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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."
It's like comparing SUVs to cars to trucks. They're all different, suited to different people's needs.
(A brief example, I'm sure everyone knows each individual point already)
Windows is for the everyday user, who doesn't mind a few crashes here and there if it means all their favorite software will run on it and the whole thing can be as user friendly as possible.
Unix is usefull for those who know what they are doing, and is usually considered faster and more reliable, and is in general more suited to business and (especially) software development.
MacOS combines the two, with a GUI similar to windows (suprise!) and more support for games and home use software, but with a Unix kernel and better reliability. I don't use them much myself, but I hear that mac's are the best choice for multimedia development (graphics especially, but they also seem to have some of the best music editing apps)
I myself prefer Windows for home use (it's all about the games) and Unix (solaris8 to be specific) for work development.
Why compare any of them in general though when they're all suited to different applications?
-Space for rent
Maybe "internal consistency" is something that a mass-marketed OS might want, but for the legions of DIY'ers out there, is this something to be worried about in an open-source OS?
Internal consistency isn't about making your desktop look like the next guy's -- it's about making the way the user interface works consistent. Experts tend to overlook this, but it's important when introducing someone new to computers.
You may or may not have used DOS systems, but every application in DOS that had a GUI looked (and worked) differently. Some had mouse support, some didn't. Some had menubars, some didn't. Some would use accelerator keys (Alt+whatever), some wouldn't. Some would have right-click context menus, some wouldn't. One of the ideas behind a good OS is that all of that would be consistent: all windows should resize the same way, so that once you learn how to resize one window, you know how to resize them all. That sort of thing. The point of the quote was that, since Linux apps are written by lots of people with little in the way of an overseeing body, it won't have the consistency that a "monolithic" OS might.
What I saw will also be dogmatic and anecdotal, as it is being drawn from my own life.
Comparing Macs to Windows is not SUVs to cars and trucks. It is not about different, or suited to different needs, though one can very clearly make that distinction.
It's *almost* like talking about luxury vehicles though, as noxious as car analogies are. You pay for the Mac experience, where the Windows world spans the whole gamut of econoboxes to SUV.
I'm going to leave out Linux and Unix for simplicity and because with Mac OS X you get BSD 'for free' since it's built atop it.
For the average (not the specific individuals), a Mac is drop in compatible with a PC, about the same way that an AMD Athlon is compatible with the Intel P4.
Macs have less quantity software, but it is not without the entire spectrum (except, perhaps, maybe only in the short term, for VB virii)
What Windows has is the ability to transform nearly any machine into a Window's platform device. Think borg, think virus. A 486? A P2? A P3? A Duron? A MP P4? You can install Windows. It's not perfect, it's not seamless, it's not graceful, but it works. That seems to be the catchphrase that is Windows.
The Mac is arguably more tightly bound to it's hardware. It *is* seamless, graceful, and clean. Perhaps it wasn't like that in the past, but right now, and for the next few iterations, OS X is going to be hand tailored for the hardware and the hardware is going to be hand tailored for the OS.
If you prefer the simplicty of a single setup, like I do, you can get one Mac PowerBook G4 for home use (video, graphics, games, movies, etc) and for work (BSD, bash, gcc, etc).
GPL Deconstructed
I'll raise my hand here and say I'm that guy. "Why?" you ask? Simple. Apple can do such a damn good job with the OS because they don't have to deal with metric assloads of third party drivers, IRQ conflicts, blah blah blah rest-of-x86-nightmare.
I'm actually very comfortable with Apple having extremely tight control over the hardware - and the integration and compatibility that comes from that, and if that means coughing up a few bucks on the hardware so they can concentrate on improving the OS instead of dealing with "this week's third party hardware shipment from China", I'm cool with that.