Same old argument
Someone locked the thread so i don't get my wiseguy comeback!?
Ok, X is slow - and I have... 704MB of RAM. Get used to it some people have different perceptions.
An Extensions Manager for X: boy I must be really stupid, there are no extension on X!?
If you thought that literally then you are far more stupid than I.
What I meant was that there are, to my knowledge, no system maintenance tools as basic as Extensions Manager. Install something new that doesn't play nicely... how are you going to get rid of it?
Concerned that there's a built in web server on your machine? Are you sure the bastard thing is out of harm's way and definitely *not* running.
ColorSync not running right, what version do I have, do I have the okeykokey2200 file to match the flangesaver0040?
When I look at a an X System I just see billions of files that have no obvious relationships and no obvious consequences when deleted... it's kind of like looking down the barrel at... Windows.
And that's why the total cost of ownership goes out the window, because now you have a mess of a file system that next to no one understand and no simple maintenance tools.
You were right the first time - boy am I stupid. And still only twenty-odd posts!
Ok, X is slow - and I have... 704MB of RAM. Get used to it some people have different perceptions.
An Extensions Manager for X: boy I must be really stupid, there are no extension on X!?
If you thought that literally then you are far more stupid than I.
What I meant was that there are, to my knowledge, no system maintenance tools as basic as Extensions Manager. Install something new that doesn't play nicely... how are you going to get rid of it?
Concerned that there's a built in web server on your machine? Are you sure the bastard thing is out of harm's way and definitely *not* running.
ColorSync not running right, what version do I have, do I have the okeykokey2200 file to match the flangesaver0040?
When I look at a an X System I just see billions of files that have no obvious relationships and no obvious consequences when deleted... it's kind of like looking down the barrel at... Windows.
And that's why the total cost of ownership goes out the window, because now you have a mess of a file system that next to no one understand and no simple maintenance tools.
You were right the first time - boy am I stupid. And still only twenty-odd posts!
Comments
One of the reasons I gave up on X was that I found it no more stable than 9.x, really!
There's no Luddite trying to break out here, I bought the public beta, I bought the real thing, I bought the 10.1 CD... I've been there. But what I found was an immature, if promising, system, that is not yet ready for primetime no matter how loud you say it is.
X is no more complicated than 9. You just have to learn your way around it. Frankly, any moron wouldn't know what an extension is or anything.
Jeesus.
If you're not using the UNIX side, they're irrelevant. In fact, you can choose not to install the BSD layer when you install OS X, and in that case they aren't there at all.
[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
Those files you're deleting that have little to no influence on how your system runs are more than likely there for the BSD UNIX functions that you're probably not using.
I'm sorry you've had nothing but a bad experience with OS X but for most if not ALL of my friends and aquantences who use OS X it has been a gem and a godsend.
[quote] Oh, and yes, when you use 9.x it does crash, but my webserver's been up since January, running 8.6. <hr></blockquote>
That's nice... I never said you couldn't make classic stable, it's just inherently NOT known for being that way. One who knows what they are doing can make ANY OS stable and run for MONTHS on end with no problems.
My mother is living proof... IDENTICAL installs with IDENTICAL 3rd party apps and extensions installed... Mine hasn't gone down in, I'd have to say about a Month or so... hers, three to four times a day. It's all in the user.
"It's not the OS that's the problem it's the driver"
I've heard this said THOUSANDS of times for ANY OS you can name.
I'm finished with this mundane topic... FINITO.
Mac Guru
Extensions are in the "root" or main system folder and so are available for all users on a system. The reason you do not have an extension manager is because you do not need it. In OS 9 extensions went right to the machine level and could conflict with other machine level extensions. In OS X applications do not have that sort of access and it really does not crash hardly at all. I have heard of a beta scanner driver that would crash a system. If you really want to muck around with things you can use xFiles or boot in to OS 9 and start mucking things up. The average user will never have to know about extensions, memory allocations, virtual memory etc. because it works. [though I am no expert. i might be wrong here]
As for speed and all that, it is not the easiest thing to write an operating system. Clearly they are working on it very hard and it's getting a lot better. Someday people will look back and be amazed at how easy the trasition was. You can still use OS 9. That's not a bad thing either.
I agree the the OS9 gui is a little better than OS X (mainly because it was snappier and I used finderpop). The OS X system is way better than OS 9. way way better. way! The OS X gui can improve in ways that the previous OSes never could. I am confident that OS 10.2 will be nearly as snappy on most G3 machines as OS 9 was.
In short, give them a break. They are working their asses off.
[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: wwwork ]</p>
To begin with, I found the 'new' way of doing things took some getting used to. Just stuck in my classic ways I guess.
Seeing the Mac Academy, I realised what Apple was trying to achieve with a more orderly way of living on our desktops.
(Perhaps Apple should team up with those guys to give everybody a Mac 'X' academy video away with every computer/bundled with 'x'. I wish I had it when I first used my wife's ibook!
Sure, 'x' is easy enough and most gui experience is transferable to 'x'...but there are a few fundamental subtleties to what Apple is doing with 'x' and in terms of using 'x'.)
Of course...that doesn't stop us having files all over the place if we want to.
I kinda saw Apple looking at the 'big picture' with regard to future performance, market share, tech', potential new user experiences and killer programs to be invented...and in terms of going beyond the Mac box.
In the short term, 'classic' Mac users are going to find it a little niggling...but these are natural growing pains... 'Classic' will one day 'fade away'...as we use it less and have less need to use it.
It's a rough diamond. Sure. But it's a stunning rough diamond with plenty of head room to grow on all fronts.
Sure, there'll be niggles. I buy a Hewlett Packard printer. No 'x' drivers. Arggh. I have a DSL internet connection. Doesn't have 'x' drivers. Will only work with PC...
BT don't support 10.1 yet...
No PS7 yet...
But...in the fullness of time...
Lemon Bon Bon :cool:
i run os x on my imac 450 with 384 of ram - and you know what?
it has only frozen on me once in the past 6 months when i put it on
let compair the problems with os 9 and os x shall we?
9: Extensions conflicts
not enought memory error
fighting with programs who need virtual memory while others do not
hmmm what else?
hardly any plug and play options for external burners and so on (or at least having to restart 50 billion times)
freezes almost every other day when working with multiple programs
i could go on forever
and no im not compairing two diffrent computers either i ran os 9 for a long time before I got my os x
so whats wrong with os x you say?
the placement of important files
not being able to delect certin files owned by root (easy fixable)
finding and changing to other themes besides aqua is harder than it was in os 9
so as anyone can tell os x is far superior to os 9 - i work daily in multiple applications and os x never freezes - and if a program stops working? what do you know you can force quit it without freezing up your computer for affecting any other applications -
this is the kind of os that the computing world has been looking for for a long time - true its not perfect but its better than anything else out there mac or pc - enough said
Guess what. My TiBook 667 runs OS X fast as hell. Games with an OS X and OS 9 version run FASTER in X. I would use it for EVERYTHING if only Deus Ex and UT weren't OS9 progs.
jm2c
stjobs
<strong>...Extensions are in the "root" or main system folder and so are available for all users on a system. The reason you do not have an extension manager is because you do not need it. In OS 9 extensions went right to the machine level and could conflict with other machine level extensions. In OS X applications do not have that sort of access and it really does not crash hardly at all. I have heard of a beta scanner driver that would crash a system. If you really want to muck around with things you can use xFiles or boot in to OS 9 and start mucking things up. The average user will never have to know about extensions, memory allocations, virtual memory etc. because it works. [though I am no expert. i might be wrong here]
As for speed and all that, it is not the easiest thing to write an operating system...
I agree the the OS9 gui is a little better than OS X (mainly because it was snappier and I used finderpop). The OS X system is way better than OS 9. way way better. way! The OS X gui can improve in ways that the previous OSes never could. I am confident that OS 10.2 will be nearly as snappy on most G3 machines as OS 9 was.
In short, give them a break. They are working their asses off.
[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: wwwork ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
You know, I'd agree with most of this, evdn though I really can't see X being production worthy for at least another year. I really can't believe that all these people see no faults! I know *no one* that's using X full time, and I know lot of Mac users.
As to Extensions, the issue isn't so much conflicts and crashes get dealt with in other ways, it's *I don't want this thing installed*.
It's about managing system components and enabling/disabling as you see fit. How do I disable ColorSync, take out all the things realting to serial connections/dialup... there's lots of this stuff laying around that isn't needed (look at the amount of stuff that Apple ships with 9.x that you have disabled).
As to speed - first I get pointed at "you need RAM", I have RAM, now "you need speed" - right, but a B&W G3 350 should be capable. When the beta X shipped the base G4 was 400MHz, is a G3 350 really so out in the cold?
And again, my experience with X as a server platform is completely different. I am very impressed with some of the things I'm achieving in a web serving environment with the same G3. It's not the core OS, it's the GUI that's slow, but when I'm working i need the GUI to be fast - it ain't.
I don't think X is junk, it's just a long way from being finished.
"OS X is a damn good operating system. It is freakin' amazing when compared to ANYTHING else on the market. Show me another OS as stable and easy to use. As for it being slow, it's a matter of having the right hardware. I mean, OS 9 will install on a PPC603e. It will be slow as hell.
?
Games with an OS X and OS 9 version run FASTER in X."
I pretty much agree with you ? over time, OS X will become one of the most stable, powerful, and easy-to-use operating systems in the consumer and professional markets. It may be sluggish right now, but once most of the bugs have been replaced by optimizations over time, Mac OS X will be an OS to be reckoned with.
However, I have to disagree with you on two points:
<ol type="1">[*]Mac OS 9 runs very well on my 7200 with a 75 MHz 601. I can even run Photoshop 6.0.1 comfortably!
Regardless of these temporary "problems", OS X shows and will show much promise as it matures. Go X!
<strong>As to Extensions, the issue isn't so much conflicts and crashes get dealt with in other ways, it's *I don't want this thing installed*.
It's about managing system components and enabling/disabling as you see fit. How do I disable ColorSync, take out all the things realting to serial connections/dialup... there's lots of this stuff laying around that isn't needed (look at the amount of stuff that Apple ships with 9.x that you have disabled).</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you don't use dialup, the files related to that function isn't used.
Mac OS X is not like Mac OS 9 and you don't get a better running machine if you remove lots of stuff that you don't use - the OS doesn't even think about those files untill you need them.
Let's be real here: with X is that it is SUPPOSED to be used without knowing anything. Users are supposed to use their programs and enjoy the animations and click on the dock icons without having to worry about managing memory and extensions and worrying about their computer locking up.
YOUR problem is you desperately want X to be OS 9 - with 'extension managers' and 'things you can throw away so the system will be faster' and things of the like. Let me state this one more time, just to be clear, just to get it out of the way - it'll make me feel better: ahem...
MAC OS X IS NOT MAC OS ****ING NINE!!!!!!!!!
Okay. Now that this is done, let me explain a bit further. (I work in IT for a bio-company who relies heavily on MacOS 9 and X (Client and Server), as well as Unix with one or two Dells so don't think I'm talking out my ass.)
[quote]Originally posted by Clive:
<strong>I really can't see X being production worthy for at least another year. I really can't believe that all these people see no faults! I know *no one* that's using X full time, and I know lot of Mac users.</strong><hr></blockquote>
X is not 'production worthy' why? It's stable. It's wonderfully easy to implement in a corporate environment. The hardware OS X comes with is ready to go right out of the box, except for specific software installs and certain settings that need to be adjusted. If you have the software you need running natively in X, what's to stop you from running OS X? We have some of our users here, and all of IT, running OS X as an OS full time, all the time. I have uptimes of 30+ days under constant bombardment from what I do, restarting only when Apple releases software updates that require it. You say your OS 9 machine can go for days (months?) under heavy work without restarting? Liar. That's right. I called you a straight-up liar. But I'll tell you why. I worked for a major magazine pub that was on deadline three of the five work days every week, needless to say their machines were getting beat up. Not ONE of them, not the techiest or the one who barely used the machine as much, could keep MacOS 9 from crashing at LEAST one every three or four days. If you're always working in OS 9, I'm talking about REALLY working, it's not technically possible to acheive those uptimes. See, memory becomes fragmented easily under 9 and after a while, it becomes easy for another app to stomp on one of those fragments, therefore bringing about a crash. You say your server running 8.6 lasts for months and months? THAT I believe. A dedicated file server won't fragment the ram (a typical cause of crashes in everything below X) anywhere near as much as actually working on the machine. Nowhere near as much at all. So, as much as you'd like to use that as an example of the stability of everything pre-X, it's not a good example at all. ANY machine can run for a long time if you don't use it and while the disk can become fragmented, that WON'T cause a computer to crash, only to slow down.
AND just because no one you know is running OS X full time, doesn't mean that there aren't thousands of users out there doing just that. Shit, I've never met anyone from Antarctica, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
AND we're not saying OS X doesn't have its faults. WE KNOW what OS X faults are and so does Apple. The reason we rush to defend OS X is because WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE AND HEARD THAT. Shut up about it. Wait for 10.2, and if you don't like that option, don't use it. It's that simple. If you find another bug or find something NO ONE ELSE HAS HEARD ABOUT at LEAST a hundred times before, tell us then. But STOP with the same shit over and over.
[quote]Originally posted by Clive:
<strong>As to Extensions, the issue isn't so much conflicts and crashes get dealt with in other ways, it's *I don't want this thing installed*.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Listen, OS X is very much an operating system that knows about it more than you do. It knows much better what it needs installed and what it doesn't need installed; it knows what it needs to run right here and now and what it doesn't need to run; it knows exactly how much memory to allocate for a particular application and knows exactly how much processor power to allocate for any particular process. IT JUST KNOWS WHAT IT NEEDS so there's NO NEED for user intervention.
See, here your stuck in MacOS 9 mentality. That's fine, old habits are tough to break and everybody knows how stupid OS 9 was. Put in an extension, it's gonna load it no matter what, even if the stupid thing isn't being used. Same thing with control panels. So, of course, to gain the most out of the OS, you had to learn what was needed and what wasn't. Of course of course. BUT IN OS X THIS DOESN'T APPLY. Things may seem weird to you but they're there for a reason. If you go around deleting things you may not exerience any problems, but in the future when the OS looks for that file, whoops. Kernal panic. And you're blaming the OS. When if you had left well-enough alone everything would have been fine.
Listen, OS X DOES, indeed, come with many 'strange' files. But these files are like KILOBYTES big! Why would you want to get rid of them? To conserve hard drive space? To make yourself feel like a power user? So you can feel like you're in charge of the OS? Is it some ego thing because in a world of multigigabyte drives, a lot of kilobyte size files isn't going to take up that much space. And removing these files AREN'T going to make your system any faster. On the contrary, removing them might one day **** shit up. You want to feel like a power user like you felt in OS 9, then read up on X and learn it for what it is, and let go of what you think you knew. THAT'S the ONLY way to move on and adapt to X.
[quote]Originally posted by Clive:
<strong>It's about managing system components and enabling/disabling as you see fit. How do I disable ColorSync, take out all the things realting to serial connections/dialup... there's lots of this stuff laying around that isn't needed (look at the amount of stuff that Apple ships with 9.x that you have disabled).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Who here wishes Clive would learn a little about OS X before posting about OS X? Raise your hands.
Clive, like I said up there, you don't have to worry about managing the OS because the OS manages itself. How do you disable Colorsync? You don't because if you don't use it, the OS doesn't load it. How do you remove everything that the OS needs for dialup? You don't, because if you don't use it, the OS doesn't load it. "Look at all the stuff that Apple ships with OS 9 that you have disabled." Right. See, managing things in OS 9 is different because the OS loads what's there even when it's not needed, OS X does not. You're still using OS 9 arguements in OS X. MacOS X is a DYNAMIC OS that instantly gives the user what he needs when he needs it, nothing more, nothing less. Removing the files you feel aren't necessary WILL NOT RESULT IN IMPROVED PERFORMANCE and the amount of storage space saved WOULDN'T BE WORTH THE RISK of accidently deleting a crucial system file.
Let's put this in OS 9 terms, since that's where you're still thinking: in the System Folder, you don't like the way the Finder is looking at you and how many resources it takes... do you delete it? No. Good. Why? Because you know what it does, despite that mocking, evil grin that thing has. Well, my advice to you is LEARN MORE ABOUT OS X. You'll find that the UNIX beast isn't really as scary as his grin has made him out to be.
[quote]Originally posted by Clive:
<strong>As to speed - first I get pointed at "you need RAM", I have RAM, now "you need speed" - right, but a B&W G3 350 should be capable. When the beta X shipped the base G4 was 400MHz, is a G3 350 really so out in the cold?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You're right on this point. Obviously Apple developed OS X with forward-looking technologies in mind, which is a great thing, but that doesn't help people who are in the now with yesterday's computers. Understandable. Without making excuses, all I can say is the NeXT people who have taken over Apple operated this way: make it work, then make it work fast. 10.0 made it work, 10.1 made it work faster, let's see what the future brings because that's all we CAN do.
[quote]Originally posted by Clive:
<strong>It's not the core OS, it's the GUI that's slow, but when I'm working i need the GUI to be fast - it ain't.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You've hit the nail on the head. But I think the most important aspect of an operating system is NOT the GUI but it's underpinnings. Seriously think about it. If GUI was the MOST important thing, we'd all still be running a variant of OS 9 and not moving on to Unix. The trouble was, Apple saw that the underpinnings to OS 9 were horrible, with no future. Despite how clever the GUI was, it didn't matter because the underpinnings were falling apart. You can dress up a turd all nicey-nice, but that doesn't hide the fact that he's still a turd underneath. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
OS X's underpinnings are not only solid but incredibly fast. Now the GUI has to catch up. It really is that simple.
OS X isn't a long way from being finished. The main interface called Finder.app is one more speed and feature increase from making X the best OS out there, bar none.
Sorry if I ragged on you, Clive, for real. Just you MUST understand OS X isn't 9, no matter how much you wish it was.
<strong>Okay guys, someone write back. Tell me I'm wrong, or that I'm an idiot, or something! Just don't let all that I wrote go to waste or else I'm never posting again!! Here me?? NEVER!!!!
You're perfectly sane. I agree with your main proposition: OS X is a completely different beast than OS 9. The slogan för OS X should really be "Rethink".
Before you install OS X, you are given the option of not installing portions of the BSD layer. Lots of BSD cruft still gets installed, but you can free y ourself of ~100 MB of space, plus have a false sense of added speed and a leaned OS.
If you want a lean, mean Mac OS, run the process viewer and figure out what's chewing up CPU cycles. Stuff like HP's All-in-one printer drivers chew up 5-10% of my CPU while they do nothing. Palm Desktop background apps chew up some cycles too. Turn off services you don't use.
Anyway, I have been using my iMac (new classic SE, 700MHz 1GB Ram) for over a month and I have to say that I have never bombed at all! Sure, a few programs bombed here and there, but not the OS. Not once. In all fairness, I don't use the Mac as much as I do my PC, but I use it every single day. I should also mention that I've had Windows XP for 7 months with HEAVY use and it also has NEVER bombed out on me. Not once!
Anyway, as far as OS 9 - I have never booted into 9. I've only been using X so I don't think it's fair to say that it's unusable as a stand alone OS. The only time I had to use OS 9 was in classic mode to install Toast Titanium - but after I installed the OS X Update for it, I never went back into classic mode at all. I hate 9 and never liked the older Mac OS to begin with.
Also, I find OS X so much easier than OS 9. It took me about 30 minutes to get the feel of the OS and know my way around as if I was using it for months. As for OS 9, all that manual memory allocation nonsense, preferences folder and extensions stuff and a boring GUI are definitely not things that I miss!
The reasons? You weren't reading what I'd written, just what you'd thought I'd written, and you called me a liar over a statement I nver made.
I never wrote anywhere that I'd had 9.x running for months. What I wrote is that it doesn't crash on me, and the I shut it down every night when I go home (most of the time).
Am I ignorant. Yes I am. I'm ignorant about where drivers go when some installer stick them on the disk, I'm ignorant about what goes wrong to make X as unstable as f*ck (and it happens), I'm ignorant as to how I remove systems components that I do not want on my system.
Now, you think this ignorance is driven by me trying to compare X to 9 - this is partially true, but mostly false.
It's true in the sense that I want some management tools to show me what core resources are installed and help me remove them. An "extensions manager" (don't get hung up on the name here guys, you just make yourselves look like pricks).
It's false in that you make me out to be an idiot that does not understnad the difference between "classic" extensions and the type of "services" that are available in X. I do understand this.
What I don't understand from your perspective is how you think it's acceptable to have a system in which these things cannot be easily managed. You seems to keep asking why I would want to do that, and assuming the wrong answers all the time.
The reasons are pretty clear to me, and they should be clear to you, but I think it's your ignorance that is showing through.
I want to be in control of my systems, and the systems in my studio. I don't want to deprecate that control to some bloke in Cupertino that thinks he knows better than me.
I do not want a web server on my system, in any way, shape or form, for any reason.
I want to be able to control the system level services that kick in without me asking them - I want to be able to disable them as and when I choose. If I don't want ColorSync running then I'll have a good reason for it, it'll be my choice - so where are the tools to help?
Mostly, I don't want to be the victim of a script kid or hacker or virus distributor who wants to prey on my vunerability - because Mac OS X is supposed to be the system you run "right out of the box".
What you seem to be proposing is that "ignorance is bliss". I don't want that, I want something that i can be proactive with and fix if it goes wrong, without having to resort to a disk reformat and complete reinstall.
What you seem to be proposing is not the "Mac" way, it's the "Windows" way, the blind leading the blind.
Your suggestion is probably going to be that if I want such control, then I should get my hands dirty with Unix.
Right, so now to maintain our systems we all have to become Unix geeks - not going to happen. that's why7 I say the TOC argument goes out the window. Now we have to start paying, really paying, for support.
You know what lie I'm most tired of hearing about X - it doesn't crash and it doesn't go wrong.
This is an outright lie. As I've posted before, I've found X no more stable than 9.x - and I really do use both (but X is no way going into production).
Why is it not production ready - mostly because there are a lot of apps that I use that are not yet native (XPress, Photoshop... don't tell me soon, it's not here now, and we're talking *now* not next week or next year).
Additionally there are things in the transition between classic and X that have been lost, or have compatibility problems. We're heavy AppleScript users, there are many, many AppleScript compatibility and component problems between the two environments.
So tell me, again, how I've got it all wrong, that X is wonderful. Then I can call you a liar.
I haven't given up on X, it's just not ready for me yet.
X won't run Quark, or Photoshop but at the same time you want to disable ColorSync?
Call me dumb but ColorSync is a VITAL component to a system if this user wants to run Quark, and Photoshop PROPERLY.
Were you just pulling a system resource name out of the air or were you SERIOUS when you were saying that you don't want ColorSync?
Sorry but you'r confusing me.
(BTW I'm a Professional Graphic Designer and I use OS X 100% of the time. It's called InDesign and a Photoshop Beta. The beta is to tide me over till Photoshop is out but I can still make a decent living off of it. X IS Ready and IN USE by MANY MANY professional people.)
Mac Guru