11 Jun
2014
11 Jun
'14
9:43 a.m.
I play with System 7 and 7.5 all the time; daily, almost, and I wouldn't
say that I find it frustrating to use when compared to OS X, adjusting for
the fact that it's a 20 year old operating system running on 20 year old
hardware! I think to the contrary; to me, the classic Mac OS is still
remarkable; a truly 100% GUI drag-and-drop OS all the way down to
installing, modifying and copying the System. It was eminently easy to use,
and usability -- and consistency over time -- were considered paramount.
Someone who learned how to use a Mac in 1986, would not have been out of
place in 1996. There was just no comparison then -- or now?
It seems that nowadays Apple really couldn't care less about usability and
consistency over time; they have become just as capricious as Microsoft at
racing to implement pointless new flashy UI features, switching up the
method for completing a task pointlessly, just for the sake of doing it
(why does the method for installing a printer need to change with every
release?); etc. To Me, Mac OS X is no marvel compared to Windows 7. I miss
what Apple used to stand for in building a computer or an operating system.
Honestly it's true, the best melding of classic Mac OS usability values and
modern operating system internals underneath was not A/UX at all; it was
BeOS! I just think it is slightly inaccurate to say that Apple had nothing
internally they could have drawn upon in creating a next-generation
successor to the classic Mac OS. Would it have been any greater effort to
port A/UX to PPC and bolt on the Finder from System 9, than it would have
been to port NeXTstep to PPC and graft a few Classic-reminiscent visual
queues on top of it? Would taking the alternate route of basing their
next-gen OS on A/UX (or BeOS??) instead of NeXTstep have dramatically
altered Apple's fate in the long run? It's hard to say, as the introduction
of OS X kind of co-incided with their move more into the consumer
electronics space (iPod, iPhone, etc). How much of Apple's revenue is
derived from selling computers today? Probably not much.
Best,
Sean
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 6:36 AM, Joost <gyorpb at gmail.com> wrote:
On 2014-06-09 21:36, Sean Caron wrote:
That all said, I don't see why A/UX would have been any less suitable a
foundation for Apple's next-generation
operating system than NeXTstep?
A/UX was dead and buried by the time Apple bought NeXT.
Also, you're pondering the wrong questions. Apple weren't looking for a
UNIX; they were looking for an OS that would become the next-gen Mac OS.
The underpinnings, as much as they mean to gearheads like the populace of
lists like these, were inconsequential. Appl eneeded an OS, *any* OS, that
could carry the Mac forward into the new millenium.
They got more than they bargained for, bringing SJ back into the fold as
well, although of course it has also been suggested that maybe it wasn't
Apple taking over NeXT, at all...
You did have the OpenStep APIs and toolkits; that was always believed to
be
the best part of NeXT... Apple didn't really have an equivalent to that in
OpenDoc or the historical Mac Toolbox. But I've never been a fan of ObjC
anyway;)
I think you answered your own question, there.
Look at the Mac OS -oops: OSX- as it stands, today. Everyone whining about
how great and polished and efficient System 7 was should take a short break
from OSX every now and then and try to work with System 7 for a while.
You'll be pulling your hair out in no short order, because of all the
little conveniences we take for granted that wouldn't have been possible to
bolt onto classic Mac OS, at least not without turning into an even bigger
kludgy pig than it already was by the time 7.6 shipped.
Apple aren't in the business of making technical marvels that are
marvellous from a technical standpoint. Every now and again, they do do
that, but that is merely a side effect. Apple are in the business of making
things atht are marvellous from the viewpoint of users. How that is
accomplished, is entirely not the user's problem. Who cares if NeXT is a
resource hog: as long as resources are plentiful, it'll do some damn handy
things for the user.
I'm no Apple insider but I could totally see an alternate universe where
Macs are running an operating system with a
Classic-like GUI and a
monolithic UNIX kernel underneath. I bet in practice, it would have run
faster than Rhapsody, and that great, easy-to-understand UI gestalt Apple
was known for could have remained unsullied:)
In that universe, I'm afraid Apple would no longer exist today and we'd
still be jumping through hoops trying to get our Symbian feature phones to
work with our Windows machines and just grinning and bearing it when our
Outlook contact lists would be cleared again after our weekly botched synch.
J.