[Macworld]

Post your comments for Looking for disruption? It's staring you in the face, bub. here

[bastion]

"All of this change is not going down terribly well with longtime Mac users. They like their mouse, trackpad, and keyboard; they’ve learned to think of their data as stored in nested folders; and they resent the iOSification of the Mac OS."

I really wish this generalization would go away. The majority of the people I see complaining about this sort of disruption have become Mac users since the advent of OS X or even Intel-based machines. While it's certainly true that there are old users who share that attitude, it's hardly universal. Many of us older users - some old enough to remember when our files *weren't* stored in nested folders - have seen Apple productively disrupt the status quo so many times that we're willing to accept that needing to learn something new isn't automatically a bad thing, and doesn't mean that Apple has lost their way or is abandoning its long-time users.

[Poupic]

I refuse to own a iPad, a iPhone or any other i Anything that is not my iMac. So I have nothing I want to be tied in to with my iMac. Leave well alone.

[lewk]

How do you think layers of abstraction can be removed for a desktop system, or even a laptop? Are you suggesting that all monitors need to be touch screens? I hope not! It doesn't seem to be working to well for Windows 8 right now! I know I'm not interested in such a thing. Maybe others are, but I would suggest that it is totally impractical for word processing, video editing and nearly all of the things I do on a daily basis.

I like my iPad, but I don't want it as my desktop.

And sorry, but this push to the cloud is for the birds. People on the east and west coast need to remember that there is a heck of a lot of the country that doesn't have high speed internet yet. I have a good connection at work and at home I have a cable modem that gives me pretty decent speeds at times. But I live in town - a very small one, but still a town. Once you get 4 or 5 miles away, you are limited to dial-up or, in some cases, a wireless connection. But storing everything in the cloud is just asking for problems. How am I suppose to get any work done when a backhoe 50 miles away takes out the internet for a day and my files are stored in the cloud? (And that has happened for both my work and office connections.) My connection to the internet goes down and my files are in the cloud - what the heck am I suppose to do?

To many folks are getting all hyped up about the glitz, glamour, and dreams and are totally losing touch with reality.

All of this contributes to my still using 10.6.8. And I probably bought my last MacPro a month ago. Sure, I'd love the speed of the machines that will be coming out sometime next year and to be able to use Thunderbolt. But I want to control my computer. I don't want it to control me. Remember when Steve Jobs talked about how we shouldn't have to adapt to the computer - it should work the way we do? Why is that being forgotten now?

I have bought Macs because I want to use them not be repairing and tweaking them all the time like so many of my PC using friends do. Yearly updates to the OS and the need to constantly buy updates for software are out of control.

I want to use my computer to do things not to spend my time doing things to it!

LewK

[fjpoblam]

If, as you suggest, the concept of folders is doomed, I can't see how I can do my job. I suppose my imagination's limited. I create and maintain websites. Each has its own folder, parallel to the site. (Each has subfolders, parallel to the site.) All this is very handy for testing. Maybe I read you wrong. But I just can't wrap my pea brain around the idea of doing without discrete folders.

[bastion]

lewk, on 27 November 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

All of this contributes to my still using 10.6.8. ... Yearly updates to the OS and the need to constantly buy updates for software are out of control.

I might agree if they were mandatory. But if you're still using 10.6, they're clearly not mandatory, at least for you.

Quote

To many folks are getting all hyped up about the glitz, glamour, and dreams and are totally losing touch with reality.

Many of the people who decry the changes Apple has made to the OS over the last few years are also losing touch with reality.

[Speculist]

Linking and Syncing across phones, tablets and computers is spectacular, but turning everything over to local police, IRS, and other government officials (who often have personal as well as public lives and interests) as our privacy rights rapidly disappear makes this cross exposure quite dangerous. Apple is in position to add privacy and security to its excellent disruptive capabilities. I wish it would do so and give us all more confidence when allowing our iPhones (and thus AT&T and any government group who are marginally interested) to scoop up and make available all the information on our computers. Of course, Cloud storage of any kind is even more exposed, unless we are always notified (by right of law) when anyone has accessed it directly or while just "passing through on a government project".

[bastion]

fjpoblam, on 27 November 2012 - 01:18 PM, said:

If, as you suggest, the concept of folders is doomed, I can't see how I can do my job. I suppose my imagination's limited. I create and maintain websites. Each has its own folder, parallel to the site. (Each has subfolders, parallel to the site.) All this is very handy for testing. Maybe I read you wrong. But I just can't wrap my pea brain around the idea of doing without discrete folders.

As long as Mac OS X is UNIX-based, you can be confident that the directory idiom you're used to isn't going away. The article is certainly a bit breathless and overwrought, but I think what the author was trrying to convey is the reality that for an increasing number of people the details of the file system are irrelevant and can even be an impediment. For those people, there *can* be a better way to access their data than arbitrary hierarchies of identical general-purpose folders. There's still a file cabinet in the office, but there's no reason you can't have an intern to go fetch the files for you.

Do you open up your hard drive and go into the Applications folder (and possibly subfolders of that) every time you want to run any application? Probably not. You've probably got the ones you use routinely in the dock or a similar 3rd-party launcher interface. Perhaps you've gotten into the habit of using Spotlight as a launcher even for the things you don't use that often. But your applications aren't in the dock or in the Spotlight search results. They're whereever you left them in the file system, and you're using one of those cursed abstractions (on top of several other layers of abstraction) to help you get to it with less effort, time and risk of error.

[fjpoblam]

Oh, and I might add to my above comment: I wonder whether the folks who *develop* iOS/MacOS software use iOS/MacOS systems to manage their *development* activities!

[bastion]

fjpoblam, on 27 November 2012 - 01:33 PM, said:

Oh, and I might add to my above comment: I wonder whether the folks who *develop* iOS/MacOS software use iOS/MacOS systems to manage their *development* activities!

Certainly.

[hagen]

I have no problem learning something new: sure I might be bothered and annoyed for a while, but most-times it can be a better way of doing things. OS 7.5 and 8.x have introduced retarded changes:

1. that natural way of 'scrolling' a mouse: a garbage excuse. Why? as the author pointed out, using a mouse is a learned behaviour. So the natural way to use a mouse is the learned behaviour. Not some brainless 'reversed' scroll. And it is entirely possible to create an API for the touch pad so that it uses the 'reversed' input and leaves the mouse alone. And don't say 'Apple gave you the ability to turn it off'. That is an asinine response and you did not stop to actually use your brain to think of the issue.
2. How many steps did it used to take to put (then edit) an address into the address book from an email? Two. Now it takes three as you need to go through some useless 'contact card'. What the hell is that? It provides ZERO value.
3. No more 'save as'? How is EXPORT intuitive to anyone? Sure Apple now has auto-saving versions right inside programs that use the TM engine. But if you want to get out of that little 'container' brainwave? You need to export. What? I challenge someone, nay, I need someone to explain the rational behind that valueless paradigm change.
4. I'll stop there so you have a chance to ponder your responses without thinking about what I said.

I'll also remind you that I accept change easily. But accepting or denying change requires critical thought, which is woefully missing these days along with stopping and thinking before responding.

Do not seek the treasure! It is NOT Lion or Mountain Lion no matter how much someone tells you they are.

[larryn]

I've got Macs (10.7, 10.6, 10.5) and an iPad (iOS 5) and they interact via Dropbox, iCloud, GoodReader. I started with Apple computers back in the Apple II days and with Macs before OS X, so I'm drilled in folders inside of folders, but they are just organizational tools. I'm open to newer and better ways to organize with meta-data that covers many ways of organizing files and data: folders, time/date, application file types, tags,project names, people's names, etc. I'm sure Apple doesn't think that the iCloud file organizing principle of application ownership is the whole story, just a start. I've gotten used to Google mail that doesn't have folders but does have labels that can be assigned to related messages with multiple labels on a message as well.

I do agree that Apple needs to simplify some of the tasks in OS X but not dumb down the functionality. My guess is that OS X and iOS will stay different but related and able to communicate. Time will tell.

[bastion]

hagen, on 27 November 2012 - 01:48 PM, said:

I have no problem learning something new: sure I might be bothered and annoyed for a while, but most-times it can be a better way of doing things. OS 7.5 and 8.x have introduced retarded changes:

1. that natural way of 'scrolling' a mouse: a garbage excuse. Why? as the author pointed out, using a mouse is a learned behaviour. So the natural way to use a mouse is the learned behaviour. Not some brainless 'reversed' scroll. And it is entirely possible to create an API for the touch pad so that it uses the 'reversed' input and leaves the mouse alone. And don't say 'Apple gave you the ability to turn it off'. That is an asinine response and you did not stop to actually use your brain to think of the issue.
2. How many steps did it used to take to put (then edit) an address into the address book from an email? Two. Now it takes three as you need to go through some useless 'contact card'. What the hell is that? It provides ZERO value.
3. No more 'save as'? How is EXPORT intuitive to anyone? Sure Apple now has auto-saving versions right inside programs that use the TM engine. But if you want to get out of that little 'container' brainwave? You need to export. What? I challenge someone, nay, I need someone to explain the rational behind that valueless paradigm change.
4. I'll stop there so you have a chance to ponder your responses without thinking about what I said.

I'll also remind you that I accept change easily. But accepting or denying change requires critical thought, which is woefully missing these days along with stopping and thinking before responding.

Do not seek the treasure! It is NOT Lion or Mountain Lion no matter how much someone tells you they are.

At the start, and near the end, of this post you declare your willingness to learn new things. In between there, and in closing, the tone is one of such dismissive hostility that it's difficult to grant any credence to that claim.

1. The "natural" scroll direction actually makes a fair amount of sense as the default. I happen to agree with you that it would also make sense to have the mouse wheel setting separate from the trackpad setting, and I've said as much in these forums multiple times. But that issue aside, consider the current reality of the Mac user experience *and* user base. What you're facing is a disconnect in idiom. When you manipulate the physical control device, are you interacting with the content, or are you interacting with the onscreen control? The "learned" behavior is that the scroll wheel changes the position of the scroll bar. The scroll bar that by default for most users in the current Mac OS is hidden almost all of the time. You may not agree with the decision to hide it - I'm not thrilled with it, as I liked the passive feedback it provided about where I was in the document and, potentially, what portion of it was visible - but that's the way it is right now. So the default behavior is to manipulate the thing you can see. The thing on which you're focussed.

2. I'll admit to not having used Mail's ability to create Address Book entries often enough to be familiar with how it *used to* work, but what I'm seeing on my 10.8 machine right now doesn't line up with with your description. Adding a contact is a single step. I have no idea what the "useless 'contact card'" is that bothers you.

3. I find this one difficult to respond to because what you're really asking is for a defense of something Apple did when Apple didn't actually do what you've described. Export is not the replacement for Save As. How is Export intuitive to anyone? How is Duplicate and then Save intuitive to anyone? I don't know "how" they are. I'm not even sure the question makes sense. But they are to some. And the change is hardly valueless. In normal usage it reduces the risk of unintentional data destruction.

[LelandHendrix]

Quote

How am I suppose to get any work done when a backhoe 50 miles away takes out the internet for a day and my files are stored in the cloud? (And that has happened for both my work and office connections.) My connection to the internet goes down and my files are in the cloud - what the heck am I suppose to do? To many folks are getting all hyped up about the glitz, glamour, and dreams and are totally losing touch with reality. All of this contributes to my still using 10.6.8. And I probably bought my last MacPro a month ago. Sure, I'd love the speed of the machines that will be coming out sometime next year and to be able to use Thunderbolt. But I want to control my computer. I don't want it to control me. Remember when Steve Jobs talked about how we shouldn't have to adapt to the computer - it should work the way we do? Why is that being forgotten now? I have bought Macs because I want to use them not be repairing and tweaking them all the time like so many of my PC using friends do. Yearly updates to the OS and the need to constantly buy updates for software are out of control. I want to use my computer to do things not to spend my time doing things to it! LewK

I agree with your points about touchscreen desktop computers--they are an ergonomics nightmare. It just doesn't make ANY sense for touch to be a primary interface for computing environment.

About the cloud, your concerns have been part of the planning for this technology. With iCloud, when you prepare to open a document save in that cloud, it's still there for you even if your Internet suddenly went out. iCloud still works with a local folder of files, and then when the machine has access to the Internet your new files are pushed to the server along with changes to existing files. It doesn't slow you down to the point of being unusable when access stops or is slow.

I don't think anyone currently advocates having ALL your data in the cloud. We realize, even in cities, that sudden outages simply CANNOT stop all work. But there is a lot of value in having documents and data that you're currently working on, available on your desktop and notebook computer, even your tablet and smart phone for a quick review or small change or to email it to someone, without your constantly having to copy and shuffle your files manually between computers and devices. Not to mention, the massive headache issues of which revisions are where, and potentially losing track of what version of a document you've got where.

I don't see anything about new Macs controlling us vs us controlling them. If anything, it's a further streamlining...getting the technology out of the way and letting us do what we do.

And spending time doing what you want, and not doing things to your computer...that's exactly what much of iCloud does. Not having to worry about what disc or thumb drive has the data that we are working with, by keeping active documents and data in places that iCloud manages, so it's where you need it when you need it, without so much hassle.

That's the way I see it at least. Even though I would never dream of placing all of my eggs in one basket by keeping all of my data in a cloud service that required Internet to access at all, I know how iCloud works, and I know that I can turn my internt access off and still be able to open my iCloud documents and even save them! And when Internet reappears, the changes will be synchronized. That's an entirely reasonable approach to me.