I am not an Apple user. I don’t feel Apple envy or suffer from Apple blight. I do however enjoy Applepeels, a thorn in the side blog which should be essential reading for the folks in Cupertino. Although with such thin skin, maybe Apple execs should avoid it altogether. The author obviously has some issues with Apple management, but he also evidently knows what he is talking about.
I am one of those people that think Longhorn will sell, when it arrives. But i also need to know about Tiger and Linux experiences. Easy to track of course- so many bloggers are Apple users, Joi for example.
But David Sobotta homes in on one of the problems with desktops in general-
I then found out that in spite of doing an archive and saving my settings, my printers had disappeared. So I proceeded to add my network printer. In the process I found out about the annoying little “supplies” button that Apple has added to their print dialog box. Just what I always wanted, a trip to the Apple Online Store to buy my printer supplies. Taking me to the most expensive place on earth to buy printing supplies is not exactly what I consider an advanced operating system feature.
This kind of “functionality” really annoys users. Its good to know that Apple is as guilty as anyone else of creating integrated aggrevation. Truly great design avoids such base captology.
David also takes a look at SuSE Linux 9.3, and for an Apple lover comes to some stark and surprising conclusions
I actually find the user interface of SUSE 9.3 more productive than Tiger. Now there isn’t an image program as slick as iPhoto but there are lots of other apps with SUSE which don’t come with Tiger.
Also as far as getting things done, moving around the desktop, and accomplishing my work, I think SuSE may win the race, but I will give it a few more days.
So, Steve Gillmor says his MS Tablet makes him more productive. Now here’s a Machead that says SuSE is more productive than Tiger, with a cleaner designed GUI.
Great design is hard to monopolize; there is always some flickr just around the corner ready to engage people more effectively. How to win on the desktop – avoid integrated aggrevation. That means don’t take over my machine in unexpected ways. It also probably means avoiding DRM, which is bad juju and just annoys people.
Sometimes less function leads to a better experience.
As Sobotta puts it: “Maybe OS X is moving into the bells and whistles phase of their user interface”.
Less is more folks, remember the Google interface? No integrated aggrevation there. Just a function that’s there, when i want it, no more no less.
Are we learning from good design or not? Tim O’Reilly asks: Are designers the new heroes of the computer industry? I would have thought that much is somewhat obvious, given the influence and kudos accorded to Jonathan Ives. But Apple needs to make sure it doesn’t forget what it has learned.
James Governor says:
May 6, 2005 at 12:06 pm
just read this – this guy definitely gets it
http://www.axentric.com/posts/default/8
Tom says:
May 6, 2005 at 3:23 pm
I’m not really sure you understand how captology works. Check out the Web site for it–captology’s not about doing bad things, it’s about doing good. http://captology.stanford.edu
James Governor says:
May 6, 2005 at 3:29 pm
no i think i know how it works, at least in my mind. i have read the captology blurb and subscribed to the blog for a while. but surely it can go either way. would you have preferred me to use “affordance” or something?
Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.
ummm…. you dont think captology can be used in a negative way? eh?
Tad Reasoner says:
May 6, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Sobotta’s been a little down on Apple, since he and they “parted ways”. I think there may be a bit of disillusionment involved in his current viewpoints.
James Governor says:
May 6, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Thanks ted.
I did try to make that point on the blog – The author obviously has some issues with Apple management, but he also evidently knows what he is talking about.
But perhaps I didnt make it clear enough. Yes he recently left (under a cloud?) after a long time and yes that does might cloud judgements.
The printer thing though– I have now seen on a couple of blogs.
Peter says:
May 6, 2005 at 7:48 pm
I gotta admit, I had the same problem when I installed Tiger and noticed the same thing. After a quick click on the “Supplies” button took me to the Apple Store, I just shook my head in disgust and went on with life.
My biggest complaint, though, is the placement. Uh…how do I know I need supplies before I print? I think this needs to go into the Printer Setup Utility or maybe–maybe–into Page Setup.
I agree that it’s tacky for the Apple Store to be integrated like that.
But what if it wasn’t?
Now, I have no way of knowing how this works. I’ll probably check out the sessions at WWDC to see if it works this way–hopefully it does. But suppose printer vendors could add this information into their printer drivers? Better yet, suppliers could add this information as well. Maybe better still, IT shops could add this, too.
So when I click “Supplies”, it presents me with a list of ways to buy supplies for my particular brand of printer. Go to the Apple Store, go to the Canon store, or go to joesprintersupplies.com. The reason it goes to the Apple Store right now may be that no one has added this information because no one knows how–yet.
Another neat idea would be to allow IT shops to override the other plug-ins. So they can pull out the other plug-ins and create their own that sends an e-mail to IT saying this printer needs a new toner cartridge or inks.
ChemBob says:
May 7, 2005 at 12:19 am
We’ve upgraded three laptops and 2 servers with Tiger and Tiger Server and experienced no problems other than having to reset one printer driver because a newer version came with Tiger. The printers are attached to Airports and we’ve had no networking problems at all.
I truly can’t figure why any of you are having any problems unless you didn’t do the standard Unix routines (repair permissions, run the crons, empty the caches, etc.) prior to the install. I will grant you that Apple should do a better job of explaining those and how they can solve most problems. I love Tiger (except for the appearance of Mail 2.0). It is much faster on most processes and many of the programs that I use are already optimized to use the added features that are under the hood (improvments to webkit and pdfkit, etc.).
Widgets are great, my invoicing program has a widget that can start the timers and send the info to the program without having to bother with opening and bringing it to the front. It merely opens when you tell the widget to send the info to it. Too cool really.
I use PCs too (or used to) and use Virtual PC when I’m running a geochemical modeling program, have used computers since 1979 (card readers, etc.) and I’m here to tell you that Tiger is far superior to any of the rest of them imho. Thanks for the opportunity to post.
Bob Powell
Catherine Helzerman says:
May 7, 2005 at 12:55 am
I currently have computers running Tiger, SUSE, and XP. Why? Because I don’t have a life—but that is another story. I have not found an ideal operating system yet. If someone knows of at least one that does not have a number of annoying qualities, I’m all ears.
pats boots says:
May 9, 2005 at 6:20 pm
In regards to the Printer problem: I think people are misinterpreting “Archive & Install” option of the Tiger install.
Archive and Install takes your current Home folder, archives it, wipes the drive clean and installs the OS. You can then, if you so choose, copy over settings from your archived Home folder.
It does not automatically copy over any settings form your old installation to your new installation unless you use the standard Upgrade option.