I was wondering who had kidnapped Yager and replaced him with a smarter, more reasonable version (*cough*SecretAppleNinjas*cough*LedBySteveJobsHimself*cough*) until he took that dig at the iPhone.

That's right, Yager, the iPhone was designed to make sure it was as consumer-unfriendly as possible.

<rolls eyes>

Talk about gushing.
Apple could not ask for a better review.

I expect this to be the best OS ever. No, not just the best OS on a Mac, but the best OS ever, period. Leopard may turn out to be a greater leap than the one from OS 9.

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iJack wrote:
No, not just the best OS on a Mac, but the best OS ever, period.

Oh c'mon; like there's a difference?

I haven't used Leopard, but I've been looking over the new features list on Apple's site, and I'm impressed. No, not with the big things like Time Machine and Spaces — these are things that can be easily bungled and made unusable (which Apple did with Spotlight in Tiger, in my not-so-humble opinion). Rather, I'm impressed with the amount of small improvements that show that Apple is finally polishing things up. Some of the little things that give me hope for this update:

Icon Mode in Open and Save Panels
Scroll Non-Active Windows
Spring-Loaded Dock
New Folder of Options (er, that's not a very descriptive title; it includes the ability to adjust the icon grid spacing in the Finder and setting default views for new folders)

These aren't sexy things, but I've at one time or another I've wished for every single one. Apple's let me down in the past few years with the lack of attention to detail in their interface design (especially the Finder). It seemed like they wanted to focus more on demoes and eye-candy. So it's reassuring to see such progress in simple areas that really affect usability.

The geekier part of my finds Apple's embracement of Ruby and Python for both AppleScript and Cocoa similarly reassuring.

I'm officially getting psyched. I tried not to, since I was badly disappointed by Tiger, but I can't help it.

This business about layers - that's simply not true. As a systems engineer working on all those platforms all I can say is it sounds like some more talking head column filler. It's definitely misleading.

"Icon Mode in Open and Save Panels"

Exactly how is this useful?

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Fairly wrote:
"Icon Mode in Open and Save Panels"

Exactly how is this useful?

Talk to someone who is not a systems engineer, i.e., a normal user. It's often easier and faster to recognize a particular folder by icon than name--or don't you believe in using custom icons?

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Fairly wrote:
&quot;Icon Mode in Open and Save Panels&quot;

Exactly how is this useful?

Ah, allow me to explain in more detail than you ever really wanted:

First of all, it lets me navigate my files in the same way I do in the Finder. That alone is enough reason to have it in open/save dialogs.

Aside from that, icon view is what I choose for many folders, because it's efficient. It's even more suited to open/save dialogs than it is to the Finder, because in open/save dialogs you rarely need all the extra data in list view anyway.

The whole idea of a dedicated file browser for open/save dialogs is outdated. It's so inefficient that I normally navigate to the folder I want in the Finder and use drag-n-drop to bring it up in save dialogs anyway. Navigating through lists is a pain.

As for exactly why icon view is efficient, there are several main factors:

• Item density is better. You can fit WAY more items on screen in icon view than any other view. Think I'm crazy? Try small icons with the name on the side. You can easily fit 200 items on a typical screen. Scrolling is for chumps.

• Arbitrary (read: customized) item placement makes things easier to access. Again I imagine some people will think I'm crazy, but this is true, especially for frequently-used folders. With icon view, everything stays exactly where you put it, which lets you use motion memory to access them. Plus, you can arrange the items based on your usage habits. I never have to hunt for what I want, because accessing it is second nature. Nothing moves around as I add, remove, or modify items.

• Icon previews are just must-haves when dealing with folders of images. From what I've seen, this will be even more useful in Leopard, since all sorts of file types will have meaningful dynamic icons, not just images.

That said, there are ways Apple can bungle this. The great thing about the Finder is that I can set my views on a folder-by-folder basis. If I had to view ALL my folders in icon mode I'd go mad (quickly). Icon view is certainly not efficient in all (or even most) cases. I hope Apple respects my preferences on a folder-by-folder basis in open/save dialogs. If they don't, it won't be so useful and I won't use it.


The big problems with icon view are mostly due to bugs or omissions in OS X that have been around since 10.0. One of those problems is the ridiculously large icon grid, which is being fixed in Leopard. That will finally make large icon view as useful as it was in OS 9.

Frameworks are great during development, but what about the fragile base class problem?

When Tiger came out, we upgraded our boss's Mac with it. Unfortunately she didn't like the new Mail app, but the Panther version won't run on Tiger because the frameworks were replaced. Panther's mail relies on the previous version, so my boss had no choice but to upgrade her Mail as well. She was not happy with our IT staff.