I had my best friend die a few weeks before I sold my house. It was a long torturous death that affected everyone around him terribly.
Am I entitled to my house back?
It's sad what happened in Adam Hinkleys life; however when it's all said & done he's responsible for his own decisions. To date he's refused any & all of that responsibility and indeed seems incapable of recognizing cause & effect, ownership & obligation.
It's all about Adam, all about what he wants, all about how he believes things should be run, never anything about anyone else.
Frankly while he may be a good coder he seems a tremendously (almost scarily) immature person and certainly not someone I can ever imagine wanting to be involved with professionally. Indeed I expect he has little to fear from investors & other such folks, he's clearly poison.
Before grinding your axe you might want to actually do a bit of research first. Apple didn't just reheat the Star & resell it cheaper, they developed a similar but different & far more usuable product.
I've used a Star, I've used a Lisa, & also the originial Mac (I'm a former Manager for The Computer Museum.)The Star was not particularly complete and was not particularly usuable. Apple's folks made a number of significent advances that GREATLY improved the concept & execution, not just fine-tuning but fundemental changes.
Finally it would all be just as much a myth that Xerox PARC invented all of this. Much of it had been floating around in academia for a while & Xerox PARC was notable for integrating & actually producing some working examples.
It's rare that ideas get invented whole-cloth by a single person or institution. Generally they're a product of a general zeitgeist and typically a widely held world-view of the future. The Xerox Star was just such a product as was the World-Wide-Web (Gopher & other protocols/tools had been evolving in this direction for awhile.)
First of all this has been covered on/. before: see Programmer Gagged.
Next a few things to ponder upon:
Note that most of this is from recollection. A number of online searches produced very little in the way of detail. I'd be very interested if someone could provide more material, reality-check my memory, etc.
Adam Hinkley sold the rights to his code. He did this without duress & in an apparently legal fashion. He took the money (ok, stock too.)
Later he disagreed with the direction the company who had bought his code was going. Fair enough, it's not unusual for an inventor/founder to become unhappy with the future course of their product, particularly when they've sold control of it.
However Hinkley's solution was to encrypt the source-code for the application & refuse to release it to those who had paid for it. Now I don't know about the rest of you but had I paid someone some large sum of money for the rights to a product then employed them under contract to extend the product I would expect it to be mine. Again Hinkley took the money.
Later (as I recall) it is discovered that Hinkley had apparently misappropriated OTHER code that he'd been previously hired to develop by a previous employer, renaming & reusing it without their permission.
I don't know how other folks view this but when most companies hire someone to write code they expect it to belong to them, not to wander out the door with the employee.
Generally this is clearly spelt out in the employment contract and yes generally the folks who paid for the code get to determine it's license, if any. Sure skills & techniques & code snippets & even architecture go with the employee but not the whole ball-of-wax, line by line to be used in another companies' product.
Yes Adam suffered some devastating personal events. However none of those have any direct bearing on his being compos mentis and signing contracts. At some point one has to take responsibility for one's decisions, for ill or for good.
Finally note that Adam did not do this all without advice. His father assisted him in the decisions, was involved in running his business, and they did hire lawyers to help write & review the legal instruments.
Adam had every opportunity to refuse to sign the paperwork, to demand things be put in writing, to simply not go ahead with the deal. However he didn't. He sold his product.
Frankly it all reads to me as a greedy young man who had a good idea, sold it, then when he realized he'd lost control regretted it & attempted to renege on his obligations. It's great that he was so committed to the product, a pity he'd sold away his control of it. That the courts have not backed him up is not surprising, he has shown little reason for them to do so.
What's the lesson to be learned from all of this?
Be legally smart.
Understand what one is getting into.
Realize that when something is sold it no longer belongs to you.
Understand that one can't later renounce contracts.
Accept that there are no legal 'outs' for personal disaster; distraction & grief are not sufficient to invalidate one's commitments.
Respect that if one is capable of signing a contract one is expected to honor that contract.
Take responsabilty for one's actions and fulfill ones obligations.
After Adam Hinkley sold his product to Hotline he was no longer it's owner. This was trivially clear beforehand whether he recognized it himself or not. That the company may have different goals & directions for Adam's product should have occurred to him earlier & provisions been made. Without those he was simply another employee with a valued position, a paycheck & a block of stock. To attempt to then hold material hostage in order dictate terms to the new owners was stupid & illegal. To attempt to remove the materials to another jurisdiction was even more stupid. That the legitimate owners of the material were forced to bring in the law & have a search made to return their property was sad but justified - the code was theirs as much as any other corporate asset, physical or intellectual.
Sob stories make for interesting reading but aren't particularly compelling. Perhaps next time Adam will have matured a bit & treat going into business with the seriousness it requires, respect the implications of signing a contract.
Again: note that most of this is from recollection. A number of online searches produced very little in the way of detail. I'd be very interested if someone could provide more material, reality-check my memory, etc.
Finally, here's the only source-material I could find:
HL Afterbirth.
The Xerox Star went for $25,00-$40,000 a station. The Lisa shipped for $10,000. Early Macs cost $4,000 (yeah those little toaster-Macs.) Since you couldn't buy the OS separately from the hardware the costs can't be broken out.
Just for comparison my originial IBM XT cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 too (in early-80's money!) It had:
16 bit 8086 (better then the previous 8088s)
A 5.25" 360KB floppy
A massive 10MB Winchester drive
Built-in tape-drive port on back (for making backups to a modifed audio casette recorder)
64MB RAM (woohoo!)
13" IBM Monochrome Display with a Hercules card (oooh! The GeForce 3 of it's day)
*&*
IBM Color Card with a 13" IBM Color display (COLOR!)
That was a totally studly system for back then. Came with a choice of UCSD-Pascal or DOS 2.1. My box was even tricked out with a "Baby Blue II" card allowing it to run CP/M on an onboard z80 processor (there wasn't much stuff out there for DOS or 8086's.)
Back to the Apppe Lisa costing 10 grand, yeah, that's why it's little cousin the Mac sold so well. It didn't have all of Lisa's advanced features like multitasking, bigger monitor, etc. but it cost less then half as much & got you most of the goodies. That's why today folks buy Mac's & the last couple thousand Lisas were consigned to a landfill in Arizona.
I'm going to correct myself here: The website does get it right in a couple of places, notably in the hardware timeline where it has an extensive set of links under the heading Xerox GUI.
However the year-by-year business timeline is significently flawed & leaves the misimpression I noted.
Just to give folks a reminder: Just 'cause someone put it on a web-page doesn't mean it's true...
For example the web-site linked to claims that it was a visit to Xerox PARC that inspired the Apple Lisa. Rather the Lisa was well along it's development (with the GUI close to it's final form) before the famous trip.
While it's become geek-folklore to assert Apple "stole" the GUI from Xerox PARC you'll note that none of the folks involved have ever said so & indeed often go to lengths to point out the differences between the Xerox Star & what Apple shipped as the Lisa & Macintosh. Indeed this would be more accurately labelled an "urban legend".
Overall the web-site is a nice one & presents lots of information (none of it particularly unknown but still nice to see out there) however it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism.
Unfortunately you're wrong (or at least innacurate.)
The Xerox "Star" preceeded Apple's "Lisa".
However as the Star cost decidely more (even more then Lisa's steep $10,000) it wouldn't classify as a consumer-OS. Therefore the Lisa can lay claim as the first "Consumer-OS with a WIMP (Window Icon Mouse Pointer) interface."
Unfortuntaly the Star had Xerox's top-notch non-sales team behind it & while a first & technically interesting (bitmapped display, portrait display, initial use of Ethernet, etc.) it never to succeed in any large scale.
By the way for those who want to repeat the old urban-legend about Apple "stealing" Xerox's ideas actually the Lisa concept was well developed before the Apple folks ever visited Xerox PARC.
Something that seems to be a source of confusion is the various flavors of AppleTalk.
AppleTalk is run on any of several mediums. Originially it ran over LocalTalk, Apple's twisted-pair low-cost networking (a marvel in it's day.)
When these networks began to grow the general "chattiness" of AppleTalk bagan to be an issue. Therefore AppleTalk Phase II was developed & the creation of "Zones". No longer was it a flat network but a series of cells between which traffic was limited.
Soon thereafter EtherTalk debuted: Unsprisingly it was AppleTalk over Ethernet. TokenTalk released around the same time was AppeTalk over Token-Net (saw that coming didn't you?)
Since then AppleTalk has been tunelled, bent folded, spindled & mutilated. There are dial-up AppleTalk services (AppleTalk Remote Access), wireless versions and over IR links.
Several years ago AppleTalk-IP debuted. To no one's suprise it's AppleTalk over TCP/IP. Significently faster then AppleTalk "classic" it quickly proved popular with users. Along with the protocol change a change in service discovery was implemented going to from the AppleTalk-native Name Binding Protocol to the RFC 2165 Service Location Protocol.
Apple's AppleShare series of Network Services (fileserver, mailserver, listserver, printserver, account-manager, etc. all in a single Mac native easy-to-use-package) quickly became AppleShare-IP where it has had success in the K-12 & Workgroup markets.
With the release of MacOS X 10.0 AppleTalk "classic" is now depreciated in favor of AppleTalk-IP. Indeed AppleTalk "classic" is not even supported out of the box in the initial release of MacOS X 10.0. As AppleTalk-IP has been availiable since MacOS 8.5 this isn't a seen as a widespread problem except in supporting older AppleTalk "classic" printers & other network devices.
At this point AppleTalk-IP is a stable efficient network protocol. Not subject to storms or excessive traffic it's a good corporate-citizen on LANs & WANs and has brought Apple into the Internet-age. One notable use of AppleTalk-IP is Apple's "iDisk" service allowing clients to sign up for 20MB of free server space with direct access to Apple-supplied software releases, updates, promotions, etc.
Finally, I know this all reads like a sales brochure - it's not. I think AppleTalk-IP is a fine protocol & many of the complaints levied against it in the past have now been rectified. It's certianly as good as most other comparable protocols. On the other hand it is another protocol on the network & one more thing to track, support, secure, train-for, etc.
-- Michael
Who bemoans the loss of SPX/IPX as it was a great protocol for security.
Ah - so I should link-scrub to identify the meaning of the article - how.... neo-Zen.
In the meantime anyone with the slightest interest in effective communication would rather an article that contained within it's body some reference to the course case R.S. was involved in.
That's not telling you "what to think" nor do I see how you could confuse it with such (perhaps you're confusing this with some "issues" of your own?) Rather it's just common sense to give folks the basis upon which to judge if the article is likely to be of any interest to them before they go off clicking willy-nilly.
128 words in the intro to this & not one of them even attempted to communicate why this might or not be important, interesting or even relevant.
So what's a pageview on/. going for these days? Andover must really be hurting for cash to resort to these "4 common items in your kitchen that can kill you - after the commercial"-type teasers.
So in other words your originial post impugning my fairness is no longer valid?
As to the TCO, so far pulling up lots of K-12 stuff but still trying to find numbers real-world applicable (education is so distorted a market as to be useless for comparison.)
Going a bit further afield I'll point out that I remain at a steady 50 karma by simply posting well written (or at least good enough for/.)cogent posts that express my opinions honestly. Perhaps it's the content of your messages that depreciate them & not their politics? Certianly your originial response to me was both inflammatory & not particularly useful.
OK. I'll look for some numbers. In the meantime give me the respect of answering the rest of my response:
Rather I believe this posting was a well balenced & honest one. Aside from your quibble do you have any problem overall with my posting, do you see any signs of bias? Is there anything innacurate or unduly rah-rah?
Finally, why is your karma so precious you can only use it for things you consider sure to gain points? Isn't that a rather dishonest way of using the moderation system?
First of all I generally don't bother to reply to Anonymous Cowards - if you don't feel your words have the worth to create at lease a nom de plume then why should I grant them any more respect?
However I'll make an exception.
First you're implying that my assertion that Mac users generally require less support & are more productive is false. If you really care to follow this up I'll do some research & find numbers to back me up. However as you're likely a fly-by-nighter I'm not going to waste time on your sneer-in-passing without some demonstration of committment as to following this up.
Regarding my recent participation in Mac-related discussions on/., yes I have been. They've come up regularly recenty, have been of general interest & and I'm clearly knowledgable in this area. It's only reasonable to expect someone conversant with these areas would post in topics related to them. While you may be fond of posting on subjects you know nothing about or have no interest in the rest of us don't.
If you cared to read some of my postings I think you'll find I'm not particularly biased pro/con Mac. Actually I find it somewhat funny your implication I'm biased pro-Mac when some Mac-folks likely consider me to be the opposite.
Rather I believe this posting was a well balenced & honest one. Aside from your quibble do you have any problem overall with my posting, do you see any signs of bias? Is there anything innacurate or unduly rah-rah?
I've also posted +5 messages on Space Shuttle activities, other Netware-related topics, corporate IS sSecurity, the French language and Computer History (non-Mac related.) When those topics again come up on/. I'll likely become involved again in those discussions, presumably indicating (in your mind) some sort of bias.
Tell me, is it possible for someone to post on something they know about & not be accused of a bias (in your view?)
Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X
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Er - Next was bought by Apple for 400 million.
Indeed Next is often described as having bought Apple for -400 million.
How else do you describe it when the principals of the bought company all end up running the buyer & the bought technology becomes the basis for all of the buyer's new projects?..
That's not the same as "they went out of business a few years back".
First of all I've managed IS Depts. where we've had mixed Wintel/Mac/*nix/Netware environments, dozens of servers, thousands of clients - it can be done.
There is a bias against Macs in many IS Depts. Some of it is just leftover snobbery (no command line / 1-button mouse / easy to use = not a studly OS) and some of it's frustration. MacOS has always done things differently & often idiosyncratically. It's file-structure is tough to accommodate on other OS's and it's networking, while fine amongst Mac's has generally suffered from poor non-Mac clients (Netware a case in point.)
For one thing it's difficult to manage large numbers of Macs without investing a bit of time & effort into specialized solutions. While many enterprise-management packages include some level of Mac support it's often a separate add-on, sometimes at additional cost, and generally works differently then the other parts do.
Then there's application support. While Macs do have a full range of applications they're not always completely compatible with their Wintel counterparts. MS Office for Mac is a fine product but some of it's files are subtly different from the Wintel side. There is no Access database but instead most folks use FileMaker (a product with it's own strengths & weaknesses but nonetheless a *different* product.) WordPerfect for Mac has been dropped & while Lotus does offer Notes for the Mac the client can be, well, challenging at times. MS Exchange support via the Mac Outlook client is best left for truly masochistic - it's a truly evil bit of code & you'll be better off using Exchange's web-interface.
These issues have left Mac's the odd-child out for harried IS staffers, fairly or not. The fact that Mac users tend to require less support & be more productive isn't lost on many IS people but it does get forgotten in the daily run of problems. Where Wintel is the standard anything different is often (unfairly) considered a 'problem'. Thus Mac costs & issues stand out and are an easy target, again likely not fairly.
To your own case more specifically as you've discovered there's been erratic support from Novell for Mac clients on Netware. Originally when Netware offered Mac support it was at an extra cost for the server package. Then Novell rolled NW-for-Mac into the base Netware offerings at no additional cost.
Unfortunately the Novell MacOS/Netware clients were awkward & didn't blend in well with the MacOS environment. Eventually Novell outsourced MacOS/Netware client development to Prosoft Engineering Inc. with the rationale that a Mac-dedicated company would do a better job. The up side of this was the new clients behaved like native MacOS networking clients, the down result was one now had to pay extra to ProsSoft for the clients.
Then the agreement ran out and folks were stuck with so-so drivers on an evolving MacOS (rapidly becoming less compatible) & no options from either company. Recently (March 1st) there's been a new contract signed & ProSoft has resumed development. Needless to say customers of both companies are irked. Check for details at http://www.prosofteng.com/netware_faq.asp
In the meantime Novell has announced NW6 will support Mac's using IP natively (along with apparently every other OS) but of course that's a bit off before it's deployed widely. In the meantime it's either use ProSoft's drivers or wait for NW6.
My advice: Why do you want to be on the larger network?
Here's my take on the various services:
File Servers: Presumably there are files you could benefit from having direct access to; for collaborating more closely with your clients if nothing else. On the other hand you've gotten along thus far without this so something is working.
To provide Mac support on one file server would be an administrative problem (making the server unique, requiring reevaluation of it's loads, increased filespace usage, determining if the backup systems support Mac namespaces, altering disaster-recovery plans, etc.) It might or might not be possible depending on a number of factors but its certainly not farfetched assuming there are no direct technical obstacles & the administrative will to make it happen.
To enable Mac support on *many* servers would be a very large undertaking & thus very unlikely for only a few users. I wouldn't even bother pushing for this, the cost/benefit ratio just isn't there.
Email servers: This is a different set of issues. As I noted the Mac Outlook Exchange-client is a scurrilous thing deserving only of being burnt at the stake then the stake driven through it's author's heart (if any can be found - the heart that is.) (Do I sound like I don't like this application?) Here while it might be nice it's not worth the hell.
The situation promises to change over the next year and the newer versions of Outlook for Mac are *almost* not completely foul but I wouldn't hold your breath or fight for this quite yet until the darn thing is actually out. In the meantime trust me, use the PC & be happy.
Application Compatibility: Here is where you might run into some issues. Eventually the State is likely to adopt some sort of widely distributed software that willl *require* Wintel. It shouldn't happen but it does, over & over again. This is a long-term strategic problem for you & your department. At that point you'll likely run into a problem with the single-PC access point.
Forward Migration:Apple's MacOS is undergoing fundamental changes. You'll be fine using your current OS & applications for another few years but the change is coming & it will affect you folks sooner or later. It's too soon to predict accurately but under MacOS X it appears networking will be significantly improved. The same holds true for Netware 6.0 - it promises much better Mac support. Either or both of these changes could provide opportunities to better connect your desktops to the larger network.
My suggestion would be to consider what the benefits to you & your department would be (of greater connectivity) & balance them against the costs to the overall IS architecture. If you can make a business case for certain types of services being made available do so but keep in mind you're three or so users, not a large constituency.
My solution would be to invest in Virtual PC. It performs exceedingly well considering what it's doing (running a full-PC environment in your Mac) & will allow your Macs to serve double-duty as PC desktops.
You'll be able to copy files to & from your Mac via VPC to the larger network environment & IS can treat it all as just another PC client & ignore the whole Mac-aspect of it.
Frankly it's the best of both worlds: You get your wonderful Mac desktops & all of the applications & tools you've invested in, IS gets to treat you folks as just more Wintel users and you can (within VPC) run all of the applications everyone else is without any special provisions or 'gotchas'. As you're graphics folks your Macs are likely up to snuff for running VPC reasonably already so you're 90% of the way there.
It's a great thing that MIT's doing, but a few observations:
Does this mean that MIT's moving away from Project Athena?
Athena (which brought us X Window by the way) was to be an academic-version of what became the WWW before there was a WWW.
Folks could log in from anywhere, use a standard environment and take advantage of flexible tools to interact with their faculty & classmates, perform online coursework, use computer-aided-learning exercises like simulations and of course access do general computerey things like word-process etc. Are the materials & systems developed to support all of this to be dropped or will there be an attempt to migrate all of this material & labor to the WWW?
What about an Instructor's rights to their syllabus?
Recently there was much turmoil at schools like UCLA when the university insisted instructors post their materials online and many refused.
In refusing the instructors pointed out that their syllabuses were their tools-in-trade; individually developed by them & were expected to go with them when they came or left. Indeed much of these materials were written or otherwise developed by the individual instructors over the course of years and should the school attempt to publish them without the consent & remuneration of the faculty they'd simply place them under their personal copyright. How is MIT expecting to handle these situations?
What technical standards will MIT use in distributing it's materials?
As noted before much of Athena's material may be problematic to move to today's online environment; how will MIT "future-proof" it's new investment in online materials to ensure they remain useable for the near future?
HTML has come, gone through many revisions, and is now being depreciated in favor of XML all in the span of a decade. Most XML folks will confirm that they expect some large-number of the DTD's now being developed to fail or quickly become irrelevant. SGML is the preferred format for many commercial & government documents and is readily exported to it's descendants HTML & XML but few institutions produce material in it outside of large-commerce & government.
Indeed if there are any standards for academia they're TeX, Postscript, WordPerfect 5.2 (common standards in legal & medical) and often some form of MS Word - none of which are easily/usefully portable to the WWW nor for which there are universal native viewers. Compounding the problem is the fact that much of this material will need to be accessible in a format that is translatable or speakable (for blind folks as well as for non-native Anglophones)
Lastly many MIT courses & their online components include non-textual material: audio, video, interactive applications, etc. What standards will apply to these? Will all material be available in standard formats, will they be in unencumbered formats and if not how will the licensing be handled? For interactive materials will Java and/or other Java-like languages be used & platform independence maintained or will there be portions that require "BigCorp v.2 patch 117" (released 2002, still required in 2020) ?
Again I applaud MIT in it's decision & feel they are doing the world a great service by both opening their own curriculum & leading the way for others to do the same. This program could have profound impact (both positive & negative) across not only academia but also in how governments (particularly 3rd world ones) support & develop their indigenous educational systems, the standards expected by hiring institutions, and what the "standard body of knowledge" is considered to be in any subject.
I would be very interested in/. Arranging some sort of interview with the authors of MIT's plan & get their thought on these and many of the other questions that have been raised by/.'ers.
Actually writing MacOS device drivers can be pretty hairy, there's some nasty code down there. I helped with a SCSI driver in the late 80's (proofread code & did reality-checks on the coder) - scary stuff.
That said our dissafected youth never actually bothered to claim he knew diddly about such himself, instead he just sidestepped the question & the invitation to list a single API, MacOS or not.
However he DID over-clock Win98 which, like, *totally* awes me...
Oh, yeah, & "predecessor" as in came before, yeah like coal is the predecessor to Multics 'cause it came before.
Frankly it's just a mouthy kid without a clue nor socal skills.
Part of the problem is that Apple is trying to sell OS X as Mac OS 10. They didn't bother to put that.0 on the box, in their ads, or anywhere else. (Hell, they ditched Arabic numerals entirely! Talk about avoiding the issue!)
Riiiggghhht.....
Those folks buying MacOS X don't know they're getting into something completely different, they're just plucking down US$120 for another MacOS upgrade, nothing to see here folks move on no news...
I think we can safely assume most MacOS buyers know there's something special about MacOS X. The same way we can assume Win2K buyers know that it's not Win95 & that WinME & WinXP folks also 'get it'. There's kinda a limit on how explicit boxes need to be & I think this is about it.
Presumably MacOS 10.1 etc. will have be more specific but for right now I see no issue with just calling a product by it's name on first release & it being implicit it's.0; explicit can come later when there's more versions to concern one's self with.
Thank you for registering your concern though & I'm sure it will be duly noted.
ps My MacOS X 10.0 box is in another country - what does it say on the outside? I don't recall.
Re:So -- cross platform apps?
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Maybe this is another brilliant but unpopular move by Jobs (a la killing the clones)
Apple never had clones, it had licensees. There's a fundamental difference:
Clones reverse-engineer intellectual property in a legal fashion and produce a (mostly) work-alike.
Licensees enter a legal contract between themselves and the product owner for access to the technology based on a flat-rate, per-unit, etc. fees. They're selling the "real deal" with permission from the licensor.
Apple licensed it's hardware, designs, and MacOS 7.0 to a number of companies including Power Computing, IBM, Bandai, Umax, Motorola, Daystar & I believe Dell. Appple intended for these companies to extend Apple's distribution into super-high-end markets, low-end markets like education or difficult-for-Apple-to-service ones like Asia. Instead the ones that exercised their licenses (IBM, Bandai & I believe Dell also never did) soon began to cannibalize Apple's own sales. Furthermore the licensees ended up costing more then they produced in revenue.
When Apple attempted to renegotiate rates (it had the impending release of MacOS 7.5 which was not under license as leverage) it was unable to do so. After some acrimony Apple decided to drop the program altogether and exercised a clause in the contracts allowing them to buy back the licenses.
However at no time was this situation analagous to IBM & the companies who against it's will (and numerous lawsuits) cloned the IBM PC and made it so popular. Indeed IBM spent years & millions fighting them, even going to the extent of inventing whole new architectures attempting to regain control of it's market.
NeXTSTEP 0.8 Oct. 12 1988
NeXTSTEP 1.0 Sep. 18 1989
NeXTSTEP 2.0 Sep. 18 1990
NeXTSTEP 2.1 Mar. 25, 1991
NeXTSTEP 3.3 Feb. 1995
OpenStep 4 1996
Rhapsody DR1 Sep. 1997
Rhapsody DR2 May 1998
Darwin 0.1 Mar. 16, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.0 Mar. 16, 1999
MacOS X (DP1) May 10, 1999
Darwin 0.2 May 13, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.02 Jul. 22, 1999
Darwin 0.3 Aug. 16, 1999
MacOS X (DP2) Nov. 10, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.2 Jan. 14, 2000
MacOS X (DP3) Feb. 14, 2000
Darwin 1.0 Apr. 5, 2000
Darwin 1.1 May 15, 2000
MacOS X (DP4) May 15, 2000
MacOS X (beta) Sept. 13, 2000
MacOS X Server 1.2v3 Oct. 27, 2000
Darwin 1.21 Nov. 15, 2000
MacOS X 10.0 Mar. 24, 2001
Re:hillarious interview with Steve Jobs about OS X
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I've never met Steve Jobs so I don't feel qualified to judge his mental state. Clearly he's able to function & I'd like to believe anyone who earns my salery^2 and oversees three large companies to have some credible skills & brains.
Just for accuracy Jobs didn't manage the Lisa project, indeed the Mac was his secret skunkworks project that he led under a pirate flag off of the Apple campus. As to adopting Xerox PARC technologies it's generally accepted that the built-in networking with the then very affordable (compared to the competition) Apple Laserwriter was a key element in the Mac's success. No, it didn't involve Ethernet but it was the first hardware & OS to come with any sort of built-in networking and Apple was the first computer manufacturer to pair their product with a laser printer.
As to mismanaging the Mac project it may not have been succesful until after he left but it was certianly more succesful then either the Apple III or the Lisa projects that preceeded it.
The Next plant story I heard was that he delayed production to have the robots repainted correct colors. There was no building-orientation or Feng-Shui (then unknown) involved in it.
As to Pixar being small: they have a multpple movie contract with Disney so they can afford the occasionial flop. I don't think there's any fear of their going belly-up soon.
Indeed upon rereading it appears that I've corrected or rebutted all of your points so far leading me to wonder how much direct involvement with Pixar Jobs has. You say "little" & "in spite of" but frankly you don't seem a reliable source.
As to being reliable to holding the keys to anything, I'd like to note that all three companies are doing relativly well, seem poised to weather the industry turndown and he *does* have the keys, we don't.
DP was PS based.
PDF is PS based.
PDF is not DP based.
PDF can be thought of as a sorta-objecty-oriented extension of PS. It's not the interpreted PS like PS v.2 but rather a 'chunky' version with elements in it that can be often pulled out & manipulated independantly.
-- Michael
It is hoped that PDF will continue to evolve & that in mebbe two generations it might be a fully object-oriented which would lead to some really interesting features like distributed rendering, multiple views, etc.
Apples products have always been inferior. Er, and you base this opinion on... ?
I'm talking from a software Engineering point of view. Ah, OK. So you don't like the API's then? Tell me, could you list a single API of any sort? How about a MacOS API? Or are you just truly talking out your butt as you seem to be?
Up until OS IX/X, OK, first of all MacOS 9.x & MacOS X 10.x are completely different beasts, you can't logically lump them together.
it didn't have a real operating system, Ah, it may not have one up to your exacting standards but yes, MacOS pre-X does have an OS. It doesn't have protected memory and relies on cooperative multitasking instead of preemptive multitasking but yes, it's there and in every sense a "real" OS.
no command shell, So that's your criteria? Righ, MacOS doesn't ship with one. There are third-party ones but then the whole idea of MacOS was to get *away* from the command line & use a WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse Pointer) interface.
no real easy to use interface, Er, the MacOS GUI(s) aren't easy-to-use? I don't think you'll find a lot of agreement there. Ranging from novices to power-users most agree that Mac's GUI(s) are their strongest feature. Not perfect but arguably better for the vast majority of folks then anything else availiable out of of a box.
just a GUI, that's it That's right, a GUI floating in space, no OS below it... (Hint: Go check the root directory "System Folder" on any Mac, more particularly check the files "System" & "Finder" on any pre-X MacOS.)
If you wanted extra, you had to buy it. Such as?... This differs from?...
Apple is certainly better then Microsoft in every ascpect in GUI and OS stability design MacOS >X is more stable then Win2K?! (choke) Heck I like Macs but not even I can say that one without giggling. Easier to maintain, yes. More productive, yes. More stable, not. MacOS X is shaping up to be far more stable OS but with MacOS 9.x Mac'ers were just happy it's the "most stable release in years"; note no one saying it's rock-solid stable like a *nix box usually is. The fact is that much of the unstability comes from third party patches but the point that it's easy to destabilize the OS remains (try holding down the mouse - freeze everything.) Sorry Honey but right there you've completely marked yourself as a clueless goober.
but the lack of a command shell in early versions Again what's with the command shell? You got some sort of prompt fetish? What, exactly, would you have wanted this for and why do you believe Apple didn't include it if it was so critical?
and that of a good advertising department killed Apple Yeah, that 1984 commercial sank without a trace... Look, Apple has had good campaigns & bad campaigns but most will agree that the early ones were excellent and some of the more recent ones have been pretty good. Name any company that's had 25 years of unqualifiedly great advertising... None.
Former Apple products were nowhere near that of UNIX Er, first of all back then *nix's were big iron / big ticket items. Name one consumer OS that was comperable to a *nix... Uh huh. Look here son, you gotta go reading more then the textbook-for-dummies before you go lecturing your betters on the history of computing (the back issues of Byte would be a good start.)
The problem with Unix and its precursor, Mulics,Not. Unix's name is a play on the name "Multics" but they're not related, not in any significent way. As someone who had a Multics account trust me on this.
is that they were made for users who already knew how to use a computer and not for beginners As to being written for novices / power users, back then we were all novices & by definition power users. There was no concept of different skill levels, the wonder was that any of this worked at all & there was certianly darn little to compare it to.
The problem with Monday-morning Quarterbacking is that you had to have watched the game, or at least read about it. You, heck I'm not even sure you're literate much less conscious or capable of critical thought.
Do your parents know you're on their computer? Isn't it your bedtime? Or naptime? Mebbe when you grow up you'll learn to write about what you know, in the meantime be quiet, don't fidget, pay attention & mebbe you'll learn something.
You'd think nobody had ever done so before. That Linux version n.0 sprang from the earth complete, perfect, without errors or missing parts.
Heck, MS Windows 9x has gone through, what, 9 revisions and it *still* has fundimental technical flaws and persistant bugs (some of which are both trivially reproducable & trivially fixable.)
Now Apple finally get's an OS out the door, doesn't spend the next decade polishing it in the lab and now folks want to diss it?
Puh-lease.
Wait 'till July when Apple ships the darn thing on their hardware. Wait 'till it's been through a patch cycle or two. Wait 'till the developers have finally gotten their asses out of beta and shipped some product, there's some more native applications out there. Wait 'till Apple & third parties have had a chance to go in & fix some of the booboo's, some folks have had an 'itch to scratch' & used the Open Source 'Darwin' to muck about a bit and rework things. Then stop comparing, well, apples to oranges and instead compare MacOS X to any other.1 OS.
In the meantime Apple has just released a consumer *nix with more shipping copies then any other *nix. It's includes a number of innovations: XML-based 'scripts' to GUI-ify the notoriously idiosyncratic *nix et al configuration files, a non-X rendering layer based on the public format PDF, and of course the immensely productive Nextstep-derived object-oriented Cocoa development environment.
Finally it's gotting *nix into more houses & businesses then anything else has, all of the press regarding GNU/Linux et al notwithstanding.
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad what happened in Adam Hinkleys life; however when it's all said & done he's responsible for his own decisions. To date he's refused any & all of that responsibility and indeed seems incapable of recognizing cause & effect, ownership & obligation.
It's all about Adam, all about what he wants, all about how he believes things should be run, never anything about anyone else.
Frankly while he may be a good coder he seems a tremendously (almost scarily) immature person and certainly not someone I can ever imagine wanting to be involved with professionally. Indeed I expect he has little to fear from investors & other such folks, he's clearly poison.
I've used a Star, I've used a Lisa, & also the originial Mac (I'm a former Manager for The Computer Museum.)The Star was not particularly complete and was not particularly usuable. Apple's folks made a number of significent advances that GREATLY improved the concept & execution, not just fine-tuning but fundemental changes.
Finally it would all be just as much a myth that Xerox PARC invented all of this. Much of it had been floating around in academia for a while & Xerox PARC was notable for integrating & actually producing some working examples.
It's rare that ideas get invented whole-cloth by a single person or institution. Generally they're a product of a general zeitgeist and typically a widely held world-view of the future. The Xerox Star was just such a product as was the World-Wide-Web (Gopher & other protocols/tools had been evolving in this direction for awhile.)
Next a few things to ponder upon:
Adam Hinkley sold the rights to his code. He did this without duress & in an apparently legal fashion. He took the money (ok, stock too.)
Later he disagreed with the direction the company who had bought his code was going. Fair enough, it's not unusual for an inventor/founder to become unhappy with the future course of their product, particularly when they've sold control of it.
However Hinkley's solution was to encrypt the source-code for the application & refuse to release it to those who had paid for it. Now I don't know about the rest of you but had I paid someone some large sum of money for the rights to a product then employed them under contract to extend the product I would expect it to be mine. Again Hinkley took the money.
Later (as I recall) it is discovered that Hinkley had apparently misappropriated OTHER code that he'd been previously hired to develop by a previous employer, renaming & reusing it without their permission.
I don't know how other folks view this but when most companies hire someone to write code they expect it to belong to them, not to wander out the door with the employee.
Generally this is clearly spelt out in the employment contract and yes generally the folks who paid for the code get to determine it's license, if any. Sure skills & techniques & code snippets & even architecture go with the employee but not the whole ball-of-wax, line by line to be used in another companies' product.
Yes Adam suffered some devastating personal events. However none of those have any direct bearing on his being compos mentis and signing contracts. At some point one has to take responsibility for one's decisions, for ill or for good.
Finally note that Adam did not do this all without advice. His father assisted him in the decisions, was involved in running his business, and they did hire lawyers to help write & review the legal instruments.
Adam had every opportunity to refuse to sign the paperwork, to demand things be put in writing, to simply not go ahead with the deal. However he didn't. He sold his product.
Frankly it all reads to me as a greedy young man who had a good idea, sold it, then when he realized he'd lost control regretted it & attempted to renege on his obligations. It's great that he was so committed to the product, a pity he'd sold away his control of it. That the courts have not backed him up is not surprising, he has shown little reason for them to do so.
What's the lesson to be learned from all of this?
- Be legally smart.
- Understand what one is getting into.
- Realize that when something is sold it no longer belongs to you.
- Understand that one can't later renounce contracts.
- Accept that there are no legal 'outs' for personal disaster; distraction & grief are not sufficient to invalidate one's commitments.
- Respect that if one is capable of signing a contract one is expected to honor that contract.
- Take responsabilty for one's actions and fulfill ones obligations.
After Adam Hinkley sold his product to Hotline he was no longer it's owner. This was trivially clear beforehand whether he recognized it himself or not. That the company may have different goals & directions for Adam's product should have occurred to him earlier & provisions been made. Without those he was simply another employee with a valued position, a paycheck & a block of stock. To attempt to then hold material hostage in order dictate terms to the new owners was stupid & illegal. To attempt to remove the materials to another jurisdiction was even more stupid. That the legitimate owners of the material were forced to bring in the law & have a search made to return their property was sad but justified - the code was theirs as much as any other corporate asset, physical or intellectual.Sob stories make for interesting reading but aren't particularly compelling. Perhaps next time Adam will have matured a bit & treat going into business with the seriousness it requires, respect the implications of signing a contract.
Finally, here's the only source-material I could find: HL Afterbirth.
The Xerox Star went for $25,00-$40,000 a station. The Lisa shipped for $10,000. Early Macs cost $4,000 (yeah those little toaster-Macs.) Since you couldn't buy the OS separately from the hardware the costs can't be broken out.
Just for comparison my originial IBM XT cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 too (in early-80's money!) It had:
- 16 bit 8086 (better then the previous 8088s)
- A 5.25" 360KB floppy
- A massive 10MB Winchester drive
- Built-in tape-drive port on back (for making backups to a modifed audio casette recorder)
- 64MB RAM (woohoo!)
- 13" IBM Monochrome Display with a Hercules card (oooh! The GeForce 3 of it's day)
*&*- IBM Color Card with a 13" IBM Color display (COLOR!)
That was a totally studly system for back then. Came with a choice of UCSD-Pascal or DOS 2.1. My box was even tricked out with a "Baby Blue II" card allowing it to run CP/M on an onboard z80 processor (there wasn't much stuff out there for DOS or 8086's.)Back to the Apppe Lisa costing 10 grand, yeah, that's why it's little cousin the Mac sold so well. It didn't have all of Lisa's advanced features like multitasking, bigger monitor, etc. but it cost less then half as much & got you most of the goodies. That's why today folks buy Mac's & the last couple thousand Lisas were consigned to a landfill in Arizona.
However the year-by-year business timeline is significently flawed & leaves the misimpression I noted.
For example the web-site linked to claims that it was a visit to Xerox PARC that inspired the Apple Lisa. Rather the Lisa was well along it's development (with the GUI close to it's final form) before the famous trip.
While it's become geek-folklore to assert Apple "stole" the GUI from Xerox PARC you'll note that none of the folks involved have ever said so & indeed often go to lengths to point out the differences between the Xerox Star & what Apple shipped as the Lisa & Macintosh. Indeed this would be more accurately labelled an "urban legend".
Overall the web-site is a nice one & presents lots of information (none of it particularly unknown but still nice to see out there) however it's not a particularly rigorous piece of historical documementation or even good basic journalism.
The Xerox "Star" preceeded Apple's "Lisa".
However as the Star cost decidely more (even more then Lisa's steep $10,000) it wouldn't classify as a consumer-OS. Therefore the Lisa can lay claim as the first "Consumer-OS with a WIMP (Window Icon Mouse Pointer) interface."
Unfortuntaly the Star had Xerox's top-notch non-sales team behind it & while a first & technically interesting (bitmapped display, portrait display, initial use of Ethernet, etc.) it never to succeed in any large scale.
By the way for those who want to repeat the old urban-legend about Apple "stealing" Xerox's ideas actually the Lisa concept was well developed before the Apple folks ever visited Xerox PARC.
AppleTalk is run on any of several mediums. Originially it ran over LocalTalk, Apple's twisted-pair low-cost networking (a marvel in it's day.)
When these networks began to grow the general "chattiness" of AppleTalk bagan to be an issue. Therefore AppleTalk Phase II was developed & the creation of "Zones". No longer was it a flat network but a series of cells between which traffic was limited.
Soon thereafter EtherTalk debuted: Unsprisingly it was AppleTalk over Ethernet. TokenTalk released around the same time was AppeTalk over Token-Net (saw that coming didn't you?)
Since then AppleTalk has been tunelled, bent folded, spindled & mutilated. There are dial-up AppleTalk services ( AppleTalk Remote Access), wireless versions and over IR links.
Several years ago AppleTalk-IP debuted. To no one's suprise it's AppleTalk over TCP/IP. Significently faster then AppleTalk "classic" it quickly proved popular with users. Along with the protocol change a change in service discovery was implemented going to from the AppleTalk-native Name Binding Protocol to the RFC 2165 Service Location Protocol.
Apple's AppleShare series of Network Services (fileserver, mailserver, listserver, printserver, account-manager, etc. all in a single Mac native easy-to-use-package) quickly became AppleShare-IP where it has had success in the K-12 & Workgroup markets.
With the release of MacOS X 10.0 AppleTalk "classic" is now depreciated in favor of AppleTalk-IP. Indeed AppleTalk "classic" is not even supported out of the box in the initial release of MacOS X 10.0. As AppleTalk-IP has been availiable since MacOS 8.5 this isn't a seen as a widespread problem except in supporting older AppleTalk "classic" printers & other network devices.
At this point AppleTalk-IP is a stable efficient network protocol. Not subject to storms or excessive traffic it's a good corporate-citizen on LANs & WANs and has brought Apple into the Internet-age. One notable use of AppleTalk-IP is Apple's "iDisk" service allowing clients to sign up for 20MB of free server space with direct access to Apple-supplied software releases, updates, promotions, etc.
Finally, I know this all reads like a sales brochure - it's not. I think AppleTalk-IP is a fine protocol & many of the complaints levied against it in the past have now been rectified. It's certianly as good as most other comparable protocols. On the other hand it is another protocol on the network & one more thing to track, support, secure, train-for, etc.
-- Michael
Who bemoans the loss of SPX/IPX as it was a great protocol for security.
In the meantime anyone with the slightest interest in effective communication would rather an article that contained within it's body some reference to the course case R.S. was involved in.
That's not telling you "what to think" nor do I see how you could confuse it with such (perhaps you're confusing this with some "issues" of your own?) Rather it's just common sense to give folks the basis upon which to judge if the article is likely to be of any interest to them before they go off clicking willy-nilly.
So what's a pageview on /. going for these days? Andover must really be hurting for cash to resort to these "4 common items in your kitchen that can kill you - after the commercial"-type teasers.
As to the TCO, so far pulling up lots of K-12 stuff but still trying to find numbers real-world applicable (education is so distorted a market as to be useless for comparison.)
Going a bit further afield I'll point out that I remain at a steady 50 karma by simply posting well written (or at least good enough for /.)cogent posts that express my opinions honestly. Perhaps it's the content of your messages that depreciate them & not their politics? Certianly your originial response to me was both inflammatory & not particularly useful.
Finally, why is your karma so precious you can only use it for things you consider sure to gain points? Isn't that a rather dishonest way of using the moderation system?
However I'll make an exception.
First you're implying that my assertion that Mac users generally require less support & are more productive is false. If you really care to follow this up I'll do some research & find numbers to back me up. However as you're likely a fly-by-nighter I'm not going to waste time on your sneer-in-passing without some demonstration of committment as to following this up.
Regarding my recent participation in Mac-related discussions on /., yes I have been. They've come up regularly recenty, have been of general interest & and I'm clearly knowledgable in this area. It's only reasonable to expect someone conversant with these areas would post in topics related to them. While you may be fond of posting on subjects you know nothing about or have no interest in the rest of us don't.
If you cared to read some of my postings I think you'll find I'm not particularly biased pro/con Mac. Actually I find it somewhat funny your implication I'm biased pro-Mac when some Mac-folks likely consider me to be the opposite.
Rather I believe this posting was a well balenced & honest one. Aside from your quibble do you have any problem overall with my posting, do you see any signs of bias? Is there anything innacurate or unduly rah-rah?
I've also posted +5 messages on Space Shuttle activities, other Netware-related topics, corporate IS sSecurity, the French language and Computer History (non-Mac related.) When those topics again come up on /. I'll likely become involved again in those discussions, presumably indicating (in your mind) some sort of bias.
Tell me, is it possible for someone to post on something they know about & not be accused of a bias (in your view?)
Indeed Next is often described as having bought Apple for -400 million.
How else do you describe it when the principals of the bought company all end up running the buyer & the bought technology becomes the basis for all of the buyer's new projects?..
That's not the same as "they went out of business a few years back".
There is a bias against Macs in many IS Depts. Some of it is just leftover snobbery (no command line / 1-button mouse / easy to use = not a studly OS) and some of it's frustration. MacOS has always done things differently & often idiosyncratically. It's file-structure is tough to accommodate on other OS's and it's networking, while fine amongst Mac's has generally suffered from poor non-Mac clients (Netware a case in point.)
For one thing it's difficult to manage large numbers of Macs without investing a bit of time & effort into specialized solutions. While many enterprise-management packages include some level of Mac support it's often a separate add-on, sometimes at additional cost, and generally works differently then the other parts do.
Then there's application support. While Macs do have a full range of applications they're not always completely compatible with their Wintel counterparts. MS Office for Mac is a fine product but some of it's files are subtly different from the Wintel side. There is no Access database but instead most folks use FileMaker (a product with it's own strengths & weaknesses but nonetheless a *different* product.) WordPerfect for Mac has been dropped & while Lotus does offer Notes for the Mac the client can be, well, challenging at times. MS Exchange support via the Mac Outlook client is best left for truly masochistic - it's a truly evil bit of code & you'll be better off using Exchange's web-interface.
These issues have left Mac's the odd-child out for harried IS staffers, fairly or not. The fact that Mac users tend to require less support & be more productive isn't lost on many IS people but it does get forgotten in the daily run of problems. Where Wintel is the standard anything different is often (unfairly) considered a 'problem'. Thus Mac costs & issues stand out and are an easy target, again likely not fairly.
To your own case more specifically as you've discovered there's been erratic support from Novell for Mac clients on Netware. Originally when Netware offered Mac support it was at an extra cost for the server package. Then Novell rolled NW-for-Mac into the base Netware offerings at no additional cost.
Unfortunately the Novell MacOS/Netware clients were awkward & didn't blend in well with the MacOS environment. Eventually Novell outsourced MacOS/Netware client development to Prosoft Engineering Inc. with the rationale that a Mac-dedicated company would do a better job. The up side of this was the new clients behaved like native MacOS networking clients, the down result was one now had to pay extra to ProsSoft for the clients.
Then the agreement ran out and folks were stuck with so-so drivers on an evolving MacOS (rapidly becoming less compatible) & no options from either company. Recently (March 1st) there's been a new contract signed & ProSoft has resumed development. Needless to say customers of both companies are irked. Check for details at http://www.prosofteng.com/netware_faq.asp
In the meantime Novell has announced NW6 will support Mac's using IP natively (along with apparently every other OS) but of course that's a bit off before it's deployed widely. In the meantime it's either use ProSoft's drivers or wait for NW6.
My advice: Why do you want to be on the larger network?
Here's my take on the various services:
- File Servers: Presumably there are files you could benefit from having direct access to; for collaborating more closely with your clients if nothing else. On the other hand you've gotten along thus far without this so something is working.
- Email servers: This is a different set of issues. As I noted the Mac Outlook Exchange-client is a scurrilous thing deserving only of being burnt at the stake then the stake driven through it's author's heart (if any can be found - the heart that is.) (Do I sound like I don't like this application?) Here while it might be nice it's not worth the hell.
- Application Compatibility: Here is where you might run into some issues. Eventually the State is likely to adopt some sort of widely distributed software that willl *require* Wintel. It shouldn't happen but it does, over & over again. This is a long-term strategic problem for you & your department. At that point you'll likely run into a problem with the single-PC access point.
- Forward Migration:Apple's MacOS is undergoing fundamental changes. You'll be fine using your current OS & applications for another few years but the change is coming & it will affect you folks sooner or later. It's too soon to predict accurately but under MacOS X it appears networking will be significantly improved. The same holds true for Netware 6.0 - it promises much better Mac support. Either or both of these changes could provide opportunities to better connect your desktops to the larger network.
My suggestion would be to consider what the benefits to you & your department would be (of greater connectivity) & balance them against the costs to the overall IS architecture. If you can make a business case for certain types of services being made available do so but keep in mind you're three or so users, not a large constituency.To provide Mac support on one file server would be an administrative problem (making the server unique, requiring reevaluation of it's loads, increased filespace usage, determining if the backup systems support Mac namespaces, altering disaster-recovery plans, etc.) It might or might not be possible depending on a number of factors but its certainly not farfetched assuming there are no direct technical obstacles & the administrative will to make it happen.
To enable Mac support on *many* servers would be a very large undertaking & thus very unlikely for only a few users. I wouldn't even bother pushing for this, the cost/benefit ratio just isn't there.
The situation promises to change over the next year and the newer versions of Outlook for Mac are *almost* not completely foul but I wouldn't hold your breath or fight for this quite yet until the darn thing is actually out. In the meantime trust me, use the PC & be happy.
My solution would be to invest in Virtual PC. It performs exceedingly well considering what it's doing (running a full-PC environment in your Mac) & will allow your Macs to serve double-duty as PC desktops.
You'll be able to copy files to & from your Mac via VPC to the larger network environment & IS can treat it all as just another PC client & ignore the whole Mac-aspect of it.
Frankly it's the best of both worlds: You get your wonderful Mac desktops & all of the applications & tools you've invested in, IS gets to treat you folks as just more Wintel users and you can (within VPC) run all of the applications everyone else is without any special provisions or 'gotchas'. As you're graphics folks your Macs are likely up to snuff for running VPC reasonably already so you're 90% of the way there.
Athena (which brought us X Window by the way) was to be an academic-version of what became the WWW before there was a WWW.
Folks could log in from anywhere, use a standard environment and take advantage of flexible tools to interact with their faculty & classmates, perform online coursework, use computer-aided-learning exercises like simulations and of course access do general computerey things like word-process etc. Are the materials & systems developed to support all of this to be dropped or will there be an attempt to migrate all of this material & labor to the WWW?
Recently there was much turmoil at schools like UCLA when the university insisted instructors post their materials online and many refused.
In refusing the instructors pointed out that their syllabuses were their tools-in-trade; individually developed by them & were expected to go with them when they came or left. Indeed much of these materials were written or otherwise developed by the individual instructors over the course of years and should the school attempt to publish them without the consent & remuneration of the faculty they'd simply place them under their personal copyright. How is MIT expecting to handle these situations?
As noted before much of Athena's material may be problematic to move to today's online environment; how will MIT "future-proof" it's new investment in online materials to ensure they remain useable for the near future?
HTML has come, gone through many revisions, and is now being depreciated in favor of XML all in the span of a decade. Most XML folks will confirm that they expect some large-number of the DTD's now being developed to fail or quickly become irrelevant. SGML is the preferred format for many commercial & government documents and is readily exported to it's descendants HTML & XML but few institutions produce material in it outside of large-commerce & government.
Indeed if there are any standards for academia they're TeX, Postscript, WordPerfect 5.2 (common standards in legal & medical) and often some form of MS Word - none of which are easily/usefully portable to the WWW nor for which there are universal native viewers. Compounding the problem is the fact that much of this material will need to be accessible in a format that is translatable or speakable (for blind folks as well as for non-native Anglophones)
Lastly many MIT courses & their online components include non-textual material: audio, video, interactive applications, etc. What standards will apply to these? Will all material be available in standard formats, will they be in unencumbered formats and if not how will the licensing be handled? For interactive materials will Java and/or other Java-like languages be used & platform independence maintained or will there be portions that require "BigCorp v.2 patch 117" (released 2002, still required in 2020) ?
Again I applaud MIT in it's decision & feel they are doing the world a great service by both opening their own curriculum & leading the way for others to do the same. This program could have profound impact (both positive & negative) across not only academia but also in how governments (particularly 3rd world ones) support & develop their indigenous educational systems, the standards expected by hiring institutions, and what the "standard body of knowledge" is considered to be in any subject.
I would be very interested in /. Arranging some sort of interview with the authors of MIT's plan & get their thought on these and many of the other questions that have been raised by /.'ers.
That said our dissafected youth never actually bothered to claim he knew diddly about such himself, instead he just sidestepped the question & the invitation to list a single API, MacOS or not.
However he DID over-clock Win98 which, like, *totally* awes me...
Oh, yeah, & "predecessor" as in came before, yeah like coal is the predecessor to Multics 'cause it came before.
Frankly it's just a mouthy kid without a clue nor socal skills.
Set phaser on.... "Ignore".
Riiiggghhht.....
Those folks buying MacOS X don't know they're getting into something completely different, they're just plucking down US$120 for another MacOS upgrade, nothing to see here folks move on no news...
I think we can safely assume most MacOS buyers know there's something special about MacOS X. The same way we can assume Win2K buyers know that it's not Win95 & that WinME & WinXP folks also 'get it'. There's kinda a limit on how explicit boxes need to be & I think this is about it.
Presumably MacOS 10.1 etc. will have be more specific but for right now I see no issue with just calling a product by it's name on first release & it being implicit it's .0; explicit can come later when there's more versions to concern one's self with.
Thank you for registering your concern though & I'm sure it will be duly noted.
ps My MacOS X 10.0 box is in another country - what does it say on the outside? I don't recall.
Apple never had clones, it had licensees. There's a fundamental difference:
- Clones reverse-engineer intellectual property in a legal fashion and produce a (mostly) work-alike.
- Licensees enter a legal contract between themselves and the product owner for access to the technology based on a flat-rate, per-unit, etc. fees. They're selling the "real deal" with permission from the licensor.
Apple licensed it's hardware, designs, and MacOS 7.0 to a number of companies including Power Computing, IBM, Bandai, Umax, Motorola, Daystar & I believe Dell. Appple intended for these companies to extend Apple's distribution into super-high-end markets, low-end markets like education or difficult-for-Apple-to-service ones like Asia. Instead the ones that exercised their licenses (IBM, Bandai & I believe Dell also never did) soon began to cannibalize Apple's own sales. Furthermore the licensees ended up costing more then they produced in revenue.When Apple attempted to renegotiate rates (it had the impending release of MacOS 7.5 which was not under license as leverage) it was unable to do so. After some acrimony Apple decided to drop the program altogether and exercised a clause in the contracts allowing them to buy back the licenses.
However at no time was this situation analagous to IBM & the companies who against it's will (and numerous lawsuits) cloned the IBM PC and made it so popular. Indeed IBM spent years & millions fighting them, even going to the extent of inventing whole new architectures attempting to regain control of it's market.
NeXTSTEP 0.8 Oct. 12 1988
NeXTSTEP 1.0 Sep. 18 1989
NeXTSTEP 2.0 Sep. 18 1990
NeXTSTEP 2.1 Mar. 25, 1991
NeXTSTEP 3.3 Feb. 1995
OpenStep 4 1996
Rhapsody DR1 Sep. 1997
Rhapsody DR2 May 1998
Darwin 0.1 Mar. 16, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.0 Mar. 16, 1999
MacOS X (DP1) May 10, 1999
Darwin 0.2 May 13, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.02 Jul. 22, 1999
Darwin 0.3 Aug. 16, 1999
MacOS X (DP2) Nov. 10, 1999
MacOS X Server 1.2 Jan. 14, 2000
MacOS X (DP3) Feb. 14, 2000
Darwin 1.0 Apr. 5, 2000
Darwin 1.1 May 15, 2000
MacOS X (DP4) May 15, 2000
MacOS X (beta) Sept. 13, 2000
MacOS X Server 1.2v3 Oct. 27, 2000
Darwin 1.21 Nov. 15, 2000
MacOS X 10.0 Mar. 24, 2001
Just for accuracy Jobs didn't manage the Lisa project, indeed the Mac was his secret skunkworks project that he led under a pirate flag off of the Apple campus. As to adopting Xerox PARC technologies it's generally accepted that the built-in networking with the then very affordable (compared to the competition) Apple Laserwriter was a key element in the Mac's success. No, it didn't involve Ethernet but it was the first hardware & OS to come with any sort of built-in networking and Apple was the first computer manufacturer to pair their product with a laser printer.
As to mismanaging the Mac project it may not have been succesful until after he left but it was certianly more succesful then either the Apple III or the Lisa projects that preceeded it.
The Next plant story I heard was that he delayed production to have the robots repainted correct colors. There was no building-orientation or Feng-Shui (then unknown) involved in it.
As to Pixar being small: they have a multpple movie contract with Disney so they can afford the occasionial flop. I don't think there's any fear of their going belly-up soon.
Indeed upon rereading it appears that I've corrected or rebutted all of your points so far leading me to wonder how much direct involvement with Pixar Jobs has. You say "little" & "in spite of" but frankly you don't seem a reliable source.
As to being reliable to holding the keys to anything, I'd like to note that all three companies are doing relativly well, seem poised to weather the industry turndown and he *does* have the keys, we don't.
PDF is PS based.
PDF is not DP based.
PDF can be thought of as a sorta-objecty-oriented extension of PS. It's not the interpreted PS like PS v.2 but rather a 'chunky' version with elements in it that can be often pulled out & manipulated independantly.
-- Michael
It is hoped that PDF will continue to evolve & that in mebbe two generations it might be a fully object-oriented which would lead to some really interesting features like distributed rendering, multiple views, etc.
Statement by sorry statement:
- Apples products have always been inferior. Er, and you base this opinion on... ?
- I'm talking from a software Engineering point of view. Ah, OK. So you don't like the API's then? Tell me, could you list a single API of any sort? How about a MacOS API? Or are you just truly talking out your butt as you seem to be?
- Up until OS IX/X, OK, first of all MacOS 9.x & MacOS X 10.x are completely different beasts, you can't logically lump them together.
- it didn't have a real operating system, Ah, it may not have one up to your exacting standards but yes, MacOS pre-X does have an OS. It doesn't have protected memory and relies on cooperative multitasking instead of preemptive multitasking but yes, it's there and in every sense a "real" OS.
- no command shell, So that's your criteria? Righ, MacOS doesn't ship with one. There are third-party ones but then the whole idea of MacOS was to get *away* from the command line & use a WIMP (Windows-Icons-Mouse Pointer) interface.
- no real easy to use interface, Er, the MacOS GUI(s) aren't easy-to-use? I don't think you'll find a lot of agreement there. Ranging from novices to power-users most agree that Mac's GUI(s) are their strongest feature. Not perfect but arguably better for the vast majority of folks then anything else availiable out of of a box.
- just a GUI, that's it That's right, a GUI floating in space, no OS below it... (Hint: Go check the root directory "System Folder" on any Mac, more particularly check the files "System" & "Finder" on any pre-X MacOS.)
- If you wanted extra, you had to buy it. Such as?... This differs from?...
- Apple is certainly better then Microsoft in every ascpect in GUI and OS stability design MacOS >X is more stable then Win2K?! (choke) Heck I like Macs but not even I can say that one without giggling. Easier to maintain, yes. More productive, yes. More stable, not. MacOS X is shaping up to be far more stable OS but with MacOS 9.x Mac'ers were just happy it's the "most stable release in years"; note no one saying it's rock-solid stable like a *nix box usually is. The fact is that much of the unstability comes from third party patches but the point that it's easy to destabilize the OS remains (try holding down the mouse - freeze everything.) Sorry Honey but right there you've completely marked yourself as a clueless goober.
- but the lack of a command shell in early versions Again what's with the command shell? You got some sort of prompt fetish? What, exactly, would you have wanted this for and why do you believe Apple didn't include it if it was so critical?
- and that of a good advertising department killed Apple Yeah, that 1984 commercial sank without a trace... Look, Apple has had good campaigns & bad campaigns but most will agree that the early ones were excellent and some of the more recent ones have been pretty good. Name any company that's had 25 years of unqualifiedly great advertising... None.
- Former Apple products were nowhere near that of UNIX Er, first of all back then *nix's were big iron / big ticket items. Name one consumer OS that was comperable to a *nix... Uh huh. Look here son, you gotta go reading more then the textbook-for-dummies before you go lecturing your betters on the history of computing (the back issues of Byte would be a good start.)
- The problem with Unix and its precursor, Mulics, Not. Unix's name is a play on the name "Multics" but they're not related, not in any significent way. As someone who had a Multics account trust me on this.
- is that they were made for users who already knew how to use a computer and not for beginners As to being written for novices / power users, back then we were all novices & by definition power users. There was no concept of different skill levels, the wonder was that any of this worked at all & there was certianly darn little to compare it to.
The problem with Monday-morning Quarterbacking is that you had to have watched the game, or at least read about it. You, heck I'm not even sure you're literate much less conscious or capable of critical thought.Do your parents know you're on their computer? Isn't it your bedtime? Or naptime? Mebbe when you grow up you'll learn to write about what you know, in the meantime be quiet, don't fidget, pay attention & mebbe you'll learn something.
You'd think nobody had ever done so before. That Linux version n.0 sprang from the earth complete, perfect, without errors or missing parts.
Heck, MS Windows 9x has gone through, what, 9 revisions and it *still* has fundimental technical flaws and persistant bugs (some of which are both trivially reproducable & trivially fixable.)
Now Apple finally get's an OS out the door, doesn't spend the next decade polishing it in the lab and now folks want to diss it?
Puh-lease.
Wait 'till July when Apple ships the darn thing on their hardware. Wait 'till it's been through a patch cycle or two. Wait 'till the developers have finally gotten their asses out of beta and shipped some product, there's some more native applications out there. Wait 'till Apple & third parties have had a chance to go in & fix some of the booboo's, some folks have had an 'itch to scratch' & used the Open Source 'Darwin' to muck about a bit and rework things. Then stop comparing, well, apples to oranges and instead compare MacOS X to any other .1 OS.
In the meantime Apple has just released a consumer *nix with more shipping copies then any other *nix. It's includes a number of innovations: XML-based 'scripts' to GUI-ify the notoriously idiosyncratic *nix et al configuration files, a non-X rendering layer based on the public format PDF, and of course the immensely productive Nextstep-derived object-oriented Cocoa development environment.
Finally it's gotting *nix into more houses & businesses then anything else has, all of the press regarding GNU/Linux et al notwithstanding.