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(When) Will Linux Pass Apple On The Desktop?
EisPick writes "A column posted today on Slate ponders projections that Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year. Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?"
...done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
Of course not. Two reasons:
1) Apple's followers are nothing less than fanatical; you will pry their Macs from their cold dead fingers.
2) Apple has seen the light. The costs of embracing Unix underpinnings and âoeMostlyOpenSource,â are going to seriously pay off. Soon, there will be nothing cool that comes out for the Linux Desktop that doesn't soon run on the Mac.
No worries.
like thatll happen
The SCO licensing fees should prove a healthy deterrent to future adoption of Linux. Windows, as the only desktop operating system untainted by the whole Unix mess, is the only secure bet for the future.
I hope the author checks out the keynote given today by old Stevie boy. I think the future for the Mac looks brighter than ever after today. FP!
I am not even going to RTFA ...
The mac desktop is millions of times easier to use, better looking, and generally nicer than linux. Never will linux desktop be better than Apple's.
Or when Linus gets the commercial and media attention Steve Jovs gets. Or when Linus developes a reality distortion field of his own.
today is spelling optional day.
if we all installed Linux on our Macs then what?
Why did you leave OS/2 off the list as Windows desktop competitors? OS/2 geeks were bashing Microsoft for years!
oh yea it will happen... I already see it as better in so many areas... I mean the new mac os is just a gui for unix... so why not...
I know you Linux guys are all excited about the penguin and the RMS and the hey hey hey, but seriously.
Seriously.
Maybe when it has Photoshop, Shake, Final Cut, Illustrator, Quark, Acrobat, etc...
Until then OS X has nothing to fear on the desktop.
Server side is completely different though. I run almost all Linux servers (one windows server and one sun server) but OS X kicks the shit out of Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment/etc... It's consistant, reliable and fast. Not to mention the coolest laptops around.
Not to whine or anything, but presently Linux has a niche and Mac OS also has a niche. Some parts of these may touch each other, but there are Mac users who wouldn't touch Linux with a ten foot pole, and vice versa. Right now, Mac OS supports far more commercial productivity software in many areas than Linux, something which many other of the "outmaneuvered" systems have not done. Considering Apples release of the G5 and the continuing improvement of both Linux and OS X, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux and Apple primarily eat Microsoft's market shares, not each others'.
That Steve Jobs will give up? I mean come on. He is the leader of a company whose brand loyality is through the roof. They are making money. And are pushing the boundries... all the time.
As long as Jobs continues to raise up religious zealots to the cause, Apple will never really be dead.
Also of note, who says that Jobs can't encorporate all the advantages Linux has into his OS.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
...nope.
The configuration files stop changing location from release to release.
I am constantly asked by people how to do things with Linux, my response is always the same, which version do you have?
Face it, the desktop market is not self supporting. Until support is easier with Linux, the alternatives are worth the money.
yea only if you beam all the mac fanatics to a different planet. otherwise i dont see any mac fanatic switching to any other OS :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Apple will never go away. Apple has built a loyal fan base that will stick with it through thick and thin.
I am not an apple fan... but I appreciate what apple brings to the table.
That apple fan base is going to remain constant. Apple is safe and it works--easily.
Linux and windows systems CAN be built to work and to work well... however, they also allow a lot of tweakage. A large portion of the users feel they have a muscle car, and they want to tweak, overclock, and customize that bastard of all of its worth.
A world with linux, apple, and microsoft--having the three of them is much better than having any two. New ideas, new flow, new users.
Davak
You didn't even read the summary. No one is saying that the Linux desktop will be easier to use, rather that it will be used by more people.
That's cool that Linux is getting a bigger market share, but I still feel that it's too hard to use for the average computer user. I can use it just fine, but I don't know if someone like my mom or grandparents could. That's pretty much the main place Apple pulls ahead right now. That may change in the future, and I don't want to start a big argument, but that's just how I feel things stand right now.
It was only a matter of time until the penguin would swallow the apple :P
As a linux geek who likes Mac OS, the big difference comes when I can make a decent linux box for between a half and a third of the cost for a decent Mac OS X box. You're right in that Mac users will always be Mac users, and I don't know that all that many people are going to flock to linux desktop, but for geeks it's not so likely to crossover to Mac for desktop use.
Consider also that linux gets most converts from people who decide to dual boot for a while, end up liking it, and tanks MS. The cost to try linux is as low as free - trying Mac OS X is a significant financial undertaking. So they're not going to get the casual switcher like linux can. Hey, that's how I switched.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
For an end-user, particularly someone unfamiliar with computers, the big advantage of Macs is that they are easy to use. The hardware is all pre-configured and the operating system is fairly intuitive. You can tweak it if you like, but it's not necessary for many people. It's possible that Linux might one day be able to compete with that, but unlilkey.
I think "market" implies a place where goods are bought and sold. Perhaps free copies of Linux should not be part of the calculation.
Seriously. As long as Windows beats them both to a bloody pulp on the desktop, it doesn't matter.
Apple users are just that, Apple users. They love them, trust them, and some may do things that i can't mention. They love the simplicity, and the pretty screens. Professionals, more specifically digital photography (even more specifically digital typesetting, the field of work i'm in) also love Mac's. Linux on the other hand, in the professional aspect, is still sort of a new player. In the server aspect, linux is still a front runner for professionals, but in the desktop environment, it's still..shady to them. They have system's they know how to use, and aren't willing to make dramatic changes. With the Mac OS now using unix-based underlayers, professionals are even more likely to stay with Apple because "hey, we still have an Operating System we're used to, with the dependability of Li/Unix in the background, Why change?"
your sins into me, oh my beautiful one.
what a reliable source for such a story.
If the Mac hardware wasn't so freaking expensive or the OS ran on x86 I think OSX would have lots more market share. Heck, I know I would at least give it a try.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I'm not sure why this is a big surprise... I'm more interested to know when Linux will overtake Windows on the desktop.
|>>?
Linux users upgrade their distro's more then Mac or Windows users. Are they counting users twice or even three of four times?
What about those who purchased it to play with it on an older box while using Windows as their main workstation?
Also do Linux users count as Windows users because they paid for an os each time they upgrade?
Since 97 I purchased 9 different distro's or versions of distro's. Redhat 5.1, 6.0, 7.0,7.8.0, Caldera lite ( shudder ) 1.1, 1.3, Suse 7.0, 8.0, Mandrake 6.2,7.1. I use WIndows most of the time now and use FreeBSD on an older box which is out of order at the moment.
I only purchased 2 versions of Windows during the same time period.
Does that mean their are 10 extra Linux users at there?
http://saveie6.com/
Better in so many areas? Care to elaborate, or am I just supposed to tell my boss "well, it's better...but only in vague, hard to articulate ways"?
The "new mac os" isn't a GUI for Unix. It may have BSD underpinnings, but that has fuckall to do with Unix, unless you happen to be posting from 1985.
It's not just a kernel and a gui in a box, either. It's a system. Like FreeBSD, sort of. A collection of software more than just an OS.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I wouldn't run Linux if you paid me. I use BSD, and MacOS only (and MacOS only at work). I'd be forced to hurt you if you sugguested that I run Windows. ;-)
(note: doesn't count for smart-ass slashdot comments)
linux 1% apple 2-5 %? i dont see apple losing much.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I love Linux. I breathe Linux. I make a business out of migrating people from Windows to Linux. My question is though, why should we even worry about whether or not Linux will surpass OS X in desktop usage or sales. If it's for acceptance in the marketplace for newer applications being ported, great. If it's for bragging rights, bad. Remember, it's about the best tool(s) to get the job done, not market dominance. We're not looking to eliminate competition (well, maybe SCO but that's another story for later on in the day), we're trying to add choices and solutions. We shouldn't be striving for all out dominance, we should be striving for the best tools for the job and let the people who need it decide.
Ok, I'm done with my rant. Mod this as you see fit. This isn't meant to be flamebait or a troll but I can definately see how it can be taken as one...
CliffH
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
That's the funniest shit I've read on /. in a long time.
Keep it up Tim.
Common sense is not so common.
From a technical viewpoint, Linux doesn't offer much to the home user:
Aqua's a nicer interface (of course this is subjective), and X servers are still freely available for it
Most (but not all) software for Linux can port easily to MacOS X
Apple's got better game support than Linux. Barely.
Peripheral support is superb under MacOS X - plug-and-play actually works.
sloth jr
Ran a little Win95 back in the day, and I'm stuck using Windows at work... but suffice it to say, I've got a LOT of Linux experience.
I can say, its not ever going to happen. Every single person I've ever talked to about it who believed otherwise hasn't used OSX.
I bought a mac, and haven't touched my Linux desktop since then. I run some programs off it via X once in a while, but there's no way in a matter of a year, or even likely five years Linux can catch up to the quality of a desktop OS produced by a company that actually hires UI experts.
Linux will always run my servers, but I'd be shocked if it ever runs one of my real desktops again. (Its happily running on my webplayers, though)
Apple is transforming itself. Yes, they're still proprietary, but their OS isn't entirely so anymore. They're also supplying some kick ass hardware now, so there's a chance that even your average Linux user might find an OSX machine well enough built to be worth buying.
For myself, I want 64 bit. x86 offerings aren't really completely available to me as I have been able to find, but I could spend a couple thousand to have a very well built computer with a version of UNIX (abeit, a rather interestingly tweaked version) already prepared for the exact hardware, including the multimedia aspects. That's pretty damn slick.
Linux is awesome for anything I want to load it on to, but if I an buying the high-end hardware, I'd probably run OSX just for the fit.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Linux will never defeat Apple on the desktop. To be succesful on the desktop, for the average user, you have to have a system that's very consistent and 'just works'.
OS X does that. Some will say that $DISTRO also does this, but, although Linux isn't bad on the desktop, it's nowhere near OS X. And it'll possibly never be, because of the heavy fragmentation in linux-land.
Besides, most (all?) apps that you'd run on Linux can also be run on OS X, so there's really no advantage in running Linux, for the average user.
Apple also has the advantage of being able to integrate the OS and the hardware.
Of course it's a different matter for the power user, or for server usage, but that's a whole different story.
A Dell Inspiron 8000 with the max options for a nice apple notebook?
I would trade my PC's in a heartbeat if I could justify the cost of a new apple notebook!!
I have this nervous twitch after playing with the new 17" notebook the other day. After being unsuccessful in trying to weasel a way to expense one for work, I've been dying for a way to get one!
-Rob
1. Much missing software. (Office, Photoshop, etc). Some of these have Linux equivalents but they really aren't the same. i.e. no graphics professional would use Gimp instead of Photoshop. There isn't an equivalent of Illustrator or Freehand. OpenOffice is still very limited in opening up Excel and Word files. (And is clunkier in my opinion)
2. Too much configuration. It is hard for Slashdot folks to realize, but keeping Linux up to date and configuring it is a royal pain in the ass. I consider myself computer savvy and I still have problems with Linux all too often!
Compare this to the Mac. Everything works the way you expect it. Plus you do get nearly everything that Linux provides. So it really is the best of both worlds. The only downside is that the hardware ends up being a couple hundred more than an equivalent PC system. And if you roll your own box (which most can't) then the price difference is even higher. That's a big deal to many people.
APPLE CAN EAT A DICK
I have been a windows user for a long time and now am switching to Linux. Everyday I become more and more attracted to Linux.
At the same time my attraction for Linux grows, I find myself more and more repulsed by windows. The repulsion, interestingly, makes me want to use Apple computers more too.
Perhaps Linux will just show people there are other options than windows and as a result make Apple's popularity rise?
Maybe Linux will help increase Apple's market share?
Linux, HUH! What is it good for? Absolutely Everything!
Okay, so uhh.. if Apple isn't a viable competitor to Windows right now, then what is? And if linux surpasses it in installed base terms, does that make Apple any less viable? The word viable here is really problematic basically.
But I will say this: The number of people likely to get rid of OS X in favor of Linux are about the same amount of people that ever ran Tru64 on the desktop.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Linux runs on all hardware EVEN Apple's. Apple, proprietary hardware that can only be bought from Apple. It's crazy to think that Apple could come back from their 5% market share. They aren't hungry enough for market share to cut prices enough to make their hardware competitive with x86.
Chris
Linux has mostly replaced conventional UNIX boxes because it can do (roughly) the same stuff for less money. It's never (I hope) going to be quite as idiot proof as OS X (because that way the idiots will start using it) - so it's not really going to attack there in the same way.
If anything Windows is going to get more and more squeezed between the two decent desktop UNIXish systems - at one end by the simple OS X, at the other end by the cheap Linux.
It's not a battle between OS X and Linux - they compliment each other and Apple even seem to be playing reasonably nice with the OSS community. The battle is for the middle ground, currently occupied by Windows.
Beep beep.
I run FreeBSD servers for personal stuff, but I've had excellent results with Apple's XServe in business environments.
Given that OS X can run pretty much anything Linux/*BSD can, why would you say it's worse for the sever room than Linux?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
What you have to understand is that after Jobs came in, Apple permanently gave up the idea of unseating Wintel dominance, or even gaining market share. Everything they do now is focused on extracting maximum profits on sales to their current fanatical user base, and keeping them locked into the platform for as long as possible. Even through the last few years of "success" their sales have been relatively stagnant and the overall market share has dropped. They are making money, more or less, though, so no one is too concerned. But there is nothing of the sense of manifest destiny and that empowers the Linux/open source community, nor the ability to run on practically any computer hardware, so in the long run I don't see how they could hope to stay on top of Linux (as long as the usability of desktop Linux distributions improves and continues to approach parity with Windows and Mac OS).
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Why? Simply because in organisations, on the desktop there gets to be a natural limit about how much support you can give. I have personally seen it in a number of large companies, Universities and the like, Linux is becoming "the alternative", as in "We support Windows and the alternative". Especially in Universities, I expect to see the rot of Apple continue and anything that happened today (apart from Panther's supposed better integration with Active Directory) wont change that
Would anyone mind telling me exactly what Linux "already has done" to the above OS?
Tru64 and HP/UX were both doomed as soon as the Compaq/HP merger happened, and I don't think things would be much different even if Linux wasn't around.
How about SGI? It doesn't seem to be an example of where Linux beat Irix, it seems to be an example of where ia32 systems beat out propritary systems in price/performance.
As for AIX, IBM may be doing a lot of talking about how Linux will eventually replace AIX, but it isn't happening now (nor do I suspect it will ever happen) so I don't think that's much of an example.
I'm not sure why Solaris is on this list... Sun is still going strong, and Solaris is doing just fine.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Will this happen in general? maybe.
...nope.
But will Linux ever overthrow Mac in it's niche markets. Probably not.
Personally, I won't give up my mac. I use it for a wide range of tasks from Music, to Video Editing, document preperation, and development in several languages (c, obj-c, java, perl, python, php, etc). I do have several linux boxes as well though. I use them for certain tasks (web server, CVS server, NFS), but they haven't replaced my main desktop.
I just don't know how I feel about this, there's now doubt that Mac is better on the desktop (and the laptop for sure), but linux has it's place.
Will linux pass mac on the desktop? maybe. Will us Mac users care?
I like linux quite a bit (it's been my primary OS since the 1.2 kernel days, and have been dabbling with it for quite a bit before then) but there's no way that you can honestly compare the user experience of linux and macs.
...) etc. etc.
Linux: still needs sysadmin-level tinkering every now and then (RH9 is nice, but if I wasn't as experienced as I am I'd have had some problems with it), has very few, if any, 'pro' applications available, interoperability with Office is still not very good (yeah, I can open Office docs, but they don't look right most of the time unless they're totally trivial) etc. etc.
Mac: extremely user friendly (too much so, IMHO, re: single button mouse) all the pro apps you can want (office, photoshop, cubase,
The only thing against macs is price at this point, and for a lot of users the 'apple user experience' is definitely worth paying for.
-- the cake is a lie
[quote]
Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
[/quote]
Linux may one day pass Apple by on the Desktop arena. But that day will come only when Linux can be used by those without intimate knowledge of their PC.
Think about it this way:
When the average person is driving his car, he's not thinking about the intricacies of the engine that powers his car. The only things he thinks about are (1) steering wheel, (2) pedals, (3) signals, (4) gear shifter. In other words, he's only thinking about the "interface" to the engine, and not the engine itself.
The average person wants his computer to be this way. Turn it on and do what needs to be done, and not have to figure out what why package so-and-so says "failed depencendy" during an install, or figure out all the work arounds needed in order to view, say, a Microsoft Word document.
Currently, Linux is no match for the ease of use that Apple and Microsoft (compared to Linux) offer in the desktop market. If the Linux community really wants their favorite OS to be accepted by the average Joe, the presentation (i.e. interface, documentation, simplicity of design) needs a lot of work. KDE is getting there, but it still can't match Apple or Microsoft. Try again when my grandmother can look at Linux, and with a short time (say, 30 minutes) of on-screen tutorials and simple instructions, she can send Email.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
When has Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris ever been a viable alternative to windows on the "desktop"?
Second place is the first loser...
So some of the lower-end boxes, that can be easily load-balanced, are being set up using Linux rather than Solaris / AIX / HP-UX.
What precisely is the 'Windows portion' of the server market, anyway?
Certainly not big-assed application servers that are the meat and drink of the big Unix vendors - in fact the 'Windows portion' of the server market looks tailor made for Linux replacement.
IBM probably isn't too bothered - the ability to run multiple Linux images on their big iron is a major selling point.
Bah - Slate is a M$ owned site, anyway.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
...there will be more Linux boxes in the field than OS X machines. Duh: they're cheaper.
This being said, no: Linux won't make Mac go away. Mac is solvent, well marketed, and--after today--on the cutting edge. People will still be willing to step up for a high-end Mac, particularly in Apple's traditional markets.
As an aside, I think a lot of Linux folks will wanna try PPC distributions on Apple's blazing new hardware.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
For me, Linux already has surpassed MacOSX, since I avoid Apple like the plague. (Why trade proprietary software dependence for proprietary software/hardware dependence?) Unfortunately, the other 9 Biochemistry profs here are Apple Addicts. What is needed for a full conversion for researchers/scientists? Absolutely must have Microsoft Word and Powerpoint compatability (CodeWeavers is close to solving this). However, EndNote (for writing papers/grants) and SigmaPlot (for graphing data) are still not covered. One thing that would finish the deal for scientists/educators is a good Apple emulator that runs on Linux - there is plenty of good/old Mac specific Molecular Biology Software that people are loath to give up. Anyway, I don't think Linux ascendency is as far fetched as some of you Mac people do. We'll see. Running the underdog operating system since Tandy CoCo.
I think, therefore I thought.
But now I'm not about to learn an entirely new filesystem layout, when Red Hat is working just fine. Once, I could complain that not all the tools are in Linux -- but with the recent spate of video drivers, audio editing tools, and cool CAD and drawing software, there's no ``killer app'' that draws me irresistibly back to the Apples.
...but I just don't see this happening in the long-term. Up until now, Apple has been reeling from Motorola's catastrophes and leftover problems from the Stone Age (aka pre Jobs' return). On the other hand, Linux is getting great press and has made great strides, both in terms of acceptance and the actual product. Given the abundance of hardware out there that Linux runs on (namely x86 for purposes of this discussion) and being free as in beer, many people have tried and liked Linux. It is also important to note that in the past few years when Linux has gained the most on the desktop have also been coupled with a recession where people haven't been as willing to buy new computers. It comes as no surprise to me that Linux might pass Apple next year.
On the other hand, I see a very bright future for Apple. This article couldn't be more timely as today we Apple loyalists heard some of the best news since OS X came out: the shackles of Motorola have been cast off for pure IBM goodness. With the G5 and OS X, I think Apple is unstoppable. Apple already sports the nicest laptops, and now the desktop offerings are equally awe inspiring. One of the biggest complaints about Apple has been that the are overpriced and underpowered. With the G5 fixing the power problem, I think the economy and IBM will help with the price. IBM reportedly can produce the 970 much cheaper than Motorola could produce the G4, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple tried to pass on these savings in the process of trying to carve out more than their traditional niche. Also, if/when the economy gets back into swing, more people will have the money and be willing to go for a pricier Mac if they believe it to be a superior machine.
Ithink their pre-installed Macs is a good job to help converting OSX fanatics back to reality :)
Less is more !
...but being based on BSD and such, it's pretty easy to port Linux software to OS X. Apple's stuff it more expensive, so for existing installations (i.e. business desktops) Linux has a huge advantage of working on existing hardware and being free. However, i see Mac OS X as a complement to systems like Linux and BSD. For home use, I'm not sure Linux will surpass OS X, simply because most people still are not familiar with it.
If Apple's prices where lower ($1999 for an entry level G5? I love Macs, but Jesus tapdancing Christ...) they'd beat everyone in a heartbeat.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Why is he trying to talk down at the Mac? Doesn't he realize that we are on the same side? Everything good for Linux is good for Apple in my opinion. We both are fighting the fiercless war against big brother Microsoft!
But let's come to the most important part: What do I think the future behold? All of my G5 upgraded crystal balls tell me that Microsoft will start to fabricate their own computers (they're already doing it with HP, right?) to the point where they can start to cripple people that run Windows on other machines than those who are branded with the Microsoft-logo. In other words Microsoft will sooner or later turn in to Apple because they are Apple-wannabes... While on the sidelines Linux will grow and grow for some reason -- can't really tell because all of my balls are cloudy on that issue...
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
To say nothing of it costing $120 each time Apple upgrades the OS. I paid for 10.1 just in time to watch 10.2 get released. I thought I'd simply do without the luxury of 10.2, but began encountering an increasing number of pieces of software that required 10.2 - not 10.1 - to work. The Apple OS is slick and beautiful, but may not be worth the extra $100+ every N months.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I think the opposite will actually happen. If I had never run Linux (i.e., stayed with Windows), I would have zero interest in OS X. It's the Unix core with the legendary Mac polish that makes OS X worth looking at, and the desktop user who wants a machine that "just works" is still a long way away from being ready for Linux.
LordBodak's journal.
...but outside the Empire, Linux desktop usage is gaining an incredible momentum. Not only in Germany, France and all over Europe, but - and that's really interesting - in Asia and Latin America. No wonder the article tells about a next year turn; all those Linux deployments in India, China, Germany and Brazil will start to appear in 2004-5.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
Well, Linux will certainly not push apple aside. Macintosh has a great product. But the price is what most people keep from buying one.
Linux (and opensource in particular) can become a true competitor to microsoft. Unlike Microsoft and Macintosh, it is less independent to the global economy. Large compagnies allready consider switching to linux, because of the cost of licences and support.
If linux can be developed to a powerfull yet usefull OS, Microsoft can truely fear it's progress.
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
This is what Linux needs to do.
As far as a graphical desktop...
I figured getting a mature E17 (not E16) Enlightenment(www.enlightenment.org) environment with Scalable Vector Graphics would go a long way towards this goal.
Of course the packaging systems still have a lot of evolving to do.
Of course there are plenty of other rough edges that need to be honed out, but in relation to Apple, these are the first two issues that come to mind.
McDoobie
Having recently converted my parents from Windows users to Linux users I can certainly see how Linux could quickly replace OSX as the number two desktop OS. They have taken to Linux rather well. Of course it's been like a twelve step program for them. Ween them off a little at a time. Show them a little more every day.
I have even managed to get them to keep diaries so when they have questions they are at least well thought out. If more people took the time to do this Linux could soon overtake Windows in the home market.
If Darwin was right, you'd be dead by now.
yeah but bills got his eye on penguin "source"
... i know ... i formally apologise
it was bad
Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
<sarcasm>
Of course it will! And it's the wealth of commercial-quality software packages that will get it there! Rumba, Photoshop, PageMaker, Framemaker, Flash 6, AutoCAD, MS-Office, Lotus Notes, Cisco VPN client, Acrobat full, Kazaa... These are all cool pieces of software that run better under Linux than Mac. NOT!
</sarcasm>
Seriously, Linux is great and all but to compare it to Mac is the height of arrogance. Look at Freshmeat some time. There are six times more projects under Software Development Tools than under Office / Business. There are more damn desktop environments than office projects! 435 text editors and only 66 pieces under Artistic Software. Mplayer is great and all but it still doesn't compare to Media Player. And it's the best there is!
Choice is great and if someone wants to write YATE (Yet Another Text Editor) then go wild. But to suggest Linux will surpass Mac on the desktop within the year? I've never owned a Mac and think that's ludicrous!
Hmmm I wonder how much conflict of interest there is with this appearing on the MSN?
When will the Amiga surpass Mac OS X?
This story is almost flamebait, and heavy on the ridiculous.
When exactly did it come about that everything has to be Linux vs. Windows?
Is there something wrong with there being a MostlyOpenSource, BSD-based desktop OS?
Can't Apple and Linux co-exist?
Can't they contribute to one another?
Can't they stand side by side to prove that the closed-source, privacy-robbing monopoly that is Microsoft is doomed to failure if it doesn't shape up?
I'm no Apple freak, but give Apple a break.
Maybe when it has Photoshop, Shake, Final Cut, Illustrator, Quark, Acrobat, etc...
How about GIMP, CinePaint, Blender, the various LaTeX environments, GhostScript, OpenOffice.org, etc.
Until then OS X has nothing to fear on the desktop.
Looks like it's time to get worried.
Server side is completely different though. I run almost all Linux servers (one windows server and one sun server) but OS X kicks the shit out of Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment/etc... It's consistant, reliable and fast. Not to mention the coolest laptops around.
The various window managers are very quickly gaining in consistency, but otherwise I agree with you there
"Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris..."
heh.
Hee, hee! Ho ho hooo ha ha!!!!!
Damn! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Speaking as a Mac user who started out and spent better than ten years on Windows before switching my desktop machine to a Mac and as an administrator who takes care of Windows and Linux boxen at work I'm saying it makes no difference to me if Linux passes Macintosh in market share on the desktop.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The percentage points Linux makes in desktop marketshare won't be coming from Mac users. They'll be coming from Windows users.
That's the "it's all good" about this situation. There's a ton of Windows market share out there to eat up so there's enough to grow a healthy Mac and Linux following. The two will play together far better than Windows ever played with anyone and the computing world will be the better for it receeding.
Macs, Penguins, doesn't matter. Better computing for everyone if this bastard (Windows) goes down.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
99% of Linux is on x86 platform, it is a threat to Windows, which is on the same hardware, not a threat to Mac, which is on different hardware. People buy a Mac for different reasons to those who use Linux. Most Linux users buy a distro and put it on the hardware of their choice, Mac users buy a package of software and hardware, getting a UN*X based OS in not the prime consideration for a Mac User.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I think the appeal of Linux and OSX are totally different. I think people run Linux on the desktop because it's cheap/free and or because they are "geeks" who like the technical aspect of fooling around with it. While Linux is getting better, using linux still generally requires extra work and extra effort
The appeal of Apple is the opposite. It's known as easier, but is generally more expensive to run because of the hardware lockdown that Apple has. It appeals to people who DON'T want to have to fiddle under the hood alot, as well as to certain markets that have a hardcore base of Apple users - education and graphic artists come to mind. It also appeals to people who want hardware that just looks so much cooler and has had much more design attention than most desktop systems.
I think the two can coexist and that there is minimal overlap in the two markets.
I have blog like everyone else
If Apple does this properly, they have an advantage over Linux for the desktop (besides the advantage of focussing their efforts on one desktop system instead of n): open source software.
Any software which will run on Linux can be easily ported to Mac OS X. Any software which can't be ported easily can be replicated without fear of a look-and-feel lawsuit. So, if Apple does the smart thing and continues to fund their core programmers and continue to make their API available und so weiter, Apple should be able to stay at least on a technological par with Linux for the foreseeable future.
Now, as for price/performance... if you've bought the expensive Apple hardware, you already have the OS. If you aren't going to buy the Apple hardware, for whatever reason, then you are much more likely to become a Linux convert. My prediction: if Adobe decides that releasing Photoshop for Linux is a good idea, then Linux will be in the process of wiping out Apple's raison d'etre.
I also purchased about 6 Linux distros, and downloaded countless others, but am currently only using one, so you can chop off another 5 users!
I mainly use Win2k on a server spec'd computer (Dual Athlon MP, Corsair memory with ECC enabled, Tyan mobo, Antec Power Supply, etc.) and have very few problems with Windows.
I'm neither a fan of Intel, AMD, Microsoft or Apple, but I have to admit the new Apple computers are jaw dropping.
I also like appliances that WORK 24/7. I turned on my DSC alarm system 4 years ago and it hasn't missed a beat. I put Sun and IBM mainframes in the same reliable category as my alarm, but these are servers. The new Apples might get there aswell for a few hundred thousand dollars less.
I'm a Linux zealot, I love Linux and all such, but I DON'T want Linux to hurt Apple or replace it or push it away from the market or...
Doh, especially that OS X is based on BSD which is a Good Thing (as opposed to many I'm BSD-friendly) and it would be sad to see it gone...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Has anyone taken a close look at the code behind Windows (NT+) POSIX compliance? Any old AT&T code kicking about in there? That'd be a hoot, eh?
I go PC for one primary reason. Standard ATX motherboards. I do linux for a number of reasons, but linux under the PC for one reason, standard ATX motherboards.
I would *consider* Os X only IF it ran on my present hardware. I don't see this happening any time soon. I would *consider* going with an apple only IF I could buy a standard ATX motherboard and pluging it into my existing case and power supplly. I'm talking new ones here, no e-bay scratch and dent sale. I don't see this happening any time soon either.
I'm not here to flame the mac, far from it. Only making a simple statement osx vs linux just doesn't apply to me yet.
People I know are shocked when I say lately i'd *consider* a mac, but my only complaints have been
1. No command line interface [no longer valid]
2. requires mac cards and mac approved hardware [no longer valid]
3. requires mac form factor cases and apple wired power supply [somewhat valid]
4. Purchace of a mac motherboard not possible on the new front [still valid near as I can tell].
I can say these things without it being a flame because they are true and affect my choice is purchace. While there are users of Frankentoshes, I would prefer geting my hardware from mainstreem channels.
Should Apple see in their wisdom to actually take that next step... they would very likely have another customer. My respect for Apple has grown greatly over the past 3 years and feel that their innovations have served increase our computing standards.
Apple provides an experience to the end user.
Apple studies the user experience from the on switch to the way the windowing system reacts to different types of input. Apple is the Ferrari of computer Systems.
Linux is not a lowest common denominator solution and wont be for some time. Linux is free and uncontrollable, which makes it alot more inconsistent requiring more maintenance etc, etc...
in this sense linux is on the other end of the spectrum from the Macintosh with windows somewhere in between.
just my $0.02
If Linux gains market share, it's not taking from the MacOS user base, it's taking from windows.
Or maybe that's just my rose colored classes that say windows will die and we'll have a MacOS+Linux Nice-user-machine+cheap-server computing utopia.
Start Running Better Polls
Thank you.
You're too funny.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I guess all those switch ads were just surrealist art, then.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Not until Linux (and Unix in general) becomes truely fanatical about a quality user interface. This includes such things as consistently protecting the user against dumb accidents (no more unrecoverable 'rm * .o' errors)
a really consistent interface (no more
Athena/KDE/GTK/... toolkits as the whim takes
the programmer) and, generally, not just
papering over the cracks but ensuring that the UI
is really seamless.
But I'm not sure that this is even possible in open-source land. The natural inclination is to do things your way, rather than the way laid down by the Great Committee. This is great in the sense that it has made amateur programming fun again. "Amateur" in the sense of for fun, rather than for profit; no implications on the quality of the software are intended. But it's not so great in that the user has to come to terms with the myriad incoherent ways of doing things that make up each work of art that is an open-source program.
Linux (at the moment) is wonderful for the community of Morlocks (of which I am a member). But Apple, if it wasn't so expensive, is still the only company serious about being "the computer for everybody else".
Just had to comment on this. Please tell me if I'm wrong here... ;-)
Quote from the article:
"Linux is basically a better version of their Unix products, for free"
We all know linux is free, but better? What consitutes better? I mean surely it runs on far more plattform and is highly customizable but Linux still has some catching up to do when it comes to being as stable and scalable on highend plattforms. Linux still suffers from several drawbacks in these areas. How good is linux when it comes to NFS implementation? What about large memory support?
As for the user interface. Anyone can run KDE or Gnome on Solaris so that part of usability can't be an issue.
The Mac is like my 2002 Prius, and an Intel machine is like my 1982 diesel Suburban, regardless of the OS. They might do the same thing, but I tell you what, I sure don't like driving the Suburban anymore :-)
I'm a linux guy, but I have to say, Apple has done a great job with OS X. I always disliked OS 9 (it was so damn ugly! comon, you agree!), but OS X made me think twice. My opinion is slowly moving in favor of Apple because of the great things they've done recently. While I'll never get rid of a standard linux desktop, I think my next computer purchase will be a Mac. I'm not the only one either. A good majority of my friends also feel the same way. I don't think linux is gonna overtake Apple. Both will become competators for Microsoft, because both are making excellent progress in there respective fields. It will be fun to see how things play out in the next 5 years....
Personally, I hope not. Linux has a lot to learn from OS X and the junky spiel you get from everyone about Linux being "hard to use" has some truth in its madness. You can't ask a typical idiot to go to a shell and ./configure, make and make install - it's all too overwhelming. And what about uninstall? Most of my friends haven't figured that out yet... what you can ask them to do is drag stuff into the trash can, because that makes sense.
On a side note, speaking as a music producer, I can't see much of the mucho expensive music software taking off on a free operating system... I mean, the price of Cubase SX, in comparison to the cost of Windows, is pretty outrageous to begin with, but when you consider that the whole rest of your applications, including your office suite, were free, you'll be even more apprehensive.
is Aqua. or more to the point, the INABILITY to GET RID OF IT. I firggin HATE the Aqua style, and the idea of not being able to change your WM and Widget style just seems so foolish. Every window manager under the sun has this ability, even Windows XP lets you. But not OSX.
:P
Until I can get rid of the horrible Aqua I will stay away from Apple. Seeing how that is my only problem with it, I hope some Apple engineer sees this and fixes it pronto
when will Windows pass Apple on the Desktop, with all those billions of $$$, why can't they get something new up. Longhorn, maybe in 2005, or later. How will Linux do this without a good finaincial base?
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The problem with linux for *normal users* are that their are too many choices.. somebody will have to cut a chunk of them out. The only company with the market clout to do so is RedHat.. and now that it is focusing on it's corporate workstation product we might see some improvement in the consumer version where they try out some of their ideas.
-
Having a competitor who gives their software away, has tens of thousands of independant developers and uses a fairly different business model has got to scare the sh©t out of them.
If Linux eclipses OSX you can expect to see some wierd marketing tricks from Microsoft. The question is will they continue selling their OS or give it away to compete and focus on applications.
Quack, quack.
Why does someone always publish an anti-macish article right before they release something big? Last time it was an article about how much better PCs are at DTP. Now this.
3) Apple does not make much money from OS X, rather from OS X *AND* their hardware platform. There is something to be said for tight hardware/software integration and good industrial design.
4) Most people are installing Linux on existing (mostly older) PCs, MS is still losing because someone is using a PC without upgrading to the latest Windows license.
5) There is nothing preventing someone from installing Linux on a Mac, but are they likely to buy a Mac just to run Linux on it? If the hardware is compelling it could happen and that would push Apple hardware which sort of takes us back to item 1.
6) OS X *is* a kind of UNIX and porting from Linux to it isn't all that difficult, especially now that they include X11. I don't see it losing out because there wasn't any software available for the platform (unlike, say Mac OS 9).
7) Mac OS X is relatively new and people are still moving to the platform. It could be a while before the numbers start to show.
8) In my personal experience, I have seen a lot of Windows and Linux users buy used Macs just for OS X. This would not be reflected in the marketshare studies.
9) Is it surprising that MSN would be publishing something like this?
You can get tittles on Mac OS X? Someone please post a link!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Did no one notice that the article comes from MSN? This is not some sort of paranoid idea. Microsoft is finally feeling competition from Apple, being that they are delivering everything Longhorn is suppose, but two years earlier. Mac OS X has enjoyed being best buddies with Linux, and together they represent a serious threat to Microsoft. If they had it in their power to break this alliance, they would, and this article proves it. This article is nothing more than propoganda bent at forcing to allied threats against Microsoft to go after each other instead.
It's interesting to wonder whether Linux will beat Apple. But I have to wonder if it's not more likely that Linux will beat Windows, with Apple remaining in second place.
Let me explain. I am a former Amiga and Mac user. I now use a Windows PC. When I bought my new computer, the most important factors in my decision were that it was cheaper than a Mac but easier to use (since I know Windows already) than Linux.
But imagine if Lindows computers expanded up the food chain a bit, and Linux expanded its desktop share some more. Now we have a world where you can get a pre-installed Linux PC that has good vendor support for less than a Windows PC costs, because you're not paying the Microsoft tax.
Would I then buy a Linux box? Very possibly. After all, at least in concept I much prefer using free software than being tied into a monopolist's offerings.
And I believe there are a lot of Windows users who use Windows because it's cheap and everywhere. But if Linux is cheaper and everywhere, and it's pre-installed on a wide range of PCs, then they might go Linux.
But in that scenario, Apple remains as is (because Mac users are willing to pay a premium for the overall Mac experience). In fact, to my mind, Apple's position is strengthed.
What's Apple's great advantage? That it controls both the hardware and software, and under Jobs' iron fist makes sure that everything works really, really well together. There are never any hassles, because the MacOS only has to support a very limited range of hardware and meet the exact range of user demands Jobs decides to meet, rather than being everything to everyone.
Now, if the great downside of Windows PCs now is that, because there are so many varieties of hardware/software, it's hard to get them to work flawlessly (so many conflicts/confusing issues), how much greater is that problem when, instead of a couple versions of Windows to deal with, there are the dozens of different Linux versions to work with?
Relatively, Apple's position is strengthened. Won't it be worth it for many people at that point to pay a premium to have Apple create a software/hardware package that spares them all those annoying incongruities of a Lintel PC?
Just a thought, explained poorly...hopefully you'll get the idea.
That surprises me a little; I know plenty of Linux users personally, but not a single Apple dude/dudette...
Linux is about as far from ease of use as you can get. I think Linux has a good 5 years to go before it's remotely viable for everyday users (ie non-geeks).
Whereas Apple has harnessed the power of unix and wrapped it in an easy to use system and Mom's and Pops are already using it, unlike Linux.
Someday Linux might bang heads with Apple, but I don't see that coming any time soon. Not when a standard install (install all) of RedHat 9.0 fails to allow you to even login (due to NIS and yp issues).
First off, Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris were never even MINOR players in the "desktop" market- at best, they only had the workstation market. Irix probably topped that market, followed by Solaris, I'm guessing.
Second, most stats put MacOS between 3 and 5 percent of the market, and growing. Linux has around a half a percent, and growing. Trends will continue- people will buy Macintoshes before they install Linux.
The difference between MacOS and Linux is that with Linux, the "I can't buy any software for it" argument is actually RIGHT. First- reality. Very few commercial applications run on Linux, and people don't want open-source counterparts; they want the real honest to god Microsoft Office or Quicken. Also, quite frankly, much of the stuff that ships with the various distros and pose as useful applications are, quite simply, feature-poor, unreliable garbage. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, even comes close to holding a candle to software like Illustrator and inDesign/Quark. Gnumeric SUCKS compared to Excel(and I say that having just having made a chart in Gnumeric from some very simple data, then trying to set options for tic spacing, background color, ranges, etc.)
Then, there's perception. I tried to 'sell' someone on OpenOffice for his new iMac, and he just wasn't interested. "I need the real thing" were his exact words. Before anyone preaches to me about how wrong he is- you have to understand that PERCEPTION and REALITY are two entirely different things- and one drives the commercial world, the other doesn't :-)
Please help metamoderate.
Thought the discussion was over Linux and MacOSX.
It's hard to predict what will happen in the future, but the article is talking about Linux overtaking MacOS "NEXT" year.
While long term (say 3 to 5 years) I feel that Linux will overtake Mac OSX, but this will be at the expense of Windows, not Macs as you suggest.
If Apple can produce the hottest hardware around, at a decent price, why would people bother putting Linux on Apple's hardware when MacOSX is good enough.
MacOSX is based on BSD...who knows, some Linux fanatics might just see the light!
I gave up on the Linux desktop a few months ago. Actually, there's no Linux on my HD anymore and there's a few reasons for that which I won't delve into (The distros I had interest in either didn't work or wouldn't dual boot with XP, and I NEEDED XP.)
I began using Redhat in 98. It became my primary OS by version 7. I even used it as my primary OS at home while I worked MS XP tech support. I always dual booted with XP, and used XP for gaming and OS research, testing, etc...
I stayed with RedHat until version 9. Actually, I used 7.3 up until version 9. I made the mistake of formatting 7.3 and installing v9. I quickly formatted that, then tried some other distros which I couldn't get working right with XP dual boot (XP makes it difficult, but I could do it fine in RH7 with GRUB) or my video card wouldn't work with their X11, etc. And I wasn't about to go through the bullshit of grabbing src and compiling it to find out it may not work, downloading and compiling in drivers, etc. etc.
Before totally messing with my Linux-based OS installs I had been using XP a lot more frequently. I had purchased a new 9700 Pro video card and started playing a lot more games. I gained nothing from this card in Redhat.
XP works fine for me. I can do perl programming with ActiveState's perl interpreter. If I need a Unix command-line I use VMWARE to run FreeBSD 5. I use VisStudio 2002 and .Net for development. I (*gasp*) began using and learning the Office products after realizing no one used the 'free' office software packages in buisness enviroments around here. When I want to pirate some music I fire up Kazaa Lite and begin downloading. I do my gfx editing in Paint Shop Pro 7, although GIMP has served useful.
You can post a list of alternatives to these products but I've tried them or care not to switch from the Windows counterpart.
I hope someone does make a decent Linux based desktop someday, there may be some out there now but I don't see any allowing me to be as productive as I am now.
If Apple would take OS X to the PC I would love to give that a whirl.
Maybe in 5 years but I think its likely that Linux will continue to gain steam and end up picking up published versions of the originals anyway.
I mean Gimp is powerful, but its only geek friendly and unless OSS developers start codeveloping commercial branches of these projects I have my doubts about the commercial viability of most of them (of course Openoffice aside, though I've got some big gripes about that one too).
Quack, quack.
Linux is not ahead of Mac yet.
I guess all those switch ads were just surrealist art, then.
Unless you can refute the claim that overall Macintosh market share has been roughly stagnant for the last 6 years, yes (no, fickle retail sales numbers will not do this, they are apt to fluctuate wildly and are not representative of larger usage). Of course they have to advertise, as much to give current users confidence to keep using the platform as anything. But the very fact that some of their ads explicitly targeted the miniscule segment of desktop Linux users should give a good idea of the kind of numbers they expect to respond.
Is there anyway to mod this article to +5 Flamebait?
Case in point: I installed Mandrake on a PC. I connected the PC to a printer which we found incompatible with Mac OS X. Once I set up the printer using CUPS on Mandrake, ZeroConf (i.e. Rendezvous) automatically shared the printer on the network, effectively making it compatible with OS X!
This kind of compatibility strengthens both sides, and validates each. Each operating system going it alone will not take either out of niche status.
A rolling stone is worth two in the bush!
Ever try getting 3DFX Glide acceleration to work?
/etc/XF86Config, DRI, and it still didn't work. On a Mandrake system, of all distros.
I still have bad memories about that. Hours of looking at HOWTOs, fucking around with
Installing hardware is a bitch on Linux. For example, swap motherboards and watch the fun on Linux as it halts on bootup. Windows doesn't give a shit either way and installs the chipset drivers. Better yet, swap video cards and spend hours getting XFree86 to work again.
I haven't used Photoshop for seven years, but GIMP really impressed me with its feature set. It's probably not as intuitive as the Mac counterpart, but I do think that it's intuitive enough, especially for the only person in our organization who'd ever use it -- the Webmaster.
Open Office, on the other hand, seems completely featured to me, though I agree with the general sentiment that more Microsoft Office compatibility would hasten its adoption. But for internal use its power and UI seem just right.
I think many organizations would settle for a less whiz-bang user experience due to cost concerns.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
There are far to many apple zealots out there. I mean seriously, these people ran the original Mac OS! About one of the crappiest OSs in the late 90s. I mean, no preemptive multitasking, no unthreading, barely any memory protection (guard pages only, and only in the very latest versions). I mean, good god
:P). Sure, it looks nice these days, even pretty cool looking. But Aqua is just smooth like that.
:P
Plus, Linux has a long way to go before there is a consistent UI that comes anywhere near the quality of OSX (sorry to say
Even if the hoard of Command line loving geeks is larger then the installed base of Mac users, I don't think Apple has much to worry about. The windows installed base was much larger then the apple and even when the OS was far crappier (since win-95 until OSX) and even when the hardware was slower and more expensive they stuck by their platform.
They are brainwashed. Nothing is going to change that
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You think Linux overtaking Apple on the desktop won't make a difference?
One of the biggest problems with Linux on the desktop has always been the lack of commercial software support. Apple has managed to do very well in that regard despite coming in a distant second place to MS. Linux might not immedietly get that level of support from the likes of Adobe et al but just how long can they *afford* to ignore Linux if it really does become the second most popular desktop o/s? How long before the user interface issues are dramatically improved with so many users giving feedback? At what stage will companies other than Walmart decide that theres money to be made selling desktop systems?
The only thing that can stop Linux eventually becoming a major competitor with Windows on the desktop now is lawsuits.
My machine is an WinXP one. I have not had a single global crash for over a year. My son uses OSX and I find myself playing with it and enjoying it. I find it very slick indeed. I love to play cutting edge games and my XP box is the shit. I am a big fan of Linux and I always explore the new Knoppix distro when it is released. I have bought both Redhat and Mandrake off the shelf at staples. The Mandrake purchase was immediately pitched in the trashcan right outside the door. I was not going to use it but I will support it! If all the distros would work together and get rid of that fugly, outdated, slow X11 interface and strive for something like BEOS had going on, Linux could rival both M$ and Apple. Right now there is no direction and X11 needs to be aborted.
Two weeks later, I was running Mac OS X pretty much all the time. Two months later, and I reinstalled the laptop to reclaim the disused space on the Linux partition.
Mac OS X is what Linux should be aiming to be: robust, easy to configure, easy to use, and with the power under the hood that you can still get to if you need it. Right now, I'm saving the pennies for the day that the G5 is released in Australia; when that happens, I'm going to be paying a visit to the nearest Apple store.
The only reason I'm using Linux at the moment is because my desktop is a PC. If the powers that be were prepared to buy me a Mac, I could do everything I need to do as a Unix sysadmin. Including handling those pesky Office files that they insist on sending me every so often. (Yes, OpenOffice does the trick... but Office for OS X is an absolute dream. Credit where credit's due, folks.)
Linux overtaking OS X? There's a lot of work to be done before it happens.
I would rephrase that to say that Linux won't pass Apple on the desktop until "configuration files" is something the average Linux desktop user won't need to see / understand / fiddle with.
There are some good utilities that provide a UI over some conf stuff, but it has a ways to go.
Linux, being free software, appeals to the people who write free software and always will be tinkerable. This is because people who write software are geeks and will write software they want to use. If someone is paying them to do it then well, they will also write software to be retard proof.
Apple's market share has been decreasing more and more over the years. Any recent gains notwithstanding ( I don't keep up with Apple since I replaced my Centris 610 years ago with an Intel box. I grew up on Macs and was a Machead once. ) - any recent gains notwithstanding, Linux will not surpass Apple, Apple will fall behind Linux when enough Mac users switch to Windows that the remaining die hard Macheads amount to less than the total geek population.
There are 2 other possibilities:
Real geeks will still use linux unless Apple can offer them something they don't already have which they can't.
I don't think free software will get much more retard proof. It will never be as polished as non-free software. I think that is because polish means closing up stuff which hinders tinkerability. Open software tends to leave frayed edges exposed. This is not a sign of poor quality - it is just that you need those edges loose to weave it in to something else or to add to it.
Eat at Joe's.
Comparable.....GNU/Linux.......Apple
Hardware.......Almost Any......Apple Only
Compat.........Custom drivers..Plug and Play
Installation...Troublesome.....Infantile
Updates........Troublesome.....Infantile
Support........Many people.....AppleCare
Applications...Many............Many More
Cost...........Free (uh-huh)...$129
Man in Charge..Nobody..........Steve
Where that leaves me is with a definite win on the desktop for Apple. Highly simplified, but that's the point, isn't it?
Troll: If you want to fsck with your computer, get Linux. If you want to use your computer, get a Mac.
The question wasn't whether Linux systems would replace Macs, the question was whether Linux market share would surpass that of Macs.
In my experience, Apple is picking up users right and left. People I would never have imagined as Apple users. I have not met one person who as adopted Linux as their desktop. I honestly do not see why anyone would.
On the price issue, people need to stop bitching about that. Apple always will be higher priced. That is the cost of innovation. They will also always be second, because you do not corner the market by being the most expensive.
I'm a Linux user. No I'm really a Linux user. I currently have four machines. I'm running it at as my primary desktop at work and as a server, primary (gaming) workstation, and diskless PVR at home. I've modded my series-one TiVo. I installed slackware in the days when one had to wrangle 13 floppies.
With that in mind, I recently I purchased a maxed out 17" Powerbook on my research funds at work and have been amazed at the quality of MacOS hardware and software. I get the true Unix experience with terminals, perl, X11, ssh, vim, and the rest along with an exceptional GUI. The best part about MacOS is that it just works. I've got a Sun Blade 2000 on my desk that's a pain. I've been trying to install KDE on it for the better part of a month and I paid $3k for a graphics card that's slower than my nVidia GeForce 3. I upgraded SuSE on my home Linux workstation and once again I have to recompile the kernel to stop my mystery lockups. (One of these days I should write down my sound-card settings.) MacOS provides the best user experience of any Unix OS.
Will I get rid of Linux? No. There's a quality-cost trade off that will always guarantee the presence of both. The ratio is a function of the environment and thus the evolutionary stable strategy that the competing systems reach. When will Linux pass MacOS? Both soon and never. Linux, due to its low-cost software and hardware, will outnumber MacOS soon but Linux will never pass MacOS in quality. Ever.
Linux : MacOS
Michael.
Linux : Mac
who cares about OS X vs. linux? all we should care about is everybody else vs. microsoft. we should all have a nice beige linux box and a nice grey sleek mac on our desks.
if there's one thing the mac world and the linux world share it's fanatical users. we need a marvel comics team-up to start converting the unwashed masses!
The column isnt about whiping MAC off the desktop, it is about surpassing MAC on the desktop... I have no idea what ther percentages are, but all LInux has to do is take away from the dominant giant (anyone, anyone?) enough to beet out the MAC. Example (1) M$ = 90% Linux = 2% MAC = 5% ------- Example (2) MAC=5% Linux=6% M$=86% Reasons... 1) Users dont have to change hardware, only software 2) Linux is easy to obtain... Linux has taken the market away from Gates, and at the same time beeting out MAC... Apple will probably never loose there market share, probably only grom at a slow and steady pace... What would be cool - is to have Apple and the OSS comunitee team up to take back the market shares together!
I've pissed someone off somewhere...
Our small company (15 developers) is fixing some bugs in various OSS packages every month as it's faster then waiting when someone else will fix it. But even waiting is faster for OSS then you would wait for such fixes from commercial vendors.
Less is more !
It's obvious that Linux is going to surpass OS X in the long term. But this isn't going to hurt Apple a bit.
Apple is a luxury computing brand. They're not competing for marketshare. Their goal is to ensure that a Mac is the computer you choose once you've got enough money to abandon your cheap Windows/Linux box and are ready to move to a more integrated, customized user experience.
Unless Palladium catches on with consumers, Windows' days as a dominant OS are numbered. Soon Linux will approach Windows for ease-of-use, and then it will pass OS X in terms of raw marketshare. But both Unices will exist comfortably together, Linux in the cheap $238 Wal-Mart computer market, Apple in the high end.
In the years afterward, Linux will continue eating away at Microsoft's marketshare. And what will Microsoft do about it? They won't be able to compete on price, so they'll have to compete on features. Palladium and DRM seems to be the major ways Microsoft has chosen to develop their OS, but I think this will prove to be a dead end. I believe consumers will ultimately reject computers that don't do what they want them to do. Microsoft will see its marketshare dwindle until Linux becomes the dominant OS and Microsoft just another player in the industry.
And when Linux becomes the dominant OS? It will still never have the hardware integration to be able to offer the rich user experience that Apple does. Apple will continue developing new products, new software, and new ideas, secure in its niche as a luxury computing brand for the forseeable future.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Apple computers are generally used by a very small market: graphic designers, artists, photographers...etc. Linux on the other hand has something for everyone, it comes with a nice suite of software installed and has excellent multiuser capabilities. A business is more likely to consider linux than the Mac as an alternative for Windows. Have you ever seen a large network comprised of Macs? And home users tend to consider what their business is using when they buy computers.
Apple has begun using oss too late for it to matter. Linux is engrained in peoples' minds as the open source Unix derivative. No matter what, Apple just isn't going to change peoples' minds.
Then there's the cost. Apple products are outrageously expensive for the home user or business. No one wants to pay $1000 for a low end computer. Linux can be put on any computer and can be gotten for free. the Mac OS doesn't work on anything other than Apple's own computers.
Macs are never going to be more than a niche market because of Apple's past policies.
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
I don't think this needs to be a fight between Linux and Apple at all.
I think they should help each other out. Apple has done quite a lot of things that can help Linux use - including X11, bundling software like Apache.
From the Linux side it would be great to see support for things like Rendezvous, based on ZeroConf - so I could have a linux box basically sharing via Rendezvous the same kinds of things a Mac would be sharing.
In short, I'd like to see Yet Another Distro, only this one built to work as kindly as possible alongside groups of macs in a house. It would make using Linux as a home server a great choice, so that you could afford one nice Mac and then a Linux workhorse stuck somewhere in a closet handling heavy lifting of storage and network management. Then perhaps some uber-cheap linux boxes stuck around as simple terminals, like an LCD with a simple linux desktop built right in so all you need to do is plug it in the wall and go.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If they'd sell their OS to any platform Apple would be capable of really competing. I'd buy it.
Or when Linus gets the commercial and media attention Steve Jovs gets. Or when Linus developes a reality distortion field of his own.
. as p
I don't see how that can happen. Linus doesn't possess a reality distortion field; he projects a reality assertion field. Check him out here on SCO:
(fucking lameness filter bitching about this as a link....)
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1134098,00
He's understated as ever.
People are forgetting: Who just announced G5 processors and a new Powermac design today?
cool things that are immediately "ported" from linux+bsd to OS X are not cool when they're simply recompiled and have the same lame ass interface and random X widget toolkit of the day.
get real.
one thing linux has over mac is price. I bit the bullet and bought some mac hardware. I thought it was worth it the initial investment to have the cool hardware and stable software. Since then apple has nickle and dimed me to death!!! I had to pay for a .mac account and now I have to pay $129 every time Steve farts. It's been twice now that they are requiring payment for OS upgrades. If you look at the cost of the OS, apple probably costs more than win32. There is a win32 release every couple of years and it's around $100 or less, apple has one a year and wants big money.
It's all about choice.
;-)
Linux will pick up more market share on the desktop as soon as the hardware vendors will test their stuff on linux as well and supply drivers if needed. Chicken and egg problem here. Also Linux needs a better mechanism to integrate those drivers.
OSX is more for the "I just want it working" people for now. So once the public realizes that there is more than one bootscreen (who the heck knows what an Operating System is ?) they will look at Linux AND OSX.
Choice is a good thing. And the generations knowing what an OS is and that you can select from multiple are coming
Cheers,
OhMy
It's not a forced upgrade.
I've got boxes running 10.1 Server around here because no one "forced" me to run 10.2 Server.
Likewise I know my mother's 233 iMac and another 333 iMac I support are running plainjane 10.1 and it runs well.
I'll get 10.3 for my machines, but not becuase Steve Jobs is pointing a CD to my head screaming "Forced Upgrade biaaatchhhh! Now shell for Panther!" but because I want the features.
I think most of the discussion is missing the main points of the article. One point is that linux only has to get to 3 or 4% of the market to surpass Apple -- and to do that, it doesn't have to be better than Apple at what Apple does best.
The second point is that you can't get an Apple PC for $300. Yeah, I know that *you* and all the current Apple fanatics are willing to pay for the Apple experience, but if only 4% of the total market disagrees, then Linux "pulls ahead".
Who will that market be? Tech-savy cheapshakes. Extremely poor folks who only want e-mail on Netscape. Engineers working at home. A (few) corporations with simple and standard software requirements that just happen, in their case, to run on Linux.
Now, do these folks add up to 4% of the market? I don't know, but arguments like "current Apple users won't switch" or "my grandma won't switch" don't have much to do with it.
Do you like how OS X works? Would you like it to keep getting better?
Then why do you mind paying $129 every year and a half or so for truly innovative R&D?
Think of it another way - by charging separately for major OS upgrades, you are also encouraging Apple the company to build machines that last longer instead of machines that need to be upgraded every two years to pay for R&D costs. It's pretty easy to show investors how much money OS releases make and help justify large R&D budgets, whereas if you wrap that up in the cost of a machine it's harder to quantify.
I tend to think though that the need to upgrade might lessen over time... I'm not really sure, but I think I might have been able to not upgrade to Jaguar and wait for the next upgrade. I'll probably never know though, as I'm a sucker for upgrades (at least ones that are worthwhile).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For Linux to be sucesfull on apple it needs a lot more Linux people to like Apple.. And that might happen when Apple starts shipping its computers with a 2 (or more) button mouse out of box ;o)
I know several heavy mac worshippers.They live and breathe the religion. But they don't do a damn thing on their boxes. No coding. No creating. They just like the cool factor.
I know this is just a segment of users. But how large a segment is it?
And yea, I know the mac is a great system and works extremely well and many artists and creatives use it to their advantage. But still most of the mac people I know are wannabe geeks.
"Don't Follow Leaders." Bob Dylan
the competition provided linux by osx's seamless unix integration into a stylish and functional os will help to drive it and make it better
the two feed off of eachother like one of those little algae and shrimp globes; they both benefit
the only one who stands to lose is M$, i say that they (osx/linux) should compete with eachother because with each user using either one they take one away from M$ (apple contributes to opensource projects/they take what they sow and the people doing the coding for free get professional backing and legitimacy by someone who has been around, apple)
this is win-win-lose
my $.02
God I hope not. Apple's desktops are much nicer than those of Linux. Linux desktops and applications lack cohesion; even a pure KDE desktop is a pain to use. For example, I tried to download a zipped trailor movie for a game. I double clicked the ZIP file in Konqueror file manager and double clicked the movie file inside. When MPlayer tried to load the file it couldn't because it didn't exist; Ark didn't extract it to a temporary file.
It's basic (staple) things like this that Linux fails so badly on. I know I'm going to start a flame war and get lots of hateful messages but one of the reasons that Linux fails in this area is because there are so many desktop environments and so many applications that don't work together.
Does anybody else see the irony of the title "Linux's new popularity may hurt Apple more than Microsoft" being posted on a microsoft site? Also on the G5 page Apple compares its G5 to a Dell...I mean wtf? Apple comon now...thats way to easy, I mean its an "advanced" mini tower!
"Aim low, so low that nobody will care if you suceed, if you want some butter its under my face."-Marge Simpson
During the Alaska earthquake today, on one of the Aleutian islands, on a desk in an obscure research station, a Linux computer shifted position while an Apple OS X computer remained stable. Yep, you guessed it...Linux passed Apple on the desktop.
Slate ponders projections that Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year.
That's what the article is about. Not which is better. Not which has better software.
How about some figures.
Wednesday 30th April 2003
"Apple's worldwide market share is about a paltry 2 percent, according to IDC."
Friday, September 06, 2002
"According to Gartner Dataquest, Apple's worldwide market share was 2.5 percent last year[2001]"
Is it difficult to believe that Linux will achieve >2% penetration into the worldwide desktop market by next year?
Considering that Wal-Mart is selling Linux PC's for $199 and it is the OS of choice in developing countries trying to run a modern desktop OS on legacy hardware it does not seem to be that much of a stretch.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Take an arbitrary commercial OS maker. Could be MS. Could be Apple. Could be Sun.
Suppose they do some particular thing better than Linux, and better than the other commercial OS makers. If that thing is good enough...it can kill the competing commercial OS makers.
However, it cannot kill Linux. Linux is good enough, and has attracted enough developer attention, that it will continue, even if Windows or OS X or Solaris or something else is better by some measure, simply based on price (we talk about "free as in speech, not free as in beer", but a lot of people want that free beer, too!).
So, Linux will always be out there, perhaps playing catchup as the Gnome or KDE (or other) people snarf up good ideas from OS X or Windows and clone them...but eventually it will catch up. Sure, Windows and OS X will have moved forward by then...but the improvements are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by. Eventually, the Linux GUIs will be close enough that having a nicer GUI will not be a factor for Windows or OS X, at least as far as the functionality and objective qualities of the GUI go.
The proprietary companies like Apple and MS can put more money into aesthetics than Linux developers can, so they will have nicer looking interfaces, but eventually that is where all of their advantage will be: they will have prettier icons or nicer animation.
At that point, Linux wins big...because people will put up with averageness of looks to save money.
OS X is just too good. Linux still is hard to use and has a long way to go. OS X is a mature desktop OS.
The article links to absolutely no hard facts that linux is even growing on the desktop much less overtaking MacOsX.
I'm not saying desktop perfection is even what linux should aim towards, but come on. This just proves that the editors don't even read the articles. The article *says* it links to an article regarding linux overtaking OSX, but it doesn't.
Sorry Charlies, but linux is nowhere even in the ballpark of as polished on the desktop as OSX
That does not mean that it can't be a viable desktop either for a geek or after it has been heavily tweeked to act like it should and work correctly, but that is not what it will take to be widespread on the desktop. I mean seriously, when is the last time you sat down to an untweaked linux GUI and everything just worked? Now how about flawlessly, and cohesively like OSX?.
It doesn't yet and linux will not overtake OSX on the desktop because of it.
Now I'll get modded to oblivion because I've spoken against the pharisees, but seriously, one more severely misleading topic description down, many more to come.
Apple's been getting a free ride for too
long. The road to Redmond goes through
Cupertino.
To be more precise, it's the *only* GUI for unix. Unless, of course, you consider either KDE or Gnome to be worth its price. I sure don't.
I've got to admit Mac OS X totally destroys linux on the desctop. Sorry folks, the game is already over.
But I love linux when it comes to running servers etc...
salaries
Each OS has its niche users. As I walked through, a company which I will not name, in midtown Manhattan I see a slew of IMac's. Why are these people torturing themselves with this inferior machine, I think to myself. It hits me: the only reason these boxes are there is because they have a sleek and sharp look. A cosmetics company such as this one must keep all appearances high. I go back to my plant of operations and take a look around. There definitely aren't any MAC's..ugh. There are about 15 different styles of x86 based PC's running some variant of Windows XP/2000/NT. I am the only one running a Linux desktop with a Linux server and several BSD servers and the good ol' ancient NT PDC. As far as other UNIX based variants, why pay a pretty penny when I can get the whole thing for free with Linux. I am not a fan of apple, and haven't been since they stopped making the II-C and II-E, but I understand why people stick to them. They are hyped up as a great graphics computer, and always keep a fresh look. Dollars to cents - MAC is a horrible buy. I'm not a fan of a platform that is hardware/software locked. I've had my share of MAC troubleshooting and to me they are just boring and SLOW to boot. Props go out to Tru64 though, too damn bad Alpha chips are fading away. Enough rambling... What I believe it comes down to is the end-user preference. Most people are going to stick to MAC or Winblows because its easy and known. I believe Linux is on the threshold of a breakthrough in desktop technology. The UI is nice, but the office and home apps just aren't quite there yet. If it were up to me the world would be UNIX. Just a thought.
... if something happens in the Microsoft world to alienate a large number of companies and/or users. Something along the lines of a major worm or bug appearing, with M$ refusing to offer a fix for the 9X line (and maybe Win2K).
Given the choice between upgrading to Windows Palladium (now with extra DRM!) and the latest version of MS Office for a large chunk of change, or switching to (mostly) Linux on the desktop for cheap, I think the latter is very likely for home users and small companies. Large companies don't do well with major changes, and have the resources to pay for the new licenses.
Apple is about to redefine the UNIX workstation market that will leave everyone, including Linux, in it's dust.
Why?
1. At $3K, the 2x2.0 is more than half the cost of any other 64bit UNIX workstation, and brings comparable, if not better, performance. Prepare to see a crapflood of cheap SUN ultra's, SGI Octanes, RS6000, and HPUX workstations on EBAY.
2. OS X has one thing that no other UNIX based operating system can claim: Microsoft Office. Look under most UNIX user's desks in the workplace, and more often then not you'll see a windows box for documentation/presentations/outlook stuff. From a PHB's perspective, that means a single $3K box can replace a $9K+ UNIX workstation plus a $1500 PC. Not to mention the associated savings in power, maintenance, real estate, KVM switches, cabling, administration...
3. The quality experience. This is the point hardest to grasp by the typical L1nux d00d. I'm using UNIX for WORK. If something goes wrong, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to recompile my kernel, figure out the config, or test a driver. I want to pickup a phone and pay someone to do if for me. NOW. As Apple sells the "complete widget", I expect them to quickly figure out what's wrong with the box. (The same applies to most other commercial UNIX which is why SUN and SGI are still in business)
4. The codebase. Scratch OS X and it bleeds BSD. Porting most opensource apps isn't too complicated. Add the growing library of OS X cocoa/carbon apps. Windows on VirtualPC should render decent performance on the new hardware (Please MS, don't kill it!). Finish off with Java. You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
5. The interface. While this is subjective, OS X brings a lot of quality that Gnome/KDE/etc can't match, and don't get me started on how it compares against Windows... It just 'works'
Expect to see Apple make a strong play for the workplace. Then see users want to use the same at home. If IBM can supply the faster chips, then prepare to see Apple start to grow in the business and home markets.
Is it because Linux's market share is increasing, or because the Mac's is decreasing? This is NOT a flame, but a serious question.
I'm a university student. I'm looking to replace Windows and I like that OSX is 'Nix based. I'm seriosly considering buying a MAC now (I was waiting for the announcement before making a descision). I don't think Linux will replace the desktop for:
.... which requires a lot of libraries == unnessary bloat, slowness and confusion when source compiling.
1) The X font management sucks. I write a lot of essays and need access to fonts for some papers.
2) DLL hell. I use Gnome and KDE sometimes. Mostly I try to use a few of the programs from each. GNU cash, KWORD
3) Commercial software. Say what you will of Open Source software. There are times when I want/need access to commercial software. Photoshop, Word, etc are all available for the OSX not for Linux. It will be a long time before this happens.
4) Hardware support. Mac have - albeit - limited hardware choice compared to Windows. But, getting hardware to work w/ Linux or FreeBSD means recompiling, getting newer kernels. I don't mind doing it but see it as a waste of time.
5) Better integration. GUI apps are much better integrated in OSX than in X.
6) Appearance. OS X just looks good. Gnome, KDE make me want to puke. Toolbars, message prompts, etc, are all different to name a few.
Will Linux/BSD rival OSX in a year? NO. Will it be widely adopted? No. Will the MAC be widely adopted? Probably a bit more.
I had not thought of this, but it makes perfect sense!
Apple's been hamstrung by Motorola's lackluster perfomrance as their high end chip supplier. With that problem now solved come August, I expect that a great deal of marketshare improvement will start showing up in the next year or two.
1.8 Ghz Macs were supposed to be at parity with the 3.2 Ghz Pentiums that were just released. Well, surprise, we have 2.0 Ghz Macs and the possibility that when it's IBM v. Intel in a chip improvement race, IBM might beat out Intel. For people with serious computing needs that might mean PPC hardware (IBM or Apple label) and a continued lowering of PPC chip costs vis a vis Intel.
I think you've missed my point. I said it was geek friendly, because it is powerful, but its a powerful application that suffers from the typical under development of the user interface. Gimp is the only graphics application I use and I can do just about anything my Photoshop using friends can, but they couldn't or more importantly wouldn't because they've got a well designed application already.
Cloning popular interfaces is one way to create consistency, but good UI design will always stand on its own. People like things that work nicely.
Quack, quack.
Yes but in terms of portablity Linux wins hands down so infact it could win on the desktop in marketshare. Since Apple runs on one platform and only one platform PPC.
Apple provides an experience to the end user.
Apple studies the user experience from the on switch to the way the windowing system reacts to different types of input. Apple is the Ferrari of computer Systems.
Thanks for your "insight", Apple employee.
- Apple introduced preemptive multitasking much later than Micro$oft.
- Apple insists on the "one-mouse" button, which the inventor of the mouse, Doug Engelbart, calls an "arrogant" decision. For engineenering purposes, mice should have two to three buttons, not one. Apple breaks this rule by having the user's other hand use the butterly CONTROL key on the keyboard as the 2nd and 3rd buttons. This is more inconvenient to users. (So much for the "end user experience.")
- The "Cube" was a failure because its crystal clear acrylic case would crack during shipping, and hence was discontinued.
- Jean Louis Gassee's idea of "networking" the Mac was by using a modem over a serial port! (Read Jim Carlton's "Apple: the Inside Story").
- Steven Levy, author of "Insanely Great" (a book on the history of the Macintosh) admits in the preface that his Apple Mac crashed on him several times whilst he was writing the book! (So much for the "end user experience.")
- The first Macintosh did not have a hard drive because Jobs didn't want the noise of the hard drive to detract from the aesthetic appeal of the machine. Thus, not many Macintoshes were sold to businesses, which absoluately required the extra storage space. (So much for the "end user experience.")
- The Newton was a failure.
- Pippen was a failure.
- Taligent was a failure.
- OS-X/Unix introduces timing problems for MIDI musicians. Better stick with an older version of the software.
- Apple is not known for its servers.
- Apple is not widely used in scientific computing.
- Apple is not widely used in business for email, inventory control, financial analysis, etc.
Apple appeals to superficial ("my pink hair defines me") artsy-fartsy on-the-fringe kind of people, and it is lucky that enough of those people exist to keep them in business. If Apple were "mainstream", those people would migrate to some other non-mainstream product to define their "individuality" and satisfy their fragile egos.
I am Not a Switcher - I am Bi
A Bi-cyberal that is!
I have a Dual 1GHz G4 desktop - and it works wonderfully. I can do what I want to do and NEVER think about 'Oh, I got to do such and such' on a computer level - It's Apple - It just works.
I also Have a Windows 98 laptop.
Yes, it shows it's age but works most of the time too.
And I don't like compromises so just to be a true bi-cyberal - I have Windows XP running on Virtual PC on the Mac. WinXP software works great on it.
I've Used Red Hat and Mandrake Linux, Apple has them beat. I did like the various Linux GUI's and Windows Managers, some cool tricks there!
I am (yet another) certified Microsoft MCSE,
and I love the Apple.
Remember Bill Gates still owns a major chunk of Apple - they are not the bitter rivals people make them out to be!
And anyday - Bill and his Crew can come out with
M.S. Linux. Then things would get really interesting!
I was under the suspicion that this had already happened years ago, but then OSX came out and reclaimed the lead.
Although I agree it is a bit annoying to pay, I don't think that building the price into hardware is a good idea for the company or the consumer - really the hardware should be helping to pay for research already done, otherwise it seems like a ponzi scheme where you have to keep selling new hardware to pay for R&D to improve older machines. The way Apple is doing it I think adds a lot of value to older computers by making more upgrades available to us as well... thus enhancing the usable life of our machines.
The price point is really weird though. I wonder how they come by $130? Considering how well-thought out Apple products are generally, it seems like they would try to work a more harmonious price... then again, perhaps it's exactly the point where people are willing to pay but not get too worked up about it. I was in line at an Apple store for the release of Jaguar and there really was not a lot of grumbling going around at all!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Safari Would have happened with Gecko had it needed it
Photos.
Linux trys to run on a variety of motherboards, with serveral different CPUs, it is real-time, embedded, it is a real OS. A real OS should try to have drivers for as much hardware as possible. Some may say we are only talking desktop here, well my desktop is hooked up to a dance, dance, revolution game pad, a Rio 500 MP3 player, a joystick, an epson printer, a n50 nostromo speed pad. I run Windows, which I consider a real OS, because it like Linux tries to have drivers for all available hardware and has an open PC architecture. When OS X runs on a variety of platforms and has a better variety of drivers I will check it out...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
In one sense, Linux and Apple are both the same product - Unix, with a GUI. In another sense, though, they are different - Linux' strength is that it's open source, and Linux' two most Apple-like GUIs are both strongly slanted toward being a replacement for Windows.
Having recently switched from OS X to Linux, I can tell you that the switch would be maddening for the average Apple user. Nothing is where you expect it to be. You have to hit the control key to get stuff that ought to be on the command key, and there's no option key. Preferences are in the wrong place. The dock doesn't work. These aren't intended as criticisms - I'm just trying to show you how an Apple->Linux switcher would see things.
KDE has an "apple mode", but its resemblance to the Apple UI is very limited. Basically, they add a menu bar, which is clever, but just swap control and meta, which is not. It was easier for me to use the default KDE setup than the "apple-like" setup, even though I'd been using OS X for a year and a half prior to switching to Linux. I wound up switching to Gnome anyway, because it's prettier, and after a year and a half with Apple, I'm used to pretty and it's hard on my eyes when something isn't.
However, having just set up a couple of WinXP computers for some friends who weren't quite ready for Linux yet (they *were* interested, but it just isn't time for them yet), I can attest that the WinXP UI and the Linux UI are much more compatible - I can easily imagine someone switching from Windows to Linux. I think at this point they'd still be a little frustrated, but it's *very* close now. If you're a Windows user who's not a geek, but you have a friend who's a wizard to set up your Linux system, I think you can really use it at this point. I wouldn't have said that last year.
So I think that realistically, Linux is going to do two things: get new people who can't afford an expensive computer with 'doze and 'office, but can afford a cheap computer with Linux and OpenOffice. And it's going to cannibalize 'doze sales where people are just tired of paying all the stupid license fees and agreeing to all the stupid licenses. As the Linux GUIs get better and better, it's going to become a realistic platform for more and more non-geeks.
Having said that, I miss my Mac, and I don't think I'll hold out using Gnome much longer. GNOME and KDE both have a long way to go before they approach the ease-of-use of the Mac, even though they are both really very good.
Sigh.
osx is absolutely blinded by nextstep, which is why it is successful. rapid application development tools, bsd underpinnings, windowing system, quartz... as they say, next engineered a takeover of apple. but, what they have is fanatical leadership with a vision of what the product should be. any company producing a product successfully is similar. not simply forward vision, but "brand" vision. what should using your product be like?
look at emacs. you may not like the vision, or find it productive, but those who do use it are fanatical. perhaps apple has the correct point at which to add the value... the user interface. additionally, the developer tools are getting very good. i think symbian is becoming equivalent in a product sense. good, open tools. a nice user interface. useful applications, and usability...
...if I didn't...
Now, I could handle the second hurdle all by itself. It's the combination of the two that make me stay right where I am (and no, running virtual pc doesn't help me, I use win4lin right now and I'm desparate to dump that). If Apple would release some hardware that would get me the specs I'm used to without having to start a new line of credit I'd be a user of OS X.x already. The only thing that keeps Apple from making headway in market share, is Apple. Please don't bring up the iMAC; they were, for the most part, decent little machines, but Jobs' artistic flair kept them from being a house-hold item as much as anything.
I'd love a powerbook, I just don't have $2000+ bucks to spend on a computer and software.
...or have the lot of your forgotten? OS X is based on the BSD kernel, and most of the core concepts in OS X (i.e., Darwin) are based on Apples work in the 90's on the Mach Microkernel, which formed the basis for MkLinux, the first and only Linux ever sanctioned by Apple.
Yeah, when I was poor, I "preferred" to walk everywhere. Now I can afford a bus pass - and a car! And the $129 for Panther will be money well spent.
While I'm sure OS X is great for a lot of things (I'd love to try it out, but I'm too poor ;) ), it lacks games. I can play Half-Life/CS, GTA:Vice City, and I hear that Morrowind is working now. Can a Mac user play CS? You might get a CS'er to try Linux, but forget about another hardware platform.
:)
Incidentally, my definition of an operating system is "a system that lets me play Half-Life." Once WineX worked with Half-Life, I stopped dual booting and went 100% linux
Vote for global prefs bug
MacOS X is probably a far more multimedia oriented and certainly a technologicaly superior desktop OS than Windows is. If we can assume that MacOS X is also more user friendly, and also assume that Linux is less user friendly than either Windows or MacOS X then it follows that Linux would first have to surpass Windows before it could surpass MacOS X.
:)
But this is strictly a comparison based on the attributes of each system. If you want "real numbers", aka a gross quantative analysis. Then sure Windows is the most popular as of this moment.
Comparing the attributes of each might lead us to where Windows, MacOS X and Linux will be in the future. Evidence I've seen points to MacOS X gaining shares from both the Linux and Windows world. Linux's popularity seems to be, according to other sources, falling.
PS- Where does FreeBSD fit into this picture.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You say "Linux is for when you're young, poor, and in need of serious computing horsepower. OS X is for when you've got money in the bank and you don't want to have to deal with the Linux hassle."
For me it is the reverse. I am neither young nor poor, and am not really in need of serious power, except for serious flexibility.
I love my Linux desktop because *I*, not Steve J or Bill G, am in charge. I can do what I want, I can combine, shells are not hidden, and I have a choice of apps greater than one (vs MS Office for Apple and not much more for the Mac).
You say Windows is open? Not to me it isn't. All the really useful Windows knowledge I have is in the form of "secrets". THAT is why I have a Linux desktop.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
I am definitely interested in buying a Powerbook for my next laptop though. I really like what Apple has done with their laptops and it is great having such a solid unix-based desktop on the laptop which will also let me run Linux. If I am able to buy a laptop, I will most likely install a PPC version of linux and run the Mac OS through Mac On Linux.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
One simple reason which applies not only to linux desktop but also to web development and range of other things. Read the bold text below:
Coders are Not Designers
In fact, a good coder most certainly has a really shitty design sense. It's like being a doctor and lawyer at the same time - a truly rare occurence. Most of the project maintainers are coders, and tend to prioritize the codebase integrity over a consistent and easy to follow design from user's perspective. There is no single individual to oversee these projects from a 3rd person perspective and summon a conference to connect the dots in a team effort. Most of these project owners are not properly trained in software development for tasks they're trying to overtake. They might have the best skills in writing killer command-line or server-side applications but when it comes to usability in desktop apps, they try to judge it from own perspective. Functionality and Usability are two of the most integral elements and should be observed in any project which is meant to appeal to a large audience of users with various skill levels.
One of the positive things that might come from wide adaptation of OSX from Linux/BSD crowd is how it could enable them to understand how Apple tries to put the user first and make the computing experience as effortless as possible. One can notice how OSX is both complex in nature and easy enough to be operated by a cluless 60y/o grandmother who never touched a computer before.
I think your theory holds a lot of water.
One thing I would add, is that it would be very exciting to see Lindows release a machine that supported Rendezvous so that a household with powerbooks could use the Lindows computer easily across the network. That's something I think Microsoft would be uncomfortable doing, releasing a machine and saying "Now Mac Compatible!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try http://www.pompom.org.uk/ instead. And yes, it does look really cool, and does run on Linux, MS-Windows and Mac OS X, and yes there is a free demo. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There's no way this could happen.
Now, I am a committed Linux user - I won't let anything else into the house - but Linux desktop software is, let's be honest, still very buggy and unreliable. Particularly big programs like object frameworks, web browsers and integrated office suites.
It will ever be thus, because a team of teen-plus OSS GUI programmers basically just doing what ever floats their particular boat are never going to be as committed to stamping out bugs vs. adding k3w1 new bloat as would, say, anyone associated with *BSD, or any other team of hairy 1970s renegades working on big important infrastructure software like sendmail or apache.
So OSS desktop software bugs may move around, but I don't see them going away any time soon. Mac software developers on the other hand seem to aspire to clean design, stability and trouble-free operation. You might say it's their animus.
The result is that where Mac software might lack some variety, what is available is very high quality indeed, and it runs on a rock solid platform. With a desktop that is just breathtakingly elegant. So I don't think Linux is going to beat Mac OSX in the desktop marketplace, at least not on the grounds of desktop desirability.
Also bear in mind that Apple has chosen to be a niche player. They have had ten years to compete with Microsoft, and they had a head start as well, but they have never tried to own the mass desktop market. They have always left that to Microsoft, and concentrated on winning a dedicated minority of discriminating users, compensating with high profit margins.
However, If they actually had ambitions to become a mass market desktop player I have no doubt they could do so most effectively. If it gets around that the Mac is so painless to use, and Apple then gets the idea that there is a genuine sustainable market for cheaper Macs beyond the traditional arty-farty sector, they may be emboldened finally to grab a larger slice of the pie. And that sort of groundswell can easily reach critical mass. Just look what happened to Linux.
Then Microsoft really would have something to worry about - a world run on Macs connected to Linux servers.
For these reasons it's only in Microsoft's interest to suppress public interest in the Mac platform. In my opinion MSNBC, Slate etc. have always managed to keep their journalism more unbiased than their ownership might lead one to expect, but there must be some influence from time to time even if it is of the most subtle kind. So it's not too surprising to see an article like this in a Microsoft-owned publcation.
Little known fact: Linus already developed a reality distortion field. However, it was done using IP misappropriated from SCO, so Linus opted to do the honorable thing and give the field generator to SCO. Considering SCO's recent usage of the device, I'm sure Linus regrets that decision.
How does this affect Mac OS' actual market share... numbers-wise, not ranking-wise? Will this cut into their 5% (or whatever), or will it cut into Windows'? If it's the latter, I don't think Apple has much to worry about...
Yes - Linux will pass Apple, but at the expense of Microsoft's market share, not Apple's. The number of current Apple customers who will switch to Linux is near zero. The number of dissatisfied Microsoft customers willing to dump Windows is growing. The few Windows defectors who want Macs and have the financial means to purchase them will go Apple. Those who want *nix and are unable or unwilling to swich architectures or pay the hefty prices for Macs will sacrifice the gooyness of OS X for KDE/Gnome and Linux.
So, will Apple be No. 3 next year? Most Likely. Will Linux surpasing Apple hurt them? No way - it will help them. There is much more synergy between Mac OS X and Linux than there ever will be between Mac OS X (or any other OS) and Windows.
Microsoft may be at the top of the mountain now, but it is cold and icy up there. If Microsoft loses their grip and starts to fall - it will be a fast and long fall, and it will hurt when they hit the rocks below...
Your comment is great, and really needs to be shown for how wise it really is. I also love Linux. It fufills all of my computing needs. So you must know how annoying it gets to see constant articles and laments about "if Linux had a [insert pundit ramble] it would succeed on the desktop/server/embedded world/etc".
I can run Linux as a desktop, as a server, on SPARC, on x86 CPUs, on a PPC CPU, and even a PDA. It just so happens I actually do all of the above.
Your comment is 100% correct in that to some of us Linux succeeded years ago. Other OS users will get my support and respect. I have no need to compete with them.
...I'm not really flaming or anything but huh? Ten years? It kinda sorta sounds like maybe you're a tad overly-leechy. Just a scosh maybe. Free is free and all that, but really, a whole decade and never bought even one boxed set? Why doncha pick out your favorite distro you've run in the past decade and buy just one boxed set? What is that like 30-40 clams or something low end from some distro place? Once every other year even won't hurt, heck I've done it and I B po and stuff. I think it's the least I can do just for the errata and upgrade action, I know if I had to rely on_me_to do it, it wouldn't happen. To me, "code" is anagrams in the paper next to the crosswords. A few cents a day averaged out just ain't that bad really, and it's all I can offer back at this time. If it goes to some coders/distro folks electric bill and beer and cola and rent, swell, that's what it's for.
Well, unless you are a coder yurselfs and contributed a buncha open source code here and there, and in that case, never mind, carry on and stuff, fair trades there.
> linux ain't gonna do nothin' to OS X.
Agreed.
That hasn't been true for years. Microsoft invested $150 Mil in non-voting stock, more or less when Jobs returned to the fold, and they sold it a couple of years later at a profit.
When Elephants roost in trees. Or Mkrozft writes a copy of Office for it. (Elephants or Linux)
John Soward...University of Kentucky
The previous poster claimed Apple had given up trying to gain marketshare, and the switch ads disprove that idea (i.e., they're obviously trying). Whether or not it's working is a completely different matter. You are conflating the two.
Is this guy on PCP?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Think back to the days when Microsoft was starting with Win3.1. At the same time, Novell was after the same market share. Novell's marketing strategy was to meet with all of the CTOs and low-level IT guys and get them sold on Novell. This worked. Microsoft then had to come up with a way of getting those corporations to use Win3.1, instead. Microsoft, instead of talking to the IT guys, went straight to the CFOs and CEOs. Microsoft was able to sell them, and Win3.1 became the work force's de facto. People generally want to keep things simple with their computer, so obviously the people who knew nothing of computers would want Microsoft Windows on their home computers, too. Thus began the Microsoft Empire.
I hope this helps your over-rated comments.
Linux has replace Solaris? Haven't enough /.ers already commented on the drawbacks of smoking pot before submitting stories?
Here in remote Perth, Western Australia (the most isolated city in the world) you can buy a complete Athlon 2000 system (256MB, 40GB, 17" CRT) for AUD$862+GST, which (including GST) works out at USD$629. If you can get by with a Cyrix, 15" and and 128MB, knock about USD$150 off that. On special, getting a new "real" (ie processor speed etc not far off bleeding edge) system for under USD$500 (AUD$753 inc GST) is not hard.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I made the switch last year. It wasn't from Windows to Macintosh, but Mac to Linux. The reasons were purely economic. All of Apple's software and hardware are quite impressive. What is more amazing to me is how far Linux has come since the first time I experienced it in '98. I've found suitable replacements for everything I used before. BBEdit was replaced with Kate. Finder with KDE. Office with KOffice and Open Office.
:winmutt:
"and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?"
God, you losers make me laugh.
Linux IS A JOKE.
Linux IS A TOY.
Linux will NEVER, EVER, EVER be a viable alternative to Windows.
OS X will do to Linux what Linux has done to Solaris, IRIX, and others on the desktop. Why? Because OS X from ground up has been designed as a desktop OS and it shows. The Linux desktop will never become a viable mainstream desktop OS for a number of reasons. I think people who have followed the evolution of the multiple incompatible and quickly changing Linux distributions and their desktop environments for the last five years should have realized that by now. Average consumers don't want to deal with that. Apple and MS have an advantage here because they're in full control of their respective desktop environments and their APIs and their goal is to produce a useful system to the users and not say something that's architecturally elegant but hard to use or develop for.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Just a credible threat to Microsoft will help bust open the rest of the corporate and private network installations to Apple. Why? Because, Microsoft has bred intolerance to diversity into it's very core so that everyone believes that sameness in the OS is a "good thing". Of course, all that's really needed are compatible data types. Linux will help force that data-level compliance and I would bet that Microsoft will resist complying longer than Apple. Bad for Microsoft, good for alternative platforms.
As grabbing innovation from linux has kept OS/2 on life support for adepts, it will contribute to Apple.
But, watch out, linux has killed before....(Coherent).
...which I have been told require you to ship the motor back to Italy for refurbishing after circa 90,000km.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OS X will understand it, Temporal's sarcasm aside. (-: Dang Mac zealots, only thing worse'n a BSD zealot... oh... :-)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
We'll never know, because there's no way to accurately measure it. Besides. Who cares?
It's worth noting that while OS X is not /free/, it is CHEAP. Consider this... most people don't know, but if you read the fine print, an OS X license is good for FIVE MACHINES. This means you can buy one copy and install it on up to five puters at your house, and stay legal. That works out to $26 each. It's not free, but they are certainly trying to help you out here. And most people that would make that complaint are linux users, (since Windows doesn't offer that deal!) and I have yet to meet a linux user that owns fewer than 3 computers. Deal!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
(Of course, if the simplest thing goes wrong, such as a floppy left in the A: drive so the computer won't reboot, she has to call me to fix it, but that just makes me feel needed... ;-)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I typed one line at a shell prompt to bring an unofficial repository of Mandrake RPMs to the system's attention, started a package manager, selected all, and a whole lot of things which Mandrake can't safely ship (video CoDecs etc) came on line as well. This could have been done with a single click in the web browser, but for some reason Mandrake are a bit thingy about letting random websites have open slather on their systems. Note that it's possible to have that work OOTB as well (by defining a KParts handler for it and having that prompt for superuser rights).
Funny that the above paragraph describes the kind of stuff that Lindows want to charge you $99 a year for access to. And Lindows isn't shy about running stuff as root (how you say, disaster in the offing?).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
1. Linux market share will grow.
2. Apple market share will not.
Based on what I saw from the Stevenote today, and also based on my most recent miserable experiences with trying to download Red Hat images off one of the official mirrors via my DSL line (for all the talk of Linux being free-as-in-beer, it's a pain in the ass to get the latest distro any way other than by buying a cardboard box full of disks from your local retailer for about $50... sometimes more), I'm not so sure either assumption will turn out to be true over the long haul.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The thing that you must realise is that GNU/Linux is not trying to cut market share out from under Apple. Apple, if anything, has been friendly towards Free Software in general (or at least not showing a passionate hatred as Microsoft does). Linux will bloom, but so will Apple, for their respective reasons. Linux is powerful and robust. Apple is simple and elegant. Microsoft is, to be impartial, moving towards all of these goals, and they're not doing badly if users want a few advantages from each world. Unfortunately, for most people, this is slowly becoming insufficient, and it is from Microsoft's inflated market share that both the competing technologies will draw their user base.
Despite this, I believe that GNU/Linux will slowly surpass Apple. Linux simply has too much momentum behind it, and its development is moving swiftly and strongly. Apple will continue to grow, however, so don't write its obituary quiiiite yet.
Interesting thought, but I think its been thought and discarded. I cut my teeth on Linux and FreeBSD, but now I've gone on and graduated to MacOS X. I'm a professional that doesn't have time to play and tweak my OS anymore. I do enjoy tweaking some things, and very much like to be able to get under the hood and tinker, but there is much value in being able to start up Photoshop, check e-mail, run iTunes (rhythm box may have a chance, but doesn't build in gentoo any more), and jump into Project Builder or the bash shell to do build an app or write some scripts. Sure, I've run Win4Lin, works pretty well. I've run VMWare 4, does OK. Neither of those work quite right for my LightWave 3D needs though. The bottom line is that MacOS X offers _everything_ that I've ever needed. I don't care too much for the UI in any system, but its sure better than other offerings at the moment. I don't like some of the particulars, such as the WM being a big monolithic system with the window server. I'd rather see it separated out like XF86 and KDE/Gnome/etc etc. BUT I can't complain as OSX offers more than any of those. KDE may have some comparable features, but its still one step behind I always feel, no matter how much I still like to play with KDE and even run it on OSX. Also, I do enjoy ports and am excited about Gentoo coming over to OSX as I do like to burn cpu cycles sometimes and fiddle with interesting apps. I will say that I like the Linux kernel in several ways better than darwin/xnu, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the upper level bells and whistles. All we need is someone to port over all the system calls, etc. to Linux and allow us to drop in Linux 2.5 in place of xnu/darwin 7. :)
Anyways, back to the beginning. MacOS X is a graduate level OS that offers far more than Windows can dream of and has more together than Linux or FBSD. I've been around the block several times and I'm very happy with MacOS X... at least for the forseeable future.
When you can install Linux apps by dragging an icon onto the hard drive.
I love Linux as a concept, and I reread "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" every year just for the part about the free tanks. But my days of dicking around with a box for hours at a time ended when my second kid was born. OS X is slick, it's BSD, and it works for me, instead of the other way around.
It's interesting to note that the #3 supercomputer is Linux based, #2 is about twice as powerful as it, and #1 is about six times as powerful - but had ASCI Q arrived last year it would have been undisputed king of the hill.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OS X can run 99% of Linux apps.
Linux can run 0% of OS X apps (unless you're running mac on linux which is the same thing as running mac on mac so I don't see the point).
X-11 Built in, BSD/UNIX core. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. Linux is a big reason I am where I am today (software developer, manager, sysadmin, etc). However, even though it has come a long damn way since the 0.98 Kernel and programming my own dot clocks for my graphics card/monitor, it still seems like there is no *professionally* done distro.
My grandma can install OS X, get her scanner, camera, printer, sound, internet, email working. The day she (or my mom) can do the same thing with a Linux distro I'll be very happy. Until then it's no contest.
I use Solaris 7-9, Windows 98-XP, Linux (2.2-2.4 based), Mac OS 9.2, Mac OS X (10.2), DOS 6.22/7.0 (MS/IBM) and WinCE/PocketPC 2000/2002 for my companies (I have 4 jobs right now). OS really doesn't mean much to me other than it's a new toy to learn. I like and hate things about all of them. Linux could be the biggest threat to OS X (not much to threaten) and Windows (believe me this does scare the shit out of Redmond). The only problem is a well done distro. If IBM would just get some nuts and drop AIX and focus all their attention on Linux, making a distro that *Just Works* like OS X. They could own the desktop once again. Now is the best opportunity in the next 20-30 years for this as most platforms are moving to 64bit and Intel dropped the ball (Itanic). I'm not sure it would necessarily be a good thing to have IBM as the defacto Monopoly but maybe they'd be better than the first time around (doubtful).
Oh well I guess the point is:
Linux Good
Mac OS Great
I've read a lot of comments and I am surprised at how few people touched this. I consider Linux and Mac OS X to be on about the same level as far as they functionally work. What is different is the philosophy each grows by.
Mac OS is driven by what I like to look at is a unified force. Apple puts together the hardware, makes the OS, and writes many of the basic computer apps people use on their machines. Developers who write Mac OS applications usually choose to follow the guidelines set by Apple (interface or otherwise). The result of this is that using a Mac is some what of an integrated package. The stereotypical person considering Mac is considering the benefits of the Hardware, software, and design.
Linux on the other hand is driven by driven by a divergent force. Sure there are leaders, like Linus, who set a general direction for the OS, but there are many different people with many different goals working on it. This leads to Linux having a sort of piece meal user experience. No two linux systems are a like. Linux is incredibly flexible and powerful, but it is also complex. The stereotypical person considering linux has some sort of goal in mind for the system. Weather it be for development, web servering, or simply to save money and be free of licenses.
I approximate that the switchers for linux to Mac os an vice versa will pretty much cancel out. The question is which way will the Windows users lean? Assuming they jump ship (fairly likely) will they choose Integration or Flexibility?
I'm putting my money on the former...
100% Crunchier
Most of the switchers to OSX that I see aren't coming from Windows. They're coming from Linux.
The old Mac zealots are staying with Apple despite their dislike of it's Unix core (a typical comment is "I got a Mac to get AWAY from things like Unix and command lines". OSX is good enough that they're staying anyway).
That leaves the new crowd of Apple fans, attracted by it's Unix core. And there's a lot of them from what I've seen. I go to lug meetings around my state, and more and more Ibooks/Powerbooks are popping up, sometimes outnumbering X86 laptops running Linux. This is at LUG meetings, my friend. My own lug's vice president uses a Powerbook now. He only touches Linux now for his servers. Despite the advances of GUIs and window managers for Linux, what I typically see is if that a Linux guy can afford a Mac, he gets one. If he can't, he runs Linux with a shiny KDE or Gnome desktop and talks about how it's "just as good" as a Mac; usually he's looking at the Mac with utter lust as he says this.
I personally think this is one reason that Apple hasn't released a port of Quicktime for Linux. They're busy wooing Linux users, and doing it very successfully.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
On the first point, suffice it to say I agree with those who point out that Apple (and even Windoze) will retain the bulk of their customers because of the relative ease of setup and configuration.
As to the second point, if Linux racks up numbers that good, much of it will be at the expense of Windoze market share. If Linux helps (re)establish a heterogeneous desktop computing market, especially if it does so by increasing popularity of *nix, it erodes one of the biggest objections to inclusion of Macs in the workplace.
Where are these mentally slow people getting the money to pony up for Apple hardware?
Oh wait. Hollywood. Nevermind.
"Merging into heavy traffic at near light speed!"
"Our inertial mass ever increasing!"
As they are fanatical in their loyalty, just like my GNU/Linux and *BSD users, who are often fanatical in their loyalty to a particular distribution.
If GNU/Linux is to make inroads against Apple -- and, indeed, against Microsoft -- it will be through new users. There are many OEMs now that are offering GNU/Linux (usually RedHat) on their computers as an option, and online there are even ones that will install your GNU/Linux distro of choice (CraigWeb offers to install Gentoo, for example).
The important thing is to get OEMs to install GNU/Linux distributions -- preferrably, a spread of them -- by default. The significant cost-savings will alone create interest.
Before you go off ranting about how $100 isn't really a big deal, yes it is, to many people. Especially college students and those just entering the job-market.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
My fav quote from the article, "Is the new Mac the fastest personal computer ever? Maybe, but that was Sun's line, too. I'd love to do my work on a shiny new G5, but $248 is a lot closer to a free-lancer's purchasing power these days. Unless Jobs unveils a better, faster economy at his next keynote, my next desktop computer will come from Wal-Mart."
okay dipshit - put two 'freelancers' up against one another... one with Linux, the other with OSX. now put the software in front of them... Photoshop vs. GIMP, et al...
sorry my friend, i just finished 4 jobs while you're dicking around with configs and conflicts... how's that 248$ computer looking now? douchebag.
soon word will get out that you suck and you'll be reduced to writing articles for MSN... blah....
Yes they did. Something like 600% to 700% profit, I might add.
Have you seen E17? That desktop literally blew me away. Big Mack OS 10 better look out, your eyes will pop out of your head. And yes it is all about the eye candy, especially if you use linux for art/web development. Everything has a niche market, and as far as eye candy goes E17 is where it's at.
I'm sorry, but when exactly did linux become a viable desktop system?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Just it's less cost effective (maybe not for long).
I run Apache/Tomcat, qmail, mysql on my personal server at my house. When I booted up I forgot to put the extra ram I had lying around into it. Since I'm a typical lazy computer person I figured I'd be due for a reboot once I found something was messed up from my install. The funny thing is that it's been 6 months and the 2 extra 128mb sticks are setting on top of my server and it's running off 128mb with 8mb free. Granted it doesn't take a big load but I have 8 people using it as a mail server, it's my personal webserver and I do test mysql/jsp development on it. It's a pentium III 450 (the first one to come out in '99? slot 1) and it is a champ. So I took my server and didn't reinstall it as a server, it became my personal machine (It's a Dual Pentium III 933 with 1024MB RAM, RAID 0 (I backup frequently & mirror) 80GB of HD space). I really don't see the need to upgrade because my Business (read: mistake) Class DSL chokes on anything (1.5MB down 128Kb (notice the little b) upstream) and my pathetic computer is faster!
I guess the $500 price tag for OS X Server on top of the hardware cost is prohibitive to a very small shop like I have (lol, my company just got a huge contract so this won't be for long). I'm going to mirror on hostway and use them until a redundant T-1 is reasonable for my companies income.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
... is a Macintosh user.
Seriously, this is something that I believe hurts the cause of anyone who supports a choice in OSes.
Users should use what makes them productive.
If Apple really wanted to vie for a major place on the desktop, they'd release an X86 distribution, and then all of the MAC addicts would buy up copies of it for their significant others and extended families. I mean, the MAC fanatics I know would be giving everyone they know a copy of OS-X86 for Christmas!
Heck, Apple could probably even strongarm the software companies into supporting osx on multiple architectures.
But herein lies the problem - Apple still tries to be a Hardware&Software company and own their whole show. They need to port and license their OS. If they would have done this in the 80's, all of my Gateways and Dells would be running some variant of an Apple OS
As long as OSX doesn't run on commodity hardware (and Apple has done a good job ensuring that other vendors' PPC systems don't/won't challenge their hardware monopoly), it will remain a niche OS.
Linux has a major upper hand here -- find me a CPU, a bus, some storage device, a display device, and a gcc cross compiler and I can get linux running with a huge base of applications quickly.
What many people may not have noticed is that Linux is eating DOS's lunch in the embedded market since it runs on *ANYTHING* and has no licensing cost.
Don't forget to lump the other BSD's in with OS X.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Hmmm... I'm thinking wine and the amazing work of codeweaver's crossover. The percentage of Windows or MAC on my network? Zero...
Then build me a form programmable pdf that does spell checking and has embedded javascript to check date entry fields.
Oh wait you mean it has Acrobat Reader? I meant Acrobat Professional. The reason Acrobat PDF Format is so popular is because you can read it on any platform. Creating them is a different story (See Windows, Mac OS).
"what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris"
What on earth are those? Doesn't seem very impressive that Linux beat Tru64 operating system...
Apple's new, expensive proprietary hardware is their only hold on their customers.
The only thing that will save Apple is an X86 version of their OS. The Mac hardware, while cool, is overpriced compaired to comparably performing Intel iron.
Or they could make the PPC into commidity hardware. I'd buy the new Apple box and OS X for $500.
Otherwise, they will be sticking with the failed market model of Tandy, Amiga, and TI. You remember them?
Apple makes money selling specialized hardware. Only problem is that their cpu's are slowly drifting and drifting out of competition with Intel and AMD.
If this gap becomes too big then no flashy gui is going to save you.
So now Steve has to this really hard problem. Say I put an AMD chip into my Apple hardware, won't that mean that I'm only selling a GUI now as my GUI doesn't force me to buy Apple hardware anymore?
I mean even if the article portrays the situation as "success for Linux means failure for Apple", we should be smart enough to realize that that isn't true. Success for Linux means more portable software like Mozilla and OpenOffice. Success for Linux means that products start to be judged on their ability to work on multiple platforms again (that's almost totally fallen away these days). Success for Linux means that grunts can have cheap Unix boxes running free office software and managers and hotshots can have lickable ones also running Unix.
I don't think that the Macintosh has in recent memory cracked 10% of the market and today I think that even 5% would be progress. It would be sad to think that people out there have such low expectations for Linux that they say "no way will Linux ever beat Apple." Guess what: price matters more than quality and IT managers today see either Linux or Mac on the desktop as more expensive because of the support costs. But Linux can gradually eat away at those support costs. The Macintosh is forever stuck with the license and hardware costs. But that's okay. I don't care if a secretary in Munich uses a Mac. I use one and that's good enough for me. If she can save some money using Linux then I'm happy for her too!
old piece of shit Wintel machines, as corporations retire old underpowered CPUs from desktops. The only good use for old Wintel hardware is light-duty file or web servers running Linux, corporations don't run old OSes in new mass deployments. But corporations tend not to run flaky old hardware in mission critical server deployments either. On the other hand, I just upgraded my ancient Mac G3/400 server to MacOS X Server 10.26, it runs great. Try that with an old PeeCee box of equivalent age.
On the other other hand, corporations will always be buying new state-of-the-art machines and software. The battle is for the NEWLY deployed machines. Linux hasn't got a chance.
I guess it's that Apple thing where "it just works". The computer is a tool to HELP YOU work and play, as opposed to the computer BEING your work and play.
time is money.......
Maybe when it has Photoshop, Shake, Final Cut, Illustrator, Quark, Acrobat, etc...
... I guess normal users don't use those features either, just us web geeks/artist types.
Web geeks and artists only make up a tiny portion of the desktop market. The VAST majority of desktop users have never even heard of most of those apps. Their availability on Linux is utterly irrelevant for 98% of the computing public.
How about Word, Excel, Changing Resolutions, Installing a Printer, Copying pictures off a camera,
The problem with Linux is there's no standard distribution.
And since OS X is more bsd-like, BSD is more "compatible" with it.
Best Buy can have you arrested
2) DLL hell. I use Gnome and KDE sometimes. Mostly I try to use a few of the programs from each. GNU cash, KWORD .... which requires a lot of libraries == unnessary bloat, slowness and confusion when source compiling.
Okay, I agree with most of what you said, but this is just silly.
First, "DLL Hell" is reserved for DLL conflict, in which different programs require different versions of a library but the system can't cope; not "requires a lot of libraries."
Second, the fact they require a lot of libraries is *good*. The goal of Object Oriented Programming is code-reuse; this is considered a Good Thing. Now, libraries aren't necessarily OO in nature, but the fact that all these apps use a core set of functionality is really A Good Thing. This *doesn't* lead to bloat; it leads to faster development with less bugs, as the library becomes well-tested and well-debugged.
Slowness? Yes, since Linux seems to be a bit slow in dynamic binding. Troube compiling? Possibly, if you download the source and compile yourself. But, desktop users shouldn't be doing this! They should be doing "apt-get install gnumeric gnucash kword" or whatever. Or clicking friendly checkboxes and a button that says, "Download and Install."
Or whatever.
The rest of your points are valid. Not debilitating, I think, but valid. Unfortunately, because of the way politics works (and the computer industry is driven more by ad-hoc business politics than by worth and value, that's for fucking god-damned sure), I think OS-X doesn't stand much of a chance against MS-Windows.
But then again, Linux doesn't stand much of a chance, either.
Yet.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
J. Random Secretary neither needs nor cares about flexibility, power, or cutomizability. Pointy haired bosses couldn't care less about command line interfaces, or wide availability of development tools. For them, the MacOS dumbed down interface is ideal-- it allows them to get their simple tasks done without giving them too many opportunities to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will always be a market for Mac-like systems, and dumbing down Linux user interface to that level would be disastrous for those who have technological work to do.
Plus, Apple has seen the light and actually has a real OS buried beneath the chrome-- giving the opportunity for real Open Source development and genuine stability and security.
I am a Linux zealot by all means, but I don't see Macs as competition. They are a required, and orthogonal part of the market. If Apple folds, we would all loose a quality product.
Let's pray Apple holds on dearly to its clue, and never lets go.
-- MG
>So why the fuck don't they include one then? Sell you an
>overpriced machine, and then make you spend another
>$30 on a real mouse? WTF?
Simple. The OS is not so fatally flawed as to require two (or three) buttons to use effectively and, for the vast majority of users, a single mouse button is all they ever need for anything that they do on the computer.
Professional/power users, who need 3 button mice (or 2 button, or 12 button, whatever), can buy the one that they want--since whatever version Apple choose it would not work for many users who even want a multi-button mouse would need (I want a 3 button mouse, with the third button under my thumb, built for a right-hand! I want the same, but a lefty design! I want a flat, 3 button optical mouse! etc.)
So instead they provide an elegant one-button optical mouse with a clickable surface (rather than buttons) that will work for virtually all of their non-power users and even their power users until they find the right replacement.
It also simplifies tech support if everyone has one, but that's another matter.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
How many geeks do you know that buy from Dell?
I, for one, either get my machine custom-order from a local comp shop, or buy it piecemeal and build it myself (more the latter).
Which, if you know what you're doing, you can get the computer cheaper than you could at Dell (or others), as well as minimizing wasteage (IE: ATA133 drive with only ATA100 controller, PC-133 RAM running on a 100MHz bus, etc).
It's REALLY hard for Apple match the value of a well-built homebrew PC. Also, you're probably hard pressed to find a new Mac to put Linux on where you aren't already paying for OSX, giving another reason why Apple has a hard time competing on hardware prices alone for people who plan on using Linux.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
This article seems to be a case of an MS-Windows geek pitting the two most-likely challangers against themselves.
Fuck that. "United we stand, divided we fall."
OSX is good. Linux is good. Who cares who has the biggest market share? We don't need to whip it out and do a size comparison.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Consider this... most people don't know, but if you read the fine print, an OS X license is good for FIVE MACHINES. This means you can buy one copy and install it on up to five puters at your house, and stay legal. That works out to $26 each.
The regular license that comes with the $129 10.2 is good for ONE computer. However, Apple also sells a 10.2 box for $199 that is good for FIVE computers. Even at that price ($40 each), it is not a bad deal, but how many people have 5 macs at home capable of running 10.2?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Yeah when I was in 3rd grade (age 25 now) I used Tandys. What an awesome machine, I even programmed in basic at the age of 8. What a rush. Now I can't even write html without a GUI, LOL!
I am a hardcore linux/bsd guy, when I ran from M$ about 6 years ago, I ran as far as I could go, I've ran every distro of linux under the sun( RedHat,Mandrake,Debian, Slack, even LFS ) and any "free" version of unix I could get my hands on ( Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) ,by the way I didn't mention Gentoo because it is in a class all it's own, and then a friend let me borrow his powerbook, needless to say I'm writing this on my own ibook.
In the end we will always have wars of "Who has the biggest and badest OS around" and in the end it doesn't really matter as long as it's not Microsoft. Sorry BIGHEAD no soup for you.
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
I don't see the Mac as threatening Windows, since Apple does not make a $550 computer. Windows vendors make tons of them, and they sell tons of them. Linux is now in the $199 WalMart computer possible, and quite honestly, more power to it, and even to WalMart.
Linux IS going to pass Apple's market share, because Apple doesn't even compete in the low end of the market. What I protest about the Slashdot posting is the idea that Apple is going to be harmed by this.
I think Apple is going to increase its share in the high end of computing, which is its natural habitat. If you considered market share of computers costing $2,999 or more, I think you'd find Apple has an excellent chunk of that market, probably around 1/3.
Apple has laid the groundwork for this by buying up high-end applications like crackerjacks. Want Shake? Final Cut Pro? Logic? Mac time!
The main thing holding Apple back in this space was wimpy processors and high prices. But now that they have a processor that competes with $4,000 Xeon systems for performance, and all the software a digital art fanatic could ever want, I see them ready to make dramatic inroads in this space. If they're 30% now, they'll be 55% in six months.
There's little point in Linux trying to compete in this space; in the mainstream, Linux is about saving money, and you're not going to save people money selling a $4,000 Linux box when a $3,000 Mac's a better experience.
So Linux is going to do fine, and so is MacOS X. I wish I could say they'd all unite and destroy Windows, but Microsoft has enough loyalists that I don't think that's possible. But I do think we're heading towards a world with a lot more viable options, and quite honestly that's the best outcome for everyone involved.
D
In any case, its more likely that many creative engineers, scientists, artists and musicians will embrace OS X on the client as well as Linux on the server. At least those with $$.
Also, within certain limits price be damned. I love OS X. I've programmed/used computers since 1975 and everytime I boot up my Mac it feels like a comfy old pair of shoes. Like my favorite pair of jeans. I know that is very subjective, but so is any user experience.
This from someone who only uses windows for CounterStrike. I've configured Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/X etc ad nauseum. I've owned TRS80s, Atari 800s, Amigas, PCs and now my PowerMac.
Only real thing I would fix on the Mac is to:
Honestly everything else on the machine feels very professional, but that damn keyboard looks like it costs $300, but feels like it cost $5 from CompUSA.
Apple has an edge in the desktop market due to three primary advantages ove Linux.
1) It is standardized 2) It is very asthetically pleasing to the lamen 3) Super user friendly
Linux can dominate only if a standard can be met for a GUI that low end users can relate too over a series of computers. (i.e. a friends, neighbors or family members desktop) You can go from one OSX to the next and not get lost. Where as with Linux One person can run KDE, another Gnome and another Blackbox and the lamen will be like wha-da-fuh?
By asthetically pleasing I mean damn it is purty. If you have dealt with it you know the anti-aliased fonts aren't always bugged. They work. You know the task bar won't fall under some weird glitch and fail to work now and again. You know what it will do at any given moment if you perform the same command or function to it you always do and it does it in such a way that it is gorgeous to watch over and over.
I shouldn't have to comment on the user-friendly portion here. Lamen shouldn't have to know how to configure any files to make it boot X properly or how to blaze through a driver file to activate the proper driver that has been commented out. You should install it, it should work with out effort. This is for the lamen of course. For those who are technically inclined, (who enjoy the how and the why) that is cool yo. But for that individual who doesn't know what an email filter is, they should have to be hasseled by trivial little things they will never comprehend.
It is like electricity. The lamen plugs it in and it works. They should have to know that the device is operating at 60hz. Or that the plug is alternating current. All they should have to know is that they can do something over and over and it will work everytime.
If the linux community can achieve this then they can take Apple. But seriously... if it doesn't look pretty then the lamen isn't gonna be impressed. Just like EQ. I don't care if your leather armor has 45ac. I have a damn fine looking plate setup here with only 20ac. I may take more damage but damn I look good doing it.
A big reason for Mac's popularity is because a lot of designers use the Mac for thier work. It is almost standard in the print design industry to use Mac's. Plus a lot of webdesigners use the Mac.
I'm a designer that has done a lot of print work and now do a lot of web stuff. I personally prefer the PC.
What if Adobe and Macromedia ported all their apps to Linux? I would switch in a heartbeat from my PC to Linux. Would Mac users switch? No.
If you've got it for free and it can do "bash", "talk", "ps", "kill", "make", "cvs", "ssh", "pstree", "emacs", and "more" on the code it is compiled from (did I get it all?)..., then it's Linux (or F**BSD). Or,... do I want it another way around?... hmmm...???
/.
As long as it does as much as that, it can be called whatever, and I will still like it...
Still, so far, I haven't seen "X OS" poping up on my screen, other than in my "web browser" when reading
"Extinguishing someone else's candle doesn't make your own shine brighter"
If Unix takes over the desktop, Macs & Linux machines will both greatly increase in market share but from opposite customer markets. Linux from the soldering, compiling, experimenting & tinkering crowds. Mac OS from the simple, hands-off, no-fuss & no-muss crowd. When that day comes Linux will rule in terms of numbers of computers, but Macs may rule in terms of profit margins. That's a symbiotic relationship that will make a lot of people happy.
But to get there, the key is reducing the reliance on Windows. If you're corporate department is considering a large purchase of desktop machines and you're a Linux geek, make the argument for Mac OS X today. If you're a Mac geek whose department is replacing PC's with newer models, convince the PHB's to recycle the older hardware with Linux and turn them into file servers, print servers, backup stations, and simple desktop machines.
If the world moves toward Unix and away from Microsoft, it will help both Mac OS X and Linux.
Plus no one has anything like iTunes.
Rhythmbox
JuK
liteamp
Put on your sunglasses before visiting JuK's website.
It will be intersting to see this one play out. I installed RH 9 on a machine I use as a LAN server and I have to say that I am pretty impressed. Gnome/KDE blow windows out of the water IMO. I think that you will see a large shift in market share as the common man becomes more computer literate.
One example - I went to visit my family a few months ago - was talking to my 15 year old sister and noticed that her desktop looked odd. Took a closer look and realized she was running KDE. She explained that she was sick of her system getting virri and being generally unstalbe, always having to reboot - so she googled for an alternative to Windows and ended up installing Suse herself. My sister is not knowledable about computers - she just uses her machine for email, webbrowsing, mp3s, and IM.
This made an impression on me - I think that the days of the 'computer impared' are numberd. Her generation is not going to put up with Palladium - ha.
I think Palladium will cause a good amout of market share to change hands. Will it go to apple or linux? I think it will be about even when it comes to the home user - but if linux starts eating into apple's share I am certain they will just release OS X for X86.
An area that seems to have been glossed over in this thread is the laptop market. The reality is that running linux on your laptop is tough. The hardware isn't really upgradable anyway, so why not go mac?
I've seen a real increase in the number of powerbooks and ibooks that people are carrying around with them, especially in technical circles. It's unix without the hassle, in a spiffier piece of plastic/titantium/aluminum.
Linux does not need heavy tweeking to become a polished desktop. Install RedHat 8+ and you'll see a very polished desktop that just works.
I'm running RedHat 7.2 on my wife's machine. The only tweaking I've done is to install the Ximian desktop (that takes one command line). The machine runs well and has been doing so ever since 7.2 came out.
Sig is on vacation
Spend USD$3k on a commodity PC (or buy four little PCs, some networking gear and IO cards) and be amazed. I'm pretty sure I could squeeze four Athlons and a few GB of RAM into the box for USD$3000.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
One bite and the other 97% will become Apple zealots themselves, but you virtually have to "bring them" the Apple, the rest is instinct!
Studies show that computer-illiterate people are easily confused by multiple buttons
They're absolutely correct. I know several people on WebTV (aka MSNTV) that look at a multiple button mouse (heck, even a single button mouse for some) with a mixture of fear and terror. They know that their boxes are already obsolete, and that within a couple years, MS will stop supporting them entirely and they will need to move to a computer or loose the internet, and it terrifies them. Some are old folks who think a computer is too much for them. Others are like my ex girlfriend who is just a technophobe and hates learning new things. I have seen some of the pictures which say "keep your damn mouse, I want my WebTV" and know that while us computer users look down on AOL folks for their lack of internet savvy, most of us don't even see the WebTV folks, as they don't make that big of a noise at all. The eerie thing is, there are still a LOT of them, just ask the old Talk City management...their customers were half Webbies.
If you have the money for a Mac, you can probably afford any mouse you want to go with it. Personally, I've been using my trusty IntelliMouse Explorer for something like five years now, and I don't intend to give it up until someone pries it out of my cold, dead hands!
I say the same about my mac, and yes, I do use an IntelliMouse, which is pretty much the only Microsoft product connected to my machine next to IE, which I am slowly phasing out.
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
It's time to stop spreading the FUD. Anyone who can setup and use Windows can setup a Mandrake or Red Hat box. It is only difficult for some people stuck in a Windows world who couldn't imagine anything else. The completely clueless will learn either just as easily. Admittedly even former MS zealots (myself included) can find it not too difficult to setup a Linux box.
Time makes more converts than reason
"A column posted today on Slate ponders projections that Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year." Market Share != yummy GUI + bad ass HW Linux's market share is increasing at a faster rate than Apple's; todays announcements are great! I've been drewling over the g5 all day. Thing is REAL market share is not about how slick and integrated things are, it's about how cost effective a solution is. Compared to a Linux box an Apple box doesn't really win that argument on the desktop (at least for me) for the common joe...
Push the envelope. Watch it bend. -Tool
When you decide you want to stop fooling yourselfs, click the link.
Apple and MacOS will do the same, it's just that they are so far ahead now on everything but price as you say. How many non-geek people in your street would consider Linux over MacOSX if they were the only two to chose from?
If Linux wasn't free it wouldn't have a hope in hell.
Most home users aren't geeks with banquet tables set up to hold multiple machines. Really. Most users have ONE machine to do ALL their work/play. Really.
Outside US Apple is almost non-existent while
Linux is more popular than in the US.
And most of the people outside US are really
price-sensitive - the part of the market
Apple does not even try to get.
Esential thing will be the enforcement
of IP - as long as you can steal Windows and Office there is no problem with price.
But administration and companies will slowly
go towards Linux.
The lowest priced G5 is $1999. Expensive, and remember, just like with any OS, the power users adopt first. I don't want no stinkin' eMac, that's for sure.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Unlike the other answers to your post, I don't buy it. Got a source for that? It's all fine and well to say something like that, if true, but back it up.
What's your source?
Well, I see there are at least two illiterate people on Slashdot. The original poster and you.
Just listen to how this sounds: "linux ain't gonna do nothin' to OS X"
Ok, so if Linux "isn't going to do nothing", then it must be doing something, right? Well, what is it going to do?
Where do you people come from? India?
Slate should have had to say in this article that they are essentially a subsidiary of Microsoft. Does anyone else sniff the air when an article like this comes out the day of the G5 unveiling?
Yeah I'll second that thing about JuK's website. Ouch!
Rhythmbox actually looks like the best one of the bunch, but damn it's a clone and is much less pretty than its inspiration. JuK looked pretty clunky and liteamp is alpha like hell. You didn't mention XMMS.... interesting.
It's good people are doing what the like to do, but like I said in a different post on this thread, the programs are mediocre clones and they exist in a vacuum. I would bet that none of these programs can interoperate with OSS Photo programs like iTunes does with iPhoto.
Most stuff (memory, drives, standard interface cards, USB devices and many video cards) is swappable between PC and Mac. Apple stuff (motherboard/CPU) and Win(Modems/Printers) are not. Bootstrapping ROMS on PCI cards don't work on the other platform, but the other functions of the cards generally work if there's a driver for it.
Cooling fans and power supplies were the same as on a PC a couple years ago, but not quite standard now, and the standoffs for mounting the motherboard are different. Also, Xserve drive modules are pain.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
I watched Steve Jobs address at WWDC today, and I have to say, I was almost drooling when I saw the Xcode's "flowers/petal" demo. With X integrated into Panther and safari and Xcode (for free!) and add VPN into the sweet deal, who gives a damn about Linux? I have Linux/Windows as well as OSX, and since I got my baby (an iBook) about 6 months back, I am a lifelong convert. I for one wont mind paying 120 bucks for Panther. Linux is for people who want to spend time on the computer. OSX is for people who want to spend time on their mac's.
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition....
Will Linux ever surpass Apple/Mac on the desktop?
This can be answered with the following question...
"Was linux designed with the desktop in mind from day one?"
For those who don't know, the answer is a resounding NO! The MacOS was designed to be a desktop OS. It was designed to "just work". Linux was designed primarily as a server OS. It is an *nux/*nix. It robs the user of Windows weeks if not months if his/her time trying to figure things out. It's an "everything is file, even your HDD!" OS. Don't get me wrong, Linux is great and all but this kind of question shouldn't even be asked at this point. There's no way Linux will gain a larger share than MacOS as the primary OS of choice on one's computer. At least not until being an easy to use OS ever becomes a goal in this camp. KDE and Gnome have made great strides but OSes like MacOSX, BeOS and to a lesser extent Windoze were designed to be easy from the get-go.
But you don't get to compare hard-core distributions like Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Stampede, and so one and so-forth -- that were intended for power users who really know what they're doing -- to Apple's OS', which are intended for users who are still looking for the any key.
If you want a fair comparison, you need to compare to a distribution like Lindows, which is intended for someone who's still looking for the any key.
Once you make that fair comparison, Linux has a huge advantage, because you can get it for less than $300 and still have reasonable performance for any common daily activities (you won't get good FPS on such a comp, but it will be fine for picture editing, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, internet browsing, and e-mail checking). Now, find me an Apple for $300 with a modern OS on it, and that performs well, and doesn't require you to wait several seconds for every app to open.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
That would be a shame if you're in any sort of IT career. That's nice that you're on your way to becoming a fanatic and all, but you really need to keep up on everything.
Now if you're just a reagular old home user, fine. But since you're posting on
I wish more
> My little iMac can encode MPEG4 video in realtime. > Show me an x86 that can do that. Or, shut up about > x86 performance.
1GHz athlon can easily do this, 720x480 video divx5 encoding at 10000 kbps in real time. Perhaps it's time to updage your sig, since my machine isn't exactly the bleeding edge these days.
Not as easily or seamlessly as on a USD$1500 Mac, to be sure, but the tools are there to do all of the above and can (have, in the case of my sister-in-law) been used by non-technical people to do just those things. She doesn't have a DV camera, but others do.
Cinelarra and friends aren't as easy to use as iMovie, but Mandrake does give you access to $zero film tools like CinePaint (many of which, it must be said, will also run under OS X with an X server). How much did you spend on software on top of your USD$1499?
BTW, given a choice between OS X in stable Apple hardware or MS-Windows on commodity PC hardware for anything like comparable pricing, I would be hard pressed to not choose the Mac. But given a choice between a good Mac at AUD$3k or a good PC running Linux at AUD$2k, I'd need some justification for that extra AUD$1k.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Dear Apple,
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Would this general be like the last one elected? Would he actually warn of the dangers of the military industrial complex??
Sounds like an episode from the upcoming Discovery show "Monster PC".
John Kerry is a Joke!
Nooo waaay
I mean, seriously. Apple knows exactly how many copies of its OS have been installed. Linux companies, eh, not so much. Even if they keep track of sales AND the number of downloads, how can they possibly know how many times a distro has been passed around? And the Mac OS pretty much has to run on a Mac. Not so Linux. My personal experience says, there's a lot more machines out there running Linux than you think.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
You have described my exact frustrations with the Linux desktop to such an accurate degree it's scary.
For now, I will stick to the console (like I have for the past 6 years) and patiently wait for a usable linux desktop (that works from the get-go).
"Sorry wishful thinkers... linux ain't gonna do nothin' to OS X. In any case, it'll have much less effect on OS X than it could have on Windows."
Maybe not on its installed base, but what we are discussing is market share. If Apple is content with the number of users they presently have, then that's wonderful, but it isn't much to brag about either.
GNU/Linux is inevitable.
Look at the OpenOffice.org suite. While it is not now as feature rich or as polished (no, it isn't) as Office XP, it seems inevitable that it will in the near future come sufficiently close to being so in enough respects that for majority of users it can be considered its equal or better.
Surely there is a point in the near future, if it has not already passed, when the the increase of features in Microsoft Office which are beneficial to to used by more than a small minority of users, will come to be quite insignificant. There are only so many different useful ways one might want to create a document. Visual polish and enchancements to clarity and ease of use, which are already not far behind, will surely come soon.
If this is the case, I can not help but believe it to be inevitable that within the next several years OpenOffice.org will for the majority of users be the equal of MS Office, or its better, and be free of cost (at least to license).
Further, for email, scheduling, and coordination, Ximian Evolution is already there, is it not?
Mozilla Browser already appears to be superior or equal to Microsoft IE in nearly every important feature, except perhaps for certain proprietary plugins, but how much of a concern is that?
While it may be a long time before Linux has as much support from hardware vendors as does Windows, for the corporate client it does not matter whether or not a user can plug in and use brand X digital camera, brand Y scanner, or brand Z printer, as it might for the home desktop user.
As it stands, Linux can not outperform Macintosh in any area key to desktop use (as it relates to Mac users). Linux can do the same in many respects (like offer a decent web browser and MP3 playback), but overall user interface and major application support from key vendors is lacking and or far behind (Aqua, Photoshop, PageMaker, DreamWeaver, printer support, etc). Until these key desktop areas are addressed, the vast majority of Apple users won't mind paying the extra $$$ for convienence and famailarity.
Despite how much I love Linux, despite the fact that I contributed over $500 dollars to various Linux companies last year out of my very small pocket, and despite the fact that I use Redhat as my desktop operating system, I know that it ain't ready.
Let's get this straight - Linux is very very cool. It's boss. It's the bees knees.
My mom will NEVER use it. Period.
Neither will teachers, or graphics pros, or musicians, by and large. The goal of most users is not to have a custom theme on thier window manager or have thier shells exposed or to recompile thier kernel with a cron job. Keep it simple, stupid. They want to run a web browser, and email app, and some word processing and spread-sheet apps, and maybe some games, too, and they don't want thier OS to get in the way, but rather to facillitate those tasks. Linux is very good at what it does, and it will only get better, but it will never match Apple for ease of use, hardware/software integration, accessories (iPod, Cinema Display, etc.) and - lets face it - eye candy.
Have you ever recorded a 64-track composition, with MIDI instruments, waveform, effects, samples... If you do that every day (or even just most days), the last thing you want to do is write freakin' shell scripts and recompile your sound card driver. Most people just don't get off on this sort of stuff (speaking as someone who does).
Apple's market share, for the gazillionth time, is NOT 3 percent. That's just how many new machines they've been selling compared to the rest of the market lately. There are millions of Macs out there that have gotten years of use and are still in service - my Macs have ALWAYS outlasted my PCs. There are something like 5 million Safari users, FCOL, and for that you have to have Jaguar, and be willing to try beta software. This is only a small portion of Mac users.
So dream of the day that there are MANY viable alternatives to Windows, and I'll share your dream. But please don't assume that everyone is a geek like you. First ask yourself if you really want them to be.
Maybe it's just me, but I see Linux and OS X competing for the title of Next Killer OS, while simultaneously complementing each other -- both are Unix, but they differ/compete on price, ease-of-use, available applications, etc. (Apple's stylish and now superior-performance hardware is also a big carrot for going with Mac). Anyway, I don't see how this competition can be a bad thing for either, but it could spell trouble for Microsoft:
Of the Windows user who will switch it seems likely that more will choose Linux than Mac, especially as KDE and GNOME become friendlier, but some will choose Mac, so it really seems that Apple and Linux only gain.
sig != null
Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
:-P
Apple has made enormous strides forward since OSX, but the fact remains that they cannot, in the long term, compete with completely Free / Open Source desktop environments. It's true that OSX currently has a big eye-candy advantage over XFree86+KDE/Gnome, but that will not last forever. Work is already being done to modernize XF86 and integrate OpenGL acceleration, ala. Quartz. It's really a shame that Apple did not contribute to existing windowing projects instead of doing their own proprietary thing. The half-open/half-closed approach will buy them some time of whiz-bang product uniqueness, but between MS's Longhorn and the work of open projects, it won't last. When will that happen? Who knows. 2 years? 5? 10? But it will happen. The Open Source movement has hardly even taken off yet. But, not to be too down on Apple, I imagine they'll continue to be forward thinking and adopt more Open Source technology in the future. And maybe someday if they move enough volume their hardware prices will be more reasonable too.
And, as a sidenote, I don't believe the "X11 is outdated" nonsense. From what I've seen/heard, XF86+KDE far outperforms OSX on lower end machines in terms of interface responsiveness. Once OpenGL acceleration and translucency is built-in, there will be nothing to complain about. Just my $0.02
I want to switch, but I am too busy to monkey around with my computer anymore... win2k works, (NT didn't) and I'd like to have a reason to never upgrade again, but I can't be tweaking settings and hunting for drivers...
There's some beaut scenery. Perth is a nice city but not a patch on some of the amazing stuff in the outback. But you'll find idiots everywhere. The ones in the country tend to be a more interesting quality of idiot, because if they were ordinary boring idiots, they'd have moved back to Perth (or Sydeny or Melbourne) long ago. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Never. Linux sucks.. fucking commies.
"I love my Linux desktop because *I*, not Steve J or Bill G, am in charge"
I can see that, and respect it. But personally, 99% of the details about my desktop I don't want to be in charge of; I don't care and I don't want to be bothered so long as they're handled even reasonably intelligently. Both Bill and Steve handle them reasonably intelligently (your opinion may vary, and given that this is slashdot, almost certainly does. Keep in mind, I may have a different level considered "reasonable", and I definetly seem to exceed most peoples ability to not care about things I consider, well, not worth caring about)
Sometimes I'd rather Steve were in charge, because I think he more frequently exceeds "reasonably inteligent" and reaches for brilliant . But Steve is awfully insistent that he's right, even when I think he's wrong. Bill still does ok most of the time and when he is wrong, he's easier to outwit and work around than Steve (possibly I'm just more used to it). He doesn't really try for "brilliant" so he has a better hit rate on reasonable.
"You say Windows is open? Not to me it isn't."
The sense in which he says it is open is , I suspect, the very thing that tips me firmly from Steve to Bill: hardware. Steve want's to be in charge of my hardware. Bill dosen't. (Or if you prefer, Steve is picky about what hardware he's in charge of, Bill wants to be in charge of all the hardware...)
So there you go, Bill G is in charge of my desktop, and like it that way. Show of hands please: Would you like to proceed straight to the lynching, or tar-and-feather first?
Apple has been in "stay alive" mode while they weathered the storm of the underperforming G4. Now that they have come back to parity with PC hardware, they are going on the offensive. Just look at all the MS jokes in today's keynote, if that's not a declaration of platform war I don't know what is.
Unless that motherboard has a lot more than I'd guess, you've left out gigabit ethernet, firewire 400 and 800, optical audio in and out, and amplified analog audio out.
Perhaps more importantly, that system would be about half the speed of the mac to which you're comparing it.
Don't need GigE, optical audio, and all that speed? Then you should be comparing to an imac, which is still cheaper than what you've listed.
Certainly more importantly, you haven't accounted for your time spent selecting, purchasing, and assembling the parts. What's your consulting rate? Several hours work at a few hundred an hour dwarfs the cost of the hardware entirely.
I don't have time to read through 860 comments to see if this is redundant, but there seems to be a rather obvious omission in the article. It seems as if the author doesn't realize that many Linux desktop installations are dual boot with Windows. Many Linux desktops users switch back to Windows for various things.
With a Mac, you're almost certainly running Mac OS X (or OS 9) exclusively. Sure there's Virtual PC and Linux for PowerPC, but these situations are in the vast minority. In most cases, a Mac is dedicated to running some version of Mac OS. That's why you have to write Mac software to reach Mac hardware owners. You don't have to write Linux software to reach people that have Linux hardware.
So the suggestion the Linux desktop marketshare will somehow surpass Mac OS X on the desktop doesn't hold much weight for me. Perhaps what will surprass Mac OS X eventually are the segement of Windows machines that also have Linux installed. I don't see how any of this would make professional developers reconsider selling Mac OS X software (as the article suggests). How many Linux users even buy software?
Although with Apple now selling at 64-bit dual processor workstation (with 8GB ram capacity and half a terrabyte of storage capacity) with a beautiful Unix OS for $3000 -- well I'm not so sure anybody can reasonably predict where this will go.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Linux will have a hard time simply because of what you hinted at an didn't say outright: Linux (and GNU and KDE) don't innovate, they continually take existing ideas and attempt to mimic/emulate them.
When you are continually playing catchup, and can't provide any reasonably reliable timeline for feature releases or updates, it's very hard for a company to take you seriously. There are entire too many projects in the free software model that are totally dependent upon the dedication of one person. It that one poerson gets bored, gets a job, dies, whatever, the project dies.
Sure you can be noble and say that "well someone else will just pick up where they left off", but time after time we've seen that it doesn't happen. A company like Apple,Microsoft, Sun and the like allow projects to survive the loss of even multiple project authors. The company can hire replacements to continue the project since cash is a mighty incentive.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
If Slate wanted to generate as much reaction as possible for an article, Boutin couldn't have chosen a better way to sensationalize some pretty tame analyst conjecture. This story isn't new, and heck - I even suspect that regurgitated analyst conjecture has been wrong in the past. But even if it isn't wrong this time, who cares? Boutin presents an eclipse of MacOS by Linux as another death knell for Apple, when in fact it presents the greatest opportunity Apple Computer has seen in decades. This is for 3 fundamental reasons:
1. Linux will not be replacing Macs, they'll be replacing current & future Windows boxes. They will be the new systems of price-conscious IT managers or consumers or who would have otherwise used cheap Windows systems anyways. Where Linux is making desktop inroads (with the corporate & enterprise set) Apple has never has had, and probably never will have, any significant acceptance. And nobody can credibly say that Apple's core users - people who work with graphics & music, publishers, etc - will dump their platform and be using Gimp et al instead of Photoshop & MSOffice this decade. Neither will the grandmas of the world anyday soon be getting Linux boxes instead of dead-simple iMacs from their adult children so they can chat with the grandkids. Boutin is right that Linux is growing, but Linux is not eating into Apple's market share to any significant extent.
2. Linux acceptance means more willingness to look at all alternatives to Windows. If we, as consumers or enterprise managers or whomever, are considering going with something other than what we're used to, all options are suddenly open for discussion. The hard part is stepping away from the psychologically safe, familiar zone of Windows to start with; after that, most people don't care what they run so long as they can do what they need to with minimum hassle. The more people use Linux, the more they will consider a Mac, and vice versa.
3. More Linux adoption directly results in more Mac software. Porting is easy, and how many app developers wouldn't spend a few days (nearly a worst-case scenario) to make MacOS X-compatible versions of their software for minimal cost, opening up a market of millions? Furthermore, the more people using Linux, the more users out there will be familiar with the *nix conventions and tools that are also permeate MacOS X, so switching from one to the other will be increasginly like going from KDE to Gnome rather than to/from something foreign.
Boutin is wrong to imply that growing market share for Linux will eat away at Apple's customers. Analogies to Sun & SGI are misleading, since these companies are competing with Linux in the same market spaces that Linux has strength in, and may not show enough beneficial differentiation from Linux to be considered a better solution for the same needs. Apple, however, is very significantly differentiated in the minds of most people from Linux - how many people would confuse the two? - and presents real & imagined specialized benefits that are not seen to be available elsewhere, certainly not with Linux. I won't even comment on his analogies to the XBox vs. Playstation & Gamecube, it's so irrelevant. Wost of all, Boutin pits Linux vs. Apple, predicting Apple will be another "friendly fire" casualty. The two communities have so much to gain from one another by an increased acceptance of either, that one should really consider a success for one to be a success for the other (and the *BSDs as well). A nice try at inflammatory writing, though.
Do it NOW.
I'm a Mac friggin addict and i've only owned a mac for about 3 months now. The more I use this machine(17" Powerbook), the more I fall in love with it. I'm not going to say what everyone else has said 5 times already, but the one thing i've noticed since i've been a mac user is how Apple literally PUSHES the industry along. Not just with the big stuff like the new badass G5 but just little stuff like the Quartz graphics and OpenGL. WHO ELSE thought to make regular desktop video processing be done on the VIDEO PROCESSOR?!? It's brilliant. And rendezvous is awesome as well. But anyhow... Apple doesnt just sit with their feet on the desk and think of how to make things pretty. They sit around and think of how to make the obvious details work much more effieciently. They make the user(consumer, grandma, hardcore unix programmer, audio, video, graphics professionals, etc) the first and foremost on their list. In a nut shell, they cater to everyone. They make things simple enough to use so anyone can use it (iMovie, iDVD) and they make shit that takes Months to figure out(Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro). They've got something for everyone AND every price range. What more could you ask for?
A problem that I think will hinder LINUX in the end is the argument over licenses, open-source vs. closed source, and the general hate of proprietary code and hardware. It's hard for closed-source software to survive on LINUX. Free, open-source alternatives will be continue to be common and will make an impact on the industry, but it's a well known fact that it's hard to make money off of something that's free.
IF LINUX won and stayed with the current licenses, it might mean an end to proprietary software. If there was no more closed source software, that would of course mean that it would be tough for Adobe to make money. They might make Photoshop open source to be compatible with the GPL. They'd do that right about when Microsoft distributes MS-LINUX. An end to propriety software would also mean that most developers of open source software would be out of a day job â" a tough proposition. The battle would be won, but switching to a 100% open-source development model would be a tough transition. As long as money exists in the world, the open source developer needs a way to make some, and donations don't pay much more than the server bills. In the end, it all costs money.
Thus, the Apples are needed in the LINUX/UNIX/Windows/Mac OS X/Amiga wars. Open source is great for closed source companies because it saves on development time. It results in cheaper software, and as long as the two spheres coexistent peacefully, it's the only way to win. Apple, for example, contributes some changes back to the community, but they also reserve the code they hold near and dear to their hearts for themselves. It's OK that LINUX is entirely open, and it's OK that Apple is mostly open. Working together, it's still better than everything being closed, and it's more balance than everything being open.
There is a reason that the industry grew up on closed source software, and the quality of software will suffer if there was no such paid job title as "Computer Programmer. The software industry is huge. And the software industry is important. A balance is what is needed, and a balance is what will happen.
Finally, when it comes down to it, most users just want to get their work done, curse the machine because they don't understand it, and have someone else fix the problems. They want to work 9-5, and leave early on Fridays to go up to the lake to go fishing. For the majority of computer users, there is no liberation: they just don't care, and it won't impact their life. They will use LINUX if their job tells them to use LINUX. They will use Windows if their job tells them to use Windows. And they will use Mac OS X if their job tells them to use Mac OS X. And no choice will make much of a difference in productivity, because few people use an OS to it's full potential, and anyone who does is doing pretty darn good on any OS. It may be just like the classic 1984 ad, but no OS is going to change that.
You know, when I peek inside companies I'm invariably called in to "help out" because they're having network/computer woes, I've ended up doing a mental note of the companies with white boxes vs. the ones with name brand systems.
Every single one who "saved" money buying white boxes over the past couple years is now out of business. Period. Their PCs crashed, they lost data, they lost time, they didn't have the necessary skilled person on staff to maintain them, fix them, and eventually that ate them alive.
Nothing in life is free. Support costs money. Buying from a first tier vendor, like Dell, or like Apple, means you get someone to call at the very least, and if you pay for the privilege, someone to come out, on site, to replace the defective piece of hardware.
So enjoy the white box on your desk. Because you're going to be on unemployment soon.
If you do, you would know that Linux's gui (KDE, Gnome...) really sucks compared to Apple's one.
Linux might have the same or better technical habilities but its interface really lacks the polish of Apple's Mac OS X.
I personally don't care about the NUMBER of linux or Apple boxes out there. I only wish that Linux interface become more friendly.
If linux cannot invent really nwe interface paradigms that should start "copying" Apple's interface.
MacOS X is definitely not comparable with let's say Irix, or HP/UX. It's not a piece of patchwork "art" like most other Unices. In fact, it's quite consistent within itself.
:)
Application development is more or less simple (have you ever written a Motif application?). Low level programming is not as tricky as on other OSes, since the interfaces to the kernel are pretty well designed.
The GUI technology is powerful and fast when compared to X11 and even to Windows. Graphical applications integrate with each other as well as they do on Windows. And yes, at Apple they do seem to consult designers when making GUIs.
In other words, there is some thought behind MacOS X, as opposed to the organic growth that's behind other Unices. Technically it's no more than another GUI on top of Unix, but it feels like a GUI-only OS which happens to come with a terminal application that no ordinary user will ever have to use or even know of. Sorry guys, but that's what most users want.
So, to answer the question. Is Linux going to have an easy win over MacOS X? While I'd really like to see that happen it's certainly not going to be right now.
Best wishes
Madeleine Freudenberg
First a bit of history. When I started an interactive agency in 1984, we were a Mac shop. But a year after Apple made the move to the Power Macs, I forced my graphic designers to move to Windows. Apple's platform was so unreliable and so slow that the price premium was absurd.
Very early on we used Linux as our file server platform, since we could serve both Windows and Mac files. Over time the advantages of open source became more apparent to me, and about 4 years ago I switched to a Linux desktop. I started with Gnome before it hit 1.0, but I have been using KDE now for about 2 years.
I'm a marketing/manager type. My key tools are these: word processing, browsing, addressbook, email and IM. One thing I have learned to love about the open source world is that it allows me to own my own information. Proprietary formats mean I have no control and I will be forced to pay ransom in the future just to keep accessing my own files!
So now my key working application set includes: Lyx, Abiword, OpenOffice (for those pesky word files I have to open and edit on occassion that Abiword still barfs on), Jpilot, Mozilla, GAIM and Acrobat Reader. Sometimes I also use Quanta for fixing up our website or Gimp for touching up a graphics file. I also use Konqueror as an ftp client for our Zope backend. All these applications give me everything I need, work quite well, and store my files in formats which are open standards which I know will be around for as long as I need to access them. Windows is not an option, and never again be for me.
In fact, the Linux desktop has reached a stage where I would recommend any business user like myself to use it. Certainly, I would strongly urge businesses to use the applications listed, instead of their proprietary equivalents. Most of these apps are available on Windows as well. And I haven't even begun to talk about the thousands of dollars saved in licensing fees and the superior feature set and useability of these apps over the proprietary equivalents.
Recently I had to decide about a new computer for a web designer. The software set this person uses - Photoshop, Freehand, Dreamweaver - just isn't available for Linux and may never be. So looking at Windows XP versus Apple, guess what: I chose the eMac. Despite the small premium in price, the stability of Mac OS X made the switch seem worthwhile. It had been a number of years since I had played around with an Apple machine, and I was extremely impressed by the speed and the ease of use of the OS X platform., and how great these apps ran on the Mac.
But there is also me as the home user. Yes, I also like to listen to music and rip cds. My son likes to do that too, and he also wants a P2P client and he just got a video camera and he would like to do some editing, and play around with midi and his piano keyboard. Here's where things get fuzzy. Sure you can do all this stuff on Linux, but it's such a pain to set up, and if you upgrade something, something else breaks.
Now in the past I would say, the Apple premium isn't worth it. But having played with that eMac I'm starting to think differently. For the home user who wants multimedia capabilities, Linux is just too big a pain. Apple just works out of the box (except I would add the Ogg Vorbis plugin to iTunes since I don't want to use proprietary MP3s). So probably the next home computer I get will be a Mac (and that's certainly what I'm going to get for my son going to college).
So the key in choosing a platform is your application set. For designers Apple (once again) rules and the price premium is worth it. For business people, Linux is the way to go. For home users with a rock bottom budget or who aren't multimedia fanatics, Linux is a great entry system. If you have some extra cash, the Mac is worth it.
And here's another thought: maybe down the line if business is good I might get a Mac as my business machine as well. With Fink and other projects bringing my favorite Linux open source applications to the Mac, I can hav
let's not forget that it Star/Open Office is a "gift" from Sun, another top notch proprietory manufacturer of hardware with their own OS
OpenOffice.org software is under the GNU Lesser General Public License, one of the same licenses Mozilla uses. Why do you use scare-quotes around "gift"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I've read nearly 1000 posts, and am disappointed we don't seem to be able to agree that Linux will overtake Apple #'s simply because Apple continues to offer a high priced, high quality combination of HW and Desktop, while linux continues to plow on the path of X86 low cost, high performance user solutions.
Low cost beats high quality every time in the numbers game, and unless Apple wants to completely change direction and play at that, there's no question that Linux will overcome them in the desktop arena. (See years 1990-2000 MS vs Apple).
But that won't necessarily effect Apples sales, the audiences are too dissimilar. This is where the article makes a HUGE mistake, because in fact, KDE and Gnome are becoming real threats to XP, and with bigger deployment #'s, Linux gains billions in support and government backing (none of which it's really had previously, excepting IBM). This in turn continues to push the evolution of both the OS and the desktop, and concurrently the server apps, but more and more often with concrete backing.
This has already had a snowballing effect, anyone who works large MS installations can tell you the CFO's are asking how to deploy Linux and save licensing fees and disable BSA treasure hunts for lost receipts.
Personally, I wish the likes of linux and gcc would completely halt further development now--I made good money with MS's professional BS. But I'm going to continue to work in the field for at least another 20 years, and the writing is on the wall, and in my paycheck.
You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
It still can't run DC, PS2, GCN, or Xbox game discs. I don't think it can run Alpha or Itanium binaries at an acceptable speed either.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Last year, my attempt to follow the several pages of instructions for installing Mathematica on linux failed. I eventually spent several unpleasant hours hacking through 50K of interdependent awk scripts, reworking some of them and manually handling some of the things they were failing to do. I got it working eventually, but it wasn't fun. And I certainly can't remember what all I did, so if I had to install it again tomorrow, I'd have to repeat the whole painful process.
Imagine how happy I was when I installed it the following day on macosx, and found that instructions consisted of "Drag the Mathematica icon to the Applications folder."
No.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Well, DLL hell is probably the wrong word regarding Linux apps. Having used Linux for years now, one of the most problematic points there is is, that usually there are around "200" minor versions of the core libraries, each breaking something, often smaller api changes, which makes it close to impossible to have a static binary for a longer period of time on a constantly updated system. At least for the core libraries (libc, gtk2, qt etc...) there needs to be a common versioning mechanism with common agreeable static versions which you basically can find on every distro, I'm not sure if LSB already covers that, but this is one of the worst problems Linux has and no other OS has to this extent. It all comes down to one fact, either program with a VMed language and hope that the language is on the system or see your binaries breaking left and right on around 10-50% of the systems over time unless you do a static compile of everthing.
...Thanks, IBM. You blew it.
Competition is a really funny thing... a whole bunch of clans on Slashdot have their little competitions everyday about "SPECint" this and "open source" that.... all the while seemingly oblivious to the fact that competition is driving this technology.
Apple use Open source because it is a unique competition paradigm for software technology... OS X and Linux are both part of the competition but each team is fueling the other. The great thing is that although its very tough competition (i.e. lots of new releases, lots of development, lots of new code), each team benefits from the others improvements. Im talking big picture here... not the symantics associated with open source licenses etc. It is why open source is all about competition... it is a new paradigm of competition... it is a paradigm of competition that is similar to athletes who train and compete together.
The space race was a great non-violent spin-off of the cold war. A technological competition between two enormous developers. Now they didn't have an opensource model... they were too paranoid for that... but they did have leaks and spys and defectors and other means of sharing their core developments. I think the opensource model makes a whole bunch more sense.
I think that this new opensource paradigm is the reason why OS X is so good and why it has foundations which are standards based. I also know OS X's limitations but this is early days for apple in this new developer environment.
Imagine if Microsoft joined this paradigm. The landscape of computing would change dramatically. Unfortunately they wont engage in competition with the likes of Apple or the Opensource world...... "but they ARE in competition!!" you say... no they are not. They are the bully's on the playground who do not want to play with the other kids... all the time looking at what everyone is doing and playing catchup, or making there own version. Ofcourse their games aren't as much fun, because they make up their own rules and change the rules as they go. Time to finish the playground analogy... it could go on forever, it is very apt in describing Microsofts behavior.
It is very frustating to me that there is a culture and a philosophy at microsoft that is threatened by this new paradigm of competition... unfortunately they think it impacts on their bottom line. They are short-sighted and under-resourced to play the bully in this technology landscape. I'm not any kind of Opensource evangilist but I'll tell you now Microsoft do not have enough money in the bank to take on the shift in computing that is taking place now.
This isn't off topic... Apple had enough money in the bank (thanks to their first iMac sales) to join this new paradigm... it also suits their original style which is one of advanced technology and innovation. This is why they have got a product like OS X and why they are creating new hardware initiatives with companies like IBM, who are part of the Opensource competition.
Consider, if you will, what Apple is doing, right now, with their hardware; The price/performance has, with the new G5s, been brought SIGNIFICANTLY lower than x86 based systems.
The reason Apple could not release x86 "OS X" before was that it would kill their hardware business (Faster and Cheaper on DELL?? Makes no sense).
But with the new G5 systems combined with the greatest damned laptops ever constructed, there is little reason to fear a loss in hardware sales now.
It is no secret that Steve would love to give Bill a taste of his own medicine, served straight from "The Art of War".
I can imagine no better way to do that than a Christmas release of x86 "OS X" and a fabulous Apple style marketing blitz...
People would convert in hordes using existing hardware and launch straight into an apple hardware upgrade path.
Could it happen? What do you all think? Only problem I see is a need for a runtime dynamic compiler (ppc->x86) or a nasty lack of apps in the first few quarters of availability...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Not on Mac OS. Not after this.
When Richard Nixon won easy re-election in 1972, New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael illustrated precisely the same lack of perspective when she exclaimed, "I can't believe it! I don't know a single person who voted for him!"
The moral of the story is that we all need to get out more and interact with other communities in order to follow the trends in rest of the computer world. It is far too easy to be lulled into a false sense of world homogeneity when those who surround us all share the same viewpoints and choice of operating system... :-P
I completely agree with that statement, and the rationale behind it. If you go back and read what I originally wrote (the first paragraph), I was saying that companies who need computers to survive need to pay for that support. I also said that I, personally, don't need to pay for that support. I said that because I have the option of building white-box PCs, for me -- personally, then I can save money and get a lot more computer than if I paid Apple or Dell.
If I got a new life and became a person that set up office computing environments, I'd demand that they buy from a vendor who had support built into the cost of the hardware. That would, aside from being a very good idea, allow me to set up more offices and therefore make more money.
So enjoy the white box on your desk. Because you're going to be on unemployment soon.
Use white box hardware and go out of business? Are you saying that if I had an Apple on my desk I'd be able to keep my job? Your syllogism is serisouly flawed.
I work at a university, in the CS department. We have the most byzantine IT setup you could imagine. We not only have an IT staff, our "customers" -- the students and professors -- are an IT staff. And yes, we have a lot of Dells, and they have support contracts. We have Apples, too. And Sparcs. They have vendor support. And we have a lot of other frankenstein hardware laying around, some of which made it into a machine I use. So because it's not an Apple I'll be losing my job?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
In my opinion, Linux marketshare will probably overtake MacOS marketshare, and will do so soon. However (and far more importantly), the MacOS's continued ability to thrive holds profound consequences for the long-term financial viability of Linux in particular, and open-source platforms in general.
We should all remember vividly that people have predicted the demise of the MacOS since time immemorial. Both Windows 3.0 and OS/2 2.0 were supposed to be the death-knell of the MacOS, as were both Windows 95, and Apple's inability, until as late as 2001, to deliver a pre-emptive multitasking, crash-protected operating system. Yet the MacOS survived, and although Apple's relative marketshare declined, the number of MacOS installations has never dropped (to my knowledge) below some 25 million. The reason, from my experience, is Apple's appreciation of the computing process as a holistic, integrated endeavour.
Many posters on this topic seem to lament the fact that the MacOS is a closed, proprietary system, but, in my mind, this is the system's chief strength. Apple makes the whole Widget, software and hardware. Apple delivers a single, integrated, computational experience. Both software and hardware are designed, by a hierarchy of engineers, from the top down, to function together in a logically coherent, easy-to-use manner. This fact, in itself, gives the MacOS a value that far exceeds, in the minds of those who can appreciate it, anything else available in the open-source or Windows worlds.
Yes, you will pay more for a Mac. Perhaps you will pay considerably more. Perhaps it won't be as powerful, in terms of raw SPECmarks. Perhaps the selection of software won't be as plentiful. But for business users, you get a single, unified vendor of both software and hardware. You have one person to call. You have a meticulously crafted OS that is the end product of coherent, top-down design by a team of engineers united by a single corporate culture. Everything works together, and it works in predictable ways. If you can use iTunes, you can use Keynote, or iMovie, or iDVD.
The bottom line, for business users, it seems to me, is that with MacOS the whole system costs less to own. Training costs are lower, maintenance costs are lower, and users are more productive. Furthermore, there is one vendor with which to maintain a relationship, for both software and hardware.
By constrast, open-source systems, though free, aren't nearly so monolithic, and are surely more costly. Open-source operating systems are not the product of a top-down design process by engineers operating in the atmosphere of a unified corporate culture. No, by stark constrast, open-source operating systems aren't really even designed. They seem to evolve, as if "grown", the end product of the contributions of thousands of distributed programmers. Now, I'm assuming we all understand the value of distributed, pseudo-organic systems for solving many types of problems, but it doesn't seem to me that software design is one of them. Let's face it, KDE and GNOME apps don't even share the same user interface guidelines, and OpenOffice has interface guidelines all its own. When apps from the KDE and GNOME worlds run together on the same desktop, there is little integration, and the entire environment appears jumbled and incoherent. Gesture ergonomics and keystroke combinations are not portable from application to application, and inter-application data exchange is clumsy. We end up with an incoherent system that is difficult to support, maintain, and train users to understand.
An example from my own experience is useful here, so I'll interject it. I am among the founding partners of a software studio that produces custom applications in visual simulation and immersive environments. In 2000, we took the decision to get rid of our SGI IRIX-based workstations, and replace them with commodity Dell PCs running RedHat. This seemed like a brilliant plan, considering that we were paying some $21,000 (US) per SGI workstation plus an annual
And as a result of improved support for X Windows on Mac, better source-level compatibility or ports between Linux and Mac OS X, the number of popular applications available on Mac OS X will also increase as Linux becomes more popular.
To simplify things further, future package managers will probably support FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X. Perhaps they will be based on MetaPKG or something similar.
I think the ONLY remaining reason not to purchase a Mac this coming Christmas will be the lack of support for specific apps or games. Apple addressed the OS by ditching OS 9, now the CPU and more reasonably comparable price/performance. This leaves lack of support for specific apps or games to be the biggest remaining barrier. WILL SONY AND APPLE EVER SIGN A DEAL TO ENABLE MACS TO RUN PS2/PS3 GAMES?!?!?
I could be totally mistaken but I'm under the impression that porting Windows apps to Mac OS X is more difficult than porting Linux apps to Max OS X. So there you have it. More Linux desktops = more popularity of Linux apps = more "popular" apps available on Mac OS X. Just a guess. Nothing more.
PC hardware is not consistent. Many distros of Linux are not consistent. (Save for maube Debian,
with some real package management.)
I define consistency related to computers as "A supportable method of reproducability."
Case in point. A year ago, we bought a small cluster of 12 linux machines. They were all iedentical, and managing all of them was easy. Now, a year later, the cheap commodity hardware is failing, and I cannot find the "old" hardware anymore. I now have a cluster of 12 machines that are of different configurations with hardware from different vendors. Every machine has something different, and different software configurations are producing different results, either by performance , or reliability, or both.
On our 10 year old cluster of SGI IRIX machines, all the hardware has been consistently the same. When something does break, SGI replaces it with the same part! it works the same way, nothing changes , and my life is much easier. I manage hundreds of machines. I don't need 12 linux machines taking up all my time because the commodity parts, and the OS can't be coordinated, or worse yet, dependency trees, and OS packages don't get managed well at all.
As with the SGI machines, Apple has done a good job of product consistency. In the PC arena, you have to go to the high end IBM, Dell, or HP servers to get any semblance of consistency,and then the price you pay for that "pc server hardware" completely negates any savings you might realize from going with a PC platform. You might as well buy something cheaper that is still consistent, like Apple, or go for the gusto, and get SGI, or Sun machines, while you are spending the money, and at least enjot some consistency,and supportability.
Agreed. Every now and then I have to post hear to counter your cult. I'm an Apple nut but I have Redhat 8 on a AMD k6 400mhz. It is far worse than Windows and coming from me that is saying something! At least it's not from an Evil Corporationâ but it just plain sucks. VERY slow, ugly, hard to use, and useless. Can't connect with a Winmodem, not Linux's fault but do I care?
:p
OS X beat the sh!t out of Linux, give up and start writing for Darwin. Macs are the future. Linux is always going to be a niche for embedded systems, possibly some servers but I would rather have an OS X interface to my server.
Well there's Windows for Solitaire, Mac for productivity, and Linux for...mah jong?
Everyone here is like Nader voters. It's all about Apple vs. Microsoft. Linux are you kidding me? No one knows what it is in the regular world and don't kid yourselves, it's because it just plain sucks all around. GUI, compatability, drivers, userbase, etc. Only a few good things come from all this like Mplayer so I can watch divx p0rn and vlc and some hacking things like DVDBackup for DeCSS.
That said we're on the same team, everyone get a G5 and realize how awesome OS X is. Using Linux on your desktop if it is not job related means you have TOO MUCH SPARETIME.
The usability of a Linux desktop just isn't anywhere near the level of a Mac from a Joe Bloggs perspective.
The inroads linux has made against commerical Unices are in the server environment and on the odd midrange desktop. This is not the market Macs live in (except the xServe).
When Linux is easy and intuitive enough for the average Joe, when it has a consistent look and feel across applications, then it might make moves into the Mac desktop arena.
David de Groot Snr Systems Engineer
Why does everybody believe the Spec2000 numbers on Apple's site? Compare them to AMD's Opteron Spec numbers :
r ma tion/0,,30_118_8796_8800~69692,00.html
r ma tion/0,,30_118_8796_8800~69664,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInfo
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInfo
And you'll see a different picture (Xeon results are faster, and Opteron's at 1.8Ghz beat the fastest Apple G5s!)
I don't want to sound like I'm accusing you of stupidity, but I do believe you are ignorant of a few things which could resolve all of your qualms with Linux. I'll go at this point by point, following your precedent:
1) The X font management sucks. I write a lot of essays and need access to fonts for some papers.
The TrueType-extended X font server 'xfs-xtt' is a damn fine font manager. I don't know what specific needs you place on your font manager that could be addressed, but it will take font files and serve them up to X apps for rendering, so that should do the trick.
2) DLL hell. I use Gnome and KDE sometimes. Mostly I try to use a few of the programs from each. GNU cash, KWORD .... which requires a lot of libraries == unnessary bloat, slowness and confusion when source compiling.
Good Lord man! Are you writing GUI apps for both KDE and Gnome? If not, use a package management system - Debian's apt/dpkg and Redhat's RPM are handy, and they can resolve any kind of library conflicts for you automatically (and damn easily if you're using apt-get). If you're using software which isn't available in a distributor's package format, it's likely to be pretty new/experimental, and therefore rough around the edges anyway. If you're just compiling for the extra optimization for your specific environment, you're asking for trouble. Windows/Mac software isn't compiled optimally for any one environment, so it's a rather unfair comparison.
3) Commercial software. Say what you will of Open Source software. There are times when I want/need access to commercial software. Photoshop, Word, etc are all available for the OSX not for Linux. It will be a long time before this happens.
Save yourself some money and use a commercial WINE-based solution like Crossover Office... it's less than a license for the OS, though I'll admit it's not 100% perfect. Then again, if you've got the money (~$800) for the software you listed above, you probably won't have trouble affording a copy of Windows or MacOS. While you're at it, give The GIMP and OpenOffice a try.
4) Hardware support. Mac have - albeit - limited hardware choice compared to Windows. But, getting hardware to work w/ Linux or FreeBSD means recompiling, getting newer kernels. I don't mind doing it but see it as a waste of time.
That really depends on how your system was setup in the first place, and how new your hardware is. First of all, I'll admit that some hardware just won't work with Linux. Blame the manufacturer. Second, if you're using any modern linux distro, you're pretty damn likely to have the necessary drivers built as modules with your stock kernel. All it takes is loading the module (which is generally a lot more straightforward than installing drivers under Win32). If not, a quick upgrade of your kernel package might magically include the right driver. If the driver you need is not part of the kernel, but it is available, it only requires the compilation of a couple tiny files (just the driver module) - certainly not the whole kernel.
5) Better integration. GUI apps are much better integrated in OSX than in X.
KDE and Gnome are both attempts at creating integrated desktop environments. There's so much software to choose from that much of it isn't designed to fit into either of these IDE's - that's not to say that they couldn't be made to if the developers were convinced that it would be a good idea, nor that there aren't already tons of apps which do integrate solidly. I don't quite understand your point unless you plan on using every possible app you can get your hands on rather than just the 10-20 most people use on a daily basis. If folks just run KDE apps under KDE, they'll never know the difference (most of the General Public Users probably stick to what's in the menu).
6) Appearance. OS X just looks good. Gnome, KDE make me want to puke. Toolbars, message prompts, etc, are all different to name a few.
Back t
Thankyou, that is all.
I seriously doubt it. Apple always comes up with something new, great innovation etc. and Mac users are mostly fanatics :). They wonldn't change their beloved computer/OS for any other. Hey, most of us want an TiBook or an iBook, I know for one I do.
I do not think Linux will steal market share from Apple.
I think Linux will steal it someplace else.
For me Apple is just another GNU distro.
It does cost a bit more than Linux, but at least it's not windows and I have Openoffice X11 boa-constructor GNU python fileutils plus all the awsome out-of-the-boxness of the great Apple apps.
It's a pointless comparrison. Linux may overtake Apple, yes, but Apple will also increase it's share.
I really don't care... I just use what works for me.
Me.
However I don't think OS X will lose any market share to Linux, for exactly this same reason. Only zealots will run Linux on PPC machines, and even then Apple still make money from the hardware to further develop OS X. Sorry guys but Apple really does have the best apps, and while they pour money into innovation, they always will. Until Linux stuff is designed by designers instead of engineers, it will always be the cheap mass produced alternative to OS X's luxury, and that won't come for free, designers make a living from their designs, not service/support.
Countries are busy passing laws to allow use of OS X and it's successors, and to require that the os at least be considered...
Spain adopts OS X libre!
Mitre study released recommending that the US military increase use of Macs!
On hearing India is adopting Macs for its vast network of developers, butterball balmer, errr... make that steve jobs...cuts ski vacation short to head off Mac disaster in India!
Police bureaus across UK and Germany switching desktops to macs! Early reports indicate that officers are freed up from the desktops and are able to spend more hours patrolling streets due to increased productivity of photoshop!
Update...police bureaus kicking themselves when they learn that photoshop actually runs on penguin powered computers...better...faster...clustered.
UN declares 2004 year of the mac! Vows to take worldwide humanitarian aid, and spend it on $3,000 macs, powered by multi-thousand dollar software packages, and then distribute the macs to the masses to bridge the technology gap, and have the hungry solve their own food shortage problems using photoshop running on macs!
First lucky recipients, former recipients of humanitarian aid, will be the various tribal groups located deep on the congo jungle. Some tribal members could be seen carrying placards with the words, " Give me my photoshop!", "Give me my mac!"
"Or give me death!"
Undaunted, mac believers hold onto the fact that same quarter sales are down to 111,000 units this year, from 4x that figure last year. "We'll show them!" shouts one user. The secret that the mac user is not letting everybody else in on is that apple has a new click and run download feature, where they can magically generate non-existant earnings...
Wake up.
The codebase that makes up OS X and its successors aren't going anywhere. Because when apple is on its last dying leg, it will be gpl'd.
Any software company that refuses to evolve along with Gnu/Linux is dead. Hear that? Dead. Dead as a door knob.
Everything on mac now, photoshop, cad software, quark, everything...it either ports to linux, or its dead. Dead as a door knob.
Countries outside the US have their opening, and they are taking it like a banshee.
G5 will sell. But it will be a last gasp. Because either the apple codebase ports to Intel and other 64 bit systems, and is open sourced, or it dies. It's that simple. Without proprietary hardware, what do you have? The hardware gets commoditized, the software gets open sourced (or dies), and what do you have left?
gui configuration tools are coming, or are here already. Others will be built, being commisioned by sponsor countries for their own needs. And the development of these tools will reflect the speed and momentum of current gnu/linux development.
And just as windows and mac operating systems today come pre-loaded, so will gnu/linux systems (already available as Lindows/Manrake/Suse pre-installed Walmart boxes). So mom and pop won't have to suffer through an install that is actually easier than windows. And where the real meat and potatoes exist, corporate desktops, when was the last time a fortune 1000 or Wilshire 5000 company had individual employees installing and configuring their own systems? Anyone?
Want a mainframe? Who you gonna call? SCO (puke)? Or IBM? Anyone seen the operating system being adopted across the board at IBM for mainframes? Think they'll be hooking up macs to those mainframes?
Corporate now has a single unifying operating system that can tie in their main frame, mini-computers, and micro-computers, along with their embedded systems, pdas, and even phones. Let's go with macs! We'll replace all our desktops with macs, so we have a closed system from a company that may not survive the next quarter. Corporate really needs an additional, unrelated operating system to support, otherwise how will
A compelling arguement ... but
:-)
How about the numbers that are using Win98 - thats the 'upgrade' zone - with win95 that make 35% of the users who are up for a change of computer sometime in the next few years.
If linux desktops can capture a big share of this then they can define that as success - if not, if when we come back here in 2005/6 and the win98 boxes are all gone, but linux etc is still at 1% - then its bad
But I'd contend that the costs of R&D is for improvements to future machines, and by granting those spin-offs for free to existing customers, they build customer satisfaction with their brand and their product, and as a consequence, build customer loyalty.
The reason that I feel as though I'm always getting the shaft from Steve Jobs is because I feel as though he knows he has that customer loyalty and exploits it to the hilt.
Web browsing:
KHTML, Apple used KHTML for it's browser and the changes have been merged into KDE.
Playing DVDs:
Well I use xine and gentoo, no real problems except you have to pick the correct DVD/CSS/Menu plugin out of a choice of two.
I think I'll just listen to my MP3s with xmms:
The next relese of KDE comes with KJukeBox, kde can already play MP3's etc... and Video files.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
it was (is?) still the best desktop environment. between arexx and a unified file system (form files) the amiga provided something that we all wanted go on flame me...
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
Honestly, why are there people fixated on Mac OS and Linux in competition? They each have their applications and a number of the replies to this post make those points clear, but Linux and Apple should be focused on outdoing and ultimately succeeding Microsoft not trying to eliminate one another, that will only weaken the non- (or anti-, as the case may be) microsoft movement.
------------ Ben Chroneos
Linux on the desktop isn't about home users and geeks, it's about thousands of workplace desktops that are switching to linux, becaused of:
Price,
Stability,
Ability to turn all the crap off so that you get some work done by your employees.
etc....
Fast pretty twinkley frilly bits don't cut it in the business world.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
In many areas (university institutes, certain companies) at least in Europe, Linux desktops are already more frequent than Apple desktops for some time. Most of the university institutes I worked for do not use Apple - if there is an Apple computer, it gathers dust in some corner. Secretaries work with Windows, nearly all other people use Linux on their desktop.
My personal case is: I work as a developer in the State House, and my wife is a district attorney. I have the following work and personal friends/acquaintances demographics:
/. is; only one reads it eventually. I read it everyday and post eventually. I would not be fooled into suspect this is the most popular site around (altough it is the coolest).
200 Computer Science people
20 IT-management people
20 programmers
10 engineers (not software engineers)
50 journalists
20 lawyers
30 district attorneys
30 law clerks and paralegals
30 other
Of all those, I know for sure 5 know what
On the other side, of all those mentioned, only one is a Mac user; some 20 use Solaris workstations at work; some 5 use Linux servers at work; I am the only one I know (last time I checked) that uses Linux in my personal workstation at home (no dual-boot) and at work.
Hope I added some useful, on-topic information.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
>Studies show that computer-illiterate people are easily confused by multiple buttons. You'd be surprised, but it really is a problem.
So when is Apple going to come out with the 1 key keyboard and make it standard?
I wish they would hurry up, just thinking about using this complex input is giving me a head ache.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Very few Mac users will ever switch to Linux. Very few Home users of Windows will switch to Linux. Big companies are in the process of *Forcing* their drones to use cheap linux platforms.
Linux use will also skyrocket where there are no Windows machines (2nd and 3rd World).
About half the Ximian guys use OS X to develop on but there is zero corporate interest in OS X. It's expensive, it needs expesnive hardware, it doesn't have the remote management tools of the Linux desktops and you're just locked into another proprietry OS. Where is the win there?
On the other hand Open Source platform developers will definately not be resting our Laurels and OS X will have to steadily improved to remain ahead of Gnome and KDE.
But that is good. That is progress.
Martin
- there are way more Linux boxen than Mac OS X
boxen
Only the more recent versions of gcc (or patched versions) have AltiVec support out of the box, and only through use of the special vector routines (just turning on optimization won't help). Otherwise, you might as well compare performance to a PPC 750 (aka G3)
Didn't this already happen last winter?
Help us build a better map!
Back in the day, anyone who had any sense of aesthetics ran Enlightenment.
:p
OSX can't hold a candle to the sheer beauty of older versions of Enlightenment. 1.0, if ever released, will make Aqua look like the work of a child with a box of crayons.
Oh, and whine about applications all you want. People want shiny and pretty.
After getting attracted by Macs, I got interested in UI. I found in my university's library a big book called "The Art of the human-machine interface design". Published about 1990. I was surprised to see it was published by Apple! It comprised lots of little articles by people from different backgrounds / industries (even AutoDesk and Microsoft!). It was really, really interesting.
Well, 13 years after that book was published, even Apple itself uses only a fraction of the incredibly insightful AND EASILY IMPLEMENTABLE stuff that was in that book. Not to mention Microsoft, for example. Amazingly, M$'s article was about online help systems, and was really nice!.
Since I read that, I hate even more viscerally Word's "help" system - it's exactly the contrary to what that article said. Oh, so painful.
So: why Linux misses the UI? I don't know. Perhaps they should just get a bit of (even cheaply available) theory before practicing?
(...or is that exactly the definition of a programming hacker?)
Certainly, when I program now (or just use a program), (I think) I have a much clearer feel of what is or isn't a good UI - and why!.
It's flamebait when you say Windows will crush OS X or Linux, but when you say that Linux will crush OS X, you post it as a story?
So you gotta wait until some clue'd person touches up the autoconf, eh? Heh. Yeah. Ok, whatever, all those Linux apps appear to only be usable by those who are proficient Linux users. Or those who mooch off of those Linux users. Don't believe the hype.
Blar.
Linux distros have had YEARS to become viable desktops. Barring the lack of missing apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, the desktop experience itself could use some improvement on Linux.
To be fair, I place a good chunk of the blame on the renegade nature of PC hardware. OS-X doesn't have to support the entire fickle world of PCs so its easier to make it do what it needs to do.
A few examples of issues that still plague the Linux desktop experience:
- Printer setup. CUPS has potential, but I've fought with it enough times on both the client end and the server end to suspect that CUPS integration in Linux is spooky magic that nobody to date has mastered.
- Techie terminology. I know Linux/UNIX terminology and you know Linux/UNIX terminology. A whole helluva lot of good that's going to do for the executive admin who thinks a computer is a "Windows" and a hard drive is "memory" or "C drive".
- Driver support. No, this is not the same as hardware support. By driver support, I am refering to a scheme by which drivers can EASILLY be installed without patching, compiling, etc. I'm sure some distros have done work in this area.
This is one area where Macs have always excelled above and beyond any other system (OS + hardware) that I've used. Here's a recent example:
A few months ago I purchased an ancient, beaten up Epson Stylus Color 740 printer ($20). It didn't come with any driver disks. I brought it home, plugged it in (USB), turned it on, and tried to print a web page with the expectation that I'd be prompted for a driver. Needless to say I was surprised when the Print dialog appeared, and after clicking "Continue" (no extra configuration steps taken) the web page printed in full photo-quality color. I can't begin to imagine how much I would have had to do to get that far on a different OS, even Windows. I spent probably 20 seconds of time between turning it on and printing, most of which was spent waiting for the printer to stop initializing. ESC printer owners will know what I'm talking about...
Am I complaining? Nope, so don't say "you dislike this stuff so much? The source code is there, fix it!" I'm merely comparing different desktop experiences. Linux will always be a viable desktop offering IMHO, but sorry, I don't see it EVER equalling a Mac desktop experience, especially for a UNIX-based OS. The UNIX-ish stuff is hidden so well, I can use a Mac and never know or care that a flavor of BSD is running behind the scenes (I still spend a lot of time playing around in xterms, though, just because that's how I was raised). Linux desktops have their place, though.
Apple only needs the 5% it has to sustain operations, so who cares if Linux usage increases as far as companies sticking around is concerned.
The 90% (or whatever) of computers users that have PC's try to sustain some upteen-billion PC component manufacturers, I'd fear more for them than a company that has 5% of a market share all to itself, speaking on the hardware side of things. On the software side, well, Apple is a hardware company, so it doesn't matter...
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
Unfair comparison. Building a house requires a lot more knowledge and a lot more work than assembling a computer.
Nowadays theres lego kits that are harder to assemble than a computer with a modern motherboard.
Assembly labor is definetely not the cause of steep apple prices
No sig for the moment.
Until Apple can match such competitive prices they will always be a second niche player.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Last year I was at a Citrix conference and one of the speakers was Dan Kusnetzky (System Software research Vice President of IDC) Before things got started I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about GNU/Linux. To my surprise, he told me that Linux Desktop Users had already surpassed Macintosh.
I would tend to believe him since he is the foremost knowledgeable (in my opinion) person in the field about such things.
I really think these kind of discussions (will Linux replace Windows? will Linux replace Apple in 2nd place?) are fruitless (get it? Apple, fruitless... ah, never mind!).
This really misses the point! I am migrating to Linux for one simple reason: innovation!
I just recently downloaded Cluster Knoppix and am playing with a simple 2-station cluster; eventually I want to make a larger cluster and use it as a render farm for video processing. This one project involves two concepts missing from Windows AND Apple OS X: 1. complete bootable OS on a CD and 2. built-in SMP-like clustering across the LAN.
My firewall/router runs IPCop, a minimal OS with services that provide configurable firewalling and intrusion detection. It all took about 3 days of tuning to install and get the way I wanted it and it all runs on a vinatge 1995 PC!
I could go on and on, but these two examples precisely make my point: with access to the OS source, innovative solutions to specific computer tasks are possible that can't even be dreamed of in a Windows or Apple environment.
In fact, Apple's OS X is an example of this, too. Apple took the source from *BSD and layered their own vision of what THEY thought the user interface ought to be.
I read another post to this thread that claimed that the applications are what makes the OS. I beg to differ: with the innovations coming in Linux, I can actually run Windows applications on Linux. Apple has made a point of running Linux applications and the environment is close enough that any new applications for OS X will run under Linux too. So, with open source, applications for ANY OS may eventually run on Linux.
You will never see that kind of innovation from Redmond. For the past 10 years, the only innovation from Redmond has been in locking users ever tighter into the Windows vision of what the user environment should be and changing the underlying OS so that competitor's products do not work. Rather stultifying, don't you think?
The reason I am moving to Linux, away from Windows and NOT to Apple, is because that is where the action is! Diskless workstations that boot directly from the server, clustering with shared computing power across the network, dedicated minimal OS solutions that boot directly from CD, the fact that you CAN boot the full OS directly from CD, server OR client with exactly the same OS environment, cross-platform compatibility that merely takes weeks to implement, API translation and adaptation to allow other OS applications to run, the list goes on and on...
And I have the source! These petty squabbles with SCO do not trouble me! if they completely outlaw Linux, I will still compile and run my own flavor right here on my machines and trade enhancements and bug fixes with other Linux fans. They (whoever THEY may be) cannot kill it!
The real issue is that you need a dual CPU on the Mac to be comparable to the single CPU on the PC. When comparing prices, look for machines that can do equivalent amount of "useful" work (whatever is relevant in your business/pleasure). I think that you'll find for most users (business, home, academic) that the PCs price out at 20 to 30% cheaper (after adding software). Of course, for some applications the Macs will be cheaper and for others perhaps an XBOX or homebrew is appropriate. Remember, many other companies quote prices that include monitors (apple doesn't, except for the built-in e/iMacs.) Also, if you need it, Office is much prier on a Mac than as a included item from a PC manufacturer. (Also, I don't think there is a boxed cheap version of home/academic Office for the Mac.) Don't forget to add a couple of bucks for an adaptor if you don't want to be a pricy (but gorgeous) Apple monitor.
Linux is more likely to be a positive than a negative for Apple.
I agree but I think linux helps Apple in many more ways. First, as you pointed out Apple is exploiting open-source projects for their own products (and giving back too).
Second Linux has kept Windows from dominating the low-end server market which helps keep Mac's as viable client machines.
Even more importantly to Apple linux has promoted/preserved open standards which are as important to Apple as they are to linux as niche players competing against a monopoly.
Finally, Apple will do better in a heterogeneos computing environment. If linux starts gaining serious desktop market-share all the above effects will increase. Also Apple's selling-points would be even more compelling. An "open-source(ish)" unix that's broadly compatible with linux but with a very slick consumer oriented user environment and wealth of comercial consumer software, brain-dead easy to use interface & tight hardware/software integration would be an easy sell in a linux world. Even if linux starts becoming "user-friendly" it will be a long time before the perception that it isn't change and it's unlikely that it will ever become as "user-friendly" as MacOS because it's developers and users value power, flexibility, configurability at the expense of ease-of-use rather than vise-versa as Apple does. For this reason I think Apple and Linux are largely carving their niches out of Windows from opposite ends (though that has changed somewhat with OS X).
An interesting question is if either (or both collectively) gains a critical mass of market-share what will windows selling point be? That it's easier to use than linux? Get a Mac! That it's more "open" with more hardware vendors than Apple? Get a linux machine!
This is a great insight that I hope more people will read and take note of. Just because the initial expense is significantly less does not mean that the solution as a whole is a better solution. It's good to hear some real world examples of when linux on commodity hardware may not be the best investment, even if the initial price looks very appealing.
We have linux 9 and trying to install GL drivers that work correctly with certain graphic applications is a pain. Just check out the nvidia linux install instructions... 104 pages. Every time you get a new driver, or new application, you have to modify a script. Yes, that is not too hard, but trouble shooting driver problems that is related to installer script is a pain. It should not be that difficult, but I spent 3 days trouble shooting, a waste of my time, or heck I could pay someone else to do that, but where is cost savings?. Our SGI Irix seems easier! I like Linux a lot, but it is not nearly as painless to set up as Mac OS X. If something goes down or needs updating, no sweat... just click and go. And command line is near by just like any other modern Unix system. I like Mac OS X a lot especially with a dual proc and plenty of ram running Shake 3 has never been easier.
I could build a dual Opteron 244 today for less than their dual G5, and the Opteron smokes the G5.
All good points, but some of them are one (very critical) day outdated.
Dual 1.25 Ghz G4 Proc
What is this "G4" of which you speak? That is sooo last-week!
Maybe if the Linux GUI got up to speed with OS X then it would surpass it. Users want responsiveness in their applications. OS X has it, Linux is playing catch up.
The Linux desktop will only surpass Apple OS X because it is "free". This is a major criteria for many countries, businesses, and for those trying to hold down costs.
However, those businesses, countries and people who must use MS Office or any of its components for work, school, or some other purpose, will be FORCED to continue to use MS Office. Thus either MS Windows or Apple OS X will be REQUIRED for their use. Unless someone can make all MS Office components work seamlessly under Linux, without additional cost and effort to make it work. As in: "it must work out of the box."
This brings up the other criteria of the stability of Linux. One cannot have constant upgrades and fixes that are not seamlessly and automatically installed such as under Windows or Apple OS X. End users will not tolerate that. End users vote with their choice of operating system. Look at the numbers: 96% Windows, 2-3% Apple, the rest...
This does not mean that one may not have a second machine with Linux. Or with dual boot. I do.
In order to replace Windows, Linux will have to be orders of magnitude easier to use on the desktop. Something that will make the end users say, "Wow that is far better," (an example is when the Macintosh came out in 1984, causing the windowing paradigm to become the required mode). Apple later lost the initiative to Windows 95. History is bound to repeat itself if one ignores it. So far, Linux is just copying Apple and Windows on the desktop, not replacing the desktop with something far more interesting and useful.
So the end result will be that Linux might replace Apple but not Windows. And because of MS Office, Linux may never replace Apple as well.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
One of the (myriad) problems with Windows is that by integrating everything - by trying to do everything - it actually winds up not doing any one thing very well.
Linux is an outstanding OS - particularly as a server environment. That's where the bucks are in sales and service anyway: why compete with OS X? I use both Linux and OS X every day, and I wouldn't dare try to combine them/integrate them. They're each brilliant at what I need them for, but they'd be wholly inadequate if their roles were reversed somehow.
OS X will never be Linux, but if people spend time trying to make Linux behave like Jaguar/Panther/whatever, doesn't that undermine Linux as a whole?
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
One could say that it already has surpassed it in usability. I'll undoubtedly get flamed for this, but Macs have always felt very cludgy for me, and in general using Windows is like banging your head against a wall. The only thing Linux lacks is, firstly, singularity (it is both good and bad that there are many distrobutions out there - good because of choice, bad because normal users don't know what the 'right' one is). Secondly, and I'm sure many of you know this, even though there is a bit of a learning curve for the command line, once you know how to do it it's almost like riding a bike and things that take you a half an hour in Windows can take anywhere from one line on the command line to five minutes, going around the point-and-click interface. The reason that it won't is that people are inherently lazy. I think that before anything can be a viable competitor to Windows, Microsoft will have to do something incredibly stupid with it, stupid enough for regular "I write emails and text files and that's it" people to be effected. Not to mention that to a regular user the acronym "OS" isn't even known and when they think about the difference between Mac and Windows they probably think about it more on a hardware level - "What's the Linux computer going to look like?! Where can I get one? Who OKs Linux hardware / software?" It's intimidating to run something that (though businesses are growing) is maintained primarily by geeks with free time.
The software is awesome, but it's the hardware that's the constraint. So long as Apple remains the sole supplier of Macintosh computers, there will never be competition leading to lower prices, and thus significant gains in marketshare. Microsoft achieved 50% marketshare with cheap PC's running MS-DOS against the elegant, graphical but pricey Macintosh in the late 80's/early 90's.
It also means that there will always be significantly less variety than the PC world; you can get (or build) a PC in any shape, size or feature-combination imaginable, but with Macs, you only get what one vendor produces, and Apple offers a fairly limited selection (I mean, they only came out with rack servers just LAST YEAR fer cryin out loud).
The ONLY way for Apple to actually BEAT Microsoft is to reopen the clone market, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Macromedia and Adobe need to port their apps to Linux and make them for sale before any serious desktop war can be waged.
It is not that the current soup of Linux apps are not present, it is just that they are not really up to date with the current offerings of the heavy hitters. This is not to take away for their development work. It is just reality.
I don't think developing countries will be buying Macs, but all the linux boxen they set up should be considered in these numbers.
I just took a quick visit to googlefight and Linux Desktop absolutely trounced Apple Desktop!
:)
2 690 000 for Linux Desktop, and 1 490 000 for Apple Desktop.
So, depending on how much value you place on amount of hits from a search engine, it looks like Linux has already got a decided victory
In all seriousness though, I'm pretty comfortable with the idea of Apple and Linux sharing the desktop scene. So long as somebody beats out MS, I'm happy.
Build boards not bombs
This whole debate would be over if (when) Apple ports OS X to the PC. Finito. Kaput. And Microsoft would finally face a true contender.
Might even knock out Linux in the same blow.
Gee, I might even buy a Mac then (would be my first).
I have been a Mac and a Linux/FreeBSD fan for quite some time now. Originally, I started using RedHat but it turned out to be a nightmare compared to FreeBSD. Still, I think that Linux has a great potential if its developers achieve the following: 1. Whoever does GUI interfaces for Open Source must be top notch. Afterall, Apple Inc. managed to gather the best of the best in terms of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) professionals. Almost every course HCI course that is taught in this country refers to Apple and their neat ideas: simple things that make life easier and more appealing. 2. OS Management! Whoever thinks that I like being in front of the computer for eight hours a day and then come home and maintain more computers got it wrong. The reason why I switched my desktop to OS X from Linux was the amount of time I had to spend when I wanted to update the system. If Linux distros want to be better, they have to learn from FreeBSD and its 'ports.' Easy system updates and builds via cvs are breeze and should be used by linux in the future. 3. People who develop apps for Linux must have some sort of enforced standard. One of the few reasons that make me want use os X is its consistency. Apple has published a set of guidelines that are to be followed during the development and it makes all applications look and feel the same. Things like having "OK" and "Cancel" buttons in the same places across all programs make it easier to navigate. I know that some standards exist in KDE and GNOME communities, but what about the rest of applications? 4. Better Java support. Yes, it is lame, but many people use Java now and I would love to write Java code on Linux, except that it does not work as good as it does on Mac OS X (as of today). 5. Better laptop support. 6. More business software. Sorry, Linux does not have a good pack of usable business software yet. I used KOffice for most of my work; it was good, but still sucked compared to Microsoft Office (I can myself being moderated down) in terms of portability and some weird bugs that occured quite often. Mac OS does not have a hudge business software base, but at least there are more stable products. Also, more multi-media products could help (again, something that is stable, not pre-alpha). That's what I have on my list. Some people may have more or less, based on their preferences. Additionally, I think that there should be more companies that sell Linux ready desktops with adequate (read professional) support that knows what's it is doing. When I started using Linux, I was frustrated with techs who could not help me due to their lack of knowledge. When I called Apple tech support because of some problems they helped me without wasting my time and I was glad that I was a Mac owner.
"Will Linux ... emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?"
Are you kidding me? That was a good laugh. Thanks.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
And never has been either.
Entry level Apple Mac 800i (no extras): £999.99
Which I believe is approx 1660 USD. Only 256Mb RAM, 32 MB graphics card and a 15" TFT for that money. Which would otherwise buy a very well specified PC.
At the top end, a dual 1.4Ghz with 17" TFT screen retails at a stonking £2600.99 (4300.00 USDish)
And you pay a premium for Apple hardware and software as well.
What all the Mac and Linux zealots are overlooking in this argument is the actual bottom line in regards to productivity. Time for you and your customers has a cost that most overlook in the hardware and OS pricing.
I support 400 Macs and most of the time there's not much need for my help. My windows counterpart supports less than 100 PCs and he's always busy. So while his customers have a lot of downtime and frustration mine are happy campers and are not suffering from productivity loss.
Don't just look at the pricetag. In my experience the initial higher price of the Mac is more than offset by the labor saved. Plus there is the intangible aspect that I'm not constantly frustrated having to hack my system to get it to work
...when they prise the single button mouse from my cold, dead hands.
You can't deal with having options.
Well at least the tv tells you where to get stuff and what to think.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I switched to RedHat 8 last year on my company laptop (I'm a field consultant). Crossover Office was the enabler (as I have spreadsheets with macros in them I have to use). My company uses Exchange but runs IMAP/POP on the Exchange servers. I use Mozilla for mail (it's LDAP gets my directory info from Exchange).
I loaded RedHat 9 on my new Latitude C840 and continue to Crossover Office (and Plugin). I use VMware to run a Siebel application we use.
I see no need to run Windows as my host OS.
The reason... More and more governments will start to use it simply to save $$$. When workers are stuck using it for 8 hours a day they will want the same thing on their home computers. It's that simple. And the funny thing is...I like the look of KDE more than OSX!
I never realized the editors considered trolls too for bringing out all the Apple geeks into a ferver.
There, you now maybe realize my point, in that you are making wide assumptions about all PC systems, just as I pointed out some assumptions about Mac systems. You may have known some people who shell out money every year for PC upgrades, but that doesn't mean all PC users do. And yeah, I run some Macs also. I have 53 total computers, everything from PowerPCs to Alpha Boxes, an AS/400, some Amigas, and a couple of PCs. I have Mac LC's etc., but I don't want to bore you with details.
Suffice it to say, I felt the need to reply to you, as you were spreading as much FUD about the PC world as I was about Macs. My preference is Linux, but so what? Yours is Mac.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
That's likely true, it may pass Apple in market share, but I dont see Apple's market share decreasing to meet that prognostication. Linux's primary growth in the home market is on secondary Intel machines as users continue to upgrade hardware and are looking for a use for the older boxes. The Linux rally cry of "it works great on older hardware" is working.
I'd be curious to see a statistic of how many of those new Linux boxes see more than a few weeks of use before being obsoleted by people disenfranchised because they can't find Network Neighborhood, get streaming audio working under Mozilla, figure out how to print under CUPS or apply their generous experience of Outlook filters to Evolution.
I think that most people who still use Win9x are risk-averse and technically challenged. Generally, they run a few Windows and DOS applications in which they have invested a lot of effort. When you put them on a Linux box, you would find them to be very concerned about running their favorite apps and not very interested in the advantages of Linux. That's not the kind of demographic that would switch to Linux in droves.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Anonymous Posters suck, but hey I'll reply any way... No, I'm not a very good gamer, but I can get Red Faction to run on a Cyrix 333 at 20FPS!!!(hint, minimum requirements listed: 400Mhz w/mmx)
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
But I'd contend that the costs of R&D is for improvements to future machines, and by granting those spin-offs for free to existing customers, they build customer satisfaction with their brand and their product, and as a consequence, build customer loyalty.
The problem with that equation is that the hardware lasts five years, rather than the 2-4 in the PC world. A satisfied customer is important, but the cash flow of upgrading every fifth year doesn't work!
Well, you could use a g4 tower as a midpoint between an imac and g5, giving you both expandability and some more speed. (Yes, they're still available, and range between $1200 and $1500).
My claims about the g5's speed were based upon the information revealed yesterday, which implies that they're actually significantly faster even than those dual 3ghz amd cpus. Of course, we'll need to wait to see them in person and verify how true that turns out to be, but the current data seem very promising.
And yes, if assembling a machine is something that you find to be fun, then obviously that's not a cost. And without that cost, I think it's safe to say that a personally-built machine will always be less expensive than any prebuilt one.
Seriously, I have a G3 running Linux that I use as a file/print/NAT server at home. Well I decided it was time to rebuild the whole thing, since I had some new ideas on how to implement the filesystem layout... anyway, in between the old Gentoo OS and the new install, I popped the Jaguar CD in to see how it felt on my G3.
LO AN BEHOLD!
Jaguar recognized my Compaq NC3131 64-bit PCI dual-port server NIC without ANY configuration! I saw eth0, eth1, and eth2 in the system profiler. I had forgotten that I put the card in there last year to see if I could get it to work under linux. OSX was even reporting all the detailed info on the Compaq NIC that I wasn't expecting!
Apple's OSX has drivers for hardware Apple never even produced, a byproduct of it's Mach/BSD heritage, and it has the auto-configuring niceness of a well-designed Apple OS.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Can someone mod this ENTIRE article as flamebait?
Might as well have said "Will Linux ever catch up with XP?" or "Will vi ever catch up with emacs?"
Use what best suits your purposes.
See? Now this is the type of thing that us Linux-using, tech-savvy people have been trying to tell you zealots. Apple computers are no longer the GUI only, closed-source only, one-button only computers they used to be. I run zsh on my linux machine and my OS X box. I download stuff with wget on both. Basically any utility I commonly run on Linux is easily available on OS X with a simple fink or apt command.
For all those who badmouth OS X but have never used it, see if you can find out a way to try it out for a week before you comment on it. "Terminal" is in Applications/Utilities. Fink is at http://fink.sourceforge.net/. Enabling the root account is as simple as sudo passwd root. Emacs builds on OS X right from their standard CVS repository, though it's not 100% perfect yet, more details here: http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/, and I wouldn't be surprised if vi is out there too somewhere, but hey, while you're switching OSes why not switch to a better editor anyhow. ;)
Seriously. Imagine Linux on a pretty computer, with no driver issues, and some pretty damn good closed-source programs to boot. Check it out, if you don't like it, that's cool, but at least you'll have an informed opinion.
I use Windows. :D
People People open your eyes. The computer / OS battles have already determined the future. Its just a matter of time now. Let me explain. Jobs and co. will never and I mean never move to Intel or go entirely open source and here is the reasons. First and foremost Microsoft has made their money selling a good enough OS on cheap computers. Apple has sold a beautifully solid OS and excellent hardware which is mostly proprietary. We all know this. Now here is where it gets interesting. Bill Gates always feared a clever hacker / programmer bringing down Windows. Simply because he knows what he has been selling for years is stolen software that somehow Microsoft turns into bloatware. Probably due to too many renegade developers. Enter Linus Trovald and / or the clever hacker / programmer. Well now and certainly in the future Linux will become the good enough desktop OS for cheap Intel / Amd boxes simply because its close enough to Windows and all software including the OS is either extremely cheap or free. Apple and / or Steve realizes this. Apple also realizes that it can not make the same mistake twice by not being compatible with the bargain basement stuff. Enter OS X. Apple is able to port almost every program, (if not all) for linux or unix to OS X plus have its own proprietary software with the assurance that everything just works thanks to developing the whole widget. So here is the conclusion. Linux will eventually take over Windows on the desktop on cheap PC's simply because of price and being good enough just like Windows was. However those people lookin for something more will turn to Apple simply because all the programs they are used to with linux will be compatible. I expect Apple to eventually give OS X away (upgrades etc.) to existing Mac users and simply make thier money off of thier bread and butter which has always been hardware. In essence linux / cheap PC's will become Ford. Apple will become BMW.
Market share matters as much as market share matters. I don't much care whether anyone else uses macs as long as I can continue to use my mac. That depends primarily upon Apple's ability to make money, and they've been very good at making money lately, even amid the slump. Of course, a certain amount of market share is important, but Linux can have all the market share in the world. As long as Apple is making money, I could care less. It's true. You'll pry my macs from my cold, dead fingers. So Go Linux, I say. And Go Apple too!
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to do it by not dying." -Woody Allen
I read through the huge amounts of comments and not one person mentioned the places where the use of Linux is actually surging dramatically.
Linux on the desktop will surpass OS X (market share), if it hasn't already, in all of these countries.
Thanks
Hansel
Did everyone miss the three letters between "slate" and "com"? I don't think it's the Apple that is terrified, nor the Penguin who is pulling ahead. The cartoon is written from the point of view of m$n who is terrified of the Apple and the Penguin, who are now both running hand in hand! It's m$n's worst nightmare: double teamed by *nix!
For one apple products are much better than PCs will ever dream. With the new g5s out they are going to dominate and sooner or later Linix and Windows will be over looked more than Apple and its os.
OK, add on USD$413 for software (do Elements require PhotoShop proper as well?), call it $1900 total in round numbers. What's XP Home and Office XP worth in the land of the Stars and Stripes? Guessing roughly $150 and $500 respectively, that quietly eliminates an MS-Windows PC from the running - although you could sub OpenOffice and then it doesn't look so bad.
Almost all do, modulo most graphic apps requiring an X server. With the advent of free Qt/Mac I imagine that all of the KDE utilities could be recompiled to run native. If Apple Carbonise KMail as well, Many of the lower-level libraries (like SDL) have a Mac version as well.
What Linux society doesn't have doesn't have nearly as much of as Mac land is graphic artists and the like. The rising spread of cross-platform libraries mean that more of this resource is being leaked back into Linux.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What is UP with all these friggen' Linux freaks?! See, I don't know if the community knows, but if you keep on rattling about something too much, people actually begin to repell it instead of growing closer to it. At first I wanted to learn how to work with Linux, and then I found out what a bitch it was, how hard it is to learn to work with and especially how hard it is to find good documentation and not waste your money when buying a distro (if you already know you won't be able to install it..) Besides, most people (including me) think MacOS X is about the most revolutionary OS of today. Linux? What is this Linux crap you are blabbering about woman? C'est rien, c'est rien du tout! OS X is one tightly integrated working whole, where Linux is just a bunch of thrown together software components that 'should' work together, but do they? Without excessive manual sysadmin tuning?
It's no where in site. Open a form drawn pdf and look at that mess of shit. It's not easy to imagine making that into a good pdf.
I believe that OSX/Apple and Linux ARE making serious inroads into the desktop, mostly by those who've dealt with Windows and low to mid end x86 hardware for years.
Here's my reasoning...
On the desktop
A few of us are tired of turning on an x86 machine to see the blue screen of death, a boot failure message, whatever... We're tired of Windows working great with a fresh install but six months later slowing to a crawl (must be that reboot timer.)
One of the guys here (who is NOT a computer 'guru') figured out that with the amount of time spent in the past year upgrading/reinstalling Windows and apps, waiting for one of us to come over to DO the work... that he could have bought a top of the line Apple and saved time and money to boot. Nothing that he does is Windows centric.
We did set him up with dual boot and various flavors of Linux (Lindows and Redhat)and he was even more lost, having to wait for us to tell him how to do something or to reconfigure something that he wanted to do. (Perhaps that was our fault for not doing it right in the first place.)
Yet set the man down at a Mac and he's happily clicking away. Doesn't even notice that it's an 800Mhz G4 instead of a 2.4Ghz P4.
I catch my wife using my 400Mhz G3 desktop mac at times because her's "is getting stupid again"... (*SIGH* another weekend shot backing up, reinstalling and reconfiguring Windows XP, her apps and data.)
My boss just brought in his 3.06Ghz P4 because it booted up with an error message one time too many. We're to use it for parts, perhaps for a new database server. (Note, there are dents in the side of the case that match his shoes.) Meanwhile he's using his iBook until his new Dual G5 2 Ghz machine arrives.
And these are just a few examples of the problems folks have with their x86 hardware and Windows that I and others here have to deal with.
On the server side:
The same boss looked at the hours that the two of us have spent configuring and setting up five rack mount servers (a combination of Windows and Linux, off the shelf name brand and custom built) plus the cost of the hardware. (one server purchased from eLinux has had to have the mother board, one hard drive and three power supplies replaced in the year that we've owned it.)
Then he looked at the cost of Apple's X-Serves. As an experiment, He had me set up an OSX server as a mail server, duplicating our Qmail/imap/virtual domain mail server functionality. Total time was about three hours I'd never done it before.) The Linux/Qmail version took me weeks of manhours, mostly spent searching the newsgroups, forums and books as I'd never done THAT configuration before either. Again, it was probably me as I didn't know what I was doing. But I was able to get it done a lot faster on OSX Server than on Linux, not knowing what I was doing on either machine. (Windows would have been faster still.)
We built a new file server with IDE raid to replace our aging Snap server (linux based)... It runs XP. If we don't reboot it every week, it locks up and stops serving shares. If fact, every Monday morning I have to reboot the Windows servers as a preventive measure. We find that they stay up longer.
The bottom line is that through all of this, the Linux machines have only suffered from hardware failures... once configured and running, they stay running.
The Macs (I have the G3 at home, the G4 Powerbook I carry with me and a G4 800 at work, plus a number of others around here) haven't crashed nor had hardware failures. My G3 hasn't needed to be "reinstalled" since I got it other than when I upgraded to newer versions of OSX. (Neither have the other Macs, but my G3 is the oldest.)
Th
Maybe it's the lack of sleep talking, but you'd have to pry my scroll wheel mouse from my cold dead hands. I'd call the scroll wheel mouse one of the few true innovations for input devices, and, as such, I downright refuse to use anything but on a box that I'll be using for more than 5 minutes.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Thanks for extending the helping hand. Unfortunately it's not just one or two websites, I think it might be any web site with Javascript on it but it only happens when Moz has been running for a while and has a number of tabs/windows open. I'm pinning my hopes on 1.4 (sucker!)
Latest updates? I have them all. This may be part of the problem. SuSE's QA is terrible, the updates always seem to add at least as many bugs as they fix.
As for Gnome - I've avoided it mainly because I find the interface confusing and non-intuitive. I think I may try again, especially now that the new ximian updates have come out.
First of all, you purchased a hardware solution you expect to last for ten years... this i definately stretching the timeline for hardware... when making this purchase, realizing YOU are the vendor now, you didn't purchase extra components???? The reasons to use linux are performance and stability, NOT because it has a lower initial cost.
I dispel this myth wherever I can, it's NOT less expensive to implement linux initially... if anything it's more expensive, it's less expensive to maintain and it's more reliable.
A very low end sun system for example STARTS at about $20,000 for a single machine. In certain applications that machine will compete with a single dual opteron system (assuming it's properly built, with GOOD pc components rather than the cheapest you can find like you will get with a dell, compaq, hp, etc), in some it will lose the performance fight, and in others it will blow it away. For $20,000, I can easily purchase:
1 x monitor, keyboard, mouse ($60)
15 x opteron mb ($2100)
15 x opteron w/fan ($9000)
2 x 32x10gb disk array w/disks ($600)
40 replacement drives ($2400)
1 x clean metal wardrobe w/shelves,brackets, screws, etc ($100)
15 x 1gb ddr 2700 modules ($1650)
20 x psupply ($600)
15 1gb nics ($1500)
total= $18010
Now this gives you enough to build a 10 node cluster. In terms of replacement hardware you have.
5 extra processors
5 extra mb's
5 extra nics
5 extra 1gb ram modules
40 replacement hard drives
an entire redundant disk array
10 extra power supplys
Now assuming absolutely every piece of hardware goes off the used and new market tomorow and ebay erupts in a tower of flame, your STILL in pretty good shape on parts for a 10yr run. Some things like the disk array are actually old now... but still provide a hell of throughput and price/performance especially with $20 a drive max if purchased individually, can't be beat.
Now you intall linux on the system, stick it in a corner and forget it exists for the whole 10yrs. If a piece of hardware dies, you pull the node, replace it (assuming it's not just a drive), and go back to browsing slashdot.
I administer 16 linux servers currently, I've been administering them for 2yrs. To date, none of them have so much as needed a reboot after setup.
I'm archiving a lot of my old videotape, and looking to do it quickly. At the moment, I capture from video into FCP, edit it up into what I want, then export via Quicktime, which takes considerably longer than real time. If I could get it to do real time it would speed up the process considerably!
I'm on a dual 800 G4 with maxed out ram. Any pointers would be helpful!
Cheers.
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait