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Some of ID's development was contracted out to The Omni Group, who did their stuff on NeXTSTEP. You haven't lived until you've played Doom and Doom II on a 33MHz MC68040 :-)

Reading the same file formats is nowhere near the order of interoperability that the grandparent post was talking about -- running the same executables.

I didn't post above, but I currently use both XP and 2000 daily. Make your own decisions but I also use OS X daily and it's far and away the most pleasant working environment I've encountered to date. That doesn't mean it's perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's not the point now, is it.

As for "OS 9," um, who's talking about OS 9?

If you want Unix, install Linux... FreeBSD... SuSE... Debian... Lycoris... Lindows... There are choices in the Windows world.

Well, by the time I've finished clicking through the (Continue) buttons in an OS X install I've managed to install both the entire GUI environment and the entire Unix OS. I can also install other Unix systems on Mac hardware, but frankly I've got everything I need right here.

I don't need to install anything else except Logic Pro 6, Ableton Live, MetaSynth, ArtMatic Pro, MetaTrack, Voyager, VTrack, Absynth, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniDiskSweeper, Studiometry, FileMakerPro, Adobe Creative Suite, LaunchBar, MySQL, Perl 5.8.3, Fink, Plone, Keynote, BBEdit, FastTrack Schedule Pro, Sonasphere, Toast 6, ZBrush, and a few more but I'll get to those tomorrow.

I run all these (plus my email, internet, contacts management, calendaring, etc) in the same operating environment; not an emulation shell, not after dual-booting, but in the very same operating system and simultaneously.

To top it all off OS X comes with a full set of developer tools, documentation and optimization utilities, plus Cocoa+Obj-C is a match made in heaven.

There's no need to pay Apple for a decent Unix experience.

Well, I believe there is. I enjoy the ability to support quality whether it's a film, a restaurant, a music venue, a book, clothing, my neighborhood, an artist, etc. every single day.

The hardware is just a hunk of material until you've discovered/designed an interface with which to use it. Solely on a base consumer level, I'm very happy to pay Apple for what is, in daily practice, a superior computer operating system. From the level of both a technology consultant and a media creator, the solution is very simple.

OS X is a very impressive "Holy Grail" for all my current activities. Strap me in because I'm ready to get to work.

I didn't post above, but I currently use both XP and 2000 daily. Make your own decisions but I also use OS X daily and it's far and away the most pleasant working environment I've encountered to date. That doesn't mean it's perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's not the point now, is it.

As for "OS 9," um, who's talking about OS 9?

If you want Unix, install Linux... FreeBSD... SuSE... Debian... Lycoris... Lindows... There are choices in the Windows world.

Well, by the time I've finished clicking through the (Continue) buttons in an OS X install I've managed to install both the entire GUI environment and the entire Unix OS. I can also install other Unix systems on Mac hardware, but frankly I've got everything I need right here.

I don't need to install anything else except Logic Pro 6, Ableton Live, MetaSynth, ArtMatic Pro, MetaTrack, Voyager, VTrack, Absynth, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniDiskSweeper, Studiometry, FileMakerPro, Adobe Creative Suite, LaunchBar, MySQL, Perl 5.8.3, Fink, Plone, Keynote, BBEdit, FastTrack Schedule Pro, Sonasphere, Toast 6, ZBrush, and a few more but I'll get to those tomorrow.

I run all these (plus my email, internet, contacts management, calendaring, etc) in the same operating environment; not an emulation shell, not after dual-booting, but in the very same operating system and simultaneously.

To top it all off OS X comes with a full set of developer tools, documentation and optimization utilities, plus Cocoa+Obj-C is a match made in heaven.

There's no need to pay Apple for a decent Unix experience.

Well, I believe there is. I enjoy the ability to support quality whether it's a film, a restaurant, a music venue, a book, clothing, my neighborhood, an artist, etc. every single day.

The hardware is just a hunk of material until you've discovered/designed an interface with which to use it. Solely on a base consumer level, I'm very happy to pay Apple for what is, in daily practice, a superior computer operating system. From the level of both a technology consultant and a media creator, the solution is very simple.

OS X is a very impressive "Holy Grail" for all my current activities. Strap me in because I'm ready to get to work.

I didn't post above, but I currently use both XP and 2000 daily. Make your own decisions but I also use OS X daily and it's far and away the most pleasant working environment I've encountered to date. That doesn't mean it's perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's not the point now, is it.

As for "OS 9," um, who's talking about OS 9?

If you want Unix, install Linux... FreeBSD... SuSE... Debian... Lycoris... Lindows... There are choices in the Windows world.

Well, by the time I've finished clicking through the (Continue) buttons in an OS X install I've managed to install both the entire GUI environment and the entire Unix OS. I can also install other Unix systems on Mac hardware, but frankly I've got everything I need right here.

I don't need to install anything else except Logic Pro 6, Ableton Live, MetaSynth, ArtMatic Pro, MetaTrack, Voyager, VTrack, Absynth, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniDiskSweeper, Studiometry, FileMakerPro, Adobe Creative Suite, LaunchBar, MySQL, Perl 5.8.3, Fink, Plone, Keynote, BBEdit, FastTrack Schedule Pro, Sonasphere, Toast 6, ZBrush, and a few more but I'll get to those tomorrow.

I run all these (plus my email, internet, contacts management, calendaring, etc) in the same operating environment; not an emulation shell, not after dual-booting, but in the very same operating system and simultaneously.

To top it all off OS X comes with a full set of developer tools, documentation and optimization utilities, plus Cocoa+Obj-C is a match made in heaven.

There's no need to pay Apple for a decent Unix experience.

Well, I believe there is. I enjoy the ability to support quality whether it's a film, a restaurant, a music venue, a book, clothing, my neighborhood, an artist, etc. every single day.

The hardware is just a hunk of material until you've discovered/designed an interface with which to use it. Solely on a base consumer level, I'm very happy to pay Apple for what is, in daily practice, a superior computer operating system. From the level of both a technology consultant and a media creator, the solution is very simple.

OS X is a very impressive "Holy Grail" for all my current activities. Strap me in because I'm ready to get to work.

Also, not free, and not really a hardcore spreadsheet app, but OmniOutliner will pass for most spreadsheet tasks. You can use multiple columns, type them as numerical currency, and summarize (sum) numerical columns. There's an example expense list on the site.

Actually, The Omni Group did the Framemaker port to NeXTSTEP. You can still see a reference to it on their jobs page under the "What's Omni Like?" heading. If Adobe wanted to put forth the money, The Omni Group could do the port.

Actually, The Omni Group did the Framemaker port to NeXTSTEP. You can still see a reference to it on their jobs page under the "What's Omni Like?" heading. If Adobe wanted to put forth the money, The Omni Group could do the port.

OmniWeb has explicit support for this. Check out:

http://www.omnigroup.com/images/newimagestemp/omni web/featuresPage/Speech.jpg
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/gall ery/

So it is nothing new, really.

OmniWeb has explicit support for this. Check out:

http://www.omnigroup.com/images/newimagestemp/omni web/featuresPage/Speech.jpg
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/gall ery/

So it is nothing new, really.

Macs don't run Visio;

I've used Visio. I hate Visio. There are way better alternatives to it, including OmniGraffle. Professors would often ask how I created such pretty diagrams in Visio. It was fun to tell them I didn't use that horribly designed program.

they don't run Access;

Access sucks. There isn't anything you can do in Access that's not easier in MySQL, and MySQL is free. And if you aren't 1337 to set up MySQL yourself, there's Filemaker.

they have Entourage instead of a proper, modern Outlook;

Entourage is superior to Outlook in just about every way.

So, really, the only app that's really missing on Mac OS X is Project.

and if you're into such things, they can barely run more games than Linux can.

Will the FUD never end?!? There are thousands of games for Macs, including most of the top games out there. Just because you can't find "Jethro Shoots Stuf Withuh Gun" at Best Buy doesn't mean there's no games for Macs

try the beta of OmniWeb 5. it allows arbitrary window sets to be saved and, optionally, opened upon application launch.

I've heard OmniWeb 5 has "workspaces" that function as save states. Read up on it.

There's the Omniweb 5 Beta preview that has built in RSS streams.
Or if you prefer not to switch browsers, I strongly recommend Slashdock (do a search on Versiontracker for it) to stream in a tonne of RSS feeds.

As far as software goes, Office v.X runs better on my PB than Office XP on my universities new 2.4Ghz Dells. I suppose most people wouldn't notice the difference, but I've been using Office since its Win3.1 days and I notice the little things. For music software, I pretty much only use iTunes right now, but Garageband looks sweet and I'm going to be buying a new guitar and some new M-Audio gear soon, so I'll know more in the future.

For Safari, I should point out that I have Jaguar 10.2.8 and Safari 1.0.1, I don't notice any slow downs with SSL sites, but I do notice heavy slowdowns on flash intensive sites, like IGN (who has become worse over the years instead of better). Most of the time for that website, I use Mozilla or OmniWeb 5 Beta 2 and it loads much much faster. I suspect that the Flash in Safari is much faster since the release of Panther. I decided that I would just wait until 10.4 before I upgrade because 10.3 came out a few weeks after I bought my PB and Apple didn't give me a free upgrade (I think I missed the cutoff by a week or so), and 10.2.8 works well enough.

Hope this helps. At this point, I'd say just wait until the new rev. is released. It shouldn't be too much longer. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Amigori

Point by point... #1 I use Microsoft Office v.X and share documents all the time with other Windows users. The only problems I ever ran into were when I forgot to check off "Send Windows Friendly Attachements" in Mail.app when exchanging documents. #2 The only feature missing in the Office apps I miss is Visio. Of course, once I bought OmniGraffle Professional, I could read and write Visio drawings in the Visio/XML format. #3 My company's portal doesn't work with Safari, IE 5.2, and any flavor of Mozilla on ANY platform. In fact, it doesn't even work with anything prior to IE 6.0 on Windows. Would I blame the Mac? Nope... I blame the dork who architected our portal (he knows who he is!) When sites target IE, that's unavoidable... #4 Never run into a problem exchanging documents in Word format, as per #1 #5 I'm a Java developer, so I can't even begin to touch the Adobe apps. #6 Ever heard of SAMBA? I can login to Windows domains, navigate shares, and work alongside my colleagues on a Windows network. I'm doing that today. And I never need to worry about viral hits on my laptop.

"I can't browse anymore without find-as-you-type, a feature that only Moz/Firefox has (to the best of my knowledge)."

OmniWeb has it as well.

Or with Omniweb 5. The Beta's cookie management has a little button on the status bar that you can click to manage cookies on a per-site basis, on the fly, without having to dig around in preferences. In my case, I have it default to only accept cookies from the site I'm on. I could specialize filtering, though.

For people interested in an alternative to Safari, the Omni Group just released the first public beta of OmniWeb 5.0. It has some cool new features including a particularly nice tabs implementation, a (IMHO) more flexible interpretation of Apple's SnapBack, and site-specific preferences.

I don't mean to sound like an advertisement, and to be sure, OmniWeb has its quirks, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Here is a link.

Today IE5 for Mac OS is a crumby browser compared to modern offerings such as Apple's Safari, Camino/Firebird, and OmniWeb but back near the turn of the millennium Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS was praised far and wide as the best browser EVER for Macintosh systems, and arguably the best browser on any platform.

Here is a review at O'Reilly's Mac Developer Center (which has some geek-credit here) where they praise thinks including:

- Blending into the newly released OS X Aqua look
- The "page holder"
- Font controls
- CSS1/2 support
- PNG Support (which is still broken on windows)
- HTML4 support

Here's one over at macworld that decries it as the best thing since jesus as far as os x browsers are concerned. IE was very impressive, unfortunately Microsoft let it stagnate which hurt all mac users - choice is good.

Another article from 2000 that speaks to the quality of the MacIE.

Those of you who aren't familiar with Omni's other apps, check them out. These guys are some of the best software developers in the business.

Abso-freakin-loutly. If you've never seen OmniGraffle (their diagramming application), check it out. I put together graphical representations of a theoretical computer cluster in about 5 minutes that is thoroughly impressive. Ditto for a quick sketch of UML. And a street map to get to my house. And so on. Basically, if I have to think about anything for more than 2 minutes, I'll usually sketch it out in OmniGraffle (in about 3 minutes) to make sure I've got it right.

Another of their applications, OmniOutliner (an organizational/outline app), is also something I use every day. Yeah, you might not think it sounds that useful, but an outlining tool that can handle multiple columns (with various column types) and export to any useful format you can think of makes my job a whole lot easier. I use it to take meeting minutes, keep notes on technical documentation, and keep a log of what I did to get things working (for instance, getting OpenLDAP to work with SSL connections).

Yeah, I am gushing a lot, but I swear I don't work for these guys (I don't want to live in Seattle). But they just make my life as a developer easier & more productive. Check the apps out.

--Mid

Those of you who aren't familiar with Omni's other apps, check them out. These guys are some of the best software developers in the business.

Abso-freakin-loutly. If you've never seen OmniGraffle (their diagramming application), check it out. I put together graphical representations of a theoretical computer cluster in about 5 minutes that is thoroughly impressive. Ditto for a quick sketch of UML. And a street map to get to my house. And so on. Basically, if I have to think about anything for more than 2 minutes, I'll usually sketch it out in OmniGraffle (in about 3 minutes) to make sure I've got it right.

Another of their applications, OmniOutliner (an organizational/outline app), is also something I use every day. Yeah, you might not think it sounds that useful, but an outlining tool that can handle multiple columns (with various column types) and export to any useful format you can think of makes my job a whole lot easier. I use it to take meeting minutes, keep notes on technical documentation, and keep a log of what I did to get things working (for instance, getting OpenLDAP to work with SSL connections).

Yeah, I am gushing a lot, but I swear I don't work for these guys (I don't want to live in Seattle). But they just make my life as a developer easier & more productive. Check the apps out.

--Mid

The text you'll find at Omnigroup where they present themselves as a company hasn't changed much over the years. I also like their job opportunites page... too bad I don't live in Seattle (6000 miles from where I live)

The text you'll find at Omnigroup where they present themselves as a company hasn't changed much over the years. I also like their job opportunites page... too bad I don't live in Seattle (6000 miles from where I live)

First of all note that OmniWeb is not affected by this bug. Outside of a lack of tabs, it's a very good Web Browser that should satisfy you until Apple patches this bug. Of course, I'm sure the Slashdot readership is aware of other options as well.

As for the discussion as to whether this is a bug in KHTML in general, it is not. The bug is in the way browsers parse the hostname out of a URL differently for cookies and the connection itself. So in Safari the url:

http://www.EvilSite.com%00.amazon.com/

will connect to www.EvilSite.com, but be considered in the domain of .amazon.com for the purpose of cookie security. This seems to be a bug in the code around KHTML, not KHTML itself, since vulnerable OmniWeb uses the same WebCore framework that is used by Safari without being vulnerable.

While you're waiting for Apple to patch this why not check out Mozilla Firebird 0.7 for OS X.

It is a great, feature rich browser. Of course you could also check out Mozilla 1.5, Camino, Netscape, iCab, Omni Web, Opera, or even IE 5 or MSN for the Mac

All of these can be downloaded from their respective sites, or from the Internet Utilities section of Apple's Mac OS X Downloads page.

kisok

I don't know neither, but there seems to be demand.

What about Omniweb? Now that it's using Apple's WebCore, it's faster, though not like Safari. Excellent cookies and animation control; I'm not sure if it does tabbed browsing.

Err, no.

*NIX already has a wonderful, Visio-compatible application.

As showed by Omni, Next-step applications can be ported to OS X quite fast and are generaly high quality. It is kind of sad to see good code go to waste simply for political reasons.

I have yet to see any web browser with a usable TEXTAREA text editor for non-trivial messages (limited viewing area, no spell checking, no word wrapping, cumbersome copying/pasting).

Try OmniWeb. Spell checking, a "zoom" box to blow the TEXTAREA up into its own window, and it accepts Emacs control keys.

Of course, you'll have to run Mac OS X.

Omniweb for Mac OS X provides multiple undo and redo for HTML text forms.

Microsoft is bad enough, but I don't recall a lot of their updates causing people to need to reformat and reinstall from scratch once a month.

Are you seriously suggesting the problems in 10.2.8 are normal for Mac OS X?

Sure, every piece of software is going to have some problem with some individual's machine because people do strange things to their computers. But if memory serves, this is the first update in a long time that had to be pulled (I welcome corrections on that). I moderate OmniGroup's macosx-talk list. When more than a small number of systems have issues with a given release, I hear about it. With 10.2.8, there were problems. Usually there aren't.

Mac OS X hasn't crashed on either of my machines in 2.5 years, and from what I hear, that's not at all rare. Stability is the norm.

As for why Microsoft gets harassed more, why do you think? They sell themselves to the mainstream media as the one true software company, yet have lackluster products. It's a lot harder to say that about Apple. There's a good faith factor there that makes the difference when it comes to slashdot comments.

- Scott

For file systems I use symbolic links in a column viewed filesytem. I really like what a company formerly known as NeXT has done with some of their products. Their software for pictures and music both have a "Library". From there you can drag songs or pictures into "Playlists" (music) or "Albums" (photos).

Very cool.

As for software, I use OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner from OmniGroup. OmniOutliner is especially simple, yet unique. I wonder why no one else has an idea organizer that is so incredible? I couldn't do my job without it. Well, I could, but I'd use a lot of paper or spend a lot of time in OpenOffice messing around with things.

I read it on Slashdot that no one makes games for Macs, so it must be true. I better let Aspyr, MacPlay, MacSoft, Westlake Interactive, Ambrosia, Freeverse, The Omni Group, Blizzard, GraphSim, and Feral Interactive among many other commercial operations and hundreds of shareware developers that no one at all makes games for the Macintosh and that they should all shut down immediately. Additionally, Inside Mac Games should shut down their operation immediately as they are a waste of server space because they will never have any news to report ever.

I heard it on Slashdot so it must be true.

You can see a screen shot of my lame attempt at making a cube with Graffle.

For quick sketches and graphs, its an amazing little tool.

As far as I know, Visio will not be ported to the Mac.

I've used both Omnigraffle and Visio. Visio is a very good program and very comprehensive. The problem is, it's not very easy to use. It's fairly difficult to make it do what you want it to do. Make a mistake or need to resize your chart, you are in for hours of editting.

Omnigraffle is much easier to use! Very intuitive interface, easy to adjust things -- and yes, it does come with an office layout pallette. You can even import your own graphic elements, if you choose. The new version 3 does even more cool stuff!

If the folks at Omnigroup ever decide to take on Excel (my favorite M$ product), I've got some money I'd like to throw at them...

I know that omnigraffle, a flow chart program that comes with most newer macs has basic office layout symbols built in to it.

It's not the most exact in the world, but it's something at least, no?

Actually ... checks CVS... (yes, I work for Omni)

OmniWeb's shortcuts have been around since at least Apr, 1998 (compared to May, 2001 according to Old Mozilla Releases). They were around in less featureful incarnations back to 1996 or 1997, judging from what I see in CVS.

Remember, OmniWeb is one of the oldest browsers still around:

revision 1.1.1.1 date: 1994/02/16 21:53:53; author: kc; state: Exp; lines: +0 -0
Here's OmniWeb!

We love it when other browsers copy OmniWeb's features (and we've certainly copied features from other places). What is even better is that with WebCore/JavaScriptCore we have to spend less time futzing with web standards (if they can be called that) and can work on honest-to-goodness innovations.

Dude, Omnigraffle 3.0.1 does almost everything Visio does and is much simpler to use. Check it out!

Adobe Framemaker, Visio, and Max/MSP were all created on the NeXT

I wouldn't call any of the features you mention "features" as such, as they are simply pieces added to complete a rather unfinished operating system. IPSec included in the kernel? Should have been worked out in beta. X11? Ditto. Microsoft does the same thing, like upgrading IE for free, but they don't charge for it..
Off topic: anybody know why Apple's working so hard to alienate their (already meager) developer community? First they rip off Watson) and now they're kicking Adobe Premiere in the nuts. Wonder if they're trying to fulfill all the prophecies..

Microsoft drops Mac IE development as Safari reaches 1.0

Of course, anyone who wants to develop Office-like business software or any kind of web browser for Windows faces the same uphill battle. When the OS manufacturer makes non-OS software, they enjoy unparalleled integration with the rest of the system and anyone else comes in four to six months behind the development curve.

Microsoft drops Mac IE development as Safari reaches 1.0

Of course, anyone who wants to develop Office-like business software or any kind of web browser for Windows faces the same uphill battle. When the OS manufacturer makes non-OS software, they enjoy unparalleled integration with the rest of the system and anyone else comes in four to six months behind the development curve.

Indeed it is. We also used CVS to collaborate on the sgml files and the makefiles to drive the DocBook->PDF toolchain. I used emacs for my chapters, and Aaron used an in-house tool called DocBooker. The early version of DocBooker is presented in Aaron's Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X book. Many illustrations where done with OmniGraffle.

And others rise in their place: Omni Group has risen to the top in terms of Mac OS X software developers. OmniGraffle is about as much of a Cocoa experience as you can get!

True, but anyone can use the WebCore framework when building their own browser. The Omnigroup guys have done this by releasing OmniWeb 4.5 using WebCore as the HTML engine. The WebCore framework is also comprised of open source code that anyone can examine, embrace, extend, etc.

cr

Microsoft brought IE to mac to gain leverage during the browser wars - also helped them with a few of their antitruse issues.

This being said - I think that Microsoft put good amount of development into IE for mac - still a piece of crap - but they tried. They knew that mac users would not put up with mickey mouse BS like IE for windows. They should add some of the features from their mac browser to IE on windows.

Omniweb (Webcore), Camino, Mozilla, and Firebird are, and have been for some time, the most competitive mac browsers. (left IE in the dust a long time ago) To imply that Safari is the undisputed king is nieve. I actually think that Omniweb 5.0 is going to shake things up a good amount when it arives ( Omnigroup has a lot of former neXtstep people).

Microsoft is pulling IE because it does not fit into their Palladium/DRM strategy. I am sure there will be no tears shed over this one - they can have both Pallidium and IE - need to keep those 'features' for the Windows users. ;-)

"Today's SlashDotFunQuiz is to predict the order in which, impact when, and years until these other Mac products get the axe: Media Player, MSN Messenger, Office, Outlook, and Virtual PC."

So, what are our alternatives?

Media Player: VLC, MPlayer for OS X

MSN Messenger: Proteus, Fire

Office: Apple Works, Keynote as Powerpoint Replacement, Open Office, AbiWord, Gnumeric

Outlook: Apple Mail.app, iCal, Evolution,

Virtual PC: Ya, well, maybe sometime RealPC will appear after they settle with Microsoft. But who uses that stuff anyway?

Last but not least, Internet Explorer: Safari, Camino, Mozilla and maybe soon again Omniweb, thanks to WebCore. (Yes, i left out Opera & iCab)

Okay, did i miss something? ;-)

And if it's a Mac, get the Omni Group's excellent OmniOutliner software; that thing is a freaking godsend when it comes to taking class notes.

I second that - and I also recommend OmniGraffle, also by Omni Group. OmniGraffle is a kick-ass charting app, and it saved me a bundle of time when I had to do annoying flowcharts for my programming classes. :)