>>You mean like GNUstep? Cocoa is Yellowbox renamed in OPENSTEP renamed is being cloned by GNUstep.
Exactly. So the Cocoa part can be considered mostly finished. The Quartz (note: Linux KDE/Gnome advocates and aqua haters in general, Quartz != Aqua) display engine will be trickier but a PDF based display engine would be a great boon to Linux/BSD users. There has been much discussion in the Linux community recently about the age of the X11/Motif/XWindows paradigm. For immediate compatability, X11 could draw through Quartz like the Xservers for MacOSX do.
As I write this I'm getting more excitied about the possibilty of this project. I think a PDF display engine (compatible with Quartz) would be an absolutely fantastic project for the open source community to undertake. Difficult, but rewarding. And certainly not impossible.
You make a good point about the amount of choice available as far as tools are concerned. But if some tools are NEEDED by SOME people this really doesn't affect the Mac community at large. A long time ago I compiled NEdit for MacOSX server with the maX X windows env installed. and it was very handy to have that tool around. Nobody else cared.
However your insight that anything else is likely to be horrible might be a little unfounded, here's why:
The tenon X port will run rootless and the X widgets will look like Aqua widgets. So you shouldn't be able to distinguish (obviously within limits) between X apps and "real" mac OS X apps. That should make running X apps a little more aesthetically pleasing for MacPUs (that's Mac Power Users)
The problems you address here are "why can't mac apps be ported to (Li/U)n(u/i)x?" And you are right, the gui is the big problem.
However, the question posed is quite different. How easy is it to port existing Unix apps to MacOSX? The answer is: easy because of the existing BSD API and the x11/Motif/Less-tif libs that have already been ported to the platform in both Open-source and commercial environs.
However I think the question pose is an interesting one. I think a great project for the open source community would be to port clones of Quartz and Cocoa to (Li/U)n(u/i)xes.
If one uses UFS (instead of HFS+) and installs one of the many available (or soon to be available) X11 servers, he/she will wind up with a full-blown kick your ass Unix. So the port won't be any more difficult than any other port.
There's always an idiosyncratic difference here or there betweeen (Li/U)n(i/u)xes, but thats it.
As to the question of why? Many many mac power users are quite versed with Unix and use a mac in addition to Unix because in their opinion all of the available Unix desktop environments suck.
My opinion is as follows: CDE sucks, Gnome sucks at the moment, KDE sucks at the moment, OpenWindows Desktop sucks slightly less that the rest. Hopefully Gnome and KDE will improve, but that is a different discussion.
The author has a very good point about this book. It has absolutely no context on its own. However, If read and used in conjunction with "Java Design" also by Peter Coad et al, the design patterns described begin to be meaningful.
"Java Design" has the added advantage of some very amusing diagrams.
I know that this used to be true. But I remember hearing at one point (please pardon my vague citation, I wish I could be more accurate) that once Mac OS X Server shipped, that the Apple Store and the Apple website were moved from WebObjects on Solaris to WebObjects on Mac OS X Server. (disclaimer: I might be out of my tree on this point, please forgive me if I am)
One note that I am quite sure about though is that Sun Uni-Processor Servers (Enterprise 10 & 250 etc) if similarly configured to G4's give very similar performance. Its actually pretty interesting to look at this similarity between Mac OS X and Solaris.
>>By deliberately lying to customers, apple is begging for destruction.
uh... I see. And what exactly are they lying about?
>>I wouldn't be suprised to see them drop off of the net for a few hours sometime this week.
Your powerful threats make me wish I were so masculine. But seriously, if you had a clue you would realize that Apple's partnership with Akamai make your threats quite a challenge to step up to. Are you up to it? Their servers (G4s) stood up to more abuse during Macworld Expo than Yahoo saw during the DOS attack a few months ago. If you succeed in your endevour please tell us all about it.
These sorts of questions relate to all platforms. Usually when we don't understand the rationale behind an activity, its usually because we don't have a good grasp of the activity. Which isn't really a bad thing at all, if we all understood everything, life would be boring and suck.
An Example:
I am a Solaris/Oracle developer. I write J2EE programs in this environment. The reason is that I, and my company, feel that these are good technologies to use for dealing with the Terabytes of phone, network configuration, and network performance data that we have to supply to people to do their jobs. I don't care what they're doing with the data, its not interesting to me, I'm interested the computer science aspects of OOP, keeping very large sun machines running efficiently and optimizing all available bandwidth and processors on VERY large data sets.
This is a very questionable endeavour. I have been asked many times by people who have a consumer or art oriented mindset what the point is and how do Unix companies stay in business? An interesting aside to this is that my Workstation is a Macintosh with TenonMachTen installed so I can open up X11 apps on our E10k and actually program the damn thing, so I have some understanding of the mac world. And I can honestly say that I just intrinsically like the platform. There are lots of reasons that I won't list, but bottom line is, I can use it to do my job, and I find it the most pleasing way of doing so. Doing ones job is what it really comes down to in the private sector. Which leads me to my next point.... Photoshop. There are a number of Professionals whos job is using Photoshop. Apparently they all feel that this is best done on a macintosh. It doesn't matter why they feel that, they are professionals and have the right to make this decision for any reason including irrational ones. However it should be noted that people who use Photoshop 40 hours a week are better suited to judge these things than those who use it occasionally. That said, it seems that if one company can sell a product and make enough money off of it to keep developing for the macintosh thats all thats needed. A consequence of this is that support apps are required and a software industry grows out of this as long as companies can produce products cost effectively.
In answer to your question, I suggest that to really get to the heart of this question if you are so inclined is to really use a mac for a while and push it as you would linux. I think you will begin to understand that all machines and OS's have their appeal even if we don't understand that appeal, all that matters is that someone does.
We disagree on what qualifies as an objective source.
Personally I think this article is one sided and comes from a news outlet that has a particularly hard-love outlook toward Apple. I am not disputing that these are indeed the claims of the ATI employees or even that it is gospel truth. I am however skeptical that the RADEON did not launch for soley based on Jobs reaction. Here is why I am skeptical:
* The claim that ALL radeons had to be pulled from the show floor is a bit far fetched. Apple is not the "Supreme Authority" at Macworld. Macworld magazine is. My guess is that Macworld magazine would have sided with ATI and allowed a radeon launch at another part of the show. Simply because the press gets a kick out of that sort of thing.
* There may have been other reasons that Apple may have requested that ATI delay a product launch indeference to nVidia.
* Employees tend to be defensive of their company and may have become angry at such a request by Apple. ATI senior management would have had to go along with Steve's demands in order for the product launch NOT to occur and I doubt they would have done that. Generally news of this nature is covered in press-releases, not in whispers to IMG reporters.
* Steve has not displayed his legendary temper for some time. While it is perhaps his most famous quality, he has in recent history shown more level headed business sense.
* In recent Macworld Expo histroy (Tokyo) when a Jobs keynote has been changed at the last minute, Mr. Jobs has not dealt with it so eloquently. There were numerous inconsistencies with his tokyo keynot due to a last minute delayed product launch. My suspicion is that similar inconsistencies would have arisen.
Please note that I am primarily trying to play devil's advocate here and present situations that have not been mentioned. I am a skeptic and I always try to look at all the angles of a news story. I think the points I described are valid, but they are in no way incontrovertible proof that the IMG article is false. I simply wish to present an alternate viewpoint.
Basically I have a harsh distaste for general scathing emotional criticisms of anyone because I wouldn't like it if it happened to me.
It seems that in this brave new world of instantaneous and sensationalist "news" that we pay too much attention to those stories that seem most exciting. This story might be true, it might not be true. We should not pass judgement on those involved until we know all the facts. Lest we become judgemental.
It seems to me that this story only has weight because of Steve's infamous temper. But to his credit, there has been very little evidence of that temper since he left apple, tail tucked, many years ago.
Re:This is nothing new. X for Mac has been around.
on
MacOSX and X11
·
· Score: 1
oh, woops. I realize now that I'm supposed to use tags to get a newline. Nest time I'll use the combo box to post it in Plain Old Text. Thanks for pointing that out... seriously.
Re:This is nothing new. X for Mac has been around.
on
MacOSX and X11
·
· Score: 1
I agree with you. When I wrote it, I had all kinds of newlines in it. I swear. I guess my browser sux. I'm using Netscape 3.0 on Solaris. Maybe if I skip 2 lines at a time like this it'll come out right. My apologies. I tried...
This is nothing new. X for Mac has been around.
on
MacOSX and X11
·
· Score: 1
Ok, everybody slow down... I can't believe that this topic has generated this much discussion... X for MacOS X by Tenon is nothing but a port of an already existing Tenon product to MacOS X. Tenon's entire business is providing UNIX tools/shells/environments etc to Mac and now Linux users. For at least 6 years Tenon has had a product that allows you to run a full blown commercial Unix system as a program under Classic Mac OS. Go to their web site and check it out. Its interesting... Especially technically since they did it using the Mach microkernel. (Sure has been popping up a lot recently.) No one needs to point out that the pre-emptive scheduling and memory protection are just mapped onto a classic MacOS application process with all weaknesses inherent thereof. The product, despite the fact that its a user process, gives the user a fully functioning POSIX compliant Unix machine. You can open remote and local X11 apps and run all kinds of shells. Its great, well written and I only ever experienced one crash with it, and that was because the MacOS crashed. Tenon also sold the X11 server part of Power MachTen (the product I have been describing) as a seperate product. It uses the afterstep window manager. But it somes with several others. It lets you run remote X11 apps. Even over ssh! It too is a great product. Its official name is XTen. Seeing as they have a product niche here, they decided to upgrade it to run natively on MacOSX. Please note that their current products run nicely under classic MacOS emulation on MacOSX DP4. Just as they did on a machine running DP4. So this product announcement is not really a big deal. Especially considering the following: There was also an Xserver available for some time from Apple itself called MacX. There is also an XServer available from: ftp://ftp.peak.org/next-ftp/apple/macosx/server/Ap plications/Utilities/X/maX/ that runs on MacOSX Server, and the developer has posted screen shots of it running under DP3. And yes Mr. Carmack has apparently gotten X11 running under Darwin and MacOSX server (but I don't know if he's made the code available) There is even a Java1.2 based Xserver that I have gotten running under DP4 but I have forgotten what the hell its name is or where it can be found. So I fail to see why this has become a political debate. Sure X for MacOSX from Tenon is a commercial product, and if it is to do well, it will be held to higher standards than it numerous free counterparts. One advantage that it has pre-release is that it runs rootless. Which means that you don't have to open X11 apps within a giant Quartx window, it will natively map X11 to quartz. (feel free to mince words with my choice of terminology here, but you get the idea...) In addition I would like to make one observation that has not been made about X11. That X for MacOSX can run local and non-local apps is a non-issue. This is what X11 does. In fact the only X-server I am aware of that DOES NOT run local and non-local apps is XTen by Tenon and that is only because there is no local Unix machine with clients to connect to.
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>>You mean like GNUstep? Cocoa is Yellowbox renamed in OPENSTEP renamed is being cloned by GNUstep.
Exactly. So the Cocoa part can be considered mostly finished. The Quartz (note: Linux KDE/Gnome advocates and aqua haters in general, Quartz != Aqua) display engine will be trickier but a PDF based display engine would be a great boon to Linux/BSD users. There has been much discussion in the Linux community recently about the age of the X11/Motif/XWindows paradigm. For immediate compatability, X11 could draw through Quartz like the Xservers for MacOSX do.
As I write this I'm getting more excitied about the possibilty of this project. I think a PDF display engine (compatible with Quartz) would be an absolutely fantastic project for the open source community to undertake. Difficult, but rewarding. And certainly not impossible.
Any thoughts?
You make a good point about the amount of choice available as far as tools are concerned. But if some tools are NEEDED by SOME people this really doesn't affect the Mac community at large. A long time ago I compiled NEdit for MacOSX server with the maX X windows env installed. and it was very handy to have that tool around. Nobody else cared.
However your insight that anything else is likely to be horrible might be a little unfounded, here's why:
The tenon X port will run rootless and the X widgets will look like Aqua widgets. So you shouldn't be able to distinguish (obviously within limits) between X apps and "real" mac OS X apps. That should make running X apps a little more aesthetically pleasing for MacPUs (that's Mac Power Users)
The problems you address here are "why can't mac apps be ported to (Li/U)n(u/i)x?" And you are right, the gui is the big problem.
However, the question posed is quite different. How easy is it to port existing Unix apps to MacOSX? The answer is: easy because of the existing BSD API and the x11/Motif/Less-tif libs that have already been ported to the platform in both Open-source and commercial environs.
However I think the question pose is an interesting one. I think a great project for the open source community would be to port clones of Quartz and Cocoa to (Li/U)n(u/i)xes.
Numerous X11 server ports are available. Last I checked, every (I use the loose sense of the word) UNIX gui is X/Motif based.
So GUI is no problem.
If one uses UFS (instead of HFS+) and installs one of the many available (or soon to be available) X11 servers, he/she will wind up with a full-blown kick your ass Unix. So the port won't be any more difficult than any other port.
There's always an idiosyncratic difference here or there betweeen (Li/U)n(i/u)xes, but thats it.
As to the question of why? Many many mac power users are quite versed with Unix and use a mac in addition to Unix because in their opinion all of the available Unix desktop environments suck.
My opinion is as follows: CDE sucks, Gnome sucks at the moment, KDE sucks at the moment, OpenWindows Desktop sucks slightly less that the rest. Hopefully Gnome and KDE will improve, but that is a different discussion.
The author has a very good point about this book. It has absolutely no context on its own. However, If read and used in conjunction with "Java Design" also by Peter Coad et al, the design patterns described begin to be meaningful.
"Java Design" has the added advantage of some very amusing diagrams.
I know that this used to be true. But I remember hearing at one point (please pardon my vague citation, I wish I could be more accurate) that once Mac OS X Server shipped, that the Apple Store and the Apple website were moved from WebObjects on Solaris to WebObjects on Mac OS X Server.
(disclaimer: I might be out of my tree on this point, please forgive me if I am)
One note that I am quite sure about though is that Sun Uni-Processor Servers (Enterprise 10 & 250 etc) if similarly configured to G4's give very similar performance. Its actually pretty interesting to look at this similarity between Mac OS X and Solaris.
>>By deliberately lying to customers, apple is begging for destruction.
uh... I see. And what exactly are they lying about?
>>I wouldn't be suprised to see them drop off of the net for a few hours sometime this week.
Your powerful threats make me wish I were so masculine. But seriously, if you had a clue you would realize that Apple's partnership with Akamai make your threats quite a challenge to step up to. Are you up to it? Their servers (G4s) stood up to more abuse during Macworld Expo than Yahoo saw during the DOS attack a few months ago. If you succeed in your endevour please tell us all about it.
These sorts of questions relate to all platforms. Usually when we don't understand the rationale behind an activity, its usually because we don't have a good grasp of the activity. Which isn't really a bad thing at all, if we all understood everything, life would be boring and suck.
An Example:
I am a Solaris/Oracle developer. I write J2EE programs in this environment. The reason is that I, and my company, feel that these are good technologies to use for dealing with the Terabytes of phone, network configuration, and network performance data that we have to supply to people to do their jobs. I don't care what they're doing with the data, its not interesting to me, I'm interested the computer science aspects of OOP, keeping very large sun machines running efficiently and optimizing all available bandwidth and processors on VERY large data sets.
This is a very questionable endeavour. I have been asked many times by people who have a consumer or art oriented mindset what the point is and how do Unix companies stay in business? An interesting aside to this is that my Workstation is a Macintosh with TenonMachTen installed so I can open up X11 apps on our E10k and actually program the damn thing, so I have some understanding of the mac world. And I can honestly say that I just intrinsically like the platform. There are lots of reasons that I won't list, but bottom line is, I can use it to do my job, and I find it the most pleasing way of doing so. Doing ones job is what it really comes down to in the private sector. Which leads me to my next point.... Photoshop. There are a number of Professionals whos job is using Photoshop. Apparently they all feel that this is best done on a macintosh. It doesn't matter why they feel that, they are professionals and have the right to make this decision for any reason including irrational ones. However it should be noted that people who use Photoshop 40 hours a week are better suited to judge these things than those who use it occasionally. That said, it seems that if one company can sell a product and make enough money off of it to keep developing for the macintosh thats all thats needed. A consequence of this is that support apps are required and a software industry grows out of this as long as companies can produce products cost effectively.
In answer to your question, I suggest that to really get to the heart of this question if you are so inclined is to really use a mac for a while and push it as you would linux. I think you will begin to understand that all machines and OS's have their appeal even if we don't understand that appeal, all that matters is that someone does.
The product has been announced and will begin to ship in September. That it was excluded from the keynot hardly seems newsworthy now.
We disagree on what qualifies as an objective source.
Personally I think this article is one sided and comes from a news outlet that has a particularly hard-love outlook toward Apple. I am not disputing that these are indeed the claims of the ATI employees or even that it is gospel truth. I am however skeptical that the RADEON did not launch for soley based on Jobs reaction. Here is why I am skeptical:
* The claim that ALL radeons had to be pulled from the show floor is a bit far fetched. Apple is not the "Supreme Authority" at Macworld. Macworld magazine is. My guess is that Macworld magazine would have sided with ATI and allowed a radeon launch at another part of the show. Simply because the press gets a kick out of that sort of thing.
* There may have been other reasons that Apple may have requested that ATI delay a product launch indeference to nVidia.
* Employees tend to be defensive of their company and may have become angry at such a request by Apple. ATI senior management would have had to go along with Steve's demands in order for the product launch NOT to occur and I doubt they would have done that. Generally news of this nature is covered in press-releases, not in whispers to IMG reporters.
* Steve has not displayed his legendary temper for some time. While it is perhaps his most famous quality, he has in recent history shown more level headed business sense.
* In recent Macworld Expo histroy (Tokyo) when a Jobs keynote has been changed at the last minute, Mr. Jobs has not dealt with it so eloquently. There were numerous inconsistencies with his tokyo keynot due to a last minute delayed product launch. My suspicion is that similar inconsistencies would have arisen.
Please note that I am primarily trying to play devil's advocate here and present situations that have not been mentioned. I am a skeptic and I always try to look at all the angles of a news story. I think the points I described are valid, but they are in no way incontrovertible proof that the IMG article is false. I simply wish to present an alternate viewpoint.
Basically I have a harsh distaste for general scathing emotional criticisms of anyone because I wouldn't like it if it happened to me.
You are correct. The cube does indeed currently sport Rage 128 and not Radeon. I was not disputing that fact.
I was questioning the rationale of making condemnations based on a RUMORED product launch that did not occur.
It seems that in this brave new world of instantaneous and sensationalist "news" that we pay too much attention to those stories that seem most exciting. This story might be true, it might not be true. We should not pass judgement on those involved until we know all the facts. Lest we become judgemental.
It seems to me that this story only has weight because of Steve's infamous temper. But to his credit, there has been very little evidence of that temper since he left apple, tail tucked, many years ago.
oh, woops. I realize now that I'm supposed to use tags to get a newline. Nest time I'll use the combo box to post it in Plain Old Text. Thanks for pointing that out... seriously.
I agree with you. When I wrote it, I had all kinds of newlines in it. I swear. I guess my browser sux. I'm using Netscape 3.0 on Solaris. Maybe if I skip 2 lines at a time like this it'll come out right. My apologies. I tried...
Ok, everybody slow down... I can't believe that this topic has generated this much discussion... X for MacOS X by Tenon is nothing but a port of an already existing Tenon product to MacOS X. Tenon's entire business is providing UNIX tools/shells/environments etc to Mac and now Linux users. For at least 6 years Tenon has had a product that allows you to run a full blown commercial Unix system as a program under Classic Mac OS. Go to their web site and check it out. Its interesting... Especially technically since they did it using the Mach microkernel. (Sure has been popping up a lot recently.) No one needs to point out that the pre-emptive scheduling and memory protection are just mapped onto a classic MacOS application process with all weaknesses inherent thereof. The product, despite the fact that its a user process, gives the user a fully functioning POSIX compliant Unix machine. You can open remote and local X11 apps and run all kinds of shells. Its great, well written and I only ever experienced one crash with it, and that was because the MacOS crashed. Tenon also sold the X11 server part of Power MachTen (the product I have been describing) as a seperate product. It uses the afterstep window manager. But it somes with several others. It lets you run remote X11 apps. Even over ssh! It too is a great product. Its official name is XTen. Seeing as they have a product niche here, they decided to upgrade it to run natively on MacOSX. Please note that their current products run nicely under classic MacOS emulation on MacOSX DP4. Just as they did on a machine running DP4. So this product announcement is not really a big deal. Especially considering the following: There was also an Xserver available for some time from Apple itself called MacX. There is also an XServer available from: ftp://ftp.peak.org/next-ftp/apple/macosx/server/Ap plications/Utilities/X/maX/ that runs on MacOSX Server, and the developer has posted screen shots of it running under DP3. And yes Mr. Carmack has apparently gotten X11 running under Darwin and MacOSX server (but I don't know if he's made the code available) There is even a Java1.2 based Xserver that I have gotten running under DP4 but I have forgotten what the hell its name is or where it can be found. So I fail to see why this has become a political debate. Sure X for MacOSX from Tenon is a commercial product, and if it is to do well, it will be held to higher standards than it numerous free counterparts. One advantage that it has pre-release is that it runs rootless. Which means that you don't have to open X11 apps within a giant Quartx window, it will natively map X11 to quartz. (feel free to mince words with my choice of terminology here, but you get the idea...) In addition I would like to make one observation that has not been made about X11. That X for MacOSX can run local and non-local apps is a non-issue. This is what X11 does. In fact the only X-server I am aware of that DOES NOT run local and non-local apps is XTen by Tenon and that is only because there is no local Unix machine with clients to connect to.