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Does New Development For Mac OS X Make Sense?
DLWormwood wonders: "As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies (like the PowerPC and OpenTransport) left to the platform. With the high likelihood that these new Macs will offer a full speed version of Virtual PC and (what I think is) the almost assurance that some clever hacker will make 'X for x86' run on commodity hardware, I'm doubting the willingness of most IT and development houses to even give the Carbon and Cocoa APIs a first glance. (If it wasn't for the poor past performance of VPC, I would not have gotten my first Mac programming job.) Can anybody with a more optimistic view think of a scenario where a modern development house will do Mac development in an age where the help desk will just say either 'switch boot to Windows/Linux' or 'run Virtual PC?'"
Apple is much more than just a processor. What really differentiates Apple from the Windows world is the OS. Not to get into the argument about stability, OS X is much more intuitive and overall an easier to use operating system.
I don't think that you will come into a situation where a help desk would tell a user to switch into Windows or run VirtualPC because I doubt that Macs will ever come with those pieces of software installed. Working at a helpdesk is not about telling users what they should do, it's about helping them do what they want to do
I think that now that Apple is switching to Intel they will have more flexibility in pricing and will probably continue to grow their market share. I'd say that the prospects for Mac developers will be better than ever in the future. If you need another opinion check out this article.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
I think your view, while logical and understandable, is unnecessarily pessimistic.
The market has always viewed the Mac as another computer, one interchangeable with every other computer. While a Mac is (technology wise) a computer, the people who buy them view them very differently and the sheer dynamics of the Mac Economy (the customers, companies and products that hinge on the Mac platform) prove this out.
Take your fear of people figuring out how to run X on beige boxes... Apple doesn't care about these folks. Simply by having not purchased a Mac, this portion of the market has already proven that they are unwilling to have ever paid the Apple premium so, in effect, Apple will virtually never loose a sale to this crowd.
Or think of it this way; the kind of people who are drawn to the Mac platform are drawn to it PRECISELY because they don't want to fuck around with patches, workarounds and general hackery in order to make their computer run. Here is the test: could you imagine telling your mother to run out, buy a beige box, download some boot hack, install it, then install OS X on top of that? Probably not and that's exactly why Apple isn't going to be kept up at night worrying about the people who are going to hack OS X to run on commodity hardware.
If anything, I think this will bolster Mac sales- the kind of people who are willing to jump through the hoops to make OS X run on beige boxes are computer enthusiasts and typically serve as the computer information maven within their circle of friends. I think that if these hardcore Windows guys get OS X (for free) and play with it on their beige (or Tie Fighter) boxes, they are going to be pretty impressed. When it comes to telling people what computer to buy though, they will probably just recommend to their friends that they buy a Mac.
The same logic generally applies to your second point (will software developers still make Mac versions of their stuff). I think that the answer here is again, a big yes because there is a fairly substantial wall between people who will want to run native apps and people who want to run emulated apps. As someone with a Mac, I've proven (by voting with my dollars) that I am someone who will pay a premium to have an elegant computer that "Just Works." Any software developer with half a brain is going to realize that forcing the Mac customer to run clunky Windows emulation (even if it is at native speed) is inherently out of step with what that customer wants.
I think this is the perfect time to start developing Mac software. Porting over PC code is going to be easier then ever. The overall buy rate of Macs is going to be increasing significantly. A major chunk of risk in regards to the stability of the Mac platform has now been removed. Apple will be rocking the computer world within the next 24 months...
What makes the Mac OS what it is is the platform, and all the technologies involved with it. These are not going away.
Macs are %90 PCs anyway, they use products from Intel, AMD and other chip venders and they use the industry standard architecture of PCI. They just use a different CPU.
I think this move is being made to make the Mac platform more viable and vibrant, not less.
Though I don't quite see the path yet either... the platform is still wonderful, and Cocoa is still the best development environment ever.
PS Am I really first post? Weird.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Well, I'm fairly sure OpenTransport has been gone for a while now, but to answer the question...
One, Mac users will still want Mac-native applications. Witness the lack of interest in X11 ports of Linux programs. These all work just fine, but look comparatively ugly. Same goes for Java apps.
Two, Cocoa and friends is a wonderful language / API set. The programs I have made under OS X have been actually fun to create and build. I, for one, will still program for OS X, regardless of what everyone else does, because I use OS X.
I think the problem facing people programming for OS X will be the same as it always has been, which is just getting enough user base to make the application financially viable for companies. That is up to the markets.
There are a lot of things that made a Mac a Mac long before those two technologies were introduced.
NuBus
Motorola 680xx CPUs
SCSI
1.44 MB Floppies
ADB
HyperCard
(and many others)
Did the Mac stop being a Mac when those technologies were replaced with other, better technologies or dropped altogether?
I'm completely confused by your assertation that if someone makes OS X run on beige boxes that development houses won't look at Carbon/Cocoa. In a word, "HUH???" How do those two statements have any correlation to each other whatsoever?
Apple needed to switch to a different chip supplier because IBM/Motorola will be spreading themselves thin filling supply contracts for all three next-generation consoles. Since those contracts are going to be bigger and more lucrative than Apple's purchasing commitments IBM/Motorola probably told them they'd be last in line.
Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved to a CPU supplier that can fulfill their needs. That they get a higher speeds, dual cores, and lower prices also is just icing on the cake to them.
How this change affects corporate adoption of the Macintosh platform is probably a great big, "not much". Those industries that have shown a predilection to Macs will continue to use them. Those that haven't, won't. Unlike geeks, most people don't care what chip runs their PC. They care about what tools are at their disposal.
If it quacks it's a duck. If it has minimalistic (not minimal) design esthetics, ease of use, runs OSX, and is sold by Steve Jobs it's a Macintosh. It's a Mac regardless of what collection of silicon and transistors makes it run.
So we've heard alot of rumors about this change in the last few weeks, Apple made their big announcement yesterday.
And now we're swamped with all these Apple people throwing out fearful statements like "Apple's switching to Intel, therefor Apple going to get replaced by Windows!".
You guys DO realize that an Apple computer is more then just a Processor, right? There's still a whole proprietary computer built around the CPU, and this OS X thing which runs on the Hardware, and some applications which run on the OS.
I seem to remember similar hysteria during the old MacOS to OSX change. "My programs will never run! The WORLD IS OVER!" but Apple's been doing pretty well since then, as has development for the Mac.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The issue for developers isn't that bad - after all, apple appears to be making it fairly easy to produce cross platform code. If you were going to develop before, why not now? It will be many years before there is a significant number of apple intel systems to run PC stuff quickly. If you were going to write for the apple PPC last week, your situation hasn't changed much and won't for the next couple of years. You will write with standard PPC tools, or use the latest version of Xcode (or similar) which produces fat binaries, and runs on both platforms without a performance hit.
Interestingly, the major improvements in Tiger, such as core video and so on, move all the graphically intensive stuff into the GPU. The cleverness of this is that the lack of the altivec units aren't such a big issue if you use the OS X core API's - everything is done in the graphics card, altivec is much less important, and this means that emulation of the PPC code will work fairly fast on their software emulator (rosetta). So your legacy code isn't going to suffer too much, and newer code even less so using the core API's even if you don't use fat binaries, which you will.
Of course, you could just write for windows, but then you are going to miss a large number of apple users and watch other developers make money in that market whilst you compete in the win32 sphere. Your choice as a developer I guess.
Eventually, the powerbook I am writing this on will be a legacy piece of hardware because the number of people using PPC will be too small to be worth developing for.
However, a similar situation exists for old windows boxes, not because the processor has changed, but because the hardware requirements are too high for big new apps to work on it.
This process will take many years to occur, and won't be a problem for developers unless all new purchases stop for apple.
If this happens, you will get alot of warning over the next 6-12 months that its time to bail from apple.
As a user of apple computers, after the initial concern, I am much less worried about making new purchases because the obsolescence of the current models will take years to occur. It really isn't so different from the transition of OS 9 to OS X. You can still run stuff in classic mode. And my current power book is still a magical 12" laptop that does what I need, and will be good for a few years no matter what, and for which I'll still buy new software for (if its good enough to buy). So the market will still be there.
I don't think that many apple fans will jump ship, even if they are not happy - after all, what is the alternative? Go back to windows? Get your apps working under linux (like iLife, Keynote, etc?). Even if you feel abandoned by apple, the alternatives are still either a malware ridden platform or alot of hard work and a significant drop in the eye candy factor.
In the longer run, its going to be more a case of alot more dissatisfied windows users jumping ship and the apple user base growing, in my opinion.
My 2c worth
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
> its just ...too gui for me
Put Terminal in your dock and then click on it once in a while. Your problem will clear right up.
-- Mark
Nobody buys a Mac because it's got a cool processor - they but it because it's got a great interface that makes life easier for them.
Who cares if it's x86 or PowerPC - it's the OS and the Apps that make Macs great.
My Journal
Because the CPU is irrelevant in the big picture. People buy the engineered package, called an iMac or a PowerMac or a PowerBook, and the PowerPC is really a sidebar in the whole deal.
Sure, some apps perform better on PowerPC, but some others perform better on x86. And no one said exactly what model of Intel CPU future Macs will have. Given that Mr. Jobs mentioned a concern about power consumption, I'd bet that the current Pentium 4 or Xeon CPUs will not get a Mac logo. The Pentium M or an even better CPU in the pipeline (Jobs specifically said he had access to Intel's roadmap) are much more likely to be in future Macs.
Watching the keynote reminded me why people love Apple. It really has nothing to do with PowerPC. The WWDC presentation was full of energy and hype and buzz, and the audience applauded and cheered like no other tech company presentation I've seen.
Why does it seem so strange that people might actually choose products based on their attributes?
you had me at #!
I've noticed a lot of strange talk lately. That somehow the x86 Mac is a BAD thing. That somehow, Mac software will cease to exist. I just don't get it.
I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies (like the PowerPC and OpenTransport)
Those are not "Mac" technologies! Those are implementation details! Who cares what kind of chip is under the hood?
What kind of "long time mac developer" are you anyway, don't you know what makes programming a Mac special? The nice clean APIs. The integration of all the services (want to write a Bonjour-enabled program that shares iTunes playlists whenever you drop the computer? No problem!)
Programming in Objective C and Cocoa is like getting a hand job. I put it right up there with Ruby and my other favorite languages, even though it is positively ancient (but its old age is just indicative of how well-designed it is).
I can't imagine writing GUI apps without the various tools Apple makes available.
With the high likelihood that these new Macs will offer a full speed version of Virtual PC and (what I think is) the almost assurance that some clever hacker will make 'X for x86' run on commodity hardware, I'm doubting the willingness of most IT and development houses to even give the Carbon and Cocoa APIs a first glance.
Do you seriously think "X on x86" will be anything more than a geek toy and/or a cease and desist magnet? Just forget about that, it ain't gonna happen.
And the virtual PC thing is also a red herring. I'm not going to pay $150 for a copy of Windows just so I can run your $20 shareware (or whatever) on my Mac.
I also don't care what "most IT and development houses" are doing. Shrink-wrapped software from big companies is pretty much a dead industry to me outside of a few things like PhotoShop. I buy shareware, I use open-source, those are people who are passionate about the platform.
Now that I think about it, I probably don't want folks like you writing Mac software in the first place, because you don't believe in the platform. That's what your question suggests, anyway.
Can anybody with a more optimistic view think of a scenario where a modern development house will do Mac development in an age where the help desk will just say either 'switch boot to Windows/Linux' or 'run Virtual PC?'
Yeah, because when people buy a Mac, they aren't going to buy Windows or Linux along with it. They don't want some hideous Windows crap on their desktop that doesn't respond to the services menu, that doesn't work right with Expose, and that doesn't minimize to the dock.
As for folks making windows-only software and telling mac users "we aren't going to write a mac version, go do XYZ (XYZ = use Java, buy a PC, go fuck yourself, etc)".. how is that different than now?
I repeat, x86 on Mac is just an implementation detail that means nothing to me. All I know is that in a couple years, my new Macs will be faster and cheaper, that's fine with me.
All the buzz on the news and the blogs is going to die down and we'll move on. It really isn't a big deal, the sky isn't falling, the users don't care, the developers SHOULDN'T care because they will still have enthusiastic paying customers, so really, who cares? I guess game programmers who have mastered PowerPC assembly might be a little annoyed, that's about all I can think of.
They who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
Yeah. After all, it did OS/2 a whole lot of good that it could run Windows 3.1 applications in protected memory space, and pre-emptively multitask them back in 1992.
Sorry, but you're failing to learn from history.
Back before Windows 95, OS/2 had a significantly better desktop environment than Microsoft Windows did. It ran Win16 applications, typically better than Windows itself did. I knew of a lot of Windows developers who did their development on OS/2 because of its better memory management, pre-emptive multitasking, and crash protection.
And what good did any of this do for OS/2? I remember personally contacting ISVs to talk to them about porting their popular software to OS/2, and the answer I always got was "why, when it runs our Windows software so well?". They didn't care one whit about the desktop environment, or the fact that their Win13 and Win32s applications looked bad on OS/2, and ran worse than native applications, didn't integrate into the desktop environment, couldn't use long filenames, etc. They cared only about one thing: how do we target the largest possible market at the lowest cost?
I don't see that much has changed within the industry. There are a lot of Windows-only ISVs out there who have no intention of putting any effort into making OS X applications, but who wouldn't mind increasing their userbase. And there are a lot of other ISVs out there who put minimal effort into OS X native applications, but who would love to do away with the additional staff and costs associated with that.
Fortunately for Apple, unline IBM they already have a significant development community using their APIs. Cocoa is an absolute joy to develop with. If anything, I would think that instead of having good Windows emulation, what Apple really needs to do is to port Xcode and Cocoa to Windows and Linux, and get developers on those platforms to write applications to their APIs, and allow existing Xcode developers create apps which will run on Windows and Linux. That is where the real battle is -- for the hearts and minds of developers. If you permit Windows to run on OS X as well as on native Windows, you concede the most important battle by telling developers that using the Windows APIs is just as good as using your own APIs.
That is the lesson IBM learned the hard way. They continued to make that mistake with their Open32 APIs, which mirrored the most common Win32 APIs in order to permit Win32 applications to be recompiled to run on OS/2. That didn't work out too well either.
That was introduced about 10 years ago. Do you want OS X in 10 years to be where OS/2 is today?
Yaz.
1. There's no need to use a different kernel. Darwin is available for x86 and is open source. Apple is sure to try to tie the binary-only portions of OS X down to their specialized hardware, but just getting the machine to boot Darwin x86 is already a done deal.
2. You can't replace Darwin with some other kernel without an extensive syscall compatibility layer of some sort. That's not to say it's impossible - take a look at the Linuxulator in FreeBSD for an example of that sort of thing. Wine is another example.
No matter what Windows-on-a-Mac solution you've got in mind, I can assure you that it won't come out of Apple's hands. That'll make it essentially nonexistent for the vast majority of average users. Apps will still have to be developed for OS X for those users. And if dual-booting becomes an issue, Apple most likely make it impossible through a quiet update, a la the Rhapsody issue.
----- "All right. It was a miracle. Can we go now?"
You should leave the OS X development arena. It'll leave more room for me...
OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 included a fully copy of the windows. I'm not sure OSX for Windows isn't a good idea. Since IBM screwed up OS/2 marketing in so many different ways its hard to know which ones killed the product. Heck maybe it was it the default to color blind schemes on the desktop?
I recently ordered a Mac Mini (up to day 11 of the wait - already overdue) - will future releases of OS X run on my Mini?
It is reasonable to assume that 10.5 and probably 10.6 will be released as PPC versions, but what about there-after?
For internet usage, audio/video/DVD playback, such a computer should last at least 6 years (just like my PIII has). Did I make a poor 'investment' or will Apple release PPC OS X for several years to come?
Mike
If a Mac could run the handful of Windows only programs I need (in addition to generic apps) to do my job, exactly what arguments could my boss use to stop me buying one?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
"...though my parents love osx (as they arent power users)"
Many power users also love os x for the same reason as your parents - it is just so clean and easy to work with. I know many sysadmins, developers etc who use os x because they want the OS to keep out of the way, not have to play around in the CLI half the time - theyre paid to get a job done, not tinker. I know when I'm coding I just want to click something to do any non-coding related tasks, not have to type things in. And if youre getting CLI withdrawals all you have to do is open up a terminal and there it is.
If you permit Windows to run on OS X as well as on native Windows, you concede the most important battle by telling developers that using the Windows APIs is just as good as using your own APIs.
I never saw OS/2, but it happens all the time that some useful app comes to the Mac as an ugly port from windows/linux and gets picked up. Its popularity always lasts precisely as long as it takes for a Mac-native competitor to appear.
The fact is, any developer who decides that using the Windows APIs is just as good as using Apple's APIs isn't going to last very long on Apple's platform -- not because they'll give up but because they'll be replaced. Mac-native applications will still be written as long as users keep voting with their feet, the same way they do now. I haven't seen any reason that should change.
If things *didn't* work out this way with OS/2, it's either because their users didn't strongly prefer native apps, or there weren't enough of those users to justify independent development. I've been on Macs for a decade, and everything I've seen suggests that your history just doesn't apply here.
Maintaining the OSX/OpenStep APIs for Windows would be a great idea as it would allow Mac developers to sell their software to windows users. In fact this was in Apple's original plans when they announced Rhapsody which OSX.
Somewhere along the line they decided that making the market for mac developers software smaller instead of bigger was a better idea.
As a long time Mac developer, originally as a hobbyist and then a professional, I'm feeling pessimistic about the future of the platform now that Apple is embracing Intel and abandoning the few remaining 'Mac' technologies
You are extremely lucky to be developing Mac applications for a living. I envy you.
Apple is still going to be making incredibly well designed computers. They'll still be named "Macintosh". The Macintosh will still have a great looking case. The OS will still be called "Mac OS X" and will have code names based off of large cats. What will change is that the CPU inside the Macintosh will be named something else. That's it. You will still have to buy it from Apple, and you will not be able to put your Mac OS X installation DVD into a Dell or Gateway PC and expect it to install. Hackers may come up with a way, but it will be unsupported, since anyone who installs the OS onto a non-Apple certified machine will be breaking their license agreement. No company in their right mind will run PCs with a hacked OS X installed -- they'll just buy Macintosh computers and be done with it... and they'll be better off for it as well.
So program away, and feel good about yourself, you are doing what others only wish that they could do.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
This is just stupid. "PowerPC" doesn't make the Mac. Otherwise, IBM would be a big seller of Macintoshes. Open Transport is just a poor attempt at reinventing the wheel. It made sense before TCP/IP was the only game in town, but it belongs in the bit bucket, in favor of modern network stacks built around IP.
With the high likelihood that these new Macs will offer a full speed version of Virtual PC and (what I think is) the almost assurance that some clever hacker will make 'X for x86' run on commodity hardware, I'm doubting the willingness of most IT and development houses to even give the Carbon and Cocoa APIs a first glance.
Sorry, but this is just as stupid. Once again, what is OS X, if not Carbon and (especially) Cocoa? Lots of developers code for X, not because it runs on PowerPC, but because, well, it's cool. Powerful apps are quite easy when you're provided a good set of frameworks.
Can anybody with a more optimistic view think of a scenario where a modern development house will do Mac development in an age where the help desk will just say either 'switch boot to Windows/Linux' or 'run Virtual PC?'
You definitely don't get it. Mac is the frameworks. Intel changes none of this.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Back before Windows 95, OS/2 had a significantly better desktop environment than Microsoft Windows did. It ran Win16 applications, typically better than Windows itself did. I knew of a lot of Windows developers who did their development on OS/2 because of its better memory management, pre-emptive multitasking, and crash protection. And what good did any of this do for OS/2?
Since OS/2 ran Windows apps "out of the box", it's easy to see how a lot of people saw OS/2 as a nice(r) way to run Windows apps rather than as a development target in its own right... I agree with what you're saying there.
Here's the key difference between OS/2 and OSX w/ Virtual PC or VMWare... OSX won't include them for free. OSX won't run Windows applications "out of the box" like OS/2 did.
For those who really want or need the functionality of running Windows applications on OSX, they have to pay for the emulation/virtualization software and a Windows license.
So, while OSX x86 will be able to run Windows applications very nicely for those who don't mind spending the extra cash for a Windows license, I don't see it becoming "a prettier way to run Windows apps" as you say.
Think about it from a developer's standpoint. In the OS/2 days, you could say "well, we'll just write a Win16 app and let the OS/2 people use that". I cannot imagine today's developers saying "we'll just write a Windows app and let the OSX users use that plus pay several hundred dollars for a Windows license and additional software".
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I tend to agree with your pessimism, but perhaps for somewhat different reasons.
The shift from PPC to Intel signals a shift in culture at Apple. It means that Apple has gone from being an innovative 'cool', 'hip' company (of course we know that a lot of that is just marketing hype) to being much more staid and conservative.
If Steve Jobbs felt he really needed to make a move to a different CPU he could have made a very bold move (something he _has_ done in the past) and chosen to move towards the Cell processor. Why would that make so much sense? Well, for one each Cell processor contains several PowerPC processors, so chances are there would have been a fairly easy transistion from PPC to Cell - almost seamless. And two, the Cell architecture promises a quantum leap in performance over what is available now.
But instead, Steve looked out over the CPU landscape and chose Intel. Intel: boring, staid, not terrifically innovative anymore, married to an old CPU architecture. Their only real gamble in recent years was the Itanium and it failed miserably.
So this time the switch from PPC to X86 is nothing like the switch from 68K to PPC for Apple. Going to the PPC really did give Apple a quantum leap in performance. This switch is being done more for bottom-line business reasons. Jobbs feels he can get better pricing out of Intel. He also feels that the relationship with IBM was somewhat rocky. I think one of the big problems was that he couldn't get a G5 in a laptop. However, he may have lost his patience at just the wrong time. IBM was apparently about to be able to fulfill that wish.
This was a huge opportunity lost for Apple. Had they gone with the Cell processor it's possible that they would have been able to create machines that were so much faster than Intel/AMD PCs that it would have drawn a lot of attention and market share. But instead Apple took the safe route. Too bad. These are strange days when Microsoft is going towards PPC (XBox 360) and Apple is moving towards Intel. Perhaps the bold move in the computing world will come from an IBM/Sony partnership creating Cell-based boxes that run Linux.
But look on the bright side: in a few years you'll be able to pick up dual 2.5GHz G5 machines at garage sales for about $25.
Like Be and RedHat, Apple is the new OS vendor out there. Be ran on 2 platforms and is dead now. RedHat runs on 3 (or more) platforms and has big community backing. Apple does too. They both have good application base, although Apple has more on one platform, the PPC.
Some say Apple has a good OS, so they'll have success. Others say their Intel hardware will be superior and people will buy more of it, since it will be cheaper and efficient, so Apple will be successful.
And yet for some reason, I'm also pessimistic here.
We had the evil wintel. And then we had the Apple, motorolla, IBM alliance. IBM is very busy pushing Linux-on-PowerPC, which means that hardware platform will have a future, and might just pull ahead of x86.
However, the AMD64 platform showed that the x86/x64 platform is the best thing out there and Apple is too moving to it. Less diversity. Just a bunch of OSes on the same chip on roughly the same motherboard (since the mem handler is built into the chip, theres less else on the AMD64 mobo). Thats now the entire desktop market of the world.
There was once a time when we had IRIX on MIPS, OpenVMS and Tru64 on Alpha and VMS, Solaris on Ultrasparc, HPUX on PARISC, Unixware on Intel, OS2, and all the BSDs plus Linux out there. It was a rich world. Lots to learn. Each one had a strength you could count on. All thats collapsed, Be was bought out, SCO was too, Alpha, Tru64, OpenVMS were too, Ultrasparc and Itanium and PARISC are dying, MIPS is dead, OS2 is dead, the diverse mainframes are dead, and we're seeing even more industry consolidation, and later the demise of some of the companies who couldnt differentiate enough.
I suppose I'll feel different when I'll see a cheaper macmini with an Athlon64 FX55 (or equiv) running OSX.
OSX had better be able to make me buy the whole deal now.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Apple has been developing builds of Mac OS X for Intel since day once. They obviously have the resources to handle both architectures at the same time. So they will be able to maintain builds for PowerPC as well as Intel for years to come but yes, they will eventually phase out PowerPC, yes.
If you've read about the keynote, or watched the video, you'll know that Apple will introduce the Intel line in 2006, and complete the transition of all Apple products to Intel in 2007. My guess is you'll have two years of OS X updates for PowerPC after that (about how long OS 9 was still maintained after OS X was introduced). Simple math says your PowerPC will probably be running Mac OS X 10.8 (Garfield?) in 2009 by the time PowerPC is EOL'd.
Of course, I don't know for sure. It's just speculation based on Apple's historical transitions. They're not going to leave you out in the cold.
Gabriel Ricard
I think the major problem is that now VPC will have virtually no performance hit. And if you don't want an actual virtual computer and the bugginess of Windows, I'm betting WINE will be out of OS X within 6 months of the first x86 macs ship date.
I have a shitty sig!
It's unfortunate, but endianness is the most important part of an API. You're going to have to reverse to order of the bytes for the string literal in "Hello, World!" to make it work. It's just not worth the effort.
English is easier said than done.
i bought a mac because of os x, not because my ibook has a g3 inside...
You still have to have software translating from the APIs of one operating system to the older one, but using the same processor.
This would indicate that the performance level you might get on VPC would be comparable to Classic on MacOS X.
Do you know anyone running MacOS X who still uses Classic with any frequency? I don't, because the ancient applications are just plain sluggish.
The main advantage of the Mac platform is MacOS X, not the hardware it runs on. And we still have a distinct lack of virii and spyware. None of that will change, so the Mac will continue to be viable. (I expect Mac virii and spyware eventually but I think it will always be a much, much smaller problem than under Windows).
Right now, the odds are pretty good that you have software from the following vendors on your Mac:
Apple (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Pages, etc, etc, etc)
Adobe (Photoshop, etc)
Macromedia (Flash) - of course they will become Adobe soon
Microsoft (Office)
Apple is obviously fully committed to its platform.
Adobe has made a public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
Microsoft has made the public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
That covers about 95% of the software on my computer. And I'm sure that the shareware vendors will also support it since it's pretty darn easy from what I can see.
So I don't see a problem. I was very sad to see this happen because I'm a bit sentimental about Macs being different, but if i delivers us faster creative applications, then that's what we need.
D
I completely understand Steve Jobs' point about moving to Intel. IBM has had little success exploiting the massive "room for growth" they vociferously touted with the announcement of the G5. I have a G5 Dual 2.5GHz machine, and it never ceases to bug me that a machine with such a "low" clock speed requires liquid cooling and a half-dozen fans to spin up every time I start compiling code.
As a programmer since the Z80 and 6502 days I'm a little perturbed by this move, but really just for aesthetic reasons. The reason I could never abide the x86 architecture is that in its original incarnation it seemed so brain-dead and backwards. With its backwards endianness, funky limited-use registers, paged memory, and bolted on extensions it always seemed like a kludge on top of another kludge.
When I discovered the 680x0 architecture (through the Amiga) I was very pleased. The bits were in the right order, the registers were all general-use, and there were plenty of them, and they seemed to be more interested in energy efficiency.
While Intel was building processors that required giant heat-sinks and fans to dissipate all the waste heat I was glad that Apple was seeking out processors that pushed efficiency and low energy consumption.
Maybe this is a misconception, but I thought that at some point the ancient x86 instruction set and registers were "set aside" in favor of a more modern RISC-style processor core, and the old x86 stuff is supported as a kind of pass-through layer on top of that. I understand that's the case with AMD's Athlon, anyhow.
So what I'm hoping is that any new computers based on the Intel architecture will eschew the legacy cruft and compile only the core instruction set. Then perhaps they can drop the pass-through x86 layer and get even more power for the price.
How much have I got wrong in my thinking on this matter?
-- thinkyhead software and media
. . .could you imagine telling your mother to run out, buy a beige box, download some boot hack, install it, then install OS X on top of that?"
.
And I own two G4 Powerbooks, 15 and 17", two partioned volumes each, running Tiger, max RAM, broadband, wifi / Airport Express, Nokia Bluetooth . .
I'm also a grandmother, and you all need to get: (who am I talkin' to: dateless geeks) women are not what you think.
I'm sure that somebody will figure out how to hack OS X to run on a generic Wintel box. It won't affect anything. Nobody will use it except for a handful of hackers, and not for any serious purposes, because it will be too much of a pain to maintain, with the patches breaking every time Apple releases a system update.
Mac O/S has excellent Java support. Write your code in Java, and it should be able to run on whatever hardware macs currently have under the hood.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
What fall back? The machines that come out June 2006 are replacing machines that are still 32-bit G4s (the Mac Mini and the laptops). No eating of crow-like substance necessary. When the 64-bit part (Merom) comes out in 2007, that's the right timing to replace the PowerMac line and anything else that needs upgrading from the first Intel generation. This maps out perfectly to what Jobs announced, and doesn't require any product to go back to 32-bit that is currently 64.
Yes, what they said is all very well, but the truth of the matter is that there simply wasn't a customer demand for OS/2. At the time, Window was largely "free" in that it either came with your hardware or was readily pirated. Remember those were the days before license enforcement actually happened. Anyway, contrasting that to the price of OS/2 which was, I forget the exact figure, but in the ball-park of several hundred bucks, it's not hard to see why uptake on OS/2 was sluggish.
No customers, no ISVs. OS/2 lost on price alone. But unlike OS/2 vs. Windows, both OSX and Windows now cost, and there is an existing market for OSX. The battlefield today isn't cost, it's (some notion of) value. My gut feeling is that OSX is not going to go the OS/2 way primarily because Apple will bust it's blankity-blank to position itself as at least equal or better value to Windows.
In that sense, the move to Intel and the potential of Wine does just the opposite of what Windows support in OS/2 did. In OS/2 it provided an excuse for developers to ignore the platform even for the tiny market that was there and subsequently that market dwindled because of being ignored. What this really shows is that there wasn't a core market for OS/2 without the Windows support. But OSX is doing just fine without Windows. Now adding Wine adds value.
As long as the value of OSX without Windows support is still at the same as or better than the value of Windows, OSX will be healthier than it is today.
True, but certainly it does not look like Mac compatibility for the top applications (i.e. Photoshop and Illustrator) is in danger.
...
One of the reasons Adobe is not as much of a Mac supporter as it once was is Apple's software division. Final Cut Pro absolutely slaughtered Premiere in the marketplace, and with good reason.
In looking at software quality and design, I trust Apple more than I do any other vendor. I use Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, etc, and they're all amazing applications at a very fair price for what you're getting. I've also done some mission critical documents in Pages and it really does a slick job with styles.
I wonder if Apple will ever design a pro photo editing application. Photoshop is great, yes, but not easy to learn. A bit of competition would do the end user a world of good
D
Tonight I wrote a large portion of an experimental RSS program in 45 minutes using only my mouse and XCode's CoreData modeling tool.
What was the question again?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
OS/2's problem was no free development tools, little native software all the while everyone was developing for Windows. Further it was very mismarketed. Apple certainly can screw this one up. But anyone who has used OSX knows there is no shortage of software. And some of the best is from Apple. (FCP, iLife, iWork, DVDStudioPro, etc.) Likewise Adobe/Macromedia is porting their stuff. Microsoft is porting their stuff. Then there are the native developers like Omni with excellent software. The OS/2 comparison really is a false one.
Just FYI, there are 8 different api's for handling a length prefixed string in windows, each defined separately with WHOLLY different semantics and parameters for performing the same tasks. Ironically while they are not interchangable, each of them has a different, subsection of text-proccessing or storage-management none of the others has, and a completely separate method of conversion to a LPSTR (std string pointer). I have talked to dozens of people about this, and most people who've done work in windows have seen this, Nobody has the slightest fucking clue why they are there or what they have to do with each other. It's like seeing a glowing pink elephant on I-95 every day while going to work, but everyone just drives around it, pretending it doesn't exist.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
I don't understand why you're concerned. Do you think that the reason that developers wrote software for OS X in the past was that they really liked PowerPC? I mean, the architecture is slightly nicer than the x86 (what isn't?) but most programs are written in a form that will compile trivially for any architecture. From a developer's perspective, what's the big deal?
One positive aspect of this is that any code tuned for the x86 (ie, DOOM 5 or whatever) will be able to run on Mac immediately, so I expect that the Mac will get applications like that much sooner.
"Yeah. The stinging and very real issue you and several others are choosing to ignore is the value issue. If there is nothing to really distinguish a generic PC with a Mac other than some BIOS/rom/software thing to allow OS X booting (oh! and a pretty case) then we've got a problem."
Well, there's the power of good design. Not as in oooooh shiny pretty case, but as in clever, suave, wanna have and above all HARD TO COPY. Not all Apple designs are brilliant, or totally perfect but they evoke something that resonates with a lot of people. Especially on standardized parts I think they can benefit from this. In a sense they've removed a huge future bottleneck with the intel switch (the horror! but still).
A real-life example, a bad one:
I really like my G4 Cube, probably a lot more than it deserves to be liked. It's not too fast after five years of service, its connections are inconveniently at the back/bottom of the machine, the optical power button has long lost its novelty value and is a nuisance (especially in conjunction with those connections: tilt computer carefully, plug in Firewire cable, slowly, carefully put the computer back upright and... it magically turns itself off or falls asleep, because the casing invoked that shiny optical power button), the space saving is relative, since you're not going to push that looker UNDER your desk, are you?
Still, with minor upgrades (ram, HD) this little machine has served me for five years on two continents, four countries, three different AC/DC schemes, and still does the OS X thing with panache. People still ask me where my computer is when in fact they're already staring at it and the thing can even play a decent game of Quake III (don't even think about Doom III, just don't).
There's incredible good design in this machine, but I only focus on the mistakes of this particular model and the obvious strengths that just about every mac model has. My point, even when not perfect, people really really dig the Apple experience, I just would have given up on computers ages ago if they'd gone away. I really like working with computers, but have absolutely no tolerance for things that go bleepbleepbleep when they shouldn't.
So in essence there's not a whole lot Apple has to change, in fact the less the better.
I don't like the intel inside idea, but that's because I remember the bunny burning, I liked it, I can still tell what I was doing when I first saw it (I was watching a silly commercial, see?!). I grew up on Apple, my first computer was an Apple//c, so I'm allowed a bit of grumbling, but as long as they keep doing most things right, I'm actually not worried at all.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I think you're wrong about OS/2. Developers didn't like it because of market reasons. It wasn't a consumer OS, and no matter what you think about OS/2, the marketing and appearance of Windows 95 KILLED IBM in the consumer space, and in the business space, Microsoft had better value and had support from hardware makers. I think all this porting talk is just a small thing developers worry about. Developers follow the money.
Apple appeals to a different market than IBM, and always will. The consumer market is where Apple has it's biggest successes. It doesn't matter what you can/can't port or run on Apple, because people purchase Apples for simplicity, home use and high-end graphics. You mostly can't replace these things with emulated Windows apps, so the Apple won't lose it's appeal.
Listen, OS/2 was terrific engineering. But IBM couldn't win in the market - their fate was essentially set when IBM clones appeared. It's the same reason that Apple faltered at the same time- nothing about porting software, it's about competing against the huge Wintel biosphere with expensive, proprietary stuff. IBM left the PC OS business essentially because they had other options, and Apple didn't. Apple found a market that worked for them, and they've stuck around long enough to gain ground back at this opportune time.
I know this move won't help Intel with the PC makers, so Intel has finally given up on M$. They clearly see that their integrated chip designs work better in Apple's economic model because Apple doesn't have to leave their options open with AMD. Apple can sell at higher prices and people will pay. With Dell, HP, etc., their competition keeps driving the price of Intel's components down, and M$ doesn't budge on the OS, so I'd make a deal with Apple, too. The future is integrated systems like consoles and cell phones (Microsoft Cell OSs run on non-Intel), not these monstrosities called Personal Computers. Despite the prices, Apple is closer to selling information appliances than HP/Dell/Lenovo/Gateway+Windows is. Does anyone else think the Media Center PC is a disaster in the marketplace?
The computer market is getting crowded and messy.