On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Derek Glidden wrote:
> Same here. I'm using the powerbook for most things now it seems. If
> only there were a decent terminal program for it though. (X11 is a
> resource hog, iTerm is one of the ugliest pieces of software I've ever
> seen, Terminal.app's emulation sucks rocks...)
I've not had problems with Terminal.app's emulation (I even got emacs to
work properly), but it does crash with disturbing frequency. It would be
nice for such a fundamental program to be a little more robust. Maybe
10.3 is improved in that regard (I'm still running Jaguar/10.2, being
somewhat conservative about OS upgrades, especially from Apple).
> Just that, for example, you can't replace Aqua (or whatever they want
> to call it) with Windowmaker.
Heresy! Aqua is the one true interface, and you shall have no other
window managers before it.
It's a tradeoff -- either you codify the interface guidelines and enforce
a consistent look and feel across the board, or you go the X Windows route
and separate mechanism from policy, allowing drastically different
interfaces from machine to machine.
Personally I agree with Apple on that issue. X is a great system for GUI
research in the lab, but a graphical Tower of Babel when it comes to the
real world. The major UNIX vendors admitted as much with initiatives like
OPEN LOOK and CDE. Such flexibility is desired by a very tiny percentage
of the user population, and has a major negative effect on acceptance of
the system by everyone else.
That, along with the fact that network/remote display capabilities turned
out to be not nearly as important as speculated, form the two big design
errors in X, IMO. The latter is an atavism from the days when a lot less
computing power was available on the desktop, and it was assumed you'd be
using much beefier compute servers over the network. Then Moore's Law
happened...
I will admit though, I didn't like Aqua's appearance at first. If it were
up to me I'd prefer something a lot cleaner, more akin to the old System 6
and earlier theme. But I can understand Apple's reasoning and desire to
look more modern. I'll deal.
> I've been seriously digging on Applescript lately. The language is
> hideous (please, the next person who decides they want to design a
> programming language that mimics "spoken english syntax" go see your
> doctor and ask him to up your prescription dosage...) but the
> functionality is really nice.
Agreed, it's ugly as sin, but awfully useful.
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