New Windoze User Interface is a pleasent surprise

I don't get it.

You need to give it a minute or two - after all it is Windoze.

You should hear Kermit the Frog

Hmmm. Is it me, or does it remind you of the Mac OS?

Oh lord people!

IT IS Mac OSX.

The point is that the voice is from the demonstration of windows vista at CES played over a demonstration of the exact same features already up and running in OSX.

PC users . . . are you all asleep?

Doug

Oh I get it now, I wasn't really listening so only saw an advert for OSX.

Mind you I don't believe that quicktime videos actually run in the dock, they did in OSX1 but they kinda ditched it.

It always amused me that the Commodore Amiga had an operating system that was was fully pre-emptive multi-tasking and the main OS (based on Tripos) ran in 64k. In other words, the OS decided on what resources were available to a progran rather than the programmer. This was written by a small Bristol company called Metacomco in the mid-80s.

Windoxe 98 (I think released in 1999) was still not as advanced as this using cooperative multi-tasking. Even Mac OS 9 relied on programs cooperating with each other, but unlike Windoze, it was relative easy to catch and resolve conflicts.

Unix was always pre-emptive, of course. Steve Jobs used pre-emptive multi-tasking on his superb Next computer, the development of which is OS X.

I don't think the computer industry has progressed as far as it would like us to believe - I look forward to full voice recognition in OS X Leopard. (They even had that on Oric in Blake 7 and that was in the 70s)

Rotf

The trouble with voice recognition is firstly you feel like a prat in your home talking to a computer and secondly you need to have a North American accent.

Seriously why do you think this would be such an advancement can you hear yourself "Open Harddrive", "Open CV" etc. Boy would you look stupid.

.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
The trouble with voice recognition is firstly you feel like a prat in your home talking to a computer and secondly you need to have a North American accent.

Seriously why do you think this would be such an advancement can you hear yourself "Open Harddrive", "Open CV" etc. Boy would you look stupid.

I was thinking of dictating letters and documents rather than relying on my pathetic typing skills.

I agree that talking Unix may not be the greatest idea -> ls -l | grep -v nicedocs | more.

John - really nice picture of Foghorn Leghorn - now he was a great programmer.

I bet it still doesn't have the elegance of X windows.

My first PC came with DOS4/Windows2 and I remember all too well what a rude shock it was after using UNIX on a VAX 11/750 for years at uni. Fortunately there was a UNIX port for PCs and windows dissappeared very quickly from my machine.

BTW I thought OSX was a linux distro from apple for powerpc? But then I am not a Maccie...

Gus

Hi Gus

OSX is not a distro of Linux - it is built on Darwin Unix which uses a Mach kernel. It is Open Source, but definitely not Linux. That said, it is trival to port a well written Linux program to OS X and you can use the X11 interface if you wish.

OS X has Apple's Aqua interface which is much easier to program and control than X-Windows - aided by the fact that Apple provides a free developer kit with all Macs or OS packs or free download (Xtools). Creating simple icons to launch programs used to be a challenge in OSF/Motif (X-Windows).

Unfortunately, the PowerPC is now going a way as Apple releases Intel Macs.

If you like Unix/X-Windows then I think you'd really like OS X.

Rotf

I used to enjoy buying Amigas (had 16 - only 2 left) and was sad when Philips killed them in 1994. Shortly after that, I transferred my 'swop the operating system' urges to PC IBM clone world in 1996, and get a new PC whenever there is new OS to examine. Sadly I got bored after 2 years of WinXP in 2003 and bought a 2nd XP m/c mainly to use DVD writing facility.

I await release of Leghorn later this year, and wonder if at last I will see sense and not buy a new multithreading PC/new Gates OS.

I frequently use my commercially purchased Cloanto Amiga Emulators
http://www.amigaforever.com/
on various PCs, and think that I have successfully managed to have avoided buying Macs.

OSX is basically a copy of the Next unix OS, just as MacOS began as a rip off from Xerox.

Of course the Next unix OS will itself have been based on X and one or other of the unix flavours (system 5 possibly).

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
It is Open Source, but definitely not Linux.

Imagine what would happen if Microsoft ripped off something open source and sold it as proprietry...

quote:

Originally posted by Steve G:

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
It is Open Source, but definitely not Linux.

Imagine what would happen if Microsoft ripped off something open source and sold it as proprietry...

Yeah but Apple aren't Microsoft, which is why you can download the Darwin source for free - click here

quote:

Originally posted by Chumpy:
I used to enjoy buying Amigas (had 16 - only 2 left) and was sad when Philips killed them in 1994. Shortly after that, I transferred my 'swop the operating system' urges to PC IBM clone world in 1996, and get a new PC whenever there is new OS to examine. Sadly I got bored after 2 years of WinXP in 2003 and bought a 2nd XP m/c mainly to use DVD writing facility.

I await release of Leghorn later this year, and wonder if at last I will see sense and not buy a new multithreading PC/new Gates OS.

I frequently use my commercially purchased Cloanto Amiga Emulators
http://www.amigaforever.com/
on various PCs, and think that I have successfully managed to have avoided buying Macs.

Whilst I'm very happy with my Apple computers - I too think the Amiga was superb and use the Amiga emulator in a Virual PC window on my PowerMac. My old A1000 has seen better days, unfortunately.

In 1977 I started with Burroughs Machines (a few years later bought Sperry to form Unisys). We were working on a personal computer called the B80, and the OS provided full multiprogramming, virtual memory capability. It ran in 32K of memory, and the complete suite of system software lived on a 1MB disk cartridge. There were no fancy graphics, we didn't provide 10000 unnecessary fonts, silly cartoon men telling you how to do things, etc. However it ran thousands of small businesses and was used by many large institutions. We laughed at how primitive DOS was compared to what we were producing. The rest, sadly is history.

It horrifies me when I see system requirements for today's software - hundreds of megabytes of disk and tens of megs of memory to do not very much. I'd love to see what a 3 MHz processor and 512 MB of main memory could achieve without all the unnecessary bells and whistles today's PCs seem to require.

Incidentally a personal computer back then was the size of two desks in an L shape! Ah the good old days.

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:
It horrifies me when I see system requirements for today's software - hundreds of megabytes of disk and tens of megs of memory to do not very much.

My job is implementing a tier 1 business software suite and it needs hundreds of gigabyes of disk space just to install, a minimum of 4GB of RAM and at least two fast processors as a bare minimum. Most systems we deal with now have multiple servers with terrabytes of data, 16GB of RAM and at least 8 processors. Ok it's capable of a good bit more than the equivalent system did 15 years ago when I started implementing it but a lot of people just want to do their accounts and the old green screen systems were just as capable of doing that.

Steve G - you're making me nostalgic for TermCap and TermInfo files.

Good god, it's still there in Mac OSX - great specalist subject for mastermind

vt100|vt100-am|dec vt100 (w/advanced video),
am, msgr, xenl, xon,
cols#80, it#8, lines#24, vt#3,
acsc=``aaffggjjkkllmmnnooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzz{{||}}~~,
bel=^G, blink=\E[5m$<2>, bold=\E[1m$<2>,
clear=\E[H\E[J$<50>, cr=^M, csr=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dr,
cub=\E[%p1%dD, cub1=^H, cud=\E[%p1%dB, cud1=^J,
cuf=\E[%p1%dC, cuf1=\E[C$<2>,
cup=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dH$<5>, cuu=\E[%p1%dA,
cuu1=\E[A$<2>, ed=\E[J$<50>, el=\E[K$<3>, el1=\E[1K$<3>,
.............

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Steve G - you're making me nostalgic for TermCap and TermInfo files.

I still use a vt emulator (TeraTerm) and vi as my preferred editor when writing code! Some of my colleagues think I'm a ludditte...

I saw this posted on another forum and found it amusing:

Why Mac's Suck