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If there ever was a company that could've tried “Unix done right™” was Apple. Maybe Sun. But I guess it wasn't meant for this world. Perhaps Apple's biggest co
by tambourine_man 5y ago
If there ever was a company that could've tried “Unix done right™” was Apple. Maybe Sun. But I guess it wasn't meant for this world.
Perhaps Apple's biggest contribution to the Unix/Linux landscape was launchd, which inspired systemd. I don't know if we would've endeavored in rewriting essential and mostly working decades-old parts if there wasn't a proven path already laid out.
Maybe LLVM as well, a modular compiler toolchain, but that's a strech.
- pjmlp 5y agoAIX and Solaris already had init replacements before launchd. Sun's only good idea for desktop UNIX was NeWS and they killed it. Their desktop execution for Swing proves how much they understood (not really), desktop development. As for Apple and UNIX, it was more the inverted takeover from NeXT than anything else, given A/UX execution. Also Steve Jobs wasn't a UNIX fan, it was more of a embrace POSIX due to the competition with Sun, and extend with NeXTSTEP Objective-C frameworks than anything else. Get hold of his USENIX talk about "UNIX should be invisible".
- tambourine_man 5y agoI wasn't trying to say that Apple (or Steve) is particularly found of Unix historicaly. Nor should they, Unix should be a means to an end, not one in itself. Unix should really be invisible to most users if present at all. What I'm saying that Apple is a company usually willing to rewrite things the “right way”, vide Webkit, LLVM.
- pjmlp 5y agoLLVM wasn't started by Apple, rather Illinois university, and they only adopted it after GPL 3 happened. WebKit was born as Khtml by KDE project.
- tambourine_man 5y agoI'm aware :) I don't know how that proves that it's not a company willing to rewrite foundational/taken for granted stacks.