Let me make it clear. I’m not a fan of Apple. I think that their products are overhyped, overpriced and underperforming. If you’re looking for a fair unbiased opinion, you’re looking in the wrong place. You’ve been warned. So, I was at Steve Jobs’ 2004 WWDC keynote yesterday, attempting to take pictures for OSNews (an amazingly hard task, by the way, which really explained why people pay big bucks for big lenses equipped with image stabilizers). UPDATE: Stop reading right there, I have rewritten & updated the article here.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
Not much to say about the Airport Express (nice little appliance, well thought, well executed, I found it funny that Steve Jobs would use the words “iTunes” and “lossless compression” in the same sentence). Not much to say about the iPod BMW connection (it’s ironic that iPod and iDrive don’t work together, and even though it’s unrelated the gray plastic bumper of the X3 looks cheap and out-of-place on a BMW). Not much to say about to 30-inch monitor (“wow”), nor about its price (“damn”).
Now, about some of the actual features of Tiger:
-Data syncing. Nice, maybe, but every single app needs to do some work, and I’m ready to bet that at least some of them won’t (who wants to bet that my default JPEG settings in Photoshop won’t migrate over). That’s also a domain where interoperability with the PC world would be crucially important but seems to be sorely missing.
-64 bit support. Nice for those who have G5s, maybe. For those of us stuck with ancient machines (the G4 kind, which Apple still sells today on their web site) there doesn’t seem to be any enhancement, and no indication that Photoshop CS will be able to use more than about 40% of the RAM on my 2GB dual G4).
-Dashboard. A plain, simple and blatant ripoff of Konfabulator. The kind that makes you think that software patents aren’t a bad thing after all. The kind that makes Steve Jobs look like a fool when the big banners for Tiger read “Redmond: start your photocopiers”. Shame on you, Apple, this kind of behavior really doesn’t make me want to give you any of my money, if all you do with it is drive your own developers out of business. That being said the way the accessories slide in view over the existing apps is probably nicer than having them on the desktop.
-Safari RSS. Not overly impressed. I’ve worked on RSS as part of my day job, and honestly what Apple did is really not a big deal. If they don’t improve the way they make RSS pages look (they currently all look the same), they’ll
have missed a big opportunity to really innovate. I’d much rather have learnt that they fixed some of the rendering bugs that Safari has, or that they did a better job at integrating PDF (actually, there’s absolutely no integration at all in 10.3, so anything will be better), or that they improved direct navigation to images, or many other things where Safari has a lot of margin for improvement.
-Automator. Once again not really impressed. That reminded me a lot of the Khoros image processing system which I used in college almost a decade ago, except that the Khoros system allowed for non-linear processing chains. Also not really impressed by how basic the UI was when entering parameters. There seemed to be no way to enter parameters in advance (a script that takes a while
to run can’t be left to run unattended if it needs parameters in the middle of its execution, and no way to specify that a given parameter would be used in
multiple places in the script.
-Spotlight. In 1997, as a Be developer, I got my hands on BeOS “Advanced Access” (also known as developer release 9). I wasn’t a Be engineer yet at the time. It was the first release that featured Dominic’s bfs filesystem instead of Benoit’s ofs filesystem. bfs was a major step forward from ofs, but not a revolution. It was natural evolution. Spotlight is an evolution of a similar
magnitude, which attempts to solve pretty much the same problem with a slightly different approach. Seeing Finder create complex queries gave me the illusion for a moment that BeOS’ Tracker had been ported to MacOS.
-Core Image. Discussing the issue with other engineers who are more familiar with the image-processing capabilities of current graphics cards, it very much sounds like Core Image isn’t gonna cut it for serious image processing
(support for floating-point pixel formats as source or destination of pixel shaders seems to pretty much not exist, which is a veyr big issue if the processing chain contains in the middle a filter that can’t or isn’t
implemented by Core Image, like a plain Median Cut noise-removal filter). I’m really curious to know how well Core Image will deal with very large images. Epson’s rumored $500 F3200 scanner is able to output images that
weigh 180 megapixels (4×5) or that are 21000 pixels long (6×17). With IEEE 754 pixel formats we’re talking about 2GB per image, the kind of size that only the most carefully written software will handle (Photoshop barely manages). We’re talking about file sizes that are unusual, but not exotic yet (exotic is a 30GB 8000dpi drum scan of an 8×10 sheet of film, and overkill is a 130GB 12000 dpi drum scan of a 9×18 sheet, typically cropped from 12×20), and I wouldn’t bet too much on Core Image until I can be sure that it has the ability to scale to such sizes. Core Video sounds like it has a lot more potential, as speed is a definite issue there, and the expected SNR and pixel
sizes that are expected in video are well within what I expect a GPU to be able to handle.
Then there was the usual reality-distortion field surrounding many things that Apple says, as usual. A few examples:
-Steve Jobs claimed that Apple’s LCDs are a reference in image processing, and that other manufacturers use panels that Apple rejects. I’ll start with only two words about image processing: “Sony Artisan”. If you really want two more words I’ll add “Lacie Electronblue”. As for the quality of the panels that Apple uses, I’m officially inviting Steve Jobs to my place so that he can compare himself the quality of the screen on my IBM thinkpad and on Eugenia’s Powerbook.
-Steve Jobs claimed that the only OS transition ever to happen in the PC world was that in 1995 when going from DOS with Windows 95. Sorry buddy, but the transition from Windows 3.1/95/98/ME to Windows NT/2000/XP was at least as big. Or maybe I’d actually say that the PC world is unique in that it is able to maintain such a level of compatibility that no sharp transition is needed. The
latest Windows is still able to run many 10-year-old applications. Most recent PCs can still run 10-year old DOS 6.22. By comparison compatibility in the Mac
world is a total disaster.
-Steve Jobs was quick to mention that there hadn’t been any major release of Windows since Windows XP (I really wonder what that “Windows 2003 server” thing was). Ignoring the case of the expensive server OS, he forgot to compare the cost of continuing to run the latest version of Windows and the latest version of MacOS on a PC and on a Mac both bought in 2001.
When I interview a candidate whose resume lists tons of different competencies, I very much like to pick one which I am familiar with and ask a few advanced questions, the kind that can only be answered with some real knowledge and/or experience in the domain. When I get an unsatisfactory answer, all I can assume is that the knowledge of the candidate in the other domains is going
to be as shallow. Similarly when I listen to Steve Jobs’ glorified sales pitch, I recognize a few areas where I have some level of competency, and my knowledge
in those areas makes me realize that MacOS isn’t the perfect operating system that Apple would like me to believe.
In summary, I don’t think that MacOS 10.4 is worth my $129 (or my $199 since I have multiple Macs, assuming that they maintain their policy about upgrade pricing). In my experience each upgrade on MacOS X comes with a lot of pain, lots of broken compatibility with at least some of the drivers and accessories that I can’t live without on MacOS, and I’m getting to the point where my Mac experience is stuck between a rock (continuing to use 10.3 and all its problems) and a hard place (upgrading to 10.4 and deal with all the new bugs and incompatibilities).
As a footnote, here are a few of my gripes with MacOS X:
-I find the hardware support to be very poor. 10.3 doesn’t have any kind of decent out-of-the-box support for my good Keytronic USB keyboard (it swaps some of the modifier keys), for my good Logitech USB mouse (it makes it
several times slower than it is supposed to be). Finder doesn’t burn to my external Sony firewire DVD-R. I can’t print a full-page letter picture if I tell the OS that I’m printing on letter paper and I have to pretend that I
have legal paper, which then causes quite some headaches when trying to center prints.
-serious glitches in the window management. Exposé get very seriously confused when used while some modal windows are on screen, e.g. while scanning with an Epson 3200 photo scanner from within Photoshop. Maximizing the driver window of the Minolta Dual IV while inside Photoshop renders it almost unusable if you don’t know some of the advanced keyboard modifiers that allow to interact with the window manager). I’ll add that some apps (like the aforementioned driver for the Epson 3200 scanner) have some serious graphical glitches.
-memory limitations in applications. Even though my dual G4 has 2GB of RAM, which Photoshop can perfectly detect, Photoshop doesn’t manage to use more than about 900MB of RAM. The rest of the RAM mostly sits there, unused (several hundred MB are unused, which is especially annoying when Photoshop is struggling with the hard drive to try to apply filters to 500MB images).
-poor multi-user support. Fast user switching is only available when displaying the user name in the menu bar (try to create a user named “Jean-Baptiste Quéru” and to enable fast user switching while using Photoshop CS on a 1280-pixel-wide screen and you’ll see what I mean). Also many applications don’t work well (or at all) when you’re not the primary user of the machine, and many applications can’t be installed at all if yo’re not the primary user, while other applications cannot be installed to be available to all users at the same time even when installed to the primary user.
-non-intuitive installs, and non-existent uninstalls. I’ve installed several instances of software that wouldn’t install automatically and needed some files to be moved around by hand. I’ve seen instances of software where an
upgrade to a newer version would not replace the older version but would actually live side-by-side, with no visual indication about which version was the newer one. There’s no uninstaller worth mentioning that can clean up after your /Library, /System or your personal ~/Library for certain apps.
-non-existent keyboard shortcuts. I really dislike how there doesn’t seem to be any way to dismiss certain alerts with the keyboard, or how there doesn’t seem to be a standard way to access with the keyboard menu items that don’t have a shortcut. I got really annoyed when I found no way to move a window with the keyboard (which would be quite handy when a window ends up in a spot where you can’t access its title bar with the mouse, e.g. underneath the Photoshop toolbar).
At the moment, MacOS irritates me so much that I don’t even want to use it any more, which means that I’m not really doing any photography. If Apple doesn’t solve those issues with Tiger (or if they do but create many new ones on the way) I have the feeling that I’ll go back to using my trusted old PC. It might be noisy and slow, but it just works much better for me. Your mileage may vary.
Oh, one last note. Before someone tells me that some of the problems I have come from application writers and not from Apple, let me tell you that I’ve walked the very same arrogant path when I was at Be, claiming that it was
possible to write clean applications for BeOS. As long as the OS makes it easier to write misbehaving code than to write well-working code, something is wrong with the OS itself and the blame cannot be passed on to the application
developers. Even worse, it doesn’t matter which API is the cleanest, which programming language is the most advanced, or any of those abstract qualities. If a small OS (in terms of market share) like MacOS has API that doesn’t look
like what most developers are used to, something is wrong (again) with the OS itself.
About the Author
JBQ is a software engineer who used to work on BeOS in a previous life. He uses Windows XP and Mac OS X (no, he doesn’t use BeOS), and one of his hobbies is photography, which involves a lot of work in the digital darkroom.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
thats why apple themselves will not trot out any performance benchmarks for the g4. the cpu in 75% of all macs sold. they can only promote the g5.
thats why apple themselves (jobs) have openly discussed gui performance issues and how first jag and than panther were to solve all of it. its way better, but the gui is still slow.
as an experienced mac user and avid online member of many mac related tech sites, i can read reams of data by other mac users complaining about the same issues.
Anonymous….doing a good job trolling. Anyway, this thing has definitely degenrated and in the meantime JBQ got his Photoshop to access the the gobs of memory that he needed.
The only thing about the GUI that is still slow in OS X is windows resizing. Hopefully that will be fixed with CoreImage /Video or whatever it is called. Everything else is just as speedy as Windows.
Why would Apple trot the performace of the G4 even if it is in 75% of the machines sold. Do Dell, HP, IBM, or anybody else trot the processors of their low-end, mid-range computers which are the vast majority of their computers sold. It’s not like those machines are running AMD64’s or anything. A lot are running Celerons. Get a clue!!!
I read this article earlier today.
I wasn’t upset by the fact that someone who claims to use OS X isn’t happy with it. There’s always room for improvement, and objective criticism is fair and healthy. It wasn’t encouraging though that the author states bias against Apple right up front.
But still, you have invested in expensive third party hardware that isn’t well supported by it’s manufacturer on Mac OS X. I can understand the disappointment. But to say Apple has to fix that situation? The fact that you recognize at the end of your article that others will criticize that point of view does not negate our objection.
When Canon finally offered an OS X driver for a legacy scanner I owned it turned out to be written in Java, which does have a crappier, non-standard appearance on OS X. I realized Canon had done it ‘on the cheap’. It worked, but was somewhat of a disappointment.
That’s not something Apple has to fix. Apple’s customers will reward the developers who produce better quality products for our platform. (The weird thing about that Java driver was that I know it wasn’t distributed for Windows, so how great could the savings have been? It wasn’t code shared with a much larger base. The could have hacked up a basic GUI in Cocoa easily).
I can only imagine your driver was similiar, because to say the windows in OS X are unstable, or leave artifacts all over the screen is to turn the truth on it’s head. I use Windows 2000 Professional every day, and watch windows updated and draw themselves piece by piece. (But seeing that that horribly pixelated and amateurish Windows splash screen everyday, proclaiming ‘Professional’, does make me smile.)
The windows on the Mac are of a completely different feel. Completely solid and real.
Let me make a few things clear. I don’t really want to go back to Windows. MacOS is almost there for me, at least as far as running Photoshop is concerned. I’d like it to “just work”, but using MacOS for me proves to be a stressful exercise in avoiding a number of bugs. It’s very possible that if I used it professionally all day every day avoiding those issues would become second nature and the flow of the odd alert boxes and other issues would probably become intuitive. Right now I only use it “a few hours a week” (as opposed to probably more than half my waking time on Windows) and that is not enough for all the quirks to become intuitive.
Plus I don’t really have the choice of “going back to Windows” anyway, at least not without some significant investment since none of the PCs we have at home comes even close to the Mac in terms of CPU power, RAM or HD space. And I don’t have a copy of Photoshop CS for Windows.
I was irritated by Steve Jobs’ overhyped presentation of Tiger (at least I perceived it that way), and I was annoyed by the feeling I had that Tiger was another feature-heavy release, as opposed to one that would pay much attention to compatibility issues or bug fixes that have been nagging me since almost day 1 on the Mac (let’s say “day 1 of serious work”, i.e. the point in time where we wiped the hard drives and installed the then-freshly-released 10.3).
With what I’ve read and learnt today (and with the miraculous change in Photoshop’s memory behavior) I would probably have enough material to re-write parts of my original opinion in a way that would reflect the reality better. Oh well, such is life…
That being said, I’m gonna stop reading this thread for now.
As a last note, I’ve been contacted by somebody at Apple. So far there hasn’t really been any exchange, but if I can I’ll try to find an opportunity to show them in person what my problems are.
One last reply…
“That’s not something Apple has to fix.”
Actually, this is something that Apple could seriously improve. Have you used multiple scanners drivers on MacOS ? 90% of what the drivers do is common to all drivers, and only 10% is readdy hardware-specific (I made those numbers up). Preview, cropping, histogram, B&W/color, positive/negative, transparency/reflective selection, 8/16 bit, color correction, preview, zoom, scan, all that is the same in all drivers.
Apple could very well write a reasonably generic version of those, and only require from the hardware vendors that they write the parts that are really hardware-specific.
“The windows on the Mac are of a completely different feel. Completely solid and real.”
And sometimes brainless. The interaction of Photoshop, various scanner drivers, Exposé and the Dock sometimes looks like a Charlie Chaplin movie. Probably very fun to watch, but definitely frustrating to use – and I still haven’t understood the logic that rules window activation on MacOS.
Ok so you (JBQ) bought a USB2 card, a dvd burner, …. and it did not wok with panther. Ok, that was an issue, but should we generalise your experience to the all users of Photoshop. And i am sure that new drivers are available for 10.3.
But i feel that it is strange that someone like you could just update to a new os before to check any compatibility issues that can arise. I mean, for a USB 2 card and a dvd burner, that’s low level divers. and you should have thought that a compatibility issue could appear, and you should have wait any information from the vendor of your devices.
That’s just logic. There is nothing to complain. And don’t tell me that this situation of incompatible drivers just exit on osx, windows has much more issues like this, and any os has this kind of “problem”. That’s the responsibility of the device vendor to react fast to provide compatible drivers for a new os release. That’s the aim to give beta version for developpers.
And yes Apple is responsible of the quality of the applications that run on their os, that’s why the WWDC exists. Apple is reponsible by providing the best APIs possible, and os technologies. After, that’s the responsibility of the developer to use those APIs, and to respect the guidelines of Apple. Apple can not be behind the back of every developers coding on mac. And i don’t think that all applications running on windows are perfect windows-citizen apps either……
And sure Adobe has still to make some effort to provide a better osx citizen applications. Application like Photoshop have been coded for the first time in a totally different os, and still those fundations are inside Photoshop. Photoshop is still far to use all the potential of osx. And i am glad that you could solve your problem of memory, it shows that your criticals on osx have been wrong……
By the way i find very ridiculous to say that for you, the mac is only for Photoshop, it seems that you don’t really know the mac, you just follow some stupid anti-mac statements.
I tell it to you again, the article that you wrote has no sense, we are not stupid, and we don’t have to believe everything you say , because it is written in big “An engineer’s thouhts on MacOsX Tiger”. I am developper myself, so please come up with some solid arguments, no only the usual trolling arguments found inside the forums of a pc web site.
And finally could say me why Apple products are underperforming, please?
So should i consider a PowerMac bi-G5 2.5 ghz, as a “underperforming” machine, or what? And you said that you are a Photoshop user, so you should know how those machines perform extremely well (and i am talking only about the bi-G5 2.0 hhz) against x86 machines.
So again a trolling statement!!! Nothing more…….
I personally agree mostly with the author. I am a Mac-User since the day an SE 30 costed 4500 US-$ and I do my living with Macs…
It is interesting to see, how people get into platform wars and cannot “pull themselve out” at least some steps back to get a maybe better or at least distanced view…
As far as I can tell, I am not a software engineer, nor can I confirm most of the authors arguments but my own experience in the 5-part-transition with “plugged in equipment” not made by apple of X is enough that I want not spend the time to remember what made me scratch my head and costed me long nights to find a solution…
The real question for me is, where is Steve driving this platform to… Look at the cpu-theme, the speed race is over “they and we hit a wall”… The new G5 is a “pitch in the face” of any design at all. Why should I buy a computer, which is just a grey metal “minimalistic” box, where minimalistic refers to expandability (one optical drive, two hd-bays…) and big refers to a large (much larger than a quicksilver and less expandable) unhandy clunky box…
Hmm, the iPod and “the new culture” makes more money as all the computer-business alltogether.
I guess Apple missed the big chance to bring up something new with a new OS, new ideas… Maybe there is not enough young fresh openminded people and the “thinkers” are “the old brigade” like the ones behind Bush… old warriors in a new world they did not realize…
john
And finally could say me why Apple products are underperforming, please?
Because for the machines most people are able to purchase, they are.
So should i consider a PowerMac bi-G5 2.5 ghz, as a “underperforming” machine, or what?
And here we go. Whenever someone questions the price/performance of Macs, suddenly the only machine that exists in Apple’s lineup is the top end AU$5000+ monster that is well outside most people’s budgets.
Not everyone buys a dual CPU G5. Indeed, very few people do. The ca. $2300 a 15″ iMac costs here in Australia buys me a much more powerful PC than it does Mac.
>>Let’s say that I have a deep disdain for liars.
This is what cracks me up the most about OSnews. Apple is demonized for trying to sell its products, but M$ isn’t. The linux flavors that promise everything under the sun aren’t as well. But Apple… Apple must be stoned 24 hours, 7 days a week (and no, I don’t mean the popular term).
You should really go back and rethink the tone of your piece. It’s the sole reason so many people are fired up– but then again, I suspect the advertisers of OSnews appreciate the flamebait.
We are talking about power users, so power users think Powermac. And you talked about Photoshop,…..Photoshop is an application for pro users and it needs pro hardware.
Now ok, i am agree, Apple has to change his Imacs line, and to go to something else, rather than to use a all-in-one design. And sure even if Imacs are not as powerful with photoshop as a G5 machine, it still performs well for most task that everyone has to do. I don’t think that they are underperformed, only if you read somewhere instead of using them.
And you said : “I think that their products are overhyped, overpriced and underperforming.”
So it basically means that all apple machines are, and it is really not the case. You did not talked about Imacs.
Again anyone who has to use Photoshop in a pro enviromnment can buy a Powermac, which have a great performance/price ratio. Moreover Apple has a great laptop computers line.
Again you generalize, you go to the extreme position….
I thought it was a good and informative article. A actually kept it open in a window while I read all the comments, in case I missed or forgot something.
Some of the new features are pretty cool to have, others I couldn’t care less about. It is good to get an idea what they do and how they evolved, even if they are “innovated” from someone else…
As far as a great number of the posters here…
I was at work the other day, and we had a new temp guy working for us. He told me that he had been employed doing graphical work for the government, so I asked him if he had been using a Mac or an SGI workstation.
When he told me he used a Mac, I could see him visibly flinch… Then he started into a long defence of the platform and its benefits vs. windows. I told him that it was nice to use a Mac + OSX, and that windows must really suck for those that use it.
I was rather taken aback at his reaction to such a simple question, and how much of a party line he was reciting to me when I really didn’t care one way or another. Rather strange all in all…
So I told him to just go ahead and finish doing the dishes, and we could talk computers later… Heh Heh
(true story, I kid you not!)
This is what cracks me up the most about OSnews. Apple is demonized for trying to sell its products, but M$ isn’t.
Eh ? You must be reading a different OSNews to me, because pretty much *everything* Microsoft does gets demonised in the forums here, last I looked.
“Because I drank the Kool-aid, bought a Mac as an upgrade to my aging PC which started to really show its age when doing heavy image processing, being wrongfully led to believe that MacOS was the platform of choice for image processing and assuming that in this very small domain I’d get a superior experience.
My budget to buy new computers isn’t infinite, sadly.”
Put your G4 system up for sale on e-bay, with all that software installed, you ought to be able to afford a new G5 with the proceeds. Rendering will no longer be a problem, and when Adobe decides to improve their CS, you will be, may I say, a bit more content with a solid state-of-the-art system by comparison to xp’s dismal spaghetti code failures. Windows user for over 12 years — I would NEVER go back.
I do have a PowerMac. I went for more RAM and hard drive space but slightly less CPU power when I got it, knowing in advance that not putting in enough RAM would be a mistake since I was planning for Photoshop. It’s not a bad machine, but it’s not a screamer, nor was it when I initially got it.
It would be more interesting to compare e.g. my dual-xeon at work to the current dual 2GHz G5 – the prices are roughly identical (the Mac is about 12% more expensive, not a huge difference) if you ignore the sweet software bundle that is available with the Dell.
None of the current Powermacs are bad machines. In my experience (limited to toying around in stores) they are not as superiorly fast as Apple would want people to believe. They are decent, but that’s it. And really at the high end of the price scale. I know that it’s an unfair comparison, but if I had to buy (build) a new PC I’d probably aim for a price point around half the price of those Macs or comparable Dells (i.e. $1500 instead of $3000).
I’ve toyed with iMacs and with similarly priced PCs. The perceived price/performance ratio wasn’t as good for the iMac as it was for the PCs. That’s purely subjective, though. I think that iMacs are the most overpriced of all, actually.
I’m disappointed with the quality of Eugenia’s laptop, and specifically about the quality of the LCD and of the keyboard (knowing the quality of that specific panel made me chuckle during Steve’s keynote). I can’t see how to justify the price of that powerbook when compared to my corporate thinkpad.
I’ve said that a long time ago, I’ll say it again, I’m really disappointed that Apple doesn’t publish official SPECCPU results for their high-end machines. This would allow to compare the CPU/memory performance of those machines against a very wide array of configurations.
I only did a very quick check, not some really serious shopping. There’s no point selling the software with the G4 since I’ll have to buy it all back for the G5.
A “small” G5 equipped with enough RAM and HD to be on par with my G4 would cost today almost double of what I bought the G4 for almost a year ago (I got a sweet deal on the G4 I have to admit). If you read one of my recent posts in this thread, this kind of money would also buy me a decent PC today, and that’s probably what I’d be doing if I decided to invest that much money in new computer gear.
What I remember of Photoshop Elements (NOT Photoshop CS) on Windows XP is that it worked at least as well as CS on 10.3, if not better (scanning especially was a lot more pleasant, though this is as much because of the scanner driver as it is because of photoshop itself).
Let’s see, I am a computer engineer. In fact I remember teaching myself Pascal in THINK Pascal back in 1985 when I was in grade school. I’ve been coding ever since then, as well as using MacOS. So I guess I might have something valid to chime in on.
Personally, I’ve been a MacOS user all these years because I think they do the UI better than anyone else. I feel like I get placed first before gcc, AppKit and the Event Manager — compared to the time I’ve spent in front of Windows and various Linux desktops. The OS and apps feel more seamless to me in MacOS. Even the image processing ones (I’m a big Illustrator user).
As for things such as Automator, Dashboard, Spotlight, etc, and if they are “brand new”, yes they’re not 100% original springing forth only from the collective mind of Apple. But the particular MacOS implementations, with all the particular MacOS features, are new. And hopefully easy to use and seamless as most the rest of MacOS.
As for taking from the past, consider spotlight in 1997. Yeah, I remember BeOS tackling the same problem. I also remember a few years earlier Copland having a similar search feature planned as well. Also, dynamic folders in the Finder that fetch results based upon a search expression. OpenDoc components in the Finder as well that did similar things for other data sources, such as email. Speaking of OpenDoc, it also had a rich meta data system for document content. Taligent’s CommonPoint had something similar as well. I’m sure there have been others before. I know of a big one off hand: databases. And knowledge representation and ontology folks have been obsessed with this basic problem for years, back to at least the early 70’s. The list goes on.
JBQ’s review was more of an end user perspective, thinking in terms of end user features and griping about problems with the current OS itself or code running on it that perhaps the OS vendor could help fix. Which is all valid. However, as for the future, it is just one WWDC speech to base it all on. And it was a major keynote speech by the CEO of a large company. His job is to create excitement about a new product. Which he does. Of course this isn’t some in-depth technical discussion. So I’ll wait until I get more than a handful of screenshots and a couple of QuickTime movies.
I don’t care about what you say about Apple’s business or other practice, but you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when you think patents
a) are intended to cover mere ideas or concepts (ideas are free, patents are for inventions). FWIW, this also goes for when Microsoft supposedly “steals” ideas from Apple: you simply cannot steal an idea, because ideas can’t be someone’s property.
b) would help the creators of Konfabulator in any way (how many software patents do you think Apple has that the Konfabulator guys infringe on? Apple could probably make those developers give their imaginary patent to Apple and additionally ask them to pay a fee for infringing on dozens of other Apple patents)
What I do know is that under Windows XP with 1GB of RAM and no special code at all I can malloc() more than 1GB of RAM in a single chunk (1.1GB to be precise) – that’s one line of code. Yet on MacOS a huge company like Adobe with all the experience and weight that they have can’t manage to write code that allocates more than 880MB of memory for one of their flagship product.
Either you’re trolling or I should apply for a job at Adobe with my mad OS X malloc skillz:
Weatherleys-Computer:~ james$ more mem.c
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <malloc/malloc.h>
#include <stdio.h>
const size_t TWO_GIGS = 2147483648;
int main()
{
char* jbq_is_teh_trool = malloc(TWO_GIGS);
printf(“%p
“, jbq_is_teh_trool);
size_t bytes = malloc_size(jbq_is_teh_trool);
printf(“%u
“, bytes);
free(jbq_is_teh_trool);
return 0;
}
Weatherleys-Computer:~ james$ gcc -std=c99 -o mem mem.c
Weatherleys-Computer:~ james$ ./mem
0x2008000
2147483648
Weatherleys-Computer:~ james$
I still find it weird that software developers call themselves engineers. I call myself software developer, and I have great respect for engineers who build bridges and other amazing structures, build planes, cars and my lovely hi-fi system. Software developers who call themselves engineers always make me think of cleaning ladies being addressed as interior decorators or working in “domestic employment”.
Or how the software business renamed itself to IT and then to ICT.
But that is just me, I find it funny that people have to find importance in their job title.
Now, to that silly rant of JBQ and photoshop. First of all, he acts like he has a problem with using large files in photoshop, when he doesn’t. He can easly use over his stated 900 mb of memory. What he is looking at is NOT if photoshop can handle large images and then also edit them and have undo buffers available, but what amount of RAM photoshop uses while doing so.
He has NO problems using photoshop, just whining about the amount of actual RAM being used. He then goes on making out that you can not allocate more memory in MacOS X, and how easy it is to allocate 1 gig in Windows.
As a software developer/engineer it is NOT hard to find out how to do that on a Mac. Especially since your 10.3 comes with development tools. Guess what, it is as easy as it is in Windows, standard memory allocation in C/C++ (yes, you can write C/C++ programs for MacOS X… of course one can allocate large chunks of memory in Objective-C or other languages available for MacOS X too).
Since I think photoshop 5 photoshop has multiple undo buffers, and with it came Adobe’s own memory management, with multiple selectable scratch disks and quite advanced layer and undo buffer management. It is Adobe’s choice of when to unload buffers from memory to scratch disks, and it works basically the same in their Mac and Windows versions. Note also that a canon D10 does not make 900 MB sized images, so we are not talking about one chunk of memory here, but about a lots of chunks for filters, buffers, layers. You have NO control over when Windows (XP/2000/whatever) offloads to virual memory on disk, just like it is up to MacOS X to manage that.
I have no doubt that JBQ has written some very impressive software, which will make what i have worked on look pretty simple, but his critisizm of Apple for the behaviour of Photoshop (which behaviour has, I am sure, pretty sound software techinical reasons) does lack some insight in what Photoshop actually is doing. Try looking at the windows version and see what memory, RAM and virtual memory, it uses with a tool like taskinfo (which is a very neat tool to see how windows manages its memory).
I am sure memory management of MacOS X is different from WindowsXP/2000, but both work pretty well for most tasks. I have an iBook with 384mb of memory, and so I run into limitations of memory quite a bit faster than a mac with 2gig. I also use Windows computers at work (writing software).
On the issue of drivers, I have a Sony Digital Photo Printer UP-DP10. It came with a MacOS 9 printer driver. My Epson Stylus Color 880 (which is older) also came with a printer driver for MacOS 9. Epson made a MacOS X driver available for that printer, it is included with MacOS X itself actually. So did Epson for Windows XP. Sony on the other hand has NOT developed a MacOS X printer driver for my nice UP-DP10. They did however update the Windows version for XP.
You will not see me bitch about Apple in this, doing so would be very strange. It is Sony’s politics, not Apple’s.
As an ex-Be employee you of all people must know what it is to have some hardware manufacturers not write drivers for a certain OS. It was one of the things that prohibited BeOS to be a viable alternative to Windows for a wider user base. You can not blame Apple for the quality or lack of drivers written by 3rd parties. As Epson and Canon show, its not impossible to write good drivers for MacOS X. And I have seen a lot of crappy drivers for Windows too.
Don’t say “Apple needs to send people over to Adobe to help them”. Apple does help in a lot of ways, but Apple is not a huge company like Microsoft. They do not have infinite developers that they can send to every company that makes nice software! And yes, there are a LOT of companies writing software for MacOS X.
On the point of installers/uninstallers, there ARE installer products that come with uninstallers. It is TOTALLY upto the 3rd party software developer on how to distribute their software. On Windows there is NOT just one standard and perfect software installer/uninstaller. There are many products used, some crappy, some really good. A lot of Windows software comes without adequate uninstallers too. It is upto the 3rd party software developer to choose a better product, you do not see me write a big rant on how Microsoft is to blame for 3rd party software problems. You also should not blame Apple. If some products come with good unintallers, that should tell you something!
I am guessing everything BeOS ever was was totally innovative, No idea was derived from other ideas? HFS was innovative in its time. The use of metadata in System/MacOS was innovative in its time. Sherlock in OS 9 (or was it introduced in macOS 8.6?) was innovative in its time. Try indexing harddrives and searches in macos 9. Faster than anything I have seen, MUCH faster and MUCH more flexible than on the fastest Windows PC’s, you can find anything.
I can not judge how good and fast BeOS was in finding files, I know MacOS 10.3 doesn’t hold a candle to Sherlock on MacOS 9. I for one am impressed with what Tiger promisses with Spotlight, and that they keep HFS+ to keep things compatible and simple (and do not go the WinFS road like microsoft has been pursueing since WinNT4). And I am glad that an ex BE-Inc employee has found a job at Apple where he can work on what is his great passion, improving file systems and working with meta data.
And as a tip for JBQ: You should take a look at Photoretouch Pro 3. It is a lovely, if not perfect, application, and as photographer you will love some of the things that you can do with it, it gives great control over colour, for one. Not as a replacement for Photoshop, but as a very nice addition to what you will be able to do with your photo’s. I for one am VERY impressed with it, even though I am only just starting to learn how to use it. And yes, it is for MacOS X.
I seriously don’t understand how someone expressing his opinion can be attacked at the personal level. It’s really too bad that I cannot really participate in this discussion, since I don’t own a Mac.
But really, JBQ has every right to say what he said, and with everything he said, he was right. Why? Because they were opinions. And opinions are always right. When I say, “I hate Windows because feature X isn’t implemented right.”, then I am 100% right. I’m not right, though, when I say: “Windows sucks because feature X isn’t implemented right.”, becasue then I am generalizing.
JBQ expressed his very own gripes with Mac OS X, and therefore he is always right. You may have had different experiences, and therefore have different opinions, but that’s no excuse for being rude.
Anyway, what disturbes me the most is this:
-I find the hardware support to be very poor. 10.3 doesn’t have any kind of decent out-of-the-box support for my good Keytronic USB keyboard (it swaps some of the modifier keys), for my good Logitech USB mouse (it makes it several times slower than it is supposed to be). Finder doesn’t burn to my external Sony firewire DVD-R. I can’t print a full-page letter picture if I tell the OS that I’m printing on letter paper and I have to pretend that I have legal paper, which then causes quite some headaches when trying to center prints.
I have bought a special keyboard, costing me 50 Euros, and special Trackball, costing me 40 Euros. I have been tinkering with the idea of aqcuiring a Mac, but when I cannot use 90E worth of equipment…. That would stop me. Personally, I wouldn’t like being forced into using a mouse…
Reading JBQ’s explainations of his viewpoints, the origins of the story, and why the article was published in a form that seems fairly poorly edited, and taking into account that the editor of OS News is his main squeeze, my opinion of the article (and JBQ) has softened a lot.
Now, for the rest of you who keep trying to draw comparisons between Microsoft and Apple’s OS transitions, here’s my take on what parts of the OS are comparable.
The DOS to Windows 386 transition can be compared to Apple’s transition to PowerPC from 68k because both events allowed the respective companies to take advantage of a new generation of hardware.
The Win16 (Windows 3.x) emulation layer in NT is the equivalent of Classic in OS X.
The Win32 API in NT and Win9x is the equivalent of Carbon in OS X, it was created with portability between NT and 9x in mind.
.Net is the equivalent of Cocoa in OS X. Created purely for the new OS with no legacy support, with rapid development, extensibility and portability paramount design considerations.
I’m sure someone will disagree, but I think it’s inappropriate to (for example) compare Windows 95 <-> NT compatibility to non-carbon OS 9 <-> OS X compatibility since the Win32 API was created for the same purpose as Carbon. A more valid comparison would be to see how Win16 applications like Trumpet Winsock run in Windows NT.
Please people, think a little more about what you’re really comparing.
By Anonymous (IP: —.chvlva.adelphia.net) – Posted on 2004-06-30 04:16:57
“they wouldnt come close to that paltry return they get on $6 billion in annual sales.”
Other than Dell, PC vendors get a losing return on all their PC sales. (HP makes profits from printers and system services, and IBM from services and other stuff, not PC sales.) Somehow Dell and MS are the only ones making money. Now, do you think MS is somehow overcharging the PC vendors for their OS, who are forced to support it after they sell it….
“.Net is the equivalent of Cocoa in OS X. Created purely for the new OS with no legacy support, with rapid development, extensibility and portability paramount design considerations.”
no legacy support huh?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F…
“System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows XP
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 requires Service Pack 6a.”
it of course also runs on windows 2003, but it came out late enough to include the .net framework.
please dont be so fast to spout the party line of only dell and apple make money.
“Other than Dell, PC vendors get a losing return on all their PC sales”
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2004/01/31/2003096938
acer is growing like gangbusters and is much more profitable than apple.
if you are unfamiliar with the market, do some research first.
and like what you mentioned, apple (like dell, sony, panasonic, toshiba, gateway, hp, sun, you name it) is much more than a “pc” maker.
apple sells music players, software, they have a large retail store operation, they have a large online store, they sell software, they sell third party products, they own several subsidiaries like Filemaker, they sell music, they sell subscription services, they have $4 billion dollars earning interest in banks and in short term investments.
bottom line is the $4 billion+ in cash should make them more money than what they have made over the last couple of years. since they haven’t even made what they would get off simple interest on that large pile of money, you can actually surmise that all of their other operations lose money and reduce that baseline profit.
apple is losing money selling pcs too. and that is why they are branching out.
“But really, JBQ has every right to say what he said, and with everything he said, he was right. Why? Because they were opinions. And opinions are always right.”
Well, in that case, then SJ has every right to say what he said in the keynote, because they were his opinions and opinions are always right. When he says Tiger is innovative or revolutionary, that is his opinion. When he says you get the very best, most capable OS with Mac, that is his opinion. So JBQ, don’t call him a liar. (Even his comment about LCD panels, we don’t know if just one time, an LCD company sold panels to other mfrs after Apple rejected them, so you can doubt it but you can’t call him a liar.)
I went back and watched the stream last night. And note that regarding Tiger, everytime he said innovative, he added the words “for an operating system.” I think he meant in comparison with Windows and Linux – mainstream OS. Steve knows that lots of these ideas have been tossed around before (by Apple and others) or implemented in fringe OSes or mainstream applications; but now it will be in a mainstream OS (before Windows or Linux).
And when he says “revolutionary”, he means for the developers because the OS feature will add significant power to their applications and change the things they need to code. This is like memory management; when the OS took that over and developers no longer had to do it. How many times did SJ mention SDK? Just about after every item. SJ said that he wanted developers will take these tools and create something revolutionary for the end-user. That’s why he’s talking about it so far in advance. (It certainly seems that most of the items are already designed and coded, and would not need 7-12 months to optimize, test, and package. Of course, SJ could just be hiding that it just isn’t ready!)
For the Adobe comment, SJ hopes that by using Core Image, they will be able to spend more time implementing significantly more powerful manipulations on top of Apple’s basic set; not that Core Image does it all for them.
Maybe 98% of the world does think Macs are overpriced and overhyped. (SJ never says they are cheap.) But for the 2% (who keep buying Macs), the Mac system (Mac hardware combined with Mac software) provide an experience and productivity far greater than using a Windows and Linux system (HW and SW combo), and are worth the price. To each his own. (I use both but I love my Mac and tolerate my PC.)
But we certainly can have a civil discussion on specific merits (and demerits) of the architecture, quality, and capabilities of the three platforms, while allowing for human passion (which is generally good for us), and forgiving other feelings that arise in response to ignorance and generalizing.
So on the merits: 64-bit, Spotlight, Automator, Core Image/Video, iChatAV multi-conference, Dashboard per Expose, H.264, Safari RSS per Webkit, VoiceOver; Tiger will be the first to offer these capabilities system-wide via a “mainstream OS” when it is released next year. All of them can be built upon further by developers. Most likely, Windows/IE/IM and Linux (packaged-supported versions) won’t have them built-in for at least another year.
The demerits: How well will any of these work on G4 Macs, if they work at all? And when will G5 Macs cost in the $800-1700 range so that most people can afford Macs that can really use Tiger? (I do want to note that I use 10.1.5 on a 1998 beige G3 desktop with 256K RAM and no other upgrades, alongside 10.3.3 on a G4 Powerbook, and XP on a Dell laptop. I find them all usable, but the Powerbook works best.)
I could write such an article each day using my PC,s and the content would be different each day !!!!!
-)
.
An ‘easier to use than windows’ version of Unix/Linux is not better than Windows <Version XXXX> ? ? Not in my experience.
You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet though.
This piece has generated the predictable backlash…
Let’s cut to the bottom line:
I use Mac’s and PC’s everyday.
I find the Mac easier to use / install / uninstall / upgrade
Tiger is very glitzy, obviously to attract consumers, but I’d happily trade speed & reliability for two ‘major’ Tiger features.
I’ve used various peripherals and software in Panther with no adverse side effects, and went about my day.
I do think the Finder needs a re-write though…
PS: It needs to be faster than OS 9 / Win / Linux ALL the time!!
regards Jase.
“apple is losing money selling pcs too. and that is why they are branching out.”
WRONG! Study Apple’s financial statements and you will see they’ve made money selling Macs this past year (adding in proportionate R&D and SGA but not income taxes), even with the low number of units sold. The interest from cash is added onto that profit. The retail stores and iTMS barely make any profit. The iPod is added to that profit. And they do generate about $250m in revenues from third-party products (SGA applies to this).
And in my comment, I was referring to PC sales operations of primarily US vendors, so I had discounted Acer and Fujitsu, who focus mainly overseas, where pricing is different. My error in not being clear.
Comments from Gateway, Compaq, and even Dell make clear that PCs will yield very little profit per sale for them, as it is a commodity product requiring significant volume sales to cover SGA. For Gateway and Compaq, they quit, i.e., merged, in order to generate volume and/or focus on other sales channels and other lines of business. And even Dell which has volume, is looking for growth in printers and consumer electronics. I believe eMachines is profitable due to very low SGA but I haven’t studied them much.
However, it is also true that in 2004, it is likely due to demand (and volume), all PC vendors will make money on PC sales.
Being an engineer and all, I think you could have figured out a way to keep the camera still.
Where are the photos, then?
Dude, really, it is time to put the crack pipe down, and learn something about computers. If you are going to spout off in a tech forumn, you better damn well have a clue, which you obviously don’t. You even said in your post, they changed the kernel and that isn’t a big change. First off, that IS a big change, secondly, you don’t understand OS architecture at ALL!! The only thing about XP and 98 that are the same, is the win32 API. EVERYTHING else is different. The difference between 98 and XP is almost as big as the difference from OS 9 to OS X. I suggest you take a few lessons in system architecture, and educate yourself before making post that contridict what you are saying yourself!!
Right out of the gate his comments on Steve Jobs had me in hysterics. Funny Stuff there. I have never been impressed with Apple hardware, which has always had this rinky cheap plastic feel to it. Form molded thermoset resin does not impress me, never has. The construction techniques feel more like what I would expect from a $40-50 dollar inkjet printer than an actual computer.
The bit about him targeting M$ for not releasing a new OS in ‘years’ raised my hackles. You know for years people have been bitching that new versions have been coming out too close together. They finally get a stable mainstream version that nobody I know has issues using, and everyone complains there’s not a new version coming out? Sure, whatever.
I also got a good chuckle out of his hardware issues. Lemme get this straight… He has problems getting a Keyboard and a Mouse, made for the Mac, to work… Right. When you cannot in this day and age make a keyboard or mouse port that is backwards compatable, or worse, an OS that has issues with them… Well, it does not inspire confidence in the programmers ability… And you know the programmers are gonna blame the hardware and the hardware folks will blame the programmers. I cannot think of a single PS/2 or even 5 pin keyboard I have ever had compatability issues with, the same with PS/2 or USB mice… Under Windows. Case in point I am on a Logitech Trackman Marble that is over ten years old (the old white-case non-wheel version) with a IBM keyboard from the PS/2 era. (You know, 5lbs, real microswitches, goes “Click” when you press a key) On a fairly new Barton 2500 box… No issues.
Ok, correction. I have a TWENTY YEAR OLD Mouse Systems serial optical mouse (the type that uses the shiny metal pad with red and blue stripes) that XP won’t recognize out of the box… BFD.
The most laughs, or perhaps confusion comes from the “$129/199” for the upgrade to 10.4 – Lemme get this straight, this is a minor revision jump that are effectively bugfixes right? He owns 10.3, right? Windows update costs how much again? Jumping from 10.3 to 10.4 should be the same as installing a Windows Service Pack. The mere fact they charge for it is… a damn good reason NOT to buy a Mac. Microsoft tried charging for bugfixes everyone would be screaming bloody murder… but I forgot, Apple can do no wrong; An attitude I am becoming increasingly annoyed with.
Some of his complaints have fun responses.
-I find the hardware support to be very poor
Welcome to *nix
-serious glitches in the window management.
Welcome to *nix
-non-intuitive installs, and non-existent uninstalls.
Welcome to *nix
-non-existent keyboard shortcuts.
Welcome to Macintosh
I really want a good alternative to Windows XP that lets me do EVERYTHING I do in XP without spending hours dinking around with drivers… Unfortunately there is no such thing.
The software engineers at Be Inc. were and in my opnion still seriously cool. There’s no point bitching and moaning about JBQ is biased against Mac’s etc as I’m sure as a software engineer he does knows what he’s talking about.
Its also funny and nice to see some of the ideas that were in BeOS appearing in macOSX, curtesy of other ex Be Eng.s’ Pavel(Tracker) and Dominic (BFS) BeOS for its time was a seriously nice OS – actually it still is !
HarjTT
With an engineer like you it is no wonder that BEOS did not become the success it should have. Terrible writing, terrible analysis and you clearly hold a grudge against Apple. By the way, Core Image is FP.
I think JBQ needs to find a nice Mac forum and ask some questions. Most of his rants sound like those of a Mac user in isolation, although some are just insane, like the statements about poor quality LCDs on PBs. I’ve seen many a PC laptop in person and to me, most of them in the PB price range look like dookie.
Anyhow these comments are what I expect from someone who has reluctantly “switched” based on some outside pressure and is about one week into the experiment.
Let’s take the mouse issue. For free you can download this little doodad to speed it up. End of story:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12205
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12198
There’s more too, I use some little hack on my iBook, and it’s neither of those (“mouse zoom” I think it’s called, ask Google).
As for keyboard shortcuts, please visit your system prefs and click on “Keyboard and Mouse”. Then “Keyboard Shortcuts” and click “Turn on full Keyboard Access”. That’s really not THAT unintuitive, is it? Also note that you can view and define shortcuts on that same pref pane.
I’m not even going to touch Photoshop… Adobe sucks ass. On all platforms.
>You should not have Eugenia posting for you
And what exactly this means, £$%£$%£$%?
JBQ was writing about it last night, I saw that it was more than 3 paragraphs and I asked him if we could post it, and he said yes (I had not read it until this morning).
Maybe you should read through the articles published on your site better.
(Btw I love osnews! Keep up the good work!…but I don´t think this post had existed hid JBQ had´nt been a friend of yours)
Just re-read the new article and while I think you still get your main points across it comes off as being far more even keeled. Thanks for putting in the time and effort as it shows a commitment to your craft.
I don’t think you got anything straight.
you said you got free upgrades for the last 3 years from microsoft. afaik, these are just security updates and minor tweaks. these updates are comparable to updates 10.3.1 -> 10.3.4 which apple don’t charge for.
microsoft, like apple, charge if you want to upgrade to a new release i.e windows 2000 -> windows XP
i don’t mind it when someone doesn’t like apple but when they make a false argument against apple it really annoys me. especially the “you have to pay for an upgrade” argument because it is made so many times!
My problem is that lots of Mac software requires newer version fo MacOS. If you’re not running at least 10.2 today, you’ll start to have a hard time finding drivers for your brand new hardware or software.
In the comparison “how long ago can I have paid for my last upgrade and still be able to use any new hardware and software?”, MacOS doesn’t win. There start to be applications that claim to require 10.3 (I’m not sure whether they actually do, but they claim to).
in the comparison “how long ago can I have paid for my last upgrade and still be able to use any new hardware and software?”, MacOS doesn’t win. There start to be applications that claim to require 10.3 (I’m not sure whether they actually do, but they claim to).
in fairness, if there are such apps out there then it’s hardly apple’s fault. afaik, it’s to do with the version of gcc. when installing the dev tools, one can choose to install older versions of gcc to keep backwards compatibility. if a third party dev doesn’t do this it’s hardly apple’s fault.
Well, Apple could make sure that the output of their recent development tools still works on older versions of the OS (e.g. by providing forward-compatibility libraries for older versions of the OS).
Yes, it’s not all Apple’s fault, and yes, a developer could very well be sneaky and purposedly write code that doesn’t work on older versions of the OS despite all of Apple’s efforts. On the other hand I’m quite confident that in many cases the incompatibilities are introduced “by accident” by the software developers, and it’s possible that Apple might have been able to prevent some of those accidents.
Honestly, as a user, it averages over time down to “the same applications or the same hardware costs me more money to run on MacOS than on Windows because I’m required to pay for OS upgrades more often in order to be able to run the latest versions of the software”.
Just wanted to drop-in and encourage Jean-Baptiste Quéru to continue writing such informative articles about an OS I don’t know much about; it is great to get the “straight dope” on it. Just ignore all the comments by the Apple cultists and keep reporting…
Eugenia and I had tried many “mouse acceleration” doodahs. Quite a lot didn’t work at all on 10.3. When they did, most of them didn’t actually change the mouse speed, they just steepened the acceleration curve (exactly the opposite of what I wanted, which was a decent unaccelerated speed with a gentle acceleration slope). After a few days Eugenia finally found one that did something close enough to what I wanted (though still doesn’t quite feel as smooth as I’d like)
I’ve used MacOS for more than 6 months on a fairly regular (but light) basis. Definitely not a one-week thing. Still checking for a new version of the Epson 3200 scanner driver which hopefully will interact with Exposé a little better (and will remember that Photoshop supports 16-bit). No luck so far.
I promise you that the LCD on Eugenia’s powerbook is really poor, and it’s not a sample issue, we’ve seen the same thing on pretty much all samples in different stores.
The Keyboard settings panel is where I’d go look for settings about keymap and key repeat rate, but not about keyboard shortcuts. So I guess it wasn’t that intuitive after all. (or maybe proves that Spotlight is really needed in the preference panels). I’ll give it a try the next time I have a chance.
The DOS to Windows 386 transition can be compared to Apple’s transition to PowerPC from 68k because both events allowed the respective companies to take advantage of a new generation of hardware.
They are perhaps comparable in that sense, but in scale the Apple 68k -> PPC transition was much bigger and more complex. Apple’s job in that comparison was much, much harder and they handled it admirably.
The Win16 (Windows 3.x) emulation layer in NT is the equivalent of Classic in OS X.
Again in broad concept but not in the (important) gritty details. Win16 on NT is handled by simple API translation, whereas Classic on OS X is almost a complete virtual machine (IIRC it even still has the 68k emulator in it).
The VM approach is technically better, but Apple have handled it poorly. The timeframe must also be taken into context – when Microsoft were trying to figure out how to support Win16 in NT, a 20Mhz 386 with 4MB of RAM was cutting edge, so the “emulate the entire old environment and machine” approach clearly wasn’t a valid option. Apple have the advantage of machines more than capable of doing that.
The Win32 API in NT and Win9x is the equivalent of Carbon in OS X, it was created with portability between NT and 9x in mind.
Not really. Win32 was an extension of Win16, true, but it was created for NT to use as its primary API and wasn’t meant to be solely a “transition tool”, whereas pretty much the only reason for Carbon is to transition applications and developers from one environment to the next.
.Net is the equivalent of Cocoa in OS X. Created purely for the new OS with no legacy support, with rapid development, extensibility and portability paramount design considerations.
Again not really correct since .NET is available for the “legacy” platforms, whereas Cocoa is not.
Win32 is more like Cocoa in purpose, just created a lot earlier (because, as I said, Microsoft were doing this more than ten ago) and with more sacrifices towards supporting legacy platforms.
Win16 – or more accurately the Windows-on-Windows subsystem in NT – is more like Carbon, combined with OS X’s Classic environment.
.NET is simply a new and improved version of Win32 in purpose – a newer, shinier API, just with less legacy baggage.
I’m sure someone will disagree, but I think it’s inappropriate to (for example) compare Windows 95 <-> NT compatibility to non-carbon OS 9 <-> OS X compatibility since the Win32 API was created for the same purpose as Carbon.
I think it’s highly appropriate. Win32 wasn’t created solely as a transition tool like Carbon was, and the switch from DOS-based Windows to NT-based Windows is almost identical in scope and complexity as the change from MacOS Classic to OS X.
A more valid comparison would be to see how Win16 applications like Trumpet Winsock run in Windows NT.
That’s not really fair. Trumpet Winsock is a very low level tool, not a regular application (and is made unnecessary by WoW anyway).
A little instruction for the ignorant PC/MS losers. The numbering system on OS releases from Apple are not the same as Microsoft’s. Point releases are major upgrades in OS X. For example, Jaguar version 10.2 didn’t have the major features called Expose, FileVault, Fast User switching, etc.
Here’s the breakdown:
OS X version 10.0 = Cheetah….updates 10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3, etc.
OS X version 10.1 = Puma…updates are 10.1.1, 10.1.2, 10.1.3, etc.
OS X version 10.2 = Jaguar…..updates 10.2.1, 10.2.2, 10.2.3, etc.
OS X version 10.3 = Panther…updates 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, etc.
OS X version 10.4 = Tiger…updates will be 10.4.1, 10.4.2, 10.4.3, etc.
Deathshadow et al. , please, stop making fools of yourselves. Apple’s OS X will always be OS X v10.x. We could have version 10.10. Funny how numbers work. Oh, BTW, I’m a supposed Mac cultist. Forgive me for shedding some light on how Apple’s OS numbering system works.
yes we know apple calls its major point releases in essence a new os and therefore charges for it. the complaint is that it happens so often and costs so much. and that with such a rapidly moving target, hardware and software makers are stuck trying to figure out how to make their products the most compatible.
the end user is forced, if they want greatest reliability, to constantly upgrade both the os and all of their third party things….and they dont always happen at the same time. and it isnt cheap. just part of the price of working on mac.
this is a good read i found on the web:
“Price Comparison for Apple Mac OS X v. Microsoft Windows XP
Apple OS X History
Moving from classic Mac OS to the new OS X
09-13-00 Mac OS X Beta ships on cd only—cost of $29…no free download.
03-24-01 OS X Ships (doesn’t ship on new macs until July)—cost of $129
09-25-01 Mac OS X 10.1 released—cost free, but $20 to have Apple ship it (no download available to upgrade) and some Apple retailers gave the cds away free
End of 2001 10.1.2 ships—cost free
08-24-02 Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar) available—Cost of $129
02-14-03 Mac OS X 10.2.4 released—free
10-24-03 Mac OS X 10.3 ships—cost of $129 (only $20 for Mac users that have bought brand new G5 machines.)
Total for OS X if always upgrading to latest and greatest version:
Including beta in 37 months: $436
No beta, just retail in 31 months since March 2001: $407
(as an aside, since you have to have a Mac to install the Mac OS, buying the OS from Apple is always in essence an upgrade and not a full version being installed on a machine with no operating system as you can do on the PC side.)
Prices listed above are full retail and are controlled by Apple. Retailers are not allowed to sell but at a tiny percent less than the above prices or they lose the right to sell Apple products. Retailers do at times offer some other deals like a free t-shirt or other such goodies to sweeten the offer (Apple allows this).
I assume you can expect another update like 10.4 next year for $129.
Windows XP History
10-25-01: XP is released—cost, see prices below for Pro and Home versions.
09-09-02: Service Pack 1 released—cost free download.
02-03-03: Service Pack 1a released—cost free download.
Third Quarter of 2004: expected ship date for Service Pack 2—cost free.
Late 2005: expected ship date of next new OS with cost to upgrade—currently codenamed Longhorn. As both MS Windows Server and MS Office have gone down in price with their latest releases, I would expect the desktop OSes to do the same when they go gold master.
Weekly and monthly updates are released via download at no cost. These include security fixes and product compatibility fixes. Also includes updates to driver database, Direct X, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, Netmeeting, Messenger, Windows Movie Maker, Power Toys, etc. etc.
Professional Version
Full Version cost is: $299 (only bought by the user building a PC from parts or from select vendors that sell barebones computers without an OS, another thing that can’t be done on the Mac side). All others would either get OS in a new PC or would buy upgrade models since they already own Windows. Can be bought online today for as little as $220.
Upgrade cost is: $199 (available today for as little as $178 via online order)
OEM Full License cost is available on the net today for: $130 (no support)
Full Volume License cost w/ media is: $97 online today.
Upgrade Volume License w/ media is: $65 online today.
Home Version
Full Verison cost is $199 (only bought by the user building a PC from parts or from select vendors that sell barebones computers without an OS, another thing that can’t be done on the Mac side) Can be bought online today for as little as $142.
Upgrade cost is $99 (available today for as little as $79 via online order)
OEM Full License cost is available on the net today for: $83 (no support)
MS resellers and retailers don’t have stringent price controls forced upon them and that is reflected in the heavily reduced prices off of retail.
Misc.
Note that MS gives you many choices based on need. The Pro version is usually only needed by a user with a client pc on a network with a server environment involved. All others short of “power users” can use the Home version of XP. Power users can buy an OEM version without support for radically lower prices if they are savvy enough to take care of their PC on their own.
All updates to XP and supporting applications that ship with the OS since release have been free. Two years of free service thus far and the next full upgrade with any cost is not expected until late-2005. Four years between paid upgrades!
I wonder how many Mac users don’t run the latest release of X because it simply costs too much to pay Apple what amounts to a yearly $129 subscription fee.
Windows XP users bought once and know that they will get free upgrades and enhancements for years to come until the next major release of a full OS. MS also clearly roadmaps its plans so that businesses, education, and concerned users can plot their future.
So not only do PCs cost less than Macs in hardware, but Microsoft sells Windows for less than what Apple sells the Mac OS…by a substantial amount.
* Both Microsoft and Apple offer discounts to non-profits, academic, government, and military buyers, but again MS discounts at a higher percentage.”
Well, you can use all kinds of twisted logic to come up with “XP” is cheaper than OS X. Fact is, if a Mac user who is still using OS 9 wants to get the latest and greatest, all they pay is $129. A Win98 user (and there are many) will still have to pay more. Those who were early adopters of OS X, like me, have paid more ($260, 10.0 and 10.3) but that’s fine by me. I guess we pay for innovation. Other than security fixes and virus protection on XP, are there any innovations that have been introduced into the OS since it’s release. You’ll have to wait til 2006 for that I guess. Meanwhile, Steve is right. Watch the tail lights get smaller and smaller while you wait for XP2006.
what do you call the .net framework and its updates? (the third major version is now in public beta) free.
what do you call directx 9? free.
Windows Security Update CD. free, and includes a commercial antivirus and firewall solution. ( http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp )
what do you call full support for usb 2.0? before apple. free.
all flavors of wireless including 802.11a? no support from apple. free.
full support of dvd burning with both the – and + standards. – support at same time as apple, + support before apple. free.
full support of agp 8x (before apple), pci-x (before apple), pci express (apple does not have support)?
full support of ddr2 memory? no support from apple. free.
full support of iSCSI. free.
new moviemaker? free.
Remote Desktop Connection Web Connection? free.
Tweakomatic Utility. free.
new version of msde sql server database for workstation use. free.
Windows XP Peer-to-Peer Software Development Kit. free.
windows xp fun packs? free.
windows xp themes, skins, screensavers, and desktop backgrounds. free.
major updates to the windows updating system. free.
Internet Information Services (IIS) Lockdown Tool 2.1. free.
ms baseline security analyzer. free.
Advanced Networking Pack. free.
Windows XP Language Interface Pack. free.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) Version 1.3.4073. free.
major updates to activesync. free.
major udates to the jet database engine. free.
Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0. free.
Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager for Windows XP. free.
major updates to windows media player. free.
major updates to windows media encoder. free.
updates to ms keyboard and mouse software. free.
windows journal viewer. free.
new versions of msn messenger and windows messenger? free.
windows xp powertoys. free.
windows plus! and plus! digital media edition. (parts of which are free downloads). newer iLife is not free unless you buy full os.
no innovation? so easy to overlook.
smart display windows xp.
media center windows xp.
tablet pc windows xp.
windows xp embedded.
windows server 2003 (either 32 or 64 bit).
two new version of windows ce pocket pc os.
ms office XP and 2003 (when did apple last release a new version of appleworks?)
outlook 2003 with business contact manager (contact manager that utilizes msde sql server database). free addition to outlook buyers.
one note 2003.
infopath 2003.
ms producer for powerpoint (free).
2.5 years later and you are still getting substantial upgrades to the os for free. all current technologies work with the older os with at additional charge. some of the other technologies dont relate to the os per se, but i mention them to point out ms’ continuing endeavors. then again, the newest iLife isn’t free either.
xp service pack 2 is due out within weeks and it too will be free.
to not see ms’ innovation is to be blind to the obvious. or you are simply ignorant.
“A Win98 user (and there are many) will still have to pay more [than $129].”
Actually, WinXP Home OEM costs $69 (street price). For $129 you get XP and a good hard drive to install it on.
os 10.3 came out oct ’03
tiger will come out first half ’05 (if it isnt delayed like the g5 and the new imacs http://news.com.com/Apple+delays+new+iMac/2100-1041_3-5255095.html?… )
so the os has averaged one upgrade per yr for about $130 per yr…going from 10.3 will slow that cycle to anywhere from 14 to 20 months depending on when tiger ships in the first half of ’05. thats better for the folks tired of the constant payments to apple.
but again, talk about apples free parts of the os and we can go back to the good ole iTools….
ooops, thats not free anymore.
if you want the .mac functionality you now pay $100 per year.
apple is running a subscription service now.
os x upgrades $129/yr
.mac $100/yr
total to stay current on the mac is a modest $229 per yr.
forking that out, every three years, you would be able to buy a fairly decent PC on a 3 yr cycle for $700.
OK. Whatever you say chief.
I still don’t get where you (and Bill Gates) consider writing device drivers for technology developed by someone else as innovation. Looks like the hook is still in BIG time. Please remove.
Another thing is you make it seem like Mac users are forced to upgrade their OS or upgrade to .mac. There are approximate 25 Million Mac users according to recent figures. Only 12 million have moved so far to OS X and around 500,000 subscribed to .mac. There is no requirement to do either. I know a couple of folks that still use OS 9 for simple things like e-mail, internet, and word processing. They’re a little older and not so techie, so it is understandable. In the meantime, you may as well wait til 2006 or 2007 for anything really new from MS.
P.S. Last post on this topic for me as I definitely cannot persuade a person that needs justification for their platform’s stagnation by referencing FUD. Visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/ and http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger to get the scoop.
“I know a couple of folks that still use OS 9 for simple things like e-mail, internet, and word processing.”
most of the os 9 users i know are graphics pros that are not interested in upgrading because
–huge investments in scsi products wont work.
–huge investments in third party software wont work well or at all in the classic environment.
–education settings cant afford the cost of the migration.
but yeah, if half of all mac users are still cooking along on pre os x, that says it all about what they think of the newer os. with that in mind, dont tell me about all of the great new things in os x…and the additions that have occured with each paid release. using that old and tired logic of forcing people to do things is juvenile. we all know that no one is forced to do anything. so they continue on using os 9 and its 1984 quality and technology. or they bought os 10.04 or 10.1 and havent upgraded and cant use half the new features in os x because they cant afford to pay a subscription fee. what does innovation mean if few use it? or cant afford it?
back to the innovation, remember that apple makes the whole widget (but does of course license and borrow technology from others as well) whereas microsoft is but a part of the package when you go with a pc.
on the pc side, innovation comes from ms and:
intel
amd
sony
nvidia
ati
creative
media center pc makers
tablet pc makers
etc etc etc etc………….
ms doesnt have, or need, to do all of the innovation on its own. when you go with the pc side, you have more enterprises pushing the envelope and therefore get more innonvation for less cost.
I think “Spotlight” is great and this is even bigger than the greater 64-bit support.
The way Tiger implement is very nice, I think it’ll be very useful in all occasions. I’ll pay for the upgrade just for this function.
This author is such a tit.
Thank goodness MS is innovating. Ha!
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?st…
Too bad for 95% of the PC world. Many institutions have geared their websites to be IE compatible and this means that many people are stuck playing Russian roulette (pun intended).
I guess we’ll see what MS is really made of when it comes to OS’s. Their soon to be released SP2 better fix things. If SP2 is crappy then don’t expect “LateHorn” to have many buyers. Could be an opportunity for Apple Computer.
“Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.”