[ic] Mac OSX viable as a development platform?

Chris Devers interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Tue Mar 5 20:49:01 2002


On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Robert Brandtjen wrote:

> On Tuesday 05 March 2002 07:01 pm, Chris Devers wrote:
> > So don't use Quartz: log in as ">console", then drop down to a normal text
> > login and launch X from there. It's ugly, but it is much faster. Isn't it
> > nice to have a choice? Don't you wish RedHat could run in PrettyMode? :)
> 
> Whatever funtionality OSX has it borrowed heavily from the X world

Or, uhh, "bought" from the "NeXT" world. I agree with this fully.

> My X is "pretty"

I was teasing when I make the prettymode remark -- I've seen plenty of X
desktops that were cute enough, but I haven't seen any that are as usable
as OS9 was. [NB that I don't think OSX is as usable as OS9, either.] 

It's one thing to make an interface that resembles something clever from
another system -- I've seen X desktops that look just like BeOS, with the
shrink-to-fit titlebars. But I haven't seen any that take this resemblance
to anything past a superficial level -- none of the BeOS knockoffs could
actually slide the titlebar from side to side, allowing you to neatly
arrange large, overlapping windows.

Giving the user some configurability is a virtue; drowning them in options
for everything imaginable isn't. 

I really wasn't looking to help start a flame war here, because there are
a lot of things about X11 that I really respect & miss when I'm using
other systems. Why can't Macs or Windows support multiple desktops? Why do
you need third party software to allow remote graphical logins? (For that
matter, why is it so hard to login remotely at all? OSX finally gets past
at least this gripe...). But for all the great features of X, the kicker
is that it's just a pain in the butt to work with. Why can't X do simple
Cut & Paste operations reliably? Why do you have to know so much about
your hardware to make it start, nevermind work well? Why isn't there any
significant consistency from one setup to the next? In the end, both camps
have strong & weak points, and thus are suitable for different needs. 

> Still waiting for an SNMP fix? a BSD ftp fix? AN update to apache (apple
> has to recompile its mod_hfs+ to close a security hole in HFS+ FS), etc,
> etc ,etc-> upgraded python lately? OpenSSH ? SSH ? hmmm? still waiting
> for Apple, right ? 

Err, no, not at all. I'm running current versions of ncftp, apache,
Python, OpenSSH, SSH, OpenSSL, VNC, and about a hundred other packages as
downloaded and built from source myself. Aside from Interchange, the only
thing that hasn't built properly has been Mozilla and, well, so what?

For a proprietary software vendor, Apple is doing a pretty good job of
both [a] providing a platform that allows people to do these sorts of
things if they're so inclined, and [b] being pretty on the ball about
providing updates by themselves promptly. 

I don't see Apple replacing RedHat, and I don't see RedHat replacing
Apple. I think that, so far, one has done a much better job of providing a
solid desktop OS, and the other has done the same for servers, but best of
all: *they get along well together*. They are *complementary*. That's a
good thing. If one OS can't be good at everything -- and it can't -- then
you might as well split up the work to systems where things work best, and
allow them to work together as seamlessly as possible. For the most part,
these systems do that well; Interchange is the biggest obstacle I've hit
so far, and I was hoping that it could work too. Oh well. 


Sorry for letting this degenerate into a flamewar. I'm still interested in
getting this software working at home, but I'm not interested in
formatting my hard drive to make it work. Oh well, back to ssh... :)



-- 
Chris Devers                           chdevers@netscape.net
Apache / mod_perl / http://homepage.mac.com/chdevers/resume/