First, I would like to thank all those who have contributed to this thread 'cause they are increasing my knowledge on Mac OS X. I am unable to answer to each of you individually, so I 'll just answer those comments that I think try to distort reality
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
What you seem to have a problem with is anything in user space such as OSX's system wide PDF compositing technology, it's object oriented frameworks inherited from NextStep, it's simple networking and discovery technology, it's system wide functionality that is built in to all applications and many more things that make it more than just UNIX + GUI. UNIX is such a little part of OSX. If Apple switched from a UNIX kernel to a Windows kernel, it'd barely matter to a user - it'd sure matter to us geeks though.
Again, if Apple switched to the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel, it would suffer from all the deficiencies of that system, including, but not limited to, the painting sessions that 1337_5L4Xx0R so nicely described, viruses and a whole lot of security issues that come with the Windows NT kernel design (it has to solve the impossible problem of allowing the average user to have some admin priviledges (to do things like installing software or modifying the registry) or supporting a myriad of hardware done by third parties, thus having a less tightly controlled driver subsystem). Mac OS X's doesn't have those issues because it's UNIX based (great!) and as I said, does things like being able to edit PDFs make it a complete different OS (no, I don't thik so), and more importantly, do they justify the move to a world where 90% + use Windows? That's what I will figure out. But as I said, based on all the answers I've gotten so far, Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
As visionary put it, we're explaining 3D to you when you're living in a 2D world.
I disagree, you are explaining irrational attachment when what I was trying is to find a rational answer to the question Max OS X ~ UNIX + GUI?
And OS X is certainly not 'enterprise grade' as its focus is user-desktop and media creation.
As a matter of fact, because of its UNIX roots, it's not that far from being enterprise grade. If Apple was willig to make the right investments (in supporting high availability HW and creating a Professional Services group for the Enterprise), it could easily make a dent in the medium sized servers market most likely at the expense of Sun or Linux. In the high end space, it's more unlikely since it would need to make OS X support several hundreds of cores/CPUs and ultra high end storage HW to make it competitive with the offers of HP and IBM (and that's far from trivial).
Another point where Mac OS X's UNIX roots are of extreme benefit.
I disagree, you are explaining irrational attachment when what I was trying is to find a rational answer to the question Max OS X ~ UNIX + GUI?
Cheers!
An answer you were never looking for since your mind was made up prior to ever coming to this forum.
Yes, OSX is just UNIX + GUI. Of course it's also the most popular desktop unix ever made and the only unix with a GUI that doesn't suck.
I use OSX so I don't have to load Linux to do unix stuff. 80% of the time my MBP is running Windows because I need DirectX9 support for work.
But hey, ignore that many, if not most, ex-Amigans have Macs and live in your Linux world bucko. After all, AmigaDOS didn't have a GUI...oh wait...by gosh it did. And while Apple scripting isn't exactly like ARexx it is powerful and useful. There's a lot more to like about OSX than simply dismissing it as UNIX + GUI. But only for folks with an open mind rather than some oddball superiority complex because you used to use an Amiga.
Mac zealotry. Pfft. Pikers. Amigans are undead zealots of a cursed operating system.
QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix) is a commercial POSIX-compliant Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. As of September 12 2007, the source of the QNX kernel has been released for non-commercial use.
...Due to the POSIX interface, porting Unix and BSD packages to QNX became much easier.
You're not going to get away from the UNIX roots even in QNX.
Again, if Apple switched to the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel, it would suffer from all the deficiencies of that system, including, but not limited to, the painting sessions that 1337_5L4Xx0R so nicely described...
Again, this isn't specifically tied into the UNIX core, but rather the Core Graphics Framework which is part of what makes OS X > Unix + GUI. And the rest of what Aegisdesign said, also frameworks. They have nothing to do with Unix, specifically.
If your only concern is stability and redundancy, stick with Unix sans GUI or one of those ATM systems you talked about earlier. It'll do the trick for you. If you're living in the terminal anyways, you'll have no need for a GUI no matter how many spiffy frameworks and elegant functionality it has...
Again, this isn't specifically tied into the UNIX core, but rather the Core Graphics Framework which is part of what makes OS X > Unix+ GUI.
What what said originally, At work at a video game company, I used a multi-core PC running XP. One of my favorite things to do when the UI locked up due to 'CPU overload' was grab a window, and start painting with it. It would leave tracers all over the desktop. You simply cannot do that with a Mac running OS X. The front-most app has priority, and both the GUI and BSD layer are threaded. With OS X 10.5, the Finder (which sucks) is now kinda-threaded, so iDisk access doesn't lock up the Finder.
That has everything to do with the BSD core, which is UNIX. Then, the GUI makes an efficient use of the UNIX services (which speaks highly of the Mac OS X developers) but it's the UNIX core which makes it possible.
That has everything to do with the BSD core, which is UNIX. Then, the GUI makes an efficient use of the UNIX services (which speaks highly of the Mac OS X developers) but it's the UNIX core which makes it possible.
And in fact, this is another aspect that supports the UNIX + GUI thing. Every single UNIX + GUI OS that I have used is robust in this respect (the GUI is not as nice as Mac OS X's but is equally robust). From the HP 700 workstations that ran HP-UX 9.X ~ 12 years ago (the same was true for the Sun workstations) to the RedHat/Ubuntu Linux machines I have used recently. I have been only able to "paint" in the sense described before with Windows NT/2000/XP .
My claim, based on having worked for a long time with Linux (Redhat, Debian), HP-UX and Sun Solaris, is that Mac OS X is a UNIX + GUI (I stress probably the best GUI ever built on top of a UNIX-like OS) + a bunch of bundled software/applications intended for non expert users.
Well, you are close, but wrong. OS X has pretty much everything you'd expect from a unix/unix-like system + a bunch of OS X-specific frameworks, services and programs. The meat of the issue is that vast majority of what makes OS X what it is are the OS X-specific frameworks and services.
BTW, you need to cut out the "mac preacher"/"religion" thing. Grow up.
You're not going to get away from the UNIX roots even in QNX.
Classification : UNIX-like Operating System.
It is now perhaps but it has no UNIX roots. The POSIX layer came later. I've not used it in ages. The last time was back in 1997-2000ish when it was being touted as the new kernel for the Amiga by whoever owned Amiga back then. Can't remember exactly if it was Gateway, Amiga Tech or just Fleecy and Bill spinning us a yarn.
I can remember watching some cool demos of it's Photo Micro-GUI though which featured 'warp gates' where processes could pass messages through a 'warp gate' and they came up somewhere else, even a different computer somewhere else on the network. Cool technology.
Of course, curious would probably still call even that UNIX + GUI just because it ran bash.
edit: incidentally, back then QNX was the favourite because of it's almost Amiga like interprocess communication and real time performance which OSs like Linux couldn't match. And IIRC Tao ran on top of QNX too. BeOS was the only other OS that got close.
edit: incidentally, back then QNX was the favourite because of it's almost Amiga like interprocess communication and real time performance which OSs like Linux couldn't match. And IIRC Tao ran on top of QNX too. BeOS was the only other OS that got close.
Yah, BeOS got close. OSX is certainly sluggish in comparison. I dunno that QNX would have been as good a spiritual match as BeOS would have been.
I'd have bought OS4 and a PPC unit for it except that it never really hit release. I'd love to run the OS4 on my old quicksilver. I had an A500, A2000, A3000 and then finally an A1000 before I sold it all. Every so often I look on eBay and think about getting one for kicks but alas, my wife made me dump a lot of my old gear and I finally tossed out all my old Amiga software disks including a lot of NewTek stuff and LightWave.
All in all though...OSX is a good replacement for the Amiga experience in a way that MacOS never was.
But as I said, based on all the answers I've gotten so far, Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
I think it would help your case if you make it clear exactly what conclusions you want to derive from the assertion that Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
I could very well go to a forum and say Jessica Alba is just another woman. The only difference is that she is more attractive. So you could easily just take the skank down the road and you'd get a similar experience.
I think you'll agree that although the assertion that Jessica Alba is just another woman is true, the conclusion of her being somehow equal to any other woman is somewhat misleading. This is the same thing with OS X.
The conclusion you seem to want to draw is that because Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI, that means that it can easily be replaced with another unix+GUI, which is a misleading statement.
I've actually enjoyed the various posts on this thread. As a former Unix SysAdmin, it is good to get under the hood and hear guys talk about the engine, and well as all the old "hotrods" we used along the way. IT guys = the mechanics of the 21st century - just without the grease.
However, there is more to a car than just the engine. People can throw every thing else all under the category of GUI but that is not correct. Some have brought up the frameworks and other aspects that make Mac OS unique. I have tried to present a case that there is something bigger than the UNIX engine, GUI, or frameworks - and that is design.
I can talk form and function maximization but most engine geeks look at me like I am speaking Greek. At least that is what it seems. So let me attack a different angle of design. It is going to involve a pretty good leap too so bear with me. However, it should make sense to most knowledgeable geeks.
I really suspect Apple is slowly moving the Mac OS to OpenDoc. It was a good idea back in the day, just too big of a chunck to bite off back then. We now have more RAM and processors to handle the overhead of OpenDoc. I think Quicklook is one step towards OpenDoc. Think about it for a second and you will see this is true. Also think of what OOP does for app creation and usage.
Just as OOP code is reusable, Apple is designing the building blocks to make OpenDoc happen. We can look at the cores - Core Audio, Core Image, Core Animation - but also look at the Apps. Most people look at them and compare them to other apps - for example iWork to MS Office. But examine all the iWork and iLife apps from an OpenDoc perspective. Apple is getting WP, the Spreadsheet, the HTTP editor, audio, video - all the classes objects and methods developed.
I eventually see the Libraries and their viewing functions of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie all being incorporated into the Finder. Thus for example, the left hand Pictures, Music, Movies, and Documents all become icons that change the data format on the right hand side to that of the iLife apps. Thus one does not open iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes but in a way, the OS does it behind the scenes and just displays it all in the Finder window on the right side. Same for Mail, Address Book, iCal - even web pages.
Just as iWork Numbers takes spreadsheets and introduces a document focused way to look at spreadsheets, so to will the Finder present a data focused way to look at different types. For most users, the various data types will be stored in centralized libraries and metadata will be used to finding and sorting.
I know I am jumping some into the future of the Mac OS but it is based on Apple's desires in the past and the plotted the progress points from the last ten years. What we have is an OS on its way to an integration of apps and OS unlike anything most people envision. Apps load, open, and shut in the background just by us using various data types. It is all invisible and seamless to the user. If they want to edit the data type, then the core methods are loaded and waiting to go. However, rather than apps, think of them as additional Core Frameworks if you want.
I hope I explained this design trajectory well enough to show how UNIX+GUI+frameworks+Xcode+apps=something much bigger than the sum of their individual parts. It is design but on a whole new dimension. Think OpenDoc with all the pieces Apple has been developing over the years.
I wish I had time to do a mock up of what all this would be like. It would be much easier to understand it then. While Apple is not all the way there yet, they are well on their way to redefining what a computer OS is.
Just as browsers and Java were a threat to MS as a OS agnostic GUI that would render Windows irrelevant, there are other paradigms that can upset the current state of operating systems. While MS can quickly buyout a browser and give it away for free to knockout competition to their desktop OS, they will not be able to buy up software apps and throw them together into an OpenDoc-like OS.
Apple is building all their pieces to their OS and then when they are all ready they will rearrange the tested and proved pieces and combine them into an integrated OS unlike anything most people can envision.
Thus the Mac OS = UNIX + GUI is so very short-sighted. Computers are quickly becoming systems of systems of systems. What people want is high level solutions not do-it-yourself kits to assemble themselves. Just as Apple discovered when they failed with their new OS and had to buy Next, there is only so far you can keep hacking together complex systems. You eventually have to do a rewrite from the ground up. It is this organization and design in the OS code that is a huge deal.
Apple has made that transition and now is extending what the OS can be. But its true design potential has yet to be revealed. MS has not made that transition and probably never will. By the time Apple releases an OpenDoc-like OS, MS will have nothing even close to offer. They are years behind and don't realize it.
MS is planning to fight future and present wars using past strategies and weapons. Apple is designing the IT equivalent of the A-bomb. MS will never stand a chance in this future OS broadside.
Of course, Apple is now much more than an OS company. With its music, phone, and retail business, they are grabbing all their vertical market share and extending the expectations what a computer company is. They are outflanking Microsoft's Maginot Line. Walking into an Apple store and talking to a Apple Genius, taking free how-to-use-app classes leaves MS and all PC makers inadequate. And nobody is going to dare suggest the local Best Buy salesman or Indian tech support person is equivalent.
Apple is changing the war from just an OS war to an all-out tech war. It is fighting on so many more fronts and MS is losing in most of these. The one front Apple is not fighting on is the game console front. However, MS is battling Sony and Nintendo and while standing their ground, they are also not doing well financially in that battle. Thus, this business warfare of a much greater magnitude. MS offers a gun. Apple offers a combined arms military. And Sony and Nintendo are convenient allies - enemies of their enemies.
One can look at just the OS but they need to understand the history, the future, and the context of the battle. So on this bigger perspective, Mac OS is just a portion of the picture.
These are reason why evaluating a current OS by itself is so shortsighted. One needs to look at the past, look to the future, and look at the complete scope of the industry. When one does that, they see the Mac OS is the right train to jump on now. Even if we do not like everything Apple doing, they are still the ticket to ride.
So regardless of the warts Apple has - and it does indeed have some, it is important for anybody in the IT world to start learning the system that will probably make most others obsolete. I know for ex-Amiga people it is hard to win this point. They have been burned once and have gone what they think is pragmatic. But they should not make the mistake the other way now and not jump when they should.
I think you'll agree that although the assertion that Jessica Alba is just another woman is true, the conclusion of her being somehow equal to any other woman is somewhat misleading. This is the same thing with OS X.
Well, as misleading as claiming that Jessica Alba is this generation's equivalent to Rita Hayworth. As of today, Jessica Alba is "just" another good looking/sexy Hollywood woman, as there are/"have been" hundreds. Only time will tell!
And as for the comment,
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
So regardless of the warts Apple has - and it does indeed have some, it is important for anybody in the IT world to start learning the system that will probably make most others obsolete. I know for ex-Amiga people it is hard to win this point. They have been burned once and have gone what they think is pragmatic. But they should not make the mistake the other way now and not jump when they should.
Well, if anything, that would be one reason to stay away from Mac OS X. If there is something I fear more than MS's dominating position in the OS world (BTW, the company has been punished for its abusive practices) is that a single company would dominate both HW and SW in the desktop. Windows might be a crappy OS in many respects, but it's great in the sense that it runs in a myriad of HW from which I can pick the cheapest/more expensive if I wanted to. One of the William Pitt's (the online sources cannot agree in which one) put it best,
"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins"
And a century later, it was Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887 who said,
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
At least Bill Gates is giving away most of his money (and therefore power/influence)!
Which would you rather have - a good king or a democracy of fools?
While some may fear one company controlling too much of the IT industry, one has to look at how that company got its power and its actions. I think MS got their power illegally and has held back years of progress in the computer world. On the other hand, name me something bad Apple has done, I mean something worse than the typical rant that their computers are a couple hundred dollars overpriced. I also do not mean bugs and occasion recall stuff. I mean evil stuff.
You could fill a couple volumes with MS actions but you would be hard pressed to do a brochure on Apple. The problem with MS is that is it is a repeat offender. In my opinion they have NOT been adequately punished for their offensives and they refuse to change their MO. Talk about one person or company controlling too much power - is this a reason to not support MS or not to support Apple? You seem to use it against Apple while most everybody else would say this reasoning goes against MS.
As for Gates giving his money away, I see lots of his "charity" as another way to attack his business opponents. Give free PCs to schools - that otherwise would probably use Macs. Also doesn't he give away millions for population control - ie. abortion and contraception? For many people, they would not call that "charity." Same with vaccinations. Mercury anyone?
My point is that Gates is a very controversial figure and I theorize he has quite possibly added nothing of value to IT or charity. In fact, he has done great harm to many innovators. Same with much of his charity. But this is really a side issue.
Iit all comes back to which computer company is the future and why. UNIX is the future and GUIs are here to stay. With that, the Mac OS is in the right place. But there are other things that differentiate the Mac OS from just another UNIX with a GUI. That is what many of us are trying to lay out. Even if we have answered the original question, can we not extend the thread to what Apple has in addition to UNIX and a GUI?
Anybody want to comment on the OpenDoc theory and where the Mac OS is going? I see this as the next big thing in Mac OS development yet most people just give a big yawn. Do people not know about OpenDoc and what it promised. Do you not realize the barriers why it failed in the past are now gone? Do people not see how metadata databases provide a far superior view then the traditional nested folder view? Do people not see how a program like iTunes should get rolled into the OS Finder. Same with the libraries and their views in iPhoto and iMovie.
When the Mac OS boots, it should load the core code into memory to handle all these browsing and finder functions. Then when one looks at a specific data type, the core edit code for that data type should be loaded into RAM and be waiting to go. If it is not used then the user never knows. Else if the user wants to edit the data type, the code is already loaded and immediately ready to go.
Do people not see where OOP is going and where the end of Core frameworks will be? Everybody knocks the Finder yet nobody proposes how to make it better. I mean really make it better. Everything I have read is just little surface stuff - brushed metal this and aqua that. I have laid out a very valid idea where the OS should go and I know there are veteran IT guys on these forums that have to acumen to understand this stuff.
It is one thing to be a geek and get under the hood and build a PC or configure a server. Unix this and GUI that is average mechanic stuff. I want to do the race car stuff - set land speed records - go where no OS has gone before - real geeky stuff. Thus the OpenDoc theory.
No, I mean Apple. If it had world dominance on both HW and SW in the desktop space it would be a very difficult monster to deal with which would make MS look like an NGO.
Just look at how it is managing the whole iPhone thing, forcing revenue sharing agreements with operators (unheard of in the telephone market), not allowing full openness of the iPhone (it's been only partially openned; and recently due to pressure). A world where 90% of the world computers run Apple SW + HW doesn't sound very appealing to me. If Apple decided to license Mac OS X to third party HW, that would be different story. The game would be even interesting .
And now I go with visionary
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
Which would you rather have - a good king or a democracy of fools?
Not sure whom you are thinking about in each case, but as the founding fathers of the United States brilliantly argue, tyranny is tyranny, be it because it is exercised by a despot or be it because it is imposed by the mobe, which is why the US constitution places such a strong emphasis in individual rights and due process. But that's a different topic and I don't want to get sidetracked
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
On the other hand, name me something bad Apple has done, I mean something worse than the typical rant that their computers are a couple hundred dollars overpriced. I also do not mean bugs and occasion recall stuff. I mean evil stuff.
Until very recently (I claim ~ 2005 when Apple began to get really fat thanks to its good decision of opening iTunes/iPod to Windows users), Apple didn't have that type of leverage. What we have seen in the past 2 years is no different from other companies that began to get big, be it MS, Yahoo or Google. To the iPhone abuse I mentioned (it even had a German court issue an order to liberate the iPhone in that market), you can add its attitude with dealing with the content owners (which is making it tough to negociate good deals with the owners of the industry). The price thing is not a minor issue. One of the merits of MS/Intel, which people don't appreciate enough (even myself, and I insist I am not an MS fun) is that it drove HW (and SW) prices down making it possible for the average person to own a Personal Computer. If the iPhone way is any indication, a desktop world dominated by Apple both in SW and HW will suddenly make Personal Computers unaffordable for a large portion of the population. We'll see how it goes. If Apple decided to support Mac OS X with non Apple HW, we might be talking a very differencet scenario (and a very interesting one, BTW).
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
As for Gates giving his money away, I see lots of his "charity" as another way to attack his business opponents. Give free PCs to schools - that otherwise would probably use Macs. Also doesn't he give away millions for population control - ie. abortion and contraception? For many people, they would not call that "charity." Same with vaccinations. Mercury anyone?
Even Gates' harshest critics seem to agree that Gates is making a huge positive impact in worthy causes. For you is fine to talk like that, but if you were one of the million people whose live has been saved because of the money Gates has put into vaccinations or HIV/AIDS drugs (the UN and world governments have been totally unable to handle those crisis in the way Gates has) or whose college education has been possible because of Gates Millennium Scholars program, you might have a complete different view.
Look, here in Silicon Valley / Stanford (and this way I gave away a little bit of info), Steve Jobs has a huge fan base. Even myself I admire him very much for many things (I attended almost by chance his now famous commencement speech at Stanford; I didn't know much about him until I went to the Stadium that morning of June 2005). But the very one thing that both admirers and detractors alike seem to have against Steve Jobs is his so far lack of commitment towards philantropic causes. That, despite being one of the richest men in the universe. When he has been challenged about it in public, he has always refused to give an inspiring answer. Maybe whatever he is doing, he is doing it in private (and that would be another reason for admiring him) but to the best of my knowledge, most people I have talked to seem to think it's unlikely.
This society (the US) wouldn't be as great if generations of wealthy business people hadn't given back their fortunes for the benefit of those who were less fortunate. We had Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Howard Hughes, Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett, now the Intel founders, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, even the "Google = evil" guys set up a foundation right away when Google went public. What has done Steve Jobs in this respect? To the best of my knowledge nothing. If that's any indication of how he plans to manage an Apple which would have the leverage and influence of MS, it's damned scary.
Comments
What you seem to have a problem with is anything in user space such as OSX's system wide PDF compositing technology, it's object oriented frameworks inherited from NextStep, it's simple networking and discovery technology, it's system wide functionality that is built in to all applications and many more things that make it more than just UNIX + GUI. UNIX is such a little part of OSX. If Apple switched from a UNIX kernel to a Windows kernel, it'd barely matter to a user - it'd sure matter to us geeks though.
Again, if Apple switched to the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel, it would suffer from all the deficiencies of that system, including, but not limited to, the painting sessions that 1337_5L4Xx0R so nicely described, viruses and a whole lot of security issues that come with the Windows NT kernel design (it has to solve the impossible problem of allowing the average user to have some admin priviledges (to do things like installing software or modifying the registry) or supporting a myriad of hardware done by third parties, thus having a less tightly controlled driver subsystem). Mac OS X's doesn't have those issues because it's UNIX based (great!) and as I said, does things like being able to edit PDFs make it a complete different OS (no, I don't thik so), and more importantly, do they justify the move to a world where 90% + use Windows? That's what I will figure out. But as I said, based on all the answers I've gotten so far, Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
As visionary put it, we're explaining 3D to you when you're living in a 2D world.
I disagree, you are explaining irrational attachment when what I was trying is to find a rational answer to the question Max OS X ~ UNIX + GUI?
Cheers!
And OS X is certainly not 'enterprise grade' as its focus is user-desktop and media creation.
As a matter of fact, because of its UNIX roots, it's not that far from being enterprise grade. If Apple was willig to make the right investments (in supporting high availability HW and creating a Professional Services group for the Enterprise), it could easily make a dent in the medium sized servers market most likely at the expense of Sun or Linux. In the high end space, it's more unlikely since it would need to make OS X support several hundreds of cores/CPUs and ultra high end storage HW to make it competitive with the offers of HP and IBM (and that's far from trivial).
Another point where Mac OS X's UNIX roots are of extreme benefit.
Cheers!
I disagree, you are explaining irrational attachment when what I was trying is to find a rational answer to the question Max OS X ~ UNIX + GUI?
Cheers!
An answer you were never looking for since your mind was made up prior to ever coming to this forum.
Yes, OSX is just UNIX + GUI. Of course it's also the most popular desktop unix ever made and the only unix with a GUI that doesn't suck.
I use OSX so I don't have to load Linux to do unix stuff. 80% of the time my MBP is running Windows because I need DirectX9 support for work.
But hey, ignore that many, if not most, ex-Amigans have Macs and live in your Linux world bucko. After all, AmigaDOS didn't have a GUI...oh wait...by gosh it did. And while Apple scripting isn't exactly like ARexx it is powerful and useful. There's a lot more to like about OSX than simply dismissing it as UNIX + GUI. But only for folks with an open mind rather than some oddball superiority complex because you used to use an Amiga.
Mac zealotry. Pfft. Pikers. Amigans are undead zealots of a cursed operating system.
Yep, there are non-UNIX OSs such as QNX that are POSIX compliant. IIRC BeOS was too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix) is a commercial POSIX-compliant Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. As of September 12 2007, the source of the QNX kernel has been released for non-commercial use.
...Due to the POSIX interface, porting Unix and BSD packages to QNX became much easier.
You're not going to get away from the UNIX roots even in QNX.
Classification : UNIX-like Operating System.
Again, if Apple switched to the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel, it would suffer from all the deficiencies of that system, including, but not limited to, the painting sessions that 1337_5L4Xx0R so nicely described...
Again, this isn't specifically tied into the UNIX core, but rather the Core Graphics Framework which is part of what makes OS X > Unix + GUI. And the rest of what Aegisdesign said, also frameworks. They have nothing to do with Unix, specifically.
If your only concern is stability and redundancy, stick with Unix sans GUI or one of those ATM systems you talked about earlier. It'll do the trick for you. If you're living in the terminal anyways, you'll have no need for a GUI no matter how many spiffy frameworks and elegant functionality it has...
Again, this isn't specifically tied into the UNIX core, but rather the Core Graphics Framework which is part of what makes OS X > Unix+ GUI.
What what said originally, At work at a video game company, I used a multi-core PC running XP. One of my favorite things to do when the UI locked up due to 'CPU overload' was grab a window, and start painting with it. It would leave tracers all over the desktop. You simply cannot do that with a Mac running OS X. The front-most app has priority, and both the GUI and BSD layer are threaded. With OS X 10.5, the Finder (which sucks) is now kinda-threaded, so iDisk access doesn't lock up the Finder.
That has everything to do with the BSD core, which is UNIX. Then, the GUI makes an efficient use of the UNIX services (which speaks highly of the Mac OS X developers) but it's the UNIX core which makes it possible.
That has everything to do with the BSD core, which is UNIX. Then, the GUI makes an efficient use of the UNIX services (which speaks highly of the Mac OS X developers) but it's the UNIX core which makes it possible.
And in fact, this is another aspect that supports the UNIX + GUI thing. Every single UNIX + GUI OS that I have used is robust in this respect (the GUI is not as nice as Mac OS X's but is equally robust). From the HP 700 workstations that ran HP-UX 9.X ~ 12 years ago (the same was true for the Sun workstations) to the RedHat/Ubuntu Linux machines I have used recently. I have been only able to "paint" in the sense described before with Windows NT/2000/XP
My claim, based on having worked for a long time with Linux (Redhat, Debian), HP-UX and Sun Solaris, is that Mac OS X is a UNIX + GUI (I stress probably the best GUI ever built on top of a UNIX-like OS) + a bunch of bundled software/applications intended for non expert users.
Well, you are close, but wrong. OS X has pretty much everything you'd expect from a unix/unix-like system + a bunch of OS X-specific frameworks, services and programs. The meat of the issue is that vast majority of what makes OS X what it is are the OS X-specific frameworks and services.
BTW, you need to cut out the "mac preacher"/"religion" thing. Grow up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
You're not going to get away from the UNIX roots even in QNX.
Classification : UNIX-like Operating System.
It is now perhaps but it has no UNIX roots. The POSIX layer came later. I've not used it in ages. The last time was back in 1997-2000ish when it was being touted as the new kernel for the Amiga by whoever owned Amiga back then. Can't remember exactly if it was Gateway, Amiga Tech or just Fleecy and Bill spinning us a yarn.
I can remember watching some cool demos of it's Photo Micro-GUI though which featured 'warp gates' where processes could pass messages through a 'warp gate' and they came up somewhere else, even a different computer somewhere else on the network. Cool technology.
Of course, curious would probably still call even that UNIX + GUI just because it ran bash.
edit: incidentally, back then QNX was the favourite because of it's almost Amiga like interprocess communication and real time performance which OSs like Linux couldn't match. And IIRC Tao ran on top of QNX too. BeOS was the only other OS that got close.
edit: incidentally, back then QNX was the favourite because of it's almost Amiga like interprocess communication and real time performance which OSs like Linux couldn't match. And IIRC Tao ran on top of QNX too. BeOS was the only other OS that got close.
Yah, BeOS got close. OSX is certainly sluggish in comparison. I dunno that QNX would have been as good a spiritual match as BeOS would have been.
I'd have bought OS4 and a PPC unit for it except that it never really hit release. I'd love to run the OS4 on my old quicksilver. I had an A500, A2000, A3000 and then finally an A1000 before I sold it all. Every so often I look on eBay and think about getting one for kicks but alas, my wife made me dump a lot of my old gear and I finally tossed out all my old Amiga software disks including a lot of NewTek stuff and LightWave.
All in all though...OSX is a good replacement for the Amiga experience in a way that MacOS never was.
But as I said, based on all the answers I've gotten so far, Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
I think it would help your case if you make it clear exactly what conclusions you want to derive from the assertion that Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI.
I could very well go to a forum and say Jessica Alba is just another woman. The only difference is that she is more attractive. So you could easily just take the skank down the road and you'd get a similar experience.
I think you'll agree that although the assertion that Jessica Alba is just another woman is true, the conclusion of her being somehow equal to any other woman is somewhat misleading. This is the same thing with OS X.
The conclusion you seem to want to draw is that because Mac OS X ~ UNIX + GUI/UI, that means that it can easily be replaced with another unix+GUI, which is a misleading statement.
However, there is more to a car than just the engine. People can throw every thing else all under the category of GUI but that is not correct. Some have brought up the frameworks and other aspects that make Mac OS unique. I have tried to present a case that there is something bigger than the UNIX engine, GUI, or frameworks - and that is design.
I can talk form and function maximization but most engine geeks look at me like I am speaking Greek. At least that is what it seems. So let me attack a different angle of design. It is going to involve a pretty good leap too so bear with me. However, it should make sense to most knowledgeable geeks.
I really suspect Apple is slowly moving the Mac OS to OpenDoc. It was a good idea back in the day, just too big of a chunck to bite off back then. We now have more RAM and processors to handle the overhead of OpenDoc. I think Quicklook is one step towards OpenDoc. Think about it for a second and you will see this is true. Also think of what OOP does for app creation and usage.
Just as OOP code is reusable, Apple is designing the building blocks to make OpenDoc happen. We can look at the cores - Core Audio, Core Image, Core Animation - but also look at the Apps. Most people look at them and compare them to other apps - for example iWork to MS Office. But examine all the iWork and iLife apps from an OpenDoc perspective. Apple is getting WP, the Spreadsheet, the HTTP editor, audio, video - all the classes objects and methods developed.
I eventually see the Libraries and their viewing functions of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie all being incorporated into the Finder. Thus for example, the left hand Pictures, Music, Movies, and Documents all become icons that change the data format on the right hand side to that of the iLife apps. Thus one does not open iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes but in a way, the OS does it behind the scenes and just displays it all in the Finder window on the right side. Same for Mail, Address Book, iCal - even web pages.
Just as iWork Numbers takes spreadsheets and introduces a document focused way to look at spreadsheets, so to will the Finder present a data focused way to look at different types. For most users, the various data types will be stored in centralized libraries and metadata will be used to finding and sorting.
I know I am jumping some into the future of the Mac OS but it is based on Apple's desires in the past and the plotted the progress points from the last ten years. What we have is an OS on its way to an integration of apps and OS unlike anything most people envision. Apps load, open, and shut in the background just by us using various data types. It is all invisible and seamless to the user. If they want to edit the data type, then the core methods are loaded and waiting to go. However, rather than apps, think of them as additional Core Frameworks if you want.
I hope I explained this design trajectory well enough to show how UNIX+GUI+frameworks+Xcode+apps=something much bigger than the sum of their individual parts. It is design but on a whole new dimension. Think OpenDoc with all the pieces Apple has been developing over the years.
I wish I had time to do a mock up of what all this would be like. It would be much easier to understand it then. While Apple is not all the way there yet, they are well on their way to redefining what a computer OS is.
Just as browsers and Java were a threat to MS as a OS agnostic GUI that would render Windows irrelevant, there are other paradigms that can upset the current state of operating systems. While MS can quickly buyout a browser and give it away for free to knockout competition to their desktop OS, they will not be able to buy up software apps and throw them together into an OpenDoc-like OS.
Apple is building all their pieces to their OS and then when they are all ready they will rearrange the tested and proved pieces and combine them into an integrated OS unlike anything most people can envision.
Thus the Mac OS = UNIX + GUI is so very short-sighted. Computers are quickly becoming systems of systems of systems. What people want is high level solutions not do-it-yourself kits to assemble themselves. Just as Apple discovered when they failed with their new OS and had to buy Next, there is only so far you can keep hacking together complex systems. You eventually have to do a rewrite from the ground up. It is this organization and design in the OS code that is a huge deal.
Apple has made that transition and now is extending what the OS can be. But its true design potential has yet to be revealed. MS has not made that transition and probably never will. By the time Apple releases an OpenDoc-like OS, MS will have nothing even close to offer. They are years behind and don't realize it.
MS is planning to fight future and present wars using past strategies and weapons. Apple is designing the IT equivalent of the A-bomb. MS will never stand a chance in this future OS broadside.
Of course, Apple is now much more than an OS company. With its music, phone, and retail business, they are grabbing all their vertical market share and extending the expectations what a computer company is. They are outflanking Microsoft's Maginot Line. Walking into an Apple store and talking to a Apple Genius, taking free how-to-use-app classes leaves MS and all PC makers inadequate. And nobody is going to dare suggest the local Best Buy salesman or Indian tech support person is equivalent.
Apple is changing the war from just an OS war to an all-out tech war. It is fighting on so many more fronts and MS is losing in most of these. The one front Apple is not fighting on is the game console front. However, MS is battling Sony and Nintendo and while standing their ground, they are also not doing well financially in that battle. Thus, this business warfare of a much greater magnitude. MS offers a gun. Apple offers a combined arms military. And Sony and Nintendo are convenient allies - enemies of their enemies.
One can look at just the OS but they need to understand the history, the future, and the context of the battle. So on this bigger perspective, Mac OS is just a portion of the picture.
These are reason why evaluating a current OS by itself is so shortsighted. One needs to look at the past, look to the future, and look at the complete scope of the industry. When one does that, they see the Mac OS is the right train to jump on now. Even if we do not like everything Apple doing, they are still the ticket to ride.
So regardless of the warts Apple has - and it does indeed have some, it is important for anybody in the IT world to start learning the system that will probably make most others obsolete. I know for ex-Amiga people it is hard to win this point. They have been burned once and have gone what they think is pragmatic. But they should not make the mistake the other way now and not jump when they should.
Thanks for your patience with the long post.
Or, for another analogy, saying os x is just unix with a gui is like saying a car is a human with a paint job.
Icecream is just sugared milk.
A human is just a monkey walking upright.
Earth is just another planet with an ozone layer.
Come on, join the game! This is fun!
Of course OS X is UNIX with a GUI.
The word "just" might be intended to belittle (or not). But does it really matter?
I think you'll agree that although the assertion that Jessica Alba is just another woman is true, the conclusion of her being somehow equal to any other woman is somewhat misleading. This is the same thing with OS X.
Well, as misleading as claiming that Jessica Alba is this generation's equivalent to Rita Hayworth. As of today, Jessica Alba is "just" another good looking/sexy Hollywood woman, as there are/"have been" hundreds. Only time will tell!
And as for the comment,
So regardless of the warts Apple has - and it does indeed have some, it is important for anybody in the IT world to start learning the system that will probably make most others obsolete. I know for ex-Amiga people it is hard to win this point. They have been burned once and have gone what they think is pragmatic. But they should not make the mistake the other way now and not jump when they should.
Well, if anything, that would be one reason to stay away from Mac OS X. If there is something I fear more than MS's dominating position in the OS world (BTW, the company has been punished for its abusive practices) is that a single company would dominate both HW and SW in the desktop. Windows might be a crappy OS in many respects, but it's great in the sense that it runs in a myriad of HW from which I can pick the cheapest/more expensive if I wanted to. One of the William Pitt's (the online sources cannot agree in which one) put it best,
"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins"
And a century later, it was Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887 who said,
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
At least Bill Gates is giving away most of his money (and therefore power/influence)!
While some may fear one company controlling too much of the IT industry, one has to look at how that company got its power and its actions. I think MS got their power illegally and has held back years of progress in the computer world. On the other hand, name me something bad Apple has done, I mean something worse than the typical rant that their computers are a couple hundred dollars overpriced. I also do not mean bugs and occasion recall stuff. I mean evil stuff.
You could fill a couple volumes with MS actions but you would be hard pressed to do a brochure on Apple. The problem with MS is that is it is a repeat offender. In my opinion they have NOT been adequately punished for their offensives and they refuse to change their MO. Talk about one person or company controlling too much power - is this a reason to not support MS or not to support Apple? You seem to use it against Apple while most everybody else would say this reasoning goes against MS.
As for Gates giving his money away, I see lots of his "charity" as another way to attack his business opponents. Give free PCs to schools - that otherwise would probably use Macs. Also doesn't he give away millions for population control - ie. abortion and contraception? For many people, they would not call that "charity." Same with vaccinations. Mercury anyone?
My point is that Gates is a very controversial figure and I theorize he has quite possibly added nothing of value to IT or charity. In fact, he has done great harm to many innovators. Same with much of his charity. But this is really a side issue.
Iit all comes back to which computer company is the future and why. UNIX is the future and GUIs are here to stay. With that, the Mac OS is in the right place. But there are other things that differentiate the Mac OS from just another UNIX with a GUI. That is what many of us are trying to lay out. Even if we have answered the original question, can we not extend the thread to what Apple has in addition to UNIX and a GUI?
Anybody want to comment on the OpenDoc theory and where the Mac OS is going? I see this as the next big thing in Mac OS development yet most people just give a big yawn. Do people not know about OpenDoc and what it promised. Do you not realize the barriers why it failed in the past are now gone? Do people not see how metadata databases provide a far superior view then the traditional nested folder view? Do people not see how a program like iTunes should get rolled into the OS Finder. Same with the libraries and their views in iPhoto and iMovie.
When the Mac OS boots, it should load the core code into memory to handle all these browsing and finder functions. Then when one looks at a specific data type, the core edit code for that data type should be loaded into RAM and be waiting to go. If it is not used then the user never knows. Else if the user wants to edit the data type, the code is already loaded and immediately ready to go.
Do people not see where OOP is going and where the end of Core frameworks will be? Everybody knocks the Finder yet nobody proposes how to make it better. I mean really make it better. Everything I have read is just little surface stuff - brushed metal this and aqua that. I have laid out a very valid idea where the OS should go and I know there are veteran IT guys on these forums that have to acumen to understand this stuff.
It is one thing to be a geek and get under the hood and build a PC or configure a server. Unix this and GUI that is average mechanic stuff. I want to do the race car stuff - set land speed records - go where no OS has gone before - real geeky stuff. Thus the OpenDoc theory.
Well, if anything, that would be one reason to stay away from Mac OS X.
Don't you mean MS?
Don't you mean MS?
No, I mean Apple. If it had world dominance on both HW and SW in the desktop space it would be a very difficult monster to deal with which would make MS look like an NGO.
Just look at how it is managing the whole iPhone thing, forcing revenue sharing agreements with operators (unheard of in the telephone market), not allowing full openness of the iPhone (it's been only partially openned; and recently due to pressure). A world where 90% of the world computers run Apple SW + HW doesn't sound very appealing to me. If Apple decided to license Mac OS X to third party HW, that would be different story. The game would be even interesting
And now I go with visionary
Which would you rather have - a good king or a democracy of fools?
Not sure whom you are thinking about in each case, but as the founding fathers of the United States brilliantly argue, tyranny is tyranny, be it because it is exercised by a despot or be it because it is imposed by the mobe, which is why the US constitution places such a strong emphasis in individual rights and due process. But that's a different topic and I don't want to get sidetracked
On the other hand, name me something bad Apple has done, I mean something worse than the typical rant that their computers are a couple hundred dollars overpriced. I also do not mean bugs and occasion recall stuff. I mean evil stuff.
Until very recently (I claim ~ 2005 when Apple began to get really fat thanks to its good decision of opening iTunes/iPod to Windows users), Apple didn't have that type of leverage. What we have seen in the past 2 years is no different from other companies that began to get big, be it MS, Yahoo or Google. To the iPhone abuse I mentioned (it even had a German court issue an order to liberate the iPhone in that market), you can add its attitude with dealing with the content owners (which is making it tough to negociate good deals with the owners of the industry). The price thing is not a minor issue. One of the merits of MS/Intel, which people don't appreciate enough (even myself, and I insist I am not an MS fun) is that it drove HW (and SW) prices down making it possible for the average person to own a Personal Computer. If the iPhone way is any indication, a desktop world dominated by Apple both in SW and HW will suddenly make Personal Computers unaffordable for a large portion of the population. We'll see how it goes. If Apple decided to support Mac OS X with non Apple HW, we might be talking a very differencet scenario (and a very interesting one, BTW).
As for Gates giving his money away, I see lots of his "charity" as another way to attack his business opponents. Give free PCs to schools - that otherwise would probably use Macs. Also doesn't he give away millions for population control - ie. abortion and contraception? For many people, they would not call that "charity." Same with vaccinations. Mercury anyone?
Even Gates' harshest critics seem to agree that Gates is making a huge positive impact in worthy causes. For you is fine to talk like that, but if you were one of the million people whose live has been saved because of the money Gates has put into vaccinations or HIV/AIDS drugs (the UN and world governments have been totally unable to handle those crisis in the way Gates has) or whose college education has been possible because of Gates Millennium Scholars program, you might have a complete different view.
Look, here in Silicon Valley / Stanford (and this way I gave away a little bit of info), Steve Jobs has a huge fan base. Even myself I admire him very much for many things (I attended almost by chance his now famous commencement speech at Stanford; I didn't know much about him until I went to the Stadium that morning of June 2005). But the very one thing that both admirers and detractors alike seem to have against Steve Jobs is his so far lack of commitment towards philantropic causes. That, despite being one of the richest men in the universe. When he has been challenged about it in public, he has always refused to give an inspiring answer. Maybe whatever he is doing, he is doing it in private (and that would be another reason for admiring him) but to the best of my knowledge, most people I have talked to seem to think it's unlikely.
This society (the US) wouldn't be as great if generations of wealthy business people hadn't given back their fortunes for the benefit of those who were less fortunate. We had Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Howard Hughes, Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett, now the Intel founders, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, even the "Google = evil" guys set up a foundation right away when Google went public. What has done Steve Jobs in this respect? To the best of my knowledge nothing. If that's any indication of how he plans to manage an Apple which would have the leverage and influence of MS, it's damned scary.
Anyway, lets keep the conversation going.
Cheers!