April 16th, 2001

There are lots of great articles, and some really bad ones, on the Internet. Though we link to all of them at MacOS News Around The Web, some of them deserve special mention here. Most of what we will mention within these pages will be among the best, but on occasion we will talk about articles that are so bad or so wrong we just have to say something. Consider them mini-editorials on our part about things we think you might also be interested in.

Best [3:00 PM] Mac Edition - X-Treme gotchas
As with anything new, OS X has had its fair share of problems in the operating systemis young existence. Most problematic, perhaps, is a major problem with Appleis installer deleting mission critical files. This well written article breaks down the problem. Our favorite quote from this piece:

This good news isn?t enough to counter some of the more serious issues that crop up though, such as an installer bug made up of three rather important components: problems with symbolic links, problems with permissions, and problems with incorrect or inappropriate files being deleted. Pax, a Unix-based archive utility, and Installer.app?s literal execution of directory deletion based on receipts appear to be the causes of these ills.

Now I love OS X, but randomly deleted file is officially a Bad Thing. Reviewer - Kyle DiAddario


Best [3:00 PM] Low End Mac - BeOS or NeXT? Did Apple Make The Wrong Choice?
When their Copland project was floundering in the pool of futility, Apple had to do something, and do something fast. At the time nearly everybody involved that that "something" would be to purchase operating system upstart Be and mold their BeOS into what would be Mac OS X. Apple instead, however, went with NeXT and Steve Jobs, and the rest is history. Looking back, though, was it the right choice? Our favorite quote from this piece:

BeOS offered preemptive multitasking that would improve the user experience over the Macis cooperative multitasking. BeOS had protected memory for increased stability. BeOS could easily use more than one processor at a time. BeOS had a dock. BeOS even had a Posix compatibility layer so it could run Unix programs that were recompiled for it. Whew.

But BeOS has more buzzwords that Mac OS?X doesnit have.

I still have friends that swear by the BeOS. But with NeXT came Steve Jobs, so the actual technology might have been the second most important acquisition. Reviewer - Kyle DiAddario


You can find these links, and lots of other links for Mac and Tech Industry stories, at MacOS News Around The Web.