About GMail archiving: Really not? (I haven't read trough this massive review yet.)
At least on iOS it is possible to convince the delete button to archive. (By setting the trash folder to 'All mail', if I remember correctly.) I would imagine that Apple Mail should be at least as configurable as its iOS counterpart.
iOS supports archiving perfectly fine. No need for any tricks.
Lion kinda does. You can archive but doing that will actually create an “Archive” folder and moves the mail there. That’s not the expected behavior when using Gmail. (The expected behavior would be to move the mail to the “All Messages” folder, or, in Gmail lingo, to remove all labels from the message. iOS does that, Lion doesn’t.)
Archiving is handled through IMAP delete by default. Check your GMail settings and go to the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab. Most likely your setting for "When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted" is "Archive the message (default)."
That was the point of gmail... five years ago. And then they added delete, because there are some message which never again need to see the light of day.
I just purchased this. One feature I'm really looking for is the ability to launch multiple apps in a specific configuration. The best solution I've found so far is using Applescript. I realize I might just be overlooking already implemented features. Anyone have a recommendation?
As far as I can remember I had problems when I compiled it to a universal binary so if anyone else does try compiling it directly to your architecture.
I use tiling when I want two Windows to each occupy half of the screen.
Let me ask you a question: What on God's green earth does the little green plus button do in OSX? I just pressed it three times on Chrome and here's what happened:
1) The windows was occupying the entire screen (thank you Cinch) and when I clicked the green plus, the window changed to roughly 600x800.
The green button tries to remove all scroll bars and it will also shrink the window down to where there are just no scroll bars (i.e. shrinking it one more pixel would activate the scrollbars).
sizes the window to best fit the content (in theory). I think it's up to the application to specify that size though.
Works very well in Safari, but always seems to go to full screen for Firefox. Chrome's working sort of as expected here alternating between best fit and some stupid tiny size it seems to have concocted.
In old MacOS it was called "zoom", not "maximize" and the application developer was supposed to swap between the "ideal small size window" and the "ideal large size window".
In this age of cross-platform apps, and people who are used to "maximize" instead of "zoom" it is a concept that has been long forgotten
Coming from Windows this confused me as well. I found an article that clarifies why it behaves the way it does; it does make sense to do it this way particularly on high res screens where the empty space would be glaring.
As someone who has never used OS X as his primary operating system, I am confused about what is being shown off as new in the Window Resizing section [1]. Were you not able to resize windows from all of those eight points before Lion?
No, this has been one of the fundamental UI differences between Mac OS (from farther back than OS X) and Windows/Linux. Mac windows can only be resized from the bottom-right, with those other points being used to drag the window around.
I haven't owned an Apple since my old IIgs, but from playing around with friends' and Apple Store Macs, I always wondered if there was just a non-obvious way for powerusers to maximize Mac windows for an alt-Tab type window switching workflow.
Now I know there wasn't. Was this ever a pain point for powerusers, especially on laptops, or did you just get used to it?
As a power user I never maximized windows (also not convinced about the new full screen mode) but just stacked a gazillion open programs/windows, that I can bring them with a click to the foreground. I also have always Skype/Adium or a terminal/twitter/netnewswire window at the side of the screen open.
Absolutely. My typical workflow is a mixture of full-screen windows and windows that are tiled left-right or top-bottom. For what feels like forever, I have managed this manually (and tediously), but then I found Moom - http://manytricks.com/moom/ - and it made my life easy.
OS X has always had its own window management protocols, different from full-screen alt-tab but arguably just as good. In Leopard it was all-windows-Expose, activated via mouse flicks to the screen hotcorners. It was great, really natural.
Unfortunately they crippled the feature in Snow Leapard (grid based rather than spatial layout) and did away with it entirely in Lion in favor of Mission Control.
It's really not still there though. Mission Control always groups by app. No way to get an immediate spread of all open windows. Instead you have to explore the bundles of windows grouped by app.
Er, no. Until now I seem to prefer having the windows grouped together. Until now I never encountered a situation where I had to spread apart the groups. I guess it depends on how you use the Mac.
The apps I spend the most time in, Firefox and Emacs, have ways for me to make them cover all the pixels except the menu bar at the top and the Dock at the bottom. In Firefox it is a simple as hitting the maximize ("+", green) button -- and once you do, Firefox remembers your preference next time it opens a new window.
Just got used to it. I reboot very infrequently - once a week, if that - so I setup my windows once and just forget about it. The + button up top means "maximize vertically" in most applications, so that's a start. And in Terminal, it actually maximizes it to the whole screen.
The irony being that GNOME 3 has slavishly copied (badly) various Mac OS X "features", one being the inability to resize windows from all sides. And less than a year later, Mac OS X changes to allow resizing from all sides.
I don't think this is true. I'm using GNOME 3 on Fedora 15, and I'm able to resize windows along all 4 edges and 3 of the 4 corners (I can't resize by the close button).
Great snippet from the report summing up all that is wrong w/ GNOME 3 devs:
"I propose to remove the ability to resize a window by the 1px border. The current behavior requires super precise positioning to achieve it willingly, while still poses a good chance to do it accidentally."
The difference is that GNOME 3 still allows you to resize from any point inside the window with Alt-middle-drag. No matter how big your resize border is, it's smaller and more fiddly than 'the entire window'.
Slight correction - pre Mac OSX you could only resize from the bottom right, but you could move a window by dragging from the border on any edge (the idea being that windows were equivalent to pieces of paper, so people would rather move them out of the way rather than resize them, which had no physical analogue). But OSX took a step back - resize from the corner and move from the title bar only.
Most likely they were worried about breaking existing scripts since 1.8 has been the official Ruby of Mac OS X for pretty much its entire lifetime. Ruby 1.9 is better, but it did manage to break a decent number of programs.
Appears to include the "psql" command-line client and related support libraries, but no server. The server might be present in Lion Server, which I don't have.
Dan's been trying to get the rights to do a dramatic reading for at least a few parts of it. (Ars said no to him reading the whole thing, understandably.)
I wanted the EPUB version, so I bought an Ars Subscription for $5 (it auto-renews, though). You can also get MOBI and PDF versions with the subscription.
Interestingly, I was offered a 1 year subscription to Wired, or a $10 refund (which requires printing something and mailing it in). Does anybody know if I can send that in and get my EPUB for an effective -$5?
It's not really worth the time, but it's amusing.
BTW: Gruber had an Amazon affiliate link for Siracusa, which was almost enough to make me get the Kindle version: http://amzn.to/oJtmGd
Love the (lack of) scrollbars. My perfect OS would have no visible window chrome at all, no edges, no title bar, no buttons, nothing other than my work. The other bits would fade in as needed, then disappear again. not sure how exactly though...
actually, no. My window management is like my desk - loads of crap everywhere, but I know where everything is and can get it it quickly (most of the time...)
yeah, I like what Ubuntu have done too. Same idea, different solution (probably better, imho)
I thought about the "bad ui" thing, and I can see where this coulf be confusing, but tonight (it's almost midnight here) I'm being selfish and voting for no scrollbars just because that's what I like.
Of course I'll have to reconsider this later when my father-in-law rings me up saying almost all his documents has gone.
What his screenshot doesn't show is that Finder does show the scrollbar for a couple seconds to indicate to the user that he/she can scroll to see more.
"With ZFS out of the picture, Brtfs presumably eliminated due to its licensing, and future development of ReiserFS uncertain, its hard to see where Apple will get the modern file system that it so desperately needs other than by creating one itself."
There is one BSD licensed option I can think of: HammerFS. However, considering the fact that the creator of BFS is an Apple employee, I could totally envision them creating their own from scratch.
They didn't want to make a new file system for a while, when they were going after ZFS, but that has fallen through. And anyway, all he saying is that they definitely could make their own, which is true.
True but they probably had other fish to fry when he started. As I recall, he worked a lot on Mac OS X's expanding use of metadata search and extended file attributes.
I would love to see serious developer tools integrate the new file/state APIs creatively.
- Will it be possible to populate the list of previous file versions from another source, like a git or svn repo?
- Could the application state API include a shell intelligently reopening itself and launching the development environment that was running before a restart?
- Can applications read old versions of files edited in another application? E.g. could I tell Chrome to view a page in one tab, and in the next tab view the version of that page from a week ago to compare differences?
Is there a version of Firefox that plays nicely with the new full screen app features? 5.0.1 kind of falls apart with it, but I just can't give up TreeStyle Tabs to make the leap to Chrome, which is a good citizen.
>So, how's that "geek panic" now? Still there, huh? Well, let me try to reassure you. As a committed user of a great Mac text editor that, years ago, implemented its own version of almost all the document management features described so far, I can tell you that you get used to it very quickly. Spoiled by it, in fact. Ruined by it, some would say. Yes, it's a very different model from the one we're all used to. But it's also a better model—not just for novices, but for geeks too.
This works fine with text editors (although I'd argue that if invoked via the equivalent of "mvim" or "mate" they should discard this), but it absolutely falls apart with media creation applications. Photoshop and Illustrator files can be big, and they can take a long time to open. Just so that you can close it immediately and open a different one. Logic Pro currently does this, and it isn't nice or better. It's annoying.
Then there's the privacy concerns. If a designer is working with multiple clients, the last thing he or she wants is a different client's work showing up when he or she is showing something to a client.
Don't worry - Adobe won't be updating the Creative Suite with these features until at least the next release cycle. I imagine that, as you said, "Resume" will not be supported for performance reasons alone.
I'm not sure I follow. You mean that when you are working on something, you just shut down the application to close all your open files?
BTW, the apps need to be updated to take advantage of resuming application state, so application authors can choose to not support it if it doesn't make sense (giant Photoshop files, etc.).
I casually dabble in making music with Logic. When you open it (in Snow Leopard), it opens the last opened project.
Logic is a pretty complex application, and there are a lot of different synths and filters. The synths take a lot of memory, since they have a large number (presumably) lossless audio samples in them (think every key on a piano, times X for X number of different strike velocities).
Therefore, Logic only loads the synths that are needed for files that you have open. It actually recommends with an alert box that you close your current file before opening another one.
When you open a file, it loads all of the synths for that file - this can take a long time.
The result is, when you open Logic, if the last file that you had opened isn't the one you want to work on now, you have to wait for that file to load, then close it, then open the file you actually want and wait for that one to load.
This probably won't be a problem for Adobe users, because Adobe is really bad at making native-feeling Mac OS software, so this probably won't be supported. But for Apple's document-based media applications (Final Cut and Logic, Aperture is different because of its nature), this is a bigger issue (Final Cut has some... bigger issues right now though).
The other issue is the privacy one. I used graphic designers working for competing clients as an example, but really, it could apply to anyone that values their privacy. Personally, I like my browser being a blank slate each time I start it back up.
A final issue that I can think of is with applications that tend to be opened by files (the user clicks on a file in Finder, not on the application). QuickTime and Preview are good examples. If I open a picture in Preview by double clicking it in Finder, typically I don't also want to see the last picture I viewed as well. I quit Preview when I was done looking at that picture for a reason - I was done with it.
I know it doesn't help much, but you can globally prevent apps from resuming. There is even a checkbox for doing so in the System Preferences, it's not a hidden preference.
I say it's not helping much since it's a global preferemce and resuming apps would be great to have – at least sometimes.
The APIs in Lion which enable the saving and resume are built to do their reading and writing asynchronously. So long as the developer makes use of the new system APIs, it should be a nicer experience for a case like Logic with its significantly larger files.
Try doing this with 3rd party sound libraries (e.g. East|West) and you can quickly get into loading times that are hugely longer. I love opening my projects that only use Logic's built in synths, because they load quickly compared the marathons that can ensue when I am working on a large, fully-orchestral, 70/80-track piece.
And that's before I've added other media, such as video, to the project.
One thing that continuously strikes me is Apple's ability to invest great level of detail when they want to.
Take the FileVault recovery key, for example.
For something so crucial like file encryption, not only do they offer you a quick solution but a practical and more "human usable" one; they offer to store it for you.
Remember how typical security questions are "What was your mother's maiden name" or name of your pet? Typically those questions are considerably very unsafe since they are very easy to find out in an innocent conversation.
Compare that to questions like childhood phone number, first teacher in school etc. - they are considerably "safer".
Being picky about the childhood phone number: does anyone even remember that? Since I have the iPhone I can only memorise something like three or four phone numbers.
Well, maybe that point just got me all excited because I had to work on exactly that dilemma of bad security questions a few years ago for a big identity management installation and we would end up with exactly those kind of a bit more personal/specific questions like who was your first manager, lyrics to favorite song, most significant politician...
In my case, being European and only moved from my parents' house once in my life so far - yes, I do remember my (old) home phone number better than the one my mom switched to now.
Either way, it is a surprisingly difficult topic and very dependent on the organization and people.
I really love that type of research and I guess I got myself all excited as well and forgot to say that one of the numbers I do remember is the childhood phone number but only because it still is the same!
I wonder if there's an age difference thing here. I'm unusual for my early twenties (AFAICT) in that I have several numbers in my head (including most of my college phone numbers, original home phone number, etc). Most of my friends are helpless without their cell.
Interesting: at 65, I only remember my childhood phone #, my current cell # (which I had for a couple years before I memorized it), and a previous landline which I use at the grocery instead of their club card.
No I really don't think it's an age thing; I think it's more likely a thing you're born with. I have no idea what my phone number is, have serious difficulties remembering even my postal code or house number. In the meantime, my girlfriend (who's my age) easily remembers the IP addresses of my servers.
Childhood phone numbers - if your parents still live in your childhood home and haven't changed phone number (not that unusual) then it's just their phone number.
First teacher - actually I can't remember mine (I was only there for a single term) but, again, I know enough people who have contacts they've had since very early school days, so will share that answer.
Honestly, I'm yet to come across a 'security' question of that type that is memorable to the user but couldn't be identified by someone else for at least a significant percentage of users. I'm not at all sure there are 'safe' questions of this sort.
The best solution I've found: I lie on all my security questions.
Give your father's middle name instead of your mother's maiden name, or something. As long as you're consistent in your lies, it's not hard to keep track of.
This is not-super-secure, but in a lot of situations I just use a rule like "third character of first word + second character of third word + first character of fourth word", and so on. You end up with gibberish most of the time, but at least you're not going to let it slip in conversation (and as long as you remember the rule and don't pass that around, you're hopefully okay).
My strategy is to pad the real answer with the same two words for each question. For example, "purple 12345 banana", "purple Smith banana", etc. Not perfect, but it should defeat even the best would-be guessers.
We spent some time working on this for the security survey at SocialSci during signup -- since we don't associate your email to your account; its the only way for our participants to recover their password.
We did a lot of research and came up with a list of 20 security questions, tiered by quality and applicability. We present users the questions, and allow them to skip to a more desirable one.
Some highlights:
Who taught you how to drive?
How do you like your eggs prepared?
What was your first brand of cell phone? (a cell phone is required to have gotten this far)
How quickly after you were eligible did you get your drivers license?
What time of day were you born?
What is the name of the place your wedding reception was held?
Many of these questions are multiple choice, not fill-in-the-blank. We found that users are far more likely to recall what they would've chosen from the available choices vs what arbitrary text they entered into a field.
There are limits on recovery attempts; and limits on how much we tell you about what/how many you got wrong.
Lion's just another big cat name, right? Within seconds, we were on to the next slide, where Jobs was pitching the new release's message: not "king of the jungle" or "the biggest big cat," but the "back to the Mac" theme underlying the entire event.
I don't miss the karma. However, it was interesting to see this petty, gang-like downmodding behaviour from HN. More interesting still was that I provoked it merely by acting upon a desire that any nerd should be able to love-- a desire for correctness.
Siracusa strikes me as a power user type so I'm extremely surprised that he neglected to mention how patently awful and useless Mission Control is on multiple monitors.
Whereas in the Spaces view in Snow Leopard I could move a window to a different space AND a different monitor with a quick drag, Mission Control doesn't allow this - I have to first move the window to the correct "Desktop", then exit MC and drag it to the correct monitor.
Full Screen Apps are similarly useless on multiple monitors - regardless of which monitor the window originates on, clicking the full screen button returns it to whatever display is designated "primary". Even worse, while you're in full screen on one display, the others become useless as it blocks them out with Apple's new favorite canvas texture. Why?
At first I thought all this was intentional and that Apple was leaving multi-monitor users in the dust to focus on Macs that are very close to iOS devices (11" Macbook Air comes to mind), but today they also announced a new Cinema Display that lets you daisy chain two monitors off a single Thunderbolt port. Clearly it's still a mode of operation they intend to support for some time - so why have they crippled it so horribly in this release?
Don't know why you're getting down voted, seems to me this is the obvious reason (if not 10.7.1 then 10.7.x). These are clearly bugs, and I agree, they make these features kind of useless for me on my main setup. Prior to Lion I already used a "poor man's fullscreen" by manually making the windows these sizes on each screen. Was hoping this would make things better but instead made it infinitely worse.
Windows is just as bad. Windows 7 doesn't ship with multiple taskbars for your secondary monitors. Seriously?
What's worse is that the developers actually making these features are probably using more than one monitor. And hitting those productivity gaps every day.
When I used Windows on a multi-monitor setup I never found myself wishing, "if only I had a taskbar on each monitor." (Similarly, I've never wished for multiple docks on OSX.) So YMMV.
The dock is an application organizer, the taskbar is a window organizer. Big difference.
The windows on each monitor should be represented in a taskbar on that same monitor. Easier to comprehend, faster to mouse to. The app Ultramon does this very well, it's essential for any multi-monitor Windows install.
Except I use one monitor almost exclusively for reference. I want as much screen real estate there as possible. Since my mouse is already on the editing monitor, it would take _more_ effort to move it over there to switch windows.
One puts a task bar on the same screen as the applications which makes it easy to switch applications per window, the other hides pictures of the application in a task bar on another screen which makes it harder to switch applications at all and completely ignores screen distinctions.
They aren't virtually identical; they aren't even the same thing done differently, they're completely different.
What are you talking about? I'm dual monitoring with both windows and OS X right now. Both have their taskbar on my right hand monitor. Both have icons for launched applications with indicators representing each instance of the application. They both include icons for quick, often used apps that are present even when the application is not open.
They're identical... Is there any chance that you're using "task bar" to mean the application's menu? There are lots of engrossing UI discussion surrounding the application menu and the global menu, but that's not what we're discussing here...
Hell, if you ignored the fact that the Windows taskbar extends across the bottom of the screen and is grey rather than floating in the middle, and ignored the start button vs the finder button... my taskbar and dock look identical, Chrome, Firefox, VLC, Office Apps.
I see; I interpreted you meaning Windows 7's solution is virtually the same effectiveness as Ultramon because of window groups. Missed that you were comparing the OS X dock and 7.
You might want to check out ActualMultipleMonitors as well. It adds some features that I don't believe Ultramon has yet, such as the ability to have a completely functional taskbar on your secondary, complete with its own start button and notification area/clock/etc.
I didn't need this feature until I started running multiple 30''s, but now that I am it's invaluable.
+1, trying it out now and it works pretty well. Really wish there was a simple multiple monitor app though. The ActualMultipleMonitors settings screen is a clusterfuck, has all these 'features' like extra title menu buttons that I don't want and can't figure out how to turn off.
I totally agree, it's a disaster. I feel the same way about GridMove, which is the best thing I've been able to find for managing multiple windows on a big display. For some reason, the syntax for defining the grids is so opaque to me that whenever I look at it I feel like I'm trying to read in a dream.
By the way, you can definitely remove those buttons. I don't remember how, but I do remember thinking it took far too long to find the setting to disable them.
Actually interestingly enough full screen apps that have palettes are really nice on multiple monitors. Omnigraffle, etc. The palettes can live on top of the linen on your secondary display. it makes using Keynote, omnigraffle and similar apps such a joy.
That's great, but the whole reason I like multiple monitors (instead of one big one) is to segregate tasks. For example having full-screen terminal on one monitor and a browser on the other.
Regarding Mission Control and multiple monitors, what it will let you do is if it's on your second monitor in your current space, you can drag it to the second monitor of another space. It is odd that it doesn't let you do it directly (it even highlights if you drag it over, but just doesn't drop). So I guess you have to move it to the second, then go to mission control, then change what space it's in. Although this is just a different workflow it does make a bit more sense. Hopefully a change will come for this however.
I think the assumption here is that if you have multiple displays you would rarely need full screen apps in the first place. It's definitely a feature that works best on a laptop display. The best alternative I can think of is to full-screen all the windows on each display. So for example if you had 3 monitors with 3 Safari windows, one on each display, they would go full-screen on their respective display. (downside is it would be awkward to leave full screen since the controls for it reside on the menubar)
ARGH. I'm still bitter over the introduction of Spaces in the first place—a crappy implementation of virtual desktops that nevertheless drove all the third-party versions out of business—and now they cripple their already-weak version further?
Over and over in this review I'm seeing Steve Jobs's message come through loud and clear: "You should be on an iPad. We're going to make Macs as much like iPads as we can, even when this makes no sense and observably degrades productivity and user experience. If you're still somehow holding on to your non-iPad existence, we don't give a shit."
What changed in spaces? I really can't stand stock spaces in snow leopard and am currently using hyperspaces to get reliable hotkey switching in spaces, if something breaks this I would like to know so I can not upgrade.
The one point (OK, one of the points) which I think will be VERY confusing to the power user is that the "Automatic Termination" function will remove programs from the application switcher. Given that they're still existing as a process, what's the point of this? The whole point is that launching and quitting apps should be transparent. Why remove it from the application switcher - which will now be the only way to see what apps are running, given that the little doc light gems are gone by default - thereby making the user click on it to restore it? There's no benefit, and it's a jarring concept ("Hey, where'd my app go? I didn't quit it!") I don't see the point.
I think they're off by default for new installs but on for upgrades from Snow Leopard. My upgraded-today Mac had them on by default. Either way, you can switch it in System Preferences > Dock > Show indicator lights for open applications.
I've observed my parents, wife and sister using OS X and they've NEVER ever quit an application "the Mac way". They just click the red cross and think that quits the application as it does on windows. The only person who gets upset about their behavior above is me and with this change, even I don't need to bother. I think it's a change for the better. The policy for automatic termination is VERY conservative so I doubt an application will be terminated when you really don't want it to.
I've emailed John before to ask him about language issues on OS X – I think this was back around the time that Apple decided they weren't going to roll their own Java runtime anymore. He responded back promptly and pointed me toward some reading material he thought was insightful.
Not only are his reviews and articles awesome, he seems like a really decent, chill guy.
Totally agree with your last sentence. This is an EPIC review, and drove me to clear some diskspace and buy and install Lion.
I like it so far, some nice touches, but there really are some serious usability issues, including discoverability, with Mission Control. Very unlike Apple, at least for the last few releases of OS X.
I'm surprised he did not point out that the document saving model is just revision control for the masses. If you have a mental model for cvs or subversion, it's just like having that automated for your documents.
Agreed, about time! Having to hack the terminal's prefpane to make my terminal colors work has been a total headache every time I upgrade or switch machines.
Tried most of the non-Apple Terminal alternatives, but personally I have always kept returning to Terminal because there is something about its finishing touches that add up.
I skipped about four pages from the middle of this review because it was just way too technical. I know he's an engineer and wants to cover these things, but I'm not interested in seeing so much coverage for something that very few people will get.
That's alright, the review even advises you to skip a few pages if you are not interested in technical details.
The technical details are definitly part of Siracusa's reviews and have been for well over a decade. It would be wrong to leave them out. Many readers expect them.
You must be new to Siracusa. Geek Porn at it's finest really. :)
"If this is your first time reading an Ars Technica review of Mac OS X and you've made it this far, be warned: this section will be even more esoteric than the ones you've already read. If you just want to see more screenshots of new or changed applications, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. We nerds won't think any less of you." - (Second Paragraph, Page 9)
This is Hacker News, where it is generally understood that most people will have a fairly technical background (it's not called "Hacker News" for nothing). And the review is on Ars Technica, which also targets a technical audience. John Siracusa's reviews of new versions of Mac OS X are famous, as they provide all of the technical details that most other reviewers don't. I understand that's not what you are looking for, but that's what the target audience of Hacker News and Ars Technica wants, and I certainly appreciate it.
Is this your first time reading one of John's reviews ? The last few that I remember even had a programming section of some kind :-) And he does mention before beginning the Internals section that people can skip it and the geeks wouldn't mind.
221 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadCan I tile two windows without 17 clicks and mouse movements? Fortunately for the creator of Cinch, it seems the answer is no.
Can I archive a gmail message? No?
At least on iOS it is possible to convince the delete button to archive. (By setting the trash folder to 'All mail', if I remember correctly.) I would imagine that Apple Mail should be at least as configurable as its iOS counterpart.
Lion kinda does. You can archive but doing that will actually create an “Archive” folder and moves the mail there. That’s not the expected behavior when using Gmail. (The expected behavior would be to move the mail to the “All Messages” folder, or, in Gmail lingo, to remove all labels from the message. iOS does that, Lion doesn’t.)
http://mizage.com/divvy/#divvyMac
http://manytricks.com/moom/
Completely Free and does everything divvy and SizeUp can do !!
A git repo, with latest chages based on
appears to be here: Very easy to build with Xcode 4 on SL 10.6.8 ...I'll be happy to upload a binary of the latest build I made last night for those in need (just ask).
Let me ask you a question: What on God's green earth does the little green plus button do in OSX? I just pressed it three times on Chrome and here's what happened:
1) The windows was occupying the entire screen (thank you Cinch) and when I clicked the green plus, the window changed to roughly 600x800.
2) Window changed to to 600x1100.
3) Window didn't change any more.
WTF?
I'll have to give cinch a try, I've just gotten used to really janky window layouts in OS X.
Works very well in Safari, but always seems to go to full screen for Firefox. Chrome's working sort of as expected here alternating between best fit and some stupid tiny size it seems to have concocted.
In this age of cross-platform apps, and people who are used to "maximize" instead of "zoom" it is a concept that has been long forgotten
shift-click green is maximize.
http://www.macyourself.com/2011/02/06/why-doesnt-mac-os-xs-g...
http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass
1. http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...
Now I know there wasn't. Was this ever a pain point for powerusers, especially on laptops, or did you just get used to it?
Unfortunately they crippled the feature in Snow Leapard (grid based rather than spatial layout) and did away with it entirely in Lion in favor of Mission Control.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644930
Great snippet from the report summing up all that is wrong w/ GNOME 3 devs:
"I propose to remove the ability to resize a window by the 1px border. The current behavior requires super precise positioning to achieve it willingly, while still poses a good chance to do it accidentally."
"Our servers melted!"
"Our servers are misbehaving"
Anyone know the versions of Python, Ruby, Apache, PHP, etc. that come installed with OS X Lion?
Install RVM, then:
https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/Also, is there a Python 3 bundled?
Can we haz 3.7 and its Write-Ahead Log?
This week's episode should be awesome.
Downvotes? Did I copy-and-paste an affiliate link or something?
Interestingly, I was offered a 1 year subscription to Wired, or a $10 refund (which requires printing something and mailing it in). Does anybody know if I can send that in and get my EPUB for an effective -$5?
It's not really worth the time, but it's amusing.
BTW: Gruber had an Amazon affiliate link for Siracusa, which was almost enough to make me get the Kindle version: http://amzn.to/oJtmGd
Ever used Quicktime X? That's what I want :)
The reviewer is also surprised to see he is "missing" some programs (scrollbar is missing). I think this is a bad UI decision.
I thought about the "bad ui" thing, and I can see where this coulf be confusing, but tonight (it's almost midnight here) I'm being selfish and voting for no scrollbars just because that's what I like.
Of course I'll have to reconsider this later when my father-in-law rings me up saying almost all his documents has gone.
"With ZFS out of the picture, Brtfs presumably eliminated due to its licensing, and future development of ReiserFS uncertain, its hard to see where Apple will get the modern file system that it so desperately needs other than by creating one itself."
There is one BSD licensed option I can think of: HammerFS. However, considering the fact that the creator of BFS is an Apple employee, I could totally envision them creating their own from scratch.
Dominic has been working at Apple since 2002. I'm guessing if they wanted a new filesystem they'd have tapped him quite a long time ago.
- Will it be possible to populate the list of previous file versions from another source, like a git or svn repo?
- Could the application state API include a shell intelligently reopening itself and launching the development environment that was running before a restart?
- Can applications read old versions of files edited in another application? E.g. could I tell Chrome to view a page in one tab, and in the next tab view the version of that page from a week ago to compare differences?
>So, how's that "geek panic" now? Still there, huh? Well, let me try to reassure you. As a committed user of a great Mac text editor that, years ago, implemented its own version of almost all the document management features described so far, I can tell you that you get used to it very quickly. Spoiled by it, in fact. Ruined by it, some would say. Yes, it's a very different model from the one we're all used to. But it's also a better model—not just for novices, but for geeks too.
This works fine with text editors (although I'd argue that if invoked via the equivalent of "mvim" or "mate" they should discard this), but it absolutely falls apart with media creation applications. Photoshop and Illustrator files can be big, and they can take a long time to open. Just so that you can close it immediately and open a different one. Logic Pro currently does this, and it isn't nice or better. It's annoying.
Then there's the privacy concerns. If a designer is working with multiple clients, the last thing he or she wants is a different client's work showing up when he or she is showing something to a client.
BTW, the apps need to be updated to take advantage of resuming application state, so application authors can choose to not support it if it doesn't make sense (giant Photoshop files, etc.).
Logic is a pretty complex application, and there are a lot of different synths and filters. The synths take a lot of memory, since they have a large number (presumably) lossless audio samples in them (think every key on a piano, times X for X number of different strike velocities).
Therefore, Logic only loads the synths that are needed for files that you have open. It actually recommends with an alert box that you close your current file before opening another one.
When you open a file, it loads all of the synths for that file - this can take a long time.
The result is, when you open Logic, if the last file that you had opened isn't the one you want to work on now, you have to wait for that file to load, then close it, then open the file you actually want and wait for that one to load.
This probably won't be a problem for Adobe users, because Adobe is really bad at making native-feeling Mac OS software, so this probably won't be supported. But for Apple's document-based media applications (Final Cut and Logic, Aperture is different because of its nature), this is a bigger issue (Final Cut has some... bigger issues right now though).
The other issue is the privacy one. I used graphic designers working for competing clients as an example, but really, it could apply to anyone that values their privacy. Personally, I like my browser being a blank slate each time I start it back up.
A final issue that I can think of is with applications that tend to be opened by files (the user clicks on a file in Finder, not on the application). QuickTime and Preview are good examples. If I open a picture in Preview by double clicking it in Finder, typically I don't also want to see the last picture I viewed as well. I quit Preview when I was done looking at that picture for a reason - I was done with it.
I say it's not helping much since it's a global preferemce and resuming apps would be great to have – at least sometimes.
And that's before I've added other media, such as video, to the project.
Take the FileVault recovery key, for example.
For something so crucial like file encryption, not only do they offer you a quick solution but a practical and more "human usable" one; they offer to store it for you.
And then they go the extra mile with those security questions! http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/07/04/lion/file-vault-app...
Remember how typical security questions are "What was your mother's maiden name" or name of your pet? Typically those questions are considerably very unsafe since they are very easy to find out in an innocent conversation.
Compare that to questions like childhood phone number, first teacher in school etc. - they are considerably "safer".
In my case, being European and only moved from my parents' house once in my life so far - yes, I do remember my (old) home phone number better than the one my mom switched to now.
Either way, it is a surprisingly difficult topic and very dependent on the organization and people.
First teacher - actually I can't remember mine (I was only there for a single term) but, again, I know enough people who have contacts they've had since very early school days, so will share that answer.
Honestly, I'm yet to come across a 'security' question of that type that is memorable to the user but couldn't be identified by someone else for at least a significant percentage of users. I'm not at all sure there are 'safe' questions of this sort.
Give your father's middle name instead of your mother's maiden name, or something. As long as you're consistent in your lies, it's not hard to keep track of.
We did a lot of research and came up with a list of 20 security questions, tiered by quality and applicability. We present users the questions, and allow them to skip to a more desirable one.
Some highlights: Who taught you how to drive? How do you like your eggs prepared? What was your first brand of cell phone? (a cell phone is required to have gotten this far) How quickly after you were eligible did you get your drivers license? What time of day were you born? What is the name of the place your wedding reception was held?
Many of these questions are multiple choice, not fill-in-the-blank. We found that users are far more likely to recall what they would've chosen from the available choices vs what arbitrary text they entered into a field.
There are limits on recovery attempts; and limits on how much we tell you about what/how many you got wrong.
We require you to fill out 5 of these.
So that's 60% of your users with the security answer: "Dad"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion
Lion's just another big cat name, right? Within seconds, we were on to the next slide, where Jobs was pitching the new release's message: not "king of the jungle" or "the biggest big cat," but the "back to the Mac" theme underlying the entire event.
I don't miss the karma. However, it was interesting to see this petty, gang-like downmodding behaviour from HN. More interesting still was that I provoked it merely by acting upon a desire that any nerd should be able to love-- a desire for correctness.
:D
Whereas in the Spaces view in Snow Leopard I could move a window to a different space AND a different monitor with a quick drag, Mission Control doesn't allow this - I have to first move the window to the correct "Desktop", then exit MC and drag it to the correct monitor.
Full Screen Apps are similarly useless on multiple monitors - regardless of which monitor the window originates on, clicking the full screen button returns it to whatever display is designated "primary". Even worse, while you're in full screen on one display, the others become useless as it blocks them out with Apple's new favorite canvas texture. Why?
At first I thought all this was intentional and that Apple was leaving multi-monitor users in the dust to focus on Macs that are very close to iOS devices (11" Macbook Air comes to mind), but today they also announced a new Cinema Display that lets you daisy chain two monitors off a single Thunderbolt port. Clearly it's still a mode of operation they intend to support for some time - so why have they crippled it so horribly in this release?
What's worse is that the developers actually making these features are probably using more than one monitor. And hitting those productivity gaps every day.
The windows on each monitor should be represented in a taskbar on that same monitor. Easier to comprehend, faster to mouse to. The app Ultramon does this very well, it's essential for any multi-monitor Windows install.
What sample size do you have here?
They aren't virtually identical; they aren't even the same thing done differently, they're completely different.
They're identical... Is there any chance that you're using "task bar" to mean the application's menu? There are lots of engrossing UI discussion surrounding the application menu and the global menu, but that's not what we're discussing here...
Hell, if you ignored the fact that the Windows taskbar extends across the bottom of the screen and is grey rather than floating in the middle, and ignored the start button vs the finder button... my taskbar and dock look identical, Chrome, Firefox, VLC, Office Apps.
I didn't need this feature until I started running multiple 30''s, but now that I am it's invaluable.
By the way, you can definitely remove those buttons. I don't remember how, but I do remember thinking it took far too long to find the setting to disable them.
Over and over in this review I'm seeing Steve Jobs's message come through loud and clear: "You should be on an iPad. We're going to make Macs as much like iPads as we can, even when this makes no sense and observably degrades productivity and user experience. If you're still somehow holding on to your non-iPad existence, we don't give a shit."
Separately: I've used Keyremap4Macbook to get my desired hotkey-switching behaviour in Spaces.
Preparing for John Siracusa's Review of OS X Lion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOG25fM8so
(Previously, page 18 stated that "The old lock screen didn't allow account switching." Turns out it has, since at least Panther back in 2004.)
Not only are his reviews and articles awesome, he seems like a really decent, chill guy.
I like it so far, some nice touches, but there really are some serious usability issues, including discoverability, with Mission Control. Very unlike Apple, at least for the last few releases of OS X.
Woohoo! Finally a true MediumAquamarine comment-face in emacs in mac term.
It's not so much a review as it is an overview.
The technical details are definitly part of Siracusa's reviews and have been for well over a decade. It would be wrong to leave them out. Many readers expect them.
"If this is your first time reading an Ars Technica review of Mac OS X and you've made it this far, be warned: this section will be even more esoteric than the ones you've already read. If you just want to see more screenshots of new or changed applications, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. We nerds won't think any less of you." - (Second Paragraph, Page 9)