How Mac OS X, 10 Today, Changed Apple's World 342
CWmike writes "Ten years ago today, Apple's first full public version of Mac OS X went on sale worldwide to a gleeful reception as thousands of Mac users attended special events at their local computer shops all across the planet. What we didn't know then was that Apple was preparing to open up its own chain of retail outlets, nor had we heard Steve Jobs use the phrase, 'iPod.' Windows was still a competitor, and Google was still a search engine. These were halcyon days, when being a Mac user meant belonging to the second team, writes Jonny Evans. We're looking at the eighth significant OS X release in the next few months, Lion, which should offer some elements of unification between the iOS and OS X. There's still some bugs to iron out though, particularly the problem with ACL's (Access Control Lists) inside the Finder. Hopefully departing ex-NeXT Mac OS chief, Bertrand Serlet, will be able to fix this before he leaves."
halcyon days? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows was still a competitor, and Google was still a search engine. These were halcyon days, when being a Mac user meant belonging to the second team
So mac users fancy themselves as belonging to the winning team now? And how exactly were the days when Microsoft propped up Apple to prevent Microsoft from becoming a noticeable monopoly halcyon? Apple's fire almost died, and they had to make heavy use of BSD licensed (free, wee!) software to rekindle the embers.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, another Apple, Inc. (no "Computer" in the name any more, they removed that) knob schlob on the front page. Gee, isn't Apple great. Hasn't 10 years been great for Apple? Boy, they sure are the dominant operating system NOW (no. they're still not.) Got news for you poster, having Apple still makes you part of the "Second Team" of journalists. Just do what the marketing tells you, you're doing fine.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now it's dead. Replaced by NextStep. Which is thriving.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. It's more like a chimera, with MacOS-like stuff bolted onto NextStep. There are still some things I preferred about the original NextStep, such as the menu arrangement.
Also, MacOS isn't really dead, just emulated. There are emulators available for original [sourceforge.net] 68k [emaculation.com] and PowerPC [emaculation.com] varieties, and for multiple platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux). The Mac OS zombie marches on, even on OS X.
Re:Flamewars (Score:4, Insightful)
OS X has solved more flamewars than it sparked. It's a great middle ground, where both GUI lovers and CLI lovers are welcome. You don't have to be a fanatic to like OS X, unlike OS 9 and earlier.
Obviously, there are still good reasons to use systems other than OS X, but everyone can agree that OS X is a big improvement.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
"year of the Linux Desktop" is what pushed me to OS X 10 years ago. Red Hat was touting that line, while Apple was providing their first attempt at a Unix desktop. I wanted to get off Windows, and Apple provided the better path for me when I compared it side by side to Linux desktops of the time. 10 years later, the Linux desktop has gotten better, but not enough to sway me away from OS X.
Definitely don't regret the decision. I have out of the box IPv6 based secure tunneling between all my machines now by check marking a box, all my photos in an app that lets me organize them well, a decent selection of games (still not as big as Windows, but it has gotten much better in recent years), and all the unix tools I want waiting for me in Terminal.app. All in a powerful, quiet and well built hardware platform too.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple Gross Profit previous 3 months - $10,298 million (reported on 12/25/10)
Microsoft Gross Profit previous 3 months - $15,120 million (reported on 12/31/10)
*I would have used annual numbers which were even more in MSFTs favor, but Google has different reporting months for annual data
So which is a better indication of a companies strength. What wall street investors will pay for its stock, or the gross profit the company makes?
Re:Apple's World? (Score:4, Insightful)
"...a place where remote exploits simply don't exist."
Wow. Where is the -1 Delusional mod? Check out www.macexploit.com for a list of Mac OS X remote exploits that do exist.
Re:Not only that (Score:5, Insightful)
You touch on a good point. The dominance of Windows was tough to beat. MacOS X changed much of that, as did Linux. If you're a civilian, you just want to get work done. For a long time, Windows dominated for many reasons, some of them illegal competition. MacOS put more non-Windows machines in peoples hands than Linux did. Eventually, Ubuntu and some other distros could be used by civilians. Fine.
MacOS X gave Windows the competition that OS/2 couldn't and Linux (at the time) couldn't in the general market place. SunOS/Solaris couldn't do it. Apple actually innovated, rather than relying on a lot of hardware partners to do this. They were consistent, where Microsoft's architectural compromises cased huge incompatibility issues and security nightmares until they were resolved.
Re:Flamewars (Score:5, Insightful)
Most my computers are Linux machines, including my desktop.
My laptop is a Macbook Pro. Before that it was a Macbook, and before that it was a Powerbook.
I would not have TOUCHED a Mac if not for OS X, which is, essentially, UNIX.
I'm typing thins on my laptop right now. I currently have Firefox open, and an IM program, a VNC, and several terminals. One terminal is running Alpine on my desktop, one is doing an apt-get dist-upgrade on my media center, and one is setting up the new kernel/boot parameters for the network boot on my media server.
So, yes, people DO use the CLI in OS X, I'd say ESPECIALLY people who live in UNIX-land, but do also occasionally need to edit some video or process some photographs or record some audio.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot's comments section fell off the map of the technologically savvy a long time ago. As you said, it's mostly just a sounding board for people who "use the internet" and think they understand how things work, and base their opinions on childish principles. Granted that it's always had a bit of that element, but the days when people discussed actual code, complete with pasted samples, are long gone.
I'm a programmer, I work with a lot of programmers and engineers, and none that I know of read Slashdot. Ten years ago, this would not have been the case.
Re:Was a wise move by Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX is what Linux wants to be when it grows up.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, I use it since 95, and I wouldn't install anything different to a server. But right now Linux interface (yes, Gnome, I'm talking about you) feels so old it's frustrating. And don't get me started about the beautiful-but-hiper-unstable KDE ... If KDE's stylists wold support Gnome's good but aesthetically blind developers, we may be on to something.
But right now Linux feels stuck on FVWM95, while OSX provides a CLI just as powerful (MacPorts rule, BTW) and a consistent-yet-usable-yet-nice-looking GUI.
Re:halcyon days? (Score:2, Insightful)
I you really still believe that Microsoft " propped up" apple with a few million dollars when Apple had Billions in the bank then its really not worth listening to your opinion of what was going on 10 years ago. You clearly weren't paying very close attention.
You see only what you want to see.
Re:Windows "was" a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I mean iPhoto. Been using it since version 1 from January 2002. Back when cameras all hadn't standardized on ways to transfer photos to a computer, and most people were doing all the file management by hand. I plug in a camera, iPhoto launches, and offers to import. I can organize them into albums, and over time events, places, faces and smart albums were added to make it better. Features have also been added to let me share the photos to web sites, via e-mail, Facebook, and other places. All without ever having to manage the files directly.
And at any time I can extract out all my initial jpeg imported images out of the library this "bit of proprietary software" created and move to another program if I need to. So far that hasn't happened. I have poked at Picassa and had fun with the face movie feature, and I am glad to see the competition. It's just not quite enough to move me away from the solutions I have now that work for me.
iPhoto was one of the programs that helped me understand "The Mac way" early on, and I've come to appreciate it. With iLife apps, Spotlight, and other features, I don't manage files. I manage my content. In doing so, it's helped me realize what a proper consumer based system should look like. While the free software folks have been busy over the past decade arguing over licenses and what free and open mean, I've been bringing the joys of computing to my family members, including my elderly grandparents thanks to the consumer nature of OS X. I've given up on caring about using proprietary vs open software long ago, and instead pick what works well. In some cases it's FOSS software, in others it's free but closed software, and other times it's paid closed software.
I'm still a supporter of Linux, and continue to use it as a server OS. But I'm not prepared to switch to it as a desktop OS, nor would I even think of switching my family over. Ultimately practicality wins out for me these days over idealism.
Re:Flamewars (Score:2, Insightful)
So where does it leave us - the people who dislike shitty GUI and CLI interfaces/implementations?
For being a mouse-driven OS, it sucks at it. There is an obscene amount of mousing required for some of the most basic tasks, and keyboard shortcuts only mildly improve the matter. Want to avoid carpel tunnel? Don't get a Mac. (Have they fixed the "big screens need a high-mpg vehicle to navigate" slow scrolling problem, yet? Last I looked, short of using drivers from Microsoft and/or a Microsoft mouse, there was no work around.)
Console interface? Sure, it's got bash, or tcsh, or zsh, or whatever the hell you want to use. The filesystem sucks nuts, and it's horribly inaccessible in that the pathnames are long with spaces. It's got a crude mix-match of BSD utilities, so if you want anything relatively modern or featureful, you've got to use something crude and poorly conceived (due to it being based on ports) like Darwin Ports. It fits in well with the (legacy) Apple approach of "why upgrade it if it's working well?" but on a modern system it's somewhat pathetic.