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Cringely: OS X on Intel
sti writes: "Cringely's column this week argues that Apple should port OS X to the Intel platform. He makes an interesting case for it. I would definitely favour this. I've always had this warm spot in my heart for Apple but rarely had the money to pay for their overpriced hardware."
I don't find it to be any more overpriced than any name brand Intel kit such as Compaq or Dell, HP, IBM.
FUD FUD FUD
Isn't that strange how we devote so much of our lives to tinkering with these beige beasts? If the time is worth say $4 per hour, then the difference between a Mac's hardware and an x86 is probably a rounding error of the consumer/geek TCO. Right?
For Apple to sell a crappy product on Intel would be like Disney selling porno movies in Thailand.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
OS X on Intel just wouldn't have the same experience. When you buy an Apple machine you know that the OS is well tuned to run on that hardware. You don't have to worry about an odd mix of hardware or bios problems that are responsible for a number of woes on x86.
I think the only way for OS X to be viable on x86 is with different pricing. Say something like $50 for no support, but $150 with support. That way way nerds like us can play around with a leet OS cheaply, while those who need support would make up for lost hardware profits.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I've heard this same line of thinking before, but Apple has done nothing. A port would be pretty interesting. I had an iMac for a while and ran OS X. The interface was great, and I could still find the command line to play with as well.
Porting OS X would be a great move for Apple, as it would provide another revenue stream for them. Granted, they could use Micro$oft's pricing scheme and charge an arm and a leg, but at least there would be yet another challenge to the Windows empire.
"What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?" - Weird Al Yankovic
First of all, I'm so tired of the "Overpriced Hardware" statement, but that's a different post. As for porting OS X to intel. let me explain this one more time:
The hardware is half the magic!!
The reason OS X and all the Mac OS's before it work so well, is that there is a finite, documented set of hardware that it has to work with. Unlike Linux and Windows OS developers, Mac OS developers don't have to worry about every pre 1990 ISA soundblaster compatable card, periphial, and motherboard.
Yes, OS X is great, so go support the company who put it together, by buying one of thier computers. You won't be disapointed.
Any port like that would be a major one.
They are going to have to support a vast number of devices and hardware that just don't happen on the mac.
Plus the fun of trying to provide a dual boot situation - given the average user as well as the tendancy for MS installers to trounce over anything in their way. Just doing a non destructive repartitioning would be interesting.
And as for reading the filesystem that are already there (people will want their data, right?) - well at the least it would compromise security (The new OS would probably not respect account privledges as you would be root) and at the worst would stand a real chance of corrupting the existing system.
Overall, as a clean install, it might be a goer (I'd be interested), but how many people are in that market?
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Already been done. OSX is on the mach microkernel and NeXt ported it to the Intel platform long ago after it abandoned the famed black boxes; thus becoming NeXstep "white".
http://saveie6.com/
Cringley himself answers his own stupid question... Who would buy such a beast? Mac users buy Mac hardware, so why bother? That's exactly right Cringley, so the product would be a waste of time. Either the Mac users would save some pennies on Intel hardware and Apple loses, or they wouldn't
and it would be a waste of time. Most users are simply not going to bother loading another OS with Windows, that's why BeOS failed. Linux is making some headway because (a) it's free as in beer and (b) it's free as in liberty. We don't need another stinkin proprietry OS, one is enough and users know it.
With a BSD base to work on, the porting process should really be a piece of piss.
But would apple really want to do this?
The strength of apple has allways been tight integration of hardware/OS. But with such diversity in the x86 world, it throws open a whole load of problems that apple have never had to deal with - support for various chips/chipsets, interdependency problems, conflicts, support for non-standard hardware, support for the latest, greatest graphics cards etc.
Quite a number of the things which apple get right but MS dont is purely because apple have allways gone their own on the hardware side. If they ported to x86, they would be in direct competition with MS, with all the drawbacks of the architecture.
I really don't like seeing this kind Microsoft bashing at the end of the article. Why? It reflects badly on the other arguments when you resort to name calling in your conclusion.
They wont port it to intel, because they sell hardware, not software. They make software to sell hardware. thats the whole *goal* of the company.
If they'd port OSX to intel, they would literally make software to sell OTHERS hardware, and they wouldn't sell hardware anymore then because of the price gap. x86 hardware is too competitive, there are lots of box-makers who don't pay R&D to... make software!
Simple, isn't it?
So all the "columns" about that OSX-on-intel is just people wanting OSX, but not wanting to buy the hardware to run it.
Damn. Besides the technichal hurdles that would have to be climber over, I don't think apple would do this, unless they were getting out of the hardware business. It would hurt them bad. Why pay for the expensive new iMac, when the dirt cheap duron you built could run it as well? Whens the last time apple allowed a clone system to be made? Regretfully it is never going to happen and is probably nothing more than I pipe dream.
What, no Linux kernel, well let's dig out another dood who wants OS X ported to Intel and will never get what a SYSTEM is about. OS X is OS matching hardware and usability.
As soon as you stop building crap with IRQs and BIOS instead of OpenFirmware etc. they might think about it.
Until then (and likely thereafter) You will get what You pay for.
By the way, when will Porsche build front wheel driven cars, so I can pick out the engine and put it into a SMART?
If You dont want it, dont buy it, if you want it cheaper, just go ahead and make one on your own or start off with a free project and make it usable. But these silly articles about OS X in Intel dont help anybody unless Apple says something (new) about this subject.
This site talks about a project at Apple some ten years ago to port Mac OS to Intel hardware.
The article also talks about the work done by ARDI, the firm mentioned in the InfoWorld story.
Apple assembled a small team and got Mac OS runnning pretty quickly, but it seemed the firm didn't have the willpower to push it to market.
It probably would be different this time around with the forceful Steve Jobs at the helm.
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So, Macintosh finally creates a new GUI OS that appeals to not only the general sheep-herd user base but also to the Linux geeks, thus making many people reconsider their usage of PCs and possibly port over to the ever-struggling Mac Hardware, and now they're gonna make it so that it's not exclusive to Mac hardware?
Wouldn't be a smart move unless Apple decided it wanted to move out of the Home Desktop business and simply make their machines for professional use... which they're bordering close to, but this would render all the iFruit campaigns obsolete, and this kind of intrudes of Apple's whole originating philosophy of doing something different than what all the other business-class computer companies (IBM, HP, Xerox, etc.) were doing...
Karma: Non-Heinous
Apple has always been a hardware company. They are more like Sony than Microsoft -- the sleek industrial design is what distinguishes their computers. Jobs tried licensing their OS previously, and much as Cringely says that releasing OS X for Intel wouldn't be like the Mac Clones debacle, it is. Apple revenues would plummet -- they make their money on the hardware side, not the software side.
If anything, I'd rather see Apple release OS X as a GUI that rides on top of Linux, and help the Linux world fight the good fight. New OSes just divide so that others can conquer, and users know this -- that's why new ones like BeOS don't sell.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
Microsoft would fight this hard. Unless the anti-trust case suddenly developes teeth (yeah, right) it's much safer staying in its niche.
Remember, MS controls the hardware manufacturers and the applications. They could easily drop support for MS-Office on MacOS and punish hardware manufacturers to keep MacOS out.
As it is, Apple is doing Ok. As long as they can keep coming up with neat stuff like the new iMac, they can hold on to their core users and maybe even expand into neat consumerish devices.
If they want to go back to being mainstream, however, then they need something even more radical than MacOS on Intel. At the very least they need to cut their dependance on MS. Perhaps if they joined the OpenOffice initiative that would be a step in the right direction.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
No, the biggest problem will be getting all of the application manufacturers to release two versions of the software. And before everyone talks about the 68K->PowerPC as a refutal, don't forget that that was only transitional. Try and find 68K binaries now. You get lucky somtimes, but not normally.
Now, the problem is simple. If you release on two platforms, you have to support two platforms. That is, two compilers, and their associated bugs. That is, two different endian systems. That is twice the headache in any project managers book.
Cringely points out possible benefits to Apple if they enter the OS market on Intel (and has several good points). But what about the certain negatives? Apple now is a mild threat to MS's power. But if they 'infringed' on turf that was MS's, they would certainly be targeted by the giant. Is it really in Apple's best interests to rouse that big of bully? I don't think so.
Cringely mentions Netscape in his article (how by competition, MS made IE better). Look what happened in that case. Would Apple want to risk the same fate? To sacrifice themselves so that Windoz might be a little nicer to use.
Come on.
The thrust of Cringely's argument, which he devotes most of his article to, is this: Apple should port OS X to Intel because "it is exactly the competitor Microsoft needs." But what really matters to Apple is: Will porting OS X to Intel make Apple more or less profitable?
Cringely resolves this complex matter in the space of a paragraph length assertion "The upside for Apple is enormous. Suddenly, their software budget is leveraged across a much larger number of units, making the company more profitable and able to spend even more on making the software better."
Really, Cringely? I think we need more than a handwaving assertion to back this up. e.g. What effect will porting OS X to Intel have on Apple Hardware sales? What will MS's response will be - will it withdraw its Office and IE products for OS X? etc.
It's an option-- go to your preferences page and check the box (under "I, Cringely", maybe 20% of the way into the links). Then you won't have to wait for some karma-whore to get his weekly column submitted to be reminded to check his PBS column.
For what it's worth (to be just a little bit on topic), I've been using Win2K and Linux at home and OS X on a G3 Mac at work. The 10.1 update to OS X along with the Omniweb browser has made that my favorite platform, bar none, to surf the web. For games, it sucks.
It has been fairly stable--I get a hard crash (locked up) about once a month now. The machine is also running Apache, ftpd, and telnetd, and for all intents and purposes I treat it just like my Linux box except that the browser is nicer...
Honestly, I would rather not have OS X on Intel hardware--it is dog slow even on this 400 MHz G3 after all the updates/patches have been applied. What I would like is just a browser as nice as Omniweb.
But would it be the best approach for Apple? Probably not. It's not fun going head to head against a juggernaut. Those who tried in the past got one helluva headache as a result.
What kind of argument is this to try to convince Apple? "Give Microsoft a decent competition to bring them back into focus and back in touch with the market."
Apple are just fine in their niche of selling overpriced hardware using better software. Why would they leave this cosy little corner?
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Could this happen? You betcha. The PPC line is stretched to the limit with nothing new in sight. Motorola wants no part of desktop processors. AMD and Intel are racing to the moon in speed and performance, while holding down price. Already the Apple PPC system is in the dust vis-a-vis price/performance. By this time next year it will be all over. The price/performance gap will be too wide to ignore any more. PPC can not compete with the big bucks in the long run. That is when Apple will make the leap.
bzzzt. X runs just fine under OSX. Check out the XonX project .
. It is under darwin but that is a seperate distro and not is the bundled OSX that comes default with all macs
What? Darwin is the same, with or without OSX "on top".
The only Unix things I can run in OSX is stuff like sed, awk, etc.
Dude, what have you been smoking? You've never even *seen* OSX, have you?
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Your very wrong. you can run an x server and x windows on it at the same time as osx if you like.
Why the fuck does this retarded shit keep coming up from supposedly intelligent industry writers? Wow Apple could abandon all of their supporters and turn into a software company? I suppose I should pat Cringely on the back for that suggestion? The upside for Apple is a downhill slope. Mac users as it is are faced with smaller numbers of available software titles than Windows users. Some companies refuse to make Mac ports of their software *cough*Sierra*cough*. If Mac had an x86 port little would change because it is still MacOS and said company will refuse to support it. Then you've got the problem of current Mac developers telling Apple to go fuck themselves because they're not going to spend even more money their not making in order to make x86 ports of their Mac software. While ports between ISAs using the same API isn't too terribly difficult it still requires man hours to accomplish, time is money, hence it cuts into your bottom line. Then there is the messy issues of hardware support. Apple shipping MacOS on x86 systems means having to deal with thousands upon thousands of combinations of hardware. Are hardware vendors who already shun support for any OS besides Windows are going to spend much time supporting their hardware on MacOS? Ask IBM and Be what happens when you run on the same ISA as Windows but are the under dog.
This is the nth concurrent Cringely article posted on slashdot in as many weeks, would you people fucking knock it off? Timmah: cut it the fuck out. It is getting ridiculous that the best you can do is post YACA (yet another Cringely article), there has got to be more in the submission bin than just links to pbs.com. Hasn't someone posted a story from ZDNet or Wired you can link to instead?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Where can I download the source code?
-Dirty GNU hippie
The guy makes enough money, you think he could plunk down the cash for a Mac
Love it or loathe it, Mac Hardware has consistently been the most interesting consumer products in computing. To wit:
Last time Apple licensed their OS and made beige boxes like everyone else they almost went out of business.
As far as anyone complaining that Apple hardware is too expensive, go on eBay and buy any slot-loading iMac, max out it's ram, and install OS X. It runs OS X great, and you can get these darn things for, oh about $300 dollars. If they're anything like my Macs, they will last 6 years without a blip.
My father is a blogger.
Please remember that these files should be considered as alpha software, All the packages work, and we expect to go beta with this very soon, but there are still many problems. Join the project, if you want them fixed!
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Apple has already ported Mac OS X to Intel. And I don't just mean the Darwin open source foundation. The entire operating system including Cocoa, Carbon, Quartz and Aqua runs and runs well on Intel CPUs. At one point there was also an Alpha port but that was discontinued well before Mac OS X went beta.
Apple won't release a general Intel port of OS X. It makes no sense for them to do so. Apple makes the vast majority of its revenue through hardware sales, somewhere around 90-95%. If they released Mac OS X for Intel their hardware sales would fall dramatically. Because the unit cost of an operating system is much less than the cost of a hardware box (say $100 compared with $2000) Apple's revenues would fall precipitously.
No company can gp to Wall Street and say: I'm going to chop my annual revenues down from $8 billion to $500 million. Can you imagine what would happen to the Apple stock price if they announced this? It simply can't be done.
So why do Apple keep the Intel port of OS X alive? After all it costs real money to keep all that software running cross-platform.
There are two reasons. First as a hedge against Motorola or IBM screwing Apple on the PowerPC processor. In the last few years the clock rate (and other key performance measures) of the PowerPC line has fallen a long way behind Intel. If IBM/Moto can't get competitive again, then Apple wants the option of putting Intel CPUs into Macs. This would not mean you could buy an off-the-shelf Gateway/Dell/whatever and run OS X on it. You can bet Apple would make sure it only ran on a "real" Mac to preserve their hardware revenues.
The second reason they keep the port up is because it helps them produce better code. Having to write code that runs on more than one CPU family is a good engineering discipline. The different architectures stress different parts of the code and you will often see bugs on one platform that are hidden on the other.
So Apple already have OS X on Intel, but don't expect to see it in the marketplace anytime soon.
Sailing over the event horizon
It's simple. Let's say apple release OSX on intel. Forget their hardware sales, forget support problems. This would be the future:
1) Office is no longer available on any apple lines, neither is Explorer.
2) Office XP++ doesn't write in any format office X can read.
3) Office was never available for OSX on intel.
4) Microsoft tells Dell, HP, etc that if they want to offer OSX then windows wil cost $$$$ more per copy.
which leaves apple going steadily bankrupt, and the masses with no options if they want user-friendly but don't want Bill....
I'd love it, I'd be first in line to buy it, but it ain't gonna happen
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I had this happen to me under Win XP Pro three days ago. About a 30 minute repair install and another 15 minutes making sure all the latest updates and drivers were install everything is running great.
This is a nice idea, but Apple's driving force is this whole "digital hub" thing. Hardware plays a very important role, and OS X is only a side line goodie (at best) to the overall vision.
Where is Cringley getting useful applications for OSx86? One of the things that has kept the mac platform alive is very stable & mature ports of MS Office. MS will *not* port office to a direct windows competitor.
Sure, it's BSD, so OSS apps can be compiled for it, but people don't want abiword or kword, they want MS Word. There's no way apple is going to bundle pre-compiled OSS software, and even if they did, it's not what people are looking for. If anything, without apps, this would be a niche desktop OS.
Unless Cringley expects a perfect win32 emulator to appear, or perhaps he supports a classic mode for windows [this is feasible, grab the netraverse guys and port win4lin to bsd in a rootless mode], this won't work.
...is Apple packaging Darwin and selling it, ala Linux distros. Apple branding would be a huge selling point, and they could set up XDarwin with a default Aqua-lite windowmanager.
I'm guessing an Apple-branded Darwin distro would double the number of desktops uning *nix.
Meanwhile, intel architecture gets Darwin, Apple accelerates porting for Darwin, and Joe and Jane Average get introduces to weird Uncle Linus and his pet penguin.
All the while, Apple keeps the good stuff (Aqua, Cocoa) for their own hardware.
My father is a blogger.
...this short blurb at the Register from 2000 saying something similar.
You cant just sell it as OSX. First you need to create a child company in portugal or somewhere that can not be traced back to your company. That way when everyone starts complaining about the instability of the software, they dont suddenly realize its by Apple.
Further, if everyone realizes the difficulty in supporting TONS of hardware, they may feel empathy for M$.
Technical hurdles and business considerations aside, cast your memories back to 1997 when Jobs shocked the world by teaming up with Gates. Remember that $150 million in non-voting Apple stock purchased by Microsoft, and patent cross-licensing deal? Anyone? Here's the Apple Press Release in case you forgot. Apple was in bad shape, and Microsoft was up for monopolistic practices. Jobs agreed to make IE the default browser for the Mac, and Gates agreed to give Office better treatment on the Mac platform.
According to my vivid imagination, Jobs had a word in Gates' ear, saying words to the effect that Gates could crush Apple like a bug if he cared to, but then he'd have no real competitor to point at in defense of monopoly charges. Why not just let Apple have its little niche, whispers Jobs to Gates, and we'll agree not to get cocky and muscle in on your turf? The IE and Office deals merely consummated the marriage, as it were. Jobs is happy because Apple gets to survive, and Gates is happy because he has a harmless competitor that he can act all panikcy about.
This is pure speculation on my part, of course, but if there's much truth in it, you can expect Apple to be totally uninterested in the OSX for PC idea. I'm thinking that both Jobs and Gates would still prefer a no-compete situation.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I submitted this yesterday:
Of course, it was very sarcastic and the editors may have taken offense to that...
Mr. Cringely has a good point about it. It would be a good idea. However, as a plus on the Intel side, Apple wouldn't have to port over the legacy compatability layer. And not having that in there should be a good thing anymay (making things a little more snappy and responsive perhaps)
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
NeXT Step 3.1 and on ran on Motorola 68k, Intel x86, Sun Ultra Sparc and HP PA RISC. Unreleased NeXT Steps also ran on DEC Alpha and Motorola 88k/98/PPC.
Big endian/little endian; it didn't matter. The development tools compiled all the supported versions. The resulting fat binaries ran on any NeXT Step on any supported platform.
NeXT solved the Intel compatibility problem by limiting supported Intel systems and cards. As a side note, NeXT developed an object code program to write drivers for NeXT Step.
It's just a business decision.
Another Cringely story? I know you're busy and all, but can't we get a Cringely icon if all his stories get posted here?
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
LOL¦yuck!¦;)
Apple is hiding in its niche with the Tee-Ballers. Time to grow up. It's Apple's turn to show if it has any real mettle or not. No guts, no glory.
The argument here is a little absurd.
The author would have Apple "sparing" with the current heavyweight champ in order to get him to fight harder? Like saying "Get in there and get your ass kicked so we can squeeze a little real innovation out of 'em".
No, I don't think so. Apple started turning itself around when it stopped competing with MS and started leading with it's strengths again. The PC war is over. MS beat us all but Apple is still (and always was) a better machine.
Innovation... Bill keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
MAC EWWWW
Will everyone wake the fsck up?
If they were all that wouldnt more ppl be building clones of Macs?
PeeCee ppl now. Go find something else
that is different.
One of the greatest things about Apple is their quality control. Something that would be impossible for Apple to do without being able to control what hardware their OS runs on. Not to mention the overhead of writing drivers for all the x86 devices out there. Apple's core business is hardware, not software. Porting OS X to x86 would seriously hurt their bottom line. Another roadblock would be getting all the developers to re-compile their applications so they can run on OS X x86. Do you think Microsoft would be willing to do this with Office/Internet Explorer? Makes you wonder why they decided to port these applications to OS X....
They sell *systems*. You seem to have the impression that the operating system is free wth the hardware rather than integral with the price of the system.
There is no evidence that an Apple operating system purchased individually would be anything other than "overpriced".
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I expected more from Cringely, but even he uses a car analogies for Macs/PCs.
Yes it is true that Porsche buyers will always WANT to buy Porshes. But Mac users (not zealots mind you) HAVE to buy Macs.
If I could get a Mac in a beige box that was as fast (faster?) than a purrty Apple case and it was $1000 cheaper you can sure as hell bet that I would.
How many people do you know with Apple towers have ugly, but functional, beige monitors attached to them? Nearly every Mac user I know breaks the aesthetic with an ugly monitor.
I'm a professional. I need to get work done. Getting it done econimically is always nice. Sure I like Apple, I like the design. But I LOVE my money.
OS X on Intel would definitely hurt Apple. No non-zealot would ever value the architecture and design of Moto/Apple over the price and performance Intel/Generic PC maker. All things else. (the OS) being equal.
Apple can't release a successful os without two things: Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. If Apple was planning to hit microsoft on the Intel desktop market, I think it is unlikely microsoft would be willing to port these two things to OSX for intel, as much as i'd like to see it happen.
What signature defines me as a person?
so a bit like what's happening with MS Windows at the moment:
Lamers buy it for the full price with support and 'nerds like us' get it as warez without support.
way to go Microsoft!
Is there really such things as a drag and drop compiler/environment were you just take your code and have it instantly complile between different platforms?
Cuz that's what Apple would need. How else would they get software on their Intel port. Adobe would have to be able to take their source, drop it on the "Intel Compiler" and have their code be executable. Otherwise, how else does Adobe, or any commercial app maker, justify the exepense of porting their code to an even smaller user base of Mac users.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be a huge task. Did the Be OS have a drag and drop source code for compiling between PC/Mac hardware?
Enlighten me.
Yes, after much training by Slashdot editors, submitters have learned the right way to get things approved is to insert that last-line-insult themselves and not rely on someone else to do it.
ObApple: They can't port it to Intel, because intel doesn't have a crappy one-button mouse. My AMD athlawn system is 10x faster than the fastest apple and only cost $50 to build. Apple should stop using those 68040 chips and use Athlawns.
If Apple does that, M$ will say, "Bad doggie, Apple. Now we won't put out the next version of Office for Mac..."
Why is it so that Cringely wants to see Mac OS X on Windows ?
Is it just to see yet another player burns all of it's resources trying to fight the Redmon behemoth on a plateform where they already have a monopoly and, once witness them failed !
(just like Borland, Lotus, Netscape et al. not because of a lack of a good product but as a result of unfair business practices)
this would just give Microsoft another reason to claim to the world how great their products are compared to the competition which is the only reasons why customers buy them etc. etc.
If OSX comes out on Intel I wonder if MS would pull Office Mac off the market. In my opinion that would be a huge blow.
I love OSX, however, I must have MS Office. Too many folks send me Office documents. StarOffice won't do. We had major miscommuncations with a client who was using the mark up features in Word and Star Office was ignoring them. It cost us big time. Can't risk something like that happening again.
Apple can't even support their own very limited hardware selection. There is no way in hell they woud support the superb hardware choices on the PC side of things.
Why, Timothy, why? Why deliberately start a flamewar with the Apple HW debate? Did you want the article to fill up with posts about this rather than a healthy discussion of the real point? It will, youknow. People just can't resist.
Nicely written and well put. I would speculate the hidden truth of the matter is simply that Steve Jobs had to make promises to Microsoft after their large investment into Apple several years back. In addition, they rely heavily on the Microsoft Office product for OS/X - because there is no alternative office suite which comes close on the Mac platform.
I would venture to guess that either Steve promised not to compete with Microsoft with OS/X for Intel or he simply is afraid to piss them off - Then they would pull their Office product development. Apple unfortunately needs M$ more than they like to admit.
It's a shame - there are many who would love to see a slick OS like OS/X on Intel! I agree it would tip the scales in the right direction.
Thanks for the nice article though!
My audio application programmer doesn't have to know shit about pre 1990 ISA soundblaster compat i ble card. That's the task either of creative labs, either of my OS provider. Like it's not the task of the internet exploder team to support my modem, and in the opposite direction it's not the task of my telco to tell what email client to use.
Apple is a hardware company. They make their money selling hardware, not software. If you take away those hardware sales, and a MacOS on Intel would certainly do that, you impact their core business. That's the last thing they want.
You will never see MacOS on Intel. There's absolutely no motivation for it. Furthermore, Cringley seems completely ignorant of the fact that supporting the morass of hardware that is the Intel problem is a huge, huge job. One of the biggest reasons that Apple's stuff works so cleanly is that they don't have to support nearly the range of equipment.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Although it would be cool I think Apple has missed the boat.
Years ago 9 (1990-1992) Apple had the chance to move out of the hardware buisness, but they chose not to. Now they are locked into their hardware sales. To release an x86 version would kill their hardware business.
Their only real chance at the big OS market of M$ is to abandon their hardware buisness and focus on building OS sales to all types of hardware.
And to those that say that the mac is stable because of the consistant hardware, it has been my opinion that the mac os crashes just as often if not more that a PC.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
That way dual-booting might actually be a nice thing. On one side you have linux, on the other you have OSX, a beautiful and powerfull OS, not some Microsoft piece of crap. Plus we get nice hardware. Altivec anyone?
Pedro Côrte-Real.
I certainly have, though that's hardly the point. I'm using "drag and drop" to illustrate the simplicity that would be needed for any company to port to an Intel/Apple solution.
the biggest company of the USA (and the world). After all, MS literally makes software to sell OTHERS hardware, and they don't sell hardware anymore then because of the price gap. x86 hardware is too competitive. Software is not (it's the exactly the opposite!)
unfinished: (adj.)
What I wonder about are business users: How much would it take for a global corporation to make the switch to Intel-OSX? What is the amortisation time they would be looking at / hoping for?
Right now, MS is perceived as "stable" - a business can easily invest mill- or billions in an MS IT infrastructure, without worrying too much about availability of products, resources or platform-compatible hardware over the next decade or so. Even if MS is destined to die, it will take a long time for it to peter out completely.
So - what businesses need is a compelling reason to switch, which always comes down to savings, either indirectly through superior performance (which is unlikely - IT guys get MS-PCs to jump through pretty much any hoops they want), or directly via a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) - which is equally unlikely in the mid-term, not least due to retraining costs.
All in all (and IMHO) - businesses won't change in the short-term, because they are not being screwed over by MS *hard enough*, and businesses are a crucial parameter, because a large computer company like Apple (much less MS) cannot survive on private users alone.
yes, we have no bananas
The guy thinks Apple going to the PC would be the best thing "for Microsoft", not for Apple. I agree. Microsoft can only move forward if it has someone to emulate, copy, and later on destroy.
So basically the author wants Apple to have the same fate as OS/2, Novell, Netscape, Borland, etc.
I'm not saying Apple shouldn't consider moving to another processor family. I think they already have considered it. In fact, I think one of the reasons OS X is based on FreeBSD was to give Motorola an ultimatum: deliver faster chips or we'll go with someone else. That's the reason Apple never mentions PowerPC and OS X in the same phrase. They want Motorola to know they have the upper hand, but they don't want to show that card right now.
I think we'll see Mac OS X on other chips (Itanium? Pentium?, Transmeta?), but always on cool Apple hardware.
Offering OS X for x86 hardware would kill-off Apple's own hardware-division. Perhaps Apple could survive on it's own software-division, if Microsoft would not see such a thing as a declaration of war.
Bringing out OS X on x86 would give Microsoft a legal excuse for giving a death-blow to Apple, as Apple would be a competitor for Redmond, rather than a place where you can get some nice ideas to implement in your own products.
Apple likes it's 5 percent market-share on the desktop, and hopes to get some extra percents perhaps. But I'm sure they'll be cautious not to wake up the giant.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Linux/BSD and KDE is coming along nicely.
Why pay for MacOS X when you can get the code for something that performs and looks better for free?
As the thread sez, you can surely port OS/X over to PC chassis.
Unfortunately, you then got to start creating stable device drivers, coping with motherboard incompatibilities, the versions of different card etc etc ad infinitum
Which costs. Linux suceeds because of the nmber of contributors. prepared to do this. It probably would not be the case for OS/X.
We (as users) are better off with the current situation. Apple make hardware and the OS, restrict the hardware they use and are thus able to prove stable, reliable systems. They can also afford to program funky tools, rather than spend on compatibility issues.
Sun had an Intel port of Solaris. Now, they're pulling support for it. New versions of Solaris will run only on Sun hardware.
Cringely should really examine those parallels more closely.
JJ
There's another wannabe monoply out there in the Mac world. It's known as Adobe.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Macs typically cost more than a Windows PC, but only up-front. With Macs, you can employ a pay-once, use forever school of thought. Not the case the other way around.
Anybody who doubts me should consider the costs of:
- Seperate Microsoft CALs for everything under the sun.
- Down-time caused by virii, worms, and other compromise.
- Bandwidth costs associated with said worms. (Anybody still paying a Code Red debt? Anybody go out of business because of it?)
- Down-time due to hardware failure caused by use of cheap/shoddy/no-name components.
- Hour wasted re-installing OS 2-3 times annually (3-5 times annually in an office/heavy use scenario)
- Time wasted installing/finding/troubleshooting device drivers when installing hardware.
I'm not saying there won't ever be a hardware problem or support issue to arise on a Mac, because there will be, but I'm saying there are a number of hidden costs in Windows PCs.
When you factor in those hidden costs, and factor in the lowest bang for your buck prices at Apple in history, Macs become much more attractive for regular business users, not just web-designers, programmers, and graphic artists. Are you telling me that whatever Unix apps your company runs couldn't get ported to OS X or accessed as a web-application?
Data-processing workers or secretarys could even live with sub-$1000 iMac systems. Beef them up with OS X and 512 meg of RAM and you've got more than ample resources to run Office v.X and email, which is about 99% of my mom's job (and since most people know as much about computers as my mom, that's a good measureing stick.)
Who did what now?
Apple supporting Mac OS X on Intel hardware would be bad for business. I am planning to replace all my Intel hardware with Mac hardware. The reason? I want OS X. If they ported it to Intel I would have no reason to switch. I personally feel that Apple's market share will increase as people like me buy more Mac hardarw to get access to the best operating system there is.
1. Supporting MacOS on god-knows-what hardware configs is a nightmare that would cripple it's reputation. When WIN doesn't work, users don't call the box maker, they curse the OS maker. Something about WIN made all of you stop using it - some of that was lack of HW toleration - did you go buy a new box? Nope - you switched OSs.
2. Overpriced hardware is a myth bordering now on The Big Lie - go to Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP and match any level of the new G4 iMac - then count yer change.
3. Bob, it WOULD cannibalize hardware sales - Apple's largest edge is the OS/box integration, the Mac faithful would still buy the mac boxes, but your average new user would - and does - buy the rattiest box they can find - blind to the reality of the $599 specials. And good luck getting it to run reliably on some box that, as is typical, doesn't even know the names of the cards slapped in it.
Sticking to HW/SW is not so bad - Apple knows that typical system turnover is about three years - would they rather rachet up to making box money or start tomorrow with a herculean effort at supporting all the hardware in the world to make license money? Think you can open a storefront and sell licenses? Or would you rather have a store that can sell someone a solution and make box money?
Anyone know what portion of their business MS makes on licensing the OS alone? Remember, MS makes a lot of software - odds are Apple would not - this number needs to be known before convincing anyone that ramping up the software biz would be their saviour.
I have an iBook2 with OSX because since day one, I open it up, it does everything I ask of it as a plain old person, teacher, writer, webmaster, admin, tourist, scientist, etc. I have yet to crash OSX after 11 months, anything I plug into it fits and works. It is an order of magnitude above any previous HW/SW I've seen or owned. I could run windows on it tomorrow.
But I won't, and not because of religion. because of integration.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
i should know better.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Apple doesn't have the resources needed to make their OS compatible with all the thousands of different hardware available on PC's. It's an enormous task.
Actually the new imac is priced 400 US dollars lower than a Dell with equal options. I myself am a new mac user. I switched once I read about and was able to try OS X. I am running 10.1 on a 600mhz G3 iMac w/ 512 meg of ram and really haven't noticed a difference in performance over the 1ghz Athlon I was using with Win2k and Redhat. To be quite honest, this has been the best computing experience I have ever had. I have not had a single problem. Pricey? I would agree that the G4 towers are pricey. But I haven't met anyone who owns one who is complaining about it. As for porting OS X to x86 I doubt that Apple would ever do that.
... spot in my heart for Apple but rarely had the money to pay for their overpriced hardware...
Now if you had spot in your brain and actually took time to compare hardware prices and associated costs you realize that you are just parroting a common misconception about Apple hardware.
i'd have to see the numbers on that.
they can make more selling a handful of apps that mostly only run on the boxes they already sold for way more money?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
First, the car analogy is wrong. Is true, no Porsche fan would buy a car from a no name company (even if it had Porsche components), but they may buy it from a reputable source (what if Ford made a Porsche-components car for 30-40% less?)
Second, who, besides Microsoft, has succeeded doing OS for PCs? Nobody! (here success is defined exclusively in monetary terms). Why should anybody try? The only approach that *may* succeed is the Free Software approach. Watch how much success Sun has had with Slowaris for Intel
No company can gp to Wall Street and say: I'm going to chop my annual revenues down from $8 billion to $500 million. Can you imagine what would happen to the Apple stock price if they announced this? It simply can't be done.
The solution, then, is simple. Just as consumers pay much higher prices for higher quality automobiles, so should be the case for OS X on Intel. Put it out of the reach of "average" technology consumers by charging a premium price tag - as much as twice as much as a full version of a Windows OS.
People will either bite the bullet and buy the expensive OS, or just buy the Apple hardware. Either way Apple wins.
I'm a 2000 man.
I've used almost everything over 25 years and after all of this time, I'm now a Mac user and
developer. I only spend maybe %5 doing system maint things and the rest of the time
I can focus on the task at hand, not troubleshooting problems with my machines.
And now with OS X and it's Unix services, the Mac meets every need I have with style, grace,
and consistency.
Sure for some, tweezing a kernel, wrangling DLL's, or editing config files might be fun but
life's more enjoyable and productive when you get past getting your computer to work right.
Moving OS X to peecee hardware would bring much of that grief back into the user experience,
plus the overhead and hassle with fat binaries for developers and their customers.
Sure, I still have wintel boxes, develop software on them. But they stay in my out-building.
Only Macs are allowed in the house.
Just what we need. Another OS ported over to x86. Let's not improve existing OS's, or build a new one with the knowledge of what works and what doesn't - let's port over something that is designed for an entire different arch! Pure genius. We all know how speedy and reliable ports are in general. Just like Solaris for x86. Because, you know, *BSD/Linux doesn't already exist. Let's port something that is ported -from- a BSD x86 -to- mac crap -back- to x86. Sir yes sir.
If they ported to x86, they would be in direct competition with MS, with all the drawbacks of the architecture.
That's a really good point - maybe they will enter the market once Wintel has finally shaken off x86....
I'm a 2000 man.
Okay, this is old territory. Mac OS X is based on a PowerPC port of OpenStep, which was an Intel port of NeXTstep-- so at first blush one would think the transition simple. However, there are portions of Mac OS X which rely heavily on the PowerPC hardware, primarily the Classic and Carbon environments. Classic and Carbon could either be eliminated or emulated on Intel.
Eliminating Classic and Carbon would mean that the main work would be in upgrading OpenStep to the Mac additions to Cocoa, Aqua, etc., so we could call any theoretic Intel port of Mac OS X "OpenStep X". OpenStep X would be able to compile the source code for all the best new Mac software, but it would not be backward-compatible with Classic or Carbonized apps, which accounts for the vast majority of existing Mac software.
The alternative, emulating Carbon and Classic on Intel, would result, at best, in performance approximately similar to running Windows XP on Virtual PC on a Mac, which is horrendously slow (I do it on my PowerBook all too often).
The main reason Apple won't make OpenStep X, beyond the fact that it knows hardware is its core business and can only be hurt by such a move, is that the old OpenStep already runs much faster on Intel chips than OS X on the latest G4's, so OpenStep X could easily undercut Apple's core business (Porche metaphors notwithstanding). Emulating Classic and Carbon would make OpenStep slower than OS X, but would require a mammoth effort and result in nothing but bad press for Apple.
As much as Intel users might salivate over Mac OS X, there is only one realistic way to use Mac OS X, and that is to buy Mac hardware. iMacs and iBooks can hardly be accused of being overpriced, nor can they be accused of being overly expandable. PowerMacs and PowerBooks provide a pretty good value considering all that's included. Macs use regular USB, FireWire and VGA ports as well as PC Card or PCI slots compatible with a majority of Windows cards.
Now that I've basically poo-pooed the idea, I believe there is one way Apple could throw a bone to the Intel dogs without having to pay their vetrinary bills-- release the old OpenStep (no Carbon, Classic, Aqua or Mac compatibility) source code under the GNU or Darwin license to get geeks salivating over it. No matter what we do with OpenStep, everyone will probably come to the conclusion that it is great but Mac OS X is far better and worth the price tag of Mac hardware. However, that is a risk with the potential to backfire, maybe as an OpenStep-Linux hybrid mounting a more serious challenge to Windows on PCs and cutting into sales of Macs. I doubt Apple will take such a risk, but Steve Jobs is the same guy who moved NeXTstep to OpenStep, so who can say?
Look at the iBook. Small, light, preforms decent. Try to find a brand name x86 for the same money with similar equiptment. Same for the iMac.
Yes, you can say that you can _build your own_ for less with x86. x86 to Apple is already comparing apples to oranges, so to further try to compare a home built to off the shelf brand name is not a fair comparison.
SO, what's the REAL problem with APPLE?
When you can get an iMac for $799, an iBook for $1199, and then have to pay $550 for MS Office X who wants to buy it? When you can get at least the basic MS Office bundled with almost all x86 brand name hardware for almost nothing!
Don't bother arguing the Open Source office suites to me, I know. That doesn't change the fact that public perception is in the believe that you NEED MS Office to make a computer useful.
They still may do it politically: if Apple would convince graphical software vendors to support Intel OS X (would it be a name?) then it would hurd potential deals of Linux support by those vendors. And we know: Apple hates linux even more than M$ b/c Linux is a strong competitor to all Mac OS versions including the last one. The history of Mac OS is hard and painful. My opinion that Apple can not do OS business at all: they are much better with hardware and some of application software (like CyberDog or QuickTime). They probably have some personal issues related to Steve Jobs who thinks about himself as OS genious. But he is not: Next is dead, Mac OS v BAD OS vendor. And linux is already on Macs - alive and kicking. While Apple keeps wasting money on OS development. Instead of commit facts, stop wasting money amd concentrate their software development efforts on support of Linux/PPC. Otherwise, Apple's future is not so good as Mac hardware architecture. And it might be not so bad - without Apple it would be more space for IBM P6K :)
Apple makes their profit selling hardware. GOOD hardware.
Porting OS-X to Intell will just decrease the amount of hardware they will sell. That's a no-brainer.
Let us humor poor, deluded Robert X. and imagine for a moment Apple on x86 hardware.
Can you hear it?
That giant sucking sound you hear is the sound of all the developers at Microsoft being pulled off their Apple assignments and reassigned to the XBox.
The vast majority of Mac users use:
Internet Explorer for browsing (Poof!)
Outlook for e-mail (Poof!)
MS Office for word processing, etc (Poof!)
It is also the sound of Microsoft technology being withheld/withdrawn from any ISV that supports the Mac on x86.
That wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear is the sound OEMs that have offered the Mac desktop make when BillG tells them the price of Windows has been tripled. It is also the sound sysadmins make when they discover the time trying to integrate Mac/x86 into the network has also tripled.
That hysterical laughter you hear is Microsoft top brass laughing at the pathetic stooges at DOJ. You can just hear how ludicrous the DOJ case would sound: "Your Honor, I know we said before that Microsoft was exerting monopoly power by developing competing software, but this time we will argue that by refusing to develope IE/Outlook/Office for the Mac, Microsoft is again exerting monopoly power." And the DOJ will get handled yet again.
That gurgling sound you hear is the sound of Apple's cash reserves going down the drain as former stockholders place their money in safer havens, like Enron or Pets.com.
Linux is the only candidate for an alternative desktop on x86 because every other possibility is supported by a company at least partly dependent on Microsoft. The Mac interface (Quartz/Aqua) will never come anywhere near an x86 machine, because Steve Jobs is a good deal smarter than Robert X. Cringeley!
How about this:
Mac OS X running on Intel, with free software written in Java compiled into MSIL executables.
Now, that's a platform I'd like to use!
apple is not going to port os x to x 86 because apple is more than just software. apple is hardware, software and good design in and out all built together as one. putting os x on a crappy beige box would be like taking the engine out of a mercedes s 600 and putting it in a ford taurus.
well hey if you're happy with a tiny 15" screen, tiny keyboard and mouse that's your choice. Many of us like to think big.
Apple might actually be able to do this. Something I've wanted for a while is for Operating Systems to give up on the the legacy support thing. Win95 was partly a pain in the ass because it was trying to be a next gen OS and still run 10 year old apps and support 10 year old hardware. Apple could release for x86 architecture but with this caveat.
"OSX/x86 is designed for the latest hardware ISA is not and never will be supported. PS2 is not supported. Parrallel is not supported. Serial is not supported. USB 2.0/Firewire/PCI/AGP/32 bit/64bit procs are. This is a next gen OS for a next gen machine."
If few people buy it, so what. Apple makes it money making Apples.
-
As much as I like OSX and would enjoy using it on Intel base comodity hardware, I can see why Apple hasn't ported it and should not do so.
Apple is making a proffit on it's hardware and as such there is no value to the company to alter it's business model in such a drastic way until such time as they start losing money in their hardware business.
I say this because offering a port of their OS to comodity hardware would completely descimate their hardware business to to offer such a port would nessecerily include removing hardware from their business model completely. Companies line NeXT and Be, had in the past both abandoned their hardware businesses in favor of software as a last corporate gasp - a struggle to remain viable, so if Apple were to take this path, it would be viewed in the context of the past, as if the company were struggling, which for the moment they really are not.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
They still may do it politically: if Apple would convince graphical software vendors to support Intel OS X (would it be a name?) then it would hurd potential deals of Linux support by those vendors. And we know: Apple hates Linux even more than Apple hates M$ b/c Linux is a strong competitor (on Apple's platform!) to all Mac OS versions including the last one.
Why? because Apple doesn't want to be just a hardware vendor (what's wrong with that?). Apple wants to make money on OS as well. Stupid.
The history of Mac OS is hard and painful. My opinion that Apple can not do OS business at all: they are much better with hardware and some of application software, like CyberDog or QuickTime. Imagine, what a competitor of M$-IE has been lost when Apple closed the OpenDoc project.
Apple may have probably some issues related to Steve Jobs personallity who thinks about himself as OS genious. But he is not: Next is dead, Mac OS (7,8,9) is dead, Mac OS X is attempt to give a fresh air to that room, but it's too late.
The market already recognized that Apple is BAD OS vendor. And linux is already on Macs - alive and kicking. While Apple keeps wasting money on OS development. Instead of commit facts, stop wasting money amd concentrate their software development efforts on support of Linux/PPC.
Otherwise, Apple's future is not so good as Mac hardware architecture. And it might be not so bad - without Apple it would be more space for IBM P6K :)
Honestly, I would rather not have OS X on Intel hardware--it is dog slow even on this 400 MHz G3 after all the updates/patches have been applied.
The thing is, the PowerPC lags significantly behind the x86 in performance (e.g. SPEC CPU benchmarks). In fact, Intel has pretty much overtaken all the other CPU architectures, so an Intel port would be running on much faster hardware.
The question of whether an Apple computer is "overpriced" is completely speculative. Comparing hardware for hardware can be direct, but the overall 'value' of the system can be compared with things like usability, integration, and "wow factor" (along with just about anything anyone could 'value' in a computer).
However, just for empyrical purposes, I've outlined a Dell system that's similarily spec'ed out as the new iMac:
Dell Dimension 4400 VS iMac:
Both systems come with a 15 inch flat panel (admittedly, the iMac screen is of higher quality)
Both systems come with mid-range processor speeds for their respective platforms.
Both systems Come with a 40GB IDE hard drive and 128MB system memory (specs on hard drives unavailable, Dell system memory is DDR while iMac is PC133)
Both systems come with an Nvidia GeForce 2 (Though, the Dell version has 64MB of RAM while the iMac has 32).
Both systems come with a CDRW drive
Both systems come with 10/100 networking and 56k modems
Both systems come with keyboard/mice/sound/bundled software.
Dell: $920 (not counting $100 rebate)
iMac: $1300
So is Apple over-priced? That's up to you to decide.
You might also want to note that the Dell comes in a standard PC tower case while the iMac comes in an aesthetically pleasing housing (prettier, but less upgradable).
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Bob needs to point to an example of at least one company (other than Microsoft) turning a decent profit licensing an operating system for commodity hardware.
Clue: That's hard to do unless you're in a very fortunate position where you're able to build a monopoly.
Microsoft was lucky or evil enough to get a license providing an OS for the x86 architecture at the beginning of its lifecycle before Microsoft even had acquired DOS. They were able to convince IBM that they should commoditize the architecture and used that to take the control away from IBM. Apple wouldn't be any where near as fortunate. They'd have an entrenched OS to compete against, and whether Bob knows it or not a lot of consumers buy based on price (read: cheapness) first and quality second. x86 machines would weaken Apple hardware sales (which is where Apple makes its money).
I don't know if Bob knows this or not, but his analogy is horrible. There is a company that buys parts from Porsche and makes their own cars around them. This company is called Ruf. Any Porsche-lover with the extra cash to spend would rather have a Ruf than a Porsche. Please note that I am not saying x86 is to PowerPC as Ruf is to Porsche. I'm just saying Bob's analogy sucks.
I hope Bob reads Slashdot because I'd love a response from him (and I didn't see his e-mail address on that article).
I have a website. It's about Macs.
There are a lot of comments saying 'Apple can't, because supporting all pieces of PC hardware is a huge task' .
Right. But after all, Darwin is based upon FreeBSD. And FreeBSD *does* support a lot of PC hardware. Given the marvellous OS Apple was able to do, merging new FreeBSD drivers shouldn't be an impossible task.
{{.sig}}
Give up, it is not going to happen. First of all, when Apple tried liscensing the MacOS to other hardware companies (Powercomputing, Motorola, etc.) in the mid-90's, they ended cutting into Apple's own hardware sales and Apple lost alot of money. They would not try something like that again.
Plus, there are issues of porting apps, OS X running on cheap hardware, etc.
It always amazes me how forgetful geeks are of their geek "history". Even events that happened scarcely a decade ago fade into the background, much less thirty or more years ago.
It's time for a short lesson in Ancient Apple History, kiddies.
It turns out Apple had seriously considered porting the MacOS to Intel hardware in a joint venture with Novell beginning in 1992, as part of the secret, so-called "Star Trek" project (although Intel's Andy Grove knew of and supported it.) It's all covered in detail in Jim Carleton's book "Apple" (yes, sometimes you have to actually read real books, people!), on pg. 166-180, and elsewhere.
The goal was to put the Mac's "finder," which provides the distinctive look and fell of the Macintosh on the screen, onto an Intel-based computer...(Gifford) Calenda designated a former System 7 manager, Chris DeRossi, to head up Apple's side of the project. In a meeting with their colleagues from Novell, someone suggested the endeavor be called "Star Trek". "The idea beaing 'Boldly go where no Macintosh has gone before,' Rolander recalls.
Note that this is all well before the release of Windows 95. One can only wonder what the outcome of a full-out battle of the Mac OS with Windows 95 on Intel boxes would have been, because the project was killed in 1993, shortly after a working prototype was developed. The ostensible reason given by Carleton was that the cost of development was too high : Apple had finite resources, and didn't commit a large enough software budget to handle both the release of MacOS for Power PC hardware and Intel simultaneously.
Carleton goes on to criticize Apple for its short-mindedness in squandering a prime chance to compete for market share. However, the larger debate within Apple has always been whether to pursue the "high-right" strategy of selling small numbers of highly profitable boxes and hardware, or the "low-left" strategy of selling larger numbers of low profit boxes and hardware. The same debate occurred when Apple licensed its hardware in the late 1990s. The discussion ultimately comes down to this basic point.
While I won't go into the merits of both sides of the argument (Carleton does in some detail), I will note that people don't run computers for the operating system : they run it for the applications. For the largest fraction of consumers, the single largest software application is Microsoft's Office. Microsoft now develops and sells Office for MacOS because it is a nice niche market, and doesn't directly compete with it's bread-and-butter Wintel market.
However, would Microsoft develop Office for an Intel-based MacOS directly in competition with Windows? I would bet not. Think about what that means for an Intel-based MacOS.
Best,
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
driver support for alternative OS on intel is a problem today, even with linux having a 10 year head start. Does Cringely think these drivers for sound cards, graphic cards, eathernet cards, modem (winmodem anyone?) would just pop out of thin air?!
No way is apple going to do this.
Why does everyone assume that OS X should run on all Intel hardware - well I guess its because that's what Cringley implied. The only viable option is that Apple would make the Intel hardware (they're a hardware company, right?). Since the Apple Intel hardware is made out of standard components, it may or may not run on other Intel hardware, but that would not be supported by Apple. Tinkerers can of course make it work, but honestly, how much does the build-it-yourself PC cannibalize the hardware sales of Dell, say? So hardware problem and control over the whole widget are solved. Now on to software.
OS X on Intel could run Windows software natively using the same mechanism as VMware uses to run Windows on Linux. They wouldn't have to support Classic on Intel, and may or may not do carbon. Either way, the Intel OS X would have Cocoa, and by extension iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, etc. Any Objective C Cocoa app would run on Intel OS X with a re-compile. Java and Perl Cocoa apps (mmmm, Perl Cocoa apps...) without doing anything. And on Intel OS X, at least, you can always run your fave Windows apps on a VM at near-full-native-speed.
Of course Bill would just absolutely *hate* that, and may or may not do something untoward. The only real solution is for moto to pull the finger out and start making processors that can emulate Intel faster than Intel can make them run natively. If PPC really is a better processor design, then it should be possible, no? Don't forget, kids: After we've dealt with MS as a monopoly, there's Intel to think about.
The keyboard is a standard size... you are thinking of the old iMac keyboards... they have been shipping with the newer Apple Pro keyboard and ProMouse (not the stupid round one) for a while now. Its a very nice keyboard too... I'm typing on one now.
As far as the 15" monitor... well I'm using a 19" on my G4 Tower, so I agree, but the resolution and the fact that LCDs have more viewing space than CRTs makes it closer to a 17". Hopefully Apple comes out with a 17" model.
But still as far as price, the towers start at $1500, which isn't so bad for the quality you get. Nice things are expensive.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
When you can get at least the basic MS Office bundled with almost all x86 brand name hardware for almost nothing!
FYI, the beige G3 series came bundled with Office 98, which was out for some time at that time, allowing MS to sell some copies after bringing it out. Office X is quite new. We might well see Apple hardware bundled with Office X in some months or even weeks.
Just in case it was different in the U.S. - I'm talking about Germany, but I cannot imagine it was different elsewhere.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Gates will never allow this to happen. If Jobs wanted to move OSX to an Intel platform, he would not be "granted" Microsoft Office to run on that platform. Moreover, its very likely that Gates would then pull Office from the OSX on Apple hardware. This would be suicide for Apple. You can beat your drums all you want and the govt. could threaten the MS monopoly and so on and so forth. In the meantime, Apple would be dead...
FMFrank W. Miller
and for a very good reason. Apple is a hardware company. They always have been, and they always will be. Where would all the money come from if people didn't have to buy their hardware anymore? Why do you think it is so expensive anyway? This proposal is a little rediculus.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Ever wonder why there isn't a Windows XP for your Powerbook yet? It's the same reason that there isn't an OSX for your shiny new Athlon XP system. Microsoft knows that it'd take them months, if not years of further development before they'd have a usable version of Windows ready for a Mac, and in the meantime, most people wouldn't want to use it over their already functioning OSX.
There's a middle way between "support all and sundry Intel-type hardware" and "Apple must make it."
;) with terms like "We will pledge to make OS X work on your OptiPlex and Latitude lines, as long as we can be assured the hardware is stable enough for it." (Those are the lines of Dell which are *supposed* to be stable anyhow, for business purchasing / IT consistency, etc.)
For instance, make a deal with the Dell
If they did that, I bet people would climb the walls to buy a new Dell with OS X installed, or at least known-to-run.
Michael? Michael? Meet Steve. Steve? Meet Michael. Michael?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
1. software production costs are hardly limited to the manual and cd. how'd it get there, how does it stay updated? how does it get sold?
2. that hw liquidation scenario has only happened on a handful of isolated occasions to apple.
they charge for their boxes, most of their sw is free - if more money could be made the other way around, wouldn't they have done it by now?
remember, MS is 79 on the fortune 500 - there are three intel box makers ahead of them.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
... you might as well add a Salon icon too. ;)
Oh, and don't forget that kernel update icon everyone's been bitching about. I wouldn't mind be able to ignore those either without missing Linux posts.
----- rL
Hardware may be a "commoddity," but even with Apple's "fan club" niche, it is still one of the world's top computer makers. Apple may only have 9% of the desktop market, but Dell only has 10%. In the hardware industry, this means whatever Apple is doing is working splendidly. Plus, Dell has to pay a good chunk of its profits to Microsoft, whereas Apple collects residual income from OS upgrades and pays nothing to Microsoft beyond dividends.
What is your definition of "marginal finances?" Even in Apple's darkest days last millennium, it still had $9 billion in cash, which was only down to $8 billion-ish by the time the original iMac brought Apple back into profitability. Apple was burning through $250 million a quarter, but could have easily survived that for 28 years before getting into serious financial trouble. After the tech bubble busted, Apple has emerged financially as one of the strongest companies in the technology sector.
Perhaps you are still looking exclusively at market caps, which is the mentality that created the bubble economy and its subsequent bust. Market capitalization is only one of many factors, and probably the most deceptive, especially when evaluating Apple whose stock prices are almost always artificially depressed due to uninformed prejudices surrounding its products.
Please don't think I'm just picking on you-- technical savants tend to be ignorant of the most elementary business principles, which is why they were suckers for the mythical "New Economy." The non-existant "New Economy" was nothing more than an illusion created for the sole purpose of separating fools from their money. Those of us who knew that the emperor had no clothes made a killing off the plummeting stock market while the rest of you lost your shirts.
The irrationally exuberant have no one but themselves to blame!
So, do I point this out solely to nitpick? No, not solely. I do so because he uses this example to argue that, due to loyalty, Apple would not lose hardware sales to Intel boxes running OS X. He points out the loyalty will keep buyers from jumping ship, be the ship Porsche or Apple, but then in the same paragraph, admits that loyalty has its limits. His analogy is flawed, so it does not make a credible argument.
I'm not split hairs here; the question of lost hardware sales has to be the biggest issue standing in the way of Mac OS X on Intel. If Cringely is going to argue for it, he has to convincingly allay those fears, and he has not done so.
There are other flaws in the cars-to-computers analogy, such as the fact that a large reason Porsche owners (or Corvette owners, or, especially, Viper owners) buy the cars they do is because they are expensive; the high price symbolizes success and exclusivity. But, these, and other arguments, have been made before, so I will not delve into them here. Though it is ironic that despite the fact that this argument has so often been criticized, that Cringely decides to bring it up again, if only to present it will fresh new holes.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
But still as far as price, the towers start at $1500, which isn't so bad for the quality you get. Nice things are expensive.
Oh Boy, $1.500 is not so bad... I consider this price as an insult from Apple.
I would rather have a dual Athlon MP with 1GHz Registerd DDRAM than a G4 high end.
As far as the 15" monitor... well I'm using a 19" on my G4 Tower, so I agree, +
Old iMac keyboards... they have been shipping with the newer Apple Pro keyboard and ProMouse (not the stupid round one) for a while now .
Good thing that as a Apple user you didn't lost the vision tottaly.
When Apple bought Next in 1996, Next not only had NextStep (Mach+BSD+OPENSTEP+DPS, the system OS X was based on) running on Intel hardware, but also had OPENSTEP running on Win32. This was an important part Apple's original strategy. OPENSTEP was known for being a development environment that allowed for rapid application development and giving away the OPENSTEP DLLs for Win32 royalty free allowed developers better tools that traditional win32 development, and Apple as a side effect got products developed to their API.
It was the big name Mac/Windows cross platform developers, Adobe, Microsoft, and Macromedia that put a stop to this plan. They already had their own cross platform tools already in place. If they had to port to yellowbox (as OPENSTEP was known in its initial incarnation at Apple.) just to keep selling apps for the mac, they would have just as well drop mac support entirely.
Apple conceded to their major app developers, and developed Carbon, as API similar to the classic MacOS. Since yellowbox couldn't coax windows developers to write cross platform Windows/Mac applications, then its drawbacks (the potential decrease in Macintosh computer sales) outweighed its advantages (that large amount of available software could increase Macintosh computer sales.)
You can't port OS X to Intel simply because this would blow Hollywoods latest good/bad-clichés: According to Wired Good guys use Apple Macs, the baddies use Windows PCs. LOL... But I thought about it and except for Milennium I really can't come up with any counter-example...
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
Remember that $150 million in non-voting Apple stock purchased by Microsoft, and patent cross-licensing deal? Anyone? Here's the Apple Press Release [apple.com] in case you forgot. Apple was in bad shape, and Microsoft was up for monopolistic practices.
Getting a bit off-topic, but I just found it interesting that Microsoft did the same thing with Corel in Oct. 2000. It's no coincidence that Corel sells WordPerfect.
Microsoft is effectively helping competition stay alive, which is probably cheaper than buying a verdict via expensive lawyers. I don't know how a judge can look at that and not realise a conflict of interest.
It may be non-voting stock, but don't you think Microsoft will continually hold that over the company's heads like an older brother? "Remember that loan I gave you a while back? That was really nice of me, wasn't it?". So now all of these companies are expected to play nice with Microsoft even though they are really competition? Common sense sees right through that, and hopefully so will a judge.
DISCLAIMER: I work for Corel, but I do not speak on their behalf. My opinions are my own.
----- rL
Plus only companies buy branded ix86 from Compaq and HP, etc. to get technical assistence, not a home computer user, this will buy a non-branded PC and will get the most modern CPU and RAM.
I have a lot of friends who aren't very technologically adept. They want their PC to work, with 'easy' being the keyword here. Each and every one of them owns the prepackaged Compaq, Dell or (shudder) Packard Bell machines. It took them A LOT of convincing from my side for them to actually buy a beige-box that would actually be compatible. My poor old father got suckered into buying a Presario two years ago on which he can't run anything other than Win98. It's utterly unstable with anyting NT-based, and don't even try linux/*BSD on it. This SUCKS!! But it's the reality out there. Joe Sixpack doesn't buy beige box-PC's, but goes for the prepackaged OEM deals.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Think about it. Apple currently has a reasonably profitable hardware business going. Their gear is attractive, performs well and is priced reasonably compared to machines of comparable quality and power.
I offer that the reason most folks want an OSX port to x86 is *not* to help Apple beat Microsoft in the battle for desktop dominance. That war is over. Microsoft won. In fact, I believe you will find that the overwhelming majority of Apple users don't really care whether Apple's market share gets much larger. Honestly, we might be happier if Apple didn't attempt to take Microsoft head-on. Would Bentley realistically try to take on Chevy for market share? Probably not if they want to maintain their reputation of quality and prestige.
Instead, I believe that folks are pushing for an x86 port because OSX is a viable alternative to *Linux*, not to *Windows*. OSX is what all of us hoped that Linux would someday become. Instead, it is here now. The problem is, that you have to actually have to go spend money to obtain OSX. My guess is that if Apple did release a port of OSX to x86, they would only sell a handful of copies off the shelf, yet 345784385 slashdot readers would run it through the magic of ISOs and cable modems. If Apple did find a way to force you to pay for it (god forbid), imagine the chaos. Here is a hypothetical timeline:
*Linux users convince Apple to release OSX for x86
*Large Slashdot thread devoted to how unjust it is that Apple is forcing people to pay for OSX
*Large Slashdot thread on "spyware" inside OSX which determines if a user actually payed for OSX
*Two college students crack OSX registration and licensing system
*Large-scale adoption of OSX on cheap Intel hardware by 12yo Slashdot readers
*Large Slashdot thread devoted to how crappy OSX is because it won't support XYZ video card on cheap, frankenstien hardware. Gawd, if it works this bad on *my* hardware, I'm glad I didn't shell out any cash for over-priced Apple gear
*Apple hardware market share plummets along with company profits
*ZDNet article about the imminent failure of Apple (#4567547896457896)
Don't do it Apple!
It would be nice if there was a Cringely slashbox so the editors wouldn't feel compelled to post a front page story almost every week.
I guess Sundays are slow anyway. *shrug*
-Peter
Most of the work is done and on tape somewhere in the bowels of Apple.
But Steveo will never, ever port MacOS to commodity hardware. He won't even allow clone Mac H/W. This is how Apple makes their money.
Everyone is saying the same, obvious things about how Microsoft would pull their applications and that apple is a hardware company.
The truth is that OSX sucks. I know, I have it running on my Powerbook. The thing is that MacOS is poorly designed and it has only gotten worse. I really laugh when people say that it is easier, as I find it the most difficult and annoying operating sytem to use.
I will admit that the user interface in OS9 was quite nice, although far from perfect. Unfortunately, OS9 was also unresponsive.
The problem isn't raw speed, which in OSX can sometimes be a factor as well.. but the way that they multitask. OSX will give the active application full tasking priority, lets say it is Internet Explorer or Mozilla.. and it is fetching a page, while it is doing such.. it will put up the wait cursor. While the wait cursor is up, that application is using a lot of CPU and makes it more difficult if not impossible to switch to another application.
This has gotten worse in OSX as it has replaced the popular finder with the Dock. Unfortunately, even without anything running or using lots of CPU.. trying to use the dock to switch between running appliations can be somewhere between difficult and impossible.
Well, this shouldn't be a rant about usablity.. the point is that I don't think that OSX or any other version of MacOS is a very well designed Operating System. The best commercial OS, imho is Irix (although still far from perfect, still better then OSX)
We have an old Compaq at work from 1997 that runs NT 4 with no trouble at all... why can't the 2 year old Presario?
One nice thing about Macs... my old Mac clone from 1997 (updated to a 500 MHz G3) runs Mac OS 9.1 with no problems at all.. and LinuxPPC
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
My poor old father got suckered into buying a Presario two years ago on which he can't run anything other than Win98. It's utterly unstable with anyting NT-based, and don't even try linux/*BSD on it. This SUCKS!! But it's the reality out there. Joe Sixpack doesn't buy beige box-PC's, but goes for the prepackaged OEM deals.
That is way Apple is not finished yet. Nor wintel pre-packaged PC companies. Too sad that 80% of humans are so... helpless.
People keep bringing up name brand! I haven't bought a name brand computer in over 7 years! I buy whiye box...You can buy a MoBo with a 2.2 GHZ processor for $500! What is comparable in the Apple world? Until they make it possible to build an Apple yourself off the shelf, I'm not buying one.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
try adding a 15 inch LCD INSTEAD OF A CRT...
when you do so, the price is $20 apart.
HEH.
I don't think the Mac is only about visual appeal. Sure it looked nice, but it was the fluidity and ease of use that came with the MacOS that made it shine. I think Apple could have something that wasn't as flashy like BeOS' interface and still make a good OS. Apple has just used the visual appeal as a way to attract attention while at the same time justifying an expensive hardware upgrade to thier customers.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
If Mac users really are confident that Apple hardware isn't overpriced and represents a good value, they should have nothing to worry about, right?
On the other hand, if they are concerned that existing Mac users would switch to Intel hardware, perhaps that's a sign that the hardware does not represent the hardware value they say it does.
of jumping into the Mac vs. PC war...
I consider myself to be somewhat computer literate. I've been building and servicing PCs for 6 years, and seen what wintel has to offer. I've also worked as a systems administrator (*NIX systems).
I bought my first mac about 6 months ago. I chose mac vs. pc due to the higher quality hardware, the tighter integration of the OS, and the feature set (try to find a good small, leight-weight wintel laptop with internal DVD and 802.11b that doesn't burn the batteries in 1.5 hours). I'm also a big fan of OS X. I'm sold on the integration between UNIX and a good GUI. Yes, there are a bugs and annoyances, but overall, I'm happier with my mac than I have ever been with a PC. My main argument is this: You get what you pay for. I chose to pay more for my mac because I expect more from a computer system than wintel can provide.
Sure, you do see a nice PC once in a while, but for the most part, they are klunky, thrown-together (read: no top-level design), and let's not forget to factor in the chineese discount (read: cheap quality) hardware. (No offense to chineese hardware manufacturers! Please, keep making $7 10/100 NICs!) A wintel box will provide a big bang for your buck, but unless you're a power user, you'll never see the difference--or care for that matter.
Why choose the bare minimum in satisfaction? Isn't it better to be pleased/happy with a purchace, rather than just satisfied?
That's my $0.02 anyway.
What's to stop Apple continuing as a hardware vendor on x86? They just put together a standard set of components they can support, put them in a fancy box, and sell that with OS X tailored specifically for those parts.
An x86 port doesn't have to mean it runs on every x86 machine, just as a PPC OS X doesn't run on every PPC machine.
Of course, they'd bump the price up to Porsche standards still, missing the point entirely...
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
OS X can do movie editing and DVD authoring much better than current windows software, so for that reason alone I may be interested in it, but wouldn't want to buy a whole new computer.
Well that's part of why MS is in trouble with the Feds...but the new iMac does come with a bunch of software... iTunes 2, iMovie 2, iPhoto, iDVD 2 (on SuperDrive-equipped systems only), QuickTime, AppleWorks 6, Mail, Microsoft Internet Explorer, AOL, Quicken 2002 Deluxe, World Book Mac OS X Edition, Otto Matic, Mac OS X Chess, PCalc, Acrobat Reader and FAXstf 10.0 Preview.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Somebody explain this to me again?
First I pick up a heavy 2x4, and aim it at your head.
Apple has total control over the software that ships with computers that they build. Microsoft wants total control over the software that ships with computers that they don't build. i.e., telling Dell, Gateway etc that they can't bundle netscape on their computers. thwack
Apple doesn't have a long and cherished history of forcing hundreds of other companies out of business, unlike Microsoft. thwack
My arm is tired; please have someone else take this 2x4 and beat you over the head with it until you stop breathing, so you don't contaminate the gene pool.
why would i want to run OSX on an intel box when it doesn't even work properly on apple hardware? i'll stick with what works, thank you
It's basically that simple. Apple has a fine business making great systems for people with smarts and taste. Period. Want one? Buy one! $1799 for an iMac w/G4/flat screen/OS X/DVD-R etc etc. Great deal.
Why would Apple screw this up and take on the headache of needing 45,000 hardware drivers for the mish-mash of cards and peripherals on the PC side? What for? I think that PC users are starting to get the envy bad now. PCs are boring and ugly, and only getting more so. They suck, and they suck harder every day.
Let's face it. Macs (with OS X) are just a blast to use and are freakin' gorgeous. PC users are looking for any reason not to have to admit defeat and abandon their Big Beige Barf-Boxes and just go Mac. Too f'in bad. Move up or continue to stew in your beige vomit. There's no shame in ditching a Hyundai for a Boxster, but your quality of life makes no think difference to me. I'm having too much fun to give a shit about your misery! Beep fuckin' beep, buddy. Get outta my way!
P7-VROOOOOOOM.....
AFAIK, it's just C code for the darwin kernel(already ported to x86), just recompile and you have an x86 OS.
Monday: Apple ships OSX for Intel
Tuesday: Microsoft announces they will no longer support Office on MacOS.
As much as it gals, Office being the de facto standard makes it very important to have available.
Microsoft has always held this threat over Apple's head and that and fear of damaging their hardware sales will keep Apple from doing it.
You can't scale up Apple's model to 95% of the market, or even 50% of the market, and hundreds of hardware manufacturers. If you try, you end up with the same configuration problems as Windows or Linux have, and you end up with the same complaints about usability that people have about Windows and Linux. A single company can't be everything to everybody.
What we need is not one Microsoft that has 50% of the market and one Apple that has 50% of the market, what we need is 20 companies and efforts like Microsoft, Apple, Linux, BeOS, etc., each of which caters to the needs of 5% of the market.
Its a sweet price for overpowered hardware :)
As much as OS-X has a very lickable interface and some spiffy commercial apps ported to it already... the performance just plain sucks. It is slow, sloow, slooow... even with 512MB of RAM... even with all the updates. Windows and Linux will plain beat the pants off of it on Intel/AMD hardware.
I know Apple has something called Altivec, but have you ever used OS-X? Dunno what Altivec has to do with useablility but compared to a Windows/Linux box in a side by side comparison and you will see what I mean.
Linux-PPC is much faster and smoother than OS-X on Apple hardware.
Could also be that OS-X on Intel is faster and smoother than OS-X on Mac. I can't check this because I can't run the full OS-X on Intel. See: for a comparison of Linux vs OS-X.
"Don't sweat the technique."
Speaking as a long-time Macintosh software developer, I literally drool at the possibility of selling my apps to an intel-sized audience with a simple recompile.
Take a step. Take another. Now take a GNUstep. Like Mac OS X's Cocoa, GNUstep is an implementation of the OPENSTEP API, except on top of a GNU system running X11 instead of a DarwinBSD system running Quartz. And if you need wincompatibility: 1. it's free software so you can fund a porting effort if you want, and 2. XFree86 runs on Cygwin.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I love how the Slashdot crowd - which consists mostly of techies that make way more money than the average citizen and then spends that money on $2000 PVRs, Nomad MP3 players, PDAs, cell phones, pagers, the highest end Sony consumer electronics, every console video game system, rewiring their entire house with cable/Ethernet/RCA connectors, making sure every corner of their house can access their 802.11b/Bluetooth wireless network, creating a photo mosaic out of a dozen LCD screens, funding the fastest Internet connection available in their area, and hacking up any device that can run Linux - still complains that a Mac costs 10 to 20 percent more than a PC...
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Yeah the mac guys always mention the ibook and imac, but if you want to get a top end machine you have to spend 5000 compared to 2500 for a much faster x86 machine.
What Apple needs is cheaper, expandable, rackable server hardware for the new Mac OS X Server OS, no wow, no show.
Luckily their WebObjects Java webapplication server framework runs on FreeBSD, Linux on Intel hardware. If not I wouldn't be happy at all.
BSD derivate Darwin and open source QuickTime Steamer runs on Intel.
The Objective-C Cocoa frameworks did run on Intel, Motorola 68xxx, HP and Sun before they did on PPC. NeXT apps had FAT binaries that did run from any hardware platform over to any platform the OS supported.
Now MacOS X app wrapperdirectories have their architecture dependent binaries in a directory, seperate from the resources directory. At the moment there is only one such architecture directory: "MacOS". Who says we won't see a second one?
I was told that apart from the CPU / cache there is little difference between Apple or Intel hardware.
So, running on Intel or standard server hardware components would surely help them into the enterprise market.
For the rest, my guess is that the Classic MacOS 9 app or the Carbon libraries are not ready for Intel architecture.
I don't understand much from marketing, but making the short term move to Intel is a BSD-Quartz-Cocoa-only matter. I'm afraid all current tedious Carbon ports could possibly not benefit from it. I think this is not what Apple wants for their developer community. Correct me if my guess is wrong.
--------
* Sigh *
I am thinking HUGE. ;)
proton != antielectron
Both the "Common Hardware Reference Platform" and "PowerPC Platform" were the last hopes of bringing the Mac OS to inexpensive and open hardware to compete with Wintel.
However, it was not a smart business move for Apple to continue with it. They had the Mac OS all set to go (running on the reference platforms), and also some hardware vendors ready to produce these units. In fact, I think PPCP didn't even require a Mac ROM to be present on the motherboard, so it made things that much easier.
Also at the time, there was a Windows NT port for PowerPC. It was rather worthless because there was no Windows software compiled for PowerPC, but it was basically ready to go.
I am sure in some labs at Apple and elsewhere, there were PPCP machines able to boot into either Mac OS or Windows NT. I, reading articles about these machines, was really excited about this, and was wanting to buy one when they came out. If it all did not happen, it probably would not have been an Apple machine either.
FYI, this is all separate from Power Computing and Motorola Mac clones because those were basically the same old Apple motherboards, complete with the ROMS required to run Mac OS.
To add to it, Apple is doing well enough right now to not care about expanding to Intel hardware. If I were Jobs, there is no way in hell I would authorize a Mac OS X for x86 to be released. Not when Mac OS X for PowerPC can still use every developer they have to improve it.
(Apologies: This is actually a crosspost of something I wrote on Macslash. I didn't feel like rewriting it, since I'm already late for this discussion -- curses for sleeping in on Sunday morning!)
I can't believe Cringely's bought into this argument now. I expected better from him.
The whole Mac-on-x86 argument has many followers, with multiple -- and frequently contradictory -- goals. Cringely's is to get Microsoft a competitor on their home turf, one with the human-interface knowhow that Linux and other *nix versions don't have. He's a little better at strategizing than most, offering the idea of a strategic alliance with one of the surviving OEMs as a bulwark, but ultimately what he's suggesting is an altruistic gesture from Apple that offers little chance for success and huge odds for catastrophic failure.
Imagine if Steve Jobs were to announce tomorrow morning that OS X for PCs, developed in secret for months, will be available immediately at your nearby Apple Store or CompUSA. Never mind for now the enormous logistical problems of getting the installer to recognize the nearly infinite combinations of PC hardware out there, or the need to repartition your HD to accomodate an HFS+ partition; we'll say that the installer works like a dream. Here's this brand-new, gorgeous OS ready to go -- and there's not a single damn program that'll run on it.
That's because there's no developers' kit out there in the public. Oh, sure, Apple will port its developers' tools, but programmers need time to use it. (It could be that our mythical Stevenote will include a surprise announcement from Adobe that Photoshop 7 is ready to go for OS X-for-Intel, but considering Adobe's reticence in porting to Carbon, that strains credulity far past breaking. And considering that Adobe already has a perfectly good version of Photoshop running on Intel iron, it'll take quite a bit of arm-twisting from Steve to get them happy about more work.) Existing Cocoa apps will need to be recompiled; I'm not even sure how Carbon apps are supposed to move their legacy 680x0 and PowerPC code crossplatform. And good luck getting your Classic applications to run in emulation (and if you didn't create an HFS+ partition during the setup, you won't even be able to get their resource forks copied over.)
So this brand-new OS, which you paid good money for (and you're dreaming if you think Apple can afford to stick with $130 per license), is sitting on your computer without a thing to do. You have to reboot into Windows to get any work done, which makes you seriously wonder why you bothered in the first place. Meantime, the platform shift -- as Cringely says, Apple can't go into this move halfheartedly; OS X for Intel has to be first-class from the outset -- is having the effect of completely killing sales of Apple's remaining PowerPCs. New users are scared off by certain obsolescence; after all, not even Microsoft could keep two full-blown versions of the same OS running on different platforms at the same time, and Apple's clearly given up on the G4. Old-timers like me have no reason to repurchase the new Mac-compatible PCs and waste our existing investments. Plus, Apple's the only vendor of PowerPC-based desktop computers, and they're now battling Dell and Gateway on price; even assuming that they've been licensed as OEMs, they can undercut Apple's prices even more severely than the clones did.
So Apple, by shifting to x86, would have no legacy software, very few willing developers, an extremely dangerous and powerful competitor on Microsoft's home turf, none of the years of optimization that makes OS X run well on G4s, millions in lost sales for their own hardware, millions more lost dollars in R & D, an alienated fan base, and little hope of evading the implosion of Be and other would-be MS competitors. And they would do this -- why? The goodness of their hearts? Apple really has no reason to budge from PowerPC; the platform's still running, if not neck-and-neck with Intel and AMD, at least fast enough to give Mac users value for their money. Porting would not be Apple's best way of leveraging their comfortable niche market -- it would be a leap of desperation from a company that doesn't need to do it.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
This is the reason that most Macs other than the Latest And Greatest will not run MacOS X. I have a G3 Blue And White. 350MHz G3. 192MB RAM. It's also something that could be bypassed if only MacOS X allowed people to run alternate GUIs.
What am I going to do about it? Well, upgrading the processor is an option, but it is a costly one. I'm thinking that maybe the Penguin might be my ticket to xNIX on Mac bliss. PPC distributions of Linux have lots of good features and are not too far removed from the Bleeding Edge of Linux. My friend Chad has been running DebianPPC on a G4 Sawtooth and he's very happy with it.
The difference between Linux and MacOS X is this: GUI freedom of choice. If Apple gave us the ability to bypass Aqua and run, say, Ice or BlackBox as the GUI, I could maybe run OS X on my beloved G3. But they won't, so I can't, so I'll be moving to a dual boot of Linux and MacOS 8.6 eventually.
Maybe I'll get an iLuxo Jr. sometime in the future. But until I do, I'm staying well away from MacOS X.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Very well said! You get what you pay for.
I think Apple could support OS X on x86 at some point, but I would wager it is at least 18 months away. If I were Apple, here is how I would do it.
1. Continue enhancing the free development tools. Make sure gcc 3.1 and later is a first class citizen (I lurk on the gcc lists and there is a lot of Apple involvement).
2. Generate and distribute better documentation for writing IOKit drivers. Stress the importance of correct handling of microprocessor endian characteristics.
3. Use their investments and/or relationships with nVidia, ATI, et al. to push the development of a GPU that can accelerate their vector-based 2d graphics (Quartz).
4. Stress the use of the Cocoa framework for development; cease new development work on Carbon beyond bug fixes and performance enhancements. Alternately, port the Carbon framework to x86.
5. Line up a lot of driver support for 3rd party peripherals under PPC (related to #2).
6. Begin building support into Darwin x86 for some popular mass produced motherboards.
We already know that ProjectBuilder had a checkbox for compiling to x86 once upon a time (last seen in Rhapsody DR2 I think). Provided there is adequate availability of good drivers on the PPC platform, you may infer that a recompile of the IOKit drivers (or compiling them "fat") would also be adequate for a specific x86 system. IOKit abstracts the hardware layer enough such that the memory bus and device bus might "just work."
Apple could work a deal with an OEM (bury the hatchet with Dell perhaps?) to build a system using specific components that are known to be well supported by the OS. This would allow them to ship a machine that works out of the box with the same suite of hardware add-ons that we've all grown to love (all the great USB, IEEE1394, ATA, etc. devices).
On the ISV side of things, Apple could prove the viability of the platform just by shipping versions of iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, iEtc until the ISVs could catch up. Provided the dev tools are up to snuff, within 6 months there could be a reasonable number of x86 or fat applications available. It would be akin to the wait we've endured for OSX compatible apps since March of 2001 when it started shipping.
In 18 months the speed of microprocessors would hopefully be fast enough that the Altivec-enhanced graphic routines weren't necessary for a good user experience under x86. Couple that with a GPU that can accelerate Quartz and the need for Altivec diminishes even more for this specific operation. Also, Apple would need Motorola or IBM to have a PPC that was able to better compete with Intel and AMD so they don't completely lose their existing hardware sales.
Just a thought. I'm certain there are a million reasons this wouldn't work or Apple wouldn't do it, but it's fun speculating.
cr
First, Cringely's article is 90% about what this port would do for consumers and Microsoft. There's no compelling case here for why Apple would want to do it, which means there's no story about why it would happen.
Steve Jobs already tried this game with NextStep and it didn't work out. I bet he did that under duress, and since it didn't work out, there's no way he'll be convinced to try it again.
Cringely also writes, "So Apple has to make at least a "good faith" effort with this OS X port, reflecting the realities of Intel hardware." This points to a fundamental reason this will never happen. With Apple hardware, Apple can sell a product that "just works." With Intel hardware, Apple is stuck with a massive and unprofitable effort to develop and test drivers for all the cheap Intel-compatible devices out there, or they're stuck with a bunch of customers screaming about how their machines don't work with OS X. Either way, Apple loses.
Finally, I'm amazed by this whole business about Apple hardware being "too expensive." Look, obviously some people are buying it at this price, so it must not be "too expensive" for them -- i.e., it offers something they're willing to pay for. It's just "too expensive" for you, and that's why you're griping. And I think that's outlandish for coders, because we can pretty much universally afford to pay the $400 extra to get a really good box. Some of you just seem to feel entitled to perfect hardware at bottom-of-market prices, which I don't understand. I've worked in carpentry, and I know that you have to pay extra for good tools, but they make the work experience so much better. If you're making your living off the hardware, a few extra dollars is nothing. Think about all the other things you throw money away on, yet you balk at investing in decent tools for your work?
However, it's not quite accurate to claim that x86 buyers get the MS software for "almost nothing." It's frequently noted that you can build your own machine for considerably less than you can get a Dell for. While Dell does charge a premium, their margins aren't that high. Most of the difference between DIY and Dell is the software licenses. Play with different configurations on Dell's site, do some reading between the lines, and you'll see that Windows and Office account for at least a couple of hundred dollars of the price. Specify the upgrade to the full office, and you're talking an additional $199 IIRC.
To be fair, we must also note that Apple doesn't exactly charge itself for each unit of its OS, so there's some bundling going on there too.
The fact that a Dell with Office prices favorably to a similarly-configured (yes, apples and organges, but there's no better comparison in this case) Mac without Office tells me there's more to it than MS getting its cut.
Apple vs. the PC. This is all very similar to the whole "Gamecube vs. X-Box vs. PS2" thing. I never really understood the whole thing because all the systems have games that I want to play, so I'm not really biased one way or the other (although Gamecube games seem to be more fun). It is the same with Apple and the PC. I like both! Why can't other people do the same? Why do we have to pick one, close our minds, and argue it to the death? Do people bashing Apple really know what they are talking about? What about the people bashing PCs? I used to hate Apple and I had no idea why. All I'm suggesting is open up a little, you may find that you can like more than one thing. I know I do.
proton != antielectron
You call that a monitor? THIS is a monitor!
*smile*
-Alex
*smile*
-Alex
MacOS as freebie ended with System 7.1.
Everything from 7.0.1 backwards was free as in Free Beer. Now 7.5.3/7.5.5 is free as in Free Beer and can be downloaded from several Apple servers. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for 7.1...apparently there is some third-party proprietary code in there which prevents 7.1 from being released as freeware. Too bad...7.1 is the ideal OS for some elderly Macs.
7.6.1 and above are payware, with no sign that Apple is going to release them into freeware any time soon.
HTH.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I disagree about there being no DIY: While you usually don't start with a motherboard, choice of power supplies and processors, etc., there's a pretty large assortment of choices to start low and build big.
My 8500 (~8 years old) was designed with a PPC604 CPU running @ 120MHz. Standard buss was Fast-SCSI-2.
It's now got a relatively recent G3/400MHz in there, and ATTO Ultra-Wide SCSI controller, lots more RAM and DASD. All of this, I've Done Myself, and the box is MORE than usable for the variety of tasks I throw at it; if i needed more juice, I could certainly add it.
If you go to Mac Rescue, or David Baucom's site and the like, you'll see plenty of 'barebones' Macs and the add-ons you can buy to soup-up yourself pretty nicely.
You can get yourself a pretty nice LinuxPPC box for around $200.
Takes a bit more looking than on the PC-side (it's sort've like finding Linux-compatible componants was ~3 years ago ...), but it's definitely more than do-able.
The hardware support is already there... OSX is basically FreeBSD with Apple's pretty interface.
FreeBSD supports a large amount of hardware.
OS 9 did support BiDi languages (it supported Hebrew, and probably Arabic too), but OS X doesn't support them, which makes that OS kinda useless for a big part of the world.
And it's a pity. I'd love to have some OS X running... I understood its look n' feel is kinda futuristic.
-- The ballad of arrivederci
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's the funniest sig I've seen in a long, long time.
I did like you suggested a couple weeks ago and bought a Mac to play with OS X. What a dog where's the so called blazing speed over Intel. Oh that's only with app's that use mainly floating point operations, like all the ones Apples uses in their speed comparison. For normal app's using integer operations forget it the overhead of OS X bogs the Mac down. I downloaded Samba and built it on the Mac and should of called for a pizza to chow on while waiting and waiting. Mac != Speed demon.
Now giving credit where credit's due OS X does a great job of putting a GUI on Unix that the masses can actually use. OS X still needs a lot of work, but it's off to a great start. Give OS X another year or so of updates and tweaking and it will be a real contender. Look out Linux, OS X is the OS that could eat away at MS desktop market share. I think if Apple made a Intel version of OS X, MS would be VERY nervous, it would sell.
Cringley is wrong.
Apple is about holistic system design. Sure you pay a little more initially, but you pay a lot less later because of the quality of the design.
For new users Apple is a great choice. Nowhere near the number of potential issues waiting to hose things up.
Apple has identified a clear niche and is making money at it, why would they give that up?
Blogging because I can...
I have been saying the same thing for some time now. I know I would certainly buy OS X for x86 hardware. I don't like the mac hardware. I like to build my own boxes, Mac hardware is proprietary, overpriced and more about form than function. Having said this I do believe OS X to be the superior OS compared to Win XP.
I believe many others would buy it as well.
-Mark
The bright idea to take the LC motherboard design and graft a PPC 603e onto it was one of the main reasons why Apple was sucking so badly in '96 and '97. The 52xx, 62xx and 63xx Performas had a laundry list of things wrong with them because of this ill-conceived design decision. It would be like stuffing a Pentium II onto a 486 motherboard and expecting it to work.
Gil Amelio was on the road to fixing Apple, but he didn't have enough time to do it. Steve Jobs gets all the credit but Apple was on the uptick (modestly, true, but still on the rise) even before he got there. Jobs deserves a great deal of the credit...the iMac was Jobs' baby, so was the G3 Yosemite and the Cube.
The crappy Performas did more to push people away from Apple and towards Windoze than anything else. It certainly turned a lot of the educational market away from Apple. Remember, the 52xx all-in-one series were one of the crappy Macs and that was what the educational (K-12 in particular) market was buying. They got stung real bad by those stinkbombs and were then very receptive when Dell came calling.
Here's the full story of these Road Apples:
http://www.lowendmac.com/tech/x200.shtml
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If life solely revolved around the core OS, then Linux would already own the world.
The fact is, it's all about having applications, such as Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc. (even if some of them have to be run in Classic mode, which is less than ideal, at least they largely run)
OS X for intel would have none of that, nor the simple 'Carbon' layer allowing existing applications to run without total rework.
I guess people still think a '$700' Dell is something close to what Apple a $1299 PowerMac gets you?
you remind me of my neighbor..the guy LOVES his tricked-out '68 Chevelle, but treats his wife like sh*t.
Here is the near top of the line dell system I'm able to purchase for $1759 shipped. This includes a 2ghz pentium 3, 256 megs of ram, dvd, cd burner, 80 gig hard drive and 64 megs geoforce 2mx w/17 in monitor.
Here is a 933mhz Mac with 80 gig HD, 256 megs of ram, radeon 7500, and a superdrive for $2600. This unit has no monitor but does come with a superdrive.
Congratulations, you are the proud owner of one of Apple's worst line of computers ever produced. The 6400 and slightly upgraded 6500 performa series were the worst-designed Macs ever produced, crippled by Apple so that it wouldn't encroach on the higher-end models. The hardware was almost completely non-upgradeable, with slow and small hard drives (limited to 4GB, I believe), 1 non-standard PCI slot, crappy, non-upgradeable video (that often failed or turned different colors) and many other problems. The PowerComputing clone (although I think clones came out a little later than the 6400 glory days) would definitely have been a better deal, although they are not too reliable, and most of the ones I've seen have broken down since then, whereas the 6400s are still (unfortunately) chugging along, causing pain to any user trying to use modern apps on them. A headless linux fileserver has got to be the best possible use of this terrible lemon of a computer.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Actually this was EXTREMELY effective, IMNSHO. Whether you worked in a Mac shop or a Windoze shop you could see familiar things about the computers the geeks worked with. There were even Linux-like aspects of that weird hybrid "operating system" the computers used.
Add to it the anachronistic software boxes on the shelves. I laughed my ass off when I first saw it and everyone looked at me funny because they couldn't see how humorous it was to see DBase II and Lotus 123 and Wordstar 3.3 on the shelves next to more-or-less modern computers on the desks.
Of course it could have all been accidental. The set decorator could have gone through thrift stores in Austin, TX looking for cheap software and finding those old classics. The guys who made the fake OS for display probably were working with Macs (Hollywood LOVES its Macs) and Mike Judge was probably telling them to "make the OS look like Windows." But the result, intentional or unintentional it might be, was true geek humor.
It is my assertion that the co-stars of Office Space were the computers themselves. One more reason that movie is an underrated masterpiece.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...making life harder for Microsoft and making Microsoft better for that.
Hey, who the fuck wants M$ to be better? We want them to DIE!!!
Okay, dustpuppy, now stop trying to be (+1 Funny), but really... what Cringely says is not true. There aren't enough Apple-fans to buy Apple-branded hardware just because of the name. I mean, even I thought of buying a clone when they were avalable, it just wasn't the right time, because I didn't have the need or the money.
Its a pentium 4 not a 3. I wish they had a 2 ghz pentium 3 ir would probably be REALLY fast.
OS X will never be available on the x86 platform.
All you Mac devotees seem to have forgotten something - Uncle Billy owns 5% of Apple. Steve "can't market my way out of a wet paper sack" Jobs made a pact with the devil a few years ago and it wasn't without strings attached. Specifically, IE-only on the Mac and Apple doesn't compete with M$ in the x86 market, among others. It wouldn't matter if the Borg of Redmond didn't own part of Apple. To kill Apple, all M$ has to do is stop developing Office for the Apple platform, a move they're sure to make if Apple so much as spits in the direction of the WinDoze monopoly.
Like it or lump it, that's how it is. I am no friend of M$. I would consider buying a Mac if I didn't have to pay double for a platform that nobody's developing for.
If people here complain about the "overpriced" apple hardware, won't they complain about the overpriced apple software? $130 for an OS? When you're used to getting that for free - $30?
Of course, that's just us open source zealouts. The average, everyday user probably doesn't care quite so much. But if you start looking at associated software for the MacOS, like say, Microsoft Office (which everyone beleives they have to have), you're looking at $400 minimum if you're not a student. Probably higher, if MS decided they don't like the fact that Apple moved into their space. And that's if it exists at all -- how easy would it be for MS to simple decide that they didn't want to develop Office for OS X Intel? Meanwhile, having Office come with your Windows PC is becoming more common.
Nope. This isn't going to work, and Apple's not going to do it.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This is the link I got my info from: http://www.dell.com/html/us/segments/dhs/compare.h tm
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Yup! You are right on! And thats why I'm giving all 4 of my computers to charity and switching over... besides... there is nothing like the awe that comes across peoples face when they see that cool little G4 and its 22 inch flat display...
Would be to sell the port for $500-$1000. Basically have it as a development operating system. This would allow intel shops a slightly cheaper way of porting to OS X. Of course, final testing would have to be on an actual mac, but it would be a good investment for a intel/windows only company who wants to enter into the mac market.
I guess then the problem would be piracy, though.
-no broken link
You say that the public perception is that you need MS Office to make a computer useful. Then maybe this is what we should change. Don't accept MS Office files from friends and co-workers when another more standard format is possible. My mac doesn't have MS Office on it and I have no problems. Now this won't work for everyone, but it does for me. My office suite is Appleworks which I purchased as it did not come with my g4 tower. To me $80 for an office suite was fair and has provided all the capability I require. I agree that MS Office is better than Appleworks. For the difference in price, I don't need that capability.
Also, why is it Apple's fault that Microsoft doesn't cut them a great deal to bundle Office v X with new machines?
Microsoft brought us Windows XP. I bought a Mac.
Cringely mentioned a company named ARDI. This is a company that for many years has been working on a Mac hardware and OS emulation environment for PCs. The product is called Executor and it will run many 68k mac Applications. It does not rely on Apple roms or on the MacOS. It is also VERY FAST. There is work being done on a PPC version, but I don't know how far along it is.
In any case I just wanted to point out that what ARDI does would do nothing to help Apple port OSX over to intel. ARDI produces an interesting emulator, but what is needed is a native port of the system itself. Not to mention the fact that Executor is for the 68k and OS-X is written for the PPC, not exactly an insignificant difference.
There is already a version of Darwin for x86. In case you're not familiar, Darwin is the underlying BSD/Mach core OS that OS-X is based upon. Creating a complete port of OS-X would involve porting the upper layers of the system such as Aqua, the upper layer API systems, and the GUI, among other things. Since these layers are undoubtedly written in C and Objective C (another story), and the low-level OS inferfaces they rely on would be the same for the PPC and x86 versions of Darwin, porting them should be very easy to do.
Its kind of like Linux itself. There are x86 versions, Alpha versions, and even PPC versions. These versions are 99% source code compatible. Meaning that code written on one will compile and run on the others with VERY FEW if any changes. The same should be true of OS-X. In fact I would not be a bit suprised if there is already a complete version of OS-X for x86 today. The hackers (!= crackers) at Apple would just be too tempted not to port it as an experiment with Darwin already existing on x86. It would also be created in order for the company to hedge its bets. Should Apple ever have to drop their hardware line, a ready to go version of OS-X for intel would be their primary escape strategy.
Do I expect to see this version of OS-X? Not anytime soon. We may never see it. Back in the 80's Apple developed an x86 version of their classic OS with Novell, it was never released and the project it was developed as part of was dropped. There was also a version of MacOS developed for Apollo to run on their Domain workstations (Apollo was bought out by HP some time ago). This project was also scrapped when Apple dumped Apollo and began trying to cozy up to Sun. So seeking an alternate platform for their operating systems is nothing new, its just that we've never seen any prior examples of this marketed.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Apple's marketshare has grown over the last 4 years. Part of this can be attributed to getting back some of the market they lost to the clones back, but I think at least some of it has to be attributed to getting new PC buyers with their products and even stealing a few previous intel buyers away. They are selling hardware to new customers.
This makes the prospect of OS X for Intel dicey. It means that Cringley's assumptions about it not competing with Mac HW are at least partially wrong. The guy who walks into the store MIGHT buy the Athlon box over the iMac. In which case Apple loses the sale of the HW. In a market where apple is trying to grow (and succeeding), this hurts.
Cringley isn't stupid, but this idea isn't anywhere near as easy or as foregone a conclusion as he seems to think.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Please define "faster". If you define "faster" as clock speed of the CPU, then Apple does not offer a "faster" computer than the Intel P4 platform. If you define "faster" as an ability to do a specific task or type of work, then please let us know from which viewpoint you are making your statement from.
This is being typed from a 867Mhz G4. It replaced my Windows based computer. I find it to be as fast or faster than windows for what I do. However, the reason I prefer my Mac is that I no longer fight my computer to get work done. I spend less time at the computer and get more work done. This is my definition of "faster", what is yours?
By the way, my G4 was $2500 not $5000.
Microsoft brought us Windows XP. I bought a Mac.
If Jag's weren't built with stock Ford parts an engines nowadays you may have a point...as it stands now, though, you don't. ;-)
As far as x86 machines are concerned, Office and IE are "The Standard". By creating Office and IE for Mac, that just extends their standard across non-x86 computers. If the only way to see word processor and HTML documents is to use MS stuff, then MS software on Mac extends its monopoly.
" that's why new ones like BeOS don't sell."
That's not the reason. It didn't sell because it couldn't get into OEM preloads. Windows users are looking for alternatives.
2 - If the PPC hardware wasn't overpriced or if there really was parity between "similar" systems, why would 3 be valid? Why would Apple lose out? Would people choose the wrong choice simply because it existed? No, people would look at a performance metric and balance that with price considerations, and x86 would, most of the time, win that; over 80% of the market is x86, and like GM, they pay a lot less for nuts and bolts than SAAB does.
About HW/SW integration being worth the premium. I don't buy it, I've used so many computers from so may platforms, and between x86 and Apple, its certainly very easy to build a "highly integrated" x86 box with all the trimmings. Sure, in a laptop you have to rely the manufacturer, but on the desktop, anyone obsessed with integration can build their own souped up hardware - like I have, with no problems, none. And I don' even need support. Bad integration makes me think of Sun, not Dell. In fact, the other day I got my hands on a new Dell C400, they are amazing - 1.2GHz 512K P3 -M, faster than any Powerbook even wet dreamed - and 3.5 lbs to boot with 30GB hard drive. Now if you want to trade 50% of your speed for that built in firewire port that never gets used, go ahead (not that firewire is a bad thing, I think its great.).
I agree with another poster about something, if no X86 port, then "What we need isn't Mac OS X for Intel. What we need are cheap PPC machines, with dull beige designs.." About this statement:
Is a godsend. This go the extra mile to prove beyond all reasonable doubts that Microsoft is in fact a monopoly.There is way too much conjecture in this thread, and not enough test marketing or real critical thinking about the viability of the x86 OS X project.
I had a guy at work who knew Steve Jobs from his last job. This was the kind of freak who would print out his correspondence and show it to me to prove he knew Steve. Steve apparently has a flair for brevity or more likely, doesn't know this guy.
Anyways, he was submitting his brain droppings to Steve about various things from time to time, the last of which was the iPod. Each time I begged him to ask Steve to port OS X just as NeXT was. The goofball seemed to think it was a bad idea. Not so. This is essential. Nobody goes and buys a Windows upgrade, every Tom, Dick and Harry just pass along upgrade, Microsoft makes 80% of its sales from Desktop OS and 90% (figures off the top off my head from what I can remember) of those are from OEM pre-builds.
SOME people will go out and buy OS X and remove that festering piece of garbage OS - whatever resides there. The main Caveat is an HCL. Apple should have a fairly short HCL and work with the vendors to bring sanity to the X86 platform (like BeOS did, 'this is what works, here you go.')
I am dying to buy a PC with OS X on it. I have to use Windows for my job function as a Hardware Release Engineer (Unix based systems) - go figure. I was formerly an IT Manager just to know... The latest rendition of Windows, XP, is a step in the right direction but like Office XP vs. Office 2000, there is hardly enough there to call an OS upgrade. It should be called Plus! For Windows NT 5.
A friend and I argue in jest about Win32 vs. OS X. He seems to think of OS X as a passing afterthought, relegated to niche-dom. I love the OS. I allows me to use bash, the god of shells, and still have a desktop that doesn't promote an eructation of vomit. I surely hope that you can influence Steve Jobs (who I refer to as Steve Slobs, because every time he about to "score with that chick", to use a metaphor, he cuts a nasty fart and she runs for the hills) by producing more fervor of this nature.
Apparently Steve has had it with the clearly inferior PPC. There are may things that make PPC a better architecture, but people who buy fast cars look at the quarter mile, the 0-60 and the 100-0 times. And a skid pad rating for more European types.. The point is that the PPC fails in all three, its slow comparatively, proprietary and expensive. Its has the proper endian, but Intel is out there so most code is Intel endian clean, not PPC making running ports on OS X/PPC slightly problematic. The story goes that Steve told Chris Galvin of Motorola to get out some faster chips, and as part of that demand he send a Dell PC running OS X to Galvin's office. Corporate megalomaniac antics are a far from reality at this point - but I can only hope for x86 OS X. Some zealots will mod down for this, and cry Altivec, go right ahead.
Also, from the corporate IT perspective, I would like to use OS X for all corporate PC desktops. It reduces the amount of "crud" applications that can run there (Napster, Audio-galaxy, spy ware, things that mess with windows registry) its licensing and cost are far better, and Microsoft Office for OS X is better.
This is just another "Steve Jobs Fart." He is about to score, to land the chick, and he does this. Sequesters the best thing Apple has ever done on a niche. He knows that Apple goofs will pay for it, but is still not willing to put his money where his mouth is, if it is truly better and more elegant, he should make it so everyone can put it to the test. These people are the types who sit down in front of a plate of steak, bread, mashed potatoes, and looks at a fork, a spoon and a knife. The pick up the spoon and refuse to use anything else holding the spoon high above and screaming this is the physical incarnation of the savior, the spoon. Its not hard to sell to the spoon only types, as they are zealots.
One can only hope to see OS X on x86. One can only hope to see Steve finally score with that chick without getting kicked aside by some "nerd" named Bill who has better bowel control.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
You can (or could, last I checked) get Office v.X for $150 with the purchase of a new mac. Quite a deal.
--Dan
First, the Microsoft trial still hasn't been finished and nothing in the proposed settlement really makes a difference for the Dells and Sonys of the world. None of them ship Linux as a regular and promoted desktop now. They didn't hop onto BeOS and it had no licensing fees toward the end.
Additionally, one reason Apple works so well is that they control all aspects of the platform, hardware and software. Microsoft would love to have this power but they have to deal with every piece of garbage add-on card that comes out. I don't have a problem with Apple having this control, because they're peanuts compared to MSFT. Without control of the devices that people want to attach to the Intel box, Apple would end up with many of the same problems endemic to Windows.
I would say that Apple should stay exactly where they are. If they choose to move to an Intel box, they should provide their own hardware and not sell shrinkwrapped copies of the OS.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
NT/2K can and will run headless. You can use Terminal Services to remotely administer if you're using 2K. If memory serves me right, it requires a bit more gyrations to convince a Mac to boot headless. This is why people use SE/30s to run as cheapy web servers. The Mac will check to see if a monitor is attached before attempting to boot.
I'm a fan of Macs and use one every day to deal with the Internet. I'm also an MCSE/A+ and work with PCs on a just-about daily basis.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It would be really stupid for Apple to announce plans to start porting Mac OS X to x86 until at least some sort of ruling is out about the Microsoft case. Why not wait a couple months until Microsoft is somewhat crippled before releasing a competitive product? Along similar lines, I'll bet anyone dimes to dollars that when the Microsoft case's are all said and done with - the present case and AOL TimeWarner's recent suit - that we'll start hearing mumblings about AOL buying RedHat again. I think its only bound to happen.
It just doesn't make business sense to not sue the f*ck out of them first to cripple them at their own game before competing with them in any market space.
Just my thoughts.
--tom
Usually Cringley has some interesting ideas and some of them even make sense but this is one of his lesser ones that should go in the same box as his idea to build a custom-designed airplane in 6 months.
OS X would be terrible as a port to x86 hardware. Here's why:
I'm willing to bet that development and production of PPC hardware is a major cost center at Apple. Here's a much better idea: Abandon the PPC platform and switch to x86. This doesn't mean that Apple has to run on Dell machines. Apple can build x86 motherboards based on open firmware and omit annoying backwards compatibility features. Their hardware configuration will still essentially be proprietary but their cost for development after the changeover should go down dramatically. What it means is that Apple can leverage the tremendous investment in x86 architecture (both hardware and software) made by others so that Apple may design and build their systems cheaper. I'd be suprised if Apple hasn't researched this business strategy already. It just doesn't jive with their traditional culture of total platform control.
It would be a little sad to see the low-end of the PPC platform die but the market and business realities probably make x86 a more competitive and profitable platform. Oh well it's Apple's loss, not mine.
"Jobs is happy because Apple gets to survive, and Gates is happy because he has a harmless competitor that he can act all panikcy about."
Really? When was the last time you seen MS "panikcy" over anything Apple did?
In late January I bought a 667Mhz TiBook. This was my first Mac (not my first Apple, but the ][e isn't competitive anymore) ever, and OS X was definetly one of the reasons. For me, it's an OS with 95% of the Unix functionality I need, and 0% of the hastle. (It took a lot of effort to get Linux running on the Toshiba work gave me.)
OS X wasn't the only reason...Apple took a very sexy platform and put a sexy OS on it. Would I have bought the TiBook running Windows? Probably not. But I could go for OS X on another platform (if the TiBook didn't exist), it's just the that the features of the hardware wouldn't be as exciting.
As for the price issue, my TiBook came stock with:
512MB RAM
30GB HD
Firewire and USB
802.11b
DVD/CD-RW Combo drive
When I started trying to decide if I really wanted this TiBook, I priced out the competition. And what I found was that most of the name brand laptops that could come close in terms of feature set were $3500 or so, which is more than the TiBook. And none of them had a wide screen (which I love), or GigE (which believe it or not, I have used).
And even setting aside the feature set....this isn't some beige box that sits under the desk. It's a piece of hardware that's in my face, so to speak, and the form factor is exciting.
Apple's got killer hardware and a killer OS. For those that don't think Apple is price competitive then usually they're not being sure to add in all the features. I'm very happy with mine.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Strangely enough, that discounted price seems to violate Microsoft's own shrink wrap policy, that once you have installed on one computer, you can't install on another... So, how do you install the old Office version on your New mac (second computer) to get the upgrade to work, if you already had a Mac and Office installed.
So, yea, it's cheaper that way, but how exactly is it suppose to work for people out to try mac insted of x86?
Apple is competitive on higher end too... go shopping the websites and look for yourself
For what it's worth (to be just a little bit on topic), I've been using Win2K and Linux at home and OS X on a G3 Mac at work. The 10.1 update to OS X along with the Omniweb browser has made that my favorite platform, bar none, to surf the web. For games, it sucks.
Yeah, but this really shouldn't surprise anyone - the G3's video card is an old ATI. What're you comparing it against?
Honestly, I would rather not have OS X on Intel hardware--it is dog slow even on this 400 MHz G3 after all the updates/patches have been applied. What I would like is just a browser as nice as Omniweb.
Running OS X on a 400Mhz G3 is roughly like running Win XP on a PII 333 or so. Yes, it's going to be a bit on the slow side. Throwing lots of RAM at it helps, though. But expecting the responsiveness of a high end machine off that 400Mhz G3 is probably asking a lot.
OK, well, I think most of the open source community has been trying to do that for well over 5 years now. You suddenly have a way to make that happen that hasn't been tried?
Also, why is it Apple's fault that Microsoft doesn't cut them a great deal to bundle Office v X with new machines?
Where did I blame Apple? I thought I made it clear that I blame Microsoft for the lack of more people taking the purchace of a new Mac seriously...
Apple is just starting to open up stores around the United States (from what I've heard). If they were to start selling OS X on Intel hardware, their stores would flop (unless, of course, they started selling Intel hardware there...which I just don't see happening.) For them to consider OS X on an x86 platform, we're looking at a 180 by Apple of the same magnitude as Microsoft's recent security 180. But hey, who knows, maybe it'll happen.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
1. Release Windows for Machintosh: what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
2. Bundle IE with the OS, release Office for MacWindows: Microsoft Standard Operating Procedure
3. Discontinue support for IE and Office for OS-X: claim that the effort in porting Windows has consumed resources previously used for Mac apps. Promise updates 'soon'
4. Release products that directly compete with iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, iEtc... : replay the counter-Netscape strategy
5. Watch Apple dry up and turn to dust
Cringley uses Borland and Netscape to make his point. The more obvious conclusion is that "he who competes with Microsoft, dies." I don't think Apple users and shareholders would like that, would they?
All G4s have graphics acceleration hardware. Just because they have that capability, doesn't mean that they are using it. The software has to support the graphics acceleration before it will provide any benefit. Once it is properly supported, and graphics performance isn't strictly CPU bound, Mac OS X will prove more useable on lesser machines.
-castlan
Why would I want to run a hacked up proprietary OS derived from an older version of BSD when I can run the real thing? Or Linux. What's the point? What would you gain? The interface is nothing to raise an eyebrow at in terms of real functionality. It's bloated and cheezy. Yes, those stupid minimize/restore warp animations get old after about.. the 5th time you've seen them. What's the point? Proprietary is dead. Get over it Apple.
I don't know it it really is better on a Mac. I can't see how it would be.
MacOS 8/9: Applications install 99% of their stuff in their application's folder. Sometimes they install an extension in a special folder, I use an utility to manage these files. This allows me to identify them, group the files and delete them. This works great for a power-user. A reinstall of the OS can be done without many problems, most software needn't be reinstalled (no registry, copy the needed extensions with the utility or by hand). If you copy the preference files from the preference folder, you don't have to set up applications again (I do and sometimes go through it and delete the obvious cruft). I do this at most once a year and it works extremely well, bloat is very small (~50mb per year, mostly because I'm lazy and don't clean up everything perfectly). But the OS allows you to do so almost perfectly, Windows hides everything so managing installed software is extremely hard.
OS X: Some applications are shipped as self-contained packages, only preference files are left in the system (no (de-)installer needed). Others do install cruft, I'm still figuring out how to manage it (it's still a bit of a chaos, developers are still learning about the workings of the OS). I suspect this mess will improve in time.
Windows: My experiences with Win9x have been horrible, reinstalls were regular (but I do install a lot of software) and very painful (having to reinstall almost all my software). Win2000 is doing well for me, it's fairly stable and doesn't start to lose features (Win98->where did my OpenGL go?). So I needn't reinstall, which would probably be just as painful as reinstalling Win9x.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
iMac prices here
:P), 800mhz cpu, still only 256 megs of ram, it'll be $1800 since that's the only way to get the top cpu, that does include a flatpanel, but still that's quite a difference pricewise.
:)
:)
Sure you can buy iMac for 800 bucks if you don't mind 128 megs of ram, only a 500mhz cpu, and crappy ati rage 128 video, but if you want a *decent* iMac with a half ass video card (nvidia gf2 mx
Sure you can upgrade some things yourself, but most mac people can't, and won't. And you can't easily put in a new video card/faster cpu in an iMac. Whatever happened to the mac "flashship" line anyway?
I'm going to stick to my solid, name brand x86 hardware for the time being until Apple can compete again pricewise, or give me something extra that a PC can't do (other than pretty).
And on a side note, I've been doing without an office suite for almost a year now at work, running Debian linux, mozilla and staroffice (which is slow, yes, but it works for those few word documents I receive, and the p3-850 is pretty snappy). I haven't had one yet that it couldn't open. I don't think what I'm running for my OS is really all that complicated, sure some of the software is under par compared to things certain multi billion dollar corporations put out, but I get along. That's the price my cheap ass pays for free.
I'm a web developer so mostly all I do is programming, but do I get my share of spec word docs to look over and follow. And I still do have find a windows pc every now and then to make sure a web page works in IE's "jscript/activex scripting".
OS X is faster, smarter, prettier, and easier to use than any version of Windows
Has he even used OSX for more than five minutes? I mean, to actually get anything done, rather than just oohing and aahing at the wibbly bits of the UI?
I won't reiterate everything I've said before, but lets just say the OSX is the reason I run Yellow Dog Linux on my computer at work.
"Faster"? Try resizing a window. Any window. That is such an omigod simple fscking thing to do in any windowing system you would expect it to happen at least within the same aeon as you began dragging the corner.
"Smarter"? The Finder is useless compared to Konqueror or Nautlius (Nautlius's icon stretching with previews is sweet). And have you ever noticed how there is no "find" option in the Finder (apart from starting a completely different app, Sherlock).
"Prettier"? Apples notion of prettier, that is. Which means transparency everywhere and NO CUSTOMISATION. There are two colour schemes - Grey or Blue. The windows are striped which hurts your eyes after twenty minutes. The animation is sooo annoying. Compare this to my KDE setup, where I have the Luna theme, so it looks like Windows XP. This actually illustrates a fundamental difference between Apple and the rest of the computing world; Apple like to dictate everything about the users environment regardless of their personal preferences, whereas any other system would be configurable.
"Easier"? Easier as in having to click the "ignore" button twice on two dialogs in completely different places on screen after inserting a CD-R before you can write to it using the app you want to use. Easier as in having to drag disc icons to the trash to eject them, rather than having a big button marked "eject" in front of the drive (how can that be 'unintuitive'?)? Easier as in having no useful keyboard navigation (finally appeared in OSX 1.1; but still not actually useful)? Easier as in having only one button on the mouse - what next, a one-button keyboard?
What would actually be far nicer is if Microsoft ported Windows to ppc hardware. The NT HAL actually makes this relatively easy. Then Microsoft would have competition with Apple for operating systems. But Apple wouldn't allow it -look what they did to Be.
And besides, Apple would never release an OS for even a wristwatch if they didn't have complete control over every single component and couldn't disallow anyone else from making that hardware. This is how Apple make their money. It is also how they keep their zealots happy.
</rant>
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
"... Steve Jobs has been for months making these bold predictions that we'll all be making home movies with our computers, but I just don't buy that. What we do with home movies is shoot them then put them in a drawer or closet and forget they exist. ..."
3 0. html
Ref: I, Cringley:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200011
So, what does he want us to do with OSX on i86? Run MS Word?
This is the same guy who said "Broadband is Dead". I don't think Steve Jobs is going to pay much attention.
And if he does, goodbye Word on OSX.
ClarisWorks and AppleWorks run on Windows, but I've never met a Wintel user who owns a copy. It would be the same for OSX; the average Windows user would yawn, say "where's the games?", and reboot.
That's for the few that pay attention; most wouldn't read the second line of an article that has Apple in the first line.
If you NEED OSX (or some Mac function/application), you buy a Mac box. If you don't, you buy SGI, Wintel, a GameCube, or a pen and paper.
This article isn't that bad, but it's based on one MAJOR misconception: that Apple is a software company. Apple is not. Apple makes software IN ORDER TO SELL HARDWARE. Not the other way around. All of its money comes from Hardware sales. In order to sell OSX (or any other software) on x86 hardware, it would have to become a Microsoft type company - that is, a software driven company. This is a complete culture shift. It may work, but it wouldn't be the Apple that we all know and love (or not, whatever you think).
If you know how to get Office X for $150, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post the link!
Forget about releasing OSX to run on any X86 hardware. What Apple should do is release OSX to run on *their* X86 hardware! That's right, drop the PPC chips and start building their own Athlon systems with. Dual Athlons running OSX with a tested and optimized hardware platform. Oh yeah, go ahead and release OSX for everyone else with non-Apple spec X86 hardware but either do not offer support or seriously charge for it. I think I would make it gratis and simply not offer support.
I've always been a PC person. However, not too long ago I saw the light. I was in the market for a laptop. Apple's Titanium Powerbook, at 1" thick with a 15.2" display, struck me as the best notebook on the market, and I bought it.
... if you want the software, buy the well-tuned hardware to go with it. They work so incredibly nice together...
The hardware is incredible. OSX is incredible. My Mac runs Windows 2K faster than my Duron 650 does. Plug my intellimouse and 19" monitor into the powerbook, and I can run OSX on one display, and W2K on the other. (Virtual PC).
I don't think apple should bring OSX to X86. I'm not trying to be flamebait, but
I think that he gets it half right.
Firstable, it is true that Porshe buyers will keep bying them... and Apple hardware will kept being bought by the current Apple customers who will unliky step down to an IntelAMD based PC.
What he gets wrong is when he assumes that releasing an Intel version of OSX would fly. This is wrong, I think, for the follwoing reasons:
1) While the Aqua stuff can probably be recompiled to the Intel platform esaily, the Carbon apps (most of the current apps unfortunately) will not be.
2) You will never get MS to release an OSX Intel version of Office unless they are forced to do so, which looks more and more unlikely (as does a Linux version)
3) Porting OSX to Intel might be "easy" but supporting the zillions of INtel based hardware is nearly impossible. Even MS does not seem to be able to do this and relies on third party vendors to supply drivers. I doubt that these companies would rush to release OS Intel drivers.
4) Apple IS already a thread not only for MS but also for Intel and the Wintel duopoly. My simple example is that I have just dumped my crapy DeLL laptop for a G4 powerbook, replaced my Sun Ultra 10 with a dual 800Mhz G4, and purchase a new iMac from home. All this at a price that is competitive with what I could have gotten from any Wintel vendors. I know of several people in the process of making the same move. Apple is right to keep its hardware and OSX tied. This makes for a much better platform and user experience...
I can buy that argument. Which just goes to show that there are both carrot and stick arguments for Microsoft to not fight the Mac very much. As it turns out, the Mac part of M$ actually makes some good money as well. I don't know why that's true, and I've never verified the claim, but so I've heard it said.
C//
I never understood that either. I watch my friends gloat at me that their PC cost so little to build, $800, $600, $500... and they have all this AMAZING stuff in it, 1.8GHz Athlon CPU, lastest-most-awsome motherboard, 1094576GB of hard drive space, and 896MB of RAM, running Windows XP and the lastest Linux, dual boot, with a 32x rewritable burner in it.
And every other day, something breaks. How many ATX motherboards have they sent back? How many times has that Maxtor drive failed? Windows XP? I wont' even start with the FUD...
I have a Power Macintosh 8600/250 here. I bought it in 1998. It has probably been powered down for about 6 months TOTAL that whole 5 years. It runs better than the day I bought it (thanks to OS updates) and for 250Mhz and only 96MB of RAM, I can do a suprising amount. Writing code, Photoshop, it hosted a variety of 'net services (SMB share, web site, FTP, and AppleShare) all at once when I was living in a dorm. Slightly sluggish, but it's a 250. It does crash but in the 5 years I've had it, it's never had to be reformatted. And these are SCSI drives from Quantum (yes, one IS a FireBall, hasn't failed yet).
The point is, you get what you pay for. Buy a Mac and learn the right way to use it, and it'll last forever. I haven't seen one of these homebuilt PCs last more than a few months before SOEMTHING majorly wrong happened with either hardware, software, or both. So, save your money and spend top dollar, and you won' tneed a new PC every 2 years but every 10 instead. (And they even throw in a DVD burner)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I use iMacs at school and I honestly can't see why these things are soo great.
I mean, I can understand how they can be good with newbies, they're pretty damn easy to use. Also they can be great for school because they're pretty indestructible (compared to PCs which you can screw up pretty easily.)
And as for 'Aesthetics' I can really give a shit about that. Know why? After a while I get tired of the same looks, no matter how 'pretty' it is. The iMacs at my school are pretty and blue and all but they get boring after a while. All I want to do is use them, not look at them. I might as well date the next hot chick that walks by because she's pretty right? Even if she's some dumb airheaded broad.
Also, what's the deal with the one button mouse? I think that 2 is minimum for a 'real' computer. I've heard that you can use a USB PC mouse and the other buttons work. If that's true, never mind this argument.
All I'm trying to say is Mac's aren't that great. But I wouldn't buy a Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. computer anyways because I rather build it myself. And if you just want a computer that 'works' then I can understand why you would want a Mac instead of a PC.
And as for hardware, I can agree that Macs have better hardware, and if were ever to get a laptop it would be an Apple because I want reliable hardware and I don't want to mess with hardware that small and crammed.
Apple has come a long way but it's gonna take more than just 'prettiness' to get me to buy a Mac, it's going to take more games and the ability to build my own, before you see one on my desktop.
Here's something to think about; Perhaps one of Microsoft's stipulations for purchasing all that Apple stock a few years ago was that Apple had to cease all development on an intel version of OS X? Before OS X was OS X it was code named Rhapsody, and (if memory serves me correctly), the first two delevoper releases had intel counterparts. After MS bailed Apple out, all intel development ceased to exist. I know it might be a long shot, but maybe just a little too convenient at that?
It would have to be an act, at the moment. Gates is acting "panicky" about Linux, probably because it blindsided him and he cannot get his meathooks into it, has absolutely NO leverage against it at all. With Apple, he can PRETEND to panick if an antitrust suit calls for such an act, but know deep down that he owns Apple.
Course, I wonder how he felt when the US Army standardized on Macs after becoming fed up with the insessant virus and worm and hack attacks suffered via windoze?
Where the Army goes, eventually so will go the rest of the armed forces...for similar reasons. It may not be going to Macs (though that would be logical) and more into opensource alternative mixes, but it will not become a stranglehold of Gates.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Neat! A personal attack! I love those!
WildeBreast -- You don't have to like Macs, but you could at least thank Apple for basically engineering everything about the modern computing experience.
This is not written with flaming in mind, I'm honestly wondering how people can overlook the mess that x86 is in, especially regarding Microsoft, and think that it's an attractive market for Apple to enter with Mac OS X.
... why go up against them in their own backyard? Even Cringely has to mention courts and settlements just to propose that Apple ports to x86
... they take much more power and give much less performance
Here are just some of the problems with x86:
convicted monopolist owns exclusive access to hardware pre-installs; further, they have shown that they are always willing to break the law if that's what it takes to continue to exert their dominance
you can't get decent performance without a 60-70 watt CPU the size of a hard disk at a time when computers are shrinking in size and volume dramatically (in 2001, Apple's iBook and PowerBook both shrunk by half in volume); x86 mobile chips are a joke compared to PowerPC G3's and G4's
the 64-bit road map is a mess, with the current iTanium a complete embarrassment, without x86 compatibility
FireWire is only on about 25% of shipping machines, even today (FireWire is how digital camcorders, VCR's, pro audio equipment, and in the future consumer audio equipment, and such hook up -- no, they don't use USB 2.0 -- so why doesn't your computer have it on the mobo by now? Apple has been shipping FireWire for over three years)
x86 doesn't use OpenFirmware (the IEEE standard that Apple, Sun, and others use) and the equivalent BIOS is a mess - sleep doesn't even work right on many machines
most x86 owners and purchasers buy cheap over good; if they are geeks, maybe they can turn cheap into good with Linux or BSD, but mostly cheap is just cheap - people buy the box just to "have a PC", most consumers don't compare what the machines can actually DO, because many people have been taught by MS that the machines can't do much of anything, at least not without a consultant coming in to work some voodoo even to install an app (DOS for Dummies syndrome is still around - if you don't take to DOS like a duck to water, you are a dummy and better just shut up and pay the consultant)
So what's the point? To me, this is like somebody who uses a typewriter wanting a typewriter that looks like a grand piano because they saw a pianist using a nice grand piano. Apple's stuff is better for their customers because they work harder and their customers are willing to pay them a bit extra to get a lot more. It's not like the x86 market at all.
Hardware is obsolete every two or three years, tops. If you want Mac OS X, then get a Mac the next time your hardware is obsolete. Even if Apple were porting to Intel, it isn't going to happen for a couple of years anyway. So the argument here is, "Apple should port OS X to x86 to satisfy people who want it so badly that they 1) won't buy a Mac, and 2) are willing to wait a couple of years for the x86 version." Hardly a brave new place for Apple to go.
Where they are now is that the Internet boom is over, digital devices abound, Microsoft is in court all the time, Windows has no security and is riddled by bugs and viruses or multiple descriptions, and millions of people who are on their first or second x86 machine are becoming educated about computers, and how much Microsoft did not fulfill all their past promises about ease of use and reliability. Apple can't yet make enough iMacs to meet demand; they are selling 40% of their systems at the Apple Store to people who have never bought Apple before. The truest geeks are buying iBooks and PowerBooks (look at O'Reilly, the BSD conferences and such). The only reason that this doesn't look like a huge sales boom is that Apple's traditional customers are all waiting on OS X native versions of their apps, like Photoshop for all the graphics pros, and Pro Tools for audio people. When Apple's core markets start to buy into the new Mac with Mac OS X, they will be in an even better place.
Finally, one of the arguments that people use to promote the idea of Mac OS X on Intel is that it used to run on Intel. To me, this is a knock against the idea. Steve Jobs and Avie Tevanian used to be CEO and Head of Software Engineering for NeXT, and they ported OpenStep all around and got very little love for it. Granted, OpenStep lacked the Mac application platform that Mac OS X enjoys, and that's a huge thing, the original and most full-featured GUI platform, but still, why would they want to go down the road of trying to sell to x86 users again? They know the pitfalls better than anybody. Avie Tevanian testified at the Microsoft trial that "two goons from Microsoft" told him to "knife QuickTime" or there would be no more MS Office on the Mac. I bet they want as little to do with Microsoft as possible, notwithstanding the buckets of money they make together on MS Office: Mac.
And really finally, there is an air of looking backwards about Mac OS X on x86, like trying to rewrite history. Sorry x86 users, you bought into Microsoft's thing and now you have a lot of problems on your platform. Time to look to a future with open standards, and choose your technology with respect for the long term, so you don't end up five years from now looking over the Microsoft/Intel fence at the rest of the industry and wondering how much better your life could have been with UNIX instead of NT-DOS, Aqua instead of Luna (can you believe they couldn't even name their new UI look without making it seem like a rip-off of Apple?), QuickTime with MPEG-4 instead of Windows Media Player with MS-MPEG-4, Apache instead of IIS, and on and on.
I see no reason why apple cannot do exactly what they are doing now with the PPC and simply switch CPUs. There is no magic here, afterall. This would leave you with an Apple-branded x86 box on Apple-branded motherboards (subcontracts,etc), with Apple-branded HDDs, video, etc, etc. It would be in some ways a pain it the ass like Packard Bells and others with their special propriatory mobos, but you would be buying a quality hardware package, certified to work.
Sure, you could swap out components, upgrade, etc, perhaps moreso with an x86-based design than with the PPC but take it too far and you simply void your warrantee or Apple official support.
They could still sell quality Apple hardware and quality Apple boxes all nicely integrated to work 100% together but the CPU would just not happen to be a PPC.
There is not mysterious magic to Apple using a PPC vs anything else.
Apple could do two things: make a little money selling the OS for other x86 boxes, perhaps with limited support, and make more money selling fully integrated OS X-x86-based boxes that WILL work well together (they'd be tested every bit as much as they are now with the PPC systems).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Or for $1599 you get the 800MHz G4 tower, with 256K L2 cache, 256MB SDRAM memory, 40GB Ultra ATA drive, CD-RW drive, ATI Radeon 7500, 56K internal modem.
And of course OS X and 9, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie 2, Mac OS X Mail, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Acrobat Reader 5.0, Art Director's Toolkit, FAXstf 10.0 Preview, FileMaker Pro 5.5 Trial, Graphic Converter, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, PCalc, PixelNhance, Snapz Pro X
And 4 PCI slots, room for extra drives, etc.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
alright, why do many people use MS Stuff in the first place? Not because they love the explorer or the look, they use it because of word, outlook and excel.
There is only one platform aside Windows that those packages run on, it's Apple. I promise you the very minute this will ship MS will stop development for OS X versions of MS-Office...guess what OS the people will buy??
cu,
Lispy
I searched all the replies and was surprised that nobody has even mentioned GNUstep.
I'm currenty working on a project called SimplyGNUstep which aims to be the Mac OS X for Intel and likely other archs as well.
This will give everyone a source compatible version of OS X, minus Aqua.
I'm also working on an OpenSource (LGPL) Carbon API called Graphite, which will actually be a c-bridge to the GNUstep API, all Carbon apps compiled on Graphite will actually be objective-c GNUstep (Cocoa) apps (quite different than how Apple implemented Carbon os OS X)
SimplyGNUstep was posted on slashdot last month and I've been steadily redoing the source tree to allow easy maintenence and portability, the source will be available within 2 months (I don't want to release it until it's good cause it has to be built as "root" and can damage systems). This source tree actually builds the distro cds, it the FULL source. Graphite is in the planning/early coding stages and seems to be feasible, source should be avail at about the same time the next SimplyGNUstep is released.
If you guys and gals really want a OS X on x86, then help me out! When the source tree is put on cvs (it is a 1GB+ tree though) helping out will be snap!
A non GNUstep thing that can be very helpfull is a vmware linux video framebuffer, anybody wanna pick this up?
Thanks,
Chad
In order to use OS/X you've already paid Apple for a system, hardware and software and are simply upgrading.
The same will not be true on Intel or other open hardware platform. The hardware won't subsidise the software pricing.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Porting to x86 would be bad for a host of reasons, but the main one is that the x86 architecture sucks ass. What Cringely fails to realize is that Apple has never wanted to be the Ford of personal computing. They've aimed higher than that. Most of today's consumers consider Apple hardware "overpriced" only because they do not know how to measure value beyond the dollar cost of the item. Compare, say, a Dell laptop to an Apple iBook. Even if the Dell is $400 less, take a good look at it. It is made of cheap plastic. The hinged port covers will break off within two weeks. And it looks like it was designed by the same people who invented the pizza box.
Now ask yourself "Why is Dell hardware this way?" Because if it weren't, it would cost the same as an iBook. Now turn to the iBook, and admire its elegant design. It really is a well engineered piece of hardware, and while the G3 may not be as fast as the latest Intel offering, it's also nowhere near the power hog that the Pentium is. That means less heat, which in turn means less need for a loud fan. When I use the iBook, it doesn't make any noise (except sound that I can control). The Dell sounds like a a Black & Decker tool.
Finally, I can get pretty close to 4 hours of battery time with the iBook, which I haven't seen many PCs of similar capability do. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any.
This is why Apple shouldn't port OS X to Intel. It will cost them more to support what is essentially "crappy" hardware, and consumers who are too cheap to recognize real value will blame Apple for their inferior computing experience.
This was also the reason Apple dropped the idea of the Mac OS (they didn't call it that back then, it was Macintosh System 7, not MacOS 7) on Intel.
The story goes that Apple went to Gateway and showed System 7 running on Intel hardware. The head of Gateway said "this is great, and we'd love to bundle it, but you would have to give it to us for free, because we pay for a copy of Windows, for every PC we sell, even if we dont install it on the PC."
So you can thank MS for that.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
If you want a name-brand OSX machine, just get an apple, for christsake. Unless you do a lot of assembly programming, what do you care if your CPU is G4 or P4? Do you just have something against apple?
Wow!! I can get AOL for free with a Mac? Now I don't have to wait for days on end for a CD in the mail. Ooh...Acrobat Reader and IE too! OMG...did you say Mail comes bundled??!!!
Like Cringely or not, I must admit that at least he gives valid reasons for the point he's arguing.
I don't think it would really hurt Apple's hardware sales to release an x86 version of OSX.
I also think it would be good if consumers had a valid alternative to MS. Sorry, I'm a Linux fan too, but its still a work in progress and IS NOT ready for prime time. At least this way we have a decent alternative that is already established and proven.
On the other hand, Apple would be taking a risk to do such a thing. Just because its not likely (IMHO) to damage Apple's hardware sales, it could. Plus, in the larger scheme of things, Apple would also be shooting themselves in the foot unless they want the world to belong to Intel (and AMD). Wouldn't Apple rather that the G-series processors dominated instead of Athlon/P4?
Also, I must confess that I've grown weary of the PC (x86 archetechure), and actually perfer Apple's hardware these days. I've grown rather disenchanted with PC hardware. As far as we've come, I can't figure out why my damned computer crashes more than it did in 1994! I've played with a G3/OS at school for awhile, and I don't ever remember it so much as hiccupping. Can't say that for any PC hardware I've used, ever.
So while yes, maybe it would be cool to have OSX in PC, its a moot point for me at least, cuz my next computer's going to be a Titanium laptop.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
if this were something new, maybe i'd care. apple will not port OSX to intel; their users wouldn't forgive them. mac people are, to be frank, stuck-up. there is no room in the world of macintosh for "the rest of us."
1) I'm never going to buy a Mac.
2) I'd run OS X in an instant if it were available for Intel.
Gaining 'mindshare' is the reason why a port might be interesting for Apple.
1) I'm never going to buy a Mac
2) I would use OS X in an instant if it were available for intel.
Apple gains 'mindshare' which it desperately needs.
OK, this MacOS-on-Intel topic is re-warmed on the internet so often it's cliché, and Timothy's submitting it as an article is close to being flamebait, but I'll bite.
Let's all repeat: Apple is a Hardware Company. Cringley is deepley mistaken in thinking "Macintosh users will always buy Macs." - as evidenced by their quick adoption of UMAX, Motorola, DayStar and PowerComputing clones they obviously will not. Mac users buy whatever will run their operating system on, and as has been pointed out 1000 times in this endless debate the vast majority of Apple's sales come from hardware. Think of this: if you could get OS X running smoothly on your Intel machine, would you consider trying it out? So would most Mac users.
Still, if Apple thought they had a chance with this, they might have considered it. It's often been accepted that they already had a rudimentary OSX-Intel version deep in the vault. The fact is, without a structural rememdy to the MS Antitrust Case, there is no hope - MS could yank MacOffice, IE, and drive little Apple into the ground forever. And that's the lynch pin in Apple's decision not to consider releasing OSX for Intel.
The surviors fight the fights they can win and run from those they can't - and live to fight another day. Apple is nothing if not a survior.
Quite a few people have made comments like
1)Office would longer available on any apple lines, neither is Explorer. 2)Office XP++ wouldn't write in any format office X can read. 3)Office would never be available for OSX on Intel.
Bullshit. Apple would just have to lie, cheat and steal, like Microsoft did with IBM and OS2. They could pretend to cooperate with M$ at first, then renig. I think if anyone could do this to M$, it would be Jobs.
That's probably what it is. My friend's handwriting appears on a box in the movie. He works for The State (of Texas, is there any other?) and they throw away lots of boxes, and some of them ended up in Office Space.
I love the idea of having X on my intel box. I bought 1st gen powerbook when the second gen came out. That was probably the best decison of my life. I love OS X. but see the problem is Microcrap. people have said what about office and they are right. But also people are fogetting that Microsoft actualy OWNs a small but infuental part of apple. So they are holding a gun to apples head in two respects. Office and the stock. The only reason that Microsoft keeps apple around is to "try" and not look like a monopoly.
Putting OS X on wintel makes little marketing sense, it might
please a few people that like to roll their own cheap boxes
but they probably would run a pirated copy anyway.
It would be far more interesting to put OS X on Sun boxes.
There's no real overlap in market segment; Sun isn't going
after the home or laptop market and Apple, at least right now,
doesn't have anything in the big iron server market.
Solaris is ok, but it's not got much of a desktop environment
and some Sun customers might like to have unified access
to Office, Photoshop, iApps etc. New iMacs would make spiffy front
end terminals to big Sun boxes. And a partnership with Sun might bring
some of Solaris robustness and torque into OS X.
Plus, Apple's got a good appreciation for Java, at least better
than M$. I've heard that wintel is banned at Sun, which makes
the TiBook and iBook the laptop of choice there (hearsay, I
don't know if that's true).
I can't see any downside in having OS X/SPARC for Sun,
Apple, or their customers.
I would not buy OSX on the x86 for the same reason that I refuse to buy WindowsXP.
****IT IS FUCKING UGLY AS HELL***.
Thank you.
(blue + curves == UGLY AS DAMNED HELL DAMNIT FUCKING SHIT MAN.)
---- self subscribed Beige + 90 degree corner lover.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Moving OS X to peecee hardware would bring much of that grief back into the user experience,
plus the overhead and hassle with fat binaries for developers and their customers
OH Please! Cheap hardware is going to be problematic REGARDLESS of the OS or architecture. I've several PEECEEs and if I use cheap parts I have problems, if I use quality, I don't. Surprised, aren't you? Another point I want to make, I've used lots different computers in the 15 years I've been in computers and I only have one thing to say!
I've used almost everything over 15 years and after all of this time, I'm now an AS/400 user and developer. I only spend maybe %5 doing system maint things (not counting backups) and the rest of the time I can focus on the task at hand, not troubleshooting problems with my machines. And now with Linux and it's Unix services, the AS/400 meets every need I have with style, grace, and consistency.
This is not meant to be flamebait, I'm trying to make a point. This whole "my machine is better than yours" war is stupid and over-rated.
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's an option-- go to your preferences page and check the box (under "I, Cringely", maybe 20% of the way into the links). Then you won't have to wait for some karma-whore to get his weekly column submitted to be reminded to check his PBS column.
:)
(+1, Sensible)
I've been wanting to post something like this each of the last few weeks, but my messages would have been a lot more inflammatory, so I refrained
deus does not exist but if he does
... OS X core foundations on Windows XP/NT, now you are talking.
Yellow box has been killed. WebObject shifted to Java. Now if Apple would offer the Aqua Look and Feel and Services including CoreAudio, CoreGraphics, OpenGL, and QuickTIme (the full blow version, not the bad windows implementation), on top of Windows and Linux kernels on Intel, that would be the real killer thing.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
It would be great (read: healthy) competition for Microsoft, it would offer an alternative just for the sake of having one, it would impress us geeks. But there's also benefits for Apple, they'd have more money coming in, a larger consumer base, and a much bigger community. It would also convince those who stay away from the high prices of Apple hardware (relative to PC, I mean) to give Apple a chance.
Count me in!
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
I pity the fool who doesn't have access to academic licensing. I can get a copy of Office v.X for $199. I guess that is a great way for Micro$haft to get people into their product. It is good software, though. Office is a pretty slick suite, even if it is from the much-berated MS.
"There is not mysterious magic to Apple using a PPC vs anything else."
The PPC is a nicer processor to program for.
Dude, you're getting a dell! Only $900 for a smoking x86 system (plus maybe $40 for a 256 meg stick of ram), xp and ms works suite, everything else that *I* need, I can get free, sans games.
:), but you're kidding yourself when you say it's not expensive. For instance if my CPU is too slow, I can buy a new mobo for $100, new cpu for $150, and maybe new ram for $60, now I have myself a PC that's now with the times. Anyway, what were we talking about? :)
:)
Don't get me wrong, I love mac hardware. I love the idea of controlled hardware and an OS tuned to it. (I always used to be an Amiga man up until I found out I was missing out on doom2.
Oh yes, full blown Office Suites and how expesive they are compared to the OS. Damn it would be nice if everyone just would settle for notepad/wordpad.
Tongue in cheek response: If I paid a lot for my computer you bet I'd care about it.
Real answer. Yeah I know what you mean about "personality". I'd say it's just the old adage about something being greater than the sum of its parts. Although in the case of an apple it's more because of the software than hardware. To illustrate try loading one of the Linux PPC distributions. Note the big difference in "personality" even with no change in the hardware.
Yeah, I'm sure he's really eager to require people who want to use his software to have to deal with installing all that crap in order to use his stuff.
Now watch somebody make money selling a desktop-oriented Cygwin distribution. "It's just like Linux, except it runs on top of Windows, so you still get your Office apps." A double click on Setup.exe, a few Enter keypresses, and you have a working GNUstep environment. Sure, it'll take some time and money to get it built and tested, but I know people who would be willing to pay for such an environment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1) Anyone remember Solaris on x86 and how poorly/slowly it ran? Exactly.
2) If Apple does this, they will be giving up on their hardware business and its higher margins. Why buy a Mac if you can put OS X on your PC?
3) They will then be competing directly with Microsoft, and we all know what happens to those people. Just ask GO Computing, Be Inc, etc etc.
4) Apple's hardware business is responsible for great innovations like USB and FireWire. We need Apple, if for no other reason than this.
I also kind of like how Apple has its own way of doing things. I think it is very healthy to have a small, fast-moving company like Apple which is CONSTANTLY innovating. If Apple went PC, they'd go out of business, and then whose ideas would Microsoft steal?
PS - I am not even a Mac user (I write this on a PC), but I think Apple is a company which needs to stick around.
It's called Project Builder and Interface Builder. And (though it's not used because only PPC is available), the MACH_O binary format used by MacOS_X supports "fat" binaries which include common data segments, then code segments for each architecture. On Rhapsody/MacOSX-Server, and it's predecessors, I could click on check-boxes to tell Project Builder what cpu's to build for, and it would build binaries that would run on any of the listed CPUs.
Magic... no, just good engineering from Avie and crew.
i - This sig provided by
Yep - hardware is all the magic.... It's the way Steve Jobs wants it.
There was a post on Slashdot awhile ago (I know I should go find the link) that was pretty insightful to the way Steve thinks. Steve is a fully paid up member of the Style Council - cool design is his thing, remember the Cube - totally cool, and this was a total reprise of the NeXT Cube and they both bombed. Steve has an obsession about cool hardware and if you've eveer seen him demo OSX you can see him drooling over his candy coloured OS too. And do you get his "oh and one more thing' surprise fetish?
The point is could Steve ever bear to see his beautiful OS run on a beige box? Probably not. And he's a wealthy man having the time of his life - so why bother?. He has this company making these great looking computers, running a beautiful cutting edge OS and when he has time he can duck over to Pixar. I bet his idea of a great time is watching Monsters Inc on a Cinema Display running OS X. I have to agree - it's mindblowing.
So what's the motivation for going to Intel for Steve? He's having all the fun he wants, the business model is dubious - Apple is a hardware company.... I repeat HARDWARE company. Do you think that iPod is going to drive sales of computers for Apple... No. It's just more cool hardware. There's nothing about moving to Intel that does it for him.
I figure that Apple will begin to release more and more hardware products alongside their range of iComputers. It's much much more likely that Apple will support Intel based computers and operating systems for these other products... iPod will be the first of many.
So Cringley is way off - he doesn't get how Apple and Steve Jobs tick - he should stick to technology - this whole topic is too much about people for him to grok.
Cringley's remarks are about restoring competition to the market place, he uses Apple OS/X as a candidate.
But there already exists suitable candidates that have a large amount of software available, that could easily be pre-installed on computers.
The simple process is to dual-boot all new computers, and provide internet and networking connectivity through the non-Microsoft OS.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
That's true, but I'd wager most of the businesses (especially with the BSA thugs around) are paying for support with their Windoes liscense. How good the support is should be a topic of a whole new story.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Both Apple and Microsoft have used BSD-type licensed code to build large segments of their latest patent laden OSes.
But Apple has been even more aggressive at enforcing rediculous patents such as look & feel patents (the Aqua theme, for example). Furthermore, Apple's desktop is not any more user-friendly and offers less flexibility for users. I learned the Linux desktop for the first time much faster than my iMac.. I really am dissappointed by their OS and their company policies--but I do like the hardware..
--Matthew
I would rather deal with the beige beast than the
auqua beast in Cupertino. My experience with their customer relations dept is that they have little other than contempt for thier customers. Sure their hardware is sexy, but you are also stuck with their hardware monopoly too.
For anyone in the position where they are managing a bunch of Macs, but don't know what to do:
t ml
I would suggest you somehow get yourself a mac, and just play with it. Break it, have to reinstall, etc. Whatever, just get an feel on how things interact with each other.
http://www.macsurfer.com/ is a great website that tracks multiple mac news websites. Pretty much a twice a day visit for me.
Apple freely provides a tool similar to Ghost, you can read up on it here;
http://developer.apple.com/testing/docs/TNasr.h
http://www.macmgr.org/ includes a ton of resources when it comes to managing a bunch of macs on a network.
http://www.versiontracker.com/ is great for keeping your software up to date (it now also has a windows and palm section, even a subscription type program that will moniter software versions across multiple computers)
I haven't read any of the "missing manuals" by David Pogue, but he is a great mac writer, and O'Reilly makes good books, so they should be a good place to start.
I know it may seem obvious, but I wish I discovered the plethra of information that apple's knowledge base archive provided, and their discussion boards (you need to create an account to access them).
http://www.apple.com/support/
To think that people would buy PCs for brand...I hope that isn't true.
Seriously, that's the last reason I'd buy a PC. If just any computer with X and Y specs will do, that's when I buy a PC. If I want something that I know I can (dis)trust, I buy an actual brand machine, something with no x86, but with an Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC or whatever which hasn't been commoditized to bland genericity.
As for Cringley's question, "Haven't we seen this before," the answer is, "Yes; it was called BeOS." BeOS was basically Apple's OS for the Intel. That's not to say that Be couldn't have done a better job, but the point remains that we have already seen an example of the attempt.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
I love the idea of cheap hardware. Buying a nice Intel box doesn't really hurt someone that much when they're buying a computer. I paid $1800.00 for the box I'm using now, and I've had it for more than a year. A PIII 800EB with 1/4GB of RAM goes a long way, and will generally last me quite a while. To get the equivalent in a Mac (at the time) it would have cost me about $3000.00. So... yes, it would be nice to have MacOSX on an Intel box, but I'll tell you why I wouldn't use it unless I had a Mac.
The hardware Macintosh sells is not only good, but it's fixed. When you buy a game for the Mac you don't think "I hope this game works with my hardware," cause it's a Mac. Of course it works with it, that's why you bought Mac hardware. The point is that you won't have to worry about hardware compatibility. With OSX you'll have to worry about software compatibility (I think, can someone clarify if MacOS 9 software will run on MacOSX?) but the hardware is given.
So, I've been thinking for a long time that I'd save up and buy a Mac. If they released MacOSX for Intel I wouldn't buy it, I'd save my money and buy a Mac. But maybe that's cause I've used a Commodore64, an Amiga and a Vic-20. I like hardware that software is pretty much guaranteed to work with.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
PCs are faster as in games. That's where brute force matters. A Mac can kick a PC's ass at any Photoshop-type app, but a P4 will burn the hell out of even 2 G4's in say, Quake 3 Arena.
Perhaps, as another poster has said, Apple already have an x86 port. But if they are thinking about the future, and who will be making their chips in the future, perhaps that x86 port is a precursor (or part of) a port to the x86-64. Afterall to the best of my knowledge Microsoft have not yet said whether they will port Windows to x86-64 (no direct competition between Apple and MS) and AMD needs someone to buy the chips. AMD can also provide chips in the numbers Apple will need. I tend to think it will be better for Apple to consider an x86-64 port than a straight x86 port. Of course I wouldn't expect AMD's initial Hammer offerings to be particularly cheap.
Warning this part repeats a lot of stuff said in other posts
Firstly, he states that the greatest problem M$ have now is a general lack of competation on the desktop, true, but every company who has taken on M$ has gone broke, even when they produce a unbeliveable OS like BEOS (this he points out). Could it be that apple doesn't what to compete with M$ casue they don't play fair. He also ignores that M$ hold 40% of the shares of Apple, and that they would stop ports of Explorier and Office to the platform.
Secondly, He states that rather then introducing a software bundle they should go the OEM route, This would be utter madness, not only are people like gateway and dell losing money at the moment, It would undermine the market of PPC as a alternative platform to i86. Althought, I think he's right that people would still buy Apples regardless.
Thirdly, He claims that OSX is a great OS, while this is slightly true, there are points of contension, notably the register who recently tried to bribe one of the main developiers to kill the dock. Loads of mac fans seem to dislike the new UI. Also, PC fans would hate the lack of options to customise their OS.
Finally, I think that a OSX port would not be as easy to do as he makes it out as being. He ignores a lot of the problems alternative OS's have, things like the lack of support from third parties something which the open source nature of Linux let's it get away with, and Apple get away with right now by being a alternate platform.
This article seem's to be just wishful thinking, to me. It would just be a hell of a gamble to make. Not something that Apple would make unless they got desperate. What Cringely seem's to be asking is for apple to repeat a lot of the old mistakes that they have done in the past, mostly the same that Palm seem to be doing now.
Ok here's the meat
What apple should do is port their development environment to windows as an alternative to the windows API, Which, thanks to .NET seems to be turning into a JAVA knockoff. Objective C really is a joy to use. This action would be a nice compromise to porting the whole OS and gesture, it would insure greater cross compatablity between OS's, something which really should exist today, but doesn't. It is also something more likely to happen, since things like quicktime already work in windows (and sorta in Linux) and Openstep (which is basically OSX anyway, albert sans the window manager). It would also test the water for a full OSX port someday.
However, that said, I do think that there is the possibility that we will see a port of OSX to i86, though a leaked version, or a free software clone. But not something which will be marketed by Apple.
It should also be noted, that we are starting to see a lot of influence of OSX on non Apple platforms, in fact linux could end up as being the OSX for x86 in a few months, at least from a desktop perspective, also the OSX theme has been knocked off by everyone including M$ now.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
In 1985, Bill Gates sent a secret memo to John Sculley proposing to act as a broker to license the Mac OS to Microsoft's hardware clients. I will copy and paste the memo text from a Wired (Nov. 97), that is itself excerpted from the book Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Plunders, by Jim Carlton, published at the same time.
The memo
Bill Gates sent the following 3-page memo to Sculley dated June 25, 1985, entitled "Apple licensing of Mac technology":
Personal comment: reading the rather sound line of argumentation, isn't it somehow funny to see Bill Gates 17 years later opposing the same arguments in his attack on Open Source development?
--Explore and serve
Let's not forget one thing people, the days of having to support a gazillion different devices on a PC are over. Today so long as a vendor supports, PCI, AGP, USB, Firewire, TCP/IP, etc, it is simply a task of writing a device driver for the OS. In other words, we're living in a world of standards.
If I were Apple, I wouldn't miss this opportunity to port Mac OS/X to Intel hardware for anything. This is Apple's true last chance at becoming a major player and not just a niche player.
I have NEVER owned a Mac, but if they port it to Intel you BET I'm installing it and using it if I can (i.e.: if I get applications for it). Although I've used Windows all my life I certainly openly admit that Macs are just much more advanced than Wintel machines in all respects but two: cost and application availability; port the OS to Intel and the cost barrier dissappears and anyone can now buy a $500 PC and run Mac OS/X, and once software vendors (specially Mac vendors with ties to the PC business) see a new revenue stream (potentially MUCH bigger than their traditional Mac business) in the Intel platform, the apps will come.
I'm very glad people have started to notice that this is the right thing for apple to do, I myself have been proposing apple port its OS to Intel for over a decade now. Let's cross our fingers and see what happens, I for one would be glad to finally not have to deal with an OS (i.e.: Windows) that I hate so much for being so awkward, slow, and buggy.
Oh yeah, one more thing for apple: Please DO ADOPT the two or even three button mouse with scroll wheel, one button just doesn't work as good as a one-button mouse regardless of what apple says.
Jobs likes to say that Apple is the last company that can take full responsiblity for the user experience, hardware and software. That's pretty much the end of the story.
This is the sentence after the end of the story. They are probably keeping OS X's intel capability alive internally in case something bad (or, maybe, something worse?) happens wth the PowerPC. But even if the chip becomes an Intel chip, they will go on making it so that their OS only runs on their machines, because they want to remain int hat position.
Also, Jobs hates fan noise.
Liberty uber alles.
Wintel boxes often do better in games. However, most people agree that the G4 has better floating point than Intel chips. That plus the fact that 2 1Ghz G4 chips have been shown to outperform 2.2Ghz Intel P4 chips in several applications. I think the mac has plenty of "brute force".
But I agree, if I want to play games, I'd buy a pc.
Microsoft brought us Windows XP. I bought a Mac.
This is where I thought you were blaming Apple. I think that more than microsoft, Apple can be blamed for not advertising more the advantages of the mac over a wintel solution. I agree that a mac can appear more expensive that a wintel box initially. But as microsoft likes say against linux boxes, the total cost of ownership over time, can easily make the mac less expensive.
OK, well, I think most of the open source community has been trying to do that for well over 5 years now. You suddenly have a way to make that happen that hasn't been tried?
Not new, but tried and true. One person at a time. Show people how new box that spent $X.xx on still can't do things better than your linux / mac machince. ie:Wow you spent $199 to upgrade to office xp? I didn't have to and I can do this. Don't accept ms office documents if at all possible. Let people know there is a choice. By the way, the best time to let people know there is a choice is when they have just upgraded, bought the "dummies" book on the upgrade and are trying to relearn what they used to know.
Microsoft brought us Windows XP. I bought a Mac.
by customizing yoru choices at Dell, Compaq and Gateway.
You're either under by less that $50 or over by up to a few hundred.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
All G4s are using their capabilities to the max in OS X, it's only the first G3s which aren't.
When OS X properly supports the first G3s and graphics performance isn't strictly cpu bound, genetically modified pigs will start flying past your window...
Which is one of the reasons I'm programming a new operating system based on BSD, so you can get performance that doesn't make a G3 or old G4 feel like a sluggish intel pentium.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Apple won't release a general Intel port of OS X. It makes no sense for them to do so. Apple makes the vast majority of its revenue through hardware sales, somewhere around 90-95%. If they released Mac OS X for Intel their hardware sales would fall dramatically.
I'm curious to know if you actually read Cringely's article, which argues fairly convincingly that this isn't true. You don't respond to his point at all, but simply reiterate the initial claim.
You can't beat Microsoft that way -- look at what happened to OS/2 and its "Better Windows than Windows / Better DOS than DOS" strategy.
First, I am a die-hard mac fan. If you do not like them, stop reading here. Here's the deal, Mac keeps coming out with the best stuff and if you have been waiting to get a mac or worse yet you need a new monitor... the new imac is tight check it out on www.apple.com , BUILT IN flat screen. I want one and they are only $1800 for the top of the line and those can be modified if purchased Direct from apple. Anyhow, I think the PC battle is over and as ridiculous as this may sound MAC won.
What we need are cheap PPC machines, with dull beige designs.
What keeps Apple machines from being cheap is not the color, but rather the money required to develop, maintain and give away software and internet services with your hardware. For instance, if Apple had to work with razor thing margins, we most likely wouldn't even have Mac OS X in the first place, and the point would be moot.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
you can expect Apple to be totally uninterested in the OSX for PC idea
I expect you're right, but I doubt it has much to do with Jobs deciding not to gain too much marketshare. Jobs has historically wanted to ship a single box as a piece of art. He doesn't want people to have to worry about how the computer works. He wants the the complete experience to be seamless. This is pretty hard to do unless you have control of the hardware and software platform.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
You can get an iMac with OS X 10.1.2 on eBay for $300-$700 and a brand-spanking new one for less than $1300, development software included. There are no transitional development advantages to running OSX on intel. The open source Darwin with gcc is the most transitional Intel software necessary, and it's free. Main hurdles are differences in Windows and Mac OS APIs.
For those already developing for Linux, porting to OSX is trivial. With a free Mac X-Windows manager, for example, the GIMP (and most other Linux software) compiles and runs on Mac OS X without significant modification.
If OS X is released for x86, it would have to be for better reasons than encouraging developers to support the mac platform.
Apple shouldn't port their OS to x86 platforms we all know what Sun had to do recently because of Solaris 8, Besides Microsoft would hate it a probably stop making Office for MacOS on the other hand Apple could try to go in the IA64 market theres alot less competition there and PC will eventually all be IA64 in the long run... It would be a way to slowly infiltrate the market without taking any risks, driver support would be minimal, and apple could retract their support for it at any time if it turned out to be a failure... Because right now IA64 platforms perform bellow expectations in comparison with their capabilities. Plus is a 64bit chip im sure that will help alot as far as porting goes ...
Perhaps
Okay everyone knows x86 MacOS X is just not going to happen right? the reasons are obvious ... that means no more support for MS Office on the MacOS X platform and it also means Apple wont be making alot of sales with their hardware... Anyways lets say they did this... Well just look at a very similar example ... Solaris 8 is going to be discontinued for the x86 in future versions this shows this isn't a good solution at all for Apple... however i dont think all hopes are lost as far as seeing MacOS X on PC's, what apple should try is a IA64 versions of their OS rather then attacking Microsoft directly which would result in failure. The current performance of IA64 platforms with old x86 code which in most cases used is what is used makes the platform weak with current windows applications and perhaps this is where apple should come in since we are all eventually going to be converted to IA64 platforms anyways... Right now Apple would have an advantage beacause IA32 is a longer way to IA64 then PPC is to IA64 ... Making very easy to port... Also note that IA64 isn't as hard to support as the x86 architecture... It would be a safe attempt to break into the PC market without destroying their current strategy...
just wanted to point this out... XP runs dog slow on a 500mhz machine too... and i mean in real world usability tests, like using your fave big app and whatnot...
There's a difference between the consumer and business market when it comes to Compaq x86 PC's. I know from experience that the Deskpro line of PC's is, or at least used to be, a lot more compatible than the Presarios I've seen. Now I haven't seen that many of them, four reasonably recent presarios, two deskpros and a 'Professional Workstation'. The deskpros and the PWS were great with NT whereas the Presario line sucked eggs. My dad's presario is a model 5686 which I fitted with a 3Com 905B NIC and disabled the onboard affair, which strangely helped stability a lot.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
You silly, troll. :D
:P
Does this actually work? How many people are using your exo-skeleton OS? Do you charge for it? Is it capable of running on a non ia-32 platform? If not, why don't you put some of your efforts into the Mach MicroKernel, which has been ported between at least ia-32 and PPC. Then you could just implement your BSD clone in the style of the lites single server... or even as multiple services if you really truly do have your kernel split up as autonomous daemons as you claimed in a previous post to me. Perhaps you could raise a flock, gaggle or murder to outflank the hird of hurds of GNUs that will soon trample you.
silly, silly troll. You could really teach ideut blah1394@hotmail.com a few lessons about steadfast persistence. You definitely make a much better "ideut".
-castlan
I suppose trollvertising is inexpensive, but how effective is it? I'm fairlt sure that most of the limited audience you'll encounter would be put off by your method. I know that I never thought much of you based on your previous posts.
/. as my primary news source, and then as a barometer of public opinion. Perhaps this isn't the General Public in many cases, but amongst the rabble it does include a higher caliber of individuals than I usually encounter on a daily basis, and with much less social effort. The Newspaper is only for the rare particularly intriguing stories, as it tends to be unweildly. The television, while requiring much less effort, is too agenda oriented for my tastes, and ususlly fairly ignorant about issues so that I know more about the interesting topics then they do. Radio news is only interesting when I'm driving... otherwise, Opie and anthony is usually more entertaining.
Persistence is nifty, how does it handle data corruption? Do you use a filesystem, and is it fault tolerant? What kind of security model is employed? How does it boot? what kind of UI do you advocate?
I have heard a bit about exokernels, but I honestly can't recall much about them at the moment. Mach is admittedly ancient, but have you tried L4? How does your exokernel compare to a more recent "2nd generation" uKernel? Do your "failsafe core kernels" need to reside on the same machine, or are they network aware so that one system image can be distributed amonsts various hardware? Do you have a full BSD userland, from "top" to "whoami"? As for keymapping, both AT and ADB keyboards have escape keys. Did you ever consider equating "command" with the "windows" key? Then esc can be universal, and you have other options for keyboards without the Win95 keys. Do you use the Mac "power" key? You might consider linking it to the Win95 "menu" key (which exhibits right mouse functioanality in Windows, next to the right ctrl key.)
Well, that was about 21 questions. For the record, I actually use
Slashdot can be entertaining, informative, and If I really want balance, I can always read at -1. Plus I get to dispute the morons!