[OT] really?

[Eric Dunbar]

On 6/7/05, Cian Duffy <myob87 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is certainly the strangest, but most exciting thing that I've
> > seen in the Mac world since I started using the Mac 128 before the
> > start of time. It's far more profound than the switch from System 6 to
> > 7 and from 68K to PPC.
> 
> OSX wasn't stranger? From bashing UNIX to being UNIX in 10 years?

In retrospect, I spoke too quickly. Going from PPC to i86 should be no
different than was the switch from 68K to PPC. If anything this switch
should be much easier since the OS isn't changing and won't have to be
emulated the way 68K code had to be emulated in pre-OS 9 versions of
Mac OS on PPC.

> > For us Mac (hardware + OS) users this is a win-win situation. We get
> > access to a fast laptop (FINALLY) and we get access to Windows
> > software, all in one fell swoop. It does open us up to X86-based
> > viruses and exploits, but proper software design will minimise that
> > danger -- Linux for Intel has a signficant user base now yet viruses
> > and spyware are still virtually unknown.
> 
> Viruses, except ye-olde fashioned boot block virus-on-a-floppy-disk,
> aren't architechture dependent. Entirely OS dependent. Same goes for
> spyware.

I was thinking the exploits (e.g. buffer overflows) but also added the
viruses. Oops.

> As goes the GUI's - until OSX comes even close to BeOS for me, its not
> a good GUI. GNOME gives me the closest I'm going to get on a UNIX
> system...

Of course, you ain't exactly your standard computer user ;-). That
doesn't invalidate my argument that OS X and Windows are still hands
down more refined and usable GUIs vs. what GNOME or KDE can offer at
the moment (however much anecdotal "evidence" Linux fan(atics) would
like to present). I'd like to be able to say that Linux was as good as
the two "biggies" but I can't. Neither YDL or Ubuntu are anywhere near
dethroning Windows or Mac OS X. They're still designed by and for
computer hackers. I expect them to start becoming "usable" in the
not-so-distant future but we're still at least half a decade to a
decade away from parity with Windows or Mac OS X (and, half a decade
is a lifetime in computers).

Eric.