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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Unforuntaely, this (Macintosh being overpriced) is not FUD. And I'm a Mac user.
The reason Mac hardware is considered overpriced is because the only thing we can compare them to is the prebuilt kits from Compaq, HP, etc..
There's no DIY aspect to Macs. It's like buying a dishwasher. Which is exactly what Jobs wants in the first place.
But, when you compare all of the Macintosh industry, to all of the x86 industry, the Macs do fall behind in the price department.
This is a visceral implementation of the Cheap, Easy, and Fast problem. Apple chose Fast and Easy. And implemented that well.
Rather than nay-saying anyone who has anything against the pricing of Macs as FUD-broadcasters, I think it is more important to point out how FSCKING SIMPLE AND COOL MacOS is compared to just about anything else in the non-free OS market.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
What is Apple selling? I would argue that Apple sells, "We are the computer company that cares about you. We try to build the best products we possible can." There's a level of trust and loyalty that people give Apple that is unmatched in the industry, and rarely matched outside it. Apple has that reputation because the company listens to customers. Yes, they make unpopular decisions, and a lot of people hate Apple. But Apple customers don't generally feel that way. They generally feel that Apple is doing the best that it can. Can Microsoft say the same? No.
Of course, Microsoft hasn't been able to reverse engineer the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field either.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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?
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."
Actually, the way he most likely intended that wasn't as namecalling, but as a way to point out that one of the big differences between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple products have personality. There's just something about an Apple computer that makes you care about it a lot more from the moment you get it into your home.
In November, I got an Apple G3 iBook. I love that machine. It does what I want it to, it does it smoothly, and with OSX it does it in a way that looks kinda cool. However, OSX isn't the fastest speed demon out there on a G3 processor, and I definitely need more RAM. But I haven't really regretted my purchase yet.
On the other hand, I recently settled a nightmare of support with Best Buy in returning an IBM laptop. I hated that thing. It was a total waste of my money. In exchange for it, I brought home a Sony VAIO with a Pentium 4 1.6. I can't respect this machine as hard as I try. I've actually had dreams about returning it and getting something else. Not daydreams, full-on-REM-stage dreams. It was a downer when I got up that morning and realized it'd been over two weeks and I couldn't take it back anyhow.
And this is a Sony, probably the closest thing to a "designer" line in the PC market.
Apple machines have a soul, it's there. But it's next to impossible to find a PC with a Microsoft OS that has one. I've even got two 50Mhz Sparc machines that I keep running for no real reason here at home, but the perfectly good 1Ghz Athlon that the Sony supplanted is powered down, dejected. My machine for several years, if you count it from the oldest component. Yet I find it hard to bother messing with it anymore. My iBook on the other hand... Yeah. I like it a lot. Still.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
"Uh?" indeed. He was talking about the OS developers. On the PC they have to worry about things like pre 1990 ISA (not quite) soundblaster compatible cards.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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.
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
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.
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
As for cost, the price of a high end Mac doesn't seem so unreasonable compared to similarly configured high end dual Xeon (and even Athlon MP) workstations. It may even come out favorably for Apple. The Apple entry level isn't so high, either. The cost argument has just been the most popular anti-Apple FUD lately.
As for ease of use, I'm still not buying the idea that Macs are easier to use. There are ancient studies and a lot of unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence, but not much proof of anything. I think it's pretty much a wash, and probably a dead issue.
As for speed, the G4 leaves me unimpressed. Altivec optimized binaries _do_ scream, but for >95% of the code you run, they don't seem any faster (MHz for MHz) than Intel's Pentium 2/3 generation. Binaries optimized for the P4's extended instructions, and account for the branch predictor that is woefully inadequate for its deep pipeline are also very fast, but in the PC world, this is considered a Bad Thing(R).
Of course, that brings me to one of the more interesting concepts: there is a perverse relationship between the Macintosh and PC worlds. Hardware/software/design deemed good by one camp is considered bad for the other. All-in-one systems have never been popular PC designs, and so on.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
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)
Just did the same BTO at Dell.com... there seems to be a slight discrepancy here.
I believe that Riskable made the same mistake I did initially... which was selecting a 15" CRT, rather than a 15" LCD.
With the LCD, Dell's offering rounds out at $1289.00.
I could locate no option to add FireWire.
Now which is the bargain computer? Hmmm...
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Compare two cars: Ford Mustang vs. Jaguar XK Series (I'm not going into great detail on the specific options/prices)
Both have 4 wheels
Both have a stearing wheel
Both have bucket seats
Both have CD Stereo
Both can drive you around town
Price of the Mustang is dramatically less than the Jaguar - is the Jag overpriced? I would say not, the two cars are of completely different classes, and as such, cannot compare.
What you pay more for in a Mac is the complete engineering and design. Some say ease of use, as well, but that is too subjective to quantify. The simple fact is I can attach/detach my USB camera, photo printer, scanner, MP3 player, mouse, etc. to/from my Mac without any bazaar configuration issues to deal with. A Dell, or any other x86 box, will have quite a different behaviour to the this practice. If you're using Windows, prepare for a blue-screen or two. If your using Linux/*BSD hope you have the correct kernel/module compiled and your USB subsystem doesn't panic when connecting/disconnecting devices rapidly (I have had panics in both Linux & FreeBSD due to a USB based KVM switch to share a single USB keyboard & mouse if I switch ports too quickly). This is what you pay for - a system that works consistently, without putting the user through hell just to get work done.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
(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
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.
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?
What you pay more for in a Mac is the complete engineering and design
no, what you pay for is no hardware competition.
Why do you think Jobs killed clones?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on