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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."
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.
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