NuTek Mac comes

[Ian Finder]

TL;DL

On Tuesday, July 12, 2016, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> > I vaguely recall seeing some in a mag at the time. It looked a bit like
> > Mac apps running on CDE, if I remember correctly. The in-window menus
> > were weird (for a Mac) and made it look more Windows-like.
>
> That's about what I'd expect. I wonder if it could crash as much as OS 8.1
> on my Quadra 700. That's a tough act to follow. :-)
>
> > Of course, today, GNUstep is something very broadly akin to this, and
> > almost nobody pays any attention to it. :-( There have been a couple of
> > LiveCDs, never updated, and TTBOMK nobody has ever produced a
> > GNUstep-based Linux distro.
>
> IIRC, there was an alpha-quality liveCD for a while. I never could get
> that excited about NeXT, Objective C, or any of that Steve-Jobs-in-limbo
> kruft (and by extension GNUStep, either). I saw a Color Turbo slab for
> sale recently:
>
> http://denver.craigslist.org/sys/5677975263.html
>
> I passed. That machine is sweet, for what it is. However, like most
> hobbyists I tend to gravitate toward machines I actually used "back in the
> day". In the 90's I was a student, mostly. There was no-freakin-way I was
> going to afford a NeXT machine. They were prohibitively expensive (or at
> least that's my recollection): even more so than high-end Macs. Plus, back
> in the 1990's I met a couple of people who did own them, and they were
> *super-snobby* about it, which also turned me off. It's a bit like BMW
> owners today. I don't care if they put 1000 HP in them, even most of their
> sportscars ('cept the whacky hybrid) still looks to me like mom's car
> leaving the tennis courts at the country club to head out to a PTA
> meeting. I'm guessing I will never be a BMW fan or a NeXT bigot.
>
> GNUStep wants to clone their whole API and the UI, as you know. I wish
> them luck but it's nothing that exciting to me personally. It's
> interesting that you bring it up now that Linux is committing anti-UNIX
> heresy on a regular basis. Maybe GNUStep's future is now brighter? It's
> still very fiddly and immature the last time I looked at it, but in terms
> of the overall approach, it does appear to have some nice plumbing and
> backing-ideas. I'd rather see GNUStep succeed than GNOME or KDE (fantasy
> on my part), honestly. Those two are just hopeless chaos-impregnated
> hairballs with ridiculous dependency chains which are starting to pollute
> working/good/not-at-all-broken areas of the *OS* at this point. I've never
> liked either project (though I could almost stand GNOME for short periods
> in the early days). Then again, I'm not one of those "Linux world
> domination" types who want to somehow capture every user, no matter how
> low we have to set the bar to snag them.
>
> Google Android has shown that folks can (successfully) bastardize
> Linux/UNIX into something very weird, proprietary, custom, and no longer
> even resembling UNIX, much. So, now that this sort of blaspheming is
> normal, why not try to make a *decent* desktop OS from it, eh? Lord knows,
> Ubuntu is trying.  Who knows, maybe Android will become that. I'll catch
> the screenshots... I'd rather not use an OS where soooooo many of the apps
> are pre-infected with some type of malware or does things behind the
> scenes I wouldn't approve of (yet the "store" claims they are "virus"
> free, eh?). Funny how they can redefine "virus" or "malware" as it suits
> them (ie.. corporate sponsors say it's safe? Oh, ohhhhhkay then, we don't
> mind if you steal an address book, log keystrokes, or secretly GPS track
> folks - just don't replicate). The countermeasures for these issues seem
> to me to be weak and ineffective, so far.
>
> I'm not sure I'll ever be able to trust commercial OS's or software at
> this point, no matter how much bling they cop. I still carry my Philips
> Xenium phone running Symbian (and lasting about 20 days before needing a
> charge). Tastes great, and less filling.
>
> I'd love to see a commercial phone OS project start with the mentality of
> the OpenBSD project. I'd be willing to try something like that! Features
> like totally secure defaults, zero trust for basically anyone or anything,
> secure OS protections that are difficult to override by silly apps, etc..
> would be welcome.
>
> > I've always suspect that, if by some massive effort, ReactOS succeeded
> > and produced something that was usefully stable and could run Windows
> > apps usefully, Microsoft's attack lawyers would *vaporize* it leaving
> > nothing but a smoking stain on the ground.
>
> I have absolutely zero doubt that you are quite correct. If it took
> .000001% bit of market share away from them, they'd have a nuclear
> freak-out and figure out a way to hybridize ninjas with their corporate
> lawyers and send them out riding elephant sharks for vengeance. What would
> be hilarious (but again fantasy) is if ReactOS had a breakthrough in terms
> of functionality that got them very close (say 99% or better compat). Then
> if they sat on it for a while, getting it right before subsequently
> release it the genie would be out of the bottle. If it worked
> compatibility-wise even as well as XP or Win7, it'd be a hit and crimp the
> snot out of M$. Of course, they'd probably find some way to DCMA it out of
> existence. It just depends on how widespread the release got and how
> illegal it was to own it.
>
> > Saying that, I'm amazed at how well WINE works these days.
>
> It's impressive when it works. There are still a large number of
> applications that don't work, too. Even bread-and-butter apps like the
> latest Firefox often crash and burn. I have seen a few that are rock
> solid, Office 97, Winamp, and a few other "gold" (winehq) or better
> certified applications. I run RegexBuddy sometimes in Wine and as you say,
> no problems.
>
> That's not to say the WINE team isn't amazing. They are. It's just a tough
> slog.
>
> -Swift
>


-- 
   Ian Finder
   (206) 395-MIPS
   ian.finder at gmail.com