I can’t sleep, so I’ll type!
OS X and it’s community do not have a standard install/uninstall system. Instead all applications come as bundles, and basically to install an application you just copy the one file to your Applications folder, or wherever you would like it.
This works fine.
What doesn’t work fine is when you install something that isn’t a bundle, such as a printer driver. That installs crap all over the hard drive that might later cause problems, doesn’t create a log and doesn’t offer a way to uninstall.
While I like the idea of being able to install something just by dragging it, Apple dropped the ball on this one. In Windows I would regularly go to the Add/Remove Programs control panel and clean house. Helps keep the hard drive clean, keep space free and keep the cruft out. Much harder to do in OS X.
Now for some more praises. OS X has a built in speech synthesis and recognition system that totally kicks ass. I noticed it last night while playing the Chess program that comes with it. An option was to use voice commands. I turned it on, said “Knight A3 to B4” and the damn thing moved! No training, or nothing.
Did a little reading and it turns out this system is fully exposed in the Carbon, and to a lesser extent the Cocoa Frameworks and I can program to it! I wrote a little sample application that took voice commands in about 4 lines of code. Very impressive!
I finally dove in tonight and really started learning Cocoa and Objective C. Cocoa is well designed, but I wish they had used C++. Objective C breaks most of the rules of common syntax that I have been using for the last… like, 15 years and it’s a big adjustment. I’m getting there, but I’m definitly not fluent yet.