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Apple OS X, BSD and Jordan Hubbard
We've had a number of posts noting that Boston.com's digitalMASS has a very decent article on Apple's OS X, BSD and Jordan Hubbard.
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Is it as good as I've heard some say? I don't trust many reviewers, unfortunately...
Basically, it's going to affect whether I buy a Mac or not - it's certainly a step up (on the Mac side) from my Doorst...I mean Mac Classic...
to the IBM PC version of Mac OS. It seems it would be the best of both worlds. Even if it's closed source, the GUI is very nice. And, with a full BSD unix underneath, a damn stable and usable OS. So, what happened?
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
We love you, WeatherTroll! We want you to snot us, WeatherTroll!!
Any OS? So install MacOS on it then...
There is no platform you cann install any OS on. However, having a Mac means you can still use NetBSD or Linux as well, you're not restricted to MacOS.
We love you, WipoTroll! We want you to snot us, WipoTroll!
We love you, WeatherTroll!! We want you to snot us, WeatherTroll!
Just imagine if Microsoft owned the hardware and the software like Apple !
oh yeah so they do
I would never discount the Mac. If it weren't for their blunders during the Gil Amelio days (ok you can make clones, wait we take it back - or - we are recalling the 5300's because they tend to ignite) they might still have a very significant piece of the pie. I figure that there have to be a lot of closet Macaddicts out there who are just waiting for a reason to go back.
I frequent the FreeBSD mailing lists, and I have a large cluster of FreeBSD boxes powering the demanding computer applications my Fortune 500 employers demand, and it is the only operating system I have ever seen able to take the punishment my servers take on a daily basis. Jordan has practically abandoned the lists since joining Apple, and the discussions as a whole feel more hollow and less directional without his guidance. With the continuous slippage of FreeBSD 5.0's development, I fear for the future of my operating system. I can't help but feel that Jordan has abandoned his project to rot like BeOS and the Amiga.
Quite frankly, I really don't care WHAT my pc looks like - as long as it does what I want it to do - and if I'm using a Mac, that means graphics and multimedia ONLY.
For me, Macs don't mean gaming, web browsing, or things like that.
Just my 2 (Canadian) cents...
I'm sorry, WipoTroll! Why do you like to post the FAQ so much, then, WipoTroll? Can't you just link to your profile, WipoTroll? You must really want to get the word out, Mr. Wipotroll, sir!
OK - I should have been more selective in my phrasing. I currently have many more options with i386 than I do with powerPC. How many distros are there for PowerPC right now - 3 (LinuxPPC, YellowDog, MXLinux)? There's also nothing that says I don't want to have Windows on my machine, too. The hardware options, while growing, are still pretty limited. My first goal would be to get rid of those fruity cases.
Who modded this a troll? Propietary hardware isn't a legit beef? Sounds like a sour-grapes macaddict.
Sounds gruesome, Mr. WipoTroll, sir!
And SuSE 7.3. Their PowerPC release is sitting on the shelf at Fry's, tempting me daily.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
With VPC, or Wintel(Bochs) you can run Linux, Windows, OS/2, DOS or Debian if you want to. Get with Man! We've had that capability for years.
Ther is also Real PC and one other I can't remember.
photosMy Photostream
I didn't realize Suse had a PowerPC port. I was actually looking at Suse to replace my slackware box.
"My first goal would be to get rid of those fruity cases."
I point you towards the new iBooks and G4 TiBooks.
JubeiX
Towards the end of our Mac days we tried Virtual PC (this was back in 99) and I remember it being something awful. Pretty much brought the G3's to a crawl and we had a lot of networking issues. I assume they have made a lot of progress since then.
OS X, BSD and L Ron Hubbard. I was like no the apocolypse is upon us. They have constructed the user friendly E-meter. We are doomed. Greta van Strokin (sic) will indoctrinate us all to its wonders at 7:00 pm.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Dearie me, I fear I have just lost some precious karma. Remember, kiddies, one checkbox can make all the difference.
Does one token open-source project really make up for Apple's intense closed-mindedness? One need only look at their recent past to see that they are still up to their old schemes, what with the recent stink over Aqua-like themes and their continuing refusal to open the Sorensen codec, which powers nearly all the streaming media on the web. Darwin seems to me more like Apple trying to get a free ride by encouraging their users to develop their core operating system for them, while they reap the profits and keep their platform under an iron grip.
There's a PPC Debian too.
I will say that they are definitely a huge improvement but I am still a pretty plain guy. I am happy with my black T22 and my beige Antec.
even more importantly (well at least in my opinion) there is also a Debian port for PPC hardware (including most PowerMacs)
I may have to convince somebody at work to give me one of the old 7200's sitting in the closet. I saw a couple of stacks of them the other day justing sitting around collecting dust.
True, it is proprietary, but with over a million Macs sold each year (in both consumer and pro lines -- not to mention the used market), I don't feel too locked in. It's certainly better than being in a much smaller "traditional" unix market (ie, HP-UX on HP PA-RISC or AIX on IBM RS/6000).
Apple may build the machines, but there are MANY sources for accessories and upgrades. Common IO standards (PCI, AGP, IEEE-1394, USB, HD15 monitor, etc) are great as well.
My only beef is the proprietary connector on the Apple LCD monitors (which, is actually based on a draft of some obscure standard that never took off). But at least DrBotts makes an adapter.
Careful, your plurality is slipping.
Well, I won't argue with you about the beige cases, because I don't know how to. I own a bunch of them, and even though I think they're hideously ugly, PC hardware in any other color feels weird to me.
That having been said, the new iBooks have a 2D area just larger than a piece of notebook paper, and weigh under 5 pounds with the battery in.
Also, any and all praise I dole out has largely to do with OSX, and it rocking so hard. OSX kicks many forms of ass simultaneously, and I refuse to ever honestly support an OS without protected memory.
JubeiX
seems hard to believe that he had to struggle to land the job at Apple, as such a prominent OS developer. I would have thought that the more successful/visible open source developers would have their pick of jobs at any firm... and Hubbard would be especially well suited to work on OSX, since it's based on freebsd. i bet he's just being modest...
Gaming? Real gaming takes place in a text window. Mac's got those too.
Only thing I'm missing is apps with hidden extensions that auto-launch from my mail apps. I don't really miss them that much, though.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
this is just lifted from the classic linux not ready for the enterprise troll.
This user looks to be a new troll trying to accumulate karma. just check his history.
Around here, most of the new Apple users are former SGI-using 3D artists, Amiga holdouts, and even PC users tired of the Microsoft Tax. Let me tell you, when reinstalling Mac OS after overhauling 250 3-year-old Macs with new hard drives and more ram, it's sooo nice to install an OS that doesn't require a CD key.
I'm not saying you're missing out on it - it's just my personal opinions on Macs in general...
My first web browsing experience was Mosaic for Windows 3.1... and I've been pretty much a PC user since.
Also, consider the fact that my only Mac is a Mac Classic... I haven't even TOUCHED a G4 - but from what I'm hearing about OSX - I'm certainly considering going into greater credit card debt to get my hands on one.
For me, Macs don't mean gaming, web browsing, or things like that.
The latest "sneakypeaks" of OmniWeb 4 do just fine for me. True, MSIE 5.1 (the Mac OS X version) and OmniWeb feel a bit sluggish compared to MSIE on Mac OS 9 or Windows. Next round will probably be a lot more optimized. I do a lot of Photoshop, but I also develop dynamic web content in perl and php on my box. I also have fully native versions of MS Office, too... Office v.X on the OS X machines and Office 2001 on the OS 9 machines. I don't feel like I'm missing much. I've played a few Mac (and Windows) games. I like my Dreamcast, PS2, and GameCube moreso, though (much like my old Sun days when I used SPARCstation 20 for work and an SNES for play).
Essentially, I spent the last ten years of my life shackled to Microsoft products with the all-too-infrequent practical use of Linux. As Microsoft's business practices continue to get ever more predatory, and the Microsoft operating systems become increasingly marketing tools rather than productivity tools, I decided that it was about time to try something new.
I found an inexpensive, new iBook, and bought it. An "icebook" with a 500Mhz G3 processor, I've been quite happy with it so far. The construction of the iBook is quite decent, with a few common blemishes in the casing and a few mechanical defects reported. However, the real shining star of Apple's lineup has got to be OS X. This BSD alteration (Or enhancement, or bastardization, or annexation, call it what you will.) is positioned in the perfect place to bring intelligence back into the use of personal computers. Functionally, OS X is a wonderfully complex yet artistically presented program interface which does an admirable job of concealing the true nature of things from the average Macintosh transitional user, while providing an extremely high amount of flexibility for the more technically oriented. With the Macintosh userbase, there's actually a very devoted core that could use the help and assitance of open source efforts despite the problems with Apple in regards to certain areas of the system. (The interface, primarily)
Projects suck as Fink, an excellent tool for porting unix applications to the OS X environment are a great start, but what will really help Apple prove a real challenge to Microsoft is the conscious effort by Open Source developers to port applications to Apple hardware so seamlessly, that the average user won't even have to know that The Gimp was actually a unix application.
This is where Apple has succeeded as a core business, making computing simpler for the artistically, rather than the technically minded. The best thing Open Source can do is aid the Apple userbase in proving that the Mac is a viable alternative. Yes, Linux and BSD themselves as well as all the other systems out there, deserve to continue to be the primary focus of most efforts. But it just may be that the most effective way to open up the operating systems market will be to back the entrenched underdog.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Further, you need to do more research about your arguments. Open source zealots may never bother to check copyright law, but companys really -have- to defend their copyrighted stuff every single time. If they don't they risk losing the rights to it. In addition, Apple -doesn't- own the Sorensen codec: they license it. They can't control whether or not it is open sourced. Finally, your arguments about aqua and other core technologies are ludicrous. People should be very clear: Apple is a commercial company, which means they need to make real -money-. If everything is free, why would anyone pay for the OS? What would cover development costs. The OS is comparatively cheap, because of hardware, but it is still the corner stone of Apple's business. People can get the base Darwin for free, just like linux. If you want the extra stuff Apple worked so hard on, you're just going to have to pay for it.
This is a great start, and I hope that it is very sucessful and prompts other commercial companies too start to champion open source. Value added solutions can be viable business models.
Not to burst your bubble or anything, but if you plan on running OS X on one of those, you're better off buying a G4. Apple only supports models made after the beige G3 and revision A iMac.
:)
Course, if you want to run Linux on one, go right ahead.
Don't forget that it takes about 15 minutes (depending on your CD-ROM speed) to do a fresh install of the Mac OS. Try that with BillyWare.
None of these things happened on Gil Amelio's watch. Mike Spindler initiated cloning and introduced the 5300. Jobs killed the clones shortly after Amelio renegotiated the licensing agreements so that Apple could actually make money off them.
Apple also has the following opensource projects:
Quicktime Streaming Server
Openplay and Net Sprocket
Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA)
HeaderDoc
Documentation
Also Apple has summited source back to projects like Apace and GCC.
Come on, just because I posted my name in one of the other threads doesn't mean you can pretend you're spying on me.
Linux runs just fine on modern Macs.
I recommend Yellow Dog Linux, in particular.
Macs are basically PC hardware with PowerPC processors instead of x86. For instance, my iBook has an IDE hard drive and an ATI Rage 128 video chipset (which XFree86 supports). The audio chip is a Texas Instruments part. Documentation is available from TI, and there is a Linux driver.
-John
Both of which have licences requiring that modifications are released back to the public.
who let all these trolls in here? the temple guard must be asleep...
.sig error: carrier signal lost.
Dont forget you can do unattended local & remote installs in M$ ware, try doing that with an Apple Os
Having a PC running different OS's are nice, but gets to you after a while.
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
OpenBSD, NetBSD, OS X, MkLinux, YellowDog, Suse, Debian, MacOS (pre X), that's hardly anything, you're right. I better sell my dual booting iBook for a wintel laptop that doesn't have half the hardware at the same price. What was I thinking?
trolling, FUDing, either way, it's not a good thing, sparky.
Apple has suceeded where others after years of trying have failed. They have created a Unix with an interface intutive enough that you could give OS X to your grandmother and not be hounded by calls. Honey how do I....
Now if Apple would get a clue and drop their prices they could gain some serious marketshare in the business commmunity.
-- WHIPMSTER --
Mod me down if you like, but I am a slashdot geek that unfortunatly uses Windows and is trying to learn Linux. However, it occured to me if I am making a move to Linux for ethical reasons (I hate Microsoft), then perhaps I should consider BSD. So can anyone point me to any sites or explain to me the differences between BSD and Linux? Such comparison should point to practicality, compatibilty, useability (especially for newbies like me), community, and such. Please help those that wish to convert!
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
This article completely ignores the main issue for most people with respect to Apple. The propietary hardware will always hold me back from a mac. I like having the ability to install any OS on my machine.
They have had a couple years to get it down, and the higher speed chips of the G4 makes any speed hit of little consequence.
I like Connectix products, but I don't want MS products in my house.
photosMy Photostream
I don't know much about OSX. If I could ask...
/usr like we're used to?
What kind of shell does this "console" for Darwin/BSD have? Does it come with bash? Does it come with many of the standard Unix tools like top, vi, etc... Does the directory structure look fairly close to Unix? Do the Mac user apps really go into
And this toolkit on the extra CD... is that the Cocoa tools? Is it somewhat comparable to how Qt/GTK is worked with?
Is almost seems like OSX is "open" at the Darwin/BSD level, but the "closed/restricted" part is the GUI level above. You can work with the Cocoa tools to build apps, but unlike Qt/GTK, you can never have open access to much of what's going on in the UI layer. Does that seem about a fair description?
Basically, try out VPC again, it has come a long, long way. It doesn't even require a separate IP anymore.
"Suddenly, there's a mostly open-source Linux-line operating system with a superb user interface, with a target market of 25 million faithful Macintosh users."
Its funny that we've progressed to this point. It used to be things were "Unix-Like" but Linux has become such a household name, that its easier for the lay person to understand "Linux-Like".
Does anyone else find the humor in this?
Microsoft "Mac OS X v10.1 is the must-have upgrade for anyone using or considering Mac OS X and as such, Microsoft is making it the required minimum version to use for all of our Mac OS X products," said Kevin Browne, general manager, Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. "We're proud to be shipping the final release of Internet Explorer 5.1 for Mac with Mac OS X v10.1. Designed as a native Mac OS X browser, IE 5.1 is fast, rock-solid and features great support for Java and Internet standards to provide the best possible browsing experience. Finally, our eagerly-anticipated release of Office v.X for Mac will take advantage of Mac OS X v10.1 to enable stunning graphics, as well as efficient productivity and communication."
See this mailbox and search for "LMbench/results" (they apparently didn't archive back that far in their web archiving thing, so you have to checkout the mbox).
It will give you lmbench numbers for the same 400MHz Powerbook G4 running Linux, NetBSD, and OS X (2 diff versions). Granted, lmbench numbers probably only impact practicality and useability...
The summary: Linux out performs the others on the same hardware.
His speech basically came down to "open source failed to do anything on the desktop, and without proprietary, commercial vendors like Apple it will never go anywhere either". He almost sounded like he ment to say "only Apple can make UNIX a success on the desktop", but he explained all he ment to say was open source couldn't, when I asked him about that.
Martin Konold, who like me was present to hold a speech about KDE, responded that KDE already deliver all the stuff Jordan Hubbard was talking about, even before OSX was on the shelves.
The "open source developers can only developer for themselves and never think of end-users" view is just not true. GNOME and KDE prove that every day. Knowing these projects only exist respectively 5 and 4 years, while Apple (and Microsoft) have been in the desktop market for a much longer time gives me plenty of confidence and hope that open source can definitely bring UNIX to the desktop. Just imagine what KDE X (pun: OS X) and GNOME XP (pun: Windows XP) will look like.
Maybe you should give your Mac classic to a local school (I know of many that are still using them quite happily for word processing and games) and buy a G4 so you can actually discover what a Mac is like *now*. Just like I went out and installed Linux years ago and got hooked on it and like I bought a PC to check out XP just recently (and got hooked on my Mac).
Eh. My girl went to college with C.T. and she tells me that he's a bad mother fucka. He WAS the terror of Holland, MI before he became a Millionaire! Many a punk ass got a free trip to the bottom of the big lake for looking at him the wrong way. So don't be playing. Anyone who can (at one point) get rich off a web site must have some mob or gang connections!
ahem - say WHAT?
Oh, you didn't know that AppleScripts can be attachments to mail messages, and run automagically from Outlook, and have misleading file types assigned.
It's just that nobody's written an AppleScript email virus. Yet.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Why should anyone bother to help Apple? I kind of expect it to go the other way. If Apple wants my respect they can drop their little IP insecurities and really open things up. I suggest they develop a nice window manager for X and put it on top of Debian as the default software that ships with their nice hardware. The GIMP is just as easy to use under Debian as it is under Red Hat, as I suppose it would be under what ever. When I feel like I own it, I might want to contribute. Until then I'll stick to much cheaper x86 hardware.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Last time i was on irc looked like the #FreeBSD channels were packed. Since when did it need money to continue? I think Microsoft is in that downward spiral. In a few years you will notice that large amount of jack they have is dissappearing. Pigs are getting fat and its time for the farmer to carry them to the slaughter house. peace yo... jack==money
In effect, all Linux proper is is an OS kernel. Everything on top of the kernel is something that is bolted on independently of any kernel development. Thus Slackware is the Linux kernel plus "all sorts of stuff Patrick Volkerding added;" Red Hat Linux is the kernel plus "all sorts of stuff they added;" ditto for SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, ad infinitum.
With the BSDs, there's quite a lot of additional "environment" that is tightly tied to kernel development so that you've got a "base system" that is defacto-standardized that is capable of, for instance, recompiling itself.
With Linux, you've got to add in whatever that is needed that isn't in the kernel in order to do that yourself.
With that larger basis of "stuff" surrounding the kernel, a whole lot of the arguments "Red Hat puts the files here; Debian puts them there" just plain go away. The "Linux Standard Base" effort where they're trying to standardize where a bunch of the basic stuff goes and what it does is an effort that would be ludicrously irrelevant amongst the BSD folk; they started off by standardizing the user space stuff that LSB is fighting over.
Then there's Ports. Ports is sort of the BSD equivalent to Debian's apt-get or perhaps the Red Hat-oriented autoRPM . Except with a difference: With Ports, the approach is not to download binary packages, it is rather to download the sources, pull in any patches needed for Ports integration, and then compile it all.
That's got the demerit that it's a lot more work for your poor, overworked CPU.
However, it has the merit that if you compile libraries and packages, together, on your system, with the same compiler, the sorts of "DLL Hell" that people suffer from when they grab RPM files from here and there just can't happen. The libraries will necessarily be compatible with the applications because the applications were compiled with and for the precise set of libraries you have on your system.
This means that if there are any challenges in getting programs to compile, you'll hit them. That being said, since the folks collecting and maintaining the Ports will indeed hit those issues, they're likely to have patches in place so that by the time you see the code, it should compile cleanly.
In effect, the crucial concept involved in all of this is that the BSD packaging paradigm is that everything should be readily compilable and recompilable, from the ground up. The classic "make world" will compile all the base tools, the kernel, all the kings horses, and all the kings men, and what you get at the end is that every single component in the "world" (which is the base system; the stuff below Ports ) has been rebuilt locally.
It's all using Makefiles, and can be downloaded using CVS, so the details are all visible. None of the controversies of "well, the Red Hat kernel compiles include some special patches, and getting at them is a bit challenging...."
Big-time learning opportunity.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Example: AppleScript cannot delete or overwrite files. Any attempts to do so will only send the files to the trash. AppleScript cannot empty the trash. So the worst you could do would be send a bunch of email to people. As long as your email program requires you to confirm emails generated by scripts, that won't work either.
Besides which, under OS X, the file permissions are set so that users cannot delete anything that doesn't belong to them. Only the user folder can get hosed, which isn't good, but it's better than having to replace the whole system.
If it were possible to write a virus in AppleSript, I'd have expected to see one by now. Even with Apple's small share of the market, I would not expect one that would propegate by email, but I would have expected to see one that propegated somehow.
The fact is: Visual Basic Script was designed in such a way that it is possible to do real damage to your system. AppleScript is not.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Now people have known that BSD was going to be the core of OS X for at least three years. To create this false "Apple vs. Open Source" strawman merely to knock it down is lazy writing, and this late in the game it's actively insulting for anyone even remotely familiar with BSD or OS X. This is "Look at me! Look at me!" writing that needlessly draws attention to itself, something real writers don't need to do.
Indeed, this paragraph mars what is otherwise a reasonably adequate column. But at least it's not as irritating as the average Jon Katz column. Speaking of which, I see that more votes have been dropped from the dump Katz poll. The numbers don't even add up anymore...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
now logically, i would expect a robust Linux port
to substantially outperform OSX, simply because OSX
is based on the Mach microkernel. OSX suffers from
the same disease that NT does, because it was born
(as NeXTStep) at about the same time, when micro-
kernels were all the rage.
Can anyone comment on the comparison between 2.4.16
and OSX 10.1 on the same hardware? How do threads
scale? How does the VM scale? What does it feel
like when the load average hits 10 or 15?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The argument for cancelling Copland (the original MacOS 8) was that it was going to take another year to make it work, and buying NeXT would get the new OS up faster. A similar argument was advanced against BeOS. That was, what, in 1996?
The MacOS really needed a new layer underneath, but UNIX/Mach wasn't a great match. I'm not suprised it took Apple almost five years to make them play together.
The original MacOS only supported one app at a time, and the addition of "multitasking" was a horrible hack internally. No memory protection, no process dispatching, no interprocess communication, and no way to reliably get an app that crashed cleaned up without a system crash. Developers used to call it the Mess Inside. Apple desperately needed a new kernely, and it should have happened around 1992 or so, by which time all new Macs had enough hardware for a good protected-mode OS. Basically, Apple was nine years late with their new OS, which is part of why Apple tanked.
I once wrote an entire dial-up PPP implementation for the MacOS, called "Simple PPP". It was not fun.
Linux and BSD both use OpenSource software. ie. most programs that compile to run on linux, will compile on BSD without problems. LINUX IS A KERNEL, not an operating system. So please stop confusing Linux with OpenSource.
Anything that runs on Linux will run on BSD, except BSD is WAY more organized.
All these stupid newbies and their lame questions. "does BSD have KDE?", F@#$!!!! Of course it does you igit.
I have been a fan of mac hard ware for a long time now but have never bought any. This is because its so closed. I can't go buy a MotherBoard for the G4 and put it in my case. Well I could but I would be buying it from Apple. I think thay could of stomped Microsoft and Intel if thay where more open with their HardWare. I know I would buy a G4 and the likes if I could costomize it like I can X86 stuff. But then with the new Athlon's and P4's(which suck) G4's are looking less and less sexy.
OH and I am still mad at them for what thay did to BeOS.
011000011001111
Gaming? Real gaming takes place in a text window. Mac's got those too.
I hope this was a joke. If that's the mindset of the Mac community then it's no wonder so few developers target MacOS, even with OpenGL running native on X.
debian, suse, and mandrake all have PPC ports as well.
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
Quite frankly, I really don't care WHAT my pc looks like - as long as it does what I want it to do - and if I'm using a Mac, that means graphics and multimedia ONLY.
Of course the appearance of my computers has no bearing on their function, although I do occasionally get compliments on my server's paint job. My PC does what I want (it's a server that occasionally doubles as a desktop system), and my iMac does what I want (all my desktop needs). My 486 even does what I want - an extra test box I can play with, and the only floppy drive in the house.
Graphics and multimedia? I have no Adobe or Macromedia software installed, save Acrobat Reader and the Flash and Shockwave plug-ins of course. I do have some music software, but so does my friend on his PC.
For me, Macs don't mean gaming, web browsing, or things like that.
I don't spend much time playing games; the one I play most is Unreal Tournament. Looking forward to Quake 4 and Warcraft III. I'm writing this with Mozilla 0.9.6 (yes, I sometimes use nightly builds, but keep the milestones around too). Of course I use BB Edit to write HTML and Perl code. For me, this is what Macs mean, and I'd be surprised if they didn't fit the vast majority of your needs too.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Small correction from an amateur apple scripter here. I don't know if this will still work in OSX, but it certainly worked in OS9.
/*this moves it to the trash*/
/*this empties the trash*/
tell application "Finder"
activate
select "System Folder" of startup disk
delete selection
empty trash
end tell
/*less the C-style comments, of course*/
I used to use a script like this to erase my browser cookies every time I restarted (a common occurrence in OS9). One bug in it was that if I clicked on something while the script was halfway through running (the the Finder had selected the file but hadn't moved it to the trash), it would erase what I selected. We lost many Netscape aliases that way...
I think that an applescript virus would have a hard time self propagating, however, depending on how scriptable the email client was.
BlackGriffen
Apple at least has a chance to push past that and get to the meat'n'taters of selling apps built on a real multitasking protected memory O/S. Building on 'nix clone was a biz decision, not a political one. MicroSofts unity of vision (at least as presented outside the company) gives it enormous advantage over what should be an insurmountable enemy of open source fanatics working their asses off for nary a penny. Except for Divide and Conquer. MicroSoft didn't have to divide the 'nix community, its quite capable of doin' that itself... of shootin' itself in the feet, kneecaps and elbows.
Here's hopin' that a strong market presence can bring some unity to the open source community, even if it is starting off with a few baby steps.
Forgive me for not backing this up, but I think if you'll look around the web a bit, you'll find that (at least pre-6.0/win) IE5.5/Mac was considered the most standards-compliant, useable, stable, all-around-best web browser every made. There's a native OS X version.
iCab is another excellent browser. I find it much faster rendering web pages than OmniWeb 4 (though I haven't tried the latest "sneakypeak").
Motorolla is not the only company that makes PowerPC chips in Mac computers. IBM and Motorolla have been making chips together for the Macintosh for years.
Apple does not solely use one company to make their processors.
Debian also has a distribution for PowerPC
;))
don't forget BlackLab...
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD...
Hell, some of my older macs can even run BeOS...
Can you run YellowDog, BlackLab or MacOS or even OSX on your x86 hardware?
Then again, VirtualPC5 is now out for OSX so you can install and run any x86 operatin system on OSX (and in fact as many as you want at the same time (given resource limitations, but this is a UNIX system after all
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
Hmmmm
Depending on what you mean, you can...
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
Yes, it is a wonderful operating system. I have never been so excited to think about buying Apple's hardware to run its chic operating system. Now Mac has actually become a BSD box, where I can open a simple xterm and use gcc to compile my favorite Un*x application. There are already numerous OSX applications available in open or closed source form. For a fervent Linux user like me, it means I can have more choices --- I can live as a terminal-and-bash-addict and normal-commercial-software-user simultaneously. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? I still have to run Windows 2000 to use some commercial application and I could not get rid of it. Yes, it's better to switch to Apple than remain in MS monopoly.
However, Apple's strategy has a major drawback; Apple's product *must* run only on Apple's hardware. Think about OSX. The only part with the source code open is the core operating system. No Cocoa available for x86, even in closed source form. Apple won't allow its superb desktop environment to be ported to other platform than Apple's. If you're trying to run OSX on your PC hardware, you're going to have only a small text terminal window. Maybe you're going to think about compiling XFree86 yourself and installing GNOME or KDE on top of it.
That is the dilemma of Apple. It must lock you into the Mac hardware platform, even though it is in desperate needs of larger user installed base. You always have to buy a new Macintosh to use Apple's OSX. You want to develop an application for OSX? You'll never see it running on Intel platform or whatever, because Apple won't port Cocoa to other platofrm than Apple's Mac.
In order to break this chain of dilemma, I think Apple must port its entire OSX product into Intel platform. Apple will lose money from its reduced hardware sales, but once OSX for x86 reaches a critical mass of user base, then it can ship OSX to the major PC providers like Dell or Compaq. Or it can port its desktop part to Linux. Linux users still need a decent desktop environment with killer applications. We will never be able to see MS office running on the OSX desktop environment for Linux, but we will able to see Photoshop running on Linux at least. With the release of OSX deskop for Linux, Apple will have the benefit of porting the OSX applications for Linux to its own Mac platform easily. One of the strong point of Linux users is that it has a large pool of best developers in the world.
If there were OSX for x86 or OSX desktop for Linux, I would definitely buy it and install it on my computer. It will mean that I can get rid of Windows installed in my box forever. But apple won't port its OSX to Intel platform in any case. That means I have to stick with Windows for a time until major software vendors release such things like photoshop for KDE. Apple is losing a best chance of conquering the Intel user base, surfacing themselves as a major competitor against Microsoft. But it rather chose to live with Microsoft and keep their realms separate. Perhaps that is why Microsoft continues to release IE for Mac and Office for Mac so seamlessly with Windows.
btw, comments are prepended with '--' like:
empty trash -- this empties the trash
I always love reading Slashdot posts about Apple because a thousand people who haven't even touched a piece of Apple hardware in 5 years come forward and bitch. Yes, the Macintosh is a propietary platform, yes, the hardware is more expensive. The fact of the matter is though that there isn't a better end user experience in the world.
Hey kids, you get what you pay for. Remember that little blurb about Linux only being free if your time is worth nothing? It's true and no computer commercially available today is as fast and easy to get rolling as a Mac. It might not be the king of the benchmarking circuit or the cheapest possible solution but the people giving their money to Apple aren't flushing it down a toilet as some would like to have you believe.
... that every company that promises PPC mobos is built on bullshit promises which they never fill.
examples:
www.bplan-gmbh.de
www.merlancia.com/MISEL/torro.html
("out in November/December 2001" yeah, like fucking sure, you'll go fucking broke like phase5 did.)
he might get there one day though. evro?
Wilfredo Sanchez, Darwin developer:
28 may 2001 [...]But there were some cool things about the keynote. One is that Apple has truly come about on the Unix front. There was a time when I had lunch with Jason Thorpe of NetBSD, and we were talking about Apple and NetBSD working together. Jason was very helpful, and NetBSD played a key role in getting the BSD subsystem in Rhapsody (which fed into Darwin/OS X) updated. (That work is by no means complete, but it got a lot better.)[...]
Diary + other info on Sanchez
Currently FreeBSD is the BSD reference platform for Darwin (the core of MacOS X).
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Let's stick to the facts instead of name calling. They have not opened their entire base, and they continue to punish anyone who would violate their "look and feel". If they had really opened everything up, every Linux distro would come with Quicktime, DVD recording software and many other Apple goodies. The choice of underlying OS is not the issue, it's all the extra effort they go through to protect their goofey little IP. If they took advantage of FreeBSD, fine. My preference is for OpenBSD, but so what? The idea is that they should just concentrate on what they think is so important, look, feel, backwards compatibility issues, and and not the rest of it.
Is it so absurd to think of them pooling their resources to make Debian or some specific BSD better? Why don't they tap into a nice pre existing user community instead of going it alone all the time? I mention Debian because it's distrobution method is superior.
Oh yeah, they might put their central reporting requirments where they put their termination clause.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
One aspect of OS X that seems to have gone largely underreported is the decision to distribute developer tools with the operating system. The developer tools include the Project Builder IDE and Interface Builder GUI constructor, as well as gcc, gdb, cvs, make, perl, and the Java JDK.
The integration with Java is alone remarkable; full Cocoa bindings means that your Java applications are no-less "mac-like" than apps implemented in c/c++/objective-c. The file-bundle structure (executables are packaged in hierarchical directories with resources and XML files providing metadata) completes the encapsulation: a Java app looks and launches just like any other.
On the other hand, you can double-click ".jar" files, and programs that use AWT or Swing, and run them as well.
Providing the facility to write first class programs "out of the box" is an important, if unheralded, aspect of Apple's "open" philosophy. It's a form of user empowerment. It may not go far enough to please the proponents of some open source ideologies, but for the great majority of personal computer users it represents more freedom than they know what to do with. I think it could have a significant effect in introducing people to programing. IANA Windows programmer, but my impression is that the barrier to entry is considerably higher.
rooooar
http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ie/default.asp
You can get IE and outlook for Solaris, have been able to for a while now.
Chris
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
are you under the age of 13?
doesn't work you fool - why not try it and see?
Where I work, we're not allowed to buy Macs. Period. I bet we're not the only place with such a restriction. So OS X may make it into the home market, but will have a harder time with the corporate world. But we can get PCs on almost a next day basis. Sure they run Windows, but Linux is only a CD away.
A little over a year ago, I had accidentally left Linux with X and Window Maker running on the "family" PC (ie: the one that needs to run windows so the rest of the family can use it.)
I left the house to run some errands, and while I was away, my mom needed to browse the web, and check her email (via hotmail.) When I returned home, she asked me why the computer was different. I said "oh, I musta left Linux running." - lo and behold, she figured out the Window Maker interface enough to open Netscape and browse the web. Needless to say, I was impressed.
The thing about Linux and associated software, is that it can be complicated or it can be easy. It all depends on what the user wants to do with it. If you want to setup servers, compile all your apps, muck around with source code, or uber-tune your window manager interface, then yeah, Linux (or bsd, or whatever) will be complicated. Take all that crap away, and setup a system with a standard graphical interface, and it can be just as easy and friendly as a Mac.
My buddy runs OS X on a G4, and I think it's nice. But I don't think it's great. Combining the two systems (a bsd variant and the mac stuff) has sort of created a half-ass Unix system combined with a niceish interface. It seems some of the Unix attributes have been ignored in favor of.. user friendlyness? A necessary evil, in order to make OS X successful with the average user.
What Apple has done isn't terribly difficult. Any Linux distriution could acheive the same if they'd ditch a lot of the development and server utilities. Maybe include that stuff on a second cd that, as this article stated, the average user will ignore.
-kidlinux.
The problem is that it's true. I've tried twice to install Linux (PPC first, then intel), and failed both times. Linux sure isn't doing much for me on the desktop.
I don't think it's really the open-source developers' fault. It's just that there's too much hardware out there that only loosely supports a particular set of standards, and a lot hardware developers refuse to share the info with open-source developers.
The obsession with running Linux is doing real harm to the open-source community. It ghettoizes open-source apps. It's as if there was an art gallery with beautiful paintings in it, but every time you tried to go there, the roads were closed and the subway wasn't running.
I really don't see it as a problem with software usability. I run GIMP and Freeciv on MacOS X, and although they're a little harder to use than commercial software sometimes, you just have to read the documentation. IMHO, the real problems have to do with the OS-hardware interface.
Find free books.
> After installing bash, XFree86 (XDarwin), GTK+...
You got GTK+ installed? How did you manage that? I admit that I'm not an expert in porting code, but I gave up after trying off and on for a few days, which was a real shame, because that's the toolkit that I'm used to using.
... mobo's chipsets into darwin so you can boot OS X?
(probably not -- shame, going to have to let someone else do it).
What's the difference between Osoma Bin Laden and RMS?
One is a smelly, bearded, religious nut with a 3rd rate "army", living in a cave. The other is a rich arab.
Perhaps back in the 80's Apple could have switched to licensing their OS and become what Micro$oft did become, but it is too late now. Even back then I doubt such Apple could have survived the radical change from a very large company (in terms of revenue, employees etc.) to very small company such a change in strategy would have resulted in. Even Bill Gates didn't have some grand plan in the 70's and 80's to become the worlds richest man - he stumbled onto his business plan by playing the cards he was dealt and making decisions as they came up*.
Providing only the OS has certain business advantages as Micro$oft's financial success eloquently attests to. But Apples approach of controlling all aspects of the machine - OS, Hardware, and even certain peripherals and applications considered strategically important also has advantages. In the past Apple has not fully exploited those advantages but I think that is exactly what they are trying to do now. OSX is intended to become the reliably stable (as the classic MacOS had ceased to be) foundation of a purposefully designed, integrated system that "just works". Wintel PC's by contrast because they cobble together an OS, applications, CPU and other components that are created by different companies often with different agendas will be at a disadvantage when it comes to things like reliablity, integration and user experience.
This is not to say that Apple has always (or even often) succeeded in those areas or that the Wintel PC's have always failed. But Apple has a structural advangtage and if they exploit it to the full they will be in a very strong competative position.
* Gates even got those decisions wrong a few times: when the Mac first came out Gates thought it would blow the market away so he decided to hitch his company to what he thought would be Apple's rising star. Micro$oft allocated a full half of it's resources to becoming a Mac office productivity application developer while the other half serviced the existing DOS/IBM clone business he thought was doomed. With Microsofts big initial investment the Mac's less than stellar sales the first couple of years was almost a disaster for Gates, fortunately for him he owned the competition. On second thought perhaps he did think it all out - whatever happened to the Mac he was in a position to profit by it but he cut it pretty close by commiting so many resources into the Macintosh application business.
I hope that Jordan Hubbard being employed by Apple does a little bit to speed the development of the PPC FreeBSD port. Linux on PPC has some serious issues (most notably random lockups, due to which I had a very important ext2 partition NOT survive an fsck the other day, causing me to lose about a week and a half of work). 2.2 was much more stable, but 2.4 performs significantly better.
:) I'm probably going to end up reinstalling OS X.1 on my laptop sometime in the next few days, just because I can't trust the Linux kernel on PPC, which is a shame because I use Classic apps fairly frequently and Mac-on-Linux runs much better than OS X's Classic on lower-end hardware (I'm running a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet, 292mhz, 192MB RAM). Maybe I'll take a crack at writing a decent virtual desktop enabler. But DAMMIT, I want FreeBSD :( Oh well. I'll probably just end up running OS X with Xfree86 most of the time.
I would love to run a more solid OS on my Powerbook, but the FreeBSD port isn't in a useable state yet, and OS X has a few interface issues that just make it COMPLETELY unuseable for me. First of all, the menu bar at the top of the screen. While I understand the appeal, it breaks any hope of using sloppy focus - you can be in a situation where you simply can't get to the menu bar of an app without crossing over another application's window, which would give it the focus and change the menubar. Sure, you could rearrange the windows so you can get up to the menubar, but that's an annoyance and kinda annuls the main point of using sloppy focus in the first place (speed)! Second of all, and this is a minor bitch because it can be easily fixed, I need GOOD virtual desktop support. Space.app just doesn't cut it. I need virtual desktops to switch quickly and to have FUCKING HOTKEYS! Third, and again, this is easily fixed (but I'm surprised it hasn't been yet) - how about a decent native terminal emulation? Terminal.app is shit! My terminal application should NOT eat my page up/page down keys.
*deep breath*. Ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest...
It's nice to have a computer that just.. plain... works. I've put together dozens of x86 machines, and I've troubleshot even more. Let's be honest, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Apple's hardware isn't "Closed." It's proprietary. There is a difference. You CAN just by a motherboard or just a processor from apple, they just don't make it common knowledge that you can. Plus, lots of vendors sell that way too.
What exactly would you customize, that you can't customize now? It's not like there are lots of models of motherboard for each proc design anwyays! They use IBM drives and network cards. You can stick whatever PCI card in there that you like, whatever ram, whatever IDE, whatever SCSI card.
OH and what did they do to BeOS besides not buy it? NeXT was a better purchase choice.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Actually, I was worried about this too, but then I started playing with Openstep/Cocoa. There are tons of tools to port projects in Cocoa striaght to GNUStep. Just run them and the do the work for you. Now, GNUStep IS missing some classes, but they're mostly in the user interface realm, and if you don't try to go crazy with a blizzard of interface toys, you can actually make something that ports with almost no work at all to a machine with GNUStep installed.
I think that's at least a start.
I think, personally, that a better course of action for Apple would be to release runtimes and libraries for Cocoa on all platforms, so just a recompile would move the apps from platform to platform.
Apple makes a large chunk of its change in hardware, and taking that away from them would ruin them. So they NEED to sell hardware, and OS X is the best incentive for that right now. It enticed me and I'm not regretting it. This dual 800 G4e was expensive, but (brace yourself) MY GOD this thing is the fastest computer I've EVERY TOUCHED. Even OSX's massive amount of graphics computations don't slow it down at all.
I do agree with you on one point, Apple needs to make its apps more portable.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Writing this was not fun.
Doing background work under the original MacOS was ugly. Underneath, the MacOS was almost as dumb as DOS. No CPU dispatching, no threads, and no waiting in a thread. Instead, there were all those wierd "task" types; "system tasks", "timer tasks", "vertical blanking interrupt tasks", etc., each with a different set of restrictions on what they could do. New task types (multiprocessor tasks, Open Transport tasks) were added over time. The whole "task" mess was far more complicated than a standard CPU dispatcher would have been.
So I was really looking forward to the new MacOS. I gave up waiting in the mid-1990s and switched to Windows NT 3.51.
If Apple had bought Be, they would have bought a cool OS that had even less market share and mind share than they themselves had. What would the point of that be (no pun intended)? Going with NeXT was worth it, if only for getting Avie and Steve. And opening Darwin (and keeping it open) was also a pretty shrewd move.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
It has come to my attention that we are wasting our time dealing with these subjects. There are Mac zealots, like me, who believe that OS X is the best OS out there. Then there are those people who believe that OS X isn't so great. However, I believe that most Slashdot readers would agree with me that Apple is doing a better job in their products and business practices than Microsoft. So even if you would rather have Linux or some other OS take the crown which windows has held for some time now, it would be to your benefit if Apple had a better standing against Microsoft.
:)
I hope that I have disagreed with myself enough that I wont have to further explain my opinion to those who flame me
-- If it aint broke, fix it till it is. --
OS X is architected on top of Mach to keep Apple stockholders from asking why Apple paid $400 million for NeXT, bailing out Steve Jobs and his buddies.
No. OSX is architected on top of Mach because OSX is NeXTSTEP, and NeXTSTEP was always built on top of Mach. The decision to use Mach was a sound one, as proved by NeXTSTEP/OpenStep's durability and portability across many diseperate architectures over 15 years after its birth.
The argument for cancelling Copland (the original MacOS 8) was that it was going to take another year to make it work
No. The argument for cancelling Copland was that it was never going to work. Copland was a horrible idea to begin with, and rapidly became the textbook example of an out-of-control, death-ship project. By the time Hancock performed the mercy-killing, Copland was over three years behind schedule, and what little in terms of development SDKs had dribbled out of Apple had been universally panned by developers.
The MacOS really needed a new layer underneath, but UNIX/Mach wasn't a great match. I'm not suprised it took Apple almost five years to make them play together.
No. Apple had functional, usable builds of Rhapsody (OpenStep on PPC with a MacOS Classic look-and-feel, and "Blue Box" fullscreen OS8 emulation) within a year of the NeXT acquisition. I personally used such a box in early 1998; it was quite slick. This product was later released as "MacOS X Server 1.0".
The reasons that OSX "consumer" didn't ship until much later were twofold: First, Apple listened to feedback from their existing developer base, and realized that they were risking alienating a substantial amount of them by trying to force an immediate migration to the OpenStep APIs. (Adobe, in particular, dug in their heels and threatened to discontinue Photoshop development for MacOS.) In response to this, Apple had to develop the "Carbon" API layer, which was a substantial effort. Second, Apple made the decision to take the time to re-engineer the user interface and display layers ("Aqua" and "Quartz"), on the (likely) theory that the MacOS UI needed a facelift.
Apple desperately needed a new kernely, and it should have happened around 1992 or so, by which time all new Macs had enough hardware for a good protected-mode OS.
Blame IBM. Apple had a new base OS technology in 1992. It was called "Pink", and ironically was very similar in conception to OpenStep. Unfortunatly, as part of the original Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance, Pink was given over to IBM, who renamed it "Taligent" and promptly buried it.
Basically, Apple was nine years late with their new OS, which is part of why Apple tanked.
Ah. I was not aware that "tanked" could also be used to mean "wildly profitable in a year when Dell, Compaq and HP are hemmorhaging money." Fascinating.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
"Blame IBM. Apple had a new base OS technology in 1992. It was called "Pink", and ironically was very similar in conception to OpenStep. Unfortunatly, as part of the original Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance, Pink was given over to IBM, who renamed it "Taligent" and promptly buried it. "
That's crap! It was *NOT* given over to IBM. You're so stupid it pains me!
Taligent was a separate corporation given the challenge of taking the best OO tech from IBM and Apple and turning out a next-gen OS and cross-platform API. The Pink team was *part* of that effort.
Taligent wandered around aimlessly unsure of what to do, not sure of what "success" was. After dropping the OS plan, it delivered TalOS (Object Services) in the form of "CommonPoint" to the partners. IBM *S H I P P E D* it for AIX and put it in beta for OS/2. Apple... well Apple played with itself saw that it was too slow, too big, to unworkable on the Copland ukernel and then state-of-the-art flaccid Mac hardware and shelved it. That left IBM and Taligent high and dry.
That poked a HUGE stick in the eye of IBM. IBM played nice and tried to get Apple to license Mac OS (ported to IBM PReP spec computers) so it could continue to build clones and move along, as planned, to the common PowerPC platform. Apple balked despite a successful demo of the "unportable" System 7 running on IBM's PReP systems.
IBM offered and negotiated TWICE to buy out the floundering Apple and make it their consumer division! Again, Apple balked.
Apple went their own way with the clones again giving the finger to IBM. Apple was slow getting OpenDoc (Bento was a bitch and made performance awful) ready. IBM had to pick up the pieces that WordPerfect dropped on OpenDoc for Windows in addition to attempt to get OpenDoc working on OS/2. They got it into OS/2 for Warp 4, integrated (to OS/2 customers lament), into the desktop. That was something Apple "planned" but never did deliver for Mac OS. Apple never did finish QuickTime for OS/2 either. Another finger to IBM. IBM took Mach 3, reworked it, offered it as IBM Microkernel 1.0, selected by Taligent to be the base of their OS which was later scrapped as the market didn't want yet-another-OS. Some of IBM's changes were later rolled into Mach 4. They offered the kernel to Apple. Apple balked and continued ahead with "we can do it better, smaller and faster" with Copland's uKernel (Penguin was it?).
Apple did NOTHING but piss away one opportunity after the next throughout the '90's. It was too egotistic to accept Copland was going NO WHERE until a certain Hancock, a former IBM exec, came in and had the testicular fortitude to end it and look for something else.
isn't the verb 'to meow' spelled mew? Like mewed, mewing, etc . . .
Let me guess: you worked at IBM, circa 1993-98? Sir, you have my sympathies, but chill the fuck out.
That's crap! It was *NOT* given over to IBM.
Taligent was a separate corporation
Let's get real for a second here. Yes, Taligent was, on paper, an independent company. In reality, as you yourself point out, Apple lost interest in the project shortly afterward, and IBM was in the driver's seat for the majority of its history, and the failure of any of Pink's technology to ship on any platform until years after its irrelevance was assured can be laid largely at IBM's feet.
Apple's mistake was to spin Pink off as an external entity when they really had no interest in using an OS that they didn't completely own. The mistakes after that one were IBM's and Taligent's own.
given the challenge of taking the best OO tech from IBM and Apple and turning out a next-gen OS and cross-platform API. The Pink team was *part* of that effort.
Correct. I don't recall saying anything contradictory to this.
IBM *S H I P P E D* it for AIX and put it in beta for OS/2.
...the former being promptly ignored, and the latter, well...
I think we are largely in violent agreement here. Apple and IBM both spent a good chunk of the 90s strangling their own best technology initiatives in the cradle, while Microsoft laughed all the way to the bank. Taligent, I suspect, failed inside of IBM for the same reason that OS/2 did: because IBM is not so much a unified company as a stiched-together group of fiefdoms, and in the final analysis the portion of IBM that had no interest in challenging Microsoft seriously on the desktop was the one that got to make the critical decisions. (It's ironic that you mention CommonPoint shipping for AIX, as AIX is now undergoing the same crib-death treatment at the hands of the pro-linux/S390 crowd -- listening to IBM sales reps try to explain their unix strategy these days is alternatively hilarious and depressing.)
IBM offered and negotiated TWICE to buy out the floundering Apple and make it their consumer division! Again, Apple balked.
Sorry, but this was the right decision on Apple's part, even then. OS/2 Warp's fate made it crystal clear what Apple's destiny would be as a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM: a lot of pretty talk, followed by inevitable destruction. (See also: "Any part of Lotus other than Notes" and "AT&T buys NCR.")
Apple did NOTHING but piss away one opportunity after the next throughout the '90's. It was too egotistic to accept Copland was going NO WHERE until a certain Hancock, a former IBM exec, came in and had the testicular fortitude to end it and look for something else.
Quite. Please read my post again with your jerking knee taped down -- I said pretty much exactly the same thing about Hancock. (The phrase I used was "mercy killing.")
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
"doesn't have half the hardware at the same price" That's not trolling?
Oh boy did they ever. Every once in a while, I try to amuse myself by listing all of the next-gen OS projectst that Apple started and then abandoned in one form of completion or another since the release of System 6. There were a lot of them.
...and that's just off the top of my head. Any former Apple developers are welcome to chime in and add to the list.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
as of os-x 10.1, apple has the most advanced audio subsystem in existence ("core audio") -- it's got system-level support for multi-channel 32-bit/96k audio with ultra-low latency, and world-class, plug-in extensible midi support... the biggest problem with os-x audio isn't the subsystem, it's that it's all brand new, and very few sequencers and audio recording programs have been rewritten to take advantage yet (true of os-x as a whole, too)
for more details, go here
i thought, therefore i was...
Is your name Linus Torvalds? No -- therefore you have no legal rights to determine who or what is called "Linux".
The fact is that Torvalds licenced his trademark to Red Hat, Debian, Caldera, Mandrake, etc. for use in marketing their operating systems, which are properly called "Linux", as per Linus' wishes in the matter.
Until you can get Torvalds to change his slack licencing policy, you have no say what-so-ever.
Or you could dl it off some hotline or carracho server (the beta anyways).
Okay, so the "Flower Power" iMac was a terrible idea, but what's your beef with the G4 towers? They a joy to work with: I wish to god that some PC case vendor would implement something similar to the "fold down" access to the motherboard that the g3/g4 towers have.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I guess nobody does, since it hasn't been done yet, right?
rooooar
If you're interested in a standards compliant browser for the mac allow me to recomend icab. It also has great ad filtering and a number of other features that ie lacks.
Please man pkg_create(1), pkg_delete(1), pkg_info(1), pkg_update(1) and pkg_version(1) for more information.
As a side benefit, these binary packages are built FROM the ports tree every day by the kind people at freebsd.org.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
> "doesn't have half the hardware at the same price"
... ALL Macs include a lot of stuff that isn't standard on Windows machines, and then you look only at the specs you're familiar with and write-off the other stuff like it's useless extras. It's not useless extras when all of the machines on your platform have them, though, because developers build on them and users learn how to use them. From the Mac side, it's the reverse. We look at Wintel prices, think at first that they're low, then we start to say, "how much to add FireWire to that machine? where do I get drivers? will they work later if I upgrade Windows? will they work with a range of FireWire devices (storage, cameras, media devices)? who do I complain to if it doesn't work right?" and then we do the same for AirPort (802.11) and pretty soon the Wintel machine is looking a lot more expensive, in money but especially in admin time, especially later when you can't find drivers or a firmware update or whatever. Once you see a 2GHz P4 crawl through Photoshop filters and encoding jobs, the Wintel system definitely doesn't seem so cheap anymore. Those are some empty megahertz, man.
> That's not trolling?
No, it's not trolling. The iBook is $1299 and has FireWire, TV out, VGA out, Ethernet, 56k modem (not Winmodem), 5-hour battery, 1024x768 display, built-in antennaes for 802.11, and you can add a $99 wireless networking card into a slot under the keyboard. Windows notebooks in that price range don't usually have built-in ethernet, never mind a real modem, antennaes, FireWire, and forget about the battery life (less than two hours on Dells, less than three on Compaq). iBooks generally run silent, too, with the fan coming on only in hot climates, and all the software you need to enjoy the hardware is already there and working.
That's part of the reason Macs seem expensive when you're used to looking at Wintel prices
One of the things that the Apple Desktop Connector (ADC) doesn't get credit for is that it solves a real problem with DVI displays that involves AC grounding. I forget the exact details, but either the display has to be plugged into AC power before you connect the DVI plug to the graphics adapter, or else the display should NOT be plugged into AC power until after you connect the DVI cable. This can fry displays, apparently.
With ADC, power and DVI are together, and this apparently solves the problem and extends the life of the display. You can't plug them in the wrong order, so the display is grounded when it first gets a spark out of the DVI connector.
I really like ADC. My PowerMac is in an equipment rack with music and audio gear, and all I have to do to set it up is plug the mouse into the keyboard, the keyboard into the display, and the display into the computer, which itself is already connected to AC power in the rack, and gets Internet over 802.11. I have almost zero setup with this rig. It takes no time at all to do, and you don't have cables going everywhere. The converter to turn ADC into plain DVI is only $20 or something, so you can still use a PowerMac with a plain DVI display if that's your preference, and VGA is on the back of PowerMacs, too (and all other Macs as well). But if you use an Apple display, you get the bonus of having one less power supply and USB hub to worry about.
It's a great connector. It saves me time and trouble again and again and again. My Cinema Display has basically just been a part of my PowerMac, with no configuration or calibration or controls needed, because it's always connected via USB as well (impossible to forget with everything on one cable). I just plugged it on there and it worked and has worked ever since.
Man. See - you can say bullshit like that and get away with it. I am using Dell for my example since they are I believe still the most popular in the PC world (personally I have a IBM T22 from work and build my own desktops/servers).
First, it's hard to compare on equal footing. The Ibook has a 12.1" display vs the 14 and 15 inch displays on the Dells. That big of a difference can have significant weight and price differences.
Second, built in ethernet and modems are pretty much standard on all the systems I looked at.
Third, You got me on the battery. Right now batteries suck.
Fourth, I've never seen a laptop without VGA out. The Dells also include S-Video (TV) out.
Fifth, Dell doesn't have the firewire option yet. Sony and Apple are really pushing that standard while USB 2.0 is being pushed by other companies. For most users this is a non-issue. Firewire is great for Digital camcorders and external drives. Considering that the card costs about $50 (and drivers usually come with the card) I don't think it is a big issue.
Sixth, Dell is offering free dvd or burner upgrades. The Ibooks have them but for a cost.
Both systems chintz on memory but they are about equal in price to upgrade.
Finally, seeing as that I am getting tired, every Mac addict talks about Photoshop. Do you realize that 92% (a guess) of the world doesn't care about Photoshop? The average consumer isn't going to buy $600 image editing software. Adobe has always focused on the Mac and that is why it performs better there. On the other hand, Adobe sucks on the PC. A lot of their products (Acrobat for example) are famous for being crapy, buggy software.
In summary, both systems cost about the same and you are hardly getting twice as much out of your Mac. Maybe later I'll see what I could buy for $2400.
Also, if you haven't disabled the dialog box that asks you if you are sure you want to empty the trash, you get an extra chance to stop it. Applescript cannot override that.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
From http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/security. html
Disk Image Encryption
For high security, you can encrypt part of your hard disk through the use of a disk image. You can then email this disk image can to other people who know the password. Simply open the Disk Copy utility, make a new image and set the encryption. The image will show up as a volume on your desktop. When your Keychain is locked, or when you send that disk image file to another person, the image is secure. When your Keychain is unlocked, you can copy, move and delete files as you would on any normal hard disk.
I know how to use the loop device to mount fs images, but I would really love to be able to mount an ISO9660 image as writable in Linux or FreeBSD, to perfect an image before burn. And being able to encrypt the image would be neato too, though I know that can be done.
So is there a way to mount an ISO image writable in Linux?
PS. Notice the screenshot at that link shows the recommended crypto to be AES-128! The more I read about Mac OSX the more I want it.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
proprietary compilers take development effort and lots of it
Of course! Even people as low as intelligence as yourself know that.
However, the original post I was responding to was going on about how Apple was such a monsterous "closed source" company. If that were true than they would just work with a closed compiler, just as other companies do to this day - like Microsoft. As I mentioned, one option is CodeWarrior.
So had Apple been all about closed source could simply have said "if you want to program a Mac, get CodeWarrior". Instead they support GCC and even provide patches. Thus, to spell out the conclusion for you in ultra-plain english, Apple doesn't just give back patches to GCC because it's GPL - they provde patches because they are intelligent enough in the first place to use GCC instead of relying on a proprietary compiler, WHICH IS AN OPTION AS IT CAN BE MAINTAINED BY A THIRD PARTY!!
I'm sure you'll be back with another witty reply, I'll let you have the last word and let the lack of intelligence in whatever you say speak for itself. Sorry for insulting your intelligence again and again and again, I guess I was just on a roll. You know how it is - or do you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An AC wrote:
> So why now?
Why, oh why, did you choose *that* day to make *that* posting? Five years ago, on December 14th, 1996, Mothra Leo resurrected a charred dead sapling, and made to grow into a mighty Apple tree. Did you not see Friday afternoon, the sun displaying a bite like that of the Apple logo? Did you not hear Godzilla's mighty roar echoing over Japan? Or the crack of the egg heralding Mothra's rebirth? Or the meteor showers that accompanied Ghidrah's return (yeah, he promised Mothra to behave this time, but can she really get him to give up Windows for the Mac)?
> *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic
> circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD
> keeps losing market share but why?
The OS X boxed version, which is based on BSD, outsold the Windows 2000 upgrade for its first two months out, and placed number 8 out of the 10 top selling PC (not Mac specific) business software packages for those months (March and April 2001). OS X has been shipping on every Mac sold since last May. Decline? Hardly. And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until 2002, when OS X gets to run on 1.6 ghz G5's with gigabit firewire!
> The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come
> back from the grave.
Mac OS: gave its last gasp circa 1995-1996 when Apple did its impression of a burnt cinder. Apple and its beloved OS are quite fine now, thanks to timely intervention by Mothra and Steve Jobs. See above comment on OS X, Mac OS's remarkable child (sired by *BSD).
UNIX: as a whole presumed finished (again back in 1995-1996), when the NT steamroller came to town promising to erradicate that old outdated OS. Linux, the *BSDs, and OS X have changed all that.
OS/2: supposed to be dead. Doesn't seem to care, though.
NeXT: died, I think, in the 80's or early 90's (wasn't paying that much attention to it at the time -- silly me). IP was sold to Apple, and parts (such as Cocoa, kernal, etc.) used in OS X. User groups for the old system have simply switched over to OS X, with some grumbling.
> As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed
> OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death
> shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone;
"Lightning shines on wavey beach, and all clouds are made right:
Happiness appears!"
From "Infant Girl" song in "Mosura" (1961 - japanese version only) - my translation
irony: having to comment AppleScript code. . . :)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
He's referring to the Be party-line that Apple wouldn't let them have tech specs on the G3 to stifle Be. Nevermind that mklinux was being published on the FTP site at the time. Be thought if they jumped to Intel they would take over from Microsoft so they used the G3 issue as a smoke-screen.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Have you ever heard of OpenFirmware? No, I see you haven't. It's the thing that most Linux distributions on the Mac use to boot. Neat huh?
Why do you speak with certainty about Apple an their hardware when it's obvious that you don't follow the company, and don't have any experiece with their products?
all parts of MacOS X that aren't in Darwin
What's in Linux that isn't in Darwin? Apple never had to Open Source anything, expecting them to opensource everything, and complaining is being unreasonable.
Look it's the Quicktime file format! Make your own player.
More Open Source projects at Apple.
Why do you speak with certainty about Apple an their hardware when it's obvious that you don't follow the company, and don't have any experiece with their products?
Why do you bother speaking at all, when it's obvious you haven't the slightest ability to read or comprehend information more complex than "See Spot run!"? Please point me to a native Linux application that will play Quicktime movies that use the Sorenson codec (no, the WINE-based plugin for Mozilla/Netscape doesn't count). As for my supposed lack of experience with Apple products, I used to be a developer of Macintosh software.
I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply to your drivel when I've already responded to all of these points elsewhere in this thread. You're just too lazy to look them up, so that's all I have to say.
rooooar
As for my supposed lack of experience with Apple products, I used to be a developer of Macintosh software.
Macs have been using open firmware for a long time now, expertise in the workings of the Mac Plus do not translate well onto modern hardware or software. Anyway, "used to be" doesn't lend you much credibility when commenting about Apple's recent activites, especially after the ignorance you displayed in your comment.
BTW, you don't flame well. Try harder next time, or not at all.