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Interview Jordan Hubbard, Apple's BSD Tech Manager
Stigmata669 writes "Over at MacSlash the editors have managed to schedule an interview with Jordan Hubbard, Engineering Manager of the BSD Technology Group at Apple to answer questions about BSD, and Darwin in the context of Mac OS X. The interview is being conducted in the Slashdot style, so comment and in a week they will have the highest moderated comments answered. The specific article is here."
A couple things from an Apple User. 1.Apple seems to be sticking to some of their historical design decisions (one-button mouse, laptop ADB keyboards). Nope. Apple uses USB for all it's keyboards and mice. Yes they still have the one button mouse, but the keyboard can be remapped at will (in fact you can get DVORAK for OS X pretty easy off VersionTracker.) ADB connectors for mice and keyboards are available, but hard to come by since Apple ditched that standard in 1998. 2.Produce systems that give the user a choice between "Mac Look-and-Feel" and "Traditional Unix Look-and-Feel" when the system is first powered up and/or when the OS is first installed. You already can. Hold down the Apple (command key is the "real" name for it) and the S key at start up. This allows you to start from the command line and the GUI will not load on the computer. Launching X-windows from this environment is pretty easy, or any other GUI that runs on Darwin is pretty easy, though getting such environments is not as easy as going to Veriontracker and d/ling them. 3.Why not try to capture this market away from HP/Sun/IBM/etc.?? Have you looked at Apple's Open Source partners? much less their hardware partners? IBM makes the G3 and probably will be putting the Power 4 in next years towers. Sun got Open Office to work on a port for OS X so that Office v.X wasn't our only industrial office suite. HP had print drivers out of the gate on day 1 for OS X. These groups are supportting OS X with their help. Apple can be a bit crazy at times, but they rarely bite the hands that feed them. 4. and Lastly : if using a one button mouse and having to use both hands on one computer are such a problem for you, then buy a different mouse. if you just sank $1500 to 3000 on a new computer, will the $15 for a two-button USB mouse really kill you? When I switched to the Mac a year and a half ago, I constantly tried to right click. Then I realized I always have two hands. With the control and command keys I had many more options, and a finer control than I did with two buttons. try it some time and you may like it.
TANSTAAFL
First, OS X supports two-button-mice *natively*. You can buy any non-apple off-the-shelf two-button USB laser mouse for ultra cheap and plug it in any not-too-old mac laptop's *two* USB ports. If there is a 3-button USB mouse out there, i bet you it'll just work on a mac laptop (or desktop), in the worst case you might have to install a vendor-supplied driver.
Apple hardware has *for years* supported USB peripherals, and that includes mice AND keyboards.
ADB serial ports for keyboards have been gone for a WHILE. As far as keyboard remapping, there is a slew of 3rd party OSX shareware and "how-to's" out there that'll help you do just that. Keep in mind that the Alpha Geek Community is switching in *strides* over to OS X, thereby building a very strong support-base. Check out a couple of my switching experience stories to give you a small idea of *some* of the slew of cool things you can do with OS X.
Futhermore, Apple hardware has been increasingly following mainstream peripheral and other device specifications: VGA monitor ports, ATA drive controllers, PCI extension slots. You can pretty-much buy a mac, gut it out, and fill-it up with non-apple components. But at least you have a base system that *just works*, and works well at that.
Please define "Unix Look and Feel". Are you talking about Solaris CDE? Are you talking about GNOME? KDE? I've got X11 and a slew of window managers and other X11 apps installed and running on OS X, using Fink. I would highly recommend that you get used to OS X's Aqua interface which is quite intuitive and powerful.
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Anyway, his point about laptop mouse buttons is perfectly correct: Apple will not let you have an internal trackpad with two buttons. He said nothing about peripheral mice.
However, dual button trackpads require two hands to use comfortably, at which point modifier keys are superior anyway. Requiring two separate skus for single and dual button laptops would be retail suicide. If you're doing intensive mouse work on a laptop, and you need 2+ buttons, no currently offered trackpad will fill your needs. A two button trackpad is a doily on a warthog.
His point about laptop ADB keyboards is also correct. The laptop in my 600 mHz iBook has an ADB keyboard, which poses several limitations that he describes accurately.
He also surmises that this is because of "religious reasons," which is braindead. There is no apple-faithful desire for adb keyboards. It's surely a cost issue.
His point about Unix look-and-feel is particularly braindead, though. You *can* have the Unix look-and-feel. X11 on MacOS X is free and easy.
His implication that these changes would enable them to dominate the massive "Unix/DSP/Embedded/Engineering" market are absurd. The internal adb & 1 button trackpad have *nothing* to do with that market. They need mice for their work anyway. The X11 issue is dealt with. That particular market is not that special. They are already making huge strides there.
Whatever. Now I've been trolled too.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
but it was off topic,,,,,,
Th post was to gather questions for JH, and all you did was complain about clustering....that was off topic.
Ask a question, and move on. All you did was bitch.
It's an Apple site, ok. People want to use Macs. That is opposite of your opinion, so stop trolling and move on.