Is UNIX An OS?

Technik~ writes: "An Editorial at Unixreview.com discusses David. K. Every's of Macweek assertion in his column that Unix isn't an OS. Read the original MacWeek editorial here."

Comments

Hard to read

[OlympicSponsor]

I thought it was poorly editing until I realized that "Every" was the original author's last name. That's gotta be a daily confusion-generator. "Every stand up. No, not everyone. Just Every."
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.

UNIX an OS?!?!

[Some Id10t]

Of course it's not an OS, it's a RELIGION!

(Actually, my cow-orker behind be just stated that it's actually probably a cult since it's not quite old enough to be a religion yet.)

- Some Id10t

Re:UNIX an OS?!?!

[MochaMan]

Actually, my cow-orker [snip]

Pardon my asking, but how exactly do you "ork" a cow? On second though, I don't want to know.

Re:UNIX an OS?!?!

[jbridge21]

Gospel of Tux unearthed

Every generation has a mythology. Every millenium has a doomsday cult. Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the speaker melts. Archeologists at the University of Helsinki today uncovered what could be the earliest known writings from the Cult of Tux, a fanatical religious sect that flourished during the early Silicon Age, around the dawn of the third millenium AD...


The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)

In the beginning Turing created the Machine.

And the Machine was crufty and bogacious, existing in theory only. And von Neumann looked upon the Machine, and saw that it was crufty. He divided the Machine into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and yet the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery, and the beginning of wisdom.

And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and blessed it, saying, "Go forth and replicate, freely exchanging data and code, and bring forth all manner of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was cool. The Architecture prospered and was implemented in hardware and software. And it brought forth many Systems unto the earth.

The first Systems were mighty giants; many great works of renown did they accomplish. Among them were Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, the targeter; EDSAC and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the defender of the sky and father of all networks. These were the mighty giants of old, the first children of Turing, and their works are written in the Books of the Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.

Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and baleful attributes. And they said unto themselves, "Let us go now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may bring us great fortune." With sweet words did they lure their customers, and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.

And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and grew numerous upon the earth. In those days there were IBM and Digital, Burroughs and Honeywell, Unisys and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to their own System, hardware and software, and did not interchange, for their Licences forbade it. This was the Second Age, the age of Mainframes.

Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and von Neumann looked upon the earth and were displeased. The Systems and their Corporations had grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true Engineers. And the Customers groaned and cried loudly unto heaven, saying, "Oh that there would be created a System mighty in power, yet small in size, able to reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned and cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer would arise to grant us freedom from these oppressing Suits and their grave and perilous Licences, and send us a System of our own, that we may hack therein!" And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the cries and were moved, and said unto each other, "Let us go down and fabricate a Breakthrough, that these cries may be stilled."

And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann spoke unto Moore of Intel, granting him insight and wisdom to understand the future. And Moore was with chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it 4004. And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art a Breakthrough; with my own Corporation have I fabricated thee. Thou art yet as small as a dust mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size of a mountain, and conquer all before thee. This blessing I give unto thee: every eighteen months shall thou double in capacity, until the end of the age." This is Moore's Law, which endures unto this day.

And the birth of 4004 was the beginning of the Third Age, the age of Microchips. And as the Mainframes and their Systems and Corporations had flourished, so did the Microchips and their Systems and Corporations. And their lineage was on this wise:

Moore begat Intel. Intel begat Mostech, Zilog and Atari. Mostech begat 6502, and Zilog begat Z80. Intel also begat 8800, who begat Altair; and 8086, mother of all PCs. 6502 begat Commodore, who begat PET and 64; and Apple, who begat 2. (Apple is the great Mystery, the Fruit that was devoured, yet bloomed again.) Atari begat 800 and 1200, masters of the game, who were destroyed by Sega and Nintendo. Xerox begat PARC. Commodore and PARC begat Amiga, creator of fine arts; Apple and PARC begat Lisa, who begat Macintosh, who begat iMac. Atari and PARC begat ST, the music maker, who died and was no more. Z80 begat Sinclair the dwarf, TRS-80 and CP/M, who begat many machines, but soon passed from this world. Altair, Apple and Commodore together begat Microsoft, the Great Darkness which is called Abomination, Destroyer of the Earth, the Gates of Hell.

Now it came to pass in the Age of Microchips that IBM, the greatest of the Mainframe Corporations, looked upon the young Microchip Systems and was greatly vexed. And in their vexation and wrath they smote the earth and created the IBM PC. The PC was without sound and colour, crufty and bogacious in great measure, and its likeness was a tramp, yet the Customers were greatly moved and did purchase the PC in great numbers. And IBM sought about for an Operating System Provider, for in their haste they had not created one, nor had they forged a suitably grave and perilous License, saying, "First we will build the market, then we will create a new System, one in our own image, and bound by our Licence." But they reasoned thus out of pride and not wisdom, not forseeing the wrath which was to come.

And IBM came unto Microsoft, who licensed unto them QDOS, the child of CP/M and 8086. (8086 was the daughter of Intel, the child of Moore). And QDOS grew, and was named MS-DOS. And MS-DOS and the PC together waxed mighty, and conquered all markets, replicating and taking possession thereof, in accordance with Moore's Law. And Intel grew terrible and devoured all her children, such that no chip could stand before her. And Microsoft grew proud and devoured IBM, and this was a great marvel in the land. All these things are written in the Books of the Deeds of Microsoft.

In the fullness of time MS-DOS begat Windows. And this is the lineage of Windows: CP/M begat QDOS. QDOS begat DOS 1.0. DOS 1.0 begat DOS 2.0 by way of Unix. DOS 2.0 begat Windows 3.11 by way of PARC and Macintosh. IBM and Microsoft begat OS/2, who begat Windows NT and Warp, the lost OS of lore. Windows 3.11 begat Windows 95 after triumphing over Macintosh in a mighty Battle of Licences. Windows NT begat NT 4.0 by way of Windows 95. NT 4.0 begat NT 5.0, the OS also called Windows 2000, The Millenium Bug, Doomsday, Armageddon, The End Of All Things.

Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among the Microchip Corporations; mighter than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it had it waxed. And Gates heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of this curse:

"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."

And the people were cowed in terror and gave homage to Microsoft, and endured the many grave and perilous trials which the Windows platform and its greatly bogacious Licence forced upon them. And once again did they cry to Turing and von Neumann and Moore for a deliverer, but none was found equal to the task until the birth of Linux.

These are the generations of Linux:

SAGE begat ARPA, which begat TCP/IP, and Aloha, which begat Ethernet. Bell begat Multics, which begat C, which begat Unix. Unix and TCP/IP begat Internet, which begat the World Wide Web. Unix begat RMS, father of the great GNU, which begat the Libraries and Emacs, chief of the Utilities. In the days of the Web, Internet and Ethernet begat the Intranet LAN, which rose to renown among all Corporations and prepared the way for the Penguin. And Linus and the Web begat the Kernel through Unix. The Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities together are the Distribution, the one Penguin in many forms, forever and ever praised.

Now in those days there was in the land of Helsinki a young scholar named Linus the Torvald. Linus was a devout man, a disciple of RMS and mighty in the spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One day as he was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell into a trance and was granted a vision. And in the vision he saw a great Penguin, serene and well-favoured, sitting upon an ice floe eating fish. And at the sight of the Penguin Linus was deeply afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream.

And in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore answered and spoke unto him, saying, "Fear not, Linus, most beloved hacker. You are exceedingly cool and froody. The great Penguin which you see is an Operating System which you shall create and deploy unto the earth. The ice-floe is the earth and all the systems thereof, upon which the Penguin shall rest and rejoice at the completion of its task. And the fish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty Licensed codebases which swim beneath all the earth's systems. The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and bogacious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and perilous Licences shall it capture. And in capturing shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documentation shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the earth and all who code therein."

Linus rose from meditation and created a tiny Operating System Kernel as the dream had foreshewn him; in the manner of RMS, he released the Kernel unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold. And in the fulness of Internet Time the Kernel grew and replicated, becoming most cool and exceedingly froody, until at last it was recognised as indeed a great and mighty Penguin, whose name was Tux. And the followers of Linus took refuge in the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities; they installed Distribution after Distribution, and made sacrifice unto the GNU and the Penguin, and gave thanks to the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore, for their deliverance from the hand of Microsoft. And this was the beginning of the Fourth Age, the age of Open Source.

Now there is much more to be said about the exceeding strange and wonderful events of those days; how some Suits of Microsoft plotted war upon the Penguin, but were discovered on a Halloween Eve; how Gates fell among lawyers and was betrayed and crucified by his former friends, the apostles of Media; how the mercenary Knights of the Red Hat brought the gospel of the Penguin into the halls of the Corporations; and even of the dispute between the brethren of Gnome and KDE over a trollish Licence. But all these things are recorded elsewhere, in the Books of the Deeds of the Penguin and the Chronicles of the Fourth Age, and I suppose if they were all narrated they would fill a stack of DVDs as deep and perilous as a Usenet Newsgroup.

Now may you code in the power of the Source; may the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities be with you, throughout all Distributions, until the end of the Epoch. Amen.

Written by Lennier
-----

Re:UNIX an OS?!?!

[jo42]

> the age of Open Source.

Until some other fad comes along.

I've been mucking about with computers since the early 80's. Every few years, there is a new thing where the new generation forgets what the old one learned, throwing it all out the window, starts all over again with something 'new', learns something, then the new generation comes along and borks it all up over again.

Linux is a fad. Linux is a religion. I feel sad very for you.

Whats to say...

[catseye_95051]

... other then he's clueless and obviously never been to college-- at elast not for Computer Science.

Actually, there IS something else to say. This is a wee bit scary, the MS media amchien ash eben so successful it has managed to warp people's belief as to the meanings of words.

The mac week author shoudl do the following:
(1) Read Judge Jackson's findings of fact (he and his team did an EXCELLENT job of seperating OS for middlewar, the latter being what he thinks is missing from UNIX as an "OS".)

(2) Buy a decent machine organization text and read it (I'd recommend tannenbaum's, personally.)

When did Journalism stop being researched fact and become ignorant IMO???

Re:Whats to say...

[scrytch]

> ... the MS media amchien ash eben so successful

It took me a few readings to realize that this wasn't some kind of laps into some kind of bastardized german...

Re:Whats to say...

[Paladin128]

I believe from my college Operating Systems class, an OS is a piece of software that acts as an interface between hardware (device drivers and other kernel functions), the user (shell), and applications. Hmmm... UNIX fits the bill there. This guy seems to have bought in to the M$ "the talking paper clip is a logical extension of the OS" crap.

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"

Linux is not an OS, either...

[hpa]

These arguments sound an awful lot like the FSF' "Linux is not an operating system, Linux is GNU, even though we were pooh-poohing it and calling it nasty names for the first several years of its existence"...

Re:Linux is not an OS, either...

[Christopher B. Brown]

This is exactly why the issue isn't cut and dried.

I expect that a whopping lot of people would not consider Linux, The Kernel to be terribly useful for terribly much. After all, it doesn't include:

• A shell such as zsh; note that the notion of separating OS from shell was largely due to Multics, where the command language had its commands reference programs.
• A C library as an interface to programs, such as GLIBC
• Some set of initialization controls as with init
• ... And then the whole set of "user space" stuff, including compilers, text editors, file tools, word processors, and such...
• ... And if you want to do anything graphical, you'll be using something that is recognizably "not Linux," whether you use SVGAlib or XFree86.

It is entirely true that Linus and friends didn't implement much of this sort of stuff. In order to get anywhere, you have to be using GNU "stuff" of some description.

The question of where the OS "stops," and where "non-OS stuff" starts is incredibly unclear.

It is not an outrageous thing to argue that Linux is "just the kernel;" that certainly does represent something that is recognizably associated with Linux, and most other components such as GLIBC, X11, GNOME, KDE, GCC, and such are decidedly not specific to Linux as they are used with other OSes of whatever provenance.

It is also not an outrageous thing to think that an "operating system" might include a bunch of additional abstractions that make it useful, which could well include GLIBC, X11, GNOME, KDE, and such.

I prefer to live in the "realm of ambiguity:"

• I would consider MS-DOS to be, while rather sparse in functionality, providing little more than a CP/M program loader, along with a userspace defined by COMMAND.COM , ANSI.SYS and some other .SYS file whose name escapes me, to indeed be an "operating system."

  It is a minimal OS, to be sure; note that you need the program loader, terminal controller, and ( whatever the INIT equivalent is) to have some semblance of a functioning system.

• I'm not sure where to draw the line with Linux.
• Someone using Linux to build embedded systems might stop the line very shortly past init by implementing a custom userspace.
• Someone using Linux to deploy Internet "WebSurfing" Kiosks might consider the "OS" part of the system to include everything below a surface loosely defined by X11; the "application" side being the JavaScript and Java stuff that people might run atop Mozilla.
• On that "kiosk," if they used cfengine to clean up the system configuration every time a new user logs on, there's some ambiguity as to whether:
  • The "operating system" includes cfengine, or
  • The "operating system" includes cfengine plus the scripts used to clean up "system" stuff.

The author of the magazine article in question obviously holds to a dogma that includes some portion of the "GUI" as part of the "operating system."

I would contend that in a heterogeneous world with computer systems used for different things, there's not a good straight answer to this.

he's right - UNIX is not an OS. neither's Mac OS X

[abde]

but then, according to his definition, neither is Mac OS. :) Mac OS too is just a "kernel". Hell, MAcOS X is just a kernel on top of a kernel on top of a kernel.. :

• Cocoa. This is a layer on which business applications run. ie, a kernel.
• Carbon. A software laye to run Mac OS apps better - ie, a kernel.
• Classic. a "environment" used to run legacy Mac applications - ie, a kernel.
• Aqua. a library for look and feel, to allow applications to run with a shared style interface, ie a visual GUI kernel.
• QuickTime. He claims QuickTime is a "service" and not an application - therefore, other applications will use it as an embedded unit - therefore, its a media kernel.

He's very proud of the "Utilities, applications and tools, including an e-mail package" which will supposedly help make users "productive", but what about the web browser? office suite? graphics program? Oops, sorry - Adobe, Microsoft, etc make those. So when you buy Mac OS X for business or for graphic art work you aren't productive right out of the box either. at least the unix versions are free.

if you want to get REALLY pedantic, define an Operating System as that which makes the System Operate. I'd define that as the hardware, software, and the user! I TOO AM THE OS.

he's right. By HIS definition, UNIX is not an OS. of course his definitions are double-edged swords - Mac OS X isn;t much of an OS either.

Re:No OS for Big Iron ?

[finkployd]

They are going to have to rename OS/390 now (actually they did, to zOS, but that is a different rant altogether)

Finkployd

Re:GUI This!

[Parity]

So embedded systems don't have OSs?
Generally, no. At least, they didn't used to. What the hell does a microwave oven need an operating system for?

Hunh? No, actually, almost all embedded systems have an OS, for exactly the same reason as any other computer having an OS - a centralized resource manager. Granted, in many cases, embedded OSes look more like DOS than *nix, which is to say, a handful of interrupt handlers and some startup/initialization code, but it depends. Remember that the UI for a microwave is only a tiny fraction of the code - there's also code to turn on the fan, optionally turn the rotary tray, modulate power to the microwave heating system, monitor the ambient temperature and/or thermometer for 'autosense' cooking, etc. It might well be sensible to put a multithreading OS inside a microwave so that your UI is a separate component from your systems controls, and if your UI gets screwed up your systems controls still shut the power off when they detect an erroneous condition and don't microwave the hapless user or burn out the microwave...

Note that embedded operating systems may well look like a single process, or a single process with multiple-threading... if you wanted to get semantical, you could argue that products sold as embedded operating systems are really 'template applications' and not operating systems at all, but then, the embedded world is just backwards that way. A better way of looking at it, is that the simplest embedded operating systems are modified by adding functional code directly to the kernel rather than having a separate application. (More complex embedded OSes have a tendency to look like unix plus or minus some system services... but those are more likely to go into factory control than a microwave... )
--Parity

Re: Nader is a Communist

[pturing]

Here we go again
"My OS is better than yours"
"Mine is the only real text editor"
"Your mother is a communist"
"phurst poastttttt"

Communism is not inherently evil
Do not use the word as such
Its just been done very badly historically
Democracy has never fared well historically either
(and I hope you'll pass over the fact that I'm comparing a Political system to an Economic system)
but everyone here lives in their little "my government is omnibenevolent" world

back to the subject at hand:
I agree. Unix is not an OS.
Unix is a group of Operating Systems.
Solaris, Tru64, AIX, OpenBSD, NeXTStep,
these and many others are all Unixen.

If you'll excuse me now, I have to go
assemble my NeXT Station

Haven't I seen this before?

[NecroPuppy]

Last time I saw this kinda thing, it was the same arguements - that Unix wasn't an OS because it wasn't bloated all to hell with stuff that I consider optional in a computer, but that he considers mandatory.

Of course, that's not saying that I'm right either. Stuff I consider mandatory in an OS may be optional as far as other are concerned. After all, as one of the graphics freaks, I think CMYK and Pantone support should be part of the base system, but others would disagree.

An OS is, and should be, what a computer needs to work. It doesn't need Internet support, so that isn't part of an OS. Sure, it's nice, and most people are going to add it right away, but it's hardly necessary. Whereas memory management, device handling (drives, vidio, printers), etc, are required.

Missing the point

[znu]

Is Solaris an OS? Yes. Is Mac OS X an OS? Yes. Is FreeBSD an OS? Yes. Is Linux an OS? Yes.

Is Unix an OS? This is like asking 'Is the x86 hardware architecture a computer?' No. It's a standard that defines functionality.

--

Definition of OS

[fist]

It seems as though the author believes that he can make up the definition of OS to suit his needs. I could make the claim that MacOS X is not an OS because it doesn't contain a Word Processor and Spreadsheet. According the the author I could say this because my definition of an OS is different than the real definition.

Wonderfully PC

[marcop]

Every's reflections are indicative of the confusion Mac and Windows specialists must feel as they survey the changing state of the industry.

That's got to be the most PC way of calling someone an idiot that I have ever heard.

Not an OS?

[karma_policeman]

A kernel provides three primary capabilities:

Messaging, a set of routines to help applications (processes) or parts of applications (threads) talk to each other;

Scheduler, to give the many applications (or parts of applications) some processing time to get work done;

Memory management, so that applications have an area in memory in which to run, protected from other applications' bugs that might affect them.

There are supporting elements on top of the kernel, such as drivers to help programmers talk to hardware, libraries to provide extra code functionality, and a set of commands (a shell) to enable users to tell applications or the OS what to do. But almost everything else outside the Unix kernel is considered a utility or something extra, not part of the core OS.

That makes Unix sound an awful lot like an OS to me. The author's main argument seems to be that since unix doesn't come with a standard GUI, it isn't an OS. This is so unbelievably wrong it isn't even funny.

Hairsplitting

[Deskpoet]

This is truly a non-issue.

It's like arguing that cars minted after the first four-wheelers are not horseless carriages.

They are, and it doesn't matter. We still use them.

Stupid definitions.

[pb]

Okay, never mind; it's time to flame the writer.

Unix is no longer an operating system. An operating system is the software that comes with a computer (or OS distribution) that programmers and users need to make themselves productive.

Wow, what a subjective definition! That means that my computer has no operating system, and most people I know don't have an operating system either, at least until they figure out how to use their computers...

Firstly, I *bought* my computer without an operating system; it had a BIOS and some blank hard drives. I did a network install of Linux, and I'm using it now to write this post. Incidentally, yes, Netscape Communicator was included in that network install. However, this isn't an operating system because, guess what, it didn't "come with my computer". Oh well, I guess I'll just have to surf the web without an OS.

But wait, it gets better! If I run Windows on this machine, it isn't an OS for *TWO* reasons; not only did it not come with my computer, but it also doesn't contain the productivity software I need! I mean, really, where's my C compiler? That goes double for MacOS; WHERE'S MY COMMAND PROMPT???

Therefore, by this argument, I'd consider a pre-installed Unix box the ONLY Operating System out there, at least for me. Now that I know that the definition is so subjective. I'm assuming that these boxes must be pre-installed at the factory or something, and must have the C compilers, word processors, etc., etc., all bundled in, because of course you couldn't install software LATER. That's just too hard...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

User OS vs. System OS.

[PenguinX]

Often times we hear the term "modern OS". Generally this implies some sort of windowing GUI that has N amount of applications etc. etc. It has long been my idea that this term was dreamed up by some slightly FUD oriented marketing boob to scare people away from the command line - or thinking that anything that deals directly with hardware is an "OS". All I do is examine those two letters "operating system". This term doesn't leave any room for a user part, nor does it give any context of what sort of interface that the user should have. The only thing it implies is that the software must operate. UNIX fills this void. Most "modern" OSes are no more modern than UNIX at the base - in fact they are usually so archaic under the hood that nothing can be "real" in the OS. Everything must be virtual - take windows for instance. Virtual drivers, virtual memory, virtual Bob - it's silly.

So yes, Unix is still an operating system.

Re:Misc. Mac/Marketing comments.

[IntlHarvester]

Marketing != Advertising .

True. But advertising is part of marketing, and the only part most of us see. So it's hard for me to cite examples of other aspects of marketing.

This distinction is important, and is often lost on people. I got involved in some flamage over IBM's handling of OS/2. (The perception among OS/2 users is that IBM didn't "market" the product, but the fact is OS/2 was the product of a shrewd, well-thought-out, and enormously expensive marketing plan that happened to fail due to events largely outside of IBM's control.) So, when people say that Apple's marketing was bad, they often meant that the commercials, but Apple's real marketing activities were horrible. Just as some examples:

+ The original Mac was supposed to be a $1200 "computer for the rest of us" Toaster (or a icon against totalitarian computing, depending). After QuickDraw and bitmapped graphics brought out some innovative applicaitons (the ease of use was less of a factor), Apple was selling Macs for $5000 to $10,000 to professionals within 3 years.

+ In the late 80s, they told their customers "Apple // forever!" and positioned the Mac as a high-end product. End result: Millions of dollars spent putting a GUI, networking, and HyperCard onto the //gs, Millions of customers (mainly schools -- Apple's strongest base at the time) were screwed when they went with a low-end Mac strategy in the early 90s.

+ In the early 90s, Apple spent millions of dollars trying to sell Macs to large corporations. Meanwhile, they forgot the basics like making Mac file/print-sharing compatible with Novell and Microsoft. End result: Far less Macs in large corporations now than in the late 80s.

+ In the mid 90s, Apple introduced dozens of nearly identical models in addition to licencing the OS to others to produce hundreds of other models. End result: Customers are bewildered, nobody knows if a 300Mhz 603e is faster or slower than a 200Mhz 604, and Apple Marketing can't even explain to Steve Jobs why somebody would want a 7600 over a 6500 over a 4400.

Apple marketing fixed itself mainly by cutting the number of models to a very small number, focusing on individual and educational sales, and getting the price in the same range as the compeition. The goofy cases and Think Different adverts were just the icing on the cake.

--

MacOS X sees Linux as direct competition.

[Cyclops]

At least this is what it seemed to me. The author mentions quite a few times characteristics that have been, or only have been, associated with the Mac, as for example, streaming video. I think he mentions it twice, and always as quicktime. No RealMedia, which is supported in linux.

All the article had a "MacOS X is a better OS because it has a GUI and many applications".
Well...

• Linux has MANY GUI's to satisfy user choice, MacOS only has what used to be called The Finder. Besides, I just bet that MacOS X may be run without gui... with a hack or two, probably. Is it less of an OS?
• Linux HAS applications, surely many have been in development, but many more are coming to linux, and yet more will come up, as linux raises in popularity.
• MacOS is good. Windows also (although terrible) but has a browser and applications, and browsers are an essential part of the experience of an OS. Well, Linux has text based browsers... and this seemed to me like the final argument that showed the bias in the artical towards MacOS X. There is only one good OS, MacOS, and the rest is crap.

Maybe it's the fact that Linux is probably growing faster that MacOS is...

Oh, and another thing

[mrbuckles]

David Every's next article posits that what we call monitors really aren't.

"In the old days, monitors were simply devices for displaying text, images, etc. to us. That defnition has gradually fallen by the wayside. Nowadays, a monitor is that, plus a few post-it notes, a picture of your significant other, an optional troll doll and at least 4 toys that are important to you. Most models also come with one or two fortunes from a chinese restaurant."

This is seriously ironic

[fm6]

Anybody who knows the history of Unix knows that the minimalist approach is deliberate. OSs used to put everything in the kernel: ISAM support, command interpreters, even applications. Unix showed that it was better to break everything down into specialized modules, so that most services ended up in application-level code. (I'm not certain, but I think the word "kernel" was coined to describe this distinction. Before Unix, everything was "The OS.") The power of this approach is shown in all modern OSs, but especially in Linux, where the kernel hackers can diddle around without stepping on the toes of all the GNU software hackers -- themselves divided into various groups that can change their own software without necessarily breaking somebody elses. Indeed, Linux would be impossible without this approach.

This "not a real OS" is hardly suprising from a Mac diehard. How many developers have looked at the gigantic MacOS API and fled in terror? There are many reasons for the decline of the Mac (proprietary hardware, bad marketing) but the tendency to think that the OS has to do everything is my personal favorite.

__________

My Os

[Icky]

An operating system is the software that comes with a computer (or OS distribution) that programmers and users need to make themselves productive

Just goes to show that emacs truly is an OS...

Normally I respect Every...

[Crash Culligan]

Before job conditions forced him to more or less abandon his personal site, I went to it daily to see what bits of wisdom he'd cough up. Often he made sense, sometimes he was merely entertaining. Sometimes scathing (It should be pointed out before you click away that he's a staunch Mac-user; devout /.ers will probably feel the urge to vomit).

In this case, I fear he's trying to squash bugs so small as to be theological.

The fundamental question in this whole debate is, "Where does the operating system end and the user interface begin?" or "How much of the UI can you scrape off before the OS underneath becomes useless or breaks?"

Microsoft's assertion all through its monopoly trial was that anything that made changes to the operating system (or DLLs that it relied upon) BECAME part of the operating system, or as they called it, 'integration.' I can see the reasoning behind it, but I don't necessarily agree with it. (The ham sandwich is a different matter -- can InstallShield remove mayonnaise?)

I can also see the reasoning behind Every's statement, though I can't quite agree with it. An OS without any sort of interoperability ceases to be the central authority of the computer and instead becomes 'that thing what makes the disk go around.' You might as well shut off at that point, because the system isn't going to do anything but make whirry noises.

The line between OS and the cruft that makes it more like a 'computer' is somewhere in the middle, and depending on how you like your semantics, it could end up being anywhere in the middle. It could include file-copying services, file browsers, multimedia services, or not.

The question much on my mind now is, "Is this really important??" The answer I come up with is "No!" , but obviously others feel it's worth arguing. I'm a little stunned that Every said it because of the wiggly nature of the argument. But then Joe Casad just had to respond, and I expect there will be much Mac-bashing before this thread is expired.

Sigh.

---

Defining Definition

[RhetoricalQuestion]

In mathematics, once something is defined, that definition holds until someone can prove that something is fundamentally wrong with the assumptions on which the definition is based. (Or until the end of time, which ever is sooner.) For example, a graph has the specific definition of a set of nodes and edges. (Don't remember the exact wording.)

In language, once something is defined, that definition may change based on how people use it. Change takes place very slowly, but it occurs. The only example of this that I can think of at the moment is vagina, which was originally a slang term literally meaning the sheath of a sword -- the proper name for that part was c*nt. Obviously, this has completely changed.

Computer Science falls into a weird place. CS was originally a branch of mathematics (the study of algorithms) -- remember that it existed before computing machines. The programming part came later. Now it's possible to "do computers" without doing math. There's still a historical relationship to math, but most modern computing is less about math and more about business.

So the question here is whether we're looking for a mathematical definition of an OS, or a linguistic (contextual) definition of an OS. Mathematically, Unix is an OS -- it's a layer of abstraction between the base hardware and the applications that run on the hardware. (There's probably more to the definition than that.) Linguistically, I would argue that most people expect an OS to be more than that. You sit someone down in front of a Unix console, they'll look for icons.

Perhaps the mathematical level of abstraction has be become too much of an integral part of computing. As far as most people are concerned, the OS *is* the computer -- hardware doesn't mean as much any more.

No OS for Big Iron ?

[redelm]

Well, if *IX isn't an OS, then none of IBM's Big Iron has ever had an OS. Ditto for for Univac, Burroughs, Cray, etc.

Right on

[heikkile]

Unix is not an OS. It is just a pile of drivers etc for the *real* OS: Emacs!