Vista / Aqua, eat my shorts

[Praxis]

Eh, the effects are neat but a lot of it is just useless eye candy.

This is what I thought when I watched that video. Wow, a whole bunch of meaningless flashy nonsense.

Then again, most people I know who use OSX think much of *that* 3d-enhanced stuff is meaningless flash, and it's far more restrained than 'rivers of sparklies woo'. How much of it is anyone actually going to use, when people turn off the 'blue start bar' of XP and the 'slurpy windows' of OSX?

I like the slurpy windows...
I like to hold down the shift key and watch them slurp in slo-mo.

[Stark]

You can do that?

And I'm talking about regular people, for whom such things are distractions. You can set zoom or wobble on dock icons, but that throws people right off.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The designers at Apple apply effects in a more or less restrained fashion and to make them functional. Vista goes to town with transparency and shaders to the point where you can barely read the title of a window if it's against a certain background. I'm seeing the same kinds of issues with Beryl. The Linux community is now basically saying "ME TOO!!!" after so many years of "Whatever, OS X and Vista are just useless GUI fluff."

Steve Jobs has said on numerous occasions that the geek crowd makes the erroneous assumption that design is "what it looks like" rather than "how it works". That's why Vista looks gaudy and Beryl looks superfluous, but OS X just looks nice. That's why the iPod sells, and your favorite iPod killer doesn't.

Sounds more like style over substance, which is what pisses me off over iPods (and Zune for that matter). Beryl works too, and there's nothing there that wasn't being worked on years down the line anyway. The project only started coming into being a true replacement for X last January when composite managers run by the GPU looked set to be the future rather than bland 2D stuff.

Wow, that makes it on par with Mac OS X circa 2004. Welcome to 3 years ago.

Again, OS X being essentially proprietary UNIX, that doesn't surprise me. The only thing is, Linux can use all this stuff now and customise it at will and have it work for everyday use. Last year, no. But now, it's on every major distro and Beryl is looking like a good fork.

You can do that?

And I'm talking about regular people, for whom such things are distractions. You can set zoom or wobble on dock icons, but that throws people right off.

Name it, chances are, someone made it. They look pretty, but I'd only ever stick with minimum aesthetics and stick with more practical plugins such as the zoom, transparency, cube 3D desktop switcher and similar things. The rest is just added niceness that we've been getting more of ever since we got windows. Bring back the CLI only stuff, says I.

[EnsGabe]

I find it amusingly annoying and ironic that I lack a windows key- need it for the keyboard shortcuts for various effects and utilities (I have the 1999 Model M w/ the builtin trackpoint).

I'm in the same boat as you- have you found a solution? I've knocked up a solution using xmodmap if you're interested.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You can change the superkey to whatever you want if you have a keyboard sans-Windows key.

[Praxis]

You can do that?

Yup, hold down the shift key when you minimize any window or do any of the effects in Mac OS X like Expose, and it goes in slow motion. Really cool looking.

If you kill Finder using Terminal while it is in the process of minimizing, the window will be stuck in its distorted form until you close or minimize it again. Even the buttons remain clickable.

Steve Jobs built the slo-mo function in for the first Mac OS X demo. It serves no practical use, but it's pure awesome.

[Pu-239]

You can change the superkey to whatever you want if you have a keyboard sans-Windows key.

Yeah, but what if I'm using those for other purposes. There are sadly only so many keys to go around...

[Durandal]

Sounds more like style over substance, which is what pisses me off over iPods (and Zune for that matter). Beryl works too, and there's nothing there that wasn't being worked on years down the line anyway. The project only started coming into being a true replacement for X last January when composite managers run by the GPU looked set to be the future rather than bland 2D stuff.

What "substance" is the iPod missing? Or Mac OS X for that matter?

Again, OS X being essentially proprietary UNIX, that doesn't surprise me. The only thing is, Linux can use all this stuff now and customise it at will and have it work for everyday use. Last year, no. But now, it's on every major distro and Beryl is looking like a good fork.

OS X is implemented on top of Darwin, which is an open source operating system. It's a hybrid.

[Uraniun235]

I like the slurpy windows...
I like to hold down the shift key and watch them slurp in slo-mo.

I hear there are people who like Star Trek: Voyager, too.

[Beowulf]

Darwin is an open source kernel. This is distinct from an operating system. The problem is that none of the layers above the kernel are open source, and none of the drivers that the kernel uses to interface with the hardware are either.

[Drooling Iguana]

Eh, the effects are neat but a lot of it is just useless eye candy.

This is what I thought when I watched that video. Wow, a whole bunch of meaningless flashy nonsense.

At this point, one of the the only things Linux was really lacking was meaningless flashy nonsense. Now it's got even that covered.

[Durandal]

Darwin is an open source kernel.

Wrong. Darwin is an operating system. The kernel is XNU/Mach.

This is distinct from an operating system. The problem is that none of the layers above the kernel are open source, and none of the drivers that the kernel uses to interface with the hardware are either.

Wrong and wrong again.

[Praxis]

What "substance" is the iPod missing?

He's probably going to say something nobody cares about. Like Ogg playback.

[Uraniun235]

The Linux community is now basically saying "ME TOO!!!" after so many years of "Whatever, OS X and Vista are just useless GUI fluff."

I was under the impression that these sorts of projects don't necessarily represent everyone involved in the creation, use, and advocation of Linux.

Steve Jobs has said on numerous occasions that the geek crowd makes the erroneous assumption that design is "what it looks like" rather than "how it works". That's why Vista looks gaudy and Beryl looks superfluous, but OS X just looks nice. That's why the iPod sells, and your favorite iPod killer doesn't.

So what would you say is the key behind "how it works"? What's the factor that makes Apple products more usable than others?

[Durandal]

So what would you say is the key behind "how it works"? What's the factor that makes Apple products more usable than others?

Look at the iPod. Simple navigation via a scroll wheel and a center button. Everyone else up until then was including some scroll wheel thing adapted from a mouse.

Hell, look at the iPhone. Completely different way of thinking about the Internet on a mobile device. Instead of making some piece of shit called a "web browser" on a phone, Apple found a way to put an actual web browser on the phone. Instead of finding a way to cram more keys on to a cell phone, Apple used a touch screen with intelligent software. The iPhone is so far beyond everything else on the market that it's staggering.

[Xisiqomelir]

So what would you say is the key behind "how it works"? What's the factor that makes Apple products more usable than others?

The OS X HIG?

[Crayz9000]

Well... fired up Beryl on my Athlon XP 2000+ with an aging GeForce 3 Ti200...

Had a couple of snags since it doesn't work with nVidia's "official" legacy drivers, thanks to their brain-dead separation of cards in the monolithic driver. Switched back to an older "regular" driver and got that working fine.

It's incredibly snappy and uses almost no CPU cycles. The cube is a great metaphor for switching desktops, too. Also, the task switcher runs rings around Mac OS X's switcher, then again, I get the feeling that Apple kind of ignored Alt+Tab in favor of Expose. Yes, Beryl does that stuff, too.

I have most of the pointless flashy stuff turned off, but there are a few niceties such as the windows automatically going transparent and blurring slightly when losing focus (makes it VERY obvious which one's in front).

So yes, GNOME + Beryl is a nice combination. Not as polished overall as Mac OS X, but getting there. And it's definitely not as much of a resource hog as Vista is looking to be.

[Pu-239]

Sarcasm?

Well, from what I can gather from the features of MacOS versions on wikipedia, it does do compositing and the expose ripoff, so maybe 10.3 in terms of graphics.

In 10.2, the GPU was added to the compositing path. That made things like shadows, transparency, etc ... all possible in real-time. Note that the actual drawing of the GUI widgets is not done by the GPU in Tiger unless you turn on QuartzGL in the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools. QuartzGL will actually put the GPU in the drawing path. But in Tiger, it's a recipe for kernel panics and weird drawing issues.

So as it stands right now, every window in Mac OS X is a 2-D rectangle with a texture on it. That texture is created and laid out by the CPU.

Ah, so it's the same as here- I was under the impression Quartz used openGL to draw the widgets and all. Still, OS X had it first... (then again, it is knocking off virtual desktops w/ spaces and FUSE, everybody rips off everyone else, granted those are smaller items)

The Cairo library has an openGL backend, but it isn't really used, and it has to be enabled by the libraries that use it like GTK. Apparently the X server is supposed to accelerate the stuff itself from what I can gather from http://www.arcknowledge.com/gmane.comp. ... 00068.html
Not sure whether it actually does this at this point in time (supposedly the nVidia drivers have it implemented and the other's don't).

[Pu-239]

I have most of the pointless flashy stuff turned off, but there are a few niceties such as the windows automatically going transparent and blurring slightly when losing focus (makes it VERY obvious which one's in front).

So yes, GNOME + Beryl is a nice combination. Not as polished overall as Mac OS X, but getting there. And it's definitely not as much of a resource hog as Vista is looking to be.

Yeah, that's why I'm pretty much using compiz- Beryl has too many useless flashy crap- only things I have enabled for daily use are the fading and zooming animations, cube, and translucent windows. I miss the transparent cube though (I don't actually use virtual desktops since I have problems keeping track of which one actually has my stuff- being transparent helps that).

Another thing that is actually useful is the annotations... unfortunately, I've run low on keys.

[Admiral Valdemar]

What "substance" is the iPod missing? Or Mac OS X for that matter?

I never said it lacked anything, and I confess to being quite happy using a Mac from the old notebooks with trackballs to the latest Power Mac. I just dislike the way some people buy these things simply because of the aesthetics and because it's the "in thing". I considered an iPod Nano, for instance, but saw a Samsung player that was half the price but with the same specs. Course, if it was reversed, I'd be an iPod owner.

OS X is implemented on top of Darwin, which is an open source operating system. It's a hybrid.

True, but in the words of the almighty Nintendo wrist band my brother has: "know your roots".

Additionally, a lot of the problems you may get from XGL/AIGLX and Compiz/Beryl are down to driver support, not the software which, if you've set up right and pray your video card isn't a bastard to work with, will run smooth as Baileys down an alcoholic's throat. My ATI Radeon is shitty, it's only a 9200SE, but it runs well when you spend time configuring it. Just not as well as I'd like, because ATI suck donkey bollocks when it comes to driver support, especially given the time it's taken to get DRI and X.org 7 support working.

[Durandal]

I never said it lacked anything, and I confess to being quite happy using a Mac from the old notebooks with trackballs to the latest Power Mac. I just dislike the way some people buy these things simply because of the aesthetics and because it's the "in thing". I considered an iPod Nano, for instance, but saw a Samsung player that was half the price but with the same specs. Course, if it was reversed, I'd be an iPod owner.

I don't get why you care so much about why people buy iPods. They're very well-designed from both a usability standpoint and aesthetic one. Are you saying that it doesn't deserve the success it has or something?

True, but in the words of the almighty Nintendo wrist band my brother has: "know your roots".

Which Apple does. Just ask the gcc folks.

Additionally, a lot of the problems you may get from XGL/AIGLX and Compiz/Beryl are down to driver support, not the software which, if you've set up right and pray your video card isn't a bastard to work with, will run smooth as Baileys down an alcoholic's throat. My ATI Radeon is shitty, it's only a 9200SE, but it runs well when you spend time configuring it. Just not as well as I'd like, because ATI suck donkey bollocks when it comes to driver support, especially given the time it's taken to get DRI and X.org 7 support working.

I'm not referring to any of that. From a technical standpoint, Beryl has basically achieved what both OS X and Vista have (more or less, I'm not sure). It's that so much time is spent just putting features in rather than putting them in a good place. Microsoft has this problem with Vista. Just look at all the effects applied to a window's title bar. You've got transparency, the glass effect, a glow around the text and then a foggy glass effect. All this was designed to make the text readable against as many backgrounds as possible. When instead they could've just left the title bar opaque.

Ah, so it's the same as here- I was under the impression Quartz used openGL to draw the widgets and all. Still, OS X had it first... (then again, it is knocking off virtual desktops w/ spaces and FUSE, everybody rips off everyone else, granted those are smaller items)

FUSE was ported to OS X by Amit Singh, not Apple. I don't count porting software as "ripping it off".

And Singh is a motherfucking genius, plain and simple.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't get why you care so much about why people buy iPods. They're very well-designed from both a usability standpoint and aesthetic one. Are you saying that it doesn't deserve the success it has or something?

It just bugs me that people assume if you're getting a personal audio player, it has to be an iPod. The same thing bugged me with Walkmen too. There are alternatives, is all I'm saying. And they don't all suck like the Zune.

I'm not referring to any of that. From a technical standpoint, Beryl has basically achieved what both OS X and Vista have (more or less, I'm not sure). It's that so much time is spent just putting features in rather than putting them in a good place. Microsoft has this problem with Vista. Just look at all the effects applied to a window's title bar. You've got transparency, the glass effect, a glow around the text and then a foggy glass effect. All this was designed to make the text readable against as many backgrounds as possible. When instead they could've just left the title bar opaque.

Many of these fancy features can be done on just 2D and have been done for a while. It's just that making the desktop fully GPU based relieves the CPU of tedious rendering time and allows for some additional eye candy, should you want it. Transparency, for instance, existed long before any composite manager, but you get better performance if using one of the new generation 3D, fully rendered systems now, and everyone is going that way with varying success. I won't be using such a manager properly until I get a new GPU at least because of how ancient my Radeon is, but I still have a look I like which is similar to OS X in ways more than Vista.

[Durandal]

It just bugs me that people assume if you're getting a personal audio player, it has to be an iPod. The same thing bugged me with Walkmen too. There are alternatives, is all I'm saying. And they don't all suck like the Zune.

... Okay. You seem to have this rebellious hatred of the thing.

Many of these fancy features can be done on just 2D and have been done for a while. It's just that making the desktop fully GPU based relieves the CPU of tedious rendering time and allows for some additional eye candy, should you want it. Transparency, for instance, existed long before any composite manager, but you get better performance if using one of the new generation 3D, fully rendered systems now, and everyone is going that way with varying success. I won't be using such a manager properly until I get a new GPU at least because of how ancient my Radeon is, but I still have a look I like which is similar to OS X in ways more than Vista.

A CPU can do anything that a GPU can do. It's a matter of performance and practicality. GPUs are massively parallel floating-point monsters, so they're much more suited to this kind of work. Sure, you could do it on the CPU, but no one wants to.

But there are giant technical challenges in getting a GPU to do certain things correctly, since GPUs use an IEEE sub-set for floating point, not fully-accurate floats. And since precision among GPUs can vary, whatever system you're designing to do this must make sure the same thing gets drawn no matter what hardware you're on.

[RThurmont]

With regards to the UI on OS X, which we seem to be talking about, I would say that it has a number of really annoying characteristics. The fact that windows can only be resized by clicking on the lower right corner is one of the most annoying aspects, another being that the Dock tends to interfere with this if auto-magnification (or whatever Apple calls that effect) is turned on, and the Dock's icons can be hard to see if it's off (or if the Dock is on the side of the monitor). Additionally, the Dock wastes massive amounts of precious vertical real estate, and any applications that aren't on the Dock are unneccessarily difficult to get to.

This is why most Linux GUIs instead use the Windows approach of a start menu, which is a simpler, better way to launch programs. The sad reality is that most Linux GUI efforts lack the finances to do the kind of user interface research that Microsoft does, but at any rate, the FOSS community respects Microsoft's innovations in that area, and thus the approach is somewhat different from Apple's, where (from what I've read), no UI research is done at all. Apple uses the "genius design" approach to interaction, whereas Microsoft uses a "user-centric design" approach, and the FOSS people learn from both and attempt to implement, albeit with limited resources.

I would say that from a pure interaction perspective, KDE is geniunely better than the OS X UI (and will continue to improve with KDE 4), and GNOME is probably on a par (thanks to some of the brain dead features included by GNOME designers). We also have XFCE, which is a wonderful UI simply because its so much faster and simpler than everything else, although it lacks cool features like animated buttons. The biggest disadvantage the FOSS community has compared to Apple in terms of UI design is font rendering: the Linux desktops do a terrible job at it (worse than Windows, I would argue). I would argue that OS X's excellent font reason is a contributing factor to its continued popularity among graphics designers.

[Uraniun235]

What we need now is some hardcore Amiga fan and we could really get things going.