I think that would take away a major percieved advantage Macs have.
The percieved advantages of Macs are only percieved to be such by Mac users, which are not growing faster than the rest of the computing population.
I'm not agreeing that WinOSX is the right strategy, but ultimately Apple's in a marketshare box, and if they want to change that, it will probably involve Windows somehow.
If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started
Yes, not offiically, but it was correctly reported by ZDNet etc using "IBM Sources". IBM basically blew their load on the failed Mach/Workplace idea. "Warp" was a last minute swerve, where IBM dumped a DOA OS onto the consumer market with a big ad campaign for some quick revnue. At that point, they never really inteded to fight it out. (Sorry Teamers, it's true).
Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain... Been there...
The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available.
I think if we were to generalize the Mac Community's attitude it would be "Why don't all those idiots wake up and buy a Mac tomorrow!!!"
But Apple is a lot wiser than their fans. They seem to understand how purely fundemental the Windows-lockin is, and how their 2% marketshare is not simply a cost/hardware problem. Somewhere I read that there's over 1 Million commercial Windows programs (most vertical market). How many have been ported to the Mac? 12? How many will EVER be ported to the Mac?
That Apple simply can't compete on merits alone is the main reason they keep jamming up margins (now to 30%!) to extact their pound-of-flesh from the Different-Thinking Mac loyalists.
So the trick for Apple is to increase sales while still maintaining record profitability. I think Cringley is full of it here, but I'm also sure that Apple will "embrace" Windows somehow, in order to change the rules and break Macs out of their segement. (Probably with Bootcamp and Vista Preinstalled on Macs.)
I think it's true. Look at OS/2 v2/3 -- The icons were so fugly that even I could make better ones in MSPaint, and the fonts were big chunky and blocky.
Also, OS/2 came with a "power user" desktop that relied heavily on nested folders, drag-n-drop, right-drag-n-drop, "templates", and property windows. This was in an era when most PC users hadn't even touched a mouse. Confusing+Ugly=Problem.
Most of this was fixed with OS/2 v4 that copied the "Start Menu" idea and had some graphical treatment. But that came out in 1996 (8 years after the original OS/2 GUI), and was too-little, too-late.
Technically, it is shipped with the OS, but it's "off" because it doesn't work. Apple promised a feature, and it's not working, and not enabled, and not documented. Vapor!
You'd never see another game port, and any app that wasn't really core-market kind of app for Apple would likely stop porting.
One could argue that Apple sees only a very small percentage of game and "non-core" ports anyway, so they wouldn't be losing very much.
(There's a wishful-thinking at work in the Mac community that eventually major software houses will come around, but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen.)
I always disliked the impression that OS/2 failed because of WinAPI support. To the extent OS/2 succeeded, it was because it was sold as a "Better Windows Than Windows". And OS/2 was reasonably successful with a marketshare about the size of Apple's.
There's many more reasons one can find for OS/2 ultimate destruction. It wasn't a very technically sound design -- IBM spent zillons on a expensive Mach-based rewrite that failed. It was largely mismarketed by IBM first targetting "enterprise" customers, and then oddly "consumers". And the touted features like the object-desktop were ugly and poorly executed.
You're wasting your breath here. If you think classic Unix security is misunderstood, you should tell all the Unix developers working on SELinux, Trusted Solaris, et al. I think you'll find that they get it just fine.
And IE & Outlook are not the reasons that Windows users don't implement user security. It tends to be 3rd party programs with the problem, largely games that implement copy-protection.
I will agree that "MSDOS Attitudes" are the reason MS has to implement a more complex and "un-Unix-like" system, but there's hopefully there's some upside to it. "User-based" security was designed for multi-user systems and are really a kludge on personal computers -- even if you can get it to work, it's not what the system was designed for.
Absolutely, SELinux is here and it's getting implemented. I'm sure there will be a "Low-Rights Firefox" sooner or later (although there is less of a need right now).
No shit. And, in case you weren't aware, Windows NT has had users/groups "since inception" as well. However, "MAC" or "role-based" security functions uses different security primatives. This is a big area of Linux development as well, so feel free to look it up and educate yourself before lecturing people on Unix 101.
Despite what Thurrot said, Vista's graphic subsystem is more advanced than OS X's. This has been discussed endlessly around the web, and even he has made this point before, so he's obviously trolling here.
Now perhaps with the next version of OS X, there will be feature parity, but as of yet nothing's been announced except "Quartz Extreme 2D" which turned out to be vaporware.
So, no, Linux/Unix has not been doing this since inception. There's been military versions of Unix that have done it for a long time, but it's hasn't been a generally available feature (and still isn't on the desktop even for SELinux distros).
IIRC, the comments were in some random story about Oracle, so were all technically "offtopic" and therefore the mods were "abuse".
The issue is that this sort of thing has never been enforced at all here -- you can walk into an Oracle story and start a flamewar about Communism, Macs, SCO, or any other hot-button issue you can walk away with a Score 5 and nobody will care.
Ray Ozzie is a genius. Lotus Notes gets a lot of (deserved) flak for the UI, but technologically, this thing was basically the World Wide Web invented 10 years early.
I never denied that Windows does sometimes have these issues. But your knee-jerk "Windows is just as bad" response is just completely passe generic zealot whining -- especially in this case where the accusation is blatently silly.
Sure it's a troll, and it's a good troll because the guy probably knew more about Linux than the l33t d00ds he was tormenting. I'm sure he knew exactly what was needed to support his printer, and exactly why Linux didn't support his floppy disk.
Actually, I'm talking about pretty much everything other than hardware detection -- firewalls, deamons, etc.
In fact, hardware detection is one of the few things I've never had a problem with in Linux -- it's "just worked" for me, even back in the stone ages (except for ancient versions of Debian that weren't worth the trouble.)
You have to keep in mind that there was no "Overview of Linux filesystems" webpages in those days because Linux only had one production fileystem!. The only place you possibly find this info was perhaps on a BSD mailing list with folks flaming Linux, or the "Unix Haters Club".
ext2 was designed to be very light with very few reliability features. Of course all the propaganda was how that it was "better" than "bloated" systems like NTFS because it could write 20% faster. There was no information about the downsides because deliberate propaganda campaigns to cover-up all Linux failings. There was no reasonable alternatives, and Linux Zealots would rather kill themselves than tell anyone that ext2 "fragile".
I think you'll find the history of Linux filesystems parallels a lot of Linux features. DENY DENY DENY there's a problem... until someone fixes it.
Well, it takes a certain maturity and confidence level to say "this sucks", which is why "Linux Snobs" will to great extent to deny some sucky thing about Linux and/or blame it on the user.
In general the Windows groups have a better feel because: (A) Nobody under the age of 30 has even heard of Usenet (almost:)
(B) People with jobs have better things to do than hang out in help channels just so they can say "RTFM" and "Shutup n00b!". As Linux has become more professionally accepted, the asshats have gotten out of their basements.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that would take away a major percieved advantage Macs have.
The percieved advantages of Macs are only percieved to be such by Mac users, which are not growing faster than the rest of the computing population.
I'm not agreeing that WinOSX is the right strategy, but ultimately Apple's in a marketshare box, and if they want to change that, it will probably involve Windows somehow.
If I remember correctly, the decision had been made to drop support for OS/2 before the advertising campaign for os2/warp even started
Yes, not offiically, but it was correctly reported by ZDNet etc using "IBM Sources". IBM basically blew their load on the failed Mach/Workplace idea. "Warp" was a last minute swerve, where IBM dumped a DOA OS onto the consumer market with a big ad campaign for some quick revnue. At that point, they never really inteded to fight it out. (Sorry Teamers, it's true).
Also, having to call 10-15 different divisions to get technical information was always a pain...
Been there...
The "Mac community" you mention -- at least the hardcore types you'll find online -- probably want to attack the issue from both sides by increasing both the number of users and the number of programs available.
I think if we were to generalize the Mac Community's attitude it would be "Why don't all those idiots wake up and buy a Mac tomorrow!!!"
But Apple is a lot wiser than their fans. They seem to understand how purely fundemental the Windows-lockin is, and how their 2% marketshare is not simply a cost/hardware problem. Somewhere I read that there's over 1 Million commercial Windows programs (most vertical market). How many have been ported to the Mac? 12? How many will EVER be ported to the Mac?
That Apple simply can't compete on merits alone is the main reason they keep jamming up margins (now to 30%!) to extact their pound-of-flesh from the Different-Thinking Mac loyalists.
So the trick for Apple is to increase sales while still maintaining record profitability. I think Cringley is full of it here, but I'm also sure that Apple will "embrace" Windows somehow, in order to change the rules and break Macs out of their segement. (Probably with Bootcamp and Vista Preinstalled on Macs.)
I think it's true. Look at OS/2 v2/3 -- The icons were so fugly that even I could make better ones in MSPaint, and the fonts were big chunky and blocky.
Also, OS/2 came with a "power user" desktop that relied heavily on nested folders, drag-n-drop, right-drag-n-drop, "templates", and property windows. This was in an era when most PC users hadn't even touched a mouse. Confusing+Ugly=Problem.
Most of this was fixed with OS/2 v4 that copied the "Start Menu" idea and had some graphical treatment. But that came out in 1996 (8 years after the original OS/2 GUI), and was too-little, too-late.
Technically, it is shipped with the OS, but it's "off" because it doesn't work. Apple promised a feature, and it's not working, and not enabled, and not documented. Vapor!
You'd never see another game port, and any app that wasn't really core-market kind of app for Apple would likely stop porting.
One could argue that Apple sees only a very small percentage of game and "non-core" ports anyway, so they wouldn't be losing very much.
(There's a wishful-thinking at work in the Mac community that eventually major software houses will come around, but the reality is that most desktop apps are just too tied to Windows for that to happen.)
I always disliked the impression that OS/2 failed because of WinAPI support. To the extent OS/2 succeeded, it was because it was sold as a "Better Windows Than Windows". And OS/2 was reasonably successful with a marketshare about the size of Apple's.
There's many more reasons one can find for OS/2 ultimate destruction. It wasn't a very technically sound design -- IBM spent zillons on a expensive Mach-based rewrite that failed. It was largely mismarketed by IBM first targetting "enterprise" customers, and then oddly "consumers". And the touted features like the object-desktop were ugly and poorly executed.
You're wasting your breath here. If you think classic Unix security is misunderstood, you should tell all the Unix developers working on SELinux, Trusted Solaris, et al. I think you'll find that they get it just fine.
And IE & Outlook are not the reasons that Windows users don't implement user security. It tends to be 3rd party programs with the problem, largely games that implement copy-protection.
I will agree that "MSDOS Attitudes" are the reason MS has to implement a more complex and "un-Unix-like" system, but there's hopefully there's some upside to it. "User-based" security was designed for multi-user systems and are really a kludge on personal computers -- even if you can get it to work, it's not what the system was designed for.
Absolutely, SELinux is here and it's getting implemented. I'm sure there will be a "Low-Rights Firefox" sooner or later (although there is less of a need right now).
Here's a classic flamewar on the topic:i nfs_detail_3.html?page=1 (check the comments on pg2)
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/03/08/w
It never shipped, therefore it is vapor.
a rtz-2d-extreme-for-tiger-104.html
http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2005/04/no-qu
No shit. And, in case you weren't aware, Windows NT has had users/groups "since inception" as well. However, "MAC" or "role-based" security functions uses different security primatives. This is a big area of Linux development as well, so feel free to look it up and educate yourself before lecturing people on Unix 101.
The CD Burning probably requires a lot of hardware testing, not to mention iPod support.
Hypercard was never network aware, and Notes is older anyway.
No, the program's rights are a subset of your user's rights.
Despite what Thurrot said, Vista's graphic subsystem is more advanced than OS X's. This has been discussed endlessly around the web, and even he has made this point before, so he's obviously trolling here.
Now perhaps with the next version of OS X, there will be feature parity, but as of yet nothing's been announced except "Quartz Extreme 2D" which turned out to be vaporware.
This is "role-based" security, not "user-based"
So, no, Linux/Unix has not been doing this since inception. There's been military versions of Unix that have done it for a long time, but it's hasn't been a generally available feature (and still isn't on the desktop even for SELinux distros).
IIRC, the comments were in some random story about Oracle, so were all technically "offtopic" and therefore the mods were "abuse".
The issue is that this sort of thing has never been enforced at all here -- you can walk into an Oracle story and start a flamewar about Communism, Macs, SCO, or any other hot-button issue you can walk away with a Score 5 and nobody will care.
Ray Ozzie is a genius. Lotus Notes gets a lot of (deserved) flak for the UI, but technologically, this thing was basically the World Wide Web invented 10 years early.
I never denied that Windows does sometimes have these issues. But your knee-jerk "Windows is just as bad" response is just completely passe generic zealot whining -- especially in this case where the accusation is blatently silly.
It's a simple fact that Linux is usually a lousy MS Windows replacement, yet a lot of people have a hard time understanding that.
Sure it's a troll, and it's a good troll because the guy probably knew more about Linux than the l33t d00ds he was tormenting. I'm sure he knew exactly what was needed to support his printer, and exactly why Linux didn't support his floppy disk.
Actually, I'm talking about pretty much everything other than hardware detection -- firewalls, deamons, etc.
In fact, hardware detection is one of the few things I've never had a problem with in Linux -- it's "just worked" for me, even back in the stone ages (except for ancient versions of Debian that weren't worth the trouble.)
Linux Fault Threshold Reached
But, no, in general Windows does not have these problems the same extent as Linux (where every single distribution is configured differently).
You have to keep in mind that there was no "Overview of Linux filesystems" webpages in those days because Linux only had one production fileystem!. The only place you possibly find this info was perhaps on a BSD mailing list with folks flaming Linux, or the "Unix Haters Club".
... until someone fixes it.
ext2 was designed to be very light with very few reliability features. Of course all the propaganda was how that it was "better" than "bloated" systems like NTFS because it could write 20% faster. There was no information about the downsides because deliberate propaganda campaigns to cover-up all Linux failings. There was no reasonable alternatives, and Linux Zealots would rather kill themselves than tell anyone that ext2 "fragile".
I think you'll find the history of Linux filesystems parallels a lot of Linux features. DENY DENY DENY there's a problem
Well, it takes a certain maturity and confidence level to say "this sucks", which is why "Linux Snobs" will to great extent to deny some sucky thing about Linux and/or blame it on the user.
:)
In general the Windows groups have a better feel because:
(A) Nobody under the age of 30 has even heard of Usenet (almost
(B) People with jobs have better things to do than hang out in help channels just so they can say "RTFM" and "Shutup n00b!". As Linux has become more professionally accepted, the asshats have gotten out of their basements.