This was submitted as news, but due to lack of content in the news item itself posting it here in the forum instead.
Please people, it is not so hard to make a few sentences to describe what the news is about.



http://www.osnews.com/story/21826/sam440ep_AmigaOS_4_1

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@tomazkid

It's a very good review! Shows how quirky AmigaOS could look, seen by the eyes of a non-Amigan. It really makes you think about whether certain things could not be implemented differently.

I used Amigas for 11 years (1990-2001), and returned to the platform (OS4.1) this year. Although my Amiga experience and knowledge was still there, I asked myself a couple of questions, like:

- Why is ClickToFront not the default window behaviour? A new user can actually spend a lot of time finding out how to activate such a trivial functionality - and you still call this "fun computing"?

- Why do you have to use Snapsnot all the time to arrange things? OK, power to the user ("you decide when the OS will remember positions") but what if I prefer automatic behaviour that lays out the icons nicely in a properly sized window upon opening a drawer? Why am I not given an option? After I installed all my programs, I spent the whole afternoon just resizing windows and repositioning icons!

- Why are drawers not updated automatically upon changes? (An internal Workbench limitation?)

When asked by a newcomer, these are all 100% valid questions. Food for thought

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@Trixie

Dragging "ClickToFront" into WBStartup is one of the first things that I do when I install Amiga OS. I agree that this should be the default behaviour.

Hans

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@Trixie

Quote:

Trixie wrote: @tomazkid It's a very good review! Shows how quirky AmigaOS could look, seen by the eyes of a non-Amigan. It really makes you think about whether certain things could not be implemented differently. I used Amigas for 11 years (1990-2001), and returned to the platform (OS4.1) this year. Although my Amiga experience and knowledge was still there, I asked myself a couple of questions, like: - Why is ClickToFront not the default window behaviour? A new user can actually spend a lot of time finding out how to activate such a trivial functionality - and you still call this "fun computing"? - Why do you have to use Snapsnot all the time to arrange things? OK, power to the user ("you decide when the OS will remember positions") but what if I prefer automatic behaviour that lays out the icons nicely in a properly sized window upon opening a drawer? Why am I not given an option? After I installed all my programs, I spent the whole afternoon just resizing windows and repositioning icons! - Why are drawers not updated automatically upon changes? (An internal Workbench limitation?) When asked by a newcomer, these are all 100% valid questions. Food for thought

As a newcomer myself (brought my first Amiga last year), I can tell ya that I agree with the above!

@Trixie

Quote:

Shows how quirky AmigaOS could look, seen by the eyes of a non-Amigan

Is like someone that has lived all their life in darkness .When you bring him to light, he will complain that light blinded her and will think that the way darkness "works" is better

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@Fransexy

Quote:

Fransexy wrote: @Trixie Quote: Shows how quirky AmigaOS could look, seen by the eyes of a non-Amigan Is like someone that has lived all their life in darkness .When you bring him to light, he will complain that light blinded her and will think that the way darkness "works" is better

They would probably also blame the light for the sudden gender transformation or maybe due to the lack of visibility she had always just assumed she was a man until the light revealed the truth.

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@TheMaskedMuchacho

Mabye its a whole lot like paying to get a gender change! When you got the first gender for free... But that's not enough right. Shelling out more money for the reaming years of life seems to be normal.

The review was good, until the last few paragraphs where it's clear that the reviewer has low self esteem and was perhaps a little bit drunk or ill or something.

A lot of features should be the default and or pre-configured from the first install. The AmigaOS4.1 FINAL CD, I would assume would contain all the patches from word go! Also the reviewer would have been more impressed if time allowed for hunting and installing all the goodies and tweaks.

The reviewers comments on applications do not take into account a lot new cloud computing functionality like Google Docs, GMail, etc... I guess that just means even Google is still struggling to sell CLOUDs to the world.

Bring on more reviews, it can only shed light on the SNAPSHOT perspective of the individual minds out there.

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Great review!!!

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I agree with autoupdate of WB windows, should be default. Same with this icon snapshot thing. It takes far to long to adjust windows and snapshot them in place these days IMHO.

Another thing bothering me, it would be nice if you could set drawers to always show hidden files as default, even if a drawer had no .info file.

Click to front is not the Amiga way of working with windows IMHO, it should not be default.

@meet.mrnrg

Quote:

Bring on more reviews, it can only shed light on the SNAPSHOT perspective of the individual minds out there.

Dont tell him about snapshot, you will ruin the entire basis of his review

He does have a valid point though, there should at least be an option for windows to remember the position of icons automatically and it should probably be default behaviour as should click to front. if experienced users dont like it they wont have much trouble turning it off again. Its a good look at amiga OS from an outsiders perspective though, i dont think there is anything bad that can be said about the review.

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@TheMaskedMuchacho

It's interesting because it shows how a technical 'non-Amiga' user views OS4.1. To shift units it needs to be aimed at a non-technical, non-amiga user. If it's only attractive to classic user's it will never get a big enough install base to reach critical mass (whatever that means?).

Last edited by NovaCoder on 15-Jul-2009 at 01:28 AM.
Last edited by NovaCoder on 15-Jul-2009 at 01:26 AM.

@Hans

Quote:

Dragging "ClickToFront" into WBStartup is one of the first things that I do when I install Amiga OS. I agree that this should be the default behaviour.

"ClickToFront", yes, but as a double click or ctrl click or whatever meta click.

I can't recount how many times I've had to spend time resizing windows in Windows because clicking on a back window not only activates it but pops it up front. This often happens when I've got a window in back, but only partially obscured, so that I can see in it some information I want to put into the window in front. Do a cut in the back window, and, if it is a full sized editor window for example, immediately it pops in front and obscures where you wanted to paste it in the front window!

If you have a series of separated things to cut from the back window and paste into the front, you really have to resize the windows before you do this.

Keeping the window activation and pop to front separate is a real advantage. Maybe there is a Windows kludge for this, but I don't know it.

Maybe this is a reason why all our Office users clamor for two monitors
overlapping windows in Windows are very hard to use together.

Tom

@tbreeden

Quote:

tbreeden wrote: @Hans Quote: Dragging "ClickToFront" into WBStartup is one of the first things that I do when I install Amiga OS. I agree that this should be the default behaviour. "ClickToFront", yes, but as a double click or ctrl click or whatever meta click. I can't recount how many times I've had to spend time resizing windows in Windows because clicking on a back window not only activates it but pops it up front. This often happens when I've got a window in back, but only partially obscured, so that I can see in it some information I want to put into the window in front. Do a cut in the back window, and, if it is a full sized editor window for example, immediately it pops in front and obscures where you wanted to paste it in the front window!

Double-click to front is exactly what the "ClickToFront" commodity does, and that's the way that I like it. I also dislike the way that the active window is always on top in Windows.

Hans

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@cv643d

Quote:

cv643d wrote: Another thing bothering me, it would be nice if you could set drawers to always show hidden files as default, even if a drawer had no .info file.

That's what "Snapshot window" is for, but yes, being able to set that as the default behaviour would be nice.

Quote:

Click to front is not the Amiga way of working with windows IMHO, it should not be default.

It's double-click to front, and yes, it should be the default. It saves a lot of time being able to double-click on any part of a window in order to bring it to the front instead of having to drag things around so that you can access the depth gadget.

Hans

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@Hans

Quote:

I also dislike the way that the active window is always on top in Windows.

And when windows activated by the OS pop to front, either due to bad coding or OS behavior.
linux and osx are a bit better than Windows in this aspect, but still this applies to those OS:es too.

The sad thing is that it is so hard to explain the advantages with the Amiga windows behavior where you can type in a Windows not on front. The Windows/Mac/*nix users just asks: "What is it good for?" and "If it is such a good feature, why isn't it more widespread?"

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Hi Everyone!

As a man who works on Pcs and Macs, but owns AmigaOnes at home and soon the Sam, in my opinion, windows and mac os x is too automated for my taste. I always feel like I do not have control over much in those operating systems, definitley Os X. Since this reviewer is used to less control over his operating system, he sees workbench and AmigaOS as outdated, not as more control over your computer. That control over the os is the genius behind AmigaOS, that is lacking in a lot of other operating systems. For example, the directory structure in AmigaOS makes sense, Libs for libraries, etc. Look at the windows directory structure (OMG!), a mess in my opinion.

I don't believe that making Amiga OS like the other operating systems is going to attract more users. He is right in that we need to update our software library ASAP. Also, get the price of the machines down, and set it up where a user can plug it in and go. He talked about the boot time, and he is right! We really need to get rid of Uboot the way it currently is and put kickstart and the hardware boot strap back into the flash rom.

I know from my own personal experience with the Amiga, part of the fun is exploring all the control you have in the operating system as you learn more about it from using it over time. That is what made me and Amiga user in the first place. I remember learning about Workbench V1.3 back in the day on my Amiga 500. I originally bought it to play games, but ended up learning so much more about it over time. I think that can still hold true today.

Just my opinion!

Yogi

One thing i think would work pretty well is to have a menu open when you right click on the title bar of a window with a few options of what you want to do so you could choose to minimise or maximise it , bring it to the front or close it (pretty much all of the usual gadget functions duplicated in a menu) as it would make a lot of actions quicker and easier without having to bring the window to the front or move it to get at the relevant gadget. I like how file with no icon are hidden by default but a quicker way to show all files would be nice, since my menu idea would mean a very short menu it could be added to there

I also prefer the double click to bring a window to the front, even after 10 years i still get irritated by windows and OSX bringing the active window infront of all others although there should be an option for single click or middle mouse button to front (some will prefer it).

Having never used OS4.x im basing everything on 3.1 so if things have changed since then please forgive me

if i remember correctly workbench is due to be replaced so maybe features like these are being left as they are until the replacement is ready. only a privileged few will know.

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@TheMaskedMuchacho

Quote:

TheMaskedMuchacho wrote: I also prefer the double click to bring a window to the front, even after 10 years i still get irritated by windows and OSX bringing the active window infront of all others

That's my #1 hate of Windows. You're happily touch typing in a document only for some background application to finish whatever it was doing and make itself the active window, you look up to see that you've spent the past few minutes of your life typing in the wrong window....bugger.

overall a good review

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@tomazkid

Pretty good review and he brings up some interesting and very good points.

One thing though:
Quote:

In addition to the problems above, the file manager also doesn't auto-update its contents; you need to manually update a folder if you downloaded something new into it.

Not exactly sure what he means about that, but if he means if you drag something in a window it doesn't 're-alphabetize'/sort the window, well, that's one of the things I love about Workbench. When I drag something to a Windows it 'stays' right where I drop it... forever! Next time I go to the Window I know right where it is. It's where I put it. :)

Last edited by AmigaHeretic on 15-Jul-2009 at 04:26 AM.

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