spectere.net
The Chatterbox => Computing => Topic started by: Spectere on October 10, 2007, 03:09:12 AM
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In perhaps the largest twist of irony ever, my PowerMac is running Linux and my desktop is running OS X.
I have to say, OS X is a lot more pleasant when you're running it on a decent computer. Here are a few of my observations:
First of all, its multimonitor support is second to none. Oh man, I could gush about this all day. Rather than the tacked-on support that Windows has and the meh support that other *nix variants -- and Linux -- have (one desktop environment is flexible, one desktop environment blows, though either way it's a bit of a hassle to get X set up in the first place), OS X has an amazing level of support for it. Rather than dealing with displays as being mere numbers, OS X actually places a resolution and color profile switcher on each display. This might seem like overkill, but if you've ever tried changing the refresh rate on a specific display in any Windows version you'd fall in love (in Windows, you have to click the display and hit advanced -- overall, that feature neither very obvious or friendly). OS X, like KDE (and other *nix environments), also has the ability to change the wallpaper on each screen individually without having to make a special tiled wallpaper like you do in Windows. Another great feature becomes apparent when you change around the arrangement of your monitors. When you click and hold one of the displays down on the arrange dialog, a thick red line appears on the display that's being manipulated. All in all, very intuitive.
In verison 10.4, I believe, Apple finally introduced a feature that allows the user to change around the modifier keys. Fracking finally! There's nothing worse than having to plug in a shitty Apple keyboard (let's just say, with mine, typing "cd " quickly results in "cdd " appearing on the screen for some reason...needless to say, I always used to have a bash alias set up to calm my frustrations with that POS) just to have the command key in the right place.
Screen capping is fairly easy and straightforward. Shift+Command+4 lets you select a region while Shift+Command+3 dumps the entire screen. One nice part about both features is that they dump a PNG file right on the desktop, rather than forcing the user to paste it in Paint or something. Not a big deal, but still a time-saver. One thing that IS rather nice, however, is that on a multimonitor system, Shift+Command+3 stores each display into a seperate PNG.
The Alt-Tab feature (or should I say, Command-Tab) is basically the same as the one in Windows, though the OS X is a wee bit more refined. The icons are much bigger and they can be clicked on. Not bad.
The input system for non-English characters is pretty nice. Rather than having an inconsistent model (i.e. Windows with a US keyboard, X11, etc) it uses a system-wide one. The keys for them aren't as intuitive as the ones in Microsoft Office for Windows but it's still more convenient than memorizing a short list of ALT-codes. For example, let's say I want to type an accented e, as in Pokémon. In Windows, normally I'd type ALT-130 -- the old extended ASCII code for it. In OS X, no matter which program I'm in, ALT-e, e, does it. I personally like the Office 2003 method the best (ALT-', e) but whatever.
The system, overall, feels fairly responsive. It feels a bit more sluggish than Vista does on my mom's laptop but it's nothing to raise a fuss over. The inconsistency with some of the styling in OS X bothers me a bit -- some of it is brushed metal, some of it is smooth metal, and some of it retains the old OS X 10.0/10.1 style. It just feels very mish-mashy to me.
Moving on to brighter things, the font rendering engine used is simply incredible. Best font smoothing I've seen, ever.
The mouse movement is a bit different than in Windows and X. Rather than having a fairly quick-moving pointer with little or no acceleration, OS X has a slow-moving pointer with a high amount of acceleration. It's not hard to get used to it, but going back and forth between OS X and, say, Linux (like I'm doing right now) is weird.
I really don't like iTunes. I hate how they make sweeping changes to the interface with every release (the iTunes bundled with OS X 10.4.6 is quite different from the one in 10.4.8 for whatever reason). The UI is broken for one major reason. It's normally fairly quick (at least on OS X, in Windows it's slow in all aspects [on the same system that I'm running OS X on, to boot]) but that all goes to hell when you try to use the search. Rather than handling the search like any logically designed program would, by either waiting for the user to finish typing or waiting until they press ENTER, iTunes constantly searches as the user types, making the experience nothing but SLOW and TEDIOUS (and I didn't even add my entire music collection). If you're a quick typist you'll be sitting there waiting while the program repeatedly searches. A second or two of lag might not seem like much, but if you go right from the keyboard to the scroll bar you're forced to wait while the system catches up. For example, I was in the mood to listen to System of a Down tonight (currently listening to: Tentative), so I started up iTunes and typed "System of a Down" into the search bar. After I finished typing I got to watch the window continually refresh for about 3-4 seconds. Wonderful. Had I been using Winamp or Amarok I would have been listening to the music by the time iTunes caught up. But anyway, onto better and brighter things.
Exposé is a wonderful feature. Its main ability is spreading all of your open windows out over the screen and letting you click the one you want. I like. Like everything else, it respects multimonitor settings by keeping the windows on the appropriate monitors.
One problem with Exposé, however, is configuring a mouse button. Can someone please tell me what the hell THIS is supposed to be:
(http://www.spectere.net/graphics/expowha.png)
I don't know about you guys, but I sure don't have a 16-button mouse, nor would I want one. What's even better is when I had OS X 10.4.10 on my PPC PowerMac. It wasn't happy with only supporting 16 buttons. Oh, no, that machine gave me the selection between one of 64 mouse buttons (and I was actually using it on proper Apple hardware, like a good boy). How exactly does something like that slip past the QA team? :/
I had a few issues with hardware. I had to grab a network card driver for my onboard 3c940 (thankfully, someone ported over the Linux skge driver that I use in that OS...whew) and a set of hardware IDs so that my video card would work with Apple's drivers. My main sound card (SB Live!) isn't supported but my onboard AC97 is, so I have to swap my speakers around when I want to hear anything. The network card was easy to get working but I had issues getting the video card drivers to work. After I got the right set they went right in, thankfully. None of this is Apple's fault, of course, it's just the cruel reality of play with OS X on systems that aren't "supposed" to run it. :P
Whew...that was a lot more than I'd intended to type. I think Imma play with this a bit more in the next few days.
Long story short: OS X runs a HELL of a lot better on Intel processors than it does on PowerPCs (I've used both G4s and G5s and OS X's performance on both is just crap).
Edit: Almost forgot to include one very nice feature: read-only NTFS support. Very convenient, I'd be very unhappy (and surprised, what with Boot Camp and all) if this wasn't put in.
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write support for NTFS would be nice too, but alas..... That's clearly another story for another bedtime.
I agree with nearly everything in there. OSX has incredible multimon support. Instead of just "Primary display" and "secondary display" like windows, I found that OS X treats both monitors with minimal favoritism. (Seriously, why do you need that? That's like saying "Primary 3 cyclinders" on a 6-cylinder car. Retarded.)
Oh, and where can I find those unofficial soundblaster drivers? Mine have been giving me problems... Sometimes I'll watch a video, then a god-awful noise will come out, then my computer stops and reboots. Happens rarely, but these things really shouldnt happen... I remember you saying something about it on Spectere.net 2.0 or 3.0.
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write support for NTFS would be nice too, but alas..... That's clearly another story for another bedtime.
That might happen if fuse/ntfs3g gets ported to OS X. NTFS write support is a tricky thing from what I understand. ntfs3g seems to work pretty well, though.
Oh, and where can I find those unofficial soundblaster drivers? Mine have been giving me problems... Sometimes I'll watch a video, then a god-awful noise will come out, then my computer stops and reboots. Happens rarely, but these things really shouldnt happen... I remember you saying something about it on Spectere.net 2.0 or 3.0.
Here go you: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/ (http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/)
I pretty much lost my faith in Creative Labs. I was thinking of pulling my SBLive and just sticking with my onboard AC97 because, really, I don't see much of a reason in having the card. The SNR isn't all that much better and it's been more of a pain in the ass than anything else lately.
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these drivers arent working for me... It says it's outputting sound, but there isnt any. Also, when I go to the sound and audio devices in control panel, and try to change the volume, windows says theres a problem with the drivers. Device manager says the device is working fine. Arfg.h
hfsdfh
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Oh...I think I know.
The kX drivers, by default, swap the front and rear outputs on the soundcard. As it turns out (and this is based in fact -- I've checked it on my system) the rear output is less noisy than the front. Either plug your front speakers into the rear jack or find the option for it in the horrible-looking mixer that's included. :P
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haha, ok. Also, creative redid their drivers apparently. Big difference... Sounds much better than the old drivers for some reason. But I like it. I'll give those other drivers a shot later tonight. I'm too tired of fucking around with computer stuff at the moment.
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Which sound card do you have? Audigy 2 line, I'm guessing?
The newest drivers that they have for the Live! are from 2003 because my card is outside its service life. I'm not too depressed over it, though, the kX drivers are, for the most part, better than the standard Live! drivers.
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no, I have an audigy 4 SE
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That might not be supported in the kX project. I think the Audigy 4s were just coming out when the author of that vanished.
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I donno, I think I'd use a 16-button mouse. Or at least a 10-button one. I have 6 on my current one, and could easily deal with another two. :V
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I have six on my current one as well, seven on my last one. Thing is, most of the buttons on there aren't really usable as mouse buttons -- for my old mouse they acted like a scroll wheel, on my current one it's a DPI adjustment.
The mouse is really too much of a context-sensitive input device to assign tons of actions to. Putting shortcuts to applications on a mouse, for instance, would prove to be a nuisance. They wouldn't be used all that much and they'd be too easy to accidentally hit. Copying and pasting -- another function that mouse manufacturers like to stuff in their drivers -- generally causes you to lose any benefit of easily accessible side buttons (i.e. back/forward functionality in basically everything, extra buttons in games, etc) for a feature that is best served on a keyboard. The two devices are best used to compliment each other, doing too much on one or the other is generally a bad idea.
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My current mouse has two wheels, which is completely whacky, but whatever, it works. I would actually probably use the billions of extra buttons just for gaming, I wouldn't particularly care if they were programmed to do something useful in the operating system. I tend to like to have everything I ever would possibly use in one close, easy to reach spot, so having a whole bunch of customizable mouse buttons for a game would be ideal.
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I wouldn't want more than one or two buttons added to the standard design, personally. In addition to the semi-standard dual thumb button layout (that most five-button mice use...and I have to know, why the FUCK isn't there a forward button on the G5, Logitech?) I think a single pinkie button would be good. The Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 that I use for my laptop has something like that. In that case it's supposed to be a thumb button for lefties, as the mouse is ambidextrous, but it feels comfortable swinging my pinkie up and hitting it.
So, basically, six buttons -- left, middle, right, scroll wheel, back and forward buttons for the thumb, sixth button for the pinkie. I think it would work pretty well. I can't see any more buttons being easy enough to hit to be practical.
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I'm fine with my 3 button + wheel mouse...
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I'd be quite happy with six or eight buttons on a mouse... although I can't really use full-sized mice. I have freakishly small hands, and a laptop 'mini' mouse fits my hand perfectly. >.>
I mean I can use an ordinary mouse, but it's not terribly comfortable. Anyway, as I see it, keyboards are very efficient for data entry- literally telling the computer exactly what you want done. Mice are more analogous to a child in a supermarket pointing to the lolly it wants, and the parent decides whether or not to get it for him. In this way, computer mice are used for the manipulation of existing data. What I'd like to see done is have a few more innovative designs for tools for the same purpose. Touchscreens, mice, trackpads- they're all nice, but they all do the same thing. Move a cursor around and click. With some extras thrown in like touch sensitivity and extra buttons. I mean, you can do more with a hand than point, why isn't there a device that captures and handles multiple physical gestures? A wireless glove-like device would be pretty damn ergonomic, surely.
Also, macs. One of the few things I like about macs is the very, very tight integration. There are so very many downsides ("Everything works with a mac", read "Everything mac works with a mac"), but mostly it's kind of... complete. A windows box is windows with half a dozen windows applications piled on top. With Mac OS, you have practically everything you'd use, which is I guess, half of their marketing strategy. And with everything designed around the same systems, it integrates well. Everything mac plays nicely with everything mac, because it's all mac maccy. But... that's about all I'll award it. I see brushed metal and frosted metal and smooth metal interfaces with those weird plasticcy fan popups... I can see why some would find that faptacular, but I get bored of themes quickly. I like to change the look of things depending on my mood. And since I didn't like the look of Aqua to begin with, one could imagine how frustrating that would get.
Because I'm a linux fanboy, I mention this. KDE's got the same thing going for it. KDE's got itself a full damn system that works very tightly- there's koffice (with a very adequate paint program- something apple notably doesn't have), konqueror, kopete, konversation, amarok, katapult and every other k-pun out there. It's not quite to the level of OSX where there are some quirks and there's a distinctive lack of polish in various areas, but I hope in the future it can draw on some of the better maccy elements so that I can benefit without ever again using such a vile system. Apple hardware isn't pretty anymore, but it used to be. It's also very interesting and well designed because it doesn't have to adhere to the two-decade-old standards in PCs. I speak... stuff. Waffles. I have a bucket. It was 99c.
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I did think it was interesting that they were using RISC processors in their normal computers, which I believe is why some programs for stuff like graphics and such ran so well (Photoshop, etc.) But the downside was that nothing ran on there but mac software, and god knows how much of a headache porting something to a RISC architecture can be.
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god knows how much of a headache porting something to a RISC architecture can be.
Sounds like some risky business.
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/facepalm
You do know with RISC processors are, right?
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...uh, he was making a pun.
And besides, unless you're using assembly, porting something to a RISC processor isn't that much different from porting it to any other processor. All you really have to do is make sure your code is endian safe (in other words, be mindful of how you write your code if you do anything somewhat low-level) and...you're good. C is nice like that, interpreted languages -- even better.
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That's what the facepalm was for. I was just hoping that he did indeed know what a RISC processor is.
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No, but I still thought it was funny. Talking about "RISC" and how it was "risky" using them.. I couldnt resist.
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So, basically, six buttons -- left, middle, right, scroll wheel, back and forward buttons for the thumb, sixth button for the pinkie. I think it would work pretty well. I can't see any more buttons being easy enough to hit to be practical.
I had a couple of Kensington USB laser mice, like that, left, middle & scroll, right, but only one thumb and one pinkie. Kind of useful but both of my mice broke.
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My Microsoft laser thingie is like that.
I think the issue is more about OS support. Just because a mouse has a gazillion buttons doesn't necessarily mean that the OS can use them. I know in Win32 you have to do a completely separate call in order to use the back/forward buttons in applications and games, and even then it's only valid on XP, I think (possibly 2000).
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(http://malwyn.box43.net/appledebian.jpg)
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Rofl @ external floppy drive.
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Haha, YES! ;D
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Apple ][s didn't have hard disks. :(
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Lol, pain. Nice work though.
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So, is that via the Ethernet interface or a serial link?
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My hackintosh died when I upgraded to 10.4.8 :(
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So, is that via the Ethernet interface or a serial link?
Serial. :P
If I could afford it, I'd totally buy a uthernet card. Serial kind of suits it though... it's a bit less patronising to use (the apple//e) Evelyn's native hardware than to 'upgrade' her. It's just pretty awesome being able to network computers manufactured two decades apart with ordinary hardware.
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My hackintosh died when I upgraded to 10.4.8 :(
Mine died when I murdered it. ;[
I figured another LUNIX install would be more useful.
Serial. :P
If I could afford it, I'd totally buy a uthernet card. Serial kind of suits it though... it's a bit less patronising to use (the apple//e) Evelyn's native hardware than to 'upgrade' her. It's just pretty awesome being able to network computers manufactured two decades apart with ordinary hardware.
Totally.
Another thing that's neat-o about it is that should the monitor or video card on Brollodon ever die you'll still be able to use it through Evelyn. :P