ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ari Halberstadt) (08/04/89)
I should have known I was openning pandora's box when flaming the mac on comp.sys.mac.programmer....oh well, I got myself into it, I guess I have to weather the storm :-) There have been several replies, and I would like to state that: 1. I don't think all those poor old mac users should have to learn unix; I've seen people just struggling with how a mouse works. 2. I want the productivity as a programmer, not an end user! But believe me, I've seen plenty of software out there that its makers, even with a menu/dialog type interface, could have made much more productive if made more general, instead of trying to cram everything into one giant ram-resident program [multi-finder has to set aside the whole block before the program is run]. They also could have implemented such things as pipes, even without calling it a pipe, to make interfacing these programs easier. Just because something doesn't look like a duck doesn't mean it can't act like one :-) 3. For the user, most of the functionality of unix is reached through some excellent shell's, and through a bunch of tools. I know perfectly well that the tools have nothing to do with the kernel, but they have become synonymous with the word "unix". Who would market unix with only /etc/rc, /etc/passwd and vmunix? 4. I have read most of the book "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System" by S. Leffler, et. al. The book is an excellent description of the unix kernel. The kernel provides many things which allow the user programs to be so powerful, without resorting to various kludges; for instance, pipes are created by the kernel, not simulated as in MPW. And today, unix is gaining many more advanced interprocess communication facilities, etc. Unfortunately, it's also getting *bigger*. 5. Yes, I know the mac was really supposed to be a toaster [well that's what my CS prof called it]. Apple did have to get a product out before the year 2000, and it had to be acceptable to the rest of the world; they'd already screwed up with the Lisa. Unix does take up tons of space, but I'm working at a place with 5 meg macs with 60 meg drives each, half of which is mostly empty. Our macs are also shared by a number of programmers and users, so that it's not really practical to go around reconfiguring everything to be just the way to you like it [e.g., fix up all the menus in MPW to be just the way I want]. The NeXT machine gets around this by keeping preference info for each user separately, since it's a true multi-processing environment. Does anyone know of a way on the mac to have it reconfigure for each user? I suppose I could have MPW check the user name on startup, and call different scripts depending on the user. Then all I need do is have it ask for the user name in a dialog, or just set it in the chooser before starting MPW. 6. Speaking of the NeXT machine: I don't know how many people have managed to get their hands on one, but it's a really slick machine, once you get past the ver 0.8 or 0.9 bugs. It's got this huge CD ROM, and 330 meg drive, and 400dpi printer...ooops, you've probably all heard this before. Anyways, from my as yet brief experience with it, looks like they did a real nice job of combining the power of real unix with the ease of use of a GUI. Maybe I'm not a mac hacker; maybe I've just been waiting for the NeXT machine... 7. Neither the mac nor unix come with an auto-chef. To the best of my knowledge, no commercially available products provide such a feature, though I have heard rumors of something called "mom" that supposedly implements this; some also say a unit called "wife" fulfils the same function, but evidently this has been on the decline since a new theory called "womens lib" was invented. I therefore must take leave and go eat lunch...more later, as I think of new things. [Another nice feature would be auto-sleep, or perhaps auto-pilot. Then I'd never have to leave my computer alone, even at 2AM; hey mac system ver. 1000 designers, you listening?] -- Ari Halberstadt '91, "Long live succinct signatures" E-mail: ari@eleazar.dartmouth.edu Telephone: (603)640-5687 Mailing address: HB1128, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755