An Answer To "What is Mac OS X?"

XCube writes: "'What is Mac OS X?' is a fascinating article over at KernelThread.com. According to Amit Singh it's a hacker-over-friendly answer to that question and a low-level taste of Apple's OS. The extensive article covers many details on Mac OS X: history, Mac firmware & boot loader, system architecture, kernel, startup, file systems, app environments, programming facilities, available software, and more. A great read if you are interested in Mac OS X, though some stuff is too technical methinks. On second thought, this may be a better read if you're *not* interested in Mac OS X! The author says he wrote it to introduce Mac OS X to the Linux User's Group at his work."

Comments

Re:I did the best thing

[Junta]

I suppose it is your choice, but why bother getting a Mac and skipping out on MacOSX? Their hardware is crappy, Apple cares more about looking nice than lasting more than the warranty period. Once upon a time, they made stuff that worked and stayed durable, but now they make overpriced cheap flimsy plastic and offer hostile customer support when things break. The only thing I like about Apple is that OSX is truly a fantastic blend of 'Grandma usability' and BSD power. Linux can run just as well for 99.9% of users out there on x86 hardware (if you find/make a decent x86 with the same money you shell out for a Mac).

If you couldn't tell, I bought into the hype and bought an iBook a while back and have regretted it since. Spent months trying to convince support the motherboard needed replacement due to video failures, (now well documented), and they eventuall did. The power supply started shocking my lap after 3 months, it was replaced and the replacement died just after warranty was up, and I had to shell out 80 bucks to keep using the damn thing. On top of all that, the lid latch broke and the ethernet port stopped working, so now I can only use the wireless. And each time I called about stuff under Warranty, they were more interested in trying to sell me extended warranties or insisting that Apple didn't do direct hardware warranty service , or admitting they did, but my problems were obviously because I abused/dropped the laptop or something, which never occured.

Meanwhile my Thinkpad has served me well, and it was cheaper. Even a crappy Presario laptop has outlasted that crap iBook. I buy a new system usually at least annually, and Apple has me so off to their products. It is a shame because I think the Apple software developers/testers have *really* got something right in the midsts of everything else going to crap.