And there's a story there. The guy who developed it got laid off, in the middle, but no one bothered to take away his badge. He kept working there, and all sorts of people conspired to help him... He got it on the gold master, and everything.
Why? I think you can still use cron. It's just that Apple doesn't; and you might need to install it. Seeing as you're talking about using OpenBSD, that sort of OS customization evidently doesn't faze you. More power to you, brother.
I'd give The Apple Way a look. The XML dependencies stuff they use for this sort of thing does make cron, rc, et al, look a little arcane. I (not an experienced administrator) run a Panther Server, and getting everything to startup in the correct order (two Apaches, MySQL, etc., etc.) to run headless was easier, once I (quickly) figured out Apple's way of doing things, than it might have been on a similar OS. Just edit a few.plists, copying and pasting from Apple's, and it worked like a dream. I did it right on the first try. Now, I'm no expert, but The Old Way seems to have precious few advantages over The Apple Way in this area. I really won't be surprised if, in two years, I will read, in these pages, about *nix users compiling launchd on their systems, praising the deliberateness, surety and configurability that it allows. I mean, these are your values, right?
Let's be serious: there's plenty wrong with Tiger. Apple has been playing fast and loose with the Human Interface Guidelines (the KEY to the OS's vaunted usability!) for awhile now, and Dashboard is just the icing on that particular cake. But things like launchd are really excellent ideas, the best aspects of this whole desktop unix experiment that Apple has been working on. This, and stealth mode.
Now this is exactly the sort of thing we mac users hear all the time.
Look... I organize files fine. My mom doesn't organize files terribly well. I've been using macs since 1986, when I was four, whereas she's been using them since 1986, when she was forty. What is natural to me, as easy as reading and writing, is a late-acquired and artificial skill for her.
Even many expert mac users now are ceasing to carefully organize files. Using applications like Quicksilver (something that I believe has no parallel in the Windows world) we are increasingly accessing files in a non-hierarchical manner. Quicksilver is a utility that allows users to quickly find files or other "direct objects" such as Users or servers and take actions (such as: Open, Print, etc. for files, switch to..., for Users, Connect to..., for servers). It's only pretty cool now, in the future I think it will be really cool.
In fact, the websites I author for a living are increasingly seeming tediously constrained by the strict hierarchical organization of directories that we use to metaphorize file relationships. An example: I use mod_rewrite to clean up the urls in a php content management system. Excellent. Great work. But then, I can no longer reliably use relative links to images and javascripts. What a hassle!
So, bro, just because you are a fucking champ at manipulating hierarchical file systems, that doesn't make them the most intrinsically "intuitive" or natural way to organize things. They're just a way you've mastered. Spotlight and Quicksilver-ish things point to a way beyond Mac OS's current dependence on the Finder (which is showing its age) or worse, Redmond's laughable Windows Explorer.
Don't get me wrong: I think Finder should still be around, I just think that there should be multiple approaches to manipulating our hard drives. Different kinds of Finders, that organize data different ways. I want to use Finder for laying out hierarchical ensembles like web pages and php apps, and Spotlight for looking at all of the files I output from ImageReady in the last three days. And I want things I haven't even imagined yet. Is that too much to ask?
Guys, it's worse than that: the "Pro" line of Apple Apps, eg Final Cut Pro, Shake, and Soundtrack, etc. have another gui theme (dark grey, and quite appealing, frankly). And GarageBand has an absolutely monstrous ui, totally unique.
And yes, this is important. If this keeps up, it could get to be like Windows around here in no time.
Good thing I scrolled down to avoid redundancy.
I have one of those in my parents' attic. It was the first laptop I ever saw under five pounds; and back when laptops were seriously chunky, this made sense. Usable sublaptops (and tablets, and palmtops, if that's "usable") render this sort of shenanigans unnecessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Dawg, it was 7.
And there's a story there. The guy who developed it got laid off, in the middle, but no one bothered to take away his badge. He kept working there, and all sorts of people conspired to help him... He got it on the gold master, and everything.
http://www.pacifict.com/Story/
Why? I think you can still use cron. It's just that Apple doesn't; and you might need to install it. Seeing as you're talking about using OpenBSD, that sort of OS customization evidently doesn't faze you. More power to you, brother.
I'd give The Apple Way a look. The XML dependencies stuff they use for this sort of thing does make cron, rc, et al, look a little arcane. I (not an experienced administrator) run a Panther Server, and getting everything to startup in the correct order (two Apaches, MySQL, etc., etc.) to run headless was easier, once I (quickly) figured out Apple's way of doing things, than it might have been on a similar OS. Just edit a few .plists, copying and pasting from Apple's, and it worked like a dream. I did it right on the first try. Now, I'm no expert, but The Old Way seems to have precious few advantages over The Apple Way in this area. I really won't be surprised if, in two years, I will read, in these pages, about *nix users compiling launchd on their systems, praising the deliberateness, surety and configurability that it allows. I mean, these are your values, right?
Let's be serious: there's plenty wrong with Tiger. Apple has been playing fast and loose with the Human Interface Guidelines (the KEY to the OS's vaunted usability!) for awhile now, and Dashboard is just the icing on that particular cake. But things like launchd are really excellent ideas, the best aspects of this whole desktop unix experiment that Apple has been working on. This, and stealth mode.
Now this is exactly the sort of thing we mac users hear all the time.
Look... I organize files fine. My mom doesn't organize files terribly well. I've been using macs since 1986, when I was four, whereas she's been using them since 1986, when she was forty. What is natural to me, as easy as reading and writing, is a late-acquired and artificial skill for her.
Even many expert mac users now are ceasing to carefully organize files. Using applications like Quicksilver (something that I believe has no parallel in the Windows world) we are increasingly accessing files in a non-hierarchical manner. Quicksilver is a utility that allows users to quickly find files or other "direct objects" such as Users or servers and take actions (such as: Open, Print, etc. for files, switch to..., for Users, Connect to..., for servers). It's only pretty cool now, in the future I think it will be really cool.
In fact, the websites I author for a living are increasingly seeming tediously constrained by the strict hierarchical organization of directories that we use to metaphorize file relationships. An example: I use mod_rewrite to clean up the urls in a php content management system. Excellent. Great work. But then, I can no longer reliably use relative links to images and javascripts. What a hassle!
So, bro, just because you are a fucking champ at manipulating hierarchical file systems, that doesn't make them the most intrinsically "intuitive" or natural way to organize things. They're just a way you've mastered. Spotlight and Quicksilver-ish things point to a way beyond Mac OS's current dependence on the Finder (which is showing its age) or worse, Redmond's laughable Windows Explorer.
Don't get me wrong: I think Finder should still be around, I just think that there should be multiple approaches to manipulating our hard drives. Different kinds of Finders, that organize data different ways. I want to use Finder for laying out hierarchical ensembles like web pages and php apps, and Spotlight for looking at all of the files I output from ImageReady in the last three days. And I want things I haven't even imagined yet. Is that too much to ask?
Guys, it's worse than that: the "Pro" line of Apple Apps, eg Final Cut Pro, Shake, and Soundtrack, etc. have another gui theme (dark grey, and quite appealing, frankly). And GarageBand has an absolutely monstrous ui, totally unique.
And yes, this is important. If this keeps up, it could get to be like Windows around here in no time.
Good thing I scrolled down to avoid redundancy. I have one of those in my parents' attic. It was the first laptop I ever saw under five pounds; and back when laptops were seriously chunky, this made sense. Usable sublaptops (and tablets, and palmtops, if that's "usable") render this sort of shenanigans unnecessary.