I think "price" may have had something to do with this as well. $10,000 vs. $3,000. IBM machines with OS/2, MicroChannel, etc. were expensive vs. a PC's Limited, Compaq as well.
Exactly. Those features don't come for free. You have to pay for them somehow. It's not like OS vendors don't know how to implement those features, you learn them in any standard operating system course.
MS didn't get those features into their consumer OS until XP, and even then it didn't come for free. They lost backwards compatibility, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much in 2002 as it did in 1995.
Apple couldn't integrate them into the Mac OS because the old management was stupid- they wanted engineers to do it without an API change; engineers said they could do it preserving 90% of the API. When Steve came to Apple, they implemented the 90% solution, which became Carbon. OS X wasn't needed; Apple could have shipped Copland/Gershwin with Carbon, but old Apple management was stupid and didn't listen to their engineers. Steve knew NeXT needed a procedural API (NeXT's bigggest tech drawback was being OO only, as was BeOS's), and as such Carbon became a primary requirement for the new OS.
The same company that didn't offer a preemptive, protected multitasking OS until OS X
Wrong. The Apple Lisa had a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS with protected memory, but the hardware cost too much (the Motorola 68k in particular had a paging bug at the time that required them to use their own MMU). The Lisa was $10K in 1983. The Mac didn't have those features (and a lot more), and was $3K in 1984. The Mac won in the marketplace over the Lisa, therefore it can be argued that co-operative multi-tasking and a simple memory model are better.
After all, if pre-emptive multi-tasking and protected memory are so important, everyone would have used OS/2 instead of Windows 3.1.
This just smacks of Darwin. But, Darwin doesn't try to contort existing tools to work in a new infrastructure; old (ignorant) stuff can do whatever it's used to, new stuff and can work in the new model, and take all the advantages of such.
So there are two directory structures in Darwin./usr,/etc,/var, etc, and the structure that's designed to work with dynamically loaded bundles through the CFBundle API.
In short, a bundle is not a file. A bundle is an organized directory of files. It contains executables (one executable for each platform the bundle is compiled for, PPC-code in the MacOS directory, x86 in the Windows directory), localized resources (in Resources, Resources/en, etc), and meta info explaining what kind of bundle the directory is (in an xml file in the root of the bundle, describing it as a application, startup item, kernel extension, app plugin, framework (shared lib & headers), etc), and more.
There's not much point of messing up the traditional Unix file system layout. It works, and it's perfectly serviceable. Simplicity is a virtue, and Darwin does use it for very core uses (ie. first stage of booting and single-user mode). The bundle-based file system layout is something like this (I'm adding/Local, which was in Rhapsody, but merged into / in Darwin for simplicity and to avoid confusing users).
/Local /Network /System
So,/Local contains dynamically loadable resources on the local machine,/Network are things on the network,/System are things that are only part of the operating system. When you do a 'global' search for a resource, the search path is to search for resources in $HOME, then/Local, then/Network, then finally/System.
Within a bundle tree (tree, domain, whatever they're called,/Local,/Network, etc), there's a typical layout. Here's an example of/Local (/ in Darwin),
/Applications /Users - can have/Network/Users as well /Library
Naturally,/Applications would contain executable bundles that are GUI applications. Think about this for a moment. This is a simplified example/implementation, but if the user wants to launch the application associated with 'http:', the OS would first look in $HOME/Applications, then/Local/Applications, then/Network/Applications, then/System/Applications. Cool huh? (Again, that's simplified. Actual application finding is handled by Launch Services; applications can be stored anywhere on the hard drive. But this is part of the search criteria.)./Applications is the bundle counterpart for GUI 'bin'. For actual command-line tools, Darwin does use/usr/bin, but Apple also uses Tools for some of its Developer package extras (and this is not handled by Launch Services, put blah/Tools in your $PATH in your zshrc. Unix acts like Unix.).
/Library is more interesting. Let's take a look at a part of my/Local/Library, rather than giving examples (use your imagination, I'm getting tired of typing),
Application Support - folders like Microsoft, Adobe, for app-specific resources. Often in $HOME
Audio
Caches
ColorSync
Contextual Menu Items
Filesystems - ftp.fs, hfs.fs, msdos.fs, udf.fs, ufs.fs, all are bundles. These ones are actually in/System
Fonts
Frameworks - these are bundles that equate to/usr/lib AND corresponding
I mean really can any of them make a series without having to have some sort of sexual innuendo or put girls in compromising positions.
It's Japan. They have different moral values. We don't live in one big culture. Live with it. But keep reading, I've got more to say that might interest you.
Firstly, I haven't seen a lot of anime, as I'm fairly selective and only watch the good stuff. But of those I've seen I haven't had a problem with the sexuality, and that includes Love Hina (although I found the bouncing boobies in the original Gundam Seed opening a bit much. But hey, I'm a legs man). I even watched a couple of episodes of GTO at a local anime club. Meh. It helped that there was an interview with the series creator before the showing; it allowed me to see the intelligence behind all the "perverted" stuff going on.
Artists explore taboo in their artwork. We've been doing it forever, and that's part of what makes art interesting. It doesn't mean that the artists are pervs/murderers, it's just an expression, it's art. Live with it, it helps make the world go round.
I don't find the anime's exploration of sexuality offensive. But I do find Hollywood's obbsession with violence very offensive. I generally steer away from action movies, but I've watched a few. Die Harder was great. Assassins was excellent (though not popular).
But there was one movie, I don't remember the name anymore, some Snipes flick (you know, typical "ONE MAN must SAVE US ALL"), where the gore was just over the top. The setting wasn't a gory movie, he was an agent of some kind, and, while violence was expected, gushing blood and having the bad guys get killed by steel beams smashing through their windshield and heads, and their car exploding, while Snipes looks back with a "serves them right" face, is just too fucking sickening. Everything in the movie was like that. Shit like that just gets rated R, where it's basically a porno of action movies.
And why was Assassins not popular? The common cry was, there was not enough killing. I, who did not care for such things, thought it was fantastic. Cool and calculated, moody, with character development - something rarely found in the cookie-cutter characters of today's Hollywood movies. Perhaps the movie was not that great; I was young then and my tastes have grown. But lamenting it because there was not enough killing is stupid, but obviously, that was what the market wants. And assassins don't kill people left and right, they take targets down one at a time. You're not going to find a lot of blood in such a movie.
Some artists in a culture are not as smart as others. Some, while in a culture that loves watching violence, will end up making crap like that Snipes movie. Some, in a culture that finds sexuality taboo, will make perverted crap.
The Japanese created Street Fighter. In response, Americans created Mortal Kombat, which was very popular in North America (heh, more dull wombat. ah, the memories. I hated that game, too offensive). Japanese like boobies. Americans like blood. Which is better? You can't honestly answer that.
I was at the Anime Expo in New York last summer (which was during the premiere of Cowboy Bebop:TM) and was in the Q&A session with the director Shinchiro Watanbe and the music composer Yoko Kanno (and the character designer, forgot his name. Side note: I was in the same room with Yoko Kanno! woot!)
The name was changed because it conflicted with Bob Dylan's song name. That's all. Rather than coming up with some other original title, Mr. Watanabe decided to use "The Movie."
I've found anime to be the best medium for story telling. Books are great, they can tell any story, but they can't show it to you. Live action stuff is limited to special effects (and going more and more to CG, which is just animation). If you can imagine it, you can animate it.
I personally didn't like Princess Mononoke or find Akira very interesting. If I were to introduce someone to anime, I'd do it through Cowboy Bebop. It's original, it's gritty, it's funny, and it looks and sounds gorgeous.
Go rent (or just buy) the first DVD of Cowboy Bebop, and watch the whole disk. It'll really open your eyes to what story telling can really be.
AND NEVER WATCH A DUB. Japanese productions like Cowboy Bebop are done by the best directors and the best voice actors in the country. When they bring it over here, it's released by a much smaller company for a niche market. They get low-talent, no-name actors and directors who try to Americanize the production, or try to put they're own creative skills into it (these are different than what the Japanese director intended, and these American directors are no-names for a reason).
Jerry Pournelle has written the best article I've read so far on the subject. He's a guy whose actually gotten funding for his ideas (the DC-X) and has good insight into what Americans should be doing with their space program.
The X-series (discounting the dumb X-33/34, and I use dumb lightly) were a smashing formula for success, and they were the blueprint for the process of getting man on the moon. Pournelle says we need a similar project to focus on building a space ship. Haven't you always wanted a space ship?:)
Troll? What dingbat modded this as a troll? I'm guessing it's related to this,
People claim ease of use, when they have no idea what ease of use is. I see Mac users bickering about why their platform is so hot, and all their arguments are just childish rants. They sound like the old DOS supporters, praising their choice without having any real arguments. Exactly what you said.
Think moderators, think. I'm not saying all Mac users, just the snot-nozed idiots who rank things on VersionTracker and such. You know, the whiny childish ones who give us a bad name. The ones that we're embarresed about.
Dude, I used my last mod point on you, and I'm a Mac user.
Your right. I'm not a psychologist, but I've always noticed the brand-loyalty, cognitive dissonace thingy. It goes both ways actually, not just Mac users but Windows users too. That's why Mac v DOS wars have gone on for so long.
And those wars were SOOO stupid! I mean seriously, no DOS box is competition for any Mac. But DOS users kept coming up with reasons that their hard earned money that they put into their box (no computer was cheap back then) was worth it, and better than a Mac.
I've been a Mac user for a very, very long time. And as computers got more popular and, accordingly, Macs have gotten more popular, I've been more and more embarrased to be a Mac user. It seems as the price of Macs dipped below the $3000 range stupider people started coming into the fray.
People claim ease of use, when they have no idea what ease of use is. I see Mac users bickering about why their platform is so hot, and all their arguments are just childish rants. They sound like the old DOS supporters, praising their choice without having any real arguments. Exactly what you said.
(It was also painful to see Macworld, once a prestigous publication headed by Jerry Borrell, turn into the waste of paper that it is today. They used to talk about cutting edge computing issues with a Mac focus, now they tell you how to upload a website to your iDisk.)
Anyway, I don't defend my choice of using a Mac because of cognitive dissonance. I use Macs because they are better to use. Years of using Macs has made me very proficient and, hell, bonded to them, and it would be worse to switch to Windows because I can't use a winbox like a Mac.
Some people are (pardon the term) too stupid to use a computer. In that case, it may be better that they use Windows, since they can get help from just about anyone. Unless if I know them personally, in which case I can teach them to use a Mac and be damn proud of it!
If you have a choice of buying a Mac + having a friend support you, and buying a PC + having a friend support you, the Mac is usually the better choice.
rant off. I think that was a rant. Yeah, definitely a rant.
* Forget tcsh and get bash [sourceforge.net], copy it to/bin, add it to/etc/shells, and change root's shell and your shell.
Yes, forget tcsh but there's no reason to get bash. OS X comes with zsh built in. Rather than chaning your login shell (which is still good for when you log in remotely), tell Terminal to exec/bin/zsh in Terminal's Preferences. Otherwise it calls login(), which is pretty slow.
Zsh is the successor to ksh, and, generally speaking, kicks butt. Put 'setopt automenu; setopt autocd; setopt autolist;' in your ~/.zshrc file and you will be happy.
* Forget sudo and enable root access (I forget how, I don't have an OS X box in front of me), then use su.
sudo passwd root
Put your own pictures in, er, somewhere in your home directory (don't remember where) so the screen saver can display them in its slide show.
Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?
Don't buy RAM from Apple; it's way overpriced (like double). A local Mac dealer will sell you RAM for a fair price. You can probably get a better price from other (non-Mac) dealers, but you have to pay attention to what you're buying, rather than saying "QuickSilver. Gimmie RAM." The stock configs come with 256 MB which is comfortable, but an extra 512 MB from a local dealer doesn't cost much if you want to add it in.
Go for megahertz!!! The baseline machines (800 MHz) do NOT have an L3 cache. This is a huge deal, because the G4s they're using only have 256 K on-chip (1:1 speed) L2 cache. That's tiny for a RISC architecture. The other G4s have 2 MB L3 caches, which is a huge gain. I remember an Apple hardware guy (I was at MWNY when the QuickSilvers were released) saying that a G4 with 2 MB of L3 cache can encode MPEG-2 entirely in cache RAM. Apple even boasts the effectiveness on their main PowerMac page.
That said, the original G4/733 (first Superdrive) had 1 MB L3 cache. The next G4/733 (QuickSilver low-end) had none. The QuickSilver may have been a lot cheaper, but a lot slower too:P
At this point, you've missed most of the promotions the Apple Store has had (cash back on G4s and discounted display bundles; Firefly hard drives for free), as they expired at the beginning of this month. You may as well wait until Macworld, and get the old stock at blow-out prices if they do announce anything new.
If you really want speed (and feel the need to geek-out), go for an Xserve. They have the fastest hardware available (such as memory design; DDR ram, whereas the current G4s only have DDR L3 caches). The downside is expandability (# of expansion cards you can shove in the box). Mount it under your desk:)
Um, this is off-topic, but I guess I'm in a ranting mood.
IMHO, what really killed the NeXT systems was lack of software, which was in turn driven by their use of Objective-C. Obj-C was a great language, but it wasn't what anyone else used: Mac and Windows folks were committed to C and C++ by that time
That's a horrible argument. At this point in my reply, I'll just say it's wrong.
NeXT failed* for the same reason that Be failed. Well, Be failed ultimately because they engaged themselves with a war with MS, instead of trying to make their technology work. They're technology failed (was not adopted) because the only API they had was C++. And that API was just a knock-off of OpenStep anyway (try comparing them sometime). Be was too stupid to learn from NeXT's mistakes; they just copied them outright (Wee, a wonderful new gui, an object oriented api. That's what NeXT brought to the table). For some reason, they thought C++ was a good idea. C++ is never a good idea:) They did worse than NeXT did; at least enterprise found NeXT's Objective-C-based software tools useful.
NeXT and Be failed because they didn't bring procedural APIs to the table. It's like those dorks on slashdot who keep saying 'Office is on OS X! It can come to Linux now!!'. OS X has apps coming to the table because of Carbon, a procedural API. It has nothing to do with BSD or Cocoa (or NeXT).
It's a pain in the ass, if not impossible, to graft one object oriented API on top of another. Try porting some Java code to the BeOS, or to Cocoa (without using Cocoa's Java support). Java receives button clicks differently than the other frameworks. You need to be able to tell Java (or whatever OOP framework your code came from) that you got a button click. This is easy to do with a procedural API like Carbon. In Cocoa, you'd have to let NSButton tell you it's been pressed, and somehow pass that off to... whatever replacement you have for Java's event stuff; because you won't have that Java button anymore (any code that wanted to access that Java button is garbage; with Carbon you can simulate that Java button).
The main diff is that OO-frameworks give you already built objects. Procedural APIs give you raw materials. You can rebuild your car with raw materials, but you can't rebuild your inline-6 engine from an inline-4 that someone handed you.
This is why the original Rhapsody project was killed. It was f'n stupid. Office, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc would have to be rewritten from scratch. From scratch, not a port. I remember reading a MacTech article about bringing your apps to the Be OS. The main tip was, "if you're app is already factored into back-end, and front-end parts, it's easy to port to the BeOS! Just throw out your front-end code and write it again! Otherwise you're SOL."
*NeXT probably would not have failed if they had pursued WebObjects. But that didn't happen. Apple didn't pursue it either, which was really stupid.
When people design stuff, they don't design it with health in mind. That's why we've wound up with safety regulations and agencies to back them up. You can't go by manufacturer's claims and expect that by following their rules you're going to be healthier—more often than not they just want to sell you their crappy product by using a marketing gimmick.
An ergonomic keyboard alone won't help; you have to put your whole body into it. Pay attention to your neck and how far your mouse is, how straight your back is, etc. It may seem obvious, but it doesn't come into habit without effort. It's very helpful if you have a chair, desk, and monitor well suited to this. It's actually better if the monitor is low and pointing up at your face, and you keep your head pointing forward but your eyes looking down. It's less stress on your eyes.
Now how many companies make setups like this? You have to pay a pretty penny to get a perfect setup for yourself. It's much cheaper to make unhealthy stuff:) Especially when there's research involved into making healthy products.
Another good example is Dvorak vs. Qwerty. Dvorak is awesome. If you have pain in your arms, try learning Dvorak. It's pretty easy to learn and very efficient; you don't have to move your fingers very much to type. Most of the vowels are under your left finger tips, and must of the stuff you combine them with is under your right. You rarely have to hit keys below the home keys. But no one's going to teach it to you, and no one's going to sell your favorite keyboard in the Dvorak layout.
IMO, Apple's Adjustable Keyboard (the funky one that split) was the best. The best feature was the fact that the numeric keypad wasn't on the main keyboard (it was a separate ADB device) so you didn't have to reach so far to use your mouse. (heh, since I've started using USB macs, I have this nasty habit of smashing my mouse into the corner of my keyboard. I don't have a mousepad to keep me in check.). Mircosoft's ergo keyboard is bloody huge. I wish more people would sell small keyboards. I only need the numeric keypad for games. BTW, I actually had to give that keyboard to my brother who was developing a pretty bad RSI. He's better now that he uses that keyboard instead of a normal one.
It's actually healthier to use your left hand to control the mouse, so you don't have to stretch over the keypad (you lucky left-handed people you). It takes a bit of getting used to, of course.
Try this. Go to a mirror, and check the height of your shoulders. Chances are your right shoulder (for people who use the mouse on the right side) is much lower than your left shoulder. If you raise it to match you'll feel a bit of pain. The problem's probably worse if you drive a standard transmission car:P Good habits can prevent problems like that. You can apparently fix this by keeping your shoulders up (helpful to give your elbows support from a chair that has adjustable armrests).
I've always wondered why Superman's cape flows so nicely when he flies. I'd expect it to twist into a cord flying behind. I mean, does he fart a lot or something? That would explain how his flight works too. There is an official explanation for his flying ability, but it doesn't explain the cape thing.
This is not intended as "fart humor." It's just the only plausible explanation that I can think of. Really.
"I wonder if anyone is masochistic enough to attempt run an old 68xxx application in emulation mode in OS9 while running that under classic mode in OSX:"
I just couldn't let this one pass by unchallenged. My first Mac was a Quadra 700 and the software I used then was WriteNow (68K Assembly ), FoxBase+ (68K) and I added
Cyberdog as a browser with OS 8 on my PM6500
Oh yeah?? You think that's cool?!
Try 1984's MacPaint running on OS X! I got it working on my 5-slot G4:)
I'd put up a screenshot but I don't want my server to get slashdotted (or slash-nibbled). Let's just say that it works, but MacPaint isn't 32-bit clean, so it's a bit f'd up.
I've tried the bugger on every new piece of hardware I've gotten over the years. I felt a little bummed out when Apple dropped support for 24-bit addressing:P
Notebooks are crap. They have the worst possible ROI. You pay the extra money for a cute portable system, that's a bitch to upgrade and a fixed video system.
Back in '95, our family bought a 7200/90. The next year I bought a PB 1400/117 (first rev). They were at par with each other (601 vs 603e). Then we put an L2 cache in the 7200. Holy shit. And now it's hosting several GB of HD space. My PowerBook is still stuck with it's 740 MB HD and 32 MB of RAM; and I'm not spending a dime to upgrade those. The battery's dead, and that bugger itself is too expensive. Who wants to work on a 117 Mhz PPC with no L2 cache? The 7200 still runs Office and we use it daily.
Two years later, my bro bought a PB G3/233 (Wallstreet). Damn nice. Same price as my PowerBook, whose performance was going in the gutter. We also bought a Beige G3/233 MT that year.
The MT is still running; 256 MB of RAM, Rage 128 and a 400 MHz G3. It's got USB too now. My bro's PowerBook is pretty much stuck with its initial config (more ram, better HD- but still a slow notebook HD). It's not a fraction of the machine that the MT is.
Notebooks cost more, they use non-standard, fragile, expensive parts, and they last two years if you're lucky. This is standard fair.
Macs last longer than PCs, huh?
That 7 year old 7200/90 is chugging along just fine. My Powerbook makes a very pretty doorstop (it's got one of them BookCover things; I put a Craig Mullin's Oni painting-printout in there).
Notebooks are great if your company pays for one. Hell, it's a win-win for companies, take your work home with you! Do it on the train! In the airport! Otherwise they suck.
Well, Googling "comic store" brought up anotheruniverse.com. They have the second print of the first issue and you can probably get the second issue when it comes out.
It's got zsh. FreeBSD doesn't come with bash either.
No Vim
It's got Emacs, which FreeBSD does not out-of-the-box. I'm not one to miss vim:)
That's not a complete list, of course. Basically, what I've found is that if I sit down and try to use OS X to develop Unix programs, I run into lots of little things where it is just not as good as Linux.
Duh. You've been using Linux for quite some time, you would say that you're more comfortable with Linux. For example, I can't stand bash. I love zsh. In fact, I feel like I can't even type when I'm using any other shell. I've used FreeBSD and OS X side by side for, well, exactly a year now I guess. I'm very comfortable on both; actually more comfortable with OS X because it comes with industrial strength development, debugging and profiling tools. libMallocDebug! out-of-the-box! You can't beat that!
OS X's BSD layer is a bit old (no localtime_r, and other _r functions). I'd much rather use FreeBSD for servers. But I'm more than comfortable enough to develop Unix stuff on it! The code I write is intended for FreeBSD, but I tend to make it OS X compatible (using #ifdefs and the like where needed) just so I can get the superior development experience.
And sure Terminal may not be as good as KDE's term. But hey, I've used aterm on FreeBSD. Terminal kicks the crap out of that. And that doesn't mean that FreeBSD 'loses' to most Linux distributions.
Well, I guess if it really was one of those 'of course' things, I wouldn't be responding, would I?:-)
Users know only one thing. "I want this." This doesn't just apply to software, it applies to any industry, from cars, services, whatever. Users only know what they want, and they typically want the stupidest stuff.
It takes people who understand the problem domain and the issues involved to actually make solutions work. This is why joe-6-pack doesn't make solutions. When they do, they make Homer's Car.
They've committed several 'crimes' on their wishlist. The most prominent is that they used Outlook as a launching point. Good god. Outlook shouldn't be a launching point for anything, especially a Dream Email-PIM system.
Besides that (I'll admit that I've got several grudges with Outlook), they've ignored problems with scalability and configurability. It's easy to dictate "I want this here, and it should do this," but it's much harder to decide how it's supposed to adapt to varying amounts of data and user workflows. The split email view is bad on so many counts- it makes showing subjects and dates harder, and what if you have 5 email accounts (such as I do) that you need to monitor? It just doesn't work. You need a better solution.
And there's the whole issue of feature bloat. I'd say reviewers are fairly savvy with the software they use (if not, they don't deserve their job). But a new users (and many not-so-new users; basically whenever anyone encounters something outside of their knowledge domain, which anything that they're not used to working on) have to take a blind eye to 90% of the features of feature-bloated software. It's information overload; so much that the new user doesn't know where to start, or what half of those things are useful for.
It's just the 90/10 rule; 90% of the work is done by 10% of the code- or interface. Don't put the rest of the 90% of the interface up front, it's just not useful.
For people born and bread on Microsoft Office, it would be hard to picture another way of working. But it's not for those people to decide; it's up to the user interface designers to make those decisions and come up with appropriate solutions.
That's the most important factor when writing software. Most programmers and managers (and reviewers) completely miss that fact, and we all end up working with complicated (== $$ on training), inefficient (== $$ on time), feature-rich software designs (== $$ for MS and people who support it, like that NT sys admin at work you love so much) that don't help the user.
UI designers exist for a good reason. Good ones understand their problem domain better than anyone else, and are best suited to make solutions for it. To get anyone else to do the job is akin to putting non-tech people in charge of digital copyright laws. It just doesn't make sense.
nowadays there are other CODECs like On2's VP5 which kick the snot out of Sorenson
Hmm. I haven't used On2 in a while, but Sorenson 3 really is the good stuff, the best I've seen so far. I've been really amazed at what it's capable of; 600x400-ish video at 200 k/s, that does NOT look compressed, at all. This is with the free encoder without using Media Cleaner.
Sorenson 2 isn't much competition for anything anymore.
I'd think in the future, Sorenson 3 will be more like the high-quality versions of the Qdesign codec- kicks the crap out of the MPEG solution, but more proprietary (and no free high-quality encoders). You'll probably see movie trailers available in higher-quality, lower-bitrate versions next to MPEG-4 versions.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Those features don't come for free. You have to pay for them somehow. It's not like OS vendors don't know how to implement those features, you learn them in any standard operating system course.
MS didn't get those features into their consumer OS until XP, and even then it didn't come for free. They lost backwards compatibility, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much in 2002 as it did in 1995.
Apple couldn't integrate them into the Mac OS because the old management was stupid- they wanted engineers to do it without an API change; engineers said they could do it preserving 90% of the API. When Steve came to Apple, they implemented the 90% solution, which became Carbon. OS X wasn't needed; Apple could have shipped Copland/Gershwin with Carbon, but old Apple management was stupid and didn't listen to their engineers. Steve knew NeXT needed a procedural API (NeXT's bigggest tech drawback was being OO only, as was BeOS's), and as such Carbon became a primary requirement for the new OS.
Wrong. The Apple Lisa had a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS with protected memory, but the hardware cost too much (the Motorola 68k in particular had a paging bug at the time that required them to use their own MMU). The Lisa was $10K in 1983. The Mac didn't have those features (and a lot more), and was $3K in 1984. The Mac won in the marketplace over the Lisa, therefore it can be argued that co-operative multi-tasking and a simple memory model are better.
After all, if pre-emptive multi-tasking and protected memory are so important, everyone would have used OS/2 instead of Windows 3.1.
dork.
So there are two directory structures in Darwin. /usr, /etc, /var, etc, and the structure that's designed to work with dynamically loaded bundles through the CFBundle API.
In short, a bundle is not a file. A bundle is an organized directory of files. It contains executables (one executable for each platform the bundle is compiled for, PPC-code in the MacOS directory, x86 in the Windows directory), localized resources (in Resources, Resources/en, etc), and meta info explaining what kind of bundle the directory is (in an xml file in the root of the bundle, describing it as a application, startup item, kernel extension, app plugin, framework (shared lib & headers), etc), and more.
There's not much point of messing up the traditional Unix file system layout. It works, and it's perfectly serviceable. Simplicity is a virtue, and Darwin does use it for very core uses (ie. first stage of booting and single-user mode). The bundle-based file system layout is something like this (I'm adding /Local, which was in Rhapsody, but merged into / in Darwin for simplicity and to avoid confusing users).
So, /Local contains dynamically loadable resources on the local machine, /Network are things on the network, /System are things that are only part of the operating system. When you do a 'global' search for a resource, the search path is to search for resources in $HOME, then /Local, then /Network, then finally /System.
Within a bundle tree (tree, domain, whatever they're called, /Local, /Network, etc), there's a typical layout. Here's an example of /Local (/ in Darwin),
Naturally, /Applications would contain executable bundles that are GUI applications. Think about this for a moment. This is a simplified example/implementation, but if the user wants to launch the application associated with 'http:', the OS would first look in $HOME/Applications, then /Local/Applications, then /Network/Applications, then /System/Applications. Cool huh? (Again, that's simplified. Actual application finding is handled by Launch Services; applications can be stored anywhere on the hard drive. But this is part of the search criteria.). /Applications is the bundle counterpart for GUI 'bin'. For actual command-line tools, Darwin does use /usr/bin, but Apple also uses Tools for some of its Developer package extras (and this is not handled by Launch Services, put blah/Tools in your $PATH in your zshrc. Unix acts like Unix.).
Application Support - folders like Microsoft, Adobe, for app-specific resources. Often in $HOME /System /usr/lib AND corresponding
Audio
Caches
ColorSync
Contextual Menu Items
Filesystems - ftp.fs, hfs.fs, msdos.fs, udf.fs, ufs.fs, all are bundles. These ones are actually in
Fonts
Frameworks - these are bundles that equate to
It's Japan. They have different moral values. We don't live in one big culture. Live with it. But keep reading, I've got more to say that might interest you.
Firstly, I haven't seen a lot of anime, as I'm fairly selective and only watch the good stuff. But of those I've seen I haven't had a problem with the sexuality, and that includes Love Hina (although I found the bouncing boobies in the original Gundam Seed opening a bit much. But hey, I'm a legs man). I even watched a couple of episodes of GTO at a local anime club. Meh. It helped that there was an interview with the series creator before the showing; it allowed me to see the intelligence behind all the "perverted" stuff going on.
Artists explore taboo in their artwork. We've been doing it forever, and that's part of what makes art interesting. It doesn't mean that the artists are pervs/murderers, it's just an expression, it's art. Live with it, it helps make the world go round.
I don't find the anime's exploration of sexuality offensive. But I do find Hollywood's obbsession with violence very offensive. I generally steer away from action movies, but I've watched a few. Die Harder was great. Assassins was excellent (though not popular).
But there was one movie, I don't remember the name anymore, some Snipes flick (you know, typical "ONE MAN must SAVE US ALL"), where the gore was just over the top. The setting wasn't a gory movie, he was an agent of some kind, and, while violence was expected, gushing blood and having the bad guys get killed by steel beams smashing through their windshield and heads, and their car exploding, while Snipes looks back with a "serves them right" face, is just too fucking sickening. Everything in the movie was like that. Shit like that just gets rated R, where it's basically a porno of action movies.
And why was Assassins not popular? The common cry was, there was not enough killing. I, who did not care for such things, thought it was fantastic. Cool and calculated, moody, with character development - something rarely found in the cookie-cutter characters of today's Hollywood movies. Perhaps the movie was not that great; I was young then and my tastes have grown. But lamenting it because there was not enough killing is stupid, but obviously, that was what the market wants. And assassins don't kill people left and right, they take targets down one at a time. You're not going to find a lot of blood in such a movie.
Some artists in a culture are not as smart as others. Some, while in a culture that loves watching violence, will end up making crap like that Snipes movie. Some, in a culture that finds sexuality taboo, will make perverted crap.
The Japanese created Street Fighter. In response, Americans created Mortal Kombat, which was very popular in North America (heh, more dull wombat. ah, the memories. I hated that game, too offensive). Japanese like boobies. Americans like blood. Which is better? You can't honestly answer that.
I was at the Anime Expo in New York last summer (which was during the premiere of Cowboy Bebop:TM) and was in the Q&A session with the director Shinchiro Watanbe and the music composer Yoko Kanno (and the character designer, forgot his name. Side note: I was in the same room with Yoko Kanno! woot!)
The name was changed because it conflicted with Bob Dylan's song name. That's all. Rather than coming up with some other original title, Mr. Watanabe decided to use "The Movie."
I've found anime to be the best medium for story telling. Books are great, they can tell any story, but they can't show it to you. Live action stuff is limited to special effects (and going more and more to CG, which is just animation). If you can imagine it, you can animate it.
I personally didn't like Princess Mononoke or find Akira very interesting. If I were to introduce someone to anime, I'd do it through Cowboy Bebop. It's original, it's gritty, it's funny, and it looks and sounds gorgeous.
Go rent (or just buy) the first DVD of Cowboy Bebop, and watch the whole disk. It'll really open your eyes to what story telling can really be.
AND NEVER WATCH A DUB. Japanese productions like Cowboy Bebop are done by the best directors and the best voice actors in the country. When they bring it over here, it's released by a much smaller company for a niche market. They get low-talent, no-name actors and directors who try to Americanize the production, or try to put they're own creative skills into it (these are different than what the Japanese director intended, and these American directors are no-names for a reason).
The X-series (discounting the dumb X-33/34, and I use dumb lightly) were a smashing formula for success, and they were the blueprint for the process of getting man on the moon. Pournelle says we need a similar project to focus on building a space ship. Haven't you always wanted a space ship? :)
Cameron's not doing this one. He's only credited to coming up with the characters. This movie is purely milking the cash cow.
On the plus side, those Terminator box sets should be going cheap now. I think I'll pick one up.
People claim ease of use, when they have no idea what ease of use is. I see Mac users bickering about why their platform is so hot, and all their arguments are just childish rants. They sound like the old DOS supporters, praising their choice without having any real arguments. Exactly what you said.
Think moderators, think. I'm not saying all Mac users, just the snot-nozed idiots who rank things on VersionTracker and such. You know, the whiny childish ones who give us a bad name. The ones that we're embarresed about.
Get it? Good. Back to dinner...
Your right. I'm not a psychologist, but I've always noticed the brand-loyalty, cognitive dissonace thingy. It goes both ways actually, not just Mac users but Windows users too. That's why Mac v DOS wars have gone on for so long.
And those wars were SOOO stupid! I mean seriously, no DOS box is competition for any Mac. But DOS users kept coming up with reasons that their hard earned money that they put into their box (no computer was cheap back then) was worth it, and better than a Mac.
I've been a Mac user for a very, very long time. And as computers got more popular and, accordingly, Macs have gotten more popular, I've been more and more embarrased to be a Mac user. It seems as the price of Macs dipped below the $3000 range stupider people started coming into the fray.
People claim ease of use, when they have no idea what ease of use is. I see Mac users bickering about why their platform is so hot, and all their arguments are just childish rants. They sound like the old DOS supporters, praising their choice without having any real arguments. Exactly what you said.
(It was also painful to see Macworld, once a prestigous publication headed by Jerry Borrell, turn into the waste of paper that it is today. They used to talk about cutting edge computing issues with a Mac focus, now they tell you how to upload a website to your iDisk.)
Anyway, I don't defend my choice of using a Mac because of cognitive dissonance. I use Macs because they are better to use. Years of using Macs has made me very proficient and, hell, bonded to them, and it would be worse to switch to Windows because I can't use a winbox like a Mac.
Some people are (pardon the term) too stupid to use a computer. In that case, it may be better that they use Windows, since they can get help from just about anyone. Unless if I know them personally, in which case I can teach them to use a Mac and be damn proud of it!
If you have a choice of buying a Mac + having a friend support you, and buying a PC + having a friend support you, the Mac is usually the better choice.
rant off. I think that was a rant. Yeah, definitely a rant.
Yes, forget tcsh but there's no reason to get bash. OS X comes with zsh built in. Rather than chaning your login shell (which is still good for when you log in remotely), tell Terminal to exec /bin/zsh in Terminal's Preferences. Otherwise it calls login(), which is pretty slow.
Zsh is the successor to ksh, and, generally speaking, kicks butt. Put 'setopt automenu; setopt autocd; setopt autolist;' in your ~/.zshrc file and you will be happy.
* Forget sudo and enable root access (I forget how, I don't have an OS X box in front of me), then use su.
sudo passwd root
Put your own pictures in, er, somewhere in your home directory (don't remember where) so the screen saver can display them in its slide show.
That would be ~/Pictures.
Don't buy RAM from Apple; it's way overpriced (like double). A local Mac dealer will sell you RAM for a fair price. You can probably get a better price from other (non-Mac) dealers, but you have to pay attention to what you're buying, rather than saying "QuickSilver. Gimmie RAM." The stock configs come with 256 MB which is comfortable, but an extra 512 MB from a local dealer doesn't cost much if you want to add it in.
Go for megahertz!!! The baseline machines (800 MHz) do NOT have an L3 cache. This is a huge deal, because the G4s they're using only have 256 K on-chip (1:1 speed) L2 cache. That's tiny for a RISC architecture. The other G4s have 2 MB L3 caches, which is a huge gain. I remember an Apple hardware guy (I was at MWNY when the QuickSilvers were released) saying that a G4 with 2 MB of L3 cache can encode MPEG-2 entirely in cache RAM. Apple even boasts the effectiveness on their main PowerMac page.
That said, the original G4/733 (first Superdrive) had 1 MB L3 cache. The next G4/733 (QuickSilver low-end) had none. The QuickSilver may have been a lot cheaper, but a lot slower too :P
At this point, you've missed most of the promotions the Apple Store has had (cash back on G4s and discounted display bundles; Firefly hard drives for free), as they expired at the beginning of this month. You may as well wait until Macworld, and get the old stock at blow-out prices if they do announce anything new.
If you really want speed (and feel the need to geek-out), go for an Xserve. They have the fastest hardware available (such as memory design; DDR ram, whereas the current G4s only have DDR L3 caches). The downside is expandability (# of expansion cards you can shove in the box). Mount it under your desk :)
IMHO, what really killed the NeXT systems was lack of software, which was in turn driven by their use of Objective-C. Obj-C was a great language, but it wasn't what anyone else used: Mac and Windows folks were committed to C and C++ by that time
That's a horrible argument. At this point in my reply, I'll just say it's wrong.
NeXT failed* for the same reason that Be failed. Well, Be failed ultimately because they engaged themselves with a war with MS, instead of trying to make their technology work. They're technology failed (was not adopted) because the only API they had was C++. And that API was just a knock-off of OpenStep anyway (try comparing them sometime). Be was too stupid to learn from NeXT's mistakes; they just copied them outright (Wee, a wonderful new gui, an object oriented api. That's what NeXT brought to the table). For some reason, they thought C++ was a good idea. C++ is never a good idea :) They did worse than NeXT did; at least enterprise found NeXT's Objective-C-based software tools useful.
NeXT and Be failed because they didn't bring procedural APIs to the table. It's like those dorks on slashdot who keep saying 'Office is on OS X! It can come to Linux now!!'. OS X has apps coming to the table because of Carbon, a procedural API. It has nothing to do with BSD or Cocoa (or NeXT).
It's a pain in the ass, if not impossible, to graft one object oriented API on top of another. Try porting some Java code to the BeOS, or to Cocoa (without using Cocoa's Java support). Java receives button clicks differently than the other frameworks. You need to be able to tell Java (or whatever OOP framework your code came from) that you got a button click. This is easy to do with a procedural API like Carbon. In Cocoa, you'd have to let NSButton tell you it's been pressed, and somehow pass that off to... whatever replacement you have for Java's event stuff; because you won't have that Java button anymore (any code that wanted to access that Java button is garbage; with Carbon you can simulate that Java button).
The main diff is that OO-frameworks give you already built objects. Procedural APIs give you raw materials. You can rebuild your car with raw materials, but you can't rebuild your inline-6 engine from an inline-4 that someone handed you.
This is why the original Rhapsody project was killed. It was f'n stupid. Office, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc would have to be rewritten from scratch. From scratch, not a port. I remember reading a MacTech article about bringing your apps to the Be OS. The main tip was, "if you're app is already factored into back-end, and front-end parts, it's easy to port to the BeOS! Just throw out your front-end code and write it again! Otherwise you're SOL."
*NeXT probably would not have failed if they had pursued WebObjects. But that didn't happen. Apple didn't pursue it either, which was really stupid.
The article says,
The common standard also will solve such business issues as digital rights management and payment, officials said.
It's down at the bottom. You know, so no one will notice it.
</paranoia>
An ergonomic keyboard alone won't help; you have to put your whole body into it. Pay attention to your neck and how far your mouse is, how straight your back is, etc. It may seem obvious, but it doesn't come into habit without effort. It's very helpful if you have a chair, desk, and monitor well suited to this. It's actually better if the monitor is low and pointing up at your face, and you keep your head pointing forward but your eyes looking down. It's less stress on your eyes.
Now how many companies make setups like this? You have to pay a pretty penny to get a perfect setup for yourself. It's much cheaper to make unhealthy stuff :) Especially when there's research involved into making healthy products.
Another good example is Dvorak vs. Qwerty. Dvorak is awesome. If you have pain in your arms, try learning Dvorak. It's pretty easy to learn and very efficient; you don't have to move your fingers very much to type. Most of the vowels are under your left finger tips, and must of the stuff you combine them with is under your right. You rarely have to hit keys below the home keys. But no one's going to teach it to you, and no one's going to sell your favorite keyboard in the Dvorak layout.
IMO, Apple's Adjustable Keyboard (the funky one that split) was the best. The best feature was the fact that the numeric keypad wasn't on the main keyboard (it was a separate ADB device) so you didn't have to reach so far to use your mouse. (heh, since I've started using USB macs, I have this nasty habit of smashing my mouse into the corner of my keyboard. I don't have a mousepad to keep me in check.). Mircosoft's ergo keyboard is bloody huge. I wish more people would sell small keyboards. I only need the numeric keypad for games. BTW, I actually had to give that keyboard to my brother who was developing a pretty bad RSI. He's better now that he uses that keyboard instead of a normal one.
It's actually healthier to use your left hand to control the mouse, so you don't have to stretch over the keypad (you lucky left-handed people you). It takes a bit of getting used to, of course.
Try this. Go to a mirror, and check the height of your shoulders. Chances are your right shoulder (for people who use the mouse on the right side) is much lower than your left shoulder. If you raise it to match you'll feel a bit of pain. The problem's probably worse if you drive a standard transmission car :P Good habits can prevent problems like that. You can apparently fix this by keeping your shoulders up (helpful to give your elbows support from a chair that has adjustable armrests).
This is not intended as "fart humor." It's just the only plausible explanation that I can think of. Really.
I just couldn't let this one pass by unchallenged. My first Mac was a Quadra 700 and the software I used then was WriteNow (68K Assembly ), FoxBase+ (68K) and I added Cyberdog as a browser with OS 8 on my PM6500 Oh yeah?? You think that's cool?!
Try 1984's MacPaint running on OS X! I got it working on my 5-slot G4 :)
I'd put up a screenshot but I don't want my server to get slashdotted (or slash-nibbled). Let's just say that it works, but MacPaint isn't 32-bit clean, so it's a bit f'd up.
I've tried the bugger on every new piece of hardware I've gotten over the years. I felt a little bummed out when Apple dropped support for 24-bit addressing :P
Heh, you're a slow learner, aren't you?
Notebooks are crap. They have the worst possible ROI. You pay the extra money for a cute portable system, that's a bitch to upgrade and a fixed video system.
Back in '95, our family bought a 7200/90. The next year I bought a PB 1400/117 (first rev). They were at par with each other (601 vs 603e). Then we put an L2 cache in the 7200. Holy shit. And now it's hosting several GB of HD space. My PowerBook is still stuck with it's 740 MB HD and 32 MB of RAM; and I'm not spending a dime to upgrade those. The battery's dead, and that bugger itself is too expensive. Who wants to work on a 117 Mhz PPC with no L2 cache? The 7200 still runs Office and we use it daily.
Two years later, my bro bought a PB G3/233 (Wallstreet). Damn nice. Same price as my PowerBook, whose performance was going in the gutter. We also bought a Beige G3/233 MT that year.
The MT is still running; 256 MB of RAM, Rage 128 and a 400 MHz G3. It's got USB too now. My bro's PowerBook is pretty much stuck with its initial config (more ram, better HD- but still a slow notebook HD). It's not a fraction of the machine that the MT is.
Notebooks cost more, they use non-standard, fragile, expensive parts, and they last two years if you're lucky. This is standard fair.
Macs last longer than PCs, huh?
That 7 year old 7200/90 is chugging along just fine. My Powerbook makes a very pretty doorstop (it's got one of them BookCover things; I put a Craig Mullin's Oni painting-printout in there).
Notebooks are great if your company pays for one. Hell, it's a win-win for companies, take your work home with you! Do it on the train! In the airport! Otherwise they suck.
yet i'm still tempted to buy an ibook.
The first issue is long sold out (poor you, it was really, really good); the second issue should be out next week.
When I grow up, I want to go to Internet University!
(sorry)
It's got zsh. FreeBSD doesn't come with bash either.
No Vim
It's got Emacs, which FreeBSD does not out-of-the-box. I'm not one to miss vim :)
That's not a complete list, of course. Basically, what I've found is that if I sit down and try to use OS X to develop Unix programs, I run into lots of little things where it is just not as good as Linux.
Duh. You've been using Linux for quite some time, you would say that you're more comfortable with Linux. For example, I can't stand bash. I love zsh. In fact, I feel like I can't even type when I'm using any other shell. I've used FreeBSD and OS X side by side for, well, exactly a year now I guess. I'm very comfortable on both; actually more comfortable with OS X because it comes with industrial strength development, debugging and profiling tools. libMallocDebug! out-of-the-box! You can't beat that!
OS X's BSD layer is a bit old (no localtime_r, and other _r functions). I'd much rather use FreeBSD for servers. But I'm more than comfortable enough to develop Unix stuff on it! The code I write is intended for FreeBSD, but I tend to make it OS X compatible (using #ifdefs and the like where needed) just so I can get the superior development experience.
And sure Terminal may not be as good as KDE's term. But hey, I've used aterm on FreeBSD. Terminal kicks the crap out of that. And that doesn't mean that FreeBSD 'loses' to most Linux distributions.
Of course not.
Well, I guess if it really was one of those 'of course' things, I wouldn't be responding, would I? :-)
Users know only one thing. "I want this." This doesn't just apply to software, it applies to any industry, from cars, services, whatever. Users only know what they want, and they typically want the stupidest stuff.
It takes people who understand the problem domain and the issues involved to actually make solutions work. This is why joe-6-pack doesn't make solutions. When they do, they make Homer's Car.
They've committed several 'crimes' on their wishlist. The most prominent is that they used Outlook as a launching point. Good god. Outlook shouldn't be a launching point for anything, especially a Dream Email-PIM system.
Besides that (I'll admit that I've got several grudges with Outlook), they've ignored problems with scalability and configurability. It's easy to dictate "I want this here, and it should do this," but it's much harder to decide how it's supposed to adapt to varying amounts of data and user workflows. The split email view is bad on so many counts- it makes showing subjects and dates harder, and what if you have 5 email accounts (such as I do) that you need to monitor? It just doesn't work. You need a better solution.
And there's the whole issue of feature bloat. I'd say reviewers are fairly savvy with the software they use (if not, they don't deserve their job). But a new users (and many not-so-new users; basically whenever anyone encounters something outside of their knowledge domain, which anything that they're not used to working on) have to take a blind eye to 90% of the features of feature-bloated software. It's information overload; so much that the new user doesn't know where to start, or what half of those things are useful for.
It's just the 90/10 rule; 90% of the work is done by 10% of the code- or interface. Don't put the rest of the 90% of the interface up front, it's just not useful.
For people born and bread on Microsoft Office, it would be hard to picture another way of working. But it's not for those people to decide; it's up to the user interface designers to make those decisions and come up with appropriate solutions.
That's the most important factor when writing software. Most programmers and managers (and reviewers) completely miss that fact, and we all end up working with complicated (== $$ on training), inefficient (== $$ on time), feature-rich software designs (== $$ for MS and people who support it, like that NT sys admin at work you love so much) that don't help the user.
UI designers exist for a good reason. Good ones understand their problem domain better than anyone else, and are best suited to make solutions for it. To get anyone else to do the job is akin to putting non-tech people in charge of digital copyright laws. It just doesn't make sense.
Hmm. I haven't used On2 in a while, but Sorenson 3 really is the good stuff, the best I've seen so far. I've been really amazed at what it's capable of; 600x400-ish video at 200 k/s, that does NOT look compressed, at all. This is with the free encoder without using Media Cleaner.
Sorenson 2 isn't much competition for anything anymore.
I'd think in the future, Sorenson 3 will be more like the high-quality versions of the Qdesign codec- kicks the crap out of the MPEG solution, but more proprietary (and no free high-quality encoders). You'll probably see movie trailers available in higher-quality, lower-bitrate versions next to MPEG-4 versions.