The analogy of OS as cars (Windows is a station wagon, Linux is a tank) is brought up in the recent Acquired episode on Microsoft, where Vista was a Dodge Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry, which is what users actually wanted.
The analogy of OS as cars (Windows is a station wagon, Linux is a tank) is brought up in the recent Acquired episode on Microsoft, where Vista was a Dodge Viper but Windows 7 was a Toyota Camry, which is what users actually wanted.
"I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of 'In the beginning was the command line' is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely."
https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-...
But people still dredge this quarter century old apocrypha up and use it to pat themselves on the back for being Linux users. "I use a Hole Hawg! I drive a tank! I'm not like those other fellows because I'm a real hacker!"
I also primarily use Windows and don't have a dog in the fight you mentioned. I might actually dislike Linux more than OSX, though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS.
Linux and the UNIX derivates are not even cousins. Not related. Not even the same species. They just both look like crabs a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation.
Setting aside the "more BSD/Mach than Linux", OS X pressed a lot of the same buttons that BeOS did: a GUI system that let you drop to a Unix CLI (in Be's case, Posix rather than Unix, if we're going to be persnickety), but whose GUI was sufficiently complete that users rarely, if ever, had to use the CLI to get things done. Folks who love the CLI (hi, 99% of HN!) find that attitude baffling and shocking, I'm sure, but a lot of people really don't love noodling with text-based UIs. I have friends who've used the Mac for decades -- and I don't mean just use it for email and web browsing, but use it for serious work that generates the bulk of their income (art, desktop publishing, graphic design, music, A/V editing, etc.) -- who almost never open the Terminal app.
> though it has been quite a while since I've seriously used the one-button OS
Given that OS X has supported multi-button mice since 2001, I certainly believe that. :)
And since MacOS 8 before that...
The trouble with the original MacOS was that the underlying OS was a cram job to fit into 128Kb, plus a ROM. It didn't even have a CPU dispatcher, let alone memory protection. So it scaled up badly. That was supposed to be fixed in MacOS 8, "Copeland", which actually made it out to some developers. But Copeland was killed so that Apple could hire Steve Jobs, for which Apple had to bail out the Next failure.
Of course, this belief probably had no downsides or negative consequences, other than hurting my brain, which they probably did not regard as a significant problem.
So, "zero shared lineage" seems like a very strong statement.