Old thread, but hey, just saw it in the mail box.
Hans_ wrote:
@everyone who thinks that Steve Jobs is the most amazing guy on the planet
Please go to the reality distortion field entry in wikipedia. The phrase was coined to describe Steve Jobs. In some ways he's more cut-throat than Bill Gates. Just beware that this guy excels at convincing people of anything, including his own greatness.
I think that statement might have been aimed partially at me. To that I only need to tell you that I hated Macs when I had never used them (sound familiar situation to many of you?). After many years, much experience and knowledge gained, learning to use comparative and critical thinking, and a lot of reading on the history and workings of computers and computing systems, I come to stand by my previous statements. Any time of the day.
We should also remind people that there is a MUCH bigger reality distortion field, emmanating from somewhere near Redmond Washington for some reason and it runs on 95% of the desktops. I think the effects are visible below...
Hans_ wrote:
I've never liked: the closed system approach, and locking in to Apple products. Locking in to Apple doesn't seem to have changed, just look at things such as the iPod and iPhone. Both are locked in to Apple services (or Apple sanctioned AT&T).
Hmmmm, so Hans, how's that different than the Amiga? Did Commodore go around giving the source to Kickstart to everyone? Last I've heard, it's still illegal to have a copy unless you own a real chip. And the company has been dead for 10+ years!
As for the "lock-down", I chose the lesser of the two evils: Compare Apple's lock-down to Microsoft's. Microsoft wrote the freagging book on this subject! Most people don't know that when they're buying a PC to run Linux on it, they are STILL PAYING MICROSOFT money for a copy of Windows that they will never use. You should know better, as I believe it was Germans who first tried to have the EU lift this unfair slave tax. Don't talk to me about lock-down.
Lastly, I'd rather be locked down in an awesome environment such as the one Apple provides, then a Microsoft hell.
To put it more visually, would you like to be locked down in a Swedish prison with hot blondes, or a Turkish prison with man-friendly guards? I picked the first, you pick your favorite.
If the point comes where Apple's hardware and software is so crappy that it's on par with Microsoft's and PCs, then I'll change my tune very quickly, believe me. Until that point, I'm happy locked down in Apple-land.
Hans_ wrote:
Has Apple become less restrictive about developer documentation? Providing all the documentation freely is a requirement for me to even consider anything as "the next Amiga."
Hmmmm.. do you even know that every new Mac comes with a full developer suite and extremely nice documentation, as well as live code-samples, etc? Heck, you can even program vertex and pixel shaders without ever installing a SINGLE file (once you've installed the Dev. Tools that come with the Mac). Now, that's like the good old days where you got a machine and a BASIC manual and could start hacking on day one!
Please don't spread FUD. Macs come with first class developer documentation in the box. Everything you'd like to do, programmatically, on a Mac, is in there.
Now, if you're referring to the iPhone and iPod SDKs, then please don't compare the two. This thread was for Macs. And you already know that the iPhone is "special" in the sense that Apple HAS to work with AT&T, the typical telecom {bleep}s that they are, in order to lock-down the phone because paranoid telecoms are afraid that little mischievious and uncreative hackers will cause havoc on their networks. And anyways, this will change when the SDK is released at MacWorld. In the mean time, jail-break the bizatch, and no more lock-down. Where's the beef?
HenryCase wrote:
As for Apple being the new Amiga, can't say I see it. Amiga was a strong platform back in the day in terms of hardware
and software, but also in terms of flexibility (through
The meaning was: "my new as-favorite as Amiga computer", not "another Amiga-like breakthrough in computing". Apple's Macs are PCs, as I stated to begin with. They're really NO different technologically than most PCs (same busses and architecture, same CPUs, same memory subsystems, disk subsystems, etc).
Believe me, I'm still waiting for the "NEW" Amiga to come, and this means a new platform that changes the rules of the game.
Apple's biggest advancement is in the software department. Unfortunately it's not easy to explain. You have to try programming and many years of CS to realize, and takes many volumes of books to explain the details.
HenryCase wrote:
Apple has the software part about right, but as Hans pointed out where's the detailed documentation for the platform?
You need to look, before you point a finger :wink:
Don't you just love the uncontrolled spread of FUD? It's like a virus, but worse! :-)
@AeroMan:
No need to be shot down, but Mac OS 9 and below were total *crap* technologically (behind the scenes, the UI was good, as far as consistency, look and feel, smarts, etc). Mac OS X is definitely not the same and definitely the only reasonable OS to talk about, as far as Macs are concerned.
@Varthall:
Thank you for pointing out the obvious (to me). I never refuted that you can't run Mac OS X on a PC, but after you try it you realize that one: it's not easy and won't work on most PCs or parts won't work (ex. sound) and two: it ain't too legal.
persia wrote:
The world has moved on, Amiga will only be a retro box. There are no killer apps out there to make it challenge the big boys. Where would Amiga have been had it survived? Hard to say, but the Mac is a good approximation.
I agree. Amiga would have been where the Mac is and actually I believe even further (at least *definitely* as far as the hardware is concerned, if the likes of Jay and company were kept onboard)
Nostalgiac wrote:
Mind you ... my A2000/2060 is not leaving
Of course! Who says the Amiga has to go, right? In fact, it likes being next to the Mac. It reminds the Mac that a long way back, it was kicking it's arse big time, before some big-headed greedy unimaginative egomaniacs who ran a company called Commodore decided to milk the cow...
@toRus:
To be fair, you have some good points for lack of certain improvements (ex. Finder, mount/umount races, etc). To that you can also add a whole slew of things that you and I might have wanted for something to be an "awesome OS", but reality says it's not going to happen, due to economic and time constraints. So out of all the choices we could have had, and out of the ones that we have, OS X is much better off comparatively with the other two popular platforms such as Windows and Linux.
Also, I don't know if your statement about "wower switchers" was directed towards me (I forget what I wrote), but just because I'm rather new to Macs doesn't mean I've not used other platforms including Amigas of course. And it also doesn't mean I'm wowed by the eye-candy. I can see below the surface (and in fact it's the first thing I like to do, and the reason I was in love with the Amiga from early on), because like you I'm a CS guy.
Also your statement "consistent lower denominator of installed software" is unrealistic, because if you honestly judge those applications and the features they offer, they're nothing but lower denominator. Sure they're not chocking with features, but that's also what makes them NOT a nightmare to use. And pardon me, which OS offered better "standard" apps? Even the venerable AmigaOS couldn't give more than standard calculator, notepad and say. Excellence! on the other hand combined the last two for an excellent word processor. That's to be expected, but not in the OS. Also, in order to exploit the underlying capabilities of the OS (APIs primarily) time is needed, because we're talking about paradigmical shifts in application design. We've had the APIs to do something like TimeMachine on *any* platform for at least one decade (Amiga, Linux, etc), yet it took years for the whole thing to coagulate to a vision which then became reality. That always takes time. It's like drawing or painting. You've always had your brushes and pastels and whatnot since you were a child, but it's taken years of practice and absorbing the world, in order to come to the point in time where you can create a Dali painting. Anyhow, I believe the event horizon for this stuff is right now with Apple. I hope they don't drop the ball now. But with Steve on board, I feel they stand a better chance, because he has vision, which I'm sorry to all you Steve-haters, I've not seen the likes since the days of the old Amiga crew in 1983-85. If you've seen it, point the man out to me, I'm interested.
I also disagree with you on the 20 talented people and 2 years to do the job. I don't want to guess wrong, but if you hadn't stated that you've used computers for a long time, I'd assumed you just got out of college and think anything is do-able in a day. This is concerning the software development world, which you clearly know by now is an evolutionary approach to creation. Things take time, because life puts up roadblocks in front. Of course, I'm always hoping I'm proven wrong, because I'm generally unhappy with current computer user interfaces and HCI (I just pick OS X because it's the better of the 'modern' bunch). Prove me wrong, someone!
@MarkTime:
I would have commented on the FreeBSD vs not, but who has time to repeat the whole history of NeXTSTEP from inception to its latest incarnations, or explain microkernels and why the Amiga microkernel was the only one that performed well, and the NeXT folks had to move the BSD core into the kernel to avoid context switching, and other problems related to message passing. Anyhow, at least this way we know who knows and who doesn't :-)
"Fast, fun, powerful....every machine comes with standard development tools in Xcode. Heck, even before Amiga...in the Commodore 64 and Atari 800 days, what I liked is they always came with Basic, and anyone could tinker with it."
Very well said! That's part of the fun with Mac OS X! Reminds me of those good old BASIC prompt days :-)
@pault1:
Very interesting, what you say about Gateway being pressured by none other than Microsoft to drop the Amiga... If there's any truth to this (got any documents or links to share?), my hatred and digust for Microsoft have just increased exponentially. Like all of you, I was hoping I'd be running an Amiga today for my "modern" tasks, rather than a Mac, as good as it may be to me.
Starrfoxx wrote:
Leopard is cool and all, but that's a lot of money to plunk down.
This always gets me. Did you actually pay for Windows yourself, separately from the computer? Or did it come with the computer? I mean seriously, how many people would say the above if they had actually paid the $100-150+ or whatever the slave tax is these days for Windows, separately from the computer, FROM THEIR POCKET. You know: EXTRA. I personally think the latest version of Mac OS X is very competitively priced, compared with general software prices (bought a video game lately, that will last you 2-3 days of fun-time only?), other OS prices, new features and new applications included, etc.
@mdwh2:
Good points.
