RoughlyDrafted

If you do not yet read it, I highly recommend Daniel Eran Dilger's RoughlyDrafted Magazine for cogent, prescient, detailed, forward-looking analysis of Apple as Apple evolves. Unfortunately, some of his better stuff is buried in his archives. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/ "The big 3.0: How iPhone will shift peripheral devices" http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/20/the-big-30-how-iphone-will-sh… "Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune" http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/05/09/why-windows-7-is-microsofts-n… http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22By+daniel+eran%22+%2B+site%3Arou… From June 2007: "Apple’s updates will draw a stark contrast between the iPhone as a handheld Mac, and the basic smartphones that can only run mini-apps and a few poorly drawn, overpriced software titles. Apple has turned the mobile industry into a consumer facing market, where consumers will buy the phone, get updates, and buy software from Apple. That makes Apple responsible for their security, their demanded features, and their support. That’s not how things work today in the mobile world... Once users get accustomed to a full handheld computer that works intelligently, are they going to make any attempt to break free and grab a smartphone that really does very little, like the Motorola Q? It will also be very difficult for other hardware makers to match Apple's product on an engineering scale. Sure, Nokia, Sony, and…

Agree. Inbox is an OK product but nowhere close to expectation. It's a product of mixing ideas, not a product of revealing essence. Daniel Eran Dilger, the apple fanboy had a brilliant observation on John Sculley's Apple: "In general, Sculley's Apple consistently produced ambitious but unrealistic technology plans that attempted to over-achieve at a price that failed to capture a sustainable segment of the market. " (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/7C942A13-E006-4EBB-A4F9-C92798A… Yes, I think Larry Page is another John Sculley. Edit: Actually I think GoogleX projects are fine, b/c they are in fact PR projects: couple of billions here and there to maintain a hi-tech myth. Money well spent! The problem is the products like realtime search, Buzz and G+. They are ill designed, poor planed, poor executed and have 0 substance.

netatalk, hooboy, that brings back memories. Classic MacOS X stored the type and creator codes in the resource fork. Early versions of MacOS X discouraged this, but preserved and respected the codes if they were present. 10.6 Snow Leopard killed them off with the UTI (an unfortunate acronym) framework. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/09/22/inside-snow-leopards-uti-appl…

I was completely distracted by the use of Gartner's 2015 marketshare predictions. They have a terrible track record. http://www.zdnet.com/why-does-the-it-industry-continue-to-listen-to-ga… http://www.gsmdome.com/blackberry/gartner-predictions-not-so-accurate-… http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2012/10/21/three-years-ago-gartner-predi… http://betanews.com/2010/09/13/are-idc-and-gartner-mobile-os-forecasts…

You don't know Dilger? Consider yourself lucky -- until now: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/

Actually, it's the lack of intellectual property protection of software (and Microsoft's practice of ape and maim) that caused it to stagnant. Here's a great article explaining why: Are software patents evil? http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2011/08/09/are-software-patents-evil/

Quick rule of thumb: if it's on AppleInsider, it's probably speculative bullshit. Doubly so if it's written by Daniel Eran Dilger, whose articles usually are in the following form: Recent news item + A bunch of tangentially related, usually revisionist details about Apple's history + Some tangentially related, laughably biased, usually revisionist shots at Microsoft/Google + (Sometimes) An insane, impossible-to-read graph/chart = Unsubstantiated conclusion that reads like a wish list for what Daniel wants Apple to do, not what the evidence shows. He recently wrote an article explaining that he thinks Apple is going to port Cocoa to Windows and release a Windows app store: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-release-an-ap…

Carbon itself was a concession, if you look at the earlier Rhapsody and OS X Server releases, it was pretty clear that they were planning on using the "Yellow Box" environment (Basically OpenStep) as the primary system, with the "Blue Box" emulation layer as the only way to run Classic software. Then a revolt from developers (apparently especially Adobe and Microsoft) and the reality of how much a Display PostScript license would cost relative to a PC set in, and OS X happened with it's in-house windowing system and Carbon for easy porting of well-behaved Classic software. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-968… Also, early versions of OS X (IIRC though 10.4) were perfectly happy to install and work on UFS, the installer would even help you do so. From the user end, the problem with running OSX on UFS was that... a bunch of sloppy software broke on case-sensitive volumes. Famously, Adobe's entire suite wouldn't even install on case-sensitive volumes (see https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensitive-drives-… I think it's still unfixed to this day). This is probably also the reason why despite Apple finally getting a modern file system... APFS has and defaults to a case-insensitive mode in opposition to essentially every other modern FS.

Not just OpenStep, but Rhapsody! It was Apple's original transition plan for Mac OS X, basically OpenStep/Mach 5.x with a Mac OS 8-style Platinum UI done in NeXT-style Display PostScript complete with draggable menus. It's my favorite Apple product of all time just for the "what could have been" factor, but the Adobes of the world balked at "rewrite your apps in Yellow Box" so we got Carbon and friends in the rebooted Mac OS X project. There was one retail release as "Mac OS X Server 1.0", but the "Premier" desktop-user-focused version was canceled. I like to run Rhapsody on my Power Mac G3 Blue&White because that particular machine shipped with Rhapsody (in a Server G3 configuration) and is extremely well supported: https://cooltrainer.org/images/original/michiru-rhapsody-20130909.png And here are some good starting points for more info: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-968… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system) http://rhapsodyos.org/

This reminds of something... As a kid, I played the game "Neuromancer" (1989, Interplay) which is based on the book of the same name by William Gibson. The images of "decks" (portable computers) always struck me as odd and quite visually disconnected from the combination appearance of my Amiga 500 and its Commodore monitor. And yet, looking at a MacBook Pro from the front or side, it looks a great deal like those renderings of decks in that game (minus some of the features that make the images in the game more than just rounded rectangles). I know laptops existed earlier than that time, but to think they got a futuristic drawing so right it astounds me (not that we're quite to "deck" level with tech just yet). Screenshot from the game: http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=778&scre… The front-closed profile of a MacBook Pro for comparison: http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-frontclose… Edit: I guess it's not a big jump though, considering these were some contemporary laptops of 1989: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200808292255.…

I've been following the author of this article for a few years now. Although he's been mostly consistent in his writings until 2010, when Apple got into the patent wars game he changed his stance from "Apple is wise not to exercise patents offensively, let other industry players ruin each other doing it" to "Of course Apple has a right to defend their intellectual property, and even be aggressive about it". Do a Google search for "site:roughlydrafted.com not aimed at the iphone" and you'll find this article from 2009 http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/11/21/inside-googles-android-and-ap… About two thirds down you'll find the paragraph heading "Not aimed at the iPhone". Read that paragraph. It is a sample of how the author used to think about the mobile landscape ca. 2009. Come 2010 the author abruptly and disingenuously changes stance to the point where the tone of all articles he writes is about agreeing with SJ's "thermonuclear" war against Android. So yes, Daniel Eran Dilger, if you're reading this, I think you're an arrogant and disingenuous Apple fanboy motivated by a blind hatred of everything that isn't Apple.

There is another doomed project that XROS reminds me of: the Apple "Pink" OS. Brief history: https://lowendmac.com/2014/pink-apples-first-stab-at-a-modern-operatin… "Pink was spun out as Taligent. The kernel was jettisoned. Taligent would run on top of an operating system and act as an object oriented system (like OpenStep). It was released in 1995, but it sold poorly. It was canceled altogether in 1998." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent?useskin=vector more history http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/36A61A87-064B-470D-8870-736DD59… After Apple tried Pink, Taligent, and Copeland they .... ended up using Mach / FreeBSD and some pieces from other BSDs (as I understand it). Today, we have Windows and Unix of some flavor in the main. I think Geordi LaForge was using one of these OSs on his Warp Drive computers...

Yes. WebObjects development was possible on NT due to “YellowBox”. It shipped with ProjectBuilder, EOModler, Mail, and other NeXT apps. You could even do Objective-C monkeypatching shennigans on YellowBox, which I remember being needed at the time to get the scroll wheels on certain mice to work on YellowBox apps. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-968…

What alternatives did you use- Microsoft Office for those? Now I'm imaging if Oracle had invested in creating as many competitors for Google products as possible, Samsung-style, even in markets that don't make sense. Back in 2007, Sun had been working on an iPhone/iOS competitor named the jPhone. Imagine if Oracle had ended up continuing their work. Then there'd be two competing smartphone OS's powered by Java. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/0ADA49EA-93A2-4960-BAA… https://www.informationweek.com/call-it-the-jphone-sun-shows-java-twis…

Are you referring to Yellow Box and Rhapsody? http://roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-9681-F1…

Well, yeah, nobody thinks they built it all in a single year. The SDK largely just publicized a subset of Apple's existing private APIs that they used to make their own apps. Foundation, UIKit, etc. — that stuff was already there, but you couldn't use it without jailbreaking your phone. Here's an article running down all the stuff that was included with the original iPhone, from almost a year before the SDK was announced: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/16/iphone-os-x-architecture-coco…

> The Mac OS is pretty, well-designed components for GUI/desktop on top of a hybrid between a microkernel and UNIX (BSD). Let's ignore their bad choice of microkernel. Is it necessary to ignore the microkernel choice? Isn't MacOS X -not- microkernel, even though (or "because") it uses an old version of Mach? [0][1][2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_%28kernel%29 [1] http://www.roughlydrafted.com/0506.mk1.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RwlEZ88rKM&t=445

This feels a little like wishful thinking. Remember YellowBox back when Apple originally bought NeXT? YellowBox was going to be a cross-platform updated version of the OpenStep APIs. While I remember some alphas of it, it basically got nixed. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-968… As much as I enjoy using Apple products, their history says that they would not directly support something like this.

Oh how quickly the past is forgotten :) In early 2000s, microsoft, through its partners, tried releasing remote displays powered by windows CE - they were essentially a precursor to the tablet. Several devices were exactly as you describe. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/50755EA6-A759-42FD-84E… Im surprised it took over a decade to get a device that doesn't suck in that form factor, but im glad it happened. Will be preordering one tomorrow! edit: this post was written on an MBP :)

According to this: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/0506.mk3.html It states that the Mach kernel used in OSX was Mach 2.5 which was not a micro-kernel (as opposed to Mach 3.0) and is not used in OSX as a micro kernel.

I'll point you to some experts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple) http://www.canicula.com/newton/prog/soups.htm http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/600D65E6-A31E-45CA-AFC5-42BC253… (read the Technical Innovations section)

For those thinking "oh, another piece of Microsoft bashing from some Apple / Google / Linux fan" (my own initial thought), look at the byline. Paul Thurrott's been covering Microsoft, almost always positively, for most of (if not more than) two decades. He's been labeled one of the "notorious Microsoft shills" by Daniel Eran Dilger (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/01/18/dan-lyons-paul-thurrott-the-f… -- and that's not far from my own impressions of Thurrott based on some of his earlier Linux commentary. So -- yeah, the rats are, if not fleeing the ship, talking loudly about its soundness.

> However I would be genuinely interested to be shown a deliberate wrong fact or lie he's written. Just an example, I can pick just any of their articles, they are full of that: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2013/03/09/googles-android-powered-by-re… If you can't see the wrong facts and the lies in just that post I can't do more.

Parent and grandparent claims look false. Apple generally doesn't make announcements unless they have a real demo, or often until the product is ready to go. What we're talking about here OTOH is Microsoft providing a product (update) announcement without much substantial, soemthing MS is well known for. The stark differences between their current approaches have been extensively documented, for example: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/922B4392-850C-4CA6-92F3-9C265E2…

Reminds me of Yellow Box (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-968…

This entire "article" gave me a bad taste in my mouth. The LEAST this guy could do is actually wait for Apple to do their Keynote. Now he's responding to rumors and leaks. I suppose it's no fun to write an article based on things like facts. I think the Passbook alone could create a surge in new Apps. Here's an article about just that: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2012/09/04/apples-ios-6-passbook-is-a-ne…

There are piles of evidence that Apple's computers have a longer useful life than a typical PC if you look for it. For instance, comparing measures of installed base vs market share. Here are a couple of links. If you put some time into it, you can find more going back to the 80s and 90s: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/03/mac-os-x-north-american-installed… http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/9E601E8E-2ACC-4866-A91… (cmd-f for "Mac vs PC Life Span")

HTC. HTC, once known as High Tech Computer, is a Taiwanese company that began making phone sets using Microsoft software in 2002. By 2005, it had grown to sales of $2.2 billion, double that of the year before, making it the fastest growing tech company that year according to BusinessWeek. See: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/02/18/microsoft-htc-has-made-80-of-…

Do you hear music in the background while doing other things? Do you see your mail being checked while doing other things? Do you get background notifications while doing other things? Do you get appstore apps downloaded while doing other things? The iphone is fundamentally built on a mach kernel, which supports multitasking. Taking it out, when they already needed to use it for multitasking for the above tasks, is a silly idea. Here is a rundown of other parts of the iPhoneOS kernel: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/13/iphone-os-x-architecture-the-…

You have it backwards. The iPhone was revealed before the Prada, and was not considered to have feature parity with the iPhone at the time. Your comment about HTC phones from that time period is kind of meaningless since you don't mention what phone(s) you are talking about, so it is impossible to check your assertion. You may want to have a look at this article from that time period: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/72B08E9A-D467-45EA-B21…