It’s worse than redundant when it’s used to defend Microsoft Windows. I don’t think that Apple is perfect or blameless or anything of that sort, or course. But whatever Apple does, cannot justify the poor quality and blatant disregard for the user that MS shows. It’s true of course that the mouse and GUIs were developed in Xerox’s labs in the seventies, and that that is where the Apple guys got the idea. But it is also true there isn’t another (significant) computer OS or company that has taken user interaction, elegance, and efficiency seriously as a design philosophy. That doesn’t mean that every Apple OS feature has worked, or that they have come up with every and each one (I was happy to see them copy command/ctrl-tab to cycle through apps from Windows). But it does mean that MS has been almost entirely derivative in it’s GUI and the underlying approach to user-interaction. Apple lost it’s big copyright infringement suit against Windows not because Windows wasn’t stolen from Apple’s OS (it’s obvious it was), but because Apple didn’t invent the basic elements either. I’d rather all OS use good UIs, and don’t care for them suing each other or being proprietary about them. But it is frustrating about MS that they didn’t think stuff through themselves and “borrowed” ridiculous amounts of stuff from OS X for Vista, only to get it just wrong.
And Apple made the commendable choice to use Unix (FreeBSD) as the basis of Darwin, making OS X the most prevalent consumer unix installation out there by far. That’s a great thing, and it’s a bit weird to call that “exploiting” or “significant” with a meaningful ellipsis. If I have a gripe with Apple than it’s that they seem to be backing away from their previous open source approach in recent years, not that they are providing a modern OS with a mature and elegant GUI that’s based on unix and has the command line just lurking under the surface.
I can’t speak for others, but such was never my intent.
It’s a good thing you snuck “significant” in there, or I would have to refer
you back to my NeXT comments, as well as to BeOS (from which MS,
NeXT and Apple borrowed heavily in the 90s).
As I’ve been trying to point out, that was never an Apple decision. It was an
accident of the NeXT acquisition. Jobs and the NeXT engineers deserve the
commendation for that.
(I sure hope Walden sees my post with a possible solution to his original
question. I may PM it to him…)
Whenever I have to interact with a piece of Apple-designed technology, I find myself infuriated about all the things that the device can’t do–things that it could in theory, except that Apple’s design philosophy has determined that you can’t. Apple makes the four (or whatever) things it thinks you should want to do ridulously easy, but at the expense of making another eight things damn near (if not entirely) impossible.
Like what? You can do all kinds of crazy things with the Terminal window.
Every GUI has a tradeoff, because there’s only so much you can anticipate
about what a user will do, and you have to have a control for everything.
The command line can do anything the computer is capable of. Same goes
in Windows. Don’t complain, learn the command line
I was thinking of BeOS specifically. Let’s be fair an mention that Jean-Louis Gassee was an Apple Exec before he left to found BeOS, and that his aim was to get BeOS bought by Apple for the next generation OS. NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs, of course, so that both these operating systems stem directly from Apple and it’s design philosophy.
[quote=“Bloomfield”]
And Apple made the commendable choice to use Unix (FreeBSD) as the basis of Darwin, making OS X the most prevalent consumer unix installation out there by far.
[/quote]
As I’ve been trying to point out, that was never an Apple decision. It was an
accident of the NeXT acquisition. Jobs and the NeXT engineers deserve the
commendation for that.
I don’t quite understand this. Apple faced the decision whether to develop the next generation OS in house or to acquire (part of) it. They considered BeOS and might have bought them if Gassee hadn’t asked for too much money (at least that’s what was reported in the press at the time). In the end, Apple decided that the future lay with unix and the way it had been implemented in NeXT STEP, and so bought NeXT instead (paying three times as much as they would have been willing to pay for BeOS). It was by all accounts a very conscious decision to build OS X on unix, using NeXT.
(I worked on a first-gen NeXT computer at some point: they were just mindboggling and fun at the time. I believe the first worldwideweb server ran on a NeXT box, I am not sure I remember that right.)
Interesting. I was given to understand that Jobs left to found NeXT because
he no longer had the power to push that vision at Apple. Also, that the force
of Steve Job’s will was the driver for the NeXT acquisition (over other possi-
bilities). This seemed to be backed up by Jobs replacing many Apple execs
with his own people. This could easily be propaganda and misunderstanding
on my part, though. I’m certainly not on the inside at Apple. And I suppose
Jobs’ new power at Apple could’ve been due to their belief in NextStep’s
importance.
It seems weird that they balked at Gassee’s asking price, but not at Job’s.
It all becomes clear when you consider that “Apple” isn’t just one guy. Gil Amelio (Apple’s CEO at the time) wanted Gassee and BeOS, but the board of directors was unhappy with how things were going, wanted unix as a solid foundation for the next version, and wanted Jobs back after Amelio had all but killed apple at this point. With the board’s backing, Jobs did clean house when he returned to apple. The last 10 years have proven how right the board was to chose unix + kickass GUI (that is, NeXT) over BeOS.
ma non, mon ami, I beg to differ…
it wipes completely for audio acquisition. especially if the computer comes hard-wired with a mic.
I’m acquiring sound + vid on my snails pace XP pc, then transferring , editing & burning on my vista laptop.
Although I strongly second Sober Sam’s emotional response,
we’re pretty much stuck with it…both Apple + MS have some 'splainin to do , imhfo…but at $50 for each individual email support…I think I’ll just have to find ways around it or be internt roadkill…
