Sprawl (necrosaint) Mac OS

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We evaluate the four-day work week against the background of other institutional and social practices and constraints. But we fix these other variables when considering the value of this work reform. For example, workers enjoy the commute time and expense savings associated with a four-day week. These savings would mean little if the commutes in question were negligible. Therefore, the value. OS X Yosemite and iOS 8's enticements could also entrap Apple's seamless cross-device experience will appeal to business users, but security experts warn integration poses new risks.

Abstract

Americans witnessing the bulldozing of their country's pastures, farmlands, and sensitive habitats to erect suburban housing tracts and commercial centers have come to realize that the remaining open land may be too precious to waste. Residential and commercial development is no longer quickly embraced to stimulate economic progress and prosperity. Municipalities are learning that development often extracts a price — sometimes the loss of community character and local charm, sometimes tax revenues that fall short of increased expenditures, and sometimes just plain ugliness. Responding to the new reality, many community officials have initiated unilateral ordinances regulating the development of open spaces to protect the residents' way of life. Too often, however, most land-use policies are easily circumvented, leading to a rash of unintended outcomes that more than neutralize their derived benefits. Long accustomed to vast open spaces and the allure of large suburban lots and dwellings, the citizens do not readily embrace restrictions on where and how they may live. This article investigates sprawl by examining the human desires and economic realities that drive it and its development. More important, it examines the benefits of commonly used land regulations and their unintended consequences.

Recommended Citation

• An easy way to run 'classic' Mac OS applications under Windows. Under Windows, software written for the 'classic' Mac OS (i.e. Versions 6 through 9) can only be run through software that emulates Macintosh hardware from 1980s and 1990s. The most advanced of these emulator programs is SheepShaver.
• Microsoft will continue development of virtual machine solutions from Connectix and will integrate them into the Windows and Mac product portfolios. During the transition period, Connectix will continue to sell and support Virtual PC for Windows, Virtual PC for Mac and Virtual PC for OS/2 products through its current distribution channel partners.

Bucci, Robert S. (2000) 'Managing Sprawl in the Land of Unintended Consequences,' New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 16 : Iss. 1 , Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol16/iss1/4

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The Trash Can belongs in the corner

This decision was so wrong that several replacement desktop trash cans have appeared to address it. Dock diehards point out that they always use Command-Delete anyway. Of course they do! That's because having a hidden, constantly-shifting trash can sucks!

The Dock's locations are unpredictable

Apple's solution to the early fire storm of protest over the Dock was to allow the user to hide it. That way, it doesn't float over all your applications. Slide below the screen with your mouse and the Dock appears.

This Windows copy job, unfortunately, suffers from the same defect as the Windows Task Bar: You can't predict where a given object is until you reach the bottom of the screen and cause the Dock to appear. Worse than with Windows, your job is not over. Now, you begin the task of scrubbing the length of the Dock, trying to force the labels to appear, hoping you won't go far enough out of range in the process to cause the bar to disappear on you. (The Dock is linear; the human hand was designed to move in an arc. We don't do well with scrubbing.)

The Dock is a sprawler

The corners and edges of the screen are proven by Fitts's Law to be the most easily reached targets. The low-information-density Apple Dock takes up a variable, but large measure of one entire side of the screen, leaving little or no room for high-density docks, such as those of DragThing. It's target region sprawls even beyond, covering one entire side of the screen.

This excessively-large target also ensures many mistakes, where people are simply sweeping the mouse too far while engaged in their application, suddenly triggering the hidden Dock.

The Dock needs to have a visible target. Hit the target and the Dock opens. Miss the target and the Dock won't open. Then supply a very slight delay, measured perhaps one twentieth or one tenth of a second to prevent accidental triggering. (The Dock, at the time of 10.3's release, has an excessively long delay, probably in response to the invisible, unpredictable sprawl problem herein discussed.)

This tab could be dynamic, one or two pixels deep and running the full length of the Dock, with the Dock acting much as it does now except in a more predictable manner. Or the user could elect to set a labelled tab of user-defined width, freeing up a lot of precious edge space. Still another option might have the Dock triggered by throwing the mouse in a corner. This could relieve much of the frustration of the variable-location trash can. Throw the mouse in the lower right-hand corner to grow the Dock up the display from that point, leaving the trash can in a consistent, predictable location.
(This by the way, is the way the Windows XP task bar should be triggered, instead of having any touch of the bottom of the screen display it.)

The Dock replaced better objects

Both OS 9's Tab Menus and the Applications Menu are being forced into the dock. Tab menus were formed by dragging a Finder folder to the bottom of the screen, where it turned into a multi-level hierarchical menu. Tab menus in OS 9 had problems, not the least of which was that, every few weeks, the Mac crashed in such a way that they all moved to the center of the screen, opened as normal windows in random positions, and each had to be dragged to the bottom of the screen and placed in the desired position again.

A Dock-like device would be of great value in upgrading the current tab menu scheme. Unfortunately, while you can now drop a Finder folder in the Dock, then right-click on it to reveal it's contents in a Tab Menu style, it remains fatally flawed, since every one of your Tab Menu folders will have the same name displayed—namely, none.

Fortunately, however, actual improvements on the old Tab Menu do exist, even if Apple has lost the ability to make them. You'll find one discussed in, Make Your Mac a Monster Machine. In the old days at Apple, when we saw something like DragThing on the market, we would go buy it and incorporate it into the system. Let's hope someone at Apple is still watching out.

(We once had a couple of Berkeley students come down on the bus to Apple to demo what was to become Multifinder, the first instance of the modern Finder we've all come to love. We sent them back to Berkeley in a nice, shiny limo, along with a big, fat check.)

The Applications menu, in OS 9, sat in the upper right hand corner of the screen, giving people reasonable access to running applications. It had its problems; for example, it neatly avoided high-speed access by not accepting a click from the absolute corner of the screen. Nonetheless, it worked well enough and took up little space.

When we invented pull-down menus for the Lisa computer, back in the late-seventies, the concept was that you wanted to create information-dense objects that took up minimal screen space. The result was a single label that would instantly reveal a whole bunch of objects when touched. The Applications menu did that. The Dock, on the other hand, is as big when 'closed' as it is when 'open,' unless you have magnification turned on, which causes some of us to become sea-sick. (Again, a great demo, but a poor daily performer.)

The Dock is also throwing the application menu's items in with everything else in the Dock, forming just one big jumble. (The applications are now arranged on one end, but that doesn't seem much of a win; it is still one big jumble.) Again, as revealed in Make Your Mac a Monster Machine a solution once again exists: The Applications menu is back, though from a third party. Apple needs to incorporate it once again into the interface, making it triggerable from a corner touch.

The Dock adds bad behavior

The Dock adds a whole new behavior: Object annihilation. Drag an object off the dock and it disappears in a virtual puff of smoke. This is the single scariest idea introduced to the Macintosh since the original bomb icon. How would you feel if you spent eight hours working on your first Macintosh document, only to have it disappear entirely when you try to move it from the dock to the desktop? Pretty disorienting, no? This is a completely unnecessary concept for the user to have to learn, particularly in such a painful way. Makes for a 'hot demo' though, doesn't it?

Conclusions

The Dock's sole positive attribute lies in its improving the Mac's 'curb appeal' and demoability.

Apple would appear to be after two separate and distinct market segments. First, the naive consumer who isn't going to do much with his or her computer anyway. OS X, with its suite of simple apps would appear to be a good fit.

The other extreme they appear to want are self-identified power users. Why else all the talk about the UNIX underpinning, about 'munitions-grade' computing power?

OS X is a powerful operating system. It deserves a top-level interface that matches. The old Mac handled both sets of users handily. OS X, with its powerful underpinnings and slick graphics support has the potential to do much better. However, the focus on this single object to the exclusion of the kind of information tools power users need must stop. Keep the Dock as long as it helps close sales, but provide the real tools needed by people with serious work.

The Trash Can belongs in the corner

This decision was so wrong that several replacement desktop trash cans have appeared to address it. Dock diehards point out that they always use Command-Delete anyway. Of course they do! That's because having a hidden, constantly-shifting trash can sucks!

The Dock's locations are unpredictable

Apple's solution to the early fire storm of protest over the Dock was to allow the user to hide it. That way, it doesn't float over all your applications. Slide below the screen with your mouse and the Dock appears.

This Windows copy job, unfortunately, suffers from the same defect as the Windows Task Bar: You can't predict where a given object is until you reach the bottom of the screen and cause the Dock to appear. Worse than with Windows, your job is not over. Now, you begin the task of scrubbing the length of the Dock, trying to force the labels to appear, hoping you won't go far enough out of range in the process to cause the bar to disappear on you. (The Dock is linear; the human hand was designed to move in an arc. We don't do well with scrubbing.)

The Dock is a sprawler

The corners and edges of the screen are proven by Fitts's Law to be the most easily reached targets. The low-information-density Apple Dock takes up a variable, but large measure of one entire side of the screen, leaving little or no room for high-density docks, such as those of DragThing. It's target region sprawls even beyond, covering one entire side of the screen.

This excessively-large target also ensures many mistakes, where people are simply sweeping the mouse too far while engaged in their application, suddenly triggering the hidden Dock.

The Dock needs to have a visible target. Hit the target and the Dock opens. Miss the target and the Dock won't open. Then supply a very slight delay, measured perhaps one twentieth or one tenth of a second to prevent accidental triggering. (The Dock, at the time of 10.3's release, has an excessively long delay, probably in response to the invisible, unpredictable sprawl problem herein discussed.)

This tab could be dynamic, one or two pixels deep and running the full length of the Dock, with the Dock acting much as it does now except in a more predictable manner. Or the user could elect to set a labelled tab of user-defined width, freeing up a lot of precious edge space. Still another option might have the Dock triggered by throwing the mouse in a corner. This could relieve much of the frustration of the variable-location trash can. Throw the mouse in the lower right-hand corner to grow the Dock up the display from that point, leaving the trash can in a consistent, predictable location.
(This by the way, is the way the Windows XP task bar should be triggered, instead of having any touch of the bottom of the screen display it.)

The Dock replaced better objects

Both OS 9's Tab Menus and the Applications Menu are being forced into the dock. Tab menus were formed by dragging a Finder folder to the bottom of the screen, where it turned into a multi-level hierarchical menu. Tab menus in OS 9 had problems, not the least of which was that, every few weeks, the Mac crashed in such a way that they all moved to the center of the screen, opened as normal windows in random positions, and each had to be dragged to the bottom of the screen and placed in the desired position again.

A Dock-like device would be of great value in upgrading the current tab menu scheme. Unfortunately, while you can now drop a Finder folder in the Dock, then right-click on it to reveal it's contents in a Tab Menu style, it remains fatally flawed, since every one of your Tab Menu folders will have the same name displayed—namely, none.

Fortunately, however, actual improvements on the old Tab Menu do exist, even if Apple has lost the ability to make them. You'll find one discussed in, Make Your Mac a Monster Machine. In the old days at Apple, when we saw something like DragThing on the market, we would go buy it and incorporate it into the system. Let's hope someone at Apple is still watching out.

(We once had a couple of Berkeley students come down on the bus to Apple to demo what was to become Multifinder, the first instance of the modern Finder we've all come to love. We sent them back to Berkeley in a nice, shiny limo, along with a big, fat check.)

The Applications menu, in OS 9, sat in the upper right hand corner of the screen, giving people reasonable access to running applications. It had its problems; for example, it neatly avoided high-speed access by not accepting a click from the absolute corner of the screen. Nonetheless, it worked well enough and took up little space.

When we invented pull-down menus for the Lisa computer, back in the late-seventies, the concept was that you wanted to create information-dense objects that took up minimal screen space. The result was a single label that would instantly reveal a whole bunch of objects when touched. The Applications menu did that. The Dock, on the other hand, is as big when 'closed' as it is when 'open,' unless you have magnification turned on, which causes some of us to become sea-sick. (Again, a great demo, but a poor daily performer.)

The Dock is also throwing the application menu's items in with everything else in the Dock, forming just one big jumble. (The applications are now arranged on one end, but that doesn't seem much of a win; it is still one big jumble.) Again, as revealed in Make Your Mac a Monster Machine a solution once again exists: The Applications menu is back, though from a third party. Apple needs to incorporate it once again into the interface, making it triggerable from a corner touch.

The Dock adds bad behavior

The Dock adds a whole new behavior: Object annihilation. Drag an object off the dock and it disappears in a virtual puff of smoke. This is the single scariest idea introduced to the Macintosh since the original bomb icon. How would you feel if you spent eight hours working on your first Macintosh document, only to have it disappear entirely when you try to move it from the dock to the desktop? Pretty disorienting, no? This is a completely unnecessary concept for the user to have to learn, particularly in such a painful way. Makes for a 'hot demo' though, doesn't it?

Conclusions

The Dock's sole positive attribute lies in its improving the Mac's 'curb appeal' and demoability.

Apple would appear to be after two separate and distinct market segments. First, the naive consumer who isn't going to do much with his or her computer anyway. OS X, with its suite of simple apps would appear to be a good fit.

The other extreme they appear to want are self-identified power users. Why else all the talk about the UNIX underpinning, about 'munitions-grade' computing power?

OS X is a powerful operating system. It deserves a top-level interface that matches. The old Mac handled both sets of users handily. OS X, with its powerful underpinnings and slick graphics support has the potential to do much better. However, the focus on this single object to the exclusion of the kind of information tools power users need must stop. Keep the Dock as long as it helps close sales, but provide the real tools needed by people with serious work.

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