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

Downloading BeOS

[citizenc]

I could have sworn that I heard that BeOS was going to be given away, or something along those lines. Is this true? Does anybody have a download link or two?

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

BeOS...

[The Great Wakka]

With a little more polish (multi-user, better networking) it coulda been a contender. You can still get it at http://free.be.com, the free version. I think that Palm should open-source it; because it has some nice features (multi-thread apps, REALLY nice interface). Alas, it seems it is doomed.

Re:BeOS...

[Anonymous Coward]

With a little more polish (multi-user, better networking) it coulda been a contender.

Frankly, no. For a system with such a small user base and development team as BeOS, the product was *highly* polished. It contained virtually every feature of a modern operating system with outstanding features ranging from the kernel (true multithreaded processing) to the interface (the textual "move to" and "copy to" options are some of the most ingenious interface considerations in a long time). Tet it's obvious that BeOS wasn't a finished product, but it was definitely going places quite fast-- and if the company was actually able to get money, the rate and quality of development would have been quite impressive. Ever hear of BONE or BeOpenGL? Besides, does an OS really need to have "polish" to market? Think of a little company in Redmond and define "polished".

The real reason BeOS wasn't "a contender" is because Microsoft screwed Be over with the fine print in its OEM contract. I suggest that you read this article by Scot Hacker with an accurate description of Be's demise.

Re:BeOS...

[nehril]

One of the reasons it died is sort of summed up by this comment in the linked article:

Most of this applications section isn't really about operating systems, but about the apps available for the operating systems, so you might want to skip it if you're just looking for the OS comparisons. However, I believe that the applications landscape is an integral part of the total OS experience, so included it here.

The problem is that apps are not "an integral part" of a computing experience. They are almost the totality of it. With the exception of some supergeeks, nobody buys a computer in order to run the operating system. People buy computers to run apps. No matter how lickable the shutdown/adduser/finder screen interface is, without real apps a system is doomed. If Be had all the killer apps that people buy computers for, it would still be alive today.

Nobody cares about threading, "multimedia support", or POSIX. Users want Photoshop, MS Word, Quicken, Halo and that goofy little custom VB app that runs your small company's entire finance department.

Spare me the "OS Shootouts." Gimme the apps.

Re:BeOS...

[FFFish]

Damn straight! It's this that the alternative OS communities need to realize, once and for all. Focus on the apps, and the masses will beat a path to your door. Focus on the OS, and they'll shrug their shoulders.

Re:BeOS...

[sheldon]

Oh puh-leeze!

Nobody screwed over Be, as it was never a real contender.

I have BeOS version 3 and 4 at home, and while they were pretty cool I never found anybody who was remotely interested in them except some really perverse geeks like myself. Even the anti-MS Linux zealots universally derided it every time it was mentioned on slashdot.

Now this Scot Hacker might blame Microsoft for preventing dual boot, but it would not have mattered. If OEMs had installed BeOS on their systems along with Windows, they would have simply received a few million phone calls asking how they could free up the used space.

There was even talk at one time of Apple adopting Be, but instead went with this OS-X. But even then I don't believe Apple screwed over Be, because BeOS wasn't ready to replace MacOS and it needed the Apple commitment.

Be lacked applications, hardware drivers and all sorts of things which were necessary for it to succeed. But what it lacked most of all was a problem that needed to be solved that only it could do.

Nobody screwed Be over. Be was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong solution.

Re:BeOS...

[snarfer]

Microsoft illegally prevented computer makers from including BeOS on their computers. If any manufacturer had included BeOS there would have been plenty of apps, and of course no issues of drivers because the OS came on the computer, users wouldn't have to learn about partitioning, etc...

Re:BeOS...

[gig]

They bought NeXT in 1996 and shipped Mac OS X Server 1.0 in January of 1999, roughly two development years later. It ran OpenStep, Mac, and BSD apps. Mac developers demanded Carbon, though, which is an updated Mac application environment that make porting Mac apps much easier. So, Apple went to a plan where they built Carbon for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and then merged the platform into Mac OS X 10.0 and now 10.1. As well as Carbon, the newest Mac OS X also has Java2 and the Quartz display engine, just to name a couple of things.

The short answer is that they shipped the original Mac OS X on time, but it didn't turn out to be quite enough to migrate the platform, so they kept at it. It isn't like they went into a room promising something right away and came out four years later with Mac OS X 10.0.

Also, Mac OS 9 is not Mac OS 8.1. In fact, Apple improved the old OS so much that there are still people who don't want to leave it. The quality of Mac OS 9 gave Apple a lot of breathing room that nobody thought they had in 1996.

Re:BeOS...

[sheldon]

Prove it.

It's convenient to say that Microsoft illegally prevented it, so therefore it never grew.

It's much harder to prove that without this scapegoat Be would have been successful. There were plenty of computers available with Be on them, but nobody bought those. Why is that?

PDF version of this html article

[rcatarella]

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

Re:PDF version of this html article

[Hal-9001]

For those like me who kept getting a 404 looking for the PDF, an HTML version of the entire article is available here.

Re:PDF version of this html article

[srvivn21]

One of the more interesting innovations in OS X is the fact that PDF technology is pervasive in the operating system -- the Quartz display engine is built on top of Display PostScript, as was NeXTStep's. This means it's possible to output from any application that can print directly to PDF. Select Print, then click Preview. The document is rendered to PDF and displayed in the built-in Preview application. Do a Save As... and you've got your PDF. No need to purchase or install Acrobat, and no need for 3rd party software to integrate with particular applications. It's just there. Very nice.

The printable version of this document was created with this technique.

No wonder I can't find the PDF. It's on Scot's desktop machine. &lt/humor&gt

Wow.

[PopeAlien]

One of these users was Scot Hacker

I'm just jealous of that name.. are you sure thats not a psuedonym?

Re:Wow.

[MisterBlister]

I hear his kid's names are "Elite", "Supafly" and "Ownju".

OS Preferences

[Mr_Matt]

From the article:

Bio-diversity is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of open source software. It is what will keep Linux thriving no matter how depressed the tech industry gets (unlike Be), but it is also that which practically guarantees that the Linux experience will never feel internally consistent.

That last sentence was the one that intrigued me - is "internal consistency" something that people really look for in an OS? Speaking for myself (somebody who spends 90% of their time at the CLI) I've never really had a complaint in the "internal consistency" department - in fact, I've always liked the fact that Linux has kind of a TMTOWTDI feel - I can set my desktop up completely differently than the guy in the next WorkCube and be productive as hell.

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?

Re:OS Preferences

[SoftwareJanitor]

Eh? I just cut-n-pasted from Nedit to "Advanced Editor" and KWord... It worked with no problem at all. What is even "sort of" impossible about that?

Re:OS Preferences

[Violet Null]

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.

Re:OS Preferences

[Anonymous Coward]

I like being able to highlight a whole page full of HTML (say this one, for instance) and cut and paste it from Internet Explorer into Word XP.

Graphics, layout, the whole thing.

Maybe you need a paper tape punch/reader. That's a proven, reliable means of cutting and pasting plain ASCII characters from one program to another. I was doing that back in 1975 on a Teletype ASR-33. Running a time sharing system, kinda similar to Unix.

Re:OS Preferences

[SlamMan]

Well, sure it is. Being a mac and windows person, I'm trying to learn linux, using yellowdog on some apple hardware. Half the basic programs refuse to run (such as shutdown, even. I have to use reboot). Consistancey of such basic things is really an impediment to using and learning linux. When man pages reference commands that don't exist on your system, also, an impediment to learning.

Re:OS Preferences

[Mr_Matt]

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.

Right, I misspoke. Thanks for clearing me up. :) Your last point (new computer users want just one way to do it) is the heart of what I'm getting at - is "internal consistency" (using middle-mouse only or CTRL-C, CTRL-V only for cut-n-paste) something that users of an open-source OS really want?

You may or may not have used DOS systems, but every application in DOS that had a GUI looked (and worked) differently.

And boy, were they confusing, too. :) But then we made the Great Leap Forward from DOS 6.22/Win 3.1 to Windows 95, all of a sudden, my computer knowledge was useless, and my computer got really boring. You make an excellent point that the fractured approach to user program interfaces is confusing as heck to a newbie, and I agree wholeheartedly. I guess what I'm wondering about is this: is making Linux (or insert your favorite open-source OS here :) more "internally consistent" something that we, as its users, really want to do? I mean, if all you want is one way to do something, then Windows works just fine :)

Re:OS Preferences

[Samrobb]

I guess what I'm wondering about is this: is making Linux (or insert your favorite open-source OS here :) more "internally consistent" something that we, as its users, really want to do?

Yes. Most emphatically yes.

This does not neccesarily mean that my desktop will look (or behave) anything like yours. To me, it means that when I configure my system so that "shift-rightclick" means "copy the current selection to the clipboard", all my applications pay attention to my configured preferences.

This is a real basic issue of *nix user-friendliness (primarily for X apps - GNU tools have gne along way towards helping "standardize" command line interfaces.) I expect my computer to do what I tell it to do, and what I have configured it to do, not what some l33t hax0r d00d thinks it should be doing.

Re:OS Preferences

[Violet Null]

Your last point (new computer users want just one way to do it) is the heart of what I'm getting at - is "internal consistency" (using middle-mouse only or CTRL-C, CTRL-V only for cut-n-paste) something that users of an open-source OS really want?

Well, personally, I want everything done my way. =P I, for instance, don't like to use the mouse, and if CTRL-C copies highlighted text in all the applications I use and CTRL-V pastes it, I'm a happy person. I'm not tied to CTRL-C and CTRL-V (that's just what Windows uses, so everyone else does too), but I would like it to be consistent. IMO, the best way to handle this would be to allow the universal keystrokes to be definable so that I could make, say, CTRL-P be the "paste" shortcut in all of my applications. The OS (or it's GUI shell) would catch the preferred keystroke and pass on system-defined messages, which the applications would look for, instead of keystrokes. Not going to happen anytime soon, but still nice to think about.

As to making Linux internally consistent: I'd like it to be so, yes. I prefer that all of my computer knowledge become obsolete only with major upgrades, as opposed to each time I install a new application.

Re:OS Preferences

[harlows_monkeys]

I can set my desktop up completely differently than the guy in the next WorkCube and be productive as hell

That's not what people mean by internal consistency. Consider, say, scroll bars. How many ways could scroll bars reasonably work? Let's look at some decisions that a scroll bar designer could makes:

1. Direction. Is the scroll bar logically moving the document in the view, or the view over the document?

2. Does the thingamajig in the scroll bar indicate just the position of the view, or the siz also?

3. How do you control scroll direction? Clicking in arrows, or do different mouse buttons scroll different amounts?

4. What specifies the distance you scroll per click? One line? Or maybe it depends on where you click (classic X behaviour)

Internal consistency means that whatever choice is made for all these (whether made by the system designer or by you) applies everywhere. You aren't going to be "productive as hell" with 10 apps open if each one is doing scrollbars totally differently, and menus totally diffently, and uses its own keyboard shortcuts for common operations, etc.

Re:OS Preferences

[harlows_monkeys]

I guess what I'm wondering about is this: is making Linux (or insert your favorite open-source OS here :) more "internally consistent" something that we, as its users, really want to do? I mean, if all you want is one way to do something, then Windows works just fine :)

You are still confused. "Internally consistent" doesn't mean that there is only one way to do things. It's perfectly fine for my computer to use CTRL-C for cut and yours to use some kind of weird mouse gesture, for instance.

What "internally consistent" means is that when I tell my computer I want to use CTRL-C for cut and you tell yours that you want to use that weird mouse gesture, the system and all applications obey our preferences.

Re:OS Preferences

[benedict]

Internal consistency is what lets you know that "-r" is likely to mean recursive and "-v" is likely to mean verbose, etc.

Re:OS Preferences

[Howie]

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?

For end-users, it's important. As an example, if I go to the Control Center thingy in my desktop and change the Theme, not all of my windows change to match it? Why? because xemacs, xedit, ddd and koffice don't actually take any notice of the GTK settings. As an end-user, I shouldn't have to care about things like that - they should work together, and in a predictable way.(*)

Assuming for a moment that the general desktop is a target audience for Linux, then it's an important thing to behave at least as consistently as say MacOS or Windows (not that I find MacOS all that consistent, personally).

(* Yes, I know it's a bit contrived, and I seem to recall there's a GTK xemacs nowadays, but whatever...)

Re:OS Preferences

[sulli]

is "internal consistency" something that people really look for in an OS?

Yes. For a desktop OS, when you are "deploying" 1000s of laptops to salespeople and adminstrative assistants, it damn well better be "internally consistent" to make training possible (surprising as it is to me, many, many people need training to use a PC) and to keep help desk costs under control.

Re:OS Preferences

[spitzak]

This cannot be done the way X works.

PS: I am NOT defending this lame-o design!

Under X the window manager (and other programs, but few, if any, actually do this) can "grab" a key or mouse combination. A key combination is a specific set of shift keys held down plus a single key on the keyboard. For instance "Alt+A" can be grabbed, but this will leave A and Alt+Shift+A and all other combinations ungrabbed. A mouse button can also be grabbed in the same way.

I think it is possible to grab a "set" of mouse buttons like left+right+Alt, but I know of no programs doing this. There are also numerous options for limiting the cursor to certain windows and forcing the cursor icon to a certain value, this functionality was originally designed for screen-capture programs, and all this stuff is quite irrelevant to the main use for window managers.

When something is "grabbed", when the user types that combination, it gets sent to the window manager, and the program that would have normally gotten it *does not get it*. There is absolutely no way for that program to know that it missed the keystrokes, and in fact it is impossible for a program to even find out what keystrokes are being "grabbed".

A typical Linux window manager will "grab" Alt+Tab to switch windows and Alt+left-mouse to move the window around. This means no program can use Alt+left-mouse for anything, and also means the user must hold down Alt even though there is no other reason to click on an area than to move a window.

A better design would be to have X programs indicate if they "understand" each keystroke. Keystrokes that are not understood would be passed to the parent window (ie the window manager window frame, or the desktop). This would allow window managers and other programs to "grab" as many keys as they want, with no setup (the can just look at the keys as they come in) and the applications get first dibs on all keystrokes.

Re:OS Preferences

[spitzak]

This cannot work, because it requires the defintion of a "set" of operations that everybody agrees on.

Imagine we have this giant set of actions (like cut, paste, copy...) and the system turns keystrokes into these. Then I invent a new program that has this really good action called "frob". If this system is badly designed, it is impossible for me to make this program work without registering "frob" with the X consortium and every single machine being reprogrammed to produce "frob".

Now that would be a stupid design, so lets assumme I can just put "alt+F in my program does frob" and it works on all normal setups. But what if somebody has said "alt+F is Copy". Either Copy does not work in my program, or it is impossible to get "frob". You lose in either case.

The only thing that will work is standardization of what the keystrokes themselves do.

Re:OS Preferences

[spitzak]

Bzzt. Wrong. There is no central database that Windows programs read to figure out their key bindings. In fact the bindings are picked by the application writer the same way Linux ones are.

All modern KDE and Gnome Linux programs copy the same keybindings that Windows programs use, and are just as consistent as Windows programs.

There are *old* Linux programs, such as editors with older command sets. There are also programmers like me who disagree with some ctrl key editing combinations (everybody agrees on cut/copy/paste/undo, but I cannot function unless ^D deletes forward, ^A to start of line, ^E goes to end of line, and ^K deletes to end of line, these often show up in Windows programs for the same reasons). There are also bugs and design mistakes (the whole cut & paste verses the middle-mouse copy & paste, which is really drag & drop in disguise but confused with cut & paste by endless numbers of X programs).

But there is nothing in the Windows system that isn't in Linux forcing the keybindings. And there is no reason for the same forces that make Windows programs "consistent" to not work for Linux.

Re:OS Preferences

[overunderunderdone]

is "internal consistency" something that people really look for in an OS?

Yes!! Most people have been pointing out that consistency is important in the UI particularly for first time users. Of course UI consistency is usefull even for advanced users - after all even the most advanced user might on occasion use a piece of software that he is not familiar with - if there is no consistency he is not able to take all the knowledge and skills that make him an "advanced user" and apply it to the new unkown application. For that application he is essentially a "first time user" and must struggle through the learning curve all over again. If the UI is consistent he probably already knows how to use it even though he has never laid eyes on it before.

But internal consistency goes beyond just the UI. Consistency is important under the hood too. Why do you think the Linux crowd is always pushing open standards? A standard is simply a way of maintaining consistancy. Without some level of consistency you wouldn't be able to get anything done. A system that is designed as a whole rather than cobbled toegether from a variety of components has the potential advantages of enforced compliance and more comprehensive standards. The decentralized organic evolving "cobbled together" compenents of GNU/linux has other advantages but the more it can be standardised and so become "internally consistent" the better and more useful it will be.

but for the legions of DIY'ers out there, is this something to be worried about in an open-source OS?

That depends: Do you want it just for the sake of being a DIY'er or do you want it to be an effective tool? Do you want it to be an effective tool for other people to use it or is it just for yourself? If actual use is a secondary concern to the joy of doing it for yourself and you don't care if anyone else will use it then consistency is not so important. If on the other hand being a useful tool is important then internal consistency is very important.

Re:OS Preferences

[binarybits]

I'm gonna comment on both this comment and its children since it relates to the whole thread...

Neither Mac OS *or* Windows forces key shortcuts on apps. Doing so would have all sorts of problems. If I wanted to write a Mac OS app that uses command-t for paste, there'd be nothing stopping me from doing that.

What has made Mac OS and Windows apps consistent is that Apple and Microsoft (or at least Apple, I imagine Microsoft is the same) publish very specific and detailed UI guidelines instructing developers on the "correct" way of doing things. They specify the standard keybindings. (paste=v, copy=c, open=o, print=p, etc on Mac OS)

Once developers start following these conventions, they begin to have the force of habit, and users start to expect them. So after a few years any developer that does anything else is flagged by reviewers and others as non-conforming, and the product in question doesn't sell as well. Hence almost all apps support the conventions, and the UI experience is consistent.

On free OS's, on the other hand, there is no central authority to set these sorts of standards, and there is no market pressure to be consistent with the way other apps do things. That's why you have so many apps with such braindead UI conventions (control-middleclick to get a scrollbar on an xterm? WTF?)

As a result, using X is absolutely bewildering for a newbie, and even experienced users are completely clueless when encountering a new app that doesn't act like previous apps.

The idea that this is a feature of *nix is assinine. Being able to change colors of backgrounds and styles of windows is great. Having different apps use different keybindings and different UI conventions is simply bewildering.

Even if you had a central repository for such keybindings, it would still be stupid to let the user change them. For starters, this would cause problems if a system keybinding overwrote a applicatin keybinding. More to the point, having everyone use the same keybinding makes it easier for others to use your computer. You aren't going to want to have to change every keybinding every time you stit down at a new computer. It's much better for everyone to just standardize on a single scheme, and then everyone expects the same behavior.

Really, who cares whether paste is cmd-v or cmd-p? It seems far more important for the convention to be consistent accross applications than for the user to be able to change it, since it's essentially arbitrary anyway. Since 99% of users are used to the Mac/Windows conventions, I see no reason for Linux GUI's not to use the same conventions. Apple put a lot of thought into the placement of undo, cut, copy, and paste, and those at the very least should stay in the bottom row. And others like (O)pen, (P)rint, select (A)ll, and (Q)uit just make sense.

I think this is a good example of why geeks shouldn't design interfaces. They seem to have an infinite tolerance for clumsy design, and no perception of how bewildering their designs are to non-geeks. Yes, shift-middleclick is a perfectly functional way to access functions on an xterm, but no one is going to just figure that out on his own. Every geek should run his GUI by some non-geeks to make sure that his design decisions aren't completely asinine.

Re:OS Preferences

[autocracy]

Yes, very important.

./configure --help ; ./configure --options ; make ; make install

Things can be confusing when this pattern isn't followed. Try compiling sendmail custom for your site before bitching about this. Thank you.

Re:OS Preferences

[gig]

NO NO NO he is not saying "I couldn't copy some text from one app and paste it in another", he is saying he couldn't use the clipboard to move sophisticated data around reliably on his Linux system. On a Mac, you can generally copy audio, video, pictures, whatever, and paste it into another app and it works. Vector graphics stay vector graphics, and so on.

Re:OS Preferences

[nathanm]

That's OK if you want the layout & formatting. 9 times out of 10, I don't, so I have to go to Edit->Paste Special, then select Unformatted Text. No shortcut key available.

Re:OS Preferences

[benedict]

I said "likely" for a reason.

Well, it doesn't really matter at this point

[Bud Dwyer]

I loved BeOS, too. It was a great operating system, ahead of it's time. BeOS beats both Windows and the classic MacOS, by far.

Unfortunately, BeOS is for all intents and purposes dead. Nothing me or you can do will change that. That's why I'm going to put my money on MacOSX every time. We all know the advantages of OSX--I mean, it's certainly the first time anyone has combined user-friendliness and good-design with the power of Unix (and a real Unix, at that).

So, sad is I am to say it, this article is sort of irrelevant. Sure, I'll keep BeOS around as a toy. But for serious work, OSX is my new OS of choice.

--
I support a US first strike

Re:Well, it doesn't really matter at this point

[IronChef]

We all know the advantages of OSX--I mean, it's certainly the first time anyone has combined user-friendliness and good-design with the power of Unix (and a real Unix, at that).

True, but anyone who really believes OSX to be user-friendly never really got to know the classic MacOS line.

In terms of GUI usability OSX is about 10 years behind OS9.

I agree that overall OSX is a wonderful thing, but IMHO Apple made a serious error by not making it feel more like OS9 WRT the interface. Why is a customizable Apple menu denied to us and the dock forced on us? Why is the method for changing file ownership even MORE obfuscated than OS9? I could go on.

I could use all my Mac apps in Classic mode in OSX, but I still spend 99% of my time in OS9. Why? For the productivity apps I use, it just works BETTER. Easier to manage files and such. By a huge margin. Lots of that is due to years of experience, sure. But a lot of it is also the design of the system.

I do love having bash on my mac though, when I need it.

Re:Well, it doesn't really matter at this point

[cpt kangarooski]

He doesn't mean the skin. That's mildly important, you don't want to fuck it up, that's true.

He's talking about the behavior that the computer exhibits when you try to do stuff. That's what UI is fundementally all about. That's why it has to be started on at the beginning of any project, and has to have a significant, controlling voice.

Using a sans serif font vs. a serif font is a minor, albiet visible, issue with the skin. That's a small UI problem. Having characters you can't type into the filename for any reason, including the number of characters or the specific glyphs, that's a big UI problem and has nothing to do with what it looks like visually.

Possible last words from Hacker:

[Anonymous Coward]

"And Mac OS X is MUCH better at serving web pages than BeOS ever was..."

thud thud thud, his site gets slashdotted

"Wait, what am I saying? Beos was a horrible web server."

Re:Possible last words from Hacker:

[A_Non_Moose]

Before you speak to soon, bro:

from netcraft:
The site www.osnews.com is running Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.4 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.6 mod_perl/1.24_01 on Linux

Oops...how does that foot taste now that the other shoe is on it?

.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually that's his real name. He must have had very cool parents :)

Mirror site coming

[shacker]

Looks like osnews is getting bogged in the traffic. I'll try and get a mirror of the article online soon.

- Scot Hacker

Re:Mirror site coming

[ryanvm]

Looks like osnews is getting bogged in the traffic. I'll try and get a mirror of the article online soon.

That was your entire post and it got modded '+5 Informative'!?! Feh - real fuckin informative.

I hate these arguments

[.sig]

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?

Re:I hate these arguments

[stego]

1) I've never hear anyone describe Windows as "as user friendly as possible". You may have never used a Mac

2) "with a GUI similar to windows" --- It would be more realistic to describe Windows as having a GUI similar to the Mac, considering which came first.

Re:I hate these arguments

[sheldon]

But then your analysis depends on what you mean by "Windows".

Are you talking about Windows 98, or Windows XP? The two are quite different. You appear to refer to Windows 98.

On the other hand Windows XP plays games, does not crash, will run all their favorite software, is useful to those who know what they are doing, considered faster and more reliable, generally more suited to business and (especially) software development.

So why do we compare them when we already have a solution that is great for all practical uses? :)

Re:I hate these arguments

[cymen]

You're not enthralled with Windows, you're enthralled with it's marketing!

Uhh... No, he is enthralled with being able to play the games he likes to play. What does this have to do with marketing? You could tie it together with a big spool of thread but if you aren't going to even bother to try at least plug the holes with some interesting personal flames or something...

Personally I happen to use Windows 2000 to play Counter-Strike but apparently it runs under wine so I'll be trying that soon. My servers run a mix of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux (debian and redhat) but I do have the solaris 8 ISOs (free download) so I'll be checking that out for the experience factor soon.

Re:I hate these arguments

[sheldon]

Faster, better support for hardware and software(especially games and older stuff with new compatibility options), improved user interface, improved manageability, remote assistance, and so on.

Despite rumors to the contrary, they aren't even close.

Re:I hate these arguments

[Steveftoth]

I can say that unless you turn off all of the new features, WinXP is not faster. And if you don't have more then the reccommended amount of RAM then it is not faster at all. I'm just comparing it to win2000, not win98. I do like the improved remote assistance, but it's not like you can't get that on win2k. You just can't get it out of the box.

Re:I hate these arguments

[mr3038]

Even so, I don't consider making a menu that reads from bottom to top any great innovation over the top-to-bottom apple menu, that's always right there at the top of the screen on the mac, performing a similar function...

But according to what I've seen very few mac users actually use apple menu for nothing but configuration (like control panel in windows) and use some weird way, like some launcher or browsing to installation folder with finder, to start apps instead. At least MS got people to start apps from one place. Yeah, most apps still force their icon on the desktop and some people start those apps from there but even so.

Re:I hate these arguments

[sheldon]

"The fact that XP is advertised as not crashing just shows MS's previous incompetence. "

So the fact that Linux now has a journaled filesystem is not a selling point because of past incompetence? The fact that all the problems identified after the Mindcraft benchmark is not a selling point because of past incompetence?

That makes no sense.

Re:I hate these arguments

[sheldon]

While I agree that WinXP(and even WinNT and Win2k) work much better with large amounts of RAM(I recommend at a minimum 256Megs)... RAM is cheap.

I can't imagine buying a computer today with less than 512Megs of RAM. Mine all have 768 Megs which is the max they hold.

Now back when I spent over $500 to buy 16 Megs so I could run OS/2, Linux and Win95... yeah RAM prices were a big deal. That was six years ago.

Re:I hate these arguments

[sheldon]

"even transfers to/from other machines linked directly to the same 100mbit switch, are noticeably slower, using samba, ftp.exe and cuteftp.. "

Hmm, I can saturate my 100baseT connection doing an ftp between my WinXP box and a Win2k server. That is, I'm seeing nearly 10Meg/sec transfer rates. I don't know you can expect faster than that.

"Remote assistance, sure.. but you had terminal server in win2k anyway"

Terminal server is not available for Win2k Pro. Comparable functionality would come from PCAnywhere, or VNC. Although VNC is very slow even on a local LAN.

"i still have a lot of older windows and dos software which won`t run, mostly games."

No, direct hardware access is not going to be available under any modern OS because it causes instabilities. But WinXP has better support for older Win95 software that didn't exist in Win2k.

"The "improved" user interface you speak of, is actually slower than the previous one"

Actually no it's not. Not with a modern video card anyway, and from a user perspective it's more efficient.

"garbage which makes it look like it was designed for children"

No, that would be Gnome and KDE.

"There are certified win2k drivers for my ATI Mach64 card (with tv in/out), yet there are no XP drivers... "

Well using a Mach64 would explain why you think the UI is slower. The ATI Rage I had at work was a dog. I have a Radeon 7500 at home which works very nicely.

That's too bad about compatibility. Moving forward, however, since WinXP is now the standard platform for both home and business users you will not see this problem. Already I've encountered a number of things which have XP support, but no support for 2k.(such as the HP Scanjet 2100c, and some digital cameras)

Metadata Reviewed

[Lysander Luddite]

Since I returned to the Mac in 97 and was using it for web work I got used to typing in the extensions to file names. I never thought this was a big deal having done it ion Windows a lot. When OSX came out and the metadata controversy reared its head I was unsure what the rancor was about.

After reading this article I can now understand why some people want a different system than that used in OSX. In some ways OSX takes a step backward by getting rid of the resource fork. On the other hand, it acknowledges the fact that to be compatible in a heterogeneous network you have to accomodate Windows and UNIX. The system Scot mentions that was used in Be sounds very intriguing. The fact that MS is moving to a database structure for their file system is also interesting.

While I would love the ability to use attributes in files like Be did, Apple doesn't have the luxury of starting from-the-ground-up. Still this was THE feature (aside from performance) that I wish OSX had. Would make Sherlock much better. Scot seemed to find some of this functionality in iTunes. Wish it was in the Finder.

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[Skirwan]

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

Minor quibble: metadata (type and creator codes) isn't saved in the resource fork, but directly in the file system.

Either way, the thing many people seem to be missing in this debate is that metadata and resource forks have not be removed from OSX so much as they've been deprecated - code that uses these apsects of the filesystem still compiles and runs just fine. It's really more of a change in Apple's recommendations and documenation than any technical difference. If you work at it, you can even get the Finder to open files using the old type/creator heuristic (more or less).

While I'll agree that BFS definitely had some far more interesting applications than HFS does, don't sell HFS short - it still beats the pants off FAT.

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:Metadata Reviewed

[HiThere]

The resource fork was quite salvageable. There was nothing to prevent any normal file from having a .normal file cousin. And that could have been an XML file, which could easily map onto the Mac resource fork.

The Mac resource fork was quite useful. It had some problems, but what doesn't. (Admittedly, this solution would require some tinkering with the GUI version of the system commands so that the pieces of the file would move together.)

If I ever design an OS, it will have a resource-fork equivalent. (I'll probably use an version of the option that I suggested. This allows text editors to edit the resource fork, but also allows specialized editors to handle them. But I may make the file location a bit more inaccessible. And I'll certainly have separate permissions.

OTOH, magic numbers and the #! solve many of the problems that resource forks handled. Any application can use structured data to place it's resource where it desires. So it's less important than it was. Except for plain text files.

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[spitzak]

You probably want to use a directory to make these files. The "data" is one file in the directory, each "resource" is another file in that directory. Then modify the gui and command-line tools so that directories work like single files unless you use the right tools to look into them.

I think you meant that magic numbers and #! replaces the metadata, and I agree with that. It would help a lot if Windows and KDE and Gnome would go back to using magic numbers rather than registries of file name extensions. The main reason they don't is that on current file systems it is way faster to read a file name than to read the first few bytes of the file.

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[Lysander Luddite]

Thank you for the clarification. Here is what caused my confusion:

"The official Apple recommendation to developers regarding the storage of file type metadata in Mac OS X (as expressed in the Mac OS X System Overview document at the time of this writing) is as follows

In Mac OS X, you indicate the type of a document by specifying two things:

• Type and creator codes stored as attributes of a file (if it is created on an HFS or HFS+ volume)
• One or more file extensions relevant to the type (for example, .html and .htm)

...

The "consequences" of removing a file name extension are actually determined by Mac OS X applications, not by the operating system itself. If I email a Photoshop document named "Logo(Second Revision)" to a Windows user and my email application does not encode the file type information in the file name by appending the appropriate ".psd" file name extension, then the recipient may have trouble opening the file.

Unfortunately, Apple does not recommend that applications that move files across platforms behave in this manner. Instead, as we've seen, Apple recommends that Mac OS X applications encode file type metadata in the file name as soon as the file is created. This "solves" the interoperability problem in that any file created in this manner can be sent to another platform without encoding file type metadata in the file name at the time of the transfer. But it requires Mac users to live with file name extension the rest of the time as well.

From: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metad ata-8.html#macosx-file-types

More info is also available at:http://people.ne.mediaone.net/siracusa/proposal .html

In any event, I apologize for my stupidity. In any event, what I want is to view files in the Finder and be able to sort by attributes similat to Hacker's Be equivalent.

Hey, I admitted I was wrong, surely a /. first!

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[gig]

> If you work at it, you can even get the Finder to
> open files using the old type/creator heuristic

You don't have to work at it. All you have to do is double-click a file that has a Creator and File Type attribute and no file name extension. That's billions of Mac files, created by millions of users over the last 20 years.

The issue is not whether it actually works in Mac OS X but what Apple recommends now to developers. Apple acknowledges that the Mac user runs into files all day long that came from non-Mac systems, and those files often have file name extensions and no File Type or Creator attribute, so they want Mac OS X to be able to adjust and work with a file that has only a file name extension on it. Since files are not guaranteed to have Creator and File Type attributes, Apple doesn't ask developers to always add them to files their apps create. This is so that you can bring a Java2 app over and it just works, so that Cocoa developers don't have to bother with Creator and File Type if they don't want to.

The real problem is that Apple's system for dealing with file name extensions didn't appear until Mac OS X 10.1, so most of your native apps don't use the same system when you go to save a file. Some do the right thing, totally hiding the extension from you; in Mac OS 9 you'd save a PNG file as "My Document" and it would invisibly get a PNGf File Type and you're done. In Mac OS X, you should save a PNG file as "My Document" and it will acutally be called "My Document.png" but the ".png" will be hidden by the Finder (just for that file). This only works with known extensions, and not if you have two extensions (file.jpg.vbs would never have its .vbs extension hidden). Most apps have the extension in the save box waiting for you, or have a checkbox "Add Extension" or "Hide Extension". We just traded one kind of extension management for another, instead of really getting rid of the need to manage extensions.

Apple is moving in the right direction, but it's unfortunate that this aspect of the transition hasn't gone a little better. It's nice now that in Mac OS X I can receive a Word file in email called "ch01.doc" and I can just rename it "Chapter 01" and work with it that way, and it is actually called "Chapter 01.doc" with the ".doc" hidden, so when I send the file away in email, it still works on any system. In Mac OS 9, the best I would have been able to do would be "Chapter 01.doc" because I wouldn't want to lose the Windows compatibility of the file.

Re:Metadata Reviewed

[gig]

File Type is just an attribute like Creation Date. It's part of the HFS+ file system and has nothing to do with the fact that HFS+ also supports forked files. The Creator code (also called Application Signature) is also an attribute. As Scot Hacker pointed out, you don't have to use the Creator code as the primary method for determining how to open a document, but it is a great last-ditch bit of information to have. If all else fails when trying to open a document, it makes sense that the application that originally created it can open it.

Files on Windows have Creation Dates and other attributes, but the file type is put on the end of the name as a file name extension because there is no File Type attribute to use in FAT16/32.

The perfect user

[Otter]

Excellent article. I say this every time an OSNews article is linked but it's still true so I'll say it again: it's a terrific site.

Scot Hacker seems like the ideal OS X user. Unlike hard-core Mac users, like most of the OS X audience, he doesn't have Mac desktop environment that's tweaked exactly the way he wants and his hands don't automatically issue Finder commands. He's extremely at home at the command-line and can tap the power of the Unix underneath but still appreciates an elegant, consistent GUI. (Unlike desktop Linux fans, who consider middle-button text pasting that may or may not work between apps from different toolkits to be perfectly satisfactory integration.) And, as he said, when you're coming from Be, it doesn't take a lot of software to look like a vast cornucopia of available apps.

The one thing that surprises me is that the speed didn't bother him more. The biggest thing BeOS had going for it, besides that file system, was blazing, silky-smooth speed, whereas all the OS X systems I've seen dragged their butts. (Admittedly, I haven't used 10.1.) He did have a really fast box, though.

Re:The perfect user

[ArsSineArtificio]

The one thing that surprises me is that the speed didn't bother him more. The biggest thing BeOS had going for it, besides that file system, was blazing, silky-smooth speed, whereas all the OS X systems I've seen dragged their butts. (Admittedly, I haven't used 10.1.)

That's what you're missing, then: the speed jump from 10.0 to 10.1 is massive, even on what now amounts to "lower-end" machines.

Re:The perfect user

[shacker]

Hunh? I spent quite a bit of time - a couple of pages - talking about how painful the speed difference was. I also noted that i'm not sitting on my thumbs waiting for OSX, but that multitasking compared to BeOS is abysmal.

Re:The perfect user

[spitzak]

Middle-mouse cut & paste works just fine between these two and every other X program I have ever seen.

I think you mean the command-key based cut & paste, which admittedly does not work.

The problem here is that most programs originally used the middle-mouse buffer for this. This totally confuses Windows users because selection of text to replace trashes the buffer, so there was a decision (used by Motif & GTK, and newest versions of Qt) to use a different buffer for this. Unfortunately older programs will still use the older buffer (or don't have command-key cut&paste at all) and thus do not interoperate.

Re:The perfect user

[namespan]

the speed jump from 10.0 to 10.1 is massive, even on what now amounts to "lower-end" machines.


I can confirm that; I'm running 10.1 on a Powerbook G3/333Mhz with 320 MB RAM, and I rarely notice slowness. I do notice that 9.x is much snappier, but I'm fine in 10. Even running classic.

Re:The perfect user

[gig]

Mac OS X systems aren't as slow as all that. It's just that each OS and GUI has its slow parts and fast parts. When you switch over, you notice immediately if the new system has a slow part where your old system had a fast part, while you often miss the new system's fast parts because you are in the habit of waiting on the old system. As you work with the new system, though, you quickly learn its fast and slow parts and suddenly you are literally "back up to speed".

In Scot Hacker's case, he is obviously going to find the file system in Mac OS X slow, because that was Be's greatest strength. Windows users might find the file system slow because Mac OS X is writing a lot of stuff there so that it can make a bunch of things easier on you (Scot Hacker found this out when he renamed all his MP3's and iTunes could still find them through HFS+ node numbers). Mac OS 9 users find that the GUI is not as instantly responsive to their touch, but soon they notice that they don't have to wait for stuff to finish before they go on to the next thing, and you make up the speed with the multitasking.

Also, things don't just appear in Aqua, they fade in and fade out. Some people think this means the system couldn't have made the item appear instantly, and call it slow. Mac OS X also has five or six application environments and is working in full Unicode and can use almost any font file ever created (OpenType, TrueType, Type 1, even TrueType fonts that have been created in the Windows format). It's doing a lot of things for you that you may not be thankful for at first, but you will be later when you can just take a font file and put it in your Fonts folder and use it without getting a converter or whatever.

I have also read a few reviews where the guy is used to using a Pentium desktop machine, and he auditions Mac OS X on a PowerBook or iBook. While the PowerBook and iBook are very fast computers, they use notebook hard drives just like any other notebook, running at 4200rpm usually (except the 5400rpm 48GB drive in the high-end PowerBook). Hard drives are one of the big bottlenecks in today's computers, so the guy is going to notice something even if he was reviewing a Windows notebook. The fact that the PowerBook feels like a desktop machine in every other way only makes it easier to forget that the hard drive is a fact of life, not a Mac OS X thing.

My main point is that using Mac OS X is not like switching to last year's Windows machine or something. Some things are a little slower for no reason, some things are a little slower for good reason, some things are faster and you notice, and some things are faster and it takes you a while to notice.

Personally, I've found a really good rhythm in Mac OS X where I just keep working and working and the system generally never interrupts me or slows me down. When I do use Mac OS 9 occassionally, at first it feels faster, but then I notice that I have to wait on certain things that I'm not used to waiting on, and I end up thinking Mac OS 9 is slower.

It's so subjective. I recommend Macs to almost anybody who works with anything other than just text, but if they can get to an Apple Store, I tell them to go hang out there for a few hours or days and let their own feelings and observations be their guide. Most people who know nothing about Macs and then spend an hour in the Apple Store touching all these working, connected machines get a whole new idea about Apple's computers. Maybe you don't end up buying one, but at least you have expanded your true knowledge of the tech and the tech industry. Replace the old 1993 vintage Bill Gates FUD you "know" about the Mac with an honest 2001-2002 opinion about what Apple is offering you and your business. At the very least, it may make you demand more of your current vendor.

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

[e271828]

Also, the release notes for AppleScript Studio states as a "known issue" that "AppleScript Studio does not currently support other OSA languages."(emphasis mine) This holds out hope that this excellent tool will support Perl etc in the future.

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:scripting in MacOS

[melatonin]

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

He also says that Be's BMessage system is more advanced, and then goes on to explain it. His explanation makes me wonder, does he even know how AppleScript works? There are several things in his essay (which is very well done and an overall very balanced view, especially for an ex-Mac hater) where he complains about OS X saying "Be had it," where he knows 100% about Be and about 10% of OS X :P

If you replace "BMessage" with "AppleEvent" in his description, you basically end up with a description of the AppleEvent model, and AppleScript is just a front-end to that model.

It's cooler in OS X's Cocoa environment, where you don't have to use AppleEvents, the Cocoa objects are the AppleScript objects. If you do

tell app "My Cocoa App"
myString = "foobar"
count myString
end tell

You're basically telling the Cocoa app

myString = [NSString stringWithCString:"foobar"]
[myString length]

Unfortunately, with Cocoa apps I've noticed in a few places the behavior of some things are a little broken from traditional AppleScript... hopefully they'll get around to fixing them... and I'll file some bug reports.

And other Objective-C objects/Cocoa objects (including view objects with AppleScript Studio) behave that way. Plenty of coolness and advanced-ness there, IMO. Try to hack that with C++ :)

Also similar is the cropping example about picture clippings. Mac OS had that since 7.5, it's just that the Preview app doesn't let you drag & drop clippings :P The very cool SimpleImage X does, though.

Apple has a habit for leaving blatant holes in their stuff to leave room for developers (unlike MS, who wishes to be the only developer). Sort of like how the AppleScript Script Editor app didn't have search and replace for years :P

You gotta admire him

[WildBeast]

I mean this guy always manages to become an extremely experienced user of a doomed OS.

Re:You gotta admire him

[90XDoubleSide]

"Apple Computer: going out of business for over 20 years"

You have no idea how happy I was when C|Net ran an article a few weeks ago that contained the phrase, "beleagured PC makers Gateway, Compaq and HP" ;)

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.

Re:About the free version

[Hal-9001]

Here is how to make a BeOS install CD from a BeOS Personal Edition install.

Here is how to perform a bootstrap installation of BeOS Personal Edition onto a separate partition by using an intermediate BeOS Personal Edition installation on an existing FAT partition.

These tips come from the Miscellaneous BeOS tips category, which can be found here
.

The only thing worse...

[AugstWest]

...than clicking on a slashdotted link is clicking on a link that works, getting 3 or 4 pages in and interested, THEN having the site get slashdotted....

I obviously cannot speak for everyone.

[2nd Post!]

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).

Not the original poster here but

[Anonymous Coward]

And, for the record, the two main beos projects by lost souls are BlueOS and OpenBeOS.

Re:Offtopic: Caching

[cloudmaster]

Score:-1 beat-to-death

Want a cache?

1. Copy the url from the link in the article (right-click followed by "copy url" usually).
2. Go to http://www.google.com/ (leave off the www if you're in a *really* big hurry)
3. Paste the URL into the search box, and submit the form.

Kapow! Almost instantly, there you have a link to google's cached copy, if one exists. Perhaps this should be in the Slash FAQ, or printed out and taped to everyone's monitor. For a little more effort, you could use some javascript to strip the http:// off of the current selection and replace it with "http://google.com/search?q=cache:" to automagicaly go to the google cache of whatever URL is currently selected in your browser (for those times when people helpfully make their link text the URL of the link).

Re:Huh?

[shacker]

Shall I fax you a copy of my driver's license? ;)

- Scot Hacker

The dude doesn't really grok graphics, does he?

[jcr]

He said: "Because the Quartz display engine is vector-based, it's possible to do things like providing sliders that adjust the size of the photo-quality icons from miniscule to immense with no dithering."

That bitmap-resampling that you see in the Dock isn't a simple dither, but it has nothing to do with vector drawing, either.

-jcr

Re:The dude doesn't really grok graphics, does he?

[daeley]

For those interested, from the Apple developer site here:

"Quartz is a powerful graphics system which forms the foundation of the imaging model for Mac OS X. Quartz offers a sophisticated two-dimensional drawing engine and an advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality. Quartz's windowing services provide low-level functionality like window buffering, event handling/dispatch as well as dynamically creating the translucency and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface."

OpenBeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

New BeOS software appears consistently at http://www.bebits.com/

Also, a quite large group of people are working in OpenBeOS http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/ and after it matches functionality of BeOS5, it will be further extended. Development is early, but you can't help but take notice at the healthy amount of activity (I keep my eye on the project).

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:Offtopic: Caching

[inburito]

Extending this idea a little further...

It should be mandatory for slashdot postings to have the submitter first go through all links and submit them to google for searching and as such automatic caching and then on a sidebox provide a link to google cache of this link. This way slashdot could avoid having anything and everything cached and yet provide people the opportunity to view the cached page through google.

Everybody could be happy and all the content would be cached.. how about that?

Re:Huh?

[sprayNwipe]

Exactly. Everyone knows Hacker died while trying to launch the Hacker Hellstorm. Damn you, Bud B. Boomer!

Re:MacOS X, Darwin and cheaper kit

[Dredd13]

I can't think of ONE person who would rather pay $3000 for a G4 with a pretty case instead of $1000 for a PC in a grey box that's easily twice as fast (except in Apple's famous "Photoshop bakeoffs").

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.

Arrgh!!!

[sulli]

To burn a data CD, you drag the volume toward the Trash.

When will they ever learn? Don't those numbnuts at Apple know that this is the #1 most annoying and stupid thing about the OS, and has been since - oh, I dunno, 1987?

Re:Arrgh!!!

[daeley]

Dorkenheimer Maximus, feel free to click on the disc and select "Burn Disc" from the File menu. Sheesh.

Re:Arrgh!!!

[MadMoonie]

To burn a data CD, you drag the volume toward the Trash.

When will they ever learn? Don't those numbnuts at Apple know that this is the #1 most annoying and stupid thing about the OS, and has been since - oh, I dunno, 1987?

They have learned. The Trash icon on the dock is only the Trash icon for files. Grab a volume (CD, Zip disk, external hard drive, NFS mount, whatever), and it turns into an Eject icon. Grab a volume you created to burn and the Trash changes to a Burn icon. Drag, drop, and it does just what it said it would do. Very useful...

Re:Arrgh!!!

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually it's one of the greatest triumphs of usability on the Mac. It wasn't DESIGNED to do that originally. But it _works_ really well. The 'proper' method of ejecting disks is to dismount them from the menu. Everyone's preferred the shortcut method of dragging them to the trash since before the Mac was even finished.

Read up on your history, and you'll see why this is good.

Re:Arrgh!!!

[gig]

> Don't those numbnuts at Apple know that this
> is the #1 most annoying and stupid thing about
> the OS, and has been since - oh, I dunno, 1987?

Then ignore it. It is the third method for doing things. The first two are menu command and key commands. So, ejecting a disk is File > Eject or Command+E. Very easy. Deleting files is also File > Move to Trash or Command+Delete. Burning a disc is File > Burn Disc. You can also put these kinds of things in the Finder toolbar or in the Dock if that's your preference. Or write a simple script to do them that you can save as an application.

Actually, in Mac OS X you can also eject removable disks with the F12/Eject key on the keyboard, so dragging to the Trash is like the fourth or fifth method now.

It's not as hard as it might sound. With a little instruction and a few months of practice, I bet even sulli could do it.

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

[aussersterne]

I'm an old school Unix user, and I will forever believe [forever] that users who say "command line is great, but for normal work, you want an integrated experience" --

these users do not really know what the hell they're doing in front of a command line interface. They may think they've mastered the shell of Unix or Linux, but they haven't --

because once you have, you will never really have a use for anything else -- the beauty of the shell is that all things and all functions are subsumed below it in consistent fashion, in one magnificent world-view, and all things no matter how complex become possible with a single, well-constructed command, almost like magic.

Some of my fellow Linux or Unix users will understand what I am talking about here -- using the command-line interface is not, as this author says, like carrying around a heavy toolbelt all day when none is needed. Instead, once one has truly mastered the CLI, one is like a Jedi master -- all acts are balanced, rapid, skilled, both intricate and simple at the same time -- and all things are possible and as simple as one another. I can get more work done in ten minutes with my CLI -- including editing video streams and audio streams! -- than most users can get done in days using GUI-only tools.

Of course, OSX and BeOS both have a CLI -- but neither is very useful because much of the rest of the system and the set of standard tools is gutted or malformed in peculiar OSX and BeOS ways. Users of BeOS and OSX think they are getting a CLI, but it's as though they've been trained only by Obi-Wan and never by Yoda -- the real essence of the system is muddied and lost and the benefits are never realized -- or worse -- they are driven from the concept of a CLI unduly.

That is my belief: that users who claim to want a desktop in which CLI use is normally avoided really don't understand and haven't yet mastered the CLI -- because once you have, anything else feels like a straightjacket.

MHO

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

[bnenning]

Of course, OSX and BeOS both have a CLI -- but neither is very useful

Have you used Mac OS X? What's wrong with its CLI environment? It's pretty much a full BSD installation.

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

[babbage]

...and I will forever think that users like you forget that the Jedi all went extinct in the Star Wars movies. Being an uber-master of the command line is a great thing -- hey, I love it too, I'm typing this on OSX right now and I pretty much always use the Terminal over the Finder, for exactly the reasons you describe. But I also know that my fiance couldn't give a damn about typing into the Terminal all the time -- she is very adept with the mouse and doesn't want to have to learn all the commands and syntax that the CLI demand, and I don't half blame her (or my parents, or our friends, or any of the millions of others that prefer GUIs to CLIs).

When Scot Hacker was talking about how having to carry around a toolbelt, he wasn't dissing the commandline, but rather the lack of point & drool simplicity that, while lacking the finesse of the command shell, also doesn't need years of training to become adept with.

And as for your comments about the CLI of BeOS or OSX not being "the true CLI", well, you're just talking out of your ass on that one. I have never seen a system that better balanced command line & graphical interface functionality better than BeOS did -- for the most part you could use whichever one you felt more comfortable with, and one would be just fine driving the other environment. Lovely. And as for the Mac, it has had AppleScript for generations now and thus could have been automated in the same ways without even having to adpot a shell until now. With OS9 and before, the "real essence of the system" *was* the graphical shell, and none of the available CLI interfaces for it (msh, tclsh, etc) ever felt like anything more than a kludge, and a broken one at that.

You seem to be making the assumption that, like Linux and (old school) Windows, the graphical shell is a crude wrapper around the text interface. That's just not the case. BeOS and MacOS have always booted directly into a graphical mode, and whatever text interface has been available has always been a service provided on top of that graphical shell, not laying underneath it as a foundation.

Your argument is thus a bit like saying that anyone that tries to change channels on their television without knowing how to manyally rewire the circuitry is missing out on the true power of the machine. Not only are you flat out wrong, you just sound silly. Knowing how to perform command line surgery is indeed an elegant trick to know, but it is not the end all & be all of modern computer systems, and hasn't been for going on 20 years now, the admirable rise of Linux notwithstanding.

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

[Steveftoth]

The only problem is that it requires you to remember too many commands.

The average person can only remember 7 things in their short term memory. Usually less, due to the lack of exercise given to their brains. Regarless, most people cannot remember all that a cli has to offer unless they use it all day long. IMO, a gui is easier to use when you don't know anything and easier to remember.

Most people can't touchtype. They have to look at the keyboard while they are typing to do anything.

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

[yuriwho]

Sounds to me like you have never used OS X (or BeOS for that matter). If you were truly a jedi knight of the command line, you would have little trouble with OS X. I think you have only been trained by yoda (Solaris/Linux etc) and not by Obi-Wan (bsd, next).

If I am wrong, please tell me how the CLI on OS X is gutted or malformed.

Y

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.

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

[Nailer]

I know bash, some python and C, and administer CLI Linux servers for my day job. At hoem, and on my office destkop, I do about 95% of my work via a GUI. Here's why...

On a techncial level, poor engineering is evident in the CLI's lack of consistency. Nobodies quite sure how formatted output should look. ifconfig looks different from host that looks different to route. Any good CLI should seperate content from presentation, but this is never the case (unless talking about runlevels). Hence `text processing' which is as nasty way of dealing with data in the order of Microsoft Word.

But more importantly: an ordinary computer user writes documents, send email, does archiving, has PDFs top be printed of shown on screen, wants to view web sites with plugins, etc etc etc. Some people just want to get their work done. Sure, they could learn tar, zip, bzip, lha, lhx, their various switches, and learn about piping and redicrection, but maybe they're got actual work to do (remember, the computer is an means to an end, and most people want their means to be easy to pick up and use. I'm know all these command lines switches of the top of my head myself, but remeberingtyping tar -zxvf "whatever" takes longer than clicking the file and hitting enter or clicking three times in KDE to extract it. yes, the GUI saves time. Something that takes multiple uses of ls, sort, and wc is easily accompilished with a single click using Konq's sorted list widget.

You might be a mechanic, others want to drive. And if you didn't build your own car fram scratch I'll bite your troll and call you a hipocrite.

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

[auntfloyd]

hell probably even serve web pages all without leaving the comfortable enclave of EMACS.

There's no "probably" about it. Phase does all that and more.

And I don't see how a vi user can deride "obscure commands and syntax?" But then, I never understood people who stuck to modal editors. Sure vi (not vim) is nice for configuring a newly-installed OpenBSD box, but it only takes a single pkg_add to install the latest XEmacs, and who needs vi after that? (except for recovery, of course!)

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

[hey!]

This old debate, eh?

Speaking as somebody who was well versed in the UNIX shell use and programming for years before the advent of GUIs, I believe GUIS and CLI each have their relative advantages on a task by task rather than an application by application basis. If I have a directory with a hundred files, and I want to copy ten of them based on some arbitrary criteria not addressed in the file names or the available filestystem metadata, then it's much better in a CLI. If I want to do them based on mod date, it's a wash. If I want to do it based on some metadata sarch or by using regexp matches on the file name, CLI wins.

Another example of this comes in graphics intensive applications, like GIMP, or perhaps a GIS. It's essential to have a GUI, but having a scripting environment really empowers users.

As far as the original poster's idea that CLI gives you full access to an application's power and that GUIs do not, this is partially true. CLI design is forgiving -- you can just pile on options -- although there is an art to this as well if you are old enough to remember the Software Tools movement. GUIs are much harder, and in practice you have to sometimes sacrifice some goals for clarity.

The key to good design in either kind of environment is providing the user what I think of as "leverage" -- the power to get tasks done. This is more important in practice than giving the user every capacity you can think of.

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

[babbage]

scripts you create can be combined with pipes and sockets and allowed to communicate in various ways.

Right. Hence, AppleScript. Hence, the macros that you can save in fully graphical applications like Photoshop or Office. What you & the parent are describing is indeed a very powerful thing, but it's naive to assume that it's only a property of CLI environments -- well designed GUIs can do it just as well.

And as for your TImothy Leary / Gene Roddenberry styled comments about each ~user directory being it's own universe, err, ...I really have no idea what you're talking about and I don't think you do either. You're describing a multi-user system, and that really doesn't have anything to do with CLI or GUI oriented computing. Your dotfiles can configure both the command shell and the graphical environment, both on Unix, Linux, and OSX, and to a large degree this is portable across different environments (I've used some of the same dotfiles on Solaris, SuSE, Redhat, BeOS, and now OSX). To the extent that a multiuser system can be personalized by different users, by *both* the command line *and* the graphical shell, that's a nice thing. But to the extent that these personalized environments stop resembling each other, hindering portability across platforms and confusing different users, it is a detriment. But either way, it really has nothing to do with a CLI vs. GUI debate, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say with these condescending remarks of yours...

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

[Steveftoth]

If you only care about yourself then why express your opinion? Nobody should listen to you.

You shouldn't say that everyone should use the CLI and then declare that if you can't use the CLI you are a moron.

Do you also think that computers should only be used by an elite class of superhackers?

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

[gig]

The command-line in Mac OS X is just a single application called Terminal. It's kept in the Utilities folder. Promoting its use over other applications that have more graphical interfaces is foolish. It's like you're saying, "stop using Photoshop and Pro Tools to edit your graphics and audio; you can use Terminal instead". Hello? No, you can't. The artist, director, songwriter, musician, etc. etc. are not going to find switching to a command line is all that advantageous. They require a graphical environment for their work anyway, so why not drag and drop files just the same way they drag and drop image objects or audio segments?

What you're also missing is that you love the consistency of the command line, and you've tried Windows and balked at all of its inconsitencies. On the Mac, the GUI has traditionally been just as internally consistent as your command line is. When I want to select two graphic objects in Fireworks, I hold down Shift and click on one and then the other and they are both selected; when I switch to Finder, I can hold down Shift and click on one file and then another and they are both selected. I can drag these selections into other apps and that works; I can drag selections to the Finder and they become files or clippings as required. The menus are consistent; the key commands are consistent. Just as you see the structure and beauty of the command line, we Mac users see the structure and beauty of a good GUI.

In a way, your argument identifies you as the perfect Mac OS X user. You can spend 80% of your time in the shell and find yourself happily using a consistent GUI for other things that make more sense there. Guys like you are buying iBooks and making iMovies while shell scripts do something in multiple translucent terminal windows in the background.

And recommending that a person boot their system without a GUI is like saying that they should ignore the bulk of the world's application software, even though their machine can run it. You don't have to choose CLI over GUI or GUI over CLI in Mac OS X. You can use what you want, in the way that you want. The UNIX subsystem is wide open for the UNIX power user to really do what they want. No reason not to access it through a graphical application.

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

[gig]

> Then you should try imagemagick. Rocks your
> head off for ceratain tasks. Like converting
> beetween 100 different fileformats or adding
> logos to images. Far more easy than photoshop
> when dealing with lots of pictures.

I'm sorry, man, but that is just an asinine thing to say. Photoshop and Fireworks are totally recordable and scriptable. If you want to add a logo watermark to one billion images, you record yourself doing it once and apply the script (called an Action) to the other 999,999,999 images. All graphically. In Fireworks, any set of steps that you do can be saved as a Command, which can then be applied to a billion files using the Batch Processing dialog. If you need something really esoteric, you can edit these scripts by hand. Fireworks' scripts are just JavaScript. Once you've recorded an action once, you can use it again and again, right from where you're also painting and drawing and applying filters to images.

Honestly, Photoshop is to graphics what UNIX is to files. It's nice that there are command line tools for working with images in certain ways (obviously this scratches an itch for somebody) but to recommend that kind of thing to an artist is like telling Linux Torvalds to use Windows 3.1 because it has a command line, too. I see people marveling that Mac OS X supports "alpha channels" like it's some kind of amazing thing, when on the Mac, full support for 32-bit graphics is old, old hat. Even icons have been 32-bit since Mac OS 8.5. It's basic stuff for a platform of artists, video editors, and multimedia people.

We Mac users are not just sitting her poking around with a mouse cursor, wishing for the internal consistency and scriptability of the command line. Our GUI has been internally consistent forever, and has been recordable and scriptable for many years (8 or 9 or something). Don't make assumptions about the Mac, just go and see one at the Apple Store, or better yet, make a Mac friend online and find out what kinds of things they're doing and how and you'll get a greater picture of the diversity of general computing.

I can't believe I'm having a CLI vs GUI argument and it's almost 2002. The Mac has had a CLI built-in for almost a year now, and it has brought a few more users to the platform (although we won't really see that in numbers until the mass of traditional Mac users moves to Mac OS X fully as well). There is no more debate. You can have whatever you want from one box now, or use whatever other box has a subset of Mac OS X features that satisfies you (pure CLI guy just uses Linux on a 486, for example).

Re:MacOS X, Darwin and cheaper kit

[Dredd13]

MS has done a great job of fixing most of those problems, unless you have older hardware.

I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing porting MACOSX to intel hardware, not contracting Microsoft to make yet-another-Mac-OSX lookalike.

Microsoft may well have dealt with it, but the bottom line is that for MacOSX to get ported to intel, then APPLE has to deal with it too, and that's just a hideous black hole for resources.

D

New programming jobs for OS X? Yeah, sure....

[Wee]

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

Ok, sure: all those companies actually employ people to write Mac OS X software. How many are hiring? I can't seem to find any on the job boards. And in fact, a search on monster.com for "mac os x" for every job category and every location yields just 17 jobs. Nationwide. A similar search for "windows" in just the "computer software" category yields 1,075 results. A search for "Linux" in the same category returns 246 listings. Solaris has 301 jobs, AIX has 115, and BSD has 8 (although a BSD search for all categories returns 37 listings).

Anyway, I get your point. But the trouble is that there just aren't that many jobs for Mac OS X programmers now. And I can guarantee you that your chances of getting a programming job at Qualcomm are like from slim to none. I recently found out that two very competent and capable engineers were cut in yet another popularity contest. And in any case, most people are going to be buying commodity hardware and running Win32 software. So the jobs are going to follow that...

-B

Re:MacOS X, Darwin and cheaper kit

[DavidRavenMoon]

I happily upgraded my motherboard/cpu, but kept the rest of my machine. My friend, who uses a mac, lacks this option...

What planet does he live on? My old Mac was a PowerComputing clone. When I bought it ran a 132 MHz PPC 604 processor. It had 16 MB of RAM, a 1 GB hard drive, and 1 MB VRAM on the built in controller.

Since then (1997) I have upgraded the CPU three times, without having to replace the motherboard, and it's currently running a 500 MHz G3 processor, 192 MB Ram, has a 10 GB hard drive, USB card, and an ATI Radion PCI graphics card. This computer is now owned by my 10 year old son ;-)

Sounds like I replaced parts to me...

just a brilliant article

[RestiffBard]

I bought BeOS 4.5 and Scot Hacker's Bible, years ago. He convinced me then that BeOS was one of the greatest OSs that could have been. BeOS had more potential than Linux could ever dream of. (sacrilege, I know)

I have been very interested in Mac OS X since I first heard about it. I've been drooling over Mac Hardware since I first saw the G4 Towers and their translucent shells. Scot Hacker has a way of cementing a person's desire for something. I simply must have a Mac.

I'm beginning to think that if Scot Hacker began to extoll the virtues of lobotomy or the life of a eunuch I would fall in line. He's like the Pied Bloody Piper

Re:just a brilliant article

[topham]

Agreed.
I own a copy of BeOS 4.5 and his BeOS book. I've been tempted to aquire a Mac and OS X. Why? Because Nothing else makes sense.

I've used PCs since DOS 2.01, I've used Windows 2.01-W2K, OS/2 2.0beta-Warp Connect (complete with pull-away menus), Linux (RedHat 5+), and BeOS 3.0, 4.5 and 5.0.

I upgraded my computer at one point, installed a new motherboard (From P166 to PIII-500) and said 'Watch this...' to my girlfriend as I booted each installed operating system for the first time.

BeOS took its usual short time to boot into full GUI. Worked fine.

Linux booted in its leasurly time as per usual. X didn't run, but that was my fault, not the upgrade.

Windows95 took 3hrs to get working correctly.
No, I'm not kidding.

I liked BeOS. It was quick, smooth, awesome filesystem. Lots of potential. (I liked OS/2 before that...)

So, I figure if I buy a Mac they should go bust in 6months.

Every negative thing that Scot said about Linux I agree with. I'm an experienced user but I'm tired of all the stupid interface issues under Linux. (I don't use it enough to eliminate the problems by familiarity alone). I figure a lot of people here are blind to the issues because they are so used to adapting to it.

I was so used to the right-click menus in OS/2 for a while I felt crippled under Windows. When I sit down at Linux I don't feel empowered, I feel hog-tied. Even though it IS far more powerfull than Windows. BeOS didn't make me feel that way.

If OS X had a filesystem like BFS I'm not sure I could stop myself from buying a Mac.

Re:Huh?

[natenate]

You expect us to trust the state, Scot?

Speaking of File Systems

[UnknownSoldier]

One thing that drives me nuts in Linux is that the dam file system is case sensitive.

Can someone tell me WHY a file system needs to be case sensitive from the user's point of view?

Re:Speaking of File Systems

[SCHecklerX]

You would have loved OS/2's file system then. It was (is) cases insensitive, but does keep the case of the file. Very nice, and how it should be IMHO.

You would name a file MyFile, and it would show up as MyFile, but you could find/select it using mYfIlE, if you wanted.

Re:Speaking of File Systems

[SCHecklerX]

NTFS is based upon, and indeed written by the same guy IIRC, OS/2's HPFS.

Re:Speaking of File Systems

[Arkham]

You have just described the MacOS HFS+ filesystem exactly. HFS+ (pronounced H F S Plus) is case-aware, but not case sensitive. It's the default disk format under OSX (although you can choose UFS if you want a case-sensitive filesystem).

Your PC == your home

[mr100percent]

"Tech workers spend all day, every day dwelling within the environments provided by their operating systems. After a while, that environment needs to begin to feel like home."

Amen. I love the environment I set up with my iBook, Airport, and OS X.

I sleep with my iBook.

Re:Who needs GUI anyway?

[pressman]

Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark XPress would be awfully hard to use in CLI mode.

Re:Huh?

[jsse]

Shall I fax you a copy of my driver's license? ;)

No, just fax a copy of your article since I'm too lazy to follow the hyperlinks. :)

A loophole in the OEM License...

[kesuki]

Two words "Linux Ready" I'm pretty sure that the current OEM License doesn't prohibit leaving empty space on the hard drive, or shipping a CD with the system that includes another OS. If I could find a site that had the infamous OEM Licence on it I could be certain. Worst case scenario they would have to ship the Linux CD seperately. Those OEMs that provide Linux-only models could overnight add a 'linux ready' option to thier windows PCs. A modified linux CD that installed linux in one click setup correctly for that model of PC could be shipped either seperatly or if the license allows with the PC itself.

Of course since this is posted to /. Microsoft could well be reading it and sending the legal staff to draft up a New OEM license as we speak. However, I doubt that even Microsoft could win a court battle about leaving a hard drive partially unformatted as a user option. The trade secret status process should also delay things long enough that an OEM could start shipping systems with the 'linux ready' option before Microsoft could act, and could then SUE Microsoft for damages ala the Dr. DOS case.

Re:Who needs GUI anyway?

[ZigMonty]

I'm curious what bad things you've heard. Out of the box almost everything is off: no webserver, no ftp, no ssh. Sure, it's only one click to turn these things on but isn't that better than RedHat's policy of almost everything on by default?

Out of the box, MacOSX isn't much easier to break into than MacOS9 (read: near impossible). Of course i'm not an 1337 hax0r but I'd say it's no less secure than most base linux installations and probably more secure.

Re:MacOS X, Darwin and cheaper kit

[Dredd13]

and what do you do when the East Asian Motherboard Company decides to use the new El Cheapo chipset, causing some wonky incompatibility.

You have to remember that, with x86 architecture, EVERYTHING is - to Apple - third party hardware.

D

4 years Re:BeOS...

[wchin]

The original idea when Apple went with NeXT was that Apple would ship essentially OPENSTEP/Mach for PowerPC. The early Rhapsody Developer Previews were essentially that, and were available pretty quickly. Apple had to dust off the old NeXT PowerPC port and bring it up to speed and port it to Mac hardware, as it was originally written for the NeXT RISC Workstation that never shipped (I've seen a prototype of the m88k version, but I haven't the PPC version).

The problem with that strategy was that the major ISV's balked at the idea of porting to OPENSTEP API's. They saw it as a lot of time and expense for a platform that might not last out the year. It would not have required a total re-write as some people have suggested, but certainly it would have been a major effort. (I would personally argue that going the Carbon route was also painful and going the Cocoa route would have resulting in a better product). Plus, these ISV's would have to then maintain separate ports for Mac OS X and Mac OS X, and they weren't willing to do that - many of them had already cut out ports to anything but Windows and Mac, and were probably considering dropping the Mac anyways.

So the Rhaspody strategy was abandoned, Steve Jobs took over, Apple re-invested in the traditional Mac OS and got some good releases out the door. They also came up with Carbon, which is a re-tooled Mac Toolbox API that sits native inside of Mac OS X. In doing so, they also re-wrote the graphics layer, removing Display Postscript and replaced it with brand new code called Quartz which is based on PDF. That means re-writing the window manager as well so that it supports simultaneous display of Quicktime, OpenGL, Java2D, QuickDraw, and so on including using underlying hardware support. They also re-wrote the DriverKit layer, replacing it with IOKit which is embedded C++ based and has much broader support. The print system was replaced, the Workspace Manager was tossed and the Finder was re-written in Carbon (IMHO one of the worst parts of the current Mac OS X). Lots and lots of utilities were re-written, the BSD layer was upgraded from BSD 4.3, the kernel was moved from Mach 2.0++ (2.5 and some 3.0 extensions) to Mach 3.0++. The Classic layer was also added so that it can mingle with native apps, Java was added, Mail.app was re-written, and so on and so on. There was a lot of work put into this operating system since OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach, which basically remained stagnant for years.

In the meantime, Rhapsody did essentially ship as Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999. It was basically OPENSTEP 5.5/5.6 with a menu layout that was Mac OS Classic-ish but pretty much everything else was straight from OPENSTEP/Mach.

So... any operating system that Apple might have chosen at the time would have had to go through the wringer in order to get it to support Apple's technologies and what Apple perceives as what their customers require. It would have taken a long time, and BeOS would have been a worst choice in terms of both adapting the technology and the personnel. I think that going with BeOS and C++ would have led back to the Copland and Taligent quicksand pit. As for personnel, if Steve Jobs didn't come back to lead Apple, I'm not sure Apple would have had this resurgence.

Windows, Unix, Mac OSX, BeOS, Amiga SDK, and QNX

[dh003i]

Well, I agree...ultimately, you can't effectively compete against Windows if you want to make money. They own developers -- hardware people ONLY write drivers for Windows...same for software developers. Yea, they make drivers for other OS' too, but those come out second, and they are usually second rate. Same with software. I'm not an advocate of Windows -- this is just a consequent fact of the fact that MS is an illegal monopoly. Solution? Break the company up into a million pieces, open source their software, and prevent anyone with the name Bill Gates from owning a business.

Ok, that said...let me talk about the features of an OS that are important...I'll take it from the lowest level to the highest.

1. Functionality -- how much stuff your OS can do...i.e., how many operations/manipulations of data, ways to do things, etc.

2. Performance -- when something is operating, how long does it take? How long is load time? Boot time? What about the memory footprint in RAM?

3. Size -- how large is it? Smaller for the same functionality is better. Obviously, smaller progs tend to load and run faster, so this ties into performance.

4. Stability -- this one's pretty obvious. Does it crash or doesn't it? How often does it crash, and how difficult or easy is it to crash it.

5. Security -- related but distinct from stability. How secure can an OS keep your files? i.e., encryptions, permissions, access levels, file sharing, etc.

6. User interface -- this one's composed of several categories. Its not just ease of use, as some Macphiles would have you believe. Ease of use is important. It should also be pretty, so long as the prettyness contributes to making it easier to use & understand (anything beyond that is wasteful). But furthermore, it should allow you to get things done fast. Power features, shortcuts, etc. This is where having a command line and being able to do everything from a keyboard comes in handy. Max OSX may be easy to use, but many tasks are repetitive, and people don't want to constantly have to use the mouse.

7. Compatability -- How much software/hardware/user support does your OS have? This is where M$ gets to kick everyone else in the nuts until their eyes pop out of their head.

8. Of course, their is availability. This is where Linux gets to kick everyone else in the nuts until their eyes pop out. Having something freely available and such that any can see the code is a great benefit. BeOS doesn't get hit as hard, b/c it has a limited version available free of cost (though no source code). M$ doesn't get hit at all -- no fault in their operating system hinders them or costs them money.

Linux and BSD (yes, I know these are DIFFERENT...don't go nuts). These OS' have a great concept behind them -- that the source code should be available for all to see and analyze, and modify on. This also happens to make them free ;-). This is an ideal we should aspire to b/c it produces more knowledgeable users, and keeps them more informed and more empowered. These OS' also happen to have great power/functionality, as well as enoromous customizability. So, summing it up, Linux and BSD are all about giving the USER CHOICE. They also happen to have some very good code, as well as stability/security, and *decent* performance in typical day-to-day desktop uses, as well as great performance for networking.

On to the great Satan, Microsoft Windows. This is an OS which is a prime example of mediocracy and slovenlyness. Most things are OK, some are terrible. MS is all about standards -- that's why its so successful. More simply put, MS is about "popularity". Every hardware vendor makes makes drivers for MS and every software company makes software for MS. As long as this continues, and no other OS' get this kind of support, MS will invariably dominate. The main reason ppl don't switch from MS is because: (1) They've spend hundreds of dollars on Windows games like Descent and Tomb Raider, and don't want to waste that; (2) They have lots of MS software, and don't want to waste that; (3) They want to be able to get all the latest, greatest, and best hardware, which they can always do with MS.

Now, onto the Max OSX. Its all about ease of use. Very easy to use (though annoying not having a right click, and little keyboard menu support). Though easy to use, it is slow -- things open slow, and getting things done is slow, b/c EVERYTHING has to be done with the mouse, or almost so. Very poor performance. Its BSD-core, so good security and stability, if you configure it so. Not too much functionality -- by this, I mean, you can't customize it to your choosing. Very little User control. Apple RAMS their UI down your throat and you better like it or else (cause if you don't, and try to offer programs for modifying MaxOSX's appearance/features on the net, Apple will sue you).

Now, onto three of my favorite proof-of-point OS' in terms of performance: BeOS, Amiga SDK, and QNX. Let me summarize the specialties of each before I treat them all as one cummulative OS. BeOS -- very fast, great for graphics, great file system, fast load-time, boot time, etc. Amiga SDK -- same story as BeOS, but crossplatform and offers interestingly fast VP Assembly code, w/c is crossplatform. Apparently, code runs at near-native speeds once loaded; also, progs written in VP Assembly (w/c is like Java in cross-platformedness) load faster, b/c there is "less" stuff to load from the hard drive, and more CPU transformation (dynamic compilation) of code...CPU much faster than HD, so as far as loading, better to load less and have to "dynamically compile" it than to have to load larger thing to start w/ but not transform it. QNX -- prime example of minimalism: truely, an Orwellian OS in terms of efficiency. No unneeded junk. Now, let me summarize the advantages of these OS: namely, performance performance performance. They boot up quicker than Windows, UNIX, or MacOSX (though QNX is a "UNIX"). Programs load faster on them, tasks are performed faster, and their memory footprint is smaller.

So, what is it the USER really needs?

(1) An OS w/ the PERFORMANCE of BeOS/Amiga/QNX. Fast boot time, fast run time, fast load time, small memory footprint. This comes down to fine tuning and revolutionary thinking in terms of file-systems, algorithms, etc etc. You also need cross-platform code like VP Assembly, w/c can run faster than native code, and w/c can load faster due to less "information" on the HD, w/c needs to be transformed into binary code by the CPU dynamically.

(2) An OS w/ the POWER, FUNCTIONALITY, and CUSTOMIZABILITY of the UNIXs. In Linux/BSD/IRIX/etc, you have enormous power. Everything is customizable. You can customize your browser to selectively ignore certain images on web-sites, etc. Vast array of commands to perform repetitive tasks quickly (such as replacing all instances of ": " in a file with a TAB.

(3) An OS with the EASE OF USE of MacOSX. "Prettyness" is a secondary concern. Prettyness is only something they add to it to make it look better to OEMs. The main concern is to make the interface very intuitive, as well as quick to use. MacOSX tends to be very intuitive, but not very quick to use...you have to drag your mouse to do everything.

(4) An OS with the SOFTWARE SUPPORT, HARDWARE SUPPORT, and general INTERCOMPATABILITY as Windows. As said before, all software companies support Windows, as do all Hardware companies. For software, solutions like Wine may easy to pain for games who already have hundreds of games. But for Hardware? You need to sell companies on that, or make the drivers yourself. How do you sell companies on it? Well, you convince them that b/c your OS is so mean and lean, their product will perform v. fast on it, w/c makes it look good...this only tends to work for gaming and 3D developing software companies, though. But for other companies, doesn't quite have the same effect -- so you have to make it yourself, until your OS becomes popular enough.

What apps, outside of games and 3D progs, do you need? Well, I'll tell you what progs I usually use every day. (1) E-mail prog; (2) Internet browser; (3) Word-processor; (4) Spreadsheet; (5) Database; (6) Drawing/graphics program; (7) Media-viewing program (something that can play ALL kinds of sounds, show ALL kinds of images, and play ALL kinds of videos); (8) Encoders; (9) FileSharing prog; (10) Antivirus; (11) Various scientific utilities. This comes to 11 -- ELEVEN -- programs that I use regularly.

Is itr really that hard for people to come up with 11 GOOD programs which accomidate people's everyday needs? I wouldn't think so.

So, hows all this to be accomplished? Well, I think we start out with the IDEA behind Linux/BSD: you need a free and openly available source code. This gives uers control, and insures a project is immortalized. Maybe you even start out with the BSD or Linux OS?

But, I think thats too difficult. Like BeOS, we need to start from scratch. Our aspirations need to be towards excellence and nothing less. Linux' file system -- while more efficient than Windows and MacOSX -- simply could not be worked to be made as efficient as BeOS'. Granted, Linux has a lot of good things -- OpenSource, and many many useful commands. We shouldn't abandon any of the many many UNIX commands. But we should abandon the Linux file system...in fact, we should abandon all file systems.

It needs to be a clean break -- sometimes, a house is so infested by termites that the only solution is to tear it down and build another house. It won't be easy, and it won't come fast. It certainly won't provide a viable solution for many years...but good things come over time. The pyradmids took lifetimes to build (well, one lifetime of a pharoh, many lifetimes of the avg. Egyptian citizen, since they lived shortly). A good opertaing system may take decades to build -- and that's just to get to the core OS.

But, if you want your efforts to be worthwhile, you have to bite the bullet on one thing -- cross compatability. You need to develop on top of a code which can be run unaltered on any platform, now and in the future. That means something like Amiga SDK's VP Assembly. This does mean a performance hit in terms of run-time once somethings open -- generalized code will never run as quick as a finely-optimized piece of Asm. But it will load faster -- as its basically stored as a smaller executable, which is then translated dynamically. So you optimize the "machine" as much as possible to speed up translation and then bite the bullet on that. This is the only way you'll ever have time to really work on some fundamentals of the file-system and OS, w/o falling vastly behind and finding out your OS can't run on the latest CPU.

Then, you take it one step at a time. First, you plan out the entire system...find new revolutionary ways to make code smaller, more efficient...to make the file system quicker, for example. Of course, to give the user maximal customizability, you need to try to make everything modular. This also makes your OS faster down the line, b/c it can call and load only functions w/c are needed.

Then you proceed logically, first building a solid foundation before building atop it. You don't add new an unnecessary features to a program until you've resolved stability/security issues, as well as performance issues; you also focus firstly on improving performance. Chances are, your prog has all the critical features. LimeWire, for example, doesn't need any more features: it needs to be streamlined. Finally, when adding features -- only add needed and useful features. Don't add features just to "impress people" or make it "look cooler". Add features which are really needed.

If you want an example, lets take MS Word. MS Word had all the features it *needed* in Word 98. Now, MS is just adding new features to impress OEMS. What they really should be doing is making the program smaller, making it run and load faster. Furthermore, they don't need to make it any "easier" to use. It had a simple help system, operated by indexes and contents -- that was great. And a decent menuing and button system. Why did they need to add those stupid office assistants? Only justification, promotion. Dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator. What Word really needs, from MY experience, is faster load times and faster run-times for operations. It also needs more power-shortcuts. Making legends or equations in MS Word is an excercize in "CTRL +"ing or "CTRL SHFIT +"ing...and that's if your an "expert".

As a final note, let me say that I rarely find programs sorely lacking in features. Most progs have plenty of features -- more than you need, in fact. What I do often find is progs that are bloated, huge, slow, and load slowly.

A few additions and corrections.

[gig]

> OS X does not have a journaled file system
> (although, to be fair, I have lost power on
> this machine and found that it booted back
> up in a normal time span without appearing
> to do anything special).

Mac OS X runs fsck on each and every boot, but because of the way the HFS+ file system is constructed, running fsck multiple times on an 80GB disk takes only a few seconds, so you don't notice it.

If you check a disk with Mac OS X's Disk Utility, it actually runs fsck, and you'll notice it is done in a blink. Same with formatting disks ... takes a second or two to format an 80GB drive.

> The [long] filenames were truncated with garbage
> characters when viewed in the Finder.

They're not actually random garbage characters ... it's some kind of node number or something that is unique to that file, and so keeps shortened file names from conflicting. This is one of the top two or three "it's not going to kill me, but I sure wish it wasn't the case" types of things with Mac OS X. All you can say that's positive about it is that Apple is dealing with this issue better than Microsoft did with the similar issue on Windows.

> I don't mind AppleScript. I wish the system
> were open to other languages, but
> AppleScript does a fine job, and is very powerful.

The system is open to other languages. What most people call "AppleScript" is actually called "Open Scripting Architecture (OSA)", and AppleScript is just the default language. You can already get a JavaScript plug-in for Mac OS X.

http://www.latenightsw.com/freeware/JavaScriptOS A/ jsDownload.html

Once installed (drop it in /Library/Components for the whole machine or ~/Library/Components for just yourself), the Mac OS X Script Editor will now have a menu on the bottom left of its window where you can select the language you want to script in. Other languages are available for Mac OS 9 as well.

The Mac OS X Script menu also launches Perl and shell scripts in addition to OSA scripts.

> This is fairly minor, but it seems that some apps
> remember their window positions when closed
> and some do not. Mail.app and Internet Explorer
> do remember their exact size and position
> between runs, but Terminal and many
> others do not. This is another good candidate
> for consistency in the user experience.

Mac OS X can hosts apps with a number of different heritages, so it's definitely true that there is great inconsitency between apps than there was before. As time goes on this will probably get better, as the "Mac OS X way" emerges completely and developers are all familiar with it to some degree.

Re:New programming jobs for OS X? Yeah, sure....

[Wee]

They may be harder to find, and there may be less of them, but OS X jobs (outside of Apple) do exist.

I never said that Mac OS X jobs are non-existent, I merely said that they are scarce. So we agree. I also, in a roundabout way, said that perhaps programming jobs in other, more widely distributed operating systems are more available. I used Monster to illustrate my point because: A. it was fastest and I was leaving work at the time of my post and B. Monster, as the largest online job board, probably represents a very large sample of available high-tech jobs. I admit my post wasn't scientifically valid, and it was certainly biased (statistically, I mean), but the point stands: By any measure there are much fewer Mac OS X programming jobs than not.

You've done quite a good job of refuting me, and I hope that any aspiring Mac OS X/BSD programmer sees your post. But I fear that Mac OS X will languish in near obscurity like Be or Amiga or any older Mac OS did. (That's not flamebait, it's fact. MacOS, like BeOS and others before it, has had a very small market share and today represent only a very small percentage of the OS market. Note that Linux -- my personal OS of choice -- is included in this group of "marginal" operating systems.) If you want to be a Mac OS X programmer (for like GUI stuff or some such maybe) then you will have a much harder time finding a job than if you wrote Motif or KDE or MFC apps (again, using GUI programming merely as an example). Again, it's fact. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's true. And I'm guessing it'll be that way for a long time to come, best intentions and (semi) corporate evangelism aside. Mac OS X is still -- like it or not -- a "fringe" OS, same as Linux or BE.

But then we both still have our choice, right? And we have almost as much choice as anyone has ever had? So it's all still good. But then again I don't use BeOS...

(And as a complete aside, I had a thought: What was it that "killed" Be? What was it that made MSFT king of the hill? Why are there fewer Mac OS apps than Win32 (or perhaps even Unix apps)? The answer: Developers. People, hired by other people, that exist only to make applications tailored to a specific operating system. BeOS got bought, and then delevoper mindshare moved to something else. It moved to perhaps Mac OS X. It doesn't matter. The point is that when Be lost its developer support, it lost its viability as an OS. It lost even all hope of being anything but fringe. If Mac OS X doesn't get developer support -- say it only has one app that plays MP3s and also syncs with an iPod -- then what might its fate be? Not good, I think. In fact, I think looking at developer mindshare -- or like compiler sales -- is probably a much better metric for OS penetration than outright OS purchases, at least in terms of lange-range growth. If Mac OS X doesn't have or continue to grow this mind share then what will happen is a very scary thought.)

-B

Its horses for courses even for OSes

[DABANSHEE]

Mac OS is the go as far as desktop publishing is concerned.

W98SE is the go as far as games & application 'n driver compatibility is concerned.

BeOS is the 'bees knees' as far as music editing is concerned. Hence its the OS for the TASCAM SX-1 Integrated Audio Production Station & IZ Tech's RADAR 24, plus its the OS of choice for Edirol - Roland UA100

QNX is where its at for embedded applications, whether its the 'machine that goes beep' in hospitals or its nuclear reactors.

W2K/XP is/are where its at for the best balance of stability & compatibility for a desktop system

BSD is the server OS

Amiga classic is still consided by many to be the video editing platform. Have you seen the prices a 10 year old towered upraded video toaster goes for campared with a Wintel PC of the same age & new retail price?

Linux is the cheapskate OS for cheapscapes who have hangups about infringing on copyright, & is also the script kiddie OS of choice. Plus is the *nix OS for compatibility.

OS/2 is the bankers OS, being the OS of choice for ATM & counter teller workstations.

While Mac OSX has the potential to displace maybe more than half of the above.

That'l do for now

Re:Its horses for courses even for OSes

[Brand X]

No insult intended, and I use MacOS X at home and at work (among others in both cases), and it is my favorite in terms of user experience... and the only ones of the above that I don't currently work with are QNX and OS/2, and QNX I used to develop for (as well as VxWorks)...

That qualifier voiced, I only count three targets for OS X, and they are all gimmes.

Desktop Publishing
Will belong to OS X as soon as Photoshop and QuarkXPress join InDesign as native.
Video Editing
As of last week, secured by Final Cut Pro 3.
Music Editing
Several of the most important authors of professional grade music editing software have recently announced intent to support MacOS X. This includes solutions that were previously MacOS, BeOS, and Windows only. The ultimate status of MacOS X as a premier audio editing platform remains up in the air...

Now, for the others:

Games, apps, and drivers
Number 3, will pass classic Mac soon... plus, I've succeeded in porting linux drivers for an unsupported graphics card and camera. >:) Will never pass windows, I fear. XP will soon take the top spot, as '98/Me vanish off radar...

Server Usage
Marketshare, number 4. Capacities, number 4, with reservations on 3 (See Win2000 Advanced Server)... will never surpass BSD or Linux. Win2000 AS is another issue. SMP is OK, Memory addressing sucks. I suspect MacOS X will start featuring an optional 64 bit kernel before Windows.

Banking
Don't know, don't care, doubt Apple will ever be a contender.

Best quote from the Article:

[tb3]

Something about using Windows made me feel hypocritical and slutty.

Now there's a quote just waiting to become a sig!

Re:MacOS X, Darwin and cheaper kit

[mttlg]

I can't think of ONE person who would rather pay $3000 for a G4 with a pretty case instead of $1000 for a PC in a grey box that's easily twice as fast .

$2500 for an 867MHz G4 with built-in DVD-R/CD-RW sounds like a nice deal to me. Prices should go down even more if anything interesting is announced at MWSF next month. I don't care about the case (I would actually prefer a case with corners and flat surfaces), but the software is the selling point for me. The MacOS works the way I expect an OS to work, while Windows is just painful (I haven't used X yet, so I can't comment on its interface, but the UNIX/BSD/whatever foundation is something I am really looking forward to playing around with). Add to that all of Apple's multimedia software, and the price tag seems like a bargain. I've spent my fair share of time using Windows, and I could never use something like that as my main machine. I'm not going to buy (or build) another Windows box anytime soon because I refuse to pay for a second-rate OS dropped onto a mess of generic hardware. I know what I'm getting with a Mac, and I know it will work.

Apple's real problem isn't the price of their systems, but the price of BTO options. Last I checked, RAM was priced at $100/128MB and hard drives were $100/20GB, and you have to get at least 128MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive with any system, which will just get discarded when you max out the RAM and drop in a couple of larger hard drives. I have no need for this stuff, but I don't have the option of getting a system without them. Apple needs to either bring the prices of standard components down to something resembling reality or make "none" an option. I don't even care if the amount they reduce the price by is equal to the going price for the components, I just don't want to waste my time and money on stuff I have no need for.

What are you talking about?

[2nd Post!]

OS X is built upon the BSD bedrock; you can go download Darwin and install it on x86 or PPC systems. It's a full featured OS in it's own right, excepting that it's missing an X server out of the box. Are you trying to say that Darwin/BSD is somehow not sufficient?

Are you trying to say that OS X somehow removes functionality from Darwin/BSD with the GUI interface?

Re:What are you talking about?

[2nd Post!]

Of course. I very carefully worded myself to avoid saying "OS X is built on top of BSD" because it isn't.

My point is still valid that the BSD OS that is Darwin that is an integral component of OS X is available for download and scrutiny and that it is still a BSD OS even if it sits atop the Mach kernel. OS X *does* come with extra software and functionality, but it still doesn't mean that there isn't a full fledged Unix OS underpinning everything, with full CLI access.

I ask you again, markj02, what are you talking about, when you ask, "That's a typical mistake people make. While not talking specifically about OSX vs. UNIX, more is not necessarily better, and the total can be less than the sum of its parts.
"?

I made no mistake, I left the BSD vs Linux discussion for another topic because that's not what I was trying to address. In fact, if I read my histories and understand my facts correctly, OS X ne BSD *is* a Unix, and is not an issue of OS X vs Unix.

relatively speaking he's right though

[DABANSHEE]

The shareware/freeware scene for the Mac is pathetic compared with Windows, Linux & even BeOS

Re:relatively speaking he's right though

[jcr]

Give it a year. Apple has just become the UNIX volume leader.

-jcr

Re:Scot we're not made of money ya know

[gig]

VirtualPC is less than $100. Add it to Mac OS X and you can run Carbon, Cocoa, Classic, Java2, and BSD apps natively, and run any PC OS and applications in VirtualPC. You can have a window open with DOS running, next to a window with Windows XP running.

The speed is obviously not as good as a native x86 processor, but it's plenty fast enough to use to run about 10% or 20% of your work.

However, you're not really going to get anything from all this if you don't also use the advantages of the Mac itself. If you edit video, then this would be a great plan, or work with any kind of graphics or rich media. If you just edit text files or do office work, then Windows or Linux will do fine for you. The point is, though, that if a Mac is in your best interest 80% of the time, then for $90 you can get VirtualPC and have access to everything you "left behind", albeit at last year's speeds.

I have a friend who traded in his 1999 PC for a 2001 Mac, put VirtualPC on it, imaged his old hard drive, and now he has his old computer running as an application on Mac OS X. It runs about the same speed for the few apps he hasn't migrated away from yet.

Also, VirtualPC is a whole lot of fun. My brother just installed Windows 3.11 in it last night and we had a tremendous nostalgic laugh. It was funny to see the Windows 3.11 desktop with an Aqua titlebar above it.

Re:He doesn't understand creator codes, either.

[gig]

One of the frustrations of Mac OS X is that there are a few things where it does not yet match up to 9. It's funny to see guys come to Mac OS X fresh, knock Mac OS 9 with some old FUD, and then say that X needs a certain feature that is what is missing since 9. The Creator code is also caled "Application Signature". You can also call it "application that originally created this document". It's just information, and useful information if you can't figure out some other way to open a document. It is also easy to change with a script or utility, so a user has never been locked into one app with their documents. Apple still provides scripts to modify this, even scripts built specifically for Mac OS X.

It's like once here on Slashdot I read a post from a guy who said that the Mac was no good because you couldn't script it. Then he proposed that all GUI's SHOULD have a system where the user can record their actions and turn them into scripts, which they can then use or tweak as desired to speed up repetitive tasks. Ha ha. (For those of you who don't know, he described the Mac's Open Scripting Architecture aka AppleScript precisely.)

Mac OS 9 is a bunch of great software running amazingly well on a really antique core. If you like Mac OS X, you have to give up your old Mac OS 9 bashing FUD spreading ways. It's mostly the same stuff on a great new core. Sure, the core changes things for a lot of people, opening the Mac up to them, but it's a bit frustrating to see people like Scot (an admitted Mac-basher) amazed at DiskCopy and being able to rename or move files and have that not break aliases or dependencies, or liking iTunes or iMovie, or being able to plug in devices and they just work. Those things are core features of Mac OS going back a long way. The same people (post Steve Jobs return Apple) who brought us Mac OS 8.5, 8.6, 9.x are also responsible for Mac OS X. It's not like classic Mac OS stopped evolving while people waited for Mac OS X. The Carbon API is in both systems. A lot of stuff is the same, just rock-solid stable and more eye-catching.

Not to imply that I don't welcome each and every user to the platform, no matter what. Just think it's worth it for the new Mac OS X user to hold off on the Mac OS 9 bashing unless they also used that as well. There are so many ways that you can say "Mac OS X is better than 9 because ..." and then put your foot in your mouth when you are told that the same feature is in both systems (of course, updated and running on a better core in Mac OS X).

Re:The money factor - Cha-ching Cha-ching

[gig]

The system he has is under $3000, including flat panel display, and includes all kinds of things that he would have had to add to another system himself. Adding this to a Linux box would have worked against Linux in this comparison because he would have had to deal with FireWire (1394) or AirPort (802.11) drivers and hardware installs, when what he said he didn't like about Linux was dealing with drivers and hardware installs.

You pay one price with a Mac and get all the trimmings. It's a different approach. It works better for Scot than the do-it-yourself approach. It works better for most people. There are also COMPLETE Mac systems for $799 in a desktop and $1299 in a notebook. Many people are very happily running Mac OS X on these systems, and on $799 systems they purchased a year ago or more.

Ahhh

[2nd Post!]

Man, you're the first person I've met who doesn't seem to think outright that Apple adopting BSD ne NeXTStep is a 'better' thing.

There's a good reason for the 3 GUI APIs, though I only count 2, myself, Carbon and Cocoa, and they aren't GUI APIs, they're APIs. The third, Mac Classic outside of Carbon, only lives in OS 9. Unless you're counting Java and ObjectiveC+ as two different APIs. Likewise, Apple could hardly release and OS without a GUI; the BSD layer was a holdover from NeXT, and one I don't mind at all. Speaking from experience, since I own a OS X machine :)