3 ms·

I think the problem is that current OSes are too complicated. What does a common user really want? I'd say text editing, making presentations, multimedia, and b

by meuk 8y ago

I think the problem is that current OSes are too complicated. What does a common user really want? I'd say text editing, making presentations, multimedia, and browsing. While these sound like simple things, text editing usually happens in a Word-like format, which - from what I've heard - is ridiculously complex. The same thing holds for browsing (simple browsers don't exist anymore, and many use the same back-end for rendering). For multimedia, USB is very important, which is a very complicated format to use correctly. Then, there are tens of codecs and formats for multimedia, each with their own idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the specs (or deviations from the spec that are so common that they are expected nowadays). The case is even worse when your OS is supposed to run on different hardware. I think this is the main reason that Apple, in general, has a much better UX: They only have to support a limited set of hardware. Casey Murati has a great rant about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk

bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
I agree. I think the lack of new operating systems since late-90s can be (partially) attributed to the simple fact that modern computing world is so fully-developed, we have the computers for everything, and enjoy all the state-of-art features and functionalities. You already have, well, all the things you have on your personal computer. Although desktop apps are getting crappier and crappier as always (which is another story), but some parts of underlying infrastructure are created and only understood by the best developers in the world (high-performance TCP stack, 802.11n, multimedia, 3D graphics, TLSv1.3, PCI-e, USB 3.0, virtualization, exploit mitigation, web browser engines, C10K-free web server). By creating a new system, you lost everything immediately and render the computer less useful, making it less attractive for both hackers and academic/industrial researchers alike. Back in the early days, not too many things were being done on computers, and you had fewer things to lose. Want to play Space War on PDP-7, but don't even have an OS? Then Unix! Want to do some real work on 80s home computers? BASIC! Micro-Soft! When Linus purchased his computer, he found that the computer only runs DOS and was effectively useless for him. So he ordered a copy of Minix, meanwhile playing a DOS game to kill his time. After Minix arrived he eventually got a usable programming environment, was able to got online to Usenet with a modem, and also got the Minix filesystem which was suffering from performance issues at that time. This is everything he had for his computing. Then he decided to create his own operating system. He wrote the kernel, ported glibc, bash, gcc, and the system boots, later he added modem support. Now he could do everything he was able to do on Minix. That's it! Naturally, a few years later, it became a community project and gained huge momentum. Perhaps the early-90s was the last era, when hackers can "just" create a operating system in a tinker's way. On the other hand, new OS are still being constantly created on platforms which don't have the burdens of workstations/servers, we still see many hobbyist/research/practical systems on microcontrollers every year. As they became more and more powerful, then it also runs Linux and the story ends there... I think this is also one reason that retrocomputing is getting more and more popular, it brings back the "playground" nature of early computer systems, unlike the "factory" nature of modern ones.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  You can still tinker away like the 90's on Arduino, ESP* like boards. The problem is the effort to actually build something half as usable as an existing free OS, so most just give up.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
    Thus I mentioned "microcontrollers".
wtallis 8y ago
> I think this is the main reason that Apple, in general, has a much better UX: They only have to support a limited set of hardware. People assume this to be the case, without actually analyzing what hardware actually needs to be supported by operating systems these days. For internal components, most of the stuff in a PC is pretty standardized: AHCI and NVMe for storage, EHCI and XHCI for USB, HD Audio for sound (and it's almost always a Realtek codec). Apple doesn't have any significant advantage in any of those areas. They still have to support two out of three GPU vendors, the top two or three NIC vendors, and maintain a driver infrastructure that supports loading third-party drivers for any of the above when there are exceptions. (Sure, the expandable Mac Pro may be long-dead, but Thunderbolt docks and enclosures enable the same variety of components). Apple's real advantage seems to be that they don't have to try to work around anybody else's broken motherboard firmware. Microsoft could take the same stance and declare it to be Lenovo's problem if your Thinkpad's power management is broken. Microsoft probably should have changed strategy there when the industry switched to UEFI.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Devices have bugs, corner cases, incomplete implementations of standards, and standards can be ambiguous. The advantage isn’t that Apple have to implement less interfaces, it’s that they have to test with less devices. I’m sure on paper Linux works with all my devices. In practice it does not. That’s the gap Apple close with their hardware.

by meuk 8y ago

bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago

I agree. I think the lack of new operating systems since late-90s can be (partially) attributed to the simple fact that modern computing world is so fully-developed, we have the computers for everything, and enjoy all the state-of-art features and functionalities. You already have, well, all the things you have on your personal computer. Although desktop apps are getting crappier and crappier as always (which is another story), but some parts of underlying infrastructure are created and only understood by the best developers in the world (high-performance TCP stack, 802.11n, multimedia, 3D graphics, TLSv1.3, PCI-e, USB 3.0, virtualization, exploit mitigation, web browser engines, C10K-free web server). By creating a new system, you lost everything immediately and render the computer less useful, making it less attractive for both hackers and academic/industrial researchers alike. Back in the early days, not too many things were being done on computers, and you had fewer things to lose. Want to play Space War on PDP-7, but don't even have an OS? Then Unix! Want to do some real work on 80s home computers? BASIC! Micro-Soft! When Linus purchased his computer, he found that the computer only runs DOS and was effectively useless for him. So he ordered a copy of Minix, meanwhile playing a DOS game to kill his time. After Minix arrived he eventually got a usable programming environment, was able to got online to Usenet with a modem, and also got the Minix filesystem which was suffering from performance issues at that time. This is everything he had for his computing. Then he decided to create his own operating system. He wrote the kernel, ported glibc, bash, gcc, and the system boots, later he added modem support. Now he could do everything he was able to do on Minix. That's it! Naturally, a few years later, it became a community project and gained huge momentum. Perhaps the early-90s was the last era, when hackers can "just" create a operating system in a tinker's way. On the other hand, new OS are still being constantly created on platforms which don't have the burdens of workstations/servers, we still see many hobbyist/research/practical systems on microcontrollers every year. As they became more and more powerful, then it also runs Linux and the story ends there... I think this is also one reason that retrocomputing is getting more and more popular, it brings back the "playground" nature of early computer systems, unlike the "factory" nature of modern ones.

pjmlp 8y ago
You can still tinker away like the 90's on Arduino, ESP* like boards. The problem is the effort to actually build something half as usable as an existing free OS, so most just give up.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
  Thus I mentioned "microcontrollers".

wtallis 8y ago

> I think this is the main reason that Apple, in general, has a much better UX: They only have to support a limited set of hardware. People assume this to be the case, without actually analyzing what hardware actually needs to be supported by operating systems these days. For internal components, most of the stuff in a PC is pretty standardized: AHCI and NVMe for storage, EHCI and XHCI for USB, HD Audio for sound (and it's almost always a Realtek codec). Apple doesn't have any significant advantage in any of those areas. They still have to support two out of three GPU vendors, the top two or three NIC vendors, and maintain a driver infrastructure that supports loading third-party drivers for any of the above when there are exceptions. (Sure, the expandable Mac Pro may be long-dead, but Thunderbolt docks and enclosures enable the same variety of components). Apple's real advantage seems to be that they don't have to try to work around anybody else's broken motherboard firmware. Microsoft could take the same stance and declare it to be Lenovo's problem if your Thinkpad's power management is broken. Microsoft probably should have changed strategy there when the industry switched to UEFI.

chrisseaton 8y ago
Devices have bugs, corner cases, incomplete implementations of standards, and standards can be ambiguous. The advantage isn’t that Apple have to implement less interfaces, it’s that they have to test with less devices. I’m sure on paper Linux works with all my devices. In practice it does not. That’s the gap Apple close with their hardware.