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Interview with Jordan Hubbard About DarwinPorts
Gentu writes "OSNews hosts an interview with Jordan Hubbard (of Apple, OpenDarwin, and FreeBSD fame) where they discuss DarwinPorts and how they compare to Fink. There is also a hint from Jordan that there might be some of the FreeBSD 5.x advancements to be found in Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) that is coming out, reportedly, this autumn."
The interviewer didn't ask for Hubbard's reasoning for leaving a dying free OS to join a dying company.
yes I'm joking
Trolling is a art,
Dying+dying = Living!! =)
Ñ'
Let us just hope that the Darwin ports don't fall prey to natural selection
...that's why they BSD-licensed the shit. But good troll!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Why don't Apple Port OS X to i386 machines? Surely they could screw Linux in the corporate world as well as snap at the heels of MS. Do they really make so much money from their hardware business? If so, I doubt it would die as a lot of people like Macs for the look-and-feel (to coin a phrase) and that wouldn't go.
Why so bitter?
First of all, it may very well be a free upgrade.
Second, if you don't think it's worth it, nobody is going to force you to get the newer version.
I for one am glad that Apple is heavily updating the operating system. It's a new OS and it's by far my favorite, but it still needs a lot of work to be perfect.
Why yes, it probably will cost $130 for the upgrade to 10.3 (Panther). Of course, there is no requirement to upgrade. If the new features are worth the price, then do it. I know that I will be upgrading.
I agree, that is a bit steep for a 1-year upgrade, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt on pricing before we start vilifying them. As for cost, I thought Mac-heads were supposed to be used to paying 2-3 times typical cost for stuff. (NO, that's NOT flamebait!)
The question is also, can you keep using 10.2 when 10.3 comes out? I suspect so. In fact, I kind of like the way this works - they release a new upgrade every year, but probably the last 3-4 years of upgrades work perfectly. This way, though, there is a *new* version of Mac OS out whenever you upgrade. That's pretty cool. So the only people who really get gouged are people who feel like they have to have an updated OS every year, which you couldn't even get from M$ if you wanted it. (Yeah, service packs don't count ;))
I've been using Macs since 1984, but I've given up now. The only reason I'm keeping my Mac is to run legacy apps.
Interesting, I wouldn't even touch the damned things until 10.2 came out...
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't agree, hp and compaq tried that one and end up with, big company with problems + big company with problems = very big company with lots of problems.
James
Bleh.. $130? I think not.. =)
If you're a student, you can usually go to your campus computer store and pick up a copy for $20..
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Apple is a hardware company that also makes their own software. The hardware has always come before the software, Apple I to present.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
When Mac OS X for your mom?
I think it is important to point out that the 2-3 times the *typical* cost will also yield you 2-3 times the *typical* stability and usability of comparable machines. Maybe there is an Apple luxury tax, but Apple users are more likely to be satisified.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Never, you insensitive clod!
as someone who uses computers for both research and creative purposes and at the same time need compatability with the masses (i.e. M$office compatability) I have finally made the decision to switch from my current dual boot windoze/linux config to mac. I can now run all the professional level music production software I need for work, my free linux apps, research group unix software and M$office on one system without the need for reboots / emulators etc...
I had been trying linux/openoffice/wine for some time, but to me mac osx is the ideal solution (despite the cost)
When hell freezes over. Oh, what's the point? I already answered this.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
If I want a Unix with spotty peripheral support and availability of applications, my choices are Linux and MacOS.
Spotty peripheral support? The only reason Windows has better peripheral support than either of those two is that hardware vendors supply drivers, and they supply drivers for the OS with a 90% installed base -- Windows.
But more and more peripherals are being supported under Linux and MacOS X. Some by reverse-engineering, but many hardware vendors are now stepping up to the plate and providing Linux and MacOS X drivers.
If you want to support Linux or MacOS X, then only buy hardware from those manufacturers that provide drivers. For instance, HP has open source (BSD license) drivers available for CUPS, LinkSys provides drivers for Linux (at least) for some of its products, etc.
If you don't like that OSes other than Windows have inadequate or missing driver support -- use your OS of choice and VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET and buy peripherals from vendors that provide Linux or MacOS X drivers, rather than whine and complain that Linux and MacOS X have spotty peripheral support. Or, better yet, get down and dirty and start reverse engineering products and coding your own open source drivers.
My journal has hot
Unfortunately. since OS X is still a growing system, I have found that the OS updates become required very very quickly. Many applications updates thereafter will make use of the improvements and break backwards compatability. This is even true with small updates. I would love this update if it were free, but I don't like being forced to cough up cash to keep getting bug fixes to my favorite applications.
i agree.
What siskbc said.
Mac OS upgrades are typically more interesting than Linux or even Windows upgrades as Apple tends to make it a point to add a significant change in performance and luxury to the operating system. Since Mac OS X is still relatively young, the changes you may see in 10.3 will be striking--or, to some people, a "Duh!" move.
For one, the Finder is the butt of jokes, and needs multithreading and greater power.
Second, I think Samba needs more work.
This summer, Apple fans should expect to see some serious shit. Strong rumors of the PowerPC 970 chip will probably come true (amidst NDAs) from WWDC as super-Mac hardware may finally arrive with all the system bus, cache, and 64-bit power that's needed to return Macs to compare reasonably to Pentium systems. Next, Mac OS X matures, and goes 64-bit compatible (if it's not already there).
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
You guys obviously didn't hear about the seeded developer testing of a "White box" from Apple. The case was welded shut to avoid intrusion, and reportedly contained an Athalon chipset. OS X IS ported to i386 and IS working. I don't see why Apple holds back, but it sure is cool to know that they have an ace up their sleeve...
"...these observers report that Apple has been serious enough about its ace in the hole to seed a few lucky civilians with prototype boxes - delivered heavily swaddled in layers of cloak-and-dagger security, natch. Specifically, recent testers report taking delivery of Athlon-powered boxes that Apple had assiduously welded shut to prevent prying eyes from ogling whatever other gremlins might be lurking inside these nondescript beige chassis." -MacEdition
I got nothin'.
Or, better yet, get down and dirty and start reverse engineering products and coding your own open source drivers.
Unless you live in the USA in which case reverse engineering could get you thrown in jail -- because congress is sure that by reverse engineering you must either be a terrorist or a thief.
Whew! I feel better.
--
Slashdot: Group session for Nerds.
Next time I go to a birthday party I'm gonna tell the person I give a present to that it's GPL-licensed. That way, if they actually use the present, they have to go give it away.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
That's what they told you to say?
Well, the masses will prefer the most inferior OS which is windows. Does apple expect to sell macs because "the masses" will want to use OS X so badly that they'll buy Macs next?
The thing is that OS X is already portable since its based on FreeBSD which is working on i386 just fine. The only excuse for not porting it is to make you buy apples, but that won't work because a) its dead obivous that this is a stupendous marketing plot and b) because OS X is no big thing and c) because Windows XP is much better.
I disagree that reverse engineering drivers is better than supporting companies that go out of their way to produce OS X/Linux drivers.
I want *supported drivers in the box* for my OS of choice, and I'm prepared to vote with my wallet for that.
While your case is good for Linux you are way off for OS X. This is especially true with your example of HP printers. HP provides Mac (OS 8,9 and X) drivers for all of their USB printers. When it comes to mice and keyboards both Logitech and Microsoft support Mac. Actually, almost anything that is USB has Mac drivers. The only time you are limited is when you have something with Parallel or Serial interface since those aren't typically available with a Mac.
I think perhaps you cut and paste your post from somewhere else and just added an "and/or Mac OS X" throughout.
If you think I'm kidding, you can rest assured that your Linux distro includes something, somewhere, that came into existance as a result of Apple's work, whether directly or indirectly. Yeah... you know fully well that things get ported from one free software project to another. That's the whole point. (Ever seen the BSD license on something in your Linux distro? Yeah. That's right!) And if it wasn't "copied" as code, it was "copied" in theory.)
I was an advocate of various Linux distros for a long time, until I finally tried FreeBSD. This was relatively recent: 3.3-RELEASE had just shown up in stores and I bought a boxed set that included the FreeBSD handbook. Not ten minutes passed after installation completed on one of my machines and I was hooked. Since that moment, I can't stand the SysV style that most Linux distros have adopted. SysV is just too complicated... all kinds of directory structures stretching on for infinity, and WHY?! FreeBSD puts everything at your fingertips. (No offense to Linux advocates and developers, as I continue to use Linux on many machines at home and at work. But I really do wish that BSD-style admin stuff would show up in more Linux distros... If I had the time to do it myself, I would have done it a long time ago. But as you know: 1, setting up a truly intuitive environment is difficult; and 2, I'm wasting all my time posting junk all over /. and don't have any time left to do useful stuff.)
Back to OSX... No, I have not switched to "the dark side" yet. I am waiting for Apple to natively support x86, which shouldn't be too complicated considering that the software they used to build the operating system is relatively portable. I would be all over an x86 Apple iBook. It is the hardware that currently prevents me from switching.
Oh yeah... and keep up the good work, Jordan.
I think you could have abbreviated that to "The finder is BUTT" without losing any accuracy. Seriously, I think Windows Explorer is better, and that must have been difficult for Apple to accomplish.
Second, I think Samba needs more work.
Well YOU just won the understatement of the year award! Samba implementation on the mac has been pretty spotty. I've had some issues with disconnects between the "apple" username and the "BSD" username, with the result that I simply couldn't use samba for certain user accounts. That has to change. Also, I can't mount stuff by hand really well from command line with mount -t smbfs. If I do, it will recognize it and give me a mounted volume icon. But then, if I go to eject it, it hangs with the SBOD (spinning beachball of death), and I have to force quit finder. Not cool.
Also, if they would change the way they do aliases/links, that would be good. It should be integrable with unix, and now it's not. I want to be able to create an alias under Mac OSX, and then, when I mount that volume under samba from a linux/windows machine, I want it to be navigable (if the alias is a directory). Right now, apple aliases don't work like that, and just show up as a file in samba. Not so good. I want aliases, in the future, to be implemented pretty much as symlinks.
So when you get down to it, FIX SAMBA!!! ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
academic pricing rocks. I got my first chem set there for science. blew my eyebrows off and I haven;t looked back since.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People, please, it's been answered already a thousand times. Stop asking!@@$#$%@
Uhhhh no, 10.1 costs $129, like 10.0 before it and 10.2 after it.
OS X is not based on FreeBSD. Its based on 4.4 BSD. The kernel is not the BSD kernel, it is Mach. The only BSD parts of Darwin are the userland tools which are generally inferior to the GNU ones. And all of the source released by Apple is under the APSL, not the BSD license (the APSL is far more restrictive than the BSD license).
Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the text of the last time I responded to this question. (And here is the link.) Please distribute this text/link to every nerd on earth so that we can dispense with this question once and for all.
The lack of clones is the major problem with Apple? Sure, it keeps prices high and marketshare low. It's true. It is the worst thing about the platform.
And yet, it is also the one single thing that makes them unique in the market and gives them value. The vertical integration they have (hardware/os/iapps) allows them to a) innovate their product line faster and more radically than some other hardware/software makers and b) allows them to sell an entire end-to-end solution (like firewire-imovie-idvd-superdrive) with a user experience better than anyone elses. These things are at the core of what makes Apple Apple. Take them away - take away the vertical integration by doing clones - and what you get is cheaper boxes and much rejoicing...and a dead/dying platform within 2 years because it has lost that which made it valuable to begin with.
Bonus point: Why should anyone care? Certainly Mac users should care, but others should, too. Apple has an influence on the personal computer industry that is vastly disproportionate to its marketshare. They innovate. Others follow. Therefore, a healthy Apple is good for the industry. Mac clones = bad for Apple = bad for the pc industry.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Though I sympathise with Hubbard's reasons for leaving the FreeBSD project almost a year ago, I was saddened by the fact as well.
Though FreeBSD as always, continues to evolve into an ever more mature, robust, and friendly platform for almost any purpose one can envision pursuing, the loss of one of it's founders, the man responsible for so much of the advocacy, and promotion of this wonderful system is certainly a setback, and likely not the best way to help it to embody everything that he loves in OSX.
When MacOS X for Intel/AMD architectures?
Next Tuesday.
It sounds like you're using OS 9..
the 8600 is less than 100mhz, so that may have something to do with it, i have a powermac 9100 that has 12 dimm slots and takes up to 1.5gb memory. it smokes on os9.2.2 :) seriously though, the 8600 is a dinosaur and 64 megs of ram is inadequate for anything above os 8.6, unless you are a wizard with extension, and that is probably not the case.
that 8600 can be ugraded to a viable machine. my 9100 can get a processor upgrade into g4 territory for a couple hundred (a bit expensive for my wallet), take 1.5gb ram, has 6 pci slots and plenty of room for 5.25 and 3.5 drives. the 8600 on the other hand takes Apple SIMMs and is not something worth salvaging as a mac machine. put linux on it and have some fun. the 8500 i play with with debian runs way better than my old ibm, which stacks up even in megahertz, disk space (ide on x86, scsi on ppc) and ram (32mb). they are identical for all intents and purposes, but powerpc architechture will always do better.
that is not a 300mhz machine, either. maybe 300watts, but that is upgradable to 400
10.2 was 80$ with student discount 10.0-10.1 upgrade 20$, 10.3 will be 80$ to students...or anyone who says they are a student and knows the name of a university.
Apple has shown a history of giving out every other upgrade for free. 10.1 was free, 10.2 wasn't, 10.3 prly will be. IMEO, anyway.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
All PCI-based desktop macs use either 168-pin dimms or are G3's or newer... sorry you don't win the prize!
Breaking and entering.
Asshole.
I just bought an iBook (I'm normally PC but I HAD to...long story) and OS X does NOT run slow on it. Now that the iBook supports Quartz Extreme, OS X runs smooth as butter. The G3 in the iBook is a different beast from G3s of old. In fact, it gives the 12" PB's G4 a run for its money in non-altivec software - and that's quite a bit of software. The only thing I would suggest is max'ing out the RAM to 640MB. But even at 128MB, my iBook didn't seem as sluggish as I thought it would (me coming from a P4 2.2GHz). I still upgraded to 640MB though. As the PC folks might have their "MHz myth", the Apple folks have their "G4 myth". Sure, the G4 is faster, but if you're not into photo re-touching, or rolling your own home video DVDs, you'll very seldom take advantage of the extra speed.
Well, personally, I could see how Apple would port OS X to Intel architecture mainly to use it as leverage.
They may build and sell a lot of systems, but it's a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of people using Intel or AMD processor in their machines.
Apple might have felt threatened that they couldn't push a chip-maker (like IBM) to give them a sucessor to the G4 quickly enough to prevent Apple computers from lagging too far behind PCs in the performance curve.
Therefore, they needed to make it clear that they weren't going to simply sit around and wait for someone to build them the next CPU. What better a way to send that message than to say "Hey, we have our OS running on existing AMD (or Intel) CPUs. If we're pushed up against a wall, we can go that route - and then we won't be buying *any* of the new CPUs you guys develop. So how about stepping up that timetable on production?"
Should I mod all these OSX-on-Intel idiots down, or mod insightful people like you up? Oh how I wish that one would turn into ten!
Fuck off, asshole. 10.1 did NOT cost money and you either know that, or you're a fucking idiot who can't keep numbers straight. I have one mod point left, but damned if I'm gonna waste it on a fucking troll like yourself. Go die. Slowly and painfully.
Q: Jason, why do you insist on simply dressing up the corpse of a long-dead OS? Wouldn't your time and money be better spent working towards polishing an already-complete OS that 95% of the world uses?
Good joke, wrong crowd. All Mac freaks know that Apple releases stuff on Tuesdays (typically). For at least 2 months now, and probbably more, both a new 15" Aluminum Powerbook and a new iPod have been coming.
Alas, not this Tuesday. Maybe NEXT Tuesday. Of course, nowadays the popular money is on Apr 28 (a Monday???), but who really knows.
When you said 20 minutes, the first thing that clicked in my mind is this guys having some problem. You definitely have something bad in your system and blaming it on Apple, if its really taken you 20 minutes.
Gather up more diverse experience in different macs and different wintels before making a judgement. Apple is known for its stability and speed over wintel in all quarters, not because a bunch of mac fans tried copying a file on a 486 running windows98 and 8 mb ram, with viruses etc, for 20 minutes, then gave up on it.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Are you dumb? The 8x00 and 9x00 line used the original PowerPC 601/602/603/604 chips. This was WAY pre-Gx chipset.
Moron.
I almost always noticed the exact opposite comparing my old 7500/150 (604e) and my old work 200MHz Pentium Pro (Both had 1GB Fast SCSI drives, I think the mac was a Quantum Fireball and the PC was a Matrox of some kind).
:). How do you justify a $300 OS (OEM ~$129, but off the shelf around ~$300 - assuming the Pro/Business editions)? I've made sure I get a new processor and motherboard with that $300, just to get the OEM version (and still save money). I usually need Word and Excel, so save another $200-300 by getting the OEM, as well (no, OpenOffice won't do - my manager likes to add features to the forms that aren't supported by OpenOffice yet).
The thing is, unless you've got a pristine, unfragmented drive with no bad sectors and a clean install of the OS, performance can easily be different using the exact same hard disk. Macs running OS 9 or earlier, like PCs running pretty much any OS, get bloated and slow in time due to massively sized registry or finder entries (the bigger it is, the longer it takes to search). For Macs running OS 9, you usually end up rebuilding the desktop (hold cmd-opt on boot) and defragging the drive (using a third party product like Norton Utilities). For Windows PCs, you use registry cleaning (regclean) and disk defragment tools (and eventually reinstall the OS, in my experience). Old disks get bad sectors, which are often found in write verification, so the computer may be spending several minutes testing and eventually invalidating a particular sector in the disk.
btw, it sounds like the mac has some extension conflicts, or is possibly running too many (basically a driver conflict). There are programs to deal with that, but I haven't used OS 7/8/9 in so long, I have no idea what they are, anymore. I seriously doubt OS-X would have that problem, but OS-X isn't supported for 8600s.
My current PC smokes my mac (OS-X box) in copy tests by about 3-1 (it feels about that at least - I haven't done any time tests or anything), but it also has over a GHz process advantage and the disk has an 8Mb cache (as opposed to the 1MB cache on my mac disk) - not to mention the drive being about a year newer. Both are 80GB/7200RPM drives. Interestingly enough, I get even faster (feeling) copies running Linux on either...
Honestly, it's not about faster and cheaper, though - if it were, you'd be using Linux or FreeBSD on an Intel-based platform (heck, I usually do - unless I have to do some word/excel crap for work or want to play a game
Now I'll defend commercial OSes a bit - the way I justify it, to a degree, is that Windows and MacOS are easier to use than Linux/FreeBSD/others. The other way I justify it is that many of the cool/useful games/applications can only be run on Windows or Mac, which requires purchasing that or those OSes. I think Apple has done by far the best job of abstraction and simplification of the OS objects (applications are self contained and not the collection of files you see on Windows or UN*X, for example), which is why many find it the easiest to learn. Microsoft, on the other hand, is easier to use than most UN*Xes, and fakes a lot of the application abstraction by using desktop and start menu shortcuts (and therefore, isn't _too_ much harder to use than macs). Microsoft did a wonderful job of wooing developers in the mid-90s and has built an impressive software base. Linux (and UN*X in general) pretty much fragmented into a bunch of interfaces (so lacks consistency), has a mixed software base, and lacks a consistent upgrade path (RedHat and Debian have made progress in fixing this, but neither is perfect, IMO). It also lacks the ease of use, especially for set up. I can train my mom to use KDE, but train her to install linux? Forget it. Some packages have improved, but I still get asked questions like how I want my disk partitioned, and most of my computer savvy friends (from a user standpoint) don't know what that means, so do you think my mom could figure it out (she's not exactly a computer idiot, either)? We're talking fundamental stuff, but it's still beyond the scope of the average user.
do not feed him, he posts this to every apple story. plus hes wanking it to the fact that you people are responding to him, yes even this post too.
Wow man, you really like to post this, don't you... http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59343&threshol d=0&commentsort=3&tid=179&mode=thread&cid=5644317. If you have been waiting for that file copy for the weeks since you've last posted, may I suggest killing that process? In the mean time, come up with some new material to add to our discussion, Mr. Troll.
today is spelling optional day.
Funny....I just set up fink on my iBook the other day after setting up XFree86. I plug in at work and can use xdm query to our HP, Solaris and linux database boxes. I use it has a handy extra terminal. I also do recording with my Bluegrass band with my iBook (why I bought it) and OS X has made it so I can use it at work too..(Oracle DBA) now that there is a OCI client, JDBC clients for 10.1 and 9iR2 for 10.2, OpenOffice and Mozilla I don't forsee needing Microsoft products for anything...(goodbye IE in a few days)
I am on 10.1 still but will be popping for 10.2 shortly as drivers and audio apps are now ready for my MOTU 828. (no need for MacOS 9.2 then)
(I don't work for Apple BTW)
Certainly OS X is IMHO the most interesting OS right now.
I say if you are buying a notebook get a Mac...intall fink, Mozilla, OpenOffice and leave MS behind.
Free-for-all is not the only way to go with clones. Apple could specify the standards and license fees to ship a clone and then put checks in MacOSX to only allow it to boot on approved hardware. Yes, someone will hack it, but the result will not be sold in CompUSA. Apple doesn't have much to loose, when they'll still get money from anyone who competes well with their own hardware.
Find out where the DEC guys who wrote FX32 are working. If they are at apple, you have your answer.
FX32, for those that don't know, was an add-on to NT for Alpha, that ran x86 binaries natively. And it was awesome. Although this will be sort of the reverse of that, the mindset is the same.
Anyone here familiar enough with FreeBSD 5.x to know what features Hubbard may have been referring to when he said "we'll have to wait for the 10.3 Panter release"?
Right, because you can of course run OSX binaries compiled for Motorola chips on an x86. Dumbass.
Oh, and be sure to convince Apple that people don't really mind noisy fans to dissipate all the heat (no really, those people complaining about the MDD Macs were just being sarcastic, Apple didn't really need to send out those replacement power supplies to be nice to their customers and give them back their nice QUIET machines!).
God, you know an architecture is dead when the best argument someone can come up with is heat dissipation and the sound of fans. Yeah, Motorola chips dissipate heat well, they don't run fast enough to make much heat! If apple switched to x86, the cost savings at a given processing power would leave you more than enough money to liquid cool the goddamned thing, with no fan, producing 0 dB of noise. If that's your best argument, you lose.
When you get down to it, the Motorola line is dead. Supposedly Apple is going to go with some 64-bit chips from IBM for their next major change. They could have gone with x86, but decided not to. But either way, staying with Motorola would have been suicide.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"As for cost, I thought Mac-heads were supposed to be used to paying 2-3 times typical cost for stuff."
You lack historical perspective.
What THIS Mac Head is used to is getting his OS for free. I didn't pay for OS 5, 6, or 7.
What happended to the good old days when you could just wander into the local mom & pop Apple retailer with a couple blank floppies and they would gleefully (and legally) dup it for you?
This Mac Head was quite accustomed to paying $0.00, thank you.
No. Command-Option-Escape is more or less a GUI wrapper for killall (dunno if it's signal 15 or 1 though).
kill -9 is stabbing him in the eye first.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Another good trend for peripheral support for Mac OS and Linux is that USB and FireWire have the "device family" concept, so generic drivers can be written and work with lots of hardware.
There will still be a need for product-specific drivers, and sometimes devices will not properly implement the generic interfaces they say they do, but this situation makes the playing field a lot more level.
I was gonna add that too but I forgot. :)
My journal has hot
you're shooting alot of blanks lately tsarkon.
you're just not very good at this troll thing, perhaps it's time to pack your things & go home to mommy.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3559
It's not like the G4 is THAT far behind the x86 architecture (which is dying, btw).
In 1997, when Apple was offering dual 604e-350 machines compared to Intel's pathetic Pentium Pro 200 (complete with math bug!) you didn't hear PC zealots calling the x86 architecture 'inferior' or blaming it for the destruction of Intel...
x86 is a moribund architecture. All modern x86 chips do "translation" from x86 instructions into their own RISClike machine instructions (think how fast those CPUs could be if they weren't hobbled by this). Intel is leaving x86, and AMD is only sticking with it to get Intel's sloppy seconds.
The PowerPC is relatively new architecture with a lot more room to grow. The POWER4 already beats the Xeon and Itanium, and the PPC970 will continue this tradition. And it will be true 64bit as well!
I know that many people claim they make the majority of their money from their hardware. But i'm not so sure about this anymore. Ever open up a Mac lately? Turn over the main board and you will sure enough find an intel nic. The only thing they make anymore is the nifty case, keyboard, and mouse. They resell the rest and i'm not so sure the profit margin is what everyone thinks it is. Its more plausible to me that when you buy a new mac, you are paying the suggested retail price for all the software included in one plus a small markup on the hardware. Just my 2 cents.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Ah, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf! We were wondering where you had got to...
Wow -- this comment's been stuck in the time machine since 1998. I feel so sorry for this guy. Won't anyone help him get back to the current position in the space-time continuum?
I would, but I'm late for lunch.
The 8600 is actually one of the faster pre-G3 machines; see this link. They go up to 300 MHz and take the same RAM DIMMs that your 8500 takes. The 8600's the next generation after the 8500 (they went from 8100 to 8500 to 8600 with the pre-G3 PPC midtowers, you see.) I have an 8100 and an 8500, nice little machines. The 8500's been a great Linux box with the RAM upgraded to 96 MB and a 9 GB Seagate SCSI-2 drive in it, running Debian of course :) And I've got it down to the point where I can pull the motherboard out in 4 minutes.
Actually, the way Apple and MacOS (Classic and X) do aliases is far superior to the way symlinks or shortcuts work. An alias in MacOS still tracks it's target until it's moved to a different filesystem. You won't gate a broken link until you delete the target. With Symlinks/Shortcuts, you move the file once, it's gone. I'll stick with my aliases, thanks. (Oh, yeah, and if you make an alias, the Terminal/shell treats it as a symlink.)
Jordan Hubbard is not in fact a core team member anymore. He resigned shortly before he left full time for Apple. I refer you to the following page for a a current list of FreeBSD core team developers:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/arti
I thought Woz was the Polock and Jobs was the Jew.
...but maybe it doesn't have to. Why not a dual platform solution?
Sun has Solaris for x86 and the last I checked they were still pushing a lot of Solaris on Sparc.
It doesn't sound like it would be all that expensive or complicated for Apple to support x86 hardware in addition to PPC, especially if they take the Sun model and get real selective about what will and won't run. They can use many of the low-level drivers from FreeBSD x86, which will ease most of their hardware burden.
The biggest work IMHO would be making the graphics layer work with PC graphics cards, but then again Apple already has a ton of experience with nVidia and ATI already -- couple that with a "limited menu" for supported hardware and you're off the races.
The purpose of making something like this available? It'd send a signal to CPU vendors that they are ready, willing and able to support other CPUs *now*, not just through in-house portability boxes. It'd also give them an opportunity to improve their portability capabilities.
Would it make a huge dent in Windows? Probably not, but there's always a chance that it grab enough trendsetters and mindshare leaders that it could possibly move into places where it hasn't existed.
I just copied a 64M file from one folder to another and it took about 5 seconds. Something's wrong with your machine, dude.
Granted, I have a machine that was designed and built in this millenium...
Right, because you can of course run OSX binaries compiled for Motorola chips on an x86. Dumbass.
Uhh, where the fuck did I say that, dipshit? You seem to have a major reading comprehension problem. I don't know if you're trying to tie in the next point (that fact that few apps outside of Apple's own would initially exist for OSX/x86) or if you're just fucking stupid. Frankly, I don't care. I'm just bored.
God, you know an architecture is dead when the best argument someone can come up with is heat dissipation and the sound of fans.
Ooh, I'm so glad you're a mind reader, because I forgot to say in my post, THIS IS THE BEST ARGUMENT I CAN COME UP WITH. Thank you so much for clearing that up!! God, you know a person is a moron when they call any little example supporting the opposing position 'the best argument someone can come up with.' That,s right, you win. People buy Macs to sit and measure the sound levels and brag about heat dissipation. They don't actually do anything with them.
And then you confuse 'architecture' with one company's products based on an architecture. Motorola is not the entire PPC architecture! Wow, I'm going to try to be REALLLY smart like you and assume that because you didn't say something, you must not know it. Ready? Here I go, I'm concentrating real hard... NEWSFLASH, IBM's new chips ARE PPC! Same damn fucking architecture! And they'll kick ass. They won't beat the latest Intel has at the time, but they'll be a hell of a lot closer! I ASSumed you didn't know that because you omitted it from your dumbass post. Look at ME!!! I'm clever like siskbc!!!
Oh, and the whole point, which both of you are too fucking stupid to grasp, is that OSX for Intel is suicide for Apple. They know that, but you're too fucking dumb to figure it out! Wow, you and Icy would make a fine pair. Go sodomize yourselves with a cheese grater.
Quite a short list to see a pattern..
I am so very very bored of reading /. replies to Apple-icon articles. They just go on and on about whether OSX sucks/rules or Apple hardware sucks/rules or Apple the company sucks/rules.
Come on, post something relevant. Tell me why you love fink or darwin ports.
Me: G4 powerbook; OSX 10.2.5; love it. Use both as terminal and for development, before committing over to Linux cluster or webserver. And I do use fink a little bit, but mostly I get stuff from the developers' CVS or websites because it's not _in_ fink. BioPython; ncbi toolbox/blast; assorted other bio-this'n'that.
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
They just do not see a financial win/win return on investment, business case.
How do I know? I've worked at both shops and I agree the business case is just not there.
If you really want to determine the Annuity on that Initial investment then take into account all the maintenance costs, etc in broadening the driver base that HAS TO BE THERE for x86 MacOS X to be profitable.
Architecturally speaking x86's limited IRQ's etc really is annoying. Ask nVidia and ATI how much better they enjoy developing drivers for OS X versus Windows, and even Linux.
I'm waiting to get my hands on the IBM 970 in the next generation Mac systems so I can get back to using MacOS X.
For now I use Debian/KDE which I also love.
You have obviously never used a digital camera, a DV camera, or audio gear with OS X. I have yet to run into a 'consumer' grade digicam that I can't just plug into my mac, and let iPhoto take care of the rest. Windows requires drivers for most digicams, and even if you get a good driver, the photo management software suxorz for a good many reasons.
I'm sorry, but I just got a Mac a little over a year ago, and I couldn't be happier. I still love FreeBSD and tolerate various flavors of Windows, but my true home is now OS X.
Hardware Company. HARDWARE. The only way Apple could stay afloat, without a major company policy/income shift would be to have all the systems made in such a way that only Apple systems will run macos X. if the emachines for 300 bucks at the computer store down the street runs macos X just like a mac then Apple would lose access to their cashflow(hardware). So you want x86? fine, but you won't be able to use your p3 500 system in the corner with it. Apple couldn't afford it.
You have obviously never used a digital camera, a DV camera, or audio gear with OS X. I have yet to run into a 'consumer' grade digicam that I can't just plug into my mac, and let iPhoto take care of the rest. Windows requires drivers for most digicams, and even if you get a good driver, the photo management software suxorz for a good many reasons.
;) you know where to find it. ;)
Someone pointed this out above, too, with USB and Firewire devices, particularly with the type of gear you just mentioned, and I agree. What the parent poster is talking about with spotty peripheral support probably mostly relates to gaming hardware and stuff like that. And if Mac OS X isn't the ideal platform to play games on -- so what? If you want Windows (about all its good for
My journal has hot
Indeed, it has been said that the fact Apple does not allow clones is the worst possible alternative...
...except for all others.
Uhh, where the fuck did I say that, dipshit? You seem to have a major reading comprehension problem. I don't know if you're trying to tie in the next point (that fact that few apps outside of Apple's own would initially exist for OSX/x86) or if you're just fucking stupid. Frankly, I don't care. I'm just bored.
When you told the guy that if he wanted OSX on x86 he could implement it yourself. And I quote you,"You can do that now, it's just not cost effective. Duh, Darwin is open source! Modify it if you need to, and run OS X on top of your modified Darwin. Same could be done with x86, and for much cheaper." Fucktard. Guess you forgot how a compiler works, huh? Or that might assume you ever knew. Shitty advice on your part, poor guy's going to be trying to run OSX on top of his hacked x86-Darwin install now.
Ooh, I'm so glad you're a mind reader, because I forgot to say in my post, THIS IS THE BEST ARGUMENT I CAN COME UP WITH. Thank you so much for clearing that up!! God, you know a person is a moron when they call any little example supporting the opposing position 'the best argument someone can come up with.'
When someone is making a case and only uses a single argument, it's a fair chance that it's the best argument, except in your case it's because you're a dildo. So no, your lame argument makes you look like a moron.
Oh, and the whole point, which both of you are too fucking stupid to grasp, is that OSX for Intel is suicide for Apple.
You have made absolutely no coherent point for this, and frankly, I consider your zealotry on the issue to invalidate any point you would have had, except you don't have any. Why is Intel suicide for Apple? There wouldn't be any clone issues as long as long as Apple used proprietary Mobo's with proprietary BIOS's....like they do NOW! There are other issues to deal with, but any alternative is better than Motorola.
Honestly, you seem to have some serious anger problems as well as this tendency to lash out when people shred your ill-formed posts. You might want to talk to someone about that.
you shut your pussy bitch mouth you fuck-fag.
i dont want to hear your carmelized dog shit crap eructate from your pussy mediocritomaton mouth you fat unwashed greasy sexles fucking pig.
id fucking up and kick your ass if I ever saw you. and if you were "bigger" (not fatter, like the fat fuck i think you are) i get a taser and duct tape your fucking ass in a port-o-let and dump it on you fucking pigboy.
i hate you little pussy asshole anectdotal chiming in like this. i fucking hate it, bitch.
You dont get the context. The troll was referring to a reference hubbard had made to the freebsd comittee being like polish parliament. Sounds like Hubbard possibly got arrogant and had to find the most arrogant person in computing today to hang out with, Steve Jobs.
Now realize im kidding with the subject but hear me out. Its not that explaining why OSX on open x86 isnt _ever_ going to happen isnt needed at times; here in response to an otherwise very thought out parent posting qualifies as a good time to do so. But at this point it is hardly "Insightful" anymore. If anything the original parent should be modded down as unintentional trolling for not coming to terms with what any Apple user knows and many others (/. editors with Powerbooks?) are figuring out with a quickness. Apple is a hardware company when it comes to their coffers. Yes to a user it may seem like they sell hardware and software but to their accountants the truth is obvious: sick hardware margins keep Apple in business, period.
So again im not trying to come down on either of the aforementioned posts, please dont get me wrong, im just saying that this is about as tired as explaining why Apple ships a one button mouse.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.