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I don't like that bar at the bottom that enlarges and shrinks

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I thought this was a little goofy till I realized why it was there. You can shrink the tool bar down to illegable sizes. When that is the case, the magnification trick makes a lot of sense.

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And the amazing thing is even Microsoft does this. Pop in the Office ver:X CD, and drag and drop a "Microsoft Office" folder to the Applications folder (and probably either using the easially customizable toolbar, or springloaded folders to do so). Install is complete.

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Actually. This has been around since at least the MacOS9 version of Office98.

Well, I'm not saying it should behave exactly like Windows. I just get put off by things I don't like initially. For instance I can see your reasonings behind the bits of UI we've been talking about, but I tend to think that the first thing I would do would be to turn them off, just like I turn off and adjust countless Windows "features" when I get a fresh machine.

First off, what is "Aqua"? I gather that's the general interface of the MacOS? Hmm, that inability to resize the titlebars would be a big point for me. I really disliked the size of them on the machine I tested. Is there no way to adjust it? I keep all my Windows titlebars as small as possible.

I'll check into those classes you mentioned. Like you said, it's a big investment just to try out the Apple experience, but I may give it a try someday. I think I may do my Linux trials first, though, as that would be an easier thing to try

First off, what is "Aqua"? I gather that's the general interface of the MacOS?

Specifically, it's the name of the new user interface that was introduced with Mac OS X.

Luna is the name for the "Fischer-Price OS" user interface that Microsoft introduced in Windows XP.

Luna was clearly designed by a group of drunken, color-blind, myopic camels.


Tony, how can you say such a thing? Don't you think you're being unreasonably harsh? I mean.... myopic?



tanstaafl.

You're right. I should have said drunken color-blind camels with strabismus.

No, myopic was fine... at least I knew what it meant.

/me digs out his dictionary.

Strabismus is the medical term for cross-eyed.

Well, sorta. Folks who are cross-eyed have strabismus, but not all strabismus sufferers are cross-eyed. They could be walleyed or a few other symptoms.

Types of Strabismus

You're right. I should have said drunken color-blind camels with strabismus.

I agree. I like XP better than the last couple attempts from Microsoft (aside from the activation thing), but the first thing I did was rip out the luna interface, personalized menus, the icon hiding in the system tray, etc... It's personally affrontive that my operating system would assume I'm an idiot and that I can't organize my menus and pick what programs I want to run for myself. I would find it more acceptable if they offered an option to choose "idiot mode" or "I-can-do-it-all-by-myself mode" during the install.

Oh...and it's ugly too

Sadly i never have been good enough to dump all that shite and detrius but i have no PC with XP i have had 95,98,98se,Me and win2k and find 2k the best so far.

but OS X has blown them all away only had one total crap out when a dirty dvd locked up the dvd player and i had no idea how to kill it so i had to kill the whole machine.

but the idea of having idiot mode or i know better than the computer mode a great concept it will never happen.

The latest cool thing i have found is the multihead mode of the laptop when i can attach a big monitor and have two different things on the laptop screen and the external monitor.

me thinks i might be wanting a G5 unless i can pick up a cheapo G4 powermac.

i had no idea how to kill it

Command-Option-Escape brings up the ``Force Quit'' dialog. You can also usually control-click on the dock icon if the program's not responding and it'll give you the option to kill it, but that may not have been available if the DVD app had taken over the screen. For that matter I can see that C-O-Esc might not have worked, either, but it probably would have.

There's also a Unix-y way to kill processes, but I won't burden you with that, as I don't think that C-O-Esc would fail when the Unix way would work.

So is the Luna interface basically everything that is the initial alternative to the "classic" theme? I'm on XP at work and I agree, I've been on several computers here and the first thing I do when I sit down is to get rid of all those annoying features.

And I agree it is very ugly. Nothing prettier than green, bright blue, and orange color schemes.

That is so true. As well as I hate having the OS define its directory structure so rigidly. Every install I do includes a registry modification and moving Program files and Documents and Settings to a different disk. What I really really miss is an "expert" installation mode that makes me do all this at the very beginning during the install process...

And yes, I find Luna awful as well. And I either get rid of it or install StyleXP and use some different visual style. But I hate having to waste ram memory for that.

And yes, I find Luna awful as well. And I either get rid of it ... But I hate having to waste ram memory for that.

Best way with XP to ensure the themes don't waste memory is to disable the "Themes" service. That way, XP dosen't load Luna for the login screen.

disable the "Themes" service

Wow, thats always annoyed me. How the login screen had the luna theme. Nice. Thanks!

Making all of an application's windows rise to the top when one of them is clicked is another.

Umm, OS X doesn't do this (unless the other windows are floating pallets). You can have multiple browser windows open with stuff in between then for example. If you click on a window just it will come forward, if you click on the application icon in the dock all the windows will come forward.

-Mike

if you click on the application icon in the dock all the windows will come forward.

It may be that that's what I always end up doing, due to the small screen on my MacOS X machine. Sorry for the misinfo.