Hey, I like the Register and their style of reporting. However, if you read all of Andrew Orlowski's posts over the last 9 months, you will see he has never really embraced OS X. And you know what, that's OK.
The thing that really bothers me about the minority of people bitching about OS X's interface is that they are all bitching about the same things, and just about every issue they complain about can either be adjusted to suit their preferences, or at least modified with a free third party app.
For instance, if you don't like the dock, DON'T USE IT. Download ASM (freeware), or Menustrip 2.0 ($12), and get back your Application Switcher Menu. Or download FruitMenu and get back your customizeable Apple Menu. Set the Dock to hide and never deal with it again. Downoad SNAX and replace your Finder. It's that simple.
I was not completely enamoured with the Dock when OS X was first released. However, in time, I grew to like it, then love it, then I completely abandoned the previously mentioned tools and relied solely on the Dock.
Is it perfect? No. I can still think of a few enhancements to it that would make me happy. But for the general masses, it works quite well. And for people who are new to computers, it works AMAZINGLY well. Apple clearly designed the Dock for the lowest common denominator, and that's fine. Just so long as they realize power users need extra features and they get implemented over time, I'm OK with it. As it is, I feel the Dock is about 85% there. Enough that it doesn't get in my way too much and is helpful when I need it...
The biggest thing I think Mr. Orlowski fails to realize is that OS X is like going back to the egg. Square one. OS 9 had a good interface, but it was far from perfect, and most people forget this point - more than half of the "neat" things we like about it came from third party sources originally. Apple only incorporated them in to the OS when people cried loud enough for them to know what they wanted. And how long did OS 9's interface have to arrive at it's final incarnation? Over 17 years.
Still not convinced? Let's run down the list of "features" of OS 9 that started their life as third party shareware.
1) The customizeble Menu Bar Clock
2) Pop Up Folders
3) Windowshade
4) System Sounds
5) Themes
6) Sticky Notes
7) The Extension Manager
8) PPP Control Panel
9) Tear off Menus (came via Next purchase)
And I'm sure there are lots more I'm forgetting. Most of these features didn't ship up until at least System 7.5, which was released in the early 90's. Apple had almost 10 years of development on the Mac OS GUI at that point.
I realize your argument will be that Apple, having put all that development in to OS 9 and it's GUI, should have just taken that GUI and put it on OS X. Here's why I disagree with that.
OS 9's GUI, while heralded as the best GUI available for an commercial OS, still has some major drawbacks. For starters, there is no easy way to drill down to a folder that is several levels deep. Sure, you can use an alias. But aliases are confusing to novice users. You could also create a pop up folder. But if you have several of these, they quickly litter the bottom of your screen. Not to mention, if you use the Control Strip, it will obscure a good portion of that Pop up folder real estate.
In OS X, you can get to that folder easily in a number of ways. First, you can still make an alias to that folder on your desktop. Even easier, you can drag that folder to the Dock. If you don't like to use the Dock, you can drag that Folder to your Finder's toolbar Window and easily access it from there. Also, the Column view gives you a Window that not only shows you where you are, but has "breadcrumbs" from where you started at least 3 levels. OS 9 never had anything that intuitive.
I think Apple did a decent job in stripping away what was wrong with OS 9's GUI and supplanting it with new, more efficient ways of getting things done in OS X. It's still a work in progress, as any OS is. But it is better than any other GUI out there, including WinXP, and especially OS 9.
And finally, about the speed issue. OS X 10.1 may not do everything as fast as OS 9. But overall, even on a machine like a G4/400, it handles the majority of tasks better than OS 9. Case in point - Mr. Orlowski mentions rebooting in to OS 9 and being amazed at how fast IE runs. However, in OS 9, try to do anything else while IE launchs and you'll be reminded that OS 9's multitasking is cooperative, meaning certain tasks completely monopolize the system and lock you out from doing anything at all. Granted this may only be for a few seconds, but in those seconds under OS X, I may switch over to check my e-mail, or check on a render I'm currently doing in Lightwave, etc.
OS X will run on anything with a G3 or better. WindowsXP will run on anything better than a PII233. You wouldn't catch me running XP on anything less than a PIII600, and I wouldn't run OS X on anything less than a G3/G4 400. Yeah, it will run, but OS X is the OS of the future, and Apple simply couldn't (or didn't want to) get the speed out of the older machines to run the OS at acceptable levels. This shouldn't be a big surprise. Apple is in the hardware business. They want you to buy new hardware to run their latest OS. OS X is designed around pushing the hardware envelope. This is how progress is made. Hardware and software continually leapfrog one another. We now have an OS that can take advantage of the current hardware and our future hardware. The drawback is that it doesn't run (as) great on hardware from 2 years ago. That's how progress is made.
I'm sorry Mr. Orlowski found it necessary to boot back in to OS 9 and ditch X. I do webdesign for a living and have been using OS X exclusively since 10.1 came out. The funny thing is, the other day, after defragging/optimizing my harddrives with NUM, I accidentally booted back in to OS 9 for the first time since September. I decided to try and do my work for the day in OS 9 instead of X. I figured I'd see a speed gain since a few of the apps I use (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash) are all OS 9 native. Boy - was I wrong. Aside from constantly looking for the Dock and missing my Finder Toolbar and Column view, I had to deal with all of the quirks that prompted me to leave OS 9 in the first place.
The bottom line is OS X is nothing like new Coke. If it were, Apple would have already recanted and pulled the existing product and restablished the Classic OS as it's future. Apple has sold most of it's hardware in 2001 because of OS X, and will continue to do so. I'm sure we'll see additional gems from OS 9 reappear in X (Spring Loaded folders are coming back for 10.2), but OS X is now the Mac OS of the present and future. The masses really enjoy it, and I'm afraid those who don't are a very small minority.
Sorry Andy....
