Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: OS Xi, Sarge, Statistics
It still feels like a strange dream that they're really switching. An anonymous reader writes "With our latest Unix (MacOS-X) vendor's switch to x86, I figured now would be a fine time to revisit an old MIT Graduate Student Beer announcement from 2001."
Also, samchung writes "CoolTechZone has its latest article up that discusses the possibilities of Apple's protection on x86 hardware to prevent users from running the Mac OS X on non-proprietary hardware."More fuel: Reality Master 101 writes "Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire posted an editorial talking about his disappointment that Apple wasn't embracing generic hardware. But the really interesting part was that he states, "My sources say that Jobs is going to use Intel's cryptographic technology called LaGrande to make sure OS X will only boot on Apple-branded hardware. This is a similar technique to the one that Microsoft used to make sure Linux could not be loaded on Xbox..." I'm still not sure how they'll do this with an open source Kernel." They're clearly part of the Linspire marketing effort, but Robertson's messages, including this one, are usually pithy and worth reading.
Hey, you could always wait for a service pack. An anonymous reader submits "Because of an error in a configuration file, Debian Sarge, released June 6th, does not have security updating enabled by default. ZDNet Australia reports that after several years of testing, the release team's error caused a significant delay in deployment. Steve Langasek, of the release team, says, 'Whoops, don't go pressing those 10,000 copies of [3.1] just yet.' Fortunately, the error may be fixed quite easily, and an update is expected within several days. OSNews also covers the story.
Sticker shock alone could defeat the other drivers. josemunizn writes "Remember the Honda FCX, from a Slashdot article in '03? Well the New York Times has an automotive review of a week-long, unsupervised test drive of the Honda. Choice quote: 'In most important ways, the FCX feels ready for prime-time combat on the world's roads.'"
Carry the one, subtract 5, voila! An anonymous reader writes "WinMX and Limewire are the most popular P2P apps? That's what NPD group claims in its research on iTunes covered on Slashdot yesterday. But as Jon Newton points out on P2Pnet and MP3 Newswire, the entire premise that more people use iTunes over the file sharing networks is 'nonsense.' With sites like Slyck.com reporting eDonkey alone has over 4.5 million concurrent users and P2P research firm BigChampagne saying in the U.S. in May an average of 6,290,327 people were logged onto the p2p networks at any given moment, how can iTunes' 1.7 million downloads over an entire month put them anywhere near the top? Zeropaid has also chimed in on these claims and even CNET is now questioning the results it reported in its original article on the NPD research."
Catching up to the 3rd parties who have caught up with the competition. An anonymous reader writes "For the impatient or those few not ready to adopt Firefox, there is now another option to get tabs. BetaNews reports, 'Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser will not have to wait until IE7 to experience tabbed browsing. MSN has shipped a new build of its MSN Search Toolbar that adds basic tabbed browsing support to IE6. But the feature is not fully integrated into the browser, instead relying on the toolbar to create tabs.' Here's an article including a screenshot.
Apple with 'Intel Inside' is at best a wash. No more hype about being
faster than a Wintel box, but they get close to parity in the real world.
They might get a few more people buying Macs if they can dual boot them,
but will suffer a financial hit when someone gets it running on commodity hardware.
And make no mistake, it WILL happen as the linked article says. If
for no other reason than "because we can". Darwin already runs so if
nothing else someone will just extract the higher level functions from
the CD and drop them in, disabling the copy protection as required.
Removing copy protection is well understood and will pose no real
challenge. Macs aren't X-Boxes, developers who have not signed an NDA
must be able to use one, including the debugger, so hardware lockdown
isn't a real option.
And I'm not even sure this new practice of locking software to one's
own brand of PC is even going to be legal. The console world gets away
with it because a) the consoles sell at a loss so people cut em some
slack and b) nobody has waged a real legal war over it yet. But on the
PC, Compaq v IBM is settled law.
Democrat delenda est
An RSS feed of Slashdot appearing in my RSS feed of Slashdot... hmm I'm confuzed!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Should be a function of the window manager, not the application. freedesktop.org should standardise a tabbing protocol for X11 apps.
The MSN search bar tabs seem interesting, but I wonder if it will establish precedents that might carry into final builds of IE7. The possibility of bugs or issues with this implementation may also help the adoption of firefox, as people who like the concept of tabbed browsing but find this implementation lacking may seek out other browsers, or ask those 'in the know' around them for recommendations.
Business Voyeur
The last thing the world needs is another locked-up platform But there's no other way I can think of for Apple to resist cloned/virtualized Macs running in other OSs. It has to be signed apps, right? And that takes us down the road to the end of free computing as we know it.
This may be a reason to stop buying Macs. What this could represent may change the entire spirit of computing from "buy/own" to "borrow/rent". And forget privacy and being able to do whatever you want on your own machine.
Thanks for trying but we'd rather have one good story rather than five crappy ones.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If so, why don't you post the fix within this post, EH? Or maybe a nice link to a page with the easy fix... please?
See, I told you Open Source was slower than Closed Source!
...
Um, when were MSFT going to release that patch for IE? Next century?
.
.
. now where's that irony key on my keyboard
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The old MIT thing about SGI and Compaq throwing away their innovative technologies and betting the farm on x86 is really quite stunning. You rest assured, I don't care what Apple does to make it so that OSX will only run on Apple Mac86s, it will take perhaps a day to get it running on your average Dell. Even if their motherboards and hardware are designed completely differently from those of PCs, and all the addresses of various devices are as they are on a Mac, rather than a PC, you rest assured that all it will take is a compatibility layer, akin to what FreeBSD has for running Linux binaries unchanged, to make any part of OSX execute on any PC, and in fact, it won't even require Darwin to run. I can already see hacks that run Aqua on Linux/x86 (er, forgive me, that's GNU/Linux/x86) and hacks that get Final Cut working on User Space Darwin running on Linux, and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff. Apple just bet the farm and I am disappointed. Hopefully I won't be when I see the products that will emerge from these changes, but it's only a matter of time before my own Mac is useless because the newer applications will no longer be compiled for G4. Fsck. The IBM/FreeScale processors have been steved.
Prevent Linux from being installed on the Xbox, in the same fashion as Apple tried to prevent Linux from being installed on the iPod? All encryption can be cracked. However, this is a bit different. You're not preventing an OS from being installed on a box, but keeping an OS on a certain box. They're not stopping you from installing other OSes, but they *are* stopping you from installing OS X on another box. This can be easily accomplished with another chip on the motherboard that the OS looks for. Getting past this is much easier than preventing Windows or Linux from installing because if the OS looks for hardware, you have to get your hands on the hardware to install the OS. Of course, you could always take apart old broken Mactels, take out the chips, and sell them for $50 each - "OS X on a Dell Package." Naturally, you'd be sued within the hour, but still... As for the IE thing, I think it's great that the so-called "little guy" is forcing the so-called "big guy" to play catch-up. However, I wouldn't necessarily call IE the "big guy" - I'd be willing to bet money that more people and collective time is being spent on the development of Firefox and other assorted browsers than is being spent on IE. Oh, and the text "sticker shock" reminded me of my single greatest fear about the Apple-Intel merger: *PLEASE* no "Intel Inside" stickers! THE APOCALYPSE IS NIGH!!!
I'd have thought that especially the Opteron line would've been a good fit with Apple, and by using those at least they could've mantained some semblance of being 'different' and justify the premium cost for their systems.
Not to mention that AMD's dual core offerings seem a lot better than Intel's, and with apps on the mac already fairly SMP-aware (due to all the dual-G5 boxes Apple sold) I'd have bet that OS/X on a dual dual-core Opteron 275 would've been a much stronger proposition.
-- the cake is a lie
Apple is a software company...period. But until (or ever) they get at least 25% of the desktop marketshare they need hardware to generate revenue.
Apple would love nothing more than to ditch the hardware all together, but can't because of economic necessities.
Just because OSX isn't going to run on vanilla boxes in 2006 doesn't mean they won't start licensing out OSX to independent vendors in 2010 and in 2015 start selling OSX DVDs to run on vanilla boxes.
Apologies, looks like I forgot to stick in those darn page breaks. Shoulda used Preview...*slaps self*
Here is line-broken version:
Prevent Linux from being installed on the Xbox, in the same fashion as Apple tried to prevent Linux from being installed on the iPod? All encryption can be cracked.
However, this is a bit different. You're not preventing an OS from being installed on a box, but keeping an OS on a certain box. They're not stopping you from installing other OSes, but they *are* stopping you from installing OS X on another box. This can be easily accomplished with another chip on the motherboard that the OS looks for. Getting past this is much easier than preventing Windows or Linux from installing because if the OS looks for hardware, you have to get your hands on the hardware to install the OS.
Of course, you could always take apart old broken Mactels, take out the chips, and sell them for $50 each - "OS X on a Dell Package." Naturally, you'd be sued within the hour, but still...
As for the IE thing, I think it's great that the so-called "little guy" is forcing the so-called "big guy" to play catch-up. However, I wouldn't necessarily call IE the "big guy" - I'd be willing to bet money that more people and collective time is being spent on the development of Firefox and other assorted browsers than is being spent on IE.
Oh, and the text "sticker shock" reminded me of my single greatest fear about the Apple-Intel merger: *PLEASE* no "Intel Inside" stickers! THE APOCALYPSE IS NIGH!!!
Slashback should be fired-
it takes too much vacation.
Anyone care to wager the correct order these events will happen in?
1) First mod-chip to bypass firmware limitations of Apple x86 hardware released
2) Linux distribution boots on new Apple-x86 hardware
3) Mac OS X for Intel boots on generic x86 hardware
4) Windows hacked to boot on new Apple x86 hardware
5) Mac OS X for Intel hacked to run in emulated virtual x86 machine
Tiebreaker question: estimate the date when OS X for x86 runs under Virtual PC on a G5 running the current OS X.
Until OS X, Apple has always been a locked-up platform. One reason they chose BSD over Linux is because BSD allowed them to release altered versions of the kernel without being required to publicly release the source code. I'm not saying it's right, just that it is. If you want free computing use FreeBSD, Linux, etc. We'll have to wait to see what they do regarding privacy. I doubt it will be any different than it is now.
Never leave a dead horse unbeaten!
That article on CoolTechZone has blown it all out of proportions. Considering that Darwin (being the kernel of Mac OS X) is open source, it is only a matter of time before someone will either (1) engineer some sort of compatibility chipset, or (2) write kernel support for PC chipsets, to make Mac OS X run on commodity hardware.
... the same game that Linux has to play, all over again.
I don't think Apple is intentionally preventing its users of doing that. Apple is just not going to support running Mac OS X on your average PC.
I think OpenFirmware is likely to be the major hurdle preventing you from running Mac OS X on your PC. Most PCs have BIOS that date back to the IBM PC clones. Modern computers (UltraSparc, Macs) have OpenFirmware instead. Your best bet is to check out OpenBIOS and see how you can get that running on your PC.
And then, you just need to make sure whatever other pieces of hardware on your PC has a driver in Darwin
I once had a signature.
Apple's computers have always been about ease-of-use. It doesn't matter that they're the only ones making PPC hardware now, because OS X will only run on "good" Apple hardware anyway.
The same will happen with OS X on Intel. Inevitably, someone will find a way to build their own Intel box that can run OS X. I predict Apple's response will be: (1) You can't publish how to do this on the Internet, or if they are legally unable to stop them: (2) Refuse to support that hardware.
And that will be enough. Some OS X user will call Apple, somewhere along the line, and say that they're running OS X on non-Apple hardware, at which point Apple will decline to help them on the grounds that they don't support BYO hardware.
Sure, people out there will be building their own OS X boxen, but Apple won't help them do it. And if anyone tries to make a business out of selling boxen that are explicitly marked as "OS X compatible", Apple will bring their lawyers in, force them to remove whatever's making them compatible, and that will be the end of that.
It is total utter complete FANTASY that Apple's locked out platform strategy for OS X is going to work.
And you know what ? I agree it may well be illegal and anti-competitive as well and really there is going to be no way on Earth for Apple to cling on to brand prices on the hope that a few Mactel sheep will buy enough of their boxes. It is just a nonsense.
Mac OS X WILL be on generic PC boxes. Apple have done an amazingly stupid move of killing of their brand when they announced they are going with Intel.
This may sound rough to some but Macintosh as we effectively know it is dead now. It is finished. The dream is over.
I urge everyone to brace themselves for the next few years when Mac OS X will be become unrecognizable to what it is today and bloated up with more and more tacky useless halfbaked features like Dashboard and so on. Innovation and excellence is dead. Mac OS is ALL about converting people from Windows. To do that it will BECOME another Windows.
Are you talking to me?
after posting this http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152036&cid=127 59477
We all need to get through our heads: hydrogen cars are a boondoggle. The hydrogen economy is a code-word for "the biggest subsidies (tax dollar give-aways) the fossil fuel industry has ever dreamed of."
Biodiesel is cost-competitive with plain old oil RIGHT NOW. A barrel of food-grade vegetable oil costs about $50, and unlike a barrel of crude oil, vegetable oil needs only minimal processing to use it.
Electric cars are almost competitive with ICE cars also, and will be more than competitive long before hydrogen fuel cell cars show up in any show rooms. It's simple math. A lithium-battery electric vehicle could have a range of about 300 miles. That's all we need. The battery packs for such a vehicle would cost about $100k right now. That's (obviously) too much, but there's nothing inherently so expensive in lithium battery production, so it should be possible to bring the price down to make it cost-competitive.
Meanwhile, there are no realistic ways of storing more than a dozen pounds of hydrogen in a vehicle, and guess what, fuel cells still rely on metals like palladium, which last time I checked, isn't something that just grows on trees (unlike biodiesel, which does in fact grow on (palm) trees).
Oh and guess where hydrogen comes from, and probably will come from for the forseeable future? It comes from oil, natural gas, or other fossil fuel sources! It just happens to be almost the least energy-efficient way to use those fuels that you can imagine. Yes, it is possible to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of water, using solar electricity... but again, the process is so inefficient that it's never going to happen.
6) How long it'll take the average hacker to realize they can crack all that stuff, but are unlikely to have an OS X driver that works for their onboard video, onboard audio, onboard networking, etc.
" I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will have one of my own next week as well.
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really. All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come with the OS are already universal binaries....
They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports 64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900 doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia. The Apple engineers says the dev kit will work with regular PC graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So, when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the compatibility lab several times.
It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS. That's right, a Mac with a BIOS.
(I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is common for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards don't usually have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it out when out dev kits arrive.
They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so you can download drivers and run XP on the box.
Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code, etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but most Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
(I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a G3, right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K to PPC.
Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/x86 to Mac/x86 as much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support PPC.
I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well as the x86 versions.
This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch in 2 years.
Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT in
The note at the top of every 3.1 download page:
/etc/apt/sources.list for "http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates" rather than an active entry for "http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates", and thus will not get security updates by default. This was due to incorrect Release files on the images.
/etc/apt/sources.list, look for any lines mentioning security.debian.org, change "testing" to "stable", and remove "# " from the start of the line.
Note: 3.1_r0 CD image problem
A bug has been discovered in the 3.1_r0 CD/DVD images: new installs from these images will have a commented-out entry in
If you have already installed a system using a 3.1r0 CD/DVD image, you do not need to reinstall. Instead, simply edit
If you installed other than from a CD or DVD (for example, netboot, or booting from floppy and installing the base system from the network), you are not affected by this bug.
These new 3.1_r0a images correct this flaw. We apologise for the inconvenience.
On another note, I wanted to start downloading the 3.1 ISO set for Sparc, but none of the US mirrors have 3.1 ISO sets, and the root server is giving out 404's. Perhaps they're all still busy updating? At this point, I don't think bit-torrent is propagated well enough to be faster than HTTP/FTP, and jigdo only puts the load on your workstation by opening 9,000 connections on your box to go download little bits of Debian.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
A lot of posts answer that AMD does not have a viable competitor to the Pentium M (which is possibly the best mobile chip out there) for being one of the reasons whgy Apple went with Intel.
But my question and which has not been answered anywhere is, "Why can't AMD come out with a competitor to the Pentium M?"
AMD had dual-core before Intel, AMD is likely to have very capable people as well as Intel, AMD has most likely studied Pentium M. So, what is taking AMD so long to come out with a viable competitor? Sure, AMD is smaller than Intel but it is by no means a small company.
Therefore, I can only think of several reasons, of course there could many other plausible reasons too.
(1) AMD does not want to challenge Intel in the mobile, at least not yet. (2) AMD is already working on a mobile chip and will only release it when they are confident that it will blow Pentium out of the water.
To not want to compete in the mobile market is commerical folly because the mobile is growing more than the desktop market. So, the most plausible reason is most likely (2). Remember when AMD first came onto the scene and challenged Intel. Their chips weren't very fantastic and therefore they were only thought of "the other player" and religated to playing second fiddle. They competed mainly on price and with a poorer branding too. But when their dual-core and 64bit processors came out way before Intel's, their status changed rapidly. Suddenly, they were a serious competitor with better technology.
I think that's their strategy for the mobile market. When they release their mobile chip, it's going to make people sit up and listen.
it's only a matter of time before my own Mac is useless because the newer applications will no longer be compiled for G4. Fsck.
You're worried that your new Mac will one day be obsolete? Bzzt. That's going to happen anyway. There's nothing you can do about it. Anyway, you're going to be buying a new machine in a couple of years anyway.
Running old programs on new machines is what having source code is for.
My other first post is car post.
Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel is only feasible because of the work that Transitive Technologies has done in creating a dynamic recompiler. But that technology, too, is actually old news. Check out this PC Nintendo 64 emulator, from 2001, for example.
It's pretty clear that, even if Apple didn't make it easier for h4x0rs by moving to Intel chips, we would all eventually be able to emulate OS X in software no matter what. It would be a bit slower, perhaps, but it would be possible.
So what?
Apple is still a hardware company. If they can produce a great looking low-end box, a great looking mid-range box, and a great looking high-end box, where will the attack on their revenue stream come from? The only market segment they would lose by rampant piracy of their OS is the segment of "switchers", and though I don't have hard data, I suspect that group is tiny compared to the group of people who buy new computers year by year.
We all wail menacingly about a future where John Q. Public buys a Dell machine, downloads a cracked copy of OS X with a bunch of open-source driver patches and a dongle emulator, burns it, and wipes his machine with it, thereby completely divesting himself of all warranty service and tech support from either Dell or Apple. How likely is this, really? (If you DON'T factor yourself, as the helpful nerd-on-hand, into the picture?) Is the couple of hundred dollars saved worth the extra trouble, present and future? Just how many end-users, as a percentage, are willing to deal with that?
Does Apple really produce superior hardware, and do people really care enough about superior hardware? In two years we'll find out once and for all.
Your Irony Key privilges have been revoked until you learn the meaning of the word. Don't bother asking your friend Alanis, I took hers too.
Oh, so you're the one. Cut it out!
It seems to me that hydrogen fuel cells could become a viable solution with the advent of safer and more efficient nuclear power (eg: some sort of controlled fusion). Not to say that really means much at the moment, and I agree with you one most of those issues, but it may not be as bad as you say (if we can find a suitible enegery source for electrolysis).
Does anyone know if Apple (or others) are working on a hypervisor for Mac OS (a la XEN or Microsoft's new work for a windows hypervisor combined with Intel VT virtualization support or AMD Pacifica)??? That would make the Mac OS on Intel move waaaay more interesting.
Please tell me if there are any other problems, this was the first time I heard about these 404s. Btw, saying which links will help even more, in this case I'm guessing at the powerpc isos?
Here's my prediction. It'll come true sooner than Dvorak's did:
:)
HP will build and sell desktops and laptops with Apple's OS X. They might have the Apple logo right along-side the HP logo; but it will definately be branded and marketed by HP.
They already are using HP do build and market iPods. Steve understands HP's distribution chain and likes it. They'll still be lock-in chips, just like the Apple brand, so OS X will still get cracked out of necessity.
This is going to happen. Steve sees this as a huge push into the corporate desktop, and he's gunning for it. He'll sign HP into the deal too early and might suffer a bit for it in Apple dollars; but he'll do it because he'll fear he won't keep up with demand, which scares him.
Of course, I've made some rather curious assumptions about Steve Jobs, and I won't be 100% accurate. Take it all with a grain of salt, with tongue firmly in cheek. Just give credit when it happens!
put the what in the where?
Is there a patch to edit the 31r0 iso's to make them 31r0a for people who already downloaded the CD netinstall and DVD's?
The really important thing for Apple will be 'allowing' linux and Windows to run on Apple hardware. I'd *gladly* buy a powerbook to replace my Dell - heck, I almost did - and that was before the posibility of dual booting MacOS and Win. And a nice all in one for mom/pop? Give em an imac with winxp... There are a lot of people out there who will be happy to buy apple hardware and run windows on it... Apple still wins.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Isn't there more to a computer than simply a processor?
Wouldn't there be hardware componenets in a Macintosh that might be different from "standard" x86 hardware that keeps MacOS X from booting on it?
Besides, Apple already does a pretty good job of limiting what computers an OS can run on. For example, if you buy a computer and then try to use its disks to install an OS on a different model of Mac, you usually get an error message. Whereas with an OS disk that was bought separately, it will install on all supported machines.
Can't Apple just have its installer check to make sure you are on their hardware before installing?
I'm not saying it will be impossible to fool, but most people won't bother since it won't run on standard x86 hardware anyway. If there were someone out there creating specific "mac clones", I would think Apple would just sue them.
Will go back to having proprietary ROMs in the computer?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Can someone explain why the Mactel fans really keep clinging onto this notion that some sort of lid of compliance will be shut on running OS X on Dells etc ?
Seriously, Pleeeassse. Listen to what you are saying. Think about it for a second:
2 PCs.
A is Apple branded and costs $2000+
B is some generic beige box and costs $400
Inside they are identical for all practical purposes.
You are not allowed to run some piece of software on B because A thinks that piece of software should only be run on A and not B.
Come one guys, seriously the world has moved on. People (yes even non geeks) are no longer interested or satisfied in this kind of business model. Customers want and deserve more.
It just doesn't stand up anymore.
I can tell you Mactel closed platform fanbois something though which you won't to hear but you need to hear:
If you think it is Apple's longterm strategy to keep OS X on $2000.000+ Apple branded boxes you are very much mistaken.
There's a LOT of ways we could solve the electricity problem... The problem is you can't "plug in" the electric car into the existing architecture; you need to make social changes.
1) Encourage people to have ONE biodisesl car and one or more electric cars
2) Put overhead wires along the interstates.
3) Build better mass-transit inside of populated areas.
4) Offer a battery-rental-and-exchange service at gas stations. The battery pack is accessible from outside of the car. Your existing pack is removed and a freshly charged one replaces it. The DoT may need to create standard mandatory charging agreements to make everything work.
The big problem with all of this Hydrogen crap is that it runs the risk of destroying the natural economic effect of peak oil. If the crazy Russians who think that crude oil is more renewable than we think are wrong, what will merely happen is that oil prices will keep going up, until it starts to make economic sense to start looking for alternatives.
The problem is that if the equivelent energy of a barrel of crude oil is subsidized to cost $50, it ruins that effect.
Gentoo Sucks
I only have access to dial up, so grabing a iso image or doing a net-install is uncomfortably slow. However, I *have* managed to get the first two debian cds through rare access to a University comp lab. I was wondering if/when the fix is released, would I be able to use jigdo to create a new cd image from my existing disc with with correct config file entry? Actually, this bug (though a nusiance for every install) is too minor to bother with - What I'm really curious wrt jigdo is if I can use the update feature to scan multiple CDs. The idea is to use the unchanged packages in my existing Woody cd set to form the core of a sarge set. But since woody spans 7 cds, whereas sarge spans 14 cds, there is no one to one match of the cds for an update job. Furthermore, I have no idea if enough unchanged packages exist to make this worthwile. Anyone feel like sharing some wisdom?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
> What if the GUI won't load unless there is a custom chip on the
> motherboard?
So? That is copy protection and we have been stripping that off of products in days since the 8bit days. They can't go XBox and full DRM if developers are to use the machine. Same for the other ideas in your post. If Quartz is running in memory it can be assaulted with the debugger and fixed. The only hitch would be if this chip actually performed some useful function, then it would have to be emulated in software and could impose a performance hit.
Democrat delenda est
friggin hilarious
In case you don't have NYT subscription, here is the original article.
Another, oh, I dunno, perhaps _slightly_ more important reason for choosing a BSD over linux is that they already had it from NeXT, the kernel developers were from NeXT, and they had to ship a new operating system _yesterday_ to keep from going out of business?
Because Apple said that's what will happen.
HOW they'll manage that is not currently clear, especially since it seems likely that they'll use a standard PC bios.
BTW, a generic beige box that costs $400 is not competing with a $2000 mac.
a $2000 Mac competes with a $2000 Dell - maybe a $1500 beige box.
OS X on generic hardware -- it's not a matter of IF, but WHEN. Considering the fact that people have already managed to get Windows (somewhat) working on something as non-PC as Xbox, I'm expecting to see OS X/Intel running shortly on all our crappy no-name boxes, despite what Apple might wish.
Despite this, I don't think it will necessarily diminish Apple's hardware revenue stream (but it certainly won't increase it) -- witness the fact that iPod sales aren't exactly in trouble despite everyone and their dog in the electronics world having their own cheaper MP3 players. Apple has always been known for its quality (certain iBooks excepted... =P) and industrial design.
Also, with the more carefully controlled Mac hardware combinations, they can hopefully avoid driver hell that plagues even the best PC installations due the myriad of hardware possibilities -- anything else is just "not supported" officially, and that peace of mind might be enough of a value proposition for many, especially educational users.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Apple announcing that they are going to Intel I think has significantly lowered the value of the current line of iMacs and PowerMacs.
I'm currently running an older (900mz) G3, and I've been saving up for a new Dual G5 PowerMac. One of the things that I've always liked about the Macs was that they had a great value. Although people say that Apple hardware is expensive, if you price a PC of comperable specs to a PowerMac, the PowerMac isn't much more expensive, and they keep their value for a long time.
The problem is, regardless of whatever promises Apple has made about both x86 and PPC being supported, I don't have faith that, if I buy a new PowerMac now that it will retain the value for as long, because I'm not sure how long it will be until the platform is no longer supported. Sure, XCode may generate binary that runs on both processors, but will Adobe and Quark and Alias support that, if the commercial vendors for software that I use are going to jump ship and support x86 macs exclusively, then the value for a PPC PowerMac now drops significantly.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I imagine a lot of Linux users would. Of course the added benefit would be you can use OSS software under fink and I'm assuming with the x86 processor you'd be able to compile Linux applications unaltered? So I could use OS X while continuing to contribute to the growth of Linux..
That all sounds too good.
Quack, quack.
There was a large company, with a powerful staff of lawyers, who tried very, very, hard to keep other companies from running PC OSs on clone systems.
That didn't work out very well for the large company (IBM), whom I believe is/was far more sophisticated/powerful in terms of its legal staff.
There is a difference this time, of course; Apple's EULA. My guess is, however, that there will be some way to challenge the 'Apple branded machine' requirement in court. If there wasn't, I suspect Apple would have sued the emulator designers by now (PowerPC (pearpc) and 68k (basilisk)).
Honestly, I believe this will happen:
1. Intel Macs will be cheap. Not Dell cheap, but maybe midrange HP cheap.
2. Apple will grab marketshare.
3. Apple will license Mac reference designs to other manufacturers, possibly with Microsoft's blessing. How? They'll buy a Microsoft license to something or other.
4. Once a sufficent marketshare is reached, Apple will sell un-tied versions of Mac OS. These will only be OEM, and will have to be supported by OEM PC manufactuers. Apple will only support the 'Apple' experience.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Maybe you should give Apple the benefit of the doubt until we know for sure.
Their history shows that they prefer to put the trust on the user rather than enforce it.
Otherwise, the "patch" would be to manually add the security.debian.org line in sources.list after installation. Just like it says in the errata in the grandparent to this comment.
If I had one mil to spend on a car, it'd be a McLaren and I wouldn't be giving a flying fuck about mileage. Although, an F1 would probably get amazing mileage, as tuned as the engines are.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Because Apple said that's what will happen.
Look in many ways I want to feel the same as you do. I've always enjoyed Apple kit for many years and have got a lot out of it.
However, I don't believe everything or anything that Apple spew out about their own products and assumed (wrongly) that all others took a more cynical probing view too. Take for example 'Airport' (Apple's branding of WIFI) cards, still to pick up an original Apple branded one is expensive, but they are um...identical to generic ones which you can pick up for 5-10 bucks on ebay.
For me it doesn't really what Apple say now. It's what happens and what market and public forces do, not what firmware blocks and lawyers try an enforce that will shape the future Mac OS market. I suspect Apple themselves know that and have accepted or are even looking forward to the fact, that down the line, possibly in the very near future OS X will be on generic hardware.
How many chipsets does Darwin currently support? Whose chipsets are they? Who will write the drivers for all of the other chipsets out there? I don't think it would be hard at all to make installing OS X on a non-apple-specifc intel box really difficult. Even if you can port all the necessary drivers to Darwin, that won't do you any good if there are random checks strewn throughout the entire higher level OS.
What if to defeat this situation, we use the same methods that crackers would use to defeat things like LPT dongles or usb dongles, etc. Apple can simply break that fix with every security update that they release.
I think it will still be possible, I just don't think it's going to be as easy as some of you think.
And I for one like OS X because of "it just works" mentality. If that is violated in any way, then it's not worth the trouble to me.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Apple will most likely benefit from highly reduced rates in exchange for an exclusive sales agreement like Dell enjoys. Apple is a "high end" status symbol company. Intel's exclusive association with that brand name will only drive sales everywhere else.
People won't think "emachines" or "dell" with Intel, they'll think "Apple" now.
On the Apple-Intel switch:
As long as Apple doesn't force any hardware-based DRM on me, I'll continue buying Apple products. I buy Apple products because they work. Now like everyone else, I'm sure I wouldn't mind running it on a generic x86 machine. Just don't do anything stupid to offend the rights zealots, Apple.
On the Sarge error: A few days? Really, just uncomment that line and send it to the presses. Please don't make those of us who support the Debian project in this manner wait any longer. If this takes more than a week, I'll be seriously disappointed.
There won't be much of a need to "hack" Windows. Just make sure you have drivers available for any custom hardware, and you can boot.
Is the bootloader considered a "driver" for your purpose?
Windows XP runs on a huge variety of hardware and CPU combination as-is.
Does Windows XP boot on machines that lack an IBM compatible BIOS? Sure, Apple has disclosed that the x86 Macs aren't using OpenFirmware, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're using IBM compatible BIOS.
Lots of people talking about the possibility of dual-booting windows and osx.
But they are missing a key part of the puzzle - virtualization.
Imagine VMware, SoftPC, etc but running at the full speed of the native hardware with full isolation between running OSes. In a year, that's the way any serious virtualization will work. The hardware assist that Intel's VT and AMD's Pacifica doohickies provide is what it will take to do it.
So, it will be entirely possible to run both OS-X and Windows and Linux simultaneously on the same cpu with no performance hit. Heck, with multi-cores becoming so popular you'll be able to give each OS it's own processor so they can all run in true parallel if that's what you want.
Sure, Intel and AMD are talking like this virutalization stuff is only for servers - but they always say that about the new toys right up to the point when they start releasing it on the consumer-grade systems too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I feel pretty sorry for the state of events concerning sarge the last 2 days... I had copies of the netinst/businesscard isos sunday night (since I am a l33t hax0r), but they were unusable until the following morning when the tags on the mirrors changed sarge from "testing" to "stable". At that time I installed from businesscard, got the error about the security repository, and noticed the commented out repo line.
"This has to be me. No way can a problem this big be universal." So I continued looking into it throughout the day, occasionally checking the mailing lists and IRC, and not seeing anything about this. Tuesday morning, I found the source of the problem on the CDs, and finally admitted to myself that it was a widespread problem, and filed a bug report. Of course, while I was doing that, there was a post to debian-devel-announce about this. Doh.
Of course the ISOs have been updated since tuesday night, but many many thousands of people have already downloaded the flawed ISOs. This is bad for the debian community: if word doesn't get spread around about this, you have people unknowling not getting security updates, if it does get spread around, it looks bad for Debian. (One bit of comfort is an error is thrown during base-config after installing from the flawed images, and while it's a bit cryptic, it should give users SOME idea that something is up.)
Oh well, sarge is still a kickass disto. Until I start pining for etch, that is.
And another reason is that they found linux to be unsuitable. They did spend a lot of time and money developing mklinux, but BSD was (is) more mature and offers better performance.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Looking at the screenshot of MS's tab hack, I have to wonder how web sites look through a horizontal slit.
OS X won't be released for any pc because the quality control and support needed to have it run on all of the systems is huge. Apple does a great job providing tech support for its hardware / software and this is how they will acomplish this for the new generation macs.
- MOSKIE
Apple still claims that OS-X never crashes. Mac users will say the same thing in public. However the Big Secret is that on Mac-centric bulletin boards (like this, for instance) you see that there are many "kernel panics" (the equivalent of a Windows BSOD).
I give Apple credit for putting up a nice, friendly message that "your computer needs to be restarted" instead of a blue screen with scary numbers on it. That way, Mac users believe that they simpley have to reboot because Macintosh said so, and there's nothing "Wrong."
Best Buy can have you arrested
I've dumped everything Apple the day after the switch announcement. It's my money, and I'd rather not serve as a guinea pig for Steve Jobs & co. I liked the hardware and the software, but it's not THAT much better than either Linux or Windows. In fact, in some cases it's less polished than on Windows. Photoshop runs MUCH faster on Windows, too.
So I'll be running Windows and Linux until SJ makes up his fucking mind. This lesson cost me around $600. Fool me once, shame on you so to speak. Won't get fooled again.
I dunno. Your model for pricing seems naive. Sure, vegetable oil costs on the same order of magnitude crude now. But we also use over twenty million barrels of oil a day. Some quick back of the envelope calculations show this is is probably an order of magnitue greater than the total vegetable oil production in the world. What would ramping up vegetable oil production to the scale needed look like?
You always have to factor in scale in enviornmental issues. Traditional Innuit made clothing out of natural materials -- animal skins. However to clothe hundreds of millions people this way would be an environmental disaster. Petroleum derived polypropylene fleece is much more benign -- and recyclable.
Meanwhile, there are no realistic ways of storing more than a dozen pounds of hydrogen in a vehicle..
Well, sure at present, but there are some short and long term solutions. Ammonia is promising. It's already one of the most highly produced chemicals in the world, many agricultural areas would have very little trouble converting to ammonia because the world uses over a hundred million metric tons of this stuff annually for fertilizer. It's also not hard to imagine worldwide production increasing by an order of magnitude. NH3 undergoes a phase transition to liquid at normal temperatures at 8 bar, so you can pack a lot of hydrogen into a tank this way if it's in the form of ammonia, which would mean it would have a volumetric energy density closer to gasoline.. The hydrogen can be released by a device like a catalytic converter, or in some designs the cracking takes place inside a specially deisgned fuel cell.
I'm not saying that it's going to work, certainly not precisely on anyone's timetable. But you are being unreasonably pessimistic.
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A gallon of ethanol is cheaper at the pump than gas. (Don't mention subsidies unless you can track down oil subsidies to compare) It is energy positive (though critics like to cling to the early 80's plants that were not, as if technology hasn't moved on). We produce a lot of it. In fact there is a glut in the car ready ethanol market.
WinMX is popular?
From just doing a simple search on downloads.com for p2p.
Morpheus 4.9.2, added 6/8/2005 = 134,000,000
iMesh 5.0 added 1/5/2005 = 95,000,000
WinMX added 07/12/2004 8,700,000
And from what I remember all 3 of these sites use downloads.com for their file providers.
TruePunk | Games
It seems wierd that at this late date, Apple is trying to switch to the 32-bit Intel architecture. Switching to the 64-bit AMD/Intel architecture would seem to make more sense. It's very late in the IA-32 life cycle to switch to it. Windows and Linux have already shipped as 64 bit systems, and it's clear that IA-32 is becoming low end.
The FCX carried a federal combined city-highway economy rating of 57 miles per kilogram
But how many decimeters per troy ounce does it get?
Come on, America. Get off your lazy ass and switch to the metric system. (That goes for you too, the UK -- finish the job you started!)
Everything I've read so far assumes that there will be some sort of software mechanism that can be broken that will prevent non-Apple x86 hardware from booting OS X, but why would apple NOT just use openfirmware like on the PPC Apple hardware? They could probably even get intel to use a different initialization vector (which is currently something like 16 or 64 bytes before the end of addressable memory -- this is where all x86 chips look for the first instruction in the bios; the bios is always addressed as the last 256K or however large the ROM is). This would make it physically impossible for non-apple intel processors to boot OS X. They may even be able to achieve this without modifying the processors by making the memory controller host/chipset that they use (and which will of course will only be available to them) translate anything that looks like a bios access to a different memory address space. Using openfirmware and either of these methods, Apple would make it damn near impossible to boot a system containing non-apple hardware, or even non-apple compliant video cards -- even if someone rips the x86 openfirmware ROMs. Now, you might say that someone else could BUILD a non-apple motherboard into one that utilizes the same trick, but you first need apple hardware to figure out what the trick is, and even then it would probably be more expensive to modify non-apple hardware than it would be to just buy apple hardware. And that's without even considering the hassle and risk involved, which is substantial.
`which fortune`
I have a couple of questions for you, mainly unrelated to this, instead based off of reading your website and some links off of it.
You say:
I believe Saddam Hussein is a very bad man indeed, and that he and his evil sons fully deserved what they got. And I'm proud of the fact that Iraq is now a much better place than it was before we invaded.
You don't provide any evidence for this so called fact and you state the one actual fact in that paragraph as a belief.
Why is that?
Also, you link to free republic who I'm not that familiar with.
When I clicked the link, the main topic was Deep Throat. All of the links there were violently against one of if not the greatest hero in American history who single-handedly saved Democracy (for a few years at least). One of the first links was from Ann Coulter saying, "Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion -- making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era."
So, while you do say that you agree "There are many people there who are mean-spirited, prejudiced, intolerent, and - worst of all! - illiterate", it seems that at least in this limited view of the site that they are promoting the foremost examples of hatred of freedom and a totally Orwellian view of reality.
I guess my point is I'd like to hear some sort of rational defense of these views as they seem diametrically opposed to your stated beliefs of
"people should be allowed as much freedom as possible. The freedom to win, and the freedom to lose. The freedom to try, the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail."
The people that you seem to support want to remove the freedom to fail from those in power by removing truth and all accountability for their actions. I mean, Ann Coulter?!? Sure, she has the right to spew hate based vitriolic lies and even make money off of the books filled entirely with them, but lending any legitimacy to that anti-freedom rhetoric is contrary to your stated beliefs, and my deeply held ones as far as I can see.
Am I mistaken in this somehow?
It takes more energy to make the stuff than you can get out of it, in which case you might as well use the energy used to make Hydrogen directly in whatever appliance that you're making the hydrogen for.
Hydrogen is a Bad Idea.
The Best Idea is to STOP DRIVING and STOP FLYING.
Need to go to the corner store? ride a fuckin bike. Need to go to your sister's place for her wedding? Take a train. If there isn't a train that goes there, (re)BUILD ONE.
Power the train with biodiesel.
Go to the gated communities filled with McMansions, DESTROY THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE - ENSLAVE THEM AND FORCE THEM TO WORK IN THE FIELDS, and burn their houses and SUVs to the ground.
Do it now. Otherwise: In the year 2525, the few people left will be huddled in caves.
AC
One reason they chose BSD over Linux is because BSD allowed them to release altered versions of the kernel without being required to publicly release the source code.
Funny, I thought it was because we'd already been on BSD since the beginning of NEXTSTEP, and we had enough to worry about at the time without having to deal with porting to a Sys-V style UNIX for no clear benefit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Actually, apple flirted with Linux in the 90s. Remember mkLinux?
Linux has insanely efficient thread creation. I wonder if XNU can obtain that type of performance.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Keep your old machine, perhaps uucp will return to favor when the rest of us find out the Internet won't let us on anymore (because we are not running a "trusted" OS)
The article mentioned the dongle-on-motherboard idea, but it didn't mention the TCPA/Palladium issue. AFAIK, TCPA is not dead. And with Intel promising to deliver on this tech in the future, all it will take is for apple to produce their own version of Palladium for Leopard and their own custom motherboard to make it very difficult for crackers, at least in theory. Maybe Leopard will end up even more locked down and DRM enabled than Longhorn.
I'm not saying that it will be impossible to release a cracked version of Leopard that doesn't require a TCPA enabled system, but I don't think anyone can say for certain at this stage how easy it will be to get around. After all it is new tech, a whole new scheme. I realize that it will be considered the ultimate challenge to crack Leopard and there will be lots of people working on it, but it may not be as easy or as automatic as everyone seems to be assuming.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
- Genetic engineering or plant breeding to get more efficient
- Developing new farming techniques: algae, seaweed
- Methods of extracting fuel from other biomass waste materials, like cow dung and other waste
- More efficient methods of processing biomass
- Automated farming approaches
It seems like there are a lot of ways increased production could make it cheaper.Anyway, doubling the number of CPU's to test on just made life 2x nastier for developers. Let me tell you, any developer with a brain will want to drop the "ancient" platforms ASAP.
Possibly, but the thing is that it will be many years before it's pratical to do so...
And there will be a lot more G4/G5 computers around to test on for a long time, so it will more more the issue of getting smaller apps to do that testing on the Intel boxes than the G4/G5!!
So for many years to come the G4/G5 computers will enjoy a nice spot as ALL apps work on them, while apps are being ported to universal Intel compatible binaries. That's why I don't think sales will suffer much, and people should not be afraid to buy now - because now is a great time to buy when the platform is at the peak of its stability curve. The G5 is still damn fast and will be good to go for many years to come while enjoying the 100% software support that will take some time to ramp up on the new Intel boxes.
I know what you'r saying about testing because I've done that kind of full-platform testing before, but I think people have it really backwards and the hard part will not be getting developers to avoid Intel-only binaries but instead to make the bulk of people offer Intel-aware universal binaries ASAP for the new boxes coming out next year! I ahve to say Apple has been very sporting with a year to prepare, I think it's as good as they could do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not like software is going to stop being developed, and you are going to miss out on a lot of cool stuff that Tiger developers are gong to be producing - in the meantime if you flee to Windows you still have the whole malware/AdWare scene.
What do you think will be the problem? With universal binaries any new apps that come out for at least five years are going to support that Apple box. I'm buying a Mac mini pretty soon myself and this does not phase me at all. Unlike other platform migrations the older platform owners have it easy while the Intel boxes will not have 100% software support for a little while.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
hydrogen, at a fairly efficient processing level with wind power supplying energy for electolisis, would cost about $4 / gasoline gallon equivelent of power. thats not so great. we will likely not develope a more efficient means by clean technologies for quite some time.
if hydrogen is produced(refined??) from coal or petrol generation it would still be nearly $3.50 / gasoline gallon equiv.
hydrogen is NOT the answer short term.
the answer for immediate energy problems and environmental issues is large scale conversion to bio-diesel.
bio-diesel can reach a cost of just $1 / gasoline gallon equivilent AFTER the initial infrastructure is built. AND, biodiesel would stimulate north american farming economies by providing steady cash crops for southern mid-western farmers growing efficient crops like algea.
No, Nnno, NnnnnnnnnnnnnnO. :-)
No.
The experience that these handfuls trying to 'switch' their Dells will be miserable. What are these doobies gonna do wihtout device drivers?
We're talking possibly less functional than PearPC.
It will make Linux look incredibly well-endowed by comparison.
No, really, he's right on with hydrogen. We're going to have to do a few things. One, move almost all shipping back to rails - they use FAR less fuel per ton of goods, sometimes as much as an order of magnitude. Rails can be electrified again (many used to be), and that electricity can come from renewable sources. We reduce our energy consumption - hell, our consumption in general - a la Ecology of Commerce (Paul Hawken) et al, and produce the energy we need with a combination of wind farms, wave farms, dams, solar panels, stirling engines if necessary. We fix our urban planning so that we walk short distances, cycle if we're going a mile, take different kinds of trains to go many miles. Cars based on electric power will stay - not this hydrogen nonsense. Since the early 1900s we've had cars that work off of lead-acid batteries. We can build better batteries, and hydrogen isn't a bad battery, but it's not cost competitive with existing battery technology. Oil will be used for emergency backup systems in hospitals, and last mile delivery of goods. That's really about it. Grain output can go WAY up - I live in Washington state, and the only reason we aren't producing more grain is because the state DOT is rehabilitating abandoned rail lines to ship all of it. We can make tons more, and use it for oils and plastics.
We'll need something to fix the Gulf Stream when it shuts down from lowered salinity due to the melting ice caps.
To them Intel or IBM don't make any difference. In fact, I'd bet good money that at least 80% of their customers (current and prospective) don't know about the switch and what it means.
I predict the following:
1. As sales slow down (and they WILL slow down to zero over the next year or so), Apple will heavily drop the price on G5 and G4 based models, including laptops. This won't help the sales much, but people wanting to sell their Macs will only be able to sell them for a lot less.
2. This is not the last "switch" Apple has in the pipeline. The next one will be the switch from slow and brain damaged Objective-C as the language of choice for Mac OS X programming. This one will be painful to everyone but people who kept using Carbon (that's actually a lot of people).
3. Once Intel platforms start hitting the market Apple users will be shocked by just how much _slower_ Mac OS X is on the same processor compared to Windows (or Linux if it makes inroads). That's microkernel and IPC, there's no way around this cost short of throwing microkernel architecture out of the window. Another switch?
4. Yet another switch is coming. Apple UI is currently 32 bit, so you can only run your console apps in 64 bit mode. 64 bit editions of Win XP are not castrated in this regard, and I have no reason to think that Longhorn will be. So Apple will have to convert Cocoa to 64 bit.
Each of the last three "switches" is a cost to the developer. At some point developers will just say "fuck it" and go develop software for Longhorn.
Remember mkLinux?
Sure do. Porting NeXTSTEP to it was more trouble than it was worth.
Linux has insanely efficient thread creation. I wonder if XNU can obtain that type of performance.
On OS X, apps typically keep a pool of threads around which are re-used, rather than creating and destroying them.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, I'm not joking.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Since developers won't need to make two different versions anymore does anything think there's any chance the big companies will start developing more for Linux since many will have a dev team/porting team that won't be doing much of anything anymore?
sig.
Isn't it possible that biodiesel prices could also go down as production goes up?
Yes, you are completely right. They may go down, for some of the reasons you mention and others you don't. Just as the price of the vehicle in question may go down.
I'm not against biodiesel by any means. I think it's a premature at this point to be looking to any one technology as the answer to all our problems though. The idea of scaling biodiesel production to replace today's petroleum industry has certain attractive features to it, but it will have implications, some of which we don't like.
There isn't an alternative energy source at this time that doesn't have any number of things that detractors can't point to toshow it won't possibly work. But eventually, one of them will have to. So it's best to keep an open mind.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I agree with that. In fact, I think one of the big problems we are facing right now is the perception that we need to replace our single source of energy (oil) with some other single source of energy (?). That's a mistake. We should replace our single source with a whole range of different sources that have different properties. Solar is great... during the day time. Wind and waves are great... in the right locations. Fusion is great... if it works. Fission is great... but it's centralized. Biodiesel is great... but there might not be enough of it. But put all these together, they all fill in gaps for the others, and we may have a robust, diversified solution, to replace our current non-diverse fragile non-solution.
I'm glad you mention Paul Hawken's book. It deserves wider attention.
Your point on rail of course is part of a bigger strategy: efficiency. Efficiency, looked at as an energy source, is the one thing that you can be pretty certain has no downsides environmentlaly speaking.
I think your technological points could be challenged. Your comparing hydrogen to a battery is insightful; but we can't go by today's costs. We have to consider the potential raised by future hydrogen technology to fit into a sustainable scenario. For example a system which creates NH3 from atmospheric nitrogen and water, pipes it to its destination, and then crack the NH3 to run a fuel cell forms a closed matter loop, becuse the byproducts of the process are what we started with: water and nitrogen.
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dams
The significant hydropower sites are fully exploited, often at great cost to the environment, archaeological sites, and so on. Glen Canyon is a prime example of what can be lost. Lake's Low Water Level Exposes Prized Canyons"
We fix our urban planning so that we walk short distances, cycle if we're going a mile, take different kinds of trains to go many miles
This conveniently ignores problems of weather and climate, the age distribution of the population, suburbanization and the decay of the urban core, etc. Henry Ford saw earlier than most that Americans do not like to be bound to the fixed routes and schedules of bus and rail.
Since the early 1900s we've had cars that work off of lead-acid batteries
But they were heavy, slow, and expensive, and first sold to the upper class as a replacement for a horse drawn coach, with roughly the same range and speed.
" I'm still not sure how they'll do this with an open source Kernel."
Easy, it's a BSD License. They don't have to redistribute anything if they don't want to. I love Robertson, but he's thinking it's GPL. It's not.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I don't think you realise how deadly pure Amonia is.
There is NO WAY that I want a bunch of yahoo rednecks riding around in their pickups with "death-tanks" of Amonia poison just waiting for a crash.
I hear that. I'd much rather have a bunch of rednecks with access to several kilos of hydrogen. Heck - you can't make that stuff burn, much less explode, without some careful fule-air mixing.
Oh, right, H2 goes BOOM in just about any F-A ration (2-3% up to 97%, or somewhere about there), and balloons form a great containment system.
I say it only takes one or two cars to explode on the highway before H2 is banned for use in passenger vehicles. Gasoline is dangerous, too, but it's a lot harder to ignite and get an explosion.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You're right that we can't go by today's costs - and you have a great point in that the way we do it now might not be the best way. :)
Virtually none of the Mac OS X toolbox will work in a 64-bit app. So you can't make a real 64-bit app. You basically can make 64-bit command line tools, and that's it.
Apple's own docs say if you want to make a 64-bit app, you have to put all the 64-bitness in a separate task and message back and forth to it. Because of this, there aren't any 64-bit apps to speak of.
You do have to understand also that this is the guidelines for making a universal app. How universal would it be if it only ran on 64-bit processors? All current Intel Pentium-M offerings are 32-bit. The point of this announcement is to get a body of apps for x86 Mac OS X so that people can buy machines like that when they come out will have something to run.
The point isn't to encourage developers to make a lot of apps that will only run on a subset of these x86 machines.
That time might come later, there's nothing that says Apple can't release a 64-bit ABI as soon as they get their 32-bit house in order. It honestly would put this x86 platform then on up on the G5s, since as mentioned above, making a 64-bit app for the G5 Mac OS is very difficult.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Darwin is open-source and they have been regularly releasing the code for it. You have been able to compile, install and run it on intel for ages.
I'm not interested in building new dams, or raising the ones we've got. I'm interested in the capital investment that increases efficiency of the generators - note that Grand Coulee is up to 1.1 gigawatts, and *most* of the dams in WA haven't gotten anything like the new generators it has. So, no, you're very much incorrect about full exploitation. Some of the dams in WA can get twice as much power as they are now out of the same amount of water. On urban planning, I suggest you have a look at "A Pattern Language", by Christopher Alexander et al. I *do* actually take into account weather and climate, age distribution, and suburbanization - suburbs will disappear as the car becomes less used due to oil prices. People only "like" what they're told to like. The more trains you put on a line, the more people will use them - look at all the successful urban subway systems and train networks. Check out the Japanese or European city cores - they're sure not decaying. And no, they weren't heavy, slow or expensive. They were cost-effective, had better acceleration, and were becoming affordable before big oil finds. Here's an example from Seattle: http://content.lib.washington.edu/imlsmohai/image/ 1998.jpg
Remember, the Ford automobile was first sold to the upper class as a replacement for a horse drawn coach. :) Neither that nor this had the same range and speed.
To them Intel or IBM don't make any difference. In fact, I'd bet good money that at least 80% of their customers (current and prospective) don't know about the switch and what it means.
I'm not sure why your question was directed at me, for I agree with you 100%! It's part of why I don't think we'll see much of a dip at all in sales of Macs because most people have no idea this is happening, and do not care.
They might care more when an Intel mac comes out and cannot run something, then they'll want to know why.
I'm not sure I agree with point #3, we'll see.
I'm really sure I don't agree with point #2, as Objective C is working out pretty well. I've had a lot of time in other languages like C++ and Java, but Objective-C has its place.
On point #4, there is no need to convert the GUI to 64 bit. You want to see a slow GUI, that's how to do it for no benefit whatsoever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let's make a minor correction to your statements. Hydrogen doesn't explode easily at all. It *does* burn easily, but because of it's nature the resulting flame would disipate upwards very quickly.
Gasoline vapor, however, is explosive under the right conditions. Also gasoline in liquid form burns readily, and doesn't disipate readily.
(Before you quibble about the difference between burning and exploding, take a block of C4 as an example. Light it on fire, and it burns, expose it to an electrical charge, and it explodes.)
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. I mean, this is an article about email disclaimers, right? The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx. WTF?
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one.
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean,
I'm sure I'm posting this way too late for anybody to notice, but...
Apple will make sure that OS X will never run on a non-Mac. They've already been through this with earlier versions of the OS. In the past, I believe they placed proprietary hardware on the motherboard that the OS needed to run. When people tried to make Mac clones, they were technically successful, but they never made it to market because Apple controlled the IP, and successfully sued to stop it. (Why isn't Power Computing making Macs anymore? Because Apple didn't renew their licence.) Apple is very good at using the law to its advantage. They won't stop now.
However, the interesting news is that Apple is willing to let users run Windows on a Mac. I think this is yet another brilliant move. Remember that Apple is a hardware company. They make very little money from OS X compared to how much they makes on the Mac. From that perspective, Apple doesn't care what you run on a Mac, as long as you run it on a Mac. Apple clearly intends to cut in to the Windows market by being the best computer to use for Windows, as well as OS X. They are taking a page from their iPod experience: make the best product, spread it to different sectors, and take over the market.
If this plays out -- and that's a huge 'if' -- then it will be much easier to ween people off of Windows and on to OS X when the Mac has a larger install base, regardless of what operating system people are using. But even if OS X doesn't catch on, and Windows successfully competes to become the best OS for the Mac, then MS will have legitimized the Mac as an important platform to be supported. With MS backing the Mac, and given the Mac's reputation for superior quality and service, Mac sales will explode. Then Apple will take all the money made from hardware sales and laugh all the way to the bank.
The key ingredient to all this is production time. I'm just speculating, but look at the chain of events: Apple already has an Intel OS, an Intel development environment, and Intel dev kits. The last step was the most public one, striking a deal with Intel for hardware. They'll be shipping Intel Macs in a year, fully six months before Longhorn is scheduled to ship (for now). Not only did most people not suspect this move, they thought it was impossible for ideological reasons. But Jobs is no ideologue, he's a pure capitalist. It's quite possible that MS was just caught with their pants down. They're so heavily invested in Longhorn that they can't react to this move. The next OS X is scheduled to appear exactly when Longhorn does. If Longhorn slips again, then OS X -- only on a Mac -- gets all the fanfare. And if they ship Longhorn on time, and the Mac can run it, Apple will sell more Macs.
It simply brilliant. Like watching Fischer play chess.
Actually, I think most people that would have this attitude will just pirate OSX. In some parts of the internet, people trade whole 4 gig dvds like its an Mp3 or something.
Open Source Sushi
For me, the sad part is that I was just considering going out to get a high-end Apple G5. It was going to make sense for several reasons, not the least of which was because it is a better platform for running Linux, and indeed for corss-compiling things for the embedded box my company uses.
Now there is this apocoliptic (sp?) horizion on such a purchase...
Sad to go the way of the cheap just to lose...
So who's distinctiveness was to be added to whom?
8-/
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Remember, Mac OS X is mainly a friendly, safe and stable CONSUMER product. If it wants to keep it that way, it should not easily allow adventured and experimental hardware hacks and tweaks going in those consumer's direction. It should protect that brand and image of ease and reliablilty.
Mac OS (X) users are still the most demanding computer users out there... It's Microsoft that lowered the users expectations, not Apple.
--------
* Sigh *
No, C4 detonates. Both gasoline and H2 simple deflagrate, whis is what I was referring to. (the difference is vecolciy of wavefront propagation; detonation occurs faster than sound in the medium, deflagration slower. Blackpowder deflagrates)
There is no real difference between burning and exploding in a fuel-air mixture. The primary differences are in flame probabgation speed, total energy released, and confinement.
The flammability limits for gasoline are 1.4% to 7.6% percent. H2 is 4% to 75%. So sue me, I was off a bit. Nonentheless, gasoline has a much narrower flammable/explosive range (And, yes, those two terms are used interchangably). Google for LEL/LFL and UEL/UFL. It's actually rather hard to get gasoline into an explosive condition, though numerous people manage to do so each year, mostly though bad luck. H2, otoh, is exceedingly easy.
Any H2 which escapes will also be in gas form, whereas gasoline is a liquid at STP and will require evaporation. Gas vapors will hang around for longer, you are correct. But I don't want to be _anywhere_ near several kilos of H2 escaping from pressurized tanks near a charged ultracapacitor. But, hey, that's just me.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Something a lot of people overlook, or simply don't know about, is that Open Step (which is what Mac OS X was before NeXT and Apple merged and it got some serious plastic surgery) and Rhapsody (which I appreciate only some of us were able to use, but it was pretty much just a partly borked version of Open Step with Mac OS 8+ window manager and widgets) worked fine on generic x86 hardware.
Supporting the majority of systems is not all that diffcult, thanks to common interfaces on things like IDE controllers, sound cards and graphics cards (even good GL support is possible as ATI and Nvidia chips dominate the market).
Open Step/Rhapsody installed fine on all sorts of weird frankenboxes (at least, on my weird frankenboxes - YMMV), so the odds of generic x86 compatiblity for a lot of users with no (or minimal) driver development are good in my estimation. This is also true for Windows, which (to a varying degree) can work in a 'compatible' way with common hardware, even if it doesn't have a 'proper' vendor supplied driver for a given device.
It's true that Apple could make it especially difficult with bizzare hacks everywhere and continually shifting the goalposts, but I don't think they will because I don't think that's commercially viable option for them - I think they would judge it would simply require too much work and be relatively ineffecient way of trying to enforce the goal of preventing it being used on non Apple hardware.
I rather suspect that if they are going to be prissy about it they will simply opt for the inclusion of something like DRM technology or propriatory copywritten information stored in the BIOS (which I equally expect to be worked around, by either illegally copying and flashing a ROM image onto other hardware, or a tool for creating a hacked up installer, as examples).
iMac G5, 1GB ram, 1.8GHz processor, 7200RPM hard drive is about 30% slower than my Pentium-M laptop with1 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 5400RPM hard drive. Operations that I've compared:
1. Opening a large TIFF file (130M 48bit film scan)
2. Conversion to LAB color mode
3. Saving a large TIFF file
4. Converting to a different color profile
5. Unsharp mask
ALL are slower on the Mac. Why? Perhaps because Adobe Mac sales are only 20% of their overall Photoshop sales?
There IS a need to convert UI to 64 bit if you want UI apps to support 64 bit. Your apps can't go across 32/64 bit boundaries seamlessly.
As apple was saying, just have the UI live in a 32-bit space and have a separate worker process that does the heavy 64-bit lifting. It's not that bad and saves a chunk of time and memory Your UI should really be in an independent thread (and/or process) anyway...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you want to do 64bit, you need 64bit libs, including UI ones.
No you don't, you can have a 32-bit process and 64-bit process with communications between them. It's not as easy but then not every app really ever needs to address 64-bt memory spaces.
Frankly I'd find it frightfully more wastefull to have every app be 32-bit when it does not need to be. I am fine with a division where the GUI is always 32-bit. I don't think it's quite right to say that the graphics would absolutley have to be limited to 32-bits in quality as that is a seperate issue (though in fact is not the current CoreImage stuff limited to 8-bit images?)
As long as the OS is 64-bit you can make full use of that 16 GB of memory even if every app you own is 32-bit, it's just that one single app would not be able to address the whole space. Some apps that need it (like Photoshop) will be 64-bit where they need to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry, but in Tiger any app can be 64-bit using the method I've described. It doesn't have to be as slow as you say with proper use of shared memory or other techniques. And Microsoft wont be laughing quite so hard when all thier GUI apps consume twice the memory and are slower than OSX apps because they are needlessly 64 bit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
P2P is better simply because of its very nature of being P2P. It's a give and take amongst the users that's only possible with P2P. The relationships are equal. All can upload. All can download to and from whoever they wish. Not just some company server. Regardless of what you think, this is a good thing. P2P is what makes self publishing possible without oversight from anyone. That's the real reason the industry is trying to kill it. I don't know, and I don't care whether you believe it or not, but this isn't about piracy. Your constant droning about it just exposes your vested interest in the status quo. In other words you just talk up copyright only because you benefit from it while other people, every bit as talented as you are, can't get their foot in the door. Evidently people like you can't handle the competition, so you need the law to keep other people out. A real sweetheart you are.
I work in the electric vehicle "industry". Already now the prices have fallen a lot, and you can probably get a battery pack that goes 300 miles for around 40-60k depending on the car (weight).
Hopefully we will see the prices falling much more in the future.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.