You prefer vi or Emacs? Great you get those for free too.
As for writing code, there's project builder, which has a very good code editor, on its way to being excellent. Also free. If you prefer vi or emacs then you can use them for you code, you can do all your development within emacs, for instance (building and debugging as well, I believe.)
IF you like BBEdit, though, then get it, great. I'm just saying that its a tough market when Apple ships 4 editors with the OS, and BBEdit is there for those who want BBEdit like features.
In my almost 15 years of professional software development, from Basic and Fortran on up to Java and Objective C, the number one impactor of quality of code is memory management. Closely followed by error handling.
ObjC and Java have exceptions, and unfortunately exceptions doesn't completely solve the "recovery from all errors well" path... but Cocoa does even better than java in that many things that can happen (such as calling a method on an ojbect that doesn't exist) which cause a java program to crash with an exception are thrown on ObjC but the program keeps running. They become more like warnings-- which has been great in my experience.
But the number one thing is memory management. In C and C++ it just plane sucks. Its a little better with C++, but in my timeline it wasn't "fixed" until Java. Java does it right, but the GC threads can cause issues if performance consistancy is important.
ObjectiveC does it really right-- you can defer freeing of memory when you want, and you can control it explicitly when you want and it all works rather well. The first C style language I've ever worked with where memory wasn't the biggest issue. (And I'm not talking about my code,but the code of all the programmers I've worked with over the years-- even guys who felt they were experts in C or C++ wrote code that cause memory bugs)
Objective C gets memory management right and it does so without being over-bearing about it.
I was dreading going to ObjC from Java, but I have been very pleasently surprised. I can say with confidence that you will write better code and have fewer bugs writing with ObjectiveC than with C++.
Its worth getting "Building cocoa apps" from Orielly and working thru it.
Thing is there are so many free editors out there (at least four that come with jaguar-vi, emacs, TextEdit, project builder, hell you can make your own with 20 lines of cocoa code.) that commercial editors have a tough market. Either they charge real money and provide lots of features like BBEdit, or they go out of business.
So, if TextEdit doesn't cut it, you probably should buy BBEdit.
It's his right, its his code to keep it when he stops selling it. There's nothing "telling" about that, unless you think that people should be forced to give up their property because it fits your ideology. (eg: Stallmanism/Communism).
Hell, from what it sounds like, not giving the source away probably saved the world a lot of trouble.
I apologize if I misunderstood you and you were talking about the fact that his customers deserve better support. But I disagree with you if you were saying that all code should be given away if its not being sold.
Its my intention to open source my code when it becomes 5 years old... if the news stuff isn't innovative enough and compelling enough that opening the olds stuff hurts sales, then that's a sad state of affairs. But the last person I will give code to willingly is the one who insists that it is his right to demand my code from me-- that I don't have the right to sell my code and choose when/where/how or if I open source it. (That man being richard stallman, et. al.)
The pepper author doesn't "owe" us his source code-- unless we bought the product and are now screwed by lack of support. But then only those who paid money have right to ask for support.
That would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Commercial software vendors are not using cocoa right now because they need to get their OS 9 apps running under OS X without re-writing from scratch. The path to do that quickly is Carbon and it works pretty well.
Cocoa is excellent for commercial and hobby projects. Apple will not abandon it and go to C++-- believe me, the very suggestion would be laughed at by the NeXT people. Objective -C with Cocoa is far superior to C++ and actually, any of the other frameworks I've worked with in the past. Even though I've just learned ObjectiveC and the cocoa frameworks in the past 2 months, I'm already more productive with them than I have been in the past with Java (and Java was far more productive than C++ at getting things done-- ESPECIALLY UI Code which is very difficult in the C/C++ way of doing things.) Cocoa is a breeze.
Its clear you haven't used it. IF you're a developer, I suggest you check it out and see how nice it is. If its your first framework you may not see what the big deal is, but if you've had to write event handlers under OS 9, or even Java, you'll see how nice it is. (And if you're a java fan you get all the power and glory and can stay in java space... though I chose to learn Objective C and made the language switch.)
Its funny to say the "jobs way of thinking"-- I doubt jobs thinking had anything to do with cocoa, except that he markets it pretty well.
I don't see anything limiting about it, at the worst you have to use carbon to access stuff, but that's the previous status quo.
I'm aware of no commercial cocoa developers who have left and gone to carbon. I think you're wrong there. Omnigroup, Stone Design, and all the cocoa commercial houses continue to be fans of it and on the developer lists there is grousing about things that could be improved, but nobody saying "I'm going back to carbon". I think you're mistaking companies like adobe using carbon to port their (carbon) apps to OS X. Future apps will likely be in cocoa from these companies.
Finder is both a Carbon application and a Cocoa application. At least the one on my Jaguar install is. Which means technically its a cocoa app (From what I can tell) but it still links in a lot of carbon code.
But then, most programs are. Its very difficult to write a cocoa application that doesn't hit carbon (Even though you don't link against it) and vice versa... for instance printing is done by carbon, even for cocoa apps.
Carbon is part of OSX and is going to stick around (much as I prefer cocoa and objective C)..
I see no reason to believe that carbon can't be (or couldn't have already been) ported to x86. Odds are most of it is C not assembly anyway.
You see this said alot but it doesn't make sense. IF Apple moved to the x86 platform (which I don't think they are going to do in the next 5 years) then there would be no "widgets" on the mother board that the OS looks for in order to boot-- that would be impossible, without close-sourcing OSX.
Remember darwin is open sourced. Its there at anonymous CVS on the opendarwin.org site. OS X just runs on top of this, so it would be trivial-- in an x86 version of the OS-- to have the OS report that "Yep, I found the widget, this is genuine apple hardware!" even on a typical not-going-to-keep-working-for-more-than-six-months -because-of-solder-burrs-and-bad-joints PC Motherboard.
IF Apple moves to the x86 platform, it would mean they are giving up the hardware strategy and are going software only-- or that they have some magical hardware that they think will be compelling enough to get people to run OS X on Apple hardware even though it runs on clones. The latter I think is a lot less likely than the former.
I won't rule out Apple going to x86, but it won't happen soon, and if it does, there *will* be a "clone" market... or apple will be software only.
And the world will be a sadder place. Apple's hardware is wonderful. ITs especially nice to have a computer that keeps working after 6 years, let alone 6 months.
Oh, I thought you were talking about Plan 9, the operating system! (It did/does exist and was named after the movie, and is about as common, though its open source.)
I'm so happy every day that goes by and I don't have to run classic for anything. My last regular app was replaced about 2 months ago, and its nice to be 9 free.
Given that the Mac project invented the GUI (yes, I know about the work at Xerox, I've used those machines. They were a step in the right direction, but they were not GUIs.) and this occurred in 1984 or so, and that the complaints that the original article were making were about the GUI, saying "You want a modern operating system but you want it to work like 1984" is totally valid.
"UNIX" does not sum up the totality of OS X. OS X does many things in a modern (IE: NON "unix" way) such as using XML to store configuration information. XML was not in use in 1984.
The cluebat belongs on your head-- thers is more to OSX than "Unix". To my knowledge the NeXT was the first (and apparently only so far) object oriented operating system, and this came much after 1984, yet OS X is based on it. That also is part of what makes it modern.
And even there it isn't just a copy of the bits that existed in 1990-- those frameworks went thru changes between 1996 and 2002 as well.
The idea that OS X is "just unix" is what lets people foolishly compare it to Linux with a straight face. Yeah, they both are based on Unix, but OSX has a lot more there.... but since its behind the scenes its either discarded out of ignorance, or dismissed as "Eye candy" by people who apparently don't know the purpose of a GUI.
Sheesh. You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984? This is silly, these absurd expectations.
OS X, 10.1 runs fine, if a bit sluggish on my 9500. To hear people complaining about its performance on G4s makes me laugh. I don't buy it-- I think this is just an excuse from people who are too grumpy to switch from OS 9.
I made the transition from OS 9 really easily. The UI? Much better in 10. The cruft? Gone in 10.
Umax doesn't support OS X? Bitch at Umax, not Apple. Some software breaks? Well, those are the breaks-- probably the person who made it will fix it. But Apple hasn't done anything wrong (Except provide some nice features in 10.2 tempting us software makers to make our products 10.2 only.)
To completely gloss over the fact that OS X is a new OS (not a warmed over version of NeXT) with a lot of new fiatures, and complain (and complain and complain) about the fact that its different than 9 is absurd.
If apple had shipped something that looked like OS 9, the OS would have been a complete failure. Instead they shipped something good and made a break with the past-- its about time. 15 years with the same UI is too long... and now they can migrate and update the UI much faster so it doesn't get stale, crufty, and pointless like OS 9 was getting. (Note the changes in 10.2, every button is different, etc.)
ITs time for a moratorium on OS 9 whining. IF you don't like 10, don't switch. But don't complain that you can't have your cake and eat it to. Its absurd.
There is no evidence that this was done deliberately for marketing reasons.
That the chip supports it does not mean that the ASICs, controllers, drivers or other software necessary for THAT SPECIFIC PIECE OF HARDWARE also support it.
So, until someone makes it work under the version of 10 that shipped at the time, without using a new driver, or shows where the driver is deliberately checking the hardware and turning the feature off because of the hardware, ALL REASONABLE PEOPLE will presume that there's a reason apple did this that is technical.
Actually, I know they are faster because I know the architectures, the science, the physics and because I have done my own tests.
Not only are they faster, but when you buy Apple hardware you get it for less money than a comparable PC.
But I don't expect that to sway you-- this has been the case for most of the last decade: Macs are cheaper and faster than quality PCs (any computer that doesn't last a year isn't worth buying or comparing to.) So, either you know it by now, or you're keeping faith in your religious convictions despite objective reality.
The Java version is the one I used. It is not buggy-- I thought I found a bug once, but an Apple engineer showed me that it worked, and he was right, it was my bug. It is not undocumented-- I had no trouble learning it and everything I looked for I found documentation for (still do)..
as for indistinguishable in the market, clearly you have never used it, nor have you used the "competitive" offerings.
But then, what do I expect from someone who's nick is "antijava".
BZZT. Quite wrong. Here we have an OS where you can extend operating system objects without access to the source code. Think NSSTring doesn't do something you want it to? Want it to give you an FSSpec from the string? Write a category. This is more powerful than subclassing-- all my NSStrings inherit the ability in my code everywhere, whether they are subclasses or not.
Or is that too powerful for you? you meant the command line? Well, you got that too, right there at your fingertips. And everything you could want to do you can get at that way.
But you also have plist viewer. All the switches and settings in the OS are in XML plists, just open them in the viewer (or whatever parser you want) and flip bits to your hearts content.
NOTHING has been dumbed down in this OS. A good ui has been provided to make easy interaction (And if you're smart, you value this-- cause smart people value their time. It has nothing to do with making it usable by idiots).... yet all the power and glory is still there too if you want to use it.
Not to mention the best development environment I've ever seen in 20 years of programming (including stints at microsoft, dozens of startups, Java, C, fortran, Lisp, etc. etc.)
This is just yet another of the Mac Myths (like "Macs are more expensive", "Macs are slower", "Macs aren't upgradeable" -- "Macs are for dumb people")
Right, because apple should give away its work for free.
How is releasing a dozen free bug fixes and a major upgrade and then charging for the next upgrade "nickel and diming"? You just want your software for free. Fine. Don't upgrade.
But don't expect us to buy the idea that apple is money grubbing... they are delivering great value for the money they are charging. Jaguar has improvements all over the place, most of which weren't mentioned in the keynote.
Then don't upgrade. Nevermind that printer and scanner support has been improved in 10.2. Never mind that mostly the lack of support you see is from the people who made the product not providing drivers, not APPLE's fault.
Quicktime is a file format, a libarary to work with the format, and a collection of codecs, most of whom are owned by other companies.
Apple has done all it can for quicktime-- its given it away to the world for free as an open standard as part of MP4. Granted they didn't adopt it wholesale, but all of apples engineering work for the Quicktime file format was given to MP4 and is available to everyone who wants to implement the standard. How can an open source advocate complain about that?
That Apple doesn't give away other people's codecs (That they HAVE TO PAY FOR) for other competing operating systems is not surprising. You expect apple to pay $5-$20 for every linux install that it gives codecs away for? And its not like its a simple port either-- the codecs on PowerPC are altivec optimized, so it would take significant work.
Yes, they PAY to have quicktime on Windows, and there's a strategic reason for that. But apple not choosing to subsidize your operating system is not in any shape "evil"
Thank you for providing a reasonable response. Most people would rant about how apple hardware is so expensive (it isn't, it's actually cheaper), but instead you indicated you like to build your machines yourself. While there are people who hack around with apple hardware, it is a lot less common than it is in the PC world.
As to the full price upgrades, I really don't think this is as bad as people think. Yes, you never pay upgrade costs with Linux, and in that sense the comparison works. However, the speed of new features and capabilities being added to Linux is much slower than OS X. (which is interesting from a philosophical basis-- more developers, but slower innovation. Part of this is the open source nature, but part of this is how well OS X is designed and how easy it is to implement new stuff on it.)
But apple's upgrading policy is much better than the other commercial OS- windows, which gives you less, charges more and is far more restrictive about how and where you install the upgrade.
For instance, just one of the things Jaguar added for $129 was the capabilities that previously you had to pay $150 for separately from another company (in the area of networking.)
Not everyone will use those capabilities, but everyone in a mixed Mac windows environment will, and even if that isn't worth the money to you- there are dozens of other features-- when commercial MP3 players cost $40 or so, getting one free adds $40 to the value of the OS for me.
And if it STILL isn't worth it, then wait 6 months and get it a lot cheaper... or get the next free update.
But, from my business perspective, the value apple delivers in their machines and their OS far exceeds the costs when compared to Linux and Windows. I do not have cash to burn, for the time spent configuring PCs is counted as a cost-- you have time to burn, but not cash. Even so, I am getting-- for MY USES-- more value for less money than if I went with Windows or Linux.
Unfortunately, this value is hard to quantify and varies from situation to situation.
I just want to assure you that there are those of us who are very skinflint who run Macs because it SAVES us significant amounts of money.
But then, we're also people for whom the ability to tweak our hardware isn't has high priority as getting other things done. But that doesn't mean we have cash to burn.
In fact, I'll even go a step further. I would run the MacOS tommorrow if I didn't have to pay through my nose to do it
Great! Then prepare to switch next time you upgrade your computer.
Since Apple hardware has been consistently cheaper and faster when compared to quality Intel machines, then when you're ready to retire the computer you've got now, make the switch. It will cost you less and you'll get more.
Of course, there are trolls who think a 2GHz processor is twice as fast as a 1GHz processor (talk about marketing suckers!) but we both know that performance is more than that, and the PowerPC architecture and apple hardware, has it in spades.
What more consistent and responsive and well designed gui is there than Aqua? I've never seen one that comes anywhere close in usability, speed, and quality.
And each release gets faster, Jaguar is a hardware upgrade in a box. The UI speed is amazing.
Oh, and the "%150" claim about PC prices-- that's funny. Apparently, you've not priced a PC lately, or you think a 2GHz processor is twice as fast as a 1GHz processor.
It gets tireing hearing all these complaints about apple from people who either don't understand the technology or are just making stuff up. Apple is kicking ass in all the areas you complain about... wtf?
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You prefer vi or Emacs? Great you get those for free too.
As for writing code, there's project builder, which has a very good code editor, on its way to being excellent. Also free. If you prefer vi or emacs then you can use them for you code, you can do all your development within emacs, for instance (building and debugging as well, I believe.)
IF you like BBEdit, though, then get it, great. I'm just saying that its a tough market when Apple ships 4 editors with the OS, and BBEdit is there for those who want BBEdit like features.
In my almost 15 years of professional software development, from Basic and Fortran on up to Java and Objective C, the number one impactor of quality of code is memory management. Closely followed by error handling.
ObjC and Java have exceptions, and unfortunately exceptions doesn't completely solve the "recovery from all errors well" path... but Cocoa does even better than java in that many things that can happen (such as calling a method on an ojbect that doesn't exist) which cause a java program to crash with an exception are thrown on ObjC but the program keeps running. They become more like warnings-- which has been great in my experience.
But the number one thing is memory management. In C and C++ it just plane sucks. Its a little better with C++, but in my timeline it wasn't "fixed" until Java. Java does it right, but the GC threads can cause issues if performance consistancy is important.
ObjectiveC does it really right-- you can defer freeing of memory when you want, and you can control it explicitly when you want and it all works rather well. The first C style language I've ever worked with where memory wasn't the biggest issue. (And I'm not talking about my code,but the code of all the programmers I've worked with over the years-- even guys who felt they were experts in C or C++ wrote code that cause memory bugs)
Objective C gets memory management right and it does so without being over-bearing about it.
I was dreading going to ObjC from Java, but I have been very pleasently surprised. I can say with confidence that you will write better code and have fewer bugs writing with ObjectiveC than with C++.
Its worth getting "Building cocoa apps" from Orielly and working thru it.
It comes free with Jaguar. Its called TextEdit.
Thing is there are so many free editors out there (at least four that come with jaguar-vi, emacs, TextEdit, project builder, hell you can make your own with 20 lines of cocoa code.) that commercial editors have a tough market. Either they charge real money and provide lots of features like BBEdit, or they go out of business.
So, if TextEdit doesn't cut it, you probably should buy BBEdit.
It's his right, its his code to keep it when he stops selling it. There's nothing "telling" about that, unless you think that people should be forced to give up their property because it fits your ideology. (eg: Stallmanism/Communism).
Hell, from what it sounds like, not giving the source away probably saved the world a lot of trouble.
I apologize if I misunderstood you and you were talking about the fact that his customers deserve better support. But I disagree with you if you were saying that all code should be given away if its not being sold.
Its my intention to open source my code when it becomes 5 years old... if the news stuff isn't innovative enough and compelling enough that opening the olds stuff hurts sales, then that's a sad state of affairs. But the last person I will give code to willingly is the one who insists that it is his right to demand my code from me-- that I don't have the right to sell my code and choose when/where/how or if I open source it. (That man being richard stallman, et. al.)
The pepper author doesn't "owe" us his source code-- unless we bought the product and are now screwed by lack of support. But then only those who paid money have right to ask for support.
That would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Commercial software vendors are not using cocoa right now because they need to get their OS 9 apps running under OS X without re-writing from scratch. The path to do that quickly is Carbon and it works pretty well.
Cocoa is excellent for commercial and hobby projects. Apple will not abandon it and go to C++-- believe me, the very suggestion would be laughed at by the NeXT people. Objective -C with Cocoa is far superior to C++ and actually, any of the other frameworks I've worked with in the past. Even though I've just learned ObjectiveC and the cocoa frameworks in the past 2 months, I'm already more productive with them than I have been in the past with Java (and Java was far more productive than C++ at getting things done-- ESPECIALLY UI Code which is very difficult in the C/C++ way of doing things.) Cocoa is a breeze.
Its clear you haven't used it. IF you're a developer, I suggest you check it out and see how nice it is. If its your first framework you may not see what the big deal is, but if you've had to write event handlers under OS 9, or even Java, you'll see how nice it is. (And if you're a java fan you get all the power and glory and can stay in java space... though I chose to learn Objective C and made the language switch.)
Its funny to say the "jobs way of thinking"-- I doubt jobs thinking had anything to do with cocoa, except that he markets it pretty well.
I don't see anything limiting about it, at the worst you have to use carbon to access stuff, but that's the previous status quo.
I'm aware of no commercial cocoa developers who have left and gone to carbon. I think you're wrong there. Omnigroup, Stone Design, and all the cocoa commercial houses continue to be fans of it and on the developer lists there is grousing about things that could be improved, but nobody saying "I'm going back to carbon". I think you're mistaking companies like adobe using carbon to port their (carbon) apps to OS X. Future apps will likely be in cocoa from these companies.
Finder is both a Carbon application and a Cocoa application. At least the one on my Jaguar install is. Which means technically its a cocoa app (From what I can tell) but it still links in a lot of carbon code.
But then, most programs are. Its very difficult to write a cocoa application that doesn't hit carbon (Even though you don't link against it) and vice versa... for instance printing is done by carbon, even for cocoa apps.
Carbon is part of OSX and is going to stick around (much as I prefer cocoa and objective C)..
I see no reason to believe that carbon can't be (or couldn't have already been) ported to x86. Odds are most of it is C not assembly anyway.
You see this said alot but it doesn't make sense. IF Apple moved to the x86 platform (which I don't think they are going to do in the next 5 years) then there would be no "widgets" on the mother board that the OS looks for in order to boot-- that would be impossible, without close-sourcing OSX.
Remember darwin is open sourced. Its there at anonymous CVS on the opendarwin.org site. OS X just runs on top of this, so it would be trivial-- in an x86 version of the OS-- to have the OS report that "Yep, I found the widget, this is genuine apple hardware!" even on a typical not-going-to-keep-working-for-more-than-six-month
IF Apple moves to the x86 platform, it would mean they are giving up the hardware strategy and are going software only-- or that they have some magical hardware that they think will be compelling enough to get people to run OS X on Apple hardware even though it runs on clones. The latter I think is a lot less likely than the former.
I won't rule out Apple going to x86, but it won't happen soon, and if it does, there *will* be a "clone" market... or apple will be software only.
And the world will be a sadder place. Apple's hardware is wonderful. ITs especially nice to have a computer that keeps working after 6 years, let alone 6 months.
IF you don't have anything to say, don't say it.
I started this thread. I read the original post. Apparently you didn't pay too much attention, or your reading comprehension is low.
Being vague and not taking a stand are not strengths in a position, they are weaknesses. Yet you snidely act as if that fact makes you superior.
Sigh. When can we go back to the way the net was before AOL, and people had a clue.
Oh, I thought you were talking about Plan 9, the operating system! (It did/does exist and was named after the movie, and is about as common, though its open source.)
I'm so happy every day that goes by and I don't have to run classic for anything. My last regular app was replaced about 2 months ago, and its nice to be 9 free.
Yeah, you were too quick with the cluebat there.
Given that the Mac project invented the GUI (yes, I know about the work at Xerox, I've used those machines. They were a step in the right direction, but they were not GUIs.) and this occurred in 1984 or so, and that the complaints that the original article were making were about the GUI, saying "You want a modern operating system but you want it to work like 1984" is totally valid.
"UNIX" does not sum up the totality of OS X. OS X does many things in a modern (IE: NON "unix" way) such as using XML to store configuration information. XML was not in use in 1984.
The cluebat belongs on your head-- thers is more to OSX than "Unix". To my knowledge the NeXT was the first (and apparently only so far) object oriented operating system, and this came much after 1984, yet OS X is based on it. That also is part of what makes it modern.
And even there it isn't just a copy of the bits that existed in 1990-- those frameworks went thru changes between 1996 and 2002 as well.
The idea that OS X is "just unix" is what lets people foolishly compare it to Linux with a straight face. Yeah, they both are based on Unix, but OSX has a lot more there.... but since its behind the scenes its either discarded out of ignorance, or dismissed as "Eye candy" by people who apparently don't know the purpose of a GUI.
Sheesh. You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984? This is silly, these absurd expectations.
OS X, 10.1 runs fine, if a bit sluggish on my 9500. To hear people complaining about its performance on G4s makes me laugh. I don't buy it-- I think this is just an excuse from people who are too grumpy to switch from OS 9.
I made the transition from OS 9 really easily. The UI? Much better in 10. The cruft? Gone in 10.
Umax doesn't support OS X? Bitch at Umax, not Apple. Some software breaks? Well, those are the breaks-- probably the person who made it will fix it. But Apple hasn't done anything wrong (Except provide some nice features in 10.2 tempting us software makers to make our products 10.2 only.)
To completely gloss over the fact that OS X is a new OS (not a warmed over version of NeXT) with a lot of new fiatures, and complain (and complain and complain) about the fact that its different than 9 is absurd.
If apple had shipped something that looked like OS 9, the OS would have been a complete failure. Instead they shipped something good and made a break with the past-- its about time. 15 years with the same UI is too long... and now they can migrate and update the UI much faster so it doesn't get stale, crufty, and pointless like OS 9 was getting. (Note the changes in 10.2, every button is different, etc.)
ITs time for a moratorium on OS 9 whining. IF you don't like 10, don't switch. But don't complain that you can't have your cake and eat it to. Its absurd.
No it's paranoia.
There is no evidence that this was done deliberately for marketing reasons.
That the chip supports it does not mean that the ASICs, controllers, drivers or other software necessary for THAT SPECIFIC PIECE OF HARDWARE also support it.
So, until someone makes it work under the version of 10 that shipped at the time, without using a new driver, or shows where the driver is deliberately checking the hardware and turning the feature off because of the hardware, ALL REASONABLE PEOPLE will presume that there's a reason apple did this that is technical.
.
Actually, I know they are faster because I know the architectures, the science, the physics and because I have done my own tests.
Not only are they faster, but when you buy Apple hardware you get it for less money than a comparable PC.
But I don't expect that to sway you-- this has been the case for most of the last decade: Macs are cheaper and faster than quality PCs (any computer that doesn't last a year isn't worth buying or comparing to.) So, either you know it by now, or you're keeping faith in your religious convictions despite objective reality.
Unbearably slow?
That's funny. Its certainly sluggish on my 9500, but then, that computer is so old its not even officially supported.
All these people complaining about the speed of OS X are just bashing it-- I doubt any of you have ever even installed it.
Let alone used it on modern hardware. I thought it was zippy before, with jaguar it became instantaneous.
Dragging this full window around (not outline as you get in "speedy OS 9" but full window, with greater than 60Hz updates to the window.)
Yeah, its unbearably slow. Sheesh. I've never seen an operating system that could do that, not windows, not OS 9, not nothing.
I've used the mac since pre-system 6. System 4, in fact.
I know CHI well.
You think your opinions and familiarity with Windows and PCs means that you can decide whats "good" and whats "bad" CHI.... and you're wrong.
Just another PC fanatic who is living in denial.
The Java version is the one I used. It is not buggy-- I thought I found a bug once, but an Apple engineer showed me that it worked, and he was right, it was my bug. It is not undocumented-- I had no trouble learning it and everything I looked for I found documentation for (still do)..
as for indistinguishable in the market, clearly you have never used it, nor have you used the "competitive" offerings.
But then, what do I expect from someone who's nick is "antijava".
The Mac just isn't that flexible in that regard.
BZZT. Quite wrong. Here we have an OS where you can extend operating system objects without access to the source code. Think NSSTring doesn't do something you want it to? Want it to give you an FSSpec from the string? Write a category. This is more powerful than subclassing-- all my NSStrings inherit the ability in my code everywhere, whether they are subclasses or not.
Or is that too powerful for you? you meant the command line? Well, you got that too, right there at your fingertips. And everything you could want to do you can get at that way.
But you also have plist viewer. All the switches and settings in the OS are in XML plists, just open them in the viewer (or whatever parser you want) and flip bits to your hearts content.
NOTHING has been dumbed down in this OS. A good ui has been provided to make easy interaction (And if you're smart, you value this-- cause smart people value their time. It has nothing to do with making it usable by idiots).... yet all the power and glory is still there too if you want to use it.
Not to mention the best development environment I've ever seen in 20 years of programming (including stints at microsoft, dozens of startups, Java, C, fortran, Lisp, etc. etc.)
This is just yet another of the Mac Myths (like "Macs are more expensive", "Macs are slower", "Macs aren't upgradeable" -- "Macs are for dumb people")
Right, because apple should give away its work for free.
How is releasing a dozen free bug fixes and a major upgrade and then charging for the next upgrade "nickel and diming"? You just want your software for free. Fine. Don't upgrade.
But don't expect us to buy the idea that apple is money grubbing... they are delivering great value for the money they are charging. Jaguar has improvements all over the place, most of which weren't mentioned in the keynote.
Then don't upgrade. Nevermind that printer and scanner support has been improved in 10.2. Never mind that mostly the lack of support you see is from the people who made the product not providing drivers, not APPLE's fault.
Sheesh.
ITs worth bringing up Quicktime.
Quicktime is a file format, a libarary to work with the format, and a collection of codecs, most of whom are owned by other companies.
Apple has done all it can for quicktime-- its given it away to the world for free as an open standard as part of MP4. Granted they didn't adopt it wholesale, but all of apples engineering work for the Quicktime file format was given to MP4 and is available to everyone who wants to implement the standard. How can an open source advocate complain about that?
That Apple doesn't give away other people's codecs (That they HAVE TO PAY FOR) for other competing operating systems is not surprising. You expect apple to pay $5-$20 for every linux install that it gives codecs away for? And its not like its a simple port either-- the codecs on PowerPC are altivec optimized, so it would take significant work.
Yes, they PAY to have quicktime on Windows, and there's a strategic reason for that. But apple not choosing to subsidize your operating system is not in any shape "evil"
Thank you for providing a reasonable response. Most people would rant about how apple hardware is so expensive (it isn't, it's actually cheaper), but instead you indicated you like to build your machines yourself. While there are people who hack around with apple hardware, it is a lot less common than it is in the PC world.
As to the full price upgrades, I really don't think this is as bad as people think. Yes, you never pay upgrade costs with Linux, and in that sense the comparison works. However, the speed of new features and capabilities being added to Linux is much slower than OS X. (which is interesting from a philosophical basis-- more developers, but slower innovation. Part of this is the open source nature, but part of this is how well OS X is designed and how easy it is to implement new stuff on it.)
But apple's upgrading policy is much better than the other commercial OS- windows, which gives you less, charges more and is far more restrictive about how and where you install the upgrade.
For instance, just one of the things Jaguar added for $129 was the capabilities that previously you had to pay $150 for separately from another company (in the area of networking.)
Not everyone will use those capabilities, but everyone in a mixed Mac windows environment will, and even if that isn't worth the money to you- there are dozens of other features-- when commercial MP3 players cost $40 or so, getting one free adds $40 to the value of the OS for me.
And if it STILL isn't worth it, then wait 6 months and get it a lot cheaper... or get the next free update.
But, from my business perspective, the value apple delivers in their machines and their OS far exceeds the costs when compared to Linux and Windows. I do not have cash to burn, for the time spent configuring PCs is counted as a cost-- you have time to burn, but not cash. Even so, I am getting-- for MY USES-- more value for less money than if I went with Windows or Linux.
Unfortunately, this value is hard to quantify and varies from situation to situation.
I just want to assure you that there are those of us who are very skinflint who run Macs because it SAVES us significant amounts of money.
But then, we're also people for whom the ability to tweak our hardware isn't has high priority as getting other things done. But that doesn't mean we have cash to burn.
In fact, I'll even go a step further. I would run the MacOS tommorrow if I didn't have to pay through my nose to do it
Great! Then prepare to switch next time you upgrade your computer.
Since Apple hardware has been consistently cheaper and faster when compared to quality Intel machines, then when you're ready to retire the computer you've got now, make the switch. It will cost you less and you'll get more.
Of course, there are trolls who think a 2GHz processor is twice as fast as a 1GHz processor (talk about marketing suckers!) but we both know that performance is more than that, and the PowerPC architecture and apple hardware, has it in spades.
So, welcome to the Mac family.
Back in the late 90s I was an engineer on MS Works at Microsoft.
The reason MS Works doesn't come out for the Mac is because Apple Works kicked its butt.
Microsoft tried and tried to compete against Apple in this segment, but was completely unable to.
So, they stopped selling MS Works for the Mac. Not that I'm surprised, after that experience, now I *know* why MS products suck.
As with anything, though, people choose to see this as a failing of the Mac and not Microsoft.
But on a level playing field, Microsoft lost. (which actually happens regularly if you know the industry.)
It works fine in OS X, its just not supported on that model.
It could be for a number of reasons- a software issue, memory issue, of a hardware design compromise that was necessary to save costs on the iBook.
The idea that apple deliberately disabled it seems paranoid... but it certainly works on OS X on machines that do support it.
What more consistent and responsive and well designed gui is there than Aqua? I've never seen one that comes anywhere close in usability, speed, and quality.
And each release gets faster, Jaguar is a hardware upgrade in a box. The UI speed is amazing.
Oh, and the "%150" claim about PC prices-- that's funny. Apparently, you've not priced a PC lately, or you think a 2GHz processor is twice as fast as a 1GHz processor.
It gets tireing hearing all these complaints about apple from people who either don't understand the technology or are just making stuff up. Apple is kicking ass in all the areas you complain about... wtf?