What is Digg?106 Comments
- jmontes, on 10/12/2007, -22/+79It's a poor OS that blames crashes on any application.
- mateo60, on 10/12/2007, -2/+46Slightly misleading title because in the article it also says: "But, Wozniak concedes, the switch to OS X wasn’t a bad thing. “Now looking back it’s a good thing we have a better more stable more complete better operating system, from the ground up,” he said."
- fanboydcs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35lets put it this way, if macosx wasnt based on unix, I would not own a mac.
and im sure if they didnt use next, they probably would have just "upgraded" os9.
You might be thinking, well my mom uses a mac and she didnt buy it because it uses unix.
Well your wrong, if it wasnt for the unix part of the OS, you would have seen alot less ALOT less support for the os. Almost every linux developer I know has jumped ship to OSX because of unix. And Im sure that those guys recommend the OS to their parents because they think its so great. - tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29I'm glad they did buy NeXT, if only because Cocoa and Obj-C are so great.
- IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -9/+38What about OS8/9? I have had to manually pull out the powercord off many Macs just so as to reboot it. And no I wasn't using IE as a browser on any of them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28Woz has been such an ***** lately...
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23@Buschaga: You just threw out a bunch of names there, and Copland was the only one that was right.
Rhapsody was the precursor to OS X, based on NeXT. Yellow Box was the OpenStep environment, now called "Cocoa" essentially. Blue Box was the Rhapsody precursor to "Classic", so essentially 3 out of 4 of the things you mentioned were all from the post NeXT era, and lead to Mac OS X as we know it today. - monkeyrun, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20BUT Apple needs Steve Jobs, AND Steve Jobs owns NeXT. ;)
- reiggin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15I ran System 7 all through high school on computers that were NOT connected to the internet. Believe me, they crashed and they crashed often. Most of the time, the applications we were running were PageMaker, Word 5.1, and Crystal Quest. Never had IE installed.
Woz, I used to respect you when you stuck to what you know... inventing and tinkering. But these claims you've been making recently are really outside of your area of expertise. Mac OS X brought not only legitimacy to Apple, it brought pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection. Not to mention a better development environment, Quartz, Services, Unicode, etc. The Copeland team tried to create these features and failed. For Woz to say that Apple didn't need NeXT is either ignorant or just plain sensationalism for the purpose of drawing more attention to himself. - tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"Incidentally is there any way to filter out the Digg news I don't want? "
I see a bit of a conflict in you thinking you have the authority to bitch and moanwhile lacking an understanding of some of the more basic Digg customization options.
Sort of an RTFM moment, yeah? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16Don't be a dick.
- wolphcry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Go back to a more basic tech news for beginners like news.yahoo.com
- exobyte, on 10/12/2007, -24/+35Considering that Woz did the technical side of things (compared to Jobs not knowing how to program), I'll trust him on this stuff.
From what I hear, Bill Gates used to be involved heavily in the technical side of things; he was like Jobs and Woz combined. He knew enough on both sides of the business to create a powerful company.
Sorry for the MS plug, but they are clearly more sucessful than Apple (not just right now, overall, don't digg me down apple fanboys; you know that why MS is the evil empire. They're just that big) - techweenie1, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17What is Woz smoking? I remember OS 7 crashing to the point of having to pull the plug in more than just Internet Explorer ... try just about every app. I don't know if this is true, but I heard when Apple transitioned from NuBus to PCI, Mac OS 7.x didn't play nicely with PCI and subsequently crashed alot...anyone else hear this? OS 9.x was better but still not nearly as reliable as X
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Is it me, or does Woz remind anyone else of a cross between Austin Powers and Chuck Norris?
- anudeglory, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16Purchasing NeXT is definitely the best thing Apple could have done...
I have only ever used MAC OS X until last week when I had to use an iMac with OS 9 on it - it reminded me of Windows 3.11 - it absolutely awful!
It was no way comparable with Win95 or earlier Linux OS and that puck mouse! It nearly went out the window... - chevyorange, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I can tell you don't understand Apple by asking a question that is simply found with a few seconds of clicking.
- KillerX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Woz, may be a cool person and yes he helped build Apple in the early days, but who the hell cares what he thinks now. He hasn't been a part of Apple since the 80's.
- Buschaga, on 10/12/2007, -11/+20Was Woz not around in 1997? Apple needed a new OS and quickly... it would have taken years to develop a modern operating system, especially the way the company was running at that point. Copland, Rhapsody, Blue Box, Yellow Box, etc. They were a trainwreck at that point. Apple wouldn't have needed to buy NeXT if they were running the company properly, true, but as it was NeXT or Be OS were the only real choices.
Apple would have been sunk if they stayed on their pre-NeXT course. - lordsandwich, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11No kidding. He's trumpeting his own self-described genius and taking potshots at Jobs more and more frequently.
Sure, he hasn't received as much credit as he deserves, but geez, so much for taking the high road. The guy's ruining his own legacy by trash-talking like this. - geekee, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13""In this book Wozniak claims that the OS 7 crashes were linked to running Microsoft Internet Explorer, rather than the Apple operating system""
If any user application can crash your OS, your OS is fundamentally flawed or very buggy. - fjvwing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10If Woz thinks that he could have spruced up that co-operatively multitasking operating system that lacked memory protection or the ability to dynamically allocate memory, into something that would be a credible business contender in the age of a ubiquitous network ready to distribute malware at every click on a browser, I'd say he doesn't know what users actually want. Hint: they want to never ever crash and lose work again, even if you do install a terrible program like IE. Mac OS 9 was great in '92, but by '97 it was a toy, and by '99 its kludgy internals were an embarrassment, not matter how much the HIG tried to come up with nice gestures and window shades.
Apple needed NeXT not just for the knowledge and internals of how to create a robust and insanely great OS, but more to get the whole set of senior VPs to get rid of that 'Not Invented Here / We Don't Have To Try, We Have A Cult' mindset that couldn't seem to innovate beyond making the next beige box and that abortion of an OS design called Copeland. Just watching the architecture diagram made my toes curl in embarrassement, no matter how many times the presenters wanted to distract me with 'Themes'. - ginty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10This just in – WoZ takes a dump.
Enough of the WoZ for a while if not, forever. - drlha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Legacy support in PowerPC macs is excellent. I can still run programs designed for Mac OS 1.0 on my Powerbook. Only with Intel and its dumping of "Classic" do you lose all that stuff.
- VolsFan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Acutally, if they hadn't bought NeXT they would have bought Be. So there would be some unix-like stuff in there still, but I imagine that the NeXTSTEP-derived OS X is way better than a Be-derived OS X would be..
- serpicolugnut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Woz is dead wrong here. Apple desperately needed a new OS. Even if he's correct that the only reason OS 7 crashed was because of IE (which is bogus), the classic Mac OS didn't have any of the stuff that a modern OS needs - dynamic memory allocation, mulithreading, etc. Sure, it was a secure OS. But what good is a secure OS if it handles applications badly and keeps crashing.
As for the whole "IE is the reason OS 7 crashed"... Baloney. I used a Mac every day from 1993-present. Back in the Sys 7 days, I never touched IE (and never did until Apple bundled it with the OS circa 1997/98). The damn thing still crashed daily thanks to wonderful apps like Quark Xpress, ATM, Suitcase, and yes, even Netscape. Although in fairness to Netscape, many of their crashes might be blamed on plugin makers.
Moving to NeXT/OS X (and getting Steve Jobs back in the deal) was the #1 saving grace for Apple. Without these two items, Apple would be a subsidiary of either IBM or Sun right now. Enough said. - streak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8IMHO, Woz is a crackpot pure and simple, to be sure a wealthy crackpot, with historical ties to some of the most important events in modern history and the influential people who made them happen. People therefore politely give him his say, but he's still a crackpot -- and now with a book to sell. His last book on geek jokes he didn't apparently write but he allowed his name to be used.
- atezun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Acutally, if they hadn't bought NeXT they would have bought Be. So there would be some unix-like stuff in there still, but I imagine that the NeXTSTEP-derived OS X is way better than a Be-derived OS X would be.."
Well the thing abouit Be is that it runs damn fast. I haven't seen another modern OS that could run as fast as BeOS. The think Be had in it's favor was it's amazing threading technology. In fact I think the Intel CEO at the time comment that he'd never seen Intel's processor's run faster; however, for all of the advantages of BeOS, by now there would likely be a lot of cruft left in it if aple would have used it instead of NeXT. From what I've heard, sometimes in order to get things working Be implemented some pretty hackish solutions in their code. Also, Be wasn't multi-user, nor was it completely POSIX compliant to my understanding. For it's flaws though, I'll be damned if I didn't love the BeOS and would have loved to see what Apple would have done with it. Still to paraphrase a macworld article at the time of the purchase. Apple wasn't buying NeXT, they were buying Steve Jobs. - jamessavik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The way I see it NeXT and OSX have the best of both worlds: an intuitive GUI that scares no one and the power of a UNIX like kernel under the hood.
A few years ago I had a lot of trouble buying Apple. My accounting dept gave me a lot of guff because they weren't PCs, didn't run this or that- until I bought them one. Now they are all Mac and happy.
I'm happy too. I don't get nearly as many trouble calls from them. When I try to buy something that they don't know about, they trust my judgment. - Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Keep in mind that Woz said Apple didn't need intel either, which I think he was wrong about.
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Exactly; Apple would have been long-dead by now if they didn't have Jobs giving it direction and focus. No matter what technical quibbles Woz might have had with the NeXT OS design philosophy, it's totally irrelevant in face of the fresh blood and new direction the acquisition brought to the company.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I disagree. Apple was dead in the water before they bought NeXT. The Copland project was a total failure. There were some good ideas but the project was horribly mismanaged and was simply never going to produce a shippable product. You have to look at the situation as it was in 1997-98. Apple was facing declining sales and was in serious danger of going out of business. They couldn't commit to a 5+ year OS development cycle from scratch. NeXT was the only realistic option. (according to legends Apple even seriously considered using Windows NT as a basis for their new OS)
- MaxDrax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8What has Woz done for the computer world lately?
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5No, he's being quoted out of context. People love to seize on anything he says that can possibly be twisted around to "woz sez steve sux". Woz, like many other people who don't have a crystal ball, opposed the NeXT acquisition AT THE TIME, and has changed his mind since.
-jcr - jsg7, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6From the article:
"But, Wozniak concedes, the switch to OS X wasn’t a bad thing. “Now looking back it’s a good thing we have a better more stable more complete better operating system, from the ground up,” he said."
Woz said *at the time* that Apple didn't need NeXT. Let's not confuse this with the fact that he now says it was a good idea in retrospect. - scelestus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@ AegisGFX
Congratulations! You have just been nominated for the Digg "Jackhole Of The Day" award! - jamessavik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Obj-C by itself was worth the price of the ticket.
- jamessavik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I disagree- Mac isn't anywhere near dead. In fact, Apple/Mac are stronger than ever.
It has never been easier to integrate Macs into existing networks. It has never been easier to get IT/accounting people to sign off on Mac purchases. Mac software has never been better.
I myself am a Linux guy. I've used almost everything- Linux has what I need.
When I bought a computer for my Mom last Christmas, I gave her a Mac and she loves it. - joe90210, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5that's ridiculous, if your OS becomes unstable by just having application installed, even if it's not open, then something is seriously wrong with the design, so yes, they did need NeXT.
- maiku00, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11sounds like Woz has some penis envy now that Jobs is synonomous with all things Apple
- aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4They did not follow up on it because back then, the GUI frameworks and X-Windows was absolutely prosaic and primitive. Purchasing Next gave Apple a robust object model and GUI framework as well as world class development tools like Interface Builder and Project Builder. Interface builder allowed for rapid development and prototyping even before any code was written and it is still with us in Tiger today while Project Builder was replaced by Xcode when Panther came out.
- superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Inaccurate summary - he said that AT THE TIME he did not think they needed NeXT, but currently he realizes it was a good idea, and also that OS 9 was pretty stable and secure.
Both things are true, OS 9 was stable and secure. But it lacked many features of more modern operating systems and it was time to use a stronger foundation (which Woz agrees with today).
So before you flame Woz, think instead about denouncing the summary writer. - macserv, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5You're right, they didn't *NEED* NeXT... they could have purchased Be. But between the two systems, OpenStep was vastly superior. Internally, they had nothing.
What's an embattled, misunderstood CEO to do? - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5This is what happens when someone tries to stay relevant, and they are using any means necessary to get publicity to sell their book.
- kuwan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Apple NEEDED NeXT for one reason above all others - Steve Jobs.
Jobs gave the company something that they desperately needed at the time - vision. He canned a lot of unprofitable projects and helped Apple to focus on what they're good at. In doing this he was able to lead the company back into profitability.
Apple needed NeXT for Mac OS X as well. The classic Mac OS was in desperate need of replacing - no preemptive multitasking, no memory protection, arcane virtual memory/dynamic memory allocation implementation, etc. I'm sorry, but Woz is just plain wrong here.
Apple needed NeXT for Mac OS X, but they needed NeXT for Steve Jobs more. - NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's not quite correct to say that Xcode replaced project builder. Project builder got major revsions, and got a name change with one of them.
-jcr - streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's all about promoting his book.
- zonk3r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5As with many things Woz has said or supposedly said I wouldn't be surprised if he was misquoted or quoted out of context. I've heard him many times examine an article that was written about him or about what he said and him later explaining why or how the person he was talking to didn't understand his meaning or intention.
I don't know if this is the case here but it wouldn't surprise me to hear him on something like TWiT or something next week explaining what he said. - NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well, if they'd gone with Be, they'd be out of business by now. BeOS had some interesting ideas in it, but it was a long way from finished and Apple didn't have a lot of time to get their act together.
-jcr - _jens_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If Woz would run Apple, it would be in OS heaven hanging out with OS/2 and Windows 3.11. He always have some clever solutions to past problems that Jobs already fixed.
He is just an old nerd with no influence anymore. -
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