[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by CharlesS:

11. Help Viewer. OS 7.5 through 8.6 had Apple Guide, which was great, but doesn't count since OS 9 is what we're talking about, and it had the same really crappy HTML app that 10.0 had.

12. The Apple menu. It sucked. It was cluttered with tons of junk, only some of which was useful (who ever used the Scrapbook?). It was configurable! But only if you manually navigated to HD:System Folder:Apple Menu Items. Of course, newbies couldn't possibly be expected to know this. I actually read tips in Mac magazines back then which involved making an alias of the AMI folder, pasting a blank icon on it, giving it a name of a few spaces, and putting it right under the Apple menu on the Desktop so there'd be an easy place to drag files into to put them in the Apple menu, or go in and take them out. In OS X, you can have as many Apple Menus as you want by putting folders in the Dock, and then at least you can drag stuff into them (although it'd be better if they were spring-loaded).

14. Ejecting disks. Dragging a disk to the Trash to eject it has got to be one of the dumbest UI decisions in history. "But I don't want to erase the disk! I just want to eject it!" And it makes even less sense to drag a disk into the Trash to burn a CD. At least in OS X the Trash turns into an Eject or Burn icon if you're dragging a disk, so it's more clear what will happen. But much more logical is the Eject button that appears next to each disk in the Finder sidebar. Makes more sense than dropping your disk in the wastebasket, no?

18. OS X's standard toolbar widget for apps. Provides another element of uniformity and consistency among apps. OS 9 has no equivalent.

OS 9 had the best interface for its time. And what was its competition? Well... Windows 98, and the various window managers available for X11. Not the stiffest of competition in the UI area. OS X is so much better than OS 9, it's not even in the same ballpark, and I will say with a straight face that it's the best UI around, a thousand times.

Great post. Disagree with a few parts though.
11. So HTML Help rendering wasn't great. It was much faster then the 10.2 widget, and plenty capable - better the Windows 98's help, Mac OS X pre-10.3's help, etc. Furthermore, although Apple didn't support it starting at Mac OS 8.5, not 9, the Apple Guide runner was still there and programmers could use it. SimpleText does, for instance. Furthermore, Balloon Help was a major pain to program, but when it was implemented (WordPerfect, for example,) it was frequently useful.

12. Actually, the Scrapbook is very handy for holding pieces of information, such as a funny joke article, a porn pic (let's face it,) or, in schools, for instance, animal sounds. It was left out of X because of the new, enhanced Stickies. Stickies is also great for jotting down thoughts, the Calc was fine, as was ASP and Cd Player. Note Pad (seen in 8.6 and earlier, or in the Apple Extras folder) was nice but redundant (stickies, scrapbook.)
The Control Panels are still present to this day, as is "About this Computer/Macintosh" (earlier OSes used Mac, newer ones Computer, X Mac again.) And it was easy to remove and add things from Favorites, with a simple File > Add to Favorites, and to remove, Choose Apple > Favorites -- that is, click the folder itself; alien to Windows users; common on the Mac -- and drag the item to the Trash. To access Favorites, Choose Apple > Favorites > Favorite. And don't forget the Launcher; drag items in and to the Trash to add or remove, and click one to launch. It is too bad not to have the Dock, though, although DragThing rectified the problem.

14. I always drag disks to the Trash, but it is a stupid metaphor, which is why in Mac OS 8 or later choose Special > Eject Disk.

18. True, but why doesn't Safari use the stinking interface? Also, Carbon apps, nee the Finder, can use it.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
@nerdboys and zealots

I am not a nerdboy or zealot and I am turning you in for that one. I simply am a Mac fan who likes both 9 and X. I think the X interface is slightly better, but 9 has the upper hand in Finder, Launcher, Scrapbook, etc.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
I am not a nerdboy or zealot and I am turning you in for that one. I simply am a Mac fan who likes both 9 and X. I think the X interface is slightly better, but 9 has the upper hand in Finder, Launcher, Scrapbook, etc.

Thanks. Don't hesitate to hit that "report abuse" button if you ever feel personally attacked. This is a much better response than yelling back. In a perfect world, it wouldn't phase any of us, but everyone has buttons that can be pushed.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
Great post. Disagree with a few parts though.
11. So HTML Help rendering wasn't great. It was much faster then the 10.2 widget, and plenty capable - better the Windows 98's help, Mac OS X pre-10.3's help, etc. Furthermore, although Apple didn't support it starting at Mac OS 8.5, not 9, the Apple Guide runner was still there and programmers could use it. SimpleText does, for instance. Furthermore, Balloon Help was a major pain to program, but when it was implemented (WordPerfect, for example,) it was frequently useful.

Comparing the OS 9 Help Viewer vs. the 10.0-10.2 help viewer, I'd agree with you. But my impression has always been that we are talking about the current state of the OS when it comes to OS X, which is 10.3. If we were comparing OS 9 against, say, 10.0, then hell, I'd agree that the OS 9 interface was better. With 10.3, though, absolutely not.

14. I always drag disks to the Trash, but it is a stupid metaphor, which is why in Mac OS 8 or later choose Special > Eject Disk.

The Special menu was pretty non-intuitive with regards to its purpose or what sorts of functions would be in it. Most non-power users didn't know about Eject in the Special menu. Generally, "Special" was a terrible name for that menu as it imparted very little information about the kinds of functions you'd find in there. If I wanted to eject a disk, "Special" is not the place I would have looked for it. Granted, "File" isn't much better a place for it either.

Fortunately, in 10.3 the sidebar has those plainly visible Eject buttons, which I much prefer over dragging to the Trash or File->Eject. And, they're much more visible and intuitive to new users.

18. True, but why doesn't Safari use the stinking interface? Also, Carbon apps, nee the Finder, can use it.

Beats me why Safari doesn't use it. This was one of the first things that made me go WTF when I first used Safari. Fortunately, one of the Tiger screenshots that was available on the Web a long time ago had a Safari window open with the "Drag your favorite items into the toolbar..." sheet open, making it look like Safari might finally follow the standard interface in Tiger.

And AFAIK, I never stated that Carbon apps couldn't use the standard toolbar. That would indeed be foolish since it would be clearly untrue to state such a thing. It would also put a huge ding in my point, since a standard interface isn't worth much if it can't be used by a huge number of apps written for the system.

[CharlesS]

BTW, here are a few more UI advantages of OS X over OS 9:

21. Sheets. I can't believe I forgot to mention this earlier. If you've ever read through the classic Mac OS guidelines for the pre-OS X OS, you'll notice that they advocate making windows modal as little as possible, for a variety of reasons. Since sheets are modal only for a particular document, and don't tie up the rest of the app, they minimize modality and therefore are better even by OS 9's own UI guidelines. They also make life easier for the user because they make it obvious exactly which document you're saving, printing, or whatever.

22. On the rare occasion that the whole OS crashes, OS X puts up a nice-looking sheet with a cool transparent version of the power symbol, and instructions on how to reboot the computer in four different languages. Now, this is as minor a feature as any, but I think it illustrates the beauty of Apple's UI design. Even when the thing crashes, it's attractive and helpful.

I remember in the OS 9 days, how we used to talk about Apple's UI design and what made it better. What was usually said was that Apple is a company that always seems to pay attention to the smallest of details. There were many little niceties in the OS 9 design that seemed very minor, but were so numerous that you missed them when you used Windows. Now, of course this argument was partially fueled by the fact that OS 9 was so lacking in the big features department, but I still believe it to be true regardless, and believe that it's the little details that make OS X such a smooth, luxurious platform.

And OS X does it better than OS 9. Going back to my crashing example, OS 9 just puts up an ancient-looking System 6 dialog box with crappy-looking buttons and a bomb icon. Rather than the soothing, "don't panic" effect that the OS X kernel panic (ironic, eh?) screen has, the OS 9 bomb box is scary. For example, my dad thinks that once you see this screen, you need to reboot immediately and time is of the essence. If you let it sit too long, Bad Things will happen. I think the reason is because the idea of a bomb is something that is ticking away, needing to be defused right away before it explodes! Of course, by the time you see that bomb box, it's already exploded, but to a non-power user, the scary nature of the bomb box may cause them not to realize that.

23. Also in the "little touches" department, check out the app switcher in OS X. It's slick - you can command-tab through of course, if you tap "Q" it quits the app while leaving the switcher open, if you tap "H" it hides the app, etc. You can even mouse over it, and the app you mouse over will get selected automatically. It's quite nice.

24. Desktop printing. In OS X, any printer can be made into a desktop printer easily. Simple, transparent, and it Just Works. OS 9 has desktop printing, too, but it doesn't seem to work with all printers. Some printer drivers just don't seem to support it and have resisted any attempts by me to make a desktop printer out of them. What's worse, you can't really turn desktop printing off. If I set up a printer driver that supports desktop printing (like LaserWriter) in the Chooser, it automatically makes a desktop printer icon on the Desktop. What if I don't want all my printers cluttering my desktop?

25. OS 9 has too much maintenance voodoo you have to perform to keep the system running correctly. Too many times I've seen icons get screwed up because the Desktop file got corrupted, and in order to fix it, you have to rebuild the Desktop. And then, the Finder's Rebuild Desktop function doesn't make a completely clean desktop file, so sometimes you have to make the file visible yourself and trash it, or run one of the programs designed to do that. And, you have to remember Command-Option at startup, because there's no function to rebuild the desktop in the menus, where you'd expect it.

26. Bizarre placement of certain preferences. To toggle warnings on emptying the Trash, for instance, you have to Get Info on the Trash. Why? In OS X, preferences are more likely to be found in Preferences where they belong (although there are some notable exceptions, i.e. the default browser setting being in Safari. WTF?).

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
In OS X, preferences are more likely to be found in Preferences where they belong (although there are some notable exceptions, i.e. the default browser setting being in Safari. WTF?).

I believe that was changed because people who wanted to make Safari the default browser looked into the Safari preferences for that feature (which is an obvious place to look for it in a way). Of course that change means that other browsers need this settings as well so when people want to make those the default they find it in those app's preferences. Internet Explorer can do it, OmniWeb can do it. Only Mozilla.org is stubbornly resisting the change. Probably because they insist that System Preferences is the better place for such a setting. It is the better place for advanced users who understand the underlying mechanisms of the system selecting the browser. But for a naive user making a browser the default is a feature of the browser.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I believe that was changed because people who wanted to make Safari the default browser looked into the Safari preferences for that feature (which is an obvious place to look for it in a way). Of course that change means that other browsers need this settings as well so when people want to make those the default they find it in those app's preferences. Internet Explorer can do it, OmniWeb can do it. Only Mozilla.org is stubbornly resisting the change. Probably because they insist that System Preferences is the better place for such a setting. It is the better place for advanced users who understand the underlying mechanisms of the system selecting the browser. But for a naive user making a browser the default is a feature of the browser.

Then put the setting in both places, but for the love of God, this setting really needs to be in the System Preferences.

Argh.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
...14. I always drag disks to the Trash, but it is a stupid metaphor, which is why in Mac OS 8 or later choose Special > Eject Disk....

There was a MAJOR flaw with this, actually. I don't remember what all it applied to, but I know it at least applied to floppies. If you told the machine to eject the disk, a grayed out icon stayed on your desktop. Then, if you double clicked the icon, you had to put the floppy back in. You couldn't cancel. In fact, you had to choose File->Put Away to properly eject a floppy, which was totally counterintuitive.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by Detrius:
There was a MAJOR flaw with this, actually. I don't remember what all it applied to, but I know it at least applied to floppies. If you told the machine to eject the disk, a grayed out icon stayed on your desktop.

That was not a flaw, that was a feature. How else would you copy files between disks, when you don't have the ghost to drag files onto?

[Detrius]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
That was not a flaw, that was a feature. How else would you copy files between disks, when you don't have the ghost to drag files onto?

The ability to leave the disk grayed out on the desktop is a feature, but the UI to do it was unintuitive.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Detrius:
There was a MAJOR flaw with this, actually. I don't remember what all it applied to, but I know it at least applied to floppies. If you told the machine to eject the disk, a grayed out icon stayed on your desktop. Then, if you double clicked the icon, you had to put the floppy back in. You couldn't cancel. In fact, you had to choose File->Put Away to properly eject a floppy, which was totally counterintuitive.

IIRC that was fixed in OS 8, so it's outside the scope of this comparison. But yeah, that was bad indeed.

[irfoton]

I would like to disagree that the app menu is an OSX advantage. OS9 beauty was the muscle memory. app names are variable in length and thus the File menu changes it's location depending on the app. Bad UI design.

Sheets are OK until you want to see the file content underneath and then it's a pain in the butt.

the trash can was easy to locate because it was at the bottom right. Again muscle memory.

Dock changes location of content as things get added. Bad UI, bad.

Help viewer. mixed bag. it still sucks and is one of the worst apps in OSX. i think even worse than the Finder. The old Help Viewer had the neat aspect of doing what it was suggesting - remember the big red circles?

Being able to change file affiliation by changing the file name is bad UI design. the name of the file should not effect the file type.

Quartz is great but QuickDrawGX was really cool too.

things I miss from OS9:
UI speed
Tabbed, spring loaded folders. I loved pulling a folder down to the bottom of the screen to create a tab.
the control strip - lovely just lovely.
the Apple menu.
One view of a folder's content at a time.
UI speed
Platinum look
Did I say UI speed?

all that being said, I prefer osX for it's stability, preemptive multi-taksing, and protected memory.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by irfoton:
I would like to disagree that the app menu is an OSX advantage. OS9 beauty was the muscle memory. app names are variable in length and thus the File menu changes it's location depending on the app. Bad UI design.

I wasn't talking solely about the application menu, I was talking about the more logical grouping of menu items in general.

With that said, menus always shift around, in OS 9 or OS X, because each application has a different set of menus. The only ones that would always be in the same place in OS 9 were File and Edit, and those were comprised mostly of commands that you'd just about always be using keyboard shortcuts for anyway (who honestly uses the Edit menu for Cut and Paste?).

Sheets are OK until you want to see the file content underneath and then it's a pain in the butt.

As opposed to the OS 9 modal dialog boxes which were often not even movable.

Actually the sheets are slightly more accommodating in this regard, since they're slightly transparent.

the trash can was easy to locate because it was at the bottom right. Again muscle memory.

Command-Delete.

And, unless you don't keep many items in your Dock, the Trash can is always going to be about in the same location all the time anyway. I haven't noticed any problem thus far, and it's been 4 years now...

Dock changes location of content as things get added. Bad UI, bad.

Someone's been reading Tog. Bad UI? Really? How else is it supposed to work? Especially when the thing fills up the width (or height) of the screen. Should it just display a little chevron on the edge or something?

This hasn't bothered me one bit in four years. I barely notice it if some app in the Dock moves by some minuscule amount. Far more important is the muscle memory of hitting the edge of the screen, which the Dock does just fine.

Help viewer. mixed bag. it still sucks and is one of the worst apps in OSX. i think even worse than the Finder. The old Help Viewer had the neat aspect of doing what it was suggesting - remember the big red circles?

That was Apple Guide, and it was replaced with the Help Viewer long before OS 9.

Being able to change file affiliation by changing the file name is bad UI design. the name of the file should not effect the file type.

Hey, thanks for reminding me of that one. I was going to put it in the list:

27. You can easily change the application that a document will open with without having to resort to a developer's utility like ResEdit.

Funny how there can be more than one way of looking at things, eh?

I used to think this about file extensions, but then I realized that the real strength of the type/creator system was its ability to have more than one file of the same type openable by different documents. OS X has managed to replicate this aspect of the type/creator system, and even make it easier to use with the "Open with:" option in Get Info, and the "Always Open With" option in the context menu.

Regarding file extensions, like it or not, we've got to have them, because unfortunately Windows is the lingua franca these days, and having to dick with files in ResEdit to get them to open properly when you got them from another computer == bad user experience. Admittedly, I've seen this problem in OS X a few times too, but it was mostly with poorly ported Carbon apps which hadn't gotten with the program and were still doing things the OS 9 way and not supporting extensions.

Quartz is great but QuickDrawGX was really cool too.

As I understand, Quartz incorporates most of the features of QuickDraw GX, although I'm not too familiar with the latter so there could be something it's missing. With that said, Quartz has a huge advantage over QDGX in that it's actually used by a wide range of applications. I can't think of a single OS 9 app that used QDGX at the moment, and IIRC it was also killed long before OS 9 came along.

things I miss from OS9:
UI speed

Really? This was true in 10.0, for sure, but I find Panther to be quite zippy.

Tabbed, spring loaded folders. I loved pulling a folder down to the bottom of the screen to create a tab.

I'll give you this one - I miss those too. Fortunately, there's DragThing: http://www.dragthing.com/ which IMO is a better implementation than the OS 9 tabbed folders were anyway (the latter were too fragile and easy to mess up).

the control strip - lovely just lovely.

Really? You're the first person I've heard that missed this one. I found it to be annoying and in the way all the time (although it was all right if you moved it to the right-hand side of the screen instead of the left). The few features of it that I actually used have made it into the menu extras, so it's no great loss to me.

the Apple menu.

You've got as many Apple menus as you need - just drag folders into the Dock.

It's better, actually, since you can actually drag stuff into the docked folders to add stuff to them, or you can click them to get into the folder and move or delete stuff (although I do wish these were spring-loaded). The Apple menu, on the other hand, was completely unintuitive.

One view of a folder's content at a time.

I still can't understand why people clamor for this so much. I find it to be a disadvantage and a limitation in what I can do with the file browser.

Platinum look

Whatever floats your boat. I find it ugly after being used to OS X's interface. Someone's probably got a Platinum theme out there somewhere for OS X, if you really want it.

[Andrew Stephens]

How OSX went in the right direction: Never having to manually allocate application memory. Nice, invisible OS

How OSX went in the wrong direction: Newbie: "My xxx has stopped working and xxx. Can you help?". MacMeister: "Easy to fix. Just open terminal and type in exactly file/blipconfig dada doodoo/ widget/widget/balh blah blah unflip snoozemonkey flabbiscuit - warning get one letter wrong and your computer will launch a preemptive missile strike against Iran!"

er

ps Why do I need "permission" to do anything on my computer. Give us a proper single user mode and hide all the crudola!

[Richard Edgar]

Why do I need "permission" to do anything on my computer. Give us a proper single user mode and hide all the crudola!

There is. Look up how to log in as root, and you'll never need to worry about being denied permission to do something again.

As for filename extensions... I dislike them profoundly. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has decided that they are good enough (not unlike Windows and Unix, really). Of course, the type/creator code system was not without its flaws - primarily when they got lost (e.g. during transmission over the internet). Still, many apps (e.g. GraphicConvertor) would try opening files anyway, and then reset the creator codes for you, if desired.

[irfoton]

CharlesS

this isn't an opinion piece. UI design is a science. To say that you like it and I don't or vis versa has little meaning. Muscle memory is a proven advantage in many tasks (sports, assembly line...) including GUI design. The dock violates much of what was learned during testing of GUI design. I'm glad you like it but it doesn't make it good GUI design. I too have adapted to using it but really wish that I could "Pin" things to a certain location. For instance just changing the location of where minimized items are located to the beginning of the dock would help. That way the things i put in the dock for permanent storage are always in the same place.

As for extensions, just because Windows dominated in doing something incorrectly doesn't mean it is good design. Many "standards" are not good design. Apple had an opportunity to do better. I don't think they got there when metadata is confused with the filename. Instead, I wish they would have allowed another column or two in the finder window that showed the file creator and file type independent of the filename. Power users could view and alter that column in their Finder list if wanted.

As for speed, if you think Panther is snappy compared to OS9 you haven't booted in OS9 in a long time.

Again, I'm not advocating a trip back to OS9 days. Just wanted to point out that UI design is a science.

irfoton

[IamBob]

(who honestly uses the Edit menu for Cut and Paste?)

My mom.

You have no idea how long it took me to train her to use cmd +/- to change the text size in Mail (and I doubt she gets the "everywhere else too" bit). Every day for a week, "This person's font is too small, how do I change it?"

Agreed though, menu shifting is a non-issue. I prefer the way OSX does it, it seems more logical.

this isn't an opinion piece. UI design is a science.

There may be a lot of science involved but the same is true of opinion.

If it was all science we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd be able to prove which UI was superior and there'd only be one worth using. Since we can't prove it either way (never mind CLI [or text-based] vs GUI) I'd say it's more about opinion (and the task(s) at hand) than science.

The dock violates much of what was learned during testing of GUI design.

It's not the end of the world if you miss your target by a few pixels because the Dock moved things a little. Chances are you don't mouse blindly anyway. 9 times out of 10 I'll land the mouse on the app/doc I want without further mousing and when I do miss it's a little nudge this way or that, not worth complaining about.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
How OSX went in the wrong direction: Newbie: "My xxx has stopped working and xxx. Can you help?". MacMeister: "Easy to fix. Just open terminal and type in exactly file/blipconfig dada doodoo/ widget/widget/balh blah blah unflip snoozemonkey flabbiscuit - warning get one letter wrong and your computer will launch a preemptive missile strike against Iran!"

As opposed to the same problem happening in OS 9, and the solution being "clean install the OS".

ps Why do I need "permission" to do anything on my computer. Give us a proper single user mode and hide all the crudola!

Because then you have a situation like Windows where any virus, worm, or trojan has full access to screw with the system however it pleases, and normal, poorly written apps have the freedom to stick their tendrils deep into the system without your knowledge, causing you to have to clean install and start from scratch to be sure you got rid of it all.

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
There is. Look up how to log in as root, and you'll never need to worry about being denied permission to do something again.

This is terrible advice.

As for filename extensions... I dislike them profoundly. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has decided that they are good enough (not unlike Windows and Unix, really). Of course, the type/creator code system was not without its flaws - primarily when they got lost (e.g. during transmission over the internet). Still, many apps (e.g. GraphicConvertor) would try opening files anyway, and then reset the creator codes for you, if desired.

Many apps would try, but even more wouldn't. As nice as the idea behind the type/creator system was, it didn't really work well once the Internet came around. If Apple had won the market-share battle, and had caused everyone to standardize on type codes, it would have worked fine. But as it is, it had too many problems.

Originally posted by irfoton:
For instance just changing the location of where minimized items are located to the beginning of the dock would help. That way the things i put in the dock for permanent storage are always in the same place.

I don't get it. Wouldn't that just shift everything to the right?

As for extensions, just because Windows dominated in doing something incorrectly doesn't mean it is good design. Many "standards" are not good design. Apple had an opportunity to do better. I don't think they got there when metadata is confused with the filename. Instead, I wish they would have allowed another column or two in the finder window that showed the file creator and file type independent of the filename. Power users could view and alter that column in their Finder list if wanted.

I'll come back to this in a sec...

As for speed, if you think Panther is snappy compared to OS9 you haven't booted in OS9 in a long time.

I had to boot into OS 9 just two days ago, in fact, because I wanted to surface scan a disk that I suspected of having bad sectors, and I'm too cheap to buy the upgrade to TechTool Pro since I use it so rarely. First of all, Panther has become fast enough that I don't notice any speed problem, so if anything is faster, it's not going to make much of an impression on me (I suppose if something resized really quickly, I'd notice it, because that's about the only thing that I find can get noticeably slow on OS X. But OS 9 doesn't even have live resizing, so my mind won't make a comparison). Perhaps if you're using an original Bondi iMac G3 or something, it might be slow, I wouldn't know. But then again, my G4/450 isn't that hot in terms of processor speed these days either. What's more, if you've got something going on in the background (like that surface scan), then OS 9's UI becomes maddeningly slow. I'm talking click a menu, wait a few seconds for it to drop down slow. In OS X, I was then able to make a disk image out of that same disk for a backup, in the background, and not even notice it.

Funny how there can be more than one way to look at things, eh?

Originally posted by mAxximo:
I stopped reading in the part where ResEdit was crucial to open files in a different application in the Mac. Perhaps you were too young to remember how things really were?

Having fun? Nice way to twist my words. Sigh...

Let it be known that the only reason for my replying to a post of yours is because this has come up a few times and needs to be cleared up.

If a Mac file got distributed through some non-Mac medium, like e-mail, a PC-formatted disk, or whatnot, causing it to lose its HFS type information, you'd end up with a file the OS didn't have any idea what to do with. Some applications were smart enough to try reading the file anyway, but with most, it wouldn't even show up in the Open dialog box. You'd have to fix the file with ResEdit to get it to open. Again, I've had this with OS X when dealing with poorly written apps that still aren't writing the file extension. However, at least you can fix it most of the time in OS X just by typing the right file extension on the end of the name. And, if the app doesn't support file extensions at all, at least you have the command-option-drag recourse to force the app to try to open the file (remember, the one people were claiming wasn't important from my list?). And when you're working in the Mac lab, and someone comes to you with a type code-shorn file and ask you to fix it, it looks a lot less scary to them if you look up the extension and then type it. If you have to go download ResEdit or some similar tool, open up the app to find out the proper type/creator code, then open up the file and change it there, then the user is basically going to see you doing a bunch of voodoo and is going to think you need to be a wizard to use a Mac.

No wait, I actually stopped at “10.0 was sluggish, from there on I feel OS X is as fast as OS 9”

No, what I actually said was, "Really? This was true in 10.0, for sure, but I find Panther to be quite zippy." Not so hard to go back and actually read what I said - it is the Internet after all...

Originally posted by IamBob:
There may be a lot of science involved but the same is true of opinion.

If it was all science we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd be able to prove which UI was superior and there'd only be one worth using. Since we can't prove it either way (never mind CLI [or text-based] vs GUI) I'd say it's more about opinion (and the task(s) at hand) than science.

Thank you.

I find huge improvements such as Exposé, being able to drag a file onto any open app, column view, and not having to disk with memory allocation much more of a big deal than a Dock icon shifting a few pixels over.

Frankly, I don't even find the comparison valid. If OS 9 had something which provided the same function as the Dock but had a better UI, then you'd have a point. As it is, OS 9 had nothing like it, so it's not like you've lost anything. If you want the OS 9 experience, you can just hide the Dock and use the rest of the OS as you always did.

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
As opposed to the same problem happening in OS 9, and the solution being "clean install the OS".

A different set of problems is not a solution or an improvement.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
A different set of problems is not a solution or an improvement.

Uh huh. So how would you go about solving a problem if, say, things are messed up enough that the GUI won't load? There's the OS 9 way, which is a clean install. Or in OS X, you have the option of going in a little deeper and fixing it. But, if you are squeamish about that, the OS 9 way of reformat and/or reinstall still works - it's just a PITA...

[irfoton]

Originally posted by IamBob:
There may be a lot of science involved but the same is true of opinion.

If it was all science we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'd be able to prove which UI was superior and there'd only be one worth using. Since we can't prove it either way (never mind CLI [or text-based] vs GUI) I'd say it's more about opinion (and the task(s) at hand) than science.

Thank you.


I don't know how to respond to this. So because there is a lot of opinion and a lot of science, they should carry equal weight? OS9 was based on studies of human responses to a GUI. Apple had a human interface group that did scientific studies of the most intuitive methods for accomplishing a task or viewing information. The new Apple disbanded this group. OSX violates many of those tried and true guidelines - the simplest being muscle memory. There are many more and I suggest you read Siracusa and other HI experts to gain an appreciation for this science.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by irfoton:
I don't know how to respond to this. So because there is a lot of opinion and a lot of science, they should carry equal weight? OS9 was based on studies of human responses to a GUI. Apple had a human interface group that did scientific studies of the most intuitive methods for accomplishing a task or viewing information. The new Apple disbanded this group. OSX violates many of those tried and true guidelines - the simplest being muscle memory. There are many more and I suggest you read Siracusa and other HI experts to gain an appreciation for this science.

But the question is, is there any proof that it suffers very much from this — aside from at the hands of people who take UI guidelines as holy writ? Is there a significant number of people who, never having heard of John Siracusa, find menus that move by a few pixels so much more difficult that it actually impairs their workflow?

[analogika]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
How OSX went in the wrong direction: Newbie: "My xxx has stopped working and xxx. Can you help?". MacMeister: "Easy to fix. Just open terminal and type in exactly file/blipconfig dada doodoo/ widget/widget/balh blah blah unflip snoozemonkey flabbiscuit - warning get one letter wrong and your computer will launch a preemptive missile strike against Iran!"

As I recall (I do Mac support), I've only ever had to use the terminal to fix something ONCE - while connected to a client machine via SSH, something I couldn't even have *done* under OS 9.

Everything else has been easily fixed via GUI or swiftly-found and downloaded GUI wrapper applications.

Name me THREE instances since Panther where a) you've actually had a problem, and b) you *needed* to use the Terminal to fix it.



IME, 95% of problems on OS 9 are either extension conflicts (i.e. badly programmed extensions) or simply unfixable limitations of the system. And once you're talking about extension conflicts, I'd like you to explain to me the transparency of System 9.

-s*

[analogika]

Originally posted by irfoton:
the trash can was easy to locate because it was at the bottom right. Again muscle memory.

Unless, of course, the trash can is obstructed by fifteen windows - with no quick way of clearing them ALL off.

Trashcan on the desktop is the most useless location I can think of, save hiding it in some menu.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by analogika:
...Name me THREE instances since Panther where a) you've actually had a problem, and b) you *needed* to use the Terminal to fix it...

1) blue screen on startup--user doesn't successfully log in, or something like that. Remotely logged in to see which process was bailing and to find corrupt preferences, etc...
2) logged-in-user's user interface crashed. Remotely logged in and kill loginwindow to prevent logging out other users
3) screen saver crashed. logged in remotely and killed the screen saver. no data lost.
4) automount has been crashing a lot recently. If it's crashed and a network user attempts to log in, the loginwindow hangs. Remotely log in and kill the loginwindow, and of course, kill automount and start it over using SystemStarter.
5) bug in client where if a machine is set to autologin and then receives an Open Directory server via DHCP, but then the server is removed again, the machine bluescreens on startup. Used nicl to remove the mcx_cache from the NetInfo database in single user mode. Even FireWire target disk mode would have required a terminal window for this, as there aren't any tools to modify a raw netinfo database, other than nicl.

BTW, none of this was possible in OS 9.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
There is. Look up how to log in as root, and you'll never need to worry about being denied permission to do something again.

Uh, no.

[analogika]

Originally posted by Detrius:
BTW, none of this was possible in OS 9.

Okay. That's kind of the crux, isn't it.

Considering you couldn't do *anything* in similar situations under OS 9 except reboot - that is still the default newbie solution to the immediate problem of freezing.

After that comes troubleshooting, which is done via GUI.

It's nice, though, isn't it, that the Terminal actually gives you the possibility of saving work rather than just killing everything outright...the way it was in OS 9.

-s*

[- - e r i k - -]

UI design may be a science, but it's not an exact one. I know, I've studied it for years. It's a science of compromises and learnability is sometimes as useful as usability.

Take the dock. I have 36 items in it, pinned to the bottom of the right-hand screen (OK, so you have to use a 3rd party utility to pin it to the edge, but I set this once many years ago and haven't needed to change it through upgrades and it works without it). It's maximized so that it's always 100% of the height of the screen, and this minimize the distance icons move as the dock shrink and expand.

I can always and without trouble find the application I am looking for at any given time. Not only because muscle-memory still works even if it's object has moved a few pixels (much as you still can find a knife in the knife-compartment of your drawer even if it's not in the exact physical location as you left it), but because it works in tandem with your visual memory (icon shape, color) as well.

[ginoledesma]

Originally posted by analogika:
Name me THREE instances since Panther where a) you've actually had a problem, and b) you *needed* to use the Terminal to fix it.

Something of which I've had to do recently:

1. Files refuse to be deleted in the Finder, because of "not enough permissions." I think this was more of a problem with Jaguar than Panther. And no, not even changing ownership or permissions would do anything. The only ways would have been to either a) reboot the system (seldom worked), or b) use sudo rm -f <file>.

2. Killing an application that didn't respond to Command-Option-Esc or "Force Quit". If I left everything to the Finder, I've have the spinning beach ball of death for a very long, long time, if not forever.

3. Force mounting a hard drive which had a filesystem the Finder claimed was "unmountable" or unrecognizable. Thankfully, the mount utilities work fine.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Something of which I've had to do recently:

1. Files refuse to be deleted in the Finder, because of "not enough permissions." I think this was more of a problem with Jaguar than Panther. And no, not even changing ownership or permissions would do anything. The only ways would have been to either a) reboot the system (seldom worked), or b) use sudo rm -f <file>.

You didn't *need* to do this in Terminal. There are several (3rd party) GUI-utilities that solve this.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Something of which I've had to do recently:

1. Files refuse to be deleted in the Finder, because of "not enough permissions." I think this was more of a problem with Jaguar than Panther. And no, not even changing ownership or permissions would do anything. The only ways would have been to either a) reboot the system (seldom worked), or b) use sudo rm -f <file>.

Like erik said, there are utilities out there like Force Delete that let you basically rm -f with a GUI.

2. Killing an application that didn't respond to Command-Option-Esc or "Force Quit". If I left everything to the Finder, I've have the spinning beach ball of death for a very long, long time, if not forever.

Whereas with OS 9, if Command-Option-Esc to Force Quit didn't work (and it frequently didn't), there'd be nothing you could do, and you'd just have to reboot.

3. Force mounting a hard drive which had a filesystem the Finder claimed was "unmountable" or unrecognizable. Thankfully, the mount utilities work fine.

And again, if this had happened under OS 9, you'd just be up a creek without a paddle.

In order to make a case for OS X requiring the command line in places OS 9 didn't, you're going to have to actually find some situation where the command line is the only way to solve some problem in OS X that there would be a GUI solution for in OS 9. Submitting problems that simply couldn't be solved in OS 9 at all doesn't count.

[wataru]

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
There is. Look up how to log in as root, and you'll never need to worry about being denied permission to do something again.

As for filename extensions... I dislike them profoundly.

Someone already replied to this, but I think it needs to be mentioned again: Logging in as root is a surefire way to screw up your system. If you don't understand the need for file permissions, and you don't understand why root is disabled by default, then you will render your system unusable when you log in as root.

If you don't like file extensions, hide them!

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by wataru:
Someone already replied to this, but I think it needs to be mentioned again: Logging in as root is a surefire way to screw up your system. If you don't understand the need for file permissions, and you don't understand why root is disabled by default, then you will render your system unusable when you log in as root.

If you don't like file extensions, hide them!

This was in response to the complaint

"Why do I need "permission" to do anything on my computer. Give us a proper single user mode and hide all the crudola!"

I think it's important to realize what this person wants from his computer. Not much at all. But he wants to be able to really mess it up in the process.

Lesson learned here: people liked os 9 because they thought they were super power users by customizing the apple menu / extensions / control panels.

Honestly, I wasn't productive at all on OS 9, I lost a lot of work due to crashes, and it was generally a pain. I like to use a lot of programs at once, and it really didn't do what I needed. I have never, ever missed it.

[Richard Edgar]

Someone already replied to this, but I think it needs to be mentioned again: Logging in as root is a surefire way to screw up your system.

Where did I say that it wasn't? Someone had a problem. I offered a solution to it.

As nice as the idea behind the type/creator system was, it didn't really work well once the Internet came around. If Apple had won the market-share battle, and had caused everyone to standardize on type codes, it would have worked fine. But as it is, it had too many problems

But that problem is wholly independent of the merits of the type/creator system itself. It is more work to preserve type/creator codes (or some equivalent, possibly better, functionality). Similarly, it is also more work to have apps double check a file, if asked to open it. And we are back to the perennial problem of the computer industry: work costs money, and people will only pay for 'good enough' (although they will also whine that it could be better).

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
But that problem is wholly independent of the merits of the type/creator system itself. It is more work to preserve type/creator codes (or some equivalent, possibly better, functionality). Similarly, it is also more work to have apps double check a file, if asked to open it. And we are back to the perennial problem of the computer industry: work costs money, and people will only pay for 'good enough' (although they will also whine that it could be better).

And all this is moot if the user ends up being the one who has to do the work, if a file comes in that has no type code and the system doesn't support file extensions.

Thing is, I actually like it the new way. Set a default app for a file type, and then decide for yourself when to make individual files open with a different app, rather than just having the OS decide for you by slapping a creator code on the file when you save it with a certain app. I like being in charge.

[Richard Edgar]

And all this is moot if the user ends up being the one who has to do the work, if a file comes in that has no type code and the system doesn't support file extensions

The work involved being dragging it to the appropriate application, rather than immediately double-clicking it? And why didn't the file have the codes set? Because something on the way mangled them.

Set a default app for a file type, and then decide for yourself when to make individual files open with a different app, rather than just having the OS decide for you by slapping a creator code on the file when you save it with a certain app

The OS doesn't do it. The applications do it themselves. GraphicConvertor (and I think SoundApp) has a specific option about whether it should reset the codes.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
The work involved being dragging it to the appropriate application, rather than immediately double-clicking it? And why didn't the file have the codes set? Because something on the way mangled them.

if it's not in your dock than yes, that's a pain.

[mAxximo]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
As opposed to the same problem happening in OS 9, and the solution being "clean install the OS".

In real life, actual OS 9 users just had to deactivate this or that extension to make things go back to normal. A Clean Install of the OS was very very unusual as opposed to *now*. Stop trying to rewrite history, please.

[unnecessary personal attack removed by Detrius--what part of 'No personal attacks' don't you guys understand?]

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
In real life, actual OS 9 users just had to deactivate this or that extension to make things go back to normal. A Clean Install of the OS was very very unusual as opposed to *now*. Stop trying to rewrite history, please.

Yes, to the average user that's very intuitive.

[mAxximo]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
Yes, to the average user that's very intuitive.

Of course it was.
The beauty of the Mac was everyone was able to do their own troubleshooting by just safely checking or unchecking items from a list as opposed to having to deal with [argh] Unix. If I messed up on the Mac I was always a couple of restarts away from fixing it. If I mess up with Unix I'll be instead a couple of *reinstalls* away from fixing it, thank you very much.

For intuitive I'll take trial and error over writing arcane code on a terminal or having to fetch and manually trash a bunch of obscure and clumsily named files any day of the week.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Of course it was.

No. It was not. Trial and error - , crash restart, crash, restart without extensions, repeat? How many times did you have to restart and crash before you fixed it?

I have not had any problems with OS X thus far that requires anything close to that. I use the terminal to edit my httpd.conf and hosts files for web development. Never had to for troubleshooting.

On the contrary lots of programs for OS9 installed extensions, and at any given point they could wreck your computer.

Jonathan-Haddads-Computer:~ jhaddad$ uptime
12:23 up 14 days, 20:59, 2 users, load averages: 0.33 0.26 0.28

Now that's not even a long time for OS X standards. But It was absolutely impossible for OS 9.

The point? OS 9 required you to do stupid, non intuitive things to even have the system work correctly. OS X has worked for me without issue.

[lookmark]

I can't believe I'm being drawn into this, but (grrr!) speaking of rewriting history... is there *anyone* here who didn't get bogged down for hours trying to resolve some mysterious extension conflict nightmare in OS 9? The only to avoid this awfulness was to lock down your system and be very careful installing new software. Which we did, and (cross your fingers) it was workable, but man—talk about arcane troubleshooting and user-unfriendliness.

How anyone, friend or foe of OS X, could pine for the extension conflicts of OS 9 is really beyond me.

There's still little things I miss from OS 9 -- occasionally I miss the speed and responsiveness of an OS (only in a non-multitasking situation, of course) that had otherwise fallen behind the times. Otherwise, Panther outstrips OS 9 in UI in nearly every department, for all the excellent, detailed reasons CharlesS has listed (and many more). Especially for users new to the platform.

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
This was in response to the complaint


I think it's important to realize what this person wants from his computer. Not much at all. But he wants to be able to really mess it up in the process.

Well, er no! I want to be able to forget about permissions and such rubbish. If I try to trash a vital OS file then the system should stop me. I'm not saying that OS9 was any better than X at many things, simply that in many many ways OSX is simply not the great leap forward in computer OS's that most people tout it as.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
Well, er no! I want to be able to forget about permissions and such rubbish. If I try to trash a vital OS file then the system should stop me. I'm not saying that OS9 was any better than X at many things, simply that in many many ways OSX is simply not the great leap forward in computer OS's that most people tout it as.

Permissions are how the system knows it's a vital file (or somebody else's which you don't have a right to delete).

If you have permissions, they may, on occasion, get screwed up which will cause problems - but its still better than the alternative.

Again though, I think most former OS 9 user's problems with OS X tend to stem from the multi-user nature of OS X, whether it be thinking in terms of your own user-space instead of the whole machine, dealing with file permissions, or some other aspect. Fortunately, this just takes a little time to get uses to (and is a true god-send if you're actually in a multi-user environment - lots of family members using the same computer, each wanting their own preferences, etc.)

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
In real life, actual OS 9 users just had to deactivate this or that extension to make things go back to normal. A Clean Install of the OS was very very unusual as opposed to *now*. Stop trying to rewrite history, please.

What?!

Are you really trying to say that a clean install of the OS was unusual as opposed to now? Are you serious?! WTF?!

I had to clean reinstall the OS so damn many times in OS 7-9, I don't even want to think about it anymore. System 6 was all right! But starting with System 7, it became very fragile. Why is this, you ask? Well, not only did the lack of permissions make it easy for anything that wanted to to modify the System folder or important system files themselves, but they actually did so on a regular basis. Hell, in OS 9, it wasn't unusual for the System file to get written to all the time! Don't believe me? If you have an OS 9 system running, check the modification date on the System file. It's probably later than when you installed it! In fact, go to the Sound control panel and record a new beep sound. Guess where it'll put it? In the System file! Add a new keyboard layout and guess where it goes? The System file! But that's not all! Double-click the System file once, just to see what's in it. The modification date gets bumped! Yes, it modified the file even though you didn't change anything! Now, let's look at the rest of the system folder. For example, put the Extensions folder in List View, and then sort them by mod date. Notice how many of the Apple-supplied extensions have later modification dates than when you installed the OS. Now, go to the Chooser and change your default printer. Watch the driver for that printer jump to the top as its modification date gets changed to today! Yes, during normal usage, OS 9 modifies critical system files all the time. This is BAD, people! This means they can easily get corrupted just like any preference file! And the only solution at that point will be to reinstall the OS.

I grew up in a relatively small town, and my uncle was a local judge and knew tons of people. And I would get asked to fix their Macs when they had problems. And I ended up having to clean reinstall the OS all the time. I had the process down - rename the old system folder, put the system file in Startup Items to make it non-bootable, then install and you get a clean copy. When System 7.5 came out, I memorized the keystroke to activate the hidden clean install feature of the installer. When the thing became a standard option in... hmm, was it 7.6 or 8.0? Don't remember. Anyway, I made good use of it. Since OS 9 didn't separate out the System and Library like OS X does, I then would dig through the preferences, sounds and whatnot in the System file, fonts, control panels, extensions, and such, figured out what was worth keeping, and move it into the new system folder. I knew the drill. Hell, on our own Mac (a Quadra 605) I had one case where the system would slow to a crawl until I clean reinstalled it, even if I turned extensions off! And I had this happen twice in one week! It was a mess.

This is why people still recommend Archive and Install to people upgrading the OS. They're used to it, because in OS 9, if you'd been running that OS for any considerable amount of time, chances are, it was corrupted in some way.

In OS X, not only does it not have this stupid policy of modify any system file for any reason, but there's actually this little thing called file permissions, you see, and it keeps the important system files read-only so they don't get modified! So basically the only way to get the system $%@#ed up enough to need to clean reinstall it is if you a) have severe hard disk problems or b) log in as root. If the latter, it's your own fault, not OS X!

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Richard Edgar:
The work involved being dragging it to the appropriate application, rather than immediately double-clicking it?

Nope, because if the proper type code wasn't set, most applications wouldn't let you drag them over them (with a few exceptions of course). And because this wasn't OS X, it didn't have that command-option drag to force the file to open with that app. So, the work involved was opening the file with ResEdit and manually fixing the type code.

And why didn't the file have the codes set? Because something on the way mangled them.

Could be, or it could be that the user didn't set this up properly:



Sure, this would be set up by default for common extensions like .mp3, .gif, .jpg, and so forth. But for more obscure ones? The user would have to know how to do it him/herself. Not cool. I remember having to fix this for a lot of people.

Oh, and don't forget there's a parallel set of settings in File Exchange that you have to deal with too if you want stuff to work coming from a PC-formatted floppy disk.

The OS doesn't do it. The applications do it themselves. GraphicConvertor (and I think SoundApp) has a specific option about whether it should reset the codes.

The majority of applications set their own creator code. And a lot of the time this was what you wanted. But not always. And when you sent the file to a friend, chances were his preference may not coincide with yours.

[analogika]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Something of which I've had to do recently:

1. Files refuse to be deleted in the Finder, because of "not enough permissions." I think this was more of a problem with Jaguar than Panther. And no, not even changing ownership or permissions would do anything. The only ways would have been to either a) reboot the system (seldom worked), or b) use sudo rm -f <file>.

Terminal is fastest and easiest (and filenames/paths are drag & drop from the Finder).

For the phobic, however, there are plenty of GUI wrappers for removing "undeletable" files, downloadable off versiontracker.

no points.

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
2. Killing an application that didn't respond to Command-Option-Esc or "Force Quit". If I left everything to the Finder, I've have the spinning beach ball of death for a very long, long time, if not forever.

I have Activity Viewer constantly running in the backround, with no open windows. If the Force Quit window doesn't work, I switch over, hit Cmd-1 and kill the process from there. Never had to kill via Terminal.

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
3. Force mounting a hard drive which had a filesystem the Finder claimed was "unmountable" or unrecognizable. Thankfully, the mount utilities work fine.

Congratulations. You have found something to be done via Terminal which flat-out couldn't be done at all under OS 9.

I'd postulate that mounting it via Disk Utility would probably have worked just as well.

Except, you know, via GUI.

Play again?

-ch.

[analogika]

Originally posted by lookmark:
I can't believe I'm being drawn into this, but (grrr!) speaking of rewriting history... is there *anyone* here who didn't get bogged down for hours trying to resolve some mysterious extension conflict nightmare in OS 9? The only to avoid this awfulness was to lock down your system and be very careful installing new software. Which we did, and (cross your fingers) it was workable, but man—talk about arcane troubleshooting and user-unfriendliness.

Unless, of course, you forgot that IE had to be the very last application opened, else it would grab memory from whatever application had the block adjacent to it and invariably crash the entire system.

[analogika]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Since OS 9 didn't separate out the System and Library like OS X does, I then would dig through the preferences, sounds and whatnot in the System file, fonts, control panels, extensions, and such, figured out what was worth keeping, and move it into the new system folder. I knew the drill. Hell, on our own Mac (a Quadra 605) I had one case where the system would slow to a crawl until I clean reinstalled it, even if I turned extensions off! And I had this happen twice in one week! It was a mess.

Clean-Install Assistant was a great help in that process.

Of course, it cost money.

And it did NOT play well with localized versions of the OS. In fact, after OS 9, it became pretty much useless to me for that reason.

And yes, playing with the extension lists is a wonderful process for the newbie. Case in point: Just TODAY, I had a customer in whose printer wasn't working. Nor was the DSL connection. She'd played round with Extension sets trying to fix her internet connection, and turned off Epsonsomethingorother in the process.

Marvellously intuitive.

I've been a Mac user - and troubleshooter - for over fifteen years, and at some point, three or four years ago, I decided no longer to waste so many hours of my life on extension bullsh!t - unless I get paid.

Fer chrissakes, you had to RENAME certain extensions to change the load order, to keep them from freezing up your system. WTF!?

[irfoton]

I have to disagree with you Charles. I never had to reinstall OS9 to fix a problem. if you did, then you probably didn't get to the bottom of the problem. In most cases, a corrupted preference file (MS Office prime culprit) was the issue. Extension conflics were rooted out very quickly and information. They didn't cause constant crashes because you stopped creating the conflict. The web was a good place to find conflicts and avoid them. I rarely if ever had my system crash. MS office was really the only thing that could consistently crash my system.

As for the terminal or the GUI slowing down when something else was running, that has nothing to do with interface design. The GUI is the interface to the OS. If the OS can't handle the Finder and other processes, that is not the GUI's fault unless of course the GUI is the one consuming the CPU cycles. Ironically, that is more true of OSX than OS9.

Note that the one person who studies human interface pins his dock and arranges it in a way to best maintain spatial consistency. Now why can't apple allow for that from the outset?