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Mac OS X Leopard 9A581's Dock Visual Tweaks
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Ah you youngins, didn't think to use a picture of a radio? Or haven't you seen one of those?
What do I have to do to express my over-thirty cred? I'm the guy running the Amiga 1000 emulator with Workbench 1.1, after all.
And when I'm less busy, I'm going to see if I can still beat "The Faery Tale Adventure" in under four hours like I did in 1988. "Youngun" my @$$! Anyways, I did think to use a picture of an old radio, but I didn't think the guy who'd never seen a radio button would know what it was. Then later on I realized that elevator buttons are more like checkboxes, so my bad.
The image I was TRYING to find was one of those old Cable TV channel selector boxes, but I couldn't find one. Had about fifteen(?) tactile radio buttons to choose a station with a loud, satisfying Clunk. If the show was boring, I'd try to FOIL the radio buttons, by forcing two down at the same time, to see if I'd see two channels at the same time. It never worked. Then I'd get bored, fire up the Atari 2600 and play Dig Dug.
But Radio Buttons! They're like a metaphor for life. Sink or swim, do or die, take the path less traveled by; It doesn't have to be a button. It can be a metaphor for all those times that you can only choose one option to the exclusion of all the others. Like Voting. Well, voting in a country with more than two parties, anyway. Down in the States there it looks like you can only switch between Drive and Reverse
I was thinking the same thing. It reminds me of one of those pop-up HUDs or the Application Switcher Bezel.
I'm 21 and only got the origin of the computer science term "radio button" 2 years ago when playing around with an old radio. I actually love those wooden radios. Those tube things sound like the band was right there in your room.
matticus,
that's got to be the most intelligent, rational, eloquent reply in defense of apple i've ever read. well-put, man.... (and now, i apologize for the use of the word "eloquent." lol.)
To all the recent whiners...
An acknowledged expert on operating systems, Tom Yager, wrote a glowing report of Leopard of which I have his last paragraph below.
So many people have criticized Apple for not putting enough time and resources into Leopard. Mr Yager dispels that in his review, showing how Leopard has been thoroughly designed from the base up.
It is welcome to read an expert's opinion for once as one can sometimes lose that perspective on these types of forums as partial experts to complete idiots and trolls get equal access to show their ignorance or stupidity.
Thanks Tom. It looks as if Leopard might well be on the way to being the Windows killer
The quote:
Leopard is a legitimately big deal. It's underhyped compared to iPhone, and yet unlike iPhone, Leopard is a genuine triumph of customer-focused engineering. It's a pleasure and a relief to see that Apple remembers how to deliver open, affordable, standards-based products. There probably won't be lines around the block at Apple retail stores for people who can't wait to get their hands on Leopard. If they had been using Leopard as long as developers have, Apple wouldn't be able to stamp Leopard DVDs fast enough. Word will get out.
Posted by Tom Yager on October 17, 2007 03:00 AM
An acknowledged expert on operating systems, Tom Yager, wrote a glowing report of Leopard of which I have his last paragraph below.
So many people have criticized Apple for not putting enough time and resources into Leopard. Mr Yager dispels that in his review, showing how Leopard has been thoroughly designed from the base up.
It is welcome to read an expert's opinion for once as one can sometimes lose that perspective on these types of forums as partial experts to complete idiots and trolls get equal access to show their ignorance or stupidity.
Thanks Tom. It looks as if Leopard might well be on the way to being the Windows killer
The quote:
Leopard is a legitimately big deal. It's underhyped compared to iPhone, and yet unlike iPhone, Leopard is a genuine triumph of customer-focused engineering. It's a pleasure and a relief to see that Apple remembers how to deliver open, affordable, standards-based products. There probably won't be lines around the block at Apple retail stores for people who can't wait to get their hands on Leopard. If they had been using Leopard as long as developers have, Apple wouldn't be able to stamp Leopard DVDs fast enough. Word will get out.
Posted by Tom Yager on October 17, 2007 03:00 AM
I'm glad they are giving us an option for a simplified dock. I was worried the reflections might slow down my poor old Powerbook G4 too much.
Well, it seems to be one of those hidden options. You can do similar things in tiger if you need to have the dock on the top or aligned to a corner. So it's not trivial for the average joe to disable the shelf. On the other hand, if you see people using the black dock on the bottom, you know they're not total newbies.
This is what I'm concerned about too. I have all my applications in subfolders, and access them from the dock by right clicking. Is this functionality effectively lost in Leopard, if my applications folder becomes a stack?
Speaking as a Mac convert as well, I say that functionality and aesthetics do go together, and Apply has been pretty good at demonstrating that. Saying that, Apple also been prone to demonstrate aesthetics that are overdone that don't have any functionality at all. I'm not gonna deny that.
Anyway, I think the visual look of the Dock is relevant and functional. The 3D Dock is not only ugly in my opinion, but provided poor contrast and visual feedback on what applications were running. That's very functional feedback. The 2D Dock in Leopard looks a lot better and it's much easier to tell which apps are running.
Additionally, I work on a computer all day, so at the end of the day I'm tired and I get agitated easily. Having an aesthetically pleasing user interface helps me every bit since I don't get tired of it, and I actually forget that I'm on a computer sometimes because of it. On a Windows machine I've never been satisfied with the look, either the default options or any of my customizations, and it is not the user interface I want to be looking into at the end of the day.
Err... you can do this in Tiger...
But his screen shot is of the dock on the SIDE. He was responding to a post where the person said they can't do this when the dock is on the BOTTOM.
So he proved nothing
Exactly. Would we all be so into Macs if they looked like Win95? I don't think so...
Aesthetics has a bigger role to play other than making the OS look pretty, it helps the user (well me anyway) stay focused and operational when the task at hand isn't overly thrilling (typing up a multi-page document in Pages is a lot easier than typing it up in an old version of poorly designed Word I tell ya
)I personally love eye candy, even if it does or does not enhance the operational use of the computer.
Actually it was me who submitted this image. Unfortunately in the wrong discussion
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/373669/
Seriously, I just don't get Apple at all. They update the Dock (which was fine to begin with, in my opinion), yet they keep the horrible Aqua scroll bars in Leopard, when it's clear that the iTunes 7 scroll bars were the way to go. (To the point where even a few apps in iLife/iWork '08 have gotten them.)
Please, Apple, get rid of those damn Aqua scroll bars in 10.5.1.
Clear to who? There was a huge outcry when iTunes came out with those gross flat scrollbars. I don't think they'll change the system to use them even if they do get changed. Again, subjective, but I am thinking more people dislike the iTunes ones than dislike the aqua ones.
I'm glad they made it an option in this way, like many of the hidden options in Tiger. It lets power users who care about this sort of thing get the interface they want while Apple still gets its way with the vast majority of users. I'm fine with these tweaks being command-line only, as long as they're available *somewhere*. On that note, is there an option that gives you the 3D dock on the side, like before?
Also one quibble with the 2D dock - those little lights on a dark background are going to get confusing when paired with Leopard's default "space" desktop, aren't they? Look like little stars to me..