…OpalCat!
Average users don’t want new operating systems. They don’t want innovation. At least not in the UI. Fiddling around for the sake of fiddling around is monstrous.
A/UX was their first UNIX-like OS.
Don’t forget the liger, which are bred for their skills in magic.
Sure, but all Unix variants (Unicies?) are basically patches on an ancient, creaking architecture. I’ve dealt with enough different operating systems to see just how much better the state of the art is than the current market leaders. You can patch Unix, but until you re-think it, it’s not going to get significantly better.
The thing is, what people need from an OS is shrinking. Once you have something that can drive a display, process I/O, access storage and launch a web browser you have all that a lot of folks want.
I wish BeOS had managed to survive. I’m not the sort of partisan that is still trying to run it, but I think the world would be a much better place if development had continued. Windows and OS X would both be better with the competition.
And when your OS is all done via a cloud system it will be Cheshire Cat.
Yes there will be an OSXI. The last version of OSX will probably be 10.9 as 10.10 confuses people (and software as well). Snow Leopard is 10.6.
>Average users don’t want new operating systems. They don’t want innovation. At least not in the UI.
Sure they do. The original UI was the command line. They didnt like that too much. Power users wept when PCs went all GUI. Now, they dont like a system tray full of garbage and the same applications crowding the task bar. Win7 takes care of this. Power users used to the old system wept.
Lets say you use 3.11 everyday and someone showed a tech demo of how Win2000 or XP was going to be like. You would crap your pants in anticipation.
We do not speak of this. There is only One True Apple Unix, and it is OS X. 
Unlike a certain major competitor, Apple seems to understand that managing their brand isn’t throwing some new bling on an old engine, or trying to tool up a new OS from scratch in hacktastic fashion to replace the previous puddle of crap, but instead constantly evolving the existing code base, using what works and improving what doesn’t. For the original OS X program, Rhapsody, Apple used the OPENSTEP basis from NeXTSTEP with it’s Mach-based hybrid microkernel. Although it is true that the basic Unix code base is decades-old, predating Windows, much of the core functionality is well-vetted and is the underlying basis for the network utilities and protocols that drive the Internet. Users of OS X.1 will recall how hobbled that version was when it came out, but X.2 was genuinely useful, and X.3 and beyond have been great general purpose operating systems.
Furthermore, because the code base is well-understood by both OS designers and application developers (and indeed, open source) it is easier for code to be ported and reused. One can poo-poo this as being backwards-looking, but in fact the same philosophy is used in mission-critical embedded applications in the aerospace industry, where obsolescent computing architectures and generation-old code is preferred for robustness over performance. The essential design philosophy of Unix–that if at all possible, services and applications should be modularized so they can just be plugged in or replaced transparently–has made it easy to continue to use Unix-like systems as the basis for a modern OS, and in fact, exchange core functions and utilities between OSs that have uniquely-developed kernels and system utilities. Linux, BSD, NeXTSTEP, and System V Unix and their derivatives are all essential independent manifestations of the same philosophy, but their compliance to common interfaces allows you to port services and apps between them with minimal cleaning. Compare this to “porting” applications between different versions of Windows, where you essentially need to rewrite most of the code base to new (and often poorly documented) Microsoft APIs, and the appeal and anticipated longevity of OS X becomes clear.
Another really smart thing Apple did with OS X was both the integration of Carbon API to support apps from OS 9 and the Cocoa API to the Display PostScript-like Quartz rendering engine. Because of the object-oriented architecture of Quartz (as with the rest of the OPENSTEP basis) it is easy to upgrade OS X in individual chunks rather than big monolithic leaps, providing a path to adopting capabilities to use advances in computing hardware. (OOPS is kind of overused in a lot of programming applications, but is absolutely the smart way to design operating system service architectures.) Essentially, OS X can be expanded indefinitely without negatively changing or having to completely redesign the interface functionality that the user sees.
All that being said, eventually a new computing hardware and networking architecture will eventually emerge, and a Unix-like OS will no longer flexible or suitable to this. At this point, I would expect Apple (or some other successor) will have to develop a new operating system from the ground up. But there is little reason to “innovate” for the sake of doing something new when making evolutionary improvements to an existing operating system architecture provides a very robust and functional result.
Stranger
Meh. I used BeOS back when it was under active development and have installed Haiku since, and have not been seriously impressed with either, both from a user standpoint or the underlying system functionality. It really is intended as a desktop OS and its networking and interoperability capability is not that impressive, although it did attempt to implement some kernel and low-level service functionality that would be difficult to adapt in Unix. It certainly isn’t a good basis for a fine-grained, distributed, concurrent computing system which will likely be the next revolution in computing architectures. The Unix approach may be a bit clunky in some ways, but it also offers enough flexibility to keep improving without having to totally reinvent major parts of the system.
Stranger
OS 11.2 Cerval might be a little confusing to some people.
To me, Mac OS X 6.??* was perfect. Then it progressed. Now I’ve got my 10.6 systems, and there’s no way I could go back. Who says that users don’t want progression? Although, to be fair, I’m still happy with XP on the Windows side… I may do 7 if I can get it cheap, though.
*Of course, we just called it System 6 back then.
Quoth Horselover Fat:
So you call it OSX version 11.0 . No need to change the recognizable brand name; just change the fine print where nobody but the nerds will notice it.
And what version do we need before we get to Eartha Kitt?
OSXI sooo lends itself to the “Oh Sexy” ad campaign.
Which of course means that the different releases have to be named after famous sexy people.
Apple, the most image focused company on earth is going to call a product “OS ten eleven?” Color me skeptical.
I was going to say that people don’t want innovation as long as they’ve got something up to the level of Windows XP or better.
So the more complete answer is that most people don’t care about the operating system, they just want to do their horrible dead-end soul crushing jobs in peace. If the opeating system keeps fucking them in the ass, then yeah, they’re gonna want something else. But as long as they can get their work done without rectal bleeding, they’re happy.
Technically you’d need to start with Julie Newmar and then Lee Meriweather.
Stranger
That is a wildly incorrect statement. 32-bit versions of Windows can run applications written for windows 1.
So can any other OS. Yet the other OSes still use major version numbers.
There will never be a “completely new computing hardware and networking architecture” again, especially so far as Unix-like OSes will cease to be suitable. Not before the singularity.
Stranger, you’re a preeminent poster, but in this discussion you’re dropping the ball.
Take a look at this illustration: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/e7fcc31c1a040132b59cf0cf9172e43f.png
The span of time OS X has existed is the same as the one that took Mac OS from version 1 to version 7. Perhaps OS XI really will never be.
Funnily enough, I’ll buy that too.
And you really don’t seem to have a clue as to what you are talking about when it comes to OS functionality and architecture. So rather than waste time continuing a pointless discussion of talking past one another, I’m going to bow out of this thread.
Stranger
But thanks for the unsubstantiated insult on the way out.