don't forget that OS X includes Classic Mode, letting users use all of their crust old OS9 apps.
And inside that compatibility mode, another compatibility mode. I have old applications in 68000 code, dating perhaps back to OS 6--such as the venerable Word 5.1 (in many respects still the best version) and Canvas 3.5--that still run just fine using the 68000 emulator inside Classic Mode.
sorry, but in my world, 10.2 -> 10.3 is classed as a minor revision change.
That's a pretty foolish way to think of it, as Apple is clearly assigning version numbers in a different way. Apple obviously plans to keep the "OSX" moniker for a long time, so minor revision changes are in the third digit, not the second.
Here's a better way to think of it: Major OSX revisions include completely new standard applications (e.g. Expose, iChat), as well as OS performance enhancements. Personally, I'd happily have paid the upgrade price for Expose alone.
This has been true for a looooong time, but seems to be swept under the carpet. If MS broke this many applications, the linux and apple zealots would be gloating like the DNC at Rush Limbaugh.
This doesn't make sense to me. I still run some ancient applications. I can't think of any major applications that have "broken" with a Mac OS release. The only things that typically break are user-interface hacks that typically use undocumented tricks to mess with the system menus, dock, and the like--but I don't expect such things to survive a major update. If 10-20% of applications really fail under Panther, that is a real problem, but it doesn't match with what I've heard from people who have been running pre-release versions.
These are widely used applications, so for people looking to make a choice at this time, the results are relevant. You can see it either way--basically, whether you like Mac or Wintel platforms, there is not a big difference in speed at the top of the line, so people concerned about performance can choose the platform and OS that they prefer.
The place where you are likely to find the oldest PC's is in instrumentation control. Often, a manufacturer will introduce a new product and abandon software upgrades to the old one. But labs that have a $10-20K system that is working fine are not likely to want to replace it. I've got one instrument running off a Leading Edge 486. It's software is not compatible with anything later than Windows 3. We run it with the clock set back, because it is not Y2K compliant. I've got another custom-built instument running on a Mac 7100 (upgraded from a IIci, which we keep as backup)--that's the most recent Mac that will accept its NuBus-based A/D and D/A cards. We've put together a newer system, but the old one still works fine, so we continue to use it.
And even though they are running with the same processor, Mac OS could run better and faster, just like Linux on PC
Except, of course, that Apple's current chips are speed-competitive with top-of-the-line x86 chips, so there's no reason why MacOS would run any better or faster.
I have to wonder if Apple and MacOS could have been doing back then what Linux and *BSD are doing now as far as "portable" software development. Remember, Windows 3.1 was big, but what if MacOS was running cross-platform when Windows95 had been released?
Sometimes, hindsight is a lot less than 20:20. It is worth noting that a bunch of companies tried to compete directly with MS for the windowing operating-system market. Do you even remember their names? I had to look them up: VisiOn, GEM, DesqView. But MS had the inside track, because it controlled DOS. Even IBM tried to challenge MS, with OS/2 Warp, and failed. Whatevery else you might say about Bill Gates, when it comes to business maneuvering he really has no peer. Witness the way Gates tricked Steve Jobs into licensing to MS the "signature" features of the MacOS.
So the GPL doesn't grant anything that normal copyright law doesn't grant.
The copyright law does not "grant" anything, except for limited fair use exceptions. It does, however, allow for the copyright owner to grant permission. The GPL is an example of permission, granted by the copyright owner. If the GPL is ruled invalid, then no permission to copy the GPL'd work exists, and people who wish to copy it will have to request new licenses from the copyright owner.
There are now also DVD video recorders that offer free "Tivo Basic" service. This includes 3 days of program info, TV pause, timer recording, but lacks some of the fancier features like season passes and wish lists.
Well, there's enough evidence out there to say that it's worth it to worry.
I would be more worried about flying saucers, for which there is about the same level of evidence. And there certainly is not enough evidence to rule them out as a danger, either. The good studies of non-ionizing radiation show no effect, the studies that show harm are small and generally show tiny effects of marginal statistical significance under circumstances where there are numerous potential artifacts and biases. And it is very hard to come up with even a remotely plausible hypothesis for how non-ionizing radiation could be harmful at all--and if it was, how one such source could make an appreciable difference considering the large number of sources in our society.
Whether the 8th was going to be the day, or not, was debateable. Rumors are rumors.
The exact date was unknown, but it was known to be within the next few weeks, so if you ordered a system before the announcement, you could reasonably assume that the final price including Panther would be $129 more. Of course, you don't need Panther. Jaguar continues to work just fine.
Still, you might want to check with Apple; reportedly, they're being somewhat flexible about the policy for people who are right on the cusp.
did they really have to screw everyone who bought a laptop yesterday?
Considering that nearly everybody has known for some time that Panther was imminent, I figure that most everybody who bought a laptop yesterday figured that having a laptop then, instead of in a week or two, was worth the extra $130 or so that it would cost them for the OS upgrade.
This field of study involves protein that sit in cell membrane and control transport of substances (ions and water). Such proteins are involved in all sorts of important signalling functions in biology, but they have been very difficult to study because they sit in a cell membrane and are exposed on both the outside and the inside. This means that the outside parts has to be hydrophyilic (i.e. interact well with water) and the parts in the membrane has to be hydrophobic (i.e. kind of greasy). You can't even get them out of the membrane without detergents, and once you get them out it is exceedingly difficult to get them to crystalize into the highly ordered structures required for X-ray crystallography, which is the only reliable method of determining the structures of large proteins.
Come on, rendering text has been real time
for 30 years. If you actually do wait for text to appear, then
why do you pay more than $3000 for a computer.
Let's see, that would put us back in '73. Not many PCs then. The Apple II (released 26 years ago) was capable of generating text on its hi-res graphics display (if blitting a pre-stored bitmap directly to the screen can really be called "rendering"), but was painfully slow. The operating system relied upon hardware character generation, and did not even attempt to render. Other PCs of the time lacked graphics display with sufficient resolution for text rendering. The Macintosh (19 years ago) was the first PC to use "rendering" of text routinely (if you don't count the Lisa), but it was still just blitting prestored bitmaps. Actual real-time rendering of outline fonts came in 13 years ago, with Adobe release of Adobe Type Manager, but it was still pretty crude and ugly, with no antialiasing. Apple introduced antialiased text in OS 8.5, about 5 years ago (Microsoft offered it in an upgrade to Windows 95). The idea of antialiasing is an old one, but it wasn't until the mid 90's that computers had enough power to do it to text in real-time at a respectable (albeit slow by modern standards) rate.
Generally, Apple's "pay" upgrades include major new software and or features, as well as OS performance enhancements. Having seen Expose in action, I'd certainly pay $69 for it (which is the academic OSX upgrade price) if it were offered alone as a shareware product.
I have a friend running a pre-release version, and if the new features were offered as a 3rd party product, with no OS improvements, I'd consider $129 a more than reasonable price (although being in academia, the price for me is $69).
That's OK - the six guys to whom that would actually apply are still waiting for their copies of 10.2 to boot up.
A common misconception. Actually, a beige G3 with adequate RAM runs quite well under 10.2. Not surprising; it is close to being as fast as some of the iBooks that are still in common use.
They're not "expressing" anything. They're just trying to make money. They're producing a commodity to appeal to a marketshare whom they think will be profitable to them.
Much of what we now recognize as great art was produced by people who were just trying to make a living. A videogame may or may not be a form of "meaningful" expression, but the fact that it is produced for profit is entirely irrelevant to the issue.
Administrative staff are constantly bombarded by email attachments. Doc files, images, all kinds of stuff that are necessary to get their job done. If you think you're going to require a secretary to just not open things because they cant understand permissions, it simply wont work.
No, I think I'm going to require a secretary to not open things that, on a well-designed system, require administrator approval to install and run--i.e. executables. That does not include doc files, images, or most of the stuff that a secretary should reasonably be dealing with.
This is probably one of the very few times we'd want to see Microsoft win a case like this.
I'll shed few tears for Microsoft; they have a long history of appropriating (indeed, sometimes outright stealing) the work of others. Some companies have been driven out of business because Microsoft stole their products (they may have won in court, but they were still out of business). If Microsoft doesn't like it, they can lobby to change patent law (which might be a good thing for everybody).
Ok, so basically all things absolutely opposite to intrinsic corporate (read: secretary) thinking. Glad to see we're comparing apples and oranges here. Come back to planet Earth, please.
Do you really think secretaries should be running foreign executables? Somebody who doesn't understand permissions, or what it means to "make something executable" shouldn't be doing it, period. And with a well-designed system, they will almost never need to. It makes more sense to set things up so that the secretary has to consult with a more knowledgable person (i.e. the system administrator) to do such a thing.
Seems the author misses the very obvious point that many of the weaknesses in Windows are there for user-friendliness. Making it easier for users to open attachments & see HTML mail is practically a requirement for the great mass of users. Yes, they're clueless, and yes, it would be nice if they could get over their fear of slightly more complex interfaces. But it ain't gonna happen.
This in itself is a form of "social engineering." Unsophisticated users are offered these "simple convenience" features, and tricked into thinking that they will make their life simpler. Instead, they are trapped into a bewildering nightmare of frequent patches, virus infections, spyware, and confusing complaints that their computers are sending spam or emailing their private documents to random strangers.
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Actually, according to most reports that I have heard, they have substantially increased performance, and added the "gee-whiz" stuff, too.
And inside that compatibility mode, another compatibility mode. I have old applications in 68000 code, dating perhaps back to OS 6--such as the venerable Word 5.1 (in many respects still the best version) and Canvas 3.5--that still run just fine using the 68000 emulator inside Classic Mode.
That's a pretty foolish way to think of it, as Apple is clearly assigning version numbers in a different way. Apple obviously plans to keep the "OSX" moniker for a long time, so minor revision changes are in the third digit, not the second.
Here's a better way to think of it: Major OSX revisions include completely new standard applications (e.g. Expose, iChat), as well as OS performance enhancements. Personally, I'd happily have paid the upgrade price for Expose alone.
These are widely used applications, so for people looking to make a choice at this time, the results are relevant. You can see it either way--basically, whether you like Mac or Wintel platforms, there is not a big difference in speed at the top of the line, so people concerned about performance can choose the platform and OS that they prefer.
The place where you are likely to find the oldest PC's is in instrumentation control. Often, a manufacturer will introduce a new product and abandon software upgrades to the old one. But labs that have a $10-20K system that is working fine are not likely to want to replace it. I've got one instrument running off a Leading Edge 486. It's software is not compatible with anything later than Windows 3. We run it with the clock set back, because it is not Y2K compliant. I've got another custom-built instument running on a Mac 7100 (upgraded from a IIci, which we keep as backup)--that's the most recent Mac that will accept its NuBus-based A/D and D/A cards. We've put together a newer system, but the old one still works fine, so we continue to use it.
Except, of course, that Apple's current chips are speed-competitive with top-of-the-line x86 chips, so there's no reason why MacOS would run any better or faster.
Sometimes, hindsight is a lot less than 20:20. It is worth noting that a bunch of companies tried to compete directly with MS for the windowing operating-system market. Do you even remember their names? I had to look them up: VisiOn, GEM, DesqView. But MS had the inside track, because it controlled DOS. Even IBM tried to challenge MS, with OS/2 Warp, and failed. Whatevery else you might say about Bill Gates, when it comes to business maneuvering he really has no peer. Witness the way Gates tricked Steve Jobs into licensing to MS the "signature" features of the MacOS.
The copyright law does not "grant" anything, except for limited fair use exceptions. It does, however, allow for the copyright owner to grant permission. The GPL is an example of permission, granted by the copyright owner. If the GPL is ruled invalid, then no permission to copy the GPL'd work exists, and people who wish to copy it will have to request new licenses from the copyright owner.
There are now also DVD video recorders that offer free "Tivo Basic" service. This includes 3 days of program info, TV pause, timer recording, but lacks some of the fancier features like season passes and wish lists.
A more accurate term would be "fraudulent."
The exact date was unknown, but it was known to be within the next few weeks, so if you ordered a system before the announcement, you could reasonably assume that the final price including Panther would be $129 more. Of course, you don't need Panther. Jaguar continues to work just fine.
Still, you might want to check with Apple; reportedly, they're being somewhat flexible about the policy for people who are right on the cusp.
Considering that nearly everybody has known for some time that Panther was imminent, I figure that most everybody who bought a laptop yesterday figured that having a laptop then, instead of in a week or two, was worth the extra $130 or so that it would cost them for the OS upgrade.
This field of study involves protein that sit in cell membrane and control transport of substances (ions and water). Such proteins are involved in all sorts of important signalling functions in biology, but they have been very difficult to study because they sit in a cell membrane and are exposed on both the outside and the inside. This means that the outside parts has to be hydrophyilic (i.e. interact well with water) and the parts in the membrane has to be hydrophobic (i.e. kind of greasy). You can't even get them out of the membrane without detergents, and once you get them out it is exceedingly difficult to get them to crystalize into the highly ordered structures required for X-ray crystallography, which is the only reliable method of determining the structures of large proteins.
Let's see, that would put us back in '73. Not many PCs then. The Apple II (released 26 years ago) was capable of generating text on its hi-res graphics display (if blitting a pre-stored bitmap directly to the screen can really be called "rendering"), but was painfully slow. The operating system relied upon hardware character generation, and did not even attempt to render. Other PCs of the time lacked graphics display with sufficient resolution for text rendering. The Macintosh (19 years ago) was the first PC to use "rendering" of text routinely (if you don't count the Lisa), but it was still just blitting prestored bitmaps. Actual real-time rendering of outline fonts came in 13 years ago, with Adobe release of Adobe Type Manager, but it was still pretty crude and ugly, with no antialiasing. Apple introduced antialiased text in OS 8.5, about 5 years ago (Microsoft offered it in an upgrade to Windows 95). The idea of antialiasing is an old one, but it wasn't until the mid 90's that computers had enough power to do it to text in real-time at a respectable (albeit slow by modern standards) rate.
Generally, Apple's "pay" upgrades include major new software and or features, as well as OS performance enhancements. Having seen Expose in action, I'd certainly pay $69 for it (which is the academic OSX upgrade price) if it were offered alone as a shareware product.
I've used XPostFacto to install Jaguar on a PowerComputing clone (with G3 upgrade). Perhaps there will be a version of Panther and beige G3's.
I have a friend running a pre-release version, and if the new features were offered as a 3rd party product, with no OS improvements, I'd consider $129 a more than reasonable price (although being in academia, the price for me is $69).
A common misconception. Actually, a beige G3 with adequate RAM runs quite well under 10.2. Not surprising; it is close to being as fast as some of the iBooks that are still in common use.
Much of what we now recognize as great art was produced by people who were just trying to make a living. A videogame may or may not be a form of "meaningful" expression, but the fact that it is produced for profit is entirely irrelevant to the issue.
No, I think I'm going to require a secretary to not open things that, on a well-designed system, require administrator approval to install and run--i.e. executables. That does not include doc files, images, or most of the stuff that a secretary should reasonably be dealing with.
I'll shed few tears for Microsoft; they have a long history of appropriating (indeed, sometimes outright stealing) the work of others. Some companies have been driven out of business because Microsoft stole their products (they may have won in court, but they were still out of business). If Microsoft doesn't like it, they can lobby to change patent law (which might be a good thing for everybody).
Do you really think secretaries should be running foreign executables? Somebody who doesn't understand permissions, or what it means to "make something executable" shouldn't be doing it, period. And with a well-designed system, they will almost never need to. It makes more sense to set things up so that the secretary has to consult with a more knowledgable person (i.e. the system administrator) to do such a thing.