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LinuxDig.Com : Review : The Many Moods of Apple OS X
Author: HumanX | Wednesday December 01, 2004
Since OS X was first announced, I believed in the possibility and the promise of Apple Computers new operating system. But I never spent any real time on a Macintosh. So I took the plunge and purchased an Apple G5 and what I found was the many moods of OS X.
Introduction
OS X, a marriage of something old and something new. The old, an operating system based on 30+ years of Unix experience and the new, a rewritten GUI interface.
What does OS X offer? To both the command line and GUI enthusiast the best of both worlds. The power of an elegant, advanced interface and underneath the hood, the power of Linux. With just a little effort on your part you will find that what seems to be a simplistic system is actually probably one of the most advanced operating systems today.
And this brings me to the many moods of OS X. What are the many moods you ask? They are the feelings you must indulge to cradle this operating system to find your way to the sweet spot, combining your knowledge of Linux and an advanced GUI.
Surprise.
The feeling you get when you first boot your new Apple the first time. It is yours. Instantly you notice how quickly the system boots, how unobtrusive the system really is, the design and the elegance. That feeling spans for a day or two as you dance around the interface and you notice all of the little nuances that make the desktop great.
Loathing.
Being a Linux user you begin to feel the frustration of the command line. Where are all of the commands and directories I am used to? Where is X? How come programs are not compiling. Frustration. I am taking this thing back. The documentation blows, it tells me nothing.
Satisfaction.
You have put a week into the system and you have learned to navigate OS X. You figured out how to install X11, you found the incredible package manager called “Fink”. Your compiling all of your favorite Linux Programs while finding Apple has tons of native applications. The system is near complete. Gimp, Gaim, Audacity, MC, Pico, eMacs, ethereal, Mozilla Firefox, Blender, Dreamweaver (See screenshot at the end of this article) are installed and you are feeling like you are getting control of your system. Then you realize, I am running tons of Open Source applications and X11 within OS X. I have the best of both worlds, I am feeling pretty good.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good
There is so much good about OS X that it is difficult to list, so I will just shed some light on some important items.
*nix
What can I say, this is my favorite part of OS X. Gone are the days of running VMWare in Linux or in Windows to run multiple operating systems, with OS X you get the best of both. The Gui and the Command line and the ability to use thousands of open source applications. Though, I will admit I do not think OS X is going to topple Fedora or Suse just yet especially in the server arena, but when it comes to design and daily tasks, OS X makes for a great desktop.
Security
For those of us forced to run Microsoft Windows because certain applications demand it, well OS X just might be a replacement. Being that most popular commercial application written for Windows are ported to Mac, then the transistion should be easy. And being that the computing world has become netcentric, then why not run on a secure operating system. We have all seen Microsoft's idea of Security.
GUI
The OS X interface is unobtrusive, responsive and elegent.
Crash Free
Or so they claim, but many do claim that it is a rare occasion that you see an OS X machine completely crash.
The Bad
Our Friend the Penguin
So what could be bad in all of this good. Well it is sometimes hard to see the good things unless you have something to compare it to, the bad.
From the perspective of Linux and alike, yet another version of a distribution has entered the arena further corrupting the potential of the open source movement. This is an argument for another day, but, the fear is with so many distributions available one day Linux may jus t loose its appeal. It will become difficult for developers to program for the Linux O/S and the system will slide into a fading memory like OS/2, Unix, Beos and so on. But there is hope folks. Many great people are working on standards for our friend the Penguin and I do not see any signs of him fading in the near future.
I can tell you the folks at KDE and Mozilla are working hard together to really build a powerfull desktop for Linux and with projects like that, maybe my fears are unfounded.
Pricing.
Apple is not cheap and there is no shame in claiming 30% mark up while other manufactureres are only claiming 12%-15%. But though more expensive, users familiar with OS X realize that they get allot bang for there buck. High end equipment, a great deal of software and reliability. Compared to Windows, Apple is more then likely less expensive then Windows when you figure in all of the open source software available.
OS X
Yes that is right, OS X. OS X is still in many ways a youthfull operating system which shows its head from time to time. But do not let this fool you because for all of its youth, its maturity shines right through. Give OS X another version or two and I think they will have finalized this system.
Closing
With each new release of the OS X operating comes an operating system that I think any user would not only enjoy, but for those enthusiast who are quite comfortable in multiple operating systems then MAC OS X will really offer you the power you are accustomed to except fused into a single environment.
Resources
Up to this point, one of the best applications I have found for OS X is "Fink" located at http://fink.sourceforge.net/. Fink is similar to other package managers for Linux except Fink is built with OS X in mind. Fink offers the end user the ability to either download and compile applications or choose from precompiled binaries. Need GAIM, Ethereal or any number of common applications for Linux but do not want to chase down dependencies? Fink is the answer.
OS X: http://www.apple.com/macosx/
On this page you will find a PDF document which goes into some detail about the feature of X11 on OS X.
OS X - X11: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/
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