Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Wed 11th Jun 2003 21:39 UTC
Apple Computer is being sued by The Open Group, the San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system without a license. Apple has countersued, asking a judge to declare that the trademark is invalid, because the term Unix has become generic. This legal battle, though separate from SCO's recent claim that Linux uses copyrighted Unix source code, adds further fire to the debate over the custody of Unix--the 30 plus-year old OS originally developed by AT&T.
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It's hard to create a new OS that differs dramatically from what's in the field today simply because of the net effect running against it.
BeOS was the most recent struggle for this, it had novel features, etc. but still failed.
All of the features of the OS are represented through applications, so applications will drive the OS.
Also, many people today are "computer literate", which a really meaningless term. They're actually Windows/Mac/Unix literate. Throw a "computer literate" person in front of a Lisp Machine and they'll just flatline and glaze over.
But in order for a machine going to market, it needs to leverage that "computer literacy" in order to become productive quickly.
One place where this was less important in the past was the blossoming PDA market. There you were able to explain the device. "It's a address book, calendar, note pad thing".
Nobody today sells a "Web browsing, word and digital image processing, MP3 playing" machine. That's why people buy them, but that's now they're sold, or described, or documented (although to be fair, Apple is coming close to this in their marketing and product structure).
Look at the novelty of the system underlying the Apple Newton. Pretty cool crafty system. Easy for 3rd parties to integrate into etc. None of this infrastructure was disclosed to users, rather they simply described "here's the notepad, address book, and calendar".
The infrastructure is a boon to developers, but not end users. Windows has all sorts of neeto things, and few programs take advantage of all of them because the developers chose not to expose that functionality.
There's no reason someone couldn't write an office suite with all of the things that Mike mentioned. All the stuff Jef Raskin (The Humane Interface) talks about can be emplaced today with little direct OS support, but obviously it's a lot of work for the developers, and it doesn't integrate with other applications on the same OS.
So, get the application designers to start charting new ground (and watch them get pummeled by pundits etc). Unix is a reasonable foundation for all sorts of abstractions. Windows gets pushed forward by the MS application guys. "Let's get this into the OS, so we can all use it better." Remember, MS is an Applications company, not an OS company. Always has been.