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Darwin Team Answers & Develop on Darwin

Posted by Hemos on from the and-the-leg-bone-connects-to-the-thigh-bone dept.

Lagos writes "In July Darwin developers at Apple had a call for questions. Their answers were posted on Monday and may be found here. There is some discussion of Apple's place within the Open Source community, though most of the questions answered are more technical." Along the same Darwinian lines, this submission came in: Maktoo writes "Maccentral is reporting that SourceForge.net has added PowerMac G4 Servers running MacOS X 10.1 into their Compile Farm. Now any apps you have going on SourceForge, you can test to see if it'll run on OS X! Gotta love that BSD heritage... OS X is already going to benefit greatly from all the apps it can use in the UNIX/Linux space. This just makes life easier for developers to bring even more."

42 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Bay Area NeXT Group. by jcr · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're interested in Darwin, and you live in the S.F bay area, come to the BANG meeting tonight at Apple Town Hall auditorium. The subject is Mac OS X 10.1, and Fred Sanchez will be there.

    See http://www.bang.org/ for the details.

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  2. UMCP by SlamMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you interested in getting more OS X information in general, the Collge Park chapter of ACM is having a speaker from Apple today to talk about it. Its from 5-6, in the Classrom Building (yes, that actually is the name of one of our buildings), room 0111

    --
    Mod point free since 2001
    1. Re:UMCP by himself · · Score: 4, Funny

      So is it really room 0111 or is it Room 7? (hee, hee)

  3. Simple Clarification Needed... by Uttles · · Score: 2

    I'm ignorant, I admit, but I'd love to know one thing about Mac OS X:
    If running OS X, can you use linux/unix software?

    --

    ~ now you know
    1. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by jcr · · Score: 4, Informative

      The short answer is yes. Mac OS X is a full-blown 4.4 BSD lite OS.

      It doesn't come with the X window system, but there are several commercial and free ports of X available.

      The place to find information on apps for Mac OS X is stepwise.com. Click on the link that says "softrak".

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    2. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by winterstar · · Score: 3, Informative

      OS X is mostly like any other UNIX. As long as you have the source code and can recompile it it should work under OS X in most cases.

    3. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by spike666 · · Score: 5, Informative

      the simple answer: Sort of.
      the real answer: it all depends...

      the explanation: if you can compile it, you can run it. if its a command line program, you're porting compile is considerably easier. if its Graphical, you've got a bit harder approach since OSX uses Aqua - a graphical display system which has bases in display PDF (some *nixes GUI systems used to be based on Display Postscript - see Solaris' OpenWindows v1.x)

      however, since i've yet to see a linux/bsd / solaris / aix application that uses aqua, if its a gui program its probably doing Xwindows. to run X on X, you gotta do some tricks, theres a few methods, but Darwin has ported XFree86 to X. it runs pretty well too.

      what i've found is that the quickest way to get an aqua app running is to find a java version of the application if possible since the awt/swing -> aqua stuff is abstracted by the osx implementation of java. but this doesnt solve all your woes.

    4. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The short answer is yes: OS X is a Unix variant - so you only need to recompile the software. In fact many tools of OS X are typical Unix programs, apache, perl, gcc, tcsh, etc...

      The long answer is, it depends. While OS X is clearly Unix, there are some issues:

      • OS X is from the BDS Unix familly, so linux programs might need some tweaking.
      • OS X is structured differently from other Unixes, standart paths are different and configuration files are very different.
      • Most Unix system use the X11 standart for GUI. OS X does not use X11 but instead a protocol based on display PDF. While it is possible to install an X11 server (for instance Xfree), this is not the default installation.
      Still many Unix programs have been ported to OS X in the rather short timeframe of it's existence(~six months).
    5. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by iso · · Score: 4, Informative

      A lot of people are saying "it depends," but I'm not really sure why. Just about any UNIX app that will compile on *BSD (graphical or not) can run on OS X. Get XonX and you can run a rootless XFree86 port right next to the Aqua windows. Where does "it depends" even enter this? OS X is as much a UNIX as FreeBSD and Linux are, period.

      The funny thing I've found however, is that after going to great lengths to install beta versions of XDarwin and hacking libraries to get them to compile (this was 6 months ago, all of this is much easier now), I found myself wondering what exactly to do with it. I put a lot of importance on running my old Linux apps, but when it came down to it there was nothing I needed to run under X! I used the Gimp for a bit, but then picked up a copy of Photoshop instead; Mozilla runs better under Aqua than X-Windows; Fire is a great ICQ client and I really like Apple's Mail.app for email; Microsoft Office for the Mac is hands down better than any UNIX clone (or even Office for Windows). The new Office for X looks phenomenal! Everybody using OS X should download the Word for X trial version and try it for themselves. StarOffice and the like don't even come close to this newest version of Word for the Mac. Amazing.

      Sometimes I use the xterms in XDarwin just for old times sake, and it's nice to remotely connect to my linux box though the X Server, but what really struck me is how much better apps are in OS X than they are in Linux. Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well. Now I'm using no X-Windows apps, a handful of OS 9 apps, but the vast majority of the apps I use are OS X native. It's official, I'm a Mac convert :).

      - j

    6. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by Creepy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Most BSD programs seem to compile OK, the biggest problem I've had is compiling anything that needs access to device drivers, in which case you need to rewrite the code for the IOKit. What I would do for a DEC network driver right now (tulip in Linux)...

    7. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually there is a freeware/shareware program called Graphic Converter that does the job for a reasonable price.

      As for TeX, I also use it, but I use a nice tool called TexShop that is really nice, free and open source. It uses pdttex to compile and renders the file directly in pdf, so you get all the nice features of Quartz, like anti-aliasing.

    8. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by iso · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Photoshop is major $$$. Why do you think so many Mac users have been interested in a GIMP port?

      Well photoshop is available to students for only about $200, which is how I first bought it years ago. Anybody who isn't a student will have a job and therefor money, but even then one can still find photoshop for about $500, sometimes less if you pick up an older version and upgrade.

      Add to all this the fact that the GIMP is useless for print, and if you're not doing print then you'd be better off buying Photoshop Elements for a mere $99. There are even upgrade programs to buy Photoshop Elements for as low as $70 if you have a copy of Photoshop LE (included with many scanners, and I've even seen it included free with magazines and at tradeshows!)

      It should also be noted that while I've seen many Mac users interested in the GIMP (hey, everybody likes free stuff), I've run into exactly zero who were impressed by it when they finally got it running. The GIMP is a nice idea, but despite what many (ignorant) zealots preach, the GIMP does not, in any way shape or form, come close to the power of Photoshop Elements, nevermind Photoshop.

      - j

    9. Re:Simple Clarification Needed... by iso · · Score: 2, Informative

      I haven't actually used Photoshop Elements, but my understanding is that it doesn't support layers, has weak support for text, and comes with a pretty limited set of filters.

      Wrong to all of the above. Everything you mentioned is there, and it includes all of the basic Photoshop filters, completely un-crippled, which is more than enough for 99% of users. Many of the features are presented in a much more intuitive way for beginners, though just about every function you'd find in the GIMP is there.

      I'm not going to spend a dime on anything that isn't Carbon or Cocoa.

      That's understandable; I'll give you this one :)

      GIMP provides everything I need, and I've been using it for ~2 years so I'm used to the interface. Why change?

      Well sure, use what you're most familiar with, but the conversation started with a reference to Mac users switching over to the GIMP. If you're familiar with the GIMP, that's fine, but you would be doing a great disservice to a beginner if you told them to use the GIMP over Photoshop Elements.

      - j

  4. Question of the day... by gergi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many people complain about Linux not being user-friendly enough in the GUI. Whether that is true or not is irrevelant to my question. Near everyone can agree that Apple has the best GUI. We're talking about how easy it is to port *BSD/Linux apps to OS X ... how easy do you think it would be for Apple to port Aqua to *BSD/Linux?

    -As beautiful as KDE is, I would drop it in a heartbeat for Aqua.

    --
    Nosce te Ipsum
    1. Re:Question of the day... by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 4, Informative

      Aqua is not simply a window manager and widget set you can install on top of a X11 server. It relies on a different drawing sub-system

      A simple port would imply rewriting the low-level IOKit functions for BSD/Linux and then recompile the foundations classes, and the Quartz rendering engine and then finally the Aqua layer. While it would not be very difficult, most of the code as been ported to many architectures. I suspect that a lot of work went into optimising Aqua for the PPC processor and the Atlivec unit. Aqua implies a lot of processing, and I would think that a straigtforward port would be very slow.

      Then again if Apple did this, they would roughtly have changed kernels, using the Linux/BSD kernel instead of Mach - what would be the point?

  5. Potential danger by nahdude812 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sorry if this is seen as flamebait, but isn't anyone else concerned that potentially all apps that run under Linux would migrate their way to another (commercial) OS with marketing power, and a desire to influence it? Couldn't this be a real threat to Linux? What if everything that ran under Linux suddenly started working under Windows? Wouldn't that reduce the marketability of Linux? If I were a corporation considering switching to a different environment, all be it a more stable one, when I only have people on staff who know the current environment, might I not be inclined to stay with the current environment given that the tools from the new one were available within the current one? Immediate costs would be reduced as there's less of a rollout, even if licensing in the long run is more expensive.

    I think it's a great testament to Open Source that Apple chose to heavily base their OS on it; Apple decision makers aren't idiots, they know a good thing when they see it. But in the end, it takes a piece of the market owned wholly by *nices and allows a commercial entity to have a share of it.

    --
    Slay a dragon... over lunch!
    1. Re:Potential danger by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 2

      Why is this different from commercial compagnies like SUN,HP and IBM that also sell Unix systems?

    2. Re:Potential danger by alfredo · · Score: 2, Informative

      But what it comes down to is getting work done. Having OSX has not lessened my Linux time. I am doing some graphics on My OSX machine, and surfing in YellowDog Linux on my G3.

      Yeah, and I am using GIMP and Photoshop today, that is Classic(OS9.2.1) OSX, and XDarwin. Let's see ya do that on your GateWay. OSX is about flexibility. Jobs knew that butting heads with Gates is a losing strategy, OSX is an end run. He is uniting the NIX world.

      Insisting on Purity will only slow our movement. It was good to get a solid base, but now it is time to be inclusive.

      Get yourself an iBook and see what OSX is all about.

      --
      photosMy Photostream
    3. Re:Potential danger by nahdude812 · · Score: 3, Flamebait
      OSX is about flexibility. Jobs knew that butting heads with Gates is a losing strategy, OSX is an end run. He is uniting the NIX world.

      Oh, I absolutely concur! It's a magnificent strategy for Jobs! Absolutely it will boost the market share of MacOS! But will it be at the detriment of Linux? Seriously, I doubt that this will pull many Windows users away, as the majority of them are set in their ways, and it isn't MacOS doing anything new that Windows does. Instead it is MacOS seeping in to a share of the market, and in fact, potentially completely blanketing it, that is currently proudly held by BSD/Linux, when they have greater right/authority/capacity to hold that share of the market, except for the fact that they don't have a marketing department.

      Why is Microsoft the big OS right now? Marketing! Is MacOS (pre-X) better than Windows? In very many ways! Is Linux better than Windows? Also in very many ways! Is Windows better than either of them? Not in very many ways at all! My brother just exceeded 400 days uptime on his home server running RedHat. On Netcraft, of the top 50 uptimes, last I checked, only ONE was Windows, and it was a machine run by Microsoft, with the express purpose of proving Windows' uptime capacity, and not a machine that was being used in a production environment. So why is this inferior OS in possession of the largest share of the desktop environment, with an inferior less stable environment that Linux, and a less intuitive, more difficult to use interface than MacOS? You better have guessed it by now (I'm such a cynic), MARKETING. MacOS is absorbing a lot of the strategic advantage of BSD/Linux, and inserting it into their marketing machine under the name MacOS.

      My concern is over whether this pushes BSD/Linux out of the picture, as they are about operational quality not visual quality while OSX focuses a lot more on visual quality (which has proven to be an exceptionally marketable aspect; translucent windows and a warping docking bar, wow, way better than some boring uptime!) and leaves the operational quality to the BSD programmers, who are pouring their hearts and souls in to a project, which Apple might, in the end, turn around and stab them in the heart with.

      Very loose simile: It's like the greatest swordsmiths (Open Source programmers) on earth collectively working for years to create the greatest sword ever for a king (the public, and perhaps Apple), who kills the smith with it to prevent the smith from making a better one. Your greatest source of pride might very well be your undoing in an irony that belongs in fairy tales. (This is not to imply that Apple has its goal laid out to squash BSD, indeed, BSD is proving to be a great aid to them, thus the loosness of the simile.)
      --
      Slay a dragon... over lunch!
    4. Re:Potential danger by Snocone · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hello... VHS vs Beta (tried, but true example of marketing versus quality).

      Actually, as usual, the conventional wisdom is wrong in their explanation. Beta was actually well ahead in unit sales until the rise of pr0n on VHS. No, really.

      See, to RECORD a Beta tape, you needed a Sony-licensed machine; very expensive. On the other hand, anybody could make a (comparatively) cheap VHS camera. And the numbers tell the story; when Beta and VHS had about the same number of titles available, Beta led in sales. About seven months after the first VHS cameras hit US shelves, VHS had six times as many titles available, of which not quite half were cheap pr0n flicks. And, needless to say, VHS piracy was rampant, while Beta piracy was next to nonexistent.

      Sales of the two respective systems, which until then had moved along similar trendlines, promptly diverged radically.

      Lesson to be learned from this: Technology adoption is driven by piracy and pr0n. As if looking at any contemporary P2P network hadn't made that clear to you already...

    5. Re:Potential danger by znu · · Score: 2

      Apple isn't that huge, and doesn't appear to be doing anything that could be construed as unfair play. If Mac OS X is detrimental to Linux, it will only be because people view it as a better product. The way to fix that is pretty straightforward, even if actually doing it will take some work: make Linux better.

      Competition with a really polished desktop Unix OS can only help Linux in the long run. Although OS X will likely do quite nice things for Apple's market share, I seriously doubt that everyone is going to abandon x86 hardware, or that OS X will be ported to such hardware any time soon. This means there's still going to be a huge potential market for Linux, and being able to learn from OS X will be of much help in the battle against Windows.

      --
      This space unintentionally left unblank.
    6. Re:Potential danger by dolanh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As of right now I don't see too much of a conflict, considering the products that MacOSX is encroaching upon are mostly positioned at the desktop market, whereas BSD/Linux main strength is still primarily on the server end.

      When BSD/Linux gets a stronger desktop following (I give it about two years), we could revisit your argument.

      --

      just my blog and pix

    7. Re:Potential danger by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just want to contradict the perception here that BSD sprung entirely from the 'great swordsmiths' of Open Source programmers.

      BSD UNIX was a US government funded project intended to advance the state-of-the-art for the computer industry as a whole. The entire intent was to allow commercial companies to 'steal' the code to improve interoperability -- in fact iconic BSD developers like Bill Joy got very rich doing just that. BSD code is used in virtually every OS -- it's a significant chunk of every commercial Unix, probably a bunch in GNU, and there's small bits in Windows, as has been repeatedly discussed.

      Not to take away anything from the people who deUNIXifed BSD and have been doing a excellent job maintaining it ever since. Just that Apple won't be the first nor the last to use BSD code in their OS. Compared to every other commercial user of BSD code, they've been saints.

      --
      Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
    8. Re:Potential danger by benedict · · Score: 2

      Apple is putting unixalike machines on the desks of every Mac user in the world, and you're concerned about this hurting Linux's market share?

      Don't quit your day job to be a strategic consultant, is all I can say.

      --
      Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
    9. Re:Potential danger by NutscrapeSucks · · Score: 2

      The growth of that operating system was mostly the result of a deliberate strategy to exploit the network-effects of controlling APIs, protocols, document formats, and distribution channels.

      All of which I'd classify as marketing. (esp. the distribution channel bit, which along with Pricing is exactly what marketing is supposed to worry about.)

      Of course, most folks here think of marketing as equal to advertising. But that's why Microsoft has 'good' marketing, and Apple/IBM/etc have 'bad' marketing. In other words, when MS's slogan was "Windows Everywhere!", they really meant it.

      --
      Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
  6. Re:?question by JimRay · · Score: 3, Informative

    Kind of. Darwin is actually the core of the new Mac OS, including a kernel based on Mach and BSD4.4 compatible Unix layer. Darwin has been released as open source software. It was built to run on PowerPc systems, all the way up the G4. However, the Darwing team has ported it to the x86. If you have a system that meets their guidelines, you can actually run Darwin on an x86, though I'm not real sure why you'd want to. Some have speculated that with a simple recompile and rewrite of some drivers, Apple could port OS X to the x86. Hope this helps.

    Get more info here:
    http://www.apple.com/darwin/

    --
    My other computer is your Windows box
  7. To reward the developers... by Teddyman · · Score: 3, Funny

    They should give Darwin Awards to the most hard-working of them.

  8. Use whatever works for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I was a foreman at a construction company, I wouldn't force the bricklayers to use hammers just because the carpenters are really productive with them. A computer is a tool. Use whichever one is right for the job.

    Alot of my job revolves around web development. For me, OS X is perfect because I have Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and vi all on the same machine. I tried to use Linux, but alot of my time was spent dual-booting.

    You probably do other things, so another machine might be better suited for what you do. Whatever. Better or worse is all relative to what you want to accomplish.

  9. Re:Ask Slashdot - OSX? by Wadesworld · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let me know when MS Word for Linux comes out.

    Yes, Linux has penetrated the corporate server market. But it has not penetrated the corporate desktop market.

    OS X has the potential to do so. Time will tell - it may not, but at least it's got a chance.

    Wade

  10. So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by torpor · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the FAQ:

    Q: Porting Unix software to Mac OS X, one thing that is often sorely missed (especially in cryptographic tools) is /dev/random, a system-level entropy provider. Adding a decent /dev/random would be a Good Thing.
    A: Although /dev/random is not in the latest Darwin binary release, it is now in the kernel sources available in the Darwin CVS repository. It took us a bit of time to release it because we wanted to be sure of its quality. Check it out and enjoy!


    So does this mean that OS 10.1 has a /dev/random now, and I can chuck away the entropy daemon I've been using?

    Anyone (early 10.1 users) know the answer?

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
    1. Re:So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by znu · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yup:

      [entropy:/dev] znu% sw_vers
      ProductName: Mac OS X
      ProductVersion: 10.1
      BuildVersion: 5G64

      [entropy:/dev] znu% ls | grep random
      random
      urandom

      --
      This space unintentionally left unblank.
    2. Re:So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      From my version of 10.1:-

      tcsh% ls -al *rand*
      crw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1, 0 Sep 26 17:47 random
      crw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1, 1 Sep 25 21:23 urandom

      That enough for you? :-)

    3. Re:So, OS X 10.1 has /dev/random now? by blaster · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes. And I have been pushing for it for a long time ;-)

      Louis

  11. Re:?question by connorbd · · Score: 2

    Nnnot quite. The older versions of Darwin are (as is MkLinux) but the Darwin driver model is based on something specific to Darwin/X called IOKit.

    /Brian

  12. Huh? by megaduck · · Score: 2

    I'm afraid that I don't see your point. Apple is now just another commercial unix vendor, much like Sun or IBM. The only difference is that they're targeting the desktop market instead of servers. How does this threaten the open source community, or specifically, BSD?

    Are BSD coders going to drop everything and start hacking on Darwin? Not likely. Darwin is pretty nifty, but projects like OpenBSD have different goals. People might lose interest in Linux PPC, but that will only happen if Apple puts out a superior (and free) product.

    Besides which, Apple's been a pretty good neighbor. They've given a lot back to FreeBSD and GCC, and that says a lot. The traditional way of squashing a technology is "embrace and extend", but that requires your extensions to be closed-source. Darwin is totally open, and the contributions to GCC and FreeBSD are anything but closed.

    Your rant seems more born from fear than reason. Why are you scared of OS X? It's a full-featured unix that my mom can use. Why is that threatening?

    --
    This .sig for rent.
  13. Apple's crown jewels by benedict · · Score: 2

    It seems like every other Apple article posted to Slashdot draws comments from people who want Apple to give away their crown jewels, and have some kind of wacky idea as to why that would be a good idea for Apple.

    Open source is really cool and all that jazz, but there are times when a company's best interests are served by keeping some code proprietary. You don't see Veritas giving away their volume manager, and you won't any time soon, either. Same deal with Apple.

    --
    Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
  14. open source software and the software ecosphere by benedict · · Score: 2

    > [W]hat advantage is there to Linux over
    > other OS's if everything that Linux does can
    > be done by them as well, in a completely
    > identical manner?

    Now you're getting it! Open source is the graveyard of revenue-producing intellectual property -- when an idea is sufficiently well-understood and unencumbered by patents, it is implemented in open-source and thus commoditized.

    Apple understands that unix's base functionality is no longer a source of proprietary advantage. That's why they weren't afraid to open their kernel and BSD userland source. But their graphics and user interface software contain real innovation and valuable proprietary ideas.

    Open source software can provide considerable value to the world by providing a baseline. Part of the idea of BSD-licensed software is that no new implementation has any excuse for being worse than the BSD-licensed implementation, because they can use the BSD-licensed implementation with basically no strings attached.

    --
    Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
  15. Not exactly the answer you want by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 2

    With MacOSX, you get unix with a mac interface. With all the other unix desktop environments, you get unix with a windows interface. While much talk is made in the linux community about "yes, we've got skins for apple this and mac that" the widget layouts, keyboard shortcuts, and other thingies about GNOME/KDE are all Windows carbon copies. If you don't like anything that resembles a windows interface, linux may not be right for you. On the other hand, there's nothing preventing you from going into the GNOME/KDE sources and "deredmonifying" stuff.

  16. beer vs speech (here we go again...) by renard · · Score: 2
    Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well.

    The problem, to most open source advocates, is not that your new applications aren't (beer) free - we all like to see developers well compensated for their efforts - but rather that they aren't (speech) free. You will never see the source code, and the community will never have the benefit of the work of those developers... at some point in the not-so-distant future, you will no longer even be able to "purchase" any license for that software you're using; you'll have to lease it instead. Both Microsoft and Adobe have expressed interest in this new-and-improved revenue model - which they will undoubtedly market (consumer inconvenience aside) as merely their best response to "software piracy".

    Of course you are (speech) free to use the software that you prefer. But I hope you consider the political benefits of (speech) free software to be a point in its favor - above and beyond any price differential.

    -Renard

  17. Qt on Mac OS X by SeanAhern · · Score: 2, Informative
    My favorite GUI library, Qt has been ported to Mac OS X. I have tried this out with some simple code and it seems to work fairly well. The few bugs that I found have been fixed in the final release, which should come "any day now".

    So any app that's written to Qt (and there's a lot of them out there for Linux) should require just a recompile and work perfectly fine under Quartz/Aqua.

  18. Hardware by TheInternet · · Score: 2, Informative

    The top-of-the-line stock desktop machine doesn't even cost $4000:

    $3,499.00
    Dual 800MHz PowerPC G4
    256K L2 & 2MB L3 per processor
    256MB SDRAM memory
    80GB Ultra ATA drive
    SuperDrive
    NVIDIA GeForce2 MX w/TwinView
    Gigabit Ethernet
    56K internal modem

    But this is some pretty serious hardware. The TwinView thing is a video card with two ports on it. The SuperDrive is a DVD/DVD-R/CD-RW drive.

    iMacs start at $999. Towers start at $1699. Apple averages ~30% gross margins because it has a software, hardware and a platform to develop and maintain. Much of the software is outright free, and all Mac users also get free email and 20MB web space/nework storage -- all without ads.

    - Scott

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
  19. Re:Why don't they use bugzilla? by sfgoth · · Score: 2

    Because Apple already has an internal bug tracking database called Radar, with a full app UI instead of a web UI.

    The darwin pages that interface to it are rather primative. But slowly, they're becomming better integrated with Radar.

    Opening up Radar to the public is not an option. With millions of bugs related to every aspect of Apple's business, darwin represents only a tiny sliver of the active Radar bugs.

    -pmb