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Franz Bestuchev wrote:

I never really considered the Apple platform until OS X. I had used it
in various forms over the years in an educational setting but found the
machines to be the absolute most anxiety producing way to generate an
essay - these things froze early, they froze often, they went down hard.
Could be the power, the students mucking with the OS (but it seemed
rather hardened).

Anyway with the release of OS X Apple was now a very compelling platform
in the unity of hardware design, construction, and features and this is
equally integrated into what is now a jem of an OS.

Speed problems have been addressed, features like Expose become
addictive the first time used, the Aqua window manager and the manner in
which screen output is vector, or essential a big ol .pdf - neat.

Anyway, they're still using one mouse button. I'm used to 3 minimum but
the real workhorse clocks in at 5 buttons with a proportional spin wheel
with that swank sidways scroll too (2.5-axis wheel?). this solitary
click well, takes some getting used to. I usually plug an MS wheel mouse
in but it was put to sleep...off to vallhalla now

I want to do so much more clicking, and I promise the kind of multi task
clicking that makes executives drool, and I want to scroll fast and
furious (anyone got little NOS stickers that would fit a mouse?)

You can use 2- and 3-button mice on modern (USB) Macs. Believe it or
not, the OS recognises the extra buttons and you can write an utility to
assign actions to them... they're also extra useful when using an
X-server or MSWindows emulator.

I quite like MacOS X. As you surely know, it's actually OpenStep 5.x -
and I always liked NeXTstep/OpenStep (and the old NeXT machines).

Anyway I'd much prefer a simpler interface... Aqua is very nice looking,
but I find colour gradients and transparency tiring for the eyes after a
while.

But then again I find OpenLook and Motif (or at least SGI's Motif) quite
elegant in their simplicity (in fact I always use the simplest skins in
both gtk and qt) when everybody finds them horrible, so maybe it's just
me...