Re:another Linux user's experiences with OSX
on
Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
The biggest problem with Objective-C is that it provides no support for runtime safety. That becomes more and more of a problem as programs grow larger and become composed of ever more components.
I think Apple has two choices: either update Objective-C, or move more aggressively into Java. Java has almost all of the features found in Objective-C, it has the industry acceptance, it has the performance, and it has the runtime safety.
Re:Software Installation?
on
Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
Good Linux installations make installing a package as easy as:
apt-get install package-name
That goes out over the Internet, finds the package, finds all its dependencies, and installs them. Distributions like Debian have just about any package you might want included in their package system. Furthermore, the package will get upgraded automatically when new versions come out.
What's the situation on OSX? Some applications come from Apple and are part of some automatic upgrade process. Others come in a variety of archive formats. After unpacking them (and leaving bits and pieces of partially unpacked stuff on your desktop), you need to drag their contents nowhere in particular. Yet others come with installers that do who-knows-what. And a lot of UNIX tools, you have to install from source. Much of the stuff you install on a Macintosh is not tracked and not updated automatcially.
In fact, apt-get exists for OSX (the fink project uses it). It is just that the commercial and Apple software don't use it and instead rely on cumbersome manual installations.
Re:another Linux user's experiences with OSX
on
Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
The iMac has 768Mbytes. It's "smooth", it's just not "fast".
another Linux user's experiences with OSX
on
Penguin2Apple
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I use Linux for most of my work, but recently bought a Mac running OSX (and, yes, I also have a Windows XP machine). I think, overall, Apple did a good job. But, in my view, Linux still compares quite well.
What's good about OSX?
It installs and works easily. Part of that is that there is only one hardware vendor.
It seems like a well-tested and a pretty stable platform to deliver code on.
Device drivers really do install dynamically (with Linux, you usually end up having to recompile the kernel at some point).
It has great Java support out of the box.
Things like automatic network location selection work out of the box.
There is a reasonable amount of polished, commercial software available for it.
Both the hardware and the software looks very stylish and pretty.
It comes with a complete set of BSD tools.
It comes with standard networking tools and protocols like ssh, NFS, and lpr.
You can download a complete development environment from Apple, including GUI designer.
Applications like iTunes and iPhoto are really well designed. They do less than their KDE and Gnome equivalents and that is good. Apple has thought carefully about what you need and what you don't need.
Standard GUI aplications are scriptable using OSA (although it's a bit messy).
Mach allows user-level device drivers.
You get X11, as well as the Debian package tools and packages (fink.sourceforge.net).
Apple is somewhat less nagging about "download this" and "sign up for that" than Microsoft.
What's not so good about OSX?
Driver availability: there are very few drivers available (some of the ones that are are ports of Linux drivers); this will presumably get fixed over the next 6-12 months.
The UI is enormously resource intensive and slow. The kernel is no speed daemon either on things like disk I/O. On a 600MHz G3 iMac running OSX 10.1.2, applications are annoyingly sluggish. It's mostly the GUI; X11 applications running on the same screen and hardware are much faster.
It isn't quite as stable as Linux.
There are some usability bloopers in the UI (as there are in previous versions of MacOS); I guess if you have a 15 year history, you need to accomodate some historical idiosyncracies.
Software installation is a mess. Some applications come with installers, some come as archives that you need to drag somewhere, some come as loopback mountable disk images. Linux is much better in this area, and even Windows XP seems a little better.
There are almost no books available (BN doesn't even have a Mac section anymore, while their Linux and open source section is quite large).
Cocoa/Objective-C are nice, but somewhat aging technology. It's not clear to me what Apple's future vision is.
Device access is inconsistent. For example, audio and video have no device nodes; the APIs for accessing are messy.
Keyboard access and editing keys are pretty primitive.
No "strace" (the kernel isn't compiled for it).
If OSX were a Linux distribution, people would probably debate endlessly whether it was really ready for the desktop. I think overall OSX is neither better nor worse than Gnome or KDE on Linux. What it lacks in performance and consistency, it makes up in commercial support and simplicity.
The biggest advantages of OSX are that it's supported by a big brand-name. You can get MS Office for it. If a piece of hardware doesn't work, you take it back to the store and say "I plugged it in and it doesn't work; sorry--it says it's MacOS compatible". Presumably, there will be books around for it, and they will all document the one, standard version. And APIs and functionality change less rapidly than on Linux (which can be good or bad).
OSX is an operating system that a UNIX user can live with. I think it's good on a laptop, for PowerPoint presentations, as an iTunes jukebox, or to recommend to one's parents or manager. But it's no Linux killer.
OSX is just so much better than Windows XP. The OSX software architecture is much cleaner and the toolset you get with it is so much better. And the OSX UI is incomparably more consistent and easy to use than what Windows XP has.
Apple needs to address their performance issues (or release dual 2GHz iMacs:-), and they need to communicate a more coherent software strategy.
What the Linux community should do is study Apple's approach carefully and copy the good parts of it. KISS not only saves programming effort, it results in better software as well. A GUI with the simplicity of OSX but without the performance problems and OS9 compatibility would be great, and it would be less work to develop than the feature-laden KDE or Gnome desktops.
So, where I would grudgingly use Windows right now, I will probably now gladly use Macintosh. While OSX is no substitute for Linux, it brings a good, usable version of a UNIX-derivative into the mainstream, and that's good.
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I think Apple has two choices: either update Objective-C, or move more aggressively into Java. Java has almost all of the features found in Objective-C, it has the industry acceptance, it has the performance, and it has the runtime safety.
What's the situation on OSX? Some applications come from Apple and are part of some automatic upgrade process. Others come in a variety of archive formats. After unpacking them (and leaving bits and pieces of partially unpacked stuff on your desktop), you need to drag their contents nowhere in particular. Yet others come with installers that do who-knows-what. And a lot of UNIX tools, you have to install from source. Much of the stuff you install on a Macintosh is not tracked and not updated automatcially.
In fact, apt-get exists for OSX (the fink project uses it). It is just that the commercial and Apple software don't use it and instead rely on cumbersome manual installations.
The iMac has 768Mbytes. It's "smooth", it's just not "fast".
What's good about OSX?
What's not so good about OSX?
If OSX were a Linux distribution, people would probably debate endlessly whether it was really ready for the desktop. I think overall OSX is neither better nor worse than Gnome or KDE on Linux. What it lacks in performance and consistency, it makes up in commercial support and simplicity.
The biggest advantages of OSX are that it's supported by a big brand-name. You can get MS Office for it. If a piece of hardware doesn't work, you take it back to the store and say "I plugged it in and it doesn't work; sorry--it says it's MacOS compatible". Presumably, there will be books around for it, and they will all document the one, standard version. And APIs and functionality change less rapidly than on Linux (which can be good or bad).
OSX is an operating system that a UNIX user can live with. I think it's good on a laptop, for PowerPoint presentations, as an iTunes jukebox, or to recommend to one's parents or manager. But it's no Linux killer.
OSX is just so much better than Windows XP. The OSX software architecture is much cleaner and the toolset you get with it is so much better. And the OSX UI is incomparably more consistent and easy to use than what Windows XP has.
Apple needs to address their performance issues (or release dual 2GHz iMacs :-), and they need to communicate a more coherent software strategy.
What the Linux community should do is study Apple's approach carefully and copy the good parts of it. KISS not only saves programming effort, it results in better software as well. A GUI with the simplicity of OSX but without the performance problems and OS9 compatibility would be great, and it would be less work to develop than the feature-laden KDE or Gnome desktops.
So, where I would grudgingly use Windows right now, I will probably now gladly use Macintosh. While OSX is no substitute for Linux, it brings a good, usable version of a UNIX-derivative into the mainstream, and that's good.