Originally posted by iPC
A few things....
All Windows users don't have all apps open and maximized. This is why I am constantly complaining about the lack of screen res for most of Apple's products.
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I have 10.2.8 on said iBook, and cmd-tab swaps open programs via the dock.
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As for exposé (heh - just figured out option-e), I think it is rather gimicky in it's visual implementation. My *nix zealot buddies would call it a "bloated" feature. Using unnecessarily high amounts of processor time and RAM. It may be nice, but I can't say until I use it. Probably like the genie effect you mentioned, looks cool, but gets turned off on this "slow" iBook 800 G3 because it's a resource intensive gimick.
Fast user switching - about darn time! The rotating cube thing is odd way to re-draw a screen, and I hope it can be turned off. A quick pulse (1/20th of a second gray flash) followed by re-draw to another user would suit me just fine. Along with a 2 second show of the user's id that has been switched to (no idea if that is there now - or something like it).
And please, remember, your computer is just a tool. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a rite of passage.
I don't think anyone will argue with you about needing more pixels... That's one of the reasons I hate menu-per-window in Windows, and one of the reason I hate all the metal trim on the new Finder...
I personally won't disagree about cmd-tab being broken in past releases. This is the first workable cmd-tab for Mac that I've seen.
I do start to disagree about the "bloat" in Exposé and FUS though.
One of the principles of Apple design is to make sure the user follows you through what's happening. You'll notice things never just "snap" into place-- they always slide. When a user lets go of something and it suddenly "snaps" to a different location there's a momentary panic as the user tries to figure out what happened. It breaks the flow.
If you ever used Interface Builder, I noticed that if you just click an item on a palette that is meant to be dragged instead, it jiggles. Cute, right? But it also tells you "I move. Don't click me, move me".
Show Desktop might clear the desktop, but when you click it, there's the "where did everything go" lag while you reorient to your new environment. Did it close all my apps, or just minimize them? If they're minimized, which icon represents the app I'm interested in?
Exposé makes sure the user is following what is going on. You know everything slid off screen when you look at the desktop. You know where your windows are in the stackup when they slide out to tile and then back again. They tile according to their relative sizes, so you don't lose that visual clue as you would with a 'simple' tiling-- everything is as you remember it, albeit a bit smaller.
Same holds for FUS. While that cube is rotating, you're orienting yourself to the new desktop. You know the desktop that is leaving hasn't been closed-- it's being rotated out. You are remembering where things were left on the new one.
The quick strobe and change is faster as far as getting the desktop drawn, but not faster for the user who has just gotten flashed in the face and now has a new view to adjust to and possibly a bunch of questions about what just happened.
Don't confuse speed with productivity-- just because something happens more quickly doesn't mean you can get more done in less time. Often the opposite is true. The brain is well adapted to the physical world where things happen in continuum, not instantaneously.
As far as the use of resources, one of the beauties of Quartz extreme is that most of this makes use of the largely unused graphics processor-- so it is hardly wasting useful resources.
I'm running without QE (iMac 400) and I find it perfectly workable- a momentary blip to 20% cpu usage for Exposé and FUS unfortunately doesn't bother with the cube.
People often refer to Apple's UI style as "eye candy", but there is very little that they do that without purpose. It's probably better phrased "instinct candy", because it's a group of niceties that appeal to your instincts more than to your eyes.
