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MacWorld UK: Lion is IT nightmare
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amazing
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Mar 9, 2012, 01:41 PM
 
When's the last time you've seen any MacWorld article that is strongly critical of anything Apple? Never?

Apple's Lion is a resource and security nightmare for IT - Apple Business - Macworld UK

Lots of great points, whether you agree with them or not...
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 10:10 AM
 
Excellent article.

I was pretty amazed at how bad the new "features" of Spaces are. I think I'll be sticking with Leopard/Snow Leopard for awhile.
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Eug
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Mar 22, 2012, 10:47 AM
 
Yep, this irritates me to no end, even for just home use:

When you shut down a modern desktop computer users see a window telling then that their computer will shut down in XX seconds. Most people then hit return to make the shutdown immediate. But with Lion there's an added small button that is permanently clicked on and tells you that all of your currently opened applications, including those running in all of your Spaces, will launch again when you next turn the computer on.
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 10:59 AM
 
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 11:30 AM
 
Let me summarize the compliants:

* Spaces: Wah wah they moved the controls and because I refuse to the read the help file I don't understand the new way of setting them up!

(It honestly took me several tries to understand just how stupid the writer was being when he wrote this, but it seems that his complaint is that he can't make a new space. You can make new spaces by going to Mission Control and start dragging a window. In the top left, an empty desktop appears. Drop it there and boom, you have a new space. No need for multibutton mice or trackpads).

* Dangerous System Preferences: Back when I learned computers in the eighties, we had to shut them down all the time because there was no sleep mode. Since that sleep mode has only been there for 20 years now, I haven't bothered learning it yet, and so any change to how shutting down works really pushes my Asperger buttons!

* Full Screen Mode: No, I won't read help files! Why should I? I just want to push buttons and see what happens, and when that does something unexpected, it's much better to complain on the web than try to figure things out.

(This one has some relevancy to it, because I think that the menu bar hiding by default is the wrong choice, but all the other key combos like Command-Q and Command-tab as well as Expose work for getting you away from that mode)

* One More Thing: I want the Save As button to work as it always did, darnit!

(This I can sympathize with, but honestly - anyone who didn't back me when they came for Command-N in the Finder gets no support here. This change at least makes logical sense, even if you have to think about it.)
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Eug
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Mar 22, 2012, 11:31 AM
 
Awesome, thanks turtle.

Apple, stop making these stupid irritating changes with no opt-out option.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 22, 2012, 01:06 PM
 
Sorry, Eug,

I'm with P, here. The irritation will pass, and come Mountain Lion, nobody will give a **** anymore.
     
amazing  (op)
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Mar 22, 2012, 01:28 PM
 
Well, there you go: controversy!

The articles's point still stands: The experts can take care of themselves. It's the teeming clueless masses that IT pros have to support that are the problem with Lion. Or did everyone forget how dumb the average office worker or student can be?

Still, nothing like job security for Mac IT pros thanks to Lion!
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 22, 2012, 01:39 PM
 
It's not the clueless masses that are complaining.

As always, it's quite the opposite.
     
amazing  (op)
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Mar 22, 2012, 02:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
It's not the clueless masses that are complaining.

As always, it's quite the opposite.
That's because the clueless masses don't even know how clueless they are!

And the IT pros have to stock up on headache remedies and antacids!
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 22, 2012, 03:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by amazing View Post
That's because the clueless masses don't even know how clueless they are!

And the IT pros have to stock up on headache remedies and antacids!
With most changes, I've found the people who complain to be generally clueless about the needs and problems of the clueless masses.
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 03:41 PM
 
Ah, calling people stupid and telling them to read the manual — the classic response to any criticism of UI issues. You usually didn't see as much of this on the Mac side of the fence, though. Mac users used to be interface guys — if you have to read a manual to figure it out, it's not intuitive, and if novice users keep on making the same mistake over and over again, it's not the users who are stupid, it's the UI that has issues.

Let's be honest — Lion was a pretty big change, but you can't really argue that it doesn't need work UI-wise. Pretty much all the points that the article makes are valid. I find the UI of the full-screen feature particularly bizarre — not only does the full-screen button disappear instead of staying in the upper right corner of the window like you'd expect, not only does it go into the hidden menu bar alongside a whole bunch of other pictures that non-technical users won't necessarily know what they are, but it doesn't even look the same once it's moved. That made me scratch my head for a bit the first time I tried using Lion's full-screen mode. My guess was that novice users would probably rely on just closing the window as a way to get out of FSM. At least the Escape key works now — it didn't in the first build I used, but I don't know when it got added.

Remember, just because we don't have problems using a UI doesn't mean much — we're geeks. We could get by using one of the dodgier Linux window managers if we had to; it doesn't mean much for the quality of the UI. If Apple gets a little criticism from the press now, it's a good thing, because Mountain Lion is still early enough in development that there's time to make improvements in this regard.

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Mar 22, 2012, 04:12 PM
 
That article contains all sorts of incorrect information, starting with labeling the latest release as OS X 7.2.3. WTF? Also, Spaces. Move your mouse to the top right on mission control. A big + symbol slides out, that you can single-click for a new desktop.

If you're going to write about tech, you should apply a minimum amount of rigor to your work, or at least a modicum of curiosity.

Regardless of how well-accepted 10.7's new features might or might not be in the world of IT, that article is very poorly written. Warning away people from using a new OS with new features because your IT people might have to explain some of those new features is... a way to get page views, I suppose.

The only legit gripe in the whole piece is the "reopen windows on restart" button that's perpetually checked. It's a dumb little thing, but it is an annoyance.

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift.
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 04:25 PM
 
This wasn't a regular RTFM, though. I'm not saying it to a user who comes in here asking for advice - I'm disassembling a particularly terrible linkbait. The basic idea is that because Apple changes the UI, IT now has to support them users more, and he utterly fails to prove it. The complaint about the Mission Control changes is
However, because you can no longer manage them from Systems Preferences, unless you have a Track Pad, a three-button mouse, or know the launch-key combination, you're stuck with three.
i.e., that it's not possible to make a new desktop. Not that it's harder, that it's impossible. He even describes the situation as IT setting up new desktops, and complains that it is now not possible. That was worthy of an RTFM - and I will admit that it colored the rest of the post, because I honestly couldn't believe that anyone could be that stupid and write in what is an old and well-established Mac magazine.

As for the rest...I agree that the menubar disappearing is a bad design choice, but saying that it will increase IT's workload because each user has to be told about it exactly once just doesn't wash. Complaining about autolaunching apps at shutdown is the only one that could be remotely described as a "security" issue, and he put it in there to make the title even more linkbaity. The Save As/Duplicate thing is just another "I don't want to change my habits" thing. The entire post is just "I don't like how Apple changed things, and since I am the world, noone likes this. To hide the fact that this is just about my habits and expectations, I will wrap it up as 'IT resource issue' because that makes it appear more rational somehow."
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Eug
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Mar 22, 2012, 04:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
As for the rest...I agree that the menubar disappearing is a bad design choice, but saying that it will increase IT's workload because each user has to be told about it exactly once just doesn't wash.
I'm not overly concerned about this particular point, and I don't necessarily agree with the entirety of that article, but since when does IT support mean just telling a user to do something once and then they get it right every time after that?

That's the whole point of UI design - to make things intuitive so that they don't have to talk to IT support in the first place.

Complaining about autolaunching apps at shutdown is the only one that could be remotely described as a "security" issue, and he put it in there to make the title even more linkbaity.
It's a UI design error IMO that one must select the no-autoreload option every frickin' time you logout or reboot the machine. There should be either a preference setting for this, or else it should 'remember' your last choice.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Sorry, Eug,

I'm with P, here. The irritation will pass, and come Mountain Lion, nobody will give a **** anymore.
The irritation will pass, because some other irritated programmer wrote a nice script to get rid of this irritating and unintuitive... and potentially unsafe... behaviour. And if it behaves this way in Mountain Lion too, then I'm sure someone else will write the same script to get rid of this irritating and unintuitive... and potentially unsafe... behaviour.

Hell, not even iOS does this.
     
CharlesS
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Mar 22, 2012, 04:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
This wasn't a regular RTFM, though. I'm not saying it to a user who comes in here asking for advice - I'm disassembling a particularly terrible linkbait. The basic idea is that because Apple changes the UI, IT now has to support them users more, and he utterly fails to prove it. The complaint about the Mission Control changes is
However, because you can no longer manage them from Systems Preferences, unless you have a Track Pad, a three-button mouse, or know the launch-key combination, you're stuck with three.
i.e., that it's not possible to make a new desktop. Not that it's harder, that it's impossible.
That's not the impression I get from that quote. He says you can't do it unless you have certain arcane knowledge (the key combo), which pretty much makes it just harder. Sure, he didn't know about the hidden "+" button that pops up when you move the mouse to one edge of the screen (but only one edge, for some reason, and it seems to depend on how your Dock is set up). But that can also be blamed on a non-intuitive design — it's not really obvious that that button is there, is it? I don't think it would have hurt anything for that button to be permanently visible on the Mission Control screen.

Complaining about autolaunching apps at shutdown is the only one that could be remotely described as a "security" issue, and he put it in there to make the title even more linkbaity.
He's hardly the first person I've heard complain about that feature causing embarrassing or security-compromising material to pop up.

The Save As/Duplicate thing is just another "I don't want to change my habits" thing. The entire post is just "I don't like how Apple changed things, and since I am the world, noone likes this. To hide the fact that this is just about my habits and expectations, I will wrap it up as 'IT resource issue' because that makes it appear more rational somehow."
The Save As/Duplicate thing turns something that used to be one step — choosing Save As from the menu bar — into three steps — choosing Duplicate from the menu bar, saving the new document, and then closing the original. And one of these steps (the Duplicate item) doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut by default (yes, I know you can add one if you possess arcane geek knowledge). It's a small productivity loss, but it's pretty annoying, especially when it bites you a number of times in a row. This could easily be fixed by adding a menu item named "Duplicate and Save" or something similar, and giving it the now-unused ⇧⌘S keyboard shortcut, unless the press just decides to give Apple a free ride and never give them any criticism or pressure to improve because hey, it's Apple.

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amazing  (op)
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Mar 22, 2012, 04:47 PM
 
I think Charles brought up a central point: This sort of criticism is what we all delighted in bringing up with respect to Windows. The Mac side of things had its own arcane knowledge for those "in the know" but the general user could get along quite happily without ever seeing any of that "special knowledge, eg obstacles."

Lion's got "obstacles" in abundance.
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 04:48 PM
 
Some of Lion's UI 'tweaks' reminds me of the no-button iPod shuffle.



A supposedly slick design change that really just leads to pointless complexity that in turn serves only to annoy people.
     
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Mar 22, 2012, 05:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
That's not the impression I get from that quote. He says you can't do it unless you have certain arcane knowledge (the key combo), which pretty much makes it just harder. Sure, he didn't know about the hidden "+" button that pops up when you move the mouse to one edge of the screen (but only one edge, for some reason, and it seems to depend on how your Dock is set up). But that can also be blamed on a non-intuitive design — it's not really obvious that that button is there, is it? I don't think it would have hurt anything for that button to be permanently visible on the Mission Control screen.
For me it shows up as soon as you start dragging a window on the current desktop, or when you move to the hidden spot. That last is a bit of an odd move, though - just creating an empty desktop without any windows on it - but sure, that button should be present. Avoid scrubbing is always a good UI rule, but one that Apple has mostly ignored since 10.0, so it's hardly a new point. And I'm still is not going to let him off about not knowing how to make a new space when writing a piece about it. That's just bad. The help file, Working with spaces, and it lists exactly one way how. How hard can it be? Again - not a regular user, someone writing a piece on it.

Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
He's hardly the first person I've heard complain about that feature causing embarrassing or security-compromising material to pop up.
Probably not, but that doesn't make it a valid complaint. He's just complaining about things not being the way he's used to and somehow phrasing it into an enterprise resource and security issue. It is better in the common case, and for those in the edge case, there is text RIGHT THERE IN THE DIALOG BOX FOR SHUT DOWN that this is the way it works now.

And I maintain that a regular user does not, and should not, shut down their computer unless they're going to be away for more than just one night.

Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
The Save As/Duplicate thing turns something that used to be one step — choosing Save As from the menu bar — into three steps — choosing Duplicate from the menu bar, saving the new document, and then closing the original. And one of these steps (the Duplicate item) doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut by default (yes, I know you can add one if you possess arcane geek knowledge). It's a small productivity loss, but it's pretty annoying, especially when it bites you a number of times in a row. This could easily be fixed by adding a menu item named "Duplicate and Save" or something similar, and giving it the now-unused ⇧⌘S keyboard shortcut, unless the press just decides to give Apple a free ride and never give them any criticism or pressure to improve because hey, it's Apple.
Great idea - did you send it in in the Feedback box? Because if it's one thing Apple ignores, it's press from people who wants things to be like they always were. When they, as in this case, can't even formulate what they want and phrase into a classic linkbait, they do more harm than good.
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CharlesS
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Mar 22, 2012, 05:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
And I'm still is not going to let him off about not knowing how to make a new space when writing a piece about it. That's just bad. The help file, Working with spaces, and it lists exactly one way how. How hard can it be? Again - not a regular user, someone writing a piece on it.
I think you're missing the point of the article. He's writing about the effect of the changes as they affect the general population, and the IT people who get the same support questions over and over. It's not supposed to be a how-to guide, it's about the new changes to the UI and their intuitiveness (or lack thereof).
( Last edited by CharlesS; Mar 22, 2012 at 05:30 PM. )

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Mar 23, 2012, 04:27 AM
 
Any time a control moves somewhere, there is the argument that IT support calls should go up because users can't find them. This is the same every single OS update Apple makes, and honestly the changes Apple makes are smaller than those made by MS in Vista and Win 7. This particular complaint describes the situation where IT is used to making multiple spaces for people, and suddenly can't do that anymore because Apple removed the ability to make more than three spaces. That's simply not true. So the controls moved, arguably to a more logical location but with a less discoverable interface. Relearn, IT. Not that hard.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 12:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
And I maintain that a regular user does not, and should not, shut down their computer unless they're going to be away for more than just one night.
Care to elaborate? Why shouldn´t i (and every other user) completely shut down my comp even over night?!


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Mar 23, 2012, 12:46 PM
 
I'd be happy if they'd fix what they broke with SMBX. It's causing problems on campus with our network-based storage system.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 01:37 PM
 
I'm going to say something that seems counterintuitive for the tech world: Sometimes too much innovation is a bad thing.

The thing is, the basic interface of a computer - the whole mouse/keyboard, files/folders paradigm that's out there, has been around for almost 30 years now. It may have at one time been true that the vast majority of the market for computers was going to face a steep learning curve to learn to do things that way, but now I think it's more true that they'd face a steep learning curve to NOT do things that way.

It's kind of like cars. Early automobiles had all kinds of control interfaces - tillers like boats to steer, big levers like a cable car for throttles, and so on. At some point, everyone settled on the round control wheel to steer/foot pedals for throttle and brake paradigm. Is this the best possible interface for a car? Probably not. Could someone come out with something different that was objectively a little bit better? Almost certainly. But at this point they'd be crazy to, because their entire market has spent the last hundred years getting used to one way of doing things. At this point, the retraining necessary to get people to use a different interface to drive a car wouldn't be worth it barring a truly momentous advancement like voice control.

And so it is with computers. Sorry, Apple, it's not 1987 anymore, and the majority of the market for computers (and especially for your high-end, expensive computers) isn't made up of people who have never used one before, are mildly afraid of them, and need you to make all their decisions for them. Making big changes to your interface in the name of simplification will ultimately just end up frustrating people who've spent the past thirty years getting used to one way of doing things. Taking a feature like Save As away from a customer like me who's been a Mac owner for eighteen years on the off chance that a miniscule percentage of your new customers might be awed and frightened by its presence is not a good UI design change. It's trying to solve the problems of the past at the expense of the present.

Yes, the new way may indeed be objectively a bit better. But, like a tiller in a new car, that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea to implement, and I still have good reasons to not like the change.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 01:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by euphras View Post
Care to elaborate? Why shouldn´t i (and every other user) completely shut down my comp even over night?!
Why do you want to take the time to shut down every night? There's no reason to. Why waste the time in the morning booting up again when you can just have the machine sleep?

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amazing  (op)
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Mar 23, 2012, 01:56 PM
 
Got an SSD? Why shouldn't you shut down then start up the next day?

It's what the SSD can do so well!
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 02:39 PM
 
I shut my Mac Pro down each night because it still uses something like 20 watts when it is sleeping.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 03:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by euphras View Post
Care to elaborate? Why shouldn´t i (and every other user) completely shut down my comp even over night?!
Because modern sleep modes are just that good that the energy saving is is not worth the efficiency loss from shutting down and rebooting. Booting up is a very power-intensive state, modern sleep modes use very little power, and soft power off (ACPI S5, the state you end up in if you just select Shut Down) also uses a bit of power. In fact, the best way to do it is probably to go into standby (S3) as often as you can and then drop to hibernate (S4) when you know you will be away for a while, but OS X does not make that easy to do, so I pretty much leave it in sleep mode at all times.

In fact, I'm not sure you save any energy at all. Apple publishes energy usage figures for its computers. My iMac is here. I'm in Europe, so the soft power off number is 0.92W and the sleep mode is 1.87W - I'm saving just under a watt by shutting it down. I don't know how much power it uses when booting, but the idle power with display on is just over 150 W and the PSU is rated at 370W. Is it fair to say that it uses 250W? It's probably high, but let's see where the numbers take us. I have an SSD in mine now, which cuts boot time a lot, but some googling indicates that this model with an HDD boots in about 1:10. By this logic, it has to be shut down for four and a half hours to even start saving energy. But raw boot time is not all. How long does it take to open all your programs? To save documents and close everything at the end of the day? To shut down? If you're gone from the computer for 15 hours - 8 hours work and 1 hour lunch and breaks and whatnot - the break-even time for startup and shutdown becomes 3 minutes and 36 seconds. That's not a lot. Yes, I'm doing a lot of ballpark numbers here, but even if you think that the power usage of that Mac when booting is 200 W, the break-even time becomes 4 minutes 30 seconds. Not a lot.

I'm not saying that they should be left fully on and running, but sleep modes are good these days, and DDR4 RAM will only make them better.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 03:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by JackWebb View Post
I shut my Mac Pro down each night because it still uses something like 20 watts when it is sleeping.
Current models use <7W.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 23, 2012, 03:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Nergol View Post
Yes, the new way may indeed be objectively a bit better. But, like a tiller in a new car, that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea to implement, and I still have good reasons to not like the change.
It's only been a couple of months since I've upgraded to Lion, and the new Duplicate function has already saved my bacon several times. It has also simplified my bookkeeping, as I no longer need to keep PDF duplicates of all my bills, in case I accidentally edit and save over one.

I don't give a damn about all the interweb geeks crying over how much more "complex" this new solution is (it's not), and how Apple no longer needs to pander to the complete newbie.

All wrong.

People now and in the future will be MORE "newbie" on average than the people who hang out here and see stuff from the perspective of someone with 10+ years of experience. Kids today are LESS inclined to deal with the intricacies of technology they've taken for granted since their birth.

It's all the more important to remove steps that alienate them.

I do not understand why there isn't a system preference THAT WILL STICK that allows people to toggle OFF the re-opening of all windows after a restart.

But on the whole, after living with them for a while, I'm QUITE happy with the changes made in Lion (okay, full-screen mode on anything larger than 13" is total bullshit), and the changes shown in Mountain Lion so far will make me an even happier camper.

Coming from someone who's been on the Mac since System 4.2 (briefly, in 1989, then quickly upgraded to 6.0.3), and has considered himself fairly tech-savvy for twenty years. I do IT support for average humans, and I see what they have problems dealing with.
     
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Mar 23, 2012, 03:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by ibook_steve View Post
Why do you want to take the time to shut down every night? There's no reason to. Why waste the time in the morning booting up again when you can just have the machine sleep?
Because OSes and software aren't perfect yet. I find that if I never shut down I start running into weird problems. eg. Safari hanging (memory leak?), external drives or other devices disappearing, Apple and 3rd party software locking up, etc. This is especially true on my iMac, which has lots of devices attached to it, and lots of stuff on it.

However, my SSD-endowed Lion MacBook Pro takes about 20-25 seconds to boot.

I don't shut down the iMac every day, but I definitely shut down several times per month.


Originally Posted by P View Post
Because modern sleep modes are just that good that the energy saving is is not worth the efficiency loss from shutting down and rebooting. Booting up is a very power-intensive state, modern sleep modes use very little power, and soft power off (ACPI S5, the state you end up in if you just select Shut Down) also uses a bit of power. In fact, the best way to do it is probably to go into standby (S3) as often as you can and then drop to hibernate (S4) when you know you will be away for a while, but OS X does not make that easy to do, so I pretty much leave it in sleep mode at all times.
If you leave a laptop in sleep mode for a few days, there can be significant drainage of the battery. OTOH, if you shut it down, and then reboot later, the battery drainage will be negligible. This can be important when travelling.


Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
I do not understand why there isn't a system preference THAT WILL STICK that allows people to toggle OFF the re-opening of all windows after a restart.
And that is my #1 complaint in this thread, out of the complaints that were mentioned in the article.
( Last edited by Eug; Mar 23, 2012 at 04:06 PM. )
     
Waragainstsleep
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Mar 23, 2012, 04:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
Because modern sleep modes are just that good
I'm not sure you're right there. My Late 2008 MacBook Pro will drain 10% from its battery overnight (The battery is getting on a bit but still gives an hour or two) My 1999 PowerBook G3 would sleep for months on a single charge. Months. Plural. The battery on that never lasted more than an hour or two when it was brand new.

Also I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that PPC Macs used much less power in sleep mode than Intel chipsets do. Just 2.5V to maintain the RAM contents.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
tmurray
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Mar 23, 2012, 04:27 PM
 
This is a disaster of an OS for the enterprise. For those of us that use AD binding, it's still broken even in 10.7.3. Yes, we have a case open with Apple. Expected fix is in 10.7.4 -several months away (May-ish). We can't deploy new machines or upgrade the OS because the binding piece was not added into the OS on release. Brilliant. Also, no Java.. Has anyone tried to control licensing or deployment via the only means Apple wants to allow aka the App Store?

This is making the use of a Macintosh in the enterprise extraordinarily difficult.
     
Nergol
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Mar 23, 2012, 06:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
It's only been a couple of months since I've upgraded to Lion, and the new Duplicate function has already saved my bacon several times. It has also simplified my bookkeeping, as I no longer need to keep PDF duplicates of all my bills, in case I accidentally edit and save over one.
That's great. I'm not saying that Apple should never introduce new features and give me the choice to use them. I'm saying that OS design is not a zero-sum game: to add a new feature, you don't have to take an old one away. I use Save As for different things than the Duplicate feature does, and different things than their versioning system does. Sometimes, for example, I like to save two or three different versions of the thesis paragraph of a paper so I can run them by my Professors to see which they like best. Or sometimes I like to take a picture I find on the internet, crop and resize it, and save a copy for use as wallpaper while leaving the original picture intact. Or I like to use one document as a template for another, which is easy if I open abcd.doc, make a change, then Save As wxyz.doc. All these are simple with Save As, and as far as I can tell, Apple took away my ability to do that either because they really don't understand that UI design is not zero-sum, or just for shits and giggles.

People now and in the future will be MORE "newbie" on average than the people who hang out here and see stuff from the perspective of someone with 10+ years of experience. Kids today are LESS inclined to deal with the intricacies of technology they've taken for granted since their birth.

It's all the more important to remove steps that alienate them.
I'm sorry, this simply doesn't make any sense. It says that the more experienced people get with a technology, the more you have to treat them like they're complete beginners who don't know anything about using it. That's an inversion of logic and reality.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 23, 2012, 06:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by Nergol View Post
That's great. I'm not saying that Apple should never introduce new features and give me the choice to use them. I'm saying that OS design is not a zero-sum game: to add a new feature, you don't have to take an old one away. I use Save As for different things than the Duplicate feature does, and different things than their versioning system does. Sometimes, for example, I like to save two or three different versions of the thesis paragraph of a paper so I can run them by my Professors to see which they like best. Or sometimes I like to take a picture I find on the internet, crop and resize it, and save a copy for use as wallpaper while leaving the original picture intact. Or I like to use one document as a template for another, which is easy if I open abcd.doc, make a change, then Save As wxyz.doc. All these are simple with Save As, and as far as I can tell, Apple took away my ability to do that either because they really don't understand that UI design is not zero-sum, or just for shits and giggles.
You are not using Lion, or you haven't taken the 30 seconds to work out what it does, or you have simply decided beforehand that the new Duplicate functionality doesn't do what you need and you'd rather bitch about it than work.

None of what you describe is in any way made impossible, nor even more difficult, than it was before.

The ONLY difference for the scenarios you describe is that you decide FIRST that you wish to create a new version, and THEN work (you can save later, or even completely forget about saving, without losing any data).

That's it.

Originally Posted by Nergol View Post
I'm sorry, this simply doesn't make any sense. It says that the more experienced people get with a technology, the more you have to treat them like they're complete beginners who don't know anything about using it. That's an inversion of logic and reality.
No, I'm saying that the more pervasive technology gets, the LESS experienced people get with it, as tends to disappear as it advances.

How often do you need to adjust the crystal on your radio? Do you even have a clue what that means? Knowing how to do that was second nature to anybody who owned a radio sixty years ago.
     
Nergol
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Mar 23, 2012, 08:38 PM
 
No, I'm saying that the more pervasive technology gets, the LESS experienced people get with it, as tends to disappear as it advances.
Maybe you can make that case when it comes to something like knowing a lot of command line stuff, but when it comes to the changes between Snow Leopard and Lion? That's a big stretch.

How often do you need to adjust the crystal on your radio? Do you even have a clue what that means? Knowing how to do that was second nature to anybody who owned a radio sixty years ago.
The ability to adjust the crystal on my radio wasn't a feature. It didn't add any functionality to my radio, and eliminating the need to do it didn't take any functionality away from it. Save As is a function I use every day. Again, why is Apple taking functionality away from me? Do they have a good reason?

The ONLY difference for the scenarios you describe is that you decide FIRST that you wish to create a new version, and THEN work (you can save later, or even completely forget about saving, without losing any data).
So again, why change the way people have learned to do things for the past 30 years? Just to say you did something new, at the price of ****ing up workflows that people have developed and stuck with for years?

To go back to my car analogy, the last major interface change in cars was the introduction of automatic transmission 60 years ago. That was change that there was a good reason for. It did take away a certain degree of control for the user, but not much - and if it really bothers you, you can still buy a standard transmission version of virtually any car out there. Car makers are smart enough to know that you don't change basic UI elements without a really good reason, and even when you do, you give users as much choice as possible in the matter. Apple, for all the hype about its user-friendly design, seems to be forgetting that.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 24, 2012, 05:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by Nergol View Post
Maybe you can make that case when it comes to something like knowing a lot of command line stuff, but when it comes to the changes between Snow Leopard and Lion? That's a big stretch.
And yet, here you are complaining about a change that eminently makes complete sense.


The ability to adjust the crystal on my radio wasn't a feature. It didn't add any functionality to my radio, and eliminating the need to do it didn't take any functionality away from it. Save As is a function I use every day. Again, why is Apple taking functionality away from me? Do they have a good reason?
Here you claim they're "taking functionality away from me".

So again, why change the way people have learned to do things for the past 30 years?
And here you claim they've just "changed the way people have learned to do things".

And that's exactly it:

You are unable or too lazy to adapt to a simple RE-ORDERING OF STEPS to make them more logical and more in-tune with how people GENERALLY work and think.

It takes all of 30 seconds to get used to. It is not arbitrary. It is not difficult. It is completely capable of dealing with all the scenarios you described above with as much elegance and simplicity as the previous method.

If you were even USING Lion, you would know this.

you give users as much choice as possible in the matter. Apple, for all the hype about its user-friendly design, seems to be forgetting that.
Apple has always been about making the best choices*, and NEVER about leaving that choice up to the user. Everybody seems to be forgetting that when Apple makes decisions that will cause their fragile little minds to explode for having to re-learn easier things.

EVERY TIME Apple replaces adjusting the crystal with a rotary dial, or the rotary dial with favorites, six people strip down to their underwear and start shouting about how stupid Apple is to change their world in such a fundamental way, and that they're being robbed of features, and how Apple needs to at least give them the option. Eventually, those six people realize that the rest of the world keeps working as before, take their panties off their heads, and quietly dress again.





*) granted, those choices are occasionally debatable, as can be seen here.
     
TETENAL
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Mar 24, 2012, 08:50 AM
 
Why has nobody ever complained about the fact that you have to create a virtual copy in Lightroom before you make changes to it and not after?
     
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Mar 24, 2012, 09:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by tmurray View Post
This is a disaster of an OS for the enterprise. For those of us that use AD binding, it's still broken even in 10.7.3. Yes, we have a case open with Apple. Expected fix is in 10.7.4 -several months away (May-ish). We can't deploy new machines or upgrade the OS because the binding piece was not added into the OS on release. Brilliant. Also, no Java.. Has anyone tried to control licensing or deployment via the only means Apple wants to allow aka the App Store?

This is making the use of a Macintosh in the enterprise extraordinarily difficult.
This would have made an excellent point for that article, as opposed to the ones he brought up. Maybe you can ask MWUK if they need a writer?

This is also part of why that article bugged me. I know that Apple is basically ignoring Macs in the enterprise, so I was expecting a cogent critique of the problems. Instead I got some whining about how they changed the interface.

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
I'm not sure you're right there. My Late 2008 MacBook Pro will drain 10% from its battery overnight (The battery is getting on a bit but still gives an hour or two) My 1999 PowerBook G3 would sleep for months on a single charge. Months. Plural. The battery on that never lasted more than an hour or two when it was brand new.

Also I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that PPC Macs used much less power in sleep mode than Intel chipsets do. Just 2.5V to maintain the RAM contents.
That is what the Intel Macs should do as well. S3 (Suspend to RAM) means that everything stores its state in RAM and then shuts down, and the computer only has to keep power to the RAM. If your Mac drains that much over night, something is off. My MBA had the same situation when I had a Bluetooth trackpad paired with it. Not sure why, but when I removed that trackpad from pairing (because I never used it) battery life in sleep went back to the claimed 30 days.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Mar 24, 2012, 12:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
I tried this but it doesn't fix the problem.

It prevents loading of the app windows automatically at login. However, when you launch Safari again, it loads the old windows and sites, so this fix is pretty pointless unfortunately.

Dammit Apple. Fix this please.
     
Eug
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Mar 25, 2012, 06:50 PM
 
Did that fix screw up OS X behaviour? I applied the command to reverse the fix but I notice if I logout and log back in, and unclick the box for reopening windows, although Safari won't reopen, when I relaunch Safari the pages i was last on will reload.

Is this what regularly happens? Because I don't remember this behaviour.

However, if I quit Safari first, and then logout, this doesn't happen. Very strange. In other words, in order to ensure no windows will reload at application launch at the next login, I have to quit each program individually.
     
   
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