OS X Mountain Lion Review 424
John Siracusa at Ars Technica has published a lengthy and detailed review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. (Lengthy enough that the review garnered a review of its own.) Siracusa methodically goes through all of the changes in the new version, covering everything from the minor new features to the overarching goals. Quoting:
"Despite the oft-cited prediction that Mac will eventually be subsumed by iOS, that's not what's happening here. Apple is determined to bring the benefits of iOS to the Mac, but it's equally determined to do so in a way that preserves the strengths of the Mac platform. Where we Mac nerds go wrong is in mistaking traditions for strengths. Loss aversion is alive and well in the Mac community; with each 'feature' removed and each decision point eliminated from our favorite OS, our tendency is to focus heavily on what's been lost, sometimes blinding ourselves to the gains. But the larger problem is that losses and gains are context-dependent. A person who never uses a feature will not miss it when it's gone. We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion. The fact is, we are not the center of the market, and haven't been for a long time. Three decades ago, the personal computer industry was built on the backs of technology enthusiasts. Every product, every ad was created to please us. No longer. Technology must now work for everyone, not just 'computing enthusiasts.'"
A somewhat briefer review is available at ComputerWorld, and there's a quick one from John Gruber.
Here we see the difference between Free and Slave (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why I left the commercial software behind so many years ago. Let us contrast OS X, Windows and Linux+GNOME. All have recently succumbed, or will soon, to tablet madness. By this I mean that they are all undergoing an almost total rewrite to target an audience almost exactly unlike the one that currently uses the product. Whether this will be 'successful' is still debatable but for my purpose, as a current or past user, almost beside the point.
If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid y
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Funny)
Look. All I want is a computer with two keys. A 1 and a 0. Preferably really, really big keys. No software. No firmware. Just me and the machine. No way to screw things up. It will do what I tell it, and no more. That way, I can keep banging away until I get either Turing's syndrome, or Tourette's.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Funny)
Or Carpal Tunnel
There's some madness here, for sure (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I left the commercial software behind so many years ago. Let us contrast OS X, Windows and Linux+GNOME. All have recently succumbed, or will soon, to tablet madness.
I'd buy that in the case of Win8, and maybe Gnome 3, but not OS X. Apple already owns the most successful tablet OS in the business. OS X has borrowed a few iOS touches, mostly aesthetic [eg superficial and easily ignored] ones, but has not succumbed to "tablet madness" the way Microsoft did. Probably because Apple was the only OS vendor that didn't have an "Oh-shit-we-need-our-own-iPad-thing" reaction.
OS X still has a Desktop metaphor.
Still has a user-accessible filesystem.
Still has windows and a menu bar.
Doesn't even have native touch-screen support at all
And these are not accidents, or features that Apple forgot to cover up or replace with tablet-like equivalents. They're there because Apple was smart enough to understand the differences between tablets and traditional PCs, and had enough foresight to come up with a separate OS for the former five years ago.
Re:There's some madness here, for sure (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the arguing we do about Apple, there are a few things I think we can agree on with regard to their last decade:
They plan ahead.
Everything they do is for a reason consistent with that plan.
So they're all shiny and finished on the outside, like every little product just pops out effortlessly, but that place is like a well oiled machine on the inside. You don't hear a lot about half-hearted tinkering at Apple. That's not to say they don't have flops, but still, they're on-mission every. single. day. And it's working for them.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
>Free means never being at the mercy of someone else's business plan.
It just means being at the mercy of a bunch of random developers instead.
Nobody has enough time to maintain forks of everything they use, never mind the people who don't even have the knowhow.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Informative)
> Nobody has enough time to maintain forks of everything they use, never mind the people who don't even have the knowhow.
The point is that we usually don't have to. Unless you really are a unique snowflake, you aren't the only one being abandoned. In the case of GNOME going nuts there were lots of options and more directly on point a lot of pissed off former users creating offshoot replacement projects. Most of those will fail but it doesn't matter because it will be because a couple will succeed and attract in attracting the majority of the outcast former GNOME users. You don't HAVE to create everything yourself, from scratch. You can even take the last 'good' version of a software line that goes off the deep end and use that as a starting point.
If you don't like MIcrosoft or Apple's new direction you have fewer options. You can suck it up, switch operating systems or start a cleanroom cloning effort of the entire stack from scratch. And look at ReactOS or Wine to see how impractical that last option has proven to be.
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The point is that we usually don't have to
Thus putting yourself at the mercy of someone else.
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Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you're trying to make a point in there somewhere, but it's pretty evident that you haven't used OS X Lion or the new Mountain Lion. With a few tweaks, my desktop looks the same in Mountain Lion as it does on my older machine running Leopard. I just don't see what you are talking about. A single application named "Launchpad" doesn't mean that OS X has abandoned the desktop and gone tablet crazy.
Congrats on your effort to somehow include Gnome 3 and your free software slogan in your diatribe.
Is it really all life and death? (Score:5, Insightful)
...um... And here I thought I was just upgrading to a newer release, not drinking Kool-Aid or proving I am a slave or whatever.
10.8 is a nice dot release. I am VERY happy to have AirPlay mirroring to my AppleTV. I travel and give presentations to small groups and in meetings, knowing that I just lost my tether and will be able to sit anywhere around the table instead of right next to wherever the monitor cable happened to be is kind of nice. I also appreciate the integration with my reminders app on my iPhone.
I dislike the fact that they removed Podcast Publisher. This means I am going to have to find a workaround for what (had been) an easy workflow for me. I'm sure I'll find other little annoyances over the coming days and weeks. And I'll adjust.
All things considered, I'm pleased. More than that, though, I guess I'm just really confused by the us-vs.-them mentality in the above post. I happen to use the OS I do because it seems to be the right tool for the job. I also run Windows 7 (via Parallels) so that I can run Visio and MS Project and a few other programs that I need. Sometimes my smartphone is the right tool (happens to be an iPhone but I've seen similar functionality on Android phones and Windows phones) sometimes my tablet... I don't feel "locked in" to any of it any more than I feel locked in by the choices a television network makes for their fall lineup or the choices my state has made for when and where road construction will occur. There are projects in life that are bigger than one person and choices are made we don't always agree with.
Jeepers. I had no idea I was drinking Kool Aid or stifling dissenting thoughts so as to stave off madness. I've been coming to Slashdot for over 14 years. I appreciate a low 4 digit UID. But really, does a content free screed about how open source is the only right path posted minutes after the article hits the front page really further the discussion about the OS X Mountain Lion review?
Re:Is it really all life and death? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps you neglected to mention that you are as 'locked in" to your preconceptions about Apple, Microsoft, and even Linux to the point that you just assumes the 'competition' is doing something boneheaded, even though a read through the article in question would answer most of your preconceptions. The fact that it's marked insightful is pretty telling.
In what way has OS X "succumbed to tablet madness"?. When the your description of OS X is entirely counter to reality and shows that you have no clue as to what this version of OS X looks like, what the last version looked like, or the version before that, it speaks volumes. Slashdot is about anything that is anti-Apple, Anti-Microsoft, or pro-linux/android. It's no longer someplace to go for an adult discussion of new tech, new software, or new features. It's turned into an Android Thunderdome. I expect this post will be marked 'troll' or 'flamebait', or oddly enough 'Offtopic' even though the thread is an OS X thread because it speaks ill of the general bent of Slashdot these days. They've all put their blinders on and have turned into a Fox News of Technology unless the posts in question praise Google or Android regardless of the story.
OS X It looks nothing like a tablet OS and is nothing like Windows 8's push to tablefiy it's OS. It borrows some features that work well on a desktop or that are cloud centric, but that's about the extent of it (excluding Launchpad, which for the life of me I still can't figure out why they put it on the desktop). For most Mac users, it's just an OS Update. I'm betting a large number of Mac users can't even tell you the version of the OS, or the name for that matter, just as you would find on a Windows machine, or possibly a Linux machine if they are of the non-geek orientation.
Is wanting to upgrade to get some decent new features 'drinking the Kool-Aid'? I'm betting that for the majority of us, it's not a religious war. It's just a computer that fits our needs, and this is just an update that adds some decent features for $20 bucks.
Re:Is it really all life and death? (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. I used PCs running various flavours of DOS and Windows for years. I was constantly upgrading drivers, fixing problems, updating my components etc. I liked being in control of my hardware, but the net result was a lot of time spent making the computer work.
Eventually I decided to try an iMac desktop. I love it. yes, I give up the ability to upgrade components, but on the plus side I have had this desktop for 5 years or so and it still meets all my computing needs including gaming. I no longer spend 10-20% of my time fixing something that broke mysteriously. It just works and I can get on with doing what I want to do.
I also ran various distros of Linux, FreeBSD, even tried out Solaris briefly. When the need could be met by FOSS, I used it, and still do. When the need could be met by commercial software, I used that if I thought it worked better. Eventually I switched to running an iMac that runs OS/X and I am happy with that. I bought an Apple TV, my wife has an iPad, we are happy with those.
That however is apparently "drinking the koolaid" and I must be put down for enjoying the product I paid for. What fucking bullshit. You know, sometimes when companies really work hard to develop a decent product, it turns out to be decent, and worth the money they charge. Apple is doing that for me, and so long as they continue to do that I will likely buy their products, but when that is no longer true, or something better comes along I will buy that instead. For me, nothing has so far.
Re:Is it really all life and death? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't tell if you're kidding or not. Can a 5-year old iMac even run games like Portal 2 or Diablo 3, both of which had native OSX releases?
How do you know what his gaming needs are? Maybe his "gaming needs" go no further than Pac Man and Tetris.
That said, the lowest end 20" mid 2007 iMac had an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT in it, which is the minimum listed in the Portal 2 specs. Diablo 3 lists the ATI Radeon HD 2600 as the minimum required on the Mac; the HD 2600 Pro was the card in all the 24" mid 2007 iMacs[0]. So yes, a five year old iMac would meet the minimum requirements for the games you list. I'd assume this would require you to run with all of the lowest graphical settings -- you're not going to get the best possible textures and frame rates, but they can in fact run the games you mentioned.
Yaz
[0] - Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based) [wikipedia.org]
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I can't tell if you're kidding or not. Can a 5-year old iMac even run games like Portal 2 or Diablo 3, both of which had native OSX releases?
Yes. I've play both on my 2006 24" 2.16 Intel iMac with 256MB NVIDIA 7600 GT and they are both fully playable. No, it can't play new, 3d intensive FPSers very well, but for games that aren't too graphically intensive, it works fine (SWTOR in BootCamp too).
Re:Is it really all life and death? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess I'm just really confused by the us-vs.-them mentality in the above post.
It's just the cognitive dissonance created when a zealot is forced to reconcile two thoughts: the free market is correct, and customers (i.e. regular people) choose something else than their fervent attachment. They can't figure out why everybody doesn't use the same stuff as they do, after projecting their identical preferences/tastes and workflow or usage patterns onto the rest of humanity. Since they are naturally correct in every way, the conclusion is people are sheep or just don't get it.
I used to be like that, but I'm also more willing to try stuff out and think critically. Over the years I realized that outside gaming, about 90% of what I do on a computer easily transfers between Windows, OSX, and Linux. These days rather than obsessing over OSes, I'm enjoying programming languages more - just learning and fiddling around with all the various new fangled languages there are. And that stuff is readily available for free on every platform.
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What if. What if Linux and Windows ARE that "multitude of options" to OS X? You know you can install GNOME in OS X and use that, right? You can drop right to a command prompt too and to the lay person it doesn't look any different than any other BSD OS.
What if. People actually like these improvements? What if you had actually liked GNOME3?
Dun Dun Dun.
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This is amusing, because most of the Linux users I know are *constantly* upgrading to the latest version of everything. I'm still using Windows XP at work, though I have 7 at home, and my Mac (and most of my friend's) is/are still on 10.6. If it works, why upgrade?
In any case, why would you *bitterly* cling to Fedora 14? Does 15 have something you *absolutely* must have? Why did you upgrade to begin with?
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're blowing the "iOS-ness" of Mountain Lion out of proportion. I've been using the GM for a while and the DPs before that, and my core usage has remained unchanged since Lion. "Now wait," you say, "Lion also brought iOS features!" True. Of course, you don't have to use them. My Lion usage patterns are unchanged from Snow Leopard.
If you look at the main features [apple.com], you'll see two things. First, it's not a big update like Leopard or Tiger (hence the $20 price tag). Second, the most iOS-like feature is Notification Center, which is basically just a better version of Growl that Macs have had for years now. Reminders and Notes are apps that appear in iOS, yes, but that's all they are--apps. Use them or don't.
There are two major features of Mountain Lion. iCloud is the most obvious user-facing one, as it is much more tightly integrated with the OS than it was in Lion. The biggest feature is probably the one least talked about, and that is Gatekeeper. It's pseudo-iOS-like, because by default it only allows apps from "identified" developers to run on your system, but when you try to run an unsigned app it lets you know how to turn it off. It should be noted that "identified" does not mean App Store only, though obviously App Store developers are "identified".
Compare this to Windows 8, which is getting a near-complete UI change. Or GNOME or Unity and possibly other DEs I haven't used, which are also heavily influenced by tablets. Apple seems to be the only one that isn't trying to completely change my workflow. I wouldn't be sure I'd call this update insanely great or anything--frankly, the iCloud features should have been present in Lion--but it's a nice update and it's cheap.
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Exactly. Since Apple designed the iPad (before the iPhone, actually), it's understood that there are similarities and differences between laptop/desktops and tablets/phones. Microsoft never got this, which is why its tablet and phone OS's sucked: they tried to port a desktop OS and UI into a smaller form factor. Now, Microsoft is assuming that its philosophy was right, but the direction was 180 degrees off: they're porting a phone OS and UI to the desktop.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to share ideas between th
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This is true. However, Windows 8 is much more in-your-face about it, and does provide a completely new UI on top of the old one. ML doesn't do this--you have the same old UI as ever. The iOS features are unobtrusive, whereas Metro has the potential to be very obtrusive (depending on whether popular apps switch to Metro-only; consequently, does Win8 offer support for "hybrid" apps that have both desktop and Metro versions?).
(For the record, I actually like Windows 8.)
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Insightful)
I can dismantle your whole pro-Linux argument with one sentence:
- Show me how to run Microsoft Visio on Gnome, KDE, or any other distribution so I can open, edit, and then save *.vsd files on my company's network drive.
I don't use MS-Windows because I like it. Anymore than I drive through interstate jams for fun. I do it because it's the defacto standard that everyone uses. I avoid Microsoft as much as possible but using alternatives (LibreOffice, VLC Player, Winamp, Mozilla seaMonkey, etc). But at the end of the day I still need to use Windows as my base because that's where the office & engineering tools run.
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I can dismantle your whole pro-Linux argument with one sentence:
Wow, you're confident.
- Show me how to run Microsoft Visio on Gnome, KDE, or any other distribution so I can open, edit, and then save *.vsd files on my company's network drive.
And yet again, your confidence is misplaced...
I don't use MS-Windows because I like it.
So, basically, your argument about how free is better because you're not a slave to proprietary software is to show that you are a slave to proprietary software and how you dislike thi
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy's argument was that we should all stop using OS X or Windows. I dismantled the argument by showing that I can't run Visio or ModelSim or other worktools on Linux, because they are only available on Windows.
Therefore his advice to abandon Windows is an automatic deadend, and as brain-numbingly stupid as the Libertarians' advice to get rid of government-built roads. Clear?
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I came here to see a first post along the lines of "I heard you like reviews so I did a review of your review so you could review your review" or something.
I don't know if I was happy, or sad, to see an interesting FP instead.
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If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid you have no choice. Whatever is coming out is insanely great, you simply must believe that because any other thought would lead to madness. Windows folk will simply bitterly cling to Windows 7 until it end of lifes and hope policy changes, as it often does. They are more like Star Trek fans, they admit there is a pattern to which releases suck and don't suck. But again, their choice is limited to picking one of the available supported versions. When you hitch yourself to a commercial entity you always subject yourself to their business needs, which are rarely in alignment with your own and you get little input into the decisions they make and few options when they change directions and abandon you.
Except distros pretty much demand that you're on the upgrade treadmill to get newer versions of software, backports are few and far between and library versions are often carelessly bumped so everything turns into a massive upgrade. For the most part you can install a brand new Windows application on an OS released in 2001 and it'll still work fine. I don't have to "bitterly cling" to Windows 7, it's not me losing out on that but Microsoft. Yes, maybe eventually after a string of horrible releases where I d
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Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous. Microsoft may have "succumbed to tablet madness", but the review made clear that Mac OS X has not. Mountain Lion has borrowed things from (tablet) iOS, but many of these ideas are not tablet-specific at all. The review specifically states that OS X has not been subsumed by iOS, and has a distinct trajectory.
Do iOS 6 and Mountain Lion converge a bit? Yes. Is there "madness" to it? Not even a taste. You should actually read the article instead of using it as a jump-off point to grind your Linux axe.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid you have no choice.
I have been using Mac computers since 1989 and to this date I have found the OS to consistently improve over time. The only exception being OS 9, which kinda sucked. I'm speaking about my perception of their software of course, and implying others should share my opinion.
It makes no sense for me to believe it's better to switch to Linux out of fear of being let down in the future. I really have no reason to believe it will happen. Even if it did, moving my files to some other PC would not really be an issue for me.
My experiences with Linux weren't very happy ones either. I'm not trying to generalize but I've more than once found myself in a situation in which I've been told to fix something myself - which really is not something I'm interested in doing at all. I've got my dev projects and work, and I don't really care about improving the OS I use at home. Some of those issues were things that I know I can get working much easier in windows or mac (maybe due to experience on the OSes, that's not really important to me). My personal opinion on the subject is that Linux is not for me.
Going back to your idea about Mac users drinking Kool-Aid, I think you're failing to put yourself in other people's shoes. Maybe your principles regarding open source/free software vs commercial software are not as important to others as they are to you?
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
From up that high, you might not be able to see it, but not everyone has the ability/time/desire to be a pilot. An overwhelming majority of the people who use planes to get from A to B are content with that choice. And frankly, I don't really hear a lot of private pilots droning on about how much better they are that they can fly themselves to somewhere when they want to.
And btw, nobody is free. Don't pretend to be free just because you're a computer enthusiast. You're still a slave to the farmers, the electric company, the sanitation and water sources that feed your house and every other item in your world that you pay for. For you, this may be about freedom and choice and all that other jazz that 90% of the world doesn't care about when it comes to an operating system. If you sleep better at night, then cookie for you. The "Aura of Rightness" that you're projecting just comes off as a bit juvenile, though.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Funny)
1000 different text editors and solitaire clones
Don't forget text editors which run solitaire! [gnu.org]
Or is that a solitaire game which permits text editing...?
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As has often been said, it's a really nice operating system. Shame the text editor is so clunky.
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It's a good thing there isn't a handy command like "apt-get dist-upgrade" on debian based systems or anything.
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As long as you do not mind having a botnet zombie.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as you do not mind having a botnet zombie.
Botnet malware doesn't just pop in out of nowhere. It's gets in when the user does something careless. It's gotten much easier to avoid issues without being excessively paranoid. If you like torrents or porn, quarantine them in a Linux VM. I believe Chrome (and maybe Firefox) now sandboxes websites as well. (of course, VM works here too) Change the moronic default settings to various programs so executables don't get launched without your direct action. (I blame software developers, including Microsoft, in the early 00's for this) There are other things to do as well, but you still get to enjoy your Windows gaming.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Insightful)
If "and yet I don't have to upgrade my OS at all" means no longer being updated with security patches, then that probably qualifies as "the user does something careless".
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Not when there are vulnerabilities that don't require user initiation (or even awareness). Not all attacks are based on the user doing something stupid.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
It's gets in when the user does something careless.
This myth really has GOT to die.
I direct you to exhibit A:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2Own [wikipedia.org]
6+ years of Windows and OSX being utterly Pwned through nothing more than a link click. Ill note that OSX was the first one owned for the majority of the time, but really the OS and browser dont matter that much. Chrome's upped ante and subsequent pwning this year shows that if you give hackers an incentive and enough time, they will 0-day remote-code-execution exploit any machine out there.
The VAST majority of infections out there have NOTHING TO DO with Windows "exe" files, and everything to do with Flash, Acrobat, or Java plugins being exploited to run arbitrary code. Oh, and exploits run against older versions of Windows and IE, for those folks who never got the memo that upgrading is important.
You can go ahead and assume that nothing can get thru your smug barrier, but Im going to go out on a limb here and say you might already be infected.
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Botnet malware doesn't just pop in out of nowhere. It's gets in when the user does something careless.
Yes, "something careless" like receiving TCP/IP packets [microsoft.com] from the Internet.
A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the Windows TCP/IP stack due to the processing of a continuous flow of specially crafted UDP packets. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.
That was in November last year. Hope you patched since then!
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Informative)
No it won't.
Eventually 3rd parties will begin to ignore it.
XP is interesting here only because it's successor (Vista) was so bad that Microsoft was forced to continue supporting it against it's will.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
For now, I know firefox was talking at one point of dropping XP support and we aren't far from the rest of the current software developers doing the same. A 12 year old Linux system is still just as usable, but you would be a fool to think any 12 year old system with no updates is in any way secure. As Microsoft is soon to phase out all updates for XP, you'll find that your 12 year old OS is no longer really usable.
You'll also find that your not getting the performance if your running that 12 year old OS on newer hardware since you have a lack of 64 bit support, lower memory allowances, and worse video performance capabilities.
You'll also find you still have to reboot on a frequent basis, a Linux system can go years without a reboot (and our Linux based phone systems do go 2+ years without frequently)
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Informative)
12 year old linux system just as usable? seriously? would you be able to find _any_ recent binaries that ran fine on it? which was the point about windows stability.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:4, Informative)
You will likely need to do the same for a dozen dependencies before that works, since it won't compile against 12 year old libraries. And then some of those dependencies will need their own dependencies, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if you end up effectively upgrading half of your Linux install that way, if you actually started with a 12 year old distro - I mean, we're talking Gtk 1.2 and Qt 2.x in that time frame.
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Looks like they still don't have a working spell check though.
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And yet my Windows 7 will have better gaming and application support than your Loonix desktop for the next decade well after mainstream support is dropped
Windows definitely has much better support for new games, but for older games I've found that WINE often works better. I have a number of games designed for Windows 9x that work fine in WINE on OS X (which is very much a tier 2 platform for WINE), yet won't even run on Windows 2000 or XP, let alone anything newer.
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Ah, the old astroturfing: a "dearth of applications for Linux" and "great backwards support for Windows". Give it up, man, you'll never hype your stock up again.
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One thing I never really agreed with in terms of the Star Trek's depiction of computers was that the alphanumeric keyboard was a goner.
How Scotty manages to rock the QWERTY in Star Trek IV, I don't know. Dictation is not a natural fit for everyone ; I can probably type far more efficiently than I can orate.
And while there are some nods to a "tactile interface" - presumably produced by forcefields in the control panels - the TNG / Okuda panels must be murderous for anyone who wants to be productive.
Enterpris
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You, maybe.. But why do you think they had to make shorthand and stenotype machines?
Heck, watch the closed captioning on basically any live TV show (or live-to-tape, like late night talk shows). Lots of errors, and missed words, even *with* the more-efficient-than-standard-typing mechanisms.
(I am not claiming that voice input is always the superior interface, simply that it's faster than typing the same text.)
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy's argument is that we should all stop using OS X or Windows. The problem is that I can't run Visio or ModelSim or other worktools on Linux, because they are only available on Windows. Therefore his advice to abandon Windows is an automatic deadend, and as brain-numbingly stupid as the anarcho-capitalist's advice to get rid of government-built roads. (IMHO)
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Insightful)
> The problem is that I can't run Visio or ModelSim or other worktools...
Dunno about you but I'd run Visio in a VM the few times a typical person needs it and download the Linux tarball for ModelSim. It ain't the 1990s anymore, dude! Professional tools tend to be available on professional workstations and Sun and SGI are long since out of that space, replaced with high end hardware running Linux, usually RHEL. That means any serious software runs there now. Sure they have a Windows exectuable and since Mac is POSIX they will often do one of those too, but real work happens on real workstations and more importantly, real compute heavy stuff happens on clusters. In case you have been in a cave the last few years, Linux pretty much owns clusters.
Re:Here we see the difference between Free and Sla (Score:5, Interesting)
Free software doesn't exist in industries that does not involve computers itself. This is the fundamental limitation of the free-software model, since it relies on its own industry to support it - you need other software engineers to make it happen.
But, most people don't use computers to use computers, they use them to do something else that DOESN'T involve computers. People are only interested in what gets that job done.
For example, there is no better tool than Apple's Aperture in cataloging and publishing photos within an hour of doing a photoshoot for a fashion magazine or newspaper. Free software doesn't even exist in that industry. (Lightroom isn't as good...) So, what are you going to use to code a free-software version of Aperture? A bunch of eager fashion models and stylists? =^D Who's going to code the controls of your kitchen's microwave ovens? A bunch of chefs?
Nobody else really cares about software. You still have to pay to play in these industries. If you can't pay, you don't play. Go do something else.
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I think the argument (more specifically) is that for a while now (thankfully) we CAN stop using OS X or Windows and it won't impact you in the way say, a decade or so ago would. The support and enthusiastic community surrounding all things Linux is very hearty and shows no signs of going anywhere. Things that were "impossible" (or very difficult) in the past are nearly as seamless as or (in the case of certain things) more seamless than the paid counterparts.
For me, the transition to 100% Linux came around
Long Story Short (Score:5, Funny)
It's a post about a review of a review of a review.
Re:Long Story Short (Score:5, Funny)
post about a review of a review of a review.
Whereas this is a response to a comment on a post about a review of a review of a review.
Comment review: (Score:5, Informative)
So it's better than Windows 8 (Score:2, Offtopic)
OS 10.8 is not trying to be a tablet OS like Windows 8. (Interesting that Apple and Microsoft have synced-up with their numbers)
old OS: Win7 and 10.7
new OS: Win8 and 10.8
BTW the review of the review was funny. But this award-nominee was even funnier: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/04/the-shadow-war-of-the-night-dragons-book-one-the-dead-city-excerpt [tor.com]
Gizmodo has a much more interesting article... (Score:2, Interesting)
"It feels like Apple has run out of ideas. Or worse, that Apple is too afraid to implement new concepts, fearing it will kill the company's golden goose. "
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Re:Gizmodo has a much more interesting article... (Score:4, Informative)
Metro's getting flak because its a legitimately bad idea to make that the desktop paradigm.
As long as Apple steers clear of anything in the vein of "Screw business users, we're competing with iPad!", they should be fine.
Re:Gizmodo has a much more interesting article... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gizmodo has a much more interesting article... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple blacklisted Gizmodo after they bought a stolen iPhone prototype a few years ago and refused to give it back before doing a full disassemble and report on every little detail. Since then, they've been left as the only major blog or news outlet that can't do firsthand reporting on the keynotes and product announcements, which has left them a little bitter. Small wonder that Gizmodo (Jesus Diaz in particular, of recent) has been saying all sorts of nonsense about Apple ever since.
Even if we ignore the chip on their shoulder, their reporting is shoddy and slimy, with them sometimes substantially altering their articles after they're posted. For instance, Briam Lam's account of returning the iPhone [gizmodo.com] makes it sound like they got a letter from Apple's legal team and they sent it right back. What you don't see in that version of his account is that Brian received a personal phone call from Steve Jobs, asking for it. Brian responded with an e-mail in which he refused to return it until Apple went on record [businessinsider.com], then altered the online version of the e-mail he sent to Apple's legal department, since the original version [edibleapple.com] made him look like an ass. The original reporting also contained a rosy accounting of a lot of those facts, but even that was later edited out in an effort to sweep it under the table as the original text of his correspondences leaked from other sources.
And that's far from being the only incident, though it is the most famous. RoosterTeeth lampooned Gizmodo [roosterteeth.com] and their "reporting" a few years back. They're a bunch of classless jackasses who treat facts as malleable ideas for their own benefit and cannot be trusted.
Conclusion (Score:5, Funny)
"We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion."
That most users are ignorant?
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I use default settings too, but not because of "ignorance". (1) I got tired of tinkering with my computer to try different settings. I've been doing it since the 80s and ultimately decided I'd rather DO something useful than just try different windows colors or graphics. (2) Using the default means I can jump from one computer to another without disorientation. They are all near-identical.
Re:Conclusion (Score:4, Funny)
"We all pay lip service to the idea that most users never change the default settings in software, but we rarely follow this through to its logical conclusion."
That most users are ignorant?
You seem to have Slashdot still set to the default "vapid elitism" setting.
Re:Conclusion (Score:4, Funny)
There's actually a GUI setting for this, but it's disabled when you have Elitism set to Vapid. So he had to use the command line there.
Change to Mac File System (Score:2)
QUOTE: "The old way: go to the Finder, find the file you want, and open it. The new way: go to the app and open the document from within the app. Conceptually it works just like iOS â" your files arenâ(TM)t in the file system, but rather âoeinâ the app you used to create them. This is the future, but Apple isnâ(TM)t forcing it upon us. The feature is prominent, yes, because Apple wants us to use it. But it is far from mandatory. Donâ(TM)t want to use iCloud document storage? Th
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Stuck in a PhoneOS mindset on the desktop?
I don't like being stuck in a PhoneOS mindset on a tablet.
The old school file hierarchy is not a bad thing. It allows you to organize things in ways that Apple products simply don't account for.
Having a great big pile of stuff to look through is not "usability".
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They're still on the filesystem, so you can still get to them just like before. You can also change the program the file is associated with.
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The old way: go to the Finder, find the file you want, and open it. The new way: go to the app and open the document from within the app.
The "new" way sounds like Windows 3.0
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1 year was my call. 1 year after Jobs death, Apple will have lost noticeable momentum. You cna't replace one dynamic, smart driver with the ideal of make quality products, and the money will follow with a committee.
I'm not an Apple Fan boy, but I do hope I'm wrong. While they didn't really invent the mp3 player, tablet, or smart phone, they raised the bar for everyone else.
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Their handling of the retina display was a major screw up that sacrificed the very reason to call the MacBook Pro a professional device
Except they didn't do that in any sense of the word.
Macbook Retina a major success, not failure (Score:3)
Their handling of the retina display was a major screw up
You didn't lay out the case for that well at all.
The fact is the VAST majority of professionals like and use the 15" form factor. The Macbook Retina is a "pro air" in that form factor, really light, really thin and an amazing display. Months after launch, there's still a 1-2 week shipping delay on new systems.
I myself have a 17" macbook pro, and while I don't plan to upgrade soon (my system works well enough as is for a year or so more I think) I wo
Re:Apple isn't helping things (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, my "dumbed down laptop" has the latest generation of Intel chips, a dedicated graphics processor, the best display on any laptop anywhere, truly high-speed connectivity (Thunderbolt), and all kinds of goodies in the OS including a free IDE and tools for multithreading, process monitoring, etc, and I regularly do video editing, statistical analysis, 3D, and all kinds of other technical pursuits on it.
Yes, it's troubling that Apple has neglected their towers for a while. But very few industries require a tower instead of a well-designed laptop at this point. With a Thunderbolt disk array, I can edit 5 HD sources in real-time on the Retina MacBook Pro that shows a full HD video in a window. You don't need a tower to edit video, or to do a whole bunch of other things anymore.
Not for me yet. (Score:2)
I'm still on Snow Leopard because I still have some old OSX PowerPC code I need to run.
Does anyone know a way to run PPC OSX code in Lion or Mountain Lion? I have the Sheepshaver emulator which runs PPC stuff, but only OS 9 / Classic, not OS X.
Is there a way to emulate, say, 10.4 in 10.7/10.8?
Re:Not for me yet. (Score:4, Informative)
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Doesn't that only work with the Server version of Snow Leopard?
I wrote a brief review myself .... (Score:2)
(Not yet published, but will probably go "live" on www.techcitement.com later today) I didn't really come here to promote my article though....
I was just going to comment that while it's probably true that Mac users often confuse tradition for the "best" way to accomplish something in their OS, it's also true that in the case of OS X Lion, an awful lot was removed..... In some cases, I think these deletions were unjustified and let people to a poor user experience, despite many benefits with the upgrade.
First impressions (Score:2)
Fink is proving to be a total pain in the ass to get working again, not to mention xcode ap
Big Difference though between..... (Score:4, Interesting)
the changes OSX is making and the dumb moves that ubuntu did.
Removal of scroll bars on OSX is not a big deal, Apple hardware had scrolling devices (magic mouse and multitouch pad) for a long time. so scrolling is not affected on that platform. Removal of scroll bars on Ubuntu was the stupidest move ever. I dont have a multitouch device to scroll with, so now I have to hit a 2 pixel bar on a window. WTF is that??!?!?! ROWARRGH!
Ubuntu needs to stop everything they are doing right now and support apple multitouch hardware and tell everyone to use X,Y or Z and suck it up. OR they need to stop chasing a UI that requires special hardware to make it useable.
Now the "single window" mode is retarded. on a 27" mac it is utterly stupid to do this. on a 11" macbook air? ok, I can see that. Dumbification of the UI needs to be optional. Let me have a "professional mode" to switch to a power users multiple window setup.
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Having used Ubuntu 12.04 for a while, I don't really find it too bad. Specifically, the lack of scroll bars is fine because when the cursor is moved to an area where the scroll bar would have been, a real scroll bar pops up. The area trigger for when the scroll bar pops up is actually wider thant the width of the actual scroll bar.
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the most chilling thing I've read in a while: "Three decades ago, the personal computer industry was built on the backs of technology enthusiasts. Every product, every ad was created to please us. No longer. Technology must now work for everyone, not just 'computing enthusiasts'." Why is it chilling? Because I'm seeing it everywhere. Things that I consider to be killer features that MUST exist on a computing device are just disappearing. No OS is immune at this point. As a hardcore Linux fan since the early 90s, even I have to acknowledge that Linux is dying. Ubuntu is killing it. Windows isn't looking to sharp in version 8 either. It sounds like Mac OS X is headed down the same road.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "technology enthusiasts" it means hobbiests who want to overclock their CPU and add a steam-powered cassette storage mechanism, Apple hasn't been the place for those enthusiasts since the Mac came out. If it means people who compile programs from source code, Mountain Lion has better compilers than GNU and tools for things like process monitoring (DTrace) and multi-threading (Grand Central Dispatch, blocks, etc) that are better than just about anything else out there.
Those who play with computers to play with computers are a dying breed. Those who play with computers to accomplish something else (including very techie things like statistics) can do so under Mountain Lion as easily as ever, without being subjected to designs created by "enthusiasts" without design skills.
Sounds like a better upgrade than Windows 8... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mountain Lion might be the thing that tips me over. The retina Macbook Pro is becoming hard to resist and there is no comparable Windows laptop on the horizon. I like Windows 7, I am comfortable with it, but if I am going to relearn stuff from scratch, I would pick ML over the travesty that is Windows 8. I'll pick something that doesn't show me a blocky touch based interface on a goddamn laptop. I never wish to use a touch screen on a laptop or a desktop, it's the most uncomfortable thing ever, I don't know why Microsoft and everyone forgot about Gorilla Arm. OSX doesn't look like it's going to anything that crazy, some of the things copied over from iOS, like notifications, are actually worth copying over. At least for now, Mac OS still doesn't put restrictions on anyone who wants to do stuff from the command line or install unapproved apps. App support in Macs has improved with growing market share. The only thing I will miss about Windows is games, but for the few times I do play games, dual booting with Boot Camp will do.
I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't 'learn' ML rather than learning Windows 8.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple is now supporting X11 on Mountain Lion through the open-source XQuartz project:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293?viewlocale=en_US [apple.com]
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/ [macosforge.org]
The rise and fall of general purpose computing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Slightly OT in that I'm getting away from the Apple-ness of the topic, but...
This is precisely why smart phones and pads are going to return us to the days of $2000 hard drives and $5000 PCs. The general population has needed to buy a PC or laptop in order to not be left behind in our increasingly computerized and online society. Now that the average person has access to surfing the web, reading email, and anything other than compute-intensive work in the palm of their hand, there is absolutely no need for them to buy desktops or laptops. The commodity surge of desktops and laptops is now passing us by, and we're going to see general purpose computing return to non-commodity prices.
To quote Samuel L. Jackson, "Hold on to your butts!"
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Tablets and phones outnumber Apple's computer sales by something like 10:1.
If Apple is making "billions of dollars of profit" every quarter, then it is not because of the PC business. If Apple were still just a PC company they would be either dead or terribly obscure by this point.
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Yeah, they are flat in this booming economy!
Try telling the whole story.
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I'll wait longer. I will not upgrade to 10.8.x until I have to. the upgrade to 10.7.x already caused problems with older apps that I used (try to install Garageband Track packs... oh sorry they dont work, re purchase them for the version that will work)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm definitely going to upgrade when I get home. Worst case, I reload a TM backup, or copy over my home directory sans the TM ACLs and go back to what I'm doing.
I do hope Apple makes a USB flash drive with the Lion install image on it eventually.
One thing I will say about OS X: Of all the operating systems I've used except some Linux distros [1], OS X is one of the few that can do a major version upgrade [2] without leaving too much cruft behind. Most operating systems (especially Windows), I just save o
Re: (Score:2)
I typically just create a second partition, and install it on that. It comes with a boot manager. It's a simple matter to choose which to boot into. I've been using it for a few months and overall I've had no problems once it was released as a beta.
If/When you are ready to make the switch, just restore your Mountain Lion on top of your old Lion or Snow Leopard partition via Disk Manager. Nothing lost and no reconfiguration needed.
Re:One little loss (Score:5, Informative)
Or best of all, you could take the hour or so to download a free signing certificate from Apple and recompile your app... But that would actually be useful to your loyal customers who want to take advantage of Gatekeeper, and you wouldn't want that because how then would you grind your axe?
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Okay, where do I get a certificate for free?
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I do more with my "iToy" in a day than you have ever done in your entire life on your windows PC little kid. Come on back when you can do something more than edit a Myspace Page.
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Siracusa's OS X reviews are always gazillion pages long. I haven't read this one, but the previous few I dug into were thorough and -- if you're a Mac dev -- very interesting.