If you want to go all geek
August 25, 2007The world’s most advanced operating system.
That’s how Apple introduces its Mac OS X. And it’s the biggest piece of bullshit marketing I’ve ever seen.
I want to install Mac OS 9 on my Cube. I want to do that because I want Classic support, but also because I want to boot into OS 9 from time to time (I actually like OS 9). Anyway, the reasoning is irrelevant. I want to do it. Anyway, in order to do this, I need to take a few steps: non-destructively shrink Tiger’s HFS+ partition, create a new partition in the resulting free space, initialise it as HFS+ with OS 9 drivers, boot from my OS 9 disk, and install it.
The world’s most advanced operating system can only do the last two - and let’s face it, that’s not even due to OS X.
You cannot non-destructively shrink the boot HFS+ partition on a PowerPC Mac using Apple’s diskutil resizeVolume command (booting in single user mode, obviously). This is the command used by Boot Camp, but it only works on Intel Macs. The command is present in OS X/PPC, but it simply doesn’t work - without even giving a useful error message. Even partitioning tools for OS X, such as iPartition, cannot help you on this one - it says this is a limitation in OS X.
I needed to resort to GNU parted on a Ubuntu PPC disk in order to, quite easily, shrink the HFS+ partition. Without a hitch, in 10 seconds.
Mac OS X also cannot create a new partition in the resulting free space. Actually - OS X cannot edit any area of the disk it is booting from - whether you are messing with the boot partition itself, the free space around it, or any other partition. The crap thing, now, is that GNU parted cannot create HFS+ partitions, so you’re basically fcuked on this one.
In Vista, I can right-click on “Computer”, select “Manage”, go to “Disk Management”, shrink any partition, including the boot partition (!), on the fly (!), in 30 seconds (!), without even needing to reboot (!), after which you can easily create a new partition in the resulting free space, and install whatever you want on it.
OS X the world’s most advanced operating system? Utter bogus. OS X is an extremely good piece of engineering (and I thoroughly enjoy using it every day) but only if you stick to the use cases His Steveness set out for you. Do anything even remotely exotic, and OS X will curl up in fetal position and scream “help! help!” at the top of its voice.
If you want to go all geek, stick to Linux, BSD, or Windows. Each of them covers a whole lot more use cases than OS X.
OS X the world’s most advanced operating system? Utter bogus. OS X is an extremely good piece of engineering (and I thoroughly enjoy using it every day) but only if you stick to the use cases His Steveness set out for you. Do anything even remotely exotic, and OS X will curl up in fetal position and scream “help! help!� at the top of its voice.
I have to say, I think you’re being a little dramatic here. Every OS has its limitations. Windows STILL can’t properly change files while in use. In OS X, you can actually DELETE a file while it’s in use (you can’t empty the trash, but you can delete it). In Windows and Linux, drag and drop is hit or miss. Windows installation, startup, and uninstall processes are still nightmarish compared to OS X, even if you use AppDelete or somesuch. Resizing the boot partition is something a very small fraction of a percent of people need to do. I often want to rename files I’m using (like pictures or MP3 files), which I think is common, not exactly “exotic”, but apparently “His Billness” didn’t envision this - Windows still chokes on this basic task. I’m just saying: everything has its ups and downs.
Up until Vista - which, I’d remind you, is regarded by most as a complete bomb - you couldn’t resize partitions properly if they were “basic” instead of “dynamic.” This capability is still fairly new, and Tiger is going on 2 years old.
BTW, check out Sheepshaver. You can use classic apps without booting into OS 9.
Comment by Adam — August 27, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
I have to say, I think you’re being a little dramatic here.
Of course I am. Don’t you know by now? ;)
Windows STILL can’t properly change files while in use.
Well, this is probaby a good idea. You don’t want to delete any crucial files currently in use, now, would you? The real problem here is that neither Windows, nor OSX, can tell you which application is using the file in question.
In Windows and Linux, drag and drop is hit or miss.
Mmmm, never have any problems to that respect in GNOME or Windows. Do you have any examples?
Windows installation, startup, and uninstall processes are still nightmarish compared to OS X, even if you use AppDelete or somesuch.
Application installation on Windows and OS X both suck. On Windows because you still need installers, and on OS X because dragging an application to the trash does not in fact delete every trace of the file. On top of that, when something uses an installer on OS X, you cannot uninstall it at all!
Until I can use drag and drop to install/remove applications, without it littering the filesystem with crap, then I’m happy. BeOS actually can do this fairly well.
Resizing the boot partition is something a very small fraction of a percent of people need to do.
Most computers ship with only one hard disk, and it’s good practice to use two partition. So, in my case it was to accomodate OS 9, but what about people wanting to create a seperate /data partition? They cannot do this in OS X, but they have been able to do so for ages on Windows - Partition Magic or Partition Logic can easily resize Windows boot partitions, and have had that ability for years. And in Vista, this has become OS functionality.
On OS X, not even third party utitilities can do this.
But yes, of course I’m making an elephant out of a mosquito (or the English variant, a mountain out of a molehill).
Comment by Administrator — August 27, 2007 @ 4:56 pm