100 Years of Macintosh

Zero seconds on the Mac OS system clock is January 1, 1904. The Mac OS epoch hits 100 years ... now. That's assuming you live in the Pacific time zone, anyway: the Mac OS epoch is unique in that it is time zone-specific. Of course, none of this applies unless you are running Mac OS, and all you Mac users are using Mac OS X, right? (Geek note: the Mac OS epoch is unsigned, which is why it can count over 100 years from 0 seconds, and 32-bit Unix can't, though it can count backward to 1901.)

Comments

Apple and the Future

[The Slashdotted]

It seems that with Apple's other projects, they stand a good shot digging themselves out the nitch they carved out long ago.. Since Apple models itself a hardware company, do they offer patches on a similar basis as Microsoft or to they rely more on the BSD patching system?

Re:Apple and the Future

[NanoGator]

"So too, opinion seems to be that security holes are entirely the fault of the attacker, never of the software designers. ... The point is, if software companies were liable for any serious defects, they might try harder. And if they were liable for ignoring those defects, I betcha they'd be able to find someone to get to work on it... We, the public simply need to weigh in with some careful legislation to balance those priorities with stability, reliability, and maturity. "

I'm sorry, but I simply don't agree with this point of view. Your heart is in the right place, but this is not the answer.

First, the hacker *is* guilty. Software is designed for a specific purpose (even general purpose software) and because of that, the creator of that software cannot and should not be held liable for that. Problem #1 is that software is written by humans, who are, by nature, error prone. Problem #2 is that finding defects and using them maliciously requires creativity. Because of this, there's no practical way for a software company to know that their software is 'liability free'. Problem #3 is that there are far too many products out on the marketplace today that can be misused in such a way that a simple modification would prevent that sort of behaviour from happening. Why single out software? Problem #4 is that in cyberspace, monetary damage is very difficult to measure. Problem #5 is that the environments that the software is run on are far too diverse to guarantee any sort of working order. As such, anybody 'relying' on a computer system would be incredibly ignorant without ways of minimizing damage due to loss of functionality or data. (I should pause here a sec to let you know that I'm quite fatigued, and I apologize if what I'm posting is difficult to read.)

Secondly, unloading legislation that says you are liable for an attack that somebody else carries simply because you didn't cover all your bases is going to do more harm than good. The Open Source Community will be hit the hardest. Who would want to contribute spare time to a project only to open the door for being sued because somebody decides to be a git? I mentioned in an earlier point that there's no real scientific way to certify the 'safety' of software. The only real way to approach that would be heavy testing on a very diverse range of platforms and configurations. I can see Microsoft with their 25+ billion in the bank doing this, I can't see a startup company doing that. Nor can I see that startup company surviving their first lawsuit over this. The only way to minimize this negative effect on the industry would be to tightly define very specific rules about very specific exploits, such as the one you mentioned with Apple. Well, what good is this legislation going to have if it only covers a limited scope? Okay, I'm drifting a bit here. Sorry. I just don't see this doing anything but making software development less accessible, and making megacorps like Microsoft stronger. Software could become 'less exploitable', but the cost of that is growth. Even then, defects will not disappear. BS like the Blaster Worm will still happen, it just might take a little longer.

Third, how does one even begin to define effective legislation here? In order to prevent a defect from being exploitable, one has to know every single way that defect can be used. I remember back in the Windows 95 days, you could rename your Windows folder. Doing so meant instantly breaking your system. A shortcut or batch file could be made to do this. If somebody sends out an email tricking people into running a shortcut to do this, how do you define Microsoft's guilt due to damage done? The rename feature works perfectly. Using it to rename your Windows folder is like cruising down the highway at 70mph and shifting into reverse. Sure, the car could be made to prevent that, but why would somebody do that in the first place? Should Honda be partly responsible because of deaths caused by somebody saying "

There is no article...

[emerrill]

This post doesnt have a real point, and isnt based on an article. It is just stating that today marks 100 years from the point that macs count from. Nothing bad happens from it, it can still cound for another 30ish years (i beleive).

Huh, I have older files from that

[Nova Express]

Mainly because I have files on my current Mac (a Dual 1 GHz G4) that were present on my Mac Plus hard drive when it crashed in 1991, and they read:

Dec. 31, 1903, 6:00 PM

Which may be the default for the Central time zone.

Do I really need those files anymore? Well sure! Some of them are old entries for the Bulwer Lytton Contest, and you never know when I'll have enough to collect for section of a short story collection. Plus, you know that as soon as I throw away a file, I'll need it the next day. That's just how things work.

This is one of the many, many reasons why I've gone from a 60 Meg to a 60 Gig hard drive. ;-)

Re:Huh, I have older files from that

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an old Quadra with a 240MB hard drive and lots of Word 6 documents from 1994. When I decided to get rid of the Quadra, I copied the entire hard drive onto a CDR and then wiped it.

I was just hoping that Office 98 on my G3 could open the old Word documents, but I didn't have to worry. When I popped the CD in the drive and double-clicked a document, Word 6 launched from the CD! No configuration, conversion, or installation necessary.

That put a big grin on my face! I turned to my wife and said, "I knew there's a reason I love the Mac!"

(p.s. - this doesn't work under OS X. Score one for Classic Mac OS!)

um.. OK..

[Phroggy]

Note that there's nothing particularly special about hitting 100 years after epoch, being that 100 years is not a technically interesting length of time and the epoch being 1/1/1904 isn't non-technically interesting.

A technically interesting length of time (such as 2^32 seconds) from epoch would be noteworthy, but that's a few decades off.

A non-technically interesting length of time (such as 20 years) from the date the Macintosh was first introduced would also be noteworthy, and that's later this month I believe.

I'm a bit tired; did anyone grok that?

Re:Ugh.

[Bruce Perens]

The epoch was a well-defined moment in time until leap-seconds happened, and Unix ignored them. POSIX perpetuates that error. As a result, the epoch keeps moving.

Bruce

Picking Epochs

[john_smith_45678]

Why did these people pick these various epochs? Why 1904? Why 1970? Why is unix going to have (?) problems in 2038?

Palm OS too

[Imperator]

Palm OS also uses 1904 as 0. I don't know about Macs, but I do know that the DateType structure uses a 7-bit field for the year, so 2027 will be the end of the world for Palm handhelds.

Re:Palm OS too

[porkchop_d_clown]

There are huge similarities between the original PalmOS design and the original Mac OS design. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of the same people were involved, or else the Palm OS team were big Mac fans.

Explanation as to what this is about

[soft_guy]

The Macintosh traditionally measured time for most purposes in seconds since Midnight, January 1st, 1904. The call to get this value is GetDateTime() which takes a pointer to a unsigned long and returns the number of seconds by assigning the value to the argument.

Unlike what the article says, GetDateTime() is still available under the Carbon framework in MacOS X. However, there are now other ways of dealing with date/time in the MacOS. Ironically the preferred method, CFDate is also available under MacOS 9. So, I don't really get the point of the write up saying that this works only in MacOS 9.

Frankly this is of little interest to anyone who is not a Macintosh programmer - and only mild interest to those of us who are Macintosh programmers.

It is interesting to note that the Apple Newton also measures time from this reference point. However, it measures minutes since 1904 instead of seconds in dealing with its default date handling routines. On the Newton they had no real reason for picking that reference date other than that the Mac already used it.

On the original Mac, they did have a good reason for picking it. Apparently 1904 is the first leap year in the 20th century and it simplified the algorithm for factoring in leap years by starting at that point. Since they were trying shoe horn a graphical OS onto a 128Kb machine with no HD (but they did have some ROMs), you can't really fault them for taking a few shortcuts.

Re:Explanation as to what this is about

[sulli]

Frankly this is of little interest to anyone who is not a Macintosh programmer

Not entirely. Users of Microsoft Excel across Mac and Windows platforms at least used to have to compensate for the 1904 (Mac) or 1900 (Win) date systems when copying data. It was a major pain to always have to add or subtract 1462 days to get the dates to work properly.

Re:Ugh.

[gellenburg]

You're obviously forgetting that GMT (the time-zone which UNIX epoch originated at) is a time-zone in and of itself.

Sheesh.

You kids now-a-days.

(Note - UNIX does not use UTC since UTC incorporates leap seconds which UNIX & POSIX does not honor.)

Re:um.. OK..

[Johnny Mnemonic]

A non-technically interesting length of time (such as 20 years) from the date the Macintosh was first introduced would also be noteworthy, and that's later this month I believe.

That is indeed later this month, dated from the SuperBowl 1984 when the Apple SuperBowl commercial aired. And there are some rumors that Apple will air it again, during the 2004 SuperBowl, to get some of that old time feeling back.