Slashdot Mirror
OS X 10.1 Coming Today (Sorta)
usa35.com writes "News.com has a story detailing the release of Apple's 10.1 update. They say "unveiled" today, probably meaning actually disseminated to us general public folks sometime in the coming days." This is of course the release that regular users can actually use. Supposedly this is a free upgrade. Speed improvements, UI fixes, DVD stuffs. I can't wait to test it out a little. And those new iBooks are pretty reasonably priced (I figure that they can sell them cheap by cutting corners like most of the mouse buttons ;)
I'm sorry, but 10.0 was a very... incomplete release. It was sluggish, didn't have important things like DVD or CD-RW capabilities, plus it didn't always work correctly. 10.1, on the other hand, is just incredible. The speed increases are phenomenal (from 50-400%, depending on your CPU) and the added functionality and general GUI cleanup are much welcomed. 10.0 always had sort of a beta feel to it, but 10.1 feels like a sleek, finished OS. Kudos to Apple for the great job.
'cause that's when Steve said we'd get DVD playback. :)
Paul
Sounds crazy, but it's Apple so nothing is ever out of the question.
Not OS X per se, but its core software, Darwin, is essentially an open source BSD release. Quite a lot of work has been done on it. You can't run OS X-specific apps (things that expect the Aqua interface), but Linux and UNIX apps should port as well as they do in OS X.
It's the power and integration of the Macintosh hardware and software that makes OS X shine. Even if Apple chose to port the Whole Thing to x86, you would need a much more fortified PC than you would normally buy off the street.
Better than nothing, or maybe just do FreeBSD. Try www.darwinfo.org.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I see a pleonasm there. Shouldn't it be OS X.1?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion/
Tom.
Oh arse
However, one thing that worries me is whether or not they will include Dev Tools. I bought OSX 10.0 when if first came out, and it came with the disc. The Dev Tools include important things like a compiler for making other programs from the Terminal, and fun things like a Java browser, OpenGL stuff, etc. However, they were not included with my new computer. While I already owned them, so I just loaded them myself, I hope that people won't have to pay $129 just to get some tools that should come with new machines. Thanks Apple, you based the system on BSD, but don't forget the tools we need to really write with it!
Darnit Taco, please join the present. I'm currently using an Intellimouse Explorer on my Mac, and I've got five mouse buttons plus a scroll wheel. They all work quite well, thank you. If you really want a multi-button mouse for your iBook, just plug one into the USB port. You don't even have to reboot.
I know you meant it as a joke, but statements like that smell a lot like a troll. Please try not to taunt your audience.
This
Ok the 10.0.4 boxes I ran at work and home were slow in the aqua gui, truely, but as far as I/O,
/. most here would be pleased to know that it is not BSD/Darwin that is slow, but the Aqua gui that ppl are bitching and moaning about (with good reason, IMO).
processing, task switching, serving web/ftp...they all kicked ass to say the least.
For all the unix'ey love fests that take place on
Lack of features, nope, not for what I used it for: Surfing, SETI, FTP, pr0n watching, vcd (mpg1, naturally), ssh, classic apps...it did it all with nary a hitch (just don't leave a DVD in the drive...kernel panic w/o fail on my box).
So, yeah 10.1 is a drool inducer ooo-ooo, shiney *blue* objects!!! (kiki the ferret voice) and dvd, speed tweaks and some needed + native cocoa apps are well and good, but I hope the OS's speed does not suffer, gui be damned.
(can you tell I'm a CLI type?)
Moose.
la la laaaaaa
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
For those of us who also happen to own a multi-processor machine and have been unable to run Mozilla as a native OS X app, it looks like part of the problem was with 10.0.4's MP support and will be fixed in 10.1. For more info, check out this bugzilla bug.
Perhaps this could even mean an end to the dial-up disconnection woes, as those, too, were MP related. (For those of you blissfully unaware, MP machines with a dial-up modem connection had a tendency to randomly drop said connection.)
All in all, very good news, especially since Apple appears to have listened to its customers and will be making the upgrade free.
With 10.1 not only do I get dvd play back on a "Unix Based" os but MS is releasing a preview version of Word X. Now before you Anti-MS Dolts get your panties tied in a Knot. If you don't use Macs and haven't seen Microsoft's Mac software. You're missing out. MSIE:MAC Runs better than it does under windows. (There goes that whole its only "Faster" Cause its integrated into the OS Theory) And Microsoft Office for the Mac has consistently been the most useful Office Suite on the market. Star Office doesn't have anything on it. And Office:Mac has consistently blown the pants off of Office:windows For a long time.
But anyways. Check out the Microsoft mac stuff at www.microsoft.com/mac/ and just drool over screen shots of Office v X
And on a final Note. I love my TiPB I love OSX and I don't understand how I used anything other htan it for all those years.
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
...is the sound of 10,000 Slashdot moderators opening their dictionaries to learn what the word "pleonasm" means.
Or at least to see if there's a picture of it.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
> laptop because of it's lack of mouse buttons.
Not the fastest snail on the leaf, is he?
I was hardly an early adopter, but I had two buttons on my mac in '92 or so (ok, hardly an early adopter of the second button. I had a 128k mac brand new . ,
They're availalbe all over the place, and come with the software to make that second button do whatever you want . . .
hawk, who gets a kick out of folks with the button-deprived windows mouse mocking those only slightly more deprived
I've only been using OSX for about a month now (got my first mac then). And I love it. It's a recent Quicksilver model, so honestly, I don't know what people are talking about when they say it's slow, but I guess it probably is on less recent hardware. What I really would like it more customization for the GUI, there's really very little you can do to change the appearance. They have two sets of button colors, and you can change the magnification and size of the dock, as well as the size of icons. Gee, that's fantastic, but that's it! Also coming from X and Windows, it's hell of hard to keep track of applications (maybe just because I'm switching from a taskbar to a taskbar clone- dock). But I seem to get flustered when I have too many applications open. I really wish they'd incorporate multiple virtual desktops like in X.
As far as features and stuff, well honestly I haven't noticed any lack of them. The OS is the pinnacle of compatibility and versatility. I can open MacOS9 in classic mode to run Microsoft Office (ya ya, Microsoft sucks, but if you haven't tried their version of Office on a Mac shut up), Internet Explorer under OSX along with whatever else I need, and I with the click of a button I'm transported to a Gnome desktop running my *nix X programs (the ones I don't need to run from a terminal). Oh yeah, and it's got a terminal. Using Fink it's a snap to install Unix software (granted not all the ports I want, but more are coming). It's funny the way it works, Microsoft products are actually much better on Macs. Or of course I could just log out of Aqua all together and run pure Darwin alone, or with X.
I was going to install NetBSD or Linux on the computer, but now I don't think I'll need to.
> THERE's the problem. If it were a $5 POS,
... it's an excellent pointing device for Mac OS X, which only requires one button. Mac OS X has a pervasive context-sensitive menubar at the top edge of the screen ... getting a second, limited, on-screen menu under your mouse cursor is just not that valuable. Mac users just slam the mouse cursor into the menubar and use the pull-down menus, which contain all of the options. Rather than right-click an item and choosing "Properties", you click on an item and choose File > Show Info from the pull-down menus (or press Command+I). Rather than right-clicking an image in a Web page and choosing "Save to disk", you just drag and drop the image from the Web browser window to the Finder (including Desktop) and it is saved as a file. All of the things that you may be used to doing with your second button have drag and drop or similar equivalents on Mac OS ... the user uses their one mouse and one button to move things around instead of using a second mouse button to display a text menu. Think about which is the best use of a mouse. After using a Mac, you might be pissed at Microsoft for all the broken drag and drop features in Windows (if you are a Windows user).
... it will last so long and get so much use that it will be almost free.
... very ergonomic. I did it, my wife did it, my brother did it. We all use Apple's mouse now. Try it and you'll see that there's more to it than meets the eye. Maybe you will even like it.
> no big deal, but you've already paid $60 for a
> hobbled, less functional mouse that you're just
> going to trash.
You are completely incorrect.
First, it's not hobbled
Second, you don't pay $60 for the mouse when you get it with a system. You can sell an Apple Optical Mouse on eBay and get $40 for it, which is likely more than you actually paid for it with a system. Use the $40 to buy whatever mouse you like. Any USB mouse works with Mac OS X. eBay can be operated with one mouse button on a Mac, so you will make it until the auction closes. If it was just a $5 POS mouse, all you would have is a $5 POS mouse, a non-biodegradable waste of space that you'd replace with a decent mouse later anyway. A good USB optical mouse is so compatible and has no moving parts
Honestly, it is CLASSIC for a person to get their first Mac after using Windows, complain about the one-button mouse, get out their old Windows USB mouse with two buttons, use that for a while, realize that they haven't hit the second button in three months, and go back to the Apple mouse, which you just cup in your hand and click with your palm
For the Windows and Linux bigots, relax. You don't have to get so tense. If you don't think OS X is worth your time, then just ignore it.
On the otherhand, if you have a bit of an open mind, you owe it to yourself to check it out. (Make sure you're checking out 10.1 and not 10.0.x)
It really is cool to have a mainstream commercial app like MS Word and say GIMP running rootless right next to it.
It really is cool to program with the Cocoa dev tools. (Yes, it requires you learn Obj C, but if you're a true geek, you love trying another language)
It really is cool to have a BSD-based system that even your grandmother could install and use.
It really is cool that the BSD-subsystem is available for anyone to hack on (Darwin).
It really is cool that there's a commercial company (Apple) guiding the OS and putting in all the most sophisticated plumbing (Aqua, IOKit, etc) that probably would never have gotten done or would have gotten done poorly otherwise.
It really is cool that all the major commercial app manufacturers have already pledged their support (many have already delivered) and that many apps which have never been on the Mac before are now coming over.
It really is cool that there's going to be a decent selection of games for this platform. Not Windows numbers by any stretch, but all the major titles and certainly more than Linux.
In short, if you take the time to look, it really is a very cool OS. Now, maybe you don't want to spend the extra money to buy a Mac. No problem. But that doesn't make it any less of a product.
Wade
A: The one mouse button was thought up by a guy named Jeff Raskin who is largely responsible for starting the Macintosh project at Apple. He thought that mouses with more than one mouse button would be confusing for new users. This might seem like an oversight, but when you consider how uncomplex graphical interfaces were back than and the fact that virtually no computers in mass production had mice as an essential navigational tool, it really isn't.
A: Because we can use the regular pull down menus to bring up a menu. If you take a look at *NIX & Windows UI's, you often see that not all menu items for the program are in the pull-down menus. Often, there are some commands that you can only access through right-clicking (i.e. the contextual menu). When this is the case, you're going to need a 2nd mouse button. Contrast this with the mac paradigm, where is it a cardinal sin to have commands that are not listed in the pull-down menus.
A: No and yes. Unlike other platforms, macs have the pull-down menubar at the top of the screen instead of on each window, like you usually find on Windows or GNOME or KDE (yes, KDE does have a mac menubar mode, but not by default). A menubar at the top border of the screen has been proven in usability labs to be far faster to access than menubar stuck on a window, because the user can ram the mouse pointer into the top of the screen to click on the inital menu item and they can't overshoot. This illustrates a principle of Fitt's Law, which states that things on the borders are faster to access than things that aren't because they are infinitely large . To learn more about Fitt's law, go here . This being said, contextual menu (i.e. right-clicking) is faster IF you can do it anywhere to bring up the same menu anywhere on the screen, because the mouse pointer can be anywhere and the menu will appear right under it. Unfortunately, bringing up a contextual menu in windows/GNOME/KDE almost always requires that you first land the mouse on a tiny visual target. If you have to click on a tiny 15x10 pixel icon in an e-mail program to bring up a contextual menu for it, any speed advantage of right clicking is negated.
A: The reason that mac users use those keyboard strokes is because Apple was smart enough to have the keyboard complement the mouse instead of replacing it. Just like right-cliking is supposed to do on windows. Notice that the command key most often used on macs for the keyboard combinations is located in a spot that is in the center of the keyboard, so a user doesn't have to stretch their fingers 3 miles to hit an out of the way key. Also notice that keyboard strokes using the command key make use of the two most dextrous fingers of the human hand: the index finger and the thumb. The result is that keyboard shortcuts on a mac are easy to do, and they can be done easily with one hand. Why don't Windows users use keyboard shortcuts as often as mac users? Because microsoft was stupid and tried to have the keyboard replace the mouse instead of complmenting it. They added those underline thingies on all the menus (technically, they're called mnemonics), which are far less efficient because you have to hit two sets of keys "Alt+firstletter Alt+secondletter" to use them. This added so much visual clutter and so jammed the users mental keyboard-menu associations that most Windows users also filtered out the keyboard shortcuts (i.e. Ctrl+letter). There is even less incentive to use keyboard shortcuts on windows because the ctrl key that makes use of them is far at one end of the keyboard, which makes keyboard combinations with keys in the center of the keyboard very hard to do with one hand and impossible to easily with the two most dextrous fingers of the human hand (the thumb and index finger). One final advantage of mac keyboard shorcuts is that the command key is represented in the menu system by a symbol that take up one character's worth of menu real-estate as opposed to "Alt" or "Ctrl", which take up 3-4 characters of menu real-estate.
A: Yes. I don't think you'll find many mac users who are against having more than one mouse button, but they are against some dumb windows/unix geek who knows nothing about macs and who refuses to learn anything about the way they are designed arrogantly assuming that the machine is unusable in some sort of way.
My mouse comes with 16-buttons and four independent scroll-wheels, this allows me not only to scroll vertically, but horizontally, diagonally, and to zoom in and out. Other integrated features include a complete 128-key keyboard and surround-sound. Instead of optical technology, my mouse uses Extra-Sensory-Perception (R) to give better tracking. But it's most useful feature is the great satellite transceiver which allows me TRUE wireless operation from a distance of thousands of miles - which is great for when i'm away on business I can tell ya. It has a compartment for a miniature hashish plantation, glows neon, and hovers.
This sig has been deprecated.