Slashdot Mirror
MacOS In A World w/ 2 Microsofts
Peter Lalor writes: "Here's a possible future scenario that I wrote after hearing of Judge Penfield Jackson's decision to break up Microsoft." It doesn't predict rosey things for Linux either, but it's probably not totally far fetched.
Based solely on the article's basic premise, I see things slightly differently (My personal premises differ from the article's, but...)
TODAY:
Next few years:
1) MS splits. It does not disappear. Absent a totally egregious business policy, Windows will continue to predominate, but due to its huge market share, the 'leakage' causes a rebirth across all the minor OSs
2) MacOS predominates in certain populations of defecting users: non-ideologically driven; non-tech; early familiarity with Mac; scared by the geek rep of Unix; etc. MacOS blooms.
3) Linux/BSD continues explosive market growth, aided by porting of MS-Office, *and* its explosive feature and function growth. Linux changes more in a year than MacOs does in 3. From a User POV, the jump from original Mac to MacOs X (20 years) is comparable or *less* than Linux in '93-'00.
4) Not only does Linux continue its proven growth pattern, but MacOS and Windows continue theirs. FUD is smeared liberally by both Win *and* Mac as MacOS finds that being BSD-like works both ways: they borrowed a large body of work, but cannot do anything BSD cannot rapidly learn to do, due to the similarity in underlying platform.
5) Some Geeks get over themselves and create UIs that deliberately and slavishly mimick the Win and Mac UI, perhaps creating a hybrid that is not too similar to either (for legal reasons), but can be configured with a template to resemble either. They are shunned and mocked by all. They blow the doors off everyone else in the Linux market (The CLI is still available under the removable and configurable GUI) Mac and Windows are scared -- major lawsuits, but Open Source provides few targets. IP laws are critical.
Finally, my personal invention: a speculative concept that could save the world - LISTEN UP!
6) Fortunately, the "many eyes make all bugs shallow" principle is used to find prior art and legal arguments. A vaguely CVS-like 'legal argument tracking' system emerges, to permit community assistance to OpenSource legal teams. This is later expanded to create structured data and argument views of public issues in general.
Bad data can be pruned, mutually contradictory arguments indicated, etc. (maintanance and 'approval is a problem, but multi-editors can work on the same tree with their notations and emendations visible together or individually [e.g. 'Stallman view', 'Perens view', View Diff (Gore/Bush; Katz/Roblimo) etc.]
This tool is widely disparaged, except by geeks (but is used by the politically active is private) However, for all the mocking, it becomes very hard to debate these geeks. Whiny choolyard cries of "Hey, no fair using your PDA!" are heard on televised debates.
Slashdot posts transcripts computer-computer debates using different trees or tree views. For the first time, the majority of contributions on Slashdot are "insightful" because trolling a script that can logically thrash you to your skivvies in microseconds is simply no fun
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
In a nutshell, what it sounds like you're saying is that there's no particularly high barrier to entry in what Apple has done with a core BSD system -- that the open source organization could duplicate it in a matter of months.
Please explain to me then why it hasn't happened yet. The Mac has been around for 16 years. BSD has been around in various forms just as long (and 10 years longer in its antecedents). If it's so darned easy to do, then explain where the easy to use, user friendly, robust User Interface is for Linux/BSD/etc.
The fact that there ISN'T one flies in the face of your contention that a loosely organized collection of open source hackers can outperform a highly motivated, focused, and well-organized team of commercial O/S developers. It's a nice dream, but the mythical man-month still prevails. 500 part-time Linux hackers will never outperform 50 dedicated commercial O/S engineers because they simply cannot organize and motivate themselves to the same degree.
And the ultimate issue is this. Perhaps the Linux community CAN organize itself and produce just such a product (compressing 14 years of UI R&D into 24 months). But in a couple of years, how much market share is irretrievably gone? And now Linux (in 2002) is where mainstream operating systems were in 1995 in terms of usability. Do the lines ever cross again or is Linux doomed to be perpetually behind the innovation curve?
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
The Microsoft Applications Company drops all support for the Macintosh. They view it as a fringe platform that can't generate enough revenue to justify continued support of Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Office. The programmers are redeployed to more profitable Windows projects. Microsoft executives later reveal that they only spent money on Macintosh development because of antitrust considerations. They needed to be able to point to the Macintosh as proof that Microsoft did not have a monopoly on desktop computer operating systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well, this was nicely biased by the President of "The San Francisco Bay Area's Macintosh Consultant and Internet Service Provider"
I have to disagree with this quite vehemently. Not because I love Linux (which I do) or because I hate the MacOS X (which I don't). But the author seems to be assuming that OS'es are a one-size-fits-all-trust-us-we-know-what's-best-for -you deal.
Number one, Mac OS X might look nice, it might even have some nice technology, but you're still stuck under the thumbs of people who think that an operating system should limit you to what they think you should do.
You can run Apache, yes. Even bash, zsh, tcsh, I'm sure. But that's not what customization means. As a desktop OS, Linux shines because, given a little time, it can be customized to suit your environment better than any closed OS. At my workplace, my team of programmers uses exclusively FreeBSD and Linux. We're at least 5 times faster than the market at delivering products. Why? Because we know how to customize our systems for what we're doing.
Finally, just because Apple released a portion of the kernel under an pseudo-open source licence, doesn't mean that it's free for us to do what we will. The windowing system is still locked down, and we're still expected to fit into the desktop paradigm, that Apple's UI people have come up with.
With Linux, some people run Gnome, some KDE, some Enlightenment, etc. etc. This is freedom. This is thinking outside the box. MacOS X is a box.
Would we honestly want to be stuck inside one?
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
The problem is that once again, people underestimate how much of Apple's income comes from their hardware. Apple makes nearly nothing off of OS sales. That's one reason new versions of the OS are relatively cheap compared to a full copy of NT or Win2K. Apple gets all its money from the hardware sales.
It's been demonstrated many times in the past that your average consumer will go for low price over high performance. If Apple ported Mac OS X to Intel, you can kiss their PPC machine sales goodbye. People would install the system on $500 PCs and say to heck with a $1000 iMac in spite of the nice color.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a Mac user and a major Apple supporter, but this article is nothing but seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. I do think Mac OS X will eat into Linux sales somewhat, because it is a viable Unix platform all to itself, in the end it may boost Linux sales as people get interested in using the command line provided.
I think Apple's best chance for domination is to reinstate the Yellow Box (now Cocoa) APIs for Windows. With no Office leverage to fear for making apps easier to port between Mac and Windows, it would be the best way to encourage software to be written for both platforms.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm mystified by the assertion that Mac OS X on Intel hardware can magically solve hardware problems that Windows can't. How does this work? I can't remember the last time I even *had* an IRQ problem on a PC that wasn't cause by me deliberately trying to run two ISA devices on the same IRQ. That newish machines with PCI devices running semi-current Windows have IRQ problems is just really far off base.
I also think the other assertions are more the author's prejudicial opinion than any solid factual representation. We have several satellite offices where I work that have Macs and PCs -- the Mac people are *always* in need of some consultant to fix some INIT/CDEV snafu or some other MacOS lunacy. The PC machines have problems, but nothing that isn't simply solved or that can't wait for the semi-annual office tuneup visit.
You don't like the way it looks and you don't know how to operate it? I think now we're getting down to brass tacks. My benchmark for ease of use is my wife, a marketing executive, who can't figure out the microwave. She switched from a Mac to a PC with a job change about 3.5 years ago and her comment on it was "What's the big deal? The buttons look different, but basically do the same thing. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out the differences."
I must say, though, that this was pretty neat fan fiction...
Yeah, a Microsoft breakup will likely help Apple gain a bit more market share on the desktop and will make OS X for Intel a viable product, especially given its "fat binary" support for "hybrid" executable files.
But Mac OS X as a server OS has a key weakness: its nonstandard GUI. The easy, intuitive, and now stable GUI that Apple has put on top of OS X isn't built out of X Window.
It's a single-user GUI tied to local hardware despite the Unix running underneath. So at this point in time, remote administration of a Mac OS X machine needs to be done either with a destablizing, single-user remote control program like Timbuktu, or with the Unix command line. And not incidentally, OS X's BSD dialect is a pretty odd one, with a directory structure only an old NeXT-head from ten years back could love.
Furthermore, though Darwin, the non-graphical core of OS X, is open-source and free, OS X isn't. The most bug-prone, destablizing parts of OS X, which sysadmins raised on BSD and Linux would most want to be able to review and fix themselves, are closed and proprietary.
In addition, the Mac's well-deserved reputation for low-fuss plug-and-play hardware support comes largely from the Mac's closed, circumscribed world and its strictly limited selection of hardware. Putting Mac OS, whether the old one or OS X, on standard Intel hardware throws this out the window. Mac OS X will do no better at handling 700 disk controllers, 800 graphics chipsets, thousands of Ethernet cards and so forth than Windows and Linux do. And anyone who's spent much time with Macs lately knows that Apple's USB support is cranky and idiosyncratic to say the least, with vast numbers of devices that won't work off USB hubs or chained off the keyboard, even with external power.
About the only worthwhile insight in that silly little essay is that Mac OS X for Intel might be viable. Though unless Apple starts selling Intel hardware themselves, it's not likely to see the light of day, since Apple appears to be focused on making its money from hardware, not software: note the low price points for MacOS, AppleShare IP Server and now WebObjects. Netting $25 per copy for the sale of a boxed MacOS is a drop in the bucket once you factor in the cost of providing support.
Yes this is accurate. MS Office didn't exist until much later. MS held off on several important pieces of software for the Mac OS in exchange for licensing of technology. This software includes MS Word (first for Mac), MS Excel (also first for Mac), MS File, and a entry-level visual programming language for beginners. You know, all the foundations for what would later become Office in the later days of Windows development, the early- to mid-90s.
In fact, one of the things MS also held off on Word and Excel for was the rights to be the vendor of a visual BASIC development environment for the Mac. Apple had been developing their own, but MS howled for the rights to be the sole vendor or else. Apple dropped theirs, MS never came out with theirs until much later and then dropped it due to lack of interest, and a frustrated Apple developer name Bill Atkinson came up with Hypercard as a substitute in the mean time.
The history of this and many other MS dirty dealings can be found at Mackido, under the history section. It's a fine site which has unfortunately been very infrequently updated since the author got a job writing for MacWEEK.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
SAN FRANCISCO (AP): Today, June 10 2001, local Macintosh consultant Peter Lalor was eaten by penguins. He was seen clinging to a piece of blue fruit, screaming something that witnesses say sounded like "save me, Steve!"
.0000001 point immediately thereafter.
The NASDAQ went up by
--
This article is a bit amusing, but nothing more. A scenario dreamt up by some guy who was thinking "hey, what if." - I'm sure if you check everything he's ever written, there's probably a "what if we killed hitler" essay in there somewhere.
:) - Next, you've got the OS that "replaced" it, or "defeated" it or what have you...Windows. Why? Because it was very easy to use, but there was also a lot of depth, at least a lot more than with MacOS. Joe User had no problem just clicking on stuff, while the developers and geeks out there could really sink their teeth into it (at least much more so than with MacOS). Now, we've got this crazy new OS..."well honey, i think it's called Linux." It's easy to use, with GNOME or KDE, the end user really doesn't have to figure out why or how it works, they just know they can double click on an icon to get online. But here's the part that's really cool - it's REALLY in depth, and it's YOURS!!! Geeks and hackers and developers, and even just the curious can really get under the hood to see what's going on. And that's the best part! You see the trend here. MacOS took computers and made them easy to use, and slightly technical. Windows made them even easier, and even more technical. Linux is taking both of those concepts one step further. Which OS is going to dominate in years to come???
First off, MacOS is dying. Sorry guys, but that's the simple fact. I applaud the Mac user base for sticking with it. I used to be a mac guy myself, then a windows guy (shortly), and now a linux/bsd guy. But there are limits to how much one OS can take, and do. While we can sit and quibble about the specifics and the logistics of the OS, one can't deny that unless OS X is to operating systems what the original Voodoo was to graphics cards...there's not going to be much for Mac except the hardcore userbase, the graphics market, and...well...that's about it.
As for Micros~1 Winders. First of all, even a fast track to the supreme court and everything going against MS probably wouldn't see them broken up untill 2002 or possibly even later. And that's *WITH* everything going wrong for them. A lot can happen in that amount of time. OS X will be out, and most likely *not* on the intel platform. (Remember one of the things that really hurt apple was their refusal to let clones be manufactured.) - They could have done that long ago...hindsight is always 20/20.
Finally, your proposal of where linux is going is pretty off the wall. While most people don't like the command line (i'll certainly agree that joe user doesn't), Window managers such as GNOME and KDE can very easily replace that. Currently, if a user doesn't want to touch a command line using one of the WM's then they don't have to...in a year or two, i expect that Linux will be very easy to use...if you want it to be.
Here's my scenario - see if you can follow. MacOS is older than Windows - the reason people jumped ship (eventually at least) is because of the depth of the OS. Sure MacOS is better for joe user because it's simple. There's one mouse button...but there really isn't a hell of a lot of hacking that can be done aside from maybe resedit
I suppose the years to come will let us know.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Yeah...
Good thing none of the Linux advocates have a vested interest in the success of Linux.