Slashdot Mirror
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.)"
Get a sense of humor, dude.
...and less is more.
Consistency is vital. A `deep' user interface notion is needed, instead of the concept of the user interface as shallow cosmetics.
You cannot get consistency without coordination; consistency, and a deeply uniform structure in all things noticable, limits choice too.
Less is more. Predictable behaviour over in-depth per-widget configuration is required.
You'll never get there by borrowing here and adding there. A larger vision is called for, rather than ad-hock additions of code, no matter how l337 the c0d3 h@x0rZ be.
Next time Apple releases a new super-duper OS that requires you to buy a new Mac and renew your entire collection of software you bought with your hard-earned cash, I and my headache-making Linux box running on my PII-266 shall taunt you a second time.
I know I'm not saying anything new here so please don't mod me down for being unoriginal, but I am dying for a x86 desktop alternative.
As somone who has been selling custom built computers for at least 5 years and tinkering with Linux and other free operating systems. I become increasingly disgusted when i have to buy a copy of windows forcing my customers to pay an extra $100 for the computer. If only there were an alternative desktop operating system which I felt my customers would be happy with.
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
buying into a hardware platform that is less flexible than the current x86 standard, is single-sourced, and thus considerably more expensive. If OS X ever makes it to the x86, it will be hard to resist.
-
The funny thing I've noticed is that a lot of the BeOS and Linux types are migrating straight for OSX for exactly the reasons brought up in the article. It's UNIX, it's got a great interface, etc, etc, etc. On the other end of the coin, people who have been with the Mac for decades (me included) have yet to migrate over. I have my excuses - no photoshop, and it runs nice and slow on my 3-year old Blue G3. OSX works fine on my Powerbook, which actually came with it installed, but I downgraded as I didn't feel I had enough disk space to warrant running a 1 GB OS. That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do... hell, I'm still using a 3-year old 350 MHz box for professional web design, Photoshop and video editing, and it works just fine. Rendering takes a few more seconds, but it's not noticable. As soon as I went over to OSX, it just got really choppy.
While I think it's great that OSX is getting so much new blood into the Mac, power users at that, I simply don't find that OSX has enough to offer me yet. I won't go so far as to say I hate it, as some of my other iPod-toting hardcore-Mac friends have said, it just has a little more way to go.
NerfOnline - Because Nerf Guns aren't just for kids -
Gentlemen, light your flamethrowers.
I don't care if my software is open. Open source hase wonderful advantages, but it's more important to me that software is good. OS X is the best operating system I've ever seen. I don't care if it's closed, I don't care if they had to drive a steamroller through a kitten factory to make it. It's that good.
It's amazing how people will put up with crap software just because it's open source, and denounce great software just because it's closed. Last time I checked, the purpose of open source was to create great software, not to stick to ideals.
there's more than one way to do me.
MacOS X cannot be used on existing hardware
I run OS X on my G3 Powerbook. This was pre-iBook. In fact, OS X runs on most G3 macs (and with the right Darwin kernal, it runs on most PCI PPC macs)
What do you know I wrote a novel
...was that OS X can handle filesizes up to eight exabytes—sorry, I forgot—that's eight exbibytes . More than a gigabyte for every man, woman & child on earth.
Okay, I'm satisfied. Now let's see some ATA10000 drives with that capacity, and I'll finally be able to reload all my MP3's.
As another poster said, it's been a -long- time since Apple came out w/an OS that made you buy a new Mac.
;)
For most current Mac users, it is only OS X that made them do this, and it even runs on a lot of Macs from at least the G3 line onward (I use it on a B&W as well as my new G4).
Seems like a lot of old Mac users complain about OS X, but I certainly like the fact that I've never had the OS crash yet
Christina
It's not entirely logical, because going to MacOS X requires at least two things: one, it requires you to purchase new hardware, and two, it requires you to use closed-source software (namely, Quartz et. al.).
If OSX truly makes you more productive in your business--and I mean "you" personally and not some generic group--then it's worth the price. Too often poor open source advocates (i.e. students) think that it is worth enduring massive hardship just to avoid spending $1000.
As an old time NEXTSTEP and SunOS/Solaris administrator, I was really skeptical about installing OS X on my friend's beige G3 266 Minitower. But, after slapping 512MB or RAM in there, and formatting the stock 9GB IDE drive in UFS, I was amazed at how _well_ OS X (10.1) runs!
This is the equivalent of a Celeron 300 running Windows 2000 pro in 1600x1200 with all the visual effects on. I am surprised that it runs very nicely.
Of course, I am still running openStep 4.2 on a Motorola 68040 25MHz, and it is fine as well. I have OpenStep 4.2 for Sparc on a 60MHz SuperSparc, and it iis quite usefull as well.
it takes my Athlon 1.2GHz to run Win2K reasonably.
Apple and NeXT just made good tight platforms with very solid HW SW integration. Same with Sun and HP on the UNIX side. Bemoan closed platforms all you want, who here does their daily work and surfing on 13 year old HW? I do. How about on 9 year old HW? I do.
Why? Because I use enterprise grade pro-caliber equipment with OSes made by talented people who gave a damn about the concept and execution of Quality. Quality endures. I have a 18 year old Volvo GLT Turbo that has much more character and fun factor than my 2 year old Jeep Wrangler. Why? Quality.
Well anyways, back to the usability myth. I propose that it is just that, a myth. People think something is easy to use because they feel familiar with it, or they "know" how to use it, that's how something ranks high on the "usability" scale. The Mac mantra has always been how easy it is to use... well.. the couple of times I tried to use a Mac it seemed confusing to me and certainly not "easy" Why???? You may be asking??? Because, all I've ever used have been Windows machines and Unix machines. Those are easy to me. But that's mostly beside the point, which is, if usability was so important than why didn't the public migrate to the Mac? Answer, besides the obvious monopoly thingy, is because usability, for the most part, doesn't matter. Period. People learn how to use a machine to do what they need to get done and it becomes easy to do when you know how to use it.
So, you can make Linux the most "user friendly" desktop OS on the planet and it won't matter at all. If you want Linux to matter then you need to come up with a reason for people to use it, a killer app or a killer tool or something along those lines.
Now before you pundits get your panties all knotted up into a bunch, I'm not saying you shouldn't try to design an interface that is consistant and easy to learn, yes, that's important, but it's not the driving force for the public when it comes to using one operating environment over another.
Thank You.
Well, looks like the site is already slashdotted, so I haven't read the article yet, but let me shed some light on a few things.
I'm a UNIX person. I've run Linux, Solaris X86, IRIX (yes I had an Indy) at home. I like UNIX. It's what I do for a living, I'm a SysAdmin.
I LOVE OS X. 10.0.4 blew dogs. It's what came with the new iBook I bought this year. 10.1 is prime time, if not ready for the masses. I recently started a new job and was given my choice between a 500 MHz Intel machine running Linux or a G3 at 350MHz running OS X. No brainer dude. Aqua is hands down the best window manager I've ever seen (I never saw a NeXT machine.) Rendering everything in PDF is just mind blowing, and the ease of application development in Cocoa is equally dope.
Here's the thing though. If you're a hardware hacker it's not for you. Plain and simple, neither was the Indy, or the NeXT, or an Ultra Sparc. There are things you just can't do with workstation class machines that you can with desktops.
However, if you're like me and could give a rip about the hardware and tweeking the hell out of it, well Mac OS X is SWEET! It reminds me of the early days of Linux when I'd download something and actually HAVE TO COMPILE IT! Hehehehe, yes i compiled bash, and the fileutils, and even vim on OS X, no problem at all. And since I can't fiddle with the WindowManager I'm not going insane trying to get the current version of Enlightenment (heh a one word oxymoron there) and all it's assinine libraries to compile. I was always partial to WindowMaker anyway, and here's the upgrade!
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Well, its a matter of your hardware becoming obsolete. Yes it runs classic really well. OSX requires a bit.. more. Fortunately and unfortunately. Newer hardware supports OSX wonderfuly. Not sure if its anyone's fault really. Just the desires of having a "really cool" OS.
;)
As for the software thing, give it time. Just like how linux and the bsd's went from a.out -> elf, it takes time.
OSX isn't unfortunately suited to the population of mac owners who can only run classic and need them. Luckily, photoshop isn't my biggest need.. yet. And office is finally out, so I'm happy.
Just think of it as X11R6 with a really neet window mangler
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I assume you're referring to the pseudo-database format of the befs? Very nifty idea, but it's more fakery than most people realize. Using a full-blown rdbms was too performance intensive, so while initially the befs did have an actual relational database, it eventually became lighter code that had a sql-like syntactical interface. Still very nice, I agree, and it'd be nice to see something similar in Linux.
For limited types of hardware, sure. When I last tried BeOS 4.5 (yes, I never tried 5), I was lucky that my nVidia TNT2 Ultra card was supported in 2D, and forget about 3D. Maybe Be's OpenGL implementation was one of the fastest software rendering implementations, but that can't hold a candle to proper hardware acceleration, and nVidia is currently the king in that area.
But not the G* PPC processors, sadly. Which meant that the PPC version was essentially dead, and Be was spending all their efforts on the x86 port.
I agree with your assessment of OS X, and I also agree that there are some nice ideas to be had from Be, but I just want to point out that Be was not the pinnacle of GUI or OS design (yeah, sure, it was good, but it had its share of problems, and quite a few of them). It'd be nice to see all the fancy features of Be on an OS with better hardware support, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
What type of machine were you running it on? I just received a new Powerbook G4 (550/512MB) and it runs great on it. Very stable and fast. It has taken me a few days to find out where everything is, but I really like it once I got used to it. I'm a PC user, but Apple really tempted me with their notebook design and the promise of a great GUI on top of *nix. I think they delivered in spades. I've already compiled Apache/PHP4/MySQL on it and have a backup of my main site running so that I can test different things. It's a great combo. Add Airport (which I did) and I can work on development anywhere in and around my house.
To test their claims, I've plugged my digital camera and digital video camera in it and was pleasantly surprised that no drivers were needed and the correct apps popped up automatically. iTunes is a great MP3 ripper and manager as well. My wife and I played with iMovie this weekend and found it to be a great entry level movie editor. It even connects to my Samba server and WinXP desktop with no add-ons. Very cool, everything just works!
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
Speaking as a recovering BeOS user/developer, I can say that BeOS is/was great software. But because it was closed source, it is now orphan-ware, getting more obsolete every day. When I to upgrade to a new machine, I most likely won't be able to run it at all anymore, since the new hardware won't be supported. If BeOS had been open source, it would still be a viable OS today, since the Be developer community would have taken over development when Be keeled over. (indeed, they are still trying to do just this, but Palm couldn't care less)
The moral of the story is this: for certain "platform" types of software that require a lot of time/money/software investment from the user (such as operating systems, APIs, languages, etc), one of the most important "features" that must be considered is whether or not the software product will continue to be supportable and developed. You can either make that guarantee by being too rich to ever go out of business (if you're Microsoft), or by making the code open source (if you're anybody else).
Or to put it more succinctly, it's gonna be a bummer for all the OS/X users if/when Apple goes out of business, and drags OS/X down with it. Users of open source operating systems have no such worries.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
>> one of the fastest OpenGL implementation on Desktop PC For limited types of hardware, sure. When I last tried BeOS 4.5 (yes, I never tried 5), I was lucky that my nVidia TNT2 Ultra card was supported in 2D, and forget about 3D. Maybe Be's OpenGL implementation was one of the fastest software rendering implementations, but that can't hold a candle to proper hardware acceleration, and nVidia is currently the king in that area.
The blame for the lack of nVidia support in BeOS lies squarely on nVidia. As a member of the BeOS community I begged and pleaded with nVidia to either a) release their register info to Be, Inc., or b) just create the BeOS driver themselves if they want to keep the register info close to the vest. I kept all the emails short and polite, too.
All of that to play... Quake2. Or watch the Teapot rotate at insane speed.
Seriously though, hardware rendered OpenGL support for the nVidia line may have helped the wider appeal of "the little OS that couldn't-quite."
I've been following criticism of OS X on slashdot for a while. It seems that people here mainly reject OS X because either it's closed source or the hardware's too expensive.
Well, criticizing OS X because it is closed source is ridiculous. Choose a product based on quality, not ideology. Linux will never gain many mainstream users because of ethics- people will choose the best product offered to them. Granted, compatibility, available software, and conformity may play into this more than some would want, (perhaps explaining why my parents use MS) but it is still a matter of quality.
The cost of the hardware is a valid issue. However, the computers are well built, especially the laptops. If you're obsessed with customizing beige boxes, then stick to a different operating system. But, regardless, stick to criticizing features, not attitudes.
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.
For Wintel hardware, supporting the thousands of possible hardware components is probably more than any non-Microsoft company could manage. It consumes a lot of resources and doesn't really impress anyone (whoopee- there's a driver...) Instead, people complain when there aren't drivers. I don't know how much of Be's energy went into supporting so many configs, but even if it was done in the most efficient way possible, it would still complicate things dramatically- both in terms of the install process and the support process.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
OS X is unfinished to say the least. I was pretty excited when I got a new iMac with OS X to play around with. But when I got around to integrating it into my Linux-base environment, it really fell apart.
/mnt/local", the "/mnt/local" directory disappears. The mount doesn't and you can't unmount without rebooting. There is a shareware program that makes it possible to use NFS, but c'mon folks. This is a violation of some basic trust. NFS should just work.
NFS support is severely lacking. You can't even count on a command-line mount of an nfs volume. If I try to mount with "mount server:/local
SMB is nearly as bad. At least you can reliable mount samba volumes. However, it's highly unstable. Changing files on the server will cause OS X to behave unpredictably. Updating an app binary, for example, will cause subsequent execution of that app to fail with bus errors.
NIS? Good luck. Not supported. There is an FAQ for enabling it. But my success with this has been limited at best.
Until they get the basics sorted out, it'll just sit on the kitchen counter as a nice little internet and recipe browser for my wife.
Take a deep breath! You are about to dump core, or something.
You seem to have confused expansion capability with aging, but they just ain't the same.
**As far as being widely useful for getting work done** Macs last longer than PCs. That is what I believe the other poster is talking about.
As far as Mac OS X and its interface, its nice that people used to generally weak interfaces think it is so great, but us long time Mac users are suffering a severe downgrade with Mac OS X and it Just Isn't Worth It for most of us.
Apple has been successfully going out of business for about 15 years.
cpeterso
The BeOS guys were always predicting Apple's demise.
It ain't gonna happen.
They survived 1996, which was an absolutely hellish year. If they can survive that (lost 1 billion in a quarter) they can survive anything. Apple makes money, their business is self-sustaining. If they sell the same number of macs every year from 2002 til doomsday, they can go on designing new machines and updating the OS. Hell, the place is run by NeXT guys, who were profitable before the buyout even though they had no real userbase.
In addition, they have a huge pile of cash in the bank. Apple will be around for years to come. They have a unique value to add to personal computers and won't ever have a problem finding someone to buy their product.
Now, if Steve leaves and another Michael Spindler takes the helm, all bets are off, but assuming current management practices, Apple will be just fine.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Apart from that, hear hear. Know what I care about? I care that my software is open. Photoshop is not 'my' software, I just bought some and use it. I do not have the power to make people like that share their work, even if doing so would help me and help society in general. I just have power over what I do, particularly over what I code up myself.
I'm mac based, so quite a lot of software I use and enjoy is freeware. Of this, very little is truly open source- the most significant OSS to me that I use is Mastering Tools, which was written BY me. That's not so wrong.
Look, they already tried and they failed. It may seem like nothing to you, but designing an OS to be compatible with thousands and thousands of different PC hardware is kinda hard.
I'm constantly swapping PCMCIA cards in and out of my Powerbook G4, so I know it is useful. First, I have to use a Cisco aironet card for 802.11b because the airport implementation in the Powerbook G4 sucks shit. Range is horrible with the built-in antenna to I use the Aironet.
Second, I have to use a SCSI controller because the Powerbook has no SCSI port, and I have a lot of SCSI peripherals (that I mainly bought because Macs used to come with SCSI ports...grr). My scanners are the essential things here but also removable storage. And no, I can't just haul off and replace all that stuff with 1394 gear.
Third, you have to use the PCMCIA card if you want a modem that works with Linux. I guess you could use a USB modem, but let me know when you get that to work with Linux and for someone who goes on the road a lot it is too painful to carry another box.
Right there with ya on 9.2.2; I like the UI better, and it supports my printer. I dual-booted for awhile, but when I realized many of my apps were still running in Classic and the native apps didn't run better, I switched back.
I would use OSX anyway, if I didn't also have a Linux box that I can ssh to.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That's another thing... Macs don't age nearly as fast as PCs do... hell, I'm still using a 3-year old 350 MHz box for professional web design
This is a nice way of saying, "I can't upgrade my 3-year old Mac because Apple's hardware is too expensive." Right?
"And like that
I think we've kinda missed something here. If your needs never change then neither does the usefullness of your hardware - PC or MAC or, heck, Amiga. If it works, it works.
If, on the other hand I now have a need for newer software, different hardware etc, then the question of life span becomes more important.
In this case, though - the statement "Macs last longer than PCs" is clearly BS for the reaons stated in this parent's parent.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Ok. As irritating as it is, I am going to have to do a point by point rebuttal here. Sorry in advance.
Point 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.
Rebuttal And this is bad why? The vast majority of people in the world out there DO NOT upgrade their computers. EVER. I worked at a computer repair firm for two years, and I would guess that not more than a quarter of PC users actually get new cards installed into their computers. This, contrary to what most people on slashdot feel, is not a limitation for the vast majority of users. Here, think of it like this. Most PC users, when they're adding new stuff to their computers, will get things that can be plugged into serial, parallel, and usb ports. Not PCI. Not AGP. Not (god forbid) ISA.
Point 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.
RebuttalAnd this is different from those microtower Dells, Compaq iPaqs, etc, in what way exactly? Furthermore, with laptops, what the hell is the point of a PC card slot on a laptop that has video out, firewire, usb, 10/100 ethernet, AirPort (802.11b), and a 56k modem built-in? I actually just bought a TiBook 3-4 days ago (it's still on its way), and I don't have any notion of what I'll actually use the PC card slot on it for. I've been using an indigo iBook for the last 14 months, and I am currently replacing it only because I am starting to find the screen size limiting (it's a pain to use Project Builder and Interface Builder in 800x600 pixels).
Point 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.
Rebuttal Ok. OS X is big. It's a dog on anything less than a 366 MHz G3 with at least 128MB RAM. The original iMac (the bondi blue variety) has a 233MHz G3 processor, and came with 32 mb RAM. The average person is NOT going to run OS X on that thing. They'd be absolutely nuts to do it. Apple knows this. That's a big reason why they will not bother writing accelerated video card drivers for the bondi iMac. No one would use them (or at least they shouldn't). If these people really want to run OS X, they should sell their Bondi iMac off for $350 or $400, or whatever they go for, and pick up the $799 iMac.
PointAnd 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.
Rebuttal Ha. Yeah right. I hate to break it to you, but if you can't afford to pick up a new computer every two or three years (the iMac will be 4 next August, and the iBook came out ~one year after the iMac) there is no way in hell you could afford an iPod. The iPod is a toy for those with too much money. Don't get me wrong on this, I'd love to have one, but there's no way in hell I can afford one until I'm out of college (I bought the TiBook because it'll serve a definite purpose. besides, I bought an AVC Soul Player a year ago). These people aren't going to go out and spend $400 on the iPod unless they could afford a new computer anyway. Besides, it doesn't matter, since everything comes built-in anyways, right? ;-)
Point 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.
Rebuttal Yet people continue buying iBooks, with their 400 Mbit firewire ports that have devices available for the port today. What idiots! Can you even buy a USB 2.0 card yet? By the way, take a look at your P.S. statement. Hell, I'll quote it here. 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. But wait, you still want 5 USB 2.0 devices hanging off your computer? I'm confused. It must be because I'm one of those gullible anti-windows mac users (I'm typing this on my self-built coppermine-core system running XP pro right now.).
Point 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."
Point I just did a search on Micro Warehouse for pc card, and as you can see, basically everything listed is a wireless ethernet card, an ethernet card, a modem, or a usb controller. I HAVE ALL OF THOSE THINGS BUILT INTO MY IBOOK. Jeez. About the only thing I would find useful to buy for a pc card slot would be one of those pc card hard drives (that ibm makes). Even then, I'd rather just burn a cd with the built-in burner. More people have cd-rom drives than pc card slots. Furthermore, let's take a look at the cards I have in my PC right now. 1. An ATI Xpert 2000 (AGP 4x). 2. An SB Live (PCI). 3. A Linksys 10/100BaseT Ethernet card (PCI). 4. A firewire card. There is really nothing else that I am planning on ever adding to this computer. Sure, there are a lot of people out there who need second monitors, but none of them would buy an iMac anyways. They wouldn't be served well by a 15" monitor. The iMac is a consumer machine. The iBook (supposedly) is too (although most business types would probably be fine having one). The Power Mac G4 is a professional machine. Same thing goes for the Powerbook G4. You don't hear people complaining that their Dell Dimension 2100's won't let them install a burner inside the case. If you did, you'd probably ridicule them for not buying a higher-end machine.
You know what, I will go on using my Apple laptop, my Intel/Microsoft desktop, and the god-awful Sun Blade 100 I get stuck using at school, and you can go on using whatever you want to. We'll just call it even.
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
Two comments from the articles stuck out at me.
The first was copying and pasting in Linux. It has gotten *much* better in Mandrake 8.1 Gaming, where I'm at right now. I use KDE, so as a test I opened up Nautilus, copied the text from the address bar and pasted it into both vim and emacs, which would seem to be a pretty good test. With KDE, don't know about gnome, you even sort of get 2 clipboards. If you select text, you can paste it with the wheel or middle button. At the same time you can ctrl+c some other piece of text and ctrl+v it in, effectively giving you 2 clipboards.
The other was using special characters with umlauts in Windows. I believe it is true that Windows itself doesn't support the simple ctrl+U, U to get an umlauted U, but I would swear you could do that in Word and maybe even Wordperfect; I'm not in windows right now, so I can't check to see if my memory is correct, I could easily be wrong. Not the same thing as having the os handle it so that the keystrokes work in things like a command prompt window or in notepad, but still close enough for most people.
Other than that, a lot of the comments seemed to be along the lines of "this matches/doesn't match the way I prefer to work." Unfortunately there is no optimal way for all people to work efficiently. We can talk about mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, etc., but a lot of it comes down to personal preference and whatever the user is accustomed to.
It's a dog on anything less than a 366 MHz G3 with at least 128MB RAM
I was first running OS X on a 266MHz G3 with 192MB RAM. Since then, in different steps, I upgraded the CPU to a 300MHz G3 (mainly because it has 2x the cache that the 266 does) and the RAM to 768MB. The heftier CPU helped a little bit, but the real noticeable difference came with the big RAM upgrade. With OS X, you need 128MB just to get the OS up and running and useable. Consider running any applications and that memory requirement goes up fast. When I upgraded the RAM, I no longer had to deal with the slow UI responsiveness that I had with the smaller amount of RAM. So I'd definitely say that OS X will run just fine any pretty much any speed G3-- as long as there is oodles of RAM for it to consume.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I'm posting this from Mac OS X using OmniWeb. I've been using my brief Christmas vacation to get my home machine running just the way I like... this is the first time I've seriously tried to avoid using Classic or booting into Mac OS 9.2. There's just one thing I can't get working.
I have a three button mouse on my iMac, and I can't find a way to map the buttons to anything other than the default! The left button is "click" and the right button is "ctrl-click," which is fine. But on OS 9 I map the middle button to "option-click," and I can't find a way to do that in X. Does anyone have any ideas?
--saint
(before you ask, option-click switches to the application whose window was clicked on while automatically hiding the application that you just used. It's a great time saver, and I want it to work quite a bit. Not enough real estate on a 15 inch iMac monitor, you know?)
Once upon a time I would have agreed with you on the idea that Macs have longer lives. Back in the day, I remember my friends having to get new PC's very frequently in order to run the latest stuff. My Mac Plus and IIvx, on the other hand, served me for five years with only minor expansions (hard drive and RAM) each.
:-) Aside from adding some more drive space and a burner, there's very little I've done to it.
Now that processors are so fast though, and RAM is so ubiquitous, most people don't need much faster machines. Bandwidth tends to be the key limiting factor in what people can do, especially now that CD burners are so cheap. My Pentium II is going on in to its fourth year right now, and it hardly feels aged when I don't browse the game isles
I think PC's, in general, have reached a point where they all have longer lives. Most people are still very productive with Win95, and until recently they could run everything they wanted on it. I think once upon a time Macs used to have the longer life, which made them a much more worthwhile purchase, but now that PC's have surpassed what people need they've switched to features, like firewire. I think the above poster is right to mention expansion. The capability to add a firewire card to an original iMac would add some extra life to the machine.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Well anyways, back to the usability myth. I propose that it is just that, a myth.
...it's[usability] not the driving force for the public when it comes to using one operating environment over another.
Look here, let's get something straight. When the marketing people talk usability, what they're talking about is the learning curve. And there are several ways to turn a learning curve into usability 'statistics'.
One is the very bottom of the curve: with the most idiotic of users. How easily is it to sit down at a strange system and understand it? No one will argue that new users understand a GUI metaphor far better than the command line-- it takes a brand new user training in understanding the CLI metaphor. For most intents and purposes, then, a UI can't be considered 'usable' until it's graphical.
The next two criteria seem to be at odds with themselves most of the time. The first is how error-friendly the system is: for example, can the system tolerate an error in case? For the Linux CLI (Bash most likely) the answer is no (And yes I know there's an option in Bash to change that but it's not enabled by default- which is what matters to a new user)- compare to DOS, which doesn't care at all. In this particular instance, DOS is more usable. But to turn the tables, Linux/Bash has command line completion, which helps prevent typing errors. However, you can't have your UI out-guess the user-- never let it push the user in the wrong direction.
Complimenting error tolerance is how much power is available- how many options the user can select from at once. This is again a balancing act: give the user too few options and you give them no power, and yet if you give them too many at once they will not be able to determine the ones they want to choose. Nesting options helps, but may add to user confusion (that is, it only helps if done in a logical manner And I don't consider the way Windows does its' menus logical. Why is the dialog for changing file associations nested under the View menu? (This is from memory, I'm in Linux)).
There are other things to consider, I will pass them over for the sake of brevity and to mention the way I would measure usability- being a programmer and not a marketroid. My measure is height of the first learning plateau. On any learning curve, there are plateaus- level-- or nearly so-- periods with little to no learning. Having a low first plateau on your curve means that the user will feel comfortable with some very limited parts of the system, yet have far more to learn to be able to manage it all at once. The "best" (most usable) system would employ a UI metaphor that enabled the first plateau to be as high as possible. This is more true with GUIs than a CLI (compare launching a new program-- from a brand new users' point of view) as well as more true of Windows than Linux (compare program installation- with Linux I still hunt dependencies often).
People think something is easy to use because they feel familiar with it
Without a doubt, the portion of usability that most lay persons bandy about is indeed familiarity, but that isn't too limiting a factor. Sit an aveerage Windows user down at a Mac and let them browse the web- you won't get that many questions. (Probably just "Why does this mouse only have one button?") Sit them down at the Mac and give them a reference book- they'll be able to use it quickly. (I assume, knowing the converse is true, that they will read the book.) The problem with the transition is that in each system the baseline skills are the same-- beginning users have no problem transitioning-- but the power users would flounder. Keyboard shortcuts differ. Mouse command keys differ. The control panel on each system works differently. And so on.
What I'm saying here is simple. Usability is not a myth. Having differed with your introdcution, I agree entirely with your conclusion.
Nope. It's marketing. Joe Sixpack drinks the beer his favorite sports star does, wears the same brand name clothes his favorite TV/film star does, and uses the Operating System he is told to on his favorite TV channel. Once Linux registers on his radar at all, then it has a hope of really making it onto the desktop (getting a "respectable" percentage like Mac- as a Linux advocate I'd settle for 10% in a heartbeat! At least the Mac registers on the major software developer's radar). From there, who knows? And I won't prognosticate about that day at all- because I can't even tell if it will come in a year or in a hundred years. I just hope that the revolution comes before computers get outlawed.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Oh no! Didn't we just have this discussion?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I'd like to reiterate what I wrote earlier in a similar thread which some moron scored down to -1.
I think people have had enough of user interfaces that are based on the twenty-some years old ideas that Windows, MacOS, Gnome and KDE are based on.
Where are the attempts at trying to create somehting exciting and radical?
It's hard enough to convince a Windows-user that MacOS makes you more productive - the interfaces are so similar that it's possible to approach both MacOS and BeOs with a Windows-infused mind and miss out all the good stuff. It's possible to build a user interface that is both obviously different and obviously better - even with Linux, but it seems to me that the Linux community lacks the competence. I would like to be proven wrong.
-- Rolf Lindgren, cand.psychol
I wonder if apple is planning on making the default file system in Mac OS X to be UFS. This could help reduce costs on FS development. This does not mean the death of metadata. TrustedBSD is working on giving UFS extended attributes and ACLs. So maybe Apple could use those for metadata
well, Apple failed time and time again.
what development cost? their whole OS is based on someone else's code.
That's the most concise statement of the problem I've ever seen.
I don't care if they had to drive a steamroller through a kitten factory to make it.
:)
;)
Where the hell did you get that line? It's priceless!
Consider it stolen.
I spent quite a bit of time using it at the local Circuit City here. It's no Apple Store, but it's decent enough for my needs. I just need a computer with MacOS X on it, and no one to pester me. It's PERFECTLY useable on Apple's low end machines. Just make sure you have a bunch of ram and you'll be fine. The interface didn't take too long to learn. The most confusing aspect of it was what the red, yellow, and green buttons at the top-left corner of every window are. If you can learn what those are, then you'll do fine with the rest of the OS. The thing that really struck me as handy was the one click to all the system prefs you could ever need. It's just right there on the dock. Click, and it comes up. Can't get much simpler than that.
The software Apple bundles in is pretty slick too. iTunes is great stuff. The visuals are awesome. But then again, how hard can it be to make an easy-to-use MP3 program? I haven't seen one yet that wasn't common sense to use. The MP3s included are pretty good too. iMovie is incredible stuff. There was a camcorder already attached to the iMac when I got there. I don't think those guys at circuit city would care enough to install drivers and such. Thank god it just works at the mere action of plugging it in. But anyway, I recorded just a bunch of customers walking and I went to edit it with iMovie. I have never used it before, and within 5 minutes I had created a movie that looked awesome. Well, as awesome as it could look. Customers walking isn't too entertaining.
I guess I'm a firm believer that technology should be simple to use. It is to be there to assist you, not to work against you. To that end, Apple's the best. Taking complex technology and making it easy enough for the average person to use. It's the reason why people bother purchasing macs. It's not like they're faster, or that they get the latest and greatest in software first, and it's certainly not price or that it's the latest trend. It's because they do what is advertised. They just work.
A couple other notes: judging from the front page of Apple's website, I think MacWorld is going to be big. Very big. You can catch the live webcast on Janurary 7th on Apple's website.
couldn't care less, Apple's OS doesn't meet my needs.
Its quite fortunate for Apple. Imagine all the old computers that must be phased out. Remember the whole era between OS 6 - 8? If I remember correctly, a lot of computers became.. obsolete. Wasn't that the time the PPC came into play? I am quite sure it wasn't Appple's intention to write an OS that requires 128 megs of RAM minimum, but think of all the profit it brings to this smaller computer company.
Unfortunately because it forces others to upgrade. Hell, I had to upgrade my G4 to 256 megs ram and now to get office for OS X.
Esscentially, they created a need, which forces users to spend a little more. I was a little suspect of this type of behavior and waited a little longer until OSX was actually out to get my mac. So Apple earned $1650 or so out of my pocket.
A fair trade for a really good machine, with a good OS from a company that's not doing as well as.. others.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Isn't it better to enjoy what you've got then to live in fear of what might happen?
If you love Linux, great. I don't. I love my OS X box. Apple going out of business? You really want me to worry about that? I haven't worried about losing the Mac in the last 10 years. Apple always had enough cash in the bank, and in the case if it does tank, someone will pick it up. The Macintosh is one platform that will not just fade away. If the tools I use can no longer fulfill my needs, I'll move on to different tools. I'm not going to worry about the company making them going bankrupt.
Duh.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Actually, there are a few winmodem chipsets that are supported by Linux these days. Like with any AltOS (including Win2k), you merely have to acknowledge the fact that doesn't have the characteristic of "it runs everything" that Microsoft's flavor of the month does.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Technology changes over time. Nifty new things get introduced. If Apple manages to forget something, or merely succumbs to progress, then you have to trash and entire system when a single expansion slot might save you from this.
Now one might argue against the complexity of opening up a desktop system. However, there is simply no excuse for this kind of narrow minded shortsightedness on a laptop.
Ironically enough, this mentality locks the end user out of using traditionally Mac-only type of hardware (consumer SCSI devices).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you're an operating system development guy who is working on a Windows killer, don't move to OS X... there's nothing left to be done.
This is a nice idea in theory.
However, if there aren't WinDOS users defecting in droves to get to use Quartz then there there really is no point in expending an excess of energy cloning it.
2003 will be the same as 1983: All that matters is the apps. People don't care about spiffy features, cool multimedia hardware, or a easy user interface. All they want to run is their app (or game) du jour.
If the Amiga or the Mac couldn't win the market in the era of DOS, a spiffier Mac is unlikely to make a significant dent now.
Sadly enough, the world just doesn't work that way. The competence of Apple's advertising agency is simply more relevant than the quality of their system software.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Have fun replacing all of your payware.
Although, this is something that you're probably used to anyways.
This talk of "quality" is gibberish. You need what you need, not some self-proclaimed guru's notion of what you need.
Yes, this means that for a great many people a mangey desktop crafted by volunteers is more relevant than your beloved Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...actually, it's painfully easy.
The hard part is getting the world of hardware vendors to work on your behalf.
They would be expending their resources to make your product more valuable with little prospect of reward.
In this situation, there is some value to an OS that is "owned by everyone". The exchange of labor doesn't seem quite so lopsided.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Back in the days before Redhat 2.0 I was willing to shell out the ~$400 for Solaris or NextStep x86. Microsoft OSen were really crappy in those days and I was anxious for an alternative. I was willing to "fork over" for it despite my relative lack of money then.
Yet it was Linux that won me over first. All that it achieved was supporting my common hardware (IDE disks, SB cdrom, SB soundcard). Solaris and Nextstep were SCSI only.
Linux also had some wider name recognition from it's Amiga and ST ports. I had heard of Linux even before buying my first PC.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My point was it was fortunate and unfortunate. :) But why should we be concerned? To answer your question (briefly)....
.5%, BSD some other amount. If you care less, kudos to you. :)
What to care about
Apple is no Microsoft. There is no perpetual motion of upgrades and contracts for Apple like MS has.
How Apple is making us care about them
Mind you, there are, but think of the home users. MS has such a strong hold. Apple is simply pulling a Microsoft, except they are doing it in my opinion, a nicer way. Apps in OSX and Classic will work the same, mostly without the Classic emulation. And even then, there is good support for complete backward compatibility with it.
Why care at all
We find such ways to combat MS, perhaps we should also find support for Apple, IMHO. A similar thing to care about is that the DJIA is back to 10k. The same reason applies to the WTC attack. Do you care that DeCSS has been found a freedom of speech? Perhaps, perhaps not. The entire mp3 revolution?
Maybe the concern isn't for you. Like microsoft. Point being, if you don't care for MS, Apple's existance, whether or not you like Mac's does affect you. After all, Apple hold's 5%. Linux,
Did you go as far as to educate if you are concerned.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
The real distinguishing factors are not the technology, they are the business positions. Windows comes from a wealthy, ruthless monopolist that knows how to generate a steady revenue stream by controlling APIs and formats. OSX comes from an upscale vendor with a valuable brand name and stylish design. Linux comes from a large group of volunteer developers and has a DYI flavor.
And BeOS? Well, BeOS came from a small company that failed to sell to its one major potential client and somewhat predictably went out of business. That's the reason why most developers wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, no matter what its technical merits may have been.
> and OpenGL hardware support
They got that right, at least.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Suggest you re-read parent post. The whole point of the PC card slot is for FUTURE technologies. Yes, the iBook has built in ethernet, modem, and Firewire. But what happens when you want some NEW technology? Out of luck.
This is the core of the argument - I say "I'd use OS X, but Mac hardware is too expensive". You say - "Mac hardware isn't expensive - the iMac is just $799!"
But when I complain about the iMac's shortcomings, mac lovers say "well, if you need expandability, you need the G4 tower, not the iMac". Funny how that works - the G4 tower is $1700, which damn well is expensive.
The FACT is that the cheapest expandable computer Apple sells is $1700. Even if you accept that the G4 is twice as fast per Mhz, that's still double the cost of x86 hardware. NICE x86 hardware, not junk.
Apple has never tried on x86.
That isn't true. For a long time Apple funded their "Star Trek" project, which was a ground-up port of Mac OS to the IA-32 architecture. (Going where no man has gone before... get it?)
Both "Star Trek" and "TNG," the follow-up project, were cancelled.
not just the UI - it's Making Things Work.
I've used a lot of UNIX machines, a few variants of linux and many PC boxes between work and home. I now have a TIBook and I have to say OS X is my favorite OS thus far because more things Just Work than on any other platform... it comes with great UI tools for many networking tasks if you don't want to waste a lot of time to learn the command line (though if you already know it, it's right there for you). Multiple monitors work as nature intended them too with no fiddling. I tried video creation under PC's and found the xperience exasperating.
I get a combo USB/Firewire CD burner. Under Windows (98, admittedly I've only used NT/98 so far and not used XP so I'm not sure how different things would be) I have to install Special Software. Of course, after burning a few CD's I find that the default is to burn them under a windows format so the can't be read on a mac, and the hidden preference setting to switch to ISO has dire warnings about filename truncation.
I plug the same drive into my Mac and just burn a CD - a handy dialog box comes up to ask if I would like that HFS+ or ISO? No extra software needed.
Windows update feels klunky to me compared to the mac update, though I couldn't say exactly why. Perhaps it's that I've yet to have the mac update fail or render my mac update unusable, as Windows update has done to me in the past.
The only reason you wouldn't want to get a Mac as far as I can see is that your selection of games might suffer somewhat - but in that case just get an XBox or PS2 or Gamecube. That's what I did to stop the rediculous upgrade cycle of PC's. And there are lot of games that come out for the mac so you might not have to suffer that horribly after all (especially true for RTS games which I don't think consoles do as well, or at least the same). As for office software, the Mac version of office has been said to be better than Office XP if you swing that way!
I can boil down all my experiences to this - on my home PC, both under Windows and Linux, I was fiddling a lot more than I wanted to with system settings. With OS X I'm getting more done and fighting the system less, and that to me is usability. I still prefer Linux for servers but for a development box I really like OS X.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It really points out the difference between the Unix philosophy and the Apple philosophy.
:-))
...
(As an aside, I'm quite happy that email addresses are case-insensitive
My only grip with this is : where do you stop?
Everybody will recognize that "John Doe", "John_Doe", "John-Doe" or "JohnDoe" is the same person, should the filesystem be insensitive to underscore, white-space, etc ?
If we have "John Doe" and "Jon Doe", is-it the same person?
Same with "Jhon Doe" and "John Doe"
I think I can make some good guesses at what
we're going to see at the MacWorld. Apple is
pretty much cornered in the PC market and I
think they'll try to sell more hq gadgets
like the iPod. Of course there'll be perfect
integration with the Macs.
I'm pretty sure some of those products will be
presented:
Digital camera
Handheld
LCD Monitor with TV functionality
Less likely:
Beamer
Camcorder
Cell phone with organizer functionality
In the future, Apple's main competitior will be
Sony and not MS.
I have a Mac Plus sitting on the desk next to me that we bought a LONG time ago. Is that "long time" enough for you? I have used MacOSX exclusively since the Public Beta. I dread having to boot into OS9 because of its weak interface. I fully respect your decision not to upgrade (yes *upgrade*). I am however sick of non-converters claiming things like "OSX is good for beginners but us power users need more". If you don't want to use it fine, but do realise that you are being left behind. I'd wager that a lot more people are currently happy with OSX than people who have *tried* it and given it a decent chance but still prefer OS9. It is not the next version of the MacOS, it is the first version of MacOSX. If you keep that in mind and stop trying to turn it into OS9 (like I did after about the first month), you'll have a much better experience with it.
If you've done this (with 10.1, *big* difference) and still aren't happy with it, I'll accept that. I believe that MacOSX cured a lot of the long lived problems with the classic MacOS. Yes, it introduced a few annoyances of its own but with each (free) upgrade that apple puts out their numbers are diminishing quickly. Apple is listening to user feedback. If you have a gripe with OSX, besides "Please kill the Dock", tell them about it.
Simple, they do this they lose MS Office. Linux may have survived without Office but Microsoft's withdrawal would kill MacOSX. Unless we can find a competitor that is *very* compatible with Office, it isn't going to happen.
I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I found out I couldn't put a GeForce2 in my apple //c ...
(Although I do think you have a valid point.)
I really think that Apple's hardware monopoly has completely screwed them -- MS would be in the same boat, but since they (up 'til recently,) have been lenient w/r/t pirating (from DOS up 'til recently,) and since the cost of their software (to the consumer) is 100$~ to 300~, versus Apple's much higher prices. I'd love to have an Apple machine of my own, but since there's nothing I can run on Apple that I can't run on Wintel/Lintel machines for 1/3 of the price, there's no point in throwing my money away.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
How far did the projects get, and what were the reasons for their being cancelled?
"Star Trek" got far enough along to have a working prototype; I don't know about TNG. As to why, exactly, they were cancelled, I'm not sure. I'm certain it had something to do with putting the engineers where they could do the most profitable work.
What on earth are you basing that on? Would you call Linux or BSD a "crashing, freezing heap"? One of the more important potential benefits of opening the source is to improve reliability, not the other way around.
The key point to keep in mind is that while any idiot can go and change the source on his own machine, only the best code gets accepted back into the "official distributions". (assuming the official project maintainers are even a little bit competent, of course)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
If I am not mistaken(which I may be :), one of the tenants of the $150 million dollar "investment" Microsoft put into Apple several years ago was to not port there software to Intel/AMD chips.
Who knows? Come next week, we may both be surprised.
[sarcasm]
Yeah, it really really sucks to be an Apple user who is required to buy new hardware every few years because Apple has released new software that's so amazingly cool that the computer police will arrest you if you don't upgrade.
[/sarcasm]
Last time I checked, Macintoshes did not suddenly keel over dead just because Apple released new software. No one is forced at gunpoint to upgrade.
No one ever needs to buy all new hardware to run Linux, because Linux has never come out with anything substantially new from what was done 30 years ago.
People would be a lot happier with their computers if they just bought them to get something done today, instead of thinking they're buying some magic box that will solve all the world's problems tomorrow.
-pmb
Bullshit.
:)
If I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how _simple_ things like USB and FireWire worked, I seriously doubt that I'd be running Slackware on my X86 boxen. I can tell you that (without a doubt) if it's on the Apple supported hardware list, for something simple like (say) a CD-Burner via FireWire and OS X, all that you have to do is plug it in.
And it really does Just Work. Suddenly, iTunes stops reporting that there is no CD-Burner attached. As soon as you insert a blank CD, it asks you what you intend to do with it - should it prepare it for life as an ISO9660 CD or a real audio CD, to be used in your car and home stereo systems?
Without even a reboot.
I'm quite used to Slackware, and I wouldn't give it up for anything. But it's really REALLY nice to be able to sit down and plug things in, and watch them work properly. Which is exactly what my iBook is for.
Not only that, but it runs UNIX. (And since I prefer tcsh anyway, it's fine with me that it doesn't include bash.
The line "That doesn't even work with Win2K" should tell you something - OS X is a far different beast, and I'm quite glad of it. That doesn't work with Win2K because Win2K, while quite possibly the best Windows available, still sucks as far as operating systems go. (And yes, I know what I'm talking about here, too. I've had to use Win2K on my workstation before, and I'll probably have to again. Shit, I run it on my desktop at home for when I want to play CS and Unreal.)
-clee
Yes, the virtues of IEEE1394 and USB are very potent. But don't forget that there are two parts to every piece of hardware - the hardware itself, and the software to talk to it. Apple might have chosen the less-technically-elegant approach (let's include every driver we can with the OS) but it's much more impressive to the end-user. For example, I've got an iBook with iTunes. (From iApple, apparently. And who says the 'k' prefix on everything from the KDE project is annoying? :)
Someone at work brought in a FireWire CD burner (a Sony, a sweet 16x8x32x model - probably cost a pretty penny) and all I had to do to get it to work with the OS was plug it in. No clicking 'next' on the driver install, no prompts. iTunes suddenly stopped reporting "CD burner or software not found..." and ejected the disc tray, stating "Please insert a blank disc to continue..."
That's the kind of experience that people want from a computer. And so far, nothing - Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98, Linux, or anything else on the x86 platform - has been able to deliver it. Apple, quite simply, has.
-clee
A Wintel notebook has (usually two) PCMCIA slots, which can add just about ANY kind of device to your computer. The iBook has no PCMCIA slots, so you're stuck.