You are quite right. I did not mean it to sound like I was expecting an X11 app to miraculously work flawlessly in a Mac environment. Some effort (like the OpenOffice developers made, in supporting traditional Mac keybindings) would go a long way though.
What I am saying, however, is that GIMP will never replace Photoshop on the Mac unless it is ported to Aqua. And that was the ultimate idea behind this whole news posting - how do Photoshop users see the GIMP? Well I'm telling you, from the perspective of a Photoshop user on the Mac, that it is a good tool but not one that will replace any of Adobe's offerings for serious use anytime soon.
The interface (in those respects) doesn't suck, it's just different.
On the Mac, that is almost as bad as the UI outright sucking. When you can't even use simple shortcuts that are consistent across apps on the OS (such as Cmd-O to open, Cmd-Z to undo, etc.) it can be a pain in the ass. On Windows, do users not take it for granted that Ctrl-O will open window/document, that Ctrl-Z will undo, that Alt-F4 will close a window, etc? Wouldn't you find it REALLY annoying if you had a very capable app that decided to use key bindings totally inconsistent with 99% of the apps you use?
Us Mac users are spoiled by the majority of our apps complying with the Apple UI standards. Sure, there are programs that don't fully cooperate, but those are usually along the lines of "Joe Bob's REALbasic app" featuring the default icon. Any app that sees remotely serious use will be as consistent as possible. Apple didn't just pull their UI guidelines out of their ass, they're based on years of testing and experimentation on their part.
GIMP's UI is fine for Windows and Linux, but it does not fly for most Mac users, especially those who do not want to waste precious moments of their day waiting for their brain to switch into "oh, this is a non-native app with inconsistent key bindings" mode. For The GIMP to see serious acceptance on the Mac platform, the developers would need to modify it such that it can be bound to a GTK interface or an Aqua interface. Then it can be built with an Aqua UI to keep Mac users happy, but the same core can be used for the number crunching and whatnot.
That's the way good port jobs are done. After all, Photoshop on Windows doesn't force you to use Alt-O (Alt being in the same position as Cmd is on a Mac keyboard) to open documents, does it? It doesn't make you use a Mac-esque open dialog, does it? Of course not. Windows users would be annoyed, and rightly so.
I know for sure I have absolutely no trouble writing Japanese text in GIMP 2.0 on my XFree86 / Linux system.
No, this is using GIMP 2.0 on Mac OS X.:) My complaint is that, not being an Aqua app, it does not support international input the way native OS X apps (including Photoshop) do. There may be a way to rig it to support (in my case) Chinese input, but I'm not aware of any such way, and the point is that serious graphic artists on the Mac do not want to rig stuff.
When I was primarily a Linux user, I used GIMP for many hours out of each day, tinkering with my photos, working on images for web sites, etc. It is a good tool, and it has a lot going for it. The new interface is nice, but... in so many regards, GIMP is no Photoshop. I quickly realized this after I got a Power Mac and Photoshop 7.
Even though I do not use Photoshop in any professional context, it is a phenomenal product even for my personal use. Here are the major things that keep me from using GIMP on the Mac beyond occasionally playing with it:
No easy automation that compares to Photoshop. Click a record button, do your thing, and you're set. Then you can use that macro manually, or apply it to a collection of images.
All the builds of GIMP I've tried for Mac very obviously do not take good advantage of my dual processors. When I can actually see the redraw process for simple layer changes, etc. that is a bit disturbing. That just should not happen on a dual 1ghz G4 system.
It requires X11, and a whole host of problems goes with that - for example, no support for international input (i.e. I cannot compose images and include Chinese characters in them by typing them with the text tool). Not to mention that I've yet to find a way to get GIMP to support Mac keybindings, like OpenOffice does. Then there's the small matter of X11 using Option-Click to emulate the right mouse button, whereas almost everything else on the Mac uses Control-Click...
Don't get me wrong - GIMP is a nice program, and for the price it absolutely kicks ass. But just that handful of problems listed above will be enough to turn off serious photo/graphics folks. Hell, I'm a geek that has used Linuxy and UNIXy stuff for years, and I am seriously bothered by those issues I listed, among other nit-picky ones.
Adobe doesn't have much to worry about at the moment. But if an Aqua native version of GIMP came out and could offer similar performance on high-powered Macs, then they might have reason to start sweating.
well, if this sentiment is expressed more often then more people will see and will think about it... "raising public awareness" that is =]
Quite true. One unfortunate thing, though, is that awareness doesn't always equate to action when humans are involved. I won't say "especially Americans," though I may think it. But it is an unfortunate truth that even when people are "aware" of these troubles, they do little about them. Usually this is because they do not feel impacted directly (the all-too-common case of "somebody else's problem" syndrome), or because they feel powerless to stop it.
Truth be told, I tend to fall into the latter category. I'm a middle class citizen who carries views that sometimes fall into the "anti-American" (read: not 100% pro-corporate and pro-Bush) category. Is anyone with influence over trade going to listen to me? Not bloody likely, as things stand. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
what I also don't understand is why 'democratic' world has such a great trade relations with totalitarian China?...
This sentiment is frequently expressed whenever China is mentioned, especially here on Slashdot (as you can see from other peoples' posts already.) I think it is rooted in either an ignorance of or an unwillingness to believe that our Great Democratic Country(tm) would *gasp* trade with a country like China because of money outweighing our precious values.
When it comes right down to it, do you honestly think the people who have influence over such things give one damn about freedom or democracy when faced with lots of dollar signs? It's the same factor that influences outsourcing of jobs - it's not cheap enough to have your labor force in the US. Peoples' financial problems and well-being be damned, there's money to be made. It's not that people are unaware of the incongruencies between our way of doing things and China's, it's that they do not care as long as it brings in the dough.
Re:Upcoming Open Source Alternative to Google...
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 1
As others realise the money in search try and compete with Google the premium on employing search experts will go up so high that there won't be many with the principles to work on open source. It's sad but true.
I'm having a hard time understanding why this would be much different from say, developing an operating system kernel... perhaps one that involves a penguiny mascot. Plenty of extremely talented developers work on the Linux kernel. Sure, some of the top ones get paid to do it (i.e. by companies like Red Hat), but who's to say the same thing could not happen with search engines?
Though there are surely many programmers who would rather get paid insane amounts of money to work on a search engine, there are still the select few who would just as readily work on an open source one instead - either on principle, or out of a simple desire to not get trapped working for an Evil Megacorp(tm).
No, DMCA is bad when protecting bogus copy protection mechanisms.:) I don't think anyone here would seriously argue with you about the validity of the musicians'/RIAA's copyright on their own music.
If your offer up your creative material with no copyright protection and state that it is free for all to use, why shouldn't Linspire (or for that matter Microsoft or SCO) feel free to use it?
Because if no specific license is offered, then basic copyright applies. This means you have no right to make derivatives, commercial or otherwise.
Prior to the addition of the CC license on Klowner's wallpaper site, there was no specific copyright, although standard international copyrights still hold.
45 - 60 seconds ?! I just opened OOo writer, the first time since I turned on the computer today - 12 seconds. If thats an indication of Mac OS-x speed then I'm happy running linux.
Well, I'm including the couple of seconds it takes X11 to load and initialize, and then for OOo itself to start. It is indeed rather slow to load, and buggy - but this isn't the fault of OS X in either case. When Microsoft bloatware that isn't even fully native can load faster, it says something about the code or the way it was compiled.
One of the main problems with OpenOffice on the Mac is that it does not yet use Aqua for its user interface, and a side effect of this is you cannot use the different international input modes in OS X to type in OO. So I can't just switch to Chinese and start typing in OO, as it does not know how to handle it. Without that, half my use for a word processor goes out the window.
There may be a way to rig the X11 environment or OpenOffice itself to allow Chinese input in another fashion, but it's just one more usability knock against the program when run on Mac OS X. Ugly UI, incosistencies with the Mac's interface conventions, international input kludges, etc. Not to mention the performance issues, and missing niceties like AppleScript automation (which can be done on ANY native OS X app, even if it's not designed for it), non-crappy file dialogs, etc.
Microsoft Word may have its share of problems, but at least it can start in less than 45-60 seconds, and it follows most of the Apple UI conventions. So while OpenOffice is nice, it definitely is not a decent substitute for Office X at this stage.
Of course, not everything was replaced at the same time, but rather a gradual process of upgrades over the years.
So, is it really the same computer I started with?
Your computer is not the only one that has undergone a "gradual process of upgrades" over time. Your body is not the same one you had a few years ago, or even a few hours ago for that matter... And don't forget the rather fickle and ever-changing mind, too.
would be to port iTunes to Linux. I can't think of any reason how that could hurt Apple.
This has been brought up before, and the ultimate problem is that iTunes relies very heavily on QuickTime, and since QuickTime does not exist on Linux, it would have to be ported as well. Now they could probably hack something like how mplayer does it, using the Windows DLLs and bolting the iTunes interface onto it, but that would not be very elegant... And that ties in with another reason Apple would probably not want to bother:
Some people will not like to acknowledge it, but Linux is a pain in the ass to support commercially with closed source. Yes, there are companies that do it, but it is difficult and for most it is not worth the bother. Apple has probably already looked at the situation, and seen that it would take a lot of money not only to port iTunes (and probably QuickTime), but also to support it. How much of a pain would it be to support say, just Mandrake and SuSE? Enough of one that they would likely not recoup their development and support costs through the handful of Linux users that actually care to buy music from the iTMS. They'd have to worry about building RPMs for versions X, Y, and Z of distros A, B, and C, and then worry about God knows what a given Linux user will do to customize (i.e. screw up) things on their system, thus potentially breaking iTunes.
Ultimately, I really don't think Apple would make enough money off of iTunes on Linux to make it worth the cost of porting it, supporting it, and keeping up with the rather chaotic placement of and frequently breaking changes to system libraries, GUI toolkits, etc.
If developer tools are to be free as in lunch, then why not just make them available for download. This is much cheaper than including a CD with every computer.
Way to be sensationalist and not even entirely read the post you're replying to! Quoth the grandparent:
Also in the unlikely event that the developer CD is not present or there is an upgrade it is ALWAYS available(even to free online developer members) as a download.
Oh and - what is the big deal about including the CD? It's not like CDs are expensive, especially when they are mass-produced for inclusion with Macs and copies of OS X. How does this in any way "increase the cost for everyone?"
What language? What IDE? There are so many to choose from. If the CD doesn't have the right one, then it doesn't do any good anyway.
Uh, what the hell are you talking about? What language? How about Objective-C, C, C++, and Java? Ya know, the main languages for developing OS X and UNIX programs?
Yes there are "so many to choose from" (REALbasic, CodeWarrior and... uh... and.....) but it's a CD that's thrown in as a gift, and it's the same tools you can download later if they become out of date. And if you don't like Xcode, you don't have to use it. You are free to go out and pay for other IDEs and development tools if you wish.
Again, what is the friggin deal? Apple includes, for free, a bunch of very powerful development tools so that you can, for free, develop programs for their OS. Yeah, what a bunch of evil bastards they are.
Honestly I think they should be focusing on cleaning up search results. There is an increasing amount of spam and while it's not their fault, who wouldn't want cleaner, more accurate results?
That's all well and good, but that is a not an in-your-face and noticeable change to most users. And unfortunately, when Google goes public, it will most likely have to stick to more "noticeable" things (i.e. 1gb e-mail) to keep stockholders happy.
I'm sure it's a far cry from the level of GUI control you can get with WinBatch and AppleScript, but these things take time
No doubt about that. As I mentioned, it wasn't until the most recent release of OS X that you could script literally any graphical element of any program. For the many years AppleScript has existed up to that point, if the program(s) you wanted to work with did not expose their capabilities to AppleScript (and even if they did, there was still a good chance that they did not think to provide access to the part of the program you wanted) you were out of luck. Now you can send raw keystrokes and mouse clicks to an application, or a specific GUI component/control within it.
I'd love to see something like AppleScript take shape on the Linux/BSD/*nix side of things. Even if it was initially limited to GNOME/GTK or KDE/QT, if you could script any app that used those toolkits regardless of whether the developer intended it or not, that would still be a gigantic leap forward.
That said, commandline scripting is a lot more powerfull, and virtually all unix tools are scriptable that way.
Gluing applications together as tools is not the only issue with scripting them - sometimes you want to be able to automate those existing applications. This is where something like AppleScript is an excellent tool. For example, Safari does not have a "session" capability to easily save/restore all the open windows and tabs I have. With a bit of AppleScript and a UI I put together in Interface Builder, I have a nice little tool that can extend Safari's capabilities by controlling its GUI.
I've also used AppleScript to do stuff with console applications, capture the output, play with it (or have Perl do something with it), then pass it to a text box/e-mail message/whatever in a GUI app.
Scripting isn't just about putting together grep and sed to mess with data - it's also about being able to automate existing apps and extend their functionality. In this regard, OS X Panther (with GUI scripting allowing you to control the interface of any application, even otherwise non-scriptable ones) definitely beats out Windows and Linux.
You read far too much into what I said.:) I said I don't see how the security as I've known it to work is any less secure than the way most Linux/BSD users run any ol' makefile or rpm install script as root.
As far as I know, going back to Jaguar, applications have required authentication to touch the/Applications folder, even if those earlier releases of OS X did not require the user to authenticate.
Besides that, with the 10.3.3 patch (which added more stringent authentication), things have only gotten better. And as more and more users switch to Panther or buy Macs that have it, and as Panther continues to evolve, the security will most likely only improve.
Mac OS X is not "invulnerable" but it is a solid system, and it is becoming more robust as time passes. Besides, when you get right down to it, I could care less about stuff in my/Applications folder... it's everything in $HOME that I am worried about.:) But without some ridiculous requirement like having to enter my password everytime a program wants to save a document, or update its XML preferences file, that will always be a potential "vulnerability" as well.
OK, it sounds like you are using an account without admin privs, which isn't the default setup.
Yes I am, and yes it is. I have administrator privileges, and that's the way it was configured by default on Jaguar after I set up my Mac for the first time. Believe it or not, I do have a fair idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to my own computers.:)
Are you even using Mac OS X? The default user can write to the Applications directory without any additional authentication required. This is less secure than most other Unixes.
I'm running OS X 10.3.3. And no I'm not "thinking of the System directory" at least not in particular. Whenever I perform any write operation on/Applications, whether it be installing, copying something there with the Finder, etc. I'm prompted to authenticate. Under previous versions of OS X, I only had to authenticate when programs were installed. Again, that's not much less secure than sudo make install or sudo rpm -Uvh somepackage.rpm.
On my powerbook, taking installation defaults, over 95% of the apps installed in the Applications directory are writable by the primary user.
This seems inexcusable from a virus security perspective.
That sounds reasonable, until you remember that such places are writable only after the user authenticates. This means entering the administrator password, allowing installer X or operation Y in the Finder to go ahead and write to that directory. I don't see how that's any less secure than what most moderately experienced Linux users do -./configure ; make ; sudo make install
Slashdot Mirror
You are quite right. I did not mean it to sound like I was expecting an X11 app to miraculously work flawlessly in a Mac environment. Some effort (like the OpenOffice developers made, in supporting traditional Mac keybindings) would go a long way though.
What I am saying, however, is that GIMP will never replace Photoshop on the Mac unless it is ported to Aqua. And that was the ultimate idea behind this whole news posting - how do Photoshop users see the GIMP? Well I'm telling you, from the perspective of a Photoshop user on the Mac, that it is a good tool but not one that will replace any of Adobe's offerings for serious use anytime soon.
The interface (in those respects) doesn't suck, it's just different.
On the Mac, that is almost as bad as the UI outright sucking. When you can't even use simple shortcuts that are consistent across apps on the OS (such as Cmd-O to open, Cmd-Z to undo, etc.) it can be a pain in the ass. On Windows, do users not take it for granted that Ctrl-O will open window/document, that Ctrl-Z will undo, that Alt-F4 will close a window, etc? Wouldn't you find it REALLY annoying if you had a very capable app that decided to use key bindings totally inconsistent with 99% of the apps you use?
Us Mac users are spoiled by the majority of our apps complying with the Apple UI standards. Sure, there are programs that don't fully cooperate, but those are usually along the lines of "Joe Bob's REALbasic app" featuring the default icon. Any app that sees remotely serious use will be as consistent as possible. Apple didn't just pull their UI guidelines out of their ass, they're based on years of testing and experimentation on their part.
GIMP's UI is fine for Windows and Linux, but it does not fly for most Mac users, especially those who do not want to waste precious moments of their day waiting for their brain to switch into "oh, this is a non-native app with inconsistent key bindings" mode. For The GIMP to see serious acceptance on the Mac platform, the developers would need to modify it such that it can be bound to a GTK interface or an Aqua interface. Then it can be built with an Aqua UI to keep Mac users happy, but the same core can be used for the number crunching and whatnot.
That's the way good port jobs are done. After all, Photoshop on Windows doesn't force you to use Alt-O (Alt being in the same position as Cmd is on a Mac keyboard) to open documents, does it? It doesn't make you use a Mac-esque open dialog, does it? Of course not. Windows users would be annoyed, and rightly so.
I know for sure I have absolutely no trouble writing Japanese text in GIMP 2.0 on my XFree86 / Linux system.
No, this is using GIMP 2.0 on Mac OS X. :) My complaint is that, not being an Aqua app, it does not support international input the way native OS X apps (including Photoshop) do. There may be a way to rig it to support (in my case) Chinese input, but I'm not aware of any such way, and the point is that serious graphic artists on the Mac do not want to rig stuff.
When I was primarily a Linux user, I used GIMP for many hours out of each day, tinkering with my photos, working on images for web sites, etc. It is a good tool, and it has a lot going for it. The new interface is nice, but... in so many regards, GIMP is no Photoshop. I quickly realized this after I got a Power Mac and Photoshop 7.
Even though I do not use Photoshop in any professional context, it is a phenomenal product even for my personal use. Here are the major things that keep me from using GIMP on the Mac beyond occasionally playing with it:
Don't get me wrong - GIMP is a nice program, and for the price it absolutely kicks ass. But just that handful of problems listed above will be enough to turn off serious photo/graphics folks. Hell, I'm a geek that has used Linuxy and UNIXy stuff for years, and I am seriously bothered by those issues I listed, among other nit-picky ones.
Adobe doesn't have much to worry about at the moment. But if an Aqua native version of GIMP came out and could offer similar performance on high-powered Macs, then they might have reason to start sweating.
well, if this sentiment is expressed more often then more people will see and will think about it... "raising public awareness" that is =]
Quite true. One unfortunate thing, though, is that awareness doesn't always equate to action when humans are involved. I won't say "especially Americans," though I may think it. But it is an unfortunate truth that even when people are "aware" of these troubles, they do little about them. Usually this is because they do not feel impacted directly (the all-too-common case of "somebody else's problem" syndrome), or because they feel powerless to stop it.
Truth be told, I tend to fall into the latter category. I'm a middle class citizen who carries views that sometimes fall into the "anti-American" (read: not 100% pro-corporate and pro-Bush) category. Is anyone with influence over trade going to listen to me? Not bloody likely, as things stand. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
what I also don't understand is why 'democratic' world has such a great trade relations with totalitarian China?...
This sentiment is frequently expressed whenever China is mentioned, especially here on Slashdot (as you can see from other peoples' posts already.) I think it is rooted in either an ignorance of or an unwillingness to believe that our Great Democratic Country(tm) would *gasp* trade with a country like China because of money outweighing our precious values.
When it comes right down to it, do you honestly think the people who have influence over such things give one damn about freedom or democracy when faced with lots of dollar signs? It's the same factor that influences outsourcing of jobs - it's not cheap enough to have your labor force in the US. Peoples' financial problems and well-being be damned, there's money to be made. It's not that people are unaware of the incongruencies between our way of doing things and China's, it's that they do not care as long as it brings in the dough.
As others realise the money in search try and compete with Google the premium on employing search experts will go up so high that there won't be many with the principles to work on open source. It's sad but true.
I'm having a hard time understanding why this would be much different from say, developing an operating system kernel... perhaps one that involves a penguiny mascot. Plenty of extremely talented developers work on the Linux kernel. Sure, some of the top ones get paid to do it (i.e. by companies like Red Hat), but who's to say the same thing could not happen with search engines?
Though there are surely many programmers who would rather get paid insane amounts of money to work on a search engine, there are still the select few who would just as readily work on an open source one instead - either on principle, or out of a simple desire to not get trapped working for an Evil Megacorp(tm).
copyright is BAD when protecting music
No, DMCA is bad when protecting bogus copy protection mechanisms. :) I don't think anyone here would seriously argue with you about the validity of the musicians'/RIAA's copyright on their own music.
If your offer up your creative material with no copyright protection and state that it is free for all to use, why shouldn't Linspire (or for that matter Microsoft or SCO) feel free to use it?
Because if no specific license is offered, then basic copyright applies. This means you have no right to make derivatives, commercial or otherwise.
Prior to the addition of the CC license on Klowner's wallpaper site, there was no specific copyright, although standard international copyrights still hold.
45 - 60 seconds ?! I just opened OOo writer, the first time since I turned on the computer today - 12 seconds. If thats an indication of Mac OS-x speed then I'm happy running linux.
Well, I'm including the couple of seconds it takes X11 to load and initialize, and then for OOo itself to start. It is indeed rather slow to load, and buggy - but this isn't the fault of OS X in either case. When Microsoft bloatware that isn't even fully native can load faster, it says something about the code or the way it was compiled.
One of the main problems with OpenOffice on the Mac is that it does not yet use Aqua for its user interface, and a side effect of this is you cannot use the different international input modes in OS X to type in OO. So I can't just switch to Chinese and start typing in OO, as it does not know how to handle it. Without that, half my use for a word processor goes out the window.
There may be a way to rig the X11 environment or OpenOffice itself to allow Chinese input in another fashion, but it's just one more usability knock against the program when run on Mac OS X. Ugly UI, incosistencies with the Mac's interface conventions, international input kludges, etc. Not to mention the performance issues, and missing niceties like AppleScript automation (which can be done on ANY native OS X app, even if it's not designed for it), non-crappy file dialogs, etc.
Microsoft Word may have its share of problems, but at least it can start in less than 45-60 seconds, and it follows most of the Apple UI conventions. So while OpenOffice is nice, it definitely is not a decent substitute for Office X at this stage.
Of course, not everything was replaced at the same time, but rather a gradual process of upgrades over the years. So, is it really the same computer I started with?
Your computer is not the only one that has undergone a "gradual process of upgrades" over time. Your body is not the same one you had a few years ago, or even a few hours ago for that matter... And don't forget the rather fickle and ever-changing mind, too.
That is SIMMply the lamest Slashdot headline I've seen in a while. :)
How are web portals like google making back the cost of 1GB email?
By virtue of 90% of their users storing anywhere near that much data, I imagine.
would be to port iTunes to Linux. I can't think of any reason how that could hurt Apple.
This has been brought up before, and the ultimate problem is that iTunes relies very heavily on QuickTime, and since QuickTime does not exist on Linux, it would have to be ported as well. Now they could probably hack something like how mplayer does it, using the Windows DLLs and bolting the iTunes interface onto it, but that would not be very elegant... And that ties in with another reason Apple would probably not want to bother:
Some people will not like to acknowledge it, but Linux is a pain in the ass to support commercially with closed source. Yes, there are companies that do it, but it is difficult and for most it is not worth the bother. Apple has probably already looked at the situation, and seen that it would take a lot of money not only to port iTunes (and probably QuickTime), but also to support it. How much of a pain would it be to support say, just Mandrake and SuSE? Enough of one that they would likely not recoup their development and support costs through the handful of Linux users that actually care to buy music from the iTMS. They'd have to worry about building RPMs for versions X, Y, and Z of distros A, B, and C, and then worry about God knows what a given Linux user will do to customize (i.e. screw up) things on their system, thus potentially breaking iTunes.
Ultimately, I really don't think Apple would make enough money off of iTunes on Linux to make it worth the cost of porting it, supporting it, and keeping up with the rather chaotic placement of and frequently breaking changes to system libraries, GUI toolkits, etc.
If developer tools are to be free as in lunch, then why not just make them available for download. This is much cheaper than including a CD with every computer.
Way to be sensationalist and not even entirely read the post you're replying to! Quoth the grandparent:
Oh and - what is the big deal about including the CD? It's not like CDs are expensive, especially when they are mass-produced for inclusion with Macs and copies of OS X. How does this in any way "increase the cost for everyone?"
Uh, what the hell are you talking about? What language? How about Objective-C, C, C++, and Java? Ya know, the main languages for developing OS X and UNIX programs?
Yes there are "so many to choose from" (REALbasic, CodeWarrior and... uh... and.....) but it's a CD that's thrown in as a gift, and it's the same tools you can download later if they become out of date. And if you don't like Xcode, you don't have to use it. You are free to go out and pay for other IDEs and development tools if you wish.
Again, what is the friggin deal? Apple includes, for free, a bunch of very powerful development tools so that you can, for free, develop programs for their OS. Yeah, what a bunch of evil bastards they are.
Can Microsoft really refuse to support your windows installation if you're running Linux (as an application, even?)
How much do they "support" installations of Windows anyway? Could it truly get any less supported?
Honestly I think they should be focusing on cleaning up search results. There is an increasing amount of spam and while it's not their fault, who wouldn't want cleaner, more accurate results?
That's all well and good, but that is a not an in-your-face and noticeable change to most users. And unfortunately, when Google goes public, it will most likely have to stick to more "noticeable" things (i.e. 1gb e-mail) to keep stockholders happy.
I'm sure it's a far cry from the level of GUI control you can get with WinBatch and AppleScript, but these things take time
No doubt about that. As I mentioned, it wasn't until the most recent release of OS X that you could script literally any graphical element of any program. For the many years AppleScript has existed up to that point, if the program(s) you wanted to work with did not expose their capabilities to AppleScript (and even if they did, there was still a good chance that they did not think to provide access to the part of the program you wanted) you were out of luck. Now you can send raw keystrokes and mouse clicks to an application, or a specific GUI component/control within it.
I'd love to see something like AppleScript take shape on the Linux/BSD/*nix side of things. Even if it was initially limited to GNOME/GTK or KDE/QT, if you could script any app that used those toolkits regardless of whether the developer intended it or not, that would still be a gigantic leap forward.
That said, commandline scripting is a lot more powerfull, and virtually all unix tools are scriptable that way.
Gluing applications together as tools is not the only issue with scripting them - sometimes you want to be able to automate those existing applications. This is where something like AppleScript is an excellent tool. For example, Safari does not have a "session" capability to easily save/restore all the open windows and tabs I have. With a bit of AppleScript and a UI I put together in Interface Builder, I have a nice little tool that can extend Safari's capabilities by controlling its GUI.
I've also used AppleScript to do stuff with console applications, capture the output, play with it (or have Perl do something with it), then pass it to a text box/e-mail message/whatever in a GUI app.
Scripting isn't just about putting together grep and sed to mess with data - it's also about being able to automate existing apps and extend their functionality. In this regard, OS X Panther (with GUI scripting allowing you to control the interface of any application, even otherwise non-scriptable ones) definitely beats out Windows and Linux.
You read far too much into what I said. :) I said I don't see how the security as I've known it to work is any less secure than the way most Linux/BSD users run any ol' makefile or rpm install script as root.
As far as I know, going back to Jaguar, applications have required authentication to touch the /Applications folder, even if those earlier releases of OS X did not require the user to authenticate.
Besides that, with the 10.3.3 patch (which added more stringent authentication), things have only gotten better. And as more and more users switch to Panther or buy Macs that have it, and as Panther continues to evolve, the security will most likely only improve.
Mac OS X is not "invulnerable" but it is a solid system, and it is becoming more robust as time passes. Besides, when you get right down to it, I could care less about stuff in my /Applications folder... it's everything in $HOME that I am worried about. :) But without some ridiculous requirement like having to enter my password everytime a program wants to save a document, or update its XML preferences file, that will always be a potential "vulnerability" as well.
OK, it sounds like you are using an account without admin privs, which isn't the default setup.
Yes I am, and yes it is. I have administrator privileges, and that's the way it was configured by default on Jaguar after I set up my Mac for the first time. Believe it or not, I do have a fair idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to my own computers. :)
Are you even using Mac OS X? The default user can write to the Applications directory without any additional authentication required. This is less secure than most other Unixes.
I'm running OS X 10.3.3. And no I'm not "thinking of the System directory" at least not in particular. Whenever I perform any write operation on /Applications, whether it be installing, copying something there with the Finder, etc. I'm prompted to authenticate. Under previous versions of OS X, I only had to authenticate when programs were installed. Again, that's not much less secure than sudo make install or sudo rpm -Uvh somepackage.rpm.
On my powerbook, taking installation defaults, over 95% of the apps installed in the Applications directory are writable by the primary user.
This seems inexcusable from a virus security perspective.
That sounds reasonable, until you remember that such places are writable only after the user authenticates. This means entering the administrator password, allowing installer X or operation Y in the Finder to go ahead and write to that directory. I don't see how that's any less secure than what most moderately experienced Linux users do - ./configure ; make ; sudo make install
A lot of people think something freely available ... can't possibly be secure.
Well, they have been given good reason to feel that way.