Of course, this has nothing to do with the kernel API. Since the source is available (and someone is clearly maintaining it) it could be recompiled if the kernel API changed.
A bunch of stuff broke in the 2.6 kernel - how was this different than if they'd tweaked the kernel API and cleaned this mess up?
Kernel event notification is present in Mac OS X as well, but the Finder and NavServices don't use it yet. Tiger may fix this, but I doubt it (people would have been dancing in the streets).
Oddly, it *was* enabled in early betas of Panther, and then mysteriously vanished. Sad.:(
As many have said about many a proprietary thing, if you don't like it, then write your own replacement.
Java was chosen as the best technology. BitKeeper was as well. I'd have a hell of a lot more sympathy for the free software zealots (RMS and co) if they actually had a credible answer.
This isn't about ethics vs economics, it's about pragmatism vs idealism. Ideals are great until I need to actually write code; then pragmatism is front and foremost.
Source code can take hours to install. Find ANY Windows or Mac program that takes more than a half-hour. I can install the whole OS in that time.
I don't use X11 on Gentoo *purely* because of the compile time required for the source. And then what about updates? Will we be recompiling the whole thing every time an update comes out? Another reason I don't run X11 anything on Gentoo...
(I'm going to get modded down (or not modded at all), but sometimes it just doesn't matter.)
Marketing my ass. You're assuming these users never change their system, and their needs never change. How many grandmas and such needed the internet a few years ago? How many parents have gotten into digital photography? What if they simply want a new printer? What about wireless?These things all common technologies that have moved from the realm of geeks to the masses in recent years. They all also require system changes and configuration, knowing where to get software, what distro you're on, and usually are a pain in the ass to get working "right", and while some distros have some pieces right, it is NOT ready to pass the "mom test".
On Windows or Mac OS X, users get a CD with drivers and software with their new hardware purchases. They can walk into a store and buy software, knowing with a couple clicks it's installed and works. If they need networking set up, it's either transparent (Rendezvous/Bonjour) or set up with good default settings (DHCP, yada yada). With Linux, good luck EVER getting to the point of being able to open a single installer and have it "just work". As others have said, different libraries, distros, dependencies, and other assorted BS will prevent this (this is what LSB was supposed to help fix, BTW).
Hell, Linux is still trying to agree on basic things like how to create a standard "Start" menu - freedesktop.org is slowly helping get the DE's standardized (but you still need some kind of "editor" program to change it, that may or may not be on your distro).
This kind of *stupid* chaos is what holds Linux back. Sure, you should be free to choose whatever distro you want, whatever desktop environment you want, and make it look and act however you want. At the same time, you should be able to install binary software from a CD and have it work as reliably as it does on Windows or the Mac - the end user should NEVER have to know or care about what libraries a program decided to use and link against, and what "dependencies" there are. If Linux hasn't reached that point, then it is most definitely not ready for the desktop, and Linux has NOT reached that point.
This isn't about just finding stuff on the drive (yes, we've all done that for decades upon decades), this is about finding it:
Instantly
Everywhere
From any application
Your grep search will take quite a long time to search the entire drive, will not find related items, and will have trouble finding some hidden (formatted, unicode, or otherwise) metadata. Spotlight (and others) has everything indexed so that as you type in your query, it's found everything on the drive that matches, whether it's contents, metadata, filename, whathaveyou. Spotlight is further available anywhere - open dialogs, inside programs, the Finder, or right on the menubar.
I'm not saying you don't need that much memory; my point was that any task that uses that kind of memory would also benefit hugely from additional processors. Once you have 16GB+ of *any* kind of data you're going to need to run it through the CPU at some point, so you better have all the horsepower you can get - otherwise you shift your bottleneck from I/O to the CPU.
Don't forget System 7, which was every bit as revolutionary at its time as OS X. And the whole 68K to PowerPC transition, which people tend to forget because it was so completely seamless.
You see, John Siracusa is a Mac fan who's hard on Apple. John Gruber is a Mac fan who is hard on Apple. Paul Thurrot is a Microsoft-shill who writes uninformed trolling articles to drive pageviews. Go ahead, read any of his articles on Longhorn, Windows XP, anything Apple/Linux/Google related and try and tell me he's even the slightest a "fan" just trying to be constructive.
He's a very skillful troll. Thanks for feeding him.
Apple "planned" to release it with Copland in 1995. We've seen "plans" for this type of technology for at least a decade. The only ones to ship have been BeOS and now Tiger. Get back to me when Longhorn ships in 2007.
This argument doesn't hold up. First you bash Tiger's features as things of limited utility, then you include the following Panther features:
- Expose - Massively improved finder - Safari - iChat AV - Fast user switching - FileVault - Inkwell - Preview
The Finder improvements are debateable, Safari was released for Jaguar, iChat AV has a VERY limited appeal, FileVault looks nice but had so many problems in the beginning everyone turned it off, Inkwell has an even MORE limited appeal, and... Preview?
The only major things that end-users really cared about were Expose and Fast User Switching. However, as other posters have mentioned, it's the sum of all of the little improvements that makes Panther so much better. I also had to use Jaguar recently, and I didn't miss any of the above items, but I sure missed a myriad of little things scattered everywhere else.
However, with datafiles (as opposed to a service like Steam or Tivo), we have the option of removing the DRM if such an occurance takes place. If Apple went belly-up tomorrow, We'd use Hymn on all of our music and be fine. Or burn and rip (if you don't mind the quality loss and want to be SURE there's no DRM or other hindrances).
So while I would love to see open formats (I hate dealing with copy protected abandonware games), in this case the DRM is less burdensome.
who sits in judgement of what speech is and isn't worthy of protection
What is "the courts"? The same courts that have already decided this is not a matter of free speech, but of trade secrets, and that there is no public interest being served?
Slashdot Mirror
Except this is a patch to WebCore, which you CAN build, which Safari will then use.
While I agree in this case, Debian should be a good example of why this is NOT always a good idea...
Of course, this has nothing to do with the kernel API. Since the source is available (and someone is clearly maintaining it) it could be recompiled if the kernel API changed.
A bunch of stuff broke in the 2.6 kernel - how was this different than if they'd tweaked the kernel API and cleaned this mess up?
Kernel event notification is present in Mac OS X as well, but the Finder and NavServices don't use it yet. Tiger may fix this, but I doubt it (people would have been dancing in the streets).
:(
Oddly, it *was* enabled in early betas of Panther, and then mysteriously vanished. Sad.
Add drivers to that list and I'm in complete agreement.
It's a sad sign when "Finish Sarge!" is marked as +4 Funny.
As many have said about many a proprietary thing, if you don't like it, then write your own replacement.
Java was chosen as the best technology. BitKeeper was as well. I'd have a hell of a lot more sympathy for the free software zealots (RMS and co) if they actually had a credible answer.
This isn't about ethics vs economics, it's about pragmatism vs idealism. Ideals are great until I need to actually write code; then pragmatism is front and foremost.
Screw karma.
BSD has no presence on the desktop, eh?
Source code can take hours to install. Find ANY Windows or Mac program that takes more than a half-hour. I can install the whole OS in that time.
I don't use X11 on Gentoo *purely* because of the compile time required for the source. And then what about updates? Will we be recompiling the whole thing every time an update comes out? Another reason I don't run X11 anything on Gentoo...
(I'm going to get modded down (or not modded at all), but sometimes it just doesn't matter.)
Marketing my ass. You're assuming these users never change their system, and their needs never change. How many grandmas and such needed the internet a few years ago? How many parents have gotten into digital photography? What if they simply want a new printer? What about wireless?These things all common technologies that have moved from the realm of geeks to the masses in recent years. They all also require system changes and configuration, knowing where to get software, what distro you're on, and usually are a pain in the ass to get working "right", and while some distros have some pieces right, it is NOT ready to pass the "mom test".
On Windows or Mac OS X, users get a CD with drivers and software with their new hardware purchases. They can walk into a store and buy software, knowing with a couple clicks it's installed and works. If they need networking set up, it's either transparent (Rendezvous/Bonjour) or set up with good default settings (DHCP, yada yada). With Linux, good luck EVER getting to the point of being able to open a single installer and have it "just work". As others have said, different libraries, distros, dependencies, and other assorted BS will prevent this (this is what LSB was supposed to help fix, BTW).
Hell, Linux is still trying to agree on basic things like how to create a standard "Start" menu - freedesktop.org is slowly helping get the DE's standardized (but you still need some kind of "editor" program to change it, that may or may not be on your distro).
This kind of *stupid* chaos is what holds Linux back. Sure, you should be free to choose whatever distro you want, whatever desktop environment you want, and make it look and act however you want. At the same time, you should be able to install binary software from a CD and have it work as reliably as it does on Windows or the Mac - the end user should NEVER have to know or care about what libraries a program decided to use and link against, and what "dependencies" there are. If Linux hasn't reached that point, then it is most definitely not ready for the desktop, and Linux has NOT reached that point.
While I'm looking forward to Beagle myself, you rather shoot yourself in the foot with (emphasis added):
it's already somewhat usable
Your grep search will take quite a long time to search the entire drive, will not find related items, and will have trouble finding some hidden (formatted, unicode, or otherwise) metadata. Spotlight (and others) has everything indexed so that as you type in your query, it's found everything on the drive that matches, whether it's contents, metadata, filename, whathaveyou. Spotlight is further available anywhere - open dialogs, inside programs, the Finder, or right on the menubar.
I'm not saying you don't need that much memory; my point was that any task that uses that kind of memory would also benefit hugely from additional processors. Once you have 16GB+ of *any* kind of data you're going to need to run it through the CPU at some point, so you better have all the horsepower you can get - otherwise you shift your bottleneck from I/O to the CPU.
At least will get you up to 8 slots. I'm not sure if 2GB DIMMs are shipping yet, however, so you still may be limited to 8GB.
Also, what are you going to do with all of that RAM? You'll likely end up with far more data than you have the resources to process.
Don't forget System 7, which was every bit as revolutionary at its time as OS X. And the whole 68K to PowerPC transition, which people tend to forget because it was so completely seamless.
You see, John Siracusa is a Mac fan who's hard on Apple. John Gruber is a Mac fan who is hard on Apple. Paul Thurrot is a Microsoft-shill who writes uninformed trolling articles to drive pageviews. Go ahead, read any of his articles on Longhorn, Windows XP, anything Apple/Linux/Google related and try and tell me he's even the slightest a "fan" just trying to be constructive.
He's a very skillful troll. Thanks for feeding him.
Apple "planned" to release it with Copland in 1995. We've seen "plans" for this type of technology for at least a decade. The only ones to ship have been BeOS and now Tiger. Get back to me when Longhorn ships in 2007.
To quote the original Macintosh team, "Real Artists Ship".
It should further be noted that Thurrot is most certainly not a fan, if we are to judge by how laughable his anti-Apple/Microsoft-shill writing is.
This argument doesn't hold up. First you bash Tiger's features as things of limited utility, then you include the following Panther features:
- Expose
- Massively improved finder
- Safari
- iChat AV
- Fast user switching
- FileVault
- Inkwell
- Preview
The Finder improvements are debateable, Safari was released for Jaguar, iChat AV has a VERY limited appeal, FileVault looks nice but had so many problems in the beginning everyone turned it off, Inkwell has an even MORE limited appeal, and... Preview?
The only major things that end-users really cared about were Expose and Fast User Switching. However, as other posters have mentioned, it's the sum of all of the little improvements that makes Panther so much better. I also had to use Jaguar recently, and I didn't miss any of the above items, but I sure missed a myriad of little things scattered everywhere else.
Deal with iTunes and you've got it in an iPod. Nothing is forcing you to even look at the iTunes music store or DRM.
However, with datafiles (as opposed to a service like Steam or Tivo), we have the option of removing the DRM if such an occurance takes place. If Apple went belly-up tomorrow, We'd use Hymn on all of our music and be fine. Or burn and rip (if you don't mind the quality loss and want to be SURE there's no DRM or other hindrances).
So while I would love to see open formats (I hate dealing with copy protected abandonware games), in this case the DRM is less burdensome.
Some people have a way with words and some people... ... um... not have way.
I stand corrected - thank you for the illuminating post. :)
Ahem, technical schematics and presentations for products in development don't count as trade secrets? Then what the hell does?
I'll take Constitutional Law for $200, Alex.
who sits in judgement of what speech is and isn't worthy of protection
What is "the courts"? The same courts that have already decided this is not a matter of free speech, but of trade secrets, and that there is no public interest being served?