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MacOSX Vs BeOS ShootOut
Jolie writes: "After Palm purchased Be's assets, the future of BeOS became uncertain and a lot of users have left the platform. One of these users was Scot Hacker, mostly known for his 'BeOS Bible' book among other things. Scot tried to stick to Windows, then to Linux but he ended up with MacOSX. He has written a long and detailed article comparing, from the user's point of view, his beloved BeOS to his new favorite, MacOSX."
For those who don't like to click all day long- Here
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
It's like comparing SUVs to cars to trucks. They're all different, suited to different people's needs.
(A brief example, I'm sure everyone knows each individual point already)
Windows is for the everyday user, who doesn't mind a few crashes here and there if it means all their favorite software will run on it and the whole thing can be as user friendly as possible.
Unix is usefull for those who know what they are doing, and is usually considered faster and more reliable, and is in general more suited to business and (especially) software development.
MacOS combines the two, with a GUI similar to windows (suprise!) and more support for games and home use software, but with a Unix kernel and better reliability. I don't use them much myself, but I hear that mac's are the best choice for multimedia development (graphics especially, but they also seem to have some of the best music editing apps)
I myself prefer Windows for home use (it's all about the games) and Unix (solaris8 to be specific) for work development.
Why compare any of them in general though when they're all suited to different applications?
-Space for rent
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.
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.
I mean this guy always manages to become an extremely experienced user of a doomed OS.
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.
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.
The Personal Edition of BeOS, given away for free, can be turned into a full installation very easily. Check betips.net for details.
I'm the stranger...posting to
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?
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
What I saw will also be dogmatic and anecdotal, as it is being drawn from my own life.
Comparing Macs to Windows is not SUVs to cars and trucks. It is not about different, or suited to different needs, though one can very clearly make that distinction.
It's *almost* like talking about luxury vehicles though, as noxious as car analogies are. You pay for the Mac experience, where the Windows world spans the whole gamut of econoboxes to SUV.
I'm going to leave out Linux and Unix for simplicity and because with Mac OS X you get BSD 'for free' since it's built atop it.
For the average (not the specific individuals), a Mac is drop in compatible with a PC, about the same way that an AMD Athlon is compatible with the Intel P4.
Macs have less quantity software, but it is not without the entire spectrum (except, perhaps, maybe only in the short term, for VB virii)
What Windows has is the ability to transform nearly any machine into a Window's platform device. Think borg, think virus. A 486? A P2? A P3? A Duron? A MP P4? You can install Windows. It's not perfect, it's not seamless, it's not graceful, but it works. That seems to be the catchphrase that is Windows.
The Mac is arguably more tightly bound to it's hardware. It *is* seamless, graceful, and clean. Perhaps it wasn't like that in the past, but right now, and for the next few iterations, OS X is going to be hand tailored for the hardware and the hardware is going to be hand tailored for the OS.
If you prefer the simplicty of a single setup, like I do, you can get one Mac PowerBook G4 for home use (video, graphics, games, movies, etc) and for work (BSD, bash, gcc, etc).
GPL Deconstructed
"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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
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.
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
STOP . AMERICA . NOW