[Dr.Michael]

I would have switched to Linux. A short time before osx came out I realized that I needed a commandline for my development projects. Doing things with apples developer tools was too painful. Buying another expensive update for CodeWarrior every few months sucked too.

But I would have missed the macintoshs user interface (the old one). I still like it a lot.

Originally Posted by besson3c

Consolidating stuff with the Unix world was one of the smartest things Apple has ever done. Positioning the battle as Unix vs. Microsoft was much smarter than BeOS/Apple and Unix vs. Microsoft.

I fully agree. We scientists have always preferred unix based systems for their stability, reliability and computing power. Windows doesn't come close. If you run a job that takes over night you don't want to come into the lab next morning and find the machine crashed after 6 hours. Thats why windows never was an option for me and thats why OS X is a really great system. It has inherited all the nice things of unix machines and replaced the ugly parts (like UI).

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Targon

Yes, how utterly stupid was Amelio. I still cannot believe how he was 'conned' by Jobs so easily.

Jobs didn't con him. BeOS wanted WAAAAAAAAY too much money for BeOS and though he could con APple into paying it. He even said he had them by the balls.

Amelio didn't want to pay any more than 50 mill for BeOS so he went and payed 427 mill for NeXT and it still Apple took 4 years to bring it to market and another 4 to get it usable. The Job's stabbed him in the back had him ousted. Biggest fsck up in Apple history IMO.

WHAT? Gil wantd 200mil for BE, and it wasn't even HALF done. Be had only invested in 20m into the project and wanted to sell it for 200m. Apple offered them 100 and they refused. Steve didn't con anyone.

BeOS would have taken lots longer to get to the shelves than OS X. And they got Steve with the deal. Which of whom did save Apple.

I suggest you read that article again.

[lavar78]

Won't anyone think of the poor subjunctive mood?

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Kevin

...Gil wantd 200mil for BE...

Jean-Louis Gassée*

Originally Posted by olePigeon

If they had stuck with OS 8/9, I would assume they would've finished the Copland project.

I don't know how Copland would've been like. It's be Classic, sure, but with real multitasking and protected memory. That would've been interesting.

Copland was going to be a lower layer with preemptive multitasking and protected memory, but all apps had to share a single UI layer that was cooperative and UIs of different apps were not protected from each other.

There's a reason it was scrapped - nobody would have written apps for that.

Gershwin was going to be the full preemptive, protected OS. Would have been interesting. But UNIX brought more to the table (e.g. multi-user, lots of open source software, etc)

[driven]

Originally Posted by itai195

Interesting. I switched to the Mac from Windows for OS X (and an original TiBook). I had to endure OS 9 for a couple months before OS X was released

This mirrors my situation.

I bought the iMac DV SE 500 for my kids. (They were supposed to be good kids machines ... they were .... the machine is STILL in use.) In doing so I began to hear rumblings about OSX ... I purchased a G4 Cube for myself in preparation for the release of OSX. I purchased a copy of OS X 10.0 the day it was released. I'm still blisfully happy. (Just to be clear ... I'm on the LATEST version of OSX now.)

[jasonsRX7]

OS X is what got me to switch to Macs from Windows. I never gave a crap about Macs before that, actually I disliked them.