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The View From Here: What's on your Mac?
June 1996
One of the most rewarding technical experiences for me is when I watch someone else using a Macintosh. Each of us has adapted to the Macintosh "experience" (the current Apple buzzword for the body of interactions and perceptions a user has when using the software and hardware). Each of us has customized our Macs by tweaking the Preferences settings of the system software. Each of us has found third-party software (extensions, control panels, and applications) to further enhance our productivity. And each of us has done it slightly (or vastly) differently. When I see how others have modified their operating environments, I learn about my assumptions about the limitations in the Mac. I usually walk away with another tool in my belt, able to do the computing tasks that face me on a daily basis in a better way.
I'm a firm believer in icons as a replacement for text. One of the places in the Macintosh user experience that 20/20 hindsight has worked best is the menu bar. Twelve years ago, when Macintosh was unveiled, applications put only a few items in the menu bar; these days nine items aren't unusual. Above you see the menu bar as used by "BBEdit" 4.0; the globe (Internet Config) and scroll (AppleScript) icons are placed there by BBEdit. (The downward-pointing arrows are placed there by Now Utilities' NowMenus ("Now Software").)
The menu bar is too crowded; there are many other useful things that should appear there. My solution? A piece of shareware called menuette.
Right off the net, it'll convert that crowded menu bar into something easier to fathom (below). The right side of my Mac's menu bar has, respectively, the digital clock from Apple's Date and Time control panel, Now Up-to-Date's QuickFind (easy access to phone numbers), "Farallon"'s Timbuktu Pro (for debugging remote Macs), "FreePPP"'s menu bar control, Apple's AppleGuide help system, and lastly, the icon of the frontmost application.
Another user interface aggravation for me is having access to commonly used applications. NowMenus lets me navigate my hard disk by dragging the cursor over the disk hierarchy (starting at the downward-pointing arrows in the menu bar), but even that's not as convenient as it could be.
I have both bars showing small icons; the medium and large icons take up too much screen real estate. The horizontal bar is also configured to show the names associated with the icons (when the cursor is over an icon). (The image shows the text "Eudora*3.0b113-6.96 PPC", which is my shorthand for: this is "Eudora", version 3.0, beta build 113, which is good through June 1996, the PowerPC-only version.)
You may notice that my screen shots look different than does your screen. Why? Because I'm using Aaron, by "Gregory Landweber" and "Ed Voas", which converts my System 7 window style to one of the three default System 8 (Copland) 'user experiences'. (By agreement with Apple, other user experiences won't be implemented by Gregory and Ed, so don't ask.)
There are things I use for recreation. Some games I really love to play are PegLeg, WarCraft, Doom, Marathon II, and Diamond 3D.
Software programs that I use to kill time include CU-SeeMe and RealAudio (especially to listen to Internet Radio Hawai'i).
I hope this tour has been interesting. If you have suggestions for future columns, please let me know. It's very helpful to me.
Michael 'Mickey' Sattler and his cat Copernicus live on the top floor of a Victorian in the Upper Haight-Ashbury. Michael works out of The People's Café on Haight Street with his wireless Macintosh setup.
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This trip through my hard drive can't be complete; that would take several hundred paragraphs. Here are some highlights that make my life productive (and sometimes a little silly). Let's start with the icon I've chosen for my hard drive - Jessica Rabbit from the Warner Brothers movie Who Killed Roger Rabbit? When my computer acts up it helps me to remember the phrase she uttered in the movie: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." (This might be a good time to note that customizing the little things can have a profound impact on lowering your stress level during your workday. Many of these items are designed to make one kind of interaction easier; cumulatively, you'll wind up doing many things with less thought and less effort.)
One of these things is the screen background. It sits under the icons and behind the windows of your applications, peeking out, affecting your mood and efficiency. A vibrant, colorful desktop is interesting for a few minutes, but I've found that a calm dark pattern works wonders; Apple's Desktop Patterns control panel will allow you to paste textures that are 64 and 128 pixels on a side (I've included one of each here). If you don't like these patterns, please check out the 
My solution? Guy Fullerton's 
From top to bottom, the vertical bar has anchors to the following applications: 
By now you've got a good feeling for the tools that I use in my daily work. What else is there? Well, there are a number of "Navigator plug-ins" for Netscape's web browser (or as Netscape would have you say, "platform"). There are too many to list here; pick the ones that meet your web-surfing needs. Do you use another browser? Check its home page on the net to see whether plug-ins have been written to extend its functionality.
