On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 08:36 PM, Tim May wrote:
For the past couple of years I've had Mac OS X on all four of my Macs able to run it efficiently. It has bits and pieces of BSD Unix, a Mach kernel, and of course a wonderful graphics interface.
So, no, one's first OS is not always the best.
Agreed. My first was an HP 2000E BASIC timesharing system. If it had a recognizable OS, I don't remember the name. My second was a PDP 11/03. Useable. My third was a TRS-80 and TRSDOS. Please don't force me to remember it. Then an Atari 800. Marginal. (But very nice graphics for the day. Thank you Jay Miner) Then the venerable Amiga 1000. AmigaDOS had multitasking, and some other innovative GUI features. The whole machine worked like a charm, but lacked memory protection. Graphics were way ahead of its time. Thanks again Jay Miner and crew. Then various incarnations of DOS/Winbloze. A real low point. And then Mac OS X. Like a breath of fresh air. BSD on top of Mach. Fantastic graphics and a mind blowing GUI. Just yesterday I saw a demo of the standard OpenGL silver teapots spinning around over a Mac OS X desktop while a DVD was playing. As the OpenGL teapots spun past the DVD, the DVD content was playing and reflecting in the silver surface of the teapots. In real time. My jaw dropped. And then my jaw dropped. That this was even possible is a testament to an incredible graphics architecture. ObCrypto: And of course the really great gpg plugins for the standard mac os x mail client ;-) jim burnes