[midwinter]

Originally posted by LaGow:
Millenium, you're obsessing.

I know, I know--some of that stuff is too over-the-top to resist. Do they still have their manifesto up?

You mean their One Theses* [sic]?

What I want to know is if Thalo ever coughed up any of his "pro designs."

--

* That Thesis is of course that Mac OS X Suxx0rs

[LaGow]

No, he never has--and I know he was challenged by at least one who had the guts to put his own work up.

You do know that, out of boredom, they lurk here, right? mAxximo and Markle are the only ones I've seen post. The rest just write us off as hopeless crap settlers. (We're starting to gossip.)

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by LaGow:
The command line of unix is cryptic--like DOS or CP/M--butmAxximo, I'll bet you never set type with a Coyote system way back when. Now that was hard. Only one or two of us in the entire art department could even sort of wrap our brains around it.

Now you're talking. How about opening .ps files in with a text editor and editing them so that they'll print on a Level 1 Hardware RIP? Or removing the corrupt custom colors so lovingly put there by Illustrator 5?

There are precious few facts in this thread, and a lot of hot air and crap. If someone would like to post some reliable figures which show some mass migration away from Apple because of OS X, I would like to see them. Any such facts aside, it seem to me to be a pissing contest.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Pretty good description if only for a couple of misconceptions.

The main one would be calling us �OS 9 advocates�. I speak for everybody there when I say that all of us were eagerly awaiting for System 9's replacement. Many of us bought the public beta �Public Beta� weeks in advance and couldn't wait to replace the old and very limited OS 9 with the next (not NeXT) great creation from Apple. I personally couldn't wait to put my hands on OS X.

The problem is, it failed so miserably at pretty much *everything* I intended to do with my computer that it felt like a ton of bricks had fallen in my head. I went through all of the betas (10.0, 10.1, 10.2) hopelessly waiting for the necessary interface and usability fixes to no avail. For years after OS X came out OS 9 was still the system that was getting the job done in my industry day in, day out.

Overlooking this part of the story and calling us �OS 9 advocates� as if we were a cult or something is not very accurate. We used to be the ultimate Mac Faithful. Somewhere along the way Apple have failed us. Big time.

10.2 IS NOT A BETA! I used it as amy main OS from When we got an iBook 900 till Panther came and was very happy with it. Basically, I really don't see where you're going. I mean Mac OS 9 was nice, but it wasn't ideally suited to pros or digiConsumers. Believe it or not, I think Mac OS X is close - veru close, far closer then Windows - to appealing to both digiGuys and pros simultaneously.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Are you serious? Whatever...

Unix: CLI-based //// Mac: GUI-based
Unix: The Computer tells the user Who, Where and When. //// Mac: The User tells the computer who, where and when.
Unix: Its real power is in the hands of the geek aristocracy. ////Mac: Its real power is in the hands of everyone else.
Unix: Created with computers in mind. ////Mac: Created with people in mind.
Unix: Passwords, Permissions, Ownerships. ////Mac: What?
Unix: THE most user-unfriendly OS of all times. ////Mac: The definition of user-friendliness.

Etc., etc., etc.

Update your perception of unix/unixoid OSes. Nowadays, you can install Linux pretty much like you can install windows or MacOS.

As a matter of fact, it doesn't matter what is running beneath the surface, because you won't notice unless you are interested to look. You could run a window manager that looks and behaves like OS 8/OS 9 and you wouldn't feel a difference in terms of usability.

If you don't believe me, take a look at BeOS (created by Mac people). You think it matters what is under the hood, but it doesn't.

[midwinter]

Originally posted by LaGow:
No, he never has--and I know he was challenged by at least one who had the guts to put his own work up.

You do know that, out of boredom, they lurk here, right? mAxximo and Markle are the only ones I've seen post. The rest just write us off as hopeless crap settlers. (We're starting to gossip.)

Well, that's a fine looking website they have, let me tell you.

[fiesta cat]

Having picked up my first (and perhaps last, technically speaking) copy of Mac Design last night at a bookstore, after reading this thread, I have to admit there is some good photography-oriented stuff in there.

I am one of those who always figured it was aimed at graphics designers and so always ignored it. My only question is why didn't they change the name a while back (of course they may have added the photography stuff not too long ago).

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I think the point of the image was to show blurry (their code for "antialiased" text on a striped background. Never mind that text on the lines which correspond to the text sizes used in Aqua are perfectly readable. As far as that goes, the Gaussian blur is perfectly acceptable.

That said, they stack the deck unfairly: the font weight is too heavy and they apply more blur than any antialiasing system known to mankind, even the bad ones.

Blur and anti-alias are two way different things. They have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. Just thought I'd point that out to anyone confused with your post.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally posted by fiesta cat:
Having picked up my first (and perhaps last, technically speaking) copy of Mac Design last night at a bookstore, after reading this thread, I have to admit there is some good photography-oriented stuff in there.

I am one of those who always figured it was aimed at graphics designers and so always ignored it. My only question is why didn't they change the name a while back (of course they may have added the photography stuff not too long ago).

Mac Design is a good magazine, although Kelby's "PC's SUCK!" editorial tone is childish and unnecessary. Hopefully as "Layers" they'll dial back the rhetoric a bit (although if they stop saying PCs suck, I suppose that will be further proof to Maxximo that OS X sucks...or something).

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
You got it all backwards, what a shocker...
The creative industry helped keep Apple alive during the dark years and it was the main reason why their marketshare hit 12% in the early 90s. That and also...oh, forget it...

So OS X, a NeXT operating system based on Unix is more Macintosh than the actual Mac? LOL. I guess in that parallel univers of yours transvestites are better than real women. Hey, after all they have more �features�, no?

No no no!. The whole point is that Mac OS 9 is not "the" Mac; it is the Mac after years of updating. Mac OS X is the Mac after a drastic upgrade, that restored even more of the Mac OS 1-style theories and easy-to-use elegance to the OS, while having full support for the new digital lifestyle thing Jobs likes.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Are you serious? Whatever...

Unix: CLI-based //// Mac: GUI-based
Unix: The Computer tells the user Who, Where and When. //// Mac: The User tells the computer who, where and when.
Unix: Its real power is in the hands of the geek aristocracy. ////Mac: Its real power is in the hands of everyone else.
Unix: Created with computers in mind. ////Mac: Created with people in mind.
Unix: Passwords, Permissions, Ownerships. ////Mac: What?
Unix: THE most user-unfriendly OS of all times. ////Mac: The definition of user-friendliness.

Etc., etc., etc.

No, we mean stereotypes forgotten, as this is no usual Unix.

Unixes other then X: CLI_based or crappy GUI
Unixes other then X: The Computer tells the user Who, Where and When. //// Mac OS X:The User tells the computer who, where and when.

Unixes other then X: Created with computers in mind. ////Mac OS X: Created with people in mind.
Unixes other then X: Passwords, Permissions, Ownerships. ////Mac: Doesn't interfere with life
Unixes other then X: THE most user-unfriendly OS of all times. ////Mac OS X: Very User-friendly

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
You got it all backwards, what a shocker...
The creative industry helped keep Apple alive during the dark years and it was the main reason why their marketshare hit 12% in the early 90s. That and also...oh, forget it...

So OS X, a NeXT operating system based on Unix is more Macintosh than the actual Mac? LOL. I guess in that parallel univers of yours transvestites are better than real women. Hey, after all they have more �features�, no?

No no no!. The whole point is that Mac OS 9 is not "the" Mac; it is the Mac after years of updating. Mac OS X is the Mac after a drastic upgrade, that restored even more of the Mac OS 1-style theories and easy-to-use elegance to the OS, while having full support for the new digital lifestyle thing Jobs likes.

[goMac]

Originally posted by mAxximo:
Are you serious? Whatever...

Unix: CLI-based //// Mac: GUI-based
Unix: The Computer tells the user Who, Where and When. //// Mac: The User tells the computer who, where and when.
Unix: Its real power is in the hands of the geek aristocracy. ////Mac: Its real power is in the hands of everyone else.
Unix: Created with computers in mind. ////Mac: Created with people in mind.
Unix: Passwords, Permissions, Ownerships. ////Mac: What?
Unix: THE most user-unfriendly OS of all times. ////Mac: The definition of user-friendliness.

Etc., etc., etc.

In Mac OS X the average user never sees the command line. Your point?
Point 2 is simply not true.
Point 3: If you don't want to use UNIX in OS X, DON'T USE UNIX IN OS X. You don't have to.
Point 4: Depends entirely which GUI you use. Mac OS X is UNIX with a Macintosh GUI (and a port of the original Finder)
Point 5: Mac OS 9 had permissions too, except they sucked.
Point 6: Try Windows XP sometime and get back to me.

[analogika]

Originally posted by Millennium:
More like Mac: Its real power is... nowhere. Anything that could be done in OS9, with the possible exception of moving a system to another drive, can be done just as easily with OSX. Just about anything else which is difficult on OSX is outright impossible on earlier Macs.

And quite a bit is a lot easier on OS X.

Originally posted by Millennium:
I thought I should revisit this. Yes, mAxximo, you and your friends at thalo.net are OS9-advocates, because your path led only to stagnation. It was tried, back in the days of Copland. It failed. Aside from being technologically impossible, it was utterly incompatible with any of the older technologies that Mac users held so dear.

You've apparently missed the part where even mAxximo has finally realized that OS 9 was, technologically, a pile of crud.


They are now reduced to arguing that having to install extra software and configure no less than four separate control panels just to set up a DSL connection, or troubleshooting extension conflicts, is somehow inherently more user-friendly than a completely drag-and-drop interface, because the drag-and-drop interface has coloured buttons.

They also eschew bicycles and automobiles because they've been told it's a good idea to lock them when they're out and exposed, and refuse to tolerate such user-unfriendliness.

-s*

[LaGow]

Not to troll here, but here's an example of more reasoned complaints about OS X among some creative professionals.

I think it's important to understand that while many here are perfectly satisfied with OS X, there are still people--some "pro" users, if you will--who think the OS still hasn't lived up to its potential.

[analogika]

Originally posted by LaGow:
Not to troll here, but here's an example of more reasoned complaints about OS X among some creative professionals.

Somewhat.

This part, for example, is just purely misinformed:

if I make a mistake and installed an OS that's too new for my applications (as I stupidly did when I installed 10.3.7 without checking Digidesign's compatibility pages to see if Pro Tools would cooperate with it, which at the time it most definitely would not), my only recourse is to wipe the hard disk and start all over. This means not only losing all my files (which presumably could be backed up), but also my software keys, registrations, preferences -- in short, many hours of my life.

"Archive and Install" works perfectly and preserves all those many hours of his life.

And this bit:

whenever I'm using a multitrack application with a USB interface and I'm mixing multiple tracks down to just two, there comes a point when the output takes off into the Twilight Zone: The sound stops and the interface disappears from the hardware menu.

The only way I've found to bring it back is to turn off the interface, turn it back on again, call up the application's hardware menu and pray to the gods of connectivity (who generally offer 2-to-1 odds against) that it shows up. If it doesn't, restart the computer - because this is one nasty situation when even Force Quit won't work.

Do you know that if you're doing audio on the Mac, you can't ever let your computer sleep? That's the word I got from several manufacturers who tell me that when the Mac wakes up, their hardware won't work. In the case of M-Audio's new FireWire Solo, the computer just won't see it. In the case of Digidesign's Mbox, the computer sees it but that nice polite interface transforms into a high-SPL noise generator -- as soon as you put audio through it, the most godawful digital hash pours from the outputs, making little smoke bombs out of your tweeters.

I have no idea what Apple has to do with poorly written device drivers, other than that they're not terribly forthcoming with info to driver developers, since they're constantly optimizing stuff themselves.

In any case, neither of my audio interfaces exhibit this problem. I sleep and wake my Powerbook ALL THE TIME, with and without the USB interface connected. Frontier Design, who wrote my Tascam USB interface's software and developed the hardware, apparently have better software engineers than whatever stuff he's using (since he's mentioned ProTools, I'm not surprised). Although I did need an update for Panther, before which, yes, the interface would occasionally not be recognized or panic the machine.

-s*

[Randman]

I wonder if maximmo believes the Earth is flat.

Max, what is your field? Are you a designer? I am and I've been using Macs since the mid-1980s.

The only reason I still have Classic is because I need it for Quark because there are times I need Quark for freelance work.
But 6.5 sounds as if it might be reasonable. I'll probably hold on till Quark 7, but then Classic will get buried on my external hard drive.

I loved the old OS but OSX is so much better. It's like when you first got a remote control for the TV. Getting up and turning the knob worked but the remote is so much better, easier and faster.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by Randman:
I wonder if maximmo believes the Earth is flat.

Max, what is your field? Are you a designer? I am and I've been using Macs since the mid-1980s.

The only reason I still have Classic is because I need it for Quark because there are times I need Quark for freelance work.
But 6.5 sounds as if it might be reasonable. I'll probably hold on till Quark 7, but then Classic will get buried on my external hard drive.

I loved the old OS but OSX is so much better. It's like when you first got a remote control for the TV. Getting up and turning the knob worked but the remote is so much better, easier and faster.

OT: Randman, any version after QuarkXpress 4.11 distinctly and abjectly sucks. Don't waste your money.

On Topic: In order to understand the Thaloites, you only have to look at the terminology they employ to describe themselves. They are all "brothers" in some sort of "crusade." And they've all had their religion stripped from them. They are bare and vulnerable, feeling threatend at every turn. Hence they lash out.

(How's that for a bit o' pop psy?)

[midwinter]

Originally posted by Randman:
I wonder if maximmo believes the Earth is flat.

Max, what is your field? Are you a designer? I am and I've been using Macs since the mid-1980s.

The only reason I still have Classic is because I need it for Quark because there are times I need Quark for freelance work.
But 6.5 sounds as if it might be reasonable. I'll probably hold on till Quark 7, but then Classic will get buried on my external hard drive.

I loved the old OS but OSX is so much better. It's like when you first got a remote control for the TV. Getting up and turning the knob worked but the remote is so much better, easier and faster.

Here's how it will work: if you like OS X, you are clearly not a Pro Designer. If you are a Pro Designer, then you're one with not taste and hence, you're not very good. Therefore you're a digikid and a crap-settler.

See how that argument works? Repeat 900,000 times and you have the MFI OS X Talk forums from back in the good old days.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by midwinter:
Here's how it will work: if you like OS X, you are clearly not a Pro Designer. If you are a Pro Designer, then you're one with not taste and hence, you're not very good. Therefore you're a digikid and a crap-settler.

See how that argument works? Repeat 900,000 times and you have the MFI OS X Talk forums from back in the good old days.

yes, and paraphrasing what you said, posts must be at least 1,000 words.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by Randman:
The only reason I still have Classic is because I need it for Quark because there are times I need Quark for freelance work.
But 6.5 sounds as if it might be reasonable. I'll probably hold on till Quark 7, but then Classic will get buried on my external hard drive.

6.5 is pretty good. I go back and forth between 6.5 and InDesign CS as work demands and don't see a lot of difference between the two.

[goMac]

Quark on OS X is crap. It crashes all the time. Everyone I know (education, so yeah, not pro publishing) is moving to InDesign. It does a lot of stupid stuff, like not using the standard OS X print manager, so you can't print to PDF and stuff. I have a few people on OS X system who I support who are running 5.X and 6.5 side by side still.

[ghporter]

{Stepping in timidly, due to the large number of predatory fish in this tank}
I think it's amusing that a "designer" is complaining about what he sees in OS X-which is itself a number of design decisions.

First, the GUI is all design, from top to bottom. It is about visual appeal, about making required actions make sense, and about being distinctive. The OS X GUI is identifiably a decendent of the OS 9 interface, but the state of the art in computer science has evolved since OS 9 came out, so the GUI had to as well.

Being "Mac" is about being simple, straightforward, and efficient. There's nothing non-Mac about OS X, particularly since this OS has brought a huge number of new users into the Mac world; yours truly included.

Graphics work with a Mac is still MUCH easier and better than on a Windows machine because of the basic design philosophy behind Mac OS-in this case OS X. Everything flows smoothly, it's all there for you to use, and it is as customizable as anyone could ask for. That the tools changed is not a real issue, but it seems to be what some of the negative posters are complaining about. Did the introduction of synthetic brushes destroy oil painting? Are acrylic pigments going to destroy ink-based illustrations? Are mass-produced Speedball nibs less usable than hand-crafted nibs? For crying out loud, did PHOTOGRAPHY destroy the visual arts? Flexibility is the key to survival here; either be ready to move forward with new tools, or be "quaint." And pretty much unemployed. Sorry, but that's just how it works.

[siMac]

Originally posted by goMac:
[InDesign] does a lot of stupid stuff, like not using the standard OS X print manager, so you can't print to PDF and stuff.

[OffTopic]
Why would you want to print to PDF when you can simply export to PDF with all the functions and options that Distiller has, direct from InDesign?
[/OffTopic]

As for this thread - are you telling me there are actually people out there, real people, who are still using OS9? Get out of here... Next you'll tell me there are people (the same people?) still using audio cassettes! "But, but, the dynamic range.." Shut up.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by siMac:
[OffTopic]
As for this thread - are you telling me there are actually people out there, real people, who are still using OS9?

Some Quark 4 Extensions never arrived on OS X. I know of a large educational software publisher that was stuck on OS 9 until 2 months ago, unfortunately, until someone had developed a suitable replacement for InDesign.

There are so few solutions to typesetting complex calculus formulas on both the Mac and PC, there was simply no choice.

[LaGow]

Originally posted by ghporter:
{Stepping in timidly, due to the large number of predatory fish in this tank}

Ah, don't be shy--the only one who really bites hasn't posted since the last page.

I think it's amusing that a "designer" is complaining about what he sees in OS X-which is itself a number of design decisions.

So, for that matter is Windows, or any other GUI, but I get your point. I would add that the Mac has an underlying operating philosophy, which boils down to: make it easy and give users a choice. This contrasts with Windows, whose philosophy seems to be: the computer is hard, so let's do this task for the user.

Graphics work with a Mac is still MUCH easier and better than on a Windows machine because of the basic design philosophy behind Mac OS-in this case OS X.

I find Windows XP pretty useable, once you get used to its design philosophy. That said, I do my design work exclusively in OS X, and have since 10.1.

...That the tools changed is not a real issue, but it seems to be what some of the negative posters are complaining about. Did the introduction of synthetic brushes destroy oil painting? Are acrylic pigments going to destroy ink-based illustrations? Are mass-produced Speedball nibs less usable than hand-crafted nibs? For crying out loud, did PHOTOGRAPHY destroy the visual arts? Flexibility is the key to survival here; either be ready to move forward with new tools, or be "quaint." And pretty much unemployed. Sorry, but that's just how it works.

That the tools changed is, I think, at the very heart of the issue. Creative professionals tend to be very conservative about their tools and the switch to OS X was jarring for a lot of people. I think many folks have switched and have found OS X to be an adequate workspace; others still have issues, especially with the new Finder.

But Finder issues aside, if one really considers how most people get work done--inside applications--then I don't see the problem. Photoshop, for example (or at least the last version that was released on both OS X and OS 9), is not fundamentally different between any platform, Windows included.

As for your last example, speaking as a painter using tools developed in the fourteenth century or earlier (and using hogshair brushes since synthetic brushes aren't that well-suited to oil painting in my experience), I'm not sure what to say! But you're right about computers.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by LaGow:
I would add that the Mac has an underlying operating philosophy, which boils down to: make it easy and give users a choice. This contrasts with Windows, whose philosophy seems to be: the computer is hard, so let's do this task for the user.

I would just like to take a moment to comment that this may be the most brilliant description of the difference between Windows and OSX that I've ever seen. Very concise and succinct, but so expressive that it gets across everything that needs to be said.

So by this analysis, Windows does hard things for the user, while the Mac makes it easy for the user to do hard things. I like this. Mind if I use it in my sig?

[ghporter]

Originally posted by LaGow:
That the tools changed is, I think, at the very heart of the issue. Creative professionals tend to be very conservative about their tools and the switch to OS X was jarring for a lot of people. I think many folks have switched and have found OS X to be an adequate workspace; others still have issues, especially with the new Finder.

But Finder issues aside, if one really considers how most people get work done--inside applications--then I don't see the problem. Photoshop, for example (or at least the last version that was released on both OS X and OS 9), is not fundamentally different between any platform, Windows included.

As for your last example, speaking as a painter using tools developed in the fourteenth century or earlier (and using hogshair brushes since synthetic brushes aren't that well-suited to oil painting in my experience), I'm not sure what to say! But you're right about computers.

A good craftsman must be ready to adapt to new tools to remain current in his craft. Any artist who is NOT a craftsman is probably not really an artist-and let the hate mail flow! That's my belief. Sure, you may like a certain type of brush for one brand of oil pigments and another for a different brand, you may stay away from synthetic brushes for oils and prefer bristle or camelhair, but that's not going to keep you from using the latest pigments, is it? You'll play with them and find out what they're good for.

The change in the way OS X presents things like Photoshop is more a difference in how the easel holds the canvas and how your tables and stands are arranged for your palet, rags and cleaners. It is NOT a difference like going from chalks to oils. The Finder issue is simply a different style of file cabinet, not a completely new way of filing. My point is that the changes are no more jarring than moving to a new studio, so why the hue and cry?

Millenium, as a long-time Windows user, I think LaGow has hit the nail on the head. Boiling down the two philosophies to their essence is genius! And your statement that it is quintessential brings it into clear focus. Yep. Absolutely correct. Do hard things, or make it easy to do hard things-perform or facilitate. Beautiful!

[LaGow]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I would just like to take a moment to comment that this may be the most brilliant description of the difference between Windows and OSX that I've ever seen. Very concise and succinct, but so expressive that it gets across everything that needs to be said.

So by this analysis, Windows does hard things for the user, while the Mac makes it easy for the user to do hard things. I like this. Mind if I use it in my sig?

Be my guest! I'm swooning.

[TheTraveller]

It just astounds me that people still get all teary-eyed about OS 9. I am not very familiar with the contents of my OS X /System directory, I must confess. Why am I so ignorant? I don't have to go in there, really, except when I get incredibly bored and feel like wasting my time. With OS 9, though, I was very familiar with the System folder, subfolders, etc. Why? Because my machines constantly frozed, crashed, bombed, etc., so I had to get very handy with jiggering it to get it back on track.

I don't really know how Mac OS X works. The terminal? Sure, I crack it open to do some PING commands or perhaps an uptime or top once in a while, just for kicks. Oh, I guess I've edited a few apache config files with vi. But essentially, OS X is extremely stable, reliable, and far, far more trouble free than any Classic Mac OS ever was.

The Mac OS is dead; Long Live Mac OS X!

[goMac]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by siMac:
[B][OffTopic]
Why would you want to print to PDF when you can simply export to PDF with all the functions and options that Distiller has, direct from InDesign?
[/OffTopic]

Because I'm trying to print to pdf from machines running Quark?

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by goMac:
Quark on OS X is crap. It crashes all the time. Everyone I know (education, so yeah, not pro publishing) is moving to InDesign. It does a lot of stupid stuff, like not using the standard OS X print manager, so you can't print to PDF and stuff. I have a few people on OS X system who I support who are running 5.X and 6.5 side by side still.

I've had my fair share of Photoshop and especially Illustrator crashes as well. From my experience I just don't see much difference between Quark and InDesign. I use whatever's needed for the job.

[lookmark]

Quark 6.x has an Export PDF function now. Still an awful, half-baked Carbon port of course.

Edit. Good lord, Don. Quark is a OK tool to get the job done for sure, but you honestly don't see the difference between Quark and InDesign? Have you somehow not noticed that Quark doesn't support OpenType fonts? Or have a glyph palette? Or a quick way to copy and paste character and object styles? Or support transparency? Or the ability to see a layout w/o bleeds? Or that the type looks awful at certain sizes and requires hacks to look anti-aliased, as Quark hasn't even moved to the Quartz display model yet? I could go on for a long time.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by LaGow:
That the tools changed is, I think, at the very heart of the issue. Creative professionals tend to be very conservative about their tools and the switch to OS X was jarring for a lot of people. I think many folks have switched and have found OS X to be an adequate workspace; others still have issues, especially with the new Finder.

But Finder issues aside, if one really considers how most people get work done--inside applications--then I don't see the problem.

I agree. And, for my two cents, the designers I work with are as clueless with OS 9 as with OS X. Crap all over the desktop, programs installed in weird places, nine different versions of the same font installed. . . Basically, so long as the programs run, they're happy.

[Detrius]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by goMac:
[B]

Originally posted by siMac:
[OffTopic]
Why would you want to print to PDF when you can simply export to PDF with all the functions and options that Distiller has, direct from InDesign?
[/OffTopic]

Because I'm trying to print to pdf from machines running Quark?

Or {ahem} Word, or Pages...

While looking for an advancement in my career, I sent my r�sum� to companies in PDF format. A couple of them responded saying that they couldn't figure out how to open the file. Since I wanted to work for a technically-competent company, I didn't respond to these. My take on it is "If the company can't use someone competent enough to open a PDF for screening new employees, then they aren't worth my time, as this person clearly can't see *my* strengths."

BTW, a week from today I'm moving to Los Angeles... I found a good, competent company.

[betasp]

I worked with media 100 and Avid in the late 90s. I can tell you for a fact the they were moving away from Apple with the release of 9. 9 apparently made it difficult for them to optimize their apps to work with their hardware. OSX has allowed many of those people to move back to Apple. Avid at one point even said there would be no more Mac releases, before X was shipped. They backed off that decision later when they realized how much better X was going to be for their development.

Apple, before the return for Jobs, was a floundering company with no direction, Today that had changes.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by LaGow:
But Finder issues aside, if one really considers how most people get work done--inside applications--then I don't see the problem. Photoshop, for example (or at least the last version that was released on both OS X and OS 9), is not fundamentally different between any platform, Windows included.

Ah. Here we must disagree. Photoshop on Windows uses the horribly faulty MDI window model whereas the Mac OS X does not.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by lookmark:
[B]Have you somehow not noticed that Quark doesn't support OpenType fonts?

All professional print production is done with Postscript Type 1 fonts, so this is a non-issue.

Or have a glyph palette?

Non-starter because of the above.

Or a quick way to copy and paste character and object styles?

Quark does have this, in fact, and has a quick way of doing it that InDesign doesn't.

Or support transparency?

Adobe's transparency functions in Illustrator have been problem-ridden since the beginning, so a lot of people don't use it.

Or the ability to see a layout w/o bleeds?

If you set up your document with bleeds, it's a non-issue.

Or that the type looks awful at certain sizes and requires hacks to look anti-aliased, as Quark hasn't even moved to the Quartz display model yet? I could go on for a long time.

And InDesign doesn't support custom kerning tables, meaning a lot of work hand-kerning type in the final stages you don't have to do with Quark. And InDesign's optical kerning is near to useless because 1) you're limited to one type size per text box and 2) it doesn't line up well for smaller type sizes, so you end up doing it in style sheets like you've always done.

I'm not a Quark fanboi � in fact, I'm pretty much agnostic when it comes to programs and platforms � but a lot of the reviews of InDesign I've seen come from people like the Ars people who may know technology really well, but aren't serious print professionals. Because of this, I think they tend to get excited about features which aren't of much use in a serious print environment but sound neat. This is not to say that InDesign doesn't have some great features, like the ability to set up a slug on the master page, or the ability to export great PDFs straight from the application, or a live Tabs palette, but it also has some significant shortcomings, and is an enormous resource hog. InDesign runs slowly on anything less than a G5 with a lot of RAM, whereas Quark will run great on an 867 MHz G4. InDesign still runs slowly on long documents. InDesign doesn't have keyboard shortcuts available for some important actions. InDesign also has some glaring shortcomings (the lack of custom kerning tables I mentioned) which really limit its usefulness.

Quark has a lot of shortcomings, too. The end result, in my opinion, is that it's a draw between the two programs right now. I have both of them installed on my machine and use whichever one I need to when onsite. But until InDesign comes up with a true killer feature, or if Quark 7 is a complete POS, Quark will continue to be the most popular DTP program out there.

All of this is, of course, my opinion only. You think OS wars are heated? Check out some debates between pre-press geeks. . .

[siMac]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
All professional print production WAS done with Postscript Type 1 fonts, so this IS an issue.

Fixed.

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
a lot of the reviews of InDesign I've seen come from people like the Ars people who may know technology really well, but aren't serious print professionals.

I'm a serious print professional and I've been using InDesign for years. Serious print professionals need to be able to use all print related software, but InDesign is also my weapon of choice - I hate XPress.

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
You think OS wars are heated? Check out some debates between pre-press geeks. . .

Hee hee, you're right - I'll stop now...

[goMac]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
I've had my fair share of Photoshop and especially Illustrator crashes as well. From my experience I just don't see much difference between Quark and InDesign. I use whatever's needed for the job.

The biggest problems I have had with Quark are font related crashes and print related issues, neither of which seem to affect properly written OS X software.

[analogika]

Originally posted by LaGow:
I think it's important to understand that while many here are perfectly satisfied with OS X, there are still people--some "pro" users, if you will--who think the OS still hasn't lived up to its potential.

Sorry to reply twice, but this is a rather good point.

Yes.
OS 9 was stretched FAR beyond its potential.

OS X hasn't yet lived up to its potential. At the risk of being called an apologist, I think that this is perfectly natural for something that was designed with the potential to be the basis for OS development for the next 10, 15 years.

-s*

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by LaGow:
... So, for that matter is Windows, or any other GUI, but I get your point. I would add that the Mac has an underlying operating philosophy, which boils down to: make it easy and give users a choice. This contrasts with Windows, whose philosophy seems to be: the computer is hard, so let's do this task for the user.

I find Windows XP pretty useable, once you get used to its design philosophy. That said, I do my design work exclusively in OS X, and have since 10.1. ...

I have worked with Windows since 1992, and I have also (briefly) worked with Windows 3.0 (yes, .0), which is pretty much Windows 1.0 (aka first usable version). I never got used to their design philosophy.

I hate nothing more than assistants (a waste of time for people who know what they are doing), but I have yet to find a way to avoid them It's still a relief to go back to my Mac

[analogika]

Originally posted by Millennium:

Originally posted by LaGow:
... So, for that matter is Windows, or any other GUI, but I get your point. I would add that the Mac has an underlying operating philosophy, which boils down to: make it easy and give users a choice. This contrasts with Windows, whose philosophy seems to be: the computer is hard, so let's do this task for the user.

I

I would just like to take a moment to comment that this may be the most brilliant description of the difference between Windows and OSX that I've ever seen. Very concise and succinct, but so expressive that it gets across everything that needs to be said.

So by this analysis, Windows does hard things for the user, while the Mac makes it easy for the user to do hard things. I like this. Mind if I use it in my sig?

Originally posted by analogika earlier in this thread:
Macintosh is a design ethic, an interface concept, more than ANYTHING else. Make complicated processes so transparent and simple that "the rest of us" can use them. (As opposed to the typical Microsoft Clippy approach of "Hi, you're doing something complicated; you need help.")

(Oh, and Weyland-Yutani replied to my post that, after 16 years of Mac-userdom, I *still* didn't "get it". Okay.)

-s*

[LaGow]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Ah. Here we must disagree. Photoshop on Windows uses the horribly faulty MDI window model whereas the Mac OS X does not.

I stand corrected--that is indeed a fundamental difference. I had limited my thinking to palettes and such.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by analogika:

I'm sorry. I didn't quite understand what you were getting at when you posted it; LaGow took it one step further. You provided Clippy as an excellent example, but LaGow made it more general, getting to what Clippy stands for (which is to say, not ease of use, but lack of thought). Windows is the ultimate lock-in, as far as that goes: it does everything for you, ensuring that you never learn anything from the process. End result: because you never learn anything, you become dependent on Windows to do everything.

Macs, by contrast, make it easy to do hard things, but still makes you actually do them; as a result, you learn about the process. This has been true ever since the makings of the first guidelines, whereby once you've learned a single app, you know some basic functionality which will work in (nearly) all apps. Contrary to what the thaloites will say, the Mac is not inherently intuitive, and it never has been. I remember first working on a Mac 128, when I was four years old. The very first thing i ever did on a computer was to delete all of my uncle's saved chess games (from an ancient version of SARGON) while trying to open my own. If the Mac were truly intuitive, this would not have happened; anyone with the requisite motor and reading skills -even a precocious four-year-old- would Just Know what to do. But as it turns out, not even the Mac can do that.

No, Macs aren't intuitive. If they were, there would be no need for any documentation or Help text at all. They are, however, easy to learn, and they provide enough common functionality between applications that it is usually easy to carry most knowledge from one app over to another. This has not changed in OSX. It's strange, because with all the things like the Aqua/Metal dichotomy, you'd think it would have changed. By the AHIG's theories, it should have changed. But the fact is that it did not.

Tog, Raskin, Atkinson, and all the others: brilliant men all, but men nonetheless. Not gods. They did not always have the only right answer, and in some cases they did not have the right answer at all. To hold them up as some kind of technological Aristotelian authorities, as the thaloites do, is as foolish as to hold up any other scientist as such.

[:haripu:]

Originally posted by LaGow:
Creative professionals tend to be very conservative about their tools and the switch to OS X was jarring for a lot of people.

No, they are not. The people who make hard- and software decisions for creative professionals tend to be very conservative.

OSX meant buying new hardware AND upgrading every single program. Which is not what bean-counters want to do.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by LaGow:
OT: Randman, any version after QuarkXpress 4.11 distinctly and abjectly sucks. Don't waste your money.

Version 4.11 was incredible, I agree.

I skipped XPress 5 and now I'm using XPress 6.5 and it is as good as 4.11 IMO. I'm experiencing some funky font problems with XPress 6.5 but other than that it is damn solid. No crash yet. The font problem is connected to special characters and fonts that have been modified, but they do work in other apps. All unmodified fonts work fine.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by analogika:
I would just like to take a moment to comment that this may be the most brilliant description of the difference between Windows and OSX that I've ever seen. Very concise and succinct, but so expressive that it gets across everything that needs to be said.

So by this analysis, Windows does hard things for the user, while the Mac makes it easy for the user to do hard things. I like this. Mind if I use it in my sig?

(Oh, and Weyland-Yutani replied to my post that, after 16 years of Mac-userdom, I *still* didn't "get it". Okay.)

-s* [/B][/QUOTE]Weyland-Yutani agrees with your asessment of what the Macintosh is, but Weyland-Yutani feels you can equate the word Macintosh with OS X. Rather it is the New Macintosh. Kind of like the New Coke. Then you have Classic Coke. Both are Coke but there is a distinct difference.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by Weyland-Yutani:
Weyland-Yutani agrees with your asessment of what the Macintosh is, but Weyland-Yutani feels you can equate the word Macintosh with OS X. Rather it is the New Macintosh. Kind of like the New Coke. Then you have Classic Coke. Both are Coke but there is a distinct difference.

Yikes! You're comparing a very good new thing-OS X-to a not so good thing-New Coke. Remember, public demand killed New Coke, while demand has brought OS X into the mainstream.

"New Coke?" YUCK!

[LaGow]

Originally posted by :haripu::
No, they are not. The people who make hard- and software decisions for creative professionals tend to be very conservative.

OSX meant buying new hardware AND upgrading every single program. Which is not what bean-counters want to do.

I agree with you about bean counters--may they die a thousand deaths.

But as an art director who has assembled and managed many design staffs over the last 15 years (and also being married to an editor), I could not more strongly disagree about the conservatism of creative professionals. It is a bitch trying to get them to switch the tools with which they have become comfortable, particularly in a production environment where deadlines matter and learning a new tool is one more thing a designer has to do (never mind the long-term benefits). They'll do it when forced--or at least strongly persuaded--but they won't do it if they don't have to. That's what I mean by conservative. Attempting to get a writer to switch word processors is equally trying. When I was at my last corporate job It took us forever to wean our edit staff off of XyWrite, for heaven's sake.