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Apple and Linux Beneficial to Each Other?
viewstyle writes "There is an interesting commentary on eWEEK discussing the 'synergies' between Apple and Linux after visiting LinuxWorld. It makes a good point that advancement of Linux is good for Mac OS X and vice versa, because of the ease of porting across the platforms (soon to get easier with the X11 on Mac OS X)." Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
>Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
:)
But this is already happening. Cmdr Taco and Hemos both have Mac laptops, and from what I read online on their pages/blogs, they are their main machines these days!
I am thinking of buying a 12" Powerbook for myself. I have many PCs over here (8+) and an old G4 machine. But I need a new laptop, and that 12" powerbook does look good.
pronounced "10-11" by Steve Jobs!
If they can work towards an open file format system to replace MS office, they could chip away @ the MS desktop market.
I attended Jeff Bates's talk at linux.conf.au where he gave his presentation using OS X. The only presenter all week who dared to use a non-Linux platform.
Not only Linux wins, but all platforms capable of running KDE win. Huzzah.
I think care needs to be taken around Apple.
While they are producing some good stuff now (lets not talk about the past will we) they are a commercial company. That much won't change any time soon
As such their "priorities" so to speak are different and opposed to those of open source, linux, and software.
We could end up just feeding apple a lot in the way of open source projects, all up and dancing in a hoohaa of joy.
What happens when apple change their mind? Suddenly they're not so supportive of OSS. The commercial climate is fickle, and it WILL change
I'm waiting for Apple to get a version of Quicktime for Linux.
X has been available on OS X for about a year. With XDarwin and OroborOSX it's about as perfectly integrated as it can get. Most X programs will compile just fine (and the ones that don't more often than not the problem is with the configure scripts.. rewrite the makefile and it works) I use gvim as my text editor and other X programs with relative frequency. OS X really is the best of both worlds IMO.
Penguins like apples. They grow quite well in Antarctica.
It's funny, I've used Macs since I was a young'n in 1984, and I've used Linux since kernel 0.99. I've never used anything else, except for a couple years in college using Windows and Sun on and off.
;-).
Linux has power and flexibility, and the Mac always "just worked". Sometimes I was annoyed that Macs were so closed, and sometimes I was annoyed at the lack of polish on Linux. Between the two I could do anything.
It's amazing, almost *surreal*, that Unix and Mac merged together in Mac OS X. It's truly the best of both worlds.
Of course, I'm still wary of "depending" on Mac software, because of the proprietary lock-in and other evil stuff that companies do. But Apple's continual underdog status has been keeping them in check.
I look forward to more cool stuff from Apple...just getting ready to invest in a 12" powerbook (Mac #8 in my life) and a new Linux-based mini-itx PC to build a home gateway (Linux box #4).
Life is good (well, computer-wise
I've been running both OS X & Linux boxes at home for the last 10 months. I can and do use both hardware and software as common elements, from drives & PCI cards to mail, music, browser and office apps, etc.
For me, these boxes are extensions of each other, not competitors, and I've come to think of them as one environment.
MySQL on one...MP3s and image db's on the other. Apache and PHP on both...DVD's play on both... TV on one...DVD authoring on the other. It continues to delight me that I can expand and build as they both mature. This effort started out as an experiment. Now, I wouldn't consider just running one box or one system.
The beat goes on.
First off, just to clear this up...
soon to get easier with the X11 on Max OS X
X has been on X for quite some time. You could fink it if you wanted, or, if you want something even easier, you could XonX it or xdarwin it.
What's new, of course, is Apple's X11. That Apple would Aquafy X11 is really a great step forward, and hopefully means that -- and this is key -- Apple will start shipping Macs with X11 preinstalled.
Just as OS X's built in Java Virtual Machine makes OS X a first-rate Java deployment platform as Java apps look and act native without a single end user consideration about VMs, soon OS X could be a first-rate, well-integrated client-side deployment platform for open source software. Most importantly, this will continue to add new developers to open source movements, and that can't be bad. Even if Apple doesn't share everything they do, the fact that you'll have people used to making client-side apps increasingly contributing to open source projects is a great thing.
Not to mention that I've been impressed with what Apple's give back to the oss community, even though they technically often have no reason at all to do so. They've made Darwin open source, and have worked with the BSDs to share code that they have no pressing legal reason making them do so. Safari's updates to KHTML continue to be checked back in to the Konquerer source code by this paid Apple employee, which is another great move.
The only way I see Apple's new love of oss possibly being a bad thing is that Apple tends to hire the best away from open source projects and slap them onto Apple-first ones. Though this is great in that these people feel connected to the oss community, it has to shift their attention away from Linux and other F/free *NIXes a bit.
But more developers, especially good client-app developers, is a good thing, and having Apple return their contributions to the community is icing on the cake.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
As I posted in another Mac article,
:
Here's what I'd like to see
User Mode Linux under OSX That would be interesting. Running a complete Linux distribution as a user process under OSX.
Based on the comments from the linked exchange above, Jeff Dike (UML developer) thinks it can be done.
one of the best *nix apps sights out there:
http://fink.sourceforge.net
I'm currently running windows maker on top of aqua
kiyote
Yeah, good point. Because we all know IT geeks, sysadmins, software engineers, etc. -- you know, your average Slashdot reader -- are dirt poor.
--- Why yes, I am the webmaster of Microsuck.com
I brought home my Ti OS X PowerBook from work one day. My Solaris/Linux loving spouse immediately downloaded OroborX (sp?), turned on the wireless networking, fired up iTunes and accessed remote Xterm apps for his job. I have asked him to stop greeting me at the door with "Hi Honey! Did you bring your PowerBook?", as it makes me feel he loves me only for my laptop.
Negotiations are currently underway for his own PowerBook, so that I might eventually recover mine.
bluesangria
If together the two groups and help eachother out, that seems wonderful to me. Not every business in the same market has to be working to destroy all others. Often times a symbiotic relationship will be more beneficial than a destructive one.
At this point they have 90% of the market to shoot for. There's plenty of room for both to grow together while taking most of their customers away from MS.
More marketshare means more apps. It also means that technologies like OpenGL just might survive and keey DirectX from taking over the gaming world.
Just think, standards that are standard. Programs designed to run on multiple platforms. Sharing ideas rather than secreting them away.
Sounds good to me.
KDE 3.1 was a good step in this direction imho.
Personnally I don't want OS X Aqua on Linux, I'd rather have a more unique experience.
I can see KDE and Apple both dropping good things that each other offers if it doesn't quite fit into what they aim for.
StarTux
Tell me in what ways Apple has been beneficial to the opensource movement (not just Linux).
KHTML and Rendezvous are two biggies that come to mind, but that is not the point. I don't get the people who always whine, "Apple has taken foo and hasn't given anything back." Nowhere in the BSD license does it require Apple to do anything opensource, and in the GPL they are only required to released the code they used to augment GPL'd programs. Apple has done exactly what they are entitled to do with the code. You can't give something to someone and then cry even though they followed the terms you set forth.
If this is as good at it gets I'm in deep trouble. One of the synergies between Mac OS X and Linux is that Matlab is available for the Mac again, after Mathworks had previously announced that would no longer release on the Mac platfrom. Very good news for me, however, Matlab for Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy. (I am using Simulink, which relies heavily on OroborOSX.)
What kinds of bugs you ask? I can't always navigate through the fields in parameter boxes (one button mac mouse and the key combos just don't do it). I can't use the letters 'f' or 'd' in comments when OroborOSX isn't in the mood (well, there are 24 other letters in the alphabet). Matlab crashes reliably if I choose "cancel" instead of "save" with the "save as" command (in a Simulink model).
And sometimes when Matlab crashes, XDarwin doesn't shut down completely which prevents me from being able to reboot from the system on my internal hard drive -- I have to reboot from an external hard drive and then restart. It happened (again) yesterday while I was working at a coffeeshop.
I'm not sure who's to blame here, and I'm really pleased that Matlab is available, but the integration of these various programs still has a long way to go.
blog-O-rama (more raving & ranting about my experiences with OS X, etc. etc.)
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Not really. OS X applications use Aqua. If you are a Mac user and you have a choice between an Aqua program and an X11 platform, you will choose Aqua every time. Most Mac users won't bother to download X11. (I didn't, and I am a linux user of many years). Aqua is just too dambed nice.
If you were developing on the mac, you have some cross-platform options that allow you to leverage Aqua and still work on other platforms. Java and Qt are two. ( I have a strong preference for the first ).
I laughed when I saw this story because just now I was trying to understand Apple's relationship with Linux regarding Quicktime. I complained earlier today to the U.S. Mint because of this page, which is a sublte advertisement for the Microsoft Media Player. WMP has significant proprietary features, and just linking to Microsoft as the sole standard implies something.
... I've written several emails to other government sites that sport the infernal "best viewed with Internet Explorer" links. I doubt I can take credit, but my state of Virginia dropped the MSIE tags. (They originally wrote back explaining, "Frontpage told us to say that." :)
... why was I hanging out at the U.S. Mint site? My 6 y.o. thinks the state quarter program is very cool, and the Mint even has a whole kids' site built around the damn things. I'm getting tired of state factoids, but am impressed by the savvy of the Mint. We've already calculated how much the Mint would make if everyone in the U.S. took a complete set of commemorative quarters out of circulation.
The immediate licensing problem in WMP may simply be a side effect of DRM, but of course Microsoft intends to use WMP as a wedge to push its own standards into what is now fairly generic commerce -- as it did with MSIE. I told the rep at the U.S. Mint (who knows if anyone will care) that it was unseemly for the government to tacitly endorse a private company by offering just one format, even providing a link to the company's site to get the player, especially where across town the government just recently busted Microsoft for monopoly abuse.
Anyway, Apple doesn't make a QT player for Linux (right?) but appears supportive of it (right?), and there are options to access QT content from *nix. Meanwhile, Microsoft's antagonism towards GPL is very well known, and may appear over WMP. Of course, generic MPEG does streaming, which QT plugins will play. (Also, there's Real, yech.) Maybe this is most another Windows versus Macintosh struggle, but I'd hate to see the government take sides, and I don't trust MS.
On standards and compatibility
BTW
1. I believe you can add GPL on top of BSD license.
You can add whatever you want on top of code that has been BSD-licensed.
2. Apple used the BSD operating system , not the BSD license (or did they use both?).
Apple used the Mach microkernel and the FreeBSD userland with a little bit of NetBSD to make Darwin (the kernel for OS X). Darwin is considered a member of the BSD family. Much of the code they used to make Darwin was BSD licensed, but there were also some GNU tools like gcc. The Darwin kernel is released under the Apple Public Source License.
The article makes a lot of good points, especially the fact that a lot of Linux users are picking up Apple portables. As a longtime Mac user I noticed this trend early last year on all the Mac boards I frequent. More and more Linux users were popping up talking not about how they "switched" but how they picked up an iBook to compliment their Linux desktop. The most common reasons for doing so seemed to be a combination of the stylish design of Apple's portable line, the slick GUI mixed with the familiar CLI and of course the long battery life.
:)
On the contrary, the adoption of OS X on the desktop by Linux users seems quite a bit lower in my experience. Perhaps this is a testament to the fact that Apple is losing the edge in price/performance in the desktop market (even among its own users) and that it's just so much geekier to build your own box.
Either way I agree that both systems compliment one another quite nicely. Then again, as a web developer I produce my sites on OS X, test them on XP and host them on Linux boxes so in my opinion all the OSes have something good to offer.
DigiSquid Design.
I could build an x86 box with the same power for 1/4 of the price.
Dual processors? DDR RAM? ATI Radeon 9000 (or GeForce 4 Ti) graphics? Audio I/O? Gigabit Ethernet? FireWire 800 and FireWire 400? DVD-RW burner? Built-in 802.11g and Bluetooth?
Maybe you could build a machine like that for $500. But it wouldn't be easy, no sir.
I write in my journal
Apple hardware is just better.
... built in wireless, a gig of RAM and a 60gig drive.
I'm on a 1ghz PB4, 15". It has gigE built in, 5 hour battery, built in DVD-RW, CDRW, DVD, CD
These things are just slick. They could do with a MHZ injection, but fast enough for me.
So few people understand this - if there were Mac clones there would, in short order, be nothing left of interest in the platform. The key to Apple's role in the industry is that they are the last vertically integrated, "make-the-whole-widget," software-plus-OS company around selling desktop machines. That enables them to do things and be things that give them the unique place in the marketplace. Without that unique place there'd be nothing left of them.
Of course, the vertical integration is at once the best thing and the worst thing about Apple. But clearly without it they'd be entirely forgettable and irrelevant.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I have no idea what that means. Apple does a fairly good job of keeping their public CVS server in sync with OS X.
and where is the updates for freebsd?!
As far as I know, Apple hasn't made any. They just take a good chunk of the FreeBSD userland and ship it with OS X, without modification.
Also we give them X11 support but would they ever give us Aqua support?
:sigh: I've about had it with all the "Aqua"-related ignorance out there. Guys, Aqua is an appearance. It's a collection of graphical elements, okay? That's all. It's not software, in any meaningful sense of the phrase. When you say "Aqua," what you're really talking about is the combination of Quartz, which is the OS X display system, and WindowServer/SystemUIServer, which is the OS X equivalent of the X server, the window manager, and the desktop in your operating environment of choice.
Is Apple going to release the source for WindowServer/SystemUIServer? No. Get over it.
Tell me in what ways Apple has been beneficial to the opensource movement
Well, for starters Apple has done more to increase positive public awareness of open source than anybody else. A hundred thousand non-hacker Apple fans saw Steve Jobs stand up at the last Macworld keynote and declare that he thinks open source is great. There has been no better act of PR for the open source community.
Oh, that and the whole thing with Rendezvous and WebCore and Darwin Streaming Server and CDSA and OpenPlay and Open Directory and whatnot. Can't forget those.
I write in my journal
Key parts of OS X are still proprietary. Until they are free (or at least open), I still consider Apple an enemy.
Ugh. Enough with the communist ideology, okay? Apple spends a fortune developing wonderful things. If they were to simply give those things away for free, they would be unable to stay in business. I, for one, like what Apple produces, and I like the way they influence the rest of the computer industry-- indeed, the entire consumer products industry. I don't want Apple to go away, so I don't want Apple to make any of their core products "free" or "open." I want them to stay as proprietary as possible, forever.
And so do you. You just may not realize it yet.
I write in my journal
... that IBM can't market anything. Where I work, we have this big black computer sitting in the middle of the computer room, that cost several thousand dollars, and has a support contract that probably costs several thousand more annually. It has IBM stamped on the side.
And have you used any of their modern laptops? The best description that I have for when I got to play with an IBM Thinkpad 240 for a week is 'precision'. The hardware felt like a precision piece of equipment. Everything had tight tolerances, the tactile feel of the unit was superb, and the machine just felt sexy. The sleek black case was both soft and firm at the same time, a cool trick of ABS plastic, yet didn't feel too weak or brittle to take on the road.
If IBM still made a laptop in that small of a form factor (its footprint was smaller than a piece of letter paper), I'd have one. The American market doesn't seem to want small machines right now, though.
Oh, one more thing, there was driver support for this machine (and many of the other brand new thinkpads) for as far back as Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp, and as far forward as Windows XP. Drivers that work properly, not half-assed drivers like Compaq and other large companies provide for products they're no longer making money on.
You can also still downloadd support files for machines as old as the original 8088.
If I need some really expensive piece of equipment, IBM is definitely on the list for a vendor.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Yeah, it's been a long time since the horrid M$ office interface has bothered me. Auto-indent, auto -listing, auto-spelling, and all those other nasty auto-make your work take forever and look horrible stuff are fading from memory. That's because it has been about 8 months since I learned how to wade through the forrest of tabs required to turn those "features" off, and four months since I've been forced to use Office. I don't even want to think about what a terrible bug ridden easy to crash, no transaction "database" access was. Excell was OK, but the data format, like all M$ junk, kept changing and it's very dificult to get your work back out. It's good to be free of that.
Please, please, please keep that junk away from me and do not design interfaces like that. Ah the beauty of not seeing red and green squigly underlines beneath the repeated please above. When I need to spell check, I will. When I need a typesetter, I'll get one. When I want to hurt someone, I'll give them Word. There are so many superior free alternative, you have to wonder why people use Office.
What do the Apple people use these days, I wonder. I remember filemaker Pro was a very nice database. I can only imagine they had reasonable word processors and what not. M$ did not poison them too much when they bought so much of them in the deapest darkest days of Pepsi style Apple ruid, did they?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
From another thread...
Bet you it won't run OS X.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Gnome is the closest living relative to NeXT/OpenStep or OS/2 Warp...
Can't say I follow this. OS X is the closest living relative to OpenStep. OS/2 Warp... Perhaps eCommStation? But that's barely alive, admittedly. Either way, I wouldn't liken GNOME to either of them. GNOME is a pretty close relative to Windows, as far as how the UI works.
That's not a troll or a dis. It's not my style (I prefer NeXTSTEP and the Newton OS as models of good UI), but a lot of people have grown up with Windows 9x/NT, so it's no surprise that the majority of the users who like GNOME share this background with the majority of GNOME developers. Having actually used OS/2, NeXTSTEP, OpenStep, Rhapsody, OS X 10.x, Windows and Linux+{GNOME, KDE} extensively, I think it's safe to say that GNOME works the most like Windows. I could go on and on why, but that probably be over kill.
That said, I must say I'm pretty impressed with GNOME in RedHat 8. A lot of people hate RH for it, but I think it's quite brilliant. As a person who switched from Linux to OpenStep four years ago and then to OS X in the last few years, I became pampered with the ease of use, and most importantly, the consistency provided in OpenStep and OS X. Not to mention the great feature that things usually "just work." I left Linux because it was so bloody consistent, from a GUI user's point of view.
I've had my fill of other modern distros as well. RH8 is far from perfect, but at the very least, it provides a taste of what potential GNOME and KDE holds, a pointer to the kind of consistency that distros, GNOME, and KDE should be working towards. I fear it won't get much better, considering that all too many Linux developers seems to think that appearance is what is worth copying from OS X, while the way things work- how they feel, seems to come from Windows or CDE. Bah.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
That's why there exists wxWindows, which provides such a wrapper. You still have to download different binaries for each system, but you can't get much better without having applications written in cross-platform, bytecode-based languages like Smalltalk or Python.
Some projects do use wxWindows. Other people take the approach of seperating model and view well, and simply redoing the GUI for each environment on which they want the app to run. Depending on the nature of the project, this can be very easy or very hard.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
This is a great example of the kind of attitude a lot of Linux users have. You want a machine that works as well as a Mac OS X machine? Install a GTK+ and E theme!
No matter how much lipstick you put on your grandma, her plumbing still doesn't work like it used to. Likewise, even with a shitty Aqua theme on a windowing system that can't even handle alpha without employing one of many hacks may give you those "pretty stoplight buttons," it sure as hell doesn't give you a clean or consistent interface. It's the same one you had before, exempting a different pixmap in your window decorations.
An interface is a lot more than the color your buttons are. It goes a lot deeper, into the way you interact with the computer.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Apparently you've not heard of GNUstep. GNUstep is an implementation of the OpenStep API and includes most of Mac OS X's extensions.
:)
The GUI builder is almost done (I am the pricipal developer of it).
Take a look at http://www.gnustep.org.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Very true, penguins are native to everywhere in the southern hemisphere.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Yeah right. Next you'll be telling me that they use Linux!
(Sorry, a bit harsh of me, I suppose. I guess I thought everyone knew that everyone knew about the editors and their Macs.)
Boom Shanka
This means that when you run Konqueuer on KDE you will be enjoying the beta testing that thousands of MacOSX users have performed on Safari. This is what open source is about and this is what makes it powerful.
Go out and get sailing!
Of course, that might change in the future
The Raven
Friend, WebCore includes KHTML and KJS with tons of fixes and optimizations-- all of which have been submitted back to the project, as per the LGPL-- Kwq, the QT adapter library, and the Objective-C SPI. Apple improved the hell out of KHTML and KJS, sent their changes back to the project maintainers, and then released the whole shebang in an OS X-style package. What more do you want, exactly?
I write in my journal
Certainly they have their reasons for wanting stuff to be proprietary, but why on earth should I want them to keep stuff away from me, forever, with no gain to me, ever, unless I pay them large amounts of money? That doesn't mean I feel I have a right to their product, which is a different argument. But I would most certainly prefer a society where everything possible were free. In fact, I _want_ a utopian society where everything is free. Why on earth would I want things to remain costly, forever?
That was perhaps the most arrogant comment I've ever seen.
But Apple has made the system much more proprietary and non-standard than it needs to be. The system administration database is different from mainstream UNIX systems made integrating the Macs into my home and work networks much more work than a Linux machine. The window system is completely different from UNIX, hard to port to, and rather sluggish. Apple's software package management is worse than even that of Windows. And the commercial software situation on Macintosh is not all that great either. A big disappointment, too, was that Apple had promised "free .Mac service with every iMac" and then started charging less than a year later.
Altogether, I think Apple has benefitted quite a bit from UNIX/Linux compatibility, by promising a no-hassles Linux-like environment and attracting some UNIX and Linux users. I don't think they really have delivered, and I will probably not be upgrading my Macs--I can get better functionality and more software for less money with Linux. On the other hand, Linux has not benefitted directly from OS X: there is little or no useful software that Apple has donated to the Linux community (Darwin is more of a distraction), and I don't think Apple's "switch" campaign has been all that effective.
I think in the long run, Apple will be forced to become more and more Linux compatible, and then maybe there will be more benefit to the Linux community. Until then, every Windows user that moves to Macintosh is still of some benefit to the Linux community.
They basically ripped off Xerox Parc's windowing system and mouse interface ideas.
Endless Apple myths:
Ripped off Xerox
Can't use multi button mouse
Uses non-standard hardware
Is a monopoly
Put SoundJam out of business
Owned by Microsoft, a major shareholder
Costs too much
OS X is slow
Lawsuits for no reason
Rips off Linux
any more?
CmdrWass wrote: "You won't see me own a mac until the day comes that they open the hardware standards and there is good competition for hardware. In other words, until I can build a mac from spare parts, you won't see me owning one."
... can't count video cards, I guess) that Macs are less different from PCs than they used to be in the days when just exchanging floppies between Windows and Mac OS was a big pain. Now (for instance) I frequently transfer things between Mac and Linux machine with a little 65MB memory key that cost me $35 at a computer show :) (And next year, maybe 128MB will cost the same amount ...) I have an external CD burner that works under Linux and Mac OS X, scanner likewise. Enough components live *outside* the box that the computer itself isn't always as important as it seems ...
... even if no one else can produce Macs per se, Apple knows that they are not alone in the world, and the ability to switch hardware platforms without switching OS has got to affect their pricing. (Not that Apple laptops are badly priced, all things considered ... go price some non-Apple 17", super-thin, aluminum-clad notebooks;)) Even though it's not direct, it's definitely competition. And that's just for people willing / anxious to run Free software; even for Mac OS-only users, Windows laptops (which cannot run OS X) are obviously competition; people need computers, not necessarily Apple computers.
Instinctively, I agree with that -- don't want to be stuck with something dependent on one company etc.
However, a couple of things mitigate that fear:
- there are enough standard-enough parts n' ports (ethernet, CD-ROMs, firewire and USB, IDE hard drives, etc
- file formats: there are quite a few that are legitimately cross platform. Depending on what you do with a computer, they might not fill all your needs, but for many people, RTF / PFD / html / JPEG / mp3 / ogg and other very cross-platform file formats mean a lot more than the OS being used to open / use / manipulate / save them. Double-edged sword, though, since so many apps love to create difficult-to-share filetypes by default, so if that *is* a concern, it is probably a deal killer. [Ahem]
- there are non-Apple OSes that run on Apple's hardware (a few varieties of Linux, and at least the three biggest *BSDs). Now I'll admit this is a roundabout argument, but
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
chess.tgz on Apple's site. It's right there for the taking.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
No it isn't silly.
It's about seeing enough of the big picture too see a *relationship* between you and Apple. A big enough picture where you can see that what is good for Apple is good for you, and *ultimately* that Apple reciprocates and sees what is good for you is good for them.
If that doesn't exist, then Apple never can see any benefit to helping you at all, because they just want to help themselves right? Wrong, of course. By helping you they increase sales and usage and commitment (or something like that). That helps them.
So likewise, you want whats good for Apple because (hopefully) there exists a relationship in which you benefit from Apple getting some benefits.
Past examples include:
Quicktime, which Microsoft and others eventually used as the template for a media framework (Quicktime was just first)
Mac OS, which pioneered things like color desktops and UIs in a world of CLI and low res low fidelty desktops. This became mass market with the introduction of Win 95
USB, if only because iMacs could only use USB peripherals, giving USB developers a market
Firewire, if only because Macs use it for their high speed interface for iPods and DV cameras, as well as hard drives and stuff. How does this help you? Well, if you need a high speed serial interface, of course.
Then there's 802.11b, Rendevous, widespread adoption of LCDs, DVD-R, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio, iMovie, etc.
The point? Apple makes a profit making tools and functionality available that was inaccessable, expensive, or nonexistant before. That *is* benefit to you, if you want a $1800 DVD or movie studio, or a $3800 pro quality DVD, audio, or movie studio. Sure, you have to pay for it, but that's what keeps Apple alive and gives you your product.
So yes, you want whats good for Apple because there's a symbiotic (or for some, parasitic) relationhip. If Apple dies, than you (we) need someone else to come along to do this, even if it's Microsoft or your next door neighbor. Until, of course, it becomes a commodity.
Dunno if this is clear. Apple produces A, B, and C. You only care about B, but that is enough because the existence of B gives you a benefit. So already Apple cares about you, because by providing B they have your reliance upon them. Perhaps B+ is what you really need, so you want what is good for Apple so that B+ comes out. And at the end, both sides win.
Life, and certainly this marketplace, is *not* a zero sum game. Both sides can win.
GPL Deconstructed
Well, if it took you 8 months to figure out some trivial settings then you shouldn't be aloud near a computer...well I guess you can use a Mac then.
Hmmm, you are confused. Eight months ago, I took the time to figure out how to turn all that XP crap off. It took me a week or two because the damn "features" kept turning themselves on until you figured out the double secret key punch to kill them. About four months ago, I quit using office all together thanks to a job change. I would have been happy to be using anything else.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As mentioned in other posts, if the file format had been open and documented there would not really be an issue. However, since legacy formats are starting to punish businesses with real costs, the issue can no longer be ignored, even by those that don't/can't plan ahead.
DMCA and EUCD are two additional reasons for migrating from legacy formats. These two could legally prevent businesses (and agencies) from accessing their own documents if encoded in undocumented, proprietary formats and the tools to manage these formats are no longer licensed.
Chip, yes, but it MS-Office revenue will collapse like a sand castle when it goes -- but that's a separate thread. Since Microsoft has alrady taken a publicly stated position against the open file formats, the collapse will only reduce the overhead costs of businesses, agencies and citizens.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
1. Harrassing Aqua-ish theme makers. As Apple should know, you can't patent "look and feel" -- as their failed case against MS demonstrated.
The "harassment" was due to people copying and pasting widgets directly out of Mac OS X and passing them off as their own. And no, that's not what the failed "look and feel" case demonstrates - that case was lost due to the slack language Apple used in the contract they signed with MS. They gave MS more rights than they thought they had, and when they went to court this came out - hence they lost.
You most certainly can sue over "look and feel", due to a concept known as "trade dress". If I set up a MacDonalds fast food chain with a couple of golden-Ms, you can be I'd have a suit slapped on me within minutes.
Refusing to release a Sorenson codec enabled player or library for Linux, effectively locking Linux users out of an increasing majority of all Internet video content and thus making Linux unviable to end users
Mod -1, Boo Fucking Hoo. Apple signed a contract with Sorenson. Sorenson signed a contract with Apple. Those two companies entered into a deal whereby you're not going to get Sorenson's code for free on your platform. Get over it.
Instead of whining about it, why don't you get off your ass and write a better codec? What's that, it's hard? Well that's why people can and do build businesses around it...
3. Undercutting development of established Open Source projects, like Mozilla and XFree86, by pushing less open alternatives and thus both cutting their mindshare and draining developer talent.
Apple doesn't owe Mozilla anything - you've as much right to demand they use Mozilla as I've got to demand the Mozilla developers come over and paint my house. If an Open Source project can't stand on its own merits, why should it succeed?
And before someone replies 'but now it supports X11', the point is that they aren't the 'default' systems under MacOS -- which means "native" GUI MacOS X applications are useless to Linux
Yeah, and your average Gnome/KDE app won't run out of the box on a Mac either - your point is what? What Apple choses to make their default is their business - face it, X11 caters for a minority, and it's just not that useful to Apple's target market.
It's definitely a prudent move for Apple to ensure it runs reasonably well, since they want to see if they can expand their target market into the Unix workstation market (or what's left of it), but it's by no means their main focus.
In short: Apple is not Linux's friend, and these articles that claim otherwise are stupid and tiresome.
Apple is absolutely Linux's "friend" (in so far as a large company can be friends with a bunch of source files). For god's sake, it's Unix. On The Desktop.
Nae bother
As a longtime user of Mac, Unix and Windows, I respect the first 2 groups much more than the pure Windows users. Generally speaking, people chose Mac or Linux over Windoze for good reasons such as technical or design superiority, ease of use, style, productivity, TCO, security, bad experiences with Windoze, refusal to reward the convicted Redmond monoplist for its bad practice, etc, and they tend to be more articulate and intelligent than the Wintel PC crowd who either think Windows is the only thing in the computing universe or Linux is too complicated or Mac is too expensive and slow and has no software or second mouse button. Everytime a PC hothead lost his argument, there is always the last defense: why is everyone using Windows if Mac and Linux are so good?
Personally, I think both Mac and Linux platforms badly need the critical mass to break the MS monoply, and the best way to achieve that goal is to help each other. I am not suggesting that MS should be elliminated altogether, but the economy and the computing industry are desperately in need of several viable alternatives and adequate ecological diversity to be heathy and prosperous, and MS is just too nasty to be trusted to control our destiny. Without the design flair and innovation of Apple and the spirit diversity of the Open Source community, the computing world would be such a boring place.
Twirlip was far too absolute in the statement, but you must recognize there is a lot of truth to it. The whole reason copyright and patent exist in the US is because the people who wrote the Constitution recognized that one of the best (not the only) ways to encourage innovation was to grant temporary monopolies to the innovators.
... Free Mickey!
That is, unless you believe the Supreme Court of the United States
Firstly I'd better say that until OS X, I hated Macs too. Now I never use anything else.
"An error of type 1 has occured" no memory protection until OSX. What were they thinking? Losing your work is very user friendly
Sorted.
To eject/umount a disk, drag it to the trash! I've seen Human Computer Interaction "experts" trying to defend this as good design. Talk about tortured logic...
How telling that you should say 'umount' instead of 'unmount'. Try defending that classing naming decision! On OS X, when you hold down the mouse on a mounted volume's icon, the wastepaper basket (which is in the dock) changes into an 'eject' symbol (since you can't delete volumes, this is good screen-estate reuse).
Have you ever tried using that hockey puck iMac mouse? RSI within a week, I promise!
Yes, the hockey puck was a mistake. But personally I think that trackballs are terrible, but you can still buy those for use with Linux systems!
Good interface design goes deep, I agree. Somebody go out and shoot the Quicktime player designers. In fact, any of those "brushed metal" interfaces are monsters!
I take it that your beef with Quicktime Player is its brushed metal appearance, then (because other than that, it's basically just play, pause etc). Many of the other brushed metal apps (the ones written in Cocoa) you can change the appearance back to default Aqua.
Two words: "Apple keyboards". I celebrate the birthday of my IBM M-Series keyboard, thanking the higher powers I don't have to kill my hands on a Mac keyboard.
One word: adapter.
Floppy disks. Somtimes the Mac will spit it out, sometimes it will fail to recognise the floppy at all (hello paperclip), sometimes it will not recognise the format any more. No wonder they abandoned floppies; they couldn't make them work.
So, are you telling me that 'mount' can just deal with unreadable volumes? Under OS X, if 'mount' can deal with it, then it'll happen in the GUI, cause the GUI is just a frontend for 'mount'. Anyway, get with the programme, floppy disks are hardly even nineties, let alone noughties.
It sounds like you need to give OS X a try. Would you judge Windows by version 3.1? Would you judge Linux by version 1.2? They were the first versions of those operating systems I tried out, but I've got over it.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
I have never been happier with my home office setup: an iBook on my desk (with the improved Mac X server :-) networked to a dual-processor Linux box in a closet (so I don't hear it).
I do a lot of AI work, and having the Linux box for long machine learning runs, etc. and for hosting experimental sematic web stuff is great - that leaves my iBook for most coding, running design tools, Microsoft Office, etc.
Apple's recent release of a customized X server really helps a lot (still some work needs to be done on it though). Linux KDE applications look great (fonts!) using the iBook display.
Anyway, I feel like I get both the fun and productivity of Linux with the great experience of OS X. Perfect!
-Mark
Any project for GNUStep should compile fine on OS X.
This is not true. Many objects present in the current versions of the GNUStep libraries (base, backend, and gui) have no equivalent in Cocoa. Mainly, the Display Postscript code, but there are lots of others. For example, any class that starts wiht GS instead of NS, GNUStep handles Unicode totally different, there are al kinds of macros in GNUStep that don't exists in Cocoa because they are redundant. Supposedly there are scripts that come with OpenStep that convert lots of this stuff over, but GNUStep has made lots of additions to OpenStep, and besides, I don't have OpenStep.
Case in point: I tried to "port" the GNUStep Terminal.app to OS X (don't ask why, I have no good reason), and wound up having to basically #ifdef half the source code. I'm about 75% done with TerminalView, since it uses DPS for everything, however most of it is easily converted to Cocoa. I realize #ifdef'ing everything was the wrong way to go, but I'm learning about all the differences, and my whole point behind this was to port it to OS X while being able to submit patches back to the original developer. I'm sure that I will wind up starting over again and creating a DPS compatibility layer, otherwise the resulting code would be totally unreadable.
In conclusion, yes, some parts of Cocoa don't have any equivalent in GNUStep, but that really goes both ways. If you code for portability, it will be portable, if you code now, think later, it will probably only run on your computer, and probably only at the current screen resolution.
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
And I'm still waiting for Apple to release the source code to their GNU Chess port, dammit.
You're currently modded "flamebait" for this post. Maybe it's because you would rather rant than research? I found Apple's source for chess here. Hope that helps.
--
$tar -xvf
Alternatively, you could write your Mac app in Cocoa and port to Linux with GNUstep.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
:-P
you mean as opposed to windows, right?
You can check out the merges the KDE folks have made to CVS from code apple supplied with Safari here
Twirlip:
Just so you know - even when pointed to the KDE cvs logs, where one can see the SAFARI_MERGE branch, this corebreech guy still claims the code isn't being released.
You just can't reason with some people, I guess.
"Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs" ..and the readers would rater spend $200 on a box from Wal-Mart running Ark, Debian, or Red Hat then a WAY OVERPRICED, incompatable with most applications, and propretary format.
/. even carries a Mac section.
I still cannot believe
I can't believe Linux cheapskates like yourself keep posting the same thing over and over and over and over! "Too expensive! One button mouse! Proprietary architecture! Not Linux! No apps! It's ridiculous. You're not saying anything that someone smarter hasn't already said and spelled everything correctly.
And I can't believe that these same people keep bothering to come into this section or post to threads that are clearly marked Apple.
You know what? There are some technically savvy Mac users out there, myself included, who (when the threshold is turned up high enough!) actually enjoy and get a lot out of the discussions in this section.
If you don't like the threads in the section.... stay out. You're not adding anything useful to the discussion and just increasing the noise to signal ratio.
The bulk of the content on the site is geared to the OSS, Linux, *NIX crowd. Please join those discussions and let us have ours.
Pooty tweet