It's not nostalgia. It's the software industry; and Apple. If they do not keep writing needless code and mindlessly adding features and then _forcing_ you to use their software (you are not given a choice; hello Apple), they become less important. The focus then (properly) becomes Moore's Law.
And your machine gets more and more powerful. That comes from the hardware. Software does not add more power. It drains power.
But you will not likely see much of the gains from Moore's Law as a home user; you only see "new" software. The software industry will be the ones who get the benefit of hardware advances. They will promptly usurp all the gains for themselves to make their bloated software capable of running. Writing power hungry programs is perfectly acceptable (I love writing code) BUT _forcing_ people to use it is not cool. Users are not often given a choice to keep using "yesterday's" software (even if it still works). Even if it would let them see the gains from Moore's Law. That is a travesty. Keep staring at the beachball. Life is good.
We've had decades to observe software development and it's clear that software does not have an equivalent to Moore's Law.
Let us buy the Apple hardware without the Apple software. Let us install our own software if we so choose. Now, behold as people try to argue against this. But they are only arguing against options and choice. What is the harm in giving people the option to install their own OS? If anything without the Apple brand is so terrible then surely no one would opt for it. So no harm done. You never know, they might actually be able to sell lots of hardware this way. "Average consumers" are not the only ones who spend lots of money on hardware.
Apple has taken a decent system (free UNIX) and ruined it. They have made it unusuable for anyone who has any idea of how fast computers SHOULD be.
I'm not sure who "we" is anymore. Smart people like yourself would not do many of the things we're seeing done. I think it's within your power to control the slippage at least starting with you. Again, the word is "tolerance". When will you say "Enough. No mas."?
If you need one, I'm happy to send you a UNIX (or simple instructions on how to build one) that does not have the complexity of Ubuntu but runs just as fast and does all the same stuff, sans the gratuitous GUI's. You can always add GUI layers later if you want them. My guess is you won't once you see how much faster things are, and how few processes you need to be running at any given time.
Technically. If you consider The Open Group as some sort of authority. But Apple's OSX shows how meaningless it is to recieve the expensive POSIX "certification" from The Open Group. Alas, there is nothing in the spec about having to actually perform. Nothing that requires clean design or reliability, let alone transparency. I mean, if you want to use UNIX for a commercial product, by all means go ahead, but the least you could do is not ruin it.
"Certified UNIX". Pure marketing. Apple has the budget. There are vastly better UNIX implementations (from which Apple has borrowed copiously) that will never be certified. Go figure.
From where I sit, the most talented coders always seem to hold the POSIX specifications in spite. They do not like them. OSX is proof that they are not being unreasonable by taking that view.
To be clear, I'm not endorsing GNU/Linux. That is a whole 'nother story of UNIX gone bad.
Tolerance. I guess I just have less of it. Machines are faster now than they were back then and I am not going to tolerate slow response time just for the sake of the latest version of an OS. Windows is the same game. Upgrade, again and agina and again. All the while, no speed gain. I once worked for a guy who said, "Software is like a gas. It expands to fill space." Nowadays I use UNIX exclusively, as much as I can. Whenever I have to use Windows or Mac it slows me down. With UNIX, I can keep the software expansion contained and enjoy the speed gains as hardware improves.
Everything with computers is a trade-off. I'm happy to make some trade-offs and forgo whatever Cupertino is hawking in order to have flexibility and speed like the "good ole days".
Pretty sure it's not a troll. He's pretty well known for his writings on search engines. It's a sign of the times when longtime Mac users are complaining. That's how bad things have gotten.
I've watched people struggle like he's describing. Too many upgrades. Too many authorizations. Too many restrictions. They are jumping through hoop after hoop just to do basic stuff. If they are young they probably don't know any better. But for anyone who has been around, this has gotten to be a joke.
If you have stuck with Apple over the long haul, then you remember what it was like before OSX. When OSX was first introduced you had to upgrade your Mac hardware just to run it or it would be dog slow. Then it got better over time as we all upgraded but it has gradually become more and more annoying. How many people are staring at a spinning beachball at this very moment? Trying to appeal to PC users, all the Mac vs PC nonsense. Then trying to lock down people's music and other files and make them "subscribers", like they are some sort of media licensing company. Apple is no longer an alternative to the typical computer hassles. They have become a primary source of them!
But only if you have been using Macs for many years can you see this. Noobs and fanboys are not going to notice. They will wait minutes for their Mac to boot and stare endlessly at the beachball and accept that this is "fast, start-of-the-art computing".
While noobs suffer through iPhoto staring at beachballs, I will boot in seconds and process my photos, running in a background process, in half the time, using a more traditional UNIX without the Cocoa cruft. No hassles.
http://netbsd.org http://freebsd.org http://openbsd.org http://dragonflybsd.org
They all borrow from each other. They even borrow from Apple sometimes.
As for what has been copied, you simply need to read the source code.