[MacDV] Re: The 20inch LCD Conspiracy

[Mark M. Florida]

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 09:57 PM, Michael Winter wrote:

> Isn't it just possible that the reason Apple needed a new base for 
> their OS is because OS <9 had so many additions, extensions and 
> patches to get it to support such a wide array of hardware and API's 
> over the years that the code was getting nearly impossible to maintain 
> and troubleshoot, much less add more to?

Well, maybe but here's my take on it:

(strictly my opinion...)

All OS 9 really ever needed was some decent memory protection and 
better multithreading/multitasking.  It seemed that the users were fine 
with the interface, but some of the guts needed a transplant.  Apple 
was able to bring those "modern OS" features into the original 0S X 
Server (v1.x), but there was no "Carbon" API, and therefore no way to 
"easily" port existing "Classic" apps to the new "Modern" OS.  Also on 
the old OS X Server they had a similar Classic compatibility mode 
called the Blue Box, which ran Mac OS 8.6 pretty well, but the two 
environments ran side-by-side, and were not at all integrated.  And 
this original "X" OS ran respectably even on outdated PowerPC 604 
Macs...

Do you remember when OS X Server 1.x came out?  February 1999.  When 
did Apple release what we now know as Mac OS X 10.x (not including the 
public beta release)?  March 2001.  What happened in those 2 years?  
Mac OS 9 was fine-tuned after an awful 9.0 release.  Mac OS X (v10.0) 
was polished -- I mean, more like the GUI got polished to death until 
all of the buttons were worn to a mere spherical representation of 
their previous form.  My point is that, in my opinion, Apple wasted so 
much time making the GUI look "gooey" (pardon the stupid pun) that they 
should have spent on getting the OS a little more optimized.  Here we 
are 4 years after the release of the first OS called "X" (that's "ten", 
you know), and it's still super bloated, buggy, slow, etc.  And it's 
taken us almost two years to get to a usable version after the initial 
10.0 release...  And when 10.3 comes out, guess what?  We'll all have 
to pay for the upgrade (or spend more for a new Mac with it 
pre-installed).  And we'll probably need a video card with 128 MB of 
DDR VRAM just to make the GUI work right...  :-\  I would be completely 
happy with an OS that looked like Mac OS 8/9, but functioned like Mac 
OS X (no, GUI hacks don't really accomplish this), and had the 
snappiness that Mac OS 9 has even on "older" G3/G4 hardware.

One more thing...  Remember the BeOS?  The OS that nobody said had a 
future? (well, I guess it didn't, since it's not really around today... 
d'oh!)  Did anybody on this list ever use the BeOS?  I did, and it was 
f***ing fast!  It ran circles around Mac OS 8, and made no regrets 
about it.  Don't get me wrong, I'm soooo glad Steve Jobs came back to 
save his baby (Apple), but I think his vision is severely clouded by 
his own stupid ego.  And that's bad for all of us.  He should have just 
secretly bought the BeOS after Amelio was ousted, and spent a couple of 
years on that beast to get it to print and network better.  Can you 
imagine how fast that OS would be on a dual 1.42 GHz G4 system?  OMG!  
And the current incarnation of Mac OS X is only barely usable on 
hardware that fast...  Audio and video apps would just SCREAM...

On the other hand, I think Avie Tevanian is a genius, and his software 
team has done marvels to get a good foundation for what will *SOMEDAY* 
be the only OS anyone would even consider installing on their computer 
(Apple hardware or otherwise).  Yes... sad, but true... I envision a 
day when Apple can make a killer OS for any computer to run, and that 
day may be only a year or two away. (that's been said before, right?)  
There goes that whole software/hardware integration thing...  Ah, but 
you'll still have to spend tons of dough to buy the USB dongle to run 
your OS on any non-Apple hardware...  That'll teach you to buy a "beige 
box"...  but you'll save your dongle money on the cheap/fast 
motherboard and processor...

Sigh...

It's late and I'm getting a little slap-happy.  I don't know what this 
ranting has to do with the original post, but all of the talk in this 
thread got me thinking about this stuff again...  that's where I'm 
coming from here.

Take it for what it's worth, 2 cents maybe?

- Mark

Mac OS history page found at:
http://www.jcn1.com/wiley/html/machistory.html