Oh well, I have to completely disagree! This reply will come out quite long, I guess... > This thing is officaly a "Bad Idea". It is the most insane concept in >computer science after Micro$oft Window$. No, given enough time to iron everything out, this thing will be best thing ever to happen to the Mac or any other desktop platform. >For starters, lets look at >what OSX is in reality. It is simply A BSD Unix kernel and shell, with a >X frontend. There is not a single bit of X (X11!) there, if you mean that. If you mean X = OS X = the OS that was OpenStep, you're right. And there's a lot more between the kernel/BSD layer and the GUI. >Check out ( http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/mac68k/ ). NetBSD is >a BSD Unix kernel with a (optional) X frontend. It, however, runs on a >68k. With at least 4-8mb of ram. I have my little cute SE/30 here running NetBSD just for testing PHP stuff. I'd love to run my web scripts on the same machine that runs my main apps, so OS X is a wonderful idea for me. >From what I've heard, it sounds like os >9 is being run in the background to keep compatibility with MacOS >software Once the developers get up their collective butts and port their apps to X you'll have a lot of native software and don't need this emulation anymore. >(Which is also a very bad idea, the proper way to do that is by >traping the MacOS system calls, and executing them before they reach the >kernel, which would not eat up nearly as many cycles as running 2 oses). And it would be so incompatible that everyone would flame Apple to death. They simply implemented a highly integrated classic Mac OS emulator, that's the best way to deal with the old stuff. >The second problem is with the UI. Unix is a command line interface. It >will never be diffrent. No MacOS has ever had a command line. You cannot >run Unix without it's command line, it simply was not built for that, >but Apple is trying, and it won't work nearly as well as they expect. So what, then we'll have a command line. Where's the problem? I doubt you ever tried to use OS X. For normal day use you'll never need the shell. Maybe in the early versions there'll be some bugs left that force you to tweak some bits here and there with the CLI, but at the end you shouldn't need it. There are so many times I have to copy some files to my NetBSD-SE/30 just to do some things I couldn't do with the Mac OS. Last time I had about 200 small text files I wanted to merge into one single, big file. I couldn't think of a tool on Mac OS that would do that for me, and instead of searching everywhere for an appropriate tool I simply copied everything to my BSD machine, typed "cat * >all" and got my big file. With Mac OS X you don't *have* to use the CLI, but you *can*, and that's a BIG plus. Why are Mac users so unhappy about getting *more power*? >If Apple wants to support Unix, then they should release the hardware docs >to the linux and BSD projects, but this is a step in the wrong >direction. There are a lot of serious things that bug me, like Apple planning to abandon the whole file forking concept, since there's nothing more elegant than just one simple file (like a JPEG) with the actual data in the data fork and stuff like the icon, the preview, program settings in the resource fork. Multi-file solutions don't feel and work nearly that elegant. The look and feel of the new Finder is not right yet, I don't like the new list view without the OS 8 gray background with the while lines. I need support for several hardware pieces I got, like an ISDN adapter, WACOM tablet, Contour mouse, SCSI CD burner, and since that's all "legacy stuff" I can't be sure that it will ever be supported by Apple or the 3rd party manufacturers etc. etc. But you are ranting against Apple's *direction*, and that's, sorry, stupid. What do you want? The old Mac OS is so rotten to the core it's really a wonder that these Apple guys managed to keep it alive for so long. If they'd continue to squeeze every little bit of life out of it it would explode some day. Instead they decided they needed something new, so they bought Next. The rest - history. There was no choice, they needed a new OS from the ground up. Look what MS did. They had DOS+Win3, realized that this couldn't go on forever and bought the kernel/OS base that became Win NT, which was just a small step ahead of the old thing. And they are still struggling to merge the DOS and NT stuff together. Apple chose a really modern base for their "NT", so the gap between the old and new stuff will be even greater. With that in mind they are doing extremely well. After the transision period OS X will be far better than anything NT, and that's what matters, not some Mac OS users who want their Apple menu back (yawn!). If you really want your old Mac OS back, then why don't you run System 6? That was the last classic Mac OS, pure simplicity. A lot of OS X reminds me of System 6, like the control panel or the black/white finder views. Many of the special functions like window shade, menu bar clock, pop-up folders etc. came later after Apple licenced some 3rd party stuff and merged it into the system. People are forgetting how slowly the Mac OS progressed in the years after 6 was released. It took about 10 years to get from System 6 to Mac OS 9, so give OS X maybe 2 years and everything you really need will be there. Well, anything left? Ah, yes. 128MB is the minimum for the beta version, the final should be happy with 64MB. And it's the Classic emulation that needs this real RAM, the actual OS X isn't that greedy. Steffen -- Steffen Barabasch (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---------- Duo/2400 List, The friendliest place on the Net! A listserv for users and fans of Mac subportables. FAQ at <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/DuoListFAQ.shtml> Be sure to visit Mac2400! <http://www.sineware.com/mac2400> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Need help from a real person? Try. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------- Dr. Bott | Great Duo & 2400 stuff including 10/100 Ethernet for 2400s! Dr. Bott | Duo Batts too <http://www.drbott.com/prod/alist/duo.html> NineWire | If they are cool enough to host this list... Digital Solutions | ...you should check them out! http://www.NineWire.com/ PowerBook Guy is | Click here! 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