Quote: Originally Posted by romeosc What Os does your toaster or washing machine run..... In the future most programs will become web based, only thing you nedd is a clean powe…

Right now OS X is not missing any big, vital features. OS 9 was missing several - preemptive multitasking and a modern memory model with protected memory, to just take two. Apple w…

What we have now is a modular system with the underlying pieces being common to many different OSes. These parts have input from thousands of developers all over the world. So in m…

apple said they could get 10 years more marketing from the os x brand.

Quote: Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani My estimation is that OS X will be the Apple OS until Macs run Windows. Make of that what you will cheers W-Y Not bloody likel…

I think OS X is here to stay, but I suspect over the years the interface (GUI) will change. 10 years from now is hard to predict. Just look at what has changed in the last 5 year…

Quote: Originally Posted by msuper69 Not bloody likely. Oh yes. I'm positive that my previous post will come true. cheers W-Y

Coming at it from a slightly different angle, well, a marketing angle I guess, when are Apple going to release OS XI, and how significant a change is it going to be over OS X? Obv…

Marketing, for sure. What arrived as Mac OS 8 was originally supposed to be 7.7. OS 8 was supposed to be the name for the next, built-from-the-ground-up, fully PPC-native OS. I thi…

At first the System and Finder developed very quickly, up to version 6. Updates were free, and noone really bothered about the version numbers. System 5 never actually existed - Sy…

Quote: Originally Posted by P ...Calling it OS "ten" but using roman numerals was a way to get the final X commonly associated with UNIX OSes without infringing on the UNIX trad…

P, thanks for that post, very interesting and informative, cheers.

IMHO, due to the Unix underpinnings, Apple is no longer chained to creating EVERYTHING for OS X. I know that Steve Jobs isn't going to make the same mistake twice with Apple's OS. …

Apple may decide on a new paradigm for the interface, but not a new operating system from scratch. It may do something like the "Public Square" concept for organizing and rely on h…

Quote: Originally Posted by P Right now OS X is not missing any big, vital features. OS 9 was missing several - preemptive multitasking and a modern memory model with protected …

I have been a switcher for about a 1 1/2 years, and am intested in taking some courses on computer programming. There is a course on Perl at the local community college. A six week…

Stick to the cross-platform languages (i.e. take ANSI C instead of Visual C) and you should be able to program in any language on your Mac.

Quote: Originally Posted by larrinski I have been a switcher for about a 1 1/2 years, and am intested in taking some courses on computer programming. There is a course on Perl a…

I've got a Mac (and only a Mac), and I'm currently a student of Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona. All the work I've done so far has been easily accomplished on any…

I recently found a local community college that is offering an intro course on perl, and I thought I might try it out. Now, the various languages are not too obvious to me, as to w…

C is popular, it's everywhere. It's offshoots are C++, which is immensly popular, and on the OS side of things: C# for windows and Object C for macs. Java is the most portable, b…

I second the php idea. Basically php is a scripting language that runs on web servers to produce web pages. It is similar to c in syntax. The basic concepts are identical to any l…

Quote: Originally Posted by larrinski I know I have perl installed, so it must be more mac specific, but which ones should I focus on if i get more interested in programming? Ca…

I say go with the PHP idea as well. You learn C syntax, can learn OOP concepts if you'd like, and also acquire the knowledge of a really useful language.

I'm updating a small screensaver I wrote to universal Binary, and I'm wondering about backwards compatiblity. I wrote it origionally on 10.3 and found it works on 10.2 as well (so…