Philosophy 101 Mac OS

• Philosophy 101 Mac Os X
• Philosophy 101 Mac Os Catalina

• How to Capture the Screen in macOS Big Sur. If you've been a Mac user for a while, you might have noticed that the venerable Screenshot (formerly Grab) app, the app you use to use to manage screen capture features including timed shots and cursor visibility, is no longer in your Utilities folder.
• Unix under Mac OS X recognizes command more, but all it does is invoke less. So remember, more is less, less is more than more, and more is less than less! Command head displays the first 10 lines of a file. Specify option -n followed by a number to display a different number of lines.

The Mac OS 9 user interface generally was designed better than Microsoft Windows. ( The study at XvsXP.com has found that Mac OS X is also more thoughtfully designed.) Apple took a lesson from the human-computer interaction research being done at a Xerox.

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Ask a Mac OS X fan or a Windows fan what the difference is between the two operating systems, and the short answer might be something like, 'The difference is, the one I use doesn't stink.' That response may underscore the emotional pull an operating system has with a particular sort of computer user, but it is not very helpful for getting at the heart of the matter. The long answer involves understanding the soul of each OS.

Mac OS X is gaining favor among a growing number computer users. What is it that makes up the real difference between OS X and Windows? The long answer goes well beyond the Dock, the Start Button, or other obvious surface features and appearance details that any user can easily see at first glance.

'Apple is second to none in user experience,' Bill Gribbons told MacNewsWorld. Gribbons is director of the Master of Science in Human Factors in Information Design at Bentley University and senior consultant to the Bentley University Design and Usability Center. 'They turned it into an art form. Apple's approach to product design is what distinguishes them from Microsoft. Microsoft is not always focused on technology. It is not always a good experience for users and is not always easy to learn. It does not always fit the users' needs.'

Close Birth

Certainly, both Microsoft's and Apple's operating systems have changed dramatically over the years.

The two systems share a common lineage, of sorts. Windows was released in 1985 and was at least inspired (if not copied) from the earliest Mac OS, which Microsoft had access to as a Mac software developer. Apple actually sued Microsoft in the 1980s for 'borrowing' their ideas, according to Edward Shepard, marketing manager of Apple sales professional for Small Dog Electronics.

'Forward 25 years, and it can be argued that Microsoft borrowed many ideas for Vista's look and feel from Mac OS X. Likewise, Apple has also borrowed ideas from Windows over the years. The two OSes are like two competitive, wealthy cousins from different sides of a single family tree,' Shepard told MacNewsWorld.

From these entwined origins, the two systems embarked on different paths and gathered families of followers either born into the fold or converted to it. For instance, Apple has emphasized the seamless integration of software and hardware, as well as a core focus on graphical feedback. Windows was designed as a licensed product to run on thousands of different computer models produced by dozens of companies around the world, according to Shepard.

Soul Differences

Apple's approach made it easier for developers to assure compatibly and reliability. However, it has also limited the size of Apple's user base, which stood at about 30 million users in early 2008, Shepard noted.

Meanwhile, Microsoft emphasized getting as large a user base as possible for Windows. Now, somewhere around 90 percent of computer users run Windows. On a global scale, having a dominant OS probably helped facilitate mass adoption of personal computers. On the other hand, it also made Windows an attractive and easy target for viruses, Trojans, worms, and other computer attacks, he added.

These two paths followed distinctively different design passions, and it's in the design that the essence of their souls emerge.

Mac OS X has a restrained, coolly calculating soul that effectively handles its business, though perhaps doesn't always tell you about everything on its mind. As a human, Mac OS X would be an efficient, dedicated concierge that smoothly does his job, albeit with an air of quiet superiority. Windows has an aggressive, do-it-all soul, but often huffs and puffs to remind you it's working hard (even if it's for your benefit). As a human, Windows would be a sweaty middle manager stomping around the office, reliable enough and 'surprisingly good at karaoke,' quipped Shepard.

Designed Distinctions

Peeling back the trappings of each OS unveils a closer glimpse at the architectural differences that separate Mac and Windows systems. At the root of the architecture lies the core programming.

'Windows was built around networking. Its foundation is on highly modifiable DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) to support many applications and a registry file for multiple configurations. On the Mac side, the OS is based on Unix, Mach and the Apple OS structure,' Gene Spafford, professor in the department of computer sciences at Purdue University, told MacNewsWorld.

Mach is an operating system microkernel Carnegie Mellon University developed to support operating system research. The basis of the Mac OS X is still the core built by Carnegie Mellon.

Architectural Adversaries

Windows' design set led to the growth of an OS that was full of tweeks. The Windows of today evolved from the NT/Windows 2000 structure. It facilitated drag-and-drop convenience and easy-to-install applications, Spafford explained. In contrast, the Mac OS seldom put in a shared library to install applications.

Instead, the Mac uses permissions like Unix. No large-scale system management is needed. The result: When something installs on an Apple computer, the user knows it. The installation cannot happen silently.

Another difference is that most configuration settings on the Mac are in plain text. There is no arcane registry setting like in Windows, and the kernel stays minimal.

'This is the overall Mac philosophy of how things get added in. Microsoft extended the design to add to the kernel,' Spafford said.

Growth Spurts

Both the Mac and Windows operating systems are inherently different today than their earlier generations. Apple had a shift in technology that brought an end to the single-threaded OS that was similar to DOS (Disk Operating System), according to Spafford. Windows designers began peeling away the DOS core upon which the Windows GUI (graphical user interface) was applied with the migration to Windows XP.

Similarly, Mac OS 9 was creaking under the load. Steve Jobs, who at this point had returned to head up Apple once again, changed the operating system to make the OS X into a new design, explained Spafford.

'What was novel was its ability to seamlessly emulate OS 9 running under OS X, much like VMware functions today. This enabled users to switch over without losing their software. The new version strengthened Unix as the underlying kernel,' he said.

Sensitivity Training

One of the main aspects of the Mac soul is the connection its designers have with Mac users. Gribbons, who specializes in studying how people interact with systems, describes Mac developers as having a deep, intimate understanding of what people want and value.

'Apple maps the system design to whatever product they do to that model. Apple always feels like a user's best friend,' said Gribbons.

With Apple, users enjoy a carefully orchestrated experience that is not accidental. From the way it is marketed, sold, packaged and supported, it is designed to be seamless.

'You don't see that from Microsoft,' he said.

How Good Is Too Good?

However, this approach almost brought doom to Apple, noted Gribbons. At one point, the company almost went out of business because of it, he said.

'The systems didn't seem serious. They were expensive. There were delays in getting to the market. They wanted to get it perfect, but the market didn't demand this. On the other hand, Microsoft got its products to the market more quickly, and they were good enough. This is how Microsoft captured the market share,' Gribbons said.

Addressing this conundrum was part of the soul searching that Mac developers did to salvage the Mac OS from itself. For much of the 1990s and up until about the last five years, the product was almost too good, he explained. Consumers were really buying too much product, and the price point was way above that of Windows-based products.

What's the Diff?

Differences abound in the two systems, but both can do essentially the same things, according to Fernando Machado, who has a decade of experience running a computer maintenance and service business and is a computer expert on JustAnswer.com.

'Windows is better for gaming due to the large amount of games that are available for it. Mac, however, has better overall security and is less prone to attackers,' he told MacNewsWorld.

The differences in OS design reflect a clear distinction in what attracts the user base. For instance, the Mac is designed more for graphical and multimedia functions and tends to run better than Windows doing so. Windows, however, is much better with statistical applications as well as office applications. It also seems that Windows is easier for the user to customize, Machado explained.

The Roots of Design

Windows is designed to be a do-it-all-at-any cost OS, which has its benefits and complications, Shepard added. For example, there are six versions of Windows Vista, and there will be six versions of Windows 7, all listed at different prices. In contrast, Apple simply sells one fully loaded version of OS X for one price (US$129). This version even includes Boot Camp for installing Windows on a Mac if desired.

'The biggest difference between the two goes back to their origins. Windows tries to be everything to everyone, is phenomenally successful, but has a history of security vulnerabilities, peripheral incompatibilities (ironically enough), and upgrade confusion. Apple still has a more restrained consumer focus, still controls the design and engineering of its hardware and software, competes hard in some demographics but is content letting others go. Thus, it has a smaller user base,' Shepard summarized.

All things considered, the two OSes are starting to become quite similar, according to Mike Palumbo, an IT specialist for the Center for Instructional Technology at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Most OS preference these days is driven by the same brand loyalty that divides Ford and Chevy owners and Coke and Pepsi drinkers, he said -- and the arguments that ensue are often the equivalent of 'Tastes Great! vs. Less Filling!'

Soul Survivors

In recent years, both companies have learned from each other and incorporated each other's ideas. Windows has become more user friendly and more slick in its design, while Apple has included functional features and control options that were previously unavailable, according to Palumbo. Apple mac os 9.1 download.

'Apple makes a lot of assumptions about what you want control over and makes a lot of decisions for you, and that's great for the majority of the users. Windows gives the user more control and more options, and by virtue of that, more opportunity to mess it up,' Palumbo told MacNewsWorld.

Windows designers are catering to an audience that likes to look under the hood and shift manually. The average user can still drive it, but the enthusiast can really tweak it if they desire, he explained. Windows designers have made it possible for IT pros to completely control every aspect of how the computer is used by the employee.

'Apple designs its interface and even the outward hardware to appeal for people who appreciate design. It's slick, shiny and expensive, not unlike buying a sports car,' said Palumbo.

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1. Project 21 Display Text Files

This chapter is all about file content and what you can do with it from the Unix command line. The nine projects cover the following topics: Catalyst (itch) mac os.

• View text files. Learn how to display text files page by page and view them dynamically as they are being written.
• View nontext files. View binary and compressed files.
• Search files. Say hello to grep and friends—the Unix equivalent of Spotlight.
• Sort and compare files. Unix has some handy utilities to process text files.
• Compress files. Discover tar-balls for archiving, and learn how to zip and unzip.

These projects show you how to search the file system for specific content, view files, process them, and compress them. For related projects, see Chapter 4 on Unix text editors, and Chapter 7, which shows how to change file content programmatically.

Project 21 Display Text Files

'How do I view a file quickly?'

This project introduces commands to display the contents of a file in the Terminal window and to browse quickly through it. It covers cat, vis and unvis, less, head, and tail.

Reading Files with cat and vis

The simplest way to display a file on the screen is to cat it. Let's illustrate this by displaying one of the system files called /etc/ftpusers.

The cat command pours the whole file onto the screen in one go. If the file is too big, it will overflow the Terminal window, leaving only the tail end visible. Coffee talk (itch) mac os. The name cat is short for concatenate and was originally written to join many files sequentially to form one large file. For example:

The cat command has a few useful options. Option -n displays line numbers.

Option -s squeezes multiple blank lines into a single blank line, while option -v displays nonprinting characters visibly. A file containing control characters can look a mess when displayed on the screen; worse, it can put the terminal into a peculiar mode.

Command vis provides a better way of dealing with control characters, being written specifically to display nonvisible characters. To illustrate, let's display a file that contains four control characters: Control-a, Control-b, Control-c, and Control-d.

The output generated by vis has each nonvisible character represented by a unique sequence of visible characters. Because the sequences are unique, this human-readable output can be turned back into its original binary form. The unvis command does just this, taking the output from vis and restoring the original file—handy when you need to process or transmit a file in which control characters might cause problems. We might redirect the output from vis to the file safe, which is transmitted and then used as the input to unvis, thereby re-creating the original file contents.

Use the cat command as a simple filter to tidy up a messy file. We can remove unnecessary blank lines from a file by using the following commands.

Note that this places the cleaned-up contents of messy.txt in a new file called tmp, and then replaces the original file by renaming tmp to messy.txt. As discussed in Project 6, trying to redirect output back into the original input file can trash the file or cause an infinite loop.

Make a Hard Copy

Printing is beyond the scope of this book, but it's worth mentioning a few key commands. The lp command sends a document to the printer, using CUPS (Common Unix Printing System, a resource built into OS X since version 10.3) to handle print jobs.

The pr command formats pages before they are printed, adding a timestamp header to the top of each page. Option -l sets the number of lines per page, and option -F ensures that multi-page documents print correctly. Pipe the output from pr to lp to print the formatted document.

The less Pager

Type less followed by a filename to displays the file's contents one page at a time. The less Mini chess 5x5 mac os. command is not an editor; it will only display files.

The less command provides a very quick way of flicking through a file. It doesn't wait for the entire file to load before displaying the first page, so it's faster than using an editor to view a file. You can page through the file by pressing the spacebar. Search for a specific pattern by typing /pattern and then pressing Return. Press n to move to the next occurrence of the pattern and N to move to the previous occurrence. Press q to quit less. Read the man page for less: It has many options and navigation keystrokes, and will take some reading. To save you time, the most useful features are summarized below.

Navigation

Use the following keystrokes to move forward and backward through the file:

• space and b to move forward and back a page at a time
• d and u to move down and up a half-page
• Down arrow and up arrow to move forward and back a line at a time
• Right arrow and left arrow to scroll horizontally
• ng to move to line number n (for example, type 11g to go to line 11)
• g and G to move to the beginning and end of the file
• n% to move n% of the way through the file
• /pattern Return to search forward for lines containing a pattern
• ?pattern Return to search backward for lines containing a pattern
• n and N to search for the next and previous occurrences of a pattern
• :e filename to examine (view) another file
• :n and :p to view the next and previous file when less is given more than one file to view (like less *.txt)
• Control-g to display a status line
• R to repaint (handy if the file being viewed is changing)
• h to display a help screen
• q to quit less

Options

Here are some of the more useful options:

• -a causes a search to resume from the last line displayed, rather than from the last match—handy when a single page shows many matches.
• -i causes less to ignore case when searching for strings unless the search pattern contains uppercase characters. So /hello matches hello and Hello, but /Hello matches only Hello.
• -M says to display a long prompt on the last line. The prompt can be customized; see the man page for less and search for ^PROMPTS to find the relevant section.
• -N displays a line number preceding each line of the file.
• -Q says shhhh! and stops less from ever dinging that annoying terminal bell.

Specify options to less in one of three ways:

• On the command line as usual.
• Interactively while viewing a file. S imply type an option like -a to toggle it on and off.
• In the environment variable LESS. When less is invoked, it assumes that the options listed in the environment variable LESS were actually passed on the command line.

Use Bookmarks

Set a bookmark so you can flip to the marked point in the file at any time. To set a mark, type m followed immediately by any lowercase letter from a to z. (You can have as many as 26 bookmarks per file). To return to a mark from elsewhere in the file, type ‘ (the single-quote character) followed immediately by the bookmark letter. Type ‘' (two single quotes) to flip between the last two bookmarks.

more or less

A Unix pager called more was a forerunner of less. It doesn't have half the features of less and cannot move backward when viewing a file. Unix under Mac OS X recognizes command more, but all it does is invoke less. So remember, more is less, less is more than more, and more is less than less!

Philosophy 101 Mac Os X

heads or tails

Command head displays the first 10 lines of a file. Specify option -n followed by a number to display a different number of lines. To display the first five lines of the file index.html, we would type

Command tail displays the last 10 lines of a file. Specify option -n followed by a number to display a different number of lines. To display the last few events in the system log file, we would type

Philosophy 101 Mac Os Catalina

View Live Files

The tail command has a few options, the most useful of which, -f and –F Witwatia drive download. , let you monitor continual changes to a file's contents. Use option -f to track files that are continually extended by the addition of appended text. Use option -F to track files as they are rewritten—changed in a text editor or replaced with an updated file that takes its name.

A system log file is a good candidate for tail's -f option. Whenever a line of text is appended to the file, tail displays the new line:

Press Control-c to quit tail.

The Console Application

The Console application in Applications:Utilities:Console.app is the OS X-native equivalent of tail -f.