OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out • Hacker News Board

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#121

Post by scruffyherder » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

patrickg_zill wrote: post #100

gsnedders wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple finally decided to overhaul their filesystem, but other things like the kernel, the API etc. still need the treatment. And a large proportion of the kernel and APIs very obviously go all the way back to early NeXT days; they're really as old as WinNT is.

Older, actually... NeXT 1.0 was released in 1989; first version of NT shipped in 1993.

NT shipped in 1993, but MS took on the NT project in 1988, and Cutler had the idea much earlier. NeXTSTEP 0.8 was 1988 as well, along with 4.3BSD Tahoe which the base was a part of, but of course 4.3BSD owes everything to Unix 32/v and everything before hand.....

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#122

Post by gnl » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #114

gnl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. While I do need to use a number of third-party tools to get the UX like I want it (Hammerspoon, Hyperswitch, Spectacle and Quicksilver), they do exist, they work fine and I think this has more to do with my specific requirements than with any fundamental issues or missing features in the UX. Going forward, advanced sandboxing is indeed one of the most important things that I would love to see Apple focus on. Eve…

Is there something akin to the little flocker for windows?

Not that I know of. The only other comparable project I'm aware of (including relative ease of use as a criterion here) is Linux' AppArmor.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#123

Post by gnl » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

finchisko wrote: post #101

gnl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. While I do need to use a number of third-party tools to get the UX like I want it (Hammerspoon, Hyperswitch, Spectacle and Quicksilver), they do exist, they work fine and I think this has more to do with my specific requirements than with any fundamental issues or missing features in the UX. Going forward, advanced sandboxing is indeed one of the most important things that I would love to see Apple focus on. Eve…

macOS has sandbox based on TrustedBSD MAC framework. However official documentation is non existent and implementation looks like unfinished product, but I've tried it and it worked. Recommend you to read "Apple's Sandbox Guide" pdf. https://reverse.put.as/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Apple-Sand...

That looks like it might easily involve lots of fiddling, tweaking and dealing with obscure issues while XFence just works, which is worth a lot to me these days.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#124

Post by scroot » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

linguae wrote: post #31

jgh wrote: post #2

I'm not sure why the article is speculating about a "seismic" change. Apple (and Microsoft and Google have followed) has established a pattern for their OS evolution: yearly incremental updates.

When Steve Jobs announced the transition from the PowerPC to the x86 architecture in 2005, he mentioned that the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X which took place between 2001 and 2003 set Apple up for the next 20 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdTqnYnFyg It's 2018, 20 years since Apple first announced Mac OS X at WWDC 1998 as a change from their original Rhapsody strategy. The 20th anniversary of the ac…

Someone is eventually going to make one of the systems you describe, regardless of what Apple does. Modern consumer OSes are overly complex. Worse, there's nothing "personal" about personal computing. Something like a Smalltalk machine would go a long way, so long as it was built on appropriate metaphors and allowed users to "peel back" layers at a time as they wished to do more (imagine a system that, at the top user layer, acts like a "hypercard machine," but is Smalltalk or something underneath).

The proliferation of Internet access has changed the game in this regard. Back in the 80s and early 90s, compatibility issues among exotic PC systems led people to adopt only several types. But now as long as you can communicate and your system has a web browser...

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#125

Post by peatmoss » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

trimbo wrote: post #94

kbob wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor the CMU Mach years, nor the ancient Unix years?

Hm, well the way I think of it is, MacOS X 1.0 is to NeXTStep as Windows XP is to Windows NT. Both were releases on a decade-plus-old codebase, and had features (Carbon, e.g.) aimed at migrating legacy users from DOS and Mac. IIRC, it did have some differences that made it incompatible with NeXTstep (like DPDF), but I remember getting it and thinking it's basically the same OS with some Mac emulation and a different…

I played around on a NeXT cube last weekend at the Living Computer Museum and was reminded just how NeXT-like macOS is. I mean, I’ve played with NeXT in the past, and was aware of the continuity since the beginning, but playing with a NeXT in 2018 is uncanny. Of the noticeable UX changes in macOS, I’m not sure how many have been for the better.

I’ve long been bummed out that there’s never been an open NeXT clone gain traction. GNUStep, Etoile (built on GNUStep), and Cocotron all tried to recreate the magic, but languished in obscurity.

Back when Apple’s fortunes were down, betting on GNUStep would have been a decidedly quirky decision. But having the benefit of hindsight, I am convinced that had GNUStep been ready to ride Apple’s ride back to glory, we’d have a greater Linux user experience today, where popular software was a recompile away from running on both macOS and GNUStep.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#126

Post by itomato » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

peatmoss wrote: post #125

trimbo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, well the way I think of it is, MacOS X 1.0 is to NeXTStep as Windows XP is to Windows NT. Both were releases on a decade-plus-old codebase, and had features (Carbon, e.g.) aimed at migrating legacy users from DOS and Mac. IIRC, it did have some differences that made it incompatible with NeXTstep (like DPDF), but I remember getting it and thinking it's basically the same OS with some Mac emulation and a different…

I played around on a NeXT cube last weekend at the Living Computer Museum and was reminded just how NeXT-like macOS is. I mean, I’ve played with NeXT in the past, and was aware of the continuity since the beginning, but playing with a NeXT in 2018 is uncanny. Of the noticeable UX changes in macOS, I’m not sure how many have been for the better. I’ve long been bummed out that there’s never been an open NeXT clone gain…

Apple didn't exactly make it easy with all the changes and replacements to Core libraries.

Keeping pace with Apple seems impossible, given the glacial pace of the improvement and development of ProjectCenter and GORM.

It's not dead, in any case.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#127

Post by amatheus » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #8

I would honestly love to see a ground-up rebuild, but not the kind that would probably happen. OSX is getting creaky; it seems like it's had an increasing number of integral bugs lately, and the "redesign" that came with Yosemite felt more like a rushed coat of paint than a substantial rethink of the UX. Here's what I'd like to see: a fresh desktop OS that actually innovates in the space. Desktop UX innovation has sl…

Well, to each their own, the last thing I would want is a rewrite that innovates. You can already get that with Windows or the myriad Linux desktops, and I don't think the result is particularly enticing: having all your things being moved around endlessly as new trends come and go.

When Apple decided to innovate in the space, they made iOS. Now you could that's not a desktop OS but the thing is, I don't think they care about this desktop/whatever distinction, these are all computing devices, with different use cases.

Meanwhile, Windows, the leader in desktop innovation, tried everything at once, pretending to be a mobile device with full screen windows, then reverting it, removing and adding back the start menu, changing the look and feel to Metro and now Fluent, and even in the technology front there is constant churn. That may be innovative but I definitely don't want to be in the midst of all this innovation in my work computer.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#128

Post by wool_gather » Thu, May 24, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #120

wool_gather wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disbelieve you, but do you have a reference for this? `nm /sbin/launchd` doesn't show anything that looks like Swift. Searching ASCII WWDC turns up nothing. All I can find is you saying it a couple of times here on Hacker News. :)

What is new in Swift, WWDC 2017. Later I can cross-check it.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#129

Post by creviere » Thu, May 24, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #119

_bxg1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some (arguably most) of the missing features/core problems are due to the fact that OSX has been all-but-ignored by Apple for half a decade, but some of them are just due to the fact that the UNIX paradigms are becoming outdated. Google is trying to solve the latter problem with Fuschia, you're right, which is interesting. But so far that OS's UX also looks like it's primarily mobile-focused, even if it's desig…

I don't know why you would want window snapping. It doesn't provide any benefit

Scenario: I want to position three separate windows so that I can see and use all of them on a single screen. When I launch the three application windows, they launch stacked on top of one another.

With window snapping, I can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly position each window and have all 3 windows be fully visible in their own distinct space, without having to remove my hands from the keyboard.

If window snapping 'doesn't provide any benefit', then there must be some alternate method that achieves what I've described above. What is this alternate method?

Re: OS X is as old as the classic Mac OS was when it came out

#130

Post by makecheck » Thu, May 24, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

The core OS needs to improve at a faster rate and OS-specific features need top billing. We tend to see mostly application-level improvements touted as top-10 OS features (enough about Safari and Photos!).

Concurrently, the environment provided to developers ranges from stagnating to degrading.

The solution to both problems is exactly the same: separate and silo bundled-app development away from the OS and make sure they dogfood the entire process, right down to having to use the EXTERNAL bug reporting system and Apple’s external tools for App Store updates, etc. Then, give the internal app teams at Apple massive superpowers in terms of prioritizing changes to developer tools. Overnight, those ridiculous bugs in Xcode would go away, App Store submissions would be less bureaucratic with superior tools, bugs would be responded to, APIs would be more sensible, etc.