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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."
They do have Darwin ported.. (it's not really useful as it only supports very limited hardware..)
You also have to keep in mind.. if they're building an OS for their hardware, it's much easier to keep wraps on bug issues, etc.. If they were to move to intel, they'd have SOOO many device drivers to write, etc..
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
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)
Hubbard has said he joined Apple because they achieved the "holy grail", a easy-to-use UNIX-based desktop where he could hack and also play RtCW. He wanted to help so he went to Apple, while FreeBSD and Linux still aren't there yet.
This has been my own experience. After trying hard to use FreeBSD and Linux for a few years as my primary desktop, I just got frustrated. It wasn't worth my time, so I switched to OS X. And coincidentally enough, I also happen to work for Apple now.
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.
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.
How is that applicable to the discussion at hand? You are talking about totally different formats not backward compatibility for the same format. A better example would be my old VHS tape not working in a new SVHS player. I would bet a lot of people would be pissed if that was the case.
I can hack away all I like on my Linux boxen, play native RTCW when I'm done, and I'd say Jordan can manage to handle either Gnome or KDE.
What was your point again?
I hear this a lot, but to be honest I don't see it as a showstopper. There may be a billion and one hardware devices available for the PC, but that doesn't mean Apple has to write drivers for them all.
I really can't imagine it's beyond Apple to ship a version of OS X for i386 that supports maybe ten different motherboards, five graphics cards, five sound cards, ten printers and maybe a few things like scanners and firewire cards. If they were to do this, retailers could immediately start building systems for (say) £600 that screamed past G4 systems twice the price. I suspect this market would take off extremely quickly; and of course, as it did, OEMs with any sense would start writing drivers to ship with their devices.
I know as geeks what we all really want is to take OS X home and install it on our existing computers; but I don't think it's too unreasonable that we should have to upgrade some of our hardware at the same time - or of course write drivers for the hardware we already have!
Sounds like you're describing BeOS which didn't do very well only supporting 5 different graphics cards, sounds cards etc.
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.
Apple did that with the first round of clones and it went a long way towards killing them off. Apple makes anywhere between 20-30% in margins on every bit of hardware they sell depending on the particular product. For more expensive products like the super high end PowerMacs that is a fat wad of cash. They tend to make even more on their low end systems because they use much more commodity parts. If all the Macs sold in a year averaged $1800 a piece even a 20% margin would be a $360m profit on a million Macs sold.
Now let's say they make some sort of margin off licensing clones out. Say the margin is 20% but the average price of the clone systems is $1100, that is only $220m for a million Macs sold over a year. That is a 39% drop in margins. If the average price of clones is $800 that is a 56% drop in margins to $160m for a million Macs over a year. You'd have to pull a pretty fancy marketing campaign to sell 39% or 56% more Macs to make up for the reduced margins on the clones. Cheaper Macs might sell a little better than expensive Macs but there is STILL going to be the stupid "Macs don't have any software and can't be upgraded" stigmas attached which heavily influences sales.
Selling clones also kicks Apple in the ass in the fact a cheapo version of a PowerMac is going to outsell an Apple PowerMac simply because it is cheaper. So not only does Apple NOT get a sale of their high margin PowerMac they get a crap licensing return from the clone maker.
PowerComputing and UMAX put a serious dent in Apple's bottom line because the licensing fees didn't make up for the loss in Apple branded sales. If the Gap licenses out their logo to someone who sells the same exact clothes WITH the Gap logo for half the price how long do you think they'd stay in business? Letting a company outsell you with your own product is a dumb business move.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3559