Alternate.org

Apple actually cares about this sort of thing. Which is odd. Which is rare. Which is why they deserve gushing adulation now and then. They actually put the time and energy and labor into creating a gorgeous package most people will toss anyway, and why they include a first-time welcome experience, with subtle music, with flowing lush clean graphics, one that will never be repeated, just because.

This is the point. Detail and nuance and texture and a sense of how users actually feel, what makes them smile, what makes the experience worthy and positive and sensual instead of necessary and drab and evil

These are the things that are nearly dead in our mass-consumer culture, things normally reserved for elitist niche markets and swanky boutiques and upscale yuppie Euro spas and maybe cool insider mags like I-D and Metropolis and dwell. They are most definitely not to be expected of mass-market gadget makers. This is why it matters. This is why it’s important.

Aw. Look at that. His first Mac. Welcome to the real world, child.

Via SVN (you don’t need a link, you know where it is): Macromedia Central: a Sherlock-style app. Written. In. Flash. A desktop app. Written in Flash.

You can downlaod and install it via a Flash UI within the webpage which seems scary and cool to me at the same time. The app runs and…

Not as good as Sherlock. Its very impressive that it’s Flash, but it has a few major shortfalls for me:

Unresponsive UI
Aliased text
UI is a little too much like a web-app for me to want to have on my desktop
I just don’t dig mouse-overs on scrollbars. That feels wrong to me
It seems to make everything else running hang a little bit. Uncool.

Now, that’s not to say it doesn’t have its pros. Tha data transfer is faster than you’d expect. The Flash movement in the UI is nice, but I prefer Aqua’s smooth transitions to Flash’s clunky ones. Also, I don’t use applications because of the fact that it’s neat they’re written the way that they are.

Of course I could also spend more than 10 minutse in it before passing judgement. Go see for yourself.

So in order to offset my last post with something to prove Alternate’s not dying, I’m going to spackle you with my latest impressions of Panther.

No. I’m not a developer. Yes, it was procured with BitTorrent. Now hush.

First thing a lot of people want to know about is the Finder. I love it. The action menu mirrors the functionality of a right- or control-click, I’ve never really used it, but I could see a first-time user getting the hang of it. The customizable sidebar is a thousand times more easy to use that the regular ole Cocoa top-bar in Jaguar. In my build (7b44), you can set the folder a new Finder window will open. No more choosing between Home and Computer anymore! I have mine set to “Current Projects” which is managed by a PHP script I wrote. The new Open/Save dialog boxes go along with this, as they use a similar UI. Shortcuts on the left, browsing on the right in one of the three different metaphors. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself not using the Open dialog much anymore because…

…Exposê makes the Finder instantly and insanely accessible. I use my Desktop again! Just slide the mouse down to the bottom-right corner and I have my Desktop available, with all my other windows’ edges a wee bit visible and lower opacity clinging to the screens edges. Click the Finder icon in the dock and get a new Finder window by itself (which, again, opens up Current Projects), find the file I’m looking for, double-click it or drag it over to its respective app icon, and all my windows come sliding back, and my app is opening the file. I use the desktop show thingy much more than the much-touted all-window minimizer, which in my opinion, takes too long to find the window you’re looking for, as there’s no predictable place for your window to end up. Yes, it’ll go to the same place every time given an almost-same number of windows but when you a. have a million windows to choose from and b. use a 1600×1200 resolution, each window is barely discernable from the next and you really only know which one you’re selecting because of the mouseover that tells you the window’s name. Like I said, I don’t use it. When I use someone else’s machine with Jaguar though, I find myself intuitively mousing over the bottom right to get the desktop, and when nothing happens, I get disappointed. I think that’s a big point to make: mouse gestures were so easily implemented into my workflow that I end up really more dependent on them that I expected I ever would be.

Speed: I’m like 10 releases behind, and I see no reason to try to find the newest ones. This thing is fast. My aging 533 with 896mb of RAM was like a brand-new machine, easily equaling a 667 or 733 machine with Jaguar. I see speed increases easily in the 20-30% range, with Photoshop 7 being the most welcome. Save For Web comes up instantly, etc.

The general UI is cleaner than Jaguar and definitely feels more professional without all those stripes. The new tabs are very nice and the darker wells/fieldset-type backgrounds are very striking.

The only apps that don’t work from Jaguar are the Apple-issued ones (iTunes, iMovie, iChat, Safari) and you have to use Panther-specific versions of those. Otherwise, application support is phenomenal. There were a few UI bugs in BBEdit but they seem to have been squashed, minus the ever-annoying and really stupid one where when I command-tab from BBEdit to Safari and hit Reload, my keyboard stops working. Other than that, this OS is a dream to use and will definitely be worth whatever it costs when it comes out, which, despite what your opinion may be, I will certainly pay. I’ve paid for every major MacOS upgrade since 8.0. So nyeh.

Holy shazbot.