OS X 10.9 Mavericks Review 222
An anonymous reader writes "John Siracusa at Ars Technica has put together a comprehensive review of Apple's OS X 10.9 Mavericks. This is the first time a major OS X update has been free, and it works on any device that supports Mountain Lion. This suggests Apple is trying to boost adoption rates as high as possible. Siracusa says the following about Apple's move away from skeuomorphic design: 'Mavericks says enough is enough. The leather's gone, the fake pages are gone, the three panes are independently resizable (more or less), even the title bar is bone-stock, and it's boring?' On the other hand, he was a big fan of all the internal optimizations Apple has done, since the energy savings over Mountain Lion are significant. He found a 24% increase in his old MacBook Pro's battery life, and a 30% increase for his new MacBook Air. He also praised the long-needed improvements to multi-monitor support: ' Each attached display is now treated as a separate domain for full-screen windows. Mission Control gestures and keyboard shortcuts will now switch between the desktop and full-screen windows on the display that contains the cursor only, leaving all other displays untouched.' The 24-page review dives deeply into all the other changes in Mavericks, and is worth reading if you're deciding whether or not to upgrade."
Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple has really fucked up big time on 10.9.
Basically, the sRGB spec is no longer sRGB, and colour managed applications that use ColorSync are completely hosed. Almost everything is more saturated then it should be. Towers of bug reports have been filed on this alone and absolutely nobody has received a response from Apple, which makes me think it's some retarded "stylistic choice" of theirs to literally try and make the OS "look better" (it doesn't).
So, basically, if you rely on OS X for colour accurate work, you're totally fucked.
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If they dont fix color issues and piss off the graphics/hollywood crowd, they'll lose the constant free advertising, and that's not going to help the bottom line. They'll need even more "Apple's CEO just sneezed, is that a hint at iTissue" journalism, and I don't know that it's actually possible.
Re: Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:2)
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I think there were some legitimate gripes about FCPX at launch. Things like no XML support, no support for tape media, and no backwards compatibility with older projects. Third parties had to release applications solve most of these problems and they weren't available for quite some time.
However, I agree that people bitching about how FCPX is just iMovie on steriods because of the new UI probably are just overly resistant to change. From the little I've seen it has some very nice features and should make bi
Re:Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have a link? I'm not readily finding anything but I'd be interested in reading more.
Re:Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:5, Informative)
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1651041
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1649988&highlight=saturation
You can actually see the difference in the Ars Technica article just from the screenshots (which likely means it's intentional, since you can screenshot the issue and clearly see it in the pixel colours). Look at the icons closely, and you'll notice that the majority of them seem darker and more saturated then normal. I'd link you to the ADF forum discussion about this exact same issue, but that's kinda pointless since you'll need an ADC account to view it.
We've got a whole bunch of ultra high end Eizo monitors in the office that do self calibration and colour correction inside the monitor itself. These units are all configured to accept a straight sRGB IEC-61966-2.1 colour space, and nothing else. Since the monitor ASIC handles the calibration & correction for the panel, there's no need to use ICC profiles if you don't want. We've found this to be an insane boon when you're targeting the sRGB colour space for mobile app development and graphics design (where sRGB is basically the safest space to target if you want it to look decent on any handheld).
Anyways, under 10.7 and 10.8- setting up OS X to use the sRGB IEC-61966-2.1 colour space resulted in a pretty perfect image on the monitor (which was configured for the sRGB colour space "mode" and self-calibrated). No problems there, or with any of the Cocoa APIs, or OpenGL stuff.
Under 10.9, everything is basically "fucking whacked" (according to our IT guy). About 60% of the Mac OS X UI doesn't adhere to the sRGB spec anymore in that if you have an ICNS file that was generated from sRGB source material, it is no longer displayed as straight sRGB in the Aqua UI- it's being tinkered around with by Apple's bug and/or design decision. A lot of stuff being displayed through NSImageView is totally hit and miss as far as the colours go, even with an sRGB monitor profile (this is even worse on Apple's own computers that use LCD panels which are somewhere in-between a wide gamut and sRGB... The colour variances I've seen on our office laptops running 10.8 and 10.9 side beside are unbelievable). Even OpenGL is hit and miss now- before everything seemed to be uncorrected (which was fine, applications could implement colour management themselves if they wanted), but in 10.9 it seems like some stuff is completely whack and other things almost look partially colour corrected depending on the monitor profile. We think this is due to the GPU drivers and brand, but nobody knows for sure.
In a nutshell, things are NOT as they should be.
1) Their Aqua UI should assume that input images are in the sRGB colour space, and display them as accurately as possible according to the monitor profile
2) NSImageView & friends should do the same thing for data sources that have no associated colour space
3) OpenGL should preferably be totally uncorrected, since anything else would be totally ambiguous and up to the manufacture
Our six 10.9 pilot systems were recently reverted to 10.8, which still has horribly broken colour management... BUT, at least on 10.8, if you tell it to output sRGB then that's precisely what it does (and this works well with our Eizo monitors). 10.9 seems to take this all one step further in that they fuck around with anything and everything at will, and it's just a complete nightmare to deal with as a user.
TLDR; it is very evident Apple has no clue what they're doing in regards to colour management. This is becoming more and more apparent with each release of OS X.
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What is so wrong with UI widgets not adhering to sRGB, so long as content is displayed pursuant to specification does it really matter?
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We've found this to be an insane boon when you're targeting the sRGB colour space for mobile app development and graphics design (where sRGB is basically the safest space to target if you want it to look decent on any handheld).
I hope this isn't a silly question, but why on earth do you care about accurate colour matching on mobile devices? Given that they have screens of very variable quality and no decent colour accuracy themselves it seems that putting much effort in will be wasted.
Re:Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:4, Informative)
Just because you use Android doesn't mean people don't care.
The iPhone 4s was about 90% sRGB (mostly due to a faulty blue filter that lets in a little green), the iPhone 5 (and 5s, 5c, and associated iPods) are actually a little over 99% sRGB. And Apple calibrates every display as they come off the line. tests done on the displays have shown excellent calibration with very little variability between devices.
While Androids have better screens, the AMOLED ones, especially Samsung Pentile variants tend to be far worse - the OLED display is nice but oversaturates for the most part. LCD Androids may or may not be calibrated as well - some devices exhibit such wide variations in color accuracy and error that they're effectively uncalibrated screens, while others do calibrated them to an extent during manufacturing (usually the flagships).
The modern smartphone and tablet display is a far cry from early mobile LCD displays - they're often very good (especially Apple displays - if you need color accuracy on a portable, you're pretty much limited to Apple) and people do expect their photos to be somewhat like reality.
If you want to see what crap looks like, check out a cheap digital photo frame, then look at a modern smartphone or tablet display and you'll find they're much nicer.
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The broken colour management in OS X is still far better than anything on Linux. Linux can't even get decent font rendering due to "patent problems."
Hm, that's odd. I simply copied the active color profile used by OSX over and set it up on my Linux partition (dual boot MBP) and it works like a charm. I haven't actually measured scientifically though (I am not a graphic designer) but most images immediately looked much better.
Also I find free TTF fonts look fine, which distro/version are you talking about?
Re:Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:5, Informative)
All I can find is this in the Apple Dev Forums (login required) [apple.com]. It seems that certain people in a workflow without a monitor color profile see differences without embedded profiles look differently. This does not appear to be a problem in a workflow where you regularly profile your monitor (and in fact, I don't see a problem).
So, if you depend on OS X for color accurate work, and if you are working exclusively with untagged images that are to be assumed to be sRGB, and if you have a monitor which does its own sRGB calibration and you're depending on the bits from the image being sent directly to the monitor without adjustment, then you might see problems. I don't know how big of a community that is.
Ah, you noticed it too! (Score:2)
After I upgraded at first I assumed it deleted the calibration profile and ended up going through the whole monitor calibration process only to end up with something close, but not exactly like what I started with and neither like how it looked under Mountain Lion. It doesn't really bug
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10.6 -> 10.7 was much worse. Get used to it Apple is picking up the pace for developers not slowing it down.
Re:Nothing about colour accuracy? (Score:4, Funny)
They also dropped off another x86 64bit arch
What the fuck are you blithering about? Mavericks supports all the hardware which Mountain Lion supported.
just as they did with the bullshit 32bit video bus driver bollock.
"32bit video bus driver bollock" is an amazing bit of word salad. Calm down, stop frothing.
Apple only release OS "updates" when they can kill an entire hardware release with the exception of their little cell phones stuck in a 2008 timeloop.
Can't tell if stupid or just trolling.
Enough already! (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we have Soulskill yet [slashdot.org] again [slashdot.org] trying to act like skeuomorphic artistic design is some sort of big, bad thing which we should be concerned about. This is not an important issue in human interface design. This seems to be some sort of pet peeve lens which Soulskill keeps bringing up. Skeuomorphism may bother designers who don't want to be tied down to designs based on mid-twentieth-century conventions of office life and people who demand every last pixel of their screen be useful for them. ell, it may even
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It is an important issue. It's not the end of the world, but it's dumb to waste screen real estate on gewgaws to make the interface look like something from yesteryear to which it is superior. And notably, the world already rejected these ideas back in the classic MacOS days.
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Skeumorphism is just a thing, if done right it is great, if done poorly, it is bad.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Insightful)
> Skeumorphism is just a thing, if done right it is great, if done poorly, it is bad.
As a 3D, UI, & UX expert I concur 100%.
Skeumorphism is like spice. A little kicks it up a notch. Not having any is TOO plain; having too much and that is worse then not having any.
IMO the BIGGER problem is OSX 10.9 and iOS 7 completely desaturating and removing all 3d shading -- THAT is the hideous UI crime. The UI designers should be forced to use Windows 1.x for their stupidity.
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You would not pass any computer art class today with that attitude.
Every professor out there has been teaching this is the way to go and flunking out those who do these outdated 20th century things. Unfortunately, this trend is post impressionism which once became popular because herasy to do art any other way. These new students are landing jobs at companies like Apple and Microsoft. Simple color is it.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any "computer art professor" that teaches which style is "superior", as opposed to "how to do" any style you are tasked to implement, isn't worth the time spent with them.
The issue of replicating physical interfaces is not, and never will be, cut and dry. Some physical interfaces are highly refined and functional, and abandoning them leads to problems (look at a modern audio system as compared to, for instance, a late 1970's Marantz. Now try to turn up the midrange, or route one recording input to a recording output, assuming your modern hardware even has them.)
There are some excellent UI design guidelines out there. Like, don't constantly show and hide interface elements, it fouls up muscle memory. But "bury everything in menus" is a total newbie suck move, and "remove all familiarity" (which is what the rabid anti sku folk are saying, really) is also a suck move.
Change and so forth in moderation, see?
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and "remove all familiarity" (which is what the rabid anti sku folk are saying, really) is also a suck move.
The problem with skeuomorphism is that the familiarity is often misleading or at best limiting. People experience something like this when they go to a foreign country. Things look similar superficially, but are subtly different and disorienting.
For example a skeuomorphic address book would look like an actual book, but not really work like one. You can fold the corners of real pages down to act as bookmarks, then turn the book sideways to find them. You can't search a real book by entering search terms, so
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"often" is not "always", and that destroys the argument against skeuomorphism without even requiring you to prove your assertion of "often." Sorry, but it's BS and it's been BS all along. Familiarity can be a great thing, a significant assist into the how and why of something. Radio dials. The play, pause, rewind, record, FF, and dub interface of tape machines. The phase display of a radio-teletype scope. The hand
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Radio dials. The play, pause, rewind, record, FF, and dub interface of tape machines.
Interesting examples. The play, rewind and FF buttons are of course simple arrows and a double bar symbol whose meaning can only be learned. Dials make sense on machines with linear tapes, but on computers it is usually possible to seek directly to where you want to go. Such interfaces were chosen largely because of the limits of technology and low cost manufacturing, rather than because they were good.
Hands on a clock are another excellent example of how skeudomorphism fails. They were developed because cl
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Off topic ...
Holy crap, I thought your .sig was a joke ... "const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)" but sure enough it is real.
https://silvermoon.svn.codeplex.com/svn/Silvermoon/Silvermoon/OpenGL/Texture.cs [codeplex.com]
Sad that the noob programmer couldn't even use a descriptive name for texture coordinates in 16.16 fixed point format!
i.e.
instead of using whitespace and columns for alignment to make it m
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Brushed metal look was the beginning of Apple's long, painful end.
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It IS a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
We use computers and mice, maybe a track pad. It is one thing to theme something with fluff and quite another to try to simulate historical metaphors while ignoring known methods of user input and popular conventions.
Making something look like a book is a nice touch that is a matter of opinion but making you do the motions of the real world to interact with a computer program using a mouse... that is just idiotic and should be a cause for concern.
Skeuomorphism is great if you are making something tor a target demo that understands some real world item well and would instantly "get it" while you could slowly migrate them to something better suited to the newer technology that is replacing it.
You might want to use VHS tape or film reels as metaphors when introducing video editing in the 90s... But as soon as people can adapt, those metaphors can be chucked for more modern or abstract ones; as Apple and others have done with digital video editing. Some terms like film and reels still remain despite this generation never using or even seeing actual film.
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You might want to use VHS tape or film reels as metaphors when introducing video editing in the 90s...
But even back then, yes, even with technophobes, if you'd forced your users to rewind those tapes in real time you would have had a serious problem.
Actually (Score:2)
I remember a couple apps that had rewind buttons in them! I don't remember their names... Obviously they didn't rewind in real time because then there would be zero benefit to bothering to buy and learn the computer. I fooled around with most everything in the area as it came out... the early stuff actually DID make you wait because it was hooked into actual tape decks-- The benefit of recording and replaying all your edits was only worth it for a professional -- the COST was totally unjustifiable for mos
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I don't understand why in 2013 I still have to save things. It's not like they haven't figured out how to do it automatically.
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I don't think they will, and I don't think they should. The floppy disk icon is part of our language now. People understand that it means "save", even if they have never seen a real life physical floppy disk.
Exceptions - SAVE (Score:2)
Save is an exception to the general rules. The whole concept of "saving" was and is abstract and foreign to the real world for MOST people. Despite the lack of a save metaphor new users learn it QUICKLY. Once you lose your work a few times, you learn to SAVE.
Doesn't matter what symbol is used or what word. Saving is a computer metaphor and could have been any word. Now "Save As..." that is not an exception - millions still do not understand it but use it as SAVE due to past experience. If you could
Re:Enough already! (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess it depends on what your standpoint is. From a user standpoint, transitioning to a new technology via a familiar UI is better than doing it via an unfamiliar one. Once there however, the real test is how unintrusive and easy to use the UI actually is.
From a designer standpoint, again, when in transition, a familiar UI is easier to work with. However, once the transition period is over, it can be a limiting factor for improvements to the interface or to the functionality of the device.
Take the keyboard for example. We still use the same QWERTY layout of its predecessor, the typewriter. This was the natural course of evolution for typing as people transitioned away from typewriters to keyboards. But it is limiting, in that the key layout is not ideal for the typist, and the flat keyboard layout itself is not friendly to the hand at all.
On the other hand, look at the Segway. It has such a revolutionary interface that nobody really knows what to do with it. It probably would've gained far more traction had it looked closer to a bicycle. It could have eventually replaced all those motorized bikes with the 80cc engines, been legitimately the next revolution in transportation. Instead, it's now associated in my mind with being a fat slob, since the only people I've ever actually seen use one are mall security guards and the occasional beat cop.
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It probably would've gained far more traction had it looked closer to a bicycle.
Or if it cost less than $8000USD
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Here we have Soulskill yet again trying to act like skeuomorphic artistic design is some sort of big, bad thing which we should be concerned about.
I think whaling on skeuomorphic design completely misses the point.
Good skeuomorphic design gives the user cues about how things work, what you can click, what you can slide etc.
Bad design (skeuomorphic or otherwise) paints a pretty picture on the screen for the hell of it. The form doesn't suggest function and well-established conventions from other software are ignored.
At worst, bad design creates false cues that misdirect users.
Unfortunately, recent versions of iOS and OS X have included several glar
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bad design creates false cues that misdirect users
I don't think I could agree with this any more. I didn't intend to take sides in the pro/anti skeuomorphism debate; I'm simply annoyed to see /. consistently framing skeuomorphism as fundamentally flawed instead of something which newbs and the artistically inept (e.g. suits) will rely on too heavily and apply when inappropriate.
Re:Enough already! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why App Store and not software update? (Score:2, Interesting)
app store should not need it's own password/ login for free stuff.
also Software update seems better for OS stuff.
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App Store _is_ Software Update, now.
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Where by personal information, you mean an arbitrary string of characters (log in name), and an arbitrary string of characters (password)?
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I recently managed to create a new account and download software for my mother without giving it a credit card, but by using a gift card only. I think I googled creating a AppleID with no credit card for the details on how to do it, it wasn't terribly hard.
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No it is not. It's the other way around. Apple does not allow you access to the upgrade program and security fixes unless you give them personal information. They want their computer hacked, or they wouldn't place this huge and unnecessary barrier to upgrades. They know most people buy a new Mac when their old one becomes unusable so by not allowing security upgrades, they greatly increased the stream of people that will stand in long lines to give them cash.
Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X. Apple have gotten WAY too controlling to the point of being a menace to society.
I haven't read the review yet, but I'm going to bet that the issue of privacy was not covered more than glancingly (and zero references to mass surveillance).
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If you want be alarmist about something, at least get your facts straight. NSA is spying on people for Apple, not the other way around. Corporations are the citizens with votes, the government is in their service. The reason why there is outrage about the data sharing going the other way too is because Facebook does not want their data to be shared with Microsoft :)
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Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.
So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?
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Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.
So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?
Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-5.jpg [washingtonpost.com] ...from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/ [washingtonpost.com]
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Just a data point. All seems to be going well on my machine. About an hour to update, rebooting fine.
About the only thing I would complain about was the need to register my iCloud. I wish they would have kept the online password manager.
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Apple wants control. I found out that Apple uses your ID account to inject your data into each downloaded app as DRM. Read https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5261 [apple.com] ... I was wondering why my downloaded 10.9 copy did not match others' with file sizes, CRC checksums, etc. :(
Re:Why App Store and not software update? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what in hell you are talking about and apparently neither do you. There is no requirement for any info whatsoever to get security updates. I hit the apple in the top corner of the screen, scroll down to software update, it shows the updates and I hit go and it goes. My computer asks for my administrator login/password. That's pretty much it, a lot like updating my linux box. I get the idea you've never used an apple computer.
mine does too (Score:2)
and one of those updates offered to me is 10.9
don't mind the ass-hat trolls
Re:Why App Store and not software update? (Score:4, Informative)
You are correct. What people don't realize is that there are actually two different update mechanisms behind the "App Store" updates. When you check for updates, Apple displays the updates for applications purchased from the App Store along with updates for the OS-- but the fact that they're displayed together doesn't mean that they behave exactly the same way. The updates for App Store apps are downloaded from the App Store and require you to have an App Store account, but the system updates are downloaded from a different location, and no account is required.
I administer these things as part of my job. You definitely don't need an account to download system updates.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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BTW if you want to sign up for a throwaway Apple ID with no payment method, do this:
Go to store.apple.com online wherever and "buy" a Free app. It will prompt for a sign-in, but only with Free Apps can you create a new account with the option for No P
Maverick McCain (Score:2, Funny)
Finally! An OS suitable for Sarah Palin.
She's a real Maverick.
Okay, there's the review... (Score:4, Funny)
So when can we expect the Review of Ars Technica's Review of OS X Mavericks?
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Once they have received their payment from Apple, which is about NOW.
FINALLY (Score:2)
With the skeumorphism gone, the stock Calendar app finally became usable.
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With the skeumorphism gone, the stock Calendar app finally became usable.
Wrong! It is the only stock apple app that it NOT full-screen capable. Why in gods name not? Consistency is the lifeblood of a UI. (I'm looking at you windows 8/8.1)
Except is IS full-screen capable.
Step Away From The Kool Aid (Score:2, Insightful)
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A fright pig of immense proportions is available for anything clang runs on.
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Sure, but have you actually tried to use it for anything serious on another platform? There is a reason you don't see many Linux or Windows apps written in Object-C.
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No, it isn't. I developed in C++ for 12 years before (initially reluctantly) moving to Objective-C about 10 years ago. After some orientation, I realised it was actually a breath of fresh air. The most productive language I've ever used, bar none.
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I wouldn't say the most productive language, but it's certainly the most productive language at that level. Higher-level languages like Python will always beat lower-level languages like Objective-C for productivity.
I find that practically everybody who talks about how awful Objective-C is has turned their nose up at it without trying to use it for any substantial period of time. Yes, it can look weird and verbose when you first start using it, but once you catch on to the patterns, it's a very pleasan
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C++ has changed a lot since 10 years ago - more so than Obj-C, I dare say.
Frankly, in 2013, a programming language that has only recently got any form of automated memory management, and still doesn't have any namespacing facilities, is outright embarrassing.
And if you found Obj-C to be "the most productive language you've ever used", especially 10 years ago, then I think that you didn't really explore many other options.
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The Objective-C spec (absent of the Apple APIs) is much, much smaller than the C++ spec, and it's a proper superset of standard C. Any ANSI C program will compile as an objective C program.
C++ has a massive spec and even when you know what you're doing, you're pretty likely to shoot yourself in the foot at some point. A friend of mine recently joked that the motto of C++ should be, "Yes, well, don't." As in: "I can do this amazing thing in C++ and it's totally legal!" "Yes, well, don't." Pretty much every C
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Well, to be fair, Objective C is one thing, however Apple's related APIs are quite something else, and do represent potential vendor lock-in, particularly if you are careless about using them.
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Well, to be fair, Objective C is one thing, however Apple's related APIs are quite something else, and do represent potential vendor lock-in, particularly if you are careless about using them.
That's of course exactly the opposite of Windows APIs, or Android APIs, which will run anywhere. Or do they?
Make your own Kool Aid (Score:2)
I'm not saying Apple's alone in this (that was someone else), I'm just pointing out how Objective C can relate to lock-in.
Certainly using any OS's unique APIs can bind you tightly to that specific OS.
However, there are also lots of APIs that are the same, or so similar that dealing with them generally doesn't lock you to anything. The standard C library, for instance, contains lots of useful stuff, most of which works as designed on all major platforms (Windows, OSX, linux), and you can often leverage that
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"If you want to port your application you can always write your own version of the APIs you use."
Yes, that's exactly what 'vendor lock in' is. Thank you captain obvious.
Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid (Score:5, Insightful)
There you go again. Have you used it? It's "just" a 2D sprite library that has the simplest API I've ever seen, and yet handles all the OpenGL stuff behind the scenes for you, has a full particles system AND a physics engine, all built in. The physics alone (which is not just basic collision detection but a full physics environment) is worth the price of admission, which is ummm, free.
As a test I piled sprites of about 100x100 pixels, all with attached particle emitters and each with a physics body into the system, moving randomly and interacting according to their 'natural' physics. On my 13" Macbook Pro Retina I only started to see the framerate dip below 60fps when I got to almost 3000 sprites. That's good performance actually.
2D games may be ho-hum to some, but with simple API, power and performance SK gives you, I look forward to seeing what cool stuff people come up with. Should be fun.
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Whoah! Battery life (Score:2)
Re:Whoah! Battery life (Score:5, Informative)
I am really curious what power optimizations were done?
You are in luck. An article about that is the topic under discussion.
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In case you don't want to read the 28 page article.
Timers of all programs are synchronised so they are fired right after each other so that there are longer periods processing and longer periods of idle. This means that frequency throttling up and down happens a lot less often.
Also for invisible and inaudible applications (obscured, or minimised, and not producing or recording audio) they reduce the rate of the timers, so less screen redraws and other things are done.
When showing the battery menu it will sh
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Timers of all programs are synchronised so they are fired right after each other so that there are longer periods processing and longer periods of idle. This means that frequency throttling up and down happens a lot less often.
That sounds a lot like the timer coalescing [microsoft.com] added in Windows 7, and it did have notable improvements in power usage over XP. So while the idea isn't new or innovative on the part of Apple, it does help them maintain their lead over Windows when it comes to lower power consumption.
Some Tips : no CC required - no other upgrade (Score:2)
Let me share those tips I've found:
No credit card required to create an Apple ID if you don't have one: tip 1 [apple.com]
No Snow Leopard upgrade from Leopard (however you should have a Snow L. licence for this Mac): tip 2 [macworld.com]
One still needs a Snow Leopard at least to use the new App Store and download the Maverick files.
Maybe you can go to a friend's and use your new ID to download your Maverick copy... or wait for a tip 3 someone may post here !
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Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product (Score:5, Funny)
Someone needs to counter-balance the horrendous anti-Apple bias found here on /.
Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product (Score:5, Informative)
John Siracusa's reviews of OS X over at Ars Technica have always been in-depth and informative, and while John Siracusa himself may be a fan of OS X, he doesn't shy away from being very critical when it does something not-so-great, or he sees a problem with Apple's direction. This year he (rightfully) railed against several UI elements that are pretty bizarre. It's hardly a puff piece. It's more educational, than anything.
In general, I find his reviews much more about explaining how things work, than actually praising or criticizing. It's a review, in the sense that it's an overview of the new operating system, rather than some sort of grading of the operating system. He's not comparing it to anything except the previous versions of OS X, and then only in objective technical respects. It's not about competing views of different products, it's to tell existing OS X users what they can expect if they upgrade.
Mostly Siracusa talks about under-the-hood workings of the operating system and computer hardware, and past Siracusa reviews have even included code examples to explain new APIs to developers interested in the platform, and users who may be the beneficiaries of developers using new APIs. This year it talks quite a bit about race-to-sleep and other technical issues that apply to computing as a whole. It's exactly the sort of review somebody would want to read if they were technically-inclined, like the Slashdot audience. I would say a Siracusa OS X review is entirely appropriate, here. If you're just looking for some kind of Windows vs. Mac (vs. Linux) argument fodder, it's not the review for you. I wouldn't want or care about those sorts of reviews on Slashdot.
Fuck You (Score:3, Insightful)
With your "OMG, they must be fucktards" mentality and your openly bias "Linux before God" agenda have you ever stopped to consider for so much as a second that Apple's setup has some real value to ordinary consumers who just want shit to work?
Their closed garden approach may irritate the hell out of you information ought to be freers but good God, it makes certain my grandmother doesn't have to worry about viruses or malware. There is plenty of shit to be found on the app store, but a hell of a lot less tha
Re:Fuck You (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac is also not very stable with heavy applications like photoshop, after effects, 3dsmax, etc.
I chuckled heartily over this, especially considering that Autodesk hasn't released a native 3DS Max binary for OS X.
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Lol. Windows 7 regularly crashes with my USB RS232 adapter. Just today, without the adapter plugged in, it black-screened and half-rebooted (elitebook 8570p) itself for no reason. Ivy bridge hardware, hardware diagnostics are all good.
I've been running beta versions of Mavericks on my main machine since DP1. I've yet to have a crash with it.
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So what you're saying is you have a dodgy driver causing kernel related issues? What would you have the operating system do, chug along as if nothing is happening risking major data corruption? Set the hardware on fire? How about reach out and slap the user for not getting to the root of their problem and making the system more stable.
Windows 7 never crashes on its own accord. Users install buggy crap that makes it crash, or bodgy hardware causes it to crash.
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You didn't fix anything. You just passed on the blame for the user not caring enough to run a quick debug utility and google the error code of the memory dump caused during the crash.
The reality is it doesn't matter who or what is causing windows to crash, the point is the user has made no attempt to determine why and has declared the system a lost cause. Ultimately he won't be satisfied with any OS as in theory any OS can be brought down this way when the hardware plays up.
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From my OSX shell, result of "uptime":
22:14 up 29 days, 18:22, 4 users, load averages: 0.15 0.15 0.10
Hardly even trying. Last reboot was probably a result of an upgrade from Apple. System crashes are so rare I can't even recall one. App crashes, yeah, sometimes, perhaps once every couple months or so. Depends on the app.
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I know a company that recently completed a three-year project replacing about 20,000 Dells with Macs at about two dozen locations nationwide. And not just for visual things. For accounting, management, general office, etc... EVERYBODY is on a Mac now. And for the very few hyper-specific applications that don't have a Mac equivalent (things like transmitter monitoring, satellite aiming, etc...), they use Macs running BootCamp.
All you've done is show the world that you have very limited experience. You re
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10.6 to 10.8 was a pretty difficult transition. different X, command line compiler tools hidden in a couple of directories underneath XCode, signed applications, grudging support for java, different open source package manager.
as someone who should probably be running linux, how difficult is this going to make my life?
X: just like 10.8, you need XQuartz. At least it's not different from 10.8.
Command-line compiler tools: if, for example, you just type "gcc" at the command line just for the lulz, it'll pop up a window (so your command line had better be in a Terminal window on the machine on which you're running your shell) asking whether you want Full Frontal Xcode or just the command-line tools. If you select the latter, it'll plop them in an obscure directory under /Library but will plant stuff in /usr/bin that runs
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Open source package manager: OS X doesn't come with one, so no change.
...which means it is probably wise to wait for Macports and/or Fink to support Mavericks (I'm sure they're working on it, but currently their websites stop at 10.8)
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Does OS X still include GCC, or have they - like FBSD 10 completely deprecated it in favor of LLVM/Clang?
Well, I'm not sure more recent versions of OS X "include" a compiler in the sense that you have the compiler available on the machine as delivered, but, in Mavericks, if you try to run a developer command-line tool, it pops up a window asking if you want to install Xcode or just the command-line developer tools. As of the current version of Xcode (5), they have nothing using GCC's front end, just clang. Xcode 4.2 through 4.6.x included only llvm-gcc (GCC front end, LLVM back end) and clang.
Also, does OS-X include X at all
As of Mountain
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Also, if Apple is deprecating all GPL3 software that they have, be it GCC, Samba, then why are they offering bash?
And that version is GPLv2 [apple.com].
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But just to be precise (and this precision matters if you are building some piece of software that relies on the leniency of the GNU compiler collection), gcc (as well as g++) has been a symbolic link to clang for quite some time.
That was not true until Xcode 5.
You don't get the real gcc with Mac OS X out of the box. This is not the worst move because clang has superior error reporting (even making suggestions that are actually helpful)
What you got as "gcc", prior to Xcode 4.2, was GCC. What you got, from Xcode 4.2 to 4.6.3, was llvm-gcc, which had GCC's front end and an LLVM-based back end, so it wasn't fully the real GCC but it also didn't use clang as the front end and didn't give clang's error reporting. What you got, starting with GCC 5.0, was clang.
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Hahhaha. Wat? As someone who's installed Linux since you had to write over the MBR manually, you sound ridiculous man. You know, Linus cranked out the simplest and most hacky POS kernel in a few days, bare minimums to get a shell up, using a shit ton of GNU software -- Ever write a compiler or editor? (Man, yeah, that's the real engineering feat). Linus then immediately got help from lots of folks who wanted to have Unix on their home PCs. If anything Linux is the epitome of the Bazaar approach vs the
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Yes, and a tabbed folder manager too. What will they get around to next?
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Yeah, unfortunately it's named after an obscure Californian inside joke, as if the whole world revolves around California. They should have just named it Sea Lion to hang a lampshade on this terrible chapter, then dropped cutesy nicknames entirely with OS 11+.
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