Week 3 - Musings...

Bill Veghte - 'An Update on the Windows Roadmap'

Having resisted the recent onslaught of new Microsoft operating systems on my personal computer in the past few years and remained with Windows XP, I was heartened to read this e-mail. Some of the information I knew (having worked with and confronted problems at work on machines loaded with both VISTA and now 7), but I was less clear on the date when Microsoft would cease support of Windows XP. In many ways it makes sense, as the operating system will have reached its 13th birthday at the date service stops - a degree of longevity not frequently seen in operating systems today. Still, I was a bit disturbed by the fact the Windows seemed to 'rush' into releasing VISTA with its performance and compatibility issues. The old mantra of, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' seems appropriate here, as VISTA was universally panned for its shortcomings. When the previous operating system performs better than the 'latest and greatest,' there's a message there for Microsoft R&D.

Wikipedia - Mac OS X

My experience with Macs is admittedly limited - the last time I used one was around the initial release of OS X in 2001 and I don't remember much about it. Reading over this informative description brought some of it back, but also confused me a bit because of the lack of a common frame of reference. Understanding the underlying system technology was at times difficult until I read over the UNIX article. Even then, my understanding of what a kernel is, as well as some of the functions of the Mac systems (Carbon, Cocoa, etc.) weren't easily understood without further research and supplemental reading.

Amit Singh - What is Mac OS X?

After reading the wikipedia article on OS X and finding myself slightly confused, I was dumbfounded when I started looking over this article. The degree of technical knowledge needed to understand a majority of what was written in here seemed overwhelming. I started understanding what was being talked about around the time Aqua was introduced. I'm struggling to come up with something intelligent to say about this article aside from the obvious fact that, despite Apple's ability to make a clean and simple interface, the back-end of this particular OS appears as confusing if not more-so than understanding Windows or any other operating system on the market today.

Machtelt Garrels - Introduction to Linux

An eye-opening introduction to an operating system about which I knew virtually nothing. I hadn't associated Linux with the open source movement and it quickly became apparent that the potential for technological growth and development here is immense and has already been well-exploited. I was less than heartened to read that it isn't the most user-friendly interface to work with, but it seems that the supporting community built up around it as well as its flexibility and compatibility more than make up for difficulties in working with it.