Dvorak Says Apple Move to Intel Will Harm Linux

Deep Fried Geekboy writes "John C. Dvorak is pretty quick off the blocks with a response to the news that Apple intend to switch to Intel processors. Thankfully, he doesn't gloat about having called this one correctly, but says that the move is likely to hurt Linux, as OSS developers increasingly target the Mac. Since it now turns out that Dvorak was apparently not smoking crack when he predicted the Apple move, could he be right on this one too?"

Comments

his prediction was not quite correct

[LunaticLeo]

He said in 12-18 months and that was almost 27 months ago. This is something of a nit, but you can't say "Windows will be less than %50 of market share in the next 5 years" then 20 years later say "I told you so" when it actually happens.

I was thinking the same thing

[Anita Coney]

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about Linux/Unix users switching to Macs in droves. If that's true, I don't see how Apple switching to Intel based system will stop that switch. It will almost certainly make the switch even easier to make. Let's face it, with a Mac you get Unix AND a great GUI.

Re:I was thinking the same thing

[nathanh]

Do you own a car? You do realize that there are various patents and copyrights covering your car? Do you own a microwave oven? Once again, there are patents and copyright limitations covering it too. Do you own a TV? Same thing. Why is it that when it comes to software you demand complete freedom, but when it comes to everything else, such freedom is irrelevant?

Because software isn't a car. Software isn't a TV. Software isn't a microwave.

Software already has protection via copyright and trade secrets. Thanks to copyright, and the very nature of source code vs machine code, we can't see how closed software works. We can't modify it. We can't improve it. We can't learn from it. It's a black box, never to be opened. And thanks to patents we can't even make another piece of software that WORKS like the original.

My car might have patents but nobody owns the copyright to my car. My television might use a radical new form of electron gun but nobody will sue me for building my own TV. With patents I'm supposed to be able to see how the invention works; that's the balance that patents are supposed to provide. Where's that balance with software patents?

Books have copyrights but I don't see anybody claiming a patent for murder mysteries. Music can be copyrighted but nobody owns a patent on Rock Ballads. With copyright the original is supposed to pass into the public domain for the good of all humanity. With software copyright, where is the balance? The knowledge is still locked up in the source code which we NEVER SEE.

The software manufacturers are simply greedy; they want copyright protection AND patent protection AND trade secrets. They want copyright on the machine code and trade secrets for the source, so the public NEVER receives the intended balance. They want patents on the algorithms so nobody can compete, but if you can't see the code then how can you know when you infringe? Once again, where is the balance?

I'd like to see a simple rule applied here; software can have patent protection, or copyright protection, but not both. If you choose patents then you must publish your source code and in 20 years time it's in the public domain. If you choose copyright then you can keep the source code a secret but you can't enforce patents. That would go some way towards restoring the balance.

Re:More good than harm.

[Fizzol]

UPDATE: After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that." However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

http://www.osnews.com/

Re:More good than harm.

[LMCBoy]

Except that Yellow Dog has already said that they aren't going to transition to x86, they're sticking to PPC. Yes, it's possible that this divergence will decrease sales to the point that they go out of business, but they seem to think it will increase their presence in the xserve market.

Re:Dvorak's (Current) Folly

[dr.badass]

They won't just start slapping together off-the-shelf hardware that will dual-boot to Windows.

You're half-right...

Apple also confirmed that they would not stop customers from running Windows on the Intel-based Mac, although the Mac OS will not run on another PC.

"We will not sell or support Windows, but we are not doing anything in the hardware that would preclude someone from using it," said Moody.

-- MacWorld

Elsewhere they have said, of course, they're not going to allow Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware. So it seems that if you want to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows, you'll have to buy a Mac. (Or wait for the inevitible hack.)

Re:Marginal effect on Linux

[Too Much Noise]

the developer doc ("universal binary guidlines") talks up and down about IA-32 and not a stitch about EM64T/x86-64/amd64. In fact, the ABI section explicitly mentions 32-bit details only (registers, limits on returning values in registers).

Makes one wonder, what kind of game is Apple playing? It does not make much sense to withhold information from developers and say later "actually ... it's going to be 64bit too" - but they could be doing that on the scenario that migration starts with notebook-class CPUs (P-M is 32bit only) and towards the end PowerMacs get the 64bit dual-cores or something along these lines.

Goes without saying that a 32bit-only x86 PowerMac would flop when you can buy a 64bit machine from any other vendor and have the Windows version of your image/video processing toolchain run faster/better.

Either way, it will suck for the short term and remains to be seen what the long term will bring.

Re:More good than harm.

[poofyhairguy82]

Ignoring the difficulties of supporting a wide range of random hardware, they're so close to snapping up a huge chunk of the desktop user market who'd switch in a second if their crappy box could run Tiger.

You are ignoring the thing that makes it impossible. Supporting the x86 world is nearly impossible- just ask any Linux distro. Despite years of work on drivers there are still cheap webcams, wireless cards, dvd drives, sound cards, and other peripherals that won't work with Linux because there is no driver. Are you saying that every creator of all the x86 shit (including those that are out of business like Aureal) is going to create new drivers JUST for a new OS that will have a smaller percentage of the market than Linux has today? No. OSX on Dells are a fantasy. The magic of OSX works because the OS knows every piece of hardware it touches . There are only a few thousand MAC possiblities. The arrangement of parts in other x86 boxes can easily reach over a billion combinations. Apple isn't going to mess with that. People won't accept "buy OSX, and there is a small chance it will work!"