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Fantasktik taskbar app for Leopard {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 20th 2008 9:46PM Oh, and I used the app for, like, five or ten minutes collectively while writing the above. (Also, now that I look at the website again, I see that it points out the thing about dragging the taskbar's contents around, but I suppose one shouldn't depend upon one's prospective userbase reading the "documentation", as it were. Derpa derp on my part.)
Fantasktik taskbar app for Leopard {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 20th 2008 9:05PM Rabid Windows-hating aside, this seems, at first glance, like a nice implementation of the taskbar concept. However, as just about everybody else has already said, it does still need some work. I'll try to be a bit more thorough in the hopes that it'll help Fantasktik to improve.
• The taskbar's behaviour with Exposé (staying visible and in place) and Spaces (staying put on the screen regardless of what Spaces is doing) should be fixed. However, if SOME OF THE ABOVE COMMENTERS (*cough*) looked at the developer's website, they'd see that Spaces support is a top priority for future updates.
• The window manager should be told to subtract the area occupied by the taskbar from the screen area available for other application windows and desktop icons, as Darren mentioned. An auto-hide feature would be nice as well, so perhaps the screen real estate could be "given back" when auto-hide is on, much like the Dock's auto-hide behaviour.
• Also as Darren said, the preview feature needs to be configurable, allowing the user to decide how large the preview is (and which dimensions to restrict it by), and whether or not they even want to see it.
• The intro and outro animations for the previews appear to be separate, which you can see if you move the mouse pointer away from a button before the preview has fully "zoomed in". You can briefly see one copy of the preview continuing to zoom out while it fades away, and another copy zooming back in; ideally, the preview should appear to "change course" from whatever point it's currently at in the animation, zooming back in from there.
• Actually, *ideally* we should be able to choose from a few different animations (i.e. fade-and-zoom, straight fade, 3D rotation using the edge of the taskbar as its axis so it appears to swing out on a "hinge", etc.), and perhaps even have an optional Core Image blur effect on the background to prevent underlying text and icons from degrading readability.
• If possible, each application's Dock menu should be accessible by right-clicking/Ctrl-clicking its icon on the taskbar; it's a little disconcerting when nothing happens, and I don't think it's extremely likely that the user wants to continuously go back and forth between the taskbar for app switching and the Dock for contextual menus.
• Users should be able to have the taskbar adhere to the left or right edge of their screen as well as the current top and bottom options — perhaps there should either be an option for which direction to display the text when vertical, or simply point the bottom of the text towards the inside of the screen.
• Some users may not want to see a number at all on an app's icon when it has no windows open.
• Button width should be configurable.
• Yes, painfully Windows-esque, I know, but maybe there should be a "grouping" feature when an app has more than a specifiable number of windows open, to cut down on button overload.
• On a related note, it wasn't immediately apparent to me that I was supposed to drag the taskbar's contents left and right in order to see items that ran off the screen; I initially tried hovering over the ends to see if it would scroll like a menu does when it's overstuffed. When I dragged the contents to the left with around 12 Safari windows open, then closed all but the one I was using, the invisible leftmost items remained where they were, instead of the bar's contents automatically moving back to the right as space became available. It's the little things, sometimes, as much as the big things. :P
Now that the deficiencies have been stomped upon, I'll point out what I liked:
• When the user switches between Top and Bottom display, the taskbar animates to its new position.
• When a button has too much text in it to display it all, it fades the end off nicely instead of just clipping it. (It would be kind of cool to see it start scrolling, Front Row-style, when you hover over the button for a short time, but the label that appears between the bar and the preview works too, despite perhaps unnecessarily duplicating the text shown above it.)
• Finally, I don't think a user interface concept should be shunned or avoided on the Mac platform just because it happened to originate on another platform that happens to suck goat balls due to unrelated factors like shoddy engineering and corrupted priorities. Where would Linux's trademark diversity be if Linux devs thought like that?
All in all, I think Fantasktik shows promise — perhaps not enough to warrant a $15 price tag (though that's entirely subjective and may be biased towards the "I want everything for free" attitude that seems to be growing these days), but promise nonetheless. Despite all the people saying it's crap, I think that if the developer perseveres in the right direction, it could evolve into a utility that's a pleasure to use.
TUAW Tip: Add date to the menu bar clock {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 19th 2008 11:45AM Just remember what was in there before (which is easier if you don't change the actual "time" portion of the string), and go back in to delete everything else. :)
TUAW Tip: Add date to the menu bar clock {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 19th 2008 11:43AM Yes, but can you make your menu-bar clock read "Tue Aug 19, '08 jiggitywicky 12:43 PM BEEEATCH" by dragging iCal to your Dock?
Thaaaat's right.
Back to School: Malkinware Reference Tracker 1.0 for Mac OS X {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Aug 18th 2008 10:28AM That's Mal-KIN-ware, folks. ;)
Psystar says it is "definitely still shipping" its Mac clones {Engadget}
Aug 14th 2008 3:31PM Not a bad point, but neither Nintendo nor Microsoft sell the firmwares/OSes of their respective consoles as a separate product from the console hardware itself, and Apple does, at least for its desktop and laptop computers. Nobody seems to be crying out for Apple to license out the slimmed down "distros" of OS X that run on (and only come as part of) the Apple TV, iPhone or iPod touch either. I won't pretend to know the legal details, but I don't think Apple could really get away with classifying Mac OS X as "firmware" or the like, because they sell it as its own product that just happens to be artificially restricted (i.e. not out of necessity, as with the aforementioned devices' specific and unique hardware) to certain computers which are, more or less, based on the same overall architecture as other brands of PCs. You'd have to do an assload more work to get the Wii's OS to run on an Xbox 360, or to get "OS X iPhone" to run on a Diamond, than to make Mac OS X ignore its compulsion to check whether it's running on an Apple machine or not, because the Wii/Xbox 360/iPhone/Diamond all have much more specialized sets of hardware. Food for thought, at least. :)
Psystar says it is "definitely still shipping" its Mac clones {Engadget}
Aug 14th 2008 12:55PM True, true. They just use a different method to protect sales, so people don't make the connection right away. Really, though, aside from whatever benefits it has as a platform, it's there to sell hardware, which is a different focus than Microsoft's. Nothing stops you from pirating every copy of OS X you can find...if you've already paid for a Mac to install them on. MS doesn't sell the hardware, so for them the protection has to be in the software.
Steve Jobs: 60 million iPhone apps downloaded, confirms kill switch {Engadget}
Aug 11th 2008 12:22PM No, because you're running that jailbreak application on your desktop or laptop, not your iPhone or iPod touch. Presumably, the jailbreaking process will also start "breaking" Steve's kill-switch once its whereabouts in the OS are discovered.
Aiko gets a new, Starbucks-ready hand prototype {Engadget}
Aug 10th 2008 6:20PM Really? I was just pondering why he would want to pepper his mouse...unless, of course, VX Revs are considered a delicacy among actroids.
Foreign Object Debris detection and removal systems bring safety bots to the airports {Engadget}
Aug 9th 2008 10:13AM And remember, kids, that's FOD, not FUD. ;)
