Apps UI ... continued

Application UI on the Mac is interesting. The goal for most application UI appears to be minimalist approaches. For many apps there are not any tool bars .. just a title bar and the app. Everything is controlled through the standard mac menu bar at the top of the screen ... or through shortcuts.

The little button in the top right helps to minimize any menu bars down further which in turn create more space on the screen. I kind of slammed this in an earlier post a few days ago but then I thought ... maybe that makes sense.

I have since gone through and minimized most of my apps to just a title bar. I have found that I use the menu bars far less than I thought. It seems once I get all the settings the way I want it then I don't mess with most of the available options. I also tend to know short-cuts for many common functions.

Obviously, applications such as MS Office are an exception.

However, there are some UI elements that are just bizarre (we will ignore the atrocity of Mac:Office). Some apps have multiple toolbars controlled by these weird text bubble icons. They kind of remind me of the MS Office 2007 ribbon ... but more poorly done.

Also the green plus acts strange. Sometimes it maximizes the window to the full screen but sometimes it just makes the window bigger. Hitting it again shrinks the app to only visible content. This again seems like a screen saving measure.

Suffice to say .. the conclusion is that apps and the Mac in general is intended to take a minimalist approach to everything. Show only what you need and keep the content relevant. This actually makes some sense. However, I have found it frustrating when I can't find what I am looking for ... since it is hidden in some menu somewhere ... wait that sounds like Windows apps also .. haha.

Apps are formatted much like all of OSX with the ugly grey everywhere. I still think Aero is much more engaging and beautiful experience.

Apple Crumble

I think that Google should have a 'throwback' version of Android and call it Apple Crumble. Maybe some kind of anniversary edition. Anyway ... aside from that I finally killed the Mac today.

It totally locked up ... and this was after I closed all apps ... I got the beachball, pinwhile, gay pride thing and it just spun forever and ever and ever and ever...

Being the mac newb that I am ... I didn't know what ctrl-alt-del equivalent on the Mac was so I eventually just hard powered it down. It was sad.

Final uptime was about 27 days for the machine. Not too shabby.

I hope not to have too many more of those.

Fail Whale - In the Spirit of Halloween

iTunes has plugins! Whoa!

My music collection has lyrics in most of the songs. I have been using iTunes on the Mac but really missed the ability to see my lyrics like in my Windows based players.

Then lo and behold ... direct from the Apple site are iTunes plugins to display lyrics in a myriad of ways. Actually ... they seem more like little apps that run in conjunction with iTunes and less of what I would call a 'plugin'. Either way ... yay!

I noticed that Apple has lots of little apps, plugins, widgets/gadgets, enhancements on the apple.com site. however, the interface for reviewing and learning about these are terrible. The site is pretty awful. I found many things with broken links, non-updated, terrible UI, etc...

My guess is that Apple hopes to remedy that with the Mac app store. In the mean time I am happy to have lyrics display on the Mac!

Apps

Alright. So what about apps?

This is a follow-up to the to my last post about the OSX registry ... errm or lack thereof. Apps are really easy to install. You open an archive and drag it to your applications folder and begin using. It is really easy.

It seemed to easy at first. I kept waiting for an install wizard to pop up .. Read my EULA and hit next next next finish ... watch some bars move across the screen and possibly a reboot before I could begin using my app. Instead I just dragged some icon to a folder and begin using... this still feels odd.

It goes beyond that experience though. I have not had to reboot for any app installation (except for a large system update by Apple).

Deleting apps is the same way. I select the app and move it to my trash .. boom it is gone. No add/remove programs, registry cleanup, uninstall wizard ... and no reboot!!

Now apple is talking about having an App store similar to that of their iPhone. I actually like this idea ... so long as they don't make this the only place to get apps.

I think the combination of an app store along with the ability to install from disc/web at any time is a great idea. The app store has many advantages:

• Single source for updating apps
• User reviews and comments
• Single repository for comparison
• Enhanced UI, security and other features 

There are some outstanding questions such as license use on other machines or even across platforms. For example, can I buy an app and use it on my phone and computer?

I have said for a long time that I feel like MS should have leveraged their auto-update systems in Vista/Win7 for the same purposes. How amazing would it be for developers to register their apps with MS and then all products on machine get updates through a single repository instead of every app bugging me for updates.

Register This! Cha Ching!

 Alright ... so I went searching for the OSX registry recently .. I was just curious. So ... at this point Windows users have a headache from the word and OSX users are laughing. There is no registry on a Mac. WTF? Huh? Where is everything stored and how?

Honestly, I still need to learn more about the OSX files system, OS etc.. But from what I can gather everything is stored withing archived packages .. sorta. When you install an app you just open the .dmg (what the hell is that? damaged file?) .. then you drag it to your 'applications folder' and it just runs. All settings are stored within itself.

However, it seems some apps do integrate more fully into the OSX environment. Again .. I am not sure how all this really works. If anyone has links they want to share then that would be cool.

But .. what does this mean? No registry cleaners, rootkits, registry malware, registry slowdown, bad settings, or all the other registry nightmares you can imagine. I think life without a registry is money!

Approves of this .dmg.

Slow it up!

Oh no! The Mac had to 'think' for the first time today. The machine slowed down and I got this little beach ball umbrella looking thing. It wasn't for too long and was just processing. It did it a few times and then kicked into another gear ... that was nice.   :)

What? Oh .. what apps was I running when this occurred?

• Multiple Finder Windows
• Dropbox upload
• Mac Mail
• iCal
• iTunes up and playing
• Excel
• Word
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Windows XP Virtual with apps running
• Adium
• Filezilla
• Acrobat
• Razor SQL (SQL Developer Application)
• Firefox
• A few other things (terminal windows, text edit, photo preview)

Yes... it was a crazy productive day. I was jumping through apps, writing sql, creating reports, analyzing data, printing docs, checking mail, scheduling meetings. I just didn't close stuff. lol.

A couple additional notes. At no time did the music pause, skip, burp or other. The backgrounds continued rotating without stutter. Nothing crashed. I did end up closing a couple apps though.

20 days, 11 hours

What is this number you ask? That is the current up-time on my Mac. How often do you go 20+ days solid uptime in Windows? I don't know ... feels like I reboot all the damn time which just pisses me off because I am always in the middle of something.

I have to say .. OSX has only asked me to reboot one time. That one time it saved the current windows position and state of everything running ... did its reboot thing and came back just like I left it. I didn't even know it did this. I assumed it would just close apps and such .. shut down.. come back .. and I start over opening all my stuff.

Admittedly... I was pretty shocked by this. I keep wanting to do it again .. but don't want to kill my up-time. I will just wait until I need to reboot again. Please power stay on ..

I will post every so often as I break new uptime records.

Of course ... my Droid X is running at 24.5+ days of uptime right now. Android vs OSX uptime .. fight!

Update:  It happened. The Droid X rebooted today. It ran for 25.75 days without a restart, reboot, battery pull ... etc... Pretty awesome I think. Let's see if the Mac catches up.

Turn Left in 500 Feet ...

Let's talk Window Navigation ... 

Okay ... so I am still struggling with window navigation. I totally dig corners, spaces, and expose. It really makes managing lots of apps more convenient. I generally group like items together and can jump between them.

However, I really miss alt-tab functionality. What is up with the not being able to alt-tab to minimized items. What is the minimize anyway?

I've come to the conclusion that it is supposed to work like this ... Open windows are things you are working on now and can alt-tab between quickly. Items that are minimized are intended to come back to and work on and thus not in the alt-tab because it is not a pressing item. Of course I could just hide windows ... which is that like the boss button.. quick hide my blog entry .. lol.

Maximize is another weird area. OSX does not like maximize functions. It really wants you to work in 'Windows' ... see what I did there ... anyway. I prefer to work in windowed spaces so this is not a problem but there are times I want full leverage of my screen. For example, when working in Excel with lots of data ... I want the whole view. Often I have two excel apps open on multiple screens comparing data and they both don't want to maximize. I just drag them to most of the space .. it is an unnecessary pain though.

I miss some of the Win 7 features like throwing things to the top or side. I miss the ability to view thumbnails of minimized items (in a size I read .. that little icon in tray sucks). I miss maximize. I miss shake to minimize ... .... just kidding .. shake is kind of stupid. I miss the Windows Aero ... the Mac Grey is pretty ugly compared to the beauty of Aero.

I also kind of miss being able to resize any window from every side .. but this is also kind of wasted space. I like that the Mac windows are so minimalistic with menus and borders. I always find myself changing settings in every MS Windows app to small icons, no text, smaller ... etc.

Lastly, I use a lot of apps and jump between them often. Sometimes I find the 21.5in screen constraining. I would love to jump to the 27in model.  :)

Oh wait ... forgot about the button in the top right corner. I have found little to no use for this button. It minimizes the toolbars and leaves only the menu bar. That is cool for some things and if I remembered it was there I might use it ... but doubtful. Most interfaces are already pretty minimal.