[cwkmacuser]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

I've been known to have that effect on people...

...dammit, now I want cookies.

could you change your sig? You are making me hungry with that picture of Chocalate Chip Cookies!

YUM!!!!!!!!!

[Simon]

I'm afraid I'll have to second that. Those cookies look extremely tempting!

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Am I the only one that wonders what happened to vector independence and QuartzGL (née Quartz 2D Extreme)? Both were promised for Leopard, and both simply fell by the wayside, never to be heard from again.

A resolution-independent version of the UI was promised even for Tiger. Seems like it's much more complicated.

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Anything still using QuickDraw (and even HIToolbox?) would simply be left in the lurch, including Office 2008 and Adobe CS4.
</speculation>

Apple will not pull the plug on Carbon -- yet. We know for sure that there will be no 32 bit version of the GUI parts of Carbon and it stands to reason that active development focuses on OS X' other frameworks. It's not entirely out of the question that in time, Carbon will be dropped.

Adobe is moving away from Carbon with its new apps, because they want Photoshop to be a 64 bit app. Quark has moved away from Carbon already, all new apps are written in Cocoa. What MS will do to Office, nobody knows. (For sure, MS Office is horrible on any platform.)

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

A resolution-independent version of the UI was promised even for Tiger. Seems like it's much more complicated.

I had entirely forgotten about that. Oh well, I'm sure that if it's been this long, it must be harder than it looks.

Apple will not pull the plug on Carbon -- yet. We know for sure that there will be no 32 bit version of the GUI parts of Carbon and it stands to reason that active development focuses on OS X' other frameworks. It's not entirely out of the question that in time, Carbon will be dropped.

I'm assuming you meant 64-bit, not 32. Otherwise I agree - it's far too early to completely drop Carbon support yet. But its time will come, just like Classic's did with Leopard. It's just a question of when...

Adobe is moving away from Carbon with its new apps, because they want Photoshop to be a 64 bit app. Quark has moved away from Carbon already, all new apps are written in Cocoa. What MS will do to Office, nobody knows. (For sure, MS Office is horrible on any platform.)

Office is already moving towards Cocoa: a few panels here and there are Cocoa, with more coming. Trust me, Microsoft wants away from Carbon as much as everyone else. (Windows) Office 2010 will come in a 64-bit variant, and I'm sure that the Mac version will get upgraded as well eventually (probably not the next major version, but maybe the one after that).

Originally Posted by Simon

I'm afraid I'll have to second that. Those cookies look extremely tempting!

Try not to lick your screen. Trust me, it's nowhere near as delicious as it looks .

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

I'm assuming you meant 64-bit, not 32.

Yes, you're right, that's what I meant.

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Otherwise I agree - it's far too early to completely drop Carbon support yet. But its time will come, just like Classic's did with Leopard. It's just a question of when...

Sure, I hope the last old-school developer has gotten the message now.

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Office is already moving towards Cocoa: a few panels here and there are Cocoa, with more coming. Trust me, Microsoft wants away from Carbon as much as everyone else.

I sure hope so. However, they'd have to get rid of all Carbon first … and I suppose their whole rendering engine is written in Carbon.

[P]

Considering how 32-bit Carbon and Cocoa are implemented, I find it very unlikely that Apple will really pull out 32-bit Carbon. The work required to do that and not break 32-bit Cocoa is too much to bother with for any potential stability/performance improvement. If nothing else, Carbon will stay as long as OS X supports HFS+. We're nowhere near replacing that particular piece of the puzzle - the only potential replacement, ZFS, will only be fully ready by SL, and I seriously doubt that Apple will start using it as the default formatting any time soon. After that, there is a lengthy transition period before HFS+ support can be removed.

[OreoCookie]

Sure, that's why some parts of Carbon are offered in 64 bit (the non-GUI parts). Apple could also make Carbon disappear from a developer's point of view in other ways (e. g. by cutting out only the GUI parts of Carbon), but anyway, I don't see that happening for another 5-7 years.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

I sure hope so. However, they'd have to get rid of all Carbon first … and I suppose their whole rendering engine is written in Carbon.

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you...

[cwkmacuser]

Hey, stop posting that signature!

Why would you have to kill OreoCookie? Do you work for Apple?

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser 

Hey, stop posting that signature!

Why would you have to kill OreoCookie? Do you work for Apple?

That's it, you're on the preliminary list...

Not Apple - I interned with Microsoft's MacBU last summer, and am starting with them full-time in June.

[Spheric Harlot]

Oh dear.

Probably a sound decision, job-market-wise, but oh dear.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Not Apple - I interned with Microsoft's MacBU last summer, and am starting with them full-time in June.

Awesome. So how about you make it your holy mission to get them to finally program Mac apps like they were actually Mac apps?

If you succeed I promise I won't steal any of your cookies.

[Spheric Harlot]

He said "starting", not "managing".

I'm inclined to believe that the massive slew of problems with MS Office are due to corporate structure, not strictly inability to code.

[Simon]

Oh really?

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I'm inclined to believe that the massive slew of problems with MS Office are due to corporate structure, not strictly inability to code.

If only I could remember who it was, but there was a guy from Microsoft who got hired onto Google. In an interview he said that he was so frustrated with Microsoft because they hire some of the most brilliant programmers and engineers, but everything goes to crap because everything is completely micromanaged. No two groups know what the other group is doing or is being done because of some crazy hierarchy system that's completely out of control.

Everything seems to get fixed after the software is released because the patch team is a smaller, more organized group versus the way-too-many development teams that don't know their heads from their holes.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I'm inclined to believe that the massive slew of problems with MS Office are due to corporate structure, not strictly inability to code.

Well I'm not an official employee yet, so I will say this: moving an enormous legacy codebase (trust me, Office is enormous) from PPC to Intel, and from CodeWarrior to Xcode, and from doc/xls/ppt to OOXML, and to the new drawing engine in Office 12, all in the same version, is an enormous job by anyone's standards. The fact that Office 2008 even launches is a testament to the ability of the developers responsible (some of whom have been on the team since before I started the 3rd grade!).

Trust me, I'm not defending Office 2008 - I think that from an end-user's perspective, it's a bit of a steaming turd. But there is no conspiracy, and there is no lack of skilled coders at MacBU (nor are they indifferent to the Mac platform: many have been using Macs since System 1). It was just a bit of a perfect storm that still managed to be salvaged into a reasonably complete product.

Originally Posted by Simon

Awesome. So how about you make it your holy mission to get them to finally program Mac apps like they were actually Mac apps?

I'll see what I can do. But that means that if Office 14 is up to your standards, all the credit goes to me, right?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Trust me, I'm not defending Office 2008 - I think that from an end-user's perspective, it's a bit of a steaming turd. But there is no conspiracy, and there is no lack of skilled coders at MacBU (nor are they indifferent to the Mac platform: many have been using Macs since System 1). It was just a bit of a perfect storm that still managed to be salvaged into a reasonably complete product.

Note that I explicitly said that the coders WEREN'T the problem.

The company-internal versioning system, which effectively bars different teams from working together to actually produce workable solutions to problems and non-redundant or actually sensible functionality by requiring their snippets of code to be migrated all the way up the development tree and back down the other branch - often taking months - , very much IS a problem, and it serves to explain much of what we see.

The other thing is that nobody in charge of Microsoft's Mac unit has EVER actually understood what Macintosh is about. I've been using Word for Mac for twenty years now, and even back then, in version 4 IIRC, it was obvious that Microsoft completely eschewed standards in favor of in-house reinventions of the wheel.

The most beautiful (current) example of this is the unfathomably stupid implementation of window toolbar configuration in Office 2008. Make it look like a standard Apple toolbar. So of course, there's a "Customize Toolbar…" command in the View (system-wide standard term in German: "Darstellung") menu. Except in the German version, there isn't even a menu "Darstellung". It's called "Ansicht". Okay, it means the same thing, but that's strike one.

Strike two: "Customize Toolbar…" command, which will then roll down a sheet for configuration - oh wait, there isn't a "Customize Toolbar…" command, but…um… :search: oh look, there's "Customize Toolbar and Menus…". Okay. Well, I guess that will be the sa- WOAH.

Some utterly botched conglomerate of drag and drop and checkbox-enabling, coupled with bizarre sorting and what-the-F*CK-is-going-on-here voodoo, and the box doesn't even have a "Cancel" button (but hitting the "Escape" key exits the window, whether with or without changes is not something I have been arsed to bother testing out).

Word is, and always has been, FULL of "me too" features (Word's combination text-entry/pulldown menu Frankenstein UI elements were a constant source of eye-rolling and a laughing stock in the software industry AT LEAST as far back as 1989) and look-alikes that invariably fail to meet expectations in the most fundamental way.


They simply don't get it.

At all.


The only thing Word 6 taught them is to keep working on *symptoms* until the Mac users stop screaming too loudly and just deal with it, but the actual disease is systemic.

No doubt getting 2008 off the ground at all is a tremendous feat, and my hat's off to the engineers and coders who made it possible - in all seriousness.

But Office 2008, to me, is the final straw and the version that finally tipped the scales.

In combination with the Vista disaster, it's driven ordinary people - not Linux geeks or computer junkies - to try *anything* to keep Microsoft off their machines.

And the alternatives are getting stronger by the week, even if there are cases where only Office will cut it (and more often than not, the alternative product will supply BETTER compatibility than Microsoft's own version).

I apologize for the rant; please don't take it personally.

But this is a subject that is rather dear to me, and it's been a source of tremendous frustration over the past two decades, on many levels.

Go at 'em, Theo, and try and imbue the unit with a ****ing clue, even if it's just a small seed of Welcome to Macintosh.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

I'll see what I can do. But that means that if Office 14 is up to your standards, all the credit goes to me, right?

Deal.

[JKT]

@ Theocryst - make it your mission to read www.betalogue.com (for both the Office and iWork flaws) prior to starting.

[P]

Warning: this is tangential at best to the original topic, but Spheric's post was much too interesting to skip.

MS is really between a rock and a hard place, UI-wise. Their master plan for the Windows interface as articulated in Windows 95 pretty much died two years later. The plan was windows in multiple levels, the so called MDM, where each application was to have one window that included several document windows. That didn't work very well, but instead of sticking with it and trying to make it work, MS basically killed it when Word 97 moved to having multiple document windows and then stuck an extra fork in with apps like Messenger that abused the notification area (right part of the taskbar) to have applications with no active window. They even did that with apps where it made little sense, like Windows Media Player.

Yes, this is a Windows-only concern, but it affects Mac Office, because they share a codebase and thus have to share an interface to some extent.

Because the application window has a completely pointless title bar, the menu bar is not at the top of the display even when the window is maximized, thus defeating Fitt's law. In fact, I don't think MS was even aware of this UI feature, because the taskbar buttons stopped 1 pixel before the edge of the display until XP. Without Fitt's law, the menu bar doesn't work. Office responded by adding 4 million button bars, because what else could they do?

What Office 2007/2008, and to a lesser extent Vista and Win 7, are trying to do is to come up with something that works. For some reason they're stuck with that stupid window titlebar, so they can't use a menu. The ribbon in the titlebar is a hack at best, but at least they're trying. They're killing off wizards and trying to make it work with dialog boxes that are finally non-modal. The tabbed toolbars aren't ideal, but it's an attempt.

From a Mac point of view it's easy to say that they should just drop this nonsense and move back to a Word 5.1 setup - a traditional Mac application. That would be great, but as long as there is a shared codebase and the Windows interface doesn't work with that setup, it isn't going to happen. After being in some sort of limbo for 10 years, MS is finally trying to make it work. Not a moment to soon, even if the situation is a bit of a hack now. Maybe they'll learn something.

As for Word's funny UI solutions: Word is intended to be possible to control without using the mouse. It always was, even back in Word 1.0 in 1984. Originally this was hidden, and the app looked like a regular Mac app, but eventually MS decided that the features should be discoverable, and the current setup is a result of that.

(Sidenote: Andy Hertzfeld tells a story from when he developed Switcher, the predecessor to Multifinder. When implementing a Force Quit command, he tried to come up with a key combination that no app was using yet. He decided on Command-Option-Esc, and sent it out to some big app developers for testing. MS came back and said that they key combo collided with one internal Word feature, could he please change it? Sure, no problem - could MS come back with a combination that was used yet? After a week, MS told him to keep Command-Option-Esc, they would change Word. They had discovered that there were no reasonable combos left on the keyboard. This was in 1985 - Word doesn't exactly have fewer features today than it did back then.)

Well, that turned into another rant. Whatever. Bottom line is that I don't like Office 2007/2008 either, but they do deserve credit for trying. At least it's better than Adobe CS4.

[AppleGirl1990]

Interesting points.

But long term, i think the Windows & Mac version of Office (Word, Excel...) need to be identical. I already see problems with my younger brother and his use of Word. At school he uses a PC and he uses to the ribbon at the top of the screen. When he gets home, he's tries using the Mac version of Word which is completely different looking and he's always getting mixed up where buttons are.

Why must there be two versions of Word? It's confusing for people who use both platforms.
And having used both, i think the Windows version is better. Why should the same program be better for one than the other?

Same!

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

But long term, i think the Windows & Mac version of Office (Word, Excel...) need to be identical.

I couldn't disagree more: I think that's the reason why Office for Mac sucks that bad. It breaks Mac conventions (e. g. by translating the File menu as Datei just as in Windows rather than Ablage which is the correct term in the Mac world).

Even more so, because Office on Windows is also a royal GUI nightmare: there are at least 3 different ways to do something and you don't always have the same options.

The Mac version should be in the tradition of the Mac. If I want the Windows version, I'd be using Windows.

[Simon]

People who want Word on the Mac to be like Word on the PC should use Windows Word on their Mac with WINE, Crossover, Parallels, etc.

People who want to use Word on the Mac as a word processor that happens to offer compatibility with .doc and .docx should use Word for Mac. Needless to say, that Word for Mac should look and act like a Mac app and not try to be a clone of the Windows version.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Well I'm not an official employee yet, so I will say this: moving an enormous legacy codebase (trust me, Office is enormous) from PPC to Intel, and from CodeWarrior to Xcode, and from doc/xls/ppt to OOXML, and to the new drawing engine in Office 12, all in the same version, is an enormous job by anyone's standards. The fact that Office 2008 even launches is a testament to the ability of the developers responsible (some of whom have been on the team since before I started the 3rd grade!).

And now they have to turn around and rewrite it again for Cocoa. I suspect your life is going to be quite interesting starting this June.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

And now they have to turn around and rewrite it again for Cocoa.

Well, isn't that exactly what they should have done the first time around, if they hadn't been so retarded in their planning?

[TheoCryst]

And now we've touched on one of the biggest difficulties of developing Mac Office: which is more important, being a good Mac application, or acting like WinOffice? Everything from keyboard shortcuts, to menu contents, to the layout of the OK/Cancel buttons in a panel, varies between the two. There is strong pressure on both sides even within the community, from longtime Office users as well as Mac users, to make MacOffice act like their preferred platform.

It turns out that no matter what decision you make, both sides will end up unhappy, so the best you can do is walk the fine line between the two. Imagine if Office 14 shipped with a ribbon-esque UI: even if it were done perfectly, it still wouldn't be very Mac-like, and it wouldn't be identical to the Windows version.

Personally, I'm with Oreo and Simon (and to a lesser extent, Spheric): I personally would much rather Office be a great Mac application, rather than a transparent port of WinOffice. But we're only part of Microsoft's customer base, particularly as Macs continue to make inroads into the enterprise. I think that in the end, AppleGirl will be closer than you think to the final answer.

Of course, if the WinOffice guys would get a few basic things right, then everyone would benefit. Even in Office 2007, it's impossible to have two Powerpoint presentations, or two Excel spreadsheets, on screen at the same time without reverting to the MDI interface that P referenced. The only reason Word allows it is because of an enormous hack.

Do I have the answers? Of course not, nobody does right now. But the situation is getting better: as Office slowly drifts from Carbon to Cocoa, more and more Mac conventions will be enforced, particularly in the smaller details that grate on everybody's nerves. It'll never be perfect, but I'd like to believe that it will at least become useable.

My opinion, as a still-not-Microsoft-employee? I think that within 1-3 versions, MacOffice and WinOffice will be nearly indistinguishable when viewed in broad strokes, but MacOffice will continue to improve on the little features. That's the only way to help AppleGirl1990's little brother without further frustrating Oreo and Simon (and me, in all honesty). At least that's my hope.

Originally Posted by JKT

@ Theocryst - make it your mission to read www.betalogue.com (for both the Office and iWork flaws) prior to starting.

Looks like an interesting blog -- will do.

Originally Posted by CharlesS

And now they have to turn around and rewrite it again for Cocoa. I suspect your life is going to be quite interesting starting this June.

No kidding. But this time, there should be some very concrete benefits to overall integration and usability. Hopefully.

[Chuckit]

Microsoft already tried making the two versions identical in version 6 and people hated it with a seething rage. It's widely regarded as the worst version of Mac Office ever. The Office team consciously moved away from that. Maybe you're right and there will be enough turnover in 1-3 versions that Microsoft will no longer remember what a huge cluster**** it was, but that doesn't make it the right call.

[AppleGirl1990]

I'm not booting my Mac in windows/parallels just to get Microsoft Word.

Simon you stated "Word for Mac should look and act like a Mac app".
Oreo, you stated, "The Mac version should be in the tradition of the Mac".

What does that mean? What makes it more Mac than Windows? Eye candy?
Is the Mac version of Photoshop MacEsk? Or WindowsEsk? Is iMovie Macish? What if it was created for a PC? then what? How are distinguishing?

Programs just exist for both platforms.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

I'm not booting my Mac in windows/parallels just to get Microsoft Word.

You don't have to. Check out WINE or Crossover if WinWord on the Mac is really what you're looking for. Mac Word should be a Mac app. IOW I want all menus to be called what they're supposed to be called on the Mac, all KB shortcuts to be what they're supposed to be on the Mac, windows/palettes/sheets/dialogs to look and behave like they should on the Mac, drag and drop to behave the way it should on the Mac, etc.

File compatibility with .doc/.docx does not automatically mean I want to have to use shortcuts like ctrl-f5 or squint at those ridiculously small and Windows-esque icons just because MS doesn't understand tabbed palettes.

[Simon]

Umm BTW, why are we discussing Word in a thread about Snow Leopard?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

I'm not booting my Mac in windows/parallels just to get Microsoft Word.

Simon you stated "Word for Mac should look and act like a Mac app".
Oreo, you stated, "The Mac version should be in the tradition of the Mac".

What does that mean? What makes it more Mac than Windows? Eye candy?
Is the Mac version of Photoshop MacEsk? Or WindowsEsk? Is iMovie Macish? What if it was created for a PC? then what? How are distinguishing?

Programs just exist for both platforms.

This is just wrong. Maybe you can't appreciate the difference, but a lot of us can. You could stick Oreo, Simon and me in separate rooms, show us photos of apps and ask whether they're Mac-like, and I guarantee you we would almost always agree.

The Mac has UI conventions. It actually has rules written down for how apps are supposed to behave, as well as many de facto conventions that train users to think in a certain way. By your logic, it would be perfectly acceptable for the red stoplight button to close your document without saving — hey, the program just exists, no need for it to behave in any predictable way.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

I'm not booting my Mac in windows/parallels just to get Microsoft Word.

Simon you stated "Word for Mac should look and act like a Mac app".
Oreo, you stated, "The Mac version should be in the tradition of the Mac".

What does that mean? What makes it more Mac than Windows? Eye candy?

Read my post above for just one example.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by JKT 

Well, isn't that exactly what they should have done the first time around, if they hadn't been so retarded in their planning?

Nah. They did the smart thing at the time, just like Adobe did: bringing everything from Classic to Carbon was much easier than from Classic to Cocoa, especially at a time when Cocoa was mostly unproven (most "Cocoa" apps at the time were just upconverted NeXT apps).

Of course, both Adobe and Microsoft should have predicted Carbon's downfall much earlier than they have, but it wouldn't have killed Apple to be more forthcoming either.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by AppleGirl1990 

Simon you stated "Word for Mac should look and act like a Mac app".
Oreo, you stated, "The Mac version should be in the tradition of the Mac".

What does that mean? What makes it more Mac than Windows? Eye candy?
Is the Mac version of Photoshop MacEsk? Or WindowsEsk? Is iMovie Macish? What if it was created for a PC? then what? How are distinguishing?

Let me start my rant with a few comments on Word for Windows (the most-used app of the Office suite, but also holds for the other apps): it is full of features nobody uses. That's because (a) nobody knows they're there, (b) they're too complicated to use, (c) there 3 ways to use them and you need to remember which way for a few special options you need and (d) all of the above. Even basic stuff such as styles aren't used consistently by most people, because they don't know how. It doesn't help that the example files/templates are useless, too.

Word on the Mac has (at least for the versions I've used, starting with Word 98, I think) been a bastard child that was supposed to have a GUI as close to the Windows version as possible. Then a few sprinkles of Mac-ness were added. The programmers stirred occasionally and voilá!

You asked me specifically what a Mac-like app should look like. I can give you a whole bunch of examples (iTunes, Papers, Safari 3.0, Pixelmator, Mail, Aperture, Nisus Writer Pro, OmniGraffle, OmniFocus), but put succinctly:
(1) Apps should focus on core functionality first, you should rather have a direct access to the features you use 80 % of the time rather than all functions at once. That helps you hunt for the right icon, menu entry and whatnot.

Microsoft tries to cram everything on screen. (How often have you wanted to play a slide show when you inserted a USB stick?)
(2) Apps should have a consistent look. If you compare iTunes, Papers and Things, you notice that even though they all do very different things, the look is very similar. Ditto for Nisus Writer Pro and OmniGraffle. And with the exception of iTunes, all of these apps have been created by different (!) third-party developers.

Have a look at Windows, there it seems that none of Microsofts apps have a similar feel. Office these days is ok, but if you look at earlier versions, it becomes painstakingly clear that different groups have developed them independently.
(3) Apps should integrate well into the OS. That starts with the look-and-feel and ends with proper use of special technologies offered by it. Apple has UI conventions (which it breaks on occasion, but at least there are rules!), for instance.
(4) Apps should be quiet. No helpers (remember the Paperclip?), popups that no update has been found, etc.

Before you ask, IMHO Photoshop is not a very good example of a Mac-like interface, Adobe tries to keep Photoshop similar across different platforms.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

(2) Apps should have a consistent look. If you compare iTunes, Papers and Things, you notice that even though they all do very different things, the look is very similar. Ditto for Nisus Writer Pro and OmniGraffle. And with the exception of iTunes, all of these apps have been created by different (!) third-party developers.

Have a look at Windows, there it seems that none of Microsofts apps have a similar feel. Office these days is ok, but if you look at earlier versions, it becomes painstakingly clear that different groups have developed them independently.

This is exactly what Microsoft has completely misunderstood, and just to additionally clarify this point:

It's NOT about the LOOK; it's about the FEEL.

That's why the window toolbar in Office 2008 I described above is such a prime example of what's wrong: They follow the LOOK perfectly - it's like they copied it pixel by pixel from Pages and any number of other "standard" Mac apps.

But the single most important aspect of Macintosh is that things work as expected.

Everything Apple does is built to be as instantly recognizable as possible. If you've seen and used an interface element ANYWHERE before, you will probably find it in the same place, and it will look and more importantly WORK *exactly* the same way.

If it looks the same, it will work the same. You already know how to use it.

Not so with Microsoft's window toolbars. EVERY other Mac application that comes with window toolbars has a "Customize Toolbar…" command in the View menu. And they ALWAYS work *exactly* the same way.

[Chuckit]

Photoshop is a terrible example of a Mac interface.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

It turns out that no matter what decision you make, both sides will end up unhappy, so the best you can do is walk the fine line between the two.

I no longer have any hope for the future of Mac Office if this is the attitude you will bring to the job.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, and if you try you will end up failing. Miserably.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

I no longer have any hope for the future of Mac Office if this is the attitude you will bring to the job.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, and if you try you will end up failing. Miserably.

Sorry, I misspoke -- I meant to say that no matter what, one side will end up unhappy. I absolutely agree that you can't please everyone all the time, and you can be damn sure that I'm gonna do everything in my (admittedly limited) power to help make Mac Office the native, stable, and powerful suite that Mac users deserve after all these years. Even as an intern I was fighting to make Office a first-class OS X citizen, and I'd like to think that I succeeded in some small ways.

I love my Mac, and I'm just as picky as the next Mac user -- considerably more so than many of my friends. I do understand the vast difference between "look" and "feel," and I know how short Office falls on both accounts. I know I'll face some stiff competition, mostly in the form of a 25+ year old codebase, but I really care about the Mac experience, and I'm stubborn enough to not give up without making a difference.

And don't think that others in the unit haven't noticed the recent competition that Apple's been providing, and on their own turf. Needless to say, I'm not at liberty to discuss how hot and bothered many important people have gotten about iWork's elegance, or Snow Leopard's Exchange support, so I won't. Use your imaginations. I haven't seen the progress made on Office 14 over the past eight months since I left, but I'm expecting to be impressed.

And on that note, I'm thinking it might be time to transition back to the topic at hand... So, how about that Snow Leopard? I bet it's gonna be snappy™.

[- - e r i k - -]

That's exactly what we want to hear TheoCryst. Cheers.

Yeah, that Snow Leopard. I was just about to ask about ...

[OreoCookie]

Glad to hear, Theo. Now let's get back on track, Snow Leopard … 

[AppleGirl1990]

With Cookies and Chocolate as your sigs, it's tough to focus on SL.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Photoshop is a terrible example of a Mac interface.

WOW is all. So glad CS 3 is relatively stable. I've only got one client that's having to save back AI files for me right now and I hope it stays that way for the forseeable future.

[AppleGirl1990]

Any chance that Snow Leopard will be the last major overhaul of the OS for a few years (maybe 5)?
I'm worried that software developers are getting frustrated by all of Apple's changes.

OS 9 (classic) to OS X, Cocoa, Carbon, IBM to Intel, 32 bit to 64 bit

Just when they start to develop, a new architecture is out and all the old software is wasted.

[Cold Warrior]

Your first group is really just changes driven by a single division: old Apple vs new Apple. Old Apple had an aging OS (the classic Mac OS), inconsistent chip suppliers (Moto and IBM), and a brand-new OS that in order to survive had to play nice (Carbon API) with other old software. New Apple efforts to bring itself into the future have been Leopard and 64-bit. That's really been the macro-level picture — Apple's own OS and CPU problems and its decade-long efforts to address them in ways that have created smaller currents of various architectures and transitions. The road ahead looks less cluttered and more consistent.

[jmiddel]

Oh heavens no! without continuous innovation we perish. Seriously, there are many more challenges ahead for OS development. I'll suggest effective voice recognition for one, others can surely suggest other major areas of expansion. I see SL as cleaning up the inevitable excessive and redundant complexity of code that happens when you upgrade the OS, adding new features on top of older code. I'm sure it will have some nifty new features as well. But 5 years?

As for wasted software, well I used whatever I had to use under Classic when I switched to OS X, and looong before Classic was no longer functional, my OS 9 SW was obsolete anyways. Most of my SW will work on Intel, under Rosetta when I make the switch. All my recent SW acquisitions will work on G5 as well as Intel processors natively.

I think SW developers welcome Apple's changes, it gives them an opportunity to increase their products' capabilities, and gives them reason to make money putting out upgrades.

[TheoCryst]

I'd expect relative stability for the next few years. The OS is built on a stable and portable core, with an extensible and powerful framework for developers. With Snow Leopard, it'll be 64-bit down to the kernel (which should provide plenty of room to grow for the foreseeable future), and much more parallel-programming-ready. The nice part about these changes is that 64-bit will only cause a significant headache for driver developers, and the parallel support is entirely opt-in. There's really not a whole lot missing from the platform that will directly impact application developers in the near future -- the mark of a mature OS.

Of course, the OS will continue to evolve, but I'd expect major overhauls to slow for a little while -- there's just not much to transition to at the moment.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser 

Does anyone know how much SL will cost? Will any future iLife/iWork upgrades (in 2010 or something like that) require SL to run? Should I invest in this upgrade? Apple called it "bug fixes" instead of new features at Macworld (I saw it on GMA or something). I see that you guys are speculating something new, but I'm not sure. If it's not like Tiger to Leopard or Panther to Tiger, it should be free. I don't want to pay money fpr little bug fixes.

Why Snow Leopard Should Be (almost) Free by Adam C. Engst (TidBITS#976_27-Apr-09)

[Simon]

Adam makes a great case for why users would want it to be free. He however fails to point out why it's in Apple's best business interest to offer it for (or close to) free IMHO. What he mentions there basically boils down to common deployed OS version. And I have serious doubts Apple's executives think that's worth hundreds of millions of Dollars in lost software sales.

BTW, there's a proper thread for this.
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...-will-be-free/

[JKT]

Because some money from lots of software sales is better than no money from no software sales.

[Big Mac]

Indeed. I think it's possible that we'll see a half-price SL release, but anyone really hoping for a freebie is most likely to be disappointed.