Would a teenage Steve Jobs today run MacOS or Linux?

[WriteNow]

I'm not an expert on Jobs--and I know very little about him as a teenager. That said...I have a hard time imagining him using Linux. I think the look and feeling of the software mattered way too much for him.

Woz, on the other hand, might well embrace Linux if he were a teenager today.

 

[TJ82]

Totally agree. I want to get my work done, not tinker. Windows and Mac have no future. Linux is the only path forward. It sucks now, but it can be improved. Donate money to devs, buy from Linux-focused vendors. We'll get there.

You're living in a bubble.

Billions of people literally could not give a toss.

See that mountain of cash Apple has? That is their protection for generations of the human race's whims - Apple can either crush or move with any trend. And security has been proven to not be something the general population care about enough to act upon decisively, in fact for most - it's a trade off for getting easy to use tech.

 

[mi7chy]

Neither being that Jobs is more of a designer so he'll need Windows to run software like Catia, ANSYS FEA, etc. Chase the software you need to do the job rather than the OS.

 

[crymimefireworks]

You're living in a bubble.

Billions of people literally could not give a toss.

See that mountain of cash Apple has? That is their protection for generations of the human race's whims - Apple can either crush or move with any trend. And security has been proven to not be something the general population care about enough to act upon decisively, in fact for most - it's a trade off for getting easy to use tech.

This sounds like someone who would try to convince Steve Jobs not to start Apple. "Steve, home computers are toys! Cray and IBM have the business market completely covered, no one needs computers at home. Get out of your dream world, do something with your life and go back to college!"

 

[loby]

You both just reminded me of my first trip to COMDEX, in 1998 (luckily for me at the time I was living in Las Vegas, so that trip was a 10 minute drive!).. I got to the section of the convention center where various geek booths were. O’Reilly had a booth. Slashdot and Freshmeat had booths. Yggdrasil, Slackware, SuSE, Debian, and Mandrake had booths, where the developers of the sisters were there answering questions. But in the middle of where these booths were was a set of chairs and a overhead screen for Redhat. Every booth had either the founder of the company, or a sysadmin or tech person for the company, except Redhat. They brought in a marketing guy. Their presentations started out with getting the chairs filled, then for the first 3 minutes, the Marketing guy getting everyone to shout "LINUX MEANS E-BUSINESS!!!!" while jumping up and down like Steve Balmer at a Microsoft event.

Everyone wanted to throttle that guy.

However, it was from that point where everyone started to get the hint that Linux was going to be geared towards the business and enterprise environment versus the end-user or desktop environment. There wasn't anyone that could make X or an XTerminal user friendly enough to compete with Windows, and by the time GNOME or KDE came out they were no where near rich enough to compete with Windows as a desktop environment.

So while Linux is great with enterprise and IoT devices, MacOS and Windows for the most will have the desktop environment for a while. Their problem, however, is the same that the Boeing 737 has: there is only so much that you can put into a 50 year old design. Like the B737 MAX, which is based on the original B737 designs from the 1960s/1970s, modern GUIs, including Windows and MacOS (even going back to System Software 7) are built on X, which is 30-40 years old. There's only so much that you can improve on that before something gives.

BL.

Just a side note: I have not heard any talk that Apple might be creating a new OS or macOS is evolving out of their old design and limits. With all of the new and fresh talent now with the new Apple, i would not be surprised if Apple comes out with a new OS as they came out with Apple silicon.

i don’t think Apple is in the same category as let’s say Microsoft with having to rely on old code etc. Windows I think will morph into a Linux hybrid eventually and I think macOS will morph into something completely new as things progress. It might take some time, but I don’t think Apple has coded themselves in a corner with macOS and it’s obligations to business as Microsoft has.

 

[bradl]

Just a side note: I have not heard any talk that Apple might be creating a new OS or macOS is evolving out of their old design and limits. With all of the new and fresh talent now with the new Apple, i would not be surprised if Apple comes out with a new OS as they came out with Apple silicon.

i don’t think Apple is in the same category as let’s say Microsoft with having to rely on old code etc. Windows I think will morph into a Linux hybrid eventually and I think macOS will morph into something completely new as things progress. It might take some time, but I don’t think Apple has coded themselves in a corner with macOS and it’s obligations to business as Microsoft has.

In a sense, Apple has morphed. I mean, MacOS has NeXT for its underbelly, so it's based off of a Unix-like OS. That is completely different from System Software 6.x to 7.5.x, which was GUI only, and nothing at all.

Windows is still based off of what they saw with Macs, but similar to Unix, uses DOS as its underbelly. Their morphing is incorporating more Linux into the core OS, but that still isn't saying much, because it still using the same model of GUI on top of a Unix-like CLI..

BL.

 

[loby]

In a sense, Apple has morphed. I mean, MacOS has NeXT for its underbelly, so it's based off of a Unix-like OS. That is completely different from System Software 6.x to 7.5.x, which was GUI only, and nothing at all.

Windows is still based off of what they saw with Macs, but similar to Unix, uses DOS as its underbelly. Their morphing is incorporating more Linux into the core OS, but that still isn't saying much, because it still using the same model of GUI on top of a Unix-like CLI..

BL.

I think Apple's OS morphs as it goes along (sometimes slower, sometimes faster), while Microsoft has spurts. It is due to their foundational base code. Apple's UNIX (to me) is a better and solid foundation, where Microsoft's DOS is not solid.

Gates when he first started just hurried up something to present to IBM to start off his company and bought coding that was in its infancy and not fully developed just so he had something to present. Gates even said that he didn't really have any code when he pitched his OS to IBM, so he had to make deadlines and just found quickly code that seem to work. Then He developed and built on top of it. After awhile, he probably realized that DOS has it limitations and issues and is why he probably started making his own version MS-DOS and then eventually Windows. But by then....the world was too saturated into his offerings (especially business), so he was stuck with what he started and it seems like Microsoft has been "stuck" with what they gave the world over the years, constantly trying to make it work. It is better now..but Apple's OS is by far better overall out the gate and is not limited as DOS based code. Jobs and his team at NeXT was exploring UNIX based code, so that was a great (maybe lucky) choice we got.

 

[JMacHack]

Personally I think that MacOS is something completely different now than it was at OSX 1.0. It only kept the same name for years. In the modern era, there’s no bespoke “OS versions”, as there is “updates”.

I believe the next “big change” to MacOS will be to add touch controls. I know Apple harps on about keeping iOS and MacOS separate, but today’s generation is growing up in a touch-centric world.

I took my sister to buy a MacBook Air a couple years back and when looking at the iMacs on display, her first instinct was to touch the screen.

It may not happen for years or a dozen, but I believe eventually MacOS will go touch as younger people gain buying power.

It would be naive to think Apple isn’t already experimenting with it either. In the same way OSX lived a “double life” on both Intel and PPC, I believe it lives a “double life” as both touch and mouse in an Apple lab somewhere.