Mac OS X Tiger Slide Show

Eugenia Loli 2004-07-03 macOS 53 Comments

Apple says the client and server versions of Mac OS X “Tiger” sport powerful changes under the hood, but there are also noticeable improvements to the interface. Here’s a slideshow showing some features.

About The Author

Eugenia Loli

Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.

Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli

53 Comments

2004-07-03 6:01 am

Anonymous
Because if he’s seriously pushing for us to just throw things around with no heirarchy then he’s asking for trouble. Try making a backup with that search, or organizing nfs/afs mounts when people don’t use folders…

Besides, things are sorted either way you look at it. By folder heirarchy or by metadata/extension/filename/text/context. He’s simply trying to let the user be sloppy and organize for them, not forgoing organization as he seems to suggest.

But hey, marketing will be marketing.

Even with a powerful app like this it takes a lot of time to be always searching. If it’s really important to have it now you need to know your own organization system. This helps the home user that uses their computer every two days, not the person who actually need to be productive on it. Although powerful search utilities are very good, just not something you want to depend on.
2004-07-03 6:05 am

Anonymous
oh my god, do people not shut up about something or what!!!

Spotlight has been discussed ad nausium in the other thread.

Windows will do this in Longhorn, Google does this with GMail. this is not a bad thing it is a good thing. if you MUST put your files into a strict hierarchy then do it, spotlight will not inhibit you.
2004-07-03 8:20 am

Anonymous
Spotlight isn’t a replacement for organization, but fills the holes organization by folder leaves. There are times when you have documents cleanly organized by project or such, but then how does that deal with the common situation where you need to find files with common elements that have been organized into completely different areas?

There’s plenty of room in computing for meticulous organization and really good searching.
2004-07-03 8:25 am

Anonymous
Can anyone explain the rationale behind Dashboard? As I understand it, you press a function key, and it moves your desktop to the background, and shows you some applets, that have a different interface from regular applications both for programming and interaction. Press another function key, and the applets will be replaced by your desktop again.

All this sounds like a broken implementation of virtual desktops to me. Why, then, don’t they give us true virtual desktops, which would allow normal applications with normal user interfaces (there are already 2 of them 🙁 ) to be foregrounded and backgrounded. They can make the cube spin vertically, too (horizontally being used by fast user switching).

I really don’t see the use of Dashboard. Can I chose not to install it?
2004-07-03 8:50 am

Anonymous
Think of Dashboard as a baby step towards real virtual desktops (which most Mac users would not understand).

Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people. If all of sudden Mac copied UNIX/Linux too much, they’d be lost in the weeds. So Dashboard is an applet-specific virtual desktop… easy to understand and something that will make Apple users think of virtual desktops on their own… in a few years… and they will think they are so clever and Apple is so innovative….
2004-07-03 9:03 am

Anonymous
a) its not virtual desktops (VD) because VDs are by and large used for multiple APPLICATIONS open not applets; dashboard is all about APPLETS, not applications. little buggers that act like applications but are not full fledged applications

b) dashboard does not hide you desktop, just mutes it (by dimming it; the procedure is done to keep all these little applets less cluttered amidst your true applications

c) dashboard works principally more like (google for these):

* konfabulator

* karamba (for kde)

* gdesklets (for gnome)

* desk accessories (for mac system 6)

* stardock’s desktopx (for windows)

d) for more information about dashboard, actually read apple’s take on it at:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html
2004-07-03 9:08 am

Anonymous
P.S.

Here is a open source virtual desktop for mac. If you need it, you got it. Otherwise don’t mess with it.

http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/

P.P.S.

Expose works with the same principle as virtual desktops. Try it out. You might enjoy it. Otherwise, look above.
2004-07-03 10:01 am

Anonymous
David Hyatt of apple webkit and mozilla fame has written up a quick definition of what exactly dashboard’s widgets/applets are in a technical sense and how it is NOT a direct ripoff of konfabulator; in fact, dashboard is much, much more flexible and has the potential to do so much more than what konfabulator’s widgets do

read about it here on his blog:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_07.html#005896

—————————————————————–

really, dashboard has nothing at all to do with virtual desktop or the principle behind a virtual desktop so i don’t understand where your confusion stemmed (neither do i understand goethe’s weird explanation but whatever; the answer to virtual desktop on mac is really expose not dashboard, which as stated above has nothing to do with VDs; whatever. i gave u the link to an opensource implementation of VDs and you can google for more)
2004-07-03 10:09 am

Anonymous
The new integrated RSS reader in Safari looks great:

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/7/0,1311,sz=1&i=…

I wish Firefox had that too, not in Thunderbird or as a lame sidebar but as a full fledged feed:// or rss:// support in the browser proper with slick css styled content. It could probably be created as an extension, I might even try creating something like it myself.
2004-07-03 10:23 am

Anonymous
Yeah, and wsmanager rocks btw.

It’s real virtual desktop, not hidding windows. it beats any other hands down and is a real equivalent to the ones we are used to in linux.

I haven’t found this equivalent in Windows in the standard shell even (that is, without litestep etc)
2004-07-03 11:15 am

Anonymous
In this thread a lot of linux people (I assume) are complaining about Mac being too little unix since it would confuse people to have too much unix, since unix is so extremely advanced and powerful – or that was what I could get.

The real fact is that Mac OS X is Unix.

The other real fact is that Mac OS X is the largest distribution of unix on the market/in use.

And what you can get from this is that the completely-opensource people have failed in providing anything user-friendly enough to beat Mac in this.

You should not see Mac as a competitor, here you should put windows.

And then all of your arguments are kindda overexposed with the fact that you have never actually used a mac.

“Virtual desktops are too complicated for mac-users” – yeah right, exactly how complicated is that concept? It’s close to stupid – buy an extra monitor instead, much more use.
2004-07-03 11:33 am

Anonymous
>c) dashboard works principally more like (google for these):

> * konfabulator

> * karamba (for kde)

> * gdesklets (for gnome)

> * desk accessories (for mac system 6)

> * stardock’s desktopx (for windows)

Indeed. A lot of people have complained about Dashboard being a rip-off of Konfabulator, but I was using Desk Accessories on Macs and Atari STs as far back as 1991, maybe earlier.
2004-07-03 11:42 am

Anonymous
I agree, wsmanager rocks. But it lacks integration with the system, and I hope Apple will deliver something more integrated, working flawlessly with Exposé, cmd-tab, which is not the case at the moment.

Windows has a number of sharewares that give you the functionnality of virtual desktops. And there is the Virtual Desktop Manager made by Microsoft itself, that is free, and allows you to have 2, 3 or 4 desktops, and has one of the best pagers I ever seen (it was a little buggy on my machine, but I’m unlucky with MS. My friends never had a problem).

For MS Virtual Desktop Manager see here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys….
2004-07-03 11:50 am

Anonymous
Mac OX X is not UNIX, it’s UNIX based. Other than that I must agree, I would rather go for two of these new 30″ cinema displays =). I’d probably need to by a new desk though, or even a new apartment.

If OSX was to be released for x86 I would switch in a second.
2004-07-03 12:44 pm

Anonymous
> I was using Desk Accessories on Macs and Atari STs as far

> back as 1991, maybe earlier.

I used them in 1985 on my first Mac. But the main thing with Dashboard isn’t the look of the calculator or if it has been copied from some other group, it is the brilliant Exposé function. To quickly be able to show and hide. I hate tings that intrudes on my desktop space, but you need to be able to use a calculator, an iTunes controller, stickes etc. With Dashboard I can do that and get rid of them when I’m ready calculating, changing music or done writing notes.

If you watch the video from WWDC, you can see that the widgets splashes onto screen with a ripple. And the clock flips smoothly when clicked to let you adjust your settings. Sorry to say this, but neither Windows, nor KDE or Gnome, are even close to that kind of user-experience.

I just love to be able to do my own widgets with HTML, RSS and JS. Power for the rest of us.
2004-07-03 12:49 pm

Anonymous
MacOS X is really the closest thing to what BeOS would have been today if Be had continued developing it. And the interface is starting to get a lot better IMO.

Private browsing (aka porn browsing) is a nice feature. Anyone know if theres a Firefox addon that allows you to do that easily?

I don’t have the money to buy a mac. But I’m happy for the mac users getting something more BeOS-like.

Sad thing is that linux will never be able to touch it, and the BeOS community is way too small to improve the OS that much within a reasonable time.
2004-07-03 1:04 pm

Anonymous
Mac OX X is not UNIX, it’s UNIX based.

This is a load of crap. When will people actually understand the pedigree of Darwin/OSX. Lets start from the beginning and repeat after me:

In the beginning UNICS (1969) begat the UNIX time-sharing sytem (V1),

V1 begat V2 begat V3 begat V4 begat V5 begat V6 (1976),

V6 begat 1BSD (1978),

1BSD begat 2BSD begat 3BSD begat 4BSD (with some dots) and the BSD were happy and people rejoiced.

The 4.2BSD begat Mach (1985) and together in 1988 Mach2.0 and 4.3BSD begat NeXTStep and for years the slab, the cube, and the big monitors illuminated our lives and gave [theUser setSetMuchJoy:YES];,

Eventually, with much gnashing of teeth, OSX Server arose from the ashes of Rhapsody, descending from the glorious OpenStep

On march 16, 1999 Darwin 0.1 sprung from the belly of OSX Server and a few months later OSX DP1 arrived via a convoluted union of Mach/FreeBSD/OSX Server.

So where is the “OS X is no Unix”? Enlighten us, oh virtuous seer of alternate realities.
2004-07-03 1:09 pm

Anonymous
“Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people.”

Yeah, and Linux/Windows users are like car owners who prefer to stick their nose in the motor of the car, fiddling all the time, without ever thinking of driving the car and of course the car comes with a thousand page manual, good luck you smart guy!

Happily, I am dumb enough to choose an OS that just works and delivers quick results. (Like it is supposed to do!)
2004-07-03 1:10 pm

Anonymous
“Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people. If all of sudden Mac copied UNIX/Linux too much, they’d be lost in the weeds.”

what the fuck?! Are you some sort of elitist pig?

I think Expose is actually much nicer than virtual desktops. The problem with virtual desktops is that users might forget which desktop had window/app XYZ running. Expose doesn’t have that problem. Mac users aren’t dumb at all. Certainly some are, but generally, probably not.
2004-07-03 1:34 pm

Anonymous
i don’t think he’s trying to make users like us be sloppy but there are a lot of users out there who don’t sort their different files into different folders. these kind of users who double click on attachments from people they don’t know, you know most people that have computers don’t have a clue how to use them. i think this searching feature will be used rather heavily by these people
2004-07-03 2:08 pm

Anonymous
roddog, to be a UNIX it needs to be licensed as such. OSX, *BSD and Linux are not UNIX in that sense. They are UNIX-like. End of story.

Goethe:

“Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people. If all of sudden Mac copied UNIX/Linux too much, they’d be lost in the weeds.”

Copy Linux? Are you serious? You think virtual desktops is a Linux thing?
2004-07-03 3:00 pm

Anonymous
> i think they cant claim to be a UNIX because they havent bought

> an SCO UNIX licence also that i dont think BSD contains any

> actual UNIX code its all Unix-Like code i think, i mayb wrong

> and thats why they claim to be UNIX based rather than a UNIX.

SCO has nothing to do with this, since BSD is “clean”.

The only problem is that Apple refuses to pay $110.000 in fees to http://www.unix.org/ The Open Group to become a “real” Unix.

I think Apple told them to sod off, since MacOS X now is the major Unix OS on the market. So The Open Grop http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1015814.html sued Apple.

So, yes, MacOS X is Unix. And, no, it is not approved by The Open Group.
2004-07-03 3:24 pm

Anonymous
Whether or not some entity pays some fee, it is still Unix, in the sense that my pure bred labrador and my mutt labrador are still both good hunting dogs. They both react the same, they both respond to the same commands and they both eat and crap identical materials.
2004-07-03 3:35 pm

Anonymous
Mac OS X is NOT UNIX. It is UNIX-like. FreeBSD, is UNIX-like…

Beneath the easy-to-use interface and rich graphics of Mac OS X is Darwin, an open source UNIX-based foundation built on technologies such as FreeBSD, Mach, Apache, and GCC. Darwin provides a complete UNIX environment, with X11 and POSIX services comparable to Linux or FreeBSD, including familiar kernel, libraries, networking and command-line utilities.

2004-07-03 3:37 pm

Anonymous
For me, the most important aspect of Dashboard is that it is built arround web standard tools, so you have not to learn a new API nor a new language.

Even if I dislike the “all in one layer” aspect of gadgets (dashboards applets’ name in the documntation) it will be easier to make a personal-fitted resource. Even if you have to learn HTML, CSS , JavaScriptt… it will serve you in all the other areas of the web… the next platform. (¿next? ¿NeXT? ¿Jobs has done it before?

I would like a free environment (a la Konfabulator), so I can keep some gadgets in the desktop always and take in/out the others. But I also would like to see a “group/folder/hierachical” dock so I can have one icon for all my web-creating-applications that, when “magnifyed” expand upwards (I have the dock in the bottom) so I can pick the one I like.

2004-07-03 3:39 pm

Anonymous
OSX Tiger actually looks like it has a very clean and friendly GUI. Currently I’m using SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional mainly due to Linux use in production studios, my software such as Maya Unlimited runs on it, games, security and it’s TCO. My feelings toward Apple are looking better since I heard Alias will soon release Maya Unlimited to OSX and Transgaming is intending to port their Cedega (formally WineX) to OSX. I would most likely switch if Apple would only change their view on supporting x86 platforms and offer DCC graphics cards such as FireGL and Quadro FX. For now though I’m happy with SuSE Linux. I have a lot of tools that can be found in OSX as well configure the GUI with SuperKaramba to look exactly like OSX if I want to.

2004-07-03 4:24 pm

Anonymous
Because if he’s seriously pushing for us to just throw things around with no heirarchy then he’s asking for trouble. Try making a backup with that search, or organizing nfs/afs mounts when people don’t use folders…

Besides, things are sorted either way you look at it. By folder heirarchy or by metadata/extension/filename/text/context. He’s simply trying to let the user be sloppy and organize for them, not forgoing organization as he seems to suggest.

I can’t disagree more.

Decades ago when hard drives were within the buying reach of typical computer users, most of us had very few files. The amount of objects were small enough to organize and store hierarchically, keep mental map in our heads of those hierarchies. (“I have a C: drive that contains a finances directory, a jokes directory, and a games directory. That’s all.”)

Fast forward to today: I just counted the non-system related files in my home directory, and there are almost 25,000. That includes pictures, diagrams, notes, illustrations, page layouts, designs, articles, and all kinds of other visual documents. That’s not counting source files and applications, and the other ~25,000 on my work computer. That’s probably an average number, and will only increase (I bet exponentially) as more and more digital objects are created.

The biggest problem with hierarchically organizing all those objects is it takes a much larger mental map. I’m sure some university psychology research has quantified this, but let’s say the average person can’t organize hierarchies more than 5 deep. That wouldn’t be enough to keep track of 25,000 files.

The other problem with hierarchy organization is in grouping common items into non-related hierarchy tree branches. This is best illustrated with an example: I have a folder of pictures, in there I have pictures of people I know, pictures of my house, and pictures of my cars. Where do I put a picture of my wife standing in front of her car in the driveway?

Sure symbolic links could help this by creating an alias of the picture in each of the 3 folders, but if you take symbolic linking to an extreme, you end up with a non-hierarchical grouping system. In other words, instead of a file being contained by n nested folders, the file is now grouped by a certain criteria (“it is a picture”, “it involves my wife”, “it involves my cars”, “it involves my house”). And that’s the alternative to hierarchies: grouping by data and meta-data.

As a decade-and-a-half-long unix fanatic, I can’t dismiss filesystem hierarchies all together. At the OS level it’s essential to unix and to system administrative tasks. Apple is not trying to flatten the entire filesystem (although that would be an interesting leap for the next evolutionary step in filesystems provided there was an elegant querying language). They’re leaving the structure of the OS filesystem as-is, and allowing user files to be stored wherever they want.

As for system administration tasks such as backing up, hierarchies don’t necessary guarantee accurate task completion. Let’s say you’re the admin for a publishing company, and you set up a system to regularly back up everyone’s ~/Pictures, ~/Projects, and ~/Library/Mail folders. Eventually you’ll get the user that either accidentally or purposefully saves a document to their desktop, to /, or some other directory. In order for that system to work, it would require discipline on the user’s part to make sure they store files where they should.

The alternative in the grouping world is to create a search criteria that says “All files belonging to the user that are marked as Active Projects, Pictures, and Mail” then backing up the results. Sure similar user-error problems could happen in grouping systems as they would with hierarchy misuse. The user could forget to add the “Current Projects” keyword to their InDesign document for example. The big difference is if the user relies on these grouping searches for their primary file access, they would quickly realize their error and could correct it when they opened up their “My Current Projects” smart folder and their document wasn’t there. (How would he or she find that document? Easy — search for all InDesign documents reverse sorted by create time.)

By far even grouping isn’t perfect, and isn’t the only alternative. Countless hours of corporate, government and academic research has been poured into alternatives. But user-specified grouping at this juncture seems to make perfect sense, and personally is a wish come true.

2004-07-03 5:36 pm

Anonymous
Jon i could not agree more with you. The other thing to bear in mind is that where the information is physically stored should be irrelevant.

As a user I want to retrieve quickly and easily my information period. In the same way should I care where the information I seek is stored in a web site I search?

What Spotlight is trying to do is not trivial, but it gives the user incredible flexibility on how its information is virtually organised through Smart folders. Think of Smart Folders as ad-hoc constantly updated stored search. For example, I am working on a certain project involving text, sound, video and still images. This project is about my vacation in Florida in July of 2004. The Smart Folder will automatically keep track of all those files for me using the criterion mentioned above. Exactly as if I created a folder specifically for this project.

So where is the gain? Suppose you are sharing some of these files for an other project of yours, in which “traditional” folder would you keep those files?

What is important is not the physical location of the file but its logical location. In other words, you want to retrieve the information relating to your project quickly without worrying about where it is.

Furthermore, once you are done with the project you can delete the Smart Folder without deleting the files (unless you want to of course).

This gives enormous flexibility to the user.

2004-07-03 5:37 pm

Anonymous
I like the way Apple develops its OS. Small incremental upgrades every year compare that to MS’s policy of only once every 4 years. Apple is much faster to react to new developments.

However I do understand that a lot of businesses that use Windows on a desktop/workstation don’t want too upgrade every year. But for home users it should be cool, if they could keep the upgrade below $50 (as PC people are poorer then Apple people .

Another nice thing would that Apple and MS would allow their developers to do some pet projects like Google allows. Maybe then you can have a lot of useful (unsupported) utilities made by the people that know the OS inside out. I’m thinking of something like the power toys suite for WinXP.

2004-07-03 5:39 pm

Anonymous
“So, yes, MacOS X is Unix. And, no, it is not approved by The Open Group.”

…hum no. It is a BSD derivative, hence they can not claim it to be unix. On top of that it really is its own pseudo micro-kernel with a BSDish interface thrown in, ala NeXTStep. Plus it adds a lot of the NeXTisms esp. at the interface and FS level, not that that is a bad thing.

Think of it as: It almost looks like a duck, it almost quacks like a duck…. but it is not a duck. Even if one of the parents was a duck….

As long as it is POSIX and the GNU kit compiles who cares if it is a real Unix or not. Same goes for Linux

2004-07-03 5:41 pm

Anonymous
<aloud class=”in the direction of SCO”>Mac OX X is not UNIX, it’s UNIX based.

; )

2004-07-03 5:48 pm

Anonymous
You must be a packrat. You must be one of those people who buys CD shelves and organizes your collection by artist then by year. I, on the other hand, have CDs scattered randomly around the house. Yet, I can find a given piece of music as easily as you — just connect to my MP3 server (which has all it’s music in one big directory!) and load the song I want.

Because if he’s seriously pushing for us to just throw things around with no heirarchy then he’s asking for trouble. Try making a backup with that search, or organizing nfs/afs mounts when people don’t use folders…

Besides, things are sorted either way you look at it. By folder heirarchy or by metadata/extension/filename/text/context. He’s simply trying to let the user be sloppy and organize for them, not forgoing organization as he seems to suggest.

But hey, marketing will be marketing.

This helps the home user that uses their computer every two days, not the person who actually need to be productive on it.

BS. Search utilities are there because you need to be productive. Nobody (unless you’re a secretary) gets paid to organize files. When you have a lot of data, it’s much cheaper to use a search-based interface than waste time and money organizing files manually. I pointed out in the previous thread that our current project has many gigabytes of files authored by more than a dozen people. It’s not cost-effective to waste time to organize that. We also exchange dozens of e-mails a day. I’d be stupid to put all of those in categorized folders, instead of just using the search dialog in KMail. I don’t get paid to do that!

2004-07-03 6:03 pm

Anonymous
I totally agree with you Rayiner. if Hierarchies were useful in all situations then we would not need Relationl Databases.

2004-07-03 6:20 pm

Anonymous
Oh, I forgot one more example. Several years ago, I workedat a company that facillitated cooperation between big non-profits. They had an enormous amount of data to manage (reports, recommendations, etc) from literally hundreds of different sources. It’d take a full-time staff to keep that organized and perform searches for people interested in certain information. Even then, documents that people might want to see together (eg: a report on tuberculosis cases in Uganda and a paper on best-practices in preventing tuberculosis) might be in very different places in the hierarchy. To manage this complexity, they invested in a knowledge management framework, which basically takes large stores of documents, and indexes them for quick retrieval via a search interface.

2004-07-03 6:32 pm

Anonymous
I think some posting here are missing the point. It will be usefull. You can still organize your files in a heirarchy but to find something; this especially if done as advertised will make me very productive. Anyone that’s ran an IT department will know you have to have a hierachy on a server or of the files on your personal workstation, but to be able to search that fast and find some that is sometime 5 and 10 folders down the row; this could be huge for me in my organization!

2004-07-03 6:59 pm

Anonymous
I think, beyond what Nicolas says, there is one thing all this nested vs. chaotic babel. No matter what you do, it is hierarchial, everyone starts at ~/ It is a default heirarchy.

I, as a scientist, see the searching of the contents of pdf files (i.e. journal articles I’ve downloaded and have scattered across my $HOME), as worth the cost of the upgrade itself. Until now, I’ve been using perl to manually turn pdf->html, parsing it for keywords, saving in MySQL. The new searching is marvelous.

2004-07-03 7:00 pm

Anonymous
Dashboard is an awesome implimentation, it works awesome in Motion. Dashboard really helps instead of having floating pallets in the way. Dashboard disapears. I heard the same lame comments about Expose’ when it came out and now there are winteller copy-cats.

2004-07-03 7:06 pm

Anonymous
However I do understand that a lot of businesses that use Windows on a desktop/workstation don’t want too upgrade every year.

Well, the thing is that they don’t have to upgrade once a year unless they really need the new features (and in that case it would be worth the money).

People seem to think that they always need the newest version available, that newer automatically makes it better. Well, most people here know that it’s not always the case.

Most people doesn’t switch cars for each new model they put out, why would it be any different with computer software?

2004-07-03 7:27 pm

Anonymous
For all the people who think dashboard is supposed tobe a virtual desktop, watch the keynote. You can se thats its for quick tasks that you shouldnt have to open apps for. Need to quickly add something to respond to an email? hit F12 and do it than hti it again and your back to the mail. Need to quickly check the weather before going out? Need to check up on a stock? These re things that only need to be looked at for a few seconds, and shoudln’t require opening a webpage, or an extra app, just one key. That is what dashboard is all about.

2004-07-03 10:58 pm

Anonymous
“Think of Dashboard as a baby step towards real virtual desktops (which most Mac users would not understand).

Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people. If all of sudden Mac copied UNIX/Linux too much, they’d be lost in the weeds.”

I was going to offer a rebuttal as to why I think you missed the clue train regarding Dashboard and why it is nothing like virtual desktops, but reasoned discourse with a close-minded person like you is a complete waste of my time. So I’ll just restate the obvious: you’re an arrogant, patronizing prick.

Now go fuck yourself, flatworm.

2004-07-03 11:17 pm

Anonymous
i keep hearing this and i don’t know why people keep repeating the same sentence when the answer is the same…

“if apple supported x86, i would buy it up in a second”

no, they are NEVER going to support x86, its just not going to happen. apple’s bread and butter is in hardware, not software, and they are not about to throw that billion-dollar business for some million-dollar business.

truth-be-told, there is no money to be made in software. microsoft knows this, redhat knows this; everyone knows this (except pseudo-tech geeks who misunderstand economic factors). everyone sells services to digest selling software. apple has been there selling just software. nextstep has been there just selling software. beos has been there just selling software. all ideas resulted in failure. and pray tell who really wants to go against the juggernaut microsoft?

frankly, no you would not buy apple software if it just sold x86; there will be a new complaint, a new something to hold complain about (maybe its not free enough, whatever)

the summary: its not gonna happen. so stop wasting prayers and hopes on it. there’s so many other things that they can be used on.

2004-07-04 12:55 am

Anonymous
Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people

I switched because I felt I was more productive in MacOS (9 for me) than on Windows. Plus, Mac makes everything accessible, where Windows prefers to throw the user through Wizards. If anything, MacOS is designed for ease-of-use, Windows is designed for dumb people.

2004-07-04 3:18 am

Anonymous
You can sure tell when someone has lost the argument. All good sense flies out the window and they resort to gutter language. Please wise up. Arguments are settled with words in well crafted sentences and are lost when one resorts to babbling in gutter language. Please, learn and grow u?.

2004-07-04 4:47 am

Anonymous
Now what argument would that be Ronald? Goethe didn’t offer one; he merely took it on himself to gratuitously insult Mac users without explaining his assertion. I’m more than willing to listen to any reasoned argument and enter a discussion, no matter what the point of view, but by engaging as he did Goethe showed himself to be a close-minded, arrogant, patronizing jerk. He’s already made up his mind; I’m not going to waste my time trying to change it, and I deliberately resorted to the language I used to express my extreme displeasure with him. What are you, the language police?

2004-07-04 5:10 am

Anonymous
I use MacOS X, and am grateful that it introduced me to the wonderful world of Unix-like operating systems, and I am keenly interested in discussing with others their experiences with, and learning about, their preferred OS, be it Windows, Linux, OS X, BeOS, whatever. I am not some blind frothing Mac fanboy who thinks that the Mac is the greatest thing since the wheel, and I have no use for those who do. But I am also heartily sick and tired of people who pass judgement on others’ preferences and spew gratuitous insults at them, especially when it is patently clear that they have zero idea what they’re talking about.

I am here because I think that there are many here who can offer insights into things about which I am profoundly ignorant and about which I wish to learn, and I am grateful when one or more of them takes the time to answer an honest question. Goethe did not ask a question, and he was needlessly offensive and judgemental from the outset. In my opinion he violated the sense of community I usually feel when I read the comments. If I offended your sensibilities I apologize, but don’t expect me to apologize to Goethe.

2004-07-04 5:13 am

Anonymous
Apple supports Shake on Linux which is for the x86 platform. They also port iTunes and Quicktime to Windows, not just OSX. How difficult can it be to port the rest of their applications such as FCP to Linux on x86? The simple answer is it’s not difficult and Apple would rather force consumers to only use their hardware so they can keep control over the end user. If the CEO Steve Jobs isn’t capable of seeing an increased profit margin available to Apple by porting the rest of their software to the x86 platform then the board should elect another CEO. I believe a change of leadership would be good for Apple so as to widen it’s use in the global market.

2004-07-04 5:50 am

Anonymous
I can’t believe that people are still flogging this deceased equine. Apple makes its money on hardware, not software. The only reason iTunes was ported to Windows was to enable the vast majority of computer users to access the iTMS. Why? To sell iPods. Apple is a profitable company no matter which way you slice it, and I continue to be baffled that tech companies that don’t dominate are somehow considered failures. Clearly the board is happy with Jobs’ performance as CEO.

2004-07-04 12:27 pm

Anonymous
Hope they give credit, at least, to the Konfabulator gang for the “Widget” idea. Most likely not? Hopefully the widgets will look better by release time. I also hope Konfabulator doesn’t got the way of Watson.

2004-07-04 2:15 pm

Anonymous
I think the widgets look fine. if you bothered to look at he keynote on the QuickTime site you would have seen how nicely it uses Expose to bring them in and take them out…. and even the cool ripple effect like on water when a new widget is called from the dashboard. Oh, and no, the apps do not need to be open from what I saw.

2004-07-05 3:44 am

Anonymous
and the BeOS community is way too small to improve the OS that much within a reasonable time.

oh ok, boys wrap it up rain has pronouced BeOS dead.

2004-07-05 10:21 am

Anonymous
(which most Mac users would not understand).

Thank you. I love flowers…

And what does that tell us about the usability of the virtual desktop concept?

Keep in mind Mac is designed for dumb people.

(which is a good thing). And since no other OS does that (especially not Unix/Linux), the conclusion must be, that other OSes are designed by dumb people or what?

(I actually fail to see why such troll postings are not removed at once from this list, since the forum rules state:

1. No gratuitous use of profanity, biting sarcasm, or personal disparagement, especially directed at individuals.

)

2004-07-06 2:16 am

Anonymous
Microsoft supports WIndows Media Player on Mac OS X which is for the PowerPC platform. They also port Microsoft Office and MSN Messenger to Mac OS X, not just Windows. How difficult can it be to port the rest of their applications such as Windows to PowerPC? The simple answer is it’s not difficult and Microsoft would rather force consumers to only use x86 so they can keep control over the end user. If the CEO Steve Ballmer isn’t capable of seeing an increased profit margin available to Microsoft by porting the rest of their software to the PowerPC platform then the board should elect another CEO. I believe a change of leadership would be good for Microsoft so as to widen it’s use in the global market.

(If you don’t get the post, scroll up to read Dark_Knight’s post)

2004-07-06 6:41 am

Anonymous
Apple called interface elements widgets long, long before Konfabulator was a gleam in the developer’s eye. In fact, the whole idea looks very much like the original desk accessories from 1984 (the Mac 128K). There’s no need for Apple to give credit to anyone.