OS X

So, now that OS X has been out a few days and people have had a chance to put it though its paces, let's take a look at it. Upside.com wonders if the new OS was released half-baked. Ars Technica puts it through its paces with a very thorough review. O'Reilly plans to release tech books covering OS X, so if your bookshelf isn't full yet, you can add a few more. Certain major software projects are already being tried on OS X - look out Adobe. And finally, we know it's not April 1, but we thought the picture of OS X on a Visor was cute. Any other good links to reviews? Post them below.

Comments

Re:Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody know what karma an OS needs to be reincarnated as OS X ?
Is this good or a punishment ?
And when reaches an OS the nirvana ?
And how can 2 OS merge on reincarnation, when one of the two is not even dead up to now ?

X and X

[Anonymous Coward]

I've compiled and installed a number of X-Windows things for OS X, including glib, gtk+, imlib, jpeglib, etc., XEmacs, WindowMaker, AfterStep, Xfce, XV, rxvt, Freeciv, Dillo, gFTP, and Postilion. (To start X-Windows, you need to type ">console" at the login window; login to the console, type startx, and away you go.) Apple added a number of symbolic links at places other flavors of *NIX usually have their system libraries; the links point to the location of said libs in Apple's distribution. Hence you no longer need to hack the hell out of the configures and makefiles to get things to compile. In fact most things just require a simple ./configure, make, make install, without any modifiction aside from occasionally needing to specify --host=powerpc-apple-darwin1.3 or --host=powerpc-apple-machten.

Go to gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net or fink.sourceforge.net for more information on getting X to run under OS X. For that matter, if anyone's interested in running X without having to shutdown OS X's native window manager first, check out the XonX project at mrcla.com/XonX/.

Re:OS X software

[Trepidity]

I think he meant a real OS. =P

Twas more of a port than that

[DCMonkey]

From what I understand, they didn't just port it as if to another *nix but also reimplemented the Swing UI classes and Java2d to use Quartz/Aqua more efficiently/directly and that instances of JVMs are supposed to share more common resources (classes and such). There's more at Apple's Web Site. It'd be interesting to benchmark these improvements vs. Windows/Linux/Solaris/etc Java implementations.

Re:RAM/Paging usage

[Eccles]

Actually, OS 9 just gives you an out of memory error.

Yes, but Mac apps that run out of memory often crash, and can take the OS with it. (Windows apps aren't written any better, it's just that VM trashing often slows things down enough to discourage people from hitting the VM limit.)

I installed it last night

[Don Negro]

It was much quicker than I had been led to believe.

Config: Rev 1 Blue and White G3 400Mhz, 256MB, 1 9 GB UltraSCSI 2 HD, 1 8.4 GB ATA HD.

I was previously running MacOS 8.6, and I chose to wipe my 8.4 GB HD and copy my old system folder over en masse, mainly because I have ProTools/Powermix, Bias Peak, and Reason all happily coexisting on that system, and I'll be damned if I screw up that happy accident for *any* new OS.

So, I installed 9.1 on the 9 GB, then installed OS X. The initial 'welcome' screen played the QT movie that others have written about, but the music was what caught my attention. It was almost certianly remixed Portishead - no one else does the ambient vibraphone thing like they do.

I chose to skip the internet set-up. I connect to SBC DSL via PPPoE and I was a little apprehensive. I shouldn't have worried. It took 2 minutes with the Internet Connect App. I selected Built-In Ethernet, the protocol pulldown menu changed from PPP to PPPoE, and I selected that. Typed in my username and password, and I had IP connectivity.

I was installing off an Apple Internal CD, which has a reduced software set, so I used my new connection to go the apple.com and download a copy of OmniWeb. Slick little browser, that. Clean, small, uncluttered. My wife used to work for AT&T Wireless (a large NeXTSTEP installation) and she had nothing but good things to say about OmniWeb, and she was right.

I spent most of the rest of the night digging around for printer drivers for my Epson Photo 1200, to no avail. It would recognize it from the USB bus, but listed it as unsupported. Supposedly there were new drivers from Epson available via iDisk, so I created a new iTools account and dug around in there for a while, but was unable to find them. I did download some nifty software, though.

Some people have bitched about the anti-aliased fonts being blurry or hard to read. I can see how this could happen. I have an Apple Studio Display 17", which has a Mitsubishi Diamondtron tube with a .25 dot pitch. With a less-tightly grained monitor, 10 pt. fonts would have been hard to read. I was running 1152X870, millions of colors, 75 Hz, and the small text got *easier* to read between 18" and 3' back from the monitor. Closer, and it got progressively more grey as I could better resolve the anti-aliasing.

I was able to hang a few processes, which were easily killed off via ProcessViewer (second thing I aliased to the Dock, right behind the terminal). Click on process, Apple-Shift-Q. Gone.

My explorations were cut short by the fact that I had to go run errands, but I expect to spend most of tonight screwing around with it, and I expect that I'll be able to give better anecdotal evidence about OS X in the new future.

Don Negro

Re:I installed it last night

[minimis]

but the music was what caught my attention. It was almost certianly remixed Portishead - no one else does the ambient vibraphone thing like they do.

It's 'Sofa Rockers (Richard Dorfmeister mix)' by Sofa Surfers.

Re:I installed it last night

[moongha]

It's from the K & D sessions - a superlative album.

Re:I installed it last night

[A Sarcastic Bastard]

So, I installed 9.1 on the 9 GB, then installed OS X. The initial 'welcome' screen played the QT movie that others have written about, but the music was what caught my attention. It was almost certianly remixed Portishead - no one else does the ambient vibraphone thing like they do.

I Don't know wether it actually is Portishead, altough I checked amazon, but what I know for sure is that it's a remix from the austrian trip-hop duo Kruder & Dorfmeister.

If it wasn't illegal I would suggest that you check Napster for Kruder and Dorfmeister, they are really my heroes when it comes to remixing. Try and find their remix from Madonna's Nothing really matters! Or their Depeche Mode remix...

Don't try to contact me to ask if I can send you the mp3's because that'd be illegal and I wouldn't do it!



Remove your opinion to email me!

Re:MacOS X

[jafac]

gosh, it would be nice if Quartz were optimized for a single 3d card, like ATI for instance? Seeing as how pretty much all Macs have at least an ATI built in.

Should they have held-off? No, this ball needs to get rolling and now. It's not just Mac users that have been denied the OS that X is destined to become, it's the entire world that's dying for an OS that "does not suck". It's our last, best hope.

Companies like Adobe clearly are needing some kind of incentive to get off their asses and carbonize apps. A 1.0 release is as good an incentive as any.

I consider myself an early adopter, but I'm not buying OS X, I'm sticking with 9.1 because I was not impressed with performance of PB on my 300MHz beige G3. Reports are mixed about performance now, but I'm not expecting that I'll be one of the lucky ones like the guys who say it screams on their 233 MHz Rev A iMac. So I'm going to wait, maybe 6 months, maybe a year, until a little more maturity, more drivers, and more apps are there, and by then maybe the stock market will have recovered enough so I can afford new hardware to run it on. ;)

Re:OS X software

[jafac]

My wife owns an iMac, and those Harmon/Kardons aren't all that.

they're okay, they get the job done, but you really don't want to listen to music without an additional subwoofer. There's just no bass at all to those things.

Re:NeXTSTEP 5.0

[jafac]

The thing is, I think that the pundits do not believe that their readership understands what NeXT is/was. They think it's a CS-academic-geek-trivia thing, and that most people are more likely to understand what BSD is.
Also, BSD is like, in with all the GNU/OpenSource/Linux stuff, so it's 1337.

So they say BSD.

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[jafac]

Feng Shui is a scam invented by furniture salesmen to make spending enormous amounts of money on trendy furniture and redecorating seem "new age" and "spiritual" and "multicultural".

Re:Common threads.

[jafac]

It could be that if Microsoft doesn't get it's ass in gear and either Cocoa-ify IE, or fix whatever is wrong with the Carbon version (which may turn out to be Carbon itself from what Siracuse writes), then when OS X starts shipping in significant quantity, OmniWeb may just start eroding IE's marketshare. . .

Where's Netscape? SOL. er, I mean AOL.

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[jafac]

I doubt there's any technical reason we can't have the apple menu the way it used to be. Heck, how long did it take for a shareware hack to make it out for PB? two weeks?

How long did it take for similar apple menu functionality to show up in the Dock? two months?

I'm 100% certain that it was a stubborn, political, Steve ass-kissing decision. Had they put configurability back into apple menu, it would have diminished the necessity for the Dock - rumored to be one of Steve's special favorite features (mainly because of the Genie effect when minimizing, because it's a super-cool thing that makes Windows look WEAK).

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[jafac]

uh, yeah. Until you start doing things like moving stuff into and out of the Application folder, then suddenly permissions break for no explainable reason, and your average Mac user is out buying Unix for Dummies so they can figure out how to use terminal.app, man, su, sudo, chmod, hacking netinfo to enable the root account, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Having unix superhero powers is very cool.
Having to use them for simple everyday tasks that weren't necessary on the old OS is very uncool (expecially when it's because of buggy behavior as described above).
OS X has changed a simple drag-n-drop file move operation into a major educational ordeal involving many steps.

IMHO, this is *not* the highly touted, much promised "Macintosh ease of use on a powerful Unix OS".

NeXTSTEP 5.0

[Seth Morabito]

I'm really surprised more people in the media haven't commented on how much NeXT there is in MacOS X. The common battlecry is "it's based on UNIX", or with a little more specificity, "it's based on BSD". Look, the truth is, this is NeXTSTEP (or OPENSTEP for you 4.2 fans) with a funny interface.

Let's review. There is a BSD layer, yes, but it's no more BSD than NeXTSTEP had. Think back to 1990. Imagine yourself sitting in front of a big black cube. Open up a shell, and you'll find it's tcsh. Look around at the file system. You'll see it's strikingly similar to MacOS X today, virtually the same layout.

Most important are the runtimes available. The primary runtime, now called "Cocoa", was formerly just called OPENSTEP. It's Objective-C, and all objects inherit from NSObject (NS - NextStep, get it?). You can get access to a lot of these objects through Java as well, but mostly you use Objective-C to write native MacOS X applications.

The display layer, now called "Quartz", is Display PostScript at its heart. You'd be more accurate to call it "Display PDF", but since PDF is really an extension of PostScript... well, you get the idea.

Oh, and applications are "bundles" (really just directories that encapsulate their internal components and expose a single icon) that end in a ".app" extension. That is so very, very NeXT.

The good news is that there are so many core enhancements since OPENSTEP 4.2. This is not your father's OS. The tight integration into the system of a really rather decent Java VM is a delight. Quartz has come a long way since the initial Display PS. The mere fact that InterfaceBuilder.app and ProjectBuilder.app are included for free is marvellous.

I was a NeXT Computer booster from way back, I've always had a soft spot for them. And MacOS X just confirms what I knew was going on in 1996 -- NeXT bought Apple, not the other way around.

(And thank God, too.)

-Seth

Re:NeXTSTEP 5.0

[WillAdams]

But there's a lot that's missing...

- no Fax support (anyone tried rolling their own?)
- no ``Save'' button in the print panel either, and the printer list is a pop-up, not a scrolling/resizeable list
- Quartz instead of Display PostScript, so no arbitrary PS code usage :( must flatten to .pdf...
- scroll bars are on the wrong side (this is especially bad in the Miller-column browser)
- all of the Services clients are MIA. No Websters (but it'll connect to dict.org), no Oxford's, no Digital Librarian/Shakespeare
- gotta d/l TeX and get TeXShop.app instead of using NeXTTeX
- no more nifty .font bundles
- no Shelf

I for one hope GNUstep picks up some steam. www.gnustep.org
William
--
Lettering Art in Modern Use

Re:NeXTSTEP 5.0

[green pizza]

Great summary!

NeXT bought Apple, not the other way around.

Amen!

Aside from the Apple-shaped logo and the user base, the company is almost totally NeXT these days... including and especially the engineers. They still need a nice slick-looking high-end workstation. A quad-CPU 667 MHz PPC7450 box with onboard Ultra3 SCSI in a NeXTish enclosure with the ease of the G4 tower would be nice. Maybe make some real servers. Hint to Apple: real servers are either the size of fridges or rackmountable. They also have ECC RAM, lights-out-management (either Sun-like or thru a terminal server), and hotswapable drive sleds.

It's also a lot easier to -use- Mac OS X when one thinks "the NeXT way" rather than trying to think of it as a modified Mac OS, Windows, or KDE/GNOME atop Linux/BSD.

All in all, I *love* Mac OS X. Remotely running non-GUI tasks the thing hauls like nothing else. It's really just the GUI that's sluggish... as was NEXTSTEP on the original 68030 NeXT Cube. Given time (and eventually, better hardware) this thing is going to fly in all respects and it's certainly an OS "for the next 10 years".

Re:NeXTSTEP 5.0

[shotfeel]

I'm really surprised more people in the media haven't commented on how much NeXT there is in MacOS X.

I'm not. A quick survey here (5 people) shows they've all heard of unix, only one of those 5 have heard of NeXT. Its easier for the media to build on what people "know" than it is to actually inform them.

Re:NeXTSTEP 5.0

[wandazulu]

I agree in that Apple has been taken over by all things NeXT, and that's not at all a bad thing. If anything, I admire Apple (and before it NeXT) for pushing the state of the art. I used an original monochrome-monitor Cube back in the early nineties and found its interface, while more complex at first coming from the Mac world (before Win3.1 had taken over the world), but that it was a breeze to use, and really put a beautiful spin on the true power of the machine. The MacOS (vers. 1-9) I thought hid *too* much of the machine away, which might be ok for arists and designers, but more hard core users, I think, grumbled not a few times at not being able to just drop to a command line and "just do it". NeXT, and now Apple, have done, I think what no one else has done in the *thirty* years Unix has been available ... create an elegant interface that is not overly confusing for a newbie, while still powerful enough for hardcode. I've used a *lot* of window managers over the years, motif, openlook, tom's, et al. Those wms merely provided easier ways of having multiple xterms open, and wms like Gnome try to curry favor with windows users who demand a start button in the lower left hand corner. NeXT and Apple tried to create a truly useful interface that would appeal to the masses without insulting their intelligence *or* limiting them. Though it's not flawless, I think it's better than anything out there. As it is said, only God is perfect. By the way: In regards to a slick high-end workstation, I think that's what they designed the Mac Cube for ... no slots, but has that NeXT enclosure, and smaller too. I'm guessing that the Mac Cube is the machine Jobs has been dreaming of, even since the NeXT Cube days.

Re:MacOS X

[castanaveras]

For what it's worth, I'm reading IMAP folders using Mail.app on a 350Mhz B&W G3.

RAM helps a lot - when I went to upgrade last month, I ended up paying $82 for 256M - I'd budgeted 175 so I went ahead and bumped up my machine a half gig.

As far as your AirPort trouble goes, try setting your password in the airport panel in hex (don't forget the leading '$'). I saw that as a fix on (I think) macosx.com

Re:Common threads.

[Lally Singh]

Actually mozilla runs pretty well on it if you want to try that.

--

Re:Most of you are missing the point.

[Lally Singh]

I have to disagree. Truth is that I've been a rabid Linux and UNIX user for years, spending many of them programming Motif under CDE...

As a user who's been through many unices and been heartbroken by all the UIs it's been through, I could really see OS X being my final home. I enjoy the antialiased graphics in all my applications. I enjoy the built in UI. I enjoy the general low pain-in-the-ass factor that I have with either UNIX or Windows when it comes to software installation, hardware installation, or any other maintanence task.

Apache is pre-installed. I installed PHP and mysql within ten minutes, and am fully up & running. GCC 2.95.2 comes on the development CD, and project builder's got a fairly nice editor. I installed bash 2 and vim 5.7, and I can't say I've ever been this comfortable on any other computer in my life.

Sure, customizing the windowmanager of the week (and I've been through it all when it was actually like that back when fvwm95 was the rage) is fun for a while, but I have SHIT TO DO. The biggest attribute I must give many people who need to customize X to the very limits, who need to install 400 themes, or any other truly useless overtweaking activity is TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS.

Armed with a shell prompt and the easiest to use GUI I've ever known on UNIX (because Mac OS X is a UNIX, remember that!), I've never been happier.

And, the fact that I don't have to put up with the PC architecture's completely fucked up hardware is wonderful. A 64bit cpu that does up to 4 GFLOPS is wonderful in my mind. I enjoy not using an interrupt controller dated to 1979 (yes, I know all about the APICs, but how many devices use the little fuckers?).

Also remember that macs have a longer lifetime than PC hardware. A pentium is barely usable, while a normal powermac is fine under OS 9. Sure alot of macs will be obsoleted by OS X, but many still run OS 8 or 7.x with glee. All that an old linux box really says is "router."

So, before everyone goes off into their non-linux tirade, ask yourself, what are you in it for? A quick reaction to show your 3733+3ness, or a genuine love for a good every day use & programming environment?

One of the biggest plusses now is that your grandmother (no, not the one that sends patches to Alan Cox, the other one) will probably most likely use UNIX with you :-)

--

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[VAXGeek]

NeXT was, in fact, so successful that they went out of business a few years back.
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless

Re:Common threads.

[stripes]

Another one is that IE performs really badly in its beta-carbonized form.

I think IE is worse in the OSX release then it was in the public beta. Not really slower as much as it crashes way more often, and the "page holder" has stopped working. I have more or less switched to OmniWeb.

P.S. I dig the new finder, but maybe that is because I like the new list view (well the NeXT list view).

P.P.S. umount -f seems to cause lockups pretty easily. Too bad, all the other BSDs are stable after one.

Re:My thoughts on OS X

[stripes]

Applications - well, I hardly ever have to run anything in Classic. I've found an email application, an mp3 player, a web browser, AIM, a LiveJournal client (addict? me? never...) and other things that I need for daily happiness, all either Carbonized or already Cocoa. The only things I need Classic for are things like Photoshop and Dreamweaver - and it works just fine for those. Not every application I'll ever use is available yet - but stuff I need on a daily basis is all already supported in OS X.

I pretty much agree with you, for two reasons:

• Classic may not be the ideal solution, but it does work for the vast majority of applications. Hell it even works for pre-release 1980's versions of MacDraw that are written for a different CPU!
• I really believe that a lot of places have been dragging their feet on doing OSX ports until there was a release. Not delaying the release for 3rd party apps was a good idea. Also not installing it on new Macs is a great idea, because the thing ain't finished.

Plus, if you think something's missing - add it. Apple couldn't get ssh included, but many many people have gotten OpenSSH installed and working with a minimum of hassle.

I heard the govm'nt didn't OK Apple's paper work until about four hours after the golden master was cut. Beats me if it's true, but it makes a good story. It was only modestly harder to get compiled and installed on this OS then on others. I was kinda looking forward to a mass release OS with ssh built in though.

Re:Been playing with it

[stripes]

Being able to call up a terminal which is actually part of a Mac system absolutely rocks. Although, has anyone been able to replace the default shell with bash?

Have you tried chsh /path/to/bash? It worked for switching to zsh.

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[stripes]

In the older OSes, as I understand it, you have a set amount of virtual memory (set in a control panel). Each application reserves a set amount of memory (which in theory is the maximum amount of memory it would ever need) when it launches. So, IE might reserve 16 megs of memory, but only be using 7 or 8 at any given time. This way, each running application will never had its memory used by another app (in theory). The down side is that since the amount of memory an app has reserved is fixed, you don't get as many apps in physical memory as you do in an OS with a real VM system.

FYI, you can do (almost) that on OSX and other Posix systems (like Linux). Use "setrlimit". It won't pre-allocate the memory though, just limit the apps.

Re:Indeed

[stripes]

if Carbon/Cocoa apps actually used the system call interface directly.

You may mix any of the APIs (according to the OSX overview doc - I havn't finished my reading, let alone started testing!) except classic (Carbon is 80% to 95% of Classic, depending on how you count).

However if you use a fairly narrow set of APIs you can be a Carbon OS X app under OSX, and still run under OS9 (and I think OS8).

Re:Indeed

[stripes]

The fact is, it has little in common with bsd other than the fact that there is a bsd interface to the mach kernel that is there for the sole purpose of allowing it to run unix programs such as apache, sendmail, etc.

Sure, it has little in common except the whole 4.4Lite source base. Oh, and all the shims so it can use FreeBSD device drivers and filesystems. Oh, and the systemcall interface, which native OSX applications can/do use (unlike WinNT where you wither have a GUI, or you have Posix, but it is almost impossible to have both).

Most people seem to think that it started out as BSD and apple built their own window system on top, which is far from the truth.

How do you think it started out? It was MACH when NeXT built it, which had a BSD single server on it (not 4.4 at the time because 4.4 wasn't available). NeXT put their own windowing system on top because they felt (like many others) that X sucks.

The BSD stuff is a convenient way for apple to use existing software, nothing more.

Duh. What do you think Linux is? It is an easy way to use all that existing Unix app code.

Actually that is a bit far from the mark since Apple isn't getting a huge amount of mileage from existing Unix apps (mostly they don't have a friendly UI, and the ones that do need to use a new API for the UI anyway!).

Why should it matter that Apple chose BSD to reuse existing code? Isn't that the reason to choose an OS? What's next? Bitching at Red Hat for choosing Linux so they can use all that existing Linux software? Well, duh, of corse.

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[cpt kangarooski]

Steve is more like a cross between the PHB and Catbert. He's stupid, and nontechnical, but actively evil. (wasn't it Cringely that described him as a sociopath?)

He co founded Apple, but his job consisted chiefly of convincing investors to invest, people to buy the hardware, and getting more people to help run the company. This was pretty impressive, as he was against bathing at the time. Or eating a balanced diet.

But he screwed up at Apple all the time; had he not been successfully opposed by the Woz, the Apple II would've not really been expandable or useful. He mismanaged the Lisa project. (you are right about PARC, only Steve wasn't familiar with GUIS - too bad he didn't adopt Ethernet, laser printing or Smalltalk when he was there; all parts of the tour)

He mismanaged the Mac project, which was not successful until the Mac Plus came along after he was booted out.

NeXTs failure is in many ways Steve's own fault. I enjoyed "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing" for an accounting of his screwups large and small. (e.g. having the assembly plant built, torn down and rebuilt, because the computers have to get assembled going in the proper direction!)

Pixar's success is in many ways due to Steve not getting involved. He lets Pixar do its own thing, more or less, though it was started as a division of Industrial Light and Magic, so he can't take all the credit. Additionally, Pixar is so small that one good flop is bound to cause no end of trouble for them.

Steve is remarkable for his amazing chutzpah. Outside of that, I'd take a stable and historically successful person like McNealy, or Gates or Dell or Ellison any day. Steve's too unreliable to be given the keys to anything, IMHO.

(Best Apple manager: Mike Scott. This is not saying a hell of a lot, I'm afraid.)

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[cpt kangarooski]

Sorry, I meant in context: Gates is rather paranoid, and I understand his management style tends to involve wanting direct control over everyone at MS. (which is merely unfeasable to him for techical reasons alone)

But he has managed to get MS to the top, and keep it there, and get its tentacles into other businesses and take them over, or at least make good headway into doing so. It makes him a successful businessman, even if I doubt I'd want to ever deal with him personally.

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[cpt kangarooski]

Three companies? NeXT no longer exists. It was bought by Apple. I count two companies.

With regards to Lisa and Mac, Apple planned to have three products after the Apple II+. Apple III - a stopgap business machine; Lisa - a serious business machine that would be Apple's future; Annie - a cheap gaming computer.

Jobs, being in upper management, wasn't nominally in charge of Lisa, but was closely involved in it, the PARC tour was arranged so that he'd let them do GUI devlopment, fired and hired people up to and including project leaders, and was kicked off by Markkula when he consistantly missed deadlines. (mostly by adding features)

Then he went to the Mac, fought with Raskin, who ran it and had proposed GUIs at Apple to begin with, Raskin quit, and Jobs consistantly missed deadlines. (mostly by adding features) He also fought with his engineers - Jobs' dream Mac would've had 64kB RAM and a 880kB Twiggy disks. (the kind that he had had made for Lisa, and were notoriously lousy) Word has it that he deliberately kept networking off the Mac as long as he had control; he definately kept expansion slots off. (and had tried to get rid of them on the Apple II but was rebuffed by Woz)

When the Lisa and Mac divisions were brought under a single division, Steve killed the Lisa - the Mac was better, in his opinion, even though Lisa sales were picking up a little bit.

Then he tried to oust Sculley, but was in fact hoisted by his own petard, stripped of power, and quit, taking key employees with him.

A few good histories of Apple can get into the real nitty-gritty. Same with NeXT. The story btw is that (aside from robot colors, which also happened) Steve wanted the factory to be in the US, and for people who were buying computers to be able to see them being assembled, rather like cars.

But the place where people would be taken to see the assembly was oriented with the assembly line in such a way that the cubes would go right to left. That's backwards, but he only decided after the plant was completed, so everything had to be torn out and moved so that they went in the correct direction.

No one _ever_ came to see the assembly.

Another great story is that the case designers wanted to put an imperceptable angle in the cube sides so that it could fall out of the mold; this was unacceptable to Steve, so special one-of-a-kind mold technology had to be developed to accomodate the perfect cube angles. Magnesium turned out not to hold paint well; the logo was nearly as bad as Apple's in terms of printing costs; cubes would only have MO drives - no HDs, but MOs broke easily and were slow and expensive... there are a lot of problems with NeXT that were caused by what Steve wanted to do, regardless of what actually would've made sense.

And no one could ever argue with Steve.

With regards to Pixar, there are rumors that Monsters, Inc. won't be all that good. Particularly in the face of the Harry Potter movie and Fellowship of the Ring. Their deal with Disney is nice (they have had difficulty predicting hit movies accurately, e.g. 102 Dalmatians and Emperor's New Groove) but when it runs out, with other major studios pursuing computer animation aggressively, what do they do? Movie making is a highly turbulent business, and Pixar is very small, given the output of many other studios and production companies. But again, Lassiter pretty much runs Pixar according to all reports I've heard.

Apple isn't doing well, as their market share is pitiful. Perhaps their revenues are good, but they are pretty certainly under a sustainable share point, and unless they can grow up to something like 15-30% of the market, it'll continue to decline, as it's been doing steadily for a decade. Making a few million is nice. In the face of MS making so much more, it's not quite _as_ nice. And Apple competes against Intel, MS, Dell, Compaq, Gateway and all the little clone makers. It's a nasty uphill battle.

Please, check out reliable sources. "Fire in the Valley," "Apple Confidential," "Infinite Loop," "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing," "Accidental Empires." They generally paint the same picture of Steve.

Re:OS X software

[cpt kangarooski]

Like the $899 iMacs?

I _am_ a Mac user, and I know that Apple's prices are awful. Although there is the possibility of generic components being of lower quality than name brand, in truth they're just as frequently the same components.

The Windows platform is hugely benefited by the ability of some guy in the middle of nowhere to assemble computers on margins so thin he can see through them, but to be able to sell them to people in his town. Apple, or Dell, or Gateway, or Compaq, or whomever can never have presences in all markets, and the Web isn't always a viable replacement.

Frankly, I doubt they'd ever even consider selling computers with a profit of $5 or $10 because it's too low - regardless it is a perfectly worthwhile niche to be filled.

Only one really big company - MS - is trying to move in on that segment, with the XBox (possibly future revisions, that use .Net and incorporate WebTV) but it's chiefly a response to the OS now being one of the most expensive parts of a low end system. If eMachines started selling Linux systems (if they could manage somehow) MS would percieve it as a threat, so it's acting preemptively ;)

We can't pretend that the world is in the 1980s forever. Relatively good generic parts - ones that are 'good enough' are pervasive, and we had better deal with that. If Apple were smart they'd port over to x86 as fast as possible to take advantage of the cheaper, faster, more standard hardware. And if they had the opportunity (read: MS is broken up) they would need to spin off their hardware division entirely and license the OS to absolutely anyone that wanted it, from Michael Dell to Krazy Larry.

But I doubt they'll even be able to get that far, these days.

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[sarlalian]

You used to be able to create OpenStep apps under win32.

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[sarlalian]

I'm pretty sure that Jobs killed OpenStep for win32, very sad for windows users.

Re:Quartz != X11 and Carbon != POSIX

[sarlalian]

Posix is there, otherwise it would not be BSD, but it also has Carbon, Cocoa, Quarts, and OpenGL. It should be significantly easier to port from OS X to linux than from win32 to linux. IIRC ID used to develop on NeXT and then port to windows.

Re:Should I get one?

[Colin Simmonds]

I'm using NFS between my Linux server and my OS X workstation, but it's a bit flaky. OS X can import NFS filesystems if you set some options (look in the forums on macnn.com for details), but I've found that I need to stop and restart the NFS server processes every time the OS X box tries to import a new filesystem. OS X can export via NFS so long as it's from a partition formatted as UFS (the default is HFS+ for Classic compatibility, which does not work with NFS).

There is no fancy GUI to enable NFS, so you have to be familiar with the Unix command line and the NeXT-derived NetInfo system in order to get NFS working.

In the Public Beta, I found some problems where non-Unix applications could not see NFS-imported filesystems, but that appears to have been fixed in the Final Release.

Re:Mac people don't know how to use top

[John Siracusa]

I read the review on Ars Technica, and they think it's a problem that top shows that the system is using 253mb of ram on a system with 256mb ram in total. It's not

...which is exactly what I was trying to show by launching a dozen more apps and noting that top still reads about the same. I didn't think it was necessary to get into the gory details of demand-paged virtual memory. I just wanted to illustrate the different set of "rules" in OS X vs. classic Mac OS, where "3MB left" means "3MB left"! :-)

Re:Ars Technica

[John Siracusa]

The thing that bugs me about Ars (I liked their review) is their continued use of white text on black, as if it's still 1996. I found myself selecting the text to read it more easily.

User interface experts, indeed!

I just write 'em, I don't choose the site design...

Larswm on OSX?

[asn]

I'm a diehard larswm fan, and also love the look of the new Apple Titanium Notebooks... Could I be running larswm on top of OSX and still be able to run both BSD and Mac apps (specifically, allt eh movie and DVD stuff)?

lmbench results anyone?

[pp]

Has anyone run lmbench on it btw.? I'd be really interested in seeing some figures (compared to Linux 2.4 on the same hardware).

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[maggard]

Except the PHB answered "Mauve" without any concern or confusion.

Of course most PHB's haven't founded three extremely succesful companies either (Apple, Next, & Pixar.) Nor have most PHB's been reponsible for many of the major changes in computing we've seen in the past two decades. I'm not much of a fan of Steve Jobs but one does have to accord him respect for his accomplishments.

-- Michael

ps Before some not-very-knowledgable person cuts in with the old urban legend about Xerox PARC & GUI's: It's been debunked, The Lisa team was well advanced on their own GUI well before they visited Xerox.

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[maggard]

I've never met Steve Jobs so I don't feel qualified to judge his mental state. Clearly he's able to function & I'd like to believe anyone who earns my salery^2 and oversees three large companies to have some credible skills & brains.

Just for accuracy Jobs didn't manage the Lisa project, indeed the Mac was his secret skunkworks project that he led under a pirate flag off of the Apple campus. As to adopting Xerox PARC technologies it's generally accepted that the built-in networking with the then very affordable (compared to the competition) Apple Laserwriter was a key element in the Mac's success. No, it didn't involve Ethernet but it was the first hardware & OS to come with any sort of built-in networking and Apple was the first computer manufacturer to pair their product with a laser printer.

As to mismanaging the Mac project it may not have been succesful until after he left but it was certianly more succesful then either the Apple III or the Lisa projects that preceeded it.

The Next plant story I heard was that he delayed production to have the robots repainted correct colors. There was no building-orientation or Feng-Shui (then unknown) involved in it.

As to Pixar being small: they have a multpple movie contract with Disney so they can afford the occasionial flop. I don't think there's any fear of their going belly-up soon.

Indeed upon rereading it appears that I've corrected or rebutted all of your points so far leading me to wonder how much direct involvement with Pixar Jobs has. You say "little" & "in spite of" but frankly you don't seem a reliable source.

As to being reliable to holding the keys to anything, I'd like to note that all three companies are doing relativly well, seem poised to weather the industry turndown and he *does* have the keys, we don't.

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[maggard]

Maybe this is another brilliant but unpopular move by Jobs (a la killing the clones)

Apple never had clones, it had licensees. There's a fundamental difference:

• Clones reverse-engineer intellectual property in a legal fashion and produce a (mostly) work-alike.
• Licensees enter a legal contract between themselves and the product owner for access to the technology based on a flat-rate, per-unit, etc. fees. They're selling the "real deal" with permission from the licensor.

Apple licensed it's hardware, designs, and MacOS 7.0 to a number of companies including Power Computing, IBM, Bandai, Umax, Motorola, Daystar & I believe Dell. Appple intended for these companies to extend Apple's distribution into super-high-end markets, low-end markets like education or difficult-for-Apple-to-service ones like Asia. Instead the ones that exercised their licenses (IBM, Bandai & I believe Dell also never did) soon began to cannibalize Apple's own sales. Furthermore the licensees ended up costing more then they produced in revenue.

When Apple attempted to renegotiate rates (it had the impending release of MacOS 7.5 which was not under license as leverage) it was unable to do so. After some acrimony Apple decided to drop the program altogether and exercised a clause in the contracts allowing them to buy back the licenses.

However at no time was this situation analagous to IBM & the companies who against it's will (and numerous lawsuits) cloned the IBM PC and made it so popular. Indeed IBM spent years & millions fighting them, even going to the extent of inventing whole new architectures attempting to regain control of it's market.

Re:Big news

[maggard]

Part of the problem is that Apple is trying to sell OS X as Mac OS 10. They didn't bother to put that .0 on the box, in their ads, or anywhere else. (Hell, they ditched Arabic numerals entirely! Talk about avoiding the issue!)

Riiiggghhht.....

Those folks buying MacOS X don't know they're getting into something completely different, they're just plucking down US$120 for another MacOS upgrade, nothing to see here folks move on no news...

I think we can safely assume most MacOS buyers know there's something special about MacOS X. The same way we can assume Win2K buyers know that it's not Win95 & that WinME & WinXP folks also 'get it'. There's kinda a limit on how explicit boxes need to be & I think this is about it.

Presumably MacOS 10.1 etc. will have be more specific but for right now I see no issue with just calling a product by it's name on first release & it being implicit it's .0; explicit can come later when there's more versions to concern one's self with.

Thank you for registering your concern though & I'm sure it will be duly noted.

ps My MacOS X 10.0 box is in another country - what does it say on the outside? I don't recall.

Re:OS X software

[maggard]

Actually writing MacOS device drivers can be pretty hairy, there's some nasty code down there. I helped with a SCSI driver in the late 80's (proofread code & did reality-checks on the coder) - scary stuff.

That said our dissafected youth never actually bothered to claim he knew diddly about such himself, instead he just sidestepped the question & the invitation to list a single API, MacOS or not.

However he DID over-clock Win98 which, like, *totally* awes me...

Oh, yeah, & "predecessor" as in came before, yeah like coal is the predecessor to Multics 'cause it came before.

Frankly it's just a mouthy kid without a clue nor socal skills.

Set phaser on.... "Ignore".

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[maggard]

Er - Next was bought by Apple for 400 million.

Indeed Next is often described as having bought Apple for -400 million.

How else do you describe it when the principals of the bought company all end up running the buyer & the bought technology becomes the basis for all of the buyer's new projects?..

That's not the same as "they went out of business a few years back".

Re:OS X software

[maggard]

Oh kid you gotta stop smokin' that cheap shit!

Statement by sorry statement:

1. Apples products have always been inferior. Er, and you base this opinion on... ?
2. I'm talking from a software Engineering point of view. Ah, OK. So you don't like the API's then? Tell me, could you list a single API of any sort? How about a MacOS API? Or are you just truly talking out your butt as you seem to be?
3. Up until OS IX/X, OK, first of all MacOS 9.x & MacOS X 10.x are completely different beasts, you can't logically lump them together.
4. it didn't have a real operating system, Ah, it may not have one up to your exacting standards but yes, MacOS pre-X does have an OS. It doesn't have protected memory and relies on cooperative multitasking instead of preemptive multitasking but yes, it's there and in every sense a "real" OS.
5. no command shell, So that's your criteria? Righ, MacOS doesn't ship with one. There are third-party ones but then the whole idea of MacOS was to get *away* from the command line & use a WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse Pointer) interface.
6. no real easy to use interface, Er, the MacOS GUI(s) aren't easy-to-use? I don't think you'll find a lot of agreement there. Ranging from novices to power-users most agree that Mac's GUI(s) are their strongest feature. Not perfect but arguably better for the vast majority of folks then anything else availiable out of of a box.
7. just a GUI, that's it That's right, a GUI floating in space, no OS below it... (Hint: Go check the root directory "System Folder" on any Mac, more particularly check the files "System" & "Finder" on any pre-X MacOS.)
8. If you wanted extra, you had to buy it. Such as?... This differs from?...
9. Apple is certainly better then Microsoft in every ascpect in GUI and OS stability design MacOS >X is more stable then Win2K?! (choke) Heck I like Macs but not even I can say that one without giggling. Easier to maintain, yes. More productive, yes. More stable, not. MacOS X is shaping up to be far more stable OS but with MacOS 9.x Mac'ers were just happy it's the "most stable release in years"; note no one saying it's rock-solid stable like a *nix box usually is. The fact is that much of the unstability comes from third party patches but the point that it's easy to destabilize the OS remains (try holding down the mouse - freeze everything.) Sorry Honey but right there you've completely marked yourself as a clueless goober.
10. but the lack of a command shell in early versions Again what's with the command shell? You got some sort of prompt fetish? What, exactly, would you have wanted this for and why do you believe Apple didn't include it if it was so critical?
11. and that of a good advertising department killed Apple Yeah, that 1984 commercial sank without a trace... Look, Apple has had good campaigns & bad campaigns but most will agree that the early ones were excellent and some of the more recent ones have been pretty good. Name any company that's had 25 years of unqualifiedly great advertising... None.
12. Former Apple products were nowhere near that of UNIX Er, first of all back then *nix's were big iron / big ticket items. Name one consumer OS that was comperable to a *nix... Uh huh. Look here son, you gotta go reading more then the textbook-for-dummies before you go lecturing your betters on the history of computing (the back issues of Byte would be a good start.)
13. The problem with Unix and its precursor, Mulics, Not. Unix's name is a play on the name "Multics" but they're not related, not in any significent way. As someone who had a Multics account trust me on this.
14. is that they were made for users who already knew how to use a computer and not for beginners As to being written for novices / power users, back then we were all novices & by definition power users. There was no concept of different skill levels, the wonder was that any of this worked at all & there was certianly darn little to compare it to.

The problem with Monday-morning Quarterbacking is that you had to have watched the game, or at least read about it. You, heck I'm not even sure you're literate much less conscious or capable of critical thought.

Do your parents know you're on their computer? Isn't it your bedtime? Or naptime? Mebbe when you grow up you'll learn to write about what you know, in the meantime be quiet, don't fidget, pay attention & mebbe you'll learn something.

Re:Some tech background

[maggard]

DP was PS based.
PDF is PS based.
PDF is not DP based.

PDF can be thought of as a sorta-objecty-oriented extension of PS. It's not the interpreted PS like PS v.2 but rather a 'chunky' version with elements in it that can be often pulled out & manipulated independantly.

-- Michael

It is hoped that PDF will continue to evolve & that in mebbe two generations it might be a fully object-oriented which would lead to some really interesting features like distributed rendering, multiple views, etc.

Big news

[maggard]

Wow - Apple released a .0 release.

You'd think nobody had ever done so before. That Linux version n.0 sprang from the earth complete, perfect, without errors or missing parts.

Heck, MS Windows 9x has gone through, what, 9 revisions and it *still* has fundimental technical flaws and persistant bugs (some of which are both trivially reproducable & trivially fixable.)

Now Apple finally get's an OS out the door, doesn't spend the next decade polishing it in the lab and now folks want to diss it?

Puh-lease.

Wait 'till July when Apple ships the darn thing on their hardware. Wait 'till it's been through a patch cycle or two. Wait 'till the developers have finally gotten their asses out of beta and shipped some product, there's some more native applications out there. Wait 'till Apple & third parties have had a chance to go in & fix some of the booboo's, some folks have had an 'itch to scratch' & used the Open Source 'Darwin' to muck about a bit and rework things. Then stop comparing, well, apples to oranges and instead compare MacOS X to any other .1 OS.

In the meantime Apple has just released a consumer *nix with more shipping copies then any other *nix. It's includes a number of innovations: XML-based 'scripts' to GUI-ify the notoriously idiosyncratic *nix et al configuration files, a non-X rendering layer based on the public format PDF, and of course the immensely productive Nextstep-derived object-oriented Cocoa development environment.

Finally it's gotting *nix into more houses & businesses then anything else has, all of the press regarding GNU/Linux et al notwithstanding.

Re:Big news

[Some Dumbass...]

Wow - Apple released a .0 release.

You'd think nobody had ever done so before. That Linux version n.0 sprang from the earth complete, perfect, without errors or missing parts.


Part of the problem is that Apple is trying to sell OS X as Mac OS 10. They didn't bother to put that .0 on the box, in their ads, or anywhere else. (Hell, they ditched Arabic numerals entirely! Talk about avoiding the issue!)

Anyway, it would be nice if companies bothered to mention it when they make .0 releases. For example, the Linux kernel 2.4.0 was called exactly that. Okay, yes, I know RedHat (for example) is just as guilty with RedHat 7. There's my "Linux-bashing quota to prove that I'm unbiased" for this post. The fact remains that Apple is not about to say "OS X is incomplete" in any way, irregardless of whether or not it's true.

NeXT OS/Mac OS emulator 0.63b (was Mac OS X 10.0)

[Mumble01]

From a UI perspective, Mac OS 9.1 is nice and easy to use. Not perfect, but good. OS X 10.0 isn't just a few steps back, it is on a pretty escalator that goes sideways. Check out all of the reader reports on Macintouch for details. I bought the beta but I'm glad I didn't plunk down $129 (or $99 with the rebate) for the retail version.

I never thought I'd see the day when I preferred the current Windows GUI to the current Macintosh one. But there you go.

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[IRNI]

I don't really understand your statement. If you read through what I had written you would see where I say tons of other lombard users are going through the same problem. I have never had a problem with my computer up to this exact release of osX so I don't really see how my hardware is the problem. It is running great with 9.1 right now sitting in front of me. Yes plenty of lombard users did get it to work. And that is great. But a great many powerbook users in general are having issues. All of which I have gone over and tried their solutions. Nothing works. I will just wait to see what apple comes out with in the next few weeks as a solution. Or maybe I will wait until summer for that revision release. But I do not see this as a conspiracy against me. That is just rediculous. And I am not going to send my computer to apple so they can fix what runs fine with another OS. I don't have that kind of money to flop around. My lombard isn't under warranty.
IRNI

MacOS-Unfinished

[IRNI]

Ok I am going to try to lay this all out without sounding anything like a flame. This OS release is sort of the poster child for unfinished software releases. This OS is for all purposes Public Beta II. If you go read the discussion boards for installation on Apple's site or the forums on MacFixit you will see how many problems this OS has. It won't even run on my G3 Lombard Powerbook. There are so many threads on what could be causing it. Ram, Processor, Font folder in the wrong place. All suggesstions give tips... none of them make the OS get past installation on my system. The install took 2 and a half hours on my laptop. 9.1 runs fine without any problems. I have used recent internal builds of OS X without a problem either... except for kernel panics... which I figured would go away with the release version but they haven't according to the discussion threads. So DP4, Public Beta, 4k56 and 4k60 all ran nicely on my powerbook. But the Official release will not run at all. Apple says they do not know but are working on it. I don't see any progress. And another pet peve I have developed is that Apple has all but forgotten the lombard powerbook. They only care about the pismo and Ti. The lombard is probably the most needing of a firmware update but every firmware update is for the pismo. Anyway. I love OS X.. just waiting for it to actually work and for Apple to get their heads out of their asses. :)
IRNI

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[Knobby]

It won't even run on my G3 Lombard Powerbook.

Uhm.. It works great on my Lombard g3/400, and the Lombard g3/333 in the office next door.. If I had to make a suggestion, I would tell you to pass DiskWarrior over everything before (make sure the directory structure is correct first), and after (clean up the diretory structure after the OS X install stomps all over it) the install..

Good luck!

I agree that Apple has sort of left Lombard and Wallstreet users out in the cold, but that could be said for beige and b&w G3 desktop users as well..

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[sg3000]

You're definitely in the minority here.

I'm running Mac OS X on my PowerBook G3 (firewire), and I'm quite impressed. I use it at work and at home. I've got a few complaints (speed mostly -- it feels like it needs to be optimized).

I loaded it on my wife's iMac DV+, and she now loves it. She's been a Mac user for years, knows nothing about Unix, and she's had no complaints. My friends have installed Mac OS X on their PowerBooks and desktop G3s, and they're running fine.

Yes, there are some issues with the release. But if you have issues, do two things:

1. If you ran the beta, realize that you ran the beta. that is, unfinished software. If you didn't reinitialize the hard drive, and zero it out, perhaps you should do so and then install Mac OS X. Mac users tend to be pretty cavalier about their computers (run beta software, never read the manual, click, drag, delete, etc. without abandon), but a beta OS is pretty serious. There's all sorts of goofiness that goes along with a beta OS that cannot be corrected by "select all" then "move to trash".

2. Provide constructive feedback to Apple's forum (you can copy and paste that yourself; I'm too lazy do do an href). Mac OS X is a tremendous achievement with plenty of potential, but admittedly, there's room for improvement.

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[carbondave]

My Lombard has had no problems with the installation which took about 15 minutes but has had one kernal panic while running in a dual monitor configuation. One thing that is not working is video mirroring. The option is there to use it but is greyed and Apple tech support says the freature is not yet avaliable.

As for firmware updates being needed.. the main thing they have been made for is updates for firewire support.. which the Lombard does not have. I personaly see no need for a new firmware update. If you are update crazy.. buy a new powerbook.

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[update()]

I can't speak for your Lombard problems (although it sounds like other people aren't seeing them) but I think it's pretty clear that this is a bleeding-edge, take-your-chances release. Apple isn't preloading OS X, isn't advertising it in mass media and isn't pushing users to upgrade.

I received my OS X box and am still trying to decide on a safe place to try it out. Put it on the 8.6 box I'm using now at work? Not a chance, and I'd be responsible for any resulting problems if I did.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[Petrophile]

Don't blame Apple or the OS if it's clearly some fault either in your hardware or in your current installation

Go look at Macintouch at the "Beige G3" section. All sorts of horror stories about people having to pull out cards, dink with IDE master/slaves settings, and so on. It's quite possible his PowerBook has some non-vanilla hardware which would cause OS X to croak.

Not that this stuff is a huge problem in the big picture, but it's definately not the "Mac experience" as Apple has previously touted it.

Re:MacOS-Unfinished

[alex_siufy]

This is what I find plain unacceptable. Don't blame Apple or the OS if it's clearly some fault either in your hardware or in your current installation!
Zillions of others have installed the OS on the same model of hardware that you have. So, either you take it as a conspiracy against you (rather unlikely), or you'd better send your computer back to Apple so they can fix whatever's broken with it, since that's most likely the case!

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[fireproof]

Actually, Apple officially calls it "OS X 10.0" from what I understand. That's sort of redundant, if you ask me, since they've insisted all along that the "X" is pronounced "ten" . . .

I'm all for calling it "OS X 1.0" personally, since it's really a different animal from any previous Mac OS.

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[fireproof]

Well, I was thinking that they could have the X just be "ex", and not refer to ten. Then you could have "OS X 1.0.1" or the like. That, of course, would be confusing since they've insisted that the "X" is really "10", but it's no less confusing to your average person than "OS X 10.0" . . .

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[fireproof]

Now, with the release of OS X, I'm thinking about buying myself a Mac portable (probably the next incarnation of the iBook) after Apple starts shipping them with OS X pre-installed. It's not that I can't handle installing it myself or anything, but I don't feel like shelling out $1500 for a new system, then $130 for the OS, when I can wait three months and get it included in a more stable format...

OS X is what caused me to finally purchase a (new) Mac . . . I got one of the G4 machines that they were unloading right after they announced the newer models earlier this year in anticipation of it. I became enamored with the power of UNIX (and UNIX-like operating systems) while in my CS degree, so the classic Mac OS never really appealed to me, except for the interface.

I'm not stuck on OS X though, if I end up not liking it I know I can always go the Linux route on it -- I've always wanted to run something UNIX-like on PPC hardware anyway.

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[fireproof]

In the older OSes, as I understand it, you have a set amount of virtual memory (set in a control panel). Each application reserves a set amount of memory (which in theory is the maximum amount of memory it would ever need) when it launches. So, IE might reserve 16 megs of memory, but only be using 7 or 8 at any given time. This way, each running application will never had its memory used by another app (in theory). The down side is that since the amount of memory an app has reserved is fixed, you don't get as many apps in physical memory as you do in an OS with a real VM system.

From my experience, you run out of memory pretty fast. I've got a old 7100/80 at work I kick around on every now and then, and it has 64 megs. Right now, the OS has reserved 15.1 megs, and it's using about 95% of that. IE has 11.9 megs reserved, and is using about 80% of that. Outlook is using about 50% of the 8.8 megs it. If I launch Excel and Word, then all my physical memory is suddenly "used" and if I run other apps, I have to use the virtual memory.

Havent any of you noticed...

[Bob McCown]

its an april 1 joke?

Re:OS X software

[Tim Browse]

You mean that you think if you bought it as a unit, and/or had a warranty etc, that they would just replace it?

My experience of all these warranties/after sales plans is that you have to prove something is wrong. Good luck doing that with a system that reboots spontaneously once a week!

"Sorry Sir, we tested it for 3 days and found no problem...so you're down the shipping charges as well now..."

Tim

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[Sethb]

From my experience, you run out of memory pretty fast.

Absolutely, if you're a hard-core user on the classic MacOS, you need hundreds of megabytes of RAM. I worked in a Mac shop when I was in college, doing a lot of FileMaker & Photoshop work, and having to tinker with the RAM settings for each application was my biggest gripe about using the Macintosh. To get acceptable performance, I'd wind up dedicating 40MB of RAM to Netscape, 80MB to FileMaker and 128MB to Photoshop.

As a Windows user by nature, I got frustrated rather quickly with the non-protected memory and having to specify how much RAM my applications needed. I always felt like I was supposed to be psychic about what I was going to be doing later in the day..

Now, with the release of OS X, I'm thinking about buying myself a Mac portable (probably the next incarnation of the iBook) after Apple starts shipping them with OS X pre-installed. It's not that I can't handle installing it myself or anything, but I don't feel like shelling out $1500 for a new system, then $130 for the OS, when I can wait three months and get it included in a more stable format...
---

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Sethb]

They don't recommend upgrading an existing system at all.

I think that is sage advice from Microsoft for the average home user. Obviously the same doesn't apply for people who know what they're doing. Upgrading from Win9x or NT to 2000 works "sort-of". You get a usable box, but you'll probably start having problems in a week or two.

Clean installs are the way to go, hands down, but most home users can't handle this without shooting themselves in the foot. They'll do something like reformat their box and install their new OS okay, but they didn't have the foresight to download Windows XP versions of their drivers before they did so, so now they're sitting there, running in 640x480 with 16 colors, and they're caught in a Catch 22. Without drivers for their crappy Winmodem, they can't connect to AOL to download the XP versions of their drivers...

This is why for most people, it makes more sense to just wait until you get a new computer, unless you have a technical friend who is willing (or can be bribed with pizza) to spend an entire Saturday at your house, installing the new OS for you. Or, will let you bring your box over to his place, where he can use his cable modem to grab drivers and BIOS updates, etc. as needed.

In short, upgrading from Win9x to XP isn't going to be as simple as popping in a CD and clicking "Upgrade". On the surface, it will be, but the user isn't going to have a very good experience with the OS, and Microsoft will start hearing the same sort of complaints that Apple is suffering right now.
---

Re:Uhh

[Roogna]

My retail version of MacOS X works fine with XFree86 and XonX, with one exception, being the keyboard on my PowerbookTi isn't always recognized within X, I had it working, then it wasn't, then it was, but it's something with the enviormental variables for X, most likly something to do with the LOCALE. But when the keyboard does work (I'm never quite sure what all I've set) it works great.

Re:OS X software

[makohund]

Here's what I found on that board.

Two Serial ports
One Parallel port
One IR port
Two USB ports
PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard ports

Also, it has video, audio, and 10/100 ethernet onboard. So you can knock $151 off of that an spend that on a modem, firewire, SCSI card, or whatever if you like.

Warranty? Probably standard parts warranty from the manufacturer. Usually just as good as an OEM (including Apple).

Support? Who needs it. I don't, at least. And unless they've improved in the last few years (I hope so... I used to work for an Apple VAR, so I speak from a LOT of experience here) it doesn't make all that much difference. People needing support end up getting help from the VAR (or person selling the stuff) anyway. Or even more likely, from a friend/reletive that knows what they're doing.

Time to put together? Maybe an hour tops for the hardware. Add Debian or something in 30 min. or so. My time is worth plenty to me. But any machine of mine will get plenty of time spent on it anyway... what's another 90 minutes?

You do get what you pay for, but nowadays the PC has an edge price/performance. Apple builds outstanding hardware, but to get the higher performing machines the premium is a lot higher.

Don't feed me the "don't look at MHz" line, either. I'm well aware of that, and not stupid. I used to support and sell Macs, remember? Not to mention one of the nicer benefits with Macs is gone. SCSI everything rocked. No IDE. Till recently, anyway. Paying more for that used to be worth it, but now they're primarily IDE drive machines too. Bummer.

And to get a really good PC, my opinion is you HAVE to build it yourself. (An OEM will skimp all over when they can get away with it. I can pick every single little part and end up with similar quality as you get with a Mac.) I would've given different hardware choices than what you replied to... check out ars-technica and read their system guides if you want to put together a good PC machine.

I'd love to own a Mac, and to try out OS X. I may even do it. But to argue bang for the buck, it really depends on what you are doing. For most things, you can get more power and similar quality with a PC for the same price, if you do it yourself. (Provided you don't use windows. :) Or similar performance for less.

Macs still win the "Grandma Test" hands down, though. :)

Yes I agree, but...

[FallLine]

I agree that slashdot is often extremely hypocritical and clueless. However, I think many of the criticisms of MacOSX/Apple have been quite unfair. While it is true that we may not accept certain things from Microsoft, Microsoft is in a consirably different position. Quite simply, they dominate the market; they can afford to (and can hardly afford not to) make sure that certain features are in at release date. Apple, on the other hand, is a much smaller company targeting a much smaller niche. In essense, you're comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended). Furthermore, MacOS X is essentially a completely new operating system, totally unlike anything Microsoft has attempted to date. In short, it's a very demanding effort that is being supported by a company with limited resources.

Now this is not to say that we should ignore the software itself; rather it is a suggestion that we might be well served to try cutting Apple a little bit of slack. The "problems" that we see in MacOS X seem to be symptomatic of a slight lack of resources, not of lack of effort, care, direction, or what have you. With a little bit of time, we might well expect these criticisms to be solved. If Apple fails to solve the problems with MacOS X in a reasonable amount, then we should write them off, since they're either not capable of bringing the resources to bear or because they simply don't care.

As for the whole Linux thing, I think Linux is, and has basically always been, doomed to mediocrity. Linux's problem is probably not lack of caring per se, but rather a combination of lack of effort (in absolute terms) and resources; none of which will ever be solved in a GPL/idealists world.

Re:Common threads.

[mr_burns]

A problem also is the actual decline in usability from os/9 to os/x, which stems from changes to the finder and the general methodolgy of the thin.

As a 16 year mac veteran, I can tell you that usability in the beta was much better. After a month of using it, I would wince at the thought of booting into os 9. It's like having to give up your humvee for that cheesy go cart I tried to make in 6th grade. It just takes a little bit of time, and your workflow is so smooth.

Memory consumption is a big issue that all reviews seem to note.

Classic had a vsize of 1.6GB when I was using it. The key is to not use classic if you can avoid it. There's tons of Open Source software for unix that just takes a li'l bit of fiddling to get to work, if any ;) The serious plus to memory in OS X is vastly better VM thatn OS 9, and getting rid of the need for manually setting static stack sizes for apps. I NEVER got a memory error under OS X PB, but i still see the occaisional memory error under OS 9.

Another one is that IE performs really badly in its beta-carbonized form.

I would use IE for browsing, and wget for downloading. OmniWeb is crashy too, but it's a far better browser (the multithreading in that one is like a breath of fresh air after spending time in a riot gas chamber). I would keep my eyes peeled for the carbon versions of opera and iCab. Also, look for that second fork of fizzilla...that one shoudlbe somewhat nifty.

you're on crack

[mr_burns]

I've been "Bleeding six colors" since '85. If you think OS X is un-maclike, then you don't know what the mac is about at all.

It isn't about popup folders. It isn't about the control strip.

The MacOS is a software manifestation of this ideal:

Your tools should be extremely powerful, intuitive, elegant, and above all else, when you need them to, they should get the fsck out of your way!!!

The Classic MacOS accomplised this. Mac OS X takes this ideal further than most people ever dreamed.

Just because it doesn't look or act exactly the same, doesn't make it un-maclike. On the contrary, I believe the differences in OS X make it more maclike than the original.

Most copied interface?

[shaka]

This just occurred to me: The Aqua interface must be the single most copied interface before release.
I mean, when I look at it now, when the product is released, it just looks like some old stuff I've seen a thousand times before. I've been running it under Enlightenment and GTK and all that.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm not talking about the actual look & feel sitting at the box, it's just the feeling I get from looking at screenshots.

Jet setting evengalists!

[Graymalkin]

I think the Ars article makes a veyr good point, OS X is a new and improved OS that is sort of intended for new computers. I doubt I'll stick this thing on my G3 333Mhz Powerbook since I'm not getting much of a bargain. Alot of the apps I use now are based on Classic (apart from Appleworks) so I can only make them run slower by switching. However If I just bought a brand spanking new G4 I would almost immediately pick this thing up and spend the time downloading carbonized versions of the programs I use most often. This isn't about the OS sucking on its initial release. It is destined for brand new systems with enough resources to handle it, not for your aging beige G3. I don't think many of the linux zealots here would understand because when you grab the latest kernel it is merely an incremental revision rather than an entirely new OS with a bajillion differences between it and the old system.

Re:Jet setting evengalists!

[ickyfreak]

isnt that what m$ is saying about winxp?

get a new pc if u want xp...

or was that winme? no matter all m$ is crap (except AOL and there mouses)

Re:My thoughts on OS X

[ethereal]

Yes, I have to boot into OS9 to watch DVD's. Windows doesn't ship with a DVD player (Media Player doesn't count. I don't use it to play my mp3's, I won't use it to watch my DVD's) and certainly has issues, and Linux has been not-ready-for-primetime since its inception.

Well, Windows Media Player DVD support wouldn't be in great shape either if Microsoft had to fight off the RIAA, the US court system, and the Norwegian police :)

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[ethereal]

The problem is that if the "X" means "10", then for incremental releases you would have "Mac OS X.0.1", "X.1.2", etc. and that's really confusing. Plus there's no way they're calling the next major release "Mac OS XI"!

More Mac Games Now?

[Jethro73]

I, for one, would like to see more games for Mac on OS X. Things have been getting better, but it still isn't good enough for an addicted PC Gamer to switch over...

Is there still only one mouse button on Macs? 8^)

Jethro

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[BWJones]

Westlake Interactive is porting several of their recently released games and future titles to OSX (Tomb Raider etc...depending upon what Aspyr and others want)

Also as for the multibutton mouse issue: OSX supports multiple button mice right out of the box. Two, Three, Four button mice seem to work here on OSX just fine.

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[Ciannait]

That's a possibility. If so, it's likely just a generic one, because every optical scrollie mouse I've used (several) has worked out of the box with OS X.

It's still a damn sight nicer than having to load an extension or control panel to get it to work - less work for me. ;)


"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[Ciannait]

There's some Mac games for OS9, but not a whole ton for OS X. (Diablo and Deus Ex came out in a timely manner - read: within six months of the PC version - and versions of the Sims and Livin' Large exist, for example. These are all OS9 games though.)

As far as mouses are concerned, my two-button scrollie wheel optical mouse works *out of the box* in OS X - no need to load extensions or control panels anymore. It works lovely.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[Creepy]

and buggy -

turn on the console and play around with the browser - I get non fatal errors all the time.

As for mice, my logitech scroll mouse works great - even the second button. The third button does nothing at the moment, but it wasn't hard to get used to right-click copy, right-click paste (netsccape UNIX uses it, so I was already well trained).

Two other problems with getting games - we need device drivers for joysticks and gamepads and easy networking. OpenPlay will be the source for supporting these, I think, but it's half baked at the moment.

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[Rura Penthe]

Westlake Interactive has announced that all their titles currently under development will have carbon versions (and they will do some carbon versions of older games as well depending on the publisher). Check here for the projects they are working on and here's the announcement from Westlake Interactive about OS X support.

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[BlowChunx]

No, but I bet if you check with Apple System Profiler, that there is a 'kext', or kernel extension, that is responsible for the responsiveness of your scrollie wheel....

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[ickyfreak]

jeeze buy a 6 button mouse for gods sake

even on a pc i wouldnt use the standard mouse (standard anything always sucks)

Re:More Mac Games Now?

[drzhivago]

Your two-button mouse will work fine out of the box, but there are hardly any apps that will work using the wheel. The only one I could find was IE, but the IE for OSX is slow and a CPU hog right now. Not even the Finder works with the wheel.

Greg

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[HiThere]

Besides, it wouldn't matter. The important thing was recognizing what was a good direction to push, and heading that way. I suspect that Apple probably did get some good ideas from Xerox, and so what, Xerox wasn't going to do anything with them. I don't think they ever brought the Star to market (though I do vaguely remember something about a $20,000 version -- which was the price of a house in Cupertino at the time).


Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[Mindwarp]

I believe that the PHB's reply to the 'what color Database would you like?' was:

"I hear purple has more 'RAM'"

--

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[Mindwarp]

Damn! I was so close, too! ;-)

--

Kuro5hin Review

[Pacorro]

There's a pretty good review of MacOS X on Kuro5hin, you should have included also.

huh?

[Scudsucker]

The last version of the old Mac OS is version 9. Hmm.....

8, 9......10? What seems so illogical about that? And I think totally ripping the guts of the old os and replacing it with a Unix base is worthy of a major revision number.

And I thou doust whine too much about the beta, it was only $30. Sure, MS charging for an WinMe beta is lame as it isn't that different from Win98, not much of a change. It would be a different story if they ripped out the old Win9x codebase and replaced it with Unix though.

Re:huh?

[cryptide]

well, isn't 'x' a roman numeral for 10?... let them call it what they want, people will still buy it, they won't change their name.

Re:OS X software

[Nightpaw]

$7 case? Don't forget the $17.50 shipping and $20 for the power supply.

So it comes in at maybe $550. This computer will be total shit and not worth using. Regardless of the architecture and OS, if you pay less than $1000 for a computer, you are buying crap.

Re:Developer tools

[BWJones]

Apple is currently hiring technical writers for OSX, presumably to rectify this issue.

In my experience, unfortunately documentation in almost all areas of the software industry is treated as almost an afterthought.

Developer tools

[BWJones]

One of the most impressive things about this OSX release for me is the developer tools that are included. You get Project Builder and an Interface builder that are IMHO some of the best damn tools I have seen for rapid project development. NeXT is definately showing its presence here.

Re:Developer tools

[Creepy]

Some of the manuals are not done or near done, though. I am trying to get my Linksys ethernet card (2nd card for LAN) to be recognized by the system, which probably will mean writing a device driver for it. PPC Linux IDs and allows/uses the card, so I know the card works on the hardware (I don't know the BSD equiv of tulip.c, though). I ran through the IO manual and it is full of stubs "Add Heading here" and references to an Intel driver that doesn't exist in the folders or on their web site (it would seem a good starting place for writing an ethernet driver, tho). The manual is also riddled with errors - one shows a section on 'Child Nodes' and says there should be four when in fact there should be 6 (there are 4 for the section they are describing, + 2 for the section before that one).

Anyhow, I haven't tried many of the other tools yet, so I can't say what state they or their documentation are in.

Re:Developer tools

[green pizza]

Yeah, so I've heard. Not only do you get the compilers but the nice IDE (Project Builder) and almost-as-easy-as-HyperCard-or-VisualBasic GUI designer (Interface Builder). All in the retail box! I hope Microsoft follows suit, MS "Visual" C++ still costs over $300.

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Shadow Knight]

I have the final version. I received it from Apple. XonX *DOES WORK*. The sourceforge page says it works, it works, it does work! One problem: on some portables it fails to pickup a keymap. Here's the key, don't type "startx," type "startx -- -quartz" in a Terminal.app window.

Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Shadow Knight]

THen I'm out of suggestions. I'm sitting here, staring at it working on two separate Macs, both running official Apple retail copies of Mac OS X. Well, the keymap thing is causing problems on this iBook, but it does run, it doesn't crash. I'm out of suggestions.

Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

Re:OS X software

[warpath]

Why would anybody bother running an OS without a command shell. It's just too freakin' time consuming, dragging and dropping.

This is a joke, right? Or a troll?

Please tell me you aren't really this ignorant.

\//

Re:OS X software

[mackman]

The look on your friends face when he sees your new computer for half the price of his iMac... priceless.

Re:OS X software

[KFury]

Here's an easy way to get around the pricy hardware problem:

Buy a used mac.

Kevin Fox
--

Re:OT: Powerbook, not OS X

[Black Parrot]

> Now you can have the 500MHz powerbook for the price of the 400MHz one.

Steakhouses don't normally charge more for "well done", either.

--

Re:MacOS X

[John Whorfin]

I'm sorry if I sound angry, but I was up until all hours trying to get OS X to work in my iMac DV (400mhz G3, 128 megs RAM).

Mac OS X blows.

I'm a long time MacOS, Unix & Windows user and I've never seen such a mess as OS X.

First off, it's S-L-O-W. I mean, c'mon, the 400mhz G3 is a bit old, but not THAT old.

Second, 128megs of RAM is NOT enough. Kids, don't try this at home unless you've got 256.

Third, I really wanted to like the dock... I don't, it's painful.

MacOS X is NOT Unix. Uhg, I wouldn't recommend this to my Unix friends. Damn, even 'root' is disbled until by reading the Ars artical to figure out how to turn it on - and you WILL need to turn it on.

Why the %#$^$* doesn't my Airport work?!?! - it worked in OS 9.0 and OS 9.1.

This OS is certainly half baked. It's not user friendly (not to Macphiles and not to Unix geeks and oh man, not to non-computer users), it's certainly not intuative, and it's slow as a dog.

But hey, it boots into OS 9.1 so at least it's not a total loss :).

Re:MacOS X

[John Whorfin]

Ok, you are obviously blowing off steam

Er.. yeah...

You can get along fine in less than 128MB of RAM, I do. The trick? Don't use 'Classic' applications

Well, it's not that easy.

1) the Mail app doesn't seem to support IMAP mail directories (usually set in the 'advanced' section of the prefs) so it doesn't work with my current mail server - so I need Outlook Express.

2) all my images seem to have kept their Picture View 1.1 bindings, and I don't know an easy way of changing the bindings for the several 100 images. Picture viewer FYI is the Quicktime 4 simple picture viewer.

Did you do a clean install

Yup. I'm considering a reformat + install

Open up a Terminal.app window

I did, but the swapping was murder :)

Airport does in general work. If you provided more details...

Apple Airport card, Lucent RG-1000 base station. All up to date. Using WEP. Whats more to give? Everything works except OS X.

But then I have to point out that what Quartz (the lightweight windowing system) is doing here is a whole head-and-sholders above any other windowing system out there.

I had enlightement running faster on a PPro box :(

I understand that firstime OSes are sometimes hard for users to adjust to. I expect the same with OS X.

I understand the speed issues (well except for running out of 128 megs of RAM) I mean the G3 is a bit long in the tooth but what I find troubling is the little things. The trouble with the Mail app, the Airport oddness, the bindings issues. These are little things that add up.

When you start swapping so much in the first 15 minutes of use that basic app launching virtually stops you tend to get a little frustrated.

I still think OS X is a little half-baked, but I will continue to work with it (leaving the default boot to OS 9.1 for my wife) and maybe with another 128 meg stick and some tweaking I'll get it to be marginal, and maybe even useable.

Re:File Bindings (super easy) NOT

[John Whorfin]

No! This doen't work! You can only do one at a time.

Re:Does it have emacs, TeX, and sendmail? Others?

[the eric conspiracy]

Sendmail as default mail deamon - yes
emacs - yes
csh, tcsh, zsh - yes - bash you can compile & install

TeX - not in default, but I know people who have it running.

Other things that I know that work on OS X are Samba, mysql, ssh, cvs. Apache is the personal web server, and comes with PHP.

perl -MCPAN -e "install Bundle::LWP" works.

What is really amazing is that the terminal supports drag and drop; ie drag a folder to it and you get the path on the command line.

The level of compatability of Darwin with the standard UNIX tools is astonishing to me.


MOVE 'ZIG'.

Indeed

[rm -rf /etc/*]

This whole "bsd based" thing has gotten way out of proportion. The fact is, it has little in common with bsd other than the fact that there is a bsd interface to the mach kernel that is there for the sole purpose of allowing it to run unix programs such as apache, sendmail, etc. Most people seem to think that it started out as BSD and apple built their own window system on top, which is far from the truth. The BSD stuff is a convenient way for apple to use existing software, nothing more.

Re:Indeed

[mr]

This whole "bsd based" thing has gotten way out of proportion.

And on what basis do you form this opinion?

Apple pointed out in thier own documentation that the product was based on FreeBSD.

Here is a URL that says Apple® today announced the release of Darwin 1.0, the advanced operating system core at the heart of Mac® OS X, .....The new Darwin kernel is based on FreeBSD (it would have been nice if Apple also noted they used parts of Net and OpenBSD, but they didn't)

On what basis did you draw your conclusion? Me, I read what Apple says about their own product, and has been saying for over a year.

The BSD stuff is a convenient way for apple to use existing software,

The carbon interface is the way to use existing software.

Re:Indeed

[Bungie]

I agree, if you read the documentation at Apple Devworld you'll find some technotes that say that the BSD layer is easy to remove from OSX, and it may not even be present in future versions of the MacOS. The BSD layer is from the FreeBSD code, but I think its just more of a convienent stepping stone for MacOS 11.

Re:Indeed

[megaduck]

Which BSD are you comparing it to? Darwin has a different architecture than FreeBSD, but according to Wilfredo Sanchez they used NetBSD as their reference platform for Darwin. Darwin is it's own animal, but it's definitely part of the BSD family.

Re:Runs Office in "Classic Mode"

[acomj]

OS X has a classic mode that will allow the user to run ma OS8/9 applications like Word/Excell etc.

I think you'll need alot of memory as to boot into classic mode means to be having 2 OSs in memory at once (at least 192 megs...)

I think the performance would be fine once you're in classic mode.

If you can wait OS-X native office is supposed to be comming in the fall..

Progress, definetly better than os 9.....

[acomj]

I haven't actually tried OS-X yet, but I'm looking forward to someday getting it. I'm waiting till version 10.x.. so bugs will be squashed etc. Apple had to ship, even if its not completely done to get developers aboard. Name one OS thats "Done" and doesn't need more work.

Being a mac user at home. I've had no problems with it and have to say they make everything really easy (adding ram/ upgrading the processor and adding a 2nd video card all went flawlessly and took about 15 minutes...) I have to say I'm looking forward to a more stable system, although I have MacOS running pretty stable right now. Also it will be nice to get Unix underneith, but I don't think I'll be giving up on linuxppc right away, especially since it runs well on older hardware.

I think it will be nice to have a unix box with gnu tools that runs photoshop and apache..

GAMES!

[austad]

So, since game developers writing games for OS X will basically be writing their games for a Unix based OS, does this mean that we will see more ports to Linux since it will be considerably less work to port them over?

I gotta buy me a Mac.

Or...

[Levine]

As some people refer to it, the next incarnation of NeXT. With a BSD core, I suppose.

Cheers,
levine

Re:Or...

[Sc00ter]

As other people have pointed out in earlier OS X articles. OS X runs on a Mach microkernel (same as NeXTStep) with some BSD interpretation layer. So it's more like Next Step then they would want you to think.
--

Re:Or...

[ozbon]

Next you'll be telling me it's a-peeling.

Re:Or...

[iainl]

Does anyone know why Apple are so shy of the NeXTStep links? Personally, I thought NeXT was one of the nicest machines I've ever used, and the thought of OSX being similiar is the main reason why I've been considering getting a Mac. My experience of pre-OSX versions of MacOS has been abysmal; its not that its particularly non-intuitive, but its just similiar enough for someone who had an Amiga and then Windows and later Solaris boxes to let you do real damage. It looks like it, but if you use it in the same way then the OS gets thoroughly confusing, leaving multiple copies of files around, deleting stuff you meant to move and other generally unpleasant things.

Re:Or...

[connorbd]

They're hardly shy -- most of the company brass (especially Steve and Avie "Mr. Mach" Tevanian) are NeXTies. It's just that they've subsumed it so completely that to all intents and purposes old-line cubers have been grandfathered as Mac folks (I guess, anyway).

What does bug me is that Apple doesn't push the fact that "their" tech (i.e. NextStep) was the base of the very first implementation of the World Wide Web. They should have been pushing that to a near-ridiculous degree when Rhapsody first shipped; after all, what better way to plug your server OS than to emphasize that it ran the first web server?

(And, yes, it's fair to say that. Scratch X, find OpenStep; there was even an issue of MacAddict a while back that showed how to activate the old Next look on Cocoa apps.)

/Brian

Re:Or...

[billybob2001]

With a BSD core

This is an Apple joke, right - you pipped me to that one.

Also, is the next NeXT the same as next^2?

Re:Some tech background

[hugg]

Neato... what I'd like to see is a ports tree, like FreeBSD.

cd /usr/ports ; make install

Oh yeeeeeah.... :)

Re:OS X software

[Tripster]

It's just your bad luck I'd say, or you stuffed the machine full of low cost, crap hardware from manufacturers whose name may begin with Z and end in x.

What do you think IBM and Dell throw in their machines? Stuff they invent themselves?

Do some research before you build, learn what "quality" hardware is.

I put a dual celeron system together, I've had no trouble with it. Before that I had a P200 I threw together myself, again no troubles at all. I've worked for a company that built their own computers, very little if any hardware problems.

There's a difference between throwing a system together to build it the cheapest or throwing one together cheaply with quality parts inside.

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[x3d]

Are you out of your mind?

A/UX sucked so bad I can still smell it 10 years later. I used it on a IIci back in 90-91 finishing up a masters thesis. I have mercifully forgotten most of that experience.

More reboots required even than NT 3.5.

The ars article (link) discusses boot time a little -- claims that it is not so important. But if you have EVER waited for the mac OS to boot so you could boot the ridiculously slow A/UX kernel than you might agree that boot time is important. I can still remember that slowly creeping status bar from hell. I shudder to think ...

Not only that, but A/UX was a very much frontal lobotmized unix. Of course that was back in the days before autoconf, so extensive hacking was required to get A/UX to compile *anything*. OS/X can at least handle a symbolic link.

On the other hand, if we let our memory get a little fuzzy we can say that it was a good thing, and maybe OS/X will take where it needed to go.

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[x3d]

Ah you youngsters ...

A/UX was a painful abortion that should never have been.

The IIfx was pretty much like the IIci only was almost twice as fast (40 Mhz instead of 25-30 for the IIci). I had a IIci because I couldnt scrape up the extra scrip for the IIfx.

Just to clarify, A/UX was an "Operating System" and IIfx was a "computer". For the most part, you can run several several different "Operating Systems" on a single "computer". The IIfx did NOT ship with A/UX by default -- you had to get A/UX and install yourself (at least I did, maybe there were other ways).

Re:A/UX, y0!

[x3d]

I cant belive someone else said they liked A/UX!

Did you actually ever use the machine for something?

...it was a nice little package ... had nice compilers, and was a pleasure to use ...

Back in those days, you pretty much were stuck with xmkmf (imake) to compile anything interesting. I remember hacking macII.cf if you do not. Of course, if you were particularly tough, you could hack the individual makefiles (Ugh!), but I wouldnt call that a pleasure to use. I won't even start on the A/UX implementation of X.

"Nice compilers?" WAYSACIHS !! (What are you smoking and can I have some).

... ran existing Max apps very well ...

Sure, with N Mb of RAM, where N is a large and prohibitively expensive number. Maybe in the first boot mode, *before* launching A/UX. Afterwards you had the sluggish random crash mode.

Maybe you, unlike many others I have talked with, did not experience the look and feel of A/UX: random and unprovocated hangs and much (all but unbearably lengthy) rebooting -- especially if you attempted to do exactly what was touted as the biggest advantage -- mesh use of the unix side of A/UX with the more traditional "Mac apps".

numbers and numbers

[adrien]

From what I understand - Be wanted $200M. Apple said "too much".

A year later they bought NeXT for $400M.

If you know different - correct me.

I only wish that they had bought Be instead -- it could have been released a lot earlier, it would have made a better OS, and they wouldn't have had to take Jobs back - meaning the world would have just that much less ugly blue transparent plastic - not to mention ugly blue transparent User Interfaces. a real shame.

adrien

Re:numbers and numbers

[Nohea]

Well, thanks, i didn't know the numbers. However, i'm willing to bet NeXT was worth more than Be.

Plus, coming down from $200M doesn't look so bad in hindsight, considering Be is now $91M in debt. Let's face it: Gasse made a calculated risk, and came out short.

I'm not really a Steve Jobs fan, but he does serve a useful role as promoter/dictator. I do think the management at Apple during the period was clutching at straws, and Jobs was a name-brand.

Re:Should I get one?

[kennylives]

Don't know about NFS.

NFS (Client) is there, and I believe I've seen mention (try Google) about making MacOSX an NFS server. As a client it seems to work ok, but I havn't tried some of the combinations that would likely be a problem (like running a 'classic' app under MacOSX, accessing data on an NFS-mounted directory. I strongly suspect that Creator/Type would not be shared with the app properly through NFS); casual access seems to be fine.

Also, I recall there being an issue with exports from Linux needing the 'insecure' directive in the export to work with the public beta, but I don't know if that's true with the released version of MacOSX.

Re:OS X Server

[mhanlon]

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n600 38 and http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n308 32 are incredibly useful, if you're looking for NetInfo info.

Quit the FUD troll...

[Pengo]

I am using XonX on OSX 10.0 and have been for over a week.

Don't be a idiot. Unless you know what you are talking about, don't open your trap.


--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Pengo]

Dude, I have got this working on two machines, the only difference is it is 2 G4's, not G3's... but I can't beleive that would be the problem.




--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Pengo]

I didn't pirate the software off of Hotline.. (I try to support QUALITY commercial software)

I didn't install over a beta. It was a clean install on a seperate partition.

Man, you are doing something wrong. If you can't even see the STARTX .. there is something very wrong with your installation.




--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Pengo]

My Secret Knowledge..

Step 1, read the docs:

Step 2, Download from Darwinfo.com XFree86 binaries. (Was a december release)

Step 3, Download the binary update from ftp.XFree86.org (4.0.3)

Install all.

Download XonX .4 release

decompress

go to terminal

startx

OPTIONAL

Download and install WindowMaker binary from darwinfo.org

Install NATIVE OSX/Darwin WindowMaker onto OSX (Doesn't run from Linux box, runs locally)

modify /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinit

(I removed startup items that are default and added )

/usr/local/bin/wmaker &
xhost +

I can now choose to compile and run programs natively, or telnet into my Linux machine, type in

export DISPLAY=192.168.10.4:0.0 (my OSX machine)

... the run something such as

/opt/jbuilder4/bin/jbuilder

/usr/local/mozilla/mozilla

etc etc etc, it's working fine for me...

... hit CTRL-OPTION-A ... back to Aqua...

thats it....




--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[vorpal22]

# setenv PATH "${PATH}:/usr/X11R6/bin"
# startx

this should work.

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[vorpal22]

If you are in Aqua, you must do: # startx -- -quartz

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Auckerman]

"I am using XonX on OSX 10.0 and have been for over a week."

Lets see, I JUST NOW got finished reinstalling X-Windows on my iMac, and reinstalling xonx, overwriting everything. It doesnt work. End of story. The people over at MacGimp cant get it to work either. What secret knowledge do you have?

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Auckerman]

# setenv PATH "${PATH}:/usr/X11R6/bin"

# startx

Pretends to start up followed by crashing.

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Auckerman]

Dude, I have got this working on two machines, the only difference is it is 2 G4's, not G3's... but I can't beleive that would be the problem.

Few questions:

1. Did you actually purchase the retail copy of OS X or did you hotline it? I suspect this is why it works for you, that is that you don't really have the retail version.

2. When you installed OS X did you install it OVER a previous version of OS X?

Im not stupid, im not trolling, It doesnt work as far as I know on retail OS X. Tested on two iMacs and people over at MacGimp are having the same exact troubles that I am having.

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Auckerman]

type "startx -- -quartz"

Been there, done that. Didn't work.

Re:Quit the FUD troll...

[Auckerman]

My Secret Knowledge..

Step 1, read the docs:

Done

Step 2, Download from Darwinfo.com XFree86 binaries. (Was a december release)

Done

Step 3, Download the binary update from ftp.XFree86.org (4.0.3)

Done

Install all.

Done

Download XonX .4 release

Done

decompress

Done

go to terminal Looking at it right now.

startx

# startx

startx: Command not found.

# cd /usr/X11R6/bin/

# ./startx ./startx: command not found: xinit [79]

On builds of OS X previous to the final, this worked. It doesn't in the final. You must not have the final version.

Re:I did...

[Pengo]

Hindsight is 20/20.. right now that is the best deal.

I had a Dual 450 on order, but they ran out of stock so I was put between purchasing a 533 dual (which was the next reasonable step up..) or go down in price and .. for once in my life.. make a bottom end purchase... ;-) about $1500USD purchased a machine that packs a lot of punch.

If you can afford the dual CPU version though , I definately recomend it. (I would of spent the xtra money if I had not been so impatient and could of waited another month..)


--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

I did...

[Pengo]

I am in the same boat.. I bought a G4 two weeks ago and I am quite happy with it. (I bought the bottom of the line G4 466)..

It's about as fast as linux in feel of the os, but less buggy. Yes, even though Mac people are complaining, it's 100% imporovment over gimp or kde in terms of stability and 'togetherness'.

I can use Mozilla, IE, and I nabbed up a copy of Microsoft Office 2001.. Basically I am set. I have a full screen XWindows server running next to the aqua, I can hit CTRL-CMD-A and it bounces from the full screen XWindows server back to Aqua. This is helpful when I feel like running a i386 based program or just want to play with XWindows.

If you do go for the bottom of the line (466 G4), you should probably buy some more ram .. other than that.. it's been great.

Oh, and if you use Visio.... there is a native OSX (well, carbon) program out that will let you build Visio compatible documents.. for about $200 you can buy the Windows and Mac OS9/X license and use it at home and work.. Windows or Mac. But I use visio quite a bit for flow charts and network diagrams.

But, to me user experience was worth more than a few hundred dollar difference between a comparable PC based system. Unix with style ;-)




--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

Re:I did...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

(I bought the bottom of the line G4 466)..

Mac users, by and large, consider the Dual 533 to be the best deal going, right now. At the Apple Store an extra $800 buys you 600 more cycles (fully utilized by the new OS, natch), an extra 10G of HD space, and upgrades you to an NVIDIA GeForce2 card from a Rage 128. If you've got the cash, it's worth it.

Incidentally, you can downgrade the HD to a 30G, and save $100; you can also lose the default modem, to save $50, and can downgrade the video card, to save $100. Buy your RAM elsewhere.

Re:OS X software

[CSC]

See, I can buy that $500 box and use any old POS monitor I have laying around.

You're lucky to have monitors lying around. To me it seems the only thing I *never* have is a spare monitor.

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[CSC]

This is almost exact, but not quite true. The memory "slice" of applications is actually a bite of the whole (fixed-size) virtual memory, not physical memory. The part of it which is never touched has no reason to be ever allocated.

This you can see easily with a little piece of software called MemMapper. (no URL handy, sorry... google it if you want).

Re:MacOS X

[Van Halen]

2) all my images seem to have kept their Picture View 1.1 bindings, and I don't know an easy way of changing the bindings for the several 100 images. Picture viewer FYI is the Quicktime 4 simple picture viewer.

If you mean changing the Creator so that they open up in something else, try File Typer. It's a Classic app, so maybe it'll be easier in native OS 9.1 rather than the Classic environment under OS X? Anyway, just select all your images, drag them onto the file typer icon, and change the Creator to whatever you want - if you have an example file that works the way you want, use Same As...

Not sure of the exact details since my Mac is at home... Also I have no idea how file types/creators work in OS X since I haven't used it, so maybe this will be less than helpful.

So -- cross platform apps?

[hey!]

I believe you used to be able to create win32 apps in in NextStep. Is this still possible? Would it be possible to create cross platform apps in a subset of Cocoa?

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[hey!]

OK, I'll craft what I say better:

I think used to be able to deploy applications written against the OpenStep API on Win32.

Is this still true, and if so, can you create applications that with recompilation will run either under Win32 or OS X?

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[hey!]

Aaargh. If

Maybe this is another brilliant but unpopular move by Jobs (a la killing the clones), but does anybody doubt OS X benefits from having cross platform apps like Apache and PHP? Or that it would benefit if Microsoft ever ported VB?

It just makes it hard for me to justify targeting the Mac at all. I've been considering WebObjects for some projects, but I'm chary of getting involved with Apple again.

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[hub]

It is no longer possible. Apple killed cross-platform support for Cocoa (née OpenStep).

Re:So -- cross platform apps?

[naasking]

Then use, GNUStep

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:OS X software

[MatriXOracle]

Besides all the other missing stuff that's been pointed out in this thread, you also neglected to buy a pair of speakers to go with that sound card. (The iMac comes with some nice Harmon/Kardons).

Re:The Great Multimedia OS!

[MatriXOracle]

Last time I checked, Windows didn't come with a DVD player or a CD burning application either.

Re:OS X software

[MatriXOracle]

I guess we're assuming it's some POS on-board model.

I'll run MacOS X when...

[Kymermosst]

I can run it in Basilisk

It won't run on my Quadra, either :(

Oh Kripes, bring on the MAC whiners....

[BLKMGK]

Here we go - no monitor, no powersupply, you'll cut your fingers. Sheesh!

Hey, I'm an X86 guy too and OSX sounds interesting to me. Interesting enough to buy a whole new piece of hardware to try it out? I don't think so! Kripes, I've got 8 computers already not counting the laptops - if Apple wants a piece of my business they're going to have to give up this idea that I've got to buy their damned hardware to do it!

Can I piece together a decent machine for less than what Apple charges for it's stuff - yup! And that's part of the point - I can PIECE it together if I wish and EVEN upgrade it. Neat concept huh? All this whining about warranties and whatnot - none of my machines are "name brand" and yet they ALL run just fine - wow! I maintain them, I upgrade them, I put in them what I want - not what Apple decides. I've got a HUGE selection of good (and bad) parts out there to choose from if I want to. Apple on the other hand seems happy to shove what they want down their user's throats. Gee Steve how about a nice MO "floppy" at a pile of bucks a shot ala NEXT?! No thanks - I like having CHOICES in hardware. Hell, didn't Apple even go after the folks putting out books on how to repair their hardware without going to an Apple service center? Oh no, can't have the unwashed masses inside their computer cases can we?

The one and only good reason I've heard so far for not having an X86 port of OSX has been that the PC hardware base is too disparate for Apple to reasonably support. Even Linux has some trouble there and that's with everyone having access to the code. Getting OSX to that same level would be a bear. Instead they'll just keep it on "their" hardware base and let it wither - a shame. Apple nearly had me when the clones were being produced, I was pricing one out the week they killed them all off. Too bad Steve, you missed out on my money and that of many other PC folks who might have crossed over....

Re:Oh Kripes, bring on the MAC whiners....

[Choron]

Amen, brother ! I too have quite a few PCs and would need a very good reason to switch to another platform when I got much software and hardware already. Like many other PC users, I would have bought a Next if Jobs hadn't been so stupid to make it die, just because it was a wonderful machine with great development tools. However OSX is not attractive enough to me to decide to buy a Mac : Linux supports all my hardware, has a great interface (Gnome), plenty of applications available (and Kylix looks very promising too), and maybe even more important, I can CUSTOMIZE my system the way I want to, I really hate not being able to do what I want, the way Mac OS was designed (may be good for kids or people who don't want to know how computers work, but that's definitely not for the majority of /. users I guess).
Apple is basically dying, and the only thing to stop it would be to cut the crap and think of the huge majority of computer users, that is, PC users, and make some software/hardware available for them. I work for a major software company, and there's not a single Mac here, everybody would talk about Macs as a big farce. Until Apple stops jerking off on their blue translucid plastic, I don't see how the situation would be different but I wish them good luck.

Re:Oh Kripes, bring on the MAC whiners....

[Choron]

You're the fool in that story man, I'm not talking about a crappy tool like resedit, where's the shell in there ? SMB ? What are you talking about ? There are some C compilers for Mac OS, so yeah there is SMB working, so what, that got nothing to do with the subject, oh well never mind.

Re:Oh Kripes, bring on the MAC whiners....

[majestyk2000]

I'm far from being a Mac addict, but I can see the benefits in putting a minimal amount of money into something that will run the newest and bestest Mac OS. I'm a support technician slash systems administrator, so if nothing else it keeps my knowledge well-rounded to try out alternative operating systems.

I can sympathize with those who say "I've already got an office full of computers...why do I need another?", but it really isn't all that expensive to build a Mac that will run OS X. I'm doing it this way:

1.) Already bought a Powermac 8500 midtower from Ebay with 80MB of RAM and a 10 gig hard drive: Cost = $100 shipped

2.) Going to buy a G3 333 or 400 upgrade card: Estimated cost = $220 based on completed Ebay sales.

3.) Going to buy 128MB of RAM: Estimated cost = $60-$70 for SDRAM more or less.

4.) OS X = $99 +-, or $129 MSRP at most.

Total Cost: $450.

The only caveat is that I've already got a Mac monitor, but IIUC I can use a standard PC monitor with that Powermac anyway, so my KVM switch will just have to clear a spot. I figure that will be a reasonable price to pay to have a machine that will keep me up to date. Your mileage may vary.

BTW, for those who say "I've already got too many machines", I've got the following in my office:

1.) Sparc 2 POS running SunOS 4 something or other.
2.) Sparc 2 POS running RH 6.2 as webserver.
3.) Compaq Pentium 200 running Win98.
4.) Compaq Pentium 233 running NT Workstation/Server as dual-boot.
5.) Compaq Pentium 200 running Openstep 4.2.
6.) Compaq POS running Win 3.1 (I know, useless).
7.) Homebuilt Athlon 1Ghz multi-booting Win2k Pro and RH 7.1 and (currently) WinXP beta 2.
8.) Powermac 7200 running OS 8.1.
9, 10.) (2) Next slabs, both running NextStep 3.3.
11, 12.) (2) IBM Thinkpads, running Win95 and 98.

Don't tell me I don't need another computer...lol

Re:Oh Kripes, bring on the MAC whiners....

[unimac]

Can I piece together a decent machine for less than what Apple charges for it's stuff - yup! And that's part of the point - I can PIECE it together if I wish and EVEN upgrade it. Neat concept huh?

Apple sells computers. That's how they make money. They want OS X to be another reason to buy their hardware instead of somebody elses. I don't think they'd survive on OS sales alone. Not when you get Windows on new computers *for free*.

Sure you can still build a computer for less than what Apple will charge you for one of theirs. You won't be able to run OS X. That's your choice and I'm sure you and many others are perfectly happy going that route.

What bothers me about your post is that it seems to perpetuate this old notion that Macs aren't upgradeable. G4 towers have open bays for drives. There are PCI and AGP slots. There are several companies selling processor upgrades. What else do you want?

I'm willing to bet you can get at the guts inside a Mac tower much easier than any PC you've ever built (any that have a cover anyway). It has a very well designed case.

I upgraded the processor in my old PowerMac 7500 and not a single tool was required.

Even the cube, often scoffed at because "it's not upgradeable" is easy to open. RAM is a breeze to install. Firewire drives can be added externally or the internal drive can be replaced. This covers the kinds upgrades that a typical user would ever perform before deciding they want a new computer.Sure, some people need more flexibility. That's what the towers are for.

Re:OS X software

[yomahz]

Buy an OS? Hmm... no thanks, I can download one dummy:

http://www.linux-mandrake.com
--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:�Chicken and egg

[yomahz]

Hmm.. maybe I'm not stupid and burned a few CD's at work or at a friends home or before I decided to rip my old box apart.

Think before you post damnit.
--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:OS X software

[yomahz]

You mean a cheap processor with no L2 cache?

Actually the Celeron A's have 128k l2 cache.

An OS?

Download one (BSD, linux take your choice)

What about USB?

Yep, it's got USB (what doesn't now days?).

Firewire?

You probably have me there.

Preloaded software?

Most linux distro's come w/ much more software than you get from MS or Apple.

Expandability?

Much more so than a Mac or major brand PC.

CD-ROM?

Who needs one w/ a DVD?

You mean a cheap monitor, video card, keyboard, mouse

Check here for an upgraded list ($93 dollars difference).

--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:OS X software

[yomahz]

You mean a cheap monitor, video card, keyboard, mouse

And that video card was *very nice*.
--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:OS X software

[yomahz]

$7 case? Don't forget the $17.50 shipping and $20 for the power supply.

So it comes in at maybe $550. This computer will be total shit and not worth using. Regardless of the architecture and OS, if you pay less than $1000 for a computer, you are buying crap.

Do you really think that I'd have to spend double to get nice hardware? Some of it is already nice (geforce, logitech) but just for shits and grins, let's upgrade it:

$111 - Tyan S2054 TOMCAT i810 MB w/ 533 celeron (was $95..)
$72 - Western Digital HD (was $66)
$27 - Case w/ power supplly (was $7).
$17 - 10/100 Netgear ethernet card (was $4)
$42 - Creative labs DVD (no price change)
$14 - Logitech Keyboard (no price change)
$3 - Logitech mouse (no price change)
$134 - Geforce 2 64M GTS (no price change [in fact, this could be downgraded])
$170 - 17" NEC monitor (was $119 [I could have found a nice, less known brand for much less but I think you're impressed w/ brand names])

Total price difference: $93

That's a pretty nice system. Not the best but more than adequate.

And while you're picking at the details, let's don't forget the $70+ that you are going to spend on sales tax from buying it at your local computer store. That's not to mention the effort of going to the store, dealing with some store clerk who has no idea what he's talking about or even where the hardware is located.
--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:OS X software

[yomahz]

And let me know where I can buy that $500 Duron/Celeron with that nice big 17" monitor.

From pricewatch.com:

$95 - 533 celeron w/ MB
$31 - 128 M RAM
$7 - Mid Tower case
$134 - Geforce 2 64M GTS
$4 - 100Mb ethernet card
$42 - DVD Drive
$15 - Logitech Keyboard
$3 - Logitech Mouse
$119 - 17" monitor
$66 - 10 Gig HD
=================
$516


--

A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Re:OS X software

[hattig]

Is all that stuff the same quality components as used by Apple though? Apple make machines to last 5 years, PCs are lucky to last 5 years, especially cheap piece o' crud ones like the one above.

Enjoy cutting your hands to bits on an ugly crap case. That motherboard must be the lowest of the low. The mouse will not compare - be honest. And that will be one hell of a crappy 17" monitor - I would prefer a better quality 15" monitor.

And hey, I don't even care one bit about Macs. Yet I think that you should argue like components for like whenever possible.

Ars Technica

[Uri]

"Ars Technica puts it through its paces with a very thorough review."

Thorough and interesting, yes, but also quite opiniated and arsey. Every point seems to become a 'huge, glaring misfeature', and they often assume that their way of doing things is automatically the right one.

For example, they got rather annoyed at Finder for truncating long names in the middle, rather than at the end (which, they claim, is clearly correct behaviour!). Personally, I quite enjoy being able to differentiate between "Complete System Backup - 01-04" and "Complete System Backup - 95-01". In fact, since the important information is usually either at the beinning of the name or at the end (version number, date, etc), Finder's approach seems quite sensible to me.

Ah well. At least they had lots of nice screenshots :)

Re:Ars Technica

[//violentmac]

now you decide to chime in? huh! Your review was good but i thought you wrote it for macusers. I mean i don't think pc users knew what you were talking about when u spoke of the finders intricacies and abilities. "Spacial" finder? Why don't you just say it remembers your window layout. Surely you should have explained yourself more, even i a macuser for 13 yrs was confused.

Also your focus on the GUI was painfully nitpicking. Like a true macuser! ;) I was impressed.

The test of a OS is if ppl use it. Are u using os 9 or x today? I personally am torn between the two. My schizophrenic mac can't decide ifs its 9 or x. On one hand is os 9's beautyful familiar gui but rotten execution. On the other is os x's rotten gui, but excellent execution. It's like a pretty girl w/ no mind or a ugly genius girl. Perhaps apple should have just copied os 9's interface onto x's guts.

Re:Ars Technica

[sulli]

The thing that bugs me about Ars (I liked their review) is their continued use of white text on black, as if it's still 1996. I found myself selecting the text to read it more easily.

User interface experts, indeed!

For more info on GIMP and GTK under OS X...

[Uri]

...visit www.macgimp.org. Presently, it's all still a bit fiddly though - so be warned. A screenshot of the GIMP (running fairly happily, it seems) can be found here.

Size doesn't matter.

[solios]

Let's see- would you rather pay for a cheap box that has half-assed USB support and a big, nasty-looking monitor, or would you rather pay an extra bit of cash for a solid, reliable hardware package that comes with an OS that supports USB, firewire, and, oh... comes with a CD burner?

The iMac has the BEST monitor clarity, refresh rate and gamma out of every monitor I have EVER used. My 17" KDS and 21" Trinitron look like ass by comparison (though the trinitron is close enough, it's stuck on a wintel machine... don't get me started on Windows gamma).

If the monitor really, REALLY bends your noodle, perhaps you need to reappraise what matters about the computing experience. I cranked out a three and a half minute, 640x480 demo tape that contained a lot of 3d and compositing elements on my rinky-dink 233mhz bondi iMac with 96 megs of RAM- while my roommate put his expensive-ass 21" monitor and 600$ video card to use playing halflife. Great use of time there, spanky.

If you like the hardware and hate the monitor, then drill a hole in the back of the case and hardware hack the danged thing- the iMac monitor connects to the mobo through a standard VGA jack on the inside of the case. You can put any danged monitor you like on the thing.

It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[solios]

Not by a long shot. I've used OSX Server, the public beta, and the shipping release. The last of these three is by far the coolest, but it's still missing damn near everything that makes the MacOS my platform of choice. And I'll be using Classic until X catches up, thank you.

X is lagging in a lot of areas- pop-up folders are smoked, the control strip is gone, the dock is a joke, and I'd love to have the *finder* as opposed to this piece of ass NeXT replacement. As has been pointed out in the Ars review, there is something a lot like this that has been available for the classic OS for a long time- and I used it for about a minute and a half. A few other Mac users that I know laughed it off and likewise refused to use it- and when OSX starts shipping preinstalled, well... it won't be shipping in my direction until the GUI gets marginally close to that of the Classic OS.

In so very many ways, OSX is really a step down or backwards- the UI "feels" too much like Windows and other, similar half-assed graphical frontends for my liking, despite the apple menu.

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[iso]

I'm inclined to believe there's some NextStep interface baggage involved there. So be it. But make a working Apple Menu -- the old way -- as soon as possible. Put an Apple Menu Items folder in my home directory so it's as easy to manage as the original. That can't be so hard.

what is up you people begging for the Apple Menu back? the dock can already do what the Apple Menu does, but better. just drag the Applications folder (or any folder for that matter) into the dock and you can right-click it to get a list of applications. that's the functionality of the Apple menu right there, but considerably more configurable, as you can do different dock icons for different applications or documents. this is exactly what i'm doing now (see the lower-left corner), and i prefer it to the Apple Menu.

MacOS X has some missing UI features (we *need* pop-up folders back for navigating the Finder!) but the Apple Menu is one of those interface hacks that really needed to be done away with.

- j

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[iso]

uh, yeah. Until you start doing things like moving stuff into and out of the Application folder, then suddenly permissions break for no explainable reason, and your average Mac user is out buying Unix for Dummies so they can figure out how to use terminal.app, man, su, sudo, chmod, hacking netinfo to enable the root account, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

ok then, drag a folder into the dock that just contains aliases to files in the /Applications folder. then it is 100% exactly like the Apple Menu (you can even call it "Apple Menu Items" if it turns your crank). shit, this isn't rocket science. no command line required.

- j

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[chrischow]

"the UI "feels" too much like Windows and other, similar half-assed graphical frontends for my liking"

uh do you actually use Windows? unfortunately for my job i have to every day and OSX feels nothing like it whatsoever!

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[chrischow]

mac users either use the apple menu all the time or hardly ever in my experience. i am the the latter group =P

same with the control strip, whats so great about that anyway that the dock doesn't replace already (and with the CD audio dockette) it replaces even more. but once again... it depends what u used...

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[connorbd]

It's what we're used to. The one-size-fits-all concept of the dock is a bit of a mess, and to someone who's been using a Mac for any great length of time it feels broken.

I wouldn't consider the Apple Menu an interface hack anyway -- since 7.5 it's been a much more flexible way of doing the same thing Microsoft did with their ripped-off Start menu, and it's been able to hold anything at all since 7.0. It's been one of the Mac's most visible interface component, in fact, and the OS X version is the most obvious interface botch in the design.

/Brian

Re:It's definitely NOT MacOS.

[connorbd]

Okay...

I'll give you this much -- the interface of the shipping version of OS X is an inexcusable kluge. Apple painted themselves into a corner with the Public Beta interface and wound up having to go back and return the Apple menu to where it belonged, but they screwed up by not really making it the Apple menu we all know and love.

I'm inclined to believe there's some NextStep interface baggage involved there. So be it. But make a working Apple Menu -- the old way -- as soon as possible. Put an Apple Menu Items folder in my home directory so it's as easy to manage as the original. That can't be so hard.

The interface isn't *awful*, mind you; it's just not very Mac-like and will take way too long to get used to. The finder isn't bad at all. The dock... well, I could take or leave that, but the use of the dock as a control strip replacement doesn't quite wash with me.

BTW, a quick history, for those of you not quite Mac-savvy enough to know about the nifty little gadget we've come to know and love: the Control Strip started out as a way for PowerBook users to control various system functions. It was intended solely for PowerBook users and was rigged to run only on those systems, but enough people found it useful that it was hacked to ignore the machine type. Apple got the hint and made it general system software in the next release, for both desktop and mobile. Its function was merged into the dock in X, which works, but it's a bit... oh, messy?

/Brian

Re:OS X software

[NetCurl]

USB? Firewire? Sounds out? A guarantee that it will all work well? AppleCare (warranty)? A bigger HD (iMacs have larger than 10G), and what is the quality of the $119 monitor? I don't want shit thrown together, I want a machine that runs well, is fast, is under warranty, and has a decent OS.

Re:OS X software

[NetCurl]

Define for me "nicer" will you? You mean a cheap processor with no L2 cache? You mean a cheap monitor, video card, keyboard, mouse, CD-ROM? What about USB? Firewire? Expandability? Preloaded software? An OS? If you're making just a simple Linux box, fine, but for a GUI, you have got to be kidding me.

Re:OS X software

[NetCurl]

I mean, even if this OS produces everything it claims to, is it really worth an intel user to switch over when you can get a duron/celeron box for 500, and the cheapest way to get a mac is an iMac for about 8 or 9 hundred and then you have to suffer through a 15" monitor?

So your Duron/Celeron box for $500 comes with a 17" monitor? Really? That's incredible.

At least the iMac has a monitor, while it may be overpriced, there is a price-point that is very succesful in all platforms of Computer sales that is right around $800-$1000. The iMac isn't geared toward the power user, rather, toward Joe Friday who wants a computer for the internet, word processing, email, and his 5 year old kid to play "Reader-Rabbit" on.

And let me know where I can buy that $500 Duron/Celeron with that nice big 17" monitor.

Re:MacOS X

[Spyky]

Oops, yeah, you are right, OSX on all Macs this summer.

Actually, and this is totally unrelated to this thread, I think its interesting that none of the reviews i've read of OS X have mentioned Power Builder. I think that the quality of development tools for OS X is going to be the real deciding factor for Apple's success with its new operating system. Having a really nice IDE is going to make all the difference.

Spyky

Re:MacOS X

[Spyky]

Environment. It supports C/C++, Java and Objective C. Presumably with nice tools for developing Cocoa interfaces.

Spyky

Re:MacOS X

[Spyky]

Just a quick correction, my understanding is that Apple has no plans to install OS X on *all* shipping machines until sometime in 2002, it definitely won't be ready by July. July is when the MacWorld Expo will take place in NY, when the slightly updated OS X (10.0.2 i believe) and likely newer (faster) G4, Powerbook and iMac machines will all be announced.

Spyky

Re:MacOS X

[bnenning]

Classic crashes way too much for me to trust it when I'm trying to get my work done. I don't have any choice but to use Classic apps, since there's basically zip out there as far as carbonized/cocoa apps

Then you shouldn't be using it yet. Getting OS X and running mostly Classic apps is like using Linux and only running WINE. Apple has always said that you should switch to OS X when the apps you normally use have Carbon or Cocoa versions available. For most users, that time is not now, which is why the OS X rollout was relatively low-key. This summer an updated OS X will start shipping preinstalled on all Macs, and at that point there will be many more native apps.

Re:The Great Multimedia OS!

[nitehorse]

Hmmm... do you have a Win2K box anywhere?

Start->Run... (or Windows key + R)
C:\WINNT\System32\dvdplay.exe

I'm seeing a DVD player. Ugly as sin, but it's a DVD player. Now, to get back on my KDE box before I get infected or something...

Re:OS X software

[Zoop]

Only for people with more stock options than salary :-).

Seriously, it's not that much more expensive. Certainly you couldn't get an x86 multimedia system capable of running the latest stuff (and let's face it, this still means running Windoze until Apple ports Quicktime to FreeBSD (gotcha!)) for much than $100 less than an equivalent Apple system (caveat to x86 zealots, I use both daily so I know whereof I speak).

Take one of your current monitors and get a used Smurf (blue and white G3) on eBay if the $100 premium over an equivalent x86 system is that dear. You'll still get a speedy system (in os 9.1) with the cool case design and you won't spend that much.

Re:OS X software

[Zoop]

My time to put it all together (assume I'm fast, using my company's billable rate):
$360

Making it $876, slower, considerably uglier, and much more likely to break than the low-end iMac. Plus it only runs Linux and Win95 at acceptable speeds. Woo. Hoo.

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[babbage]

Two posts up:

One thing that I don't like about OS X is the root account is not active right off the start. They are afraid that if traditional MAC users are able to change /etc/motd, then the system will crash or something.

This isn't as much of a problem as you might think.

If you want to fiddle around with system settings via the GUI tools, you'll be prompted to give the admin password, which will be the password for the account you first created. No big deal, and you can do what you want to do with no hassles.

If you want to mess around with settings via the underlying text files, again, no big deal -- just use `sudo vi $file` and you can edit it as you please.

Not having default access to root isn't a big deal here, because you can accomplish whatever you want to do without it. Keep in mind, this is semi-*nix, and in that spirit you only semi-need root access.

Parent post:

What Apple's doing is trying to reduce security vulnerabilities by not even allowing anyone to log in as root, not even locally.

And here's where your *nix expertise can hurt you. I have been informed that creating an initial login account called "root" is a bad idea (though of course it is a perfectly typical thing to do in the *nix world).

Apparently a friend of mine did this and inadvertently wreaked all kinds of havoc. My best guess is that the name "root" was now attached to both the superuser and a not-so-superuser, and things pretty much fell apart from there, with the only recovery being reformatting & reinstallation.

Lesson: if you want root that badly, fine, but don't expect it as a GUI login option. Remember: su & sudo are you friend, so don't be afraid to call on their help when needed.

Apple has given it's customers an unusually large gun, hidden in plain sight for those that know where to look: don't point the damn things at your own foot for crying out loud... :)

...not that anyone is going to see a post this far into the discussion, but oh well....

Is your time worth nothing?

[Gorimek]

Comparing no-brand cheap-as-dirt components to a preassembled name brand computer is an eternal part of the Mac vs PC discussions, and I won't do more than point it out here.

But it seems to me that you will spend thousands of hours in front of whatever machine you aquire. If, as you say, the apple product is superior, even if you only value that advantage to only $0.01 per hour, the Mac looks pretty attractive.

These days I make well into 6 figures, but I still have some vague memories of being a very poor student, and the equation may well be different for someone in that situation.

I don't want to be smug, but...

[Gorimek]

Yeah, compared to Windoze or Solaris, the interface is perfectly OK. Compared to the pinnacle of usability and productivity OS UI, it is painfully inadequate. If you've not really used Mac OS 9, X will seem quite decent.

It's like the remote control, if you're old enough to remeber life before it. We were perfectly happy getting up from the counch to switch channels of adjusting the sound. Had we been given a 10 foot stick custom designed to click the tv buttons from the sofa with, we would have loved it. Once you get used to the convenience of a real remote though, the stick is unbearably inconvenient.

Let me also point out that usability is NOT a matter of taste about what's pretty etc. It is a hard science where you measure how fast people accomplish tasks using different UIs, and while I haven't done the tests myself, I have no doubt that many of the problems in the X Finder are very real and measurable.

I heard it's java 1.3?

[Gorimek]

I saw some discussion of java on X, and someone claimed that it ships with java 1.3. If you do "java -version" on the command line it says it's 1.3, according to him.

You'd think that the work of porting java from Solaris and/or Linux would be pretty minimal, compared to doing it for MacOS 9.

I'm hoping I can get a MacOS X box for my new java programming job that starts in a few months. The dual 1GHz should be out by then...

Re:OS X software

[Vlastyn]

Why,
so you can have some refurbished piece of shit Celeron?

It may be just my bad luck, but I've had so many problems with every cheap or home-built PC I have ever encountered. If I were ever going to buy another PC, it'd be from a large manufacturer (i.e. Dell or IBM). Even that would be a little cheaper than getting a Mac, but I happen to think Macs are much nicer and worth it.. :-)

-vl

Re:OS X software

[Vlastyn]

the tower case would probably run you about $40 for shipping alone. They always rip you off on that.

also since you are probably searching from mulitple sources you would have to pay shipping from each individual place

lastly, I dont think your $3 logitech mouse compares to the optical mouse that comes with every iMac.

besides you'd just end up with a PC and who wants that?

Re:OS X software

[Vlastyn]

Hey now
I've *never* used cheap hardware in anything I've built. Needless to say I have still had problems.

There is a difference in any case: The manufacturers don't just take some components and throw them together. They put each model through tests to ensure quality and compatibility. These companies also offer support and service plans.

How can you call the previously mentioned system something of "high quality"? It doesn't even say what brand of motherboard it's using, only that it's an Intel 810 board and uses the on-board video and sound (whice are both, in my opinion, crap). I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this setup in particular, but how can you compare?

Re:OS X software

[Vlastyn]

I've got pretty decent hardware in my audio computer:

MB: ABIT SE6
CPU: P3 700
RAM: 256MB 100mhz (Tested)
HD: 6.4GB Quantum - System
HD: 45GB IBM Deskstar GXP - Audio
Video: Matrox Millennium II
Network: 3Com 10/100

Additional USB stuff: eMagic MT4

It spontaneously reboots. I don't know why. It is nearly impossible to pinpoint because there is no single way to reproduce it and it only happens every few weeks, though sometimes it happens more than once a day. Is it the CPU? The motherboard? The power supply? I don't exactly have the parts to go swapping around and wait a month to see if it's working. I know a reboot once a week doesn't sound awful, but it kinda sucks when you're working on audio that sometimes you only get one good shot at. If I had some kind of service plan, I could just let it be somebody else's problem and probably end up with a replacement. I know each individual piece of hardware has its own warranty-- but until I can pinpoint it, the warranties are useless.

It's not just about the service plan though. The Apple G4 Towers are just very well designed and have this kind of personality that you don't get with PCs--especially home-built ones. But that is only MY opinion and preference. No one has to agree :-)

-vl

Re:OT: Powerbook, not OS X

[lizrd]

Overclocking a laptop is interesting and all, but why would you do it? That can't be good for battery life. In addition, that's a pretty hefty clockspeed bump it must get really hot when it's sitting on your lap.
_____________

Java - both good and bad

[DeadSea]

I have been excited about OS X because this is the first time in a long time that the most recent versions of my software will work on a Macintosh. Previous versions of Mac OS have supported up to Java 1.1.8. OS X supports Java 1.2. I have been using Java2 features such as the new Swing GUI for some time in my programs.

The good:
Java actually works. Programs that are pure Java are able to run just fine. This is an amazing step for Macintosh.

The bad:
Running java programs on a mac is not easy. I had to use a command line to run all my software. Since this is the first command line on a Mac, I assume that Mac users will not be willing to go that route. Neither class files or jar files are double clickable. By contrast, jar files on windows are associated with Java and open right up when you click on them. Apple does have a tool that will package your as a Mac Application. However, it appears that it can only be run on a Macintosh and as a GUI. Since I don't develop on a Mac, this isn't really a good option. I would consider switching, but if I did, then I would like to be able to build everthing from a make file, so I'm hesitant.

Apple has done a poor job of porting the MRJ, the java hooks into the Mac OS. Specifically, I was upset to find that the command for opening a web browser hasn't been implemented. I have a crossplatform class for opening a web browser from Java, but as of yet have not been able to get it to work with OS X. This can be done on other systems by using a command line, but applications on OS X appear as directories on the command line, and most Mac apps don't accept command lines anyway.

I also consider the MRJ to be a poor solution because after using these system specific classes your applications will not compile on other systems that do not have these libraries. You have to jump through hoops using the Reflection API in Java to be be able to find the classes at runtime so that your stuff will compile on other systems.

Overall:
I'd say Java on the Mac is good enough. I'll start supporting OS X as a platform that my programs run on. Provided they don't have to open a web browser, and given that the user has a bit of command line savvy.

Re:The Holy Grail!

[retiarius]

ditto for the youth crowd, meaning
my six-year-olds, who are ituning X
into the digital jukebox replacement for
cumbersome audiovisual equipment.

neither generation cares if ars technoids
get all twisted up using such simple stuff.

but since you can get as geeky as
u wanna be with unix, it'll suit them
even finer when schools, govt., and business
get with new procurement cycles.

Reviews, OSX, TiBook Overlocking on TekMage.com

[marz007]

Check out TekMage.Com!!

Re:Reviews, OSX,TiBook Overclocking on TekMage.com

[marz007]

Damn subject size limits...CLOCKING.. OVERCLOCKING....yeah..

So where's the x86 port?

[mach-5]

Sure, Apple wants to sell their hardware, but they want to sell their OS too. How long, if ever, until we see an x86 port, and some competition for MS Windows?

Also, how complex would the porting process be if Apple were to try such a thing? Any ideas?

Re:So where's the x86 port?

[Cheshire Cat]

Sure, Apple wants to sell their hardware, but they want to sell their OS too. How long, if ever, until we see an x86 port, and some competition for MS Windows?

There are several schools of thought on why Apple hasn't ported its OS to the Intel platform. One holds that it would drain away too much money from Apple's hardware sales. Personally, I doubt this because they'd easily recover the loss with increased software sales.

My opinion, and that of a lot of other people is this: If Apple released its OS for the Intel, it would compete directly with Windows, a much more inferior product. You can better believe that MS would never release *any* of its software for the Apple after that happened. And the inability to run Office on your new AMD-based Apple will really cripple sales.

But hey, thats just my opinion.

Re:So where's the x86 port?

[Bungie]

Apple has made a few efforts to get the MacOS on Intel machines. Rhapsody Blue Box comes to mind and Darwin x86 is in the works. The problem is not so much porting the OS, its in the vast amount of hardware on the x86 platform. If you look at Blue Box, it supported such a small amount of hardware, that most common PC's couldn't even use it (I couldn't install it until I had the proper Adaptec SCSI controller). With a Mac, Apple know exactly what hardware has been and will be in it, and they can develop around that. Until the x86 market gets more standardized hardware, I think it will be a long time before Apple considers moving the MacOS to x86 in a complete way.

Look at the way the developers of XFree have come under fire or not including legacy S3 support in XFree 4 (among other video cards). Apple just does not want to deal with it. It is far easier to do their own thing, and know that it will work well on it.

Re:So where's the x86 port?

[Raffaello]

"There are several schools of thought on why Apple hasn't ported its OS to the Intel platform. One holds that it would drain away too much money from Apple's hardware sales. Personally, I doubt this because they'd easily recover the loss with increased software sales. "

You haven't bothered to do the simple arithmetic to see why this is mistaken.

Apple makes a hefty profit on every high end box they sell (several hundred to a thousand dollars). They would have to sell as many as ten Mac OS X Intel CDs for every high end box sale they lost. Apple (quite correctly) doesn't think that there will be 10 intel buyers of thier OS for every lost high end machine sale. So no OS X for ix86.

Re:Some tech background

[hub]

But it has Quartz which is PDF based. Remember that PDF has Postscript graphic model. They just cut DPS to cut off licensing issues, and probably performance. I have never used DPS before, but I don't think Quartz is really different at doing graphics.

Some tech background

[hub]

To answer questions asked here:

• MacOS X is the descendent of NeXTStep. Call it NeXTStep 6.0 (version 5.0 was MacOS X Server aka Rhapsody). OpenStep APIs are here. They have been renamed Cocoa.
• MacOS X has a BSD layer on top of Mach like its ancestor NeXTStep. It is like OSF/1 too (from Digital). Note that this is NOT a microkernel architecture but more a macrokernel. Mach kernel version evolved compared to the version found in NeXTStep
• MacOS X is the descendant of MacOS 9. This is tru and false. In fact, speaking of architecture, this is completely false. Speaking of user experience and API, it is a great step forward, but it shows its roots: menu bar on top, Finder to handle files, etc. Carbon is also here to provide legacy support with some cleanup, and Classic is here to really provide legacy support.
• MacOS X foundations are open source. This true if we restrain on the core OS. Starting with the graphic layer (CoreGraphics aka Quartz), it is completely proprietary. This open source part is called Darwin. See uname and Apple Public Source web.
• MacOS X is NOT FreeBSD. While MacOS X borrows utilities from the various BSDs (Free, Net and Open are all represented), it is not in anyway binary compatible. But at source level, it works quite good, unless it depends on X11 or any library that depends on it.

Re:It's official: Apple has become Microsoft...

[zensmile]

Hmmm...you make a lot of assumptions. You say that it is "dog slow" and "bug-ridden". I haven't found any of this to be true. It is fast, stable, and a delight to use. I will expound on this...

I have a G3 "Pismo" Powerbook, 320 MB RAM, and a 10 GB HD. The RAM helps; I am sure. But RAM helps everything. I wiped the drive of my PB and installed 9.1 on a single partition, then installed OS X on the same partition. IT JUST WORKED! 20 minutes to install OS 9 and X. It has not crashed...all of the apps work just as advertised AND I set up my internet connection (PPPoe) in about 2 minutes.

Maybe if you can explain your assumptions a little better...people could use your scenarios to help iron out their systems or avoid problems entirely.

As for the "selling a BETA" pout...I was happy to pay for it. If you don't want to pay...don't buy it. America is a democratic republic...you don't have to purchase anything you don't want. Or if you are an ass, you can go and steal a copy of the beta or release off of #macfilez or something. You could have used this little forum to elaborate "constructively" about the problems you are experiencing...but you did not.

So your rants are not really that important. Sorry if this sounds like a flame. It is not intended as such.

Re:MacOS X

[larkost]

Apple is going to be installing MacOS X on all machines this summer, with the exception that they will be allowing Educational institutions to buy lots of MacOS 9.1+ (whatever is out then) for a while longer to ease that transition.
As far as the general public (including students) is concerned, MacOS X will be the Apple OS this summer.

Re:MacOS X

[larkost]

Ok, you are obviously blowing off steam, but here might be a few notes to help you along:

You can get along fine in less than 128MB of RAM, I do. The trick? Don't use 'Classic' applications. For what I do they simply are not necessary. If you are constantly using them (say your Classic email program polling for mail in the background), then you are forcing a large chunk of memory to stay resident. I run in 96MB, and occasionally have to wait while swapping occurs (2-3 seconds), but I don't really have big problems.

Second note: Did you do a clean install, or install over the top of an existing MacOS 9 install? Clean installs seem to run much faster. This might be due to fragmentation, as some people have found that running a defragmenter over the partition helps. Not having had this problem, I can't really comment.

Third: MacOS X is a Unix insomuch as Linux is a Unix. Neither is in truth, but both are Unix-Like. Open up a Terminal.app window, and you can go to. Like every other Unix-Like variation it has it's own 'fingerprint' (using Netinfo would be one big point on this).

Fourth: Airport does in general work. If you provided more details, such as: are you using WEP, is it a private network, did you flash the basestation to the latest firmware, etc... then maybe I could help you.

Fifth: I set up a MacOS X box for my mother, and she finds it very user friendly. She is definitely not a "computer user" (I know this is a contradiction... go with me on this one). I do agree that there is more work to be done, but I disagree with the term "half baked".

Lastly: Speed is a very complicated issue. If you are referring to live window dragging in the finder, then I agree with you it needs work. But then I have to point out that what Quartz (the lightweight windowing system) is doing here is a whole head-and-sholders above any other windowing system out there. There is going to be a shake out period where the techniques and technologies need to catch up to what is being done. Is it perfect in the mean-time? No. Is it useable, yes!
I think if you sit down and look at how much work you can get done in what amount of time, you will find that your perception of "slowness" is simply a perceived thing.. not an actual one.

Common threads.

[barneyfoo]

The biggest problems with OsX so far are speed, which is the #1 complaint, especially with native OSX apps, ironically. A problem also is the actual decline in usability from os/9 to os/x, which stems from changes to the finder and the general methodolgy of the thin. Memory consumption is a big issue that all reviews seem to note. Another one is that IE performs really badly in its beta-carbonized form.

On the bright side, most reviewers seem to agree that the Unix underbelly really gives os/x strength in terms of usability, and a VM subsystem that is more robust and general purpose, rather than the flakey patchwork that was os/9. Most reviewers seem to agree that OS/X has alot of potential yet to be fulfilled on the usability side and the performance side, and thus suggest waiting until July or thereabouts, when apple will start preloading computers with a newer version of os/x for the masses.

Re:Common threads.

[uid8472]

P.P.S. umount -f seems to cause lockups pretty easily. Too bad, all the other BSDs are stable after one.

True. But all the other BSDs don't have the autodiskmount daemon automatically mounting removable (and fixed, actually) media. Granted, it Really Should be able to deal with inconsistencies like that, but it doesn't.

Oh, and there's still no man page for it.

Re:Common threads.

[breic]

The biggest problems with OsX so far are speed, which is the #1 complaint, especially with native OSX apps, ironically.

This isn't really accurate. Cocoa apps (like Mail) are generally found to be fast enough. Carbon apps (like IE and the Finder) are pretty slow.

Another one is that IE performs really badly in its beta-carbonized form

On the bright side, there are lots of alternatives to IE. You can use OmniWeb, iCab, Netscape, the classic version of IE, and -- eventually -- Opera.

And -- newly arrived on the Macintosh -- you can now browse with lynx!

Re:RAM/Paging usage

[dondelelcaro]

The differences is that MacOS is intended for clueless users. Clueless users don't

I'm going to ignore this troll.

realise that running umpteen applications at the same time is going to adversely affect performance.

Actaully, on classic MacOS before VM, running N processes doesn't affect performance. (If you can run N processes in the available memory... ;-)

I suppose OS 9 got around this issue by simply crashing if you loaded too many apps, thus training users to run fewer

Actually, OS 9 just gives you an out of memory error. See this comment for explanation.

but OS X degrades gracefully will stick work even if the harddrive is thrashing to keep up.

Quite right. This is why ide hard drives are quite annoying. You will eventually run out of memory, but it takes quite some time. (Course, you'll be hard-pressed to reach it if you have 4G of swap as they had in the test)

Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"

wheelie micey

[Ciannait]

The secret for this is that any Cocoa app will use the scrollwheel, while any Carbon app won't.

Carbon is the "springboard" to ease developers into Cocoa, which is the API leftover from NeXT.

It's frustrating, but not surprising, that the Finder's a Carbon app and not a Cocoa app.


"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Ciannait]

Naw... We've got OS X running on an old beige G3/233.. It's not perfect by any means, but it works. The performance isn't as stellar as on my G4 Powerbook, but it's serviceable.

And the beige G3 is considered by many, including myself, to be an old machine.

Windows XP's system requirements aren't going to be much better, but I know that Microsoft and Apple are like twin anathemas to most /. denizens.


"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."

My thoughts on OS X

[Ciannait]

I read the Ars review with some interest.

I've been running OS X since March 24th or so, thanks to Staples selling it early, and I've personally been very impressed with it.

I'm a long-time UNIX geek and recent Mac convert. (Despite the initially seemingly-high pricetag, the quality of the hardware and support is unbeatable.)

I don't think it's fair to say the OS was shipped "unfinished" or "half-baked". From time to time, you have to decide what bugs and problems you can live with, and get stuff out the door. (How long was 2.4 in development? If I'm not mistaken, since I'm not a Linux person, Linus finally slapped a code freeze on it, did he not?)

Yes, I have to boot into OS9 to watch DVD's. Windows doesn't ship with a DVD player (Media Player doesn't count. I don't use it to play my mp3's, I won't use it to watch my DVD's) and certainly has issues, and Linux has been not-ready-for-primetime since its inception.

Aqua is eyecandy, and a lot of it is probably overkill to some of our more utilitarian users, but there's a whole lot of config files and resource forks just waiting to be hacked. Lots of sites exist, as a matter of fact, devoted to such things.

Applications - well, I hardly ever have to run anything in Classic. I've found an email application, an mp3 player, a web browser, AIM, a LiveJournal client (addict? me? never...) and other things that I need for daily happiness, all either Carbonized or already Cocoa. The only things I need Classic for are things like Photoshop and Dreamweaver - and it works just fine for those. Not every application I'll ever use is available yet - but stuff I need on a daily basis is all already supported in OS X.

The only real caveat I've heard about its support, in fact, is a lack of real MIDI support. But I've heard that's being worked on.

Plus, if you think something's missing - add it. Apple couldn't get ssh included, but many many people have gotten OpenSSH installed and working with a minimum of hassle.

It needs a bit of work, but the potential within OS X is huge. I'm looking forward to watching it grow.


"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."

Re:My thoughts on OS X

[green pizza]

Yep! In fact, I think Win95 OSR2 and WinNT SP5 & SP6 have dvdplay.exe as well.

Re:My thoughts on OS X

[ChiefCrazyTalk]

"Can not find file 'dvdplay.exe' or one of it's components" that's what happens!

Re:My thoughts on OS X

[Ayende Rahien]

Um, windows has dvd player, and had it in all versions since 98.
Type dvdplay.exe in the run menu and see what happens.

Re:OS X software

[passion]

You can easily plug in some larger POS monitor to the Standard VGA output port.

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Noer]

"One thing that I don't like about OS X is the root account is not active right off the start. They are afraid that if traditional MAC users are able to change /etc/motd, then the system will crash or something."

This really is a GOOD thing... if you actually did your research and knew anything at all about the system (or even the fact that "Mac" is not an acronym, and thus is properly capitalized "Mac" rather than "MAC") you'd realize that disabling root access is a great security feature. After all, sudo is configured by default to allow the Administrative account (essentially, the first one you set up) to do anything via sudo, including opening up a shell as root.

What Apple's doing is trying to reduce security vulnerabilities by not even allowing anyone to log in as root, not even locally.

Of course, you can change this rather easily, but the only reason to is if you wanted to log into the GUI as root. And if you know enough about what you're doing to be root, you shouldn't need to do anything via the gui.

Or are you one of those idiots who uses their linux box as root all the time and wonders why they keep hosing their system every time some shitty app decides to call unlink() on /etc or something?

A tip for future software installations:

>./configure; make; sudo make install

is a HELL of a lot safer than

>su
>./configure; make; make install

Apple's just being smart :)

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Noer]

If you DO enable root via NetInfo Manager, which you can do (it's just not a great idea) then you CAN log in as root via the GUI.

It's not necessary to CREATE a root account, as it already exists; it's just got login disabled by default, which is a good thing. If you try to be all 'l33t' and make your user account called 'root' then you may be shooting yourself in the foot, yes.

I'm just tired of cleaning up after idiots who insist on doing EVERYTHING as root - I'm talking, they want to be "root@mystupidlinuxbox" so they have their damn mail forwarded to the root account on their linux box. Gimme a break!

MacOS X is Nirvana. Why?

[PhreeStyle]

As a person that works with unix an a daily basis I enjoy the ability to use all my perl, python, apachie & unix toys (especialy angband) and MS-office. I imagine that your average /.'er prolly doesn't need or can avoid MS entirely - but in my real world all business communication is via that crap they call office. I get my cake & I get to eat it to.

Apple rocks.

MacOS X

[iso]

i've been using MacOS X since Developer Preview 3, and following the Ars write-ups as well: they're always very well done. this latest review of OS X final is excellent, but i think John goes overboard on bashing the interface. the issue with Aqua is that it borrows a lot of interface workings from the UNIX, NeXT and Windows world, and isn't 100% Mac. this is infuriating to Mac die hards, but to people like me who have only owned a Mac for a couple of years (with a primarily UNIX background before that) i'm right at home with Aqua.

the reports of MacOS X being "half-baked" are over the top. yes there are some things missing from OS X, and yes it's not as "polished" as MacOS 9, but it's hardly as "unfinished" as many of the reviews would suggest. first of all any of the "unfinished" bits are interface-only; the guts of MacOS X are excellent. of course to Mac people the interface is the computer, which is where all of these reports come from.

so why is it unfinished? well first of all the UI is quite slow for certain functions. mostly it's the transparencies and other Aqua-isms that can't be accelerated with a typical 2D graphics card, so the CPU is working overtime to render the screen under heavy loads. many of the slow downs can be directly seen in the Mac's most important application, the Finder, which is why you'll hear the Mac folk screaming bloody murder. many have suggested that as Quartz (the UI rendering engine) is optimized for 3D cards, the interface will speed up substantially.

admittedly there are some bugs in the interface, especially related to classic applications (as noted in the Ars Technica review). sometimes these can cause UI lockups and stalls that for Mac-users, looks like a complete OS hang. Apple of course needs to work these thigns out before OS X gets pre-installed on all Macs in July.

all in all i'd say that MacOS X is an excellent operating system with great potential. but at the same time this release was not highly trumpeted by Apple for good reason. it's not designed to instantly replace every Mac-users desktop tomorrow, but rather to bring in the early adopters and determine what the priorities are for everyday Mac users. it's still a fully-functional OS, and i use it every day outside of work for general net use and development, and to that end, it works phenomenally.

but the question is, should the current release of OS X be the "final" release? i'd say yes. again, i'm not a long-time Mac user (and really, i only got a Mac to use OS X), so i don't see the interface as lacking substantially. and while the MacOS 9 interface is nice, it's not the be-all and end all, and things needed to be changed. the UI as it stands is extremely useable (for instance, i prefer it in its current state to every single Linux interface i have ever tried), and any changes from here on in have to be made by getting it in the hands of as many people as possible to make it better. it's a painful process for Mac users religiously tied to their interface, but in the end i think it'll make for a better UI.

so the bottom line: i wouldn't suggest it to my not-so-computer-savvy Mac friends, but to anybody even reasonably familiar with UNIX, you'll feel right at home.

- j

Re:MacOS X

[andrewraff]

the reports of MacOS X being "half-baked" are over the top. yes there are some things missing from OS X, and yes it's not as "polished" as MacOS 9, but it's hardly as "unfinished" as many of the reviews would suggest.

I guess we just have higher standards as Mac users. :)

Re:MacOS X

[Refrag]

Is PowerBuilder a language, an environment, or both?


Refrag

Re:MacOS X

[minimis]

MacOS X is NOT Unix. Uhg, I wouldn't recommend this to my Unix friends. Damn, even 'root' is disbled until by reading the Ars artical to figure out how to turn it on

If you're too dumb to work out how to sudo passwd root you're too dumb to use the root account responsibly.

and you WILL need to turn it on.

Given that the Admin group is in sudoers by default, just what is it that you need root for?

Re:MacOS X

[IronChef]

all my images seem to have kept their Picture View 1.1 bindings, and I don't know an easy way of changing the bindings for the several 100 images.

Whoa, that is a good question... how DO you change a file's creator in OSX? That's a pretty critical feature!

Anyway, OSX is interesting and fun enough to dabble in while they work the bugs out. I don't have the serious speed issues you do, but I have it running on a PB with 320MB RAM. That probably helps.

Re:MacOS X

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Simple things like popup folders...are now gone

Although this thread is nearly dead, I have to point out that Versiontracker has come through again.

Re:MacOS X

[bcrowell]

If anything, I thought the article was not critical enough of the serious problems with X. The two things that made it useless to me were

1. Printing doesn't work, even though it apparently does have a driver for my printer (Epson Stylus Color 800).
2. Classic crashes way too much for me to trust it when I'm trying to get my work done. I don't have any choice but to use Classic apps, since there's basically zip out there as far as carbonized/cocoa apps (and I'm not thrilled about the prospect of paying money for X versions eventually, either).

I've been using macs since ca. 1984, and this is the only OS release I ever installed that's been completely useless for doing real-life work.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews

Re:MacOS X

[Bungie]

it's the transparencies and other Aqua-isms that can't be accelerated with a typical 2D graphics card

If you've ever tried to create a transparent window with the Carbon SDK under OS9, then you'll understand why MacOSX requires a G3 or higher to run. It is slow as hell. The controls take up to a minute to update and there is no going back once you've clicked one. Even under the Carbon 1.2 SDK, which renders windows incredibly faster on a 2D card, the controls are still slow, and now are not displayed properly. I agree that OS/X is a great base and will probably lead the MacOS into the future, but right now it is just not an alternative.

The functionality that made the MacOS popular is somewhat lost. Old time Mac users expect some things and none are there under OSX. The "close box" is on the wrong side of the Window, icons etc. are not handled the same, and the Finder is not as intuative as OS9's at all. Simple things like popup folders, LaserWriter 8 and the Control Strip are gone. How can I install this printer? Well now I need a driver!

Then we get to to the difficult part, the new filesystem. Mac users are used to just moving things around, dropping them wherever, and being able to find these things again. I know people who still can't find things that the download because they are no long just dropped on the Desktop, they are dropped in a profile storage area. Prefs are no longer in Hard Disk:System Folder:Preferences they are installed in other places. I can also no longer drag a Finder and System file on a disk and get it to boot.

I appreciate UNIX, but on a server or networking installation. I cannot give OS/X to my mom/grandparents and expect them to run it. It is just to complex. They want things simple. They could care less about Protected Memory or Preemptive multitasking, as long as they can drag and drop things into Office and then print it to their HP bubblejet crap printer. Right now Windows 98 and a slew of Wizards are more preferable to them than UNIX.

I think Apple has abandoned their long term users in hope of improving their OS's image. I wish they had stuck with the client they had proposed years ago (looks like OS9, but Mach underneath, much like OS/X server), but they haven't, and now I know many hardcore Mac users that are doubting the Mac. People who would have died for Apple are now swearing against OS/X. Was it worth it for Apple? I hope so...

No prediction of doom?

[graniteMonkey]

Props to Michael for not making an idiot of himself and predicting doom for OSX.

CP/M is still alive!

[T-Punkt]

> Bring back CP/M.
Have you ever seen a ":\" in file paths? There you will find CP/M! At least (cloned) parts of it...

> That was a real operating system.
By most definitions I've seen for operating systems it's not. But so MAC OS 9.* or Windows ME aren't either...

root 'n' stuff

[WiseWeasel]

For root, it is very simple, any UNIX user could figure it out... just type the following in the terminal:
sudo passwd root
it'll prompt you for your "admin" password, then for a root password, and to confirm the root pass, and that's it . . . you've enabled root. Apple was right to hide this from normal Apple users, they would have caused all sorts of hell on their systems. Enabling root is so easy, that anyone who knows what to do with a root account will know how to activate it.
About the RAM, 128 MB is definitely NOT enough. I have 320 and I'm golden, but I'm sure you could get by with 256. With the price of RAM, this is not a problem.
MacOSX IS UNIX, it has a full implimentation of FreeBSD, and it's pretty much (but not officially) POSIX compliant.
Airport is supported, I believe, so it's your fault that it's not working. I'm sure this will also be made easier as OS X progresses. There's always ethernet cable to hold you through...
I'd say this OS is less half-baked than OS 9. I mean, some apps crash, and they do it a lot, but even then you just relaunch them or use an alternative...no more freezes, no more system bombs, life is definitely better. Most apps in OSX are perfectly stable. Some of the bigger ones (IE, OmniWeb, AppleWorks) seem to be a bit rough, but even then, they only hurt themselves. I'm sure the apps' bugs will be fixed in the future, and we'll have a very nice user experience.
My only quarrel with the interface is that it doesn't remember icon placement, making it impossible to have links in strategic locations and be able to count on their being there. When they add this feature, OSX will be very useable.
I'm now using OSX as my primary OS, and only boot OS 9 to burn CDs and play Q3. Everything I need works well as a native OS X app or in classic mode.

peace,
WiseWeasel

File Bindings (super easy)

[WiseWeasel]

"2) all my images seem to have kept their Picture View 1.1 bindings, and I don't know an easy way of changing the bindings for the several 100 images."

This is really easy, just select all the files you want to bind, hit apple-I or choose "show info" in the File menu, and then choose Applications from the popup tab. Choose the application you want to open them with, and that's it; they're all bound to that app.
peace,
WiseWeasel

Re:out for a few days?

[artemis67]

i didn't even realize this was on the market yet. no advertising, nothing. not even on the front page of the latest best buy/compusa ads.

There's a reason for that... Apple acknowledges that OS X is still missing a few key features, like DVD and CDRW support. Right now, OS X is only for the early adopters.

According to the rumor sites, Apple is going to wait until MWNY this summer to do the big advertising campaign on OS X. That's when it will start shipping pre-installed on all Apple systems, and when most of the major software vendors are going to sell OS X versions of their apps.

Re:out for a few days?

[artemis67]

Well, two things. One, OS X may be missing a few minor things, but other than that it's a fully functional OS. I'm using it right now. It just doesn't have all the spit and polish Apple wanted to give it for the launch.

And two, when you figure that an OS 9.1 CD is included (a $99 retail value), you're basically getting OS X for $30. Not a bad deal.

Personally, I'm glad they shipped it. Have you used it?

Re:out for a few days?

[artemis67]

OS 9.1 is included? Why would that want to bundle an old OS with their new OS? That makes me think that they knew OS X wasn't ready for mass consumption.

The reason is simple... OS 9 runs inside of OS X to provide support for legacy apps. This was Apple's plan from the start.

Re:out for a few days?

[artemis67]

OS 9 is only required to be installed if you want to run legacy, or "Classic" apps. Which, of course, is 99% of the Mac apps on the market right now.

OS X doesn't run on top of OS 9; the other way around. When you launch the first Classic app, OS 9 boots up as a process within OS X. This allows OS 9 to take advantage of some features, like improved virtual memory and, I believe, improved multitasking. Also, the Classic environment can still crash, but it won't bring down OS X.

For the most part, OS 9 is invisible to the user. Apple has designed it to be unobtrusive. When you launch a Classic app, it behaves for the most part like any other app.

most of the software profiles as beta or dev

[Creepy]

I was looking at the system profiler and a good chunk of the system software is listed as either beta (b) or development (d) versions.

I'm surprised Apple didn't force all these to release numbers...

Re:Mac people don't know how to use top

[Creepy]

many UNIXs report confusing memory numbers in top that are not the real values
To make matters worse, most UNIXs have their own tool for getting real memory numbers - examples are dmesg | grep mem on Solaris, for AIX you'd use the SMIT tool's change/show characteristics of operating system, for hp do a dmesg | grep Physical, and for sgi you'd use hinv -c memory. dmesg is a fairly common program for getting real stats, but still not universal.

Another thing that might happen (but probably not on macs) is that AGP cards originally were designed to claim physical memory as graphics memory and might be claiming a small portion as their own (not true with most newer cards). My cheap PC has 128MB of memory, but 2 are claimed by the AGP card (the minimum allowed by the motherboard [card is soldered on] since I have and use a much better PCI card). I doubt this is the case for them, since the earliest AGP cards on macs already had on board memory.

Re:OS X software

[Paradise_Pete]

Notice how, in every way, this "budget PC" beets the cheapest iMAC in terms of performance.

Beets? If you're going to use vegetables you could have said squashes.

Re:OS X software

[Paradise_Pete]

If you wanted extra, you had to buy it.

Well if it were included it wouldn't be extra then, would it?

Re:OS X software

[Xenex]

Or, perhaps you could use BOTH the monitors AT ONCE with the same hardware...

Apple's notebooks do multiple monitors, i'd expect the iMac does too...

OS X software

[peteshaw]

Well, I have heard a lot about OS X and it sounds impressive. And while I would be the envy of my neighbors with one of those cool looking cubes, I just can't get around the hardware cost.

I mean, even if this OS produces everything it claims to, is it really worth an intel user to switch over when you can get a duron/celeron box for 500, and the cheapest way to get a mac is an iMac for about 8 or 9 hundred and then you have to suffer through a 15" monitor?

I am sympathetic to Apple's plight. They probably rightly feel that by adanoning a unique hardware platform they destroy the gravy train.

Apple has a superior product. No question.

But until I can buy OS X for my cheap and available hardware platform, my interest is going to be limited to reading these interesting threads on /..

Sorry if this is not directly germane to the topic at hand. But its the everpresent problem, right?

Re:OS X software

[Cheshire Cat]

I think his point was that you can add a 17" monitor later on. How could you do that with an iMac?

Who was the genius who moderated this up? iMacs have an SVGA port so you can hook up an additional monitor to it as well.

Re:OS X software

[Angelwrath]

This is true to a large extent, but for a customer with your needs (i.e. lowest price PC) Apple obviously was never a consideration for you anyway.

OSX is not intended as a low-end OS. It is based on Unix, of which most is either FreeBSD or NetBSD, and it has some serious high-end graphics and application capabilities.

To that end, it is clear that Apple hopes to strengthen one end of its product spectrum - high-end. Looking at the applications coming to OSX, it is clear that OSX has some significant high-end solutions now that simply could not be available in the MacOS.

Maya is coming to OSX, so is Apache, SendMail, OpenSSH, and a ton of BSD software, in addition to many other commercial Unix and high-end products. Apple is also working closely with companies like Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel to bring some of their enterprise-class software to OSX. Clearly, OSX is going to strengthen the Mac in the high-end arena far more than the low-end arena, and Apple is working hard to maximize its gains in the high-end.

So to someone like yourself, your solution of choice is clearly not going to be an Apple product, and realistically it never will be. Apple will never be the low-cost leader - their entire business strategy is based on product innovation and quality, and that strategy just doesn't translate into low-end price advantages or even parity.

Although, to be honest, if you are a programmer and would like to see OSX migrate to the PC, you can download Darwin right now with rudimentary support for x86, and perhaps contribute some driver work. Apple is very interested in getting Darwin onto x86 and would welcome any support they could get in that area.

Re:OS X software

[Jagasian]

Do your homework, and you will find that an 800mhz Duron with 256MB of ram, a 17in CRT (a nice optiquest which is a budget viewsonic), CD-RW, 40gig harddrive, mouse, keyboard, etc... can all be purchased for around $600. Notice how, in every way, this "budget PC" beets the cheapest iMAC in terms of performance. Fact is, Linux or BSD on dirt cheap PC hardware is the best bet for a do-it-yourself power user. Need I mention overclocking your 800mhz Duron to even greater speeds?

So you want to know where? Well, you have to build the computer yourself, and you need to do a little homework at pricewatch

Re:OS X software

[chrischow]

celerons are crap, last year i bought my wife one at the same time i bought a new iMac, they cost the same (and the PC has lots more MHz so gee it should be faster!!) but hell the PeeCee is soooo slow, its the fastest PC we ever had but compared to a G3... and this is the slowest available Mac btw. the iMac monitor is better than the crap one that came with the PC too.

basically iMacs rule

Re:OS X software

[chrischow]

you ought to try OSX, you could do with the system wide spell checker

Re:OS X software

[x1r0k3wl]

You could always install the monitor in the iMac (or the iMac in the monitor, as the case may be). You wouldn't be the first.

--

Re:OS X software

[foo fighter]

Check out E-bay, or another auction site. I just bought a one-year-old, 17" Trinitron monitor that functions and looks like new for $60 plus shipping. I'm not going to do graphic design on it, but the picture is sharp, text is crisp, and I'm very happy.

==========foo fighter==========
Do not mistake understanding for realization,

Re:OS X software

[kirkb]

Why will it be shit? It looks to be just as capable as an imac. Actually, the video card is probably too good. You could cut almost $50 off the vidcard and still end up with a competitive PC.

Re:OS X software

[Beatbyte]

iMac is MUCH more capable. Don't look at the Mhz numbers.
And yes you could get a Kyro 64MB AGP 4x Pro video card for 85 bucks. iMac's monitor is very capable. Even though its small its very nice. Not to say it doesn't cost a lot but considering the design and look (yes you pay for the shiny and purty colors) and power of the computer its very worth the cost of it. Especially with the financing Apple offers ;) 50 bucks a month will get you a very capable apple....


Maybe we should all shut the hell up until we have *nix benchs to compare x86 and the G3/G4's power. Rant rant rant........

Re:OS X software

[IronChef]

When I first got into PCs the 486DX/66 was the big thing, and I was intoxicated with all the cheap parts. Not surprisingly, I used to have problems with my PCs being all crappy.

Then I finally figured it out -- just because you CAN get a $10 part doesn't mean you SHOULD. Quality costs a little more, and it usually comes with a name brand.

Of course, I am talking about name brands like Abit, Asus, Nvidia. Stay far, far away from crap like Dell, Gateway and Compaq. They produce often quirky systems that are difficult to maintain. They are probably easier for the total novice, but if you are a "hardware guy" at heart they are trouble. IMHO.

The only way to build a decent x86 system is to do your homework. Read all the very extensive reviews that the hardware sites put up. Choose your parts very carefully, and you *will* be rewarded.

(FWIW I am a Mac guy too, and I always have been. I just happen to like computers, and I have a few x86 systems around for games, FreeBSD, etc.)

Re:OS X software

[IronChef]

The reboot problem is most likely due to a bad power supply, but a failing CPU, DIMM or mobo-to-case short can do it too. Those are aggravating problems for sure.

The Apple G4 Towers are just very well designed and have this kind of personality that you don't get with PCs--especially home-built ones.
heh, I see the rebooting problem as personality. PCs have plenty of that kind of personality. ;)

Re:OS X software

[Meech]

RISC vs. CISC. The chips are totally different, a 400 G3 is comparable to a much faster Intel chip.

Celerons are crap, but more than that, Windows sucks, but then again everyone knows that. The funny thing is when people look at me and laugh at my Mac, I ask them the last time that their computer crashed, then they shutup.

Re:OS X software

[Meech]

I am sure that once in a while that a BMW will not work properly also, not to say that a Mac is a BMW, but there are always extreme cases. On the other hand, there is no comparison between the "crash rate," Windows is the king of crash.

At our school's "library lab" the iMacs that they have are pieces of shit too, but that is becuase they have retards setting them up (and using them).

Re:OS X software

[Fervent]

And let me know where I can buy that $500 Duron/Celeron with that nice big 17" monitor.

CompUSA. Get a package deal with a Duron/Celeron 500, 15" monitor and printer, and swap out the monitor for a 17" one. You'd still be well under the $800 barrier (can probably through a DVD-ROM in there too).

Re:OS X software

[Flannan]

Apple make machines to last 5 years, PCs are lucky to last 5 years, especially cheap piece o' crud ones like the one above.

Five years? Every Apple computer I've ever bought is still in perfect working order. Including my 22-year-old Apple ][ Plus.

Re:OS X software

[Bungie]

Hey! Come to think of it, I still have an Apple IIe in perfect working order in my storage room! And numerous Mac SE's too. Not one has given me trouble in all the years I've owned them. Yet all the 386+ machines that I've owned (except my current Pentium machine) have had some hardware failure at some point. Apple must do something right!

Re:OS X software

[perlyking]

In my experience spontaneous reboots can be caused by amongst other things:

• CPU overheating, use motherboard monitor to keep an eye on cpu temps, check heatsink is seated firmly, especially if you are overclocking (overclockable cpu you got there)
• Dodgy power supply, I had a dying PSU and it kept doing this, eventually it died :-(

Hope you figure it out, on the subject of mac hardware - I wish I could afford some, it looks sweet as does OS X. For one it has transparent terminals i'd die for (awww yes I guess i'm shallow!)

Re:OS X software

[SpyceQube]

Uhm, no, no, no, no, and no. Ain't no $7 case gots a PS in it sonny. And the equivelent Mac to a Celery 533 is a G3/266 which you can get on Ebay (Apple hasn't made a model that slow in 3 years) for a couple of hundred dollars. And it does have onboard sound and ethernet... and SCSI and video and a power supply.

Go away now boy, you bother me.

Re:OS X software

[SpyceQube]

Let's see: no Firewire, shitty with a capital SHIT monitor, a dog slow processor, and no sound. All of wich is secondary to the fact that this system has no power supply.

Re:OS X software

[Drakantus]

So your Duron/Celeron box for $500 comes with a 17" monitor? Really? That's incredible.

Yep. Motherboard w/video/sound+cpu is around $130, best buy has a 15GB hard drive for $40, CD-ROM's cost about $30. A cheap ATX case/PS can be had for $25. Mouse & keyboard can be found for $9. I'm sure you can find a nice 17" monitor for under $264.

However, I don't even think that is the point. The point was you can build a cheap duron/celeron system for $500 and buy a monitor for $400 and have a much nicer system than a $900 iMac.

Re:OS X software

[Drakantus]

The difference though, is that there is no macalternative currently. You CAN'T build your own powerPC G4 500mhz system, so the only option is to pay the appletax(tm). The cheapest possible new computer setup is going to cost you a good $300-$500 more than an equal homebuilt x86 system.

Re:OS X software

[shotfeel]

Just out of curiousity, what does that MB have for I/O ports compared to the iMac? Do you want a modem with that?

What kind of warranty and support do you get with that system?

How long does it take you to put together and how much is your time worth?

Still seems to me that you pretty much get what you pay for, PC or Mac.

Re:OS X software

[booser108]

1.Apples products have always been inferior. Er, and you base this opinion on... ? Hmm. They suck.

2.I'm talking from a software Engineering point of view. Ah, OK. So you don't like the API's then? Tell me, could you list a single API of any sort? How about a MacOS API? Or are you just truly talking out your butt as you seem to be? Ever tried a device driver for the Macintosh, if you haven't I wouldn't talk, not saying its any better then Redmond

4.it didn't have a real operating system, Ah, it may not have one up to your exacting standards but yes, MacOS pre-X does have an OS. It doesn't have protected memory and relies on cooperative multitasking instead of preemptive multitasking but yes, it's there and in every sense a "real" OS. Didn't, past tense.

5.no command shell, So that's your criteria? Righ, MacOS doesn't ship with one. There are third-party ones but then the whole idea of MacOS was to get *away* from the command line & use a WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse Pointer) interface. Why would anybody bother running an OS without a command shell. It's just too freakin' time consuming, dragging and dropping.

6.no real easy to use interface, Er, the MacOS GUI(s) aren't easy-to-use? I don't think you'll find a lot of agreement there. Ranging from novices to power-users most agree that Mac's GUI(s) are their strongest feature. Not perfect but arguably better for the vast majority of folks then anything else availiable out of of a box. Again, no command shell, comes with a single mouse button, must suck.

7.just a GUI, that's it That's right, a GUI floating in space, no OS below it... (Hint: Go check the root directory "System Folder" on any Mac, more particularly check the files "System" & "Finder" on any pre-X MacOS.) Eye Candy sucks, production rules.

8.If you wanted extra, you had to buy it. Such as?... This differs from?.. No Comment

9.Apple is certainly better then Microsoft in every ascpect in GUI and OS stability design MacOS >X is more stable then Win2K?! (choke) Heck I like Macs but not even I can say that one without giggling. Easier to maintain, yes. More productive, yes. More stable, not. MacOS X is shaping up to be far more stable OS but with MacOS 9.x Mac'ers were just happy it's the "most stable release in years"; note no one saying it's rock-solid stable like a *nix box usually is. The fact is that much of the unstability comes from third party patches but the point that it's easy to destabilize the OS remains (try holding down the mouse - freeze everything.) Sorry Honey but right there you've completely marked yourself as a clueless goober. Have you ever tried overclocking a Win98 box. On the same computer, I overclocked my win98 box 100 Mhz machine, non-stable. Linux, extremely stable. I haven't used a macintosh for quite sometime but what I do remember is that they were descently stable

10.but the lack of a command shell in early versions Again what's with the command shell? You got some sort of prompt fetish? What, exactly, would you have wanted this for and why do you believe Apple didn't include it if it was so critical? Without the command shell, all we have are beginners and Right brainers, no one who actually knows how to use a computer.

11.and that of a good advertising department killed Apple Yeah, that 1984 commercial sank without a trace... Look, Apple has had good campaigns & bad campaigns but most will agree that the early ones were excellent and some of the more recent ones have been pretty good. Name any company that's had 25 years of unqualifiedly great advertising... None. Do you think Microsoft has ever taken a year in without a profit? If Apple could sale their product, every one would have one.

12.Former Apple products were nowhere near that of UNIX Er, first of all back then *nix's were big iron / big ticket items. Name one consumer OS that was comperable to a *nix... Uh huh. Look here son, you gotta go reading more then the textbook-for-dummies before you go lecturing your betters on the history of computing (the back issues of Byte would be a good start.) Do you remember the age of terminals, dialing into computers? This is what I'm referring to. I never had a Unix machine of my own back then(who did) but atleast I'm not a dumbass like you

13.The problem with Unix and its precursor, Mulics, Not. Unix's name is a play on the name "Multics" but they're not related, not in any significent way. As someone who had a Multics account trust me on this. Precursor means something that came before, it does not mean they have to be related. Unix started out as a single user, independent version, with most of the basic ideas of Multics plus new ones.

14.is that they were made for users who already knew how to use a computer and not for beginners As to being written for novices / power users, back then we were all novices & by definition power users. There was no concept of different skill levels, the wonder was that any of this worked at all & there was certianly darn little to compare it to. Certain groups of people develop faster then others and I was one of them. Its like duh when one states that everybody starts as a novice without knowledge of the operation of a computer, but some users remain that way while others learn and become "experts"

The problem with Monday-morning Quarterbacking is that you had to have watched the game, or at least read about it. You, heck I'm not even sure you're literate much less conscious or capable of critical thought. Do your parents know you're on their computer? Isn't it your bedtime? Or naptime? Mebbe when you grow up you'll learn to write about what you know, in the meantime be quiet, don't fidget, pay attention & mebbe you'll learn something. If you were actually a literate user, you would stop using a Mac and get a real machine with a real OS, I did several years ago.
-----

Re:OS X software

[booser108]

Look in the mirror.
-----

Re:OS X software

[booser108]

I meant writing
-----

Re:OS X software

[kylepike]

Really?? Are you in the market for a new computer?? I'd be more than happy to assemble one for you somewhere above the $1K price point.

Re:OS X software

[meleotl]

You probably shouldn't buy a Mac if all you care about is the price of one. That's not at all what a Mac is about.

Re:OS X software

[cosmo7]

besides all that cheapest possible uber-crap that you apparently want to drek out your life with, you neglected to buy an operating system, which is the point of this thread.

Re:OS X software

[alex_siufy]

All the recent mid-to-high end iMacs (about a year ago) have SVGA out. Your point?

Re:OS X software

[dewhite]

Hey, uh, I built my duron system from scratch. Because of this I know something you conveniently forgot to include. That is besides the sound card, case fans, and a few other little things like that... What's the S&H gonna be on that bad boy?

Re:OS X software

[aspenflyboy]

You get what you pay for. I have a neighbor who buys the cheapest of everything he can find and then spends inordinate lengths of time trying to get things to run. They don't give quality away. If you buy the cheapest thing you can find expect that it will work just like that, or possibly not run at all.

As a Gen-Xer....

[GodHead]

I like OS because it's X-tream. I also want to run Windows XP! And Linu-X! I'll be so XXXXing leet....

G.H.

ALL YOUR BASE ARE OVER ALREADY

Re:As a Gen-Xer....

[epukinsk]

The x is in style....

First it was i-everything (apple brought this back) then e-everything, and everything.com...

all that has fallen out of fashion. Now it's everything-x.

can't wait til we get desparate and start promoting u-business and wTools

-Erik

Wow... Double Wow...

[alexhmit01]

So I had already planned a vacation that left on March 24th, so no OS X on the trip. I picked up a copy towards the end of the vacation when we passed by a CompUSA. I got to install it yesterday... WOW.

First off, all the eye-candy is gorgeous. Now, I am running this on a reasonably current machine, Mac Cube G4-400 w/256MB RAM, but not a high end one (no dual processor, no 500+ MHz, so workstation with souped up video card). The Genie affect is neat, the quicktime movies playing in the dock are neat. Wow, doubly wow.

Now, I only got to play for a few hours, just poking through preferences and utilities. It's very cool. My work machine is still the Win2K box, but only until I configure this one. After this one is configured with programs, etc., then Win2K sits around for Visio only, and MacOS is the primary system.

BTW: my partner is a die-hard Unix geek. He was drooling. I don't think we'll buy another box for a Linux workstation. I mean, with xTools or XonX, there shouldn't be anything Open Source that won't run on it. I'm hoping that a Motif, GTK, and QT port to Quartz are all in the works so I can eventually get all my Unix stuff native.

Let's face it, if you are buying a new machine to run Linux (which I guess that most here don't do) as a workstation, why would you not buy a Mac for MacOS X. It will save you money, given the hours it takes me to have a Linux workstation approaching the usefulness and prettiness of the Mac.

Alex

Re:Most of you are missing the point.

[Cheshire Cat]

You guys are all GEEKS. The Macintosh isn't aimed at you.

This is such a great point. When I sit down in front of my computer I want to go play on the Internet. I don't want to spend twenty minutes poking around with esoteric settings trying to get my modem to work. And I'm a pretty computer savvy person. This is what the Mac has done, and done well: It makes it easy for a person to do work on a computer, instead of trying to make a computer work!

Minor version numbers?

[whovian]

Think I'll wait for version OS X.II before trying this out. (Oh

Since when was DVD a 'Core' and 'Basic' thing?

[sl3xd]

I realize that I'm a minority that actually watches DVD's on a computer... But since WHEN was playing DVD's as much of a 'must have' feature as a HTML browser? Even Microsoft hasn't tried to claim that playing DVD movies is a core OS feature.

Re:Since when was DVD a 'Core' and 'Basic' thing?

[green pizza]

My SunOS box (SPARCstation 10 with dual SM71) doesn't even have an internal CD-ROM drive!

Re:iMacs don't have CDRW

[vorpal22]

Both the new 500 and 600 MHz models have CDRW. Check out the Apple store.

v

Re:Uhh

[vorpal22]

I beg to differ. I have XFree86 and XonX working right now. Either somebody fixed it, or I have an older build that works.

v

Mac OS X is better than I could have imagined!

[vorpal22]

Let me begin by saying that I used to be a rabid, frothing at the mouth Linux/UNIX advocator. I've been using Linux exclusively for nearly two years.

Anyways, when I found out about Mac OS X, I was very excited. I wanted to try it. The interface looked so incredibly well done. Whoever says that Windows has a nice user interface must be joking; I think that the Windows GUI is extremely bland.

So I bought an iMac 233 for a steal over at eBay. I ran Mac OS X Public Beta for many months in anticipation of the final release.

The day the final release came out, I was so impressed with Apple hardware and the beta, that I ran out and bought one of the new iMacs just so that I would have the extra speed boost in running OS X.

Anyways, let me say that I have not been disappointed in the slightest! OS X is everything that Linux should have been. It's powerful enough for the command line lovers, but elegant enough for the common desktop user. I don't care what anyone says; Linux is not ready for the common user.

Common Linux scenario. I'm running KDE with some GNOME apps, along with Netscape 4.77 and emacs. Say I want to change my computer's theme. That means I have to find a KDE theme, a GTK theme (and figure out how to install it from KDE), and edit my .Xdefaults file, testing new values for Netscape and emacs until everything is the way I want.

That's just too inconvenient. In fact, after running OS X for a week now, I found that there were a lot of annoying inconveniences that I put up with in Linux that I don't have to deal with in OS X. It got to the point with Linux where I was saying, "I'm so tired of constant sysadmin battles... I just want something that works." You know what? Mac OS X just works.

Not to mention the fact that I find Apple hardware far superior. There's none of the Intel Driver Hell that I've dealt with using other OSes. I plugged in my iMac (which was equipped with CDRW, ethernet, modem, etc...) and everything worked, no tweaking necessary.

What I like the best is the XonX program that a bunch of sourceforgers are working on. By hitting Command-Alt A, I can switch back and forth between my old XFce desktop and my new, spiffy Aqua desktop.

To those who say that Apple hardware is too expensive... yes, the powermacs and the cubes are still fairly high in price. If you're looking to play around with OS X, pick up an iMac. They're very reasonably priced machines that pack a lot of power.

Spare Monitors

[Forrestina]

who needs em? get a KVM :) i've only got one monitor but, i can have 4 computers on it. this comes in quite handy when building new boxes actually. or machines you don't need a monitor on most of the time... like servers...

-------

Altivec

[burris]

so why is it unfinished? well first of all the UI is quite slow for certain functions. mostly it's the transparencies and other Aqua-isms that can't be accelerated with a typical 2D graphics card, so the CPU is working overtime to render the screen under heavy loads. many of the slow downs can be directly seen in the Mac's most important application, the Finder, which is why you'll hear the Mac folk screaming bloody murder. many have suggested that as Quartz (the UI rendering engine) is optimized for 3D cards, the interface will speed up substantially.

The reviewer did most of his tests on a G3 though he did mention that window resizing was still unbearably slow on his G4.

The Quartz engine has some Altivec enhancements that should give significant performance boosts on the G4.

It's important to note that application specific drawing implementation can have sizeable effect on drawing performance. Back in the NeXT days, an Adobe employee would tweak the drawing code for open source screensaver modules and games and end up making them an order of magnitude faster. Intelligent drawing or lack thereof can make or brake the performance of an app.

Finally, let us not forget that the new Finder, which is the source of most of the OSX bashing, is not even a native Cocoa app and is written in Carbon. Give a nice native app like Stone Design Create a whirl and see what a difference it is. BTW, Create is a badass drawing program and the only 3rd party app that has run on EVERY version of NeXT ever released, all the way back to the early days and including OpenStep for Solaris and HP Gecko.

In any event, everyone knows that operating systems are never "finished" and 1.0's are always euphemisms for Beta software. NT 3.1 anyone? OS-X is a very ambitious project and it's amazing that the thing works as well as it does with backwards compatibility.

Burris

Re:Should I get one?

[demaria]

Emacs. Yes, it has emacs. Runs in text mode.

Porting, sure you probably can. It includes developer tools. Thank you Apple! :)

No built in X-Server. "There is no X in MacOS X". You can use an X server as a standalone application just like you can in Windows and OS9.

Don't know about NFS.

It runs a beta of IE now, and Office is being ported.

�Chicken and egg

[yerricde]

Buy an OS? Hmm... no thanks, I can download one dummy

How? You need an operating system to run an FTP client so you can download an operating system.

Except Apple MADE the hardware

[yerricde]

Don't blame Apple or the OS if it's clearly some fault either in your hardware

Well, some of us expected Apple to provide a working solution. Hardware purchased at apple.com is supposed to work with OS software purchased at apple.com, wouldn't you think?

Quartz != X11 and Carbon != POSIX

[yerricde]

So, since game developers writing games for OS X will basically be writing their games for a Unix based OS, does this mean that we will see more ports to Linux since it will be considerably less work to port them over?

Mac OS uses proprietary Carbon and Quartz APIs instead of the POSIX and X11 APIs we're used to on *n?x boxen. But good abstraction layer libraries such as Allegro will solve much of the problem.

Re:Quartz != X11 and Carbon != POSIX

[jessemckinney]

OS X uses the POSIX and X11 APIs. There are three ways of programming for the mac now. The carbon APIs, which are the old mac toolbox but cleaned up for multithreding, mulitasking ect. and 'cross platform' compatability with the old Mac os. Cocoa. This is what apple calls their implementation of the Next APIs with java 2. And finally, stright unix. Mac os x is a Mach os with BSD. Most things are a straight recompile. Oh by the way, there is nothing called the Quartz APIs. Quartz is the graphics layer for the os.

Re:We get PhotoShop first - No IRIX did!

[piranesi]

OS X will be the first *NIX to run Photoshop native!

Nope. Adobe Photoshop 2.5 and 3.01 ran on sgi's IRIX. I think maybe version 2 did too?

I think there was a solaris version in the same deep historical abyss of 6 or 7 years ago.

Re:RAM/Paging usage

[DrXym]

The differences is that MacOS is intended for clueless users. Clueless users don't realise that running umpteen applications at the same time is going to adversely affect performance. I suppose OS 9 got around this issue by simply crashing if you loaded too many apps, thus training users to run fewer but OS X degrades gracefully will stick work even if the harddrive is thrashing to keep up.

Re:RAM/Paging usage

[DrXym]

It wasn't a troll. MacOS is quite deliberately designed for clueless users. There's nothing wrong with that.

But running a lot of apps (even with memory to spare) does affect performance for example when power saving kicks in and it takes a minute for it to become responsive again. Or when a supposedly "co-operative" task starts hogging CPU cycles or hitting the disk.

As for displaying an error message, perhaps it's meant to but it doesn't always. It's not an uncommon for my Mac to lock up when it runs low on resources.

My summary, after a week or so of usage.....

[MrDalliard]

Well, I've had it on my iBook (466Mhz, 10GB/HD, 192MB Ram) and I have to say that it's all been pretty painless.

Installation was easy. Bung in CD. Wait 20 mins. Reboot.

Stability is good. No kernel panics (yet).

To me, startup time is irrelevant (within reason). I put the machine to sleep when I don't use it, anyway, so startup time is approximately 2 seconds.

I spent the weekend getting as much carbonised stuff as I could in replacement for the Classic stuff I'd been running before, which has meant that I've been able to get underway with most things. True Classic really does hog resources, but the long term plan is that you won't be running it much any more. Just some 'old favourites' that don't get updated will stay running under Classic. It wouldn't surprise me if in a few years time, Classic is dropped.

Games run OK too. Played the Sims with no noticable problems. (Apart from the dock trying to pop up when you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, but you can quickly sort that out...)

True, it loves RAM, but this is all short term stuff. Computing power and RAM is on the up, and this is a new release. I'm going to put as much RAM in my machine as I can (320MB, I think) and I should hope things should kick along nicely. I guess that this is the chance you take when being an early adopter. RAM prices have nosedived recently, so I'll be upgrading.

I'd just like the right printer driver for my HP printer now... (not included in the set that was shipped on the CD, unfortunately). This means I've got to reboot under 9.1 to print, but as I only print about 3 documents a week, it's not a big issue.

Only real gripe - some of the apps are fairly ropey (Mail in particular), but that's not an operating system problem. I think we shall be given a good few updates in the next few months. Fine by me.

Generally, I'm pretty happy with it. Apple did the right thing releasing it early (*). Only then can developers start running apps on it.

(* - Early is a subjective term. We should have been using this 4 years ago....)

M.

P.S. OS X on a Visor - Pah. Damn article posted on April Fools day.....

Re:Most of you are missing the point.

[chrischow]

why can't geeks use Macs? gee how narrow minded are you!

Mac people don't know how to use top

[El Prebso]

I read the review on Ars Technica, and they think it's a problem that top shows that the system is using 253mb of ram on a system with 256mb ram in total. It's not, my Linux box does the same thing, even when I don't really run anything. I don't think Mac users are ready for Unix memory management :) We all know that that does not mean that the system is about run out ram and being using swap files. A Unix system will release the memory it needs.

Just pointing it out to scared Mac users, it's not a problem.

Re:Be's mistake

[Nohea]

Yeah Apple "blew" it's chance, but so did Be lose it's chance to become the next Mac OS.

Jean-louis Gasse was probably demanding too much from apple. I guess they chose one big ego (Jobs) over another. Actually, when Gasse was in charge of Apple's tech, he was the most vocal in not licensing the Mac OS to other platforms, like PCs, mainly to keep the Mac uncorrupted and on top. This was smart short-term stupid long term. I think in doing Be, unfortunately, he replayed some of the same mistakes. Be is about to go kaput, and selling to Apple was their big shot.

I agree BeOS is rock-solid engineering, but as usual, that's not the whole story.

Re:I love it.

[ellem]

I've got an NT 4 box running Domino 4.6.x that's been up for 223 days with no signs of going down.

+
+
+

The above statement is a total fabrication.
---

A better way of putting it...

[stokes]

OS X recognized and allowed me to use both buttons and the wheel on my Logitech USB mouse right out of the box. No additional drivers to install.

You could say just as acurately that the Mac supports a one-button mouse. How many other OSes can?

(That last comment is paraphrased from someone else's /. post from a while back. Credit for the witicism goes to whoever made the remark.)

What's wrong with this title?

[Lizard_King]

from Ars Technica?

What is Mac OS X 10.0?

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Well, I was thinking that they could have the X just be "ex", and not refer to ten.

I would guess they were wise enough to realize that the letter X is already overburdened in the world into which they are entering.

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[sonofepson]

...since it's really a different animal from any previous Mac OS.

Thats what I thought too, until I stumbled across an ad for the Apple IIfx in a back issue of Scientific American (May 1990)

Right there on page 11 it says --

Our latest version of the Unix operating system -A/UX 2.0- represents 32 innovations from Apple. And hundreds of new choices for you. Because it not only makes the notoriously complex UNIX easier to use. It also lets you run UNIX programs, UNIX X Window System programs and off-the-shelf Macintosh personal productivity software at the same time

It may be old news to some, but it surprised me! I hope OS X has better luck than the Apple IIfx enjoyed

Re: What's wrong with this title?

[Petrophile]

There were configurations of the IIfx that shipped with A/UX as the default operating system.

Just for historical reference, the IIfx's base configuration (4MB RAM / 40MB HD / no video card or keyboard) cost $9,995. The A/UX models generally shipped with a special fast SCSI board and probably ran at about $20,000. The box had special I/O DSP circutry that was only enabled when running A/UX.

As the other guy mentioned, this was the most coveted personal computer on the market. However, when compared to real workstations like Sun Sparcs (which weren't that much more expensive), it was pretty lame. Kinda like MacOS X, it was the Mac application base that kept it interesting.

As I said in another reply, the IIci was a much more braindamaged box in ways other than the CPU speed. When it was the entry-level color Mac, it still retailed at something like $5000 in a base configuration.

Re:Most of you are missing the point.

[connorbd]

The Mac is actually rather interesting from a geek point of view, and I'm talking about Classic here. While it is in fact designed to be easily grasped by idiots (and/or people who don't want to waste their time learning the ins and outs, they just want to get the job done), it's plenty powerful for the hacked-over blob that it is.

Okay, multitasking support is and always has been impressively half-assed, and memory protection seems to be more theory than practice (though it's gotten much better, it's still ugly). But how many other operating systems have such a flexible scripting architecture built in? AppleScript is pretty nice for scripting -- if an application supports it properly, you can control everything from the MacOS equivalent of a shell script with a lot finer-grained control than most traditional environments. (Yes, VBA, but I think AppleScript may have been first...)

/Brian

Add shipping and you have $500 POS computer

[SensitiveMale]

And the shipping and you have well over $500. And the absolute cheapest (in price AND quality) computer

Mac will be the least expensive PC you will own

[SensitiveMale]

Sure, it costs a little more money up front. But study after study had shown that Mac users are more productive than Wintel users. Also studies have shown that there is MUCH less upkeep and maintence required for a MAc than a PC (and Lord knows much less than linux needs). The bottom line is that a MAc costs a little more upfront but MUCH less over the life of a linux/Wintel box. Your time is worth something. Right?

Bill Gates?!

[green pizza]

"Bill Gates" does nothing special under tcsh on my SunOS box. What does it do under Mac OS X?

Does it have emacs, TeX, and sendmail? Others?

[green pizza]

Can anyone tell me if the final (retail, shipping) version of Mac OS X has emacs and TeX installed by default? Does it use sendmail as the mail daemon or some funky Apple daemon. And finally, does it have real shells (csh, bash, tcsh, etc) or just a lame "telnet emulator" like Windows 2000 / Windows XP?

Thanks!

MacPaint!

[green pizza]

Classic may not be the ideal solution, but it does work for the vast majority of applications. Hell it even works for pre-release 1980's versions of MacDraw that are written for a different CPU!

I know!! Isn't that totally awesome! I saw a screenshot of MacPaint and MacWrite from 1983 (pre Macintosh release) running in Classic and nearly wet my pants. Not only were they made for the CISC-based 68000 CPU @ 8 MHz, but they were designed before System 1.0 (Mac OS 1) was even finalized.

Neat Stuff!!

dvdplay.exe

[green pizza]

As someone else pointed out, MSFT has had DVD support for a long time. On Win95OSR2/Win98/WinME/Win2K/WinXP/WinNT4SP5-SP6 type "dvdplay.exe" in the Run app (from the Start Menu).

Re:dvdplay.exe

[Petrophile]

I try to run that and get a nice message :

"There is no Windows 2000 compatible DVD Decoder installed on this system. A DVD decoder device or decoder software is required to play movies (a DVD drive alone is not sufficient)"

So, Microsoft has shipped *part* of a DVD player for Windows (the user interface part), but it relies on other third-party software or hardware. A bare DVD drive + Windows doesn't help you.

When Apple ships it's DVD Player, it will certainly include a decoder.

Final Cut Pro 2.0.... DVD Support?

[green pizza]

Ok, I realize that OS X does not yet support CDR/CDRW/DVDR burning, so I'd imagine that iDVD and DVD Studio Pro support won't be around for quite awhile...... But I see that Apple has already ported AppleWorks, iTunes, and iMovie... so does anyone know the ETA for Final Cut Pro??

Re:You can shove your One-Button Mouse up your ass

[green pizza]

Heh... the NeXT computers had two button mice but the second button only pulled up the current app's menu in a contextual fashion.

compile 1.3.19 & PHP 4

[green pizza]

It's Apache 1.3.x. I don't know which version it ships with, probably something recent, though. Stepwise has instructions on compiling 1.3.19 & PHP 4 if you want newer versions.

http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/2001-03 -24.01.html

You'll need to install at least the compilers from the included developer CD. May as well install the nifty IDE, gdb GUI, and interface builder while you're at it too. Nice dev tools if you like GNU stuff. gcc/g++ still needs A LOT of PowerPC optimizations in general and "G4" PPC7400/7410/7450 optimizations specifically.

A/UX, y0!

[green pizza]

I can't belive someone else claimed they didn't like A/UX!! The thing was very, very cool. At the time you could spend the mindblowing $1500 for A/UX software from Apple to run on your existing Mac II (and later, Quadra) rather than spening $10K on a Sun, IBM, or HP. There wasn't much else for the desktop at the time. Minix (heh), Xenix (heh), SCO. I don't recall "all of the reboots" required... it was a nice little package and ran existing Mac apps very well, had nice compilers, and was a pleasure to use. The total integration wasn't that great, but it worked well and (in later versions) was rock solid.

not that bad, except for the GUI

[green pizza]

OS X feels quite zippy for sustained non-GUI apps. Compiling, rendering with POV-Ray, etc. Mach 3 certainly needs some speed tweaks and the compilers have *A LONG* way to go, but it's still very impressive at present. It's the GUI that's the total slug. Just like the original 68030-based NeXT was... had a miserably-slow GUI but did batch tasks quite well. (The MO drive didn't help IO much). FYI, MacOS X has almost nothing to do with Mac OS 1.0 - 9.1 aside from some application compatibility. It's really just a *total* overhaul of NeXT OPENSTEP 4.2 (which was based on NEXTSTEP 3.3).

And from the other side

[green pizza]

Those of us from the NeXT Cubist Movement and grew up with NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP are thinking "YAY, no more of that Mac OS 9-style Finder garbage!".

To each his own, I love the NeXT style and really wish that OS X was more NeXT-like. But it would have been nice if Apple had offered *BOTH* types of finders.

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[green pizza]

What are you smoking and where can I get some?

The Mac IIfx rocked the house, but many of its features worked only under A/UX. The IIci was great even under System 7.1. I really don't know too many folks that used a IIci for very long with its builtin video... most got a Radius, RasterOps, or SuperMac card after awhile. Better color depth and large resolution support was nice. IIci was a great machine and Apple sold a lot of them for a long time. Still it was nice to see the IIfx (and eventually, Quadra 900/950/800) ship. The Quadra 840av blew me away as far as the goodies that were builtin, though my last 68k mac was a Quadra 800 with 128 MB RAM, a Radius VideoVision broadcast capture card, an FWB SCSI Jackhammer SCSI card, and a Radius Precision Color Pro 24 GFX card. Better SCSI, capture, and graphics than what the 840av had builtin. Was a total screamer in its day (and is still usable).

Finder not Cocoa???

[green pizza]

Where does it say that Finder is NOT Cocoa?? I'm pretty sure it and all new-for-OSX apps are done in Cocoa.

Re:Finder not Cocoa???

[Matthew Austern]

My understanding is that Finder is, indeed, not cocoa. Further, my understanding is that it's impossible to write a cocoa program unless you write it in Objective C or Java. If you want to use C, or C++, you have no choice but to use carbon.

I hope I'm wrong about this. If I'm right, then I don't expect carbon to go away any time soon. I find it very unlikely that developers will switch to a new language just so they can port their program to a new version of an OS. Building that sort of language dependence into their new API strikes me as a mistake.

Re:John Siracusa needs to learn how to read top

[green pizza]

NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Mac OS X have always seems to have very high load averages. My buddy's OPENSTEP 4.2 box (a PPro 200) shows a load average of about 0.90 - 1.20 just when surfing the web with OmniWeb 3.1... even though the whole machine feels snappy and CPU usage is over 50% idle.

But agreed, OS X in its current form is sluggish due almost entirely to the baggage of the new GUI and Quartz/DisplayPDF. Non-GUI tasks (SETI, RC5, POV-RAY, gcc/g++) run quite well. Apple still has a long way to go with the compliers and Mach 3 tweaks... and the GUI/Quartz needs a HELLOFA tuneup/overhaul soon.

docs

[green pizza]

NeXT had an awesome set of manuals for NetInfo and things haven't changed much (for NI) since then. If you have access to a system running NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP, take a look at the (RTF) file in:
/NextLibrary/Documentation/NextAdmin/

The newsletters in:
/NextLibrary/Documentation/NEXTSTEP_In_Focus/
are also pretty interesting... especially:
/NextLibrary/Documentation/NEXTSTEP_In_Focus/1993S ummer/Typical_NetInfo_Setup.rtfd

I don't have access to a httpd right now, perhaps someone else can mirror the entire /NextLibrary/Documentation directory (from something recent... from OPENSTEP 4.2 please!)

NeXT had great online documentation, it's a shame most of their site is gone aside from the NeXTAnswers portion moved into the Apple website. The on-system docs were almost as good as those provided by SGI... but don't have a viewer as nice as IRIS Insight or the DynaWeb webserver CGI.

Re:docs

[MeNeXT]

I just have to pull them out of the dust, I still have a print server running NeXT, I just don't have the time.

Poor journalism...

[Eq 7-2521]

I found the article at upside.com to be misleading. The first nine paragraphs mostly support the 'OS-X is half-baked' argument. Then, finally, it states:

But an oversized majority of our jurors -- around 80 percent, according to our poll -- said Apple was innocent of delivering a half-baked operating system.

If 80% of users polled think that the OS is OK as shipped, I don't think it deserves the title of 'half-baked'...

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Meech]

The way that Apple makes money is by selling hardware.
It is true though that it does run like crap even on newer computers. But eventually when the old computers filter themselves out, the OS will run smooth.

One thing that I don't like about OS X is the root account is not active right off the start. They are afraid that if traditional MAC users are able to change /etc/motd, then the system will crash or something.

Re:out for a few days?

[The Mutant]

So, uhh, is this the first time you've looked at /. in a long, long time?

Re:Been playing with it

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Although, has anyone been able to replace the default shell with bash?

Stepwise has a utility that does this. Stepwise is also a good source of other X Client and Server stuff; they're old NeXT Step folks that have kept the flame alive (and seen their page hits jump hundred fold in the last week, no doubt.)

There's plenty of other places that I've seen bash; don't forget to check Versiontracker for other Mac OS X goodies, a long standby of Mac users.

Re:out for a few days? - value of OS 9

[Johnny Mnemonic]

An OS 9.1 CD is included for free, but I doubt many are buying OS X because they get OS 9 thrown in. Most machines new enough to run OS X well will most likely have OS 9 already.

Actually, we only sell 9.1 this way anymore--and since only machines that came out in January of 2001 come with 9.1 preinstalled, this is pretty common. That is, none of the Dualie Gigabit G4s, and none of the Summer 2000 iMacs (Ruby, Sage, Snow) came with 9.1 Even if they aren't really interested in X at this point, they might be later--and the 3 CD set is only $30 more than 9.1.

Plus, don't forget--registered owners of the Beta can get a $30 rebate on the Final.

Re:Functionality

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I've got my copy of Think Unix, my public beta and now the true release,

We're all with you, bro. As a professional Mac support tech myself, a deep place inside of me is crapping itself. I haven't got a "I can't print from X" call yet, but that day will come--probably day 95 after they installed (thereby out of the Apple 90 "new stuff" warranty.)

However, there's lots of talk about Pro-level courses from Apple--think ACSE. Apple's iServices is making noise in that direction, and if that doesn't happen, I might just get Red Hat certified and translate. Also, there's going to be lots of Unix type fellas coming into our field--like has been said before, Apple will be the largest shipper of Unix by year's end, so that will attract Unix sysadmins who can't find Big Iron to support elsewhere. But I think that iServices is our best shot, and we'll hear more when X Server ships. I hope.

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[Johnny Mnemonic]

if you want root that badly, fine, but don't expect it as a GUI login option.

Don't forget, however, that you can still type ">console" at the GUI login screen and get dumped to full-screen terminal. Then, login however you want. Also, you can command-s (or is it ctrl-s?) at boot to startup in single-user mode.

Been playing with it

[Fervent]

I've been playing with it the past few days and I'm pretty impressed. If you're all going to debate the kernel underneath, don't bother. That's not what Mac users care about anyway. The GUI is everything.

It's a resource hog (don't bother running it below the 128 MB required) but it is perhaps the pretiest OS around. The Dock is fairly robust actually. You can put just about anything in it, and the OS includes options to resize it and hide it completely.

Being able to call up a terminal which is actually part of a Mac system absolutely rocks. Although, has anyone been able to replace the default shell with bash?

By the way, a few Mac users new to Unix have loved this little quirk of the shell (which is typical of the shell they are using in the Unix world): try typing Bill Gates at the prompt.

Re:Been playing with it

[SpyceQube]

So when will Scott Anguish release LaserPositive for OSX (snicker-snicker-chortle ;)

Re:Been playing with it

[Red_Winestain]

try typing Bill Gates at the prompt.

[sparky:~] red% Bill Gates

OK? kill Gates?

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Re:Why?

[moongha]

You seem to have missed the original posters point. Yes other operating systems had these features already. But in many other respects (like ease of use for example) they are substandard.

So MacOS X is ease of use + power.

Anyway, a few of your points addressed...

I thought OSX didn't use gcc.

Yes it does use gcc. Not only that, it uses it within a full featured and easy to use IDE.

Including dev tools is awesome. I don't know if they're really awesome in and of themselves.

Exactly why should we care that you don't know if the dev tools are awesome? When did this become a useful comment?

'Does anyone know if Mac OS X includes gcc?'

'nope'

Very informative.

Word is, OSX is dirt slow and unstable precisely because of the eye candy.

Where did you hear that OS X is unstable because of the eye candy? This is complete news to me. How exactly does eye candy make an OS unstable? Does it cause a kernel panic?

Rip that shit out of there (and port to x86) and maybe I'll give it a try.

What makes you think they have you in mind as a potential user?

Godd review at kuro5hin

[havardw]

I'ts called 24 hours with Mac OS X.

Mouse bashing... typical!

[pressman]

ah yes, the oblligatory one-button mouse bashing!
Don't bring up anything useful, just bash the mouse!
---------------------------

OS X Server

[jmu1]

We have been running OS X Server here were I work link for a few months(file server for ye ol' G4's/G3's) and it is great. I can bolt it down like any of my Linux/*BSD boxes, and I can control it with the 'ease' of a Macincrap. I have only used the workstation OS X once or twice, and all I can say is... too much eyecandy! It is pretty and all, but how is that stuff going to increase productivity? I'm sticking to the monitor off server version... I'll keep on sshing in, or using the nifty web-based java-encrypted controls!

Re:OS X Server

[jmu1]

Well, interestingly enough, we don't use any of the NetInfo stuff for the same reason. I spoke to an Apple rep and this was the response I got (over a year ago). They basically said that I could do one of three things: purchase manuals, get an Apple Certified Technician(TM), or become an ACT(TM). I simply said... "Listen, we paid extra to get the AppleCare, so I better get some assistance." Guess what. We are still not using NetInfo. All we are using is Apple File Services. It is run via Apache in a java applet(encrypted). Heck, the web interface is much easier to use than the blooming "Network Assistant." I hate those things just like I hate wizards (that aren't Gandalf the White that is... hehe)

Re:OS X Server

[MeNeXT]

ok now mabe you can send me some documentation on NetInfo and how to set it up....I seem to be unable to find any documentation on networking on the Apple site.

When all is said and done...

[TheOutlawTorn]

The thing I like most about OSX is that it's making Apple relevant again.

Nuff said

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[Bungie]

Hey! Don't complain! You've never tried Minix on an old Mac. Now that was bad! A/UX was a godsend to the Mac compared to Minix.

Re:The Great Multimedia OS!

[Bungie]

You guys have to understand that if a Mac reviewer sees a pixel out of place...

That's so true! When the Mac switched from MFS to HFS thats how you would tell if the system was running HFS or not, by an extra pixel in the window by the close box!

Classic (bomb!) behavior (crash!)

[sulli]

In the Ars article it is written:

Classic is Mac OS 9.1 running inside Mac OS X... Other than that, it's exactly what you'd expect from Mac OS 9.1.

Well, ideally it's exactly what you'd expect. What you'll find is that it's prone to freezing and crashing (sending you running to that handy "Force Quit" button) unless you are very careful about what extensions you load (thus the "modifier key on startup" option). Then there's the aforementioned possibility that classic will not only hang, but that it'll hang in such a way that you cannot start it again successfully without rebooting the machine. Not fun, especially considering the current dearth of native OS X applications.

No, this is exactly like OS 9!

Macintosh: Most applications crash; if not, the operating system hangs.

(I'm a 14 year Mac user. Still...)

OT: Powerbook, not OS X

[grammar nazi]

I found a link to step-by-step instructions as to how to overclock your G4 powerbook. Now you can have the 500MHz powerbook for the price of the 400MHz one.

Here's the link

Re:OT: Powerbook, not OS X

[m2t]

Yeah, and it's not like powerbooks don't get hot enough as is.. I have a G3/400 Lombard and this thing gets -hot- I could probably work on my laptop for a half hour, move it, and cook breakfast on the part of the desk it was sitting on.

Re:OT: Powerbook, not OS X

[tkanerva]

a brief comment on this 400->500mhz overclocking thread.

the 400mhz g4's will be exactly the same parts as the 500mhz ones, but they just failed some tests at motorola. this doesn't mean that they couldn't be more or less safely run at 500mhz, though. you'll find that after overclocking, it doesn't heat up your lap more than the higher-powered, 500mhz model. and anyway, when i run linux on my powerbook, it doesn't get too hot until i start up setiathome or something other that really stresses the cpu...

my powerbook has a fan as well... it just doesn't start up unless i put the powerbook on top of some very insulating material, e.g. clothes or something like that.

out for a few days?

[mark_lybarger]

i didn't even realize this was on the market yet. no advertising, nothing. not even on the front page of the latest best buy/compusa ads. anyway, hope this gives a boost to unix software.

Re:out for a few days?

[Cberg]

And two, when you figure that an OS 9.1 CD is included (a $99 retail value), you're basically getting OS X for $30. Not a bad deal.

OS 9.1 is included? Why would that want to bundle an old OS with their new OS? That makes me think that they knew OS X wasn't ready for mass consumption.

Re:out for a few days?

[Cberg]

OS 9 runs inside of OS X to provide support for legacy apps

Do you have to install OS 9 seperately to get the legacy support? If not, why include the CD?

One more thing, I just want to make sure I understand you. OS X runs on top of OS 9 to provide legacy support? That seems awkward to me. Maybe its just me.

Re:out for a few days?

[shotfeel]

The simplest way to explain how it works is that your full install of OS 9 is run as a single process under OSX when Classic is started. The advantage of this is that OS 9 is not being emulated, the OS and apps are "native", its just that they have to share resources (CPU time, memory) with OSX.

The disadvantage is that since OS 9 and the classic (legacy) apps are being run under a single process (Classic), they don't benefit from protected memory and multitask cooperatively within that "Classic" process. The end result is that if an app running under Classic crashes, it can take out other apps running under Classic, but OSX and OSX native apps still chug along merrily.

Re:out for a few days?

[Petrophile]

Actually, if you run a Windows 3.1 app inside of NT/2000, many of the UI elements (dialogs, scrollbars, window borders) get a more modern Win95ish look.

A better comparision would be running Windows 3.1 apps on OS/2 (which is actually a better technical comparison to the OS X Classic VM than either WinNT or Win95's way of running Win16 programs).

Re:out for a few days?

[madfgurtbn]

In other words, they are selling the beta for $129 because they had promised OSX was coming out in March come hell or high water. Then when March came around they weren't ready, but they couldn't push the date back any more because it would be another failure on top of their other problems and the stock would have gone back down to to $14 again.

Re:out for a few days?

[madfgurtbn]

I would argue that OS 9.1 is not worth $99 anymore. It may have a MSRP of $99 but that doesn't make it a "retail value of $99". It's probably selling in the clearance bin for $35. Also, I don't think you can buy OSX for $30 as an upgrade from 9.1, right?

Re:out for a few days?

[unimac]

One more thing, I just want to make sure I understand you. OS X runs on top of OS 9 to provide legacy support? That seems awkward to me. Maybe its just me.

OS X doesn't run on top of OS 9.

If you want to run "classic" Macintosh applications from within OS X, you need to have a working installation of OS 9.1 installed on your computer, otherwise you don't need OS 9.

The akward part comes when you try to start the first "classic" application. This can take extra time because the classic environment must be loaded as well. To help eliminate this problem, some people have the classic environment loaded automatically at startup and just leave it running.

The other awkward part is that classic apps look like classic apps and don't have the aqua look and feel. Not that much different than what you experience when you run a Windows 3.1 app in Win 9.x/NT/2000

RAM/Paging usage

[sasha328]

In the ArsTechnica article, there was a mention in the RAM Usage section about the system's virtual memory

Yes, there are many more important advantages to a "real" VM system as found in OS X versus the cobbled together OS 9 implementation, but the bottom line is this: OS X will give users enough rope to hang themselves.

How does the last comment compare with other OSes. I have used Redhar 6.2 for a while now, and I never gave this a thought before.

Re: RAM/Paging usage

[Petrophile]

That's not true. The unused part of the slice is effectively allocated (other programs can't use it).

Furthermore, the allocations must be contigious in VM. If you start and stop a bunch of apps, you will get a fragmented memory situation where you can't start an app even though you have the memory free.

Not to mention that the VM scheme in MacOS is sloooow, and most professionals just buy more real RAM and turn it off.

OS X has a pretty nifty solution to this: It emulates a 1 GB VM space for classic. So you can set all your apps to 50-100MB RAM slices and forget about it.

Re:RAM/Paging usage

[alex_siufy]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. If you knew anything about the MacOS (I don't blame you if you don't), you'd know that it won't "crash", it'll just tell you it's not possible to run that application because you're out of memory.
Now, with OS X, users will be able to launch as many applications as they want, regardless of how much memory they've got. This will, of course, make people's computer seem slow, if they're running more applications than their memory capacity can handle. But that is true for any other OS out there! Windows NT crawls once you hit VM severely, and that is supposed to be a server OS!

be careful with character mappings

[wmulvihillDxR]

I'm on OSX right now and it IS pretty sweet. Nice to have a stable multi-tasking environment finally, blah blah, (insert everything else good about OSX). BUT, if you install openssh (see www.stepwise.com for installation instructions), be careful using scp. If you use funky characters in your perl scripts, it could bungle the character translation. But more importantly, the translation of line breaks into "^M" is extremely annoying. I've reverted to using NiftySSH in Classic mode to avoid the issue.

OS X on an iBook - impressions

[u2zoo]

Well I have been running OS X on my iBook (firewire) since March 27th and personally I'm quite impressed. Just to give some background:

iBook (firewire) G3 366 320mb of Ram (okay so that is a little more than average) no DVD or CDR/W

I upgraded OS X to build 4L5 (10.0.1) ( http://osx.macnn.com/news.php?id=4812 ) with the "unreleased" update that is floating around. Now for me . . . OS X is light and snappy . . I hear quite random things when I read through all the boards and newsgroups though.

Classic apps are not as fast . . but are certaintly usable. SO far I have played with Photoshop 6, Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, and Freehand 9 in classic emulation mode.

Also . . I should probably point out that I have used linux before . . I also have a full time BeOS (please don't go bankrupt!!) box at home too . . that said I use the command line and unix functions everyday . .

The default shell is TCSH . . which I found odd . . but whatever . . I think it comes with ZSH and CSH installed too. This site ( http://www.savagetranscendental.com/data/OSX/bash- osx.html ) has a precompiled Bash install for you . . which is quite nice. And for you Python freaks a precompile version is here too ( http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/ ).

I have installed the hack called Docking Maneuvers ( http://homepage.mac.com/isleep/ ), which lets you move the "dock" to the right, left, and top . . instead of just the default bottom.

I've had to go through and make some "compability" fixes . . creating symlinks for things like cc to gcc . . or /Users to /Home . . but those are just little geeky pleasures I find that make it more user friendly . . I'm sure my mom as a mac user would care less.

Speaking of which, the OS install in about 10 minutes, I rebooted . . configured the PPPoE to work with my Verizon DSL and walla I was on the internet . . so for my mom . . that being done in like 12 minutes is purty nice.

Hmm . . I'm quite enjoying it . . I haven't expierence the number of problems with IE 5.1 beta that most people have . .in fact I really have expierenced many problems at all . . it hasn't crashed once. I was sad to find out that Fortune wasn't available . . "sniffle" . . but I just grabbed the source from somewhere and compiled it. wheeee.

It's a very young operating system

[oncee]

It is young, and yes it is unfinished. As a core OS it still has a lot of debugging code in it, but I don't think OS X will every suffer from a lack of developers, like BeOS has in the past. As the OS grows up, you will find more finished features. One reason Apple released the Public Beta, and now OS X 10.0 is so developers and early adopter could begin working toward a more finished product. The best is yet to come.

Most of you are missing the point.

[TJPile]

You guys are all GEEKS. The Macintosh isn't aimed at you. The main reason X is based on a *NIX is because Apple couldn't waste time coming up with it's own OS that had all the buzzwords. So stop saying Linux or BSD or anything is a better Unix or server OS. It's meant to be. As long as OS X is easy to use and install, it will NEVER be accepted by the geek community. You guys LOVE keeping the complicated stuff around so you can try to out-do one another with your set-ups. Just remember that 90% of computer users aren't as "31337" as you ego-maniacs.

Re:Should I get one?

[Matthias Wiesmann]

OS X has native NFS support. It simply well hiden. For more info, have a look at this site.

Uhh

[Auckerman]

"What I like the best is the XonX program that a bunch of sourceforgers are working on. By hitting Command-Alt A"

This comment suggests that on some level you are bullshitting these people. The final version of OS X broke XFree86 and hence XonX doesn't with OS X final. OS X is nice, but don't make stuff up.

Re:Uhh

[Auckerman]

"I beg to differ. I have XFree86 and XonX working right now. Either somebody fixed it, or I have an older build that works."

My retail bought copy of OS X doesn't work with it and other peoples OS X final don't work with it.

Re:Uhh

[davechen]

Well, I have it working. Don't go accusing people of lying just because you're a dumbass.

Re:FALSE

[Auckerman]

"Umm, instead of trying to discredit the guy maybe you should do a little more research."

You mean by trying to install it on two iMacs that have OS X retail installed (which I did), or do you mean by verifing with external sources (which I also did)

From what I can tell, it non rootless if you compile it yourslef and currently doesnt work rootless at all.

Re:iMacs don't have CDRW

[Auckerman]

"iMacs don't have internal CDRW. Some have DVD but most have simple CD-ROM. None have CDRW"

Yeah, none of them except this one.

It's official: Apple has become Microsoft...

[hyacinthus]

...with that "MacOS X Ten 10.0" crap. One of the distinguishing features of Microsoft has been its meaningless product version numbers. Apple started getting into that game in a small way with "System 7.5" (where, one asks, was System 7.4?) and really got into the swing of things with "MacOS X Server", which was neither MacOS, nor the tenth release of anything, nor which has any kind of "MacOS X Consumer" counterpart. But this "MacOS X 10.0" achieves truly Microsoftian greatness. I'm expecting "MacOS X 2010 Special Edition 2.0" any time soon.

I've been stunned by how much Apple has been able to get away with, during this whole MacOS X business. Microsoft charged for a beta and everyone who didn't condemn them, laughed at them; Apple pulls the same trick and there's hardly a whisper of complaint. The beta was bug-ridden and dog-slow, and the excuses of "It's JUST a BETA!" flew thick and fast. Now we find that the commercial release is bug-ridden and dog-slow, and we head modified versions of the same excuses--"It's JUST a FIRST RELEASE!"

hyacinthus

Desk space.

[Drakantus]

Who has room for an iMac AND a 19" monitor on their desk? Technicly, I guess most people have the room, but it would be damn crowded and messy.

Grumble grumble...

[HongPong]

I find it rather odd that slashdot has decided to take a while to let others reflect on OS X's status before posting a story, especially since /. didn't even announce its release AFAIK. It just seems unusual to me that slashdot, which prides itself on lickety-split fast news is becoming all pondering and introspective. Perhaps Taco is growing up and maturing... Or maybe VA Linux going down the hole has something to do with it. :)

--

Speed of Evolution

[G4-Ben]

One thing that impresses me about OS X is the speed at which it has evolved.

In just the past 3 months, numerous changes have been made to Classic and the Finder.

I get the feeling that the engineers have had a lot of sleepless nights while Jobs cracks the whip over their heads

The only reason I comment on this is because I'm hopeful that the momentum is going to be there for quite a while. By next year, OS X will hopefully still not have any competition from Microsoft.

Personally, I can't wait until July! I think we're going to hear a lot of cool announcements and see some new apps that we never thought would run on a Macintosh.

Now, if we could only eliminate any need for Microsoft products, that would be Nirvana. StarOffice, here I come!

-BEN

OS X ROOOLZ!

[davechen]

I've been playing with it since it came out. As a Linux/Irix hacker at work and Mac guy at home, I have to say that OS X is so F***ING COOL! You get the best of both worlds, mac easy of use and Unix power. Speed-wise the unofficial 10.0.1 update that's floating around made a world of difference for me. Also doing things like reducing the # of colors and renicing the GUI make it much more usable. The Developers CD includes all the GNU tools you'd want, a load of examples and plus some Apple tools. Just started playing with Apple's Project Builder yesterday. That's their integrated development tool. Looks pretty nice, although I'm more of a makefile type. Built and ran a couple of the OpenGL examples. Did I mention that OS X is way cool? Every time I use it, I just think to myself, this is so F-ing cool. dave chen

I love it.

[megaduck]

After living with it for a few days, I'll say that Apple's got a winner on their hands. Here's a short list of things that I like:

It's stable. I leave my computer on 24 hours a day and it hasn't crashed on me once or even gotten flaky.

It uses bundles for apps. Bundles kick ass.

It's flexible. Don't want to run Aqua? Want to run X? No problem.

Two words. Command Line.

Comes with Emacs and gcc.

Unicode to the bone.

The included dev tools are awesome.

Aqua's pretty. Sue me.

Sure, it's got some (minor) problems, but it was still enough to convert me from a raging x86 bigot to a Mac user. That's pretty damn good.

Re:I love it.

[megaduck]

Err... That's not at all impressive. Even NT can do that...

True, but I managed to crash OS 9 twice in the fifteen minutes before I installed OS X.
BTW, what are "bundles"?

Bundles are big metafiles that contain everything a program needs. Executables, data, config information, plugins, whatever. You can even include seperate versions for OS 9 and OS X. To install a program you just drag and drop the bundle into your Applications folder. Kinda like RPMs for Linux (sorta). I used to be a Windows guy, and it's pretty refreshing not to have to deal with all the InstallShield/Uninstall crap that never totally works right.

The Holy Grail!

[megaduck]

It's a Unix that my mom can use.

hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[xlurker]

BBspot Interviews Apple CEO Steve Jobs

this reminds me of the immortal Dilbert comic where the boss walks in from some idiot leadership meeting and suggests they install a "SQL". Dilbert then (knowing his boss doesn't kown diddly) asks him if he already knows in which color he wants the server ... which of course makes things for the pointy-haired boss *very* -if not to- complicated...
the point to the whole story is the joke about the colors isn't so absurd anymore...

____________________________________________

Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X

[Phoenix_SEC]

Not to nitpick (which means I will =)... "I believe 'mauve' has the most RAM." -Phoenix_SEC

Re:It's official: Apple has become Microsoft...

[applemacguru]

First, what is so confusing about 10 (X). The last big number release was 9; 10 comes after 9. System 7.5 was called that because it was bigger than a .1 upgrade but not big enough for a full number upgrade. Makes good sense to me. Apple has kept the same relative naming scheme for 17 years and it seems that they are continuing. Besides, no one at Apple is calling it Mac OS X Ten 10.0. It is version 10 of the OS, 10.0 to be exact. X is a good marketing strategy, especially because of its roots in uniX. Apple did get a lot of flak for charging for the beta. The purpose: to keep everyone from trying it. They only wanted feedback from a sample of their market. The public beta was really research in disguise. The price was to make what they were doing feasible and not overly time-consuming. The price was an intentional deterrent. The target market, until July, for OS X is Mac aficianados and Unix geeks. They don't want iMac owners to get it yet. They're trying to change everything about their user experience and do it smoothly without alienating the entire market. And are you using OS X? Because my system is anything but sluggish and buggy. I love OS X. The only thing better might be a smoke after sex.

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[Petrophile]

Hey I can still smell the IIci running System 6. That machine sucked! (used main RAM for video RAM for example)

A/UX ran and booted plenty fast on my IIfx. I also didn't have any particular problems with symlinks that I can remember.

Software availablity was a problem - both due to the obsolete API, but also due to the fact that GNU banned the platform and wouldn't release anything that worked on A/UX. Independant forks eventually got some of the major stuff like gcc working, but by then it was too late to care.

But the point is, Apple had their "MacOS of the future" right on their price sheet more than 10 years ago. They should have fixed the problems (such as moving to BSD so they didn't have to pay the huge UNIX licence fees) and moved ahead with it.

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[Petrophile]

Actually, for the price of (say) a IIfx in a decent configuration and the A/UX licence, you could have gotten a new Chevy or maybe a nice used Mercedes at the time.

Re:More accurately, the reincarnaton of A/UX?

[Petrophile]

Hey - I was a college labslave in a room full of IIci's (no cache models) without upgraded video, so there you go. If I had to use Word or something I had better luck using the "server" which was a SE/30. Eventually I got a LC at home, and while that was also a shitbox, I'd rate it above the IIci.

Functionality

[nquartz]

Let me predicate this by stating that I'm a Mac user, Apple lover, non-unix-since-college professional troubleshooter in the printing industry.

Mac OSX scares me. Apple has fundamentally changed how their operating system works, and while this may very well make it more stable, for the printing industry it may cause massive problems.

It's difficult enough for the majority of my print franchises to get good tech support for their Macs right now. Neither I nor any other troubleshooter who doesn't already know the 'nix versions pretty well will have a chance at bailing them out when the system goes down. And I'm afraid the 'nix troubleshooters out there for the most part won't understand squat about printing industry applications.

I'm doing everything I can to get up to speed as quickly as possible, but the OS is unlike any other that Mac has had. For home users? Sure. For production plants?

I've got my copy of Think Unix, my public beta and now the true release, and I've got my fingers crossed. When they start forcing OSX on the printing industry, there will be casualties.

We get PhotoShop first - nyah nyah!

[BiOFH]

OS X will be the first *NIX to run Photoshop native! WOOHOO!

The GIMP is cool and all... but even the GIMP guys will tell you 'it ain't Photoshop yet'.
I'm not bashing the GIMP, nor am I abandoning my Linux boxen. I'm just so happy that, once this happens, I can practically abandon OS 9.1 (Classic) like I did Winders oh so long ago and have an all *NIX household!
Yes, Adobe has committed to bringing its major apps to OS X)

But, hey, you guys... think about your future.

[BiOFH]

If you were to come to me next year applying for a job in our incredibly huge *NIX-based printing environment and said "I set up print services at XXXXX. We ran OS X", I'd be inclined to put you in line for serious consideration. Not only do you understand Macs... I'm going to assume you now understand printcaps and lp!!
Welcome to a new level of IT experience... "*NIX-savvy".

Re:We get PhotoShop first - No IRIX did!

[BiOFH]

Rats....

Re:Sir, your opinions aren't fact

[booser108]

Windows XP is going to suck. I got a beta version from a link at windowsxp.nu and it really sucked. I don't like windows but I hate macs even more. Of course, the beta version will probably be better then the final one anyways.
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cd burning

[tube013]

I'm not an programming expert, barely know how, but why wouldn't apple/somebody compile cdrecord on darwin, and then throw together a quick cocca app to control it from the gui. or even just install the gtk libs and compile gcombust or something. To me wouldn't this be a pretty easy/quick fix for the lack of cd burning software in OS X?

Mac Costs

[Spirit of Ishmael]

I too have found macs to be a bit too pricey for the typical student. My main problem, however, is the older generation of mac users in higher education that still see the mac as the computing equivalent of a vw bug. Macs haven't been "the people's computer" for sometime now, a problem which seems to be aggravated by the Apple marketing department. They're great computers, I've just never been able to justify the extra cost.

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[tb3]

Windows XP requirements are worse, much worse. Their offical position is that you only buy XP pre-installed on a new PC, to make sure you meet all the hardware requirements. They don't recommend upgrading an existing system at all.
-----------------

Re:Apple Sux

[pbjones]

A demonstration of the use of an MS spell-checker, 8)

Re:Microsoft is cool too

[Otto-matic]

yeah... kinda makes me wonder why they allow users like you to post here, as well.

The Great Multimedia OS!

[strictnein]

Yes, it's _finally_ out! Thank goodness for that, the latest iteration of the greatest OS for multimedia functions ever. Now, I got OS X installed. Let's go watch some DVDs! ... oh... er... wait.... no initial DVD support. Heck, watching DVDs isn't that big of deal. I think I'll just burn some new CDs to listen to in my car! ... oh... damn... again... uhm... shoot... I think I'll just look at the pastel colors... woop.

Re:The Great Multimedia OS!

[strictnein]

Workarounds? For semi-major features of an OS? There's no monitor support... but I could hook up a teletype. How's that for a work around? I just... for some odd reason... want a complete OS when I purchase one. If MS would try this type of crap, the out cry (and mockery) would be deafening.

Re:The Great Multimedia OS!

[strictnein]

What DVD playback software comes with Windows? NONE.

Except for the DVD playback software that comes with Windows. (dvdplay)
Thanks though.

And any computer you purchase that has a cdr drive comes with CDR software preinstalled.

Re:One mouse button is for retards

[modman]

I thought that mac can support a 2 button mouse now. I see them selling them at copusa in the mac section.

Re:out for a few days? - value of OS 9

[unimac]

In other words, they are selling the beta for $129 because they had promised OSX was coming out in March come hell or high water.

An OS 9.1 CD is included for free, but I doubt many are buying OS X because they get OS 9 thrown in. Most machines new enough to run OS X well will most likely have OS 9 already.

On the other hand, a CD with some exceptional developer tools is also included for free and NeXT used to charge a fortune for those.

For me, the $118 was well worth it. OS X as a whole is much more stable than OS 9, the BSD subsystem satisfies the Geek in me, and there's enough native apps to keep me happy. Plus it just plain looks great ;-)

Apple did need to get something out the door, and while it would have been nice to have more native apps at launch, it is sort of a chicken and egg thing.

If you're MS, you can launch a new OS and everybody and their brother will have apps ready for it. The market for Mac software isn't that big and since most of the Mac user base will be running OS 9 or less for a while, some developers aren't as motivated to get OS X apps out as fast. There's been a steady stream so far though.

Depending on what you want to do with your computer, $130 for OS X can be a great deal. If you're happy with OS 9's stability, going to be running mostly classic apps, and don't give a rip about *nix, then $10 is too much.

Re:out for a few days? - value of OS 9

[unimac]

Actually, we only sell 9.1 this way anymore--and since only machines that came out in January of 2001 come with 9.1 preinstalled, this is pretty common. That is, none of the Dualie Gigabit G4s, and none of the Summer 2000 iMacs (Ruby, Sage, Snow) came with 9.1 Even if they aren't really interested in X at this point, they might be later--and the 3 CD set is only $30 more than 9.1.

As I said, I doubt that the fact that OS X comes with OS 9.1 is a selling point for very many people. All the machines you mention came with OS 9. The upgrade from 9 to 9.1 is a *free* download. Anybody who'd buy OS X because they want to upgrade from OS 9 to OS 9.1 is nuts.

Anybody who's got a machine running OS 8 or older probably doesn't have enough horsepower to be happy with OS X's performance on their box. There are exceptions. There are many tricked out older machines out there, but I'm guessing lots of them have already been upgraded to 9.

Don't get me wrong. I think there's plenty of reasons for the right users to get OS X. I just don't think a free OS 9.1 CD is one of them.

Re:Should I get one?

[alex_siufy]

Let's see:

. Emacs works just fine. vi too :)
. Python (1.x) is included, 2.0 compiles fine. Perl/PHP also works. Don't know about PostgreSQL, but mySQL compiles, no problem.
. No built-in X Server. You'll have to install XFree86 yourself, and use a hack to run it along with Aqua.
. NFS works fine.
. Yes. The Office applications will be run on the "Classic" environment, which is basically MacOS 9, but they will be made fully OS X native by summer. IE is already native, but it's horrible. You can use it if you absolutely must to, but I'd rather use OmniWeb or any of the alternatives.

Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T

[alex_siufy]

What are you talking about...
I've ran my two laptops, side to side. PowerBook G4 500 with the default 256mb RAM and OS X, and a Toshiba Tecra, 750mhz, 192mhz RAM, with Mandrake 7.2.
*Everything* under both Gnome AND KDE was so much slower. Launching apps, moving windows, typing, browsing, everything.

Get over it. OS X is what Gnome/KDE should've been if they weren't so busy trying to emulate the flawed Windows interface.

Re:Apple's mistake

[alex_siufy]

BeOS is leaner, faster, has no software, and probably won't exist 6 months from now.

Unix OTOH is big, bulky, has tons of software, has been around for ages, and probably will exist for a good bunch of years.
Complicated APIs? Carbon is basically the old Toolbox, with a few things missing (for improvement's sake). It's there just so the new MacOS doesn't suffer from the BeOS syndrome of lack of developers.
Cocoa is the NeXT/Openstep APIs. They've been around far longer than the ever changing BeOS APIs, and with them, Apple gained a number of experienced developers who are providing great software, stuff that was totally out of reach of Mac users (as well as Be users). I'm using one of those applications right now, and it's a complete joy to use (OmniWeb).

Overall, I'm glad Jobs ditched Gassee and its half-baked OS (yes, Be is the half-baked OS).

Re:PC

[dewhite]

You will be able to, hopefully. This site has a petition and some information on what I'm talking about. Currently Darwin (the "underpinnings" of Mac OS X) is running on x86 hardware, but the pretty UI that really sets MOSX apart is still not opensource, so sign up, and let apple know we want another hardware choice...

My experiences with OS X so far...

[A Sarcastic Bastard]

I was working with OS X for the last couple of days and I am quite happy with it.
The userinterface is really advanced IMHO and it didn't crash a single time until now. *knocking on wood*. I can't wait to look how Apache actually works (I hear network connectivity helps, if you want to use a Webserver, find reason below)

The only reason I can't really work with it is the fact that PCMCIA is not yet supported and thus non-apple airport cards (i.e. Lucent Technologie's orinoco Card) don't work. Since I need Airport to access the net at home and in office, there is no way of using it productively at the time. But I am definitely looking forward to that
Also I hear that Lucent is not planning to implement the driver for OS X, so I guess I'll have to wait for Apple to do so.



Remove your opinion to email me!

Programming with OpenStep/Cocoa

[Blue Jekyll]

I think one thing people are missing about Mac OS X is the programming environtment. I sat down the other day and punched out a simple OpenGL project in Cocoa in about 5 minutes, I am not exagerating. Yeah all it did was draw a square and a triangle, but I didn't have to worry about any of the crap you do in windows. Anyway, I was sitting there thinking how easy it is to develop GUI tools in OS X and it hit me that maybe Apple should be selling these boxes as front ends to large server farms. I mean the thing has all the standard Unix stuff that you would expect, sendmail, nfs, BIND... And all of it just works (well for sendmail you have to make /. only writable by root, can anyone explain why NeXT made /. writable by the group?). SO why not develop apps in OS X that are basically just front ends for other Unix OS' like Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris... It seems like a natural use for such a great OS. If you like programming, and you hate all the stupidness of GUI dev tools out there, check out OS X, the Cocoa dev environment lets you forget about the things you don't care about, and you can just code. It is sooo nice. Burn windows burn...

Sir, your opinions aren't fact

[IAmSean]

comes with a single mouse button, must suck.

I'm speechless...

Come on, man...not everybody needs, or wants to know every aspect of a computer. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Windows XP headed towards a "less command shellish" interface? Regardless, I'm perfectly happy with my fake computer that is running a fake OS.

Re:out for a few days? - value of OS 9

[macmangreg]

The G4 mac I bought in November of '99 came with 8.6 installed. If I had to pay for 9.1 to have X, I would not have purchased X. I agree that including 9.1 with X is not the number one selling point, but since only 9.1 will work to run classic inside of X it is nice that I only had to pay for the current upgrade, not the one I decided to skip. Also, get the price straight. You can pay $129 if you want too, but it is readily available for $99. Nobody with sense pays MSRP for anything.