G5 Experience..

[sUn]

I went to check out 12" iBook's, and I decided to try out the new G5, on a 20" display.

All I can saw is wow, it's the quitest computer I've used, but it's pretty expensive at $2399.

Has anyone else tried it?

 

[skip0110]

Yeah, I played around with a G5 and a couple iBooks at an Apple store. I like Apples hardware design and their strategy for obtianing performance (seems like PC manufacturers think that more and more Ghz=overall system speed, which is not true). However, I firmly feel that apple UI desgin is poor. For example:

1) Apple GUI has a lot of "chrome" to it, stuff that takes up space ont he screen yet does not offer any functionality. This gets in the way of productivity. Case in point: the dock. With icons growing and shrinking all the time, it hard to quickly and reliably select a chioce.

2) In the name of "slickness" many apple buttons lack clear markings. Same with "glass" or "aqua" look icons and buttons, the eye cnady interferes with viewing the icon.

3) All this stuff uses up CPU cycles for rendering it.

4) In order to keep stuff simple, or clean, many of the common functions are hidden 3-deep in menus, or, even worse, inside those damnable "intuitive" wizard type things, with wordy descriptions. (I dont have much experience with macs, but XP's control panel is a definte example of this.) This makes stuff harder to find than a simple list. Too much categorization is bad, I would say 10 -12 similar items in a group is good enough to remeber where things are and at the same time find them quickly.

5) Why doesnt Apple use trees? The tree GUI structure is the quickest, easiest way to group things together, keep them accessible, and allow quick switching.

And BTW, I have many of the same issues with the Windows XP look. IMO Win2K was the height of easy of use/GUI design.
Anyway, thats my take, I'm not sure if you were impressed with the GUI or the hardware, super-supra (or sUn, if you insist).

 

[sUn]

Yep, I compared Apple with the PC's, but visually, the Apple's stomp PC's. Personally, I like the offer that there giving with there computers, Mac OS X Panther, iLife 04', and it adds up to a pretty good deal. I absolutely love the iBook's, there fantastic. Heavily considering one of those.

 

[Giancarlo]

$2399 pretty expensive? If you built a computer yourself with that kind of money you could create Lucifer's spawn.

 

[Sage]

Originally posted by skip0110
Case in point: the dock. With icons growing and shrinking all the time, it hard to quickly and reliably select a chioce.

Erm, you know that you just have to right-click on the Dock to turn that off? I turned it off when I first got OS X.

2) In the name of "slickness" many apple buttons lack clear markings. Same with "glass" or "aqua" look icons and buttons, the eye cnady interferes with viewing the icon.

Could you explain what you mean?

4) In order to keep stuff simple, or clean, many of the common functions are hidden 3-deep in menus, or, even worse, inside those damnable "intuitive" wizard type things, with wordy descriptions.

Um, I haven't run into a single wizard when using OS X, unless you consider the register screen a wizard.

5) Why doesnt Apple use trees? The tree GUI structure is the quickest, easiest way to group things together, keep them accessible, and allow quick switching.

 

[skip0110]

OK, I'll do my best to explain the points that I made in my last post. Sage cleared up a few things, but I still have a general beef with the OS X UI (but keep in mind that my time using it is limited--forgive my ignorance). Perhaps it would grow on me if I used it everyday?

Originally posted by Sage
Erm, you know that you just have to right-click on the Dock to turn that off? I turned it off when I first got OS X.

Cool. I didnt know that; it's good that apple leaves you that option.

Could you explain what you mean?

OK, I'll do my best to specifcally show the stuff that bugs me, I call it "eye candy." I took a screenie off the web and tried to identify some issues (sorry about the crappy img quality).

...image of the tree ...

That is basically what I was talking about (and never had seen), but for maximum convenience nothing beats a real tree. (But a UI without trees can still be good, it is the designer's coice). Like this kind of tree:

Also, see how closely the toolbar buttons can be packed without "eye candy", and compare the clarity of the tabs to those in OSX. (They are obviosly tabs, they look pretty much like the things on manilla folders.

I know a lot of this sounds like nitpicking, but if I am gonna use a UI everyday, the first priority in my mind is ease of use, not the overall slickness of the design. And there is a software designer somewhere that can fix these things.

 

[Sage]

Originally posted by skip0110
Perhaps it would grow on me if I used it everyday?

Well, I'd like to think so.

There is no definite boundary as to where I can grab the window to move it around.

Yeah, that is a beef that a lot of people have had with Apple's move to brushed windows... however, I don't know if you've noticed this, but you can grab those windows anywhere you see brushed metal, and drag them around. So, anywhere you see that dark gray stuff is fair game for using to move the window.

This "glass" icon is not as legible as a regular icon could be.

Thus the text "Network" next to it...? I suppose I'm used to it, because that's always been Apple's universal symbol for a network (the .Mac Internet service for example uses the same icon, except that it's colored).

I can't see what these icons do [...]

If you hover over them, they show x, -, and +, respectively. (x = close, - = minimize, + = expand). Again, it's never been an issue for me, since once you use it long enough you don't even care about the colors or the shapes or anything... you just remember that the first button closes, the second one minimizes, and the third one expands.

I suppose if it really bothers you, you could always use Max's brushed theme :

Considering that this is just a scrollbar, there's way too much clutter in this area.

Um, they seem to be almost the same size as every Windows and Linux scrollbar that I've seen... And again, if it really bothers you, there are lots of themes with square scrollbars. I've never heard that complaint before though, so I'm a bit flustered.

What does this shadow do?

Oh, that's simple enough, but the reason you can't tell is that the screenie you have is of a brushed window, which makes it less obvious. Aqua windows are entirely borderless, so the shadows have two purposes: a psuedo-border, and to distinguish which window it active (if a window's shadow it on top of another window, it's obviously in front).

It's actually more efficient than borders, since the shadows themselves don't physically take up any space, like borders do. BTW, you can turn off shadows in OS X, but I find it a lot more confusing if they're off.

[...] and compare the clarity of the tabs to those in OSX.

Yeah, this was another thing that Apple got some beef about from some people (they had regular tabs in 10.2, but dropped them for these "segment buttons" in 10.3). Most people though, including me, like them more. Visually, it's still very obvious which button the pane is being associated with (the blue button), and personally, I've always thought that this method makes more sense than the office metaphor - With the latter, the idea is that there are several sheets of information that are being shuffled to the front. With the segment tabs, the idea is that there is a pane of information that dynamically changes the information it shows you based on your selection. For a computer, it makes much more sense to me, but maybe I'm just weird like that.

 

[skip0110]

Thanks for the very clear and logical explanation, Sage. You answered many of my questions (perhaps they were more like confusions?) about the Apple GUI design, and now I see that some suff (like the shadows, and the ability to drag from anywhere) makes more sense than what years of Windows-type GUI has trained me to like. There are still a couple of things I'm not sold on (like the tabs), but that pretty much just my personal idiosyncracies/opinions. Anyway, I always likes the way Mac hardware looked, and I have been hearing great things about thier development environment, so perhaps I should give a mac some more consideration for my next desktop .

 

[sUn]

Definatly, Mac's are awesome, Sage your so lucky to have one!

This PC isn't going to die soon is it.

 

[Sage]

Originally posted by skip0110
Thanks for the very clear and logical explanation, Sage.

You're welcome! My pleasure.

There are still a couple of things I'm not sold on (like the tabs), but that pretty much just my personal idiosyncracies/opinions.

And of course, those are perfectly valid, and I have my own personal "issues" with some of the UI elements, though they're actually even more picky than what you've pointed out. (For example, in Panther, the normal push buttons have a stroke on the inside and an outer stroke, while their popup buttons have Jaguar-style gradient layers with no stroke... that bugs me to no end, even though there are like 5 people on the face of this Earth who even notice or care. And don't even get me started on the ugly progress bars or the blurry-edged scrollbars...)

BTW, save your keyboard a few keystrokes by only putting one space between sentences – browsers automagically truncate any extra spaces in an HTML document. For some reason, I feel compelled to tell everybody this... I've been telling Klos for months now.

Anyway, I always likes the way Mac hardware looked, and I have been hearing great things about thier development environment, so perhaps I should give a mac some more consideration for my next desktop .

Looks like I've done my job.

I'd work at an Apple Store if the closest one weren't 40 miles away.

 

[ceiling_fan]

To answer the first question, I have a G5, and its AWESOME. I figured with the amount of time I spend on the computer, I might as well get a nice one.

 

[Shannon]

I've never really liked Macs. My school has a lab full of them; the later ones running OSX. All that fancy eye candy just doesn't do it for me.

 

[Burnout]

Macs suck.

Every freaking thing about them. The hardware, software. Eh, I think it's useless to have a Mac in a home environment. I suppose in a very professional one, where only one, maybe two programs were to be used on it (ie., video editing, Photoshop, 3d, etc), maybe, since they do pretty well in those departments, but other whys, blah!

I assure you Macs would have just as many problems as Windows do if as many programs and as many people used them as they do PC. I do understand why someone would complain about Windows, but think about how hard it must be to have the slightest about of stability with that kind of program circulation...It's like, 97% of households us Windows, 2% use Macs, 1% us everything else. Do you know how many households there are?

Dude at our church has a 17" Powerbook or something? I don't know exactly. Might be the 19". Looks really nice, really sleek, small, screen looks nice, speakers sound good, the UI looks pretty for 3 minutes. So, initial reaction was, 'Wow, I need one of those!’ Now, after watching for a few minutes I came to a few conclusions, one of which is...Speed. I understand that some manufactures might take the more GHz = more speed thing a little too much, but I also think Mac takes it too little. I guarantee, if I spent the same amount on a Mac 12" iBook as I did on a windows laptop, the windows one would blow it out of the water. I'll laugh if you even try it deny that. I'm already laughing...Ha ha. Ha.

I just don't get it, why someone would actually want a Mac, that is. It's crazy.

I suppose to each his own, eh?

 

[Vasco]

Macs are alright...what do you mean by quitest Sunny?

I had a look at most of the macs in the Apple Centre when I was going to get my ipod fixed, and that 23" monitor is absolutely jaw dropping....I think I'd still have to have a few more lessons with OS X before I'd consider buying a Mac though.

 

[Shannon]

I'd rather use Yellowdog Linux instead of a Mac OS.

 

[Danoff]

I'd rather use Yellowdog Linux instead of a Mac OS.

I'd rather use redhat than yellowdog.

I'd rather use MacOSX than redhat.

I'm stuck in windowsland, however. I find over and over that the software I need is only compatible with windows.

Plus... there is the whole issue of multiple vendors for hardware. The reason macs are so expensive is because they insist on selling every peice of hardware through them. In the pc world you can buy hardware from lots of vendors - increasing competition.

Anyway... I've been a diehard windows user for most of my life and I have to admit that OSX is a work of art - it's too bad that they removed command line tape drive access though.


Edit: One beef I have with the G5 is the advertising campaign. They really shouldn't say that it's the worlds most powerful desktop computer. That is a lie just about any way you cut it.

 

[LoudMusic]

Originally posted by sUn
I went to check out 12" iBook's, and I decided to try out the new G5, on a 20" display.

All I can saw is wow, it's the quitest computer I've used, but it's pretty expensive at $2399.

Has anyone else tried it?

Yeah, I have ten dual 2GHz machines at work (:

And about the OS X GUI debate - Macintosh GUIs have always been sufficiently bloated. It's what they do. It's also not the point of the OS to be physically effecient. It's supposed to be pretty. You either like it or you don't. Windows is more physically effecient than the various Mac OSes, and there are Unix window managers that are even more effecient than the Windows GUI. My favorite was Blackbox. Oh my gosh that was amazing software.

 

[LoudMusic]

Originally posted by danoff
One beef I have with the G5 is the advertising campaign. They really shouldn't say that it's the worlds most powerful desktop computer. That is a lie just about any way you cut it.

Are you sure? With only ten dual 2Ghz G5s I have a high enough key rate to put me in the top 50 TEAMS on Distributed.net's RC5-72 challenge.

 

[Danoff]

Are you sure? With only ten dual 2Ghz G5s I have a high enough key rate to put me in the top 50 TEAMS on Distributed.net's RC5-72 challenge.

That was an expensive way to get that much computing power.

The G5 is not the worlds most powerful desktop computer. The worlds most powerful desktop would probably be a dual or quad intel architecture with liquid nitrogen cooling for overclocking. It would require some sweet graphics too. Since graphics cards can cost almost as much as the g5, I'd think that the g5 is not as powerful as computers can get. 4 of the fastest pentium chips would also be as expensive as the g5 I'd think. Plus it can't be as powerful because it's not running the most efficient UI.

It's a stupid claim... made even more stupid by the lack of disclaimers.

 

[LoudMusic]

Oooohhhh, so you're going to pit four processors against two. That makes sense ...

Find someone manufacturing a quad Intel desktop.

 

[Danoff]

Oooohhhh, so you're going to pit four processors against two. That makes sense ...

It doesn't say worlds most powerful dual cpu desktop. It says, world's most powerful desktop. I'm going to put desktop against desktop .


It also doesn't say worlds most powerful commercially manufactured desktop... So whatever I can build is fair game.