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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.
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
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
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
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
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.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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
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
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A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
Hub
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."
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
You can easily plug in some larger POS monitor to the Standard VGA output port.
- passion
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
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.
.Xdefaults file, testing new values for Netscape and emacs until everything is the way I want.
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
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.
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.
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