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Ars Technica Reviews MacOS X DP4
Mad Browser writes: "Ars Technica has posted a review of the recently released-to-developers MacOS X DP4. Check it out." Rather than concentrating on Aqua, this article is typical Ars -- it gets beneath the surface to consider the mechanisms for printing, screen display and more. As the writer points out, DP4 is not itself OS X, but only a snapshot of OS X as it matures.
A recent discussion on the Darwin development list:
:-)
From Creed Erickson at Apple:
>Hello all. I read somewhere (don't remember where right off) that
>terminal.app would not be included in the consumer release of Mac OS X,
>presumably for fear that novice users could/would dork up their system.
This is the first I've heard of it, but "they" rarely consult "us" about such decisions
AFAIK, we intend to ship Terminal.app with the general release. Whether it is installed by default is another issue.
From Justin Walker at Apple:
On the subject of product content, I'll say the following: first, the various rumor pages and alleged news services have consistently misrepresented, confused, and butchered any information that we've put out, so I'd err on the side of ignoring whatever you read that isn't from Apple.
Second, we havn't made any specific statements about what will and won't be in a "consumer relase" of Mac OS X. However, Apple surely does not want to build in any reliance on, or requirement for, mechanisms like Terminal. We have said that BSD will be part of Mac
OS X, because that's what our code is built on. Beyond that, there's little to say at this point.
From Hary Wilke:
just put it in the "folder of death", apple extras.
it will live very nicely with other amazing yet underused things like applescript.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
1) Mac OS is a WORK IN PROGRESS. Don't loose sight of that - when you read a RUMOR on something considere the sources -- also jumping to conclusions is beneficial to no one and only serves to futher confuse the issues and facts.
2) MacOS X is built on BSD. Apple took BSD and build a "Darwin", a new BSD variant. This is why is is opensourced.
Atop Darwin, you have Quartz (2D Graphics), Open GL, Clasic/Carbon, Cocoa, java, Aqua, etc
3) Terminal, the interface to the MacOS X command line, etc will be there for the "l33t" users who want them, BUT Apple strongly expresses that a no time shall the user ever be REQUIRED to interact with the low lever command line interfaces of MacOS X. So what does the mean?
This means, that Apple does not want me and other developers to expose that level to the end user in our programs. This is a HI (Human Interface) guidline. I could write an app that is fully command line based and sell it if I wanted to. The command will stay. All of BSD will be there and what you don't have you can download and compile till you puke your guts out.
4) Apple is even building their own command line tools -- there are tools to compile applescript at the command line, and even the new project Builder is a GUI to gcc, gdb, jdk, etc -- so all that kewl BSD underpinning is being leveraged by a great GUI.
Basically alot of the kewl AQUA stuff is built atop a unix command line util.
5) AQUA is a Work in Progress. I attended the Aqua Feedback Forum at WWDC 2000 and let me tell you that ALOT OF DEVELOPERS had ALOT to say about what they did and did not like in DP4. I would fully expect either DP5 (if they make a DP5) or the public beta to have alot of these suggestions in place.
They were VERY interested in the feed back, it was video taped, and there was an Apple Rep feverously typing notes into his powerbook.
Of the record alot of the Apple developers said they are listening and working on all suggestions. Just make sure they are sent to Apple.
For example- complains, suggestions, etc for the MacOS X Human Interface (AQUA) should go to:
HI@apple.com
Send them email -- don't rant about it in a public forum. Apple may or may not read it.
Can you actually expect them to spend hours trolling the net for suggestions and feedback!?
6) between now and the PUBLIC beta is the time the give Apple Feedback. When they release the public beta you will have EVERY oppertunity to give them feedback on what you like and do not like. If you fail to then you have no reason to complain.
It is much like you complaining that George W Bush is elected president, when you did not even go out and vote.
[btw i hate both Gore and Bush, but I trust Bush less than Gore]
7) Apple told every developer over and over in session after session to GIVE FEEDBACK TO APPLE. If WE (developers) do not give them feed back we are just bitching to the wrong folks. We need to tell THEM - NOT /., etc.
8) I would suspect that Intel / Window users might have pleasant surprises in store for them after MacOS X is shipped to consumers.
You see, MacOS X could be ported to other processors. Once the Darwin level is ported to intel, most of the remaining higher level items (the rest of MacOS X) would follow with relative ease.
9) I would suggest those of you who want to see MacOS X get ahold of a someone who has it -- I am sure you can find a Mac user with MacOS X lurking around somewhere.
Sit down, open a terminal window, download something GNU and try to gmake, gcc, etc it.
10) Get involved in the MacOS X Public when it comes out -- and remember to give Feedback, Feedback, Feedback.
Enjoy.
Let me tell you.. if windows was a) built on top of a unix kernel, with real normal gnu userland tools, and source and b) had a proprietary windows interface on top of it, that was also x compliant, and supported win32... the world would be in trouble.
Let me assure you that the only trouble would be the drop in productivity as all windows developers experienced simlutaneous spontaneous orgasms.
Trust me on this one.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)
BUT the real question is: Why isn't anyone in the Open Source World doing this? Why isn't anybody cleaning up the kruft that is Unix/Linux/BSD? I don't want any more
Apple has shown the way; bundles kick ass. XML for system configuration kicks ass. OSS can copy that design and improve on it:
XHTML for documentation; searchable, anotated documentation that can be tied back to the Internet --damn it, that's where "errata" belongs: as a link to my local manual; not buried in some "knoweledge base" somewhere.
Protected userland documents that are *not* tied to some a priori defined hierarchical structure. I want a 'soup' of documents I created that can be searched, sorted, sliced and diced by a local search engine.
I want a system that can introspect for a change; I want PHP to be able to find Apache by itself, configure it and itself (after asking of course) and, while it's at it, do the same for MySQL. OOP is not just for GUIs: System-wide, componentized configuration a la OSX extended even further.
X needs to be thrown away; just dump the whole ugly freaking mess. It belongs somewhere to access remote Unix machines, but it does not belong as the main layer under my GUI. BeOS (and AtheOS) has shown the way. Can we get the AtheOS GUI code and plug it in under Qt or GTK?
This is OSS: enough coders and the problems *will* be solved...
[Rant Off]
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
And READ THIS PDF
This is the Same Manual that was handed out in printed form with MacOS X DP4 at WWDC to developers.
It is a GREAT read for those of you who have a clue -- or want one ;-)
Use of bold-faced application name in place of small application icon - He admits this is much clearer for novice users and "according to Eric Schlegel of Apple, the eventual goal is to allow the application menu to take the form of an icon, an icon plus a name, or just name, according to the user's preference." Doesn't sound like a problem to me.
Useless Apple Logo - "The Apple logo at the center of the menu bar remains (and remains non-functional), but blessedly disappears in DP4 when an application's menus extend past it." Not a solution, but at least it no longer breaks the system.
Finder is now Desktop - Aside from a learning curve for the Mac veterans, "Calling it the Desktop makes more sense and, thankfully, does not hurt experienced users."
DP4 includes Preference Panels - "This is quite an improvement over DP3"
You can "Kill" the dock - In addition to improved organization of the dock (apps on left, everything else on right), and the return of the bottom 4 screen pixels (previously used for underlining active apps), you can send a "Quit" Apple Event to the dock. How much can you complain about a feature you can turn off? Seems like the next logical step to make the dock a Preference option.
So, he has some (valid) points about the Dock still (Icons aren't obvious tiles - only the icon itself is clickable), but other than that, where's the "Bad News" the heading promises? Sounds to me like they could (and possibly are trying to) respond and fix his every complaint and he'd still be upset about the new User Interface.
-----
It is obvious that mating a mature, modern kernel with a reasonable user interface is the finish line of a marathon which pretty much every systems player is hurtling desperately towards.
- Linux will beat X to death until it is impossible to see through the bloody pulp on your screen. Then (one day, I pray) they will replace it with something sensible.
- Microsoft will keep dumping code into the DOS/Win95/Win98/WinNT/Win2k landfill until they've made the largest functioning (?) program ever created.
- And Apple... Apple is somewhere in between. Smart enough to use BSD (only Linux would have been smarter
;-). Smart enough to discard X. But are they smart enough to discard ALL that which makes Unix awful?
I realize it seems easy in principle. I understand that it is in fact desperately hard. Put yourself in that systems engineer's shoes. It is painful beyond measure to take a perfectly good Unix like BSD and then toss out backwards compatibility with all your Unix apps just so that Mac users all over the world won't wake up one day and discover they need to log in as "root" and find their files buried somewhere deep inside a directory called "/usr/home/root/.msword/c|/WINDOWS/MyDocu~1/". They put up with it every day. You can almost hear them screaming here in New York. "Let those bastards eat CAKE!" So what if unix filesystem hierarchies, library handling systems, common executable namaes, and so forth seem exactly as half-assed and hair-brained as they are...My point is simply this: Mac users do not want unix. They want a stable MacOS. They want it no matter how much all those NeXT people flatter themselves. They do not want to "log in" to their powerbook.
I have heard many things that encourage me that Apple understands this, and may therefore be the first to create a Unix-stable, xerox-style operating system. I have also seen many things that discourage me, because they indicate Apple is buying the benighted notion that BSD-compatibility is worth a damn to their business. It is not. Let me repeat: it is not. And furthermore, it will eviscerate the utility of the MacOS. Do you hear me, Tevanian? Hide that damn shell. Hide it somewhere where we will never find it.
Unix users are smart, self-reliant people. We can find plenty of ways to get our jollies without mastering our problems onto millions of MacOS CD's.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Bingo! And what is the prime directive of all marketing campaigns? To get noticed!
I would say that it was a brilliant move. They are sort-of saying, some people are so pedantic that they nit-pick about the grammer used in advertisements, but we are not like those poor souls... we think different.
(This reminds me of a pretty funny rumor: Steve Jobs is notorious for parking his Mercades pretty much wherever the hell he wants on the Apple campus, usually taking up at least two spaces. As the story goes, some brave employee snuck up and put a sticker on his back bumper that said "Park Different".)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Inside Mac OS X: System Overview
But specifically, from page 42:
In DP4 it's all standard BSD, matter of fact when you telnet in it says right up front it's BSD 4.4. Shell is tcsh but I'm sure you could install whatever gets you hard. Emacs is there too