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The Cadr Critique

I hate MSWindows and the PC architecture, and I love my Mac and I love OS X. I even worked for Apple for awhile, but this is really too much Apple propaganda for an encyclopedia article, down to the Apple party line that OS X is "pronounced" OS 10. I haven't ever called it or heard it called anything but OS X. Calling it "OS 10" makes it sound like it is some kind of successor to MacOS 9 and all the others, but in fact, it is a new UNIX implementation, and pronouncing the X emphasizes that.

Even worse, the article does not do a good job of explaining OS X, or even of being enthusiastic about the really imporant points about OS X.

I am not technically competent to write the article, but OS X is clearly a UNIX system running a program that emulates a Mac interface (with lots of junk tossed out and lots of UNIX windowing system stuff added) and even runs a program that emulates OS 9.

OS X places the thorny, techno-nerd UNIX/Linux type systems within reach of the average yo-yo, and introduces architectural integrity and reliability, including genuine multi-tasking and memory-management, to the personal computer world. Ortolan88

That last paragraph is a good start, maybe trim out "techno-nerd" though... ;-) OS X is several things:

• culmination of a long project to rebuild the MacOs from scratch. This has had many false starts, eg Copeland, and the NeXT stuff (which may have been used, not sure)
• Aqua, a redesign of the MacOs interface. I wouldn't say it "emulates" though. it's a redesign with new foundations.

OsX is one of several major shifts in the Macintosh OS: the last one was the platform shift to PowerPC, which was largely user-transparent.

I called it "os X". I know OS/2 was pronounced "O.S." but when Apple changed from calling their system software "System software" to "MacOS" I've pronounced it as a full word, so I've stuck with that. -- Tarquin

Is it really appropriate to have all the Apple press release stuff at the bottom? Any factual information it contains could just be integrated into the main article, and it isn't written from a NPOV (although since it's explicitly quoted, maybe this doesn't matter so much). -- Cadr

last time I saw this article it was in need of much work. it reads as a just list of "great things about osX". I say go for it! -- Tarquin 17:57, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree: one notable fact that should be added is that OS X was the first Mac OS to feature preemptive multitasking.

—Vespristiano 00:14, 2004 Jan 21 (UTC)

Re the pronunciation, I think the references to "oh ess ex" should be removed completely. That's not Apple's "party line," products are not named democratically-- Apple created it, they made a deliberate decision to name it that way, and they have always consistently pronounced it "oh ess ten." Anyone pronouncing it differently is just, well, wrong. Facts are on Apple's side, sorry.

— MFNickster 03:03, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

While the article should certainly make clear that "oh es ten" is the correct name, I don't see why it shouldn't also reflect the fact that people do also pronounce it "oh es ex". Tverbeek 16:31, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I know that some people do pronounce it that way, and I always look at them funny! :) I guess the real problem I have with the current wording is the "favored by Apple" angle. This is very POV and perhaps in an attempt to be fair, suggests that there is no "correct" pronunciation. But Apple doesn't simply "favor" that pronunciation, they named it OS 10 and then chose the Roman numeral to represent it. So yes, it should definitely be made clear that it's a Roman numeral 10 and not the letter X. Even your Mac knows this; type "I love Mac OS X" into TextEdit and choose Edit->Speech->Start Speaking.

—MFNickster 19:56, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Three questions

I have a few questions, if someone would pls answer them on the main article:

• does Mac OS X use ELF binaries?
• does it use a standard X11R6 compatible interface?
• and the real big question: how can MacOSX binaries be run on other Unix OSes, such as Linux?

Thanks -- Michael

• No, OS X doesn't, it uses dyld, just like OPENSTEP and NEXTSTEP
• It has an X interface, but it's not used natively for graphics
• And I don't know about the third.

The stuff on X is in the main article, but I don't know how appropriate it would be to mention the OS X executable format in this article; Microsoft Windows doesn't discuss stuff about the PE format... HTH Dysprosia 07:40, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The binary format is MachO or Mach-O; dyld is the name of the dynamic linker. It ought to be mentioned, in the main article unless it gets so long than one needs a separate Mac OS X internals article. Windows uses several obj formats, so getting the mentions right is a little more complicated. Stan 13:33, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

As far as running OS X binaries on other unices, there are basically two approaches:

• Run an actual copy of OS X inside Mac-on-Linux
• Try running things on NetBSD with COMPAT_DARWIN enabled. This is unlikely to work for any but basic command-line tools.

In both cases obviously you'll need to be running on a PowerPC machine.

If you've got source of course you can port Cocoa-based apps to other OSs with GNUstep.

POV Copland line and app list

A couple of points.

"A massive development effort to replace it, known as Copland, was started in 1994, but was generally realized outside of Apple to be a hopeless case due to political infighting."

This line is very POV, and doesn't accurately reflect the optimism surrounding the project, at least in its early days. Outside of Apple there were high hopes that this truly would deliver. Even attending Apple developer seminars didn't dispel this idea, nobody from Apple ever said it was doomed due to the politics of it. If anything, it was probably only realised within Apple that the politics were hampering the effort, the outside world got the impression that everything was rosy. In any case, the politics are still there, perhaps to a lesser extent - there was for a time a definite NeXT vs. Mac flavour to stuff coming out of Apple, this was much more public than the politics under Copland.

Secondly the list of software made by others should not be included. There are 6,500 Mac OS X apps out there at the last count. Are you going to list them all? Thought not. So including a specific few here is simply commercial self-promotion. GRAHAMUK 02:53, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should at least list applications that have articles. I could understand putting them on another page like List of Mac OS X software, especially when the list grows. --Ellmist 03:59, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't think that including OS X apps is really a problem. As of the version before your change, there were only three apps, and all of them were notable (I'd even say "famous", at least inside the OS X community). We're not going to list all 6,500 apps -- most of them are simply not notable and not encyclopedia-worthy. Many of them, however, have a measure of recognition, and should be included in the Wikipedia. --bdesham 17:03, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

I disagree that the three listed were "famous". In fact I'd never heard of two of them, only Watson, and I'm a Mac developer. Not that that necessarily qualifies me to know what is "famous" or not, but it does mean I get to hear about most things. Maybe its "fame" is among those who find chat clients interesting, which counts me out, more or less. I don't have a problem listing apps, as long as the list is representative and sensible. The three included were not - it was utterly arbitrary, and, I feel, simply a way for their authors to gain a little disproportionate exposure, which is not the purpose of WP. I would go with the separate page to list apps, provided that the list grows significantly larger than the three mentioned so far, otherwise not to bother. There are thousands of better places on the net to find out what OS X software there is. GRAHAMUK 22:29, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

POV Carbon paragraph

I removed this: "In retrospect it seems that the original Rhapsody plan may have been the more reasonable one after all. Although it took some time, developers have been slowly moving to the newer Cocoa libraries after all. Meanwhile the "easy porting" to Carbon turned out to often be somewhat oversold. It can be argued that an "invisible blue box", in which classic applications ran in their own windows, would have been just as acceptable as Carbon, but would have delayed release perhaps a year instead of two."

It's pure opinion, and hence highly POV. As a Mac developer, I also happen to disagree with it - Carbon porting is actually pretty easy as far as I am concerned - I guess it depends on how good your code was in the first place. In any case, I don't think there's much room for "if x had happened instead of y" arguments on WP. Graham 11:36, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Screenshot

Someone (I will if no one else does) needs to update that screenshot. It displays a really outdated version of the OS, and therefore is not representative of Mac OS X. I also suggest that someone merge Mac OS X history into this page, since a good deal of history is already on this page, and that page is just redundant. Ctachme 22:20, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wow... a year later, and no one bothered to update this? Added a screenshot of Mac OS X 10.3... soon to be replaced by 10.4. You'd think there were no Mac users here :P

I don't like the current screenshot. While it's nice and busy, it includes a number of hacks that are not part of Mac OS X (the player buttons in menu bar, the weather menu applet). Needless to say, this is not appropriate as it's quite misleading. -- Nils

Agreed, somone running this foul OS(smile:) please get a out-of-the-box one.--Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:00, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

Could I have permission from you guys to update the screenshot to the official Tiger apple press picture. They release it under a press anylisys agreement but it falls under fair use too. It features the new tiger enhancements and what not. When tiger's released, I'll go back and see if there's an updated one. I'd update the box art too, except the current official CD art is old and outdated and the real box art images are too small. Any thoughts?

I would wait until Tiger comes out --Ctachme 02:51, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

XNU

The XNU Kernel needs some more info and perhaps coverage, any mac-knowing person here who wants to step up and add something? --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:15, 2004 Jun 23 (UTC)

POV intro?

"Mac OS X is the latest version of the Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers. Developed and published by Apple Computer, it provides a stable' Unix operating environment"
What is so stable about it as opposed to others? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 07:38, 2004 Aug 27 (UTC)

I don't see a problem here. It's not a comparative statement, and as it stands it is a stated as fact. If it's true, then it's not POV. If you perceive it as a comparative statement, then I think that's something you're bringing to the text that isn't there.Graham 09:19, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As it sounds it gives the impression that other UNIX implementations are unstable or at least that this one is notable for being one, how is it more notable than say NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris AIX for being stable? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:59, 2004 Aug 27 (UTC)

It has multiple parses - "stable (Unix) operating environment" vs "(stable Unix) operating environment". The former suggests comparison to old Mac OS, the latter compares to other Unixes. A less ambiguous phrasing would be useful, but as an Apple employee :-) I should let others do it. Anything that sounds like a off-the-cuff comparison of Unix stability is flamebait, best not to go there outside of an in-depth article on the subject (do we have one?) Stan 15:36, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Press Release

I removed the press release segment. I don't think it adds anything to the article, it looks untidy, the info is easily found if someone wants to know more, and it could be seen as POV. I hope this won't be controversial ;-) Graham 04:05, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have no problem with it. There are all of the external links... and to be perfectly honest, as someone who reads a lot of Apple's online documentation on a daily basis, I'm rather sick of their relentless self-promotion: "In order to create a menu item in a Cocoa project, you first have to understand that COCOA IS THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD..." ;-) func(talk) 04:49, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

LOL! If only they put as much effort into the actual developer documentation! Of course, Cocoa is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I would have assumed that if you're reading the "how to create a menu" document you already know that - so quit with the ads, you've sold it already!!! Graham 05:46, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Little Help Please?

(Yes, I know this is not really appropriate, but ...) Can one of you smart OS X people contact me at tinsman99@yahoo? My iMac is coughing up furballs and sometimes I swear I am the only Mac user in this Kingdom. [[Paul, in Saudi 05:03, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)]]

Try http://discussions.info.apple.com/ MFNickster 19:26, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Aqua Interface

Some Apple fanatics claim that Windows Media Player's windows version is blatanly copying the aqua interface of macos x. Although the general article itself is quite biased, I had a problem with this blatant attempt to depict any aqua (water) effect as if it belongs to Apple. The aqua (water) effect has been known in the photoshop for many years and it wasn't first introduced in the macos x. To claim that a specific interface is a copy of aqua interface of macos x you need to be more specific than this. Many interfaces look like macos x's aqua, but not windows media player on windows. The prior techniques are also known as glass and translucent effects. These effects do not belong to mac os x or apple. Apple's lawyers are already picky about such copy-cats, even they do not have a problem with windows media player on windows.

I'm revising the entire paragraph to have a more "introductory" flavor, hopefully keeping the key points and eliminating the controversy. Please feel free to edit it or revert it... but I really think it's an improvement!

MFNickster 00:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

First, thanks for making a positive change. Now the point is clear. Here is some feedback to make it even better. Do we need to link to these two programs to illustrate the point that there are many programs that have Aqua like skins? To illustrate the point that people imitate aqua interface of mac os x, there are much better examples such as http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/. These programs are trying to skin much more than a simple program. We can also talk about Apple lawsuits in the same paragraph to show how hot the issue is. I didn't find neither XMMS nor Windows Media Player meaningful examples. What do you think?

Restore the original meaning of the Aqua paragraph. Maybe it wasn't clear before but it wasn't saying Microsoft copied the Aqua appearance with their Windows Media Player (I have trouble understanding how anyone could think that anyway, WMP looks nothing like Aqua). It was trying to say that other people had created skins for WMP that duplicated the WMP appearance. AlistairMcMillan 07:29, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's one way to see it, but my impression was that the controversy was about whether the other programs copied their look from Aqua, or whether their designers took their cues from the same places that Apple did - which was the point of examples pre-dating Aqua, wasn't it? I do agree that the "vibe" was already in the air in 1999-2000, but I also strongly believe that Apple helped push it along with the design of the iMac. Aqua seemed to me in large part an attempt to transfer the hardware look of the iMac to the GUI.

MFNickster 09:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is the previous version before the anon users edits:

In addition, interface skins imitating the Aqua look exist for many programs on other operating systems; for example, XMMS under Linux and Windows Media Player under Microsoft Windows. [1]

Seems pretty clear to me, that it is talking about third-party skins not the default skins. How this becomes ...Apple fanatics claim that Windows Media Player's windows version is blatanly copying the aqua interface... is beyond me. AlistairMcMillan 10:51, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are two problems with your version. First, Windows Media has a translucent look itself, and that example may mislead people to think that this translucent look is what you refer to as the aqua look. Also you can not find the skin you are talking about in the windows media player skins site. So you are referring to someone who distributes such a skin outside of the skins that people usually use. Also there are thousands of skinnable applications. The best known of these is WinAmp and as a simple example it is more than enough and its default skin doesn't look anything like aqua, so people will not get confused. I have also added the lawsuits sentence to reflect how important this look to Apple.

Codenames and Running Joke

Am I missing the joke with the code name "Ocelot?" I know it's a big cat, but is it supposed to sound like "owes a lot?" "Owe us a lot?" "OS a lot?" I think it's kind of cute, but maybe it should at least have an attribution if we're going to keep it in the article. MFNickster 03:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I may be missing the joke as well, but AFAIK, this was something that cropped up on Slashdot a few days ago, and that's where the "running joke" started. This seems to be an attempt by someone to try and propagate the joke by posting it on Wikipedia as if it were already an established thing. In other words it will only become a running joke if WP retains it, and since we are not in the business of "original research" (or at least try to observe what's going on in the world rather than influence it) then this should probably be removed from the text. Unless of course I have missed a deeper joke here - but as you say, some attribution and proof is needed if it is to be kept. Graham 04:59, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lawsuits

I'll be writing another section for this article on the lawsuits they have been involved in. I think there are enough public suits to give the subject its own section in the article. I have more than enough reliable resources, but if anyone else has others, please list them. The major lawsuits I'll be writing about are the Apple VS. Windows regarding Windows theft of the Apple GUI years ago. The other one I'll write about it Apple VS. PowerPage.org, ThinkSecret.com, and AppleInsider.com, concerning information leaked about the Mac Mini before it's public announcement. --Zeerus 12:15, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Go for it, but put the info in the right articles: the Apple v. MS suit over Windows was in relation to ye olde Macintosh Finder, and the Mac Mini is a piece of hardware. I'm not aware of any litigation in regard to OS X. Tverbeek 13:31, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Apple Computer article has a whole section on Apple as a corporation which contains a lot of information on Apple's lawsuits already. Zeerus, you might consider expanding that article and just putting a Wikilink to it here noting any legal actions relevant to Aqua/Mac OS X.

MFNickster 13:48, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oops, I thought I had written this post in the main Apple Article. As far as the Mac Mini suit goes, should I put it in the Mac Mini article, or the main Apple one? --Zeerus 13:59, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest the main Apple article, as the Mac Mini legal issue is really about Apple and its policies, not about the Mac Mini per se. The lawsuit could have been about any product that Apple was trying to keep under wraps. You could probably put a note about it and a Wikilink in the Mac Mini article, though. I think that would be perfectly appropriate.

MFNickster 14:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Caption for the OS X Box

Umm, the box says Tiger on it... MicahMN | Talk 18:35, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Box Image

The box image isn't showing up for tiger. I can go pull the apple tiger media anylisis image now but am no sure how to put it into wikipedia.

Criticism: no multi-user support in the GUI

The Quartz GUI has no multi-user support. The operating system can therefore not function as a terminal server, with mulitple remote graphical logins.

Why was this pulled? It is a valid criticism as both Windows XP and the X Window System have this feature and Quartz does not.

--SBuchholtz 09:37, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it's because it isn't true. OS X supports this, though it may be only on OS X server possibly, which is where I've seen it demo'd.Graham 10:12, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have looked through Apple's website for info on this and remote GUI login is not listed as a feature of OS X server. The standard version von OS X definitively doesn't have it, I'm running it since 10.0.

Maybe you have mistaken Apple Remote Desktop für a real remote login? Remote Desktop allows VNC-like remote control of a Mac, but it doesn't allow multiple users to work on a single machine simultaneously. --SBuchholtz 13:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your argument. OS X can support the X Window System, but actually, the X Window system does not have Terminal Services like the ones you cite. You can run applications remotely by exporting your display from both Linux/Unix/OS X systems running X11, but you can't actually get your "desktop" as you do with Windows Terminal Services. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:30, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Not to pick nits or anything, but Windows XP does not support multiple users. Only one user at a time. AlistairMcMillan 19:01, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh and the main reason I pulled it, is we didn't have a source that clearly linked the lack of multi-user GUI support to Quartz.

Anyway although people like to make comparisons between Microsoft and Apple continuously, sometimes the comparisons aren't really valid. Microsoft is in the business of selling software, Apple is in the business of selling hardware. If Apple sold a version of Mac OS X that let a bunch of people simultaneously log in remotely using something like a Terminal Server client (which runs on just about any platform you can think of) then that removes any need for them to buy any Apple hardware except for a single machine to run that one copy of Mac OS X. What is in it for Apple? AlistairMcMillan 19:07, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My point is that the two GUI systems in competition with Mac OS X - Windows and X11 - allow multiple users to work simultaneously on the same machine remotely while Mac OS X does not. I think this is relevant and should be mentioned in the article. I don't think a link to a source besides Apple's website is necessary here, because the reason why this feature wasn't included is less important than the fact itself. IIRC OpenStep had it, so it was probably not a technical reason but the one you mentioned. --SBuchholtz 23:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

SB, I'm finding your argument a little hard to follow. How can you say that X11 is in competition with Mac OS X? X11 isn't an OS, it's a windowing system; in fact it is fully available on OS X, and any remote simultaneous use afforded by X11 is available on Mac OS X. I believe that you are trying to compare the window system of Windows XP and X11 to the Quartz Compositor, the primary window server that Mac OS X uses. If you can just be a little more precise in your terminology, particularly the distinction between terminal services and remote display of applications, as well as the between operating systems and windowing systems, this will make the discussion a lot more productive. If you are specifically debating the pros/cons of the Quartz graphics layer or windowing system, this discussion will be much more focused on Talk:Quartz (Macintosh) or Talk:Quartz Compositor, respectively. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:18, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Okay maybe I wasn't clear enough last night, WINDOWS XP DOES NOT SUPPORT MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS USERS. ONLY ONE USER CAN LOG IN AT A TIME. Is that clear enough now? And just to be exact, WINDOWS XP HOME DOES NOT SUPPORT REMOTE USERS AT ALL, ONLY XP PRO SUPPORTS REMOTE USERS. AlistairMcMillan 14:40, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The fact that MS chose to limit the number of remote logins in various versions of Windows does not change the fact that remote logins have been possible on Windows for a long time now - there is even a version of Windows NT 4.0 that supports this, see [2]. The X Window system could do it from the start. But Mac OS X can't do it with applications which use the native UI.

SBuchholtz, you do understand the difference between a regular operating system and a SERVER operating system right? AlistairMcMillan 20:11, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, this debate has started to become too generic. We're starting to cover licensing issues, we're confusing terms like "Remote Users" and "Terminal Services", and you're still comparing the X Window system to OS X which is problematic. I'm going to say that if you have a criticism of the Quartz system at any level you should put it on the appropriate article for that component; a generic complaint about the lack of "terminal services" in OS X just doesn't make sense in the context that you are providing. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:49, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)