Apple sucks iBalls!

Tiger gives me few more reasons to stay a dog person.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: OS Wars

Today was a great day of disappointments for me on the computer front. After much pondering, for reasons I will explain, I decided to take a trip to the Apple store and Upgrade my Mac to OS-10.4 "Tiger".

I have had a Mac for 3 years now. I spent $3000 on it, and have used it probably a grand total of maybe 80 hours. This is my own fault. There is nothing really wrong with it. It is just that I find myself using my PC. I'm a windows fan, even though that's not something most people will admit. As a skinner and a customizer there is much more possible in windows. This, along with a long list of reason why I don't use my Mac much, have caused it to be a bit neglected. Today I wanted to remedy that. So with much to-do I drove to the mall - a place I try to avoid at all costs - went into the Apple store and to my surprise managed to get a copy of "Tiger" without any of the sales people talking down to me. (This is something that I have become used to at the Apple store). $129 later I left the mall and aside from a great disappointment when I find out that Wetzel Pretzel is out of Grateful Garlic pretzels (I cried only a little), I start home with joy in my heart, and a fancy pull string bag full of OS-10.4 .

On a side note; I could not help but notice that the nice Apple black box with the big brushed silver X that Tiger ships in is almost an exact duplicate of the 1990's teaser poster for "Malcom X". Coincidence..... well, probably.

Now I get home, and the annoyances begin.

First a bit of background. I bought my Dual G4 Power Mac Right when OS 10.2 had just been released. 10.2 was a big improvement over 10.1 so I was pretty happy with it. It did what I wanted and I do not use the Mac much so I never updated to 10.3 "Panther". I still had iMovie, and iPhoto, and iDVD installed. They had been updated several times and worked fine (when I found the time to play with them). A year or so ago they quit giving away iDVD and I hardly noticed. I still had the version that came with 10.2 and I had never actually used it, so I did not care much. I remember Steve Jobs saying in his Keynote at the time, "You can still get iMovie, and iPhoto, and iTunes, for free, and if you buy "iLife" you get iDVD as well, plus a bunch of crap." OK so that's not quite a quote, but that was the gist of it. Shortly after that I became quite busy with my new job and much more interested in the PC side of things again. In short, I quit paying attention to what was going on with Apple. Sure I caught the highlights, "Garage Band" comes out and "Dashboard vs. Konfabulator", but over all my Mac attention span was about as short as the amount of time that my Mac was on. This, I discovered today, was a bit of a mistake for me.
 

First problem:

I get home and open the box. Humm...nice box, nice disk, look an intro manual, pretty... Apple sure knows how to polish the products. Oh and nice a trial version of "iWork". Well I won't install that because I have office on my PC and I will never use it. I take a break to backup a few things and all is well. I have never done a nice clean install and I still have OS.9 something installed so the Mac can run in classic mode - the wife needed to be able to run that free version of ProTools. I was never a fan of OS 9 and she doesn't do much sound editing anymore, so I want to dump that. That's right, this calls for a Clean Install. So I slip in the disk. humm how to do a clean install? Oh look you can launch Disk utilities form the installer, sweet! I'll just wipe the main drive... That was simple, Apple sure is cool... ok now I just click install. Seems to be working fine. Boy Apple sure is cool, Microsoft could sure learn how to do an installer from them... With that I take a 20 minute break while it installs.

I come back, run thought the pretty 3D Cube setup wizard and bam, OS 10.4 is up and running. That was pretty simple. Well, lets get everything set back up. First I'll reinstall the few apps I have. "Candybar". Oops.. dose not work in OS 10.2. Well free patch form Panic solves that. Now Pixidex. That one seems to work. Nice. That's all I need I guess. Hey wait a sec, were is iPhoto... oh, hey iMovie is gone as well. Hummm, perhaps I need to download them from Apple... I quickly run system update. "No new updates at this time" That's odd... Then it hits me: could it be that they don't ship with the OS anymore?.... Nah... well... Then I look in the back of the Intro Manual and sure enough "iLife Applications do not come with the OS, but can... bla bla bla....." Don't come with the OS. F##K. This make me realize that I have just deleted 2 of the only useful programs on this $3000 dollar paper weight. Now now, perhaps I can download the older free versions... I'll just look around the Apple web site a bit... Humm perhaps I will look a bit better.... Humm nope........................................well. If I remember right iLife is only like 50 bucks, maybe I'll just upgrade.... What... $79 dollar... F##K... With that I leave momentarily to rant to my poor wife of the injustice I am being put through. About a hour later I come back more collected.

Now, it seams that I have lost some software. I am a bit pissed, but I don't use the iApps often except iTunes, and that one primarily on my PC. So I decide to suck it up an live with it. I suppose if I cared enough I could do a fresh install of 10.2, then upgrade it to 10.4. But I don't quite feel up to that.

Second Problem.

I have just moved, and one of the things I wanted to do in my new house is set up a nice central file server for myself and my wife to use. Now the Mac seems the perfect computer for this; it's BSD backbone is very stable and you can leave it on for months with very few problems. Perfect, I can finally use my Mac. Or so I think. As it turns out, there is no simple why to share a drive on a windows network. Now luckily I have some UNIX friends and they teach me how to get into the smb.conf file and add a "sharepoint" and I get it working. There is an entirely different annoying Apple story here, but I am already running long so I will keep it to myself. Lets just say that I was hoping 10.4 would make SMB sharing easier. In fact, one of the reasons I upgraded was for the "Improved" windows file sharing. Well as it turns out they did not change a thing when it comes to sharing outside of your home folder. Well, that's disappointing. So thanks to a great little app from HornWare. http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/ I can get OS 10.4 sharing as well as it did with 10.2, I send the programmer 10 buck for saving me the trouble of having to remember how to edit the SMB files and I move on.

At this point the file sharing is precisely as useful to me as it was in OS 10.2 and now that I think about it, precisely  the same as it would be if I just installed Free BSD. But then I would not have the pretty polished Mac graphics would I?
 

Dashboard, or as I like to call it, "The Great Anti-Climax"

Moving on. Now lets check out these cool new apps. First, since I am a skinner and I was one of the first people to start messing with DesktopX, I have to check out DA, DA, DAAAA, Dashboard. Now Dashboard was getting a lot of airtime, because on the surface it seams a blatant rip-off of Konfabulator, which is more or less a Mac version of DesktopX. (Another debate all together; we won't get into it here). Well the good news is that Konfabulator should not have much to worry about. Dashboard pretty much sucks. Now this is my opinion only but I can tell you what: I'm not impressed. Sure the graphics are nice, sure they have some nice widgets. BUT, and this is a big but, YOU CAN NOT LEAVE A WIDGET RUNNING ON THE DESKTOP. They only appear on the "Dashboard". The dashboard is essentially a full screen window that darkens the rest of the screen, and with nifty effects pulls you widgets out to be visible. So essentially you are task switching to reach them. At this point you can just switch to the real app. I realize that this means that if you want to see any one Dashboard widget, you have to show them all. You can't, for example, leave a to-do list up on you desktop and work in an app; its all or nothing. This should be Apples slogan. OK OK, but the widgets are so pretty.... So are Konfabulators. Well, that is also disappointing, but perhaps I am overlooking something. I go to the Dashboard configuration. Humm what can I change... I can change the keys it uses, I can set up hot corners to call up the Dashboard. That's it. OK I'm still annoyed by this..... Lets move on.

Now still sticking with Dashboard I click on the Icon in the dock and it slides up this nifty tray of widgets. All of the provided widgets are very polished and work well. I try a few and am impressed by their cool spinney 3D effects that make it so the configuration for the widgets are on the back of each widget. You have to see this to under stand but its pretty sweet and makes me long for Longhorn to get its compositor working 100%. Hear that Ian? That sadly is about all that impressed me with Dashboard. When you go to the "More Widgets" webpage you find some nice widgets and some crap in about the same mix you find at WinCustomize or the Konfabulator gallery, but nothing to rock my world. Needless to say I don't need a "Next Episode of Stargate" countdown widget. That's what my PVR is for. One last thing of note: not all widgets are free. This is not surprising, but something to remember next time you see a pay suite or theme.

Well...one last bitch about Dashboard: I was assuming that since Apple makes dashboard and they have full control of the OS that it would be very well integrated. So I check out the weather widget. Its pretty sweet. Nice graphics. New shiny weather Icons, nice. Let me change the zip from the default of Atlanta to mine. Look there the 6 day forecast, that's nice. I continue playing with Dashboard and when you call up the bottom tray these little X's appear in the corner of all the widgets. One of the early problems we had with DesktopX is that people did not know how to close objects, so I am glad to see that they have included that. So I close the weather widget. This turns out to be a bit of a mistake. It seams when you close a widget it is as if it was never run. That's right, when I run the widget again I have to change the zip, position it, as well as set it to show the 6 day forecast, all over again. Now I don't know if this is the case with all the widgets, but it seems that Dashboard only remembers settings for widgets that are running. You can't open and close them at you leisure and expect to keep the settings you have established. You have to leave them running ALL THE TIME. Well like I said, you cant have them visible while you work in any other app, so I guess it is not really a drain on memory, but let me just say if I made a widget for DesktopX that behaved like that I would get flamed with complaints, and I would deserve it.

On the bright side of Tiger I was impressed by the new "Smart Folder" there - pretty cool. "Spotlight" is a damn fine desktop search and Automator is very cool. I would love to have something like that for Windows. Are these nice enough things to make me start using my Mac more? Not at all, but they are fine examples of Apple polish.
 


As far as I can tell leavening a Widget open, while you work
in a application, like I am doing here with DesktopX. Is imposable with Dashboard.

 

Well, it is late, and I have been ranting too long. I shall try and summarize my OS 10.4 "Tiger" experience.

The loss of my iApps was my fault for not reading the manual first but still, come on Apple, this is the kind of bait and switch that you would be screaming at Microsoft for doing, and everyone would be screaming for court action. Luckily Apples market share is so small that they can get away with things like that. (Well lucky for them at least). I assume that eventually I will crack an buy a copy of iLife that I will never use and Apple will be a little closer to being popular enough to start suing.

I am sure there have been tones of usability fixes and such, but the one thing that I was looking for, better Samba sharing, was still not there. Come on Apple, can't you have one of you programmers take a day to come up with a GUI for the smb.conf file? I have been able to right click on a folder or drive in windows and share it since windows 3.11. You just took Samba for UNIX, can't you afford to at least give it a pretty face?

As for Dashboard; very pretty at first glance. For a skinner or widget user it is pretty much useless. I will be keeping Konfabulator on the Mac and have already begun the search for a way to disable Dashboard. This is a great example of how an idea can be taken, yet not understood at all. I could be wrong. I'm sure some people out there are wild about Dashboard. I can just say I'm not one.

Lastly, Apple, what's up with the 10.X updates? I know that the "Big X" is sexy but this naming convention is about the biggest cheese on the planet. I am sure that you will come out with 9 point release of OS 10, but come on Apple, if Microsoft charged for point release you would wet your pants. Just give up on the X and move on. If you are going to charge $129 at least make it a .5 release. At this rate it is going to cost me 700 dollars by the time we get to 11. All I know is 10.4 is now running on my system and I spent $129 dollars to "Upgrade" to an operating system that works just about as well as the old but has less useful software. I keep hearing people say that "Tiger is the OS of the future". I sure hope they are wrong...

 

First Previous Page 5 of 5 Next Last
Sembetu
Reply #81 Friday, May 20, 2005 11:37 AM
Um, I hate to be the "MOTO" here, but isn't this "Win" Customize? Why bother with Mac5p33k here? Anyway, just my two cents.
Double Zero
Reply #82 Friday, May 20, 2005 2:11 PM
Sembetu - Probably because this specific portion of the WC message boards is entitled "Personal Computing" Thats my guess..

Im not a Mac user either but I dont mind reading about them, It's interesting, if I didnt think so I would just skip the thread..

Hope that helps,
Take Care!
Zoomba
Reply #83 Friday, May 20, 2005 2:25 PM
Sembetu:
Because JoeUser is connected with WinCustomize. JU is a bit more broad in terms of topics, so a Mac article here isn't out of place at all. I believe it was written primarily for JoeUser but came up on WC because it was in the Personal Computing topic.

And, who says that just because it's a Windows site, that articles examining the competition is out of place? There have been several attempts to mimic the OS X GUI on WC.
mrbiotech
Reply #84 Friday, May 20, 2005 10:30 PM
(jumping on the wagon...)

Sembetu, The original article spawning this conversation had a very anti-Mac feel whilst coming from one of WC's most respected skinners (which anecdotally lends artificial legitimacy to the Windows world). Unfortunately, the arguments raised in the initial article are not valid, the later part of this conversation focusing on this fact.

It's interesting discussing Mac5p33k here in particular because of the popularity of Mac imitation that occurs in the Windows skinning world. Apple presents a nice graphic environment that appeals to people of both OS camps. Moreover, Tiger presents some new graphic tricks not really adopted anywhere else, sure to tease coders and themers alike into new forms of mimickry.

Don't get me wrong: I see absolutely nothing wrong with skinning Windows to look like a Mac, Mac like Linux, or Linux like Windows. It's all creative exploration, and that's all that's happening here
Ka806
Reply #85 Saturday, May 21, 2005 6:51 AM
Personally, I think the approach MS and Apple take when it comes to including applications with there OS is just bad.
OSes should just have OSes.
Id rather pay less for an OS then have a bunch of applications bundled with the thing.they should just put in there kernels, filesytem, and desktop enviornment and call it a day. Then they could sell their other trinkets seperately. Then we can worry a little less about viruses from WMP or ITunes messing up the whole OS.
Obviously those that are on the wrong side of the digital divide will disagree but to them
Actual_Pixel
Reply #86 Sunday, June 5, 2005 3:26 PM
Absolutely Correct Mac OS 10.4 is not future OS
Jafo
Reply #87 Sunday, June 5, 2005 10:30 PM

Unfortunately, the arguments raised in the initial article are not valid, the later part of this conversation focusing on this fact.

Oh, come on now.  The article was an observation...a personal one...by one individual.

It did NOT purport to be gospel or truth/reality...a definitive treatise on all things Lordly, aka Mac.

Paul's opinions are exactly that, - his, and are as valid as the next person's.

If or when you may ascribe more 'pith' to them due to his [Paul's] prominence in our sphere of endeavour then bully for you.

If you simply read them [as I did] as one person's frustration/s at what befell him in his approach to an upgrad then well and good.

If you MUST expound exactitude then publish a workshop manual...and leave thread comments and/or blogs to those who can spell 'opinion'....

gmoneykyo
Reply #88 Tuesday, June 28, 2005 3:56 PM
I don't know if anyone has said this already but in England iLife '05 come free with all macs and if you have panther you can upgrade to tiger for only £12. I just wish i could afford one
KeithMacDonald
Reply #89 Sunday, July 17, 2005 10:56 PM
Ok, let's get this out of my system first:

Windows pwnz, Linux and Mac share the same bed together.

Ok, now that that is out of my system, I can also say this: I'll stick with Windows, you just totally blew Mac out the window for me (I wasn't even considering it anyways, I hate Mac).

There's my 20 second rant.
janjop31
Reply #90 Monday, May 8, 2006 11:22 PM
I admit to being an Apple fan. However I agree with your grievance. There is a small free app called tinker tool, which can mysteriously make invisible packages and other invisible files on Mac disks appear allowing things like the installation of iPhoto from a 10.3 disk onto a 10.4 system. I say this knowing Apple will likely attempt to sensor this post.

I hate big corporations! Greed and deceptive advertising are always at their core. This is the main reason that I avoid Microsoft as a rule. Apple is capable of evil too though!

IMHO Apple is producing a better OS than Microsoft right now mainly because of it’s Unix roots providing less virus vulnerabilities. That coupled with the philosophy of a more intuitive user interface makes for a better user experience. Although other Unix OS’s have certain advantages over OS X, Apple has top software firms including Microsoft creating familiar apps for OS X. Adobe isn’t likely to do a port of Photoshop to Redhat any time soon and Microsoft Office isn’t likely to be ported to Unix platforms other than OS X. So Apple is in a unique place. Too bad only 5% of the market sees it that way.

I did believe the virus issue would eventually kill Windows but unfortunately larger issues of user comfort exist. Lots of Windows users are afraid to leave their comfort zone long enough to see the benefits of MacOS. Apple has a history of disappointing users with empty promises and more office environments still use Windows.

Island Dog
Reply #91 Tuesday, May 9, 2006 6:32 AM

.....and the "bring back old thread" month continues.

Jafo
Reply #92 Tuesday, May 9, 2006 8:09 AM
'tis only 10 months old...
Tominated
Reply #93 Tuesday, May 9, 2006 7:01 PM
I'm still getting a mac, I'm fed up with microshi*t winblows and anyway, I'm getting it for free!

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