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0 pointshuggyface14y ago0 comments

The entire article is Gruber hand-picking Jobs quotes that serve his vision of Jobs, and discounting the quotes that Isaacson picked -- or holding them as misunderstandings/misinterpretations -- because they don't conform with Gruber's opinion. Gruber has commented on Isaacson's book numerous times with incredible disdain (because, Gruber thinks, it misrepresents Jobs), so this is just a continuation of that theme.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

reidmain14y ago· 4 in thread

Gruber makes multiple references to Jobs' faults in that article. He is simply shredding the quotes that Issacson used without actually thinking about what they meant or checking the facts.

What about this article do you think is Gruber twisting Issacson's words?. Every example has a well documented reason on why Issacson is flat out wrong.

huggyfaceOP14y ago

Did we read the same article? Where does Gruber "shred" anything? Bill Gates says that "Instead the purchase ended up bringing in Avie Tevanian, who could help the existing Apple operating system evolve so that it eventually incorporated the kernel of the NeXT technology.", and Gruber says "Mac OS X 10.0 was a hybrid of Mac and NeXT technology, but it was clearly the NeXT system with Mac technologies integrated, not the other way around."

What Bill Gates said was absolutely true! Rhapsody with the NeXT Mach kernel, a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer, and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement.

But it doesn't sound as impressive to Steve Jobs to say that only the microkernel (which we know is a critical part of a system), so better still to simply claim Gates is the liar?

sjwright14y ago

  > and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc).

Incorrect. The GUI wasn't ported, it was rewritten for OS X. Cocoa's heritage is NeXT to the core. Nothing vaguely resembling Cocoa existed in the classic Mac environment.

  > a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer

Incorrect. There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. The application layer of Mac OS X is Cocoa.

(There is also the Carbon application layer which does partially derive from classic Mac, but that existed solely to ease application porting of existing Mac apps. But even Carbon is a hybrid, and was actually back-ported to Mac OS 9.)

  > Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement.

Any Mac OS X software developer will know enough to confidently refute the accuracy of Gates' claims.

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__david__14y ago

> What Bill Gates said was absolutely true! Rhapsody with the NeXT Mach kernel, a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer, and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc). Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement.

Actually, technically there's everything wrong with that statement. It's just not the case.

Cocoa is NeXTStep. Take a look at the APIs. Everything is prefixed with NS.

The old Carbon APIs were completely reimplemented--those original Mac OS Classic APIs were mostly written in 68000 assembly with a liberal amount of Pascal thrown in--totally unsuitable for the new flagship OS.

I used OpenStep for about a year before the first OS X Betas were released. I can tell you first hand that Rhapsody was 90% NeXT and 10% veneer to make it "look like a Mac". "Terminal.app" barely changed from OpenStep to Mac OS X. Several other apps looked identical too. I'm pretty sure the minify button iconified the icons the way OpenStep used to.

Don't forget that NeXTStep/OpenStep had a full BSD subsystem too. That's not new or unique to Mac OS X. Go to your terminal and "man open". Notice the "First appeared in NextStep" part.

The fact is Mac OS X 10.0 is NeXTStep/OpenStep with some extra compatibility layers for the carbon APIs (plus an VM for doing running OS 9 apps). Saying that they "just pulled the kernel out" is patently false.

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reidmain14y ago

I'm curious, have you actually done any Mac or iOS development?

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twoodfin14y ago

But it's not about the quotes at all, except insofar as the quotes that Isaacson chose leave the reader with an impression that is simply wrong. The Bill Gates quote about the NeXT acquisition stuck out for me, too.

Are you disagreeing with Gruber's thesis that Isaacson really didn't understand the complementary contributions of software to "design"? Why?

I'm typically not a defender of John's, but he seems to me to be on target here.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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6 comments · 2 top-level

reidmain14y ago· 4 in thread

Gruber makes multiple references to Jobs' faults in that article. He is simply shredding the quotes that Issacson used without actually thinking about what they meant or checking the facts.

What about this article do you think is Gruber twisting Issacson's words?. Every example has a well documented reason on why Issacson is flat out wrong.

huggyfaceOP14y ago

But it doesn't sound as impressive to Steve Jobs to say that only the microkernel (which we know is a critical part of a system), so better still to simply claim Gates is the liar?

sjwright14y ago

  > and then various other Mac layers (GUI, Cocoa, etc).

Incorrect. The GUI wasn't ported, it was rewritten for OS X. Cocoa's heritage is NeXT to the core. Nothing vaguely resembling Cocoa existed in the classic Mac environment.

  > a pulled-in, non-NeXT BSD application layer

Incorrect. There is little of "BSD" in the Mac OS X environment, save for some FreeBSD userland components, most of which only matter on the command line. The application layer of Mac OS X is Cocoa.

  > Technically there is nothing wrong with his statement.

Any Mac OS X software developer will know enough to confidently refute the accuracy of Gates' claims.

1 more reply

__david__14y ago

Actually, technically there's everything wrong with that statement. It's just not the case.

Cocoa is NeXTStep. Take a look at the APIs. Everything is prefixed with NS.

Don't forget that NeXTStep/OpenStep had a full BSD subsystem too. That's not new or unique to Mac OS X. Go to your terminal and "man open". Notice the "First appeared in NextStep" part.

1 more reply

reidmain14y ago

I'm curious, have you actually done any Mac or iOS development?

1 more reply

twoodfin14y ago

Are you disagreeing with Gruber's thesis that Isaacson really didn't understand the complementary contributions of software to "design"? Why?

I'm typically not a defender of John's, but he seems to me to be on target here.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse