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Hacking Mac OS X
Bill Hamm writes "DB is carrying a deep interview with Jonathan Rentzsch, who created an open source technology to allow other developers to inject their code into any running process to alter its functions and written papers for IBM to program the PowerPC correctly. The interview is huge and technical, and all over the place in terms of content. Some of the things discussed are the reasons for corporate America's resistance to buying from Apple, software optimization, the importance and history of 10.4's Core Data, why WebObjects is no longer relevant, the status of PowerPC compilers, and why Mac OS X's Finder should be killed off."
Doubling the size of your IT department in order to deal with technical problems is MORE expensive...
Which, many believe, is exactly the conspiracy that IT pushes on management. Bad computers justify their very jobs.
I suggest you read Slashdot
FYI, no hackers ever referred to their "hobby" as cracking and they never referred to themselves as "crackers". Crackers are people who crack software copy protection.
Unfortunately, ESR began a strange, revisionist compaign to try and rewrite history, which has all but failed.
If there are two things I don't like on my PB then it's Finder and QuickTime (player).
Finder does not seem to be multithreaded, if any network communication gets stuck the whole thing does. Even on large directories it's slow. And the way it insists on showing you previews of files (using QT) and then failing. I have to admit that I only use it as application launcher and simple file operations. For anything else the command line or mc works much better.
I like the UI, but the core should be rewritten.
I'm sure a thousand people can (and will) list a hundred complaints each, but I'll give you just one, albeit one that would be *very* easy for them to fix: why the fuck can't I sort by name|date|size|type|label|whatever in column view?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
The dock works well for what it is designed to do. Quick launch access to Applications you put their. Quick look to see which Applications are running.
Yes there are more advanced application launchers out there. But the normal users won't need/use them. Save these specialized launchers for the shareware market.
I live off a PowerBook. I totally live the PowerBook lifestyle. Between a condo, office and the farm, ongoing presentations at PSIG and CAWUG, train rides, plane rides and on-sites, it's just easier to keep everything inside one machine that goes with me and has anything.
at the risk of being mod'd flamebait... this just oozes Apple marketing speak. seriously... "powerbook lifestyle"? i'm a proud owner of a PowerBook G4 1Ghz 1GB RAM 80GB HD... but i don't live the "lifestyle"... i use it because it gets the job done. same reason i use a (patched) XP and FreeBSD 5.2.1 box with KDE at work. it gets the job done. sometimes, just sometimes, the zealotry among the apple users makes me just a weee bit quezy...
Isn't that what we complain about so much with IE and Active X?
Just wondering.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I guess that's why there are Mac users, Windows users and X users -- for my part I find it incomprehensible that there are people who prefer the Windows paradigm of stacks of windows they blindly Alt-tab through, or having all their open Word or Excel documents globbed together in a giant opaque square. And I don't see why those globs are more attractive in the office than at home. But I'm glad we have a choice.
By the way, when people bitch about Mac usability by complaining about the drag-disks-to-the-trash issue that was resolved a decade ago and has always been a non-issue for any user I've ever seen -- the absence of any second criticism tends to make their point in the opposite direction of intended...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
To understand the basic complaint about the OS X Finder look at this ArsTechnica article.
Which is essentially asking for a finder that works like the spatial Nautilus (this isn't surprising given that spatial Nautilus was designed based on this series of Ars Technica articles). We all know how well spatial Nautilus was recieved. I don't think you can win - there is no "better" only "different".
In the end I quite like what Nautilus has ended up with - you can pick or choose between the two options, and both are reasonably (if not exceptionally) well implemented.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
As a desktop admin at a site with over 300 macs, I can assure you that the os x finder is pretty much universally disliked by longtime mac users. They have a hard time getting used to it, and try to do OS 9 type things with it, like leaving everything on the desktop , or making data folders on the root level of the hard drive. If I could banish column view from ever rearing its ugly head, I would. Yes finder, I want every frickin filename truncated to fit in that stupid little column. The dock is nice, but why does it have to be anchored to the sides of the workspace? I'd much rather float it. Or perhaps the new thing of 10.3 piling up icons on top of each other when at least half of my desktop is empty annoys people? You know what I'd really love? A launch terminal button on the force quit dialog (apple-option-escape) so I could kill processes and shut down cleanly when the finder decides that it is not responding and no amount of "finder relaunches" will do a damn thing.
music lover since 1969
I was going to mod you down for this bit "Mac designers were so proud of multitasking that windows didn't maximize automatically -- hardly making efficient use of screen real-estate. (See! There are multiple apps running behind this window!)." but decided the post had some worthwhile things overall.
I suppose it's a usage debate, really, but it always made sense to NOT maximize Windows in the MS-OS's way. It's disgustingly wasteful. With higher res displays, one should not be asking for a wider view of a single window, but how one can use that space for multiple windows. That's efficient multi-tasking, in my opinion. Not having one giant square blocking everything else from view.
It's a well known fact that the term "hacker" did not originally apply to the people that media now calls hackers.
Cracking refers to people who break into computer systems using nefarious means. Ie Kevin Mitnick is mentioned on the wikipedia page, as he should be since he is probably the worlds most notorious cracker.
Just because the media says it, doesn't mean it's true. And if a cracker ever refers to him/herself as a hacker, you can rest easy because all your base will not belong to them. Anyone worth their merit knows the correct definition and differentations between cracking/hacking/spidering/phreaking/etc.
And just in case you all are too lazy to read the links... Linus Torvalds is listed as a famous hacker. This is the true definition of the term. It's not because he ever broke into computer systems, it's because he's a good programmer.
Also of note is that in the computer science community the word "hack" has gone on to have a somewhat negative connotation. For example, "Dude this code is such a hack." Although this refers more loosely to the "hack and slash" programming methodology... which often results in ugly code that is held together very loosely.
However, an ugly code "hack" and the word "hacker" are distinctly different. Please refrain from falling prey to false assumptions based on media in the future.
How is it that when business users all use the same machine, it's becuase of herd mentality, but when academics do, it's an example of sound judgement. In either case, the end user is not making the decision on the OS. Those decisions are made institutionally.
Also, in my experience in academia, most users in the humanities use the computer for word processing and email. Are there CS depts that use Mac's as their primary desktop? I would imagine it's Windows or Nix.
Business users have much higher demands than the average academic user (at least on the desktop).
My understanding is that XLC does not do Obj-C, which means Apple can use it for some of the underpinnings, but not in general... Although if you're writing a Cocoa app, it's not uncommon to drop down to straight C and compile that separately, in which case you can purchase and use something like XLC. I believe, anyways.
Why after 3 updates to OS X is there still no one-click way to go up a directory? It's the most common task in file browsing!
If they'd just give me a nice 'Up' arrow in between the forward and back buttons I could forgive all the other reasons for Finder X's suckiness.
That said, I use PathFinder whenever possible.
Ah, c'mon... that's not really a solution is it? Previewing is an excellent feature of column view, and it'd be a shame to turn it off since it's usually very handy. Sadly, Finder's brain-damaged handling of non-local storage makes it occasionally a bit of a nightmare.
... for the most part :)
I'm a fan of OS X -- my PC's now just a Wintendo games machine. The Mac has a whole slew of applications I've come to rety on which are just plain better than alternatives (in my experience, of course).
I also think OS X has some really interesting technology in it, and I find it a real pleasure to use.
I don't have a problem with how the Finder works. Of course, there's room for functional enhancements, but I'm not crying out for anything at the moment. But it really handles previewing (especially over network links, as noted) awfully. It's the only app that causes the spinning-wheel on my system. The idea that waiting for the view of a network share (or even my iDisk) to refresh should cause every other Finder window (including the Desktop) to freeze is crazy. Finder's much better than it was in 10.0, 10.1 (where there was literally NO threading) or even 10.2. But the core really needs some tweaking.
QTPlayer's not so bad. I've got the Pro version, since I like having Pro's editing and conversion features. It does its job well, but not spectacularly. I'm not going to rant about it because in a few weeks time, I'll be running Tiger with a much-overhauled QuickTime 7.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Replace "PowerBook" with "laptop" and it makes perfect sense. It's not about the brand name, so much as the flexibility that a portable offers. Some people, upon buying a laptop, get rid of all their desktops and live off of the notebook. It becomes a "lifestyle," inasmuch as your work files, eMail, calendar, address book, etc. are all on a single machine. Like the Blackberry lifestyle, or the Palm Pilot (remember those?) lifestyle, or the cell-phone lifestyle.
For the longest time, Mac-heads used "PowerBook" to mean "laptop" the way some people use "Kleenex" to mean "facial tissue."
Or, they don't make/sell crap? Which one is it? Everytime /.ers do these comparisons it seems that the prices are at worst comparible to similar spec'd Win machines. Yes yes, you can build cheaper boxen, great. But I don't think this is what TFA is talking about.
Now, does the receptionist/accountant/sales person need a Dual 2.5 G5? Hell no. An iMac would even be overkill. But, a Mini IMO may be a nice alternative, especially if you have a room full of CRT's laying around like more and more IT departments are acquiring these days (LCD upgrades at my last two places of employment). Sure, you absolutely can buy cheaper PC's than $500, and many wouldn't need the built in FW, Radeon 9200, iLife, etc... that go into the final price of the Mini (throw in a keyboard and mouse too), but take away admin costs (if all hell breaks loose on an any of our Macs, I can reinstall a clean version of the OS in 20 minutes without touching the user space or installed apps) and it more than makes up for it IMO. Now, enter the OS intuitiveness wars below:
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
If your main example is rebuilding desktops, I'd say your Mac support experience is getting out of date.
So people have to own macs to have honest opinions of them?
It couldn't be something like:
1. Person had one, but sold it.
2. Person worked on/with them at his place of employment.
3. Person used on at his friends house.
4. Person actually understands the issue at hand.
Nice attempt at invalidating his comment, should work for more gullible slashdotters.
Finder does not seem to be multithreaded, if any network communication gets stuck the whole thing does.
Fortunately, I have not experienced this problem. To me the finder (and every other "file manager') is mostly worthless. This weekend I was transferring a bunch of data that I had backed up on CDrom to a new external harddisk, actually from CDrom to my local HD, reorganize the data, or whatever, and then put it on my external drive. I never knew there was no way to move data from one disk to another (or I just don't know how). I have to copy the data, then put the old files in the trash, and at some point delete the trash.
It kills me that there is no way to simply preview a text file with a non text file looking extension. Maybe I'm just old school. But I find the commandline better for well over 99% of file interaction. I can type 'cat filename' and see what is in there, I can move, compare, copy, delete, edit, compress, use wildcards, multiple operations via a 'for' loop, or do anything basically from the commandline, so that is where I stay most of the time. The only real benefit of a GUI file manager is if I need to select seemingly random files to move or delete where a wildcard or sorting by date or extension or whatever will not be efficient or effective.
QuickTime (player).
I'll give you this. I cannot believe that my $2,500 PowerBook with all of this useful software and a great OS comes with nagware to play a subset of media files out there. I'm sure the "Pro" version handles these irritations, but it kills me that the damn thing does not remember the volume and defaults to 100% EVERY TIME. In my opinion, this is a disgrace for Apple to include such crap with their computer. Unfortunately, Mplayer and VLC aren't much better. VLC is about the best, but it still kinda sucks if you want to do something like seek ahead or behind in a file.
Aside from the high dollar professional multimedia apps for the Mac, in my experience OS X sucks for simple things like playing music or movies. For home use, I may buy a Windows computer (and I hate windows), but Windows seems to be the only OS that comes with working media software -- Winamp, and I assume there is something for video. I wouldn't mind using Windows too much if it came with some way to do remote commandline stuff. Its been years since I've used Windows, but cygwin was very useful then, maybe there is a working sshd or similar for the system. I'll have to check into it.
2) Most of the support calls I fielded in the week I had that job were not OS specific, but along the lines of "How do I do a mail merge?"
3) A lot of companies use applications that are specific enough in scope that there aren't any ports to linux or Mac. If Company X NEEDS to use Product Y and Product Y is only availble for Windows, then Company X is going to use Windows, and x86 hardware. It's that simple
Free MacMini
Apple has had *so long* to get the finder *perfect* and it's still not nearly as good as it could be.
looks-wise: when going from 9 to X, they threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater. consider active and inactive windows. in OS 9: foreground window had 3d effects all around it. EVERY OTHER WINDOW was solid light grey and a 1-pixel darker grey outline, period. no question about which was which. in OS X, it's waaaay too overly-cutely-designed and too subtle to be useful. OK, so the drop shadow is a bit smaller? great, that'd be tought to see even if my desktop picture *weren't* black. And the stoplight buttons are not there? OK, thanks. and the titlebar text goes from dark grey to medium grey? OK, super. OS 9 made the state of the computer *obvious.* OS X hides it behind pretty-but-subtle cues.
And the performance isn't nearly what it could have been. Every use BeOS? You make a file on the desktop from within an app, boom, it appears in the background instantly. OS X: make a file or folder, click on the desktop to (hopefully) force a redraw, and a moment later (on a dual-G5) it'll show up. Editing a file that you can see in a window in list view? Save it and BeOS updates the 'date modified' column in the background instantly. OS X? Click the file and it'll update. And the Finder is especially lazy about updating disk usage when you have the 'calculate folder sizes' option checked. C'mon, Apple... I had BeOS R3 for Intel and PPC in *1998*! It's 2005 now! Want me to send you my old CDs?
perfect quote: "Finder X is the compromise between the Mac OS folks and the NeXT folks. Neither won, everybody lost."
great quote: "the entire bastardized notion of switching from metal to aqua and hiding the sidebar when clicking on the toolbar chiclet in the upper right-hand corner. Bonus: notice how if you click on the extreme right of the chiclet and try to switch back, you fail -- the window theme switch moved the chiclet slightly to the left and now you've got to follow it. Gag. Folks, this type of stuff makes Gnome look good."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Or instead of Apple dropping Quartz, which is a huge part of their appeal (to both users and developers), the Open Source community should start working on and in GNUstep, which is an API-alike of the same technologies that OS X is based on.
Hell, APIs aren't protected I.P., you could make Quartz-compatible APIs for X11 and add them to GNUstep.
It would serve us better to emulate the good things we see out there, not knock them down to our level.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
To "just move" a file you hold down apple, or is it shift? It's basically the same deal on windows, except there you do hold shift.
Are you actually posting comments on slashdot? Why would I ever give a flying god damn what someone who can't move a file thinks? Honestly?
Note: Windows does not come with winamp. Plus, macs DO come with itunes, which is fantastic for music. Are you using winamp for video? Guess what, you're using media player in disguise.
I find that quicktime pro is very nice for watching video's, I find it annoying that quicktime regular can't do full screen. But then again pro is just a serialnumber away!
I'll go ahead and give you guys my software position again: If you pay for software you're a sucker. If you find that it is morally wrong to just type in a serial number from the net then you are a sucker too. Maybe someday when I have money to spare I'll feel differently, as buying it might be cheaper than downloading it when your time is worth money. But when alot of software costs more than I make in a month I'll go ahead and get it from bittorrent while I eat my ramen noodles. I do use OSS, but only when it sucks less than the comercial equivelent. So no openoffice.org, since it is pretty awful, and rarely renders Word documents correctly. Abiword is ok and I use it sometimes.
how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB?
If you need 60G worth of data, you need facilities to back up 60G worth of data. Data that isn't backed up doesn't exist, it's vapor, patterns in the clouds, sandcastles before a storm.
Hie thee down to CompUSA and get a $100 USB or Firewire external drive at the very LEAST. If you're a business, DLT tape drives give you reliable and ROBUST backups.
Sheesh.
I find that quicktime pro is very nice for watching video's
It's "VIDEOS", dammit! WHEN USING THE PLURAL OF A WORD, DO NOT USE AN APOSTROPHE!
Seriously, it's not that complicated. I don't know why you people can't grasp basic grammar.
Dude, you're coming into Appleland well after the OS X bomb went off. Apple has been working passive-aggressively to get their users to drop cash on new kit for years, and they've been leveraging the OS to do this. To whit:
1. You can run OS 9.1 on the 6100 through early-mid G4s, though it has to be installed from CD in the x100s (instead of a patch update)
2. OS 9.2.X requires first-gen G3s or better, though you can hack it onto older gear with the right tools.
3. 10.0's official sysreqs were "G3 and up". Ditto 10.1 and 10.2. 10.2 introduced Quartz Extreme, which instantly obsoleted non-AGP macs and most mac video boards. And all iMacs and portables with less than 32 vram.*
4. 10.3 won't install on beige hardware. To run the current OS, you've got to be using a machine with New World roms (or hack the sucker on with XPostFacto).
5. 10.4 will be shipping on DVD. I'm sure there'll be a CD option as well, but if it's DVD only, that chops out a couple of generations of iMacs, some blue g3s, and some powerbooks, etc, etc.
It's only a matter of time until the OS requires Altivec- the entire product line has been G4 or G5 for awhile now, so I imagine Apple is going to drop support for G3 machines as fast as they can.
And it's not like they "drop" support per se (unless obviously, as with the 10.3 release)- they do it passive-aggressively, by introducing new features that require recent hardware to use.
Doesn't help that you need a dual G5 and 2g of ram to get the Photoshop performance OS 9 has on less than half the hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you on all other points. But no forced upgrades? Please. You should've seen the 68k -> PPC transition.
* Yeah, you can use OS X with less than 32vram but the difference between QE and non-QE on slower, ram-starved machines is obvious.
Thats a horrible idea. You want them to ditch great next generation technology just to fit in? Apple is all about next generation technology like Quartz, and how would dropping Quartz help them fit in? Every platform has it's own programming interfaces. Linux does, Windows does, Apple does. Are you suggesting that Linux drop its own API's and have everyone standardly use WINE because thats what everyone else uses? Cause Cocoa is so easy, if I had to code using other API's, I would leave the Mac platform.
Fair enough...kind of. "database independent" is a dangerous term. Almost as dangerous as a senior database architect who is unfamiliar with abstraction. You can have reasonable database independence with optimizations for prevelent databases. The system can be database independent while performance isn't.