Jordan Hubbard Gives Last Intervew For Apple 122
acaben writes "MacSlash has posted what Jordan Hubbard says will be his last interview for Apple. Apple's Engineering Manager for the BSD Technology Group talks about the new BSDPorts initiative, his thoughts on working for Apple and Apple's Open Source strategy, and how Mac users new to Open Source can get involved and contribute to the community. He also gets delightfully geeky in comparing the differences between Darwin's VM envirnoment and FreeBSD's and explains that Darwin was built with things like working with Final Cut Pro in mind."
Just yesterday... (Score:1)
Re:Just yesterday... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just yesterday... (Score:2)
I'm starting to love Apple. (Score:4, Funny)
I know this is just a rant, but someone's got to comment on Ms. Feiss.... I'll leave that for you.
Re:I'm starting to love Apple. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm starting to love Apple. (Score:3)
I am running OpenBSD on a 2 GB partition on my Ibook's HD, next to Classic and OS X, and it works like a charm.
Now, can you blame a fashion concious geek for rather sporting a beautiful portable computer with the most secure OS ever next to the most usable Unix ever?
Dirk
Imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
So in other words: Don't imagine a beowolf cluster of these things!
Re:Imagine... (Score:2, Offtopic)
lol. Thats good but you forgot the obligatory Soviet Russia comment...
In USA: Don't imagine a beowolf cluster of these things!
In Soviet Russia: Do imagine a beowolf cluster of these things!
Could do better.... (Score:2)
NeXT clustering happens with PDO's (Score:2)
Re:NeXT clustering happens with PDO's (Score:3, Informative)
There have been a handful of stories that talk about the [very competitive, btw] clustering capabilities of the XServe.
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2)
The University of Michigan. Sorry if that's not good enough for you. No, I'm not a PE, but I don't think I need to be. Now I went back to school for more education. Something wrong with that?
You took a civil engineering certification test? Did you know Canada has made it ILLEGAL to use the word engineer to describe yourself as one if you don't have the certification? POSER!
Well, for one thing, I don't live in Canada. For another, I'm an engineer, both by education, and by title. My University title is Systems Engineer, and the group within the IT division I work for is called "Systems Engineering and Operations". So I'd guess that saying "Systems Engineer" is fairly accurate.
Well, now knowing there are a lot of Apple users at the #1 school for R&D makes me not want to hold my breath for a cure for cancer. They are wasting MONEY [see taxpayer, you little student tax draining liability without a real job] on hardware.
Yes, taxpayer. Of which I am one. Interestingly, you also call students a tax draining liability, when they PAY to come here, not to mention being the entire reason for the University's existence.
And almost all the engineering, modeling, statistics software I know of runs exclusively on either on Unix and/or Windows.
Yes, you're right. But a lot of it runs on Mac, or, more specifically, Mac OS X. You mention SPSS. There's a current version of SPSS for Mac OS X. And MATLAB. And r. And IDL. And Stata. And Mathematica. I could go on. You missed your own point, in fact: much of this software is on OS X, or has come back to the Mac, because Mac OS X is UNIX, at least according to The Open Group, which holds the UNIX trademark.
So you must be lying.
Or you are just misinformed.
And I know a few doctors myself. I never recall them pulling the same bullshit that mad men musician's arguments that the audio software is like better on a Mac, dude.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but many medical school and life/biosciences departments here are very heavy Mac users. The Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, one of the 7 NIH supported Primate Research Centers, is almost exclusively Mac. If you're ever here, walk through the Medical Sciences Center, or the Biotech Center, or the new Biochem building, and you'll get more than your fill of Macs. With all the tools to go along with them. In fact, it's hard to NOT see a Mac in many of the research environments here.
In fact, like, dude, there is hardly ANY engineering, statistics software for like Mac, dude. Cool. Think different.
Not true, but ok.
Like trying to use engineering applications in SoftPC instead of where they are supposed to run. Cool.
Nope, that's stupid. But you just dated yourself: if the last time you ever knew anything significant about Apple was in the days of SoftPC, now I see why you hate Apple so much. Connectix Virtual PC has been the only worthwhile emulation product for quite some time, and it's only appropriate for occasional use of occasional applications, as you indicate.
And if I was alumni of UWM,
UWM is UW-Milwaukee. We're just UW.
I wouldn't give a fucking penny until you were fired [for faking academic credentials you don't have]
Uh, ok.
and the Mac purchases were justified, particularly the completely overpriced Xserve purchases.
Well, since I didn't purchase the Xserves, or make the decision to buy them, or have anything to do with the money that purchases any of them, as I said before, I think your problem is with someone else.
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2, Flamebait)
You know that many at academic institutions have long valued Apple computers as yet another platform that brings value. There have been numerous studies by the normal collection of industry groups, most recently being Gartner, that show that the total cost of ownership of Apple hardware is lower. You know that you can skew those numbers any way you want.
UM CIO Dr. José Marie-Griffiths stated it quite well:
"It is not in the interests of a leading institution to dictate computing platform; Apple products bring unique capabilities to the campus, just as 'WinTel' and UNIX systems do, and to limit choice of selection, limits opportunity and, ultimately, limits achievement. ITCS has no plans to deviate from its even-handed support for Macintosh and Windows computing."
But all of that doesn't really matter: all we're having now is the classic Mac vs. PC argument, which can't be won. Or rather, the PC side will think that, implicitly, it always wins since there are more PCs.
And Mac OS X is UNIX; this has been beaten to death by many others, i.e., UNIX vs. Unix vs. UN*X vs. Linux etc etc etc. Mac OS X conforms to the Single UNIX Specification:
http://unix.org/what_is_unix/single_unix_specif
And yes, a lot of applications aren't on Mac. That has been the Mac's "problem" for almost 20 years. Except people seem to do just fine with the Mac platform, no? I'm sure there's a ton of machines, of all types, that are used as glorified typewriters, or purely MS Office machines. But there are many, many faculty members and researchers who would consider their machines critical to their work. Could they all be Windows boxes? Sure. Could we force people to use platforms they don't want to use? Sure. But as a leading research university, I don't think we feel it's our place to mandate platform to people, especially at a university with a long tradition of faculty governance.
And yep, there's a lot of software not on Mac. If you don't NEED any of that software, then why should someone be concerned with it? If someone wants a machine that they can use productivity software on (i.e., Office, Acrobat, Adobe apps, etc.), as well as doing development, running X11 apps, using GNU tools, etc., and they feel that OS X is the OS where they're most productive, then who are you to complain? CS faculty and grad students who abandoned any hope for Apple long ago are buying Apple, and it's because of OS X.
I'm sorry you don't like your Mac, think it's shit, think it's slow, etc. And dude, that Classic even fucking works as well as it does is amazing. And judging from the amount of times Dr. Watson visited, I don't think Win16 and Win32 were bridged as well as you think. And games on NT or early 2000? LOL!!! Windows XP is probably the first decent modern OS from Microsoft that jumps the gap between a "home" and a "professional/modern" OS. Apparently you've overlooked what is widely viewed as the most successful major platform transition in recent computing history: the transition from 68K to PowerPC, which was pulled off amazingly well. Now Apple's transitioning from an 18-year old legacy, single user OS to a Mach-based, BSD based, follow-on to NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. I think it went rather well.
As for overpriced, I think the desktop hardware definitely is. Underpowered? Well I guess it depends on what you're doing, but it's clear that PCs won the MHz battle long ago, all MHz-myths aside. And still, people buy Macs to do their work. Interestingly, the Xserves that have been bought or are being considered here are bought because they have been CHEAPER (Sun, IBM) or easier to administer (Linux, Windows 2000) than the alternatives. In some areas it's making inroads. I'm not saying Apple is ready for enterprise, or that it's better than anything else. I just find it surprising that you can see the positive aspects of Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc., but see no redeeming aspects in Apple whatsoever.
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2)
Size doesn't really matter at all. I am from Wisconsin and I have lived here my entire life. I have a BS in Theoretical and Applied Mathematics (Pure Mathematics). I also spent 3 1/2 years as an electrical engineer/software engineer/pure mathematics triple major. I am working as an engineer right now with a track to my Ph. D. in Mathematics over the next couple of years. I went to college in Wisconsin for my BS, although not at Madison, but at Platteville. Madison's graduate programs are very commendable, but the undergraduate programs are completed over-rated crap. The school just has an arrogant, piss ass attitude and (aside from Washington DC) everyone in the city thinks the world revolves around them...no, no, the universe revolves around them. And just a little reality check to Madison graduates...I was picked, along with another Platteville engineer for employment over every interviewee from Madison, and both the owner of my company and my manager are Madison graduates. My bestfriend from high school graduated from MSOE (Milwaukee School of Engineering) with a degree in Computer/Software Engineering and now works at Cray in Eau Claire, WI. He was picked over every interviewee from Madison's CS/SE department for his position. Welcome to Earth, Madison boy.
Now, let's talk about Madison and the UW systems lack of intelligence when it comes to computer systems. For a perfect example, UW-Platteville ran all of its network systems on VMS/VAX and Netware (exceptionally well by the way). There was a point when (and I worked at OIT "Office of Information Technology" for Platteville for a while) the UW system decided to force everyone to move from Compass to PeopleSoft. Solaris or Windows 2000??? Solaris or Windows??? Hmmmm...the "geniuses" at Madison decided that Windows 2000 was the way to go. For almost 2 years it was nothing but a nightmare as our network/database/processing ability went to almost zero. The system is still a huge pig. The performance of the system is absolutely terrible. And the computer systems have never been able to reliably handle the load. Sun would have been a dream. Real good, Madison boy.
It is also mandated, in case anyone has any idea about the entire UW system, that Linux is essentially BANNED across all UW campuses.
I would suggest you get off of your high horse, ivory tower, UW-Madison piss ass attitude and stop comparing college size as a metaphor for penis size. UW-Madison is a big school. Big deal. I have found that most of the best engineers and mathematicians in the world started out at smaller, more specialized colleges and programs where the students matter, not just some professor you never see who is only hired at the university to publish papers instead of teach. As far as UW-Madison is concerned, aside from UC-Boulder or Berkley, there isn't a more flaming liberal, "gotta be different", freak show, than simply walking around most of the campus. If the students of UW-Madison spent as much time studying as they do trying to feel special and unique among ~48,000 students, the undergraduate campus might actually get something great accomplished. Being special and unique is great, but not when it is just for the sake of being different just to be different. Outside of Madison, most companies only care about your education, not what color you died you hair when you were 20, what kinds of parties you went to, how big your school is...all they care about is your grades and your abilities to perform a job. From everything I have seen, UW-Madison is among the lowest on the totem pole of engineering (especially computer engineering) out of there for undergraduate programs in the state of Wisconsin. Sorry, Madison boy
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2)
As far as UW-Madison is concerned, aside from UC-Boulder or Berkley, there isn't a more flaming liberal, "gotta be different", freak show, than simply walking around most of the campus.
Freak show UC/Berkeley may be, but you do know what the B in BSD stands for, no? [joke]Sometimes liberals make pretty damned good software.[/joke]
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2)
Peoplesoft, in my opinion (though I have nothing to do with the project, nor do I know all its intracacies), sucks, and yes, is running on Windows 2000. I can't comment on any of those decisions, because they were made at much higher levels than me, and some at levels outside of the Madison campus. But look around the country: plenty of other schools that "knew what they were doing" also went to Peoplesoft for student information systems...it was just the way the winds were blowing.
And, uh, Linux isn't "banned" on UW campuses. Maybe it is at Platteville, but it's not at Madison. People are free to install whatever they wish (outside of managed environments; i.e., a secretary in geology who has an IT person in her group probably couldn't just up and install Linux on her computer...but anyone in a research or computing setting is free to install and use whatever OSes they wish). And you know damn well how decentralized UW System is. UW System doesn't "mandate" anything, save for some of these statewide initiatives. Otherwise, each campus runs its own IT show.
And I agree about undergrad at large research universities: the undergrad education isn't a top priority (but again, that had nothing at all to do with the conversation). But as a whole, UW-Madison is an excellent institution, and you know it is. And yep, UW-Madison is also a liberal haven, as are many campuses, though I'm not sure what that has to do with this discussion at all. Of course, I've always been conservative, so I am merely amused by a lot of the liberal antics.
And you're just as bad as tsarkon at comparing shit that is completely unrelated. Who ever was talking about computer engineering? The IT department here (DoIT), and at every other school I've ever seen, has no relationship whatsoever to the college of engineering, in any shape or form. And, though I'm not sure how you came to this topic since I never brought up computer engineering (and only brought up "engineering" because tsarkon had a problem with me calling myself a "systems engineer", even though I am one by title, and am an "engineer" by education), but UW-Madison is the one of the highest ranked Electrical and Computer Engineering departments in the nation, and definitely the top program in Wisconsin. I'm not sure why I'm defending it since I never have, or never will have, anything to do with the ECE department, but you seem very adamant, or jealous, or something.
Re:Aww, I'm sorry you're jealous... tsarkon (Score:2)
I'm not jealous of Madison at all. It's graduate programs are top notch. Their undergraduate engineering programs...well, most people who start out at Madison's engineering (undergraduate program) leave Madison for a better, smaller university or college to complete their engineering BS. Then return to Madison for their MS and Ph. D. programs. I just got sick of everybody from Madison talking about how great Madison's undergraduate engineering is. It's not. Not for undergraduate. Name recognition alone carries a lot of it, I am sure. But, the students heads are too far into the realm of "I'm too great to work at your petty company because I went to UW-Madison" to be good, quality engineers. They don't know how to work well in a small, team environment for one thing. But, I wish to leave it at that. For graduate programs, sure, it is the best in the nation for some of its graduate programs.
I guess I started in on a conversation in which I originally got the wrong feeling about. Sorry. On a positive note, have a great Christmas break, I am sure you will be busy working over the college holiday season fixing enough problems right before college begins session again in January.
I realize this is a huge troll, but... (Score:3)
And since Mac OS X has vastly eclipsed the number of FreeBSD systems in use, or will ever have in use, I'd say that's a "wider audience". Even "wider than a goasemon's asshole", as you put it.
I hope you really are trolling and that you don't believe what you say, because you apparently have no idea what you're talking about. For a good, usable GUI on top of ANY UNIX, BSD or otherwise, Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server is the only game in town. Sure, Mac OS X has a long way to go. But it's done the most for UNIX (and BSD) adoption that any UNIX (or BSD) ever has. And soon, Darwin will be synced with FreeBSD 5.x functionality, so then, by your logic, Mac OS X will be infinitely better than FreeBSD, since it will be everything FreeBSD is (with the exception of the hardware it runs on), PLUS a real productivity OS that normal people can actually use! Then there's the whole Server side of the equation, where I can feel free to update my core OS and do security patches on OS X Server without going through the test-and-backout nightmare my Solaris/AIX/Linux colleagues do. Or reshare NFS filesystems out via SAMBA with the click of a button. And it only gets better.
Hardware-wise, you spouted off a bunch of shit about run-of-the-mill AMD hardware. No thanks, I'll pass. Then you spouted off a bunch of shit about 64-bit processors...you may want to take a look at the IBM PowerPC 970... [ibm.com], which, by many accounts, may trounce the passé 64-bit processors you list.
If you want to stick with the commandline (which has nothing to do with Mac OS X's main markets) or the Gnome/KDE amateur hour, go for it.
Re:I realize this is a huge troll, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
And yes, we have servers. Tons of them. Literally hundreds of servers running mostly Solaris, AIX, Windows, and some Linux. And now, Mac OS X Server is starting to creep in. When a Sun/IBM/Dell/etc blade server would be appropriate, people are now looking at, asking about, and BUYING and DEPLOYING Apple. And I never said you should do server management at the GUI of a single server. Want to manage Mac OS X Server from the command line? Even via a serial termserver connection? Go for it. Want to manage it with Apple's remote GUI tools? Go for it. Want to manage and monitor it with HP OpenView? Go for it.
As for PowerPC: anyone who doesn't admit we're languishing, and have been for a while, with Motorola is denying the truth. Yes, Motorola sucks now at getting new PowerPC chips and technologies out the door. And IBM's PowerPC 970 will be shipping soon enough...do you have any doubt it will be shipping next year? And when it does, it will be an amazing competitor to all the other 64-bit products. This is obviously a chip destined for Apple's machines, and we'll see it next year.
Ran out of arguments...? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Ran out of arguments...? tsarkon (Score:2)
If you wanted to actually discuss the advantages, and disadvantages, of Apple's hardware, OS, and strategies, I'd be happy to, though...
Re:Ran out of arguments...? tsarkon (Score:3, Insightful)
Hasn't the Mac vs. PC argument gotten tired yet? I thought we were talking about Apple's BSD-based OS...
Yes, there's more PCs. A shitload more. So many more that it's ridiculous. So what?
Apple OS. OS 9 and below was an industry last place horrorshow. No need to talk of that.
Sure had a lot of users...*
*Note: just because Windows has more users doesn't mean make the millions of Mac OS users a small number.
OS X picked the wrong kernel
In your opinion.
implements 95 APIs
?
And since one of the APIs is BSD, which you seem to love...
doesnt even get games on it to speak of
You keep contradicting yourself. You talk of Jordan Hubbard as a sellout because he "left" FreeBSD, but now you're obviously talking about Windows, which belongs to the biggest "corporate" titan of them all! And now you're bringing up games...games are a big market, but I give a rat's ass about games.
and uses a crappy, slow kernel
Some people would say that the hardware abstraction is a worthy tradeoff...
makes users pay for service packs Calling 10.2 a "service pack" implies that it has the same content as Windows service packs. Mac OS X had been out for a year and a half with no paid updates. A year and a half. That's plenty within a reasonable timeframe to charge for an OS update. If Apple had called it 10.5 or OS XI, would it have made any difference? And for those who argue that OS X before 10.2 was pretty much a "beta" and Apple shouldn't have charged for it, well, I'd argue that Windows before 98 (in the consumer sector where over 50% of people still run 98) were "beta" too. Additionally, no one, including Apple, forced anyone to run OS X. Everyone could have used, and still can use, OS 9.x if they are so inclined. Mac OS X 10.1.x was good for many, and 10.2.x began the real push to Mac OS X. One paid upgrade every year and a half seems fine with me.
Re:Jordan Sold out. Tsarkon reports. JH SOLD SOUL. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of JH's move to Apple as his opportunity to spread the gospel to a wider audience than FreeBSD (of all OS's).
So, let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Re:Jordan Sold out. Tsarkon reports. JH SOLD SOUL. (Score:3, Interesting)
I did actually change my threshold down low enough to see the original article from that silly "Tsarkon" person and have to say that I haven't laughed so hard in a long time - I should read the trolls more often. He must have an odd working history if he's accustomed to selling his soul in exchange for mere employment (mine is still safely locked in a safe deposit box in Berkeley and Apple has never even expressed an interest in it, perhaps I should be offended).
In any case, FreeBSD remains a great server solution and I've said this from the very beginning. I even took a fair amount of fire during the early 90's for saying that FreeBSD shouldn't even try to focus on the desktop because we had no chance there and weren't the kind of developer community who were likely to ever focus on the needs of the desktop community anyway. The ports collection is great and I'm very proud of it, of course, but that's merely a convenient taxonomy for geeks to use in organizating and installing software, it's not something your mother is ever going to use.
I think history has subsequently proven that being server-centric was exactly the right route for FreeBSD to take, but that doesn't mean I and other Unix hackers had no INTEREST in the desktop, merely that we never saw FreeBSD as a reasonble vehicle for going there. Mac OS X is an entirely different proposition and I think the growing number of Tibooks you see at USENIX conferences every year pretty much speaks for itself. If our anonymous Tsarkon fellow wants to use Windows instead then more power to him (or maybe her - who knows?).
Re:Jordan Sold out. Tsarkon reports. JH SOLD SOUL. (Score:2)
that is what we dot-com-go-boom employees deal with on a daily basis, er, well, some of us. the rest of us have moved on with our lives, and spend our time playing with our Macintosh and NeXT machines. ok, well, hey, i do anyway.
now if i could only magically make a NuBus mac into a working, communicating Linux box (sigh).
hey jordan, i will love you forever if you inspire the NuBus machine port of Darwin. but i won't hold my breath :)
"delightfully geeky"? (Score:3, Insightful)
don't geeks go in for, ah, technical details?
Where was the technical detail in saying "Darwin's VM system has to take into account different memory usage patterns"?
(I enjoyed the article, I guess, but "geeky"?)
Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User (Score:3, Funny)
He's just some lame ass that likes to bait Mac users - admittedly a task similar to shooting fish in a barrel.
Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User (Score:1)
Yeah, but the barrel is getting bigger.
Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User (Score:1)
Yes and he should add the line:
In Soviet Russia YOU are unusable for Apple Laptops.
Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, you may eat your foot for a mid-afternoon snack.
Probably His First Too (Score:2)