Apple isn't that huge, and doesn't appear to be doing anything that could be construed as unfair play. If Mac OS X is detrimental to Linux, it will only be because people view it as a better product. The way to fix that is pretty straightforward, even if actually doing it will take some work: make Linux better.
Competition with a really polished desktop Unix OS can only help Linux in the long run. Although OS X will likely do quite nice things for Apple's market share, I seriously doubt that everyone is going to abandon x86 hardware, or that OS X will be ported to such hardware any time soon. This means there's still going to be a huge potential market for Linux, and being able to learn from OS X will be of much help in the battle against Windows.
It is a completely different product, developed by a completely different development team, based in a completely different state. It just happens to be able to read the same file format. Saying it takes the Mac version a few months to catch up doesn't really make any sense. Some features come to the Mac version first, some come to the Windows version first. New versions aren't supposed to be synchronized in any way.
[entropy:~] znu% uname -a
Darwin entropy 1.4 Darwin Kernel Version 1.4: Sun Sep 9 15:39:59 PDT 2001; root:xnu/xnu-201.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
[entropy:~] znu% java -version
java version "1.3.1"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1-root-010902-18:51)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.1, mixed mode)
The largest Java app I've tried is LimeWire. But improvements over 10.0.x seem to be significant.
The developer tools are a free download from Apple (you have to sign up for a free developer account). I'm sure the new OS 10.1 tools will show up there soon.
Office for OS X isn't shipping until November, so there's no way to know. But there are rumors that Microsoft will post a free preview version of Word v.X today.
Mac OS versions going back at least as far as 8.0 can mount AppleShare volumes over TCP/IP, and 9.0 and later can serve AppleShare over TCP/IP. So can netatalk+asun, which I run on my NetBSD box.
Nope. It's pretty damn speedy on my 400 MHz G3 and my iBook 2001. True, these machines have 512 MB and 256 MB of RAM, respectively, but RAM is so cheap these days....
The current Firewire spec only supports cables of about 15ft between devices, which isn't exactly ideal for networking. And anyway, why would you use 400Mbps Firewire (or 800, which is what the first implementations of 1394b will actually be) for this when the G4 towers have Gb ethernet on the logicboard?
Apple's current Firewire implementation isn't on the PCI bus, so I doubt any future implementation would be. And Apple has joined the HyperTransport consortium.
The Ports system is great on non-x86 hardware. I run NetBSD on an old Power Mac. It used to run Linux (various distros). I frequently cound't find pre-compiled stuff, and compiling myself often failed. I've yet to have any installation via the Ports system fail on me.
This probably isn't such a big deal for routine things, but there are some cases where there are just a small handful of doctors who can perform a certain procedure properly. They can't spend all their time flying around the world, and the patients aren't always in good traveling condition. Once this technology reaches maturity, you'll be able to get treatment from any specialist you need at any hospital. Remember, these machines will keep getting cheaper. Doctors, if anything, get more expensive.
This is a very, very funny post in the context of a discussion about digital video. You clearly lack anything resembling a clue. Apple is one of the major backers of MPEG-4 and one of the major contributors to the standard. The MPEG-4 file format is, in fact, based on QuickTime's. QuickTime and Apple's open source streaming server will no doubt fully support MPEG-4 before too long. And I'm sure they'll really support it, unlike some of the half-assed attempts we've seen. Final Cut Pro is making serious inroads into the low-end and mid-range (read: under $25K) of the video editing market. Throw in iMovie and DVD Studio Pro, and Apple is doing more interesting things with digital video than any other single company I can think of.
(Oh, and I doubt Apple Expo was canceled for the reason you give; the most recent Macworld Expo set attendance records. Again.)
Well, Apple, at least, is a major supporter of MPEG-4, and contributed quite a few important things to the standard. So QuickTime support is a sure thing, and Apple's Darwin Streaming Server (which has been ported to just about every remotely relevant server platform on the market) will provide a nice open source solution for MPEG-4 content streaming.
Now, if only Real and Microsoft can be talked into supporting MPEG-4, maybe I won't need to have 3 media players anymore.... Anyone know what these guys are planning?
This doesn't require the printer to have wireless networking. It just requires a laptop with wireless networking and a wireless wired bridge somewhere on the LAN. 802.11 is a much better choice for this.
This Bluetooth solution is more relevant in the home, where there may not be a wired LAN. But even there, 802.11 is probably a much better choice for all the devices involved, especially as multiple computers in the home become more common. Bluetooth is far too limited to replace a wired LAN. Are you really going to use it to transfer files between your computers, share your broadband connection, etc.? And if you're already using 802.11 between all your computers, isn't it convenient to be able to use it with your other devices too?
Illustrator, Quark 5 and Office will not be Cocoa applications. Most major Mac OS X apps will be Carbon apps, because it's much easier to move existing Mac apps to Carbon. Perhaps major new apps will be written in Cocoa, but major new apps don't come along all that often.
GNUStep is still a pretty big deal. This is a kick-ass API. Assuming the open source equivalents of Interface Builder and Project Builder can match or beat the Apple tools, GNUStep will be the absolute best way to develop Linux applications.
I use OmniWeb in Mac OS X. It has options to disable pop-up windows totally (without disabling JavaScript) and to disable pop-ups except in direct response to a user click. Its ad blocking is also pretty effective. It even gets those huge Flash ads that places like CNET are using now.
But I agree that things are getting a bit absurd. Legitimate mainstream commercial web sites are now opening pop-up windows that have gone beyond being mere ads: they're actually loading up other web sites!
The secret at small font sizes is 'hinting', as someone else pointed out. See patent USUS5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. This is a patent granted to Apple in 1992. (Apple and Microsoft cross-license a bunch of patents related to TrueType, IIRC.)
The "text" "Welcome to Apple" at the top is not really text - it is part of a graphic that uses color and grayscale. The characters appear smoother than regular Mac or PC text. Note where it says "What's Hot". It looks much smoother than the regular html text in the headline below it, even though it is about the same size.
Not in OmniWeb in OS X it doesn't; everything is beautifully anti-aliased. Which brings up an interesting point: not all anti-aliasing is created equal. This is very noticeable in OS X, which (for legacy reasons) actually has two different algorithms for it. Loading up the same page in IE (which uses QuickDraw) and OmniWeb (which uses CoreGraphics) makes the differences obvious. So, how good is the GTK anti-aliasing? Anyone got a screenshot?
Try this. I'd really like to see more integration between the GUI and the CLI though. OS X does a few nice things, like letting you drag a file into a terminal to insert a path, and letting you pipe to the clipboard so you can just paste into a GUI program. But that doesn't really go far enough. I'd like a field in every file manager window where I can type CLI commands and have them executed in that directory. There should be a few extra commands too, so I could do things like 'select *.zip' to select all the.zip files in the window.
Calling OS X "hard to program" is just kooky. It has one of the nicest development environments ever created, and all the tools are free. Don't waste your time with Cocoa/Java. Cocoa still works much better with Obj-C. And if you're still complaining about speed, you obviously missed all that stuff about 10.1, due in September. Folks playing around with developer builds report that speed problems are totally gone.
Apple has a rather bad habit of introducing a very competitive machine and then not bothering to update it until it's quite uncompetitive. The best time to buy is right after introduction. There are rumors about new TiPBs in the late September time frame.
Re:1-button mice suck, and other thoughts on Mac
on
Mac Rants
·
· Score: 2
Did you read the GNOME usability study posted here a while ago? Average users, even after years of computer use, still have lots of trouble with two button mice. Not including one is still the right choice -- if you want one, go buy any USB mouse and plug it in. OS X has native support for multi-button mice, and even scroll wheels, although that's a bit incomplete and buggy still.
As for games, OS X has Quake 3, Alice, The Sims, Tony Hawk 2, and a bunch of other stuff. Not bad for a 4 month old OS.
Apple shouldn't bother attacking the 'MHz gap'
on
Mac Rants
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Trying to declare that your machine isn't really slower isn't very productive, even if it's true. First, it isn't something most users will ever hear about, or understand. Second, it's just far too easy to rig the game in your favor, so performance claims by either side become pretty worthless. But third, and most importantly, performance just doesn't matter anymore to the vast majority of users. Everything out there is more than fast enough. Nobody (almost) buys a car based on top speed; most people don't even buy based on engine power -- people buy cars based on design, comfort, handling, safety, gas mileage, extra features, etc.
Apple clearly wants people to buy computers the same way. The great industrial design and things like iMovie, iTunes and OS X, with its stunning user interface, make this clear. Apple wants people to buy based on user experience, and on what they, as non-geeks, can do with their computers. Sure, it's possible to edit digital video on a Wintel machine. But is it as easy as iMovie? The capability is worthless to an average user if it's too difficult to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup:
[entropy:/dev] znu% sw_vers
ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.1
BuildVersion: 5G64
[entropy:/dev] znu% ls | grep random
random
urandom
Apple isn't that huge, and doesn't appear to be doing anything that could be construed as unfair play. If Mac OS X is detrimental to Linux, it will only be because people view it as a better product. The way to fix that is pretty straightforward, even if actually doing it will take some work: make Linux better.
Competition with a really polished desktop Unix OS can only help Linux in the long run. Although OS X will likely do quite nice things for Apple's market share, I seriously doubt that everyone is going to abandon x86 hardware, or that OS X will be ported to such hardware any time soon. This means there's still going to be a huge potential market for Linux, and being able to learn from OS X will be of much help in the battle against Windows.
It is a completely different product, developed by a completely different development team, based in a completely different state. It just happens to be able to read the same file format. Saying it takes the Mac version a few months to catch up doesn't really make any sense. Some features come to the Mac version first, some come to the Windows version first. New versions aren't supposed to be synchronized in any way.
[entropy:~] znu% uname -a
Darwin entropy 1.4 Darwin Kernel Version 1.4: Sun Sep 9 15:39:59 PDT 2001; root:xnu/xnu-201.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
[entropy:~] znu% java -version
java version "1.3.1"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1-root-010902-18:51)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.1, mixed mode)
The largest Java app I've tried is LimeWire. But improvements over 10.0.x seem to be significant.
The developer tools are a free download from Apple (you have to sign up for a free developer account). I'm sure the new OS 10.1 tools will show up there soon.
Office for OS X isn't shipping until November, so there's no way to know. But there are rumors that Microsoft will post a free preview version of Word v.X today.
Mac OS versions going back at least as far as 8.0 can mount AppleShare volumes over TCP/IP, and 9.0 and later can serve AppleShare over TCP/IP. So can netatalk+asun, which I run on my NetBSD box.
Nope. It's pretty damn speedy on my 400 MHz G3 and my iBook 2001. True, these machines have 512 MB and 256 MB of RAM, respectively, but RAM is so cheap these days....
The current Firewire spec only supports cables of about 15ft between devices, which isn't exactly ideal for networking. And anyway, why would you use 400Mbps Firewire (or 800, which is what the first implementations of 1394b will actually be) for this when the G4 towers have Gb ethernet on the logicboard?
Apple's current Firewire implementation isn't on the PCI bus, so I doubt any future implementation would be. And Apple has joined the HyperTransport consortium.
The Ports system is great on non-x86 hardware. I run NetBSD on an old Power Mac. It used to run Linux (various distros). I frequently cound't find pre-compiled stuff, and compiling myself often failed. I've yet to have any installation via the Ports system fail on me.
This probably isn't such a big deal for routine things, but there are some cases where there are just a small handful of doctors who can perform a certain procedure properly. They can't spend all their time flying around the world, and the patients aren't always in good traveling condition. Once this technology reaches maturity, you'll be able to get treatment from any specialist you need at any hospital. Remember, these machines will keep getting cheaper. Doctors, if anything, get more expensive.
This is a very, very funny post in the context of a discussion about digital video. You clearly lack anything resembling a clue. Apple is one of the major backers of MPEG-4 and one of the major contributors to the standard. The MPEG-4 file format is, in fact, based on QuickTime's. QuickTime and Apple's open source streaming server will no doubt fully support MPEG-4 before too long. And I'm sure they'll really support it, unlike some of the half-assed attempts we've seen. Final Cut Pro is making serious inroads into the low-end and mid-range (read: under $25K) of the video editing market. Throw in iMovie and DVD Studio Pro, and Apple is doing more interesting things with digital video than any other single company I can think of.
(Oh, and I doubt Apple Expo was canceled for the reason you give; the most recent Macworld Expo set attendance records. Again.)
Well, Apple, at least, is a major supporter of MPEG-4, and contributed quite a few important things to the standard. So QuickTime support is a sure thing, and Apple's Darwin Streaming Server (which has been ported to just about every remotely relevant server platform on the market) will provide a nice open source solution for MPEG-4 content streaming.
Now, if only Real and Microsoft can be talked into supporting MPEG-4, maybe I won't need to have 3 media players anymore.... Anyone know what these guys are planning?
This doesn't require the printer to have wireless networking. It just requires a laptop with wireless networking and a wireless wired bridge somewhere on the LAN. 802.11 is a much better choice for this.
This Bluetooth solution is more relevant in the home, where there may not be a wired LAN. But even there, 802.11 is probably a much better choice for all the devices involved, especially as multiple computers in the home become more common. Bluetooth is far too limited to replace a wired LAN. Are you really going to use it to transfer files between your computers, share your broadband connection, etc.? And if you're already using 802.11 between all your computers, isn't it convenient to be able to use it with your other devices too?
Illustrator, Quark 5 and Office will not be Cocoa applications. Most major Mac OS X apps will be Carbon apps, because it's much easier to move existing Mac apps to Carbon. Perhaps major new apps will be written in Cocoa, but major new apps don't come along all that often.
GNUStep is still a pretty big deal. This is a kick-ass API. Assuming the open source equivalents of Interface Builder and Project Builder can match or beat the Apple tools, GNUStep will be the absolute best way to develop Linux applications.
I use OmniWeb in Mac OS X. It has options to disable pop-up windows totally (without disabling JavaScript) and to disable pop-ups except in direct response to a user click. Its ad blocking is also pretty effective. It even gets those huge Flash ads that places like CNET are using now.
But I agree that things are getting a bit absurd. Legitimate mainstream commercial web sites are now opening pop-up windows that have gone beyond being mere ads: they're actually loading up other web sites!
The secret at small font sizes is 'hinting', as someone else pointed out. See patent USUS5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices. This is a patent granted to Apple in 1992. (Apple and Microsoft cross-license a bunch of patents related to TrueType, IIRC.)
The "text" "Welcome to Apple" at the top is not really text - it is part of a graphic that uses color and grayscale. The characters appear smoother than regular Mac or PC text. Note where it says "What's Hot". It looks much smoother than the regular html text in the headline below it, even though it is about the same size.
Not in OmniWeb in OS X it doesn't; everything is beautifully anti-aliased. Which brings up an interesting point: not all anti-aliasing is created equal. This is very noticeable in OS X, which (for legacy reasons) actually has two different algorithms for it. Loading up the same page in IE (which uses QuickDraw) and OmniWeb (which uses CoreGraphics) makes the differences obvious. So, how good is the GTK anti-aliasing? Anyone got a screenshot?
The G4 takes up around 30 times as much space and probably uses 8-10 times the power. The briQ is about the size of an internal 5.25" drive....
Try this. I'd really like to see more integration between the GUI and the CLI though. OS X does a few nice things, like letting you drag a file into a terminal to insert a path, and letting you pipe to the clipboard so you can just paste into a GUI program. But that doesn't really go far enough. I'd like a field in every file manager window where I can type CLI commands and have them executed in that directory. There should be a few extra commands too, so I could do things like 'select *.zip' to select all the .zip files in the window.
Calling OS X "hard to program" is just kooky. It has one of the nicest development environments ever created, and all the tools are free. Don't waste your time with Cocoa/Java. Cocoa still works much better with Obj-C. And if you're still complaining about speed, you obviously missed all that stuff about 10.1, due in September. Folks playing around with developer builds report that speed problems are totally gone.
Apple has a rather bad habit of introducing a very competitive machine and then not bothering to update it until it's quite uncompetitive. The best time to buy is right after introduction. There are rumors about new TiPBs in the late September time frame.
Did you read the GNOME usability study posted here a while ago? Average users, even after years of computer use, still have lots of trouble with two button mice. Not including one is still the right choice -- if you want one, go buy any USB mouse and plug it in. OS X has native support for multi-button mice, and even scroll wheels, although that's a bit incomplete and buggy still.
As for games, OS X has Quake 3, Alice, The Sims, Tony Hawk 2, and a bunch of other stuff. Not bad for a 4 month old OS.
Trying to declare that your machine isn't really slower isn't very productive, even if it's true. First, it isn't something most users will ever hear about, or understand. Second, it's just far too easy to rig the game in your favor, so performance claims by either side become pretty worthless. But third, and most importantly, performance just doesn't matter anymore to the vast majority of users. Everything out there is more than fast enough. Nobody (almost) buys a car based on top speed; most people don't even buy based on engine power -- people buy cars based on design, comfort, handling, safety, gas mileage, extra features, etc.
Apple clearly wants people to buy computers the same way. The great industrial design and things like iMovie, iTunes and OS X, with its stunning user interface, make this clear. Apple wants people to buy based on user experience, and on what they, as non-geeks, can do with their computers. Sure, it's possible to edit digital video on a Wintel machine. But is it as easy as iMovie? The capability is worthless to an average user if it's too difficult to use.