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BSD Operating Systems

Mac OS X Beta To Come Out Sept. 13 227

Posted by Hemos from the osx-finally-comes-forth dept.
A reader writes "At his keynote at Seybold today, Steve Jobs announced that Mac OS X beta will ship on September 13th. More details at MacNN's site." This is the beta - but the Sept. 13th beta launch is the first day of Paris Mac Expo, meaning that it probably will happen. He also confirmed that they are on target for an "early 2001" release of OSX.
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Mac OS X Beta To Come Out Sept. 13 More

Mac OS X Beta To Come Out Sept. 13

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  • It must be nice to *not* be Microsoft and actually meet your deadlines.

    I wonder tho if they'll find the guy in the beta program that leaks it to a pirate group...

    ----

  • The question I have is, how much can we reasonably expect out of this "beta"? I have DP4 running on my Powerbook, and its fairly stable, but there are *lots* of features that would appear to be missing (at least I hope they're missing). I'll be curious exactly how close to the final product this "beta" is...

  • OSX an "early 2001" release (Score:5)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:45AM (#818704) Homepage
    in other news, leaked photos of the new OSX server reveal it to be large, black monolith.
  • Demonstrating some of the new capabilities found in the Public Beta of Mac OS X, Jobs explained that it takes a PowerBook anywhere from eight to 22 seconds to wake-up from sleep under Mac OS 9, depending on networking settings. Under Mac OS X Public Beta, the unit takes only one second to wake up from sleep.

    "Oops it didn't work," said Jobs after the screen lit up but the PowerBook wasn't fully functional. Embarrassingly putting the PowerBook back to sleep, Jobs tried again.

    "Something's going wrong here, [but] when it works, it actually wakes up in about one second," said Jobs.

    Reminds me of the presentation that Microsoft did awhile back. Anyway, I don't know (provided I had a powermac) if I'd want to use this new Mac OS X public beta :-)

  • ... with a little Paul Rand "NeXT" logo on it.

    --
  • Will this be also for the x86 version of OS X or is that due later?
  • A beta microsoft product is a compileable piece of code.

    Every other project/company I've known hasn't had the bug problems of microsoft.

    I bet it will be about as stable as a final version +service packs copy of NT!
    I'd bet my bottom dollar on it, any takers?

  • Re:OSX an "early 2001" release (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And the new OSX commercial

    a large crowd of austrolepithecines gather around the server, one touches it to boot it, in one second.

    The austrolopethicine then picks up the femur of an antelope and beats Bill Gates over the head with it.

    "A computer for the rest of the genus"

  • Re:Oops (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, but the 'book didn't crash. They got it working after.
  • Hey, I noticed the BSD demon was used instead of that shiny, blue Apple logo. Since OS X is built upon BSD, does that mean Apple hardware stories will get the blue apple, while Apple software (specifically OS X) stories will from now on get the demon attached?

  • Methinks OS X/x86 will happen only when Apple has some reason to think it won't instigate the cancellation of MS Office for Macintosh.

    --

  • Re:no more aqua (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The real question is, why is there a BSD deamon as the story icon? This is Apple news.
  • It will be a public beta, so "leaking" is redundant. Moreover, Mac OS X is by no means "on schedule" -- it has been slipping every quarter since the Rhapsody days (still remember that?)

    The latest slip came at MacWorld NY in July, when Steve matter-of-factly mentioned that the OS is "on track for early 2001 delivery". Early 2001 obviously means April -- the deadline before that was January.
  • Probably not unless you have upgraded the graphics card in it, Ms. Onymous... although I suppose you could start a rumor that requires a G5. [lowendmac.net] :)
  • Of course, this has been in development since 1993 - the NeXT is the foundation for all of this.

    That's why OS X is based on a Unix kernel - it's so much easier for integration with OpenSTEP.

    The GnuSTEP [gnustep.org] team is also building OpenSTEP, but in a GNU fashiion, for integration with X.

    That means apps for OS X can be recompiled, with no changes, and run on Linux and any other GnuSTEP enabled platform - that was the whole goal of OpenSTEP, to allow write once - compile anywhere type development, with a simple and elegant OO variant of C.

    It is also a beautiful interface, now, from the eyecandy point of view. They've taken the Step interface (see Windowmaker and Afterstep) and combined it with the good ol' Mac menubar. That bar at the bottom... it's the Dock.

    I think OS X still uses Display PostScript, which is just as cool as regular Postscript.

    Idea: Web integration of DPS? Instead of HTML, perhaps? It would scale nicely to any size window... but thats another thread.

    Enjoy. I'mna have to buy me a Mac :)
  • The x86 version of MacOS X is currently schduled to be released... never.

  • There is no x86 version of OS X, nor will there be. Apple makes its money on hardware. Jobs does like to keeps his options open, however. You never know what might happen if the PPC coalition falls apart.

    Darwin, OTOH, can run on x86. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of.

  • Re:no more aqua (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    BSD kernel inside of OS X.

    But there's a blue apple at the top of the page...
  • " ...I wonder tho if they'll find the guy in the beta program that leaks it to a pirate group..."

    I'll bet that Apple just might be serializing each individual copy of the beta... all those millions of copies! (not just serial numbers on the packaging, mind you, but burying unique identifiers within the binaries themselves. That is a pretty huge task, you can't just burn a single image onto the disks, each image has to be unique.)

    Apple has been acting aggressively paranoid over the last couple years. A step like this would allow them to spot & sue the offending pirate immediately. just download the pirated copy and look up who it was registered to. hmmm....

    -=(V)0(V)0cr0(V)3=-
  • > I think OS X still uses Display PostScript, which is just as cool as regular Postscript.

    I believe it actually uses something akin to PDF (in the same way that DPS is akin to PS).

    --
  • There is no announced x86 version of Mac OS X.

    There is a freely downloadable Open Source OS from Apple known as "Darwin" that compiles under x86. This is the heart of Mac OS X but is by no means Mac OS X. It lacks the carbon libraries, the ability to run "Classic" applications, the Aqua GUI, etc. and those will not be released by Apple.

    Apple has nothing to gain from moving to x86. Anyone familier with their financials will tell you they're a hardware company and any attempt to compete in the x86 market would be suicide. If anything look to see an Alpha-based OS X before an x86 version.

  • A couple of points...

    1) MOSX (the semi official short) is based on BSD as it is what the OS'es it's been build on was based on (all that NeXT stuff ;)

    2) DPS is out. It's been replaced by a PDF based imaging model that's been build without using Adobe code. So it's free of that license fee Adobe used to charge NeXT.
  • Imagine my surprise when a C64 that someone didn't want came with GEOS. I had no idea that something like a C64 could be better than Windows.

    Geez. Windowing environment in 64 k of ram, better performance than my 450.
  • Anyone got any good stats on how OS X will perform? Or at least credible rumours?

    Kierthos
  • That means apps for OS X can be recompiled, with no changes, and run on Linux and any other GnuSTEP enabled platform - that was the whole goal of OpenSTEP, to allow write once - compile anywhere type development, with a simple and elegant OO variant of C.

    Are you sure this is still the case? From what I understand, there have been some considerable changes to the API since OpenStep.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Count on a lot of the performance hit being due to debugging code. Apple needs to build that extra stuff in to see where things crash.
  • Ok, well "DPDF" still seems cool :), though PostScript seems a bit more "open".

    As for BSD kernels, NeXTSTeP (is that how one captalizes it? Krezzy foo!) was based on Mach microkernel, IIRC.
  • Argh. If you have any right to the Developer Previews that's out there. You would know that something like that would exactly be the case. Nobody (well.. Maybe M$) can spare the resources to toptrim a DP to get close to final poduct proformance.

    It's been mentioned so many times. And everytime I am surpriced how it can come as a surprice to anyone that a DP version is neither stable or fast.
  • GNUstep, from what I can gather, seems to have been keeping up with the Cocoa API changes. Note that this is *only* Cocoa, not Carbon. So you have to use the Cocoa API to make an app that'll run on GNUstep. But if you're careful to do this, it just might be possible.
    ----------
  • Well, sure, that's called "innovation".

    But GnuStep, being GNU, can be updated to reflect these changes. With enough work, it could easily become the catalyst to enable many more Linux apps from large-name companies.

    (Do i sound like a marketroid, or what)
  • Hopefully they will still have the unsupported support that OSX DP4 has in it. Interesting point: if its on the supported list of Darwin and not on the supported list of OSX then its in the unofficial unsupported list for OSX. I have DP4 installed on a PowerMacintosh 7300. I cant to see how fast it runs on the G4/MP's. It ran super fast on the Machine they used it on durring WWDC.

  • Re:public beta? (Score:3)

    by Slad ( 155536 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:09AM (#818733)
    It will be availalbe for $15-$20 for a CD. So much for *free*! On September 3, ten days before the release date, you can order it through the Apple store.

  • READ MY LIPS, no more missed release dates!

    Wow, does anyone even remember Steve Jobs promising that when he took over 2+ years ago? Seems like it's been forever.

    I seem to remember a promise of the next-generation of macOS scheduled in spring on 99, not 2001. Wasn't it Steve who said "The software industry has gotten a very bad reputation for being late, and Apple is going to change that around!" What happened to that? I remember mac freaks praising Jobs. Where's the critism now?

    And it keeps happening. "Beta in the spring!" "Beta in the summer!" "September mabye?" And then there was "Final release for x-mas 2000!" "Final release January!" "Um, next spring possibly?" Yeah right. Maybe next fall.

    I know people who think the world of Apple, and I'll admit I'm a fan, but anyone screaming their perfection and moral triumph aught to get with the picture or shut the heck up. Apple fell from the tree a long time ago. They are now a giant corporation, and like most, are filled with worms and rotting from the inside out.

    Now let the flames roll in! :)
  • From the linked story
    Other features highlighted include a new Aqua Pro Mode option, which changes all the Aqua elements to Graphite, to help reduce the graphic distraction that some graphic artists expressed displeasure over in Aqua.
    This is new as Apple has to date refused to support alternate interfaces under prior Mac OS's. There was an Apple project for supported themes that even got shipped with a few demos included but Jobs scrapped it as soon as he returned to power. To date the official word on Aqua was that it's "lickable" interface would be the only option and there was fear Apple would do something to actively block alternatives (Aqua themes appear to be trivially edited text and graphics files.)

    What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".

  • So, lets recap. Aqua is unveiled. 3/4ths of the Mac using complain about how girly it is. Apple does something about it. 99% of the Mac using population complains about what an eventless day it has been. Did I miss something?

  • Re:Performance problems (Score:3)

    by TheInternet ( 35082 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:13AM (#818737) Homepage Journal
    But so far running OSX on high end hardware only produces medicore performance. It takes a lot of horsepower to this baby march. I'm eager to see if this "beta" version is an improvement.

    This is something I noticed as well, but apparently these are more due to high-level issues rather than the OS/kernel itself. For example, I believe the Cocoa and Java libaries are still being optimized, which explains why the little applets take so long to launch. At least at some point, some of those sample applications (TextEdit, I think?) were actually Java apps, so the JVM loads first, then the application. I would not be suprised if this was still the case with DP4, and possibly even in the final public release.

    The OS itself is obviously a quite capable system performance-wise. It does an admirable job serving pages via Apache from what I've seen. It just seems that some of the higher level user-level stuff needs tweaking, which is probably what most of the debug code is attached to, anyway. I don't imagine the BSD layer, etc are changing nearly as much.

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Hi Eliza!

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]

  • Actually, it is based on Mach with the 'BSD tools'. Where 'BSD tools' often means GNU tools.
  • if they'll find the guy in the beta program that leaks it to a pirate group...

    The September release will be a rather open beta, so that's not a big deal. If laptop hard drive prices drop below $15 per Gb, I'll expand my Wallstreet and give it a whirl. But it'll probably be full of bug catcher code and be too slow for serious use.

    The Developer Preview releases that have been going out for a while now -- those are private, so of course they're all available on Hotline and various WareZ sites. One fun quirk: its Open Firmware thinks different than regular MacOS. So I've been having great fun with idiots who post to comp.sys.mac.misc [mac.misc] that they can't uninstall OS X. Since the only people who should have it right now are serious Mac programmers, anyone asking that question is a pirate kiddie.

  • OS X uses PDF (Portable Document Format) for its entire graphics subsystem. It's basically a simplified PostScript-derivative, but still offers many of the same benefits in term of screen-to-print consistency, graphics portability, etc. The file format has been open for a while, and there are open source libraries for read/write and display.

    PDF files (better known as Adobe Acrobat documents) are already used online extensively, but present some problems for use as an HTML replacement. One, they're not designed to be loaded incrementally, so while small documents would download fairly quickly, larger ones would drag on and on for a long time. Two, their support for linking, bookmarking, etc. is basically just a hack Adobe added in later version.

  • Well, its predecessor OpenStep 4.2 is okay on a 25MHz, 68040 w/ 40MB RAM (my NeXT Cube at home).

    Apple engineers have posted ibformation on it running adequatly on old Power Mac 6400s, I think they were to comp.sys.next.advocacy, and OpenStep for Intel on modern hardware is by all accounts amazingly quick/responsive (``windows vanish'').

    Statements by people running DP4 have been almost wholely positive---especially those with G4s (apparently a lot of the Quartz imaging takes advantage of Altivec in innovative and elegant/efficient ways).

    William

    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
    http://members.aol.com/willadams

  • Re:Interesting other note from the Jobs demo (Score:5)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:26AM (#818745)

    What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".

    I think you're reading more into this than is really there. Choosing the graphite look just changes the Aqua widgets to monochrome. For example, the three standard window title bar widgets (close window, minimize window and zoom window) are now all the same graphite gray color, rather then being red, yellow and green.

    This is simply Aqua with a more muted color scheme. It is not a separate UI at all.

  • The Carbon API is basically an emulation layer for "old world" Mac OS applications (i.e., OS 7/8/9). It would require a much more extensive development effort to support under Linux, and has nothing to do with OpenStep outside of Apple's integration of it into OS X.

    OS X is actually looking like one of the more "platform-friendly" systems hitting the market these days. Its BSD roots should give it access to both the full arsenal of BSD-native code, and to some sort of Linux "port" system. The Carbon API gives it compatibility with traditional Macintosh applications, and Cocoa has the full OpenStep spec. Finally, the Java layer supports both the full Java 2 runtime environment, and a set of Java wrappers for the Objective-C OpenStep API and libraries.

  • Yeah - and I've a friend with a copy of WinNT that's reliable...

    Sorry to burst your bubble but there's a lot of MacOS X that's still very PPC-centric. Much of it could be ported and it's even likely that much of it is being ported but doubt there's either a running version of it or that your buddy has it.

    -- Michael

    Why do I even bother to respond to the Anonymous Cowards bragging about their friends software?...

  • Well... (Score:3)

    by TheInternet ( 35082 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:27AM (#818748) Homepage Journal
    Question is, will it run on my SuperMac clone with Newer Tech G3 upgrade?

    Can you ride a bike across a tightrope?

    You could probably figure out a way to do it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • People work better with a deadline.

    Maybe the naming of an actual day is a bit unrealistic, but a quarter, month, or week are all realistic and should be used.

    As for missing deadlines, let's talk about how long the linux 2.4 kernel has been promised.
    http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=linux+2.4 [slashdot.org]

    Informal deadlines started in the Fall of '99. That was one year ago. And I quote, from a CNET article:
    Citing the need for smaller, more incremental upgrades to the open- source operating system, Torvalds says he is trying to roll out the next major Linux release, version 2.4, by this fall.

    But when a big company does it, it's evil.

  • Those options that Jobs likes to keep open are ones that could keep Apple going in the face of a complete collapse of their hardware business. Look at the server platform that Apple is slowly but surely building up around OS X: You've got the open source Darwin core OS, the Darwin Streaming Server for media content (also open source), Web Objects for app servers, and a custom JRE that provides access to the complete OpenStep API (NetInfo, GUI elements, etc.).

    I know a lot of companies that would be happy to have their core products be even a portion of Apple's "spares"...

  • I think there's a reason that Apple funded MkLinux for several years, then dropped it: they wanted the experience with a Mach microkernel-based, *NIX OS on the PowerPC platform. They got it, and now have been able to roll that into Darwin. Hence, the decent core OS performance and stability.
  • The new ``Pro Mode'' was the best bit of news for me---I've been complaining of the blue color since Aqua was unveiled.

    Rather a shame they didn't take it all the way and offer color schemes to match all the different iMac Flavors/colors.

    On the bright side, www.macthemes.org has a couple of notes in their Developer info which indicates Themes for Mac OS X should be feasible, so even if Apple doesn't do it, someone else will.

    One other topic which hasn't been touched on is how many third-party utilities get nuked by Mac OS X:

    Adobe Type Reunion - don't need it (save for in Classic), got a decent font panel now

    Adobe Type Manager Deluxe/Suitcase/FontReserve - got memory to burn to keep all fonts loaded always, and a font panel which makes them manageable.

    - nope, got a real OS, real Virtual Memory, and sophisticated file systems

    Norton Disk Doctor/Tech Tools Pro - OpenStep hasn't crashed on me in years (and very few times in the six years I've been using it). Plus, for UFS there's fsck.

    William

    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
    http://members.aol.com/willadams
  • You know, for three years I've been reading how "This is the year that Linux is ready for the desktop.", "XXX is finally going to free users from the cryptic command-line and bring Unix to the desktop.", "I installed the new Red Hat with YYY and my grandmother finds it easier to use than Windows and Office."

    Well, on September 13, Unix is coming to the consumer desktop. For real. Yeah, I think Apple deserves another round of abuse from the Slashdot readership.

    Besides, it should be remembered that Apple has been shipping Mac OS X server for, what, two years? They're not hyping it but it's been on sale and in use.

    ---------

    • Methinks OS X/x86 will happen only when Apple has some reason to think it won't instigate the cancellation of MS Office for Macintosh.
    Should we be reading this as saying:

    Methinks OS X/x86 will happen only when Microsoft get split.

    :-)
    G

  • The third entry in that list should've been:

    insert Connectix utility here - nope, got a real OS, real Virtual Memory, and sophisticated file systems

    Sorry 'bout that.

    William
    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
    http://members.aol.com/willadams
  • While GNUstep has been more or less keeping up with the changes to the OpenStep API made in Cocoa, there are going to be issues, and a porting from Cocoa to GNUstep while be more than a re-compile. Not a major pain in the arse, methinks, but not a 10 minute just-run-make jobbie. For one, the GNUstep Distributed Object classes (NSConnection and friends) do not follow the same protocol (the methods) as the Cocoa version. I'm sure there are other differences, but as Cocoa is totally finalized, they might catch up.

    Mac OS X uses Display PDF now, not Display PostScript. This actually also might effect the porting of applications between GNUstep, Cocoa, and OpenStep. With GNUstep and OpenStep, you can put straight-up PostScript code in your app- Cocoa wouldn't know what to do with this. This isn't a big problem, though.

    It is also a beautiful interface, now, from the eyecandy point of view. They've taken the Step interface (see Windowmaker and Afterstep) and combined it with the good ol' Mac menubar. That bar at the bottom... it's the Dock.

    What are you talking about on this one? While Mac OS X does resemble the OpenStep UI in some ways, in the ways that WindowMaker and others implements, it's almost nothing like it (title bar, general look of widgets). I would agree that Aqua is beatutiful, and more importantly, quite functional- but for those of you who want a more classic NeXT interface, check out MacThemes [macthemes.org], which has begun to document the Mac OS X theme format.
  • I don't see what your point is. "X sucks, but Y sucks, too, so you're dumb" isn't really much of an argument. And besides, every time I've ever heard Linus mention a deadline, he's quick to mention that the deadline will not be met. I think this is the difference. Steve Jobs says "it'll be out in the spring". Linus says "it'll be out in the spring, and I'm never wrong" (obviously tongue-in-cheek).

    Anyway, how on earth did this get to be about Linux? Linus' sucking has *nothing* to do with Apple's sucking. Apple missed the deadline; therefore they suck. I don't care if everyone else in the world also missed a deadline; the point still standns.

  • OSX: perfect "linux" distro? (Score:3)

    by nehril ( 115874 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @11:10AM (#818772)
    All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?

    RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X. It will be hard to even try to match level that since Apple controls the hardware too.

    Throw in all the standard OSS tools (gcc/gmake/perl/apache/etc..) and what is there for a geek not to like too?

    Mac OS X seems really cool, unfortunately Apple needed this about 4 years ago. Still, OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac (ibook perhaps) just to play around with it.

  • Keynote transcript available here: (Score:4)

    by WillAdams ( 45638 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @11:12AM (#818773) Homepage
    http://www.key3media.com/seyboldseminars/sf2000/pr esentations/keynotes/apple/jobs.html

    Should help clear up some of the confusion about, e.g. ``Pro Mode''/Graphite Aqua.

    William

    PS - mentioned this before, but www.macthemes.org says in their Developer notes that themes for Mac OS X are quite feasible.

    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
    http://members.aol.com/willadams
  • This isn't a flame, I'm actually curious:

    Choosing the graphite look just changes the Aqua widgets to monochrome. For example, the three standard window title bar widgets (close window, minimize window and zoom window) are now all the same graphite gray color, rather then being red, yellow and green.

    So wait a second here. Doesn't that mean that the three unmarked buttons at the upper-right of every window will now be even more indistinguishable as to their function? It was a bad enough design decision (this is only my opinion) that you can't tell which color performs which function, but now they're going to removed the color distinction as well?

    Isn't this basically the equivalent of taking a keyboard and painting a different color over each key's label, and then deciding that wasn't obscure enough and just paiting them all grey?

    The next step of course is that each time you click on one of the buttons, their functions are all randomly shuffled about...

    --Cycon

  • Check here [slashdot.org] for a recent evaluation of the PPC market for Apple & it's alternatives.
  • (Let me preface this by saying I am an operating system design enthusiast, not expert; please let me know if I've glossed over or just plain stated incorrectly important elements of the Mach/BSD interaction in OS-X.)

    Both of you are, in a sense, correct; OS-X/Darwin will look very much like a standard BSD system to the userland application/programmer, but the low-level architecture is different, due to the Mach microkernel. Unlike a the Linux kernel, Mach doesn't include its device drivers in kernel memory space. Instead, they're run as processes, which can be started, killed, and swapped while the system is running.

    It carries a performance penalty, obviously, since the kernel has to communicate with more processes to accomplish even basic I/O. However, it also gives the entire OS an added level of flexibility and (potential) stability, since well-written drivers won't take the system down even if their code crashes and dumps.

    The 'BSD' side of OS-X's personality comes from the choice of that platform to fill out the needed higher-level services to make the system complete. Once you're up to finished applications, there should be only minor differences between OS-X and any of the other main BSD derivatives.

  • I see.

    Would you care to explain how it is that the PPC Linux developers (www.yellowdoglinux.com, www.linuxppc.com, www.penguinppc.org) are able to develop an OS for these machines for which specs are not available?

    Or, let's review the imaging model? How long did it take Be to get _printing_ as a capability of the OS? Similarly, color management, and other high-end publishing features are absent from BeOS.

    And then there're the developer tools. Compare and contrast the number of apps which are available for BeOS with those for NeXT/OPENstep---rather sobering, no?

    William


    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
    http://members.aol.com/willadams
  • Is there really much money in porting OS X to x86? There's so much competition for the high-end desktop/low end server in x86 platform. You've got Win NT/2000, Linux, BSD varieties, etc. Besides, porting an entire OS and all of its applications to another processor type is not easy, nor cheap (if I recall, there are a lot of people working on LinuxPPC, and the alpha linux platform). It's probably not worth the development time to them.

    Apple makes loads of money by selling it's proprietary hardware. If people like Mac OS X, they have to buy Apple hardware, more money for Apple. If you can have Mac OS X for x86, why would someone want to spend a fair amount more for the PPC/G4 technology when processors and hardware for AMD/Intel is much cheaper? Even a few people posting about this article say they're now considering buying Mac hardware to try out this BSD based OS. If Apple markets Mac OS X well enough, they'll increase sales in their hardware significantly.

  • That's something I'm curious about - Apple got rid of X and replaced it with Display PostScript, right?

    I can't live without my xemacs, and yet with it, MacOX X would be my dream OS - enough applications to use in the real world, but stable enough for me to use for Unix/Linux web site development.

    Many thanks for any thoughts? Incidentally, the reason I'm saying xemacs instead of regular emacs is that I like the proportional font support built into XE.

    D

    ----
  • Will the beta come with a boot manager like Lilo, and if not, how do you select which OS to use if you have two?

    Is there going to be some kind of partition manager, or do I need to buy a separate hard drive for OS X?

    I'm going to be buying one of the dual/500 Macs and would just love to try the beta on it.

    D

    ----
  • Whenever a Steve Jobs keynote comes up, the Mac faithful start feeling breathless anticipation because most of the times he speaks, he has a spectacular, world-beating announcement to make.

    And with his July announcement of the multi-processor G4s and the Cube, the collective WOW! pasted a smile on the face of every Mac enthusiast.

    Now, it would be only natural to think that there wasn't really any time for anything of significance, with less than a month between this one and the last. After all, I only saw my first Cube last night(*).

    But the public has great expectations for Steve, because, after all, Steve is the Godlike figure who saved Apple from irrelevence, disaster, and tiresomeness. Steve the Great can do anything, they say!

    So everyone expects something exciting when he speaks, however much Apple tries to diminish expectations.

    Hope that helps explain the curious phenomenon.

    D

    (*) The CUBE: Yes, it's as stunning a looker as you've heard -- but the store ruined the effect by paring it with an off-brand Beige monitor. For shame, guys! No more Beige! [laugh]
    ----
  • How do you define high-end hardware - what machines are you running it on?

    D

    ----
  • It would take a fool to cover that bet.

    I used the *alpha* release of 7.0 on my main machine ten-eleven years ago. It was more stable than what I've come to expect from microsoft.

    [note--I really haven't used anything later than 7.1 (except to find that 7.5 wouldn't cut it on a IIci), so I have no position on the stability of 7.5-9.x :) ]

    hawk
  • Um... Go to the Apearance control panel. You can change the way windows colapse, the location of the scrole buttons, and several other things like color schemes. Apple created some wild schemes ( one of which was called "gismo" ), but didn't ship them with the OS. This didn't stop anyone from useing them, since you can download them and a million other themes that people create. The format of a theme file is well documented and it is not hard to make one.

    The general pattern of apple's software is that a user who knows nothing can only do things that are not going to supprize them too much. I whould bet that the wilder themes were axed because a user who wandered into the control panel and clicked on gizmo whould probably freak out when all of the borders on every window became bright orange with yellow stripes and the menus made a loud clacking sound.

    But as someone who knows what he is doing, I can make my mac look and behave any way I want. In the Ars Technica report on dp4, it was mentioned that Aqua is dependant on a bundle, and removing that bundle changes the UI to something closer to OS 9. If you were working on OS X, and had made the OS read a bunch of files to know what the UI should look like, whould you ever consider going back and hardcoding all of the data in those files into the apropreate parts of the OS? Of course not. Even if Steve insisted, the fact that they want a beta out the door in ~20 days whoud make it fairly unlikely that it will happen at least with the beta. And if everyone who runs the beta changes the interface, I doubt Steve whould risk pissing off all of his users by locking out interface changes in the final reliece.
  • DP4 could be installed on the same partition with Mac OS 9, but I never tried that. Don't know if there are issues or what.

    If you do want to use a separate drive or partition, for older machines, you can use BootX to switch between Mac OS 9 and X, but if you have one of the following machines:

    iBook
    iMac (with slot-load drive)
    PowerMac G4
    PowerBook (FireWire)

    you just hold down the Option key while you boot the machine, and you'll get a special screen with an icon for each bootable drive the system can find. Just click on the drive you want to boot from and then click on the right-facing arrow. The icons for the drives will even have the icon of the OS.

    If you don't have space for another internal drive and you have a FireWire port (any of the above machines except the iBook or the lowest-end iMac), you can get an IDE to FireWire case for about $80 and use almost any IDE drive in it and put Mac OS X on that. Or spring a little more cash for an already-assembled FireWire drive. I'm not sure if you can boot from USB yet, though.
  • Actually, stuff like Photoshop can use the second proc. MacOS isn't single processor, it just doesn't use them very well.
  • It'll probably put a significant dent in Linux's use on the Mac platform. Most Mac users use Linux just because it's a modern OS that runs on their hardware and doesn't cost $500 like Mac OS X Server does. I've already moved my CGI development to the Mac OS X developer preview.

    --
  • Or why not just memorize which button does what? I haven't looked at the button's shapes since, oh, 5 minutes after installing Windows 3.1
  • RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X. It will be hard to even try to match level that since Apple controls the hardware too. Throw in all the standard OSS tools (gcc/gmake/perl/apache/etc..) and what is there for a geek not to like too?

    Freedom? The core may be free, but the layers on top of that are closed/proprietary, and controlled by a company which might not agree with your goals. Or which might not give enough attention to that nagging bug which is causing you such trouble, since you are only a small company. Or...

    Free software has brought us where we are now. Why not let it take us where we want to go tomorrow? Or even today?

  • Aqua isn't just pretty. Aqua/Quartz is a full-fledged DPDF engine with all it's attendant benifets. I'm guessing that Aqua didn't take very long (for a window manager.) The meat of the time was developing Darwin and Quartz. OS X should not have shipped without Quartz, and thankfully it didn't. Besides, as far as I can tell, the core stuff (Darwin, Quartz) were ready long before Aqua was put into place.
  • When you mouseover ANY window control, whether it's the foreground window or a background window, glyphs appear in all three widgets. They are (in my opinion) easier-to-understand glyphs than the ones in Mac OS 9 (where all the widgets are gray as well, but only two have glyphs).

    If these were buttons on a button bar, or some kind of control that the user only occassionally sees, then this might be a problem. As it is, people will learn the widgets in their first minute with the OS. The fact that they mouseover also shows that they are buttons ... action items ... not just a cute decoration.

    A background window in Mac OS 9 loses its scrollbars and other visual clutter. This is just an extension of that.
  • Er - actually you're kinda dead wrong about a few things.
    • The Appearance control panel was originally intended to make a lot more substantial changes to how the Finder behaves. What you've got now is a stripped down 1/2-finished control.
    • The Apple-themes that you can find out on the net ("Platinum", "Gizmo", & the Apple-Japan developed "Drawing Board") are ones that 'escaped' the company and were never officially released.
    • The format of a theme file is not "well documented" and it is hard to make one. Apple never released the specs and it was over a year before all of the intricacies were widely understood.
    • The themes were axed because Jobs saw them as a frivolous waste of resources and a complicating factor for developers, trainers, and support persons.
    • The developers won't have had "~20 days" to lock in the Aqua appearance - DP4 shipped quite awhile ago and beta isn't due for 20 days.
    • It wouldn't be out of character at all for Jobs to "lock in " the default Aqua appearence, for precisely the same reasons as he axed this functioniality the first time. Jobs would absolutely "risk pissing off all of his users" 'cause 90% of his users didn't even know these things could be changed, 95% don't care, and for most of the support folks & developers this is anamatha anyway.
    The reality is that the ability to play with ones UI is something only a small percentage of folks care about, fewer feel strongly about, and most people who have to deal with the variables this results in rue.
  • Microsoft put together an excellent, stable operating system, and the Unix zealots refuse to accept it

    Both NT4 and W2k *are* more stable than W95 or W98 - it would be really hard to be less stable than that...

    The problems with all windozes, including NT4 and 2K, are the fucking stupid I/O and task schedulers. Have you ever noticed how the "HD" LED lights up and stays on for such long times on m$ machines, compared to Linux ones? The only programs that put any stress at all on the disks in my Linux machines are Oracle8i and Netscape Navigator.

    On the other hand, have you ever tried running Oracle8i on an NT4 machine? You absolutely need a dual CPU system; I suppose one CPU is stuck with the I/O while the other does the database processing.

    I spent six months last year trying to make a real time control software I developed run under NT. After *a lot* of debugging, I found that NT seems to disable all interrupts for as long as 150 milliseconds at a time when doing disk access. After I ported that software - initially written using MFC - to Linux, using the Qt class library, I found it used less than 2% CPU time. Really amazing, for a software that tried to use more than 100% of the same CPU under NT4. And porting from MFC to Qt took me less than two weeks, for a fully debugged software. I became a Linux zealot after that, no more m$-windoze for me.

  • Many thanks for the detailed response - I'm going to be getting a dual G4/500 system, so the easy boot sounds like it will work just fine. All I need to do is buy another IDE drive and slot it in.

    D

    ----
  • Here's something from the transcript of the keynote. Thought it was quite funny.

    Now, Darwin is our core OS kernel. It is the mock microkernel surrounded by 3 BSD Unix

    I think he means FreeBSD

  • Please note that BSD is just a Mach subsystem. The VM is still controlled by the Mach kernel.


  • No. Basically Be just got pissed because Apple wasn't subsidizing them. It's no coincidence that Intel made their big investment around then.

    Once again - explain:

    LinuxPPC
    Yellow Dog Linux
    Darwin
    MkLinux
    *BSD (a few variaties I believe)
    Debian
    SUSE

    ...all having, or announcing, PowerMac distributions.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Oh, and another thing:

    Why would Apple mind if Be made their OS for Mac hardware?

    Think about it:

    1. A MacOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS.

    2. A BeOS user buys a Macintosh so they can run their OS of choice. Apple gets $XXX.XX for the computer and a copy of the MacOS. User buys BeOS as well.

    See those X's up there? They'd be equal. Apple loses no money in the deal, and it's quite likely BeOS users would gravitate to the more powerful (read: more profitable for Apple) hardware anyhow.

    The only thing Apple might lose is a little 3rd party support. Big deal. It's not likely they'd have lost, and probably would have gained more in additional profits if it came to that to deal with it.

    Face it - Be did what it did because they wanted to do it anyhow. They were lured by the siren cry of Wintel's market penetration, but have basically lost themselves in a sea of mediocracy in trying to keep up with drivers. Bad mistake, but don't blame it on Apple. Instead of coding millions of drivers Be could have been making the BeOS even cooler.

    (and yes, the BeOS was/is really really cool, but that's not what this is about...)


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Not all sigs have to be related to technology. The whole point of a sig is to put something interesting as it relates to you - a quote or something. Maybe even a link to your web site. I don't recall seeing any guidelines on what you can and can't put in your sig on Slashdot. Perhaps you'd like to point them out for us?

    Until then, he can keep his sig.

    For the record, I think religion is pure BS. But that doesn't mean I should tell him what he can have on his sig.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Um, since both xemacs and GNU emacs (and vim) are ported to regular old MacOS, if all else failed and nobody ever lifted a finger to port them to OSX you'd still be able to run them in the Classic environment, as in 'right away' :)

    I'm having a hard time getting to http://my.ispchannel.com/~pjarvis/xemacs.html (the site for the Mac port of xemacs) but that's where it's supposed to be :)

  • This is a preannoucement of a beta for a product that's years late. Apple has been about six months to a year from the new, protected-mode OS since about 1992. When new Macs come from the factory preloaded with the thing, then it might be worth looking at.

    Remember how Apple spent $400 million buying NeXT so they wouldn't have to wait for the BeOS to be finished?

  • Corporations and "abuse". (Score:3)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:43PM (#818877) Homepage Journal
    A corporation is not a human being. No matter how many times I make fun of Microsoft, I will not damage its self-esteem. No matter how many times I say "APPLE SUCKS!" at the top of my lungs on the streets of Boston, Apple Computer will not cry or flail about. Why do some people think corporations should be above reproach and criticism? I guess it's the Libertarian crowd on slashdot.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Re:OSX: perfect "linux" distro? (Score:4)

    by nconway ( 86640 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:46PM (#818878)
    RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X

    Steve Jobs and crew have a 'loooong way to go' before they even release MacOSX. When it's released, then it will be fair to compaire with a GNU/Linux distro. Considering the pace at which Linux is improving, it's very difficult to predict the future.

    All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?

    I think MacOSX will be cool as hell, but it's nowhere near a 'better Linux than Linux' (not necessarily worse or better, just different). OSX will only run on Apple hardware. That means tossing out all that cheap, plentiful x86 hardware and starting over. It also means that old SparcStation in the corner isn't going to be running MacOS X any time soon. OSX is closed source (Darwin not withstanding - I'd say the majority of MacOSX will be closed source), and only runs on a closed hardware platform. If you use GNU/Linux for philosophical reasons, you won't want to have much to do with OSX. Once MacOS X is finally released, it will be brand new, 'fresh' code (stuff taken from BSD notwithstanding). Which is great from an 'innovation' standpoint; but I know I'll definately be hesitant to run MacOS X on any important servers anytime soon.

    Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely? Throw in all the standard OSS tools

    Have they actually been ported to OSX? How stable are they? OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac

    Me too!

  • Apple's changes to the OpenStep API are being actively tracked. Some of it hasn't been implemented yet because Apple hasn't released enough information (NSSound, for example). There's discussion on whether WebObjects will ever be compatible because of patent issues. There's hope, but who knows?
  • I think I had 7.1.0.1, or maybe 7.1.1, on my powerbook 180. That's as far as I went. I found lyx, and how well it did on equations, and that was the end of the line for macs and I; I've been all-unix since.
  • My only fear about MOSX is Carbon. I'd like to see Apple's considerable developer base switch to Cocoa (making Objective C, OpenStep, and thus GNUstep more popular). I fear that Carbon may give too many developers reason to simply "coast".
  • One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely?

    In DP4 you can install X. Damn I wish I could find the link. Once you install it you have to log in as user console with password console. That disables Aqua. Then you log in for real, and startx.
  • Be, couldn't have incorporated open source developments into their OS and remained proprietary.

    LK
  • In the three in a half years since they bought next, and all of the work that they did on that OS, they could have added many of these features to Be's OS.

    If six different Linux distros are able to support the Mac, what's Be's problem?

    Six different distros, one kernel. It's the kernel that does all of the work, the distro is just clothes for the laborman.

    Be couldn't have incorporated any of the open source code from the linux kernel without opening their entire OS.

    LK

  • Re:OSX: perfect "linux" distro? (Score:3)

    by ahg ( 134088 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2000 @06:40AM (#818904)

    Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely?
    Well, Yes, and No.

    Darwin, Apple's open source edition of their new operating system is CLI only and is FreeBSD 4.0 "compatable". IIRC, Carmack has ported XFree86 to Darwin, providing your X interface. This is a totally open source option but I see no compelling reason to chose this path over x86 based BSD.

    MacOSX is the union of the BSD/mach foundation, Apple's closed source Display PDF GUI, and their Carbon* and Cocoa (Nextstep) APIs. The OSX install CDs will probably not have a CLI only install option.

    So... from a kernel/process standpoint the OSX GUI will be separate. From a delivery standpoint, you're probably going to get them both, like it or not, if you install from an OSX CD. Additionally, the option to open an interactive shell is rumored to be an "advanced" install option; the average Mac user never see the CLI.

    As for X over Apple's GUI - AFAIK, only Tenon systems has annnounced a commercial X server that fully integrates with Quartz/Aqua (the Apple GUI). It's only a matter of time before someone builds off of Carmack's work and has an OSS X server that runs on top of Quartz/Aqua.

    I think it will be a compelling hybrid of classic *nix and GUI. It's not perfect for everyone but for Apple's core markets, Graphical Design and Publishing, this is as good as it gets. Tight integration between display and print, along with Apple's advanced color managment software, makes for a system that fills their niches really, really well.

    * Note for those not yet familiar with Apple's OSX: Carbon is the API set all current Mac apps are being written to, and is part of today's MacOS9 as well. Future apps will be written to the "more native" Cocoa. -- Carbon can be thought of doing for OSX what Winelib does for Linux. There will be a Classic Interface as well which will run apps that haven't been "Cabonized". This is basically a VM running OS9 and any apps that have not been updated over the new interface. The Apps and the old OS appear as single process to the underlying system.
  • I saw Mac OS X Server for sale 2 weeks ago at Fry's electronics in Arlington, TX. Why would they be selling it BEFORE the beta even comes out? Something is not right here

    You're confusing Mac OS X Server with Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server was introduced 1.5 years ago (contrary to the claim that Apple has never shipped a modern operating system). MOSXS is based on somewhat a somewhat similar technology foundation (BSD, Mach), but Mac OS X is considerably more advanced in every significant way, and upon final release, will be aimed at consumers, as well as power uses, developers and server admins.

    Also, the original concept for "Rhapsody" is what exists today in Mac OS X Server.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • For me, the question was "Why do non-unix systems take so long to go to sleep/wake up?" My thought is that it's a result of a convoluted non-modular design that doesn't allow you to isolate what needs to occur during a sleep cycle (really, not much more than synching disks and taking care of some peripherals).
  • This is a preannoucement of a beta for a product that's years late. Apple has been about six months to a year from the new, protected-mode OS since about 1992. Remember how Apple spent $400 million buying NeXT so they wouldn't have to wait for the BeOS to be finished?

    Let's be completely clear.

    When Apple bought NeXT in 1997, it was with the intention of shipping something called "Rhapsody." This concept (which the CEO at the time, Gil Amelio, supported) revolved around the idea of forcing all of Apple's developers to rewrite their apps from the ground up in Objective-C.

    Thankfully, Jobs realized this was suicidal. Instead, he took what was planned for Rhapsody, shipped it as Mac OS X Server, and got Apple started on work on Carbon.

    I'm not going to start a flamewar, but there are clearly a lot of differences between OpenStep and BeOS -- more than just one is "done" and the other isn't.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • ---
    Maybe I missed something, but isn't that what they _are_ doing right now?

    (Tracker keeps getting better and better. 3D support is in. Security is next.)
    ---

    Having used the BeOS since DR8 and every major release since, I can say that while BeOS may be getting cooler, it's not getting cooler at any rate like it used to.

    And much of its coolness is being pushed into the whole IA thing. I'm not sure how 'cool' that is though - most of the BeOS' main benefits are wasted on an internet appliance.

    And really, if we haven't learned from Larry Ellison, this whole internet appliance thing isn't quite what it's cracked up to be...


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Oh, don't get me wrong. I have no illusions that Apple was jumping toward Be offering any and all help they could give. I imagine Apple didn't really give a damn, or at best were mildly interested. Apple is a bit of a niche player, but Be was (and is) a niche player. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Cool things tend to come from niches.

    But I just don't see Apple going out of their way to hurt Be. For the before mentioned reasons (they would profit at least a little bit), and because they had bigger fish to fry at the time.

    That's probably what happened. Pre-Jobs Apple was spilling money all over the place. Random R&D with little market application potential, dead end projects, far too many product lines with little focus, shitty tech support, dampened product quality, and a whole lot of bad morale and press. It's quite likely that Be got a little extra help and special treatment early on, but in the end they had to be ignored due to budget constraints. Apple was losing far too much money to waste engineer times on only limited returns.

    What would this have meant to Be? Apple wouldn't go out of their way to do anything, but they weren't going to bother documenting things as much or answering phone calls from frustrated Be employees. Be would have had to reverse-engineer the specs themselves. Apple wouldn't actively try to derail them, but they'd still be on their own.

    Would that have killed Be? I don't think so. Others have been doing the reverse engineering thing and Apple has more or less ignored them. Be would have also benefitted from the more open nature of recent Apple hardware (believe it or not - a lot of proprietary crap has been thrown out from the B&W G3s onward).

    It's also possible that they would have had a hell of a time reverse engineering Apple's hardware designs, and gotten their ass kicked by riding that platform. That may have been reason enough to switch to X86, but they shouldn't be saying Apple held out on them.

    In the end, I think it's pretty apparent that X86 didn't do what they wanted it to do. Maybe switching over just delayed the inevitable, but whenever a company has so many 'focus shifts' it is usually a bad sign (Apple is a perfect example of this). With luck they may get lucky, but right now it just looks like they're getting desperate.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Be careful what you ask for, is all I say.

    If simply making your beliefs known in a public forum is not tolerated, that can go both ways. If we don't allow those with Christian beliefs to have their opinions, we could very well be the next to be censored.

    Yes, Christianity has a long history of suppressing those with dissenting views. That's precisely the reason why I don't care for people trying to suppress others like this. If you wish to undermine someone's beliefs, the best way is to provide a clear difference.

    And no, Slashdot doesn't specifically say 'religious drivel here'. But it also doesn't say 'GPL proponent here' or 'pro-Mac sentiment here' - but that's all accepted. If you're going to censor someone for having religious views, you're opening up all sorts of other opinions.

    In the end, only CmdrTaco and others can make that decision. Until they come up and state what can and can not be put in a sig, you should just ignore it.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. All the guy had was a quote from a book. I hardly find that to be offensive.

    If you have a problem with the religion itself, join the club. But if we censor fairly benign quotes, are we any better than the Catholic Church or any other historical oppressors?

    Either way, a lot of crap goes into Slashdot that doesn't pertain to technology. Sigs in particular aren't really even meant to be 'on-topic' (otherwise, they wouldn't be universal to all topics).

    ---
    just because its a public forum doesen't mean I can say whatever i want
    ---

    Sure you can, as long as it's not illegal or against the rules of the place you're posting it. If you can point us to a guideline for the content of signatures on Slashdot, I'll be more than willing to concede this argument.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

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