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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."
Here's hoping the G5 powerbook comes out at the same time as Tiger. That is a mac fans wet dream.
Evolution or ID?
There's some nasty NDA business going on.
You can't even talk to other devs about Tiger if you have it.
Wow the guys over at Everquest will be jealous!
The advanced drawing capabilities of Quartz are exposed to the Web Kit environment through a set of modular extensions to HTML. This will let you draw beautiful user interfaces using JavaScript.
This has got to be the coolest new feature, considering how weak DHTML currently is. I could be wrong, but adding support for other APIs doesn't seem like it would be too hard. I'd love to finally be able to ditch Win32.
Does this mean that Tiger will support other forms of mouse gestures?
English is easier said than done.
that the Linux GUI toolkits just copy the Mac rather than Windows and stop the bickering and come up with a Unified desktop.
Apple has made Unix a dream desktop OS. I just hope that they support 64bit Java on this thing. I will buy it and switch from Linux (Fedora 64bit) if they come out with a 64bit powebook in a heartbeat.
Apple went from a pascal based operating system (OS9) to a fully functional, hyper powerful OS in less than 10 years.
Huh, Microsoft has had 20 years and still isn't there.
Apple has gone to it in more like 5 or 6 years.
Evolution or ID?
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 ;)
Only Apple releases security patches for Jaguar, so your argument makes no sense. You're not paying for security, you pay for features. If you don't care about the new features then you obviously have no incentive to upgrade and you can keep your money. Not hard.
Moof.
Realistically, how much of a gain would student developers get by developing for Tiger over Panther? It makes more sense to learn to program on a released OS than on a beta one. What if something goes screwy? Do you blame it on the OS or your inexperience?
...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.
You get an ADC membership. This entitles you to an Apple hardware discount, some programming technical support, access to pre-release software and some other niceties. Moreover, this particular deal comes with the WWDC 2004 videos DVD that has already been distributed amongst ADC members. You also get the Tiger beta that developers received at WWDC 2004 (though it's probably a more recent build). The WWDC tutorials are great resources and I'd be more attracted to this offer because of that. One can argue as to whether charging developers for assistance in making software for their platform is a good strategy or not for Apple. But this isn't merely a "$500 for the privilege of beta testing" rip-off.
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.
Core Data sounds like so many other great 3rd party tools out there, except now part of the OS (so to speak). A standardized object-relational persistence mechanism and design studio - Awesome. But why only:
Why not an odbc/ado/adsi type of interface that will allow the use of any persistence mechanism? Using LDAP or any sql-92 compliant existing database would be useful. Hey apple, you listening?
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
aka Tubcat.
Especially helpful if you plan on buying a system. The discount for a dual 2 gig is $500 and the discount for dual 2.5 gig is $600. Forgetting all the other stuff you get, you make your money back right there.
Apple doesn't DRM their OSes... You do not receive(nor required to enter on install or later) a activation/product key.. I believe you are given an optional 'registration' type mini-survey that gets sent to Apple, but no personal information is sent, nor is it required.
Apple doesn't care if you pirate it. They want you to buy it, they make multi-licenses and such a sweet deal and make it worth the money for single licenses. However, Apple makes money on the hardware, and the more users on the latest version of their OS, the less they have to support the old version and the more they can move forward.
What's a developer?
Let me get this? $500 to be a developer on an OS that is even more marginal than Linux. I guess it's part of the whole Apple mystique to pay for everything.
Apple gives away their development tools with the OS. The $500 gets you a one-year membership in the developer program, which gets you advance access to OS releases. This is similar to Microsoft's MSDN subscriptions. As compared to an MSDN subscription, I think it's a bargain. Microsoft's MSDN Operating Systems subscription (access just to Microsoft's OSs) is $699 the first year, and $499 thereafter. Want Visual Studio with that? $1,199 for the first year, $899 thereafter. (And, of course, the even higher-level subscriptions with all of Microsoft's server & desktop apps...)
Oh, and Apple lets you buy one system per year at discount when you're in the developer program. If you're looking for the high-end PowerMac G5 and a Cinema Display, you can save several hundred dollars when you buy the system.
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?
I mean the one that would force me to upgrade, is if on their DVD application they had an option to leave the window always on top.
I like to watch AntiTrust (Shhh... Don't tell anybody) while I'm coding.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Mac charged for OS 8, 9, X, X.1, etc.
Do you mean Apple? As an inanimate object, wouldn't it be kind of hard for "Mac" to charge for anything?
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.
Yeah... I did. Thanks. Really.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
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.
"I hope that the next corvette to come out of GM costs $200,000 and comes in a bunch of boxes"
l androver_d110.asp
Land Rover offers an option in some countries of "CKD" - "Complete Knock Down" that comes to you in boxes, you get to put it together. Unfortunately you can't get these in the US (tho they tease people with them at auto shows: http://www.rockcrawler.com/trailreports/SEMA2003/
32bit->64bit is a big change, enough to call it a revolutionary change.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Sounds pretty good, the only thing more I would ask for are...
A Developer commentary track:
{booting OSX} "Ding! Welcome to the developers edition of OSX. I'm Joe Schmo, lead designer of Aqua, and with me I have Jim Bob of Core Graphics. We've got some great stories here for you! You'll see that it's starting up services, let me tell you about a time old Jim was writing one of those and the power went out after a fifteen hour coding session..."
And of course "Deleted comments - too hot for public release!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
Any app that really needs something like LDAP or JDBC or what have you can still use those.
To me, the idea of provided a core OS service that essentially acts as a really nice standard embedded DB you can use quickly, is awesome. I'll continue to write apps using more standard databases, but there are smaller apps I have in mind that can really make use of this feature. I was already looking over small DB's and debating about the best way to move forward with an embedded DB in an app.
Fundamentially the configuration and administration needs of an embedded DB vs. an external DB are different, and I don't mind treating them differently.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now then, if you were actually an Mac user, rather than a Windows apologist looking for a asshat line of attack, you'd realise that you don't need to buy every version of software that comes your way. It sounds like you skipped Windows Me. Similarly many Mac users skip some OS releases if the particular features in that release aren't that important to them.
As others have noted, developer tools come with every Mac - that costs nothing, this is early release dev program kind of stuff.
However, I would question that bit about lower margin than Linux. There may be more Linux boxes around, but if you count the users willing to pay for things which base do you think is larger?
And I think in some ways you might even be better off than you would be developing with Windows, because while there are a LOT of Windows users, there are also a LOT of programs competing in whatever space you want to cover. With the Mac there are still a lot of opportunities for programs to come in and grab a big chunck of market share pretty quickly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The main reason for me to switch (probably with new hardware) is to have native h263 support. All those tv programs, movies, dvd's, dv's that I can pipe down massively in size.
My own hackable and very efficient Tivo.
Yummmm.....
I wonder if Spotlight calculates (or could be made to calculate) an MD5 for the file. This would be useful for backup. If the backup program looks up a file's MD5 in its catalog and finds it already there, no need to back up again. This would survive arbitrary renaming or moving (the metadata would still need to be backed up for each file), and would make for major efficiencies when backing up multiple machines on a network (only one copy of Hei.dfont, Osaka.dfont, xxx.App, etc. in the backup set).
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
Breakfast served all day!
.. I presume the air will get thin for MS in the long run. Look at those features. It's like "Gee, that would be really cool to have" and three years later OS X has it, 5 years ahead of all the rest. I find the Automator one of those supercool things. Those things that will eventually put me out of business when everybody can automate his tasks with a few mouseklicks. But it's cool nonetheless.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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...
Yes, the next GCC release will be 4.0.0 (previously known as 3.5.0).
It's currently in "stage 3" which is basically the GCC equivalent of 'feature freeze', where only documentation and bugfixes can be added, but not features.
The actual release is expected to be in early next year.
That in the RSS feeds demonstration for Safari, the site they use is Slashdot?
Just thought that was interesting..
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 situation combined with MS's propensity to re-invent themselves technologically while remaining compatible with billions of existing pieces of software creates a logical nightmare! I do not envy MS that task.
This, however, does not excuse their many lapses in on-tiem feature delivery or their generally buggy and somtimes poorly designed software. I'm just trying to look at it from a computing monopoly's viewpoint. Poor babies. :)
Taft
The latest DVD Player.app does this. Go into preferences and click on the Full Screen widget then look for the "Remain in full screen when DVD Player is inactive".
Now only if they would add this feature to iChat for video conferencing. :-)
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
More precisely:
95 = Windows 4.0
98 = Windows 4.1
ME = Windows 4.9
NT = Windows NT 3.1 - 4.0
2k = Windows NT 5.0
XP = Windows NT 5.1
2003 = Windows NT 5.2
My Sig: SEGV
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
Seriously, AIX stands for "Ain't Unix."
/usr/lib. Put shared libs in /usr/foo/lib and there is no way to make AIX search that lib path! And yes, we have support from IBM. Their solution was to symlink our libs to /usr/lib. Yuck.
All the "high end virtualisation, monitoring and enterprise volume management" that AIX includes does not make up for basic, fundamental problems with things like shared library handling. Everything is fscking hard coded to
Also, the fact that IBM doesn't update their Open Source repository is inexcusable. Try compiling apache on AIX sometime. It isn't fun. Actually try compiling any open source software on AIX.
Now, if you are an IBM drone, you will say, "you should buy their integrated Websphere." But, the problem with this is vendor lock-in. AIX is worse than fscking Windows for vendor lock-in.
Some of IBM's consultants are really bright, unfortunately you need that. Extensive experience with Linux/*BSD/Solaris/Irix is NOT enough to adequately anticipate/fix problems that crop up with AIX.
At a small shop, AIX is just a pain in the ass. At a big shop with ~1,200 AIX servers supporting >35,000 desktops in a whole bunch of locations (don't ask) it's a nightmare.
Ironically, there is nothing that we do with AIX that we couldn't do better/cheaper with Linux. Hell, we could probably get better support for it too. I suggest that the era of Big Iron in the enterprise is over. Cluster cheap linux blades.
I'm sick of the Slashdot IBM fanboy syndrome. There are plenty of companies to be excited about (like Apple!). There are plenty of operating systems to evangelize (like Linux or *BSD!). AIX/IBM are not the horse to bet on. They suck worse than almost any other vendor.
Oh yeah, Lotus/Domino sucks just as much as MS Exchange.
OS X may not match up to AIX or HP-UX on some of those features; scaling, high-end virtualization..
However, it does have some new technologies that might have more direct impact for more people and deliver on some age-old promises of computers making life easier; workgroup management , server task automation & client management, and volume management of its own. Not to mention everything they're doing in regard to clustering with Xgrid, and authoring software (Xcode).
Granted, the Apple stuff is new, it's not necessarily the *best*, and not even fully *out* yet, but you have to admit that there are great advances being made there, providing evidence that much attention is being paid to what AIX, HP-UX, Irix, and Solaris do best (right now). Plus, Steve's got something to prove since NeXT did so poorly against them all when they were at their peak.
~15-20% depending on the system. When I bought my powerbook, it retailed for $3,000 and I picked it up for $2,300
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
While some of what is being put into Spotlight will do what Quicksilver, Launchbar, Butler, etc do there's still a lot of other things that spotlight doesn't do. Really all spotlight does is search files and data. It'll replace the itunes search, the contact search, and what have you but i don't think it'll be as intuitive to use for finding a folder fast, or running an application, the thing i like most about quicksilver is you don't even need to use the mouse, where it seems spotlight will almost require it to an extent.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
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.
http://developer.apple.com/membership/hardware.htm l
You don't have to be a member to see the store, only to buy stuff.
I was first on campus to own a NeXTstation 68040. The NeXTstep operating environment (Mach + BSD layer + AppKit + Display PostScript + included apps) wasn't a lot different then from today's MacOS X, modulo the nifty GUI extras like Expose, etc.
My point is that NeXT technology provided the boost that gave Apple such a headstart over Microsoft. The past few years have been mainly useability and performance improvements as they have iterated through releases. So thank NeXT for doing all the heavy lifting.
(posted from my 1 GHz PowerBook)
......... kris
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
Assuming the iSight is on and looking at the user, a background daemon could look for middle finger patterns and then, if it detects one, dismiss the current modal dialog in the active application if one exists.
;-).
Sounds like a fun hack
Without the serial number, OS X Server doesn't install. Now, if you buy the $500 ADC membership, you get a (limited) OS X Server serial number, and access to OS X Server software for testing purposes.
If you want the server version of OS X, should you get OS X Server (10 client) for $499.95, OS X Server (unlimited) for $999.95, or ADC Select membership for $500 and get OS X Server (10 client) (for testing purposes) and the latest OS X releases for one year? Not a hard decision.
You would still have to download and install the widget manually. If you use a widget from an untrusted source, just like any other application or executable, you can get yourself into trouble. What it won't do is allow for remote installation and execution of unauthorized code, such as ActiveX does.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
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. -
Dashboard is not a browser, nor is it going to be built into the browser. If you browse to one of these Widgets the browser would not know what to do.
Instead, it is an application that makes use of a very widley used and understodd programming language to let you create these little Widgets. So it really is nothing like ActiveX at all, in that it is contained.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I seem to remember having 98 but having to pay extra for 98se (which I never did, and sometime later bought my Powerbook).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember in the mid nineties Apple would send me videos about various subjects. It was basically a guy talking about something like OpenDoc for a half hour, describing it in more detail than the press releases, showing sample applications, etc. I think these were phased out with the ever growing popularity of the web.
Does it MD5 them though? I thought it looked at the size, last mod date and a few other things, but did not run a digest over the whole file. I.e. it tries to be 'smart', or at least 'cheap', when calculating a signature. I've fairly sure that if you take a file and save it over itself without changing the contents that Retrospect will back up the whole file, because it thinks it has changed.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
Call it whatever you want, patches are still patches. The list of new features is not revolutionnary, by far (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/)And it's not like they did it only once. Jaguar, Panther, and now Tiger...
I think the problem is that you're reading the watered-down description of the OS intended for casual consumers.
Quartz Extreme, Bindings (both Jaguar), Core Data, Spotlight and Automator (all Tiger) are certainly not "patches".
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It's true that Apple currently only ships dual processor machines.
Mac OS X, however, is heavily multi-threaded. Before Mac OS X was commercially released there were development Macs in Apple's labs running many parallel PowerPC 604 processors (I believe it was 32); the OS coped just fine and gave fantastic performance. They never shipped, however, primarily because they would have been very expensive.
Some time next year Apple will start putting in dual-core G5 chips into their top-end machines, giving you 4 CPUs. The word on the street is that there will be options for even more processors. Mac OS X is already designed to cope with this.
You can expect that versions of Xserve will also appear with many processors.
As for "high-end virtualisation, monitoring and enterprise volume management", I'm not really a server kind of guy. However does't Xserve RAID along with Xsan address those things?
"Right-clicking' wasn't added to OS X, it has always been there. A two-button mouse on a Mac will map its right button to Ctrl-Click out of the box, and Ctrl-Click functionality has been in Mac OS for some time now.
In most cases, it opens a context-sensitive menu, just like it does in Windows. The only difference is that with Macintoshes, the default hardware layout doesn't include a dedicated key for this action, you use a key combination.
Stop bitching and google.
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/
Lets you set the trackpad to one button and the button to another. Also supports scrolling areas and hot corners on the pad. I haven't had any problems with it.
It's called Bittorrent ;-)
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?