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Apple Delays Mac OS X
Mad Browser writes:"MacNN is reporting that Apple has delayed MacOS X again until January 2001. They are also reporting that a public beta of OS X will be available this summer.
Jobs also said that WebObjects deployment licenses would go from $50,000 to $700. " QuickTime 5 is also tentatively going to be out this summer, as well.
Here's a (not so brief) history of Apple's attempts at a modern operating system:
A Brief History of Apple
Pink, announced in 1989, was Apple's first public attempt at producing a modern operating system. After IBM joined the Pink project, it was renamed Taligent and spun off as a separate company. Taligent meandered aimlessly, and was killed in 1995. In 1993, before the final death of Taligent, word began to leak out of Apple that a new OS project, codenamed Copland, was underway.
In 1995, with the death of Taligent and the imminent arrival of Windows 95, Apple began hyping Copland and its successor, Gershwin. Apple demonstrated Copland at WWDC, and promised full preemptive multitasking and protected memory support in Gershwin, with partial support in Copland. As the estimated release date for Copland slipped from 1995 to 1996 to 1998, it became apparent that Copland had gone very wrong. Copland was killed in 1996, and replaced by a plan to gradually add many of its promised features to the Mac OS. Many of the UI changes and some of the other, more minor changes were indeed added with Mac OS 8. Unfortunately, the much-needed preemptive multitasking and protected memory features never made it into the Mac OS (even Mac OS 9 lacks these features). The Copland strategy underwent a few more twists, but none had a major impact besides generating rumors and wasting Apple's resources. There were also rumors that Apple would acquire Be and use its BeOS as the basis of the new Mac OS, but this possibility was soon discounted.
Apple acquired NeXT in December of 1996. NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs after his ousting from Apple in 1985, had a modern OS called NeXTSTEP with many of the technologies Apple needed. With NeXT came Steve Jobs, who soon regained control of Apple and his former position as CEO. Apple announced Rhapsody, which was to be a port of NeXTSTEP to the PowerPC, with a Mac-ified UI and the Blue Box for running classic Mac applications. Rhapsody was renamed Mac OS X Server (to distinguish it from Mac OS X), and was Apple's first attempt at a modern OS that actually shipped. Mac OS X Server targeted the small to medium server market, and did reasonably well. Although easy to set up and use by server standards (a few Linux distributions are getting very good, too), Mac OS X Server is not suitable for use as a consumer OS. Interestingly, some of the development releases of Mac OS X Server would run on Intel-based systems in addition to PowerPC-based machines.
When it became apparent that Adobe and other key software companies were not willing to spend years porting their software to Rhapsody, Apple was forced to make yet another attempt at producing a modern OS suitable for consumers. Called Mac OS X, it combines the modern features and architecture of Rhapsody/OS X Server with a new UI (Aqua) and an application environment called Carbon that simplifies porting current Mac applications to Mac OS X.
Mac OS X combines elements of the current Mac operating system (Carbon, QuickTime), components of NeXTSTEP which are themselves drawn from other operating systems (Mach, portions of BSD), and entirely new components, such as Aqua and Quartz.
nice quip. Here's another one:
Linux UI reaches functionality of late-80's user interface!
Sunnyvale, CA - Linux has finally met the interface standards of the early 1980's. A proud crew of Linux developers stood inside their home-offices proclaiming the superiority of their latest efforts. "Our code stomps Windows 3.1!" one exclaimed over IRC. "Our interface is so good that those Windoze 3.1 users will be drooling with envy!"
"It's so good, that I only use the command line every 10 minutes!" gushed another. "In another 10 years, the command line will be obsolete!"
"The current release of Linux user interfaces is a great leap forward," said one unnamed developer. "However, there is still much work to be done. Our ten-button mouse driver still needs work, and we need some more donated hardware to finish off the teledildonics driver. Plus, the vast majority of users still can't figure out how to start up the desktop."
"On the other hand, progress is great! We just got some great work from a bunch of five-year-olds who took a Logo course at their kindergarten, and we're rolling a Logo-based UI engine into the next release. This'll allow kids to customize their user interface by using standard Logo primitives and turtle graphics. How cool is that?"
Industry analyists who cover the Linux market were overjoyed at the new GUIs. "The addition of a GUI that meets or exceeds Windows 3.1 is a fundamental value-add to the Linux solution offering, and makes Linux a strong contender in the low-end enterprise space" said Rob Towner, analyst at HypoMania securities. "And future plans call for one that meets or exceeds the 95 shell! That's amazing!"
Others were not so sanguine. "BFD. It's crap." posted one anonymous poster on slashdot. "The phrase 'Linux UI' is as much of an oxymoron as, well, it's just moronic. W1nd00z!"
My mouse is usually gonna be in the window of the app I'm currently talking to, so having the menus in that window is good.
Not true. Because it's on the edge of the screen, I can hit the Mac menubar with a single flick of my wrist, no matter where the cursor is now. In fact, it generally takes *longer* to hit menu items in Windows than in Mac OS, even if the cursor is much closer to the Windows menu. Hitting a Mac OS menu is near-instantaneous once you get used to not having to slow down as you get near the menu.
Plus you save screen space by not having multiple menus.
Mac menus also have subtle details that make it work better: Go to a menu that has a submenu, and go down to the title of one of the submenus. Notice that if you move your pointer down and diagonally toward the submenu, that submenu stays open. (Assuming you don't go too fast) If you move your mouse in any other direction, that submenu pops closed. There are a lot of things like that: subtle details that Mac users take for granted to that the rest of the computing world hasn't bothered to implement right.
Also, closing the last window of an app doesn't kill the app. That really gets me, and I blame the shared menu for it.
This is a personal preference, but there are a couple of advantages to this. One, the application-centric (rather than window-centric) model prevents multiple copies of the same app from running. Second, command-Q kills off the whole app, whicl alt-F4 only kills one window. Thirdly, there are times when you want to close the current window and relaunch it. This is much easier if the menu bar stays in place. Fourth, it cuts down on the clutter in the application menu (task bar) I have five items in my application menu at the moment. I'd have 10-15 if every window were listed.
With that said, there are downsides-- it's an issue of personal taste. But it's hardly a basis on which to choose an OS.
I use PC hardware now. And I have a choice of Windows, Linux, BSD, Be, OS/2, QNX, etc.
I use MacOS hardware now. And I have a choice of MacOS, Linux, BSD, Be, OS X Server, OS X (soon), PlayStation (via VGS), Windows 95/98/NT/2000 (via VirtualPC), etc.
This really isn't that big of a departure from Apple's previous stategy.
Before, they were going to release a final beta now and ship sometime this summer. However, they weren't going to bundle the OS with their hardware until January of '01.
The only difference now is that they're re-labeling that initial 1.0 release a beta and stilling bundling it with their hardware in January '01. To be perfectly honest, to anyone who has seriously used OSX DP3, this makes perfect sense. The user interface had a long way to go before it'd make a decent successor to OS9. If they had released anything even remotely like DP3 as a final product, they'd have been filleted by the Mac press and userbase.
It seems they have taken the criticism to heart, and might be fixing some of the stupider elements (ie. the dock) which possibly providing a replacement for some of the gaping holes (ie. the lack of an Apple menu or something similar). As a bonus, they released another beta today and will release another sometime this summer.
This is a Good Thing, IMHO. No use making people buy something labeled a release when in all reality it's a beta. There's no way Apple was going to have something release-quality within 6-8 months of DP3...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Every time macs get mentioned on here, it always goes something like
Mac user: Mac's rule, linux sucks
Linux user: Mac users are just too stupid to use a real comuter
Mac user: Maybe they just aren't stupid enough to beat their heads on the wall to get things done
linux user: Yeah, go back to your gay ass traslucent fish tank looser
(repeat for 2.4 hours)
How about this, you're both idiots! The only people who ever bother to get into this stupid insult fest are the idiots who have nothing better to do and no desire to consider that everybody has a preference. Mac users aren't too stupid to use a real computer. Linux users aren't masochistic. Now everyone shut the fuck up.
As a Maya user (not much of an artist), I have JUST ONE WORD FOR THIS: UNFREAKINBELIEVABLE!
:-D
I had to check the HTML for includes links outside aliaswavefront.com... I thought they had been HACKED! LOL...
This is very good news for the Mac folks and MacOS X in general. It's also good news for ME. My company is SynaPix, and our software ties in with Maya over the LAN. This in all probability means we will be geting our first Mac
Heck, if all I ever needed was a few Windows applications, and the interface was good enough for me, I could run those too, either with Wine or VMWare, or with some Windows-esque window manager.
A window manager is not an interface. A lousy interface with a pretty face is still a lousy interface. An interface is measured by its consistency, it's simplicity, its elegance, and its power, not by where the buttons are and what color the title bar is. Window managers are amusing, but no matter how good they are, they can't overcome the inadequacies of bad applications and lousy OS-level GUI API's.
Linux *started* with at least the functionality of a late-80's user interface as soon as X compiled on it.
Hmm... system wide, consistent cut and paste? A decent graphical file browser? Consistent keyboard shortcuts for common commands? multiple monitor support?
Granted, those aren't all specifically interface issues, but they are closely related. Linux *still* doesn't have a lot of the features that Mac users take for granted. Even KDE and gnome don't give you either the interface consistency or the attention to detail of the Mac cerca 1990. For all their technical bells and whistles, KDE and Gnome are still ugly, clumsy, and poorly designed.
My interface is so good, I use the command line all the time.
Good for you. And I bet you spent months learning it. And I'll also bet that when you get a new program, you have to read pages of documentation to figure out how to use it. And I'll further bet that you are in the top 5% on the geekiness scale in the general population.
The fact is that most people don't have the time or the interest to learn the Unix CLI. Doing so is no small undertaking-- it takes days to become even basically functional, and months to master all its nuances. I can sit down in front of a Mac app I've never seen before, and start using effectively almost immediately. I can do that because Apple has worked hard to ensure that developers follow certain conventions in interface design, so that new apps work the same as my old ones. CLI's expect you to memorize an entirely new set of flags and options with every command.
As for cutting and pasting, I'll take real cut-and-paste with a real clipboard any day. The standard X cut and paste is a nasty hack that should have died 10 years ago. I shouldn't have to worry about accidentally highlighting text before I've had time to paste copied text to its destination. And if Unix had a standard keyboard shortcut for "paste" you wouldn't lose more than a quarter-second in pasting.
And if I want to cut and paste something other than text, I'm just out of luck.
Of course, I'd rather get work done. I hate to break it to you, but that's what that "User Interface" is for: to get stuff done.
Correct. Which is why most X GUI's suck so much-- you can't get any work done until you've had someone walk you through using the thing for several hours, and it takes week before you're able to do even moderately complex tasks.
And forget it if you're planning on working with images, souds, video, spreadsheets, or even formatted text-- those are just too frivolous for our manly command line interface and our handy dandy middle-button paste.
Well, okay, but a move from July to January is then just as bad from the "upgrade the OS over the summer" front. Meanwhile, I was talking more about student purchases than departmental ones. Department/institutional purchases usually work around site-licensed software (i.e., Microsoft), and so the release date is also less relevant. But students are the ones who purchase the games and other products that come from smaller developers. Students are also the new "front line" of advocacy. Missing the student purchase window could be a pretty bad thing.
Babar
Will this public beta version expire (must set back system clock with OS 9 boot disk to boot the system again) when Mac OS 10 is scheduled to be released?
Will I retire or break 10K?
IN David Foster Wallace's 1996 classic, Infinite Jest , set in or about 2010, it describes Pink-2 as Microsoft's first Post Windows Operating System. I thought DFW was just making it up, but now I know where he got it from.
Although I think the idea of M$ dropping Windows for an Apple related OS is about as likely as gigantic packs of mutant hamsters overrunning New England.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
and then spend $500 on photoshop for windows
Are you saying The GIMP isn't advanced enough yet? It runs just fine for me on Sindows 98.
x11(which generally is much too ugly for a mac user to stand
Or the Aqua themes for GTK and Sawmill that look so not ugly, Apple is suing?
lets see is it "#start x", "#start x windows", hmmmmm how about
How about gdm? 100% GUI from startup to shutdown.
# tell application "X" to open
Interesting... I wonder why nobody has made a CLI shell for Mac OS yet, based on AppleScript and the Open Scripting Architecture.
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://devworld.apple.com/tec hpubs/macosx/macosx.html
Click on the Objective-C framework reference. I think the three-language API will be just fine... at least Apple's finally lost the Pascal version APIs... hopefully...
They have a good PDF tutorial on ObjC as well.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
features and misfeatures of X. (running graphical programs on other machines on the network, no integration of graphics into the kernel, etc.)
I saw two features and no misfeatures. Aren't buggy video drivers running in kernelspace one of the problems that make Windows NT Workstation (and Windows 2000 Professional) so unstable?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I got sick of waiting and developed a component object model for web application development in Java. It's called Tapestry and will be released as open source on SourceForge as soon as I can my damn company to open a port for ssh in our firewall!
... my first attempt wasn't good enough).
... but this is just one example of how Apple has screwed up; they've let thier best, most marketable technologies languish. They also have a habit of screwing thier supposed partners. Our shop is very, very happy to be able to do WebObjects style development without having to deal with Apple.
We're using it for development of customer web applications already and we like it. Don't have a good Object Relational bridge yet (to do it as right as EOF is very, very, very hard
You can find out more at:
http://tapestry.primix.com/tapestry
Off topic? Of course
If they do make an intel version. I really hope that thay also have the brains to make it possable to run it from within windows.
Don't hold your breath on this fantasy. Apple makes most of it's money selling hardware. For them to do what you suggest would be suicide.
The problem with SoftMac is that they are VASTLY overstating their software compatability. Almost all current versions of Mac programs are PowerMac only, which SoftMac doesn't support. This makes it useless except for use with software that any Mac user would consider long ago obsolete.
The claim of 80% of the speed of a 68040 on an Althon K7 is pretty poor, too. The 68040 topped out at 33 MHz! Given the architecture advantages of newer CPUs, this means the emulation is running at an effective 1/200th or so of the native CPU speed. This would CRAWL with anything like modern software. It would be like running Windows 98 on a 486-33 PC.
the PUBLIC RELEASE is occuring late this summer (as previously scheduled) as a "public beta" rather than a 1.0, ala W2K
But will this beta expire? "This public beta version of Mac OS X has expired. To start your computer, purchase and install the official release version. It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Will I retire or break 10K?
X Windows runnings on top of Darwin
So they have an X server on OS 10. Does this mean "OS X" is no longer false advertising, specially in the "Mac OS X Server" department?
Now all XFree86.org needs to do is get its server running on OS 10 (if it works on iMac and G4 under netbsd-ppc it'll be no sweat); then it'll really be OS X.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmm, I didn't know that, and my copy of Windows Media Player also knows QuickTime files. Unfortunately, it seems to be unable to deal with any modern codec ;-( Even the annyoing I-contact-home-without-asking feature doesn't work:
Unable to download an appropriate decompressor. (Error=80040200)
How many times has this been said in other Apple related stories???
Seems like everytime Apple is mentioned on Slashdot, SOMEONE will start b*tching about this.
FACT: Apple does NOT own *all* of the code in Quicktime.
Portions of QT are licensed from other vendors. In particular, the Sorenson codec, which is responsible for live QT streaming, is NOT Apple's intellectual property. No Sorenson, no streaming QT... No Sorenson, no super-high-quality QT like the Star Wars trailers.
A handful of other components are licensed technology, but Sorenson is the biggie. Without the Sorenson codec, you might as well be using Quicktime Three, rathar than four or five.
Now, since Apple does not own the code; do you think they are going to open-source it and intentionally expose themselves to the resulting lawsuits?
For all the mistakes that Apple has made over the years, I don't think giving away someone else's copyrighted code will be one of them... not anytime soon anyway.
And that's why there is no Quicktime for Linux. And that's why there WILL NOT be Quicktime for Linux anytime soon.
Wanna complain to someone? Go to Sorenson and convince them to open-source their codec. If you are sucessful (I doubt it), you will have made a big step (perhaps the biggest) towards a Linux version of Quicktime.
john
Imagine all the people...
Au contraire! Microsoft Office will run in the Classic environment (code-named Blue Box), which is essentially an emulator running Mac OS 9 that runs transparently on Mac OS X. No nifty UNIX features, but it'll run.
Remember when Apple transitioned from m68k to PowerPC? They wrote a 68040 emulator and built it into the OS so 68k apps would still run (MUCH more slowly than PPC-native apps, and slower than on 68040 boxes), and everybody was happy - most people never knew the difference. how many people realized that a 68040 has more in common with a Pentium than a PowerPC? To the user, the PowerPC was just an upgrade. Mac OS X will be the same way, and if anybody can pull it off, Apple's the one.
Micro$oft has said, I believe, that MS Office 2001 will not be Carbon-compliant, although I can't imagine why. I suspect they'll change their mind. Porting from the traditional Mac OS Toolbox to Carbon is supposed to be easy; that's the whole point of Carbon.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It amazes me that anyone ever trusted these people- certainly one can't depend on Office either, much less IE. They would cheerfully do just the same thing to their own Windows users if they wanted to sell 'em W2K apps all over again. Given the opportunity they'd jack prices up to boot.
There won't be Carbon Office- there won't be _any_ further Mac IE much less Carbon- MS has gone into 'crazed frothing madman mode' and will do as much damage as it can before being 'killed' (as it considers a breakup/regulation to be). This is not a slam to the many good developers and decent people who happen to work for MS. They're no doubt fine people- but the Mac IE team is still history- good people _cannot_ set the tone for a monopoly, they are merely allowing it to persist in its behavior by colluding with it.
Death of the Mac predicted: film at 11, every six months for the last 15 years ;) this, too, shall pass...
From what I've seen at the time of DP3 and comparing that progress to the expected release date, I'd say give them the extra time and MacOSX will be that much better. It will also give the Darwin Open Source project more time, which means nothing but a more stable, feature rich OS. Besides, after buying MacOS9, I'd be kind of upset at it being obsolete after 6 months.
The Mac is good, but it could still use the work to be adequate for the future.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
like having colored buttons for close, restore, minimize. instead of graphical icons.
Symbols (+ -) appear when you mouse over the buttons.
To make a "cool" looking interface for marketing reasons. Instead of practical reasons.
Marketing reasons is an odd way to put it. Perhaps reasons that people that hack around in gdb all day don't really care about. People like cool looking interfaces. There is a small, vocal group of people that think the OS should forever stay like Mac OS 9, but watching Aqua in action is an amazing experience. It makes Enlightenment look 10 years old.
Someone mentioned that there might be a Mac OS X for Intel
I can't see how this would make any sense right now. People just took way too much license with Darwin running on Intel.
If they do make an intel version. I really hope that thay also have the brains to make it possable to run it from within windows.
How in the world would this work? That's no different than expecting Linux to run from within Windows.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
how many times is someone going to bitch about having install over the internet, and how many times is someone going to have to point out this URL.../
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/support
A friend of mine at the Alias|Wavefront offices here in Toronto told me about today's announcement of Maya for OS X...sounds pretty tasty!
Does this mean VOB playback even in the 'evaluation copy'? Or does VOB contain anything beyond 'pure' MPEG-2?
Highlights of the new version include MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 codec support, both encoding and decoding, as well as support for both local and streaming playback of those formats.
Does anyone here already have an evaluation copy of the Java 2 SDK? Any benchmarks? Opinions?!
There is some truth in what you say: stable is certainly a very noble goal. But the problem with the revised release schedule timing is that Mac OS X now misses two key purchasing deadlines.
The first key deadline is the start of the academic school year, when Apple has traditionally run specials and tried to get new and returning students to buy that Mac. Now those Macs won't be running Mac OS X.
The second key deadline is the Christmas shopping season, which is also over before January 1. I do expect Apple to ship a ton of Macs for next Christmas. (My guess is that the next rev of the iMac will come with a DVD ROM/CD-RW drive that will cure the "no floppy, no back-up" problem.) But now none of those Macs will be running Mac OS X, either.
Now, the reason why this is a problem is that if those Macs were shipping with OS X, then people would be asking for and buying the new applications that were written for the Cocoa environment. But if they've just shelled out for the Mac and the available, probably Classic apps, I'm not sure they'll upgrade very quickly to Mac OS X or Mac OS X apps. And if I were a smaller Mac OS X developer, that would make me feel pretty skittish.
And, if I were a hardware buyer not totally sold on the Mac anyway, I'd probably have less incentive to buy one rather than some random Win2K box. I'm not sure that shipping late is a move that Apple can really afford right now.
Babar
I apologise for the previous post, I forgot to change it to "plain old text"
>Carbonizing an app doesn't make it any closer to Cocoa. Cocoa evolved from the very different Openstep API. Carbon evolved from the old Toolbox API. The two are almost totally unrelated.
That's the whole point. It still is OS X Native, even though it is not cocoa. This is the beauty of OS X vs. Rhapsody. Developers do not need to rewrite their code to gain the benifits of OS X. They just need to make it conform to carbon specs.
As for newly written apps, they should be in cocoa.
>However, I've heard lots of developers on the net rant about how great the Openstep API were and how easy it is to develop - some non-programmer journalist wrote an article a few years back about supposedly being able to go from, not knowing how to program, to writing a full-featured word processor program in something like 2 hours, using Openstep.
Actually, their word processor was as full featured as, say, word 2.0. Which IS full featured compared to simpletext. I'm sure Office will be much longer to move to carbon.
OpenStep is great. Objective - C rules! In fact you can develop with Obj C and use the GCC compiler.
There is even a project called GNUStep that is open source (although not complete) version of the Openstep (cocoa) libraries.
I don't understand why anyone thinks shipping software before Christmas is such a huge deal. January 2001 is after Christmas 2000 but still before Christmas 2001. Until the end of civilization there will be a continuous succession of holidays and school openings. Do what's right for the software, ignore the calendar.
Mind you, I fully expect that linux hackers will eventually put just as good a subtractive color model into the GIMP (to equal photoshop it would have to be doing internal calculations and conversions in LAB color which has a greater gamut than either CMYK or RGB), but in order to do that, they need to understand what is actually involved :) you think there weren't scarily smart geeks involved in coming up with Photoshop? Hint: Photoshop originated in _Industrial Light & Magic_, not MS or Corel. Photoshop _is_ GFX geekness concentrated into one program. In order to beat it you have to take it seriously, not scoff at it.
I look forward to eventually hearing about GIMP hackers (or whoever) getting really GFX-geeky with all sorts of different color models and LAB as a base for conversions- I don't think any of that fundamental technology is patented, because LAB didn't come out of Silicon Valley, nor did ink and printing presses ;) it'd be a little harder to get Pantone colors (and all the other color houses) in there, as I'm sure you have to pay Pantone to be allowed to refer to specific Pantone colors. But on the whole, it is possible. But no fscking way are you going to be able to do prepress on an additive color model with a hacked-up grey channel. *g* the very concept, to a GFX geek, sounds like what Linux hackers would think of a 'dozer saying "You can get Windows 95 to multitask better than unix, because it is preemptive!" Uh, no no no ;)
I think the point they are trying to make is OS X does a much better job of making the hardware interface invisible with all their features. If you've used computers long enough to have first made the transition from a CLI to a GUI you would get their meaning better. From what I have seen of OS X unless you call up a terminal you're pretty much abstracted entirely from the hardware you're using.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Apple Puts Off Joining 20th Century Until 2001.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Copland actually made it to an early developer release, and there's an excellent Apple Press book, MacOS 8 Revealed, which describes Copland in detail. (Amusingly, Amazon.com is still selling this book, resulting in some strange reader comments.) Copland was supposedly killed because it ran old MacOS apps in a compatibility box with its own window. That was a killer limitation at the time, because Microsoft was threatening not to upgrade Office for the Mac to use the new API. MacOS X isn't really much better in this area, but Apple now has a deal with Microsoft, so Office will supposedly be upgraded if and when Apple ever gets a new OS out the door. I'm not holding my breath.
Apple had three other major false starts in the application API area:
- Bedrock This Apple/Symantec effort was supposed to provide a cross-platform API (Mac and Windows). Killed by Symantec, which decided that fighting MFC was hopeless. I still have a Bedrock CD.
- OpenDoc This Apple effort was supposed to provide a cross-platform API (Mac and Windows). Killed by Steve Jobs. OpenDoc got to the point that applications using it shipped.
- A/UX Apple's UNIX port. Ran Mac apps in a protected partition, slowly. Release 1 sucked, but 2 wasn't all that bad. Apple's first "server capable OS". 68K; never really made it to the PowerPC.
The end result of these debacles was far fewer Mac developers and, today, about 4% market share. Apple is profitable only because of major cutbacks; their market share is way below mid-90s levels.As loath as I am to admit it here, I like Apple. I prefer their hardware, and for some situations, I prefer their OS. My home machines are dual boot Mac/Linux PPC boxen. Which means I am looking forward to getting my claws on a BSD based MacOS.
As much as I'm drooling, however, from the angle of Apple's future, this delay is probably a very good thing. Rushing out the release before the OS (or the apps for it) are ready gives the press opportunities to slam it into the ground. The longer developers have to polish it, the better it will be when the wrappers come off. The more apps developers support it (with Carbon or Cocoa apps), the better the package feels to the end user. And, probably, the better the reviews come off.
A September release would be premature. As a developer, I know that without question... but I really wish I had the opportunity to hack with it a while before the release...
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
Um, photoshop does those little preview icons in windows.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Where does this conception come from that Macs are super expensive boxes that only the l337 can afford. If you ever take a gander at the scores the G4s get compared to Intel and AMD's chips they manage to keep up the pace with chips that have twice the clock speed. Why the hell would you want an OS to run inside an OS? There's only a small handful of instances where it would make sense. You sure are uninformed.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Stop trippin' over the fact that the OS isn't going to be shipped pre-installed as 1.0 until 2001. In fact that was the original rollout schedule outlined in January. The only thing that has changed (as mentioned at the WWDC) is that the PUBLIC RELEASE is occuring late this summer (as previously scheduled) as a "public beta" rather than a 1.0, ala W2K. So basically nothing has been delayed; rather the naming convention has changed. All Macs will have OS X pre-installed by Jan 2001 (as version 1.0). Boy, you rabid anti-Apple trolls have to control your flame-reflexes and analyze the context of news, rather than jump wildly after reading one headline.
-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
'Why would you use an Apple product?'
Ehm..ehm...maybe because both Gnome and KDE are fucking ugly and uncouth, even when compared to Windoze?
Maybe because the hardware rocks, the OS is comfortable, as in contrast with Linux(PPC)?
Maybe because everyone uses Windows?
Maybe because I like Apple, for they have always been at the spearhead of innovation and originality in the computer industry, whatever anti-UI, command-line dinosaurs like yourself may think, with your mainstream hardware, using fscking Windoze when nobody's looking, like I suspect most of Slashdot is doing.
Maybe because there are plenty of people like you, and that I enjoy pissing them off.
Maybe because I like translucent plastics?
(OK, I didn't really mean that last one....)
i would say one of the main reasons the Mac was a relative failure compared to windows was that Apple spent too much time dicking around with crazy pet projects, and too little time on any serious business or marketing strategy.
Lots of funky technologies were breeding in the R&D labs, and some of them actually became quite useful (working at apple in the day would have kicked ass), but the majority of ideas like the Pippin were just frankly stupid and ignorant of what customers (who pay the bills at the end of the day) really wanted.
Now the reverse is true and it seems apple is nothing BUT slick marketing. Well, swings and roundabouts, eh? But remember, Apple has never been very good at getting an OS out on time. System 7 was in vapour for quite a while, and as for Copland, well, erm... So comparing the 'crap era' versus 'good era' marketing days, it seems that nothing really changes in Cupertino.
The only reason Apple is alive today is because of the iMac, which is basically a customer driven marketing tool. I bloody hate it when coders say that marketing gets in the way of 'good product'.
yes, it gets in the way of elegant and efficient software/hardware (what is important to engineers of course, for good reason) but the 99% of people buying iMacs do so because of the marketing, especially since MacOSes are pretty underspecced in terms of geek features compared to, say, Linux, and the hardware pricier than a bog standard PC.
Anyway, I know it was just a wee joke but I felt compelled to swim against the tide again.
Moof!
Face it, Linux isn't hurting Apple's bottom line at all. The strengths of the Mac OS are all of Linux's weaknesses. The large number of first time computer users and Windows converts buying new iMacs FAR outweighs the numbers that they might be losing to Linux.
Let's not forget too that most Mac users that might get interested in Linux dual boot instead of abandoning the Mac totally. Linux only helps sell Macs because of the small PPC Linux following.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I harken back to the days of Quicktime 2 and 3. There were tons of apps that used Quicktime (all different versions) that could never figure out you already had it installed. It seems like every game you bought before 1996 came with Quicktime. Those were the days!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
It is amazing how often Slashdot gets burned by the Mac Rumor Web Sites. From now on, I would suggest that Slashdot completely ignore the ignorant and always inaccurate MacOSRumors web site. The fool that runs the site was been missing the mark nearly 100% on the release of MacOS X and is causing untold damage to Apple by firing everyone up for a non-event such as the WWDC release of MacOS X beta. The only thing notable about MacOSRumors is when it actually gets something right!
What Apple did release was MacOS X DP4 which MacOS Rumors falsely claimed had already been released to "select developers".
Here is the actual text from MacOS Rumors saying that MacOS X Beta was going to be released today, er, um 90% chance it would be released today.
From MacOS Rumors:
Release of Mac OS X Beta to Developers: 90% Although sources have been unusually noncomittal about specific ship dates on Beta, the timing is right and the release is by all appearances very nearly ready to go.
Slashdot: Stick to the facts and please ignore the rumor web sites. They are an absolute waste of electrons!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
They wouldn't need to rewrite GIMP just to hack in CMYK. They'd just figure out a way to link a grayscale (K) channel to an RGB (aka [1 1 1]^T - CMY) channel. And if you want prepress, that's why there's something called "plugins." It would be really cool if some fella made a plugin adapter (Lesser GPL) that let WinPhotoshop plugins run in WinGIMP. Any takers?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmmm... Maybe this is targetted at a different audience? There *are* people who don't want to build a box and some of us out there have to support hundreds (even thousands) of them. Wouldn't it be nice to have a stable Unix based computer that could go out of the box?
Linux can be tweaked to achieve this but Apple gives a rich user experience that Linux just hasn't gotten yet.
DB
I need to ask for my new machine rather quickly. I *must* have *nix. If OS X works, and has a good fortran compiler, I'm tempted to go that way. If it doesn't, it's x86 and FreeBSD. (Either one will irk the computer folks where I'm going :)
BUt what does "public beta" mean? Sign up, and maybe they send it? Anyone can download? A spare CD hidden in the computer case?
If they release it as final this summer, and everyone hates the GUI, they have to apologise when they fix the UI.
If they release it as beta, and everyone complains, they can say that they were listening to their beta testers when they fix the interface in v1.0.
This lets them save face.
Also, if we look at recent rumors...
Microsoft isn't making Office OS X Native until they finish OE & IE.
It would be a deathwish to release OS X without Office, since it is aimed at people that already have Macs, and want the ease of use of a major Office suite.
I hope they arn't doing what I think they're doing, That is: To make a "cool" looking interface for marketing reasons. Instead of practical reasons.
Linux just dosn't have the apps I need at the moment. And Apple is lagging a bit too behide (and too expensive) for me. Which is why I'm stuck with win98 Until someone wakes up.
Which brings me to another issue. Someone mentioned that there might be a Mac OS X for Intel.
I really hope apple go ahead with this, as I think it would be a big help to them. One of the main resons I don't use a Mac instead of my wintel box is 'cause Macs are so damn expensive. Sure, they're high quality. But I'm not that rich. For the price of a G4, at the very lest, I could get a 1gighz Athlon (i hope i'm right there, but of not, u get the drift).
And I'm sure I'm not the only who's been put off a Mac because of the price.
If they do make an intel version. I really hope that thay also have the brains to make it possable to run it from within windows. If that happened... My problems would be solved.
BTW, Emulators.com Have SoftMac, which can emulate up to a Mac Quadra with Mac OS 8.1
The clame that they can get ~50-60% clock speed on a pentium or celeron. And ~80-90% on a Athlon k7 And up to a gig of RAM. And It can run in a window, or full screen.
They also talk about possable linux versions, and a PowerMac emulator.
I hope they don't make Quicktime 5 a virus like QT4 was. When you install it, it takes it upon itself to 'attatch' itself to all audio & video formats. Uninstalling won't help. Everytime you want to use it, you get a nag screen asking you to buy it. The evil empire's Media Player doesn't do that!
Quicktime is just as bad as real player IMO. Quicktime and Realplayer should be apart of the antivirus software detection scehemes.