MacOSX Vs BeOS ShootOut 416
Jolie writes: "After Palm purchased Be's assets, the future of BeOS became uncertain and a lot of users have left the platform. One of these users was Scot Hacker, mostly known for his 'BeOS Bible' book among other things. Scot tried to stick to Windows, then to Linux but he ended up with MacOSX. He has written a long and detailed article comparing, from the user's point of view, his beloved BeOS to his new favorite, MacOSX."
BeOS... (Score:2, Informative)
PDF version of this html article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Downloading BeOS (Score:5, Informative)
-OctaneZ
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
scripting in MacOS (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the system is open to other languages, although I don't know how many of them have OS X ports. MacOS uses Open Scripting Architecture [google.com], which means that pretty much any scripting language can operate your Mac, given an appropriate OSAX plugin.
I've toyed with the ones for JavaScript, Perl, and Python, but decided to stick with AppleScript since I already know (some of) the syntax.
Re:A quick comparison of BeOS to OSX... (Score:4, Informative)
I know I shouldn't be resoponding but I can't pass up a chane to prove an idiot wrong.
You may be right about the number of BeOS jobs (unless Palm decides to do something with it), but you are definitly wrong about the number of OSX jobs. Not counting the hundreds of people at Apple working on OSX itself, the following vendors all have OS X programmers:
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit
Intuit
Adobe
Macromedia
Qualcomm
This isn't even counting the small companies such as Thursby, Barebones, Omnigroup, etc. I myself work for a small company writing OS X software.
You should follow an old addage updated for slashdot; Think before you post.
About the free version (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OS Preferences (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The perfect user (Score:2, Informative)
That's what you're missing, then: the speed jump from 10.0 to 10.1 is massive, even on what now amounts to "lower-end" machines.
Re:scripting in MacOS (Score:3, Informative)
Not the original poster here but (Score:2, Informative)
OpenBeOS (Score:2, Informative)
Also, a quite large group of people are working in OpenBeOS http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and after it matches functionality of BeOS5, it will be further extended. Development is early, but you can't help but take notice at the healthy amount of activity (I keep my eye on the project).
Re:The perfect user (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Metadata Reviewed (Score:2, Informative)
Either way, the thing many people seem to be missing in this debate is that metadata and resource forks have not be removed from OSX so much as they've been deprecated - code that uses these apsects of the filesystem still compiles and runs just fine. It's really more of a change in Apple's recommendations and documenation than any technical difference. If you work at it, you can even get the Finder to open files using the old type/creator heuristic (more or less).
While I'll agree that BFS definitely had some far more interesting applications than HFS does, don't sell HFS short - it still beats the pants off FAT.
Re:PDF version of this html article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Metadata Reviewed (Score:4, Informative)
It's a common misconception, but filesystem metadata has nothing to do with Mac resource forks; metadata is not and never was stored in resource forks. The concepts are completely orthogonal; you can have either one without the other. Resource forks are deprecated in Mac OS X (replaced by bundles), and both the pro and anti-metadata factions support this.
Re:Arrgh!!! (Score:2, Informative)
They have learned. The Trash icon on the dock is only the Trash icon for files. Grab a volume (CD, Zip disk, external hard drive, NFS mount, whatever), and it turns into an Eject icon. Grab a volume you created to burn and the Trash changes to a Burn icon. Drag, drop, and it does just what it said it would do. Very useful...
Re:scripting in MacOS (Score:4, Informative)
Secondly, it is very possible to connect shell scripts to an AppleScript Studio project, you just have to call them in AppleScript, and you could go on to have your shell script run a perl script. Here is an example that comes with AS Studio; the interface is a dialog with a text field and the script executes the shell script the user types into the field:
(* Application.applescript *)
(* ==== Event Handlers ==== *)
on action theObject
set theResult to do shell script (contents of text field "input" of window "main") as string
set the contents of text view "output" of scroll view "output" of window "main" to theResult
set needs display of text view "output" of scroll view "output" of window "main" to true
end action
(* © Copyright 2001 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved. *)
Re:Use the Force, or Linux+Unix vs. BeOS/OSX (Score:4, Informative)
Different people need different things from their machines. For a lot of us the CL is completely unnessesary, even useless. For others it's indespensible. But if it's indespensible for YOU, don't try to tell me it's indespensible for ME becuase it's just not so.
Re:Mirror site coming (Score:2, Informative)
That was your entire post and it got modded '+5 Informative'!?! Feh - real fuckin informative.
Re:About the free version (Score:3, Informative)
Here [betips.net] is how to perform a bootstrap installation of BeOS Personal Edition onto a separate partition by using an intermediate BeOS Personal Edition installation on an existing FAT partition.
These tips come from the Miscellaneous BeOS tips category, which can be found here [betips.net]
.
Re:scripting in MacOS (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, the system is open to other languages
He also says that Be's BMessage system is more advanced, and then goes on to explain it. His explanation makes me wonder, does he even know how AppleScript works? There are several things in his essay (which is very well done and an overall very balanced view, especially for an ex-Mac hater) where he complains about OS X saying "Be had it," where he knows 100% about Be and about 10% of OS X :P
If you replace "BMessage" with "AppleEvent" in his description, you basically end up with a description of the AppleEvent model, and AppleScript is just a front-end to that model.
It's cooler in OS X's Cocoa environment, where you don't have to use AppleEvents, the Cocoa objects are the AppleScript objects. If you do
tell app "My Cocoa App"
myString = "foobar"
count myString
end tell
You're basically telling the Cocoa app
myString = [NSString stringWithCString:"foobar"]
[myString length]
Unfortunately, with Cocoa apps I've noticed in a few places the behavior of some things are a little broken from traditional AppleScript... hopefully they'll get around to fixing them... and I'll file some bug reports.
And other Objective-C objects/Cocoa objects (including view objects with AppleScript Studio [apple.com]) behave that way. Plenty of coolness and advanced-ness there, IMO. Try to hack that with C++ :)
Also similar is the cropping example about picture clippings. Mac OS had that since 7.5, it's just that the Preview app doesn't let you drag & drop clippings :P The very cool SimpleImage X [simpleimage.com] does, though.
Apple has a habit for leaving blatant holes in their stuff to leave room for developers (unlike MS, who wishes to be the only developer). Sort of like how the AppleScript Script Editor app didn't have search and replace for years :P
Re:BeOS... (Score:2, Informative)
4 years Re:BeOS... (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with that strategy was that the major ISV's balked at the idea of porting to OPENSTEP API's. They saw it as a lot of time and expense for a platform that might not last out the year. It would not have required a total re-write as some people have suggested, but certainly it would have been a major effort. (I would personally argue that going the Carbon route was also painful and going the Cocoa route would have resulting in a better product). Plus, these ISV's would have to then maintain separate ports for Mac OS X and Mac OS X, and they weren't willing to do that - many of them had already cut out ports to anything but Windows and Mac, and were probably considering dropping the Mac anyways.
So the Rhaspody strategy was abandoned, Steve Jobs took over, Apple re-invested in the traditional Mac OS and got some good releases out the door. They also came up with Carbon, which is a re-tooled Mac Toolbox API that sits native inside of Mac OS X. In doing so, they also re-wrote the graphics layer, removing Display Postscript and replaced it with brand new code called Quartz which is based on PDF. That means re-writing the window manager as well so that it supports simultaneous display of Quicktime, OpenGL, Java2D, QuickDraw, and so on including using underlying hardware support. They also re-wrote the DriverKit layer, replacing it with IOKit which is embedded C++ based and has much broader support. The print system was replaced, the Workspace Manager was tossed and the Finder was re-written in Carbon (IMHO one of the worst parts of the current Mac OS X). Lots and lots of utilities were re-written, the BSD layer was upgraded from BSD 4.3, the kernel was moved from Mach 2.0++ (2.5 and some 3.0 extensions) to Mach 3.0++. The Classic layer was also added so that it can mingle with native apps, Java was added, Mail.app was re-written, and so on and so on. There was a lot of work put into this operating system since OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach, which basically remained stagnant for years.
In the meantime, Rhapsody did essentially ship as Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999. It was basically OPENSTEP 5.5/5.6 with a menu layout that was Mac OS Classic-ish but pretty much everything else was straight from OPENSTEP/Mach.
So... any operating system that Apple might have chosen at the time would have had to go through the wringer in order to get it to support Apple's technologies and what Apple perceives as what their customers require. It would have taken a long time, and BeOS would have been a worst choice in terms of both adapting the technology and the personnel. I think that going with BeOS and C++ would have led back to the Copland and Taligent quicksand pit. As for personnel, if Steve Jobs didn't come back to lead Apple, I'm not sure Apple would have had this resurgence.