Andrew Chen (a_s_c@compuserve.com) wrote:
> Replace soups with bundles and XML files.
Bundles and XML files still live on mass storage, not in RAM. Traditional
operating systems differentiate between documents as passive files
(essentially large strings of bytes) on the one hand, and their active
counterparts as structured data in RAM on the other. If you need to
access or manipulate some data, you need to open the file, load parts of
it into memory (which implies that you need to know the format in which
it is stored), and write it back to the file when you're finished. In
many cases this is impossible, partly because proprietary file formats
are used, so you need to launch the original application, have it open
its documents, and than access their contents with AppleScript or
something similar. On the Newton, any application can easily access, for
example, the address database, without either opening and parsing a file
or launching another app. It's even possible to extend such a database by
adding new fields without rendering it unusable to the original application.
No doubt you could somehow simulate this behavior under Mac OS X, but at
what cost?
> MacOS X has support for
> system-wide services (such as via the services menu).
That's not quite what I meant. Services like Search and Assist wouldn't
be easy to duplicate under a file-based OS (and then it required some
extensions to the API and a rewrite of all applications to take advantage
of these services).
> Tight integration between applications needs some work (OpenDoc would have
> been the solution to this).
Only this would be a complete departure from the concepts underlying Mac
OS X. Why augment an already memory-hungry OS with still more layers,
just to achieve something you could get at a much lower price from an OS
optimized for just this stuff?
> UI optimized for PDAs - no, sorry, I was suggesting this for an iBook,
> which is hardly a PDA.
Indeed, but then, why create a new OS for the iBook? As much as I love my
Newtons, I wouldn't want to replace Mac OS on my Macs anytime soon.
Michael J. Hussmann
Redaktion macmagazin
MACup Verlag GmbH
Leverkusenstrasse 54 VII
D-22761 Hamburg
Germany
E-Mail: michael@macmagazin.de
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