What is the meaning of life? How can purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life be found? How can something of lasting significance be achieved? Many people have never stopped to consider these important questions. They look back years later and wonder why their relationships have fallen apart and why they feel so empty, even though they may have achieved what they set out to accomplish. An athlete who had reached the pinnacle of his sport was once asked what he wished someone would have told him when he first started playing his sport. He replied, 'I wish that someone would have told me that when you reach the top, there's nothing there.' Many goals reveal their emptiness only after years have been wasted in their pursuit.
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- In our humanistic culture, people lose sight of the meaning of life. They pursue many things, thinking that in them they will find meaning and purpose. Some of these pursuits include business success, wealth, good relationships, sex, entertainment, and doing good to others.
- Life comprises individuals, living beings, assignable to groups (taxa). Each individual is composed of one or more minimal living units, called cells, and is capable of transformation of carbon -based and other compounds (metabolism), growth, and participation in reproductive acts.
In our humanistic culture, people lose sight of the meaning of life. They pursue many things, thinking that in them they will find meaning and purpose. Some of these pursuits include business success, wealth, good relationships, sex, entertainment, and doing good to others. People have testified that, while they achieved their goals of wealth, relationships, and pleasure, there was still a deep void inside, a feeling of emptiness that nothing seemed to fill.
The author of the book of Ecclesiastes looked for the meaning of life in many vain pursuits. He describes the feeling of emptiness he felt: 'Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless' (Ecclesiastes 1:2). King Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, had wealth beyond measure, wisdom beyond any man of his time or ours, hundreds of women, palaces and gardens that were the envy of kingdoms, the best food and wine, and every form of entertainment available. He said at one point that anything his heart wanted, he pursued (Ecclesiastes 2:10). And yet he summed up life 'under the sun'—life lived as though all there is to life is what we can see with our eyes and experience with our senses—is meaningless. What explains this void? God created us for something beyond what we can experience in the here-and-now. Solomon said of God, 'He has also set eternity in the hearts of men' (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In our hearts we are aware that the 'here-and-now' is not all that there is.
Life The Game
In the book of Genesis, we find a clue to the meaning of life in the fact that God created mankind in His image (Genesis 1:26). This means that we are more like God than we are like anything else. We also find that, before mankind fell and the curse of sin came upon the earth, the following things were true: 1) God made man a social creature (Genesis 2:18–25); 2) God gave man work (Genesis 2:15); 3) God had fellowship with man (Genesis 3:8); and 4) God gave man dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26). These facts have significance related to the meaning of life. God intended mankind to have fulfillment in life, but our condition (especially touching our fellowship with God) was adversely affected by the fall into sin and the resulting curse upon the earth (Genesis 3).The book of Revelation shows that God is concerned with restoring the meaning of life to us. God reveals that He will destroy this present creation and create a new heaven and a new earth. At that time, He will restore full fellowship with redeemed mankind, while the unredeemed will have been judged unworthy and cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11–15). The curse of sin will be done away with; there will be no more sin, sorrow, sickness, death, or pain (Revelation 21:4). God will dwell with mankind, and they shall be His children (Revelation 21:7). Thus, we come full circle: God created us to have fellowship with Him; man sinned, breaking that fellowship; God restores that fellowship fully in the eternal state. To go through life achieving everything we set out to achieve only to die separated from God for eternity would be worse than futile! But God has made a way to not only make eternal bliss possible (Luke 23:43) but also life on earth satisfying and meaningful. How is this eternal bliss and 'heaven on earth' obtained?
The meaning of life restored through Jesus Christ
The real meaning of life, both now and in eternity, is found in the restoration of our relationship with God. This restoration is only possible through God's Son, Jesus Christ, who reconciles us to God (Romans 5:10; Acts 4:12; John 1:12; 14:6). Salvation and eternal life are gained when we trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. Once that salvation is received by grace through faith, Christ makes us new creations, and we begin the progressive journey of growing closer to Him and learning to rely on Him.
The meaning of life is wrapped up in the glory of God. In calling His elect, God says, 'Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them' (Isaiah 43:7, NLT). The reason we were made is for God's glory. Any time we substitute our own glory for God's, we miss the meaning of life. 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it' (Matthew 16:24–25). 'Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart' (Psalm 37:4).
The road behind
Mac OS X 10.0 was released five years ago today, on March 24th, 2001. To me, it felt like the end of a long road rather than a beginning. At that point, I'd already written over 100,000 words about Apple's new OS for Ars Technica, starting with the second developer release and culminating in the public beta several months before 10.0. But the road that led to Mac OS X extends much farther into past—years, in fact.
Mac OS X 10.0 was the end of many things. First and foremost, it was the end of one of the most drawn-out, heart-wrenching death spirals in the history of the technology sector. Historians (and Wall Street) may say that it was the iMac, with its fresh, daring industrial design, that marked the turning point for Apple. But that iMac was merely a stay of execution at best, and a last, desperate gasp at worst. By the turn of the century, Apple needed a new OS, and it needed one badly. No amount of translucent plastic was going to change that.
The meaning of life is wrapped up in the glory of God. In calling His elect, God says, 'Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them' (Isaiah 43:7, NLT). The reason we were made is for God's glory. Any time we substitute our own glory for God's, we miss the meaning of life. 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it' (Matthew 16:24–25). 'Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart' (Psalm 37:4).
The road behind
Mac OS X 10.0 was released five years ago today, on March 24th, 2001. To me, it felt like the end of a long road rather than a beginning. At that point, I'd already written over 100,000 words about Apple's new OS for Ars Technica, starting with the second developer release and culminating in the public beta several months before 10.0. But the road that led to Mac OS X extends much farther into past—years, in fact.
Mac OS X 10.0 was the end of many things. First and foremost, it was the end of one of the most drawn-out, heart-wrenching death spirals in the history of the technology sector. Historians (and Wall Street) may say that it was the iMac, with its fresh, daring industrial design, that marked the turning point for Apple. But that iMac was merely a stay of execution at best, and a last, desperate gasp at worst. By the turn of the century, Apple needed a new OS, and it needed one badly. No amount of translucent plastic was going to change that.
Apple was so desperate for a solution to its OS problem in the mid- to late 1990s that both Solaris and Windows NT were considered as possible foundations for the next-generation Mac OS. And even these grim options represented the end of a longer succession of abortive attempts at technological rejuvenation: OpenDoc, QuickDraw 3D, QuickDraw GX, Taligent, Pink, Copland, Gershwin, Dylan—truly, a trail of tears. (If you can read that list without flinching, turn in your Apple Extended Keyboard II and your old-school Mac cred.)
In retrospect, it seems almost ridiculously implausible that Apple's prodigal son, thrown out of the company in 1985, would spend the next twelve years toiling away in relative obscurity on technology that would literally save the company upon his return. (Oh, and he also converted an orphaned visual effects technology lab into the most powerful animation studio in the US—in his spare time, one presumes.)
So yes, Mac OS X marked the end of a dark time in Apple's history, but it was also the end of a decade of unprecedented progress and innovation. In my lifetime, I doubt I will ever experience a technological event that is both as transformative and as abrupt as the introduction of the Macintosh. Literally overnight, a generation of computer users went from a black screen with fuzzy green text and an insistently blinking cursor to crisp, black text on a white background, windows, icons, buttons, scrollbars, menus, and this crazy thing called a 'mouse.' The last soul mac os.
I see a lot more Mac users today than I ever saw in the pre-Mac OS X era, but few of them remember what it was like in the beginning. They've never argued with someone who's insisted that 'only toy computers have a mouse.' They didn't spend years trying to figure out why the world stuck with MS-DOS while they were literally living in the future. They never played the maze. (Dagnabbit!)
AdvertisementToday's Mac users appreciate the refinement, the elegance, the nuances of Mac OS X. Today, the Mac grows on people. Dark scavenger (itch) mac os. It seeps into their consciousness until they either break down and buy one or retreat to familiarity, perhaps to be tempted again later.
The original Mac users had a very different experience. Back then, the Mac wasn't a seductive whisper; it was a bolt of lightning, a wake-up call, a goddamn slap in the face. 'Holy crap! This is it!' Like I said, transformative. For the rest of the computing world, that revelatory moment was paced out over an entire decade. The experience was diluted, and the people were transformed slowly, imperceptibly.
That era ended on March 24th, 2001. Mac OS X 10.0 was the capstone on the Mac-That-Was. It was the end of the ride for the original Mac users. In many ways, it was the end of the Mac. In the subsequent five years (and over 200,000 more words here at Ars), the old world of the Mac has faded into the distance. With it, so have many of the original Mac users. Some have even passedon. Mac OS X 10.0 had a message: the Mac is dead.
Long live the Mac
Mac OS X arose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Mac-That-Was. Okay, maybe more like an injured phoenix. Also, Apple didn't light the bird on fire until a few years later. But still, technically, phoenix-like.
A side-by-side test-drive of Mac OS X 10.0 and 10.4 is shocking. The eternal debate is whether this gap exists because 10.4 is so good, or because 10.0 was so, so bad. That said, Apple's ability to plan and execute its OS strategy is not open for debate. In five short years, Apple has essentially created an entirely new platform. Oh, I know, it's really just the foundation of NeXT combined with the wreckage of classic Mac OS, but I think that makes it even more impressive. Two failing, marginalized platforms have combined to become the platform for the alpha geeks in the new century.
Today's Mac users span a much wider range than those of the past. Mac OS X's Unix-like core reached out to the beard-and-suspenders crowd (and the newer source-code-and-a-dream crowd) while the luscious Aqua user interface pulled all the touchy-feely aesthetes from the other direction. In the middle were the refugees from the Mac-That-Was, but they aren't the story here. Mac OS X is about new blood and new ideas—some good, some bad, but all vibrant. The Mac is alive again!
After spending half my life watching smart, talented people ignore the Mac for reasons of circumstance or prejudice, it's incredibly gratifying to live in a post-Mac OS X world. When I encounter a tech-world luminary or up-and-coming geek today, I just assume that he or she uses a Mac. Most of the time, I'm right. Even those with a conflicting affiliation (e.g., Linux enthusiasts) often use Apple laptops, if not the OS.
AdvertisementIn the media, the Mac and Apple have gone from depressing headlines on the business page to gushing feature stories everywhere. Even traditional strongholds of other platforms have fallen under the translucent fist of Mac OS X. Just look at Slashdot, long a haven for Linux topics, now nearly living up to the frequent accusation that it's become 'an Apple news site.' Here at Ars Technica, the story is similar. The 'PC Enthusiast's Resource' from 1999 is now absolutely swimming in Apple-related content.
As much as I like to think that I brought on this transformation here at Ars with my avalanche of words, the truth is that Mac OS X is responsible. Yes, Apple's shiny hardware helped, but it was the software that finally won over those stubborn PC geeks. It helped that the software was shiny too, but it would have all been for nothing if not for one word: respect.
Santas delivery (hexagonsgalore, melonfarm) mac os. Mac OS X made the alpha geeks respect the Mac. My part, if any, in the transformation of a green-on-black den of PC users into a clean, well-lighted home for Apple news and reviews was merely to explain what Mac OS X is, where it's coming from, and where it appears to be going. The rest followed naturally. It's Unix. It's a Mac. It's pretty, stable, novel, innovative, and different. Mac OS X was powerful geeknip; it still is.
Shindo Life Codes
During the first few years of Mac OS X's life, I began my reviews with a section titled, 'What is Mac OS X?' That seems quaint in retrospect, but it really was necessary back then. (The pronunciation tips contained in those sections might still be useful. Even Steve Jobs still says 'ecks' instead of 'ten' sometimes. He also said 'PowerBook' during the last press event. I'm just saying..'MacBook'? Come on.)
Life Or A Potential Escape Mac Os Download
Today, Mac OS X has achieved escape velocity. After five years and five competently executed major releases, Apple has earned the right to take a little more time with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Users need a break from the upgrade cycle too. (Well, the software upgrade cycle, anyway.) For all my complaints about the Finder, file system metadata, user interface responsiveness, you name it, I've always been rooting for Mac OS X. I've always wanted to believe. After five years, that faith is finally paying off.
Gacha Life
Complacency's not my style, though. I still think Mac OS X can be better, and I continue to hold Apple to a very high standard. I've even got a head start on worrying about Apple's next OS crisis. (See parts one, two, three, and four.) Maybe I've been scarred by Apple's late-1990s dance with death..or maybe I've just learned an important lesson. Maybe Apple has too. I sure hope so, because I don't know if I can go through all that again.
Mac OS X is five years old today. It's got a decade to go before it matches the age of its predecessor, and perhaps longer before it can entirely escape the shadow of the original Mac. But I'm glad I'm along for the ride.