Hey, thanks for the reply. I think it’s something for me to think about. I have to admit I have this half-crazy idea of Haiku being like the Mac and it influences a lot of my thinking. So it’d probably be something I’d have to ask in the future before deciding to present changes.
Oh boy, it would be great if Haiku got half the Apple Inc’s income for a year. That would allow for some serious contributions. 
P.S. I updated my post to explain my reply. I hope it’s completely clear now. 
If you can have such a half-crazy idea, I can also have one about a fat budget for Haiku. (who works where is completely irrelevant)
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I think you’re completely misunderstanding what I said… I do not work for Apple, nor would I ever plan to attach Haiku to anything corporate, even if I was able to. I do agree Haiku could use more support, and it’d be great, but:
What I was saying or rather trying to say is that I love the Mac and iOS as a fan of the platforms because they have (in my little opinion) the best user experience of computers from the intro of the Lisa to today. And I also like how Palm built things to be usable as well, just like Be. I know some here really love the Amiga to the same extent, but I’ve only tried AROS, and so can’t fairly comment on it. And… the thing called ‘Windows’ is its own subject best left to others to write about. 
(Outside the Mac, I do humbly confess I also like Gnu/Linux in the right setting. Void and Slackware are really great… Debian is not as good as it once was, imho, but it works. Outside of the open edition of RISC OS, Gnu/Linux runs quite well on Raspberry Pi. Systemd is awful and removes user freedom, but there’s still systemd-free flavors out there, and I happen to tinker with a small one. The day systemd is forced on everyone is the day I quit using Linux for good, whether Haiku is at R1 by then or not. But overall, Haiku is better made, has a better community and spirit, and is getting closer to being a system that can replace it with each year. And I’m super excited about that idea — but things like webcams, phone tethering, etc. still don’t work yet. LibreOffice 6 is a huge plus. But being really openly honest, I still tinker with stuff on and use Linux alongside Haiku and Mac because it’s just better supported on my hardware. Several machines do run Haiku as their sole operating system. So I really do like Haiku. But it needs more time before it can replace Linux totally on all the hardware I use. It’s getting closer, but not there yet. And I will continue to write about Haiku alongside Linux, believing it will reach the point of being a full replacement in the future.)
But in getting back to Mac, in my mind, I still think of BeOS as “one candidate for being OS X”. And the similarities between the two in the functional and visual sense which make the Be OS a cousin to Macintosh. The square, lefty close buttons and window management are a lot like the classic Mac, as one example. And with the iconic Gasseè having built Be, it gives the feeling of BeOS being a ‘Mac cousin’ more credence in my mind.
But… that’s also the problem with my state of thought. I do see real areas where Haiku can improve in terms of OOB and UX, and think in general, this would be great, but it could just be me wanting to give Haiku a Mac-like touch with more blue, etc. Yes, we need more ‘welcome’ tools and more focus on accessibility, as well as the ability to run different shells — even if just from the browser or a host app, since the old desktop feel is so deeply integrated into Haiku. But maybe why I feel I’m not ‘welcome’ to do it is because it would go against how things have been done ‘x’ amount of years.
So again, it’s something to think about because of the Be-Mac thing in my head. And like I said, I think it’s something to talk about in the future. For now, I realize this isn’t the right time to talk about changes. But I hope this makes sense now. I’m sorry if I implied any connection with anyone or anything by accident.
Okay. 
Sorry about the rigid, ranting nature of my post; I just didn’t want anyone thinking I was someone I wasn’t, etc. just in case I gave the wrong impression. It’s all totally clear now, (and dreaming of a bigger budget is definitely exciting). 
Hopefully all’s good again. 
Your hope is far-stretched because we take many things for granted. Haiku shows promise, but it actually needs a huge amount of work to become a viable operating system for the masses.
- The OS itself needs more work compared to others, and then there’s a ton of hardware requiring drivers.
- People need programs for entertainment first, and someone has to port it or build it.
- People need programs for productivity, and LibreOffice barely scratches the surface in that department because productivity means a lot more than documents and databases.
- People need programs for development, and although there are quite a few tools for this, the (semi-)professional tools are still missing. Even the programming languages and the various servers need porting for the most part.
Sure there’s hope, but realistically Haiku needs a clever strategy to make development as fun as possible while doing the right things in the right order to help accelerate the development of the other missing components.
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- Drivers are indeed a big problem.
- Entertainment is pretty much covered on the application side. We have video players, audio players, most SDL games and lots of emulators. The games library is still small compared to Windows, but there isn’t much that can be done about that until Haiku starts attracting companies making commercial proprietary games.
- This is also an area that is dominated by commercial proprietary software. Nobody can port Sai, Maya, FL Studio, Cubase etc except the owners.
- We have IDEs like Qt Creator. More languages would be nice, but otherwise it’s looking pretty good.
systemd is great. With it Linux finally manages to mount my usb sticks without me needing root access, crashed services are monitored and restarted, and I could rewrite crappy hundred lines init scripts into5 line files that my app users can actually understand and fix themselves. It is similar to launchd in macos and launch daemon in Haiku, and is an importantstep in making Linux usable on desktop machines. It is a flexible and versatile piece of software, and definitely not taking away user freedom, unless by this you mean “I want to micromanage every process that runs on my computer, even if the result is slower and more broken”
Back on topic: Haiku isn’t trying to be another macOS. It is similar in spirit but brings in alot of extra things on its own and borrowed from other places. There is room for improvement, as long as it is not about blindly copying macOS, but carefully reviewing each of their innovations and deciding wether it fitswith our UX or not.
I’m surprised how people praise the macOS gui when to me, after all those years it still looks and feels like a Frankeinstein of classic macOS and NeXTstep. Both are great, but mixing them together does not make something better.
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I’d say huge. My 2.5-year-old PC (Skylake-based) can’t even boot a Haiku stick - it restarts in less than a second, not even being able to display anything. I need a powerful PC to handle all my shenanigans, so it doesn’t matter my old PCs can handle Haiku, considering I can’t do even light virtualization on Haiku.
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Media consumption is very important for people. But even the much popular Raspberry Pi can’t officially play Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu and other web-based streaming services requiring the widevine plugin - proprietary. So the web support, with as many browsers as possible, has become essential nowadays - which is tied to networking support, which still hurts. And gaming is another important thing the users need, which would make Wine a serious target to port to Haiku. Along with decent video drivers, it could serve some quality entertainment.
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True, not even Mac OS X has all the bells and whistles in production-grade software. This is an almost impossible nut to crack, so at least the open source/free software “look-alikes” should be ported for those who can compromise.
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It seems pretty good, until the developers get picky about the tools they are comfortable and productive with. Atom, Sublime, Visual Studio Code, Brackets, NetBeans, Eclipse, various JetBrains IDEs, and more. And then servers, debuggers, testing and CI&CD tools… it’s a long and tiresome list.
And then a lot of other unrelated software that make our lives safer, better and/or more fun. And yet, I still have hope for Haiku. 
More so now than 10 years ago, I have to admit.
We can have our separate opinions on systemd; I know it has gained realms of support. I’m opposed to what it’s doing to Gnu/Linux, for various and real reasons. If you happen to like what it has done, great. I agree to disagree on this.
Right. And this is where I seriously need to think about what I’d like to do versus what the right thing to do would be. I’m sane enough to realize that though they have closeness in some places, they are really different overall. The Mac would have a visible impact on my thinking. I don’t know if I’d borrow from it outright, but I can say it definitely is an influence. Maybe once I have time to spend on playing with Haiku, I might put together a demo image for fun with my changes, let everyone evaluate and peer through it, and see what everyone thinks about it before proposing any changes to actual Haiku. Or I could just zip up files with changes for review. I don’t know, really. I’d really need to think about it all first. But I do know Dano had pulsing animations in it.
I created a MacOSX dock replica for Haiku (still in beta, written in Qt/QML):
full-screen-shot-HiQDock
Read more here:
HiQDock … New Dock coming soon
Still don’t have a .hpkg for it (but if you install the Qt4 dependency it should work on latest nightlies) - contact me if you want to test it out.
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It would be great to be able to install it from the depot. You started working on it 3 years ago and not being packaged 3 years later I fear that it will never be easy to install in Haiku. It looks great, so I hope you’ll manage to release it as a package, even in beta. 
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It’s getting to the point where all this talk about a “beta release” is itself leading to media interest. So it might be necessary to make a release even if it is just to satisfy the public expectation:
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Hmm… that’s a very good point. Making new packages before the first Haiku beta is released is an opportunity to reach a new wave of users once they start testing and tinkering with the operating system. I guess I’d better shape up and finish my first Yabasic program soon, and learn how to package it.
No access to the article unless I either accept their cookies or make a donation. This website is illegal 
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<joke>Let’s make Haiku illegal, everybody likes illegal software. Download counter jumps as high as Mount Everset.</joke>
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You just have to click “Learn more” (not exactly ideal), then “Save & Exit”.
Thanks for the info about LibreOffice.
What I most appreciate about Haiku is that it presents other ways of interacting with a computer and doing things. These ways so happens to be attuned to my work flow for getting things done.
As an user, I have to accept that enjoying and productively using Haiku means leaving some of the stuff from Android, iOS/MacOS, and Windows behind.
Projects like porting LibreOffice to Haiku and replicating features from other operating systems like HiQDock are important and worthwhile. However, their existence is not what brings me to Haiku. It is a promise of a better way to create and manage content than via drives, files, and folders.
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I saw a website that states you must be over 80 years old to visit it. It is their usage policy
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Same here with my Coffee Lake PC, can’t boot at all. But I thought at least Skylake would work, that’s odd.
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I don’t know anything about streaming services. Do they require specialized browser plugins, or just a better browser? As for Wine, it sounds great in theory, but my experience with it has been that most applications are broken. Also, on Linux, Wine tends to leave a mess in the application menu, and fullscreen games tend to crash and leave you in a low resolution. It would be a useful addition, but personally I would be leaning more toward virtualization for running Windows-only games.
Four. I played around a little bit with Qt Creator the other day and it looked to me like it could be used for any kind of C/C++ project even without Qt, without too much trouble. Then there’s at least two other Qt/KDE-based IDEs and a few native ones. I’m still not that familiar with this though, and I can see that if someone has an affinity for say Visual Studio, it might be annoying to not have it available.