Losing faith in Apple?

Well said, Ed. Let me know when you run for President. I will put in a vote for you.

Finally, there is hope after all.

Ed is definitely an old skool Mac User from the Mac Community.

/me wipes a tear from my eyes.
 
Hulkaros,

I have tried the applications on a dual 1.25ghz running 10.2 . Unfortunately, the applications mentioned - Photoshop, any web browser, Flash playback, are all still woefully slow compared with my AMD XP 2200. Look, I'm not happy about it. I'm not gloating. It really pisses me off that my $700 512MB Athlon box is faster at most tasks than my $3500 G4/800DP with 1.5GB of RAM, but it is. Plus, even with 1.5GB of RAM, the G4/800DP (yes, under 10.2) still will enter "spinning cursor of death" mode every once and a while for no apparent reason. It's better than it was under 10.1, but it's still a very annoying problem (when it pops up)

The Mac still retains an ease of use advantage, but every revision of Windows diminishes the gap.

I really want Apple to overcome it's problems, but I would definitely count myself as one who is losing faith in the company. I haven't lost it completely, but I'm no longer blinded by religion either....
 
Strangely enough, the "spinning cursor of death" rarely occurs in OpenStep 4.2.

Apple, what went wrong in the transition? Actually, the speed of OpenStep on five year old hardware puts OS X to shame.

I don't know what happened but the more I use OpenStep, the more I realize something went terribly wrong in the process.

I think if more people had the opportunity to sit down with OS Xs roots, they'd be highly disapointed with where Jaguar is today.
 
Well, the pc world won't frees and wait for apple to catch up for sure but remember that the pc evolved mainly because of its continuous purging on Apple’s ideas and creations to improve and sophisticated its OS. - Whether it's a machine's design or the GUI for the OS.
Remember folks that Apple faces many obstacles and mainly from Microsoft. However, the innovation of Apple's latest hardware releases and software development will make people think twice about what it valuable and what isn't reliable. - PC is faster indeed and Apple is looking into this problem. Sadly we know that Motorola sucks with its slow CPU's compared to Intel, but imagine OSX running on a 1.5GHz intel processor! I'm sure this thought is worrying some.
 
Hum... no money to get in there, but is there any website with screenshots, or a free trial somewhere ?
 
Originally posted by itanium
Strangely enough, the "spinning cursor of death" rarely occurs in OpenStep 4.2.

Apple, what went wrong in the transition? Actually, the speed of OpenStep on five year old hardware puts OS X to shame.

I don't know what happened but the more I use OpenStep, the more I realize something went terribly wrong in the process.

I think if more people had the opportunity to sit down with OS Xs roots, they'd be highly disapointed with where Jaguar is today.
Click to expand...

So how long have you been using OPENSTEP? What apps have you been using on it? What kind of hardware?

There are very few people who have used NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody as much as me still around. As someone who was watching the total transition from the NeXT OS to Apple’s Mac OS X, I would be very happy to tell you what changed and why.

The first thing to remember is that not all of the technology used in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody is Apple’s. The display engine was Adobe’s Display Postscript, which Adobe charges for the licensing of. Mac OS X would be something over $200 if Apple had continued to use Display Postscript instead of developing their own display engine based largely on Display PDF. It should also be noted that Display Postscript (used in not only NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody, but also CDE in Solaris) doesn’t even come close to the abilities of Quartz. It was a trade off, a cheeper display engine that (with the right hardware behind it) could do much more than Adobe’s very expensive dated solution which Adobe had no plans on updating to provide better quality. I personally think Apple made the best choice given their options.

The second thing to remember is that Mac OS X is not a direct descendant of the NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody line. The last of that line was Mac OS X Server 1.2 (aka Rhapsody 5.6). Mac OS X uses two primary application environments, Carbon (based on the original Mac OS APIs) and Cocoa (based on Yellow Box which was based on OpenStep which was based on the NeXTstep APIs). In the NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody line the Workspace Manager was written in OpenStep/Yellow Box, in Mac OS X the Finder is a Carbon app. The Workspace Manager and the Finder are completely different applications (as is the Mac OS Finder and the Mac OS X Finder).

So why make the Finder Carbon? That is a long story... here it is:
Apple believed that all they really needed to do was to bring the Mac GUI to the OPENSTEP operating system and provide an environment where legacy Mac apps could run (Blue Box). They finished the project call Rhapsody (which was version 5 of the NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody line) and readied it for release. When Apple approach bib name Mac developers Microsoft, Adobe and Macromedia about writing apps for the new OS, they said the had no intention of rewriting their apps for an OS that didn’t have any user base. So on the even of the release of Rhapsody Apple pulled the plug on everything but the version paired with a suite of server apps (which became Mac OS X Server 1.0, aka Rhapsody 5.3). So Apple ask these developers what it would take to get them onboard with a new OS. The answer was to make it easy to use code they have already rewritten for the Mac OS. The idea of Carbon was Apple’s solution. But it wasn’t enough for there to be this Carbon environment, which looked as if it was going to be a second class environment to the now renamed Cocoa. So Apple had to prove that they believed in this environment enough to make the center of the operating system out of it, the Finder. When developers saw that Apple was using Carbon to make the Finder, they started to believe that their apps would be running in an environment that had equal footing with Cocoa.

Now, as a long time NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody user who is still to this day using those operating systems, I can not only tell you that I am not disappointed with Jaguar, I can tell you that Jaguar is the version of Mac OS X that final removed Rhapsody 5.6 from my PowerBook G3. My PowerBook is my most important[/i] resource when out in the field (it replaced my IBM ThinkPad which had Rhapsody 5.1 on it and OPENSTEP 4.2, 4.1 and NEXTSTEP 3.3 before that) and there was no way I was going to have any OS on it that I couldn’t count on 100%. Sure Mac OS 9.2 was nice, and sure Mac OS X 10.1.5 was also good, but I wouldn’t have put my business in their hands (the last thing a computer tech wants is to have problems with his own computer in front of clients). With Jaguar, I have made the switch and have not had any problems at all (though it should be noted that I keep all the information on my Rhapsody ThinkPad up to date just in case, you never know). And again, there are very few who have as much experience on the subject as me and I am very far from disappointed with Jaguar.

(btw, the reason I ask about the apps you are using is that you said you thought OmniWeb wasn’t that stable, I have had no problems with 3.1 on either OPENSTEP 4.2 or Rhapsody 5.6, and 3.0 runs great on Rhapsody 5.1 for me as well. And PDFview is a much better app than OmniPFD for reading PDF documents, specially documents made by later versions of Acrobat.)
 
Originally posted by toast
Hum... no money to get in there, but is there any website with screenshots, or a free trial somewhere ?
Click to expand...

You could try this one. :D I have posted a ton of screenshots here of all types of operating systems: NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody, Mac OS X DP releases, Solaris, Irix, etc.

Just do a search (you might have to go back a ways though :rolleyes: ).
 
Hello RacerX,

Hmmm... I don't really have time to browse throught all those threads. Maybe you have a server address to give me where you store your pics ?
 
Originally posted by RacerX
So how long have you been using OPENSTEP? What apps have you been using on it? What kind of hardware?
Click to expand...

I've has a NeXT slab for years and run NeXTStep 3.3 on it.

I recently built a 233MHz P2 PC and installed OpenStep 4.2.

There appears to be a memory leak in the Intel binarys of OmniWeb 3.x. I've watched my memory consumption triple as I use it. It doesn't crash but I will eventually get a "spinning cursor of death" and the program with grind to a hault. Once I close it, all the consumed memory is released. The 2.x NeXT binaries of OmniWeb run fine on my slab.
 
Ok back to the beginning here.

Like I said, Apple has NO PROBLEMS except for

1) Slow processor
2) A little to expensive

All they need to do is get a new chip, and lower costs a bit. It would be perfect if the new chip was cheaper; that would kill 2 birds with one stone!

Then you would see Jaguar scream and be pretty much equal to any PC set up. If Apple goes for the right chip....

who knows.... we might even get Pentium-toasting commercials back again :D

But until then, we're in the boat we are now. The transition to faster hardware might take a year at least.

I still and always will however, count on better software on the mac. A fast chip can't hold a CANDLE to good software.
 
I don't know if the G4 is "slow" or not. OS 9 cruises with a G4 processor. Its OS X that seems to have problems.

Has anyone ever though about this? Why is OS 9 so much more responsive and why do apps run so much faster in OS 9 than OS X?
 
This was discussed before...

OS X uses Quartz, which supports native transparency, shadows, PDF, etc.

Jaguar with Quartz Xtreme enabled is like 30x faster than OS 10.1.5, but still slower than Windows.

OS 9 is like the original Doom. OS X is like Doom III. You need faster Hardware to support it!

Little known fact: With Quartz Extreme (or an upcoming update), the entire OS is a 3D texture. So a window could rotate and spin in 3D space, all native to the graphic card. Apple is working on this now and I even have a PDF from Apple describing this! I can't wait......
 
it's a more sophisticated OS and I guess the aqua GUI is rather heavy compared with the classic OS9. It's also an OS that has lots of modules within its main core system which is Darwin. - It's more stable than OS9 as it rarely crash.... Never I would say.

Maybe some with a better knowledge will add to what I've already explained.

Cheers
 
Great sum-up of history, RacerX. I'm glad you've posted. :)

And to Boeing777: Why expand on your explanation? It's simple and basically true.

Going to Mac OS X from Mac OS 9, you lose some and win some.

Don't forget that you have a choice. If you don't care for stability and scalability (i.e. you only want to run two big apps at the same time), you can still use Mac OS 9. This is quite a good solution if you're using Photoshop almost exclusively.

If you don't care about Mac or Carbon (or even Cocoa applications), you can go with Linux. However, I think the Mac is too expensive a solution for Linux. I'd sell your Mac (or keep it with 9 or X) and buy a cheap PC for Linux.

If, however, you want it all (stability, productivity and a full box of new possibilities), your best bet is Mac OS X. There won't be further developments to the classic Mac OS aka 9.2.x. We might see improvements to it for use as Classic environment, but as we all know, new Macs won't boot Mac OS 9.x starting 2003. So let's just forget about OS 9 about now. X is the path Apple is walking down, and the later you adapt to its features (and obstacles), the harder your way is going to be. Jaguar is certainly the time to make THAT switch, too.
 
Why was Micrsoft able to add "native transparency, shadows, PDF, etc" to there OS and still enable it to be amazingly responsive while newer apps launch and perform faster than older ones?

Faster infact then 95, 98 and 2000?
 
Hm.

1) Ask Microsoft.

2) Not true. Application launch and execution time (plus the OS speed itself) is faster in Win2k than in WinXP.
 
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