A Eulogy for OS X
Dan Johnson
the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
OS X development that we had seen is over.
That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
XP' in a few short years.
Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
pervasive animation set OS X apart.
But it's virtues went more than skin deep. Not
much more, but enough to mention:
The Quartz Compositor looked good- it eliminated
visible redraws, but there was more to it. It
moved the actual window rendering out of the
shared process, so when that code crashed, it
did not take down the desktop.
This technology delivers the stability that
X-Windows promised, but could not deliver.
Cocoa ("AppKit") was also far ahead of its time;
it demonstrated that OO APIs were superior to
the C kind.
IBM's SOM and Microsoft's COM couldn't really
deliver the same experience; it's only now with
Java-like technologies that they can compete.
There is a lot of other promising stuff in OS X,
of course; where other OS vendors badmouth
Microsoft but deliver junk, Apple came
tantalizingly close to deliving the best desktop
consumer OS in the world.
And now... well, "cut down in its prime" would
not be too strong. Had Apple focused on their
Macs, who knows what might have been?
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
LOL. Be sure and stop back in after the Leopard launch
announcement and eat those words. We'll be waiting, but not
holding our breath.
> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> OS X development that we had seen is over.
The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
> XP' in a few short years.
You've got to be joking. XP sucks butt. Did at launch, and
does today, no matter how many updates are applied.
> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
I can't think of any "area" where it is not better than XP. If
you want to talk about the number of gaming titles available for
both, that's probably the only thing you could get traction on,
an item I carry not one iota about.
> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
Stability, security, functionality, ease of use, reliable
hardware, drivers and firmware. Something /woefully/ lacking on
all purely windows-based computers.
--
Lefty
All of God's creatures have a place..........
.........right next to the potatoes and gravy.
See also: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif
Sandman
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
Nopes.
--
Sandman[.net]
Chris Clement
Yeah.....now Microsoft....there's a company that's "focused".
iMojo
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
Chill out dude. I have some inside info. Leopard with an amazing new UI
and new Macs are on the horizon. Announcements are forthcoming.
Yesterday's lengthy iPhone presentation needed all the attention. Jobs
would still be there today if he had to introduce iPhone, AppleTV, new
hardware, new iPods and Leopard.
nospam
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> OS X development that we had seen is over.
That's the best way to avoid breaking your neck, after all! There is no
need to keep developing OS X at such a rate. It's reached maturity. All
it needs now is maintenance and munor updates to keep pace with other
innovations. Like, say, the obsession with mobile phones so many people
seem to have.
I like to have some peace and quiet when I'm away, and don't like the
idea of stuff following me around, but then a lot of people rely on that
for work, so it's not bad.
Andy
Mitch
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
Apple has ADDED to the company, not shifted away from computers.
They do two things, instead of one.
> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
Jeez, where were you?
I thought people were very excited about what they were shown, and
wondering about what else would be there. Certainly as much as previous
releases.
> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> OS X development that we had seen is over.
That prediction is coming a bit early, isn't it?
Or are you just anxious to be a nay-sayer?
> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
> XP' in a few short years.
Both statements nonsense. OS X has always been quite usable, even
excellent, and it has NEVER been lower than _magnitudes_ better than
Windows.
> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
Don't flatter those selfish dummies at Microsoft. Being better than
Windows is being better than pressed ham or boloney.
> Apple came
> tantalizingly close to deliving the best desktop
> consumer OS in the world.
They do indeed, Every time they do it.
> And now... well, "cut down in its prime" would
> not be too strong. Had Apple focused on their
> Macs, who knows what might have been?
You can find out soon, Dummy.
Maverick
<snipped drivel>
As usual danny boy, you are just having a hallucination.
Tom Reestman
drivel in news:12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com...
This is horrible trolling, even by this group's standards.
--
Tom Reestman
ZnU
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems, the
> recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc" has made their
> shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
> dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features. It
was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I think
Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be buried by
the iPhone.
> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of OS X
> development that we had seen is over.
You really haven't got any basis for this claim at this point in time.
[snip]
> Had Apple focused on their Macs, who knows what might have been?
I find it extremely ironic that in the not-too-recent past, you were
insisting that Windows was a universal OS, while OS X could only be
used in more limited ways. Of course, you never supported this
very well, but... anyway, now you appear to think it's a bad thing that
Apple has introduced non-computer devices that run OS X. Doesn't this
make OS X more universal?
--
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing
about him is that I read three逆hree or four books about him last year. Isn't
that interesting?"
- George W. Bush to reporter Kai Diekmann, May 5, 2006
TheLetterK
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
I'm interested in desktop operating systems, but I don't think Macworld
was particularly disappointing. OS X is, after all, a rather minor
player. Now, if there was a LinuxWorld that was used as an excuse only
to show off cell phones running Linux. Well, I would be annoyed then.
>
> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
I suspect the demo was so disappointing because they didn't have any of
the truly impressive things ready for demonstration yet.
>
> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> OS X development that we had seen is over.
What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>
> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
> XP' in a few short years.
I started using OS X back with 10.1. It was perfectly usable for me.
>
> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
It isn't? That's like claiming that it's an impressive feat to be faster
than a 90-year-old shambling about in his walker.
>
> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
>
> But it's virtues went more than skin deep. Not
> much more, but enough to mention:
>
> The Quartz Compositor looked good- it eliminated
> visible redraws, but there was more to it. It
> moved the actual window rendering out of the
> shared process, so when that code crashed, it
> did not take down the desktop.
Are you going to claim that Xorg dies if an application does? If, so I
would suggest that you spend a bit more time using it.
>
> This technology delivers the stability that
> X-Windows promised, but could not deliver.
X-Windows is probably the most stable display architecture around. This
is undoubtedly due to the absolutely ancient implementations that people
have been fixing and extending for decades now.
>
> Cocoa ("AppKit") was also far ahead of its time;
> it demonstrated that OO APIs were superior to
> the C kind.
"It's time" was back in 1989. Most platforms already make extensive use
of OO development principles.
>
> IBM's SOM and Microsoft's COM couldn't really
> deliver the same experience; it's only now with
> Java-like technologies that they can compete.
Are you joking? You must be. Either that, or you don't know what you're
talking about.
>
> There is a lot of other promising stuff in OS X,
> of course; where other OS vendors badmouth
> Microsoft but deliver junk, Apple came
> tantalizingly close to deliving the best desktop
> consumer OS in the world.
They aren't even close.
TheLetterK
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
by Macs. Apple seems to be wording these claims very carefully--and they
have a history of similar semantic naming antics. Are we all forgetting
the "Fastest 64-bit personal computer" nonsense? It might well be
running an operating system called 'OS X', but this OS X could be a
totally different operating system. My Axim X51v runs Windows, but it's
not related (code-wise) to the Windows running on this desktop.
>
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> LOL. Be sure and stop back in after the Leopard launch
> announcement and eat those words. We'll be waiting, but not
> holding our breath.
>
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>
> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
Hardware support for H.264?
>
>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> XP' in a few short years.
>
> You've got to be joking. XP sucks butt. Did at launch, and
> does today, no matter how many updates are applied.
>
>> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
>
> I can't think of any "area" where it is not better than XP.
Video playback and encoding. Anything relating to home theater systems.
Support for 'Games'. Performance.
> If
> you want to talk about the number of gaming titles available for
> both, that's probably the only thing you could get traction on,
> an item I carry not one iota about.
>
>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>
> Stability, security, functionality, ease of use, reliable
> hardware, drivers and firmware.
Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
Security? Without a doubt. Though OS X is hardly a shining beacon of
high security.
Functionality? Even I admit that Windows is more functional than OS X,
and I can't stand Windows.
Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
Windows than on OS X. Personally, I find both to be lacking.
Reliability? Depends on how you measure it. If it's a function of
stability and functionality (as in, "I can rely on Windows to do just
about anything, even if it isn't done well"), then I think Windows would
win here.
Reliable hardware? This isn't a part of the OS. And Apple's hardware is
not abnormally reliable, when compared to high end 'PC' systems.
Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
> Something /woefully/ lacking on all purely windows-based computers.
I don't see the 'reliable hardware' argument. If anything, a well built
PC is more reliable than a Mac.
Chris Boyd
Dan Johnson wrote:
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
How is adding more products to a lineup constitute a shift away? Is it
not better that Apple is gaining traction as a huge player in the tech
market instead of being a niche?
> And now... well, "cut down in its prime" would
> not be too strong. Had Apple focused on their
> Macs, who knows what might have been?
Did you hibernate throughout 2006? What do think Apple just got finish
reinventing? Their entire Mac line, from the Mini all the way to the
new Mac Pro.
This company right now is walking taller than it ever has.
ZnU
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
> > (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
> >
> >> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> >> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> >> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
> >
> > Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
> > iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
> > considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
> > what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>
> I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
> by Macs. Apple seems to be wording these claims very carefully--and they
> have a history of similar semantic naming antics. Are we all forgetting
> the "Fastest 64-bit personal computer" nonsense? It might well be
> running an operating system called 'OS X', but this OS X could be a
> totally different operating system. My Axim X51v runs Windows, but it's
> not related (code-wise) to the Windows running on this desktop.
Jobs said the iPhone had Cocoa, Core Animation, etc. It's clearly a
system based on the real OS X.
I wouldn't be surprised if it were slimmed down a lot, of course, and
obviously the whole UI has been replaced.
[snip]
Sandman
Tom Reestman <tree...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
Dan is really losing it.
--
Sandman[.net]
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <JFbph.83$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>
>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>
>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>
> I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
> by Macs.
I'm sure it not. Just like a lot of devices use embedded
versions of Linux or Windows to solve real-world problems. They
don't need a lot of the stuff that comes bundled with the
standard OS X install, just as desktops don't need the bits that
come with an Xserve in OS X Server.
> My Axim X51v runs Windows, but it's
> not related (code-wise) to the Windows running on this desktop.
You bought an Axim? You and like 12 other people. No wonder
you're pissed.
>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>
> Hardware support for H.264?
Why? I can run it fullscreen on a 1920x1200 flat panel, and my
cpu load doesn't creep up enough to even care as is. You seem
to think CPUs are slow in 2007. Maybe they just feel that way
if you're running Windows on them.
>>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>>> XP' in a few short years.
>>
>> You've got to be joking. XP sucks butt. Did at launch, and
>> does today, no matter how many updates are applied.
>>
>>> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
>>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
>>
>> I can't think of any "area" where it is not better than XP.
>
> Video playback and encoding. Anything relating to home theater systems.
You're delusional. Certifiably.
>>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>>
>> Stability, security, functionality, ease of use, reliable
>> hardware, drivers and firmware.
>
> Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
Demonstrably better.
> Security? Without a doubt. Though OS X is hardly a shining beacon of
> high security.
Compared to the others, it absolutely is. It could be improved,
as anything with a network adapter can be.
> Functionality? Even I admit that Windows is more functional than OS X,
> and I can't stand Windows.
I have yet to find a single thing that I can't do on OS X that
makes me want to turn on a Windows system. If I were a gamer, I
might feel differently, but that's the only thing I can think
of.
> Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
> Windows than on OS X.
If those people had the same amount of face-time with both
systems, that wouldn't be the case. Taking someone that has
been using Windows all their lives, sticking them in front of OS
X for 20 minutes, then claiming OS X is harder to use for them
is bullshit, but we see it here all the time.
> Personally, I find both to be lacking.
Neither is perfect. It goes something like this.
<0-------------------------------------------------------100>
^ ^ ^
Linux Windows OS X
For those that are primarily developers, flip the left-most two
of the three.
Those of you stupid enough to use proportional fonts for Usenet
will just have to figure that out on your own.
> Reliability? Depends on how you measure it. If it's a function of
> stability and functionality (as in, "I can rely on Windows to do just
> about anything, even if it isn't done well"), then I think Windows would
> win here.
You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
ass.
> Reliable hardware? This isn't a part of the OS. And Apple's hardware is
> not abnormally reliable, when compared to high end 'PC' systems.
The last "high end PC system" was built about a decade ago.
It's all been headed toward shitty, lowest bidder taiwan crap
ever since.
> Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
The windows driver model (inherently weak and needless
complicated), plus the shitload of substandard peripheral
vendors, all of which install drivers on top of your potentially
somewhat stable system means you are doomed unless you run a
box-stock system and never change anything. When you're buying
an I/O card that retails for $19, just how quality engineering
and testing went into that product?
>> Something /woefully/ lacking on all purely windows-based computers.
>
> I don't see the 'reliable hardware' argument. If anything, a well built
> PC is more reliable than a Mac.
"Well built" being something no longer obtainable. It used to
be the case, but the good vendors all went chasing Dell down the
shithole years ago.
Walter Bushell
Lefty Bigfoot <nu...@busyness.info> wrote:
> Those of you stupid enough to use proportional fonts for Usenet
> will just have to figure that out on your own.
LOL!
--
Divided we stand!
TheLetterK
> In article <JFbph.83$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
>> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>>
>>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>> I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
>> by Macs. Apple seems to be wording these claims very carefully--and they
>> have a history of similar semantic naming antics. Are we all forgetting
>> the "Fastest 64-bit personal computer" nonsense? It might well be
>> running an operating system called 'OS X', but this OS X could be a
>> totally different operating system. My Axim X51v runs Windows, but it's
>> not related (code-wise) to the Windows running on this desktop.
>
> Jobs said the iPhone had Cocoa, Core Animation, etc. It's clearly a
> system based on the real OS X.
This does not mean it's based on OS X. They could have simply ported
Cocoa and Core Animation to the iPhone's operating system. This would
probably be easier than porting XNU to StrongARM.
I would also like to point out that the version of Windows that runs on
my Axim X51v supports .NET. Just like the Windows on my Desktop. Of
course, they aren't interchangeable implementations of .NET, but that's
neither here nor there. Perhaps Apple has done something similar for
Cocoa on the iPhone?
Until third parties start developing for the iPhone, we won't be able to
get to the truth of the matter.
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if it were slimmed down a lot,
It would have to be *extremely* stripped down. And redesigned. And it
really wouldn't be a good way to go about doing this. They'd have been
better off simply porting Cocoa to a platform based on NetBSD, FreeBSD
or perhaps even a custom OS built around uLinux. Some unix-like that
already works on StrongARM. It's not like Cocoa would be particularly
difficult for them to port. They've already done so several times, and
it was *designed* for this sort of thing. Especially if they were simply
porting it to NetBSD or FreeBSD (since XNU already acts like a BSD
kernel, and Apple already uses a BSD-like userspace).
> of course, and
> obviously the whole UI has been replaced.
To put it mildly.
Snit
rvbph.81$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net on 1/10/07 12:54 PM:
> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> I'm interested in desktop operating systems, but I don't think Macworld
> was particularly disappointing. OS X is, after all, a rather minor
> player. Now, if there was a LinuxWorld that was used as an excuse only
> to show off cell phones running Linux. Well, I would be annoyed then.
>
>>
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> I suspect the demo was so disappointing because they didn't have any of
> the truly impressive things ready for demonstration yet.
Or they did not want to water down the demo with too many things. The focus
was on the •iPhone... and they wanted *that* to be what the buzz was about.
And it is.
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>
> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
Then why is OS X so far ahead of GNI/Linux as far as desktop usability?
>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> XP' in a few short years.
>
> I started using OS X back with 10.1. It was perfectly usable for me.
Usable... sure. Good... not really. 10.0 was pretty bad, 10.1 was
usable... OS X did not start to shine until 10.2. By 10.3 it was pretty
darn good and 10.4 even better. I look forward to 10.5.
>>
>> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
>
> It isn't? That's like claiming that it's an impressive feat to be faster
> than a 90-year-old shambling about in his walker.
In many areas OS X is the best there is... period. Better than XP. Better
than Linux. Any distro.
>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>
> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
OS X shines in the area of ease of use. Do you have - or can you point to -
screen shots of the Linux flavors that are better at "being pretty"? I know
XGL allows for a bunch of gee-whiz-bang features, but how many help boost
productivity and are actually still good looking?
...
>> There is a lot of other promising stuff in OS X,
>> of course; where other OS vendors badmouth
>> Microsoft but deliver junk, Apple came
>> tantalizingly close to deliving the best desktop
>> consumer OS in the world.
>
> They aren't even close.
Who does it better and in what way?
--
€ It is OK to email yourself files and store them there for a few weeks
€ No legislation supercedes the Constitution (unless it amends it)
€ Apple's video format is not far from NTSC DVD and good enough for most
Dan Johnson
> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>>
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>
> That's the best way to avoid breaking your neck, after all!
There is something in that. Certainly OS X's stability
and security has suffered from the rush.
> There is no
> need to keep developing OS X at such a rate. It's reached maturity. All
> it needs now is maintenance and munor updates to keep pace with other
> innovations. Like, say, the obsession with mobile phones so many people
> seem to have.
Well, it's true that as OS X gets closer and closer to
parity with Windows, there's less and less *obvious*
enhancement to do.
But I have faith that if anyone could go *beyond*
Windows, Apple could.
Now, this seems unlikely.
> I like to have some peace and quiet when I'm away, and don't like the
> idea of stuff following me around, but then a lot of people rely on that
> for work, so it's not bad.
I feel the same about these things, truth be told.
Snit
>> Stability, security, functionality, ease of use, reliable
>> hardware, drivers and firmware.
>
> Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
>
> Security? Without a doubt. Though OS X is hardly a shining beacon of
> high security.
>
> Functionality? Even I admit that Windows is more functional than OS X,
> and I can't stand Windows.
Examples?
> Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
> Windows than on OS X. Personally, I find both to be lacking.
But you have shown yourself to be very, very ignorant in these areas... for
examples when you talk about case sensitivity, preference editing, Unix-like
tools, UI consistency, scriptability, top of class programs, path
dependency, file associations, dependency issues, color selection tools,
print post processing, etc.
> Reliability? Depends on how you measure it. If it's a function of
> stability and functionality (as in, "I can rely on Windows to do just
> about anything, even if it isn't done well"), then I think Windows would
> win here.
>
> Reliable hardware? This isn't a part of the OS. And Apple's hardware is
> not abnormally reliable, when compared to high end 'PC' systems.
Customer surveys show it as being more reliable.
> Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
>
>> Something /woefully/ lacking on all purely windows-based computers.
>
> I don't see the 'reliable hardware' argument. If anything, a well built
> PC is more reliable than a Mac.
I bet you never even try to support that.
--
€ Different version numbers refer to different versions
€ Macs are Macs and Apple is still making and selling Macs
€ The early IBM PCs and Commodores shipped with an OS in ROM
Dan Johnson
news:100120070739438404%mi...@hawaii.rr...
> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>, Dan Johnson
> <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
> Apple has ADDED to the company, not shifted away from computers.
> They do two things, instead of one.
They've subtracted from their company's name. :D
And I think the recent Leopard demo is,
evidence that new direction does not
come for free.
That and a "Mac"World keynote devoid
of Macintosh stuff.
[snip]
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
> Jeez, where were you?
> I thought people were very excited about what they were shown, and
> wondering about what else would be there. Certainly as much as previous
> releases.
Well, there are always fanboys. But certainly the
lameness of that demo was remarked upon at the
time.
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
> That prediction is coming a bit early, isn't it?
> Or are you just anxious to be a nay-sayer?
That's "troll" to you, bub! :D
>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> XP' in a few short years.
> Both statements nonsense. OS X has always been quite usable, even
> excellent, and it has NEVER been lower than _magnitudes_ better than
> Windows.
OS X 10.0 was bad enough Apple wouldn't
ship it as the default OS.
Today it's better in a few areas, but worse
in the rest. Sometimes just a bit worse,
but sometimes much worse.
>> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
> Don't flatter those selfish dummies at Microsoft. Being better than
> Windows is being better than pressed ham or boloney.
Hey, I like ham! :D
[snip]
Dan Johnson
news:znu-F1BF91.1...@individual.net...[snip]
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
>> dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features. It
> was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I think
> Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be buried by
> the iPhone.
They've never been shy about demoing their next OS,
and not just at MacWorld. Something has changed.
Further, have they ever added a major feature to OS X
after its first Steve-demo, but before the next version?
I can't think of one.
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of OS X
>> development that we had seen is over.
>
> You really haven't got any basis for this claim at this point in time.
I have a basis; Apple's statements and actions.
Sure, it's not ironclad proof- but that's never stopped
me before! :D
[snip]
>> Had Apple focused on their Macs, who knows what might have been?
>
> I find it extremely ironic that in the not-too-recent past, you were
> insisting that Windows was a universal OS, while OS X could only be
> used in more limited ways. Of course, you never supported this
> very well, but... anyway, now you appear to think it's a bad thing that
> Apple has introduced non-computer devices that run OS X. Doesn't this
> make OS X more universal?
If you recall, I felt that this put MS at a disadvantage- having to
serve all markets meant they had to disperse their resources. I
attributed Apple's breakneck pace to not having to do this. :D
Dan Johnson
news:rvbph.81$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
> Dan Johnson wrote:
> I'm interested in desktop operating systems, but I don't think Macworld
> was particularly disappointing. OS X is, after all, a rather minor player.
> Now, if there was a LinuxWorld that was used as an excuse only to show off
> cell phones running Linux. Well, I would be annoyed then.
Heh. :D
[snip]
>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> I suspect the demo was so disappointing because they didn't have any of
> the truly impressive things ready for demonstration yet.
That is in remarkable in itself; but I think they were
working on the iPhone then.
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>
> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last two
> years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> XP' in a few short years.
>
> I started using OS X back with 10.1. It was perfectly usable for me.
Others were not so fond of it then; and it of course
it started with 10.0.
[snip]
>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>
> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
I've tried recent live CDs of both of these;
they aren't nearly as pretty as OS X. They aren't
even as pretty as Windows XP.
[snip]
>> The Quartz Compositor looked good- it eliminated
>> visible redraws, but there was more to it. It
>> moved the actual window rendering out of the
>> shared process, so when that code crashed, it
>> did not take down the desktop.
>
> Are you going to claim that Xorg dies if an application does? If, so I
> would suggest that you spend a bit more time using it.
Other way round. If an X server dies, all the apps
go with it.
Putting rendering code in the applicaiton means that
if it faults, other apps do not go down with it. Given
the complexity of this code, that's very desirable.
>> This technology delivers the stability that
>> X-Windows promised, but could not deliver.
>
> X-Windows is probably the most stable display architecture around. This is
> undoubtedly due to the absolutely ancient implementations that people have
> been fixing and extending for decades now.
Yes. This is the same reason that GDI32 is very
stable. But Quartz has found an architecture that
doesn't require this. This is most desirable.
>> Cocoa ("AppKit") was also far ahead of its time;
>> it demonstrated that OO APIs were superior to
>> the C kind.
>
> "It's time" was back in 1989. Most platforms already make extensive use of
> OO development principles.
That's sort-of true. It's taken a long time to build
OO platforms that work as well as Cocoa.
>> IBM's SOM and Microsoft's COM couldn't really
>> deliver the same experience; it's only now with
>> Java-like technologies that they can compete.
>
> Are you joking? You must be. Either that, or you don't know what you're
> talking about.
SOM was a failure.
COM is very successful as an interop technology, but
as an API delivery vehicle, it's not a match for Cocoa.
[snip]
Dan Johnson
news:1168459888....@k58g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>
> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> How is adding more products to a lineup constitute a shift away?
It's not that that they added a product.
What clinched it for me was that they subtracted
"Computer" from their company name.
But there have been other signs, and others
have caught onto this before I did.
> Is it
> not better that Apple is gaining traction as a huge player in the tech
> market instead of being a niche?
It is probably better for Apple, really. But I'm
still disappointed.
>> And now... well, "cut down in its prime" would
>> not be too strong. Had Apple focused on their
>> Macs, who knows what might have been?
>
> Did you hibernate throughout 2006? What do think Apple just got finish
> reinventing? Their entire Mac line, from the Mini all the way to the
> new Mac Pro.
They're freeing themselves from their PowerPC
dependancy, but at considerable cost to their
software library, which must be ported.
That they would suffer this says something
about their priorities.
> This company right now is walking taller than it
> ever has.
Yes, perhaps, but as a consumer electronics
vendor.
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <12qaqmc...@news.supernews.com>):
> "Chris Boyd" <christop...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1168459888....@k58g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> Dan Johnson wrote:
>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>
>> How is adding more products to a lineup constitute a shift away?
>
> It's not that that they added a product.
>
> What clinched it for me was that they subtracted
> "Computer" from their company name.
>
> But there have been other signs, and others
> have caught onto this before I did.
When Dell dropped the "Computer" from their corporate naming,
did they stop building computers? (Well, speccing them out to
be built in Taiwan by suppliers anyway)
TheLetterK
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:05:19 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
> (in article <JFbph.83$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
>
>> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>>
>>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>> I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
>> by Macs.
>
> I'm sure it not. Just like a lot of devices use embedded
> versions of Linux or Windows to solve real-world problems. They
> don't need a lot of the stuff that comes bundled with the
> standard OS X install, just as desktops don't need the bits that
> come with an Xserve in OS X Server.
To claim that Windows Mobile is a stripped down version of Windows NT...
is rather insane. Similarly, it's not like custom distributions based on
uLinux are particularly similar to standard GNU/Linux distributions.
I think it's a stretch to call whatever they're using for the mobile
'version' of OS X related to the desktop product.
>
>> My Axim X51v runs Windows, but it's
>> not related (code-wise) to the Windows running on this desktop.
>
> You bought an Axim? You and like 12 other people. No wonder
> you're pissed.
It was decent enough--I loved the external display capability and
hardware accelerated graphics (it could actually emulate an SNES at
playable framerates, which definitely beats solitaire or that bubble
game for a time killer). Unfortunately, the screen cracked about 6
months after I got it, and it just doesn't seem worth $200 to replace
it. I'll eventually replace it with a Treo whenever my Cingular contract
runs out (Cingular's data plans cost way too much).
>
>>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>> Hardware support for H.264?
>
> Why? I can run it fullscreen on a 1920x1200 flat panel, and my
> cpu load doesn't creep up enough to even care as is.
What sort of quality was the video encoded at? Scaling the video to
1920x1200 is not an adequate test.
> You seem
> to think CPUs are slow in 2007.
I've seen high quality HD H.264 videos bring a dual 3.0ghz G5 PowerMac
to it's knees. Yes, I definitely want hardware accelerated H.264
playback. To say nothing of hardware accelerated encoding. Besides, I
don't *want* to spend a fortune of a processor just so I can play back
some video. Why drop an extra $300+ on the faster processor when I can
just buy a $120 video card that handles it in hardware?
> Maybe they just feel that way
> if you're running Windows on them.
Windows is a pathetic POS--but it does handle video playback better than
any other platform out there. Mainly because it has support from the
video card vendors, so most of it is done in hardware. A very cheap HTPC
running Windows can absolutely slaughter a Mac at twice the price, when
playing back HD video using certain codecs (H.264 is one of these). Why?
Because Windows is the only platform the video card vendor deigned to
provide H.264 hardware acceleration for.
>
>>>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>>>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>>>> XP' in a few short years.
>>> You've got to be joking. XP sucks butt. Did at launch, and
>>> does today, no matter how many updates are applied.
>>>
>>>> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
>>>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
>>> I can't think of any "area" where it is not better than XP.
>> Video playback and encoding. Anything relating to home theater systems.
>
> You're delusional. Certifiably.
Care to demonstrate this? What's the best HTPC package for Macs?
FrontRow maybe? That doesn't even support timeshifting. I suppose you
could run MythTV, but why bother paying the OS X premium then?
How about video playback? Why would someone want to put a $3000 PowerMac
in their home theater system when they could drop $1200 on a Windows
HTPC that absolutely kills it in features, quality, and performance?
Does OS X even support HDMI? HDCP? HD-DVD? The AppleTV doesn't really
help matters either, since there are many, many media extenders out
there. SageTV makes one that works very well with their HTPC offering.
For literally half the cost of the AppleTV--and it comes in both wired
and wireless offerings (the wired version is only $110). Hell, for the
cost of an AppleTV, you're pretty close to an Xbox360 with everything
needed for HD playback--which can also act as a media extender. And play
games. And it even has an optional HD-DVD attachment. Indeed, many
people already *own* these. And given the popularity of Windows Media
Center, they also have the software needed to make it work.
How about Video encoding? Does OS X support hardware accelerated video
encoding on a GPU?
Delusional? Delusional is thinking that Windows is not king of the hill
when it comes to HTPCs and video playback. I hate Windows as much as the
next Linux zealot, but even I'm not crazy enough to think that Windows
isn't the best option for this sort of thing. MythTV is fun to play with
(and offers a lot in the way of customization that HTPC offerings on
Windows do not), and competitive for SD HTPCs, but when it comes to HD
playback... Windows is king.
>
>>>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>>>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>>>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>>>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>>> Stability, security, functionality, ease of use, reliable
>>> hardware, drivers and firmware.
>> Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
>
> Demonstrably better.
Alright. Demonstrate it.
>
>> Security? Without a doubt. Though OS X is hardly a shining beacon of
>> high security.
>
> Compared to the others, it absolutely is.
Compared to GNU/Linux? No. Apple leaves holes open a lot longer, on
average. Have they actually issued a permanent fix for the Dashboard
hole? I thought they just issued a stopgap measure to prevent drive-by
installations. Sure GNU/Linux has a lot of security holes reported, but
they're also fixed faster than they are on just about any other
platform. Compared to FreeBSD? Not even close, since Apple spends longer
to put out most of the same fixes (they have to pass it through their
own, lacking, quality-control process... and package it for OS X)...
plus fixes for their additional software.
> It could be improved,
> as anything with a network adapter can be.
>
>> Functionality? Even I admit that Windows is more functional than OS X,
>> and I can't stand Windows.
>
> I have yet to find a single thing that I can't do on OS X that
> makes me want to turn on a Windows system. If I were a gamer, I
> might feel differently, but that's the only thing I can think
> of.
If you were serious about home theater PCs, you would also think that
way. Also, many of the things that *can* be done on OS X, can be done
more easily on Windows. I'm not confident that I won't discover a
missing bit of functionality in OS X. With Windows, however, there's
undoubtedly some third party developer that ships some solution that
does whatever the hell I need it to do. Even Linux is better than OS X,
in this respect, since the tools can, often, be easily and effectively
pressed into service doing something they weren't intended to do. If
need be, they can be modified to do it.
>
>> Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
>> Windows than on OS X.
>
> If those people had the same amount of face-time with both
> systems, that wouldn't be the case.
But they *don't* have that. And it's unrealistic to base your comparison
upon a situation that doesn't occur in real life. There are very few
people with more experience on OS X than on Windows. And there are many
people who have never even *seen* a Mac, much less used one for any
length of time. GNOME and KDE tap into this a bit, since they apply many
of the same design principles as Windows. It's not too hard for someone
used to Windows to be able to sit down at a default KDE installation and
start using it. Sure, they won't know it as well, but it's not nearly as
alien as OS X is.
> Taking someone that has
> been using Windows all their lives, sticking them in front of OS
> X for 20 minutes, then claiming OS X is harder to use for them
> is bullshit, but we see it here all the time.
Because that's *exactly what happens in real life*. It's not bullshit,
it's a legitimate point.
>
>> Personally, I find both to be lacking.
>
> Neither is perfect. It goes something like this.
>
> <0-------------------------------------------------------100>
> ^ ^ ^
> Linux Windows OS X
>
> For those that are primarily developers, flip the left-most two
> of the three.
To you. Usability for me:
<0-----------------------------------------------------------100>
^ ^ ^ ^
Windows OS X KDE GNOME
And you can't even claim I have no experience with OS X--I've been using
it heavily for more than 5 years now. I even used Nextstep before that.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that I have more experience with OS
X than I do GNU/Linux.
Claiming that one environment is more usable than another is BS. It
depends entirely on the person. I find OS X to be limiting and
cumbersome. It's difficult to make it work like I want it, and I'm
essentially limited to the whatever methods Apple gives me. To others,
however, that's a benefit. Especially people who *like* what Apple gives
them.
>
> Those of you stupid enough to use proportional fonts for Usenet
> will just have to figure that out on your own.
>
>
>> Reliability? Depends on how you measure it. If it's a function of
>> stability and functionality (as in, "I can rely on Windows to do just
>> about anything, even if it isn't done well"), then I think Windows would
>> win here.
>
> You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
> when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
> check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
> ass.
Because, you know, beta software never fails. Really, have you ever seen
a Microsoft-configured Windows XP box crash during a presentation? The
closest I've seen is an Media Center failure when they were
demonstrating an early beta.
The famous examples of Windows crashes on stage are usually when they
try to demo beta products on stage. Apple has had a few of those as
well--even in demonstrations of *currently shipping products*.
>
>> Reliable hardware? This isn't a part of the OS. And Apple's hardware is
>> not abnormally reliable, when compared to high end 'PC' systems.
>
> The last "high end PC system" was built about a decade ago.
> It's all been headed toward shitty, lowest bidder taiwan crap
> ever since.
Absolute bullshit. The price has gone down, but the quality has gone up.
Components today--even the 'lowest bidder taiwan crap' are far more
reliable and longer lasting than even the best desktop components 15
years ago.
>
>> Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
>
> The windows driver model (inherently weak and needless
> complicated),
Excuse me? There are far more developers who can write Windows drivers
than there are developers able to write OS X drivers. From all accounts,
XNU is a bitch to write drivers for.
> plus the shitload of substandard peripheral
> vendors, all of which install drivers on top of your potentially
> somewhat stable system
I've got at least a half dozen extra keyboards laying around. Most of
them are made by completely off-brand peripheral manufacturers. All of
them use the standard driver that comes with Windows. None of them
require me to install some poorly written driver written by some random
developer in Taiwan. And no one is forcing you to *buy* these
substandard peripherals. There are certainly going to be perfectly good
options available for what you're trying to do.
> means you are doomed unless you run a
> box-stock system and never change anything.
Or you actually do research before buying a product. I know that it's a
lot to expect someone to spend 15 minutes reading reviews and user
commentary for a product, but it really does improve the overall
experience. My current desktop is, by far, the most stable and reliable
system I've ever owned--far more than the iMac G4 I have in the other
room, or the iBook G4 on the table behind me. And yes, I did put it
together myself, as should all people interested in a reliable and
easily expandable system. Many of the components were even made in Taiwan.
> When you're buying
> an I/O card that retails for $19, just how quality engineering
> and testing went into that product?
That's the price you pay for the cheap card. It's why I probably won't
buy it. OTOH, there's plenty of options between the $20 POS and the $50
card that Apple tries to foist off on you. Though I would like to point
out that there are several companies that produce reliable and stable
'budget' components, though these are usually lacking in features or
performance. Chaintech, for example, usually produces components of at
least reasonable quality for very good prices.
>
>>> Something /woefully/ lacking on all purely windows-based computers.
>> I don't see the 'reliable hardware' argument. If anything, a well built
>> PC is more reliable than a Mac.
>
> "Well built" being something no longer obtainable.
I build my own machines--and they're built to a higher standard than
Apple applies. After all, I can focus hours of attention on a single
box, while they couldn't even be bothered to have someone turn the
machine on in person.
> It used to
> be the case, but the good vendors all went chasing Dell down the
> shithole years ago.
Your right, there are no good OEMs. That includes Apple. Apple is no
better than HP, though they charge a hell of a lot more. Actually, I
take that back. IBM used to be very good, and I haven't bought anything
from Lenovo, so I don't know if they maintained the quality or not.
TheLetterK
> "TheLetterK" <no...@none.net> wrote in message
> news:rvbph.81$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> I'm interested in desktop operating systems, but I don't think Macworld
>> was particularly disappointing. OS X is, after all, a rather minor player.
>> Now, if there was a LinuxWorld that was used as an excuse only to show off
>> cell phones running Linux. Well, I would be annoyed then.
>
> Heh. :D
>
> [snip]
>>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>> I suspect the demo was so disappointing because they didn't have any of
>> the truly impressive things ready for demonstration yet.
>
> That is in remarkable in itself; but I think they were
> working on the iPhone then.
>
>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last two
>> years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>
> I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
backend and composition manager. In less than two years. Apple is still
trying to get their version of this in a usable state. And they don't
even have any plans for really supporting vector graphics in the
UI--GNOME and KDE have steadily been adding support for this over the
past few years. KDE 4 is supposed to be including a fully vector-based
theme as the default. If you expand the scope to the time when OS X was
released... well, just compare a current XGL demonstration video to a
screenshot of pre-2.0 GNOME.
>
>>> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>>> XP' in a few short years.
>> I started using OS X back with 10.1. It was perfectly usable for me.
>
> Others were not so fond of it then; and it of course
> it started with 10.0.
10.1 was released rather quickly. 10.0 was really more like an extended
public beta test than a real release.
>
> [snip]
>>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
>> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
>
> I've tried recent live CDs of both of these;
LiveLinux distros do not do the platform justice. Especially if you're
playing around with a distribution as ugly as Ubuntu is OOTB.
> they aren't nearly as pretty as OS X. They aren't
> even as pretty as Windows XP.
That's because you're using a LiveLinux distribution. They *can't* turn
on all the bells and whistles. The goal of just about every LiveLinux
distribution is extreme compatibility and a portable work environment.
You don't get high-end graphics and a 'pretty' UI out of that. Even
Kororaa doesn't really do this well.
>
> [snip]
>>> The Quartz Compositor looked good- it eliminated
>>> visible redraws, but there was more to it. It
>>> moved the actual window rendering out of the
>>> shared process, so when that code crashed, it
>>> did not take down the desktop.
>> Are you going to claim that Xorg dies if an application does? If, so I
>> would suggest that you spend a bit more time using it.
>
> Other way round. If an X server dies, all the apps
> go with it.
And if the WindowServer dies, so do all the apps depending on it (I.E
everything being displayed). That's the proper handling of child
processes. Fortunately for Mac users, WindowServer is almost as stable
as Xorg.
>
> Putting rendering code in the applicaiton means that
> if it faults, other apps do not go down with it. Given
> the complexity of this code, that's very desirable.
A) A application dying in Xorg will not take down other applications,
save for the exception of severe bugs or possibly the failure of an
application that another application depends on without proper handling
by the dependent application (which can occur on *any* platform,
including OS X).
B) An application dying in Xorg shouldn't bring down Xorg. Unless it's a
severely buggy application. Of course, that same exception applies to OS
X as well (For example, an older version of Whamb will kernel panic Mac
OS 10.3.x when it crashes--needless to say, I haven't used it in awhile).
C) Not having applications die with the parent process result in orphan
processes, which is undesirable. All it does is waste resources.
D) OS X doesn't act like you describe.
>
>>> This technology delivers the stability that
>>> X-Windows promised, but could not deliver.
>> X-Windows is probably the most stable display architecture around. This is
>> undoubtedly due to the absolutely ancient implementations that people have
>> been fixing and extending for decades now.
>
> Yes. This is the same reason that GDI32 is very
> stable. But Quartz has found an architecture that
> doesn't require this. This is most desirable.
Uhh, Quartz has been worked on (in one form or another) for the last 18
years. And it's susceptible to the same sort of 'problems' (of you
consider these problems) that X Windows is.
>
>>> Cocoa ("AppKit") was also far ahead of its time;
>>> it demonstrated that OO APIs were superior to
>>> the C kind.
>> "It's time" was back in 1989. Most platforms already make extensive use of
>> OO development principles.
>
> That's sort-of true. It's taken a long time to build
> OO platforms that work as well as Cocoa.
They've been around for years now. And keep in mind that 'Cocoa' (in its
various implementations) isn't exactly well suited to a wide range of
tasks. It's a rather high level approach to programming.
>
>>> IBM's SOM and Microsoft's COM couldn't really
>>> deliver the same experience; it's only now with
>>> Java-like technologies that they can compete.
>> Are you joking? You must be. Either that, or you don't know what you're
>> talking about.
>
> SOM was a failure.
A) That doesn't mean it wasn't acceptable.
B) I was talking more about COM.
>
> COM is very successful as an interop technology, but
> as an API delivery vehicle, it's not a match for Cocoa.
That's because it's not an 'API delivery vehicle', and wasn't intended
to be. It was designed to facilitate interprocess communication, and
provide an object model. That's it. And you already admit that has been
successful in doing so.
TheLetterK
> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:znu-F1BF91.1...@individual.net...
>> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
>> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>>
> [snip]
>>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
>>> dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>> The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features. It
>> was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I think
>> Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be buried by
>> the iPhone.
>
> They've never been shy about demoing their next OS,
> and not just at MacWorld. Something has changed.
Yeah, they had a major new product line introduced. I think ZnU is right
about the reasoning behind the lack of Mac. I suspect they'll
demonstrate Leopard at a special presentation once the iPhone dies down
a bit.
>
> Further, have they ever added a major feature to OS X
> after its first Steve-demo, but before the next version?
> I can't think of one.
Journaling.
ZnU
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:znu-F1BF91.1...@individual.net...
> > In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>, "Dan Johnson"
> > <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
> >> dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
> >
> > The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features.
> > It was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I
> > think Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be
> > buried by the iPhone.
>
> They've never been shy about demoing their next OS, and not just at
> MacWorld. Something has changed.
There's only room for so much in a Macworld keynote, and launching an
entirely new platform, which is something that happens maybe twice a
decade even at the pace Apple is moving, takes precedence over an
evolutionary OS upgrade.
> Further, have they ever added a major feature to OS X after its first
> Steve-demo, but before the next version? I can't think of one.
No, but this is a longer release cycle than before, and Jobs said
explicitly at the first demo there were features which were still
secret. And I'm pretty sure Jobs knew how that would be interpreted, so
he probably wasn't talking about just a couple of trivial little
things.
[snip]
ZnU
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> "Chris Boyd" <christop...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1168459888....@k58g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
[snip]
> > This company right now is walking taller than it ever has.
>
> Yes, perhaps, but as a consumer electronics vendor.
As I've pointed out repeatedly, Apple itself does see any distinction
between the personal computer market and the consumer electronics
market. Apple has, in fact, been trying to get rid of this distinction
for over two decades. Remember that Jobs wanted people to think of the
first Mac not as a computer, but as a "personal information appliance".
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <yReph.112$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:05:19 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
>> (in article <JFbph.83$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
>>
>>> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>>>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>>>
>>>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>>>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>>>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>>>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>>> I'm not convinced that they're actually using the same OS X that is used
>>> by Macs.
>>
>> I'm sure it not. Just like a lot of devices use embedded
>> versions of Linux or Windows to solve real-world problems. They
>> don't need a lot of the stuff that comes bundled with the
>> standard OS X install, just as desktops don't need the bits that
>> come with an Xserve in OS X Server.
>
> To claim that Windows Mobile is a stripped down version of Windows NT...
> is rather insane.
I didn't say that. Read it again. FWIW, I've worked on
products based upon Embedded NT, so this isn't theoretical.
I've worked on products using embedded Linux distros that would
fit easily on a 64MB memory stick, with a working X Server and
TCP stack. Save your oversimplifications for the armchair
quarterbacks.
> Similarly, it's not like custom distributions based on
> uLinux are particularly similar to standard GNU/Linux distributions.
They can be similar enough to solve real-world problems with a
user interface already familiar to Linux users. Just don't
expect to see 5000 rpms or debian packages on the file system.
> I think it's a stretch to call whatever they're using for the mobile
> 'version' of OS X related to the desktop product.
It's a stretch to imagine that they, being totally in control of
the OS X development tree, can't slice it and dice it any way
you like. If you looked at the slides listing off what is in
there, it's not a trivial amount of goodies in the package.
>> You bought an Axim? You and like 12 other people. No wonder
>> you're pissed.
>
> It was decent enough--I loved the external display capability and
> hardware accelerated graphics (it could actually emulate an SNES at
> playable framerates, which definitely beats solitaire or that bubble
> game for a time killer). Unfortunately, the screen cracked about 6
> months after I got it, and it just doesn't seem worth $200 to replace
> it.
True. Pretty much everybody saw it that way, new or broken,
which is why if you walk around the engineering spaces at Dell
you'll see a lot of iPaqs (and iPods for that matter) floating
around instead. Their own people don't like Axim, so why should
you?
> I'll eventually replace it with a Treo whenever my Cingular
> contract runs out (Cingular's data plans cost way too much).
That is a worry I suppose. It would be nice to know more about
the Apple/cingular bundling after the price of the phone itself.
Given the speed shown, I probably wouldn't use it for web
browsing (although with wifi, I wonder if I could use a local
wireless router when available, and the cell side only when
needed or not), but getting a few emails through and checking on
stock prices and such from time to time would be nice.
>>>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>>>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>>> Hardware support for H.264?
>>
>> Why? I can run it fullscreen on a 1920x1200 flat panel, and my
>> cpu load doesn't creep up enough to even care as is.
>
> What sort of quality was the video encoded at? Scaling the video to
> 1920x1200 is not an adequate test.
A DVD, or H.264 content either. And that's on a lowly PowerPC
system. The Intel mac I have only has a 1440x900 display, but
it's also smoking fast.
> I've seen high quality HD H.264 videos bring a dual 3.0ghz G5 PowerMac
> to it's knees. Yes, I definitely want hardware accelerated H.264
> playback. To say nothing of hardware accelerated encoding. Besides, I
> don't *want* to spend a fortune of a processor just so I can play back
> some video. Why drop an extra $300+ on the faster processor when I can
> just buy a $120 video card that handles it in hardware?
Maybe my video card is better than yours, I don't have a problem
with it. What I /have/ seen is that playing a video file out of
itunes will sometimes stagger during playback, but copying it
out to a hard drive and playing via quicktime instead will play
it back seamlessly. I can't prove it, but I think that when
itunes goes off to poll the network for podcast updates and
such, the priorities are screwy and the video playback queueing
runs dry. It didn't used to do that, I think it started
happening about the time they put podcast support into iTunes.
>>> Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
>>
>> Demonstrably better.
>
> Alright. Demonstrate it.
I haven't had a single system crash on either of Macs in over 2
years (since purchased). I've had some applications crash,
Adobe acrobat (since removed) and Firefox being the two main
ones. Never have those required a system reboot to correct.
I'm lucky to go over 2 weeks on an XP box without having to
reboot it to fix something, especially since IE7 came out.
I'm not counting installing updates or drivers in the reboot
counts either.
>> I have yet to find a single thing that I can't do on OS X that
>> makes me want to turn on a Windows system. If I were a gamer, I
>> might feel differently, but that's the only thing I can think
>> of.
>
> If you were serious about home theater PCs, you would also think that
> way.
I have a real home theater setup. Think high-end video
processors (Runco), 9" CRT's, and 120" screens, and 7.1 sound
which is actually 14 channels (split mains and subs for each
primary, plus 4 subs in parallel for the .1 LFE) in a custom
built and professionally tuned room. Sorry, PC's don't cut it.
I've yet to find anyone offering a sound card for a PC capable
of replicating a Theta Casblanca III front-end with superior
DACs, or driving a Crestron 10" touch screen flat panel control
interface that handles lighting, masking curtains, source
selection, pip with external security cameras, doorbell
integration, telephone integration, HVAC control, and device
specific control pages for all sources.
And no, getting a BSOD during the middle of a movie with a dozen
people over watching doesn't cut it either. And no, getting a
little pop up window over the movie telling me that there is a
critical security update that it wants to install and reboot is
required, and popping it up over and over again every few
minutes during the movie won't cut it either.
HTPC's are toys, much in the way the @TV is. I see the @TV as a
living room, or perhaps a bedroom device (if you're one of those
"TV in the bedroom" people) but not for a true home theater.
>>> Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
>>> Windows than on OS X.
>>
>> If those people had the same amount of face-time with both
>> systems, that wouldn't be the case.
>
> But they *don't* have that. And it's unrealistic to base your comparison
> upon a situation that doesn't occur in real life. There are very few
> people with more experience on OS X than on Windows. And there are many
> people who have never even *seen* a Mac, much less used one for any
> length of time.
Yeah, I was one of those people that had seen pictures of them,
but never used one for more than a few seconds in a store. When
OS X came out and I read some of the more technical reviews, I
bought a Mac. At first, I kept having to stop myself form
trying to do things the Windows way. (Which, unfortunately is
often also the Linux way, since they copied the horrible Windows
UI in a lot of ways, copying the evil empire, a stupid
decision). After a week or so of looking things up on the web
that didn't make sense on the side while still using my Windows
and Linux boxes for "normal stuff" while I toyed around with it,
the lightbulb came on. I got it, 20+ years of bad habits
finally got punched through, and I realized what I really had in
front of me. I migrated all my email over, all my documents,
all my source code, photos, music, you name it.
Then something amazing happened. I "cross-graded" (Adobe's
wording) from the Windows version of Photoshop to CS2 for the
Mac. Then I discovered how color matching between the monitor
and the photo printer actually worked right /every time/ and it
was game, set match. There's no reasonable excuse why this is
still so difficult to get right on Windows.
I double checked and triple checked to make sure everything I
was supposed to have was there, I backed up the noisy as
UberFANtastic (pun intended) loud as shit Dell dual proc Xeon
workstation, and turned the bitch off so I could have some peace
and quiet in the office again. I turn it on periodically to
compile something or test something under a different web
browser. The Linux box lasted a little while longer as an SMB
file server until I figured out how SMB is similar, but
different under OS X. Then I basically did the same thing to
it. It's still here. I boot it up every once in a while to
play with something, or compare things between it and the OS X
command line, or compile some code, then I shut it off again.
The Mac is never turned off.
However, if I had tried the Mac for only 10 or 15 minutes,
chances are that I wouldn't have ever got all that crappy
Windows cluster of confusion GUI bastardization out of my head
long enough for it all to soak in.
> GNOME and KDE tap into this a bit, since they apply many
> of the same design principles as Windows.
Yeah, a huge mistake, designed to purchase fans from the windows
crowd by catering to existing bad UI design rather than
converting them to something better. The single biggest reason
IMO why Desktop Linux still isn't here. not to mention the wth
too many desktop managers to choose from. Sometimes choice is
good, and sometimes choice is destabilizing and does nothing
besides introduce confusion.
>> Taking someone that has
>> been using Windows all their lives, sticking them in front of OS
>> X for 20 minutes, then claiming OS X is harder to use for them
>> is bullshit, but we see it here all the time.
>
> Because that's *exactly what happens in real life*. It's not bullshit,
> it's a legitimate point.
No it's not, it's horseshit, and I explained why in detail
above.
>>> Personally, I find both to be lacking.
>>
>> Neither is perfect. It goes something like this.
>>
>> <0-------------------------------------------------------100>
>> ^ ^ ^
>> Linux Windows OS X
>>
>> For those that are primarily developers, flip the left-most two
>> of the three.
>
> To you. Usability for me:
>
> <0-----------------------------------------------------------100>
> ^ ^ ^ ^
> Windows OS X KDE GNOME
>
> And you can't even claim I have no experience with OS X--I've been using
> it heavily for more than 5 years now. I even used Nextstep before that.
> In fact, I would go so far as to say that I have more experience with OS
> X than I do GNU/Linux.
I have more experience with CP/M than I do with OS X, but it's a
clear win. BTW, I despise Gnome. KDE is the best thing going
if you like /functional/ eye candy, and one of the minimalist wm
setups is best if you want the UI to get out of your way.
Biggest problem though, you cant walk up to any old Linux box
and do the same thing the same way. Every one is customized, or
running a different wm, or the menus or on top, or on bottom, or
some other thing, like only accessible from a middle-button
click. you never know what the hell it's going to do from one
distro to another, nevermind one user setup to another.
> Claiming that one environment is more usable than another is BS. It
> depends entirely on the person.
There's certainly some truth to that. Requiring every user that
has a system up for more than a few weeks to either know a guru,
or know how to edit the registry without screwing stuff up is
not a usable platform. Requiring someone to be comfortable with
compiling a kernel, or dependency problem resolution with rpm
packages, or /etc/fstab, or vi ~/.xinitrc isn't particularly
usable either. Yes, OS X has some goofisms too. None are
perfect, but why on earth Linux developers would take design
cues from Windows, that's horrific.
> I find OS X to be limiting and
> cumbersome. It's difficult to make it work like I want it, and I'm
> essentially limited to the whatever methods Apple gives me.
No, you're not. You're just as free to write code, or get code,
or get apps for it as you are for Linux. You're more likely to
find a lot of productivity enhancements like Quicksilver,
Automator, Transmit3, Image Tricks, URLWell, Menushade,
Sidenote, Thumbscrew, and on and on, especially if you include
the more useful of the dashboard widgets and leave out the
thousands of silly, worthless ones from the community.
Not to mention zero chance of getting Photoshop working (no,
Gimp is not remotely equivalent), a Spyder2 Pro or equivalent to
get your color photo chain sync'd up and printing accurately.
Something like RapidWeaver to put together a really great
looking web site that is standards compliant in a day or less.
The list goes on and on.
Yes, there are lots of great little utilities for Linux. 90% of
which are aimed at developers (which I appreciate, but most
people do not), and the rest are aimed at what? Other
pseudo-geeks like bloggers, mp3 rippers, and college scientist
working on research papers in LaTeX.
>> You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
>> when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
>> check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
>> ass.
>
> Because, you know, beta software never fails.
Sure it does. So does their production code. With SP1 added
on. With SP2 added on. With all the updates added on. I have
in my hand a floppy with a single .exe file on it called
crash.exe, which I can take to /any/ windows box on the planet
and immediately blue screen it, run from the command line, with
or without admin privileges. It's great for testing hardware
watchdog timers.
> Really, have you ever seen
> a Microsoft-configured Windows XP box crash during a presentation? The
> closest I've seen is an Media Center failure when they were
> demonstrating an early beta.
Yes, I have. I've seen it happen in Building 33 in Redmond, in
front of veeps and CEO's from multiple companies. Fortunately,
no press were around to take pictures of the screen or record
the looks on the faces of them when it happened.
I've seen NT4 Gold Master get pulled, amidst a considerable
uproar, because one of their OEMs with a real test lab managed
to completely hose the kernel internals with a very simple
user-level file I/O application, resulting in a nasty slip, an
ugly Spencer Katt article, and a "NT 4 Extra Gold" after it has
already gone out to duplication. Of course, it was a server OS,
so you couldn't reasonably expect microsoft to actually test
file I/O, they concentrated on IE and other silly gizmoid gui
shit instead. [sarcasm intended]
> The famous examples of Windows crashes on stage are usually when they
> try to demo beta products on stage. Apple has had a few of those as
> well--even in demonstrations of *currently shipping products*.
Yeah, it happened to Jobs in the keynote. Of course, Jobs did a
fantastic job of covering it, whereas Gates stands there
giggling, blushing and looking like someone just shoved a major
league baseball bat up his ass.
> The price has gone down, but the quality has gone up.
No, it hasn't. I've been in the industry since the 80s, and
that's complete bullshit. Some of the components (especially
the peripherals) have higher MTBF, sure. The design quality,
signal integrity, and even simple things like adherence to
chipset design guidelines has completely gone to hell. You
can't make a formula 1 race car by taking a bunch of premium
brack pads, pistons, camshafts and carbon fibre, and duct taping
it all together and slapping a coat of Sears house paint on it.
Hard drives are much more reliable than they used to be, and
that is almost single-handedly responsible for the false
perception that /systems/ are more reliable and better today.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
> Components today--even the 'lowest bidder taiwan crap' are far more
> reliable and longer lasting than even the best desktop components 15
> years ago.
True. Problem is, everybody that knows how hook them up /right/
has retired, and the kiddies trying to do it in Taiwan have all
their "experience" from poorly translated textbooks and zero
real-world experience.
>>> Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
>>
>> The windows driver model (inherently weak and needless
>> complicated),
>
> Excuse me? There are far more developers who can write Windows drivers
> than there are developers able to write OS X drivers. From all accounts,
> XNU is a bitch to write drivers for.
It's not. Having millions of people writing for a platform with
90% of the market doesn't mean it's easy, it means it's in high
demand. In fact, there are about 100X more people writing
drivers for windows today than there are qualified to be writing
drivers for windows today.
The OS X driver model is not difficult, if you actually know how
to write device drivers. If you (supposedly) learned how to
implement Windows drivers at a $5000 1 week crash course, then
yeah, learning anything else is going to be a bitch.
>> plus the shitload of substandard peripheral
>> vendors, all of which install drivers on top of your potentially
>> somewhat stable system
>
> I've got at least a half dozen extra keyboards laying around. Most of
> them are made by completely off-brand peripheral manufacturers. All of
> them use the standard driver that comes with Windows.
Great, pick the simplest device you can come up with, besides a
simple serial relay switch. Let's pick something interesting
instead, like video drivers, network drivers, and hard disk
drivers. Don't even get started on some of the "also ran" disk
controller vendors. they have implementation bugs so big you
can drive a truck through them, and when you report the bugs to
them, they won't even consider them, unless they're on the front
page of a tech weekly.
>> means you are doomed unless you run a
>> box-stock system and never change anything.
>
> Or you actually do research before buying a product. I know that it's a
> lot to expect someone to spend 15 minutes reading reviews and user
> commentary for a product, but it really does improve the overall
> experience.
No question. Point is, you shouldn't even have to wonder.
After all, EVERY ONE OF THEM wears the PURCHASED Microsoft "WHQL
Certified" logo, which is worth, exactly nothing, because it
means jack shit.
>> When you're buying
>> an I/O card that retails for $19, just how quality engineering
>> and testing went into that product?
>
> That's the price you pay for the cheap card. It's why I probably won't
> buy it. OTOH, there's plenty of options between the $20 POS and the $50
> card that Apple tries to foist off on you. Though I would like to point
> out that there are several companies that produce reliable and stable
> 'budget' components, though these are usually lacking in features or
> performance. Chaintech, for example, usually produces components of at
> least reasonable quality for very good prices.
Siig is one of the very few I/O device vendors that actually
puts out decent adapters and peripherals for low cost points.
Almost everything else is shit, particularly if you actually try
and stress test it, instead of using it in the most minimally
stressful way you can think of. There are exactly 2 high-end
RAID hardware disk controller vendors on the planet that can
build one that is actually stable under real I/O load for days
and days, at max loads instead of 45 seconds for a pc mag
benchmark. Neither is designed in Taiwan or China, and neither
sells for a price point likely to find its way into any desktop
product.
> I build my own machines--and they're built to a higher standard than
> Apple applies.
Good for you. I soldered my first computer together from
resisters, caps, diodes, etc. when I was in junior high school,
many, many moons ago, so it's no big feat to slap some well
chosen components with standard interfaces together and get them
working. Problem is, that's not a consumer product. Probably
less than 0.5% of the user population is capable of doing even
something that simple well.
> After all, I can focus hours of attention on a single
> box, while they couldn't even be bothered to have someone turn the
> machine on in person.
It took something like two weeks of all day work to assemble
that first computer from bags of components, not surface mount,
robot-assembled boards. And then a full day of testing it
before applying power with a meter and test probe points
(nothing found) and having it fire up and work perfectly. Over
25 years later, that system still runs flawlessly, albeit at
dinosaur speeds by modern standards. Big deal. Very, very few
people could do that back then, and proportionally, about the
same number can do the "I built my own computer, ha ha ha" shit
you do today.
>> It used to
>> be the case, but the good vendors all went chasing Dell down the
>> shithole years ago.
>
> Your right, there are no good OEMs. That includes Apple. Apple is no
> better than HP, though they charge a hell of a lot more. Actually, I
> take that back. IBM used to be very good, and I haven't bought anything
> from Lenovo, so I don't know if they maintained the quality or not.
HP servers are still the class act. Their desktop products are
"faster, cheaper, better: Pick two", just like all the others.
The HP server line is still designed and tested in the US, by a
crew of very experienced engineers, not outsourced to the lowest
bidder in India or Taiwan. That's the only thing saving them
from the quality of implementation abyss that is the Dell
PowerEdge line today.
Snit
> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:znu-F1BF91.1...@individual.net...
>>> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
>>> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>>>
>> [snip]
>>>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
>>>> dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>>> The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features. It
>>> was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I think
>>> Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be buried by
>>> the iPhone.
>>
>> They've never been shy about demoing their next OS,
>> and not just at MacWorld. Something has changed.
>
> Yeah, they had a major new product line introduced. I think ZnU is right
> about the reasoning behind the lack of Mac. I suspect they'll
> demonstrate Leopard at a special presentation once the iPhone dies down
> a bit.
Likely - especially since Jobs *said* so in the keynote!
Snit
>> I'm sure it not. Just like a lot of devices use embedded
>> versions of Linux or Windows to solve real-world problems. They
>> don't need a lot of the stuff that comes bundled with the
>> standard OS X install, just as desktops don't need the bits that
>> come with an Xserve in OS X Server.
>
> To claim that Windows Mobile is a stripped down version of Windows NT...
> is rather insane. Similarly, it's not like custom distributions based on
> uLinux are particularly similar to standard GNU/Linux distributions.
>
> I think it's a stretch to call whatever they're using for the mobile
> 'version' of OS X related to the desktop product.
Ho do you know? Oh. You don't. It may be related - it might not be. We
really do not know.
....
>>> I don't see the 'reliable hardware' argument. If anything, a well built
>>> PC is more reliable than a Mac.
>>
>> "Well built" being something no longer obtainable.
>
> I build my own machines--and they're built to a higher standard than
> Apple applies. After all, I can focus hours of attention on a single
> box, while they couldn't even be bothered to have someone turn the
> machine on in person.
Your ignorance of what it takes to build a box is noted.
--
€ Nuclear arms are arms
€ OS X's Command+Scroll wheel function does not exist in default XP
€ Technical competence and intelligence are not the same thing
ZnU
Lefty Bigfoot <nu...@busyness.info> wrote:
[snip]
> Given the speed shown, I probably wouldn't use it for web
> browsing (although with wifi, I wonder if I could use a local
> wireless router when available, and the cell side only when
> needed
Yes: http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/wireless.html
(See the caption under Wi-Fi on the left.)
[snip]
--
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing
about him is that I read three--three or four books about him last year. Isn't
Steve Hix
Sandman <m...@sandman.net> wrote:
> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>
> > For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
> > the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
> > has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> Nopes.
Dan, like several other unfortunates, mistakes a marker showing an
expansion of focus with one showing contraction.
Steve Hix
ZnU <z...@fake.invalid> wrote:
> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>
> > For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems, the
> > recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc" has made their
> > shift away from desktop computers official.
> >
> > I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago was so
> > dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> The Leopard demo we say months ago didn't contain all the features. It
> was widely expected we'd see the rest of them at Macworld, but I think
> Apple knew anything else they announced yesterday would be buried by
> the iPhone.
Usually, Apple has a single stage for product demos at MWSF; this time,
they had two. One was dedicated to showing off the iPhone, and both days
I was there, was packed from first to last presentation. Probably 500+
seats, a packed crowd standing or sitting in the area around the seats.
They seemed pretty positive about it.
Meanwhile, the other stage alternated between presentations on Leopard
and on the Apple TV product.
Same size crowd there, all day, similar positive response, and if
anything, Leopard got more enthusiasm than the Apple TV thingie.
Now Dan may have been disappointed, but he's sort of a half-empty kind
of guy; he might not be quite representative of most likely customers.
TheLetterK
I'm not talking about DVD quality video. My *EPIA box* can do software
decoding of DVD video. That's a 1ghz *C3*, which is weaker than even a
Celeron. High quality H.264 video will bring even high-end Macs to a
screeching halt due to the lack of hardware support.
>
>> I've seen high quality HD H.264 videos bring a dual 3.0ghz G5 PowerMac
>> to it's knees. Yes, I definitely want hardware accelerated H.264
>> playback. To say nothing of hardware accelerated encoding. Besides, I
>> don't *want* to spend a fortune of a processor just so I can play back
>> some video. Why drop an extra $300+ on the faster processor when I can
>> just buy a $120 video card that handles it in hardware?
>
> Maybe my video card is better than yours, I don't have a problem
> with it.
The video card *doesn't matter* on OS X, because all the decoding is
done on the CPU. ATI and Nvidia haven't added hardware acceleration for
H.264 playback in OS X. And they probably aren't going to for a long
time. They haven't added it for Linux either, though that will probably
happen someday (at least for Nvidia).
> What I /have/ seen is that playing a video file out of
> itunes will sometimes stagger during playback, but copying it
> out to a hard drive and playing via quicktime instead will play
> it back seamlessly. I can't prove it, but I think that when
> itunes goes off to poll the network for podcast updates and
> such, the priorities are screwy and the video playback queueing
> runs dry. It didn't used to do that, I think it started
> happening about the time they put podcast support into iTunes.
What kind of video are you talking about? In the first statement, I was
talking about extremely high quality H.264 video. You seem to be talking
about DVD video, or video of the same approximate quality.
>
>>>> Stability? Perhaps marginally better.
>>> Demonstrably better.
>> Alright. Demonstrate it.
>
> I haven't had a single system crash on either of Macs in over 2
> years (since purchased).
I haven't had XP go down since I reinstalled it on this box 6 months
ago. Before then, I had about a year without a crash, before I took it
off due to lack of use. Linux on some of my other machines has a
substantially better record than either this box, or the iMac or iBook.
> I've had some applications crash,
> Adobe acrobat (since removed) and Firefox being the two main
> ones. Never have those required a system reboot to correct.
Application crashes almost never bring down Windows anymore. Not with
release-quality software anyway. Sure, there's some strange software
that can do it if you run across a severe bug, but the same is true for
OS X.
>
> I'm lucky to go over 2 weeks on an XP box without having to
> reboot it to fix something, especially since IE7 came out.
Reboots are not the same as crashes.
>
> I'm not counting installing updates or drivers in the reboot
> counts either.
Because then you would have to include OS X's reboots.
>
>>> I have yet to find a single thing that I can't do on OS X that
>>> makes me want to turn on a Windows system. If I were a gamer, I
>>> might feel differently, but that's the only thing I can think
>>> of.
>> If you were serious about home theater PCs, you would also think that
>> way.
>
> I have a real home theater setup.
That's nice.
> Think high-end video
> processors (Runco), 9" CRT's, and 120" screens, and 7.1 sound
> which is actually 14 channels (split mains and subs for each
> primary, plus 4 subs in parallel for the .1 LFE) in a custom
> built and professionally tuned room.
Alright, but how does this invalidate the HTPC? It wouldn't negatively
impact anything, unless you're going to claim that no PC can output
video and audio as well or better than whatever cable box or satellite
receiver you're using.
> Sorry, PC's don't cut it.
I see. You don't like downloadable movies, timeshifting, recording, etc?
> I've yet to find anyone offering a sound card for a PC capable
> of replicating a front-end with superior
> DACs,
It wouldn't need to. It just has to be of similar or better quality than
the audio/video source currently being used. I'm pretty sure you can put
together a HTPC that has output of greater quality than any cable box or
satellite receiver, and probably the DVD player as well (though perhaps
not, if it's a very nice one, as it sounds like you would buy). It's
certainly better than you'll get out of a set-top DVR. I definitely
wouldn't suggest that you could replace a good front-end with an HTPC.
That's not what they're supposed to replace (at least, I've never seen
one do so adequately). Among other things, people use them for
high-quality TV recording and timeshifting, or for storing massive
libraries of recorded video without having to keep burning DVDs. There
are, however, other uses for them. You seem to be using a front
projection display, so extensive gaming would probably be a
non-consideration for you (unless you like changing lamps?), but many
others enjoy playing PC games on extremely large displays. For others,
the upsampling ability of HTPCs make them more attractive than many
separate STBs attached to a video processor. It's certainly less
expensive to use an HTPC for upsampling than a dedicated video processor
(especially the one you're using!). The quality might not be as good,
but you're probably going to be limited by the display before you are
the quality of upsampling (on large displays anyway). Also, it allows
consolidation of devices, so you don't need a rackmount--even if the
quality can be a bit lower for it.
Granted, I'm used to dealing with less extensive setups than yours--but
I still don't see how the HTPC's fundamental uses have changed. If you
want to record or timeshift TV programming and/or keep a DVD library on
hard disk, then you're hard pressed to beat an HTPC. Do you really like
digging through a pile of disks for a movie to watch?
> or driving a Crestron 10" touch screen flat panel control
> interface that handles lighting, masking curtains, source
> selection, pip with external security cameras, doorbell
> integration, telephone integration, HVAC control, and device
> specific control pages for all sources.
You could easily manage that with X10 interfaces on the devices and
Girder. Girder might even allow finer control, though I couldn't tell
you for sure (I've only used it for controlling software by remote). If
you're not a gadget person, you could actually use an HTPC to get you
back to a simple one handed remote. Though I would assume you are a
gadget person, given the setup you say you have.
Some more exotic HTPC setups involve motion detection for
starting/stopping the movie, and possibly providing different content
during the 'intermission' period. News, stock quotes, etc could be
displays while people are away from the display, or perhaps music could
be played. I suppose you could also use it to turn on a popcorn popper,
but that seems excessive.
>
> And no, getting a BSOD during the middle of a movie with a dozen
> people over watching doesn't cut it either.
Good thing it probably wouldn't happen, hmm?
> And no, getting a
> little pop up window over the movie telling me that there is a
> critical security update that it wants to install and reboot is
> required,
So disable the popup.
> and popping it up over and over again every few
> minutes during the movie won't cut it either.
So disable it.
>
> HTPC's are toys , much in the way the @TV is. I see the @TV as a
> living room, or perhaps a bedroom device (if you're one of those
> "TV in the bedroom" people) but not for a true home theater.
No, it's not. With a serious setup, you can't send it over the air, and
you wouldn't have appropriate support on the media extender. Those are
useful for extending the availability of the central library--I.E being
able to watch your recorded shows on the shitty TV in the kitchen, or
something similar.
>
>>>> Ease of use? Perhaps. I know many people who find it easier to work on
>>>> Windows than on OS X.
>>> If those people had the same amount of face-time with both
>>> systems, that wouldn't be the case.
>> But they *don't* have that. And it's unrealistic to base your comparison
>> upon a situation that doesn't occur in real life. There are very few
>> people with more experience on OS X than on Windows. And there are many
>> people who have never even *seen* a Mac, much less used one for any
>> length of time.
>
> Yeah, I was one of those people that had seen pictures of them,
> but never used one for more than a few seconds in a store. When
> OS X came out and I read some of the more technical reviews, I
> bought a Mac.
The only reason I've even given OS X a try is because of Nextstep. I was
one of the rare people that actually liked OS 10.1 and found it
perfectly usable (to the point where I wouldn't even boot OS 9). I
seriously dislike the direction Apple has been taking it since then, and
have cut back my usage as a result. I'll eventually replace OS X on the
iBook with Ubuntu or Debian whenever the Airport Extreme driver gets
stable enough.
> At first, I kept having to stop myself form
> trying to do things the Windows way. (Which, unfortunately is
> often also the Linux way, since they copied the horrible Windows
> UI in a lot of ways, copying the evil empire, a stupid
> decision).
It's copied as far as you want it to be. If you don't like how the
defaults are set (which are 'copied' from Windows because that's what
the new users are undoubtedly most comfortable with), change them. KDE
is extremely customizable in this respect (to the point where you could
implement an OS X clone, as many have done), and both KDE and GNOME
implement the Windows concepts (and concepts from other places--I
wouldn't call Spatial Nautilus reminiscent of Explorer, would you?)
better than Windows does (IMO).
Hell, even GNOME can be made to act like OS X, if you're willing to hack
GTK to put a menu bar on the top of the screen.
> After a week or so of looking things up on the web
> that didn't make sense on the side while still using my Windows
> and Linux boxes for "normal stuff" while I toyed around with it,
> the lightbulb came on. I got it, 20+ years of bad habits
> finally got punched through, and I realized what I really had in
> front of me. I migrated all my email over, all my documents,
> all my source code, photos, music, you name it.
>
> Then something amazing happened. I "cross-graded" (Adobe's
> wording) from the Windows version of Photoshop to CS2 for the
> Mac. Then I discovered how color matching between the monitor
> and the photo printer actually worked right /every time/ and it
> was game, set match. There's no reasonable excuse why this is
> still so difficult to get right on Windows.
I don't do photographic work, so this is largely a meaningless
consideration for me.
>
> I double checked and triple checked to make sure everything I
> was supposed to have was there, I backed up the noisy as
> UberFANtastic (pun intended) loud as shit Dell dual proc Xeon
> workstation, and turned the bitch off so I could have some peace
> and quiet in the office again. I turn it on periodically to
> compile something or test something under a different web
> browser. The Linux box lasted a little while longer as an SMB
> file server until I figured out how SMB is similar, but
> different under OS X.
That difference is extremely annoying. SMB works properly between Linux
and Windows, but the Mac boxes always have a problem connecting to the
server. I'm to the point where I've stopped trying to even find the
cause, and just use sneakernet.
> Then I basically did the same thing to
> it. It's still here. I boot it up every once in a while to
> play with something, or compare things between it and the OS X
> command line, or compile some code, then I shut it off again.
>
> The Mac is never turned off.
None of my computers are ever turned off (unless the power goes out),
just put in a sleep state. The Macs are asleep >70% of the time.
>
> However, if I had tried the Mac for only 10 or 15 minutes,
> chances are that I wouldn't have ever got all that crappy
> Windows cluster of confusion GUI bastardization out of my head
> long enough for it all to soak in.
I've been using OS X for ages, and I've come to the point where I
actively dislike it. It's a poor design, and Apple stubbornly insists on
driving this poor design into the ground. The UI is inflexible,
difficult to work with, and ultimately a huge waste of effort. The
system itself is compatible enough to try a lot of the neat tricks that
works well on GNU/Linux, but different enough to cause the system to
fall apart when you do--compatible enough to work with Windows, but not
compatible enough to work with Windows, Linux, and itself. It's
everything I hate about Windows, and everything I dislike about Linux,
while giving nothing worthwhile in return. All the while, you end up
paying through the nose for basic functionality, like a filesystem
indexer, or a photo management application. This is, of course, on top
of the cost premium for the limited hardware platform.
>
>> GNOME and KDE tap into this a bit, since they apply many
>> of the same design principles as Windows.
>
> Yeah, a huge mistake, designed to purchase fans from the windows
> crowd by catering to existing bad UI design rather than
> converting them to something better.
There's nothing better that's been well accepted. Catering to people's
expectations enough to allow them to sit down and work is more important
than some arbitrary goal of a good UI design. And, of course, both GNOME
and KDE do depart radically from how Windows handles things, in areas
they think need improvement. Custom actions or kio-slaves in KDE, for
example. Or spatial nautilus in GNOME. OS X is *different*, but
certainly not universally better. Frankly, I think their method of
application and window management is pathetic. Until Expose, using
applications with multiple windows on OS X was downright painful.
> The single biggest reason
> IMO why Desktop Linux still isn't here. not to mention the wth
> too many desktop managers to choose from. Sometimes choice is
> good, and sometimes choice is destabilizing and does nothing
> besides introduce confusion.
There's only two major choices, and both are fairly compatible with one
another. The people who would even consider the alternatives are
undoubtedly savvy enough to handle the choices. Are you saying that two
choices are too many?
There's a happy medium between the two. GNOME fits in that space. It has
what is really required for a modern heavyweight desktop, while being
minimal enough to keep out of my way. KDE has the annoying habit of
getting right in your face and causing trouble. It has some nice
aspects, but the annoyances are enough to keep me on GNOME. Especially
with Beryl available to handle the eye candy (which handles eye candy
better than KDE anyway). This could be because my first desktop
environment was GNOME, but I'm still way more comfortable with GNOME
than I am with KDE.
> Biggest problem though, you cant walk up to any old Linux box
> and do the same thing the same way. Every one is customized, or
> running a different wm, or the menus or on top, or on bottom, or
> some other thing, like only accessible from a middle-button
> click. you never know what the hell it's going to do from one
> distro to another, nevermind one user setup to another.
What another user has setup is rather meaningless, isn't it? A new user
account is going to get the defaults for whatever window manager the
system is running. Of course, I also believe strongly in separate user
accounts for all users. Many people just share a single account.
>
>> Claiming that one environment is more usable than another is BS. It
>> depends entirely on the person.
>
> There's certainly some truth to that. Requiring every user that
> has a system up for more than a few weeks to either know a guru,
> or know how to edit the registry without screwing stuff up is
> not a usable platform.
There's no requirement for either of these for Windows or GNU/Linux.
Especially Windows, since innumerable people manage to run it every day
(for hours on end) without even knowing what a registry is.
> Requiring someone to be comfortable with
> compiling a kernel,
How is this a *requirement* for using a user friendly Linux distribution
on supported hardware? Most of the distributions I use put kernel
updates out in binary form as well as source. The binary package usually
gets built with modules to handle anything even vaguely common.
> or dependency problem resolution with rpm
> packages,
I haven't run into a dependency problem in regular use for... at least 6
months. There's some esoteric packages that still have problems, but I
doubt most users are going to be interested in these. Especially the
ones that don't know how to resolve dependencies and aren't willing to
learn.
> or /etc/fstab,
Which is, also, not a requirement on most modern distributions.
Certainly all the distributions that make an effort to be user friendly
do not require this. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that anyone using
GNOME or KDE wouldn't need to know about this. I know GNOME includes a
disk management utility, doesn't KDE? I seem to recall there being one.
> or vi ~/.xinitrc isn't particularly
> usable either.
Why would Grandpa Joe need to manually edit ~/.xinitrc?
> Yes, OS X has some goofisms too. None are
> perfect, but why on earth Linux developers would take design
> cues from Windows, that's horrific.
Because that's what people expect, and undoubtedly what the developers
themselves are most comfortable with. It's not like they adhere to them
rigorously or anything. There are many differences between Windows and
GNOME and KDE.
>
>> I find OS X to be limiting and
>> cumbersome. It's difficult to make it work like I want it, and I'm
>> essentially limited to the whatever methods Apple gives me.
>
> No, you're not. You're just as free to write code, or get code,
> or get apps for it as you are for Linux.
Except the already existing apps are usually expensive ($20 for a haxie
is too much), and developing a new app to do what I need usually takes
more time (or is too far beyond my skills) than it does to roll over to
the Linux box and make an existing tool do the job.
> You're more likely to
> find a lot of productivity enhancements like Quicksilver,
I've used it, and liked it, but KDE and GNOME both have similar
applications available. IIRC, katapult is actually included in KDE 3.5.
> Automator,
I don't really see the attraction. Why not just write a script? Why do
you need the pretentious UI in front of it? It's useful for people who
won't make scripts otherwise, I suppose.
> Transmit3,
It's an ftp client. And it's not free. I refuse to pay for something as
trivial as an ftp client.
> Image Tricks,
I, personally, don't do much with images at all. Let alone have a
substantial need to transform them. And why couldn't I just use the GIMP
to do it? Isn't that what script-fu is for? I've made randomly generated
artwork for backgrounds before, using xstarfish for the source material
and manipulating it with filters and scripts in the GIMP. Long before
Core Image was around.
> URLWell,
Couldn't I just put bookmarks in my web browser?
> Menushade,
This just darkens the menu bar. I suppose it's useful as a fix for the
problem, but I'm wondering how this does anything but illustrate my
point. Why isn't the color of the menu bar user configurable from the
get-go?
> Sidenote,
Looks like a Tomboy clone.
> Thumbscrew,
Never used it.
> and on and on, especially if you include
> the more useful of the dashboard widgets and leave out the
> thousands of silly, worthless ones from the community.
Sure, all these things are available, but it seems like a lot of effort
to go out and find them (assuming, of course, that there is an app that
does what you need). Why not just stick with the platform that offers me
more options from the beginning? Even with all these, there are many
aspects of the OS X UI that just cannot be changed. For example, I might
want to replace the dock with something like a start menu and taskbar.
How do you do this? I've never run across a free or very inexpensive
method of doing this.
>
> Not to mention zero chance of getting Photoshop working (no,
> Gimp is not remotely equivalent),
I'm assuming you don't consider running Photoshop in Crossover Office to
be running Photoshop?
> a Spyder2 Pro or equivalent to
> get your color photo chain sync'd up and printing accurately.
Again, I don't deal with photography, so it's never come up for me. I
don't think that most people would need or care about this.
> Something like RapidWeaver to put together a really great
> looking web site that is standards compliant in a day or less.
Why aren't people making such sites with OS X, then? The scarcity of
really great looking websites out there would indicate that it's either
too expensive, too difficult to use, or it's not actually a tool for
creating really great looking websites. Just because you offer a
powerful WYSIWYG 'website creation suite' doesn't mean it's going to
result in really good looking websites. If you know what you're doing,
you can use pretty much any WYSIWYG editor to achieve the same result.
> The list goes on and on.
>
> Yes, there are lots of great little utilities for Linux. 90% of
> which are aimed at developers (which I appreciate, but most
> people do not), and the rest are aimed at what? Other
> pseudo-geeks like bloggers, mp3 rippers, and college scientist
> working on research papers in LaTeX.
Or regular people. Katapult, for example. I named a few other Linux
alternatives to apps you mentioned if they're something I've found a
reason to look for.
>
>>> You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
>>> when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
>>> check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
>>> ass.
>> Because, you know, beta software never fails.
>
> Sure it does. So does their production code. With SP1 added
> on. With SP2 added on. With all the updates added on. I have
> in my hand a floppy with a single .exe file on it called
> crash.exe, which I can take to /any/ windows box on the planet
> and immediately blue screen it, run from the command line, with
> or without admin privileges. It's great for testing hardware
> watchdog timers.
So you've got a script that attacks a bug in Windows. Is this
surprising? Do you think that such a thing would be impossible to
develop for OS X?
>
>> Really, have you ever seen
>> a Microsoft-configured Windows XP box crash during a presentation? The
>> closest I've seen is an Media Center failure when they were
>> demonstrating an early beta.
>
> Yes, I have. I've seen it happen in Building 33 in Redmond, in
> front of veeps and CEO's from multiple companies. Fortunately,
> no press were around to take pictures of the screen or record
> the looks on the faces of them when it happened.
Or, apparently, cell phone cameras.
>
> I've seen NT4 Gold Master get pulled, amidst a considerable
> uproar, because one of their OEMs with a real test lab managed
> to completely hose the kernel internals with a very simple
> user-level file I/O application, resulting in a nasty slip, an
> ugly Spencer Katt article, and a "NT 4 Extra Gold" after it has
> already gone out to duplication. Of course, it was a server OS,
> so you couldn't reasonably expect microsoft to actually test
> file I/O, they concentrated on IE and other silly gizmoid gui
> shit instead. [sarcasm intended]
>
>> The famous examples of Windows crashes on stage are usually when they
>> try to demo beta products on stage. Apple has had a few of those as
>> well--even in demonstrations of *currently shipping products*.
>
> Yeah, it happened to Jobs in the keynote. Of course, Jobs did a
> fantastic job of covering it, whereas Gates stands there
> giggling, blushing and looking like someone just shoved a major
> league baseball bat up his ass.
How does the charisma of the CEO of a company impact the reliability of
the product?
>
>> The price has gone down, but the quality has gone up.
>
> No, it hasn't. I've been in the industry since the 80s, and
> that's complete bullshit. Some of the components (especially
> the peripherals) have higher MTBF, sure. The design quality,
> signal integrity, and even simple things like adherence to
> chipset design guidelines has completely gone to hell. You
> can't make a formula 1 race car by taking a bunch of premium
> brack pads, pistons, camshafts and carbon fibre, and duct taping
> it all together and slapping a coat of Sears house paint on it.
> Hard drives are much more reliable than they used to be, and
> that is almost single-handedly responsible for the false
> perception that /systems/ are more reliable and better today.
> Nothing could be further from the truth.
The system *not failing* due to improvements in a commonly error prone
component would, generally, mean that the system as a whole is more
reliable. If 4 out of five system failures were caused by hard drive
problems, then wouldn't improving the reliability of the hard drive
improve the reliability of the whole system?
>
>> Components today--even the 'lowest bidder taiwan crap' are far more
>> reliable and longer lasting than even the best desktop components 15
>> years ago.
>
> True. Problem is, everybody that knows how hook them up /right/
> has retired, and the kiddies trying to do it in Taiwan have all
> their "experience" from poorly translated textbooks and zero
> real-world experience.
I know that Next managed to crank out machines (even insert custom
one-run prototypes into the production line) without human intervention.
Has this not extended to other production facilities? After all, it's
been more than 10 years since they were doing that.
>
>>>> Drivers and Firmware? What about them?
>>> The windows driver model (inherently weak and needless
>>> complicated),
>> Excuse me? There are far more developers who can write Windows drivers
>> than there are developers able to write OS X drivers. From all accounts,
>> XNU is a bitch to write drivers for.
>
> It's not. Having millions of people writing for a platform with
> 90% of the market doesn't mean it's easy, it means it's in high
> demand. In fact, there are about 100X more people writing
> drivers for windows today than there are qualified to be writing
> drivers for windows today.
Bad drivers are better than no drivers. Not much better, but still better.
>
> The OS X driver model is not difficult, if you actually know how
> to write device drivers. If you (supposedly) learned how to
> implement Windows drivers at a $5000 1 week crash course, then
> yeah, learning anything else is going to be a bitch.
>
>>> plus the shitload of substandard peripheral
>>> vendors, all of which install drivers on top of your potentially
>>> somewhat stable system
>> I've got at least a half dozen extra keyboards laying around. Most of
>> them are made by completely off-brand peripheral manufacturers. All of
>> them use the standard driver that comes with Windows.
>
> Great, pick the simplest device you can come up with, besides a
> simple serial relay switch. Let's pick something interesting
> instead, like video drivers, network drivers, and hard disk
> drivers.
So, what makes Nvidia or ATI's unified drivers so bad (modern ones, not
historic)? XGI certainly has shit for drivers (many of them don't even
work), but what about the two that sell most of the discrete graphics
chipsets? Intel's don't seem that bad either, given that they are so
often used without issue. I'm not too up on network controller drivers,
since my main concern there is Linux compatibility (I.E what is included
in the kernel and well supported). I usually just get a stock network
card based on the National Semiconductor DP8381X chipset, with the
exception of the built-in network chipsets on this box and the EPIA.
Nvidia's nforce drivers (for Windows) don't seem too bad, and neither
are VIA's.
> Don't even get started on some of the "also ran" disk
> controller vendors. they have implementation bugs so big you
> can drive a truck through them, and when you report the bugs to
> them, they won't even consider them, unless they're on the front
> page of a tech weekly.
>
>>> means you are doomed unless you run a
>>> box-stock system and never change anything.
>> Or you actually do research before buying a product. I know that it's a
>> lot to expect someone to spend 15 minutes reading reviews and user
>> commentary for a product, but it really does improve the overall
>> experience.
>
> No question. Point is, you shouldn't even have to wonder.
> After all, EVERY ONE OF THEM wears the PURCHASED Microsoft "WHQL
> Certified" logo, which is worth, exactly nothing, because it
> means jack shit.
Macs aren't magically immune to bad drivers you know. You can add bad
Taiwanese hardware to a PowerMac just as easily as you can any other
tower. Assuming there's a bad Taiwanese driver written for OS X--there
might not be.
>
>>> When you're buying
>>> an I/O card that retails for $19, just how quality engineering
>>> and testing went into that product?
>> That's the price you pay for the cheap card. It's why I probably won't
>> buy it. OTOH, there's plenty of options between the $20 POS and the $50
>> card that Apple tries to foist off on you. Though I would like to point
>> out that there are several companies that produce reliable and stable
>> 'budget' components, though these are usually lacking in features or
>> performance. Chaintech, for example, usually produces components of at
>> least reasonable quality for very good prices.
>
> Siig is one of the very few I/O device vendors that actually
> puts out decent adapters and peripherals for low cost points.
> Almost everything else is shit, particularly if you actually try
> and stress test it, instead of using it in the most minimally
> stressful way you can think of.
IMO, if it's reliable for what you're doing, it's reliable enough to
buy. Stress testing seems pointless on a regular desktop box. 'Decent'
would generally mean 'good enough for what you're doing'.
> There are exactly 2 high-end
> RAID hardware disk controller vendors on the planet that can
> build one that is actually stable under real I/O load for days
> and days,
Who needs a hardware RAID controller in a normal desktop, which is what
I thought were being discussed? After all, it's not like Macs are
commonly used for anything else.
> at max loads instead of 45 seconds for a pc mag
> benchmark.
I've actually done CPU and I/O load testing for >24 hours on this
machine, which is rare, since I almost never bother with personal
machines. I was mainly wanting to see if I pushed the overclock too far.
I figure if it will stay up for a day under constant load, it's good enough.
This is using supposedly second rate Taiwanese components (mainly).
> Neither is designed in Taiwan or China, and neither
> sells for a price point likely to find its way into any desktop
> product.
>
>> I build my own machines--and they're built to a higher standard than
>> Apple applies.
>
> Good for you. I soldered my first computer together from
> resisters, caps, diodes, etc. when I was in junior high school,
It's not like that's even a vaguely reasonable course of action today.
> many, many moons ago, so it's no big feat to slap some well
> chosen components with standard interfaces together and get them
> working.
I agree, it isn't. That's why I'm wondering why you were dismissing it
when talking about PCs earlier.
> Problem is, that's not a consumer product. Probably
> less than 0.5% of the user population is capable of doing even
> something that simple well.
I think just about anyone *could* do it, but most people don't *want* to
do it. As you say, it isn't difficult.
>
>> After all, I can focus hours of attention on a single
>> box, while they couldn't even be bothered to have someone turn the
>> machine on in person.
>
> It took something like two weeks of all day work to assemble
> that first computer from bags of components, not surface mount,
> robot-assembled boards. And then a full day of testing it
> before applying power with a meter and test probe points
> (nothing found) and having it fire up and work perfectly. Over
> 25 years later, that system still runs flawlessly, albeit at
> dinosaur speeds by modern standards. Big deal. Very, very few
> people could do that back then, and proportionally, about the
> same number can do the "I built my own computer, ha ha ha" shit
> you do today.
It's not so much a 'haha' but more of a 'DIY builds are the best route'.
Even throwing Apple into the mix. You say PCs can't be stable and
reliable--I say otherwise. They can be, but those aren't the machines
you get out of margin-concious OEMs who are willing to shave two thirds
of a cent off the cost of a component, even at the cost of reliability.
They don't even have to be expensive or slow, as long as you define what
you want to do with the machine, and don't expect it to go beyond that.
Like the EPIA box I've got now. Great for SD video playback and web
surfing. Nothing else, though. Building Gentoo for that is a painful
experience (to the point where I broke down and installed distcc on the
other boxes, which turned out to be a PITA because of the Macs).
TheLetterK
> In article <rvbph.81$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
>> Dan Johnson wrote:
>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
>> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>
> to not as lame isn't much of an improvement.
Care to demonstrate this?
Sandman
Steve Hix <se...@NOSPAMspeakeasy.netINVALID> wrote:
But then he is a self-admitted troll as well :)
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> >> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
> >> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
> >
> > I suspect the demo was so disappointing because they didn't have any of
> > the truly impressive things ready for demonstration yet.
>
> That is in remarkable in itself; but I think they were
> working on the iPhone then.
"They" as in "the four people that Apple employ"?
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> > I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
>
> A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
> yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
> techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
> backend and composition manager. In less than two years. Apple is still
> trying to get their version of this in a usable state.
Eh? You got it backwards. the XGL team is still trying to get their
version of this in a usable state.
Quartz Extreme has been in OSX since 10.2.
--
Sandman[.net]
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <afjph.707$v8...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>):
First, thank to you for an interesting discussion without
flamage, with I thought was extinct in CSMA...
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:42:46 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
>> (in article <yReph.112$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
>>
>> A DVD, or H.264 content either. And that's on a lowly PowerPC
>> system. The Intel mac I have only has a 1440x900 display, but
>> it's also smoking fast.
>
> I'm not talking about DVD quality video. My *EPIA box* can do software
> decoding of DVD video. That's a 1ghz *C3*, which is weaker than even a
> Celeron. High quality H.264 video will bring even high-end Macs to a
> screeching halt due to the lack of hardware support.
I'm talking about H.264 video downloaded from various web
sources, for example the Apple website. If there's some source
for "uber H.264" that you care to point out, I'll be happy to
try it out on both systems and report back the results.
>> What I /have/ seen is that playing a video file out of
>> itunes will sometimes stagger during playback, but copying it
>> out to a hard drive and playing via quicktime instead will play
>> it back seamlessly. I can't prove it, but I think that when
>> itunes goes off to poll the network for podcast updates and
>> such, the priorities are screwy and the video playback queueing
>> runs dry. It didn't used to do that, I think it started
>> happening about the time they put podcast support into iTunes.
>
> What kind of video are you talking about? In the first statement, I was
> talking about extremely high quality H.264 video. You seem to be talking
> about DVD video, or video of the same approximate quality.
In the above comment, I'm talking about frankly /any/ video, of
/any/ quality. iTunes has gone to shit for video playback of
late, which is worrisome for using it as the means to serve up
content to @TV. It would be nice to watch some of the more
interesting podcasts on the TV set occasionally, but not if they
stagger and sputter during playback. Perhaps that's why the
normal scenario with a single Mac driving it involves syncing
first, but I imagine network and drive performance are more
likely the reason.
>> I've had some applications crash,
>> Adobe acrobat (since removed) and Firefox being the two main
>> ones. Never have those required a system reboot to correct.
>
> Application crashes almost never bring down Windows anymore. Not with
> release-quality software anyway. Sure, there's some strange software
> that can do it if you run across a severe bug, but the same is true for
> OS X.
Even IE7 can render the system unstable enough that a reboot is
required to make it function properly again. That's not a hard
crash, but it might as well be.
>> I'm lucky to go over 2 weeks on an XP box without having to
>> reboot it to fix something, especially since IE7 came out.
>
> Reboots are not the same as crashes.
Reboots are the results of crashes.
>> I'm not counting installing updates or drivers in the reboot
>> counts either.
>
> Because then you would have to include OS X's reboots.
No, because I've never rebooted OS X for anything other than
installing an update that required it. For example, quicktime
updates typically ask for a reboot. Everything on Windows wants
a reboot, even application installs typically, which is stupid.
I was being kind to Windows leaving it out the first time.
Linux otoh doesn't make you reboot for much at all, unless you
update the kernel. Fortunately, that seems to be slowing down.
Once upon a time, kernel updates where /needed/, now they're
move of a "when you get around to it, put this on" thing most of
the time, which is a good sign.
>> Think high-end video
>> processors (Runco), 9" CRT's, and 120" screens, and 7.1 sound
>> which is actually 14 channels (split mains and subs for each
>> primary, plus 4 subs in parallel for the .1 LFE) in a custom
>> built and professionally tuned room.
>
> Alright, but how does this invalidate the HTPC? It wouldn't negatively
> impact anything, unless you're going to claim that no PC can output
> video and audio as well or better than whatever cable box or satellite
> receiver you're using.
If they called it the LRPC or FRPC (Living/Family room) then
it'd be fine. The only thing keeping it from being laughed more
broadly is the horrible decline in audio and video quality of
the standard public movie theater. They're laughable now, even
the so-called "good ones" in major cities. Unless you just need
to get chewing gum on your shoes, hear cell phones going off and
look around the chick with big hair in front of you all movie
while listening to babies crying to get that true movie
experience, there's nothing there worth seeing.
>> Sorry, PC's don't cut it.
>
> I see. You don't like downloadable movies, timeshifting, recording, etc?
Those are all fine, if you're willing to trade quality for
convenience. I'm not going to fire up all that gear just to
watch a podcast on, but if I want to watch a full-length movie
as it was intended to be watched, instead of on a tiny iPod
video screen while waiting in line getting my driver's license
updated, then that doesn't do it for me.
>> I've yet to find anyone offering a sound card for a PC capable
>> of replicating a front-end with superior
>> DACs,
>
> It wouldn't need to. It just has to be of similar or better quality than
> the audio/video source currently being used. I'm pretty sure you can put
> together a HTPC that has output of greater quality than any cable box or
> satellite receiver, and probably the DVD player as well (though perhaps
> not, if it's a very nice one, as it sounds like you would buy).
Exactly. HTPC quality gear is perfect for the guy that gets all
his movies from bittorrent sites and squirts them onto 650MB
CD's or leaves them on his hard drive, along with youtube shit,
podcasts, and whatever random stuff his friends bring over for
him to copy in their 5000 CD carrying cases. It's not for DVD,
or HD-DVD quality content, and it isn't likely to ever meet up
to premium content quality, unless Hollywood succeeds in
convincing people that they shouldn't even want that. The whole
video over the internet to your iPod or HTPC thing plays right
into their hands, namely giving them excuse to /sell/ you
substandard, downscaled video and audio quality and having you
like it, because it took less time to download it from iTunes.
If you listen to all your music on a pair of earbuds, fine then,
but for those that listen to music to hear the music, instead of
to keep their ADHD (supposedly) infected heads entertained at
work or in the car, don't quite see it that way.
> It's certainly better than you'll get out of a set-top DVR. I definitely
> wouldn't suggest that you could replace a good front-end with an HTPC.
> That's not what they're supposed to replace (at least, I've never seen
> one do so adequately).
A realist. Most HTPC advocates will happily tell you that
nothing can do better than a HTPC.
> Among other things, people use them for
> high-quality TV recording and timeshifting,
Medium quality.
> or for storing massive
> libraries of recorded video without having to keep burning DVDs. There
> are, however, other uses for them. You seem to be using a front
> projection display, so extensive gaming would probably be a
> non-consideration for you (unless you like changing lamps?),
I thought I made it clear earlier that gaming wasn't a big
factor for me. In fact, gaming is usually something that
guarantees that people can never afford a system like the one I
have here, unless you take up gaming after retirement. Just
about everyone into gaming at a young age winds up being into
gaming until they manage to accomplish nothing for their whole
life, or some parental units have an intervention or something.
You don't spent 8 hours a day blasting pigs and/or sith lords in
an online game and then manage to accomplish something useful at
the same time.
> others enjoy playing PC games on extremely large displays.
those getting money for the equipment from inheritance, trust
funds or drug dealing maybe. :-)
> the upsampling ability of HTPCs make them more attractive than many
> separate STBs attached to a video processor. It's certainly less
> expensive to use an HTPC for upsampling than a dedicated video processor
> (especially the one you're using!). The quality might not be as good,
> but you're probably going to be limited by the display before you are
> the quality of upsampling (on large displays anyway).
Actually, that's the point of using a truly high-end video
processor and front projection instead of a video card in a PC.
It actually allows you take off-air or even VHS quality (ugh)
content, and blow it up to very large sizes without it looking
any worse than on a moderate sized TV set. Of course, that
isn't the point, it's more about HD and DVD quality content
being treated the same way.
> Also, it allows
> consolidation of devices, so you don't need a rackmount--even if the
> quality can be a bit lower for it.
"Not needing" is a function of justifying cost or lack of square
footage, not an advantage for someone wanting the best quality
image and sound they can get.
> Granted, I'm used to dealing with less extensive setups than yours--but
> I still don't see how the HTPC's fundamental uses have changed. If you
> want to record or timeshift TV programming and/or keep a DVD library on
> hard disk, then you're hard pressed to beat an HTPC. Do you really like
> digging through a pile of disks for a movie to watch?
Arrakis DvD jukebox. I'm not sure they make it anymore, the
HTPC "compress an entire DL DVD down to 650MB" crowd probably
took that product out of the market.
>> or driving a Crestron 10" touch screen flat panel control
>> interface that handles lighting, masking curtains, source
>> selection, pip with external security cameras, doorbell
>> integration, telephone integration, HVAC control, and device
>> specific control pages for all sources.
>
> You could easily manage that with X10 interfaces on the devices and
> Girder.
X10. Now you're just cracking me up. The fact that people
haven't figured out how to do home-grown home automation
(lighting, security, HVAC, etc.) over something better than X10
by now is a mystery.
> Girder might even allow finer control, though I couldn't tell
> you for sure (I've only used it for controlling software by remote).
Nothing based upon X10 is as reliable as a commercial grade
automation system running over ethernet.
> If you're not a gadget person, you could actually use an HTPC to get you
> back to a simple one handed remote. Though I would assume you are a
> gadget person, given the setup you say you have.
Not really. The whole point is, anyone in the family can use
it, without knowing anything about any gadgets. You walk in,
touch the display, up pops a menu of choices. Do you want to
watch TV, a DVD movie, a photo slideshow, listen to music, what?
Then say you select TV, then you are presented with a screen of
icons with TV channel logos, like HBO, Showtime, ABC, NBC, ESPN,
whatever..... you pick one. Done. Oh, you'd like to select
one of 5 or 6 lighting setups, you'd like to turn the
temperature up or down a degree or two, you'd like to check the
front-yard camera to see if anyone is out there (on the panel,
without disturbing the image you're watching), etc. Even when
relatives visit that have never even used a Windows box for
email, they can figure it out. It's all gadgets underneath, but
the end result is somebody that's never even had a VCR can use
it without sitting through a training session or reading a
manual. It's simple. Apple would absolutely slay people in
that market if they were in it because that's exactly what they
do with their products, but it's way too vertical for them.
> Some more exotic HTPC setups involve motion detection for
> starting/stopping the movie, and possibly providing different content
> during the 'intermission' period. News, stock quotes, etc could be
> displays while people are away from the display, or perhaps music could
> be played.
You have the masking curtains on the screen automatically adjust
to fit the aspect ratio of the content being projected, like 4:3
for a normal TV station, 16:9 for a HDTV channel, 2.35:1 for a
true widescreen title, etc. You have the lights dim when the
movie starts, and come up slightly when paused, or dim up more,
but slowly when the movie is over. Basically, you can do
anything you want to do, as long as the devices are externally
controllable.
> I suppose you could also use it to turn on a popcorn popper,
> but that seems excessive.
LOL.
>> And no, getting a BSOD during the middle of a movie with a dozen
>> people over watching doesn't cut it either.
>
> Good thing it probably wouldn't happen, hmm?
Not worth worrying about it, and frankly, the tradeoffs in
quality aren't worth it, even if I did believe it.
>> And no, getting a
>> little pop up window over the movie telling me that there is a
>> critical security update that it wants to install and reboot is
>> required,
>
> So disable the popup.
I don't need to. I'll never buy another windows-based system,
so the problem is eradicated from my life, I'm just disappointed
that I spent like 20 years dealing with that shit until
something better came along.
>> HTPC's are toys , much in the way the @TV is. I see the @TV as a
>> living room, or perhaps a bedroom device (if you're one of those
>> "TV in the bedroom" people) but not for a true home theater.
>
> No, it's not. With a serious setup, you can't send it over the air, and
> you wouldn't have appropriate support on the media extender. Those are
> useful for extending the availability of the central library--I.E being
> able to watch your recorded shows on the shitty TV in the kitchen, or
> something similar.
Obviously I disagree with that last bit, since it's what I just
said above. With a serious setup, you're running Gig-E wired,
not wireless, so you can beam almost anything around the house
wherever you want to do so, but still, not much point in sending
HD-DVD content to the kitchen, although there is a smallish
HD-flat panel in there. For pure audio, I use a dedicated NxM
zone switching system with each room in the house as well as the
back yard being a different 'zone' listening to different
content, if desired.
>> Yeah, I was one of those people that had seen pictures of them,
>> but never used one for more than a few seconds in a store. When
>> OS X came out and I read some of the more technical reviews, I
>> bought a Mac.
>
> The only reason I've even given OS X a try is because of Nextstep. I was
> one of the rare people that actually liked OS 10.1 and found it
> perfectly usable (to the point where I wouldn't even boot OS 9). I
> seriously dislike the direction Apple has been taking it since then, and
> have cut back my usage as a result.
What have they done to "ruin it" for you? How have they made it
worse? I have used probably a dozen or more different flavors
of Linux over the years, and no telling how many different
versions of the major ones, including RedHat (later Fedora),
SuSE, TurboLinux, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo, Knoppix,
and a lot more I've happily forgotten. During that time, the
only one that came close to getting it really right for the
desktop (many of those were, and still are great for server
systems run by geeks) was Ubuntu (My preference is to go
straight for Kubuntu). Even so, it's a pain in the ass, because
the apps I want to use aren't there. Sure, there are hacks to
try to get some apps working, in insupported ways, that may or
may not be reliable or perform as well, but it's not worth it.
I tried for several years to find a Linux distribution that
would work reliably on my AMD64 notebook with wireless (Broadcom
based), no such luck. I finally gave up. It's sitting on a
desk with a cable plugged into it running Ubuntu, because it's
useless otherwise. That's not a "real-world" ready platform,
because driver problems with Linux mean you can't do anything
you need to do. With Windows even the problem is less, but who
the hell wants to run Windows if they don't have to? I've even
thought about trying to get a bootleg version of OS X running on
it, but hell, what'd be the point in all that hassle and being a
criminal in the bargain?
> I'll eventually replace OS X on the
> iBook with Ubuntu or Debian whenever the Airport Extreme driver gets
> stable enough.
When Apple pulls the plug on supporting newer OS X versions on
PPC G5, I'll probably do something similar on the Powermac, or
well, probably not actually. It works fine today, if I never
get another update for it after 10.4.8 I can't complain. I'm
sure the itch to have a MacPro will set in before it becomes an
issue anyway.
>> At first, I kept having to stop myself form
>> trying to do things the Windows way. (Which, unfortunately is
>> often also the Linux way, since they copied the horrible Windows
>> UI in a lot of ways, copying the evil empire, a stupid
>> decision).
>
> It's copied as far as you want it to be. If you don't like how the
> defaults are set (which are 'copied' from Windows because that's what
> the new users are undoubtedly most comfortable with), change them.
Well, having worked in lab environments for 20 years, where
every system (out of hundreds) in the lab might potentially be
different to 'fly' if customized, that's anathema. Having the
same interface, be it Windows, KDE, Gnome, or OS X is preferable
to every box, and every login being different. If kiddies need
to "express themselves", let them do it with the color of iPod
they're wearing, or the music they listen to. Every computer in
the universe having a completely different UI,just because it's
possible, doesn't seem like a worthy goal to me.
> KDE is extremely customizable in this respect (to the point where
> you could implement an OS X clone, as many have done),
Is there an easy way to test that out? I'd be curious to try it
on one of my Linux boxes just to see how close it really gets.
Link, or manual labor?
> Hell, even GNOME can be made to act like OS X, if you're willing to hack
> GTK to put a menu bar on the top of the screen.
LOL. Gnome makes me ill. Probably because I started out with
X11 on old UNIX boxes, and went through Motif and such before
landing on KDE. Gnome is like "oh shit, how much can we make
this look like XP out of the box so people will actually use us"
to me. I suppose if I had been late to Linux, and Gnome had
been the first window manager I had ever used for a UNIX system,
/maybe/ I'd like it more, but I doubt it.
>> Then something amazing happened. I "cross-graded" (Adobe's
>> wording) from the Windows version of Photoshop to CS2 for the
>> Mac. Then I discovered how color matching between the monitor
>> and the photo printer actually worked right /every time/ and it
>> was game, set match. There's no reasonable excuse why this is
>> still so difficult to get right on Windows.
>
> I don't do photographic work, so this is largely a meaningless
> consideration for me.
If you do, it's huge. The "Gimp = Photoshop" crowd just doesn't
get that. Even the "But hey, you can run photoshop on Windows
too crowd" doesn't get it. It's why no serious photographer has
anything but a Mac notebook in their bag.
>> I double checked and triple checked to make sure everything I
>> was supposed to have was there, I backed up the noisy as
>> UberFANtastic (pun intended) loud as shit Dell dual proc Xeon
>> workstation, and turned the bitch off so I could have some peace
>> and quiet in the office again. I turn it on periodically to
>> compile something or test something under a different web
>> browser. The Linux box lasted a little while longer as an SMB
>> file server until I figured out how SMB is similar, but
>> different under OS X.
>
> That difference is extremely annoying. SMB works properly between Linux
> and Windows, but the Mac boxes always have a problem connecting to the
> server.
I haven't had that problem. In my case now, my Powermac /is/
the server, and everything else goes to it. The lack of
established software or hardware raid 5 solutions for Apple
right now (other than Fibre channel, crack me the hell up) means
I may eventually go back the other way, using a home-built Linux
server with a big ass disk array as the file server as storage
requirements continue to grow.
> I'm to the point where I've stopped trying to even find the
> cause, and just use sneakernet.
Please. You have something hosed on your network, I routinely
copy stuff around (or just use remotely) between Linux, OS X and
windows, as well as share photo and laser printers, with no
worries.
>> Then I basically did the same thing to it (linux boxes).
>> It's still here. I boot it up every once in a while to
>> play with something, or compare things between it and the OS X
>> command line, or compile some code, then I shut it off again.
>>
>> The Mac is never turned off.
>
> None of my computers are ever turned off (unless the power goes out),
> just put in a sleep state. The Macs are asleep >70% of the time.
My Windows box is never turned on. The wife is the last
holdout, because she has some out-of-print recipe program she
spent years entering shit into, and we haven't figured out how
to migrate the data out. There are plenty of choices for OS X
for it (and frankly, she doesn't even use them much anyway, all
the stuff she typically cooks she knows without looking them up
anyway, but it's the time invested she doesn't want to walk away
from). However, next time I spent hours fixing some
Windows-explosion due to spyware, or a windows update breaking
something, or going to a bad website somewhere, it's toast, and
she knows it. I'll print out all the data and pay somebody to
enter it into a real system if need be. :-)
>> However, if I had tried the Mac for only 10 or 15 minutes,
>> chances are that I wouldn't have ever got all that crappy
>> Windows cluster of confusion GUI bastardization out of my head
>> long enough for it all to soak in.
>
> I've been using OS X for ages, and I've come to the point where I
> actively dislike it. It's a poor design, and Apple stubbornly insists on
> driving this poor design into the ground. The UI is inflexible,
> difficult to work with, and ultimately a huge waste of effort.
Hmmm. I felt that way the first few days, then I realized I was
just fighting against something based upon what I was used to
before, instead of using it to get stuff done. I don't feel
that way now at all. It just works. I don't think about the
UI, it just works. If I could change just one thing about the
GUI, I would make it where you could duplicate the menu bar
across both monitors (not stretch it, but have two copies).
Having to mouse over 4000 pixels to get to the file menu is sort
of annoying, I don't think people in Apple GUI design spent a
lot of time using it with multi-monitor setups. (XP has similar
annoyances as well, putting the start bar icons way over on the
right side instead). That said, I just put the more active
stuff on the left side (comfortable for me :-) and put reference
stuff, or iTunes or some computational-intensive thing (like
iSquirt for the last 15 hours or so) on the right.
Of course, with photoshop, I usually have active image editing
on the left monitor, and bridge up on the right one, which is
awesome. I've even thought about running three monitors
(vertical instead of horizontal) to see how that goes.
> system itself is compatible enough to try a lot of the neat tricks that
> works well on GNU/Linux, but different enough to cause the system to
> fall apart when you do--compatible enough to work with Windows, but not
> compatible enough to work with Windows, Linux, and itself. It's
> everything I hate about Windows, and everything I dislike about Linux,
> while giving nothing worthwhile in return. All the while, you end up
> paying through the nose for basic functionality, like a filesystem
> indexer, or a photo management application. This is, of course, on top
> of the cost premium for the limited hardware platform.
My experience has been just the opposite. Thank goodness we
have still have choices. I am more than willing to pay for a
good premium photo management system, and that isn't available
on Linux. Lightroom + Photoshop is just about perfect imo, so I
couldn't be happier. Everything I want to do is available here
on a single platform, and the only reason for me to keep the
Linux boxes around is to keep current on them and for some open
source cross-platform development and testing stuff I'm
interested in. I keep the 40 pound Dell workstation (quietly
thankfully) sitting in the corner with XP on it as a reminder of
what I /thought/ was a decent computer for far too long. Of
course, I can at leas dual-boot it into Linux if I need to. :-)
>>> GNOME and KDE tap into this a bit, since they apply many
>>> of the same design principles as Windows.
>>
>> Yeah, a huge mistake, designed to purchase fans from the windows
>> crowd by catering to existing bad UI design rather than
>> converting them to something better.
>
> There's nothing better that's been well accepted.
Oh yes, there is. Programming to the least common denominator
is what gave the world Windows. Mcdonald's hamburgers are "well
accepted" based upon sales volumes, but they taste like shit and
are like 80% fat. No thank you, that little white lie has been
proven wrong plenty of times.
> Catering to people's expectations enough to allow them to sit down
> and work is more important than some arbitrary goal of a good UI design.
If they were arbitrary, I'd agree. Apple has figured out a good
(but not perfect) UI that allows you to do everything you need
to do, while maybe preventing you from having 3" custom goth
borders around your apps, with glowing red text on black
backgrounds with dragons flying around as your mouse cursor. Oh
well. I can live with that.
> And, of course, both GNOME and KDE do depart radically from how Windows
> handles things, in areas they think need improvement.
All both have really achieved in the last 5 years is becoming so
bloated that that Windows actually runs faster on the same
hardware. Instead of reducing away all the unnecessary stuff
and leaving behind what's really needed to simplify it and get
it out of your way, they've gone the opposite direction.
Something like Fluxbox (or blackbox before it) seems more like
the right direction, but certainly not for those raised on paper
clips and animated music visualizations on-screen.
> Until Expose, using
> applications with multiple windows on OS X was downright painful.
I dunno, it was already there before I bought a Mac, but
frankly, I never use it. with as much real estate as I have,
and knowing how to use alt-tab, I never hit F9 or whatever it is
anyway, unless I just want to play with it (it is funny
looking).
>> The single biggest reason
>> IMO why Desktop Linux still isn't here. not to mention the wth
>> too many desktop managers to choose from. Sometimes choice is
>> good, and sometimes choice is destabilizing and does nothing
>> besides introduce confusion.
>
> There's only two major choices, and both are fairly compatible with one
> another. The people who would even consider the alternatives are
> undoubtedly savvy enough to handle the choices. Are you saying that two
> choices are too many?
I'm saying that both of the choices you are referring to (surely
Gnome and KDE) are both too damn bloated and overbearing in
their current incarnation. 5 years ago, KDE was pretty damn
nice. They both went down the same road, just driving on
different sides, and both heading to a place named Redmond, for
no good reason.
>> I have more experience with CP/M than I do with OS X, but it's a
>> clear win. BTW, I despise Gnome. KDE is the best thing going
>> if you like /functional/ eye candy, and one of the minimalist wm
>> setups is best if you want the UI to get out of your way.
>
> There's a happy medium between the two. GNOME fits in that space.
If I despise Gnome, how can Gnome fit between KDE and itself?
> It has what is really required for a modern heavyweight desktop,
No, it has what is required to turn a functional desktop into a
heavyweight desktop. Not a worthy goal, IMO.
> while being
> minimal enough to keep out of my way. KDE has the annoying habit of
> getting right in your face and causing trouble.
It didn't used to do that. Then Gnome came along, looking all
like win/98, and a lot of people started using it instead, and
KDE folks panicked and started loading on layer after layer of
bullshit to keep up, and now you have two window managers widely
used on Linux, and both of them suck ass.
> It has some nice
> aspects, but the annoyances are enough to keep me on GNOME. Especially
> with Beryl available to handle the eye candy (which handles eye candy
> better than KDE anyway).
Well, if that's the stuff based upon compiz, that represents
evil incarnate to me. UI's filled with transparency are just a
headache waiting to happen. They're trade show demo ware that
are worse than the command line in practice for active use. The
big worry here should be that if too many people start using it,
both KDE and Gnome will downshift and start racing to catch up
with that shit and it'll get even worse.
> What another user has setup is rather meaningless, isn't it?
It all depends upon how often you use another system other than
your main one. I get asked a lot to help out others with their
systems, and having to learn which of the 300 possible ways the
menu system might be working each time is a pain in the ass. If
you sit in a troll-hole playing video games 24x7 all by
yourself, I'm sure it's different.
>> Yes, OS X has some goofisms too. None are
>> perfect, but why on earth Linux developers would take design
>> cues from Windows, that's horrific.
>
> Because that's what people expect, and undoubtedly what the developers
> themselves are most comfortable with. It's not like they adhere to them
> rigorously or anything. There are many differences between Windows and
> GNOME and KDE.
Exactly. They're catering to what GUIs looked like 10 years
ago, and not advancing things at all. (and no, I don't mean
'advancing' the way Microsoft means it: you'll need to buy new
hardware to run this shit)
Lives are complicated already, the UI should be almost
invisible, out of your way, not the focus of all your attention.
>>> I find OS X to be limiting and
>>> cumbersome. It's difficult to make it work like I want it, and I'm
>>> essentially limited to the whatever methods Apple gives me.
>>
>> No, you're not. You're just as free to write code, or get code,
>> or get apps for it as you are for Linux.
>
> Except the already existing apps are usually expensive ($20 for a haxie
> is too much),
I haven't bought any haxies. Everything I run is either freely
available, Photoshop, Transmit or Hogwasher. (the only three
commercial programs I have purchased for the Mac, iirc). Oh
wait, technically there was some software bundled with the
spyder2pro, so you might want to count that.
> and developing a new app to do what I need usually takes
> more time (or is too far beyond my skills) than it does to roll over to
> the Linux box and make an existing tool do the job.
I've yet to find a tool on Linux I need that I can't do on OS X.
If I had, I might feel differently.
>> You're more likely to
>> find a lot of productivity enhancements like Quicksilver,
>
> I've used it, and liked it, but KDE and GNOME both have similar
> applications available. IIRC, katapult is actually included in KDE 3.5.
If I were looking to replicate what I can do on OS X under
Linux, that'd be good to know. I've moved on though. Until
something drastic happens on Linux, something more important
than the next release of KDE or Gnome, but some quantum change
in the overall platform, independent of distro, I'm done with it
apart from some ssh and typing make from the command line.
>> Automator,
>
> I don't really see the attraction. Why not just write a script? Why do
> you need the pretentious UI in front of it? It's useful for people who
> won't make scripts otherwise, I suppose.
Don't play that card. You can't write a script on a Linux box
to do some of the things possible with Automator. If you want
to write a shell script on OS X, you don't need Automator. You
need vi and a $ prompt.
>> Transmit3,
>
> It's an ftp client. And it's not free. I refuse to pay for something as
> trivial as an ftp client.
I would have thought that too until I actually tried it out
after seeing a demo in a podcast. Yes, you can get buy without
it, use the command line, or say cyberduck. But transmit is
like what it /should/ be like, and it's worth the modest price
to me. If I didn't use it very often, I'd feel differently
>> Image Tricks,
>
> I, personally, don't do much with images at all. Let alone have a
> substantial need to transform them. And why couldn't I just use the GIMP
> to do it?
Because the gimp is like using a chainsaw to carve a xmas
turkey. Yeah, it's possible, but nowhere near the right tool
for the job.
>> URLWell,
>
> Couldn't I just put bookmarks in my web browser?
You could, but I often use a lot of different web browsers, some
that are easy to sync back and forth, and others that are not.
having a single common place to drop urls independent of app is
a cool idea and I really like it.
>> Menushade,
>
> This just darkens the menu bar. I suppose it's useful as a fix for the
> problem, but I'm wondering how this does anything but illustrate my
> point. Why isn't the color of the menu bar user configurable from the
> get-go?
Sure, it would be nice, I just found it yesterday and started
messing with it, but I was trying to be honest, not pick just
those that made the best logical arguments.
>> Sidenote,
>
> Looks like a Tomboy clone.
No, tomboy looks like a half-baked (v0.5) attempt at a post-it
note clone. Sidenote is completely out of the way and works
really, really well. As you would expect on a Mac. :-)
>> and on and on, especially if you include
>> the more useful of the dashboard widgets and leave out the
>> thousands of silly, worthless ones from the community.
>
> Sure, all these things are available, but it seems like a lot of effort
> to go out and find them (assuming, of course, that there is an app that
> does what you need).
Not any effort at all really. Gradually accumulated over time,
mostly because I heard about them and tried them out, some kept,
some deleted, over 2 years or so. Once you know what they are,
putting them on the next mac is easy.
> Why not just stick with the platform that offers me
> more options from the beginning?
5000 options, 12 of them good, isn't better than 50 options, 48
of them good, imo. 127 menus, each with a variable number of
items, covering every corner case in the universe may look good
on a feature checklist, but isn't better in actual use. I don't
need to configure every single variable in every single program
on the system. I want to pick a tool for a product category
where the developer picked reasonable, consistent settings that
work for me. I don't need 100 different window mangers, or
shells, or scripting languages, or mouse cursors, or icon sets.
I just need one of each that work well and stay out of the way
of real work. I've been down that path, 1000 times, and it was
a waste of time, every time.
> Even with all these, there are many
> aspects of the OS X UI that just cannot be changed.
that's true. It's also not important. Tweaking the UI is for
people that are bored and no real work to do. It doesn't
matter.
> For example, I might
> want to replace the dock with something like a start menu and taskbar.
> How do you do this? I've never run across a free or very inexpensive
> method of doing this.
Turn off the dock and use Quicksilver to launch apps. :-) The
dock isn't even necessary.
>> Not to mention zero chance of getting Photoshop working (no,
>> Gimp is not remotely equivalent),
>
> I'm assuming you don't consider running Photoshop in Crossover Office to
> be running Photoshop?
I've heard it's possible, I haven't tried, last I heard
crossover office cost money too, and why bother running in an
unsupported config when it works flawlessly on the mac. Last I
checked, I can't take CS2 for the PPC and run it on crossover
office anyway.
>> a Spyder2 Pro or equivalent to
>> get your color photo chain sync'd up and printing accurately.
>
> Again, I don't deal with photography, so it's never come up for me. I
> don't think that most people would need or care about this.
I didn't buy a computer for most people, I bought it for me. I
don't need or want a box designed for the least common
denominator.
>> Something like RapidWeaver to put together a really great
>> looking web site that is standards compliant in a day or less.
>
> Why aren't people making such sites with OS X, then?
They are.
> The scarcity of
> really great looking websites out there would indicate that it's either
> too expensive, too difficult to use, or it's not actually a tool for
> creating really great looking websites.
No, this is just another form of the McDonald's argument. Just
beacause there are 6.023x10**23 shitty websites out there
doesn't mean that some of them aren't being done right.
> Just because you offer a
> powerful WYSIWYG 'website creation suite' doesn't mean it's going to
> result in really good looking websites. If you know what you're doing,
> you can use pretty much any WYSIWYG editor to achieve the same result.
That's true, but that's not what I said.
>> Yes, there are lots of great little utilities for Linux. 90% of
>> which are aimed at developers (which I appreciate, but most
>> people do not), and the rest are aimed at what? Other
>> pseudo-geeks like bloggers, mp3 rippers, and college scientist
>> working on research papers in LaTeX.
>
> Or regular people.
LOL. I've tried that experiment. I've had people that aren't
into computers try Linux. Handed them a live-CD, for various
different distributions. All of them hand it back to me a bit
later, none of them kept it on a system. It's not ready for the
masses. Don't get me wrong, Linux is great for a particular and
previously almost ignored chunk of the market, but it's nowhere
/near/ ready to replace the primary OS for most desktop users.
> Katapult, for example. I named a few other Linux
> alternatives to apps you mentioned if they're something I've found a
> reason to look for.
Yes, if I was looking for a way to replicate most of the OS X
functionality on Linux for some reason, that'd be real helpful.
But, I'm not.
>>>> You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
>>>> when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
>>>> check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
>>>> ass.
>>> Because, you know, beta software never fails.
>>
>> Sure it does. So does their production code. With SP1 added
>> on. With SP2 added on. With all the updates added on. I have
>> in my hand a floppy with a single .exe file on it called
>> crash.exe, which I can take to /any/ windows box on the planet
>> and immediately blue screen it, run from the command line, with
>> or without admin privileges. It's great for testing hardware
>> watchdog timers.
>
> So you've got a script that attacks a bug in Windows.
You must be confused about what a script is. The info above
should have made it clear it's not a script.
> Is this surprising?
No.
> Do you think that such a thing would be impossible to develop for OS X?
I've yet to hear of any way to attack OS X from the command line
without superuser privs. Have you?
>>> Really, have you ever seen
>>> a Microsoft-configured Windows XP box crash during a presentation? The
>>> closest I've seen is an Media Center failure when they were
>>> demonstrating an early beta.
>>
>> Yes, I have. I've seen it happen in Building 33 in Redmond, in
>> front of veeps and CEO's from multiple companies. Fortunately,
>> no press were around to take pictures of the screen or record
>> the looks on the faces of them when it happened.
>
> Or, apparently, cell phone cameras.
Everyone in the room were execs under NDA. It wasn't going to
leak. It was in none of their interests for it to leak anyway.
You asked for an example, and I gave one. Sorry it wasn't
recorded for prosperity.
>> Yeah, it happened to Jobs in the keynote. Of course, Jobs did a
>> fantastic job of covering it, whereas Gates stands there
>> giggling, blushing and looking like someone just shoved a major
>> league baseball bat up his ass.
>
> How does the charisma of the CEO of a company impact the reliability of
> the product?
You ask that seriously? Come on. Have you ever seen how the
behavior of a manager in any business environment dramatically
impacts the behavior and productivity of those working under
them? You must be joking. Especially given the famousness of
Jobs' persona in particular for motivating (and sometimes
pissing off) his people over the years.
>>> The price has gone down, but the quality has gone up.
>>
>> No, it hasn't. I've been in the industry since the 80s, and
>> that's complete bullshit. Some of the components (especially
>> the peripherals) have higher MTBF, sure. The design quality,
>> signal integrity, and even simple things like adherence to
>> chipset design guidelines has completely gone to hell. You
>> can't make a formula 1 race car by taking a bunch of premium
>> brack pads, pistons, camshafts and carbon fibre, and duct taping
>> it all together and slapping a coat of Sears house paint on it.
>> Hard drives are much more reliable than they used to be, and
>> that is almost single-handedly responsible for the false
>> perception that /systems/ are more reliable and better today.
>> Nothing could be further from the truth.
>
> The system *not failing* due to improvements in a commonly error prone
> component would, generally, mean that the system as a whole is more
> reliable.
In isolation, if it were the only real problem, sure. Sadly,
that's not the case in the PC business.
> If 4 out of five system failures were caused by hard drive
> problems, then wouldn't improving the reliability of the hard drive
> improve the reliability of the whole system?
Yes. That's not the case here.
>> It's not. Having millions of people writing for a platform with
>> 90% of the market doesn't mean it's easy, it means it's in high
>> demand. In fact, there are about 100X more people writing
>> drivers for windows today than there are qualified to be writing
>> drivers for windows today.
>
> Bad drivers are better than no drivers. Not much better, but still better.
No, they are not. If you insist upon believing that, then it's
pointless to argue the point further. What consumers should
insist upon is good, working drivers, or return of the product
for a refund. Allowing that shit to go unpunished is the reason
for the sorry state of affairs in the market today.
> So, what makes Nvidia or ATI's unified drivers so bad (modern ones, not
> historic)?
What makes the Nvidia driver for my SLI-capable graphics card
for Windows pop up a silly ass warning message on /every/ boot
cycle telling me that the dual-adapter SLI configuration is no
longer valid, even though I've never had but one installed, and
the motherboard it's plugged into doesn't even support two of
them? I dunno. I've downloaded every update, I've followed
every instruction in the pigeon-english instruction manual to
the letter, I've gone through every configuration option and
erified it is configured for a single-card config, but it does
it every time. It doesn't seem to hurt anything, but there
isn't any way to shut it the hell up. I'm past caring.
> I'm not too up on network controller drivers,
> since my main concern there is Linux compatibility (I.E what is included
> in the kernel and well supported).
I spent years in the server market, beating the living hell out
network adapters and disk controllers, so my expectations are
higher than that. Data integrity being the number one thing to
get right, followed by stability and performance.
>>> Or you actually do research before buying a product. I know that it's a
>>> lot to expect someone to spend 15 minutes reading reviews and user
>>> commentary for a product, but it really does improve the overall
>>> experience.
>>
>> No question. Point is, you shouldn't even have to wonder.
>> After all, EVERY ONE OF THEM wears the PURCHASED Microsoft "WHQL
>> Certified" logo, which is worth, exactly nothing, because it
>> means jack shit.
>
> Macs aren't magically immune to bad drivers you know. You can add bad
> Taiwanese hardware to a PowerMac just as easily as you can any other
> tower. Assuming there's a bad Taiwanese driver written for OS X--there
> might not be.
I don't need to add hardware, and certainly not cheap ass
hardware. I've plugged in a Logitech laser mouse, a lexar
firewire compact flash reader, a canon flatbed scanner a nikon
slide scanner, an external firewire hard drive for backups,
additional memory, a second internal hard drive, two Dell 2405
flat panels and an Epson pro photo printer. All of them work
great, some required no driver at all, and haven't caused any
problems. If I had gone down to fry's and bought some freaky
I/O card out of the firesale bin, things might have been
different. I see no reason to do that though. I'm not looking
for the lowest possible price, barely freaking functional
system. I'm not convinced everything on that list will even
work on Linux, and if it did, I'm sure the support would be
suspect, at best. More importantly, I don't need to worry about
it.
>> Siig is one of the very few I/O device vendors that actually
>> puts out decent adapters and peripherals for low cost points.
>> Almost everything else is shit, particularly if you actually try
>> and stress test it, instead of using it in the most minimally
>> stressful way you can think of.
>
> IMO, if it's reliable for what you're doing, it's reliable enough to
> buy. Stress testing seems pointless on a regular desktop box. 'Decent'
> would generally mean 'good enough for what you're doing'.
Provided that you understand that when you get that mysterious
lockup, or blue screen, or data corruption, or other problem
that happens "every once in a while, but I don't know why",
that's the cost of not having rigorously tested and properly
implemented hardware. If you're willing to accept that once in
a while, when you copy a file from one drive to another, they
won't be identical when you're finished, and you won't know
about it right away, that's ok, cause you got a really good deal
on it, then fine. That's bullshit imo, and I don't want that
crap anywhere near me. More to the point, consumers accepting
that shit makes it harder and harder every year for me to buy
products that aren't that bad.
> I've actually done CPU and I/O load testing for >24 hours on this
> machine, which is rare, since I almost never bother with personal
> machines.
Just beating on the hard drive is not a stress test. Hitting it
with the right type of load, with well chosen request sizes, and
most importantly the correct data patterns with verification of
each transaction, while keeping everything flying as fast as
possible is needed to really do that. You might have been lucky
enough to be using one of the very few publicly available tools
that even attempt to do that. More likely, you just beat the
shit out of your hard drive for 24 hours, with no idea whether
it was actually robust or not.
> I was mainly wanting to see if I pushed the overclock too far.
> I figure if it will stay up for a day under constant load, it's good enough.
*sigh* And people wonder why substandard products are so hard
to avoid.
>> It took something like two weeks of all day work to assemble
>> that first computer from bags of components, not surface mount,
>> robot-assembled boards. And then a full day of testing it
>> before applying power with a meter and test probe points
>> (nothing found) and having it fire up and work perfectly. Over
>> 25 years later, that system still runs flawlessly, albeit at
>> dinosaur speeds by modern standards. Big deal. Very, very few
>> people could do that back then, and proportionally, about the
>> same number can do the "I built my own computer, ha ha ha" shit
>> you do today.
>
> It's not so much a 'haha' but more of a 'DIY builds are the best route'.
They're not the best route if you have particular application
needs not met on the resulting platform. They might be for you,
but that isn't a one size fits all answer. They might be ok for
/most/ people even, but that still isn't a universal answer.
> Even throwing Apple into the mix. You say PCs can't be stable and
> reliable--I say otherwise.
No, I said they couldn't be running Windows. With Linux, it is
very possible, but they don't do the same things as Windows
boxes do, so it's apples and oranges.
> They can be, but those aren't the machines
> you get out of margin-concious OEMs who are willing to shave two thirds
> of a cent off the cost of a component, even at the cost of reliability.
Thank Dell for that. They drove the entire market to Walmart
quality, and it's never coming back, unless people finally
realize that stability has value too, not just clock speeds and
video resolutions.
> Like the EPIA box I've got now. Great for SD video playback and web
> surfing. Nothing else, though.
Good to know Next time I want a computer to play SD video and
browse the web, I'll buy one. (cough)
> Building Gentoo for that is a painful experience
But hey, linux is ready for the masses, right? :-)
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <znu-256349.2...@individual.net>):
> In article <0001HW.C1CAF62A...@news.verizon.net>,
> Lefty Bigfoot <nu...@busyness.info> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> Given the speed shown, I probably wouldn't use it for web
>> browsing (although with wifi, I wonder if I could use a local
>> wireless router when available, and the cell side only when
>> needed
>
> Yes: http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/wireless.html
Awesome. An actual working home PDA that doubles as an email
client and a cell phone. Perfect. I'll order one day one.
John Slade
"Lefty Bigfoot" <nu...@busyness.info> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C1CA30FE...@news.verizon.net...
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>
> announcement and eat those words. We'll be waiting, but not
> holding our breath.
>
>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>
> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
What exactly is "missing" form Windows? I've been using Windows for
decades and I haven't found anything missing. Maybe you have lost some files
due to sector errors.
John
John Slade
"Sandman" <m...@sandman.net> wrote in message
news:mr-93E72D.14...@News.Individual.NET...
> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>
Apple knows that OS X will never be anything more then a novelty in the
desktop computing world and a niche OS for a few developers. OS X will be
used in some form in Apple's new PDA-Web Browser-Celphone-MP3 device. Apple
dropped the "computer" form it's name because they are now a different kind
of company. Most of their money will be coming from the iPod and iTunes.
They knew this when the decided to start making PCs and dumping the Mac.
John
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <fyrph.19484$yC5....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>):
>
> "Lefty Bigfoot" <nu...@busyness.info> wrote in message
> news:0001HW.C1CA30FE...@news.verizon.net...
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>
>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>
>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>>
>>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>>
>> LOL. Be sure and stop back in after the Leopard launch
>> announcement and eat those words. We'll be waiting, but not
>> holding our breath.
>>
>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>>
>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>
> What exactly is "missing" form Windows?
Stability and security.
QED.
John Slade
"Chris Clement" <chris....@mac.com> wrote in message
news:1168437984.0...@77g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...
>
> Dan Johnson wrote:
>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>
>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>>
>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>>
>> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> XP' in a few short years.
>>
>> Windows XP, and that's no small accomplishment.
>>
>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>>
>> much more, but enough to mention:
>>
>> The Quartz Compositor looked good- it eliminated
>> visible redraws, but there was more to it. It
>> moved the actual window rendering out of the
>> shared process, so when that code crashed, it
>> did not take down the desktop.
>>
>> X-Windows promised, but could not deliver.
>>
>> it demonstrated that OO APIs were superior to
>> the C kind.
>>
>> deliver the same experience; it's only now with
>> Java-like technologies that they can compete.
>>
>> of course; where other OS vendors badmouth
>> Microsoft but deliver junk, Apple came
>> tantalizingly close to deliving the best desktop
>> consumer OS in the world.
>>
>> And now... well, "cut down in its prime" would
>> not be too strong. Had Apple focused on their
>> Macs, who knows what might have been?
>
Yea, focused on making a shitload of money from software to video game
consoles. Do you know how much money Microsoft makes? Microsoft makes almost
ten times what Apple makes in a year.
John
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <2Erph.19485$yC5....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>):
I'm still waiting for Dell to drop the Dimension, Inspiron,
OptiPlex, Precision and PowerEdge products from their website
and print ads, because they dropped "computer" from their name
several years ago. Why hasn't this happened yet?
ZnU
Lefty Bigfoot <nu...@busyness.info> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:34:29 -0600, ZnU wrote
> (in article <znu-256349.2...@individual.net>):
>
> > In article <0001HW.C1CAF62A...@news.verizon.net>,
> > Lefty Bigfoot <nu...@busyness.info> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> Given the speed shown, I probably wouldn't use it for web
> >> browsing (although with wifi, I wonder if I could use a local
> >> wireless router when available, and the cell side only when
> >> needed
> >
> > Yes: http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/wireless.html
>
> Awesome. An actual working home PDA that doubles as an email
> client and a cell phone. Perfect. I'll order one day one.
What would be really neat is if the phone could switch to VoIP when
Wi-Fi was available, but they could probably never talk Cingular into
letting them do that.
Snit
fyrph.19484$yC5....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net on 1/11/07 7:09 AM:
>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>
> What exactly is "missing" form Windows? I've been using Windows for
> decades and I haven't found anything missing. Maybe you have lost some files
> due to sector errors.
Just a few things Windows lacks:
* Applescript or anything like it
* Automator or anything like it
* Professional color selection tools
* Consistency
* Font management
* Labels
* Private browsing
* Saved status notification
* Advanced screen capture options
* Spring loaded folders
* Startup and shutdown scheduling
Sure, you can add some of those to Windows... but why does it lack them in
the first place?
--
€ Different viruses are still different even if in the same "family"
€ Dreamweaver and GoLive are professional web development applications
€ Dreamweaver, being the #1 pro web design tool, is used by many pros
Snit
Dumped the Mac? Where have you been? The Mac is doing very well... from
what Jobs said over half the Macs sold are to new users. That is
impressive.
--
€ There is no known malware that attacks OS X in the wild
€ There are two general types of PCs: Macs and PCs (odd naming conventions!)
€ Mac OS X 10.x.x is a version of Mac OS
Mitch
<daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> > Jeez, where were you?
> > I thought people were very excited about what they were shown, and
> > wondering about what else would be there. Certainly as much as previous
> > releases.
>
> Well, there are always fanboys. But certainly the
> lameness of that demo was remarked upon at the
> time.
Yes, we always have to ignore the fanboy responses, as fawning is
always meaningless.
The difference is that the Leopard presentation was not a survey of all
new things, but a selection of new things. I thought everyone had
noticed that -- it was never meatn to be complete, and what it showed
was very decent. If you take it as all of the new features, no wonder
you would be disappointed.
> >> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> >> OS X development that we had seen is over.
> > That prediction is coming a bit early, isn't it?
> > Or are you just anxious to be a nay-sayer?
>
> That's "troll" to you, bub! :D
Oh, if troll, then never mind.
> >> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
> >> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
> >> XP' in a few short years.
> > Both statements nonsense. OS X has always been quite usable, even
> > excellent, and it has NEVER been lower than _magnitudes_ better than
> > Windows.
>
> OS X 10.0 was bad enough Apple wouldn't
> ship it as the default OS.
That's just silly. It was too early to expect customers to have any OS
X applications, or to expect acceptance, or to push them into it. Apple
doesn't have any reason to push them, because they had TWO very
practical OS choices.
Every Mac user I knew wanted to choose his own time to switch, and most
chose to do it well after getting new hardware. It was a GREAT move by
Apple. Setting OS X as the default may have seemed pushy and was
definitely unnecessary.
Contrast that to Windows, which never gave anyone a choice, even when
they made huge changes in the OS or hardware.
John Slade
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:09:15 -0600, John Slade wrote
> (in article <fyrph.19484$yC5....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>):
>
>>
>> "Lefty Bigfoot" <nu...@busyness.info> wrote in message
>> news:0001HW.C1CA30FE...@news.verizon.net...
>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:34:17 -0600, Dan Johnson wrote
>>> (in article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>):
>>>
>>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>>
>>> Let's see, OS X is the foundation of this new "not a computer"
>>> iPhone device, and although not disclosed, I'd bet a
>>> considerable sum it's inside the apple-TV as well. But hey,
>>> what's good fud if you pay attention to such things?
>>>
>>>> I guess we can see why the Leopard demo months ago
>>>> was so dissappointing; Apple's efforts are going elsewhere.
>>>
>>> LOL. Be sure and stop back in after the Leopard launch
>>> announcement and eat those words. We'll be waiting, but not
>>> holding our breath.
>>>
>>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>>>
>>> The need for breakneck development is over. Unlike Windows,
>>> there is nothing really fundamentally missing from OS X.
>>
>> What exactly is "missing" form Windows?
>
> Stability and security.
That's funny I haven't had problems with stability or security.
John
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
John Slade
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:15:26 -0600, John Slade wrote
> (in article <2Erph.19485$yC5....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>):
>
>>
>> "Sandman" <m...@sandman.net> wrote in message
>> news:mr-93E72D.14...@News.Individual.NET...
>>> In article <12q9jpq...@news.supernews.com>,
>>> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems,
>>>> the recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc"
>>>> has made their shift away from desktop computers official.
>>>
>>> Nopes.
>>
>> Apple knows that OS X will never be anything more then a novelty in
>> the
>> desktop computing world and a niche OS for a few developers. OS X will be
>> used in some form in Apple's new PDA-Web Browser-Celphone-MP3 device.
>> Apple
>> dropped the "computer" form it's name because they are now a different
>> kind
>> of company. Most of their money will be coming from the iPod and iTunes.
>> They knew this when the decided to start making PCs and dumping the Mac.
>
> I'm still waiting for Dell to drop the Dimension, Inspiron,
> OptiPlex, Precision and PowerEdge products from their website
> and print ads, because they dropped "computer" from their name
> several years ago. Why hasn't this happened yet?
Because Dell makes computers as it's main focus. Apple's main focus is
now on the iPod and other small devices. They know that OS X is not going to
catch on in a big way. That's why they're making PCs that can run Windows.
When they finally dump the computers, people who have them will realize they
have PCs they can use with OS X or Windows. Did you see any new computers
introduced at MacWorld?
Snit
45a68507$0$4886$8826...@free.teranews.com on 1/11/07 12:36 PM:
>> I'm still waiting for Dell to drop the Dimension, Inspiron,
>> OptiPlex, Precision and PowerEdge products from their website
>> and print ads, because they dropped "computer" from their name
>> several years ago. Why hasn't this happened yet?
>
> Because Dell makes computers as it's main focus. Apple's main focus is
> now on the iPod and other small devices. They know that OS X is not going to
> catch on in a big way. That's why they're making PCs that can run Windows.
> When they finally dump the computers, people who have them will realize they
> have PCs they can use with OS X or Windows. Did you see any new computers
> introduced at MacWorld?
No new computers were released - nor was the new OS. Jobs, however, made it
very clear right from the start that over the next few months such
announcements *would* be made.
Did you even watch the keynote?
--
€ Teaching is a "real job"
€ The path "~/users/username/library/widget" is not common on any OS
€ The term "all widgets" does not specify a specific subgroup of widgets
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <45a68507$0$4886$8826...@free.teranews.com>):
Are you just stupid, or do you not realize that Dell also
dropped the word "Computer" from their name a few years back?
> Apple's main focus is now on the iPod and other small devices.
That "focus" must be how they managed to transition an entire
product line including desktops, portables, minis and servers to
Intel (wide variety of boards and CPUs) in 7 months. That focus
on iPods. Yeah, that's the ticket.
> They know that OS X is not going to catch on in a big way.
Did you miss the part of the keynote where Jobs pointed out that
more than half of new Mac sales are to people that have never
owned a Mac before? Yeah, it's not catching on.
Do you have any clue how stupid you come off writing slop like
that?
Have you ordered your AFDB yet?
> That's why they're making PCs that can run Windows.
No, using Intel processors allows them to easily make the move a
reasonable jump with minimal shock for switchers. I don't know
of anyone that bought a mac so they could run Windows on it.
I'm still waiting for one of them to show up in the wild too.
> When they finally dump the computers, people who have them will realize they
> have PCs they can use with OS X or Windows.
Like they don't know that already? What passes for logic in
that head of yours?
> Did you see any new computers introduced at MacWorld?
No, I saw a staggering array of new computers all introduced
last year, with speed bumps coming along as expected to keep up
with Intel's roadmap. I would expect the 10.5 launch to be a
possible venue for additional hardware announcements, but don't
see any gaping hole in the product line right now for them to
fill.
ZnU
"John Slade" <hitm...@pacbell.net> wrote:
This is such utter nonsense. Did people claim Sony would no longer care
about making broadcast cameras when the PlayStation became a big hit?
Many large companies play in different industries -- in some cases
industries which have vastly less in common than the industries Apple
plays in.
And as I've pointed out a half dozen times (with no response from any
of the trolls making your inane argument), Apple itself does not appear
to see much of a distinction between the consumer electronics market
and the personal computer market. Remember that Jobs saw the original
Mac not as a computer, but as a "personal information appliance". Wait
five years. The whole industry is moving in this direction.
[snip]
Autymn D. C.
> UI, it just works. If I could change just one thing about the
> GUI, I would make it where you could duplicate the menu bar
> across both monitors (not stretch it, but have two copies).
> Having to mouse over 4000 pixels to get to the file menu is sort
> of annoying, I don't think people in Apple GUI design spent a
> lot of time using it with multi-monitor setups. (XP has similar
UthFK: con.-F1 and con.-F4
> > Until Expose, using
> > applications with multiple windows on OS X was downright painful.
>
> I dunno, it was already there before I bought a Mac, but
> frankly, I never use it. with as much real estate as I have,
> and knowing how to use alt-tab, I never hit F9 or whatever it is
> anyway, unless I just want to play with it (it is funny
> looking).
com.-` and con.-F4
> It didn't used to do that. Then Gnome came along, looking all
use
-Aut
Autymn D. C.
> It isn't? That's like claiming that it's an impressive feat to be faster
> than a 90-year-old shambling about in his walker.
Glue is fast; rockets are swift; humans are dolts; folks are nescient.
> > Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
> > which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
> > geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
> > pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>
> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
OS X and XP are OSes. It's Aqua and Luna that are pretty, and both(?)
hav window utilitities with prettier interfaces.
> "It's time" was back in 1989. Most platforms already make extensive use
> of OO development principles.
> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
its, you illiterate shithead
-Aut
Dan Johnson
news:rnfph.691$v8....@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>>> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>>
>
> A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
> yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
> techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
> backend and composition manager.
This is, as I understand it, Quartz Extreme for X-Windows;
it hardware accelerates window compositing, which,
given X-Windows lack of device independence, is
even handier for them than for Apple.
But it's not Quartz, which Apple has shipped. It's not
WPF, which MS has shipped.
And it depends on working OpenGL, which is
a bit of an issue on Linux today. The 3D support
requires binary drivers, which aren't open source;
because this is legally doubtful, many distirbutions
won't ship this.
> In less than two years. Apple is still trying to get their version of this
> in a usable state.
Quartz Extreme was worked quite well since its
introduction, years ago now.
You may be thinking of Quartz 2D Extreme; but
XGL does not offer that kind of functionality.
> And they don't even have any plans for really supporting vector graphics
> in the UI--GNOME and KDE have steadily been adding support for this over
> the past few years. KDE 4 is supposed to be including a fully vector-based
> theme as the default.
This is just SVG, isn't it?
> If you expand the scope to the time when OS X was released... well, just
> compare a current XGL demonstration video to a screenshot of pre-2.0
> GNOME.
Sexy demos are lots of fun, but they aren't products.
[snip]
>> Others were not so fond of it then; and it of course
>> it started with 10.0.
>
> 10.1 was released rather quickly. 10.0 was really more like an extended
> public beta test than a real release.
OS X has progressed a lot since 10.0.
[snip]
>>> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
>>> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
>>
>> I've tried recent live CDs of both of these;
>
> LiveLinux distros do not do the platform justice. Especially if you're
> playing around with a distribution as ugly as Ubuntu is OOTB.
I suppose you are trying to say that an interested party
could build pretty software on these platforms, but
they are ugly by default.
That's true, but it's rather trivial.
>> they aren't nearly as pretty as OS X. They aren't
>> even as pretty as Windows XP.
>
> That's because you're using a LiveLinux distribution. They *can't* turn on
> all the bells and whistles.
It seemed to me that they had overly noisy UI as it
was!
> The goal of just about every LiveLinux distribution is extreme
> compatibility and a portable work environment. You don't get high-end
> graphics and a 'pretty' UI out of that. Even Kororaa doesn't really do
> this well.
How should one discover how pretty Linux "really is",
then?
[snip]
>>> Are you going to claim that Xorg dies if an application does? If, so I
>>> would suggest that you spend a bit more time using it.
>>
>> Other way round. If an X server dies, all the apps
>> go with it.
>
> And if the WindowServer dies, so do all the apps depending on it (I.E
> everything being displayed). That's the proper handling of child
> processes. Fortunately for Mac users, WindowServer is almost as stable as
> Xorg.
I'm sorry to hear that this is so; the architecture is capable of
more: the WindowServer keeps little state, so it can be restarted
without taking down applications. Vista is supposed to do
this, and I'm surprised that OS X does not.
But even without that, the Quartz architecture keeps a lot
of very complex code out of that shared process; that can
only improve stability.
>> Putting rendering code in the applicaiton means that
>> if it faults, other apps do not go down with it. Given
>> the complexity of this code, that's very desirable.
>
> A) A application dying in Xorg will not take down other applications, save
> for the exception of severe bugs or possibly the failure of an application
> that another application depends on without proper handling by the
> dependent application (which can occur on *any* platform, including OS X).
Ah, but on OS X, a rendering engine fault occurs in
the application process. On X-Windows, it occurs in
a shared process.
[snip]
>> That's sort-of true. It's taken a long time to build
>> OO platforms that work as well as Cocoa.
>
> They've been around for years now. And keep in mind that 'Cocoa' (in its
> various implementations) isn't exactly well suited to a wide range of
> tasks. It's a rather high level approach to programming.
You say that like it's a bad thing! :D
Sure, it's not like you can use Cocoa for everything,
but it's thing worth Eulogizing.
[snip]
>> COM is very successful as an interop technology, but
>> as an API delivery vehicle, it's not a match for Cocoa.
>
> That's because it's not an 'API delivery vehicle', and wasn't intended to
> be. It was designed to facilitate interprocess communication, and provide
> an object model. That's it. And you already admit that has been successful
> in doing so.
Well, that's so- but until recently, MS didn't have anything
but COM, so they used that as an API delivery vehicle.
Dan Johnson
news:znu-4D0F3B.1...@individual.net...
>> They've never been shy about demoing their next OS, and not just at
>> MacWorld. Something has changed.
>
> There's only room for so much in a Macworld keynote, and launching an
> entirely new platform, which is something that happens maybe twice a
> decade even at the pace Apple is moving, takes precedence over an
> evolutionary OS upgrade.
Do we know the iPhone is a platform? I thought it was
going to be closed, like the iPod.
It hardly seems an earthshaking product. A *good* one
perhaps- but that's not the same thing.
>> Further, have they ever added a major feature to OS X after its first
>> Steve-demo, but before the next version? I can't think of one.
>
> No, but this is a longer release cycle than before, and Jobs said
> explicitly at the first demo there were features which were still
> secret. And I'm pretty sure Jobs knew how that would be interpreted, so
> he probably wasn't talking about just a couple of trivial little
> things.
I think Leopard didn't show because Apple had nothing more
to show, and Apple knows how badly their exuses went
over last time.
Dan Johnson
> In article <12qaqmc...@news.supernews.com>,
> "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>> > This company right now is walking taller than it ever has.
>>
>> Yes, perhaps, but as a consumer electronics vendor.
>
> As I've pointed out repeatedly, Apple itself does see any distinction
> between the personal computer market and the consumer electronics
> market. Apple has, in fact, been trying to get rid of this distinction
> for over two decades. Remember that Jobs wanted people to think of the
> first Mac not as a computer, but as a "personal information appliance".
Yes, I think you may be on to something!
A personal computer differs from your typical consumer
electronics device- say an iPod- because it is a platform.
You don't use it for itself, but as a platform to run other
apps.
But maybe Apple does not see it that way. They ship a lot
of stuff "in the box"; many of the Macs biggest draws are
not things you need to buy separately.
Maybe we should think of the Mac as consumer electronics
device, and not a platform. Maybe Apple already does.
But if so, then Apple's move away from personal computers
has *already happened*. OS X and Windows aren't even
competitors in the view.
Thought provoking idea you have there, ZnU.
Dan Johnson
"Steve Hix" <se...@NOSPAMspeakeasy.netINVALID> wrote in message
news:sehix-BA3E84....@news.speakeasy.net...
> Dan, like several other unfortunates, mistakes a marker showing an
> expansion of focus with one showing contraction.
Oh, I should not say contraction. The world of
consumer electronics is very large. This shift of
focus may well lead to major growth for Apple.
Perhaps.
Dan Johnson
news:110120070836053974%mi...@hawaii.rr...
>> Well, there are always fanboys. But certainly the
>> lameness of that demo was remarked upon at the
>> time.
> Yes, we always have to ignore the fanboy responses, as fawning is
> always meaningless.
Pessimism is much better. :D
> The difference is that the Leopard presentation was not a survey of all
> new things, but a selection of new things. I thought everyone had
> noticed that -- it was never meatn to be complete, and what it showed
> was very decent. If you take it as all of the new features, no wonder
> you would be disappointed.
I do take take it as all new features- at least all the important
ones; That's what these demos have contained in the past.
I think the the "top secret so MS won't steal it" line is
risible.
[snip]
>> That's "troll" to you, bub! :D
> Oh, if troll, then never mind.
I don't, I assure you! :D
>> >> That is a little frustrating; OS X had gone from
>> >> 'unusable even for Mac fans' to 'almost as good as
>> >> XP' in a few short years.
>> > Both statements nonsense. OS X has always been quite usable, even
>> > excellent, and it has NEVER been lower than _magnitudes_ better than
>> > Windows.
>>
>> OS X 10.0 was bad enough Apple wouldn't
>> ship it as the default OS.
> That's just silly. It was too early to expect customers to have any OS
> X applications, or to expect acceptance, or to push them into it. Apple
> doesn't have any reason to push them, because they had TWO very
> practical OS choices.
Apple had every reasons to try to shift their customers
to OS X; they were very explicitly that they had no
intention of carrying on with OS 9.
> Every Mac user I knew wanted to choose his own time to switch, and most
> chose to do it well after getting new hardware. It was a GREAT move by
> Apple. Setting OS X as the default may have seemed pushy and was
> definitely unnecessary.
Apple took the plunge as soon as they possibly could.
10.1 was pretty weak itself, after all, but they did ship that
installed by default.
*Today*, however, OS X is actually pretty good. It's
come a long way.
> Contrast that to Windows, which never gave anyone a choice, even when
> they made huge changes in the OS or hardware.
Windows has been remarkably gentle about transitions,
as I have observed before. Microsoft was shipping
Win95 and WinNT side-by-side for years.
TheLetterK
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:43:11 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
> (in article <afjph.707$v8...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>):
>
> First, thank to you for an interesting discussion without
> flamage, with I thought was extinct in CSMA...
>
>> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:42:46 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
>>> (in article <yReph.112$t6...@bignews8.bellsouth.net>):
>>>
>>> A DVD, or H.264 content either. And that's on a lowly PowerPC
>>> system. The Intel mac I have only has a 1440x900 display, but
>>> it's also smoking fast.
>> I'm not talking about DVD quality video. My *EPIA box* can do software
>> decoding of DVD video. That's a 1ghz *C3*, which is weaker than even a
>> Celeron. High quality H.264 video will bring even high-end Macs to a
>> screeching halt due to the lack of hardware support.
>
> I'm talking about H.264 video downloaded from various web
> sources, for example the Apple website. If there's some source
> for "uber H.264" that you care to point out,
There isn't. No one releases H.264 video at really high quality, because
there aren't many systems that can play it. Certainly not without
dedicated hardware support. Apple's HD trailers and such aren't even close.
> I'll be happy to
> try it out on both systems and report back the results.
Got some uncompressed video laying around? You can encode your own
clips, though it will take awhile. And don't use Apple's encoder either.
Apple's encoder doesn't even support High Profile, let alone Hi10P.
Go with x264 if you don't have one of the good commercial ones. Crank up
the settings and try to play it on your Mac. Then take it over to a
Windows box with a hardware decoder. A Geforce 6 or later GPU will
hardware accelerate H.264 (Radeon X1000 or later for ATI) with the
proper software. PowerDVD with the H.264 and AAC packs will do it.
That, and the increase in quality in HTPCs themselves. Oh, and the worse
quality of every other remotely consumer-level DVR solution on the market.
It's better than anything you're going to get without dropping >$10,000.
Most people would consider that completely unreasonable. And your
complaints here are rather groundless. A good HTPC will handle that a
hell of a lot better than 95% of the dedicated DVD players out there,
and will eventually handle HD-DVD better as well. It's a *lot* more
reasonable priced as well.
> and it isn't likely to ever meet up
> to premium content quality, unless Hollywood succeeds in
> convincing people that they shouldn't even want that. The whole
> video over the internet to your iPod or HTPC thing plays right
> into their hands, namely giving them excuse to /sell/ you
> substandard, downscaled video and audio quality and having you
> like it, because it took less time to download it from iTunes.
That's *why* HD-DVD and DVD are still going to be around. But frankly, I
don't watch movies to see what amazing video quality they show. I watch
(What few I watch) because I'm interested in whatever it's about. If I
can get said content faster, for less money, I'm all for it. Especially
since I won't have to keep a huge stack of DVDs in the corner and
shuffle through them when I need it.
> If you listen to all your music on a pair of earbuds, fine then,
> but for those that listen to music to hear the music, instead of
> to keep their ADHD (supposedly) infected heads entertained at
> work or in the car, don't quite see it that way.
How does this have anything to do with the discussion? Again, are you
claiming that PCs cannot output video and audio of a higher quality than
current sources? There might be some very high quality DVD and HD-DVD
players that have higher quality, but those are completely out of the
question for the vast, vast majority of buyers. HTPCs, OTOH, offer at
least decent quality for much less.
>
>> It's certainly better than you'll get out of a set-top DVR. I definitely
>> wouldn't suggest that you could replace a good front-end with an HTPC.
>> That's not what they're supposed to replace (at least, I've never seen
>> one do so adequately).
>
> A realist. Most HTPC advocates will happily tell you that
> nothing can do better than a HTPC.
>
>> Among other things, people use them for
>> high-quality TV recording and timeshifting,
>
> Medium quality.
High-quality, for a DVR. Nothing a consumer would consider will handle
DVR better than a good HTPC. At least, not for quality. The video
quality won't be great compared to some other sources, but that's mainly
because the content itself isn't very high quality.
>
>> or for storing massive
>> libraries of recorded video without having to keep burning DVDs. There
>> are, however, other uses for them. You seem to be using a front
>> projection display, so extensive gaming would probably be a
>> non-consideration for you (unless you like changing lamps?),
>
> I thought I made it clear earlier that gaming wasn't a big
> factor for me. In fact, gaming is usually something that
> guarantees that people can never afford a system like the one I
> have here, unless you take up gaming after retirement. Just
> about everyone into gaming at a young age winds up being into
> gaming until they manage to accomplish nothing for their whole
> life, or some parental units have an intervention or something.
That is a misconception. Some people watch movies in their spare time,
others play video games. Is it more productive to sit and watch a movie
on that home theater system rather than play a game for the same amount
of time? If anything, the game actually has more benefits (improving
hand-eye coordination, keeping your brain more stimulated, etc).
> You don't spent 8 hours a day blasting pigs and/or sith lords in
> an online game and then manage to accomplish something useful at
> the same time.
No, you don't. But there's no reason you couldn't spend an hour or two
every other day blasting pigs and sith lords on the excellent home
theater system. There is a middle point between "No games" and "Games
are my 'job'". Though apparently there's decent money in running a WOW
sweatshop.
>
>> others enjoy playing PC games on extremely large displays.
>
> those getting money for the equipment from inheritance, trust
> funds or drug dealing maybe. :-)
Or people who would rather spend the three hours it takes to watch a
movie... playing a game. It's not like you *have* to spend 8 hours a day
playing games, if you're interested in it.
>
>> the upsampling ability of HTPCs make them more attractive than many
>> separate STBs attached to a video processor. It's certainly less
>> expensive to use an HTPC for upsampling than a dedicated video processor
>> (especially the one you're using!). The quality might not be as good,
>> but you're probably going to be limited by the display before you are
>> the quality of upsampling (on large displays anyway).
>
> Actually, that's the point of using a truly high-end video
> processor and front projection instead of a video card in a PC.
> It actually allows you take off-air or even VHS quality (ugh)
> content, and blow it up to very large sizes without it looking
> any worse than on a moderate sized TV set. Of course, that
> isn't the point, it's more about HD and DVD quality content
> being treated the same way.
That's generally what upsampling means. Video processors do it, and so
do HTPCs. The dedicated video processor (the good ones) are higher
quality, but the HTPC is more reasonably priced--especially when you
include the *other* functions it performs.
>
>> Also, it allows
>> consolidation of devices, so you don't need a rackmount--even if the
>> quality can be a bit lower for it.
>
> "Not needing" is a function of justifying cost or lack of square
> footage, not an advantage for someone wanting the best quality
> image and sound they can get.
Quality is not the *only* consideration. Getting medium quality video to
people with medium-quality setups is a very valuable and useful
function. And it's still better for people with expensive setups, if
they want to timeshift programming, because the quality is better than
you'll get from the alternatives.
>
>> Granted, I'm used to dealing with less extensive setups than yours--but
>> I still don't see how the HTPC's fundamental uses have changed. If you
>> want to record or timeshift TV programming and/or keep a DVD library on
>> hard disk, then you're hard pressed to beat an HTPC. Do you really like
>> digging through a pile of disks for a movie to watch?
>
> Arrakis DvD jukebox. I'm not sure they make it anymore, the
> HTPC "compress an entire DL DVD down to 650MB" crowd probably
> took that product out of the market.
I'm not suggesting you compress it that far. In fact, I'd suggest
putting at least 1TB in a good HTPC these days, given the low cost of
drive space. That would allow limited amounts of *uncompressed video*,
or at least compressed video of substantially higher quality. It's not
like you couldn't add more later, if you needed it.
>
>>> or driving a Crestron 10" touch screen flat panel control
>>> interface that handles lighting, masking curtains, source
>>> selection, pip with external security cameras, doorbell
>>> integration, telephone integration, HVAC control, and device
>>> specific control pages for all sources.
>> You could easily manage that with X10 interfaces on the devices and
>> Girder.
>
> X10. Now you're just cracking me up. The fact that people
> haven't figured out how to do home-grown home automation
> (lighting, security, HVAC, etc.) over something better than X10
> by now is a mystery.
It works, it's cheap, and people have been using it for decades so
there's a wide knowledge base. So why bother replacing it?
>
>> Girder might even allow finer control, though I couldn't tell
>> you for sure (I've only used it for controlling software by remote).
>
> Nothing based upon X10 is as reliable as a commercial grade
> automation system running over ethernet.
Feh! The one and only commercial grade automation system I've ever used
was incredibly unreliable. To the point where certain lights couldn't be
turned on when others were in use (which was unintentional--they were in
completely different and unrelated parts of the building). This was in a
multi-million dollar facility, and professionally installed.
>
>> If you're not a gadget person, you could actually use an HTPC to get you
>> back to a simple one handed remote. Though I would assume you are a
>> gadget person, given the setup you say you have.
>
> Not really. The whole point is, anyone in the family can use
> it, without knowing anything about any gadgets. You walk in,
> touch the display, up pops a menu of choices. Do you want to
> watch TV, a DVD movie, a photo slideshow, listen to music, what?
> Then say you select TV, then you are presented with a screen of
> icons with TV channel logos, like HBO, Showtime, ABC, NBC, ESPN,
> whatever..... you pick one. Done. Oh, you'd like to select
> one of 5 or 6 lighting setups, you'd like to turn the
> temperature up or down a degree or two, you'd like to check the
> front-yard camera to see if anyone is out there (on the panel,
> without disturbing the image you're watching), etc. Even when
> relatives visit that have never even used a Windows box for
> email, they can figure it out.
MCE really isn't that hard to use--though I prefer working with MythTV.
Allows much more in the way of customization. Of course, my own setup is
only SD.
> It's all gadgets underneath, but
> the end result is somebody that's never even had a VCR can use
> it without sitting through a training session or reading a
> manual. It's simple.
What's so complicated?
http://skytg24.blogs.com/sky_tg24_pianeta_internet/images/mce.jpg
http://www.mythtv.org/myththemes/visor/mainmenu.jpg
> Apple would absolutely slay people in
> that market if they were in it because that's exactly what they
> do with their products, but it's way too vertical for them.
>
>> Some more exotic HTPC setups involve motion detection for
>> starting/stopping the movie, and possibly providing different content
>> during the 'intermission' period. News, stock quotes, etc could be
>> displays while people are away from the display, or perhaps music could
>> be played.
>
> You have the masking curtains on the screen automatically adjust
> to fit the aspect ratio of the content being projected, like 4:3
> for a normal TV station, 16:9 for a HDTV channel, 2.35:1 for a
> true widescreen title, etc. You have the lights dim when the
> movie starts, and come up slightly when paused, or dim up more,
> but slowly when the movie is over. Basically, you can do
> anything you want to do, as long as the devices are externally
> controllable.
Yes, I know. I was pointing out HTPC-specific aspects. Unless your DVD
player aggregates RSS feeds?
Most people don't have any kind of ethernet run through their house, so
wireless is the most reasonable option for them. If it works well enough
that people don't notice stuttering in the video and sound (and
obviously poor quality), it's a good enough solution.
> but still, not much point in sending
> HD-DVD content to the kitchen, although there is a smallish
> HD-flat panel in there.
No, but there is great utility in being able to play back recorded TV
shows and such while you're working in the kitchen. Especially around
lunch time, since daytime TV is even more pathetic than usual.
> For pure audio, I use a dedicated NxM
> zone switching system with each room in the house as well as the
> back yard being a different 'zone' listening to different
> content, if desired.
>
>>> Yeah, I was one of those people that had seen pictures of them,
>>> but never used one for more than a few seconds in a store. When
>>> OS X came out and I read some of the more technical reviews, I
>>> bought a Mac.
>> The only reason I've even given OS X a try is because of Nextstep. I was
>> one of the rare people that actually liked OS 10.1 and found it
>> perfectly usable (to the point where I wouldn't even boot OS 9). I
>> seriously dislike the direction Apple has been taking it since then, and
>> have cut back my usage as a result.
>
> What have they done to "ruin it" for you?
Finder has become absolute shit, they've been moving away from
traditional utilities towards their own utilities, the themes have
gotten even worse (unified is certainly better than robovomit, but not
much), the interface has gotten much less consistent over the years (the
iLife quite alone adheres to at least two different UI paradigms), Apple
has started charging for a lot of things that were originally part of
the operating system, and they seem to be focusing entirely on adding a
bunch of shit that I don't care about, while changing or removing the
stuff I do care about (like deprecating cron in favor of launchd), and
I'm generally dissatisfied with their software release policy (I hate
paying for marginal upgrades that include a lot of stuff I don't want).
> How have they made it
> worse? I have used probably a dozen or more different flavors
> of Linux over the years, and no telling how many different
> versions of the major ones, including RedHat (later Fedora),
> SuSE, TurboLinux, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware, Gentoo, Knoppix,
> and a lot more I've happily forgotten. During that time, the
> only one that came close to getting it really right for the
> desktop (many of those were, and still are great for server
> systems run by geeks) was Ubuntu (My preference is to go
> straight for Kubuntu). Even so, it's a pain in the ass, because
> the apps I want to use aren't there.
That's basically how I feel about OS X. It's a PITA to use the software
I use on Windows and GNU/Linux, unless it happens to be in Fink (though
Fink version are often out of date).
> Sure, there are hacks to
> try to get some apps working, in insupported ways, that may or
> may not be reliable or perform as well, but it's not worth it.
> I tried for several years to find a Linux distribution that
> would work reliably on my AMD64 notebook with wireless (Broadcom
> based), no such luck.
There was a driver released for certain broadcom chipsets awhile
back--I'm waiting for it to get more stable before I move the iBook to
Ubuntu or Debian. There are plenty of wireless chipsets that *are*
supported by GNU/Linux. And it's not like OS X has teriffic support for
a wide variety of wireless chipsets.
> I finally gave up. It's sitting on a
> desk with a cable plugged into it running Ubuntu, because it's
> useless otherwise. That's not a "real-world" ready platform,
Because you're trying to put it on unsupported hardware? That's as silly
as the people bitching about how much OS X sucks because they tried to
get a hacked version of the DTK version of Tiger working, but didn't get
proper hardware support.
> because driver problems with Linux mean you can't do anything
> you need to do.
I can do everything I've tried to do, but I generally buy hardware with
Linux compatibility in mind.
> With Windows even the problem is less, but who
> the hell wants to run Windows if they don't have to? I've even
> thought about trying to get a bootleg version of OS X running on
> it, but hell, what'd be the point in all that hassle and being a
> criminal in the bargain?
I agree, what's the point in running OS X?
>
>> I'll eventually replace OS X on the
>> iBook with Ubuntu or Debian whenever the Airport Extreme driver gets
>> stable enough.
>
> When Apple pulls the plug on supporting newer OS X versions on
> PPC G5, I'll probably do something similar on the Powermac, or
> well, probably not actually. It works fine today, if I never
> get another update for it after 10.4.8 I can't complain. I'm
> sure the itch to have a MacPro will set in before it becomes an
> issue anyway.
>
>>> At first, I kept having to stop myself form
>>> trying to do things the Windows way. (Which, unfortunately is
>>> often also the Linux way, since they copied the horrible Windows
>>> UI in a lot of ways, copying the evil empire, a stupid
>>> decision).
>> It's copied as far as you want it to be. If you don't like how the
>> defaults are set (which are 'copied' from Windows because that's what
>> the new users are undoubtedly most comfortable with), change them.
>
> Well, having worked in lab environments for 20 years, where
> every system (out of hundreds) in the lab might potentially be
> different to 'fly' if customized, that's anathema. Having the
> same interface, be it Windows, KDE, Gnome, or OS X is preferable
> to every box, and every login being different. If kiddies need
> to "express themselves",
It's not about expressing yourself, it's about putting together a UI you
feel comfortable with. If everyone has different accounts, it's not an
issue.
> let them do it with the color of iPod
> they're wearing, or the music they listen to. Every computer in
> the universe having a completely different UI,just because it's
> possible, doesn't seem like a worthy goal to me.
Every *computer* doesn't. Every *account* on that computer does. If you
don't like the way suzie has her desktop, *don't configure yours that
way*. Maybe there should be an 'administration mode' that the desktop
can enter into, to temporarily revert it back to defaults.
>
>> KDE is extremely customizable in this respect (to the point where
>> you could implement an OS X clone, as many have done),
>
> Is there an easy way to test that out? I'd be curious to try it
> on one of my Linux boxes just to see how close it really gets.
> Link, or manual labor?
I'll post a second reply with instructions, along with screenshots. I'll
need to reboot, since I'm not familiar enough with KDE to do it by memory.
>
>> Hell, even GNOME can be made to act like OS X, if you're willing to hack
>> GTK to put a menu bar on the top of the screen.
>
> LOL. Gnome makes me ill. Probably because I started out with
> X11 on old UNIX boxes, and went through Motif and such before
> landing on KDE. Gnome is like "oh shit, how much can we make
> this look like XP out of the box so people will actually use us"
> to me.
I don't see it as particularly XP-like. It's way more spatially oriented
than XP. What was the last version you used?
> I suppose if I had been late to Linux, and Gnome had
> been the first window manager I had ever used for a UNIX system,
> /maybe/ I'd like it more, but I doubt it.
IMO, it's more consistent than KDE is. And it's less intrusive.
I've been trying to find it literally since Jaguar came out. This is a
dead simple network (a half dozen computers connected to a single
router, going out to a gateway--as simple as it gets), so it's not like
there could be a ton of issues that would cause this.
> I routinely
> copy stuff around (or just use remotely) between Linux, OS X and
> windows, as well as share photo and laser printers, with no
> worries.
And I can get access using other network services, it's *just* SMB that
causes the trouble.
I have to disagree with that. *Especially* with XGL, which (oddly
enough) actually seems to make the UI more responsive. Though that could
just be a perception caused by the kinesthetic feedback from wobbly
windows. It certainly feels more responsive, which is all that matters.
Though, IMO, even a plain GNOME desktop feels more responsive than
Windows does. And it certainly grinds to a halt less often.
> Instead of reducing away all the unnecessary stuff
> and leaving behind what's really needed to simplify it and get
> it out of your way, they've gone the opposite direction.
> Something like Fluxbox (or blackbox before it) seems more like
> the right direction, but certainly not for those raised on paper
> clips and animated music visualizations on-screen.
If you're going minimalist, the only choice that really makes sense is
an ultra-minimalist desktop like Ion or PWM. Though I disagree with your
assessment of the 'heavyweight' desktop environments.
>
>> Until Expose, using
>> applications with multiple windows on OS X was downright painful.
>
> I dunno, it was already there before I bought a Mac, but
> frankly, I never use it. with as much real estate as I have,
> and knowing how to use alt-tab, I never hit F9 or whatever it is
> anyway, unless I just want to play with it (it is funny
> looking).
>
>>> The single biggest reason
>>> IMO why Desktop Linux still isn't here. not to mention the wth
>>> too many desktop managers to choose from. Sometimes choice is
>>> good, and sometimes choice is destabilizing and does nothing
>>> besides introduce confusion.
>> There's only two major choices, and both are fairly compatible with one
>> another. The people who would even consider the alternatives are
>> undoubtedly savvy enough to handle the choices. Are you saying that two
>> choices are too many?
>
> I'm saying that both of the choices you are referring to (surely
> Gnome and KDE) are both too damn bloated and overbearing in
> their current incarnation. 5 years ago, KDE was pretty damn
> nice. They both went down the same road, just driving on
> different sides, and both heading to a place named Redmond, for
> no good reason.
How strange. Both seem less like Windows now than they did when they
were first introduced. Especially GNOME.
>
>>> I have more experience with CP/M than I do with OS X, but it's a
>>> clear win. BTW, I despise Gnome. KDE is the best thing going
>>> if you like /functional/ eye candy, and one of the minimalist wm
>>> setups is best if you want the UI to get out of your way.
>> There's a happy medium between the two. GNOME fits in that space.
>
> If I despise Gnome, how can Gnome fit between KDE and itself?
That sounds like a personal problem. :)
>
>> It has what is really required for a modern heavyweight desktop,
>
> No, it has what is required to turn a functional desktop into a
> heavyweight desktop. Not a worthy goal, IMO.
>
>> while being
>> minimal enough to keep out of my way. KDE has the annoying habit of
>> getting right in your face and causing trouble.
>
> It didn't used to do that. Then Gnome came along, looking all
> like win/98, and a lot of people started using it instead, and
> KDE folks panicked and started loading on layer after layer of
> bullshit to keep up, and now you have two window managers widely
> used on Linux, and both of them suck ass.
I just can't agree without some examples cited.
>
>> It has some nice
>> aspects, but the annoyances are enough to keep me on GNOME. Especially
>> with Beryl available to handle the eye candy (which handles eye candy
>> better than KDE anyway).
>
> Well, if that's the stuff based upon compiz, that represents
> evil incarnate to me. UI's filled with transparency are just a
> headache waiting to happen.
Even in the relatively early state it's in, performance is very good,
and many of the plugins are very useful. The window scaling plugin has
uses for people trying to emulate an OS X feel (though I still prefer a
taskbar), the cube desktop switcher is absolutely great (and functional
too!), and even the wobbly windows add a sense of real feedback to
moving windows. After using it for awhile, it's a bit jarring to go back
to Windows or OS X. I definitely prefer having it enabled. IMO, it
really does improve the experience.
And some of the animations are just fun to watch. I've got power to
burn, why not use it to have windows burst into flame when I close them?
It's not like the 300ms animation substantially slows me down.
> They're trade show demo ware that
> are worse than the command line in practice for active use.
Don't be insulting the command line! CLIs are god, still.
> The
> big worry here should be that if too many people start using it,
> both KDE and Gnome will downshift and start racing to catch up
> with that shit and it'll get even worse.
I suspect that they'll end up using Heliodor or Aquamarine (Metacity and
Kwin replacements, respectively).
>
>> What another user has setup is rather meaningless, isn't it?
>
> It all depends upon how often you use another system other than
> your main one. I get asked a lot to help out others with their
> systems, and having to learn which of the 300 possible ways the
> menu system might be working each time is a pain in the ass. If
> you sit in a troll-hole playing video games 24x7 all by
> yourself, I'm sure it's different.
I suppose it would be annoying for people who have to work in other
people's preferred environment.
>
>>> Yes, OS X has some goofisms too. None are
>>> perfect, but why on earth Linux developers would take design
>>> cues from Windows, that's horrific.
>> Because that's what people expect, and undoubtedly what the developers
>> themselves are most comfortable with. It's not like they adhere to them
>> rigorously or anything. There are many differences between Windows and
>> GNOME and KDE.
>
> Exactly. They're catering to what GUIs looked like 10 years
> ago, and not advancing things at all. (and no, I don't mean
> 'advancing' the way Microsoft means it: you'll need to buy new
> hardware to run this shit)
Eh? XGL's requirements are pretty damned low. Not much higher than the
requirements for GNOME or KDE.
Like what?
How is Tomboy not out of the way?
>
>>> and on and on, especially if you include
>>> the more useful of the dashboard widgets and leave out the
>>> thousands of silly, worthless ones from the community.
>> Sure, all these things are available, but it seems like a lot of effort
>> to go out and find them (assuming, of course, that there is an app that
>> does what you need).
>
> Not any effort at all really. Gradually accumulated over time,
> mostly because I heard about them and tried them out, some kept,
> some deleted, over 2 years or so. Once you know what they are,
> putting them on the next mac is easy.
>
>> Why not just stick with the platform that offers me
>> more options from the beginning?
>
> 5000 options, 12 of them good, isn't better than 50 options, 48
> of them good, imo. 127 menus, each with a variable number of
> items, covering every corner case in the universe may look good
> on a feature checklist, but isn't better in actual use. I don't
> need to configure every single variable in every single program
> on the system. I want to pick a tool for a product category
> where the developer picked reasonable, consistent settings that
> work for me. I don't need 100 different window mangers, or
> shells, or scripting languages, or mouse cursors, or icon sets.
> I just need one of each that work well and stay out of the way
> of real work. I've been down that path, 1000 times, and it was
> a waste of time, every time.
I would have to disagree with that. More choice is always a good thing.
Intentionally limiting yourself to a few options seems like a very bad
road to start down. It's never going to accommodate everyone as well as
something that anyone can set however they damn well feel like setting
it. Set reasonable defaults, but offer the option for everything to be
changed.
>
>> Even with all these, there are many
>> aspects of the OS X UI that just cannot be changed.
>
> that's true. It's also not important. Tweaking the UI is for
> people that are bored and no real work to do. It doesn't
> matter.
People tweak UIs because they like to do it, or because it makes their
work environment more comfortable. Comfortable workers are more
productive workers. Why don't we all live in pre-fabricated houses with
the furniture bolted to the most 'optimal' position? It gets confusing
walking into someone else's house and not knowing *exactly* where they
keep the toilet paper.
>
>> For example, I might
>> want to replace the dock with something like a start menu and taskbar.
>> How do you do this? I've never run across a free or very inexpensive
>> method of doing this.
>
> Turn off the dock and use Quicksilver to launch apps. :-) The
> dock isn't even necessary.
That doesn't give me a taskbar. Quicksilver is fine for launching apps,
but not for managing windows.
RapidWeaver is not a requirement for making a good looking site. And I'm
sure that not all sites made with RapidWeaver look good. How good a site
looks depends on the person making the site, not on the tools they use.
>
>> Just because you offer a
>> powerful WYSIWYG 'website creation suite' doesn't mean it's going to
>> result in really good looking websites. If you know what you're doing,
>> you can use pretty much any WYSIWYG editor to achieve the same result.
>
> That's true, but that's not what I said.
>
>>> Yes, there are lots of great little utilities for Linux. 90% of
>>> which are aimed at developers (which I appreciate, but most
>>> people do not), and the rest are aimed at what? Other
>>> pseudo-geeks like bloggers, mp3 rippers, and college scientist
>>> working on research papers in LaTeX.
>> Or regular people.
>
> LOL. I've tried that experiment. I've had people that aren't
> into computers try Linux. Handed them a live-CD, for various
> different distributions.
LiveCDs are a very bad method of demonstration, I've found. If someone
had handed me Knoppix, I wouldn't have given it a second thought either.
I know many people who have sat down at my Linux box and been able to
use with with only a few minutes of explanation. The same cannot be said
for my Macs (my mother, for example, took better to Ubuntu than she did
OS X. This was in the default configuration, no less). Many people have
even commented on how they found it easier to use than Windows.
> All of them hand it back to me a bit
> later, none of them kept it on a system. It's not ready for the
> masses. Don't get me wrong, Linux is great for a particular and
> previously almost ignored chunk of the market, but it's nowhere
> /near/ ready to replace the primary OS for most desktop users.
It's not ready to be handed to people on a LiveCD, while expecting them
to instantly prefer it over something they've been using for years.
Especially if they're using hardware that isn't Linux-compatible. It's
an unreasonable expectation. No operating system could manage that.
>
>> Katapult, for example. I named a few other Linux
>> alternatives to apps you mentioned if they're something I've found a
>> reason to look for.
>
> Yes, if I was looking for a way to replicate most of the OS X
> functionality on Linux for some reason, that'd be real helpful.
> But, I'm not.
>
>>>>> You can't /rely/ on Windows to do anything, other than crash
>>>>> when you most need it to be stable. Just ask Bill Gates, or
>>>>> check out any of the infamous live demos where it bit him in the
>>>>> ass.
>>>> Because, you know, beta software never fails.
>>> Sure it does. So does their production code. With SP1 added
>>> on. With SP2 added on. With all the updates added on. I have
>>> in my hand a floppy with a single .exe file on it called
>>> crash.exe, which I can take to /any/ windows box on the planet
>>> and immediately blue screen it, run from the command line, with
>>> or without admin privileges. It's great for testing hardware
>>> watchdog timers.
>> So you've got a script that attacks a bug in Windows.
>
> You must be confused about what a script is. The info above
> should have made it clear it's not a script.
Ack, sorry. I read that as a script. Application then.
>
>> Is this surprising?
>
> No.
>
>> Do you think that such a thing would be impossible to develop for OS X?
>
> I've yet to hear of any way to attack OS X from the command line
> without superuser privs. Have you?
Actually, yes. There was an open attack vector in Panther that could be
exploited by targeting the startup scripts. An admin user could do it
without root.
That works with *people*, but I'm not sure how a charismatic CEO would
prevent the software from crashing like a window-powered satellite in orbit.
I'm using an MX1000 laser mouse on Linux. Works well, just had to plug
it in. The CF reader should work fine as well, since it's just a generic
USB disk. Similarly the firewire disk should work fine as well. The
memory and second hard drive will, of course, work fine as well. The
displays would work as well, though you would need to calculate custom
modelines and add them to xorg.conf if you wanted widescreen at full
resolution. Not sure about the scanners and the camera. I would suspect
that the flatbed would work, but the slide scanner wouldn't. The printer
is a crapshoot. Some Epson printers work well, others not at all.
> More importantly, I don't need to worry about
> it.
>
>>> Siig is one of the very few I/O device vendors that actually
>>> puts out decent adapters and peripherals for low cost points.
>>> Almost everything else is shit, particularly if you actually try
>>> and stress test it, instead of using it in the most minimally
>>> stressful way you can think of.
>> IMO, if it's reliable for what you're doing, it's reliable enough to
>> buy. Stress testing seems pointless on a regular desktop box. 'Decent'
>> would generally mean 'good enough for what you're doing'.
>
> Provided that you understand that when you get that mysterious
> lockup, or blue screen, or data corruption, or other problem
> that happens "every once in a while, but I don't know why",
> that's the cost of not having rigorously tested and properly
> implemented hardware. If you're willing to accept that once in
> a while, when you copy a file from one drive to another, they
> won't be identical when you're finished, and you won't know
> about it right away, that's ok, cause you got a really good deal
> on it, then fine. That's bullshit imo,
Because apparently you don't have a budget.
> and I don't want that
> crap anywhere near me. More to the point, consumers accepting
> that shit makes it harder and harder every year for me to buy
> products that aren't that bad.
Because products that work perfectly every time tend to be way more
expensive than the vast majority of people can afford. There's not much
of a market for that kind of quality in desktop products, so companies
start producing products that are only as good as the market can afford.
>
>> I've actually done CPU and I/O load testing for >24 hours on this
>> machine, which is rare, since I almost never bother with personal
>> machines.
>
> Just beating on the hard drive is not a stress test. Hitting it
> with the right type of load, with well chosen request sizes, and
> most importantly the correct data patterns with verification of
> each transaction, while keeping everything flying as fast as
> possible is needed to really do that. You might have been lucky
> enough to be using one of the very few publicly available tools
> that even attempt to do that. More likely, you just beat the
> shit out of your hard drive for 24 hours, with no idea whether
> it was actually robust or not.
I don't need extreme data integrity on a desktop. It's just not that
important. Oh no, what would happen if I had to restore my papers from
my backup?! What if a song gets a bit flipped?! Horror of all horrors!
My save game might get corrupted after several days of copying to and
from a second disk! My main concern here was making sure the machine had
proper cooling for the speeds I was running at, not to make sure it was
up to snuff as a server.
Come on, it's not like I'm hosting mission critical databases or
something. If I get a bit of corrupted data, well... I'll just have to
restore from one of the backups. Frankly, it sounds like you've spent
too much time in the server room.
>
>> I was mainly wanting to see if I pushed the overclock too far.
>> I figure if it will stay up for a day under constant load, it's good enough.
>
> *sigh* And people wonder why substandard products are so hard
> to avoid.
I don't wonder that--it's a natural result of people not having
corporate-sized budgets they can throw at components. People buy the
best they can afford. Is it as good as the horrendously expensive shit?
No. But it's generally better than what they had before, and certainly
won't break the bank to get it. I don't have the money to spend on
high-end server grade components, so I buy the best I can get and try to
make it perform as well as it can. The stability on this box is
certainly well beyond what is needed in a desktop, and the
performance/price ratio was very good. So what if I could only afford an
Opteron that couldn't pass muster at 2.4ghz (though this machine is
actually using an Athlon 64). I don't need server-grade reliability, so
I can push it up there by overclocking at the expense of stability.
Complaining because most people can't afford extremely high-end
components seems a bit elitist. Of course cheaper components are going
to be less reliable. But it's certainly better than not having them at
all. I'd rather have one of Dell's bargain-bin specials than no computer.
Stability has value, to a point. You don't need extreme stability on a
home desktop. At least, most people don't.
>
>> Like the EPIA box I've got now. Great for SD video playback and web
>> surfing. Nothing else, though.
>
> Good to know Next time I want a computer to play SD video and
> browse the web, I'll buy one. (cough)
Yes, but it does those very well, it's very reliable, and the machine
itself is rather small. It could have been smaller, but I needed a PCI
card to fit in the case. Quiet too. It's also well supported by Linux.
>
>> Building Gentoo for that is a painful experience
>
> But hey, linux is ready for the masses, right? :-)
I hardly consider gentoo fit for use by anyone but the insane.
Especially on a platform as slow as EPIA. It would take weeks to build a
heavyweight installation, if you were compiling packages like OOo or
Xorg (which you have to do if you want Gentoo to run well on this
platform). Distcc is the only way to fly, if you're trying to build
Gentoo for EPIA.
John C. Randolph
> "Well built" being something no longer obtainable. It used to be the
> case, but the good vendors all went chasing Dell down the shithole
> years ago.
You can get mil-spec PCs that don't fit that description, but you *pay*.
-jcr
ZnU
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:znu-4D0F3B.1...@individual.net...
> >> They've never been shy about demoing their next OS, and not just
> >> at MacWorld. Something has changed.
> >
> > There's only room for so much in a Macworld keynote, and launching
> > an entirely new platform, which is something that happens maybe
> > twice a decade even at the pace Apple is moving, takes precedence
> > over an evolutionary OS upgrade.
>
> Do we know the iPhone is a platform? I thought it was going to be
> closed, like the iPod.
It's not entirely clear. Apple has made it clear there won't be a
public SDK (initially?), but they've also said anyone interested in
writing apps for it should contact Apple Developer Relations. It's
possible the platform with be totally closed, it's possible it'll be
open, but only to serious developers that form business relationships
with Apple, and it's even possible Apple is feeling things out and
plans to open things up more more later. We don't really know.
> It hardly seems an earthshaking product. A *good* one perhaps- but
> that's not the same thing.
Um. It's pretty funny that you could say "like the iPod" in one
sentence and then downplay its potential importance in the next
sentence. Seriously.
> >> Further, have they ever added a major feature to OS X after its
> >> first Steve-demo, but before the next version? I can't think of
> >> one.
> >
> > No, but this is a longer release cycle than before, and Jobs said
> > explicitly at the first demo there were features which were still
> > secret. And I'm pretty sure Jobs knew how that would be
> > interpreted, so he probably wasn't talking about just a couple of
> > trivial little things.
>
> I think Leopard didn't show because Apple had nothing more to show,
> and Apple knows how badly their exuses went over last time.
I think you have a history of reading the Apple tea leaves in just about
the most pessimistic way possible.
John C. Randolph
> a niche OS for a few developers.
Apple's got over half a million registered developers as of WWDC 2006.
-jcr
ZnU
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:znu-941622.2...@individual.net...
> > In article <12qaqmc...@news.supernews.com>,
> > "Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> >> > This company right now is walking taller than it ever has.
> >>
> >> Yes, perhaps, but as a consumer electronics vendor.
> >
> > As I've pointed out repeatedly, Apple itself does see any distinction
> > between the personal computer market and the consumer electronics
> > market. Apple has, in fact, been trying to get rid of this distinction
> > for over two decades. Remember that Jobs wanted people to think of the
> > first Mac not as a computer, but as a "personal information appliance".
>
> Yes, I think you may be on to something!
>
> A personal computer differs from your typical consumer
> electronics device- say an iPod- because it is a platform.
>
> You don't use it for itself, but as a platform to run other
> apps.
I don't think I agree with this.
There are third-party products for the iPod, Apple just won't let Joe
Average Developer download an SDK and write for it. On the other extreme
is OS X, where the developer tools come free with the system and anyone
can distribute anything for it. Somewhere in between would be something
like the PlayStation, where access to dev tools is less restricted than
for the iPod, but more restricted than for the Mac.
All of them are platforms.
> But maybe Apple does not see it that way. They ship a lot
> of stuff "in the box"; many of the Macs biggest draws are
> not things you need to buy separately.
With the Mac, Apple clearly sees a benefit in developing much more of a
solution under one roof than its competitors. And not just in the
consumer market; in the "pro" market, if you want to edit video, Apple
will sell you the workstations and severs (with their operating
systems), the SAN software, the storage, and of course video editing,
motion graphics, audio editing, compositing and soon color correction
and media management tools.
Apple likes solving entire problems rather than bits and pieces of them.
> Maybe we should think of the Mac as consumer electronics
> device, and not a platform. Maybe Apple already does.
>
> But if so, then Apple's move away from personal computers
> has *already happened*. OS X and Windows aren't even
> competitors in the view.
This is only a meaningful statement if one believes there is a
meaningful distinction between these markets. My point was that Apple
doesn't believe that. And I don't either, really.
A Mac can be used for many of the same things a typical consumer uses
Windows box for. This makes Apple and Microsoft competitors, regardless
of their differing approaches to solving users' problems.
> Thought provoking idea you have there, ZnU.
--
TheLetterK
> In article <rnfph.691$v8....@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
> TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
>>> I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
>> A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
>> yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
>> techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
>
It's been in a usable state for months now--at least for the last four.
That's when I started using it full-time on Linux. Rather stable too.
>
> Quartz Extreme has been in OSX since 10.2.
Quartz Extreme is not equivalent to XGL. Quartz 2D Extreme is, but Apple
hasn't enabled it on any version so far.
TheLetterK
> "TheLetterK" <no...@none.net> wrote in message
> news:rnfph.691$v8....@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>>>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
>>>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
>>>> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
>>>> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>>> I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
>> A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
>> yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
>> techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
>> backend and composition manager.
>
> This is, as I understand it, Quartz Extreme for X-Windows;
No, it's Quartz 2D Extreme for Xorg. They both use the same concept to
provide indirect OGL rendering. XGL is in a much more usable state than
Apple's implementation, though.
> it hardware accelerates window compositing,
Actually, it hardware accelerates all drawing operations. Everything is
drawn using OpenGL. Quartz Extreme was just hardware accelerating 2d
drawing operations, and the manner by which they accomplished this would
have been untenable on X Windows. OTOH,
> which,
> given X-Windows lack of device independence,
What the hell are you talking about? X Windows is just about the only
device independent display architecture out there. That was, after all,
what it was designed to be. It was later extended to support specific
bits of hardware, but it's still a device independent architecture.
> is
> even handier for them than for Apple.
Apple needs it. Badly.
>
> But it's not Quartz, which Apple has shipped. It's not
> WPF, which MS has shipped.
So? XGL sits at roughly the same level as DWM does on Vista, or Quartz
Compositor does on OS X. Quartz and WPF are graphics layers, not
composition engines.
>
> And it depends on working OpenGL, which is
> a bit of an issue on Linux today.
No more of an issue than XP needing an Mp3 decoder installed before it
can play Mp3s.
> The 3D support
> requires binary drivers, which aren't open source;
> because this is legally doubtful, many distirbutions
> won't ship this.
I fail to see how it's a difficult task to run 'apt-get install
nvidia-glx' after installation. Really, that's how easy it is to install
the binary drivers for Nvidia cards on a Debian-based distro.
>
>> In less than two years. Apple is still trying to get their version of this
>> in a usable state.
>
> Quartz Extreme was worked quite well since its
> introduction, years ago now.
Quartz Extreme is not the same thing as XGL. It's not even remotely
close. Quartz Extreme was (essentially) an optimization to Quartz that
finally got it's performance out of the gutter. It moved much of the
rendering work onto the GPU, rather than rendering everything in
software before pushing it off to the GPU for display.
>
> You may be thinking of Quartz 2D Extreme; but
> XGL does not offer that kind of functionality.
Excuse me? They're both methods to provide indirect OpenGL rendering.
That's sort of the whole point behind both XGL and Quartz 2D Extreme.
>
>> And they don't even have any plans for really supporting vector graphics
>> in the UI--GNOME and KDE have steadily been adding support for this over
>> the past few years. KDE 4 is supposed to be including a fully vector-based
>> theme as the default.
>
> This is just SVG, isn't it?
SVG being 'Scalable Vector Graphics'. And no, it goes beyond simply
providing SVG icon support (which already exists on both of them).
>
>> If you expand the scope to the time when OS X was released... well, just
>> compare a current XGL demonstration video to a screenshot of pre-2.0
>> GNOME.
>
> Sexy demos are lots of fun, but they aren't products.
Tell it to Apple. They've managed to make a small fortune selling demos
to people.
>
> [snip]
>>> Others were not so fond of it then; and it of course
>>> it started with 10.0.
>> 10.1 was released rather quickly. 10.0 was really more like an extended
>> public beta test than a real release.
>
> OS X has progressed a lot since 10.0.
Alright, name some examples. What's fundamentally different about 10.5
over 10.0?
>
> [snip]
>>>> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
>>>> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
>>> I've tried recent live CDs of both of these;
>> LiveLinux distros do not do the platform justice. Especially if you're
>> playing around with a distribution as ugly as Ubuntu is OOTB.
>
> I suppose you are trying to say that an interested party
> could build pretty software on these platforms, but
> they are ugly by default.
No, that's not what I'm saying. LiveLinux disks are horrible methods to
showcase what Linux can do. They give you a concrete set of tools, and
prevent you from making any sort of lasting changes. It's Linux without
the flexibility, which is one of the biggest selling points.
>
> That's true, but it's rather trivial.
And no, it isn't true. Even Kororaa is ugly compared to a well
configured hard drive installation.
>
>>> they aren't nearly as pretty as OS X. They aren't
>>> even as pretty as Windows XP.
>> That's because you're using a LiveLinux distribution. They *can't* turn on
>> all the bells and whistles.
>
> It seemed to me that they had overly noisy UI as it
> was!
So remove the noise. Oh, wait, you can't, because you're trying a
LiveLinux distribution rather than actually installing it.
>
>> The goal of just about every LiveLinux distribution is extreme
>> compatibility and a portable work environment. You don't get high-end
>> graphics and a 'pretty' UI out of that. Even Kororaa doesn't really do
>> this well.
>
> How should one discover how pretty Linux "really is",
> then?
Install it, and configure the desktop exactly like you want it.
XGL/Beryl is a good start for something to tinker with.
>
> [snip]
>>>> Are you going to claim that Xorg dies if an application does? If, so I
>>>> would suggest that you spend a bit more time using it.
>>> Other way round. If an X server dies, all the apps
>>> go with it.
>> And if the WindowServer dies, so do all the apps depending on it (I.E
>> everything being displayed). That's the proper handling of child
>> processes. Fortunately for Mac users, WindowServer is almost as stable as
>> Xorg.
>
> I'm sorry to hear that this is so; the architecture is capable of
> more: the WindowServer keeps little state, so it can be restarted
> without taking down applications.
No, it can't. Try it sometime. Even if the apps didn't die (they're
*supposed* to die), they'd just get reparented by init and would sit
there wasting resources. You certainly couldn't resume work on them when
you restarted WindowServer.
You know what, I think I'll go ahead and try it. Hmm, what a surprise.
OS X logs you out when you try to force quit WindowServer. A SIGKIL does
the same thing. Let's try issuing a SIGSTOP and see how it behaves! Wow,
another surprise! The whole damn UI locks up. What were you saying about
how applications won't die when WindowServer does?
> Vista is supposed to do
> this, and I'm surprised that OS X does not.
Vista won't do it either.
>
> But even without that, the Quartz architecture keeps a lot
> of very complex code out of that shared process; that can
> only improve stability.
So, what does Quartz do that is unusual in this regard. Be specific.
Cite specific examples of situations where code is not shared with
Quartz, but is shared with alternatives.
>
>>> Putting rendering code in the applicaiton means that
>>> if it faults, other apps do not go down with it. Given
>>> the complexity of this code, that's very desirable.
>> A) A application dying in Xorg will not take down other applications, save
>> for the exception of severe bugs or possibly the failure of an application
>> that another application depends on without proper handling by the
>> dependent application (which can occur on *any* platform, including OS X).
>
> Ah, but on OS X, a rendering engine fault occurs in
> the application process. On X-Windows, it occurs in
> a shared process.
It occurs in a shared process on OS X too. And Windows, for that matter.
>
> [snip]
>>> That's sort-of true. It's taken a long time to build
>>> OO platforms that work as well as Cocoa.
>> They've been around for years now. And keep in mind that 'Cocoa' (in its
>> various implementations) isn't exactly well suited to a wide range of
>> tasks. It's a rather high level approach to programming.
>
> You say that like it's a bad thing! :D
Well, it *is* a bad thing for many situations.
>
> Sure, it's not like you can use Cocoa for everything,
> but it's thing worth Eulogizing.
>
> [snip]
>>> COM is very successful as an interop technology, but
>>> as an API delivery vehicle, it's not a match for Cocoa.
>> That's because it's not an 'API delivery vehicle', and wasn't intended to
>> be. It was designed to facilitate interprocess communication, and provide
>> an object model. That's it. And you already admit that has been successful
>> in doing so.
>
> Well, that's so- but until recently,
You have a strange definition of 'recently'. 5 years is a damn long time
in the computer industry. I mean, OS X is only a year older than that.
> MS didn't have anything
> but COM, so they used that as an API delivery vehicle.
No, they didn't. Because it isn't one.
TheLetterK
> TheLetterK wrote:
>> It isn't? That's like claiming that it's an impressive feat to be faster
>> than a 90-year-old shambling about in his walker.
>
> Glue is fast; rockets are swift; humans are dolts; folks are nescient.
The semicolons are improper. When poetry (albeit bad poetry) is written
on a single line, it is properly done so using a slash mark between each
verse, not a semicolon. You also need to capitalize each successive
line, since each is a part of a different sentence.
>
>>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
>>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
>>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
>>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
>> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
>> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
>
> OS X and XP are OSes. It's Aqua and Luna that are pretty, and both(?)
> hav window utilitities with prettier interfaces.
Since you want to be pedantic... OS X, in the above example, would refer
to the package as a whole. Since the comparison was specifically between
'OS X' and two desktop environments, it should be assumed that the
writer was talking about the desktop environment of OS X. Of course,
your complaint was, itself, incorrect--Aqua and Luna are *themes*, not
desktop environments.
You might consider using a spellchecker. In the above sentence, you
misspelled "have" and "utilities". I'm also not sure about how correct
"OSes" is, though it's certainly common enough to be acceptable in an
informal setting. Just like an occasional "it's".
>
>> "It's time" was back in 1989. Most platforms already make extensive use
>> of OO development principles.
>
>> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
>> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
>
> its, you illiterate shithead
Don't you mean "Its"? You also seem to have forgotten a punctuation mark
(either a period or an exclamation mark). What did that long-dead
shyster say? He said, "may he who is without sin, cast the first stone",
as I recall. Perhaps you should spend less time commenting on the
grammar of others and more time polishing your own.
Sandman
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> > Eh? You got it backwards. the XGL team is still trying to get their
> > version of this in a usable state.
>
> It's been in a usable state for months now--at least for the last four.
With "usable" meaning "hobbyists can compile it from the source form
the csv and make it run if they follow the readme's". Obviously, this
is not my definition of "usable state". Or rather, I think that any
software should reach something more than just "usable state" before
it could be deemed impressive.
> > Quartz Extreme has been in OSX since 10.2.
>
> Quartz Extreme is not equivalent to XGL. Quartz 2D Extreme
The nifty compositing that XGL does is very much comparable to Quartz
Extreme. Things like cube transitions and such.
Plus, Q2DE was introduced in 10.4 and isn't buggier than XGL, really.
--
Sandman[.net]
Sandman
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> > Dan, like several other unfortunates, mistakes a marker showing an
> > expansion of focus with one showing contraction.
>
> Oh, I should not say contraction. The world of
> consumer electronics is very large. This shift of
> focus may well lead to major growth for Apple.
Note how Dan, being a troll, changes the sentence from "expansion of
focus" to "shift of focus" and pretends that he is talking about the
same thing Steve, making it appear that he is agreeing with Steve, but
just using slightly different words.
Michael Glasser is a master at this, and Dan wants to be as good, I
assume.
--
Sandman[.net]
ZnU
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> Dan Johnson wrote:
> > "TheLetterK" <no...@none.net> wrote in message
> > news:rnfph.691$v8....@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
> >>>>> We can expect this to continue. The breakneck pace of
> >>>>> OS X development that we had seen is over.
> >>>> What was so breakneck about it? GNU/Linux has changed more in the last
> >>>> two years than OS X has through it's entire release history.
> >>> I do not see that this is so. Perhaps you could elaborate?
> >> A good example would be XGL. It's already being used by a ton of people,
> >> yet it didn't exist 2 years ago. We went from flat, ugly, rendering
> >> techniques from 20 years ago, to a fully modern OpenGL-based rendering
> >> backend and composition manager.
> >
> > This is, as I understand it, Quartz Extreme for X-Windows;
>
> No, it's Quartz 2D Extreme for Xorg. They both use the same concept
> to provide indirect OGL rendering. XGL is in a much more usable state
> than Apple's implementation, though.
[snip]
> > But it's not Quartz, which Apple has shipped. It's not WPF, which
> > MS has shipped.
>
> So? XGL sits at roughly the same level as DWM does on Vista, or
> Quartz Compositor does on OS X. Quartz and WPF are graphics layers,
> not composition engines.
Um. This statement seems to conflict with the one posted above. If XGL
is equivalent to the Quartz Compositor, it is *not* providing the
functionality of Quartz 2D Extreme.
Without Q2DE, when you draw a line or a polygon or whatever with a
Quartz call, it gets rendered on the CPU, which then generates a bitmap,
which is sent to the GPU as a texture, where it might be composited in
hardware.
With Q2DE, Quartz calls are basically implemented with OpenGL commands.
The actual initial rendering of the polygon, etc. occurs on the GPU.
Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
it? Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
like Q2DE? Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
[snip]
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <tmDph.351$Oe2...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>):
>> I'm talking about H.264 video downloaded from various web
>> sources, for example the Apple website. If there's some source
>> for "uber H.264" that you care to point out,
>
> There isn't. No one releases H.264 video at really high quality, because
> there aren't many systems that can play it. Certainly not without
> dedicated hardware support. Apple's HD trailers and such aren't even close.
Okay, so you're telling me that my Macs will have trouble
playing video that I can't even get my hands on. That's
horrible. I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I get that
resolved. :-)
> Got some uncompressed video laying around?
Not HD. I haven't upgraded from my old Canon ZR70MC yet. For
one, I don't use it very much anyway, and second, I much prefer
still photography.
> Quality is not the *only* consideration. Getting medium quality video to
> people with medium-quality setups is a very valuable and useful
> function.
Fair enough, just don't call it theater quality, and there's no
argument.
> And it's still better for people with expensive setups, if
> they want to timeshift programming, because the quality is better than
> you'll get from the alternatives.
Maybe, but that doesn't work for me, because there's almost
nothing on scheduled TV worth watching, imo.
>> X10. Now you're just cracking me up. The fact that people
>> haven't figured out how to do home-grown home automation
>> (lighting, security, HVAC, etc.) over something better than X10
>> by now is a mystery.
>
> It works, it's cheap, and people have been using it for decades so
> there's a wide knowledge base. So why bother replacing it?
It's not reliable. It loses state far too often, and starts
turning things off when they're on, and vice versa.
>>> Girder might even allow finer control, though I couldn't tell
>>> you for sure (I've only used it for controlling software by remote).
>>
>> Nothing based upon X10 is as reliable as a commercial grade
>> automation system running over ethernet.
>
> Feh! The one and only commercial grade automation system I've ever used
> was incredibly unreliable.
With a sample size of one, why even bother arguing?
> turned on when others were in use (which was unintentional--they were in
> completely different and unrelated parts of the building). This was in a
> multi-million dollar facility, and professionally installed.
Obviously it was /not/ professionally installed. More likely,
it was installed by people charging pro prices, and claiming to
be such.
My lighting system has been up (without any downtime) for over 6
years, and controls highly-controllable lighting in a 7000sqft
home. I can also control every device in the home from a web
browser, if I'm willing to punch a whole in the firewall to get
to it, or on the local LAN safely.
>
> Yes, I know. I was pointing out HTPC-specific aspects. Unless your DVD
> player aggregates RSS feeds?
I have no need for RSS feeds in a movie theater. It's rapidly
becoming the case that RSS feeds aren't worth subscribing to...
:-)
>>>> HTPC's are toys , much in the way the @TV is. I see the @TV as a
>>>> living room, or perhaps a bedroom device (if you're one of those
>>>> "TV in the bedroom" people) but not for a true home theater.
>>> No, it's not. With a serious setup, you can't send it over the air, and
>>> you wouldn't have appropriate support on the media extender. Those are
>>> useful for extending the availability of the central library--I.E being
>>> able to watch your recorded shows on the shitty TV in the kitchen, or
>>> something similar.
>>
>> Obviously I [correction: don't] disagree with that last bit, since it's
>> what I just
>> said above. With a serious setup, you're running Gig-E wired,
>> not wireless, so you can beam almost anything around the house
>> wherever you want to do so,
>
> Most people don't have any kind of ethernet run through their house, so
> wireless is the most reasonable option for them.
True enough, but attempting to beam HD all over the house on
802.11 isn't going to light up your life. @TV owners will find
that out soon enough, especially if they buy more than one for
the same location.
>> but still, not much point in sending
>> HD-DVD content to the kitchen, although there is a smallish
>> HD-flat panel in there.
>
> No, but there is great utility in being able to play back recorded TV
> shows and such while you're working in the kitchen. Especially around
> lunch time, since daytime TV is even more pathetic than usual.
TV is almost always pathetic, don't disagree.
>> For pure audio, I use a dedicated NxM
>> zone switching system with each room in the house as well as the
>> back yard being a different 'zone' listening to different
>> content, if desired.
Glad to see you didn't try to pretent like an HTPC could do that
if you installed 15 sound cards or some such silliness.
>> What have they done to "ruin it" for you?
>
> Finder has become absolute shit,
True enough, I'd said the same here. I almost never use it
though. I'll do heavy file moves from the cmd line more often
than not, or use Adobe bridge (which doesn't only work with
photos) instead of Finder, it's great
> they've been moving away from
> traditional utilities towards their own utilities,
Most of the old stuff is still there, although the first time I
tried to edit /etc/fstab and realized that wasn't going to
happen, it sort of chapped my ass. :-)
>> I finally gave up. It's sitting on a
>> desk with a cable plugged into it running Ubuntu, because it's
>> useless otherwise. That's not a "real-world" ready platform,
>
> Because you're trying to put it on unsupported hardware?
That hardware wasn't bought to run Linux on, it was initially
picked for Win64 development back when it was beta (I'll pretend
like it's not still beta), but once I had that stuff done, I
didn't want that crap on there anymore. But, it's a mainline
system from Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, and they actively support
Linux, but not on portables. It works okay apart from the
wireless, and I blame that on broadcom really. Still, it's a
real-world option.
>> Is there an easy way to test that out? I'd be curious to try it
>> on one of my Linux boxes just to see how close it really gets.
>> Link, or manual labor?
>
> I'll post a second reply with instructions, along with screenshots. I'll
> need to reboot, since I'm not familiar enough with KDE to do it by memory.
Cool.
>> LOL. Gnome makes me ill. Probably because I started out with
>> X11 on old UNIX boxes, and went through Motif and such before
>> landing on KDE. Gnome is like "oh shit, how much can we make
>> this look like XP out of the box so people will actually use us"
>> to me.
>
> I don't see it as particularly XP-like. It's way more spatially oriented
> than XP. What was the last version you used?
Been a year or so since I used it for more than a few minutes at
a time.
>> All both have really achieved in the last 5 years is becoming so
>> bloated that that Windows actually runs faster on the same
>> hardware.
>
> I have to disagree with that. *Especially* with XGL, which (oddly
> enough) actually seems to make the UI more responsive. Though that could
> just be a perception caused by the kinesthetic feedback from wobbly
> windows. It certainly feels more responsive, which is all that matters.
> Though, IMO, even a plain GNOME desktop feels more responsive than
> Windows does. And it certainly grinds to a halt less often.
I need to spend some time with the latest greatest Linux stuff
to get current again, but as a fan of minimalist window managers
(I thought Motif was too bloated), don't look for a miracle on
that front. :-)
> If you're going minimalist, the only choice that really makes sense is
> an ultra-minimalist desktop like Ion or PWM.
AquaWm for Linux would be ok too. :-)
>> Well, if that's the stuff based upon compiz, that represents
>> evil incarnate to me. UI's filled with transparency are just a
>> headache waiting to happen.
>
> Even in the relatively early state it's in, performance is very good,
Nothing to do with performance. Transparency is nothing but a
recipe for eyestrain. In all but a very few circumstances, it's
totally counterproductive, but looks 'cool'.
>> They're trade show demo ware that
>> are worse than the command line in practice for active use.
>
> Don't be insulting the command line! CLIs are god, still.
Oh, I didn't convey what I wanted to there. I love the command
line, took forever just to get me to use a GUI at all. What I
meant by that was that all the animation and transparency shit
makes it harder to use than a simple cli, which should be an
insult to any self-respecting GUI team.
>> Exactly. They're catering to what GUIs looked like 10 years
>> ago, and not advancing things at all. (and no, I don't mean
>> 'advancing' the way Microsoft means it: you'll need to buy new
>> hardware to run this shit)
>
> Eh? XGL's requirements are pretty damned low. Not much higher than the
> requirements for GNOME or KDE.
Again, didn't express myself well. I mean the microsoft meaning
of advanced is that you get to go buy more hardware (Which
Intel, Dell and the others love), not the way you read it.
> People tweak UIs because they like to do it, or because it makes their
> work environment more comfortable. Comfortable workers are more
> productive workers.
Real-world data is exactly the opposite. The more stuff like
that shows up on the desktop, the less work gets done in the
office. Productivity drops every year. Of course, iPod earbuds
in the ears don't help either.
>>>> Something like RapidWeaver to put together a really great
>>>> looking web site that is standards compliant in a day or less.
>>> The scarcity of
>>> really great looking websites out there would indicate that it's either
>>> too expensive, too difficult to use, or it's not actually a tool for
>>> creating really great looking websites.
>>
>> No, this is just another form of the McDonald's argument. Just
>> beacause there are 6.023x10**23 shitty websites out there
>> doesn't mean that some of them aren't being done right.
>
> RapidWeaver is not a requirement for making a good looking site.
That's not what I said. It's quoted up there.
> And I'm sure that not all sites made with RapidWeaver look good.
That's not what I said. It's quoted up there.
> How good a site looks depends on the person making the site, not on
> the tools they use.
That's true, but having tools that are helpful are not
irrelevant.
>> LOL. I've tried that experiment. I've had people that aren't
>> into computers try Linux. Handed them a live-CD, for various
>> different distributions.
>
> LiveCDs are a very bad method of demonstration, I've found.
Well, handing someone a factory labeled and shipped for free
Ubuntu install DVD doesn't help either, and that's supposed to
be the easiest.
> I'm using an MX1000 laser mouse on Linux. Works well, just had to plug
> it in. The CF reader should work fine as well, since it's just a generic
> USB disk.
Mine's a firewire for the extra speed (it is, I've measured it),
but yeah.
> Similarly the firewire disk should work fine as well. The
> memory and second hard drive will, of course, work fine as well. The
> displays would work as well, though you would need to calculate custom
> modelines and add them to xorg.conf if you wanted widescreen at full
> resolution. Not sure about the scanners and the camera. I would suspect
> that the flatbed would work, but the slide scanner wouldn't. The printer
> is a crapshoot. Some Epson printers work well, others not at all.
About sums it up. And makes my point well.
It's late and this is getting too long, but an interesting
discussion.
Steve de Mena
I went to their web site and registered as a
"developer" for the heck of it a few months ago.
I wonder how many other non-developers like me did
the same thing.
Steve
TheLetterK
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:36:27 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
> (in article <tmDph.351$Oe2...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>):
>
>>> I'm talking about H.264 video downloaded from various web
>>> sources, for example the Apple website. If there's some source
>>> for "uber H.264" that you care to point out,
>> There isn't. No one releases H.264 video at really high quality, because
>> there aren't many systems that can play it. Certainly not without
>> dedicated hardware support. Apple's HD trailers and such aren't even close.
>
> Okay, so you're telling me that my Macs will have trouble
> playing video that I can't even get my hands on. That's
> horrible. I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I get that
> resolved. :-)
It's not an issue now, but it will be in the near future. How well is
your Mac going to handle Blu-ray? What about content encoded at even
higher quality? It's eventually going to come, and developing the
software needed to make it work properly is going to take Apple a long
time. And it will require substantial support from the hardware vendors,
which Apple never manages to get.
>
>> Got some uncompressed video laying around?
>
> Not HD. I haven't upgraded from my old Canon ZR70MC yet. For
> one, I don't use it very much anyway, and second, I much prefer
> still photography.
>
>> Quality is not the *only* consideration. Getting medium quality video to
>> people with medium-quality setups is a very valuable and useful
>> function.
>
> Fair enough, just don't call it theater quality, and there's no
> argument.
>
>> And it's still better for people with expensive setups, if
>> they want to timeshift programming, because the quality is better than
>> you'll get from the alternatives.
>
> Maybe, but that doesn't work for me, because there's almost
> nothing on scheduled TV worth watching, imo.
There's always the History Channel. Or CSPAN.
802.11g supports streaming HD at the quality most programming is
provided at. Given that the @TV itself can store the video, it's
probably a manageable feat to handle high quality HD videos over
wireless (with 802.11n).
>
>>> but still, not much point in sending
>>> HD-DVD content to the kitchen, although there is a smallish
>>> HD-flat panel in there.
>> No, but there is great utility in being able to play back recorded TV
>> shows and such while you're working in the kitchen. Especially around
>> lunch time, since daytime TV is even more pathetic than usual.
>
> TV is almost always pathetic, don't disagree.
>
>>> For pure audio, I use a dedicated NxM
>>> zone switching system with each room in the house as well as the
>>> back yard being a different 'zone' listening to different
>>> content, if desired.
>
> Glad to see you didn't try to pretent like an HTPC could do that
> if you installed 15 sound cards or some such silliness.
You don't drive them from the HTPC. Few people do. You just feed the
audio signal to your existing frontend, like you do with a cable box or
DVD player or whatever source you happen to be using. HTPCs are really
just an alternative source for aggregated and stored content, not
replacements for high-end A/V hardware (though they *can* serve as very
effective video processors if you can't afford a very high-end unit). It
doesn't need to drive speakers as well as a dedicated frontend--it just
has to produce higher quality output than the sources being fed into it.
The people that tout them as *replacements* are doing a disservice. It's
really more of an *addition* to the capabilities already present.
>
>>> What have they done to "ruin it" for you?
>> Finder has become absolute shit,
>
> True enough, I'd said the same here. I almost never use it
> though. I'll do heavy file moves from the cmd line more often
> than not, or use Adobe bridge (which doesn't only work with
> photos) instead of Finder, it's great
>
>> they've been moving away from
>> traditional utilities towards their own utilities,
>
> Most of the old stuff is still there, although the first time I
> tried to edit /etc/fstab and realized that wasn't going to
> happen, it sort of chapped my ass. :-)
>
>>> I finally gave up. It's sitting on a
>>> desk with a cable plugged into it running Ubuntu, because it's
>>> useless otherwise. That's not a "real-world" ready platform,
>> Because you're trying to put it on unsupported hardware?
>
> That hardware wasn't bought to run Linux on, it was initially
> picked for Win64 development back when it was beta (I'll pretend
> like it's not still beta), but once I had that stuff done, I
> didn't want that crap on there anymore. But, it's a mainline
> system from Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, and they actively support
> Linux, but not on portables.
You'd have much better luck with an Intel-based portable. I mean,
literally, the problem is due entirely to HP picking a card that wasn't
supported.
> It works okay apart from the
> wireless, and I blame that on broadcom really. Still, it's a
> real-world option.
>
>>> Is there an easy way to test that out? I'd be curious to try it
>>> on one of my Linux boxes just to see how close it really gets.
>>> Link, or manual labor?
>> I'll post a second reply with instructions, along with screenshots. I'll
>> need to reboot, since I'm not familiar enough with KDE to do it by memory.
>
> Cool.
I'll actually just do it here. First step is to put the menu bar along
the top--you do that in the Desktop configuration menu (though this only
works for QT apps). Second step is to come up with some dock-alike. I
prefer using a cut down KDE panel, but YMMV. SuperKaramba has a number
of themes that act like the dock does, including the parabolic zooming.
You'll want the Baghira style engine to get OS X-like buttons and such,
but you'll need to tweak it to your own preferences. For window
decorations, I like using Emerald (part of Beryl, which is an XGL
composition manager), but you might prefer a native Kwin theme. Part of
the advantage of Beryl is that XGL does double buffering and proper
composition so you don't get visible redraw artifacts. It also supports
the various expose-like functions. You can also set Mac-style keyboard
combinations, mouse settings, and other assorted settings in the wizard
that starts the first time you run KDE. Alternately, you could manually
change the appropriate aspects.
Fonts are, as always, dependent on user configuration. You can enable OS
X-like font rendering by installing properly patched versions of a few
files. I think this was the guide I used, but I didn't fix the fonts in
KDE for this demonstration, and it's been ages since I set GNOME up.
As for the screenshot...
http://img128.imageshack.us/my.php?image=osxified3bj9.png
It's not as far as I *could* go, but I'm not willing to put forth much
more effort on this. It was about an hours worth of tweaking to get it
to that point.
>
>>> LOL. Gnome makes me ill. Probably because I started out with
>>> X11 on old UNIX boxes, and went through Motif and such before
>>> landing on KDE. Gnome is like "oh shit, how much can we make
>>> this look like XP out of the box so people will actually use us"
>>> to me.
>> I don't see it as particularly XP-like. It's way more spatially oriented
>> than XP. What was the last version you used?
>
> Been a year or so since I used it for more than a few minutes at
> a time.
>
>>> All both have really achieved in the last 5 years is becoming so
>>> bloated that that Windows actually runs faster on the same
>>> hardware.
>> I have to disagree with that. *Especially* with XGL, which (oddly
>> enough) actually seems to make the UI more responsive. Though that could
>> just be a perception caused by the kinesthetic feedback from wobbly
>> windows. It certainly feels more responsive, which is all that matters.
>> Though, IMO, even a plain GNOME desktop feels more responsive than
>> Windows does. And it certainly grinds to a halt less often.
>
> I need to spend some time with the latest greatest Linux stuff
> to get current again, but as a fan of minimalist window managers
> (I thought Motif was too bloated), don't look for a miracle on
> that front. :-)
The only reason I like Ion is because it's easy to use without a mouse.
The other minimalist window managers seem... well, pointless. But I'm
also using hardware with plenty of extra (and often unused) power.
>
>> If you're going minimalist, the only choice that really makes sense is
>> an ultra-minimalist desktop like Ion or PWM.
>
> AquaWm for Linux would be ok too. :-)
>
>>> Well, if that's the stuff based upon compiz, that represents
>>> evil incarnate to me. UI's filled with transparency are just a
>>> headache waiting to happen.
>> Even in the relatively early state it's in, performance is very good,
>
> Nothing to do with performance. Transparency is nothing but a
> recipe for eyestrain.
I don't really use transparencies in XGL. It only works really well for
the various window management functions.
> In all but a very few circumstances, it's
> totally counterproductive, but looks 'cool'.
It's good on terminal windows, if the opacity is ~75%. Especially if you
need to read something while you're typing.
>
>>> They're trade show demo ware that
>>> are worse than the command line in practice for active use.
>> Don't be insulting the command line! CLIs are god, still.
>
> Oh, I didn't convey what I wanted to there. I love the command
> line, took forever just to get me to use a GUI at all. What I
> meant by that was that all the animation and transparency shit
> makes it harder to use than a simple cli, which should be an
> insult to any self-respecting GUI team.
The transparency *is* eye-candy, but XGL does serve very useful
functions. Even some of the plugins that most would call eye-candy have
real purposes.
>
>>> Exactly. They're catering to what GUIs looked like 10 years
>>> ago, and not advancing things at all. (and no, I don't mean
>>> 'advancing' the way Microsoft means it: you'll need to buy new
>>> hardware to run this shit)
>> Eh? XGL's requirements are pretty damned low. Not much higher than the
>> requirements for GNOME or KDE.
>
> Again, didn't express myself well. I mean the microsoft meaning
> of advanced is that you get to go buy more hardware (Which
> Intel, Dell and the others love), not the way you read it.
>
>> People tweak UIs because they like to do it, or because it makes their
>> work environment more comfortable. Comfortable workers are more
>> productive workers.
>
> Real-world data is exactly the opposite. The more stuff like
> that shows up on the desktop,
My environments are usually very clean, but that doesn't mean I like it
setup in the default configuration.
Any operating system that requires joe six pack to install it himself is
going to be perceived as too difficult and needless. Windows wouldn't be
able to change that, and neither would OS X (which is why I think a
generic x86 version of OS X would go over like a lead balloon). IOW,
Linux-on-the-desktop won't be a viable plan until a major OEM starts
shipping Linux desktops by default. *That* won't happen until the
userbase creeps up to a critical size (and what that is, exactly, is
unknown). The fact that Linux allows people to keep their older machines
more viable helps a lot.
Peter Bjørn Perlsø
> For those of us with an interest in desktop operating systems, the
> recent "Mac"World keynote is depressing; "Apple, Inc" has made their
> shift away from desktop computers official.
I didn't notice. Tel me, where did Apple officially step away from the
PC business?
--
regards , Peter B. P. - http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk
"If guns kill, do pencils cause spelling errors?"
TheLetterK
> In article <NPFph.362$Oe2...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
> TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
>>> Eh? You got it backwards. the XGL team is still trying to get their
>>> version of this in a usable state.
>> It's been in a usable state for months now--at least for the last four.
>
> With "usable" meaning "hobbyists can compile it from the source form
> the csv and make it run if they follow the readme's".
No compilation required. For common distributions, anyway. Ubuntu, for
example, has XGL and compiz packages in their main repos. Just apt-get
them. You can add a third party repository and get Beryl packages. As
for the 'difficult' installation, it involves copying a two short
scripts to two files, and setting one of them as executable. That's it.
That's a walk in the park compared to getting Quartz 2d Extreme to do
anything.
> Obviously, this
> is not my definition of "usable state". Or rather, I think that any
> software should reach something more than just "usable state" before
> it could be deemed impressive.
Maybe, just *maybe*, you should actually try the current state of a
project before calling it unusable.
>
>>> Quartz Extreme has been in OSX since 10.2.
>> Quartz Extreme is not equivalent to XGL. Quartz 2D Extreme
>
> The nifty compositing that XGL does is very much comparable to Quartz
> Extreme.
No, it isn't.
> Things like cube transitions and such.
A) OS X's cube transition is very much different from XGL's cube
transition. Among other things, you can't manually pan and tilt the cube
in OS X.
B) The method by which this is accomplished is quite different. Quartz
Extreme manages this by manipulating a bitmap of the screen. XGL, OTOH,
renders the surfaces of the cube in real time. Really, try playing a
video while switching to a different user. You'll find that the video
itself stops playing during the transition, but the audio keeps going.
The cube transition in Compiz/Beryl doesn't have this same problem.
C) Quartz Extreme doesn't support many of the *other* things that XGL
does, like real-time window transformations (as demonstrated by the
wobbly windows on Compiz and Beryl). Quartz 2D Extreme could, but it's
not currently usable.
> Plus, Q2DE was introduced in 10.4 and isn't buggier than XGL, really.
It was 'introduced' and disabled by default. Even once you enable it,
you couldn't actually do anything with it unless you were a developer or
had a similar level of knowledge. OTOH, any moron who can keep from
choking on his own drool can install XGL and enable the plugins.
TheLetterK
No, it sits at about the same *level*. It's a very different
implementation, and doesn't do at all the same thing.
>
> Without Q2DE, when you draw a line or a polygon or whatever with a
> Quartz call, it gets rendered on the CPU, which then generates a bitmap,
> which is sent to the GPU as a texture, where it might be composited in
> hardware.
>
> With Q2DE, Quartz calls are basically implemented with OpenGL commands.
> The actual initial rendering of the polygon, etc. occurs on the GPU.
Yes, I know. That's what I said above (that's what "indirect OpenGL
rendering" is).
>
> Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
> it?
No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
architecture is rather different.
> Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
> like Q2DE?
No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
> Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
It's more of a way to bypass QT and Xlib for drawing operations.
> It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
> capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
The capabilities wouldn't match because they wouldn't need to. The
architectures are too different to make that kind of linear correlation.
And it depends on what you mean by 'Quartz', since it's often used for
both the graphics layer and the compositor.
Lefty Bigfoot
(in article <UeQph.124$To.110@bigfe9>):
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:36:27 -0600, TheLetterK wrote
>> (in article <tmDph.351$Oe2...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>):
>>
>>>> I'm talking about H.264 video downloaded from various web
>>>> sources, for example the Apple website. If there's some source
>>>> for "uber H.264" that you care to point out,
>>> There isn't. No one releases H.264 video at really high quality, because
>>> there aren't many systems that can play it. Certainly not without
>>> dedicated hardware support. Apple's HD trailers and such aren't even close.
>>
>> Okay, so you're telling me that my Macs will have trouble
>> playing video that I can't even get my hands on. That's
>> horrible. I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I get that
>> resolved. :-)
>
> It's not an issue now, but it will be in the near future. How well is
> your Mac going to handle Blu-ray?
Dunno about mine, but since the rumor is some upcoming Mac
hardware announcements will include drives for it shortly, I'm
guessing Apple has figured out how to solve it.
> What about content encoded at even higher quality?
Anything that high-end I'll be watching on the Runco gear, not
my Mac. My mac isn't an "HTPC" either, and I don't want it to
be. :-)
> It's eventually going to come, and developing the
> software needed to make it work properly is going to take Apple a long
> time. And it will require substantial support from the hardware vendors,
> which Apple never manages to get.
Could be, I've never had a particularly high end crystal ball,
so I won't pull a mayor and try to predict what will happen.
>>> And it's still better for people with expensive setups, if
>>> they want to timeshift programming, because the quality is better than
>>> you'll get from the alternatives.
>>
>> Maybe, but that doesn't work for me, because there's almost
>> nothing on scheduled TV worth watching, imo.
>
> There's always the History Channel. Or CSPAN.
I used to watch a lot of CSPAN, then I realized that all it was
was 30 minutes of "the clerk will call the roll", followed by a
bunch of crooks lying to me for a few minutes before they did it
all over again. All the good stuff on the history channel is
available whenever you want to watch it on DVD.
>> True enough, but attempting to beam HD all over the house on
>> 802.11 isn't going to light up your life. @TV owners will find
>> that out soon enough, especially if they buy more than one for
>> the same location.
>
> 802.11g supports streaming HD at the quality most programming is
> provided at. Given that the @TV itself can store the video, it's
> probably a manageable feat to handle high quality HD videos over
> wireless (with 802.11n).
All true. I wonder how it will stack up if you have an @TV next
to every TV set in the house.
>> That hardware wasn't bought to run Linux on, it was initially
>> picked for Win64 development back when it was beta (I'll pretend
>> like it's not still beta), but once I had that stuff done, I
>> didn't want that crap on there anymore. But, it's a mainline
>> system from Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, and they actively support
>> Linux, but not on portables.
>
> You'd have much better luck with an Intel-based portable. I mean,
> literally, the problem is due entirely to HP picking a card that wasn't
> supported.
That's true, but at the time, Broadcom was the kick-ass
networking leader on the GigE side of things, and it had not
become clear that they were going to tell the Linux community on
the wireless end to "go fish". They had open linux drivers for
all their wired BCM gig adapters, and they were smoking fast.
Hindsight and all that.
>> Cool.
>
> I'll actually just do it here. First step is to put the menu bar along
> the top--you do that in the Desktop configuration menu (though this only
> works for QT apps). Second step is to come up with some dock-alike. I
> prefer using a cut down KDE panel, but YMMV. SuperKaramba has a number
> of themes that act like the dock does, including the parabolic zooming.
> You'll want the Baghira style engine to get OS X-like buttons and such,
> but you'll need to tweak it to your own preferences. For window
> decorations, I like using Emerald (part of Beryl, which is an XGL
> composition manager), but you might prefer a native Kwin theme. Part of
> the advantage of Beryl is that XGL does double buffering and proper
> composition so you don't get visible redraw artifacts. It also supports
> the various expose-like functions. You can also set Mac-style keyboard
> combinations, mouse settings, and other assorted settings in the wizard
> that starts the first time you run KDE. Alternately, you could manually
> change the appropriate aspects.
You can see why "Joe Average" isn't going to put up with Linux
yet. I can follow what you're saying, but I've been messing
with things like this for almost 30 years.
> Fonts are, as always, dependent on user configuration.
Thanks for reminding me. You have to jump through hoops to get
decent font rendering, and I would have thought they'd fix it by
now. Apparently not.
> You can enable OS
> X-like font rendering by installing properly patched versions of a few
> files. I think this was the guide I used, but I didn't fix the fonts in
> KDE for this demonstration, and it's been ages since I set GNOME up.
>
>
http://jaganath.wordpress.com/2006/07/16/ubuntu-install-log-6-
finally-os-x-lik
> e-font-rendering-in-linux/
Okay, I'll try and force myself to go through this one more
time...
> As for the screenshot...
>
> http://img128.imageshack.us/my.php?image=osxified3bj9.png
Looks decent. Close enough, thanks.
> It's not as far as I *could* go, but I'm not willing to put forth much
> more effort on this. It was about an hours worth of tweaking to get it
> to that point.
How long would it take if you were new to Linux and not a
techie?
>> Nothing to do with performance. Transparency is nothing but a
>> recipe for eyestrain.
>
> I don't really use transparencies in XGL. It only works really well for
> the various window management functions.
>
>> In all but a very few circumstances, it's
>> totally counterproductive, but looks 'cool'.
>
> It's good on terminal windows, if the opacity is ~75%. Especially if you
> need to read something while you're typing.
Interesting, because terminal transparency is exactly what
pisses me off the most. One of the reasons I use dual monitors
is to completely avoid any temptation to turn that shit on.
>>> People tweak UIs because they like to do it, or because it makes their
>>> work environment more comfortable. Comfortable workers are more
>>> productive workers.
>>
>> Real-world data is exactly the opposite. The more stuff like
>> that shows up on the desktop,
>
> My environments are usually very clean, but that doesn't mean I like it
> setup in the default configuration.
Right, so if you want a clean, low-fluff UI, someone expert in
desktop configuration needs to overhaul it for you. That's not
ease of use. That's "I'm a geek, I'm ok, you're not". Hence
the barrier for noobs to move to Linux. Once again, Linux is
great for geeks and developers, and a pain in the ass for the
other 90+% of the universe.
>> Well, handing someone a factory labeled and shipped for free
>> Ubuntu install DVD doesn't help either, and that's supposed to
>> be the easiest.
>
> Any operating system that requires joe six pack to install it himself is
> going to be perceived as too difficult and needless.
If you're right about that, then Linux is doomed. A couple
small companies tried to sell pre-installed Linux bundles. Are
any of them still afloat? Dell even did it for a while, until
M$ made it so painful. You can /still/ get it from them, but
you have to jump through special hoops and pay a lot extra to
get it, not worth it.
> Windows wouldn't be
> able to change that, and neither would OS X (which is why I think a
> generic x86 version of OS X would go over like a lead balloon).
Windows didn't sell very well initially. Then they added
Solitaire, and the rest is history.
> IOW,
> Linux-on-the-desktop won't be a viable plan until a major OEM starts
> shipping Linux desktops by default. *That* won't happen until the
> userbase creeps up to a critical size (and what that is, exactly, is
> unknown).
Chicken and egg problem, unsolvable. Game over.
> The fact that Linux allows people to keep their older machines
> more viable helps a lot.
Which is a primary reason why the OEMs hate it. They /need/ a
bloated OS that gets slower year after year to keep their sales
up. Vista is like the holy grail for them. Linux is like an
A-bomb in comparison.
TheLetterK
Complaining about politics to a political science major seems redundant.
Not that you would be expected to know that. As a prospective 'crook'
myself, perhaps I should be posting x-no-archive...
> All the good stuff on the history channel is
> available whenever you want to watch it on DVD.
But what if you have a sudden urge to watch the history of the screw,
but don't want to wait a week for delivery?
Joe average isn't going to be trying this. Even if he did, those can all
be installed easily. I was trying to at least partially explain what
happened, and what options you have, since I was pretty sure you'd be
able to follow it. For someone less well versed, the instructions would
have been much more concise.
>
>> Fonts are, as always, dependent on user configuration.
>
> Thanks for reminding me. You have to jump through hoops to get
> decent font rendering, and I would have thought they'd fix it by
> now. Apparently not.
There's legal problems with providing good font rendering by default.
Users can patch the appropriate software themselves, but the
distributions can't bundle it.
>
>> You can enable OS
>> X-like font rendering by installing properly patched versions of a few
>> files. I think this was the guide I used, but I didn't fix the fonts in
>> KDE for this demonstration, and it's been ages since I set GNOME up.
>>
>>
> http://jaganath.wordpress.com/2006/07/16/ubuntu-install-log-6-
> finally-os-x-lik
>> e-font-rendering-in-linux/
>
> Okay, I'll try and force myself to go through this one more
> time...
>
>> As for the screenshot...
>>
>> http://img128.imageshack.us/my.php?image=osxified3bj9.png
>
> Looks decent. Close enough, thanks.
>
>> It's not as far as I *could* go, but I'm not willing to put forth much
>> more effort on this. It was about an hours worth of tweaking to get it
>> to that point.
>
> How long would it take if you were new to Linux and not a
> techie?
Maybe three times as long? That's assuming I read up on it, rather than
monkey-copying what someone tells me to do on a forum.
>
>>> Nothing to do with performance. Transparency is nothing but a
>>> recipe for eyestrain.
>> I don't really use transparencies in XGL. It only works really well for
>> the various window management functions.
>>
>>> In all but a very few circumstances, it's
>>> totally counterproductive, but looks 'cool'.
>> It's good on terminal windows, if the opacity is ~75%. Especially if you
>> need to read something while you're typing.
>
> Interesting, because terminal transparency is exactly what
> pisses me off the most. One of the reasons I use dual monitors
> is to completely avoid any temptation to turn that shit on.
>
>>>> People tweak UIs because they like to do it, or because it makes their
>>>> work environment more comfortable. Comfortable workers are more
>>>> productive workers.
>>> Real-world data is exactly the opposite. The more stuff like
>>> that shows up on the desktop,
>> My environments are usually very clean, but that doesn't mean I like it
>> setup in the default configuration.
>
> Right, so if you want a clean, low-fluff UI, someone expert in
> desktop configuration needs to overhaul it for you.
GNOME is about as low fluff as a full desktop environment can get. It's
certainly not as bad as OS X.
> That's not
> ease of use. That's "I'm a geek, I'm ok, you're not". Hence
> the barrier for noobs to move to Linux. Once again, Linux is
> great for geeks and developers, and a pain in the ass for the
> other 90+% of the universe.
>
>>> Well, handing someone a factory labeled and shipped for free
>>> Ubuntu install DVD doesn't help either, and that's supposed to
>>> be the easiest.
>> Any operating system that requires joe six pack to install it himself is
>> going to be perceived as too difficult and needless.
>
> If you're right about that, then Linux is doomed. A couple
> small companies tried to sell pre-installed Linux bundles. Are
> any of them still afloat?
A few, though they mostly do specialty stuff, or sell servers.
Linux-on-the-desktop will happen first in large businesses, though, and
that will provide incentive for people who work there to use the same
software at home.
> Dell even did it for a while, until
> M$ made it so painful. You can /still/ get it from them, but
> you have to jump through special hoops and pay a lot extra to
> get it, not worth it.
>
>> Windows wouldn't be
>> able to change that, and neither would OS X (which is why I think a
>> generic x86 version of OS X would go over like a lead balloon).
>
> Windows didn't sell very well initially. Then they added
> Solitaire, and the rest is history.
>
>> IOW,
>> Linux-on-the-desktop won't be a viable plan until a major OEM starts
>> shipping Linux desktops by default. *That* won't happen until the
>> userbase creeps up to a critical size (and what that is, exactly, is
>> unknown).
>
> Chicken and egg problem, unsolvable. Game over.
It's not unsolvable, since the userbase is growing faster and faster
over time. It's just going to take a long time to get anywhere.
>
>> The fact that Linux allows people to keep their older machines
>> more viable helps a lot.
>
> Which is a primary reason why the OEMs hate it. They /need/ a
> bloated OS that gets slower year after year to keep their sales
> up. Vista is like the holy grail for them. Linux is like an
> A-bomb in comparison.
Na, people are going to upgrade anyway. Eventually, everyone finds some
new thing they want to do that requires more horsepower. It would create
a completely cyclic market though--new software is put out that does
some neat and power-intensive feature, which drives a large portion of
the userbase to buy new hardware, which makes an even more power-hungry
bit of software a feasible idea, repeat. There would, of course, still
be hardware failures and those who just like to have the best available.
The focus for marketing would be on presenting new things for people to
do with their computer, rather than professing a solution to widespread
problems with the existing product.
It's not like people are actually forced to upgrade now. There are
people still plugging along just fine with Windows 98. Vista's probably
going to be a difficult sell for Microsoft, though it will eventually
supplant XP due to OEM shipments.
Dan Johnson
>> Do we know the iPhone is a platform? I thought it was going to be
>> closed, like the iPod.
>
> It's not entirely clear. Apple has made it clear there won't be a
> public SDK (initially?), but they've also said anyone interested in
> writing apps for it should contact Apple Developer Relations. It's
> possible the platform with be totally closed, it's possible it'll be
> open, but only to serious developers that form business relationships
> with Apple, and it's even possible Apple is feeling things out and
> plans to open things up more more later. We don't really know.
Hmm. Well, we'll see; but I'm not inclined to assume
this thing will have a console-like licensing model
until Apple says so.
>> It hardly seems an earthshaking product. A *good* one perhaps- but
>> that's not the same thing.
>
> Um. It's pretty funny that you could say "like the iPod" in one
> sentence and then downplay its potential importance in the next
> sentence. Seriously.
Well, the iPod wasn't exactly earthshaking either. It was
(and is) a good product, and a success, but it's just an
MP3 player.
[snip]
>> I think Leopard didn't show because Apple had nothing more to show,
>> and Apple knows how badly their exuses went over last time.
>
> I think you have a history of reading the Apple tea leaves in just about
> the most pessimistic way possible.
Noticed that, did you? :D
Joseph Crowe
> Lefty Bigfoot wrote:
>> All the good stuff on the history channel is available whenever you
>> want to watch it on DVD.
>
> But what if you have a sudden urge to watch the history of the screw,
> but don't want to wait a week for delivery?
Ah, Modern Marvels....one of The Hitler Channel's winners.
>> How long would it take if you were new to Linux and not a techie?
>
> Maybe three times as long? That's assuming I read up on it, rather than
> monkey-copying what someone tells me to do on a forum.
The problem is, Joe Sixpack has little to no incentive to do
this as I have found out when I have tried to get friends to even
touch Linux on dual boot machines set up for both Windows and Linux.
>> Right, so if you want a clean, low-fluff UI, someone expert in desktop
>> configuration needs to overhaul it for you.
>
> GNOME is about as low fluff as a full desktop environment can get. It's
> certainly not as bad as OS X.
In what respect do you find this to be true?
> A few, though they mostly do specialty stuff, or sell servers.
> Linux-on-the-desktop will happen first in large businesses, though, and
> that will provide incentive for people who work there to use the same
> software at home.
That certainly is the hope of Linux supporters, and I would love to
see that happen, but having worked for those large companies, I'm not
so sanguine.
>>> The fact that Linux allows people to keep their older machines more
>>> viable helps a lot.
>>
>> Which is a primary reason why the OEMs hate it. They /need/ a bloated
>> OS that gets slower year after year to keep their sales up. Vista is
>> like the holy grail for them. Linux is like an A-bomb in comparison.
>
> Na, people are going to upgrade anyway. Eventually, everyone finds some
> new thing they want to do that requires more horsepower.
I think that while some subset of the market has that characteristic,
it's a diminishingly small subset. The actual needs of most non-gamer
computer users can be met with modest hardware that allows email,
IM chats, web-crawling etc. For other uses, functionality migrates off
the desktop into specialized systems, like iTV or whatever, and the
majority of users may not know or care what the underlying OS is as long
as it gives them a fairly understandable interface. IOW, the software
needs to simply get out of the way of the function.
> It would create
> a completely cyclic market though--new software is put out that does
> some neat and power-intensive feature, which drives a large portion of
> the userbase to buy new hardware, which makes an even more power-hungry
> bit of software a feasible idea, repeat. There would, of course, still
> be hardware failures and those who just like to have the best available.
> The focus for marketing would be on presenting new things for people to
> do with their computer, rather than professing a solution to widespread
> problems with the existing product.
I don't think that is the direction the market will push things. I
actually think that the desktop computer will diminish in importance as
the providers figure out that at some point that raw technology will not
increase markets nearly so much as ease of use will. In that respect,
both Windows and Linux have a long way to go...so does Apple, but
Apple seems to realize this.
>
> It's not like people are actually forced to upgrade now. There are
> people still plugging along just fine with Windows 98. Vista's probably
> going to be a difficult sell for Microsoft, though it will eventually
> supplant XP due to OEM shipments.
You are right here. I have friends who are kicking and screaming at
the 98 to XP transition....of course, I show them how to reconfigure
XP to look more "classical", but that's the demographic you have to
reach with Linux...it's a recurring theme, but when I was young it was
IBM vs. UNIVAC.....nothing new here.
Dan Johnson
> Dan Johnson wrote:
[snip- on XGL]
>> This is, as I understand it, Quartz Extreme for X-Windows;
>
> No, it's Quartz 2D Extreme for Xorg. They both use the same concept to
> provide indirect OGL rendering. XGL is in a much more usable state than
> Apple's implementation, though.
I do not think this is correct. My research indicates
that XGL composes windows into a desktop, and
does not render geometry.
>> it hardware accelerates window compositing,
>
> Actually, it hardware accelerates all drawing operations. Everything is
> drawn using OpenGL. Quartz Extreme was just hardware accelerating 2d
> drawing operations, and the manner by which they accomplished this would
> have been untenable on X Windows. OTOH,
No, this is confused. Quartz Extreme did not accellerate 2D drawing;
that's what Quartz 2D Extreme was to have done.
There's nothing untenable about compositing windows
with X-Windows.
It may be untenable to use OpenGL or the like to accelerate
X-Windows drawing. X-Windows drawing primitives are
very simple, and have a fairly close resemblance to
the Windows primitives that modern graphics cards
accelerate natively.
On the one hand, there's not much need to accelrate these.
On the other, you hardly need to do trickly shader programs
to do so, when the card has the operations built in anyway.
So Open-GL accelerated X-Windows *rendering* seems
like a nonstarter: hard to do and pointless anyway. But
compositing is a very different story.
>> which,
>> given X-Windows lack of device independence,
>
> What the hell are you talking about? X Windows is just about the only
> device independent display architecture out there. That was, after all,
> what it was designed to be. It was later extended to support specific bits
> of hardware, but it's still a device independent architecture.
No. X-Windows is quite poor at this. We all know
it can't print, and we all know it hasn't got resolution
independence. But did you know it hasn't got pixel
format independence?
With other APIs you specify the color you want,
and you get the nearest color available on the
device. For modern true-color hardware, this works
very well.
X-Windows is designed around the old indexed
devices. You *allocate* colors with XAllocColor
or similar APIs. The color you get back includes
the bits to be written to the device, so you can't reuse
it on another device.
The is grotesque. You must free colors when done
with them, which is an headache nobody else
puts you throught, because this is what tells
X when to release color table entries on
the hardware.
And it's not even *good* at indexed hardware;
if you use it on real indexed hardware you get
terrible flashing as it changes colormaps.
>> is even handier for them than for Apple.
>
> Apple needs it. Badly.
They've got it.
>> But it's not Quartz, which Apple has shipped. It's not
>> WPF, which MS has shipped.
>
> So? XGL sits at roughly the same level as DWM does on Vista, or Quartz
> Compositor does on OS X. Quartz and WPF are graphics layers, not
> composition engines.
Exactly right. Apple has been shipping Quartz Compositor for
years now, so I'm not impressed with Linux's sort-kinda-release
of XGL.
Even MS, which hasn't got their DWM out the door official
yet, has shipped GDI+ and WPF since 2000.
>> And it depends on working OpenGL, which is
>> a bit of an issue on Linux today.
>
> No more of an issue than XP needing an Mp3 decoder installed before it can
> play Mp3s.
Windows XP can play MP3s out of the box. It can't
*encode* MP3s; that's a different thing.
(More precisely, it's a thing that legally one must
pay license fees for- due to patents. MS can't
be quite a loose with IP law as Linux is; they've
got very deep pockets.)
>> The 3D support
>> requires binary drivers, which aren't open source;
>> because this is legally doubtful, many distirbutions
>> won't ship this.
>
> I fail to see how it's a difficult task to run 'apt-get install
> nvidia-glx' after installation. Really, that's how easy it is to install
> the binary drivers for Nvidia cards on a Debian-based distro.
If you are going to the command line, that's a big usability
problem.
Even if you are not, it's still legally doubtful to offer
such binary packages for download at all.
[snip]
>> Quartz Extreme was worked quite well since its
>> introduction, years ago now.
>
> Quartz Extreme is not the same thing as XGL. It's not even remotely close.
> Quartz Extreme was (essentially) an optimization to Quartz that finally
> got it's performance out of the gutter. It moved much of the rendering
> work onto the GPU, rather than rendering everything in software before
> pushing it off to the GPU for display.
This is just completely backwards. QE did not offload
rendering. It offloaded compositing.
>> You may be thinking of Quartz 2D Extreme; but
>> XGL does not offer that kind of functionality.
>
> Excuse me? They're both methods to provide indirect OpenGL rendering.
> That's sort of the whole point behind both XGL and Quartz 2D Extreme.
They are nevertheless quite different.
XGL and QE (and DWM) do fast bitmap composition for
windows, which eliminates redraws at the cost of memory;
using hardware compositing allows various tricks to be
done (like Expose) and makes this stuff faster.
As I understand it, Q2DE was most ambitious, and was
to accelerate *all* rendering using complex shader
programs, even things like spline tesselation which seems
very un-GPU-like.
>>> And they don't even have any plans for really supporting vector graphics
>>> in the UI--GNOME and KDE have steadily been adding support for this over
>>> the past few years. KDE 4 is supposed to be including a fully
>>> vector-based theme as the default.
>>
>> This is just SVG, isn't it?
>
> SVG being 'Scalable Vector Graphics'. And no, it goes beyond simply
> providing SVG icon support (which already exists on both of them).
What more than SVG image support? Is it just support for
SVG in themes?
Is this something like WPF's styles?
>>> If you expand the scope to the time when OS X was released... well, just
>>> compare a current XGL demonstration video to a screenshot of pre-2.0
>>> GNOME.
>>
>> Sexy demos are lots of fun, but they aren't products.
>
> Tell it to Apple. They've managed to make a small fortune selling demos to
> people.
:D
[snip]
>> OS X has progressed a lot since 10.0.
>
> Alright, name some examples. What's fundamentally different about 10.5
> over 10.0?
Fundamentally different?
I said "progressed a lot". Is Spotlight 'fundamentally
different' from Sherlock? I dunno, but I know Spotlight
is a great improvement.
[snip]
>> I suppose you are trying to say that an interested party
>> could build pretty software on these platforms, but
>> they are ugly by default.
>
> No, that's not what I'm saying. LiveLinux disks are horrible methods to
> showcase what Linux can do. They give you a concrete set of tools, and
> prevent you from making any sort of lasting changes. It's Linux without
> the flexibility, which is one of the biggest selling points.
Well, flexibility is a fine selling point, but flexibility
is not the same thing as prettyness.
Apple has never been about flexibility. What they do
better than anyone else is beauty. Nothing else looks
as good as Mac.
[snip]
>> It seemed to me that they had overly noisy UI as it
>> was!
>
> So remove the noise. Oh, wait, you can't, because you're trying a
> LiveLinux distribution rather than actually installing it.
I shouldn't have to build my own OS. If I do so and
it's pretty, the credit goes to me, not Linux, thank you
very much. :D
[snip]
>> How should one discover how pretty Linux "really is",
>> then?
>
> Install it, and configure the desktop exactly like you want it. XGL/Beryl
> is a good start for something to tinker with.
That's, but that's way too much to ask just to find
out if a product is any good. In downloading, burning,
and trying out LiveCDs, I'm going *way* beyond what
most prospective users would do.
[snip]
>> I'm sorry to hear that this is so; the architecture is capable of
>> more: the WindowServer keeps little state, so it can be restarted
>> without taking down applications.
>
> No, it can't. Try it sometime. Even if the apps didn't die (they're
> *supposed* to die), they'd just get reparented by init and would sit there
> wasting resources. You certainly couldn't resume work on them when you
> restarted WindowServer.
I did not know this. But I'll take your word for it. :D
[snip]
>> Vista is supposed to do
>> this, and I'm surprised that OS X does not.
>
> Vista won't do it either.
I have not tried it, but the architecture is capable of
it, and sooner or later somebody will make it work.
>> But even without that, the Quartz architecture keeps a lot
>> of very complex code out of that shared process; that can
>> only improve stability.
>
> So, what does Quartz do that is unusual in this regard. Be specific. Cite
> specific examples of situations where code is not shared with Quartz, but
> is shared with alternatives.
Let us say you are going to draw a shape in your window; say
a rectangle. Your program invokes the suitable API function.
On Windows, you call Rectangle(). This library function then
traps into the kernel, and there invokes the corresponding
driver function. This may draw the rectangle, or it may
send commands the the video card to draw with accelerated
hardware. Should this code fault, it's blue screen time!
On X-Windows, you call XDrawRectangle(); the
library sends an X-protocol message to the X-Server
describing this and returns immediately. The X-Server
unpacks this message, then either draws the rectangle
itself or invokes the hardware to do so, as with GDI.
Should this code fault, the X-Server dies and all
apps connected to it go too.
On Quartz, you call CGContextStrokeRect(); the
library locks the window bitmap, which is in
a shared memory section, and writes the bits
there; then it signals the winder server that
changes are ready for it. Should this code fault,
that one application dies, but all others live.
[snip]
>> Ah, but on OS X, a rendering engine fault occurs in
>> the application process. On X-Windows, it occurs in
>> a shared process.
>
> It occurs in a shared process on OS X too. And Windows, for that matter.
In windows it's in a system service.
It's easy to assume that OS X works like NeXTStep,
and transmits Postscript to a server. But it doesn't;
you can verify this using Apple's debugging tools.
They've left the symbols in, and you can see what it's
doing.
I found this out while debugging a program that
deadlocked Quartz. Such a fault would have
completely demolished the entire GUI of
a Windows or X-Windows desktop, but
OS X was quite unperturbed.
[snip]
>> Well, that's so- but until recently,
>
> You have a strange definition of 'recently'. 5 years is a damn long time
> in the computer industry. I mean, OS X is only a year older than that.
By 'recently' I mean 'until the end of January'.
.NET, today, is a component included in
Windows servers but not desktops!
This will soon change, of course, and then
I'll flog Apple from a different direction.
>> MS didn't have anything
>> but COM, so they used that as an API delivery vehicle.
>
> No, they didn't. Because it isn't one.
Sure they did. DirectX is the most famous example,
but there are others. A lot of the Windows Media stuff
is exposed as COM objects, for instance.
John C. Randolph
> Indeed, in a few areas it was even better than
> Windows XP
The only products that have ever been worse than XP are earlier
Microsoft products.
-jcr
Autymn D. C.
> Autymn D. C. wrote:
> > TheLetterK wrote:
> >> It isn't? That's like claiming that it's an impressive feat to be faster
> >> than a 90-year-old shambling about in his walker.
> >
> > Glue is fast; rockets are swift; humans are dolts; folks are nescient.
>
> The semicolons are improper. When poetry (albeit bad poetry) is written
> on a single line, it is properly done so using a slash mark between each
> verse, not a semicolon. You also need to capitalize each successive
> line, since each is a part of a different sentence.
what poetry? No I don't.
> >>> Most will remember it for being prettier than XP,
> >>> which it undoubtably was. Beautifully rendered
> >>> geometry, high quality bitmap scaling, and
> >>> pervasive animation set OS X apart.
> >> Set OS X apart from what? KDE and GNOME are both better at being pretty
> >> than OS X is. Especially with XGL.
> >
> > OS X and XP are OSes. It's Aqua and Luna that are pretty, and both(?)
> > hav window utilitities with prettier interfaces.
>
> Since you want to be pedantic... OS X, in the above example, would refer
> to the package as a whole. Since the comparison was specifically between
> 'OS X' and two desktop environments, it should be assumed that the
> writer was talking about the desktop environment of OS X. Of course,
> your complaint was, itself, incorrect--Aqua and Luna are *themes*, not
> desktop environments.
What prettiness is not in those themes that was in that question?
> You might consider using a spellchecker. In the above sentence, you
> misspelled "have" and "utilities". I'm also not sure about how correct
> "OSes" is, though it's certainly common enough to be acceptable in an
> informal setting. Just like an occasional "it's".
I didn't misspell hav. You misspelld misspelld.
> > its, you illiterate shithead
>
> Don't you mean "Its"? You also seem to have forgotten a punctuation mark
> (either a period or an exclamation mark). What did that long-dead
> shyster say? He said, "may he who is without sin, cast the first stone",
> as I recall. Perhaps you should spend less time commenting on the
> grammar of others and more time polishing your own.
Fool, the interjection didn't need them.
-Aut
ZnU
But if XGL sits at the same layer as the Quartz Compositor, this doesn't
make any sense, because this sort of drawing doesn't occur at that layer.
> > Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
> > it?
>
> No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
> QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
> XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
> architecture is rather different.
>
> > Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
> > like Q2DE?
>
> No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
This doesn't conflict with what I just said.
> > Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
>
> It's more of a way to bypass QT and Xlib for drawing operations.
So it provides a *new* API for drawing? And apps (or the toolkits they
presently use) presumably have to be rewritten to use this new API
before they get GPU-accelerated drawing?
> > It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
> > capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
>
> The capabilities wouldn't match because they wouldn't need to. The
> architectures are too different to make that kind of linear correlation.
> And it depends on what you mean by 'Quartz', since it's often used for
> both the graphics layer and the compositor.
I've been rather explicitly not talking about the compositor. It seems
clear XGL provides that functionality.
TheLetterK
More correctly, it's Compiz or Beryl that sits there. Though there is
still significant overlap in which performs what functions. Quartz
Compositor essentially acts like both XGL and the composition manager.
>
>>> Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
>>> it?
>> No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
>> QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
>> XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
>> architecture is rather different.
>>
>>> Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
>>> like Q2DE?
>> No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
>
> This doesn't conflict with what I just said.
Qpainter isn't an OpenGL library. It's not at all the same thing.
>
>>> Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
>> It's more of a way to bypass QT and Xlib for drawing operations.
>
> So it provides a *new* API for drawing?
No, it doesn't. AFAIK it's just a class that does low-level drawing
operations.
> And apps (or the toolkits they
> presently use) presumably have to be rewritten to use this new API
> before they get GPU-accelerated drawing?
What new API? Qpainter has absolutely nothing to do with XGL. And no,
apps don't have to be rewritten to make use of XGL. That's why it's
called *indirect* OpenGL rendering.
>
>>> It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
>>> capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
>> The capabilities wouldn't match because they wouldn't need to. The
>> architectures are too different to make that kind of linear correlation.
>> And it depends on what you mean by 'Quartz', since it's often used for
>> both the graphics layer and the compositor.
>
> I've been rather explicitly not talking about the compositor. It seems
> clear XGL provides that functionality.
No, it doesn't. Not with the current XGL implementation, anyway. That
works on top of Xorg. The xegl implementation would, but that's years
away (if it will ever be released at all--which is in doubt, since the
primary developer quit).
ZnU
> Sandman wrote:
> > In article <NPFph.362$Oe2...@bignews7.bellsouth.net>,
> > TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> >
> >>> Eh? You got it backwards. the XGL team is still trying to get their
> >>> version of this in a usable state.
> >> It's been in a usable state for months now--at least for the last four.
> >
> > With "usable" meaning "hobbyists can compile it from the source form
> > the csv and make it run if they follow the readme's".
>
> No compilation required. For common distributions, anyway. Ubuntu, for
> example, has XGL and compiz packages in their main repos. Just apt-get
> them. You can add a third party repository and get Beryl packages. As
> for the 'difficult' installation, it involves copying a two short
> scripts to two files, and setting one of them as executable. That's it.
> That's a walk in the park compared to getting Quartz 2d Extreme to do
> anything.
Sorry, what *are* you talking about? Q2DE is disabled by default in
Tiger, but can be flipped on by checking a box in a utility included
with the developer tools. After that, nothing is necessary to get it to
"do anything" -- it transparently speeds up all Quartz drawing, and,
though there's presumably some reason Apple didn't flip it on by default
for Tiger, it doesn't seem to introduce any rendering problems.
Once again, Q2DE is not, as you seem to think, an updated version of the
Quartz Compositor. It's for drawing *geometry*, something that doesn't
happen in the compositor layer and that XGL does not appear to do.
> > Obviously, this is not my definition of "usable state". Or rather,
> > I think that any software should reach something more than just
> > "usable state" before it could be deemed impressive.
>
> Maybe, just *maybe*, you should actually try the current state of a
> project before calling it unusable.
>
> >
> >>> Quartz Extreme has been in OSX since 10.2.
> >> Quartz Extreme is not equivalent to XGL. Quartz 2D Extreme
> >
> > The nifty compositing that XGL does is very much comparable to
> > Quartz Extreme.
>
> No, it isn't.
>
> > Things like cube transitions and such.
>
> A) OS X's cube transition is very much different from XGL's cube
> transition. Among other things, you can't manually pan and tilt the cube
> in OS X.
Um... why precisely do you believe this has anything to do with the
capabilities of the graphics engine?
> B) The method by which this is accomplished is quite different. Quartz
> Extreme manages this by manipulating a bitmap of the screen.
No. With Quartz Extreme, the entire screen is an OpenGL scene with
windows existing as textures. Slapping these on the surfaces of a 3D
cube is trivial.
XGL works the same way. And only 4.5 years later! Amazing.
> XGL, OTOH, renders the surfaces of the cube in real time. Really, try
> playing a video while switching to a different user. You'll find that
> the video itself stops playing during the transition, but the audio
> keeps going. The cube transition in Compiz/Beryl doesn't have this
> same problem.
Once again, you're reading far too much about the capabilities of the
graphics engines into a specific behavior.
> C) Quartz Extreme doesn't support many of the *other* things that XGL
> does, like real-time window transformations (as demonstrated by the
> wobbly windows on Compiz and Beryl). Quartz 2D Extreme could, but it's
> not currently usable.
Q2DE has *nothing to do with this*. See above. Quartz Extreme obviously
can handle real-time window transformations, as demonstrated by the
Genie Effect. (Try it on a playing QuickTime movie. Hold down Shift for
slow motion.)
As in the two examples above, you appear to be confused by the fact that
the XGL guys make more gratuitous use of the capabilities of their
graphics engine.
> > Plus, Q2DE was introduced in 10.4 and isn't buggier than XGL, really.
>
> It was 'introduced' and disabled by default. Even once you enable it,
> you couldn't actually do anything with it unless you were a developer or
> had a similar level of knowledge.
You very obviously don't understand what Q2DE is. See above.
> OTOH, any moron who can keep from choking on his own drool can
> install XGL and enable the plugins.
And get capabilities similar to what Quartz Extreme enabled in 10.2.
ZnU
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <3DQph.129$To.3@bigfe9>, TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
[snip]
> >>> Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
> >>> it?
> >> No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
> >> QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
> >> XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
> >> architecture is rather different.
> >>
> >>> Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
> >>> like Q2DE?
> >> No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
> >
> > This doesn't conflict with what I just said.
>
> Qpainter isn't an OpenGL library. It's not at all the same thing.
QPainter is a 2D drawing library. Quartz is a 2D drawing library. With
Q2DE enabled, Quartz is a 2D drawing library implemented on top of an
OpenGL library.
> >>> Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
> >> It's more of a way to bypass QT and Xlib for drawing operations.
> >
> > So it provides a *new* API for drawing?
>
> No, it doesn't. AFAIK it's just a class that does low-level drawing
> operations.
>
> > And apps (or the toolkits they
> > presently use) presumably have to be rewritten to use this new API
> > before they get GPU-accelerated drawing?
>
> What new API? Qpainter has absolutely nothing to do with XGL. And no,
> apps don't have to be rewritten to make use of XGL. That's why it's
> called *indirect* OpenGL rendering.
Look, maybe we should be a little more concrete here. You say apps don't
have to be rewritten to take advantage of XGL, and you say XGL can do
what Q2DE can do.
Let's say I've got an app which draws an arc using a Quartz call. With
Q2DE enabled, that Quartz call results in OpenGL code being executed on
the GPU to draw the arc, because this is what Q2DE does -- it implements
Quartz drawing routines via OpenGL.
Now, let's say I've got an app which draws and arc using a QPainter
call. QPainter only knows how to tell the CPU to draw an arc -- it
doesn't know how to tell the GPU to do that. Yet, if what you're saying
is true, XGL somehow intercepts this process and arranges for the arc to
be drawn via OpenGL anyway.
This doesn't sound remotely plausible, unless QPainter is basically just
an interface to high-level drawing routines built into X itself, which
XGL replaces. But my understanding is the drawing routines built into X
are fairly primitive, so this seems unlikely.
> >>> It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
> >>> capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
> >> The capabilities wouldn't match because they wouldn't need to. The
> >> architectures are too different to make that kind of linear correlation.
> >> And it depends on what you mean by 'Quartz', since it's often used for
> >> both the graphics layer and the compositor.
> >
> > I've been rather explicitly not talking about the compositor. It seems
> > clear XGL provides that functionality.
>
> No, it doesn't. Not with the current XGL implementation, anyway. That
> works on top of Xorg. The xegl implementation would, but that's years
> away (if it will ever be released at all--which is in doubt, since the
> primary developer quit).
I frankly can't make any sense of what you're saying here. From my
reading, the main difference between Xegl and the Xglx server is how
Xegl handles the initialization of OpenGL contexts. This doesn't seem to
have anything to do with what we're talking about.
ZnU
"Dan Johnson" <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
> "ZnU" <z...@fake.invalid> wrote in message
> news:znu-B83431.2...@individual.net...
> > In article <12qdhhg...@news.supernews.com>, "Dan Johnson"
> > <daniel...@vzavenue.net> wrote:
>
> >> Do we know the iPhone is a platform? I thought it was going to be
> >> closed, like the iPod.
> >
> > It's not entirely clear. Apple has made it clear there won't be a
> > public SDK (initially?), but they've also said anyone interested in
> > writing apps for it should contact Apple Developer Relations. It's
> > possible the platform with be totally closed, it's possible it'll
> > be open, but only to serious developers that form business
> > relationships with Apple, and it's even possible Apple is feeling
> > things out and plans to open things up more more later. We don't
> > really know.
>
> Hmm. Well, we'll see; but I'm not inclined to assume this thing will
> have a console-like licensing model until Apple says so.
Jobs quoted in the NYT:
"These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load
any software on them. That doesn't mean there's not going to be
software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't
mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a
controlled environment."
At a guess, I'd say this means Apple will make developer tools available
to developers who can make a case for having access to them, test all
the apps, and maintain control over distribution. (You'll probably only
be able to get apps from the iTunes Store.)
> >> It hardly seems an earthshaking product. A *good* one perhaps- but
> >> that's not the same thing.
> >
> > Um. It's pretty funny that you could say "like the iPod" in one
> > sentence and then downplay its potential importance in the next
> > sentence. Seriously.
>
> Well, the iPod wasn't exactly earthshaking either. It was (and is) a
> good product, and a success, but it's just an MP3 player.
It has largely changed the way the masses consume music, and it has set
off a process which will seriously change the way music is distributed
and possibly the entire business model used by the recording industry,
in the long run.
Of course, you can argue if the iPod hadn't done it, some other device
would have. This is not particularly unlikely. But in our timeline, the
iPod did do it.
> [snip]
> >> I think Leopard didn't show because Apple had nothing more to
> >> show, and Apple knows how badly their exuses went over last time.
> >
> > I think you have a history of reading the Apple tea leaves in just
> > about the most pessimistic way possible.
>
> Noticed that, did you? :D
--
TheLetterK
> In article <IaZph.420$Ln....@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
>> ZnU wrote:
>>> In article <3DQph.129$To.3@bigfe9>, TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>>>> Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
>>>>> it?
>>>> No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
>>>> QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
>>>> XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
>>>> architecture is rather different.
>>>>
>>>>> Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
>>>>> like Q2DE?
>>>> No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
>>> This doesn't conflict with what I just said.
>> Qpainter isn't an OpenGL library. It's not at all the same thing.
>
> QPainter is a 2D drawing library. Quartz is a 2D drawing library. With
> Q2DE enabled, Quartz is a 2D drawing library implemented on top of an
> OpenGL library.
No, it isn't. Qpainter is a QT class that allows the programmer access
to low level drawing functions. It's not a 2D drawing library.
>
>>>>> Or is QPainter just an abstraction of some X functionality?
>>>> It's more of a way to bypass QT and Xlib for drawing operations.
>>> So it provides a *new* API for drawing?
>> No, it doesn't. AFAIK it's just a class that does low-level drawing
>> operations.
>>
>>> And apps (or the toolkits they
>>> presently use) presumably have to be rewritten to use this new API
>>> before they get GPU-accelerated drawing?
>> What new API? Qpainter has absolutely nothing to do with XGL. And no,
>> apps don't have to be rewritten to make use of XGL. That's why it's
>> called *indirect* OpenGL rendering.
>
> Look, maybe we should be a little more concrete here. You say apps don't
> have to be rewritten to take advantage of XGL, and you say XGL can do
> what Q2DE can do.
>
> Let's say I've got an app which draws an arc using a Quartz call. With
> Q2DE enabled, that Quartz call results in OpenGL code being executed on
> the GPU to draw the arc, because this is what Q2DE does -- it implements
> Quartz drawing routines via OpenGL.
>
> Now, let's say I've got an app which draws and arc using a QPainter
> call. QPainter only knows how to tell the CPU to draw an arc
Stop right there. That's where your problem is. Qpainter doesn't tell
the hardware anything. It only deals with the xserver.
> -- it
> doesn't know how to tell the GPU to do that. Yet, if what you're saying
> is true, XGL somehow intercepts this process and arranges for the arc to
> be drawn via OpenGL anyway.
Intercepts it? No. XGL is an implementation the xserver itself over
OpenGL. Xglx has some implementation oddities (it's basically a nested
xserver inside of an xserver), but everything goes to Xgl still, and it
just communicates with the hardware via the Xorg session, through the
GLX extensions.
>
> This doesn't sound remotely plausible, unless QPainter is basically just
> an interface to high-level drawing routines built into X itself,
It's a QT class for handling low-level drawing function. On X Windows,
that essentially means it bypasses any widget toolkit you're using and
gives instructions directly to Xlib.
> which
> XGL replaces.
XGL is an implementation of an xserver on top of OpenGL, not a
replacement for X Windows.
> But my understanding is the drawing routines built into X
> are fairly primitive, so this seems unlikely.
>
>>>>> It seems doubtful to me that X has a built-in rendering engine with the
>>>>> capabilities of Quartz, but I'm not very familiar with it, I admit.
>>>> The capabilities wouldn't match because they wouldn't need to. The
>>>> architectures are too different to make that kind of linear correlation.
>>>> And it depends on what you mean by 'Quartz', since it's often used for
>>>> both the graphics layer and the compositor.
>>> I've been rather explicitly not talking about the compositor. It seems
>>> clear XGL provides that functionality.
>> No, it doesn't. Not with the current XGL implementation, anyway. That
>> works on top of Xorg. The xegl implementation would, but that's years
>> away (if it will ever be released at all--which is in doubt, since the
>> primary developer quit).
>
> I frankly can't make any sense of what you're saying here. From my
> reading, the main difference between Xegl and the Xglx server is how
> Xegl handles the initialization of OpenGL contexts. This doesn't seem to
> have anything to do with what we're talking about.
From how you've phrased that, I would assume you've been reading
wikipedia? The main difference between Xglx and Xegl is that Xegl gets
Xorg out of the way. We won't need to run a nested xserver to get XGL,
it will just talk directly with the hardware. But my original wording of
that was terrible. It's probably the lack of sleep. Xglx does do
compositing, of course, it just doesn't sit directly on top of the
hardware like Quartz does. Xegl will.
However, XGL *does* do more than just compositing. It does *all* 2d
drawing operations in OpenGL (including geometry). It really is a full
reimplementation of an xserver on top of OpenGL. In this, it is more
directly comparable to Q2DE than it is QE, since both XGL and Q2DE
handle all drawing operations in OpenGL.
Essentially, Xegl would give GNU/Linux a display backend that was very
similar to what OS X was using. They would both have the same
capabilities, since they both perform roughly the same tasks. As it is,
we're having to live with only the development platform (Xglx). It is,
functionally, not much of an issue for the end user, but it's still more
complicated than it should be for developers.
ZnU
TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <IaZph.420$Ln....@bignews8.bellsouth.net>,
> > TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> >
> >> ZnU wrote:
> >>> In article <3DQph.129$To.3@bigfe9>, TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >>>>> Quartz would be the equivalent of e.g. QPainter in Qt (KDE), wouldn't
> >>>>> it?
> >>>> No. Quartz, the graphics layer, would be about the same as Motif, GTK,
> >>>> QT, etc. Quartz, the compositor, would sit at about the same level as
> >>>> XGL or Compiz/Beryl. It's a little difficult to say, since the
> >>>> architecture is rather different.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Wouldn't that be where you'd have to look to implement something
> >>>>> like Q2DE?
> >>>> No. Q2DE would be implemented on top of their OpenGL library.
> >>> This doesn't conflict with what I just said.
> >> Qpainter isn't an OpenGL library. It's not at all the same thing.
> >
> > QPainter is a 2D drawing library. Quartz is a 2D drawing library. With
> > Q2DE enabled, Quartz is a 2D drawing library implemented on top of an
> > OpenGL library.
>
> No, it isn't. Qpainter is a QT class that allows the programmer access
> to low level drawing functions. It's not a 2D drawing library.
It's full of commands like "drawRect". I'm unclear as you why this can't
be described as a 2D drawing library.
Even if QPainter isn't the exact bit of Qt I should be talking about, my
point remains the same.
[snip horribly failed attempt at clarification]
OK, but how *meaningful* is this? From what you're saying here, it
appears your answer to my question above (in the section I snipped) is
that Qt does all its drawing through Xlib, and XGL replaces Xlib with a
version which has drawing implemented via OpenGL.
This seems technically plausible, but I was under the impression that
Xlib has quite primitive drawing functions. If this is the case, I would
expect that when high level 2D drawing libraries want to do advanced
drawing, they probably do it internally and simply send bitmaps they've
generated to Xlib to be drawn to the screen.
If this is common, then adding GL acceleration for Xlib's drawing
functions doesn't seem like it buys you very much. To *actually* match
what Q2DE does, you'd need to have those drawing functions in the higher
level libraries re-implemented via OpenGL as well.
> In this, it is more directly comparable to Q2DE than it is QE, since
> both XGL and Q2DE handle all drawing operations in OpenGL.
>
> Essentially, Xegl would give GNU/Linux a display backend that was
> very similar to what OS X was using. They would both have the same
> capabilities, since they both perform roughly the same tasks. As it
> is, we're having to live with only the development platform (Xglx).
> It is, functionally, not much of an issue for the end user, but it's
> still more complicated than it should be for developers.
Sure. None of this is really particularly relevant to what we're talking
about here, though. (It's interesting that the XGL Wikipedia article
seems to devote more time to this rather boring implementation detail
than to explaining that XGL actually does. This sort of thing is
unfortunately typical of the open source world.)
TheLetterK
I guess you could describe it like that, but you could also describe it
as a tomato. I think '2d drawing library' is a bit pretentious for this,
though.
No, that's not what happens. Perhaps this would make more sense with a
brief explanation of how X Windows works. X Windows is a client-server
architecture, where the server (an 'xserver') is a bit of software
running on a computer that essentially handles the hardware interface
aspects of X Windows. X Clients, on the other hand, are applications.
They talk with an xserver by using Xlib. Xlib's only function is to
allow X clients to interact with X servers, using a common interface.
It's up to the xserver to generate the appropriate drawing commands for
whatever hardware it happens to be running on. Thus XGL (which is an
xserver) can indirectly render everything in OpenGL, with absolutely no
support needed in the applications running on top of it. Of course, that
only leaves it in the state that Q2DE is in today--rendering things very
quickly, but not taking advantage of any of the new capabilities offered
by this approach. That's what the composition managers are for (which is
why Quartz Compositor will come up).
People don't really talk about how to handle 'geometry' with XGL because
it's handled just like it was before. There's literally no difference,
because the X Windows architecture lends itself well to this particular
situation.
>
> This seems technically plausible, but I was under the impression that
> Xlib has quite primitive drawing functions.
It does.
> If this is the case, I would
> expect that when high level 2D drawing libraries want to do advanced
> drawing, they probably do it internally and simply send bitmaps they've
> generated to Xlib to be drawn to the screen.
Sort of. That can be done in some situations, but (AFAIK) it's not
particularly common. What you're describing is mainly done (on GNOME)
in some applications that use GNOME Canvas. Canvas can operate in two
ways. One allows for simple shapes, lines, and other basic drawing
functions. This is done through native Xlib commands. The other uses a
method like the one you describe. In both cases, though, you still get
the performance improvements and the effects from the composition
managers. I suspect that we will see a push for Xlib's replacement when
XGL becomes widely used. Probably in favor of libcairo, which already
supports OpenGL output and is supported by both QT and GTK.
>
> If this is common, then adding GL acceleration for Xlib's drawing
> functions doesn't seem like it buys you very much. To *actually* match
> what Q2DE does, you'd need to have those drawing functions in the higher
> level libraries re-implemented via OpenGL as well.
You've based all of this on the assumption that most applications
internally render bitmaps and send them off to Xlib? That's why you
think the two aren't comparable? Most applications don't do this,
AFAICT. And XGL hardware accelerates *all* drawing functions, not just
those made using native Xlib commands.
>
>> In this, it is more directly comparable to Q2DE than it is QE, since
>> both XGL and Q2DE handle all drawing operations in OpenGL.
>>
>> Essentially, Xegl would give GNU/Linux a display backend that was
>> very similar to what OS X was using. They would both have the same
>> capabilities, since they both perform roughly the same tasks. As it
>> is, we're having to live with only the development platform (Xglx).
>> It is, functionally, not much of an issue for the end user, but it's
>> still more complicated than it should be for developers.
>
> Sure. None of this is really particularly relevant to what we're talking
> about here, though. (It's interesting that the XGL Wikipedia article
> seems to devote more time to this rather boring implementation detail
> than to explaining that XGL actually does. This sort of thing is
> unfortunately typical of the open source world.)
You can explain what XGL actually does with a rather short sentence.
"XGL is an xserver implemented on top of OpenGL." Not much of an article
there.
ZnU
> ZnU wrote:
> > In article <cm%ph.9237$FY2....@bignews1.bellsouth.net>,
> > TheLetterK <no...@none.net> wrote:
[snip]
> > If this is common, then adding GL acceleration for Xlib's drawing
> > functions doesn't seem like it buys you very much. To *actually* match
> > what Q2DE does, you'd need to have those drawing functions in the higher
> > level libraries re-implemented via OpenGL as well.
>
> You've based all of this on the assumption that most applications
> internally render bitmaps and send them off to Xlib? That's why you
> think the two aren't comparable? Most applications don't do this,
> AFAICT.
I'll take your word for it, though given the limitations of the built-in
X drawing commands, this seems rather odd.
But here's another issue. If complex drawing in X apps is mostly done
with (presumably extensive) invocations of the simple commands in X
itself, does it really benefit very much from OpenGL acceleration? That
is to say, do these very simple commands really benefit much from being
implemented on top of OpenGL? Have people benchmarked this?
> And XGL hardware accelerates *all* drawing functions, not just
> those made using native Xlib commands.
So, explain how it accelerates creation of bitmap images by libraries
using internal drawing routines....
> >> In this, it is more directly comparable to Q2DE than it is QE, since
> >> both XGL and Q2DE handle all drawing operations in OpenGL.
> >>
> >> Essentially, Xegl would give GNU/Linux a display backend that was
> >> very similar to what OS X was using. They would both have the same
> >> capabilities, since they both perform roughly the same tasks. As it
> >> is, we're having to live with only the development platform (Xglx).
> >> It is, functionally, not much of an issue for the end user, but it's
> >> still more complicated than it should be for developers.
> >
> > Sure. None of this is really particularly relevant to what we're talking
> > about here, though. (It's interesting that the XGL Wikipedia article
> > seems to devote more time to this rather boring implementation detail
> > than to explaining that XGL actually does. This sort of thing is
> > unfortunately typical of the open source world.)
>
> You can explain what XGL actually does with a rather short sentence.
> "XGL is an xserver implemented on top of OpenGL." Not much of an article
> there.
As I think we've seen in this thread, "XGL is an xserver implemented on
top of OpenGL" is not a particularly clear explanation.
Dan Johnson
>> Hmm. Well, we'll see; but I'm not inclined to assume this thing will
>> have a console-like licensing model until Apple says so.
>
> Jobs quoted in the NYT:
>
> "These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load
> any software on them. That doesn't mean there's not going to be
> software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't
> mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a
> controlled environment."
This clearly excludes a broad software ecosystem, but
it is terribly vague.
> At a guess, I'd say this means Apple will make developer tools available
> to developers who can make a case for having access to them, test all
> the apps, and maintain control over distribution. (You'll probably only
> be able to get apps from the iTunes Store.)
He didn't say you could get apps at all. He did not even
confirm that there would be any software you could
purchase, though he obviously meant to leave that option
open at least. But it's very non-committal.
My reading is that he means to exclude 3rd party software
(ie, not "from us"), but does not want to commit to- or to
exclude- any particular thing from Apple.
This, to me, suggests a model where, to the user, everything
comes from Apple (albeit some of it may actually be written
by other companies that Apple hires for this purpose).
This seems to exclude a convention market for iPhone software,
and therefore it isn't a console-like model.
But perhaps I am reading too much into it.
[snip]
>> Well, the iPod wasn't exactly earthshaking either. It was (and is) a
>> good product, and a success, but it's just an MP3 player.
>
> It has largely changed the way the masses consume music, and it has set
> off a process which will seriously change the way music is distributed
> and possibly the entire business model used by the recording industry,
> in the long run.
"The massess"? Do not the proletariat still use CDs and such
for the most part? :D
I think you are giving the iPod far too much credit for the
increase in on-line distribution. To the extent that Apple
has enabled this, it was the iTunes Music Store that did it;
and even more than that, it was Apple's extractive more-or-
ess reasonable terms from the labels. I credit The Steve,
not the iPod here.
> Of course, you can argue if the iPod hadn't done it, some other device
> would have. This is not particularly unlikely. But in our timeline, the
> iPod did do it.
Perhaps the iPod put Apple in a position where they'd
want to do the iTMS. But that's a pretty distant connection.
[snip]