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Take a Mac User to Lunch
A Slashdot reader writes "LinuxWorld is running a story explaining how Mac OS X may help break down the walls for non-Windows operating systems, including Linux."
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Sounds interesting.
I recently got a G3 mac for free from someone who no longer wanted it. I had never used a mac before and I was kind of curious how they worked. It had MacOS X on it, including the developer tools which include command line tools all Linux developers are used to. After a few minutes of playing around with the interface I was hooked. Everything is so clear and tidy. The Unix core is not hidden away, but it never gets in the way. Real hackers have everything they need, but in an interface that makes the interaction with this Unix power elegant. Now I have the mac I am porting my softwre to support it as well as Windows and Linux. It is a pleasure to develop in, and I am really glad I found it. Give it a go.
When the article says apples sells more "Unix" boxes than dell or hp does that not count linux boxes too ? Is this a misleading statistic or is this true, are they puting linux and OSX in the general Unix (vs MSWin) category ?
sp
If you speak of the difficult "round mouse", they got rid of it. If you speak of the new "no button" optical, there's only one thing I've seen people have a problem with. IF you violently smack your mouse onto the surface when repositioning it, it might click. Simple solution - be nice to your hardware.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Oh, and for everyone who thinks it isn't worth running OS X on a G3 (there are many), it runs beautifully on my Pismo. Give it a try!
***
Apple's been making servers since 1993. Take a look.
If you didn't see the difference between MacOS X and BSD, do a little research. I'll provide some Apple links.
Apple put a lot of time into harnessing the power of UNIX into a box for Joe Average, and MacOS X Server gives admins the flexibility to do everything they want, without needing to wander through man pages to find that switch.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
almost all users? Almost all windows users wouldn't know how to transfer their mp3 collection, office documents, favorite sites, etc, etc without a cd burner.
Which is why Apple published this handy ``How to Switch to a Mac'' page. Of course, it necessarily has to gloss over burning CDs on the PC, because there are so damn many different ways to do it. All Apple can do is say, ``Read the instructions that came with your PC.''
Of course, if you don't want to use CDs, you can just share your hard drive on your PC and mount it from your Mac over AirPort. Macs and PCs interoperate flawlessly over AirPort, and Mac OS X mounts Windows shares over the network without any third-party software required.
Don't have AirPort? Run an Ethernet cable between PC and Mac (either straight or crossover; the PC probably cares, but the Mac doesn't) and mount your PC's drive that way.
Don't have AirPort or Ethernet or a CD burner? I hear a lot of PCs, for reasons that are beyond me, still don't ship with any of those built in. Amazing! Well, in that case, you can buy or borrow an external FireWire hard drive to move your files over. Initialize it on the PC, copy your files to it, then just plug it right in to your Mac. Poof.
Oh, wait. Your PC probably doesn't have FireWire. That's okay. A USB drive will work just as well, but be prepared to wait a really long time.
Sounds to me like there are plenty of easy ways to move your files to the Mac. And I haven't even mentioned Move2Mac yet. I haven't seen it myself, but it's supposed to take the pain out of getting all your stuff out of the various Windows nooks and crannies and over to your new Mac.
That's kind of the Mac philosophy in a nutshell, with apologies to Larry Wall: there's more than one way to do it, and one of those ways is to just pay somebody else to do it for you.
As for me, is there any program to load a list of music videos? I use media player b/c I can make a playlist of my 600+ music video collection.
So use Windows Media Player for Mac OS X. I haven't used it myself, so I can't say whether it has the specific feature you want, but if that's what you're comfortable with, it's just a download away.
Yes, you could. *If* you had a company willing to invest a large amount of money and experienced developers into producing a quality OS with the libraries and code to allow for high quality applications with a consistent user interface. I cannot see this happening in the realm of Free Softare.
As much as I like linux, this proves next to nothing. Linux's 'lack' of user friendliness is not a matter of technology, it is a matter of politics.
The technology is fine and no one will dispute that. You can build a nice gui over top of any sufficiently good core, which almost all modern OS's offer now. For example, XP's core is the evolution from the NT core, which was heavily inspired by VMS. You can see in the taskmanager particularly signs of the VMS underpinings underneath. VMS by itself is quite similar to Unix systems, so XP itself demonstrates that the UI on top makes the usability difference, and the solid core only helps (by delivering good performance with high stability).
The difference between Mac/Windows and Linux is that a single entity controls the system from top to bottom. Any disagreements as to how to do it are settled inside the company and a single offering is made to the public that is highly integrated, where each part knows *exactly* what to find where when it needs something. For a small example, an application installing on Mac or Win knows exactly how to register itself to show icons and menus in the right spots, whereas in linux, it isn't clear cut. You can probably manage to show up in Gnome and KDE, but there are other options. I love the breadth of choice and how I can pick and choose my favorite component for everything, but it does prevent offering a unified interface to home users.
Also, they distribute easy-to-install binaries. This relates to the previous point in that they *can* do this and not run into any wildly devating configuration that won't run that particular version (i.e. kernel/gcc/glibc versions differ a lot in the linux world). This is also because they don't have the free source ideology as a driving force. Sure, Darwin is open, but it is more of a side note, and what comes out of apple (with MacOSX) is tightly controlled. Source is easy for me to install, but it can take a long time and some people think it difficult. They could care less about the philosohy of Free software, they just want stuff to work easy and quickly.
Finally, these systems don't try to fit into an existing standard. I'm of course referring mainly to ditching X. X is a great and powerful/flexible system. I love X, but current implementations lack a lot of things XP and OSX have in terms of colorspace handling and access to hardware functions. Two clear things that come to mind are true alpha transparency (not copy and blend as all the translucency under X is) and the ability to change resolution and color depth on the fly without the 'slippery desktop'. Sure, extensions could be written to patch over this stuff, but it was more efficient to simply write a new low level graphics system and let X lie on top of it if needed. This is the way to go, it works well with Windows (Exceed) as well as MacOSX(XDarwin). You optionally get all the power of X without the limitations underneath. For linux users and developers, X is 'good enough' and there is no dominating business authority to force developers to do something more advanced.
Linux remains my preferred platform, though I want to try OSX. I like having choices and am a good enough admin to not care about the roughness around the edges, but for a common user to be satisfied, it needs to be consistant no matter where they may go..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've been a Mac user since 1984. I worked at Apple for a while in the 90s, but then I got a better paying job at IBM. I have worked at IBM since then, almost exclusively with UNIX and Windows. It's strange to see the reactions of other IBMers when they learn that I'm a Mac user. Even the die-hard UNIX guys and open-source fans are often prejudiced against the Mac. This is ironic, especially given that Macs compete more with Windows boxes than with IBM boxes. That said, I do see that people at IBM are beginning to take Mac OS X seriously. IBM makes a lot of money from its software and services businesses -- more than from its hardware business. The software can be easily ported to Mac OS X, and services are profitable no matter what OS the customer is running. Unfortunately, thare still a lot of people at IBM who haven't figured this out. Maybe discussions like this one will help to change that.
Apple's commercial said that if you bring your PC in (to an apple store), they will transfer the files to your new Mac for free.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Mac could be the OS Monopoly if it only started to port its stuff to the PC Platforms.
Apple will not port Mac OS X to non-Apple hardware. There are two obvious reasons:
But then again, why should one system have a monopoly? Some five years ago we had to choose between three (groups of) operating systems that were seriously flawed:
Nowadays we can choose between three pretty good operatings systems: Windows + Cygwin, MacOS X, Linux + KDE or GNOME. If we are lucky enough to maintain this healthy competition, perhaps some day there will be a Linux system my mother can use and a Windows system that I want to use (but I'll probably still use Mac OS X).
The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark - EC
I can verify this from personal experience. When I started in my current position, I needed a Mac to be able to work seamlessly with several outside designers and print shops. (I also wanted a Mac simply to preserve my own sanity.) I told the sysadmin that I would set it up and maintain it myself and I would get it connected to the NT and Novell servers just fine. My bosses had already approved it and signed the PO. All the sysadmin had to do was give me an IP address and network login.
The guy fought it for TWO MONTHS. "Macs can't do this, Macs can't do that, you don't have the right software, you can just use this P133 that I cobbled together from leftover parts." And the last time he'd even touched a Mac was 1992.
Before the end, we had to have a VP-level meeting simply to get him to do as he was told.
And yes, this is the same sysadmin that I complained about before.
Sorry, but I couldn't let this one go without a reply.
I use a Mac G4 running OS X 10.1.5 on our Windows 2000 network. As a sysadmin, I use XDarwin to connect to our VMS box and administer our DP software. I use VNC to control our optical system server and our Windows 2000 file server. In addition, I use this machine for Web development (we're a small place, I wear a lot of hats). In this capacity, I use ssh in Terminal to work on our Linux Web servers.
I don't use OS X because I can't do CLI; I've been using CLI for years, on Solaris, Linux, AIX, and now BSD (OS X). I held out for a Mac for my job because I don't have the time for my personal machine to crap out because I installed an RPM that broke something or tried to compile source code that bombed because of some arcane dependency. My machine is too important for me to spend all my time making it work. I have too many other machines to worry about.
Besides, since XServer ships with Samba, you actually save time and money using an XServer vis-a-vis a Windows box. I spent hours trying to get Samba working on Red Hat 6.2. It took minutes to set up this machine to work on our Windows 2000 network.
When you buy Apple, you're not just buying good hardware; you're also buying the Apple philosophy: "People want to use their computers productively. Let's make it work so they don't have to." With Macintosh, the machine disappears so you can concentrate on the task at hand. I can't explain it to you; you have to experience it. With a Mac, things work, the way you expect, the first time. And they don't mysteriously break later, leaving you scratching your head. By using Macintosh for my job, I have more time to do my job. The hardware and UI are tools that make me more productive. For the "huge price tag," You get reliability, simplicity, and stability - exactly what any real sysadmin wants in a server.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
Keep in mind that the mac development has had a long tradition of making usable, user friendly software. Many of the programmers in the mac development community are meticulous about designing their interfaces, and they understand that the will catch hell from their userbase if they put out a crappy, inconsistant UI that was developed for the software as an afterthought. Finally, the mac until recently has not had a command line (excepting some stuff in MPW), which has forced mac developers to think in a totally graphic way. They are coding for a desktop, but it is not a "Unix Desktop", it is a "Mac Desktop that Just Happens To Use Unix".
Linux programmers, on the other hand, come from a development community that has had a 30 year long tradition of calling end users stupid and telling them to go read the fine manual (which usually is anything but fine). There's an attitude that if an end user cannot perform a task that is confusing or ambiguous, it is because they "don't want to learn". Much of the linux development community thinks that HCI is a BS field of study and that usability design principles are sheer nonsense. Unlike in the mac community where deriding unusable software is widely accepted, in the linux community criticizing software usability is scorned by developers. It's referring to as "bitching" or "whining". Users who complain about badly designed interfaces are either told to shut up an code a better one or to "quit whining about what you get for free" or to "Stop spreading FUD about linux being hard-to-use". And finally, linux developers are severely tainted by their command-line heritage. Many interfaces they cook up have command line ways of thinking that just don't work on the desktop. Desktop linux will always crawl miles behind OS X if it's developers can't come out of their shell (pun intended).
Nothing prevents linux from taking over the desktop. Other than its entire developer community.
The first step in solving a problem is to admit that you have one
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
It seems to me, upon casual inspection, that the current Apple iBook designs cost less than other laptop computers. If anyone has recommendations for a laptop to run Linux, please post a reply.
Everything in my iBook, with the exception of the modem, works flawlessly... even the function buttons like volume. I know you can set up video mirroring through the VGA port, but I haven't done it. You can also start Linux off a firewire drive with its root filesystem on the aformentioned firewire drive.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
But your original question was why Apple didn't use *nix as the basis of it's modern OS way back in the 1990s. Do you remember "Taligent" and "Pink", the joint venture between IBM & Apple to create a viable OS standard based to compete with the Wintel cartel?
Pink was the OS that was supposed to be designed ground-up to be completely based on OO principles and technology. Apple put all it's eggs int that basket, and had to go shopping for an OS after years of missed delivery deadlines. Remember the play that Apple made for BeOS, before Jean-Louis Gasse and friends put a ridiculous price tag on what was still an unfinished OS? The net result was that Apple (and IBM) never finished fully OO-based Pink so it bought Job's NeXT. This allowed Apple to layer the MacOS on top of the OO-layer that NeXT had layered on top of BSD-Unix. And this also brought Apple's prodigal son back home.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."