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See the original image at gizmodo.com —

Close Call: Apple OS X Almost Looked Exactly Like OS 8

gizmodo.com — Here's the biggest OS X mistake Apple never made: The original plan UI was to take the old crusty crap interface from OS 8* and drop it on top of the core. Thankfully Steve Jobs called the entire UI team a "bunch of idiots" and they used the beautiful tech demo mockups as the foundation for OS X as you see it today. Close call, huh?

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  • Adys, on 04/23/2008, -15/+156I wonder, I mean Mac OS X started a lot of design trends - aqua/glass particularly. Maybe Web 2.0 wouldn't have been so ridiculously glossy.
    • AGiantBear, on 04/23/2008, -21/+10Most of Web 2.0 isn't all that glossy at all, in my experience. Mind giving an example or two?
      • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -7/+5the new BBC news website, Wired website, Digg (if you scroll over the sections it highlights in a glossy way).
        • HonoredMule, on 04/23/2008, -1/+12I see a lot more pastels than glossiness.
        • migitalwarfare, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5i think you're confusing "glossy" with "washed out". glossy would be something with highlights and depth, to make it look, oh, i dunno, glossy.
    • lieutenantmudd, on 04/23/2008, -2/+82I always found Web 2.0 sites to have really flat elements. Look at some of the best looking, most popular sites, Digg, Twitter, Facebook. All are pretty and not the least bit glossy.
      • Aupajo, on 04/23/2008, -19/+9"Popular" is not the same as "majority".
        • therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -7/+15yes. yes it is.
          • MadOtaku, on 04/23/2008, -2/+8Not at all. Let's say there are 10 things, (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J). Here are their market shares:
            A: 34%
            B: 15%
            C: 13%
            D: 10%
            E: 8%
            F: 6%
            G: 5%
            H: 4%
            I: 4%
            J: 1%

            As you can see, the most popular (even the 2 most popular) do not make the majority.

            That said, I think this is a silly thing to nitpick over in the first place; I'm just being a logicnazi.
          • migitalwarfare, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1you realize that your set of 10 only totals up to 86% of the whole?
          • MadOtaku, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1migitalwarfare:
            34 + 15 = 49
            49 + 13 + 10 = 72
            72 + 8 + 6 + 5 = 91
            91 + 4 + 4 + 1 = 100
    • Lutremi, on 04/23/2008, -4/+23The best usually aren't glossy, it's just the rest of them overuse stuff like shiny tables, gradients and the aqua look.
    • KMartSheriff, on 04/23/2008, -36/+3How does this story with 89 diggs make it to the front page when this story about Scientology: http://digg.com/celebrity/Jason_Beghe_Whole_Interv ...
      with 450+ diggs NOT make it to the front page?
      • Aupajo, on 04/23/2008, -1/+21Because it's the exact same bunch of people that have Dugg the previous hundred thousand Scientology related articles. Digg's system tries to prevent people from gaming the system this way. Don't like the algorithm? Give Reddit a whirl.
        • dullnation, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6So you're basically saying... do you like the same old ***** over and over? Give Reddit a whirl ;)
      • xxbrighteyed, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1It's a conspiracy, der
      • xxbrighteyed, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1It's a conspiracy, der
      • GawtMilk, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1I, the almighty Digg overlord, am personally digging YOUR story down. Since Digg is a facist website owned and funded by Scientologists, I've been given direct orders to keep all anti-Scientology stories off the front page. It's all part of the greater good, we one day hope to enslave you and kill you like that cockroach-bitten-face-lady woman that you weren't supposed to see. DAMN YOU YTMND!!! WHY MUST YOU LEAK OUR IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS!!!
      • migitalwarfare, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1oh jesus, shut the ***** up already. why do we have at least one person do this in every article?
        http://valleywag.com/tech/explainer/how-diggs-algo ...
      • migitalwarfare, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1also, it might have something to do with that scientology article being *****
    • snagra, on 04/23/2008, -5/+5And I think its because we are all tired of these relentless scientology articles.
  • MurphyMac, on 04/23/2008, -37/+20I'm not going to digg any more gizmodo stuff. still shaking my head over CES.
    • inspecality, on 04/23/2008, -12/+34I'm not going to digg any more MurphyMac stuff. still shaking my head over that stupid comment.
      • MurphyMac, on 04/23/2008, -6/+1Nobody Diggs my stuff. Nobody.
        • inspecality, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6You need to believe in the heart of the cards.
        • EwMo, on 04/23/2008, -4/+1^^ Please tell me you're twelve. If not, that was the nerd comment of the century.
          Nevertheless, I dugg it...
    • solidus636, on 04/23/2008, -2/+2You really need to let that go...it was a prank gone awry...
    • PixelKid, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1I agree! Glad someone else has some intelligence on here :p
  • GibitStylin, on 04/23/2008, -17/+4HACK THE GIBSON!!!!
  • friarcrazy, on 04/23/2008, -11/+80"This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I've seen yet." Classic Jobs.
    • yevkasem, on 04/23/2008, -24/+18classic in the sense of classic douche bag?
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -9/+8Yea, anyone who knows, knows classic jobs == douche bag
    • system7, on 04/23/2008, -0/+19The people who like to pour over the minute details of a product, pixel by pixel, are usually squashed by marketing and management types. It helps quite a bit if you have such a person at the head of your company.
    • sjmulder, on 04/23/2008, -5/+6I hate that statement, It shows Jobs' arrogance. I don't want to ever be like him.
    • dvdking, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5Has he forgotten Woz? He wouldn't be where he is today without the genius, who helped the home computer go from hobby to mainstream.
  • Jambi, on 04/23/2008, -43/+37Sadly, I think the Classic UI was in many ways far better than the current OS X one. Sure, the look needed a bit of updating, but when it came to things like button position, the menu, a spatial finder, tabbed folders and the like, the default UI features beat those of OS X hands down. Now, OS X has introduced a few useful UI features on its own (I'd go crazy if I had to use a desktop without Exposé.), but I could've done without the glossy crap. I have to theme it to get rid of it; and use various small programs to replace the functionality of the classic UI. Steve Jobs may be a genius of a salesman, but when it comes to OS usability, he's hit and miss at best. (I have no idea if he personally approved of the iPhone UI or not, although I'd think so.)
    • Jambi, on 04/23/2008, -44/+7Sure, dig me down mindless Jobs groupies. If you object, why not refute my points and tell me why OS X has the better UI?
      • estvir, on 04/23/2008, -32/+10Because they most likely can't or never used the Classic UI, most of the moronic Appel fanboys on here are newage morons who bought an iPod in the last 2 years and worship Jobs.
        • lizlemoncello, on 04/23/2008, -7/+11None of us are "appel" fanboys, and some of us grew up with an apple II. Don't be a douche nozzle.
          • estvir, on 04/23/2008, -8/+1Oh no, a typing mistake. Stop the presses!
          • rootbeerinacan, on 04/23/2008, -2/+3Well you're being a dickhole so he's just pointing out details. Calm the ***** down...
        • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -8/+10I used every version of the Mac OS from 7.1 to 10.5 and I vastly prefer the OS X UI to the classic OS. Blow it out your ass, numbnuts.
        • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -2/+6I've been using Windows since 3.11, and I've been using Apples long enough to remember when the screens were still composite RCA connections (yea, those pre-mac apples). I've used Macs in between since i was in grade school, I owned a 512k model, and I used various other Macs in various places with the old OS.

          I love the OS X look (in leopard that is), and most of the system i don't find too particularly annoying, its a change from Windows but its one that most people can adjust to. New users probably don't have much problem with it.
          • musicbear, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2There still is a certain amount of functionality that was taken away with the move from classic mac os to os x. There's no reason not to be able to open folders in a hundred different ways or move any part of the gui to where we want it. Steve wants a very simple streamlined way of interacting with the gui, and for the most part, it works well, his contribution to the os is the ability to edit over doing access to the same actions. That said, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to have the dock in the middle of my desktop or be able to window shade or minimize my windows in place. It would be nice to have access to a more flexible gui even if I don't choose to use it and stick with the streamlined standard gui.
          • migitalwarfare, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2i've been using OS X for so long that i completely forgot about windowshading. can't say i really miss it though, OS X definitely keeps things more organize
    • Flummoxer, on 04/23/2008, -5/+39I grew up on Macs in the 90s, and I prefer the new GUI to that stupid bar in the middle of the screen.
      • Balanced, on 04/23/2008, -5/+6Do you mean the control strip? That could be placed wherever you want?
      • rootbeerinacan, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2Yeah, but it was real annoying. Dock=YHESS!
    • MacTyler, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1nothing to see here
    • mebob, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3What specifically do you find is missing?
    • Herolint, on 04/23/2008, -1/+23The only feature I miss from pre-OS X days is the ability to roll up a window, but Exposé pretty much removes the need for that anyway.

      You mentioned gloss... I'm running Leopard with all default settings, other than I made my dock a darker gray color so I could see the glowing blue balls easier, and I don't see much in the way of gloss. The dock is reflective and the buttons at the top of the windows are a bit glossy, but I don't think any reasonable person could call it overly glossy, or irritating enough to need to theme it. It's a very beautiful place to work everyday, I think.

      Now, lets list what makes OS X better than its predecessors...

      BASH
      Unix
      X
      Far superior APIs
      64-bit (now anyway)
      ...

      I could list more but I have to leave.

      • hadak, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6I went one step further with my Dock, and just made it a flat 2d style.
      • userperson, on 04/23/2008, -1/+3Do you miss it to the tune of $10? I did. Then again ... I don't have expose ... yet.
        http://unsanity.com/haxies/wsx
        • drlha, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8You're still on Jaguar?
          • userperson, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4Not only that, I'm also still beige.
            It'll be 10 this summer.
        • Herolint, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2No. I don't miss it $10 worth. Plus that program doesn't work on Leopard; apparently.
    • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+15I used the old IIgs UI (System 5 and 6) and every version of the Mac OS from OS 7.1 to 10.5. I have to say that I don't miss a damn thing from the days of the classic UI. I had a little transplant shock in 10.0 of course, but soon found that I loved it. The "glossy crap" generally isn't pretty simply to be pretty (like Vista), but functionally pretty, ie, the genie effect sucking the window into the dock so you can see exactly where it went. I never missed a thing you listed (and don't understand some complaints. What about the menu bar?), but OS X currently has a FAR superior UI. Jobs was smart to do what he did. Pull the stick out of the mud and move on.
      • petard, on 04/23/2008, -9/+3Yeah I know! All the Vista effects like the window shrinking into the tab on the taskbar is pretty just to be pretty!!!
        • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7I think he means translucent window title bars just to be pretty, in some cases it makes things much harder to use unless you color it right.
          • therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -3/+2the main toolbar in mac os does the exact same thing.
          • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -2/+5Except the main toolbar is stationary and you can easily turn the translucency off.
          • ripdog, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2What, you mean you can't turn off the transparency in Vista?
    • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -9/+2(ubuntu user- in case you wonder).

      Um lets slow down for a second here. You're saying we should go back to UI thats um X(don't even know what era it was) years old?? You are right of course, because everyone would buy OS8 and NO-ONE is buying the glossy piece of ***** that is Leopard.
      • virtualball, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9He wasn't saying that at all. He's saying there are elements from a legacy OS that he likes as well as elements from a current OS that he likes. You, my friend, are an idiot :)
        • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1then it would be like bastard hybrid child. It doesn't work! You can't have EVERYTHING you like. Its never possible. You, buddy are not my friend
    • system7, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7It's not the glossy look that's the important point here (Apple has always updated the look of the OS between releases) but the fact that they decided to overhaul the UI outright, taking the best from both Classic Mac and NEXTSTEP worlds, and leaving the cruft behind. Even little stuff like reorganization of the menu bar and a standard keyboard shortcut for application preferences are important.

      I'm sure there are people who miss the classic Mac UI conventions, but for me the most compelling aspects of OS X are the stuff inherited from NEXTSTEP. Although, there's an almost equal amount of important UI concepts that came from the Classic Mac side as well.
    • GDOG5, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2Hey, I loved the Launcher. It was great, but then they made it better by moving it to the bottom of the screen and calling it a Dock.
    • comradeTJH, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1Oh yes - exactly my thoughts. The OS 8/9 GUI was in every typographic aspect far superior than that Aqua thing and snappier too and easier on the eyes and less CPU draining. Mac OS X 10.0 was a disaster. Every new version got a bit back to basics and the classic gray for Finder windows came back in 10.5 and they FINALLY got rid of those pinstripes. The over-glossy, over-transparent Aqua thing introduced in 10.0 was a marketing stunt and completely unusable.
      • Prod_Deity, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1I, for one, liked the pinstripe look of the older OS X versions.... granted the UI was buggy as hell, it looked nice.
        Beat the pants off of Windows 2000 & XP's UI, that's for sure.
  • DarkSamus, on 04/23/2008, -6/+33one of the simplest features i miss from classic is the old collapse feature where the window bar would stay in the same spot, not sure if any plugin does that in osx
    • Jambi, on 04/23/2008, -4/+22http://unsanity.com/haxies/wsx should do what you're looking for. Why this wasn't built into the UI by default, I'll never know.
      • therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6"WindowShade X currently does not work on Mac OS X 10.5. More Info"
    • mywhitenoise, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5For awhile it would work in the first OSX, I miss that feature too.
    • Asshate, on 04/23/2008, -8/+3It works in Gnome on Ubuntu.
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -3/+9Thats good, cause 100 other things don't
    • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8Doesn't really bother me. Expose and Spaces have essentially eliminated the need for it anyway. It was handy for one window, but got really ugly if you had several (or more) zipped up at the same time.
    • indoracer, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6Although a little different, this app (sticky windows) turns windows into tabs as you drag them to the side of the screen:
      http://www.donelleschi.com/stickywindows/
    • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -2/+3The reason you'll never know, is EXACTLY why you don't design the UI. I love linux apps, but the GUI's are so bad for a lot of them. I'm not complaining, if it does the job for me, I'm satisfied. It is all about being intuitive. It doesn't even matter if its harder to use. What would you say is more intuitive...having a dock with your fav apps or going to start/applications? Admittedly if you have a lot of apps start is useful. But for the huge majority of people the dock is more than sufficient.
      • therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -5/+2the dock does exactly the same thing Quick Launch has done for years. Don't act like Windows doesn't have the exact same feature. You can't compare incongruent features and act like its cool.
        • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6Except Quick Launch has tiny icons and requires you to pop up a menu to see more than a few of them. Not quite the same thing. The dock is a superior implementation.
          • Gizza, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1Quick launch get be set to use large icons (admittedly this makes your task bar thicker, in any case I don't see why you would need them any larger unless you have poor vision in which case you will be having problems with every other part of using the PC anyways). It can also be dragged out to any size you want so that you don't need to bring out a menu to see more.
          • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4And then it eats into the taskbar space for open applications, which creates a new item for every window, not just every app.
      • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+2I do prefer the drop down applications menu in GNOME compared to a dock, myself. In fact, if I bought a Mac, I'd probably be inclined to disable the dock, assuming there were some way to do that.
      • LavosPhoenix, on 04/23/2008, -3/+2No problem here with Linux applications. Superior GUI, no raccoon graphics (except for that abortion called Qt).
        • Ademan, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1I KNEW I couldn't be the only one that hates the way KDE/Qt apps look! Seriously, despite all of my efforts, countless themes, and lots of vomit, I cannot get Qt applications to look good!
    • HeroreV, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1Ugh... KDE and Gnome like to do that. I don't know why; I hate it. Most distros don't have it enabled by default for good reason, though it is very easy to turn on if that's your thing. Why do you like it?
  • clak, on 04/23/2008, -12/+64This wasn't a close call. The design problems at Apple during the years that Steve wasn't there, just goes to show you the boring nature of most programmers and coincidentally, most geeks. They just don't know how to make things look beautiful and more importantly, they don't want things beautiful. Geeks want features, even if it's badly implemented. That's why they can never understand or predict the popularity of anything Apple sells.
    • StanislawLem, on 04/23/2008, -17/+9I for one am not a geek. I care about usability over all else. While the old Apple UI looked a little drab, it was supremely functional and could be easily themed with the Kaleidoscope theming app. The OS X UI is missing a boatload of features present in classic. There was an old article on Arstechnica that I came across which summarizes this pretty well: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars
      • dullnation, on 04/23/2008, -0/+25I hereby award you geek status.

        You are now a geek in denial.
      • vibrate, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6That is one of the worst, most tediously waffling bits of writing I have ever attempted to read.
        I kept skimming ahead waiting for him to get to the point, and it never came.

        Im burying you simply for posting a link to such a terrible article.
        • therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3and he says the article "....summarizes this pretty well" ....... that article doesn't summarize anything pretty well.
      • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+11Yes, OS X is missing many features that OS 9 had...and fulfilled the need with different, better features, ie, eliminating the need for zipping a window into a bar with the Dock, Spaces, and Expose. Get your stick out of the mud already.
    • Mardala, on 04/23/2008, -4/+8Try running OSx on a pentium II 233 with 128 mb ram with a GeForce I. Most GUIs were pretty dismal if you compare to what we have now. They did have designers back then too.
      • dullnation, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10The original os x beta DID run on hardware similar to the specs you listed there (obviously on an older g3 though)
        • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -4/+2in 10 years when windows 10 comes out people will be complaining that it requires 10 exabytes of hard drive space and 4 petabytes of ram, while windows 9 only required 3 petabytes of hard drive space and 2 petabytes of ram....O the HUMANITY of it all!
          • DarkSamus, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2xp is it, there will be no dawn for win7
        • Mardala, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2remember the old ibm processors were not direct relation to intel pentiums. The desktop version of OSx came out around 2001.
      • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7You could run up to 10.2 on a 120mhz 604 processor with a hack. It didn't run well, but it did run. A little more RAM than 128MB and maybe a Rage 128 and it was actually somewhat usable.
    • solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -0/+11I had a conversation with a friend who is a web designer, myself being a graphic designer.

      I complained that clients want me to program them a website as well as design it. He complained they want him to design a website as well as program it. We both agreed clients are assholes who can't recognize sometimes it is better for 2 men to do the job instead of expecting us to be a jack of all trades, specialty people!
      • Darkhacker, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5Agreed. As a web developer, I suck at design. People think that just because I can't make flashy graphics in photoshop that it means I must not know ***** about web development. I can write proper code, good CSS, fast loading pages, proper UI and navigation, and I have many other traits needed for proper web pages.
        • hexydes, on 04/23/2008, -2/+3Uhm, I hate to break it to you, but this is your fault. Your client should not be expected to know the difference between a "developer" and a "designer". To them, you are "that web guy". As a good designer, you should know that you don't know how to develop, and bring a developer on-board. Likewise, a good developer should know they barely know how to rough out a design, and should bring a good designer on board.

          Then, when you go to meetings with the client, bring both of you, and be able to distinguish when the client is talking, what the designer needs to be responsible for, and what the developer needs to be responsible for. The client will never be able to distinguish between the two.

          The only caveat to that is working at some place like a university, where the cheap administration just hire a "webmaster". In that case, you need to know what your strength is (namely development or design), and then make the case for hiring the other. If they won't go along with that...well, nuts to them. Do your best and just collect a paycheck. They deserve to be robbed anyway if they don't accept good, constructive input from people in the positions that should be providing it.
          • solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5The problem is hexydes is the idea that designers are a jack of all trades keeps getting passed around blindly that ignorant companies who want to start up an in-house design branch start posting job requirements that are a mile long, nowadays not only do I need to be a good designer, they want me to be an expert Flash animator, CSS and PHP programmer, and even dabble in 3D and After Effects sometimes. I am decent in a wide variety of graphic programs but I am only human.

            Usually they are just cheap and do not want to hire a second person, but the joke is on them and the quality of the work is what you pay for.
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2Yea, I'm great with servers, routing and switching equipment and managing services, but i suck at designing and even coding sometimes :D
    • jabelar, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2Yeah, it is pretty much impossible to "engineer cool". Coolness has to be inspired and driven by vision. A committee of engineers won't come up with the right thing. Usability can be improved a lot through thoughtful design process, but still not an engineer's forte. I'm an engineering design manager, so I know ...
    • uziko, on 04/23/2008, -4/+26so that explains why linux is so ugly
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -2/+10Linux is ugly because GTK sucks, horribly
      • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -1/+3linux is only as beautiful as you make it to be. I actually have to settings. I usually use a very scaled down version, just two panels and thats it. for example right now I am looking at a digg comment box, does it matter what my background is? Or what colour my panels are? If you are really into it you can theme linux to look EXACTLY like a mac.
        • blocguy, on 04/24/2008, -0/+2But can you make it feel like a mac?
          The best part about the mac UI isn't how good looking it is, but how well it works.
      • TheRealToma, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2Everyone stands behind GTK, the festering old crank man of a toolkit. Yet, linux is actually the kernel and as such nothing but code.
      • comradeTJH, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Gnome and KDE have ugly aspects. Nothing really fits. Obviously that's because they can't seem to afford graphic artists and designers with decent typography skills. Just look at Gnome - looks like a comic book with oversized icons everywhere. They focus on silly effects like huge shadows, squeezing windows, ridiculous animations etc that doesn't improve productivity it's only for "fun". Unfortunately that's a trend that affects nearly every GUI makers out there...
    • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5It isn't so much about looking good as it is to being functional. True OSX has a LOT of eyecandy, but its simple things. For example if you put a computer to sleep in windows/linux, and you wake it up (by say opening the lid) it takes a little while and you can tell that it is opening up. A friend of mine didn't even realise that the apple went to sleep when he closed the lid. Actually he realised that it went to sleep but he just thought it was standard computer behaviour. I had to prove to him that my ubuntu could keep downloading something even with the lid closed (to show that a task kept on running). The closing and opening of the lid is so fast and smooth on a mac that a user cannot even tell when exactly it is waking up. I'm not saying this is a good/bad thing, it just is. All I am saying is that it is how everything fits together. BOTH my parrents have gone from regularly calling me up to fix their computer (windows usage) to never calling me about a computer problem (since they got a MacBook Pro). That says it better than anything else by far.
      • aussieNickuss, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2I was at a software training seminar once and I was the only person with a Mac. I had a bit of one-on-one time with the instructor, so I took my MacBook over to her, opened it up and it was ready to use before I'd even finished lifting the lid. She was absolutely shocked out how fast the thing woke up. I demonstrated it again, closing opening, closing opening just to prove it wasn't a fluke (like when you close a Windows lappie and open it again before it has had a chance to go to sleep).
  • robopuppy, on 04/23/2008, -3/+12Alright, I'm sort of confused I guess. All 5 of us Mac users that were interested in knowing about Apple's future projects know that there was a precursor to OS X based off of NeXT that was not OS X at all (and had a cooler name, Rhapsody). I assume that's what they're talking about here, because that WAS around the OS 8 days, whereas obviously OS X was developed in the OS 9 era. I think I still have several builds of it even. For developer purposes only. Of course.
    • knuckles, on 04/23/2008, -3/+6Rhapsody had the old OS 9 UI. I had seen a preview at MacWorld and it was really weird. I was familiar with NeXT and was a big OS 9 user and here was this other thing running NeXT with the OS GUI.

      I'm glad they decided to abandon both (ie,. not favour one group over the other) and start fresh.
      • fangorious, on 04/23/2008, -1/+7abandoned both [NeXTSTEP and OS 9]? How much of the Cocoa API is "NS..."? What do you think the NS stands for?
        • rspeed, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4knuckles was saying Apple abandoned Rhapsody, not NeXTSTEP. That's not entirely true, however. Rhapsody 5.3 became Mac OS X Server 1 (not to be confused with Mac OS X Server 10), which was then used as a base for Mac OS X 10.
    • rbanffy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Rhapsody was essentially NeXTStep/OPENSTEP with a Copeland style attached to it. OSX is more or less OPENSTEP with Aqua attached to it and Copeland was to be Apple's next generation OS, but it got lost Vista-style and got canned before release. In the end, the Copeland icons and GUI elements (except the skins feature) got into OS8 and OS9 before X was released.
      • colincornaby, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3OS 8 long predated Rhapsody. Rhapsody used the Copland appearance because that was what OS 8 used.
        What made Rhapsody different than OS X is Rhapsody actually had no relation at all to any previous versions of the Mac OS. It was entirely Cocoa. it was just basically NeXTStep with a Mac OS theme, ported to the PowerPC. Rhapsody actually shipped as a finished product to consumers as Mac OS X Server 1.0.
        Apple got too many complaints from 3rd parties, and they sat down and turned Rhapsody into OS X. OS X had Carbon, which allowed developers to get their apps running on OS X by rewriting parts of the app instead of the entire application. It was at this point that Apple found some time to do a new UI. (And you're also wrong about the skins feature. The skins feature DID make it into Mac OS 8.5. Look in the Appearance Control panel.)
    • f54280, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4> All 5 of us Mac users that were interested in knowing about Apple's future projects know that there was a precursor to OS X based off of NeXT that was not OS X at all (and had a cooler name, Rhapsody)

      It may have only interested 5 of you mac coders, but it basically interested a wholelot of us, NeXTstep coders. Rhapsody was the developer builds for OSX, where the DisplayPostscript rendering had been hacked to mimick mac os 9, and not have every mac os users run away screaming.

      But there was also a Apple-Branded NeXTstep, which was called Mac OS X Server, with the OS9 look. It have been wiped out of existence by Apple, who, smartly, later re-used the name for the server version of Mac OS X (but it was a totally different product).

      I coded with that for a couple of years. It didn't work badly, you know.

      But Apple/NeXT was so unsure of what the nextstep (ahaha) should be; they tried to kill objc, replacing it with java, they tried to kill objc syntax (the "modern" objc syntax joke), they tried to kill AppKit (later renamed Cocoa), by developing Carbon and CoreXXX frameworks. At the end, they should have kept NeXTstep with a new look (aqua), and they would probably have gained 1 year in time-to-market, and we wouldn't have to suffer that ***** Finder.app

      Btw, anynody here remember the NeXtstep 4.x beta? Not OPENSTEP4.x, NeXTstep 4.x beta, the cancelled version: beta builds of this were awesome.
  • ryanhayn, on 04/23/2008, -25/+44Damn, Jobs really is an *****.
    • diggSJaustin, on 04/23/2008, -5/+31A big huge ***** who got/gets big huge results.
      • ilikechaitea, on 04/23/2008, -10/+10he's still and ***** though....why's ryanhayn getting dugg down...because he dared to call jobs and *****??
        yeah, he's friggin great at what he does...just an ***** too
    • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -2/+16Yep, but he's an ***** who knows how to get the job done right almost all the damn time. Say what you like about his personality, but he's a ***** brilliant businessman.
      • TnTBass, on 04/24/2008, -1/+1Yet, even though he had his product out first, Microsoft's business practices allowed them to usurp Apple and develop the OS's that has dominated the market ever since.

        ***** brilliant businessman? Hardly. He does have an eye for design though.

        However, recent events show he may have learned his lesson - Apple has been on a tear lately. I still maintain he is no "***** brilliant" businessman.
    • Kanidia, on 04/23/2008, -2/+16If only the Microsoft design team had an ***** that leads them.
    • virtualball, on 04/23/2008, -3/+6Calling a design team that he/his company employs a "bunch of idiots" is not being an *****. He's a CEO of an important company and you can't say "Well, I like your GUI, but let's just make it a teensy bit better!" But that aside, he really is an *****.
  • lnappropriate, on 04/23/2008, -18/+1Yeah wouldve been pretty gay if it looked old as ***** like that
  • defcobra08, on 04/23/2008, -16/+3i like boys so what is natural...right?
  • highlyhigh, on 04/23/2008, -10/+0if i had known that this would have happened i would have bought a pair of fruit looms bottom socks and go dirty dirty on them behind a public school teacher.
  • johnnyrotten, on 04/23/2008, -14/+8So, let me get this straight. This guy was already going to do a redesign, and then Jobs calls him an idiot and tells him to do a redesign? That's truly "visionary".

    OK, so I want everyone to work to get us out of the recession we're in, and when we're out of it, I want credit for the idea!
    • TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+9Um, no, idiot, the guy's job was to basically patch the OS 8 UI onto NeXTStep. There were a few demos, but it wasn't his job to implement them. Jobs called everyone in charge of the design an idiot (managers, coders, etc), then told the guy to do a redesign. Read the damn article.
  • Mardala, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9I wouldn't call it a close call. Pre - alpha stage in anything is far from near release.
  • nova912, on 04/23/2008, -7/+4What a stupid comparison.
  • MacTyler, on 04/23/2008, -5/+21Only complaint I have on OS X is that f***ing green button. I swear people try to explain it to me, but in everyday usage it NEVER does what I want it to do. Other than that I would die without Exposé.
    • kenobi, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10the green button is "zoom" and is defined (or can be re-defined) by each application. so if a certain application thinks the "zoom" or "maximize" button should do something other than fill the entire screen, it overrides the default behavior. ie Safari, only maximizes the vertical space...

      not saying its the right or wrong thing to do, just saying how the code is laid out.. :)
    • platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -2/+19If the green button just filled the screen with the window, that'd be perfect.
      • newbill123, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2Experimenting with the Green button may give you some hint about what to expect and why it's useful to not always fill the screen. Unfortunately, the Finder has the most inconsistent and puzzling behavior with the maximize button and it's also the app most new users are likely to experiment with. Try experimenting in TextEdit.

        Go into TextEdit and make a new document. Under the Format menu, you'll see an option to change to an alternate mode of behavior: Wrap to Window (usually the default) and Wrap to Page. Wrap to Window is useful when you don't care about what the printed document looks like; the text you write will break lines only on the window boundary. Wrap to Page shows the page margins of the paper size currently chosen for printing (e.g. Portrait 8.5x11). The page margins are shown as white, and outside the printed page is shown as grey. At the expense of losing so much screen real estate, the page breaks and line breaks you see are pretty accurate representations of where they will fall and your document isn't reformatting itself each time you resize the window.

        The behavior of that Green maximize button also changes with the wrap to page and window. When you need every pixel for editing (wrap to window), the green button does what most Windows users expect and fills the screen with the important part of your document. In wrap to page, that grey area outside the page boundary is something you have no control over, it's filler space the app is putting in. When you maximize the window in wrap to page mode, the app only makes the window big enough to show the page without any of that "artificial" grey filler space that you have no control over.

        So in most apps, if the app has to add filler space in the window, the green button will make the content as big as possible but shrink the window so this artificial turf isn't visible.

        But what about Safari? Safari doesn't add artificial turf, but many web pages also don't demand a certain size and hapilly reformat themselves to the window. Unless the content is bigger than what will fit in the window, Safari sees no need to expand. There's a javascript hack which was published on the webkit.org site which you can put in your bookmark bar to do make it take up more width and height:
        javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);

        Finder windows and other apps have a similar problem to Safari. Ideally, there would be a modifier key one could hold down (e.g. Shift click the green button) which would maximize the width and height to fill the available screen space. Some apps do this (it's worth a try to experiment sometimes) but it should be more consistent system-wide.

        I don't want Apple to get rid of the window optimizing behavior it uses right now. That grey artificial turf is a real pain to me in some apps when I'm working in multiple windows. But it needs to take care of some of the common expectations and common cases.
    • Radan, on 04/23/2008, -1/+3It's actually kind of handy as a panic button when you are pluggin in a projector running 1024x768 to your 17 inch laptop which makes it impossible to resize the windows my dragging in the bottom corner. That's when you press the green button. No one knows what it does, but it does something and when you have a bunch of people waiting for you to find what you are looking for in the cluster of gigantic pixelated windows, something is good.
      • HeroreV, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1On Linux, I can hold down the Alt key to drag any window around using any part of the window. I'm not sure if that's in KWin or X, but it sure is useful. That sounds a lot better to me than a mysterious green button that nobody understands. Although it certainly isn't as discoverable.
    • crashingechelon, on 04/23/2008, -3/+4The green button works whenever I use it. Now my only complaint with it is how little I use it, I normally just manually resize my windows. In my experience with OS X the green/yellow +/- buttons are hardly ever used.
    • macattacks10, on 04/23/2008, -1/+9It's supposed to make it as big as it needs to be to fit all the content that's in the window on the screen and back.
    • abhiroop, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5Actually the green button is really intuitive. Basically if I look at my firefox window there is a bunch of space to the left and right of the digg comments area, with nothing but white space. In Mac that space would not be maximised, so it would only be maximised upto the point that I needed it maximised. So the white spaces would not be filling the screen, instead I'd see whatever was behind. Useful feature.
    • rdoger6424, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6It's the "random window resize" button.
    • p0tent1al, on 04/23/2008, -6/+1The only 2 things that have pissed me off about switching to Mac; No Cut option, you can only copy, and no Maximize/Minimize. Only some stupid green button, and having to resize everything manually.
      • FunkyWitDaSysTm, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1although it's not in the edit menu, you can still invoke Cut by using the keyboard shortcut: Cmd-X, just like is any modern os.
    • dferrand, on 04/23/2008, -1/+4"no Maximize/Minimize" -Isn't that what the yellow button is for? I'm unclear what you mean by "No Cut option"- as in typing "command-x" for cut?
      • Balanced, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1I would guess the postewr meant no 'Cut' in the Finder.
    • Kypt, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2I wouldn't mind that button if it was at least consistent within applications. Some browsers (Safari, Shiira, etc) it does what you say it does, however in others it maximizes the whole thing down to the dock (Firefox, and I believe Camino). So...if it does one or the other I'm cool with it, but be damm consistent!!!
  • psyc420, on 04/23/2008, -20/+14I HATE EARTH DAY...
  • leamanc, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8I prefer the OS X GUI now, especially how it's evolved since the Panther days. After being initially wary, I've grown to love the Leopard GUI (since we can now turn off the translucent menu bar and disable the 3D Dock by putting it on the side). But in the early days of OS X, I still preferred the Classic OS UI. There was too much gloss and too many pinstripes in 10.0-10.2. That and the GUI was so horribly unresponsive.
    Mac OS X Server 1.x or Rhapsody, if you can find either one of them, will give you an idea of the GUI talked about in this article. I didn't think it was half bad, especially considering the early "blind a cubist painter" style of 10.0-10.2. It had the classic Platinum look but some of the interface usability enhancements we now enjoy in OS X.
  • schoate09, on 04/23/2008, -0/+19Anyone remember Mac OS X Server 1.0? Released in 1999, this server OS was the first migration to the OS X codebase and carried the "platinum" Mac OS 8 look and feel.
  • imightbewrong, on 04/23/2008, -1/+38.6 ftw !!!
    • Twee, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1The Windows ME of the Mac world. That OS was so bad, it crashed on me so so much.
  • Abomonog, on 04/23/2008, -13/+1"After buying NeXT, Apple had to figure out how to turn NeXT-step into a Macintosh operating system"

    Admitting you bought an O.S. core is what I would call a direct hit. I don't bash Mac's. They are merely another operating system and it's all about user preference. But Apple just lost even more points with me over that line.
    • so1omon, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10Ummmm... How could you NOT know that OSX was NeXT-step? It's not like there's ever been any secret about it. It's the reason OSX is worth a damn.
      • Atomic1fire, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1Wait
        So thats what the X stands for
        OS neXt
        (Might need a sarcasm detector on high for this one)
    • platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10Oh,and what, Billy Boy didn't buy DOS AFTER he sold it to IBM? You are just ignorant.
      • Syphon8, on 04/23/2008, -9/+1Vista and XP are DOS based? Lolwut?
        • platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -3/+4Your even less sharp than the last guy. I was responding to this comment.
          "Admitting you bought an O.S. core is what I would call a direct hit. I don't bash Mac's. They are merely another operating system and it's all about user preference. But Apple just lost even more points with me over that line."
          Which more or less what I said is "companies buy technology". And the "lolwut". What are you, 13?
          Also, Pretty sure I can still get to the DOS prompt in XP. Pretty sure I use it too. So M$ is still milkin' that cow.
    • voyvf, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5Why? NeXT's core was way better than that of previous Mac OS versions. It made sense then, and it makes sense now.

      I bet it ticks you off that Microsoft bought 86-DOS/QDOS from Seattle Computer Products, too.
  • elister, on 04/23/2008, -9/+1The more things change, the more they stay the same. Way to berate your employees Mr Jobs! Good luck at luring programmers and project managers over from Sun, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, etc, etc.
  • TheCommentThief, on 04/23/2008, -10/+1I wonder, I mean Mac OS X started a lot of design trends - aqua/glass particularly. Maybe Web 2.0 wouldn't have been so ridiculously glossy.
    • RgyaGramShad, on 08/28/2008, -2/+1you learned how to use copy/paste! congratulations!
    • darkdriving, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2You truly are The Comment Thief.
  • ferrariman60, on 04/23/2008, -2/+4Why did they have the damn pin stripes for so long? Those looked pretty awful, didn't they? Oh well, at least they figured it out for panther, was it? I think that was when they finally went all metal and no stripes.
    • mlostracco, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5The monitor bezels and iMac shells had the stripes at the time, so the carpet matched the drapes. That doesn't make them less ugly, however.
    • KaneElson, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Pin-stripes 4 lyf
  • solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -5/+6Steve Jobs is the Bobby Knight of the tech world.
  • inkswamp, on 04/23/2008, -1/+10The Classic Mac UI was amazing in its day, but that was a different time when hard drives were measured in 100s of megabytes, most files were small enough to fit on a floppy and people weren't storing their entire lives in photos and video on their machines. I remember how outdated the old Mac UI felt back in the early 2000s and was eager to see something newer and better thought out that allowed for faster file navigation (I loved the folder navigation that Windows had and wished it had been in the Mac.) I never understood the outcry from so many Mac users when they first saw OS X's UI. I took to it immediately and never looked back. OS X's UI isn't perfect, but for the needs of current users, it's light-years ahead of the classic Mac OS.
  • slor90210, on 04/23/2008, -13/+11Dear Mac GUI team,
    What are the 5 quickest places to click on the screen? 4 corners+wherever your mouse is at. These are wasted on a Mac. At least in Windows I can throw my mouse to the right-top and close my porn and then left-bottom and hit start.
    Someone please tell me why icons in the Mac finder are laid out at random locations when I open a window for the first time?
    Also, if someone could explain why I can't right-click and share a folder, that'd be super. I'm getting really tired of opening the Workgroup Manager in OS X server and creating mount points for shares.
    Finally, punch Steve Jobs and/or yourself in the throat for reversing the order of the Minimize,Maximize,Close buttons (even compared to OS 9).
    • Kanidia, on 04/23/2008, -4/+7I use Windows, and I don't maximize my windows. It really wastes space once you start using 1440x900 as your resolution. I haven't touched the start menu for months (thanks to programs like launchy and buttons built in on my keyboard). Plus, Mac OS X uses the top right corner as spotlight and the top left corner as the apple button.
    • DarkDx, on 04/23/2008, -2/+4Think different...
    • ckSubs, on 04/23/2008, -2/+8Expose hotcorners are way better uses of Fitts' law than anything on the windows side. All Windows, Show Desktop, Spaces, and App Windows can all be assigned to corners (no click even) for very easy and fast access, plus the Apple menu and Spotlight are already there. In Windows you can hit the start menu easily, but then after that it requires eye tracking and precise mouse movements to find what you want. They don't even allow their ***** Expose clone in Vista (with really bad usability btw) hotcorner access. The one thing you can do with the corners is close a window, but to do that it has to be a maximized window. Having maximized windows is already a huge waste of space and a detriment to the spacial understanding of the desktop metaphor.
      • rossisdead, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1"but then after that it requires eye tracking and precise mouse movements to find what you want"

        You make it sound like clicking on things and paying attention to what you're doing is some horribly difficult task.
    • sudowrestler, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4Regarding your Finder issue, right click or control-click in a Finder window, and select "Show View Options." In the resulting pane you'll be able to set persistent options to keep items arranged in a certain way, for instance by name.
  • shuckl4k, on 04/23/2008, -4/+4dugg for the "bunch of idiots" jobs quote.
  • Skidmark66, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2god i love to be the boss and storm into an office screaming "IDIOTS". unfortunately i am a drummer thus therein lies the truth of my intellectual capacity . .
  • MrZaiko, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Funny thing is that If OSX looked like OS 8, IT would have never been shown in that monitor.
  • PainToad, on 04/23/2008, -5/+37...and thus Vista nearly looked like MacOS 8 instead of OSX.
    • meghalc, on 04/23/2008, -7/+1LongHorn Beta was out in 2001. When the new Apple OS show up?
      • alienpopcorn, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10OSX pubic beta available Sept. 13, 2000
        • Balanced, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7I think you meant public. I hope you meant public.
    • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -5/+6I don't understand why people say Vista looks like OSX. They look nothing alike, to me.
    • Gizza, on 04/23/2008, -5/+4I don't know what you've been looking at. But I see pretty much zero resemblance between Vista and OSX.
    • TnTBass, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
      -Book of Ecclesiastes

      Lets just learn to accept that fact that good ideas will be copied, stolen, reproduced, manipulated, etc.
  • pak314, on 04/23/2008, -6/+2"This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I've seen yet." What about himself?
  • etx313, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6Duh.. It's called Rhapsody. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_s ...
    • HappyScrappy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Yep. And the idea was for it to have switchable themes, not just look like Mac OS 8.

      Also, Cordell (Ratzlaff) is pretty high on himself apparently.
    • davidwasman, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1I was the one who 'leaked' it. If you find an old copy, check the username. It's Duckie. i.e. Me
    • davidwasman, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1Sorry for the double post but here's a screenshot:

      http://therealduckie.net/rhapsody.JPG
  • achilles101, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2OS 8 reminds me of gnome
    • meghalc, on 04/23/2008, -2/+1OSX looks like gnome too if you have the lower bar hidden....Oh *****, im gonna get bashed for not knowing the name for the little lower animated launcher lol
  • Ex3poo, on 04/23/2008, -8/+2mac osx 10.5 FTW!!!!!!! NUFF SAID!
  • rootbeerinacan, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1I've been using Mac since OS9.

    The only thing I miss is the voice-recognization for the password. They should further develop that. I can never go back to OS 9, it feels so much harder to use. Maybe its the 10+years OSX has been around...
    • EwMo, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Has it really been out 10 years?! Wow I feel old. I remember using somewhere around version 6...
  • celebi23, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Yeah, it's called Rhapsody/ Mac OS X Server v.1.0-1.2v3
  • Cherubim, on 04/23/2008, -12/+3Mr Jobs is the "biggest idiot" of course. Mac OS X is flawed as hell.
    • Balanced, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Please provide examples. It's not perfect, but I feel it's pretty good.
  • mikesown, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3I know the Classic UI wasn't flashy, but I still think it looks good to this day. Maybe it's the fact that I used a classic(OS8) Mac at school when I was growing up, but I like the Platinum interface - and I wish I could theme OSX to look that way. I loved the way classic sprung open windows, and the overall silver/grey look(even if it was bland). Maybe I'm just nostalgic.
  • meghalc, on 04/23/2008, -8/+3YAY! Another Apple article and how great it is!
  • wolfboyZ, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Tabbed folders? That's not a bad idea...
  • Mephistocles, on 04/23/2008, -4/+2wow... i care so little i almost passed out!
  • chibibonsai, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1hahah Classic. I almost miss it :|
  • donores, on 04/23/2008, -3/+3Comparatively speaking, the classic OS makes me feel less like a flamboyant homosexual.
  • jo21, on 04/23/2008, -10/+4who cares... windows vista looks better than mac os now.. and you can even use windowblinds to make it better.
    sad thing both use more than 350mb at boot.
  • bingobongony, on 04/23/2008, -5/+1Close call indeed! If that had happened, they may not have picked up that extra 0.2% market share!
  • edebolt, on 04/23/2008, -2/+3yeah right. I was a NeXTStep/OpenStep developer beginning back in 1992. I stopped using OS around 97 when it really started languishing. When OS X came out it was and still is very close to same OS. Maybe they could have made it look like Classic but the guts are still NeXTStep.
  • macmangb, on 04/23/2008, -7/+2Another reason why his Steveness is greater than Bill Gate$
  • MrViklund, on 04/23/2008, -3/+2gizmodo.com is not worthy to write about Apple. Buried as spam.
  • hellotyler, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2Why mess with a good thing ? Os X is great!
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