Linux and Mac OS X

William J writes "Here is an article with an interesting slant on the relationship between the Mac OS and Linux. The author suggests that Gnome and KDE developers can learn from the Mac GUI. Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"

People accomplish things

[Drone-X]

Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"

For software development you only need some brains, time and a computer. Because of this and also thanks to a certain global communication tool, it's hardly suprising people accomplish grand things without coorporations backing them.

Really, people don't need management to accomplish something. Given the resources (money and time) people can and will do productive things for society.

Has WIlliam J even used OSX?

[LeapingGnomeArs]

"unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing"

Has the submitter even used OSX? I've been using it daily since October and it has only crashed on me once. The majority of OSX users do not rebooted their Macs, they just put them to sleep. Remeber, Macs have instant wake-up from sleep, unlike Windows or Linux.

OSX uptime is typcially measured in weeks, not days.

Re:Porting Aqua

[base3]

Hit it on the head. Every time I think of going over to the Mac to avoid giving money to the Evil Empire [microsoft.com], I remember things like

o Apple licensed the nefarious Amazon one-click patent, giving Amazon a precedent with which to bludgeon smaller companies.

o Apple crippled their DVD writing software to disallow mastering for replication.

o Apple used legal threats on non-for-profit skinners.

o Apple screwed over the clone vendors.

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm not thrilled about buying Microsoft, but I wouldn't feel particularly good about supporting another company with a monopoly (can you get Mac OSX for a clone? No. Then they have a monopoly) which leverages their software to sell overpriced hardware. It's obvious that if Apple were sufficiently competent, they would be another Microsoft. But while Apple is ruthless, predatory, and sells out its users just like MS, they're not as good at it.

Re:Porting Aqua

[Drone-X]

(a) you have sound user interface design for free

GNOME and KDE will get there, it will just takes a bit more time. Looking at the GNOME usability project with a.o. the work Sun is putting into it, I'm confident that by version 3.0 GNOME will be a killer.

MacOS X OTOH has had a lot of critism [asktog.com].

(b) you have an instant installed base familiar with the user interface

Not all that much people are familiar with Aqua.

The number of people familiar with GNOME and/or KDE is probably larger? I admit I don't have any numbers to back this up except for the fact that there are more machines out there running GNU/Linux rather than Macintosh, add to this that MacOS X was released not so long ago and I may just be right.

Either how, the number is probably not going to be worth the bother.

(c) you have many applications which can be ported possibly with a minimum of effort.

GnuStep should allow for this without actually porting Aqua. The advantage of this strategy is that you get to keep X :). (For those that for whatever reason believe X is bad/bloated/whatever, think about the drivers.)

But it does make sense. If people can rush off and build .Net clones, why not do someting actually useful?

Gimme a break. .NET seems like a sound development platform and it's almost garantueed to be a huge success (it's Java with lots of extras plus MS is backing it).

Re:Porting Aqua

[alex_ant]

That's a really funny definition of "monopoly." By your logic, Sun has a monopoly on Solaris, SGI has a monopoly on IRIX, HP has a monopoly on HPUX, and IBM has a monopoly on AIX. Monopolies = bad, so Sun, SGI, HP, and IBM are all evil, and will be until they port their big iron OSes to your peecee. "I want 4Dwm! Open-source it, SGI! Give it to me free, or else yer nothin' but a dirty monopolist!"

Aqua is a work of art. Believe it or not /., some people in the world actually believe in intellectual property.

Apple is not predatory. It's too small to be predatory. Its attack of the clones happened only after a radical shift in management. I think the term there would be "non-suicidal," not "predatory."

How does Apple sell out its users? I've had a mac.com email address for the longest time (Mac owners get them for free - how evil of Apple to offer such nasty tie-ins!), even though I've rarely used it, and I've not gotten a SINGLE piece of spam to it. Ever.

As has been covered so many times here before, more expensive hardware != overpriced hardware. You get what you pay for. This is a myth that really needs to get shot down - I don't see why so many obviously smart geeks have such a terrible time understanding this. Some people in the world are actually not content with cheap-ass high-MHz beige commodity boxes built by soulless vendors like Dell, Gateway, etc. who just don't give a shit about their product and who WOULD sell their customers out to gain any edge they could in the cutthroat Wintel market.

I'm not an Apple apologist, but I am a Mac/Linux user and I will go to certain lengths to defend the company against the heaps of obvious bullshit piled upon it. I agree that a large and powerful Apple would not be a pretty sight. I would be most content with Apple at around 10-15% market share.

Re:Porting Aqua

[pressman]

What the /. Linux crowd fails to see is that Apple customers don't mind paying a little extra money for the time and care put into developing Macintosh systems. Most Mac users don't want to get into the guts of their computer except to maybe install an extra harddrive or some extra RAM. We generally don't care about getting under the hood because the people who made the computer engineered it so we don't have to do that if we don't want to.

For Linux users I can understand why getting to the guts of the computer and the OS is so important. It's part of the computing experience for that market. Linux users LIKE getting to the very core of their computers. I don't understand why they have to bash Apple and it's users just because Apple doesn't consider them part of their target market demographic. Why would Apple market to people who don't want to spend money on anything? They are a company whose goal is to make money and they can't make money off a free OS and low margin computer components.

I don't go around bashing Linux because it doesn't meet all of my computing needs. It's a good OS for what it's intended to do, but it doesn;t come close to meeting my needs or the needs of millions and millions of other computer users... users being the operative word.

Macs just work out of the box. Ceratin people want that.

Linux only works if you configure it to work the way you want it to and have the technical knowledge to do that. Certain people want and need that from their OS and computer.
Windows has lots of games and is ubiquitous. Very few people really want Windows but it is the only option they know. It seems to meet their needs reasonably, but then again their standards and expectations of a computer might be a bit lower than Mac or *NIX users.

So, if the macintosh doesn't fit your criteria for a computing environment, DON'T BUY ONE OR USE MAC OS! Stop complaining about the price of their hardware and buy the system you need. You're just wasting energy and the time of other people.

Developing the GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's telling that Apple was able to achieve in just a couple of years what the open source community has been struggling to do for years, unsuccessfully -- that is, bring a great user experience to a Unix platform.

Open source development models are great at a lot of things, lousy at others. Agreeing where to go or what to do or how best to do it is something the OSS model has failed miserably at.

What OSX proves is just how essential it is to have engineers working under a single umbrella, with a single vision, and a single set of user interface guidelines. There is no technical reason why Linux should be so much harder to use than OS X - the failings are all due to the failure of the OSS GUI teams to coalesce around a single vision .