What browser

[trag]

Asked in 2004 what Apple should do next, Jef Raskin replied, "Turn out a good interface." Amen, I say. After nearly ten years of using the damn thing daily, I still can't find my way around OSX. The GUI on top is sugar-coating on the gawd-awful mess in the DNA, in the billions of lines of code that have grown merely by accretion, of the UNIX underneath.

Amen.

I attribute part of my difficulty to the contrast between my well-worn OS 9.x machines and trying to find my way around the new OSX. The difficulty of the new compared to the comfort of the old, perhaps makes the new seem more difficult than it is. All the effort (fun) I put in reading Mac magazines and the occasional book are lost to memory and I'm left with a facility for Classic which I can't match in X. Perhaps if I spent as much time reading about OSX; a task for which I no longer have the time nor the interest.

On the other hand, the bloody DVD burning utility in OSX is the most confusing, obtuse, bass-ackwards, non-intuitive piece of interface that I have encountered, second only to backup utilities written for Windows back in the '90s.

I do, however, wish I knew how to program, if for no other reason than that I might then be able to tell the backside from the elbow of BibDesk. Unfortunately, I am old enough to have used early 68k machines in working life when they were brand spanking new, and therefore to have missed all opportunity for education in programming skills as a schoolchild; thus I fear it. I also did not pick programming up later at University, which I began when hole-punched cards were still in vogue, and I am presently too preoccupied with mortgages and such to learn.

I think in some ways it's harder to learn to program now than it was back then. Back when, one could write a (relatively speaking) useful program in a simple to understand language like Basic. Basic was a great place to learn the basics. From there the door was open to Fortran or Pascal and those were great gateways to some assembler or C.

Now days they seem to teach Javascript or some such as a beginning language which is probably more applicable to today's life, but I doubt that it is an easier introduction than Basic was.

Actually, back in the day (late 70s) most of my friends learned their first programming on programmable calculators, where inventing that nifty algorithm that would save three programming steps really was a valuable innovation.

The programmable calculator was a gateway to Basic on the school's TTY terminal (connected to a DEC10 at the local university).

 

[Osgeld]

Now days they seem to teach Javascript or some such as a beginning language which is probably more applicable to today's life, but I doubt that it is an easier introduction than Basic was.

lua, in this day and age its going to be hard to find a simpler system, now it can get really complex for things like window widgets or games, but the basic scripting of it all is pretty dead simple

 

[ppuskari]

Trag, I would also include the backup system AMANDA for Linux in your statement. Even though there are tutorials and how-tos to get this system up and running claimed in 15 mins.. I've yet to get that beast of a backup system working properly ever.

I yearn for the days of Retrospect or NovaStor They just worked! Retrospect even still seems my Avid DLT 40Gig drive and even the 5 cart DLT jukebox properly after all these years.

 

[Quadraman]

As Raskin put it, there really isn't any real difference anymore between Apple's OS and that of its competitors. Yes, I am sure that it is all ever-so powerful, and as OSes go, it is seemingly the pick of the litter, but it is Byzantine in its complexity, and only the insider who has lurked for years in its countless inversions and curlicues knows how to navigate it.

Imagine how much more complicated it would be if Apple didn't drop support for older hardware from time to time. This is the problem with Windows. They support so much legacy hardware that it makes everything unnecessarily complicated. Even Windows 7 goes back too far with the legacy support. Who still uses 1ghz Pentium III/Athlon Thunderbird class machines as their primary computer anymore?

 

[ChristTrekker]

Imagine how much more complicated it would be if Apple didn't drop support for older hardware from time to time. This is the problem with Windows. They support so much legacy hardware that it makes everything unnecessarily complicated. Even Windows 7 goes back too far with the legacy support. Who still uses 1ghz Pentium III/Athlon Thunderbird class machines as their primary computer anymore?

I primarily use a dual 1.8GHz box, and Apple's already dropped support for that. I've never been forced to upgrade because a box was too slow for me. Both times now (this is my third Mac) it was because my "old machine" was no longer supported by the current crop of software. First time, it was the sad state of Java on 68k. Second time, it was that I couldn't shoehorn OS X onto my G3. The next time, it will be when I can't get updates for PPC or 10.5, whichever starts happening first.

I'm not bitter, though. I keep my old machines alive using NetBSD or Linux. Since they're not primary desktops any more, this option is perfectly acceptable to me.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Imagine how much more complicated it would be if Apple didn't drop support for older hardware from time to time. This is the problem with Windows. They support so much legacy hardware that it makes everything unnecessarily complicated. Even Windows 7 goes back too far with the legacy support. Who still uses 1ghz Pentium III/Athlon Thunderbird class machines as their primary computer anymore?

I primarily use a dual 1.8GHz box, and Apple's already dropped support for that. I've never been forced to upgrade because a box was too slow for me. Both times now (this is my third Mac) it was because my "old machine" was no longer supported by the current crop of software. First time, it was the sad state of Java on 68k. Second time, it was that I couldn't shoehorn OS X onto my G3. The next time, it will be when I can't get updates for PPC or 10.5, whichever starts happening first.

I'm not bitter, though. I keep my old machines alive using NetBSD or Linux. Since they're not primary desktops any more, this option is perfectly acceptable to me.

I pretty much intend to get as much mileage out of my 10.4 quad G5 as possible. That'll probably mean starting another browser project in a year or two (I'd probably fork Camino, since Camino is my preferred browser when I'm using OS X). And my MDD isn't going anywhere - in fact, I just ordered the Sonnet dual 1.8 for it.

I don't think Steve-O dropping PPC in 10.6 was ill-conceived, but it was low. A three-year-old Mac (the quad is just barely four years old) is, in terms of typical Mac longevity, hardly an ancient box. There are plenty of people out there on early G4s still, but not for a lot longer. I know this gets them back in the Apple Store to pick up another shiny one, but it's making me think of getting an IBM power Express as a workstation when this G5 gets funky. Now there is a company that supports damn near everything they've ever made.

 

[MidnightCommando]

Who still uses 1ghz Pentium III/Athlon Thunderbird class machines as their primary computer anymore?

I'm only using it until I can get my IIvx working <_<

 

[beachycove]

As Raskin put it, there really isn't any real difference anymore between Apple's OS and that of its competitors. Yes, I am sure that it is all ever-so powerful, and as OSes go, it is seemingly the pick of the litter, but it is Byzantine in its complexity, and only the insider who has lurked for years in its countless inversions and curlicues knows how to navigate it.

Imagine how much more complicated it would be if Apple didn't drop support for older hardware from time to time. This is the problem with Windows. They support so much legacy hardware that it makes everything unnecessarily complicated. Even Windows 7 goes back too far with the legacy support. Who still uses 1ghz Pentium III/Athlon Thunderbird class machines as their primary computer anymore?

That legacy business is in a sense the issue. OSX is built, ultimately, on the same foundations as the OS that ran those room-sized, tape-turning computers controlled by the white-coated computer priesthood of the 1970s. UNIX has mainframe in its DNA, and that is what makes it such an unfriendly beast. (Granted, it is the best of a bad lot.)

To take a concrete example: Who for goodness' sake needs a machine sitting on their lap that 200 users worldwide can be logged into in order to run separate shells? But that is what I've actually got here as I write this post - an OS designed to be the sort of system you book time on for remote login in order to run some UNIX program in the terminal.