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.

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: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!"