I just got to try out OSX for the first time at my friend's house. Very impressive! It's a shame it's not open source... give KDE and Gnome a few more years and they still won't have as usable or polished a system as OSX is right now. It really is nice.
Adam: "I'm not exactly sure why it's a shame that OS X is not open source. (And by OS X we're talking about the UI layer, Aqua, as the underlying unixy stuff is open as Darwin.)"
I said why it's a shame OSX isn't open source above. It's a powerful unix based OS with a beautiful interface that's as easy to use as a Macintosh (you don't even notice the /usr folder because it's called "Users", etc., and it's got other good interface features I've never seen anywhere), but it's tied to Apple hardware and the Linux community won't have anything as good as Aqua for years. I'm not saying it should be open source, as in "Apple is evil for not releasing the source" - they've actually been very good in the open source arena with Darwin. It's just that it would be nice for all of us if it was (though not necessarily for Apple - which is why it isn't open source.)
It's sort of like other things, such as REBOL that aren't open source. It would be nice for everybody if it was, but the company has to try to make money.
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
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My problem with OS X is not that it isn't Open Source, which is fine, and I understand that, but that they will never port it to Intel based hardware. They know that their business plan of selling hardware to subsidize the creation of software would be up in smoke if they did that, because many people would simply use the cheap Intel hardware rather then the proprietary Mac hardware, though they have made a good move and brought the price of the sweet new iMac's down to a much more reasonable level. I don't know where I can get a decked out PC for under $2,000, but one of the benefits of the new iMac is useless in Canada as of the end of the year, when I expect the CDN government will kill technological innovation and support with a blank media levy. Check out The Register for more on that one, or my Hacks at http://www.geeksworld.net/current.htm.