I am surprised that people should have any doubt that Xserve and Mac OS X can handle iTMS.
Apple has been using its own hardware and software to power apple.com including Apple Online Store, QuickTime movie trailer and the.mac Web service for years now.
The QuickTime movie trailer site is the most popular on the Web, and QuickTime Player has been downloaded over 100 mln times in the last year or so. The storage and bandwidth requirement for downloading movie trailers are much higher than that for music.
To paraphrase Jobs iTMS presentation, Apple is capable of moving "ocean of bits" for video downloading, so music is really a no-brainer. In fact, a single Xerve RAID (2.5 TB) can store the 200000 songs many times over.
Apple online store is one of the best and biggest e-commerce site with annual sale in $billions.
A recent survey shows that apple.com is the #1 hardware site on the Web with 3.7 mln unique users a week, while hp.com is a distant second with 2.5 mln.
They also use WebObjects (the original enterprise application server from NeXT) for heavy lifting, which is capable of talking to multiple database systems and load ballancing. WebObjects is one of the best kept Apple secrets, and perhaps the only application server on the market that has the visual tool to automatically generate Java code for database programming.
>> OK, from that statement alone we know you're lying...a *real* programmer prefers dual or triple screen which you can't get with the iBook unless you want to void your warranty.
How dare you accusing me lying, idiot. Have you ever done any programming? Real programmers spend more time on designing and thinking, not watching the screen. Go to a Java or OSS conference and find out how many geeks use iBooks.
>> until Microsoft pulls the plug because it doesn't need to keep Apple around anymore that is.
Who cares? I have Office, but hardly use it. Although everyone including MS keeps saying Office for Mac OS X is better than Windows version, but I find the damn thing is so bloated and slow. There are plenty alternatives on the Mac: AppleWorks, OpenOffice, BBEdit, TextEdit, and Keynote (the first version is already better than PowerPoint according to every single review that I have seen). Rumor has it that Apple is about to release the Office killer really soon. Now with Safari beta kicking IE ass, MS is welcome to keep their bug-ridden software to the dirty Windows.
>> I'm writing this on a Sony Vaio. I hear nothing but the clicking of the keyboard. Woohoo, Apple has sure out-done us this time!
Oh, don't get me started on Vaio. After using Wintel for over a decade, my brother-in-law has just bough a iBook and tosses away his Vaio. His Vaio is nearly twice as heavy as the iBook, the battery life is less than half of the iBook's, it's too hot to touch after 30 minutes usage, and the fan is constantly on. On paper, the Vaio is faster than the iBook, but not in reality. I once played with a very expensive 16" 2+ GHz Vaio running Win XP, and found the graphics performance is utterly appalling. For instance, dragging a Window around with a reasonable speed would leave a gustly trail of broken window frames and cause all icons on the desktop flickering violently - very disturbing to the eyes - something that never ever happens on the Mac.
>> Think about it...the iBook is much less powerful than an x86 laptop running Windows...
Are you kidding me? Wintel laptop may idle in GHz and appear powerful on paper, but certainly not in real use. Have you ever tried Mac OS X? I use Windows regularly, and I can tell you that Mac OS X is years ahead of Windows in terms of power, style and ease of use.
>> *If* you can afford the 12" one?? Don't you think it's a little odd that something with a diminutive screen costs so much?
Oh you idiot. Do you know how much the 12" PowerBook costs? It's a professional laptop with G4 and proper GPU, BlueTooth, AirPort Extreme (54 mbps 802.11g wireless), slot-loading SuperDrive, Ethernet, Firewire, USB, etc. Is there a Vaio with such power and light weight? In contrast, many of the top range Vaio use cheap integrated graphics with no dedicated VRAM at all. I don't think so. But if there is one, it would cost a lot more.
>> And what is so exciting about the Mac OS? Oh yeah, it's so exciting that they couldn't even come up with a name for it.
What the fuck are you talking about? Mac OS X is leading the Windows crowd by at least 3 years. It's going to be really boring in the Windows world until at least 2005 when Longhorn arrives, or maybe 2006 according to the well know MS track record in hypes and delays. But from the recent Longhorn leaks, all the hyped features are still in conceptual stage but already available in Mac OS X Jaguar since a year ago. Later this month, Apple will preview the next major OS X release Panther.
Many alpha geeks have switched to Mac OS X including James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun Microsystems, James Duncan Davidson (original author of Tomcat and Ant), Tim Bray (inventor of XML), the Perl 6 core team, Tim O'Reilly (publisher of geek books), 4 or 5/. editors, and many more former Windows and Linux users.
>> And here's a tip about security: the more people that use an OS, the more flaws will be dis
Apple laptops are actually cheaper than most of the Wintel ones, and comes with tons of powerful programming tools and best-of-class apps such as iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iChat, iSync, iCal, Mail, Safari, etc.
Best of all, you get the best looking and rock solid UNIX machine that runs thousands of open source programs and MS Office plus lots of professional and consumer software from Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, OmniGroup, and more.
I am a professional software designer and use a 700 MHz iBook for all C++ / Java programming and graphics and Web design. Don't let anyone tell you that the iBook is not fast enough, I am very happy with mine. It's virtually silent, and the battery life is great. I love the instant sleep and wake up feature, and use it more than 10 hours a day.
But if you can afford it, buy the 12" PowerBook with BlueTooth and faster wireless (54 mbps 802.11g), and maybe the SuperDrive for burning DVD.
Whatever you do, just keep clear of Windows - it's boring and full of security flaws.
>> Windows' Explorer is superior to Finder in basically every way I can imagine. Ive yet to find anything Finder does better than Explorer.
It's probably because you have spent so many years getting used to the Windows oddities so that you are incapable of learning easier and better ways to do thing.
How do you do these in Windows:
(1) Finder Column View - the best way to navigate the file system. (2) Spring-loaded folder - drag and drop files to any depth without clicking. (3) Finder Toolbar - one-click access to any folder in the toolbar. (4) Genie effect - visually indicates where a minimized windows is heading to. (5) Animation - shows app is launching. (6) Icon magnification - reduces eye strain. (7) Folders and URLs in the Dock. (8) Find location of apps in the Dock. (9) Quit running app or bring any app window directly from the Dock. (10) Preview movie, music, graphics without starting apps. (11) Type "open *" from a Terminal window to open all files in the working folder with their default apps. (12) System Services (such as spelling check or text to speech) accessible from any app. (13) Chat, browse, print, sync and share music across LAN with no IP configuration through Rendezvous. (14) Access eBay, flight, translation, dictionary and many more service through Sherlock. (15) One-click music preview and purchase through iTunes Music Store. (16) Best-of-class digital tools (iLife, iChat, iSync, etc), dozens of free programming tools (GCC for C/C++, Objective C/C++, Java, Project Builder, Interface Builder, and so on), and tons of open source software (Apache, Perl, Ruby, Python, etc).
There are so many more things that you can do with Mac OS X than Windows, so stop limiting yourself to the poor old Windows hole and start exploring the new and better world.
This is going to be my last reply on the subject. It's a reasonably fruitful discussion, and it's obvious that you and I have lots of common ground as well as a fair bit of differences.
>> There are a lot of things you just don't know of UI design and the reasons behind them. I don't have the time to explain them here.
I actually know more about UI design than you think, having developed quite a few real GUI application on various platforms over the years.
>> The MDI application is a thing and concept of the past.
This should surprise no one, because the MS version of MDI is a POS in the first place.
>> As for your statement about closing IE and 'all its Windows' - Just right click on it on the taskbar and hit 'Close Group'. It will close all the document IE Windows.
Where is the consistency then? Why can you quit Word or Excel from the menu bar, but not IE?
>> This is a part of the 'new' theories of UI design, a real document centric model, instead of an application centric model, which by what you say is all you are accustomed to having.
The document centric model is neither new nor superior. Remember the ill-fated Apple / IBM project called OpenDoc?
>> The real world does not work like the application model. In the real world, documents are INDEPENDANT of the tools you use to create and modify them, and this is also how it should be on computers as well. This is how Windows has operated and been moving application developers since 1995.
But the actual fact is most people do care about applicationsm, and there is nothing wrong with that. Take plain text documents for instance, some prefer vi, others use Emacs or Notepad or Word. The document centric view is just one of many doctrines, not a universal law.
>> This is really an in-depth theory and I wish I could help you more with it. I just don't have the time, but if I ever do a book or video I will look up your post and send you a free copy, I promise.
I will be waiting for that.
There are many advantages by having the menu bar at the top of the screen in addition to saving screen space:
(1) You can reach it with your eyes shut, knowing its location never changes. In contrast, a menu bar within a window requires more precise mouse control and mental effort.
(2) For multi-document apps, it just doesn't make sense to duplicate the same menu bar in every document window.
(3) There are usually 3 types of menu commands: document-wide, application-wide, or system-wide. It really doesn't make any sense to put anything other than the document commands on a menu bar attached to a document window. On the Mac, the Apple menu is the place for system commands like Sleep / Restart / Shut Down / Log Out, the application menu next to the Apple menu hosts application commands like About / Preferences / Quit, which is very consistent and logic. In contrast, Windows menu system is a mess, which is probably why the Shut Down command inside the Start Menu.
Talking about UI inconsistency, I can't imagine anyone worse than MS. For instance, every multi-document apps (Mac or Windows) should have a Window menu that list the currently open windows, right? But no, the rule doesn't Apply to IE for some reason. Worst still, IE doesn't even have the Exit command. So how do you quit IE if you have a few dozens of browser windows? The only way I can see is close all the windows one by one, and even then it might still be running the the background.
If you are a power user, the Unix shell and AppleScript will open up a new dimension for you. For instance, the simple command "open *" would open all files in your working folder with the correct applications simultaneously, and you can write AppleScript to drive remote applications by simulating mouse clicks. How do you do these in Windows?
I respect your personal prefernce, but you must be one of the very few in the world who actually prefer XP for its GUI! Most people stick to Windows because of games or application or the perceived speed. But everyone in my circle including many Windows users agrees that Aqua looks so much better than Luna (or whatever it's called now).
The color scheme and icons and buttons in XP just look amateurish and clumsy at best. Even on 2GHz machines, dragging a window around would frequently leave unsightly trails of broken window frames or cause all desktop icons to flicker - very disturbing to the eyes - something that never evre happen on the slowest Mac.
Unlike the useless and ever so annoying Office Clippy, most eye candies in Aqua serve a purpose. For instance, the genie effect or bouncing icons lets user know where a minimized window is heading to or whether an app is launching, transparency and softshadow are just a pleasure to look at. The UI in XP has so many rough edges and simply doesn't have the refinement of Aqua. I use computer over 10 hours a day and want something visually pleasing - XP just doesn't cut it for me - and it really insult my intelligence to have to click the Start Menu to shut down Windows. There is evidence that Longhorn will catch up with OS X in many respects, but I don't want to wait for another 2 years.
I will take your word for the microkernel dispute before I conduct a proper research. But I have seen Apple's own document and remember very well that they have only changed the Mach messaging system to improve the performance. You have to remember that Mach is the original micrikernel, there is very little point to use it if its main feature is removed.
For me, there is nothing even close to OS X with Darwin Open Source and Aqua / Cocoa / Java / POSIX, and I am eagerly waiting for Panther on the 64 bit PPC 970. MS may have a solid kernel architecture, but I would put them at least 3 years behind Apple in terms of overall application environment. And Apple is moving much faster than MS since the introduction of OS X 2 years ago. It's going to be very boring in the Windows world until at least 2005 apart from waves and waves of security patches and Longhorn leaks, while Apple is makeing steady progress every few weeks - Safari - Rendezvous - iTunes Music Store - iChat - Keynote - Panther...
>> SYsadmin stuff. So, lots and lots of windows open doing lots of stuff simultaneously.
In other words, you are just talking about Finder performance - one single app! I agree that the Finder is not the most responsive app in the world, but at least it's much more usable than Windows.
>> But what _actually_ happens is that Microsoft write multitudes of hardware drivers to give basic functionality for a wide range of hardware to their customers.
But not for "hundreds of thousands components" as the other guy claimed earlier.
>> Just like Apple have drivers that support some of the hardware they don't ship (eg: wheel mice).
Exactly. Apple write code for generic USB mouse that also support mice with wheel and two buttons, which doesn't mean they have to write drivers for every past or future mouse in the world. I suspect MS does the same.
>> I disagree. Hardware support has a _lot_ to do with the quality of an OS - and the work involved in supporting large amounts of hardware answers your original question about development costs.
I am just trying to dispell the myth that MS spends lots of money and time on writing device drivers for every computer component in the world. It's just no true.
>> The $3000 you tout for.NET development is for the IDE and integration for large project management.
Project Builder is a very powerful IDE for building large Cocoa / Carbon apps or Framework / Bundle / Kernel Extension / Plug-in / Unix tool in C/C++, Objective C / C++, Java, AppleScript, with highly sophisticated dependency management for multiple targets / build styles / build phases.
Interface is the only GUI builder that I have ever used that is capable of making sleek GUI with virtually no code.
MS only has to write code to support standard protocols like USB or FireWire. The device makers will write the device drivers, do the testing, and pay MS to get certifications.
Similarly, Apple provide free programming tools and documents for companies to write device drivers, but ultimately the manufacturers have to take the main responsibility to support their own products.
In any case, this really has very little to do with the quality of the OS.
OK, maybe there is something wrong with my own PC, but I have used XP on a 2 GHz Sony Vaio - its video performance is much slower than my 700 MHz iBook. On the Vaio, dragging a window quickly would leave a long trail of very ugly broken window frames - something that never ever happen to me on any Mac.
What exactly are you doing with OS X machines? I do lots of programming and graphics on an iBook, and just don't feel it's slow at all, unless I watch QuickTime video and play iTunes at the same time as well as compile programs.
First of all, I didn't mean to pick on you personally when I mentioned the average Windows crowd - please accept my appology for not making that clear.
Secondly, you really have to get yourself a Mac to experience the power and elegance of Mac OS X. You obviously have lots of theory about OS architectures, but OS X on my 400 MHz iMac bought 4 years ago just runs faster and much more stable than Win XP on my 800 MHz PC. The only thing that XP is good at is faster booting, but that's a moot point because I don't reboot OS X for weeks or months - just put it asleep and it wakes up in a second or two. My PC gets shut down everyday to reduce the noise level, and XP still crashes once or twice a week, so your theory that the NT kernel stability just doesn't reflect the reality.
Thirdly, you have to look at the whole picture to appreciate Apple's unique contribution to the computer industry, not just focus on the OS. Apple is primarily a hardware company about 60 times smaller than MS, and yet has managed to produce more and better software than the software giant. This may sound beyond imagination, but for virtually every MS application, there is usually a better Apple counterpart, and the opposite is not true. For instance, MS doesn't have anything to match WebObjects (the original application server) and the high end Apple tools for pro digital productions such as Final Cut Pro (non-linear video editing) or DVD Studio Pro (DVD Authoring) or Shake (movie composition) Logic (music production).
Sure, MS has come up with a few GUI tricks of their own after they learnt the basic from the master in the course of developing Word and Excel on the Mac, but blunders like putting the Shut Down option within the Start menu indicate that they are still a long way from getting the fundamental right.
I challenge you to list the 100s of MS innovations, and bet many of them are just cheap imitations of similar Apple technologies. Now let have a quick run of what Apple has either invented or popularized: GUI, mouse, color monitor, laser printer, plug-n-play, voice command, AppleTalk, 32 bit OS - years before MS, QuickTime - the grandad of media players, Newton - PDA with natural hand writing recognition 10 years before MS Tablet, Darwin Open Source - the only open source OS by a major computer maker, Darwin Streaming Server - the only open source cross-platform media server, WebObjects - the original application server, AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) - compact and seamless integration of word processing / spreadsheet / drawing / painting / database / communication / presentation tools, FileMaker Pro - powerful and easy to use database system, Mac OS X - lickabe GUI with rock solid BSD / Mach Unix, iLife (iMovie/iTunes / iPhoto / iDVD) - best free applications for the digital age, iMac - the first legacy-free computer with built-in wireless / USB / FireWire that has also ignited a revolution in industrial design for computers / printers / keyboards / mouse and many more, FireWire and FireWire 800, G4 Cube - the 8" cubic marvel that broke the GFLOP barrier, Titanium PowerBook - the first laptop with wide screen display and gigabit Ethernet and DVD burner, Xserve and Xserve RAID, iPod - the best ever MP3 player, the 17" PowerBook - the only 17" laptop with built-in 54 mbps 802.11g wireless / gigabit Ethernet / BlueTooth / slot-loading DVD-R / fiber optical light sensor to light up the keyboard when the light goes out, Quartz Extreme - the first Window composition architecture that offloads the desktop rendering to the 3D GPU (to be adopted by MS for Longhorn in 2005), Keynote - the powerPoint killer, Safari - fast and powerful browser that beats MS IE even in its current beta release, Rendezvous - open source and zero-configuration networking, iTunes Music Store - the best music site that could save the record industry, and the innovation will go on.
It's absurd to suggest that Mac OS X is monolithic and the Linux Kernel is not, because the opposite is true. I agree that Mac OS X
"Apple Computer Inc.?s Apple.com led all computer hardware sites in number of shoppers for the week that ended May 11, according to Nielsen/NetRatings? AdRelevance report. Apple.com logged 3.75 million unique visitors, 73.7% of all visitors to hardware sites, which hosted 5.09 million shoppers for the week.
Next behind Apple was Hewlett-Packard Co.?s HP.com at 2.47 million visitors; Dell Computer Corp., at 1.94 million; Gateway Inc. at 312,000; and Toshiba.com at 157,000."
For those who claim that Apple doesn't have a server OS, apple.com is powered by Mac OS X Server.
>> Who says Apple is spending less then Microsoft in terms of OS development.
According to the article, there are 8000 to 10000 programmers working on the Win 2k3. I don't think Apple has that many employees world wide.
MS is about 60 times bigger than Apple and has more than $40 bln cash. Apple is primarily a hardware company, so lots of its resources are devoted to hardware innovations. But the irony is that Apple's software portfolio is actually bigger and better than that of MS. You may find that incredible, but for virtually every MS product, there is usually an better Apple counterpart, and the opposite is not true.
>> Maybe if Apple had spent similar amounts of money on OS X, you wouldn't have to have the fastest Mac available just to be able to run OS X at a barely acceptable speed ?
Have you ever tried Mac OS X?
My 400 MHz iMac bought 4 years ago runs faster and smoother than Win XP on my 800 MHz PC, and it does much more than XP and works 24 hours a day for weeks and months without getting shut down. In contrast, the PC has to be shut down by the end of each day because it's too noisy, and it still crashes once or twice a week.
You are confused about device drivers with the OS. A modern microkernel OS like Mac OS X and Win 2k should just provide a plug-in architecture capable of supporting any number of devices - without coding device-specific logic in the OS.
Mac OS X provides low-level support for industry standards like USB, FireWire, BlueTooth and so on. It's totally upto the device makers to write the device-specific stuff and do most of the testing. It's my experiences that plug-n-play works much better on Mac than on PCs. My Cannon digital camera just works on Mac OS X without any installation, but the same camera requires lengthy installation on Win XP.
Maybe Windows is not so well designed in this respect, which might explain the 50 mln lines of bloated code base. You people give too much credit to MS in this case, and too little to third parties. MS is a monoply and a known bully. They may give a little help to their big partners like HP or Dell, but smaller companies like nVidia and ATI have to pay MS and work really hard to get things certified by the Beast, and only fools are naive enough to believe that MS ever gives a damn about the tiny unknown fishes, let alone writing code for them.
In any case, to suggest that MS has to develop for "hundreds of thousands components" is just stupid. I will grant you hundreds or even thousands, but not hundreds of thousands.
Personally, I believe the average Windows crowd are just not intelligent enough to see through the MS smoke screen or to actively seek better alternatives.
MS is only good at two things: it imitates and hypes. Apple and IBM are the ones that inovate and deliver.
How many years have they been talking about Windows.NET Server and Longhorn? After all those noisy and expensive ballyhoos, now they called it Windows Server 2003 (which adds tens of thousands of "branding bugs" for their own programmers), and Longhorn is at least 2 years away. Ever heard about the revolutionary file system WinFS (Windows Future Storage) to be introduced with Longhorn? No, that's just a joke as well, according the latest MS thinking. How about the latest and greatest invention NGSCB (Next Generation Secure Computing Base)? We shall wait and see, but whoever came up with the stupid moniker deserves death sentence in my court. What about DRM or Passport? Well, MS is asking the manufacturers of MP3 players and other digital devices to build an internal clock so that Windows can check the expiration dates and prevent people from playing songs or videos once they stop paying the monthly fees. But fortunately, Apple has beaten MS again with FairPlay and iTunes Music Store - over a million songs per week just for US Mac OS X users - more sales in a week than all the existing music sites have managed in a year or so - just imagine the figure when iTMS is available before the end of this year.. Once again, Apple delivers with no hypes or fusses.
I am a Unix geek with over 10 years C / C++ / Java experiences, and use Windows 2K and XP regularly. There is no doubt in my mind that Mac OS X is the superior OS in every way. Windows people don't realize that Mac OS X also comes more and much better quality software than any version of Windows. Take iPhoto as an example, it's a very smart and powerful photo database, while Windows XP only provides the My Pictures folder.
If you are a programmer, there is simply no better system than Mac OS X - Windows or anything else. Unlike Visual Studio.NET which costs more than $3000, all programming tools on Mac OS X are free, and there are dozens of them. Further more, these tools are more powerful and better than anything I have used on Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX.
Don't just take my words, do a Google search and find out how many alpha geeks are switching to Mac OS X: James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun, James Duncan Davidson (original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant), Tim Bray (XML inventor), Perl 6 core team, Tim O'Reilly (geek publisher), and 4 or 5 Slashdot editors including CmdrTaco himself.
>> Maybe because Apple only has to support Apple hardware and Microsoft has to support literally hundreds of thousands of hardware components
Pure rubbish!
Tell me how much MS code in Windows that is due to differences between PCs made by IBM, HP, Dell or other box makers. They all use Intel CPU, ATI or nVidia GPU, etc.
I don't know where you get your hundreds of thousands components from, but the device drivers are all written by the device makers themselves not MS.
I am not saying Apple is a player in the major league yet. But Mac OS X Server is as powerful as Linux, Solaris or any other Unix system, and much easier to manage.
The main reason for Apple's small market share in the server space is due to hardware, not software. But things have changed since the introduction of Xserve and Xserve RAID last year, and Apple's server market share in Dec 2002 had grown nearly 300% - not too shabby for a new entry. With IBM PPC 970 just around the corner, the performance issue is likely to disappear soon.
>> That they support probably two or three orders of magnitude more hardware is reason enough
What the fuck are you talking about?
Other than different CPU architecture, Mac OS X and Windows both support the same sort of hardware: ATI and nVidia GPU, Ethernet, USB, FireWire, 802.11b, SCSI and ATA Drive. Apple usually is years ahead of MS in adopting new technology: USB, FireWire, FireWire 800, BlueTooth, 802.11b, 802.11g, gigabit Ethernet, Rendezvous.
Apple is 60 times smaller than MS, but actually makes more software as well as better ones, in addition to lots of sexy hardware innovations.
It's probably because MS keep copying and stealing ideas from Apple and other companies without real insight or understanding, which make it hard fro them to integrate with their own typically bad design.
Despite the author's infinite admiration for MS, his description of War Room in part 2 is a clear indication that the Redmond Beast lives in a mad house.
I feel particularly sorry for the poor developers who suddenly were asked to fix the tens of thousands of "branding bugs" after MS had decided to drop the stupid ".NET" from Windows.NET Server 2003 for marketing reason - what a waste of human intelligence.
For 6 days a week, hundreds of unlucky people have to be at the War Room meeting at 9:30 am shouting and cursing each other to pass bugs around, after housands of more unlucky guys begins the same process at 8:30 am. Programmers are supposed to be on duty 24 hours a day, and some are called back at 3 am to fix bugs!
>> 2003 is a server OS. MacOS X is not, despite Apples best attempts.
There is a thing called Mac OS X Server, you Windows idiot.
>> The only parts of MacOS that are used for serving stuff is the open source code, which effectively is built and tested by the community.
You are talking pure shit through your fat ass. What about WebObjects, NetInfo, Apple Remote Desktop, NetBoot and a host of other Apple sysadmin tools?
Slashdot Mirror
Apple actually sold about 8000 servers in about 6 months after launching Xserve in the middle of 2002 - not bad at all for their first entry.
In contrast, Intel only managed to sell 5000 Itanium 2 systems in the whole of 2002.
I am surprised that people should have any doubt that Xserve and Mac OS X can handle iTMS.
.mac Web service for years now.
Apple has been using its own hardware and software to power apple.com including Apple Online Store, QuickTime movie trailer and the
The QuickTime movie trailer site is the most popular on the Web, and QuickTime Player has been downloaded over 100 mln times in the last year or so. The storage and bandwidth requirement for downloading movie trailers are much higher than that for music.
To paraphrase Jobs iTMS presentation, Apple is capable of moving "ocean of bits" for video downloading, so music is really a no-brainer. In fact, a single Xerve RAID (2.5 TB) can store the 200000 songs many times over.
Apple online store is one of the best and biggest e-commerce site with annual sale in $billions.
A recent survey shows that apple.com is the #1 hardware site on the Web with 3.7 mln unique users a week, while hp.com is a distant second with 2.5 mln.
They also use WebObjects (the original enterprise application server from NeXT) for heavy lifting, which is capable of talking to multiple database systems and load ballancing. WebObjects is one of the best kept Apple secrets, and perhaps the only application server on the market that has the visual tool to automatically generate Java code for database programming.
>> OK, from that statement alone we know you're lying...a *real* programmer prefers dual or triple screen which you can't get with the iBook unless you want to void your warranty.
/. editors, and many more former Windows and Linux users.
How dare you accusing me lying, idiot. Have you ever done any programming? Real programmers spend more time on designing and thinking, not watching the screen. Go to a Java or OSS conference and find out how many geeks use iBooks.
>> until Microsoft pulls the plug because it doesn't need to keep Apple around anymore that is.
Who cares? I have Office, but hardly use it. Although everyone including MS keeps saying Office for Mac OS X is better than Windows version, but I find the damn thing is so bloated and slow. There are plenty alternatives on the Mac: AppleWorks, OpenOffice, BBEdit, TextEdit, and Keynote (the first version is already better than PowerPoint according to every single review that I have seen). Rumor has it that Apple is about to release the Office killer really soon. Now with Safari beta kicking IE ass, MS is welcome to keep their bug-ridden software to the dirty Windows.
>> I'm writing this on a Sony Vaio. I hear nothing but the clicking of the keyboard. Woohoo, Apple has sure out-done us this time!
Oh, don't get me started on Vaio. After using Wintel for over a decade, my brother-in-law has just bough a iBook and tosses away his Vaio. His Vaio is nearly twice as heavy as the iBook, the battery life is less than half of the iBook's, it's too hot to touch after 30 minutes usage, and the fan is constantly on. On paper, the Vaio is faster than the iBook, but not in reality. I once played with a very expensive 16" 2+ GHz Vaio running Win XP, and found the graphics performance is utterly appalling. For instance, dragging a Window around with a reasonable speed would leave a gustly trail of broken window frames and cause all icons on the desktop flickering violently - very disturbing to the eyes - something that never ever happens on the Mac.
>> Think about it...the iBook is much less powerful than an x86 laptop running Windows...
Are you kidding me? Wintel laptop may idle in GHz and appear powerful on paper, but certainly not in real use. Have you ever tried Mac OS X? I use Windows regularly, and I can tell you that Mac OS X is years ahead of Windows in terms of power, style and ease of use.
>> *If* you can afford the 12" one?? Don't you think it's a little odd that something with a diminutive screen costs so much?
Oh you idiot. Do you know how much the 12" PowerBook costs? It's a professional laptop with G4 and proper GPU, BlueTooth, AirPort Extreme (54 mbps 802.11g wireless), slot-loading SuperDrive, Ethernet, Firewire, USB, etc. Is there a Vaio with such power and light weight? In contrast, many of the top range Vaio use cheap integrated graphics with no dedicated VRAM at all. I don't think so. But if there is one, it would cost a lot more.
>> And what is so exciting about the Mac OS? Oh yeah, it's so exciting that they couldn't even come up with a name for it.
What the fuck are you talking about? Mac OS X is leading the Windows crowd by at least 3 years. It's going to be really boring in the Windows world until at least 2005 when Longhorn arrives, or maybe 2006 according to the well know MS track record in hypes and delays. But from the recent Longhorn leaks, all the hyped features are still in conceptual stage but already available in Mac OS X Jaguar since a year ago. Later this month, Apple will preview the next major OS X release Panther.
Many alpha geeks have switched to Mac OS X including James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun Microsystems, James Duncan Davidson (original author of Tomcat and Ant), Tim Bray (inventor of XML), the Perl 6 core team, Tim O'Reilly (publisher of geek books), 4 or 5
>> And here's a tip about security: the more people that use an OS, the more flaws will be dis
Apple laptops are actually cheaper than most of the Wintel ones, and comes with tons of powerful programming tools and best-of-class apps such as iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iChat, iSync, iCal, Mail, Safari, etc.
Best of all, you get the best looking and rock solid UNIX machine that runs thousands of open source programs and MS Office plus lots of professional and consumer software from Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, OmniGroup, and more.
I am a professional software designer and use a 700 MHz iBook for all C++ / Java programming and graphics and Web design. Don't let anyone tell you that the iBook is not fast enough, I am very happy with mine. It's virtually silent, and the battery life is great. I love the instant sleep and wake up feature, and use it more than 10 hours a day.
But if you can afford it, buy the 12" PowerBook with BlueTooth and faster wireless (54 mbps 802.11g), and maybe the SuperDrive for burning DVD.
Whatever you do, just keep clear of Windows - it's boring and full of security flaws.
Software Upgrade is a two-click process, and it has never broken any of my 3 machines in the last 2 years.
And best of all, virtually all of the updates add new features or improve performance, not security fixes with Windows update.
>> Windows' Explorer is superior to Finder in basically every way I can imagine. Ive yet to find anything Finder does better than Explorer.
It's probably because you have spent so many years getting used to the Windows oddities so that you are incapable of learning easier and better ways to do thing.
How do you do these in Windows:
(1) Finder Column View - the best way to navigate the file system.
(2) Spring-loaded folder - drag and drop files to any depth without clicking.
(3) Finder Toolbar - one-click access to any folder in the toolbar.
(4) Genie effect - visually indicates where a minimized windows is heading to.
(5) Animation - shows app is launching.
(6) Icon magnification - reduces eye strain.
(7) Folders and URLs in the Dock.
(8) Find location of apps in the Dock.
(9) Quit running app or bring any app window directly from the Dock.
(10) Preview movie, music, graphics without starting apps.
(11) Type "open *" from a Terminal window to open all files in the working folder with their default apps.
(12) System Services (such as spelling check or text to speech) accessible from any app.
(13) Chat, browse, print, sync and share music across LAN with no IP configuration through Rendezvous.
(14) Access eBay, flight, translation, dictionary and many more service through Sherlock.
(15) One-click music preview and purchase through iTunes Music Store.
(16) Best-of-class digital tools (iLife, iChat, iSync, etc), dozens of free programming tools (GCC for C/C++, Objective C/C++, Java, Project Builder, Interface Builder, and so on), and tons of open source software (Apache, Perl, Ruby, Python, etc).
There are so many more things that you can do with Mac OS X than Windows, so stop limiting yourself to the poor old Windows hole and start exploring the new and better world.
This is going to be my last reply on the subject. It's a reasonably fruitful discussion, and it's obvious that you and I have lots of common ground as well as a fair bit of differences. >> There are a lot of things you just don't know of UI design and the reasons behind them. I don't have the time to explain them here. I actually know more about UI design than you think, having developed quite a few real GUI application on various platforms over the years. >> The MDI application is a thing and concept of the past. This should surprise no one, because the MS version of MDI is a POS in the first place. >> As for your statement about closing IE and 'all its Windows' - Just right click on it on the taskbar and hit 'Close Group'. It will close all the document IE Windows. Where is the consistency then? Why can you quit Word or Excel from the menu bar, but not IE? >> This is a part of the 'new' theories of UI design, a real document centric model, instead of an application centric model, which by what you say is all you are accustomed to having. The document centric model is neither new nor superior. Remember the ill-fated Apple / IBM project called OpenDoc? >> The real world does not work like the application model. In the real world, documents are INDEPENDANT of the tools you use to create and modify them, and this is also how it should be on computers as well. This is how Windows has operated and been moving application developers since 1995. But the actual fact is most people do care about applicationsm, and there is nothing wrong with that. Take plain text documents for instance, some prefer vi, others use Emacs or Notepad or Word. The document centric view is just one of many doctrines, not a universal law. >> This is really an in-depth theory and I wish I could help you more with it. I just don't have the time, but if I ever do a book or video I will look up your post and send you a free copy, I promise. I will be waiting for that.
There are many advantages by having the menu bar at the top of the screen in addition to saving screen space:
(1) You can reach it with your eyes shut, knowing its location never changes. In contrast, a menu bar within a window requires more precise mouse control and mental effort.
(2) For multi-document apps, it just doesn't make sense to duplicate the same menu bar in every document window.
(3) There are usually 3 types of menu commands: document-wide, application-wide, or system-wide. It really doesn't make any sense to put anything other than the document commands on a menu bar attached to a document window. On the Mac, the Apple menu is the place for system commands like Sleep / Restart / Shut Down / Log Out, the application menu next to the Apple menu hosts application commands like About / Preferences / Quit, which is very consistent and logic. In contrast, Windows menu system is a mess, which is probably why the Shut Down command inside the Start Menu.
Talking about UI inconsistency, I can't imagine anyone worse than MS. For instance, every multi-document apps (Mac or Windows) should have a Window menu that list the currently open windows, right? But no, the rule doesn't Apply to IE for some reason. Worst still, IE doesn't even have the Exit command. So how do you quit IE if you have a few dozens of browser windows? The only way I can see is close all the windows one by one, and even then it might still be running the the background.
If you are a power user, the Unix shell and AppleScript will open up a new dimension for you. For instance, the simple command "open *" would open all files in your working folder with the correct applications simultaneously, and you can write AppleScript to drive remote applications by simulating mouse clicks. How do you do these in Windows?
I respect your personal prefernce, but you must be one of the very few in the world who actually prefer XP for its GUI! Most people stick to Windows because of games or application or the perceived speed. But everyone in my circle including many Windows users agrees that Aqua looks so much better than Luna (or whatever it's called now).
...
The color scheme and icons and buttons in XP just look amateurish and clumsy at best. Even on 2GHz machines, dragging a window around would frequently leave unsightly trails of broken window frames or cause all desktop icons to flicker - very disturbing to the eyes - something that never evre happen on the slowest Mac.
Unlike the useless and ever so annoying Office Clippy, most eye candies in Aqua serve a purpose. For instance, the genie effect or bouncing icons lets user know where a minimized window is heading to or whether an app is launching, transparency and softshadow are just a pleasure to look at. The UI in XP has so many rough edges and simply doesn't have the refinement of Aqua. I use computer over 10 hours a day and want something visually pleasing - XP just doesn't cut it for me - and it really insult my intelligence to have to click the Start Menu to shut down Windows. There is evidence that Longhorn will catch up with OS X in many respects, but I don't want to wait for another 2 years.
I will take your word for the microkernel dispute before I conduct a proper research. But I have seen Apple's own document and remember very well that they have only changed the Mach messaging system to improve the performance. You have to remember that Mach is the original micrikernel, there is very little point to use it if its main feature is removed.
For me, there is nothing even close to OS X with Darwin Open Source and Aqua / Cocoa / Java / POSIX, and I am eagerly waiting for Panther on the 64 bit PPC 970. MS may have a solid kernel architecture, but I would put them at least 3 years behind Apple in terms of overall application environment. And Apple is moving much faster than MS since the introduction of OS X 2 years ago. It's going to be very boring in the Windows world until at least 2005 apart from waves and waves of security patches and Longhorn leaks, while Apple is makeing steady progress every few weeks - Safari - Rendezvous - iTunes Music Store - iChat - Keynote - Panther
>> SYsadmin stuff. So, lots and lots of windows open doing lots of stuff simultaneously.
In other words, you are just talking about Finder performance - one single app! I agree that the Finder is not the most responsive app in the world, but at least it's much more usable than Windows.
>> But what _actually_ happens is that Microsoft write multitudes of hardware drivers to give basic functionality for a wide range of hardware to their customers.
But not for "hundreds of thousands components" as the other guy claimed earlier.
>> Just like Apple have drivers that support some of the hardware they don't ship (eg: wheel mice).
Exactly. Apple write code for generic USB mouse that also support mice with wheel and two buttons, which doesn't mean they have to write drivers for every past or future mouse in the world. I suspect MS does the same.
>> I disagree. Hardware support has a _lot_ to do with the quality of an OS - and the work involved in supporting large amounts of hardware answers your original question about development costs.
I am just trying to dispell the myth that MS spends lots of money and time on writing device drivers for every computer component in the world. It's just no true.
>> The $3000 you tout for .NET development is for the IDE and integration for large project management.
Project Builder is a very powerful IDE for building large Cocoa / Carbon apps or Framework / Bundle / Kernel Extension / Plug-in / Unix tool in C/C++, Objective C / C++, Java, AppleScript, with highly sophisticated dependency management for multiple targets / build styles / build phases.
Interface is the only GUI builder that I have ever used that is capable of making sleek GUI with virtually no code.
Both are free.
MS only has to write code to support standard protocols like USB or FireWire. The device makers will write the device drivers, do the testing, and pay MS to get certifications.
Similarly, Apple provide free programming tools and documents for companies to write device drivers, but ultimately the manufacturers have to take the main responsibility to support their own products.
In any case, this really has very little to do with the quality of the OS.
OK, maybe there is something wrong with my own PC, but I have used XP on a 2 GHz Sony Vaio - its video performance is much slower than my 700 MHz iBook. On the Vaio, dragging a window quickly would leave a long trail of very ugly broken window frames - something that never ever happen to me on any Mac.
What exactly are you doing with OS X machines? I do lots of programming and graphics on an iBook, and just don't feel it's slow at all, unless I watch QuickTime video and play iTunes at the same time as well as compile programs.
Maybe you should get your Mac fixed.
First of all, I didn't mean to pick on you personally when I mentioned the average Windows crowd - please accept my appology for not making that clear.
/iTunes / iPhoto / iDVD) - best free applications for the digital age, iMac - the first legacy-free computer with built-in wireless / USB / FireWire that has also ignited a revolution in industrial design for computers / printers / keyboards / mouse and many more, FireWire and FireWire 800, G4 Cube - the 8" cubic marvel that broke the GFLOP barrier, Titanium PowerBook - the first laptop with wide screen display and gigabit Ethernet and DVD burner, Xserve and Xserve RAID, iPod - the best ever MP3 player, the 17" PowerBook - the only 17" laptop with built-in 54 mbps 802.11g wireless / gigabit Ethernet / BlueTooth / slot-loading DVD-R / fiber optical light sensor to light up the keyboard when the light goes out, Quartz Extreme - the first Window composition architecture that offloads the desktop rendering to the 3D GPU (to be adopted by MS for Longhorn in 2005), Keynote - the powerPoint killer, Safari - fast and powerful browser that beats MS IE even in its current beta release, Rendezvous - open source and zero-configuration networking, iTunes Music Store - the best music site that could save the record industry, and the innovation will go on.
Secondly, you really have to get yourself a Mac to experience the power and elegance of Mac OS X. You obviously have lots of theory about OS architectures, but OS X on my 400 MHz iMac bought 4 years ago just runs faster and much more stable than Win XP on my 800 MHz PC. The only thing that XP is good at is faster booting, but that's a moot point because I don't reboot OS X for weeks or months - just put it asleep and it wakes up in a second or two. My PC gets shut down everyday to reduce the noise level, and XP still crashes once or twice a week, so your theory that the NT kernel stability just doesn't reflect the reality.
Thirdly, you have to look at the whole picture to appreciate Apple's unique contribution to the computer industry, not just focus on the OS. Apple is primarily a hardware company about 60 times smaller than MS, and yet has managed to produce more and better software than the software giant. This may sound beyond imagination, but for virtually every MS application, there is usually a better Apple counterpart, and the opposite is not true. For instance, MS doesn't have anything to match WebObjects (the original application server) and the high end Apple tools for pro digital productions such as Final Cut Pro (non-linear video editing) or DVD Studio Pro (DVD Authoring) or Shake (movie composition) Logic (music production).
Sure, MS has come up with a few GUI tricks of their own after they learnt the basic from the master in the course of developing Word and Excel on the Mac, but blunders like putting the Shut Down option within the Start menu indicate that they are still a long way from getting the fundamental right.
I challenge you to list the 100s of MS innovations, and bet many of them are just cheap imitations of similar Apple technologies. Now let have a quick run of what Apple has either invented or popularized: GUI, mouse, color monitor, laser printer, plug-n-play, voice command, AppleTalk, 32 bit OS - years before MS, QuickTime - the grandad of media players, Newton - PDA with natural hand writing recognition 10 years before MS Tablet, Darwin Open Source - the only open source OS by a major computer maker, Darwin Streaming Server - the only open source cross-platform media server, WebObjects - the original application server, AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) - compact and seamless integration of word processing / spreadsheet / drawing / painting / database / communication / presentation tools, FileMaker Pro - powerful and easy to use database system, Mac OS X - lickabe GUI with rock solid BSD / Mach Unix, iLife (iMovie
It's absurd to suggest that Mac OS X is monolithic and the Linux Kernel is not, because the opposite is true. I agree that Mac OS X
According to a recent survey
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNew s.asp?id=9361
"Apple Computer Inc.?s Apple.com led all computer hardware sites in number of shoppers for the week that ended May 11, according to Nielsen/NetRatings? AdRelevance report. Apple.com logged 3.75 million unique visitors, 73.7% of all visitors to hardware sites, which hosted 5.09 million shoppers for the week.
Next behind Apple was Hewlett-Packard Co.?s HP.com at 2.47 million visitors; Dell Computer Corp., at 1.94 million; Gateway Inc. at 312,000; and Toshiba.com at 157,000."
For those who claim that Apple doesn't have a server OS, apple.com is powered by Mac OS X Server.
>> Who says Apple is spending less then Microsoft in terms of OS development.
According to the article, there are 8000 to 10000 programmers working on the Win 2k3. I don't think Apple has that many employees world wide.
MS is about 60 times bigger than Apple and has more than $40 bln cash. Apple is primarily a hardware company, so lots of its resources are devoted to hardware innovations. But the irony is that Apple's software portfolio is actually bigger and better than that of MS. You may find that incredible, but for virtually every MS product, there is usually an better Apple counterpart, and the opposite is not true.
>> Maybe if Apple had spent similar amounts of money on OS X, you wouldn't have to have the fastest Mac available just to be able to run OS X at a barely acceptable speed ?
Have you ever tried Mac OS X?
My 400 MHz iMac bought 4 years ago runs faster and smoother than Win XP on my 800 MHz PC, and it does much more than XP and works 24 hours a day for weeks and months without getting shut down. In contrast, the PC has to be shut down by the end of each day because it's too noisy, and it still crashes once or twice a week.
You are confused about device drivers with the OS. A modern microkernel OS like Mac OS X and Win 2k should just provide a plug-in architecture capable of supporting any number of devices - without coding device-specific logic in the OS.
.NET Server and Longhorn? After all those noisy and expensive ballyhoos, now they called it Windows Server 2003 (which adds tens of thousands of "branding bugs" for their own programmers), and Longhorn is at least 2 years away. Ever heard about the revolutionary file system WinFS (Windows Future Storage) to be introduced with Longhorn? No, that's just a joke as well, according the latest MS thinking. How about the latest and greatest invention NGSCB (Next Generation Secure Computing Base)? We shall wait and see, but whoever came up with the stupid moniker deserves death sentence in my court. What about DRM or Passport? Well, MS is asking the manufacturers of MP3 players and other digital devices to build an internal clock so that Windows can check the expiration dates and prevent people from playing songs or videos once they stop paying the monthly fees. But fortunately, Apple has beaten MS again with FairPlay and iTunes Music Store - over a million songs per week just for US Mac OS X users - more sales in a week than all the existing music sites have managed in a year or so - just imagine the figure when iTMS is available before the end of this year.. Once again, Apple delivers with no hypes or fusses.
.NET which costs more than $3000, all programming tools on Mac OS X are free, and there are dozens of them. Further more, these tools are more powerful and better than anything I have used on Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX.
Mac OS X provides low-level support for industry standards like USB, FireWire, BlueTooth and so on. It's totally upto the device makers to write the device-specific stuff and do most of the testing. It's my experiences that plug-n-play works much better on Mac than on PCs. My Cannon digital camera just works on Mac OS X without any installation, but the same camera requires lengthy installation on Win XP.
Maybe Windows is not so well designed in this respect, which might explain the 50 mln lines of bloated code base. You people give too much credit to MS in this case, and too little to third parties. MS is a monoply and a known bully. They may give a little help to their big partners like HP or Dell, but smaller companies like nVidia and ATI have to pay MS and work really hard to get things certified by the Beast, and only fools are naive enough to believe that MS ever gives a damn about the tiny unknown fishes, let alone writing code for them.
In any case, to suggest that MS has to develop for "hundreds of thousands components" is just stupid. I will grant you hundreds or even thousands, but not hundreds of thousands.
Personally, I believe the average Windows crowd are just not intelligent enough to see through the MS smoke screen or to actively seek better alternatives.
MS is only good at two things: it imitates and hypes. Apple and IBM are the ones that inovate and deliver.
How many years have they been talking about Windows
I am a Unix geek with over 10 years C / C++ / Java experiences, and use Windows 2K and XP regularly. There is no doubt in my mind that Mac OS X is the superior OS in every way. Windows people don't realize that Mac OS X also comes more and much better quality software than any version of Windows. Take iPhoto as an example, it's a very smart and powerful photo database, while Windows XP only provides the My Pictures folder.
If you are a programmer, there is simply no better system than Mac OS X - Windows or anything else. Unlike Visual Studio
Don't just take my words, do a Google search and find out how many alpha geeks are switching to Mac OS X: James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun, James Duncan Davidson (original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant), Tim Bray (XML inventor), Perl 6 core team, Tim O'Reilly (geek publisher), and 4 or 5 Slashdot editors including CmdrTaco himself.
>> Maybe because Apple only has to support Apple hardware and Microsoft has to support literally hundreds of thousands of hardware components
Pure rubbish!
Tell me how much MS code in Windows that is due to differences between PCs made by IBM, HP, Dell or other box makers. They all use Intel CPU, ATI or nVidia GPU, etc.
I don't know where you get your hundreds of thousands components from, but the device drivers are all written by the device makers themselves not MS.
I am not saying Apple is a player in the major league yet. But Mac OS X Server is as powerful as Linux, Solaris or any other Unix system, and much easier to manage.
The main reason for Apple's small market share in the server space is due to hardware, not software. But things have changed since the introduction of Xserve and Xserve RAID last year, and Apple's server market share in Dec 2002 had grown nearly 300% - not too shabby for a new entry. With IBM PPC 970 just around the corner, the performance issue is likely to disappear soon.
>> That they support probably two or three orders of magnitude more hardware is reason enough
What the fuck are you talking about?
Other than different CPU architecture, Mac OS X and Windows both support the same sort of hardware: ATI and nVidia GPU, Ethernet, USB, FireWire, 802.11b, SCSI and ATA Drive. Apple usually is years ahead of MS in adopting new technology: USB, FireWire, FireWire 800, BlueTooth, 802.11b, 802.11g, gigabit Ethernet, Rendezvous.
Apple is 60 times smaller than MS, but actually makes more software as well as better ones, in addition to lots of sexy hardware innovations.
More stable, less security flaws, better looking, easier to use, ...
It's probably because MS keep copying and stealing ideas from Apple and other companies without real insight or understanding, which make it hard fro them to integrate with their own typically bad design.
.NET Server 2003 for marketing reason - what a waste of human intelligence.
Despite the author's infinite admiration for MS, his description of War Room in part 2 is a clear indication that the Redmond Beast lives in a mad house.
I feel particularly sorry for the poor developers who suddenly were asked to fix the tens of thousands of "branding bugs" after MS had decided to drop the stupid ".NET" from Windows
For 6 days a week, hundreds of unlucky people have to be at the War Room meeting at 9:30 am shouting and cursing each other to pass bugs around, after housands of more unlucky guys begins the same process at 8:30 am. Programmers are supposed to be on duty 24 hours a day, and some are called back at 3 am to fix bugs!
>> 2003 is a server OS. MacOS X is not, despite Apples best attempts.
There is a thing called Mac OS X Server, you Windows idiot.
>> The only parts of MacOS that are used for serving stuff is the open source code, which effectively is built and tested by the community.
You are talking pure shit through your fat ass. What about WebObjects, NetInfo, Apple Remote Desktop, NetBoot and a host of other Apple sysadmin tools?