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And Neal Stephenson acknowledged it was obsolete in 2004: "I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginnin

And Neal Stephenson acknowledged it was obsolete in 2004: "I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginning was the command line' is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely." https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-responds-with-wit-and-humor https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-... But people still dredge this quarter century old apocrypha up and use it to pat themselves on the back for being Linux users. "I use a Hole Hawg! I drive a tank! I'm not like those other fellows because I'm a real hacker!"

Phiwise_ 2y ago
"Obsolete" is too strong a word, I think. OSX isn't an evolution of the Macintosh's operating system; That'd be Pink, which was even mentioned, and it crashed and burned. OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the same desk, therefore the only change really needed is to replace mentions of Unix or specifically Linux with Linux/OSX as far as the points of the piece are concerned. If Jobs had paid Torvalds to call OSX "Apple Linux" (Or maybe just called it Apple Berkeley Unix) for some reason this would be moot. I also primarily use Windows and don't have a dog in the fight you mentioned. I might actually dislike Linux more than OSX, though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS.
- wpm 2y ago
  macOS shares zero lineage with Linux, which itself shares zero lineage with the UNIX derivatives. It would make zero sense for Apple to call macOS "Apple Linux" when it doesn't use the Linux kernel. Mac OS X is closest to a NeXTStep box with a coat of Mac-like polish on top. Even calling it "Apple Berkeley Unix" wouldn't make sense, because the XNU kernel is a mish mash of both BSD 4.3 and the Mach kernel. Linux and the UNIX derivates are not even cousins. Not related. Not even the same species. They just both look like crabs a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation.
  - 13of40 2y ago
    The crabs analogy isn't a good one, because they evolve independently to play well in a common environment. GNU/Linux is a rewrite of Unix that avoids the licensing and hardware baggage that kept Unix out of reach of non-enterprise users in the 80s and early 90s.
  - Phiwise_ 2y ago
    >OS X is closest to a NeXTStep This is already in the piece. Why waste time repeating it?
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Because the person they replied to used a term like Apple Linux which is ridiculous. So somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected
      - CRConrad 2y ago
        > somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
      - Phiwise_ 2y ago
        I used it, and on purpose. If you missed why, you should go back and read again before replying.
  - jholman 2y ago
    I used to have a coworker, a senior dev of decades of experience, who insisted that MacOS was a real Linux, "just like BSD". Sigh. Of course, this belief probably had no downsides or negative consequences, other than hurting my brain, which they probably did not regard as a significant problem.
  - frabbit 2y ago
    Your statement seems very strong. Is Mac OS X not based on Darwin? Are you defining "lineage" in some way to only mean licensing and exclude the shared ideas (a kernel manipulating files)? Thanks for the "carcinisation" link.
- chipotle_coyote 2y ago
  > OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the same desk Setting aside the "more BSD/Mach than Linux", OS X pressed a lot of the same buttons that BeOS did: a GUI system that let you drop to a Unix CLI (in Be's case, Posix rather than Unix, if we're going to be persnickety), but whose GUI was sufficiently complete that users rarely, if ever, had to use the CLI to get things done. Folks who love the CLI (hi, 99% of HN!) find that attitude baffling and shocking, I'm sure, but a lot of people really don't love noodling with text-based UIs. I have friends who've used the Mac for decades -- and I don't mean just use it for email and web browsing, but use it for serious work that generates the bulk of their income (art, desktop publishing, graphic design, music, A/V editing, etc.) -- who almost never open the Terminal app. > though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. :)
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    > Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. :) And since MacOS 8 before that...
  - Phiwise_ 2y ago
    >Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. Just a joke, mate.
- Animats 2y ago
  Apple was in some ways on the right track with an OS that had no command line. Not having a command line meant you had to get serious about how to control things. The trouble with the original MacOS was that the underlying OS was a cram job to fit into 128Kb, plus a ROM. It didn't even have a CPU dispatcher, let alone memory protection. So it scaled up badly. That was supposed to be fixed in MacOS 8, "Copeland", which actually made it out to some developers. But Copeland was killed so that Apple could hire Steve Jobs, for which Apple had to bail out the Next failure.
  - Phiwise_ 2y ago
    Yes, I, too, have read the OP before.
- SllX 2y ago
  Linux is not just another word for Unix or Unix-like and Mac OS X/macOS has never used nor shipped with the Linux kernel.
llm_trw 2y ago
Given what OS X has become it's un-obsoleted itself again. It's kind of ironic that you're using a post from 20 years ago to invalidate an essay from 25 years ago, about an OS that's been substantially dumbed down in the last 10 years. Bad corporate blood will tell.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  In what way has it been “dumbed down?” I use modern MacOS as a Unix software development workstation and it works great- nothing substantial has changed in 20 years other than better package managers. I suppose they did remove X11 but it’s trivial to install yourself.
  - isametry 2y ago
    Not GP, but usually when people talk about the "dumbing down" of macOS, they refer to new apps and GUI elements adopted from iOS. macOS as an operating system has been "completed" for about 7 years. From that point, almost all additions to it have been either focused on interoperation with the iPhone (good), or porting of entire iPhone features directly to Mac (usually very bad). Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then. If Apple were to build a desktop OS today, there's no way they would make it the best Unix-like system of all time.
    - layer8 2y ago
      > Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then. This also applies to Windows, by the way (except it’s more like 20-30 years ago).
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - jthoward64 2y ago
        Whereas Linux never stopped coming up with new ideas, but doesn't have the manpower to implement them
gumby 2y ago
> I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely." IME he hates to revisit anything he's already written so this claim is polite but implausible.
eikenberry 2y ago
Neal gave up on Linux because he wasn't a developer. He couldn't take advantage of the freedoms it provided and it worked the same for him as any proprietary OS would. I.E. he had the excuse that programming is hard, a specialty that requires much practice. This is an ongoing issue with free software and is why it is niche... it primarily appeals to software developers as they are the only ones that can take advantage of the freedoms it provides and are the ones that truly sacrifice that freedom when they use a non-free OS.
- pacaro 2y ago
  Yeah, this is basically my take too. I had a hardcopy of this sometime between 99 and 02, and read it several times At the time I was an embedded developer at Microsoft and had been a Windows programmer in the mid 90s. It was pretty clear that there was some dunning Krueger going on here. Neal knew enough about tech to be dangerous, but not really enough to be talking with authority
bawolff 2y ago
I think its still quite relavent. There are still people who enjoy more diy OS. Now a days they use arch or something. That doesn't make them any better or worse than anyone else. Some people enjoy tinkering with their OS, other people just want something that Just Works(tm) and there is nothing wrong with that. Threre is an implicit supperiority in the text which is just as cringey now as it was at the time, but i think its still a good analogy about different preferences and relationships different people have to their computers.
theandrewbailey 2y ago
> There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. Neal said the essay was quickly obsolete, especially in regards to Mac, but I'll always remember this reference about hermetically sealed Apple products. To this day, Apple doesn't want anyone to know how their products work, or how to fix them, to the point where upgrading or expanding internal hardware is mostly impossible.
- II2II 2y ago
  The difference between Apple and IBM is the latter lost control of their platform and those who inherited, arguably Intel and Microsoft, had no interest in exerting absolute control. (If they tried, it likely would have backfired anyhow.) As for Apple, their openness comes and goes. The Apple II was rather open, the early Macintosh was not. Macintosh slowly started opening up with early NuBus machines through early Mac OS X. Since then they seem to be closing things up again. Sometimes it was for legitimate reasons (things had to be tightened up for security). Sometimes it was for "business" reasons (the excessively tight control over third-party applications for iOS and the incredible barriers to repair). As for the author's claims about their workings being a mystery, there wasn't a huge difference between the Macintosh and other platforms. On the software level: you could examine it at will. At the hardware level, nearly everyone started using custom chips at the same time. The big difference would have been IBM compatibles, where the chipsets were the functional equivalent of custom chips yet were typically better documented simply because multiple hardware and operating system vendors needed to support them. Even then, by 1999, the number of developers who even had access to that documentation was limited. The days of DOS, where every application developer had to roll their own hardware support were long past. Open source developers of that era were making a huge fuss over the access to documentation to support hardware beyond the most trivial level.

Phiwise_ 2y ago

"Obsolete" is too strong a word, I think. OSX isn't an evolution of the Macintosh's operating system; That'd be Pink, which was even mentioned, and it crashed and burned. OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the same desk, therefore the only change really needed is to replace mentions of Unix or specifically Linux with Linux/OSX as far as the points of the piece are concerned. If Jobs had paid Torvalds to call OSX "Apple Linux" (Or maybe just called it Apple Berkeley Unix) for some reason this would be moot. I also primarily use Windows and don't have a dog in the fight you mentioned. I might actually dislike Linux more than OSX, though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS.

wpm 2y ago
macOS shares zero lineage with Linux, which itself shares zero lineage with the UNIX derivatives. It would make zero sense for Apple to call macOS "Apple Linux" when it doesn't use the Linux kernel. Mac OS X is closest to a NeXTStep box with a coat of Mac-like polish on top. Even calling it "Apple Berkeley Unix" wouldn't make sense, because the XNU kernel is a mish mash of both BSD 4.3 and the Mach kernel. Linux and the UNIX derivates are not even cousins. Not related. Not even the same species. They just both look like crabs a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation.
- 13of40 2y ago
  The crabs analogy isn't a good one, because they evolve independently to play well in a common environment. GNU/Linux is a rewrite of Unix that avoids the licensing and hardware baggage that kept Unix out of reach of non-enterprise users in the 80s and early 90s.
- Phiwise_ 2y ago
  >OS X is closest to a NeXTStep This is already in the piece. Why waste time repeating it?
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Because the person they replied to used a term like Apple Linux which is ridiculous. So somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      > somebody on the internet was wrong and needed to be corrected https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
    - Phiwise_ 2y ago
      I used it, and on purpose. If you missed why, you should go back and read again before replying.
- jholman 2y ago
  I used to have a coworker, a senior dev of decades of experience, who insisted that MacOS was a real Linux, "just like BSD". Sigh. Of course, this belief probably had no downsides or negative consequences, other than hurting my brain, which they probably did not regard as a significant problem.
- frabbit 2y ago
  Your statement seems very strong. Is Mac OS X not based on Darwin? Are you defining "lineage" in some way to only mean licensing and exclude the shared ideas (a kernel manipulating files)? Thanks for the "carcinisation" link.
chipotle_coyote 2y ago
> OSX was far closer to a Linux box and a Mac box on the same desk Setting aside the "more BSD/Mach than Linux", OS X pressed a lot of the same buttons that BeOS did: a GUI system that let you drop to a Unix CLI (in Be's case, Posix rather than Unix, if we're going to be persnickety), but whose GUI was sufficiently complete that users rarely, if ever, had to use the CLI to get things done. Folks who love the CLI (hi, 99% of HN!) find that attitude baffling and shocking, I'm sure, but a lot of people really don't love noodling with text-based UIs. I have friends who've used the Mac for decades -- and I don't mean just use it for email and web browsing, but use it for serious work that generates the bulk of their income (art, desktop publishing, graphic design, music, A/V editing, etc.) -- who almost never open the Terminal app. > though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. :)
- giantrobot 2y ago
  > Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. :) And since MacOS 8 before that...
- Phiwise_ 2y ago
  >Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. Just a joke, mate.
Animats 2y ago
Apple was in some ways on the right track with an OS that had no command line. Not having a command line meant you had to get serious about how to control things. The trouble with the original MacOS was that the underlying OS was a cram job to fit into 128Kb, plus a ROM. It didn't even have a CPU dispatcher, let alone memory protection. So it scaled up badly. That was supposed to be fixed in MacOS 8, "Copeland", which actually made it out to some developers. But Copeland was killed so that Apple could hire Steve Jobs, for which Apple had to bail out the Next failure.
- Phiwise_ 2y ago
  Yes, I, too, have read the OP before.
SllX 2y ago
Linux is not just another word for Unix or Unix-like and Mac OS X/macOS has never used nor shipped with the Linux kernel.

llm_trw 2y ago

Given what OS X has become it's un-obsoleted itself again. It's kind of ironic that you're using a post from 20 years ago to invalidate an essay from 25 years ago, about an OS that's been substantially dumbed down in the last 10 years. Bad corporate blood will tell.

_yb2s 2y ago
In what way has it been “dumbed down?” I use modern MacOS as a Unix software development workstation and it works great- nothing substantial has changed in 20 years other than better package managers. I suppose they did remove X11 but it’s trivial to install yourself.
- isametry 2y ago
  Not GP, but usually when people talk about the "dumbing down" of macOS, they refer to new apps and GUI elements adopted from iOS. macOS as an operating system has been "completed" for about 7 years. From that point, almost all additions to it have been either focused on interoperation with the iPhone (good), or porting of entire iPhone features directly to Mac (usually very bad). Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then. If Apple were to build a desktop OS today, there's no way they would make it the best Unix-like system of all time.
  - layer8 2y ago
    > Another point of view is that macOS is great, but all ideas that make it great come from 20 years ago, and have died at the company since then. This also applies to Windows, by the way (except it’s more like 20-30 years ago).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jthoward64 2y ago
      Whereas Linux never stopped coming up with new ideas, but doesn't have the manpower to implement them

gumby 2y ago

> I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely." IME he hates to revisit anything he's already written so this claim is polite but implausible.

eikenberry 2y ago

Neal gave up on Linux because he wasn't a developer. He couldn't take advantage of the freedoms it provided and it worked the same for him as any proprietary OS would. I.E. he had the excuse that programming is hard, a specialty that requires much practice. This is an ongoing issue with free software and is why it is niche... it primarily appeals to software developers as they are the only ones that can take advantage of the freedoms it provides and are the ones that truly sacrifice that freedom when they use a non-free OS.

pacaro 2y ago
Yeah, this is basically my take too. I had a hardcopy of this sometime between 99 and 02, and read it several times At the time I was an embedded developer at Microsoft and had been a Windows programmer in the mid 90s. It was pretty clear that there was some dunning Krueger going on here. Neal knew enough about tech to be dangerous, but not really enough to be talking with authority

bawolff 2y ago

I think its still quite relavent. There are still people who enjoy more diy OS. Now a days they use arch or something. That doesn't make them any better or worse than anyone else. Some people enjoy tinkering with their OS, other people just want something that Just Works(tm) and there is nothing wrong with that. Threre is an implicit supperiority in the text which is just as cringey now as it was at the time, but i think its still a good analogy about different preferences and relationships different people have to their computers.

theandrewbailey 2y ago

> There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. Neal said the essay was quickly obsolete, especially in regards to Mac, but I'll always remember this reference about hermetically sealed Apple products. To this day, Apple doesn't want anyone to know how their products work, or how to fix them, to the point where upgrading or expanding internal hardware is mostly impossible.

II2II 2y ago
The difference between Apple and IBM is the latter lost control of their platform and those who inherited, arguably Intel and Microsoft, had no interest in exerting absolute control. (If they tried, it likely would have backfired anyhow.) As for Apple, their openness comes and goes. The Apple II was rather open, the early Macintosh was not. Macintosh slowly started opening up with early NuBus machines through early Mac OS X. Since then they seem to be closing things up again. Sometimes it was for legitimate reasons (things had to be tightened up for security). Sometimes it was for "business" reasons (the excessively tight control over third-party applications for iOS and the incredible barriers to repair). As for the author's claims about their workings being a mystery, there wasn't a huge difference between the Macintosh and other platforms. On the software level: you could examine it at will. At the hardware level, nearly everyone started using custom chips at the same time. The big difference would have been IBM compatibles, where the chipsets were the functional equivalent of custom chips yet were typically better documented simply because multiple hardware and operating system vendors needed to support them. Even then, by 1999, the number of developers who even had access to that documentation was limited. The days of DOS, where every application developer had to roll their own hardware support were long past. Open source developers of that era were making a huge fuss over the access to documentation to support hardware beyond the most trivial level.