What has X really given us?
I was wondering what other people's views are now that X is the default OS and has been out for a while. Personally I am not happy with it. The most praise I can give it is simply "OK". Unfortunately "OK" is usually not good enough for Mac users.here are my pros and cons:
The Good:
Pre-emptive Multitasking
Protected Memory
Quartz
Aqua
Maya is released
The Bad:
Sluggishness that destroys and performance advantage a mac might have over windows
Aqua - some aspects of aqua are really painful to look at
CLI - why? after several decades has no one managed to come up with anything better?
File Extenders
Kernel Panics - for many even seasoned mac users the thought is WTF?
Lack of carbon apps - after all this time we are still lacking some native apps. For me the main prob is director. Under 9 director would crash now and again. However under classic its a dog. So upping to X has simply made my working experience worse not better.
Lack of drivers - especially scanners
A loss of feeling in control - as opposed to 9
Mastering your mac now requires some UNIX.
Quartz - does it really have to have so many deficiencies especially font smoothing.
Maya - god, its demanding on the system
At a time when windows is going hell for leather to GUI everything the Mac OS now requires you to CLI. Even in mac magazines I have seen relative newcomers write in to the help desk with a problem and the solution written to them in the article tells them to go to the root and use some arcane UNix commands.
X has been out for a long time now and the arguments that it still new etc don't cut it. If XP had been in this state we would have ridiculed it. Clearly developing for X is no where near as easy as Apple has made out.
Finally, why are there no apps being developed which have powerful features that are truly mac only? I mean if X is multithreaded and multitasking then why can't you open 5 filters in PS7 at the same time and manupulate their settings live before acccepting rather than one aftre the other? X may be knew but Unix isn't. And if we gained the pwer of a mature OS then there must be thousands of Unix programmers with decades of experience. Why are they not thinking "hey, finally a true Unix GUI OS. Now I can finally write that thing I was always dreaming of being able to do" ?
Can it be, god forbid, that X offers no potential advantages over XP? I mean if I was a developer and X had some really cool aspects to it, I'd be running to exploit them to try to get the edge on my competitors. Why is this not happening?
In short, can anyone think of anything software dvelopers could do over the next 5 years with X software that windows users could not have?
I'm not a troll. I still depsrately want to believe. I guess I'm just having another crisis of faith - something that is getting alrmingly common recently.
The Good:
Pre-emptive Multitasking
Protected Memory
Quartz
Aqua
Maya is released
The Bad:
Sluggishness that destroys and performance advantage a mac might have over windows
Aqua - some aspects of aqua are really painful to look at
CLI - why? after several decades has no one managed to come up with anything better?
File Extenders
Kernel Panics - for many even seasoned mac users the thought is WTF?
Lack of carbon apps - after all this time we are still lacking some native apps. For me the main prob is director. Under 9 director would crash now and again. However under classic its a dog. So upping to X has simply made my working experience worse not better.
Lack of drivers - especially scanners
A loss of feeling in control - as opposed to 9
Mastering your mac now requires some UNIX.
Quartz - does it really have to have so many deficiencies especially font smoothing.
Maya - god, its demanding on the system
At a time when windows is going hell for leather to GUI everything the Mac OS now requires you to CLI. Even in mac magazines I have seen relative newcomers write in to the help desk with a problem and the solution written to them in the article tells them to go to the root and use some arcane UNix commands.
X has been out for a long time now and the arguments that it still new etc don't cut it. If XP had been in this state we would have ridiculed it. Clearly developing for X is no where near as easy as Apple has made out.
Finally, why are there no apps being developed which have powerful features that are truly mac only? I mean if X is multithreaded and multitasking then why can't you open 5 filters in PS7 at the same time and manupulate their settings live before acccepting rather than one aftre the other? X may be knew but Unix isn't. And if we gained the pwer of a mature OS then there must be thousands of Unix programmers with decades of experience. Why are they not thinking "hey, finally a true Unix GUI OS. Now I can finally write that thing I was always dreaming of being able to do" ?
Can it be, god forbid, that X offers no potential advantages over XP? I mean if I was a developer and X had some really cool aspects to it, I'd be running to exploit them to try to get the edge on my competitors. Why is this not happening?
In short, can anyone think of anything software dvelopers could do over the next 5 years with X software that windows users could not have?
I'm not a troll. I still depsrately want to believe. I guess I'm just having another crisis of faith - something that is getting alrmingly common recently.
Comments
Anyway, what does X offer us? Jeez, man, where to begin.... How about I just point you to fink.sourceforge.net as an example of what we have in store for us. I don't think that we should all run out and install X11 on our computers, but I do see the open-source movement definitely making its way over here. I'm not up to listing at length all the things that OS X is letting me accomplish, surely someone will be.
There are going to be problems at first. That's why the option to run "Classic" is still there. Remember running older apps in "emulation" back when the first PowerPC Macs first came out. Well this is that all over again, in a different form. But it means so much more for the future of the Mac.
[ 04-21-2002: Message edited by: clonenode ]</p>
I would also agree that some things about X are incomplete. Sound in and Sound Out cannot be managed in X. Scheduled start up, wake up, sleep and shut down are not available in the Energy Savings CP. The open and save dialogs still need a lot of work. USB printer sharing is still missing. However, I expect most of these to return this year (just opinion).
What is wrong with OS 9:
system crashes, system crashes, system crashes - 700 for every kernel panic.
memory leaks - using a program for any amount of time and eventuall you'll have to restart.
incompatible extensions - why do I have to go through a long process just to find out what extension is incompatible with what other one? If fact why is third party software making direct calls to the hardware at all?
clicking the mouse down stops the system!!!!
Why do I have to tell each program how much memory it can use?
Lack of UNIX apps. No built in Apache. Hard to do database work locally.
ugly plain jane flat gui
One needs to "master" system extensions, preferences etc. as opposed to OS X which just works (drag and drop software installation, no crashes)
No CLI.
no built in PPOE.
no column view in finder windows.
clicking the mouse down stops the system!!!
there. That was stupid wasn't it.
<strong> X has been out for a long time now and the arguments that it still new etc don't cut it. If XP had been in this state we would have ridiculed it. Clearly developing for X is no where near as easy as Apple has made out. </strong><hr></blockquote>
What are you talking about?!?!
Think of how long they have had to develop systems like 7, 8, and 9. OF COURSE X is still new. Mac OS 9 is based off of 8, no wonder everything that worked with 8 works fine with 9. 8 was based off of 7, no wonder everything that worked with 7 works with 8...and so on and so on. I don't really know about all the really early versions of the Mac OS...but as far as I know...this is the FIRST EVER major reconstruction of the operating system...and in my opinion...it's about freaking time.
OS X is NOT, I repeat...NOT based off of OS 9. Or even 8, 7, or 6 for that matter. NO WONDER THE TRANSITION IS DIFFICULT. But it will be worth it...and it won't be a fast transition by any means. Come back to me when they are done with 11 and 12. I HIGHLY doubt there will be any complaints then...
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
And yes, I agree that OS 9 was no picnic. I just can't see massive improvemenst with X at the mo. We had problems when we had to live with fat binary apps for a while but nothing like we'd had moving to X
But, this caveat notwithstanding, the benefits of OS X can be seen in DW for example. (GoLive too, I assume). Having a built-in webserver and UNIX under the hood is a BOON for webdevelopers everywhere. I could never so easily build, test and deploy database/php driven websites as I can now. The same goes for java and tomcat. On OS 9, DW will still work, but this added bit of functionality is not as readily available (because you can still connect to a remote server running this stuff.)
Another example of OS X's great potential is its standards compliance. Java 2 built in. cc/gcc right there. Just 2 examples off the top of my head.
Now, we get to the benefit of a pure OS X application. Have you ever seen anything with the simplicity and power of a program like Omnigraffle? It's a great app that shows off the beauty of quartz (and aqua) and how easy/useful it is to have pdf rendering in applications. That's another benefit. PDF everywhere. No more futzing around with files that don't look righ across platforms. You've got a presentation that you want printed but don't have a printer on your mac? Don't have powerpoint on your pc? Simple, save it as a pdf and go. You have some handouts to give to a class and want them unchangeable so that you don't have kids messing around with what was said like they can on a webpage? Again, simple.
Now, I'm just thinking about what works for me and it may be different for others. So far, OS X has been nothing but phenomenal in its impact for me and my career. (No exaggeration. I'm doing my dissertation on the internet using programming skills that I never even would have tried without OS X.)
-t
ps - there's nothing like watching a DVD while coding
1. Less than 1 forced restart PER MONTH since last September. That's while using the OS for 6-10 hours a day, running multiple applications (as in 7 or 8 at a time).
2. Apps like Illustrator and Entourage crashing about 1/4 as frequently as they used to. Even with the unpolished state of said apps, they run better under OS X - big dot releases are pending btw, so things will only get better as they year progresses.
3. An OS that is BUILT from the bottom up to take advantage of dual-processor machines (so even if the particular app you're working with isn't built for MP, it will still get its own processor while the second one takes on network duties, iTunes, file ops and the rest).
Try ANY of that with OS 9 or earlier.
Do I need some things to be improved, being how much I use my machine for work? Sure. I'd like a more responsive Finder and some more flexible GUI features (SLF, Labels, etc. etc.). Am I will to trade whatever those things are for items 1 & 2 until they are ready (Jaguar)? You bet. OS X kicks ass as it is; it's going to be absolutely outstanding by summer.
And what some say about Adobe's new apps just being "OS X ports" of earlier versions, is a load of crapola. Take a look at some of the new stuff Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2 do, and tell me those were things we already had with OS 9. Even if they were, it's really almost besides the point. All Apple can do is give developers a powerful set of API's and dev tools to make their products reality. If someone just makes a straight Carbon port, that's not Apple's fault and it's no reflection on OS X either. But so far, I haven't seen one mainstream app that was just a straight port. Even Office, which was perhaps the least "upgraded" of them all, has some really cool OS X only features.
As for the GUI thing, turn on Graphite and there's nothing gaudy about Aqua at all IMO.
[ 04-21-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
Actually, in many ways, I prefer something a little less over the top Aqua 3-D buttons.
Sometimes less is more. And with the performance hit with all these drop shadows, give me something flat but tasteful.
I'm not a Windows user and I've never tried XP, but I must admit, it doesn't look too bad from an aesthetic point of view.
<strong>And what some say about Adobe's new apps just being "OS X ports" of earlier versions, is a load of crapola. Take a look at some of the new stuff Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2 do, and tell me those were things we already had with OS 9. Even if they were, it's really almost besides the point. All Apple can do is give developers a powerful set of API's and dev tools to make their products reality. If someone just makes a straight Carbon port, that's not Apple's fault and it's no reflection on OS X either. But so far, I haven't seen one mainstream app that was just a straight port. Even Office, which was perhaps the least "upgraded" of them all, has some really cool OS X only features.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I hope you weren't referring to my post when you said this. I said that some apps will not leverage OS X's advantages because they need to maintain OS 9 compatibility. I pointed to some Adobe apps as examples. However, I also did point out some of the advantages even these apps have just by virtue of running on OSX. If you weren't referring to my point, never mind
Funny because Illustrator 8 rarely ever crashed in OS9 [a 40 meg .DXF import comes to mind], and even running under Classic is much faster than Illustrator 10. Illustrator has been a steaming pile of poo since version 9.
And as far as the big dot release goes, I will believe it when I see it. Adobe has not released a X.1 update since InDesign 1.5. And that was to only keep Designers and Output Bureaus from marching on San Jose and burning HQ to the ground--the recently released v2.0 was what Adobe promised with v1.0.
GoLive 5, Live Motion 1 and Illustrator 9 stand as testament to Adobe's newfound M$ upgrade strategy.
<strong>I was wondering what other people's views are now that X is the default OS and has been out for a while. Personally I am not happy with it. The most praise I can give it is simply "OK". Unfortunately "OK" is usually not good enough for Mac users.here are my pros and cons:
The Good:
Pre-emptive Multitasking
Protected Memory
Quartz
Aqua
Maya is released
The Bad:
Sluggishness that destroys and performance advantage a mac might have over windows
Aqua - some aspects of aqua are really painful to look at
CLI - why? after several decades has no one managed to come up with anything better?
File Extenders
Kernel Panics - for many even seasoned mac users the thought is WTF?
Lack of carbon apps - after all this time we are still lacking some native apps. For me the main prob is director. Under 9 director would crash now and again. However under classic its a dog. So upping to X has simply made my working experience worse not better.
Lack of drivers - especially scanners
A loss of feeling in control - as opposed to 9
Mastering your mac now requires some UNIX.
Quartz - does it really have to have so many deficiencies especially font smoothing.
Maya - god, its demanding on the system
At a time when windows is going hell for leather to GUI everything the Mac OS now requires you to CLI. Even in mac magazines I have seen relative newcomers write in to the help desk with a problem and the solution written to them in the article tells them to go to the root and use some arcane UNix commands.
X has been out for a long time now and the arguments that it still new etc don't cut it. If XP had been in this state we would have ridiculed it. Clearly developing for X is no where near as easy as Apple has made out.
Finally, why are there no apps being developed which have powerful features that are truly mac only? I mean if X is multithreaded and multitasking then why can't you open 5 filters in PS7 at the same time and manupulate their settings live before acccepting rather than one aftre the other? X may be knew but Unix isn't. And if we gained the pwer of a mature OS then there must be thousands of Unix programmers with decades of experience. Why are they not thinking "hey, finally a true Unix GUI OS. Now I can finally write that thing I was always dreaming of being able to do" ?
In short, can anyone think of anything software dvelopers could do over the next 5 years with X software that windows users could not have?</strong><hr></blockquote>
First, about the CLI. It is a major improvement. You can't really have full control of your operating system unless you're able to get control of everything about it. That's where the CLI comes in. If you don't want to deal with it, fine. You don't have to. But it offers those of us with experience something we've always needed. Before, in order to edit system configuration files, one had to use ResEdit or something and in most cases it wasn't possible. You have far more control on OS X than in previous versions of MacOS.
As for the whole permissions thing, you may be annoyed, but that's a good OS doing its job. There are problems running in kernel mode all of the time as a super user (what OS 9 and previous are). However, I do not have the time and patience to educate some of you whiners as to why this is very, very bad. OS X is built on top of FreeBSD, which is a very solid operating system and one of the more respected unix based operating systems out there.
As for programming, Apple's project builder along with the Carbon and Cocoa APIs give the programmer tools that are unparalleled, especially compared to previous versions of MacOS. If you ever take the time to learn some java or objective C and read a book on Cocoa, you'll see it is very, very easy to create all sorts of applications very quickly. I have talked with many x86 users running BSD based systems, and they're now considering a Mac purchase just so they can make use of Cocoa. As time passes, there will be more developers.
Sit back and take a chill pill in the interim. OS X is a different beast than previous versions of MacOS that you've been using for many years. Getting used to the differences will take time.
cowerd: when I said "big dot release" I didn't mean to infer what the build numbering woulde (I could care less honestly). I meant big as in, GUI anomolies cleaned up, general performance enahnacements, bug fixes, minor feature tweaks, etc. It is pretty well known that both the Illustrator and InDesign teams are working on dot releases. Not sure about GoLive. They obviously messed up bad last time by not releasing one, but there seems to be an expectation by Adobe engineers that many issues have been tracked down and are "being worked on."
Same with Office. You probably already read about that update (which i think we can all agree would qualify as "major"), and it's coming in June...so I think it's hard to be anything but optimistic about running on OS X at this point. All signs point to things getting better and better as they year goes on.
(yes, that was a joke.)
the week after i started using OS X, i wanted to cry and run back to 8.6 (i skipped over 9). sometimes i still feel like that, even though i much prefer X!
but X is an OS still in its infancy, so cut it some slack in the meantime.
<img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
But in general OS 9 sucks EVEN MORE
I just can't stand extension conflicts, mouse click stops the entire system, manual memory allocation, app crashing the entire system, blah blah blah.......under OS 9
If it wasn't OS X I am already a Windows addict
My productivity has boosted over 100% since I have had all my major apps gone native
[ 04-22-2002: Message edited by: Leonis ]</p>