Yesterday I had to set up a edit suite based around FinalCut ProHD (v 4.1) - what a painful experience. No extra internal hardware on the G5 - plain vanilla machine with a fresh install of Panther and 1gig of RAM. The first four attempts at opening the capture tool resulted in the machine throwing a kernal panic and me having to re-boot (if it were really Unix I could have fired up a command prompt and KILL'ed the process - but that's another story!). Apparently this is well known if there is no video input but I intentially made sure there was stable video on all three inputs!
Anyhow
- This typifies "Mac people" - I was having an online discussion with someone about Tiger (the latest instance of OS-X) and they mentioned that if you Apple-K on the keyboard during boot you see all the "ugly Unix stuff" (the messages from various modules as they start). This obsession with the style and look of things blinds them to the real underlying power. It is how Apple managed to run all the way to 2002 with an OS (v.7 to v.9) that was technically ten years behind Windows (OS9 compared very well with Windows 3 - cooperative multi-tasker and memory management that needs to be disabled for any sensible apps to run!) and twenty years behind Unix. Never mind the quality - feel the anti-aliased founts!
- OS-X is Unix - it isn't! Nobody has regarded BSD as a proper Unix since the early nineties! That and the fact that The Open Group (see the story on C/NET) is still litigating, and not for the reasons Apple suggest - they really want all OSes that claim to be Unix to be submitted to the tests that confirm performance & compliance.
- Apple break all hardware standards they adopt - RS422, SCSI, PCI, need I say more?
- Linus Torvalds (who knows more about OS design than me or you!) says OS-X is a piece of crap.
- Apple would turn us all into consummers of their digital "stuff" - iTunes comoditises music in a way I don't like - why engage with an artist when you can cherry pick their greatest hits? Take no risks, buy only songs you've heard on the radio or seen on MTV and we'll turn into a society that only has place for Christina and Britney. Corporate America will have won.
2 comments:
For the vast majority of ordinary users in the world (those that are not "Mac people", "Windows people" - just people) OSX is very nice to use and has touches that other OSes could learn from. As far as "proper unix" goes, who cares? Unix is not the holy grail of computer science its just an OS that has forked a lot over the years and is relatively stable (my Tivo does crash. Has it passed the compliance test?). And come on, Linus is clever but not completely unbiased. He isn't God, you know ;-) RE "iTunes comoditises music in a way I don't like" at least it pokes an already hateful music industry (yes, corporate america at worst) in the eye in a way no one else managed to date. There's nothing wrong with being disruptive. There is also nothing wrong with anti-aliased fonts.
I'd take you to task on the first point - people who are obliged to use computer daily tend not to view themselves as "Windows people" but people who use Macs do describe themselves as "Mac people" with all the feux "rebellion" that they hope it implies.
You're right - Unix is no holy grail but Apple have made great play of the "Unix powered" tag (presumably people do view Unix as something special) in an attempt to gain kudos. Your Tivo never marketted itself with a "Unix powered" badge - all microprocessor-based gear crashes - what's your point?
iTunes does comoditise music from both angles - for the consumer it is a bad deal as it sticks to the safest of the safe and to the artist it represents a terrible deal - I have friends who run a small indie label out of Athens in Georgia and the deal they were offered was worse than what Sony Music offer to their artists selling traditionally - i.e. CD sales. Sony, by the way, are famed for poor treatment of artists.
The best solution for the electronic distribution of music is for small lables or even artists to deal directly with their fans - that would be disruptive!
I love anti-aliased fount - I work in TV!
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