“After spending several months with various builds of Mac OS
X as well as a few different Linux distros, one thing has become
crystal clear: Mac OS X delivers on a promise made by
Linux–Namely, that Linux is Unix for the masses, and it’s the next
killer operating system destined for the hard drives of geeks and
regular folks alike. When Mac OS X ships on Saturday, it’s
going to deliver on that promise–Apple will become the
highest-volume vendor of Unix in the world, and it’ll bring all
that *Nixy power to folks who don’t know a thing about command line
terminals–in other words, most of us.”
“When the Linux hype hit its height about a year ago, there were
predictions that it was going to take market share from every
operating system out there, including from the Mac but especially
from Windows. Regular people were going to be able to install their
favorite Linux variant and have a powerful, customizable,
infinitely tweakable operating system at their command, complete
with a stable of software that could be freely downloaded and
compiled.”
“Well, things didn’t work out quite that way. While Linux is a
tremendously powerful operating system and it makes a killer
server, it’s nowhere near ready for prime time as a consumer
operating system. Ever try to print from Linux or add a new hard
drive? Forget it. These tasks take a deep understanding of how Unix
works plus the willingness to dig through pages and pages of
obscure documentation, and then you have to munge some text files
to get things working properly. And to get X Windows–the Unix
graphical user interface–functioning, brace yourself. It can be a
real adventure to get the color depth, resolution, and refresh rate
you want on your computer.”