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Mac OS X 10.3 vs. Linux
M.Broil writes "This is a nice and fairly complete 'first look' at Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), but author Chris Gulker, who I happen to know was an Apple PR guy years ago, spends a lot of time comparing the Mac 'Panther' release to Linux, which he seems to use most of the time these days. He obviously likes a lot about Panther, but he doesn't think many Linux users will switch to it, and that a lot of 'Classic' Mac OS users may not want to move to it, either."
A quick ssh from my Linux machine revealed that only the GUI had frozen
Let the flaming commence !
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
This was back when the monitors didn't come separately from the rest of the machine (i.e. before that Mac clone fiasco).
I always loved the Mac interface because of its easy of use and very solid color support. I found that it was easy to make rainbows for my group's posters using the PageMaker software, much easier than anything on an IBM PC.
I eventually grew out of my 'rainbow' phase and am back using Windows and sometimes even Linux (Yellow Dog, for when I'm feeling a little 'crazy'!), but the experience just isn't the same. We Mac users are a happy community, and sometimes I just want to give old Steve Jobs a hand.
I came across this article a while ago
its not up to date but its a pretty good comparison
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
is definetly getting quicker, and is already very easy to use. But I'll give you a (slightly altered) quote to sum up the situation: 'Linux makes the easy things difficult, but it makes the hard things easier and the impossible things possible.'
Wheras MacOS makes the easy things easy, the hard things hard and the impossible things not possible.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Is that MacOS X has several high-quality specialised desktop applications to its name, and Linux hasn't got any.
What I want to know is if DAV over https is supported yet.
There is NO reason to run Classic anymore, except if you run classic hardware, in which you don't have the choice.
Dirk P
News Forge appears to be getting the /. treatment, so here's the article:
An early eval of Apple's Mac OS X 10.3
By: Chris Gulker
Apple's BSD-based Mac OS X 10.3 Panther offers 64-bit processor support and new features wrapped in the latest version of a GUI that has its roots in the NeXT desktop. While Panther sets a new standard for ease of use and interface look and feel, it still lacks features that Linux users have long enjoyed.
Panther, billed as "the evolution of the species" and built on the open source Darwin project's version of BSD 5, really is an evolutionary step -- not a revolutionary new operating system. Panther does offer admirable user-interface consistency and ease-of-use, but its new Finder is bound to draw complaints from died-in-the-wool Mac users,
particularly the large base of users who still cling to Mac OS 9 "Classic."
*NIX users will find this one of the most polished GUIs ever bolted onto a UNIX-like OS and probably won't have issues with the file browser. Mac developers groaned audibly when Steve Jobs presented an OS X Finder based on the NeXT columnar file browser at the ADC conference in 1998, and Mac OS Classic users continue to resist it in favor of traditional Mac windows, icons, and folders. In Panther, columnar view is the default window behavior.
Apple has taken the sleek, brushed chrome interface featured on apps like iTunes and Safari and applied it to the new version of Finder, the always-on application that provides the Mac desktop and handles chores like connecting to servers and other shared resources. Gone are many of the shiny, translucent Aqua interface widgets and light gray pin stripes that debuted barely three years ago.
Finder windows offer a new pane, called a Sidebar, that weds the NeXT-like columnar file hierarchy view with a Windows XP-like list of storage devices and common sub-directories in the user's home folder. Buttons on the customizable window allow users to select iconic, list or column views and turn the Sidebar on and off.
While this will be handy for people who are at home with hierarchical file systems, it has potential to confuse others because it can mask parts of the hierarchy, particularly when the list or icon views are selected. At first glance, files appear to live at the top of whatever directory is selected in the Sidebar -- intervening folders and subfolders are not shown. Sidebar does not have an option for the tree view common to Linux and Windows desktop windows.
ExposZ allows for one-click tiling of all open windows.
A new feature called ExposZ allows one-button (or one-click) tiling of all the open windows as thumbnails, and is a very handy way to find a specific window on a crowded desktop with many apps running.
Panther continues Apple's commitment to making it easy to use Macs in heterogenous network environments. Mac OS X 10.3 offers easy one-click access to network servers in the underlying BSD 5 subsystem. A click-to-start list in the Systems Preferences Sharing panel turns on ASIP (AppleShare over IP), SMB, Apache, FTP, and printer sharing via LPD/LPR and CUPS. NFS, surprisingly can only be turned on using the command line or a GUI config app like Marcel Bresink's NFS Manager.
Panther also discovers and connects to virtually any Windows or *NIX server, although, in practice, the process didn't always work smoothly, and occasionally not at all. Panther generated username/password errors and refused to connect to a Red Hat Linux 9 box running NFS on a local subnet. For its part, the Red Hat box could see the Mac in its UNIX network browser, but returned an error when attempting to open a directory. For some reason, SuSE 8.2 worked fine, in both directions, and the Mac happily connected via ASIP to the netatalk server on the RH 9 box.
Panther also features Rendezvous, Apple's version of zeroconf, that does a good job of discovering
He obviously likes a lot about Panther, but he doesn't think many Linux users will switch to it..
:p
Well he can put me down as a Linux user who jumped onto OSX.
I really like Linux, but I just never got on with it as a desktop OS - lots of little things used to irk me, and the frustration of trying to get Linux working with much more modern hardware (like my NForce2 board) just made me get fed up with the whole idea.
Using OSX is like having the ultimate Linux distro.. you have THE best GUI available today, there are loads of Window XP beating applications shipped with OSX as standard, and hardware integration is obviously perfect - stuff just works. Plus you can quite easily get into the underlying UNIX core, and tamper with things - having such a functional GUI, and being able to fire up a terminal and use things like openssh, pico, etc right out of the box just totally sold me.
I still use Linux on my servers though.. you just can't beat that reliability and flexibility.. though I haven't tried out OSX Server yet....
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Well, I went from Linux over to OS X for my 'daytime' OS just a month ago....and upgraded to Panther as it came out too. Just thought I'd add a couple of reflections;
I'm certainly not a linux newbie, started off with a slackware 0.99pl13 and been using various disties since, and it'll still run on my servers for the forseeable future, but I have to say that as a desktop OS OSX is hard to beat.
The bundled applications in the iLife suite are really something - plugging in a video camera and spooling a tape onto disk, editing it and burning to an indexed DVD took about 2 hours. Of course, there's plenty of stuff you can't do, but the OS basically makes the easy things trivial. Most of the things iLife offer can be done via Linux, but the beauty of OS X, for me at least, is that it all works _well_enuf_ out of the box - Linux is always a few hours tinkering to get the configuration you need. It's a shame that OpenOffice isn't better integrated into the system, but that's down to all of us getting our collective fingers out and doing something about it!
With the benefit of 'fink' theres plenty of GPL software out there, so in theory at least there shouldn't be much that you can do with Linux that's not possible on OS X (OK, OK, let's not get started about Aqua), but OTOH, linux gives you a sharp set of tools for doing the more sophisticated things that are difficult to do anywhere else.
Apple PowerBook quality, in my experience, hasn't been so great - my first machine went back because it had a duff DVD drive, current one has colour deformations on the screen, but that'll get sorted over time.
In short - OS X is a great OS for those people who want to do straightforward computer things (including content manipulation) but not for the dyed-in-the-wool linux hacker. Personally, I can't see myself going back to Linux for my desktop OS...
ever since I switch to Jaguar (My Panther box is somewhere between Cork (IE) and
What I could do on Linux and still can do on OSX:
What I still cannot do (I used to be able to do it under Linux)
So my point is not to troll (only people who disagree but won't argue might say so) but just to express the following : Linux is cool, nice, may even be optimized but my current powerbook is way faster than the P3/600 Linux laptop I had before switching (I don't care about existing models). I also benefit from many quality software and from a very cool development environement.
Finally, I won't step back because I just enjoy typing this on the sexiest computer I ever owned (I also own an Acorn RiscPC, a NeXTstation, a Bebox, a P4 PC, a Zaurus and a Sinclair ZX81).
Trolling using another account since 2005.
This is not to troll, but this is what I've been saying to my Linux pals a couple of time when Linux vs OS X has come up.... That Linux want to become Mac OS X.
Major applications ported to it. (no WINE)
Lots of games. (not Tuxracer!)
And it's cool... (not trying to copy existing GUI's)
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
You cannot compare MacOS X with Linux, despite the fact that these operating systems are similar technologically - they are based on *NIX-like architecture.
The reason for that is the simple fact that Linux is CLI (Command Line Interface) first, GUI second. And in MacOS X is the other way round - the interface is the most important part of the OS.
Of course, you can compare the Linux kernel with MacOS kernel, Linux CLI with MacOS CLI, Linux filesystems with MacOS filesystems, and GNOME (or KDE) with MacOS X GUI, you can even compare a disto of your choice (be it RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian or Slackware) - with MacOS X, but not LINUX as a generic OS, for Christ sake!
You can defy gravity... for a short time
I'm surprised that he reckons that vast swaths of Classic users are cling gin on. Even people who were held back by Quark not upgrading quickly enough are moving now. What's more OS X can provide a very classic like user experience if you want it to.
;learnt any *nix stuff or run any X11 programmes without OS X. OpenOffice 1.0.3 is now my Office suite of choice, although the sooner they sort out the terrible human interface the better. And that's my major gripe with Linux and other *nix flavours, is the terrible human interface. Now Aqua is not perfect but one thing Apple has managed to do over the years is keep the interface consistent and persuade developers to make their interfaces consistent with the OS. What linux needs is an Open Human Interface Standard if it want's to succeed on the desktop.
I'm also wondering about his assessment of the speed of OS X on his G4. Now maybe 16 years of Mac use has blinded me to how slow Mac OS X really is, but I find it (on a 500Mhz G3) pretty snappy and nothing to complain about. Maybe I should see the light and install Linux.
I think not though, productivity would grind to a halt as I tried to get Linux to do the things I wanted it to.
One things is to be said, I would have never
Well he does say
"I think nothing of leaving apps and files open for days or even weeks on the Linux machine.".
Now that is cool. Nice endorsment of Linux's stability. However I still think he should say that he does save once in a while as stable as Linux is it can't survive the power cord being pulled out the back or a child putting a pop tart in the CD-ROM drive
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I'd hate to see users of two fantastic operating systems like OS X and Linux turn into bickering opponents not unlike the factious Judean liberation groups in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
IMO, there's more than enough room for lots of operating systems out there. I hope some of you posting comments favoring one or the other can keep the comments purely at a technical, respectful and impersonal level.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Are people working on getting something similar into KDE and/or GNOME ?
I've used Mac since 9, and upgraded to X at around 10.1. Before that I used 95, and attempted Linux (but my shitty old computer didn't want to play - damn CD-Rom drives of that time).
I love 10.1 (and hopefully 10.3 once I can find 70 to drop for the students edition) - I can do 'boring' stuff on it, like run Word or Powerpoint. I can do arty / photographic things on there (Photoshop), and also run Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl to develop websites.
In addition thanks to Fink I can use debian style package management tools with ease. Damn good OS.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
It is usually possible to tell there's something wrong with a post when someone starts ranting and raving about GIMP. Yep, it's free, and no, it's no patch on Photoshop. In fact, GraphicConverter is in many ways better than GIMP.
Great, you've got 13 000 packages (and I hope you've tried them all, too!) - but no Photoshop? How about, say, Final Cut Pro? Hmm, I feel like a game of Diablo. Oh, what's that? You can only run it in emulation?
The point is, it comes down to quality, not quantity. Professionals use professional tools, not some I'm-a-CS-graduate-and-know-how-to-program-stuff. I'm willing to assert that a majority of the 13000 pkgs are under 500k. They're probably really neat, you'd probably download them and stick them in your utilities folder and they'd never get seen again.
1. It has the honour of being the first OS to do this, I suppose?
2. Can't make omelette without cracking a few eggs etc. GCC 3.3 broke shit. Get over it.
well, it'd also be the first OS to have hardware incompatibilities with one single type of chip. FFS buddy, nobody has not killed something somewhere along the way.
Yeah, and with every point release adds more features than Linux gets in a full digit release.
that, my dear friend, is a complete contradiction in terms. Apple's hardware is shiny, but their OS utterly dominates everything else out there in the desktop stakes. that's what makes apple zealots. It's also the reason so many people continually pine for OS X on Intel. The hardware's kinda cool, but the software kicks hind tit.
"Down hill". Hmm, I can think of all the
Linux certainly has it's place in areas where organisations can develop a full system, but where you want to go out and buy something and have it all work, intuitively, and stable-y, and without spyware, and without MS groping your HD, you go buy a mac. Simple.
-- james
but my grandma can't use it.
She buys a digital camera, plugs it on a Mac, and iPhoto does everything for her.
If she plugs in the same camera on a linux machine, will it do the same thing?
I only use Linux. My desktop machine at works runs Linux, and my desktop machine at home runs Linux. No "dual boot" or anything like that.
Is Mac OS X good? Yeah. I'd say it's pretty darn compelling, and all Linux application developers should take a good long look at OS X in order to learn to see where it succeeds.
Running Linux on the Desktop does not make my day easier. Printing, clipboarding, decent-quality video drivers, fonts, app consistency - these are all still major issues that impact the further deployment of Linux on the desktop.
The amazing part of OS X is it's integration and consistency. Simply put, it's a cohesive environment, built as if one very talented person built almost all the applications. Every Linux distribution is years behind it in that category (although things are very slowly getting better!)
It's hard to force UI and feature standards upon desktop applications in the world of open source - the distributedness and the lack of centralization of open source makes it hard to achieve that level of clarity.
So the next question is - can it be done in Linux? Is it even possible to build guidelines and services that make it possible for an open source project to achieve what Apple has done for OS X?
If I ever buy a laptop, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be a Mac running OS X.
PS - every application should have a "print preview"! Damn it!
Linux and OSX are part of the same culture.
Apple doesn't really compete with linux or the rest of the current UNIX crowd. Maybe SUN but they are screwed anyway. We are not talking about a fork of Unix but rather Apple embraceing a current implimentation (BSD/Darwin) and giving it there own "spin" by, bascially, bolting on their own propriety GUI (quartz and what ever that new metal look is called) plus a bunch of lifestyle apps.
As long as a program conforms to the POSIX stardard then it should compile on OSX just fine. If you absolutely must have all your software "free" in the idealogical sense then I think you can find a open source implimentation of Cocoa and afterstep - a standard which Apple more or less follows. Apple can's own UNIX as much as SCO can since it is a open standard.
What we are talking about is a company talking the best of open source and making it more friendly for your average consumer. This is someting that most linux distros try, the best example being Mandrake. but don't quite get right mainly due to technical (XFree86, dependency hell) cultural (pointless flamefests over which is the best editor) and social problems (not having one standard GUI, installing a million text editors, lack of propriety apps etc). Some of these problems can be overcome, but some, like the idea that to make more people use linux you have to clone the windows GUI are going to take years to get over. I for one am glad that someone is attempting to lead the way and give people what they what - a decent alterative to windows that dosen't require a degree to write your resume on. Yet still has the power of UNIX if yon need it.
OSX is UNIX. That Apple should chose this direction should be taken as compliment to Linux.
Sorry to rant but I wish for once us geeks would stop getting into pointless pissing contests about things which, in the grand scheme of things, just aren't really important. For example who cares that OSX can't crtl alt f1 to the terminal? this is just nitpicking.
Anyone know if PAnther has support for YP/NIS services. It was a know issue with early OSX releases and it's fairly hard find out. Believe mew, I've tried... BG: Our cxampus is about to get a nice spanknig 50 seat G% lab with 50 or som machines. Our dept has an existing infrastructure underpinned by NIS for authentication, with some samba. We'd like to be able to get some of our existing users to use new facilities more easily and beinfg able to integrate with new servers installed specifically for that lab. We really don't want to go down an LDAP route if we can avoid it, which is why I'm asking about NIS
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
Linux has many high-quality desktop applications: WordPerfect OpenOffice Xess Applixware Gnomeeting Blender Maya Mozilla Nvu GIMP (ad infinitum sourceforge.net && freshmeat.net) Civilization Quake3 Return to Castle Wolfenstein Kohan FreeCraft FreeSpace Vendetta (ad infinitum happypenguin.org && linuxgames.com)
Your funny statement notwithstanding, impossible things are by their very definition impossible on any OS in any situation.
I played around with a Mac OS X computer (one of the cool looking 'lamp' ones) in PCworld the other day and was extremely impressed.
Personally I will stick to Linux because I like it but I think for a lot of novice computer uses currently using Windows because 'theres no other choice', I think should consider switching to Mac OS X.
I had always sort of them as being extremely expensive but the ones in the shop (which sells both Windows and Mac computers) were about the same price as the Windows ones.
The major problem is that as the sales guy explained to me, people don't realise a 800mhz G4 is far better than say a 1.5Ghz Pentium however when people see the 800mhz mac costing more than the 1.4 ghz PC they obviously go for the PC.
Kind of reminds me of the old saying that if it wasn't for Apple's pathetic marketing practises they would be the dominant software company of today (whether that is good or bad I don't know).
However, I think that for novice users who arn't quite ready to use Linux as a desktop (in its current form), then they should be recommended a Mac as they are atleast half way there and all competition is good for the computer industry, better than everyone dominated by one large monopoly anyway.
Yes, and just the other day, a quick SSH from my Powerbook to one of my remote desktop clients running Linux revealed that it was only the GUI that had frozen.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
To start:
This is fine and dandy in theory, as long as that is the only operation you perform. To refute, you can do two floating point multiplies on a P4 with HT in a single cpu. Thus that single CPU is doing two floating point operations that are much more complex than your FMADD. None of this is really how a flop should be determined anyways.
Secondly, Visual Studio has had edit and continue functionality for quite some time. At least version 6, which was back before 1998. The way it is implimented in XCode is possibly more complex, but it does the same thing.
Now let's talk about that cluster... It's a nice cluster, yes, but it was also very expensive. From the reports they had to pay full price. If we use the false logic for a flop from earlier, we can deduce that two $1200 PCs and a $2999 Mac can perform the same math calculations.
PCI-Xpress... With all those cards available.... Next year.
I personally have a DVD+R writer. It's 4x and I've had it since ~February. They go for about $180 now at the local stores. Anyone can have a fast DVD burner who wants one now.
In short, I agree that XCode is good, but the rest of what you say has little ground.
-]Phreak Out[-
If you're like me and want to do some development for fun, the new developer tools that come with Panther are absolutely amazing. I think it beats anything available for free (fix and continue, need I say more...) and also beats Visual Studio (which is, to be fair, a pretty good product even if it is made by the evil empire) which certainly does not come for free with every compy of WinXP.
It is my opinion that an OS that makes developers comfortable is going to be a successful OS, so full credits to Apple on this one. I would really never have considered buying a mac before OSX (come on, they didn't even have a command line!) but now I have, and it just let's me get on with doing what I love, writing software...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
The majority of user-level processes are started by loginwindow or children of loginwindow, so killing it kills everything except the OS itself. This also returns you to the login window. In effect, this is the same as killing X11 when it locks up.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Linux is great for computer "gearheads". The equivalent of some guy 1983 whose only car was some beater that he constantly had jacked up to tweak the motor. On the other hand, if you have a regular 9-to-5 job, you can't afford to have your car not working every morning at 8 AM. One solution is to get another car. Another is to get rid of the beater for a reliable car, stop tinkering with it, and actually have some free time when you get back from work.
Some people like tinkering with their cars or computers all the time. I'd rather move on and tinker with something else instead.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Me too. I've been a Linux user for years. I took a job at a prepress company last year, and now have a TiBook running Jaguar on my desk. OS X is okay, but it needs virtual desktops, badly.
I have a dual head setup with an external monitor and the laptop's LCD screen. I frequently have both screens covered with windows, and can't find what I want. Maybe Panther will fix this with Expose, but it's not the same as virtual desktops.
Does anybody know of decent virtual desktop software for Mac OS X?
I've tried this but it's not really virtual desktops, it's more of a kludge that uses "Hide Application" to simulate them. (Or at least it was, it's been a few months since I tried it.) It also has that gigantic desktop switcher box that uses up my precious screen real-estate.
I sure would like to find one that works like the traditional X11 notion of virtual desktops.
Linux people never remember that because it wasn't a rip-off of Minix. Linux was developed from scratch. In the early days, you needed to compile the kernel using GCC running on Minix - but that doesn't mean it's a rip-off of Minix any more than a program compiled with a compiler running on Windows is a ripoff of Windows.
Linux is not a rip-off of GNU either. GNU runs on Linux. That's why it's called GNU/Linux: it's the Linux kernel with the GNU userland. That's no different to, say, taking the OpenBSD kernel and packaging it up with the GNU userland. Or indeed, taking a Mac and installing the GNU userland.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
No. But you can save it, maybe, then go to the other app, load it, maybe, well you would be able to if the app were compiled with the right image support plugins, you kept the source code right? OK, just do ./configure --with-blah-blah this time, then make, then make install, then try it. A much better system IMO, because this way, *I* have control over MY computer and it only does what *I* tell it to because *I* am its master!
Or you have software, such as MacAuthorize, that requires the ability to dial the modem directly.
Since MacAuthorize is not being supported any more by the company which owns the rights to it (Veri$ign), upgrading to an OS X version isn't an option.
Since the only OS X-native credit-card authorization software I've seen costs upwards of $1000/seat, that isn't an immediate option for many small businesses.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
I had previous installs of OSX on my G4 350 (10.1 and 10.2) both wer un-usable due to slowness..
10.3 is suddenly MUCH MUCH faster and actually usable..
MABASPLOOM!
I have a TiBook. I'm typing on it now. The NeXTStep interface was cleaner than the MacOS Classic interface. The only thing that "dirties" the MacOSX interface is the "classic" look of apps that insist on drawing windows with their own application-specific goofy widgets that are designed to look good taking up all of a blurry 14" CRT screen.
Also, more time in the "lickable" Aqua world, and you will be instantly conscious of the mood altering effects of being surrounded by soft edges and clean surfaces with rich (but understated) textures when you switch back to the cold-hard Classic. It's easy to say "it's all just flash !*blink* *blink*", but you haven't really tasted both samples.
I've used MSWindows 3.0,3.1,95,XP; NextStep; BeOS FVWM, OpenLook, CDE, WindowMaker, AfterStep, Enlightenment, KDE, Sawfish, Black Box; etc.. I prefer the OS-X (still using Jaguar) interface. Keys include a cohesive window-management scheme, and *working* VFS. Also there's transparent terminals that use QuartzExtreme so that I can put a window with documentation under a Terminal.app window and type what I want based on the slightly blurred text underneath. Cocoa's message-passing for loose-types makes for a somewhat bloat-y experience, but it isn't something that scales with hardware. It runs nearly as well on a Grape G3 iMac as it does on my TiBook at twice the clock speed plus AltiVec and 32MB GPU.
That said, MacOSX is a logical continuation of NeXTStep. It is a leap from MacOS Classic. Let me say one thing: it is much less of a leap from Classic to OSX than it is from Classic to MSWindowsXP.
You can continue to run your old Classic apps in MacOS Classic if you like. I invite you to try EBay for an old NeXT cube/slab with some software on it. OSX has definitely met Classic users halfway. If you are so reactionary that you can't bear to part with your good-ol' key combo shortcuts and learn a new style, then you don't deserve to run new software that demands it. That's great if you're a "my own little world" style user who just needs Adobe apps and doesn't need UTF-8 international character support...
The bottom line is that you can hold out and save your money for a compelling personal reason to switch, but if you really want your old OS, the old interface guidelines, etc. it ain't gonna happen. Translating your comments in light of that makes your position sound more like "There are those of us who will never upgrade. Long Live Classic!" Whatever...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
NeXT computer was the company Steve Jobs founded after he lost Apple to CEO John Sculley and the rest of the board. It was a failure but a spectacular one, as it introduced several innovations in its GUI. Later on Apple bought NeXT, and with it its code base and Steve Jobs. And with that, the new Mac OS under development (code name Copland) was scrapped, and OS X was built on the NeXT codebase.
All from memory mind you, so hit the salt lick.
Bemopolis
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
More than one previous poster has pointed out that OSX and Linux users are natural allies, and that the two systems have more similarities than differences, but I would put an even finer point on it:
;) Sony will ship a slickified custom linux with their Vaios, geared toward the multi-media heavy tasks that their product is aimed at, other companies will ship machines with stripped down, extremely easy to use "big-button" interfaces for grandma to check email and look at pictures of the grandkids. If we can just break the MS lock on the market, there will be plenty of room for a rich ecosystem of OSes to survive. If they are all commited to open standards, there is no reason why a plethora of OSes (as opposed to just one or a few) cannot both survive in the market and be easily managed by IT pros.
OSX and Linux can help each other by breaking the monoculture. There have been a few stories recently about the Linux user base being set to overtake that of OSX in the next few years. These stories are invariably followed by choruses of "Apple is dying." but consider: An (corporate) IT environment which welcomes Linux on the desktop and in the server room is a) more likely to consider alternate platforms and b) an extremely friendly environment (from a protocol standpoint) in which to deploy OSX boxes.
Unlike MS OSes, which expend a great deal of their energies in locking out other platforms, both Linux and OSX are commited to open standards; they are playing by the same rules and will always play well together. A world with (let's say) 85% Windows 10% Linux and 5% OSX on the desktop is a world where more attention and emaphasis will be given to open standards, where OSX will have less resistance to grow its share in many different market spaces, and (perhaps most importantly) a world where the barrier to entry for some theoretical new-and-better OS is much lower.
To look at this another way: As PCs become more commoditized, and as they move more toward being plug-in-and-use appliances, the OS must fade further and further into the background; it must become transperant to the user. The day will come when end users neither know nor care what OS they are using (some would argue that's always been true
The future is not a world where Linux (or MacOSX) has replaced windows on the desktop, but rather one where we have a burgeoning number of choices, and can pick amongst many tools to get the job done right. (I hope....)
-alex
Why is it at every PERL and PHP developers conference I attend, I see more and more carrying iBooks and Powerbooks? There are a few running Linux on a DELL or other PC notebook, but there were many Linux users that abandoned Linux on their desktop for OSX. Most "switchers" I know were from Linux to Mac, not Win to Mac.
I am one of them. I was tired of Windows crashing, even with 2000 and now XP being much better in that regaurds, and it was consent problem of not having drivers for the hardware I already had and what to consider in the future.
OSX came out and I waited until 10.1 for Apple to get the major bugs out of the software and when it came time to buy a new laptop, I chose an iBook. Why? I still have MySQL, PERL and PHP along with BBEdit now to code in and test in a *iux platform on my laptop. Plus, I can still communicate with the rest of the business world with MS Office, plus programs like Photoshop, QuarkXpress, GoLive, Dreamweaver, Flash, Quicktime, iLife, etc..
Apple beat Linux in the desktop market hands down. Truefully, the smaller businesses I deal with don't have the resources or the need for a dedicated IT person on staff. That want products that have a 1-800 number they can call for support or if they do need to hire someone to come fix something, that they at least know what they hell the program is.
Now, several SMB's I have delt with in the past six months have switched from Windows to Mac, and most have been perfectly happy because their systems don't crash, its easy to use. Some use it as a Point-of-Sale system with a CC reader. USB barcode scanner and USB cash drawer without any problems. Others just need MS Office, email, and Quickbooks. The biggest complaint I have heard was one manger loved the productivy, easy of use, and stablity of their Macs, but complained that the Mac didn't have solitare.
Until we see commercial vendors, the Adobe's and Macromedia's of the world, produce native Linux products, the platform in the US won't be takening off in the business world.
Part of the reason has to do with the Dot communism mystique of the OSS community. While businesses know that the deployment costs of Linux on the desktop is a hell of a lot lower, TCO may or may not be. I have only had one client switch his office over to mostly Linux. Their accounting and shipping units still use PC's because of their software needs. There was nothing there in OSS land that would have proved cost effective to switch too, and their PR department (2 people) are using Macs for page layouts and the like. However, this was a medium sized company with 40 employees including 5 IT guys that had been running Linux on servers for close to three years and played with the system at home.
I will place my own predictions: Linux users will continue to switch to OSX. Maybe not in droves, but proably more than one would think.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
All those reasons point only to one thing: A bloated, form over function slug that is asking to freeze. I was a beta tester for OSX a few years back, and I have used every release since. However, when I really want to get work done I always end up on my Linux box using WindowMaker. It's small, fast, and it has NEVER locked up. Apple has spent too much time making OSX pretty and not enough time making it work.
And this is the one area where OSX is a step backwards. Apple has fallen for what we could call the Microsoft syndrome, fallen in love with flashy graphics at the expense of a clean UI, and it shows.
We don't have to be puritanical about this. A little eye candy is perfectly harmless, although if it goes too far over the top it is distracting.
However, the old Finder was a masterpiece of UI design, built to exacting HCI standards and a coherent, ergonomically driven vision. Apple has abandoned that kind of UI design, in favor of a one that is equally coherent, but driven more by artistic vision. It makes sense I guess if you look at how their businss has changed. It's not that ergonomics aren't important anymore, it's just that they are no longer paramount. Simply put, the idea that ergonomics will conquer the world has been discredited -- decisively so. People can get by with something less than perfect, and most people will if they can get something good enough for less money.
People will pay a premium for something with more than the usual panache -- that makes a statement. Style was always part of the Mac appeal, it's just that it turned out in the long term to be its strongest suit from a business standpoint. So styling is now paramount and HCI is taking a back seat (although it is still riding in the car I guess).
So if you look at Apple products, they are (1) good enough from an HCI standpoint in comparison to the competition, (2) loads more elegant than the competition, and (3) reasonably good values. They look like the result of a business lesson learned.
Long time Mac afficiandos internalized the concept of concept of exacting HCI standards, and these are the people who groan at the new interfaces. But the fact is that they are good enough, better than what is in widespread use, and have a kind of stylistic dash that sets Apple apart.
People who are HCI purists would do better to look to open source as a long term torch bearer of that standard, because HCI perfectionism (unfortunately) is not a workable business strategy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Although, first let me tell you that I stopped using Linux all together last year finally switching the last of our servers to FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Frankly I find the orgainzation of the *BSD software and communities much better and more organized. Linux has always seemed more hodgepodge. I once heard AOL described as "training wheels for the internet" and I feel the same way about Linux...its training wheels for many students and others into the world of Unix. Its what I learned on, but once I got the hang of it, I found many time saving admin features in BSD, especially the ports tree.
Most of the Linux users that switch to Mac OS were not macfanbots. Most, like myself, hated 'Classic" and still do. What apple did was give the world an affordable Unix, and I said UNIX because as many linux users are quick to point out - LINUX IS NOT UNIX ITS UNIX-LIKE, platform that is:
1) Easy to use for the average joe that want's something easy to use
2) If you are a power user, the tools are there and you can use them
3) Aka, best of the OSS support & those 'evil' close source people.
At leas with OS X I have the choice of easy to use interface and not having to worry about it, or opening up terminal/shell and going hardcore when I want.
Moreover, I no longer have the time to "play around" with an OS no matter what it is. I work as an SMB consultant primarily in technology. In fact I am proably wasting 15 minutes I could be charging someone about $50 for by writing this post. I don't have time to toy around with something that might or might not work.
great example is our accounting software. I looked at NOLA, liked the package a lot, but decided on Quickbooks for Mac. Why? Our CPA supports Quickbooks and gives us a discount for using it because it makes her job easier, plus it took about 15 minutes to install and another two hours to set up. It would have taken at least that long to get Nola up and running, let along configured. Furthermore, our sectary was already familar with the software which saved a lot of time for us in training. TCO was a hell of a lot cheaper than NOLA for our business. Now that's not the case with everyone.
Boils down to right tool for the job. Linux has its place, like running application spefic taks such as Kiosks and on embeded chips. I like Linux's flexablities in that regaurd, but the average user just wants something that is easy to use and works. They don't have the time nor the desire to mess with problems.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
For OS X, they said:
Uninstallation service for installed programs: no. Most programs can be deleted by dragging files to the trash. This may leave files in the system folder or other locations.
Actually, dragging an application to the trash starts an uninstall script -- same thing happens on install. Maybe they thought they were deleting a single file, but most applications are actually directories that contain the "other locations" that they were probably thinking about.
There's a certain beauty in things just working and not bothering the user; I guess the reviewers expected to be hassled.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I run both.
OS X is the ultimate user interface. and what else runs dreamweaver / flash / photoshop / illustrator? the desktop environments available on linux cannot compare.
linux, however, is what i trust for my servers. i trust apple to make my OS secure, but i do not trust them to respect my modifications to the OS between software updates. Apple has screwed up my PHP / MySQL / Apache customization before and i was not impressed. RedHat is much better in this respect.