I had the luxury of meeting Woz once and hearing him speak for about an hour. He would start on one topic and midway through you would see his eyes light up because you know he just thought of something somewhat related but still incredibly fascinating that he wanted to share with you. I think his only problem was that he was mad his mouth couldn't keep up with his brain and all the ideas flowing from it. When he was talking, I think of all the things he was most proud of (and he has a damn long list of accomplishments) was being able to take a computer and do the same thing in less chips. That's what he was always striving for: to create something faster, more efficient, and thus incredibly more cool from a geek standpoint. My hat goes off to you Woz.
You should definitely try out Jaguar. Jaguar is as big of an improvent over 10.1.x as 10.1 was over 10.0.x. In my opinion, X is faster and more responsive than 9 now.
I used to understand why people would want Mac-on-Linux. These were in the pre-OS X days. For all that was great in OS 9, it still couldn't match the stability, CLI, etc. that Linux offered and some people desired. So for PPC Linux users who still wanted to run some Mac OS programs, MOL was a great alternative. However, now that OS X is out and PPC users have a *nix with the usual Apple refinements like Aqua, I see no real reason for this. Why even bother booting into Linux in the first place? In OS X you can compile from source most of the programs that you would run under Linux. While it's not a perfect analogy, this creates a sort of Linux-On-Mac OS X which seems like a much better idea than Mac OS X-On-Linux to me.
The cost of OS X Server when you buy an XServe is exactly the same as the cost of multiple Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD licenses: $0. How do you like them apples? (pun intended)
I went into this expecting this to be the usual review of Jaguar: speed improvements, new programs like iChat, whoopie heard it all before. After reading a large chunk of the article and skimming the rest, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Frankly, it's a much better introduction and manual for Jaguar than the one Apple puts out. I'll have to go through it all when I have time. Ultimately, he sums up Jaguar well:
But I will stop short of saying that Mac OS X has "matured." There remain too many "unfinished" corners of the OS. All the little details that used to separate Mac OS from more user-hostile OSes have not yet been added to Mac OS X. Even tiny things like the aesthetically unpleasing default placement of progress dialog boxes in the Finder (wedged into the upper-left corner of the screen, with no surrounding space) contribute to the feeling that there is still much work to be done to match the fit and finish of classic Mac OS.
The one thing that I would add to that is that Jaguar has matured OS X to a point where the casual Mac user still on OS 9 should switch over.
Is the XServe for everyone? No. If you want to build a decent 1U x86 box on your own and spend all the time and effort required to install and maintain Linux on it, sure go for it. But what about schools who already have a plethora of Macs. They can buy an XServe for their network and not deal with all the headaches because of the wonderful front ends that Apple has put into 10.2 Server. Not only that, they would save tons of money because of the free unlimited client license version of OS X Server it comes with. (Don't say they could install Linux; find me a school that has a sysadmin who has the time and knowledge to maintain a Linux server.) This is just one of the many possible uses.
Just a little fyi, a dual processor XServe is mighty powerful. Try and find a comparable x86 1U and it won't be that cheap.
I'm a diehard Mac guy, but I'll be the first to admit that Apple has not put out competitive servers before the XServe. When Apple changed from offering basically souped up Powermacs with a non *nix OS to one of the best 1U servers on the market running OS X, does it really surprise anyone that they are going to be getting attention in markets of which they traditionally were not even on the radar?
Do you think this company is gonna charge the extra 40 cents per gallon for full-serve? If so, they better at least wash the windows and check the oil in the satellite.
The default shell is still tcsh, not bash. Read more closely:
The bash command shell is now installed with Mac OS X, and has replace zsh as the default/bin/sh (r. 2809843).
For people who prefer bash, you can switch over easily and you don't have to install it on your own now.
I wouldn't say that Napster paved the way for P2P file sharing from a tech standpoint; I would give that distinction to Gnutella. However, I would definitely say that without Napster there to take the brunt of the bad press and lawsuits, other file sharing methods would definitely not have taken off so easily.
BTW, I never used Napster, which people used to give me crap for until Napster got shut down and my local record store amazingly was still in business.
Silicon Valley is not humid. Yes, you will see fog up on 280 or over the hill on 17 (once you get up into the Santa Cruz mountains), but those places are not really Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley can basically be bound as Santa Clara County, which only leaves a few areas (as mentioned above) where you get any humidity. However, all the tech companies aren't there. They are in places like San Jose and Santa Clara where it's incredibly dry.
Making a cluster of any Macs (well, any New World Macs) is already easy enough. There are a variety of different techniques as the poster before me pointed out. I put together my own mini-cluster of two TiBooks and one Powermac using a one page guide to Pooch in about 15 minutes. My favorite was that the guide I was using also included a link for a "simple" 247 page guide to creating a Beowulf cluster.
One of Apple's biggest selling points is the seamless integration of its hardware and software. When Apple makes the computer with the DVD burner pre-installed and gives out (for free I may add) their DVD burning software, they can and have pretty much assured that it will work flawlessly. Take this and compare it to trying to get a random CD burner to work with whatever CD authoring software you are using on Linux or Windows. It is not nearly as easy. When this dealer distributes this patch, Apple can no longer guarantee that it will work as advertise, thus possibly leading to a bad user experience and ultimately a loss of reputation and or possible future revenue for Apple.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that Apple wants to make sure that iDVD only works for people who have bought Apple hardware thus providing the incentive to buy a Superdrive rather than an external firewire or other brand drive, but I don't think that is the only reason behind it.
What were they thinking? That's an even bigger faux pas than showing up tonight at an Apple store with a Thinkpad asking if Jaguar has been ported to x86 yet.
It's getting tiring to hear about people saying "OS 9 could do this and OS X can't blah blah blah." This used to be very bad before 10.1 was released, but I do not blame anyone for this as 10.0.x was not truly a complete commercial OS. However, since 10.1 was released, there really has been no competition: for users with machines capable of running X (basically any G3 with decent RAM), OS X is an excellent choice. All major applications (or quality alternatives) now run native, there is no major slowdown as in 10.0.x, and you get to enjoy all the great things that are exlusive to OS X like Aqua and Unix. I used 9 for pretty much it's entire lifespan until X came out and even though I loved it, I'll never go back to an OS where I need to reboot bare minimum once a day and can't multitask. If you want to deal with this in order to use a couple minor features that aren't yet in OS X, go right ahead; it's your loss, not mine.
Instead of delving into the OS X v Linux debate that this has pretty much become (OS X rules all btw... guess I couldn't go without adding my two cents on this one), I am more intrigued by how Terra Soft thinks they carve a slice out of the already small pie that is Apple hardware sales. Apple had about a 5% market share last time that I checked. Of the people buying Apple hardware, I would be willing to wager that 80-90% don't even know what Linux is. Of the people who would buy Apple hardware and would commonly be considered potential Linux users (wanting a good *nix OS, at least decently knowledgeable about computers, and willing to spend the time to install/learn Linux), a large majority are people who are in love with OS X because of its Unix foundation and beautiful GUI/ability to run most commercial software. So this leaves a very small portion of Apple hardware users (with Apple already being a small portion of the hardware market) who would want to run Linux. Of this small crowd, how many do you honestly think would want to pay about 200 extra dollars for someone else to install Linux which they could do for free?
Taco told Bill to send him a new icon of his choice to replace bill-the-borg for today, but Bill unfortunately got a BSOD while trying to send the email.
You overlook a few of OS X's current security measures. If you want, you can lock the System Preferences for the startup disk, and then it can only be changed by an admin. This eliminates the ability of normal users to go into OS 9 to get into folders that they do not have the file permissions for under OS X. You may argue that people who admin abilites on a machine could just switch to OS 9 to view locked files, but this is pointless because anyone with admin powers can change file permissions in OS X if they know a few basic UNIX commands.
and somewhat shot itself in the foot by continuously spoiling the Mac faithful for years. Mac users have gotten great free products (iTunes, iTools, etc.) that can be and are flaunted in the faces of Windows users. But after so much of this, Apple has created a situation where many of the diehard Mac users no longer realize that Apple is a company that is trying to make a profit, just like other companies out there such as *gasp* Microsoft. That means that when they release new products, especially quality ones such as Jaguar, they will most likely charge for them. If they offer something sweet for free like iPhoto, the Mac community should be happy but not unfairly raise expectations for more free products. If it really bothers people to be paying for a point release (which as many have pointed out would be a whole new OS by Redmond's standards), think of it as buying a suite of new applications and features: iChat, Sherlock 3, Quartz Extreme, etc.
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I had the luxury of meeting Woz once and hearing him speak for about an hour. He would start on one topic and midway through you would see his eyes light up because you know he just thought of something somewhat related but still incredibly fascinating that he wanted to share with you. I think his only problem was that he was mad his mouth couldn't keep up with his brain and all the ideas flowing from it. When he was talking, I think of all the things he was most proud of (and he has a damn long list of accomplishments) was being able to take a computer and do the same thing in less chips. That's what he was always striving for: to create something faster, more efficient, and thus incredibly more cool from a geek standpoint. My hat goes off to you Woz.
You mean this Photoshop that isn't ported to OS X yet?
You should definitely try out Jaguar. Jaguar is as big of an improvent over 10.1.x as 10.1 was over 10.0.x. In my opinion, X is faster and more responsive than 9 now.
I used to understand why people would want Mac-on-Linux. These were in the pre-OS X days. For all that was great in OS 9, it still couldn't match the stability, CLI, etc. that Linux offered and some people desired. So for PPC Linux users who still wanted to run some Mac OS programs, MOL was a great alternative. However, now that OS X is out and PPC users have a *nix with the usual Apple refinements like Aqua, I see no real reason for this. Why even bother booting into Linux in the first place? In OS X you can compile from source most of the programs that you would run under Linux. While it's not a perfect analogy, this creates a sort of Linux-On-Mac OS X which seems like a much better idea than Mac OS X-On-Linux to me.
The cost of OS X Server when you buy an XServe is exactly the same as the cost of multiple Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD licenses: $0. How do you like them apples? (pun intended)
I went into this expecting this to be the usual review of Jaguar: speed improvements, new programs like iChat, whoopie heard it all before. After reading a large chunk of the article and skimming the rest, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Frankly, it's a much better introduction and manual for Jaguar than the one Apple puts out. I'll have to go through it all when I have time. Ultimately, he sums up Jaguar well:
But I will stop short of saying that Mac OS X has "matured." There remain too many "unfinished" corners of the OS. All the little details that used to separate Mac OS from more user-hostile OSes have not yet been added to Mac OS X. Even tiny things like the aesthetically unpleasing default placement of progress dialog boxes in the Finder (wedged into the upper-left corner of the screen, with no surrounding space) contribute to the feeling that there is still much work to be done to match the fit and finish of classic Mac OS. The one thing that I would add to that is that Jaguar has matured OS X to a point where the casual Mac user still on OS 9 should switch over.
Is the XServe for everyone? No. If you want to build a decent 1U x86 box on your own and spend all the time and effort required to install and maintain Linux on it, sure go for it. But what about schools who already have a plethora of Macs. They can buy an XServe for their network and not deal with all the headaches because of the wonderful front ends that Apple has put into 10.2 Server. Not only that, they would save tons of money because of the free unlimited client license version of OS X Server it comes with. (Don't say they could install Linux; find me a school that has a sysadmin who has the time and knowledge to maintain a Linux server.) This is just one of the many possible uses. Just a little fyi, a dual processor XServe is mighty powerful. Try and find a comparable x86 1U and it won't be that cheap.
I'm a diehard Mac guy, but I'll be the first to admit that Apple has not put out competitive servers before the XServe. When Apple changed from offering basically souped up Powermacs with a non *nix OS to one of the best 1U servers on the market running OS X, does it really surprise anyone that they are going to be getting attention in markets of which they traditionally were not even on the radar?
Do you think this company is gonna charge the extra 40 cents per gallon for full-serve? If so, they better at least wash the windows and check the oil in the satellite.
The default shell is still tcsh, not bash. Read more closely:
/bin/sh (r. 2809843).
For people who prefer bash, you can switch over easily and you don't have to install it on your own now.
The bash command shell is now installed with Mac OS X, and has replace zsh as the default
I wouldn't say that Napster paved the way for P2P file sharing from a tech standpoint; I would give that distinction to Gnutella. However, I would definitely say that without Napster there to take the brunt of the bad press and lawsuits, other file sharing methods would definitely not have taken off so easily. BTW, I never used Napster, which people used to give me crap for until Napster got shut down and my local record store amazingly was still in business.
Silicon Valley is not humid. Yes, you will see fog up on 280 or over the hill on 17 (once you get up into the Santa Cruz mountains), but those places are not really Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley can basically be bound as Santa Clara County, which only leaves a few areas (as mentioned above) where you get any humidity. However, all the tech companies aren't there. They are in places like San Jose and Santa Clara where it's incredibly dry.
Making a cluster of any Macs (well, any New World Macs) is already easy enough. There are a variety of different techniques as the poster before me pointed out. I put together my own mini-cluster of two TiBooks and one Powermac using a one page guide to Pooch in about 15 minutes. My favorite was that the guide I was using also included a link for a "simple" 247 page guide to creating a Beowulf cluster.
One of Apple's biggest selling points is the seamless integration of its hardware and software. When Apple makes the computer with the DVD burner pre-installed and gives out (for free I may add) their DVD burning software, they can and have pretty much assured that it will work flawlessly. Take this and compare it to trying to get a random CD burner to work with whatever CD authoring software you are using on Linux or Windows. It is not nearly as easy. When this dealer distributes this patch, Apple can no longer guarantee that it will work as advertise, thus possibly leading to a bad user experience and ultimately a loss of reputation and or possible future revenue for Apple. Don't get me wrong, I agree that Apple wants to make sure that iDVD only works for people who have bought Apple hardware thus providing the incentive to buy a Superdrive rather than an external firewire or other brand drive, but I don't think that is the only reason behind it.
What were they thinking? That's an even bigger faux pas than showing up tonight at an Apple store with a Thinkpad asking if Jaguar has been ported to x86 yet.
It's getting tiring to hear about people saying "OS 9 could do this and OS X can't blah blah blah." This used to be very bad before 10.1 was released, but I do not blame anyone for this as 10.0.x was not truly a complete commercial OS. However, since 10.1 was released, there really has been no competition: for users with machines capable of running X (basically any G3 with decent RAM), OS X is an excellent choice. All major applications (or quality alternatives) now run native, there is no major slowdown as in 10.0.x, and you get to enjoy all the great things that are exlusive to OS X like Aqua and Unix. I used 9 for pretty much it's entire lifespan until X came out and even though I loved it, I'll never go back to an OS where I need to reboot bare minimum once a day and can't multitask. If you want to deal with this in order to use a couple minor features that aren't yet in OS X, go right ahead; it's your loss, not mine.
Instead of delving into the OS X v Linux debate that this has pretty much become (OS X rules all btw... guess I couldn't go without adding my two cents on this one), I am more intrigued by how Terra Soft thinks they carve a slice out of the already small pie that is Apple hardware sales. Apple had about a 5% market share last time that I checked. Of the people buying Apple hardware, I would be willing to wager that 80-90% don't even know what Linux is. Of the people who would buy Apple hardware and would commonly be considered potential Linux users (wanting a good *nix OS, at least decently knowledgeable about computers, and willing to spend the time to install/learn Linux), a large majority are people who are in love with OS X because of its Unix foundation and beautiful GUI/ability to run most commercial software. So this leaves a very small portion of Apple hardware users (with Apple already being a small portion of the hardware market) who would want to run Linux. Of this small crowd, how many do you honestly think would want to pay about 200 extra dollars for someone else to install Linux which they could do for free?
Taco told Bill to send him a new icon of his choice to replace bill-the-borg for today, but Bill unfortunately got a BSOD while trying to send the email.
You overlook a few of OS X's current security measures. If you want, you can lock the System Preferences for the startup disk, and then it can only be changed by an admin. This eliminates the ability of normal users to go into OS 9 to get into folders that they do not have the file permissions for under OS X. You may argue that people who admin abilites on a machine could just switch to OS 9 to view locked files, but this is pointless because anyone with admin powers can change file permissions in OS X if they know a few basic UNIX commands.
I think Apple just wants to hear people try to pronounce Jaguar in a funny Boston accent.
and somewhat shot itself in the foot by continuously spoiling the Mac faithful for years. Mac users have gotten great free products (iTunes, iTools, etc.) that can be and are flaunted in the faces of Windows users. But after so much of this, Apple has created a situation where many of the diehard Mac users no longer realize that Apple is a company that is trying to make a profit, just like other companies out there such as *gasp* Microsoft. That means that when they release new products, especially quality ones such as Jaguar, they will most likely charge for them. If they offer something sweet for free like iPhoto, the Mac community should be happy but not unfairly raise expectations for more free products. If it really bothers people to be paying for a point release (which as many have pointed out would be a whole new OS by Redmond's standards), think of it as buying a suite of new applications and features: iChat, Sherlock 3, Quartz Extreme, etc.