Two Years of Mac OS X

The second anniversary of Apple's new operating system is coming up on the 24th, five more days. Not only has it been a fun operating system, with movies and multimedia, and the internet made easy, but also it has been the programmer's own kind of computer.

Inside your own computer you have the capability to do CGI scripts, databases, and anything they have included in the massive combination of commands:

Maybe it is the fun that makes us play, but some of us have tried something like typing javascript:alert('Ping!') into our web browser, instead of a URL--and the result shows us that we have created our own alert message.

The operating system has finally "learned" to print, to work with diverse computers, to cooperate in networks--or perhaps it took time for us to catch up.

From a few applications small enough to fit on an activist's web page to thousands that would take a priest years of study to comprehend, the existence of Mac OS X has been fully confirmed by the things people have done with it. And what else should any computer be for? It is a computer for ourselves, our business, our play, our fun.

Suddenly in the middle of a conversation it seems appropriate to make crude Unix jokes: it's a part of ourselves. Or it seems funny to talk about the security vulnerability that didn't affect our computer, then switch to the Anne Geddes wallpaper our sister downloaded. It's all in the same conversation; it's all in the same operating system.