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Ghost
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I don't ever remember anyone highlighting Avie's coding. They have always given him credit for smart kernel design and running productive development teams! Unlike past attempts by Apple to advance their OS.
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Avie Tevanian Leaves Apple
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I don't ever remember anyone highlighting Avie's coding. They have always given him credit for smart kernel design and running productive development teams! Unlike past attempts by Apple to advance their OS.
Ghost
A
Anonymous Person
Guest
Re: Re: Good Riddance to all NeXTites...
You don't know what you're talking about. You're just regurgitating what's in Apple's marketing materials.
It's Mach, not UNIX, that gives Mac OS X its two key "modern" features (preemtive multitasking and memory protection). Mach is just a kernel. An OS can be Mach-based without being UNIX. The only thing UNIX gives you is a bunch of command-line tools like sed, awk, and grep. Definitely not necessary.
And Mach is hardly the world's greatest kernel, either. It's big and slow. Even free kernels written by amatuers in their spare time can outperform it. Just look at how much of a speedup LinuxPPC is over MkLinux. Apple would have done better to go with just about any other kernel for Mac OS X, particularly Apple's own NuKernel, but Avie is just a wee bit biased in favor of Mach, so we're stuck with it.
You can see hints of just how good a next-generation Mac OS might have been. Take another look at Mac OS 9. How do you think iTunes can play in the background without skipping in OS 9? Because Mac OS 9 has support for preemptive threads, that's why. How does it do this? It turns out that every Mac OS since 8.6 is actually running as a single task under a slimmed-down version of NuKernel, called the Nanokernel. Mac OS 9 is already part-way there. The right way to fix the Mac OS's problems would have been to replace the Nanokernel with the full NuKernel, then allow newly-written apps to run as protected tasks under it, while retaining the MacOS-as-a-single-task scheme for older apps. It would have been very similar to the Carbon/Classic approach in Mac OS X, but without the horrendous slowness that comes from using Mach, and the bloat that comes from UNIX.
The only reason Apple never achieved that on their own was due to poor management. Apple needed a leader (Steve). It didn't need Mach or UNIX. If Apple had been able to gain Steve Jobs as CEO without getting the rest of NeXT along with him, that would have been perfect. Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
And as far as NeXT's development environment goes ... Sure, it was revolutionary when it was first introduced, but far from being "evolved" since then, it has remained stagnant. The rest of the world caught up and passed it by years ago. Want drag and drop editing of your application's GUI, with an object oriented backend? Use PowerPlant. It's old hat these days. NeXT's ProjectBuilder also lacks a lot of ease of use features that have long since become standard in other IDEs. And it uses gcc to compile, rather than Apple's excellent MrC, so any programs written with it perform rather poorly.
The previous poster was correct to criticize the NeXTites. They have brought very little of value to the Mac, and have introduced a lot of unnecessary difficulties for Mac users & developers.
You don't know what you're talking about. You're just regurgitating what's in Apple's marketing materials.
It's Mach, not UNIX, that gives Mac OS X its two key "modern" features (preemtive multitasking and memory protection). Mach is just a kernel. An OS can be Mach-based without being UNIX. The only thing UNIX gives you is a bunch of command-line tools like sed, awk, and grep. Definitely not necessary.
And Mach is hardly the world's greatest kernel, either. It's big and slow. Even free kernels written by amatuers in their spare time can outperform it. Just look at how much of a speedup LinuxPPC is over MkLinux. Apple would have done better to go with just about any other kernel for Mac OS X, particularly Apple's own NuKernel, but Avie is just a wee bit biased in favor of Mach, so we're stuck with it.
You can see hints of just how good a next-generation Mac OS might have been. Take another look at Mac OS 9. How do you think iTunes can play in the background without skipping in OS 9? Because Mac OS 9 has support for preemptive threads, that's why. How does it do this? It turns out that every Mac OS since 8.6 is actually running as a single task under a slimmed-down version of NuKernel, called the Nanokernel. Mac OS 9 is already part-way there. The right way to fix the Mac OS's problems would have been to replace the Nanokernel with the full NuKernel, then allow newly-written apps to run as protected tasks under it, while retaining the MacOS-as-a-single-task scheme for older apps. It would have been very similar to the Carbon/Classic approach in Mac OS X, but without the horrendous slowness that comes from using Mach, and the bloat that comes from UNIX.
The only reason Apple never achieved that on their own was due to poor management. Apple needed a leader (Steve). It didn't need Mach or UNIX. If Apple had been able to gain Steve Jobs as CEO without getting the rest of NeXT along with him, that would have been perfect. Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
And as far as NeXT's development environment goes ... Sure, it was revolutionary when it was first introduced, but far from being "evolved" since then, it has remained stagnant. The rest of the world caught up and passed it by years ago. Want drag and drop editing of your application's GUI, with an object oriented backend? Use PowerPlant. It's old hat these days. NeXT's ProjectBuilder also lacks a lot of ease of use features that have long since become standard in other IDEs. And it uses gcc to compile, rather than Apple's excellent MrC, so any programs written with it perform rather poorly.
The previous poster was correct to criticize the NeXTites. They have brought very little of value to the Mac, and have introduced a lot of unnecessary difficulties for Mac users & developers.
A
Anonymous Wimp
Guest
Re: Re:re:See Ya!
What manufacturer makes that machine?
You give us the specs, but no make or model...
What manufacturer makes that machine?
You give us the specs, but no make or model...
N
NJ
Guest
Re: Re: Re: Good Riddance to all NeXTites...
MacOS 9 supports preemptive _threading_ via MP tasks. MP tasks are not easy to understand and not all developers are keen to implement them into their existing apps, most of the time they gain very little by doing so.
Even if all developers used MP tasks for all of their programs the benefits wouldn't show. The nanokernel simply isn't up to par....iTunes still stutters on slow machines.
MacOS 9 supports preemptive _threading_ via MP tasks. MP tasks are not easy to understand and not all developers are keen to implement them into their existing apps, most of the time they gain very little by doing so.
Even if all developers used MP tasks for all of their programs the benefits wouldn't show. The nanokernel simply isn't up to par....iTunes still stutters on slow machines.
Yes, I think Anonymous Person has oversimplified the issue here, and given OS 8.6/9 far too much credit. Look at the features (or lack there of) of the kernel as a whole. It's VM system is an optional addition--enough said.
Mach handles most core kernel operations, but there are some "kernel operations" handled by BSD as well--it's more of a hybrid than BSD cleanly sitting exactly on top of Mach. In my OS studies in college, Mach was cited as a textbook example (literally) used to illustrate an ideal kernel structure.
I disagree with your criticisms of OS X and its dev environment.
blakespot
Mach handles most core kernel operations, but there are some "kernel operations" handled by BSD as well--it's more of a hybrid than BSD cleanly sitting exactly on top of Mach. In my OS studies in college, Mach was cited as a textbook example (literally) used to illustrate an ideal kernel structure.
I disagree with your criticisms of OS X and its dev environment.
blakespot
B
Bull
Guest
Re: Re: Re:re:See Ya!
Anonymous Wimp,
There are many who make such workstations at similar prices. Checkout the workstations at http://www.monarchcomputer.com for one.
Anonymous Wimp,
There are many who make such workstations at similar prices. Checkout the workstations at http://www.monarchcomputer.com for one.