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Another Look At OS X
mduell writes: "Apple has been close to their golden master copy of OS X for a week or so, but they've still been making nightly builds to squash the rest of the bugs. These last minute copies have all sported a "Build 4K78" in their info window, and many of them have been leaked to outside sources. Reviewers who got their hands on the system wrote extensively about how 4K78 was horrible, yet today resellers across the world received boxed copies marked as 4K78. This article explains what happened, as well as explains how many bugs to expect, and why Apple dropped the ball on a few features (like DVD)."
If MS is releasing an OS X native version of MSIE, would that possibly then be very easy to get it working on Linux?
Does it support Beowulf clustering?
Thank you.
-- Patrick "Shithook" Bateman
Im not an apple/OSX user but... I think OSX is a plan by some linux guys to get MS Office onto the unix platform. Hell, it would work if OSX gained enouph marketshare...right? Hell yea! -Matt
It still seems rather odd to develop on OS X if your primary targets are Java and UNIX/X. I mean, OS X is rather well suited for developing applications for ... OS X. And Linux & BSD are rather well suited for developing applications for the rest of the UNIX world. The fact that there is a command line and X environment available is nice, but I can't imagine an OS X user who uses shells and X applications as their primary environment. It sorta defeats the purpose of the superior graphics subsystem in OS X. It seems like you're spending a lot of extra dough for the Apple hardware and OS X, without making much use of its killer features, and accepting a greater potential for portability problems in the future. As for Photoshop and the other graphics apps, I seriously doubt that a Java developer is making much use of them. And don't forget that Linux runs MS Office too under Wine, which is no worse than OS X's implementation until MS releases a native version.
I think the parent post to yours was refering to the Lisa, which included special hardware for memory protection so they could have a decent preemptive OS on their 4MHz 68000 machine.
It's interesting and rather delighful to think that Windoze wil be the ONLY non-*nix based Os out there. Yes, I know there are other non *nix operating sytems, but out of all the maor players(Sun, Apple, Linux, BSDs, $ Windoze) M$ will be the loner technically speaking. M$ will be And here is the real kicker: OSX is unix that will have all the commercial apps(Adobe , Macromedia, etc.) plus all the Unix server/enterprise apps!!! Not to mention Maya 3d, buit-in open Gl and Java2!! All this combined with an incredible developement enviroment is huge Win for apple and a huge win for the *nix community. Simply put, this OS has incredible potential.
OK fuckwit, your post should be the first one to get nuked because you didn't read the original post before flaming. The poster said nothing about whether the Mac supports multi-button mice. He said Apple doesn't sell systems with multi-button mice. He was not uninformed. He was simply pointing out the stupidity of shipping systems with a one button mouse and forcing your customers to buy an aftermarket one.
It's not like Apple ships a standard POS mouse like PC vendors do. It's a heavily stylized optical unit that is matched to the case. What's the point in making a relatively cool looking, high quality mouse with only one button? Talk about wasted effort. MacOS supports multiple buttons, and every Mac owning friend & relative I have (all 4 of them) has a drab looking aftermarket mouse attached to their Mac. So why doesn't Apple get a clue and just sell their systems with one?
OMG yer dumb!
PPC processors are at 733 MHz, not 500...
BeOS and cloners are enemies? WHO CARES. All 4 ppl will be pissed... didn't seem to matter for the last few years, did it?
Motorola layed off worker from it CELL PHONE division. Shit!! No Apple cell phones, what will we do!?!?
Yes, everyone does GUI and mice. I'm missing your point. Did you just wake from a 15 year slumber?
Marketing decor... Hmmm.. but EVERYONE does GUIs nowadays.... shit, and they're not marketting mice.... or cell phones either!!! What good are they! Yes, that has done WONDERS for Windows, hasn't it, troll.
Soin case you missed everything from the past few years, Apple is offering an alternative OS based on the most stable and powerful OS that exists. They have added a userfriendly interface to this power, something many have tried to do with only moderate success, in such a way as to make it usable by children and not just hardcore hackers. They have opened part of the source, while keeping some propriety code so that they could make profit, which allows them to cut margins a little on hardware. I love Linux, but how much does the _company_ Linux(tm) make?
Someone moderate this ilinformed idiot down...
But Apple in this case will have difficulty using a drop-in replacement from the open source community, because of their multiple-forked file formats. RPM would be a great choice given it's cross platform-ness, but they'd have to extend it to support multiple forks. If it were my choice, that is what I'd do, given the active development of RPM and its ubiquity and increasing popularity on non-RedHat systems (snapdragon - very cool rpm dist for non-redhat platforms).
That being said, I haven't thought much about the licensing ramifications of bundling gpl software with a commercial os, I hear licensing was the reason that OSX final does not include openssh. Maybe that in particular was a decision by Apple possibly to use ssh.com's ssh..
yes! Steve during some macworld keynote proclaimed that OSX was to be the premier desktop OS in terms of java support. I don't personally know the standards and so I'm not going to list the compliance here, but I do know that it has very sweet integration - you can program in Java (or objc) to the Cocoa API (full OS api which is 90% unchanged from Openstep of 1990), and when you program to Swing OSX uses native aqua gui widgets.
Basically, if you're running a cocoa app, you won't be able to tell if it's objective C or Java, and if you're running a swing app you won't be able to tell it's java by its appearance. Very nice.
I have not seen anyone, even people complaining about the speed of their warezed build, say the checksum didn't match.
Anyway, doesn't it seem more likely that one of the devs that recieved this build leaked it, than one of the Apple engineers?
I guess it doesn't really matter what build it is. I hope I can get my hands on a copy of the final soon. OS 9 just crashed download a song off Napster again. That's the real reason for OS X.
If true, then why do people get the same checksum for the final and the RC that was shipped to devs? And why do some with the dev version say it's fast, and some with the final say it's dog-slow(slower than the PB!), if the final is so much different(I know you're not saying "so much" different, but if they removed the debug code and fixed a few remaining bugs...)
That article is BS. The retail version is bit by bit, byte by byte identical to 4K78 shipped to devs. Here is a post from MacNN forums explaining the situation(was a reply to the same article):
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No this is wrong, and I've already contacted the author. The article about 4K78 couldn't be more wrong. There was one single, unique build of 4K78 and that's it. The Developer RC CD and the final Retail CD have identical bytecounts, checksums, creation and modification dates, etc. Apple/NeXT's versioning system had ONE unique build number per build, and that is it. Between builds, there can be modifications and builds of components, but each full build with an associated build designation is the only one there is. Now: there were some 4K78's floating around the net that had been imaged with Disk Copy rather than Toast that won't show proper sizes and dates. But any properly created images and/or actual, official CDs will all be identical. There are NO CHANGES, in any way, from the Developer RC CD to today's Retail CD. I don't know how more pointedly to put it. Some people actually go so far as to say Apple is tricking you by making the Retail CD "look like" the Developer RC, even though it's really different. You have to be fucking kidding me. The bottom line is Apple does not have dozens, several, or even two builds of 4K78. There is one, and it was accepted as RC, accepted as GM, and accepted for manufacuring. There WERE NOT daily builds of OS X after RC was declared. 4K78, in its single incarnation, was the end of the line. If people want to *believe* that the Retail 4K78 is different from the RC 4K78, great. But it's not true. Posting articles like this further confuses the issue. The MAIN reason 4K78 was left in was so that people could see FOR SURE that the Retail was the same as the RC: that's the WHOLE PURPOSE of a build number - to uniquely and certainly identify a build. It started out with people being convinced that there were 4K8* series builds (there were never, and never will be, 4K8* builds. Future OS X development will happen in totally different build trees with different versioning, milestones, etc.), with people wanting to believe there was something oh-so-much-better than OS X 4K78. Then, when people were finally convinced that what was in the boxes was 4K78, build number in the About Box and all, they said "maybe Jobs will announce something on the 21st". When nothing was announced on the 21st, they started grasping at straws, making up ridiculous stories about how there were many many different 4K78's and the developer 4K78 was an internal debug version and the retail version is some magical optimized version rebuilt several times, yet still maintains the 4K78 designation and was even designed to LOOK identical to the developer RC to throw people off, with fake checksums and all?? It defies logic. And well it should, because none of it is true. 4K78 is 4K78 is 4K78, period. What's in peoples' boxes this Saturday is identical in every way to what developers received 3 weeks ago. And it's a great release; enjoy.
PS - Doesn't anyone realize what a support nightmare having multiple builds with the same build number would be. That's just rediculous. For the LAST TIME: any (legitimately obtained) copy of 4K78 is the same as ANY other 4K78.
THE MAC OS X DEVELOPER RELEASE CANDIDATE 4K78 CD IS IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY TO THE MAC OS X 10.0 RETAIL 4K78 CD. THERE ARE NO DIFFERENCES WHATSOVER.
The author of the article was kind enough to respond, and conceded that it was just a "theory", i.e. he hasn't compare the CDs himself. Additionally, he's more referring to illegally obtained builds of of hotline and carracho, which could be fake, improperly imaged, etc. All REAL 4K78's out there, i.e. ones obtained legitimately from Apple, are CERTAIN to be identical.
VMWARE 'slow' on a Dual P3/800?
If all you need to do is track revisions in msoffice documents than even vmware should be acceptable under your configuration.
vmware isn't THAT bad.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So?
So did InWin.
So did Epox.
So did anyone else that makes PC components.
PC builders don't magically get away from paying for the R&D costs of the associated hardware. However, PC suppliers do have to compete with each other and can't pass on the cost of their failures to their customers.
That's the real difference with Apple. You get to pay for their 'wasted' R&D expenditures.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
OSX has two local filesystems (let's just leave the network out of this).
.AppleDouble type folders, I don't know exactly how it works, I use HFS+)
UFS: The traditional UNIX filesystems. This FS is case sensitive and act's like UFS is supposed to act. Apple had to do some clever (or not so clever) hacks to get UFS to invisibly support Mac resource forks (ala
HFS+: The third version of the Macintosh filesystem, this FS is NOT case sensitive, but is case aware. Thus README and readme would be the same file. However, since the FS is case aware, it keeps the case you want. (REaDMe would remain REaDMe). Apple had to do some clever kernel hacks here too, since HFS+ does not support hard links either.
--
Though I use a Macintosh, I am not a mac-bigot. I just hate Windoze.
well, come on, a "bug" can be anything from sloppy code causing a deadlock to a misspelling in a dialog box, to, one guy thinks that the software should behave differently, etc.
There's no such thing as a perfect software release. Not everyone will agree on the definition of perfection.
Win2k had 63k bugs? No shit! It's a HUGE fucking product, it's an OS. (I've also read that a large percentage of the 63,000 bugs figure was simply some sloppy cleanup of the bug database, and that going through it thoroughly left fewer than 5000 actual open issues).
That said, software is a continuously evolving critter, and just like Homo Sapiens is not the last word in evolution (just the latest), you can't say the same of any given release.
Now; what IS *wrong* (evil, unethical, bad, stupid) is revving software, without versioning. I don't think that's the case with what's going on with OS X. It takes a stupid stupid organization to do something like that. As someone else said, it's a support nightmare. I've worked for a company that was too spineless to change the version number of their product with each release. Some releases were free patches, collections of bugfixes. 1990's version of the "service pack" in my mind, that's just spineless. It's Marketing hijacking the version numbers for their own purposes, when version numbers are freakin engineering tools for chrisssakes. That's just plain stupid. Support had to write a tool that would checksum all of our files and dump a report that the customer could email us, JUST so we could tell what fucking version they were running.
That said, I think that Microsoft may have actually hit on something good. The "year" version number. Windows 2000, is the brand name of the OS, and should not be used in any engineering sense to identify the specific OS you're running. Just what you want to buy off the shelf. Close enough. If it's not the right actual version, you just update it over the web. Versioning and updating retail inventory at brick&mortar is just a waste of time. I remember that being the reason why that company didn't want to version their products, because they didn't want 10000 boxes of "not the latest stuff" sent back from the distributors. They also didn't want it to be public knowledge that we had 8 patches in a 6 month period.
So the brand-name mechanism used by Microsoft is pretty good - unfortunately, it's not applied in any rational way to the "engineering version" that you see in the System control panel, or tech support tools. It's build such and such, service pack X. I believe that is wrong, and it's something that's trying to be a lie, and not even succeeding at that. A service pack should rev the version number of the OS, and that's all.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Er, have you ever tried using Photoshop with a good graphics tablet? Check out some mid to high-end Wacom tablets -- I assure you, it's lightyears better than having to use the mouse, and way better for your RSI (expecially if you've actually taken some drawing classes). Photoshop is *designed* to be used with a tablet -- all the tools can be configured for pressure sensitivity.
Causation can cause correlation
The author of the linked article seems to think :)
that it's clear that users would prefer to have
no DVD player rather than a less-than-perfect one.
I don't understand that way of thinking -- would
really any sane person wait for perfection? If so,
maybe they shouldn't be using computers
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Jeez.. lets see it took um.. 'like until the next MILLENIUM to incorporate such standard OS features as memory protection and preemptive multitasking when these concepts have been mainstream for a decade.. Hello?? And now DVD support is questionable when DVD writers are becoming familiar?? What?? How many times has the MacOS been given the fairytale story of an OS && API which will suddenly make every win/unix developer run towards the magical fruit.. How many APIs have there _been_ the last few years?!? Christ Apple.. sticking a colorful case on a machine does not an efficient (or even typical) machine make.. I started on Apple.. and spent many a long night, in my youth, learning applesoft && assembler - taming the machine on the frontline of available hardware.. And for such a fore-runner and inspiration to the PC world; - to take so long to come up to speed iwith the times is frustrating. Now my apple2+ hangs on wall - a 21rst century form of art, to a 20th century monarch. Get up to speed.. drink some Jolt or something Steve!! ;)
-- NeTMoNGeR
Um. Darwin IS ported to x86. The code is all there. It won't install or run, because Apple's not been working on it. But the "open source community" is free to download and work on it.
use D'oh;
Not strictly true (if at all true). I run the Apple DVD player on my Mac, and have MacsBug running all the time. I do have the hardware DVD decoding though, so that might make a difference.
Yes and no, IIRC: HFS+ is case-sensitive, UFS is not. So I guess it would depend on which filesystem you're using.
On Mac OS 9.1, I have a five-button mouse, a command shell, and the icons are where they belong, on the right side of the screen, as I am right-handed, so they are closest to my hand when I reach for my mouse. Although it would be cool to make that as a pref.
Heh!
...
Well, it would be easy to modify that yourself, with Slash 2.0, on your own site. You'd have to ask Rob if we would want it on Slashdot, I'd guess no
Erm, yeah. :)
The horse's mouth explanation, which seems credible enough to me.
The lack of CDR/DVD features in 1.0 is hardly a showstopper for the "early adopter" types (i.e. us) who are going to be installing this weekend.
no, key commands are slower. read through Tog's stuff for references. weird but I've little reason to doubt it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Hm- I'll have to go back and check some of that out, but I don't recall him ranting against contextual menus per se - the point underneath the cursor also satisfies Fitt's law, and is the most infinitely large thing you're going to get.
But sure, I know that Tog's not 100% right, though he's certainly worth listening to anyway.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Wow. Wow. You really think that with market share in the single digits, Unix (which does not count existing MacOS share - OS X gets to start at zero) won the OS wars.
Man, what a pyrrhic victory that must be. We win with oh,let's call it 5% to be generous, and Windows lost with ~90% to be stingy. Yeah, I bet Bill cries all the way to the bank.
Windows, and the stuff that runs under it is too attractive for chip manufacturers to ignore as we move to 64 bits. If it can't run on them, no one's going to bother trying to sell them anyway. (except possibly as servers, where Unix has a chance, but is still getting encroached upon by Windows) And sooner or later they will succeed, just as they manged to move over to 32 bits from 16.
The OS wars are indeed over, but the winner is the platform that natively runs Windows software. (which doesn't have to be Windows exclusively, but will be as long as MS is intact)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
However he has many good points as well. Just ranting that not everything he says should be taken as gospel...
Once this horrid problem is solved, the program is free to make up any rules it wants to map stuff typed by the user to file names. My best example is that they can now do spelling correction reliably, something that nobody in their right mind would put into a file system, but something I consider equivalent to case matching.
This is most evident in the NeXT, which had a 2-button mouse. There was a control-panel "preference" that said "make the buttons act alike". This made the right-mouse button act like the left one so it was a single button. The machine shipped with this mode set by default.
The really odd thing about it was the implementation: turning on this mode actually changed the "server" (similar to an X server) so that clicking the right mouse button returned an event indistinguisable from a left button. It was not done inside the NeXTStep code which ran in user space, which would seem to be the obvious implementation. Unlike everything else on the server (like keyboard mapping!), you could not change it with PostScript code, and only a program with suid privleges could change the setting (and even then it was undocumented). As far as I can tell, every other preference on the control panel was done simply in user space by NeXTStep.
He really really wanted to make sure it was impossible to write a program that used the right button, and was willing to make bad software design just to enforce it!
For this reason I have said many many times here that file systems should be case sensitive, in fact the file system should just treat filenames as strings of bytes and only an identical stream of bytes will identify the same file (thus if UTF-8 is used, only a single encoding of a name works even though the UTFUnicode mapping is not really 1:1). Only by using such a scheme can the file systems be fast and free of security holes.
The problem is, many people seem to think that if the file system is case sensitive, that the user has to type filenames with the correct case. This is false, there is no reason that user-level programs cannot do their own case-insensitive search for a matching file (they could also do more complex things like spelling correction).
I'm not sure why so many otherwise bright people are under this delusion, but it is causing a great deal of trouble.
It is good to see that Apple is supporting a case-dependent file system. It would be interesting to see their user-level solutions to making this user friendly, perhaps when (if?) they do it it will wake up all the idiot FS designers and NT defenders out there.
YOU should go back and read The Mythical Man Month. What the poster was saying is that this is precisely the kind of problem that _is_ solvable by third parties. If the interface is there, more people will have it done faster. If the problem is architectural, _then_ more people will not make it go faster, which is precisely what the poster was saying. There are jobs which are very parallel, like driver-writing. Architectural jobs, however, are not. If I have X parallel jobs, then I can always get improvements with up to X number of people. For a stable system, driver-writing does not require the communication bottleneck that is described in the Mythical Man Month.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Most of these are their own fault. As far as #2, all of the terrible hardware configurations to support are a result of their own making - like Plug-N-Play and WinModems. Older stuff doesn't need to be supported, especially since Win2K only supports 64Meg machines.
Given all of that, look at how far the Wine people have come with many, many fewer programmers. Their task is essentially the same as Win2K's.
One of the problems with all of this is that everyone is trying to push out large, bulky, crappy software. It _is_ too big to do right all-at-once. They fact that they are trying is proving either their ignorance or their contempt for their customers. Why not incrementally improve? Ask Bill Gates. He'll tell you "bugfixes don't sell software". They can't take any of their 2 Billion in _profit_ and fix your
bugs. Not to mention that you are the one who gave them 2 billion dollars, but that's a different story. Everyone would be much happier if all of IT people stopped "innovating" and just made something that worked. STOP ADDING FEATURES!
Think of every technology that someone has had to add compatibility for, and ask yourself, "was that technology really necessary? Did it help someone out?" Like WP file formats. I applaud SodiPodi for using the industry standard file format, rather than creating their own and importing/exporting. If someone makes something simplistic, everyone says, "it doesn't do X!" Well who cares! It works. It works well. If we start there, and _slowly_ add things, then we will have a true technology infrastructure, and not this bumpy road. This is another reason I love free software, because while commercial software can only sell "innovation", free software places value on bugfixing (not that free software packages are bug-free, but that what a company would pay for would be the support and fixing, not the innovation). Anyway, I'll end my rant here.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually, no. The Wine team has essentially the same task. The fact that they are building on existing kernels is pretty irrelevant, given that Microsoft was too (I'm sure MS had to modify the NT kernle, but actually the Wine team has patches for the Linux kernel). The major task with Win2K, at least the reason stated for the delays, was that they were having trouble getting the Win32 API working with their kernel. The fact that the Wine team has been generally successful with such a small team shows how well they've done. Win2K was also just re-implementing an existing design with the win32 subsystem, which was the majority of their headaches. I have done quite a deal of design and coding. I am fully aware of what it takes.
Engineering and the Ultimate
First of all, cars have bugs.
Second of all Linux probably has more than 63,000 bugs if you look at what ships from distributors. It's just that people classify bugs differently.
If I have a window that leaves artifacts if I move it around, that's a bug, even if they go away the next time something is moved over them. In fact, that may be several bugs, especially if it occurs at the driver level (it may happen on 20 drivers, so that's 20 bugs).
If Mozilla shifts an image one pixel to the left too far, that's a bug, even though anyone but the most hardcore testers may ever notice it.
Linux people tend to misunderstand what a bug is. We're used to dealing with and complaining about major bugs. Then when someone says, "the O.S. has 63,000 bugs" we think it has 63,000 major bugs. But that just isn't true. Bugs can also be potential race conditions that have never been exploited, or potential memory leaks that have never been looked at.
For example, if I'm programming, and I'm not sure if something I'm doing will cause a memory leak, I should add that as a bug. If the program is "notepad", there's no reason to ever even examine that bug, simply because notepad isn't a long-running app that will be affected by memory leaks.
Anyway, I agree that software has too many bugs, and that its the fault of both the distributor for not testing and the consumer for not demanding better. However, I do think you should take any bug count with a grain of salt because many of them refer to conditions that most people may not think of as bugs.
Engineering and the Ultimate
It supports 3-button mice and scrollers IIRC.. Just because apple doesn't ship multi-button mice, doesn't mean you can't go and get a $40 kensington optical mouse yourself...
:((()
(though it's not supported under deus ex
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Well, if you want really bug-free software, take a look at how the Space Shuttle software engineers do it..
And think about how many $$$ per LOC it costs, and think, "how many KLOCs are in Win2k"?
Software companies develop shoddy products because the consumer will buy them, and the mass-market consumer really hasn't voiced an interest at improved code (factoring in, of course, the added cost to software that improved code would imply), instead clamoring for more features they'll never use.
What the consumer doesn't realize is that most software is rewritten, and that if source were open, we would (do) have a rich set of reliable base components on which to build reliable complex packages. We know that. My mom doesn't. There's orders of magnitude more people like my mom, the checkout guy at the supermarket, et al. than there are of me.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Apple can pay for as many hands as it wants,
:p
:p
Checked the stock price lately? At least they haven't actually announced layoffs yet
unless there's some reason the work has to be tightly coupled to the main system.
Not so much 'tightly coupled' as 'the whole system is totally different'.. They probably have software already, but it's not QA tested..
I'm not insinuating anything, and your response seems rather defensive.
Calling a Mac fan 'defensive' is like calling a Unix user 'smug' or a Unix admin 'arrogant'.. Being both a Mac fan, Unix user and Unix admin, you can imagine how well I do with the ladies
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
that is, there may be some technical reason that these things can't be done on the current release of Mac OS X.
:p
Technically, the reason is they don't have a large enough number of eyeballs and hands to do the OS, DVD, CD, and all this shit all at the same time by the marketing/morale/fanbase-driven early release date.
Closed-source software companies, unfortunately, don't have the freedom to release software "when it's done", particularly after they've bought ads declaring a certain date, told the investors they'd release on a certain date, etc..
Insinuating Mach + BSD can't handle CD burning or DVD playback (technically, not legally) is kinda unreasonable, if only because I'm sure someone can port cdrecord at the very least
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
They already have a player/decoder they just haven't built the driver into the OS yet, nor have they tested it's quality. Porting the MacOS 9 decoder to OSX is a snap. Besides if you need DVD play back you can still boot to OS9 till this problem is fixed. No biggie
Russell
--
--
--
open(foo, O_CREAT|O_EXCL)
otherwise there's a race condition!
Robert
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I've heard that the MPAA is holding Apple back somehow. The reasoning was that the MPAA is a little freaked out by DVDs running on any Unix.
I'm skeptical because Apple already has a license for OS 9, but it's at least somewhat plausible.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
On the article that was linked he refers us to another related article he has written. You can go directly there by clicking here. The second one is a worthwhile read too. Everyone should check it out.
The thing is that they're NOT fixing bugs right now. They neglected to include a few features (like DVD) in order to meet deadline, but still nail all the bugs. Personally, I'm glad they chose this route.
Despite the tone of occasional disappointement at "missing" features (so write it or port the Linux version,) I'm glad to see that /.-ers are more concerned about the new qualities of the OS than its short comings.
Jobs was right. Just like Apple became the largest unit sales seller of RISC machines within one year of the introduction of the PPC boxes, Apple will become the largest unit sale seller of Unix boxes within one year of the introduction of OS X.
That's twice Apple has accomplished a complete change of supporting architecture without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
M$ must be feeling a little ill after failing at least twice to get off the x86. The coming 64 bit machines (needed to handle biometric information to turn packets on the 'net "black," and make life much, much harder for the "script-kiddies,") will wipe M$ off the map.
The OS Wars are over. Unix won.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Imagine what market/mindshare inroads can be made, if while waiting for an OS X version of Photoshop, Apple users, eager to try out some native OS X software, download and start playing with GIMP for Mac. Or maybe Abiword will get a build of OS X into their hands?
Hopefully soon it will be as common to see apps all packed up for OS X as it is to find an .RPM today...
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Mach kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 1.3:
Thu Mar 1 06:56:40 PST 2001; root:xnu/xnu-123.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
Kernel configured for up to 2 processors.
2 processors are physically available.
Processor type: ppc7400 (PowerPC 7400)
Processors active: 0 1
Primary memory available: 768.00 megabytes.
Default processor set: 35 tasks, 84 threads, 2 processors
Load average: 0.00, Mach factor: 1.99
If only I had waited a few weeks for the 512 MB DIMMs! I also hop Apple configures the Kernel for many more processors, may not be of interest for OS X users, but OS X Server people might be able to find uses for it.
remy
http://www.mklinux.org
http://www.dartmouth.edu
This was also a feature in Mac OS 9, btw.
Reality has a liberal bias
It turned out that the "sudden unwanted acceleration problem" was most likely due to having the brake and the gas slightly too close to each other. It was, depending on your opinion, operator error or a user interface bug.
People think about UI as minor issues, but in the case of the Audi 9000S, it was pretty serious. Kinda funny, that.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Welcome to Brooks' Law. It says "adding more developers to a late software project makes it later." If you don't understand why this is true, then you aren't qualified to open your yap about why Mac OS X is missing DVD playback and CD burning.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
DVD writing is cool but you are limited to 59 minites on the DVD
I hope you answered that question with "An also-ran".
Blar.
I'm just curious, how does one interpret Apple's version numbers? I'm used to Microsoft's four number scheme (for example, I'm using IE version 5.00.2920.00) and Linux's three number scheme (Linux 2.4.2)
cpeterso
The paths are quite similar to NeXT if you've ever used it.
----
"Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" -Apocalypse No
It's good to see that Windows is one of the only major OS's left that is not a Unix variant. That should make software porting easier for the *nix crowd.
--
InstantCool
What the heck kind of modern "multimedia" system doesn't have DVD and CD-RW support???
Neither Windows or Linux have otu of the box support for both.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
No, this statement is true. Windows XP is not a released product, and Videolan does not allow you to play DVD's.
The fact of the matter is that there is no other released product that will do what you are criticising Mac OS X about.
Ridiculous.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Hello...
/usr/libexec/gcc/darwin/ppc/2.95.2/specs
Is there a cvs ports tree ala {Free,Net,Open}BSD?
I have looked but haven't seen anything. I got my OS X monday. ( I ordered it a month ago). So far it is _very_ cool.
[chrismcc@wednesday chrismcc]$ telnet mac
Trying 192.168.91.6...
Connected to mac
Escape character is '^]'.
Darwin/BSD (localhost) (ttyp2)
login: chrismcc
Password:
Welcome to Darwin!
[localhost:~] chrismcc%
[localhost:~] chrismcc% hostinfo
Mach kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 1.3:
Thu Mar 1 06:56:40 PST 2001; root:xnu/xnu-123.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
Kernel configured for up to 2 processors.
1 processor is physically available.
Processor type: ppc7400 (PowerPC 7400)
Processor active: 0
Primary memory available: 256.00 megabytes.
Default processor set: 43 tasks, 118 threads, 1 processors
Load average: 0.03, Mach factor: 0.97
[localhost:~] chrismcc% cc -v
Reading specs from
Apple Computer, Inc. version gcc-926, based on gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)
Like I stated: _Very_ cool
Christopher McCrory "The guy that keeps the servers running" chrismcc@gmail.com http://www.pricegrabber.com
Your answer is not quite right - I plan to get an OSX box for Java work as well, and possibly one as a server.
Why? One simple reason is that at the core, Mach (which is what OSX is built around) offers light-weight threads which should mesh better with the threads Java uses than Linux or BSD alone would.
Also, from what I've read it seems like there is much better Java integration throughout the system (like a Java Coco (sp?) API) so I stand a better chance of being able to customize some of the UI using Java.
Also, a last point unrelated to Java is that I simply have to offer what support I can to an OS that offers a sane standard package management structure. I think that for everyday use, OSX will require a bit less of my time to work with than Linux. Not that I still wont have other boxes that run Linux, I just plan to do most of my work in OSX.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think there needs to be a new moderation category for ill-informed repetitive posts like this - "Nuke". It would take all five moderation points to perform, and could only be done once a month. The effect would be the removal of the post, the canceling of the user account and/or IP that generated the post, and removal of all other messages from that poster/IP. It would also launch an IRC bot that would make constant disparaging remarks about the user in a variety of forums.
Then, we would cease to hear from people that do not realize the mac supports USB mice and thus three button mice - with wheels.
A side note - the Mac ALSO supports single button mice, so it is actually superior to just about anything else by virtue of supporting a wider range of mice. Can you imagine trying to use a single button mouse in X? I guess you don't care about usability of systems at all, yet another reason why we need a NUKE moderation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I couldn't find any info in the article if there is no support for DVD or just no DVD player bundled.
No player - I've been using the OS X Beta on a G4 with a DVD-ROM drive, and had no problem accessing DvDs. You can always dual-boot with Mac OS 9 to play DVDs until OS X gets that feature - it's not hard to do (just install Mac OS 9 on a separate drive or partition). I know I'll be dual-booting to the classic Mac OS for a while anyway, since not all hardware is going to be supported in Mac OS X for a while, and I'm sure a lot of 3D-accelerated games will play better under straight Mac OS 9 without going through the compatibility layer.
Naked.
the X-Windowing System is being and has been ported to run concurrent with the Aqua GUI of OSX. Thus, any BSD apps that have been ported (if need be), and runs in X, will run in OSX. That's presueming the llibraries have been ported (most are being so)
Virtual PC... It'll be interesting to see the new versions of this native for OSX.. it'll FLY.
Almost all Mac Applications EVER written. I've used some old text only games from 1985 in OS X already. No problem.
Fully Java2 compatible. And you can write Cocoa apps in pure Java.
Somewhere there's a Be emulator...
It's a fun system.. can't wait to install the Final on Sunday night.
Donald
~Donald / Just RTFM
Cygwin & MPW is the answer to heterogenious networking and collaboration?
Let me remind you, we are the minority. It's about being able to work and co-habitate with Windows users that makes an alternative OS possible for me. (Maybe in your job this isn't an issue, but for mine it is...)
It's not just about file sharing and running Lynx in a windows Cygwin unix prompt. It's about being able to track modifications on a word document thats been passed around to 5 people hammering down a project. Things like that, unfortunately, lock me into having to have -a- windows machine to do activities such as this.
I have a DUAL PIII 800 with Ultra SCSI 166 and plenty of ram... but VMWARE still isn't a great solution FOR ME (disclaimers apply). It's just slow. I like native apps.
But again, why would I want to run Cygwin?
Stability of Windows with the applications of Linux? XWin32 is a much better solution anyway.
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
.. because you will spend MANY MANY hours using it and it will definately affect your day.
Your arguments are very valid.. probably just comes down to choice. I work 8 hours a day (at least) on my machine developing / adminstrating / planning along with the normal day to day office application requirements.
If I am going to be spending more time on this machine than I do sleep, why not have a nice one that I like and enjoy.
I don't give up anything, my linux box is still within kicking distance of my G4, but $1,500 for a OSX system which runs very quick and gives me all I need.
I could save $200-300 (if I build the machine myself) on semi-equivilant hardware, but why? I will treat myself to something that I enjoy using.
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
I can use MS Office / Explorer, etc from the Mac, I can't use those on my Linux box unless I boot into Windows.
I find myself more productive in the Mac Interface than I do in KDE as well. Just about having everything in one place. (Though you can do the same thing using 2 Intel boxes and XWin32 on windows.. but then you are stuck using Windows as your primary workstation, which I am trying to avoid.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
I have build 4k73 (very close to final version) and it has a tool in the control panel that you can have it fetch updates from Apple. It is added to the cron automatically if you wish and it will look for updates every night or every friday for example.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
I have been using it for about 4 weeks (Got build 4k73 when it was first released).
With exception of a the occasional IE crash (not OS crash) the system ran without a hitch. I had it on a iBook which is a relatively slow and old machine. (Especially when compared to my Dual PIII 800 SCSI 166 running Debian SID with KDE).
I am not one of those people that need DVD playback. I have a DVD player and TV for that. I just need good Java support and a decient terminal and X windows. OSX gives me all of that.
My G4 just arived this week and now all I need to do is buy a Gigabit ethernet for my Linux box and I have one of the coolest development environments I could ask for. (Linux apps for server and Java profiler...) I was able to get JBuilder 4.0 Enterprise for Windows actually working on OSX.
I was quickly able to get wget, vim, Lynx, Python and Perl working fine on the machine and was quite comfortable. As far as the Unix side of things, the only problem people might find is that the directory structure is a LITTLE bit different than what you are used to. (Still has
But the nice thing is now I can run Photoshop, JBuilder, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, iMovie (Which is actually a DAMN cool program
But OSX most importantly stays out of my way and just lets me work.
Also the fact that Apple is packaging everything needed to do full development is pretty neat. They are starting to learn that they will get market acceptance with empowerment of the programmer.
I am also happy that OSX allows me to very openly work in a heterogenious environment as Windows and the old MacOS seem to do the exact opposite. I see it as Linux, BSD, etc just gained a great ally.
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
I'd like to see my Swing app with the Aqua Look and Feel. Is it right that one is only allowed to use it under Mac OS X (although it should be simple to use it anywhere else)? Is there a place where I can download the necessary classes? I don't want to distribute my code, just take a look at it.
Thanks for the link. Raskin headed up the original Macintosh project and it's always interesting to see what he's thinking. He is critical of OS X, but he would direct just the same criticism to Windows or MacOS 9 or Gnome or CDE.
You can always format your partition in UFS, which is case-sensitive. You just won't be able to boot OS9.1 from (but you can still use classic).
Joe
Not exactly the answer you want... anyway. Open Packages aims at unifying the {Free,Net,Open}BSD, BSDi and [Apple] Darwin package systems. So, when (if?) this gets functional, Unixy software will be nicely packaged.
-- Colin
I couldn't find any info in the article if there is no support for DVD or just no DVD player bundled. To me, it's a big difference. If it's just "no DVD player", then it's kinda funny how people are crying about it. Meanwhile, when Microsoft bundles a web browser, *THAT* is a reason to cry about. Hmm.. So which is it? Should stuff be bundled or not? Ok, sorry, sorry, I know there were other issues invovled, like killing Netscape and integrating it so deep into the OS that you couldn't separate them without a surgical operation. I just couldn't resist. But seriously, if it's just that there is no player, then it's no big deal IMHO. If there is no support for DVD drives, then THAT is bad, tho I imagine that it won't be long before you can download those from their web site anyway.
In any case, if I owned a Mac, which I don't, I wouldn't get the first version of Mac OS X in any case. I'd wait for Mac OS X.0.5 or whatever, some 6-12 months after the release of this initial version.
I understand the sympathy you are expressing here. But, in the real world, where so many of us live, that's just the way it is.
Of course, every publisher aspires to perfection. Never forget, however, that the perfect is the enemy of the good. No Q/A process is limited to assuring installation and updating -- everyone checks everything. But checking doesn't fix bugs, fixing bugs doesn't fix bugs.
The reality is that operating systems don't work. Never has, never will. Many work well enough, and some are excellent. Pretending otherwise gets you to whining about something that never will, and never can be.
Which is why its hard to take this kind of criticism seriously.
That may be true for Linux, but a commercial OS (like OS X) has to have as few bugs as possible.
Exactly which company has ever complied with this standard, even for applications? Certainly, no major release of any Apple, Macintosh, IBM or other operating system with which I have worked has come close to that standard.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. You will wait forever if you insist on these ludicrous and unrealistic expectations.
Of course software should be bug-free. It can't be. Of course software should have as few bugs "as possible?" What is possible? Do we mean as few bugs as are possible after all testing and programming can be accomplished, without any desire to release a product on time? Or do we mean as few bugs as are possible after a reasonable Q/A process has identified known and outstanding problems?
EVERY major release of MacOS was feature-incomplete and had bugs. So what? Same is true of Microsoft, who couldn't even pretend the 3.X versions of Windows constituted an operating system, let alone a feature-complete bug-free (so far as possible) system. Windoze ME had 64K plus KNOWN bugs at release.
As I said, it is hard to take this kind of criticism seriously. Use REAL-WORLD standards, in REAL-WORLD environments, and call spades spades.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
Reasonable people may differ on this point. Time will tell. So far as I can tell, even the public beta was, infinitely more accessible than any unix distribution that has ever existed.
That may be true for Linux, but a commercial OS (like OS X) has to have as few bugs as possible.
Exactly which company has ever complied with this standard, even for applications? Certainly, no major release of any Apple, Macintosh, IBM or other operating system with which I have worked has come close to that standard.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. You will wait forever if you insist on these ludicrous and unrealistic expectations.
Of course software should be bug-free. It can't be. Of course software should have as few bugs "as possible?" What is possible? Do we mean as few bugs as are possible after all testing and programming can be accomplished, without any desire to release a product on time? Or do we mean as few bugs as are possible after a reasonable Q/A process has identified known and outstanding problems?
EVERY major release of MacOS was feature-incomplete and had bugs. So what? Same is true of Microsoft, who couldn't even pretend the 3.X versions of Windows constituted an operating system, let alone a feature-complete bug-free (so far as possible) system. Windoze ME had 64K plus KNOWN bugs at release.
As I said, it is hard to take this kind of criticism seriously. Use REAL-WORLD standards, in REAL-WORLD environments, and call spades spades.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
Reasonable people may differ on this point. Time will tell. So far as I can tell, even the public beta was, infinitely more accessible than any unix distribution that has ever existed.
What, a distribution CD-Rom for buggy software? First, all software of any complexity has bugs -- always. There are only three kinds of programs, those with bugs you knows about, those with bugs you don't know about, and those with both.
Fixes to software do not change this. A fix of a bug you know about can at best change a type A or type C program to a type B program.
Nobody has been in this business for very long who does not understand this.
So, the question isn't whether the distro is buggy -- the question is whether the distro works well enough that known bugs can be repaired by updaters, ideally through the network. If we can install it, boot it, get online, download the updaters, and run them, the distro did its job.
Physical distros serve two purposes -- (1) to serve as a token of ownership; and (2) to serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software.
I assume OSX, as delivered, will be a type C program. It will have bugs and megabugs. I also presume that Apple did sufficient Q/A to assure that the installation and updating processes will work. If so, thats all that it needs to be.
To the naysayers, what is the alternative? Can anyone suggest a fully-tested on-time bug-free distribution CD?
>Almost all Mac Applications EVER written. I've used some old text only games from 1985 in OS X already. No problem.
MacPaint won't run under anything more modern than 7.5.5, it seems. My standard way of getting it to work is to run Basillisk w/ System 6.0.8 under MacOS 9.1. Which means under MacOS X, I'll be running 6.0.8 within 9.1 within MacOS X 10.0. At least until Basillisk is Carbonized.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
InterVideo's WinDVD on my Dell laptop for work running Win2K takes screenshots from DVDs just fine.
While I hate microsoft with a passion, you have to remember the tremendous problem they are trying to solve.
They have to write an OS with the following criteria:
1) support for legacy apps (meaning old APIs and all of their little quirks)
2) support every conceivable combination of the bizarre and increasingly crappy pc architecture
3) eliminate all bugs from a 40 million line codebase
I don't care how many developers you throw at this problem, you'll never get it 100% right, and it's amazing Microsoft can do as well as they do.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
I did read and understand, being pragmatic I often take the same attitude and approach.
It's just that I getting more and more pissed off with buggy software. The more users accept bugs in released products, the more suppliers seem to do it.
Seriously, they release with known bugs and say 'we'll only fix the ones we get the most complaints about..' they then move engineers who should be fixing bugs into developing the next wizz-bang release, which will be released -with the same bugs in it-.
Plus there's a load of hassle involved in obtaining fixes, some of which are half the size of the original product (or full replacements in IE's case). If all you have is dial up (I live in the arse end of nowhere regarding broadband) this takes a day or two of continuous download for me.. not practical (yeah, OK, so I download once and burn SP's to CD, but still sucks).
EZ
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Bugs in an installation media don't really bother me.
They should, the vendor has your purchase now, what guarantee do you have they will fix the bugs?
I work for the Technical Support division of a major (multi-platform) vendor. We do this shit all the time, release stuff to satisfy a marketing schedule, then decide to drop fixes that -really, really- should have been in the released product.
All the time we (as customers) accept buggy products with a promise to 'fix it in a service pack', companies will not improve the fundamental reliability of their products and release practices.
EZ
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
"Has the software industry really sunk this low?"
It's always been this low.
"Has the meaning of software "release" and "purchase" become this perverted?"
Yes, actually it has. Into a "service", "support", "widget frosting". How do you think companies are making money off "free" software?
"Are we really expected to just accept that anything we buy is a work in progress?"
Yup. Unless of course you are willing to 1) wait forever for the company to put out a "perfect" product and then 2) be totally satisfied that the product will never ever reveal a bug (being "perfect" of course), and so you will never ever need any type of support. Unless you have an infinate lifespan, it is infeasible to wait for software to be "perfected". Releases are just snapshots in time of a fairly stable state.
"I honestly can't believe there are people out there who think that since you can't catch every bug, you aren't responsible for the quality of your software."
Who said just because you can't catch every bug you are not responsible for the quality of your software? You are responsible...that's what bugfixes, patches, and, imagine this - newer releases - are for.
You are clearly living on another planet if you think software is something you can just manufacture on an assembly line, slap an "inspected by #57" sticker on, and shove to the customer as a final, "perfect" product.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Mac OS X will be the mainstream of UNIX. The consequences of this, are wonderful:
1) Apple still ships more machines every month than Sun ships in a year. BSD will outnumber Sys V UNIX installations like Solaris by the end of the year.
2) The mainstream UNIX sytem will have a decent GUI.
3) Interest in, and progress of GNUStep will take a major jump, so Linux can quit sucking when it comes to UI, and software development environments. (Codewarrior? Don't make me yawn.)
4) Netinfo will outnumber NIS, so system administration of UNIX systems can get a whole lot easier than it is now. Using NetInfo, I have seen four THOUSAND NeXT desktops serviced by five full-time sysadmins. Compare that to any NIS, or (shudder) NT shop you care to name.
The long and short of it is, UNIX just got a whole lot better. Enjoy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"nightly 'recommended updates'....They tried that with OS 7/8/9
They never did that. They used to have an update roughly every 4 months. Those updates were not just bug fixes, they were interface tweeks as well.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
It IS true, partially. Apple has to make certin changes to get a lisence from the MPAA to play DVDs. One of them is that it can't take screenshots of a DVD in playback, and it can't save to the drive. Apple DOES have versions running, but they have to put in all the copy protection.
Ever take a screenshot in a DVD player? you get a window with a green screen.
BSD UNIX just moved onto the desktop, which is pretty cool.
I already run Linux on my iMac, but X doesn't seem to run too well on it, and OSX looks like it might just be worth the trip down to the warez channel.
When they replace my Linux-runnin' P3-500 at work i will look pretty seriously at a GeForce3-equipped G4.
Since most of my software development is done with Java, OpenGL/SDL, and Perl, it seems that this machine will deliver the goods as an affordable 3D workstation.
Plus it runs Lightwave and Photoshop, which means i can finally kick my Windows habit permanently.
I just don't understand how anyone can possibly say this is, in any way, a bad thing for Linux, UNIX, Apple, Sun and least of all the users of the new system.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
To me, these statements seem to clash:
"the program's idea of what letters match may be different than the file systems"
"there is no reason that user-level programs cannot do their own case-insensitive search for a matching file".
I wasn't trolling. Linux 2.4 IS a better system than Mach/FreeBSD 3.2. First, Mach is a pretty crappy microkernel. Second, FreeBSD 3.2 is several years out of date, and FreeBSD 4.0 is a much better system. I don't know how Linux 2.4 stands up to FreeBSD 4.0, but I know that they are close, which suggests that 3.2 couldn't compare to Linux 2.4.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't know how much sense porting OS-X to Linux would make. Altough Linux 2.4 is a much better system than Mach/FreeBSD 3.2, by taking out BSD and Mach, you get rid of much of OS X. Maybe you're thinking of porting Quartz, Aqua, and OpenStep to Linux? In that case, you won't be happy to hear that all of the above are closed source, and thus will not run on x86 unless Apple ports it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ok, is it just me or does anyone else realize that you could basically run ANYTHING on a mac now... 1-Native: -OSX -OS9 (dual boot goo) 2-Emulation -Virtual PC -Winshit -x86 based *nix's I'm sorry, but that's more than any other platform can do (that i've seen at least). The best i've seen is Linux running vmware and BasiliskII... and that's still only 68k emulation)
~~~ They call me Little John, but don't let the name fool you...in real life I'm very big.
"DVD playback and CD burning are so integral to Apple's current marketing that their lack suggests a deeper problem -- that is, there may be some technical reason that these things can't be done on the current release of Mac OS X. If it were just a matter of driver support, it could have been solved by throwing contractors at the problem. It may be something more architectural, something that was realized too late and that would have ripple effects throughout the system. "
Ah, throw contractors at a problem, Hah! With that attitude you probably think that 9 women can make a baby in a month. Try to dig up and read "The Mythical Man Month". It might wake you up.
DB
$1000 gets you the professional burner package which gives you the ability to burn commercial level disks. The MPAA would still have hives if it doesn't have some sort of copy protection.
DB
What I'm saying is that if the very drivers are the problem (as some of the rumor sites are saying), throwing more workers at that problem isn't likely to fix it. In fact past experience in the industry has shown that you are actually likely to get a slowdown as people have to take time to get the new people up to speed instead of coding. There's a religious war, but it's not OS specific.
DB
I sort of doubt that Apple to this point has any major drivers that don't already have teams on them. Some of the drivers were done in time, others were not. To add people to a particular driver team in order to speed it up so that cd/rw drives have a generalized driver is going to get you sub par results in terms of efficiency perhaps to the point where adding people makes the code come out later.
In your terms, I have X parallel jobs with X parallel teams on them. Y% of those teams are behind schedule so I should add people to those teams that fall in group Y and I will get an arithmetical improvement in efficiency. Bzzt, that's a recipe for disaster and very much the subject of "The Mythical Man Month".
DB
This article is completely off base. First of all, you can't possibly critisize Apple for a pirated build leaked a few days before the official release. However, Apple should be criticized for something else! Now, I love BSD and I think Darwin is great idea. In fact, I can't wait for them to port the OS to hardware that doesn't cost twice as much as it should. Why didn't apple port the OS a long time ago, and let the open source community adopt the software?
Someone you trust is one of us.
interview Jef basically pans the OS, although he is obviously a complete idiot.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Actually, Motorola will be laying off folks from the Semiconductor Products Sector... And mine.
OS-X supports two button mice doesn't it?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Brakes are to a car what DVD playback is to a computer? Hmm, I don't think so.
I do think that it's significant that with a brand new OS coming out the door, revolutionizing everything again, that all the pundits can talk about is DVD playback.
Ruby on Rails resources and more at idolhands.com
Read what I said. I'm not saying I could care less about bugs. What I said was: I am not concerned with trying to keep my installation media current with the latest patches and fixes. I install the raw OS then patch/update.
IE, every time a new NT service pack comes out (what is this last one, the eighth?) I don't re-burn my install CD to overwrite the source files with the newer SP version. I just go ahead and install SP0/1/2 and then when I'm all done install SP4/5/6. Ditto for the critical updates/hotfixes/security bulletins. I head over to the update server and check off everything except that f'in Media Player 7.
It saves me time, it saves me CD, it saves me hassle. The only thing I need to carry around with me on CD is enough of the OS to connect to the Internet and from there I can pull down whatever else I need. That is what Apple should be focusing on, in my opinion.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
See my above response.
0 22 8&cid=102
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/03/23/03
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I'm curious what kind of update/package system OS X uses...I have searched and not found word one about it. I assume since it is UNIX, it can use whatever current standards (RPM?) there are but this seems like a feature Steve Jobs would be hot to get his hands into.
Bugs in an installation media don't really bother me. God knows I'd have to be insane to leave any version of Windows the way it comes on CD (My most recent NT4 CDs are still just SP1!). So then why not push out the OS X CD on the due date and then throw out nightly "recommended updates" until its working the way it should?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I've been developing Web aplications on *nix for over 5 years - and have never liked using any of the GUIs available on *nix systems. I like the Mac interface - it really is the best around. But in order to fully satisfy myself in this respect, I've had to have (at least) two computers. Essentially, my Mac (cheap-o little iMac, BTW) acts as a GUI for all the *nix boxes I have running under my desk.
I've tried several things to get the machine count all the way down to one including installing LinuxPPC and running MOL (Mac On Linux - runs mac apps native. On a virtual terminal even). This almost works right, but there are issues with networking that make it more trouble than it's worth. Hell, I even blew up the ATI card in my iBook once with that setup. I gave up and went back to my 'dumb client' approach.
MacOS X will allow me to actually do this - all on one computer. The ability to work on an exact mirror of my development server in one self-contained machine is a true blessing.
Additionally, the development tools they're including for Cocoa/Carbon mean I can finally ditch that ancient copy of CodeWarrior I've been using for hobby projects. I can finally Carbonize my applications without trying to figure out which libraries are conflicting with CarbonLib this week...
Culture is more than commerce
a command-click has brought up a contextual menu since os 8.0, about three or four years ago. it works fine with the right button of my 4 button mouse, as does the scroll wheel. the middle button does an option click, closing all the windows in the finder. the support in the os is pretty much there, though i don't know what it does in osx yet.
(which of course makes it all the more ridiculous that apple refuses to accept the concept of the multi-button mouse. boo, apple!)
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
That is an excellent article, one of the best that I have ever read. The process, not the code is the software.
Unfortunately, this will likely not work for general purpose software companies. How do you define the requirements of software when you don't know exactly who your customers are, and what they want the software to do. Or, what other software will be interacting with your software, and whether the underlying OS is operating correctly?
The space shuttle software engineers have the luxury of living in a virutal bubble, where they know every single detail of the platform they are running on, and have users who are technically adept and know exactly what they want . Most general purpose developers do not have that luxury, so there will always be errors. Don't get me wrong, every developer can learn a lot from the way these guys do business, but their solution is not a panecea to the software bug problem.
We'll all be able to see for ourselves what the shipping version of OS X is like within a matter of hours. Some of the journalists, posters, and rabid pro and anti-Macheads will be proven correct, while some will be proven wrong.
Life will go on. The sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
While I agree with you on most points, just wanted to tell you.. People dont buy cars with 63000 known defects because it may kill them. So, if my car ran Windows in its computer, I'd walk.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Or Install Toast. My roommate has a Beige G3 and is looking into OS X "real soon". He's hoping that it is good enough to keep him on the Mac Platform. It's pulling me in as soon as I can afford one of the TiBooks.
However, Toast, which is apparently a large CD-Burning and CD-Imaging program, has an OS-X version?
It is an application that wasn't written yet because Apple want's it done right. Also, the Apple DVD and CD-burning software isn't run-of-the-mill stuff like their shitty Windows/Linux counterparts, it is an integrated system that allows drag-and-drop CD-burning, etc.
Expect the final versions to rock.
Just because the "built-in" software on the PC sucks doesn't mean that the Mac ones do.
Alex
What is the issue?
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
It aims to put the onus of "growing up" on the technical production staff side of things.
Unfortunately, in my experience, the technical production people tend to be the most "grown up" and are the ones who know exactly what it takes to produce perfect software. Which is why most of them are so disgruntled. Most hard-core programmers I know would love to have the sort of environment outlined in the article. In fact, I know that I've begged for it many a time myself.
Specs! Give me specs. Give me specs to the most atomic details necessary to actually write the code. Do NOT dare change a single thing without a massive change validation process. No more knee-jerk reactions.
My blame comes from poor management practices. Or rather, management practices not geared towards producing perfect software, rather, they're geared towards simply producing something to sell... we can get to those bugs later.
Growing up has nothing to do with dressing conservatively. Raising a family. Being a sober, white-bread, accountant-like programmer. No, it has to do with software being treated as more than just a simple product by the ones controlling the money used to finance it's development.
In all other respects, that article is spot on.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
The biggest problem that I can think of is tar, which will overwrite one file with another if the archive contains two files identical except for case.
Will Adobe Illustrator support Mac OSX?
Adobe is committed to supporting the next version of the Mac operating system in future product versions, including Adobe Illustrator.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
So stop your pointless whining...
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
hey, I spelled cocoa wrong too. :)
Stupid Cheap Guitars
OK, sure OS X doesn't have DVD and a few other things that didn't get quite finished in time for the March 24th deadline. Apple *had* to meet that deadline, they have a complete rewrite of their operating systems and what do operating systems need? Programs. Developers needed to have a deadline too. If Apple had said "sometime 2001" developers wouldn't have done anything, but come tomorrow quite a few people are going to be running OS X and these people want cabronized and coca apps. I think it's great that Apple decided to concentrate on making the core of OS X better and OS 9.1 better for Classic comptibilty then work on something trivial like a DVD player. I would not be happy if I heard "Yeah, some older applications won't run under the Classic environment, but we do have DVD!"
Stupid Cheap Guitars
--
Hogwash... if you can burn CDs on Linux with a P133, you'll sure as hell be able to do it on MacOS. As for DVDs, I may be wrong, but I don't think Apple ever shipped any system with a DVD player that didn't run at least 300 MHz. And even then, they had hardware decoders.
If it's not ready, it's because it's not ready. Not because the hardware - which is easily among the best in its class - can't handle it when running a BSD OS.
--
The first iMac to offer DVD was the 400 MHz iMac DV, which, as a matter of fact, did offer hardware MPEG-2 decoding through its ATI Rage 128 VR graphics.
--
Then somebody can write a player app, or a format translation utility (which is easier, because it doesn't have to be real-time.)
Does MacOS X have a DVD driver at all? Can you access the drive? Maybe someone will write a third-party player.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
What, like the Audis that used to have the sudden unwanted acceleration problem?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
OSX allows me to very openly work in a heterogenious environment as Windows and the old MacOS seem to do the exact opposite
On Windows, there's Red Hat Cygwin, a Win32 version of GNU userland. On Classic Mac OS, there's MPW.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The old player refuses to run if you have MacBugs installed. Talk about paranoid!
I've succsefuly installed 2 distros of linux, so has a friend of mine, we also are slave to winXX most of the time, and know it well. But neither of us could fix a bug yet. So I'm not sure how you expect the average mac user to. No offence meant by that either. Not everyone is a programmer.
It would be more likely they would do a ...
config MACOSX
cd ../../compile/MACOSX
make
make depend
make install
since it is based on the freebsd kernel.
-mutter- something something something...
Ohh and of course I forget to change my options.
-mutter- something something something...
That may be true for Linux, but a commercial OS (like OS X) has to have as few bugs as possible. Most users never run any updates at all. Major bugs and even missing features will stay in the OS for a long time, even if there is an update available. Microsoft and Apple both try hard to get more people to keep their software updated (using tools such as the Software Update control panel), but it is very hard to teach most people that there is more to the OS than the CD.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
How many PC users run Unix in single user mode for word processing, database access and web and email browsing?
So Windows has 90%+ penetration of home and business markets for the single user desktop but Unix won?
Well, excuuuuuse me! You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
The 59 minute limit is an important point for those wanting to do nice transfers of films, but I think its an acceptable compromise. The hardware isn't to the point where you'll get a full 9Meg a side on a disc like you can with a commercial dual-layer one, and in order to simplify the compression program they've gone for a fixed, reasonably high bitrate. Remember, Jobs claims that iMovie will compress a full 1 hour disc in 2 hours. Last time I looked at similiar Mpeg2 compression for a P!!! 900 it took about a day or so.
Also, for those of us who are used to good old laserdiscs, getting one hour per disc side is just like the good old days, and if you're transferring your films from here then you're getting a nice break where you need it. Plus, I can imagine getting this stuff past the MPAA must be a bit easier when a copy of Star Wars needs to be a 3-disc set before you put any extras on it, and I'd rather have the tech as it is than not at all.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
In my case at least, whats attracting me to the new Macs is the recently-unveiled iMovie software and SmartDrive hardware that means you can master your own DVDs that will play in normal machines. This is really cool, groundbreaking stuff, but if it doesn't work yet in OSX then I won't be buying one till its fixed.
Mind you, they must have known about this for a while; newly bought Macs with this stuff won't be shipping with OSX installed intil June/July, so thats about when I'd expect to see a complete feature set available.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Come to think of it, it would be pretty funny to watch people surf with that kind of mouse/keyboard...
main(i){putchar((1397178701>>(i/2+(i==3))*8)+(i/2
This is not an attack on Apple, Microsoft or anyone else specifically, but a complaint about software in general. Why is it that we would never buy a car with 63000 known defects, but Windows 2000 is acceptable because 'all software has bugs'. All software has bugs because the majority of it was written without enough forethought, too many dithering managers, users and coders and because writing a quick hack is easier than doing the job properly. No wonder IT is held in so much contempt by the common man. The product is late, incomplete and full of annoying bugs and bad ideas, and then the provider says 'well we'll fix it in the next service pack'. Not good enough.
It wasn't an attack on Microsoft per se, as Linux distros are perfect either. I'm just sick of having to use software that doesn't work properly. There are very few new cars that break down every day, but too many new programs do. I'm not just talking about operating systems, I'm talking about the whole ethos of releasing shit and calling it a diamond. Here's 2 examples then from each side, and remember, I'm being vendor-neutral here:
1)Windows 2000 is 4 years late and doesn't work properly.
2) A company I used to work for successfully migrated their legacy mainframe systems to SAP in 9 months with no major issues. The users, management and SAP are all amazed and delighted.
So if example 2 can produce the goods with nothing but minor errors, why can't the world's largest software house in the world with all the efficiencies of economies of scale that economists are always talking about produce something that works. This goes for every late project, bad application and buggy driver. Excuses aren't good enough. Example 2 planned and defined their requirements properly and produced well-written code. The testers then went through it with a fine toothcomb and shifted the rest of the showstopper bugs.
Most projects don't do this, but give me one good reason why not. PHB stupidity is an excuse for a bad system, not for clumsy code. A bad system with good, well-documented code can be improved upon far more easily than a good system with bad, obscure code.
Just as a disclaimer, I try to practice what I rant but I'm by no means anything better than average. I just try to think of the poor sap who'll have to maintain my code in a year's time, rather than just doing what's easiest at the time.
But then had Microsoft done it right in the first place then their job would be a great deal easier and their customers would benefit. What you're saying there is exactly why I'm sick of working in IT. The whole policy of 'produce a worthless piece of crap according political or marketing considerations. Then spend the next decade patching and hacking the code' makes me want to scream. There's a fundamental problem at every level of our industry which can be mitigated somewhat by coders writing good, well-commented code. The PHB effect is nothing compared to the bad programmer effect. Don't take this as an attack on Microsoft in particular because, as much as I dislike them, they are far from the only offender.
We got it in on Thursday at the nationwide retailer I work at. Pretty shrinkwrapped box and all. If we still had that standalone scanner, I'd post a box copy somewhere. Maybe I can throw it on a color copier and scan it at home. Got in Visor Edges on the same shipment.
"A friend of mine at Apple who works on OS X has told me for years that "it's almost ready". Heh heh. I wonder if this is for real? Personal experience has shown me that Apple is perfectly willing to ship buggy software w/o full testing, so maybe they will ship it this time. :)"
Ummm.... re-read what you just said. they've been delaying it's release for years now, but they also will just ship out almost anything. You're just contradicting yourself meh-boy!
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
FWIW, my Turbomouse works just fine on Deus Ex.
--- Submission is feudal.
As far as I'm concerned the problem here is that the software is non-Free
I really don't mean to feed the trolls, so I will accept your proposition at face value, and suggest that you check out Apple's OpenSource project, and the release of the source and documentation of the underpinnings of the OS.
Yes, I understand the difference between Darwin, which is free and opensource, and Quartz and the other userland stuff, which is neither. However, I am assuming for the sake of argument that you sincerely didn't realize that an important part of OS X was, in fact, opensource and beer-free.
--
$tar -xvf
The "Digital Hub" is where Apple sees computers going over the next few years. Even if the functionality is not there for the initial release, it will be supported in future releases. Besides, you can dual boot into MacOS 9 to play your DVD's.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Why are command line people so obsessed with more mouse buttons?
Hell, I'm a Machead from way back and I work in the graphics field and I avoid the mouse as much as possible because A) mousing is a slow way to work especially if you know key commands and B) RSI.
If only there were a good way to use Photoshop without a mouse I'd be happy.
---------------------------
Pooty tweet
Have checksums been done to verify this? I heard that the 'old' build 78 had the same sum as the 'new' gold master 78,
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get jiggy w/ ayn rand!
I don't know who or what this article bases itself on outside of a very tanigible "anti-Mac" sentiment. All the people I have seen writing about the 4K78 build of OS X have said it's great compared to previous versions. Quartz writes faster, the entire OS is "snappier" and faster. The Classic underpinnings now work faster then they do on the current OS!!! If you don't like Macs outright say it, it's stupid and misleading to write an article like this based on nothing! I find it disgusting that "mduel" even posted it! Everyone seems to criticize Apple for not releasing products fast enough for it. No DVD support-Oh the OS must suck! Well Windows 95, had terrible support for plenty of DOS based software, it was glitchy, slow, it was awful. It didn't contain many features! Infact the initial version didn't include a way to connect to the internet! (Outside of AOL or another 3rd party Dialup Application). I wish people would approach other platforms with understanding or at least not flaming someone for their choice. But I find it disgusting the number of people in the media who rip on Apple just using ignorance. I'll be the first to admit Apple has it's fair share of problems-But writing anti-Mac propaganda and disguising it as a "report" as in "The Truth About OS X" is a disservice to it's readers. Use your Linux, Windows, Mac OS-whatever use it and like it...but don't publish outright lies pulling nothing from your ass. PC users and Mac users are some of the worst-they hate eachother...and while Mac users take it upon themselves to quote Apple excuses for things, they are defending their platform of choice! I see PC users jumping the fence and flaming Mac-sites like there is no tomorrow! It's disgusting an immature, and I find it even more disgusting that this "flame" is disguised as an article. It holds no firm basis, I am running 4K78 right now-and I can tell you it's a pleasure to use, and better then any previous version of OS X...and many UI's from Linux! That is based on preference however, and I am watching the GUI Linux projects with interest, I wont kid myself if something better does come out.
The story includes a screen shot of the HTML editor. Looks like it has a built in validator, which is pretty neat.
If using Linux (and participating in the community) for 5+ years now has taught me anything about OS development, it's that there is always more to do, whether it's adding support for new technologies, improving SMP, debugging, etc. Regardless of the bugs currently present in OSX, I still consider it to be a huge step forward for Apple, just as I considered the 2.4 kernel (bugs and all) to be a huge step forward for the Linux community.
Besides, I'd rather see Apple release OSX 1.01 two weeks from now, than wait 6 months for the first "service pack", eh?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
OSX would be great if Apple added a button or two to their mice.
Release early, release often.
The best way to find bugs is to get the maximum number of people using the software and contributing fixes. Except.. wait.. how can they fix something they don't have the source for?
As far as I'm concerned the problem here is that the software is non-Free, not that it is buggy.
--
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
cdrecord and mkisofs were both installed out of the box... And something tells me that there are linux distro's out there that install Videolan out of the box.
Ranessin
"Why bother even comparing Mac OS to Windows. Of course Windows is far worse. I figured it went without saying. However, just because it's worse than Mac OS doesn't mean Mac OS doesn't have problems too. " Okay, you've just proved yourself to be a nut who's never heard of Win2k... which is really really stable and remarkably free from any odious bugs. (your comments are perfectly valid for all Win9x versions, including WinMe)
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Now it would be cool if other people were allowed to make Mac hardware but that would be like suicide - they have too much R&D to support (unlike that vast majority of PC manufacturers.)
Willy
All your base are belong to Apple!
You're not seeing something clearly. Hardware architecture (x86 vs PPC) has no bearing to the price of Apple hardware.
If, miraculously, Apple had adopted Intel instead of Motorola, their boxen would still be the same price; not because the parts are cheaper or more stock, but because Apple dedicates engineering resources to motherboard design, case design, style, look, and feel. Why do you think that if Apple adopted Intel that OS X would run under stock Intel hardware? I'd think you would *still* need an Apple motherboard, and Apple chipset, an Apple rom and bios, etc.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Except that to the 'OoB' consumer, Apple PPC is the same as Apple x86. To the 'hackers', one would not be able to buy an Apple x86 board any more than they could buy an Apple PPC board, and an Epox or MSI or Intel motherboard would be as useful to a hacker then as those boards are to the hacker today.
People still wouldn't be able to run OS X on a Tyan motherboard, any more than they can or can't today.
I can't even begin to talk about 'wasted' R&D expenditures, though.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
"I see no fan here."
Funny you should gripe about this in an Apple topic...
Perhaps I need to buy an Intel box after all, I could use someplace to grill the hotdogs this summer.
What computers would those be? I think the parent post to yours was refering to preemptive multitasking, which is something that that MacOS has never done. Windows has done it since Win95. As far as multitasking goes, MacOS has some support, but usually the applications have to take it upon themselves to do it (i.e. Photoshop filters running in the "background."
I think you may be confusing having multiple programs open at the same time with multitasking... it's not the same thing.
.....when all Apple are really concerned about is the packaging design!
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%46%55%43%4B !
The file system is not case-sensitive, but case preserving.
It rembers the case - so if a file is called Readme.txt it will remain capitalised this way. But if you type rm readme.TXT the file will be deleted.
Everything I've read about this OS seems like a step in the right direction.
Now, if Apple would only be a little kinder and gentler about opening up their hardware. I grow tired of "All my Macs are belong to Apple"
What I love about OS X is that I'll be able to stick it on my boss' laptop. Put all 3 of his applications in the dock, and let him go to town as a non-administrative user!
The only really bad thing about "classic" is that gaming just sucks. Slow games like "The Sims" will work, but you'll get your ass fragged in a heartbeat if you try to play Unreal Tournament.
Oh, and would Adobe please say something??? They're making us nervous.
Give me Omniweb. It's not free, but it renders web pages in gorgeous anti-aliased text, as OS X was built to do.
I bet IE is programmed to wait until you log in as root and then corrupt your kernel with Microsoft propaganda
OOOohhh Navy Seals!!!
This release of Mac OS X does not support DHCP Relay. FreeBSD does, more recent distros of Linux do, Mac OS 9 does (!), as do all versions of Windows.
So which fully-tested bug-free OS would you recommend ?
All software sucks. Some sucks more than others.
Hmm. I was reading a site the other day where the msg board showed the User-Agent header for all posts. What's the betting this lamer's would be some sucky browser on a sucky OS ?
Any chance of a slashcode mod to do this?
ADC member so they shipped it to me today - Don't think I am allowed to say much about it but it's much more stable then the PB and also faster. Have Netbeans running , OmniWeb (eats IE alive) ..sharity .. it's 11pm and all is well =). You could definatly do worse .. and let;s not forget what sort of change in Mac direction this actually is .. Imagine the next windows being Solaris ..
--
Jon - TheSpork
For instance, if the scheduling heuristics were incapable of avoiding the occasional long pause -- which would not be surprising on a non-real-time time-sliced OS -- that would blow away both of those features, which depend on the rock-steady delivery of large amounts of data over extended periods of time. You could do this on Mac OS because there wasn't really a scheduler to get in the way. Adding a real kernel makes it a harder problem to solve.
Tim
People have been churning out CD writer apps for many years and there's no apparent reason that one couldn't have been contracted out here as well, unless there's some reason the work has to be tightly coupled to the main system.
I'm not insinuating anything, and your response seems rather defensive. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to me -- as a former Apple technical lead -- that these particular critical features should have slipped. I have speculated on one possible reason, but I'm by no means committed to that possibility as the one and only truth. If all you can see is an insult to a beloved kernel, that's your interpretation, not mine.
Porting cdrecord would be a good test of the possibility that problems in Mac OS X scheduling are involved in the slip.
Tim
Again, I'm getting the feeling that there is an emotional reaction here to the idea that UNIX scheduling could ever be less than perfect. If it's a religious issue, I'm not interested in pursuing it on that basis.
Tim
Thanks,
Tim
Tim
"We've 'carbonized' Toast as much as we can," said Victor Nemechek, product manager for Toast, the popular CD burning software from Roxio. "You can get your CDs all ready to burn, but the final step--you can't do that." Carbonizing refers to taking existing code and moving it over to Mac OS X.
Apple shipped Mac OS X without full support for CD-rewritable, DVD and DVD-recordable drives. Besides its own troubles, developers say, Apple also failed to deliver adequate tools for third-party software programs.
"The I/O kit that Apple shipped in the release version of OS X is not quite complete," Nemechek said, referring to a computer's input/output system. This means companies developing software for CD-RW, DVD and tape drives are at a standstill in their development efforts, he added.
Apple is expected to add CD-RW functionality to Mac OS X later this month, but Nemechek said that would likely not immediately solve the problem for Roxio or other developers working with I/O-dependent hardware.
"There are some exciting things about OS X, but problems like this just validate my belief that there is no compelling reason for most people to go out and get OS X right now," Deal said.
Apple declined to comment on the I/O kit.
I consider these comments a validation of my original observation that the DVD and CD-RW features did not simply slip, but were due to deeper architectural problems in Mac OS X, which could not be outsourced due to their close coupling with the system.
Tim
Actually, it is just that. Please see http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-5423455.html? tag=mn_hd. Roxio cannot port Toast at the current level of the system.
Tim
QuickTime performance remains problematic on the G3. I was unable to play even a single copy of the large (588x440) version of the Ruby iMac television advertisement at the full framerate on the G3/400, even on a totally idle system. This movie plays just fine in Mac OS 9 on the same machine. The dual G4/450 does much better, happily playing two copies of this movie simultaneously at full speed on a lightly loaded system. Obviously, the G4's AltiVec unit helps QuickTime playback a great deal, but I'm still puzzled by the poor G3 performance, especially the disparity between playback in OS X versus Mac OS 9. This has been a problem throughout Mac OS X's development, and it's a shame to see that it's made it into the 10.0 release. Is Apple simply giving up on the G3 in favor of G4 optimizations?
In other words, it can't play DVDs yet because it's not fast enough.
I hope this is helpful information for people who didn't see how it could be possible for real-time high-bandwidth operations to play slower on a system with advanced multitasking. Primitive multitasking can get in the way less.
Tim
A friend of mine at Apple who works on OS X has told me for years that "it's almost ready".
The biggest problem with the software market right now is that it favors the company get gets to market first. I see it like Linux 2.4 - if they say it's going to be done "when it's finished," I say let them have all the time they want.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Steve Jobs spoke at MacWorld or someother similar event a couple months ago (about 2 weeks after Mac stock ubertanked)... about how the Mac was going to be at the center for all your digital needs. It was gonna be a sorta "Digital Hub" making all your digital dreams come true...
Well.... except for playing DVD's.
Comeon...this was a couple months ago that Mac laid out it's future intentions... and they are still shipping an OS that doesn't live upto thier hype. Granted.... companies rarely live upto their own hype.... but they usually can release operating systems that can play DVDs. (err one other company that makes OS's can anyway).
I'm no Mac User.... but it just seems to me that this lack of DVD support is just the sort of thing to really rain on the image Mr. Jobs was trying to paint for me.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
The file system is case preserving but not case sensative when you choose the volume to be formatted in HFS+. It is case sensative if you choose UFS.
you're a fucking queer. you just type 'fp' cos it's quick to type, you don't take any real honour in getting first post. a decent first poster actually has something to say, a true troll is funny. you are just shit.
---
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hello this is bruno brooks, umm, err, cunt.
With the Unix (BSD) base, wouldn't be fairly simple to get it running on other BSD platforms? Obviously its not something you can jusy whip together, but as the kernal is already ported, wouldn't bringing the rest of it be fairly simple? In seeing what M$ has planned for us with the horrid looking resource hogging XP, I am looking for alterenitives. Saddly I don't have enough expertese to do much with GNU/Linux releases, even though I have Debian on my "fun things to play with" box. For that matter, how difficult would it be to port OSX to use a Linux kernel?
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
Just wondering, is the file system case-sensitive? I've always wondered about case-sensitivity versus user-friendliness. I think it is difficult to explain to the 'common (wo)man' that "Readme.txt" is a different file than "readme.txt".
If it did have a fan, you could probably run it about 100 mhz faster then it is currently clocked.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
It's amazing how features that you can't implement become "minor".
What the heck kind of modern "multimedia" system doesn't have DVD and especially CD-RW support??? Didn't Jobs just come out and say the next big thing was DVD-RW? And now he is releasing a system that can't even burn simple CDs? Isn't Mac releasing commercials about how cool it is to burn your own music CDs? I guess they were really taking about how cool it would be to burn music CD's if you used a Windows machine.
Can you imagine if the next version of Windows didn't have CD-RW and DVD support and just gave you a copy of Windows 95 and told you to dual boot? But of course they had programmers that could figure out memory protection and true multitasking SEVEN years before Mac!!
If they can't even figure out how to get this stuff working, why am I supposed to have any confidence in the rest of their OS?
Odd that the iMac, Cube don't actually have a fan.
A friend of mine at Apple who works on OS X has told me for years that "it's almost ready". Heh heh. I wonder if this is for real? Personal experience has shown me that Apple is perfectly willing to ship buggy software w/o full testing, so maybe they will ship it this time. :)
notice how there are no tv commercials, there will be no 8' tall store displays. this initial release of macOS X is targetted at 'early adopters' as in, those people who want to use cutting-edge stuff but understand that it's going to take a little while for applications to catch up.
nobody expects the bulk of the Mac community to move to OS X until all their favorite applications become native on it (like photoshop). we're expecting those apps this fall. the Carbon API's have allowed developers to prepare for this even before getting their hands on the first development releases.
One might also note, that recently Apple made changes in their hardware from stock CD and DVD drives to a new CD/DVD/DVD-R drive. this probably required altering a good amount of code, and they had to tradeoff the development time to do that with finishing up other (more critical) pieces.
In the end, i'd rather get this release of OS X, and in a month or two install a updater package, than wait another few months.
www.pixelectric.com
MacOS X Looks like a Champ Red Herring
Re-Engineering the Mac Universe Washington Post
OS X Won't Change the World but is Still a Big Deal ZDNet
MacOS X: Major Into in Minor Key Business Week
It's As Easy as A Mac Wired
And tons more, too many to mention. All from mainstream press, note... will wonders never cease?
Note that there is still some bad Apple press like C|Net's Jeff Raskin video interview (but I wonder what he has to say about Windows if he's so nitpicky lol!) but on the whole it's been good, even from C|Net - Look at their Holy Grail group of articles on Apple.
If they are fixing bugs now, then they shouldn't release for another few weeks, until they've given it a thorough test again. But no, it appears as soon as they've fixed the known bugs it will ship. I personally have about 2 months between me and the customer. After I've component tested, we then integration test for a month, we also then system test for a month after that. Our customers never get suspect code. Full Stop.
THL.
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Keeping
So.......what do you think of the artice HERE. But, since you started it. We recieved 8 Ti's for our agency, and we have had nothing but rave reviews on all of them. I tell you what, our clients couldn't be more impressed when you preview a piece on one of these things. I just took one to Denver and watched a movie on the plane. I couldn't finish it due to peoples questions about the thing. I even got a "What's Apple?" Awesome.
As for his "review" of OS X's features, that part consists of his complaining about a single missing feature (DVD support) and glossing over the rest. The info about the DVD problem has been widely publicized on the net. Given his obvious laziness, one wonders if he's ever actually run the OS himself.
If the goal was to get himself attention, he should have just stood on the roof of a car wearing a dunce cap and dancing an Irish jig.
I saw OS X running at my local CompUSA in Colorado Springs (Dan really knows what he's doing) on a Dual 500G4 and a 533G4. It looked and felt GREAT!!!
Here's my question. When running apps in classic, do you still have to allocate memory to applications? We ran Photoshop LE and it was really slow. Gettting Info and upping the memory seemed to help. Is this necessary?
Another question.
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?
Says it's a photo of iMac2. Anybody know anything about this?