Bill Joy on Linux and Mac OS X

(rfm)2 writes "In a Wired interview, Bill Joy mentions he just got a new dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac with 8 GB RAM and half a terabyte of internal disk. He is clearly underwhelmed by Linux: 'Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It's a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.'"

Comments

Re:Yeah, but...

[Graff]

MacOSX is fundamentally minor tweaks on proven technology and proven interface design, using a proven operating system that's older than the Mac itself. I don't see why anybody thinks MacOSX is cutting edge.

Mac OS X is cutting edge for the simple fact that it is the first OS to combine all of these proven technologies (and many more) into a package that just works and is slick to boot. Individually these technologies are nothing new but combined they represent the cutting edge of OS design.

One nitpick: the kernel is Mach (well, Mach-based), the BSD tools are layered on top of that (along with GNU, NextStep, and much more)

Re:sure -- I'd do the same

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ridiculous to say that Macs are out of the spending range for mere mortals. You can get a dual 1.8 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, Radeon 9600 Mac for under $3000. Anyone with an average salary can afford that. You can buy iMacs (with the screen) for $1300. You can get an eMac for $800.

Sure, you can blow $10,000 on a Mac; but have you priced dual Xeon workstations lately? A Dell equivalent (dual 3.06 Xeon) to Bill Joy's Mac, but with 4 GB (since 8 GB isn't even an option) was about $7700. Subtract $2600 to reduce Bill Joy's Mac to 4GB, and it comes down to about $5900. It doesn't look all that expensive any more, does it? And it still includes the digital audio, Firewire 800, and Airport Extreme over the Dell box.

Re:In a sense, he's right

[larry bagina]

MAC hasn't done any worthwhile innovation on the desktop since they ripped of Unix's X, (Which MS quickly ripped off for Win95).

Hint: The first Mac was released in 1984, which means the Mac OS GUI was in development before then. The Lisa (1983) had a mac-like GUI as well, and it's well established that they were based off the Xerox/PARC work. MIT athena wasn't started until 1984, and wasn't publicly available until 1986. X Windows itself didn't even feature a GUI - toolkits like Athena, Motif, GTK, QT, etc are needed if you want UI features like buttons, menus, etc.