“The public beta release of Apple’s new OS X operating system–a
first for the company–seems to be a hit with the Apple cult.
Taking a cue from the Linux crowd, Steve Jobs has pulled off a
nifty bit of showmanship….”
“Open source is certainly hot, and has already stolen the outlaw
zeitgeist over which Apple used to enjoy a monopoly. Apple
unquestionably wants to be as hip as the Linux community. And Apple
could save some money and heartache if small headaches for OS X are
discovered and fixed now. By contrast, Microsoft OS beta programs
are kept completely secret for months, after which the shipping
products inevitably are followed by numerous “service releases” to
fix bugs.”
“But what’s the big deal about OS X? It’s the most significant
retooling of the operating system since the first Macintosh was
introduced. First and foremost, OS X is supposed to be more
stable than OS 8 or OS 9. It’s built around a new kernel called
Darwin, which was assembled from Unix code and has been made
available to the open source process. This new architecture is
intended, among other things, to allow individual programs to crash
with less likelihood of bringing the whole system down.”