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Apple Drops Mac OS 9
Eugenia Loli writes "MacCentral has the up-to-the-minute updates on the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference. The first big news is that Apple drops Mac OS 9. 'It's time to drop OS 9,' Steve Jobs said. 'We can do things in X that we just can't do in 9... a hundred percent of what we're doing is X only. [...] Mac OS 9 isn't dead for our customers, but it is for developers. Today we say goodbye to Mac OS 9 for all future development,' said Jobs." We all expected this to happen sooner or later, more sooner than later. There's been no new Apple development for Mac OS 9 in some time; only maintenance updates. But I won't stop Mac OS 9 development. You can't stop me! Muahahahaha! Update: 05/06 18:31 GMT by P : More news from WWDC continues to roll in.
Eugenia Loli writes "Probably the really big news is with Jaguar, the codename for Mac OS X 10.2. There is handwriting recognition technology that will be recognized by any application that uses text. Apple also introduced Quartz Extreme, which takes the compositing engine in Quartz, and accelerates it in graphics cards, and combines 2D, 3D and video in one hardware pipeline via OpenGL. 'Everything on the screen is being drawn in hardware by OpenGL.' It requires AGP 2x and 32MB of video RAM. It is not possible on older graphics cards like RAGE 128 cards, said Jobs -- that means it'll work on newer iMacs and eMacs, but not on older machines, he emphasized. Jobs said this puts Apple two years ahead of 'the other guys.'"
Update: 05/06 18:46 GMT by P : An anonymous user writes: "Apple is releasing Mac OS X Rackmount Servers. Also releasing AIM-compatible messaging called iChat; you can create buddy lists of anyone on the local network, and you can use your mac.com username to log in to it."
Rendezvous. Dynamic IP discovery. Lets computers "dynamically discover each other and share them." Proposing as a new industry standard. Jobs cited example of multiple Macs working at home sharing MP3 files with iTunes between multiple computers. Demonstrated example of MP3 files streaming over AirPort. Works with any IP-ready device; built into Jaguar and will also be offered as an open industry standard that can be built into specific devices.
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
I for one am glad - both as a developer having to support to highly divergent platforms, and as a unix head who's had to work with the classic OS. I like OS X. It's unix (almost) my mom could use. There's a lot to be said for that.
\Drew National Data Director, John Edwards for President
Guess you didn't read yet:
Quartz Extreme: Takes the compositing engine in Quartz, and accelerates it in graphics cards. Combines 2D, 3D and video in one hardware pipeline via OpenGL. "Everything on the screen is being drawn in hardware by OpenGL." Requires AGP 2x and 32MB of video RAM.
There *IS* a caveat:
It is not possible on older graphics cards like RAGE 128 cards, said Jobs -- that means it'll work on newer iMacs and eMacs, but not on older machines, he emphasized. AGP 2x and 32MB video RAM are required for this new technology. Jobs said this puts Apple two years ahead of "the other guys."
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
This makes huge sense for Apple: their future is Mac OS X and the company has been saying this for some time. I'm glad they are making the cut now, still relatively early in the new OS's life cycle. This will help push developers onto the new platform; in turn this is good for end users because the applications they need to run are more likely to appear on Mac OS X.
And again it shows that Apple are able to make gutsey decisions and lead the market rather than follow it. Whatever you think of the relative merits of X vs. 9, this is the kind of bleeding-edge decision making that Apple needs if it is to differentiate itself from the Windows platform.
Sailing over the event horizon
Then there are programs I used everyday, MUSIC programs, like Finale and Digital Performer, that don't work (Performer) in OS X or are buggy (Finale).
I mean, it's great that they want to move to OS X. It's a great OS. I love running it. I just can't get all the things I need to work on it yet. And, if memory serves me, didn't Apple support System 7.X for a long time after System 8 came out? And when they switched to Power PC Chips from Motorola 680XX chips. We had FAT (68K/PPC) programs for like years.
What is the big rush Steve?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
...ah, the unprotected memory. The cooperative multitasking. The first one taught me to never make off-by-one errors in CodeWarrior (it also, by proxy, taught me all about MacsBug). The second taught me never to FTP things while typing in a telnet window.
Yeah, I'll sure miss Pre-X MacOS...
Some Apple users may feel abandoned by this news, but it is obviously not unexpected. I suggest a little grief-counseling for the truly bereaved, but I'd bet that there are a lot of people out there who would actually consider buying a Mac now that wouldn't have dreamed it a year or so ago.
OS X brings Apple into a larger community and out of isolation. It may take some time for all of this to become apparent, but I think it is pretty obvious that everyone involved (Apple evangelists, *nix evangelists) will be better off with this move.
Guac-foo.
Lots of petrified grits
I've programmed in classic MacOS for 17 years, and I've actually contributed to MacOS 9. However, I upgraded my home Mac when 10.1 came out and never looked back.
MacOS 9 had a great existence, but MacOS X is superior in every way.
As stated, 'twas gonna happen sooner or later. My thinking is that the notification of OS 9 being shelved is of only passing interest, as it is passe' itself.
OTOH, being an embedded systems developer, I know the havoc that can be caused by a vendor pulling a platform from under your feet. Are there actually any (commercial) developers who will be adversely affected by this? Does anyone really care that it's on its way out?
My own opinion is that OS X has so many advantages that it's a hands-down winner 'twixt the two.
Shine on, OS X!
I'm very impressed by Apples willingness to sacrifice backwards compatibility to make a better platform.
It's a risky move on a business level, but on an engineering level, it makes a lot of sense. I just have to hope that good design will beat questionable marketing.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
You might want to rethink that new Mac OS 9 category, then, huh?
:)
-Waldo Jaquith
All he said is whats been happening since 9.1 came out, Apple has stopped devloping the OS 7-8-9 code base and are going to move everything to OS X.
Since Oct 2000, there were only 2 minor updates to OS 9 anyway.
Just because they arn't going to develop for OS 9 anymore doesn't mean OS 9 that's installed is going to stop working.
Down inside, the original MacOS was a lot like DOS - single-application, single thread, and no memory protection. Over the years, multiple applications were retrofitted to the thing, resulting in a horrible mess. CPU dispatching was the worst part. "Cooperative multitasking" wasn't enough. But instead of putting a real scheduler, all sorts of "tasks" (timer tasks, vertical blanking interval tasks, system tasks, deferred tasks, multiprocessor tasks, Open Transport tasks, etc.) were added over time. Each of these had a different set of restrictions on what it could do. It would have been far simpler to put in a real CPU dispatcher early on.
Better late than never, I suppose.
I knew a lot of Windows users who said the same thing when Win95 came out. I knew a few who held onto Win 3.11 like some sort of retarded obsessive high-school crush until it simply no longer worked anymore. They whined, they complained, but, eventually, they were forced to run Win9x. And, guess what? They found out what everyone else did: Win 3.11 sucked. Win95 was better. Win98 was even better.
MacOS 9 sucked. MacOS X is better. The next release should suck even less. That's how these things work. You can whine about it all you want, but whining never turned the tides of progress (if it did, slashdot would be trend-setting.)
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
i think they'd prefer to have the OSS community working on OSX
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
O.K. Moderators have your fun with me, but I can't help but comment on the new OS 9 icon where the only story under the topic is the end of OS9. Wouldn't this be better placed under Apple:)
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
I support a large number of Mac people, and they just aren't moving to OS X.
The question is: why aren't they moving? The answers I've most often heard are:
1) Not enough applications on X yet.
2) Not enough hardware drivers on X yet.
3) Don't like the UI
Killing development of 9 is the best way Apple can incent third party software developers to address issues 1 and 2, which is exactly why this is a good move, IMHO. There's not much they can do about 3, but most Mac users I know who have tried both actually find Mac OS X works fine for them. YMMV.
Sailing over the event horizon
When they start want to use the latest software they will want to start making OS X the default. Good thing it is so easy to change. Forced change isn't good but at least they can focus on OS X and make it better.
I support a large number of Mac people, and they just aren't moving to OS X.
You see, that's just the problem Apple is dealing with here. People aren't adopting Mac OS X fast enough. In order for them to really kick butt they need to get Mac OS into the hands of more people (so more developers will create software, so more people will switch, etc--it's a vicious circle).
Besides, they're not telling people they can't use Mac OS 9 anymore, they're telling the developers. It's all part of the master plan... and it does more good than bad. So what's the problem?
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
You're mad! Mad, I say, mad!
BTW, how long till the first OS-9 emulator hits the fan? ;)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Apple seems to be taunting them on purpose, consider their "Rip. Mix. Burn." ads. Gateway payed Apple the sincerest form of flattery with their later ad campaign, but still Apple was the first to stick their neck out.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
The IETF zeroconf working group, led by Apple's Stuart Cheshire, has been working on this for a while.
For good minute-by-minute coverage of the keynote, commit HTTP to Apple Confidential. The latest news (as I post this) is iChat a new Apple IM client built into the 10.2 release of Mac OS X. I know the lead engineer on that project and I expect it will be pretty sweet.
Sailing over the event horizon
With it go some of the things that Mac users have come to love about their quirky boxes...high quality (but expensive) parts, Easter Eggs, strange homebrew interfaces (ADB, anyone?), tiny screens, humorous error messages that convey no information...everything that at one point made Apple Apple.
Well, I don't like it. You can have your protected memory. And while you're at it, you can remember to take your preemptive multitasking, too. We Mac users have always maintained that that kind of stuff just isn't needed for the home user, and I stand by it, even if Steve Jobs won't.
Call me crazy, but I appreciate an intuitive interface; yeah, that's right: intuitive. Since when does it make sense for "Shut Down" to be classified under a little picture of an Apple? How is your average Joe or Jane going to find it there, when it clearly should be labelled "Special". There was a time when the Apple icon was reserved for "Chooser" and "Calculator", but that time has come to pass.
Not to mention the new "brushed metal" appearance of the Apple CD player. Once upon a time, a user could choose (yes, remember choice?) from an extensive handful of horrid, non-standard color schemes for the late, great Apple CD Audio Player.
So let's raise our glasses in honor of Mac OS 1-9, the interface we hated to love for so many years. And let us launch off our Holiday Rockets in honor of Steven Jobs, our own great Lincoln, liberating the slaves of the antebellum command line. And raise too our voices, for tonight we give thanks where none thanks have dared yet go.
Thank you, Macintosh, for everything. The Last Mac Purist,
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
A. Next time, wait till the keynote is over, dont just post the first thing that happens and then have to go back and keep updating the article. There is always lots of interesting stuff said in the keynotes, no point jumping the gun.
B. Thanks for getting the maccentral.com link hammered halfway through the keynote. I always enjoy having my keynote newspage refreshing session destroyed by a few million of the unwashed slashdot masses, half of whom are probably just trying to read the article to find trolling material. This ties back to A. in that if you had waited to post this till after the keynote, those of us that *really* care would have been able to finish getting updates about the keynote before the link was trampled.
Mod me down, I don't care. I'm frustrated.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
I'm thrilled to see spring loaded folders coming back!
42
OS-X is based on a lot of open-source code. Time for payback! Open-source the OS9 code (and its predecessors)!
BTW, guys, I like the 'Aqua' slash theme... but won't you get sued?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Yes that is in fact what AGP can do. However this was to store textures not to be used as display memory.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That's actually pretty interesting. If 32MB RAM has to be ON the video card, a lot of machines that run OS X 10.1.x just fine are SOL when it comes to taking advantage of Quartz Extreme. But if the relevant spec is a fairly modern 2x AGP video card, and it's allowed to steal memory via the AGP bus, then that's not so much of a problem. But until last week, the state-of-the-art TiBook (for instance) had an ATI Radeon Mobility with only 16MB onboard RAM.
I know - I have one. It'll suck if Quartz Extreme won't take advantage of my TiBook.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
WTF is that?!? The iBook, a machine they are selling RIGHT NOW does not meet those specs. So basically their current 'entry level' model is never going to have accelerated video? This is ridiculous.
I had one, it was so slow that I sold it. This video driver issue is probably the reason why.
Macs last longer than PCs, huh? How long is an iBook with no video acceleration going to be able to keep up with OS X? Apparently by "two years ahead", Steve means "you'll need the machine we'll be selling two years from now to keep up with the OS we're selling today".
Yeah, they're all audio apps, and the funny thing is, OS X is supposed to have inherited a kick-butt set of classes/APIs for dealing with Audio and Music (MusicKit), but I haven't seen a whole lot come of it yet. Hmmm
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I am glad to see OS 9 as 'dead' because this forces developers to start creating more native support for OS X and not settling for 9 compatibility. As of right now, I have an Epson scanner with no native X drivers.
On the other hand, I am very concerned of the loss of support for 9 users. One example that comes to my mind is the Western Michigan University Theatre department which run 9 on all of their Apple computers, most of which can't even run 10.1, let alone the new demands of 'Jaguar.' Also, all of the major programs (besides Office) are either not available in X or require a major upgrade to become X compatible. That's a lot of money to spend, epically when most of your computers can't run in X. The question can be raised that the department needs to update their hardware, but when the current setup is fully functional, why spend the money to change it all?
I believe this move is to create a focus for developers to develop support of X that take charge of very innovative technologies that X has to benefit the users. I only hope that we 9 will still be supported and at least welcomed. Hopefully someone will visit the retirement home once-in-a-while and say hello to 9.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
iChat: AIM-compatible messaging built in to Jaguar. Can create buddy list of anyone on the local network, as well. You can use your Mac.com name and don't need AOL account. Sorting. "First time AOL has let anyone under the tent," said Jobs (although others have reversed-engineered AIM compatible chat apps).
I think this is a huge announcement from Apple. With AOL taking Netscape/Mozilla and using it as its Web App replacing IE, we saw the first shot across the Microsoft bow by Case. Now Jobs and Case are teaming up to make AOL IM a bundled part of Mac OS X. Taking Microsoft's game and shoving it right back them. I assume this is why MSN has finally started supporting Mac OS with their service. They are reading the writing on the wall.
We have been seeing Apple getting more aggressive in dealing with Microsoft. Jobs balked at the Microsoft/DOJ "Give the Kiddies Windows" settlement, Apple's website now shows you that Mac OS X kicks XP's butt, the famous Photoshop "bakeoffs" and now the AOL IM in Jaguar. What next?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Why not some support for the XDarwin project? This would give an easy way to bring Linux GUI developers on board, without making them unlearn open source gtk to learn the very much closed source Cocoa. The world of X11 apps is very much larger than Cocoa apps at this point (compare versiontracker's cocoa app list to FreshMeat's X11 section), and will be for the forseeable future. Why? Non-North-American countries which have a lot of developers (Poland, Germany, India) find it a lot easier to buy into hardware that runs X11.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Keep OS 9 installed. It's not like Steve Jobs is going to go to your house while you are asleep and install OS X on your computer against your will.
If your machine is secure, it doesn't matter whether crackers can discover your IP address or not.
If you install the dev tools, the
- /Developer/Applications/Quartz\ Debug
application can be used to disable double-buffering. You'll see how different the system feels when using the "Autoflush drawing" switch.Now, in terms of actual speec, getting a task done un X means not stopping other tasks, unlike in Classic. One striking example is those Photoshop bake-off Apple likes to do against Intel.
This really doesn't prove anything, because while Mac OS 9 -based Photoshop creams Intel-based Photoshop in throughput, the Windows version actually still lets you run stuff in the background, where as Mac OS 9 would technically suck the entire processor to itself, making background processes grind to a halt.
It'll be interesting how Photoshop back-offs will do, now that Adobe finally released it.
Apart from the UI perceived sluggishness, there are area where Mac OS X is clearly faster. We've noticed this from out (heavily) network-based application. Download speeds are much more efficient using BSD sockets than OpenTransport. On the plus side, the machine is not rendered useless when downloading data.
Everything runs like a charm on my DP800 Quicksilver, and will apparently only be getting better. Too bad you bought the "Happy Meal" Mac.
Couldn't you just do the test once and set some function pointers which all subsequent code would use?
DNA just wants to be free...
(IANAMU - I am not a mac user)
The only thing I have to say about this is that Microsoft is doing the exact same thing with their next windows release - dubbed "Longhorn". The gui is going to be accelerated by your graphics card using the 3d features of your card. This will (no doubt) use Direct3d instead of OpenGL but it serves the same purpose.
So your argument is invalidated because both sides are doing the same thing - Apple just happened to beat them to the punch, and I , for one, applaud them for it.
Derek
Wow. Ping the broadcast address :)
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
How long until the classic compatibility layer is no longer functional?
Presumably the Classic environment will always be functional, until it goes away forever. See, this is a developer's conference. When Apple announces that they're EOL'ing OS 9 to developers that means they're stopping development on OS 9. No future development on OS 9 means no need for future development on the Classic environment.
So Apple shouldn't release improved technology because it can't work with the low-end machines? When people bought their iBooks, was Steve Jobs telling them that it would have hardware accelerated Quartz? I don't think so. Guess what? You get what you pay for.
however this is going to force some people to either buy new hardware or just never upgrade... If I'm worng... please set me straight.
;-)
You're worng.
Think of OpenGL: if your graphics card can do OpenGL stuff, then the libgl on your computer will hand off the OpenGL processing straight to the graphics hardware. If it can't, your libgl will do the OpenGL stuff in software.
(At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Seems like in PC-land it doesn't much of the time.)
If your Mac has support for Quartz Extreme, it'll use it. If it doesn't, it'll continue to use software-based Quartz rendering.
Steve never said you had to have hardware accelerated graphics to run Jaguar, or anything that would imply that.
This isn't going to "force" anybody to do anything. I am typing this from my 4-year-old Mac running OS X. It's slower to respond than OS 9, but I like the OS so much better that I put up with it. (The developer tools alone are simply wonderful, and worth the switch.) There's nothing I have to "go without" in using my old computer, I just have to wait longer for it to happen. Same deal here. Don't want to upgrade? Then deal with it -- it won't suddenly get worse than it was, just because of Apple's decision.
they are dead last in Legacy Support
I can't agree with this. Yes, there have been many times when Apple said, "We've decided to ditch this old technology, and move to something far superior". Every time it happens, people whine and moan. But they always have plenty of time to upgrade (years, usually), and backwards compatilibily has always been excellent (68k to PPC, for example).
Your computer doesn't become less productive when Apple decides to put in a new feature. This is ridiculous. I can understand some frustration when your 1337 new computer isn't the hottest thing on the market anymore... but it really is silly. Apple says, "Buy a new iBook tomorrow and you'll get [feature]!!" And everyone who bought an iBook last month complains that Apple isn't selling the same product for 5 years. Look at the big picture, people.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Because in real life, it turned out to suck. AGP is now mainly used to quickly transfer stuff to on-card memory. Hell, most 'power' cards these days are shipping with 64 or 128 megs. And I remember being all chuffed up that my Mach64 card had a whopping 2 megs of VRAM...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
They're the ones who released those phony pics of an Apple branded PDA last year. Whether it was a publicity stunt or they were deceived (my money's on the former), Spymac is NOT a good source for Mac news.
Try macnn.com instead.
Which broadcast address? The point of this is so you don't need to be on the same network segment.
So... you can easily share your stuff with anyone on the internet -- though I wonder how autodiscovery would work like that (wow.. 30 million mac users online).
Kinda brings new meaning to p2p integration if it's directly tied into the burning suites.
Rod Taylor
I tried OS X 10.1 on my Rev A imac (233 MHz G3, with 160 MB RAM), which is to Apples spec as to what machines are supported and recommended, and found it to be unusably slow... Running native applications as well as classic apps, it was just useless.
I just checked out one of the new LCD imacs the other day, and found it to be running OS X at quite acceptable speeds... OS X seems great on a machine with the actual horsepower to run it, but apples recommended configuration is too lenient.
So, chalk another onto the list of why peopel aren't upgrading... Their computers aren't up to OS X's requirements.
And many publishing companys aren't moving to OS X until Quark is availalbe... Though some are so excited about OS X, that they're checking out Adobe's Indesign to see if it could be ready to steal Quarks thunder...
It's fully OSX native and has two more instruments over and above Reason 1; a new graintable synth and an advanced sampler. The OSX drivers for my Roland UM1 midi interface are also in beta now and can be downloaded here.
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
Now [A]pple rips off the name of an old Atari product, Jaguar.
First of all, this is just a code-name. But, on that subject, did you ever hear the story of Carl Sagan's lawsuit against Apple? The Power Mac 7100 was developed under the code name "Carl Sagan," and when that worthy found out, he sent his lawyers a-calling. The Apple engineering team obligingly changed the code-name... to "butt-head astronomer."
Sorry I was being a smart a$$.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
I don't know if a Radeon would be sufficient, or if you'd have to get a GeForce. Considering the late-model G4 Titaniums have either the Radeon M6 or the Radeon 7500 Mobility in 'em, I'd guess a Radeon will suffice.
Is your display VGA or ADC? The latter will be decidedly more expensive to replace your video card on - you'd have to get the DVIator or a similar device, since third-party Mac video boards don't have ADC ports. However, the actual video-card replacement is pretty easy:
- Open case. (i.e., pull tab on side, swing side panel down.)
- Remove retainer screw from video board.
- Remove old video board from slot.
- Insert new video board into slot.
- Put retainer screw back in its former place.
- Close case.
- Plug everything in and turn system on.
It's really not that hard. Video RAM is on the video board, and may not be upgradeable at all. The first Rage128 RE PCI boards had header connectors for RAM daughtercards, but the newer boards quite possibly won't.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
First off, you need a LOT of video ram to make this work fast. I guess 32mb is a lot, but still, if you run out the card starts swapping between video ram and main ram, which is slow. I don't know how much space all those Aqua graphics take up with animations, but I'd be surprised if it's a lot less than 32mb.
Secondly, OpenGL just wasn't designed for 2D graphics! It has virtually NO support for 2D drawing, if you wish to display something it must either be sent directly to the card as pixel data (slow) or uploaded to video RAM and displayed as a texture on a polygon. This seems like a rather strange way to go about things.
Take the lack of support for text in the API. When writing the VGL, which is the OpenGL widget set for my game (btw I'd be the first to admit I'm not a hotshot coder) I had to create my own text/font system. It was fast certainly, but required you to upload the font to video ram again, which placed restrictions on how you managed font textures.
I can't figure out why anyone would want to use 3D acceleration for making 2D stuff go faster. As far as I know, 2D and 3D acceleration are different things - am I wrong?
Oddly enough, I started using Mac OS X *BECAUSE* it has a command line. as a long time BSD user, I've always wanted a useful and responsive interface- os X gives me that, with my beloved bsd core beneath. it's a joy to use for that reason; I know several other BSD geeks who have bought new apples for this reason only, and never would have even thought about it prior to X.
Now if they would only port Aqua to x86, so it could run on all my happy darwin/x86 boxes...
EOM
Hell, it puts them two years ahead of THEMSELVES. How much of Apple's current hardware line even supports this? I think they should have tried to at least go back to Rage128 - but again, it shows that Apple's really pushing up the bar on backwards compatability to get people to buy new machines. So much for the argument that macs remain useful longer than PCs. Thing is, none of their new machines are really appealing.
We get one article today about Intel coming out with a 533 MHz FSB, and last Friday, it was about a PROTOTYPE Apple mobo with 133 MHz.
I wouldn't mind buying a new Mac - at the current specs, but I'm not going to pay the outrageous prices they're asking for out dated hardware.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Now [A]pple rips off the name of an old Atari product, Jaguar."
I actually was being tongue in cheek. I think it's lame to protect trash cans and common animal names.
It's been a while since I heard the butt head astonomer story. Heh. That's always a good one.
Apple is doing what they've said they were going to do since 1995 or so. You and your users have had years to prepare for this.
My personal opinion is that you and your users are shooting yourselves in the feet by not moving to a better OS. There is precious little excuse to not be on it by now - Office is here, Photoshop is here, Palm is here.
APIPA is yet another acronym for link-local IPv4 addressing.
What Apple is calling "Rendezvous" begins with link-local IPv4 addressing and adds "multicast DNS" (which Microsoft wants to call "link-local multicast name resolution," i.e. LLMNR... sigh).
Here's what Rendezvous *actually* is: it's the last little bit of what Appletalk had going for it, finally "ported over" to work on the Internet protocol. Not only is Mac OS 9 in the terminal patient's ward-- so is the Appletalk network protocol. Happy happy day.
--
jhw
(1024*768*32*4)/8=12582912 or about 12megs 'o RAM.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
That's funny, the #1 reason I always hear is: it's too slow on my not-brand-new hardware.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Oh, but AGP was GREAT for scamming people into buying new machines when they didn't need to because Video Card manufacturers stopped producing PCI versions of their high-end models.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This from Apple's press release:
iChat, Apple's new AIM-compatible instant messaging software that is built into Mac OS X and integrated with the new Mail and Address Book applications;
QuickTime® 6, the first complete solution for industry standard MPEG-4 video and AAC audio streaming;
Rendezvous, Apple's proposed new industry standard for automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks (i.e., Ethernet, AirPort®);
Address Book, Apple's new system-wide database for managing contact information;
Finder(TM), now enhanced with spring-loaded folders and new instant searching;
Sherlock® 3, Apple's all-new Internet search and services tool;
Quartz(TM) Extreme, the hardware accelerated Quartz graphics and compositing engine;
UNIX Tools, the latest UNIX advancements including FreeBSD 4.4 updates, the new GCC 3 compiler, IPv6 and IPSec; and Windows Support, for increased compatibility with Windows networks with SMB browsing and sharing as well as built-in PPTP VPN security.
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
It sounds like Jini to me.
Take a complex PDF document. View it in Acrobat. Do the same on a recent PC. Try dragging the page around and seeing how that looks. Viewing PDFs (native to MacOS X!) on a 550MHz PowerBooks is slower than viewing PDFs on a 300MHz PC.
-- SIGFPE
I think MenTaLguY's point was that you should not have if statements "sprinkled all over the code". At process init, do the test and then set some global function pointers to the OS-specific version. You complain about having to maintain multiple functions, but you still have the same code in your codebase today. Instead of using nicely modularized functions for each OS, it sounds like your current code has all that same code (plus OS version checks) smooshed into a single monster function.
For example, you could have a global function pointer called TcpSend. Then set it to point to one of an OS-specific implemenation such as TcpSend_MacTcp(), TcpSend_OpenTransport(), and TcpSend_BSD().
cpeterso
A question. Does Apple charge for point upgrades, like from 10.0 to 10.1 or am I going to have to shell out bucks for 10.2 when it comes out this Christmas (that's what late summer means, right)?
I'd like my alias to be Command-M, not Command-L (why the change?)
:)
Command-M (Apple-M) is for Minimizing windows, which makes more sense than Command-M for Alias. At least 'alias' has an L in it.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The first and biggest misunderstanding in your post is that all slashdot visitors share a common viewpoint. If one person rails against MS, and another person cheers on Apple, that's not hypocrisy. It might be hypocrisy if it were the same person in each case, but you haven't shown that. And even if you did, that would only suggest that that one person was hypocritical, not all slashdot visitors.
Or, to put it another way, it's as if I accused you of hypocrisy because slashdot visitors criticise Microsoft, and here you are, defending them. That's every bit as hypocritical as what you're accusing others of. (Zero is equal to zero.)
The second, and more egregious, mistake is assuming that Microsoft and Apple are equivalent. Here's a clue for ya: Microsoft has been found guilty of anti-competitive behavior in a court of law. Apple hasn't. I'm not really a fan of Apple, but to assume that people should judge these two companies by the same standards is just plain foolish.
Which leads to the conclusion that even if you could find some specific individuals to accuse of hypocrisy, your accusations might not stand up too well.
My god man, I remember the IBM and AT&T cases, and MS makes both of those companies (who were pretty foul in their day) look like saints!
For everyone wondering whether their video card will be able to use the hardware-accelerated Quartz, I quote from Apple's website (at the bottom of the page):
"Supported cards: nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance."
Also note that they say 32 MB of RAM is recommended but theoretically not required. So I don't think this is quite as much of a debacle as some posters have made it out to be. Besides, Quartz should be improved and faster in 10.2 whether you're using hardware acceleration or not; you just won't get the max performance if it isn't hardware-accelerated.
"95% of all Slashdot
one of my friends who just got back from the conference said that there was a coffin on stage for os9.. I dunno.. I thought it was funny..
ichat is supposedly being "let under the tent" by aol. according to the coverage on maccentral. i.e. aol is playing nice with apple, since they realize the official AIM client sucks rocks.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Apple says "graphics professionals will appreciate the ability to input text via stylus instead of switching to the keyboard." It also says this will require an input tablet. I kind of assumed it would allow OCR of scanned images too, but maybe not. Too bad.
Say hello to zMac.
Except when loading up 10,000 Mozilla/OmniWeb/IE windows, OSX works very fast for me. I don't think there will be that much difference with Jaguar if most of the emphasis is on increasing graphics speed.
When I load up loads of windows, for some reason the menus get sluggish. I think this may be about the memory the web browsers are using as much as anything else, but it's odd considering that I have 1.5gb RAM.
The new 1ghz system is only about 30% faster than the dual 450. So I wouldn't worry about getting rid of the dual 450 just yet.
Hope that helps.
D
But you only have to upload the texture once, and then you can make it undergo many transformations without having to send that data to the video card again, not to mention not having to have your CPU do the transformations...
My first reaction on reading the post was that the guy had eaten too many press releases for breakfast. Exactly the same as reading any pro .NET crap from Redmond. So no harm done to balanced thinkers (ie, I distrust ALL press release regurgitations).
Infuriate left and right
What really got me excited today was the news about Inkwell, the handwriting recognition engine for 10.2.
I'm excited because it's so useless. There is no way that Jobs would put his people through the effort of bringing handwriting recognition to OS X unless it was a precursor to the iPad. My guess is October, January at the latest.
Soooooo happy.
Kevin Fox
So, a new topic for OS9 was created, number 178 in slashcode, and this is the only article under it. Why, may i ask, does this deserve its own topic, thinking that this will probably be the first AND last post for it (os9) as they are getting rid of it anyways.
Erm, long, cluttered sentence. I'm too lazy to rephrase. Sorry.
Apple has always been a company that wasn't afraid to drop old technology in order to get users to adopt newer, clearly superior technology. They really understand that many users (especially those like your grandma who love the simplicity of a Mac) are unwilling to change unless absolutely forced to do so. Ultimately, all but a very few of those users, when migrated over to the superior new technology, will wonder how they ever managed to do anything with the old systems.
I don't think OS 9 is going away any time soon - it'll still be preinstalled on new Macs for some time, and it will likely live on in Classic for some time after Apple stops making it directly bootable on new machines. And there's nothing stopping anyone from running it exclusively on an existing machine.
Say hello to zMac.
I guess this relates to your Points 1 and 2, but the biggest real problems I've seen are actually
They just *have* to fix printing and need to think seriously about doing more to fix Classic if they want to continue competing in the educational market.
Babar
Don't you mean MSLLMNR?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
All good things must end. I still have a trusty 6500 running OS 9 and playing MP3s - but I doubt any consumer, given a week, would prefer to use OS 9 over OS X...
Apple had the public beta of OS X in September of 2000, remember? I've been running the thing since then, and I give feedback. There are some shareware pieces that I use, sure (FruitMenu, WindowShade X, etc.), but I love the Dock, iPhoto, Office v.X, Photoshop 7, OmniWeb, BBEdit 6.5, BlogApp - all of which are wonderful in OS X.
It's evolution, baby.
I think the very same news item has this listed as in the next OSX.
Um, have you looked under the Air Port menu icon recently? Specifically at "Create Network..."?
Honestly though, what would you do with a 533 system bus? Think about it, your HD is still reading at best at 7200 RPMS, your CD-ROM will max at 52x, and even if you've got some of the higher end DDR ram (I forget the clock speeds on those) there are some indications that the faster RAM is also more unstable, killing a lot of the percieved benifit. Not that I'm saying that a 533 system bus wouldn't be nice (I'm sure it would do some wonders for graphic processing) but I'm not about to complain because I can't shave an extra 3 nano-seconds off my render time for quake.
And they are still plenty back-compatable. There was no statement that Jaguar wouldn't run on the older machines, it just wouldn't use the graphics card enhanced system wide rendering.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Quartz Extreme won't run on an iBook doesn't mean Quartz won't be faster under Jaguar on a modern iBook.
Likewise the OS X pages mentions 32mb recommended for optimum performance, not 32mb required for Quartz to run.
So iBook owners *will* see a performance boost, Quartz *will* go faster, but people with 32+MB T&L AGP4x video cards will see the *most* performance gain, just as people with G4 CPUs will see more performance gains than people with G3 CPUs
GPL Deconstructed
This really is unfair. First off, Apple is very good at making sure their new OS's will run at useable speeds on older machines. But at the same time, let us not forget that apple is a hardware business. They don't make a lot of money just selling the next OS. So if people start relying to heavily on old machines (I still use a machine from 1996, running OS 9, and I am tempted to try X on it) they start to loose money. Apple "officialy killed" the pre-g3 support for the exact reason of needing hardware sales. They are now "officaly killing" OS 9 because they need developers making X native programs.
The fact that they are looking at handing system processes back to the hardware and not to the software is a good thing (anyone remember how fast the old comodores were [respectively speaking] in rendering and displaying graphics than modern computers are).
Yet even if you cannot take advantage you are not out of the loop, the system will run at least as fast if not faster due to software enhancements, and if worst comes to worst, you could always go staight terminal or go X Window System
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Think the protocols could be modified for plug-and-play beowulf clusters? Espesialy if you combined it with the plug-and-play PVM stuff that was availible for X and reported here (although the link eludes me currently).
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
According to Apple's Mac OS X new version page (http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion/), Quartz Extreme's supported video cards are:
nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance.
RECOMMENDED, NOT REQUIRED
Check the info before you start the next flame war.
... Jobs said this puts Apple two years ahead of 'the other guys.'
Is it just me or is Mac OS X not ahead at all? Windows has had hardware-accelerated GUI redrawing since, like, forever, mostly provided by drivers. 2000/XP extended that even further. And if I remember right, I thought some of the *nix UI stuff like KDE/GNOME supported hardware acceleration? BeOS supported hardware acceleration for the GUI, using VESA, as well. I don't know about any other OSes though, I haven't used most of them much. I really don't see how Mac OS X is 'ahead' at all, considering that their current versions aren't very accelerated at all (even though their speed is impressive considering what they do.)
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
The main problem is that OS X is a completely new OS design from our standard OSes. It's a UNIX underpinning, a classic (read backward compatibility layer), it own graphics layer (quartz) and then a GUI on top of it. In herrently the first versions will be very slow, but each succesive version has gotten faster. Give them a bit and it will all work out.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Open GL does not directly support 2d manipulations. but there is a way of doing it, pioneered by the guys at Raycer Graphics Corp. Look up their patents on large matrix and 2d manipulations.
Here is a quiz for you:
1. which company bought. Raycer Graphics?
2 Who was the Head of 3d engineering at Apple
(Answers: Apple, ex-CTO of Raycer)
This is hilarious!!!
d _l ede#
A wonderful eulogy to a dead OS. Classic Jobs. Very very funny!
Warning: Real/WinMP only...
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-899914.html?tag=f
This should be moot with QT 6 - plays MPEG2 in the QT-Player. OTOH you won't get full screen without QTPro :-(
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I feel your pain. I bought my TiBook in November. I feel even worse for my friend who bought his a week or two ago, just missing the new model. I warned him it might happen...
I'm also pissed at the lack of support for IrDA. Why'd they include the port if they weren't going to support it?
Glad to see that Stuart Cheshire is still around. The man deserves great accolades for creating bolo. I had wondered what happened to him.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Apple, once again, shooting themselves in the foot
The most shooting of the foot Apple has done has involved keeping the Mac OS 9 code base for so long. It's horribly limited and inflexible. It's hard to develop for and unstable compared to just about anything else. These aren't the type of problems that will go away if you work on them enough. The system design can no longer scale.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I've been waiting forever for this feature.
I realize there are tons of web gui's, etc. for controlling a streaming server. But I love the iTunes interface.
Being able to do what I think steve was showing off (Mp3s stored remotely, server acts like the internal iTunes dbase, and just streams the mp3s to the client when they hit play). Would mean that I could use the iTunes app, which I love, to listen to music and select what I am listening too (most streaming servers need a command line / playlist / webgui interface, I want it straight from iTunes).
Hopefully someone makes an opensource mp3 server that acts exactly like this. Screw a web interface, give me a database front end app on my desktop. Write a plugin or two for winamp / linux mp3 player good ness, and it is one hell of a nice project. And it would be good practice implementing zeroconf (on linux anyway, getting MS to do it would be something entirely different).
I have a laptop, so being able to store my mp3s on a big, cheap, hard drive in a server somewhere, instead of locally, on my small, expensive, laptop drive, would be a dream.
The bandwidth for a 192K stream is inconsequential over airport / home network for me.
I have an upgrading clone. none of the OS's will work with my current machine. It's an old machine but I want it to last just a little longer...
This drives me a little nuts, because I'm only able to run "unsupported" OS 9.1 which is unsuported and not available for purchase and I don't have it. No photoshop for me or many of the other creative folk with older machines..
Photoshop on my ibook just doesn't cut it when I have a dual monitor setup..
I have a feeling I'm not along. I crave the new technologies and osx is great great great, but I really would like 9 on my powermac as a stopgap...
Maybe I'll stop by my local apple store and get one of those spiffy new Emacs..
O wait...
/Aram
Well, no one is innocent (Microsoft, etc), but Apple has advertised OS X as being for use with all Macintoshes that shipped with a G3 processor, with the exception of the original Powerbook G3.
Therefore, I would have hoped that their engineers would spend at least a little time making certain that their product is usable on such computers. yes, it installs. Yes, it runs. But performance is far from acceptable.
Yes, I could purchase a newer iMac, and am infact intending to, but I still feel that it is a perfect valid complaint to have a machine that is completely up to Apple's spec be unable to use the software effectively.
OK, so I just did notice the passing reference to CUPS; I guess I figured they would make a bigger deal about this...
OK, so I guess I'm missing something. I just did (like yesterday) upgrade to 10.1.4, but I didn't see/hear anything about this. Of course, I went out and got me a Linksys BEFW11S4 some time back, so maybe I wasn't looking hard enough...
Thanks for the pointers.
Babar
Win 3.11 and Win 95 (and OS 9 and OS-X) were fundimentally different. Win 95 spoke a totally new API called Win32 that Win 3.11 didn't know. You couldn't run a Win 95 app on Win 3.11, just no way to do it. So an upgrade was a necessary step if you wanted to use new apps. Now every subequent Windows version with the exception of Windows XP 64-bit (which is out) uses Win32 at it's nominal API. It hasn't even really changed much since Win 95. That mean you don't have to upgrade, you can use your old Windows and still run new software.
Now for Win 2000, there was more of a reason to upgrade. Being based on the NT core it give more security and stability than Win 95/98/ME. However it has support for DirectX, which was teh major thing lacking in NT4. Hence, it's a good upgrade no matter which you are comming from. You don't have to upgrade, new programs still work fine on the older systems (well DirectX stuff doesn't work under NT4 of course), but there is good reason to.
However XP is just a refinement of 2000. It's offical version is NT5.1 (2000 is 5.0). It offers a few new things, but at it's core is no different from 2000. Basically it offers you:
--Driver rollback, nice if you are prone to install beta drivers and break your system.
--Remote desktop, for if you are too cheap/lazy to install TightVNC or Remote Administrator (it is faster than both but still).
--Skinnable interface, if you like that kind of thing.
--Builtin firewall, again if you're too lazy to get Tiny Personal Firewall.
--VESA support, so it will run over 640x480x16 even without a video driver.
--Built-in support for zipfiles.
--The ability to switch user accoutns and leave programs running.
This isn't an exhaustive list, there's more, but you get the idea. Little changes that make things a little better. If you get a new system, you might as well get it. IF you have 2000 already, no need to upgrade.
L.A.W. = Lawyers Are Wimps (for making the development team change the code name).
Here lies a Mac OS ninth in its line Its only survivor is doing just fine.
Et tu, Jobs?
All Macs go to heaven.
Please add your own Epitaphs for Mac OS 9, my only friend in the world. *sniff* I'm going to miss you, buddy!
Unfortunately it's tough to do, especially when it comes to device drivers. Windows 96/98/ME were still able to load 16-bit device drivers, if necessary. There are quite a few people around with strange, old, hardware that they need to run. With Windows ME, Microsoft introducted a compatible device driver model so people could write drivers for 98/ME and XP with a single code base.
It was worth it for Microsoft, and it will be worth it for Apple. OS 9 has a great deal of "legacy" code in it that bogs it down. Let's hope they can make the transition as smoothly as Apple did. (Please, Apple zealots, don't mod me down just because I didn't say that Bill Gates was satan in this post.)
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
I've only owned a Mac since March last year :D
But I've seen that OS X 10.0 was faster than OS X beta, and 10.0.4 was faster than 10.0. and 10.1 was faster than 10.0.4, and 10.1.4 was faster still (at least Sherlock, AppleWorks, and iTunes)
The problem is that there are two classes of optimizations within the PPC camp; taking advantage of the large register space and larger cache, which applies to both G3s and G4s, and taking advantage of AltiVec, which applies to only G4s.
Still, there's reason to believe that the 10.2 release will be faster than the 10.1 release if nothing else due to gcc compiler optimizations as well as better threading and code optimizations throughout the OS.
GPL Deconstructed
It's purpose is not to make your screen faster (otherwise, that would end up in System Preferences!).
The idea is to demonstrate how much is being drawn before the result is dumped on the screen, in one single sweep.
No. it's a debugging aid, not a generic system utility. You wouldn't find much use of it leaving it one.
As I said in another reply, it's purpose is to aid in development. The way the image is refreshed in the window is through periodic refresh of the update region of a window.
It's the same as calling QDFlushPortBuffer repeatedly as you draw each element (a line, a rect, a paint operation etc).
It's not quite like a direct-to-screen switch.
NIB-based windows (as per InterfaceBuilder) have a flag that allows them not to be retained or back-buffered. I haven't tried this yet, so i can't attest it's working or not.
...with Apple on this one. I don't think they should have completely canned OS 9 yet. I think they could have announced that there would be no further feature upgrades (leaving the room for massive fsckup fixing upgrades if needed). But they should have still committed to some support of it, like in Classic Mode. Honestly I really really really hate OS X. It has the potential to be cool. For a new user or a M$ convert, it probably is cool. It's not for me. I'm a Classic Mac & Linux guru; I know Solaris pretty well. I can jack with Irix and make it do what I need. Mac OS X is nothing like any of the above, including the Classic Mac. It's soo damned weird! It has BSD underpinnings clouded by all the shit Apple did to it to make it look unique (and it does). The GUI doesn't even resemble the Classic Mac GUI. They lost all the good points about the Mac GUI. Nothing confuses me more (expect perhaps women) than Mac OS X. 10.2 had better make OS X more Mac-like or I'll be switching to Linux.
Why would they want that? The whole point of this announcement is that they want OS 9 to die so developers will focus entirely on OS X. The only reason to release the OS 9 source would be if Apple still thought it had some value, which from their perspective it doesn't.
I found it extremely interesting that AOL has evidently given their blessing to iChat, making it the first external client to be offcially endorsed by AOL for operation on their network. Nice to see AOL sort of playing a little nice with a single other entity in IM space. I don't know if iChat will support any other systems however. If not, I'll be sticking with Fire.
Do not touch -Willie