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MacOS In A World w/ 2 Microsofts
Peter Lalor writes: "Here's a possible future scenario that I wrote after hearing of Judge Penfield Jackson's decision to break up Microsoft." It doesn't predict rosey things for Linux either, but it's probably not totally far fetched.
Please, before deciding how poorly an OS is going to do, learn what it does.
;-)
I'm not going to deny that OS X is a good OS. From what i've heard and read, it's going to be quite a good one at that. I have a friend who's huge into Macs..i get quite a bit of info from him. But to tell me to predict what's going to happen with the OS market based solely on what a bunch of CS guys (at one of the top CS schools in the country) think of the OS is slightly naieve.
The general public doesn't give a shit about what goes into their OS. As i mentioned in my previous post, Joe User likes window because it's frighteningly easy to use. Joe Hacker likes windows because it's got quite a bit of depth. OS X may have these things, but unless it's ported to intel quickly, it's not going to do for the industry what some Mac zealots think it will.
I know what OS X is. But i'm also a student of the way things *are* - and Apple isn't going to be the next Microsoft. Apple was the latest, greatest thing back in 1984. Things have changed. People have begun to think different
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Why? First and foremost, you must understand that I'm a Mac user so the stereotypical knee-jerk reaction should be, "Kill Windows!". But it's not.
Think: deploying MacOS X on Intel is going to add a helluva-lot-a bloat to the OS. If it's just run on Apple hardware, you have, maybe 10-20 different configurations to support on release with only a few more added each year for legacy support. With former Windows machines... you've got a cocktail of hardware that is accustomed to run under a kludged-up OS: Win-32.
Now, I am not a programmer--graphic designer and web designer, instead--, but I know the majority of Slashdotters are. So, I ask you: Is this a legitimate problem? How much cleaner/faster/stabler would Linux be if it's machine support was purposely limited to a specific series of hardware from a single vendor?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Likewise at the low-to-mid range of the PC market, which starts with companies basically giving PCs away, the cost of a Windows license could make the difference between making a sale and losing one. And they're starting to realize that. And on most of those PCs, trying to run Darwin with its processor intensive graphics would be painful.
The biggest thing Linux has to worry about right now is MS/OS complaining that it enjoys an unfair advantage in the marketplace due to the no licensing fees bit. They're going to have it rough, as they've always come in second in terms of quality. I'm not entirely sure there's much a court could do about Linux if it was found to be interfereing with the MS/OS business. Possibly MS/OS would end up with their own distribution.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is typical Mac zombie driveling. Macs aren't really affected by the ruling, because most Microsoft applications have been ported to there anyways (whereas Linux could benefit from an Office or Windows Media port, for example). And consider this lame quote: "With it's BSD/mach core and Aqua interface, Mac OS X starts to make serious inroads as a server operating system." laff.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
All those options are available under . I know what you mean by flexability, but you could have chosen a better example than that.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
The original IBM PC was designed to use cheap, 8-bit, Intel chips that were available in large volumes. The 8259A PIC supported 8 interrupts. 2 interrupts were used up by the keyboard and timer chip. The 6 remaining interrupts could have been mapped to ISA slots. This would have caused several problems. The interrupt priority of an ISA card would have slot dependent. The ROM BIOS was hard coded to associate certain interrupts with specific I/O devices. This would mean that, for example, the parallel port card could only be installed in the slot that was wired to IRQ 7. It would also have prevented a card from using more than one interrupt, such as a multi-io with 2 serial, 1 parallel and a floppy interface (4 interrupts).
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is a guy that dreams about replacing one monopoly with another. If your future world only has one major OS be it Linux, MacOS or something third then nothing has been archieved.
This means not even "Microsoft Certified Software Engineers" know how to use scripts in windoze machines.
Actually thats Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers, but it makes it no less appauling.
-- iCEBaLM
Based solely on the article's basic premise, I see things slightly differently (My personal premises differ from the article's, but...)
TODAY:
Next few years:
1) MS splits. It does not disappear. Absent a totally egregious business policy, Windows will continue to predominate, but due to its huge market share, the 'leakage' causes a rebirth across all the minor OSs
2) MacOS predominates in certain populations of defecting users: non-ideologically driven; non-tech; early familiarity with Mac; scared by the geek rep of Unix; etc. MacOS blooms.
3) Linux/BSD continues explosive market growth, aided by porting of MS-Office, *and* its explosive feature and function growth. Linux changes more in a year than MacOs does in 3. From a User POV, the jump from original Mac to MacOs X (20 years) is comparable or *less* than Linux in '93-'00.
4) Not only does Linux continue its proven growth pattern, but MacOS and Windows continue theirs. FUD is smeared liberally by both Win *and* Mac as MacOS finds that being BSD-like works both ways: they borrowed a large body of work, but cannot do anything BSD cannot rapidly learn to do, due to the similarity in underlying platform.
5) Some Geeks get over themselves and create UIs that deliberately and slavishly mimick the Win and Mac UI, perhaps creating a hybrid that is not too similar to either (for legal reasons), but can be configured with a template to resemble either. They are shunned and mocked by all. They blow the doors off everyone else in the Linux market (The CLI is still available under the removable and configurable GUI) Mac and Windows are scared -- major lawsuits, but Open Source provides few targets. IP laws are critical.
Finally, my personal invention: a speculative concept that could save the world - LISTEN UP!
6) Fortunately, the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" principle is used to find prior art and legal arguments. A vaguely CVS-like 'legal argument tracking' system emerges, to permit community assistance to OpenSource legal teams. This is later expanded to create structured data and argument views of public issues in general.
Bad data can be pruned, mutually contradictory arguments indicated, etc. (maintanance and 'approval is a problem, but multi-editors can work on the same tree with their notations and emendations visible together or individually [e.g. 'Stallman view', 'Perens view', View Diff (Gore/Bush; Katz/Roblimo) etc.]
This tool is widely disparaged, except by geeks (but is used by the politically active is private) However, for all the mocking, it becomes very hard to debate these geeks. Whiny choolyard cries of "Hey, no fair using your PDA!" are heard on televised debates.
Slashdot posts transcripts computer-computer debates using different trees or tree views. For the first time, the majority of contributions on Slashdot are "insightful" because trolling a script that can logically thrash you to your skivvies in microseconds is simply no fun
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Typical Apple-user delusions. Nice to know that, regardless of the break-up decision, some things will just never change. I loved how he used this little tale of fantasy as a way of bashing the Windows OS, because we all know that OS X is going to be foolproof and not have any problems, just like the Macs now which, as many a user will tell you, don't ever crash.
"Although Windows, Inc. makes Office available for Linux, the lack of a first-class unified graphical interface severely hobbles that platform for the majority of would-be users."
Just one question. If Windows Inc produces solely the operating system, and Microsoft handles the apps, then how would Windows Inc release Office for Linux? Tsk, tsk. How inconsistant.
Apple loves hardware. When they decided to listen to you and license their hardware x years ago, immediately a dozen or more 'clone' vendors popped up. Prices fell, customers were happy with cheap macs.
Then what happened? Apple started eating its young. Now, I think there is only a couple of clone makers still out there. The rest were killed or bought by Apple.
The reasoning? Opening their hardware was supposed to let the clone makers steal marketshare from windows. It didn't. They took market from Apple. Duh, of course they're going to take market share from Apple at first. Apple started with 100% marketshare for Apple hardware. It could only have gone down.
History will teach us that Apple do not have a good reason to want to give their hardware away to intel clones, who wouldn't even have to pay them a license fee.
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Just two or three things...
"But now Apple need fear nothing from Windows, Inc., as the applications the Mac OS needs are made by Microsoft. And it is in Microsoft's best interest to sell as many copies of it's applications as possible, without concern for the operating system."
Let's don't exaggerate. Reading these lines it seems that Apple needs MS Office as humans need air to live. It's a bundle of applications, nothing more. Has it sold a lot? Well, even Spice Girls have sold a lot of records but they're not - for this - good musicians. There are a bunch of applications who can substitute, for ex., Word (Nisus Writer, Word Perfect, etc.) but "someone" told that Word is standard... Word is a famous word-processor. For this matter it's considered "good" or (incredible!) "well-written". Hmpf.
And you can apply this to lots of MS products.
"Apple's hardware sales decline as people take advantage of cheap PC hardware, then increase again as the platform gains momentum and former Intel users upgrade to Apple hardware. In any case, Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer."
This is far, very far to be proved. I want to see this scenario happen in early 2001. I want to see the new hardware Apple will build. I want to see the implementation of new technologies. And above all I want to see the prices of the new Apple machines. Apple has always build solid hardware (apart from some few unlucky models), and, most of all, won't do the same mistakes done by "the richest man in the world"...
If I can drive my Ferrari, why buy a Honda with a compatible Ferrari engine? You have to consider the performance resulting from the unity of hardware and "native" software. To me the word "compatibility" has always sounded like a synonym of "compromise".
(To be continued)
Regards.
Wait, wait, hold on a minute...
You're actually saying that Linux is useful for normal people (Read: your father) if they can't even get a hold of Windows (or rather GUI's in general)? If Windows confuses the hell out of your dad, what in God's Name makes you think Linux is the answer to that problem?
And, quite frankly, Linux having better config a few years down the road means jack squat right now. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and the amount of control you have, but it is NOT easy and should NOT be given to a normal user (And as my HCI teacher repeated constantly, we [those who work with computers regularly and know the inside and out] are NOT normal).
(oh, and the command line the author was talking about is a command line, same kind you use. They have one in MacOS X.)
--
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
"The Microsoft Applications Company drops all support for the Macintosh. They view it as a fringe platform that can't generate enough revenue to justify continued support of Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Office." They can't drop Mac support until the 5 year deal runs out [late 2002, I think], and I still doubt they would, 10% of the market is still alot of $. I think linux support would have to happen eventually too - just to keep office everywhere. "They needed to be able to point to the Macintosh as proof that Microsoft did not have a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems." Actually, IE on Mac proves it isn't part of the OS and blows one of their defenses. - It was also another Netscape-kill move. The shareholders would also demand PalmOS support [80% market share] and that would kill off WinCE/PocketPC for good ;) - even though only a handfull of Palm owners [comparatively] would buy MS apps since they would be so late to market - could be a nice scenario!
"I will destroy this runaway renegade robo-ninja you call shinanui..."
Yes, but why the hell would you want to? You're not going to be able to run MacOS X apps with KDE, and KDE apps on Darwin are going to require more than just a recompile. And for Mac hardware prices, you'd probably be better off getting yourself a low-end Alpha or a high-end SMP Intel box anyway.
not only do we have to write device drivers for ...
x86-WDM,
x86-win9X,
PowerPC-MacOs,
(and to keep the good karma going...)
x86-Linux/FreeBSD,
alpha-Linux/FreeBSD,
PowerPC-Linux/FreeBSD
but we now need to add x86-MacOS to the fray... Unless they are smart and use the Windows(tm) WDM... please, please, pretty please...
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
The trouble with Windows is that it's generally unreliable and somewhat outdated under the hood. Rebooting every few days, if you can last that long, is still a good rule of thumb. Windows NT is much better, but too clunky for home use.
Linux is spot on technically, but crusty from most users' points of view. Even respected uber-programmers, like Jamie Zawinski and Rob Pike, don't see all being rosy with Linux.
MacOS X looks pretty close to what people have come to expect from the Mac. But it's also BSD under the hood. So the wife and grandma can get along with it just fine, and geeks can just grab a shell and keep it open all the time. This is the best of both worlds. Perhaps the most exciting part of it, from a UNIX lovers point of view, is that UNIX is going to, for the first time ever, be a mainstream consumer operating system.
-Elendale (blah blah blah)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Intel is ruling the world but they are limiting choice. As a programmer I can run Linux, BeOS, Window NT, Winblows 9x and other OS's on a Pentium box. If OS-X were ported to Intel I would be one of the first to get and start coding away. If it OS-X only runs on G3s and G4s then I might reconsider buying a new box to run just one OS.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
LOL.
How embaressing. Well, I would have never found out at my own, thanks... I guess.
Donate Food for Free - http://www.thehungersite.com
Monkey sense
Microsoft makes a lot of money off selling apps for the Mac, so that's unlikely if Microsoft is broken up. The new apps company will need to sell as many versions as they can. Once MS is broken up, the different versions will have to compete on their own merits without the benefits of hidden APIs.
However, if Microsoft somehow prevails in this suit, expect that the day after the Apple/Microsoft 5 year truce ends, Microsoft will announce just that. Microsoft has demonstrated many times that they're willing to throw money away to maintain their monopoly. So no matter how much money Microsoft makes off Mac software, if they win this case, they'll kill everything but IE and Outlook Express to make sure that Apple can't make inroads into business.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Unfortunately for this gentleman, he overlooked one major point.
You can't make money off of an OS.
Every sucessful OS on the market is produced by a company that makes it's money off of another product line.
In fact, I can't think of a single company that makes just an OS and is profitable.
There are hardware manufacturers in the OS game like IBM (OS/2, PC-DOS, AIX) Sun (SunOS, Solaris) Apple (MacOS, AU/X, Darwin) SGI (IRIX) DEC (OSF/1) and HP (HPUX).
The one stand-alone OS company, SCO, makes pots of money off of support contracts.
The FreeNIXes use a different business model, of course, but none of the commercial UN*X companys have any illusions that OS sales will help their bottom line. Corel wants you to buy WordPerfect and the rest want you to buy support contracts. BeOS isn't yet profitable. QNX may be the one exception, but real-time OSs are a niche market.
Even Microsoft has made all of it's cash off of Office and BackOffice sales, not off of Windows.
The current best guess around where I work is that the Windows division of Microsoft has maybe 5 years before they go under. If they get into the support contract game they might have a chance, but selling just an OS and nothing else is the path to bankruptcy.
If Apple thinks that OSX is the cure for their ills, they better start building x86 boxes to sell it with if they plan to make a profit. That's the only way that MacOS has made them any money so far, the harware that it runs on is horrendously overpriced. (No flames please, I used to sell Macs and I saw the markup)
Apple will continue to fill it's hardware market and please it's quite loyal users with a more powerful and supposedly more configurable OS. The rest of the world will see OSX run on x86 hardware, go "That's nice," and keep using what they use now.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Well guess what. I'm a developer -and- a user. The only thing I want from my computer is for it to do what I want. If I can change something, I probably will, and then I might change it back. Why does everybody assume people just want to sit there and let the computer do everything for them.
I'll bet 90% of the people who use one OS use it for the applications available. If I didn't need to use MS Office and VisInterdev, I wouldn't use Windows. Would I use Linux or Macosx? No. I'd probably use whatever was available in a public library.
If I was in graphics, I'd probably get a Mac, because you need a high end machine, and apparently most graphics people use Macs, and there is a reason for this. I'm not a graphics head, I don't know.
And if I was running a server, well, I wouldn't be running Windows NT or a mac.
People put way too much stock in the OS, its the applications that are already there that drive the selection process.
And with that, I'm going outside.
Mike
Troll Like a Champion Today
i've always said, that once i would buy a G4 ...
to run linux on it...
now, i'm considering to buy a pc, and run MacosX on it
mvg,
Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
- Apple only company other than Windows with a viable consumer operating system.
WRONG - Symantics aside (viable is not the same thing as wildly successful) There are a number of othr operating systems currently available to consumers. Linux is but one example, the list goes on for quite some time.
- He [Jobs] thrills the crowd with demos of Aqua, QuickTime, and simplicity of FireWire and USB
WRONG - Sorry Charlie....you seem to have taken an overly simplistic view of the support situation here. Apple has always had drivers that worked for (...insert device type here...) because they stuck to only a VERY limited number of manufacturers. Once you hit the PC world, there are larger numbers of chipsets for Firewire, USB, etc to support. It's not gonna be an overnight, we support everything, kind of migration. Apple would be starting from ground zero and climbing back up writing device drivers just as Linux has done to support these large number of devices/manufacturers.
- Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts
WRONG again Charlie. The mere fact that Mac OS X is installed will neither resolve the conflicts, nor will it do away with the necessity of IRQ's on the Intel platforms. The reason Apple has not had such problems with conflicts is because of the limited number of slots, and limited number of add-on boards to fit those slots.
- The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line. Witness the earlier success of Windows NT
WRONG - once again, it would seem you have critically misunderstood the issue. Windows NT is/was not a success because the Networking/Server/PC professionals liked a GUI better. It was/is a success becuase MS has successfully marketed it to the Management in most organizations. They have sold them by touting it as the only way to ... and by telling them it has a lower TCO. Basically, they've implied that with the point-and-click interface, Management doesn't need to hire highly trained individuals, anyone should be able to handle the basics. On the other hand, even for those of us who originally liked NT3.51/4 most professionals I know spend most of their time back at the command line. Who wants to point-and-click thier way through updating 5000 accounts? In short, the GUI sold things to management, not the people who actually do the vast majority of the work.
-Linux has little to offer that Unix hasn't offered for years
WRONG - Boy, the hits just keep on comin... Sadly mistaken/misinformed once again. Linux offers something that Unix has not offered since the very early days of development. It offers the best and brightest minds with a combined experience of centuries (maybe even millenia) all working together for no other primary purpose than to build the best, most advanced and technically superior operating system ever known to mankind. Its the opportunity for the best and brightest to bring in what they want to see, thier new ideas, and old conecpts implemented right, to an OS that will accept thier developement efforts, and laud them (not the companies, the programmers!) for thier efforts. In short, it has rapidly risen to a level of excellence in every aspect that was hard to envision in it's early years.
IMHO - It couldn't happen.
So, in essence, if I replace all the parts above the kernel (i.e. the windowing system) with X, I'll be able to customize it as easily as Linux? Explain how this is different from using, say Linux or FreeBSD. The ONLY thing that Mac OS X has to offer is applications, and once we replace the windowing system, what's the advantage of Mac OS X?
Themes =! true customizability. Just because I can make the widgets look different doesn't change the interface paradigm I'm using.
By the way, calling this FUD is the most knee-jerk reaction I've ever seen. If you disagree, fine, but don't write off something as FUD because you don't like it.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I think everybody, without exception, will take issue with the statement that:
Apple is currently the only company other than Windows, Inc. with a viable consumer operating system
OK, Linux isn't 100% user friendly to people weened on Windows. But has anyone heard of X over at Infoasis? Evidently not.
All the same, I must say it'd tickle my fancy to be able to run MacOS on my lil AMD chip.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Millions of users switch from Windows to OS/X running on Intel. Apple's arrogance begins to assert itself once again. They remove support for certain kinds of "unapproved" hardware because Steve decides it's time to move people ahead.
Of course, then the famous Apple greed asserts itself. Steve starts to realize that he could make a lot more money if people bought only Apple hardware. Heck, he did it once with the clones, why not again? So he stops support of all non-Apple hardware. The next version of OS/X is not compatible with Intel hardware anymore. Millions scream, but what can they do? Many decide to upgrade by going to Apple hardware.
Meanwhile, the people who remember history and didn't jump on Apple's "special deal" silently laugh. And cry. And wonder why anyone would've ever trusted Apple ever again.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Except that a Java app won't use Aqua, is not always the best language to code in, and some people just prefer another language.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
Apple has been dying for about the last decade. Every computer expert in the field has predicted their death at least once. Its like the Houdini of computers. Admittedly, its a bad position to be in but Apple is stronger now than it has been for about the last 5 years or so. The real point is that its to soon to predict what this will do to Apple. Just to many things involved for us. -Elendale (blah)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I think Apple is more committed to Intel hardware than that. Additionally, I think the free (beer) -ness of Linux will keep it in the running.
Of course, I'd sure love to see tht scenerio take place. =)
--
Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
From all the people who bought OS's?
My theory -- Most people decide what apps they need to use, then which OS will run them all (usually leaving one left), then which hardware to buy with the OS already installed because who wants to install an OS for fun (no need for a show of hands, I know a lot of people here do, but lets think outside of Slashdot).
OSs are overhyped and generally not as good as the apps they run (due to their complexity).
Maybe I'm just tired of Windows.
Troll Like a Champion Today
The pathetic GUI environment of Linux is a turn-on to some Linux/Unix folks who think command line prowess is a sign of manhood.
Not manhood, but intelligence. You see Unix comes with a set of tools that let you do almost anything with the command line. I think it is much easier to use 'find', 'grep' and a pipe than some bloated "Find files or folders" binary with forces you to click on multiple tabs before it can start looking for what you want.
But wait, this whole GUI question is relevant to the computer as an end-user machine, not systems admin or developer equipment.
A questionable assertion at best, given the fact that many products now come with "web-based" admin tools. I'd bet that many admins use Netscape rather than Lynx for such tasks. Also, while I am not developer yet, I find a GUI indispensable when I take a programming class. It is nice to have multiple windows open (editor, debugger, multiple xterms for CLI tools). Using a GUI also lets you surf the net with Netscape (to look up programming-related stuff) while you work on your programs.
I think that admins and developers ARE end-users, albeit highly specialized, highly trained ones...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
"This is perfectly illustrated from the Mac's early history, when Apple desperately needed major productivity applications for the new platform and Microsoft used that to force Apple to license it's technology to them. This technology became the foundation for Windows, and helped ensure that the unquestionably-superior-at-the-time Macintosh would remain a niche player."
Are you talking about the Apple vs. MS lawsuit here? I'm confused by this comment. Did MS already have MS Office out the door and running when the two OS's were that young? Can someone expound on this?
Second, the IRQ conflicts and hardware headaches in PCs are not Windows' fault. All of the Linux-Intel people out there know this. It is the result of the outdated internal PC architecture (pronounced "eye-suh"), and is somewhat cleaned up with the advent of PCI/AGP-only computers with more intelligent chipsets.
Third, and most importantly, a viable port of MacOS to Windows would require that MacOS support ALL of the peripherals and components that Windows supports. And that's a LOT of crap. Linux supports an amazing amount of hardware - mostly through the hard work of thousands of independent system programmers. Could you immagine how long it would take for the entire PC hardware industry to create drivers for a completely new OS? It would take at least until 2005 - that is, if you could convince everyone that the time, money, and effort to do so would pay off.
I don't mean this as a flame. Similar to Peter Lalor's idea is one that I had: if the Microsoft breakup is allowed to stand, expect to see a Unix/Linux port of Office, IE, and Media Player real soon. And that would be great for a lot of us.
--
dinner: it's what's for beer
Most professionals I know prefer the command line over GUI when setting up a system. Especially if the system isn't something trivial like a Win98 box for word processing.
Our previous network system administrator used to rant about NT and how he was fed up with having to put up with the cumbersome dialog based configuration, when editing simple ascii files with a simple editor would be so much easier.
Ummm, no.
Current estimates are that Linux commands 25% of the Server market, which is 2nd. NT is 1st with 38%... and Novell has moved down to 3rd with 19%.
Numbers can lie but in this case...
--
Scott Dowdle
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
Yeah, with a PC, it can take a long time to figure out how to fix something.
With a Mac, it's easy. Reinstall the OS, because it won't even boot.
So Themes.org _doesn't_ get a million hits a day, right? Hell, if I showed my parents Windowblinds, they'd jump at it in a second.
---
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
which OS?
see, explore questions on Operating Systems
think of mobile
phones
think of tv sets
& washing machines & refrigerators &... &...
& music, think of hi-fi stereos
and their interface
ah, the interface, buttons, knobs...
which OS?
what OS?
It was an interesting scenario but never underestimate the ability of Steve Jobs to steer his ship right into the rocks.
There is no question that Jobs and Co. know how to make a great product. I was a fan of the Macintosh which I defended against a tide of cheap PCs and the NeXT machine which I advocated over cheap sun machines.
Both platforms demonstrated what Mr. Jobs is very good at: Bringing great ideas to the marketplace... BUT there is a reason why Mr.Gates is a multi Billionaire and jobs a multi Millionaire...
Steve Jobs has NEVER understood the concept of "cost of entry". As innovative as the Mac was, did any of you ever try to purchase the "Inside Macintosh Series: Vols I,II,&III?" That doesn't even count what you could expect to pay for actual TOOLS like compilers...
As nice as the Mac was (I liked it, even though I originally had the garbage 128k version that they dumped at my university) you could expect to pay at least 1.5 times MORE for mac hardware.
Even though they've made some adjustments and offer models in the <$1000 range, they do so in a world where you can get a new, functional PC for less than $500.
There is no question that a move to Intel hardware would greatly benefit Apple, but you are kidding yourselves if you think Mr.Jobs has a clue as to how to enlist the support of any but the richest Apple fanatics. Yeah, he might throw a bone in there to hook the people that he'll extort from later... but that is a FAR CRY from what the open source movement has to offer.
Case and point: I loved NeXTStep, and I was encouraged when NeXT ported it to Intel Hardware years ago... but originally, Jobs wanted $1000 for THE SOFTWARE (you could get a PC for that!) and thousands for the training classes necessary to make a serious bid for developing on that platform.
What of the NeXTSTEP heads now?
If they are like me, they are waiting on GNUStep on the assumption that GNOME/GTK doesn't make it irrelevant.
The point is this:
Linux and the *BSDs offer the highest levels of low-cost ACCESS which translates to the potential for the AVERAGE, non-I-have-too-much-money-to-burn developers to make the kind of contributions that give a platform its vitality.
Look at projects such as Apache, which dominates the http server market, Php, PostgresSQL, and Mysql:
All of which feature low cost access and/or low cost of ownership. These speak to the BOTTOM LINE and are probably the reason that there are so many ISPs running linux and *BSD shops.
Nope, Linux isn't quite ready for the desktop YET, but that is YET... and although, where I work, my manager has spent THOUSANDS of dollars with Microsoft to turn our NT boxes into Unix Boxes (X-windows standard functionality + $$$ = MS Windows 2000 Advanced Terminal Server) when the word gets out, not everyone will be down to pay Mr.Jobs OR Mr.Gates the money they ask for stuff that the "people that know" TAKE FOR GRANTED.
The cat is out of the bag gentlemen, and its name is "Open Source".
Except that they will be in fear of getting into deeper trouble if they break up and drop MacOS support. Would it look like they are trying to cooperate with the ruling of the court if they all of a sudden drop support for the main rival of Windows Inc?
I started on an ancient Apple IIc, and pootled about on there for a few years, this was back in ninety-two. In ninety-four, I was on a windows 3.1, and did the whole DOS/Windows thing...then I "graduated" **cough cough cough, hack, sic** to Windows 95. **shudders** I pootled about with that, basically doing ####. ---insert relatively obvious profanity-| And then I found Linux... I loaded it...got pissed off at LISA, but continued on, adversity...what doesn't kill me delays the inevitable, etc...I got Linux loaded, and argh! I hadn't installed the X-drivers...all I had was Xconfigurator, which wasn't working...so I rebooted, and installed the correct drivers, and voila...I had a working Linux box, replete with an ugly X gui...I wasn't interested in the looks, if I had been, I would have gotten a Mac...it took me a total of 13.8 hrs including the first install, because I had input one wrong option...(Stupid curiousity...etc...) Now the only problems I have with my Linux box, is that the hard drive is getting full, and the video card got fried so I had to get a new one.(Sibling, and paper clips...**grimaces**) This from a "windows" weened, user. I think that someone is filling everyone full of ####. What does it matter if most idiots couldn't compile X if their lives depended on it? Is it me or is everyone overlooking the fact that computers do come pre-installed, and configured? It would be no different than going to purchase a windows box...save it wouldn't crash...at least not as long as I've had it... -Sempiternity p.s. I'm running an old Caldera distro, so maybe I'm ####### up.
0100100000100000011010010111000010000001100001001
Surely for a start, by the time OS-X is generally available in 2001 (?), wont be all be loading up our $2000 Alphas / AMD Sledgehammers / Itaniums ??? with a decent 64-bit OS ?
What will the relevance of Aqua for the Pentium be in these days to come ?
Clue me in please .. is there an OS-X port available NOW for the Alpha ? or the Itanium ?. What about OS-X for IBM 390 mainframes ... has IBM committed to that yet ? Can I order an SGI VWS with Mac-OS installed ? ... I dont think so.
Not another 'My OS does not have a command line interface, so must somehow be superior to Unix' type argument.
Says WHO? The command line offers more power than any GUI out there. For that reason, it's not something that can be given up. To say that the majority of computer people want nothing to do with the command line is idiotic. Many people PREFER the command line.
Witness the earlier success of Windows NT.
I'm assuming that the author is referring to Windows NT 4. Taking that into consideration, Windows NT 4 was successful because it was NT with a Windows 95 interface - that made migration to the 'new' NT easy, thus successful. However, everyone knows NT is a bloated bug-monster.
Although Windows, Inc. makes Office available for Linux, the lack of a first-class unified graphical interface severely hobbles that platform for the majority of would-be users.
I will agree with the basis of this argument. One thing Windows has going for it is continuity. For example, You can be in one application, highlight some text, and hit CTRL+C. Then you can click over to another application, place your cursor, and hit CTRL+V - and vice versa. Plus, all Windows applications look the same, and on their most basic level they function the same. That's one thing the GUIs on Linux and the like severely lack: A unified, CONSISTENT interface.
However, we *are* fast forwarding to the future, so why not assume that such an interface will be available?
People begin to realize that Linux has little to offer that Unix hasn't offered for years,
Hmmm....How about Source Code? Low Price? Peer Review? I can think of LOTS of things that Linux has to offer.
and with Mac OS X's BSD core and Aqua interface running on cheap hardware, the needs of even die-hard geeks are being met. For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need.
I don't believe for one second that users of Linux or BSD, or other Unices will flock in droves to switch to MacOS just because it's been ported to Intel hardware. The author is WAY too quick to assume this, and bases the whole article around that argument. There are going to be people who use what WORKS for them....and in those cases, it will be Windows, or it will be OpenBSD, or Linux.
There is no such thing as one OS for every application for every person. And I'm sorry, if there WERE, MacOS wouldn't be it.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
i was listening to some of your tracks. is experimental a synonym for crap? you know like "this music sucks, but it's cool cuz it's experimental."
Apple ought to grow until it's maybe 20% or 30% of the market. Maybe 40% max.
It's obvious from your comments and your music that you have done smoked yo-self retarded!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The reason Apple makes very little from OS sales is that they have chosen Hardware as their prime revenue source. If they were to follow the recommendations of this article, they would shift their business model from a hardware company to a software company, so your critique falls apart.
That said, I think there are other holes in the projections... Simple things like his optimism about hardware show his ignorance. Most hardware problems (such as IRQ conflicts) don't exist on the Mac because of superior hardware design, it has little to do with software. Simply installing MacOC X on PC hardware won't magically make the problems go away. And the lack of driver support will cripple MacOS on Intel for several years, just as it's currently a limiting factor for Linux.
All that said, I do expect OS X to revolutionize the industry. If it's done right, it will put an unheard of amount of power in the hand of ordinairy users, while hiding the complexity that that power inherently creates. But don't expect it to kill either Windows or Linux. With such companies as Eazel & Helixcode as well as thousands of independent programmers, backing Linux, expect to see some real innovation in usability on the Linux front.
As far as Windows is concerned, the next few years could be really interesting... All through the trial, MS has been throwing around the phrase "Freedom to Innovate", which everyone in the industry knows is a bit of a joke-- when was the last time that Microsoft created a REAL innovation. But, breaking up MS means that they are now forced to compete on their merits rather then their name. It's entirely conceivable that in a few years, Windows could actually turn into a force to be reckoned with (technically, not just marketing-wise).
It could happen...
for the president of a mac user's group, he seems to know surprisingly little about how apple as a company has survived.
its the hardware, stupid.
all the (lack of) compatibility problems are the result of their control of the OS coupled with strict control of the hardware. and apple doesnt know how to make cheap commoditized computer hardware. they havent for years (if ever), and theres certainly no way they have the capacity, will, or sheer brute capital to try it now.
there is no way x86 os x can get out in "early 2001". the simple fact is, lalor's time-frame is way off. apple's management would be complete morons to start an x86 development effort before os x was a proven success on the server market. programmers dont come cheap, my friend. does apple really have such an excess of developers that they can start porting even before the finished product comes out? does this guy know anything about software devel? you only do that nowadays if youre practically guaranteed a market, my friend...why else do you think everything but the most popular (ie photoshop) software packages come out for macs long after it hits pcs?
gambling like that would be extraordinarily risky- what if os x doesnt do that well or (more likely) is slow-grwoth because its completely new? then apple is saddled with supporting TWO devel efforts- one to make os x better (its 1.0 after all), one to port to x86... no way. theyll wait and see. how long does it take for apple to get a real piece of the server market? i dont know how long- 6 months maybe? (again, a very optimistic minimum) and only then do they START work on a real x86 port.
but, lets just say treating things **very** optimistically, maybe os x blows everyone away- like (ahem) win95 and everyone buys into it. so then apple realize theyve made the big time and start porting immediately. os x 1.0 according to apple's website is supposed to come out january 01. lalor suggests that os x on x86 debuts in "early 2001". even with apple allegedly keeping os x easy to port, can the entirety of os x, gui and all, be ported in less than six months?
hahahahaha.
thats funny.
and lalor, while accelerating the pace of devel for apple just conveniently puts every other os in stasis. yeah, linux is going to look EXACTLY the same a year from now. well obviously linux hasnt gotten ANY EASIER to use in the last year, right? i mean, theres certainly NO WAY to use linux without the command line.
what? huh? kde? gnome? whats that?
if os x wins big, the chances for an x86 version (which is already very slim) will take a minimum of two years to come out. and nobody knows what linux is going to look like by then. and what about bsd or beos? or, for that matter, solaris? are they going to wait for steve jobs and his vision of the future?
i dont fucking think so.
as a final comment i thought that the presumptuousness of the last line of his article is probably what pissed off me (and other people) the most.
"For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need."
um yeah. the fact is, neither you nor apple can tell me what i need. your arrogance and condescension is precisely why you will never understand what i need. ill get what i want myself, which means **all** the source, thank you very much.
unc_
Not true. NeXT's Display Postscript (DPS) allowed for remote redirection of any program's input/output, from Day One (1989, IIRC, it's been a while.) It worked like a champ, too.
Now I know that MacOS-X uses PDF-based technology instead of DPS, but I assume it still has the remote viewing capability.
OS-level XML parsing, and support for XML-based config files in all apps. Along with this goes their NeXT-derived bundles model, which allows large apps to appear as a single file to users, and will eventually allow for a single bundle to be targeted at multiple languages and multiple platforms.
A brand-new graphics model that goes beyond bit-mapped graphics toward vector based, devise independent graphics. This has a lot of advantages. In addition to making things look gorgeous and making developers' lives easier, it will simplify the writing of printer drivers and ensure true WYSIWYG accross all applications thanks to the common PDF-based graphics format.
A complete suite of graphical control panels and configuration tools that will allow semi-newbies to configure their machines the way the current Mac OS does. (and current Unices for the most part don't do this)
A brand new set of API's for writing device drivers that I've heard has a lot of innovations not present on other platforms.
Classic, which allows existing Mac OS apps to run in OS X without modification
Carbon, which allows an easy migration path for developers from the existing API to the new.
Coacoa, the NeXT-derived object-oriented, rapid-development API designed for new apps.
First-class Java 2 support
I suspect there are dozens of additional features that I haven't been able to think up, and there are undoubtedly additional features that have not yet been announced. Now, you want to tell me that all of the above features are part of porting the code from x86?
Sheesh. Maybe you should learn about a product before you complain about it.
My company has a copy of the Windows 95, 98, and NT4 installation CD's (and service packs) on a central server. Everybody should do it. It saves you the hassle of tracking down a piece of plastic whenever you install a new keyboard mapping or whatever.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Scientific experiment: install either Gnome or KDE and your choice of WM. Remove all terminal emulators from your system. Write back and let us all know how functional any Unix system becomes. Don't have to touch a CLI my ass. (Although BeOS was damn near usable without out it, too bad so many developers went out of there way to force you to use the terminal...)
in a year or two, i expect that Linux will be very easy to use...if you want it to be.
I've been hearing this one almost as long as I've been hearing "Everyone will soon be using MacOS because they'll realizw how much better it is!" The only way I can see any Unix being palatabble by Jane Consumer is to keep every that works, then completely redesign the GUI- starting with a complete and total rewrite of Xwindows. Current work being done on desktops and WMs show how great things could be, if they only had a leg to stand on.
Now that I think about it, isn't that exactly what Apple is doing?
No, the command line isn't dead. People who touch type and like to read... actually prefer the command line... not for everything... but for many, many things. I touch type (100ish wpm, using Dvorak). I love to read (I down somewhere between one and four books a week). I hate using command lines unless I have to. I mean, I know my way around, and I'm even used to them. I use Linux all the time at work, and even have it installed and running sometimes at home. But when I want to toss around massive numbers of files in all directions, give me my Finder.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Point is, the new applications driven Microsoft will have to prove they are not too far in bed with the now separate Windows company. Mac already has an Office port, Linux is the easy option.
At work we have a standard integrated environment that gets installed on all the PC's. It is basically Windows98 with Microsoft Office 97 and a handful of other useful utilities (ws-ftp, Netscape etc.) This wouldn't change because the cost of switching OS's wouldn't be worth it! Why do you guys think someone is going to wake up one day and suddenly decide "Oh.. let's switch to Linux." It is NOT going to happen unless Windows, Inc. does something incredibly stupid to price themselves out of the market! Why do application vendors NOW continue to write almost exclusively for Microsoft Windows? Because 90% of the PC's out there run WindowS! Why would they start writing for other OS's unless something changed?? Windows, Inc. will still be dumping out Windows Millennium and Windows2000 and app vendors will STILL be writing for those platforms. NOTHING WILL CHANGE! Now, if Judge Jackson had made them open the source to Windows or put market restrictions on Windows then I could see the point (i.e. "you can sell X number of copies of Windows next year.")
What makes you think a Java app can't use Aqua? Methinks you ought to do some investigating. Of course, a Java app that does use Aqua won't run on anything but MacOS X, but it can be done. In fact, Apple's pushing it pretty hard.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You see the trend here
That's a strange kind of voodoo statistics you learned there... predicting a trend with one datapoint. Windows was deeper and it beat MacOS, so since Linux is even deeper still it will beat windows?
It's not so hard to write a useful application these days. We have HTML and Java and the web, and with these tools a good developer can create a cross-platform tool that does something useful and marketable.
Why do you think AOL is investing in a hardware platform with no hard drive? Do you really thing the Gateway/TimeWarner/AOL/Transmeta/Linux webpad is going to have a command line? The problem with your argument is that you're assuming that the things that made an operating successful 10 years ago will make an OS successful today. -Erik
Easy. Write a script in MacPerl to do this for you. It's got almost every feature that UNIX perl does, and runs under MacOS.
Or, even better, use AppleScript to do this as well. AppleScript is a deceptivly simple language - from the top it looks idioticly simple, but if you dig deeper it's got some amazing features in it.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
I thought that the reason Steve Jobs was brought back was because the previous CEO wanted to convert the company to an OS company including porting the MacOS to PC hardware.
The last time I touched a Mac was 15 years ago but I would bet Jobs woould rather leave than turn Apple into a software company.
Probably your consumers haven't heard about the philosophy behind free software. "Consumers" have always been told that their software shouldn't be copied or modified, so I think it is normal for them to not realize what freedom they get from free software and to base their judgement only on convenience.
I think in the long run that GNU/Linux will win because people will realize at which point they were dependent on other companies/people. It will just take time to achieve because people may not see the advantage of using free software directly. And it will also take time to make some sort of applications available because of the patents surrounding them.
If you make MacOS X win, the same exact thing is likely to happen from what happened with Windows. This, because the economical system in which proprietary software evolve is based on competition (one winner, many losers) while with free software, the economical system is based on collaboration (everyone win).
Free software is not a matter of "freedom of choice" between different OS's or software, because free software resolve that point by permitting users to modify their applications if they wish. It is not a matter of "workability" either, since you can fix bugs or make them fixed by a developer around you.
That is the reason why it is important to promote the GNU/Linux platform as a free Operating System invented to give users certain freedom, rather than a technically-interesting alternative to Windows. Not to mention, the convenience brought by the "Linux" OS was possible mainly because of the freedom given to its users through the BSD license and the GPL...
This is also why it is important to call the system "GNU/Linux". Not only to give credit to GNU, but to make people realize what the "GNU" part of the system was made for.
This really sounds like an article for OSOpinion.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. And I say this as the Fascist Moderator of OSO's talkback forums.
More often than not, OSO publishes articles that are horribly biased and completely ignorant. I wish that it weren't so, and just yesterday I submitted a proposal to the OSO Editor, Mr Kelly McNeill, that included some suggestions on how to improve the editorial quality of OSO's content.
I really hope he gives it some thought; I think OSO could be a really great opinion site, and it breaks my heart to see how many people consider it to be "the Internet's trashcan" (an actual quote!).
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
About a month or so ago, when I first heard one of Darwin's maintainers reporting that it compiled & ran on an Intel, I jumped to the same, totally obvious conclusion that Peter jumps to in his article. Then I stepped back for a minute, and considered some other thoughts. Starting with Steve Jobs' de facto nickname The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley, I wondered why Apple would subtly suggest such the existence of such a "secret weapon" if they were really intent upon deploying it. I could think of absolutely no reason. Another point is why would Apple want to package their software for sale on inferior hardware? (yes - try it yourself, my iMac 350Mhz 64MB ram runs linuxppc faster than my p-III 550Mhz 128MB ram running redhat)
Clearly, Apple's win in the future is to go head-to-head against Wintel with their own hardware and software. iMac is in the right price range for entry level already. G4 would be a good price/performance value, if it didn't have OS9 sucking the life out of it. So, this whole "darwin runs on intel" thing became obvious to me after all this consideration: it is a smoke screen to buy Apple some more time to innovate and move in for the kill. When thinking about Apple I would like to suggest that everyon remember this: George Lucas invented the Jedi Mind Trick [tm], Steve Jobs has clearly mastered it.
Now, before you flamethrower-touting, namecalling pipsqueaks start labelling me a Mac Zealot, take this under advisement: out of 10 (yes 10) computers I own, 9 are Pentium[I][II][III].
cat
Would that migration kit be something like Wine? People wouldn't need coupons if they choose Linux.
No, I imagine this kit would work without 6-8 hours of configuration. I think the Windows migration kit would be a piece of software that runs while your PC is running Windows. It will collect user info, files, etc. then copy OS X to your box. Then it will reconstitute that info and those files in OS X without you needing to do any config work at all. Remember, OS 9 already runs most of the software that Wine can run for a few moments at a time. Don't get me wrong, I think Wine has great potential, but it isn't even close to there yet.
Gah
Mac OS *can* handle Multiple OSs. I've got DP4 on one partition, OS 9 on the other and I use the Darwin booter to swap the two seamlessly. If you teach it to recognize Unix/Linux/etc you can boot it everywhere.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
In a nutshell, what it sounds like you're saying is that there's no particularly high barrier to entry in what Apple has done with a core BSD system -- that the open source organization could duplicate it in a matter of months.
Please explain to me then why it hasn't happened yet. The Mac has been around for 16 years. BSD has been around in various forms just as long (and 10 years longer in its antecedents). If it's so darned easy to do, then explain where the easy to use, user friendly, robust User Interface is for Linux/BSD/etc.
The fact that there ISN'T one flies in the face of your contention that a loosely organized collection of open source hackers can outperform a highly motivated, focused, and well-organized team of commercial O/S developers. It's a nice dream, but the mythical man-month still prevails. 500 part-time Linux hackers will never outperform 50 dedicated commercial O/S engineers because they simply cannot organize and motivate themselves to the same degree.
And the ultimate issue is this. Perhaps the Linux community CAN organize itself and produce just such a product (compressing 14 years of UI R&D into 24 months). But in a couple of years, how much market share is irretrievably gone? And now Linux (in 2002) is where mainstream operating systems were in 1995 in terms of usability. Do the lines ever cross again or is Linux doomed to be perpetually behind the innovation curve?
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
While I'm not totally going to dismiss this guy's viewpoint, he should really try to explaining further some of his Linux "assumptions". They are "assumptions" because I they do little but prey upon the common myths about Linux. E.g., such as the fact that without a single GUI framework, no one likes it.
I think MacOS X will be a great addition to the OS landscape, especially if Apple keeps the codebase as close to FreeBSD as possible. But I don't see everyone going out and rushing to buy MacOS X unless it gathers some more and heavier hardware support on its own, single platform.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Back in the OpenStep days (essentially the same technology as Cocoa, the technology we're talking about here), the OS ran on NeXT's 68k hardware, Intel x86, Sun Sparc, and HP workstation hardware. When building your app you could just check some checkboxes, gcc would do all the cross-compilation, and you'd end up with a single "fat binary" application package that ran on all 4 architectures.
:-)
Of course, if you were an idiot you could break things by introducing endian-dependencies in your code, etc, but the frameworks provided everything you needed to be sure that you were platform independent. You needed zero #ifdefs or other hacks. There were lots of shareware developers that couldn't afford hardware to test on all 4 archs but would release software anyway, and it generally just worked.
There is no doubt in my mind that were Apple to release an Intel version, our applications would be running correctly on it in less than a week (being a little conservative here.)
However, most programmers coming from the Mac world instead of the NeXTSTEP world are using Carbon (a cleaned up version of the venerable Mac toolbox) instead of Cocoa. Parts of Carbon are cross-platform already (i.e. Quicktime) but it wouldn't surprise me if developers had a much harder time porting their Carbon code than we would our Cocoa code.
I doubt that Apple is going to make a move to Intel hardware unless and until they either get most of their major developers writing their apps in Cocoa (and thus are portable), or in desperation if the AIM processor alliance suffers a total meltdown (Motorola continues to be unable to reach higher G4 clockspeeds or something like that).
...and MacOSX will not save it. Probably Microsoft (you know, Microsoft will still be the Windows owner) will still be the #1 company on OS for a long time. And people is fed up of Apple and Steve Jobs and his attitude "if I were Bill I had done the same thing!"
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
you could do such a thing with AppleScript, I do believe.
The Macs are identical Blue G3s, with identical copies of Quark 4, Photoshop, Illustrator, Groupwise, and a design app or two that slips my mind at the moment, and Netscape. They were all purchased and setup at the same time. One machine was setup (and extensively tested) and used to master the others. The users complain about Type 1 errors, Applications has unexpectedly quit errors, freezes without error messages. The conflicts and problems vary from Mac to Mac, no pattern that I've ever been able to discern. They're all networked over new, AT&T Systemax cabling to an HP Procurve 2424M switch.
The fact is the bare minimum is used on the Macs, and we still have problems with them. If they weren't "needed" for design, they wouldn't be used at all. They cost too much, can't multitask, and have a limited amount of applications software. Maybe the 24 years experience myself and my colleague have working with Macs in a design and print production environment isn't enough -- maybe we need some Mac haxx0r d00dz to show us how it's done. Maybe what we're really missing is the k-k001 OS X theme for our workstations. Maybe if it looks like something that's promised to be stable it will be stable.
The fact is that I'll never believe that Macs (and Mac OS) have a weaker architecture than PCs (and Windows).
Really? You'll always believe that Win2k's multiprocessor premptive multitasking and protected memory is weaker than MacOS shared memory and uniprocessor cooperative multitasking? It pretty amazing that someone could be such a Mac zealot that they would not acklowedge Windows leadership in at least that area.
The least likely thing I saw in that article, the one thing that I think will happen only after there's ice skating and snowball fights in hell, is Steve Jobs saying "Choice is good." Anyone that thinks Steve Jobs wants consumers to have "a choice" of platform is (in my ever so humble opinion) severely deluded.
I tend to agree that it would be good for Apple to make some changes to that they get a larger percentage of their revenues off of software. I just don't think that it'll ever happen as long as Steve Jobs is in charge. As evidence supporting this view I have to point to the decision to kill the MacOS clone manufacturers right after Steve came back to run things at Apple. At least that's the way I remember it. If I'm misremembering recent history, please correct me.
The DOJ isn't telling MS not to develop systems software, they're just telling them (among other things) not to use their advantage in the OS domain as leverage for their applications software.
Apple may benefit from the breakup, and more than likely those in the Linux camp also. But Windows has had a monopoly on the desktop for years so with all the legacy applications out there I can't see it fading away overnight. Who knows? MS Windows Inc. may even produce something of greater quality in order to contend with emerging competitors. *gasp*
Please explain to me then why it hasn't happened yet. The Mac has been around for 16 years. BSD has been around in various forms just as long (and 10 years longer in its antecedents). If it's so darned easy to do, then explain where the easy to use, user friendly, robust User Interface is for Linux/BSD/etc.
1)In case you haven't noticed, Unix users generally *like* the CLI. That's why they use a primarily CLI OS. Left to themselves they write code that preserves the character of their OS.
If they wanted to be Mac-Like, they'd use a Mac.
2) However, now there are external market forces and a new focus. Apple will have done the pioneering work establishing the parameters and paradigms, and proving they work well together.
Copying is much easier han innovating. Coding is easy; solid, consistent, original thinking is hard
I wasn't slamming Apple. I was just pointing out that they have always worked in a proprietary OS that was independently derived, and primarily faced competition from another similarly independent proprietary OS. The dynamics of development and competition in an Open Source Family OS are very different.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
> Plus BeOS is POSIX compliant so the
>'professionals' who do like command
> line (code me an OS with your mouse,
> I dare you) can still use it, in addition
> to a stable UI that won't go belly-up
> when you try doing more than one thing
> at the same time.
You obviuosly aren't very aware of reality here.
MacOS X, being based on OpenStep, does have a command line. In fact, the current developer previews ship with tcsh right there and happily co-existing with the GUI.
Maybe I should be running more stuff, but I currently have 10 interactive apps running in the UI right now, and have been running it for the last three weeks or so, without a single crash. This is a developer preview, pre-beta.
> And BeOS already runs on both PPC and Intel
> architechture. Right now. Not in 2001, right now.
Darwin runs on both of those platforms; Apple hasn't released the top layer for x86, but it would appear they are keeping stuff around to ensure it can be done. NeXT stuff is much more elegant and intelligently designed than BeOS.
People keep asking about "how will apps run cross platform, won't this be difficult?" Well, since you can write a full standard UI-based app on OSX in Java, and indeed it is being pushed as the prefered way for new apps, I do believe there are some possibilities here...
Maybe I haven't caught the discussions you have, but I'm perfectly capable of reading the APSL and it doesn't look very different from the SCSL to me. In particular clause 12.1.c should arch some eyebrows. At any rate, even if it qualifies as Open Source it's certainly not preferable to GNU or BSD licenses, and technology comparable to Darwin is available under either of those licenses. So why would anyone want to use Darwin instead?
Ok, so you can delete all the Mac specific stuff, and all the programs that rely on it, and replace it all with XFree and have... a bit less than you could get much more quickly and easily with your favorite Linux distro or *BSD. What's the point?
I don't think the original post was FUD at all, I happen to agree with the gist of what he was saying. I do consider your disagreements to be specious, for the reasons stated above.
The horrid interface decisions that have gone into Aqua IMOP render it a step back for Apple in terms of their traditional strength, good GUI design, but that goes in a different thread.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You make my point for me... sure it's easy for YOU to use, since you can write scripts and use setuid bits and all that, but right now distros are NOT at that level! There are hundreds of other little details besides crazy shutdown procedures that are not at all suitable for a normal user.
Sure it can be easy to use once a geek sets it up for you, but last time I checked none of the distros came packaged with a geek. Someday linux will be there, but not today and probably not for another year or so.
So at this point in time, remote administration of a Mac OS X machine needs to be done either with a destablizing, single-user remote control program like Timbuktu, or with the Unix command line
This is actually untrue. One of the promises of OS X is remote administration via the web. It's little extras like this that I think will make OX X a very slick server OS eventually.
I would also argue that most Unices really require remote administration via the command line anyway. X11 sends entirely too much information to be useable on anything but a fast LAN.
As for the archaic-ness of OS X's BSD directory structure: I admittedly only got to play around with administering an OS X box a little bit. I did laugh at some of the places where things existed, but I found it no less frustrating than going from a Solaris mindset to Linux.
they borrowed a large body of work, but cannot do anything BSD cannot rapidly learn to do, due to the similarity in underlying platform.
Bzzt! Wrong! OS X is NOT a BSD clone. It is BSD-esque in some areas (mainly the microkernal, NOT the upper portions of the OS) and implements the BSD APIs, but it is fundamentally a different beastie. It will NOT be that easy to re-create Aqua on BSD. I know this is tough for Linux users to understand, but Aqua and even the classic MacOS have lots of elements that have nothing to do with look-and-feel but have everything to do with fundamental behaviors. Look-and-feel can be copied in Gnome/KDE/etc, but the functionality cannot without rewriting the system from X-11 on up.
Plus Aqua relies on proprietary technology that no open source initiative will ever license, and Adobe will never ever open source it. Never. Ever. Even if their company dies. I say this not approvingly, but realistically. Warnock won't do it.
Third, BSD (or Linux, at this stage) has no incentive to put the effort and hours into UI research that Apple and, yes, Microsoft have. The desktop market is vastly different from the workstation market as you realize, but the Geeks won't get over themselves (not without some major company doing it in-house and releasing it to the world fully-formed).
Fourth, don't underestimate Apple's engineers. Just because they work on the fruity OS for grandmothers and they aren't working for an open source company, doesn't mean they aren't incredibly talented, smart people. The effort they can put in as a team with a dictator like Jobs to keep them focused is far from trivial and the results hard to steal (I mean, Microsoft has been trying to give you a Mac-like UI for how long and has only gotten it half right and only improved on two or three areas?). BSD and Linux have some very good developers working on it, but it's not always a question of pure talent.
Personally, I think Linux/BSD will reign supreme in the workstation/small-to-lower-huge server markets (with a healthy competition from MacOSX and NT in the workstation/small server markets--never underestimate the power and stupidity of PHBs and people who fear switching OSes). Mac OSX will reign supreme in the graphics/web production/education markets, and probably make inroads on the corporate desktop/secretary/home/small business markets. Windows will still be the largest in those markets, and Linux will have a tiny share (except possibly small-business and education, I see interesting possibilities there), mainly for people who have their Geek son/cousin/friend/lover set up their system for them.
Umm.... sure you can.
I can install RedHat-6.2 (all GUI)... yes I can even do it without touching the keyboard...except for root password and adding a user name etc.. but no command line. Choose Gnome AND KDE (nice to have a choice)... choose a bunch of apps... all click, click, click.
Go and get a bite to eat (a quick one) and come back... click one or two more times... system reboots. I may never have to reboot again unless I change OS/kernel.
To use... just click on stuff. To administer... just click on Linuxconf... click, click, click. To install new software... click on GnoRPM. To configure menus... click on Gmenu.
The point is... I can do everything I know of via the GUI. Only touch the keyboard to enter names of things and passwords.
Can you think of something I can't do using the GUI?
"Don't sweat the technique."
very real psychological hurdle of Technologists who simply do not take Macs seriously
:)
That's very elitist and all, but don't you think people should be given a choice? That is, if people don't really like Windows or Linux for their desktop, does it not seem reasonable that they should be able to choose a Mac, and everything that goes along with it? That is what open source is about in the end, right? Choice?
After years of marketing itself as an OS just fine for idiots
So people that don't spend most of their waking hours in front of a computer screen are idiots? Huh?
My experience is that artists tend to prefer Macs because the technology does not get in the way of the creative process. Whereas with developers, getting involved with the technology is the objective.
After years of retreating into niche markets populated by arrogant graphic artists
Though network administrators are never seen as arrogant, right?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
"...Next, you've got the OS that "replaced" it, or "defeated" it or what have you...Windows. Why? Because it was very easy to use, but there was also a lot of depth..."
Windows replaced MacOS because the hardware was cheaper, so Joe User bought his PC with Windows preinstalled, not because there was a lot of depth in Win. Joe User isn't going to switch his OS until Dell switches it for him.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The difference (Microsoft vs Microsoft & Windows separate) is that in order to make their applications and OS tightly integrated and more compatible, they can only communicate through public APIs. They can't under the table negotiate secret hooks and calls nobody else knows about.
Suddenly every office application developer is on a level playing field. Suddenly the apps company needs to differentiate in order to maintain their awesome marketshare.
See, the gov't understands more than most people give them credit for.
Might I suggested that you learn what OS X actually is?
At least where I'm coming from - Carnegie Mellon University, one of the top CS schools in the US - there's a lot of interest in OS X, even from non-Mac people.
OS X is far, far more than "the next MacOS version". In fact, it isn't even really the next MacOS version. It's UNIX. It also has a compatibility layer to run old Mac apps. But it's got a BSD layer underneath, on top of Mach (developed by Avie Tevannian, among others, while at CMU).
Please, before deciding how poorly an OS is going to do, learn what it does. You obviously haven't learned much about it or else you wouldn't be talking about it as if it's just "the next MacOS version".
Forget the "article", man was it bad. Somewhere next door I have the spec sheets for NeXT STEP Intel Edition (forget which version) and the hardware support was really minimal, stuck with a few SCSI cards and drives, only basic or one or two video drivers
NeXT STEP's main feature was EOF or Enterprise Object Frameworks, basically a distributed Object-C set of classes with some real nice stuff like regular but quite complex UI widgets, spell checkers and more all there should you want to call on them and write an app damned fast. MacTech wrote some darn fine articles on basically progtramming functional and elegant stuff - with no prior sight of the machine.
EOF, of which Web Objects is apparently i think a subset, is now called Cocoa. Its heritage includes much Intel code and is anyway pretty cross plaform being avail on NT, HP-UX and Solaris (from memory so sorry if any mistakes here.)
It does occur to me there would be a whole load of people interested in NeXT - *ahem* the good bits of OS-X on Intel. One time UnixReview did a feature on NeXT and Macaw Cellular had just bought squillions of intel boxes for their CRM an dcall centers *just* because they loved EOF. So surely bits of OS-X will make their inroads anyway. I expect if a Intel WS solution were available, even on limited hardware, many big companies would be impressed and no way would Apple have to charge a retail price for the OS. I think I would happily pay $500 if i have good intel kit rather than ditch upgrade for mot G4or whatever.Even in the days of ISA this wasn't a big deal unless you were an idiot, and thats all I have to say on the matter!
suddenly I feel very tired
But isn't that what companies like VA Linux are supposed to help with? Call them up, get a system already running Linux in the mail? If the user doesn't like the default wallpaper, they can just use KDE control center, for instance?
First of all I think the article was way too speculative, I doubt Apple will be releasing OSX on intel any time soon (now yellow box for win32 is another story), Apple makes their money on the hardware, and I can't think of a good reason they would want to stray from that plan.
But as far as OSX being a consumer OS that hides the inner workings from the average customer, I agree. That you can't get to the inner workings, I strongly disagree. The unix core of OSX is just as accessible as Linux, and implemented in a much more advanced fashion.
For instance, the passwd file is no longer used during runtime. It's still there, to provide persistence between boots, but during runtime, that is all stored in a netinfo db in memory, and there exists command line tools to query and change that information.
Another example: System V startup scripts. Don't like them? Welcome to the club. Apple is defining each startup/shutdown task as an entity defined in XML, with dependencies so the init task automatically calculates the correct order. No more S71rpc, etc.
MacOSX is not a replacement for MacOS or Linux, it is the brand new (the whole thing, not necessarily ach of the parts) successor to the 15 year old MacOS. And I wouldn't be surprised if Darwin took away some market share from Linux. I know that as soon as Darwin works well on Intel machines, I'm replacing one of my FreeBSD machines to see what it can do. And I'm sure it will get some serious application support within the next year.
cheers,
-o
In working with the newest developer's release of Mac OSX I have found it to be just as flexible as any other BSD box on the market today. It can run Xfree 4, so therefore Gnome, KDE etc ARE available options. You also forget that OSX is BSD based, and is just as configurable underneath. However you are right on the point of Apple's "Public Source" agreement, as it limits the the amount of core development that you can do.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
>> I just finished writing the article on MacOS would be posting it over infoasis and then submit
/.
>> a news article on slashdot.org hopefully they would pick up. I have pretty +ve reaction from irc
>>
>> Peter Lalor
>
> Kudos! let us know when you put this up hopefully we'd get more hits from slashdot and customers.
> Also Peter, could you mail me the folder on bell I need to see why we have to cut fractional T1/tier 3 prices
>
> jd@eartlink.com | jd@infoasis.com : james davis
From the following thread I found on their http://www.infoasis.com/discuss/ server I got the impression that this dude wrote the article to get customers for their ISP. This is BAD indeed and such things should be researched before being posted on
Punjan Kumaran.
pkumaran@research.rit.edu
The writer is incompetant? I think you've got it backwards. Have you ever seen an app for BeOS in a store? Or Linux for that matter. Neither Be or Linux is viable because they do not have commercial development 100% behind them as Mac and Windows do. I think you just wanted to post something to make yourself feel cool.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You're right. I'm a Mac guy. I've used computers (mostly macs, obviously) professionally for years, and I don't understand IRQ conflicts.
;-)
Pretty sweet, huh?
The point is that PC users can migrate to OS X using their same hardware, making it a viable, $79 option. Next time they need a computer--which will be soon--they can choose superior Apple hardware, or stay with cheap Intel gear and IRQ conflicts.
The Microsoft Applications Company drops all support for the Macintosh. They view it as a fringe platform that can't generate enough revenue to justify continued support of Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Office. The programmers are redeployed to more profitable Windows projects. Microsoft executives later reveal that they only spent money on Macintosh development because of antitrust considerations. They needed to be able to point to the Macintosh as proof that Microsoft did not have a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
A sub-modern GUI and a not quite functional office suite? Yeah that's some competition.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"Consumers" have always been told that their software shouldn't be copied or modified, so I think it is normal for them to not realize what freedom they get from free software and to base their judgement only on convenience.
So are you basing your argument on the twisted idea that people only want what's convenient because they've been conditioned not to want modified software? That doesn't make sense! Freedom and convenience in a desktop environment should not even be connected.
Even if they were, your argument still makes no sense. For one thing, for every proprietary operating system available there exist numerous third party hacks designed to customize the OS environment. Screen savers, appearance modifiers, utilities, and all manner of other things. Obviously if consumers desire third party customization for a proprietary OS, we're not going to balk at customization in an OS designed for it.
Further, convenience is not something foisted on us that we don't want. Consumers flock to convenience because we like it. People eat at McDonalds and buy supplies at 7/11 because it's convenient to do so. They could get much better quality merchandise somewhere else, but that would take more time. For the same reasons, people like an OS that's already set up for them. Customizability is great, but you shouldn't have to spend time customizing your operating system just to make it usable.
...for more than one day? The interface may have some new and interesting components, but I think it will be more likely to inspire modifications to a free system, than a vast migration to MacOS X (which will, in all probability, run agonizingly slow on X86 architecture anyway).
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
and if apple decides to port more than darwin to intel space, i'll start moving the rest of our desktops there as well.
i'm tired of windows, and it would be nice to have a single operating system in our organization - from server to desktop - designers to programmers.
if they can actualy pull it off......
My experience is that artists tend to prefer Macs because the technology does not get in the way of the creative process. Whereas with developers, getting involved with the technology is the objective.
:)
:)
Point well taken.
Though network administrators are never seen as arrogant, right?
Agreed. Point well taken again!
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
As much as I love what I have seen so far about MacOS X, I can't see a serious vision of the future in this article, founded on too many prejudices and far enough from the reality, as well technically and in market terms. Here are three of the most evident prejudices :
Apple is currently the only company other than Windows, Inc. with a viable consumer operating system.
Err... Be ? RedHat, SuSE & other Linux distributors ?
Mac OS X is not just available for purchase, it's available for purchase running on PC hardware.
Since Apple makes money by selling hardware and has always done that, this scenario is less than probable. See what happened to Mac clones two years ago.
The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line.
Are you sure ? For some tasks, it's just the opposite : I don't want a GUI on my firewall, for instance.
Stéphane
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
I think this article was weak on several counts.
1) The idea that most computer professionals want nothing to do with a CLI shows the author's Mac bias. This is exacly wrong. Most serious professionals prefer a CLI since it speeds most tasks up once you learn the shell. I can't tell you how frustrated I used to get with NT clicking through 5-10 dialogs every time I wanted to try a different configuration of something.
2) The author glosses over important facts such as that Linux now runs on many different platforms and is also making inroads into the embedded space. MacOS X is only just now beginning to go cross platform. Linux is so far ahead I can't see anyone catching up soon.
3) It is unlikely that people who trust and know Linux will want to move back to something proprietary. AFAIK MacOS X only has an open source "core", everything else is proprietary. You are right back in the situation where you have to trust a big-evil-corporation[tm] with everything. I personally don't believe that Apple has really gotten the open source religion. They will make token efforts in that direction until Micro$oft is safely out of the way and then it's right back to trying to become, well... Micro$oft.
4) Given their track record I don't think Apple's Unix strategy will long be able to resist the urge to shoot itself in the foot. This will probably take the form of idiosyncratic implementations of the various POSIX specs and RFCs. You will end up trying and failing to compile even simple "UNIX" programs on OSX.
--
Nothing to see here. Mooooove along...
what the person who posted the orignial message didn't think about was that the microsoft software company will be looking for markets everywhere, in macos, windows and linux, because there will no longer be any reason for it to code soley for windows based computers. I imagine that if microsoft does break up within a year and a half we will see a version of office for linux
Without the monopoly of windows scaring away many die-hard nerds, windows will seem much more viable to everyone. Linux will find itself without a consumer base, and will have trouble surviving. Mac OS may end up being very useful, but I predict that windows will still remain on top.
does anyone know if apple has ported the quicktime player to os x?
as far as the article goes, i don't feel that os x would steal any of linux's thunder, and don't really see how the microsoft breakup is terribly relevant to an intel port of os x. it's an interesting thought though.
If Apple ported Mac OS X to Intel, you can kiss their PPC machine sales goodbye. People would install the system on $500 PCs and say to heck with a $1000 iMac in spite of the nice color.
Yes, this is obviously a signficant issue. But perhaps equally important is selling a complete package to the customer. Companies like IBM, Compaq and Dell are somewhat limited as to how much they can improve the user experience for their customers and differentiate themselves from their competitors because at the end of the day, they all still have to ship Windows on most of their machines.
Apple is in a unique situation, as they can (and often do) simultaneously make changes to both the hardware and software to provide additionality functionality for the user. Jobs phrases this as "the complete widget." It's basically something that no other desktop computer company can offer right now.
This position take a bit more dedication as well, because at the end of the day, you are responsible for both the hardware and the software.
Understand that I am not discounting the fact that Apple's primary business is hardware sales, and they sell because of the software, but just saying there are reasons for this type of unification above and beyond the obvious.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
If you hit command-? on the Mac version of Myst the program came back asking where was Hypercard Help? For the obviousness impaired, Myst was a Hypercard App that is arguably one of the most successful apps of all time in its category.
Heck there are still people clamoring for updates to Hypercard today to update some of those old apps.
DB
Sit back and smugly giggle at the people who didn't think you could do that in under 30 seconds
Okay, now, get it to email a list of the deleted files to the administrator and make your system do all that every morning at 3.
That's actually closer to what I use the command-line (actually shells and scripts) for.
The horrid interface decisions that have gone into Aqua IMOP render it a step back for Apple in terms of their traditional strength
Let me guess, you haven't actually tried OS X, but you feel qualified to make an educated guess that it totally sucks based on reading a description and looking at some pictures.
Interesting viewpoint but based on too many bad assumptions. #1 is that 'everyone' hates the command line, and that's why NT got popular.
NT became popular because getting a file/print server to work on a LAN with any other NOS was a pain. Novell and Microsoft were not exactly compatible, and as everyone switched from DOS to Windows, NT servers became popular.
Things have changed. The LAN has in many respects become irrelavent. NT hangs on because of all of the developers out there -- developers that don't develop on Mac.
I like Macs. I like Linux. I _Love_ the command line. If more people dislike the command line 'including computer experts', then it's because the 'experts' are really just warmed-over users who don't have the competence to use the command line.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Well, this was nicely biased by the President of "The San Francisco Bay Area's Macintosh Consultant and Internet Service Provider"
I have to disagree. Remember when the state of the art linux desktop consisted of fvwm, xterms, and a few really ugly X apps? Um, perhaps you and the author of the article should look up from your Apple computers, because things have changed.
Sure Apple has easier sys config, but that isn't out of reach for Linux a few years down the road. Obiously users just won't ever build their own kernel. And what the hell was the author talking about the command line for?!? I don't see any command line?
Hell while I'm ranting, windows confuses the hell out of my dad. "How do they keep installing that software on my desktop?", "Click, make a box around them, let go, left click on one of the icons... sorry select what? let me get a pen!" I don't expect that he will do well doing anything complex with any GUI. Sorry Apple.
The "average user" just needs "launch buttons", a web browser, a sane/simple window manager and productivity apps. We have to work on the last one, or well, Corel will do it for us.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Usually when you answer your own question, you put your answer after the question.
! Microsoft would still primarily write their applications for Windows, and "Windows, Inc." would still strive for compatibility with Microsoft products above everything else
I'm so glad to hear somebody else echo the voice of logic here. People seem to think that the applications group has been secretly waiting for the day that they could port Office to Unix.
Now, if Judge Jackson had made them open the source to Windows
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this was part of the DOJ's plan, and was approved in the ruling. I know I heard this at least once on TV, and somewhere online.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I didn't like the idea of MacOS X *at all*, until I heard they ported Xfree to it. That is a Good Thing. We can very easily port Gnome and most other apps to it. We will be able to control it on the commandline (i.e. easy scripts, remote administration). If all goes as it seems to be headed, I AM going to be putting a Darwin entry in my GRUB (the boot loader I use, prettier than lilo plus some other advantages) menu.
Who cares if another decent Unix becomes mainstream, other than Linux. It may not happen that way, predicting the future is wild. But who cares? Mainstreaming unix is a Good Thing. And the mainstream users don't *have* to know its Unix, the way we know its unix.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
If the editor remebered it you wouldn't have to. What we need are context smart editors, that can accurately guess the meaning of sentences and correct spelling based on the meaning.
I'd just like to say that I'll swear off computers and get a job raking pig shit with my bare hands before I ever use a Macintosh without a gun to my head. BSD with an X knock-off and a big price tag doesn't really compare with Linux or BSD and the choice of the 3 or 4 nice GUI systems that are already available, and it certainly doesn't excuse the garbage that has been the MacOS interface I've had the misfortune to have to deal with so far.
everybody switches to VMS.
Tom is that you? Sure sounds like it. I think the only one who liked VMS more than you was Ken Oleson(sp?). =)
What percentage of the server market does VMS have? Unfortunately for it, I think it's being lumped into the 'Other' category. Not trying to start a flamefest, but every place that I know of that ran VMS was also in the process of migrating their VMS servers to Unix. I also absolutely hated the user interface. I was very glad to move over to Unix which , IMHO, is more user friendly. Proprietary software on a proprietary hardware. No thank you.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I feel a great disturbance in the Force. Microsoft has been behiving themselves for the last year or two. That time is over. They're now fully evil, with nothing to get it their way.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I have to disagree with this quite vehemently. Not because I love Linux (which I do) or because I hate the MacOS X (which I don't). But the author seems to be assuming that OS'es are a one-size-fits-all-trust-us-we-know-what's-best-for -you deal.
Number one, Mac OS X might look nice, it might even have some nice technology, but you're still stuck under the thumbs of people who think that an operating system should limit you to what they think you should do.
You can run Apache, yes. Even bash, zsh, tcsh, I'm sure. But that's not what customization means. As a desktop OS, Linux shines because, given a little time, it can be customized to suit your environment better than any closed OS. At my workplace, my team of programmers uses exclusively FreeBSD and Linux. We're at least 5 times faster than the market at delivering products. Why? Because we know how to customize our systems for what we're doing.
Finally, just because Apple released a portion of the kernel under an pseudo-open source licence, doesn't mean that it's free for us to do what we will. The windowing system is still locked down, and we're still expected to fit into the desktop paradigm, that Apple's UI people have come up with.
With Linux, some people run Gnome, some KDE, some Enlightenment, etc. etc. This is freedom. This is thinking outside the box. MacOS X is a box.
Would we honestly want to be stuck inside one?
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I am an MCSE, you aren't, and are stating VERY insulting things to MCSEs. I use NT and Linux, at home I run Win2K w/ Office and Exceed for my RH6.2 machine, at work I currently only have a Linux box but I'm adding a Win2K box in a few weeks.
Now, any NT Admin worth anything didn't learn from the study guides. When I did my certification, there weren't many study guides, and I was in high school (read poor). I grabbed the NT 4 Server Resource Kit from the school computer guy, and read it.
If you want to learn NT as an administrator, you MUST read the Resource Kit. It is essentially the manual.
When preparing for a test, the study guides are nice (I need to pick them up if I'm upgrading to the 2K cert), because they help you prepare for the test.
HOWEVER to run an NT network, you must learn NT inside and out, and therefore, you must read the resource kit.
To run a Linux system (not a single box, but a whole computer system), you need to read all the appropriate MAN pages to get everything togethere. The relevent books are great because they put you in the right direction, but you still need to hack around and read MAN pages for months to learn everything. Alternatively, you can read the source code.
If you really think that Linux admins will be able to get by from the GUI alone, you're on crack. If you think that an NT Admin can get by on Resource Kits and the GUI, you are on crack.
GUIs can never include everything to really administer a system, as there are always more options available as you learn the system. To run NT Networks, you need to become familiar with the Registry and the various NT Scripting Languages. KiXtart is nice for logon scripting, Perl (supported for NT from the Resource Kit or other sources) is nice, although being more of an NT than *nix guy, I don't know well enough, and the other languages are useful. Windows Scripting Host has potential, but it needs work.
MCSE study guides are NOT the way to learn NT Administration. They are a way for NT Administrators to prepare for exams. The paper MCSEs learn from those books, and are not really good Administrators.
You guys like to bash NT Admins because "the MCSEs we hired didn't know anything." Well, judging us NT Admins by the MCSEs without knowledge is about as fair as my judging the Linux Kernel hackers by the kids who post nonsense on slashdot that get mod'd to 5 despite 12 comments in response correcting them factually.
Running an NT Network without the Resource Kit is foolish. You can complain about pricing schemes, but if you want to run you NT Network, but the Resource Kit and use the included software as needed.
The MCSE study guides teach you enough to pass the tests, not enough to run a system. The Windows 2000 certification fiasco was a bloody mess that caused many NT/Unix people to drop the NT side, but they are trying to make the exams less studyable and require more learning.
If you read the Resource Kit, there are sections on scripted installs. If your NT guy doesn't know what he is doing, replace him, not your network. If Linux can do something that NT can't, run Linux (I'm dropping a few Linux/FreeBSD servers in our new rack along with the 2 NT Servers that I'm using), but don't criticize NT or NT Admins by our weakest link.
I've bitched out paper MCSEs, one at the consulting firm I was at was going to do a 2000 user migration by using User Manager instead of a script. I smacked him around until we wrote the script that gets used at all client sites.
The GUI tools are useful. Sites without dedicated Admins can handle the trivial tasks (adding users, etc.) without an Admin, and bring in a consultant when they need real work done.
However, no system can be done without a proper administrator.
MCSE Study Books DO NOT TEACH YOU TO ADMINISTER A NETWORK. Resource Kits, Manuals, and Reference Guides combined with experience do.
Alex
The problem is that once again, people underestimate how much of Apple's income comes from their hardware. Apple makes nearly nothing off of OS sales. That's one reason new versions of the OS are relatively cheap compared to a full copy of NT or Win2K. Apple gets all its money from the hardware sales.
It's been demonstrated many times in the past that your average consumer will go for low price over high performance. If Apple ported Mac OS X to Intel, you can kiss their PPC machine sales goodbye. People would install the system on $500 PCs and say to heck with a $1000 iMac in spite of the nice color.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a Mac user and a major Apple supporter, but this article is nothing but seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. I do think Mac OS X will eat into Linux sales somewhat, because it is a viable Unix platform all to itself, in the end it may boost Linux sales as people get interested in using the command line provided.
I think Apple's best chance for domination is to reinstate the Yellow Box (now Cocoa) APIs for Windows. With no Office leverage to fear for making apps easier to port between Mac and Windows, it would be the best way to encourage software to be written for both platforms.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If the server is configured correctly, the computer shouldn't be logged in while the admin isn't running. At that point, I don't think much of the GUI overhead is even loaded. All you have on NT is the computer waiting for ctrl+alt+delete to be pressed to start winlogon. Is this such a big deal?
DB
Not that it was marketed well, but it made the IIci alot more useful.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Have you forgotten that Linux does have a (generally) unified kernel; is becoming steadily more user-friendly and 'abstractable' as opposed to 'abstracted', thus retaining flexibility of appeal to hackers and nonhackers alike; and is, along with many of its major apps, free or very nearly free?
What I don't think people see with the Microsoft breakup is that Microsoft is not getting any less powerful, they're just being hacked at like a Hydra. Microsoft the application company will still be able to leverage everyone by threatening to not offer discounts to OEMs if the OEM doesn't go with an all M$ solution. Microsoft the OS company is also going to remain a huge player in the business. Do you think suddenly millions of people are going to go out and buy a copy of Redhat because Microsoft was found to be a monopoly? Fuck no. More people trust Microsoft than they trust the government. Windows was installed on many of the millions of computers sold in the last couple of years and will continue to be sold on the computers. Windows ME is going to be even more popular than 98 because it will further abstract the user from the hardware which is what people want. Businesses don't want people fiddling with their hardware, they want the system to turn on and work with little or not user intervention. Home users want to turn their computer on and get on the internet or edit videos or email their friends or play their games. The closest thing to a simplified setup on Linux is GNOME's Helixcode installer. Apple is going to benefit from the M$ breakup simply because they have a REALLY abstracted OS that has the eyecandy people love. Apple is probably the only Unix based solution that is ever really going to give MS a run for its money, especially if OS X is going to end up available on PC hardware. Linux and is the choice of a bunch of geeks who capitalize the phrase open source. Linux is a fractured OS with too many comflicting and incompatible distrobutions where OS X is a unified model that developers can get behind with some confidence. The author of the little scenario seems like he's thinking Microsoft will suddenly become a minor player in the market once they're broken up. This is definitely not going to happen. I remember a speech by Bill Gates saying how Microsoft wanted a PC in every living room, this is something thats definitely happening. I don't see Microsoft being any less of player in the future than they are now.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"This technology became the foundation for Windows" this guy has been watching too much TV and doesn't have a clue how we got here... All these people saying Microsoft copied Apple have extremely poor memories. Xerox Parc! Digital Researchs GEM OS! Hell I wrote my own GUI back in the mid eighties. I bet the author was not even born yet. Otherwise I expect he would remember better that Apple was far from the first GUI. They went to Xerox and copied that work! Apple stole the idea from Xerox. As did Microsoft... I wish people would quit trying to re-write history. Especially if they weren't there!
Your logic is flawed, since I could point to a dozen things such as security, pre-emtive multitasking, SMP , protected memory etc.. that linux and BSD have done for years that the Mac still can't do. The reason X does not have a great gui is simple, *NIX has never been targeted at the desktop before, KDE is less than two years old, and Gnome even less than that.
Micros~1. I love it :)
:wq
This really sounds like an article for OSOpinion.
But besides that
The major productivity applications such as the oft-cited Microsoft Office run on Mac OS, making it a useful computer for day-to-day tasks in a way that Linux can only dream of.
Who says Microsoft is going to keep supporting the MacOS? Remember, there's no GPL. The decision is entirely up to MS.
But now Apple need fear nothing from Windows, Inc., as the applications the Mac OS needs are made by Microsoft. And it is in Microsoft's best interest to sell as many copies of it's applications as possible, without concern for the operating system. This dynamic will benefit Linux, and possibly others, as well.
I wish! There are many other company's that only sell products for Windows. And many of them are not affiliated with Microsoft. What makes you think the application division of Microsoft will act different?
Steve announces that Mac OS X for Intel includes a Windows Migration Kit that simplifies the conversion of a PC from Windows to Mac OS X, while retaining all customer data. Included are coupons from major software manufacturers for low- or no-cost upgrades to the Mac OS X version of their applications.
Would that migration kit be something like Wine? People wouldn't need coupons if they choose Linux.
Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts, eternal consultant visits, convoluted interface design, and painful aesthetics can now install Mac OS X on their existing computer, keeping their data and their applications. Millions do.
Linux is much more a hype (bad word choice, but I couldn't find a better description), why would people be foolish to choose MacOS X. Even their beloved Ziff-Davis magazine will warn them of the risk that Apple can stop supporting the Intel platform at any time.
Apple's hardware sales decline as people take advantage of cheap PC hardware, then increase again as the platform gains momentum and former Intel users upgrade to Apple hardware. In any case, Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer. Apple hadn't been concerned about that anyway, because a certain company in Redmond had already proven there was gold in operating systems.
Why would people upgrade to the expensive Apple hardware if they can get Intel at lower cost, besides. Observing the obsession many company's have with Wintel most MacOS X producs *would* be Intel only anyway. Apple wouldn't even be able to sell its OS because people would (have) switch(ed) to Linux.
With it's BSD/mach core and Aqua interface, Mac OS X starts to make serious inroads as a server operating system. Companies requiring high-end hardware redundancy can now use the Mac OS on suitable Intel-based server hardware. With the availability of single-rack-unit servers, Mac OS X finds a place in major hosting farms, as Mac OS users outsourcing their hosting needs begin to demand it.
Why would they care what Unix it ran, it's not like they need Quartz.
What about Linux? The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line. Witness the earlier success of Windows NT. Although Windows, Inc. makes Office available for Linux, the lack of a first-class unified graphical interface severely hobbles that platform for the majority of would-be users. People begin to realize that Linux has little to offer that Unix hasn't offered for years, and with Mac OS X's BSD core and Aqua interface running on cheap hardware, the needs of even die-hard geeks are being met. For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need.
Have you not seen Gnome/KDE? Linux users may soon not need the CLI anymore. And I don't think people in the Open Source movement will be satisfied with an OS of which only the very core is opensource (see Debian-KDE story).
Face it, Open Source/Free software is here to to make a difference.
Donate Food for Free - http://www.thehungersite.com
Monkey sense
There is nothing stopping people from taking the same open spec and creating a compatible display system but the ability to reverse engineer Apple's effort.
DB
Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer. Apple hadn't been concerned about that
anyway, because a certain company in Redmond had already proven there was gold in operating systems.
Actually this makes little sense. MS makes most of it's money from the Office suite, not from sales of Windows. Of course Windows is the "gold" here because it locks people into other MS products(including Office), but that would not transfer to OSX. I also doubt that Apple will ever "not be concerned" about the revenue it generates from hardware. They do quite well selling hardware. Witness the evolution of Solaris as an example. You can get Solaris for a song and a dance these days because Sun really only cares about selling hardware.
What about Linux? The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line
You've either been living under a rock or you just haven't been paying attention to the evolution of GUI's for Linux. One can install Linux and be pretty much CLI free if one chooses. That's the great thing about *nix as a platform, you can use whatever interface works best for you, you're not locked into what "The Man" thinks works best for you.
I haven't heard anything about what happens to options/stock with the potential split, but it will probably be a factor:
Employees (including management) on the apps side will still own stock/options in the OS side. Why would they do anything to hurt the OS side, unless it resulted in a large enough gain in the Apps side to offset the OS loss?
I'm sorry Lalor, but you can't seriously expect the open-source zealots (Stallman and like) out there to embrace Darwin with open-arms.
Apple has not fully embraced the GPL if you've ever read licensing agreements. However, in the brave new world, Apple may give it a go. But I seriously doubt it ever will. You are forgetting though, that Darwin is NOT Unix, let alone as stable/secure as true BSDs and that Apple is like every other corporation out there - it is to make money.
Zealots, I'm afraid for you will still prefer to stick it out with Debian GNU/Linux or HURD. And much Linux and BSD before it, a GPLed (unlikely) Mac OS X will have alternatives spinning off before you can even cry out "First Post", and the world will return to the previous state as before. Big corporation out there trying to make quick bucks and neglecting and users looking for an alternative and willing to make it work even if it is ugly hard work in the beginning. That's just the psychology of the underdog.
And one more thing; despite Apple having a well-deserved reputaion for having the prettest hoods around (both physcially on the Gx/imac and interface wise ie. Aqua), Power users will always worship the engine beneath. I'm afraid POSIX-type terminals will be around longer than yourself.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
It's nice that such drivel has a place to be vented. Ever hear of X, how about Star Office? All this, AND Apple builds the best hardware in the world? Cute fantasy.
Seems to me that we probably won't end up with any OS that currently exists. Linux is great for servers, since it provides great power to people who know what they are doing. Mac OS is nice, but it's old and kind of out of shape. While it may just be me, it's always seemed a little clunky but smooth. Sort of like a luxury car that only goes where it wants to go.
BeOS is killing itself off. Be's moves towards being an "appliance OS" will either give it an incredible nitch advantage or be the end of it's life. Who knows, maybe someday my toaster will be running BeOS 7.
I'm betting that the my mom's home computer will be running something completely different five or ten years from now. All the current OSs came out of nowhere. A scrappy geek from Washington, a lunatic mastermind from California, a Finnish genius at Helsinki. (Dare I pray an ultra-intelligent master programmer from Michigan? :-)
My point is simple: The next great OS will probably come from yet another unknown who knows what the people want. It will probably be a blend of the best properties of all the current systems: a stable, easy-to-use, self-configuring, and widely supported operating system.
And may the Justice Department have mercy on its soul.
I build model citizens.
Who needs Word when you can use Emacs? There are replacements for all Office applications that are (gasp!) better than Office and run on Linux.
it's green.
Besides, the MHz rating of the G4 chips is even less comperable to x86 chips than ever. Run similar applications on a G4 and a Coppermine Pentium III, and, after accounting for whatever other factors are nessecary, you'll get similar results. There is a reason the US classified it as a export-restricted weapon, you know.
it's green.
Yes, but that's not using GUI, is it?
Wouldn't Apple run into problems with third-party vendors porting their apps to OSX, especially if they have no prior experience with Mac software? While Apple might be making OSX portible to intel computers, how portible would its applications be?
BeOS ran into a similar situation. When they migrated to a mostly-intel OS, they claimed that their apps are easily portable to and from the PowerPC versions of the same. Yet, the fact remains that a good majority of BeOS apps have never been ported to both platforms. Would an intel-based OSX run into the same problems, or does Jobs & Co. have the problem under control?
-ijx.
I have tried it. It is rather unpleasant. I'd rather use gnome or kde under X, or macos < 10.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
I downloaded Corel 'LinuxOS' and burned a CD rom. It was the first ISO I could find. I spend most of my time in windows, and although I'm not a 'computer novice' by any stretch of the imagination, I found corel's graphics display settings pretty similar to windows. (you could even right-click on the desktop and to properties :)
:P
Un fortunetly, trying to change the display properties totaly hoesd the install, and I had to do a clean reinstall from the CD... but the interface was easy to use.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This article was interesting from a pure fantasy perspective, and I'm sure more than 2 or 3 MacZealots out there have enjoyed reading the fictionalization of their own personal wet dreams, but even before this article I've decided to seriously consider moving from Windows to Mac OS X within the next 6 months anyway.
... when was the last time I had that experience as a PC user? *Never*. Adding a hard disk or RAM, or doing some other sort of internal work to a PC has always, no matter what OS I use, been a dreary thing - and this is just a minor point, but in my view its one of the things the G4 got right, and which is making it a whole lot more attractive as a platform.
The reason? My new G4.
I'm the sort of computer user who doesn't have just one computer - I'm platform agnostic, and am quite happy putting money into different computers for different tasks.
For email (server), file sharing, web development and web hosting, I use Linux. No better platform for the job, imho.
For email (client) I use Windows (I'm hooked on Eudora, can't get off this addiction yet). I also use Windows for games, and for many of my clients I am expected to use it for development (Visual C++/cygnus, and Delphi). I also write music software for this platform, primarily because it's easier from the tools perspective (way more dev tools for Windows than Mac, for example), but also because the drivers for the gear I'm using are there, and only there. (Windows)
For music, I've recently moved to using an Apple G4, because there are some simply astounding sequencing/audio products for the Mac that really do just work well, no matter what. The timing is rock solid (MOTU 2408MkII with DP2.7 can't be beat in the timing department), and there's also a bit of 'fun factor' to using the extremely simple user interface of the Mac. I *used* to be a dedicated hardware sequencer user, but those days are rapidly passing as I do more and more studio work and less and less live stuff. (For live work, dedicated hardware sequencers are *essential* - nothing worse than having Scandisk or Sherlock fire up in the middle of a set, heh heh! It's happened to me...)
But now that I've gotten more and more into the G4 and the Apple Mac OS way of doing things, I'm really looking forward to Mac OS X being released to the general public later this year. Why?
Because it has, at least on paper, the best of all of the above platforms:
1. A good user interface. (Mac OS feature)
2. A good set of development tools. (Windows feature)
3. Access to the command line and the power of all that. (Linux feature)
4. Unix-like architecture. (Linux feature)
It *doesn't* have the driver support that Windows has, and to a lesser degree, Mac OS. *BUT* that doesn't matter - everything that I'm interested in, hardware-wise, in the very near future uses either USB or Firewire - and Mac OS X has one of the best Firewire and USB implementations around. So I'm not terribly concerned about that.
Plus, it runs on the Apple G4, which is one of the smoothest, coolest, kick-ass-est computing platforms I've seen in a long time. I actually experience *pleasure* at the thought of upgrading my RAM in that machine, or at the idea of putting a new hard disk in it
I'll still be platform-agnostic in 6 months. I'll still have my machines doing the tasks I assign them. But I'm thinking I'll probably be selling my existing PC laptop and having a look at whatever Apple laptop hardware runs Mac OS X in the near future, because to me, that really is an exciting new frontier.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Both Microsofts would still be at liberty to invent new proprietary formats and masquerade them as standards. (Each for their own separate specialty.) Both would likely continue the trend, started by the original Microsoft, in popularizing contractual licenses instead of merely "selling" software. Both might even work vidictively to prove the courts wrong about how beneficial the breakup would be, choosing instead to make interoperability more difficult and wear it on their sleeve like an injured party.
There is little reason to believe that the remedy would really make them more compassionate to their customers. As much room for improvement as there is, there is just as much room for further failure when their only measure of success is the money they sucker us for. They'll continue to bring us some of the best innovation their money can buy... but on their terms.
The only problem is that the script would have to sit as an idle background process (no cron on a mac)...
Actually, iDo Script Scheduler is included with
OS 8.1 and above.
There's a MacOS version of cron available here, too.
I'm mystified by the assertion that Mac OS X on Intel hardware can magically solve hardware problems that Windows can't. How does this work? I can't remember the last time I even *had* an IRQ problem on a PC that wasn't cause by me deliberately trying to run two ISA devices on the same IRQ. That newish machines with PCI devices running semi-current Windows have IRQ problems is just really far off base.
I also think the other assertions are more the author's prejudicial opinion than any solid factual representation. We have several satellite offices where I work that have Macs and PCs -- the Mac people are *always* in need of some consultant to fix some INIT/CDEV snafu or some other MacOS lunacy. The PC machines have problems, but nothing that isn't simply solved or that can't wait for the semi-annual office tuneup visit.
You don't like the way it looks and you don't know how to operate it? I think now we're getting down to brass tacks. My benchmark for ease of use is my wife, a marketing executive, who can't figure out the microwave. She switched from a Mac to a PC with a job change about 3.5 years ago and her comment on it was "What's the big deal? The buttons look different, but basically do the same thing. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out the differences."
I must say, though, that this was pretty neat fan fiction...
Yes, Apple got permission from Xerox to study their GUI. Xerox was compensated for that. But Apple DID have GUI studies going on before this. They were terrible but Apple was poking at the idea. The internal GUI studies were scrapped once they saw what the geniuses at PARC did. Everyone also seems to forget that Jobs utilized Object Oriented programming technology (also developed at PARC) when he created NeXT. All the *NIX people swoon over the API's of that OS, but forget that the technology was, in your words, 'stolen' from PARC as much as their GUI was. But is that OK because NextStep wasn't the MacOS or Windows? I began as a Mac user, moved to Windows, but I now love the BeOS. Please don't confuse me with someone who uses one OS and never migrates.
"I'd like to die quietly in my sleep like Grandpa, and not screaming like all the passengers in his bus."
...this article, and that was saying that with Mac OS X installed, you'd finally stop getting IRQ conflicts. WHAT? I haven't had an IRQ conflict in, nigh, five years. This isn't DOS.
Mac OS will never replace something like Linux until somebody figures out how to offer ALL of the power of a CLI type interface in their GUI. Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
And I'll say the same thing about OS X that I said about NT: My server DOES NOT NEED a GUI. My server DOES NOT NEED multimedia capability, be it Direct X or QuickTime. In other words, with OS X, can I strip out everything but the network stack, hard drive controllers, NIC driver, and maybe a character interface, and put Apache on it and call it a dedicated web server? Or does my web server ABSOLUTELY need to be able to do rotating vector effects on it's fonts?
Also, Apple is throwing away what was traditionally it's greatest asset as a (web) server, which was the lack of services. That's why it's so hard to hack a Mac; there's nothing there to hack. Granted, you can DoS it by pulling down a menu and walking away, but any system is vulnerable if you leave somebody access to a console.
There are some great ideas in Mac OS X, but it is NOT the Second Coming, and I know for a fact that there are Mac users (in the real world, I often see Mac graphic design artists who are put in charge of the web servers when the admins leave, because 'they know that web stuff') who are quite leery of OS X. Of course, the vast majority treat Jobs like some sort of Messiah (Come to me my child...*whump*...You see? FLESH is stronger than steel, Conan.)
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I can't imagine that the 'New Microsoft' will really be independent of 'Windows Inc'. Would it really change the situation?
The new Microsoft would probably continue making Windows-only apps but now they just have to distribute Windows and MSIE separately.
"Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts, eternal consultant visits, convoluted interface design, and painful aesthetics can now install Mac OS X on their existing computer, keeping their data and their applications. Millions do." How could Mac OS X change how PC are built?(IRQ conflicts...) "What about Linux? The vast majority of computer users--even professionals--want nothing to do with a command line." Ehrm use Gnome or KDE... "It could happen..." !TRUE Those Mac zealots :-)
I don't think there _is_ one OS so wonderful that 'everybody' would like it, nor should there be. It should be a pie with a lot of pieces, because people's tastes and needs vary so substantially.
I know that my whole 'kick' as a variously-creative person is coming up with something which just a small section of the population will just freak out and think it is absolutely wonderful. I think that's a good motivation. I've seen it happen with my music, repeatedly (see URL link). I've had fun ideas for, say, a Linux window manager which was ultra-minimal and geared to the sophisticated handling of basically snazzy Xterms... something which many people would find entirely annoying, but which would be great fun for CLI lovers- even something that could make GUI people comprehend and understand the CLI thing. It doesn't matter that it wouldn't 'win the market'. If markets were just a race, the only food any of us would eat would be rice, because it clearly 'wins the market' and soundly beats stuff like caviar, Mountain Dew and pizza in 'popularity'. Put down that Mountain Dew and drink trough-water- it's good enough for a billion pigs and horses! *g*
By the same token, it's pretty ridiculous to wish that a single okay combination of software and hardware (OSX, on Mac hardware) will expand, ditch its 'unpopular' hardware and become the only serious choice. That's nonsense- it would lose half its point and become another Windows 95. MacOS is not _about_ being a market leader- it's a gourmet brand, a matter of taste, and should remain so.
I would personally like to see a bunch of Linux and BSD-based OSes pop up to compete for the consumer 'mass market' dollar. But the best chances longterm go not to the most mass-markety, but to the ones that can identify a theme and constituency and stick to it...
My point wasn't that the Mac lacks a slick admin GUI, but that when you want to do serious administration of server elements running in the BSD layer of Mac OS X, it becomes (surprise!) Unix.
As an aside, Apple hardly has a monopoly on web-based server configuration. Have a gander at Liunuxconf, Solaris 8, any Cobalt product and so forth. And as far as Netinfo goes, multiplatform SNMP tools are quite a bit more widespread and have the added bonus of allowing you to manage a wide array of server applications on any number of operating systems, no longer just Unix.
Netinfo's interesting and nifty, but it's an eccentric cousin to LDAP and SNMP.
I never said Mac OS X wasn't pleasantly nifty. I do find it silly, however, to think it's going to storm the server world outside the same few hundred prepress shops running 100% MacOS networks.
Free Software (and to a lesser degree, Open Source) is all about choice. I get really sick of the endless predictions by Mac people (and every other advocacy group: Windows, Java, OOP, and even Linux) that someday soon, everyone will either be forced into their One True Way or that they will suddenly see the wisdom of the One True Way.
Newsflash: there is no One True Way. People differ in their preferences and needs, and there is no reason to believe that, even in this arch-conformist age, human nature will suddenly metamorphose into vanilla.
Why do so many people get off on the idea of forcing everyone to join their narrow little cliques? I'm perfectly happy for Mac people to use Macs, Windows people to use Windows, GUI people to use GUIs, and C++ people to write big, bloated, sloppy, hard-to-maintain code. (Okay, that was biased, but...) I just don't understand why they aren't content to play with their toys and leave the rest of us the fsck alone.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And where do you think Apple got the idea for the GUI? You think they pulled it from their collective ass? No, not likely. They "borrowed" it from Xerox's PARC research facility (where Steve Jobs went on a tour some time before starting to develop the Macintosh and its OS).
Don't kid yourself - there's not much innovation left. Everyone's stealing ideas from someone else, that's just the way it works...
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Granted, you can DoS it by pulling down a menu and walking away ... who are quite leery of OS X.
Not quite true. You would have to stay at the terminal holding down the mouse button. Menus do stick open under new versions of the OS, and do bring things to a halt, but stuck-open menus automatically close themselves after a 15 second delay (MacOS 8.6; I just timed this).
I know for a fact that there are Mac users
True; I'm one of them. They've just gone too dang far with the eye candy IMO this time. The BSD type stuff is a Good Idea, as is the Dock I've heard about, but all the visual effects reported to me strongly suggest that Jobs is in acid trip mode again. The iris zoom rectangles for opening windows are damn nice as it is; why do they have to change them to some weird rotating thing?
Zahlman Q. Namlhaz, esq. {:> "Zahl Incorporated - the Last Word in Everything(TM)"
Why not just get a Crusoe, with a nice PPC flash upgrade. With IBM coming out with a Crusoe based Thinkpad it would just be the icing on the cake if they are also helping them write the PPC instruction set layer. At that point, they can provide the most flexible laptops on the planet with IT departments being able to reflash a programmer's W2k laptop to make a nice MacOS creative department machine and vice versa.
Now *that* is value.
DB
Now that Suzuki Yamagucci guy, you know..the Apple Evangalist is gonna make a comeback.
;)
Integrity is what you are when nobody is looking.
By being post #19 instead of #499. A mildly informative, semi-provocative EARLY remark will always score higher than a brilliant& thorough answer a few hours later.
Screw MS Office on Linux! I want to see ClarisWorks run on Linux.
Mike van Lammeren
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
There have been a few other improvements to the MacOS you know.
IIRC the very first 128k Macs shipped had no command along the lines of makedir. Instead you had to keep an empty directory hanging around, and duplicate it as needed. I'm serious - I even have some old '84 glossy spiral bound Mac manuals detailing this process.
Macs weren't _really_ useful till 85/86 anyway, when the Plus came along. And I'm a big Mac guy, so I remember a lot of this.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But the point I made was that you personally have not tried Mac OS X and therefore have absolutely no basis for criticism. You think that the placement of some buttons was a bad choice, but haven't actually clicked them.
You must be either an incredible genius who can judge things using only his theories of how they must be, or an ignorant bumkin who thinks he's an incredible genius.
These are my current bets for the future:
= =======
= ========
OSX: consumer version will come out, along with a server for PPC machines. It will be a hit. look at the articles on arstechnica.com, and see if all the great underlying tech goodies dont make your head spin with excitement. It will have, to rebutte some posts erlier, remote control(in OS, not with something like Timbuktu). It will have as much customizability as you want. Bar none the BEST graphics model anywhere. And, the modular nature of all the os components, dont be supprised to see a red box(windows compatability) along with directX sitting next to all the other graphics technology. What does this mean? It means GAMES. It means the most versitile OS on the market. The emulation will be no more then the emulation that osX does for the classic mac os. In the end, you will be able to run Classic MacOS programs, UNIX progs, windows programs, java, carbonized macos apps, and native osX apps.
There is also the real possibility of osX part or all, being ported to intel in a retail version(server more likely then consumer)
What this will mean for all the markets:
consumer/gamer: will not switch from PC most likely. It is cheap, and the hard core market is always upgrading. However, with windows support, and/or directX, games will be running/esily ported, affording those who would like a Mac to get one and still game. Overall, it could be the best platform for games(technically), but there is a LONG way to go with the current stigmas. If osX is ported to intel, with windos or directX support, I think it could become THE os of choice for gaming.
consumer/novice: Still the core of new mac buyers, osX will nary make an impact on these buyers. Unless Apple comes up with great advertising directly targeting its OS features over windows to consumers, this market share will stay the same, and wont sway PC people to the mac side. If osX is ported to intel(consumer), advertised well, and a simple install over windows(ie-keeping all your windows files) it could be the biggest thing since the floppy *grin*. Of course, a consumer version will have to do for windows users what osX currently does for mac users - the abilty to run legacy apps.
coperate/joe user: well, joe user usually doesnt have a say in what computer or programs he uses, but the computer on his desk will be osX IF a substantial increase in productivity can be proved and advertised. This has a WAY bigger chance of hapening if osX is ported to intel
corperate/IS: This directly affects the joe user, and should be apples main target after consumers/media markets. There are a TON of compelling reasons to move to osX server. NetInfo is one of the best(if you dont know about it, get toknow about it. its incredible), scripting, customizabilty, and the ability to run unix apps. once again, if its ported to intel, this will definitly give NT a run for its money if IS has compelling reasons to try it.
publishig/media: 100% penetration(this is my business, and i cant tell you the huge buzz generating ofer its release). This is what this sector has needed for a long time. NT was a partial solution(the power) but the UI and bugginess of the os kept its numbers from totally overunning the mac os. This is where Apple will dominate, irregardless if its ported to intel.
nerds/programmers/hobbyists: I know, weather your willing to admit it or not, that everyone who might read this post is DYING to get their hands on the final osX. Weather or not they will use it alwasy seems completly arbitrary, but everyone in this sector will try to get experience with it. I suggest you get to know it, as so far, all the backend stuff is incredible, and very well engeneered, and, well, sweet =) Once again, if ported to intel, it will be on a partition of every one from this sector.
education: as loong as the computers will run it, it shold be a 100% sweep. After the release of osX, there are no compelling reason to switch to windows, and this will keep this market share on the rise for apple.
=========================================
Linux: The perrenial favorite of all who very in to computers, the windows breakup will only serve to grow market share, and insecurities about the future of the product become muddied in various circles. I predict 2 years for a good GUI, and it will have to be a very organized effort by a dedicated group(i mean organized as in what it takes to make a commercial GUI) Lixux and osX will compliment each other, and its in the 2 camps intrests to get to know each other.
What this will mean for all the markets:
consumer/gamer: forget it. if you look at the problems mac has getting games, mutliply that by 1000 for getting ports to linux(i KNOW its happeing, but no hadr core or casual gamer will switch to Linux for 2 or 3 highprofile games a year, if even)
consumer/novice: If the GUI pans out, a possibilty, but remeber, as much as you would love to think that nerds are the biggest population of computer users, we are not. A fully customizeable OS will scare the S*** out of consumers. Gte it out ofyour heads that it means anything to this market. And oh yeah, this is probably the biggest market of them all, so if your not pandering to them, your beating a dead horse wondering why its not selling to them.
coperate/joe user: once again, anything can be plopped in his face, as long as he doesnt need to have too much training on it. For now, hat means no linux, but in a future with a good GUI and apps....
corperate/IS: this sector will continus to adopt linux for many reasons, including the "buzz" it has generated.
publishig/media: well, no delusions about it, without Adobe, Quark, a good GUI, this maket is sunk for Linux
nerds/programmers/hobbyists: Always was, and always will be the haven for the user base of linux.
education: k-12, will still be mostly a no show, bu will continue to grow in the college arena.
===============================================
Windows: Windows will continue to be the bloatig pig of an os it is, and will continue to sell a billion copies every year whena new version comes out. The only competition on most fronts is osX, but most users are MS drones, and will not stray form the path unless something VERY enticing becons them.
My finges are tired, and windows currently dominates all of the markets except for schools and publishing. This trend will not end any time in the near future. The infiltratin of Linux and osX in to the current windows bastions will be slow. The only os that has a huge chance to blow windows out of the water a bit is osX, and only if it comes out for intel, and provides lagacy app support.
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As is always with technology, the future is very muddy. The Next Big Thing(tm) may upsurp the current checks and balances, but, you usually dont see it coming =)
After that ramble, i need a very stiff drink.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
Currently, Mac OS X server is being sold without charging for CALs, which are actually the bulk of the cost when you buy NT Server. Web Objects also comes with OS X server right now, and certainly it is something that is much more competitive now that they dropped the price from ~$15k to $700. The current OS X is probably going to come shipping with an enhanced server pack out of the box. If it doesn't, there's certainly a quick opportunity to make an OS X 'distro' of the OS X consumer specially tuned and bundled with all the appropriate server goodies for a few bucks more. The stock OSX pack can be included like Connectix includes Win98 when it sells its Windows emulator.
DB
The last paragraph is .. unsettling. But Linux will survive because MacOS X is still not "free" software.
I can buy MacOSX as a spit n polish BSD based GUI.
I would continue running Linux because I *enjoy* it.
I don't think I'm the only one who thinks like this.
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
This wouldn't stop hot grits and NP trolls because your script cannot respond resonably to something that hasn't any sense.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Sad but true. Starting from 2 doesn't hurt either. I've been accumulating points much faster since I made it past the threshhold.
For a while, I tried, as a moderator, to read all the way down to the end of older discussions. Later, I tried jumping a random distance down before starting to moderate. These days I usually read at a minimum of +3, and take advantage (somewhat guiltily) of other people's hard work.
If it's any comfort, I don't think my comment deserved a five either.
Fast forward to early 2001. The United States Supreme Court has just upheld the breakup of Microsoft.
Do you really think Microsoft lawyers will fold so quickly?
They don't just get paid to win, they get paid to play it out as long as they possibly can in case they don't win. It could take years for anything to happen.
The clone makers (Power Computing in particular) were embarrassing Apple by selling faster machines at much lower prices.
Well of course he had a reason, just not a good one. At that point Apple returned to being a company which prioritised keeping their customers locked into closd formats ahead of producing the best products.
Apple are about closed systems first and good products if they can be bothered. I have little faith in them porting Mac OSX to intel, and I don't see their OS bringing any benefits to ayone not currently using Mac OS. OS X is a catch up product. They're using eye candy to try to pretend it's more, but in the near future, Windows will alawys have better applications support, and Be and linux will both be better at everything else.
Believe with me, my saplings.
To say that IRQ conflicts would go away and that the hardware would be completely Plug&Play is not realistic. Apple has managed to keep their systems friendly from a hardware point of view by exercising control on the hardware and driver design. In the PC market, the hardware is much more heterogeneous, and if you have two cards that are jumpered to use IRQ3, your system will not work properly, regardless of the OS. I think the biggest challenge to overcome in PC OSs is supporting the wide range of hardware that is out there. I don't think MacOS would do any better than Windows at Plug&Play on a PC platform.
I agreed with the entire article until the next to last paragraph. Claiming that the command line isn't wanted/needed and that Linux will die in the water is just nonsense. To take from Neal Stehenson's /Command Line/ essay, MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workbench, an Apple created development environment) recreated the command line because it made programming easier than with GUIs. Most people just don't know that they need the command line, like to do simple tasks that don't need a GUI. True, the command line should be better integrated with Window Manager, but Apple already has that technology in place, making it easy to use drag and drop and other nice things with Terminal.app.
Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on Mac OS X Beta when MacWorld New York rolls around...
-- Gordon Worley
2002 - Apple and MS Office Corp. merge in surprise acquisition. Jobs appointed pCEO (permanent CEO) of the new company, Microsoft Apple. Gates continues role as chairman. "It's not the rebirth of the MS monopoly, just a strategic investment in one of MS Office Corp.'s core technology partners." - Bill Gates
2003 - Original Mac OS happy face logo replaced by Microsoft Bob. Renamed "Microsoft Bill" in October.
2004 - Newly formed MS Apple gaining marketshare due to handy tie ins between MS-OCXI (Microsoft Office Corp XI). Justice Department breakup in 2010.
A couple years ago, I thought it might be cool if Microsoft started to develop a window manager for Linux... I thought it'd be cool for Apple to do the same.
I love the idea of the "Windows Migration Kit"...
The author speaks to Windows NT successful banishment of the command-line-interface (CLI). When I got my first GUI, I tried to do as much as I could with it... I soon found how little that was. Apple has always let the field in the Human Factors department (except for their drop-down select boxes... what the hell are they thinking? sorry).
It's my belief that CLI's will not be replaced by anything than a more efficient way to issue complex commands to your computer, such as speech-to-text. Why hasn't anybody developed an USB device that handles speech-to-text and minimizes the processor requirements?
I am very interested to see how easliy the "hardcore" CLI and the "user-friendly" GUI interact in Mac OS X. As far as IRQ conflicts go... is that really fixed by an OS? Perhaps I don't understand such conflicts, but I know that if I have 2 SCSI devices on the same chain with the same ID, "Ain't no program in the world gonna hep me." Will Mac OS X recognize and work with Plug-and-Play devices? Is there such a concept in the Mac PCI arena? (My IIsi has Nubus, baby!)
Are we going to see a DirectX type interface to Mac hardware, further reducing software portability requirements? (Am I an idiot for suggesting this? I've been up all night for a couple weeks... I tend to babble.)
Also, I've heard some things doubting the AltiVec engines ability to scale as processor cycles increase. OS X may run faster on the G4, but what about nextgen AMD/Intels... will Motorola be able to come about? So many questions...
Talk to you later,
-J.D.
Why do Europeans have to wait for new stories on Slashdot while America is sleeping? Slashdot is not US-only, is it?
I've always found this strange too, since CmdrTaco is from the Netherlands. But then again, maybe he's one of those weird people that actually do something besides sitting behind a computer during the day :-P.
Donate Food for Free - http://www.thehungersite.com
Monkey sense
I think you are dreaming a little too much in Apple heaven. Like Bill or his followers would decide to port to a main threat. Just cause they broke up doesn't mean they are stupid or sloppy. Bill and his lackies will not threaten their marketplace like that. Nekros
The idea of a simple, working, windows migration tool shows how little the author understands of the windows world. Any kind of windows upgrade is an extreme challenge due to the sheer volume of conflicting dll's, driver combinations, and general chaos that is your average windows install. It's such a challenge that even Microsofts own installers and upgraders cannot successfully accomplish it.
Then there's the application base. Office isn't the start and end of business software. Out of the 70 applications my users have (and use, regularly - engineering), only 4 of them are the office suite.
And the laughable server migration concept, a server is not just an OS, it's part of protocols, WAN connections, and applications like backup, software distribution, homegrown tools.
The more I think of this article, the more absurd it becomes!
Yes, Jobs is in business to make money, lots of money, but you need to apportion the credit/blame where it belongs.
It wasn't Jobs who killed MacOS on Intel, it was John Scully who pulled it at the last minute because MacOS ran faster on 486s than on 68040s. After Scully fired Jobs, he (Jobs) went on to run NeXT, one of the most open commercial unix companies ever. NEXTSTEP ran on NeXT's own Motorola hardware, as well as Intel, Sparc and HP PA-RISC. It's still common to find NeXT packages on stepwise.com in "quad fat" binary. Eventually, NeXT stopped selling hardware altogether and became an OS vendor supporting mostly commodity Intel hardware.
Jobs *DID* kill the Mac clones, and in a pretty pissy way. He revoked Power Computing's license and refused to accept any Motorola StarMax machines for the mandatory compatibility testing. Like it or not, he had a reason for doing this. The clone makers (Power Computing in particular) were embarrassing Apple by selling faster machines at much lower prices. Apple had hoped that the clones would expand the market for the MacOS, instead the clone vendors were underselling Apple's own products and eroding Apple's existing customer base. I was very upset when he killed the clones (I had just bought a truckload of PowerWave 604e 250s), but I can see why he did it.
I think just about everyone would agree that Jobs is a control freak. If you buy into the reality distortion field, you will wind up believing that he does it because of his relentless drive for the best user experience possible. If you don't buy into it, well, he's just a control freak.
But when you look at his recent actions at Apple, he doesn't look too bad. He has more or less open sourced much of OS X and Darwin is resonably close to being a Mac system running on commodity hardware, Intel or PowerPC.
I think OS X on Intel could be a good idea. There is more uncertainty about Microsoft now than there has been in years. Corporate IT departments will be more likely to fool around with testing an alternative OS if it runs on the hardware they have on hand. After all, it worked for Linux, which now has a 24% market share for servers.
I don't understand how something like this could have made it onto Slashdot. It is poorly written and has no basis for its claims and predictions.
First of all, Apple has always been a hardware company. Now, this might not be true in a few years, but it would really be a hard transition to make, if impossible.
Apple is optimizing the Mac OS X for the G3 and G4 processors. The OS is made to run on the iMacs, the PowerBooks, and the PowerMacs. Not x86. It would be a sad disaster to see the OS on x86 because it would take YEARS to support all the different hardware configurations and pitfalls.
They would have to take the BeOS strategy, only support a limited amount of hardware. Doing that is not exactly consumer friendly, as people don't care what hardware is in their computers.
Therefore, I see no MacOS X on the x86. It would be a failure unless (maybe) it was aimed at the workstation market where people are willing to configure their hardware around an OS.
As for Steve Jobs pulling a rabbit out of the hat? He needs to pull out some new G4s that run faster than 500 MHz. Right now, RISC processors should be able to have the MHz advantage because of their simpler design. They need to whip some Motorola asses, because they are being held back by them.
In conclusion, I hope that a new Microsoft embraces MacOS X and possibly Linux down the road. Hopefully the new company will redesign their software so it can be more easily ported to other OSes. Just don't look for Apple to port their OS to x86.
P.S. Apple could possibly create their own closed x86 platform. It would have a lot of advantages for Apple.
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
EverCode
This was already done once and Jobs canceled the project after it was mostly finished. This would cut into Apple hardware sales, and it appears unacceptable to Apple internal politics.
IRQ conflicts are a problem with the PC hardware. In fact, some of the clunkiness of Windows is due to the hardware: the myriads of screen resolutions, keyboards, peripherals, and protocols Windows needs to support.
Why would people care about the Aqua UI? For most experienced server administrators, any UI is a nuisance. Maybe you hang out with a different group of server administrators than I do.
It seems unlikely. I also don't think the outcome is desirable: in my judgement, Apple's technology has stagnated years ago and they are now concentrating on consumer features. Besides, Jobs is probably even less pleasant to deal with than Gates.
A more likely outcome is that millions of people will end up using systems like the Playstation II for all their Internet access and most of their computing needs, and WebTV, PC, and Macintosh will be left in the dust. On the server side, more and more people will run BSD or Linux on the low end and Solaris on the high end, and server software will increasingly be written in Java.
The pathetic GUI environment of Linux is a turn-on to some Linux/Unix folks who think command line prowess is a sign of manhood. But wait, this whole GUI question is relevant to the computer as an end-user machine, not systems admin or developer equipment. That's why your Mac boosting sort of makes sense but doesn't. IT professionals don't need a pretty GUI, end-users do, though. The basis of your argument underlines today's schizophrenia of whether a box, G4 or Pentium, should be a server, a workstation, or a friendly end-user desktop machine--or all three at once. If X is supposed to be a server, what does a pretty GUI get you? NT became a hit mainly because it was a (funtionally) stable Windows environment which gave management the impression that their smartest secretary could be made systems administrator, so deceptively easy was the clickity-click of the mouse. Now, try to add 300 new users at once. You won't find any secretary writing Win32 code to do that. I'm sure X will be a hit on Intel machines, simply because GUI sells. Linux will hopefully climb out of the hideous font, sucky browser hole they're presently in, but the battle over what a fast G4 or Pentium is really supposed to be will go on.
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
I didn't say it totally sucks. I said there are some UI decisions that are backwards. The traditional Mac window control layout, for instance, is unquestionably superior to the three-buttons-in-a-cluster approach found in Windows 95 - OS 10 copies Windows instead of the Mac layout, why? A screenshot is quite sufficient to spot this rather bizaare choice.
Several reviewers have noted some extremely poor design decisions, see for example Ars Technica's observation on the OS 10 dock, or Ask Tog, who while trying to be positive, properly notes several steps backward in the UI.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Yeah, a Microsoft breakup will likely help Apple gain a bit more market share on the desktop and will make OS X for Intel a viable product, especially given its "fat binary" support for "hybrid" executable files.
But Mac OS X as a server OS has a key weakness: its nonstandard GUI. The easy, intuitive, and now stable GUI that Apple has put on top of OS X isn't built out of X Window.
It's a single-user GUI tied to local hardware despite the Unix running underneath. So at this point in time, remote administration of a Mac OS X machine needs to be done either with a destablizing, single-user remote control program like Timbuktu, or with the Unix command line. And not incidentally, OS X's BSD dialect is a pretty odd one, with a directory structure only an old NeXT-head from ten years back could love.
Furthermore, though Darwin, the non-graphical core of OS X, is open-source and free, OS X isn't. The most bug-prone, destablizing parts of OS X, which sysadmins raised on BSD and Linux would most want to be able to review and fix themselves, are closed and proprietary.
In addition, the Mac's well-deserved reputation for low-fuss plug-and-play hardware support comes largely from the Mac's closed, circumscribed world and its strictly limited selection of hardware. Putting Mac OS, whether the old one or OS X, on standard Intel hardware throws this out the window. Mac OS X will do no better at handling 700 disk controllers, 800 graphics chipsets, thousands of Ethernet cards and so forth than Windows and Linux do. And anyone who's spent much time with Macs lately knows that Apple's USB support is cranky and idiosyncratic to say the least, with vast numbers of devices that won't work off USB hubs or chained off the keyboard, even with external power.
About the only worthwhile insight in that silly little essay is that Mac OS X for Intel might be viable. Though unless Apple starts selling Intel hardware themselves, it's not likely to see the light of day, since Apple appears to be focused on making its money from hardware, not software: note the low price points for MacOS, AppleShare IP Server and now WebObjects. Netting $25 per copy for the sale of a boxed MacOS is a drop in the bucket once you factor in the cost of providing support.
7) Microsoft becomes irrelevant, everybody realizes that open source is just a fad and can't make good software, Apple and the Unix companies go out of business because the clueful realize it's too insecure/unstable, Compaq makes a 2.4 GHz 21464 Alpha, for cheap, and everybody switches to VMS.
Also, your notion of 'one platform to rule them all and in the darkness bind them' is pretty childish- how soon we forget that in order for Windows to do this, they had to break lots of laws and screw everybody they could- and have been busted for just that! And even so, Apple survives, Linux survives, Amiga survives in its own way, etc etc.
The fact is, Apple ought to grow until it's maybe 20% or 30% of the market. Maybe 40% max. That's its niche (big niche, but it's a consumer-oriented system). Different Linuxes, including ones designed specifically for consumer use on older PCs (soon the 'obsolete' PCs will include PIIs and the like) will probably end up somewhere between 15% and 35%- and Windows will end up atrophying to where it is somewhere probably over 50% but less than 75%- and that balance will keep shifting, but in a healthy market each of the vendors will have a solid enough base to support them.
That's _my_ prediction. So if you want to talk 'dominate', if you go purely by numbers it's probably going to be Windows- but Windows will never again be able to totally ignore the other players in the field, and that is as it should be. In some ways that translates to _nobody_ 'dominating', if your definition of domination includes 'you never have to even think about interacting with computer users that don't use _your_ kind of computer'. In a very big world and marketplace, such an attitude is absolutely pathological...
OS 9 is properly compared to Win95/98, not NT. Do you want to limit it to shipping products and not 'the next generation'? Go take a look at Mac OS X Server 1.2 to compare to NT/2000 not OS 9.
From what I understand the currently shipping server is all BSD with its greatest 'weakness' being how much it looks like a unix box.
Come back and talk when you decide to give a fair comparison.
DB
I personally am glad that the former Mac team are working on Linux. The original Mac set the UI standard for all future GUIs.
I would much prefer a 50% MacOS/50% Windows home market with an almost non-existant Linux, for the sake of competition compared to the 90%Windows/9%Mac/1%Linux (or whatever the real stats are) with the false hope that Linux is a Windows-killer. Well it isn't and it may never be.
No way! What would he sort of people who read slashdot use? It would be far far worse, because you'd have 100% of the community in substandard operating systmes instad of the 95-ish% you have now. And you'd have even less hope for exit form the situation than you do now.
Believe with me, my saplings.
With Microsoft breakup competition will drive innovation. If Apple ends up with an x86 OS (I like the term better than "Intel", AMD is in the picture providing some much needed competition now) then it will be good for us. The author expresses the classic conservative view of maintaining the status quo. Well, tough. Survival of the fittest be it Apple, Microsoft, Windows, Linux, BeOS, OS/2,Via, AMD, Intel, Transmetta, Motorola or anyone else who wants to compete to provide me the best product for my very hard earned cash. There are no downsides to competition even if it scares this guy a little. We win in the end.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
There was an article published by O'reilly about how the 10-simultaneous users limit that NT workstation has and which server lacks is wholly due to registry tweaks.
I've set up several NT server systems and without a doubt there are differences between them. But then again I never claimed there were NO differences, only that the most important ones were due to changes in the registry.
The registry access API may be clearly defined, but the registry itself hardly is. It is just like I said, a way for microsoft to obscure the configuration details. The fact that is also serves other purposes does not change this.
The idea of the registry isn't all that bad of an idea. However the use M$ has put that idea to is.
Also, don't you know by now that ANYTHING M$ does is part of Billy Boy's master plan?
If you're not paranoid about M$, it means you haven't been paying attention.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
MS originally got big because it was so easy to copy their OS for free! Be it DOS or win3.1 or win95 or whatever. I didn't get any books or support or know its inner workings, but I was able to copy the disks easily, or install offa someone else's CD, and there was no repurcussion. Repurcussions only happened to certain companies.. so the commercial client had to pay, nobody else did.
So DOS and WIN proliferated wide and far.. I never paid for upgrades neither. Plus, I never paid for any OS ever, because I always made my own computer out of parts. Nice system, that.
Well the 2nd part of the tactic happened: the contracts with computer sellers. Not too many people make their own boxes, they just buy em pre-assembled. Which is how DELL gets big, selling to folks who don't want to monkey with screwdrivers. But the way the contract goes is, every computer they sell has to go with windows, and the reseller gets the Windows for cheap. And then MS start to crack down on resellers who copy the completely unprotected OS without paying.
Mac never got going as good, with a superior product, because they never had that free aspect before. They still don't. Although if MacOSX becomes available on the PC I may copy a CD sometime.
But anyway, now there's Linux, and it's free and not only that, you never have to pay! All updates for free! To me, that's what's going to wipe out Windoze. That, and the judge's decision that they have to stop exclusive contracts from PC builders. If you don't have to buy Windows with your new box, and you can get it working better with Linux anyway, well then forget Windows! I mean, dead right now.
You guys wax a little hard about lack of personal liberty and the decision of the man and all that crap. Gimme a break. Microsoft only made contracts with computer rebuilders, who only signed because of price breaks. The example of buying a car, gimme a break. When you buy a car, you get just a car, you don't get any fabrication details or anything. You don't get any engineering performance data or NUTHIN. You get a car & a coupla sets of keys & get to pay now.
For a much more sinister system, check out the rules of your local union shop. If you take a job there, first thing you find out is you have no choice but to join the union! When decisions are made, you get the final vote but your union tells you how you're supposed to vote! Unions are way more diabolical than Microsoft, Microsoft takes flak because they played the game smarter than anybody else and now they're rich and nobody likes the rules.
I predict, as Linux gets better and better, and stays free, and Windows loses its contract-writing ability with resellers, Win and MacOS will both die. But by then, I'll probably have none of any of them, I'll have a web browser on my playstation 2 which churns along at 5 GIGAFLOPS, and which will ultimately be made into a better computer than anything on the market presently. A GAME machine! Imagine turning it on.. and not having to wait for the prick to boot up! It's all in ROM!
Computers will be made into REAL appliances, with no more bullcrap GUI buttons on buttons and configuration menus all over the place and junk. OS's will be moot. MS has already started diversifying... they ain't dumb.
What makes you think a Java app can't use Aqua? Methinks you ought to do some investigating. Of course, a Java app that does use Aqua won't run on anything but MacOS X, but it can be done. In fact, Apple's pushing it pretty hard.
From what I heard at JavaOne this week, the Aqua look and feel for Java is in the works for JDK 1.4. When it's out, Java apps should be able to use Aqua on all (supported) platforms - write once, run anywhere, remember?
I think he meant that Corel has done a good enough job so far to deliver some more "porductive" apps. I could be wrong, of course.
Hey - that's not stealing, it's family.
Believe with me, my saplings.
First: don't get offensive.
Second: I was trying to figure out a generally described scenario which at first seemed almost unbelievable. You see, too many people talk sententiously about Macintosh, at times exaggerating things they have *heard* and not even *seen*...
Third: I'm not defending Mac at any cost. My final sentence sounded so straight maybe because my experience with Macs and PCs led to opposite results compared to yours. That's it.
In my previous post there was less sarcasm than what you might have read. I just wanted to understand. And the fact that your G3s with the software you mentioned still crash - believe me - keeps me puzzled.
Best regards
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Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Heh, my thoughts exactly. :) I'd kinda like to see OS X on X86 architecture, but not at the expense of anything else. I personally find MacOS more difficult to use than, well, just about anything else, but Aqua looks so neat that I would probably buy a copy just to play with it.
Of course, that begs the question: How well would MacOS do with dual-booting? Anyone using Linux PPC want to answer that one?
These facts are superfluous and unrelated. The foundation of his position was that because MacOS X is BSD-like, it becomes exponentially easier to figure out what Apple has done. Note the, due to the similarity in underlying platform at the end of his material (you quoted it; I assume you read it?). His argument has debatable merit, but you didn't respond to it at all. Furthermore, he didn't imply it was easy; he said it would be easier.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
But interestingly, if you extrapolate this scenario into the future, Mac OS ends up driving all other OS's from the market. What you're left with then is another Microsoft, especially since the author assumes that Apple will make huge money of its software, implying that it will not be open source (or if open source, at least not free...)
So in this scenario, Apple could end up before an Antitrust court as well. I doubt this is what iCEO Steve Jobs has in mind for the company...
iefpe
Like someone already posted "Bias? On slashdot?!"
I would much prefer a 50% MacOS/50% Windows home market with an almost non-existant Linux, for the sake of competition compared to the 90%Windows/9%Mac/1%Linux (or whatever the real stats are) with the false hope that Linux is a Windows-killer. Well it isn't and it may never be.
What the author does get right in this article, and it isn't much, is that the breakup of MS will probably allow a very popular OS to get a real footing in the Intel home PC market and the Mac looks like a real contender. He also makes the simple realization that Linux is not ready, if it ever will be, for entry-level home PC buyers. Maybe when, say, trying to change screen resolution can be done by an amatuer without hosing the entire system is possible I might jump on the Linux for everyone bandwagon.
Maybe in a couple years the majority of posts will be about how much more evil Apple and Jobs are compared to not-such-a-bad-guy Gates.
For most software conflicts, reinstalling the Mac OS is always the last resort. And everything turns out good in most cases.
Reinstalling Windows on a PC isn't actually the *last* resort. A friend of mine, thanks to the "dynamic duo" Internet Explorer & Outlook Express had to reinstall Win several times. Useless, since the problem was serious file corruption. Problem increased by the useless attempts in reinstalling everything. So he finally had to reformat the hard drive.
And another unlucky friend had to open his PC a countless number of times because of hardware conflicts (video card sees not sound card; sound card changed; new sound card incompatible with CD-RW drive; then the OS sees not the modem, & so on & so on...)
Both of them - lest I forget - were stopped at the BIOS when trying to reboot.
Regards
Steve Jobs has wanted to get back ever since 1984, when Apple shunned him out and put Scully in he thought his day would never come. When Gil nearly killed the company Steve was definately off persuing other interests. When Apple asked him to come back as iCEO that was something that probably even stunned him.
Since that time a company that was literally months away from filing chapter 11 has saturated the market with cutely designed, functional systems. Based on more standard hardware, a good customer experience, and that old fashioned "Mac thing". Last December Apple picked up 60% of all computer sales (according to Yahoo!). For those who didn't think it could happen - it can.
I don't think that Apple will ever get out of the hardware market because it would be unprofitable,and I doubt that you will see a MacOS X immediately debuit on Intel. However, I do see it there in mid-2001 for public eyes. Although, then again - Apple already has it running on Intel systems -- who knows?
The one thing that I do not see happening is the fade away of Linux. Personally, I think that Helix Code Inc. will probably be the next company to do something major for the UNIX desktop. They already have their distribution of GNOME for Solaris. I see consulting, marketing, and eventually CD's of it flinging out to the business world. The next few things that needs to happen is a focus on the GNOME-Office suite, and cleaning up the GNOME interface a bit. I think that in 2001 Linux *will* evolve into a very viable world due to not having a Microsoft looming over it's head, and if Microsoft Inc. does not produce a Linux variant of Office then they are cannibalizing their own sales. Microsoft Inc will be a company much, much different than Windows Inc. Even though I do like MacOS, and I even own an iBook - it frightens me to see a market where Apple is dominant - color me crazy.
Even if Microsoft Inc. did not port it's Office suite over to Linux I think that we will see something amazing happen - Microsoft Inc. will be too busy restructuring for over a year to do anything. Compatible office suites like Star Office, Koffice, and Gnome Office, Appleworks, etc. will come out as viable, cheaper alternatives and as the computer industry grows and changes you will see some huge changes centered around that.
Who knows - they still may win in appeal - or strike a post-hearing settlement (like national news was talking about, odd eh?).
Well if THAT's the case, then... jolly good.
IIRC, what they want is for Micros~Windows to release all API information to all developers equally (no more undocumented, hidden hooks for Micros~Apps). Considerably different thing!
And your point is? This is a restriction imposed by the Workstation licence - if you want to connect more than 10 users to an NT box then buy a licence and run NT Server, which has other tweaks as well (off the top of my head, Server quanta are the same size for both foreground and background tasks, rather than making them longer for foreground tasks as Workstation does: moreover, Server quanta are of longer duration than Workstation ones, the idea being that it's better to try and get a single work request done within a single quantum if possible rather than take the hit of context switching)
Your second comment I find a bit confusing: from where I'm standing, the whole point of an API is that it hides you from the implementation. All the user need concern his or herself with is the interface, which is fixed. What happens on the far side of the API ius irrelevant to the person on the near side of it and vice versa. The reason the registry is like it is is because it's used to store non-textual data as well as data which can be represented in ASCII - not all data is best fitted by an ASCII representation, after all...
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
Darwin runs on both of those platforms; Apple hasn't released the top layer for x86, but it would appear they are keeping stuff around to ensure it can be done. NeXT stuff is much more elegant and intelligently designed than BeOS.
:) )
Why is it that whenever somebody points out that BeOS is multiplatform and kicks ass in seven spectacular ways, some idiot will try to cut it down by saying that their hardware support is crap? Yet somebody mentions OS X and suddenly it runs on both platforms. Tell me - what is OSX/x86 driver suppor like? And how many generations is it going to take before OS X is remotely optimised for x86? (particularly given how many decades it's taken for MacOS to be optimised for PPC
Just to deal with the comment that Be's hardware support is crap (stated several times elsewhere in this forum): Don't accept that - it's misleading. Be's hardware support is excellent (just look at video/sound or SMP performance), but it's a little limited. Check our free.be.com, and you'll see that almost all current video cards (the biggest complaint above) are supported. And what is supported is excellent.
Believe with me, my saplings.
If I remember correctly, you could only buy A/ux pre installed on a disk unit (i believe it was an 80MB disk too). In those days that added an enormous amount to the cost of the os and everyone could see it was Apple just jumping on the Unix bandwagon while selling a bit more hardware.
I tried a/ux, it was fun. Pointless but fun.
regards
When I get in a programming mode
Compile and run
It is so much fun
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Apple did not steal the GUI concept from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre. They borrowed some ideas but not the complete OS concept. The other key difference is that Apple actually asked Xerox first. Smalltalk really has very little in common with MacOS. Microsoft was given detailed information about the MacOS APIs to aid them in creating apps for the Macintosh. Microsoft used this information when creating windows.
There has been enough misinformation spread about the birth of the GUI and Apple and Xerox part in it all. Microsoft had no part in the creation of the GUI all the concepts were in place when it created its own.
I suggest those who are interested take a look at the following essay linked from here. They were written by people actually involved:
http://www.apple-history.com/horn1.html
You can actually still run System 1 today using the vMac emulator. If you have too much spare time then you can try it out and see just how advanced it was for its time.
http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/
Don't blame me - this
I've noticed that, too. Generally people using a Mac get alot more longevity out of the hardware before they upgrade. You'll still find SE/30's doing printserving, or webserving small sites.
I have a beige MacOS G3/300 at home, too, and have to use a Windows P2/233 at work. *sigh*
Constitutionally Correct
Mac OS will never replace something like Linux until somebody figures out how to offer ALL of the power of a CLI type interface in their GUI. Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
I am not trying to belittle the power of the CLI. Quite honestly I prefer to do all my file management with a CLI. But on this Windows 2000 workstation here at home, I just busted out the start->search->files and folders, set it to look for everything in a certain directory over a certain size, with llama in a a title that was created over three days ago, and it came back exactly as I wanted--which I was suprised to find much easier than doing that by hand on a command line.
However, one of the most powerful (most?) things about a CLI is that it is really easy to leverage that power from remote. Sure Windows 2000 has a telnet daemon now, but can you change the screen resolution from it? How about change the mouse or remove a driver? On a Linux machine, it stores the configs in text, which is easy to modify from a CLI or a GUI. I guess I'm saying its easy to 'retrofit' a gui over a CLI but not always the other way around.
-k
When I get in a programming mode
Compile and run
It is so much fun
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Well, it's interesting story. But I don't think that the Apple Computer Inc. get that popularity that easy.
Actually people don't mind how easy to use the Mac as much as the Apple want.
And, I don't think that the Apple can provide freedom form the IRQ or other resource conflicts problem on "INTEL" platform. The reason Mac could provide that is thanks to the Apple's fine handling of 3rd party developers ( including H/W )
and makes them obey the most fundamental thing
first. So, if nothing works, the most basic things works. ( It saves lots of time especially when you don't have enough time to work for something to do. )
In the PC world, the Apple could not make the 3rd parties do what the 3rd parties in the Mac world do. Because there are already sold H/Ws.
Second, I don't think the Apple is open-minded enough. Look at what Apple do now. They have white NeXT. The Mac OS X API still has name "NS..".
But they don't develop Intel version seriously.
Third, the Apple can't grow as powerful as the MS.
It's because the Apple makes the OS and the H/W together. It's ruling the Mac market, just like the MS does on the PC market.
The difference is that the MS did unfair things using the power of the market dominance of the Windows. Will the Apple does the similar things when it grows?
Whatever happens, in the capitalism, dominating the market is crime.
I want to have the Apple OS on the Intel H/Ws, though.
Everyone seems to assume that 1) I'm a writer and 2) that I have an editor. Neither are true, and I'm sorry I mixed up it's and its. I've fixed it.
This could change very easily. The Mac interface hasn't really changed much since 1984. In the mean time, the Linux interface has made huge strides. Two years ago, KDE and GNOME were unusable but today they are stable and improved versions are in the works. Also, don't forget that several members of the original Mac team are working to improve Linux's interface and ease (or is that eaze) of use. http://www.eazel.com
I have been a long time MacOS supporter and user, but my roots are in x86 hardware.
Why do cluessless MacOS adovcates (zealots?) always toss the words "IRQ Conflicts" around?
I can honestly say that I haven't had to deal with an "IRQ Conflict" in years on x86 hardware. PCI man, PCI! It deals with the "IRQ Conflicts" for you.
In the days of ISA this mattered. But now?
Seesh people. Wake up and realize that the "dark side" has evolved.
I'll guess that CmdrTaco was bored this morning and looked for the most inflamatory story he could find to post. Perhaps he knew it would turn into a 400+ comment flamefest full of FUD, perhaps not. My take is that a lot of Windows and Linux faithful are threatened enough by MacOS X that they feel the need to insult everything Mac after one Mac zealot posted a fictional future that doesn't include Linux as a major player and has Mac fighting with Windows for the market. Come on. YHBT by TACO.
no sig.
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
I think what the author meant was that you can't do BSD things (CLI stuff, configuring samba, writing bourne shell scripts) any easier than you can in BSD. So ``the power of having all your BSD stuff'' is not a net benefit over BSD.
Plus Aqua relies on proprietary technology that no open source initiative will ever license, and Adobe will never ever open source it. Never.
One if the significant reasons Apple went with ``display PDF'' instead of Display Postscript is that PDF doesn't have a lot of the wierd licensing considerations that PostScript does... so it would actually be a lot more reasonable to implement something compatable...
And, Display PostScript has been done and is somewhat understood... display PDF is just about the same thing.
Just because they work on the fruity OS for grandmothers and they aren't working for an open source company, doesn't mean they aren't incredibly talented, smart people.
No, but taking 20 years to come out with a computer with good dynamic memory allocation, virtual memory spaces, preemptive multitasking, and an architectural improvement in the display technology is proof enough that Apple didn't have talented, smart people until they bought NeXT. I mean, OS 9 is basically System 1 + Multifinder + TCP/IP + color, Really.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Yeez, it must really hurt to find that the rest of the world doesn't share your rose tinted view of the Mac.
Get real, all the breakup of Microsoft will mean is:
- Office on Linux
- Better and more stable Windows, after all when all you do is OS, you take it more seriously
- Development of Mac Office dependent on market conditions, not Court posing. If a port is easy, it will happen, otherwise not.
The Mac's day in the sun was 20 years ago, no amount of pretty casing is likely to change that in the short term. Mac is niche, and so is Linux. To supplant Windows is going to take a hell of an effort - why should a business man replace the existing approach with another, unless THEY can see a real benefit.
The breakup of Microsoft, even if it happens, is not the end of Windows, its going to take much more than that. Linux has the best chance, but needs more refinement before it has the killer edge.
Sorry if this rains on anyone's parade, but wishful thinking doesn't make a sound business model.
save you from IRQ hell?
He seems to think that the MacOS is not going to have hardware problems when it comes to the intel platform since it didn't have any on the macs... well, he must be smoking some of that good stuff.
Lets count how much hardware can actually work on a mac, then count all the hardware that works on a pc, and now lets see him rethink that idea again.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
I am not going to stop using linux because some jackass thinks that macintosh is viable.
the main point he made was that Macs are good because of Office and Macs are good because they arent Microsoft.
That makes a whole lot of sense.
Anyway, I had to vent those feelings at the expense of being flamed.
People begin to realize that Linux has little to offer that Unix hasn't offered for years, and with Mac OS X's BSD core and Aqua interface running on cheap hardware, the needs of even die-hard geeks are being met. For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need.
Call me crazy, but it's been my experience that Apple's very first attempt at a Unix-like system is going to have to turn miracles if it's going to instantaneously replace the need for Unix distributions that have been under scrutinizingly intense development for years. I'm not saying that I might not, one day, switch entirely over to Darwin because it's simply a better choice, but the author of this article seems to suggest that a flashy GUI is the one thing keeping me from really enjoying my FreeBSD box. Try again, Steve... I'm a die-hard geek and if you REALLY wanted my undivided attention, you would make OSX free!
Unfortunately, the author makes the assumption that the only importantl feature in a system is its GUI.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
No, the command line isn't dead. People who touch type and like to read... actually prefer the command line... not for everything... but for many, many things.
Apple is very much like Atari. Before Atari became a logo to stick on Hasbro remakes of aging Atari games it was often said that, "Atari couldn't market immortality." My point here is that while Steve Jobs might have helped save Apple from an earlier grave, he certainly is no magician.
It is estimated (and I'm not going to quote the sources here because they are well known) that Linux holds a 4% share of the desktop market... barely trailing the Macintosh's 5%. Please note that the tiny 5% marketshare that the Mac has is ONLY AFTER a period of record sales figures. How the Macintosh can be seen as a potential force in the desktop world with 5% of the market, and Linux is seen by many (currently) as a desktop failure with only 1% difference is beyond me.
Ok, ok... Apple has decided that they can't bandaid the MacOS like Microsoft has done with Windows 95/98... and they FINALLY decided to start with a new, Unix based, foundation. I'll give them credit for that BUT... Apple seems to take longer to make things mature... and until Apple makes some serious (as in measurable) inroads into the server market, I don't see it being a major contender in the desktop market... because people often times want to bring their work home with them and make their home systems mini versions of their business systems.
--
Scott Dowdle
Another Linux Advocate - http://linuxadvocate.b-squared.net
--
Scott Dowdle
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
OSX could very well be running on Intel equipment, but probably not in the way you'd think. Apple could very well release a Macintosh that uses an AMD at it's core. With the right drivers it wouldn't be much of a stretch to move all of your hardware to such a Mac.
Such a machine would use an Intel-compatible processor, but that's it. Apple still makes money on hardware, and Wintel users get to keep most of their system's.
The party's over
Seriously though, it wouldn't take much work at all. Most of the actual hardware added to a Mac is external and depends more on the bus connecting it to the CPU than the CPU's type. Internal hardware is PC-compatible on a Mac these days, anyway (PCI slots, IDE drives. you can buy a PC Voodoo card and make it work on the MacOS if you download the drivers.) Very doable.
it's green.
Isn't Jobs the one who killed Apple's chance of being an OS company before by withdrawing support for the open platform stardard (whatever it was called) that made Mac clones possible.
Anm
OS X has far to much extra baggage in the ways of fancy graphics and slow user interfaces (I really DO NOT want to wait for my windows to zoom in and out of icons) to ever make it as a professional OS. While it might be OK for artists and such, for a person like me who wants to get the job done and get it done now, I really don't want to have to worry about transluctent buttons are OpenGL accelorated icons. MacOS (and for that matter, most Linux GUI's too) have a disgusting "fun" look to their interface, for crying out loud here folks, this is a TOOL I am using, NOT a toy (though it can be quite fun at times, heh) Even on a G3, any macintosh OS after (and including) 8 runs sloooow. You think Windoze is slow? Just imagine how horrid it would be without the options to skip loading windows and going diretly to the command prompt! Oh yah, and the command line still lives on, there are very few things in this world which can be done faster by GUI then by a macro/script/batch files. Compare the following steps for running a program in Macintosh OS (almost any version) to running a simular program in DOS. In MAC OS Click apple icon Sort through the 50+ programs that are listed Move your mouse to the desired program Left Click. Now, in Dos Type in the name of the program that you want to run. Enjoy your program. Of course, both steps assume that you have setup a link within the apple menu on Mac OS or that you have setup a batch files in DOS. In fact, even setting a batch file in DOS is easier then setting up the neccisary links in Mac OS. Of course, once you get to Linux you have even more powerfull scripting potential, but you also get multitasking to boot (heh, the one thing that DOS does lack, often times I find myself using windows just as a multitasker between multiple DOS programs.) One more itsy bitys thing, if anybody thinks that microsoft is keeping a lid on their source code (and they are, I might add) just compare that to apples marketing strategy, ugh! Horrid horrid horrid, they officaly (and quite proudly!) announce that they are a monopoly. Granted, this leads to 100% guarenteed hardware compatability, but hell, I myself perfer to be able to tinker around with things, and there is NO way that I am buying a product from a company that has such close ties to ATI (makers of the worlds slowest graphic cards!) ---Question somthing, just so long as it isn't me
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
So, you going to put your money where your clueless mouth, er, fingers are?
-jon
P.S. I'll also take bets on when the Java "fad" is going to end...
Remember Amalek.
Listen buddy, you jumped a bit away from subject by writing the comment above.
No I didn't.
It's not only completely wrong but it shows your lack of knowledge here.
I would argue that it is completely right and displays a good deal of insight. (See, that's why it says Insightful in the moderation area of the title bar.)
Society you try to describe is anything but communist. There was NO COMPETITION.
The society I describe is completely communist. Robin Hood would love to live in it. Take from the rich and give to the poor. Or in other words: "From each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs." That doesn't sound at all familiar to you, does it? In this case, the DoJ would be deciding that the society "needs" to have access to Microsoft's complete codebase.
I used to live in there hence I know it rather better than you do, obviously. Next time better stay with subject.
That kind of statement is typical of a person who wishes to win an argument through causing emotion in the reader, rather than through reason. The second half of it is a particularly flawed bit of logic. You are implying that it was wrong of me to put forth the idea in the first place; that way you don't have to challenge the logic itself, just ignore its existence.
This is completely irrelevant to my riposte and should not be evaluated as a part of it, but it bears saying: You probably read the word "communist" in my post, got all upset, and decided to lash out at me for no good reason. I don't have to live in a communist country to know how the government works, any more than I have to live in England to understand the English language.
Regarding that institutionalised rape - well M$'s behavior looks sometimes like a corporate rape, doesn't it?
Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't say something is wrong and then turn around and do it yourself; that is hypocrisy. Lead by example and rule golden.
IBM's G3s will soon be running @ up to 700mhz. That alone will provide incentive for them to stick to PPC. And of course no one who proposes that rubbish that Apple WILL port to x86 has been able to explain the following very important areas for apple:
-How will Apple maintain backward compatability with PPC Mac software? It would be far too slow on the average PC to use emulation software to run say..... Photoshop, MS Office, etc.
-How will Apple keep its diehard users loyal? Most of them consider x86 to be pure trash
-How will Apple benefit from licensing MacOS X? Its main business is hardware. It won't be able to sell Macs and license off MacOS X without one way or another hurting itself.
I know this is a little late for this, but...
When you have the files selected in Find File/Sherlock/Sherlock 2, go to the edit menu and Select All, then go to the Edit menu and Copy. Go into your favorite e-mail program, create a new message, and then go into Edit menu -> Paste.
Not too bad, eh?
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Millions of Windows users tired of IRQ conflicts... can now install Mac OS X on their existing computer, keeping their data and their applications. Millions do.
And millions experience the same IRQ conflicts all over again.
IRQ conflicts are a hardware problem, not a software problem ("PnP" notwithstanding). Changing the OS does not automagically make hardware conflicts disappear. IRQ and hardware resource management is a very difficult and complicated job on the endlessly varied PC platform; throwing a brand new OS at a years-old problem is not very likely going to improve things at all.
begin 644
SAN FRANCISCO (AP): Today, June 10 2001, local Macintosh consultant Peter Lalor was eaten by penguins. He was seen clinging to a piece of blue fruit, screaming something that witnesses say sounded like "save me, Steve!"
.0000001 point immediately thereafter.
The NASDAQ went up by
--
Hypercard rocks, I don't know how it compares to VB, well, actualy I do. They arn't even really the same thing.
But I'd rather use hypercard on an old monocrome mac then M$ powerpoint. And I really, really, hate macs....
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
one werd (or two): http://www.fuckedcompany.com
I can't disagree with the "most people don't want to use a command line part", but in a few years (which is what this guy is talking about) KDE or Gnome should be as far a long as Aqua. It seems to me KDE/Gnome are already ahead in the game. Lets break it down.
GUI: KDE/Gnome are already released, MacOS/X will be released, someday... I guess.
KDE/Gnome 1, MacOS/X 0
Apps: Koffice and whatever Gnome is working on are already in beta ware, and somewhat workable. I don't think my brothers at MS have even starting working on an Office port to MacOS/X yet.
KDE/Gnome 1, MacOS/X 0
Stability: While it's easy to assume that MacOS/X will be a rock. This is anything from fact. Let me remind you that NextStep is also a micro-kernel design, and is not nearly as stable as WinNT, and not even close to *nix.
*nix 1, MacOS/X 0
Working well on x86: Ya right, it's taken Microsoft 10 years to half ass support everything out there. Linux can't do half of what's out there, and what it can do is a huge bitch to get working. It is absolutely absurd to think that MacOS/X is going to magically work perfectly on x86.
nix 1/2, MacOS/X 0
Looking "eatable", well admittedly I have spent some nights just dreaming drooling over the Aqua movies and screen shots, so I can't take that away from them. But then again enlightenment also looks freakin sweet.
*nix 1, MaxOS/X 1
Total: unix: 4 1/2. MaxOS/X: 1
Of course I'm biased. I've never used MaxOS/X, but then again nether has anyone else.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Hrm, I got my first PC in 1995, and I've never had an IRQ conflict in my life.
Its called PCI, most computers havn't got an ISA bus card in them at all.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I don't think many consumers really want that much freedom and choice. My experience has been thta your average computer user wants something functional and consistent, not something that can be infinately tweaked. I've set up several linux boxes for non technical users, and I've seen the looks of confusion on their faces as I show them KDE/Gnome/WindowMaker/fvrm/et al. I've heard them say the just want something that works when I ask if they want Star Office, Applixware, AbiWord/Gnumeric, Corel Office, etc. Customization is great, but the more choices you have the more confusing it is and the harder it is to get a consistent computing environment. I mean, I can give X an almost infinate number of faces, but I still can't get consistent cut and past and drag and drop between applications...
And on the other side, with all these choices, what is the IT department to do? We don't have time to learn and support all the competing applications/window managers/distributions, so we have to standardize on what we feel to be the best one. Of course, all our users might not want that one, so then what to do? Sure we can claim we don't support it, but we can't tell our users to go away if they have a problem. It's a big headache, not only do we have to spend more time evaluating all the choices, but we're also going to end up occasionaly being asked to support the ones we didn't choose.
is the assumption that people will migrate to MAC OS from windows just becuase there is a "migration kit" or becuase they are tired of IRQ conflicts. It would seem that *any* OS that got rid of IRQ conflitcs and had a "migration kit" would be "viable".
Certainly offtopic, but why doesn't any editor catch that very common misspelling of the pronoun "its"? "It's" means "it is".
I never thought of it that way. Quick all of slashdot, E-mail your governers! We must keep Microsoft whole, or Mac OSX will rule the EARTH!!!
Do not wright in this space.
As a BASH user, I find it necessary to point out that doing "advanced software development" with BASH is simply out of the question. In order to do "advanced software development," you must use a real programming language like C, C++, Java, Modula, or some other fully featured language.
I think he said as much in a slashdot interview last year
He said that its a dvantage being able to dictate what hardware is used as it enable beter compatability or soem crap.
There is no way apple would want their software running on regular PC's as it would be tooo confusing for the puny minds of apple users, who pay lots of money to have a computer that they dont have to think about.
Yes, i dislike apple very much, they are more of a marketing company than a tech company.
This is a test post
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
I haven't tried suicide either. You may think that means I am unqualified to comment on even the most obvious ramifications thereof. You are free to think that, I still say, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
... Apple would buy Be, Inc instead of NeXT. They would have a modern UNIX-based OS, capable of running multiple platforms then instead of now.
But I can't think about them cannibalizing their hardware sales in order to become a software vendor on the Intel platform.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Does anyone else find this sad. Inovation and the potential merger of 15 years of separate innovation on the two platforms stiffled by economics. Is this suprising? NO. Is it right? Absolutly not. This is the reason that I support the free software movement. Yes, Linux has bugs, Yes, StarOffice is a poor answer to Office 97. In general, however, what has this movement brougt us? Linux (free and more stable than ever) on more platforms than windows or mac will ever claim [MIPS, Alpha, x86, PPC and Sparc]. At least there is someone fighting for something besides market share. The MacOS/*nix/Intel permutation is a fantastic opertunity which I believe is limited only by the greed that has encompased nearly all of the computer industry. Sad but True ;(
That's what they all say...They all say D'oh
It's entirely plausable that you can replace all mentions of the word "MacOS" with the word "BeOS" and get a similar argument, same defenses, but with less of a 'world domination' bent to it.
Plus BeOS is POSIX compliant so the 'professionals' who do like command line (code me an OS with your mouse, I dare you) can still use it, in addition to a stable UI that won't go belly-up when you try doing more than one thing at the same time.
And BeOS already runs on both PPC and Intel architechture. Right now. Not in 2001, right now.
C'mon, optimisim is okay, but dogmatic optimisim is a bit over the top.
---
"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
Microsoft makes a lot of profit from Office on the Mac. Their office suite market share is even more dominant on MacOS than on Windows - which is part of the reason that Access wasn't ported. Microsoft has no Mac office suite competition with a database.
Interestingly, Excel and Word were both Mac programs _first_, before Windows even existed. There used to be a CLI version of Word for DOS, but it was scrapped. PowerPoint was originally developed by a company called Nashoba Systems as a Mac product (back in '87 or so), and then MS bought the company (a sidenote - the Nashoba guys also produced Nutshell and Filemaker). So Microsoft has a long history of producing Mac software and making a lot of money with it.
Apple wouldn't have to go nutty to get OS X up on Intel hardware. The Darwin core already runs, OpenStep (which forms the guts of OS X) was Intel/PowerPC based all along, and Apple is almost certainly making an effort to keep the code readily portable. I'd guess that they could have everything but the Classic environment up on Intel hardware within a couple of months of the PowerPC version of the OS shipping.
That said, I don't see Apple actively trying to play in offering Windows "compatibility", and OS X native apps will be scarce for a while - most "Native" apps will likely just be Carbonized Classic apps for a year or so. Carbonizing is a lot faster and cheaper than building a native app, and you get most of the benefits of OS X that way.
The other wildcard is that Linux will have advanced substantially in the timeframe the article mentions. Though the OS X he mentions would likely trounce today's Linux, Linux is a moving target, as is Windows.
I think the likelier scenario is that Apple, with an OS X like described in the article (that is, one that can host Windows apps) would gather a solid 10-20% of the OS marketplace since you're taking what was essentially an OS noted for it's bulletproofness (NeXTStep/OpenStep) and overall quality, and souping it up. If it can run Windows apps, too, there's a pent-up demand for an OS like that.
The Mac hardware version of OS X would then likely do about the same business - giving Apple a total of from 20-40% of the market across platforms. Probably on the lower side of that, maybe about a combined (X86 and PPC) 20-25%.
Linux continues to make inroads, and hits some enterprise desktops, but makes the biggest impact in the server room, taking about 40% of the server market over Windows 2000, NetWare,and other platforms. Linux remains a solid niche player on the desktop, with about a 10-15% market share, but penetrates a few Fortune 500-class companies thanks to increased applications support.
The Microsoft Windows company's OS remains the default OS for most consumer systems, as market pressures from Apple and Linux force them to finally start improving the broken things (like security) in Windows today. Windows improves at a faster pace than usual, and retains about half the market.
And then, everybody makes a lot of money. Microsoft Windows Co. makes a little less than they're used to, but Microsoft Office Co. makes money hand over fist, porting their dominant Office 2001 product to every operating system under the sun, and not coincidentally blowing Sun out of the water entirely with their StarOffice gambit.
The only loser: Sun, who bought and invested in an Office alternative that nobody wants now that they can get Office on every platform.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
duh.
So let me get this straight:
Microsoft stole the GUI from Apple . . .
So now Apple has to steal a future from BSD . . .
History repeats itself!
Those who cannot innovate on their own are leeches no matter what their logo is.
Linux Guy/Wandering Bard/Resident Kilt Wearing Whisky Swiller
Of course the scenario blissfully overlooks the lack of Mac OS X drivers for the large collection of PC compatible perhipherals, and just somehow assumes that Apple can overcome the long-standing technical hurdles toward true plug-and-play on the PC platform.
The reason Windows hasn't done it yet isn't entirely due to Microsoft's incompetence.
NO CARRIER
To all of you who insist that Apple would kill it's hardware sales by offering Mac OS X for Intel... ...Have you considered the possibility that Apple might actually sell Intel hardware itself?
----------
Jeff Croft
http://jeffcroft.com
http://industrystandard.org
http://newbeetle.org
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Jeff Croft
http://jeffcroft.com
I'm begining to think we've all been had on this one... there is no way in hell this can be a serious article, unless it was written by a true idiot for true idiots This article is truly moronic... I could only stomach about 1/2 of it before reaching for the 'back' button.
I did get a kick out of the the line citing Microsoft Productivity tools, like Office, etc...
I promptly respond: Productivity? Where? I'd like to know, because everytime I try using office for something, it always becomes an exercise in diminishing productivity!
Success of the NT platform proves that users don't want a command line? What? Thats an oxymoron.. Success/NT? I don't get it... I've never heard of anybody that seriously likes the NT platform... and I talk to IT managers all day long!
THis article is a good source of humor... read it lightly and bask in the knowledge that makes you a hell'of'a'lot smarter than the idiot that wrote it!
--Cr@ckwhore
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
The only loser: Sun, who bought and invested in an Office alternative that nobody wants now that they can get Office on every platform.
Maybe, but I think we still need an alternative to M$-Office. Those menus are absurdly inconvenient and hard to use. How many hours are lost in workplaces when people stop what they are doing to ask somenone "how can I do this in Word? I know, last week you showed me, but I can't find that command".
I emailed M$ about this, but they didn't answer. M$-Office needs "sticky" options, once you set an option, it should NEVER go back to the default, unless you reset that option.
What you're saying is that Mac OS X appeals to free software fans because you can delete everything but the free software kernel and then write free software replacements for the rest of it. HA! The only thing that differentiates MacOS X from other OSes is the proprietary software it has. Without the proprietary parts, NOBODY WOULD USE IT.
GNU/Darwin may come to exist, but you can be damned sure that, if it's a reasonable replacement to MacOS X, it will be the downfall of MacOS X, not proof of its agreeability with free software.
That comment about replacing the MacOS X GUI with XFree was the most hilarious... "Oh good, I get all the application support that comes with native Darwin apps for X11(!), and all I have to give up is support for MacOS X graphical apps!"
Your statement that "the Mac interface hasn't changed much since 1984" tells me that you haven't used a Mac much since then. Tabbed windows, windowshading, contextual menus, button views, document proxies*, control strip, new looks, pop-up folders**, heirarchical apple menu (used to be single-level), and thats just the things I could think of in 5 seconds. There are plenty more.
However, the fact that the fundamentals of the interface have stayed the same just tells me that they designed it well from the beginning.
*Most people don't know about the document proxies. Any window that directly corresponds to a document has an icon in the title. Grabbing that icon and dragging it is just like dragging the document itself. A very cool feature.
**Popup folders are really cool too. Do a "click & a half" on a folder (double click, but hold down the second click) and the arrow turns into a magnifying glass. Holding the glass over a folder opens it. Dragging the glass over another folder opens that one, keeping the first open as well, until you find the folder you want. Release the mouse button, and all the folders but the one you want close. You can also do this while dragging icons - just hold the icon over a folder for a second, and it opens, and you can do this till you put it where you want it. Then everything closes neatly.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
The windows registry is Microsoft's way of obscuring the way windows is configured. They don't want people to be able to go in and change things.
This is how MS was able to sell two different versions of NT, server and workstation, with the vital differences being changes to the registry. Had the registry been a collection of simple ascii files this never would have worked.
The registy is just another way for MS to make us bend over.
The market accepts the registry and regedit because MS is a monopoly, not because it ever had any choice. If Microsoft isn't a monopoly then they must have had Forrest Gump heading up their legal team because they sure didn't demonstrate that in court.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
> Where did you read that? Of course you can do that, but it's not required at all to customize anything.
How absurd! OF COURSE it's necessary to have the source to customize it. Apple has the source! Are you saying THEY don't need it?
> I doubt that there will ever be a GNU/Darwin, since Darwin's license is not the GPL.
If it's really a free software license, that shouldn't matter.
> The orignal poster was complaining that he wouldn't be able to customize MacOS X like his Linux/FreeBSD boxes. I refuted that.
No you didn't. The only customizations allowed are the ones Apple can think of beforehand. Apple still has the source, and surely you agree that it will continue to make changes. So surely you agree that there is improvement to be done that can only be done with source.
> if enough people think the MacOS X GUI is so horrible, replacements will be made
Funny, I don't see any Windows-based replacements for the Windows GUI (yet there are plenty of programmers who think it is horrible enough that they would code a replacement).
MacOS X is a proprietary OS. The kernel is worthless by itself, and doesn't allow any power that anybody really needs. If the MacOS X GUI doesn't have every feature that every GUI has ever had, in addition to every feature that ever GUI could theoretically have, just don't tell me that it is as customizable as GNOME. Give up. You're not making sense. Apple still has the source and will use it, because they know that they need it to enhance the product. That's the bottom line. If the source really wasn't needed, Apple wouldn't continue to use it.
Configure and/or add hardware? Am I missing something or is it just that all 4 distributions of Linux I've used (this year) force you to use the CLI at some point when using the system?!? I just remember fucking around so much in the command line (not by choice) when trying to get the PCMCIA ethernet card working on my laptop.
But, once everything was working, it was cool. Except it was fuckin' slow no matter which WM I used! Oh man, if this is the future of computing, I'm sticking with Windows for day-to-day use for a long time! Once you're done installing any disty of linux, you're left realizing you've had a nice learning experience and you now have a computer that would make a fine demo/museum piece, but get work done? Not without being forced to use really crude tools and then you wonder why the hell you have a $2000 PC or $3000 laptop!!!!
If you're pro-Linux like me you need to face facts or Linux is doomed: Today, Linux is not usable by your average "person-next-door". If someone doesn't make it usable and appealing to that person-next-door REAL DAMN QUICK, the ship's goin' down and I mean real quick. I've been using Linux off and on for about 7 years and it's still not usable for normal day-to-day tasks without making sacrifices -- and people tend to get cranky if you tell them to sacrifice features without good reason when using their valuable possessions.
- not part of, but the complete kernel of MacOS X is open source. The validness of the lincense has been discussed in great length and I haven't heard about any serious issues with the APSL 1.1
- since XFree has been ported to Darwin/MacOS X, you can actually choose whatever Window manager you want (some may need some porting too, but you do have the choice if you want)
- you can customize the appearance of MacOS X as much as you want, even without using another Window manager, have a look here.
- Since both the Dock and the Finder are simply applications, write a replacement you like better and presto, you've got it.
You may have other (more valid) gripes with OS X, but the above is mainly FUD imho (and not deserving a +5 score at all).This article is a bit amusing, but nothing more. A scenario dreamt up by some guy who was thinking "hey, what if." - I'm sure if you check everything he's ever written, there's probably a "what if we killed hitler" essay in there somewhere.
:) - Next, you've got the OS that "replaced" it, or "defeated" it or what have you...Windows. Why? Because it was very easy to use, but there was also a lot of depth, at least a lot more than with MacOS. Joe User had no problem just clicking on stuff, while the developers and geeks out there could really sink their teeth into it (at least much more so than with MacOS). Now, we've got this crazy new OS..."well honey, i think it's called Linux." It's easy to use, with GNOME or KDE, the end user really doesn't have to figure out why or how it works, they just know they can double click on an icon to get online. But here's the part that's really cool - it's REALLY in depth, and it's YOURS!!! Geeks and hackers and developers, and even just the curious can really get under the hood to see what's going on. And that's the best part! You see the trend here. MacOS took computers and made them easy to use, and slightly technical. Windows made them even easier, and even more technical. Linux is taking both of those concepts one step further. Which OS is going to dominate in years to come???
First off, MacOS is dying. Sorry guys, but that's the simple fact. I applaud the Mac user base for sticking with it. I used to be a mac guy myself, then a windows guy (shortly), and now a linux/bsd guy. But there are limits to how much one OS can take, and do. While we can sit and quibble about the specifics and the logistics of the OS, one can't deny that unless OS X is to operating systems what the original Voodoo was to graphics cards...there's not going to be much for Mac except the hardcore userbase, the graphics market, and...well...that's about it.
As for Micros~1 Winders. First of all, even a fast track to the supreme court and everything going against MS probably wouldn't see them broken up untill 2002 or possibly even later. And that's *WITH* everything going wrong for them. A lot can happen in that amount of time. OS X will be out, and most likely *not* on the intel platform. (Remember one of the things that really hurt apple was their refusal to let clones be manufactured.) - They could have done that long ago...hindsight is always 20/20.
Finally, your proposal of where linux is going is pretty off the wall. While most people don't like the command line (i'll certainly agree that joe user doesn't), Window managers such as GNOME and KDE can very easily replace that. Currently, if a user doesn't want to touch a command line using one of the WM's then they don't have to...in a year or two, i expect that Linux will be very easy to use...if you want it to be.
Here's my scenario - see if you can follow. MacOS is older than Windows - the reason people jumped ship (eventually at least) is because of the depth of the OS. Sure MacOS is better for joe user because it's simple. There's one mouse button...but there really isn't a hell of a lot of hacking that can be done aside from maybe resedit
I suppose the years to come will let us know.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
delete the macs' preferences folders. Then delete the windows registry. Reboot and see which machine has more working stuff. Guarentee you it won't be windows.
After years of marketing itself as an OS just fine for idiots, didn't we all internally say "ok, fine, you retards" and mentally write them off? After years of retreating into niche markets populated by arrogant graphic artists, et al. who had almost no real technical know-how, didn't we say "whatever!" internally and let them piss and moan on their own time?
And now, after their lame attempts to associate themselves Open Source software and an Ad campaign to "think different" in really only *ONE WAY*..... how on earth could any of us take the weak sci-fi future painted in the article above even moderately seriously.
Apple-- you had plenty of chances to get it right. Historically, we would have been much worse off if we were living in an Apple-dominated world than a Microsoft-dominated one. And oh, I could go on....
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
I concur. Any OS architecture like windows that has all configuration data for all applications bundled into a single file (a la windows registry) is an inherently weak architecture. It is even more so when the applications for that OS are coded in such a way that the non-existance of their configuration data will not allow the program to even run. While Mac OS 9 might not have the memory management or multi-tasking of windows, it seperates configuration data for each program into seperate files (just like unix). And when you add the fact that if a mac application cannot find its configuration file, not only will it still run, but it will regenerate that configuration file, the mac suddenly becomes far more robust than the windows machine. The windows registry is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever done in the history of OS design.
HAHAHAHA!
No, CT is not from the Netherlands. CT is from Holland, Michigan. It is this little town in the middle of no-where with the second worst school in America nearby (Hope College). In case you are wondering, the worst is Montgomery County Community College in Maryland.
Apple's hardware sales decline as people take advantage of cheap PC hardware, then increase again as the platform gains momentum and former Intel users upgrade to Apple hardware. In any case, Apple can do without it's hardware entirely, as it makes more money as an operating system vendor than it ever did as a hardware manufacturer. Apple hadn't been concerned about that anyway, because a certain company in Redmond had already proven there was gold in operating systems.
With it's BSD/mach core and Aqua interface, Mac OS X starts to make serious inroads as a server operating system. Companies requiring high-end hardware redundancy can now use the Mac OS on suitable Intel-based server hardware. With the availability of single-rack-unit servers, Mac OS X finds a place in major hosting farms, as Mac OS users outsourcing their hosting needs begin to demand it.
Some things never change.
Even if M$ is broken up, it will not go away. The MOST that we can hope to achieve from a breakup (and increasingly it looks that it will occur even without a breakup) is that the M$ choke-hold on the PC market will be broken. This will allow the consumer to choose an OS based on personal preferences -- whereas now practically speaking consumers have NO choice. The net result is that the percentage of users for this or that operating system will more accurately reflect user preference. To think that Apple could just walk into the PC market and totally take it over is just fantasy -- most likely Windows will continue to have the largest percentage of the market -- let's face it - most people really like M$ the best - God knows why!
RM
The IRQ comment? I mean, clearly the author doesn't even know what an interrupt request *is* if he thinks that all problems will magically go away with MacOS X - if anything it's merely USB that will help reduce indicence of problems.
Secondly, the comment about how Darwin will keep open-source fans happy. Yeah, I'm sure it will. For the happy ZDNet-reading Microsoft-loving company kissing pop-computer users who think they know how to hack by using rootshell's scripts.
Give me a break. A non-X GUI in this day and age is such an 80's paradigm. Even the Amiga SDK is taking advantage of the massive leaps Linux has made with regard to graphics (DRI and X 4.0, for example). I for one don't like bloaty environments like Gnome or KDE (preferring Blackbox), but why the heck would I get MacOS X for my x86 box if I am forever *stuck* with one?
I am firm believer in two things about the future of computing: 1. Linux is essential 2. Amiga will be in it
Linux has changed development of OS's worldwide. It has singlehandedly attacked Microsoft's dominance in such a short space of time the likes of which MacOS could not achieve in the extra 10 years or so it had.
Nothing suits everyone - hence why I like being able to pick and choose Blackbox as my Wm, I will like to able to develop for AmigaNG on linux/X, but I sure as hell do not believe that closed source *traditional* OS development has a hope in hell of ever gaining to even comparitive levels of Microsoft ever again, and that's the bottom line, 'cos Stone Cold says so.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Yeah...
Good thing none of the Linux advocates have a vested interest in the success of Linux.
Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
This is easier than you think. CMD-F to open Sherlock, which, although technically not the finder, is close enough for our purposes as it's part of MacOS. Click "more choices" twice. Select: Find items in the finder selection whose name contains llama; size is greater than 128k; date created is before 7 Jun 2000. Select-all on the results window and trash it.
Switch to the Finder.
Hit command-F.
Drag the folder icon of the directory to be searched into the contents area of the search dialog. Place a checkmark by it.
Select the "Custom" search option, then hit the "Edit..." button
Select "Filename", "Date Modified", and "Size", and fill in the accompanying fields as desired.
Hit the "OK" button.
Wait a second or two.
Do a "select all" in the results window, then hit "command-delete" to place all items in the trashcan.
Sit back and smugly giggle at the people who didn't think you could do that in under 30 seconds.
Have You ever installed RedHat? I don't remember exactly how the X-installation works, but I think it required choosing the size of the screen, possibly color depth. And when the system was installed and booted, I got X-login right up. Of course I do configure X after that, to get some things wokring just like I like them, but the defaults work and there is nothing wrong with them.
Hardware support? Put the manufacturer's "Device Driver Diskette for RedHat Linux 6.2" in the drive in installation if the device isn't supported by RH. I didn't read the manuals, so I don't know whether You'd need to invoce "setup" or "install" or whatever if You add hardware later on.
Probably it's all just that easy on SuSe/Caldera/Corel and other commercial distributions. Because the commercial distributions are targeting people who're not going to configure X. Free distros may be behind because they're not targeting novices but more experienced users.
This would be true if Office did not generate any significant revenues, but the fact of the matter is that Microsoft actually makes a good bit of money on Office. What will most likely happen is that IE will officially become part of Office. You'll have a "low end suite" that bundles IE, Word, and Outlook Express, and high end suites that bundle "everything". Since SQL Server and Exchange go both with the applications company, Microsoft will probably start building all of their applications to use either SQL Server (hopefully), or Exchange (somebody kill it please). SQL Server will probably wind up running on everything, first, as Office will later on. So, MS will have a totally integrated system at the applications company with a database server as the platform of domination, not the operating system. Within a decade, the Department of Justice will try to break up Microsoft Applications company because Microsoft will have kicked Oracle out of the database business. Here's a nifty scenario: Nothing in the ruling precludes another company from buying Microsoft Windows Company. What if IBM bought the Windows business. Now who would be the titan then?
This is my sig.
The IRQ and hardware conflict shit on the PC is a direct result of PC hardware being cheap. I'm not defending Windows by any means, but poor PC hardware performance is NOT always the fault of the OS. I really don't need to list all of the areas that PC manufacturers cut corners, but I'm sure that we could all make quite a list. That's why a quality PC machine (like a Compaq Proliant Server) costs several thousand dollars more than a "PC o' the Month" special. Regardless of the OS, platform, or application, you get what you pay for in terms of hardware performance.
This is really not as stupid as you might think. While I prefer Linux over MacOS, and even Windows for GUI reasons only, Apple has put out a very good operating system. Older versions were based to a degree on NeXT, which was based on BSD. The newist version is based on the Mach kernel and has a BSD layer on top, as you can see in the article(which I am sure you read). The easiest place for information is Apples Web Site, another useful site for information is this operating system comparison focusing on comparing Rhapsody (Mac OS X) to Windows NT. Their is also this post on Slashdot. Oh wait, information about Mac OS X is not susposed to be on Slashdot. And in response to your second statement, many of my friends will agree with me on this, if Mac OS X had a better interface we would love to have it on our PCs.
I'm a devout Intel follower, I can't help it. But this secenario gives me hope. Hope for a BSD operating system with a simple interface where I can still use a command shell, and run all my favorite programs (Diablo II for MacOS X, make it happen Blizzard! =). This sounds like a dream to me, Intel, BSD, Nice GUI, favorite programs all rolled into one. Breaking up Microsoft is a Win-Win situation (unless you're microsoft, then no one cares about you anyway).
--
cat a b > c in UNIX..
copy a + b c in DOS..
???? on Mac..
ChunkJoiner, by Fabrizio Oddone.
MAC is not a bad platform but in many way it
sucks. I've used it a few times and was not
very impressed. It is perhaps better than
winblows but then again anything is better
than winblows.
"I also think the other assertions are more the author's prejudicial opinion than any solid factual representation. We have several satellite offices where I work that have Macs and PCs -- the Mac people are *always* in need of some consultant to fix some INIT/CDEV snafu or some other MacOS lunacy. The PC machines have problems, but nothing that isn't simply solved or that can't wait for the semi-annual office tuneup visit."
I've worked, too, in a workplace with Mac and PCs. On the contrary Pcs users there were *often* in need, not of any consultant, but of WIZARDS, MAGICIANS, because their machines broke down. The reasons? Still unkown. System protection faults, maybe. Error code were always hexadecimal coordinates so long as to provoke headaches even to NASA. What should they do? Open up the chassis every time? No. Turn off the PC and then ON again. Sometimes worked, sometimes not. Reinstall the OS. Yes. 1, 10, 50 times in 2 weeks. Someone even thought about networking CD-ROM drives with Windows 98 permanently in it...
What are those INIT/CDEV snafus? What are those Mac OS lunacies? Who networked the computers? Do all the Macs have the same system installed? Is the conflict local, on a single machine? What kind of breakdowns? What is being connected to those Macs? Examples, please.
The fact is that I'll never believe that Macs (and Mac OS) have a weaker architecture than PCs (and Windows).
Greetings