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Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs
AllInOne writes: "Despite Apple's claims to the contrary, Mac OS X runs just fine on older Apple hardware.
Thanks to the Open Source nature of Apple's underlying Darwin system serveral clueful folks have written kernel extensions that allow "Old World" machines such as the 7300, 7600, 8500 etc to run OS X. They even support G3 & G4 processor upgrades cards as well.
The best release (and free as in beer) is by Ryan Rempel. I just installed his Version 2.0b3 of Unsupported UtilityX on my old 8550 with a Newer G3 upgrade card along along with 10.1 and performance is quite respectable."
And elsewhere along the OS price/performance front, Cinematique writes: "I was surfing around and came across this useful little tidbit for mac os x users. Apparently, apple included a way to compress the memory-hungry finder window buffer images, but didn't turn it on at the last minute due to a debuging issue. this turns the compression on, thus saving a sh*tload of memory."
The coolest thing about OS X's window compression (off by default) is that is actually *improves* performance, as well as conserving a lot of memory. Because most CPUs are limited by a RAM thruput bottleneck, compression of window data will actually improve performance by transfering far less data to and from the CPU. The compression/decompression routine does indeed consume CPU cycles, but it almost trivial with modern CPUs.
I love simple, free little performance boosts like that.
about how to enable buffer compression, is there anything comparable built into X these days? I'm *not* even close to well-acquainted with the source, so I have no idea.
This seems like something that would work well to help achieve faster GUI performance and lower memory usage under Linux/BSD. Among my friends who've tried both Windows and Linux (mostly using KDE) on semi-older hardware (350-500 mHz boxes), the usual comment I hear is something like "very nice, but the GUI's a bit slower than in Windows...".
I know the GUI "snappiness" gripe is a minor one (hey, I'm posting this from KDE 2.2.1), but the memory usage issue is a big one to me. What sort of mechanisms already exist (or are planned) in X to accomodate this sort of thing?
BTW, to the author of that little hack, VERY NICE
While there are scads of OS X "tips" sites, most of which are newbie unix introductions, I have found the following to be very useful with a wide variety of tips and other neat hacks:
http://www.ResExcellence.com/osx/index.shtml
Some of the more low-level hacks are probably pretty obvious to NeXT vets and Darwin & GNU-Darwin users.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For me, it would be useful to check web pages on the mac browsers. With Dreamweaver available on Mac OS, I've got quick and dirty page design program. With Linux or OSX I've got a *nix that will handle the LAMP platform rather well, I can host all the vanity pages and toys and development stuff I want.
So how much would I pay for a used Mac that would run OS X respectably? Or what model numbers should I look for if I were to surf Ebay for used gear? How much memory would I need to upgrade to so that OSX would run respectably? Are there many Macs that have expensive memory upgrades?
Bleh!
... and let me tell you why.
Cost. My old PowerPC 604-based Macs are still good performers, but in my mind are not worth the $80 - $130 cost of Mac OS X. Even though OS X has no CD key and no activation, I wouldn't feel right about pirating it. Especially since my business is audited enough for other things the way it is.
Some of my oldest PowerMacs are running mkLinux, LinuxPPC, and YellowDog Linux. But I think I may start using Darwin or GNU-Darwin on my old PowerMac 9600s and G3s. Why? Straight binary compatibility. If it runs in Darwin, it'll run in Mac OS X. (The other way around is somewhat true, but keep in mind that Darwin does not contain the higher-level components of OS X... such as Aqua).
But that's just me.
Even if an older Mac could run OSX fast enough, what about the screen resolution?
I run OSX in both 1600x1024 (my cinema display) and on my widescreen TiBook. It works great.
However, I would think that you would run out of space trying to run it in 640x480 resolution (which are what some older Macs are stuck at).
Another option, besides the Unsupported X untility is a software product by Sonnet Technologies, maker of Macintosh Processor upgrades. It only works in conjunction with their like of Processor Card Upgrades, but it's 100% supported by them, and sometimes *real* commercial support is a nice thing to have. They say that will also have the L2 chache card upgrades working very soon.
However there is a problem that can happen here: No matter what, you can't get around the fact that OS X needs a bucketload of memory, and many machine, like my 6400, max out at laughable amounts like 128mb, which is the bare official minimum for OX X.
.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
The compression certainly takes some CPU time, but it's a lot faster than swapping to the hard drive. Hence the overall performance win.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
I would highly recommend a G4/533 or better, any slot-loading iMac, or the new iBook. Macs hold their value *very* well, so you're almost always better off buying new.
Disks are IDE, keys/mouse are USB, video/storage/etc are Firewire. RAM is common SDRAM. PCI slots are standard 33 MHz, 64-bit.
If you can stand 1024x768, a slot-loading iMac is the way to go. Add some RAM and maybe a faster IDE drive and OS X will be zippy.
Avoid the older tray-load iMacs, they have a much slower bus and graphics and are slow buggies when it comes to OS X.
RAM:
Beige G3 = PC66
Blue&White G3 = PC100
Slot-load iMac = PC100
G4 = PC133
iBook = PC100 SO-DIMM
PowerBook G4 = PC100 SO-DIMM
http://applefritter.com/ui/aux/images/processing.j pg
The DayStar Genesis mac clone series was wild! (For those that aren't familar, see this: http://www.lowendmac.com/daystar/ and this: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ULTIMATE_MAC/Elvis/inde x.html). Back in the day, it was one hellof machine. Up to four PowerPC 604e CPUs on the CPU card. 16 DIMM slots, 6 PCI slots. Not bad for 1997.
Because Mac OS Classic's multithreading was app-dependant, only "pro" apps such as Photoshop supported the additional CPUs. But when they did, whoa, did that thing ever haul.
But it was on the PowerMac version of BeOS that the DayStar really shined. The coolest thing was the CPU meter app in BeOS. You could click on and click off CPUs at will. Turn off two CPUs and watch the load on the other two increase. Click off all four, and poof, the OS halted! (they later fixed that "feature").
Anyway.... yeah, the old DayStar Genesis was awesome.
Are these adaptions useful? Sure, particularly for those with a significent investment in an existing Mac. If one's box is already tricked out, running well and has the oomph to run MacOS X 10.1 properly then this is a great thing. But for folks thinking "heeey, I'll just pick up an old junker Mac and cobble MacOS X onto it" you're probably not making a good investment of time or money.
Wintel hardware has an optimum lifespan of 24-36 months, 48 months is still ok but you're running into diminishing results. Sure folks still use 5 year old Wintel hardware but rarely as a desktop system and even more rarely do they go out and buy it just to put a new OS onto.
On the other hand lots of Mac folks are perfectly happy running 5 year old Mac hardware and are in no hurry to move on. They paid a premium and got a box that has lasted well and is only now going to be a problem if they want to jump to the new MacOS X. Selling for 10 cents on the dollar isn't how the old Apple hardware market works: There are folks out there still willing to pay serious money for extra PCI slots or built-in SCSI or whatever.
So, if you're looking to play with MacOS X borrow a friend's. Or buy a cheap new box. Or throw Darwin onto your Wintel and play with the underpinnings. But going the buy-an-old-Mac-&-fix-'er-up route isn't really worth it unlesss you've already got one laying around.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
> The best release (and free as in beer)
Will someone finally point me to that free beer
open source people are talking about ?
I hear the port to the MOS 6502 8-bit CPU is coming along better than expected. Should be out this spring, probably very early in April.
Uh, as stupid as people are, I think that it's more often clueless best buy vs. consumer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can I round that last number off? :-)
Not that I can try, I bought a new Mac *2 days* before they announced OSX would come with new Macs (and would send it cheap to anybody who bought a Mac after that day) so if I want it I have to buy it full price. Bleh!
I'm using this hack. It seems to work well and appears to do no harm. I can see the difference on my slow PowerBook G3/300/192 just dragging windows around.
If you want to improve your Finder experience further, run the app ShadowKiller. It removes the window shadows which seem to take too much power to make on a slow, old Mac. Definite improvement. However, because OS X windows don't have a frame all the way around, you're gonna get weird white window on white window experiences; you'll get used to it.
Another good site with Mac OS X tips is Mac OS X Hints.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I'm really looking forward to the 65C816 port (Apple IIgs). Then I can use KEGS to run my favorite OSX apps on Linux. It will be nice to be able to use apple programs such as cc and c++ on my other machines.
:)
Yeah, it uses a port of aalib to display alpha-channel drop-shadows on a 40-column text screen. ;-)
Remember, Apple II had HighRes and Extended HighRes graphics modes. One of the Woz's design goals was to make it a machine that could play decent games.
There's one on ebay right now at $400, ending tomorrow.
...when is the NeXT Cube port of OS X coming out? Ok, so a 25MHz 68040 isn't going to set the world on fire, but my cube has the NeXT Dimension graphics card. In its day this was a powerful beast and has an Intel i960 accelerator.
I bet Steve Jobs would secretly love such a release. Hey, I'd even get enough RAM for it (mine can go to 128MB I believe).
Chris Morgan
Anyone know what this useful little tip is, as the bulletin board for macnn seems to have died a horrible death, and is no longer reachable? I guess UltimateBB isnt so ultimate after all....
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
for those interested, and unable to access the macnn site, visit this link. Seems to work nicely. Mucho thanks to Andrew Welch for being the smartey man he is
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Since the board site claims to be "under attack" (never knew "attack" meant "Slashdotted") I found a text-based version of the buffer hack in the newsgroups. Have a read.
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
Here's a great tip by Andrew Welch, of Ambrosia Software :
The window server has a cool feature in OS X 10.1 that isn't enabled by
default (though it will be in an upcoming update, as I understand it): window
buffer compression.
A little background. Under OS X, the contents of each window are saved in a
buffer, so that they can be updated instantly, and also so that the cool
transparency effects in Aqua are possible. This is a good thing, to have a
fully buffered window manager -- however, it uses a lot of memory.
In 32 bit mode ("Millions" in System Preferences), a window that is 800
pixels wide by 600 pixels high uses up 1.9mb of RAM. When you consider that
there are usually over 100 windows open when you're using OS X (not all
windows are visible), you start to realize that this can start to add up in
terms of RAM usage.
The more windows you open, the more RAM they use up, the more that virtual
memory will have to page in and out while you use your applications to do
work. This can cause slow-downs as the disk grinds to do the virtual memory
paging.
So what Apple did was they implemented a compression mechanism into the
window server. When a window's contents haven't changed for a given period of
time, the window server compresses them, so they take up less memory. Since
it uses a compression method that doesn't require the buffer to be fully
decompressed to do compositing (dragging a window around, updating the
screen, etc.), you won't notice a slowdown with this compression turned on.
In fact, because less memory is being used up by the window buffers, more RAM
will be available for your applications, with will mean less virtual memory
paging, and may in fact result in speeding up your machine. Additionally,
since less data needs to be read (it is compressed, after all!), things like
updating windows may be faster as well.
If you are a power user who has lots of windows open, you might consider
giving this hack a shot. I'm using it, and getting compression ratios of
about 8.5:1 (in other words, my window buffers are using 8x less RAM than
they normally would).
Now then, onto the hack! First, open up the Terminal application (found in
/Applications/Utilities/) and type:
sudo pico
(you'll need to enter your admin password in order to proceed)
Move the cursor down below the first tag, and paste the following text
in:
BackingCompression
compressionScanTime
5.000000000000000e+00
minCompressableSize
8193
minCompressionRatio
1.100000023841858e+00
Then hit Control-X to exit pico (hitting the Y key to save the changes before
exiting when it asks you), then log out and back in again, and ta da!
Compressed window buffers. Enjoy...
If you want to verify that your window compression is working, install the OS
X 10.1 developer tools, and run the QuartzDebug app
(/Developer/Applications/), then click on the "Show window list" button.
Windows that have compressed buffers will have a C next to the size of the
window's buffer in the kByte column of the window list.
Some people are a bit concerned that enabling this compression might slow
things down; that's actually not true. It will actually be faster, for the
two reasons I mentioned. First, less swapping (which will happen somewhat,
regardless of how much RAM you have).
Secondly, consider that most modern CPUs are memory bandwidth-bound. When you
need to update a window with a 200K buffer, you have to read in 200K of data,
then write out 200K of data.
The vast majority of the time spent doing this copying involves the CPU just
sitting and spinning waiting for data. If you use the compressed buffer, and
a reasonable 10:1 compression ratio, you only need to read in 20K of data,
running it by a simple algorithm, and write out 200K of data.
Since your are 10x less memory bound, and since you're using CPU cycles that
would have been wasted anyway, you are faster. This is the same principle
behind RLE blitters, etc.
--
Regards
Roo
I saw macosxhints.com, but macosxapps.com was missing from the roster.
:)
/code, naturally).
Let's see:
Macosxapps.com
macsurfer.com (best place for links to other mac news sights)
www.osx-zone.com is good for filtered "quickies".
www.securemac.com for obvious reasons.
www.greasydaemon.com for *any* *BSD based os.
arstechnica.com (Mac, PC, Linux forums rock, IMO).
And for the PC side.
www.98lite.net (98se running the 95b shell...fast as all get out for windows. Need USB support of 98? Slow computer...get this.)
www.winguides.com for info on all the Win OS's
arstechnica.com, redundant, I know, but the sight and forums rock...mac or pc, don't matter. If you don't waste a full day at that site on a first visit...you ain't a tech
www.tech-report.com decent site, some like, some don't. cool, check it out just in case.
Agnostic type sights (always refreshing).
slashdot.org (chuckle, you knew it was coming)
www.osopinion.com
www.osnews.com (just found it recently, no opinion, yet)
Oh, and for all you Mac ppl out there, don't forget macslash.com (links are good and news too...based on
For everybody: www.macdesktops.com and desktopia.com (good site, but annoying popups recently).
Have fun, dudes and dudettes.
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I've heard that Nvidia cards do something very similar. I read awhile back on a games developer mailing list that NVidia's scheme has game video data compressed and sent in compressed form to the card (which does the decompression nice and fast in hardware). Supposedly this saves AGP bus bandwidth. I'm not sure if this is true, but if it is, it would explain why Nvidia refuses to open source their drivers for linux--they're trying to protect their compression algorithms needed to communicate with the card.
Did you even look at your post? You're missing vital tags!2 ;
;
;
<BR>
<BR>The correct item to past is:
<BR>
<BR><key>BackingCompression</key
<BR>
<dict>
<BR>
<key>compressionScanTime</key>
<BR>
<real>5.000000000000000e+00</real>
<BR>
<key>minCompressableSize</key>
<BR>
<integer>8193</integer>
<BR>
<key>minCompressionRatio</key>
<BR>
<real>1.100000023841858e+00</real>
<BR>
</dict>
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
If Apple weren't a software company, they could just jettison all the expensive MacOS development work and produce translucent, elegant, highly certified and tested x86 machines, and save a bundle.
If Apple were a hardware company, they wouldn't have lost so badly when the clone makers gave Apple's customers what the customers wanted---inexpensive, powerful machines that ran MacOS, without logos, frogdesign, or ad campaigns. Instead, Apple was forced to reconsider what made them competitive, and yanked all the software licenses.
Back in the days of PReP (a joint IBM/Motorola/Apple standard for PowerPC motherboards), Apple stonewalled on support, claiming there were problems getting MacOS to run on PReP hardware---they couldn't get it to work without having Mac ROMs, and there was some problem with *that*, and etc etc etc. A small Swiss software company (I believe called Qix) demonstrated MacOS running on PReP hardware, and IIRC Apple threatened them into little pieces. Later, Apple sorta endorsed CHRP, a successor to PReP, this time with a spot for those all-important Mac ROMs to live. But Apple never shipped MacOS for CHRP; this was the era when Apple was retaking control over hardware that could run MacOS. Of course, all that talk about engineering requirements for Mac ROMs in hardware turned out to be bullshit; the iMac next to me has OpenBoot ROMs, and loads the Mac ROMs from the hard drive.
Apple's work on PReP and then CHRP, and their commitments to supporting MacOS on those platforms led to great hopes for a commodity market in PowerPC motherboards, especially among Linux weenies like me who wanted widely available, appropriately priced non-x86 desktop machines available. Apple's broken promises are a part of why more of you aren't running Linux on non-x86 machines. But hey, at least Apple got to keep their software locked up.
Locked up? Well, maybe that's the wrong concept. Let's think of Apple-branded hardware as a Really Big Dongle, a copy-protection mechanism for MacOS. (The CPU incompatibility also keeps them from looking like they're competing with Microsoft, which makes Microsoft happy.)
Here's a fun experiment. Sit down with the parts list for a modern Mac and compare it to a well-built, well-designed Windows box from a first tier vendor, like Sony. The two machines may even have a lot of identical parts, now that Macs have PC133 memory, PCI, AGP, IDE hard drives, etc. Once you get done, add ~15-20% to the price of the PC to compensate for the generally better quality and design of Macs (if you believe that.)
If you do this across Apple's product line, you'll notice price differences anywhere between $75-100 for iMac-like machines to several hundred dollars on the high end boxes. Part of that margin is what pays for R&D, and in particular, OS development. So in some sense, Apple prices their OS by the capabilities of the hardware it runs on. Microsoft can only dream of this kind of profit maximization through differentiated pricing. Oh, and the license isn't transferable; you end up buying a new MacOS license fee when you buy a new Mac. That's how Windows OEM licenses are supposed to work; there's still a fair amount of piracy of Windows onto beige boxes, but Apple avoids that too.
Anyway, a potentially important reason why Apple hardware retains value is that a significant portion of original hardware cost is actually paying for the MacOS Dongle. Even as the cost of the hardware depreciates, the price of the ability to run MacOS does not depreciate as sharply.
Yes, but you'll need the 80 column card with the extra 16K of RAM if you want a satisfying user experience.
-- Steve
Rhapsody is not OS X
9 95/q3/950508.pr.rel.copland.html h tml
Close, but not quite. Perhaps it's time for an Apple OS and Code Name refresher.
First off, and totally unrelated, is Apple's first unix OS from the mid 1980s, A/UX. This OS made its way thru several revisions, eventually ending up around 3.1. A/UX was available for certain 680x0 CPU based machines only and was never ported to PowerPC as at that time Apple had been hoping to move completely to Copland.
http://applefritter.com/ui/aux/
(The move from the 68K to PPC is also an interesting story, especially the small side storys of Apple's lab experience with later model 68Ks (68060, etc), the 88K, Alpha, 5x86, and MIPS CPUs.)
Apple's first attempt to upgrade and overhaul the Macintosh System software (Mac OS) was with Blue and Pink. Blue eventualy became System 7.0 and was a significant upgrade over previous versions of the OS, but still lacked many modern architectural features that were even present on the Lisa's OS in 1983 (in the Macintosh's defense, the Lisa had almost 10x as much RAM and cost 5x as much when it originally shipped). Blue was to be followed by Pink, a modern OS to be designed by Apple and a startup known as Taligent. Pink died a horrible political death and never saw the light of day.
Apple's second attempt was Copland, which was to be later followed by Gershwin, a heavily OpenDoc container based platform. Copland came close to being finished, Apple had released an early developer release (DR0) to select developers and had already started a Mac OS 9 marketing campaign. Copland was canned for a number of reasons, application compatibility (or the lack thereof) was a major factor.
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1
http://www.bozosoft.com/copland.html
http://www.macworld.com/1995/04/news/550.html
http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/buzz/windingroad.
Following the demise of Copland, Apple continued development of Mac OS 7.X (at the time at 7.5.X and 7.6.X). A version with some of the Copland features and appearance was developed as 7.7 but released and marketed as 8.0. Today this series is known as "Classic" Mac OS and is currently at 9.2.1. Since 8.0, Classic has undergone several major microkernel changes, driver architecure tweaks, and VM overhauls.
At the same time, Apple began a new OS search. Their options were to revive Copland, license Windows NT, or buy someone such as Be or NeXT. They decided to buy NeXT (which came with Apple and NeXT cofounder Steve Jobs).
Apple's most recent OS attempt, the the one that made it out the door, was Rhapsody. This project began at NeXT porting and updating their "OpenStep For Mach 4.2" (formerly NEXTSTEP 1.x - 3.3) OS to Apple PowerMacintosh hardware. The first devloper release of this was Rhapsody DR1 and came in three flavors... Rhapsody for Mac, Rhapsody for x86, and Rhapsody for NT (essentially a runtime framework to run Rhapsody apps atop Windows). Apps could be crosscompiled into a single fat binary to run on both platforms.
Rhapsody went thru several developer releases and was first publically shipped as Mac OS X Server 1.0, which had a GUI that resembled both Mac OS 8 and OpenStep. OS X server eventually reached version 1.2. 1.2 was codenamed Rhapsody 5.5. This can also be seen by doing a uname -a.
Later Rhapsody developer releases were known as Mac OS X Developer Previews, eventually gaining the Aqua look and perhaps most importantly, Carbon support. Previously, Rhapsody supported only two types of binaries -- Classic (non-ported Classic Mac OS apps running within a virtual machine, originally called Blue Box, later simply called Classic) and Yellow Box (applications specifically written for Rhapsody, based on the NS framework from the NEXTSTEP/OpenStep era. Yellow box is now known as Cocoa). Carbon was created to allow something no previous Apple Macintosh OS attempt had - an easy upgrade/porting path. Apple cleaned up the Mac APIs and supported them on both Classic Mac OS versions (starting with Mac OS 8.6) and on Mac OS X. The average developer now only had to modify 1% - 5% of his code to make it run on both Mac OS X and Classic Mac OS.
When Apple decided to release the source to the OS's internals, they replaced the Rhapsody name with Darwin. Today the current version of Mac OS X is 10.1, aka Darwin 1.3.1.
How can you find some extra feature buffer compression like this? Running 'strings' wouldn't turn up this little tidbit, and the line in the preferences file for this is empty, how can you discover this?
These Helped the subsystems more than the gui, but I highly recommend it...YMMV, of course.
/System/Library/StartupItems are several things you can/shoud get rid of to reduce memory/CPU load on older macs:
Ok, enable root via the Netinfo manager.
enable other logins in sys prefs (assuming 10.1 installed)...
Now logout and login as root and in the
1) Sendmail (why is this loaded and no way to turn it off via scripts?...at least that I have found).
2) NFS..this loads FOUR times, but if you do not mount network file systems..again...why?
As root you can create a startup disabled folder and just drag these folders in there an reboot. Or in the terminal do a ps -aux | grep sendmail (or nfs) and get the PID's and kill -9 (the PID).
It kind of irks me (this is no OS specific, mind you) that these programs load when I don't need/want them. Granted, I may in the near future, but every other options in os X is loadable/unloadable via a control except sendmail and NFS.
How many new OS X users are going to be spam relays w/o knowing it? Could this be a vulnerability (actual/potential).
(humph...as an aside, you mean to tell me sharing all those links in a previous post did not inform anyone? Pique a little interest?
Oh, well, I tried...just like here)
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I agree that IBM in the server space is the classic example of a systems company that works. But IBM's services are far more broad than what Apple provides; Apple isn't in the business of producing end-to-end products and services. And even IBM lately is waving the unbundling banner with their Linux push. Vertical integration can provide great benefit to customers, but often it's used to extract high profit margins from customers once committed---and you can ask IBM's customers about that.
I don't think my analysis is patently false (obviously). The cloners did use board designs incorporating R&D from Apple, and that was negotiated. Apple could have named an appropriate per unit price to compensate. But then there's PReP. With PReP and CHRP, IBM and Motorola provided significant amounts of engineering and the reference designs, if I recall correctly. Motorola sure wanted to get more PPCs out the door, so they were highly motivated to produce designs for motherboard manufacturers.
Apple's goal with the cloners was also to look like they were open. There was significant corporate misgivings about sole-source hardware, and with Microsoft pretty much destroying every other vertically integrated personal computer hardware manufacturer, it left Apple vulnerable to these kinds of worries.
In a perfect world, the cloners would have been encouraged to innovate on the hardware side as well, of course. But I agree with your position that the cloners got their hardware designs far too cheaply, and had no reason to push.
Power Computing put themselves out of business by their actions, but that happened because of poor licensing contracts, and a complete misunderstanding of their relationship to Apple. But Apple lost a real opportunity to be the benchmark manufacturer and software licensor for an industry, rather than a lone wolf.
One big misconception in your post --
PReP was an IBM/Motorola standard established so that they could eat Intel's business desktop market by selling Windows NT and OS/2-based RISC workstations. For a number of reasons, this effort pretty much when nowhere and was dropped by 1996.
The key words being "business" and "Windows". IBM/Moto's marketing efforts were so lame and such a spectacular failure, that it's no wonder that everyone has forgotten this billion dollar initiative, and laid the blame at Apple's feet.
Apple never really gave a clear indication that they were ever going to change thier business model from being a "systems vendor" to a software-only company. They really just wanted to get in early with what was supposed to be (according to IBM/Moto) the commodity CPU of the future and got dragged into the rest of it. (At this point, with Moto in embedded and IBM in big servers and a stangent parts supply, Apple probably sees that using PPC was a gigantic mistake to begin with.)
Furthermore, Apple had neither the marketshare nor the business users to drive the PReP/CHRP pony, so hopefully it's _obvious_ that it wasn't their idea.
There's also was serious problems with the lack of hardware indepedance in MacOS -- the clones had to use Apple-designed boards, and Apple wasn't planning to fix this until Copeland shipped (which it didn't).
Open PPC Hardware failing is Motorola and IBM's fault, not Apple's.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Whoops, typo.
Copland came close to being finished, Apple had released an early developer release (DR0) to select developers and had already started a Mac OS 9 marketing campaign.
That should be "Mac OS 8".
I think there's a few suitable old boxes lying around at work, and I'd love to fire up OS X and give it a shot.
To the people who are already doing this - any idea what I'd be needing in terms of RAM and hard drive capacity, to run OS X in an almost-sane fashion? (read: I can bring the OS up and load a text editor without waiting 5 minutes for the text editor to load)
I'd go read the side of the OS X box, but given the CPU/system requirements are only half-true, the rest of it probably is as well..
netbsd.
:)
it's as close as you're going to get.
i installed it on my lcII - it's nice to see the latest software version of something running on a 10 year-old low-end machine - and it's been good training on hacking on my OS X machine's BSD guts. i'd only been exposed to linux (well, and solaris and hp/ux at school) before.
hell, it even runs X (as in X windows) at 1 bit color on the tiny 12'' apple monitor perched on top.. it's wicked slow, but it's fun to see netscape and a couple of xterms compiling things (don't bother, it takes overnight for simple programs), the little LC Ethernet card (from welovemacs.com) going crazy, hard drive churning away... ahh
*that's* how computers are supposed to be built
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
> Apple isn't in the business of producing
... like you decide that you want to get Roxio Toast and make really funky CD formats ... so you get Toast and if it doesn't work, you know it is Roxio's fault because you can burn CD's in the Finder ... you know your drive works, your computer works. It makes things a lot easier.
> end-to-end products and services.
Yes, they sell lots of end-to-end stuff. They sell camcorders as an option with an iMac, and that gives you a complete system for DV editing for under $1500, everything included, even FireWire cable and free streaming video service. CNN just bought millions of dollars worth of Apple's mobile journalism bundles, which is everything you need to make broadcast quality video on the go (PowerBook, Final Cut Pro, FireWire cable, DV camcorder). They have bundles for schools that include wireless base stations, desktops, servers, notebooks, notebook carts, and even a software called PowerSchool that does all the record-keeping and sends report cards to parents by email and whatnot. If you go to apple.com or one of their stores and buy a camcorder and a mid or high-end PowerMac, you have everything you need to shoot a movie, edit it, make a DVD interface, encode it into MPEG-2, and burn it to a DVD video disc. They even sell Apple-branded DVD-R blanks, and Mac OS X's Finder can burn data CD's and DVD's so you can archive your work. If iDVD isn't enough for you, Apple has a pro counterpart to it called DVD Studio Pro as well.
Really, you couldn't be more wrong. They are one-stop shopping for many industries. It saves you so much time and trouble, it's not funny. You get a working system out of the box, so you can easily see as you go where a third-party upgrade of some sort might help your work
The Nintendo Game Cube also uses PowerPC processors, but you wouldn't expect to run Mac OS X on it. Same with BeBoxes, IBM's workstations, Kodak cameras, etc. You need all kinds of stuff beyond the same CPU.
>>Today the current version of Mac OS X is
>>10.1, aka Darwin 1.3.1.
>
>10.0 was Darwin 1.3.1
>10.1 is Darwin 1.4.1
Oops, another typo. That is correct. 10.1 is Darwin 1.4.1.
Actually, Rhapsody and Openstep are different. Openstep was a Mach 2.5+ kernel with BSD 4.3 UNIX layer. Rhapsody was Mach 2.5++ kernel with a BSD 4.4 UNIX layer. There were so many differences between the two at the OS level that they should be considered two different OS's.
That is 100% correct. I appologize for any confusion I may have made in my inital post. Rhapsody grew from Openstep and while similar, is quite a bit different.
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