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A Glimpse At Apple's New Core
Coolvibe writes: "Apple has updated their Mac OS X page. There's screenshots of the final version there. I myself am still running the Public Beta and the stuff that's shown there is just a *tad* different than what I am using right now :) For instance, the dock now has a context menu, as shown here." And speaking of Apple's core, Justin0407 directs your attention to this NYTime article on Steve Jobs, in which "Jobs gives us his insight on how he's going to save Apple and try and keep it afloat. Building on other's ideas of a PC or Mac being the 'hub' for all digital appliances, Jobs says Apple will embrace this concept."
What my unix box needs now is a nicer rendering engine. We'll see where XFree86 takes us!
-bugg
All right on wincent.org they show the vertical dock, from the build at macworld. Apparently, it's now a defaults option. That is, orientation right, and pinned.
Pretty darn cool. Remind's me of the old next bar. I'll probably choose this option over the centered dock, and Desktop icons.
This appears to be a phenomenal product. I am seriously considering ditching my windows and linux boxes both and moving to a Mac once this hits the shelves.
Its just seems that OSX is where Gnome and KDE want to get to, but will probably never arrive. While I believe in these open-source efforts, I can't be bothered to wait around for them anymore.
also, has anyone yet said that they'd love to use apple hardware but they think its so much more expensive?
This is a market in which Microsoft and it's primary competitor Symbian are going after, and to many it would appear to be the future of computing.
The funny thing is, it took a long time for the Newton division to turn a profit. And shortly after it did, Steve killed it.
One of Steve's character flaws seems to be that he is willing to let personal feelings interfere with business decisions. Newton was a pet project of John Sculley, his old adversary, so the general consensus is that he wanted to eradicate any legacy Sculley left behind.
Steve also killed the Claris software division, which I believe was also started by Sculley. Claris had been very profitable during its run. If one of the main criticisms of your platform is that you don't have enough software apps, does it make sense to kill off a profitable software division? Of course not. Now we see, though, that Steve is interested in building more killer apps in-house. What a novel idea (glad he thought of it!).
Apple needs Claris again, if for no other reason than to have a major software publisher that is keenly interested in Mac-only and Mac-first software titles. Could it be any more plain how Microsoft has built a fortune from acquisitions and publishing? Apple has much to learn. I've said this before, just imagine if Apple had acquired Bungie instead of Microsoft and released Halo on the Mac a couple of months ahead of other platforms...it would have had a big impact.
And speaking of games, no tier-one game publisher is interested in releasing Mac-first titles. Until the Mac starts getting tier-one Mac-first and Mac-only games on a regular basis, gamers will always scoff at the Mac. Claris was in a perfect position to make that happen for Apple.
Steve has done a tremendous job since his return, but of all the cutbacks he made, those are the two that gripe me the most. Steve needs to learn how to swallow that massive ego of his when it's in the best interest of the platform.
Those screenshots aren't necessarily from "the final version"--OS X hasn't even gone gold master yet. They're just from the version Steve Jobs showed off at MacWorld.
You forgot the required slam about the one-button mouse in the article listing.
How did that old ad from Macintosh go? $>CNGRTLNS.MCX!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
IIRC, this conract expired on 1st Jan 2001. I think it was being considered that the mozilla timetable would allow N6 final to be released in time for it to be the new heart of AOL.
ISTR, based on reading (a year or so ago) the findings of fact in the MS case, that AOL is locked into a contract that obliges them to maintain IE as their browser for a span several years. That term might be up in a year or two, but in any event I think they're bound to it at the moment. In that light whether or not IE is better or worse than Mozilla isn't really relevant...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
If the Bells & Whistles are W3C standards, and work in Mac IE and Windows IE, but Netscape doesn't support the standard, is it rude of the web site to utilize them? We had this question with my corporate site.
Alex
I agree. Really, who, except Linux users really care? This may seem like a flamebait but seriously, I'd say 99% of Windows users don't even KNOW what open source is, much less would they care if the source was open or not. I'm a software engineer and I sure as hell have better things to do with my time than look at 50 megs of browser and OS source code after work.
It runs exclusively on Windows and Mac, and the Mac version (and the rare non-x86 Windows versions)
Windows, Mac, HP-UX and Solaris, if memory serves. And even if we forget the UNIX versions, which might have dubious quality, that still covers some 95+% of all computers in the world.. "exclusively" is a little misleading when only a marginal amount of hardcore, impossible to please open source fans are "left out" (that would choose NOT to run the browser anyway, even if it was available for their platform).
are not often compatable with IE specific content because IE specific content usually relies on x86 ActiveX
What?! That's complete rubbish. Hardly any sites use ActiveX. I use IE (except when I'm trying out Mozilla builds) and I have it set to warn me about ActiveX and I don't remember that I would EVER have come across a site that uses ActiveX! If you're going to diss a browser and you are using 3 points to do this, you could at least come up with something remotely based on reality. That was just a plain lie.
It extends the HTML standard encouraging authors to use this to the detriment of compatability with other content.
HTML? Not really, except MARQUEE (sp?) maybe, but then Netscape has BLINK and Lynx lacks support for 90% of HTML so that's not really the big problem you're making it out to be. What is a little more worrying is the document object model and CSS support, which just plain sucks on *EVERY* single browser including Mozilla and even the latest Opera version. Even in CSS, the support IE has is the best, IMHO, but you are right in that a little too much "innovation" has been made in this area. However, given the current state of CSS support and scripting standardization in general, I think it's a little unfair to single Microsoft out. At least they have the best CSS support out there right now. If you're so desperate to boycot a browser, go after Netscape Communicator 4.x and start hacking on Mozilla.
Actually, it seems that there is a Solaris version, and possibly HP-UX as well. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp and view products for Solaris &/or HP-UX. I see version 5 editions of IE & Outlook Express for both operating systems.
So, the question from there is will a binary executable for one of those run on Linux, or is WINE emulation a more productive route to try?
As for the ActiveX stuff, yeah, that's bullshit. But just don't use it & you're mostly okay (as a user, disable it and as a developer, avoid it). IE really is a good browser, especially the 5.0 version on Mac, which renders pages beautifully and seems pretty standards-friendly to me (decent CSS & XML support, etc). Mozilla is a hog, and while I'd love to see it do well, I just can't afford to let it have all my ram & disc space, only to crash all the time & have an ugly interface besides. I'm terribly disappointed in it. IE, I reluctantly have to say, is just plain better, and it's probably more available than you realize.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
the Mac OsX server product has been quietly updated to encompass just these kinds of intranet / extranet LAN/WAN serving.
it'll be the same as the desktop product, except with the apps for more server oriented things included in the box.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Does your platform support the latest browser technology? (read: does your platform support IE?)
Does your platform support the most popular user-applications?
Granted, there are many applications that are available for AIX that are not available for OSX, but these are in extremely vertical markets (where AIX should prosper anyway - it is not meant as a consumer product).
I seem to remeber Apple using telnet for remote admin on MOSX but in the apache screenshot it says SSH. Have they switched??
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Uninstalling IE just became easier :)
(Yes, I use OmniWeb on MacOSX PB for my Webbrowsing)
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That doesn't mean it should have to wipe your ass for you. The desktop was designed to be a place to begin access to the filesystem and maybe hold shortcuts to frequently used apps. It is incredibly sloppy to use it to store your personal files. Computers should work for you, but you have to use them as they were intended, just as you can't expect a manual transmission to shift for you just because it should "work for you."
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
As it stands, BeOS itself had a rather crude interface and zilch support for modern useful software like...browsers and word processors.
I have no idea what the *native* Mac OS X APIs are like but the Carbon APIs are not derivatives of NextStep, they are just cleaned-up Mac APIs without all the legacy cruft.
The big pimp Microsoft keeps the old Mac ho alive with a weak, but steady stream of addictive crack applications. Without the pimp's apps, the old ho will die. The new Be ho (like the Netscape ho. remember her?) tried to bitch slap the pimp. BIG MISTAKE! Da pimp withheld his crack apps.
This is real.
cpeterso
I've been trying to gauge the reaction of fellow mac users to the idea of creating a mac-like fork of GNOME, with all of the mac keyboard shortcuts, menu selections, dialog buttons where they should be, global menubar, etc. A lot of mac users are going to find to GNOME no better than the wintel UI ('cause it basically *is* the Wintel UI), and I think the computing public should not be exposed to another ten years of M$ GUI design mistakes, even if the people repeating them (GNOME) does really have the best of intentions.
If I developed this beast, would you (or anyone else reading this post) be inclined to choose it over the existing GNOME?
Knowing Apple, they'll come up with some way to gloss segvs over; you also have to take into account that, by all accounts, Quartz is loads more stable than X. :)
BTW, that debug screen is the MicroBug in-ROM debugger; there's an Apple technote related to it that I can't remember the link to right now. It's intended mostly for doing debugging with two machines, one with MacsBug (a much higher-level debugger), and one with your app running, stopped by MicroBug. Some commands in it are:
g (address)- exits debugger, continues execution at current address, or at the specified address
dm address - dump memory contents at address
sm address value - set the contents of memory at address to value
Don't remember the rest off the top of my head - the most I ever have used it for is impressing and/or scaring tech-illiterate people at my former Mac-heavy school.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Do you trust MS enough to let them know your entire purchasing history?
No, but I don't have much evidence that M$ is stealing my purchasing history.
I haven't seen any security advisories about M$ stealing user data, and IMO, they don't have to.
They are a monopoly, so they don't need to make bits of cash on the side selling demographics.
To be completely honest with you, I trust M$ more than AOL.
Keep in mind the source for Netscape is NOT open, only the source for Mozilla, which is a different product.
I'm a lot more concerned with things like RealPlayer, which have proven security/privacy holes.
You can see there isn't a "report https accesses" module.
Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
Network traffic analysis may not be built in, but it is readily available.
There's no denying M$ is evil, but AOL is just as, if not more so, and Mozilla is still a ways from being done.
--K
Gotta go, I think some black helicopters just flew over.
Why do people hate Internet Explorer have you used it lately?! It's awesome, it's quick to load, less of a resource hog than some other browsers and dosent choke on pages with complex tables ie that giant jerky re-render when you scroll down. It's just plain better than anything out currently so stop your Mozilla Netscape Nazi-ing and just giving that microsoft won the battle of the browsers.
Apple has always tried to embody quality and their choice to use IE is a good one would you rather see netscape 6? Dont even get me started on Netscape 6, AOL owns netscape? They STILL use IE in AOL not that I use or endorse either but it just goes to show you that netscape hasnt been good since 3.x and the continued development of netscape is like some houseguest that wont go home, it was nice when it showed up but now it's just anoying.
"Where are my files? Where are my aliases? Where is my underwear?" It still amazes me that people think you have to be some kind of computer genius to understand "system files go here, applications go there, documents go here or with the application" and refuse to learn those things after a decade of working with computers. I mean, do they go calling the office manager looking for the stapler because there isn't a note taped on top of the desk telling which drawer it's in? But they have no problem calling tech support and spending half the day screaming that they can't work because some desktop alias to their favorite application got trashed. I guess some of it is age of first exposure to computers, but it's much more fun to pretend that it's all stupidity.
I support about 30-40 users and I've found a good cure for people putting their stuff on the desktop. When I give new users their computer orientation (how to access the file server, which printers to use, etc.) they are all told that they have a "Documents" folder/directory and they must put all their documents in that folder or sub folders or it will not be backed up. Several users choose to ignore this, and I remind them every time they have a problem with their computer and I go to thier office to fix it and see the desktop just packed with documents. I live for the day when something bad happens and they ask me to restore the files. I'll simply tell that that I would be able to do just that, if they had followed the directions I gave them several times. Then I'll just do my best BOFH laugh and leave the room.
A Mac OS X version of Office doesn't really make versions for other Unices more likely. The version Microsoft will release in Autumn will be OS X native, but via the Carbon API. For those of you who haven't been keeping up, Carbon is a new version of the "Classic" Mac OS API and MS will not have to rewrite Office from scratch in order to make it OS X native.
So the chances of MS releasing Office for Unix remain slim, unless Carbon becomes available on other Unices. I would say that the chances of this are even slimmer.
However, perhaps there is a project I'm not aware of to implement the Carbon API on Unix? It strikes me as a prohibitively complex task.
Well, I suppose it depends on how you interpret that. Everything I've read about this so far indicates that the new version will be Carbon. "Written specifically for OS X" does not necessarily mean developed in Cocoa.
This article at MacWeek seems pretty confident that what will be released is a Carbonised version of Office.
Wait a minute. I am.
poor widdle me.
When Quartz and/or Aqua crashes (*if* they crash, it only happened once to me), you end up in the console. When the kernel panics (only happened once with me), you end up in the kernel debugger. I don't know if that will change in the final version though.
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Don't trust anything that keeps you from looking inside.
;) from security analysts lately,
:-) Just because you have lots of money already and are a monopoly doesn't stop you from getting even more greedy.
:)
Definately. But IE has been getting a lot of 'attention'
and I have yet to see any evidence of covert data collection. I consider it relatively safe and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks at this time.
>Ever heard of a packet sniffer? Or a personal firewall?
The difference here is that you choose to put (and setup) these on your machines. If you decide you want to log certain transfers, so be it. At least you got the choice.
If your ISP is doing it, well, that's no good. I'd get the heck away from them and get on a real ISP that respects your privacy.
Agreed.
I am in NO way saying covert logging is acceptable.
I was stating that you don't NEED something to be open to see if it's sending out covert packets, you can use any common network tools to check.
Hell, I think I'd rather check open products with the packet sniffer than reading the code....
Certainly takes less time than wading through 10k lines of network code looking for evil write()s.
(And if you ever HAVE looked at Mozilla code, you'll know what I mean...)
Having the source does make it easier to PROVE there is a problem tho.
Three words: Bell Phone Book.
True, although I see service providers tend to be more insidious than companies that ship actual products (even if those products are intangible).
This is part of the reason I find AOL to be scarier than M$.
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
Oh, they haven't stopped with this yet. They're trying to get a similar anti-'piracy' 'feature' into Whistler.
BUT, this thread isn't about Windoze OS, it's about IE, and more specifically, Mac IE.
M$ is evil and controlling - we already know this.
And lets not forget the NSA key.
The NSA Key is probably not:
Here's what Schneier has to say about it.
While Microsoft is better than AOL, it's sort of like comparing being stamped on by an elephant and mauled by a bear. They both suck.
Very true, but just because a company puts out turds 98% of the time doesn't mean they CAN'T put out an acceptable, even useful, product.
I'm actually using Mozilla 0.7 right now. It's great. It feels like Netscape 4 (which was easy to use, when it worked), and is really fast. Plus it renders HTML quite well.
Mozilla isn't bad. It's getting there, but I still like IE better for daily browsing.
Maybe in three months it'll be good enough for daily use.
Konqueror, on the other hand, is prolly the best one for freenixes right now.
Just a sidenote: Any particular reason why your website just forwards you to slashdot? Just wondering...
Just a bit of satirical commentary about blind linux and open source zealotry.
The attitude of 'Linux is the be-all end-all One True OS for Every Purpose' just grates after a while.
My real site will be here.
(No, it's not a redirect to goatse.cx, either.)
--K
AOL, however, just plain scares me with their marketing tactics. Not only do they nail you with advertising while on their service (my family had an AOL account from 1995-2000 -- I jumped ship but my little sister wanted to stay on), they even nail you after you leave!
I remember canceling the AOL account over the phone (after several insistent "no I do not want to stay on"'s. Then they said "OK, sir. Sorry for your cancellation. Now here's a special message" and they pitched their long distance plan.
What company uses these kind of tactics. It's sorta sick how newbies get roped into this shit.
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-Be a man. Insult me without using an AC.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
What's more, these UI changes are discussed in much greater detail at Wincent.org
This is a hands-on review of the build which was demonstrated at MacWorld. Some of the key points are:
Plus lots of other stuff.
It looks like you're mixing version numbers. OS X is a variation of BSD 4.4 Lite on a heavily modified Mach 3 kernel.
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If they had kept on plodding with newton, not only would they be ahead of game with the likes of Palm, but since their Newton OS was that much more beefier that the Palm it could have been the platform of choice for the wireless information device market.
This is a market in which Microsoft and it's primary competitor Symbian are going after, and to many it would appear to be the future of computing.
Had they kept on going the likes of Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia might have well been more interested in Apples product than Psions. Then they would not have to worry about making up silly visions of how they want the market to be, and instead deliver what the market wants.
This is not to say that I think the PC is dead, just that the broad appeal of having easy access to all your necessary information while on the move is a big draw to the general populace. The geeks will still of course prefer their fat pipes, multiple desktops and the raw power that their PCs provide as well as minimal exposure to sunlight. Although most likely they will still not want a Mac. Oh well...bye bye Apple.
I'm sorry if change frightens you, but without it, we'd still have nothing but CLIs (not that a good CLI is bad :) ). The thing is, you have to make a huge jump forward every now or then or nothing will ever really happen.
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"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
You are correct that you may not *need* to partition, but I personally would recommend it, or at least have 2 OS 9 system folders. OS X puts some stuff in your OS 9 system folder which can (in the PB) cause conflicts when running in OS 9.
Not to mention the fact that OSX re-arranges the hierarchy of everything, including where your system folder is, and this confuses the HELL out of some apps when you are in OS9. If you compound it with Multiple Users you'll find that it gets worse.
The best sceme, as others have said, seems to be 2 partitions with OS9 on both, so OSX doesn't mess with your OS9 boot environment.
I too am another chronic desktop abuser. I know that sometimes my desktop gets too messy, but that's because the computer is there to help me get my work done, and it's my tool to use in the most optimal fasion for how I work.
.) and your favorite files take several minutes to find, drilling down into the hierarchy, you want quick access to them, but maybe you can't remember if it's Redheads\Fetishes\Peeing\OnCelery, or Teenager\Fetishes\Peeing\OnCelery or Lesbians\Fetishes\Peeing\OnCelery (which raises another issue about file-systems, in some cases, a relational way of organizing would help) - and by the time you've explored the other possibilities, you're too distracted, and you forget what you were looking for in the first place. Desktop shortcuts are great for that kind of thing.
v ), and your GUI gets sluggish, so drilling down through all of these directories gets to be a pain.
While I know and understand that data needs to be put away into folders, there sometimes isn't a happy medium between a well-sorted and organized hierarchy, and timeliness of access. That is, when you derive a system for organizing your data, (for example: pr0n: \Redheds, \Lesbians, \Blowjobs, \Threesomes, \Blonds, \Asians, \TrailerPark etc.) sometimes you develop some convolutedly deep structures, especially if your interests and projects are very broad and diverse (pr0n\Redheads\Fetish\Peeing\OnCelery\. .
Also, sometimes, your system may be doing some crunching in the background (TraciLords\Fetishes\Peeing\OnCelery\TraciPee5.mo
If you go through a period where your "work"load is high, and you don't have time to get rid of obsolete or lesser used links on your desktop, it starts to impede workflow.
This is what COMPUTERS are for - the flexibility of features. People can organize data that is not only more appropriate for how they work, but also how they think. For some users, this even changes from day to day - thank God the computers allow for that flexibility. To sit up there in your ivory tower of Computer Science and tell a user how they "should" and "shouldn't" use a tool, is kind of \pr0n\Redheads\Fetishes\Anal.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You are correct that you may not *need* to partition, but I personally would recommend it, or at least have 2 OS 9 system folders. OS X puts some stuff in your OS 9 system folder which can (in the PB) cause conflicts when running in OS 9.
My personal recommendation is to install OS X on a separate partition, and then install a basic install of the OS 9 system folder on the same partition to be used for the Classic environment. Then you can remove the redundant extensions (Quicktime, Open Transport, etc) and copy over any needed extensions from your main OS 9 system folder.
This has the advantage of keeping your main OS 9 folder untouched by OS X. It also has the advantage of speeding up the boot time and lessening the overhead of the classic environment of OS X because you have removed many extensions that it will try to load but don't work anyway.
This is a little safer than blindly allowing OS X to do what it pleases to your OS 9 system folder.
Anyway, this is how I have been handling classic in the PB. Also, it has allowed me to keep using the classic environment (OS 9.0.4) while upgrading my main system to OS 9.1.
out.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
With the migration to BSD, there's gonna be a whole lot of segfaults. This raises another question: in Linux, when X segfaults, it bumps back to text mode and displays, "Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped." But what will OSX fall back to? That debug screen that you get when you press that button next to the reset button? I've pressed that button, and the only way I've gotten out of debug mode is to restart the whole damn thing.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Also the great people at OmniWeb ported Q3A to Mac OS X. Here it is. This port is a 20% improvement over the MacOS 9 port. I love it! Enjoy.
Trust the source!
Well, we know of the rumors. Yes, they're rumors- but Bill and Co's not stupid. Careless, sloppy, and arrogant they are- stupid they are not (consider that they've basically hoodwinked the world's populace into buying their barely functional eye-candy apps...).
However, having said this, while MacOS X happens to have Mach/BSD, the programming API's all Apple's doing and abstracts away most of the underlying OS. Succinctly put, in order for this to make fruit for MS on the Linux front, they'd need to license and make a version of the MacOS X layer for Linux or make GNUStep fill in the holes between it and the MacOS X developer API. Not likely to happen unless MS is desperate and hurting BADLY.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I have yet to find a productivity application that doesn't work well: CyberStudio, CodeWarrior (although version 6 is a Carbon app, and runs native in OS X), Word, Excel, even most games run well. The only apps which don't work are those that need direct hardware access.
You actually DO need to run a full OS 9, though, since there are many APIs which are not supported in Carbon/OS X. Those APIs are the main difference between Classic and Carbon apps.
Russell
Nope. Explain why "sysctl kern.symfile" would print "kern.symfile = \mach.sym" on a non-MACH kernel?
Besides the IP stack has a lot of anoying little problems not in FreeBSD that I remember from the NeXT. Like needing the arp cache cleared once in a while. Oh, and a very mach like "top" (which I would post along with a FreeBSD one, but slashdot rejects it as "lame"). The MACH one is reporting a lot more thread info and four memory stats vs two.
I know Apple says a lot about FreeBSD, but they don't quite say they are FreeBSD. They can use FreeBSD device drivers, but that can be done with a shim layer (which is a good idea -- it would be nice if they had one for Linux and NetBSD drivers as well).
It still ain't bad. It is a lot better then OS9, but it isn't as nice as it would be if it were on a modern kernel (like FreeBSD 4.x, or Linux).
you need not partition to boot between MacOS 9 and OS X, matter of fact if you want the best performance from running Classic under OS X you best put them both on the same partition (word to your mother) and as i say, you can easily boot between straight-up OS 9 and OS X...
I still remember the "old days" [not so old, really]. Before MS quit wasting their time going after friends sharing software. The days where Microsoft threatened (and, I believe, implemented in early betas) to include a phone home feature in Chicago that would report a scan of the users hard drive. I don't think I kept the magazines that discussed it (stuff from '94 is just a little out of date).
Har -- In the "old days" Microsoft was one of the most pro-piracy companies around. MS-Office going from a 10% to a 90% marketshare was driven almost purely by give-away copies and casual piracy. The only anti-piracy feature they ever bothered implementing was the licence key, and even then many products had a 1111-11111... back door.
Now, we have the "new days" coming up -- Office is already registration locked for home/small office users, and the next version will require a licence key server for corporate use. OEM CDs are bios-locked now. Whistler will implement a registration scheme like Office, perhaps even for corporate users and servers.
(As for the Chicago Phone Home feature, that actually shipped as the "registration wizard" in W95. It was completely optional and scanned for certain select programs, mostly Microsoft ones but also DOS WordPerfect and Lotus Notes.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'm sure its been posted here before, but can someone update me with what unix apps will be able to run on OSX when its done? I think I remember apache and a few other things being available but what about other main stream apps. Is it just a matter of a recompile or is the BSD part too nonstandard to port to.
Most command line apps should recompile either out of the box, or with a little nudging. Apache comes with the OS, and I believe Fred Sanchez is making sure new builds continue to work. MySQL has built some OSX binaries, but most of them appear to be for the older OSX Server 1.x (Mach 2.5-based, no Aqua). Somebody is working on PostgreSQL.
The X11 apps are a different story because you have to get your hands on a X server first. There are several different efforts/approaches to this. The most seamless is a relatively expensive ($300) commercial product from Tenon. It runs X apps alongside native OSX apps. You can exit to raw Darwin and run something like XFree86, but you cannot run any OSX native GUI apps until you launch back into the window server.
Overall, anything that runs on *BSD should be able to make its way to OSX pretty effortlessly. Some of the remaining kinks should be worked out by the time the shrinkwrapped product hits shelves on March 24, and I'm sure things will continue to evolve via Darwin. Work done on Darwin is routinely synced with the OSX tree and vice-versa.
Also note that the revamped version of Mac OS X Server, which will come up several weeks after March 24, will be based on the same core as consumer OSX. It will add server-specific packages and some very cool GUI tools for things like Apache and IP filters. It comes with PHP, Tomcat, and MySQL preinstalled. WebObjects with an unlimited license is also included (previously, a 50 client connection per minute limit), as is a mail server, ftp server, and samba. The last three have UI interfaces for them.
A have a full write-up of this new version of OSXS2 on my site. It's slick.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Woo, now I've started slagging off the content of the posts. I knew I was being too nice all this time.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Consider this, the old NeXT display postscript and NeXT Step code are still proprietary even though neither technology is currently used by Apple.
I'm not sure they could release the source to DPS, even if they wanted to. They had to pay a licensing fee to Adobe for every copy of an OS that shipped with it. NextStep code as a whole, though, is very much in use at Apple. However, some parts of it have been released, such as NetInfo.
Despite the misleading hype, Apple is still closed source. [...] If one has any illusions that Apple is an Open Source company, one need only to speak to the developers of GNU Step who will greet your query with a hearty laugh. Apple open source? No, don't kid yourself.
Who is this attitude going to help?
This is not a black and white issue. It's multilayered and I think it's likely you need more information before you can make a judgement as to the worth of Apple's efforts.
Apple took a big first step with release a fully-functional Unix-based OS in Darwin. True, many of the components (Mach, BSD, etc.) were already available to the public through various other sources and licenses; but this is the foundation for both Apple's consumer and server operating systems. Why is this significant, you ask? It's significant because Apple's engineers are actively developing and improving the core OS on a daily basis. Any time they do this, you benefit. You don't even have to do anything. You just get free code, and Apple writes the check. And furthermore, this code is released under a license that has already had a few revisions, and pretty much everybody seems to be happy with at this point.
Complaining about Apple not releasing the rest of OSX is pointless. Apple, being a publicly-traded, for-profit company, needs to make money. Its positioning as an easy-to-use platform means it cannot possibly justify basing profits entirely on support (not that this business model is flawless in general), and Apple as another x86 box maker just isn't logical. The reason the company could justify the three year development of Mac OS X to its shareholders is that it knew it would gain it back in hardware and software sales. If there was no profit to be made by selling the product, OSX would simply not exist, and the advancement of all operating systems would be affected accordingly. Like it or not, Apple has been and continues to be a is a major influence in evolution of personal computers. As much as slashdotters slam Apple, it's doing pioneering work in Unix usability. This benefits everyone.
Essentially, you're expecting Apple to sit there and spin straw into gold for you. That's not the goal of open source. It's about give and take. Apple is giving you half the kingdom for free, and you just turn around and demand the other half? This attitude only discourages other companies from participating in open source. If you insist on being inflexible and taking an all-or-nothing standpoint on OS source release, then you're going to end up with a whole heap of nothing. You can't just expect Apple to abandon its current revenue streams all at once. That lacks balance and forethought.
The development of every platform cannot be structured identically to Linux. That's just as bad as everything being based on Windows. To avoid inbreeding, you need a variety of concepts, organizations and even business models in order for software to continue to advance. Apple is doing the best thing it can possibly do for the community while still keeping its product line intact.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
No, they are not using a user mode server. They decided to move that into kernel space to deal with the performance issues. Even without the user mode server, Mach offers a lot of benefits. Try browsing the darwin-development mailing list archives at http://www.darwinfo.org for more info.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
It's a good thing that aliases on the Mac are dynamic. The OS installer moved things around, but all my handy "shortcuts" and installed applications still work fine.
Uhh, JCR - Sherlock is NOT a web browser. It is a search engine that can index and search both local and remote volumes, and also query multiple search engines online simultaneously. Omniweb is just a (extremely good) browser.
And while you may think that Mac OS X will do it all and be the cat's meow today, what about four or give years from now? It will be outdated and stale, lacking new, useful features. Linux and *BSD can and do keep up with the latest OS developments, but Apple will always lag behind.
Read up on your OSX docs, son. You don't have a clue as to what you're talking about:
Mac OS X System Overview PDF.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
As for sitting in my ivory tower of computer science at RPI, should mechanics sit in their ivory towers and tell us how we "should" shift so as not to trash our transmissions?
Though I must agree with the response below about how Win2k handles it much better, and in fact is just far greater in general. In fact, I'm using it to type this...
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
You're missing the point.
Sure you can have a bunch of consumer devices to access and consolidate information, view movies, read books, make phone calls. But you're always the passive observer in these situations. Jobs is saying Apple will sell the products that will allow you to create DVDs, create web sites, compose and mix music etc. One-trick pony devices aren't appropriate for this sort of stuff.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas