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Slip me some questions I'm helping review Apple's OS X for Linux Journal (I'm the only Mac user on the editorial staff), and tomorrow afternoon I'll be talking with OS X product manager Chris Bourdon. I have a lot of questions, but I'd like some of yours. Dave raises some good ones today. I'm not so pessimistic (nor is Brent, whose opinion is far more qualified), but my faith isn't exactly huge, either. I don't think the March date will slip, but I am sure the X.0 "final" release still won't be ready for prime time, if only for the reason that few .0 versions are ever fully ready. I want to know how truly open Darwin really is. How many of the many changes being made to OS X since the beta came out consist of actual code submitted by the development community? How many are BSD weenies, vs. Apple weenies? Or good old software developers who have no religion and simply need to get products out. What's the dialog there? Can we name names? I want to know how OS9 apps will run under emulation, or whatever it is, in OS X. I've got the beta (courtesy of Apple, and running on very nice Apple-supplied hardware) and it's been pretty useless so far. Granted: it's beta. But none of my apps work very well there, if at all. Others, like Netscape, download and do ... nothing. And I haven't been able to get the thing to show up on the network yet. Admittedly, I'm the non-techical tester, but I'm not that non-technical. I want to know how the final release of OS X can differ so radically from the beta and still not be buggy all over the place. I'm told that it's not that hard, really, to make big-time cosmetic changes in the OS, but I wonder. (We can't complete this review until we have the final release running. The beta is just too different.) What's happening with 3rd party hardware companies to make OS X Macs the "digital hubs" Steve Jobs talked about in his keynote last Tuesday? That man has major mojo in the Entertainment Industry that gets little credit, and I think we saw it with the iDVD and SuperDrive announcements. Make no mistake: consumer electronics is a web of cartels, and the DVD cartel is one of the most self-protective of the bunch. Apple is now a member in high standing. Anyway, I'll throw more Q's up here while I'm working on other stuff, but lemme know a few of yours. Thanks.
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