MacOSX Vs BeOS ShootOut

Jolie writes: "After Palm purchased Be's assets, the future of BeOS became uncertain and a lot of users have left the platform. One of these users was Scot Hacker, mostly known for his 'BeOS Bible' book among other things. Scot tried to stick to Windows, then to Linux but he ended up with MacOSX. He has written a long and detailed article comparing, from the user's point of view, his beloved BeOS to his new favorite, MacOSX."

Comments

PDF version of this html article

[rcatarella]

For those who don't like to click all day long- Here

Re:Downloading BeOS

[OctaneZ]

BeOS 5 was released in two forms a PRO version and a Personal version. The personal version was available in 'Free' as in cost at http://www.be.com/products/freebeos/ and is still available on many mirrors, linked to from that page. If you have never tried it, give Be a try. It's quite nice, and different than everything else out there. Hopefully it won't die off completely.
-OctaneZ

scripting in MacOS

[frankie]

Scott's essay says: I don't mind AppleScript. I wish the system were open to other languages

Actually, the system is open to other languages, although I don't know how many of them have OS X ports. MacOS uses Open Scripting Architecture, which means that pretty much any scripting language can operate your Mac, given an appropriate OSAX plugin.

I've toyed with the ones for JavaScript, Perl, and Python, but decided to stick with AppleScript since I already know (some of) the syntax.

Re:scripting in MacOS

[90XDoubleSide]

Just a few comments for readers less familiar w/ AppleScript, first you should note that AppleScript Studio is not the only way to write AppleScript; Script Editor remains the default and what most home users will continue to use. AppleScript Studio, an extension for Project Builder, lets you add advanced interfaces built in Interface Builder to your scripts to make them much more capable and able to handle tasks that would previously have required a full-blown application. Your perl and shell scripts are still written in your text editor of choice (the wonderful BBEdit for most OS X users, although vi and emacs are of course used by many), and you can run your shell/perl scripts using Apple's great Script Menu.

Secondly, it is very possible to connect shell scripts to an AppleScript Studio project, you just have to call them in AppleScript, and you could go on to have your shell script run a perl script. Here is an example that comes with AS Studio; the interface is a dialog with a text field and the script executes the shell script the user types into the field:

(* Application.applescript *)

(* ==== Event Handlers ==== *)

on action theObject
set theResult to do shell script (contents of text field "input" of window "main") as string
set the contents of text view "output" of scroll view "output" of window "main" to theResult
set needs display of text view "output" of scroll view "output" of window "main" to true
end action

(* © Copyright 2001 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved. *)

Re:A quick comparison of BeOS to OSX...

[scorpioX]

Troll alert!

I know I shouldn't be resoponding but I can't pass up a chane to prove an idiot wrong.

You may be right about the number of BeOS jobs (unless Palm decides to do something with it), but you are definitly wrong about the number of OSX jobs. Not counting the hundreds of people at Apple working on OSX itself, the following vendors all have OS X programmers:
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit
Intuit
Adobe
Macromedia
Qualcomm

This isn't even counting the small companies such as Thursby, Barebones, Omnigroup, etc. I myself work for a small company writing OS X software.

You should follow an old addage updated for slashdot; Think before you post.

About the free version

[ColGraff]

The Personal Edition of BeOS, given away for free, can be turned into a full installation very easily. Check betips.net for details.

Something else he got wrong..

[jcr]

"Freeware just isn't a part of the OS X culture, and shareware apps cost about 50% more on average than equivalent BeOS shareware apps."

There's plenty of Mac OS X freeware and shareware available, particularly for developers. You can find it at www.stepwise.com/softrak.

-jcr

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[bnenning]

In some ways OSX takes a step backward by getting rid of the resource fork.

It's a common misconception, but filesystem metadata has nothing to do with Mac resource forks; metadata is not and never was stored in resource forks. The concepts are completely orthogonal; you can have either one without the other. Resource forks are deprecated in Mac OS X (replaced by bundles), and both the pro and anti-metadata factions support this.

Re:Use the Force, or Linux+Unix vs. BeOS/OSX

[TheAwfulTruth]

Oh yeah, I'd LOVE to see a command line only Photoshop. I bet that'd just be GREAT. Or how about commandline only games? THose are the nest. See what people like you amazingle fail to realise over and over again is that a lot of us actually use our computers to do things. Not just ftp files around and write scripts to ftp files around. We create CG, we create music, we do all kinds of things that require software that IS NOT COMMAND LINE BASED.

Different people need different things from their machines. For a lot of us the CL is completely unnessesary, even useless. For others it's indespensible. But if it's indespensible for YOU, don't try to tell me it's indespensible for ME becuase it's just not so.