Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Nice comment, too:
The Army reading list
so long as you're going to argue by exaggeration and BS, then businesses have avoided Macs because they're run by retards and easily swayed by the herd instinct to go with Microsoft.
look at academics - Mac use there is enormous, because academics are intelligent enough to choose the best. they also use computers to do actual computer work, not just the occasional email and word document.
Ok feel I feel I need to address this.
1) I use my iBook everyday in my "corporate America" Job
2) 'Mac' is not a company
. Error messaging was minimal ("sad mac"? please.)
3) the 'sad mac' was to indicate a hardware failure of some type, and it gave a diag code to lookup. Im not sure what kinda of failure code you are looking for from the built in ROM software. Perhaps you would like a blue screen filled with unintelligible register contents?
4) Ejecting a disk, well then I ask should there have been a separate 'eject media' icon?
5) One button mouse. Dont like the mouse go buy a 2 button mouse. they work just fine. However i get the distinct impression you dont use a mac anyway.
6) Auto sizing windows: this behavior is a personal preference, Some windows I want large, some not. Based on your previous comments you seem to be upset that Apple makes some choices for the user that are personal preferences, but when they dont make this one you are upset about that also.
Mac offered compatibility with windows networking very late in the game
7) Im not sure im getting the point of this one. If the complaint is that Apple (see #2) didnt add windows file sharing until osx, this seems to miss the point of this screed about 'Corporate America'. From a corporate network POV, the server is supposed to be set up to talk to the clients, the clients have no onus to be peer to peer compatible with other clients, otherwise you lose the central control that is predominant in the corporate arena. Of course to be fair you would also have to complain that PC work stations haven't added any non MS windows compatibility.
I can only assume by your context that you mean wintel x86 as corporate workstations, so I have to base my comments on that assumption. I suppose its possible you mean some stripped down unix workstation from like 1998.
You claim to 'like' macs, but your things you dont like seems to be picayune at best. For all of these things that you believe that would get in the way of your 'corporate' workflow, it seems as if you have never tried to do such a thing to begin with.
I feel that you are using this 'corporate' thing as a bag you can fill up with a bunch of complaints and use it to bolster your beliefs.
Finder is multi-threaded (at least as of 10.2 I believe). Just fire up Activity Viewer and see that Finder's #processes is > 1.
But it blocks for network responses. This is really, really annoying. I wouldn't call it the shittiest thing, but it definitely needs some rejigging. If you've been using OS X since 10.0.3 then you'll remember that the Finder has indeed come quite a long way since then.
My hopes are high for what 10.4 will bring. The problem as I see it is that earlier versions of OS X have had quite a bit of the underpinnings in a certain amount of flux. The Finder (or indeed any 'file manager') is an important element of how the user interacts with the OS. Which means that things like CoreData, Spotlight and other enhancements give an opportunity for a proper overhaul of Finder which makes the most of these technologies. Time will tell I suppose.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
They don't, for the most part, stock replacement parts. They don't do anything but the most basic repairs.
I have to chime in here. I have a refurbished dual G5 in which one of the processors stopped showing up. The guy at the Genius bar told me it could be anything from an improperly seated processor to a bad CPU or logic board -- both of which were parts that they had in stock and could fix within a day or two. Luckily, it the processor wasn't firmly "in place" and it just took a bit of reassembly.
They had it diagnosed and back to me in less than 24 hours, no charge. And I don't have Applecare on the machine. My opinion is that Apple hardware is great, but regardless, I've had few occasions to have to get repairs over the years. And when I have, it's been a relatively painless experience. I never had to ship anything in or wait for some obscure supply-chain hopscotch to get a part.
A number of other comments in this post give me pause, but I'm not qualified to respond so I'll just say "hmmm...OK, whatever" to the rest, and admit people's experiences vary.
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.