THERE IS NO industry more schizophrenic than technology. More than 50 years into the transistor revolution and 30 years into the microprocessor revolution, you can surf the Web site of SmartMoney.com from a hand-held computer, but most office workers still crank out spreadsheets on desktop machines that have advanced little beyond what hobbyists used two decades ago. No matter how much Bill Gates likes to compare the exponential development expressed in Moore's Law to the evolution of the Model T, it's still the case that innovation in the computer business seems to proceed at about the same pace that Detroit turns out new chassis, sometimes slower.
Case in point: the shifts happening this year in computer operating systems. Next week in New York, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer (AAPL) will address the Macintosh faithful waiting for news of patches, bug fixes and upgrades for the company's recently released OS X operating system. Later this year, Microsoft (MSFT) will counter with a package of desktop and Internet integration called Windows XP. Never mind all the talk you'll hear of the New New Thing: Neither operating system will take computer users very far beyond the digital version of the IBM Selectric they've grown accustomed to in the last two decades.
Between the two, though, I think the balance of the account falls squarely in favor of Apple's OS X. I've been using OS X on a daily basis for the last month, running on Apple's spiffy G4 PowerBook laptop, and I believe it will be a blessing for consumers. It may even boost the fortunes of Apple Computer, but not without a lot more hard work.
First, a bit of background. Four years ago, Jobs returned triumphantly to Apple, and some ghosts returned with him. Almost immediately, he turned out the iMac, a retread of the original Macintosh computer. It was clunky, it was heavy, but it was cute. Jobs also had Apple buy his old software firm, Next Software, which started life as Next Computer, a vendor of integrated hardware and software systems much like Apple.
A great deal of what's emerged in OS X is a buffing of concepts tried in the NextStep operating system a decade ago. NextStep remains to my mind still the best user interface ever developed, a system that offered sophisticated features for experienced computer users, and a very natural introduction to desktop computing for novice users. Sadly, some of the best parts of NextStep are gone. OS X perpetuates some of the most ill-conceived user interface conventions fostered by the old Mac OS, like having screens of data pop up one on top of the other when you select them. This is the desktop metaphor, meant to suggest that you are shuffling papers. And while it was a fine metaphor some 20 years ago, it's cumbersome in the age of the Internet. Do you really want to feel like you're rummaging through the clutter on your desk or in your filing cabinet when riding down the Infobahn? NextStep had a certain austerity, too, that evoked a calm we're not likely to see again in the age of candy-colored iMacs.
What's emerged in its place isn't bad, though. Mac OS X is a very pleasing operating system to use, and certainly better than any of the consumer desktop OS offerings, including Windows 95, 98 and ME, and Mac OS. It's also far more user-friendly than the desktop Linux operating systems offered right now. In a month of using OS X, I experienced a few serious bugs, including one or two that required reinstalling the computer completely (albeit with no loss of data, I'm happy to report). But I assume that these are merely growing pains, and certainly they're nothing worse than what I've encountered with Windows on a daily basis.
Mac users will appreciate that OS X doesn't ask them to allocate memory by hand for each program, and that individual programs are unlikely to shut down the computer when they crash. Those who've been in Windows world may appreciate how the use of Adobe Systems' (ADBE) portable document format as the system display makes designing and printing images and complex documents much easier. Another thing I liked is OS X's ability to shut down misbehaving programs more reliably than in Windows 98, though this is less an issue with some of Microsoft's other operating systems, such as Win2000.
The new things in OS X aren't really new, but they're significant. Underlying the operating system is the Unix-like Mach operating system 'kernel,' the pieces of code that manage the most basic task of getting instructions to the microprocessor. Apple has combined this code with something called BSD, part of the family of Unix-style operating systems. These are old stories: Mach was the underpinning of NextStep, and BSD's been around for decades. But the inclusion of an "open-source" piece of software (BSD is freely available on the Web and cooperatively developed) within a commercial operating system is a new direction for Apple, and it offers intriguing possibilities.
It may, for one, plug Apple into the best of the emerging breed of open-source software applications that are competing for the attention of corporate buyers. Indeed, the server version of OS X ships with MySQL, a database system that has gained an important foothold among Web site developers in the last couple of years. It certainly signals a positive direction for a company that long cultivated a bad reputation for being very close-minded toward the programming community outside its walls.
But it's critical that Apple do more to cultivate programmers. The showcase applications on OS X are still immature, and it's clear that some of that is thanks to the alien development environment brought over to OS X from NextStep. Something called App Builder is distributed free of charge by Apple with the OS, but it centers around a programming language called Objective C, which isn't readily adopted by programmers who cotton to either Microsoft's versions of the C language, or Sun's popular Java programming language.
In my experience, the programs available on OS X that are written in Objective C are a little shaky and a little slow. I expect this will change over time, but Apple must consider ways to remove the learning curve associated with programming for OS X. Exploiting the fine Java implementation installed with every copy of OS X may be the way to go. (OS X already ships with some important Java development tools, including Borland's popular J Builder.)
The stakes are high, because Microsoft will increasingly be luring programmers to its Internet-based development environment, .Net. Apple has articulated a notion of "services" for OS X that's intriguing. They would allow each program to grab some functions from another program running on your computer, or perhaps on the Web, so you could email a spreadsheet without ever leaving the spreadsheet program, or perhaps throw together a complex document without leaving email. As a result, you might spend more time working with information, less time jumping from program to program. The idea won't fly, though, unless the company and its partners can make sure OS X is a very pleasing development environment.
Apple also needs to lure over one of the more popular commercial database programs in order to win corporate business. A deal with Oracle (ORCL) would be a brilliant move. MySQL is a fine program, as are the other database offerings on OS X, but the key here is to convince the Fortune 500 that there's a measure of compatibility between OS X and what they already use.
Apple can't afford to lose the corporate computing world. In the past, the company seemed to lack the will to fight Microsoft on that turf. Even now, Jobs & Co. speak of Apple as a kind of BMW of computing, surviving on narrow market share. That's wishful thinking in an industry filled with carnivorous types like Bill Gates.
I think Apple can win over some segment of the corporate market, but it will take a long, long time. In Apple's favor, the open-source movement of Linux, the Justice Department suit and the dramatic rise of the Internet have all caused corporate America to rethink its love affair with Microsoft. Then again, the world is filled with computer users who will never buy or recommend Apple products, either because they have something against Apple, or because they're too deeply invested in Windows or because they appreciate the wide selection of hardware afforded by competition among Windows PC vendors. Even neutral parties will pause to ask themselves if, 20 years into the desktop-computing revolution, they should change all the furniture yet again just to try another PC OS.
There's good reason to. Despite many bugs, and despite some of its warmed-over hacks, Mac OS X is a fine consumer product. It will appeal to experienced users, and it's a good place for neophytes to start surfing the Web, do some desktop publishing and send email. That it took two decades to get here is unfortunate. By rights, we should all be surfing the Web over high-bandwidth wireless connections on a hand-held computer with a nice screen, voice input and a rock-solid operating system that never crashes. For now, I'll take OS X.
Courtesy of Tiernan Ray
Case in point: the shifts happening this year in computer operating systems. Next week in New York, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer (AAPL) will address the Macintosh faithful waiting for news of patches, bug fixes and upgrades for the company's recently released OS X operating system. Later this year, Microsoft (MSFT) will counter with a package of desktop and Internet integration called Windows XP. Never mind all the talk you'll hear of the New New Thing: Neither operating system will take computer users very far beyond the digital version of the IBM Selectric they've grown accustomed to in the last two decades.
Between the two, though, I think the balance of the account falls squarely in favor of Apple's OS X. I've been using OS X on a daily basis for the last month, running on Apple's spiffy G4 PowerBook laptop, and I believe it will be a blessing for consumers. It may even boost the fortunes of Apple Computer, but not without a lot more hard work.
First, a bit of background. Four years ago, Jobs returned triumphantly to Apple, and some ghosts returned with him. Almost immediately, he turned out the iMac, a retread of the original Macintosh computer. It was clunky, it was heavy, but it was cute. Jobs also had Apple buy his old software firm, Next Software, which started life as Next Computer, a vendor of integrated hardware and software systems much like Apple.
A great deal of what's emerged in OS X is a buffing of concepts tried in the NextStep operating system a decade ago. NextStep remains to my mind still the best user interface ever developed, a system that offered sophisticated features for experienced computer users, and a very natural introduction to desktop computing for novice users. Sadly, some of the best parts of NextStep are gone. OS X perpetuates some of the most ill-conceived user interface conventions fostered by the old Mac OS, like having screens of data pop up one on top of the other when you select them. This is the desktop metaphor, meant to suggest that you are shuffling papers. And while it was a fine metaphor some 20 years ago, it's cumbersome in the age of the Internet. Do you really want to feel like you're rummaging through the clutter on your desk or in your filing cabinet when riding down the Infobahn? NextStep had a certain austerity, too, that evoked a calm we're not likely to see again in the age of candy-colored iMacs.
What's emerged in its place isn't bad, though. Mac OS X is a very pleasing operating system to use, and certainly better than any of the consumer desktop OS offerings, including Windows 95, 98 and ME, and Mac OS. It's also far more user-friendly than the desktop Linux operating systems offered right now. In a month of using OS X, I experienced a few serious bugs, including one or two that required reinstalling the computer completely (albeit with no loss of data, I'm happy to report). But I assume that these are merely growing pains, and certainly they're nothing worse than what I've encountered with Windows on a daily basis.
Mac users will appreciate that OS X doesn't ask them to allocate memory by hand for each program, and that individual programs are unlikely to shut down the computer when they crash. Those who've been in Windows world may appreciate how the use of Adobe Systems' (ADBE) portable document format as the system display makes designing and printing images and complex documents much easier. Another thing I liked is OS X's ability to shut down misbehaving programs more reliably than in Windows 98, though this is less an issue with some of Microsoft's other operating systems, such as Win2000.
The new things in OS X aren't really new, but they're significant. Underlying the operating system is the Unix-like Mach operating system 'kernel,' the pieces of code that manage the most basic task of getting instructions to the microprocessor. Apple has combined this code with something called BSD, part of the family of Unix-style operating systems. These are old stories: Mach was the underpinning of NextStep, and BSD's been around for decades. But the inclusion of an "open-source" piece of software (BSD is freely available on the Web and cooperatively developed) within a commercial operating system is a new direction for Apple, and it offers intriguing possibilities.
It may, for one, plug Apple into the best of the emerging breed of open-source software applications that are competing for the attention of corporate buyers. Indeed, the server version of OS X ships with MySQL, a database system that has gained an important foothold among Web site developers in the last couple of years. It certainly signals a positive direction for a company that long cultivated a bad reputation for being very close-minded toward the programming community outside its walls.
But it's critical that Apple do more to cultivate programmers. The showcase applications on OS X are still immature, and it's clear that some of that is thanks to the alien development environment brought over to OS X from NextStep. Something called App Builder is distributed free of charge by Apple with the OS, but it centers around a programming language called Objective C, which isn't readily adopted by programmers who cotton to either Microsoft's versions of the C language, or Sun's popular Java programming language.
In my experience, the programs available on OS X that are written in Objective C are a little shaky and a little slow. I expect this will change over time, but Apple must consider ways to remove the learning curve associated with programming for OS X. Exploiting the fine Java implementation installed with every copy of OS X may be the way to go. (OS X already ships with some important Java development tools, including Borland's popular J Builder.)
The stakes are high, because Microsoft will increasingly be luring programmers to its Internet-based development environment, .Net. Apple has articulated a notion of "services" for OS X that's intriguing. They would allow each program to grab some functions from another program running on your computer, or perhaps on the Web, so you could email a spreadsheet without ever leaving the spreadsheet program, or perhaps throw together a complex document without leaving email. As a result, you might spend more time working with information, less time jumping from program to program. The idea won't fly, though, unless the company and its partners can make sure OS X is a very pleasing development environment.
Apple also needs to lure over one of the more popular commercial database programs in order to win corporate business. A deal with Oracle (ORCL) would be a brilliant move. MySQL is a fine program, as are the other database offerings on OS X, but the key here is to convince the Fortune 500 that there's a measure of compatibility between OS X and what they already use.
Apple can't afford to lose the corporate computing world. In the past, the company seemed to lack the will to fight Microsoft on that turf. Even now, Jobs & Co. speak of Apple as a kind of BMW of computing, surviving on narrow market share. That's wishful thinking in an industry filled with carnivorous types like Bill Gates.
I think Apple can win over some segment of the corporate market, but it will take a long, long time. In Apple's favor, the open-source movement of Linux, the Justice Department suit and the dramatic rise of the Internet have all caused corporate America to rethink its love affair with Microsoft. Then again, the world is filled with computer users who will never buy or recommend Apple products, either because they have something against Apple, or because they're too deeply invested in Windows or because they appreciate the wide selection of hardware afforded by competition among Windows PC vendors. Even neutral parties will pause to ask themselves if, 20 years into the desktop-computing revolution, they should change all the furniture yet again just to try another PC OS.
There's good reason to. Despite many bugs, and despite some of its warmed-over hacks, Mac OS X is a fine consumer product. It will appeal to experienced users, and it's a good place for neophytes to start surfing the Web, do some desktop publishing and send email. That it took two decades to get here is unfortunate. By rights, we should all be surfing the Web over high-bandwidth wireless connections on a hand-held computer with a nice screen, voice input and a rock-solid operating system that never crashes. For now, I'll take OS X.
Courtesy of Tiernan Ray
