QUOTE
Why take the chance of hacking your system and potentially messing something up?
Why indeed?
I do take the point,
John.
My own
why lies in a nifty control-click "yellow button" option this jewel gives me either to minimize to dock, as ever, or to do this:
Those minimized windows may be just a gadget in some eyes, but when I'm working on something in several apps, it is
useful to have a moveable bunch of them where I can instantly see what's what without having to squint into the dock.
While it requires an admin password to install, to the best of my knowledge it did not replace my dock with an older version.
My Mac is pretty "hacked" as it is. In so many ways that I've lost count. And still - touch (="knock on") wood and with regular maintenance - it runs like the Rolls it is.
There's a more fundamental point, though.
While I fully agree with you that it's foolish to fiddle with an OS unless you've at least got a notion what's going on, let's not forget that Apple has
always been open to "hacking", where the latter means intelligent
development. This outlook has, if anything, broadened with OS X.
An OS I've seen one or two people here still describe as a "beta".
Not only is there the O'Reilly development place; Apple "pinches" some of the best ideas people come up with and include them in its upgrades.
It has that
developer center of its very own, where nobody's even compelled to pay to become a registered member, depending...
...depending on what you want out of it.
OS X is a great OS. Yet, "could do better."
Much better.
And we've seen dodgy "official" upgrades already.
So long as there are people out there who are able and willing to work on making it better, often for a relative pittance and the sheer pleasure of it, I for one will go on backing them to the hilt and promoting such work as I consider first-rate, where I understand it.
That line between what's "official"
and what isn't in a new OS strikes me as a pretty moveable feast.
