Why not just get one of the various multiple desktop programs for OSX. They are out there although I agree with all those who suggest Expose works better. Especially when you map the Expose controls to buttons 4 and 5 (assuming you have one of those nice Intellimice with the extra buttons)
Does Apple really have more zealots than Linux or Windows? I go read the Ars Battleground and tend to say "a pox on all your houses." Admittedly the Linux Zealots bug me the most. But still....
There are emulators for such things. I admit Strategic Conquest is my guilty pleasure.
But just doing a brief look around, I found a half dozen emulators. Some emulate the MacPlus through Mac SE for those really old games like The Ancient Art of War or Alice. Others emulate a Mac II or other class. Others yet emulate a PPC system up through Sys9. Others finally emulate a PPC running OSX. I'm sure more will pop up as time goes on.
But even beyond that, just keep your old system on the network doing odd chores via its Unix capabilities and use Timbukto or VNC to remote control your apps. I do that with my PC and it is wonderful.
It's ludicrous to 'blame' the demise of Be on anybody but Apple.
Well that and the astounding lack of productivity apps. Be's only hope for survival always was that Apple would buy them to replace the mess of an OS that the Mac had become. Fortunately Apple had some forethought, saw the lack of multiuser and other capabilities, and went with a Unix OS. Had they not Apple would be gone by now.
I still think that if Sun and Apple had successfully merged the way Apple went with NeXT and then IBM chips that Apple would have been way better off. As would Sun. But that successful was the big question. Realistically one has to credit Steve Jobs as the best thing Apple got from NeXT. Apple really was a mess back in 1995. And Sun didn't exactly handle Java well in the 90's.
What native OS/2 programs? The parallels really don't work. Apple has a pretty thriving developer community. OSX runs natively most Linux software. Apple has commitments from Adobe/Macromedia and Microsoft. Apple right now produces most of the best software on the Mac, many of which is as good if not better than PC equivalents. (Well Google's Picaso is better than iPhoto at the moment - although I prefer iPhoto) There are also a lot of excellent Mac only developers. This is a big opportunity for them, even if the altivec programmers are griping up a storm at the moment. The only losers may be game companies. And even there I say maybe. Further the OSX game situation never was that great. And I think the consoles are where the real game action is anyway.
That the P4 3.6Ghz Rosetta benchmarks outspec my Dual 800 G4. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.
Are we reading the same benchmarks? The ones I saw put the x86 Mac at 500 MHz G3 speeds. Your dual 800 should be significantly faster. (And it was a great machine - my first Mac since '94 was a dual 800. I just got a dual 2.5 G5 which I prefer to use to my Athalon box.
I think it really depends upon the type of code you are writing. In my experience the few times endian issues pop up they are easy to deal with. But for a lot of code it just doesn't matter.
UI issues are different. Further Window users seem more willing to put up with a poor UI than Mac users.
The flaw in OSX' approach is when applications do put files in/Library or ~/Library and don't provide a simple way to remove them. Many don't offer good uninstallers and even most uninstallers leave ~/Library/Preferences alone. This can cause trouble. There was a big thread about it over on Ars last week before the Intel announcement spread fear and excitement everywhere.
They both use Linux package management because they are ports of Linux software for those who need them. (BTW - many packages also come with Mac installers outside of Fink or Darwinports)
The point is though that most Mac software doesn't. And people complaining about bloatware in a day when we regularly download multimegabyte film trailers are living in an other world. I know many Linux users are using 10 year old technology, never pay for software, and likely live in their parent's basement. But many run newer software and recognize that for $100 they can get a 160 - 200 GB hard drive.
OS/2's problem was no free development tools, little native software all the while everyone was developing for Windows. Further it was very mismarketed.
Apple certainly can screw this one up. But anyone who has used OSX knows there is no shortage of software. And some of the best is from Apple. (FCP, iLife, iWork, DVDStudioPro, etc.) Likewise Adobe/Macromedia is porting their stuff. Microsoft is porting their stuff. Then there are the native developers like Omni with excellent software.
The OS/2 comparison really is a false one.
While Apple has made a few misteps UI wise with Tiger and has inconceivably left the Finder a UI problem it still is better than Windows and vastly superior to anything on Linux. If you compare it to the Sys9 "ideal" then it is different and annoying to people who want something closer to Sys9. However when you consider all the extra things it can do, the UI makes a lot of sense.
I certainly have gripes. But overall they've done a nice job and have thankfully avoided the "wizard handholding" and task oriented approach that Windows keeps moving towards.
The problem with commodity hardware are the higher level features than Darwin provides. i.e. CoreGraphics etc. There's also the issue of driver support.
I suspect some sturdy soul could try to write something like XonX. And, so long as you buy a legal copy of OSX, I'm sure Apple will make only perfunctory complaints. However I'd be surprised if some OpenSource team makes OSX run on most commodity hardware.
The biggest issue is really the SSE3.
The Intel systems won't be available until at least January if not March. So it's silly to wait. Second, the Intel boxes will be initial revisions with probably lots of small problems. I'd say go get a dual 2.0 G5. It's a very nice system and will last them a couple of years until the Intel and perhaps AMD systems are mature.
My memory of the transition was different. Apple did a surprisingly good job on it. Some programs didn't run, but they were mainly games or specialized utilities which were now redundant. Apple's real problems came from that silly "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft and then the release of Windows 95. That, combined with some spectacular crappiness of stability under Sys7 cost Apple their marketshare.
Some blamed the unstability on the 68K -> PPC transition. But really it was a ton of accumulated crud along with some spectacular missteps by Apple.
OK then the problem is the idiots on the planet who voted for an 18 year old girl to be their equivalent of President. No wonder they were easily taken over by a bunch of crappy droids. It's hard to feel too sorry for them.
I think the main reason is competition. When only one browser controls most of the market then new features (and bug fixes) dry up. More importantly people like choice. I hate IE, although I don't think it deserves the vitriol it sometimes get. But for a long time many sites didn't work well with my alternative browsers. (Firefox at work, Safari at home) But those other browsers having more marketshare then more people will pay attention to testing their sites better so that I can use my browser.
But I fully admit to not understanding the "hate Microsoft at any price." I think there is just a drive among some people to hate the leader. In computing that's been Microsoft. In MP3 players it's now Apple, and you hear a lot of that there. People ought just be able to pick the solution they like. So long as that's possible, who cares?
The best way to use Expose isn't with function keys but with buttons 3 and 4 on multibutton mice like Microsoft's. It really makes things a breeze. Especially drag and drop. I find the function keys much less fluid - sort of like using the keyboard equivalent for the second mouse button in OSX.
OSX has some 64bit extensions, but it isn't a 64 bit OS by any means. Even Tiger, which allows command line programs to be fully 64 bit won't allow applications utilizing graphics to be 64 bit. (Although I think X11 programs can be)
It's interesting as the HTML loaded fine for me - it was the images, especially on the iLife and iWork pages, that failed to load. Thus the problem was Akamai. (Interesting I noticed other sites unrelated to Apple having slow image loading during the period - possibly related?)
I'd just say that while I definitely prefer OSX to Windows, that Visual Studio is still head and shoulders above XCode in terms of development. I've been debugging a project the last month in XCode and there are so many small "gotcha's" that make debugging annoying. Most are small UI effects that ought to be trivial to fix. The fact that they aren't often makes me wonder if the XCode developers use XCode to debug or if they have used Visual Studio. (My secret suspicion is that they are all originally Unix developers with too much affinity for Emacs)
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Not only does BYU not offer a theology degree, but I believe Claremont College in now the big hotbed of LDS theology done academically.
You do know that polygamy is outlawed by the state constitution explicitly here. Right?
Why not just get one of the various multiple desktop programs for OSX. They are out there although I agree with all those who suggest Expose works better. Especially when you map the Expose controls to buttons 4 and 5 (assuming you have one of those nice Intellimice with the extra buttons)
Does Apple really have more zealots than Linux or Windows? I go read the Ars Battleground and tend to say "a pox on all your houses." Admittedly the Linux Zealots bug me the most. But still....
There are emulators for such things. I admit Strategic Conquest is my guilty pleasure.
But just doing a brief look around, I found a half dozen emulators. Some emulate the MacPlus through Mac SE for those really old games like The Ancient Art of War or Alice. Others emulate a Mac II or other class. Others yet emulate a PPC system up through Sys9. Others finally emulate a PPC running OSX. I'm sure more will pop up as time goes on.
But even beyond that, just keep your old system on the network doing odd chores via its Unix capabilities and use Timbukto or VNC to remote control your apps. I do that with my PC and it is wonderful.
It's ludicrous to 'blame' the demise of Be on anybody but Apple.
Well that and the astounding lack of productivity apps. Be's only hope for survival always was that Apple would buy them to replace the mess of an OS that the Mac had become. Fortunately Apple had some forethought, saw the lack of multiuser and other capabilities, and went with a Unix OS. Had they not Apple would be gone by now.
I still think that if Sun and Apple had successfully merged the way Apple went with NeXT and then IBM chips that Apple would have been way better off. As would Sun. But that successful was the big question. Realistically one has to credit Steve Jobs as the best thing Apple got from NeXT. Apple really was a mess back in 1995. And Sun didn't exactly handle Java well in the 90's.
What native OS/2 programs? The parallels really don't work. Apple has a pretty thriving developer community. OSX runs natively most Linux software. Apple has commitments from Adobe/Macromedia and Microsoft. Apple right now produces most of the best software on the Mac, many of which is as good if not better than PC equivalents. (Well Google's Picaso is better than iPhoto at the moment - although I prefer iPhoto) There are also a lot of excellent Mac only developers. This is a big opportunity for them, even if the altivec programmers are griping up a storm at the moment. The only losers may be game companies. And even there I say maybe. Further the OSX game situation never was that great. And I think the consoles are where the real game action is anyway.
That the P4 3.6Ghz Rosetta benchmarks outspec my Dual 800 G4. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.
Are we reading the same benchmarks? The ones I saw put the x86 Mac at 500 MHz G3 speeds. Your dual 800 should be significantly faster. (And it was a great machine - my first Mac since '94 was a dual 800. I just got a dual 2.5 G5 which I prefer to use to my Athalon box.
I think it really depends upon the type of code you are writing. In my experience the few times endian issues pop up they are easy to deal with. But for a lot of code it just doesn't matter. UI issues are different. Further Window users seem more willing to put up with a poor UI than Mac users.
The flaw in OSX' approach is when applications do put files in /Library or ~/Library and don't provide a simple way to remove them. Many don't offer good uninstallers and even most uninstallers leave ~/Library/Preferences alone. This can cause trouble. There was a big thread about it over on Ars last week before the Intel announcement spread fear and excitement everywhere.
They both use Linux package management because they are ports of Linux software for those who need them. (BTW - many packages also come with Mac installers outside of Fink or Darwinports)
The point is though that most Mac software doesn't. And people complaining about bloatware in a day when we regularly download multimegabyte film trailers are living in an other world. I know many Linux users are using 10 year old technology, never pay for software, and likely live in their parent's basement. But many run newer software and recognize that for $100 they can get a 160 - 200 GB hard drive.
OS/2's problem was no free development tools, little native software all the while everyone was developing for Windows. Further it was very mismarketed. Apple certainly can screw this one up. But anyone who has used OSX knows there is no shortage of software. And some of the best is from Apple. (FCP, iLife, iWork, DVDStudioPro, etc.) Likewise Adobe/Macromedia is porting their stuff. Microsoft is porting their stuff. Then there are the native developers like Omni with excellent software. The OS/2 comparison really is a false one.
While Apple has made a few misteps UI wise with Tiger and has inconceivably left the Finder a UI problem it still is better than Windows and vastly superior to anything on Linux. If you compare it to the Sys9 "ideal" then it is different and annoying to people who want something closer to Sys9. However when you consider all the extra things it can do, the UI makes a lot of sense. I certainly have gripes. But overall they've done a nice job and have thankfully avoided the "wizard handholding" and task oriented approach that Windows keeps moving towards.
The problem with commodity hardware are the higher level features than Darwin provides. i.e. CoreGraphics etc. There's also the issue of driver support. I suspect some sturdy soul could try to write something like XonX. And, so long as you buy a legal copy of OSX, I'm sure Apple will make only perfunctory complaints. However I'd be surprised if some OpenSource team makes OSX run on most commodity hardware. The biggest issue is really the SSE3.
The Intel systems won't be available until at least January if not March. So it's silly to wait. Second, the Intel boxes will be initial revisions with probably lots of small problems. I'd say go get a dual 2.0 G5. It's a very nice system and will last them a couple of years until the Intel and perhaps AMD systems are mature.
My memory of the transition was different. Apple did a surprisingly good job on it. Some programs didn't run, but they were mainly games or specialized utilities which were now redundant. Apple's real problems came from that silly "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft and then the release of Windows 95. That, combined with some spectacular crappiness of stability under Sys7 cost Apple their marketshare.
Some blamed the unstability on the 68K -> PPC transition. But really it was a ton of accumulated crud along with some spectacular missteps by Apple.
Somewhat silly question, but how does this affect Fink's port of anacron?
OK then the problem is the idiots on the planet who voted for an 18 year old girl to be their equivalent of President. No wonder they were easily taken over by a bunch of crappy droids. It's hard to feel too sorry for them.
I think the main reason is competition. When only one browser controls most of the market then new features (and bug fixes) dry up. More importantly people like choice. I hate IE, although I don't think it deserves the vitriol it sometimes get. But for a long time many sites didn't work well with my alternative browsers. (Firefox at work, Safari at home) But those other browsers having more marketshare then more people will pay attention to testing their sites better so that I can use my browser.
But I fully admit to not understanding the "hate Microsoft at any price." I think there is just a drive among some people to hate the leader. In computing that's been Microsoft. In MP3 players it's now Apple, and you hear a lot of that there. People ought just be able to pick the solution they like. So long as that's possible, who cares?
The best way to use Expose isn't with function keys but with buttons 3 and 4 on multibutton mice like Microsoft's. It really makes things a breeze. Especially drag and drop. I find the function keys much less fluid - sort of like using the keyboard equivalent for the second mouse button in OSX.
he just mentions that the bug has been present with no explanation as to how this was determined.
If you look closely, he wrote code for the bug on NeXTStep 3.3 and presumably ran it on an old box he had.
OSX has some 64bit extensions, but it isn't a 64 bit OS by any means. Even Tiger, which allows command line programs to be fully 64 bit won't allow applications utilizing graphics to be 64 bit. (Although I think X11 programs can be)
It's interesting as the HTML loaded fine for me - it was the images, especially on the iLife and iWork pages, that failed to load. Thus the problem was Akamai. (Interesting I noticed other sites unrelated to Apple having slow image loading during the period - possibly related?)
I'd just say that while I definitely prefer OSX to Windows, that Visual Studio is still head and shoulders above XCode in terms of development. I've been debugging a project the last month in XCode and there are so many small "gotcha's" that make debugging annoying. Most are small UI effects that ought to be trivial to fix. The fact that they aren't often makes me wonder if the XCode developers use XCode to debug or if they have used Visual Studio. (My secret suspicion is that they are all originally Unix developers with too much affinity for Emacs)