A different look at NeXT, OS X
Recently, I accidentally ended up in a conversation with a teacher in our town's school system about computers. Our schools have been almost exclusively using Apple machines for a long time. What struck me was the comment that with even new computers, OS X is being removed and only 9 is being used. I can't verify that X is really being taken off but at a minimum, OS 9 is being reset as the default boot system.
Needless to say, when I gave just a little thought to this I was alarmed. Say what you will about the wisdom of this move but let's assume that there are knowledgeable people behind these decisions (after all, they're using Macs). Now I don't know what our school system is going to do next year with this OS X-only boot thing on new machines but it caused me to wonder if the path that Apple has ventured onto was the right one.
I use OS X all of the time and wouldn't think of going back to 9 but do others view OS X as too different and too resource-demanding compared to OS 9? I know the options weren't good for backward compatibility but is Classic just too much of a kudge for organizations like our school system to accept? Are the upgrades needed for each machine (memory in particular) too much of a time and expense issue to make X worth it?
As you can tell, I don't know the answers to these questions and have no real idea on how these decisions were made. But the unrelated question that came to my mind is what would the Mac world look like today if a different path was chosen, notably BeOS. What NeXT and Be brought to Apple's table has been looked at many times. What I haven't seen mentioed much is how much both NeXT and Be required the Mac OS to change to take advantage of what they offered. Bringing that all around to the top of this post, would an adoption of Be's technology perhaps allowed less of a forced change in the Mac OS? As an example, things like file permissions, window compositing (granted, this is not related to NeXT and Unix), basically forced multi-user mode, and higher RAM needs (others?) might be things that my school district would just as soon live without and so far have chosen to live without. Is this a bad sign for Apple? Comments?
Needless to say, when I gave just a little thought to this I was alarmed. Say what you will about the wisdom of this move but let's assume that there are knowledgeable people behind these decisions (after all, they're using Macs). Now I don't know what our school system is going to do next year with this OS X-only boot thing on new machines but it caused me to wonder if the path that Apple has ventured onto was the right one.
I use OS X all of the time and wouldn't think of going back to 9 but do others view OS X as too different and too resource-demanding compared to OS 9? I know the options weren't good for backward compatibility but is Classic just too much of a kudge for organizations like our school system to accept? Are the upgrades needed for each machine (memory in particular) too much of a time and expense issue to make X worth it?
As you can tell, I don't know the answers to these questions and have no real idea on how these decisions were made. But the unrelated question that came to my mind is what would the Mac world look like today if a different path was chosen, notably BeOS. What NeXT and Be brought to Apple's table has been looked at many times. What I haven't seen mentioed much is how much both NeXT and Be required the Mac OS to change to take advantage of what they offered. Bringing that all around to the top of this post, would an adoption of Be's technology perhaps allowed less of a forced change in the Mac OS? As an example, things like file permissions, window compositing (granted, this is not related to NeXT and Unix), basically forced multi-user mode, and higher RAM needs (others?) might be things that my school district would just as soon live without and so far have chosen to live without. Is this a bad sign for Apple? Comments?
Comments
Well, there was an attempt to do that with Copeland, but we know how well that turned out.
He doesn't even use OS X with the servers...(4 Sawtooth G4's.)
...but I don't know what it is...
(oh which one?... think NCSA)
I believe Apple made the smart move to NeXT, simply because of the BSD layer (Darwin). Everyday I see new people who "cherished" Linux or BSD, moving over to MacOS X. that is an incredible feat if you look at how much Linux/BSD users love their OS's. Aqua and Darwin have single handedly switched Windows/Unix users over to the Mac. A friend of mine went to a Perl conference and told me he was amazed that a lot of open source programmers were using iBooks and TiBooks running OS X. Including the guys who maintain the Perl source code. I doubt Apple would have accomplished this using BeOS as a basis for their next generation OS. The Unix layer itself has broken a lot of previous held boundaries and is opening the door to a lot of programmers and eventually applications for OS X. Even Windows users are switching because of Aqua, and most probably because of Apple's industrial design.
In terms of your school forcing their Mac's to boot only OS 9, that is just a load of crap from your Sys Admins. Any Sys Admin worth their weight in salt would love to use OS X over OS 9. It's just easier to maintain from a network standpoint. Maybe they are just comfortable with the old Mac OS , and are afraid to learn Unix (which they should already know). Maybe you should write a letter to someone higher up and give them some points on why they should be using OS X over OS 9.
- trowa
<strong>
I believe Apple made the smart move to NeXT, simply because of the BSD layer (Darwin).
- trowa</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ummm, I don't think Apple chose Next based on technology.
Apple did buy NeXT at least in part for its technology, especially its enterprise stuff like EOF and WebObjects.
Apple can make competitive bids to schools and businesses if you give them the chance. They often undercut Dell's offerings in these bulk purchases and especially with the opportunity to deliver end-to-end solutions instead of just hardware. I get the strong impression from my father, a former teacher (now retired), that schools simply don't even consider Apple a lot of the time figuring that they're too expensive and on the assumption that since the business world uses mostly PCs, that students should learn the current PC technology. (This is a bad assumption because by the time the students get out of school, the stuff they were using in the classroom will be out of date, if it wasn't already. I mean, a lot of schools are sticking to Windows 98 too. But don't tell a bunch of teachers and administrators that they're really not preparing their students in computers.)
<strong>Recently, I accidentally ended up in a conversation with a teacher in our town's school system about computers. Our schools have been almost exclusively using Apple machines for a long time. What struck me was the comment that with even new computers, OS X is being removed and only 9 is being used. I can't verify that X is really being taken off but at a minimum, OS 9 is being reset as the default boot system.
[...]
Now I don't know what our school system is going to do next year with this OS X-only boot thing on new machines but it caused me to wonder if the path that Apple has ventured onto was the right one.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I doubt that the reason for this is inadequate OS X performance - after all, schools tend to have antiquated hardware in abundance. The more obvious reasons are that OS 9 is a known quantity as far as support goes (a big deal in a school setting, where the teacher is frequently the IT staff) and there are a whole lot of educational apps written for OS 9. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them don't have OS X native versions. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of them never will.
As for Apple's move to all OS X, first of all there does appear to be an escape hatch according to As The Apple Turns that will allow the machines to boot into OS 9 off a CD at the very least. Second of all, schools try to get 5 years of service out of a computer on average, so if your school bought these machines recently then Apple's change of direction won't impact them significantly for several more years. And by then, the landscape should look quite different both in terms of OS X performance and in terms of what applications are available for it. OS X has more and better tools for small developers than OS 9 ever did (with the lone exception of HyperCard).
[quote]<strong>As you can tell, I don't know the answers to these questions and have no real idea on how these decisions were made. But the unrelated question that came to my mind is what would the Mac world look like today if a different path was chosen, notably BeOS. What NeXT and Be brought to Apple's table has been looked at many times. What I haven't seen mentioed much is how much both NeXT and Be required the Mac OS to change to take advantage of what they offered. Bringing that all around to the top of this post, would an adoption of Be's technology perhaps allowed less of a forced change in the Mac OS?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not really.
I don't think BeOS is a terribly good platform to build a desktop OS off of, either. Yes, it ekes a tremendous amount of performance out of the hardware it's running on, but it makes a lot of compromises to do so, and it makes them in places that make it a poor foundation to build on (such as threading). We'd have nothing like Cocoa on BeOS.
Also, if Apple wanted to develop a Quartz-like technology (which makes perfect sense for a media-oriented platform) it's easier to build that on top of NeXTStep, which already had one.
[ 11-17-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Two things to add:
Apple did buy NeXT at least in part for its technology, especially its enterprise stuff like EOF and WebObjects.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe Apple obtaining Next was purely polictical. There was no way that Apple would have chosen BEOS(Gasse) over Next(Jobs).
[ 11-17-2002: Message edited by: ThinkingDifferent ]</p>
<strong>least your school uses macs, my school uses wincrap...last time PC's were used in the district is the IIC...its shame, and you wouldn't believe the amount of bashing apple gets when i complain about things not working, heck even the teachers make fun!</strong><hr></blockquote>
I feel your pain - we have around 100 macs across 5 campuses against 1000 PCs - now they've decided to standardise on Winblows and we are being told to migrate from mac OS 9 to win2000
<strong>
I believe Apple obtaining Next was purely polictical. There was no way that Apple would have chosen BEOS(Gasse) over Next(Jobs).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
It was a combination of the two. At the time, BeOS was the only viable option, and Gasse basically had a lock on Apple. He tried to push the price up a bit, and wouldn't budge when Apple balked.
The Jobs stepped in and offered NeXT. Lower price, tested technology and, hey, we can parade Jobs around again! It was a combination of good tech and politics that made the decision.
That being said, I was a bit sad that they didn't go with Be. I had tried it on a PPC 7300 and, if there had been more software ready, I would've been using BeOS as my main operating system, rather than the MacOS.
<strong>
The Jobs stepped in and offered NeXT. Lower price, tested technology and, hey, we can parade Jobs around again! It was a combination of good tech and politics that made the decision.</strong><hr></blockquote>First, thanks to all who followed up on my original post, especially Amorph.
Concerning NeXT and Jobs, my recollection of how that all played out now is fuzzy but it seems that you could also make the case that Apple went with NeXT despite Jobs' association. Weren't there many in Apple management who never wanted Jobs to be part of Apple again? Also, again IIRC, the price tag on NeXT was higher than on Be but of course it included enterprise software that Be didn't have. That also begs the question, do WebObjects and other legacy NeXT software generate much revenue for Apple today?
1. Schools with older hardware deploy OS 9 rather than X.
2. If the schools buy new hardware next year, this hardware will be perfectly capable of using X.
Problem solved.
Well, not that fast, Fryke, yes?
Okay: Schools, teachers and their IT staff tend to think pragmatically. Don't mess with what's working today if it's still working. And don't spend a lot of money for a switch like that. And that's plausible, too.
Apple will just have to provide even more reasons for schools to switch. Programmes that make the switch easier. Like: Switch 100 machines to X and get a free iMac plus 'switching support' for XY dollars. Make a case. Tell them how to be the best school of 'em all and cheaper, too.
A little rant: In the time-frame Apple needed to get OS X ready for our desktops, ANY code base would have been suitable. Heck: They could have even decided to use Solaris, BeOS or Linux as a base. Or start from scratch all over again, taking only the good parts from the Copland project.
The sad thing is, all of the software on the new iMacs at school will run in OS X, except for Mavis Beacon, which runs fine in Classic.
Come to think of it, they may not be switched over due to lack of printer drivers for some of the Epsons in there, but I really doubt it.
Apple hasn't really taken advantage of its enterprise offerings. It used to be said that WebObjects was the hidden gem of the NeXT deal, the best Apple product that no one knew about. NeXT used to be huge with financials and a few other markets. WebObjects was more or less the first product of its kind, but then IBM, et. al. came in with WebSphere and their similar packages and have eroded OpenStep's/WebObject's market quite a bit (though it's still out there: witness FrontBase, IllumineX and Black Hole, former NeXT developers -- or for that matter, just look at <a href="http://www.stepwise.com"; target="_blank">Stepwise</a>). I think Apple has pretty much dropped EOF (Enterprise Object Framework), or there's something about it that makes former NeXTies lament its demise.
Really, now that Xserve is out, it's only the beginning of Apple's ability to deliver solutions for enterprise. Who knows, after 6 years, maybe Apple will get aggressive with WebObjects again in tandem with OS X Server and even FileMaker. Maybe.
re: on-topic primary thread:
I'd be surprised if Apple wasn't aware of the slow turnover of not only schools but also graphics departments going into all this six years ago. If Apple can get their whole education/PowerSchool/public bid act together just a little more (maybe they are now -- I'm not in the loop), I think schools will get incentives to move over to the new systems, and get a lot of help in the transition and support of both at the same time.
This is going to take a while. Most schools still run Windows 98, nevermind Mac OS 8 or 9.