Your assessment is correct, but like all flavors of UNIX, it's evolved from the base since its inception. The original 10.0 used mostly UNIX systems and utilities, but since then Apple has evolved the Darwin core. So, for example, Apple no longer uses UNIX mail, chron, and has never used the UNIX file system.
I think the biggest improvements aren't to the actual Darwin core, nor to the GUI. Apple has improved the experience beyond that, writing powerful libraries and optimizations into their programming language, Objective-C. Core data, core animation, webkit, quicktime, etc... all allow you to write software for the Macintosh platform that looks great, runs fast, and is stable.
Additionally, the new version of OS X server offers its own departures. It's really the first version of server that does significant things that you couldn't do on your normal mac. Previously, they were both using the same UNIX libraries, and server offered a GUI for the management and metrics (and trimmed away some of the frill). It's now capable of offering collaboration services out to other macs and macintosh applications. Just a small offering now - wikiserver, podcast producer, and iCal server - but I'd look for more of this in the future if it's successful. And, of course, all these libraries are accessible to app programmers, and as such, they can be integrated into your applications.
So, I think you're right to insist that OS X is basically a UNIX derivative, but that your friend is also right to point out that you're getting a lot more out of it than just it's UNIX core and GUI. Although if what you're saying is true, he may not truly appreciate what exactly Apple has done for him.
This is the type of stuff I am interested in knowing, as a matter of fact. HFS+ vs standard UNIX's HFS (although other UNIX-es also have their own FS's, HP-UX's vxfs = Veritas FS for instance is more than 10 years old, although for sometime the file system of the kernel could be only HFS not VxFS), etc.
And as I pointed out earlier, its UNIX roots offers new interesting market opportunities for Apple in the enterprise space. RedHat and Sun should be seriously worried if Apple tried to make a dent at their expense.
This is the type of stuff I am interested in knowing, as a matter of fact. HFS+ vs standard UNIX's HFS (although other UNIX-es also have their own FS's, HP-UX's vxfs = Veritas FS for instance is more than 10 years old, although for sometime the file system of the kernel could be only HFS not VxFS), etc.
And as I pointed out earlier, its UNIX roots offers new interesting market opportunities for Apple in the enterprise space. RedHat and Sun should be seriously worried if Apple tried to make a dent at their expense.
Cheers!
Correction: UNIX UFS. HFS has forever been an Apple Filesystem technology.
ZFS compliant filesystem with Mac OS X sprinkles to extend it will be clearly show it's spots in upcoming releases.
I think I have been very clear for those who were willing to listen.
As a system that is essentially a UNIX + GUI, there are plenty of positive things that I see in Mac OS X. All the other fancy stuff, although I acknowledge they might be useful for some people, it's unlikely to be of use to me since it's the UNIX +GUI aspects that I care about.
Put it in another way: if Mac OS X didn't have a UNIX core/roots (say it had a Windows NT kernel as was suggested by somebody) but it still had all the UI fancy stuff, it would be a no brainer to me: no way I am going to switch to Mac OS X: I wouldn't care about the fancy stuff and I'd be happy with the Windows UI bacause it allows me to do all I need to do and it runs on way cheaper HW. Is prescisely because it's UNIX, that I have second thoughts. And that's the genune question that I had at the begining. My friend was convinced that the UNIX roots of Mac OS X is a very tiny aspect of Mac OS X. Well, I said, if Mac OS X isn't ~ UNIX + GUI, then what is it? From listening to people, it seems clear that Mac OS X's UNIX roots is 90% of what makes Mac OS X a good OS (all the other features that people have been talking about, wouldn't run as nice in a non-UNIX kernel, you might even amuse yourself painting the Desktop when the kernel was unable to effectively handle multi CPU / multi threaded processes, as it is possible to do with Windows). It might all end up being a "question of taste". Some people wouldn't give a damn for the internals of the OS in order to have the most tasteful/nicest GUI/UI while others, like me, don't give a damn for a nice GUI/UI if the internals are crappy. It turns out that Mac OS X, in my view, seems to be a great OS not because of its fancy GUI but because its UNIX internals.
Which takes me to
This aspect seems to be ignored by most Apple followers, but it's an important one. From the Apple website, a basic 13 inch, 1GB RAM, 80 GB disk, 2.0 GHz dual proc Mac has a base value of $1099. The more or less equivalent config from HP (it has 14 inch screen and a 120 GB instead) costs $874 at HP. That's $225 less (and you even get a slightly larger screen and a larger hard disk). If you begin to add other stuff (like more memory/harddisk and applications), the price difference keeps increasing. Say the final price difference is $400 or even more for higher end models (larger screens, etc). For Silicon Valley engineers (who belong to the economic elite of the planet) that might not be a lot of money, but for other people it is. At the end of the day, the average consumer doesn't have any vested interest in making Apple rich vs making MS rich (or vice versa) but in addressing his computer needs. A cheap HW running MS software seems to be doing the job for most people. And the argument, pay me $400 more and you'll get a way fancier GUI doesn't seem to resonate much among the average consumer.
And finally,
Yes, I have learned a lot too. I am way more prepared now to argue my UNIX + GUI point than I was before the thread started.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
Take CoreData as an example: it's roots come from Enterprise Object Frameworks (EOF) but much simpler, yet at a sweet spot of capabilities to address most of the current developer needs. Whether Apple decides to role out a new EOF that covers the gaps is to still to be seen.
CoreImage and CoreAudio were logical expectations of previously private frameworks which after addressing, again, most current developer needs it was unleashed to the developer community on OS X.
The CoreAnimation aides in working with OpenGL, etc.
This approach is being added to GNUstep for those who want a Cocoa solution in Linux and other *nix platforms.
KDE 4 is doing similar approaches with Phonon, Solid, Plasma, etc.
I don't know if anyone offered this opinion, but from what I read a lot of this is really hardcore discussion of the intricate aspects of OS X's implementation and use of UNIX. I have a different reason I'd like to present:
OS X is Unix with a GUI. So what's the reason to get an Mac and not just use a Linux box for all your UNIX based computing?
Unlike every flavor of Linux I've tried (including ubuntu and all the other ones made easy to use), OS X has the distinct advantage of doing all its GUI-based actions in a very very easy and reliable way. You can basically be assured that, if you want to write some code, compile it, then print the code out over a networked printer, it's MUCH easier and more importantly FASTER to do that with OS X than linux. Sure, you can set up a printer with some CUPS knowledge and commandline chops, but i think that the time you'd save with all those repetitive tasks that are faster in GUI is worth OS X over Linux.
So, in summary, I think you should try a Mac for UNIX stuff because it does unix stuff great, but also does a lot of the GUI stuff easier than linux.
PS: It's also, honestly, fun to do a lot of stuff on macs that isn't very fun on linux/windows, and fun never hurts
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
Yours have been among the most instructive postings in this whole thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quine
....
OS X is Unix with a GUI. So what's the reason to get an Mac and not just use a Linux box for all your UNIX based computing?
.....
So, in summary, I think you should try a Mac for UNIX stuff because it does unix stuff great, but also does a lot of the GUI stuff easier than linux.
PS: It's also, honestly, fun to do a lot of stuff on macs that isn't very fun on linux/windows, and fun never hurts
Hope that helps!
Why didn't I get this type of answers at the very begining of the thread? We could have avoided all the hair splitting that went on in between.
"hfs: HP-UX’s Hi Performance FileSystem; native in older versions of HP-UXe20; “HFS has been the native file system since the mid 80s.”e42; operating systems that can handle hfs: HP-UX (NRWF) (NOTE: This is the second hfs that appears in the chart)"
That's where the confusion came from . Both HP's HFS and Apple's HFS have the same acronym but stand for different things.
Why didn't I get this type of answers at the very begining of the thread? We could have avoided all the hair splitting that went on in between.
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
For you that OSX is Unix + GUI is a mantra. The Unix aspects are competent but nothing particularly special from a user perspective. Well, a little bit with scripting and Spotlight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
I don't think its a compelling advantage to switch even for a developer. From an enterprise, rich client perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform. Likewise I consider .NET to be equal to Apple's Core capabilities overall (some areas better, some areas worse).
That said, I did switch from Linux for all of my unix development simply because the environment IS nicer and for back end development (LAMP) there's little disadvantage other than Apple is slow with Java updates.
For folks that go straight to the command line because every other UNIX UI has sucked and won't consider the UI as a useful advantage for them there is no practical advantage of OSX over BSD or Linux from a user perspective. You see little of the Core capabilities. From a developer perspective, J2EE or LAMP are typically the Unix target environments.
For him, Solaris is the platform of choice. Superior unix capabilities better than OSX or Linux (VFS, threading, etc), commodity PC hardware (limited choices but many Dell or HP machines should work) and free. The GUI is pretty bog standard for a unix these days but he keeps saying he doesn't care about ease of use, GUI, user experience or any of the OSX specific software (iLife, iWork, etc).
He doesn't want what anyone (nearly everyone) else wants in a Unix DESKTOP. Namely a GUI and user experience that is superior to that of XP/Vista/KDE/Gnome with world class user applications. No other unix or unix-like OS provides that (IMO of course).
As a plain unix, ignoring UI, IMO Solaris is best of breed. Done, go switch to solaris and enjoy.
Curious. You give links that state without equivocation that HFS (Heirarchial File System) is an Apple file system which was developed by our favorite fruit company in 1985.
Your links also clearly show that HP's file system is hfs (Hi Performance FileSystem).
hfs ≠ HFS
Because UNIX is case-sensitive, there is no confusion. As a UNIX expert, you should know that.
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
For you that OSX is Unix + GUI is a mantra. The Unix aspects are competent but nothing particularly special from a user perspective. Well, a little bit with scripting and Spotlight.
I don't think its a compelling advantage to switch even for a developer. From an enterprise, rich client perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform. Likewise I consider .NET to be equal to Apple's Core capabilities overall (some areas better, some areas worse).
That said, I did switch from Linux for all of my unix development simply because the environment IS nicer and for back end development (LAMP) there's little disadvantage other than Apple is slow with Java updates.
For folks that go straight to the command line because every other UNIX UI has sucked and won't consider the UI as a useful advantage for them there is no practical advantage of OSX over BSD or Linux from a user perspective. You see little of the Core capabilities. From a developer perspective, J2EE or LAMP are typically the Unix target environments.
For him, Solaris is the platform of choice. Superior unix capabilities better than OSX or Linux (VFS, threading, etc), commodity PC hardware (limited choices but many Dell or HP machines should work) and free. The GUI is pretty bog standard for a unix these days but he keeps saying he doesn't care about ease of use, GUI, user experience or any of the OSX specific software (iLife, iWork, etc).
He doesn't want what anyone (nearly everyone) else wants in a Unix DESKTOP. Namely a GUI and user experience that is superior to that of XP/Vista/KDE/Gnome with world class user applications. No other unix or unix-like OS provides that (IMO of course).
As a plain unix, ignoring UI, IMO Solaris is best of breed. Done, go switch to solaris and enjoy.
From an enterprise, rich server perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform.
I fixed it for you.
LAMP is the environment for Linux folks working with Blogs, Web Services and dynamically driven content that do not need to scale on levels remotely close to J2EE. However, LAMP doesn't require one to have the in-depth knowledge of Java to meet the general consumer markets.
J2EE at the enterprise server/web services market is still king. And that is due to third parties like JBoss and especially IBM who made huge investements in its use.
Neither is a superior solution to what once was the market leader (WebObjects 2.x - 4.x) which until they switched to Java was constantly being knocked for not being Java [since the industry seemed to have such a hard-on, at the time, similar to C++ on traditional client/server applications space (3-tier) and just couldn't be bothered to learn a second language], yet somehow after they switched other languages stepped in.
Apple has learned a valuable lesson: Screw the market when it comes to dictating which language rules them all. Focus on what language and frameworks gives you the edge and incorporate other languages that work in conjunction without compromising your vision [Ruby, Python].
In the end: To remain viable and be able to develop with some of the most advanced technologies it's wise to be well-versed in Linux and OS X. Depending on what areas you plan on writing solutions you have to know which platformm best serves both your short-term and long-term needs in business and solutions; and plan accordingly.
The compelling reason for OS X beyond Linux doesn't start and end with being the most seemless UNIX + GUI operating system currently in existence. It extends to the capabilities that the rich client APIs of ObjC2.0/Cocoa frameworks offer in conjunction with their ability to be extended through Ruby and Python cross-platform.
Curious. You give links that state without equivocation that HFS (Heirarchial File System) is an Apple file system which was developed by our favorite fruit company in 1985.
Your links also clearly show that HP's file system is hfs (Hi Performance FileSystem).
hfs ≠ HFS
Because UNIX is case-sensitive, there is no confusion. As a UNIX expert, you should know that.
"hfs: HP-UX’s Hi Performance FileSystem; native in older versions of HP-UXe20; “HFS has been the native file system since the mid 80s.”e42; operating systems that can handle hfs: HP-UX (NRWF) (NOTE: This is the second hfs that appears in the chart)""
At HP, we referred to HP's proprietary FS by hfs or HFS without distinction. HP today still refers to it as hfs/HFS in its technical doc:
As to who copied whom with respect to the name, I don't care. And apparently neither do HP or Apple because I haven't seen any copyright/priority lawsuit filed by either company.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vinea
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
As I have stated I don't know how many times already, this whole thing started after a friend of mine offered to lend me one of his extra Mac's for testing for 1 month or so. I told him, well, that's great, from my experience of using Macs with OS X at Stanford's clusters, it seems like Mac OS X is a UNIX + GUI with a very nice UI, probably the best GUI among UNIX+GUI OS-es. When I made that remark, my friend hit the ceiling because according to him Mac OS X was an OS of its own whose relationship with UNIX was minimal. So I set myself to figure out the truth and that's why I posted this thread.
Please keep the dialog going because I am learning a lot!
As I have stated I don't know how many times already, this whole thing started after a friend of mine offered to lend me one of his extra Mac's for testing for 1 month or so.
For which you absolutely needed to characterize it as him being a "mac preacher searching for converts" where you "don't see anything in Mac OS X that I cannot get from either Windows or Linux" but would like to stay "completely away from religious OS wars" despite the previous inflammatory statements. Mkay.
Quote:
When I made that remark, my friend hit the ceiling because according to him Mac OS X was an OS of its own whose relationship with UNIX was minimal. So I set myself to figure out the truth and that's why I posted this thread.
A single google on OSX and Unix would have been sufficient to prove your friend wrong. The very first hit is Apple's site that describes that Leopard achieved UNIX 03 certification.
From an enterprise, rich server perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform.
I fixed it for you.
And on the client side you have Java Web Start and Applets (ugh) for client side deployment and updates for high end rich clients that work across the enterprise whether it be Windows, Linux and sometimes Mac (if you still with a slightly older Java anyway).
Quote:
LAMP is the environment for Linux folks working with Blogs, Web Services and dynamically driven content that do not need to scale on levels remotely close to J2EE. However, LAMP doesn't require one to have the in-depth knowledge of Java to meet the general consumer markets.
Sorry if I implied any Java requirements for LAMP. I'm just saying at the user facing enterprise level LAMP + Ajax is the thin client stack often used.
Quote:
Apple has learned a valuable lesson: Screw the market when it comes to dictating which language rules them all. Focus on what language and frameworks gives you the edge and incorporate other languages that work in conjunction without compromising your vision [Ruby, Python].
Apple has never really compromised on ObjectiveC being the core language of the OS. The superiority of ObjectiveC vs C++ really wasn't worth the hassle of a new langage especially since automatic memory management existed in Java. Had ObjectiveC had automatic memory management like in 2.0 it might have made more an impact when language wars were the thing to argue about in technology.
Quote:
The compelling reason for OS X beyond Linux doesn't start and end with being the most seemless UNIX + GUI operating system currently in existence. It extends to the capabilities that the rich client APIs of ObjC2.0/Cocoa frameworks offer in conjunction with their ability to be extended through Ruby and Python cross-platform.
If you "extend it" "cross-plateform" you don't get the rich client APIs of Cocoa. Which are awesome if you're developing for the Mac platform but not too useful anywhere else. This is why Java is the enterprise CLIENT platform of choice when you have a heterogeneous environment. If you're purely windows you go .NET. If you're purely mac you go Cocoa. If you're purely linux you go Qt or GTK+.
More enterprise devs are stuck with multiple platforms when its not just windows so you go either Web based applications using Ajax, Flash, whatever followed by Java.
OpenDoc? Get real. This strategy of OOP Reuse is Purely Openstep 5.0. And when Apple finally provides a proper Services interaction it once had under NeXTSTEP/Openstep then we'll see how much these separate frameworks and applications can benefit each other.
Do you think they will?
I'm not so sure. They seem to be cutting off the vestigial tails left over from NeXT or spending a long time screwing about in the meantime with old Mac apps that should have been shot many years ago (iTunes, I'm looking at you).
For which you absolutely needed to characterize it as him being a "mac preacher searching for converts" where you "don't see anything in Mac OS X that I cannot get from either Windows or Linux" but would like to stay "completely away from religious OS wars" despite the previous inflammatory statements. Mkay.
First of all, I always referred to him as "mac preacher searching for converts" in an affectionate manner. He knows that (and if he is reading this, I assure him that I never meant to be disrespecful). One of the creators of the Mac religion seems to agree that there is a strong parallel between the feelings that many Mac users have towards their machines and religious feeling,
You more or less invented the notion of the Mac evangelist, why do you think Apple users have such zeal? After all, there aren’t too many Dell sites out there.
Because people see their Macintoshes as an extension of themselves. Macintoshes increase their owner�s productivity and creativity. They are not merely appliances. You don’t see many web sites for washing machines either.
Is Apple a religion?
In the sense that you’re asking, yes it is. In the bigger picture of true religions (salvation, etc), it isn’t.
And for those who are not members of the Mac religion (like myself), the way Mac zealots talk about their computers makes us suspicious. I was just interested in the technical reality of Mac OS X.
In fact, this is an important aspect where those of us who were passionate about the Amiga computer during the its heyday and Mac zealots of all time differ. Ours (the Amiga) was truly several years ahead of its competition in the technical aspects (micro-kernel, preemtive multitasking, custom chips for music, graphics, animation and IO, DMA access). It didn't appeal to us, at least not to me, because its UI was fancier, which wasn't, or had nicer gadgets, which didn't since most Amiga extension HW was intended to make it even more powerful with 16 million color cards; acceleration cards 680X0 and so on, but because it was a technology breakthrough in home computer architecture that was matched only several years after by the PC and the Mac. The Amiga passion was never about faith or religious attachment but about technology which was both years ahead of its time and affordable for the average consumer.
Hadn't it been because of the incompetent management at Commodore (and I say this to you after researching extensively on the matter), the home computer market might have been quite different today. Even Apple was so impressed (and fearful) that it hired some members of the original Amiga team to work in the Mac.
Fortunately, these days there is a reborn interest in telling the history of the personal computer the way it happened, not the way the winners (MS/PC manufacturers/Apple) have been telling it since the mid nineties. Ars Technica is publishing a series of articles on the Amiga. Its last one says,
While the crowd attending the show went away extremely impressed with what they had seen, the reaction from the rest of the world was mixed. Articles about the demo were published in magazines such as Popular Computing, Fortune, Byte, and Compute. The Fortune article both praised and dismissed the Amiga at the same time: "While initial reviews praised the technical capabilities of the Amiga, a shell-shocked PC industry has learned to resist the seductive glitter of advanced technology for its own sake."
Think about that last line for a few moments. Can any computer user today honestly say that color, animation, multichannel sound, and multitasking are merely seductive glitter that exists only for its own sake? Like Doug Engelbart's revolutionary demonstration of the first mouse-driven graphical user interface back in 1968, many of the ideas shown in the Amiga unveiling were a little too far ahead of their time, at least for some people.
Nevertheless, Commodore had some great buzz leading up to the introduction of the Amiga 1000. The machine had great hardware and software. It had features that no other computer could even hope to emulate. Freelance writer Louis Wallace described it thusly: "To give you an idea of its capabilities, imagine taking all that is good about the Macintosh, combine it with the power of the IBM PC-AT, improve it, and then cut the price by 75 percent." This last part was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much: the final price of the Amiga 1000 was set at $1,295 for the 256KB version and $1,495 for the 512KB one. This compared favorably to the Macintosh, which had only 128KB and sold for $2,495.
Commodore looked like it had everything going for it. The new Amiga computer was years ahead of the competition,
......
Unbeknownst to him, however, larger forces were at work that would turn these dreams into nightmares.
Anybody who whitnessed the first "Shadow of the Beast" when it first came out in 1989 clearly understood that no home computer of its time could match such display of graphics, animation and sound in a hardware which was essentially from 1985, with minor changes done in 1987.
NOTE: For those who didn't this is your opportunity; if you were around in 1989 and can remember the state of home computing at the time you'll be able to appreciate what I am talking about,
And no, this is not some dedicated console/gaming machine. The Amiga had its own suite of business software (even WordPerfect ran on Amiga). It could be used both as a great gaming machine (which in full honesty that's what most Amiga users had it for) and a home/business computer with multimedia capabilities. All that long before the word multimedia was coined in the context of home computing. It's no exaggeration to claim that the Amiga launched the whole Desktop Video thing in the same way the Mac launched Desktop Publishing.
To hear such religious fervor on today's Mac users about a machine which is to a large degree built on a 30 year old OS (with its own implementation of course), which runs on standard industry HW and which has a multimedia architecture that has been the industry standard for ~ 15 years (and which in many ways was pioneered by the Amiga back in the mid eighties) made me very curious about what the hell were they seeing in Mac OS X, other than the very nice UI, that I wasn't seeing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vinea
A single google on OSX and Unix would have been sufficient to prove your friend wrong. The very first hit is Apple's site that describes that Leopard achieved UNIX 03 certification.
Believe me, it didn't work and that's one of the reasons why I started this thread.
First of all, I always referred to him as "mac preacher searching for converts" in an affectionate manner. He knows that (and if he is reading this, I assure him that I never meant to be disrespecful). One of the creators of the Mac religion seems to agree that there is a strong parallel between the feelings that many Mac users have towards their machines and religious feeling,
And for those who are not members of the Mac religion (like myself), the way Mac zealots talk about their computers makes us suspicious. I was just interested in the technical reality of Mac OS X.
In fact, this is an important aspect where those of us who were passionate about the Amiga computer during the its heyday and Mac zealots of all time differ. Ours (the Amiga) was truly several years ahead of its competition in the technical aspects (micro-kernel, preemtive multitasking, custom chips for music, graphics, animation and IO, DMA access). It didn't appeal to us, at least not to me, because its UI was fancier, which wasn't, or had nicer gadgets, which didn't since most Amiga extension HW was intended to make it even more powerful with 16 million color cards; acceleration cards 680X0 and so on, but because it was a technology breakthrough in home computer architecture that was matched only several years after by the PC and the Mac. The Amiga passion was never about faith or religious attachment but about technology which was both years ahead of its time and affordable for the average consumer.
Hadn't it been because of the incompetent management at Commodore (and I say this to you after researching extensively on the matter), the home computer market might have been quite different today. Even Apple was so impressed (and fearful) that it hired some members of the original Amiga team to work in the Mac.
Fortunately, these days there is a reborn interest in telling the history of the personal computer the way it happened, not the way the winners (MS/PC manufacturers/Apple) have been telling it since the mid nineties. Ars Technica is publishing a series of articles on the Amiga. Its last one says,
Anybody who whitnessed the first "Shadow of the Beast" when it first came out in 1989 clearly understood that no home computer of its time could match such display of graphics, animation and sound in a hardware which was essentially from 1985, with minor changes done in 1987.
NOTE: For those who didn't this is your opportunity; if you were around in 1989 and can remember the state of home computing at the time you'll be able to appreciate what I am talking about,
And no, this is not some dedicated console/gaming machine. The Amiga had its own suite of business software (even WordPerfect ran on Amiga). It could be used both as a great gaming machine (which in full honesty that's what most Amiga users had it for) and a home/business computer with multimedia capabilities. All that long before the word multimedia was coined in the context of home computing. It's no exaggeration to claim that the Amiga launched the whole Desktop Video thing in the same way the Mac launched Desktop Publishing.
To hear such religious fervor on today's Mac users about a machine which is to a large degree built on a 30 year old OS (with its own implementation of course), which runs on standard industry HW and which has a multimedia architecture that has been the industry standard for ~ 15 years (and which in many ways was pioneered by the Amiga back in the mid eighties) made me very curious about what the hell were they seeing in Mac OS X, other than the very nice UI, that I wasn't seeing.
Believe me, it didn't work and that's one of the reasons why I started this thread.
Let's be clear on the comments regarding 30 year old OS. The point of leveraging theories and implementations tried and true with a rich proven history of testing is to give this as the foundation for any rational approach to building an operating system.
If I were to apply [as what Bill Joy wishes would happen] a level of Engineering that is found in Mechanical Engineering one would find solace in knowing a system was verified by sound science and any additions to this "core" would be the area of Art and Science, ultimately being refined once again to another module of Science.
The innovations even in this 30 year history of UNIX officially 36 years and counting if we ignore the work done in the 60s] aren't at a state of immutable laws of engineering. They are still an Art. Certain tools like lookupd, dtrace and other low-level utilitarian tools only make a UNIX core more solid and able to withstand the instability introduced through revision after revision every operating system endures on the road to maturation.
The abstraction knows as the GUI is the single most recent innovation that allows Human Interaction to reach much deeper levels of immediate change.
We will continue to expand upon the levels of Human Factors as we become more symbiotic with man and machine. The fact is there is still mountains of advancement that still has gone undeveloped at the base level and the GUI levels we currently have in common use.
Amiga was ahead of the game and did some amazing stuff. NeXTSTEP moved the bar forward again and was easily a decade ahead of it's time.
What makes Steve and Apple so effective is in his learned recognition from past mistakes that solvency lies in moving the bar beyond the immediate reaches of consumers, but not too far as to turn something practical into something seemingly fantastical.
The yearly vision updates we see in a "maturing" OS is much more acceptable to buyers than the every three or four year "evolutionary" OS.
Add the cost of the equivalent (if any) of the iLife suite and you have it. Yes, the screen is 0.8" bigger in diagonal, but the resolution is the same.
I can't find the specs on thickness and weight, but if it is like all the other comparisons I have done, the HP will be thicker and heavier.
Let's be clear on the comments regarding 30 year old OS. The point of leveraging theories and implementations tried and true with a rich proven history of testing is to give this as the foundation for any rational approach to building an operating system.
............
The innovations even in this 30 year history of UNIX officially 36 years and counting if we ignore the work done in the 60s] aren't at a state of immutable laws of engineering. They are still an Art. Certain tools like lookupd, dtrace and other low-level utilitarian tools only make a UNIX core more solid and able to withstand the instability introduced through revision after revision every operating system endures on the road to maturation.
I agree. The reference to the 30 years was in no way demeaning. And in fact, is one of the great things that makes Mac OS X good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
Amiga was ahead of the game and did some amazing stuff. NeXTSTEP moved the bar forward again and was easily a decade ahead of it's time.
I remember reading about NeXT during the late eighties. Wikipedia says that the first release of NeXTSTEP is from 1989. My first contact with a UNIX workstation was in 1995, an HP 700 running HP-UX 9.X. Unfortunately, I never got to use a NeXT workstation, although the screenshot that wikipedia shows (it seems from 1995, v 3.3) is indeed very impressive. If it was like that right from release 1.0 (assuming of course all the other things we have been talking about the system stability because of its UNIX roots, etc were present), it was a very deep innovation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
What makes Steve and Apple so effective is in his learned recognition from past mistakes that solvency lies in moving the bar beyond the immediate reaches of consumers, but not too far as to turn something practical into something seemingly fantastical.
Yep! And that the guy (Jobs) has an incredible ability to turn technology into useful products. A concept, product, that seems to be forgotten in these days of web 2.0 and web-service talking. Except for his lack of contributions to charity (which I don't know if he does in private, although when he was explicitly asked about it earlier during the year during his co-interview with Gates he kind of hinted that philanthropy is not one of his priorities), I have deep respect for Jobs. And that he was able to rise so high from such humble origins is simply astonishing.
Anyway, I am still unable to relate to the Mac religion. It doesn't turn me on.
Maybe the way you describe is better for Apple, but for geeks like me the feeling of owning an A500 during the late eighties (and I assume that the same can be said for those who were able to afford a NeXT WS in 1989 or 1990) doesn't match the feeling of owning an iPhone today, despite the fact that the iPhone is, in my view, the most "ahead of its time" product that Apple has in the market at this time. Let alone the the thing of owning a Mac OS X computer vs owning its equivalent running Windows XP or Vista.
Add the cost of the equivalent (if any) of the iLife suite and you have it. Yes, the screen is 0.8" bigger in diagonal, but the resolution is the same.
I can't find the specs on thickness and weight, but if it is like all the other comparisons I have done, the HP will be thicker and heavier.
Two things,
Yeah! this is the one, but I didn't include the 64 bit version of Windows (which is an extra) nor the antivirus (which is also an extra). Without those two, you get 874.99.
I have to make several comments to your comparison:
- First the fact that you can get an even cheaper Notebook if you are willing to accept a thicker PC like the Compaq Presario C700T series, is not bad per se. Just because Apple doesn't offer that option, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be welcome by those who want to spend the minimum money possible for given CPU/GHz/RAM/HD specs. Which is one of the reasons why competition is good. You want to go the premium way, great, pick the low end Mac or the HP dv2700t. You want to go cheap, then Apple doesn't give you a choice, today you can look elsewhere. In a world dominated by Apple, you couldn't.
- Second, the fact that you included the antivirus. I would strongly recommend it but I would not put it included in the price for a fair comparison. Thanks to its UNIX roots, Mac OS X is less exposed to the type of virus/malware that affects Windows. However, DUE to its UNIX roots, Mac OS X has security issues of its own, like security exploits/holes that would allow an expert hacker to gain root control of the machine. One of my best friends at HP left the company and became a freelance security consultant (SANS certified). His expertise is in Windows and UNIX systems, a domain where he's mostly worked with HP-UX and Linux. When he was given a Mac running Mac OS X recently this summer to test his ability with UNIX systems with which he wasn't familiar (in fact it was the first time he used one), he was able to get root access in ~ 2 hours based on his knowledge of Linux/UNIX exploits / security holes (which BTW shows that certain source code of certain UNIX commands in Mac OS X is even the same as in other UNIX-es). Does this mean that you would need to include the services of a security consultant in the price of your Mac, just in case, for fair comparison purposes? I don't think so.
- Third 32 bit Vista vs 64 bit Leopard. I don't think it's fair. Again, just because Apple doesn't give you a cheap version of Leopard to chose from, it doesn't mean that every single desktop consumer will need a 64 bit OS.
The first and the third issue underscore the need of having competition in both HW and SW. If Apple was willing to sell Mac OS X on non Apple HW, the game would be very interesting. Until then, I am very suspicious of Apple's intentions.
Yep! And that the guy (Jobs) has an incredible ability to turn technology into useful products. A concept, product, that seems to be forgotten in these days of web 2.0 and web-service talking. Except for his lack of contributions to charity (which I don't know if he does in private, although when he was explicitly asked about it earlier during the year during his co-interview with Gates he kind of hinted that philanthropy is not one of his priorities), I have deep respect for Jobs. And that he was able to rise so high from such humble origins is simply astonishing.
I want to elaborate a bit more about this because it might seem from the heated exchange that I have something personal against Jobs and Apple. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I have been living in the Valley since December 2000. It wasn't until 2005 that I learned more about him in the most unexpected way. Of course I had heard his name here and there, specially in this Valley where so many people love him (truth to be told, many hate him too) but Steve Jobs is not as known by the general public as Gates (though thanks to Apple's impressive performance since early 2000, especially after 2005 with the introduction of iPod/iTunes for Windows and the 2007 introduction of the iPhone things are beginning to change). In June 2005, I was sitting at home on a Sunday morning pondering whether it was worth to get dressed to go and see this Steve something who was giving the commencement speech at Stanford, where I had just completed my first year of the PhD in EE program. It seemed a lot of people where making a great deal that this guy was going to give the speech, so I ended up going. It cost me sending to the trashcan a pair of trousers (because I seated at the very back of the stadium under some trees in order to have some protection from the sun, I ended up seating on top of some resin that was falling from the tree: bye bye trousers). It was one of the best decisions of my life as student . His now famous commencement speech was extremely powerful and I have listened to it many times (I almost know it by heart).
But that said, the Apple of today is very different from the Apple of 2005. In this "just 2 years" timeframe, it has almost doubled its revenues, almost tripled its profit and its market cap has multiplied by 5 (it sucks that I didn't buy Apple stock back then). Few companies (in fact I don't know about any) that have experienced such an incredible growth in such a short period of time haven't turned evil. And if the way Apple has been dealing with the iPhone is any indication, consumers should be very suspicious of Apple's dominance. At least I am.
Comments
Your assessment is correct, but like all flavors of UNIX, it's evolved from the base since its inception. The original 10.0 used mostly UNIX systems and utilities, but since then Apple has evolved the Darwin core. So, for example, Apple no longer uses UNIX mail, chron, and has never used the UNIX file system.
I think the biggest improvements aren't to the actual Darwin core, nor to the GUI. Apple has improved the experience beyond that, writing powerful libraries and optimizations into their programming language, Objective-C. Core data, core animation, webkit, quicktime, etc... all allow you to write software for the Macintosh platform that looks great, runs fast, and is stable.
Additionally, the new version of OS X server offers its own departures. It's really the first version of server that does significant things that you couldn't do on your normal mac. Previously, they were both using the same UNIX libraries, and server offered a GUI for the management and metrics (and trimmed away some of the frill). It's now capable of offering collaboration services out to other macs and macintosh applications. Just a small offering now - wikiserver, podcast producer, and iCal server - but I'd look for more of this in the future if it's successful. And, of course, all these libraries are accessible to app programmers, and as such, they can be integrated into your applications.
So, I think you're right to insist that OS X is basically a UNIX derivative, but that your friend is also right to point out that you're getting a lot more out of it than just it's UNIX core and GUI. Although if what you're saying is true, he may not truly appreciate what exactly Apple has done for him.
This is the type of stuff I am interested in knowing, as a matter of fact. HFS+ vs standard UNIX's HFS (although other UNIX-es also have their own FS's, HP-UX's vxfs = Veritas FS for instance is more than 10 years old, although for sometime the file system of the kernel could be only HFS not VxFS), etc.
And as I pointed out earlier, its UNIX roots offers new interesting market opportunities for Apple in the enterprise space. RedHat and Sun should be seriously worried if Apple tried to make a dent at their expense.
Cheers!
This is the type of stuff I am interested in knowing, as a matter of fact. HFS+ vs standard UNIX's HFS (although other UNIX-es also have their own FS's, HP-UX's vxfs = Veritas FS for instance is more than 10 years old, although for sometime the file system of the kernel could be only HFS not VxFS), etc.
And as I pointed out earlier, its UNIX roots offers new interesting market opportunities for Apple in the enterprise space. RedHat and Sun should be seriously worried if Apple tried to make a dent at their expense.
Cheers!
Correction: UNIX UFS. HFS has forever been an Apple Filesystem technology.
ZFS compliant filesystem with Mac OS X sprinkles to extend it will be clearly show it's spots in upcoming releases.
I think I have been very clear for those who were willing to listen.
As a system that is essentially a UNIX + GUI, there are plenty of positive things that I see in Mac OS X. All the other fancy stuff, although I acknowledge they might be useful for some people, it's unlikely to be of use to me since it's the UNIX +GUI aspects that I care about.
Put it in another way: if Mac OS X didn't have a UNIX core/roots (say it had a Windows NT kernel as was suggested by somebody) but it still had all the UI fancy stuff, it would be a no brainer to me: no way I am going to switch to Mac OS X: I wouldn't care about the fancy stuff and I'd be happy with the Windows UI bacause it allows me to do all I need to do and it runs on way cheaper HW. Is prescisely because it's UNIX, that I have second thoughts. And that's the genune question that I had at the begining. My friend was convinced that the UNIX roots of Mac OS X is a very tiny aspect of Mac OS X. Well, I said, if Mac OS X isn't ~ UNIX + GUI, then what is it? From listening to people, it seems clear that Mac OS X's UNIX roots is 90% of what makes Mac OS X a good OS (all the other features that people have been talking about, wouldn't run as nice in a non-UNIX kernel, you might even amuse yourself painting the Desktop when the kernel was unable to effectively handle multi CPU / multi threaded processes, as it is possible to do with Windows). It might all end up being a "question of taste". Some people wouldn't give a damn for the internals of the OS in order to have the most tasteful/nicest GUI/UI while others, like me, don't give a damn for a nice GUI/UI if the internals are crappy. It turns out that Mac OS X, in my view, seems to be a great OS not because of its fancy GUI but because its UNIX internals.
Which takes me to
This aspect seems to be ignored by most Apple followers, but it's an important one. From the Apple website, a basic 13 inch, 1GB RAM, 80 GB disk, 2.0 GHz dual proc Mac has a base value of $1099. The more or less equivalent config from HP (it has 14 inch screen and a 120 GB instead) costs $874 at HP. That's $225 less (and you even get a slightly larger screen and a larger hard disk). If you begin to add other stuff (like more memory/harddisk and applications), the price difference keeps increasing. Say the final price difference is $400 or even more for higher end models (larger screens, etc). For Silicon Valley engineers (who belong to the economic elite of the planet) that might not be a lot of money, but for other people it is. At the end of the day, the average consumer doesn't have any vested interest in making Apple rich vs making MS rich (or vice versa) but in addressing his computer needs. A cheap HW running MS software seems to be doing the job for most people. And the argument, pay me $400 more and you'll get a way fancier GUI doesn't seem to resonate much among the average consumer.
And finally,
Yes, I have learned a lot too. I am way more prepared now to argue my UNIX + GUI point than I was before the thread started.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
Take CoreData as an example: it's roots come from Enterprise Object Frameworks (EOF) but much simpler, yet at a sweet spot of capabilities to address most of the current developer needs. Whether Apple decides to role out a new EOF that covers the gaps is to still to be seen.
CoreImage and CoreAudio were logical expectations of previously private frameworks which after addressing, again, most current developer needs it was unleashed to the developer community on OS X.
The CoreAnimation aides in working with OpenGL, etc.
This approach is being added to GNUstep for those who want a Cocoa solution in Linux and other *nix platforms.
KDE 4 is doing similar approaches with Phonon, Solid, Plasma, etc.
OS X is Unix with a GUI. So what's the reason to get an Mac and not just use a Linux box for all your UNIX based computing?
Unlike every flavor of Linux I've tried (including ubuntu and all the other ones made easy to use), OS X has the distinct advantage of doing all its GUI-based actions in a very very easy and reliable way. You can basically be assured that, if you want to write some code, compile it, then print the code out over a networked printer, it's MUCH easier and more importantly FASTER to do that with OS X than linux. Sure, you can set up a printer with some CUPS knowledge and commandline chops, but i think that the time you'd save with all those repetitive tasks that are faster in GUI is worth OS X over Linux.
So, in summary, I think you should try a Mac for UNIX stuff because it does unix stuff great, but also does a lot of the GUI stuff easier than linux.
PS: It's also, honestly, fun to do a lot of stuff on macs that isn't very fun on linux/windows, and fun never hurts
Hope that helps!
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
Yours have been among the most instructive postings in this whole thread.
....
OS X is Unix with a GUI. So what's the reason to get an Mac and not just use a Linux box for all your UNIX based computing?
.....
So, in summary, I think you should try a Mac for UNIX stuff because it does unix stuff great, but also does a lot of the GUI stuff easier than linux.
PS: It's also, honestly, fun to do a lot of stuff on macs that isn't very fun on linux/windows, and fun never hurts
Hope that helps!
Why didn't I get this type of answers at the very begining of the thread? We could have avoided all the hair splitting that went on in between.
Best to all of you!
Correction: UNIX UFS. HFS has forever been an Apple Filesystem technology.
ZFS compliant filesystem with Mac OS X sprinkles to extend it will be clearly show it's spots in upcoming releases.
Sorry! HP-UX had its own derivative of UFS also called HFS (and most of my dealings with commercial UNIX was with HP's!),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_Performance_FileSystem
http://www.osdata.com/system/logical/logical.htm
"hfs: HP-UX’s Hi Performance FileSystem; native in older versions of HP-UXe20; “HFS has been the native file system since the mid 80s.”e42; operating systems that can handle hfs: HP-UX (NRWF) (NOTE: This is the second hfs that appears in the chart)"
That's where the confusion came from
Cheers!
Why didn't I get this type of answers at the very begining of the thread? We could have avoided all the hair splitting that went on in between.
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
For you that OSX is Unix + GUI is a mantra. The Unix aspects are competent but nothing particularly special from a user perspective. Well, a little bit with scripting and Spotlight.
I'd reduce your assessment of 90% being UNIX to 70% and it's the 30% that was oddly argued which NeXT built into and on top of UNIX which makes OS X such a compelling environment for developing rich applications on the client and server.
I don't think its a compelling advantage to switch even for a developer. From an enterprise, rich client perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform. Likewise I consider .NET to be equal to Apple's Core capabilities overall (some areas better, some areas worse).
That said, I did switch from Linux for all of my unix development simply because the environment IS nicer and for back end development (LAMP) there's little disadvantage other than Apple is slow with Java updates.
For folks that go straight to the command line because every other UNIX UI has sucked and won't consider the UI as a useful advantage for them there is no practical advantage of OSX over BSD or Linux from a user perspective. You see little of the Core capabilities. From a developer perspective, J2EE or LAMP are typically the Unix target environments.
For him, Solaris is the platform of choice. Superior unix capabilities better than OSX or Linux (VFS, threading, etc), commodity PC hardware (limited choices but many Dell or HP machines should work) and free. The GUI is pretty bog standard for a unix these days but he keeps saying he doesn't care about ease of use, GUI, user experience or any of the OSX specific software (iLife, iWork, etc).
He doesn't want what anyone (nearly everyone) else wants in a Unix DESKTOP. Namely a GUI and user experience that is superior to that of XP/Vista/KDE/Gnome with world class user applications. No other unix or unix-like OS provides that (IMO of course).
As a plain unix, ignoring UI, IMO Solaris is best of breed. Done, go switch to solaris and enjoy.
... HP-UX had its own derivative of UFS also called HFS (and most of my dealings with commercial UNIX was with HP's!),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_Performance_FileSystem
http://www.osdata.com/system/logical/logical.htm ...
Curious. You give links that state without equivocation that HFS (Heirarchial File System) is an Apple file system which was developed by our favorite fruit company in 1985.
Your links also clearly show that HP's file system is hfs (Hi Performance FileSystem).
hfs ≠ HFS
Because UNIX is case-sensitive, there is no confusion. As a UNIX expert, you should know that.
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
For you that OSX is Unix + GUI is a mantra. The Unix aspects are competent but nothing particularly special from a user perspective. Well, a little bit with scripting and Spotlight.
I don't think its a compelling advantage to switch even for a developer. From an enterprise, rich client perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform. Likewise I consider .NET to be equal to Apple's Core capabilities overall (some areas better, some areas worse).
That said, I did switch from Linux for all of my unix development simply because the environment IS nicer and for back end development (LAMP) there's little disadvantage other than Apple is slow with Java updates.
For folks that go straight to the command line because every other UNIX UI has sucked and won't consider the UI as a useful advantage for them there is no practical advantage of OSX over BSD or Linux from a user perspective. You see little of the Core capabilities. From a developer perspective, J2EE or LAMP are typically the Unix target environments.
For him, Solaris is the platform of choice. Superior unix capabilities better than OSX or Linux (VFS, threading, etc), commodity PC hardware (limited choices but many Dell or HP machines should work) and free. The GUI is pretty bog standard for a unix these days but he keeps saying he doesn't care about ease of use, GUI, user experience or any of the OSX specific software (iLife, iWork, etc).
He doesn't want what anyone (nearly everyone) else wants in a Unix DESKTOP. Namely a GUI and user experience that is superior to that of XP/Vista/KDE/Gnome with world class user applications. No other unix or unix-like OS provides that (IMO of course).
As a plain unix, ignoring UI, IMO Solaris is best of breed. Done, go switch to solaris and enjoy.
From an enterprise, rich server perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform.
I fixed it for you.
LAMP is the environment for Linux folks working with Blogs, Web Services and dynamically driven content that do not need to scale on levels remotely close to J2EE. However, LAMP doesn't require one to have the in-depth knowledge of Java to meet the general consumer markets.
J2EE at the enterprise server/web services market is still king. And that is due to third parties like JBoss and especially IBM who made huge investements in its use.
Neither is a superior solution to what once was the market leader (WebObjects 2.x - 4.x) which until they switched to Java was constantly being knocked for not being Java [since the industry seemed to have such a hard-on, at the time, similar to C++ on traditional client/server applications space (3-tier) and just couldn't be bothered to learn a second language], yet somehow after they switched other languages stepped in.
Apple has learned a valuable lesson: Screw the market when it comes to dictating which language rules them all. Focus on what language and frameworks gives you the edge and incorporate other languages that work in conjunction without compromising your vision [Ruby, Python].
In the end: To remain viable and be able to develop with some of the most advanced technologies it's wise to be well-versed in Linux and OS X. Depending on what areas you plan on writing solutions you have to know which platformm best serves both your short-term and long-term needs in business and solutions; and plan accordingly.
The compelling reason for OS X beyond Linux doesn't start and end with being the most seemless UNIX + GUI operating system currently in existence. It extends to the capabilities that the rich client APIs of ObjC2.0/Cocoa frameworks offer in conjunction with their ability to be extended through Ruby and Python cross-platform.
Curious. You give links that state without equivocation that HFS (Heirarchial File System) is an Apple file system which was developed by our favorite fruit company in 1985.
Your links also clearly show that HP's file system is hfs (Hi Performance FileSystem).
hfs ≠ HFS
Because UNIX is case-sensitive, there is no confusion. As a UNIX expert, you should know that.
Well, from my own posting,
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_Performance_FileSystem
http://www.osdata.com/system/logical/logical.htm
"hfs: HP-UX’s Hi Performance FileSystem; native in older versions of HP-UXe20; “HFS has been the native file system since the mid 80s.”e42; operating systems that can handle hfs: HP-UX (NRWF) (NOTE: This is the second hfs that appears in the chart)""
At HP, we referred to HP's proprietary FS by hfs or HFS without distinction. HP today still refers to it as hfs/HFS in its technical doc:
http://docs.hp.com/en/B3921-60631/ne...reg_R1002_USEN
newfs recognizes the following options:
-F hfs
Specify the HFS file system type.
As to who copied whom with respect to the name, I don't care. And apparently neither do HP or Apple because I haven't seen any copyright/priority lawsuit filed by either company.
Because you started out combative AND you already knew that OSX has a superior UI to any other unix (or unix like os) on the market. So stating that the UI is the distinct advantage that you repeatedly claim you don't care about isn't useful right?
As I have stated I don't know how many times already, this whole thing started after a friend of mine offered to lend me one of his extra Mac's for testing for 1 month or so. I told him, well, that's great, from my experience of using Macs with OS X at Stanford's clusters, it seems like Mac OS X is a UNIX + GUI with a very nice UI, probably the best GUI among UNIX+GUI OS-es. When I made that remark, my friend hit the ceiling because according to him Mac OS X was an OS of its own whose relationship with UNIX was minimal. So I set myself to figure out the truth and that's why I posted this thread.
Please keep the dialog going because I am learning a lot!
As I have stated I don't know how many times already, this whole thing started after a friend of mine offered to lend me one of his extra Mac's for testing for 1 month or so.
For which you absolutely needed to characterize it as him being a "mac preacher searching for converts" where you "don't see anything in Mac OS X that I cannot get from either Windows or Linux" but would like to stay "completely away from religious OS wars" despite the previous inflammatory statements. Mkay.
When I made that remark, my friend hit the ceiling because according to him Mac OS X was an OS of its own whose relationship with UNIX was minimal. So I set myself to figure out the truth and that's why I posted this thread.
A single google on OSX and Unix would have been sufficient to prove your friend wrong. The very first hit is Apple's site that describes that Leopard achieved UNIX 03 certification.
From an enterprise, rich server perspective I would say that Java is the superior platform.
I fixed it for you.
And on the client side you have Java Web Start and Applets (ugh) for client side deployment and updates for high end rich clients that work across the enterprise whether it be Windows, Linux and sometimes Mac (if you still with a slightly older Java anyway).
LAMP is the environment for Linux folks working with Blogs, Web Services and dynamically driven content that do not need to scale on levels remotely close to J2EE. However, LAMP doesn't require one to have the in-depth knowledge of Java to meet the general consumer markets.
Sorry if I implied any Java requirements for LAMP. I'm just saying at the user facing enterprise level LAMP + Ajax is the thin client stack often used.
Apple has learned a valuable lesson: Screw the market when it comes to dictating which language rules them all. Focus on what language and frameworks gives you the edge and incorporate other languages that work in conjunction without compromising your vision [Ruby, Python].
Apple has never really compromised on ObjectiveC being the core language of the OS. The superiority of ObjectiveC vs C++ really wasn't worth the hassle of a new langage especially since automatic memory management existed in Java. Had ObjectiveC had automatic memory management like in 2.0 it might have made more an impact when language wars were the thing to argue about in technology.
The compelling reason for OS X beyond Linux doesn't start and end with being the most seemless UNIX + GUI operating system currently in existence. It extends to the capabilities that the rich client APIs of ObjC2.0/Cocoa frameworks offer in conjunction with their ability to be extended through Ruby and Python cross-platform.
If you "extend it" "cross-plateform" you don't get the rich client APIs of Cocoa. Which are awesome if you're developing for the Mac platform but not too useful anywhere else. This is why Java is the enterprise CLIENT platform of choice when you have a heterogeneous environment. If you're purely windows you go .NET. If you're purely mac you go Cocoa. If you're purely linux you go Qt or GTK+.
More enterprise devs are stuck with multiple platforms when its not just windows so you go either Web based applications using Ajax, Flash, whatever followed by Java.
OpenDoc? Get real. This strategy of OOP Reuse is Purely Openstep 5.0. And when Apple finally provides a proper Services interaction it once had under NeXTSTEP/Openstep then we'll see how much these separate frameworks and applications can benefit each other.
Do you think they will?
I'm not so sure. They seem to be cutting off the vestigial tails left over from NeXT or spending a long time screwing about in the meantime with old Mac apps that should have been shot many years ago (iTunes, I'm looking at you).
For which you absolutely needed to characterize it as him being a "mac preacher searching for converts" where you "don't see anything in Mac OS X that I cannot get from either Windows or Linux" but would like to stay "completely away from religious OS wars" despite the previous inflammatory statements. Mkay.
First of all, I always referred to him as "mac preacher searching for converts" in an affectionate manner. He knows that (and if he is reading this, I assure him that I never meant to be disrespecful). One of the creators of the Mac religion seems to agree that there is a strong parallel between the feelings that many Mac users have towards their machines and religious feeling,
http://www.applematters.com/index.ph...i_talks_apple/
You more or less invented the notion of the Mac evangelist, why do you think Apple users have such zeal? After all, there aren’t too many Dell sites out there.
Because people see their Macintoshes as an extension of themselves. Macintoshes increase their owner�s productivity and creativity. They are not merely appliances. You don’t see many web sites for washing machines either.
Is Apple a religion?
In the sense that you’re asking, yes it is. In the bigger picture of true religions (salvation, etc), it isn’t.
And for those who are not members of the Mac religion (like myself), the way Mac zealots talk about their computers makes us suspicious. I was just interested in the technical reality of Mac OS X.
In fact, this is an important aspect where those of us who were passionate about the Amiga computer during the its heyday and Mac zealots of all time differ. Ours (the Amiga) was truly several years ahead of its competition in the technical aspects (micro-kernel, preemtive multitasking, custom chips for music, graphics, animation and IO, DMA access). It didn't appeal to us, at least not to me, because its UI was fancier, which wasn't, or had nicer gadgets, which didn't since most Amiga extension HW was intended to make it even more powerful with 16 million color cards; acceleration cards 680X0 and so on, but because it was a technology breakthrough in home computer architecture that was matched only several years after by the PC and the Mac. The Amiga passion was never about faith or religious attachment but about technology which was both years ahead of its time and affordable for the average consumer.
Hadn't it been because of the incompetent management at Commodore (and I say this to you after researching extensively on the matter), the home computer market might have been quite different today. Even Apple was so impressed (and fearful) that it hired some members of the original Amiga team to work in the Mac.
Fortunately, these days there is a reborn interest in telling the history of the personal computer the way it happened, not the way the winners (MS/PC manufacturers/Apple) have been telling it since the mid nineties. Ars Technica is publishing a series of articles on the Amiga. Its last one says,
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...re-years.ars/4
Reactions to the show
While the crowd attending the show went away extremely impressed with what they had seen, the reaction from the rest of the world was mixed. Articles about the demo were published in magazines such as Popular Computing, Fortune, Byte, and Compute. The Fortune article both praised and dismissed the Amiga at the same time: "While initial reviews praised the technical capabilities of the Amiga, a shell-shocked PC industry has learned to resist the seductive glitter of advanced technology for its own sake."
Think about that last line for a few moments. Can any computer user today honestly say that color, animation, multichannel sound, and multitasking are merely seductive glitter that exists only for its own sake? Like Doug Engelbart's revolutionary demonstration of the first mouse-driven graphical user interface back in 1968, many of the ideas shown in the Amiga unveiling were a little too far ahead of their time, at least for some people.
Nevertheless, Commodore had some great buzz leading up to the introduction of the Amiga 1000. The machine had great hardware and software. It had features that no other computer could even hope to emulate. Freelance writer Louis Wallace described it thusly: "To give you an idea of its capabilities, imagine taking all that is good about the Macintosh, combine it with the power of the IBM PC-AT, improve it, and then cut the price by 75 percent." This last part was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much: the final price of the Amiga 1000 was set at $1,295 for the 256KB version and $1,495 for the 512KB one. This compared favorably to the Macintosh, which had only 128KB and sold for $2,495.
Commodore looked like it had everything going for it. The new Amiga computer was years ahead of the competition,
......
Unbeknownst to him, however, larger forces were at work that would turn these dreams into nightmares.
Anybody who whitnessed the first "Shadow of the Beast" when it first came out in 1989 clearly understood that no home computer of its time could match such display of graphics, animation and sound in a hardware which was essentially from 1985, with minor changes done in 1987.
NOTE: For those who didn't this is your opportunity; if you were around in 1989 and can remember the state of home computing at the time you'll be able to appreciate what I am talking about,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipWqOwkceg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHU2guYH7Og
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isyjVTQWUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2b5VoCl2fw
And no, this is not some dedicated console/gaming machine. The Amiga had its own suite of business software (even WordPerfect ran on Amiga). It could be used both as a great gaming machine (which in full honesty that's what most Amiga users had it for) and a home/business computer with multimedia capabilities. All that long before the word multimedia was coined in the context of home computing. It's no exaggeration to claim that the Amiga launched the whole Desktop Video thing in the same way the Mac launched Desktop Publishing.
To hear such religious fervor on today's Mac users about a machine which is to a large degree built on a 30 year old OS (with its own implementation of course), which runs on standard industry HW and which has a multimedia architecture that has been the industry standard for ~ 15 years (and which in many ways was pioneered by the Amiga back in the mid eighties) made me very curious about what the hell were they seeing in Mac OS X, other than the very nice UI, that I wasn't seeing.
A single google on OSX and Unix would have been sufficient to prove your friend wrong. The very first hit is Apple's site that describes that Leopard achieved UNIX 03 certification.
Believe me, it didn't work and that's one of the reasons why I started this thread.
The more or less equivalent config from HP (it has 14 inch screen and a 120 GB instead) costs $874 at HP
Please post a link to this config. I will show you why the HP is less expensive.
First of all, I always referred to him as "mac preacher searching for converts" in an affectionate manner. He knows that (and if he is reading this, I assure him that I never meant to be disrespecful). One of the creators of the Mac religion seems to agree that there is a strong parallel between the feelings that many Mac users have towards their machines and religious feeling,
http://www.applematters.com/index.ph...i_talks_apple/
And for those who are not members of the Mac religion (like myself), the way Mac zealots talk about their computers makes us suspicious. I was just interested in the technical reality of Mac OS X.
In fact, this is an important aspect where those of us who were passionate about the Amiga computer during the its heyday and Mac zealots of all time differ. Ours (the Amiga) was truly several years ahead of its competition in the technical aspects (micro-kernel, preemtive multitasking, custom chips for music, graphics, animation and IO, DMA access). It didn't appeal to us, at least not to me, because its UI was fancier, which wasn't, or had nicer gadgets, which didn't since most Amiga extension HW was intended to make it even more powerful with 16 million color cards; acceleration cards 680X0 and so on, but because it was a technology breakthrough in home computer architecture that was matched only several years after by the PC and the Mac. The Amiga passion was never about faith or religious attachment but about technology which was both years ahead of its time and affordable for the average consumer.
Hadn't it been because of the incompetent management at Commodore (and I say this to you after researching extensively on the matter), the home computer market might have been quite different today. Even Apple was so impressed (and fearful) that it hired some members of the original Amiga team to work in the Mac.
Fortunately, these days there is a reborn interest in telling the history of the personal computer the way it happened, not the way the winners (MS/PC manufacturers/Apple) have been telling it since the mid nineties. Ars Technica is publishing a series of articles on the Amiga. Its last one says,
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...re-years.ars/4
Anybody who whitnessed the first "Shadow of the Beast" when it first came out in 1989 clearly understood that no home computer of its time could match such display of graphics, animation and sound in a hardware which was essentially from 1985, with minor changes done in 1987.
NOTE: For those who didn't this is your opportunity; if you were around in 1989 and can remember the state of home computing at the time you'll be able to appreciate what I am talking about,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipWqOwkceg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHU2guYH7Og
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isyjVTQWUg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2b5VoCl2fw
And no, this is not some dedicated console/gaming machine. The Amiga had its own suite of business software (even WordPerfect ran on Amiga). It could be used both as a great gaming machine (which in full honesty that's what most Amiga users had it for) and a home/business computer with multimedia capabilities. All that long before the word multimedia was coined in the context of home computing. It's no exaggeration to claim that the Amiga launched the whole Desktop Video thing in the same way the Mac launched Desktop Publishing.
To hear such religious fervor on today's Mac users about a machine which is to a large degree built on a 30 year old OS (with its own implementation of course), which runs on standard industry HW and which has a multimedia architecture that has been the industry standard for ~ 15 years (and which in many ways was pioneered by the Amiga back in the mid eighties) made me very curious about what the hell were they seeing in Mac OS X, other than the very nice UI, that I wasn't seeing.
Believe me, it didn't work and that's one of the reasons why I started this thread.
Let's be clear on the comments regarding 30 year old OS. The point of leveraging theories and implementations tried and true with a rich proven history of testing is to give this as the foundation for any rational approach to building an operating system.
If I were to apply [as what Bill Joy wishes would happen] a level of Engineering that is found in Mechanical Engineering one would find solace in knowing a system was verified by sound science and any additions to this "core" would be the area of Art and Science, ultimately being refined once again to another module of Science.
The innovations even in this 30 year history of UNIX officially 36 years and counting if we ignore the work done in the 60s] aren't at a state of immutable laws of engineering. They are still an Art. Certain tools like lookupd, dtrace and other low-level utilitarian tools only make a UNIX core more solid and able to withstand the instability introduced through revision after revision every operating system endures on the road to maturation.
The abstraction knows as the GUI is the single most recent innovation that allows Human Interaction to reach much deeper levels of immediate change.
We will continue to expand upon the levels of Human Factors as we become more symbiotic with man and machine. The fact is there is still mountains of advancement that still has gone undeveloped at the base level and the GUI levels we currently have in common use.
Amiga was ahead of the game and did some amazing stuff. NeXTSTEP moved the bar forward again and was easily a decade ahead of it's time.
What makes Steve and Apple so effective is in his learned recognition from past mistakes that solvency lies in moving the bar beyond the immediate reaches of consumers, but not too far as to turn something practical into something seemingly fantastical.
The yearly vision updates we see in a "maturing" OS is much more acceptable to buyers than the every three or four year "evolutionary" OS.
People like change in small doses.
14.1"/120 GB/1 GB
Add:
Windows 64-bit
Norton Antivirus
A/B/G/N networking (free upgrade)
CPU to 2.0 gHz
$1,104.98
Apple Macbook
13.3"/120 GB/1 GB/2.0 gHz
Add: nothing
Extras: DVI-out, gig E,
$1,174.00
Thickness:
Macbook: 1.08"
HP: not stated
Weight:
Macbook: 5.0 pounds
HP: not stated
Add the cost of the equivalent (if any) of the iLife suite and you have it. Yes, the screen is 0.8" bigger in diagonal, but the resolution is the same.
I can't find the specs on thickness and weight, but if it is like all the other comparisons I have done, the HP will be thicker and heavier.
Let's be clear on the comments regarding 30 year old OS. The point of leveraging theories and implementations tried and true with a rich proven history of testing is to give this as the foundation for any rational approach to building an operating system.
............
The innovations even in this 30 year history of UNIX officially 36 years and counting if we ignore the work done in the 60s] aren't at a state of immutable laws of engineering. They are still an Art. Certain tools like lookupd, dtrace and other low-level utilitarian tools only make a UNIX core more solid and able to withstand the instability introduced through revision after revision every operating system endures on the road to maturation.
I agree. The reference to the 30 years was in no way demeaning. And in fact, is one of the great things that makes Mac OS X good.
Amiga was ahead of the game and did some amazing stuff. NeXTSTEP moved the bar forward again and was easily a decade ahead of it's time.
I remember reading about NeXT during the late eighties. Wikipedia says that the first release of NeXTSTEP is from 1989. My first contact with a UNIX workstation was in 1995, an HP 700 running HP-UX 9.X. Unfortunately, I never got to use a NeXT workstation, although the screenshot that wikipedia shows (it seems from 1995, v 3.3) is indeed very impressive. If it was like that right from release 1.0 (assuming of course all the other things we have been talking about the system stability because of its UNIX roots, etc were present), it was a very deep innovation.
What makes Steve and Apple so effective is in his learned recognition from past mistakes that solvency lies in moving the bar beyond the immediate reaches of consumers, but not too far as to turn something practical into something seemingly fantastical.
Yep! And that the guy (Jobs) has an incredible ability to turn technology into useful products. A concept, product, that seems to be forgotten in these days of web 2.0 and web-service talking. Except for his lack of contributions to charity (which I don't know if he does in private, although when he was explicitly asked about it earlier during the year during his co-interview with Gates he kind of hinted that philanthropy is not one of his priorities), I have deep respect for Jobs. And that he was able to rise so high from such humble origins is simply astonishing.
Anyway, I am still unable to relate to the Mac religion. It doesn't turn me on.
Maybe the way you describe is better for Apple, but for geeks like me the feeling of owning an A500 during the late eighties (and I assume that the same can be said for those who were able to afford a NeXT WS in 1989 or 1990) doesn't match the feeling of owning an iPhone today, despite the fact that the iPhone is, in my view, the most "ahead of its time" product that Apple has in the market at this time. Let alone the the thing of owning a Mac OS X computer vs owning its equivalent running Windows XP or Vista.
Cheers!
HP dv2700t series Notebook
14.1"/120 GB/1 GB
Add:
Windows 64-bit
Norton Antivirus
A/B/G/N networking (free upgrade)
CPU to 2.0 gHz
$1,104.98
Apple Macbook
13.3"/120 GB/1 GB/2.0 gHz
Add: nothing
Extras: DVI-out, gig E,
$1,174.00
Thickness:
Macbook: 1.08"
HP: not stated
Weight:
Macbook: 5.0 pounds
HP: not stated
Add the cost of the equivalent (if any) of the iLife suite and you have it. Yes, the screen is 0.8" bigger in diagonal, but the resolution is the same.
I can't find the specs on thickness and weight, but if it is like all the other comparisons I have done, the HP will be thicker and heavier.
Two things,
Yeah! this is the one, but I didn't include the 64 bit version of Windows (which is an extra) nor the antivirus (which is also an extra). Without those two, you get 874.99.
I have to make several comments to your comparison:
- First the fact that you can get an even cheaper Notebook if you are willing to accept a thicker PC like the Compaq Presario C700T series, is not bad per se. Just because Apple doesn't offer that option, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be welcome by those who want to spend the minimum money possible for given CPU/GHz/RAM/HD specs. Which is one of the reasons why competition is good. You want to go the premium way, great, pick the low end Mac or the HP dv2700t. You want to go cheap, then Apple doesn't give you a choice, today you can look elsewhere. In a world dominated by Apple, you couldn't.
- Second, the fact that you included the antivirus. I would strongly recommend it but I would not put it included in the price for a fair comparison. Thanks to its UNIX roots, Mac OS X is less exposed to the type of virus/malware that affects Windows. However, DUE to its UNIX roots, Mac OS X has security issues of its own, like security exploits/holes that would allow an expert hacker to gain root control of the machine. One of my best friends at HP left the company and became a freelance security consultant (SANS certified). His expertise is in Windows and UNIX systems, a domain where he's mostly worked with HP-UX and Linux. When he was given a Mac running Mac OS X recently this summer to test his ability with UNIX systems with which he wasn't familiar (in fact it was the first time he used one), he was able to get root access in ~ 2 hours based on his knowledge of Linux/UNIX exploits / security holes (which BTW shows that certain source code of certain UNIX commands in Mac OS X is even the same as in other UNIX-es). Does this mean that you would need to include the services of a security consultant in the price of your Mac, just in case, for fair comparison purposes? I don't think so.
- Third 32 bit Vista vs 64 bit Leopard. I don't think it's fair. Again, just because Apple doesn't give you a cheap version of Leopard to chose from, it doesn't mean that every single desktop consumer will need a 64 bit OS.
The first and the third issue underscore the need of having competition in both HW and SW. If Apple was willing to sell Mac OS X on non Apple HW, the game would be very interesting. Until then, I am very suspicious of Apple's intentions.
Best!
Yep! And that the guy (Jobs) has an incredible ability to turn technology into useful products. A concept, product, that seems to be forgotten in these days of web 2.0 and web-service talking. Except for his lack of contributions to charity (which I don't know if he does in private, although when he was explicitly asked about it earlier during the year during his co-interview with Gates he kind of hinted that philanthropy is not one of his priorities), I have deep respect for Jobs. And that he was able to rise so high from such humble origins is simply astonishing.
I want to elaborate a bit more about this because it might seem from the heated exchange that I have something personal against Jobs and Apple. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I have been living in the Valley since December 2000. It wasn't until 2005 that I learned more about him in the most unexpected way. Of course I had heard his name here and there, specially in this Valley where so many people love him (truth to be told, many hate him too) but Steve Jobs is not as known by the general public as Gates (though thanks to Apple's impressive performance since early 2000, especially after 2005 with the introduction of iPod/iTunes for Windows and the 2007 introduction of the iPhone things are beginning to change). In June 2005, I was sitting at home on a Sunday morning pondering whether it was worth to get dressed to go and see this Steve something who was giving the commencement speech at Stanford, where I had just completed my first year of the PhD in EE program. It seemed a lot of people where making a great deal that this guy was going to give the speech, so I ended up going. It cost me sending to the trashcan a pair of trousers (because I seated at the very back of the stadium under some trees in order to have some protection from the sun, I ended up seating on top of some resin that was falling from the tree: bye bye trousers). It was one of the best decisions of my life as student
But that said, the Apple of today is very different from the Apple of 2005. In this "just 2 years" timeframe, it has almost doubled its revenues, almost tripled its profit and its market cap has multiplied by 5 (it sucks that I didn't buy Apple stock back then). Few companies (in fact I don't know about any) that have experienced such an incredible growth in such a short period of time haven't turned evil. And if the way Apple has been dealing with the iPhone is any indication, consumers should be very suspicious of Apple's dominance. At least I am.
Cheers!