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Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
bonch writes "Following up yesterday's story, AppleInsider now reports that Tiger build 8A428 has been deemed the Gold Master for shipping. Sources expect an announcement of Tiger's completion sometime tomorrow." There are far better days to make a product announcement, should a company wish to be taken seriously, but it worked for Gmail!
shortage of mac minis in the coming weeks
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
And Tiger is going to be a beautiful release. There are features in it, especially the searching and process automation, that I've been dreaming about for years. The searching technology first appeared in BeOS with its attribute-based filesystem, but the process automation is actually something that a company I worked for ten years ago tried to invent and couldn't get it working properly. When I saw it on Apple's demo page for Tiger, I basically saw exactly the same thing that we tried to do...
All I'm trying to say is that I thoroughly understand the depth of Apple's success with this software, and the technical achievement they made. This is a UNIX that can do so darn much.
New releases of OS X generally run faster than older ones because the OS is relatively new and optimizations are keeping pace with feature adds.
The one thing you'll want is a decent amount of memory. 128 mb hasn't been enough for any previous version, and it's doubtful it'll be enough for 10.4.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
"can you say that you can use a 6-year old PC without any siginificant upgrades and still run the latest OS and software and be productive with it?
Sure. As long as you're not married to Windows.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Au contraire,
b ait but merely to describe the type of user whe're talking about here--
The number one question asked by 'the archetypical mini-buyer' - and of course the tons of other people that ask for a mini who sometimes have some similarity with this mythical person - is 'Will I get Tiger for free when I but my mini now?'
The archetypical mac-mini switcher (subset of a-mm-buyer) is not the complete computer-n00b we would all love to go out and buy a mac, only because then we might actually get to benchmarks the actual stand-by time of our mobile phones, that type of user still uses the windows pc they've had for years because they don't care about computers, don't read the articles about them in the press, skip conversations about computers in social events because they're biased to think they won't understand any of it anyway and are thereby still highly unaware of the other options out there besides using their windows 95 OSR 2 box with 16 megs of ram till death.
The typical switcher we get - I work in a big Apple Centre in the Netherlands - is the slightly geeky guy on a budget. The type that cares a bit above average about computers, never used Linux because they couldn't figure out how to install it in the amount of time they wanted to commit themselves to it and besides that just mature enough to be tempted by the idea that *it* might JustWork(TM)
-- above passage not intended as linux-is-too-difficult-for-'normal'-people-flame-
The second most important typical mini-buyer is the user that already has -at least one- mac, looking for an extra machine to fulfill some specific task(s) , or unable to resist the mac mini coolness factor and getting one while not having the faintest clue why they would need it, or to replace for instance a dying iMac they've been using as a file- and print-server on a budget or likewise
Besides that, all the linux-geeks I know either want one, already have one or don't need one since they've gotten themselves an iBook. but that's not such a large part of the people we get in our store.
All of those categories of customers actually care *a lot* about whether or not Tiger will be included with their minimac.
PS: I'm not in sales but in tech support, so I might miss a few of those potential customers..
(may read 'IMHO' wherever omitted from above text)
Version numbers are completely arbitrary. The differences between point versions of OSX are at least as significant as the differences bewteen major versions of Classic OSs. So it makes perfect sense to consider them as OSs 11, 12, 13, 14 if you like. No one said there has to be a "complete overhaul" between major version number bumps, as shown by the original Mac OS, which went for twenty years and 9 major version without a complete overhaul.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
The typical switcher we get - I work in a big Apple Centre in the Netherlands - is the slightly geeky guy on a budget. The type that cares a bit above average about computers, never used Linux because they couldn't figure out how to install it in the amount of time they wanted to commit themselves to it and besides that just mature enough to be tempted by the idea that *it* might JustWork(TM)
/.), I'm about to switch. I want a machine that will allow my wife and I to use with sessions running simultaneously. I want mail and printing and scanning to work right. I want Bluetooth syncing to our phones and my wife's Tungsten to work. I want to be able to use my iPod, and my digital camera, and edit videos. I want it to all be integrated, and I want it to, yes, "just work".
You have a good view, but let me give you a data point. I'm a Linux sysadmin by day. My "server" at home runs Linux. My desktops at home run sort of Windows by necessity: one is for my wife, the other is my laptop that I need to use with a Centrino wireless card, and VPN for work. I know that I could "train" my wife to use Linux. I also know that I could get my finicky laptop to work. Point is, I don't want to. By the time I get home, I don't feel like it.
From reading (mostly on
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks. Is the Mac the right answer? I think it might be. But if it's not, that's okay. I can go back to the old way, and when I do, I'll sell the Mac for damn near what I paid for it.
I never thought I would be this way. But I've reached a time in my life where I have less patience and willingness to sacrifice free time. I also have lots more money. That's why I'm giving it a shot.
Hear hear!
/. "Hack 'cause you want, not 'cause you have to." Hacking actually becomes fun again. And surely that's something quite hard to put a price on?
:)
I was in a vaguely similar boat, though I can't ever claim to have been a Linux sysadmin - certainly not outside the home anyway. All our machines at home were Windows XP, mostly self-built, and we had Linux for NAT, etc. But all the machines were a constant hassle. The only thing I can be thankful for is that this was before spyware and its ilk got really big, so I never had to deal with much of that.
Anyway, I got an iBook in 2002, after playing around on a very sexy PowerMac G4 server (it had 1.25GB RAM, which was not unimpressive at the time). Looking back now, it was quite crude - Internet Explorer for the web browser, no X11, no Quartz Extreme - but I still switched, and haven't looked back.
Granted, it's a little weird if you're coming from a Linux-centric background - each UNIX has its own ways of doing things and Darwin is no different in this respect - but you can still get down to the nitty-gritty and write your own ipfw configuration if it floats your boat. And, though Fink seems slightly stagnated of late, running KDE on your Mac is just plain cool (from a "because you can" point of view, anyway).
Keep an open mind - I know a friend of mine was a little upset at first because he couldn't start Apache with apachectl start. I was a little terse with him in reply, pointing out that Apple, champion of the GUI, could hardly expect a horde of headstrong OS9 GUI diehards to open up a Terminal to start a web server. Once I pointed him towards the Sharing tab, all was fine.
The wireless implementation is unparalleled. Having taken my first steps in the WiFi world on a Mac, it pains me to use Windows' or Linux efforts (the latter I am having particular trouble with at home). Bluetooth is beautiful - you will, I am sure, find BluePhoneElite and Salling Clicker amusing if not essential toys. iPhoto is really, really nice; iMovie HD is just totally cool...
You almost take it for granted in fact. I installed iTunes on a friend's Windows XP machine the other day, and she was almost bowled over (she has rather poor balance) by the simplicity of iTunes. I now think of it as nothing special, but to someone who has suffered under WiMP for so long, it is truly refreshing.
In the end, all the machines at home now are Macs, save for one Linux server which still does NAT, mostly for my amusement so that I can continue to hack when I want. But I really think you hit the nail on the head with this...
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks.
I think I can sum it up succinctly with a line that is sure to appeal to at least the more mature and competent (i.e. less l33t t33n h4x0r) type that reads
iqu
For my wife it would be. She would be infinitely more productive with Automator than with Bash-programming
I beg to differ. With tools like Automator they would get instant visual cues as to what the system does. The system would just make sense. They just set each step accordingly, by choosing from drop-down boxes (with descripitve names of apps and actions) and the like, and it does the rest. It even has nice arrows point that "when this is done, I will move on to this step here". But let's look at your example:
wget -nd -r -l 1 -A jpg http://somehost.com/ [somehost.com] zip out.zip *.jpg
Huh? What is "wget"? What the hell are -nd -r -l 1 -A? How do those tell the user what it's doing? The user would have to spend time going through obscure manuals. With Automator, they could simply tell the system "fetch images from this website, and make an archive out of them".
Of course, if you have the commands memorized, then typing that command is propably faster than doing the same with Automator. But ask regural user who does NOT have that knowledge to do the same with Bash and with Automator. Which will be faster? Which of them will he rather use? If you answer "Bash", you are deluding yourself.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.