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Tiger Early Start Kit
EccentricAnomaly writes "If you can't wait until next spring for the official release of next version of Mac OS X, Apple is offering a Tiger Early Start Kit to those willing to pay $500 for an Apple Developer Select Membership. And if you don't want to spend the money, they've also added a developer overview page describing some of the guts of Mac OS X v10.4."
Does Apple really need to? They have a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft, they distribute GPL'd software with source, and they've shown a willingness to license even questionable patents.
My guess would be that if Apple were found to have infringed on someone's (legitimate) patent, they would just pay-up.
Of course I'm sure someone will point out a counter example ;)
Like others, I say not bloodly likely... There's a reason the 2.5 GHz G5 towers ship with water cooling. Unless you want some really nasty thigh burns or some new-age scorch marks in your desk, G5 laptops aren't going to be coming any time soon.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
...is that you do not talk about developer releases. Hence, the NDA. It's not nasty, as another poster observed. All it requires of you is to have one nice cup of Shut The Fuck Up after another until the final release.
That said...
Select membership gets you access to pre-release software, one incident of support from developer tech services, one hardware discount, and issues of the operating systems when they're finally released at no additional charge.
The way I look at it, $500 gets you the OS release that's bound to take place during your year's membership, and you can easily save far more than the difference when you buy a Macintosh system through the developer discount program. Being able to get assistance directly from Apple when you have a coding issue is a boon. The rest is icing on the cake.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Well, one of the main reasons people use Solaris or HP-UX is because it'll run on boxes with huge numbers of processors (I'm not talking about clusters). Can OS X scale this well? Additionally, does OS X include the kind of high-end virtualisation, monitoring and enterprise volume management that AIX includes? Thought not. OS X is a good desktop operating system, and might work in clusters okay too, but I can't see that it "rivals" AIX or HP-UX. This simply isn't Apple's focus.
This is for making widgets for dashboard... not for regulary application development or web development purposes.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Close... You almost corrected yourself. Microsoft charged for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and so on. Mac charged for OS 8, 9, X, X.1, etc.
If you're mad because they're charging for two operating systems that both start with 10, you might as well be mad at MS for charging for 95, 98 and ME separately.
Win 95
Win 98 = Win 95.1
Win ME = Win 95.2
Win NT
Win 2000 = Win NT.1
Win XP = Win NT.2
Win 2003 = Win NT.3
Mac OS 10
Mac OS 10.1
Mac OS 10.2
Mac OS 10.3
Get the picture?
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Also MS dinged users with Plus! packs and 98 SE.
PS, Imagine if automakers did the same thing! Good thing they give me free upgrades every year. I've had a new Honda Civic every year since the 70's! Woo hoo!
You've got to charge for something like this. Otherwise non-developers will sign up just to play with the pre-release OS, and get the hardware discount. You have to price it at a level where professional developers are not put off, but non-developers aren't tempted. With non-developers being quite willing to pay $125 for a new OS version, it has to be significantly higher than that. I'd say somewhere in the $300-$1000 range is sensible. Why not $500, it's a nice round number?
What a troll!
Apple offers as many free patches as Microsoft does. And I wouldn't call new features like a complete file database system, 64-bit support,and new programs like automater patch material. It's not as if Windows has been drastically changed since Windows 95 (I'm typing this on an winXP computer). Every new version of OS-X has added significant features. For example Panther had a completely redesigned file manager, expose, and fast user switching. The only difference I can find between Windows 2000/Windows ME and Windows XP, is that XP has a hideous Playschool like interface... and it's much slower.
It's not just a security patch.
Why would Apple want students clogging up the professional developer forums with dumb ass questions? Learn to program on released software - you don't need early access to the next generation features.
The reason they charge $500 is to keep dumb ass comments like yours from clogging up the professional developer forums.
oh, jeeze... Please, for all of our sakes, get your head out of the clouds.
MacOS tries to be a desktop OS, and it succeeds brilliantly. However, MacOS does not try to be a mainframe OS. It doesn't run on mainframes, and would't do a very good job if it could. This is what Solaris and AIX do, and they do do a good job.
The two things aren't even remotely comparable.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Relatedly, I'd like to see the DVD Player be able to enter full screen mode on one display without disturbing the other displays (in multihead configurations). Not sure whether this is specific to the DVD app or a general issue with fullscreen apps though.
32bit->64bit is a big change, enough to call it a revolutionary change.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Wow, that's a novel idea... getting people to pay you to do your beta testing for you!
There's nothing novel about it, Microsoft has been doing it for as long as they've been selling Windows. The difference is, Apple's upfront about it.
This is how business works. You have to make an investment to make money. Also, even if you're a student, if you're using it for commercial purposes, doesn't that break the terms of the student discount, requiring you to pay for the commercial membership anway?
That would be nice. In the meantime, use VLC. It plays DVDs and has the option to stay on top. Combine with GeekBind to be able to easily set the transparency of the window. (you can also do it through the VLC prefs)
Eh, Darwin - in it's form prior to OS X, Rhapsody and NeXT/OPENSTEP, was really only slightly removed from Apple. Jobs split from Apple, made NeXT, got re-associated with apple, incorporated NeXT into Rhapsody. Rhapsody => Darwin, Darwin underlies OS X. I dunno if the developers what worked on NeXT came with Jobs when apple took him back, but it's safe to say apple didn't steal most of the OS X is, nor did they buy out some completely innovative garage software company like Palm did with Be inc. It was more like...well you break up with your girlfriend, she goes off and does her own things, then you and her get back together. All of her experiences...er...wait...slashdot...
So, Captain Kurk and Spock get into a fight...
Having a two button mouse on a laptop has nothing to do with ADC members getting to beta test the new build of OSX. That being said, it will happen when people really want it. You have to realize that the whole GUI has been designed by apple, for their hardware, and if their hardware doesn't (generally) support right clicking, then they're going to design the GUI with that in mind. Right clicking on OS X is kind of pointless (depending on the app, but the OS doesnt require it by any means) and it seems like it was added just to shut windows (l)users up.
This isn't a beta, it is a developer preview for ISVs to get their hands on the new technogies and target them. The price is because Apple had to make a cut at some point and spend developer and QA resources to polish up a release that will never sell in general availability. These developers cost money, and they need to be paid. Developers have a much higher threshhold for prices than the general public does. Can you really say to your CEO "well, we can save $300 and change if we have all of our developers just sitting around for 6 months, and let's not worry about the competition that's going to have a 6 month head start either...".
The price also acts as a filter. Joe Schmo will not get this. Only ISVs and hard core techies will get this. This filters a lot of support calls, and probably makes them hugher quality as well, since any bugs in the DP may affect the ISV's ability to make money, so it's in his financial interest to make the bug process as clean as possible.
Apple doesn't care if you pirate it.
Sure they do. They make money off of OSX, and they deserve to. They don't have activation keys and other piracy prevention measures because Apple users are less likely to pirate their OS (most are too loyal too Apple, the rest have too much money for it to matter or they just didn't know it was even possible), and 3rd world countries can't even afford the hardware so they don't have to worry as much about nock offs being sold for $3.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Why not an odbc/ado/adsi type of interface that will allow the use of any persistence mechanism?
It's called setting a reasonable goal for version 1.0. SQLite is an excellent, public domain database that works on a local file and requires no server. It directly fits in as a persistence mechanism with Apple's document-based architecture. Hell, even I saw the potential years ago when I started development of STEnterprise. If Apple picks up the ball, then I say "Great". If they go on to extend it to meet the enterprise void they left when they stuffed EOF into WebObjects and then made it Java-only, then I say "Even better!"
Let's see... Tiger is probably going to be $129, and the hardware discount is $400+ on any 15" or larger Powerbook, any Xserve or any 2x2GHz Power Mac (maybe the dual 1.8, as well). So if you're in the market for a pro machine, and are planning to buy Tiger when it comes out, you can probably save money overall by being an ADC Select member -- even if you don't take advantage of *any* of the other benefits. (Like the free copy of OS X Server, which would cost $499 otherwise...)
Yes, I believe they ship OS X Server with the Xserves. Also, if you're doing double precision floating point stuff the PPC970 is the best chip you can buy this side of Itanium.
However, those things have nothing to do with the mainframe type stuff. The whole point of clusters is to have relatively inexpensive interchangable machines. The whole point of a mainframe is to have one bulletproof system. The CPUs are hotpluggable, the filesystems can move from disk to disk without being taken offline, etc. MacOS X cannot do those things. Similarly, the mainframe OSes don't bother trying to have advanced graphical capabilities, or any of a hundred things MacOS does better than anyone.
I'm not saying Solaris or AIX is "better", only that they're better at what they're designed for.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I'll also note that there is a "no-frills, no-bennies, no-cost" ADC membership option. It's good for going to grab recent versions of XCode, SDKs, and misc other online dev resources that Apple provides free of charge. This level works great for MacOS X open source or shareware dev types, hobbyists, etc.
SP2's new security feature is a firewall. Something that OS X has had since 10.1.
Moving from X to 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 added over 100 new features to the OS with each revision and 10.4 is supposed to do the same. Microsoft can't say anything remotely close to that so don't try and make pitiful comparisons like that.
Each one of these OS updates have been vastly more than mere patches, which come out from Apple on a regular basis between OS revisions, 10.3.6 is right around the corner in just over a years time and each of the six minor updates has included security patches and new features as well.
The list of features that MS has had to pull out of Longhorn to get it to market, in possibly under five years, is long. Most of the features that were going to set it ahead of XP have already been stripped out just so they can bring it to market. The biggest, most important change to Longhorn, WinFS, has been taken out too now. Meanwhile Gates smiles and the company blames the customers, the developers and the retailers for their short-failings with "SHORTHORN". On top of all of that, you still won't see it released to the general public, in a non-server format, until 2008.
The one "new" feature that is supposedly going to remain in Longhorn is the MS duplication of the Aqua interface that Apple included with X since day one. No comparison at all, unless you just have no clue. Sorry fireangel, it seems you are clueless.
"Oh yeah, Lotus/Domino sucks just as much as MS Exchange."
I was following you, and nodding a bit, until you hit this point at the end.
Notes can do some sweet things, and back before everything was a web app, it was even more useful. The whole "everything is a database" paradigm makes for an extremely useful, extensible, and powerful system - if you design and administer the system correctly. Which, I'm afraid, most people don't seem to do. E-Mail is only a small subset of the power of Notes and Domino.
On the Exchange side, nothing could be further from the truth. Exchange, especially Exchange 2000+, has proven itself as a solid e-mail centric groupware solution. It practically runs itself after the initial setup. If using IE, the web mail is an unusually pleasant webmail experience, the system is responsive and fast, and it's filled with all sorts of great stuff you can do. I've designed and maintained Exchange systems for years and besides little silly issues that are generally easy to fix.
I've been doing messaging work for quite awhile now, including work on Unix/Linux systems - Sendmail/Postfix/etc - and honestly besides Exchange and Lotus, there's really no real competition if you want something more then plain e-mail.
At any rate..
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
20% discount on hardware. Buy a high end Mac, and that's going to be around the cost of entry right there.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
" Keep in mind, Apple likes their boxes QUIET. I'm thinking you could get away with two big ass heatsinks and fans on that 2.5GHz G5. Also, from what I've heard, the 12" AlBook has some heat problems, so Apple could release a hot laptop..."
You do realise that if your CPU is dissipating enough heat to put a small furnace to shame, it doesn't really matter how efficiently you move this heat out of the laptop because you will be wasting so much power that your battery life will be shot to hell anyway.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Not if you want to buy Apple, it isn't a moot point.
And devs do, in fact, have to upgrade at some point. Most of them combine it with their ADC purchase.
Most of what MS pimps is worthless, so why is that a benefit? I can get Linux free, for example, but it sucks, so it can't be considered a benefit that its free. Similarly, 99% of the stuff you get in MSDN (I have a subscription at work, so I can say this pretty authoritatively) is junk.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Never is a long time. Saying, "until they have some new lower-power and cooler G5 chip" is kind of pointless, as they'll have that by Christmas. Improvements are always being made. Once enough are made, we'll have a PowerBook G5. The question is not if, it's when.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Apple should GIVE it to them for no charge to increase their declining developer base. It's not like apple has more than 50% of ANY market segment anymore.
MSDN has little value to me because most of what I do has nothing to do with it. We bought a copy about 3 or 4 years ago (whenever VB6 was current) in order to have a set of tools we could use to develop PC-side interfaces to talk to our embedded systems during test and development. That's maybe 1% of my job, tops. We haven't stayed current, so my manager would have very little to say about my expenditure - we've gotten our money's worth out of it. 99% of my coding is done in one of two languages: C or Matlab, which should tell you a fair amount about what I actually do. I am not a software engineer, so your assumption about the things I do is wrong. I have no need for a large portion of MSDN - the only things I actually need are the VS tools and I don't need to upgrade those any time soon - Office and Windows are corporate-licensed, so no benefit there.
My point in bringing in Linux was that getting lots of stuff for free doesn't mean the stuff is worth having - MSDN exemplifies that trend quite well.
My last project will be going into something like 10-15 million automobiles in the next 10 years. Price in that industry matters more than you would believe, but we still pay for 'real' compilers rather than fucking with the GNU toolchain because its far more cost-effective to bitch out Wind River or Metrowerks than it is to try to get some GCC developer to fix their buggy compiler code for a random embedded microcontroller.
ADC ain't perfect, but think of it this way - if you buy one membership a year for every two developers you have, you can have a two-year hardware upgrade cycle at discount, and you have enough copies of Tiger to make it possible to work (remember, I'm assuming they'll still be supporting old code, so not every single developer will need to be on Tiger at every single moment). ADC could be better, for sure, but I don't really think MSDN is a tremendous improvement over it - remember, a lot of what MS is charging you for (e.g. IDE, compiler), Apple is providing to you for free (through the good gcc folks in the compiler case, but XCode is all Apple).
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
So how does my potential sales compare between the two platforms? Apple cannot afford to put ANY roadblocks in the path of potential developers. As you may have noticed, most developers don't even bother with Apple.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?