What's your all time favorite OS?
- Thread starter Jadey
- Start date
neutrino23
Registered
Of the choices given, I like X the best. For special niches some others were fun. RT-11 was good for a small computer. A small computer in those days had 28k words of program space of which about 4k words were used by the OS. (Total space for peripheral addressing and programs was 64kbytes.)
FORTH is great for tiny embedded systems. Actually, FORTH (or a variant) is what runs on Macs and Suns and others before the disk based OS starts up.
FORTH is great for tiny embedded systems. Actually, FORTH (or a variant) is what runs on Macs and Suns and others before the disk based OS starts up.
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
I would have to say that it is sort of a three way tie for me. I spend equal time in Mac OS X, Mac OS 8.x+, and Rhapsody DR2. Actually a little more in Rhapsody than the others because my laptop is running Rhapsody so it goes with me every where (it currently has 3 GB of pdf and html documentation on all the different types of systems that I might encounter). Before I had a version of Rhapsody I was using OPENSTEP 4.2 on the same system. It had many more apps, but it didn't display pdf documents very well. The only other OS I spend any real time in currently is Silicon Graphics Irix 6.2, and I would put that at about 10% of my total weekly computer usage.
I was a huge fan of NeXTSTEP! In fact, I had pretty much given up on Apple and had become a Windows convert UNTIL Apple bought NeXT. Once I knew NeXT's work was going to be incorporated into Mac OS I sat back and waited. Then, in February, I bought a Cube. As soon as OS X was available I ran out and bought it.
It has been fascinating to see how the original Mac & NeXT OS's are morphing together to form OS X.
Quick question, has everyone gotten used to and started using their Services? This was a great feature of NeXT, and is kind of easy to overlook its power. But it is always fun to check out the Services menu after installing a new App to see if anything hads been added.
It has been fascinating to see how the original Mac & NeXT OS's are morphing together to form OS X.
Quick question, has everyone gotten used to and started using their Services? This was a great feature of NeXT, and is kind of easy to overlook its power. But it is always fun to check out the Services menu after installing a new App to see if anything hads been added.
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
A good (or maybe bad depending on how you look at it) example was an Edit document I was working on. I wanted to add parts of some images, and I was able to use Grab from the services menu to get the selected image into my Edit document (I don't have the license for TIFFany that I was using so this was the only way to save the image I was working on). Basically almost every OpenStep (later Yellow Box and then Cocoa) app provides a unique service to the other applications. It is quite cool.
That is a good question about pdf, and frankly I don't know. PostScript has been around sense at least the first LaserWriters came out (1985?), and people were using it as a document (and display) format by 1990. I didn't start getting really interested in pdf until Acrobat 3 (that was when the display quality started to match the print quality of pdf documents). Anything run on Acrobat Reader 2 or app based on it just didn't quite look right on the screen, but printed nicely. It is not hard to figure out why PostScript died out as a mainstream document format though, unlike pdf, there is no compression for images, so adding one simple picture to a document would make it massive (by early 90's standards). Today you can download pdf files without any secondary compression (I don't think I remember to many PostScript files on the web that hadn't been at least gzipped).
This does bring to light one of the major short-comings of the computer age. There doesn't seem to be a clear historical record of major technologies (other than maybe operating systems and hardware). I would bet that it is more by design than oversight. If people were able to easily find out were different ideas came from, Microsoft would lose it's place as an "innovator". Funny how when MIcrosoft jumps on the bandwagon, they crush everyone else that was there first (that produces quite the visual, don't you think?).
That is a good question about pdf, and frankly I don't know. PostScript has been around sense at least the first LaserWriters came out (1985?), and people were using it as a document (and display) format by 1990. I didn't start getting really interested in pdf until Acrobat 3 (that was when the display quality started to match the print quality of pdf documents). Anything run on Acrobat Reader 2 or app based on it just didn't quite look right on the screen, but printed nicely. It is not hard to figure out why PostScript died out as a mainstream document format though, unlike pdf, there is no compression for images, so adding one simple picture to a document would make it massive (by early 90's standards). Today you can download pdf files without any secondary compression (I don't think I remember to many PostScript files on the web that hadn't been at least gzipped).
This does bring to light one of the major short-comings of the computer age. There doesn't seem to be a clear historical record of major technologies (other than maybe operating systems and hardware). I would bet that it is more by design than oversight. If people were able to easily find out were different ideas came from, Microsoft would lose it's place as an "innovator". Funny how when MIcrosoft jumps on the bandwagon, they crush everyone else that was there first (that produces quite the visual, don't you think?).
genghiscohen
Membrum virile
Services are excellent! They make life sooo much easier. 
Now that OmniWeb 4.1sp7 is out and pretty stable, the ability of OW to use Services has made it my # 1 browser again (sorry, Mozilla).
BTW, I am shocked. Shocked! Not one person voted for Plan 9?!
Now that OmniWeb 4.1sp7 is out and pretty stable, the ability of OW to use Services has made it my # 1 browser again (sorry, Mozilla).
BTW, I am shocked. Shocked! Not one person voted for Plan 9?!
simX
Unofficial Mac Genius
I'd love to use services, but I've never really been able to figure them out. Could someone give an example of how they're used and how you would do something with the Grab service (never been able to do that, although I've kinda been able to do the make sticky thing). A tutorial would be nice.
Also, crarko, would you please tell us all how in the WORLD you got all those services??? OmniDictionary doesn't seem to have a service for me, and how did you get the Lookup Word, Mail, OmniWeb, Search Google, Speak Text, Statistics, Terminal, TextEdit, and JavaBrowser services? I have never in my whole existence seen these until now!! If I could get all of those, Services would probably be quite useful to me.
So, PLEASE, I implore you crarko, tell us all how to get those!!! I wouldn't mind getting a personal e-mail either... simX@mac.com
Thanks.
Also, crarko, would you please tell us all how in the WORLD you got all those services??? OmniDictionary doesn't seem to have a service for me, and how did you get the Lookup Word, Mail, OmniWeb, Search Google, Speak Text, Statistics, Terminal, TextEdit, and JavaBrowser services? I have never in my whole existence seen these until now!! If I could get all of those, Services would probably be quite useful to me.
So, PLEASE, I implore you crarko, tell us all how to get those!!! I wouldn't mind getting a personal e-mail either... simX@mac.com
Thanks.
I'm pretty sure you can find most of the stuff I have off VersionTracker. Just search for 'service'.
Some caveats: Applications which offer services (like OmniWeb) must be in /Applications or a subfolder of /Applications. Standalone services (like calcservice.service) need to be in /Library/Services or ~/Library/Services.
Finally, services still only work in Cocoa apps, although the Carbon Services shouldn't be too far away (I hope).
What I'm curious to know, is there a way to tell what apps register services and which don't, other than the Readme file?
Some caveats: Applications which offer services (like OmniWeb) must be in /Applications or a subfolder of /Applications. Standalone services (like calcservice.service) need to be in /Library/Services or ~/Library/Services.
Finally, services still only work in Cocoa apps, although the Carbon Services shouldn't be too far away (I hope).
What I'm curious to know, is there a way to tell what apps register services and which don't, other than the Readme file?