Well, from a designers POV giving the user choice is more often than not either an admission of failure (if you are a good designer) or an abdication of responsibility (if you are a bad one).
I know a lot of people here don't want to hear this, but nevertheless it's the truth - only total geeks want software with all the frobs on the outside.
I did in fact write regular reviews and editorials about Linux distros for a local glossy IT mag up until a few years ago, and several of my close friends are running various Linux distros. No, I did not try crap Linux distros (RH and SuSE).
Further, your comment about how 10.0 wasn't very nice kinda nails it. In the years since then OS-X has improved significantly by any metric I can think of. While the same is true of Linux distros in general, it's quite a bit less true;)
First of all: Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I'm finishing my CS ph.d. this year, and have been in the IT business for more than 20 years as a paid professionel. I run a successful software business.
Once I ran Linux rather aggressively, back some 10-15 years ago, in dual-boot configuration on my PC. Eventually the major and minor problems with Linux pushed me enough and the fact that Windows had improved "sufficiently" in terms of utilities and stability pulled me enough that I didn't boot into Linux anymore.
Then, one day, after at least five years wandering the wastelands of Windows, I realized that Apple had quitely, without any fuzz, finaly maed the dream of useable desktop-UNIX come true. I recently got a dual G5, a PS2 for games, and am phasing out my PCs for everyting except my bread-and-butter development business. Good riddance!
Sorry, Linux/BSD/Open Source guys - someone built a better mousetrap, one good enough that I wanted to pay several thousands of dollars to get it. "Selling out" on the freedom is balanced by not wasting my fucking time messing around inside the fucking hardware or the fucking configuration. I'm all grown up now, and while I know how to fix stuff, I don't get off doing it all the fucking time to save a few bucks or to show off my 133t skilllzzz anymore.
Would they care if someone buys (or pirates) OS-X for his homebrew or his personal Dell? Would such a person buy a Mac anyway? No, but if he starts using OS-X he might influence his employer in the direction of the Mac. Businesses of a certain size do not pirate software because of the money - only because of incompetence or the dificulty of counting the users.
If (and that's a BIG if!) the Switch is on, it will likely be due to the laptop controvercy. The Apple laptops are still stuck on the underpowered G4 chip, and IBM has so far not delivered on a next gen (but still low power consumption) CPU. The laptop segment is the fastest growing one right now, so Apple must look to the future.
Frankly I suspect that the easier and hence more likely CPU related news is dual-core G5s for the Power Mac line, and possibly (probably?) some major refresh of the laptop CPUs (dual-core G4? new, low power G5-like chip from IBM in the laptops in 1/2 - 1 year?).
Your Linux on G5 performance figures are here . It does appear that the performance (or rather, lack of wrt. forking and threads) is due to tue architecture of Darwin/OS-X.
I will point out that this is hardly relevant for a desktop OS, and that I am more than happy with my dual G5/1.8GHz. Getting things done faster and neater due to elegant interaction design is much more important to me than being able to spawn threads quickly;)
This causes the problem known in eye-tracking systems as "The Midas Touch". Suddenly you risk activating anything you look at, or in this case, anything you park the mouse on. This would drive just about anyone crazy in no time flat.
Maybe they already know, hence the fact that you can configure OS-X to use a dozen of them...
The point is that you don't put unneccesary buttons on a computer for non-techies, and that IMNSHO (and Apple's) a computer designed and sold after 2000 shouldn't be designed for techies. That's just silly. Or mean!
Despite working at a university and thus having a sizeable expense account for toys^H^H^H^Htools, I held off getting a desktop replacement type laptop until Centrino-based machines came out. Bad experinces with a PIII based Thinkpad, and watching my office mates, who had to put their P4 laptops on stands to avoid scortching the tables and/or having the machine shut down due to overheating, made me proceed with some caution.
I like the Centrino-based Dell... but now I wish I had Swithed earlier. Mmmm... Powerbook-goodness!!!
I fear you will have to wait for a very long time. Every source out there pretty much agrees that the thermal characteristics of the G5 are incompatible with use in a laptop.
Tell us your story
"Well, I found the need for a dual CPU big-endian computer with 64 bit addressing on which to test patches for the Linux kernel, so I got this Power Mac G5, wiped OS-X..."
It has worked very well for me. There is a renewed interest in devices that work well both technically and UI-wise, but very few people are trained in both diciplines. You will be/in/ the interface... a good place to be, if you want to have real influence on the final product.
Oh, and it's also a good starting point for striking out on your own as an innovator.
Case in point: Count the number of operations needed in order to do a simple bulited slide with a heading long enough to need wrapping or re-scaling in OOo Presenter. Now do the same in PowerPoint or Keynote 2. Now look at the output. Finally, have your grandmother or someone else with casual or no experience with slideshow programs do it.
I am a computer scientist, currently working on my ph.d. I know my way around computers, from the UI to the kernel. And as a casual user of slide programs, I know which of the above I prefer. It's not OOo.
While the basic tech of the programs may be the same, and while it's technically possible to creae similar-looking output (at least to the untrained eye) in all programs, the UI in OOo is sorely lacking. This goes for many Open Source programs, unfortunately. Programmers seem to have reached a consensus that "UI enginering is not/real/ enginering".
I guess the cause of this is the many years of suffiring from idiot PHB's, whi just won't understand that you can't make a good product if the fundamental technology is flawed (Windows... ), gut guess what: You also can't make a good product from good technology with a bad UI.
For the other guys (Brazil, France, Italy, India...) the reason was that they made anything from 2-10 times the money they would make at home, and learned tons while doing so. They stockpiled the money at home, and used it as a nest egg or as capital to found their own companies at home. The only guy who staid -- for a while -- was French. He had the lowest ratio of US pay to native pay (except for me -- see below), and is leaving now as the US corp has slashed all research, and his promised job as manager has basically turned into managing the single remaining person in the lab, who's job it will be to eventually turn off the lights.
As for me, the ration of US pay to Danish pay was just about 1, but in Denmark I work 40 hours rather than 80, have 6 weeks (not days - weeks!) of vacation, have national health benefits, live in a place that is VERY affordable compared to New Jersey, my friends and family and SO and University is here, PLUS I have had some success in starting my own business here, which will open it's US branch this week.
I guess the point is that the US is far less attractive to foreign ph.d.'s than you guys think. The work environment is TERRIBLE! The benefits are lousy or non-existent. The hours are long. Management stinks. A lot of the current "social IT" innovations come from other places (Europe, Japan, Korea...), and hence those places offer a better climate for innovation in such areas.
You couldn't pay me enough to make me work in the US again - ever. Sorry! I love the country and it's lovely, friendly people, but the work environment is simply not attractive.
A stray thought. Perhaps it would be possible to make a filtering proxy that converts the aforementioned "soup" to HTML edible to FireFox or other more standard-compatible browsers. This would allow FF developers to keep adhering to standards (and ONLY standards), while giving users the choice of being able to read the malformed pages as the writer of them intended...
So, has the Mini led to an uptake in the sales of Apple hardware, as one might expect? Any data on this, anyone?
Personally I'd really like to know if there has been a surge in the sales of the/other/ Macs... I decided to skip the gateway drug^H^H^H^HMac and go straight for the bigger iron, and I bet I'm not alone.
Well, the Mini is neato, but the dual G5 Power Mac is one swee-eeet workstation!
That's more or less what happened to me: I went to the on-line store for a look at the Mini, and ended up noticing that if I was goo get a system for serious development, I might as well enter the ADC program and get one of the big machines with a 20% discount. Hence, a dual 1.8GHz G5 on the table next to the now-secondary Windows-PC.
OK, I don't get why so few seem to do what I did: Get games machines for the games, and a real computer for work.
Yes, I now own a Mac, and am in the process of porting my software to it. I kept the PC for emergencies, and for the odd game, and also got a PS-2 to keep the kid's Gamecube company.
So many people out there have two (or more) cars, but for some reason a lot of people panic, if you sugest that they may want to buy different computers for different needs. It's like they have been infected with some horrible meme that tells them that they ABSOLUTELY POSITIVLY MUST MUST MUST do all their computer-related activities on one, single machine...
Don't have an old PC for games? Well, bloody go and buy one for that purpose! They are cheap, and widely available!
When Apple decided to go with NeXT over Be, Be couldn't even print. Be, while blazingly fast, was blazing fast for a reason. Nothing was running on it. Apple chose to go with the OS that was stable, proven, and gorgeous. Apple also got NeXT's unbelievably fast development environment, the leading application server software WebObjects, and the Mac's father and Apple's savior, Steve Jobs. (Personal note: I still remember leaving work late for Christmas vacation ecstatic after reading that Steve Jobs was back at Apple.)
Now, nothing I have read about it so far contradicts the facts mentioned here. In fact, at least one member of the team at Apple that evaluated the options has posted here at/. saying pretty much the same thing. Well, at least someone who CLAIMED that he was...
Yes, I know it doesn't make for quite as good a story... but personally, as a recent switcher and software developer, I'm ecstatic that Apple went with the NeXT (and hence, the Next Step) environment. The X-Code environment absolutely ROCKS!
It's pretty well documented today that Apple chose NeXT as the basis for the future of MacOS rather than BeOS for very sound engineering reasons. NeXT was simply a much more mature and complete system.
From Microsoft's perspective, the big change would be that instead of Microsoft driving the industry, IBM (as Microsoft's largest OEM, and development partner in OS/2) would be the driving force (at least as far as consumers were concerned). UI decisions would be made by IBM's engineers, not Microsoft's.
In my mind, the biggest effect of such a change would be on Linux. Deprived of the sponsorship of a major enterprise vendor (the other enterprise players followed IBMs lead and went with OS/2), Linux remained as primarily an 'interesting' alternative to Solaris, AIX, and the other *nix based operating systems sold by hardware vendors. Instead, AIX and Solaris became the major players in the *nix OS space, and flourished as an alternative.
...he never mentions the users, who - in a 16-bit-windows-free world - would have avoided litterally millions of man-hours wasted on tens of millions of BSODs.
Slashdot Mirror
I know a lot of people here don't want to hear this, but nevertheless it's the truth - only total geeks want software with all the frobs on the outside.
You go ahead and believe what you want - I'll be happy and productive somewhere else :D
Further, your comment about how 10.0 wasn't very nice kinda nails it. In the years since then OS-X has improved significantly by any metric I can think of. While the same is true of Linux distros in general, it's quite a bit less true ;)
Once I ran Linux rather aggressively, back some 10-15 years ago, in dual-boot configuration on my PC. Eventually the major and minor problems with Linux pushed me enough and the fact that Windows had improved "sufficiently" in terms of utilities and stability pulled me enough that I didn't boot into Linux anymore.
Then, one day, after at least five years wandering the wastelands of Windows, I realized that Apple had quitely, without any fuzz, finaly maed the dream of useable desktop-UNIX come true. I recently got a dual G5, a PS2 for games, and am phasing out my PCs for everyting except my bread-and-butter development business. Good riddance!
Sorry, Linux/BSD/Open Source guys - someone built a better mousetrap, one good enough that I wanted to pay several thousands of dollars to get it. "Selling out" on the freedom is balanced by not wasting my fucking time messing around inside the fucking hardware or the fucking configuration. I'm all grown up now, and while I know how to fix stuff, I don't get off doing it all the fucking time to save a few bucks or to show off my 133t skilllzzz anymore.
Would they care if someone buys (or pirates) OS-X for his homebrew or his personal Dell? Would such a person buy a Mac anyway? No, but if he starts using OS-X he might influence his employer in the direction of the Mac. Businesses of a certain size do not pirate software because of the money - only because of incompetence or the dificulty of counting the users.
Frankly I suspect that the easier and hence more likely CPU related news is dual-core G5s for the Power Mac line, and possibly (probably?) some major refresh of the laptop CPUs (dual-core G4? new, low power G5-like chip from IBM in the laptops in 1/2 - 1 year?).
I will point out that this is hardly relevant for a desktop OS, and that I am more than happy with my dual G5/1.8GHz. Getting things done faster and neater due to elegant interaction design is much more important to me than being able to spawn threads quickly ;)
Now I've started porting my commercail applications to OS-X.
I guess the ole' Reality Distortion Field really DOES work, eh? :D
This causes the problem known in eye-tracking systems as "The Midas Touch". Suddenly you risk activating anything you look at, or in this case, anything you park the mouse on. This would drive just about anyone crazy in no time flat.
The point is that you don't put unneccesary buttons on a computer for non-techies, and that IMNSHO (and Apple's) a computer designed and sold after 2000 shouldn't be designed for techies. That's just silly. Or mean!
Despite working at a university and thus having a sizeable expense account for toys^H^H^H^Htools, I held off getting a desktop replacement type laptop until Centrino-based machines came out. Bad experinces with a PIII based Thinkpad, and watching my office mates, who had to put their P4 laptops on stands to avoid scortching the tables and/or having the machine shut down due to overheating, made me proceed with some caution.
I like the Centrino-based Dell... but now I wish I had Swithed earlier. Mmmm... Powerbook-goodness!!!
I fear you will have to wait for a very long time. Every source out there pretty much agrees that the thermal characteristics of the G5 are incompatible with use in a laptop.
Tell us your story
"Well, I found the need for a dual CPU big-endian computer with 64 bit addressing on which to test patches for the Linux kernel, so I got this Power Mac G5, wiped OS-X..."
Oh, and it's also a good starting point for striking out on your own as an innovator.
That's not to say that I haven't gotten horrible support from commercial developers. It's just not a given.
Case in point: Count the number of operations needed in order to do a simple bulited slide with a heading long enough to need wrapping or re-scaling in OOo Presenter. Now do the same in PowerPoint or Keynote 2. Now look at the output. Finally, have your grandmother or someone else with casual or no experience with slideshow programs do it.
I am a computer scientist, currently working on my ph.d. I know my way around computers, from the UI to the kernel. And as a casual user of slide programs, I know which of the above I prefer. It's not OOo.
While the basic tech of the programs may be the same, and while it's technically possible to creae similar-looking output (at least to the untrained eye) in all programs, the UI in OOo is sorely lacking. This goes for many Open Source programs, unfortunately. Programmers seem to have reached a consensus that "UI enginering is not /real/ enginering".
I guess the cause of this is the many years of suffiring from idiot PHB's, whi just won't understand that you can't make a good product if the fundamental technology is flawed (Windows... ), gut guess what: You also can't make a good product from good technology with a bad UI.
OK, rant over, feeling better...
For the other guys (Brazil, France, Italy, India...) the reason was that they made anything from 2-10 times the money they would make at home, and learned tons while doing so. They stockpiled the money at home, and used it as a nest egg or as capital to found their own companies at home. The only guy who staid -- for a while -- was French. He had the lowest ratio of US pay to native pay (except for me -- see below), and is leaving now as the US corp has slashed all research, and his promised job as manager has basically turned into managing the single remaining person in the lab, who's job it will be to eventually turn off the lights.
As for me, the ration of US pay to Danish pay was just about 1, but in Denmark I work 40 hours rather than 80, have 6 weeks (not days - weeks!) of vacation, have national health benefits, live in a place that is VERY affordable compared to New Jersey, my friends and family and SO and University is here, PLUS I have had some success in starting my own business here, which will open it's US branch this week.
I guess the point is that the US is far less attractive to foreign ph.d.'s than you guys think. The work environment is TERRIBLE! The benefits are lousy or non-existent. The hours are long. Management stinks. A lot of the current "social IT" innovations come from other places (Europe, Japan, Korea...), and hence those places offer a better climate for innovation in such areas.
You couldn't pay me enough to make me work in the US again - ever. Sorry! I love the country and it's lovely, friendly people, but the work environment is simply not attractive.
A stray thought. Perhaps it would be possible to make a filtering proxy that converts the aforementioned "soup" to HTML edible to FireFox or other more standard-compatible browsers. This would allow FF developers to keep adhering to standards (and ONLY standards), while giving users the choice of being able to read the malformed pages as the writer of them intended...
Personally I'd really like to know if there has been a surge in the sales of the /other/ Macs... I decided to skip the gateway drug^H^H^H^HMac and go straight for the bigger iron, and I bet I'm not alone.
That's more or less what happened to me: I went to the on-line store for a look at the Mini, and ended up noticing that if I was goo get a system for serious development, I might as well enter the ADC program and get one of the big machines with a 20% discount. Hence, a dual 1.8GHz G5 on the table next to the now-secondary Windows-PC.
Get games machines for the games, and a real computer for work.
Yes, I now own a Mac, and am in the process of porting my software to it. I kept the PC for emergencies, and for the odd game, and also got a PS-2 to keep the kid's Gamecube company.
So many people out there have two (or more) cars, but for some reason a lot of people panic, if you sugest that they may want to buy different computers for different needs. It's like they have been infected with some horrible meme that tells them that they ABSOLUTELY POSITIVLY MUST MUST MUST do all their computer-related activities on one, single machine...
Don't have an old PC for games? Well, bloody go and buy one for that purpose! They are cheap, and widely available!
Now, nothing I have read about it so far contradicts the facts mentioned here. In fact, at least one member of the team at Apple that evaluated the options has posted here at /. saying pretty much the same thing. Well, at least someone who CLAIMED that he was ...
Yes, I know it doesn't make for quite as good a story... but personally, as a recent switcher and software developer, I'm ecstatic that Apple went with the NeXT (and hence, the Next Step) environment. The X-Code environment absolutely ROCKS!
A supporting story with links to more sources
From Microsoft's perspective, the big change would be that instead of Microsoft driving the industry, IBM (as Microsoft's largest OEM, and development partner in OS/2) would be the driving force (at least as far as consumers were concerned). UI decisions would be made by IBM's engineers, not Microsoft's.
In my mind, the biggest effect of such a change would be on Linux. Deprived of the sponsorship of a major enterprise vendor (the other enterprise players followed IBMs lead and went with OS/2), Linux remained as primarily an 'interesting' alternative to Solaris, AIX, and the other *nix based operating systems sold by hardware vendors. Instead, AIX and Solaris became the major players in the *nix OS space, and flourished as an alternative.
Well, either he's trolling or he's just young.
...obviously both crimes :D