I agree that keeping the barriers to entry low are important. I think that installation and cooperation are more dramatic barriers to entry than the start button. If a system has a sensible UI, even if it's different, people are going to have a better time than a half-bred UI that serves many masters and pleases none. My windows-using friend borrowed my PowerBook running Mac OS X. He used it for a while, and liked it. He thought some things were strange, he had to ask me a few questions about it, but he didn't reject it for lack of a start menu. Most people aren't that stupid. And the people who are that stupid typically are taught what they need to know by others, they don't acquire that knowledge on their own. So it doesn't much matter. My point is that different isn't necessarily scary (it can be, but it isn't by definition) and I'd much rather see something that was (gasp) original, creative, different, and effective, rather than the derivative drivel that has characterized so much of what we buy.
The start menu is dumb. The Windows start menu is dumb but we're stuck with it. The start menus in Linux are even dumber because they are so completely decoupled from what's on the system that they're utterly inconsistent across different distros and different peoples' desktops that I don't consider them to be a factor. If nothing, I consider them to be a confounding factor.
Multiple desktops are a great idea. Multiple desktops confuse more people than any other UI feature I have ever seen. By your reasoning, they should be left out.
Re:Gnome or KDE?
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Oh, yea. And security.
Security and stability? Let's put the webserver in the kernel for speed. Lets think about security after we make things go really fast (on a 2GHz processor, you don't notice that it's slow anymore!) so that Max's webserver logs are 50% dumbass IIS virus attempts. Let's make the mail system so fundamentally faulty that the average business user is _terrified_ of his e-mail. Terrified of getting e-mail! Congratulations. We have functionality that nobody wants to use for fear of the consequences. That's getting better?
Win 3.1 wasn't an OS, but DOS was stable and fast. That's about all I'll say for MS's accomplishments in the last twelve years.
Well, I didn't consider Win 3.1. That doesn't even count on my scale.
Regarding UI, I think Windows is a mess, always has been a mess, and always will be a mess. It is ugly, it doesn't work properly, there are numerous aspects fundamental to the functioning of the UI that are purely annoying (like the tendency to steal keyboard focus and throw up windows over the current active portion of the screen.)
Win2k is miserable. Everyone keeps going on about how good it is, but I just don't see it. I set up a Win2k machine for Kazaa and to play some games, and it is hardly stable. The explorer is a piece of crap. It barely works! When I'm using it for file management, none of my file ordering or icon location choices are retained, it's flimsy. I can't tell you how many times it has just stopped working, requiring that I ctrl-alt-delete the explorer (which also kills my web sessions.) I just don't see what everybody's so excited about. It simply sub-par, and it annoys me that people are excited by all of the new features and capabilities when the core is completely rotten.
And that's what Linux folks are trying to get? File managers that are web browsers? The god-awful abomination of a start menu? If that's what you want, you can keep it.
Well, one of my points was "sorta like" is worse than different. I know I find that I am most frustrated with things that only work a little bit like the things that they're supposed to look or work like.
Exactly. Windows keeps getting worse. It's a result of not having coherent ideas and the conviction and assuredness to adhere to those convictions. I don't like BeOS, but it has that going for it. The Mac has that going for it. I don't like the Amiga, but it had it, as well. NEXTSTEP had it in spades.
I agree with you about the insularity of so many people, but what gets me is that the people who are most anxious to have done with this planet are among the most intelligent and best-educated ones I know.
The humorous irony for me is that one of them is the most fervent collector/refurbisher of discarded computer and electronic equipment I know. He won't throw anything away (ever) and regularly proclaims that getting new hardware is a waste of money when there's so much quality stuff out there to be had.
Re:Gnome or KDE?
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Boy that looks like Windows with different colors. Not trying to be a troll here, but what's the point of striving harder and harder to make Linux interfaces as close to Windows as possible? Sure, people say the secretary factor, but either a) the secretary will not be a linux user, or b) people underestimate the ability of others to do something new.
To me, it seems more confusing to have something that works and looks somewhat like Windows, but not quite than something that is well-designed and faithful to itself.
But, I'll probably be modded into oblivion, so what's the point?
Which one is that? Isabella? She was spanish. Columbus was the italian.
I'm not saying that I'm not all for exploration, etc. I'm just saying that the anti-earth sentiments confuse me. Besides, exploring all of the splendors of this planet are quite appealing, so, go Columbus (explorer-ly, not socio-ethnically.)
I've never understood why people are so eager to leave this planet. My roommate is always talking about how we need to colonize other planets and leave Earth, as this planet has been used up.
While I agree that we have major problems (not the least of which is overpopulation,) I just don't understand why people are so eager to leave the splendors that are available here behind. I do hope that we settle on other worlds, but I won't be going. I, for one, don't want to move permanently to Mars and see nothing but red for the rest of my life, or go to the moon and never see a running stream of a bird in a forest again.
I'd be happy to visit (and I'd probably be willing to pay large sums to do so,) but I'm sticking to this planet until we find something that comes close to the majesty of a rain forest or the coast of New England on a stormy day.
Don't be bitter. There ain't nothing wrong with the look, and it doesn't intrude on Apple's IP. Making XP look just like OS X (down to an Apple menu in the menu bar!) certainly does.
I agree, but even the first page produced by the link doesn't quite explain it.
For the lazy: a Flash Advance Linker seems to be a device that allows you to copy GameBoy ROMs through your parallel port. You can then put the ROMs back on memory cards and use them in your personal entertainment device.
Aah...back in the good old days I had two DECstations running my life. (The good old days are '98, '99, btw.) At CMU there are at least ten or fifteen DECstations thrown out every week. I picked up a nice 5000/125 and set it up as an X display, webserver, and mail system. It was pretty groovy. I could xhost Netscape from the campus UNIX system, and use the machine to its fullest extent.
It had a really, really loud set of RZ56 (?) full-height hard drives that made tons of noise. Fortunately, the interface parts (monitor, keyboard, mouse) are connected to a 12 foot tether, so I could put the CPU under my bed and have all of the interface portions on my desk. And it heated the room. Good machine =)
You had to be anonymous to repost your original posting?
First of all, I didn't say that Mac OS X was a windowing environment. I said it was lots of libraries that provided, among other things, a windowing environment. It just isn't an OS. It's a lot of libraries.
Darwin is the underlying OS. That is correct. (The drivers are irrelevant.) If you're actually interested in seeing how it works, go to this page at Apple.
The attentive viewer will notice that The Simpsons did get a little stale as the Bart-centeredness progressed. They had to make the show about Homer for it to really take off. There are only so many Bartman and "eat my shorts" jokes you can make without the show getting stale. So you are correct =)
Get over it. They do have to make money. And there has been no encroachment on the worthwhileness of the service. The links are in the ad section. The AD section!
In fact, I even find this useful. If I'm looking for a product or service, I have been known to click on a sponsored link in the past. I've even bought things from them.
It really isn't that much more complicated. Mac OS X is the name of a bundle of libraries other features. It's rather like Linux, which is a kernel and a number of GNU libraries/tools.
Darwin is the name of one component of the OS (the BSD core.)
It's no more an OS on top of an OS than Linux + X + KDE is an OS on top of an OS. There are layers of components that provide differing services. Aqua/Quartz is no more an independent OS (the top layer) than X is an OS.
(I made a slight mistake -- the graphics libraries are Quartz, not Aqua. Aqua is the lickable interface.)
(I posted the following response to the post mentioned by the editors. It's still wrong -- there is no "compatibility layer."
-------------------
Do you know what that means? "Based on NeXT" doesn't mean anything. NeXT was a company.
Mac OS X is based on OpenStep 4.2, which, itself, was based on NEXTSTEP 3.3. NEXTSTEP is a BSD operating system running on a modified version of the Mach microkernel. OpenStep is a API specification and a set of libraries that conforms to that API. OpenStep 4.2 (the operating system) is an implementation of those libraries on top of NEXTSTEP.
When Apple bought NeXT, they planned to build on top of OpenStep. They first produced Rhapsody for PPC and Rhapsody for Intel. They were the same OS running on two hardware platforms. On top of Rhapsody, Apple put the Blue Box, which was a Macintosh compatibility environment. At no time was there any need for a "BSD compatibility layer." It was all software running on top of BSD. Apple then killed Rhapsody for Intel (and the Yellow Box, but that's tangential.)
What was left was released as Mac OS Server.
Mac OS X 10.0 and Mac OS Server 10.0 (and further versions) are also BSD operating systems. They have the Cocoa (OpenStep) and Carbon libraries available, and the imaging system is called Aqua (replacement for Display PostScript.) At no point in any of this is there a need for any UNIX compatibility layer, as it is all real UNIX. The only compatibility environment necessary is for Mac OS 9 (Classic.) Only certain older applications (Carbon) can run natively on OS X, so for running non-Carbon apps, Mac OS 9 is run in a compatibility environment (similar, but not the same as VMWare.)
Clearly they're pursuing a radically different business plan. It's the same old DR-DOS business plan. Buy a product screwed by MS and use it as grounds to sue.
If I could afford to buy GO, I'd do the same thing. Maybe IBM wants to sell OS/2 on the cheap (then they wouldn't have to support it, either.)
Actually, a floppy-based distro that can be used for really secure work is a great idea. I can keep a trusted environemnt with me at all times, and know what's going on (I never trust another person's computer when sitting down at it. I know how my machine is set up which gives me no cause to trust others!)
Some MS person came up with an OS X theme for XP not long ago. It was absolutely ghastly, and all of the comments indicated that the Windows-using masses were masturbating furiously, they liked it so much.
Okay, i've always wondered -- what is up with so many programmers' color sensibilities? Mauve, orange, pink, magenta, and teal should not be used in large quantities. Particularly not _together_! Of course, little beats old DOS and UNIX colors. (Particularly the DOS tendency to have the F12-to-rotate-colors feature.)
There are so many medical billing programs out there that make my eyes hurt, I don't want to think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that keeping the barriers to entry low are important. I think that installation and cooperation are more dramatic barriers to entry than the start button. If a system has a sensible UI, even if it's different, people are going to have a better time than a half-bred UI that serves many masters and pleases none. My windows-using friend borrowed my PowerBook running Mac OS X. He used it for a while, and liked it. He thought some things were strange, he had to ask me a few questions about it, but he didn't reject it for lack of a start menu. Most people aren't that stupid. And the people who are that stupid typically are taught what they need to know by others, they don't acquire that knowledge on their own. So it doesn't much matter. My point is that different isn't necessarily scary (it can be, but it isn't by definition) and I'd much rather see something that was (gasp) original, creative, different, and effective, rather than the derivative drivel that has characterized so much of what we buy.
The start menu is dumb. The Windows start menu is dumb but we're stuck with it. The start menus in Linux are even dumber because they are so completely decoupled from what's on the system that they're utterly inconsistent across different distros and different peoples' desktops that I don't consider them to be a factor. If nothing, I consider them to be a confounding factor.
Multiple desktops are a great idea. Multiple desktops confuse more people than any other UI feature I have ever seen. By your reasoning, they should be left out.
Oh, yea. And security.
Security and stability? Let's put the webserver in the kernel for speed. Lets think about security after we make things go really fast (on a 2GHz processor, you don't notice that it's slow anymore!) so that Max's webserver logs are 50% dumbass IIS virus attempts. Let's make the mail system so fundamentally faulty that the average business user is _terrified_ of his e-mail. Terrified of getting e-mail! Congratulations. We have functionality that nobody wants to use for fear of the consequences. That's getting better?
Win 3.1 wasn't an OS, but DOS was stable and fast. That's about all I'll say for MS's accomplishments in the last twelve years.
Oh, and they make a good mouse.
Well, I didn't consider Win 3.1. That doesn't even count on my scale.
Regarding UI, I think Windows is a mess, always has been a mess, and always will be a mess. It is ugly, it doesn't work properly, there are numerous aspects fundamental to the functioning of the UI that are purely annoying (like the tendency to steal keyboard focus and throw up windows over the current active portion of the screen.)
Win2k is miserable. Everyone keeps going on about how good it is, but I just don't see it. I set up a Win2k machine for Kazaa and to play some games, and it is hardly stable. The explorer is a piece of crap. It barely works! When I'm using it for file management, none of my file ordering or icon location choices are retained, it's flimsy. I can't tell you how many times it has just stopped working, requiring that I ctrl-alt-delete the explorer (which also kills my web sessions.) I just don't see what everybody's so excited about. It simply sub-par, and it annoys me that people are excited by all of the new features and capabilities when the core is completely rotten.
And that's what Linux folks are trying to get? File managers that are web browsers? The god-awful abomination of a start menu? If that's what you want, you can keep it.
Well, one of my points was "sorta like" is worse than different. I know I find that I am most frustrated with things that only work a little bit like the things that they're supposed to look or work like.
Exactly. Windows keeps getting worse. It's a result of not having coherent ideas and the conviction and assuredness to adhere to those convictions. I don't like BeOS, but it has that going for it. The Mac has that going for it. I don't like the Amiga, but it had it, as well. NEXTSTEP had it in spades.
I agree with you about the insularity of so many people, but what gets me is that the people who are most anxious to have done with this planet are among the most intelligent and best-educated ones I know.
The humorous irony for me is that one of them is the most fervent collector/refurbisher of discarded computer and electronic equipment I know. He won't throw anything away (ever) and regularly proclaims that getting new hardware is a waste of money when there's so much quality stuff out there to be had.
Boy that looks like Windows with different colors. Not trying to be a troll here, but what's the point of striving harder and harder to make Linux interfaces as close to Windows as possible? Sure, people say the secretary factor, but either a) the secretary will not be a linux user, or b) people underestimate the ability of others to do something new.
To me, it seems more confusing to have something that works and looks somewhat like Windows, but not quite than something that is well-designed and faithful to itself.
But, I'll probably be modded into oblivion, so what's the point?
Which one is that? Isabella? She was spanish. Columbus was the italian.
I'm not saying that I'm not all for exploration, etc. I'm just saying that the anti-earth sentiments confuse me. Besides, exploring all of the splendors of this planet are quite appealing, so, go Columbus (explorer-ly, not socio-ethnically.)
I've never understood why people are so eager to leave this planet. My roommate is always talking about how we need to colonize other planets and leave Earth, as this planet has been used up.
While I agree that we have major problems (not the least of which is overpopulation,) I just don't understand why people are so eager to leave the splendors that are available here behind. I do hope that we settle on other worlds, but I won't be going. I, for one, don't want to move permanently to Mars and see nothing but red for the rest of my life, or go to the moon and never see a running stream of a bird in a forest again.
I'd be happy to visit (and I'd probably be willing to pay large sums to do so,) but I'm sticking to this planet until we find something that comes close to the majesty of a rain forest or the coast of New England on a stormy day.
Wow -- was that as dumb as it sounds?
Don't be bitter. There ain't nothing wrong with the look, and it doesn't intrude on Apple's IP. Making XP look just like OS X (down to an Apple menu in the menu bar!) certainly does.
Or the Mac users. Remember MacWrite? It changed the world.
Well, that is sort of funky. Can't blame them for trying, though, can you? =)
I agree, but even the first page produced by the link doesn't quite explain it.
For the lazy: a Flash Advance Linker seems to be a device that allows you to copy GameBoy ROMs through your parallel port. You can then put the ROMs back on memory cards and use them in your personal entertainment device.
Aah...back in the good old days I had two DECstations running my life. (The good old days are '98, '99, btw.) At CMU there are at least ten or fifteen DECstations thrown out every week. I picked up a nice 5000/125 and set it up as an X display, webserver, and mail system. It was pretty groovy. I could xhost Netscape from the campus UNIX system, and use the machine to its fullest extent.
It had a really, really loud set of RZ56 (?) full-height hard drives that made tons of noise. Fortunately, the interface parts (monitor, keyboard, mouse) are connected to a 12 foot tether, so I could put the CPU under my bed and have all of the interface portions on my desk. And it heated the room. Good machine =)
First of all, I didn't say that Mac OS X was a windowing environment. I said it was lots of libraries that provided, among other things, a windowing environment. It just isn't an OS. It's a lot of libraries.
Darwin is the underlying OS. That is correct. (The drivers are irrelevant.) If you're actually interested in seeing how it works, go to this page at Apple.
The attentive viewer will notice that The Simpsons did get a little stale as the Bart-centeredness progressed. They had to make the show about Homer for it to really take off. There are only so many Bartman and "eat my shorts" jokes you can make without the show getting stale. So you are correct =)
Get over it. They do have to make money. And there has been no encroachment on the worthwhileness of the service. The links are in the ad section. The AD section!
In fact, I even find this useful. If I'm looking for a product or service, I have been known to click on a sponsored link in the past. I've even bought things from them.
It really isn't that much more complicated. Mac OS X is the name of a bundle of libraries other features. It's rather like Linux, which is a kernel and a number of GNU libraries/tools.
Darwin is the name of one component of the OS (the BSD core.)
It's no more an OS on top of an OS than Linux + X + KDE is an OS on top of an OS. There are layers of components that provide differing services. Aqua/Quartz is no more an independent OS (the top layer) than X is an OS.
(I made a slight mistake -- the graphics libraries are Quartz, not Aqua. Aqua is the lickable interface.)
(I posted the following response to the post mentioned by the editors. It's still wrong -- there is no "compatibility layer."
-------------------
Do you know what that means? "Based on NeXT" doesn't mean anything. NeXT was a company.
Mac OS X is based on OpenStep 4.2, which, itself, was based on NEXTSTEP 3.3. NEXTSTEP is a BSD operating system running on a modified version of the Mach microkernel. OpenStep is a API specification and a set of libraries that conforms to that API. OpenStep 4.2 (the operating system) is an implementation of those libraries on top of NEXTSTEP.
When Apple bought NeXT, they planned to build on top of OpenStep. They first produced Rhapsody for PPC and Rhapsody for Intel. They were the same OS running on two hardware platforms. On top of Rhapsody, Apple put the Blue Box, which was a Macintosh compatibility environment. At no time was there any need for a "BSD compatibility layer." It was all software running on top of BSD. Apple then killed Rhapsody for Intel (and the Yellow Box, but that's tangential.)
What was left was released as Mac OS Server.
Mac OS X 10.0 and Mac OS Server 10.0 (and further versions) are also BSD operating systems. They have the Cocoa (OpenStep) and Carbon libraries available, and the imaging system is called Aqua (replacement for Display PostScript.) At no point in any of this is there a need for any UNIX compatibility layer, as it is all real UNIX. The only compatibility environment necessary is for Mac OS 9 (Classic.) Only certain older applications (Carbon) can run natively on OS X, so for running non-Carbon apps, Mac OS 9 is run in a compatibility environment (similar, but not the same as VMWare.)
I hope that clarifies things.
Clearly they're pursuing a radically different business plan. It's the same old DR-DOS business plan. Buy a product screwed by MS and use it as grounds to sue.
If I could afford to buy GO, I'd do the same thing. Maybe IBM wants to sell OS/2 on the cheap (then they wouldn't have to support it, either.)
Seems legit to me.
Actually, a floppy-based distro that can be used for really secure work is a great idea. I can keep a trusted environemnt with me at all times, and know what's going on (I never trust another person's computer when sitting down at it. I know how my machine is set up which gives me no cause to trust others!)
Sorry, my mistake. You're correct -- Quartz is the implementation of Display PDF and all sorts of cool other features.
Plus, they're typically butt-ugly.
Some MS person came up with an OS X theme for XP not long ago. It was absolutely ghastly, and all of the comments indicated that the Windows-using masses were masturbating furiously, they liked it so much.
It sure made me feel secure in my choice of OS =)
Okay, i've always wondered -- what is up with so many programmers' color sensibilities? Mauve, orange, pink, magenta, and teal should not be used in large quantities. Particularly not _together_! Of course, little beats old DOS and UNIX colors. (Particularly the DOS tendency to have the F12-to-rotate-colors feature.)
There are so many medical billing programs out there that make my eyes hurt, I don't want to think about it.