“October was a big month for Apple, as the company rolled out a slew of new hardware and software that included the video iPod, Aperture professional photo-editing software, and professional-level, ‘quad-core’ G5 Power Mac desktop computers,” Rebecca Freed writes for PC World. “On the lower end, the PowerBook G4 line of notebooks got upgraded as well, with higher-resolution screens and longer battery life on the 15-inch and 17-inch models–Apple says the batteries last up to 5.5 hours. More pixels on-screen is great for making icons and type look sharp, but this is a mixed blessing: It also makes everything appear smaller, and OS X doesn’t make it particularly easy to change the size of desktop elements.”
MacDailyNews Note: In Finder, hit Command-J, change icon and text sizes. That’s not “particularly easy?” Hate the keyboard? In Finder, choose View>Show View Options and adjust icon and text sizes. The iPod is not a “video iPod,’ it just an iPod that happens to be video-capable. An important distinction that shows Apple isn’t charging for video capability, it’s throwing it in as a free bonus.
Freed also takes a look at Apple’s new iMac G5 the the full article here.
Advertisement: The New iPod with Video. The ultimate music + video experience on the go. From $299. Free shipping.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple enhances PowerBooks with higher-resolution displays, longer battery life – October 19, 2005
To Kenzo and others who think Windows “advanced” appearance settings are useful… You’re Mistaken!
Windows is famous for filling the interface up with advanced options on top of advanced options. This is great for people who have nothing better to do with their time than wade through (usually pointless) options screens rather than getting something done.
The Windows XP appearance options are, as an earlier writer here said, the “illusion” of control. After all, you’re still stuck with basically the same old junky interface. Why would anyone want to change the height of a toolbar? Or a button? On a Mac, those are already optimized to be the correct size (the optimal size) for usability. On Windows, they’re not, so you have to give users the ability to tweak things if they have the time.
If you really want to customize the interface, it’s simple on a Mac. Use a Guikit (see http://www.macthemes.net or http://www.guikit.com etc). There are freeware tools to apply guikits if you don’t want to use ShapeShifter, but Shapeshifter is so easy (and cheap) I would never bother with that myself.
With a guikit, you can change EVERYTHING about the interface, and you have a gazillion options to choose from, though you only need to make one click on a mouse in the end to apply your choice. If you really want to customize it, get ThemePark and go at it! Now you can change every little piece of the interface to your heart’s content. But again, you have to have the time.
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Most people think Aqua is pretty great as it is. The article’s point was that a higher resolution means smaller gui bits. Well, duh! That’s why many Windows users I know are still using 800×600 resolution. I knew someone who for years kept using 640×480 because they didn’t know their monitor would support a higher resolution. Each year or two, their monitor would get bigger, but they’d still keep going at 640×480. Do you think that would ever happen if they were using a Mac? No!
Know why? Because a Mac would be smart enough to change the resolution for them to an optimal setting. A Windows machine expects the user to figure out that they can increase the resolution, and then (the hard part) where in the system to make that change. Then, of course, you have to suffer through a “test” of the new resolution. Why? Because Windows lets you set all sorts of resolutions that are totally inappropriate for your monitor. A Mac defaults to showing you only the settings that make sense.
Great!
Now I know what the extra 72,000,000 lines of code in Windows does.
OK. Mac user at hoome, Windows user at work.
I typically have my 17″ CRT at work set to 1600×1200. A crazy resolution, but more dots are better. Then I adjust a lot of things to be bigger, and things look smoother and better and easier to read. At least for me.
I don’t really think I ever missed this functionality on a mac. It’s not really needed. The big problem on Windows is that it’s easy to wreck, but some small adjustments are nice in order to maximise real-estate. The reason we don’t have them on the mac is that Jobs does not want to give us the option to make it look hideous. And I think he’s probably right.
Leland Scott, thanks for the constructive criticism. I much prefer this type of comment to “You’re a dork.”.
Anyway, I see your point but i disagree. Many of these comments about the sizing features in windows assume the user is an idiot. For an experienced user, it could be advantageous to have the ability to customize certain elements. What would REALLY help is what Nick is recommending, a universal DPI setting.
You are wrong however about guikits. I’ve used shapshifter since the beginning (and themepark before that). There are serious limitations to this application. It helps to make the interface more pleasant, but does nothing for usability. Particularly when dealing with fonts.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there that have a hard time seeing. Some of those people would like to keep their high-resolution but have larger fonts. or maybe everything is fine for a user, but they have that ONE problem with the scroll arrows being a little too small.
I was about to submit this when i read Hywel’s comments. I’m a mac/win user at work and a mac user at home. I’ve never needed to change the settings on my mac, but I’ve also never used a mac at 1920×1600 resolution. I find on my PC once i go past a certain resolution i just have to tweak something. I assumed the same would be the case on my mac, but every mac i’ve used has had a fixed resolution with a display designed for that particular machine (imac or powerbook).
eh. i don’t know what the hell i’m talking about =)
If this isn’t KoolAid drinking, I dont know what is; “The reason we don’t have them on the mac is that Jobs does not want to give us the option to make it look hideous. And I think he’s probably right.”
There have been thoughtful posts on how the largest displays make menus and stuff look small. Windows does give you the options of mucking with them if you so desire.
If Steve Jobs said “jump off this cliff”, would you? Or, if he sold clothes and only made jeans and black turtlenecks availabe (becuase all other clothes give the customer the option to look hideous) would you not complain?
RDL, RDL, RDL…
zupchuck: If Steve Jobs said “DON’T jump off this cliff”, you would jump? You are drinking Kool-Aid too, just another flavor…
The problem in this PC-World article is that the reviewer failed to acknowledge that there ARE some GUI elements that can be easily resized in OS X. Sure Windows has currently more options, but that doesn’t justify saying that OS X has none.
By the way Apple is working on true resolution independence for GUI elements, which will be much more useful than the crappy Windows options. There is already a tool included in the Tiger dev tools that has a slider to adjust the screen DPI and UI element sizes.
Maybe it will be ready for 10.5 Leopard, or maybe the one after, so don’t think Apple doesn’t care about this problem.
many mac-idiots above. Some are hard to spot. The easy ones to spot are the ones that accuse Windows users as being idiots (morons, etc.).
To alan smalan:
I generally find the MDN takes annoying. I come here for a bit of Jerry Springer-like indulgence.
Furthermore, as a note to MDN, you’re always trying to convert people, but I would NEVER send anyone I’m trying to convert here. You’re attidude is elitist and sophmoric. And the site is filled with a bunch of morons. This page is a perfect example. People who haven’t done any research accusing writers of not doing reasearch. No offense to the few intelligent commentors.
t is more difficult to do that on a Mac. I’ve never wanted to do these things on either systems.
—
the guys who go nuts with modding seem to find wacky ugly configurations then get rid of them soon enough.. you think that’s what PC world was talking about? I highly doubt it– it wouldn’t be a criticism of the OS that you can’t configure things that most people don’t want to configure.. size of the scroll bars??! that’s weak.. I’ll let you know when i suddenly get the urge to change the thickness of the white menu bar
…
*snort.. let’s make the apple menu logo 3X as big!!! *snort
Virtual Twin said:
If Steve Jobs said “DON’T jump off this cliff”, you would jump? You are drinking Kool-Aid too, just another flavor…
I’m not saying I would purposely do the opposite of what SJ says. What I am saying, is that I think independently and don’t take SJ’s word for it. So, in some sense, I drink KoolAid of a different flavor – mine.
That’s a big difference than getting sucked into the RDL.
Hey MDN! She’s right it is hard to adjust desktop elements. Desktop elements such as buttons, scroll bars, menu text, etc. Give her a break! Macs suck anyway.
There’s an addendum to the original article:
(11/7 update: A number of readers inform me that you can adjust the size of icons and type on the Mac desktop, in any of three ways: You can click on an open area of the desktop (the Finder) and then choose View, Show View Options from the menu bar at the top of the screen; you can right-click on an open area of the desktop and choose Show View Options, or you can press Cmd-J.
My correspondents are right: this isn’t difficult, but I don’t believe it’s intuitive. I would expect these controls to be located in the Display System Preferences. But this information is available in the Mac Help, so I guess you can chalk this up to obtuseness on my part.)
What I fouund strange was the Ad for the dell laptop on the review page which seemed to use the default OS X desktop.Is this wishful thinking on Dell’sPart ??????????
i dont understand what you kids are arguing about. you change it once. then you kinda forget about that feature. then youre good to go for a long time. i mean i totally forgot about that until i read this. come on.
nerds.
besides mac is better than windows, steve. youre just afraid of greatness.
-im out biatches.
PC World, in reaction to threats from Microsoft as becoming too “Mac friendly”, recently published a article designed to troll Mac users to visit their site and show they are still in bed with friend M$.
PC World then records the hit traffic IP numbers and sends the data to Microsoft for marketing analysis.
MDN Word: “ask” Like dude, all you need to do is ask Santa for a PowerMac G5 for the holidays and sh*t a rock of coal when a Dell appears.
20 clicks and you too can jack up your Winpuke GUI to godawfully tasteless fabbo beauty with freakin’ squawkin’ jungle animals for a pointer! After figuring out that the freakin’ mac mouse don’t have enough buttons I couldn’t get my Stargate XP-1 cursors to show up since there’s no Start menu – jeez macs bite. — Stevo B.
mw=then • Then my bald head exploded – Yow!
“What Mac OS X needs is a global DPI setting…”
Yes.
“You are wrong however about guikits. I’ve used shapshifter since the beginning (and themepark before that). There are serious limitations to this application. It helps to make the interface more pleasant, but does nothing for usability. Particularly when dealing with fonts.”
Very true. I gave up GUI Kits a log time ago.
“Believe it or not, but there are people out there that have a hard time seeing.”
There is Universal Access and the Zoom feature.
“I come here for a bit of Jerry Springer-like indulgence.”
Heh. Me too.
“By the way Apple is working on true resolution independence for GUI elements…”
I imagine even if this is a guess it’s a pretty reasonable guess. I can’t wait.
Ok…so what the author WAS talking about was purely icon and text size. Big deal. As to it not being under display…why is it NOT in appearance? Possibly because…duh. Neither windows nor mac os x supports a resolution independent display.
Sure, people will argue they can change this on a mac and this on a pc, but in the end SOME things will just be smaller when the resolution of the screen is increased. Some things might not line up. It isn’t that noticeable, but zoom zoom zoom on things like the menu bars and you start to see things rendered incorrectly. Sometimes the error is glaring. This is the kind of thing we expect vista to come close to and leopard to take care of, but as it stands; neither major platform is infinitely scalable.
Apart from setting and forgetting, Apple has had a distinct advantage as the resolution of monitors and available ppi has increase, Apple has increased the size of items in their OS. Make a large hard coded pref dialog box in jaguar (full screen vertical), then try to open it on panther at the same resolution and it can exceed the vertical space of the screen. These changes are minor, but they help when scaled.
And of course…most people know how to use the ‘increase font size’ or magnifying glass options…you just have to know that.
As a user of both Macs and PCs, I have to side with the Windows camp on this one… to a certain extent.
On a Mac, it is very easy to change the 3 things mentioned. On Windows, you can change nearly *everything*. On a Mac, the settings are easy to find… if you think to look there, or go through a Help search. On Windows, they are very easy to find… IF you know that Display Preferences even exists. (I will say I think the Mac settings should be found under Display Properties as well as in the Finder View Options menu… it makes sense to find them there, and it makes sense that a Windows user trying to make the switch would be thrown by their absence from the seemingly logical place.)
On a Mac, if you want to change things beyond the big three, the original author is absolutely correct. Telling me I can install the DevKit to acces “guikits” or to use 3rd party system hacks, or use the handicap settings is hardly the answer. There are legitimate reasons to want to change those things… in SOME situations… and Mac OSX does NOT make it easy to change anything beyond those first three. Certainly not as easy as Windows makes it. The merits of using those options should be left to the user, not Steve Jobs OR Bill Gates.
I prefer to have the option, suitably hidden against accidental use, but discoverable without resorting to extraordinary means to do so. I don’t want either OS to protect me from tweaking MY specific setup to the best possible configuration, even if it not suitable to over 99% of the population.
effwerd: it’s not even a guess…
Everyone here should read this:
http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/GraphicsImaging/ResolutionIndependentUI.html
If you have the Dev Tools installed in Tiger, search for the application Quartz Debug, open it.
In the Tools menu, select “Show User Interface Resolution”, or hit command-U. A dialog should appear with a slider. You can then set the scaling factor or the target DPI for the interface. Uncheck the “Restore scale factor to default (1.0) on quit” option, then Log-out then Log-in or restart since apps need to be restarted for it to take effect.
Note that this feature in CURRENTLY NOT INTENDED FOR USERS and is buggy, but it clearly shows where Apple is going: a Resolution Independent User Interface for either Leopard or its successor.
Hey b,
You said:
“many mac-idiots above. Some are hard to spot. The easy ones to spot are the ones that accuse Windows users as being idiots (morons, etc.).”
LOL…little irony there, pal. You could have just as easily said:
“many PC-idiots above. Some are hard to spot. The easy ones to spot are the ones that accuse Mac users as being idiots (morons, etc.).”
When insulting people, always remember not to put your foot into the shoe you have custom made to place on somebody else’s foot…
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Virtual-Twin, you just made my day! Now I’m really excited about 10.5, in hopes that it will have global DPI settings ready for public use…
This will be the thing that makes ultra-high resolution displays usefull for everyone.
Nick, wow, I’m more than happy to have done that
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The word goes that it was planned to be officially included in Tiger, but they didn’t have the time to complete it for the launch.
I guess it could be one of the big thing that they will hype about Leopard, since to the best of my knowledge Alta-la-Vista’s interface won’t be resolution independent.
One thing to remember is that it’s not something that is trivial to implement when taking into account legacy apps, so it’s not like MS could add it in a snap in a service-pack. So Apple will (again) lead the way for a couple of years in that department.
You can certainly see your expertise within the work you write. The world hopes for even more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to mention how they believe. All the time go after your heart. “No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.” by Honore’ de Balzac.