Cogs can think.

After the problems of a few days ago, I decided to simply reinstall my Cube altogether - the only way ‘the world’s most advanced operatng system’ can make way for a 2nd operating system on its hard drive.

After backing all important stuff up to my Server 2003 server, I booted from my Tiger DVD, used Disk Utility to create two partitions, and then installed OS X, followed by Mac OS 9 (which you need to update in order to 9.2.2). All went mighty fine, and a few hours later I had two fully working installations of the Mac OS on my beloved Cube. Anyway, if you are pondering (re)entering the wonderful world of OS 9 too, here are a few things you should know.

First of all, the browser situation on OS 9 is rather daft. There is no Firefox for OS 9, and the latest Mozilla build is 1.3.1 - old. Your best bet is to use iCab 3, an up-to-date browser for both OS 9 and OS X. It supports all fancy schmancy stuff, including Flash (Flash 7 is available for OS 9 from Adobe’s website, and runs YouTube just fine).

For emailing, look no further than the best email client ever: Outlook Express:Mac, 5.02 (bundled and default). This is a very elegant and extremely resource-friendly (7.1MB of RAM!) email client, with some really, really clever stuff built into it. Especally if you have a lot of mailing lists to manage, Outlook:Mac 5.02 is a dream come true. One of the best things to come out of Redmond.

There are a lot of different instant messaging clients available for OS 9, so just pick whatever protocol’s official client you use. Sadly, I have been unable to find a decent multi-protocol IM client. For IRC, ircle is a good client, even though it’s shareware.

Another must-have for OS 9 is SmoothType, a preference panel which greatly enhances OS 9’s font antialiasing capabilities (quite similar to that of Mac OS X). It’s only $10. You’ll also need something like USB Overdrive or Kensington’s MouseWorks to enable multi-button mouse and scrollwheel support (both do not seem to work with Apple’s Mighty Mouse, though).

For all other stuff, there’s still a boatload of OS 9 applications available on the net.

The 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.

My dream operating system would have BeOS’ kernel, responsiveness, and soul. Mac OS X’ attention to detail and polishedness. Windows’ industry support. Linux’ price tag. VMS’ stability. OpenBSD’s security. My nightmare operating system would have the Linux kernel. Windows’ attention to detail and polishedness. SkyOS’ industry support. Vista’s pricetag. Windows 98’s stability. BeOS’ security.

Just saying.

So, Jesus the iPhone has finally landed. God, am I happy we got that over with. I’ve never seen so much hype surrounding a glorified PDA. Things like this really remind you how stupid we people really are.

From reviews so far, it becomes pretty obvious the iPhone has the usual completely inexplicable Apple bugs features. It doesn’t do copy/paste. You can’t approach the filesystem. You can’t attach photos from within MobileMail.app. You can’t use it as a modem. The keyboard can’t be used in landscape mode. There’s no IM. The headphone jack is proprietary. It costs a kidney or two.

Can we now please return to sanity, everyone? I’m sure aliens who were planning to invade us saw the iPhone madness and thought, “ah fcuk that shit”.

Just as I was discussing the merits of using the CLI to copy over large bunches of files in #haiku, this happened, while copying my photo library to my server using the Finder:

[10:03pm] Thom_Holwerda: what the hell just happened.
[10:03pm] Thom_Holwerda: this has to be the crappiest thing EVER.
[10:03pm] Thom_Holwerda: i was copying my photo library to my server
[10:03pm] DeadYak: huh?
[10:03pm] Thom_Holwerda: the dialog was in the background
[10:03pm] Thom_Holwerda: im typing a msg in this very irc window
[10:04pm] Thom_Holwerda: suddenly, the damn copy dialo grabs focus, shows a msg, but before i can even read it, i already pressed “enter” to send my irc msg
[10:04pm] Thom_Holwerda: WTF
[10:04pm] Thom_Holwerda: and osx has this fetish with standardising on “cancel” :s
[10:04pm] Cube-ness: heh
[10:04pm] pikapika joined the chat room.
[10:04pm] geist: ah yes, reason alone you shouldn’t do that
[10:05pm] Thom_Holwerda: apps should not steal focus goddamnit :(
[10:05pm] geist: well, defaulting to cancel I can totally dig.
[10:05pm] • Thom_Holwerda shakes fist at steve jobs

Goddamnit :(.

It’s quite interesting to see how people responded to the news that Leopard will most likely drop support for PowerPC G3-based Macs. The readme file for the developer preview release states that in order to run Leopard, you need a G4, G5, or Intel-based Mac. Many people responded: the G3 is old, it makes sense for Apple to drop support. You can’t support something forever!

How fast do people forget.

The last G3-based Mac, the 14″ iBook G3 at 900Mhz, was sold 22 October 2003. By the time Leopard comes out, this means your 4 year old laptop, for which you paid a hefty 1499 US Dollars, will be considered obsolete and useless by our friends in Cupertino.

Dear iBook G3 owner, will you please bend over?

The (very buggy) beta release of Safari on Windows has ignited a very interesting discussion: what font renderer does a better job, Microsoft’s ClearType or the method Apple uses?

The deeper reasons as put forward by Joel Spolsky put aside, I think there may simply be a more simple explanation for why the fonts are as they are on both platforms: the overall look. Microsoft tends to use crisper and sharper icons and widgets, with clear lines, whereas Apple uses softer lines, fuzziness, and actual textures.

In the Microsoft design, sharper looking fonts simply fit better, and the same goes for fuzzier fonts having a better place in OS X. While I like OS X’s fonts when using OS X, they look extremely crappy and out of place on my Vista box (when running Safari). I’m sure the same would be the case for Windows’ fonts on OS X.

About 5200 words.

A new essay?

No, just the GPLv3 final draft. If you need 5200 words to define how users and developers use your free and open source software, then there’s something seriously wrong with your definition and idea of ‘free and open source software’.

By the way, Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger license is only about 1200 words more. Interesting.

Warning: rant ahead.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what all the anti-MS idiots say. Surface is a truly innovative product, and I applaud Microsoft for it. They had the guts, back in 2001, to devote money and manpower to this idea, and now, 6 years later, it is paying off. Surface looks great, opens up a whole slew of possibilities, and, as far as I can see it, is truly a Pandora’s box of opportunities. I’ve seen use cases flash before my eyes like every other minute of the past two days.

Surface is just one of those things the OSS community will never come up with. Let’s face it; Linux, BSD, most of the other OSS projects, they are all followers. They are in it to regurgitate what companies like Apple and Microsoft serve them. The OSS community is supposed to be so great, right? Then why is it that they never seem to be able to come with something truly new, something groundbreaking, something that will make people all around the world go: “wow…!” I showed Surface to some of my computer-illetrate friends, and they were baffled. They all saw new use cases in front of them… Just like I did.

Fact remains, as much as I like the OSS world (I try to use the OSS equiv. when it is at least as good as or better than the closed-source counterparts), they are followers, not trendsetters. So, sure, there is enough to bash Microsoft and Apple about, but at least they have the guts to come up with truly new ideas.

In 2010, we’ll see a marginally different, poor rip-off of Surface. The joy of waiting.

Is Linux for the masses happening? Will Microsoft ever lose significant market share to its competitors?

I have no idea, but I do know that what Aaron Seigo wrote on his blog is something I’m seeing all around me as well. I have seen many people switch to Apple, and, more interestingly, have seen awareness of Linux (and especially Ubuntu) grow almost by the day. Last year, I had a surreal talk (at the DIY shop where I work) with a normal (absolutely non-geek) handyman for a local institution for mentally challenged people about how he used and liked Ubuntu.

Awareness of alternatives to Windows is growing. Whether this will translate into significant market share increases for these alternatives is something else completely, though.