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OS X on x86?
FusionJunky asks: "There has been some talk surrounding Apple's OS X and its potential to be released for the x86 platform. Sites like OSXonIntel.com have been trying to get the message to Apple that we feel the consumers are ready to see OS X on x86 boxes. I'm wondering what the Slashdot community thinks this would do to Apple, would it adversely affect their hardware sales? Could Apple move away from selling G4s from Motorola and start producing Intel Macs. Do you think Apple should release an x86 version of their next gen OS?" We asked earlier whether you felt if Linux would be threatened by OS X, with the possibility of OS X working on x86 machines, has your answer changed?
my icedcappuchino browser wont let me spell beter or use punctuation properly my wordprocessor lets me do those things the worst part is that neither one will let me communicate a cohesive series of thoughts on a given topic
Read here for a shoot-out between OSX and BeOS and why OSX is as BeOS was in 1995!
For more information about BeOS (including Screenshots) click here.
I hate to post anonymously, but I have to to protect an Apple employee.
He's a former coworker of mine who was a Mac Developer as a hobby, but a developer for x86-based middleware apps for a living for quite some time. When our place of work moved away from the projects he was working on, he would up with his "dream job" developing for Apple.
All he has been able to tell us is that is in pretty deep on a project within the OSX team.
Recently he came to visit for lunch, and when asked about OS X for x86, he said "You really want me to answer that? You KNOW I can't answer that. I can't believe you'd expect me to talk about that."
Bottom line, whether he was working on it or not, he (and assumably the entire OS X team) was very clearly told to keep their mouths shut about OS X on x86 and what its status is.
So the bottom line is, there is no bottom line. Maybe it's just a hobby of some rogue developers. Maybe it's an official R&D project. Maybe it's gonna be a "Big Surprise" from Steve that will "revolutionize the industry."
Who knows, my point is that any conclusions drawn here or on Mac sites is entirely speculation, cuz nobody at Apple, on the OS X development team, is talking.
Mac OSX on X86 isn't feasible until there is a body of really great commercial applications running on OSX and written primarily in Java on Cocoa. (Yellow box).
Developing multiple executables for various instruction sets is not sound business for commercial software developers. Why bother - given developer concerns and economies of scale. Hence Windows.
Anyone that has had to build multi-platform commercial apps knows that dealing with all the OS details reduces the focus on developing user features. People buy software because it helps them accomplish something. OS concerns are secondary, unless it's your business or there is an overwhelming advantage to using the OS API sets.
In addition to development costs, there is shrink-wrap packaging, distribution and technical support. Tech support would have to play twenty questions to even figure out what users were running. The average user doesn't care what's inside - despite what Intel says.
A more plausible scenario is where Apple promotes development of new commercial level applications using Java on Cocoa. This provides the strategic advantage of creating an applications base. Particularly if you are providing most of the high-end packages yourself.
From a developers standpoint, it removes the burden of writing for multiple architectures and consolidates concerns into one area. This frees developers to focus efforts on providing solutions in their respective product domain.
Microsoft wants a similar solution using C# strategies. Numerous service packs and OSes aren't good when you are marketing against yourself.
Give Apple some transition time. After enough developers have applications out there on OSX, watch for Jobs to do his thing.
It could be a move that makes business sense. At this point, that's all that matters to Apple.
The chips Apple uses execute multiple instructions per clock cycle. So, a measurement of Mhz tween them and x86 chips are Apples an oranges. I am unsure of the exact # of instructions Apple's chip do per cycle, but I do know it is WAY more than x86s, something like twice the number. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Now that was some finicky stuff on Intel. But my 486/66 from 1994 was still one of the best workstations in terms of user experience that I have ever used (after working at Sun, IBM, and big ass financial houses). I loved my Sparc20 running 3.3 SPARC, too.
.sigs with "NeXTMail preferred"?
Never mind that it was indeed crappy AT-legacy peeCee kruft. It _did_ run NEXTSTEP well in 24-bit color.
Anyone remember playing Doom in a window on NEXTSTEP 3.2 in 1994 over TCP/IP? That was kewl.
Anyone remember
My fingers still have "-NXHost ajax" hardwired.
Ever drag-n-drop a NetInfo midlevel domain across to other parents, ship the hosts, and have all users, mounts, shares, and hostconfig work perfectly on boot?
Ahh, I've been to the future. I'm waiting to get back there in the non-niche world. Maybe Bill will get us up to NeXT in 1992 with Windows 2005.
So very sad. Just like the ridiculous fiasco of electing George Bush, I'm thinking the fickle stupid consumerist public deserves the crap they select when price wins over quality, and herd mentality beats the thinking man.
Oh heaven forbid Mac actually has to support some new hardware.. I think it's a shame to see all these MB manufacturer's ditching ISA. You don't NEED the speed of the PCI bus for a modem, a 10Mbps NIC, and other slow devices. Serial bus is also more than adequate for a lot of tasks, such as mouse, UPS interface, etc. That's why I'll always buy a MB with 1 ISA slot on it until it's no longer possible.
Firewire has been dying a slow death ever since it's inception. Mainly because it was associated with Apple. USB2 will probably run it right out of the market. Honestly, the only mainstream devices you see using firewire are digital video cameras. Other devices like hard drives are isolated to Mac use.
OS X on an x86 box would be fantastic, because then you could use a mouse with more than one button!!
I develop in WebObjects and Cocoa. I know about them.
- Cocoa is still Obj-C. (AppKit and Foundation)
- EOF will be Java as of WO 5.0
- WO has not been Java for nearly a year. WO has been an ObjC/Java hybrid for quite some time, and will not be 100% Java until WO 5.0.
IBM killed OS/2 because few wanted it anymore. I used OS/2 for years. But I moved on, (to Linux). Now I've moved onto the Macintosh.
Apple's competitve advantage is in its hardware design and the asthetics of its operating system. Development frameworks are a competitive advantage for a narrow audience. Having said that, I believe the actual design of AppKit, EOF, and WOF are definitely valuable -- and they will be continually valuable whether accessed through ObjC or Java.
-Stu
PC hardware *blow* macintosh at any time.
... which was rewritten in java
Not so. "any time" ? Unlikely. Using altivec-enabled applications? Unlikely.
WebObjects
Hasn't happened yet. Think you got your dates mixed up.
Linux/*BSD are way ahead of Darwin.
This doesn't seem true to me. Most of Darwin is based on FreeBSD.
OSX interface is unusable at best (I have trouble to feel NeXTstep throught this slow mess.)
Okay, now you're really grasping at straws here. Judging a BETA release for slowness is just silly. Trying to look for NeXT in what is a *mac* interface is fruitless. Certainly there were problems with the public beta's interface, but a lot of those problems were answered in the latest builds.
NeXT was in the process of dropping ObjC in favor of java, for fucking marketing reasons
Oh yes, marketing is evil. If you're a company, and no one wants to program for your product, the right thing to do is the technical thing and to go bankrupt supporting the cool-but-obscure language. Right.
Apple is taking an interesting chance with its continued support of ObjC. I'm glad they are, as a techie, but most people don't know/care about ObjC's flexibility. But they're hedging that bet by providing Cocoa/Java.
In general, I think the fact that millions of Mac users will be upgrading to OS X over the next year or two will perk up interest in the platform. I'm speaking as a recent wintel convert (for home use, at least).... there's no reason for me to use Wintel at home. And when OS X comes out, my daily work can be performed on it (since I program in UNIX and Java).
-Stu
Motorola recognized that the 68k processors weren't keeping up with the times, and so despite having an ISA that was more straightforward and not even half as convoluted as the x86 was (at the time), they scrapped it and began the PowerPC. Apple has made the right move by sticking with Motorola based processors, and most people stick with Apples because the hardware and software are so closely interwoven. It would be the wrong move for Apple to port to the x86.
Just use the accepted spelling or don't feel the need to b#$*& at people who f*#& with it if you 'stray'. Contrary to your belief, you're NOT beginning any revolution. (Does using your own spelling always make you feel better?)
IA32 is dying its future si closed, a good move for Apple would be the IA64 move, but IBM already is readying it's AIX 5 L (L for Linux ?).
none Yet.
If you check through the engineering design guide for Pentium III at intel, there's nothing to suggest that a PIII wouldn't function if not in a grey box. I suspect if Apple made x86 hardware, it might be nicely designed and integrated the same way that their PPC and 68k hardware was, and NeXT's 68k stuff too.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Having fairly recently had a play with a copy of the last release of OpenSTEP on an old Compaq 486 (a relatively current machine at it's release time in 1996), it would need a fair amount of updating of drivers - it didn't have that many drivers in the first place! It took a lot of fooling to get a combination of network, SCSI and graphics that it could actually support, and even then it was not a happy bunny (DPS died relatively often).
New hardware since then would include: AGP, USB, Firewire, ATA33/66/100 (my version didn't seem interested in IDE at all), any number of video cards with proprietry APIs, likewise for sound.
The build system (and the rest of the environment) was pretty cool though.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Aside from the fact that my grandmother won't touch anything with more than 3 (large) buttons on it, last time I checked MacOS doesn't come with any development tools, so what do the users have to do with it? In the current Mac world (not counting OSX for a second), Mac users rarely see source of anything, let alone compile it themselves.
As a developer, I'll re-run make and make tardist, or whatever the equivalent is for Mac development. Users can then download/buy the program as either a fat binary (NeXT style) or the one for their computer model (WinCE style). Besides, of all people, mac users know a little about having an OS across multiple architectures.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
You can't tell me that Apple isn't a hardware company. It's all they talk about. Listen to them go on and on about G4 this and Titanium that. If they were such a big software vendor then why do spend so much time making their hardware look "Just right?"
Yes there could be a subset of MacOS running on x86. It would be appliance centric and a functional subset of MacOS X.
Mmmm... Maya render farms...
Your Working Boy,
The idiocy level of the moderators does seem to be rising of late (as well as negative metamoderation of reasonable maoderation), but it's still flamebait. Sorta funny, but flamebait.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So the way to protect the human race is to kill off most of it? Isn't that like trying to save the rainforests with asphalt?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If Apple had been using Intel/Intel compatible chips, imagine the kind of pressure Microsoft would have been able to put on Intel/AMD/Cyrix/whoever to screw them over.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Windows 3.1 will run on a 286 with 2Mb of RAM. Just how ancient was your clone?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Apple would have to basically say it runs the same on mac hardware as pc hardware. Maybe not because they want to push their arch but I don't see how porting it then slamming it could work out for them. Now there are other problems. For one are they going to write all the device drivers for pc hardware that has no counterpart on the mac? They would have told hardware developers by now I would think. And all the software vendors that are scrambling to port to cocoa are working hard to make sure they have altivec enhanced code. Wouldn't they need to know so they can make their software work nicely on an X86 version of OS X? I think this idea is just a dream. If it happens I will shave my head. :)
IRNI
Here is the lowdown:
1. Apple will never make a full featured OSX for intel because:
a) they are a hardware company more than anything. b) their sales would drop horribly. c) it wouldn't sell as well as people think (Most Mac users I know dont use their macs because of the OS but because a quite a few pieces of multimedia software simply runs better on a mac than a PC right now).
2. People who want 'OSX on x86' don't really want the OS itself.
They want the GUI. I mean come on, put two plain monitors beside eachother and hide the machines themselves. Then take virtually anyone and ask them which one simply looks cooler. I'd say OSX will be their choice almost every time. OSX is based more on image than anything else. Watch some of Steve Jobs presentations of OSX. For a few brief moments he will mention 'Oh yeah, OSXs' core is based on BSD' and then he spends HOURS on how cool the dock/wharf/whatever is and how nifty the buttons are. Face it, OSX sells to a lot of people because of how it looks more than anything else and fortunately, this is easy to duplicate. Software such as what Stardock is releasing can enable Windows to emulate the OSX look. And thanks to a plethora of windowmanagers on linux its even easier to duplicate the OSX look on a cheap linux box. Take away the OSX GUI and then have a 'OSXonIntel' advocate tell you why they would want it on their machine.
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aphex
I Steal Music!
Think of NeXT and Be in particular. They both started with Motorolla based machines that they built, which cost more than people wanted and nobody buyed. As a last ditch effort they ported everything to Intel hardware, but couldn't compete with the ubiquity/FUD of Microsoft, and nobody buyed. I am going to guess Apple knows this too and isn't going to fall towards the same fate quite yet...
Posted from the wireless couch.
I know it is unfair to compare an iBook to a higher end PC notebook but even PC notesbooks in the iBooks price range can be found with 1024x768. Don't get me wrong - I'd buy an iBook like that over a crappy low end PC notebook but not with a small screen.
Exactly. I'm mentioning it from the standpoint of it being a Mac legacy. I have all SCSI peripherals because I've had Macs since the mid 80s. I'm not arguing current features but up until the iMac introduction, SCSI and ADB were the choices on the Mac. Hell, I'd settle for PCI. I'm stuck with a Processor Direct Slot on most of mine.
>I still like my ISA modem
Sure, but you'd get the same functionality and speed from an external USRobotics serial modem. You don't NEED ISA.
>Um what are you smoking legacy on Mac means serial ports for external devices
And ADB. They were one of the first to build in Ethernet when they were moving from 68k to the initial 601 PowerMacs. I've always been happy with my SCSI laser printer and Scanner. Both of those were years ahead of the PC moving off the parallel port.
>Yeah they will, but not as much as the same thing on the PC would
But they'd give up way too much moving from the Apple hardware market to the competitive PC software arena. Everything comes down to margins. They can still get the Graphic Artists to buy into it and they still have a way with industrial design, make as much fun a you want of translucent plastic, they did innovate and people liked it. Tell me the Cube isn't sexy... and the 22" Cinema Display.
>I was ok with everything til you got to the part about getting away from parellel ports...
Sure they expanded the "standard". Let's not start on the standards kick. We won't go into where RS232 and 422 started and went. My point was that while the only (no USB yet) printer/scanner options were serial and parallel on the PC, there were Mac SCSI scanners and laser printers. Sure, they weren't cheap but throughput is king. I still feel that parallel ports are a poor man's "geek" bus for hooking up stuff at TTL levels. It's just been replaced as the default interface answer on many devices. Even the PC has moved on to things like USB. One could answer that SCSI has also been replaced with ethernet for printing solutions too since we now have network-aware printers. Even our modems when you think about the move toward broadband. USB has it's place and it's doing fine in the keyboard/mouse arena. It's not the fastest bus but you can put it onto a $10 mouse. That goes a long way in some circles. I think there's still a place for intelligent peripherals like SCSI where some of the controller resides on the device but you also have to look at the fact that dumb devices like IDE and WinModems will always be cheaper and will have a place.
Yep, and trying to get a Pinnicle Firewire card running in my Win98 PC was horrendous but I just plugged the camera into my Mac and I was off. No IRQs, no conflicts, no hassle. He!!, even Linux is going automatic. Sure I'm a hardware junkie and have every motherboard I ever bought running on my net at home, but I've never had a problem with the Mac when installing hardware on it and I've ALWAYS had a day of hassles when trying to install a PC Plug-n-Pray device that stated I met the "System Requirements". Apple has always been kind to the user when it comes to getting things out of the box and into use.
Since OS X is BSD based, it wouldn't be a problem supporting it, just a waste of testing and resources.
I am so tired of people who know nothing about the subject trying to push this. It's not good for Apple and it's not good for Apple's customers.
A) Apple is a hardware company! The software is a loss leader to sell the hardware! Take away the hardware and there is no Apple left!
B) Endian issues, different chips, different chipsets, different devices, lack of Altivec SIMD. Binary compatibility is impossible.
C) There is no such thing as an 'X86 app'. Every app is written for one or more OSes on one or more (similar) hardware platforms. Windows Apps would not work on it. Mac OS (PowerPC) apps would not work on it. Apps written for it would not work under Windows or Linux or BSD or ANYTHING! Why would anyone use it?
Every once and a while I hear of some nuts wanting Mac OS X on Intel. Although I don't blame them, Apple probably won't do that. Apple isn't *just* a OS vendor, it's a hardware vendor as well, just like Sun. Sun has the serverroom, and Apple owns the desktop. Apple would loose a considerable amount of money if they release Aqua for the x86.
Although Darwin seems to run on Intel (only one tested configuration though), why would you think Aqua + the rest would? There are lots of issues, like hardware support for instance. Right now there are only supported Apple machines and there are a finite number of combinations, which is easier to support. With x86 you have too much diversity for the OS to be straight plug and play. Just look at the Windows Plug and Play fiasco to see what I mean. Mac OS X works right out of the box, and all your peripherals work right away (as long as they are Apple peripherals).
Just face it, we can whine and scream all you want. My bet is that Apple won't give in. They got too much at stake to do such a geek-friendly move. Apple is consumer oriented, and with consumer I mean your next door computer-illiterate (yes, the irritating luser kind that still outnumber us geeks).
Surely I do not oppose having Mac OS X on my turbocharged x86 box, but I just don't see this happening in *this* life. Not that Apple is being stupid and childish, they have a buisness to run.
End of rant
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Strange, I have been running Mac OS X PB on my iMac (G3 350Mhz) for a few months now, and no performance problems whatsoever. (Yeah you need 128 MB, but that's also what the minimal system requirements say, so I'm right up to spec)
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GNU/WindowMaker/Linux anybody?
domc
"My ISA legacy devices are what my business depends on"
As a side note in agreement, a couple years ago I saw a company where this was actually true -- IBM twinax terminal ISA cards in 100s of PC allowing them to get a greenscreen application, complete with IBM mystery drivers from 1983.
No matter that IBM and lots of other people have thought of 100s of other ways of accessing greenscreen apps, they were depending on backcompatible PC AT cruft. I always wonder what's going to happen to them when ISA finally really goes away, or if they just dumped the whole system and rewrote it in VB or something.
But, no, other than some edge cases, businesses don't care about any of the PC legacy support, or flexibility, or other advantages of the architecture. They just want something they can drop on a desk and forget until the budget comes around until they can drop a new one on the desk. Most businesses already pay Apple-style prices for stock Dells or Compaqs that come with the hard disk they come with. And despite all those ISA/PCI slots, most business PCs never ever even get their cases opened.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Not to mention that forcing a simultaneous x86 release forces Sun's internal developers and others targetting Solaris to write portable code, which is a good thing for Sun because it gives them lots of flexibility.
(Remember a couple years ago when it looked like Sun was serious enough about IA64 that they would ship Intel boxes with their brandname on the front?)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Won't ever happen... at least how its going now. Apple it too greedy. They seem to hate other company producing hardware but themselves. Yes, I know their mantra is consistency. Yes, I know their OS runs best on their hardware. Yes, I know they have a right to maintain the most optimal platform for their OS. That is also why they won't agree to have a mainstream MacOS X for ix86.
Now, they may want to consider a stripped down, ix86 version, but I hardly believe they will agree to that.
MacOS X on ix86. Not anytime soon.
-Wes Yates
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
"Oh, wow! I can use something besides the hardware that came with the system"
So, you're telling me that the ATA drive I installed in my G3 doesn't work?
Or that the Logitech USB mouse I replaced the god-awful hockeypuck with doesn't work either?
Or that I didn't swap a 128Mb DIMM from my PII into my G3?
average people know when their video card sucks or when they can't get sound out of their sound card. They would like an alternative other than "ship it back and pay the bill".
I'd argue that a) average consumer computer users do not know when their video card sucks (their kids prolly do tho), or even what a video card is, and b) 'ship it back and pay the bill' is one of the most common things to do when a home user has a problem.
I won't go into how inane time-wasting crap like soundcards (or other devices) suddenly not working generally doesn't happen on Macs...
--K
Actually, I've been a PC user for a number of years now and I plan on moving from Debian to OS X
As do I. Even as a beta OSX rocks...I can't wait for the final.
It's so cool to be able to use Photoshop or Flash AND hack in a BSD UNIX environment without having to reboot.
Not to mention the IDE (Project Builder?) looks really nifty, although I haven't had much time to play with it.
--K
Because if I need to I have all the support in the world to add extra functionality to the pc be it extra processors or a new fpu. Try doing that with apple.
Well, it is easier to upgrade a CPU from a mac than from a PC.
I have upgraded a 9500 with an 132 Mhz 604 to a G4 running at 400 MHz..
Why can't I plugin a Pentium
Even the newest G4's have the processorboard in a ZIF-socket.
No problem at all.
And about clockspeed..
MacOS X with a G4-processor beats the hell out of a Pentium 4 with Windows.
MacOS X use the Altivec unit for almost everything.
This means video, graphics and sound are much faster than without Altivec.
..that Apple may port OSX to the Pentium platform, but pre-G3 Powermac users have to buy a whole new system.
Well, the beta runs fine on my Powermac 7500.
I had to recompile the kernel but after doing so it runs perfect.
Only problem is, that the first generation aren't capable of running MacOS X due to the fact that those are using NuBUS instead of PCI.
MacOS X runs pretty good on every TNT/Nitro or Tsunami based Mac.
The Umax J700 uses the tsunami design and can run MacOS X.
The problem is not the processor (a G3 is an 603ev with a builtin cache controller) but the chipset.
And because Apple made the source of the kernel available (darwin) it isn't very difficult to compile a new kernel with support for other chipsets.
I'd love to play with it without having to pay $$$ for the Apple hardware. Apple should stop being dumb and give in to cheap hardware.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
"So, before you open your mouth and start talking bullsh*t,"
I am not sure if I am speaking BS, the fact is i tried BeOS, and I find it really fun to use. but the fact is how many nerds are there on earth!? I guess not many nerds here got the time to be using both linux and BeOS at the same time. Give reason for a nerd to use BeOS, is it Opensource (no!?) sorry.
just face it a superior (not equal) to success, no matter how hard you try to persuade your friends to change from NT to Be, they only will find it fun, instead of useful. "yeah BeOS is so cool, does BeOS got XXXX application??" (no!?) sorry.
You may say only nerds use BeOS, how many people here really use BeOS DAILY !? if I am nvidia, Ati, HP, whatever hardware company out there, will I support an OS that people use for less than 24 hours a year??
There were some japanese company that tried to ship BeOS with computers (forgot which one, anyway that's mainstream acceptance/support right?), what happened was all of those product lines just kinda fade out, anybody wonder why ??
Oh yeah that OS that's competing with windows CE on the set top market. does that mean it's kinda DEAD !?
How come Apple has to produce OS X for Intel, but Microsoft
doesn't have to make Windows for PowerPCs??? Dell doesn't have to make nonintel hardware?
I think the reason is that you guys want OS X and all the stuff Apple has produce in the last few years (even the colors), you just don't want to pay for it.
Learn something now: There is no such thing as a free lunch.
There will be no Mac OS X for Intel. You want OS X,buy a Mac...
Apple is a hardware company, make no mistake. Take away their hardware revenues and the company goes away.
If Apple ever develop anything threatening to Windows, MS will stop making Office of the Mac.
And therein lies the true anti-Mac conspiracy. Office for the Mac is one of MS' best selling software packages. It *always* sells, and always sells *well*. If MS was truly just a regular software company, there'd be no need for "strategic alliances" to ensure Office for 5 years at a time: they'd just keep cranking it out and watch the money roll in.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How would it be profitable for Apple to change their OS to x86 and then become a specialized graphics card company? They don't even make their own graphics chips now. They buy the hardware from ATi and/or nVidia.
The last thing Apple, or any half-way intelligent company, is going to do right now is enter the graphics card business!! With all of the buyouts and mergers, there are 2 or 3 powerhouses in that industry. It would be next to impossible for another company to break into that market without the backing to lose a LOT of money for a number of years.
As far as going the straight software approach, that'd put them directly in the ring with MicroSoft. They really are two different companies. As a niche player, Apple's doing ok. Yeah, they're hit in the tech slump but who wasn't? Look all the alternative OS's out there. Doesn't that show that people like choice and will support it? Apple doesn't have to be everything to everyone.
If you want OSX/Aqua, you gotta' pay the piper (Apple) and get a Mac. Instead of bitching about it, why not go and code your own version for x86? The underpinnings are available. You just have to figure out the rest.
I drank what? -- Socrates
> MacOS X is based on GNU/Darwin
Shouldn't be too hard to sell an OS named g' Nude Arwen, especially after LOTR comes out.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Look, Ma! Another reasonably intelligent person has fallen under the Intel Marketing Machine's spell. Get a grip... MHz != Computer Speed. Someone find a good computer architecture textbook & look it up.
Right... That's why companies like Sun and IBM (there are those pesky RISC chips again!) have been posting 20 - 30% quarterly revenue gains consistently for the past 3 years. The flaw in your reasoning is that the better architecture does provide real functional advantages: stability, scalability, I/O throughput, etc. You just don't seem to know where to look.
--Mid
The beauty of openstep
Everyone seems to be forgetting software. In order for Apple to pull off x86 hardware support, they would need to get software vendors to port their software over. Either that, or make (or license) a killer PowerPC emulator for x86 (but it would probably still be slower).
That doesn't matter for OS/Free Software users nearly as much, but they certanly aren't the bulk of Apple's market.
Some software will make the move with just a recompile, but this is less likely for high end video and audio software that gets down close to the hardware, which *is* the bulk of Apple's market. At the very least, the added support costs of yet another hardware platform work turn off software makers from doing a port, even if it is just a recompile.
On another note, if Apple did port to x86 hardware, who's to say that they wouldn't build Apple branded boxes themselves? Just because the boxen would have Intel (compatable) processors, doesn't mean that they would be "IBM compatable"...
While I agree that you get most of the benefits from BSD that you would get from OS X on an intel box, there is one other issue that may be taken into account: Developer's Market.
I would expect that most commercial developers would jump for a platform that allows them to market to both architectures with just a simple recompile. This could benefit more "main-stream" users by letting them buy the commercial "user-friendly", "buzzword compliant", and "developer supported" software they may want.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could buy FileMaker or Photoshop for OS X/Intel and have absolutely no change in paradigm?
mind I would sort of like to see a distribution of Aqua/Quartz for *BSD/L*nux, but then there might be... ooo, something shiny!
I'm just afraid that apple might do something like switch to Intel because it's more "cost effective". (read "higher profit")
I'm sorry for the unsupported flame, but the PowerPC architecture is just so much ... NICer. I feel more secure when I have an ISA under the hood that I could concievably understand reading through.
I don't believe the "Golden Handcuffs" of reverse compatibility is worth the inherent complexity and constraints of what is essentially an "extended 8-bit architecture".
Reality check here...
Apple is a hardware company. SGI is a hardware company. Sun is a hardware company. Microsoft is an applications company. RedHat, SuSE, etc. are distributors (for the most part).
What's my point? There's not a single company out there making money developing and selling an OS. MSWindows? MS lives on it's applications revenue and subsidises it's OS with the money. Apple can afford to develop and support OSX only through the sales of hardware. Why would Apple shoot themselves in the foot (read wallet) by making OSX available on anything other than their hardware?
Sure, Jobs is a bit crazy, but I would like to think he's not completely looney.
~~Galen~~
I believe OS X will compete with Windows in a lot of ways. The fact that it's being marketted as a mainstream OS, aimed at a totally different crowd that the standard Linux user seems significant to me. That it'll ship pre-installed on Apple's machines starting this summer also adds significantly to the userbase. And merhaps most importantly, the pretty, easy to use GUI will help it make inroads.
If I wanted to run an operating system for fun on my computer, I'd stick BeOS on it, and stick one of those funky apple schemes on it. Besides, I'm sure that porting the whole frickin' OS over would not be worth whatever money they will make from 10 guys going to the store and getting it to play with over the weekend.
And the most irrectifiable transition between apple's platform and the x86 is... You guessed it. More than 1 button on a mouse.
-S
I have a friend with a Powerbook, don't have any details other than it's about a year old. He installed OSX, which then placed OS9 into it's own subfolder. When he uses a non-carbonized app, it brings up a full copy of OS9 to run it. memory and CPU usage go through the roof, and he can't run more than one app at once.
I'd hope that Apple solves this problem before they release OSX, or that the app designers offer a swap or low-cost program to replace non-carbon apps. I'd be willing to bet that the legacy apps are going to face the same problems on PS hardware if they can be installed at all.
I wouldn't mind seeing Apple get some 2 Ghz AMD love, though.
The party's over
It would be far more and interesting (and to me a better idea) if they ported OSX to sparc instead. Much better platform, could actually make a real server and there is a smaller amount of hardware.
I believe he actually doesn't separate hardware and software in his aims: it's all integrated. Hence the original Mac, where the hardware looked great, the interface looked great, and each was tied to the other and designed from a common concept. Same thing now with the "digital hub" idea: it can only work if you see both software and hardware as two facets of a common idea.
-- Colin
But you forget that NeXTstep/OpenStep ran on 68k, Sparcs, and x86, IIRC. Seeing that MacOS X is mostly a continuation of that OS line, and Darwin _already_ runs on ia32, I don't think the port itself would be that bad. What's preventing them from doing it right now is driver support, and the fear of losing tons of money in hardware sales.
--------------------------
The problem, of course, is that this idea runs headlong into Windows, which is a bad idea. MS uses its software OS monopoly to keep the PC hardware market vendors at bay; PC's are commodities because MS decides what will be standards that they support, and they support standards that they control. This is a very new, clever (evil, IMHO) and effective business model for MS, and they pursue it vigorously. It is not simple technical merit that is slowing Firewire (iLink, 1394) from catching on -- Apple controls it rather than MS. MS would prefer USB 2, which it would have much better control over.
(BTW, Charles Fergusen's book High Stakes, No Prisoners has a lot of insights about the computer industry, from a guy who founded the company that made FrontPage and wanted to sell it to Netscape.)
Sun and Apple (and several other now or nearly defunct companies) make their own hardware and their own OS to go with it. This turned out to be a bad idea for Unices because of the lack of a common standard. For Apple, it may still be a bad idea (but I love their hardware), but at least you get a single standard. And, bless them, now you get a Unix too.
So the question is, why would it be a good idea for Apple to switch over from a hardware platform they have complete control over, to one that is completely controlled by their monopolist competitor? Remember, MS has an OS monopoly on PC's, which they leverage to control (and monopolize) two more markets: office software and internet browsers.
Since Apple doesn't make (much of) the artistic software that they do have a good market share in, their (lovely new) OS doesn't seem to stand a chance against MS's on x86 hardware.
So you have to think in terms of "what is the shape of this market, and how does that change when they do x, y, or z?" more than, "can OS sales make up for hardware sales".
... if you read that other story, some dude got linux running on microwave oven, and he even clustered them to play quake.
os x on intel and powerpc, linux on fridges, curling irons, alarm clocks, pacemakers.....
we're fine, don't sweat it. curl it
peace.
Re: MacOS... If it's just the GUI you want in linux, then try some Ethemes. :) If you want the MacOS look w/ the programs... chances are it'll not happen for linux as a 'window manager', at least not in my suspicions. Porting their programs would probably be a hastle as well. And supporting the miriad of systems on networks would be a huge pain as well. x86 mac, ppc mac, ppc linux, *BSD (are there any versions that run on ppc? I don't use it, so....), linux x86, and the various premutations of windows (which all have problems relating to various other OSes, including themselves)....
Ok, that didn't make sence. My appoligies, but I'm not changing it. I'm sleeping, 's what I'm doing. Screw you hippies. :) (meaning no negative connotations)
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If the MacOS were to show up running on intel hardware, you can rest assured that microsoft would respond by immediately ceasing development of office and ie for the MacOS. Then we would here the familiar "There's no software for the MacOS." line.
Yes... $150 big ones in stock. If I am not mistaken (which is highly likely) they sold a good deal of this off recently. While there were certainly other factors, this might have contributed to Apple's recent stock drop. Wish I could have bought some at $13. I suppose the question is, did MS initiate the drop by selling off what they had, creating a noticeable dent and sending the investors screaming, or did Microsoft just wait until Apple was way down there and just getting stable to drop the bomb, kicking them while they were down, so to speak?
While I love my Athlon/Linux box, there are many times when I wish I could have a computer that ran right, out of the box, no drivers to look for, major commercial apps available, compiled, and stable, etc. Of course, the thought of all these things, some great hardware to run it on, and a nice looking case (The G4 Tower is nice, as is the TiBook) is good too. To top it all off, it's a Unix. I can open a terminal or even drop right down to console-only mode (I believe you login as ">console" to do this). So, what am I gonna do when Mac OSX is released? Get a G4 Tower and PowerBook for graduation presents and give my Athlon (well, most of it) to my sister. It's time to move on to something better, and I hope this might be it. I'm willing to take the RISCs. hehe... little pun there... oh, sorry.
As many others have correctly pointed out, Apple is (or at least views itself as) a hardware company. They would never port OS X to Intel in a way that would allow J. Random Slacker to run it on a standard PC.
... MacOS PCs - not likely.
However, Apple could certainly build a Mac around an Intel processor. They would need to build their own chipset but they already do that (and may be working on a chipset to work with Intel processors right now). The motivation for such a move would most likely be to close the much discussed, little understood "MHz gap".
Under such a strategy, they could avoid rampant cannibalization of their hardware sales by commodity PCs. It is unlikely at this stage of the game that any player would/could reverse engineer the "Mac on Intel" chipset - both for practical and legal reasons. This would also allow Apple to maintain all their legacy technologies, firewire/airport/etc, and avoid sinking into the mire of endless PC driver support. Finally, a move to Intel might facilitate the PC binary compatibility layer that Apple has long been rumored to be working on in secret.
In short, Intel Macs - maybe
I know you were talking about the K6, and it's nowhere near the wimp that you described. (I have one of each type...a K6-200 that net-boots LFS from a K6-2-300 (which also runs LFS), plus a K6-III-450 that can boot WinME off its hard drive (which is what it's running right now) or net-boots LFS from the aforementioned K6-2.)
For comparison, I also have a P5-200 in a notebook, and the K6 has no problems keeping up with it. Are you sure you're not confusing the K6 with the K5 or an earlier AMD processor? I've never actually run across one myself, but it's my understanding that the K5 was nothing to write home about.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
In what way? I've had one for a few years now, and didn't notice any inordinate sluggishness when compared to other contemporary systems. (It still crunches Mersenne primes today, running as a diskless workstation off of a K6-2-based server.)
So the FPU is a little on the weak side...BFD. Not all of us waste time on FPS games. For most other software, it'd keep pace with (or even outrun) a P5.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
When apple had their chips down in late 95 -early 96 they opened their hardware to 3rd party venders to entice more users to the mac platform...and it was working but unfortunately for Apple they were still having financial problems and could not keep up pace with some 3rd party vendors. Then comes Steve Jobs/Next Inc and Apple kills the universal mac CHRP standard that originally Apple created and all the 3rd parties wanted to follow.
Depending on your point of few this could have been for better or worse...in the short term it helped apple regain their market share in hardware sells. However, CHRP might just be the ghost that haunts apple in the long term if apple can't keep up with the rest of the industry hardware wise.
Who knows if CHRP did survive maybe half of us on slashdot could be raving about linux ppc, net bsd, Be OS and the new Mac OS X..on our Apples macs and mac clones...
Oh well.
Could a new open CHRP standard ever exist as an alternative to going with x86?
Time will tell.
..
Actually your wrong on the point of the Cube only hooking up to the Apple Monitor, we have it hooked up to a standard VGA Monitor and it works fine. As far as the other points, your pretty much on the money.
The original OS was on Sun 3 hardware. NeXT's boxes came later :)
Oooh, good point. Although that was only in development and only in house, right? By 0.8 or so, they were producing cubes, and I don't remember any mention of Sun hardware at that point.
>The would be taking an aggressive step towards MS, that they would not take to kindly.
Amen. That has always been one of the roots of the problem. If Apple ever develop anything threatening to Windows, MS will stop making Office of the Mac. The Mac platform would lose a lot of customers without MS Office.
I'm pretty sure there is an understanding between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that Office will being developped as long as Apple doesn't make a move to x86.
Althought I am glad there is a x86 version of darwin, I have the feeling it is a kind of teaser: like Darwin on x86? why don't you get one of our nice shiny G4 and OS X, you will have the Darwin you love and much more!
I don't think it would hurt APPL, but it would maybe hurt AAPL (Apples real stock symbol). :)
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
x86 instructions have always been notoriously inefficient. Hell, back in the early 80s, an x86 had to be clocked twice as fast as a 6502 to have the same throughput. Once again, comparing MHz to MHz is stupid -- and Altivec is a better vector architecture than 3DNow or KNI.
There's a gap, but it's closer to 100MHz in equivalent Intel cycles than 5-600.
It's pretty much a given that Mac OS X and Mac OS X -native apps would be pretty straightforward to port to Intel. If Apple started building custom x86 based computers, they would have to build some kind of emulation only for the 'Carbon' and 'Classic' apps, which would mean that there would be much less PowerPC code around than 68k code during the recent transition.
Moreover, as the bulk of the lower-end PowerPC processors from Motorola and IBM are targeted at the embedded market, they cost next to nothing, *including* support circuitry. Apple could just invest $50 per box to have low end but emulation-beating PowerPC hardware in their x86 boxes.
Personally, I don't see Apple going for x86, but it is a possibility they like to play with from time to time to keep Motorola on its toes.
Perhaps unlike anyone else around here, I don't see that the PowerPC instruction set has lost the performance war, just look at the powerpc isa based Power4. (Yes, it really is based on the powerpc isa, unlike the Power3 series)
Apple should switch Motorola for IBM, not for Intel or AMD.
Marko Karppinen
Apple calls themselves the Sony(in terms of design and appliance), or Porsche, or computers. The target is to make expensive computers that are the most stylish around, and aslo have a fast engine and comfortable. Also, they want to make it easy for novices, both in school and home. If you're not the target, then you're not the target. Big deal.
Funny, it's rumored that Apple will offer OS X for high end alpha servers, opposite of Sun.
BTW, adcritic.com doesn't have their commericals. Where are they
I agree.
Apple's thinking is that they are the Posrche of computer users, style and power mixed together. If you want that experience in your buick, you really can't. I don't think Apple will port it either, the PPC clones were killed off and now there's better support, and less hardware conflicts, for one thing.
Like Save & shut down, Apple developed it before Windows "hibernate", and it works better because they control the firmware and software to make it a heck of a lot faster
Apple wants yo to buy a computer that works out of the box, no need to screw that up with tons of x86 dirvers on an aging standard.
Maybe Alpahs or Itanium, or even Curosoe
Not to mention that ADC monitor connection is a Vesa-plug-n -play standard,and there's a DVI adaptor if you so need.
Both Apple and Intel know that x86 is an aging standard,and all the legacy support is responsible for the decrease in faster chips. Plus, motorola uses RISC processors. x86 is almost 20 years old. Intel is aware of the problems, and you've heard of the 64-bit Itanium, right? In 10 years, x86 will be the past. Why would Apple want to move to a slower chip? They're more likely, IMO, to use Alphas, the only problem is heat and huge power drain.
"they are about two times too slow to keep up with the AMDs and Intels of the world"
/.er will listen to that.
What's your basis for comparison? Megahertz? Don't make me laugh, they are very close in many tests, especially AltiVec enhanced ones. In other cases, I don't need a 1 GHz word processor, and my flash animation runs fine. Extra points for knowing about RISC, tho.
You're right about the 2nd half, though no
Very good on your history! You get a cookie.
Now, Apple's other major problem with that, and everybody is overlooking, is that older Mac programs couldn't run on the x86 wihtout a recompile. Drivers would have to be written from scratch, and programs like Norton Disk Doctor would need extensive changes.
The biggest problem is that there are technical hurdles. Apple wants programs to work out of the box. Any extra effort required is counter to what made it successful in the first place.
But you're thinking hardware, not Software troubles to face. Do you want your grandmother or a newbie recompiling software for a new chip? neither do mac users.
Reminds me of when I was really pissed when I found out windows 3.1 didn't run on my IBM DOS 6 clone, but I shoulda been more realistic.
Not only is the OS the only thing standing in thw way, but the apps too. Sure, the MacOS on x86 can be pretty cool, but it won't be able to run PPC apps. Lets forget about emulation, you won't be able to run Photoshop with the same speed.
Actually, with the Geforce2MX, The new G4s get 80fps, much closer now.
http://www.barefeats.com/graphiX.htm
how many nanoseconds till M$ pulled the plug on office for Macs?
Banned from moderation 01-27-2002. Fuck you too
Apple's success that threatens/bothers us.
Please never say "ix86" Linux packagers do it all the time and it drives me INSANE. It's either i386, or x86. Intel dropped the 'i' nomenclature after the 486, so x86 is best if you want to refer to the entire product line of chips. i386 should only be used if you're one of those numb-nut distro maintainers still compiling packages like KDE2 for i386 machines ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That being said, one of the main points about OSX is that it gives mac users lickable goodies like Aqua and BSD and fun stuff like that but it also runs OLD Mac OS apps. Its called Classic and its a beautiful thing.
There is no way someone is going to tell me that an 800 Duron is going to run my PPC apps just as fast through emulation as my G3.
I know Apple migrated everyone from 68K to PPC, but then again it was just in OS 8.5(we're on 9.1 now) that they cut off 68K users from OS upgrades. PPC came out in 1991, So even if Apple made itself a nice 1.2 Ghz T-bird, with DDR and GeForce 2 Ultras standard, they won't run the vast majority of Mac apps like PPC will; ALL apps will have to be completely rewritten to take full advantage of the new processor, and those that aren't will be slow as hell; AMD and Intel are begining the migration to 64-bit chips. And the last switch took almost 10 years to complete, and you can still find apps that run 68K natively.
Its not in Apple's best intrest to switch. They've been optmizing OSX for Altivec anyway, and with the 3 or 4 1.2 Ghz G4s that Motorola is hiding from Public eyes, I don't see any reason to switch.(that and I bought my G3 with the intent of keeping it for at least 6 years)
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
because one man, Linus, controls the kernel!
Find and share links to celebrity profiles on MySpace! http://www.myspacecelebrities.com
It's already been done. Developer CDs in 1998 had a beta version my friends and I ran on a toshiba satellite in early 1998. Why didn't they release it then? Who knows
mrbubba
oh yeah, and my cpu can beat up your cpu any day
nyah nyah nyah
my hobbies include space walks, ether chugging contests and marathon sleep contests.
"Oh, wow! I can use something besides the hardware that came with the system"
"What do you mean, you can't order those with my own specs for a hard drive?"
"My ISA legacy devices are what my business depends on"
"It would be swell if I could use this video card in this computer"
Sometimes it is nice to be able to 'lift the hood'
A workstation is nice if you are going to be doing work on purely computational problems. That means businesses. But business don't like paying several times the value of the hardware because of what the label says any more than you do.
Consumers want flexibility for arbitrary interfaces. Even though the number of "tweakers" is small in population, average people know when their video card sucks or when they can't get sound out of their sound card. They would like an alternative other than "ship it back and pay the bill".
If MAC OS X was released for x86, I'd hop on it in a second. This would be one of the greatest things ever, truly landmarking a high time in my life.
Do it Apple!It could also be one of the smartest things Apple has done. I'm not saying that their OS is a dumb OS, but...ha!
That's why the x86 work is being done in the open source community through Darwin. If they are successful at making Darwin live on x86, Apple's technical difficulties largely go away.
That just leaves the business case to work out (a huge problem by itself)
DB
Mac OS X for x86 is for running existing servers, often file & print with no apps on it. Why spend a ton of money on licensing when you could just simply replace the OS and add Samba. For a large portion of the companies running Exchange, Sendmail would work just as well (no group discussion needed), etc.
A while back I needed to rip out MS-mail from a 300 seat company. They bought a server, (4k, dual processor, overkill on the specs) for about 5k and spent another 5k on software and licensing. For about 6k, they could have gotten a more stable, easier to administrate Mac OS X for PPC with equivalent useability. But many shops are loathe to support multiple hardware platforms so it wasn't even an option. If they could have spent 10% of the money on software and put it on the same hardware, Apple would have rung up a sale and NT would have been on its way out.
DB
But what about the actual apps for OS X, are they going to work on the x86 arch, or will they have to be ported.
Apple will be able to compete with MS if they do this. It will give a majority of the non-Unix PC users a chance to choose their OS. Maybe MS would actually loose some business.
A few problems:
MacOS X does not share the driver sub-system with BDS at all. While it is true that you can sometimes wrap a BSD based driver enough to get it wot work with IOKit, it is usually better to re-write the driver, looking over the BSD driver (or other platform) for ideas.
You are suffering from the illusion that MacOS X is built on BSD. It is not, it is somewhat based on the ideas... This is especially true in the Kernal space.
And the Mach-O application type can include multiple binaries in the same package so separate releases would be pointless. Apple has been doing this sort of thing since the 68K->PPC transition, and NeXT was also proficient at this.
I don't for one moment think that Apple is ever going to move MacOS X to x86, there are simply too many roadblocks, and no business sense in it. Notice I said MacOS X, not Darwin. In this the two are very different.
No one is remembering that Steve Jobs learned what the x86 market is capable. Sure x86 boxes were crap when Jobs jettisioned NeXT hardware. But it only took 18 mos. for x86 graphics developers to catch-up with NeXT graphics superiority.
x86 for MacOS X blurs the distinction between Mac's and PC's. It would be a dilution of brand equity.
No_ no MacOS x86. Yes there could be a subset of MacOS running on x86. It would be appliance centric and a functional subset of MacOS X.
-r
You don't think companies would be willing to recompile their code so that 90% of the computer market (x86 pc's) could run it? Talk about boosting sales...Anyway, most older Mac Apps have to be rewritten for OS X to run well in OS X anyway.
I am of the second group, and I will not be switching from OS 9 to OS X until it has a robust audio DSP program like Logic Audio Platinum, and other nice audio proggies like Propellerhead Software's new Reason 1.0. These two proggie examples are ported to Windows 95/98/whatevah, but I am trying to live a windows-free life out of principle. So for me, switching to OS X, whether it be on a Motorola or an Intel, depends only on the audio capacity that is an industry standard.
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Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Sure the G4 is in short supply and overpriced, but there has to be a better option than abandoning RISC processors with a large cache for those cheesy X86 machines!
I used to work for SGI and Sun and have a good background in PC, Mac RS6k, and most all unix hardware from desktop systems to supercomputers. Apple has good hardware, but I wouldn't compare it to IBM RS6000s if I were you. I unboxxed 2 RS6000s, $50k machines, and found the the freakin' floppy drive just laying inside the case, not screwed in. One didn't even have the harddrive cable plugged in. In order to have good hardware you must have good QA, and this simply isn't acceptable, even if these systems were $3000 PCs.
And if that wasn't enough you have to run AIX on them. RS6ks may run forever, but in my opinion they suck ass!
My professional opinion for system and server hardware is to use cheap PC hardware, because let's face it, all computer hardware breaks eventually, often sooner than you think. And run load balanced/fault tolerant software across many systems. In the end you will have better uptime and lower costs with a slight increase in system maintenance and time required to plan out your net. Its definitely worth it!
But back to Apple. I bet they'd make more money off of OS sales than they would off of hardware sales. If they can get their OS running on 50% of the market they could also target other software, and think about it. Software costs you nothing to produce and distribute, compared to hardware. OSX will win hands down over the look and feel of any other OS.
>And ADB. They were one of the first to build in Ethernet when they were moving from 68k to the initial 601 PowerMacs. I've always been happy with my SCSI laser printer and Scanner. Both of those were years ahead of the PC moving off the parallel port.
I was ok with everything til you got to the part about getting away from parellel ports... You do know that modern Parellel ports (ECP/EPP) are faster than USB don't you? Parellel ports are still a very good thing & except for the lack of workign with secondary decives (well sometimes they do sometimes they don't) was & still is a good technology... I think USB got way to much credit... & IEE 1394 (aka firewire/i-link) is to expensive for alot of things like external basic drives (aka zip) or printers/scanners that don't need quite that much speed... I hold a dislike of USB, but it's mostly because it's shoved down my throat as a solution to everything & I am forced to give Apple part of the blame for that happening...
>But they'd give up way too much moving from the Apple hardware market to the competitive PC software arena
I never said it wouldn't... I actually think it would kill Apple to become a software company (ala MS)...
>They can still get the Graphic Artists to buy into it and they still have a way with industrial design, make as much fun a you want of translucent plastic, they did innovate and people liked it.
First I have noticed two trends of sorts with newer graphics artists... A) They want to do 3D art & the tools for that on the Mac tend to be well... crap... so they use a PC... B) They have been told they must conform to the architecture of the rest of the companies netowrk (aka PC's) & they switch to using *nix or Windows 2k on a PC for their work...
Second, maybe you think the translucent plastic was a good thing, but um it's gone to far... It's not just cheap see-through plastic cases now, it's phones, CD-players, MP3 players, home stereo equipment, headphones, game controllers, printers, etc, etc... I could go on, but suffice it to say I'm just waiting til I see a translucent car in similiar styling to a Imac case & they have to put me in a loony bin for my breackdown...
>Tell me the Cube isn't sexy... and the 22" Cinema Display.
Ok. The cube isn't sexy. It's way to hot to touch in use (ssaw one on display in a store that had actually overheated & now won't start), I don't need to see it's guts when I'm not ripping them apart, & they are a royal pain to ever have to fix...
I will take the 22' Cinema Display though...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Exactly. It would be like BeOS all over again with resources stretched to the limit to try to get hardware supported. Even with the various BSD and *IX source drivers available this incredible growth in support base is daunting.
Also, vendors would *not* be a reliable source for support drivers. Heck, there are mainstream stuff that took months to get fully supported in win2k. What would happen with an OS that has a miniscule share compared to MS's OSs.
Couple all that with having to maintain different codebases (again look at BeOS and perhaps NT) and you can see headaches big enough to stop anyone in their tracks.
Pure speculation on my part but if Apple were to relase it for x86 (and go against their core philosophies) it would the sign of a desparate company trying one last time to get back into the market. I don't think Apple is in that position and so I don't think they'll be doing so.
btw: Why does this question get asked every 2 weeks? Don't we beat it to death enough each time there's any sort of Mac announcement?
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
Apple will start selling OS X on x86 hardware by the end of the year and next year start sueing Dell, Compaq, IBM for selling Apple clones. ;)
ÕÕ
This wouldn't be popular with the free software brigade, but its the only way its ever going to happen. Jobs isn't stupid enough to lead apple down the `open' road again. Last time it nearly finished Apple for good...
How many buttons do you have? OSX uses 2 buttons as standard (try plugging a 2 button mouse in). You can use a keyboard modifier (either shift or apple - I forget) to make the one button on a standard apple mouse work as the second button. Still leaves you with between 1 and 3 useless buttons...
The original OS was on Sun 3 hardware. NeXT's :)
boxes came later
Hey, sounds like NeXTStep..
Especially the last part:
and would finally get canned by the next CEO to run Apple.
- isaac =)
What are you talking about ? Of course Sun is a hardware & Software company, just have a look at their website and you'll understand, they are all there : workstations, servers, network hardware Solaris, Java,... How do you call this ?
Then, what you meant maybe was the difference in markets, Apple is rather for people who don't know much about computers or who don't want to know how it works, when Sun hardware & software is not targetted at all at plug-n'-play kiddies.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
It served its purpose in making Solaris knowledge/affinity more widespread. If it had been free (beer) from the start and had a bigger HCL, it would probably be most of the places that Linux is today.
Remember the design goal of Linux: Linus wanted a UNIX he coudl afford. Had *ANY* of the commerical Unixes been free (or, say $20) there would be no Linux. Hurd, Minux or BSD, perhaps, but Linus would not have done the what he did.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Linux sucks a whole lot more.
Redhat
VA Linux
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Apple has maintained their monopoly on the hardware that the OSX runs on, but just barely. The only way Apple may be able to survive is if they can move away from the hardware aspect of their business entirely. But the move to selling OS alone is likely to be too risky for the company to consider. Will it threaten Linux? I don't think so. People will buy it. People will use it. But the reliability of the OS is not on the same level as the linux platform. Those people who use linux effectively as of right now probably won't waste their time. The only people the OSX could cause any problem with would be BeOS and Microsoft. Both of these have enough to worry about as it is.
The iMac was what brought Apple back into the position of being a real competitor in the industry, and it did so by winning consumers - not businesses. The iMac sold well despite the availability of much more powerful PCs at lower prices because of its aesthetics and reputation as easy to use. Consumers eat up that kind of stuff, and Apple took advantage of that.
You can argue that the G3/G4 processors aren't nesesarily slower at lower clockspeeds than Intel chips, but for average Joe Consumer, bigger numbers mean better. And the reality is that average folks bought iMacs they thought were less powerful than comparable PCs becuase of reputation and aesthetics.
Apple knows that OS X is more than eye candy, and I know it too, but average Joe Consumer doesn't. He just hears numbers and dollar signs and sees pretty colors and ease of use. And he'll still buy it. I think Apple's consumer hardware business is safe.
On the business-end, adoption of OS X depends on application support. If you think any professional wants to run Photoshop in emulation, you probably aren't a professional yourself. Businesses won't switch until the apps are there, and from the looks of it, the ports are taking forever even when focusing on PowerPC. To expect the conversion to OS X and to x86 is ludicrous. No company would even try that - its not feasible in a reasonable timetable.
I think OS X for x86 would be very cool. And I think Apple could release it without jeopardizing their hardware business because I don't see it ever becoming a feasible platform. Cult-following? Maybe. Tinkerers? Probably. Real market? No.
Justin says wrong things.
And let's not forget the price of NeXTSTEP. First it was $1995. Then it was $199 for a "limited time only." Then it was free. And still nobody wanted it. What's changed since 1994?
Now that's a good point. Anyone ever had problems with badly done drivers for windows? The reason why windows crash so much have muchto do with the drivers. If OS X does get support from chinese and taiwanese manufacturer you'll get tons of badly writen code prehaps even in kernel space.. imagin that... Of course these people will also have to hire some unix programer to do the drivers. And i don't think we are a dime a dozen..
I agree with this. As much as I would love to play with OS X on my x86 hardware, this is definitely not the right move for Apple right now as confirmed by the issues stated above.
Ahhh... well then... true. :-)
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Mac hardware doesn't come with SCSI(unless you get the high-end machines which come with Adaptec SCSI cards). All machines come with ATA/66 built-in onto the motherboard.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
If Apple would have done that to begin with (ported Mac OS to x86), the OS competition would have intensified, and we wouldn't be seeing prices like $499 for a damn copy of Windows 2000. Plus, the OS would have to keep getting better and better to outpace Windows. Then, you have to think about drivers. Would companies like Nvidia, ATI, and the like write drivers for OS X? I bet they would. Look at what they're already doing, writing drivers that actually do work with OS X on the Motorola platform.
So, all in all, if Apple doesn't do this, Windows will continue to be more bloated, cost more, and be the only commercial choice. Yes, linux is there, and I love it to death. I'm just afraid it's getting so fragmented, with each linux company putting out their own method for doing things. It can really tear the community apart if we're not careful. I think it would be great to have yet another choice for an OS on the x86 platform, so come Apple, step up!!
Just another crazed outcat fanboy troll...
#1 Died in the wool, faithfull, Apple Fans. Will buy Macs no matter what. Even if they are based on Intel Celeron chips, use popsickle sticks for the case design, and use a lightpen instead of a mouse.
#2 Ex-PC Users upset at what the PC offers and wants something different.
#3 Graphic Artists, Creative Content Providers, feel that only the Mac Platform can offer what they need to get work done.
#4 Newbies, people new to using a computer and are frightened by Windows and other complex stuff.
#5 Developers, want to develop for the Mac Platform, see it as a good risk.
#6 Unix experts who see OSX as the next big thing, so they are buying their Macs now to run OSX Beta and will get the retail version soon.
#7 Ex-Apple II owners, want to stick with Apple. Feel that Apple has done them right, so they are going to do Apple right and keep on buying.
#8 Teenager, used Macs in schools, want to keep using them. These are the new blood Mac Users.
#9 People fed up with Microsoft products, but don't want to use Linux/OpenBSD/BeOS or OS/2. The Mac is friendlier for them, and AppleWorks does all they want it to do.
#10 People forced to use them. Could use them in schools or at work. Don't really like them, but have no other choice. That is the only platform they are given to use, or the only one that will run the software they need.
Businesses, for one.
IBM hardware (PCs, ThinkPads, etc) is much more expensive; so are Dell and Compaq (the Deskpro stuff). But businesses buy them all the time, because they are "quality" brands, and no one ever got fired for buying them. If Apple could offer x86 machines at a comparable price point to IBM/Dell/etc., along with their reputation for producing quality hardware, they could become a factor int the one market that has consistantly eluded them: the office.
As for consumers, the average consumer would probably not buy Apple hardware, but a lot of knowledgeable PC users might. The ones that care about the quality of what's in their box would probably appreciate Apple's attention to detail.
Trouble is, this would never fly. Steve is WAY too much of a control freak to allow his OS to run on just any old Pentium 90 you've got lying around. And the thought of overclockers tweaking his Apple boxen would mortify him to death!
Mark
I woke up late so I know no one will see this, but I just want to point out I summited this story about 3 months ago, it was regected. (surprised anyone?)
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
That said, it would be easier to go PowerPC 64-bit, but when I went to find out information from Motorola's site, all I could find was information about embeded and low-power, low-performance PowerPC. There was a roadmap that listed a high-performace "G5" chip with some 64-bit mode, but zero details.
I don't think Motorola is focused enough on high performance chips. Macs that use these chips will fall farther and farther behind Intel/AMD performance.
Apple should wait for AMD's x86-64 before moving OSX to x86. The memory (virtual and physical) addressing limitations of 32-bit PowerPCs are going to force able to Apple to start the move to 64-bits in the next couple of years. They either have to go PowerPC 64-bit, or they could jump to x86-64. BTW, does anyone have any idea what PowerPC chip (for the Mac) follows the G4?
Sometimes I wonder if people clamoring over the "incredibly expensive, choice free" Apple hardware have ever taken the time to see things from the corporate pov. I know...corporations are easy, but they also buy our lunches, pay our rent, give us spending money, and all that.
The simple fact is that no other platform sets up and maintains anywhere near as easily as the Mac. Give me 1000 clients and the server OS of your choice with support for Mac clients, and I can set it up faster than any other OS on the market. This will be the same with OS X. The boxes plug in and configure very easily. From a cost perspective, if you say it takes 7 minutes to unpack a mac and get it functioning on your network (this is generous...it can be done faster), and it takes hours to build a linux machine or a wintel machine, how much did you save? Non hardware related mac problems can be fixed 99% of the time in under 10 minutes, and often in under 2 minutes. They are EASY. Can the same be said for editing the registry in NT, or for fixing anything UNIX? I don't think so.
Work with all three platforms for 7 years. Then tell me what costs more. end-rant
I love the MacOS, I have been using it for years. And don't get me going on the G4. The only problem I see with Apple is the problems between them, IBM and Motorola. They can not seem to get the hardware out at the current Mhz mark/specs fast enough. Now I know that Mhz is not everything, but when one of your main suppliers has you by the balls maybe it is time to rethink some things. I personaly want as many G4s as I can get, but the price is out of range. I 500Mhz G4 whips a 1Ghz Intel, (heres a joke... Pentium 4 ) I think apple would be better to reinstate the Mac-clones and them them duke it out for hardware and shift more to software. It would take about 3 years for them to be a respected player, but I think it would be better in the long run. Then they could also release software for other platforms. OsX intel.
How much can you charge for an OS these days when Linux is free? Well, MS is charging $299 for W2K, and they are doing alright...
Just take Openstep/Nextstep, slap the new GUI on it and call it MacOS X. No, wait - keep the old Nextstep GUI. It rocks. :)
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
I'm not talking about major publishers such as adobe, I'm talking about the freeware and shareware groups. Apple has always had a huge following in teh freeware / shareware department, much more so then anything windows has seen. The people who have made these types of software are the ones that probly don't have the resources available to get thier programs to work on both platforms.
You need to look at the system as a whole when comparing. For gaming, the PCs easily kick the Mac's ass (it's not even CLOSE). For Photoshop, the G4-powered systems usually come out ahead. But who really uses Photoshop that much? People who do nothing but photoshop should get a Mac, people who enjoy gaming should get a PC.
The PCs are about 4-5x faster in Quake III and similar games (GF2 Ultra vs. Rage128/GF2MX).
Macs are also restricted to PC100 (now PC133 with the G4+), while PCs have DDR SDRAM and RDRAM to choose from as well. And then there's the bus speed issue: 100MHz (now 133MHz with the G4+) for the G4, 400MHz + 266MHz for the PC market.
Altivec is a pain in the ass to program for, as well. Won't be seeing too many programs for it.
If you really think about it, there is nothing in an Apple (with the exception of the PowerPC chip) that is unique. They all include PCI buses and IDE drives now. Granted the packaging is different than on the x86 boxes, but that is it. Apple is and always has been a software house that ties their software to a hardware purchase. It wasn't the hardware that was the draw so much as their OS. In the late 80s and early 90s there wasn't a personal computer OS available with the abilities of a Mac, yet MS-DOS and Win 3.1 outsold Macs. Why? The answer is simple, hardware cost and momentum. If Apple had opened the system specifications and sold their OS as a standalone product, they would be the ones in anti-trust court not Microsoft. Instead of making a few hundred dollars on a few million machines, they could be making thirty to fifty dollars on a few hundred million copies of their OS and control the software market. But market momentum means a lot. Its hurdle that Linux is having to overcome with Windows. Installed base can mean more than providing a superior product. If Apple were to release OS X for x86 machines, they would need to overcome not just the installed base of Windows but the growing ranks of Linux users. Granted people who have switched to Linux are more likely to be receptive to experimenting with a new OS, but the question is: What is the motivation? Another pretty interface?
The way around the driver issue is obvious. Apple will release a Intel box and support OSX/Intel only on Apple branded hardware.
It will also run Windows. The perfect box. People would pay a premium it. But they won't do it until there is a critical mass of solid OSX native apps.
This is Steve's ace in hole.
Yes, NT was ported to PowerPC, but only IBM PowerPC's, not Apple Macintoshes. Despite sharing the same CPU, the machines are different enough to prevent them from running each other's code. Of course, NT 5/Windows2000 only runs on x86 because no one else would agree to continue to maintain the non-x86 ports.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I think most people would pay for OS X on X86 because the savings on X86 over Apple hardware would allow them to purchase those expensive commercial software packages that are supported on OS X (but don't exist on Linux). I personally would use Linux more...but (for one example) Macromedia doesn't make Flash (authoring) for it. Those commercial software makers have trouble supporting Linux due to the lack of consistent GUI etc. Anyway, that's why I think people would be willing to pay for that OS on that hardware.
I think though, that your comments on an answer looking for a question and Apple's OS on non-Apple hardware are very valid. (See my post 'Making the whole widget'.) I have a Power Computing box and it hasn't been easy to update/upgrade over the years...but I am now running a dual-booting (Linux PPC/Mac OS) with OS 9.0.4 on it. Got a G3/375 in there too :-)
Galego
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
After reading the entire thread - well, at least the ones I thought were insightful, interesting or funny, it seems obvious that it will not happen.
:-
Whether it does or not is a moot point anyway - it's an OS that was geared toward a certain market, as was x86.
imho, at this moment in time (very generalised)
MacOS = high end DTP, Video/Sound editing etc.
x86 = office, server, low end DTP, video/sound etc.
The lines are very blurred right now and the above is a very general breakdown - the lines will continue to blur, of that there is no dought. They will blur more and more as new markets open and new innovations are made - specialisation is the key factor.
Let us not forget, the home/soho computer market is incredibly young - it has happened in my short lifetime.
OSx on x86 ? - who cares - it's just a dream for OS dabbling addicts !
The real factor here is consumer choice - a specialist product that is cost effective and exactly suits a clients needs.
Tailor made computers for the individual - we are so close to that right now, yet so far away.
Screw the different operating systems and the hardware that goes with them, I want a computer that does what I ask of it, that is tailored to MY specific needs, that doesn't crash or cost a damn fortune, that doesn't require constant upgrades in a never-ending cycle of cash output.
Computer Utopia....
(this is so way off topic - I must really go easy on my evening wine intake)
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Personally, I seriously doubt that Macs will go ahead and support OS X. The great thing about Apple is that they create the computers as well as the OS... this probably simplifies things like driver creation and hardware support considerably. If anyone wants to make hardware for a mac, they have to make their hardware compatible. This is unlike the vast mishmash collection of hardware for Windows where you need 650 drivers to do anything.
I bought an old 233 MHz iMac on eBay for a great price, just because I wanted a new toy to play with. Being an Intel afficionado for years, I wouldn't have touched other hardware until recently. I went to a computer store, played around with a Cube while I was there, and decided that Macs weren't so bad, and thus began my journey into Mac-dom.
Anyways, I upgraded my iMac from 32 MB of RAM to 160 MB of RAM, and this machine (created three years ago) rocks! It seems as fast as, and often performs better than my Intel P3 550 MHz with 256 MB of RAM (which was created one and a half years ago, and was nearly top of the line at the time). Even when messing with XMMS' priorities in Linux, my MP3s skip when I do anything much with the HDs. On my iMac running Mac OS 9.1, I can be copying files, have three IE windows open, be downloading MP3s off Napster, and have various other background apps like FTP servers and stickies and such, and the MP3s never even flinch.
My next computer will definitely be a G4 PowerPC. The only thing that deters from my enjoyment of my iMac is the lack of command line, which should be no issue with OS X.
If you really, really want to try OS X, stop pressing for an Intel port (I doubt that's going to happen), and run out and buy yourself one of the older iMacs (233 - 333). You can probably pick one up for $450 - $650 if you shop around on eBay and do some last minute bidding. Trust me; you won't regret it. And if you end up not liking OS X, just go and install Linux on it.
v
Thus, they won't need to support a bunch of aftermarket PC items with drivers. They can keep their margins higher than if they merely slapped together a standard PC with a dirigible-like case.
If they don't I think Apple will really die off. Their dependence on Motorola is a noose around their neck.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
I work in the valley. I have several friends that work around in the valley, while none work directly for apple several work with companies that are very close to apple Names left out to protect the innocent
Rumor has it that Apple already has compiled a good part of the MacOSX code on intel. There are several reasons apple migth start selling X86 versions. Apple has alot of supply problems with G[34]'s in the past. A few of the darwin developers are supposedly modeling development after FreeBSD which as well all know is X86 optimized.
There are several reasons why apple would not sell an X86 port. First Apple is a Hardware Company, their OS ran on other hardware it would hurt their mac sales. Second they have spent alot of money and time trying to convince everyone that G[34]'s are better then X86 chips hands down.
So what will happen? Apple will most likly spend a ton of money porting the whole OS, getting all of the binaries ready to go, just to scrap the whole project once they figure out they are a hardware company again. bah they will never learn.
Drivers and applications are a major problem to all 'new' OS's. Apple seem to have done a lot of work for the applications. However, OSX is basically BSD, so porting the GUI of other apps is the main problem. Also there's quite a few drivers for BSD, I wonder if these can be re-used? I would presume so.
Releasing for x86 would add one extra software problem: you can't release a single binary, they would have to release:
- separate x86 and PPC binaries
- a big combined binary
- release as source.
Ooooh, cat amongst pigeons!If you're used to Linux, compiling and running Unix software on Mac OS X is (excuse the wording) a pain in the ass.
I would completely reverse that: if you're used to compiling Unix software on Mac OS X, compiling and running it on Linus is a pain in the ass.
I compiled every cool little shell package i could think of, along with apache and all the rest, in no time flat! Actually easier than linux for me personally.
the very simple truth is that OS X on x86 won't happen because MS is the #1 Mac developer right now. Period.
--
"I think there is a world market for, maybe, five computers." __ IBM Chairman, 1943 __
In the early-to-mid 90's, there was a version of MacOS that ran on 486 systems in development. Apple was supposidly getting some help from a company that sells networking software in red boxes. Anyway, it apparantly was working pretty well when Apple got cold feet because they didn't want to lose the cash from hardware sales.
No, much of the drive to be cross-compatible with x86 hardware and x86 executables is so the famed "RedBox" (ala "Yellow Box" for cocoa development/nextstep compatibility and "Blue Box" for carbon development/macOS compatibility) can make its mainstay as a 3rd-party solution. Apple has long left huge marketing doors open for its third parties such as USB, which even most PC enthusiasts have to agree couldn't have been stimulated nearly as much as Apple managed to stimulate the market for USB products. FireWire is another good example, and they're poised to let Red Box be king of their cross-compatibility solution - in grand Apple style, farmed out to a third party (probably Connectix, of Virtual PC fame). Whoever gets the bid, it'll be the biggest showstopper in town without a little old-fashioned Apple R&D beforehand, the fruits of which we are surely seeing in these OSXonIntel.com sites.
No discussion of Apple strategy would be complete without at least giving lip service to its at times seemingly-deranged, but generally über-inspired CEO, Steve Jobs. Steve has, in many ways, been responsible for the total rebirth of Apple. Granted, a lot of what happened after he got there was set in motion long before he made his entrance. But the simple fact is, he knows what he thinks is cool. That's the problem with Apple's business strategy, they make products THEY think are cool and leave it to the consumers with similar tastes (or, really, a lack of options) to buy them up. Jobs slashed R&D, and what do you get? A flop on cube sales.
In many ways OSX will be their nest egg, and it simply doesn't make ANY sense to ANYone who knows ANYthinga bout Apple to blindly assume that they'd pursue this as part of a smart, business-oriented endgame. But then Apple's actions to date haven't warranted such an assumption, anyway.
Mark
mark@setz.org
I wasn't talking about a K6 - 2, I have one and it works great. I was talking about the original K6 which was about as weak as a 486.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I thought that was the only useful thing about this article, too.
Apple isn't going to shoot themselves in the foot like this and everyone knows it.
But the slash-effect meter was really worth clicking that link.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Actually, I have an iMac at work running OSX PB that has the developer tools on it. I've successfully ported a number of different apps over to OSX including squid proxy server, dhcp and nmap. From what I've seen, I'm looking forward to the actual release of OSX so I can install it on other machines. Oh, by the way, that little iMac happens to be our proxy server and dhcp server. It could use more RAM as it only has 128MB, but other than that, it works quite well.
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
I'm forced to use NT 4.0 here at work, and I gotta say this -- I have come to think of MacOS 9 as "that small, fast, stable OS!"
Do Microsoft, Intel, and AMD ship vast quantities of mind-altering substances with their products? (My PeeCee won't run Linux, even! PeeCee hardware is wet, warm, smelly, steaming, fresh, wet, jaundiced bullshit.) Only the drug-impaired or truly stupid could think that commodity x86 hardware/software has quality comparable to Apple's. My 7600 kicks the crap out of my ASUS/AMD, about 40% faster and the K6-2 has a 33MHz advantage over the G3.
MHz is RPM. I like horsepower.
Oh, and Compaq ships mice that are far worse than Apple's infamous "hockey puck," and mutant keyboards that have surprising incompatabilities. And Compaq's crud is priced in the same "prestige" range as Apple.
The "price wars" are over, it's a tie. When it comes to quality, Apple has lapped the competition. At the track, I'll bet on "Insanely Great" over "Same Old Crap!"
-toddhisattva
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free?
Because it's usable?
Bjarne
Compare it with a PII/233 and you'll find it every bit equal to grandma's box ... er, boxen.
:wq
- Photoshop Win32
- Photoshop OSX/86
- Photoshop OSX/PPC
After all, isn't the point of the Mac simplicity (I know, I know, but that's why many buy them)? Now, everyone buying OSX versions would need to check the box (or both versions could be on the CD). Even then, developers would need to compile each program twice, and completely abandon any hope of using inline assembler.I would love to see OSX/86, but it's not going to happen. In addition, think of what it would do to Mac sales if people saw the exact same software running on a machine 1/2 the cost.
x86 means tons of hardware, all hardware that requires drivers, and who is going to write the drivers ?
Drivers is a big big word.. it's the real issue with x86 boxes, it's the reason why even MS's NT coudn't take Win9x place.
In case of OS X, Apple has working drivers for its limited hardware support on its platform. If OS X attempted to work on x86 machines it would take an incredible amount of drivers coding work.. something that not even MS could do (infact HW manufactureres write their own drivers).
Here's why it's a good idea, and how it could be profitable for Apple:
:-)
First of all, they convert to the x86 standard, but produce their own AGP and PCI cards that are required to run OSX. Really high end audio and video stuff that they are used to coding for. Not only does it limit what they have to support in OSX, but it gives them a huge base of Intel users to sell to as well. And the good news is the rest of the hardware is still dirt cheap.
Second, the real meat of their OS is BSD/GNU, and that already runs fast on x86. And I really don't think the Apple crew is coding their GUI to the metal (i.e. in assembly, for specific hardware). So I don't think speed will be an issue. And they could always implement library compatibility with linux, as netBSD has...
But here's an interesting twist. What if the Linux community at large (or Red Hat and VALinux and SuSE et al.) bought out Apple, and converted the entire installed userbase of Apple users into Linux users?
Mac users have long been deprived of the joys of MS OS's (since early NT 4). They must rise up, and cast off the shackels of life without windows. It is a basic human right damnit. How much longer can we stand for this? Petion. Protest. We shall know freedom again!
I'm still using a Dell P90/64MB/WinNT. My core apps are Web browser, FTP, telnet, e-mail and, believe ot or not, FrameMaker6. I also maintain a small Web site with it. This little machine suits me fine, but I am kind of bummed that it won't run The Sims.
I have had the chance to play on several G3's, G4's, and iMacs as a lab consultant and web developer for our school. They have impressed me (well, less the hockey puck). They run most programs very well and the OS is pretty stable. The onl thing that erked me was that they were "iMacs" meaning Internet Macs... yet it was very slow when it was actually ON the Net!
It will never happen. One of the keys to the Mac OS has always been Keep It Simple Stupid. There is no way Apple is going to try to deal with supporting all the Wintel hardware and binaries for each. They just won't stand for it... case closed.
People who buy an iMac don't want to upgrade it, they just want it to work. Geeks can't seem to grasp this concept, some people just want a tool that will get the job done. Even if we ignore the fact that you can upgrade things in an iMac (memory, processor, HD), it's irrelevant. I don't bitch about how I can't upgrade my VCR because it's an appliance that does the job. The iMac is the same thing. If upgrading is your concern, the iMac is not for you...
I don't know about that, I consider myself a geek, and my last computer was an imac simply because it was a) cheaper than a G4, b) would run OS X, and c) I've never had a mac, and thought it would be fun to play around on new hardware. As you stated it is upgradeable, and peripheral-wise the USB ports make it pretty flexible. The only real problem I have with it (beyond the instability of MacOS, which OS X should fix) is you can't upgrade the graphics card.
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It would be a total white elephant, consuming ungodly amounts of money for a tiny, tiny percentage of the PC OS market, threaten Apple's hardware sales, confuse consumers
Hey, sounds like NeXTStep...
--
> Nope. I was alive then, and I remember.
Well, I was alive too. And I became an Apple developer in 1986. I developed a bit for the atari later. IMNSHO, the atari never 'caught' up with the mac for anything but games and music (for instance, GEM was ugly). Anyway, you are right to correct me. I should simply have said years ahead of Microsoft.
> 1982-1984 was a great time in personal computer history, when things advanced very fast and new platforms appeared every few months
You cannot get anyone more convinced than me. Those were terrific times. Apple2, TRS80, Lynx, TI99/4A, ZX81, spectrum, NewBrain, MO5, TO7, Excelvision, Accorn. QL. Atari. Amiga.
Hey, I still use my TRS-80 model 100 as a serial console.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Apple has been ripped for not open-sourcing the MacOS, for not opening their hardware spec, for not porting to the PC, but look at the business model...
While all the PC vendors are killing themselves trying to squeeze margins from manufacturing, Apple maintains some of the highest margins in the business, and huge cashflows without major marketshare.
Fact is, they probably will port to the intel chipset, but the only reason would be increased margins, not lower prices for consumers... and to their credit.
http://www.hiredinsight.com
www.hiredinsight.com
MacOS X is based on GNU/Darwin which is currently being ported to x86.
Darwin is a BSD-like kernel based on Mach 3.0. So there shouldn't be a lack of apps or so.
There is a differrence there. Sun is not really a hardware or a software company...it's more of a solution's provider. You can't just get what they sell off any shelf and expect it to work perfectly for your mission critical, distributed, real-time, mass storage needs. Apple sells PCs, which are supposed to work out of the box. Additionally, a lot of their hardware is stuff you really can't get very many places...at least not as many places as you can get a pc. Lastly, I dare say that Sun has a lot loess invested in its interface to its OS (CDE and whatever shell they use as default) than Apple.
But if they go to an x86 chip wouldn't they have to mke their machines IBM compatible?
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This
As far as OS X on Intel hardware, I'd like to see it because, honestly, there needs to be a user-friendly alternative to Windows. I'm sorry to say, but you really do still need to know what you are doing with Linux it run it. Not a bad thing, but Grandma can't install and run RedHat on a regular basis. People are all over Windows because it's point and click, and because it's the cheapest. Sure you get more bang for your buck with a Mac, but who wants to pay the extra $700 or more? With OS X on Intel, people could upgrade thier existing PCs to an even more advanced, more stable (yes more stable, boot a mac without any thrid-party extensions to mess up your system heap and watch that puppy haul ass, solid as a train) OS without buying a whole new box. As for Apple switching to manufacturing their own Intel hardware, it might be interesting but I happen to love the whole PPC architecture and I would hate to see Apple stop providing it, simply because it's the only good alternative to Intel. Motorola has always been the main supplier of CPUs for Apple since back in the 68k days (rememer your first 030?), but they do need to get it together on getting orders filled. Don't like PPC? A chip that runs cooler and with less power with a 64-bit bus (128 with G4's Altivec but this is emulated somehow I believe) and has 6 or more execution units which all run in parallel and complete FPU math in much fewer cycles than a Pentuim, at 500mHz it outruns a 1GHz PIII. OK just had to get it out, please don't start a flame war, the truth can't hurt you.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
This is the best idea! Besides my PowerBook G3 400 out runs my PIII 500 desktop at just about everything. To be honest it really isn't that much slower then my 1ghz duron at most things.
I was at an overview at one of Apple's offices in Northern Virginia in February/March of 2000 and asked that very question. My point was simple:
:-)
It's tough to convince people to spend 25-50% more for hardware, even if it is twice as fast, if they can't slowly migrate away from their current applications. If you want to get people to use G4's, you need to convince people to use OS X. To do so, you need to port OS X to x86 architectures to hook current Windows users, and then convince them that you have better hardware after people begin using them, and companies begin developing G4 apps. Very few people will buy non-x86 hardware because _it won't run Windows_ and that's what they're familiar with. Maybe as Linux continues to take off, PPC hardware sales will too, and then OS X - but that seems so counterintuitive.
It took me about a year to move from a Linux/Windows multi-boot to Linux-only. Why? Because I wasn't comfortable with Linux apps - there was a lot of stuff I couldn't do in Linux at the time (a couple years ago). Even stuff that I could do took a while to set up the first time.
The response of _all_ the salesmen at the meeting was that they do not ever intend to port OS X to x86. They wouldn't care if someone else did it, but they wanted to be a hardware provider - not a software provider - and didn't want to support x86 OS X.
Sounds like Sun to me. Get people to buy your hardware, and write an OS that works only on your hardware (except Sun finally got smart and released an x86 version of Solaris).
Will Apple ever port OS X to x86? Probably not. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have a great business model, which is really a pity, because they build amazing hardware (mmmmm... Titanium Powerbook...)
The more important question is: Will OS X support a 2 button more
Nope. However, if windows (and all my games; This implies an x86 CPU) would run on it, and it wasn't a AT (or even PC98 or whatever it's called) architecture system, but rather basically a modern mac architecture box with an x86 chip in it, I might consider it.
Apple has always made really cool hardware. I have a Quadra 950 running debian linux, because I know that I can count on the hardware to not spontaneously explode. I also don't have to configure hardware (though linux autoconfig on Q950 ain't there yet.)
I wouldn't be surprised if many people are buying PPC macs to put linux on. They're good, solid, and reasonably fast hardware. I still think MacOS sucks, but I've always admired apple's hardware. I also think Filemaker sucks, but that's mostly because it's a pain in the ass to extend. I'm not writing a bunch of XTNDs or something.
Also, apple may be "primarily" a software vendor, but they wouldn't have nearly the same revenues if they stopped selling hardware. They'd be a tiny replica of the company they used to be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
another Power PC manufacturer. Anyone please......
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
Yes back in the days of the P5 Apple made a Mac OS 'classic' port, & MS also made a W95 port for the PPC CHRP/PreP.
But neither were released - can you imagine the perceived confusion, as far as apps & drivers are concerned
Mind you back in the days when the double ported BeOS (PPC & X86) looked like it might take off, one could buy apps that got arround the perceived confusion just by having both the X86 port & the PPC port of the app on the same CD.
Now imagine if the MS court judgement had made it compulsary for MS to make avaliable (independently tested) Linux, BeOS & Mac OS ports of all their applications & all ports must be avaliable together with the W32 port either in the box or on the CD, before MS could sell that application to the public.
Now I think such a policy would have a greater effect on MS's 'monopoly' than any 'splitup' of MS would.
An enforced open sourcing of the Win32 & DirectX APIs wouldn't have been a bad idea too.
Actually I do, but
With IDE floppy drives avaliable (I do have one of those, they make things heaps cleaner under bonnet, without that bloody messy floppy drive ribbin cable all over the place) & for people using the SCSI bus, SCSI floppy drives are avaliable too (they are hard to come by though, they use them in SCSI drive towers) & USB modems, printers, keyboards & mouses; all that legacy stuff is now irrelivant, for new hardware anyway - I haven't use my serial ports for years.
But he's right AT firmware sucks, PC's need modern firmware, so for example USB keyboards & mice will work in the BIOS after its been jumper defaulted, etc, etc.
You can download their full X86 'free beer' non-comercial POSIX complient realtime OS
Or their 'System on a floppy' demo ('Neutrino' OS, filesystem, 'Photon' microGUI, plugin complient 'Voyager' web browser, 'Qnet' Networking, all on a bootable floppy)
For the last fucking time, this question comes up over and over. Every time, the answer stays the same. NO! Linux is an operating system, MacOSX is an operating system. Neither one is going to destroy the other. If someone using Linux decides to use MacOSX then be it. It is their own choice. That doesn't mean that Linux is being destroyed. If MacOSX does prove to be superior to Linux (not really a thought on my mind), and everyone migrates to it, then it doesn't show that MacOSX was a threat to Linux, it shows that MacOSX was technically superior to Linux.
It's not about OS's threatening each other, it's about adding features to be the step ahead of the other guys. The more operating systems that exist, the more competition there is, and (hopefully) the more featurefull and bug-free code we will have! Competition is a *GOOD* thing people. Look what Microsoft has done without any for so long...
what exactly is the point?
1) everything is going to have to be compiled twice. eg. how often do/did you see NT/Alpha binaries for anything non-trivial? never.
2) people avoid Macs not because of the hardware, but because in the past the MacOS has been totally gay. Take away the hardware edge Macs have and you're not left with much.
OS X is going to have to be "Insanely Great" to do any good on x86. Those outside Blow Jobs' RDF realise good != "Insanely Great"
I know Apple, makers of pricey hardware for two decades, does not want this to happen, but oh GOD would I be happy to have a cheap triple-boot Intel-based Win/Linux/OS-X box! Imagine being able to funnel all your $$$ into just one box! Picture it: Linux, Win2k, and MacOS-X all on a dual-CPU box (full multi-CPU capabilities in each now, natch!) with, say, two 7200 RPM 40 GB Maxtors, two 80 GB 5400s, and 1 GB PC133. God, that would be great. (Maybe even get them all running under VMWare so I wouldn't even have to reboot!) Apple in general and Steve in particular will do all they can to keep MacOS off of Intel hardware, but I dearly hope some hackers will pull it off.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That's the real question . . . as Jobs puts it, their the only company that makes the whole widget. They integrate everything and control the hardware. They also really like to sell boxes . . . In short, love or hate macs, apple has NO good reason to port it to other hardware (increased support problems too)
What do YOU think is better ... selling 5000 CDs of Os X for 100$, or 50 machines at 2000$, with an almost zero production cost for the former and quite a large one for the latter ?
I feel somewhat opposite on this subject... I think if a company with such a prominent name as apple were to put their OS on x86, this would allow people who are not confident enough in *nix, to have a solid company behind their emmigration from windows. Linux variants are definitely getting easier to install, but just the whole 'programmer aura' around it is still intimidating. I would be interested in it myself, just from the standpoint that as a web developer, I would guess many of the application providers (macromedia, adobe, cubase, etc...) would more readily port their apps to Linux if there is already a hardcore OS X following. Anyhow, that's my take on it.
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
Seems very similiar to sun situation. Sun released thier OS for X86 (don't know when but 2.4 was the first) and hardware sales didn't get affected. They seem to be doing very nicely thank you very much.
The reason that i say this is that apple is a Hardware house. They sell what is in my opinion excellent processors, coupled with medioce HDDs, CDRs, and Video Cards. I really could not comment on their mobos, but i have the feeling that as they are not 3rd party they would be ok.
:).
All this they sell relatively expensively (compared to getting the run of the mill PC), but people buy them, either coz they love the hardware &tc or the OS. Both valid. But if they released OS X for x86 i would probably leave my thoughts of their hardware as drool alone, esp the TiBook. And buy cheap PC stuff coz it is cheap.
Hrmm what am i trying to say here, well basically i believe that are BOTH a H/W company and if x86 OSX was avail they would become a S/W company, and i think that MS would juggernaut them for it. No office, No IE, no nothing!
How every version of MICROS~1 Windows(TM) comes to exist.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
cases in point: VHS vs BetaMax, x86 vs {PPC|SPARC|Alpha|etc}, Windows vs Unix, most MS products vs larger competitors early on (IE 2 vs Netscape), RedHat vs Debian (*GRIN*), and so on. It's all about Marketing, folks, because marketing makes more money than engineering...
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
I think that the guys pushing this petition are just asking for trouble. Apple is one of the more litigious companies out there, and if their website isn't copying the "look and feel" of OSX, then I'll eat my iMac. (Oh wait, I guess I'd have to buy one of the pieces of shit first).
1. I'd hate to be Steve Jobs on the phone to Adobe announcing OS X on x86. Haven't they just rewritten their core apps (Photoshop, Premiere) for OS 9 and OS X with the Altivec extensions to the PowerPC instruction set?
2. M$ won't like it. Even after Office on X has been announced, it's bad to piss Bill off.
3. They just announced faster G4s - there are likely to be further speed increases (the recently announced G4-IIs are vapour at up to 1GHz) this year.
4. Medium term you're looking at a 32-bit architecture that everyone else is about to bin. What's the point in jumping on that bandwagon right now?
5.Apple have got to be hoping that the G5 arrives on time. A seamless transition to a 2GHz 64-bit processor could set OS X on fire. Not to mention your favourite free OS.
I've always thought that a more interesting proposal than OS X on Intel has been Linux on PowerPC. The processors seem to be available (to Apple at least) at prices comparable to x86 stuff. With a decent MOBO you could build a sweet linux box around it - non?
Why Not.
I would love to put OS X on one of these old x86 machines I have.
I prolly would never buy a Mac, but I would be interested in OS X.
How now! Must every bit be spiced with a cross? Nay then, take that! - Dr Faustus
IIRC, I saw an interview with Woz and he was asked this question. He said that it would not be released for polictical reason.
I read this as MS will not support the Mac if Apple competes with Microsoft.
Hardware is the problem. Anyway Apple could pick amongst the miriad of hardware you can find for i386 and build OS-X on it.
Only if Apple focuses in a little part of the hardware that is available it could succeed.
Darwin, the underlying 'fifth BSD' that OS X runs on, has an intel port being worked on. What's really exciting now is that a whole ton of GNU stuff is getting ported. XFree86 now includes a Darwin in it's source tree, earlier this year, and since then it's really exploding. Gtk+ was ported so you can build Gimp. Qt was recently ported so you can build KDE.
:-).
Here's the page for the GNU Darwin distribution
If you want to see OS X on x86, do it yourself! Darwinfo has a howto to get it booting on Intel" It's very pre alpha, and seems to run only on a few mobo configs, but still, I think this is the only way you'll see Apple port Aqua to x86. They are really into leveraging the Open source community for Darwin already, and they've reiterated their loyalty to PPC, so they need all the persuasion that they can get.
Also, a really interesting note about OS X that is strictly mac, but applies peripherally. Last night at the analyst Meeting, Tevanian, their Software lead, said that they've doubled their number of paid developers in the last 12 months. We can expect the amount of applications for the mac to at least double when OS X comes out.
Still, IIRC, as part of the patent deal that Apple and MS did, gates didn't want cocoa to be put on x86 in exchange for Office (and it is really better than the x86 version
Again, if there is a compelling reason for Apple to go through another hardware transition, it'd be the fact that Darwin is implemented and tested already on that platform.
Personally, I think they'd port it first to SPARC and POWER4 rather than x86 since that iron doesn't conflict with their consumer market.
Macs ARE niche computers nowadays. This is a fact. Most of the dedicated Mac users I've seen ARE media types.
:-) He started the xFree86 port to the Mac.
John Carmack is a media type. He uses macs. He's in a niche (He's one of the best
who else except graphics pros need Cinema Studio Displays?). For these professionals, they don't think twice about spending a few 1000 more on their PC if it helps them do their work better
I'm sure on any IDE, the extra horizontal space is much appreciated for project windows and the like. Altivec is a really compelling reason to pay another $1000, especially if you need to crunch large chunks of data.
However for the average monkey running Office, the Mac makes no sense.
Actually, Microsoft Office 2000 for the Mac is much better than the current Windows version. Even, people within microsoft have said so. Ok, so it was Kevin Browne, MacBU lead at Microsoft. Still, Gates pays him and it shows. There's not a day that goes by that I don't sing praises of him.
And for the home user we have to add in the lack of games and cutting edge 3D hardware.
All right, uncle. You win on this one, but with a big wait. When Metrowerks fixes their compiler, Graeme Devine will be releasing the Altivec/OS X version of Quake III. (by the way, the only reason someone uses Metrowerks is if they want to dev for mac and PC simultaneously) If that's not good enough, nVidia is in cahoots with Apple.
Back to Carmack. I'm pretty sure the biggest reason why he's back to doing Doom is that he gets to play with the codebase again. Since the original was developed on NeXT using Objective-C, he can play around with it happily on his Mac.
I think you might be right , if k and GNome catch up, things could fall out for apple. However, the one thing that Linux lacks as far as GUI goes is leadership that can make some strong decisions.
While gnome is great because you can tweak every little morsel of it, that is a really hard sell to people. Eazel does an allright job of it, but I really think Apple does take the cake in this, by hiding all the unixy aspects in the gui. It's a trade off. Abstraction vs full control? What do the consumers want vs what do the developers want? A strong sense of management is what really is needed to make these decisions. While using linux, you may have that, but a lot of people don't , or just want something prescribed, that they can work around if they want.
Apple is in tune with this, and I think they finally 'get it.' Linux on the other hand, empowers the user incredibly, which is truly what linux is all about. But in the wrong hands, it can become quite unyieldy.
Listen up all, before OS X get's ported to x86 it's going to go to POWER4 and then Sparc, and a maybe to x86. Why? in their meeting last night they mentioned that Apples Enterprise is Education, helping them solve problems versus just selling boxen (iMacen? :-) To be a solutions provider, you need big iron or know how to play nice with big iron. Apple right now doesn't have the resources to develop that, nor to compete with best friends number 2 and 3, Sun and IBM. (Motorola's the old girlfriend that Apple just keeps coming back to :-) , Best friend number 1 is Ole Bill)
Any how, if you can't beat them, join them right? POWER4, as I understand it, runs the same ISA as the G3's, so that should be binary compatible (ppc is a low power derivative of the POWER chipset). Expect that first. Aqua on an RS/6000! UFS is there, and the drivers wouldn't take that long to port. You probably wouldn't have classic, or carbon, but you got Cocoa and the BSD API's. Remember this is enterprise, so you don't really need the old Mac apps except on the clients. For IBM, the ease of use of OS X could be a real big selling point, and just the leverage apple needs to ask IBM to help Moto's faltering yields.
Ok, the next path is Sun. takes a bit longer to port Aqua, Quartz, and all the goodies, but it's all there, with the old next API's.
Ok then, we get to x86. They probably have this ready in house, and just not committing it to public CVS. (the new revisions to the APSL let's them do this) Apple doesn't release it to the public, but for their own enterprise solutions needs. Upgrade for compatibility with hardware, drivers when they need them.
Don't expect anything consumer level. They have had three really good years of the PPC, and there is no way they are going to screw up something good (so they had a bad quarter, a lot of people did) Keep it simple, stupid.
It's sneaky, but Apple hasn't leveraged their Next Enterprise muscle yet, and OS X lets them do this. If you listen to the latter half of the Apple's analyst meeting, there are some subtle hints there.
So this is all speculation, but still if you're going to get OS X on x86, that's how it will happen.
( if you don't know Peoria, in the middle of illinois, is where such fine citizens as Matthew Hale 'hail' from)
:-)
Dude you forgot the slant eyes
You know, on the The Straight Dope, when asked the reason why Europeans expanded around the world and other races didn't, they concluded that the factors of the topology of Europe, the multitude of different languages, and defensible terrain, made the Europeans
obnoxious
Get out of my face, you ignorant twit.
Some one please moderate this down to -1x10^-98751234443
I'm sure I want to? No, I don't. :-) Can't stand Be.. and it doesn't have the programs I need to work with.. and if you put a serious app to it, it's not quite as fast as everyone says. The latest dev seed of OS X is quite a bit faster, especially on a 677Mhz G4.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Hi, I'm not in the media industry. I'm not only into look and feel. I wasn't seduced by plastics.
I buy Apple computers because they're extremely fast, extremely useful, and extremely high-quality products.
So you're VERY wrong in your assessment of the only 3 types of people that buy Macs.
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I've been working with Mac OS X for a while now on a G4 system, and I love it. I've never seen anything so fast - and I know the finished product is even faster (MUCH faster). Please don't take away my PowerPC. I won't use an x86. I simply can't; I need the speed for my job.
:-)
The G4 is a wonderful chip, and despite delays in speed increases, that doesn't justify switching over the ENTIRE platform. That would kill sales -- just the transition. Yes, Apple's done it before from 680x0 -> PowerPC, but this is very much different.
Apple's worried about speed? From my own experience, there's nothing much to be offered on the other side of the fence either.
Okay, I'm sick of typing, I want to go use OS X more.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
So, Apple will probably start buiding drivers after 1.0. That'll take some time (we all know how Apple is) and after that x86 drivers MIGHT come. I don't know, but if they decide to do that, it won't be for some time ...
- Anerki
Life is great! (as told by Lady Susan)
Same reason to capitalize the first and third letter of a name such as McWhatever. Part of the choice in creating the spelling of a proper name is to decide on capitalization issues.
Sun produces Solaris for their own boxes (Sparc), as well as for x86. But, how many people associate Solaris with the x86 platform? If you really wanted a Solaris box, would you load up an Intel or AMD box, or would you get a Sparc?
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Would you go to a OS that is not a standard, and, for all intents and purposes, dead? Mac is a great OS for some things(like usability) but when you get into power Linux or windows beats it. Case in point-- I am taking a 3d animation class, we run the software on some old g4's with os 9, and i also have a copy for home use, and the programs run more smoothly on my homebox which has less ram and has other issues(like a bad 3d accelerator). But the rendering and creation was many times faster. Also there are significantly fewer products for Mac OS, and without those what is a computer good for.
If people can connect to one another even the smallest of voices will grow loud.
If people can connect to one another even the smallest of voices will grow loud.
--Serial Experiments Lain
From what I gather, the AppleMac "PowerPC" platform is devastatingly powerful, far better RISC processor - and the price is not so bad (well, if you look at the iMac). Damn' shame the "Cube" can only be hooked-up to a proprietary expansive monitor, otherwise you would have a totally silent supercomputer on/by/under your desk. According to what I have been told, these things are at least three times as fast per clock tick as the Intel range for "floats".
Is this right or what? (seriously - I'm asking...)
Then there's other platforms like the "Alpha" - though it looks like Apple is going to get the volume/price at the moment...
Mac OS X is designed from the ground up to run on a RISC processor. Without the PowerPC processor it would mean back to the drawing board or release a port that suffers from poor optimization...
Why put a next-generation OS on a deader than dead horse of a CPU? As for those of you that continue to shout "comodity" and "faster", why don't you look at latest specs and prices? The ONLY way to get a comparable x86 box cheaper is to build it yourself. Period. Do you think its fun for Intel to build CPUs the size of a piza box that have to run at GHz speeds just to be credible? The rest of the CPU industry is just sitting on their thumbs while Intel sweats away. Its no big trick to run a RISC processor at those speeds with a die 1/8th the size, dissipating 10% of the power. Why don't they? Because they don't need to.
emachines?? as a competitor to Apple? emachines has never made any money, and by the looks of it never will. If they ever look like they might, Apple could buy them with the change in between their couch cusions. There is probably a larger volume of used macs in the sub-$500 range that would be a superior computer in every way to a brand-new emachines PC - in performance, durability, etc. About the only thing they wouldn't do is run Windows.
If they move to selling operating systems on Intel boxes then they'll go down the tubes.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
I'm wondering what the Slashdot community thinks this would do to Apple, would it adversely affect their hardware sales?
I think it would effect Apple's hardware sales if they were to produce OS X for x86 platform. I suppose the true answer really lies within a book called In the Beginning...Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. Despite the worries I think Apple (Steve) should consider the possibility seriously. Right now Apple is hurting because their CPUs are having trouble keeping up with Intel. Their highest clocked PPC chip runs at 733MHz while P4 runs at 1.5GHz. I'd assume everyone knows that clock speed isn't everything but I think average consumer who buys computer at CompUSA doesn't know jack comparing RISC and CISC (some RISC though). Apple's hardware isn't looking very good because of this speed gap. OS X on x86 would solve this problem.
We asked earlier whether you felt if Linux would be threatened by OS X, with the possibility of OS X working on x86 machines, has your answer changed?
This is two-part question. Answer would be No and mostly No. Is Linux threatened on the server side? I doubt that. The Open Source aspect of Linux is key strength in this area. Is Linux threatened on the client desktop side? I would say mostly no. Very slightly yes if you are talking sheer install base. I think the idea of having a powerful, stable, nice looking, user-friendly desktop is good thing. It may initially steal some market share from GNOME, KDE and such. However this can mean a very good thing for desktop side of Linux. It's lot easier to port applications from OS X (x86) to Linux (x86) than OS X (PPC) to Linux (x86). It's very unlikely that commercial software vendors will port OS X (PPC) to Linux (PPC) due to low demand. It would also be interesting to see Linux app ported over to OS X as well.
I am a programmer, and portability depends a lot on the app in question. You should be able to port a well-written app from one instruction set to another simply by re-compiling for the target machine. If the app in question is finnicky about the size of data types it uses, this can be a problem, but not usually a major difficulty. Of course, if you're using inline assembly to bum every last cycle of performance you can or something else freaky...well, life gets interesting.
Im a big mac fan. I cant help it. I grew up on them. The next computer i get WILL be a G4 or whatever is new when i scrape up the cash to get one.
BUT IM TIRED OF THIS TOPIC
next time someone posts something about OSX on intel it should be modded -1 redundant and move on. Cmon editors...filter this out already. Until apple actually releases OSX for i386 i really dont want to hear it anymore.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
There are two possibilities if Apple were to port OS X to x86: let it run anywhere (never happen!), or make their own x86 boxen proprietary enough that only they can run OS X. Even so, people would hack them to install Winders and x86 Linux, natch, so Steve would have to sit back and deal with people booting out of his brand-new OS and into other, higher-volume competitor OSes. I'm sure he'd be thrilled.
These x86 Apple boxen would, of course, be around as expensive as Macs; realistically, decent and well-built PCs with solid componentry and a good feel (comparable to a Mac) cost around as much as a Mac does. The new boxen would also have the disadvantage of being stuffed full of fans (the iMac I'm sitting in front of now has no fan at all; it doesn't need one). Apple wouldn't be able to slap a midrange-to-high-end desktop chip in a 1" thick notebook without worrying about having acreage of heat sinks and a fan or two as well (check out the new Powerbook G4).
Somebody remind me again what the benefits would be?
---------
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get your war on
From a user standpoint, of course this would be great to see on other hardware platforms. I could free myself from the M$ mindshare without changing to much more expensive hardware.
From Apple's standpoint, the question boils down to how much money they make from selling hardware and how much money they make from selling OS software. If their OS sales take off into the stratosphere, but they're left with a lot of fancy boxes sitting around unsold because they're too expensive, and few people will buy them, however superior or prettier they are, then they probably won't do it.
But running an OS X system on an Intel or AMD platform would be a great intermediary step. Once people get used to the differences in the interface, they'll see the superiority of the software.
Later on, they'll see how much faster it runs on the superior G4 boxes, think about their Quake framerates, pee their pants, and buy Apple's hardware, too.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I had a similar problems with my P2 box. NT went down every few days, so I tried linux. When linux crashed too, that clued me in... I replaced the memory and now the box works like a charm. I never went back to Windows either ;-)
Err. to keep this on topic: I would LOVE to try the OSX shell running on top of my favorite Linux distro. Now why can't apple figure out that there is very little money to be make in low-end hardware, and start selling a nice cross-platform GUI that the world could fall in love with? Worked for M$ (everything but the cross-platform part that is)
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
And afaik it won't be any more a threat than BeOS.
;) I'll buy it. Replace linux with it? Nahh. Never.
I would and probably will buy OSX if it comes out for intel, and run it on another box, just like I did Be.
As long as Apple doesn't screw up like Be did, it will almost deffinately push out Be on the handfull of machines that use it, but probably won't push out any free unixen.
I bought Be way back in version 3. Bad network card support. Even the latest version won't work with supposedly supported cards. So as long as OSX can network right
Just my two bits.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Apple's biggest problem as always been of Apple's doing....developer support. They have always had a closed system and they have made it very difficult for developers, treating them as competition. Hopefully with a BSD based system with Java support and Apple's new found support for an open system, developers will have an easier time supporting this system. Apple has to decide if they want to be a hardware vendor or a software vendor. An Intel version of OS X has the potential to knock off Microsoft as the leading OS. Regardless, supporting developers will make or break it for Apple and OS X.
Microsoft invested $150 Million dollars as well as settling some large lawsuits out of court with Apple. Microsoft agreed not to sell the $150-million worth of Apple stock for at least three years, and did not get any voting rights. At the time of the investment, Apple had more than 1 billion cash on hand. The 150 million investment was really more a of gesture (and has been rumored to be part of a legal settlement) than a needed cash injection.
For references see below:
The question and answer session from the conference call, text and analysis from Motley Fool:
http://www.fool.com/Calls/1997/Calls970806AAPLAndM SFT.htm
From an anti-Mac perspective:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/news/trends/t970806b.ht m
A more neutral perspective:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/cgi-bin/print_stor y.cgi?story
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
I blew the URL's listed in my other post, so here it goes:
The question and answer session from the conference call, text and analysis from Motley Fool:
Motley Fool Conference call 1997
From an anti-Mac perspective
PC Mag perspective
A more neutral perspective
ZD Net Anchordesk story at the time
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
I would like to try some of the apple style GUI/design philosophy without spending out on hardware.
Then again, they make sexy looking hardware too - I am often tempted to by a cube..
no sig.
I went to that link and it is pretty much the same description as in Apple's TIL article, except with photos instead of line art images. While it isn't as easy as the average ATX tower (let alone a G4), removing 4 screws and 4 cables then sliding out a small motherboard and doesn't seem _that_ complicated to me. The iMac is an all-in-one design - which tends to force trade-offs with easy access.
They have Darwin running on x86 now, and several of the OS X related sites have info regarding that. I think that Darwin _may_ be officially ported to x86 in the not too distant future (before the end of 2001?), but OS X is going to stay on Apple hardware. Hardware is Apple's business - SlashGeek and several others got that right.
biglig2 takes this in the direction Apple is giving people: port/use Gnome or KDE on Darwin/x86. This gives you the underpinnings of OS X on x86, but with GUI un*x users are used to. In that case, why even use Darwin/x86? Well, if you are a developer, there is the possibility of having a compiler for OS X/Apple HW that runs on Darwin/x86 (something like NeXTSTEP's ProjectBuilder, as dschuetz notes). This would let you make use of cheap x86 HW.
Well you know what. I think thats just a bogus question. Because in my personal opinion, I've never been a big fan of Mac to begin with. I just don't think an os like OSX should even be categorized with Linux.
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Although I wish I would be able to run osX on my pentium, it is very unlikely Apple would port it to the x86 platform. I think the reason is simple; Microsoft. Microsoft products such as office and internet explorer have attracted people that use Office 2000 at work.
Microsoft does not want to see Apple as another threat, and will probably cut off thier development of microsoft products for macos.
While English skill has nothing to do with programming skill, I want someone who's dilligent writing my drivers, not the person who thought this translation was adequate:
"Your 10/100 Ethernet Card are featuring "Auto-negotiation" which can auto-sensed and switched between 10Mbps or 100Mpbs if your HUB can also this feature."
As a Mac guy, I have enjoyed standardized harware and true plug and play. While I think MacOS goodness should be available to all, I'm afraid of that cheap commodity hardware and its scary scary drivers.
What do you x86 people think?
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Windows 2000 was a massive install, why, because it's "Plug and Play" driver collection was soooo huge, yet people hearlded it for being so easy and intuative. What a croc of shit.
The reason the there are so many Windows drivers isn't because Windows is a superior operating system, it isn't because it is hard to write drivers for any other platform other than Windows. It's because
a) Windows has the largest percentage of usage in the market (desktop anyway), so it makes sense to write for it.
b) Microsoft have a nasty habit of turning on companies that do not bow to their demands (such as "Supporting Windows"), they were taken to court for a reason you know.
c) It is what people demand.
Now, a lot of people have said to me that they don't want to install Linux on their machines because it doesn't have the support for their hardware, but they base this decision not on fact, but on the FUD that MS uses
BSD has a lot of industry support, and I don't think that it would be an issue to get manufacture's to support them, and any BSD drivers would be usable by the new Apple OS X. So what is the issue
The issue is that people do not want to see Apple compete with Microsoft, they lost that battle once before. Not because they were technicialy inferior, not because the market demanded it, but because Bill Gates was a caniving scheaming little bastard, It's what makes him a gifted buisnessman and Microsoft a globaly successful company.
Mac users tend to be a tightknit bunch, they realise that Apple system is a better way, but they can be just as zealous as the Wintel mob. Let's look at the potential benifits.
1- By making the Mac OS avaliable to the Intel platform Apple will increase it's market share, it's stock price and it's reputation.
2- With the Mac OS in wider cirulation more developers will be convinced to develop for the Apple platform, meaning more applications and drivers for use on the Mac. (games anyone?)
3- It will provide Windows with the competition that if really needs, which will, in turn, make Windows a better operating system (It's not that Linux isn't good competition, it's just the MS doesn't treat it that way, nor do Microsoft's consumers)
The only downside that I can see is that it will blur the line between what is Apple and what is MS. Microsoft has dominated the Intel platform for a long time, and many Mac users see Intel as the enemy as well. The Apple's were built with the motorola chip because Woz felt that it was better suited for his design, and fair enough too, But that does not mean that Intel cannot run the Mac OS, this is a software issue not a hardware one.
All in all I cannot see any reason why the Mac OS cannot be ported to the Intel Platform or any reason that this porting could not be view as a positive step for Apple and the computing market in general.
Roll on OS X says I
Trav
Leg Godt!
it's not just the OS. I've been through a lot of Apple hardware, and it's all still in perfect working order. I've never had Apple parts break on me, the only tech repair I've had done is battery replacement. Of the PC users I know who've had computers as long as I have, none of them can say the same.
That's an excellent metaphor.
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You are a fucking moron.
The primary technical reason for not supporting the x86 (IMHO) is because of OS X's optimization for Velocity Engine.
Sure, OS X will run on a G3, but not like it will on a G4 (or especially the G4e). From what I can tell, Apple's vision is all about "Digital Convergence" and I believe that OS X optimized for the G4 lineage is Apple's key to making this vision a reality.
Just look at the slogan on the Apple Store's home page - Power to Burn. They are referring to the fact that their current software cannot take full advantage of the capabilities of the current hardware lineup (dual processors, multiple Velocity Engines per chip). OS X will.
I'm sure it won't take much longer with the new CPUs (any of the Intel lovers noticed that the new Macs have G4+s?
Anyway, MHz or GHz isn't everything...
> I've already decided
Congratulations for such a great decision!
--
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Free Software enthusiast; Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
That's right!!! And it's coming with Mac support. The only reason why the MX chip is the only chip that currently support the Mac is because it's their most recent chip. All future chips will have built in support for Macs.
While the G4's and all may certainly be elegant and Mac's elegantly architectured, they're slow.
I think both of you are trying to say the same thing. Elegance and speed aren't always the same thing. A porche boxter (spelled right?) is most certainly more elegant then an old camaro, but stick a 500HP motor in that camaro and it'll be the faster of the two. The porche however is still the beter designed car.
I'm sure Apple would love to sell faster G4s - but there aren't any. Apple isn't to blame - they just make the best computers that they can with their slow G4s. They're still very good computers. If Motorola ever gets their act together........
Willy
I thought that buying a Mac meant that I was buying hardware superior to the Wintel crowd. Now it seams that any hack with a Pavilion can run the Apple OS that I cannot.
I originally bought the Umax J700 because I read somewhere that Rhapsody would run on it. Oops.
Well, people keep telling me that this will be a good year for Apple. Who knows?
does your mac cut the OSX mustard?
ridiculopathy.com
The problem I forsee is getting the masses to accept the OS as a replacement to Windows. Virtually every computer that the average person buys comes with Windows preinstalled. How would these people get enough experience with OSX before they decided they wanna trash Windows? And then, would they see enough differences to feel the need to change OSes?
From the Apple site, the official step by step how-to, complete with illustrations. theimac.com has a photo version for top and bottom slots. They say the max is 192 MB (circa 1999).
You may also want to look at the developer notes (links via frame seem broken, use ones in doc), since there seem to be different DIMMs, depending on the model. Hope this helps.
Once again you have blown me away with your massive vocabulary. Are you some 13 year old who thinks they're an 31337 hax0r? It's "people" like you who ruin great discussions like this. Go ask your mommy for some money to buy a new game now.
Everyone is forgetting about writing drivers for the thousands of PC peripherals. This is the challenge that Be faced and it was just too much to accomplish alone. Unless PC companies pledge full support for new PC hardware, Apple would never even consider putting their OS on an X86 machine. That's why Apple keeps their stuff proprietary: less overhead in lots of different hardware configs.
Most of everyone here seems to forget that Apple's boxes have Apple-branded ROMs inside. Apple could pull off the x86 sales if they made their own motherboards with the Apple-branded ROM in it, thus preventing people from exploiting its OS
This is not true. A lot of work done recently on OS X was about optimising the GUI not only for the G3/4 processors, but for for the Altivect unit found in G4 processors.
Aqua eats up a lot of performance, and is basically possible because of altivect (why do you think they do not use IBM's Power-PCs?). So if they move to intel, they will have to rewrite all this stuff for MMX or whatever. This would require serious work.
All the Mac users can have the virusware that makes up the remainder of OS X.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Its not just the hardware, and its not just the OS when it comes to macs, its the way both function together. Almost everything on mac is plug and play, or at least very very close to it, and it actually works (as opposed to Win's lovely version of it). When you work with apple products, you know every copmponent is quality, and youwon't have to go replacing your network card in 3 months because it was made from some no name vendor in the middle of tibet. All your apps work straigt throught withe the same interface, as according to Apple's strict human interface guidelines, which have been used for the past 10 years or so. There actually are beinifits for a closed system, where one place is in charge of all major changes.
Mod point free since 2001
Way to go, cat! I'd love to have an Apple box just to play with OS X...
coke
Without getting in to a flame can I say that flops mean as little as Hz. I'm a computational physicist and what hardware do I do my calculations on? Intel. Why? Because if I need to I have all the support in the world to add extra functionality to the pc be it extra processors or a new fpu. Try doing that with apple.
I think it's a simple question as far as Apple is concerned. Which generates more revinue 1) Sell the OS for $100 or so and never sell an other machine or 2) Sell a machine worth $1000 and the OS for $100. Why do people buy an Apple machine if not for the OS?
The PPC boxes that Apple is building these days are very high quality boxes (if only they could pump out the GHz). I've already decided that my next computer (within 6 months) will be a Mac running Debian. Those Titanium Powerbooks are amazing machines for an amazing price. I've had a fun stint with x86 for the past 3 years, but I'm ready to move back to PPC with a real OS.
microsoft can stop apple dead by ceasing production of office and leaning on other developers. why isnt office on linux? because linux is on x86
remember, sgi lost their (percieved) advantage when they went x86. sun continues to hold its advantage
a very good discussion here
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
This reminds me of a line from "Army of Darkness." "First you want to kill me, now you want to kiss me.... blow." As a long-time mac user that's how I feel about porting to x86. After all the flames about how macintosh sucks that I've endured for years and years, now suddenly windows users want OS X. Well, I'm running it right now, I love it, and you can't have it! And please, DON'T buy a macintosh. You hate them anyway. Stick with good old windows and "put on your eyeshades, put in your earplugs, you know where to put the cork..." Ahh, Whistler, that looks like one cool version of windows! I think they made the trash can look different. Whoop-dee-doo! Note: My hostilities are only toward Microsoft automatons.
But OS X on x86 doesn't have to be like a Windows release that is expected to run on every x86 box. It seems like if Apple is going to port OS X to x86, they would have their own boxes, their own hardware, and could specify a limited set of premium hardware (and charge more for it) to keep themselves from sinking their revenue stream. In other words, they could decide that they wanted to move processors without moving to the the entire x86 platform. These days, Athlons are such a good price/perf they might think about it more than usual, but it still seems unlikely.
If they were to move to the Athlon, I don't seem them supporting all motherboards, (maybe only their own?) all legacy devices, and so on. What would be the incentive? Why would they do extra work so that customers don't need to buy something new, preferably from Apple? Also remember that the idea of a reasonably high "minimum specification" would sit well with a company that has been putting an emphasis on quality components all the way through. One reason that it is hard to compare prices Mac vs. PC is that you can't get a Mac without Ethernet, you can't get a general-purpose desktop Mac without the best, easiest-to-open case there is, you can't get a Mac with crappy video (remember those pages about how even the very first iMacs could be dismantled and 21" displays hung off of them?) , and so on. Those things add up.
By the way, there was an little blurb on sharkyextreme (which usually ignores Mac stuff) the other day about how "Shocking as it may sound, many things we take for granted in today's PC, ... either started at or was proven successful at Apple Computer." Well, it doesn't sound shocking
to all of us...
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Really, the only thing you need all the processor power for is the Classic emulator. You can run it fine on a PowerPC 8500 hacked up to allow it to install, as long as you are running only native apps.
I posted this reply to make a point....
This question is more annoying than people who respond to their own posts!!!!!!!
ARRRGHHH.....
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
Mac OS X does look nice but porting it over would be a mess. Does anyone remember at one time that Apple opened things up for Mac clones? Are there any Mac clones out there today or did a certain company buy them out. What makes you think that Apple would want to revisit open hardware after that venture?
If what you're looking for something to make your Windows machine look nice, check out http://www.stardock.com to see some of their nifty programs (Windowblinds, DesktopX, etc) to enhance your desktop & make it look like what it isn't.
Sure, it's not without flaws but at least it will recognize your hardware.
-Wicky
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos." -Homer Simpson
on my mouse? I don't think OSX on Intel is even possible.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
Yeah it reminds me a lot about that. The problem with Apple is that Steve Jobs has all these crazy ideas, but he never really follows up on them. I'd LOOOVE OSx on my PC, I mean LOVE it big-time, but I would still be booting between Winblows and Linux as well, so it probably wouldn't be that big a deal anyways.
This is my sig, this is my gun. This one's for flaming, this one's for fun.
The Power PC G4 outperforms the pentiums in many operations..... So basically if apple chooses PC over Motorola thier hardware would only be an overpowered pc. All of the pluses of using motorola CPU's would be gone!! (enhanced momory management, Altivec mathcoprocessing and advanced SMP cpu management. Intel had thier heads up thier ass. If apple does choose this they should use AMD's chips.
Did anyone happen to catch the stats on the osxonintel.com site? After averaging about a dozen a day, they have collected almost 700 today alone since 6 am when this article was posted on /. Check it out http://www.osxonintel.com/stats.cfm
I'd be willing to bet that there are many more who would love to ink their name if they only knew of this site.
oh come on! You are running Linux aren't you? How can you bring up "Hardware driver support may be limited" arguments running anything other than windows?? Not to mention that OSX will have a much better driver base than the current macos has.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
We'll be stuck with some wicked slow ppc emulation to have any decent apps. Microsoft will be serving up a unix based os real soon there after. Great. Then we'll have two lame buggy GUI's to compound the buggy unix gui's we have already.. No thanks.. ==sam== free nessus vulnerability scans = www.vulnerabilities.org
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
My motto is that OS is irrelevant; it's apps apps apps that count.
Macromedia is producing it's core suite of apps for OSX and microsoft is producing office10 for OSX those are two fiarly compelling business apps. Good enough?
Yeah, it then comes down to everyone whining about the limited hardware support, and things like 'why is my Floogledorfer mark 21 asynchronous carrier pigeon network card not supported?'
This is why NeXT (and Sun, for Solaris x86) had a booklet outlining supported hardware configurations, so that when you wanted to run the OS on an intel box, you consulted the docs, and went out and *built* a compliant machine.
They also had some farily weird ideas about what *mainstream* hardware was, I mean, no NE2000 compatible driver for NeXTstep ? (not officially, anyway). The whole 'supported hardware' issue could have quite an impact on market penetration.
Touche'! The apps were provided in the form of a 'fat binary'. The installer can strip the binary of code for unneccesary platforms, if needed.
Sometimes I read posts on Slashdot and I'm amazed at the mindless zealotry I see. jkujawa, while you've made some good points about the relative "elagance" of the Mac architecture, you've failed to dispute the original argument. Macs ARE niche computers nowadays. This is a fact. Most of the dedicated Mac users I've seen ARE media types. Macs nowadays are basically PhotoShop and prepress boxes. Apple recognizes this in their marketing (who else except graphics pros need Cinema Studio Displays?). For these professionals, they don't think twice about spending a few 1000 more on their PC if it helps them do their work better. Another big chunk is a audio community, ever heard of Pro Tools? Of course, this is rapidly changing now that good tools (like CuBase, etc.) and more importantly, good sound HARDWARE is available for x86 boxes. However for the average monkey running Office, the Mac makes no sense. They're slower (in general), cost more, really aren't any easier to use, and have less software and peripherals available. And for the home user we have to add in the lack of games and cutting edge 3D hardware. Finally, there are "legacy-free" PCs on the market today, that don't have serial, parallel, PS/2, or ISA. They don't sell particularly well because the whole PC periperals industry has yet to embrace USB. Eventually this will change.
In fact a lower Mhz G4 will just about outperform a similar PC (try looking for ACTUAL benchmarks not those Apple PhotoShop thingies). Benchmarks vary but they seem to show that in real world use (ie the 97% of apps which do not use the Velocity Engine) that a 500Mhz G4 is about as powerful as my 600Mhz PIII Sony Laptop. Therefore Apple's new 733Mhz G4s may be able to compete with Intel's PIII or even the P4 but the benchmarks also show that the 1.2Ghz Althon can easily hammer them all.
Apple has been trying for too long to be both a hardware and a software company. Its about time that they realized they are a software company and a good one. People don't buy macs because they can't upgrade and its hard to get parts so you are stuck with what you buy. If they went to an Intel version they would be the biggest threat to Microsoft. Right now they aren't because they are locked into this propriatarty hardware.
Apple's corporate culture dictates that they will NEVER let go of the hardware business, at least while Jobs is at the helm. Jobs is a perfectionist and a control freak, and he will never relinquish control over any part of the Macintosh business.
For historical examples, look at the first Mac. It was a sealed box with no way to open it and no expansion capability. You either used it Apple's way, or you didn't use it at all. Look at the iMac. Look at the Cube. Same idea. Jobs doesn't want people messing up his beautiful hardware with third party sh*t.
For more insight on Apple's mentality, read Neal Stephenson's essay, "In the beginning...". I would love to see OS X on an Intel platform, but it's never gonna happen while Jobs is in charge.
This
One of the things people have always liked with the mac is that it is not 'bitty' like the PC.
You buy a Mac, with MacOS on it. It says mac on the front. It is all "one thing". you don't need to worry about which graphics card you want, etc.
People who feel that way will still buy a Mac for the same reasons.
People who are willing to try out different OSs on their PCs are going to be people who like to tinker around with things and probably like to have various hardware options too. These people are unlikely to have had macs in the first place.
I think the two markets could well be fairly distinct, in which case maybe mac will do it.
I bought a PC Laptop with USB, 56k, 10/100, 400MHz K6-2, 14.1" 1024/768, 6GB Disk, CDROM, 128MB RAM, Li battery, 7lbs, 1.8in thick for US$2000 in August, 1999. And I've never had any hardware trouble or driver incompaitiblity.
Now I could get twice as much for the same price.
So it remains the same: Macintosh hardware costs US$1000 more for the same machine if you need a developer quality system. US$200 to US$500 more if you just need to do email, word processing, and surf.
But I'll still consider a Titanium because it would be great to run OSX, it's very nice hardware, Apple quality may be worth US$1000 more, and it's real UNIX, not just Cygwin and PuTTY (both of which I love -- thanks a billion guys!).
I think that installing PCs in an office might be a mistake considering TCO nowadays. I'd switch to iMacs and Cubes now that I've spent some time doing system administrationa and maintenance for a startup. It's easy for me to manage my machine beacuse I'm a techie, but my life would be much asier if everyone else's machine just hummed, too.
Does anyone know what compatibility issues I'd face switching an office over to iMacs and PCs all on the same network (just a DHCP firewall and a big hub)? Would SMB work? Will everything configure itself automatically the same as now?
-Brian
Have you seen the Macintosh installation documentation? There are no words on it. It's so simple that my 50-something computer illiterate friends can be on the internet based on a color coded diagram on one glossy poster without reading a word of English.
Gosh, I love that. Sixty year old folks from small towns in the mountains send me email based on listserv posts I've made and meet me to camp in the desert. And you should see graphics designers take to Macs!
They say Windows works one day and not the next and nobody knows why; I don't see iMac users doing regular reinstalls, but I hear a lot from PC users about it. And I'm tired of it.
-Brian
We welcome yet another OS to the intel platform, bit on the same hand, the desire to have java or cobra or something like it, to allow apps to run on different apps becomes an issue.
The trouble is, is that no-one is moving in the right direction, except under duress. MS would not had embrased the net, but fostered their Compu$erve clone MSN on us, were it not that the people wanted the Net. IBM would have us on MicroChannel, were it that everyone wanted the AT system. Open standards may be comming to apps as well people.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
My P90 still serves to play all my old Dos/Win95 games that won't run under WinME/Win2000. All things considered, I spent about as much time on my P90 as on my Duron 1000. Funny, isn't it, how Civilization has this "look Mom, the sun's coming up again" on people?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
If Apple wants to port Mac OSX to x386 aritecture it will still need to be a closed box solution. The transmeta technology has already been proven. And AMD has already liscened the technology from transmeta. If apple wants a sucessful port they could ask AMD to create a processor using transmeta techology to inclue a PPC instruction set. This would allow PPC native apps to be run on x386 hardware with minimum (or no) software emulation.
Move 'zig'!
well I'm happy with Linux or FreeBSD on X86 so why would I move to a new prorietary OS without any applications running on ?
/*really*/ different, think real Open Source
Think
MacOSX and a port of StarOffice looks mighty tempting to me... specially if OSX was on x86 hw. I must admit though, MSOFFICE is actually an OK product... but StarOffice is just as good and free.... just my 2c -Josh
save the GNUs!
While I was working at NeXT, one of the jobs I had there was running a hardware compatibility test program for Intel-based PC's.
The system never worked particularly well, despite the best efforts of the people at NeXT and the people at the PC vendors. NeXT was never able to form the kind of high-level relationships necessary to ensure that a particular PC vendor didn't gratuitously break compatibility with our OS with a hardware change.
Microsoft didn't have to worry about that - "It still runs windows" was on the list of things to check with any hardware change. Hell, it was probably the ONLY thing on the list.
Apple will only do better if they can convince a PC manufacturer like IBM or Dell that maintaining compatibility with MacOS X/Intel is just as important as maintaining compatibility with Windows.
Or they need a different approach entirely, though I really don't know what that would look like. I don't think open-source drivers will be an acceptable answer to very many consumers.
As if mHz means something when you are comparing two completely different architechtures...Since you use the word RISC in the previous sentence I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you are trolling.
At any rate, my Debian iBook (with 333 G3 processor) is significantly faster than my desktop Intel machine, which runs at 400. Then there's the price; try finding an Intel laptop that has integrated 10/100 ethernet, 14 inch display, which is both fast and has 128 MB RAM for the price of my iBook.
Did I mention it runs linux? I accidentally erased my MacOS partition months ago and Linux has ran so well I haven't bothered to re-install it.
From where I'm sitting, I have a "better architecture" and a "functional advantage" for less $$$ than I would had I chosen a PC laptop over my iBook. I'm sorry, what was your point again?
Actually, I've been a PC user for a number of years now and I plan on moving from Debian to OS X.
Why?
full hardware support (some of my linux drivers are shoddy hacks, at best. I'm not trolling here, the author of the iBook sound driver says so himself)
slick interface. Say what you will about pretty colored buttons, the fact is that the GUI is what Apple is known for. I've had some pretty X themes, but the usuability has never really been there. Oh yeah, and I still get to run bash in a terminal window thanks to the BSD layer.
butt load of apps If I switch to OS X, I get top notch video editing software at no extra cost, plus the ability to run all the legacy Mac Apps, plus a decent web browser, plus (did I mention the BSD layer? I knew I did.) all the UNIX software I already love. There are already X servers available so (get this) I get to choose between Photoshop and the Gimp, and I have network transparency.
Sounds like a winner to me. Give me a reason not to switch to OS X.
Thanks, man!
I didn't pay for my operating system either
Oh, it was, wasn't it. OK, it was an ugly biege box ;)
I didn't pay for my operating system either
It seems to me that Apple have a chance of taking Windows out in the desktop market if they could get through the many, many, many porting issues.
I didn't pay for my operating system either
Well, the oodles of drivers certainly took a long time to get through - and I rebooted because I thought it had crashed ;)
But it was easy and intuitive. It was a piece of piss to install. You just had to wait a while.
I didn't pay for my operating system either
But the original Mac classic was an ugly grey box ;)
I didn't pay for my operating system either
I'd just like to point out that some of us hardware hackers like the fact we have a nice, slow, open, 8MHz bus to play with ...
I didn't pay for my operating system either
Is there anywhere on the web that has instructions? Can you even put more RAM into an iMac? [I'm no Mac expert, as you can tell!] ;)
I didn't pay for my operating system either
There is only one reason to why Apple wouldn't release OS X for Intel; Customer Experience. Apple is in its essence focused of giving a complete customer experience. From the day you buy to the day you upgrade, they want to own the customer experience. It is simply impossible to have an OS X installation on a platform that starts up showing BIOS stuff on a black screen using a horrible typeface. A real Mac starts with a nice sound effect and a smiling computer. This strategy is clear in all that Apple does, and is the very reason they been able to stay alive and keep the Mac fanatics. OS 9 is hardly an operating system but rather a program executor, but there is no alternative if you want the whole experience. Lately we've also understood that Apple plan to open up their own Mac stores, which effectively is just another step in the same direction.
"I wanna go electric" - Leila K
In the end I really don't care what OS becomes popular, just as long as it's UNIX based.
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>In fact before Apple released their comment about DVD-burners for Mac, Pioneer had released news of their CD-RW/DVD-? (forget which recordable format for DVD they used)... Once people start using those combo recordable drives on PC Apple will loose any possible advantage there...
The pioneer drive was developed specifically to put into the new G4 Towers. It was a joint development between Pioneer and Apple. It has been licensed to Apple and probably won't appear in PeeCees until another manufacturer makes them
1. Apple would be in direct competition with Microsoft and not just a nitch player like today. 2. Microsoft would strong arm Apple with the apps they produce for Apple (office,outlook,ie). 3. It would be way way faster than W2K on x86 and Microsoft won't let that happen. Bottom Line, Billy boy says no.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I wish people would stop complaining about Intel replacing Motorola if Apple were to port OSX to x86. For those unfamiliar with the graphic design industry, Apple has become much a standard there and Intel cannot compete on that market. Line of two machines an Intel box and an Apple with the same amounts of mem/disk space, etc, then run photoshop, some 3d programs such as Strata Pro, and you'll see the comparisons.
Apple will probably not be concerned over people sidestepping hardware purchases opting for OSX software to port to cheaper boxes, they already have a major market. Do you think that just because us geeks speak in wonderment and chant OSX OSX OSX, Apple feels threatened to port OSX?
What would be the big gain for Apple here, if they put OSX on the market think of all the free download mirrors that'd pop up causing them to lose money on sales. I don't think its a matter Apple feeling scared or threatened about losing hardware sales, you purchase an Apple comp for, looks, functionality, and its niche in the market, in this instance with OSX and x86, its like buying a Ferrari only to have a Daihitsu engine.
John Ashcroft replaced by Kathie Lee?
"When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am buddha, nobody is upset at all"
The Mac version will. My comments about pricing were directed at the hypothetical x86 version and what kind of prices Apple would be looking at if they wanted to avoid losing money overall.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
I'm guessing that if Apple is making $50-100, which seems unlikely but with an iMac coming in at $800, hardware costs making up some of that, retail costs making up even more, it might be possible, you might be able to see MacOS X for less than $200. Which is cheaper than a brand new boxed copy of Windows right now, but not by much. I doubt most Slashdotters would be willing to shell out that much. NextStep and OpenStep used to retail for around $500 IIRC, and the enthusiasm of its users was not enough to make people actually want to spend money on it.
Indeed, as superior to Windows OS's goes, the news currently is fairly bleak. Even the cheap systems, BeOS, QNX, etc, have failed to make any headway and had to go to a free (as in beer) distribution model to hold on to market share.
Then again, another question is "Would it, priced at a lower margin, attract many more times the number of users that would have otherwise been unwilling to buy a Mac". If so, then the prices might be lower, but Jobs et al would have to be very sure that they'd see a dramatic improvement in market share. If sales of Macs without x86 MacOS X would have been 1,000,000, but with the x86 platform available be half that with a mere 800,000 expected sales of x86 MacOS X, Apple wouldn't even be able to halve the price.
Right now, I don't see it as impossible that MacOS X might be released in an x86 form, but I suspect the price would be a great deal more than most people would be willing to pay, especially with most people(still!) being forced to buy Windows anyway and with little chance the x86 version will be able to run all OS X software (remember there's all the stuff designed to run on MacOS 9 that wont work)
I think Intel people who want the platform might be better of contributing to the GNUStep and Darwin projects. You wont get Aqua, but the platform will be free (as in speech and as in beer), and wont rely on Apple hardware sales to determine the level of support both now and in the future.
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
This is just a rumor that I heard from one of my Mac-loving buddies. Supposedly, there has been a group of programmers within the Apple ranks that started on a Mac OS for x86 many versions ago, because Jobs was considering it but quickly dropped the idea. But this group has kept it up all along. Perhaps for their own enjoyment, or perhaps waiting for Jobs to come and ask them to look into it for him. But it doesn't really matter. Once the AmigaDE shows its stuff programmers will settle on Amiga as the default programming platform and you will be able to run whatever program you want on whatever processor you want.
For at least 10 years there are recurring stories about Apple porting their software to x86. They haven't ever done it and they never will. It's obvious that Steve Jobs wants to be the only one selling hardware for his software. Even if they wanted to do it, there would be large technical problems, with endianness (byte ordering) at the top of the list. All Mac software is big-endian, all x86s are only little-endian. Yes, there are systems like Linux that work on both PPC and x86, but PPC is bi-endian.
Someone please tell me how this is going to make Apple money? What, if there was a cheap box to run OSX on, you all would become mac users? And you would Purchase the software? - for how much? I hear lots of whining from those who are not macintosh about the cost of Apple hardware, but really now, how much have you spent on hardware in the last 5 years? I spent $2000 on a MAC clone, a 604/150 and I'm just now thinking of buying a G4, why? 'cause I like OSX and this machine isn't likely to go there. Do I need a new computer? Hell no, this machine will throw around a 200 Megabyte Photoshop file with no difficulty - hell of a lot faster than a PIII I had the misfortune to be working on. What's that, My power computing machine is out of date? Yeah, I'm really taxing it, editing a bit of video and audio, doing some flash, photoshop, and web design - for what I'm doing, the newest, fastest G4 wouldn't give me much more than a 10% increase in efficiency - is that worth 3k? So, by making sure OSX won't run on my machine, Apple is forcing me to buy new hardware... that's a good thing from their perspective. Am I pissed? No, I think that 2 grand or so every five years make sense for the tools of my profession, and I'm pretty excited by what I've seen of OSX so far. Would I buy an x86 box if there was a version of OSX on it, heck no, I want to get work done, and that's what Mac's have always been for - I've got some x86 hardware around with linux on em to play with, but when I want something done, I go to the mac. Steve Jobs is just as capable of screwing up as the next guy - and what's more, he's started to admit it, and I like that. But look at his record lately, and say, he's doing okay so far.
The question of applications being available is a good one. I believe that there will be an x86 version of OSX but only after the transition period is over and developers are shipping Cocoa, Java and BSD based apps for the OS. This might take about a year.
We asked earlier whether you felt ... has your answer changed?
This is the slashdot equivalent of eBay saying an error occured during registration and all of your defaults were set to no instead of yes.
What is this, a slow news day or something?
Well, Microsoft will never compile its office applications for any OS that runs on x86. So Apple will not be able to switch to x86 Hardware (if they wanted at all), therefore I suppose Apple doesn't have any interest in porting OSX to Intel, right?
Hi everyone, this is my first post! yeah! well being a apple avid fan , it's important to remember that right now hardware is a critical piece of the company, if they were to port it, they would lose a significent portion of revenue. but i would like to have the the choice, i use a macintosh because of the software, not the hardware, i could careless what i have for a processor. and the x86 is cheaper option. it's definitly a pandora's box... Jim
I dont think it is loss of hardware sales that is stopping apple, although I think it is a pretty big thing. I think the biggest thing affecting Apple is its relationship (if you can call it that) with M$. If Apple competes with M$ in the OS market (and esp. the Server OS market) M$ will stop all support for MacOS. MacOS would not fair well if Office for Mac was scrapped. The only reason is exists at the moment is because apple signed a deal to make IE the default web browser (over netscape). M$ has more control over apple than most people think.
-- Cut and paste is not code re-use!
OK, Let the flames roll. I'll do you all a favor, my e-mail address is Ted.Dziuba@cheshireacademy.removethisbeforesending .org. Have any of you actually used OSX? I mean really? This is becoming the "Shiny Things OS". Let's face reality. The OS wars are over. Microsoft won. Let's look at OSX for a moment. It's all fine and dandy in its own little twisted reality of the Mac hardware platform. They can pretend to be important if they like, that's just fine. Next, onto Linux. There is a good reason that it is free. The IT industry wants things done right, and they want it done yesterday. Everything has to be compatible with what your clients are using. NT is the answer, folks. Linux is just a toy for those IT geeks who want to "be different". It takes a degree in computer science to do something on a Linux box that it takes a ten year old to do on NT. Come on people, this is reality here.
Flames. Yummy.
(Bring it, I'm the admin.)
Ted
OS/2 was awesome!
And OS/2 did not _die_
OS/2 for x86 is being KILLED by IBM itself! (there is a special place in hell reserved for you, Thompson!)
OS/2 for MACH on PowerPC was stanglled by Microsoft-loving careerists!
We are talking circa 1994, people, SEVEN YEARS AGO!
If the sabateurs had not blown it up, OS/2 would have hosted OpenDoc as the transition to Taligent.
And THAT was GEM!!
And a TRAVESTY that it was orphaned.
OSX is simply lucky that Windoze is sooo dumb and *nix is sooo opaque.
Cuz without OS/2 to show it up, OSX wins by default.
regards:dlf
ps: yes, I know that Taligent was a co-venture between Apple and IBM: but we are talking OSX vector (Openstep) and an OS2 vector (Taligent), for the sake of contrast.
1) ObjectiveC is in fact being folded,spindled and mutalated by Apple in favour of Java!
http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/2000-06-21.01.htm l
2) WO has been Java for nearly a year! If you actually knew anthing about WebObjects, you would know that V5 will be released in about 6 weeks!
Apple is trying to do to NextStep what IBM did to OS/2!
They are trying to destroy one of their few sources of competitive advantage!
Linux is already dead: every major ISV is backing away from any new committments (and, yes, I have the urls - so dont even bother).
Darwin has the intrinsic advantage that more drivers and apps will be availible just by piggy-backing on a *mass-market* platform (OS) that is the CORE committment of a major OEM (Apple).
Everything that Linux can do Darwin can do better.
Long term advantages for Darwin over linux:
* Microkernels have suprior architecture
* BSD is the 'mother' of all */nix innovation: linux is just a clone/hack.
It's not even fair to include "OSX" in the comparison with linux: Darwin beats linux all by itself.
And Darwin (now) runs on x86.
Watch out.
IFmac X ran a dual boot x86 with windows and the consumer could just use the widows boot for the software not written for X then......if I'm a software company why not just write for windows since all mac users can use that port.
I think that OS X will be a very good thing for Apple. However I don't see them going to the x86 infrastructure. There are too many problems with it. To start, as many have pointed out, the archaic pre-PCI standard being supported on it. The other thing is that it isn't on a RISC-based model. That is one of the main reasons why the 'slower; 500MHz G4 stomped the hell out of the 'faster' 1 GHz PIII.
Anyways, back on track. I think that if Apple wants to increase its share of the world, it needs to do two things. A) It needs to do something about its pricing. The iMacs are a great start. Howere its more professional line (G4 Towers and G4 Powerbooks) need to be reduced. Secondly, Apple has to entice more developers to develop for the Os X platform. I think they are doing that with its UNIX under-pinnings. Another thing to do is offer a UNIX/Mac platform. OS X Server does this, however it hasn't been widely accepted due to the fact that many only see it as a Mac Server. I think if they get rid of that mis-information, plus get more developers and lower costs they will have made it an irresistable buy for an already awesomily-made machine.
"Stupidity is like neclear energy; it can be used for good or evil, and you don't want any on you."
You want to add to that, for CPUs you have: intel compatible, AND for OSes you have: Windows?
Why, for God's sake? Is this an expression of faith that consolidation of markets doesn't really happen except for Microsoft, nVidia and Creative Labs? Leave MacOS hardware and software in the perfectly good niche they're in. Why screw that up?
Tossing X Into the Seething Sharkpit of x86
Caveat: Some unkind words about Linux and Free Software are said therein to make a point... I do have some positive views on Linux and Free Software put to print here, if it makes you feel any better.
SoupIsGood Food
As far as I know, Solaris x86 was always targeted towards academic users and home users, rather than the enterprise. It's performance on x86 was never as good, relative to other Unix implementations, presumably because of the need to conform to the specs of Solaris for SPARC, but it is a very high quality product. It served its purpose in making Solaris knowledge/affinity more widespread. If it had been free (beer) from the start and had a bigger HCL, it would probably be most of the places that Linux is today. I don't think Sun ever entertained the idea of migrating their products from SPARC to Intel - like Apple, Sun make their money by selling hardware, with Solaris, Java, SPARCworks et al as loss leaders to drive sales.
damn, I am so sick of hearing about this STUPID topic, why wont it die? why wont the idiots shut up?
Yes! I agree that Apple is in a bind with Motorola as far as getting enough high quality PPC chips, and moving the technology forward at a pace commesurate with competitors. But there's fuck-all anybody can do about it.
Yes, Darwin runs on x86. But Darwin!=OSX. Apple is YEARS behind their original plan to have a "modern" OS. When they finally made plans, they were years behind the rest of the industry. Now they're SO close to actually realizing that goal, and you want them to shove it all off, and have Apple sit on their asses for another 2-5 years to port Aqua/Quartz - and bunches of other technolgies to x86? What will we end up with? Another fucking Be? No software. Do you think for one second that Adobe would waste time porting photoshop to OS X x86? Fuck no. Apple would be dead in the water. Game over.
Not to mention the fact that Apple is bigger than Microsoft. Do you know why? Because Apple makes hardware. Microsoft does not (with the exception of keyboards and mice). Apple makes money off of hardware. The number if iMacs sold in the past 3 years proves that there is a market for Apple hardware. If Apple got out of the hardware business, they'd quickly be out of the software business as well.
Plus, x86 sucks. that's it. Do you want there to be only one viable CPU choice in the world? 0wned by Intel? Fuck that. I know Motorola isnt giving Intel much competition lately, but PPC is still a better platform, technically. The world is better off that it exists, rather than not.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
There's a project to clone OSX for Intel. It's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/achelous/.
Personally, I don't think it has a chance of succeeding, and even if it does the only thing it will accomplish is drive Apple as a hardware company into the ground, thus forcing us into a demonstrably inferior architecture. Thanks, but no thanks.
But hey, if that's what you want, go check it out.
----------
...I can't think of what.
On PowerPC, Linux isn't "threatened" by OS X. Look at the vast array of devices running Linux/PPC. There's the TiVo, Total Imact's briQ, and Apple machines ranging from the Power Mac 7200 (PowerPC 601 @ 75 MHz) to the PowerBook G4 (PPC 7410 @ 400/500 MHz).
OS X is targeted at very specific audiences, most of whom are different than Linux's audience. You can't run OS X on a TiVo. It might be made to run on the briQ (somehow). And you can't run it on any Apple machine prior to the Power Mac G3.
If OS X was released for Intel, it'd find a home (possibly a small home), but it wouldn't totally annihilate Linux. It also won't do that on PowerPC.
People aren't looking at what OS X could do for LinuxPPC. Instead, they're obsessing over what it may do to Linux. And that is not what we should be obsessing over.
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
Of course OS/X would be a great opportunity to do doubly duty in the hardware revenge department: Deal Intel a blow and ally with AMD would deliver the message loud and clear to Motorola and Intel.
And also, of course, it would be sheer suicide. Commoditize the Apple interface and there would be nothing unique about a Mac any more.
Ask Corel how well they succeeded on their apps for Linux..
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I've gotten kinda used to the idea that I can email the actual person responsible for code if I find a bug. I like being able to check the source if I don't understand what a function does. I like the fact that I will never again be beholden to a software company's whims. It'd take something pretty damned compelling for me to give that up again.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You're trolling, but you raise an interesting point. Yes, I would like to tell the engineer about the bug that I found in the ABS. Or the fact that the cupholders don't hold bottles of my favourite drink.
To give a more realistic example, my family owns a sport fishing boat, which we operate in rather rough conditions (southern Tasmania, a very windy, rough, and unforgiving place to be at times). Much of the gear that we fit to the boat fails, having been designed for relatively benign boating conditions like those in Florida, and when we repair it we often make modifications to better cope with the conditions. Don't you think the engineers at those companies would be interested?
Open source lets you do the same thing for software. That's what makes it so valuable.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yes... I recall that... it was was about 4-5 years ago. MS gave Apple 75 Million. Personally, I think BillG just likes having Macs around. Maybe be needs something to be the butt of his jokes. I dunno.
-andy
Yep. Gotta second that remark.
I bought a Mac 9600 clone (604e/200) in 1996, and five years later, I am still operating it as my primary home machine, with only video, hard drive and RAM upgrades.
It runs every new OS perfectly and without significant lag. In fact the latest OS, 9.1, runs faster than the last one, 9.04. Office 2001 runs perfectly. Only hi-end games like Diablo II are beginning to make it show its age, and I can get a G3/400 drop-in processor upgrade for about $200 which will keep me gaming for another three years at least.
Of course, this hasn't always been true. I ran a Mac SE until 1993 - that was a great little machine. But the IIsi I replaced it with was as out of date as the SE in only 2 years. Apple definitely had a slump in the early 90s.
I can see the fnords!
The reason you can't use any old piece of crap with an Apple is because the hardware specs and the software specs are engineered as a unit. The benefit is that when you do go under the hood, you pop in the new component and close the hood. And it works.
I can see the fnords!
Umm, why would publishers want to move their MacOS versions of apps to x86, when they already have x86 versions of those programs?
I can see the fnords!
There's only one kind of person that pigeonholes everyone into a few narrow categories...
Some people buy Macs because they work, and don't require constant tweaking. They don't want to have to constantly fart around with the OS and hardware to keep their machines working
Some people buy Macs because of brand loyalty, a few of whom are your classic "Mac religious zealot." Some might otherwise be fully satisfied with a PC, but they bought a Mac first, way back when, and stuck with it. Others are convinced of the utter superiority of Macintosh, and resent any implication otherwise.
Some people buy Macs because they bit on the advertising, from Steve Jobs' rebel attitude to iMac glibness, or they bought into its "easy to use" line. Very few people buy machines on appearance alone, and those who do probably can't use them.
I know some people who buy Macs because they're software engineers/EEs, loyal to the Motorola processor. Most of those, though, would rather use an Amiga or NeXT box, and complain that the more superior the hardware, the less successful it is.
Since the advent of Win32 operating systems, which effectively duplicate the Apple UI for most consumers, very few people are picky about the "look and feel" - only the old school Mac zealots for whom a start menu will never replace an Apple menu: and they've already been counted.
But in reality, most people choose Mac for a combination of all the above, appearance, legacy, loyalty, marketing, and technical reasons.
being realistic, price is king.
If that were true, NeXT and Amiga would still be around. They both had vastly superior cost/performance ratios for their day.
Nope, marketing is king. Microsoft has proven that. And beside him sits the queen: application development.
You're certainly right about Jobs' emphasis on appearance, though!
I can see the fnords!
My 33-MHz 68040 Next Turbo -- not retired. (runs my laser printer and occasionally is used for PostScript editing).
And MS is split?
Then theoretically the Apps Co won't care that Apple is competing with the OS Co. And thus a major barrier to OSX on Intel is gone.
Which is the whole point of the court's ruling, to foster competition in the OS market.
Think of it, OSX (Mac + Unix) and MS Office (and other apps) and cheaper hardware. I'm sure Apple is pulling for the DOJ on this one.
Steve M
Yeah, and face it - the people signing the "OS X on Intel" aren't interested in specing out a supported box. What they want is to run the latest cool thing on the box they have already.* And as another poster pointed out, Apple's business model just doesn't work that way - it's easier to build your own "supported system" than to dig around in the PC parts bin and find something.
* Even Linux, which has pretty damn broad hardware support, suffers from the moaners that can't kickout $50 for a real modem. Even if Apple did invest Microsoft-style money in getting drivers ported, there would always be some NIC that didn't work, along with the latest+greatest video and sound cards. Which the "cool toy" people that wanted OS X on Intel to begin with would bitch about to no end.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Ask VMWare to create a PowerPC emulation environment. Then you could install OSX on your PC. With some good native code translation I betcha such a thing could be plenty speedy.
-josh
Fuck. I really hate reading this thread over and over. Firstly OS X != Darwin (which has been ported to x86). Intel is not a panacea for Apple's supply difficulties with Motorola. And for some odd reason people think that if Apple did switch processor architectures that somehow they would become all open and cool. Apple is 85% about style, polycarbonate cases and candy colourings ought to tell you that much. They're not going to open BIOS specifications on any of their boxes, Intel chips or otherwise. It'd be a dumb fucking idea to switch architectures anytime soon in any case. Does anyone remember Microsoft had MIPS and PPC version of Windows NT? Notice how there are no MIPS or PPC versions of Windows 2000. They couldn't even get people to port to a different architecture despite they could write to the same API. Microsoft didn't even port its products to those platforms. Third part developers would get awfly pissed at them, they would be shipping their PPC software out (a costly venture) and then Apple says they are switching to x86 so you best not buy any software until new boxes come out. Yeah great idea you fucking dipshits. Let this fucking thread die and buy a fucking Mac if you want OS X.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The fact that OSX has the potential to be relatively hardware agnostic (not unlike WinNT..) has inspired all kinds of theories as to what role OS X on x86 has for Apple.
The truth is, coming from NeXT, SJ knows how hard it is to be a purely software company when you're peddling and alternative OS.
Make no mistake, OS X on x86 will never complement PowerPC Macs. OS X on x86 exists solely as an escape plan (not unlike the factors behind NT's HAL).
Apple has nothing to gain by expanding it's installed base at the expense of revenue. OpenStep was a disaster for NeXT.
OS X on x86 is the only real incentive for Moto to make 7400's better for PC use.
That presupposes that those expensive commercial software packages will be available for x86/OSX. It's not a great example, but how much commercial software got ported to Alpha/NT?
Those commercial software makers have trouble supporting Linux due to the lack of consistent GUI etc
However, it just pushes the difficulty off onto Apple. How much trouble does Apple have hitting deadlines when they control every aspect of the hardware? I wonder how much more the OSX schedule would have slipped if they were dealing with commodity hardware they have next to no control over.
Jobs is debateably suffering from some sort of demensia, but I've never thought the guy was stupid.
/* These casual Linux users could jump to OSX because of it's apparent advantages Better interface, easier administration, and abundance of popular apps.
The only way I could see Jobs doing this is if he had a big problem with Linux. OSX on x86 would hurt both Linux and Apple.
No, you say, Linux cannot be hurt by competition, only helped! That's true for the staple Linux users. Myself, I would never stop running linux because of the availability of OSX on my hardware. I might add another choice to my boot menu, but it would probably just be a fling like QNX and BeOS. I always come back to my true OS.
Its the other type of Linux user, the convert. This is the guy who hates MS, and runs linux because it's not. He rarely gets out of X, and when he does you cringe because he's logged in as root and just typed rm -rf
Does this really hurt Linux? Well, not the technical advancement of Linux, but Linux could begin to loose ground in the % war, fall from the limelight, and become obscure again. Bad thing? Good Thing? That's argueable.
Now apple has much more to loose. We all remember what happened when Mac Clones were around. Hardware so cheap there wasn't much point in buying Apple. Apple had to pull back licensing of the OS to slow their tailspin. Would we be seeing ads for cute little titanium G4's or Cubes if they hadn't done this? Probably not. Apple likely would have continued to die, and eventually would stop advancement of the OS. The entire Apple market would be virtually gone. Maybe LinuxPPC would have taken off on the clones eventually, but it's doubtful.
x86 hardware is now dirt cheap. You can build a top-shelf system for about $1000-1500. You can pick up a high-end laptop for under $2000. Tell me all you want about Apples superior hardware, but price is why the vast majority of the market is on x86 right now. Put OSX on x86, and you loose at least half of your current hardware market.
So I think that if Jobs decides to do this (no matter how much I might like to see it), its time to send the guy to the funny farm. Or maybe aknowledge that MS has perfected mind control.
People who buy an iMac don't want to upgrade it, they just want it to work. Geeks can't seem to grasp this concept, some people just want a tool that will get the job done. Even if we ignore the fact that you can upgrade things in an iMac (memory, processor, HD), it's irrelevant. I don't bitch about how I can't upgrade my VCR because it's an appliance that does the job. The iMac is the same thing. If upgrading is your concern, the iMac is not for you...
The point is, these puppies last!
Yeah, I know what you mean. I got my machine in 1995, and it's still going strong. It's running Linux beside my main workstation right now. Oh, wait-- it's an Intel machine. Whoops!
Reread the question.
The question was whether it would damage Apple's hardware revenues - and I can't see that it could concievably help them. If you wanted MacOS you'd rapidly become seduced by the cheap boxes. They could refuse to sell MacOS without a licensed box, but that would only result in the CD being copied. Put a software block in and it would be hacked out.
There's then the wider question of whether it would help their overall revenues. I'm personally of the opinion it wouldn't as their hardware revenues would fall while the prime reason people don't buy MacOS machines now - won't run Windows software - would remain. Yes, people like us can dualboot but that't not something most would think of or manage - and we're not that big a market.
I still believe this is a silly idea I'm afraid.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
How much money would Apple actually make if they only sold the software? The answer: $0. The combination of Microsoft and Linux would run them out of business.
If it makes you feel any better, you can say that Apple is a systems company. But the hardware is what keeps that company afloat. Some people might hate Steve Jobs for squashing the Mac clone market, but he simply realized that the hardware is what drives the company's revenue.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
heh, the PS/2 port, floppy, serial, and some other stuff are all on an ISA bus.
MarNuke
This is all great except for the part about Maya and Adobe apps -- they are written in Carbon, not Cocoa. They are not processor independent. So sure, you could have OSX on Intel, you just wouldn't have any apps for it except the NextStep ones. In fact, from an OS architecture perspective, OSX on Intel would bear a striking resemblence to NextStep for Intel.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
The biggest problem I see for Apple releasing OSX for Intel, is there are so many Hareware combinations to support and test, where as there are very few G4 configurations.
;-)
Apple has aways wnated to produce "easy to use" systems. If it needs complex systems to get drivers to work, that another thing to break, hence not "easy to use".
Sun tried with PCs (solaris X86) but its hardware support sucked! And so pretty much dropped it, Sun Sparcs however have few hardware configs so is much easy to support.
Its not just there are lots of new ones, you have to produce "historical" drivers to just get up to speed, before you can move forward.
yes I know its based on BSD however to keep with the hardware support for intel, (using the BSD guys) they would have repeatedly port the drivers.
All in all I do not think it would be worth their time, I look forward to being proved completely wrong
James
I think the first target would be Microsoft Windows. All of a sudden, all those people who just want a computer and are nudged toward Dell or Gateway don't have to get married to Windows. They could buy a Dell or Gateway with OS X. Really, I don't think many of these first time consumers care what flavor of OS it is running, as long as they get internet access and can play games. If Apple got even a tiny fraction of the OEM software market, that still millions and millions of dollars...plus it starts edging out Microsoft on the desktop which reduces its power to leverage through the network effect.
Anyway, I thought the linchpin for Apple was Microsoft Office. With a move to OS X, what happens now? Is Microsoft really going to develop Office (or IE for that matter) for a Unix? If not, then what does Apple have to lose by challenging Microsoft on the x86 desktop?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Could someone possibly explain why this could be a good idea?
Um, the amount of money they make is not only dependent on *what* they sell, but *how much* they sell. Even if OS X took only a fraction of the OEM PC desktop market (Dell, Gateway, etc.), that's still *a lot* of money. The question then is: will people buy enough copies of an OS X x86 machine to make up for the loss in sales of Apple hardware based machines? I don't have the numbers but maybe somebody would like to make some estimates and calculate the smallest fraction of the x86 PC market with which Apple would break even. Considering that a lot (most?) of Apple fans are diehards who would never consider buying an x86, I don't think there would be *all* that high an attrition rate.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Ha ha. Click the "Statistics" button to see the Slashdot effect in action. The Slashdot article was posted at 6:54 AM. The "Signature Submissions" jumps drastically on the 6 AM hour. ;)
(ya ya, given that they're in the same time zone...still a huge effect)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Something just occurred to me as to the reason why Apple has not released an x86 compatible version of their OS.
Fear of Microsoft viewing them as a "threat" to their monopoly and their heavy hand coming down on them.
When I look at it that way it all makes sense...
X86, and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (OSX's ancestor) always had support for X86.
For the record, that's not true; the original OS was for NeXT hardware only. My memory is pretty fuzzy here, but I think they launched the X86 version at the same NeXTworld Expo that they announced that they were going to stop making hardware. Was that '93? And the first NeXT boxes I recall were in '88 or '89, so that's 4 or 5 years on proprietary hardware.
My personal bet is that they will get the OS working in the lab as a "just in case" plan; given its cross-platform history, I think it won't be much work (except, of course, for hardware drivers, which will be a nightmare, just like they were with the x86 NextStep).
But they won't ever release it until Apple itself is forced out of the hardware business. Remember that Jobs is the guy who killed the Mac clone business; doing an X86 version of their OS is even worse, as their are no hardware license fees. But it will come to pass sooner or later.
It really saddens me, as I'm very fond of Apple, but they're caught in a vicious circle that I don't think they'll ever break out of.
I think that one of the main reasons that MacOS has been so stable(compared to Windows) over the years is because of Apple's stranglehold on hardware.
Not only on the CPUs, but also on third party hardware and drivers. I could be wrong, but don't they approve any device and driver before it will run on the OS?
Try to dump the OS onto the hodgepodge Intel platform, and you end up with the same problems x86 users are already facing (including 20+ years of backward compatibility).
"If OS X for x86 was available, I'd be willing to bet that a large proportion of the first two groups would immediately jump ship over to cheaper hardware."
:-)
:)
:) Of course he may have changed (he has been pushing iMovie, iTunes and iDVD a lot), but I would be surprised that he would want to give up nice hardware design.
I think something you forget is that those three categories are not mutually exclusive. The media workers like the really nice and well designed case of their computer. So do some of the GUI junkies.
The price difference between Mac and PC hardware those days is not that big... it's slightly more expensive on the Mac side, but not much more (if you don't buy your RAM at the Apple Store online
Also I'm not so sure that price is king.... otherwise only the cheapest computers would sell, and it seems there are lots of offerings at all kind of price points. Like for any other manifactured good.
Hey, people pay lots of moneys to buy their Nike... and it's just shoes.
Last but not least, if OS X worked on x86, Apple could switch from PowerPC to Intel, maybe even use some standard motherboard design and cut prices down some more, etc.
HOWEVER...
There is one thing to be known about Steve Jobs: he is a hardware guy. He likes beautiful hardware. He made the NeXT guys redesign the motherboard of the Next box so it looked visualy pleasant... yes, he went that far. He never really cared much for the software... what really excited him was to make and ship hardware. Or so I read, I don't know him personally
Well, yeah, but Apple would be doing this from a position of strength, whereas Be has always been a largely unknown underdog. I think that changes things somewhat, though whether that's enough to matter is anyone's guess. If it's to be done anyway -- if there will be an Intel OSX -- I don't see any reason not to do it. All I'm suggesting is that they keep the bar set high as far as hardware support goes...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I never said that Apple made bad computers. I'm just saying that the vargacies of the Intel architecture aren't bad enough to trade off the extra speed. Maybe I've had too easy of an OS experience (mainly NT4 and BeOS) but I never really have that many problems with PC hardware. Just keep on top of driver updates and buy quality hardware. Thus, any gain in elegence that I'd get from using a G4 really would be outweighed by the fact that it is slower and more expensive.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
PCs are still incredibly broken AT architecture machines
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I can certify that PC hardware is indeed crap. Do any system-level hacking, and you find out exactly how crappy it is. Forget the interrupt limit, with PCs, you have to bother with things like I/O ports (most archs use mem-mapped I/O) odd methods of addressing hardware, complicated ASM, etc, dealing with the keyboard controller to enable over 1MB of memory, etc. HOWEVER
Apple has always, with a few notable exceptions, built first-rate hardware
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Isn't true either. While the G4's and all may certainly be elegant and Mac's elegantly architectured, they're slow. Sure RISC helps out, but in the face of 1.2GHz clockspeeds (not to mention things like 3DNow! and SSE which level the field a lot) even 750MHz G4's are still slow. Especially considering the hefty price margin they carry. I like well-architectured stuff as much as the next guy, but for $3500, I want my system to be *faster* than the cheaper competition. Not to mention the fact that Apple is always several months (half a product cycle these days) behind in the introduction of new graphics chips. For the longest time, even in the days of the GeForce, G4's were coming with Rage 128's! Those are TNT-1 class chips! Just now they are getting GeForce2 MX class chips and making a big deal about it, and NV20 is on the horizon! If you're going to pay several hundred dollars more, you should at least get modern hardware!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What makes a PC "IBM Compatible" is the system as a whole, mainly, the BIOS and the processor.
Change the BIOS considerably, and you aren't IBM compatible.
-bugg
I'll name you one company that sure as hell won't recompile its OSX apps to run on an Intel platform... Microsoft.
Quite frankly, Apple can't afford to induce the wrath of Microsoft. If Apple were to start making an operating system that was real competition for Microsoft that ran on the same hardware IE and Office for Mac would disappear faster than you can imagine. Linux manages to stumble by without these applications, but there's no way in hell that MacOS would get by without them. Apple needs Microsoft because Apple's own Claris/Apple/whoever owns it these days Works is adequate by and large, but it's not office and many people really do need to have office. Apple also doesn't make a web browser and the Netscape one for MacOS really isn't much good (for that matter, are they even making one for OSX? I sure haven't heard about it...).
Where is Apple really going to be if they're pushing a platform that costs money, for which there isn't a real browser or office suite, and can run on systems that cost less than the hardware Apple sells? If they were to do that they'd be looking a lot like Be in a real big hurry. Be is a cool product and all and really has some good ideas in it, but I don't envy their market position one bit and I'm sure that Apple doesn't either.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
> Give me a reason not to switch to OS X.
Right on, brother! This is exciting shit.
I switched from a PC to a Mac two years ago once the NeXTSTEP + Mac OS = Mac OS X thing was explained to me. In the meantime, I surprised myself by totally falling in love with Mac OS. It is just great except for the guts, and Mac OS X goes overboard in fixing that, as well as tightening up all kinds of little legacy things and adding new features.
This is a platform that's about to offer a $2500 full-featured notebook with 15.2" wide-screen, built-in 802.11 and antennaes, 1394, VGA out (for a second display or mirroring), TV out, Cardbus, IR, five-hour battery life, hot-swap batteries, slot-load DVD, Apache, Perl, iMovie, Mac OS X, Java2, BSD, Altivec. And the fucker is made out of titanium and is 1" thick! Damn right we better be excited. This is everything that Apple and NeXT ever promised and moreso. You can run Apache, Perl, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop side-by-side. Quake III already runs on Mac OS X and got the fastest frame rate ever at the recent Macworld SF on a G3/533 with an nVidia card (100+ frames per second). That's twice as many frames per second as the same machine can manage with Mac OS 9.
This is the notebook for the die-hard geek to code up his next embedded Linux set-top box or whatever. Run multiple installations of Linux in Virtual PC if you want to. Dual-boot with LinuxPPC if you want to. Very 21st century. And look, no Microsoft at all. None. Not a bit. Not a hint.
> BTW, adcritic.com doesn't have their commericals.
... the new ones are easy to find, but the older ones take a bit of hunting. ftp.apple.com had a folder full of them at one point, and might still. Apple asked adcritic.com not to run their commercials, perhaps because Apple runs them themselves, and apple.com's statistics are important in PC Data's ranking of hardware-related sites.
> Where are they
At apple.com
That's bullshit, or you would have bought a Mac by now. I know it and Apple knows it. No Mac OS X for x86.
The BeOS model has not even been successful for Be. It's like you're suggesting that Apple follow the Edsel model. Also, Be used to follow something called the "Apple model". The Be model is Be's Plan B.
I always find it funny when non-Mac users complain that the Mac has no software. Most of the "brand-name" apps that are out there started on the Mac and were ported to Windows, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Director, FreeHand, Word, Excel, QuickTime, and on and on. The rest of the "brand-name" apps are Mac and Windows, except for server and database stuff, which is usually Unix and Windows. Mac OS X runs pretty much everything out there that isn't Microsoft, and that means it runs all the best software. A Web developer using Mac OS X may only have three or four server packages to choose from, but one of them is Apache. A Web developer using Windows may have 10 server packages to choose from, but none of them are Apache. Do you see what I mean? There are also a selection of amazing Mac-only apps like Final Cut Pro and MetaSynth. Microsoft's Mac apps are also dramatically better on the Mac ... you might not recognize them.
The impression that Windows has more software comes from the fact that Windows software is carried in retail stores, and from the fact that Microsoft lied for years about how many apps were available for Windows. They said 70,000. At one of the recent Microsoft court proceedings, it came out that 70,000 applications is more than have ever been written for all combined platforms in the history of mankind. The actual number was deemed to be "about 10,000", which is about the same number of apps that Apple says run on Mac OS. I've been using a Mac for two years and I still run into major apps that I didn't know were available, like Lightwave, which I saw recently at Macworld. I also saw Maya and Nuendo there, too, which are two apps that are coming to Mac OS X in a few months and have never been on the Mac at all. Software is plentiful on the Mac platform, especially so now that all the Unix stuff is coming over to Mac OS X.
> Compare [the iMac G3/233] with a PII/233 ... er, boxen.
> and you'll find [that the PC is] every bit equal
> to grandma's box
No, that's just plain not true.
A couple of years ago, I switched from a very nicely equipped IBM PII 300 box to a Power Mac G3 350 with similar specs, and the Mac runs circles around the PC. I immediately got more than twice as many tracks and effects going simultaneously in a multitrack audio program, as well as having much, much lower latency. It also just feels faster when you use it. I used to keep PC's for a year or 18 months, max, and then give them away, but this Mac is still my main machine after two years and I will still have have lots of jobs for it once my new machine arrives this month (a Power Mac with the CD/DVD-RW combo drive). The G3 still has room for 1 GB more RAM, and the CPU can be unplugged and replaced with a faster one if I want to.
Mac OS X for x86 will be out sometime next year. It's called "Windows 2002", and it's from Microsoft. It runs Photoshop, it runs FreeHand, it runs Office ... all Macintosh apps that are now available on x86 thanks to the fine people at Microsoft. Rather than BSD, you get DOS, but you can dual-boot BSD. Rather than Mac OS, you get Windows, but it also has a mouse pointer and icons. Rather than Apache, you get Microsoft Personal Web Sharing with a limit of 10 simultaneous users, but if you pay through the nose, Microsoft will flip a switch in the Registry for you and you can serve more users. Rather than a small, cool-running, superfast RISC chip with an amazing DSP co-processor, you get an overclocked beast the size of a paperback book with two or three huge fans, but x86 users know that these are all small compromises to make for the pleasure of buying your add-on hardware from umpteen different vendors in 148 countries around the world. In fact, the majority of people won't even notice the difference between the two versions, because they are ignorant.
Windows 2002 comes free with a computer system that will set you back about $800-$2500 complete. If you don't like it as much as the PowerPC version (called Mac OS X) then buy the PowerPC version, which is also available free with a computer system that will set you back about $800-2500 complete (unless you want a CD/DVD-RW combo drive, which is $1000 extra). The PowerPC systems do include such niceties as built-in antennaes, a single cable for the display, award-winning industrial design, FireWire, optical mouse, no legacy ports, free movie-editing software, etc, but the x86 version is available with snap-on colored panels, and occasionally comes in cases that look like melted marshmallows (hello, Compaq), and, as mentioned, it will work with add-on hardware from umpteen different companies. And remember, both versions of Mac OS X run pretty much the same brand-name apps.
It's all pretty simple when you ignore little details like API's and disk formats. Sure Mac OS X and Windows 2002 are different to us geeks, but geeks don't always make the purchasing decisions, do they? So, why would Apple go to all the effort of making an x86 Mac OS X when that's Microsoft's core business? So a cheap bastard with an eMachine can run a prettier and easier to use version of Word? NOT going to happen.
> What I still don't understand is how Apple
> managed to turn NEXTSTEP (runs fine on my
> NeXTStation Turbo which is a 33Mhz 68040 with
> 32MB of RAM) into OSX (apparently only runs
> reasonably well on a XXXMhz PowerPC G4 with
> 128MB of RAM)?
Well, I can tell you how. The main thing is that there's a big difference between meeting the processing needs of a 1989 user and a 2001 user. People weren't playing MP3's in 1989, they weren't encoding DVD's, they weren't serving Web pages in the background. They also weren't running Microsoft's bloated apps. Also, the NeXTSTEP interface, while elegant and useful, did not do the kind of work that Aqua is doing with anti-aliasing and drop shadows. NeXTSTEP also didn't have the Carbon API in addition to Cocoa, and most of all, NeXTSTEP didn't run Mac OS 9 inside a simulated computer (not emulated, because the processor is real).
Requirements for Mac OS X Public Beta are any G3 or G4 equipped Mac (except the original PowerBook G3) and 128MB RAM. It runs quite well on any of these boxes, for a beta. More recent builds are flying in comparison to the Public Beta. The GUI, especially, has obviously been tuned quite a bit more (one Macworld writer said "this is the fastest GUI I've ever used, period.") This is Apple's OS for the next 10-15 years, according to Steve Jobs. Sure, they could tune it for machines that predate the iMac, but why do that when the original iMac is going to turn three in a few months? It will run on older machines just fine, but Apple are aiming the feature set at the machines they've been selling for the past three years, and the machines they will sell in the next three years.
He said "IF you want OS X" ... if vanilla BSD meets your computing needs, then good for you.
Yeah, but when Photoshop so plainly runs better on one platform, you don't ask why if you're a Photoshop user, you just use the better platform. Who cares if this or that or the other is the reason? That's why application benchmarks are so meaningful, never mind if geeks don't like them as much as compiler shootouts.
Photoshop is also a great app to use, even if you're not a Photoshop user, because so many apps these days use Photoshop plug-ins or similar computations when they work with bitmaps or do anti-aliasing. Even a Web browser is resizing bitmap images from time to time.
> What's changed since 1994?
People are serving Web pages out of their homes and need reliability and good multitasking. They are editing digital video and need good system throughput. They are hooked up to the Internet 24/7 and need security. They are overwhelmed by a mass of set-top boxes, wireless phones, PDA's, MP3 players, and need an interface that is simple and easy to use, and a hardware platform that deals with peripherals in a sensible way. Most of all, they are not using computers so much because they want to, but because they need to, and that really begs for a system that really works, and is also fun to use.
Take a Cube (with Classic pre-installed).
Install OSX on it
Install a LinuxPPC partition.
Install VirtualPC with Win2k on it (preferrably on a separate hard drive).
Install lots of additional RAM to run all of these OS's.
there ya go. you've got 4 OS's on it. MacOS, BSD, Linux, and Windoze. play all you want.
>It would be a shame to have the Mac OS X move onto x86 and then get mired in the PC legacy crap that has caused us to continue to see ISA slots on 1ghz machines.
I still like my ISA modem, so I'd go easy on insulting the use of ISA... Sure it would be nice to have broadband access where I live so I could get rid of the ISA modem, but I've been told that whiel it's easy to upgrade either the phone system (for DSL) or the cable system (for cable modems)... neither will be installed where I live in the next several years... In particular the phone company would have had an easy time having to only spend $300-400 for the DSL controller in the central office in town (which I live 5000' from)... Once I have broadband I'll be happy to see ISA go... Until then I need my ISA slot...
>It would be a shame to have the Mac OS X move onto x86 and then get mired in the PC legacy crap that has caused us to continue to see ISA slots on 1ghz machines. I'm much happier with the SCSI/USB/Firewire legacy the Mac hardware has fostered.
Um what are you smoking legacy on Mac means serial ports for external devices.... not that 'new-fangled' USB... Only since Steve came back has apple thought of using USB or Firewire... On the other hand he switched them from SCSI (which at least gave a good reason for why they were expensive) to IDE...
>Don't you think that the new G4s with DVD burners are specifically to generate hardware sales?
Yeah they will, but not as much as the same thing on the PC would... In fact before Apple released their comment about DVD-burners for Mac, Pioneer had released news of their CD-RW/DVD-? (forget which recordable format for DVD they used)... Once people start using those combo recordable drives on PC Apple will loose any possible advantage there...
>Where do you think their priorities are?
I think it's in screwing the customers out of money with marketign gimmiks & tricks... Just like any 'major' PC OEM I could name... I must say that I haven't liked Apple though since I had to fix them in HS (first PPC days), so I'm biased... Though I"m bettign you are to & the real answer comes in somewhere between the two...
>Why do you think they keep orphaning hardware in each release? No OS X is planned for NuBus macs, yet another "trimming/pruning" of the Apple Tree.
I think they are trying to create a reason for Mac users to uopgrade... We all know Mac users keep their machines for ages & we should also know that Apple thinks this hurts their revenue...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
You know OSX has a decent chance in small companies looking to dump x86 windows and go to *ix. It is unproven so it'll probably take another year or so before people feel comfortable switching to it. It supports samba and nfs and all your unix goodies that many IT people are familiar with. Basically it can play nice with your other systems. Idiot proof *ix? We'll have to see. I haven't seen the versions since DP3 but it was always heading towards what I thought groups like KDE and Gnome should have been doing (if they wanted world domination/average joe desktop)
And (with a few notable exceptions) Apple hardware is a joy and dream to work with. Most cases in particular make the standard PC look like a complete and total joke. The sliding panels on the PCs may be a huge convenience but it just can't compare to a system built by robotic assembly. This means easy access to almost anything, stuff that folds out, pops in, etc.
The exceptions would happen to be (from my experience) the PowerMac 9500 and the hodgepodge of eclectic connectors that Apple used to make. Well, I suppose that new USB/Power/Video connector qualifies as well. Slick as hell though.
I have to mention BeOS as a system that offered both a GUI and CLUI but was sadly overmatched. Apple is obviously in a different postion and one that has a much greater chance of success.
As far as x86 ports I don't think that's really even a decent possibility. Jobs could prove how crazy he really is but it's incredibly unlikely for all the dozen reason people mention.
Anyways, here's a me too for support of OSX. I use FreeBSD at home as a server. I'd love to see something as stable but with an excellent user enviroment.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
i've seen it discussed here before, and i've given it a lot of thought (seeing as i jumped to the Mac platform last year for the sole purpose of being able to run MacOS X). and honestly, i don't think that MacOS on Intel is a good idea.
first of all Apple is primarily a hardware company. they make software to provide value-add for that hardware. i honestly think it's a good strategy: i think it's very difficult to make any serious money off of software unless your software is very specialized, or you have a monopoly on a certain segment. and with the rising popularity of open-source software, it only becomes more difficult to justify and existance based purely off of software sales. puttling MacOS X on common x86-based machines would completely destroy that business model.
secondly, the MacOS is more consistant (and i've found it quite stable when you get things organized right) because of the limited options available for hardware. all major plug-in cards and options are available, but when you start opening up your hardware to "cloning," you'll get a lot of the generic-taiwanese clone hardware coming out. this hardware is very cost sensitive, and the cheapest parts, development techniques and technologies are used. this makes less-than optimal hardware and it also makes people hand on to legacy technologies. why move to something that's better, but slightly more expensive (at a component level) when the old stuff is "good enough?" this is why we still have 25-year old serial and parallel ports on PCs. essentially cloning makes everything hightly price-oriented instead of highly feature-oriented. it's very difficult to fund research and development when your margins are a fraction of a percent.
Apple has taken the route of charging a premium for their hardware in order to subsidize good hardware, and new "legacy-free" technologies. and they've got to be good technologies they're funding, or you people wouldn't want it! i think in the end, this builds a better system.
as far as Apple hardware goes, it's very well designed. in fact, i would go so far as to propose this: there is nothing wrong with Apple hardware, except that they're forced to use slower PPC ships than they should.
and that's the catch in this plan: the fact that Motorola has fallen behind on process (note, not processor) technologies. they're more concerned with the embedded market, where PowerPC has a large marketshare (especially in networking equipment). i argue that if IBM or Motorola could produce high-speed G4s, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with Apple hardware, period.
i don't think x86 has any place in this plan, and that's fine. the only option i might agree with is that Apple may sometime move to x86-based processors, but support only Apple-made x86 boxes, and make no guarantees that non-Apple boxes will run MacOS X. it just doesn't make sense any other way. but switching processors is easier said than done, especially considering the large quantity of legacy apps, some of which really do benefit from the Altivec processors on the G4, and perform better than they would on x86. and if Apple is going to switch processors, why x86? just because of volume? why not switch to Sparc? or Alpha? why do the necessarily have to use the same chips as other PC manufacturers? the fact of the matter is that x86 is an antiquated technology, but a large amount of power is being sqeezed out of it purely by the market force, and a better processor, with even a fraction of the resources behind it, could overcome the gains made by Intel and AMD on the x86. which processor will that be?
so at any rate, MacOS X has no place on x86, and quite frankly i like it that way. if IBM were able to produce G4s (as they have phenomenal resources for chip production), Apple's machines would be considerably better than any PC i've ever seen. of course you have to pay a small premium for these machines, but in return you get better "non-legacy" technologies and better software. that sounds like a pretty good trade off to me.
- j
We asked earlier whether you felt if Linux would be threatened by OS X, with the possibility of OS X working on x86 machines, has your answer changed?
/. rabid Linux zelots get all worked into a mob equipped with fork()s?
Are you going to keep asking the same question over and over until the loyal
What about Apple having success bothers you? (Apple may fall on its face with Mac OS X also. The original plan was NeXTSTEP->Yellowbox and Intel based Rhapsody->Mac OS X. Due to a lack of positive customer feedback, Apple changed the plan to what it is today)
What about a Unix on the desktop bothers you?
Is your view of the OS market the same as Microsoft's?.....where the only position to be is that you have marketshare and others do not.
Lets pretend that the Linux Zelot gets their wish....a whole world of Linux kernels. Then what? All the 180+ linux distros all fighting, it will be a repeat of the 1980-1990 Unix versions fighting, only moreso.
Be happy for Apple, rather than threatened. Apple has moved slightly away from the 1980's 'closed mac' ideal and more to the 1970's red book Apple ][ days. Rather than taking the BSD and Mach code and locking up the changes for no one to see, they opted to release it for others to look at.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
By contrast, PCs are still incredibly broken AT architecture machines.
What matters ultimately is how they run, not how well they fulfill YOUR idea of what a server architecture should be. Apple has a real problem with their CPUs that other server RISC based CPUs do not have - they are about two times too slow to keep up with the AMDs and Intels of the world.
However the PC architecture may be, linux runs quite well already. So does FreeBSD. People will NOT switch to OS X when it comes out, but some Mac people will change to x86 Mac OS X. Because ultimately, the cheaper computer beats the better architecture every time. A lesson learned the hard way by IBM in the 80s, Apple in the 90s, and now mainframe Unices are learning it. If a computer can get the job done for $500, why spend $2000 to have 'a nice architecture' that provides no real functional advantage to 99% of the users ?
The iMac will run OSX quite well. There may be some speed issues running Classic applications on a system with less than 96-128MB of RAM, but native Carbon/Cocoa stuff works very well.
I've installed the public beta on a 233MHz iMac (64MB, Rage Pro), a 350MHz iMac (64MB, Rage 128 Pro) and a G4 (192MB, Rage 128 Pro). All of those systems ran the (admittedly few) native applications well. The two iMacs took a bit of a pounding when running Classic apps, but there were still quite usable.
Any G3/G4-based Mac (save for the original PowerBook G3 -- the 3500 model) will have no trouble with OSX. Some (like the early iMacs) would benefit from a RAM upgrade, but that's an easy, inexpensive update.
--srj/mmv
I don't think the move from Moterola to x86 would be too easy. There are tons of MacOS programs out there that would have to be recompiled and/or redesigned to work on the new archetecture. There are many freeware and shareware programs that have a huge userbase on the Mac right now. Not every hobbyest is going to be able to make thier code work on both Mac and PC. Now I'm sure your going to tell me that open sourcing the programs would help, and it would, but I don't foresee that happeneing to high degree in the Mac world.
The mother of my cousin's wife recently upgraded to a shiny new Gateway box. Pity she didn't ask me to build one for her, since like most /.ers I could have built a better box for 2/3 of the price or less. But anyway, she wanted to give her old computer to her grandkids to play with. they're 10 year old boys.
Guess what the previous computer was? a POS Packard-Bell P60 from 1994. Aargh! And to make matters worse, it had some bizarro integrated Aztech soundcard/14.4 modem combo on slots which went the wrong way, vertically across the bottom of the machine--I never opened it up, so I don't know if it was some secondary board wired tothe mainboard or what, it was just weird to see the slots going that way.
The boys like to play video games on my PC, so I hooked up the old P60 with as many games as it could handle. Older stuff like Quake, Doom and Doom 2, Battle Chess, all 6 Commander Keens, Carmageddon, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D and the sequel Spear of Destiny, Tomb Raider , and a bunch of other stuff, worked flawlessly although the bizarro soundcard thingy had some weird IRQs and base addresses to work out. Surprisingly, even the arcade emulator Retrocade played all the supported games I had at native speed on this old 1994 P60, and DOS emulators for the Nintendo and Genesis consoles ran full speed from within Windoze (I forget their names, but they're both by "Bloodlust Software"--great, fast coding).
And all of these ran at full speed under 98lite using the option to install Windows 98 cleanly without Internet Explorer and most of the unneeded options, on the setting which allowed it to install the Windows 95 first edition shell GUI on top of a fully functional Win98 with its better drivers and support. And DX8 installed over that, with Netscape 3.04 as an admittedly rudimentary but fast web broswer, and Office 97 for all word processing needs.
This is the perfect example of how old PCs are still very useful. a stock 1994 P60 with a measly 16MB RAM became a solid gaming rig for older games, with a solid minimal win98se OS coutesy of 98lite (try it for all your un-bloating of Windoze needs, http://www.98lite.net ), and Net acces via the old NIC--perfect for the kids or for Granny to use e-mail.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I own a PowerTower (now upgraded to G3 etc.)...you know, one of the Mac clones. Well the cloning stuff ended a few years back, shortly after it started. The largest and most successful one, Power Computing was basically bought out by Apple. That buyout (or payoff) helped both Apple and Power Computing. Not everyone knew this at the time, but Power Computing had made some bad mistakes. Despite doing well in sales and really hurting Apple's hardware sales, Apple was bailing them out by purcahsing their technology/stock shares/whatever.
The point? Apple makes its money (its real money) off of hardware. OS updates shadow in comparsion at the shows IMHO...almost sometimes as side notes to what they do in hardware. OS X will be a big one though.
I would love to see X on X86 hardware. My dream would be to build an athlon/duron system for a good price and drop OS X on it. Actually...my dream would be to have a TiBook and one those desktops with a superdrive, but I can't afford that. So...OS X on X86 would be nice. I just don't see it happening for Apple and us.
If they could get enough marketshare back OS-wise(which right now requires hardware) to make a heavier focus on OS/Software to pay off for them, they might do it. But...I still think they like making the whole widget. The dangling questions then is...How much would putting OS X on X86 hardware hurt their current hardware sales? Anyone want to offer up an answer/guess/speculation on that?
Cheers
Galego
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
One word. Investment.
I've got loads of PC hardware. I live and breathe the stuff. I've also got an old PowerMac 7500/100 and even if I were to get a G3 upgrade, the outdated motherboard is still not supported by OS X. I'm not about to chuck it all and get a new Mac.
It's FreeBSD with a GUI and a nice selection of industry-supported and backed applications. How easy would it be to port them BACK to x86 and other platforms? It's quite literally, my dream OS. X is cool but has always felt unfinished to me. I'd like apps, native and with industry backing and support.
The hardware that Apple has, although expensive, is rock solid. I'm happy they've moved over to standards like Ultra ATA and even using PC133 SDRAM in their new G4s - something you can get at your local PC store. Even Gigabit ethernet integrated into these machines has been a huge surprise. I've played with lots of networking stuff but seen few Gigabit NICs, especially in workstations.
Their hardware is expensive. I currently run a well stocked P933 with ample storage and 512MB RAM. I have no need for an upgrade in the immediate future.
There is no way I'm going to abandon the PC platform and get a Mac. I haven't got the thousands (in AU$) to throw around at a new platform. However, I am certain that if someone were to give me a G4 at no cost, my P3 933 would quickly become just anothet seti cruncher. I'd probably move my storage into the G4 along with the RAM. It's a great platform and I would probably convert to it almost purely based on the OS.
Will they learn from Sun? I've worked at an ISP where they standardised on Solaris in some older Pentium Pro machines. They loved the OS and support. Their next machine? A geniune Sun box. Nothing high end but it ran the OS much more efficiently. If they hadn't used Solaris on Intel machines, they'd probably have ignored the platform altogether.
Some people don't WANT to invest thousands of dollars into Sun hardware just as I don't feel like ditching everything and going Apple.
Luckily, I'm in the market for a new notebook and will consider the G4 powerbook as one of my options. I just wish I'd have more experience with the OS X platform before throwing thousands at it.
For the record, the 7500 was a freebie that I got from a friend.
Let me quote an article from woz.org:
m anner-of-different-specs-and-hardware was still a new one when the MacOS came out. It leaves Apple in a bit of a bind.
:), so Apple can offer a kind of reliability in support, drivers, and software in general that the x86 world just can't, due to the diversity.
"
The computer was never the problem. The company's strategy was. Apple saw itself as a hardware company; in order to protect our hardware profits, we didn't license our operating system. We had the most beautiful operating system, but to get it you had to buy our hardware at twice the price. That was a mistake.
"
Steve Wozniak, "Woz" of Apple fame, said this in a 1996 Newsweek article. It's true. Apple could have started off on a different foot by licensing their operating system from the beginning, and possibly built a good revenue base off of that, but the idea of everyone-crufting-together-x86-machines-with-all-
But come on. This is a *hardware* company. Apple makes freakin'-awesome hardware, and support for these machines is built on the premise that they're all going to be very similar. iMacs are all cranked out in a factory, all with similar hardware and peripherals. Same for G4's, PowerBooks, what have you. They're not kludged together in basements by 16-year-olds (like my k6-2/400 was
To license OS X would be dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. First off, yes, we know that there's a Darwin port for Intel. But porting everything else, like the Classic layer, and who-knows-what-else, just to make OS X run on x86--it would just not be a good move for Apple right now.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
1. Apple ports to x86 or Amd or a net machine or anything MS wants now or in the future. 2. MS stops selling MS Office and any other applications for any Apple operating system. 3. Oooops!
It should be pointed out that K6's were extremely weak chips. It was a mistake to buy one even when they could be bought.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
It would be a total white elephant, consuming ungodly amounts of money for a tiny, tiny percentage of the PC OS market, threaten Apple's hardware sales, confuse consumers, shares would go through the floor and would finally get canned by the next CEO to run Apple.
And even if all that were done, you'd be the proud owner an operating system that had no software to run on it. Apple might release a few x86 titles, but Microsoft certainly wouldn't and neither would many other software vendors.
"What about all the stuff for Unix?" you might say, but remember OS X is meant for computer illiterates, not people who download and build their software. And if you are one of those people, what's wrong with using Linux or BSD?
Of course its highly unlikely to happen. Hardware is Apple's bottom line so they're hardly likely to undermime their own profits by encouraging people to use an Intel box instead of their gear. Remember they pulled the plug on Apple clones a few years back when this started to happen back then.
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
DVD support for a UNIX? Real games (granted the Apple doesn't have that many, but usually really popular games on the PC get ported over; it'd be worth it just for Blizzard's stuff)? A windowing system maybe done right, that will let me browse the web without netscape freezing every 5 minutes (linux) or locking up the system (win)?
--
So they would get all three groups -- OS interface junkies, Media workers, _and_ industrial design fetishers... In fact, I'd really like to see more of Apple's industrial design in the x86 world, and I'd like to use a good Unix/MacOS cross (OSX), so I'd certainly be a willing customer for both the hardware and the software.
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Linux and the Mac can co-exist peacefully because they serve different markets. :) ]
Its all about the apps.
Apple should NOT port OS X to x86. Instead, they should work on methods for gracefully running windows apps under OS X. One way would be to come up with a classic environment for windows apps using emulation. Another would be to create a carbon type environment for cocoa apps that let them run under windows. Then developers could target either machine. Windows still has the most apps. People buy machines to run apps. [ Maybe this afternoon, Apple will announce they are buying Virtual PC
Its all about the apps
Linux on the desktop? Please. Everytime I sign into KDE on my Suse box, I giggle at those ugly optical illusion checkboxes. The day after Mac OS X is released it will be the unix variant with the largest installed base of desktop machines. The commercial base for desktop software for the mac is much larger than for linux. Soon after, I predict you will you be able to run the linux GUI apps under OS X, that is if you want to. If windows thrashes OS X in the desktop market because of its wealth of apps, OS X should in turn thrash linux.
Its about the hardware, too If you want to see what pc hardware will look like in six months, look at the mac today. Apple's hardware is elegent and well designed and you pay a premium for it. Under no circumstances should they abandon this. It's the core market position of the company. That leaves a whole bunch of PCs that can't run OS X. Linux will always have an opportunity to be the secondary desktop OS on those multiboot windows machines. (Find me a primary boot of linux that doesn't also serve web pages or some other server task.) OS X will probably decimate the PPC based linuxes, and have virtualy no effect on the x86 linuxes. Windows will continue to dominate linux on the desktop x86 boxes.
Its all about the apps
Today, Linux towers over the mac in the server space because of its killer internet apps. People don't use linux to run linux on their server, people run linux so that they can run apache on their server. The arcane interface is nullified, because people are interacting with apache instead. The configuration nightmares are reduced because you do it once and forget about it. I think this is where Apple is a real sleeper. OS X can run all of the linux killer apps because none of them require a GUI. Once they make it so that grandma can administer unix (OS X) on her iMac, OS X will have some significant advantages over linux in the server space. That is not to say that they will even put a dent in linux's server market, but I think they will make surprising inroads.
Summary
So, to sum it up. Linux and the Mac are in different markets. The Mac is a high end product for the desktop market. Linux is a low end product for the server market. Apple should bring linux and windows apps to them instead of bringing their apps to windows and linux. No Mac OX on x86.
The "Aqua" GUI for OS X is based on vector graphics, handled by the graphics card instead of the CPU. The pre-G3 Macs did not ship with very good graphics cards (they were okay for the time, but are pathetic by today's standards). "Aqua" was written to run on ATI, nVidia, and little else.
That is why older Macs that were upgraded (like the 7500 and 9500, very popular models to drop a G3 into) are not officially supported by OS X.
Of course, somebody will probably drop a PCI video card into a 7500 and try it out before long. If they do, their result will probably show up on low end mac or somewhere like that.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
As well, since the classic environment is not available for x86, Cocoa apps would be the only programs that would run in this environment. Many developers are carbonizing their apps, not rewriting them in Cocoa. So, it will be a while before we see a large number of Cocoa apps available. Without the software, MacOS X on x86 is basically a nice gui, but totally useless.
IMHO, what Apple really needs right now is market share. Porting to x86 would allow Apple to take advantage of this market. However, I don't think anything will happen until the software base is there, at minimum. Ultimately, I think that it would hurt more than it would help, since they would lose the hardware control.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I think that making OS X available for x86 hardware would instantly create some very serious competition for Windows on the user market. And in doing so, would step in front of linux as the biggest threat to Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, linux is fantastic, but I think we can all admit that it isn't yet applicable to the low-knowledge user (the ones who just got the latest edition of "Using a Mouse, for Retards" for christmas). However, this market has always been where Macs excelled. And this is the biggest growth market out there. Let's face it, PC sales are slowing down, why? Because everyone who knows a lot about computers already has one. I find that a lot of the people I know who are buying computers now, are doing so for the first time (having therefore no OS affinity), and in choosing an OS will be looking for 2 things--ease of use, and price. Mac's have always been easy to use. And now, they have a first class BSD core for their OS. We may care about the guts, but new users are really just interested in slick looks, and applications. Plus, behind Windows the Mac platform has the most mature user applications, including mainstay ones that aren't available on Linux (MS Office, Adobe graphics software, etc). And x86 hardware is much cheaper than Mac hardware.
I know nothing about the deal, but I understood that Microsoft had funded Apple in some way, to the tune of a million dollars or so...
Is it possible that the funds included some kind of non-competition stipulation? In other words, could Microsoft have said, "hands off the x86 platform?"
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Their share price isn't going through the floor.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Apple makes most of it's money on the hardware, if they switch to Intel then they don't control the hardware so they'll only have OS sales. How much can you charge for an OS these days when Linux is free?
Look what happened when clone makers started making MACs.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Hey, I think Apple would do a great job making pretty colored boxes for x86 processors. It's just a processor, after all. A real Mac these days still wants exclusively USB/FireWire peripherials (maybe SCSI off a card, like I have), an ATI graphics card, lots of space for exapansion (or a small single box) and colored plastic. Of course, then there would be no benefit to using x86, since I'm pretty sure the price-to-power ratio for the two chip types isn't a big part of the cost of a Mac.
I happen to fall into all three of those categories.
But, Apple probably won't do it because they'd get completely screwed on hardware sales. It would be a big risk. (OTOH, I know a lot of people who would switch in a second, particularly if they could run X on X and Wine.)
Hmmm, I thought everybody knew that Apple was second to none (not even Microsoft!) in the ability to quash all possible efficiency from the OS and turn it into a bloated resource hog. PowerPC processors have long been (cycle for cycle) faster than x86 procs, but the MacOS (and the programming geniuses at Apple) have been doing something (I'm still not sure how they manage it) that turns the performance advantage into at best a performance equivalence.
- NeXTstep on x86
- then Openstep
- then Yellow Box
- also Copland ?
- etc.
Lots of people have actually been looking forward to get Apple ergonomy at the cost of a cheap pc box.I'd of course buy it if both Cubase and my Yamaha SW1000XG drivers were ported to it but until then I'll wait to see it improved.
The problem for apple is that their environment has to remain an object of desire as it will increase their hardware sales and fidelize their customers (Few Mac-ers actually change their hardware as often as pc-ers -especially windows-ers- do).
And, honestly, OSX on iMac doesn't seem to expensive, does it ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Um... the G5?
I don't think 64bit transitioning is as tough as you make it; 64bit PowerPC would be much simpler to architect for, especially if they have 32bit compatibility and transparency, so that for a generation or two things run at par or slightly faster until the software is updated and optimized towards 64bit processing.
But that's just a Guess
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
As a variant on bgarcia's point, if Apple couldn't compete in the Windows market, why should they be able to compete against exactly the same machines for OS X sales? Of course their competitive advantage is the OS but it's precisely that advantage that allows them to maintain the high margins on hardware that fund software development.
For crying out loud -- it was the Mac clones that nearly nailed Apple's coffin shut it the 90's!
My wife's still using a P90 for web surfing and word processing, and it's quite sufficient for anything without overdone flash animation and streaming videos. It plays mp3s just fine. It doesn't feel like that slow of a box either, once everything's loaded. I don't know whay you and your boyfriend were doing with the K6-233, but it's obviously an orange in your comparison to the apple. Does it only have 8M of RAM, or something?
I'm not trying to compare speed clock-for-clock, or say it's 'better' or 'faster' than your imac, but it would make a sufficient 'granny box' any day.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
How many times are people going to ask about this? I think it would be best if we stick this one in the FAQ along with "Will OS X threaten Linux?".
DARWIN runs on Intel hardware, therefore Apple has no problem running OS X on Intel hardware. Apple will not release their OS in its consumer form for OS X, because it is not setup to gain enough profit through the sale of its OS to maintain operations...Apple needs OEM deals the same way Microbum does, and the only OEM who will readily accept Apple's OS on all its machines is Apple.
Consumer OS X will not be released for Intel. However, Darwin will probably be pushed more and more by Apple as a Linux alternative, the perfect free Quicktime streaming platform, running on ppc and x86 hardware. (thats bull anyway)
What Apple may attempt is to implement a WIN32 compatibility layer, in which they can run windows applications on their ppc hardware...get Apple hardware, get all the apps. If you were a developer and all you had to do is recompile your code for ppc, and I mean that literally, wouldn't you do it?
Well I'm tired of answering this question over and over. The answer is NO...NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Stop asking, stop wondering, stop making me see this garbage question on Slashdot every day of the week.
If you spent as much time searching the web as you do asking this question, you would know the answer by now!
If you want OS X buy a Mac!!!!!!!!!!!
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
You're right that price is king, but Macs are cheaper than x86 PC's. Don't just do a CompUSA comparison of the hardware sticker-price, although Apple's notebooks, at least, will win that easily, and the desktops would surprise you if you added the comparable features to a PC.
Not true at all.
Sure, Apple has a ludicrous comparison of the low-end Titanium to a Sony Vaio on its website, which ignores that the Vaio is designed to sacrifice features and money to save weight. Compare instead to a customized Dell Inspiron 5000e, where you get a feature-for-feature equivalent machine for less money plus a free printer or scanner.
TCO, of course, is a different matter. But Mac purchase prices are higher than Dell purchase prices.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
But as the age-old question goes, "What about applications for it?"
I'm by no means a programmer, but it would seem to me a lot of work to port existing apps over to OSX on x86, and I'm guessing that existing x86 apps wouldn't run under it natively.
Jelly.
-- Don't you love a world where they give paranoid sociopaths guns, and tell them to shoot traitors and subversives?
Apple have been partners with Motorola for god knows how many years. If OS X becomes increasingly popular, Apple would have a hard time deciding who is more important. Potential users or longtime hardware partner.
Perhaps though, if there's competition between x86 and Motorola based systems that both run OS X, it could drive down prices on G4's and the like. And ye never know, maybe if done right, it'll be Apple that steals M$'s cookie rather than Linux =).
Cheers,
leroy.
First of all, Apple will never release OS X for intel. Darwin is as close as you are going to get. This has been discussed to death already. If you want candy colored buttons, go to themes.org and grab an Aqua clone.
However, I feel I must chime in when all these people are saying that no x86 user will migrate to OS X. I have been a PC user (first windows, then linux) for a number of years. I recently bought an iBook to run Debian on because the hardware is nice and cheap (try finding an x86 laptop with integrated 10/100 ethernet, firewire, 14" display and 128 MB Ram for the price of my iBook. I sure as hell didn't when I was in the market. The G3 is also fast, with low power consumption. that also means my battery lasts forever)
So price and performance won me over to PPC, but why would I want to switch to OS X?
full hardware support some of my linux drivers are shoddy hacks, at best. I'm not trolling here, the author of the iBook sound driver says so himself
slick interface. Say what you will about pretty colored buttons, the fact is that the GUI is what Apple is known for. I've had some pretty X themes, but the usuability has never really been there. Oh yeah, and I still get to run bash in a terminal window thanks to the BSD layer.
butt load of apps If I switch to OS X, I get top notch video editing software at no extra cost, plus the ability to run all the legacy Mac Apps, plus a decent web browser, plus (did I mention the BSD layer? I knew I did.) all the UNIX software I already love. There are already X servers available so (get this) I get to choose between Photoshop and the Gimp, and I have network transparency.
Sounds like a winner to me. Give me a reason not to switch to OS X.
Judging by the kind of Apple stories run around here, I can tell this will be modded down rather quick. Whatever. I just can't troll as good as Taco
I'm actually in two minds about whether or not Apple should release an Intel OS X. On one hand, more competition is always a good thing. On the other hand, if it's successful, it could hasten the demise of viable non-x86 alternatives.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
What matters ultimately is how they run, not how well they fulfill YOUR idea of what a server architecture should be
"Try moving your sound card to a different PCI slot."
"Why won't my motherboard enable 2x AGP?"
"How can I keep my video card and my NIC from sharing IRQ 9 under Windows 2000?"
"My system hangs if I try to hibernate it."
"Ever since I upgraded my BIOS, all of my games run slowly."
All facts of life, day and day out, in the PC world. Check any hardware/gaming oriented message board and see. Sure, it's great if you are a tweaker, but that's not exactly Apple's core market, and it's the sort of thing that their current customers abhor.
OS X on Intel would be another one of those specilty OSes that you would pretty much have to spec out a whole machine for before buying (kinda like OpenStep 4.2!) Apple could solve that problem by selling nicely designed 'certified' boxes, but that wouldn't be open enough for the people who are campaigning for this (who want to run OSX on the box that's sitting on their desk).
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Under NeXTSTEP, most cross-processor porting consisted of the following grueling steps:
Oh, and you forgot to mention that you end up with one binary which through clever sharing of resources (all interfaces, resources, etc are in the .app folder rather than in the executable) is actually smaller than for example, 4 binaries of the same app for different architectures under *NIX. It also means you could essentially fire up Interface Builder on the .nib and localize apps yourself/move buttons around and so on.
IMHO these are the most important points about OSX people on /. are missing, just look at the amount of posts here saying "it's too hard". In the case of OSX, it's not. Apple has quietly been keeping Darwin running on X86, and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (OSX's ancestor) always had support for X86. So an X86 port of OSX would be a matter of updating NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP drivers, writing some new ones for hardware that didn't exist at the time (note I'm only talking about drivers for those subsystems that Darwin does not include, i.e. Aqua) and recompiling. Presto, you have OSX/X86.
What I still don't understand is how Apple managed to turn NEXTSTEP (runs fine on my NeXTStation Turbo which is a 33Mhz 68040 with 32MB of RAM) into OSX (apparently only runs reasonably well on a XXXMhz PowerPC G4 with 128MB of RAM)? As far as I can see, they are essentially the same OS (OSX has a couple more APIs and more Eye Candy, but surely doesn't justify such a jump).
Yeah, that's what I've been clamoring for. Yet another OS to run on my x86, preferably one without a killer app or widespread support, and even better if it's one that won't support my existing apps. I want something pretty. It doesn't need to do anything that Linux/Windows/Beos does. I've always thought that the world needs more OS's. I'd love to go back to the early 80's, when every time I sat down at a new desk, I had to learn a new set of commands just to get my work done. Woohoo! My heart beats with anticipation.
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
Mac OS X won't penetrate large organizations, either. Network admins have their hands full with 95/98 desktops, 2000 desktops, 2000 servers, Linux servers, and Netware servers. Mac OS X will be looked at as just another unproven alternative with no real history, an answer looking for a question.
I also can't believe posters haven't mentioned the failed 3rd-party hardware problems generated when Apple let other manufacturers build PowerPC boxes. Remember that? Apple couldn't stand letting other people build boxes and run Apple software. Now we're hearing rumbles that not only will it run on other boxes, but it'll be boxes that Apple hasn't put their golden blessing on. That's ridiculous - Apple dropped that hot potato years ago, and they're not likely to pick it up again.
What's your damage, Heather?
That way, you can support the platform without supporting all the cruft that has built up over the years. I can almost see Apple defending their hardware (and the higher prices for it) by saying something to the effect of "yeah, you can run OSX on PC hardware, but you need at least a PIII / 1.2 gHz or equivalent processor, 196 mb of ram, a DVD burner...", etc -- just make the requirements so high that it would be a relatively expensive kit anyway, so it wouldn't hurt G3 based sales that badly, and it would avoid a lot of the legacy issue.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I'm one of the Mac-using media people you talk about. You're right that price is king, but Macs are cheaper than x86 PC's. Don't just do a CompUSA comparison of the hardware sticker-price, although Apple's notebooks, at least, will win that easily, and the desktops would surprise you if you added the comparable features to a PC. You have to evaluate what the machine will cost you over its lifetime, and what it will give you over its lifetime.
... it saves you money and makes your daily work easier. And they look cool and run Mac OS X. You can't beat that.
Support. There are almost zero IT costs related to Macs. Apple has an article on their site right now about a 150-user consulting firm that is a Mac-only shop and has only two IT guys, and they take care of the phone system, too. In many places, the "business people" use Windows PC's and the "creatives" use Macs, and the IT people only work on the PC's and the "creatives" take care of their own Macs (Microsoft gives this as the reason why their Mac apps are installed with a drag and drop of the folder from the CD to the hard disk, and their Windows apps have a complicated installer). If IT does support the Macs as well, they typically have a 10:1 Windows:Mac ratio on their support calls.
Productivity. The interface is better and makes users more productive, especially in media apps, which were all originally Mac-only and it shows. You only have to learn one set of key shortcuts and they work everywhere. You don't have to know or care about pathnames. You can move or rename apps and they keep working. You don't have to use filename extensions. You can mount drives formatted with HFS, FAT, UDF, and other formats. Mac OS 9 is more stable than any DOS-Windows version, and more stable than NT 4. It probably won't quite go head to head with Windows 2000, but Mac OS X does, easily (been using it for over a year and no crashes, and these are alphas and betas). These things really add up.
Hardware. Apple's hardware is high-quality, and components are optimized for each other and work well together. You can add RAM to any Mac in under a minute, because they all have easy-access doors, even the notebooks (the keyboard is a door). Their displays are all color-calibrated, and integrate with ColorSync in the OS. Towers have built-in gigabit Ethernet, and all other Macs have 10/100 built-in (for years now). All Macs have two built-in 802.11 wireless antennaes, and an internal slot for a $99 optional wireless networking card. They all have FireWire built-in (except for the low-end iMac, I believe). They all come with optical mouses and quality keyboards. The machines come with a bunch of stuff that you'd have to add yourself, otherwise.
Saving a few hundred bucks off the initial sticker price just doesn't help you in the long run. This is why Mac users are willing to pay a little extra. We don't pay much more, though. The $3499 G4 tower has a $995 CD/DVD-RW combo drive in it, as well as iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iTools, DVD player, CD-RW burning built into the OS, internal antennaes, gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, an audio amplifier for external speakers, power and USB for the display through the video card, optical mouse, room for 1.5 GB RAM, room for two removable drives and four hard drives, four empty PCI slots, easy open case with the mobo on the door, nVidia graphics. That's an awful lot of features and capabilities right out of the box.
There are so many misconceptions about Apple, because all the other PC manufacturers are in bed with each other and not with Apple. It's worth actually checking into this stuff
Look at a G4, and look at a standard iX86 box. They basically share the same memory bus, the same PCI bus, the same AGP port, the same USB ports; the Apple lacke a normal UART serial (except for the modem card that I don't think is an option any more) and has a FireWire (highspeed) serial instead. What else is different... well the processor, its cache, but most importantly the Firmware/ROM.
Apple, in some deal of wisdom, has used Sun's OpenBoot ROM (named openfirmware) to keep their system bootable, iX86s use the uber-patched BIOS. If Apple were to make intel based machines, it would make its own custom motherboard, and stick with the clearly supirior OpenBoot styled Firmware. It would be nice if you could get this off the shelf, but you can't since MS never bothered to prod developers into supporting it.
now consider that the only cost differences are the price of the Mot's or IBM's latest PPC (who-knows) vs the price of Intel's latest chip (the who-cares), using current history, you'll see that Apple is actually saving money by buying the cheeper chip. And it has better bang for buck no-doubt.
So, considering we know Apple won't use off the shelf part, whyever would Apple increase its production costs? Is the world such a sad place that it's going to sell a 1.1Ghz chip that does 0.5 instructions a cycle peak with more success than a 500Mhz chip that does 2 instructions per cycle average?
-Daniel
One interesting thing about this would be that it would remove the OS as a major consideration when doing performance comparisons. I know, I know, compilers and all that. But it would indeed bring the two hardware platforms a greater degree of parity on the OS front.
So if Photoshop runs twice as fast on one platform as the other, it would be harder to say things like "this performance comparison is meaningless because it doesn't take into consideration this or that OS characteristic".
Oh, sure, there will always be reasons to dispute head to head comparisons. But they would certainly be more fun.
That said, I will still never run OSX. I find the philosophy behind the free software movement more compelling than a few more whiz-bang features and eye candy.
If Apples revenue does truly derive from hardware, and their hardware is superior, then they should GPL everything they do.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
And it was a thing of beauty, far more advanced than Linux and it was that years ago.. OSX is just a minor look and feel change, so if they don't do it, it's just for business reasons.
It's Steve's little red wagon and you never know when he's going to make a turn...
To drift off topic..
I was a NeXT developer from the beginning, at one point you could compile a NeXTSTEP app for X86, Sparc, HP's PA-RISC, and their 68040 based slab and have the executable's exist in ONE package as the result of ONE compile.
The source was compiled into what we would call a Quad-FAT application and the underlying MACH OS would figure out at runtime which processor's code it needed to load. (Linux could take a lesson here)
I could hand a user a disk and not know or care what processor they were using.
They didn't allow the development of shared libraries at the time, so you never had to worry about problems like which version of GTK was installed, or fall into RPM hell trying to resolve what version of which library is orisn't loaded.
The real beauty was the development system, there is nothing that even comes close to comparing to the ease of InterfaceBuilder and ProjectBuilder in the Linux world.. If you never used it you really wouldn't believe how advanced it was(is),
This was pushing 10 years ago and there is still nothing close in ANY OS (Not Windoze or Linux)
Their libraries were so well thought out that after you were programming in the system for awhile you could think "gee" there should be a routine name "xx" and sure enough it was there.
CORBA..Yetch.. Because of the run time binding of Objective-C We could "publish" an Object with literally TWO lines of code and connect to it with another application with ONE line of code... No STUB compilers or any of that crap..
It was playing to ALL of the NeXTSTEP strengths, but we used to developer "Mac Write" as the 5 minute demo for programmers. (including font changes, fax capability, printing, color RTF text with embedded images and the ability to access services like "Webster" for spell checking.
Man do I miss that system..
Perhaps in another 10 years Linux will be close, but I doubt it.
Time for a beer..
chuck
Sun has Solaris available for x86. No doubt there was a lot of debate similar to what's happening.
that's totally different. the main reason Sun wanted Solaris on x86 was to attract developers. they found that a lot of companies had difficulty developing software for their Sparc boxes because they couldn't justify putting a Sparcstation on every developer's desks. they created Sparc x86 just so that developers (or more likely part-time developers) could create Solaris-based applications on cheaper hardware, and it would still compile and run on Solaris for Sparc.
Apple could follow a similar strategy to attract developers of course, but they'd get themselves into trouble from people who expect Apple to maintain consumer-level support for an operating system port that's targeted at developers.
so at any rate, it's not really the same thing.
- j
It all depends on what you want, surely?
;-)
The OSXonIntel web page seems to take in part a disingenious approach. "We want it because BSD gives us the chance to ge at lots of open source sw and to stick it to Microsoft". Well, if that's all you want, then here's a hint: install BSD.
To be fair, later they say they want it all. But surely there's almost no chance of getting it to run legacy Mac applications or carbon apps without recompiling? So does it come down to Quartz and Aqua? What use are they on their own? Open source stuff will be available, true, but it'll be written for console or against X. Again, you're back to "install BSD"
My motto is that OS is irrelevant; it's apps apps apps that count. Why else do you think I'm writing this on a Win2K box?
I guess one argument apple can use against OSX on intel is that Apple have a very clear understanding of the fundamental hardware, so they can optimize their OS better. A lot of work done on the Linux kernel, for example, seems to be getting this and that obscure piece of hardware to work.
I think that a better response is not to try and make OSX run on Intel, but to make Gnome or K, depending on preference, look so good that it has the same "wow!" factor that OSX has.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
NextStep on x86 was available as a shrink-wrapped product for several years. And that was back when Microsoft's top product was Windows for Workgroups. Even then, it didn't sell.
Apple sells a vertically integrated product. They control the hardware and the software. That is why Macs are historically more reliable and easier to configure: there is one company controlling everything. That advantage started to erode when Apple allowed clones; therefore, Jobs killed them (smartly, in 20/20 hindsight).
Apple is able to largely avoid hardware conflicts because there are only 5 current machines (PowerBook, iBook, G4 Tower, G4 Cube, iMac) that run the Mac OS. Apple tests their products extensively on every machine that can run them from the past few years. Microsoft could never test their products on all the machines that run their software.
Apple makes their money by selling superior hardware. However, people buy the hardware because of Apple's superior software (Mac OS). If Apple allowed other companies to sell computer that would run Mac OS X, they would lose the advantage of controlling everything about the boxes they sell. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the chip inside the computer is a PPC or an x86; it matters that only Apple can produce a Mac.
"The blind man and the paralytic one", or "Confession of an old NeXTer"
The only thing that is sure, is that they need to do something else too. OS/X ppc only will not cut it.
In 1984, Apple once was years ahead everyone else.
Apple did not know how to manage its advance. The simple and friendly Macintosh mutated into a huge number of sub-standard overpriced hardware. Slim APIs and thin operating system (hey, it had to run into 128Kb of RAM) evolved into a convoluted mess. Instead of slowly adapting, they tried grandious plans that failed (Pink, Copland, OpenDoc...). A lot of working technologies were destroyed (Hypercard, to name one).
In 1991, NeXT had 10 years of advance.
NeXT did not know how to manage its advance. Pieces after pieces they dropped their assets, in order to stay profitable. First the hardware. Then the OS. Then ObjC (despite numerous claims of the opposite, NeXT was in the process of dropping ObjC in favor of java, for fucking marketing reasons). At the end, NeXT was dropping the whole AppKit, and focused on WebObjects *consulting*, which was rewritten in java. At this point, you could look behind, and see that NeXT basically dropped every single piece that gave it its '10 years of advance'. In the process, NeXT pissed about evey company that developed for them (At the time of the OPENSTEP/Enterprise thing [ie: AppKit on windows], NeXT refused to indicate how costly would be the run-time license [hint: they didn't knew themselves], despite numerous asking from the developers. It is quite nice when you tell an independant developer that he will have to compete with the biggest established players in the biggest market, but will have to pay a premium for each copy of its software. And that you cannot tell him how much the premium is going to be. "It is going to be cheap. Trust us. We are working hard on that."). I think NeXT was doomed the day Lighthouse Design sold to Sun.
NeXT then bought Apple for a negative amount of money. This was a good thing. NeXT have software that once rocked. Apple have hardware that once rocked. Thogether they are, IMHO, the only credible commercial alternative to Wintel.
The merge was difficult. Lot of good things were lost there (Newton, OPENSTEP, YB/windows). We almost lost ObjC. The most important asset of NeXT is FoundationKit/AppKit, which require developers to use a different langage. One of the amusing decision made by NeXT was to stop supporting C++. A very good idea those days. A sure way to alienate most of the existing Apple developers, but well, us NeXTers are fucking morons, and you have to play with our rules. Those have never changed over the years. I can give them to you in full:
"We are right. You are wrong. End of discussion."
In 2001, apple hardware is ahead no-one. PC hardware *blow* macintosh at any time. Linux/*BSD are way ahead of Darwin. Win2K is rock solid (and trust me, this is a pain for me to admit it). OSX interface is unusable at best (I have trouble to feel NeXTstep throught this slow mess.)
OSX/x86 could be a way to get mindshare back. But it is useless. It'll end up on the 4th partition of a linux freak that would boot it once a week, because he is bored of playing with gnome themes, then will reboot under windows to play the latest games a couple of hours later.
Nope. The only way I see for them is to:
1/ Revive Yellow Box (This implies porting Qartz to windows to get rid of the fscking Adobe DPS licensing issue). Price it at an exact 0$. Give it away from their website. Give it from magazine CDs. Tell developers to learn objective C, so they will use the best object oriented API in the world *and* deploy the same code under different operating system
2/ Write the unix yellow box. Price it at the same 0$. Tell unix deleloper that they can use the best object oriented API in the world *and* deploy the same code under different operating system
3/ Help the GNUstep project to implement the OpenStep spec. A statment that they will not sue the project would already be a great thing (gnustep-db developers are afraid that Apple sue them on 4 key EOF patent. Development basically stopped).
At this point apple will have a viable and healthy software platform. They could then sell ppc boxes, arguing that they are compatible with old Mac OS applications and have the best OpenStep^WCocoa implementation out there.
Unfortunately, this would require Next/Apple to do the right thing, which, based on personal experience, is very unlikely.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
----
Hey there,
This website is an online petition trying to get Mac OS X ported to the intel platform. Go check it out at http://www.osxonintel.com I signed it and you should too!
*Your Name*
----
I recommend that you write your own messages, if you don't want to sound like that -- otherwise you end up having to write explanatory messages to your friends to tell them that no, you didn't write that email, but it's a good site anyway...
Also, I would think that making it look as though the referrer is the sender and writer of the email is actually fraudulent, because I most certainly did NOT write that, yet it has been made to appear that I did.
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Sadly, the hardware side of competition doesn't win Apple the clearest of victories. Some wins include the peaceful, silent design of the fanless system, the artistry of the cases, and the simplicity of the peripheral attachments. But these do not distinguish it enough from its Wintel competitors: The Motorola PowerPC chips perform competitive benchmarks per clockcycle, but the masses want those GigaHertz.
A software-oriented Apple could still sell its strongest point, Design, but that takes development. Taking the new direction of support the x86 platform, with its Tower of Hardware Babel, could be more than Apple is ready to chew... affordably anyhow.
But, does Apple care about such a beast?
They would have to start supporting the newest technology, from all different vendors, not just themselves. Big expansion of their happy little driver coding armies
They would have to expand their customer services exponentially, to support all the people fleeing MS, who don't know the first thing about MacOS, let alone *nix.
The would be taking an aggressive step towards MS, that they would not take to kindly. I mean Apple's not really competition for MS in the PC market, but this would make them direct competitors, and everyone has an opinon about what MS does to competitors.
I don't think it is in Apple's best interest [as far as business practices are concerned] to supply an x86 port of OS X. It may be a nice little bit of press, and 'response to customer appeals', but it would change a lot of their business model.
Of course, there is the added benefit [to end users] of increased interoperability between both *nix and Macs, which may be a nice bit for the business world. Interesting thought... MS's being the only OSes without the OS X seal of approval.
My pennies,
-bZj
.sig
Apple has to make the same choice as Sun.
Sun has Solaris available for x86. No doubt there was a lot of debate similar to what's happening. However, there is a difference. The difference lies in who the customers are. Does Apple perceive its customers as driven by hardware or software?
Sun has been clear about its stand. Hardware is what they think will rake in the moolah. Software is incidental.
The question I want to ask is, whether we want Mac hardware or Mac software. If software is the answer, then there may be an overwhelming case for porting OS X to x86. If hardware is the answer, convincing Apple may be tough.
It would be a shame to have the Mac OS X move onto x86 and then get mired in the PC legacy crap that has caused us to continue to see ISA slots on 1ghz machines. I'm much happier with the SCSI/USB/Firewire legacy the Mac hardware has fostered. Of course it's going to negatively effect hardware sales. Don't you think that the new G4s with DVD burners are specifically to generate hardware sales? Where do you think their priorities are? Why do you think they keep orphaning hardware in each release? No OS X is planned for NuBus macs, yet another "trimming/pruning" of the Apple Tree.
Apple has a real problem with their CPUs that other server RISC based CPUs do not have - they are about two times too slow to keep up with the AMDs and Intels of the world.
First of all, Apple makes workstations not servers. Comparing a G4 to an 8 way Xeon is bullcrap.
Second, I guess Sun is too 'slow' as well. Their Ultra series workstations max out at 450Mhz...The
new Blade 1000 peaks at 750Mhz.
Why would people buy those? They're so much 'slower' than a P4!
I wonder why Sun's sales were up 85% from last year...Could it be that there is *still* demand for real UNIX hardware, even with the PeeCee?
I think if you had a clue about anything other than PeeCees you'd realize the only 'race' Apple is losing is the marketing race - Mhz is not an accurate measure of real-world performance.
People will NOT switch to OS X when it comes out
That's a huge generalization.
I know several people that are lusting after OSX right now.
Will appreciable amounts of people buy Apple boxen? I don't know, but I think there will be more than you expect.
--K
I beg to differ about "three kinds of people who buy Macs" ...
Apple has always, with a few notable exceptions, built first-rate hardware. With the combination of the PowerPC and OpenFirmware, modern Macs are, for all intents and purposes, low-end workstations, pretty much indistinguishable from the low-end RS6000 machines that IBM is making these days. (Boot a modern RS6000 -- you'll see Apple plastered all over the firmware.)
By contrast, PCs are still incredibly broken AT architecture machines. They still have 16 interrupts, and PCI doesn't work around this very well. If you look at a machine with no ISA slots, you'll see that windoze still loads ISA drivers. The machines are CRAP. The only decent non-server intel machines ever built were the SGI machines of a couple of years ago -- because those were full-blown workstations, throwing out all of the legacy crap, and having a real firmware.
The combination of really good hardware with a first-rate UNIX is a one-two punch that few serious UNIX geeks will be able to resist. And it's sexy and comes in Titanium.
I *hope* Apple doesn't start catering to the lowest common denominator and making crappy AT boxes. The effect will be to kill the last quality consumer-level hardware, and it'll kill Apple, because Apple makes its money on hardware.
If Apple started making non-AT intel-based systems, that were otherwise built like normal Macs, with decent firmware &c, that would possibly be a win. But the OS for a machine like that wouldn't run on a commodity PC.
They make well-designed hardware that lasts. Case in point: in 1995 I purchased a PowerMac 8100/100. After using it for four or five years, I sold it to my dad so I could buy a rev A iMac. He used it for a couple of years. Now he's purchased a new iMac and I've got the old 8100 back. It's happily running MkLinux (I know, I know..., but it is great as a simple network server). The point is, these puppies last!
But back to my original point. Apple has some stealth revenue sources that nobody seems to remember. FileMaker (formerly Claris) is a $282 million company, and Apple owns a sizeable chunk.
WebObjects (run by the Apple Enterprise group) has been raking in money on huge contracts with big corporations and government agencies for some time. They've downplayed the Apple name until now, and have concentrated on telling customers the history of WO (developed by NeXT) and its capabilities.
Both of these sources of revenue are independent of Apple's hardware sales (FileMaker makes as much money off of sales of its Windows products as it does off Mac sales, and WO only recently became available on OS X Server).
The WO factor, in particular, points out the impact of the NeXTies and the lessons they learned. Remember, they first went the hardware/software system route, then were forced to ditch the hardware. Jobs has been much more flexible on hardware decisions of late. Note the move from ATi to nVidia. There are strong rumors that Jobs is talking to as many as five chip manufacturers to figure out a way around Motorola's failure to deliver sufficient yields.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Jobs came up with another rabbit out of the hat. He's become less doctrinare in his approach over the years, and more attuned to market realities.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
My iMac DV (400 MHz G3) will run OS X PB VERY nicely. As for an "iMac power user" being a "contradiction in terms..." nyah! :)~
:)
But seriously, as for your shoe being more upgradeable than an iMac, think about Apple's choice of architecture--the Motorola chips. They don't work the same way the Wintel chips you're familiar with do, in terms of megahertz. My grandma has a 233MHz original Bondi Blue iMac. It has 32MB of RAM, I think. She's not running linuxPPC on it and compiling three kernels a day, so it's not like the little beast has a terribly heavy load--instead, she's doing word processing, surfing the web, email, playing a bit with graphic design--BUT even with OS 9 on it (I love macs, but don't get me started on OS 9) it doesn't feel like a slow box. This was a machine from 1998. My boyfriend's K6-233 has LONG since been retired since then.
Cost is key, concerning the sales of G4's and G4 cubes. iMacs can be had for around $700 (and then you get some rebates--my aunt got a rather good deal on one) while G4 systems are still up there in the $1,700-ish range. (Didn't stop my aunt from getting one of those either, though.
Don't be too hard on the iMac--I think things are looking up for the iMac, all around. They're really pretty affordable and the peripherals that ship with them have improved. The Apple Pro mouse and Pro keyboard are a DRASTIC improvement over the child-sized mushy original iMac laptop-like keyboard, and they've started shipping with the Pro mouse instead of that aggravating iPuck.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
If there is anything at all I have learned about the man, it's that he is utterly unpredictable, he probably has a grand scheme in mind, and he loves surprises. I think that the biggest question to ask isn't one of technical hurdles or risk/benefit analyses of Apple's hardware sales, but "What's really bouncing around in Steve's head?"
Sadly, it's impossible to answer this question. One thing is for sure, though--if Apple does release OSX for x86, Jobs is going to have a blast in announcing it. And it's going to catch everybody pretty much off-guard, even those of us who want it the most.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Let's think about this.
If they're running on commodity x86 hardware then hardware sales would go through the floor. Who would buy the expensive (but good) Apple hardware when there was cheaper hardware which did the same job? Doesn't matter if the Apple stuff is better, the man in PC World isn't going to know that so he buys the cheapest. Apple lose out bigtime.
If they're running on their own dedicated x86 hardware (remember here, there's a difference between having an x86 CPU and being IBM PC compatible) then they have to develop that, so they've got a new one-off cost to develop this, along with the same costs to maintain it as they currently have with PPC - except they don't have experience with it so they'd be running slower for a little while. Oh, and they'd lose the current advantage of not having fans, as the x86 CPUs run a lot warmer as a whole than PPC. I can't see they'd go to all this trouble so they could use laptop or Crusoe processors. They'd also then have to move their software over to the new CPU for the second time in recent memory, write all the converters and so on. So they wouldn't have a speed advantage for a couple of years (think upgrade cycles) as it'd be emulated. Not pretty.
All this so they can use different CPUs which have a current speed advantage (which the change would knock out for a while). Could someone possibly explain why this could be a good idea?
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Whilst I would openly welcome OSX on my desktop, running on my x86 hardware with all the funky hardware I've bought I see this as the one major problem for Apple. If OSX were to be released for the x86 market the number of configurations and hardware devices the OS would have to be able to support would grow to the sort of levels which would be problematic. At the moment they only have to support a few graphics chips out of the box - how many would they have to support if they were attempting to sell OSX to the masses. What about soundcard, modems, network cards and so on. I just can't see it happening without a lot of support from manufacturers who are unwilling to provide driver support on the existing mac platform.
If OS X for x86 was available, I'd be willing to bet that a large proportion of the first two groups would immediately jump ship over to cheaper hardware. Mac OS hardware is nice (The G4 is a great chip) but being realistic, price is king.
The question, therefore, is whether the increased revenue in OS sales would compensate for the losses in hardware revenues. Personally, I'm not sure.
When it comes down to it, though, Apple won't listen to what we say. Pretty much every major decision will depend on what Steve thinks, and I don't think Steve likes the idea of open hardware - historically, he's shown himself to be very sensitive to physical appearance (the original mac classic, the iMac, the cube) and I suspect that he just doesn't want his lovely OS X running on ugly grey boxes. :)
(Cue announcement from Apple tomorrow about OS X for x86, just to prove me wrong...)
For those of you who insist on purporting that Apple makes all of it's money on hardware, I suggest you take a different look at it. My question to you is, how much money would Apple actually make selling hardware, if that hardware didn't come with the Mac OS attached to it? Would you buy an overpriced piece of hardware just because it looked cool, but had to run windows on it?
If your answer is no (as I suspect it is) then the reason you buy Apples is primarily because of the software and OS, which makes Apple primarily a software vendor who uses their software technology to sell hardware. Without the Mac OS, the Mac is just an overpriced PC encased in dayglo plastic. Sure some of the hardware touches are nice, but none of that really matters without the Mac OS.
Apple is primarily a software vendor people. Don't forget that. Just because their accounting puts most of the revenue in hardware sales doesn't mean that hardware is truly where their competitive advantage is.
I've heard this tripe for so long, it makes me ill....
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
In my humble opinion, Apple would release OSX on x86 hardware on only one condition. That it was *Apple* x86 hardware and not everything under the sun that is currently available for an x86 based platform.
... Cocoa? ... will be the easiest to port. As I understand it Cocoa is a subsystem API that talks to the Mach microkernel, not to the hardware. So Apple would port the Cocoa API to x86 with the rest of the OS and the apps that use it would port easily with a few changes, just like OpenGL games do now. The "hardware" apps would obviously be the hardest, and would cause the most harm to Apple's partner alliance. Take Adobe for instance. They have worked very hard to get their Photoshop for the Mac to take direct advantage of the AltaVec Velocity Engine instruction core in the new G4 chips. There will be no Velocity in an AMD chip, so that entire section of their code would have to be thrown out, or rewritten. Being that they already have a Winport and a RISC Macport, doing a specific x86 Macport might be just enough to cause those companies using Velocity specific code to jump ship entirely.
Meaning that the issues that people have mentioned about Legacy problems with the x86 hardware would not exist. The situation would go something like this. Not that I ever see this happening, but it is the only way I can think of to make it work.
Steve would decide that Apple needs a good, powerful sub $500 system to compete with the likes of Dell, Compaq, Gateway and eMachines. The Apple Design Department would start working on an Apple standard platform mainboard (meaning that this would not be an ATX/AT box, it would be a G4/iMac box) that uses only *one* of the current x86 processor technologies. They would choose between either Intel or AMD and stay there.
Let's assume the choice would be AMD, because of cost per processor and the fact that in my scenerio they want to beat out the $499 eMachine AMD based box. The mainboard would be designed to be PCI *only* with USB as the same keyboard / mouse input we see on current PowerMacs. (Don't worry about issues with ISA slots, Apple would not write drivers for anything in them anyway.) This means the mainboard would be similar to the "legacy-free" Compaq system, the iPaq. No serial, no parallel, no PS/2 ports. Just USB and some PCI slots. Oh, and don't forget the single AGP port for graphics.
This indicates, that even though in theory Apple is porting OSX to x86, they are really porting OSX to AMD. Though Intel is also an x86 chip, they do have different command sets than the AMD chips have and vice versa. OSX (in my scenerio) is optimized for the AMD processor, so most likely a good number of the options of the OS would not work, or simply break entirely, if run on an Intel processor.
Also, there would not be drivers for everything under the sun, including the breadboard PCI card your Grandmother built to keep her recipe system organized. Apple would choose a small amount of cards to build drivers for itself. (The cards that ship with the system) Then it would be fully up to the hardware manufacturers themselves to write drivers for their hardware. If it isn't "Apple Certified" you can bet that Apple won't even give you a deaf ear to voice complaints upon.
Also, software that runs on OSX will need to be rewritten for most apps. Apps that are specifically coded in
Basically it looks like Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot to port to x86 at this stage in the game. The only reason to do it would be to have a sub $500 price point system. They would have to retool entire manufacture specs on a board specific to x86. They would have to port the OS, and all of their specific drivers to a platform that would *still* only work in the Apple way. (They aren't going to give me technical support on OSX if it is installed on a Gateway PC.) Then they would have to train technical support to field questions on the new x86 based box.
Kind of like SGI and their current market position. I never thought I would see the day when I could purchase an x86 box running NT Workstation / Linux with an SGI logo on the front of it. But I can, and I still have to ask myself "Why?" As far as I know, SGI still has some MIPS based hardware running IRIX for sale. Yet they also have these x86 boxes that they have to develop, troubleshoot, support and market. These SGI boxes are no more or less special than an IBM or a Dell system with the same specs. Apple is not about to let *anyone* say that about them.
No, I don't think OSX will have be fully available on an x86 box until long after Apple is dead and gone as a company and someone has bought all of the intellectual rights just for the purpose of porting OSX to x86 hardware. It isn't that it is impossible. The core of the system is already running on x86 (Darwin) and could probably even get as crazy as NetBSD or whatever and be running on Dreamcast, and Amiga, and VAX, and Commodore, and my toaster oven. The kernel is portable, it's just not going to be ported. It just doesn't make a good business sense looking at the current Apple business model.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
While Linux and the various flavours of BSD all currently offer solid environments for x86 hardware, the desktop facilities offered by all of them are still poor in comparison to most commercial opertaing systems.
Despite the hype surrounding some of them, I've not found any Unix desktop environments particularly compelling so far... There's also plenty of hype surrounding GNOME and KDE, but I don't see any killer applications for them. People don't need buzzwords, they need a powerful desktop environment running on Unix, and this is what Apple will be providing.
Linux and the BSD derivatives are excellent server environments, as is Darwin, but MacOS X is also getting Maya and the Adobe applications on a viable desktop.
Personally, I've yet to find a desktop environment that offers me everything that I want, BeOS came close, but Apple are in a position to offer everything in one package.
Apple are also in an excellent position to pick up the gauntlet dropped by SGI, right at the top end of the content creation market. 3D, publishing, design and video editing are about to get a whole lot better on the Mac.
The most likely reason Apple will want to continue development of Darwin for x86 is that it needs a backup plan, exit strategy if things go wrong.
If Motorola and the G4 architecture don't scale fast enough, if Apple can't buy the hardware in the volumes they need, if the price of PPC processors is too high, then Apple would still be able to put x86 processors into it's systems with only minor re-engineering OS X.
Custom designed Apple x86 hardware is therefore a possibility, and an exciting one, but I doubt Apple see any commercial interest in supporting generic PCs and legacy hardware.
Also remember that OS X has the useful ability to support application "bundles" with binaries for multiple platforms in a single executable. This would make it very easy for vendors to ship applications in a form that would run on both PPC and x86 transparently to the user.
-- aardvark doesn't constitute a good password.
Now even if Apple decided to make x86 boxes of their own, and make them right, i.e. with all the little features and the good stability and support we've come to expect, Apple would still be in deep trouble. They would release a version of Mac OS X that only runs on Apple's x86 hardware, of course. But the core, Darwin, is open-sourced, so it would be a matter of days (or maybe weeks) until someone comes up with drivers to let it run on other hardware. We've seen how much trouble Apple had with clone makers, now think about what would happen if Apple moved to x86...
Anyway, Mac OS X would have a hard time on Intel. If you're used to Linux, compiling and running Unix software on Mac OS X is (excuse the wording) a pain in the ass. I know what I talk about, because I ported GNOME to Mac OS X (see http://fink.sourceforge.net/). Also, there is no Classic environment on Intel. This is a big drawback, because not all applications will be ported to Mac OS X right away, and you won't have the choice of running the classic Mac OS applications of x86 hardware.
Personally, I'll just keep running Mac OS X on my PowerBook G3 and be happy...
-chrisp
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."