ami_junki wrote:
Exactly! I got a MacBook but the experience somehow is just not the same anymore infact makes me wanna get a G5 again
I'll take the donation. I don't see how you can sense the endian differences and internal architecure of the CPUs as a user. The OS dictates behaviour and both systems run an identical (at the presentation level) UI.
I never understood how people other than Superman aquired X-ray vision...
anivichano wrote:
People don't understand that the REAL magic of the MAC was that wonderful Motorola CPU. ... the same family as the Amiga ... by comparison, Intel is back in the stone age!!! ... Anyone who trys to tell me otherwise doesn't appreciate the true beauty of the MAC!
Sorry Alex, it's Mac, not MAC. So perhaps you're talking about something else, because I don't see any magic missing from any x86 Macs.
anivichano wrote:
So what does Jobs do?
He sells out to Intel!!! Sets the MAC back 20 years!!! (in my opinion, of course).
Next I'm expecting the traitor to sell out to M$ in a huge way ... I'm betting that the next MAC OS will be MacVista!! :-P
Boy, I had no idea there were rocks large enough for entire human beings to live under.
What makes you think that Jobs would EVER give up one of Apple's greatest "weapons", Mac OS X, for something as crappy as Vista? Please get out of whichever rock you're hiding. I also dislike Intel (I've been doing low-level x86 programming for over a decade, so I've had my share of "eat your own dog food"), but Macs are far (in the opposite direction) from "20 years back" because of the switch to Intel. Also realize that the predecessor of Mac OS X, NeXTSTEP had support for Intel CPUs since 1993-94. It ain't something new.
Yes, I want architectures (as in subsystems), including Intel's ISA (for the uninitiated ISA = Instruction Set Architecture, and not the typical ISA-bus acronym) to change, and I'm hoping AMD will help, because not only they did a good job with the K8 and 64bit cores, but frankly there are no other players around :-( And worse off, until we get away from the Van Neuman computational model, I don't this happening soon.
Anyways, good luck with Van Dyke's Amiga sale. It's sad to hear another Amigan jumping ship, but it's fully understandable. Hope it goes to the best home. Just one question: does he know this machine is "worth" more than $1000 to the seller?
stefcep2 wrote:
What negatives, exactly, have resulted in the look and feel of Macs since they changed CPU's? What is this "magic" you speak of that "has gone away"?
I fully agree with your line of thinking about Alex's post on the Macs.
However, as far as you Linux comments, I'm sorry to have to say the below (before I start, I've been using Linux since the day I was told I could play Doom over ethernet, that's around 1995, have followed kernel development, done little kernel programming, and lots in various open source projects from XMMS to X11, etc. Aka, I'm no newbie to Linux):
1) You clearly have no concept of how scalable sytems work. Linux and Unix is the embodiment of a scalable architecture (due to their history and birthplace in highly-networked and distribute environments from AT&T/Bell Labs to academia, DARPA projects, etc), which is an architecture vastly more complicated and compartamentalized in order to overcome the problems with closed systems, which would have "neater layouts" (not only at the filesystem level but also internal module/API/ABI levels) and also less updates (many updates are a necessity for highly modularized and interdependent systems, which is due to optimal usage of resources, such as libraries of code, and data. This is known as re-use or code-reuse and is a staple of less buggy software. If you're not familiar, just think of this: what are the chances of writing the same sentence on the blackboard and making more mistakes: 10 times or 1000 times? By re-using already written code, you minimize, statistically speaking, error propagation). This allows for far faster growth, something you're not aware of, as you state that multi-tasking is poor under Linux. You have no concept of the pre-emptive kernel work, low-latency kernel work, RT Linux work, etc. Yes, those are not things you click and get, that's only on a Mac. These you have to either compile or get the right distribution for, but there are few modern OSs (sorry, AmigaOS doesn't count given it's current featureset) other than RT OSs which guarantee sub-millisecond latency response.
2) Your comments are clearly biased against Linux due to your tainted experience. But you've missed the point: Linux, being an open system allows people to do whatever they want. You went asking the PCLinux or whatever the name was, people to cut down on their methodology (frequent updates), but that's obviously not their "mantra", so their best answer was what you got: you want to look at another Linux that doesn't believe in that. Although not the only one, and not recommended for newbies, I often use Slackware which is much "slower" at updates, and serves me better. The whole point is: Linux isn't one entity, and neither does it owe you anything just because it's free. What it is, is a system which you can modify (if you so wish badly enough, and if not try to find others who feel the same way and wish it more badly than you, so that they have actually taken the time and put the effort to do so), so that it does what you want it.
3) I also don't like many aspects of Linux and Unix, but I understand that complex and advanced systems aren't built overnight and because of that they carry a lot of history. In your particular case, "/etc" is confusing to you (much like the SYS:L would be an Amiga newbie), since you've no concept of Unix's history and the "baggage" that Linux got due to its ideological roots (not talking about code here) being in the Unix world. Apple for example, despite deriving part of their Mac OS X from FreeBSD, have chosen to change the historical conventions. Linux folks don't see it necessary. Don't like it? Goes back to the previous point, make your own distro and change the naming (but be warned: it'll be a pain, because you're going against historical trends, once again, which have been deemed by those working on Linux as HELPFUL to them, unlike what you think, and thus fully ingrained into their Linux work). If that sounds like too much pain, then Linux or your current distros aren't for you. Now, what people mean when they say "Linux is the future", is not that it's perfect, but that it's a platform embodying the perfect mentality for massive-scale parallel software developement. Aka, it's Open Source.
And to end on a positive note: I'm certain there'll be a Linux version/distro in the future that foregoes the old Unix baggage in many ways (X11 included, and I for one would like to see something like Apple's PDF based Quartz-like architecture for GUI - DRI doesn't suck completely, but it's not really such a good architecture, nor very clean - too long a discussion for now) and evolves into the future of Linux.
Sorry for the off-topic guys. I saw a box of soap and stepped on it... Feel free to ignore it, but don't be fooled into thinking that ignorance is bliss. It's mental poverty.
