5 ms·

I would argue that the Windows NT kernel is both newer and more maintainable for Microsoft than OSX is for Apple. At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix mon

by nbevans 13y ago

I would argue that the Windows NT kernel is both newer and more maintainable for Microsoft than OSX is for Apple. At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. This can be seen by the fact that Microsoft has never shied away from improving their OS kernel. Recent stand-out improvements such as ASLR, UAC, TRIM support for SSDs, timer coalescing etc. These are all things that OSX took years to get after Windows got them.

twoodfin 13y ago
At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. I don't think this is true at all. Sure, there's always been a BSD-style environment for compatibility, but Apple has never been shy about ripping and replacing legacy Unix-y infrastructure (see: launchd) or about adding new, "deep" APIs close to the plumbing (see: libdispatch).
dsr_ 13y ago
And of course the smashing success of WinFS.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- nbevans 13y ago
  I don't really think that WinFS was a core OS kernel feature. It was built on top of SQL Server, so I doubt it even had a kernel-mode component either. ReFS would be a better example. And that's just another example of how Microsoft is keeping their core technology up to date. Apple meanwhile is still using HFS+ which even Linus Torvalds called out as being utterly crap.
  - theandrewbailey 13y ago
    What doesn't Tovalds call out as being utterly crap?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- fetbaffe 13y ago
  Windows UAC is the best I have used on any platform. What I can remember it was not that good on OSX. Not even Ubuntu gets this right. However the permission system on Windows is a hassle. I always have a normal user account and an seperate admin account. The normal account does not have sudo permission. This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assumes normal user has some sort of sudo. Unfortunately Windows 8.1 dumped UAC in the toilet when forcing the Windows 8.1 update to be downloaded from the store, which made your local admin account useless.
  - aroch 13y ago
    >This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assumes normal user has some sort of sudo. On OSX you get an elevated privileges login prompt for any installer needing to write to / and even for many write protected folders inside your own homedir. You can grant rights as any user you want simply by entering that username (it's automatically populated with the current user)
    - jasomill 13y ago
      This is true for properly written installers and apps, but since not everything is properly written, a related problem does crop up from time to time: an installer or app assumes the user has permissions to something that the "admin" group usually has access to, and therefore doesn't bother using the correct API to elevate. Even here, though, in the typical cases of installers and updaters, there are easy workarounds that at least don't require logging out or giving additional rights to the logged-in user: fast user switch or login(1) to an admin user, then retry from there. The only thing Windows does differently here is that it provides a silent, non-admin workaround (filesystem and registry virtualization) for buggy applications, which works, but which can be problematic in other ways. Most notably, while OS-level workarounds are a clear win for older and otherwise unsupported software, they reduce motivation for developers to fix bugs in current software papered over by Windows' workarounds.
hannibal5 13y ago
For mobile applications Windows has been constantly behind Android and iOS. One part of Nokia's problems was that MS could not deliver drivers for new hardware. For example, Nokia could not move to high resolution screens because Windows could not handle them. Being constantly 6-12 months behind because software is not up to dates was devastating.
- nbevans 13y ago
  Stop comparing Windows, a desktop OS, to mobile-first optimised OSes like Android and iOS. Even Windows RT is not technically mobile-first optimised like those two. Windows Phone 8 vs Android/iOS would be a fair comparison. Because WP8 has undergone the same treatment and has been optimised for high battery efficiencies whilst still retaining the Windows NT kernel at its core. WP8 has always had support for high-resolution displays and Nokia et al have not had issues with it. WP7.x was a different story but that was a different OS kernel (WinCE not NT). During this time Microsoft was busy creating a minimised edition of the Win8 kernel that would be suitable for use on a smartphone, much like the work Apple did to OSX in order to create iOS.
  - bal00ns 13y ago
    If Microsoft markets Windows as a mobile platform I'll compare it to the existing competition. Sure, it might not be fair, but ultimately I'm looking for results, not fairness.
    - nbevans 13y ago
      http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet Search in a page with plenty of marketing blurb for "mobile". Zero results. So since they aren't marketing it as how you perceive perhaps you should cut them some slack.
      - briandh 13y ago
        They market Windows 8 tablets side-by-side with the iPad.
snowwrestler 13y ago
> At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. The Darwin kernel is regularly updated; for example Apple replaced Unix init and cron with launchd in 2005, achieved full POSIX compliance in 2007, and went to full 64-bit in 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29
- KMag 13y ago
  I admit I'm not super familiar with Darwin internals, but on most *NIX systems, init and cron are userspace programs. Does launchd need some special syscalls?
vor_ 13y ago
Darwin wasn't written in the 70s, and the foundations are regularly updated. The source code is publicly available. Your speculation that few in Apple dare touch it, as if it's some indecipherable monstrosity, is nonsense.
- nbevans 13y ago
  Why is it so slow to add new features and technologies then? It took them, what, like 3 years? To add TRIM support for SSDs? Their first attempt at ASLR was woeful and badly broken and even that was a year after Vista got it.
  - vor_ 13y ago
    They're not slow to add features. Some may arrive after a competitor, but every release of OS X sees low-level feature additions and updates. They're documented by Siracusa's mega-reviews as well as the OS X release notes. Nearly Apple's entire product line has been dependent on the flexibility of that foundation, from the PowerPC Macs to the Intel transition to the ARM squeeze, not to mention the recent ARM64 port. So, I don't understand why you think Apple can't or won't work on the foundation or why you believe it's a monolithic relic written in the 1970s, unless you're just referencing some vague bias against Unix in general.
    - nbevans 13y ago
      You're really digging in on this aren't you? I wrote very clearly that it was only a suspicion clearly in an attempt to explain why they are so much slower at improving their OS kernel than Microsoft is. So any time somebody makes a suspicion you'll arrive and interpret it as though it was a statement of fact? Noted. Meanwhile, you make woolly justifications of their slowness by making contradictions like this: "They're not slow to add features. Some may arrive after a competitor" Comments like these are not helpful and do not add anything to the conversation. They're slow. The reasons why this is the case is still not entirely clear. But even OSX fans get frustrated sometimes at how slow they are to add features that other operating systems got years before. The most vocal recent one I can think of was probably the TRIM support for SSDs.

by nbevans 13y ago

twoodfin 13y ago

At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. I don't think this is true at all. Sure, there's always been a BSD-style environment for compatibility, but Apple has never been shy about ripping and replacing legacy Unix-y infrastructure (see: launchd) or about adding new, "deep" APIs close to the plumbing (see: libdispatch).

dsr_ 13y ago

And of course the smashing success of WinFS.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nbevans 13y ago
I don't really think that WinFS was a core OS kernel feature. It was built on top of SQL Server, so I doubt it even had a kernel-mode component either. ReFS would be a better example. And that's just another example of how Microsoft is keeping their core technology up to date. Apple meanwhile is still using HFS+ which even Linus Torvalds called out as being utterly crap.
- theandrewbailey 13y ago
  What doesn't Tovalds call out as being utterly crap?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

fetbaffe 13y ago
Windows UAC is the best I have used on any platform. What I can remember it was not that good on OSX. Not even Ubuntu gets this right. However the permission system on Windows is a hassle. I always have a normal user account and an seperate admin account. The normal account does not have sudo permission. This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assumes normal user has some sort of sudo. Unfortunately Windows 8.1 dumped UAC in the toilet when forcing the Windows 8.1 update to be downloaded from the store, which made your local admin account useless.
- aroch 13y ago
  >This setup on Ubuntu and what I can remember on OSX is not hassle free because a lot of installers and apps assumes normal user has some sort of sudo. On OSX you get an elevated privileges login prompt for any installer needing to write to / and even for many write protected folders inside your own homedir. You can grant rights as any user you want simply by entering that username (it's automatically populated with the current user)
  - jasomill 13y ago
    This is true for properly written installers and apps, but since not everything is properly written, a related problem does crop up from time to time: an installer or app assumes the user has permissions to something that the "admin" group usually has access to, and therefore doesn't bother using the correct API to elevate. Even here, though, in the typical cases of installers and updaters, there are easy workarounds that at least don't require logging out or giving additional rights to the logged-in user: fast user switch or login(1) to an admin user, then retry from there. The only thing Windows does differently here is that it provides a silent, non-admin workaround (filesystem and registry virtualization) for buggy applications, which works, but which can be problematic in other ways. Most notably, while OS-level workarounds are a clear win for older and otherwise unsupported software, they reduce motivation for developers to fix bugs in current software papered over by Windows' workarounds.

hannibal5 13y ago

For mobile applications Windows has been constantly behind Android and iOS. One part of Nokia's problems was that MS could not deliver drivers for new hardware. For example, Nokia could not move to high resolution screens because Windows could not handle them. Being constantly 6-12 months behind because software is not up to dates was devastating.

nbevans 13y ago
Stop comparing Windows, a desktop OS, to mobile-first optimised OSes like Android and iOS. Even Windows RT is not technically mobile-first optimised like those two. Windows Phone 8 vs Android/iOS would be a fair comparison. Because WP8 has undergone the same treatment and has been optimised for high battery efficiencies whilst still retaining the Windows NT kernel at its core. WP8 has always had support for high-resolution displays and Nokia et al have not had issues with it. WP7.x was a different story but that was a different OS kernel (WinCE not NT). During this time Microsoft was busy creating a minimised edition of the Win8 kernel that would be suitable for use on a smartphone, much like the work Apple did to OSX in order to create iOS.
- bal00ns 13y ago
  If Microsoft markets Windows as a mobile platform I'll compare it to the existing competition. Sure, it might not be fair, but ultimately I'm looking for results, not fairness.
  - nbevans 13y ago
    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/meet Search in a page with plenty of marketing blurb for "mobile". Zero results. So since they aren't marketing it as how you perceive perhaps you should cut them some slack.
    - briandh 13y ago
      They market Windows 8 tablets side-by-side with the iPad.

snowwrestler 13y ago

> At the core of OSX is a ton of legacy Unix monolith written in the 70s that I suspect very few in Apple dare ever touch. The Darwin kernel is regularly updated; for example Apple replaced Unix init and cron with launchd in 2005, achieved full POSIX compliance in 2007, and went to full 64-bit in 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29

KMag 13y ago
I admit I'm not super familiar with Darwin internals, but on most *NIX systems, init and cron are userspace programs. Does launchd need some special syscalls?

vor_ 13y ago

Darwin wasn't written in the 70s, and the foundations are regularly updated. The source code is publicly available. Your speculation that few in Apple dare touch it, as if it's some indecipherable monstrosity, is nonsense.

nbevans 13y ago
Why is it so slow to add new features and technologies then? It took them, what, like 3 years? To add TRIM support for SSDs? Their first attempt at ASLR was woeful and badly broken and even that was a year after Vista got it.
- vor_ 13y ago
  They're not slow to add features. Some may arrive after a competitor, but every release of OS X sees low-level feature additions and updates. They're documented by Siracusa's mega-reviews as well as the OS X release notes. Nearly Apple's entire product line has been dependent on the flexibility of that foundation, from the PowerPC Macs to the Intel transition to the ARM squeeze, not to mention the recent ARM64 port. So, I don't understand why you think Apple can't or won't work on the foundation or why you believe it's a monolithic relic written in the 1970s, unless you're just referencing some vague bias against Unix in general.
  - nbevans 13y ago
    You're really digging in on this aren't you? I wrote very clearly that it was only a suspicion clearly in an attempt to explain why they are so much slower at improving their OS kernel than Microsoft is. So any time somebody makes a suspicion you'll arrive and interpret it as though it was a statement of fact? Noted. Meanwhile, you make woolly justifications of their slowness by making contradictions like this: "They're not slow to add features. Some may arrive after a competitor" Comments like these are not helpful and do not add anything to the conversation. They're slow. The reasons why this is the case is still not entirely clear. But even OSX fans get frustrated sometimes at how slow they are to add features that other operating systems got years before. The most vocal recent one I can think of was probably the TRIM support for SSDs.