Another Look At OS X 274
mduell writes: "Apple has been close to their golden master copy of OS X for a week or so, but they've still been making nightly builds to squash the rest of the bugs. These last minute copies have all sported a "Build 4K78" in their info window, and many of them have been leaked to outside sources. Reviewers who got their hands on the system wrote extensively about how 4K78 was horrible, yet today resellers across the world received boxed copies marked as 4K78. This article explains what happened, as well as explains how many bugs to expect, and why Apple dropped the ball on a few features (like DVD)."
Re:Apple hits the iceberg (Score:2)
PPC processors are at 733 MHz, not 500...
BeOS and cloners are enemies? WHO CARES. All 4 ppl will be pissed... didn't seem to matter for the last few years, did it?
Motorola layed off worker from it CELL PHONE division. Shit!! No Apple cell phones, what will we do!?!?
Yes, everyone does GUI and mice. I'm missing your point. Did you just wake from a 15 year slumber?
Marketing decor... Hmmm.. but EVERYONE does GUIs nowadays.... shit, and they're not marketting mice.... or cell phones either!!! What good are they! Yes, that has done WONDERS for Windows, hasn't it, troll.
Soin case you missed everything from the past few years, Apple is offering an alternative OS based on the most stable and powerful OS that exists. They have added a userfriendly interface to this power, something many have tried to do with only moderate success, in such a way as to make it usable by children and not just hardcore hackers. They have opened part of the source, while keeping some propriety code so that they could make profit, which allows them to cut margins a little on hardware. I love Linux, but how much does the _company_ Linux(tm) make?
Someone moderate this ilinformed idiot down...
Re:bad article (Score:3)
bad article (Score:5)
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No this is wrong, and I've already contacted the author. The article about 4K78 couldn't be more wrong. There was one single, unique build of 4K78 and that's it. The Developer RC CD and the final Retail CD have identical bytecounts, checksums, creation and modification dates, etc. Apple/NeXT's versioning system had ONE unique build number per build, and that is it. Between builds, there can be modifications and builds of components, but each full build with an associated build designation is the only one there is. Now: there were some 4K78's floating around the net that had been imaged with Disk Copy rather than Toast that won't show proper sizes and dates. But any properly created images and/or actual, official CDs will all be identical. There are NO CHANGES, in any way, from the Developer RC CD to today's Retail CD. I don't know how more pointedly to put it. Some people actually go so far as to say Apple is tricking you by making the Retail CD "look like" the Developer RC, even though it's really different. You have to be fucking kidding me. The bottom line is Apple does not have dozens, several, or even two builds of 4K78. There is one, and it was accepted as RC, accepted as GM, and accepted for manufacuring. There WERE NOT daily builds of OS X after RC was declared. 4K78, in its single incarnation, was the end of the line. If people want to *believe* that the Retail 4K78 is different from the RC 4K78, great. But it's not true. Posting articles like this further confuses the issue. The MAIN reason 4K78 was left in was so that people could see FOR SURE that the Retail was the same as the RC: that's the WHOLE PURPOSE of a build number - to uniquely and certainly identify a build. It started out with people being convinced that there were 4K8* series builds (there were never, and never will be, 4K8* builds. Future OS X development will happen in totally different build trees with different versioning, milestones, etc.), with people wanting to believe there was something oh-so-much-better than OS X 4K78. Then, when people were finally convinced that what was in the boxes was 4K78, build number in the About Box and all, they said "maybe Jobs will announce something on the 21st". When nothing was announced on the 21st, they started grasping at straws, making up ridiculous stories about how there were many many different 4K78's and the developer 4K78 was an internal debug version and the retail version is some magical optimized version rebuilt several times, yet still maintains the 4K78 designation and was even designed to LOOK identical to the developer RC to throw people off, with fake checksums and all?? It defies logic. And well it should, because none of it is true. 4K78 is 4K78 is 4K78, period. What's in peoples' boxes this Saturday is identical in every way to what developers received 3 weeks ago. And it's a great release; enjoy.
PS - Doesn't anyone realize what a support nightmare having multiple builds with the same build number would be. That's just rediculous. For the LAST TIME: any (legitimately obtained) copy of 4K78 is the same as ANY other 4K78.
THE MAC OS X DEVELOPER RELEASE CANDIDATE 4K78 CD IS IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY TO THE MAC OS X 10.0 RETAIL 4K78 CD. THERE ARE NO DIFFERENCES WHATSOVER.
The author of the article was kind enough to respond, and conceded that it was just a "theory", i.e. he hasn't compare the CDs himself. Additionally, he's more referring to illegally obtained builds of of hotline and carracho, which could be fake, improperly imaged, etc. All REAL 4K78's out there, i.e. ones obtained legitimately from Apple, are CERTAIN to be identical.
Re:File system case-sensitive? (Score:3)
UFS: The traditional UNIX filesystems. This FS is case sensitive and act's like UFS is supposed to act. Apple had to do some clever (or not so clever) hacks to get UFS to invisibly support Mac resource forks (ala
HFS+: The third version of the Macintosh filesystem, this FS is NOT case sensitive, but is case aware. Thus README and readme would be the same file. However, since the FS is case aware, it keeps the case you want. (REaDMe would remain REaDMe). Apple had to do some clever kernel hacks here too, since HFS+ does not support hard links either.
--
Though I use a Macintosh, I am not a mac-bigot. I just hate Windoze.
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
There's no such thing as a perfect software release. Not everyone will agree on the definition of perfection.
Win2k had 63k bugs? No shit! It's a HUGE fucking product, it's an OS. (I've also read that a large percentage of the 63,000 bugs figure was simply some sloppy cleanup of the bug database, and that going through it thoroughly left fewer than 5000 actual open issues).
That said, software is a continuously evolving critter, and just like Homo Sapiens is not the last word in evolution (just the latest), you can't say the same of any given release.
Now; what IS *wrong* (evil, unethical, bad, stupid) is revving software, without versioning. I don't think that's the case with what's going on with OS X. It takes a stupid stupid organization to do something like that. As someone else said, it's a support nightmare. I've worked for a company that was too spineless to change the version number of their product with each release. Some releases were free patches, collections of bugfixes. 1990's version of the "service pack" in my mind, that's just spineless. It's Marketing hijacking the version numbers for their own purposes, when version numbers are freakin engineering tools for chrisssakes. That's just plain stupid. Support had to write a tool that would checksum all of our files and dump a report that the customer could email us, JUST so we could tell what fucking version they were running.
That said, I think that Microsoft may have actually hit on something good. The "year" version number. Windows 2000, is the brand name of the OS, and should not be used in any engineering sense to identify the specific OS you're running. Just what you want to buy off the shelf. Close enough. If it's not the right actual version, you just update it over the web. Versioning and updating retail inventory at brick&mortar is just a waste of time. I remember that being the reason why that company didn't want to version their products, because they didn't want 10000 boxes of "not the latest stuff" sent back from the distributors. They also didn't want it to be public knowledge that we had 8 patches in a 6 month period.
So the brand-name mechanism used by Microsoft is pretty good - unfortunately, it's not applied in any rational way to the "engineering version" that you see in the System control panel, or tech support tools. It's build such and such, service pack X. I believe that is wrong, and it's something that's trying to be a lie, and not even succeeding at that. A service pack should rev the version number of the OS, and that's all.
Re:Message to Hemos: OSX sucks (Score:2)
Well, it would be easy to modify that yourself, with Slash 2.0, on your own site. You'd have to ask Rob if we would want it on Slashdot, I'd guess no
Re:File system case-sensitive? (Score:2)
Re:Well,well, well. Apple causing postings on /. : (Score:2)
Man, what a pyrrhic victory that must be. We win with oh,let's call it 5% to be generous, and Windows lost with ~90% to be stingy. Yeah, I bet Bill cries all the way to the bank.
Windows, and the stuff that runs under it is too attractive for chip manufacturers to ignore as we move to 64 bits. If it can't run on them, no one's going to bother trying to sell them anyway. (except possibly as servers, where Unix has a chance, but is still getting encroached upon by Windows) And sooner or later they will succeed, just as they manged to move over to 32 bits from 16.
The OS wars are indeed over, but the winner is the platform that natively runs Windows software. (which doesn't have to be Windows exclusively, but will be as long as MS is intact)
Re:Someone has to say this... (Score:2)
However he has many good points as well. Just ranting that not everything he says should be taken as gospel...
Re:Self contradiction? (Score:2)
Once this horrid problem is solved, the program is free to make up any rules it wants to map stuff typed by the user to file names. My best example is that they can now do spelling correction reliably, something that nobody in their right mind would put into a file system, but something I consider equivalent to case matching.
Steve Jobs hates multi-button mice (Score:3)
This is most evident in the NeXT, which had a 2-button mouse. There was a control-panel "preference" that said "make the buttons act alike". This made the right-mouse button act like the left one so it was a single button. The machine shipped with this mode set by default.
The really odd thing about it was the implementation: turning on this mode actually changed the "server" (similar to an X server) so that clicking the right mouse button returned an event indistinguisable from a left button. It was not done inside the NeXTStep code which ran in user space, which would seem to be the obvious implementation. Unlike everything else on the server (like keyboard mapping!), you could not change it with PostScript code, and only a program with suid privleges could change the setting (and even then it was undocumented). As far as I can tell, every other preference on the control panel was done simply in user space by NeXTStep.
He really really wanted to make sure it was impossible to write a program that used the right button, and was willing to make bad software design just to enforce it!
Re:File system case-sensitive? (Score:3)
For this reason I have said many many times here that file systems should be case sensitive, in fact the file system should just treat filenames as strings of bytes and only an identical stream of bytes will identify the same file (thus if UTF-8 is used, only a single encoding of a name works even though the UTFUnicode mapping is not really 1:1). Only by using such a scheme can the file systems be fast and free of security holes.
The problem is, many people seem to think that if the file system is case sensitive, that the user has to type filenames with the correct case. This is false, there is no reason that user-level programs cannot do their own case-insensitive search for a matching file (they could also do more complex things like spelling correction).
I'm not sure why so many otherwise bright people are under this delusion, but it is causing a great deal of trouble.
It is good to see that Apple is supporting a case-dependent file system. It would be interesting to see their user-level solutions to making this user friendly, perhaps when (if?) they do it it will wake up all the idiot FS designers and NT defenders out there.
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
Given all of that, look at how far the Wine people have come with many, many fewer programmers. Their task is essentially the same as Win2K's.
One of the problems with all of this is that everyone is trying to push out large, bulky, crappy software. It _is_ too big to do right all-at-once. They fact that they are trying is proving either their ignorance or their contempt for their customers. Why not incrementally improve? Ask Bill Gates. He'll tell you "bugfixes don't sell software". They can't take any of their 2 Billion in _profit_ and fix your
bugs. Not to mention that you are the one who gave them 2 billion dollars, but that's a different story. Everyone would be much happier if all of IT people stopped "innovating" and just made something that worked. STOP ADDING FEATURES!
Think of every technology that someone has had to add compatibility for, and ask yourself, "was that technology really necessary? Did it help someone out?" Like WP file formats. I applaud SodiPodi for using the industry standard file format, rather than creating their own and importing/exporting. If someone makes something simplistic, everyone says, "it doesn't do X!" Well who cares! It works. It works well. If we start there, and _slowly_ add things, then we will have a true technology infrastructure, and not this bumpy road. This is another reason I love free software, because while commercial software can only sell "innovation", free software places value on bugfixing (not that free software packages are bug-free, but that what a company would pay for would be the support and fixing, not the innovation). Anyway, I'll end my rant here.
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:3)
Second of all Linux probably has more than 63,000 bugs if you look at what ships from distributors. It's just that people classify bugs differently.
If I have a window that leaves artifacts if I move it around, that's a bug, even if they go away the next time something is moved over them. In fact, that may be several bugs, especially if it occurs at the driver level (it may happen on 20 drivers, so that's 20 bugs).
If Mozilla shifts an image one pixel to the left too far, that's a bug, even though anyone but the most hardcore testers may ever notice it.
Linux people tend to misunderstand what a bug is. We're used to dealing with and complaining about major bugs. Then when someone says, "the O.S. has 63,000 bugs" we think it has 63,000 major bugs. But that just isn't true. Bugs can also be potential race conditions that have never been exploited, or potential memory leaks that have never been looked at.
For example, if I'm programming, and I'm not sure if something I'm doing will cause a memory leak, I should add that as a bug. If the program is "notepad", there's no reason to ever even examine that bug, simply because notepad isn't a long-running app that will be affected by memory leaks.
Anyway, I agree that software has too many bugs, and that its the fault of both the distributor for not testing and the consumer for not demanding better. However, I do think you should take any bug count with a grain of salt because many of them refer to conditions that most people may not think of as bugs.
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Technically, the reason is they don't have a large enough number of eyeballs and hands to do the OS, DVD, CD, and all this shit all at the same time by the marketing/morale/fanbase-driven early release date.
Closed-source software companies, unfortunately, don't have the freedom to release software "when it's done", particularly after they've bought ads declaring a certain date, told the investors they'd release on a certain date, etc..
Insinuating Mach + BSD can't handle CD burning or DVD playback (technically, not legally) is kinda unreasonable, if only because I'm sure someone can port cdrecord at the very least
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Side article worth reading (Score:2)
Re:Side article worth reading (Score:2)
Fixed it though. Hopefully it'll stay up for good.
Re:bad article (Score:2)
Re:mediocre DVD player versus none? (Score:3)
Re:What about internal system testing? (Score:3)
Re:bad article (Score:4)
The truth is that there are multiple 4K78 builds out there, and every Apple employee I've talked to acknowledges this. The person who wrote that comment only saw two of the copies going around, and assumed they were all the same. This is strictly untrue.
Well,well, well. Apple causing postings on /. :-) (Score:5)
Jobs was right. Just like Apple became the largest unit sales seller of RISC machines within one year of the introduction of the PPC boxes, Apple will become the largest unit sale seller of Unix boxes within one year of the introduction of OS X.
That's twice Apple has accomplished a complete change of supporting architecture without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
M$ must be feeling a little ill after failing at least twice to get off the x86. The coming 64 bit machines (needed to handle biometric information to turn packets on the 'net "black," and make life much, much harder for the "script-kiddies,") will wipe M$ off the map.
The OS Wars are over. Unix won.
So grab marketshare now... (Score:2)
Imagine what market/mindshare inroads can be made, if while waiting for an OS X version of Photoshop, Apple users, eager to try out some native OS X software, download and start playing with GIMP for Mac [macgimp.org]. Or maybe Abiword [abiword.com] will get a build of OS X into their hands?
Hopefully soon it will be as common to see apps all packed up for OS X as it is to find an .RPM today...
W
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Re:Yes, it's got it.. (Score:2)
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
It turned out that the "sudden unwanted acceleration problem" was most likely due to having the brake and the gas slightly too close to each other. It was, depending on your opinion, operator error or a user interface bug.
People think about UI as minor issues, but in the case of the Audi 9000S, it was pretty serious. Kinda funny, that.
-jon
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Welcome to Brooks' Law. It says "adding more developers to a late software project makes it later." If you don't understand why this is true, then you aren't qualified to open your yap about why Mac OS X is missing DVD playback and CD burning.
-jon
What does 4K78 mean? (Score:2)
Re:Multimedia capability (Score:2)
Neither Windows or Linux have otu of the box support for both.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Re:Multimedia capability (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is that there is no other released product that will do what you are criticising Mac OS X about.
Ridiculous.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
OSX might support Java better than Linux... (Score:3)
Why? One simple reason is that at the core, Mach (which is what OSX is built around) offers light-weight threads which should mesh better with the threads Java uses than Linux or BSD alone would.
Also, from what I've read it seems like there is much better Java integration throughout the system (like a Java Coco (sp?) API) so I stand a better chance of being able to customize some of the UI using Java.
Also, a last point unrelated to Java is that I simply have to offer what support I can to an OS that offers a sane standard package management structure. I think that for everyday use, OSX will require a bit less of my time to work with than Linux. Not that I still wont have other boxes that run Linux, I just plan to do most of my work in OSX.
New mod category needed - "Nuke" (Score:5)
Then, we would cease to hear from people that do not realize the mac supports USB mice and thus three button mice - with wheels.
A side note - the Mac ALSO supports single button mice, so it is actually superior to just about anything else by virtue of supporting a wider range of mice. Can you imagine trying to use a single button mouse in X? I guess you don't care about usability of systems at all, yet another reason why we need a NUKE moderation.
Re:DVD support or DVD player? (Score:4)
I couldn't find any info in the article if there is no support for DVD or just no DVD player bundled.
No player - I've been using the OS X Beta on a G4 with a DVD-ROM drive, and had no problem accessing DvDs. You can always dual-boot with Mac OS 9 to play DVDs until OS X gets that feature - it's not hard to do (just install Mac OS 9 on a separate drive or partition). I know I'll be dual-booting to the classic Mac OS for a while anyway, since not all hardware is going to be supported in Mac OS X for a while, and I'm sure a lot of 3D-accelerated games will play better under straight Mac OS 9 without going through the compatibility layer.
My co-workers use MS products. (Score:2)
Cygwin & MPW is the answer to heterogenious networking and collaboration?
Let me remind you, we are the minority. It's about being able to work and co-habitate with Windows users that makes an alternative OS possible for me. (Maybe in your job this isn't an issue, but for mine it is...)
It's not just about file sharing and running Lynx in a windows Cygwin unix prompt. It's about being able to track modifications on a word document thats been passed around to 5 people hammering down a project. Things like that, unfortunately, lock me into having to have -a- windows machine to do activities such as this.
I have a DUAL PIII 800 with Ultra SCSI 166 and plenty of ram... but VMWARE still isn't a great solution FOR ME (disclaimers apply). It's just slow. I like native apps.
But again, why would I want to run Cygwin?
Stability of Windows with the applications of Linux? XWin32 is a much better solution anyway.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Computer is like a good matress.. worth buying. (Score:2)
Your arguments are very valid.. probably just comes down to choice. I work 8 hours a day (at least) on my machine developing / adminstrating / planning along with the normal day to day office application requirements.
If I am going to be spending more time on this machine than I do sleep, why not have a nice one that I like and enjoy.
I don't give up anything, my linux box is still within kicking distance of my G4, but $1,500 for a OSX system which runs very quick and gives me all I need.
I could save $200-300 (if I build the machine myself) on semi-equivilant hardware, but why? I will treat myself to something that I enjoy using.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
MS Office, etc (Score:2)
I can use MS Office / Explorer, etc from the Mac, I can't use those on my Linux box unless I boot into Windows.
I find myself more productive in the Mac Interface than I do in KDE as well. Just about having everything in one place. (Though you can do the same thing using 2 Intel boxes and XWin32 on windows.. but then you are stuck using Windows as your primary workstation, which I am trying to avoid.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Yes, it's got it.. (Score:3)
I have build 4k73 (very close to final version) and it has a tool in the control panel that you can have it fetch updates from Apple. It is added to the cron automatically if you wish and it will look for updates every night or every friday for example.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Do these people actually use the OS? (Score:5)
I have been using it for about 4 weeks (Got build 4k73 when it was first released).
With exception of a the occasional IE crash (not OS crash) the system ran without a hitch. I had it on a iBook which is a relatively slow and old machine. (Especially when compared to my Dual PIII 800 SCSI 166 running Debian SID with KDE).
I am not one of those people that need DVD playback. I have a DVD player and TV for that. I just need good Java support and a decient terminal and X windows. OSX gives me all of that.
My G4 just arived this week and now all I need to do is buy a Gigabit ethernet for my Linux box and I have one of the coolest development environments I could ask for. (Linux apps for server and Java profiler...) I was able to get JBuilder 4.0 Enterprise for Windows actually working on OSX.
I was quickly able to get wget, vim, Lynx, Python and Perl working fine on the machine and was quite comfortable. As far as the Unix side of things, the only problem people might find is that the directory structure is a LITTLE bit different than what you are used to. (Still has
But the nice thing is now I can run Photoshop, JBuilder, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, iMovie (Which is actually a DAMN cool program
But OSX most importantly stays out of my way and just lets me work.
Also the fact that Apple is packaging everything needed to do full development is pretty neat. They are starting to learn that they will get market acceptance with empowerment of the programmer.
I am also happy that OSX allows me to very openly work in a heterogenious environment as Windows and the old MacOS seem to do the exact opposite. I see it as Linux, BSD, etc just gained a great ally.
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Aqua Look and Feel (Score:2)
DVD support or DVD player? (Score:2)
In any case, if I owned a Mac, which I don't, I wouldn't get the first version of Mac OS X in any case. I'd wait for Mac OS X.0.5 or whatever, some 6-12 months after the release of this initial version.
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
Of course, every publisher aspires to perfection. Never forget, however, that the perfect is the enemy of the good. No Q/A process is limited to assuring installation and updating -- everyone checks everything. But checking doesn't fix bugs, fixing bugs doesn't fix bugs.
The reality is that operating systems don't work. Never has, never will. Many work well enough, and some are excellent. Pretending otherwise gets you to whining about something that never will, and never can be.
Which is why its hard to take this kind of criticism seriously.
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
Exactly which company has ever complied with this standard, even for applications? Certainly, no major release of any Apple, Macintosh, IBM or other operating system with which I have worked has come close to that standard.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. You will wait forever if you insist on these ludicrous and unrealistic expectations.
Of course software should be bug-free. It can't be. Of course software should have as few bugs "as possible?" What is possible? Do we mean as few bugs as are possible after all testing and programming can be accomplished, without any desire to release a product on time? Or do we mean as few bugs as are possible after a reasonable Q/A process has identified known and outstanding problems?
EVERY major release of MacOS was feature-incomplete and had bugs. So what? Same is true of Microsoft, who couldn't even pretend the 3.X versions of Windows constituted an operating system, let alone a feature-complete bug-free (so far as possible) system. Windoze ME had 64K plus KNOWN bugs at release.
As I said, it is hard to take this kind of criticism seriously. Use REAL-WORLD standards, in REAL-WORLD environments, and call spades spades.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
Reasonable people may differ on this point. Time will tell. So far as I can tell, even the public beta was, infinitely more accessible than any unix distribution that has ever existed.
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
Exactly which company has ever complied with this standard, even for applications? Certainly, no major release of any Apple, Macintosh, IBM or other operating system with which I have worked has come close to that standard.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. You will wait forever if you insist on these ludicrous and unrealistic expectations.
Of course software should be bug-free. It can't be. Of course software should have as few bugs "as possible?" What is possible? Do we mean as few bugs as are possible after all testing and programming can be accomplished, without any desire to release a product on time? Or do we mean as few bugs as are possible after a reasonable Q/A process has identified known and outstanding problems?
EVERY major release of MacOS was feature-incomplete and had bugs. So what? Same is true of Microsoft, who couldn't even pretend the 3.X versions of Windows constituted an operating system, let alone a feature-complete bug-free (so far as possible) system. Windoze ME had 64K plus KNOWN bugs at release.
As I said, it is hard to take this kind of criticism seriously. Use REAL-WORLD standards, in REAL-WORLD environments, and call spades spades.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
Reasonable people may differ on this point. Time will tell. So far as I can tell, even the public beta was, infinitely more accessible than any unix distribution that has ever existed.
Its hard to take this kind of criticism seriously (Score:5)
Fixes to software do not change this. A fix of a bug you know about can at best change a type A or type C program to a type B program.
Nobody has been in this business for very long who does not understand this.
So, the question isn't whether the distro is buggy -- the question is whether the distro works well enough that known bugs can be repaired by updaters, ideally through the network. If we can install it, boot it, get online, download the updaters, and run them, the distro did its job.
Physical distros serve two purposes -- (1) to serve as a token of ownership; and (2) to serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software.
I assume OSX, as delivered, will be a type C program. It will have bugs and megabugs. I also presume that Apple did sufficient Q/A to assure that the installation and updating processes will work. If so, thats all that it needs to be.
To the naysayers, what is the alternative? Can anyone suggest a fully-tested on-time bug-free distribution CD?
Re:Do these people actually use the OS? (Score:2)
- I can use some killer Mac apps that I won't have for a long, long time on my un*x machine; ProTools, FinalCut, PhotoShop (I have a hard time with Gimp's interface). This means a machine I can have at home that doesn't scare my wife and doesn't disgust me.
- I work with a programmer who does a lot of Java programming under Windows. Finally, I will be able to throw out Samba and just give him NFS mounts, and I won't experience any more skunky permissions errors, user mapping due to his weird NT setup, etc. And, my graphics folks can do the same, so I can throw out netatalk. Two big filesharing apps out the window.
I find it weird that you can't imagine a Java programmer using Photoshop, ProTools, etc. You must hang around some pretty boring, limited people. And I don't think that because I use an xterm, I'm not making use of the graphics subsystem. If I can mouse over and see what's going on in a minimized terminal window, I am. I 've still not figured out how to manage the titles on my xterms properly so I can do this in WindowMaker.Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
They have to write an OS with the following criteria:
1) support for legacy apps (meaning old APIs and all of their little quirks)
2) support every conceivable combination of the bizarre and increasingly crappy pc architecture
3) eliminate all bugs from a 40 million line codebase
I don't care how many developers you throw at this problem, you'll never get it 100% right, and it's amazing Microsoft can do as well as they do.
Doug
Re:What about "MacUpdate" ? (Score:3)
They should, the vendor has your purchase now, what guarantee do you have they will fix the bugs?
I work for the Technical Support division of a major (multi-platform) vendor. We do this shit all the time, release stuff to satisfy a marketing schedule, then decide to drop fixes that -really, really- should have been in the released product.
All the time we (as customers) accept buggy products with a promise to 'fix it in a service pack', companies will not improve the fundamental reliability of their products and release practices.
EZ
Re:Do these people actually use the OS? (Score:2)
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
It's always been this low.
"Has the meaning of software "release" and "purchase" become this perverted?"
Yes, actually it has. Into a "service", "support", "widget frosting". How do you think companies are making money off "free" software?
"Are we really expected to just accept that anything we buy is a work in progress?"
Yup. Unless of course you are willing to 1) wait forever for the company to put out a "perfect" product and then 2) be totally satisfied that the product will never ever reveal a bug (being "perfect" of course), and so you will never ever need any type of support. Unless you have an infinate lifespan, it is infeasible to wait for software to be "perfected". Releases are just snapshots in time of a fairly stable state.
"I honestly can't believe there are people out there who think that since you can't catch every bug, you aren't responsible for the quality of your software."
Who said just because you can't catch every bug you are not responsible for the quality of your software? You are responsible...that's what bugfixes, patches, and, imagine this - newer releases - are for.
You are clearly living on another planet if you think software is something you can just manufacture on an assembly line, slap an "inspected by #57" sticker on, and shove to the customer as a final, "perfect" product.
Re:New mod category needed - "Nuke" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Do these people actually use the OS? (Score:5)
Until Mac OS X, MacOS has always been behind the Java boat, so we always have to be limited by the version of VM MacOS supports, and bend over backwards to accomodate any idiosynchrasies. If modern Java support on Mac OS is finally now non-vapor, Mac clients have immediately jumped from the end of the pack, straight to the top, in being both Unix, *and* Mac.
Exactly. Remember, classic Mac OS has a terrible architecture; I was impressed that Apple could get Java working on it at all. With OS X's Unix foundation Java support will be an order of magnitude better.
Mac OS X will be great. (Score:2)
I already run Linux on my iMac, but X doesn't seem to run too well on it, and OSX looks like it might just be worth the trip down to the warez channel.
When they replace my Linux-runnin' P3-500 at work i will look pretty seriously at a GeForce3-equipped G4.
Since most of my software development is done with Java, OpenGL/SDL, and Perl, it seems that this machine will deliver the goods as an affordable 3D workstation.
Plus it runs Lightwave and Photoshop, which means i can finally kick my Windows habit permanently.
I just don't understand how anyone can possibly say this is, in any way, a bad thing for Linux, UNIX, Apple, Sun and least of all the users of the new system.
Self contradiction? (Score:2)
"the program's idea of what letters match may be different than the file systems"
"there is no reason that user-level programs cannot do their own case-insensitive search for a matching file".
Re:*nix around the world. (Score:2)
PS> Yea, I know BeOS isn't major, but does RedHat have a contract with Sony? [benews.com]
Re:TROLL ALERT! (Score:2)
Re:Running on X86 (Score:3)
Re:Do these people actually use the OS? (Score:2)
MS-Office, Photoshop and a hundred other graphics applications, and a better graphics subsystem than X while also retaining the ability to run X and just about every other Linux app around (including the exact same JDK as Linux).
DB
Re:OS X and MSIE (Score:2)
DB
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Ah, throw contractors at a problem, Hah! With that attitude you probably think that 9 women can make a baby in a month. Try to dig up and read "The Mythical Man Month". It might wake you up.
DB
Re:DVD features more important than on windows (Score:2)
DB
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
DB
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
In your terms, I have X parallel jobs with X parallel teams on them. Y% of those teams are behind schedule so I should add people to those teams that fall in group Y and I will get an arithmetical improvement in efficiency. Bzzt, that's a recipe for disaster and very much the subject of "The Mythical Man Month".
DB
CNET interview win Jef Raskin (Score:2)
Re:What about "MacUpdate" ? (Score:2)
IE, every time a new NT service pack comes out (what is this last one, the eighth?) I don't re-burn my install CD to overwrite the source files with the newer SP version. I just go ahead and install SP0/1/2 and then when I'm all done install SP4/5/6. Ditto for the critical updates/hotfixes/security bulletins. I head over to the update server and check off everything except that f'in Media Player 7.
It saves me time, it saves me CD, it saves me hassle. The only thing I need to carry around with me on CD is enough of the OS to connect to the Internet and from there I can pull down whatever else I need. That is what Apple should be focusing on, in my opinion.
- JoeShmoe
Re:What about "MacUpdate" ? (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/03/23/03
- JoeShmoe
What about "MacUpdate" ? (Score:4)
Bugs in an installation media don't really bother me. God knows I'd have to be insane to leave any version of Windows the way it comes on CD (My most recent NT4 CDs are still just SP1!). So then why not push out the OS X CD on the due date and then throw out nightly "recommended updates" until its working the way it should?
- JoeShmoe
the question will be obviated in 24 hours (Score:2)
We'll all be able to see for ourselves what the shipping version of OS X is like within a matter of hours. Some of the journalists, posters, and rabid pro and anti-Macheads will be proven correct, while some will be proven wrong.
Life will go on. The sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening.
Re:Why *shouldn't* Apple release buggy software? (Score:2)
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
However, Toast, which is apparently a large CD-Burning and CD-Imaging program, has an OS-X version?
It is an application that wasn't written yet because Apple want's it done right. Also, the Apple DVD and CD-burning software isn't run-of-the-mill stuff like their shitty Windows/Linux counterparts, it is an integrated system that allows drag-and-drop CD-burning, etc.
Expect the final versions to rock.
Just because the "built-in" software on the PC sucks doesn't mean that the Mac ones do.
Alex
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
What is the issue?
Missing the point (Score:2)
OK, sure OS X doesn't have DVD and a few other things that didn't get quite finished in time for the March 24th deadline. Apple *had* to meet that deadline, they have a complete rewrite of their operating systems and what do operating systems need? Programs. Developers needed to have a deadline too. If Apple had said "sometime 2001" developers wouldn't have done anything, but come tomorrow quite a few people are going to be running OS X and these people want cabronized and coca apps. I think it's great that Apple decided to concentrate on making the core of OS X better and OS 9.1 better for Classic comptibilty then work on something trivial like a DVD player. I would not be happy if I heard "Yeah, some older applications won't run under the Classic environment, but we do have DVD!"
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Hogwash... if you can burn CDs on Linux with a P133, you'll sure as hell be able to do it on MacOS. As for DVDs, I may be wrong, but I don't think Apple ever shipped any system with a DVD player that didn't run at least 300 MHz. And even then, they had hardware decoders.
If it's not ready, it's because it's not ready. Not because the hardware - which is easily among the best in its class - can't handle it when running a BSD OS.
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Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
The first iMac to offer DVD was the 400 MHz iMac DV [lowendmac.com], which, as a matter of fact, did offer hardware MPEG-2 decoding through its ATI Rage 128 VR graphics.
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Re:Public Beta mounts DVDs... (Score:2)
Then somebody can write a player app, or a format translation utility (which is easier, because it doesn't have to be real-time.)
The DVD problem (Score:4)
Does MacOS X have a DVD driver at all? Can you access the drive? Maybe someone will write a third-party player.
Re:Free stuff from Apple... (Score:2)
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Re:Didn't Steve Jobs Speak at MacWorld about.... (Score:2)
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
MacOS DVD player sucked anyway (Score:2)
The old player refuses to run if you have MacBugs installed. Talk about paranoid!
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious (Score:2)
That may be true for Linux, but a commercial OS (like OS X) has to have as few bugs as possible. Most users never run any updates at all. Major bugs and even missing features will stay in the OS for a long time, even if there is an update available. Microsoft and Apple both try hard to get more people to keep their software updated (using tools such as the Software Update control panel), but it is very hard to teach most people that there is more to the OS than the CD.
That said, this release of OS X is not really intended for the average consumer (whatever that means); it's meant for people who pretty much know what they're doing with a computer. Those types will be much more likely to download OS updates than most, but it's still a falsity to say that the OS X CD's job is to "serve as a vehicle to reduce the amount of time/bandwidth necessary to install the software."
DVD features more important than on windows (Score:2)
Mind you, they must have known about this for a while; newly bought Macs with this stuff won't be shipping with OSX installed intil June/July, so thats about when I'd expect to see a complete feature set available.
Re:Aqua Look and Feel (Score:2)
Re:What about "MacUpdate" ? (Score:2)
Cheers,
--fred
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
1)Windows 2000 is 4 years late and doesn't work properly.
2) A company I used to work for successfully migrated their legacy mainframe systems to SAP in 9 months with no major issues. The users, management and SAP are all amazed and delighted.
So if example 2 can produce the goods with nothing but minor errors, why can't the world's largest software house in the world with all the efficiencies of economies of scale that economists are always talking about produce something that works. This goes for every late project, bad application and buggy driver. Excuses aren't good enough. Example 2 planned and defined their requirements properly and produced well-written code. The testers then went through it with a fine toothcomb and shifted the rest of the showstopper bugs.
Most projects don't do this, but give me one good reason why not. PHB stupidity is an excuse for a bad system, not for clumsy code. A bad system with good, well-documented code can be improved upon far more easily than a good system with bad, obscure code.
Just as a disclaimer, I try to practice what I rant but I'm by no means anything better than average. I just try to think of the poor sap who'll have to maintain my code in a year's time, rather than just doing what's easiest at the time.
Re:Why are we suprised... (Score:2)
Re:DVD features more important than on windows (Score:2)
Want to see the entire first season of Babylon 5 on a DVD? Hack your Tivo to interface with a Mac w/ DVD Studio Pro.
Re:Why *shouldn't* Apple release buggy software? (Score:2)
I really don't mean to feed the trolls, so I will accept your proposition at face value, and suggest that you check out Apple's OpenSource project [apple.com], and the release of the source and documentation of the underpinnings of the OS.
Yes, I understand the difference between Darwin, which is free and opensource, and Quartz and the other userland stuff, which is neither. However, I am assuming for the sake of argument that you sincerely didn't realize that an important part of OS X was, in fact, opensource and beer-free.
Re:New mod category needed - "Nuke" (Score:2)
I'm glad Nuke doesn't exist or else you wouldn't have had chance to put this bit of FUD to rest, for me at least.
Re:File system case-sensitive? (Score:2)
Why are we suprised... (Score:5)
Besides, I'd rather see Apple release OSX 1.01 two weeks from now, than wait 6 months for the first "service pack", eh?
No: (Score:2)
You're not seeing something clearly. Hardware architecture (x86 vs PPC) has no bearing to the price of Apple hardware.
If, miraculously, Apple had adopted Intel instead of Motorola, their boxen would still be the same price; not because the parts are cheaper or more stock, but because Apple dedicates engineering resources to motherboard design, case design, style, look, and feel. Why do you think that if Apple adopted Intel that OS X would run under stock Intel hardware? I'd think you would *still* need an Apple motherboard, and Apple chipset, an Apple rom and bios, etc.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Apple hardware (Score:2)
People still wouldn't be able to run OS X on a Tyan motherboard, any more than they can or can't today.
I can't even begin to talk about 'wasted' R&D expenditures, though.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Important Question: Please Mod UP! (Score:2)
Re:File system case-sensitive? (Score:2)
It rembers the case - so if a file is called Readme.txt it will remain capitalised this way. But if you type rm readme.TXT the file will be deleted.
At least one bug... (Score:2)
Running Release now (Score:2)
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