Ars Technica Reviews OS X 10.5 522
A user writes "Ars Technica has published their in-depth review of the newest version of Mac OS X.
John Siracusa both covers the user-visible features such as the new UI tweaks and Time Machine, and dives into the increased use of metadata and the new APIs introduced and what they mean for the future of OS X."
Great Review (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hatred for the interface changes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man, I love my Mac... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OSX and security (Score:5, Informative)
Re:lookin good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The myth of the upgradeless (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
This is a troll, right?
What exactly on this list is "not of interest to geeks"?
Re:Man, I love my Mac... (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, this argument has come up in most Vista articles here. After one of them about a month ago, I started logging every UAC prompt I've gotten, because I didn't believe that Vista actually prompts for *that* much more than what you would get on other systems. I cannot compare with what OS X does, but I can somewhat compare with what Sudo does on Linux. These comparisons are not completely fair, because I'm running Vista in the normal setup, with the almost-admin user, but I have no reason to believe that there would be many more prompts with a limited account.
Since I started logging, I have gotten 72 UAC prompts in 25 days I have spent most of my time booted to Windows. I'll break down the prompts in a few ways.
First, by reason:
* 29 prompts were for program installations or updates, things that would require 'sudo emerge' or whatever on Linux. 10 of these prompts were while starting Firefox; I'm running the Alpha version, and get prompted to update to the latest nightly each time I run it. 4 of them were from trying to install one particular program, it's patch, and trying to work around a couple compatibility issues. One prompt was for Windows Update, to update Vista itself.
* 10 prompts were from when I logged in and this buggy hardware monitor program that I have ran. For some reason, it requests elevation. (Then, after running for a while, pegs one of my cores and I kill it. One of these days I'll remove it from the startup sequence...)
* 10 prompts were from enabling and disabling my NIC. I was having network problems for about a week, and was trying to diagnose. (This is essentially doing 'ifconfig eth0 down/up' in Linux, except that it tries to get a new DHCP address upon up, and I don't recall if ifconfig does this. )
* 8 prompts were from when I was trying to solve a weird permissions issue when I was trying to delete something. This involved various permutations of trying to take ownership of the file, changing permissions, doing something in the Users dialog, etc.
* 5 prompts were from opening the anti-virus dialog
* 2 prompts were for OKing software for the firewall
* 2 prompts were from doing some process management stuff; one from instructing task manager to show all processes, and one from running ProcessExplorer in admin mode, probably to try to figure out what program was holding a handle open to a USB drive.
* 1 prompt was from messing with the Steam service
* 1 prompt was from opening regedit
* 1 prompt was from opening the drive format dialog so I could see the options in it
* 1 prompt was from a user environment variable change. This is not entirely necessary -- a user doesn't need admin rights to change them. However, the dialog Windows provides to do so involves both user-local and system-wide environment variables, and doesn't appear to provide a way to access it with the latter in read-only mode, hence the elevation request. (XP does BTW.)
* 1 prompt was for something TrueCrypt related, but I'm not sure exactly what
* 1 prompt was for something that I have no clue about, because I got distracted before recording what caused it and forgot
Now, let's compare with what would have happened on Linux:
29 program installations. Assuming you're like my impression of most Linux users, you're using something like Portage or Apt to install programs, which means you're doing it as root, and need to sudo. In Linux it is usually possible to install programs locally, usually by downloading the source, doing
Re:The myth of the upgradeless (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to have run into the usual disconnect between the needs of normal users and hobbyist computer builders. Macs are computers for people who don't have the time or the patience to build their own systems. This is exactly why I bought one, it does what I need it to, adequately, it works just fine out of the box and doesn't run Windows. If I was inclined to build my own system I would have done so and would I would probably be running Slackware on it just for that little bit of added tech-trouble for me to enjoy dealing with but I lost the patience for that sort of thing many years ago.
Re:lookin good (Score:1, Informative)
However, I have discovered that several GIS packages that use X11 just don't do the right thing. Instead of just checking and using the DISPLAY variable, they first check the Receipts folder to see if X11 is installed. Leopard doesn't have a receipt for X11- so that test fails. They further go on to check for other things, none of which are necessary. Its the application that is failing, not X11.
Re:OSX and security (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OSX and security (Score:3, Informative)
bye, ju
Re:I see no reason for a geek to upgrade (Score:1, Informative)
This stuff is crazy. It can automatically start monitoring a running program (with DTrace as its backend) and graph performance data in real time. Then, you can click through the graphs to see the monitored events listed in detail.
--Justin
Re:OSX and security (Score:3, Informative)
Try with "sudo lsof -iUDP"
bye, ju
Re:Spaces is incredibly well done (Score:1, Informative)
If you need to quickly move a window to another space, try grabbing it (start moving it and keep holding down the mouse button) while switching to the destination space. The window will stay visible, and is thus moved to the new space. Feels very natural, IMHO.
Re:lookin good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Upgrades rather limited... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, according to Apple [apple.com] it can hold four drives.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with your other points, but that one was wrong.
Use NeoOffice, not OO.o (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Spaces is incredibly well done (Score:3, Informative)
Apple pays attention to the interface design idea that says that edges and corners are good places to put stuff, because they're essentially infinitely big targets: you slam your mouse up to the edge of the screen, and don't have to aim precisely. That's why Apple's menu bar is at the top of the screen, and the Dock at the bottom (or sides). If hitting the edge of the screen pops you over to a new screen, then the menu bar is no longer an infinitely tall click target: it's a narrow strip which totally vanishes if you mouse up a pixel too high. Same for the dock.
Edge-sensitive virtual desktop systems drive me batty, I constantly try to click on stuff near the edge of the screen only to have it vanish. It's even more problematic on Macs, since the top edge of the screen is very important.
Also, the idea of tiling desktops into a regular grid that actually lines up pixel-for-pixel on corners and edges works great for a rectangular desktop. But Macs are designed to work well with multiple monitors at different resolutions, for which that tiling doesn't work.
Re:OSX and security (Score:4, Informative)
BSOD Easter Egg (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OSX and security (Score:5, Informative)
With TCP the packet type is a part of the packet data and even the old stateless firewalls could handle it. With UDP you could argue that there's no difference but even then you rely on certain standards to filter (in the old days you just let any UDP packet with a destination >1024 in.. luckily those days are long past us).
There's a *huge* difference between asking to OS to block all *incoming* connections and asking it to block replies as well. No firewall works like that.
Re:lookin good (Score:2, Informative)
I've always thought that the Hide function was more useful than the Dock, though. Press Cmd-H and bam, the thing just gets out of your way. No animations, no screwing around, just out of your way so you can do something.
Cmd-Opt-H is also handy, it hides all the applications except for the currently active one, nice when you're using the Finder and want to see the Desktop but it's buried in other apps' windows. If you have a mouse with a lot of extra buttons that can be programmed on an application-by-application basis, you might want to think about putting those hotkeys in. (Back in the day I had them programmed into buttons on a trackball and it was great.)
I'm still hoping someday they'll bring back the Put Away command.
Re:lookin good (Score:3, Informative)
I've never understood what's difficult to grasp about apps not quitting when the last window is closed. Why should I want that? 'apple-W' to close the window, 'apple-Q' to quit.
I'm hating the look and function of the new dock, though. Now that is something to complain about!
Re:lookin good (Score:3, Informative)
quicksilver - i am keystrokes away from my apps
witch - gives better control of "command-tab"
Ctrl-F2 - takes me to the menu bar (most annoying key combo)
command-tab: cycle forwards through open apps
Command-`: cycle through an app's open windows
command-m: minimizes window (annoying to get back from dock)
command-h: hides windows
command-w: closes window
command-q: closes app
And I reversed my Function keys to not require fn, and i added the preference to be able to tab to all fields inside apps.