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The Register's Silicon Valley correspondent Andrew Orlowski has followed through on his promise to elucidate his reasons for abandoning OS X, at least temporarily, after giving it a good workout.(eight months), and as he puts it "trying to justify the investment. And watching the gold CD-ROM cursor spinning, and spinning."

The problem, says Andrew, is the Aqua user interface, which, if you have followed my own OS X Odyssey musings here on Applelinks, you will know is my own main complaint about X. For me, the most compelling reason to use a Mac has always been the Mac OS GUI, the legacy versions of which I continue to regard as the zenith of desktop user interfaces, for a myriad of reasons -- ease of use; intuitiveness; the extreme flexibility that allows me to do most everything at least three different ways, including MY WAY, and not necessarily Steve's Way or somebody else's way; and the general polished elegance of the whole Mac OS GUI experience.

So when Andrew says:

"I hadn't abandoned OS X because I was disappointed with a functionality deficit - it does a everything a modern OS should do. And then some - the near instant power-on/sleep of the Mac has been improved, and is unique in a modern desktop PC. And it has the best of the old and the new: Cocoa services and AppleScript are powerful environments, which again Apple should be proud of as unique to the platform.... No... it's the User Interface, Stupid.... It's really what marketing types would call a "user experience" issue, but if performance impairs the usage of the machine, then that's bad UI. And performance on OS X is really NOT GOOD.... Aqua has been more a case of a death of a thousand cuts: there's no big flaw so obnoxious it's enough to cause a revolt , but it's felt like a constant hindrance, and the annoyances add up."

I am inclined to agree.

Now I know there are lots of people out there who profess to like Aqua. People have different tastes. And I, as I use OS X more, am beginning to appreciate that there are some things to like in Aqua. However, it is not as good as the legacy Mac GUI by a wide margin. My hope is that someday the goodness can be restored, and I am determined, at least so far, to continue making the transition to X, despite my continued frustrations with the angularity and obtuseness of Aqua.

Andrew Orlowski has itemized his gripes:

1. It's Sticky: For example: "Although Spring Loaded folders and pop-up windows were relatively recent additions to the Mac UI, they're great examples of flexibility that disappeared in Aqua...."

I agree emphatically. Those are two features, along with windowshading, that I miss terribly (and yes, I'm aware that there are hacked workarounds for some of these, but they should be there by default).

Andrew goes on at some length about divers other painful aspects of Aqua, and I concur with them all.

2. It's Slow: "Even throwing a 733MHz G4, with half a GB of memory, at Aqua has worrying side effects. The sheer horsepower of producing some of the Aqua Eye Candy has caused me skips when replaying MP3 files.

Too true, Andrew. You should try it on a 500 MHz Pismo with 256 MB of RAM.

3. It's Patronising: "Face it, you're using one of those large-print books created for adults with reading difficulties."

Right again. A triumph of form (dubious at that) over substance.

4. Obey The Steve: "Apple has decided that the individualists who use the software can't change a thing about it. "

I addressed this in my opening comments

5. When Metaphors Roamed The Earth: "Docks aren't necessarily evil....But OS X's Dock is a truly terrible Dock, solely because of Apple's decision to base it for essentially incompatible UI tasks: launching, switching."

Jack of all trades and master of none. Bring back the Application Switcher, et al.

6. The Dock Must Go: "By insisting on some traits of NeXT-ish behaviour, but bowing to the most vociferous Apple loyalists, OS X can at times be a horrible hybrid, and you can reasonably argue that Apple has ruined not just one great UI, but two."

Interesting point. I can't comment knowledgably because I've never used NeXT.

Andrew's article will likely annoy OS X fans, but I'm a consummate Mac fan, and I can't argue with many of his criticisms. Aqua is at best a mediocre and annoying interface compared with the legacy Mac GUI. It just doesn't work as well, at least for the way I use computers. Andrew is not anti-Mac, but he's not an uncritical cheerleader either. He notes in closing:

"There are still other reasons to covet Apple computers - the helpful community, the above average build quality (we'll charitably overlook the recent run of iffy mice and keyboards), and the buoyant after-market which means your investment is still worth something three years down the line. But the Apple user interface is no longer one of them. In fact we have to conclude that with OS X, you're buying Apple in spite of the user interface, not because of it."

This could all have been avoided (still could be fixed?) by Apple providing the option of a real Mac OS GUI for OS X.

You can read Andrew's column here.
http://theregister.co.uk/content/39/23531.html

And for counterpoint, you can find a much more positive evaluation of OS X here:

http://www.birdhouse.org/macos/beos_osx/

Charles W. Moore

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