Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All 545
cremou brulee writes "Redmond's photocopiers have been unusually busy for the last couple of years, with the result that Windows 7 copies a lots of Mac OS X features. First and foremost among these is the Dock, which has been unceremoniously ripped off in Windows 7's new Taskbar. Or has it? Ars Technica has taken an in-depth look at the history and evolution of the Taskbar, and shows just how MS arrived at the Windows 7 'Superbar.' The differences between the Superbar and the Dock are analyzed in detail. The surprising conclusion? 'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'"
So, it's different ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So, it's different ... (Score:5, Informative)
How is it vaporware if it exists in beta form? I think you need to look up what that word means.
Re:So, it's different ... (Score:4, Insightful)
so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac OSX displays a button for each application open, and Win7 displays a button for each document that is open and then groups them by application.
nah! that's not the same at all!
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Windows never had a TASKBAR with BUTTONS for APPLICATIONS before Mac even had a dock.
Noooo.
For god's sake, grow up, OSX is not some holy friggen grail of OSes that everyone copies you know.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called "Windows 1.0." Look into it.
I did for you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/e7/WindowsLiveWriter/HappyAnniversaryWindowsontheEvolutionoft_1365F/clip_image002_2.jpg [msdn.com]
See that at the bottom? 1985 called, they want their dock back. (Nextstep "innovated" that in 1989, four years later!)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Xerox Star had a dock for applications, printers. tools, and so on.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, let me clarify that I posted like that to mock the guy above. Figuring out who invented what is obviously a useful UI paradigm and then pointing fingers at everyone else for copying is childish, immature, adolescent, etc.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
That's no moon! Err... I mean, that's no dock. Those are just the minimised Icons on the desktop from other applications. That was the way up to and including Windows 3.11. The taskbar was introduced in Windoes 95.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm assuming you're one of those kids who think you're "old school" because you used to play Half-life on daddy's computer in 1999. Because honestly, those are (as others have pointed out) minimized applications, Windows didn't have a task bar until Windows 95.
/Mikael
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microsoft wasn't allowed to, thanks to an apple lawsuit.
Wendy's was first (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry everyone, Wendy's had the Superbar long before anyone else. [findarticles.com]
Seriously though, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Who gives a shit if the "Superbar" looks like the "Dock" or if one car looks like another or if three movies came out this year with suspiciously similar premises.
Re:Wendy's was first (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
But when Apple copies something it's innovation. When Microsoft does it, it's child porn.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I don't necessarily care if one company copies a good idea that another company has. What I don't like is when that company comes out and acts as if they were the first ones to have the idea and that it's better than anyone else's. Going a step farther, if they bastardize what they're copying and still proclaim its greatness, that's just utter bullshit.
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I agree, but enough companies do it often enough that I stopped caring that much. I favor openness and innovation over complete compliance with patent law/spirit of fair attributation, and though I think both are important, I feel it's more important to err on the side of innovation.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny because it's true.
I find the iPod's wheel is often described as a revolutionary peice of design and used as an example of the amazing things Apple does.
Unfortunately, the Creative Zen had a side scroll wheel years earlier that you'd scroll up and down to scroll through songs and click in to select etc. etc. The wheel on the iPod is different only in that you move your finger round the wheel straight on rather than having a physical wheel you scroll up and down- the concept is identical, only the implementation is different.
If anyone truly believes Apple is some great innovator and that there ideas didn't stem from existing ideas then they're pretty oblivious to how just about all businesses work. Apple did what Apple do well, they made the idea popular, making it popular doesn't necessarily mean they innovated and invented in the first place though.
The usual hypocritical response by what I can only call the extremist element of the set of all Mac fans would probably be "the wheel is different because it's used front on therefore it's innovation" but to take that stance the hypocrisy is that one could equally argue that the Windows 7 sidebar is different enough to be classed as innovation rather than immitation then also, which you can be sure the most extreme of Mac fans simply would not accept. When they're forced into a corner of applying the same principles to Microsoft as to Apple or choosing hypocrisy, they choose hypocrisy.
I don't hate Apple, I don't hate people who love Apple, I hate people who can't be objective and realise things for what they are.
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it's an evolution, but it's a big one.
Scrolling on the front wheel is a single continuous motion. On a side scroll wheel you have to stop, come back, and scroll again.
Innovation doesn't meant that no one thought of pieces leading up to something, it means you made some jump in how those pieces were used that makes a significant difference in final quality/usefulness.
It's quite different actually (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the Creative Zen had a side scroll wheel years earlier that you'd scroll up and down to scroll through songs and click in to select etc. etc. The wheel on the iPod is different only in that you move your finger round the wheel straight on rather than having a physical wheel you scroll up and down- the concept is identical, only the implementation is different.
Yes, the "concept" of a wheel to scroll through lists is the same. But the physical experience of the interface is actually quite different. On an edge-contact scroll wheel, you can only move the list as far as the length of your thumb (or finger) pad before you have to pick up and reposition. This limits how fast you can move through the list. On a flat-contact scroll wheel, you can scroll through an infinite list continuously, which is faster. And (crucial detail) the iPod software actually scrolls the li
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See, this is why you always get ignored =P
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I don't know. Jim Carey got a lot of attention by talking out of his ass. I think he tried to make it part of his bit.
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You were: I worked for a company that produced one of the first commercial browsers for Windows, and which predated anything commercial for Macintosh AFAIK:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17043026.html [highbeam.com]
http://skypejournal.com/blog/2005/12/skype_status_report_part_3_by.html [skypejournal.com]
It was built on a license for Spyglass' Mosaic, just as was Internet Explorer, but preceded even that to market; it may have even beat Netscape to market, I can't recall for sure. Note that Quarterdeck's browser also had "tabbed browsing".
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Mac OS X used to be called NeXTstep, and NeXTstep had a dock which Windows 95 copied to create the task bar.
If you had actually used NeXTSTEP, you would know that its Dock and the Windows 95 Taskbar behave very differently. Much like the taskbar and the OS X Dock behave differently.
The Windows 95 look which came to be called the Windows classic look which was in fact a shameless but inferior copy of the NeXTstep look from 1988.
Rubbish. Application launching, task switching, menu interaction, window management - all these things were quite different in NeXT compared to Windows 95. Indeed, you'd struggle to find ways they were similar, that weren't also shared by every other GUI.
Re:Here's what Apple has copied (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually no, you're wrong--OS X displays a button every application that you decided to put in the Dock, whether they are running or not. Additionally, there is a document shortcut area of the dock which also shows minimized document/application windows (if document, independent of which app they are part of).
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:4, Interesting)
You're not weird--some of the original MacOS Human Interface Guide (HIG) designers agree with you (e.g. http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html [asktog.com] -- many of your criticisms mirror his).
When I got my first Apple laptop (10.3 powerbook) it took me awhile to get used to OSX. Probably because I was used to FreeBSD/Linux desktops, I adjusted fairly fast, and almost always have a Terminal window open. I remember a lot of frustration initially though, when I couldn't do things the windows way.
Stacks (introduced in 10.5) were one of those things I didn't like at first, but now LOVE for my Downloads folder only. Making the screen corners hook to Expose were another thing that took some getting used to, but I now seriously miss when I'm using Windows/etc.
I would say that OSX and vista re equally STABLE rather than unstable...though to be fair, I haven't had stability problems with windows since Win95/98/ME...
Re:so, to summarize... (Score:5, Insightful)
God, I don't know what I'd do without Expose nowdays. On my windows machine I compensate by having a few huge screens that I leave everything scattered around. But Expose + Spaces works much quicker for me, especially with limited screen real estate.
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Using a virtual desktop manager (like VirtuaWin, which I adore) has made my computing life much more enjoyable. At work I have dual monitors, but effectively have ~6. It lets me context-switch without needing to re-hunt through all the closed stuff.
Old hat to any Linux user, of course, but ... if you've never used one, I highly recommend it. {Win}+Number key combos are the bees' knees.
Disappointing (Score:5, Informative)
Normally Ars stuff is pretty good, but that article is *very* ordinary, with a lot of conceptual, functional and historical errors.
The main thrust is correct, however, the Windows 7 Taskbar is clearly a descendant of its Windows 95 Great-great-grandfather, not the bastard child of NeXT and MacOS.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Windows user, I found this article very informative. Every time I have used OSX in the past, I have been frustrated with the application/window behavior. Understanding the motivation behind the way the operating system UIs work will probably go a long way to reducing my frustration in the future.
Re:Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that, didn't work for me.
I still use my macbook occassionally and I still hate their separation between window and application switching.
In general, when I "ALT-TAB" (or "CMD-TAB" fwiw) then I want to quickly browse through all windows that are available to me. The UI is invited to provide a smart ordering for me (i.e. show other windows of the current application first) but the mental effort of distinguishing between a "window switch" and an "app switch" never worked for me.
But frankly OSX as a whole just isn't for me - even though I really wanted to like it and literally worked for 2 months straight only on my MacBook in an attempt to learn it. The semantics of the dock are still counter-intuitive to me and showstoppers like mandatory click-to-raise or the absurd "magic titlebar" ultimately made me go back to my linux desktop.
Spaces (Score:4, Informative)
You needed to use Spaces. Group any number of applications and windows into the same or adjacent spaces, then use control-arrows or control-numbers to immediately jump into the correct space.
See: Confessions of a Space-o-holic [isights.org]
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Quicksilver [blacktree.com].
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I couldn't disagree more strongly.
As a heavily keyboard-centric user, I find using OS X from the keyboard much easier than using Windows from the keyboard.
On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose
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On OS X, keyboard shortcuts are generally apple plus the first letter of whatever you might want to do.
This is true on Windows as well, except for the larger number of meta-keys. The general rule is that the WinKey is the meta key for a global action (not related to the currently active app) while the Ctrl and Alt key chords generally interact with the currently active application (and are often the same app to app, though that is at the developers' discretion).
In OS X, if I want to search for anything on the system, I can hit apple f to bring up a search window, or apple space to bring up a quick search in the search menu at the top of the screen. Onn Windows I would have to mouse to the start menu and choose search, or navigate a lot.
WinKey-F. On Vista, it's actually much faster to just hit the WinKey itself, then type - your text automatically goes into the search box.
If I want to rename a file in the Finder, I hit return/enter, rename the file, and hit return/enter again.
To the best
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Yes, that is correct: I press command + ` to move from window to window in the same program; and command + tab to move from an application to another.
And again, the Mac way is the best. Using your example: I have two web browser windows open, and a word editor. Now, I am
So there's the proof! (Score:5, Funny)
It waddles. It quacks. It's a camel!
KDE (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 - KDE4 for Windows ~
Fecal analysis? (Score:2, Funny)
'Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is.'
If by that he means to say that "the way it looks, feels and acts" are not important criteria for comparing the Mac OS X dock and Windows 7's Superbar, then I have to agree with him completely and whole-heartedly. I imagine the source code of each are completely different right?
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Windows in more environmentally friendly than Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Windows in more environmentally friendly than M (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft copied the recycle icon from NeXTstep which of course became Mac OS X.
http://www.andrewnotarian.com/blog/images/win95nextStep.gif [andrewnotarian.com]
"Superbar"? Who wants to kill marketroids? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 7 'Superbar.'
I'm going to get rich when I invent a machine that lets me stab people in the face over the internet.
Except there wont be anyone to run my marketing campaign :(
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That is FAR AND AWAY the best post on the Internet..EVER. Can I subscribe to get updates on your Internet-face-stabbing machine??
It's not a new idea... (Score:2)
Source. [bash.org]
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A product like that would sell itself.
Re:"Superbar"? Who wants to kill marketroids? (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to believe an OSS equivalent might be called "Open Bar",
but experience tells me it would be named something impenetrable like
"SpackleMonkey" or a difficult to pronounce word from a long dead language.
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
We arrived at the pretty much same place after starting somewhere else, so that makes it very, very, very, very different. Very.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
The suggestion elsewhere that an open source version of the dock might be called "SpackleMonkey" is apropos. If you patch leaky paradigms often enough, they begin to resemble each other: big balls of spackle.
For me, the pre-OS X version of the Mac were about as good as things get. It was like those Japanese sedans that are alike as peas in a pod because their design was very task centered. I have found OSX just as annoying as Windows. Although it looks fabulous, it does so at the expense of getting in the way.
This is the down side of Jobs' recreation of Apple. It is no longer a computer company. Yes, its still a user interface leader on its music players, but it's focus is on doing an impressive job on fine details. That works fine for iPods, but it doesn't work for computers, which users ask so much more of. The Dock is a prime example of a clever, obtrusive solution to a problem which had been handled with quiet competence before. In its jolly, gleaming, bouncy default state, it hogs huge amounts of real estate, jiggling and wiggling and generally calling attention to itself whereas everything it does was accomplished in less space, with less obtrusiveness in older versions of the operating system. You can tone it down, reduce it, and hide it, but aside from the fact it pops out when you don't want it, the Dock was designed to work best when it's just sitting there with a few big, fat icons. I do admire the magnification effect, which is a clever bit of UI spackle, but it would have been better to make it easy to launch/select with smaller widgets.
The key, pre OSX user interface principle that Apple followed was deference to the user, and one aspect of that is that when the user arranges things a certain way, they should stay that way. This, of course, is impossible when you combine the functions of launching and switching. Once you've gone down that route, you've thrown away the user's ability to put launch functions where he can find them without thinking. To my way of thinking, anything that takes a user's attention away from what he wants to do is bad.
After using OSX for about a year, I've concluded I'd rather use Vista, although it's frustratingly paternalistic, insisting on doing things on my behalf because it thinks it knows better. No, I don't want you to automatically install an udpate and reboot at 3AM by default, ruining a calculation that has been running for two days. But once you've fought it into a workable configuration, and thrown enough hardware at it, you can live with it.
It's not that I'm anti-Apple. Their iPod user interfaces are clearly superior. While iTunes has serious defects, there's no question they're light years ahead on making the whole music store to player business work. They're just no longer a company that produces a great computer user interface, from the perspective of somebody who spends well over a thousand hours a year working on a computer. Gnome, KDE and Xfce are all better to work with on if you have to do complex things, hour after hour.
It is similar... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the fundamental philosophy each inherited is different, but in effect at the 'dock' or 'taskbar' representation, Windows 7 and OSX end up presenting things similarly.
He makes the point that the OSX dock is for applications and that Windows is for each window, though Microsoft is heavily encouraging grouping that makes it seem as much like the dock as possible. True, in Windows this can be turned off, but that doesn't do anything to disprove the intent is to acheive the model the Dock presents. He says that when you close the last application window, it dissapears from the taskbar. The issue there is it behaves the same on Windows 7 and OSX, if an application exits, then the dock icon or taskbar presennce will disappear unless persistantly set.
He mentions things like the presence of the notification area as proof of difference, but all it really proves is that MS had a few different design ideas as they went and they must support all of them as a consequence.
Just like WindowMaker largely deals with non-GNUstep applications and makes them seem NeXT like through some of the best window group identifying methods in an X system, Windows is trying to fight clutter by removing quicklaunch and taskbar redundancy, and enabling the taskbar presence to be manipulated to replace system tray presence.
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He mentions things like the presence of the notification area as proof of difference, but all it really proves is that MS had a few different design ideas as they went and they must support all of them as a consequence.
You are exactly right... Apple has the handicap or luxury (depends on your viewpoint) of TWO persistent areas on the screen - the menubar and the dock. Windows has one - the "Superbar". Apple applications could put notification stuff in either the dock or the menubar, and most applications seem to favor the menubar. Incidentally, on my laptop this is a pain since it has run out of room and they don't have a way to unhide icons short of switching to an application with fewer menus!
Anyway, I've digressed... b
Re:It is similar... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem I can see is if Microsoft copies it too well, that Apple's lawyers would be on them like ugly on a bulldog.
Wasn't the whole "look and feel" thing decided in Microsoft's favor, back in the 90's?
Writeup could have been done better (Score:2)
Why didn't the author of the Ars Technica piece write it in such a way that we are in position to easily zoom the graphics? All detail is buried in tiny [un-zoom-able] sizes! I am not happy at all. Heck these are not the nineties.
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they copy it? Did they not? Do I care?
Is it useful? Does it do what it should? Does it make my work easier? That's what I care about. There are things that are clever. And, bluntly, I'd rather have them copy a good concept than come up with a completely moronic one (Office 2007, I'm looking your way!) just to be "different", just to have nobody claim they "Xeroxed something else".
Honestly, why should I care whether Windows, Mac, KDE, Gnome or whoever else copies anything from whoever? Ain't the damn patent lawyers not busy enough already, do we have to start with the same crap? What I care about is whether the system is reliable, fast and easy to use. Where they got the idea for it, I do not care.
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You probably shouldn't care, because you don't. But some people do care, and some people work in fields where they *have* to care (well, more likely, they *like* caring about stuff like this which is why they work in UI and OS GUI development, either in programming or design fields.)
Honestly, why should I care whether Windows, Mac, KDE, Gnome or whoever else copies anything from whoever?
The article asked "is it a copy (ie, is it very similar)?" not "did MS copy Apple?" Those are two very different questions
Windows never had an "application switcher" (Score:2, Insightful)
My wishlist for the taskbar (Score:2, Interesting)
For as long as I remember now, I've wanted a way to do the following with the Windows Taskbar:
1. Reorganize the order of what windows I have open
2. Send windows to background taskbars (desktops), so I could be using different sets of apps at once
Hopefully they could add some minor usability features like this; I feel like I'm regularly working against the taskbar to get things done.
Re:My wishlist for the taskbar (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he means, as basic functionality of the OS. i.e. without having to download any sketchy third-party apps.
One thing is sorta ok, but if you have to download a special app for every one of your UI niggles, you end up wasting far more resources than ordinary feature bloat wastes. I know because I've tried it.
It's much better to just try and figure out the "windows way" or the "mac way" or the "x way" for your taskload; the taskflow their developers envisioned for your use case, with as few personal modifications as possible.
Plus, using stock OS features means you won't be all used to a specialized way of doing things when you have to use other computers.
Taskbar was kinda like this long before Dock.. (Score:2)
Slight exaggeration (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All
C'mon, this has to be flamebait. The article pointed out some differences, and mainly tried to make the window-centric-vs-application-centric distinction we all know about already. It didn't say that they "weren't so similar after all", because that's clearly false.
The new taskbar is nice and it has a couple of features that the dock doesn't have and probably won't ever pick up. Specifically, the window thumbnails and the fact that "jump lists" (aka contextual menus) stay behind even when the app is closed.
I'm not accusing MS of taking ideas. I am accusing them of taking too long to implement what was the optimal solution to a design problem. Having an icon on the desktop, in the start menu, the quick launch bar, and possibly the notification area...none of which correspond to the actual open windows, which are instead listed in the task bar: stupid. Not that anyone these days has a problem with it, but still, from a design standpoint it's wasteful and annoying.
Ars is fishing for objectivity points here, and at best is running this as a dog-bites-man story (that is, "we know the new taskbar acts like the dock, and MS has a history of playing catch-up in this area, but you'll be surprised at what we think is the truth"). The fact that the headline on Slashdot exaggerates this further pisses me off quite a bit.
If it looks like the dock, walks like the dock, and quacks like the dock...you know the rest.
Oh come on, now (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious change in the new Windows Taskbar is that there are icons for non-running-applications. I don't care how you try to word it, that is the major difference between the OSX Dock and the Windows Taskbar. So Damn right it is copying it.
But is that really bad? Yes they copied good ideas, and perhaps made their own improvements to it. But that is how we get better software! Is this somehow wrong when Microsoft does it? You mean you really want Look & Feel Patents and Lawsuits? Don't be idiotic!
And the Microsoft astroturfers should not be showing such knee-jerk stupid reactions. Why not say *proudly* "we copied good ideas and improved on them even more!" instead of convoluted arguments that somehow they did not copy it.
The real difference is that (Score:5, Insightful)
The crux of the issue is that the Mac UI (and the NEXTSTEP UI) has always been application-centric from day 1. All multi-document Mac applications work in the same way: Alt+Tab to switch applications, Alt+` to switch documents.
Document-centric UIs, on the other hand, don't scale well, and that has led both the Windows OS and its applications to try to fake it one way or another, by grouping task bar icons, staying alive in the sys-tray, etc.
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Unless you've plugged in your Vista Business Keyboard becaue the apple supplied one was crap. Than it's 'alt.'
Unless you've reconfigured your keyboard in OSX, it should be WLK, not alt. OSX maps WLK to Cmd. Alt gets mapped to Alt/Option, and Ctrl gets mapped to Ctrl. Although this rearranges the positions a bit, it makes it easier to remember that Alt=Alt and Ctrl=Ctrl.
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Funny)
There are several Vista keyboards. They are the Basic vista keyboard, Basic home vista keyboard, home vista keyboard, basic business vista keyboard, business vista keyboard, and professional business vista keyboard.
The basic vista keyboard looks just like the professional business vista keyboard, but you cannot use more than a single key at once and you have to call microsoft hardware support to activate your end user license before all the keys work. Also if you do not activate it before the 30 day trial the only text written to an application upon use of the keyboard is "activate.microsoft.com"
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Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how clear that is to some of us, but regardless of how one switches windows or applications using hotkeys, the Mac windowing system (as the article makes clear) is essentially document-centric - each window corresponds (with some exceptions) to a document, which is sort of why closing the last document window doesn't terminate the application - i.e. it doesn't make this assumption, since your next action might be to open a new document.
This can be a bit counter-intuitive to those of us more familiar with X11 or Windows, but I can see where Apple is coming from. It does at least make for a more compact menu than that huge thing we see in recent MSOffice versions, which has obvious advantages if you are using a laptop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know the Office 2007 (and other apps using that interface) ribbon can be minimized, right? Double-click on the currently active ribbon tab. Single-click on a tab to have the ribbon temporarily appear until a button is pressed or you click elsewhere (like pressing Alt to access the menu bar) or double-click to restore the ribbon permanently. When minimized (the way I usually have it) it's actually thinner than the the collection of toolbars I would have on Office 2003.
Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was using a dock in WindowMaker before I saw OS X -- WindowMaker was, of course, "inspired" by the same source in NextStep.
The difference is, the dock is not only about running applications, it's meant to just be about applications. So, if I want to go to the Web, I click Firefox (or Safari), and if it's open, I get a window of it. If it's not open, it opens, and I get a window of it. I no longer have to think about whether stuff is open or not.
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
But I digress...
It's not just grouping windows. After all, you can still minimize a window on OS X, and it will become its own Dock icon. And you can put other things on the Dock.
No, it's all about mirroring the way users actually think, which is "I want to go to iTunes", and then "I want to go to Word", not "I want to launch iTunes" or "I want to find the running iTunes window" or "I want to close iTunes, then open Word". They want to go to iTunes until they want to go to something else.
Once they're in Word, then they can think about which document they want to open or find -- but an intelligent application could even hide that. Autosave with a near-infinite, persistent undo stack, and frequent backups, is much better, I think, than save/revert.
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What you've just described is why graphic design people, video people, music, etc etc tend to prefer Mac's - the windowing system lets you focus on the task, not the application. Subtle difference, but important enough to workflow for those people who don't just do "Outlook" or "Excel' all day long.
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Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, both of you hit two heads of the same nail.
The cleanest model for applications running is that you open documents for them, and you close documents for them. Everything else is OS overhead (e.g. is it running?)
BUT, some apps aren't doc-centric. iTunes shares your music when it's open, and the window is the app -- closed = gone, open = running. There's some opportunistic fuzziness with multiple playlist/store windows open, but it's really more of a desktop accessory than a normal file-editing program.
Question is, is it a problem? Application startup/shutdown for doc-editing apps usually isn't a problem until you want to free up some resources. iTunes runs or it doesn't run, usually not a problem unless you forgot it was open on another virtual desktop.
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, both of you hit two heads of the same nail/
That has to be the oddest analogy I have seen yet on Slashdot. I have never heard of a two-headed nail, nor can I really conceive why such a nail would be at all better than the standard one-headed nail.
But taking into account your 4-digit ID, perhaps you are old enough to remember a time when we used two-headed nails and were lucky to have them, or were grateful for them, or something like that.
Re: (Score:3)
If you model interfaces from how individuals act, there will be as many interfaces as there are faces. Approximation will result in interface "races."
We need to decide what is best for us, and what we want. If an OS that has more than 1 person using it forces people to do anything any one way, you will have those who will rebel. And their reasons may not even be logical or anything solvable. Seriously, it could even just be due to a bad cup of coffee they were drinking at that moment.
If you can find an inte
"I want to go to iTunes" (Score:4, Insightful)
So you start iTunes just for the fun of it? Interesting. I usually want to play some Music and iTunes is just the means to do it.
Note that I once used OS/2 which had a different approach: You would not launch applications at all. You would double click documents and the application would launch for you.
Ok, you can do that any OS these days. But there was a difference here. The reason why you would not do that with i.E. music is that Finder does not browse music folders all that well. In OS/2 an application could/should provide a plug in for the Workplace Shell (the Finder equivalent) to make browsing easy.
And then you have true document centric interface where applications are just there in the background. But this won't happen ever - and for vanity reasons. Vanity? - Yes: Have you ever noticed how many icons the Acrobat-Reader installs on a Windows system? And have you ever used one of these? I don't - I double click PDF files. Vanity - there are just there for Adobe to show off.
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The reason why you would not do that with i.E. music is that Finder does not browse music folders all that well. In OS/2 an application could/should provide a plug in for the Workplace Shell (the Finder equivalent) to make browsing easy.
To some extent, this is done.
I think the main reason this isn't done now is, an application can be organized and built around a task, or set of tasks. That's more than just looking for documents, or thinking in terms of documents.
For example, iTunes is not built around documents. It's built around songs, albums, artists, etc.
this won't happen ever - and for vanity reasons. Vanity? - Yes: Have you ever noticed how many icons the Acrobat-Reader installs on a Windows system?
Are you seriously suggesting this won't happen because Adobe is so vain about the number of icons they use? I must be missing something.
You would have loved OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
If they'd done that properly, i.e. create the blank file, AND auto-opened the application, so you can just work right away, I think it would be a great improvement.
Which is almost what OS/2 did. You could have so called templates - when you double clicked them a new document based on the template would open. When you dragged and dropped them a new document would be created at the destination. A bit like the "New Printer" icon on windows.
Need you own Template. Easy: prepare a document with the desired content and then mark it as template. The mark would be added to the extended attributes of the document - no special extension needed - works with any application as the
Re:Look carefully at "Application"... (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
This is both good and bad -- good, because we really shouldn't have to care; bad, because there is still a concept of an application "running" or not at the Unix level. I really feel that this should be transparent, even to the application developer.
In Android, whether an application is running or not is managed by the OS. If there is enough memory, applications are left running; if the system is short on memory, applications are automatically shut down. An application must be able to save and restore its state to disk, so even an application that is in use can be kicked out under memory pressure and restarted when the user switches back to it, without losing state.
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In fact, Leopard seems to even further de-emphasize the ability to know whether an application is running or not.
I don't know about that. If an app is running, its icon will be in the doc and it will have blue dot under it.
If you CMD+Tab you will get a list of all apps running as well.
UNIX processes and daemons will not be there of course, but that's why you have terminal and ps (or even activity monitor).
Re:The real difference is that (Score:5, Interesting)
hrmmm... the Ars article gave me the impression that one of the benefits of OS X (and shortcomings of Windows' MDI model) is that you can overlap "documents" from different applications. so, for instance, i should be able to easily drag-and-drop a vector shape from an Adobe Illustrator document into an already open Photoshop document. likewise, i should be able to have multiple Word documents, Firefox windows, and Photoshop documents all on my desktop at the same time (and in any layer order i want). are you saying that this isn't correct, that in OS X i would only be able to view the workspace of a single application at any given time? if so, then i don't see much of an advantage to having windows represent documents.
part of what i don't like about windows representing applications is that there's no easy way to drag-and-drop objects/text from one application to another. so if i have multiple programs running with multiple documents open in each, i have to switch applications, switch documents, copy the object/text, switch applications again, and then paste into the correct document.
it's even more frustrating with Adobe CS3 as all the applications are basically transparent MDI windows like you describe. so i'll have an Illustrator document open with a Photoshop document visible in the background. yet i won't be able to drag-and-drop objects from the Illustrator document to the Photoshop document like i would be between 2 Illustrator documents or 2 Photoshop documents.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are we still talking about Windows? I don't have Photoshop installed here, but I do have both InDesign and Illustrator, and I can drag and drop any object (path, bitmap, text or even a graph) from a document in Illustrator into a document in InDesign and vice versa. It works exactly as you describe for dragging objects within an application, and is functionally identical to copy/paste.
I can even drag any object into MS Paint which accepts the drop, but of course can't interpret the content. What does work t
This ArsTechnica article is kind of dumb (Score:3, Informative)
The starting premise is that, even though everyone thinks Windows 7's taskbar is cloning the Dock, it's not. It then goes on for several pages explaining the history of Windows' document management. ...and that's it. Somehow, explaining the history of the taskbar for several pages is supposed to be enough to convince you that the Windows 7 taskbar is not a clone of the Dock, even though it tries to behave the same way as the Dock.
Seriously, there's no real explanation of any differences between the Window
Re:Only the most facile... (Score:5, Informative)
Not that one should take at face value what Microsoft or Apple announce at their conferences, but in their developer conference the MS guys explained this evolutionary path. I saw several videos about it around the time.
The underlying tech is quite different between the Dock and the Taskbar, also they have similar but not equal philosopies behind them. I have been using XP's toolbars in pretty much the way Microsoft has done with the Taskbar.
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Insightful)
By 'astroturfing', do you mean 'having a differing opinion to the groupthink'?
I'm still yet to see a single mote of evidence that Microsoft bothers to astroturf Slashdot. Can you honestly think of a community of individuals (save, say, BoycottNovell) that are less likely to either:
a) Switch to Windows, or
b) Do anything at all on the whim of a commenter?
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we're all Linux zealots here. *rolls eyes* Seriously, might have been true 10 years ago, but today? Not so much.
Re:Astroturfing (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two basic options for people here, as it pertains to the astroturfing claim:
1. People use Windows, or
2. People use something else.
Obviously #2 can be expanded into a zillion other different options, but #1 is the important one to break out. If somebody already uses your product, you don't need to preach to them about how great your product is. It's the people in #2 that you have potential to change. That brings it back to the grandparent's point: the people here who don't use Windows aren't likely to change their mind about it as the result of some random commenter. Most of them have very specific qualms about Windows (or Microsoft) that drive their decision not to use it, and most of those people also have equally strong like for whatever OS they do use.
In that sense I have to agree with him. This seems like a really bad place to astroturf.
Re:Astroturfing (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, they're either Linux zealots or daemon worshippers then.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nor do I, and I am certainly not going to audit every post to find out. I've got getter things to do.
But in this case it is hardly the point; the article referenced by the OP is actually reasonably balanced, and certainly doesn't qualify as a shill or an attempt to astroturf.
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Twitter is that you? Hasn't there been a court order to stay on the meds yet?
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XP was Win NT 5.1
Vista was Win NT 6.0
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Win7 taskbar is not a straight cut copy of OSXs Dock. It has become a little Dockish, but your forgetting quicklaunch has been part of this for a long long time, you can even have large pretty icons with it. It seems to me the boundaries between Quicklaunch, task managerment and the tray have been removed. This does make it Dock like, but these staples of the windows taskbar have been there a