[hmurchison2001]

I use Microsoft Office 2007 every single day. There are parts of the program that I think are great (I don't mind the ribbon all that much ..it helps for a new user like myself). But like most Microsoft apps I have grown weary of the Microsoft way exhibiting paranoia through Genuine Advantage checks at every step (templates, add-ins etc)

As good as Office 2007 is ...it's about time for Apple to create the iWork big brother. Here's what Apple might want to do and this could be somewhat controversial.

BUY OMNIGROUP!

Apple will not likely find another small yet capable developer with the right product set that complements what they already have so well.

OmniWeb

Competes with Safari and not that well IMO. This product would be shelved.

OmniGraffle

A very popular app for diagrams in the Visio mold. Totally complementary for Apple's needs and important for business.

OmniOutliner

Getting a bit old UI wise but still actively developed. I could see Apple combining OO into the basic word processor.

OmniPlan

Project Management- another complementary and powerful program that Apple could use to great effect in a suite.

OmniFocus

Forthcoming GTD application which is going to be good for general tasks and could turn into a nice iPhone app someday as well.

Now for the rest of the tools

Word processing- Pages is nice but it's a hybrid. Focus the big bro on more document creation that aligns with the needs of business. That doesn't mean that you have to forgo on making it graphically rich but focus on easy template creation and management. Allow for powerful Macros and Autotext like features. Export options should be extensive and add OpenDocument support.

Spreadsheet - I'd personally love something along the lines of Lotus Improv/Quantrix Modeler. I'd like to see solid integration between the WP and spreadsheet.

Mail client - mail app is solid but let's take it's core, make it more "Outlooky" with integrated iChat and iCal Server support. Push email to the iPhone would be fantastic and a web front end would be the bees knees for calendar and email access from the road/home.

Database- Poach from Filemaker Pro

Keynote - I'm not sure Keynote would really need to be all that beefed up. A standard revision would probably suffice for most business users.


The vision here would be to include the basics WP/SS/DB/Pres/Groupw client, in the basic version and then add in a Plus package that includes Diagramming, Project management. As an adjunct Apple would also deliver a Web Pro app for professional level web authoring.

A community would be set up outside of the Apple.com domain which would facillitate the learning of the suite. Templates, and components would be available to extend the programs.

In summation:

Microsoft Office is a nice program but it still suffers from being a Microsoft app in the way that it mucks up the simplest things (like setting default templates or customizing the UI). In order to be the Man you have to beat the Man. Apple shipping a half baked suite in iWork isn't going to entrench them with many people. The stakes are high now...we're seeing the proliferation of Web 2.0 Rich Internet Apps (RIA) and further reliance on web resources for content. Apple has its own initiatives that cannot be met by subservience to Microsoft Office.

It's time to take the Office Suite into a different direction.

[Peter]

Apple owns FileMaker.
Mail will have enterprise features in Leopard.

I just want a decent Word Killer
in fact no,
I just want universal Microsoft Office.

[analogika]

I assume that postponed shipping dates on iWork 06 mean that we'll be seeing iWork 07 at the WWDC next week.

I'll be tremendously joyous the day I can trash that atrocity MS Office.

[MacosNerd]

I've was pleasantly surprised at how office 2007 works and to be honest (as bloated as it is) most other apps pale in comparison. I'd love to see a spreadsheet program included in iWork. Pages doesn't really fit my needs to much because I don't need a document layout/composting program but a word processor. I've not played with pages since it first came out so that may not be a fair assessment however.

[hmurchison2001]

MacosNerd

I too was surprised about how I enjoyed certain aspects of MS Office 2007. However the Genuine Advantage crap everytime I want to download a friggin' template is beyond ridiculous.

Yesterday I simply tried to create a default document (normal.dotm) that has our company Header and desired fonts and paragraph spacing. I was able to fix everything but the header. WTF..how hard is it to create a blank document and choose something like "make this my default"?

Apple is much better at placing graphics. Aligning objects in Keynote is simple. Grid stuff in Office 2k7 is ok but chances are there is a better way.

In the end I like having MS Office on the Mac platform and want to see it have success but part of me wants to see what Apple can do with:

1. Core Text
2. Webkit
3. Scripting
4. Core Animation

and other frameworks to deliver an app that is flat out fun to use. Every other suite out there is just a MS Office clone. Where's the "new" thinking?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Peter 

Mail will have enterprise features in Leopard.

I hope this will include basic things like folder subscriptions and multiple identities, which have been features in most other clients for years

I just want a decent Word Killer
in fact no,
I just want universal Microsoft Office.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever looked at Abiword?

[besson3c]

hmurchison:

What do you think about Apple bundling OpenOffice with OS X? The alpha versions out now are actually OS X native. It seems to me that a lot of work is already done here.

Buying OmniGroup is an interesting idea though...

[Thinine]

OO.o blows. And Apple will never buy OmniGroup, nor will Apple turn their apps into an office suite. (Seriously, OmniOutliner into a word processor? WTF?)

Apple is trying to distinguish iWork from Office through different features (whether better or new) and a different look.

[dn15]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

What do you think about Apple bundling OpenOffice with OS X? The alpha versions out now are actually OS X native. It seems to me that a lot of work is already done here.

In the past I thought it might be nice for Apple to do a port of OpenOffice in true Apple style, but I think the chances are near zero now that we have Pages and Keynote. It's much more likely that they'll round out the suite with a spreadsheet and leave it at that. That said, I actually do like OpenOffice in general. I just can't see Apple picking it up at this point in time.

[hmurchison2001]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

hmurchison:

What do you think about Apple bundling OpenOffice with OS X? The alpha versions out now are actually OS X native. It seems to me that a lot of work is already done here.

Buying OmniGroup is an interesting idea though...

I wouldn't mind seeing OpenOffice bundled as a nod toward FOSS. Buying Omnigroup is a streeetch but I wouldn't deride Apple if they did.

Originally Posted by Thinine 

OO.o blows. And Apple will never buy OmniGroup, nor will Apple turn their apps into an office suite. (Seriously, OmniOutliner into a word processor? WTF?)

Apple is trying to distinguish iWork from Office through different features (whether better or new) and a different look.

"Apple will never make an browser..too much work"
"Apple will never make a phone"

I've heard these and more. Outlining is just a way to format text, again Office 2007 does outlining well enough. It need not be a seperate app. The reasons why Apple doesn't make a more full featured Office Suite are likely more political than anything. The prevailing thought was that if the Mac lost Office the platform would die. That could have been true but now with open standards and interoperability becoming de rigeur the possibility and probability of Apple moving into this segment someday.

Consider the iPhone. Apple is currently going out of its way to thwart any attempts of positioning the phone as an Enterprise product. This is smart because Apple knows that everyone is going to want/need MS Office file support on the phone for viewing and editing. They don't want to expend the energy trying to engineer the appropriate translators. The ubiquity of MS Office has hurt the market. Monopolies are rarely good IMO.

Originally Posted by dn15 

In the past I thought it might be nice for Apple to do a port of OpenOffice in true Apple style, but I think the chances are near zero now that we have Pages and Keynote. It's much more likely that they'll round out the suite with a spreadsheet and leave it at that. That said, I actually do like OpenOffice in general. I just can't see Apple picking it up at this point in time.

I think Apple wants to take any program suite and really base it around core frameworks. OO is a nice app but getting them to fully support Quicktime, Applescript and the many core services that OS X offers is not trivial. Apple hasn't even seemed all that interested in supporting Open Document format which is the easiest way to extend cursory support for OO. Amazing, since it's hard to imagine what the net would be like without PDF.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Thinine 

OO.o blows. And Apple will never buy OmniGroup, nor will Apple turn their apps into an office suite. (Seriously, OmniOutliner into a word processor? WTF?)

Apple is trying to distinguish iWork from Office through different features (whether better or new) and a different look.

Why do you feel that OpenOffice blows?

[Thinine]

It looks and acts like a nasty Windows app. Which is to say it's looks like, and is about as usable as, crap.

[Chuckit]

So basically, buying Omni would get Apple all the major elements of an office suite except for…uh…the major elements of an office suite (word processing and spreadsheets).

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Thinine 

It looks and acts like a nasty Windows app. Which is to say it's looks like, and is about as usable as, crap.

Heh... "looks like a Windows app". Who cares? Some people need an Office program to do work. They have better things to do than sit around and marvel at how pretty the app is. The average user doesn't give a rat's ass about these sort of things so long as the app does the job without too much hassle and is priced attractively.

Yes its interface conventions are not really Mac-like, because OpenOffice was not designed for Aqua... If you want to extend this critique towards NeoOffice, go right ahead. Apple's X11 environment is pretty ancient and crippled, your OpenOffice experience isn't bettered by this fact if you are actually running OpenOffice and not NeoOffice.

Regardless, if OpenOffice does the job, I personally think it's a rather silly use of money to shell out hundreds of dollars for MS Office (whatever it costs these days) just to reward Microsoft in participating in the Mac religion, as if Microsoft really has these sorts of interests at heart.

Yes, in a perfect world OpenOffice would be a poster child Mac app, but it isn't. This isn't a perfect world, but to blow off the whole app just because of this understandable shortcoming is dumb, IMHO.

I say understandable because a part of me thinks it is the whining Mac mentality and simultaneous lack of help from the Mac-using community that has taken the OpenOffice team this long to start work on an Aqua version.

Mac users do tend to be whiners. They hold the Mac religion high above everything else, which is cool, but at the same poo poo what it would take for Apple to move beyond being a niche product for content creators and home users. There is nothing wrong with being either, but there is a whole world of computing outside of the bubble these sort of people live in.

Sorry, this rant is not directed at you personally.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Heh... "looks like a Windows app". Who cares? Some people need an Office program to do work. They have better things to do than sit around and marvel at how pretty the app is. The average user doesn't give a rat's ass about these sort of things so long as the app does the job without too much hassle and is priced attractively.

The average user also doesn't practice good security and keep his computer free of viruses and spyware. Do you say "Who cares?" about these things too?

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I say understandable because a part of me thinks it is the whining Mac mentality and simultaneous lack of help from the Mac-using community that has taken the OpenOffice team this long to start work on an Aqua version.

I sincerely doubt the fact that Mac users care about quality is slowing them down. I don't see Apple going, "Oh, we'd really like to release this new FCP, but we can't because Mac users actually care about software!"

As for "lack of help," I assume you mean they're being held back by the fact that the entire Mac userbase won't write the whole thing for them. You're probably right on that one.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Mac users do tend to be whiners.

WTF? You write a long post complaining about Mac users, and one of your complaints is that they tend to complain? This is like some sort of weird infinite loop.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

They hold the Mac religion high above everything else, which is cool, but at the same poo poo what it would take for Apple to move beyond being a niche product for content creators and home users. There is nothing wrong with being either, but there is a whole world of computing outside of the bubble these sort of people live in.

So what? Why do you care if Apple does this stuff? You continually preach against quality and usability and all the other things that make a Mac a Mac. You've already stated that you prefer free solutions with inferior interfaces. This is like me suggesting that Forever 21 should start selling Japanese pop music, because I'm much more interested in that than cute jeans. Seriously, why?

[analogika]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Heh... "looks like a Windows app". Who cares? Some people need an Office program to do work. They have better things to do than sit around and marvel at how pretty the app is. The average user doesn't give a rat's ass about these sort of things so long as the app does the job without too much hassle and is priced attractively.

Yes its interface conventions are not really Mac-like, because OpenOffice was not designed for Aqua... If you want to extend this critique towards NeoOffice, go right ahead. Apple's X11 environment is pretty ancient and crippled, your OpenOffice experience isn't bettered by this fact if you are actually running OpenOffice and not NeoOffice.

NeoOffice is bloated, ugly, and true to the fundamental principles of the Microsoft Office package it emulates (quite well, unfortunately), it holds high the ideal that Functionality necessarily equals Complexity - from the start.

It ain't a function if it don't stare you in the face - even if you're never gonna need it in your lifetime.

Apple's gift is to make applications as simple, uncluttered and streamlined as humanly possible, while making complex functionality available to those who seek it - because those who seek it will know where to find it, if the application is designed well.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Mac users do tend to be whiners. They hold the Mac religion high above everything else, which is cool, but at the same poo poo what it would take for Apple to move beyond being a niche product for content creators and home users. There is nothing wrong with being either, but there is a whole world of computing outside of the bubble these sort of people live in.

I don't think you know the first thing about Mac users, besson.

You really have no clue what the Mac is about.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogika 

NeoOffice is bloated, ugly, and true to the fundamental principles of the Microsoft Office package it emulates (quite well, unfortunately), it holds high the ideal that Functionality necessarily equals Complexity - from the start.

It ain't a function if it don't stare you in the face - even if you're never gonna need it in your lifetime.

Apple's gift is to make applications as simple, uncluttered and streamlined as humanly possible, while making complex functionality available to those who seek it - because those who seek it will know where to find it, if the application is designed well.

Agreed. Open and NeoOffice are not shining examples of the epitome of what usability is about, but compared to MS Office? There is a ton of crap in there I'll never need either, and I've always found Word to be quirky, bloated, and rather complicated too.

I'm not saying that this somehow invalidates your points, but going back to the original idea, why applaud MS Office while dumping over OpenOffice?

I don't think you know the first thing about Mac users, besson.

You really have no clue what the Mac is about.

If I were to ask you what Mac users are all about, you'd tell me about how they have high standards of UI design. Great. Who doesn't like well-designed GUIs? My point is that it is silly to be so rigid with this belief that one avoids products and solutions that do not pass this litmus test, even if this means being held back or having to spend a significant amount of money.

Perhaps the "being held back" thing is really the core of this issue though. I've been a Mac user for about a decade, and now I feel that I'm getting a lot of mileage out of using Ubuntu as my primary work computer, so much so that I'm very close to switching to it. I do recognize some significant trade-offs with this decision, but I'm also completely sick and tired of being held back by a lousy Finder, unresponsive apps when dealing with files being read from a network volume, poor performance overall, etc. I'm also finding I have less in common with this community.

Maybe it is time to simply commit to that switch.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Agreed. Open and NeoOffice are not shining examples of the epitome of what usability is about, but compared to MS Office? There is a ton of crap in there I'll never need either, and I've always found Word to be quirky, bloated, and rather complicated too.

It's true that MS Office is bloatware, but OO.o is much worse bloatware. At least the MS team seems to have come to realize that they've created an ungainly monstrosity and tried to work very hard on the user interface to compensate. OpenOffice isn't just unfit for Mac users, it doesn't seem to have been made with human beings in mind at all.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If I were to ask you what Mac users are all about, you'd tell me about how they have high standards of UI design. Great. Who doesn't like well-designed GUIs? My point is that it is silly to be so rigid with this belief that one avoids products and solutions that do not pass this litmus test, even if this means being held back or having to spend a significant amount of money.

If you like being less productive and less happy in what you do, this is a winning solution. Personally, I'm willing to give up a couple hours' pay in order to be more efficient forever after — it's a big net win. This is why I own a computer rather than using pen and paper for everything and commuting to the library when I need the Internet.

[peeb]

Why would apple want to buy omni? I don't see the problem with having other companies develop software. Frankly, office 2004 for Mac is pretty good, I certainly won't be replacing it when 2007 comes out. I use Pages more and more, and just use word for compatibility with clients.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If you like being less productive and less happy in what you do, this is a winning solution. Personally, I'm willing to give up a couple hours' pay in order to be more efficient forever after — it's a big net win. This is why I own a computer rather than using pen and paper for everything and commuting to the library when I need the Internet.

Of course, I agree. Productivity is the litmus test, and happiness can lead to productivity, but if what makes you happy is a good *looking* GUI, or a GUI that is Cocoa just because, or a GUI that supports a plethora of Mac features that are not part of your workflow just because, I think this is silly.

All I want a word processor to do is help me type up a traditional paper from time to time, that is it. If I lived and breathed typing up papers, of course I would be more picky. However, I can't help thinking that I represent the majority of users in this case. If your level of need is similar to mine, I just don't understand why somebody would shell out money for Office in light of the existence of NeoOffice, Abiword, etc.

I'm also not one of those people that likes to setup my Desktop just so with a particular theme or wallpaper, or customize my icons, whatever. I used to, but now I take a more pragmatic approach, I think, with using my computer for work. Whatever works and allows me to be productive, great. The icing isn't that important to me.

Is this out of step with the majority of users in your opinion, Chuckit?

[TheoCryst]

I still don't understand what exactly people find lacking about Pages as a word processor. I've been using Pages 2 as my primary word processor for over a year now, and have yet to find a single feature that was missing, but available in Word (save for an equation editor). Granted, the UI is very different than Word, which results in a bit of an initial learning curve, but after that I've found it to be very powerful without getting in the way.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, I'm actually hoping for someone to give me an honest explanation of what I'm missing.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

I still don't understand what exactly people find lacking about Pages as a word processor. I've been using Pages 2 as my primary word processor for over a year now, and have yet to find a single feature that was missing, but available in Word (save for an equation editor). Granted, the UI is very different than Word, which results in a bit of an initial learning curve, but after that I've found it to be very powerful without getting in the way.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory here, I'm actually hoping for someone to give me an honest explanation of what I'm missing.

Well, this doesn't apply to me personally, but I know of several people who find the track changes, bibliography/citation/endnote, form creation stuff, mail merge, and possibly envelope creation important to what they do.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Well, this doesn't apply to me personally, but I know of several people who find the track changes, bibliography/citation/endnote, form creation stuff, mail merge, and possibly envelope creation important to what they do.

Fair enough. Like you, I rarely (if ever) use any of those features, so its shortcomings would not be apparent to me.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Of course, I agree. Productivity is the litmus test, and happiness can lead to productivity, but if what makes you happy is a good *looking* GUI, or a GUI that is Cocoa just because, or a GUI that supports a plethora of Mac features that are not part of your workflow just because, I think this is silly.

You're right on a certain level, but at the same time I think you're overlooking something. Giving the user a familiar and consistent user interface gives him confidence. When I open a Mac program that obeys standard Mac UI conventions, I already feel like I know what I'm doing. Applications on other platforms and bad Mac ports do not usually give the same feeling — every button is intimidating. Having a clunky-looking interface, even if it's actually not that bad otherwise, still defeats this sense of confidence.

Besides the fact that it was just kind of ugly, I think this is part of the reason people hated brushed metal so much — the version of QuickTime Player it premiered in felt really alien and generally off-putting, with that pull-out metal drawer on the bottom and all sorts of unnecessary surprises in the interface.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

All I want a word processor to do is help me type up a traditional paper from time to time, that is it. If I lived and breathed typing up papers, of course I would be more picky. However, I can't help thinking that I represent the majority of users in this case. If your level of need is similar to mine, I just don't understand why somebody would shell out money for Office in light of the existence of NeoOffice, Abiword, etc.

With your level of need, I don't understand why you'd waste time downloading some ridiculous overkill like OpenOffice when TextEdit would be perfectly fine.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Agreed. Open and NeoOffice are not shining examples of the epitome of what usability is about, but compared to MS Office? There is a ton of crap in there I'll never need either, and I've always found Word to be quirky, bloated, and rather complicated too.

I'm not saying that this somehow invalidates your points, but going back to the original idea, why applaud MS Office while dumping over OpenOffice?

Good God, man, I'd never DREAM of such a thing!

How the **** did you get that impression? Microsoft Word is the single most atrocious piece of...ARGH.

I loved Word 5.1a (ca. 1992), and stuck with it until I switched to OS X.

I fault the OpenOffice/NeoOffice teams for emulating Microsoft.

I realize why they do this, but this is a common fault I see in a lot of Linux stuff: They aspire to imitate the worst.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If I were to ask you what Mac users are all about, you'd tell me about how they have high standards of UI design. Great. Who doesn't like well-designed GUIs? My point is that it is silly to be so rigid with this belief that one avoids products and solutions that do not pass this litmus test, even if this means being held back or having to spend a significant amount of money.

I'd rather spend money on having *other* people do the work for me than to become an expert in things that a) don't interest me, and b) I shouldn't have to be, and c) distract me from the things I'd rather be doing.

I use a Mac.

I read this rather interesting exchange on ars technica earlier today regarding the iPhone:

Originally posted by lookmark:

Originally posted by hello world:

Originally posted by Sulis:
I have to work with most pre-production phones as part of my job (not in a phone or network company). 95% of them are crap.

They are without exception designed by engineers, who think that the more features you stick in, the better. Very few menus do not need to be scrolled to see all the options. Even the so-called 'Simple' phones, designed for technophobes, had such menus.

truth is, once you learn a device, it's no big deal how intuitive it is, all that matters are the features.

So untrue. Users often give up in disgust instead and just don't use the features. I consider myself pretty UI-savvy (i.e. geeky) and I don't use more than half the features (features I'd rather like to use) on my Samsung A900 because the interface is so ****ing stupid and/or tedious that I can't be bothered.

Autoformat and Autocomplete and such things might be wonderful features in an Office package, but due to the completely ****witted implementation in Word, once I'd finally found a couple of menu points that appeared to deal vaguely with that functionality, I just turned off everything I could, so I'll never know.

And the ****er STILL does weird formatting magic, ostensibly in my interest.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Perhaps the "being held back" thing is really the core of this issue though. I've been a Mac user for about a decade, and now I feel that I'm getting a lot of mileage out of using Ubuntu as my primary work computer, so much so that I'm very close to switching to it. I do recognize some significant trade-offs with this decision, but I'm also completely sick and tired of being held back by a lousy Finder, unresponsive apps when dealing with files being read from a network volume, poor performance overall, etc. I'm also finding I have less in common with this community.

Maybe it is time to simply commit to that switch.

It sounds like it might be.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

You're right on a certain level, but at the same time I think you're overlooking something. Giving the user a familiar and consistent user interface gives him confidence. When I open a Mac program that obeys standard Mac UI conventions, I already feel like I know what I'm doing. Applications on other platforms and bad Mac ports do not usually give the same feeling — every button is intimidating. Having a clunky-looking interface, even if it's actually not that bad otherwise, still defeats this sense of confidence.

Besides the fact that it was just kind of ugly, I think this is part of the reason people hated brushed metal so much — the version of QuickTime Player it premiered in felt really alien and generally off-putting, with that pull-out metal drawer on the bottom and all sorts of unnecessary surprises in the interface.

Good points!

Of course, it goes without saying that if you are using an X11 app in OS X, most interface conventions are going to be different. However, take NeoOffice for instance... Many of the basic UI conventions are going to be similar - save dialogs, menus at the top of the screen, the geography of common commands identical (save, print, etc.), probably many of the key bindings. What you will probably be missing are things like the Cocoa customize toolbar thing (which they removed from System Preferences but left in some other apps), services, common Mac application conventions such as the iTunes/iLife library thing, keychain support, spotlight support, dock notification, etc. Right?

However, even in many popular OS X apps there are major inconsistencies: the way font menus work, save dialogs that are sheets vs. windows, how the sliding drawers are used (e.g. the mailbox listing in OS X Mail in 10.3 vs. 10.4), and subtle differences in cosmetics that many here enjoy discussing at length. My point is, various aspects of OS X itself are somewhat moving targets too.

To me, all of these sorts of things are sort of analogous to an artist having various colors and techniques available to them. By utilizing various conventions and tools at the developer's disposal, they leverage a sense of familiarity just like you said... However, the many UI standard doesn't seem to be as rigid as some Mac users think - there is no one perfect Apple UI or way of creating an Apple UI. Furthermore, just because Apple used a certain convention in one of their apps doesn't mean that it is actually the best way to communicate something, or the best way to communicate something in every context.

The question is: is there enough familiarity provided in an app to communicate meaning effectively to users? I'd say that in comparing NeoOffice to MS Office, it is probably pretty close. I'd say the same thing about many other apps that are not strictly OS X apps.

My overall point is: there is no narrow, overarching definition of good OS X GUI.

[besson3c]

analogika:

Linux imitating Windows in many cases is a good idea, from a political perspective. It all depends on the project and its goals, but in many cases it is to bring common computing tasks and capabilities to the public domain, in many cases to serve as a free alternative to proprietary software (usually Microsoft). Because people are most familiar with Windows, leveraging this familiarity represents the easiest "in" to penetrate these existing markets.

There are a lot of hand-held devices running Linux, and projects like MythTV and such that are pretty innovative and unique to Linux. I would be interested in having you critique the UI of MythTV, keeping in mind that it was designed to be used with remote controls.

Open source software is vital to us all. It fills in software gaps and helps extend standards and getting important clients on multiple platforms. There are some areas of computing that do not have a strong Mac-designed software presence. We just aren't in the position to be overly picky about every piece of software that takes up space on our hard drives, unless you are fortunate enough to be a content creator or average home user type. I just wish that more Mac users supported open source software in a more vocal way.

[analogika]

On OS X, you can assume that a button that looks the same will function the same, and that a button that functions the same is likely to look the same.

The sheets attaching to the windows they pertain to were a stroke of genius, IMO, and do not break anything.

There are inconsistencies, yes, and I'm hoping that Apple will iron them out in the next major revision (they've certainly done a LOT in the past ten years), but the basic idea of Macintosh holds true:

If you know how to use one program, you will be immediately familiar with another, even if that is from a completely different genre. And the interface and menus are structured such that, once you've figured out why things are as they are, you'll always know where to seek additional functionality, should you desire or need it.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

analogika:

Linux imitating Windows in many cases is a good idea, from a political perspective.

Oh, what you say is true.

But you're missing the point that this is NOT what the Mac is about, at all.

Macintosh is not about politics, it's about people.

I don't care about Apple's market share (well, I do because I'm a ****ing fanboi), and I'll continue to buy their products as long as they continue to feel like they're built specifically for me.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogika 

On OS X, you can assume that a button that looks the same will function the same, and that a button that functions the same is likely to look the same.

If by that you mean dialog box elements, you can say this about any OS, no?

The sheets attaching to the windows they pertain to were a stroke of genius, IMO, and do not break anything.

Sure they do, because some OS X apps do this, some don't. Have you noticed this?

There are inconsistencies, yes, and I'm hoping that Apple will iron them out in the next major revision (they've certainly done a LOT in the past ten years), but the basic idea of Macintosh holds true:

If you know how to use one program, you will be immediately familiar with another, even if that is from a completely different genre. And the interface and menus are structured such that, once you've figured out why things are as they are, you'll always know where to seek additional functionality, should you desire or need it.

This is the basic idea of UI consistency in general, and it holds true for many other products too (e.g. apps within a suite, apps bundled with popular Linux window managers, apps by the same company e.g. Mozilla and Omni, etc.)

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Oh, what you say is true.

But you're missing the point that this is NOT what the Mac is about, at all.

Macintosh is not about politics, it's about people.

I don't care about Apple's market share (well, I do because I'm a ****ing fanboi), and I'll continue to buy their products as long as they continue to feel like they're built specifically for me.

But people care about these sort of things too, it's just that the relatively small percentage of users in the Mac niche are willing to abandon Microsoft dominated conventions and let Apple dictate them, even if that means that there will be an adjustment period moving between OSes.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If by that you mean dialog box elements, you can say this about any OS, no?

I mean all sorts of interface elements.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Sure they do, because some OS X apps do this, some don't. Have you noticed this?

Absolutely. Word, for example, throws up a Print... dialog that isn't tied to the document.

And applications where a single document consists of several windows - such as Logic - don't do this, either.

Beyond that, applications not following this useful convention are broken. Not terribly significantly, but annoyingly so. In fact, it is one of the things that annoys me about NeoOffice. Coupled with the fact that the menu bar disappears (or rather, all menus do save for one) and that the confirmation dialog is a) superfluous, b) ****ING UGLY, and c) has the buttons in completely the wrong order, with key shortcuts underlined and no default pulsing button, means it is broken in a way that is disconcerting to not-so-fluent users, and annoying to those who put up with needing an Office-equivalent.

I don't use NeoOffice because it fails at Macintosh, even more so than Microsoft Office - and that's saying a lot. But hey, it's free, so sure, it's a good thing.

I wouldn't spend any money on it if it weren't though, either.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

This is the basic idea of UI consistency in general, and it holds true for many other products too (e.g. apps within a suite, apps bundled with popular Linux window managers, apps by the same company e.g. Mozilla and Omni, etc.)

I use a computer, not a browser.

I couldn't give a damn squat if Mozilla is a hideous piece of **** on the Mac because it looks the same as it does on all other platforms.

I'm not using all those other platforms. I'm using *this* one, and either software runs nicely with this platform, or it's gone, if I have another option.

End of story.