I don't know about illustrator but Photoshop uses the same control+h to hide the marquee edges. Has done as long as I can remember and I've been using Photoshop since v2.5.
It's annoying that they conflict but since designers like me live in Photoshop for a large portion of a days work keyboard shortcuts are ingrained.
There is a preference option to change the behavour. However once I'd changed this I still had problems, I'd expect control+h to read my mind and know what I wanted it to do since I'd still attempt to use if for both functions:P
There is no chance of seeing a Power 4 or 5 in an Apple machine. They are IBMs high end server processors.
The PPC970 however is a different matter. Based on the Power 4 core with AltiVec, minus the on chip level 3 cache and multiple cores (though going back to multiple cores is a possibility when they improve their fabrication to 90nm from 130nm)
There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
Uhhhh, you haven't seen many IE web apps have you? A few features off the top of my head:
ActiveX/ActiveScript - forget it, COM stuff on the Mac is not going to happen. Nor is it really a major feature of WinIE. Both have LiveObject support which is all you need to script embedded objects.
DHTML applications - don't know what you're referring too here. You should be more specific. I've written plenty of web apps that work on MacIE5 as well as WinIE6. Some of them with very complex UI features. (Such as dynamically built lists with resizable columns and live filtering)
Don't know what DirectShow is, so can't comment.
You also cite "various proprietary DOM/CSS extensions" and list no examples (unless this DirectShow is one) or how they are used and constitute major features. I've been in the web design business long enough know most things. Certainly everything that can be called major, for even if I haven't used it myself I've seen it used.
Not sure what you mean by embedding, but you most certainly can embed objects within pages easily in either browser, and access then with scripts too (LiveObjects). If you mean it the other way around that IE can be embedded in other apps that is more a feature of the Windows OS similar to the new WebCore on the Mac. Don't also forget that the current help system on the mac uses a slimmed down IE renderer.
To turn the tables somewhat WinIE6 is missing one major thing that MacIE5 does support. Full support for PNG images.
WinIE even the latest versions do not support alpha in PNG32, nor embedded ICC profiles, nor Gamma correction.
This is a major pain. There is so much design potential in using PNG32 - true transparency. Real drop shadows, nice layering effects. All of this available now as long as you don't browse in WinIE.
I've visited both places, it helps to get some perspective of what must have happened there. (It also helps to have Norwegian family who get taught about this in school to tell you about it) Norway doesn't have the most welcoming terrain. To most people Norway doesn't even factor into their thoughts of WW2 and this is sad, things could have been a whole lot worse if it wasn't for their resistance to occupation.
No intention of going back? That's a little short sighted. Especially given that Omni are considering using the same KHTML rendering engine that Safari uses for the next version of OmniWeb.
If that comes to pass then OmniWeb will have the speed and better CSS compatibility of Safari. Only Safari lacks many of the cool features of OmniWeb. OmniWeb really only lacks a tabbed browsing or similar interface feature but that omission is no different from Safari.
You would be insane not to go back. In my opinion the Omni interface is better than Safari's but that is subjective. You can't argue with the wealth of useful features in OmniWeb however.
The new thing in 4.2 beta 1 is to open text area boxes into a separate edit window (so you can better see your slashdot postings:P) Which is one of those things you don't realise how useful it is until you try it.
Stick with Safari for the speed and the CSS compatibility since that is what is important to you, but keep an eye on where OmniWeb is from time to time. You might end up switching back.
The easy way is to wait for a significant pause in mouse movement. If the mouse stops moving over a window for more than a moment if becomes selected. The threshold time would be user definable in the same way that the double click threshold is.
There used to be an old Mac OS 9 extension that allowed auto focusing called Mac Sloop which I have long since lost track of. Shame it never made it to Mac OS X.
Auto-focusing is great in use with a graphics tablet.
I would also recommend that you look at Apple's dev tools before you use them as an example of how things shouldn't be done.
Apple does allow exact positioning of every type of widget in the interface, this is good because of the flexibility.
Yes Apple has HCI guidelines but you fail to mention that these are built in to Interface Builder. As default IB makes your widgets to snap to a HCI compliant layout through smart guides, so you don't need to bother reading the documentation on widget spacing (you should however read the rest of the document;). However since HCI guidelines are only that - sometimes its a good idea to break them. They can't account for every situation, and in those cases you can turn off the smart guides.
Implementing the optional HCI enforcement as part of the development tool chain allows you to have your cake and eat it in this case.
You say the only use for case insensitivity is for CLI.
Wrong.
The whole idea is to remove any possiblity for confusion.
If I have a picture of my pet then what's the difference in meaning between Dog and dog? They are the same I don't want the complexity of the possibility of those two files being able to exist in the same place at the same time.
This is another reason why file extensions being part of file names is evil. Dog.jpg, dog.gif or dog.png? Surely they're all just the same picture of my dog?
Coding case-insensitivity into a file system is a lot harder to implement than doing without it. The Macintosh filesystem and other subsequent systems have gone to lengths to include the feature for very good reasons. It reduces complexity and eliminates an area of confusion.
It is the UNIX world that should change for the better. Do you not want Linux to succeed on the desktop? Features such as this subtly improve the user experience.
One reason why Mac OS has been considered easier to use than Windows for years. Fundamentally they are the same, it's the many small considerations that make all the difference.
I've seen some people in the Linux crowd really getting a handle on this which is great and I really respect what's the Red Hat team are trying to do. The Nautilus project was also a big move in the right direction.
I also don't see how case insensitivity makes it more difficult to spell check filenames. If you'd like to explain the problem then maybe I'll be able to understand your point of view better.
Hmm, since I am also looking into 3D modelling I followed your link to Rhino's site where I am greeted by a popup window telling me to download IE and not mozilla to use their site.
They lost my interest right there.
If they can't code a web site for shit why should I believe the quality of their software is any different?
I'd have to agree with your general premise. Although I also have a PowerBook G4. The fan really only seems to come on after extended use or heavy use of the graphics card usually OpenGL stuff. Even when the fan is on it's actually quite quiet in comparison to the PC on my work desk. But you notice it more since normally it's silent.
Having said that if you've ever heard an X-Serve in operation you'll know that not all Apple's are quiet.
My favourite OpenDoc app was a word processor called Wav by Digital Harbour (they probably disappeared some time ago - one product company)
It was just a plain page based text editor that was easy to use but with little other functionality. The really great thing was it didn't need to do anything else but be a good text editor because you could just embedded any other type of data into it through OpenDoc. Plug in picture, chart, spell checking components and they would all just work.
They came up with a really good OpenDoc interface, the toolbar had a customisable shelf to hold whatever components you wanted so you could just drag and drop them into your document.
Damn shame that OpenDoc failed to gain widespread use.
This is incredably bad interface. Using Cut Copy and Paste commands to manipulate files in Windows works differently to every other Cut Copy and Paste operation.
Think about it when you copy some text onto the clipboard. It does exactly that - a copy of the text is held. If you edit the original text the copy you took is still intact for pasting later.
Now look at how Windows handles this for files. When you select copy for a file a copy of the file is not held, only a reference to it. So if the file is edited before you paste it elsewhere you won't get what you supposedly copied.
I think the primary reason that Windows uses this method of moving and copying files is that traditionally you manipulate the file system through one window and without a feature like spring loaded folders on the column view of 10.2 you can't move or copy files without opening a new window and navigating there to drag and drop.
On a mac folders were always openned in new windows which remembered their size and position for spacial recognition. Drag and drop is easier in these circumstances. Spring loaded folders remove the only negative of this approach - having to have the target window open in advance.
Hopefully Apple will remove support for the Copy, Paste mechanism of files or atleast fix it so that an actual copy of the file is taken when you select copy.
Ok the problem with the SpecInt and especially the SpecFloat benchmarks is that the code can't be optimised for a particular processor architecture. Unless you have an auto vectorising compiler no spec bench mark test will use the Altivec unit on G4s.
A G4s integer performance is acceptable but it's floating point unit is sadly lacking. Altivec is the only reason that G4's scream at floating point math. With a vector processing unit that handles floats like that you don't need a really strong general purpose floating point unit. The only annoying thing missing from Altivec is support for double-precision floats.
If GCC were made to auto vectorise code for Altivec then the Spec benchmark results on the G4 would increase dramatically. Then you might see something closer to the real picture and they might be worth Apple publishing.
1) If a page normally displayed within a frame set is navigated to from outside of the site it would not appear within the frame set. The page would be without its main form of site navigation.
By checking the referrer header in javascript you can cause the page to be reloading within the frame set. This is one way you can repair frame sets.
2) The referrer header allows a page author to see who is linking to him. A useful statistic.
3) You can set up a redirect on your site so people linking from slashdot end up seeing google's cached version of your site so you don't get Slashdotted.
Just some things of the top of my head, there are probably more legitimately useful things to use it for.
Yup, but you forget that the original Halo work was done on for Mac then PC and finally XBox when Bungie got bought out.
DirectX will never be ported across to the Mac it is another tool that MS use to lock developers into the windows platform. The XBox is an extension of that strategy. For many developers OpenGL held a great promise of a open crossplatform 3D API that they could use. XBox doesn't support OpenGL you have to use DirectX. It was designed to be relatively easy to port from XBox to PC and visa versa. Great time saving for the game developer, but only if they tie themselves to using DirectX. Now you're locked into another MS controlled technology.
Think I will stick with my TiBook G4, more powerful and 4 hours of battery life in real use with Mac OS X. If you're not bothered so much about the power then an iBook has longer battery life again.
Ok so it doesn't run x86 code (excepting with VirtualPC) but hey we all use some form of UNIX here and any app you're likely want to run works on one.
Also I would admit the G4 gets quite warm but generally only by the mains port when it's plugged in and even then only when its actually busy.
So what's the point with these transmeta chips? It doesn't matter how technically clever it is in the PC market it doesn't really offer an advantage.
How can Network Associates enforce this? Public key cryptograph was discovered/invented at Bletchley Park, UK for our government use before it was independantly proposed in the US.
Isn't there something about prior art with these things?
Re:Ultimate Assasination Weapon
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
Spy satelites can read a license plate from orbit.
And how do you propose they do that? Unless you have a license plate some fifty times larger than standard and more crucially here - mounted horizontally, so a satalite several miles staright up can see it.
Multiple inheritance has more disadvantages than advantages. Specificially with resulting code structure.
The advantages of it are offset by the concepts of interfaces/protocols and deligation in Smalltalk, Objective-C and Java. Both of which are a more elegant way of doing things.
Objective-C also has categories as a way of bolting on additional methods to existing classes and have them present in all the superclasses of that class.
Try looking at the power of the Foundation and AppKit frameworks for Objective-C. The flexibility you get with so few classes has to be seen to really be conprehended. You also write less code to get useful stuff done.
I suggest looking at Apple's dev tools (previously NeXTStep/OpenStep or if you haven't got access to a Mac OS X box. Take a peek at http://www.gnustep.org/ and http://www.squeak.org/
The Java API is a huge mess but in defence of SUN they do have to do have to provide everything a devoper might need. You can't make OS calls in Java and maintain cross-platform support.
I don't know about templates, I know they were a more recent addition to C++.
Yes, Apple will be the largest UNIX vendor. Largest in terms of number of users.
I'll probably get slated here for pointing out the obvious...
The Mac installed base is far bigger than any UNIX even Linux. Even if you just count the number of iMacs Apple sold since its introduction.
The reason, there are far more consumers in the world who just want to buy a computer that works out of the box than people who want to tinker with every aspect of their OS.
Those people won't know that they are using a UNIX based OS nor will they care.
Linux may be strong and increasing in strength in the server market but it does not make an addiquate desktop OS. How many/.ers have only a single boot system into Linux?
Anyone who has a dual boot system with Windows is effectively saying you can't live without it.
Anyone can easily and fairly accurately work out how many Mac users there are - just count Apple's hardware sales for the past few years.
Now compare with the hardware sales of Sun, HP, et al.
You can't do the same with Linux, do you count anyone who has even seen Linux? only the purists who do with out Windows totally? or count people with dual boot systems as part of the base? But how do you count these people? So the best anyone can do is guess. Even when you have the figures do you add up the total of all the distros or keep them separate?
The Quartz compositor in Mac OS X is fast. Although more optimisations can be done it is not the source of the apparently sluggish GUI.
Two things give the user the impression that the Mac OS X GUI is slow:
1. The new Finder is badly written. It uses Metrowerks PowerPlant framework and it is slow. Since this it what most people think of as the GUI they mistakenly conclude that it is the Quartz core graphics system when that is not the case. Not all apps exibit this lack of speed
2. Live window resizing. Nice eye candy but unusable on anything but the fastest of Macs. I don't know why it is this way.
Speed optimisations are the next thing that Apple is working on for Mac OS X. You have to appreciate how big a deal it was for them to get a new OS out the door.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I remember him posting here before and also the original SG launch plug on As the Apple Turns ;)
Sorta let my membership lapse. Oh well.
He mentioned this before at least at the book signing in Birmingham if not before then too.
He said it's difficult because the 'blog provides an outlet for your thoughts and material, it doesn't have chance to accumulate.
So he doesn't 'blog when he is writing, that gives him chance to fill a store of thought enough to fill a book.
I don't know about illustrator but Photoshop uses the same control+h to hide the marquee edges. Has done as long as I can remember and I've been using Photoshop since v2.5.
:P
It's annoying that they conflict but since designers like me live in Photoshop for a large portion of a days work keyboard shortcuts are ingrained.
There is a preference option to change the behavour. However once I'd changed this I still had problems, I'd expect control+h to read my mind and know what I wanted it to do since I'd still attempt to use if for both functions
There is no chance of seeing a Power 4 or 5 in an Apple machine. They are IBMs high end server processors.
The PPC970 however is a different matter. Based on the Power 4 core with AltiVec, minus the on chip level 3 cache and multiple cores (though going back to multiple cores is a possibility when they improve their fabrication to 90nm from 130nm)
ActiveX/ActiveScript - forget it, COM stuff on the Mac is not going to happen. Nor is it really a major feature of WinIE. Both have LiveObject support which is all you need to script embedded objects.
DHTML applications - don't know what you're referring too here. You should be more specific. I've written plenty of web apps that work on MacIE5 as well as WinIE6. Some of them with very complex UI features. (Such as dynamically built lists with resizable columns and live filtering)
Don't know what DirectShow is, so can't comment.
You also cite "various proprietary DOM/CSS extensions" and list no examples (unless this DirectShow is one) or how they are used and constitute major features. I've been in the web design business long enough know most things. Certainly everything that can be called major, for even if I haven't used it myself I've seen it used.
Not sure what you mean by embedding, but you most certainly can embed objects within pages easily in either browser, and access then with scripts too (LiveObjects). If you mean it the other way around that IE can be embedded in other apps that is more a feature of the Windows OS similar to the new WebCore on the Mac. Don't also forget that the current help system on the mac uses a slimmed down IE renderer.
To turn the tables somewhat WinIE6 is missing one major thing that MacIE5 does support. Full support for PNG images.
WinIE even the latest versions do not support alpha in PNG32, nor embedded ICC profiles, nor Gamma correction.
This is a major pain. There is so much design potential in using PNG32 - true transparency. Real drop shadows, nice layering effects. All of this available now as long as you don't browse in WinIE.
I've visited both places, it helps to get some perspective of what must have happened there. (It also helps to have Norwegian family who get taught about this in school to tell you about it) Norway doesn't have the most welcoming terrain. To most people Norway doesn't even factor into their thoughts of WW2 and this is sad, things could have been a whole lot worse if it wasn't for their resistance to occupation.
No intention of going back? That's a little short sighted. Especially given that Omni are considering using the same KHTML rendering engine that Safari uses for the next version of OmniWeb.
:P) Which is one of those things you don't realise how useful it is until you try it.
If that comes to pass then OmniWeb will have the speed and better CSS compatibility of Safari. Only Safari lacks many of the cool features of OmniWeb. OmniWeb really only lacks a tabbed browsing or similar interface feature but that omission is no different from Safari.
You would be insane not to go back. In my opinion the Omni interface is better than Safari's but that is subjective. You can't argue with the wealth of useful features in OmniWeb however.
The new thing in 4.2 beta 1 is to open text area boxes into a separate edit window (so you can better see your slashdot postings
Stick with Safari for the speed and the CSS compatibility since that is what is important to you, but keep an eye on where OmniWeb is from time to time. You might end up switching back.
Erm, I think you will find that MPEG4 is a name for a collection of codecs.
The framework is actually Apple's Quicktime format which the MPEG group decided to use because of it's open and extensible nature.
That would be the cool way of doing it :)
The easy way is to wait for a significant pause in mouse movement. If the mouse stops moving over a window for more than a moment if becomes selected. The threshold time would be user definable in the same way that the double click threshold is.
There used to be an old Mac OS 9 extension that allowed auto focusing called Mac Sloop which I have long since lost track of. Shame it never made it to Mac OS X.
Auto-focusing is great in use with a graphics tablet.
I would also recommend that you look at Apple's dev tools before you use them as an example of how things shouldn't be done.
;). However since HCI guidelines are only that - sometimes its a good idea to break them. They can't account for every situation, and in those cases you can turn off the smart guides.
Apple does allow exact positioning of every type of widget in the interface, this is good because of the flexibility.
Yes Apple has HCI guidelines but you fail to mention that these are built in to Interface Builder. As default IB makes your widgets to snap to a HCI compliant layout through smart guides, so you don't need to bother reading the documentation on widget spacing (you should however read the rest of the document
Implementing the optional HCI enforcement as part of the development tool chain allows you to have your cake and eat it in this case.
You say the only use for case insensitivity is for CLI.
Wrong.
The whole idea is to remove any possiblity for confusion.
If I have a picture of my pet then what's the difference in meaning between Dog and dog? They are the same I don't want the complexity of the possibility of those two files being able to exist in the same place at the same time.
This is another reason why file extensions being part of file names is evil. Dog.jpg, dog.gif or dog.png? Surely they're all just the same picture of my dog?
Coding case-insensitivity into a file system is a lot harder to implement than doing without it. The Macintosh filesystem and other subsequent systems have gone to lengths to include the feature for very good reasons. It reduces complexity and eliminates an area of confusion.
It is the UNIX world that should change for the better. Do you not want Linux to succeed on the desktop? Features such as this subtly improve the user experience.
One reason why Mac OS has been considered easier to use than Windows for years. Fundamentally they are the same, it's the many small considerations that make all the difference.
I've seen some people in the Linux crowd really getting a handle on this which is great and I really respect what's the Red Hat team are trying to do. The Nautilus project was also a big move in the right direction.
I also don't see how case insensitivity makes it more difficult to spell check filenames. If you'd like to explain the problem then maybe I'll be able to understand your point of view better.
Hmm, since I am also looking into 3D modelling I followed your link to Rhino's site where I am greeted by a popup window telling me to download IE and not mozilla to use their site.
They lost my interest right there.
If they can't code a web site for shit why should I believe the quality of their software is any different?
I'd have to agree with your general premise. Although I also have a PowerBook G4. The fan really only seems to come on after extended use or heavy use of the graphics card usually OpenGL stuff. Even when the fan is on it's actually quite quiet in comparison to the PC on my work desk. But you notice it more since normally it's silent.
Having said that if you've ever heard an X-Serve in operation you'll know that not all Apple's are quiet.
My favourite OpenDoc app was a word processor called Wav by Digital Harbour (they probably disappeared some time ago - one product company)
It was just a plain page based text editor that was easy to use but with little other functionality. The really great thing was it didn't need to do anything else but be a good text editor because you could just embedded any other type of data into it through OpenDoc. Plug in picture, chart, spell checking components and they would all just work.
They came up with a really good OpenDoc interface, the toolbar had a customisable shelf to hold whatever components you wanted so you could just drag and drop them into your document.
Damn shame that OpenDoc failed to gain widespread use.
This is incredably bad interface. Using Cut Copy and Paste commands to manipulate files in Windows works differently to every other Cut Copy and Paste operation.
Think about it when you copy some text onto the clipboard. It does exactly that - a copy of the text is held. If you edit the original text the copy you took is still intact for pasting later.
Now look at how Windows handles this for files. When you select copy for a file a copy of the file is not held, only a reference to it. So if the file is edited before you paste it elsewhere you won't get what you supposedly copied.
I think the primary reason that Windows uses this method of moving and copying files is that traditionally you manipulate the file system through one window and without a feature like spring loaded folders on the column view of 10.2 you can't move or copy files without opening a new window and navigating there to drag and drop.
On a mac folders were always openned in new windows which remembered their size and position for spacial recognition. Drag and drop is easier in these circumstances. Spring loaded folders remove the only negative of this approach - having to have the target window open in advance.
Hopefully Apple will remove support for the Copy, Paste mechanism of files or atleast fix it so that an actual copy of the file is taken when you select copy.
Either way the windows method is flawed.
Ok the problem with the SpecInt and especially the SpecFloat benchmarks is that the code can't be optimised for a particular processor architecture. Unless you have an auto vectorising compiler no spec bench mark test will use the Altivec unit on G4s.
A G4s integer performance is acceptable but it's floating point unit is sadly lacking. Altivec is the only reason that G4's scream at floating point math. With a vector processing unit that handles floats like that you don't need a really strong general purpose floating point unit. The only annoying thing missing from Altivec is support for double-precision floats.
If GCC were made to auto vectorise code for Altivec then the Spec benchmark results on the G4 would increase dramatically. Then you might see something closer to the real picture and they might be worth Apple publishing.
Would this not be better done using an assertion?
NSAssert(![[apple processorFamily] compare:@"x86"], @"Apple Switch to x86 family")
Of course this would as default raise an exception if they switched to Intel and log a message to the console.
If you need more specific or drastic behavour might I suggest subclassing NSAssertionHandler to exhibit the following behavour under this condition:
[apple fireHardwareVP];
[[apple jobs] activateRealityDistortionField];
[[apple jobs] controlMedia];
This way you can ensure that the correct messures are always taken to prevent things.
May [apple release]; never be executed.
They can be useful...
1) If a page normally displayed within a frame set is navigated to from outside of the site it would not appear within the frame set. The page would be without its main form of site navigation.
By checking the referrer header in javascript you can cause the page to be reloading within the frame set. This is one way you can repair frame sets.
2) The referrer header allows a page author to see who is linking to him. A useful statistic.
3) You can set up a redirect on your site so people linking from slashdot end up seeing google's cached version of your site so you don't get Slashdotted.
Just some things of the top of my head, there are probably more legitimately useful things to use it for.
Yup, but you forget that the original Halo work was done on for Mac then PC and finally XBox when Bungie got bought out.
DirectX will never be ported across to the Mac it is another tool that MS use to lock developers into the windows platform. The XBox is an extension of that strategy. For many developers OpenGL held a great promise of a open crossplatform 3D API that they could use. XBox doesn't support OpenGL you have to use DirectX. It was designed to be relatively easy to port from XBox to PC and visa versa. Great time saving for the game developer, but only if they tie themselves to using DirectX. Now you're locked into another MS controlled technology.
The Mac version will still use OpenGL.
Only 2 hours?
Think I will stick with my TiBook G4, more powerful and 4 hours of battery life in real use with Mac OS X. If you're not bothered so much about the power then an iBook has longer battery life again.
Ok so it doesn't run x86 code (excepting with VirtualPC) but hey we all use some form of UNIX here and any app you're likely want to run works on one.
Also I would admit the G4 gets quite warm but generally only by the mains port when it's plugged in and even then only when its actually busy.
So what's the point with these transmeta chips? It doesn't matter how technically clever it is in the PC market it doesn't really offer an advantage.
How can Network Associates enforce this? Public key cryptograph was discovered/invented at Bletchley Park, UK for our government use before it was independantly proposed in the US.
Isn't there something about prior art with these things?
And how do you propose they do that? Unless you have a license plate some fifty times larger than standard and more crucially here - mounted horizontally, so a satalite several miles staright up can see it.
C++ virtual methods ~= Java abstract methods
Multiple inheritance has more disadvantages than advantages. Specificially with resulting code structure.
The advantages of it are offset by the concepts of interfaces/protocols and deligation in Smalltalk, Objective-C and Java. Both of which are a more elegant way of doing things.
Objective-C also has categories as a way of bolting on additional methods to existing classes and have them present in all the superclasses of that class.
Try looking at the power of the Foundation and AppKit frameworks for Objective-C. The flexibility you get with so few classes has to be seen to really be conprehended. You also write less code to get useful stuff done.
I suggest looking at Apple's dev tools (previously NeXTStep/OpenStep or if you haven't got access to a Mac OS X box. Take a peek at http://www.gnustep.org/ and http://www.squeak.org/
The Java API is a huge mess but in defence of SUN they do have to do have to provide everything a devoper might need. You can't make OS calls in Java and maintain cross-platform support.
I don't know about templates, I know they were a more recent addition to C++.
Yes, Apple will be the largest UNIX vendor. Largest in terms of number of users.
/.ers have only a single boot system into Linux?
I'll probably get slated here for pointing out the obvious...
The Mac installed base is far bigger than any UNIX even Linux. Even if you just count the number of iMacs Apple sold since its introduction.
The reason, there are far more consumers in the world who just want to buy a computer that works out of the box than people who want to tinker with every aspect of their OS.
Those people won't know that they are using a UNIX based OS nor will they care.
Linux may be strong and increasing in strength in the server market but it does not make an addiquate desktop OS. How many
Anyone who has a dual boot system with Windows is effectively saying you can't live without it.
Anyone can easily and fairly accurately work out how many Mac users there are - just count Apple's hardware sales for the past few years.
Now compare with the hardware sales of Sun, HP, et al.
You can't do the same with Linux, do you count anyone who has even seen Linux? only the purists who do with out Windows totally? or count people with dual boot systems as part of the base? But how do you count these people? So the best anyone can do is guess. Even when you have the figures do you add up the total of all the distros or keep them separate?
The Quartz compositor in Mac OS X is fast. Although more optimisations can be done it is not the source of the apparently sluggish GUI.
Two things give the user the impression that the Mac OS X GUI is slow:
1. The new Finder is badly written. It uses Metrowerks PowerPlant framework and it is slow. Since this it what most people think of as the GUI they mistakenly conclude that it is the Quartz core graphics system when that is not the case. Not all apps exibit this lack of speed
2. Live window resizing. Nice eye candy but unusable on anything but the fastest of Macs. I don't know why it is this way.
Speed optimisations are the next thing that Apple is working on for Mac OS X. You have to appreciate how big a deal it was for them to get a new OS out the door.