Slashdot Mirror
Developer Tools For MacOS X
Vizer writes: "Apple is shipping CDs with the development tools for MacOS X to its developers. Not only that, but the tools will be downloadable in mid-October. Details are on the Apple Developer Connection site. This jives well with what we've been told in the past by Apple, about how MacOS X will eventually ship as two CDs, one of which is just the basic user installation and the other CD full of developer tools.
And yes, developing for MacOS X is very familiar to anyone who has done some BSD programming, except that the paths are all different and HFS+ volumes are case-insensitive. Having the terminal window with access to various unix utilities is great, and nearly all of my un-ported apps run in the compatability environment without complaint. No OS crashes, no problems other than finding out where Apple hid all the preferences and utilities.
No, I don't want to go back."
So I am sitting here at home reading slashdot on my home machine and also logged into my osx machine at work via SSH. While it is only a terminal window I can still fork with anything on the machine I want too. I am currently learning where everything lives. Now I use the MacOS, Linux, Solaris, and NetBSD everyday and I know that it took time to figure out where each of them put things. OSX is same yet it makes much more sense. Now why didn't anyone think to put code libraries, preferences and the such in the System library before now. Things the need to be executed at startup in the startupItems. Wow that was hard to figure out. Applications in the applications folder. Ahh. And by the way they don't have to be in there. I have my personal apps in a folder in my home directory. If I put them in the Apps folder then if someone else logs in a the console the don't see them.
If people have a problem with a feature or interface gizmo get off your ass and fix it. That is why apple released this as a BETA.
I think after everything is said and done people will still hate it because they are predisposed to hating anything Apple makes. Kind of like people hating what Jon katz writes because of the fact he wrote it. But that is another story.
/sbin contains things needed to mount fs's/fix them/networing... things that are required to boot to a shell.
/usr/bin contain common system utilities that are usefull but not required, they are usually there to support multi user functions
/usr/local/sbin contain host specific utilities and services respectfully.
:)
F /...
/bin contains things that are needed once the system is ready for a shell level.
these are meant to be small and tight so you can have a small root that never changes
/usr/sbin and
/usr/local/bin and
sure there are some deviations and some argument over the semantics but thats basically what its about. of course things like lunix have blurred this line even more. apparently we don't need any standards anymore.
---
Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
That is quite a lengthy pathname, but it is still only 128 characters. This CVS tree contains over 45000 files, so paths of this length are long enough to support a large document structure. I can't see how a 255-character path would be limiting in practice.
There is also a lot of good and well designed hardware being sold. This is because the market for PC's is HUGE. With multiple companies all competing with each other for a piece of the pie, it is inevitable that not all the products will be of the same quality.
I've worked as a PC technician off and on since the late 80's, so I think I know a thing or two about their hardware. You buy good quality stuff and you're not going to have problems, at least no more than you'll have with a Mac. I don't think I have to tell you that not all the Macs Apple made were of the best quality. Remember the performa line? Remember the powerbook 1400 series? Or the powerbook 5300's that could catch fire when you charged the battery? Apple has also made some very good quality products as well. PC products vary in quality too. Ever hear of PC-Chips? They make the most God awful cheap garbage motherboards ever to curse the world. Ever hear of Tyan or Asus? They make very high quality boards that I'd be proud to put in a system. This is how things usually go when consumers have a choice. The same holds true for other things such as TV's, stereos, shoes, automobiles, sheet rock, mayonaisse, etc etc.
So if you've been bitten by cheapy parts or systems in the past then I do feel sorry for you. But don't please don't jump to the conclusion that you got bit because it was a PC that did the biting.
Also Apple is going to have a harder time hitting that well defined target you speak of as time goes by.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
My feeling about this is that when builing a GUI app using some one elses application framework it's the design of the framework that's important, not the implementation language.
I had a NeXT for a few years, and the application builder was really good - way ahead of its time. There are very few comparable mainstream environments available today (and they didn't exist then) -Borland C++ Builder and Delphi: Delphi is Object Pascal, C++Builder uses the pascal GUI library and makes heavy use of the borland __closure extension. The Smalltalk environment would be another example. None of these use straight, portable(?) C++.
I don't think you can compare the NeXT/Apple application framework to QT, MFC, MOTIF etc (ie current C/C++ frameworks.) because of the dynamic / graphical nature of the NeXT/Apple GUI design environment
Besides, late binding (a significant feature of Objective C) can be good for GUIs.
"Why was he so stupid? When told that his mind could change his response was: How? Why?" - John Cage.
Not really. Apple is making no efforts at all to woo Open Source developers since they know that for most of them it's an all or nothing strategy. They're just trying to be nicer to their existing developers by giving them access to parts of the system they wouldn't previously have had.
Most of the people working on Darwin are Apple employees. If you really think that not being Open Source is a death knell, then you really don't understand how the market works or how common, non-techie users think at all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Time will tell if that money apple is charging for their OS will buy enough brain power to compete against windows. So far the open source developers have made a go with linux and BSD. My guess is that charging a few bucks for an OS is a loosing proposition when MS has a few billion to throw around. If SUN, netscape/aol, borland can't do it how do you think apple will?
Also remember that Bill G makes a couple of hundred dollars for every mac sold. Once people find out that by making improvements to darwin they are actually putting money in Bills pocket how much will they want to participate?
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Seems like OS X is opening up the door to a number of security problems. Even in the hands of an expert unix daemons can be a security risk simply by virtue of running; in the hands of regular users who doesnt want to, or cant, understand the importance...well...Uh, Oh! I work for someone who, in times past, put a webserver or two on a Mac because there were no processes to hack and no shell escapes to exploit. It is the beta, so I will wait and see, but I am still cringing...
Ive seen these type of posts on slashdot before. "If you like Free Software so much, why dont you quit your job?"
This type of commant always seems to get moded up also.
I find this disturbing since Free Software is not about giving away money, quiting jobs, "living in a dream world", or never making a living from writing software. This very forum runs on GPL'ed code!
Well that's not how the world works
And it will never work that way with that attitude.
--
1. PowerPlant is complicated? Really, go write a metric conversion program with just toolbox calls. Now go and do it in PP. Love that PowerPlant!! Or you could just move to maczoop
2.Who says you have to use Cocoa? Carbon is perfectly legit and that carbondater is sure a neat little tool.
3. Sure, poop on java. It's a valid option for lightweight or network savvy apps... and it helps aleivate that tough-to-port-to/from-winders blues.
2 1337 4 u!
For consistensy.
Say this is our directory:
Foo
bAR
Bar
and the user wants to open 'foo'. No problem, give them 'Foo'. Now he wants to open 'bar'. Now which one do you open? Do you pick the one matches the most ('Bar')? Do you pick the one that's sorted first ('bAR')? Do you not match either one since it's ambigous?
Now suppose we chose a behavior for 'bar' in this base. Now say I want to open 'bAR'. Now what - should we use the same algorithm as we did for 'bar' or just use 'bAR'?
So in the end you end up with a whole system to go through - if it's an exact match, do one thing, if it's not but there's only one case insensitive match use that, if there is more than one case insensitive map figure some what to chose it.
As opposed to case sensitivity -
If the file name matches a file exactly, access it. If not, don't.
It's also more consistant with creating filenames - if you save the file as "MyLameFile" shouldn't it be referred to as "MyLameFile"? Being case-sensitive is simple and straight forward and the user can know with absolute certainty what the result will be.
The answer is "Why not?"
The file names and stuff are made with ASCII characters. Why limit everyone to what one person thinks is best. In the future when every character is unicode are we going to limit everyone to the lowercase roman alphabet.
There is nothing that prevents someone from having all of their files in one case. If all of the files are in one case, then how can anyone complain?
And if you want to complain that it takes extra effort to type in the name Myfile.doc then why the hell did you take the extra effort to name it that in the first place. Besides, most Mac and Windows people are going to use a GUI anyhow and are just going to point and click at the file name. When you are just pointing and clicking then how does that make things any worse.
Turn on Graphite. That's the first thing I'm doing on my freshly installed system when the disk arrives.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Also keep in mind that Bill Gates makes money of off evey mac sold. Once this little tidbit becomes better known I doubt Apple will attract many linux or bsd developers.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Beta uses hotspot version 1.3.
I have seen statements from "reliable" sources that it will ship with the full JRE 1.3 "package".
You seem to be confused as to how case-insensitive files actually work.
On, say, Linux, you create a file called FOO. Then you create a file called foo in the same directory. No problem. When you want the first one, you refer to it as FOO, and the second one as foo.
Now on MacOS, you create a file called FOO. Then you try to create a file called foo in the same directory. BZZT! That file already exists. Do you want to replace it?
So you see, the situation you outline can never happen. FOO and foo are actually the same file.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
What's unfortunate is that you are too stupid to type 'vi Makefile' instead...
:)
Joking people!
Simon
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
I've never, EVER, encountered a neophyte who used filenames so descriptive. They name every letter "letter" and don't have the vaguest idea of what directory they put it in. Do you have some sort of new breed of superuser out there? (pun fully intended)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It is a bit disconcerting to see notorious processes such as portmap and inetd, but how many of us don't have a dedicated firewall on our internet-connected networks? But then, there's still the opportunity for internal attacks; not all LANs can be trusted, such as one in a school (and where do we often find lots of Apples?).
So yeah, the first item on everyone's list of comments for Apple should be security. But of course, even if Apple changes these things, there's still no excuse for having a properly structured security policy for your own computers. A lot of this has to do with the popular opinion of who is qualified to be a tech -- whoever seems to know more than you do. Until everyone learns to trust the expertise of professionals, and not allow any yahoo who can format a floppy act as a network admin, the networks will be a cracker's paradise.
As for MacOS being secure because there's "no process to hack and no shell escapes to exploit", well... heh. A while back I read about a trip John Norstad (of Disinfectant fame) took to eastern Europe. While there he visited a few hacker groups, many of them notorious for writing PC viruses. He learned that these groups had been financed by the Soviet Union explicitly to find ways to comprimise computers. He asked about the Macintosh and they said that they didn't have any because they were too expensive; if they could have afforded Macs, they would've written viruses for them. So Macs are secure not out of some inherent design, but because of market share. While the mechanisms may not be as obvious, it's folly to think that a remote comprimise of the MacOS is impossible.
In a way, the availability of the more obvious exploit mechanisms in MacOS X are good for security, since it forces people to form a real security plan instead of relying on the relative obscurity of the Mac.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Because it's not a limitation imposed by the OS writers.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
By this logic any software that comes from "mucking about with" GPL'ed code isn't all that great, right? I mean, it's just giving back what they took in the first place...
bAR and Bar would be the same files. You couldn't have both in the same directory anymore than "/dev/foo" and "/dev/foo" could point to two different files under case sensitive file systems.
Say what you want about X (a lot of people gripe about it) but I would sorely miss being able to throw the graphical output of my applications to different machines.
Obviously you haven't heard abot VNC which allows doing that on many OSes (including across OSes).
>>It defaults to running inetd, nfsiod, portmap, and a couple of other things.
>So?
Security comes to mind!
>>They have discarded way to many Unix conventions for my liking. They have come up with their own method of 'controlling' services.
>Good, it's better.
In what way is it better? How do you know it's better? Sounds like you haven't even used it.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
You've apparently never used a case-insensitive system, have you? Try creating 'bAR' and 'Bar' in the same directory. Try creating them in seperate directories and moving them to the same directory.
Case insensitivity creates ambiguity in file names. There is no functional reason why I should be able to create both 'MyReport.latex' and 'myreport.LaTeX'. Having both is a workflow problem in determining which is which. There can also be problems with accidentally creating new files when you meant to overwrite an existing one. A case-insensitive filesystem helps average users avoid getting themselves into such a mess.
The main reason to have a case-sensitive filesystem is to support the generation of randomly named temp files, such as 'GBVhX88r' and 'gbVHx88R'. The names carry no semantic meaning, but having a case-insensitive filesystem complicates the hashing functions generally used to create such temp files. The only real reason to support filenames like that is when for when knowing the semantic meaning of a filename is unimportant.
This is good for server systems, but the advantage in simplifying the creation of such files is outweighed by the possible confusion and ambiguity for common user-oriented tasks. This is why most consumer OSes, such as the Mac and Windows use case-insensitive file semantics. Most server OSes, where the user is not as important, are case-sensitive.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Everyone keeps saying that MacOS X is the OS for everyone else (i.e. not Unix users). Fine . . .
Those people WILL NEVER open a shell, go look for a config file and hack it with vi.
The people that will do that are the people that already know Unix. And remember the saying about Unix is that the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once. OS X would make us climb it again . . .
And I'm not just complaining becasue it's different. I truly believe that somethings work, and changing them does not have a positive benefit. There is a certain amount of knowledge about Unix and they way things work. If you are going to tout the fact that it's built on top of Unix, etc, etc. Then do it the Unix way. Moving configuration and startup files to different directories doesn't accomplish anything. They're still shell scripts and flat files - leave them be.
I was really rooting for OS X to be a great OS. Apple could still fix a lot of these things, but I doubt if they will.
One major problem is that the definition of upper and lower case is language and locale specific. It's a mess. It will only get worse with the adoption of Unicode. A case sensitive file system is much simpler and cleaner.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You misunderstand his point. The 5300s may have caught fire, but they never gave software errors or had IRQ conflicts. There's a big difference between making mechanically shoddy parts, which Apple has done on occasion (like most hardware companies) and making shoddy drivers, which they've rarely done.
By definition, Apple won't have a hard time hitting that well defined target: they design the target for themselves.
This is impossible in HFS+. It preserves case, but is case-insensitive, so if you try to create a file called "bAR" it will overwrite "Bar".
I was just at an Apple recruiting event yesterday, and they obviously had a demo of OS X. The presenter was also a recent graduate from my college (Carnegie Mellon). Of course, he knew that most of the people in the room were used to Linux and command line interfaces.
:)
To prove that OS X was not just a nifty a GUI, but an honest-to-god POSIX-compliant BSD-based distribution, he opened up a terminal window and proceeded to type in the following:
emacs foo.c
Then, in emacs:
#include
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
}
^X^C
Then back in the terminal:
make foo
./foo
I think when he did that, the amount of applause that filled the room was the most applause a terminal window has ever gotten
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Where do we get details on what it's like to develop GUI apps for Mac OS X? What're the tools like?
... (still using Linux as my server and web platform)
Details! I want details, before I go out and spend $400 on an ADC Select membership... I'm *REALLY* looking forward to the possible switch away from Win32 as my client OS to Mac OS X for everything
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
and it aint so bad. If you can get over the silly GUI and colors it's actaully not a bad OS. It shows it's UNIX roots off in path names, and still is easy to use like OS 7-9. Seems very stable, and installed first time no sweat in about 5 minutes. That damn Dock is a PITA though, should autohide like in windows. Funny how the MAC OS is becoming more 'Windows' like, and Windows is becoming more MAC like, but never the twain shall meet!
screw ordinary people - If we want computers to be useful and powerful in the hands to which they're most suited (those who take the time to learn), then we must and should cater to those who know. Case insensitivity hurts people who use case-sensitivity for their own benifit, their only recourse is to change their naming scheme and hurt their productivity indefinitely. Case Sensitivity is a form of tough love, it hurts people who don't understand, but their recourse is _good_ for them - learning the way useful filesystems work.
;) but Apple certainly could, and it's an insult to use case insensitive file systems because it smacks of "*I* will decide what your computer is good for, not you"
The computing solution for the average mac idiot is not pandering, but allowing non threatening methods to teach them what is _better_ about computers, what power they hold. Clearly I am not the sort who could do such teaching
Micah
bash has been removed from Mac OS X because it's GPL'd, and Apple can't be bothered to put up with RMS's bitching and moaning for something that's not critical to the system.
egcs is worth the trouble, bash is not. If bash were available under the BSD or a similarly rational license, then it would be in Mac OS X by default.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, because obviously VMS, Unix, MVS, AS400 etc. only came along in the Server Market after Linux had saved us all from having only MS software on Servers. Thankyou Linux!!
I still haven't managed to figure out what the differences are between: /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin
/usr/sbin, /usr/local/sbin
/usr because /usr might be on a different partition/disc
/bin,
/sbin,
/bin: stuff essential for system booting (can't be on
/usr/bin: normal binaries
/usr/local/bin: non-distribution binaries (aka non-RPM, non-DEB, etc etc)
/sbin: system binaries (not supposed to be on the average users path), needed for booting
/usr/sbin: system binaries (not supposed to be on the average users path)
/usr/local/sbin: system binaries, not installed via the package manager
--
Ian Peters
There is a Web site for Darwin on Intel H/W.
They say that they were successful with Darwin on Virtual PC on Mac.
But.. Is there any way to put it on Intel h/w?
It's different story.
So.. what's the easiest way to get bash installed and running? Since there aren't any dev tools available, does someone already have a compiled bash for MacOS X?
You can get dev tools by following the instructions here.
You can grab bash here .
Oh lovely, a BSD proponent. Viral as the GPL is, it does have one handy feature - that the code we develop for free cannot be legally turned into for-profit code without our knowledge or consent.
It's quite simple. If you're going to be writing for-free stuff yourself, you are freely welcome to all the GPL code I write. If you're writing for-profit stuff, I don't want to help you unless you want to pay me too! The copyright owner of the code has all rights to it, including licensing it again to different people. In the meantime, nobody's stopping the for-profit people making a workalike to whatever's been GPLed. For the end user, surely that's more choice?
The BSD licenses have a far more political motivation - they want to cancel out choice, by whoring themselves to whoever will take their code. That way, they gain a lot more influence because big for-profit people are happy to rely on them, and rely on their code. GPL at least lets you know who your friends are.
Does my bum look big in this?
So if they gave back exactly what they took, then how is this immoral, as the original post implied? Actually Apple gave back more.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Apple screwed IBM and Moto out in the CHRP plan, but so did Microsoft (Windows NT) and IBM themselves (OS/2-PPC) and the early cancellation of PowerPersonal.
The point of CHRP was never to expand MacOS's market share. It was to expand IBM/Motorola's market share versus Intel's. When Intel managed to scale their chips and business customers thumbed their noses at PowerPC, it was clear from the start that Apple teamed up with the wrong chip makers.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Hi. Check out IBM's website. You might actually begin to know what you are talking about. To be quite honest, now that OS X is out, even just a beta, to prove it's not a joke, I'm switching over. I am SICK SICK SICK of x86 Hardware that sucks, blows, and otherwise makes me pay sizable amounts of money for crap.
The G4 boxes (not the cubes) have come down in price. Just because they say "400 mhz" dosen't mean they suck. In fact, the G4's, at present speed, are very competetive on the modern market. Further, apple boxes cost more because they have more cool stuff in them. USB, Firewire, DVD RAM stuff is expensive, but apple makes them available for a reasonable price. Of course they overcharge for RAM, but hey no one is perfect.
You're just upset because you want something for your x86 box. Why? To avoid spending money? Fat chance of that working. To avoid losing linux maybe.. ok, I could see that being a concern. A false one, LinuxPPC is in great shape.
Apple can afford to bide a bit of time here, when everyone comes time to buy their next computer, they'll find for less than $300 more, they can get a far superior piece of hardware and monitor, with a terrific GeekMeetsTrendy OS. I don't see how they can go wrong NOT porting it.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
x86 is the standard? For what? Mom and Pop Desktops? You should know that that's just not the only market out there. Even more importantly, at some point, if Intel/AMD type chips are going to evolve, they are going to have to move beyond x86. It's not a brilliant architecture by any means, and fixing all its problems is going to break your "standard." Why can't Apple compete with that? They're doing pretty darn well for what they face: a massive network externality.
Then somebody's going to eat your lunch.
"Using the Cocoa interface will net you an OS X-native application, but I don't think you'll get anything more than if you used C++ and the Carbon APIs."
This has got to be the most pig-ignorant thing I've seen any of you Mac luddites post in the three years you've had to get your shit together and learn something.
Let me tell you something, sport: I was a mac developer like you. I knew the Mac toolbox *cold*, and I had memorized all the little tricks like rowBytes isn't really rowBytes in a color pixmap until you mask off the fucking high bit.
I knew how to beat up my desktop file to accept a new icon. I built my own main event loop, and reams of code to cut-and-paste for all kinds of repetitive crap, which I carried from project to project, never realizing how much of a pain in the ass it was.
I switched to NeXT machines in 1990, and within a month, I was more productive with NeXTSTEP than I had *ever* been on a mac. Within the year, I could do any given task on a NeXT system in about 1/3 the time that it would have taken on a Mac.
Look at Create, by Stone designs (Two developers, one year in the latest re-write, which made it 1/3 the code size of the OpenStep version); OmniWeb by Omni group (something like five developers, working in their SPARE TIME between consulting gigs), which puts Netscape and IE to SHAME, and Glyphix, (two developers, one full-timer who was still learning the tools, and one part-time mentor, written in under one man-year) and BE AFRAID.
Now, kindly pull your head out of your ass, learn five new keywords, and try to save your company from irrelevance. Flash is a cool product, but the simple fact is that three people with one year each of NeXTSTEP experience each could duplicate it in a month.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Apple is opening its source to allow full development capabilty to the legions of developers worldwide. By releasing its source code into the open source community, Apple is ensuring its place in the future of application development, and in the worldwide community of developers." - Steve Jobs, San Francisco, Mar 2000
One problem: At Apple, the Hardware sales finance the Operating Systems. Apple is primarily a hardware manufacturer, not an OS company. If they started selling OS X for Intel hardware, they'd die a slow and ugly death. Look at what happened to NeXT and Be after they stoped producing the hardware.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
OS X is suppose to be pronounced 'Oh Es Ten', but it sounds so much better when it is pronounced 'Ohhh Sex'.
Part of the issue is the desire to make obscure and abbreviated directory names such as "usr/local/src/m18-src/mozilla/extensions/transfor miix/source/examples/mozilla/Transformii x/locale/en-US/" readable. "usr" and "src" are not so bad, "local" for a neophyte doesn't convey a lot of information; "m18-src" might be more readable if it were spelt out "Milestone 18 Source." Likewise "en-US."
I realize that in this case I'm picking on source code paths, which are usually set by whoever originated the source code. However, if all distributions have the same types of directories, it becomes unclear what is for what.
The trend on the MS platforms (starting with Win95) has been to spell out the software developers' name in creating a subdirectory under the "Program Files" directory...
When you don't have a CLI as your primary file system access method, so you don't have to worry about repeatedly typing the same directory name over and over, short directory names start to look a lot less attractive...
Application configuration files and resources all get bundled into one place for each App.
/proc. A very odd directory, indeed. Almost as odd as /dev with devfs mounted on it.
You mean they do it properly rather than the brain dead traditional unix way of putting everything in the same directory just so I don't have to add something my PATH? I can see people might not like that.
And odd directories...very scary. Kinda like
And how many Linux or Solaris workstation users even have a 'root filesystem'?
There might have been some good historical reasons for all of those obscure directories, but they are largely irrelevant for an end-user system with a cheap big fast disk.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Whatever jargon-boy
Still doesn't change the meaning of my post - I stand by it
(and e1ven's history doesn't indicate trolling)
I'm not sure I want what you're smoking. It seems to be a bad trip.
What Makefile hell are you talking about? If you're talking about the directory structure, that's easily enough fixed in the Makefiles. Personally, I think the bundle system will improve many of the problem of uninstalling software that is downloaded and 'make config; make install''ed.
What filching of Open Source are you talking about? Everything they are using that was open-source is was either under the BSD license and is now licensed under another Open Source license, or it was GPL'ed and is still GPL'ed. Charging for GPL'ed stuff is not in violation, or else people like RedHat would've been in trouble a long time ago.
Your portion of reality doesn't really seem all that rational. It just seems to be a lot of unjustified accusations. Of course, that's assuming that this isn't just some lame troll. I wouldn't be surprised since this post started at (Score: 0).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I have Mac and PC hardware and I don't want to see a port of OS X to Intel. Whine all you want about "overpriced Mac hardware", it is a well defined target and allows Apple to do a nice job of software/hardware integration. I wouldn't wish PC hardware support on my worst enemy, there is just too much poorly designed and incompatible crap being sold.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yes, I do think that Apple can compete against MS without Open Source. Apple has been successfully competing against MS even back when most Open Source developers were getting their first hot wheel cars. Literally.
<p>
I hate idiots like this who have no sense of 5 or 10 years ago. What do people like this make of history? "Lincoln was....ummmm....some dude, right? He did something important?"
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
Mac OS is *not* an attempt to "catch the Open Source wave."
Darwin was published to make life easier for Mac developers. When you have drivers to write, it's very nice not to have to wait around for the vendor to pick and choose what parts of the source you get to see.
Apple never had any intention of trying to launch another Linux. They already paid for one linux port to mac, and they don't need another one.
If you don't like the way Apple uses open source, then so what? They don't need your approval to give it away, and I don't need your approval to use it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Read my lips: GIMP on Mac = death of Photoshop...
realkiwi
gnustep.
Its open source to.
*/sbin: statically linked binaries (for when your system is fscked or you have no libraries)
--
Peter
Reference counting is inferior to any proper garbage collection system. The most important shortcoming of reference counting is that it cannot handle circular structures (a pair of references pointing at each other will not be freed, even if they become inaccessible by any other reference.) In primitive languages like C which severely limit the concept of "reference" this problem might be tolerable or never come up.
The second problem with reference counting is that it is expensive in computing effort. The cost of maintaining the reference counts is significant, and cannot be postponed until a convenient time.
True garbage collection can be very efficient, even if it is difficult to implement correctly. There's really no reason, other than implementors' laziness, to settle on reference counting. In my mind, people who like reference counting resemble the people who think malloc/free are guaranteed to be efficient, probably because the names are so short. Having an application malloc/free for weeks or years will create a memory arena so fragmented that malloc will get slower, and slower, and slower, but that doesn't matter, because your system is unlikely to actually run for that long without crashing, right?
No Shithead wrong post That's Stileproject.com News For Retards. Shit for Stile? Or was it Porn For Stile. Porn that matters. OS X & Apple delays.... Don't jinx it man!!!! OS X will be very nice. I am most enjoying PB way to go Developers, and Steve. Does he do anything else? Other then figurehead?
The problem is that a PC operating system has to support all of the hardware, both good and bad, plus there are too many variations in the hardware. This caused many problems for IBM when they moved from supporting OS/2 only on genuine IBM PC/AT and PS/2 computers to supporting OS/2 on everything that claimed to be PC compatible. Apple could produce a version of OS X that was only guaranteed to run on a specific, tightly specified Intel system, but that just eliminated the vast majority of existing Intel systems. Getting the hardware vendors to write the drivers isn't a solution. Even Microsoft has problems getting hardware vendor support for Windows NT and Windows 2000.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1. PowerPlant is complicated in comparison to Objective C - Cocoa. Granted this is somewhat subjective. Also, most people that have used GUI Frameworks will find PowerPlant more than a bit foreign. PowerPlant's use of mix and match classes is quite a bit different than coding in GTK+ or Motif. Not worse, just different and that difference is a bit of a hurdle. I agree that the using the Mac's old native toolbox feels like going back to assembler.
2. I am looking forward to using Cocoa. PowerPlant and Carbon are another option, but at this point going this way is more "beta" than going with Cocoa, which is well established.
3. I agree that Java is an option for lightweight apps. But the key word is _option_. There is still a speed issue with larger apps. Apple still makes use of Object C internally for a reason.
On a more person note, having used PowerPlant and native toolkit and Motif and GTK, I think it is going to be fun to mess around with Objective C and the old Next APIs (Cocoa).
> There is nothing that prevents someone from
> having all of their files in one case. If all of
> the files are in one case, then how can anyone
> complain?
It's not just the files that I create, though, is it? I don't create every file and program on my system. I get files from elsewhere - and there are a zillion programs that come with a Linux distribution that have mixed-case names for no good reason.
And the GUI argument doesn't make sense, either - if you wind up with a directory of stupidly-named files using case to differentiate them, it's going to take awhile even in a GUI to figure out what's what. There's no reason to have that feature other than to be obtuse, as far as I can figure out. Noone in this conversation has come up with an answer that's sufficient to put this kind of burden on the user. No wonder people hate the command line!
And if, as you say, we're all moving to the lowercase roman alphabet anyway in the future due to unicode, we might as well start altering the file system now, huh? That way we'll be unicode-ready that much sooner.
Got it Tuesday... Huge box skinny CD sleeve. Installation took 30 Minutes on an iMac-DV running OS-9.04. The iMac DV has 128 M of RAM the documentation says that is a minnimum. Our local Macaddict hated it at first... a few minutes later I hear sqeuals of delight over the GUI bells an whistles. 30 minutes after installation it crashed and locked up so hard we had to power cycle the iMac. Then it wouldn't boot OS-X only 9. Had to re-install. Yeah I know it is Beta... BUT it is NOT "A better Unix than Unix". It would not run even simple things like AppleWorks in "Classic" mode. I am underwhelmed by its stability and speed. The GUI is pretty... but those little buttons look more like zits. I get an urge to pop em. Would be cool if colored goo ran down the screen when one "popped" one (clicked on it). -HP-...etc...
Hey... I used to have a IIfx... with a $600 video card, and 8MB RAM...
I miss Macs. I'm *really* thinking about getting a G4 Cube if it turns out that Photoshop rocks on it. Anyone know anything about the status of Photoshop and other Adobe graphics apps?
--
IRC, Mac OS X can compile Java natively(it boasts a full native Java API), so the speed hit you were referring to wouldn't really be an issue.
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
From an engineer at Macromedia:
:-)
Unless you're Adobe or Intuit, Apple doesn't want to hear from you.
Well, Macromedia too, but that's beside the point.
At this year's WWDC, I spoke up in the developer feedback forum regarding the developer support. Documentation suffers a bit compared to other commercial platforms (yes, Windows). It's not exactly easy to get good basic docs from Apple if you're a first time developer. "Toolbox Essentials" and all do fine, but they still aren't anything like "Programming Windows", etc. on the Dark Side.
I do know that Apple's developer fees do get put to good use. The tools and support you get are top notch. OS betas and pre-release versions are available and shipped monthly. You can't ask for much more. As far as the price is concerned, well, those "steep hardware discounts" and all were during darker times at Apple. If you think about what the company makes money on, it doesn't make sense to give away your two core sources of income. If you could get hardware discounts by paying a $100/year developer fee, you'd suddenly have a flood of developers that thought C was just the third letter of the alphabet.
Don't get discouraged by Apple's developer program. The costs are on par with Microsoft's (only MS has a bit more software to offer for the Universal subscriber), the documentation is growing daily on their site (which is free at developer.apple.com) and you can provide good, solid feedback through their ADC-only e-mail lists. The WWDC is also a good place to provide feedback.
--
Greg Norz
Software Engineer - Enabling Technologies
Macromedia
>Say this is our directory:
>Foo
>bAR
>Bar
I can't figure out if you're joking or not. The point is, in a case insensitive system like the traditional Mac system, you can't have two different 'bar's in one directory. No matter how you capitalize them, there can only be one.
And so no problem figuring out which 'bar' to access... Use the only one there.
can anbody present an example of legitimate use of two files in the same directory named identically save for case?
.C, for C source it is .c so someone could reasonably have a foo.C and foo.c in the same directory.
/etc/rc.d, I will change the first letter to lowercase, this is a somewhat common technique. Although this isn't an example of two files identical save for case, it is an example of where case sensitivity is desired.
One of the naming conventions for a C++ source file is
When I want to turn something off in
Well, Since OS X includes Cocoa, which is a fully OpenStep compliant development environment, then I can say with certainty, it rules.
OpenStep is a beatufiul, object oriented and well designed environment to work with! Better yet, you get to use Objective-C++, which makes development of OO programs much faster and cleaner because the language is so much nicer than straight C++ (imnsho, anyways, C++ is a turd compared to ObjC).
All the data structures you need to make a program are already made for you, and the GUI classes are intuitive and easy.
So yes, developing under Cocoa will be easy. Carbon apps are slightly harder from what I hear, but I haven't worked with them. However, it's much easier than the dark ages of the older OS 7-8 approach, which was an amazing pain.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Well, probably the only advantage I can think of is in sorting, caps come before small case, so you can sort your files based on case. This can be very handy when distributing files, you make important files that need to be looked at first in caps so they will be listed first when the user looks at the files.
I honestly do not think that anybody actually makes use of the case-sensitivity to create same named files. I don't see any use for that.
Q.
I didnt say anyone was moral or immoral. I am saying Apple can still make money off GPLing software. However, I dont understand the analogies of giving away food or starving. Apple sells MacOS with evey machine, right? Of course if it were GPL it probably would be a better Mac OS.
Of course I am not an immoral person because I haven't given all my food away to the homeless and starved in their place!
Im simply saying the analogy dosent apply here. In your situation some must starve. What is so absurd about demanding the best quality software. Apple wouldnt just roll over and die.
/usr/local/bin: non-distribution binaries (aka non-RPM, non-DEB, etc etc)
/usr/local/sbin: system binaries, not installed via the package manager
/*bin and /usr/*bin and ports are installed in /usr/local/*bin (or whatever your ${PREFIX} is set to.)
Nope, MOSX is BSD-based, so system-related stuff is installed in
Status in regards to what? Photoshop 5.5 is great and absolutely screams on a G4 (towers at least, haven't used a cube yet) and what I've seen of v.6 looks pretty good but not a major upgrade. Illustrator 9 is very good as well but also not a major change from v.s 7 and 8. Pagemaker and InDesign still lag woefully behind QuarkXpress in functionality while being miles ahead in stability (you really don't want to get me started on how much it sucks to support a bunch of Quark users). ATM is a pain to install on OS9 machines (needs an update to not crash OS9, but requires a restart after install), but still better than Suitcase or Juggler. Hopefully OSX will have even better font support than OS9's improved font system and we won't need 3rd party apps. As for OSX support from Adobe, they are tied so tightly to Apple that they will definately be developing native versions.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
Both of your statements are untrue, one more than the other. Apple is trying to increase open source developer participation; I saw several posts on the Darwin-Developers list where Darwin leaders asked how they could interest more OSS developers to the project. One of their thoughts was donating hardware to Sourceforge (but of course we know that Sourceforge is a VA product and therefore probably runs on all VA servers :)). They _want_ to get more open source developers; they may not be sure how.
:)
Second, most of the people working on Mac OS X are Apple employees. As a result, a lot of Darwin code, coming from Mac OS X, is worked on by Apple employees. However, the Darwin team itself at Apple isn't that big, and the dev lists show healthy participation and involvement in helping Darwin become a viable OS in its own right.
Not criticizing your final point; just correcting a few things
seriously... check out th back of like Macworld magazine they have a thing you can replace the g4 tower handles with, that will attach to a rack :)
---
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
For around 4 years I was a system administrator for a network of about 12 Mac servers and 45 Mac workstations, in a demanding, deadline-driven publishing environment. This was in the System 6.5 - 8.0 days... I was a Mac zealot, but after years of dealing with crashes and instability I gave up on them. The Power Mac 7100's were the worst machines I ever had to cope with. They froze up with System Error type 11's day in and day out.
If OS X rocks, I will buy another Mac. It's a wait-and-see game for me... I suspect that's the case for a lot of people.
--
Point is, saying a company is morally wrong for trying to make a buck off software is... well... wrong.
Well, i am not saying anyone is moral or not, so I'll stay away from that. But what does Free software have to do with making or not making a buck?
(macs are really expensive.)
So are Porshes..
BETA
Err, unlike the GNU compiler which no one has been updating in the objc area, the Apple C Compiler uses Objective C++. C++ objects and syntax and items augment the static typing facilities of objective C in this situation. So, therefore, porting all C++ apps will be easy. Isn't the Carbon API C++? I thought only Cocoa was the the Java and Objective-C++ (two excellent languages btw) API set. And sure, those langauges are more flexible than the less dynamic C++. C'est la C++.
However, I _strongly_ encourage anyone open minded to look at Objective C. Just because it is old (and it's not THAT old!) dosen't mean it dosen't rule. Objective C is a really powerful and usefull language, based off of Smalltalk, which is famous for good reason.
One of the reasons Objective-C++ was discarded way back when was that it required garbage collection and the method calling is a tad slower (not much, mind you, and you can eliminate that delay with a line or two more of code). These days, it's not really true anymore. We've come a long way since the days of NeXT and the slow garbage collection and dynamic dispatch.
C++ merely dominates because MS pushes it. I'm not surprised, C++ seems like a Microsofty language to me, quite frankly, with it's not quite object oriented view.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
HFS+ is Unicode based and the locale to utilize is specified when you ask the OS to sort.
You put words in my mouth, sir.
It doesn't look like it. He was mainly going off about your statement that you cannot morally approve of Apple, which you did make.
How do you reconcile your previous statement of "Apple is not a company I can morally approve of" with your current statements "I wholly support it for others", "I have nothing against Apple", and "I appreciete what apple has done"? I may be an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy that can barely grasp the the modern notions of morality, but I am completely bewildered by what you mean by the term. If you do not morally approve of Apple, how can you have nothing against them? Isn't moral disapproval *something* against them?
But I choose not to run their software, as I would rather be free.
I must further ask, if you like your friends why have you recommened slavery, subjugation and domination for them? Don't you want them to be free as well?
In case the above sarcasm doesn't make sense, let me put it another way. If I step into a small box and shut the lid, I have certainly lost some freedom. In terms of standing up and stretching, let alone walking to the refrigerator, I am most unfree. But I am still a free man, because I can get out of the box anytime I want to. Every choice we make limits our freedom in a very real sense. Likewise, with Apple software the user can choose not to use it at any time. But full moral and political liberty (free speech) still belongs to the user.
Your friends will be just as free as you in the moral sense whether the use Apple software or not.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes. It does.
Also, it has an objective C++ runtime environment going by default as well. I think these are encapsualted in the Cocoa component. I could be wrong though.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
> comparison and progressively getting smaller.
On the contrary! Apple is about to outgrow Dell. Bear in mind that's Apple's CFO predicting that, but if you think people aren't going to take notice of their new OS along with their new hardware, then you're blind (or at least color-blind). :)
Apple is also leading the way in wireless networking. They're a long way from a "tiny market."
"If you like Free Software so much, why dont you quit your job?"
I never told the poster to quit his job. I've seen your type of posts on slashdot before. You types just can't grasp the notion of illustrating the absurd by being absurd.
Of course I am not an immoral person because I haven't given all my food away to the homeless and starved in their place! But this is the metaphorical equivalent of what the previous poster wanted Apple to do. He called them immoral because they haven't given away 100% of their software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
from the command-line. Since most MacOS apps have some AppleScript controls already, this
means that it should be possible to do most everything (from cleaning up the Finder window to
starting a particular MP3 to having IE open up the latest
Reportedly, the reverse (BSD interface via AppleScript) will make the final release.
To be fair, you really have to take all software: free and otherwise, and treat it with an equal hand. This includes comparisons between "good" and "not good" commercial software, as well as the occasional "good"/"not good" free software debacle (usually resulting when someone strays only slightly from GPL or other licenses).
If I was totally narrow-minded, I would have missed out on Windows 2000, which I think is one of the most robust platforms for hardware ever. I would have also missed out on Linux. Point is, saying a company is morally wrong for trying to make a buck off software is... well... wrong.
Particularly when some of us are or will be making our livelihoods on software sales (coming out of college soon, hardware simply isn't where it's at).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
what a terribly small world you must live in when your morality depends on giving away 100% of your property.
actually, some of us believe that something that can be duplicated for no cost can not be considered a possession.
... be decried evil because I didn't give him my refrigerator, ...
if i give someone my refridgerator, i no longer have a refridgerator. If i give someone my software, i still have my software. the two cases are quite different.
the FSF does not take any rights away from me. They use the present system of copyright to ensure that freedoms will be preserved (in a world that frequently likes to deny freedoms). Notice they always use the word copyleft to distinguish their use from the regular use of the existing legal structure.
Some people say that by clearly defining the argument, you have half-way won it already. Sometimes an argument may be clearly defined, but some people choose to ignore the definition and argue it on incorrect premises. I'd suggest you go back and carefully read the opinions of others in this topic. Perhaps you won't listen to Richard Stallman's arguments, but how about others like Proudhon, Mill, Emma Goldman, and numerous others?
If, after becoming familiar with what your opponent says, you'd like to come back and talk, I would be happy to discuss things further :)
-Doviende
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
How about we all chip in and get one super-duper deluxe membership and share it amongst all of us?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What's the problem with having
/sbin
/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin
/usr/sbin, /usr/local/sbin
/Applications
/System
/Preferences
as opposed to
/bin
/boot &
/etc
is it just that it's different that makes it wrong? Mac's aren't and won't be targetted at unix jockey's, they're computers for the rest of "us".
I still haven't managed to figure out what the differences are between:
/bin,
/sbin,
Apple's just trying to make sure that their users never have to deal with stuff like that.
There is a myth that it is faster, but it is not: it would be if Unix used a sensible string format, but nul-terminated strings have to go a byte at a time anyways.
Just wanted to comment on this one part of your post (and don't take this as a flame)-- it's not a myth, case sensetive searches are faster than searches that ignore case. The simple reason is that in a search that ignores case, BOTH values must be converted to uppercase or lowercase before being compared using a REP CMPSB assembler statement. However, for searches that are case sensetive, you don't need to process uppercasing/lowercasing the values to be compared, you can just execute the comparison immediatly.
Also consider the implications of Unicode or multibyte character sets, and the fact that uppercasing or lowercasing a string isn't as simple as it used to be in 8-bit ASCII-days.
It may not be a huge performance hit, but it's definately slower at some point.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Hey and windoze users are much better?!? I did phone tech support for Win and most of them wouldn't know a security hole from a hole in their heads. Some of the people I talked to were very bright, just not computer savvy. Others were complete morons who needed help - SERIOUS help (the kind that asks about the footpedal). Very rarely would I talk to someone who knew what they were doing and had overlooked something. Mac users are the same - some are extremely computer savvy (and probably grew up using macs) while others shouldn't be trusted with anything other than a mouse and photoshop. Then you have bastards like me who have a PC, Mac, and Linux machines happily coexisting because of their love/hate relationship with all OSes.
> Flash is a cool product, but the simple fact is that
> three people with one year each of NeXTSTEP
> experience each could duplicate it in a month.
The point that the guy was trying to make is that if you develop for Windows and Macintosh, Cocoa is almost useless to you. It doesn't matter if you were able to do 10 times more work in the same time if you have to go and redo all that work for the Windows version. Flash running on Mac OS X using Cocoa is not as profitable just yet as Flash running on Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000, Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, even if you build it in 1/10th the time. There are only 100,000 end users right now (of Mac OS X Public Beta) who can run your Cocoa software, and almost every one of those will take Flash over Create because that's what they've already learned to use and they don't give a shit if you coded it in DNA.
Cocoa is great, and yes, one day the whole world will probably work this way, but think of all the non-Cocoa man-years of code that's out there for Mac OS X to run, and all the users anxiously waiting for that code so that they can keep their current tools, workflows, and skill sets. That's the priority right now.
Personally, I can't wait to see the first pure-Cocoa, one-man, must-have shareware title, though. It is amazing what a few cats can get together and do with these API's. It's not right for everybody, yet, though.
How do you define small? How do you define big? What constitutes an appropriate size for a user base?
With the introduction of the PowerPC, in one year, Apple became the largest vendor of RISC machines on the planet.
With the introduction of OS X, Apple will become the largest vendor of Unix machines. Apple will ship more copies of OS X in the next twelve months than have shipped copies of Linux since day dot.
If its sheer numbers you want, their user base is some twenty-five million machines that are manufactured durably, reliably and usably.
Unlike a server farm where a lucky few (now there's a REAL niche for you,There ONLY seven or eight million sites running Unix & Linux) who sit over some impressive technology, each of those machines is attended to by a single person trying to do something else for a living.
If you want something really dreadful to ponder. The number of Web Servers on the planet will more than double in the coming year. All running on Macs.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Just finally managed to get OSX PB installed (turns out the installer doesn't like processor upgrades yet... go figure; worked just fine in DP4). On the whole, I love this thing. The best things...
/usr, and tmp aren't too bad, but after two years in Linux I still haven't figured out what /etc stands for).
/mnt directory, Linux-like. There's actually a very good reason for this one. Currently, drives are mounted at the root level. Thr major directories are mounted there too. Now, if the user has named a drive such that the name conflicts with one of those directories, the system gets confused and it seems as though neither is shown (according to reports I've already seen out there). This is a particular problem since "Applications" is a common name for a second hard drive or partition (and suddenly, the apps stop working).
1) Aqua. I didn't like it at first, but it grows on a person. The Graphite variant was a welcome addition (distracting the eye during graphics work is a legitimate concern), though it would be a good idea to make the three window widgets of varying brightness in this mode (they actually are in standard Aqua already, but the colors are carefully chosen so you don't notice the difference unless you can't see the color). Could be more configurable though.
2) The Dock. Again, I hated this at first, and I still have my reservations, but it's growing on me. I do wish there were an option to make it vertical and glue it to the right edge of the screen, but there are already Dock replacements that can do that.
3) Directory names that make sense. Ditto for the new directory structure. Like Unix, but without the just plain wierdness of some of the names (/bin,
4) Not only the command-line, but the fact that the Terminal is only an option. I use it, but most users never need it, and by including it standard you would cause some developers to create OSX-specific apps that require it (this is still done on Win32, despite M$'s attempts to try and hide it). I'll get blasted for this one, I know, but command-lines aren't the Mac way of life, and to ever require an average user to work with one would be disastrous. But at the same time, totally denying anyone access to it would be bad for the Unix subsystem. This is a good compromise: it's there, but only if you want it to be. (NOTE: it's still standard in the betas, which makes sense, but if I remember right is being relegatd to an option in the final release).
5) The System Preferences app (analogous to the old Control Panel) is very nice; the layouts are much better than their old OS9 counterparts. A few things still need to make it in (like the monitor calibration assistant, the ability to configure multiple network interfaces, and more screensavers) but then again, this is beta, so it's expected that a few things will be missing.
6) Two-button mouse support, native. Don't believe me? Try using a multibutton mouse in any Cocoa app. Doesn't work in Carbon or Classic yet, though (see the next list).
7) Application Services. Too bad there aren't more of them yet (though I'm sure they will be), but if NeXTStep and even OSX Server are any indication, this has the potential for some seriously cool stuff.
8) QuickTime previewing for media files in Column view (or, for that matter, Column view itself). I hope this will be extensible to other types of files where appropriate.
9) What list like this wouldn't be complete without mention of the multitasking and memory management? I do worry that programmers will use this as a safety net and not debug their programs properly, as has happened at least to some degree on every OS I've ever seen that has these features (the MacOS system may crash more often, but in my experience apps crash less frequently there than in any other OS I've worked with... except those that were direct MacOS ports, or that have ports to MacOS. And yes, studies have been run confirming this). However, these features are still important
X) Finally, gotta love the X. Though I do wish you'd stop with the "ten" stuff like this was the same MacOS we've been using for sixteen years. It isn't, so just make a clean break and pronounce it like a letter of the alphabet; give the name real differentiation. Besides which, it sounds much cooler. A minor gripe, perhaps, but one which should be considered at least for marketing purposes. Or is there a trademark out there that prevents the use of the x pronunciation? And yes, I apologize for the cheesiness in using X as a list number, though it does make the columns line up more nicely.
There's some room for improvement, though (good thing this is a beta, so there's still lots of time to improve)...
1) More security. At the absolute least, use password shadowing (is there any legitimate excuse not to do this anymore?) Preferably also better GUI control of daemons/"services" and processes, though this isn't as big a deal (I'll write the frontend myself if I have to).
2) Hardware compatibility. Nuff said. Particularly in the areas of SCSI and serial support; keep in mind that the G3Beige still had these ports, and it's supposed to be supported. At least support all its standard equipment.
3) Fix the themeing. Or take it out. I don't care which myself; if they leave it in, great, if they take it out then someone else will write software to do it (knock knock... Mr. Landweber? Hello?). But the current half-done implementation doesn't cut it (the NextStep theme hack, for example, only works for some windows).
4) Drive icons on the Desktop. Where they belong (on Macs anyway).
5) Internally, mount drives in a
6) Fix Carbon to allow it the same access to GUI functions as Cocoa (or at least similar access). Top priorities: get them on the same wavelength Appearance-wise, get two-button mouse working at least in Carbon (if not Classic also), and no resizing over the Dock (unless autohide is turned on). Try to do this for the other OS functions if feasible, but the interface at least is imperative.
7) Finish QuickTime 5.0. Again, nuff said.
8) For crying out loud, don't give the default user root acces! Let them create an Administrator password in the install, then have them create a separate user account for themselves (again, all still in the installer). And if they try to login as root, let them do it, but warn them of the dangers.
9) Drop shadows on the windows are really disorienting. Give the user the option to turn 'em off (or at least shrink the shadow), or better still only put them on the active window (where they do make some sense). Ditto for the fading windows and genie minimization (for the record I'd turn off the genie effect, shrink the window dropshadow and put it on the active window only, and leave the fading menu as is).
X) Stop requiring reboots for things like network config changes. This is Mach, and thanks to Mach's architecture this shouldn't be necessary. Even hardware drivers can load at runtime. Make it so the OS never needs to reboot (except when the machine itself must be powered down and a few other extraordinary circumstances, lke upgrading the Mach kernel itself) and you'll have a massive selling point, because none of the major desktop operating systems out there today can make that claim.
----------
Gee, and here I thought standards were defined by groups like the International standards organization...
I think they should have bought Be. It would have had a more consistent interface for Mac users, the stability and speed, and a command line. I have been using OSX for all of one day now. It's OK. Apple needed to do something. Maybe they'll release OS9 under the GPL now. Now that would be cool.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure. Mark Twain
I'm going to have to play the math geek and suggest that this would not only double the number of possible filenames, it would raise it two to the n times.
I've been doing too much math homework tonight...sorry.
--
Mac OS X--Unix without the assholes^Whassles.
We got a copy of the public beta today and installed it. There's an installation option to choose between HFS+ and a "unix filesystem". (I believe it is UFS.) We tested it, and it is properly case-sensitive. So, for those who care to install MacOS X with a sane filesystem, the option is there.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
And ranting on, does case-sensitivity make sense in programming languages? Pity that Java followed C in this.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I am sorry that you got moderated down.
Perhaps a more precise way to phrase your question would be: can anbody present an example of legitimate use of two files in the same directory named identically save for case? I indeed would be extremely interested in such an example, and have never seen one in my life.
There is perhaps nothing more frustrating in using computers than typing "vi makefile" and being presented with a screenfile of tildes instead of the contents of "Makefile". It is unfortunate that the computer is not smart enough to understand what I meant.
Being a VMS user, I like file names which are in all-caps, with one dot, and a version number. The all-caps look makes it look dry and technical (which I much prefer over Unix's cutesy, friendly use of lower case and mixed case)
Windows NT's filesystem with preservation is perhaps the best compromise for most users (and Windows 98's almost-but-not-quite case preservation is not).
Unfortunately, due to the pervasiveness of Unix (e.g. for web servers), most computer users, even extreme newbies, have been conditioned to believe that everything should be case sensitive. There is a myth that it is faster, but it is not: it would be if Unix used a sensible string format, but nul-terminated strings have to go a byte at a time anyways.
They announced that it will ship in the beginning of next year, and that the beta would be late summer this year. So far they have hit the beta release date (it was LATE summer!) but they haven't had a chance to miss the final release date yet. I give them an odds on chance of hitting it, but we will see.
Gavin Fischer
Just in case there are a few of you out there who are not officially registered apple developers, or who are just to impatient to wait until you can download the developer tools (I, oddly enough, fall into both catagories)Here is a good, albeit roundabout, way to get the developers tools back, from macaddict's website: 1) Sign up for apples darwin project, and download the binary for 1.0 THis can be done from the darwin website. Off hand, I don't remeber the URL 2)Don't click on the disk image. DO NOT. Thatw ould be bad. 3)launch the Carbonized Disk Copy from the Utilities folder in the Applications folder, then drag Darwin.smi onto its window. This should mount a volume named Darwin. 4)Inside Darwin, look in the Darwin 1.0 Installer folder. You should find a folder named Configurations. Inside that folder you should find a disk image named Darwin 1.0.img. Drag that image to the System Disk application to mount a volume named Darwin 1.0. 5)Grab this script 6) Get teh terminal, su to root, and run the script. Ignore the ranlib errors. 7) Et voila. You now have the developer tools, and a slighty more unstable system. ^_^ All this is available from the macaddict site mentioned above.
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One of us needs to stick ones' head in a bucket of ice water.
- Hobbes
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
1.When used as to name the language and not as an adjective, "Latin" should be capitalized.
2. The analogy between a 2000 year old natural language and a 15 year old computer language doesn't make any kind of sense.
3. The real problem with Objective-C is not that it isn't C++ but that like C++ it is an extension of C and is therefore not typesafe and cannot be garbage collected (except "conservatively": conservative GC being a hack which gets around the aliasing problem "statistically").
4. It is not necessary to post responses claiming that C's deficiencies are "necessary" for "efficiency". This is not true.
sr
When Windows 95 just came out, I heard about it having a 255-char limit on filenames. My friend in high school (that's where I was at the time, believe it or not) made a comment, which sounded something along the lines of the following. MacOS already provides 32 chars for a filename, and 255 seems like overkill. Is this a pissing contest?
Well, it turns out that the 255-char limit is for the full path of the file, including the drive letter, colon, backslash, path, and the filename. In MacOS (and probably every other decent operating system/file system) you can create a virtually unlimited tree of directories. In Windows, you can't. You're limited by 255 characters.
And one would think that since they were fudging the file system in NT5 (aka W2K) anyway, they might as well fix that limit. Nope. It's still there. I tested it myself. And 255 characters really isn't that much. I got an error on the fifth node of the tree, with slightly longer than average directory names.
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Macworld Magazine has said that LinuxPPC is a faster server than OS X Server. That is not OS X beta, though I imagine that it's still true, based on what I've read. Microkernel vs. native kernel, basically, plus the GUI is always optional with Linux. (He says as he types this in Gnome and Netscape...)
We may not have the pretty interfaces, and definitely don't have Steve Jobs, but so far, we seem to have one thing they don't: speed.
Cheers,
Jason Haas, LinuxPPC Inc.
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
With Unicode the mapping of upper to lowercase can be extremely complex, and potentially two file systems or programs would use different algorithims, resulting in very difficult to understand errors and potential security problems.
And there is nothing "user friendly" about case insensitivity. The average user picks a file by clicking on them!
Here's another way to look at things. If you run BSD, but want a better GUI, then you could theoretically buy a Mac and run OSX. All your apps will work, and you'll have the benefits of Apple's much-praised UI. If you have a problem with any of the other aspects of the mac, read this.
What can I say, I work for NBC.
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Bob Fucking Costas. Does anyone else hate that motherfucker?
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I am against OS X on Intel, for all the reasons that other people have specified. Is there an anti-petition anywhere? I want to sign it.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It seems to me that Apple could perhaps do well by selling OS-X for Intel (after there are a reasonable number of Carbon/Cocoa apps) by limiting what they would support, and by charging an arm and a leg for it (ie, $500).
:-)
Basically, take the profit they'd be out by not selling a machine and make it off the CD.
However, they'd have to add in the extra cost of development and support for random platforms. Make that $5000. Oh, wait we're back to the prices for OpenSTEP/Intel
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
According to Andrew Stone (Stone Design), they ditched it, even though it was still there in MacOS-X server. yes I'm aware the imaging layer changed drastically, but I believe it's still client/server based, and could (somewhat easily) be 'remotable'
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
... and who became a member specifically for the hardware discounts, I can understand completely why they changed their ADC levels.
Unless you're doing some pretty bleeding edge stuff, you don't need access to the latest and greatest hardware (my current mac is 3+ years old, still works great). And if you do need it, you're likely to be pretty serious and willing to shell out the cash for either the machines or the membership (if you're really serious, start a company and get a loan for crissakes!).
Now all the stuff I used to pay $150/year for is free! For almost everyone, the new pricing schemes are an improvement.
OS X natively supports running off HFS+ and UFS drives, and reads and writes HFS and FAT(16, possibly 32) drives. HFS+ is case insensitive, but of course case preserving. You deal with case insensitive file systems just like Mac and Windows people have been doing for the last decade and a half. UFS is case sensitive, like most unix style file systems. It's got advantages for servers, but Classic can't run off it. Carbon Apps can, though. So, use it for servers you don't need to run Classic Apps on, and use HFS+ for desktops for compatibility.
Take a walk over to Stepwise ... a grand central station for those who use NeXT/Openstep. Read a few editorials and opinions and you'll begin to pick up on a simple fact: Apple seems to be alienating Obj C developers, pushing the use of Java instead (C++ developers should have no trouble with Java).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Information of this nature should be contained in Meta-Data...I can think of 5 file systems that support it, HFS+ and BeOS's file system among them.
Having an extrememly long name within the file system is poor design. It should be bounded by the vageries of the human mind. We don't remember stuff in cases. (i.e. it's a string of letters not, A String Of Letters) The cases pop out during to post-thinking due to ingraned rules like capitalize names, first word, etc. The same goes for objects (what the filename represents) Just look at what happens when an object gets a long name; Surface To Air Missile-->SAM, we abbreviate it. It's not because this gives us more info, but because our brains like nice tidy little bits. It used contextual rules to know we aren't talking about our neighbor Samantha. And from a programming issue speed is correlationally related to data volume... more to deal with, longer to deal with it. the longer a file name is, the more likely a context switch will occur during a function involving it. (this is a piddly example but i can't think of a better one right now)
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Actually, I believe you are complaining because it's different. That's fine, if you'd actually spent enough time really USING OSX pb to have an informed opinion. Perhaps you have, but I get the feeling that you're just popping off.
Personally, I liked what I saw of Linux, and use Windows in VirtualPC. We're all better off if more good ideas are allowed to compete in the marketplace. But would it be too much to ask to avoid trying to kill the baby in the bassinette?
As one other poster said here: "Repeat after me: BETA". Frankly, this is the best damned beta version of anything I've ever used. If it's only going to get better from here, I'm going to enjoy the ride.
Hopefully, Intel's next arch will be a wonder of sparkling brilliance. I don't have much faith in them, however, since they are the Microsoft of the hardware world. In addition to design concerns, they are likely to get nasty about licensing. I have worries that Intel views the openness of x86 as a mistake. With AMD breathing down their neck, Intel is probably paranoid. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, though.
As for Apple, I think they're reasoning goes something like this: (1) Artists and musicians love the ease-of-use [I dislike the design of the GUI, but that's personal taste] of our GUI and the fitness-of-purpose of our hardware. They also like the fact that our tight control of both hardware and software makes solving problems easier. (2) They don't like that fact that our OS is more unstable than water and more outdated than Disco. (3) They're switching to Wintel reluctantly because Windows is somewhat better than the Mac OS and because the hardware is much cheaper. Furthermore, even major media creation software developers are abandoning us. (4) If we offer a superior OS (NeXTSTEP revamped, which itself was very popular with serious computer musicians) we can win back our market with even greater vigor than ever before, plus draw in UNIX people.
Ultimately, they believe that their hardware is a powerful enough draw to Photoshop types that it can win back their eroding market. Whether they're right or not, only time will tell.
What I am wondering, being a somewhat frequent Mac user, is will the advent of Mac-based compiler tools encourage 1) existing OSS authors to port to Mac OS X, and 2) encourage new software authors to take advantage of the easily-obtained compilers (I must say, Apple's current compiler is somewhat hard to get to. Registering on ADC is hell)?
I really hope that the number of open-source programs available for the Mac will increase. Of course they would still be usually distributed in binary form, but it would be really nice if similar to the Linux community, everyone offered source code.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
In the disclaimer for the beta software it states (I think, pretty sure) that the software is viable until may 15 or sooner. So I think it's highly likely that it will come out at about that time. The software is pretty much done anyways, it won't be TOO much longer. :)
Which Unix(tm) way? The BSD way? The SYS-V way?
I don't know how many times I've cursed one box or another because ps -guxaww isn't the same as ps -eaf, but my fingers don't know that!
Where should the commands be again?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Oh balls. You can get a rack & replacement handles from Marathon. They're an Apple authorized VAR, and even make rackmount units. And now that there's the G4 Cube.... egads, man. That thing was made to be clustered!!! Pop out the innards, pop it in a rack enclosure. Unit goes bad? Pop it out and pop in a replacement. Even has a built-in handle. Gives a whole new definition to the phrase "Cube Farm".
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MacTacToe - for every problem, an elegant solution
Yes--DVD. This is the point. Does VHS have a serious competitor in the analog tape based videorecording market? No. Do they have competition in the digital video market? Of course. VHS probably won't even be here in 5 years and I'm fairly sure that Intel's opinion on permanent presence of x86 can be expressed in jocular employment of four letter words.
For around thirty dollar you can start developing for MacOS X. That is a great deal which ever way you look at it.
the FSF does not take any rights away from me
You do not have the right to any non-GPL derivative, no matter how free and permissive you make it. You can't even create a public domain derivative of GPLd works. If RMS believes that software should not be owned, then why does he restrict me from creating unowned derivitives of the works he himself says he does not own?
As you yourself impied, if I give someone your software in such a way to violate your license, you still have your software.
If, after becoming familiar with what your opponent says...
What intellectual sophistry to assume that anyone disagreeing with you is ignorant of the topic! You're completely ignoring Locke, who has much to say on the nature of property. Just as a repeal of government trespass laws would not negate the existance of land property, neither would a repeal of the government copyright laws affect the ownership of software in any way. For a radical look at a world where software is owned in the absence of any government recognition of it, see Intellectual Property Rights Viewed As Contracts. This paper also has some very good references coming off of it as well.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Not true. Darwin contains far more than "borrowed" BSD code. There's Core Foundation, NetInfo, AppleTalk, IOKit, and more. And aside from Darwin there's Quicktime Streaming Server and OpenPlay. Apple was not obligated to "give back" anything, but they have chosen to release more than they took.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I think, by your own argument, that you admit that case sensitivity is indeed relevant to human eyeballs and the brains behind the eyeballs that do the interpretation.
What we might be dodging around is the issue of whether computers are better at parsing than humans. You can make a quite legitimate argument that an ASCIIbetic sort is ridiculous compared to the equivalent case-insensitive sort, but does this not indeed depend on the application?
Take the quintessintial README. It is arguable that the computer might consider this equivalent to a "readme" file. Fine. But the fact that the user indicated "README" should at *least* be an indicator that this file should "stand out" more. Whether it is the same file as "readme" is irrelevant, but for applications such as listing (i.e., 'ls') it should gain more prominence because the author deemed it so.
So...OS equivalence...user impartment difference.
Mojotoad
XML does not a good configuration file make.
Its as if, because Apple used XML, their configuration files are somehow superior? Oh yeah, I just love typing this crap all day long:
....
Damn, I got tired of it anyways. Yes there are config tools, but that just makes it a pain in the ass to manually configure stuff if the tools fail or are unavailable.
My point is, XML is being horribly abused right now. It's really quite sickening the amount of wasted storage space being used for tags, when a few extra lines of code to parse a simple configuration file would do.
XML makes a lot of sense for passing data between apps that were developed independently, or are hosted on heterogenous systems and networks. But the use of XML as a config file grammar is just OVERKILL.
hmm.. can you go to shell and do netstat -an ?? What services are running by default? Is Apple handing out a BSD box to every clueless Mac user out there (no offense, but you have to admit that your average graphics design student who goes and buys a Mac knows jack shit about unix security) with an unsecure default setup?!
Mmmmmm.. virgin territory.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Another uninformed news article. Sigh.
Have you seen the developer tools? They are the NextStep ones that provide great UI modelling, seperation of UI code from business objects, enterprise level database design and the best framework I've ever seen.
No, you were probably thinking of emacs and gcc (which is used to do the actual compiling)
Come on Slashdot, do some research for christ sakes.
[)amien
Agreed. This is a result of the use of Display PDF (Quartz). Nice for publishing types...annoying for others. This is a result of the NeXT heritage (Display PostScript).
I think the whole Aqua thing is too 'bubbly and sweet' - of course that's just aesthetic, so I won't hold that against them.
Right again. I hate Aqua almost as much as I hate the older Mac OS GUI. The NeXTSTEP UI was far superior. Apple realized that much of their market was hooked on "cutesy" type stuff though. In addition, many immature Mac OS users screamed like infants every time Apple tried to implement more NeXT-like elements.
It defaults to running inetd, nfsiod, portmap, and a couple of other things. To exacerbate this problem there is no GUI method of turning off these services, and the only command line method is 'kill'.
Hopefully, all of this will be remedied in the final release. They probably haven't gotten around to finishing this stuff yet.
They have added all kinds of odd directories like /Applications, /System and /Users.
This is more NeXT-derived stuff. They were named differently under NeXTSTEP. After working with GNUstep for a couple of years, I have really grown fond of this sort of thing. It's the same organized principle of /usr, /bin, /home, etc. but with more readable names.
Application configuration files and resources all get bundled into one place for each App.
NeXTSTEP strikes again. This confused me slightly at first but playing around with GNUstep has made me fall in love with this concept. This is so ordered and elegant it just blows my mind! I loathe having 15,000 dotfiles in my home directory. Additionally, it allows for very structured organization of resources (like localization or platform-dependent binaries). Think of it as being very similar in concept to the System V init. It's powerful use of the directory concept for organization.
I could go on, but I think I made my point. I use Unix and Macs and like them both for different reasonse. OS X is not Mac enough nor Unix enough for me to like it at all.
I think you have fallen into the same trap that many others have: you think that MOSX is Mac OS. It isn't. MOSX is NeXTSTEP, pure and simple. Apple has tried to pull a snow job with this "next generation of Mac OS" bit. That's just marketing, though (similar to the way SunOS was retroactively renamed Solaris 1.x).
I just don't think Apple get's it . . . hopefully they'll get a clue.
That depends on what you mean. If you mean continuing the Mac OS legacy or being a UNIX vendor, you're correct. If you're talking about finally producing a superior product, then I think you're wrong. I still hate Aqua, though.
Yes but DVD is not used for the same purpose that VHS is. VHS is there so you can record television programs and movies. DVD is there so that MGM can sell you a prepackaged movie with great quality sound/video. The only way that VHS is going anywhere is if there is a viable replacement for it, which DVD is not.
Now I know that there are DVD recorders out there somewhere. I also know the cost about as much as a decent used car, so they're hardly an option for mainstream use.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Go take a look at how GNUstep is progressing. We've made *tremendous* progress in the last year, and MOSX has heightened our visibility and brought more developers our way. We have alphas of ProjectCenter.app (our PB.app clone) and Gorm.app (our IB.app clone). We have those robust directory structures (/System, /Local, and /Network). We have the cool Application bundles implemented (with localization and cross-platform support). We have a fully structured makefile system. Applications and Objective C frameworks from NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, and MOSX are being ported. New applications are being written from scratch. In short, GNUstep is really beginning to snowball. Check it out!
M.A.R.E.!
fisfhcuerk.
(macs are really expensive.)
yes. another dry pop culture adaptation ("port").
Let's examine this from a business perspective...
Let's assume that Apple's typical markup on their system is 25% (since Apple doesn't have any direct competitors, they don't have to work on razor-thin margins like Dell or eMachines). On their midrange G4 system, which sells for $2499, that would mean that Apple gets roughly $600 profit.
Now let's say that Apple sells 50,000 of these babies in an average year...that would put a cool $30 million in their pockets.
Now, supposing that Apple sells OS X for x86, you can immediately assume that the bottom will fall out of Apple's hardware business; how many copies of OS X will they have to sell to recover their losses?
Let's say that OS X will sell for $99, and Apple's take is 35% (again, I'm guessing here, based on typical retail markups), so Apple makes about $35 per. A quick check of the numbers tells us that for the 50,000 midrange G4's Apple won't be selling, they would have to sell 857,142 copies of the OS (and that's just the impact on one build of one product line...Apple has 5 product lines, and several builds of each one).
Now, for Apple to successfully market to the x86 camp, two things would need to happen: 1) millions of PC users would need to jump platform as soon as x86 OS X is released, and 2) every Mac developer would need to release Cocoa versions of their apps with separate platform binaries. Regarding the first item, I don't see it happening; just look at the "mild" success that Be and Linux have had against Windows; MS is concerned, but I don't think Gates is losing a lot of sleep at night. Regarding the second, most Mac developers are taking a very conservative approach to Cocoa, in spite of the fact that everyone knows there is no going back for Apple. Just today I was reading that the upcoming QuarkXPress 5.0 would not be Carbon-compliant until possibly the 5.1 upgrade (in spite of the fact that both OS 8.6 and 9.0 have supported Carbon for almost two years), and they have yet to decide that QuarkXPress will ever be Cocoa-compliant! (boneheads!)
So, what happens when Apple ports OS X to x86? Apple's profits immediately take a nose-dive, Apple goes into the red, Apple has to shut down their hardware operations, and without the revenue of their hardware business, they have to shut down OS development. The fact remains that Apple's business model is based on hardware sales, and the key to their hardware sales is the Mac OS...it would be foolish for them to give away the crown jewels.
Did you know that betamax was BETTER than VHS? But that didn't mean squat. Sony tried to control and license Betamax while VHS was an open standard. So what happened? VCR manufacturers made and sold VHS units and Betamax died a horrible death.
Better doesn't mean squat if it isn't compatible with the existing standard. This is something that firms have had to learn the hard way over and over again.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
RMS is using the current system of copyright to get people to adopt the position that they do not have to be greedy to survive. The GPL is a promise. It is a promise that says "If you contribute to this code you will always have access to it". Without that pledge, I cannot contribute my time without fear that I will have to recontribute that time all over again when I next need to access that software. Locke did have a lot of things to say. He said you may take as much from nature as there is left for others. To take from the pool of ideas (our "nature") and leaving nothing for others - as you do when you patent things or otherwise restrict other people's freedom to create - you are violating the lockian premise.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You won't. OPENSTEP is available for Windows. And if you want a Free solution, GNUstep is portable. All that needs to be done is a Win32 backend for the AppKit. Foundation works already.
The more people who have a peice of software, the more popular that software is, the more developers work on it, the more valuable that software is. If this is not the way things are working for you, then you are doing something wrong - like restricting people's freedom or refusing to guarrentee their freedom in future.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yep--already there. The Cocoa API (AppKit and Foundation) have Java bindings. In fact, Apple has offended the living daylights out of the Objective C community by pushing Java over Objective C.
I still cannot, in good conscience, use MacOs X.
Basing it on BSD is great. Releasing the Tools, is great, releasing the source to Darwin in to be applauded...
But it is still non-free software. I cannot edit Quartz. I cannot decide that the doc would be better if I tweaked one or two things...
Apple is not a company I can morally approve of. They have a poor track record of attacking anything that is similiar to their own. Don't even get me started ont he QuickTime thing... (Yes, this involves Sorenson as well, but Appple will not let them release code)
What it comes down to is, as great of an OS as MacOS X is, (and I am not trolling, I really like it!), I cannot use without feeling dirty.
sighs, and goes back to his Debian GNU/Linux machine, without non-free enabled)
--
This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
although not '100% pure java' , I was wondering
if Apple has any plans of providing Java APIs
to programmers.
i'd love to write some 'native' MacOSX apps but
would like to program in my preferred language -
ie: Java.
For a full discussion of the altenative implementation, see:
6 /part1.html
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/paper/unicode1
Complicated? Yes. Usable on small/underpowered hardware? Yes. (a 1k memory requirement is not excessive!). Performance wise? If we look at Western European languages, about 10% of chars are non-ascii, its about 4 times as slow. For non-European languages, its roughly *30* times as slow.
I would really really not thank anyone who made fopen 30 times slower (yes I know I'm assuming the comparison is the slow step here).
DNS has gone for the half-way house - the I18N version is case-sensitive for non-US-ASCII languages.
What worries me about MacOS X is the whole new Objective C interface. Creating a new API is one thing; creating a new API in a different language is another. Apparently, certain advanced features of the GUI will only be available to you if you use the Objective C interface which is seems to be a way that Jobs can keep his NeXT dream alive.
I'm not a Mac developer, however at work our Mac developers have no interest in porting their application to the new API in Objective C. I can't imagine it would be extremely easy to port and maintain Windows applications, most of which are written in C++ to it either. For developers who are just starting out, writing their software in Objective C makes it very difficult to port to Windows locking them into the OS.
Now Objective C might be the greatest language since latin, but the simple fact of the matter is that in GUI arenas, C++ currently dominates.
Just curious what the opinions of others are out there.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I was remote Macintosh support at a large online service (heh) for 5 years. The most common complaint was "My Mac always crashes." With OSX, you can say goodbye to that.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
>can anbody present an example of legitimate use of two files in the same directory named identically save for case?
The Perl makefile?
If that was fixed, I would switch to a case insensitve in a second. I also would like to see space insensitve as well so my mp3 collection is easier to deal with. It seems that even maodern xargs is broken with spaces.
... and someone who may yet go back, I can speak with a little experience here. Apple has a flaky history when it comes to pleasing its developers. I remember back when all it took was a small annual fee, and you had full access to all alpha/beta releases from their ADC site, plus steep hardware discounts. These days, Apple's implemented a tiered system whereby the more you pay, the more benefits you receive, but the more you pay, the lower the benefit/return ratio is.
When I first got in with ADC, I was a starving college student who could barely pay the interest on his student loans, much less pay for the latest and greatest Apple hardware to test the software I was writing (some pretty sophisticated finance software, back before I started consulting in an unrelated field -- if anyone's interested, give me a holler). Here I was, struggling to develop software that Apple's platform desperately needed, and Apple recognized this and subsidized my hardware through ADC. If they hadn't, I can assure you I would've had to give up the ghost and quit my dream.
But what are young developers today to do? Unless you're Adobe or Intuit, Apple doesn't want to hear from you. If you have several thousands of dollars to throw at an upgraded ADC membership, then you're lucky. We're not all so fortunate.
Cheers,
Froid
We read case sensitively. THINGS LOOK DIFFERENT when they ArE iN dIFfeRent cases now don't they. Aren't we taught that "Bob" and "bob" are different words?
You're right. Most users of MacOS X will never open a shell, or look for a config file, or go hacking with vi. Most Mac users have absolutely no interest in doing this, since all they want to do is use their computer.
The reality is that standard Unixes are incredibly hard to learn to use properly, and incredibly easy to screw up royally. This is why it's not taken off as a consumer operating system, and why none of the current Linux-based efforts will ever get wide consumer acceptance.
As other people have said, the fact that Mac OS X hasn't followed the standard Unix model is a good thing, since what they have done is remove a great deal of confusion, and made it much more approachable for consumers.
The learning curve for a standard Unix may indeed be steep, but it's a lot gentler under OS X. If you've been able to learn how to use Unix then you'll have no problem getting to know OS X, so quit whining.
My point was that every technology wears out sooner or later and will be replaced. DVD recorders or some other digital recording technology will take over the spot that VHS has right now. MP3 is replacing analog audio cassettes right now. Intel is working on a new architecture that will replace x86. It will not be backward compatible with x86.
No, you can't even REP CMPSB a case-insensitive string; that's my point. With a C string, you don't know ECX ahead of time. So you have to go a byte at a time whether you're case sensitive or not, because C is braindead.
Even a descriptor based compare has the potential to be faster. This:
continue:
mov eax, dword ptr [esi]
xor eax, dword ptr [edi]
and eax, 20202020
jz difference
add esi, 4
add edi, 4
loop continue
is case insensitive, and MUCH faster than the fastest case sensitive compare for C strings:
continue:
mov al, byte ptr [esi]
cmp al, byte ptr [edi]
jne difference
cmp al, 0
inc esi
inc edi
jne continue
Because it loads dword's instead of byte's.
But if you're using a real (non-C) language, you can of course do it case sensitively REP CMPSD (which IS much faster than case insensitive). But if you're using C, there's no penalty for case sensitivity.
Historically, Unix was case-sensitive to evade the overhead of having to convert cases to do lookups on file filesystem, which preserved cases in filenames. This differs in behavior from NTFS, which preserves case, yet is case insensitive when referring to a file (unless you're running in POSIX mode).
This is a great precedent for a commercial OS vendor. Free (as in beer) development tools! Be did this and was wonderful. Now that a more mainstream OS is doing maybe some other vendors will do the same.
Someday I'll make devildog.org into something.
Someday I'll make
Hey wait a minute I think that the PB 1400s were a pretty good model. I haven't had any problems with mine. Granted the 1400 uses batteries and expansion bay devices that are totally different from other Powerbooks. However though the 1400 has a power socket that is the same that is used on the Powerbook Duos and every PowerBook since the 1400. However the 62XX, 63XX, 52XX, and the 53XX, except the 6360 models are true garbage, these models along with the Portable, the MacTV, and the 5300 should all be collected, grounded up, and used as filler for roads. I also wish Apple bothered to design the SCSI hardware on the 6400s and the 6500s so that they were properly terminated if you had no external devices connected. It really gets annoying when your computer is actually more stable with more devices connected.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
I have a really interesting question that I havn't had the time or the resources to fully investigate. Do any of the *BSDs have support for compressed filesystems like e2compr for linux? I would like to be able to do something similar with linux on a *BSD or on Mac OS X but really wish this feature is present. Does it exist?
Respond to s
What kind of price are we talking about here?
Respond to s
Where do you get off calling me an idiot when you define "successfully competing" as having 5 percent of the market. Right now linux has a bigger market share then the mac does. That's not me saying that go check the stats yourself.
Oh well I sould not be insulted when someone with so little grasp of reality calls me an idiot.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Remember the powerbook 1400 series? Or the powerbook 5300's that could catch fire when you charged the battery?
Sigh...
The 1400 was a _great_ computer. Still is, in fact. Highly upgradable, relatively light, good feature set. I just popped a wireless PC card into it, and now it's my WebPad for the times I don't need my iMac (or don't want to sit at a desk). With the upgraded CPU (you can buy a 400MHz G3 w/1MB of L2 cache for a PowerBook 1400 for $400. I put a 250MHz G3 into it two years ago.), it'll last me for years more.
The 5300 was poorly designed (the original system software was so crappy that Apple posted a complete set of replacement system software for the 5300 and 190 in January 1996, the plastics were cheap and tended to break on the hinge and trackpad button, and the AC adapter connector was so tiny that it would crack off), but don't blame the battery problems on Apple.
First of all, no 5300s in the field caught fire (unlike several Compaq laptop models where this did indeed happen).
Secondly, the problem was traced to some charging circuits from SONY that Apple had licensed. Apple tried to use a relatively new technology (Lithium-Ion batteries in 1995), and got bit by a bad supplier. C'est la vie.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
What "closed aspect of the architecture" are you referring to? And with USB being the new standard, there is an utter plethora of peripherals.
Gimme a break. Your arguments are outdated. Apple did what they did because it was better. I like better. x86 is a Pile Of Crap(patent pending). It is old, and ugly, and generally folks at Intel and AMD are more concerned with getting the clock speed up, rather than revising the architecture to get better performance.
All I care about is being able to run OS X and Linux. Both of these desires are satisfied by a G4. Quit your wining dualbooter.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I allways thought that sbin stands for "static binaries", i.e. binaries that should not be linked with shared libraries (anyone remember those LD_PRELOAD exploits ;)
Samba Information HQ
Why don't you study the market a bit you may come across as more intelligent.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
When I want to turn something off in /etc/rc.d, I will change the first letter to lowercase, this is a somewhat common technique. Although this isn't an example of two files identical save for case, it is an example of where case sensitivity is desired.
You might as well do what I do, preface the name with "X". Just as easy, and it's obvious which file you changed.
Even if there are a few legitimate uses for case sensitivity - not that I've heard any - they have to be weighed against all the cases of annoyance that this fosters upon it's users. Don't just look at the benefit, look at the costs as well.
Hmm what makes it a superior platform if what you say is true? I don't get it.
Respond to s
X86 is the standard for computers made by companies such as Acer, Compaq, Dell, E-Machines, Gateway, HP, IBM, etc etc. Go to any company that isn't a graphic design firm and you'll find X86 based computers. They are the standard because they own 95% of the market. That is what defines a standard, what the majority chooses to use.
Simply because there is a small percentage of users who go with something else does not mean x86 is any less the standard. There are still betamax VCR's out there that some people do use. You can still find them. Does that mean that VHS has some kind of valid competition? I don't think so.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Obj-C takes about three days for a competent C programmer to learn. If you can't pick up a handful of new keywords, and grok the [target message] syntax, then don't worry: we won't miss you one little bit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, but the true case is often hiden, for example in windows, directories such as WINNT are automatically converted Winnt for "easy" user viewing. Thus README becomes Readme and no longer stands out. Further, Readme will appear in the middle of the directory listing, there's no way for a developer to force it to appear at the top (other then calling it Aaa_readme).
disk space is cheap.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Now, I get the impression you're arguing against a totally case-insensitive filesystem, one that doesn't retain case information (ie filenames are either all lowercase or ALL CAPS). No doubt that's a bad situation, since you can't put emphasis on filenames by mixing or changing case (and worse still, ALL CAPS reduces readability; we recognize words by their overall shapes, not the shapes of individual letters. Totally capitalized words all look rectangular). But I still don't think it justifies case-sensitive filesystems, where capitalizing a letter (or failing to do so) causes you to refer to a different file, possibly one that doesn't exist.
Alan Zabaro
Yer yer.. someone do the netstat.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Add quotes to solve the problem
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
A $250 million dollar purchase of stocks (which M$ has sold in large part now) was merely a show of support and commitment to the platform that had $3.something BILLION dollars in the bank at the time of the aforementioned "bailout".
MS makes money off of Apple because of robust Office sales, not any investment in the company.
And, according to one's sources, Apple's marketshare is edging up to 7%, which is still more than Linux. Sorry.
Remember: there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Okay, lets see your BASIC version. Did you do all the ISO-8859-1 characters? How about the MicroSoft characters between 0x80 and 0xA0? How about alternative 8-bit character sets? How about the German double-s? OOPS!
What happens when we have a secure service that wants to check if a file will be overwritten and it's test does not exactly match what the file system uses to check for filename equality. What happens when it's test is done on two file systems, or on a local cache that accidentally has a different algorithim htna the remote disk? Guess what? Can you say SECURITY HOLE?
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with making user-friendly searches. There is nothing that prevents an application from searching for all possible case variations or using far more complex things like spelling correction to find files. Get it?
The average user does not care and would NEVER notice case-sensitivity. In fact the average user does not see anything wrong with having several files with the same name (possibly something that should be supported somehow). You are talking about convienence for a COMMAND.COM user, even Unix shells have filename completion nowadays making filename complexity irrelevant.
This cool new Mac thing is drawing some Unix developers to a new platform. I wonder how much of the new stuff could be, or will be sent the other way back into standard old BSD (a la FreeBSD). Will they grow together, or will the Mac versions of things be inappropriate for standard BSD?
I'm not sure you're getting the type of case-insensitivity I'm meaning.
It's like on (dare I say it) a Windows system, sorta. When you name a file, the case that appears to you maintains the case you originally specified. When you create or refer to a file, though, it's normalized to lower case.
Thus, case IS maintained, because it would still have all it's uppercase characters when doing a directory listing, etc. I'm not sure your 'indirect stability' is much of an argument.
As for flexibility - when doing searches, just like you should have in programs now, you'd have the option of case sensitive or case insensitive search, there would be no difference at ALL in searches, etc, because the code that would effect this would be in the file system - the normalization of allowed filenames in a given directory would determine what can and cannot be created, and when you're looking for something, the filesystem would match it correctly if you said "gimme foo", and there was only "FOO" in the directory - you'd get "FOO". When you edit FOO, foo is edited and updated correctly.
If you rename "FOO" to "foo", it would then appear as "foo" in directory listings.
So, case IS preserved, it's just how case is being used in the INTERFACE of the system that is being effected, and is what my entire point is all about.
It seems most people participating in this little subtopic seem to agree with me, others don't understand how it would work, and it _seems_ that the ones who understand yet still disagree are only worried about the programming complexity involved.
All I can say to that last point is - if Mac & Windows can do it, it can't be all _that_ terrible difficult, now can it?
If we want Linux and the BSDs to become acceptible to desktop users, this may become a BIG sticking point, IMO.
And yes, developing for MacOS X is very familiar to anyone who has done some BSD programming, except that the paths are all different and HFS+ volumes are case-insensitive.
In other words, it's exactly the same except when it's different.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
There is an online petition for Apple to port OSX to x86 here. I think this is something they need to do. Their ability to compete using proprietary hardware which is more expensive than commodity PC's is only going to worsen as time goes by.
They should leverage the PC and gain a portion of its massive market instead of trying to hold on to their own separate market, which is tiny in comparison and progressively getting smaller.
A new OS isn't going to be enough to convince very many to replace their hardware. But offer that new OS for the hardware they already own and you'll have yourself some customers. Customers equal money and market share and Apple needs all it can get of both.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I've never understood why so many UNIXheads think case-sensitivity is a GOOD thing. Yes, I'd like the files to have upper and lower case in them for the sake of appearance, but I'd rather NOT have it case-sensitive for matching, etc.
Does anyone have a GOOD reason to have a case-sensitive file system? If so, please enlighten me...
Dude, those monitors are just Sony Trinitrons.
We get them from Dell too. Apple sticks their label on them, Dell sticks their label on them, otherwise they are identical.
I will never buy OSX until I can build my own hardware for x86 prices to run it on. Then I will buy it immediately.
I wonder if that day will ever com e...
Everything I hear from people is how much they love OS X. Where is everyone else?
/Applications, /System and /Users. Application configuration files and resources all get bundled into one place for each App.
I installed it on a G3 PowerBook with 128M of RAM. I liked it at first. But the more I used it and the more I got into the details, the less I like it.
GUI:
The thing is not fast by any means.
Just minimizing a window into the Dock would use 75% of my CPU.
They got rid of 'window shading'.
The menus - formerly one of the most consistent aspects of the MacOS - lose much of their consistency.
I think the whole Aqua thing is too 'bubbly and sweet' - of course that's just aesthetic, so I won't hold that against them.
Underneath:
It defaults to running inetd, nfsiod, portmap, and a couple of other things. To exacerbate this problem there is no GUI method of turning off these services, and the only command line method is 'kill'. To get these services to not start at boot required hacking config files (after 30 minutes of searching to find them).
They have discarded way to many Unix conventions for my liking. They have come up with their own method of 'controlling' services. They discarded the standard rc format.
They have added all kinds of odd directories like
I could go on, but I think I made my point. I use Unix and Macs and like them both for different reasonse. OS X is not Mac enough nor Unix enough for me to like it at all.
I just don't think Apple get's it . . . hopefully they'll get a clue.
Yeah they sure do know nothing about hardware (sarcastic tone)
Respond to s
What's disturbing is that the files visible in the Desktop aren't synched completely with the files actually there -- if I wget a file from the command line, it' doesn't show up in the finder. What's up with that? //rp
isometric.spaceninja.com
Given the unsafe behavior of some older programs, there are still possible race conditions in which data not for your eyes may be obtained by predicting what the temporary filename will be.
The addition of 26 characters to your charset (what is gained by case sensitivity) will increase the total possible 8-letter filenames by 200 billion or so.
That's one of the largest advantages for case sensitive filesystems. But for Mac OS/X, an OS for the end user, I don't think it's terribly important. One way or the other.
-bugg
duh.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Clearly if IBM desires case to be easily ignored it must be a bad thing.
But personaly, Im with you. Showing case is good, but case sensitivity is bad.
Whatever.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Speaking of portability, MacOS has always been lacking in the Java arena. Being a Java developer, I'd like to see things a little more integrated and stable. Does OS X install the JRE by default?
effectively breaking the GPL
thre has been no GPL violation (not that FreeBSD or it's Darwin derivative are under the GPL)
You are paying $30 for the UI. If you want the UNIX part of Mac OS X, then download Darwin for free.
~Donald / Just RTFM
--mark
i know youre a troll, but the G4 towers stack great when turned 90 degrees and mounted on a rack :)
---
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
If anyone has a MacOS (7-X) system up and running already and wants some tools right now, they can follow the instructions from MacAddict on how to copy the Darwin versions of g++ and company over to MacOS. For those interested in other BSD apps on OS X, keep an eye on MacAddict's Ports page.
Recursion (n): See recursion
Actually if you ignore a (different) bit in ASCII, A-Z is still the same as a-z. (ignore the bit 0x20, which amusingly enough is a space in ASCII, which extra amusingly is 40 in octal while 40 in hex is a space in EBCDIC, which is only amusing if you're amused by ASCII and EBCDIC)
[Posted from deep within the northen forests of North America, via TCP/IP tunneled over carrier pidgeon]
Why can't there be just ONE place where there aren't any bigots. It's really sad. You people make me sick.
If you look at ASCII on the binary level its somewhat random - its roots are in teletypes, it was not desigined to be processed.. EBCDIC on the other hand is desigined to have processing done. A-Z is the same as a-z if you ignore a bit.
Damn. And all this time I'd been thinking I could just ignore ASCII bit 5 for case insensitivity...
Why is there only one Monopolies commission?
Darwin 1.0, which is the SAME code as Mac OS X sans the GUI, compiles and runs on Intel hardware. Go to http://publicsource.apple.com and see for yourself. Granted, you have to be running some UNIX varient to install it, but it DOES work, and Apple is working to make the GUI work all nicely.
~Donald / Just RTFM
> double the possible number of files in a given dir?
Well, if you mean double the possible number of CONFUSINGLY-NAMED files in a directory, yeah, I guess some people would find that useful. Sorta.
I'd bet that there are a LOT more people who find that irritating than useful, though.
And if you ignore a few more bits, 'A-Z' is the same as 'a-z' in ASCII as well
While I don't know how good ADC was back in the old days, but Apple today is very good to its student developers, IMO.
Student developers get a 20% discount on Apple hardware (one time use), the same as the Premier program that costs $3500 per year (student membership costs $99).
Students are getting perks that aren't technically supposed to be included - things like OS X developer previews and beta.
Finally, Apple gave away free passes to the WWDC (worth something like $1500 a piece) to any student who wanted one for the past two years.
How much will it Cost (when done)?
Apple tried to minimize the use of licensed technologies so the cost will be lower than the current OS X Server. A good example of this is the replacement of the Display Postscript display interface with Display PDF (an open standard). Most people in the know expect Apple to charge $99 for a shrink wrapped copy of OSX. It will, of course, be bundled with machines when it comes out.
Why not release a i386 version of OS X?
This seems like a no brainer but I (and many others) feel that this would be very bad for Apple right now. There are a lot of reason to NOT do this now. What about Objective C?
From the mouth of our Mac and Novell developer... 'Objective C is very easy for anyone with C or especially C++ experience to pick up'. He feels that a good C++ programmer could get up to speed in a couple of weeks.
i386 Hardware is better!
I just got 6 dual G4 450MHz machines in with Apple 17" monitors. They are incredible. The quality is superior to any PC I have ever seen. The monitor is PERFECTLY flat... we used a straight edge!
In general (as a supervisor of a PC and Mac repair department at a large University Computer Center) I feel that the quality of Apple components is generally better than that of other manufacturers. Most of my experience is with Dell and Omnitech machines (Omnitech is big in Corporate sales). I have, however, suffered through all kinds of PCs from all the major, and some very minor manufacturers.
As for performance, the new G4s run RC5 at 8MKeys/second. If they were the top of the line, dual 500s, they would do 9MKeys/second (my single G4/500 does around 4.6MKeys). I *believe* (that means I could be wrong
Crunch, Crunch, Crunch
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
And anyways, with bash's <tab> auto complete mixing uppercase and lowercase isn't that bothersome, in fact it's a blessing. If README is the only "R" starting file in a directory (because it's special), you can type:"less R<tab><enter>" to view it's contents, saves time don't you think?
Alot of windows users seem to find the command prompt annoying and extra time consumming. I think this is primarily because they've only been exposed to DOS. It doesn't have very many keystroke saving tricks (the DOSKEY history is perty much the only thing I can think of), and so they'd end up typing alot more than us unix people to do the same task. Also, without an auto-complete, you kinda have to guess commands.
--
Daniel
And the Mac platform is monopolistic how?
If anyone is emulating Microsoft's monopolistic practices, it's the FSF and its brothers-in-arms, who give away code (below the cost of developing it) in order to stifle competition from other, for-profit organizations.
The GPL ironically stifles what it attempts to create: freedom. It dangles the carrot of free (of charge) code but then beats the programmer with the stick of forced source redistribution. I don't know about you, but I don't believe that one should attach strings to the gifts one gives; it's in bad taste and does violence to the autonomy of those foolish enough to accept them. (This is why I either release code into the public domain or use a BSD-style license.)
The GPL embodies an oppressively moralistic, world domination minded ideology that seeks to convert, destroy, or render irrelevant all things inconsistent with its extreme beliefs.
Ask anyone whether Apple has any chance (or even realistic expectation) of taking over the world, and you'll get a resounding "No!" Ask them the same of the FSF and its fellow travelers, and people aren't so sure. Who is the greater threat to choice?
Who's the nitwit that marked that Flamebait? In a language like English where upper and lower case letters resemble each other so much, there's a pretty darn solid argument to be made that case preserving but insensitive is the most user friendly way for a file system to act.
Or maybe I'm just a lazy typer, too.
We've got the same ISA we've had from the seventies, keep in mind.
Is that good? Last I checked, Microsoft and Intel were busy trying to chuck all the legacy baggage out of the Intel archetecture... ISA bus, serial ports, parallel ports right now, x86 in the future. And isn't the instruction set only pertinent if you're doing assembly level coding? I thought that C abstracts you from knowing the intracacies of a given processor?
The reason I don't use Mac hardware is you can only get it from Apple (who charge A LOT!), and you can't buy, say, boxed processors and motherboards and build it yourself at a lower price.
A lot isn't really a lot anymore... you can have a kick ass system for under $2000, or a pretty usable iMac for under $1000. You can't really compare eMachines' offerings to PPC G4's...
Oh, and CPU isn't everything. Mac hardware is behind in terms of bus speed, RAM clock, and the AGP spec. So nya.
Ummm... Mac's were the FIRST mainstream platform to move to 64-bit PCI. Yeah, their memory ONLY clocks at 100 MHz... that's not a big step down from 133, which is just beginning to surface... And, really, what's the difference in performance between a 2x AGP card and a 4x version of the same card? Can joe user tell? can you in a blind test? or is it what? 3 fps in quake?