Follow-up To Critique of BeOS & Mac OS X

UnknownSoldier writes: "Scot Hacker has posted a great follow-up to his Tales of a BeOS Refugee entitled Reactions to Tales of a BeOS Refugee. (Hopefully everyone involved in implementing 'Linux on the Desktop' will eventually incorporate the best ideas of Be and Mac OS X for smoother usability in Linux.)"

Comments

Re:New blood is good, but OSX isn't up to snuff ye

[jchristopher]

That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do...

I'm sorry but that is the biggest MYTH.

One half of Apple's current lineup of computers, the iMac and the iBook (2 computers that I bet make up the bulk of their sales) have NO expansion slots. No PCI slots on the iMac, and no PCMCIA slots on the laptops.

This is nothing more than a stupid, short-sighted attempt by Apple to make the computer not last as long. In essence, your choices become: 1: buy the much more expensive TiBook or G4 tower, or 2: buy the cheap one and it's obsolete, FAST.

Apple has end-of-lifed the video cards used in the first generation iMac - users of those computers are never going to get accelerated video drivers in OS X. If those were cheapo PCs with slots, you could at least throw a nicer video card in there and solve the problem.

And don't bother posting that it doesn't matter that there aren't any expansion slots because "everything comes built in". Tell that to first generation iBook or iMac owners who like to use the iPod - "sorry, FireWire only". Those computers are less than two years old, and already becoming obsolete.

Would you like to have USB 2.0? I will, and I can add it to my 3 year old Dell notebook via a card and it will work fine. The Apple iBook you buy TODAY can't be expanded with a single new tech. beyond what it ships with. Now which comp. is aging faster, the Apple, or the Dell? Even crummy $700 PCs and $1100 laptops have PCI/PCMCIA.

PCI and PCMCIA slots let you add all sorts of stuff to your computer, in effect, "future-proofing" it by allowing you to expand rather than buy a new computer. A computer without expansion options hardly qualifies as "a computer that ages slower than PCs."

P.S. I don't want to hear about how you can add all sorts of nifty expansion option via FireWire. I don't want 5 boxes hanging off my computer.

Re:Criticizing OS X

[jslag]

Well, criticizing OS X because it is closed source is ridiculous.

That's your opinion. My opinion is that telling people they shouldn't make decisions based on their personal beliefs is moronic.

Re:Maybe BeOS ideas but which MacOS X ones?

[scrod]

But not the G* PPC processors, sadly.
Have you taken a look at Motorola's processor roadmap before? All PowerPC processors that Motorola has manufactured are prefixed with a G. The first 601 was called the G1. The G2 was the 603 and 604. The G3 is merely the code name for the 750, 740, 745, and 755 processors. The G4 is what the 74xx processors are called.

Re:Nothing New

[dozing]

The lesson, as Netscape also didn't learn, is that if you put out a shitty product, people are going to try and find a better alternative.

However, that rule doesn't apply if you put out a shitty product squash competition and name it windows.