Google's Growing Love For the Mac 222
An anonymous reader writes "While browsing the 2007 Macworld speaker bios, I found an interesting Google+Mac piece of news. Looks like Google has appointed the famous Amit Singh in charge of their Mac Engineering (also confirmed on Singh's website). While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility they have been offering some native Mac software. We earlier heard Google CEO Eric Schmidt's joining Apple's board of directors. Then following Microsoft MacBU's lead, Google started their own Mac Blog a few weeks earlier. Google's jobs website also lists several Mac openings. If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google. Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming? ;-)"
Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to all web apps would be going back to the mainframe/dumb terminal days of the 1970s. It would negate most of the advantages of owning a PC.
-b.
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iTunes? Google Earth? the Flickr upload tool?
I use at least three such (mass-market) applications regularly.
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I think the internet is a wonderful thing, and we have only begun to tap it's potention. But IMHO, the most potential still lies in local applications that access the internet for external data, not in applications that
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I'm still advocating local caching of applications and data, at least for frequently used stuff. It's grossly inefficient to keep downloading the same data over and over again. There's also stu
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the biggest problem/complaint people have against net storage versus local storage is the ability of others to access the data. There are some things you trust to store outside of your home like money, since the bank guarantees better security with tight access controls. They have a history of less risk than a more personal solution. It makes sense to trust them rather than your mattress.
Online info storage, though, more resembles a train station locker. Sure, you may be the only one with the safe combination, but it's stored in a public place and you really don't know how easy it is to pick the lock. And since the location experiences a lot of traffic passing through, you don't know who could be eavesdropping/reading over your shoulder.
I think that web-based tools will migrate more to personal/intranet versions for this reason. I can run my LAMP tools on my PowerBook and access them locally, and in fact I already do this. Companies would love to use (for example) Google's office tools on their own servers, and not have to trust Google all the time. It's all about controlling who has a copy of the data, about maintaining privacy/secrecy.
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So I don't really care that Google would partner with any specific OS vendor, because their value is in their services which can be accessed with
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I really want to like Google Apps more than I do, but they just don't quite cut it.
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
A new hope (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider that Bill Gates puts his money where his mouth is in terms of giving the largest private donations to fight AIDS and poverty, not buying up party planes and grabass photoshoots like certain individuals in charge of a certain search enGine.
Secondly, Microsoft seems to be o
It's all about iTV and Google Video Services (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the endgame that I think they are aiming for.
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Anyone paying attention to apple's hardware in the 68k era, which stretched on into unreasonableness for ages; Apple had about 1/4 to 1/2 of the price:performance ratio of the PC until the G4 came out. Then it was only stupidly expensive, not ridiculously expensive. It finally arrived a
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Come on, what about Linux (Score:2)
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Let's all switch from an OS that locks you into software, to an OS that locks you into hardware...
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You want them to buy Suse? (Score:2)
You mean you think Google should buy Suse?
ba-da-ding
ba-da-boom
cha-cha-cha
C//
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I'll consider calling it that when Linux is simple enough for the majority of the "people" can understand it. Right now, that just isn't the case.
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When OSX breaks it's just as hard to get it back going as Linux. Actually, it's a lot harder! Just getting OSX to single user mode takes half a dozen commands (on 10.3 anyway; it's only like three or four on 10.4.) On linux it takes no commands; once you're in as root, you're in and you can reset your password. Unless it fails to mount root or something, but t
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Not to say that OSX is perfectly consistent. I've found problems before -- for example as a dv
Is this a troll? (Score:4, Informative)
Single-user mode: Very easy, just hold down COMMAND-S at startup. With applejack installed repairs can be very quick. In a pinch archive-and-installing the system gets you back to where you were very quickly, preserving settings.
Context menus: Actually Mac uses them all over the place now, and they are comprehensive.
Mac Consistency: You're completely wrong about application behavior. For all applications, not just the Finder, only the clicked-on window comes to the front. An application that uses PALETTES (like Photoshop) shows them when one of its windows is active. The key-combination to hide apps is COMMAND-H for all apps that don't override it for legacy reasons. Adobe apps traditionally use Cmd-H for "Extras" so they change the hide key to COMMAND-CONTROL-H. In any case, you can always COMMAND-OPTION-CLICK any Dock icon to hide all other apps. Icons appearing under the Dock: It's so easy to avoid. Put the Dock on the side of the screen and make it smaller for the best experience.
Linux is getting better all the time though, I agree with that.
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Never heard of applejack. Why should it be hard to deal with the system without additional software? It's easy to get to single user mode but at least as of 10.3 (We're unlikely to spend the money to go to 10.4 as long as the apps run on 10.3 - and when Adobe CS3 comes out, we'r
Fixed it for you (Score:2)
Off topic I know, but boot from the OSX-disk and, oh well, start halfway this http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106 156 [apple.com] link. It even has pictures ;-)
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It seems your sig is stuck in the 90's.
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They build their own, internal linux distribution. They run all their heavy metal on Linux.
They'll never, ever switch to OS X, at least internally.
What does make sense is for them to better support OS X client apps. But at it's core, Google is a Linux company.
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Everyone knows Google runs Linux -- for their systems. Most companies I know have at least some services on Linux. I know very few that are seriously running Mac OS X Server.
That has nothing to with business relationships, strategic partnerships, or what will ultimately bring them in gobs of cash.
It's like a company running Verizon for their landline service, then setting up a strategic partnership with Cingular. Th
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"and secondly, them to come out with a Google branded Linux with full indemnity against any patent(s) that Microsoft may allege to be infringed by Linux..."
Why? Really why would Google do that?
Google isn't a charity it is a business. How would this help Google make one cent of income?
I could see IBM doing this. IBM does make a lot of money from Linux and let's
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Google isn't a charity it is a business. How would this help Google make one cent of income?
Companies regularly make strategic moves that make them money in the long term, via an indirect route. Google throwing their support and development behind a desktop Linux distro could do a number of things. It could provide a stable target for other developers. It could promote a commoditization of the OS, and thus remove MS's largest weapon against them. It could save Google money internally by providing a cheap
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"It could save Google money internally by providing a cheaper platform for their employees internally."
Ubuntu, Open Suse, and even Gentoo are all good enough for for Google to deploy internally. This is Google we are talking about."
Frankly I am having less hope for a Desktop Linux by
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How? Linux is the least stable target by nature.
Well if Google picked or made one distro, that would make for a stable target for them and anyone else who wanted to contribute. We're talking about the benefits to Google of Google sponsoring a distro.
Ubuntu, Open Suse, and even Gentoo are all good enough for for Google to deploy internally.
Sure, but it is a lot easier to standardize on one distro than many.
Frankly I am having less hope for a Desktop Linux by the minute...
You go on to list symptoms
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People WANT TO BUY Photoshop. They do not want to learn GIMP. They want the FREEDOM to buy software.
People want to buy nvidia and ATI video cards. They do not care about binary blobs. And they do not want to be educated about how evil closed source is. Want to know why? They will never look at the source. If they did they would never understand it.
OS/X gives people the choice to buy the stuff they want instead of hoping that someone will write it.
I love FO
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Yes and I am one of them. Just about the only source I look at under Linux is example code. While having the source is nice it is a rare programmer that will dig into the kernel source.
Programmers are a very small part of the user base of computers today. Sad as that maybe. I was looking at cars and the salesperson made some comment about the on-board computer. It was something like computers run everything these days and no body understands them. It was fu
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Big companies! (Score:2)
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makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
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And also note that the the Mac marketshare is on the rise. For notebooks, especially, it's becoming significant. Any time I'm in a local coffeeshop or other place where there are people using notebook computers, 30-50% of them are Macs (typically iBooks and non-pro MacBooks). Five yea
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I've been assuming Apple was just paying people to hang out in trendy coffee shops with Macbooks.
Re:makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, that's the stupidest comment I've seen in days. Congratulations!
Almost as bad as: (Score:2)
Now THAT was funny. Show me any professional shops using Windows for serious video or audio production, and I'll show you the most miserable, mislead team of designers in the World...
Amit Singh at Google? (Score:2)
That must be the coolest job in the world: working on Macs for Google.
Sensible (Score:2)
The largest threat to Google's online services business is Microsoft. Microsoft can and does illegally leverage their monopoly on desktop OS's to defeat superior offerings from competitors. Microsoft is putting a lot of resources into defeating Google, not only by making comparable services, but by tying those services to Windows and tying the Web in general to Windows by their use of proprietary technologies and their intentional refusal to fully implement standards in IE. Microsoft's plan is obviously to
Re:Sensible (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you mind elaborating how exactly Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly to defeat Google?
Bundling IE is the major method, and then what they include and do not include in IE.
The only concrete example I see here is that they do not implement standards in IE - but pray, I ask you, does Firefox fully implement all the standards?
Well, Firefox does implement standards in general. Every time I've followed the W3C spec it has worked in Firefox (and Safari and Opera, etc.) but it has not worked in IE. IE implements about 50% of the standards while other browsers are close to 90% I'd guess. No one is perfect, but IE versus the industry shows a huge difference.
All of this, however, is academic. Firefox is not bundled with a monopoly and what works and what is included and what is broken does not help the Firefox team take over some other market. Unless you have a monopoly, you can't use that monopoly as leverage. If Firefox does not implement some feature, it is just as easy to use Opera. If IE fails to implement something, because it is bundled in Windows, most people will not switch because everything else is harder. It requires education, knowledge, and technical expertise to download, install, and run any browser but IE.
Last time I checked, Firefox 2 did not pass the ACID2 test (if that's any measure of standards).
The ACID2 test is edge cases for the most part, not a test of how comprehensively a given browser adheres to standards. It is like shining a laser on a mirror to see how reflective it is. Firefox and Opera and Safari are all consumer grade mirrors and the ACID2 test is useful for determining which is best. IE is like a piece of aluminum and using the ACID2 test on it is a waste of time.
IE7 is a great improvement over IE6 and an indication that Microsoft is listening, and doing something to change themselves.
I auto-generate some pages. I wrote the code based upon the spec. When I wrote it, I tested it. It worked fine in every single browser I could find, except IE, which completely failed because they did not implement most of CSS2 and any of XHTML that was not coincidentally HTML. When IE7 came out I tested it too. It completely failed to render as well, and added an additional random bug. From reading the IE dev teams comments it seems they're up to implementing about 50% of CSS2 and still haven't implemented any XHTML. They fixed some bugs, but are nowhere near implementing the standards the rest of the industry has had for many, many years.
My point is that with so many eyes watching Microsoft at any given moment and at their every move (DOJ, EU, *every* software company affected by Microsoft), this monopoly thing is getting old.
I agree, MS should stop abusing their monopoly or the courts should actually take meaningful action against them. MS won't stop though, because they're making a fortune breaking the law. The courts won't act though, because MS is one of the largest contributors to both the Republican and Democratic parties and our government is absurdly corrupt.
Perhaps when making this statement, you should provide concrete examples on how exactly that is happening.
I did and I've elaborated upon them, but I find explaining antitrust abuse tedious. I've explained it on Slashdot a hundred times by now, but the vast majority of the people who respond have no understanding of the law or the purpose of the law. Somehow they missed that chapter in Econ 101. It isn't really all that complex, but I'm sick of explaining it over and over again. Five minutes with wikipedia and a reasonably intelligent person can see the obvious abuses from Microsoft and why they are detrimental/illegal. And yet, every time I post about MS's monopoly abuse someone has to respond with an analogy and those analogies always (and I do mean always) reference the actions of a company that is not a monopoly. Maybe these people are astroturfers, but I only have so much time.
Even your post, you compare IE to Firefox, but IE is bundled with Windows, which is a monopoly, while the Firefox team has no monopoly on anything. Why people can't understand how this changes things is beyond my understanding.
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Now, you probably argue that Microsoft should basically *not* ship IE with Windows at all because that would be leveraging its monopoly. I argue that users should have a way to get online (out of the box), find the best browser out there and have the ability of uninstalling the current one and using the one they lile.
You're making a few false assumptions. Microsoft not bundling IE with Windows does not mean the computer people buy does not have a browser bundled with it. There is no need to make a bowser
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No, it's not and it does not. Go search for OPK/WAIK on MSDN.
What does that have to do with it? Because many things are built upon the presumption that IE will be there, things from lots of places break when you try to install them without it.
So there were errors made in the past. Nobody is denying that. But it's time to move on and do the right thing moving forward.
Lets apply this logic to other criminal acts. So he stole a million dollars and used it to buy a house and a car and get his cousin elec
Follow the money... (Score:2)
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Not a lot, actually. Though Apple makes a profit on iTMS, haven't they said publicly that the main point is that iTMS helps sell lots of iPods?
Speaker BIOS? (Score:2)
Feb. 2007 Slashdot News Item. (Score:2)
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it's all about TV ads and Google PC (Score:5, Interesting)
Google + Apple is natch.
Additionally, Google has been long-rumored to want a "Google PC" -- if I was google I would OEM Mac hardware and ship it with "mom friendly" software that just does email, photos&tv, and web browsing software clients that only run full screen.
boxlight
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Additionally, Google has been long-rumored to want a "Google PC" -- if I was google I would OEM Mac hardware and ship it with "mom friendly" software that just does email, photos&tv, and web browsing software clients that only run full screen.
If that were the case, if they just wanted the hardware, wouldn't it make more sense for Google to go to Asus or whoever it is (I forget) who actually manufactures the Apple hardware? The only reason to go to Apple is if they don't want a "Google PC" but want OS
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That said, Google really doesn't see a need to move into the PC hardware arena. Nor, are they interested in distributing their "OS". It's one thing supporting their "OS" at their c
Flying chairs (Score:2)
lagging behind in Safari compatibility (Score:2)
everybody has been lagging behind in Safari compatibility because it's only been 4 months or so since Apple released a simple goddamn javascript debugger for it.
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I used a debugger that was built-in by using one of the tweaker apps to make it appear. That was 12 months ago and the level of debugging that safari has(not just javascript) was amazing.
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many google employees seems to be mac users (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft (Score:2)
Things look good
iTMS + Ads = money, lots of mony! (Score:4, Insightful)
They are talking to the TV companies who currently control video distribution. But why tie yourself to yesterdays companies, it is iTMS (and possible YouTube) that are likely to control video content soon.
Google have already realised that keyword searching isn't a killer 'product' for video content, people just don't want to plug keyboards into their TV's. So the are looking at other ways to enter and dominate that ad market.
What surprises me is Google's (public) lack of contact with the big games companies. Obviously in-game advertising has significant potential, but it is also likely that the next gen winner will control a significant portion of the 'living room'. Why should a Blue-ray disc force you to sit though last months trailers when it is being played on a PS3 sitting on a nice fat broadband connection. Live may be for downloadable games now, but what would stop Microsoft using that network to push video (to your TV and/or Zune).
Does it matter if Safari support lags? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not only does Firefox work better on the Mac, it actually looks better than Safari, pretty weird given that we're talking about an Apple application here. So as long as Google properly support Firefox I'm happy. (Though I slightly prefer Safari RSS handling.)
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Mac = Google PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though their stuff is essentially web-based, Google still needs a delivery platform. As others have suggested, it's possible that the killer-apps of the future will be both on-and-offline and thus having both Apple and Google working on both sides of the equation, together they will provide enough benefit to take on Microsoft, who has proven time and again that they want the playground for themselves, alone.
If a Google/Apple partnership works out, they have a very real potential of hitting at both of Microsoft's profitable products: Windows and Office, upon which the MS empire rests.
Wither indie devs already bridging the gap? (Score:4, Informative)
Although Singh's hiring is definitely a step in the right direction concerning Google's commitment to the Mac, it's been a long time coming. In the meantime, independent Mac developers have already started writing tools and utilities that bridge the gap between OS X and Google. Just a few examples (the first being a shameless plug, natch):
I suppose the real question is: does Google's newfound enthusiasm for OS X simply mean rewriting all these existing tools in-house?
Merger (Score:2)
There are also rumors of Solaris uptake... (Score:2)
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I do like how I can customize Quicksilver's interface and how I can put it anywhere on the screen.
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Is Apple actually getting a larger chunk of the desktop?
From the numbers I've seen, yes, kinda. They are gaining ground in the US and Europe (from 4% to about 6%) in sales at least. They are slightly losing ground worldwide as they can't keep up with the growth rate in computer use around the world.
Even in the free software world, development for the Mac just means porting from Linux to the Mac, and even then, only after the MS Windows port is finished.
This is changing as well, from what I've seen.
Switching from Linux to OS X (Score:2)
I wanted to have an easier time of managing music, movies, and photos as well as producing new content. What I found was that what was *possible* on Linux (after investing a ton of time) was not only possible, but actually as easy as could reasonably be expected on my Mac. I drank the kool-aid. Let's be clear here. I was a passionate advocate of Linux on the desktop - using it personally and professionally EVERY
Mac ports (Score:2)
That's on the the reasons why many "Mac ports" simply suck. I've been much more satisfied with Mac work-alikes than I have with Mac ports. Real, Mac
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It's better than Windows, but that's like saying that being raped in the ass is better than being raped in the ass and the mouth at the same time.
That would make Linux being raped in the ass and the mouth, but it keeps slipping out of the mouth and jabbing you in the eye.
Yeah the OS X GUI sucks, except compared to all the other options.
OS9 vs OSX (Score:2)
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Mac Apps, Partition software, etc (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php [coriolis-systems.com]
As for other Mac Applications, there are several websites you can check out for various Mac apps. I have never found a short
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One thing that you might be able to help me with is maybe a utility along the lines of partition magic to configure partions on my mac...
Have you tried Applications: Utilities: Disk Utility.app? I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but the disk utility can manage partitions on your mac and if you have an Intel machine, can nondestructively partition them.
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That being said, there are many excellent Linux live cd's that can be used to repartition drives. Take a Look [digg.com]
These will boot just fine on an intel mac, and I'm sure you could piece together a PPC version.
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I'm using iTunes combined with QuickSilver [blacktree.com] as a music player right now. I find the combination works well. You can play most common combinations of music (album, artist, genre, etc.) with a few keystrokes, and you can also run playlists if you've set them up beforehand.
For ripping, I use Max [sbooth.org]. It can simultaneously rip to FLAC, OGG, MP3, and others
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http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20. 02/PICMicrocontroller/index.html [mactech.com]
http://polarfront.org/archives/000537.html [polarfront.org]
http://blog.paddlefish.net/archives/2004/12/usb_pi ckit_tool.html [paddlefish.net]
http://robrohan.com/projects/PIConOSX/ [robrohan.com]
http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/011123 8 [macslash.org]
http://www.teammojo.org/PICkit/pickit1.html [teammojo.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPUTILS [wikipedia.org]
http://lawlor.cs.uaf.edu/~olawlor/projects/2003/mi crochip/ [uaf.edu]
http://www.gnup [gnupic.org]
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That's because Mac OS X is more like NeXTSTEP 5.x than it is Mac OS 10.x.
Steve Jobs and his engineers took over when Apple bought NeXT* in 1997. First step was damage control, next step was marketing, and now we're finally seeing the sweet produ
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> Except that Mac OS X and Mac OS 10 are the same operating system.
> FYI: X is the Roman numeral for 10. It's not Mac OS "Ex."
I know this. I should have said "more like NeXTSTEP 5.x than it is Mac OS 9+1"
NeXTSTEP 8 (Score:3, Informative)
Rhapsody, 10.0, 10.1 = v 5
10.2 = v 6
10.3 = v 7
10.4 Tiger = v 8
10.5 Leopard = v 9
Mac OS X gets the ten from its legacy of Mac versions leading up to it, but Apple uses the NeXTSTEP version numbering system to version Darwin, the core OS. The major version of ten indicates the version of the new platform (i.e. Tiger's Darwin is v 8, and todays' 10.4.8 is Darwin 8.8).
So when you see the versio
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I would make that colon a semi-colon: "It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along; it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions." making the two different sub-clauses.
It was like "Google in paperback form" because it had listings of everything you could imagine, thus the "Catalog" part of the name. I'm sure Jobs thinks the other stuff of Google too, but I don't think he meant to say that at that moment.