I can see why you think that the skyscraper is, but there is more to a skyscraper than a house. Think of it this way, inspecting a single module like say a kernel module is much easier than inspecting the entire linux kernel. Why? Rules that apply in modules and functions available for that type of module from a logic perspective are easier to train someone on. They don't need to be experts on every aspect of the system. Likewise, someone could study twm and not care how the radeon driver works. In the skyscraper analogy, someone would need to know commerical building codes and understand how a skyscraper's foundation might have trouble supporting the weight whereas a single house doesn't need as good of foundation or electrical wiring or whatever.
Modules are the reason we have Object Oriented languages. Sure, C++ and other languages can be a pain in the ass at times, but it makes it easy to write code once and reuse it in a shitload of places. It also simplifies unit testing which is very important for mission critical applications. I think xorg is a very important piece to any modern linux/UNIX distribution for desktops, embedded devices and occiasionally servers. Long term, the direction xorg is going will work out nicely. If you've followed the xorg progress since it forked off the xfree86 code, you'll know they've had some annoying bugs between versions. The seperation might allow them to either avoid the bugs or at least repair them sooner.
You forgot all the new features they stole from apple and open source projets. There's real innovation there. Seriously, IE7 is better than IE6 even if it didn't go far enough. I'm concerned about vista and still excited there's going to be a new POS to support. The same old tech calls get boring.
Look at it this way, vista will catch up to apple and KDE/Gnome. That means apple, kde and gnome will have to innovate and get ahead again. It creates competition which benefits everyone. We get 5 years of new features before Microsoft customers and they get 5 years worth of ideas every 5 years. Plus aren't we all running out of new ways to hate XP? The jokes aren't funny anymore.
Besides, if you were to ask me about OS reliability today i'd tell you i've personally had better luck with Windows XP and Windows 2000 than any linux install i've ever had or Mac OS 10.2/10.4. Of course i tend to use redhat with ext* or reiser file systems too. Mac OS 10.3, FreeBSD and Solaris have all been more reliable than Windows though. Only hardware failures have killed them. That's just my experience and anything from the 9x tree i'd consider to be less reliable than any version of linux i've ever used including redhat 5. Ok, i take that back.. if the power doesn't go out, linux on 2.4 or 2.6 is more reliable than mac os 10.4.
I think 512mb is ok on PPC. Intel needs 2gb of ram if you want to task with ppc apps running. I think everyone should hit the refurbs while they can on the ppc macs. My iBook at 800mhz is faster running adobe/macromedia apps than the new dual core mac mini at work.
For native code, its around the same speed as the dual 2.3ghz G5 powermac on my desk.
Worse yet, apple sold an academic configuration of iBook G4s when they first came out (800mhz) with only 128mb ram and Panther. Sure, OSX worked but mail.app would crash when reading my mail!!!! On day 2 I had already placed an order to crucial...
At work, we just got in a new Mac Mini core duo with 2gb of ram. It runs like crap. My iBook (now with 640mb ram and 5400rpm drive) can outperform with illustrator, dreamweaver, and many other apps. Native binaries work great (universal) but rosetta sucks. When an 800mhz G4 can beat a dual core 1.66ghz i'd say thats pathetic. There's a reason the PowerMac replacements aren't in yet and its performance. If people can't even get photoshop cs to install/run properly and dreamweaver 8 feels like dreamweaver mx 2004 on a 400mhz g3 there's are real problem.
Anyone that does any useful work on a mac needs at least 512mb ram with 10.4 and 384mb ram with 10.3. Anyone with an intel mac better damn well have 2gb of ram and expect slowdowns with ppc apps.
Microsoft and id software think alike with specs. Don't worry about what people have now. Think about what they might have in 2 years and code for that. They'll buy your shit eventually. Everyone can run counter strike source or linux today. Apple's solution is to make a new os every 1-1.5 years and then discontinue security patches and push software vendors to use the new features. That way you MUST buy the new software. I've spent more with apple on OS upgrades than with Microsoft in the last five years and thats including academic discounts. My mother in law had to upgrade to panther from 10.2 because she bought a new printer! As for the pentium 90 and linux argument.. i bet thats a 2.4 kernel. Most distros are quite bloated for old machines now. The kernel usually gets better, but the gnome/kde bs gets bigger. I think its the lack of standard libraries for tasks. There is too much duplication in the open source community. Thats why windows or mac os is usually faster or less resource intensive than many graphical environments. I'm not talking about running e16 hacked to hell here.. i mean a standard install in ubuntu, suse, redhat, or whatever.
On a side note, I just put a 5400 rpm 60gb hdd in my iBook last weekend. It was 52 screws and took me almost 5 hours. I can put a hard drive in a dell in 5 minutes using one screw and pulling the tray out. I think apple still has shit to work out.
I know that things get applied special all the time.. like "on the internet", etc. Does it matter that the iPod interface is a cross between iTunes (which apple bought) and the NEXTSTEP file manager they bought in 1996? I mean apple just duplicated something they bought in 1996 for a music player. Its pretty damn obvious if you look at it. Both are electronic devices that can play music. If i make a mp3 player in a new form factor and make it read childrens books can i get away with stealing this shit since its "different"? Patent law gives me a headache sometimes.
Yes, and we all hae the freedom to NOT BUY NOKIA products. I don't understand this continuous argument that BSD licensed software is not free.
This whole thing boils down to fair use. In the GPL world, an end user can use the software. In the BSD world, an end user can use the software. The difference is the code. A GPL licensed program is open but not reusable by anyone similar to sun's java source license. We all bitch about that on slashdot and its evil right? Well sun got the idea from the GPL i'd wager. Its no different. You can see the code all day long and commit code back to the project, but in sun's case you can't redistribute your work. In the BSD world you can take code and do whatever the hell you want with it. Now thats freedom because end users can benefit from enhancements I write and i can either profit OR keep it open. Its my choice as a programmer and i like choice. GPL only makes sense if you hate free enterprise and don't realize that some people care about open source and will release code anyway. Lets try to encourage open source in a positive way not jamming down your throat. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.
OSX Server works fine as a file server. It beats our novell and windows file servers at work all the time.
I think there is strong evidence that mysql runs like shit. The thing is mysql runs poor on everything that isn't linux anyway. There was a huge thread on freebsd-performance on this issue recently.
In general, i've noticed OSX does poor with database products which leads me to believe raw disk io sucks in OSX. Considering apple used some freebsd 5 code, that might be part of the problem. Until 6.x, i noticed that freebsd was rather slow at times under load using disks. (and other things) I don't think you can blame all possible performance issues on the Mach kernel itself. I suspect when 10.5 comes out, we'll see some better benchmarks. Apple had to hack in intel support to 10.4 (even if it mostly worked the whole time) and i have a feeling that hurt performance a bit.
Please remember the performance characteristics of an operating system are more than one technology or design decision used. Linux has changed a lot since i first tried it 9 years ago. I do understand why its hard to believe a Mach kernel can perform ok, as i still struggle with trusting linux with my data (ext2 + power off = data loss circa redhat 5)
They run OSX, but time syncing doesn't always work when the clock is 30 years in the past! Its 10.2 clients mostly. Also, the university blocks time.windows.com and their own NTP servers all run at different times as they don't sync with any outside source.
Most clients eventually sync back up, but I have a few G4 400mhz machines that often get stuck in 1969 and refuse to sync. Sometimes the system preference gets reset, although it is part of my image.
Mac OSX is vulnerable just like ANY operating system. Use software update religiously.
Simply installing a firewall does not protect you from security holes. Most problems arise from user error like clicking on a file attachment, running a program from an untrusted source, etc. Macs can't help you there. Less people try to write malware or viruses for macs, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
Also, remember that microsoft releases patches for previous os releases longer than apple does. If you use OSX, please always buy the latest version by the.2 revision. It ensures you can actually patch the damn thing. 10.2 does not receive updates anymore. (problem at work) Its possible to easily DoS attack the samba service on 10.2.8 server for example. I think apple should be criticized for their lack of patching older versions, at least the server version.
Apple recommends on their own website to run a firewall, purchase an antivirus solution and even buy a 100 dollar defrag program! It does feel like windows now, but we must all accept this. If you don't like it, there's always other operating systems that no one cares about like OpenBSD.:)
Perhaps, but I'd argue common sense is missing. My aunt is a nurse and she has absolutely no common sense. She's got 4 bachelors degrees though. Lots of learning there. She actually bought opened asprin at a garage sale! Remember she's a nurse.
I did tech support for 2.5 years at an isp. I can tell you that many professionals can't use computers. You can only tell someone to click start so many times while telling them where to look for the damn button before you wonder how they got to be a doctor. If they can't find a start button on a screen, how will they find parts on my body? The real problem is that people with higher education seem to get an attitude problem like they are too good to use windows. (aren't we all) Its a waste of their time to call me and ask for my help. They feel they can abuse me with rude and in some cases unrepeatable comments. I don't cosider those people to be intelligent regardless of what degree they might have earned.
I don't think programmers should even comment on this thread. Supporting something you wrote is much different than something microsoft, apple, or someone else wrote. You know how the damn thing works inside and out. Plus people act differently if they think you know what you're talking about. If you did tech support 20 years ago, don't bother commenting. Now there are quotas and you can't spend time with people.
I work at my university now in the IS department doing support and system administration on Macs. I miss the windows calls sometimes. You can only get the "My mac thinks its 1969" call a few times before you want to throw the computer into the trash. My boss won't buy new batteries for the damn things. Mac calls are always bad. If they break, they do it in a big way.
You are right that Swing should track the appearance of the desktop. You are wrong that Microsoft does it. Controls look different in.NET 2 vs say apps written in Visual c++ 4. Now that might be because the code is linked static but its still a problem. Microsoft hasn't drastically changed their interface since Windows 95, but if you remember running 3.1 apps on it they looked like shit too. Likewise, Carbon apps sometimes look odd in OSX. Also, using windowmaker with gtk apps or kde with gtk apps can be odd still. There are newer x11 standards to help with these problems, but i just wanted to point out no one has it down perfect yet. Its a great goal though.
Behavior is a bigger problem. You notice this on OSX running java apps more than any other platform. In fact, SWT doesn't work right in OSX. Don't blame apple, they just ported sun's java implementation and tried to fix the problems you mentioned. What burns me is that sun doesn't have cross platform media libraries to do graphic manipulations and other things you can do in.NET or in a subset of supported platforms. FreeBSD licensed java and now no other bsd can do it. (sun's fault)
Overall, sun needs to be more open to certifying java jdks on more platforms. This effects linux people to presuming you don't run on x86 or amd64/emt64. What if you run linux on a sparc or powerpc? What if you want to run embedded? Write several times, run in a few places. (that should be sun's new slogan)
Please someone write a portable, cross platform, object oriented language/runtime with a decent graphical toolkit and useful libraries. Nothing comes close. java implementations can't run everywhere and there are problems. Other implementations like Mono don't work right on most operating systems. (mono runs on windows, linux and partially on OSX and solaris but does not work right on *BSD or anything else i can think of)
There are currently 4 bsd projects that i'm aware of. They include FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD. In addition to these projects which each develop their own kernel and userland, there are linux style distros PC-BSD and DesktopBSD which do not develop their own kernel or low level userland. (they add gui shit) These two track freebsd progress as well as other projects like frenzy that do live cds.
I'm also in the process of starting a BSD project based on FreeBSD 6.x which is a fork like dragonfly was. My project is aimed at developing a desktop friendly bsd from the ground up. Another words, I want to make a BSD install with x11, a window manager and basic applications as well as reasonable defaults for desktop users. Its not like PC-BSD and DesktopBSD since I will be modifying the userland and kernel. I also don't plan on using KDE like they do as KDE users are covered by their efforts. BSD on the desktop is important in part because Macs have gone up in price during the intel switch. Plus if I accomplish my goals, apple may benefit from the source anyway. Finally, I plan on leaving as much BSD licensed as possible. The other projects prefer GPL.
Yes it would cause problems. Also, theo hates GPL code.
Please someone correct me if i'm wrong, but introducing GPL code into the kernel would downgrade the code to GPL wouldn't it? (downgrade in the sense code reuse is no longer free for everyone)
I'm in the process of transfering out actually. My wife completed her masters degree at Western and found a job in the detroit area. (there are jobs!)
Three classes are remaining on other platforms. Operating systems and system programming will be taught with Linux. In Operating Systems we wrote one kernel module and had to make a custom kernel with no module support. Seemed too light to me. The assembly course (CS223) is still taught in sparc assembly on solaris for now. There is talk of switching to embeded devices with ARM.
You bring up some interesting points. The catch is that SVHS never took off despite the VHS in the name. People need to care about this. Sure some people will buy one or the other, but will enough people buy it to warrent the production of movies in the format? I don't see SACD discussed anymore. Why? Everyone uses mp3, aac, ogg, or some other format that works on their computers. It just takes 1 person to buy a computer with one of these drives and then have something not work for the word to get out it sucks. I'm not talking about geeks here, I mean end users.
When DVD took off, I knew about 10 people who got their first player as part of their new compaq or whatever. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) bought a DVD drive for her PC because it saved her room in the dorm. She bought movies to take to college with her and didn't get a conventional player until she moved in with me 2 years later. I bought a DVD player because she had movies. Unless something like this happens again, people just won't care. Frankly if i have to deal with DRM, i'd rather do it on iTunes. I'm willing to buy high quality movies online and download them. I'm sick of the space my video and music collection takes up.
Western Michigan University. They are switching almost all CS classes for undergrads to.NET. (C# specifically) When i started i was able to use my iBook for course work but no longer. I know its stupid but they went up microsoft's ass. Until recently they pushed linux and solaris.
Mono is not a solution to.NET. Its not compatible completely with.NET 1.0 yet, let alone 2.0.
yeah it does take a year to plan and develop a new kernel with sweeping changes. 2.6.x releases should NEVER HAVE MAJOR CHANGES. No one seems to get that. 2.6 should only include bug fixes and maybe drivers IF IT DOESNT BREAK ANYTHING. If not, it needs to go into 2.7.x for inclusion in the stable 2.8.x release. This is how normal people do it. The file system code shouldn't be overhauled in a 2.6 release, etc.
The versioning needs to be fixed first and then they need to go through and clean it up.
Minis are nice in offices, but the real problem is the lack of cheap display. My boss believes that you must buy "mac displays". I managed to talk him into iMacs using his ignorance. Seriously though, if a lamer goes into an apple store wanting a computer for under 1000 dollars, apple can't do it for them. They need a 200 dollar monitor and a mac mini at 500 or less. Its cheaper to buy an iBook right now (until tuesday) than to spend the 700 dollars on that damn apple display. (its great, but not practically priced) How can dell sell monitors at 200 dollars but apple can't?
iBooks aren't good for gaming. THe processor is always too damn slow. you get at most 6 months before new games go above the specs. Maybe the intel chips will help, but i doubt it.
I think its a safe bet that it will have shitty intel graphics. The only ones key value was the fact they had radeon cards and similarly equipped dells cost a few hundred more. (at least when i bought mine 2 years ago)
Gaming on laptops is stupid anyway. Bad keyboards and usually lowend graphics. Plus the hard drives tend to be slower. A real gaming system needs 7200 rpm or better hard drives. Most people don't spring for 7200rpm drives for laptops yet. If the speed of the drive doesn't get you, the size will. Several newer games i've installed are at least 5gb. A 40gb drive in an apple ain't going to last long, especially if you need to dual boot windows for some games or school related stuff. (.NET development for cs majors etc)
Not this damn no games for the mac rant. WoW and Quake 4 don't count as games? I'm not going to bother with the full list. Research it yourself. The only games you can't play are Steam games (valve sucks on this issue) and some crappy games that no one wanted to port. Hell there's even a beta of ventrilo now.
Guess what OSX = lower ping for WoW. Microsoft needs to overhaul there IP stack again if you ask me. I love linux or OSX for gaming simply because my ping is always better.
I think bootcamp is really for businesses. It allows them to migrate off windows only apps to something better. I've almost talked my boss into buying a MacBook Pro at work for the university newspaper advisor. The only thing he needs windows for now is a stupid university app for payroll that was custom written using jinitiator (oracle bs). The whole paper runs on macs and it would be easier for him to interoperate on a mac.
I'm excited about the new macs overall. Bootcamp will allow me to buy one computer instead of two. I've got a dell workstation and an ibook now. When i upgrade next, I'll just buy a mac for my windows and mac needs. Maybe if i'm lucky, *BSD will run as well and i can get rid of my bsd box too. That would mean apple gets 3000 dollars toward a box, dell and newegg get zero.
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I can see why you think that the skyscraper is, but there is more to a skyscraper than a house. Think of it this way, inspecting a single module like say a kernel module is much easier than inspecting the entire linux kernel. Why? Rules that apply in modules and functions available for that type of module from a logic perspective are easier to train someone on. They don't need to be experts on every aspect of the system. Likewise, someone could study twm and not care how the radeon driver works. In the skyscraper analogy, someone would need to know commerical building codes and understand how a skyscraper's foundation might have trouble supporting the weight whereas a single house doesn't need as good of foundation or electrical wiring or whatever.
Modules are the reason we have Object Oriented languages. Sure, C++ and other languages can be a pain in the ass at times, but it makes it easy to write code once and reuse it in a shitload of places. It also simplifies unit testing which is very important for mission critical applications. I think xorg is a very important piece to any modern linux/UNIX distribution for desktops, embedded devices and occiasionally servers. Long term, the direction xorg is going will work out nicely. If you've followed the xorg progress since it forked off the xfree86 code, you'll know they've had some annoying bugs between versions. The seperation might allow them to either avoid the bugs or at least repair them sooner.
Better go with chinese programmers. Look what some indians can do
http://www.justjournal.com/users/raven/entry/1361
As did my apple iBook, my wife's powermac g4 and our ipods. Designed in cupertino, assmebled in china. :)
You forgot all the new features they stole from apple and open source projets. There's real innovation there. Seriously, IE7 is better than IE6 even if it didn't go far enough. I'm concerned about vista and still excited there's going to be a new POS to support. The same old tech calls get boring.
Look at it this way, vista will catch up to apple and KDE/Gnome. That means apple, kde and gnome will have to innovate and get ahead again. It creates competition which benefits everyone. We get 5 years of new features before Microsoft customers and they get 5 years worth of ideas every 5 years. Plus aren't we all running out of new ways to hate XP? The jokes aren't funny anymore.
Besides, if you were to ask me about OS reliability today i'd tell you i've personally had better luck with Windows XP and Windows 2000 than any linux install i've ever had or Mac OS 10.2/10.4. Of course i tend to use redhat with ext* or reiser file systems too. Mac OS 10.3, FreeBSD and Solaris have all been more reliable than Windows though. Only hardware failures have killed them. That's just my experience and anything from the 9x tree i'd consider to be less reliable than any version of linux i've ever used including redhat 5. Ok, i take that back.. if the power doesn't go out, linux on 2.4 or 2.6 is more reliable than mac os 10.4.
I think 512mb is ok on PPC. Intel needs 2gb of ram if you want to task with ppc apps running. I think everyone should hit the refurbs while they can on the ppc macs. My iBook at 800mhz is faster running adobe/macromedia apps than the new dual core mac mini at work.
For native code, its around the same speed as the dual 2.3ghz G5 powermac on my desk.
Worse yet, apple sold an academic configuration of iBook G4s when they first came out (800mhz) with only 128mb ram and Panther. Sure, OSX worked but mail.app would crash when reading my mail!!!! On day 2 I had already placed an order to crucial...
At work, we just got in a new Mac Mini core duo with 2gb of ram. It runs like crap. My iBook (now with 640mb ram and 5400rpm drive) can outperform with illustrator, dreamweaver, and many other apps. Native binaries work great (universal) but rosetta sucks. When an 800mhz G4 can beat a dual core 1.66ghz i'd say thats pathetic. There's a reason the PowerMac replacements aren't in yet and its performance. If people can't even get photoshop cs to install/run properly and dreamweaver 8 feels like dreamweaver mx 2004 on a 400mhz g3 there's are real problem.
Anyone that does any useful work on a mac needs at least 512mb ram with 10.4 and 384mb ram with 10.3. Anyone with an intel mac better damn well have 2gb of ram and expect slowdowns with ppc apps.
Microsoft and id software think alike with specs. Don't worry about what people have now. Think about what they might have in 2 years and code for that. They'll buy your shit eventually. Everyone can run counter strike source or linux today. Apple's solution is to make a new os every 1-1.5 years and then discontinue security patches and push software vendors to use the new features. That way you MUST buy the new software. I've spent more with apple on OS upgrades than with Microsoft in the last five years and thats including academic discounts. My mother in law had to upgrade to panther from 10.2 because she bought a new printer! As for the pentium 90 and linux argument.. i bet thats a 2.4 kernel. Most distros are quite bloated for old machines now. The kernel usually gets better, but the gnome/kde bs gets bigger. I think its the lack of standard libraries for tasks. There is too much duplication in the open source community. Thats why windows or mac os is usually faster or less resource intensive than many graphical environments. I'm not talking about running e16 hacked to hell here.. i mean a standard install in ubuntu, suse, redhat, or whatever.
On a side note, I just put a 5400 rpm 60gb hdd in my iBook last weekend. It was 52 screws and took me almost 5 hours. I can put a hard drive in a dell in 5 minutes using one screw and pulling the tray out. I think apple still has shit to work out.
You can buy AMD Opteron workstations from Sun right now. I believe IBM and HP offer solutions too.
I wouldn't mind dell pricing on an AMD system though. I've got a precision 650 dual xeon that could use replacing in a year or two.
Amazing, women fake and then complain when their partner sucks. I bet sony will be complaining about how unfair the demo was in a few weeks. :)
I know that things get applied special all the time.. like "on the internet", etc. Does it matter that the iPod interface is a cross between iTunes (which apple bought) and the NEXTSTEP file manager they bought in 1996? I mean apple just duplicated something they bought in 1996 for a music player. Its pretty damn obvious if you look at it. Both are electronic devices that can play music. If i make a mp3 player in a new form factor and make it read childrens books can i get away with stealing this shit since its "different"? Patent law gives me a headache sometimes.
Yes, and we all hae the freedom to NOT BUY NOKIA products. I don't understand this continuous argument that BSD licensed software is not free.
This whole thing boils down to fair use. In the GPL world, an end user can use the software. In the BSD world, an end user can use the software. The difference is the code. A GPL licensed program is open but not reusable by anyone similar to sun's java source license. We all bitch about that on slashdot and its evil right? Well sun got the idea from the GPL i'd wager. Its no different. You can see the code all day long and commit code back to the project, but in sun's case you can't redistribute your work. In the BSD world you can take code and do whatever the hell you want with it. Now thats freedom because end users can benefit from enhancements I write and i can either profit OR keep it open. Its my choice as a programmer and i like choice. GPL only makes sense if you hate free enterprise and don't realize that some people care about open source and will release code anyway. Lets try to encourage open source in a positive way not jamming down your throat. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.
OSX Server works fine as a file server. It beats our novell and windows file servers at work all the time.
I think there is strong evidence that mysql runs like shit. The thing is mysql runs poor on everything that isn't linux anyway. There was a huge thread on freebsd-performance on this issue recently.
In general, i've noticed OSX does poor with database products which leads me to believe raw disk io sucks in OSX. Considering apple used some freebsd 5 code, that might be part of the problem. Until 6.x, i noticed that freebsd was rather slow at times under load using disks. (and other things) I don't think you can blame all possible performance issues on the Mach kernel itself. I suspect when 10.5 comes out, we'll see some better benchmarks. Apple had to hack in intel support to 10.4 (even if it mostly worked the whole time) and i have a feeling that hurt performance a bit.
Please remember the performance characteristics of an operating system are more than one technology or design decision used. Linux has changed a lot since i first tried it 9 years ago. I do understand why its hard to believe a Mach kernel can perform ok, as i still struggle with trusting linux with my data (ext2 + power off = data loss circa redhat 5)
They run OSX, but time syncing doesn't always work when the clock is 30 years in the past! Its 10.2 clients mostly. Also, the university blocks time.windows.com and their own NTP servers all run at different times as they don't sync with any outside source.
Most clients eventually sync back up, but I have a few G4 400mhz machines that often get stuck in 1969 and refuse to sync. Sometimes the system preference gets reset, although it is part of my image.
firewall != security
.2 revision. It ensures you can actually patch the damn thing. 10.2 does not receive updates anymore. (problem at work) Its possible to easily DoS attack the samba service on 10.2.8 server for example. I think apple should be criticized for their lack of patching older versions, at least the server version.
:)
Mac OSX is vulnerable just like ANY operating system. Use software update religiously.
Simply installing a firewall does not protect you from security holes. Most problems arise from user error like clicking on a file attachment, running a program from an untrusted source, etc. Macs can't help you there. Less people try to write malware or viruses for macs, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
Also, remember that microsoft releases patches for previous os releases longer than apple does. If you use OSX, please always buy the latest version by the
Apple recommends on their own website to run a firewall, purchase an antivirus solution and even buy a 100 dollar defrag program! It does feel like windows now, but we must all accept this. If you don't like it, there's always other operating systems that no one cares about like OpenBSD.
Perhaps, but I'd argue common sense is missing. My aunt is a nurse and she has absolutely no common sense. She's got 4 bachelors degrees though. Lots of learning there. She actually bought opened asprin at a garage sale! Remember she's a nurse.
I did tech support for 2.5 years at an isp. I can tell you that many professionals can't use computers. You can only tell someone to click start so many times while telling them where to look for the damn button before you wonder how they got to be a doctor. If they can't find a start button on a screen, how will they find parts on my body? The real problem is that people with higher education seem to get an attitude problem like they are too good to use windows. (aren't we all) Its a waste of their time to call me and ask for my help. They feel they can abuse me with rude and in some cases unrepeatable comments. I don't cosider those people to be intelligent regardless of what degree they might have earned.
I don't think programmers should even comment on this thread. Supporting something you wrote is much different than something microsoft, apple, or someone else wrote. You know how the damn thing works inside and out. Plus people act differently if they think you know what you're talking about. If you did tech support 20 years ago, don't bother commenting. Now there are quotas and you can't spend time with people.
I work at my university now in the IS department doing support and system administration on Macs. I miss the windows calls sometimes. You can only get the "My mac thinks its 1969" call a few times before you want to throw the computer into the trash. My boss won't buy new batteries for the damn things. Mac calls are always bad. If they break, they do it in a big way.
You are right that Swing should track the appearance of the desktop. You are wrong that Microsoft does it. Controls look different in .NET 2 vs say apps written in Visual c++ 4. Now that might be because the code is linked static but its still a problem. Microsoft hasn't drastically changed their interface since Windows 95, but if you remember running 3.1 apps on it they looked like shit too. Likewise, Carbon apps sometimes look odd in OSX. Also, using windowmaker with gtk apps or kde with gtk apps can be odd still. There are newer x11 standards to help with these problems, but i just wanted to point out no one has it down perfect yet. Its a great goal though.
.NET or in a subset of supported platforms. FreeBSD licensed java and now no other bsd can do it. (sun's fault)
Behavior is a bigger problem. You notice this on OSX running java apps more than any other platform. In fact, SWT doesn't work right in OSX. Don't blame apple, they just ported sun's java implementation and tried to fix the problems you mentioned. What burns me is that sun doesn't have cross platform media libraries to do graphic manipulations and other things you can do in
Overall, sun needs to be more open to certifying java jdks on more platforms. This effects linux people to presuming you don't run on x86 or amd64/emt64. What if you run linux on a sparc or powerpc? What if you want to run embedded? Write several times, run in a few places. (that should be sun's new slogan)
Please someone write a portable, cross platform, object oriented language/runtime with a decent graphical toolkit and useful libraries. Nothing comes close. java implementations can't run everywhere and there are problems. Other implementations like Mono don't work right on most operating systems. (mono runs on windows, linux and partially on OSX and solaris but does not work right on *BSD or anything else i can think of)
Its only dying in your mind.
Here are the facts:
There are currently 4 bsd projects that i'm aware of. They include FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD. In addition to these projects which each develop their own kernel and userland, there are linux style distros PC-BSD and DesktopBSD which do not develop their own kernel or low level userland. (they add gui shit) These two track freebsd progress as well as other projects like frenzy that do live cds.
I'm also in the process of starting a BSD project based on FreeBSD 6.x which is a fork like dragonfly was. My project is aimed at developing a desktop friendly bsd from the ground up. Another words, I want to make a BSD install with x11, a window manager and basic applications as well as reasonable defaults for desktop users. Its not like PC-BSD and DesktopBSD since I will be modifying the userland and kernel. I also don't plan on using KDE like they do as KDE users are covered by their efforts. BSD on the desktop is important in part because Macs have gone up in price during the intel switch. Plus if I accomplish my goals, apple may benefit from the source anyway. Finally, I plan on leaving as much BSD licensed as possible. The other projects prefer GPL.
I don't have a website up yet, but the uri will be http://www.midnightbsd.org/ (MidnightBSD)
Yes it would cause problems. Also, theo hates GPL code.
Please someone correct me if i'm wrong, but introducing GPL code into the kernel would downgrade the code to GPL wouldn't it? (downgrade in the sense code reuse is no longer free for everyone)
I'm in the process of transfering out actually. My wife completed her masters degree at Western and found a job in the detroit area. (there are jobs!)
Three classes are remaining on other platforms. Operating systems and system programming will be taught with Linux. In Operating Systems we wrote one kernel module and had to make a custom kernel with no module support. Seemed too light to me. The assembly course (CS223) is still taught in sparc assembly on solaris for now. There is talk of switching to embeded devices with ARM.
You bring up some interesting points. The catch is that SVHS never took off despite the VHS in the name. People need to care about this. Sure some people will buy one or the other, but will enough people buy it to warrent the production of movies in the format? I don't see SACD discussed anymore. Why? Everyone uses mp3, aac, ogg, or some other format that works on their computers. It just takes 1 person to buy a computer with one of these drives and then have something not work for the word to get out it sucks. I'm not talking about geeks here, I mean end users.
When DVD took off, I knew about 10 people who got their first player as part of their new compaq or whatever. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) bought a DVD drive for her PC because it saved her room in the dorm. She bought movies to take to college with her and didn't get a conventional player until she moved in with me 2 years later. I bought a DVD player because she had movies. Unless something like this happens again, people just won't care. Frankly if i have to deal with DRM, i'd rather do it on iTunes. I'm willing to buy high quality movies online and download them. I'm sick of the space my video and music collection takes up.
Western Michigan University. They are switching almost all CS classes for undergrads to .NET. (C# specifically) When i started i was able to use my iBook for course work but no longer. I know its stupid but they went up microsoft's ass. Until recently they pushed linux and solaris.
.NET. Its not compatible completely with .NET 1.0 yet, let alone 2.0.
Mono is not a solution to
yeah it does take a year to plan and develop a new kernel with sweeping changes. 2.6.x releases should NEVER HAVE MAJOR CHANGES. No one seems to get that. 2.6 should only include bug fixes and maybe drivers IF IT DOESNT BREAK ANYTHING. If not, it needs to go into 2.7.x for inclusion in the stable 2.8.x release. This is how normal people do it. The file system code shouldn't be overhauled in a 2.6 release, etc.
The versioning needs to be fixed first and then they need to go through and clean it up.
Minis are nice in offices, but the real problem is the lack of cheap display. My boss believes that you must buy "mac displays". I managed to talk him into iMacs using his ignorance. Seriously though, if a lamer goes into an apple store wanting a computer for under 1000 dollars, apple can't do it for them. They need a 200 dollar monitor and a mac mini at 500 or less. Its cheaper to buy an iBook right now (until tuesday) than to spend the 700 dollars on that damn apple display. (its great, but not practically priced) How can dell sell monitors at 200 dollars but apple can't?
iBooks aren't good for gaming. THe processor is always too damn slow. you get at most 6 months before new games go above the specs. Maybe the intel chips will help, but i doubt it.
I think its a safe bet that it will have shitty intel graphics. The only ones key value was the fact they had radeon cards and similarly equipped dells cost a few hundred more. (at least when i bought mine 2 years ago)
Gaming on laptops is stupid anyway. Bad keyboards and usually lowend graphics. Plus the hard drives tend to be slower. A real gaming system needs 7200 rpm or better hard drives. Most people don't spring for 7200rpm drives for laptops yet. If the speed of the drive doesn't get you, the size will. Several newer games i've installed are at least 5gb. A 40gb drive in an apple ain't going to last long, especially if you need to dual boot windows for some games or school related stuff. (.NET development for cs majors etc)
Didn't realize the windows scheduler was so bad. I guess that makes sense.
Not this damn no games for the mac rant. WoW and Quake 4 don't count as games? I'm not going to bother with the full list. Research it yourself. The only games you can't play are Steam games (valve sucks on this issue) and some crappy games that no one wanted to port. Hell there's even a beta of ventrilo now.
Guess what OSX = lower ping for WoW. Microsoft needs to overhaul there IP stack again if you ask me. I love linux or OSX for gaming simply because my ping is always better.
I think bootcamp is really for businesses. It allows them to migrate off windows only apps to something better. I've almost talked my boss into buying a MacBook Pro at work for the university newspaper advisor. The only thing he needs windows for now is a stupid university app for payroll that was custom written using jinitiator (oracle bs). The whole paper runs on macs and it would be easier for him to interoperate on a mac.
I'm excited about the new macs overall. Bootcamp will allow me to buy one computer instead of two. I've got a dell workstation and an ibook now. When i upgrade next, I'll just buy a mac for my windows and mac needs. Maybe if i'm lucky, *BSD will run as well and i can get rid of my bsd box too. That would mean apple gets 3000 dollars toward a box, dell and newegg get zero.