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There _are_ options for *terminals* on OSX:

iTerm2
http://iterm2.com/features.htm...

TermKit
http://acko.net/blog/on-termki...

Fish Shell
http://fishshell.com/

There is no reason why you can't run zsh, tcsh, etc.

There is so much innovation these days that it has transcended the separation-by-OS that used to handily signal where and what kind of changes you could expect. As an example, if you're looking for an experimental graphical terminal emulator it turns out you can use it in Windows and OS X, but not in Linux. But the point is, it's not available on one OS in particular and it's even a virtue now to be cross-platform. There's so much new tech out there and it all happens on a huge variety of platforms. So trying out new tech is just a matter of focusing (for example: system software, graphics software, hardware support, kernel-level new stuff, software in embedded systems, hardware sensors, etc.) and then deciding what the required resources are to dive in on that specific level. What OS or OSes would be best, what packages should you install, and so on.

Going back to your examples, 3D/VR desktop work has been going on since the 80s at least, and AI before that, and "drastically better performance" has always been on peoples' minds. The GUI mashups even ring a bell, though everything is so scriptable these days that anyone who's doing a GUI mashup would probably be less frustrated just typing it into a reusable script. These aren't new topics, they change over time incrementally, and the only advice I can give is to make sure you are _really_ looking at the high-end tech that you think you are. If you are frustrated with a slow system, did it cost less than $10K? Because that's commodity-level pricing. If you are frustrated with the 3D effects you just enabled on your desktop, did you really research the state of the art? And so on.

Also, just to nitpick--you say Ubuntu is dumbed-down in "default configuration" but Windows and OS X are dumbed down by default too, aren't they? That's why you have package managers, Ninite, the App Store, etc. Restore your purchases or download a set of things and you're out of the dumbzone.

If you want something to really get hopping mad about, terminals that can do this have been around for years. Ages, in fact.

Nice to know that xmlterm is still remembered (author). There is now an updated version, called GraphTerm, which is similar in some respects to Terminology but is written in python works completely within the browser.

If you want something to really get hopping mad about, terminals that can do this have been around for years. Ages, in fact.

TermKit?

I don't see how it's any more intuitive to recognize whether every component in a pipe chain is backed by a win32 exe or a cmdlet versus memorizing some commands strip out color codes when piped

I'm not saying it's more intuitive, I'm saying it's possible. If you don't remember whether something is an exe or a cmdlet, you can find that out easily. If you want to know whether a program behaves differently when piping or attached to a console, there's no way to figure that out. Maybe it says in the man page. Maybe you can test it (but will one test be representative, or will that very depending on your command line flags and environment variables?). The only real way to know is go look at the code.

I can't think of an example that does something more drastic than stripping color codes

Personally I think that ls displaying columns (dir /w style) or not is more drastic, but that's just me. I actually have aliases that force color codes on for ls and grep so that they aren't stripped out and I can pass them around, so having to work around commands that do this mode switching isn't just some theoretical problem for me. (I also have less aliased to less -R and a decolor script to strip the escapes when I don't want them.)

Even the most recent PowerShell terminal is restricted in silly ways (won't let me make it wider than a certain bound, and I have no idea why).

Because the Windows terminal is an awful piece of software. You might take a look at PoshConsole. In a quick experiment, that seems to behave better on that front. I haven't used it enough to thoroughly evaulate though, but it seems to have some features that I think should be picked up my more terminals. (I like some of the thinking that went into this, though I'm not sure if I agree with many of the specific choices he made.)

(You do know that you can actually change the screen buffer size in preferences though, right? I am still limited to 210 characters, but it's better than 80.)

"I'm hoping the newly announced TermKit http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit [acko.net] will be discussed during the open days. TermKit is new concept to replace the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON."

that's like saying "we're going to replace the millenia-old medium of air as a means of communicating voice with a modern communications system based on the written word".

unix pipes are just an inter-process communications system that has nothing to do with the data that is transferred over it. JSON is a *data* format.

so i have to ask: what the bloody hell drugs are you on??

This is the Desktop Summit (Akademy/GUADEC) I'm looking forward the most since years.
GNOME has entered a new era with GNOME 3.0 and KDE has a lot going on with Active (KDE's mobile initiative). The news about Qt 5 and a possible KDE Platform 5 is also very interesting.
These higher level software are paired with the arrival and switch to Wayland.

Lot's of stuff happening in the FOSS world to shed legacy technologies that hold the entire stack back.
While not officially announced, I'm hoping the newly announced TermKit http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit will be discussed during the open days. TermKit is new concept to replace the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON. The Desktop Summit sounds like a perfect place to bring it to Linux and possibly FreeBSD,... as well (the current implementation is written for Mac OS X but it is not bound to it).

After years of maintaining the status quo in the FOSS stack some much needed renovating happens now.
Exciting times!

PS: I'm also glad to see that this Desktop Summit is not a "KDE + GNOME and a bit of support architecture" show. Someone from Enlightenment will also be there and talk about E17 and EFL.

http://acko.net/blog/javascript-audio-synthesis-with-html-5

It's not perfect, but we are getting there.

That? That's easy.

http://lbi.lostboys.nl/blog/artikelen/canvas-in-full-3d/
http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/wolf/
http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/canvas3dtexture_0.2/
http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/06/3d-javascript-chess-mouse-support.html
http://www.kaarellumi.com/asylum/html/dyn10.htm
http://acko.net/files/projective/index.html
http://wiioperasdk.com/

I have seen 3D experiments that do environment mapping like you showed, but I'm afraid I don't have them handy. Of course, I doubt either Papervision 3D or a Javascript 3D engine would work very well on the iPhone. If the Canvas3D spec gets finalized, then we might end up with direct access to the 3D hardware which *would* make it possible to run 3D on such devices. (I've been asking for that on the Wii for some time. Especially since the fill rate in the browser is awful.)

Don't let my little game fool you. I'm limited to the technical capabilities of a much less powerful machine than your average desktop. (i.e. The Nintendo Wii) Since I couldn't push as many pixels on that platform, I threw in a few cinematic effects to add some pizazz. I can and have made that game run so fast on the desktop so as to be unplayable. Thus what you see is intentional limiting to keep a game at a reasonable speed. Browsers are capable of a LOT more these days.

It's not so much about what you CAN do in Javascript/DHTML, but how much you have to invest to make certain things a reality. I've been coding in Flex for the last year and I cannot imagine how much work I'd have to go through to reproduce some of the applications I've built in Javascript/DHTML, much less to have it work consistently on a variety of operating systems.

It's really not that hard once you get the hang of it. The big difference I think is that it's not a very mature market yet. But it is growing and FAST. I give it a year, maybe two before JS applications start displacing Flash.

Check these out:
http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2009/01/2008-year-of-awesome-javascript.html
http://www.pixastic.com/
http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/
http://jstween.blogspot.com/

http://acko.net/files/bacon/animation-demo.html
This demo works in Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. What's more, the animations are smooth and beautiful in Chrome thanks to it's v8 Javascript engine. Now we just need to get people weaned from IE6.

I don't think the average person types in URLs that much, especially not to sites they don't know or visit often. You just Google it.

However on the subject of typing: the real problem is that typing foreign characters is insanely hard in every OS out there. If you have a US keyboard, you're out of luck completely. Luckily my keyboard has 'dead' keys which allows me to put several types of accents on various letters, but it still doesn't help me with e.g. an Å.

Typically all you have is some dumb character map which you have to hunt through, and which is buried somewhere deep. That's why I wrote an IME-like app which pops up a small in-place dynamic character map with a keystroke. It allows you to select characters based on a 'base' character. See http://www.acko.net/blog/sprankle. Sure it's Windows-only and it doesn't work on apps that do weirdo stuff with keyboard input, but I blame the Win32 API. It's GPL'd though, so you are free to port it to one of the 'superior' OSes that Slashdot likes.