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Apple to Include BSD in WWDC
Chris Coleman writes "Apple has just announced their annual World Wide Developer
Conference to be held May 21 - 25, 2001. If you find yourself wondering why you should attend, let me see if I can help. In addition to the regular Mac OS application development, this year
Apple has added conference tracks for BSD UNIX and Darwin."
How did you guys integrate PDF... You have questions about PDF? You can DOWNLOAD the spec for free. Apple is trying to please a lot of people. They won't please everyone... certainly not hippydippy GNU purists who don't grasp the point of BSD-style open source licenses. And the Law of Averages states that no Apple employee who actually uses the Frameworks and function calls every day is going to be slick and articulate enough to field questions from the army of developers down to the level of detail that you seem to want. RTFM. You might have to learn something new, God forbid.
Go to http://forums.macnn.com
It is a very good resource of OSX related topics.
The biggest difference in a shell prompt is the directory structure.
I believe there are some differences in the access of frameworks (libraries/dll + all associated files).
Every problem (practical and unix design issue) I had with unix was fixed in OSX.
-Tim
You have to be pretty sick to call "worldwide" a conference to be held at the San Jose Convention Center. I'm sorry but something isn't worldwide if it doesn't span at least 3 continents, like WWII and the WWW.
if the MacOS is the shire then Steve must be frodo, for he has returned to the shire at its time of need and has rebilt it
that would make Avie == Sam I think...
interesting
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I would hazard to guess that the real true wizard is The Woz :)
;)) that I can't remember the right guy :)
:)
BUT, its been so long since I did the entire Tolkien thing (must do it again, after I do the Jordan thing again
Probably someone from Silmarillion, as Gandalf altho great, is far more active than The Woz
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
...which BSD (and Solaris and VMS yadda, yadda) solved a long time ago.
Not solaris - solaris (i.e SunOS 5+ - the great BSD->SVR4 switchover) is younger than Linux. At least I'm pretty sure I remember using Linux 0.99p12 at college while the techs were running a single test solaris machine.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Steve Wozniak == Tom Bombadil
Very compatible.
On an early-ish OS-X beta that a guy at work had, we installed sharity-light (an early version of smbfs) straight from the FreeBSD ports tree with one modification: I had to add a -DFreeBSD (or something like that) to the CFLAGS, to make the build take the right path through the #ifdef maze. Obviously the open-packages arrangement will make the source patches do the right thing all by themselves.
But: with that one change, the whole thing built and installed and ran without a hitch. That, to me, is a pretty impressive level of compatability.
-- Andrew
I haven't tried building very many additional packages, since most every useful GNU package was already installed. ssh required a small paatch to compile on previous Developer Releases, but is now included with the installation. Most things should compile with no problem, unless they depend on X libraries or something of that sort. I'd also like to point out that the developer tools available from Apple are top notch. ProjectBuilder+Cocoa+Java is probably the cleanest development environment I have ever used. Are there any standard package managers included by default?
Apple has included their own package manager with OS X, but I almost never use it. tar and gzip are there, so that serves most of my needs. Stuffit Expander, the dominant traditional Mac OS compression utility is also included. Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
Yes, make, cc, gdb and a host of others are all there, and they work just like they do on other platforms. Native developer tools are a much better interface to these, however. (See above) Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?
OS X doesn't give you a whole lot of options for tweaking the environment at this time. There are whispers that theme support is built in, and perhaps someone will figure out how to exploit it after the release. A plethora of custom icons are available at sites such as Xicons, and of course the desktop image can be changed. Another rumour is that the toolbar in the Finder will be able to be customized by the user. You don't have to spend any time customizing your environment, save adding a user account for yourself. Apple has produced a quality user environment here. As for libraries, on OS X they are called "Frameworks" and a rich set of standard ones come with the installation. Developers are free to create their own custom Frameworks and ship them with their application. I have downloaded a couple of developer Frameworks from the OmniGroup, but they are not needed for a normal user. What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
The default shell on OS X is tcsh. I don't know about FreeBSD, but I know that OpenBSD also uses tcsh as the default. The main annoyance is the strange directory structure. Much of the standard structure is preserved, however, it is just hidden from the user. For example, in the Finder, I see this as my root directory:
Applications/
Developer/
Library/
System/
Users/
And when in the shell, this is what I get:
Applications/
Desktop DB
Desktop DF
Desktop Folder/
Developer/
Icon?
Library/
Network/
System/
TheFindByContentFolder/
TheVolumeSettingsFolder/
Trash/
Users/
bin/
cores/ -> private/cores/
dev/
etc/ -> private/etc/
mach ->
mach.sym
mach_kernel
private/
sbin/
tmp/ -> private/tmp/
usr/
var/ -> private/var/
You often find files and directories with spaces or other strange characters in their name, which can make navigating on the command line hard sometimes, but tcsh's tab-completion solves this problem.
All clear, wail the sirens!
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
hilarious! certainly not a troll.
I'll bite.. Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?
/new/, just NT for the masses.
I guess it depends on when "open firmware" does something that the current market doesn't need. I don't have a problem booting PCs into Linux, BSDs, Win2k, and so on. Tell me what I get that's "better" with OpenFirmware? I'd love to see a meaningful setup (tftp/ftp, telnet, disk formatting/partitioning, and some kind of disk imaging client) firmware, but something like that is hard to work in an environment as heterogenous as PCs.
[and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.]
It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.
I'd argue that they've made it worse through some UI changes that make it act much differently, like the scroll bar gizmos. Then there's stuff like Quicktime where UI common sense gave in to the "skin" fad. And there's still too many modal dialogs, which I guess is fine in a non-SMP OS.
No it's not. People have been using NT for years. 2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing
Comparing NT3.51, 4.0 and 2k and calling them the "same" is really stretching the truth. I'd say that each was an improvment on its predecessor, albeit the biggest jump was 3.51-4.0. ADS is loads different than the PDC/BDC domain model, although from a workstation perspective the Win2k improvements were primarily in hardware handling (USB, etc).
Agreed. Compared to what was available on x86 circa the IIcx w/7.0 was amazing and orders of magnitude better.
The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really. The core OS isn't any better than it was nearly 10 years ago and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.
Geeks may complain about Windows, but Windows2K is really fundamentally different and an improvement over the Windows MS sold at the same time Apple sold the IIcx.
Thanks for the reminder about Glaurung.
Could have all the Linux/BSD variants as the Silmarils....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Dunno about the odious business practices, but AFAIK the original Cray and Wang are no longer in business.
Neither, to me seem to have the 'really bad' ambiance a Morgoth type character requires. Even BillG wouldn't qualify for a badass of this magnitude...
You'd also need some more bad guys/gals
e.g
Ungoliant (ancestor of Shelob)
the big bad dragon in The Silmarilion (forgot his name, ancestor of all dragons)
Smaug
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I've wanted to pick up a cheap copy of the
last version of A/UX (3.0) for a while -- after all, I've got an SE 30 laying around with not much to do. Any idea where I'd do that? Ebay doesn't seem to have anything...
--
Tweet, tweet.
I'm a little confused as to why this is being seen as a "new thing" for WWDC 2001 by you guys. Apple has had sessions at WWDC dealing with Darwin and the BSD core of MacOS X since they announced the Darwin strategy. So, this isn't really news...
That's not to say that this isn't significant for the BSD world though. WWDC is the main developer event for the Darwin project, more people will see Darwin and the other BSD bits of MacOS X at WWDC than at any other time in the year. Through MacOS X, Darwin and BSD are going to be "brought to the masses" like no BSD distribution has ever been before. This could be a very big deal, I think it would be really cool if more people from the traditional BSD and Linux communities came to WWDC and mingled with the the budding MacOS X developers.
There is potential for a powerful force to grow here...
On the other hand there is nothing stopping anyone from porting the BSD package manager to MacOS X, though at the same time I feel most people developing for MacOS X will tend to use what's already available. Although MacOS X is not X, there are X programs that are now being ported now that the XonX project is allowing X applications to run on top of Aqua ( the MacOS X user interface ).
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
even on a machine with 96MB of RAM
How well would a iMac rev B (233MHz) with 96Megs of RAM perform, in your opinion? sluggish but usable? ridiculous?
For reference, I currently have MacOS 9 on it and find the response times pretty good (...websurfing with IE5 and ~4 windows open, mail, some photoshop).
I ask this because I really want to try out OSX but the above is the only piece of Mac hardware at my disposal...
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
There is a problem with HP-UX installations: it doesn't scale really well downards (i.e. workstations). If you pick the popular HP 712 100 with 128Mb RAM you'll find it is completely unusable with HP-UX 11. With HP-UX 10.20 it is comparable with an old Pentium 133 (or worse). Emacs on it is quite slow.
Things get better on an HP B 180, which is comparable to a not-so-cutting-edge PC (now IIRC a B is the entry level), but it costs as a small car. Still, a x86 with FreeBSD/Linux/whatever feels definitively better.
I suspect (but I don't have numbers) that a large base of HP-UX systems run on 712 and B 180 workstations in telco companies (and obviously also companies developing software for telco operators).
The fact that HP is giving some help with the PA-RISC port of Linux (still in early stages) should lead to interesting considerations. I believe that HP is trying to focus only on big/medium iron (i.e. servers), while leaving its customers with a viable option (PA-RISC Linux) for workstations.
I also believe the same thing is happening with Solaris: there are several old Sparc workstations out there that can be brought to a new life using Sparc Linux.
That said, older Sparc and PA-RISC workstations could be an interesting niche for free unices to fill in, since they may help companies to earn more from their former investments in (pricy!) hardware. And once they are on the workstations, they can slowly crawl also to the servers.
So: after OS/X is "finished", a port of OS/X (the whole OS/X, not just Darwin) to Sparc and PA-RISC for low-end workstations could be interesting for Apple: it could start making inroads to the server market. Until the only hardware capable of running OS/X (again, the whole OS/X, not just the kernel and the *NIX utlities) is the one provided by Apple, the probabilities for OS/X to penetrate the server area (provided that Apple is interested at all) are smaller.
A port for not-so-popular architectures like Sparc or PA-RISC doesn't necessarily mean Apple cutting itself out of market: just look at the x86 port of Solaris: it helped people to buy the hardware where Solaris runs best.
...
With the incredible combination of the rock steady core of BSD and the supple, supremely svelte GUI that is distinctive of Apples desktops, and the sublimation of Microsoft into the
Wow. That's like... wow. Do you have a program that generates statements like these, or are these beliefs you actually hold? It's one of the most impressive trolls I've seen on /. in awhile.
On the off chance that you're serious, your statements represent a deep lack of understanding of basic economics and the computer technology marketplace in general. But if you're serious, reply to this post and I'd be happy to discuss it with you.
I didn't mean it as a personal attack, but honestly, can you remember a slashdot story involving a for-profit company supporting Free or Open software to which no "evil monopolist corporations only want to rape and pillage our resources!" sort of posts were made? They get old really quick.
I didn't mean to attack you, but do re-read your original post. Can you see how it might be interpreted as assuming that a for-profit company could never respect Free or Open software?
One of two reasons:
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Next question? When will Apple be truely and totally free?
When it doesn't have shareholders.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple has their own office suite: Appleworks (formerly known as Claris Works). From all accounts a thoroughly usefull office suite, functionally somewhere between MS works, and MS Office but for only about $100.
I don't know about them porting that to x86, they might make money at only $100 a pop and via reputation alone, but the apps would of course have to read MS Office documents.
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
...is, are the daemon babes going to be there? :-)
The biggest difference that I have notices is the flexibility. The are many other changes as well, dir structure, shell options, program invocation, etc.. but as I seid the biggest difference I noticed was flexibility. With BSD it is "you" BSD and you can make it do what you want. With OS X it is Apples BSD, designed to do one thing and allow only limited functionality if that one thing is not what you are interested in.
Bullcrap! With the developer tools installed (a free download, mind you), I have de novo developed and/or ported software to do a whole host of UNIX-based DNA sequence manipulation tasks. These were traditionally big-iron programs in the past but with 500 Mhz of processor and 256M RAM, I can crunch genomes with the best of them. I don't think Apple had this task in mind specifically when they sent me the OSX beta, but nevertheless, it seemed to be readily adaptible. How was it you were defining "flexible" again?
Usually, it's fairly easy.
The problems I've had with the public beta have centered around the fact that Darwin was missing a few libraries and had sort of a goofy threading implementation. Also, a lot of config scripts don't recognize the darwin-1.2-powerpc machine/os type so sometimes I have had to tweak that manually. However, most of these problems are already fixed or will be fixed real soon now.
As for the shell prompt.. it doesn't use bash by default (since bash is GPL). However, there's nuthin stopping you from using it.
All in all, it feels like a pretty clean, pure UNIX. When starting Darwin development, I had experience using NetBSD and OpenBSD, and it was a pretty easy switch for me to make.
Okay, I'm not a BSD knowitanything, but I've used shell environments in the past, and had a bit of a time adapting to the shell in OSX until I realized that it had, much like other critical elements, been "Macified".
The only major item of note is this: While in everything else one would use CTRL+Break, ALT+F4 or Escape to eject from something [which I tried using], the default command to halt a process in the Classic Mac OS is Command + Period. This, I was happy to discover, applies in full to the shell.
This and the environment is very drag-and-drop friendly, as you would expect. I haven't the capacity to test it on a BSD or Linux distro at this time, but I was quite pleased to see that rather than type a hideously long path to navigate to a file in the shell, you can simply drag that file onto the shell from the desktop window that it's chilling out in and the correct path is displayed automagically.
All in all, pretty satisfactory.
Why would Apple want to release a PC version? As has been regurgitated untold times here and other places, Apple make lots of money selling hardware, and I would imagine that the majority of people buying it are buying it for the ability to run MacOS. If this was available on PC's then it would kill Apples hardware sales.
Don't you think that people who release under the BSD liscence realise what they're doing?
If they were as fanatical as the GNU lot, then they would have released under GPL.
Also, how can they 'rape' BSD? How on earth will anything that they do influence in the slightest FreeBSD etc.
Do you understand free software? It's not about a jihad against microsoft. It's about sharing of knowledge in an open process.
In your line of thinking, then perhaps the BSD people should have kept their code under a proprietry license so that Apple couldn't 'rape' them.
Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.
This technology has indeed been around for years. It was invented by NeXT.
apple = turin, felled by their own pride, tried to come back, make things right...but again pride took over and in the end they lost. what would the simarils be?
what about the sword that killed turin and beleg (and many orcs), anglachel. would that be the gpl?
Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development (not that I'd be adverse to that)?
Someone you trust is one of us.
I figure if he's not willing to go read any online docs, he deserves it.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Quite easy unless it require X or anything depending on it.
Are there any standard package managers included by default?
Apple's (inherited from NeXT). Pretty limited in fact.
Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
You need to get the SDK. But when you have it, ./configure ; make ; make install mostly work. You may need to replace config.guess and config.sub with the one provided.
What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
Some path are weird for a UNIX.
Hub
who asked you to go?
If what you say is true..... then I still don't care.
Ignorance? or Troll?
The BSD license is written explicitly to allow this to happen. No one who understands BSD is crying foul over this.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
hahahaah .. oh Lord this is funny. have you even tried OS X? that is a classic amount of FUD. i can assure you that you're 100% wrong on every point, but thanks for the laugh.
- j
right. i could see Apple supporting x86 in the future, but it would only be on x86 boxes that they make. they would gain the advantage of cheap parts and fast clockspeeds, but would still be able to make their money off of hardware. of course geeks could hack Darwin to support other x86 hardware, but none of this would be supported by Apple.
of course i also don't think Apple should sell OS X for x86. the G4 is a great chip, and everything that Apple is focusing on (graphics, multimedia, DVD burning) takes full advantage of the Altivec engine, and makes the G4 a cost-effective solution. what i'd really like to see is limited OS X on Intel licenses to companies like Compaq so that OS X-native (Cocoa) apps could run on some real server hardware (as an alternative to NT). ie: absolutely no support for consumer-level machines on x86, but allow others to take advantage of OS X's power in the server market--a market that Apple doesn't have the resources to invenst in themselves (the G4 "servers" are a joke).
but at any rate, opening up OS X to bargain-basement x86 computers would be a stupid move for Apple.
- j
he One Ring = OSX (one ring to rule them all... and in the darkness bind them
The one ring corrupted all those who used it (except for the hero's of the story, but even they were corrupted a bit by it), and it twisted even the best intentions into bad evilness. Also, the one ring was forged by Sauron himself. I don't think the One Ring should be OSX. It looks sweet and all (I'm getting it as a tattoo) but it's evil at the core.
Apple is not going to be the next Microsoft because Apple is a hardware company and Microsoft is a software company. It's the SOFTWARE that open source is a "threat" to because you can get for free what Microsoft charges you for. But you still have to buy the hardware. If the day comes when Apple has no choice but to give away the Mac OS for free, fine. Just so long as you have to buy an Apple machine to run it on, Apple won't care. (this, btw, is another reason that Apple putting its OS out for non-Apple hardware would be a Bad Thing for Apple)
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
BSD developers will get nothing in return
Really?
Apple submitted patches to back to OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreBSD, depending on which code they say needed the patch.
Most open source developers don't get anything in return when their code is used. It is the nature of the beast.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Yes, like the linux kernel has done. The code admits to being from BSD, yet the copywrite noticed is scrubbed.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
The thing is that Apple buying up NeXT to get MACH+*BSD+OpenStep shows that Apple knows the old MacOS is an evolutionary dead-end. Eventually the old MacOS will be phased out (5 to 10 years, tops) and the OSX (or whatever they will call it, I wonder if version 11 will be OSXI?) model is the new way to do things.
;)
Face it, the thought of running both Unix and Mac programs on the same box has potential. I was about one of the hardest Apple Critics as they came, but I must say that moving to Unix may be the right thing to do. At least they allowed Darwin and *BSD Developers at the latest conference. Maybe next year they can invite Linux and BeOS developers?
Anyway the only way for Apple to get it back, would be to develop at least a version of OSX for other platforms. Or at least give Darwin more features like OSX has. Once Apple's OS goes multi-platform, they can get back the marketshare that they keep on losing.
Someone offered to sell me a used Grape iMac for a reasonable price. I might just take them up on it, upgrade the RAM, buy OSX, and see what the fuss is about.
Apple should just release an OpenStep implementation for Darwin. Remember NeXTStep for Intel systems? Sort of base it on that. Either that or work with the GNUStep people to couple GNUStep with Darwin to get a Pseudo-OSX type OS for WINTEL systems minus Aqua and other OSX-only features. Let the GNUStep people enhance the GUI to Apple's guidelines.
If Apple wants success they'd better just get the thing ready for release--along with the PC version. Microsoft's new OEM licenses are likely to spur a lot of consumer interest in alternatives. Linux won't compete well, because commercial organizations can't sell software that still works on updated versions of Linux three months after product release. The pace of change and lack of concern for backward compatibility is killing Linux on the desktop.
>Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in
>time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
oh my god! why didn't you tell apple!?
If "Major marketing surveys" are your only concern when choosing OS, there's no need to guess what you are using.
Blame Acme. They're the real culprits. ;)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
surely the reason apple uses BSD and not Linux is because OSX is based on NextStep and they wanted to use the best underpining OS for the job, not the one with the most hype
UNIX didn't exist until 1969, according to this page, which matches what I though was true. No seeding of AT&T UNIX in the 1960s, thank you very much.
That being said, I see a bright future for UNIX, because of Linux (and other free Unices). Now highschool and university graduates (often) come out knowing UNIX, knowing it is good, and wanting to use it. Employers will listen to their suggestions and choose against Microsoft. But it is false to say that UNIX was anywhere near gone before Linus released Linux. The number of installed machines of HP/UX and Solaris is still quite high.
I've used builds through 4K33. Much faster and more stable than both the beta and the 4K17 build Jobs showed at Macworld - even on a machine with 96MB of RAM. It's shaping up to be a fun and unbelievably customizable OS.
Will the dock be able to be viewed vertically with out a hack?
Unknown as of yet. But it's a very easy hack, and I'm sure instructions will be all over the web come March 24. I actually prefer it pinned to the left side of the screen.
I have run it on just such a machine, and it runs surprisngly well -- Quicktime movies can play flawlessly in the dock, while dragging them around, etc. Hasn't seemed as stable as it is on higher MHz machines with more RAM, but it's more than usable. I haven't run too much on it, it's just a test machine at my work, but IE is no problem.
Actually, you're only sort of right -- don't forget, Mach is only the low-level part of the kernel. There's a good chunk of 4.4BSD in there as well.
The really odd thing about MacOS X in relation to other unices is Apple's rather flexible definition of "kernel"...
/Brian
Hmmm... as a serious Mac fan, I think I gotta agree with this one. Fortunately MacOS X is going to be a much more pleasant experience than the Scouring of the Shire.
Though anyone who's calling Steverino Gandalf is a little off here -- the best thing you can call him is Radagast and Saruman is much closer to the truth.
/Brian
Tell that to the Mac community, likely about to become the largest segment of the BSD market.
BSD is small, but small != dying. The fact is that BSD won't die as long as there's still a need for an OS of last resort; the licensing is flexible enough to suit just about anybody's needs and netBSD especially has been ported to hell and back.
And of course OpenBSD is still a good security system...
/Brian
My wife doesn't think so! :)
I'm not saying everyone can or should justify the small premium for an iMac, but at $799 it's a pretty darn good deal for the first time user who doesn't want to fiddle with Windows, and is not ready for Linux.
But then again, isn't this a bit off topic?
-- Charles A. Plater
Very true, the current scheme will the the old NeXT package scheme, which, although I have not seen it first hand, I have heard that it is very easy to deal with (as far as creating packages, etc.) Having dealt with (read played with) a few NeXT slabs, I can say that the installer works very well.
-- Charles A. Plater
I have to say, I don't feel I overpaid for the snow iMac on my desk. Even the TiBook, while expensive, would cost about the same, feature for feature, if such a beast existed in the WinTel world. Sure you can put together a $300 linux box, but that's not what I was going for when I made my purchase. I have learned over the years that I work best with the MacOS GUI, it makes more sense to me than Win9x/2k/NT. The next best thing for me has been sawfish on FreeBSD at work (or on Debian on my laptop for cardbus support.) I'm also willing to accept the fact that this is not the case for everyone, or every case.
-- Charles A. Plater
Apple sure isn't encouraging the average on-the-fence developer to go switch to Mac OS X development for new applications, because early registration is still a hefty $1595 (which seems just a tad high compared to many conferences, but I suppose about normal).
However, these Apple development conferences should be encouraging people who wouldn't normally develop for Mac OS to attend and find out about the features of a new operating system. I'm sorry, but a normal-sized conference price tag isn't great incentive. I guess their incentive must be this:
The first 1,500 people to register for WWDC 2001 will receive a black, genuine leather, Mac OS X jacket when they arrive at the conference to pick up registration materials.
Also, one should note that they will not provide refunds after April 20, so don't be hasty to register.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
either the GPL or WordPerfect. Wordperfect killed Novell, then Corel. At least they bought it and died.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
The dragon of whom you speak was Glaurung, btw.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
And, the "Blue Box" (Classic MacOS VM) in OS X most likely decends from the AU/X MacOS-on-Unix environment.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Jesse Berst == Gollum?
I see no reason why Apple should not emerge as a major threat to the Linux/MS hegemony over the next 10 years.
.NET in '92, for example? Did anyone really expect Linux to have as much mindshare as it does now, 10 years ago? The next 10 years are shaping up to be as disruptive as the last 10. I do think X is an interesting competitor, as well as the system that is being developed right now in someone's garage. To cede the field to MSFT at this point, is, in my opinion, premature. Remember--they have only been dominant, for, say, 5 years--an age in Internet time, but a pittance by any other standard.
Well, anyone that can predict what the next 10 years will mean for computing is a fool. Who would have thought of
--
$tar -xvf
Eh? You're obviously not a CS student. Mach didn't do BSD for quite a while after it's creation. It was a completely independent project. It's a kernel anyway, not an OS.
So the question is, does the addition of the Logo enhance the value of the jacket?
or will we see something like:
jacket valued at $249 with Logo, ($350 without).
Will it be like those cheap products that MS used to have as promo items from the company store? I had gotten ahold of one of those swiss army knives with the MS logo on it. (I still have it, for evidence.)
In my opinion, the blade could not hold a sharp edge worth spit, and it flopped around loose on the handle. You would have thought they would have at least gotten something that would be good PR.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You may type fast, but your eye -> brain word-recognition is a bit slow. I detected no whining there, a flame, yes, but no complaining.
I do agree with the AC though -- and Ive read Tolkien (not more than once per book though). I dont think its worth a +4... certainly not the +5 it will probably end up with.
Read below for the flames.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
There is one reason Apple is using BSD for OSX. ITS FREE TO STEAL. If Apple was interested in an "Open Source" or "Free" (libre or gratis) they would likely have chosen GNU/Linux because of its momentum and (justified) hype.
Apple can no longer keep MacOS current and powerful - they saw themselves as quickly becoming the odd man out in the coming Linux jihad against M$ and decided they needed to align themselves with what will likely be the 'winner' 15 years from now.
I am not slighting the tech behind BSD - I am certain that the BSD License was the reason OSX has co-opted the BSD code.
Alot of people will say "but this is a win/win situation". What I would like to stress is that BSD is enabling Apple to exploit the 'grunt' coding done by thousands of BSD hackers - offering them a significant subsidy. OSX is the GUI, API and Object Model. BSD/Mach is the foundation.
I love Apple's hardware (who wouldnt kill for one of those Cube's), and I do like the appearance of their new GUI features (for their uber-coolness) - But I am not ready to accept that Apple isnt completely operating in their own best interests.
I think IBM is a better example of someone who 'gets it'. Apple is hoping to rape BSD to sell hardware.
Its a matter of motivation.
If all of OSX was "COMPLETELY" Free Software (and free to be completely ported to other architectures) I would be more enthusiastic - but OSX is a capitalists dream: Publicly subsidized (BSD hacker pool) but still ultimately under their control
I have some questions for attendess to WWDC. Has anyone tried the new builds of OSX? If so, what do you think?
Will the dock be able to be viewed vertically with out a hack? I heard PPPoE is natively supported now. Also will apple use Telnet over SSH now? I heard that was because of overseas export restrictions. Any news on that front?
Also does anybody have any informal reviews of the titanium powerbook? I heard it's shipping.
-gb
--------
get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
I support over 200 Macs on a daily basis. 50 of them are G3's and G4's. They have given me the least trouble out of any previous Apple model. Upgrading is a snap, optimization is at an all time high, not to mention that they are the best running machines (I'm not talking speed, I'm talking smoothness) ever. I, too, am upset about the 'dumping' of the Newton, but at that time, Apple needed to concentrate on their premiere products. If they didn't drop the newton, that may be all that they would have made, every other product would have suffered. I'm personally ticked that the "Mac Like Things" group was axed, but I GOT OVER IT! Like I've said in other postings, without Jobs, (past, present, future) Apple would not exist. You claim that all the substance of OSX is from BSD, what about Quarts? Carbon? Cocoa? Aqua? NetInfo? A lot of the technologies in OSX came from NeXTStep, Not BSD!
I've gotten the Grey Screen of Death.. ya know, when the Mac's so screwed that it doesn't even look for a hard drive.
Boys, boys... settle down a bit. All I can add is... who made Gigabit Ethernet a standard first, who made USB a standard first (and it actually works unlike NT), Wireless networking, Multiple Monitor support (easily set up), IEEE 1394, Netboot, Network Assistant -the best computer remote control software I ever seen, what company coined the phrase PDA, etc. etc. etc. Apple. nuf said.
You are missing the point. Wireless was around before Apple used it, BUT, no other company made it much of a household word. Yes, Sun has NCs, but once again, Average Joe User Never knew it could be done until Apple made it one of their standards for new machines. USB, I am claiming USB to be one of Apple's "Across the board" Technologies. Every Machine has it, and every machine can use it. I say it this way, because Windows NT out of the Box cannot use USB. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN NOW?
The Reason Apple Controls the Hardware and Software is so that it works! How many times have I heard "Well, i need a new motherboard to support this software," or "My Video Card doesn't work with AMD Processors." Apple makes the Hardware and the Software to ensure that they work properly together. Remember back in the day when there were Mac Cloners? Do you know how hard it is to get anything above Mac OS 8.1 on them? You might reply, "Thats because Apple wants you to buy their hardware now." NO.. its because the Mac Clones were built CHEAP, they were designed to only work with what was made then. I have a PowerMac 9500 running Mac OS X Server 1.2 and WebObjects 4.5. You know why? Because Apple makes it all work together. MOSXSv1.2 isn't supported on anything below a G3, but it works nonetheless! Anyway.. slightly off track here. Jobs made Apple. If Jobs did not exist, Apple would not exist. If Apple would not have purchase NeXT, Apple would not exist. If Jobs had not turned Apple around, Apple would not exist. You say that he hasn't given anything back? What's Darwin, What's Darwin Streaming Server, OpenPlay, Network Sprocket? Jobs didn't hijack anything. Apple Innovates, thats what it does best. They change the world for the better. Go to the Convention and learn.
I know this isn't really the place to ask, but... I've been looking for a copy of A/UX for over two years for my Apple Workgourp Server 95 to put into my "Road to X" museum.. Any help?
Actually Jon Katz==Gollum
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
You are either trolling or you are ignorant of the benefits of open source. If it's the latter, please investigate "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", written by Eric Raymond. If it's the former, please read "How to Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
With reference to the Tolkien's Simillarillon, would that make IBM==Morgoth?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Excuse me, but my name is not Steve Ballmer.
Indeed I'm not a CS student, I work for a living.
Mach is derived from 4.2/4.3BSD. See the diagram
on page 6 of "Design and Implementation of the
4.4BSD Operating System" for more details.
Yes I know Mach is a kernel. It was derived from
the BSD kernel.
I would imagine that yes, they'd want it, except their bundle structure is different. Further, I'd imagine in their first rollout of OSX, it would not include said package manager. Only after a few revisions would further features like that be distributed by default. -Tim
I think you have it wrong. Firstly, Macs are no Orcish hordes. Definately elfish, but the story has changed since they took a different route. Gandalf = Steve Jobs The One Ring = OSX (one ring to rule them all... It can only be an Operating System. Specificly Darwin/BSD) When Gandalf returned for the second time, he took the ring from Frodo instead of passing it by for the nth time. Sauron == Bill Gates Mordor == Redmond/MS-US Orthanic == MS-Europe Denethor == some OS/2 executive, ensared by Bill Gates evil plan, as Denethor was ensnared by the Palantir. Aqua == Aragorn NT == Balrog ERS == Boromir Allan Cox == Gimli Steve Ballmer == Sauraman Shadowfax == Dual G4 Commander Taco == Frodo Hemos == Samwise Netscape == Bormir agh.... something like that. Its only @ the beginning of the second book, still 4 more to go.
The US is the best place in the world to live... if you're a rich, caucasun male..
Kind of goes with this old joke: (Person1) Hey man, I just met GOD!!! (Person2) Really? What did he look like?? (Person1) She was black..
I don't mean to flame the US, but even those Americans out there have to admit there is some truth to that first one. It appears there's no perfect balance when it comes to different cultures. For example, here in Canada we're not as wealthy. But then again, we have less crime. We pay more taxes but then we also have universal medical coverage.
Is one "culture" superior? I don't think so. They all have their pros and cons.
As for the previous message, while I agree it really sucks that medicine is often limited to those that can afford it, it is unfortunately the price we pay to have these medicines developed. Those researchers can't be expected to work for free. As far as the companies investing more money into ads then R&D, well this is just business. If more ads can make them more money to pay for the R&D then so be it. And one can't forget, for each product they bring to market they invest in many others that go nowhere. That one product must pay for all of the R&D.
I think the only way to promote private business to develop this stuff while still making it available to the "general" public is to only offer limited time patents. After 5-10 years is up the clone companies get their shot at producing it for the masses. Not perfect - but then no solution is. I believe this is the sort of protection the R&D groups in Quebec get.
Willy
Honestly, this is one of the saddest posts I've ever read, and it gets Score:4?
Surely you're talents could be better spent than this tenuous crap.
Because just like open source, these, too, are freedoms.
Well, I do respect intellectual property rights. I am careful as a software engineer to only use components that I am entitled to in the components license. However, the justification for intellectual property rights still seem void. I agree that people should be paid for the programming work they do. As I am paid by my company for all the programming I do. However, this doesn't mean that the code has to be closed. All of the work I do is Open Source and people are free to use it as they like. There are many ways of making money out of software development without making it closed source.
The whole problem with the intellectual property right issue is that although people who support it usually start out with good intentions. Just like you mentioned; people need to be paid. However, the end result is usually negative. Companies start building up their patent/copyright portfolio, not for good reasons, but to hold back their competition and to protect their monopoly in the market place.
Further to this, how many people have pirate software on their computer? Or some sort of illegal software? How many people have bought original copies of software? You will probably find that most people fall into both categories. Just as they do with music. You usually buy something because it is important to you and useful. (That is why I have bought Linux distro CDs in the past). You would buy them even if they were freely available becuase it is easier for you and you like having the original. For the average person the intellectual property rights are meaningless anyway. They just could't care. However, with Open Source you are ensuring the person is not a criminal for what they are doing.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Microsoft isn't causing people to die in other countries
Hehe..they might be driving them insane with reboots and blue screens.....Just joking, you have a valid point here.
Personally, I don't really care about people like Mirosoft anyway. I like to open up the hood and see whats in the engine. If I can't do that with a piece of software then it really isn't much good to me. When it comes to software, the freedom I am after is the freedom to tweak and hack the code...not the freedom of money. Hence, I have never bought MS windows but have bought Linux distros.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
There are techincal issues to the Intel port that many people overlook. While I'm sure Apple has internal ports running on x86 boxen right now, they most likely don't work with just any box out there. The problem with porting to x86 is that you'd have to also build in support for all the various hardware combinations out there now and in the future. Apple avoids this by controlling the hardware and the software.
depends on the package
Are there any standard package managers included by default? :-)
tar, unzip
Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo? /usr/libexec/config* .', it will usually work.
Yes, but most packages use old autoconf which doesn't recognize Darwin. If you do a 'cp
Sometimes you have to remove all references to '-lm' and add a '-traditional-cpp' to the CFLAGS.
Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?
Yes, I installed libjpeg, libz, gtk, qt, mesa, XFree, gimp, tetex, wmaker, vncclient/server, tin, gs, fsv...
What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX? ;-), tcsh is default, 'ifconfig' requires '-a' like in older versions, most /etc-files don't do anything (see netinfo).
uname says 'Darwin'
Well, if you're going to pull the Silmarillion into this, might I add:
Dennis Ritchie == Feanor
Hmm, IBM == Morgoth? This makes me uneasy, is there an old mainframe company with odious business practices who is completely out of business?
to go with that whine?
You see, I'm always thinking
and I type fast
Close, but reread the Scouring of the Shire, and figure out which powerful former wizard returned to the Shire to live off of and exploit the hobbits.
why would i go to [wwdc]... there will obviously be a major bias towards Apple software products (which I don't care for)
because in one quarter apple will have a larger installed base than all the bsds combined. if you code for a living, you shouldnt ignore a technically interesting platform with an economically feasible base
if you code for amusement, i hear texas instruments calculators provide laughs
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
this was a reply to a troll claiming open source software could not be trusted; that post has now been modded down
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
umm... did you hear of a little incident recently when russian hackers gained access to microsoft code servers for several months without detection? how do you know windows code is safe?
for that matter, how do you know closed source companies dont put in backdoors for their own use, or closed programmers havent been bribed by the competition or are just crackers?
oss companies check the code just like closed do; the difference is that you can check too. the chinese army is reported to use linux and compile their own because they can check for backdoors
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Any questions from the audience? Yes, you in the red cape.
How did you guys integrate PDF...
Sorry, that's in the proprietary zone, I can't cover that. Next? You with the DeCSS t-shirt. Are they a rock band?
Ummmm... anyway, I was wondering if Aqua had any hooks...
Oops, same problem. Don't go there, girlfriend. Boy, I love this open exchange of information with the free software guys. Any other questions?
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I thought I heaped enough humor on both sides, not that that is the only way to poke fun. I certainly don't take either side - again, I see value in both OSS and for-profit. Many people can only see one way to do things, and that's their loss. It's funny how it's getting modded 'troll' and 'flamebait,' particularly that one well after the fact. Maybe it would have been 'crappy flamebait' if they had that selection, being that it didn't really generate many flames.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Well chosen nickname!
Or did you just assume that Apple must be the enemy of Free software?
I did no such thing. YOU are the one making all the assumptions around here, wheras I just saw humor in the interaction between a for-profit company and the generally OSS developers for BSD. Please note I said generally. I made no value judgements on the motivations of either party - in fact, I see value in both for-profit and free models (GASP!).
You may consider improving your reading comprehension skills - they are clearly lacking.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Now that's just silly. Windows produced in house? Isn't it windows and NT server that are always having some new back door exposed that was put there by a disgruntled programmer? How many back doors does NT have anyway?
"Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development ?"
There are several options.
1. Use the Cocoa (aka. "Yellow Box", NeXT) frameworks. This requires either Objective C or Java (that is, the Java _language_ with bindings to the Cocoa runtime, not to the Java VM or runtime, although MacOS X does come with a Java 2 VM/JIT and JDK for developers).
2. Use Carbon (a MacOS 8.x/9.x Toolbox wrapper library around MacOS X APIs). This option lets you use C, C++, and, when Digitool is done with their port, Common Lisp. If you're really adventurous, you can also use Dylan (which compiles to C on MacOS X) Carbon lets developers port existing MacOS 8.x/9.x code with minimal modification, and it's the path most big names are taking (MS, Adobe, even Apple itseft for many things).
3. Do pure Java development for the Java 2 platform.
In addition, you'll probably see various free scheme's ported at some point.
So, to summarize:
Framework/Platform -> Languages
Cocoa -> Objective C, Java
Carbon -> C/C++, Dylan, Common Lisp (port in progress)
Java 2 -> Java (duh!)
Hope this helps
damn, i wish apple had made a newton with a larger screen.
I don't think IP is communism. It is a control artificially placed by the state, making it communist/fascist/whatever in nature. In a true free market, there would be no IP and no copyright.
The truth about Michael
Karma...Police...
Arrest this man...
He speaks in numbers,
He buzzes like a fridge..
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
I suddenly feel much better about purchasing their stock at $19.00 per share.
I think that I agree with you... I really want to see OSX (of course, I'll have to get a new system - all I've got are too old), and I really look forward to what it will be able to do - perform and allow me to perform.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Considering the hacks M$ has been suffering from recently, there's enough backdoors in Windows NT to cover the entire outside of the OS. If you have trouble understanding this, imagine a house floating in the air totally covered with holes big enough to crawl through if you're a 13 year old script kiddie.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I disagree about apple being strictly a hardware company. Probably a large percentage of their revenue comes from hardware sales - true. But I don't think that apple is fundamentally marketing their hardware. They may not have explicitly stated this, but when buying apple harware you implictly get the apple OS (unless you install linux.) Now, whether you like the OS or not, I think what apple is really trying to do is make an effort at a unified computer experience. I'm not going to argue about the success or failure of this.However, if you pull off such a thing it has a some advantages over using cheap x86's and assorted hardware. Admittedly, the aging MacOS (= 9.x) had limited usefulness for today's market. OS X has much broader market appeal if it's accepted. I suspect that whether it succeeds or fails will be largely based on what apple ultimately decides its importance in the market will be. Personally, I long for the old days of MacOS when things worked the first time you plugged them in. I sincerely doubt that this will ever be truly possible on an entire hardware base like x86 where everyone and their grandmother has a different x86 flavor floating around. And sure, you lose choice and diversity and good things like that. But I'd be willing to pay more and have fewer choices if I knew it would work for me (not that that's a guarantee at the moment, minf you.) If apple can do this again, and they can make people believe them, I feel that this could be one of apple's stronger points.
It stands to reason that a monpolising company taking the fruit of the Open Source community's efforts - the BSD kernel - will be a powerful force indeed.
With the incredible combination of the rock steady core of BSD and the supple, supremely svelte GUI that is distinctive of Apples desktops, and the sublimation of Microsoft into the .NET black hole, I see no reason why Apple should not emerge as a major threat to the Linux/MS hegemony over the next 10 years.
Will Apple be the next Microsoft? I think it might.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
These days lots of people say Solaris when they really mean to refer to both Solaris and SunOS, which preceeded it.
No. Commander Taco = Gollum.
(lost in a blind dark cave, looking for the 'ring' that is his lost youth- i.e. chasing after adolescent rock like the Who) Accompanying sound bite: the screaming kids at the end of 'We Don't Need No Education' by Floyd.
Just a FYI- 'Puffy' is also a favored nickname for the former First Lady. That term, along with 'clymer' to refer to lying SOB journalists, is a recent entry into the the English language, as spoken on sites such as L.dot .
Some of the A/UX tools (well, really just the disk partitioning tool) live on as the method of producing hard drive partitions on old 68K Maintoshes for NetBSD and OpenBSD.
You should try to get that particular block of text incorporated as a unicode character. Youre constantly dropping it into discussions here as a single never-chaning block of text; if you get it accepted as a Unicode character, you can then spam us with it using a single keystroke.
oops: L.dot .
Seems like this is one of the best moves Apple has done in awhile. It will be good for both Apple and the BSD folks... although there may be some culture clash.
Republicans are Nazis. LetsRiot!
I have compiled several GNU and UN*X programs on MacOS X. Its fairly straight forward. The GNU development tools are available from Apple, they're a free download off their site. (Members of Apple's paid developer program received two CDs, one with Mac OS X Public Beta and one with the developer utilities.) The only issues I have run into are two. First, sometimes you have to replace the config.guess file with the new one from Apple,. Otherwise config scripts don't know what Mac OS X is. The other is for X Window based applications. The Mac OS X GUI is NOT based on X WIndows, however X Window ports are available, both commercial and free. In regards to the other aspects. Apple has renamed some directories, for example user directories are located in Users, with a capital U. Much of the other directory structure is present but hidden from the typical Mac user. For example, /etc and /usr are visible only from the command line. This is consistent with Apple's goal of hiding the Un*x underpinnings from typical users, but making it available to power users.
Traditional Unixen use libraries, MOSX uses frameworks. As such (and most of my time doing this has been during the MOSX Server days), some libraries are not there, but are there in the form of Frameworks. You link a library with -ldude, you link a framework with -Fdude. That tends to be a pain in the ass.
However, there's nothing stoping you from downloading libraries and installling them yourself so everything does work. And I think it was Wilfredo Sanchez who said they're just going to change it so the BSD stuff keeps using libraries.
Are there any standard package managers included by default?
Again... frameworks. Frameworks is part of a much larger, more modern system with its roots in the NeXT way of doing things. There is a system-wide installer and package system, and it is really, really good. Frameworks are a single bundle that contain all the headers, binaries, and version handling of a library. Frameworks are good.
I strongly recommend that you read: http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/SystemO verview/SystemOverview.pdf
If you're not impressed, there's something wrong with you... Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
I remember donig this in the old days (MOSXS) and getting told "My, you really ARE on a NeXT!" by configure :P
I did build AfterStep on MOSXS without too much trouble, but that was after trying to get it to build on Solaris, which was pure hell.
Do you have to spend a lot of extra time tweaking your environment and downloading other libraries?
MOSXS has two distinct application layers. There's the BSD one, which isn't really used, and the OpenStep one, which kicks ass. I tend to spend more time in the OpenStep-based one. People who are looking forward to porting OS X apps to Linux should pay more attention to GNUstep...
I do it, but I don't spend a lot of time doing it.
What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
MOSX uses zsh instead of sh. This totally rocks.
I do use FreeBSD all day, and that's what I notice the most :) I ended up making zsh my login shell on FreeBSD.
All of the other utilities tend to be pretty old though, like more and ftp. These are pretty nice on FreeBSD compared to OS X.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
however from what i understand, work is going well on an X-Server running side-by-side with Aqua.
Well, you can download a trial version of the side-by-side X-server from www.tenon.com (they're here in S.B., and a few of the people who work with me worked there). However, the 'real' version won't be free as in beer, or as in freedom. They've got introductory pricing of $199, instead of $250, and for commercial X-servers that's pretty reasonable, but still expensive for students and people used to free (in both senses) software.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
The only improvement Apple has made since then are hardware improvements, really.
/new/, just NT for the masses.
And Apple hardware rocks now.
The newer stuff is so much like UNIX workstation hardware it's not funny -
PeeCee hardware is archaic by comparison.
(Which reminds me...When the fsck are peecees gonna ditch the ancient BIOS firmware
and get OpenFirmware like *every other* modern platform out there?
I know it's possible (SGI's Intel boxen had it), but peecee
users and manufacturers are too stuck in the 80s to change.)
and I daresay that the UI experience isn't really any better either.
It is difficult to improve something that already is excellent.
Windows2K is really fundamentally different
No it's not. People have been using NT for years.
2000 is just the latest version. Hell, even the upcoming XP is nothing
Sure, NT is fundamentally different than 9x, but NT has been around for years...2000 is just NT in an incrementally prettier package...
It's still NT tho. The same NT APIs, the same blue screens, and the same flaky 3rd party drivers.
--K
Tell me what I get that's "better" with OpenFirmware?
/the/ same.
:P
A box that has basic intelligence even when there's no OS installed +more.
It's pretty cool stuff.
I'd argue that they've made it worse through some UI changes that make it act much differently, like the scroll bar gizmos. Then there's stuff like Quicktime where UI common sense gave in to the "skin" fad. And there's still too many modal dialogs, which I guess is fine in a non-SMP OS.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with the scroll bars, but I will give you that QT4 was a major cock-up for Apple UI design.
Comparing NT3.51, 4.0 and 2k and calling them the "same" is really stretching the truth.
Never said they were
But the core OS in each is basically the same, be it 3.51, 4 or 5 (2k).
MacOS 6, 7, 8 and 9 are basically the same between verisons, but with incremental updates in each major version.
It's the same phenomenon on a vastly different system.
Until a product is scrapped or rewritten, the releases are similar.
I'd say that each was an improvment on its predecessor,
That's usually what warrants bumping the version number up.
--K
Is there any pressure to use Objective C for development (not that I'd be adverse to that)?
From what I've seen, Obj-C is pretty intertwined with the NeXT technologies...
I'm starting to learn it tho, and so far, I like it better than C++.
Project Builder also has an option for Java development, which I still have to try out, soon as I have time.
--K
I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.
Not to mention the NeXT development tools on OSX are really slick.
I'm amazed by just how fast GUI development is with
Project Builder, compared to, well, anything else.
I've disliked GUI development for a while, simply because dealing with positioning, alignment, layout managers, and such by hand is so tedious...
Interface Builder lets you graphically lay out your GUI[1],
and 'draw' connections between controls, classes, etc.
Then you just open the skeleton file it produces, and add your code for handling GUI events.
Way cool. It's painless GUI design like VB has, but without the icky BASIC coding.
[1]Yes, this tech has been around for years, and I'm aware of Glade and QT Designer. The NeXT toolset is, IMO, way slicker than either.
--K
in the latest "available" build (4k46) the XML .plist file for the Dock still includes all the options to set the orientation (left, right, top, bottom) and pinning (front, back, center) of the Dock. However, the ability to change it using the "Defaults" CLI hack has been taken away. I'm sure Apple will include these options in the final... otherwise it would be stupid to have them just sitting in the .plist file.
PPPoE support is in there, yup.
Current builds of OS X use SSH1 or 2 for Telnet access by default (you have to go turn on remote access and ftp in the "Sharing" preferences panel though, it's off by default). Hopefully, in light of the recent vulnerability found in SSH1, APple will simply use SSH2 exclusively to get around that hole.
I would go to MacWeek and check out the "PowerBook Diary" review... great series on the new Titanium 'Book.
Think about it. In many respects Apple is far more evil than Microsoft.
What a tactful thesis statement.
Apple wants control of the software and the hardware.
It's called user experience. This is the only way to do it right. Dell and Compaq are at the mercy of Microsoft's implemenation. There's only so much they can do to improve the computer since they can't really touch the OS. The hardware/software intergration is also why USB, FireWire and AirPort could be available instantly in new machines.
Steve Jobs has an open hostility to open source code
That's a fairly odd statement.
and he has never given anything back to the community that wasn't already there
Umm, what? QuickTime Streaming Server, NetInfo, and OpenPlay/NetSprocket spring to mind. I'm sure there are others.
He hijacked Mach, and he's trying to do the same with *BSD.
This doesn't make any sense. Avie Tevanian was one of the key people behind Mach at Carnegie Mellon. It was later donated to the FSF. Jobs hired Avie for next, where they used Mach. I don't know if the Next modifications to Mach were made available to the public at the time, but they are available now in Darwin.
The BSD comment doesn't make any sense. How could Apple be hijacking it? All of their BSD stuff is part of Darwin, and the most recent revision to the license appears to have appeased just about everyone.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Why are all BSD people blind to the fact that Apple and anybody else can steal all they want from software under the BSD license and contribute back little or nothing of any changes/ehancements they make?
Why are you blind to the fact that every Apple does with BSD is released under ASPL?
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
ok, let me get this straight. You would not run apple on a server because it is bsd and open source. Then, by the same token, you would also not run linux on a server. But, on the other hand, you would run windows and other microsoft products because they are closed source and have no outside developers. I'm not quite sure of the understanding behind here, because we all know that the core BSD code is not junk, not written by incompetent programmers (imo) and stable enough to be run in most environments. And best of all, its not Windows.
Well, perhaps Microsoft is a bad example because they do farm out a lot of technology work to outside consulting firms, which may or may not hire incompetent monkeys and or midgets to do their work.
I think that i'll continue to run the risk of supporting bsd/*nix instead of putting my life on the line with windows (which for the record, i think their luna interface needs some work).
i was going to respond to this message myself, but you covered just about everything i wanted to say. after running OS X for a while i'm amazed at how familiar i am with things just from my BSD experience. the two are very similar.
the only real problem i can see is that OS X doesn't have an X-Server. this obviously makes buiding X-applications an impossibility (realistically). however from what i understand, work is going well on an X-Server running side-by-side with Aqua. when this happens, OS X will definitely be my UNIX workstation OS of choice.
I did build AfterStep on MOSXS without too much trouble, but that was after trying to get it to build on Solaris, which was pure hell.
this made me laugh, because i remember thinking this the other day. i've had way more problems compiling applications for Solaris (especially opensource applications) than i have for OS X/Darwin. i'd say that makes it pretty compatibleon a somewhat related topic, has anybody had any luck compiling BIND 9.1 on OS X? there seem to be issues with OS X and the ssl library that i'm definitely not qualified to fix. has anybody had any luck with this?
- j
guess I gotta go get more coffee before I read slashdot in the AM..
--
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
> Steve Jobs has an open hostility to open source code, and he has never given anything back to the community that wasn't already there.
Wooov. That is a pretty ridiculous statment. The sources of NeXTstep are almost fully avalaible, under the sweet name of the first (early last year) darwin distribution. There are a lot of thing there. netinfo, for instance, is a crude counter example of your troll.
Sure, NeXT did not donate a lot to open source, but more than what they really had to.
Can you point me to the source of obsolete Microsoft products ?
Cheers,
--fred
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BSD Userland is in MacOS X, but the kernel is Mach. I think if you look at the records, you will find that Avie Tenanian had a part in the development of that kernel. Darwin is very BSD like, and it is open source. This is a win/win scenario as far as I can tell :)
-- Charles A. Plater
Not so. As with the FreeBSD and all the BSD projects there is a CVS tree, and only a select few have commit rights to the tree, so just because any schmuck off the street can send updates, that can and should be rejected if they are suspect.
-- Charles A. Plater
*rolls eyes*
There are quite a few True Believers on the macosx-dev list that will flame you relentlessly for wanting to write in Java, yes. We just had a big fight over that, and the moderator stepped in with
"This list is provided so that developers can help each other write software for Mac OS X.
"Mac OS X has a wealth of APIs, and they're not at all exclusive: a single application may use OpenGL for drawing, Cocoa for input, BSD for networking, and Carbon or CoreAudio for sound. Questions about all of these are welcome on this list, along with any other Mac OS X APIs like IOKit, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, SecurityCore (the updated Keychain API), and Java (and that's by no means an exhaustive list). Questions about the development tools provided with Mac OS X such as ProjectBuilder and cvs are also quite welcome. As long as your question is specific to Mac OS X development, you're in the right place."
And that would be about the best words on the subject.
The kernel architecture of Mac OS X includes operating system services derived from FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. In addition, new technologies, such as the I/O Kit and Network Kernel Extensions (NKEs), have been designed and engineered by Apple to take advantage of advanced capabilities such as those provided by an object-oriented programming model.
Looks like its not so much about BSD Unix, but more about the Apple extensions on the BSD level, specifically drivers. Which is a good thing since few seem to be writing drivers (or at least releasing them) for OS X yet.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Larry Ellison == Saruman -- he wants so badly to rule the world, but he just isn't powerful enough to replace Sauron.
Steve Ballmer == the Mouth of Sauron
Linus Torvalds == Celebrimbor, forged Linux on his own, out of the watchful eye of Sauron. Therefore Linux was not contaminated by Sauron's evil. Sauron hates Linux and wishes to destroy it and all who benefit from it.
Novell == Osgiliath, fell in the war with Mordor. Now just a ghost town between the warring parties of Gondor and Mordor.
Steve Wozniak == Tom Bombadil, extremely powerful, but prefers to sit in his own little corner as the events of the outside world unfold.
if you don't min bringing in the Silmarillion:
Morgoth == chairman of IBM (whoever it was circa 1981). He was a greater evil than Sauron ever was, but banished to oblivion by the Valar (the US Govt.). He fostered the evil which became Sauron.
Bill Joy == Feanor, created vi, the most wondrous tool ever made, but was excessively proud. Sun == the Sons of Feanor, forever fighting the behemoth of Redmond, but never to conquer.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Out of curiousity, why would I pay to go to a conference regarding Apple and FreeBSD? Number one, there will obviously be a major bias towards Apple software products (which I don't care for). But besides that, there is a TON of information online on the nuances of FreeBSD, a TON of mailing lists, and a TON of people willing to help out for free?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Mach is derived from BSD too, although it's an
offshoot of an earlier ancestor than FreeBSD.
PS You can't 'steal' BSD licensed code - it's
written with the intention that it should be used
by other people (as long as they adhere to the license).
Intellectual property rights are a complex issue as there are so many different areas that it has to be applied to. Each area has to be looked at differently. For example, there is a big difference in claiming an algorithm is your intellectual property and that of claiming a medicine is your intellectual property. Similarly, to claim that certain strings of words are your property is again completely different. Personally, I feel that the arguments for having intellectual property rights are insignificant compared to that of not having them.
There are enough examples of stupid claims to intellectual property that I don't really need to back up the argument. Even the arguments for intellectual property that people bring are usually weak. For example, peolple claim that it wouldn't be worth researching medicine if it they couldn't protect their findings. Since when has medicine been about making money out of the sick and needy! The companies then go out and exploit the poor countries that are desperate for the medicine and prevent them from making their own. Mean while you have people dying around the world of horrific diseases becuase they couldn't afford the medicine that the big medical companies are protecting behind their intellectual property rights. Just last week I read in the paper about a 8 year old Iraqi boy who died because he couldn't afford the $6 medicine becuase it was more than his months wages.
Meanwhile, you want to celebrate the greatness of the US. You should travel the world and see it for yourself. Okay, the US may have technology but you will find that the other cultures and countries have other things to offer that are much better than can be found in the US. But go ahead, point your finger and shout communist whenever someone disagrees with intellectual property. One day however you might see the other side of the argument. It is not about not liking people being rich. I have no problem with rich people. It is how the rich become richer by using things like intellectual property rights to maintain their monopoly in a market. This is always at the expense of the poor and needy and always against the general good of society. Both inside and outside the US.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
>They clearly want to promote a free Unix to remove the amount of money they have to spend themselves. They don't clearly want to promote Unix to get free developers. Don't forget, many in the Mac community don't have Unix knowledge or Unix programming skills so with OS X coming in a month, it'd be a good idea to start promoting the lower level abilities of the OS.
Its not Sun or Solaris.
The 'purity' problem dates back to when AT&T seeded universities with Unix back in the '60s when the first Minis were making their appearance.
They had to rewrite all their code to be clean of any AT&T code.
BSD has been at it a very long time.
Linux is a "purity problem" free OS thanks to Richard Stallman but its still trying to solve some problems which BSD (and Solaris and VMS yadda, yadda) solved a long time ago. Still the 2.4 kernel is good enough to propell it forward into the next decade or two.
After that we may not be able to recognize the kinds of hardware we'll be playing with.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Congratulations. You have just reiterated M$ argument about Linux.
... ) can trust Linux.
You can trust Darwin/FreeBSD for the same reasons that you (and IBM and Oracle and
Do you seriously think that anybody can corrupt the OS willy-nilly? Without review? < sigh>
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
> Anyone who ever wrote a mac application in the 80s or early 90s will tell you, their style guidelines made it IMPOSSIBLE to write an inconsistant gui
> What do others think ?
That you take your dreams for reality. Consistant Mac gui ? I saw so much applications that missed the TrackGoAway() call that it isn't funny (note for the uninformed. The original Mac toolbox was [and still is] a b*tch. Even windows is easier to deal with.). Apple guidelines were very restirctive and were blown away by apple itself numerous times (Hey, who would pretend that HyperCard followed the User Interface Guidelines ?). I was so disgusted of my Inside Mac User Interface that I trowed it in a fire.
Btw, the holy grail of UNIX/GUI was not A/UX, but, of course, NeXTstep. And rejoice, as Mac OS X is basically NeXTstep 6.
And writing an inconsistant AppKit application is really difficult. Writing a consistant Mac application was a nightmare.
Cheers,
--fred
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I'd have to assume that Apple will wait for The Unified BSD Package Collection to be implemented before including any packaging scheme.
-- Charles A. Plater
I got to see A/UX in about the 1989 ish time frame. (Don't remember exactly when.)
I was working for a company that developed a screen-sharing application, similar to VNC, that run on Mac. We wanted to make it work on Windows, and even be able to control Mac from Windows and vice-versa.
One of our guys was to prototype some code that could convert Apple's QuickDraw calls into GDI and vice versa. He did it under A/UX. When he demoed the code to the rest of us, it was under A/UX on a Mac II.
It was a Mac II box I had personally ran Mac OS on a couple years prior. I couldn't believe the performance of this old machine running A/UX. It was unbelievable! It practically made the hardware sing and dance.
It was at this point that I was impressed enough with Unix to realize that I wanted to learn more about it. Something that remained out of my reach (both time and cost) for a few years until Linux came along.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Yes, he hijacked Mach from the guy who wrote a large chunk of it. Oh, wait. No, he hired the guy who wrote a large chunk of it. Made him a VP, too. Go figure.
You probably don't spend much time on Darwin development lists, or you don't know that Apple does contribute its work back to open-source projects such as Apache (they made modifications to support Mac OS X, for example)...
Perhaps you don't understand that due to the BSD license that if Steve Jobs really hated open source that much, he wouldn't HAVE to share back if he didn't WANT Apple to do so. If this were so, Apple would not have anything called Darwin, or the APSL, or any of its other released code.
I imagine he feels there's a place for free code and a place for proprietary code.
I don't know about the Steve Jobs of old, but the man at Apple now seems different. Perhaps the years in between gave him a little maturity in how he handles things. This isn't Steve Jobs I or Steve Jobs of NeXT.
I can see why you posted as an AC. Almost all of your statements are inflammatory and unfounded.
I've tried neither FreeBSD or Darwin, but I follow the two closely. In terms of compatibility, Jordan Hubbard did a review of OSX here:
Salon Article
However, his technical assessment and comparison of OSX to FreeBSD is on the second page, here.
To quote some of his comments:
"But as a portability benchmark -- a criterion with which to judge how easy it is to get foreign software running in Mac OS X -- this was certainly not bad at all and I had much the same good results with TCL, another popular open-source application. Porting Unix software to OS X is clearly far less work than trying to port it to Windows 2000 and with OS X providing such a high degree of Unix-compatibility, something like the FreeBSD ports collection (which highly automates the process) would make the third-party software situation pretty close to ideal."
Also, Apple is making some contributions to the Open Packages project. Fred Sanchez, the former technical lead for Darwin, is a developer on the project. Fred recently left Apple, but that is moot - he will still have a lot of involvement with Open Packages, Darwin and BSD from what I am to understand.
All in all, it looks like Darwin is as close to a BSD as one could expect from a proprietary company like Apple - certainly, within one year of March 24th, OSX/Darwin will have a large installed base of users depending daily on BSD code, and Apple will be one of the biggest distributors of Open Source software, as well as software available under its own APSL license. Cheers.
A few days ago, someone was trying to map Tolkien characters to Software personalities, starting with Bill Gates == Sauron.
Someone suggested Steve Jobs == Gandalf. Close, but not close enough. Might I suggest a different wizard, one who started out with the best intentions, but was then snared by evil into remaking his world into a child's imitation of Sauron's, yes, Steve Jobs == Saruman.
Then it starts to fall into place:
Mordor == Redmond
Orthanc == San Jose (or wherever Apple is located, Cupertino maybe?).
Denethor == some OS/2 executive, ensared by Bill Gates evil plan, as Denethor was ensnared by the Palantir.
That leaves Gandalf, might I suggest UNIX == Gandalf, for UNIX was almost dead, until Linux came along and created a resurgence.
Which leads to NT == Balrog, something almost good enough to kill UNIX.
And RMS == Galadriel, as they both helped rejuvanate their peers, and both wear green tights.
Of course, Linux == Aragorn
ERS == Boromir
Allan Cox == Gimli
Steve Ballmer == Mouth of Sauron
and howabout
Commander Taco == Frodo
Hemos == Samwise
Any more?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Here's some answers
So please, before guessing or making wild-assed assumptions or making statements based on the *beta* how about just doing a reality-check first.I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Anyone who ever wrote a mac application in the 80s or early 90s will tell you, their style guidelines made it IMPOSSIBLE to write an inconsistant gui. (unlike X11, and to a lesser extent Windows9X).
But what must remain the alltime best OS ever, the 'Holy Grail' that both open source zealots and capitalistic monopolists alike have yet to achieve was reached by Apple with A/UX 3.0.
Here was an OS that combined the ease-of-use of a a mac (brain dead point and click) with the powerful sophisitcation of a full blown UNIX implementation. It was quite simply a technical tour-de-force that has not been equalled to this day.
Apple now realise this is the way forward, and hopefully with darwin/OS10 whatever they have found the path they so sadly lost in the early 90s.
I for one look forward to the resurgence of easy-to-use Unix with the power of a Mac GUI.
What do others think ?