Okay, here is what I mean. Back in the good old days, DM was mostly techie postings.

OS 8/OS 9 problems galore. The solution was to delete this preference or get your system disk out and drag over a new extension. Hell, you had extension management, you had ram doubler, you had control panel conflicts.

It was almost fun to tinker around with OS 9.

Now with OS 10.3/10.4 there seems to so much less tinkering underneath the hood, so to speak. Yeah, X has its problems, but unlike OS 8/9, it really does take a techie to fix it rather than a shade tree mechanic.

Just thinking in terms of way there is more OT traffic than OS postings. Just a thought.

Bryan

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Bryan
______________________________________________________
Mac Mini 2.6 GHz, 16 GB ram Big Sur
MacBook Pro (Early 2008 model) 2.4 GHz, 4 GB ram, 200 GB hard drive/ Mac OS 10.9.1
iPhone XR
Location: Cincinnati

i suspect that you're afraid of the terminal.

there is _plenty_ to tinker with there.

Fire up the Terminal, use man and apropos liberally! Remember, the heart of MacOS X is UNIX. Start with the Wikipedia entry for UNIX, and go from there. Do a search for Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, then for Brian Kernighan, Steve Johnson, Alfred Aho, and Peter Weinberger for starters. William Joy (csh) and Richard Stallman (FSF/GNU, emacs, ...) are worth reading about. Search for the July-August 1978 issue of the Bell Laboratories Technical Journal; many of the seminal ideas in UNIX and its utilities are described in it.

$ man man
$ man apropos
$ man sh
$ man csh
$ man awk
$ man emacs
$ man perl

That should keep you off the streets and out of trouble for a bit. ;)

MattK is totally correct, OSX has plenty to tinker with, go to OSXHints and see for yourself.
[www.osxhints.com]

BGnR

True enough, the possibilities to play and tinker in OS X are almost limitless...

But I think the point Grumpyguy is making is that the TYPICAL user now does not HAVE to do as much troubleshooting and tinkering as was true in earlier OS's.

I tend to agree with that assessment just from my personal observations of users as I switched from OS 9 to OS X.

That's not to say that there is any lack of room for growth in the user knowledge of the people I work with... but for most day to day tasks, things "just work".

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

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--
Eureka, CA

perhaps it is because I've been running Unix boxes since 1978, but I find that I do far less trouble shooting on the family's OSX machines than I did on the OS9 and earlier ones.

Of course, it could be because the kids are older and they cannot get into the System Folder.

'Too Mature'? No way. I want an OS that requires so little maintenance that it takes no time away from using the machine.

And that's possible-- how?

Is my solid state TV (OK, still CRT based) "too" mature because I don't get to play with the 6EB6s, 6AU6s, or fiddle with fine tuning?

Are my radios "too" mature because there's no cat-whisker to fiddle with?

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When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

Everybody matters or nobody matters.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

If by "mature" you mean that my wife (yes not my six year old) can no longer dump vital system components into the trash and empty it just to hear Oscar sing, "I love trash, I love it because it's trash". Then yes I agree, it is too "mature".

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BT


Signed parental releases are on file for all tattooed minors.

> Are my radios "too" mature because there's no cat-whisker to fiddle with?

Now there's an image...a cell phone with galena crystal and cat's whisker wirepoint.
Manually adjusted for just the right diode junction.
Great Scott! I really don't need to return to that!


;)

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=DH
Donkey (Ye Olde Farte of ye Internette) Hotay is a Tilted Windmill® enterprise.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2006 12:39PM by Donkey Hotay.

>>If by "mature" you mean that my wife (yes not my six year old) can no longer dump vital system components into the trash and empty it just to hear Oscar sing, "I love trash, I love it because it's trash". Then yes I agree, it is too "mature".

Wow. That brought back memories. Memories of a Mac IIci running 7.1.

Yes, it is too mature. It used to like to hang out and party with me and my friends until the wee hours, now it leaves early (if it can be bothered to hang out at all) because it has to "get up and go to work in the morning".

I don't miss the kind of tinkering I used to have to do with OS 9 and earlier. It often took hours out of my life when I just desperately wanted/needed to get my work done and go home.

After about 1990, I had at least two bootable drives on any system that I used, so I could sometimes boot from the unhosed drive and fix the other when things quieted down.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2006 02:22PM by ka jowct.

It is OS "X" isn't it? As in XXX for mature audiences! hardee har har

I marvel at how OS X now takes care of the user, instead of the other way around. As for Terminal, now there's a bowl of cherries waiting to be eaten! You want a place to play around in OS X, that's the one...it's just dying to be explored.

When I switched from 9.2.2, cold turkey, to OS X 10.3.5, from a G4/500DP to a G5 1.8GHz DP PowerMac, it was a whole lot easier than I'd every imagiined it would be. All of a sudden I found I could have 6-10 applications open at the same time without crashing the machine; I didn't have to restart the computer just to gain back memory from leakage in poorly written programs; there were no "extension conflicts" or control panel problems.
In short, I was then able to devote all of my time to getting things done, not getting things fixed on a daily basis.

It's certain there are less tech posts here in the forum, but when there is one it's usually pretty interesting, and it gets lots of action because OS X tech problems are often more complex than OS 9's were. OTOH, many OS X issues are solved with experience...some things are simply done differently than they were in OS 9.

And OS X continues to evolve, and improve with each new release and update. I'm a completely satisfied user of OS X Tiger...can't imagine a better OS to have to depend on.

________________

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What's the difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make some sense.

> Is OS X too mature?

'Just to name a few issues...

Have you navigated through multiple folders in the Finder lately? ('Notice your display settings don't always stick?) Have you opened a preference panel lately? (notice the lack of a hierarchical menu a la OS 9 or Windows to open system preferences?) Have you tried to repair your startup drive from the Disk Utility? (It doesn't work.)

No, it still has a long way to go.

Thank goodness for AppleScript and the Unix command line.

As for Terminal, now there's a bowl of cherries waiting to be eaten!

For me, more like a can of worms. I'm a lousy typist, and have no desire to mess with command-line interfaces.

MacMagus;

I agree that OS X is still, and should still, be evolving...
But I find it interesting that ALL of the examples you mention boil down to interface preferences, and NOT stability issues. Although you could make an argument about the Disk Utility not repairing the startup drive...

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

I think a lot of the "tinkering" back then was because of all the upgrading people were doing. Because there wasn't anything new to buy, so we were always screwing around. And screwing up, at least some of us. :-D Also, lots of problems caused by extension conflicts and scsi conflicts.

I never had major or lasting SCSI problems, but I followed a few simple rules. The most important ones were: using short, high-quality cables, high-quality terminators, and good enclosures; and downloading (and using) the setup guides/jumper settings for every drive I got.

Too bad none of my SCSI expertise is of any use anymore.

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My life goes smoothly and in regular intervals

> But I find it interesting that ALL of the examples you
> mention boil down to interface preferences, and NOT stability issues.

It's based on Unix. Any instability would have to be ADDED.