Makovody

The closer we got to the WWDC '08 date, the more closely Habr acquired Apple-oriented news. People guessed, imagined, gossiped, reported, muddied the water, sowed horror and disgust in the hearts of haters of the fashionable tendency to create a cult from Apple's products. It is natural that for every tendency there will be opponents - conservatives, people of principle, or just an appendage of the crowd that you don’t feed with bread - give to someone to talk. This is so wonderful - to defend its position in an unreasoned dispute. As you understand, this equally applies to people who tear their mouths behind Jobs, and to people who make fun of such people.

If I may, I also want to cloud the water. As Jobs said in his introductory films to WWDC '08, Apple is a three-legged stool. The legs are: Mac OS X, iTunes, iPhone. Sales of other software and hardware manufactured by the company are wrapped around these products: whether they are accessories, synchronization tools, or some sort of lotion. The iPod and iPhone have become known and recognized devices for some time, but the third leg of the Apple stool is still ignored or becomes a victim of the hatred of the crowd and, less often, fans of free software. So, the more I have lately stumbled upon questions like "what's so special about this Mac OS X," the more my hands sweated from the desire to deploy another graphomanism on a favorite topic. But let's stick to the facts this time, abstracting from a fanatically burning gaze.

Crowd

To Mac OS X come in different ways. Sometimes it's a desire to try Apple computers after they meet, for example, with iPods. Sometimes this is a friend's advice. Sometimes it is, so to speak, the effect of the crowd, the effect of fashion. For me, Apple has long been "some kind of computer company in the last century." Apparently, because the first time I read about Macintosh in a book dedicated to working with "personal computer", in the history section. After that, all threw it out of my head.

I noticed the second breath of Apple when I discovered the phenomenon of podcasts and subscribed to Radio T. He also spat on the eternal theme there for a long time (thanks to Umputun for not bending her), and with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 (which is Leopard) he began to drag on. It turned out that my classmate, my former classmate, another acquaintance from school, some friends on the Internet are also interested in this. Now we all became nasty makovodami, without stopping at that. We transferred or almost transferred our girls and family to the Apple equipment. We tell friends about our computers, and they also become interested. It was today that another friend of mine “broke down”. He's going to borrow a MacBook.
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All this - the usual crowd fashion. But the worst thing is that everyone, realizing that they are behaving like occultists, comes to taste. Makovodam like to look in the mouth of Steve Jobs, like telling everyone what "fast, reliable, beautiful, and so on and so on" their computers. But not because it is some kind of complex, but because it is banal fun! No one really thinks that Mac OS X is the one and only OS. I have Fedora 8 and 9 on my home and office computers. My friend Makovod likes to cut his Ubuntu in his free time. And of course, someone has a virtual machine with an institute version of Windows XP or a recklessly purchased laptop with Windows Vista, which will also come in handy once, because Wine is not a panacea. It's not about the operating system. The point is in the ordinary business of a person - to gab about their (perhaps frivolous) advantages, showing off their uniqueness. I bet that if Mac OS X’s market share were three times bigger than other systems, there wouldn’t be an obsession to shout at every corner that Apple has all the nice stuff packed, and does a regular Taiwanese PC come in a painted cardboard box?

Put yourself in order

For almost every platform, there is a guide to building an interface. It is written, of course, for what purpose - so that all programs look like relatives and work on similar principles. All this exists for all, without exception, of popular environments, both for Apple and for GNOME , and for KDE , and - oddly enough - for Windows .

Linux developers under GNOME and KDE are trying to follow these recommendations, because such programs will inevitably be evaluated and corrected by the relevant community, which will polish them to a single appearance.

A bit different is the case with the recommendations for Mac OS X. On this platform, there is also a community that, as a rule, rejects an unfamiliar interface simply by the fact that it is not used to seeing in its operating system not similar programs. Since most Mac OS X programs are monetized, developers are forced to take into account recommendations for a single interface, otherwise users will simply give up their money to competitors. If the program is weakly monetized or free of charge at all, then it is usually created what is called “with love for the platform”. I can assume that this happens again from the crowd and fashion. Such developers, apparently, write the program not only for the user, but also for their favorite fluffy operating system. In addition to these moments, there is the Apple Design Awards - the annual awards for the most innovative, beautiful and friendly programs presented at WWDC.

But how are things with Windows? Why have so many programs been created for this platform that have nothing at all to do with the official recommendations on the interface, except, perhaps, the “OK” button in the dialog boxes? Perhaps because among the developers for this platform, everyone knows how to do better. Developers write programs for themselves, and not for the user, who already has a cool head from the interface built by a student, self-confident freelancer, a small company and a large outsourcing company. Everyone wants to make an elegant decision, but unfortunately, not everyone was born Jeff Raskin. If you wrote programs under Windows (which is inevitable, if you studied programming yourself, on courses or at an institution of higher education), did you know that it is recommended to build an interface for them according to special rules?

Computer for parents

Mac OS X and Linux graphics are pretty hard to break by accident. Any attempt to change or delete a system resource or a protected directory will entail asking for an administrator password. This is somewhat similar to the annoying “Cancel or Allow” windows that are annoying in Windows Vista, only occurs ten times less often, and if, from the user's point of view, when installing certain programs and — more rarely — when changing important settings in the control panel. Just because on other systems access rights are already correctly written.

You do not need to install a firewall, because the ports are controlled by the system. You do not need to install an antivirus. Not only because “all viruses write under Windows, because the platform is more popular,” as everyone used to think. Because malicious programs will not really be able to do anything if they are not launched from under the superuser (what are the chances that this will happen?).

One day I got tired of supporting the telephone hotline for my parents, who sometimes take a job at home and recruit it into Microsoft Office. They constantly had something flying and falling, the firewall asked questions, the programs were eager to be updated (each with its own, not like the other window). From time to time it was necessary to make visits to them in order to start defragmentation (something that UNIX does not need), otherwise the system would begin to slow down. I ended up translating the documents into OpenOffice.org, after which I installed and filed Ubuntu for them. If I had extra money for a gift, I would buy them at least a Mac Mini - then I wouldn’t have to cut anything. Because it is “a computer that I would buy for my mummy”.

Just not bad

Not everyone had time to notice that in Mac OS X everything is easier than anywhere else. And this is not a very big exaggeration. Suppose you install many programs in Mac OS X by dragging one icon into the Applications folder. Most of the programs here are one .app file archive in which all the libraries and program settings are located. This means that I can (and have already done so), upload one file - the program - to the archive and send it to my friend. He will unpack it at his place, drag it to where it suits him, and he will have exactly the same program. For the end user, there is no registry, no .dll, no configuration files and external resources. An advanced user can get all this from a .app file, with a special desire.

Programs try not only to look and work beautifully, but Cocoa's graphic shell and the principles of navigation in the system compel them to do so. None of the programs have a menu under the heading - it is brought up in a strip called menu bar.

Its contents vary depending on the active window. I find it very correct. Think about how often you had to look for something in the top menu, instead of using a hot key or a button on the toolbar?

Cocoa, on the other hand, dictates a certain principle of integration of interface elements during its construction. Suppose a toolbar is collapsed using the button on the right side of the window title. Or leaving the drawer panels, which are convenient to use to group the list of windows.

Well, a rare program will deploy to you the full range of its functions. Usually, “in sight” is only the minimum of the most frequently used functions, while others “open up” and are shown on demand. This is especially apparent in dialog boxes. Thus, the default print window consists of two drop-down lists and four buttons. And in most cases it is really convenient.

Cult

Someone is obsessed with Apple technology, someone is just joking, someone is too serious to take part in holivarah. But you can say one thing - makovods ( macboys ... this is where many exist) did not appear by themselves. They were so called a society that was conservative enough to not be able to move away from the “computer = PC with Windows” paradigm. It was just that it was accepted, and it’s not interesting to the average user that he’s installed there. The main thing is that he can click on the “Internet” icon and read his favorite news feed, so that he can click on the icon in the form of a sheet and edit further his Word-document. He simply does not know that there are systems where it is easier and more pleasant to do all this. Or does not believe - and then he laughs at makovodami, which differ from him only in that they are accustomed to pay a little extra and buy a good product.