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First Look at Apple's Intel Developer Macs
xyankee writes "Think Secret is reporting that developers have started taking receipt of Apple's Intel-based Mac kits. Along with some specs and photos, the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch on the systems and that casually trying to install Mac OS X for Intel on a Dell doesn't work... yet..."
Probably not; you'd need some kind of arbitration, otherwise the cores would interfere with each other's communication to the rest of the system. A 'virtual machine' approach would be much easier to accomplish.
There might be some simple (or complex) mechanism for locking the OS to the Apple/Intel system, but even if this is broken, who is going to write all of the drivers for that Dell that everyone keeps talking about?
I'm gonna need a spec.
No doubt that they will eventually get OS X to work on a generic PC clone. It will probably take some serious work around and then you have the driver problem. nobody can get an airport extreme to work on a mac right now with any version of linux, so driver's are goign to be a problem.
But since Apple won't officially allow it to install OS X on any other computer but a mac, nobody will ever be able to sell a computer with OS X pre-installed. So it will enver get mainstream and i'm sure Apple will have few sleepless nights because a few geeks have it running on their generic PC box.
"Windows XP installs without hitch" but it also says "Some prodding managed to get the screen to 1600x1200, but sources were unable to get Windows to take advantage of the entire screen." Isn't it unlikely they'd be keen to make it work, given that if the hardware's was any good and priced competitively, people would buy them and run Windows ?
I reserve the right to be wrong.
Entirely different? How so?
People people people....
:)
/etc/rc.
;)
We're all unix geeks here, right?
**crickets**
Okay, well even if not....
Go to the Darwin site. Download Darwin for x86, install it. Ta da! We have the BSD Subsystem.
Okay, get your shiny new developer mac, place it side by side with your Darwin machine. Check the passwd file, the passwd entry in netinfo, and groups. Make sure the uid's and gid's generally match up.
Export for nfs from you dev mac:
/ --alldirs --maproot=0
Now, mount that someplace on your darwin boxen.
Use cp -pr anything of interest to the darwin box. I would take special note of anything in
Kick the darwin box.
I filesystem comparison between a clean dev box and a clean Darwin box might me useful, diffs on text files to go along with it.
Provide me or any good hacker that, and we'll have an installer out in no time.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
That's right; the PC would be lack the requisite Lucite case.
Especially the "Windows XP installs without a hitch " makes me think hard. That means there is a normal BIOS, that also means segmented memory, thaold 640k limit A20 gate, realmode bootup, completely messed up ACPI implementations, no relible and stadrad way to get hardware information from the firmware...all doors for all the Problems we all so love with our Wintel machines are open.
... Apple basically gave up building good harware.
Just as I said before
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
When you look at a PC under the hood (not literally, but from a system architecture standpoint), you really do see twenty years of computing history, from a time when DOS programs manually invoked the PIT8253 timer to invoke timing interrupts, 16 bit code, the BIOS, and all of that junk. Yes, in a perfect world, it would be nice to wave goodbye to all of that crap.
However, the laws of economics say otherwise.
The reason that it is hard to dump them is because it doesn't really cost anything to continue to support them. You cannot buy an Intel processor that does not support 16 bit code. Antiquated timers like the PIT8253 are supported in the chipsets. Unless the legacy parts actually take up physical space on the motherboard (like ISA slots and the physical parallel port itself), it is much easier to buy an off the shelf chipset that supports everything. The alternative is to make a custom chipset that may be cleaner but have less volume.
You would be paying extra so that CGA doesn't exist. Thats just plain silly.
Too bad it is still a PC-style computer. Does it have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports? ;-)
I hope Apple will build a legacy-free x86 box for the real ones.
Yet, I think installing Windows on a Mac is one incredibly dull idea. Why would you ruin a Porsche by putting a Yugo engine inside?
As for installing MacOS X on generic x86 boxes, that should not be that hard at all, nothing that hasn't been done with XPostFacto - I doubt Apple will take the effort to lock it down as the only ones who will use it will be the very same pirates that made Windows a de facto standard. Piracy, in their case, may very well help sales.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
You know, outside of a few Slashdotters who desperately want to run OS X on their pimped-out x86 boxes, there's probably not a lot of people who give a darn about this. Apple makes Macs, and as long as they provide a reasonably complete spectrum of systems across the price band, there's going to be zero measurable demand to defeat Apple's tying and install OS X on a generic PC. Zero. The biggest reason Mac cloning worked in the market for a few years last decade was that Apple wasn't providing the systems that the Mac marketplace wanted to buy. Even then, it cost Apple a lot more money than they ever expected it to, because even with the licensing fees it didn't make up for the lost hardware margins. Apple needs a lot more base market share before they can stop worrying about cannibalization.
Sure, somebody'll figure out a way to do it - every DRM scheme devised thus far has been cracked, pretty much - but what do you get after cracking OS X? You get a unsupported OS on your PC that may or may not work right with the combination of cards, chipset, and BIOS you happen to have. Do people really think that there's going to be any enterprise demand for that? Really?
Bottom line: Macs are Macs, PCs are PCs, and despite the change in architecture the twain are not going to meet any time soon. Stick to Windows, Linux, or xBSD on your generic PC, and run OS X on your Mactel. You can probably expect Apple to give up a little bit of their price delta now that the hardware is directly comparable (and the hardware superiority image is gone), but not all of it - after all, Apple puts a lot more engineering into their boxes than the typical PC vendor does. And when you're running your Mactel, you can look forward to emulation that's finally less crappy than what Virtual PC gives you. Yippee!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Actually they probably intend to make it easy to run XP in it. Thus they can advertise its dual-booting capabilities. People will buy it because its a MAC when you need a MAC and a PC when you need a PC. Now it would be interesting if MS turns around and makes it incompatible. But I doupt it.
Apple Files for Mactel Trademark but the public seems to prefer Macintel.
Really? That's almost exactly the opposite of what most people say... "Oh, I love the UI and OS, but I'm sure not paying an extra [$100 / $500 / $1000] for their hardware!"
Aesthetics being the usual culprit, it's amazing that Apple's more "unique" designs, like the original iMac, appeal to people despite the fact that the machines are really kinda marginal.
So, would someone pay an extra hardware fee just to have a funky looking hardware design that runs Windows (gamerz not withstanding; I guess they've demonstrated that people will, but we're talking mainstream here.)
I doubt it. If Apple chucked OS X into the bin and just started shipping Windows boxes, they'd stay in the computer hardware business, oh, maybe 14 minutes. No "true" Mac person would buy one, out of righteous indignation, if nothing else, and the snobs out there who would be willing to pay a premium for what would amount to nothing more than a cool looking beige box would be too few in number to keep it going long.
Apple's strength is indeed in design, but that's bolstered by a great software product holding it up. Without OS X, Aqua and all the doo-dads that you show off to your friends, it's just a pretty looking box.
And if said box is stuffed under your desk and the only entry to it you have is through your monitor, who cares what it looks like?
Just the way I mock those people who paid too much for their Ferrari's. I built mine with a VW Beettle frame and a fiberglass kit I ordered from a magazine. Man those "Ferrari ethusiasts" look down their nose at me because they paid too much for their cars. I laugh and laugh at them!
w00t!
My other car is a Popemobile
If Apple was counting heavily on Wine they'd have forked the project just like they did with KHTML. I suppose maybe they already did. We'll find out as soon as OS X86 is released.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Bad analogy -- one of the key selling points of a Ferrari is the engine, which is analogous to the CPU/mobo, and there's unlikely to be a big difference there.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
How many times does it have to be said? These machines do not represent the final products Apple will put up for sale to the public. These are a quick hack to get developers working on the Intel platform, nothing more. The real Intel Macs will use 2006-era processors and chipsets, will be legacy-free, and will almost certainly not use BIOS (the best possibility is EFI), and will probably feature some custom Apple logic on the motherboard somewhere to head off all the problems you're predicting.
but that would be violating the DMCA
:-)
I wouldn't!
Woulda, coulda, shoulda...
IMHO, if Apple hadn't fired Steve, NeXTSTEP wouldn't have been around to save Apple from oblivion. Apple would have vanished while trying yet another OpenDoc, Pink, or MacApp on top of the same old outdated OS.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not cheap??
It's $129 for a secure, easy to use OS with dozens of useful, functional apps thrown in. For $50 more, you can get a complete DVD production and burning system (iLife).
Go ahead, try and beat that price and usability anywhere. Just don't forget to charge $20/hr for labor if you have to apt-get all the dependencies just to print right, or get your video card to run, or to get firewire DV input.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Not trolling, just my thoughts:
Hmmm... Sounds like trolling, but I'll bite.
What's the incentive to port an app when you can tell the user to run it under these applications?
Well, for one thing Mac users are fanatical about the look/feel/integration of the entire OS. This is largely why such cool technologies as Fink, and Darwin ports haven't taken over more on the Mac: The look and feel isn't the same as native OSX apps. The GUI/widgets are different, they don't share data off the clipboard in the same way that the Mac does. They don't support standard OSX keyboard commands, instead defaulting to the same shortcuts and such as their x86 counterparts.
Another great example is Open Office - It's no longer being ported due to the low number of users. Instead, NeoOffice was born from the ashes of OO, and is rapidly gaining in popularity due to it's native look/feel, and it's overall integration as a native OSX app.
Running Windows apps under OSX (emulated, or via a virtual pc, such as vmware)will meet some people's needs (read this as potential switchers), but the diehard Mac users will still demand native apps, and an OSX look/feel.
Further, Apple has said, it wont stop people from putting Windows on their Macs, which I think is a mistake. Don't have that specific application? Boot into Windows or run it via emulation
I disagree... There's a helluva lot more apps written for Windows than there is for OSX. And a lot of the apps for Windows duplicate a lot of the other Windows apps that are out there. There's a lot of very similar programs, doing very similar things on the Windows end of things. I personally like to find the best tool for a job, when the need arises. On the Windows end, this means constantly evaluating a lot of different, but similar programs to find which meets my needs/wants the best, and there's constantly more apps coming out that need to be evaluated.
On the Mac end, there's fewer programs, but they're usually of a much higher caliber, and they're way more integrated with the OS look/feel than Windows apps typlically are. As opposed to you, I think that once Windows users start checking out OSX and seenig what can be done w/it, these same people will begin looking for native apps to replace their Windows apps, rather than running them emulated, or rebooting into Windows. Keyboard shortcuts are a great example! Will the average switcher want to remember all the OSX commands, in addition to all the Windows ones, or will they just prefer to memorize one set of commands for all apps? I personally think it'll be the latter, but time will tell.
One quick note about the above: The one app that I use regularly on Windows, which has no Mac counterpart yet is Homesite! There is no Mac editor that will allow me to highlight code the way that Homesite will. Specifically, I'm referring to letting me mod the foreground AND the background colors, based on code syntax. Very disapointing, and I'm a very visual guy, and being able to do this is very important to me. Dreamweaver MX allows me to do this, but it comes with so much bloat that I really hate to use it when all's I really need is a decent editor. If BBEdit allowed me to do this, my life would be much happier! But I digress...
A few die hard companies make Linux games, for instance, but very few. That's the future: A widespread OS with no nifty applications.
I think the difference here is the number and type of users. Linux users tend to be few in numbers (compared to OSX and Windows users - Although that is slowly changing), and of a much geekier variety than the average Windows user (I'm not counting the users of very dumbed down Linux distros, such as Linspire and such... These people are typically the point-and-click, email and web users types, and never stray too much from these basic tasks.). Several companies have tried to make a living out of writing native ports of Windows games for Linux, and you know what? They al
One of the things I thought was really nifty about my iMac when I bought one a few months ago was how the inside looked. Anyone who's seen the interior of any Mac will tell you the layout of the hardware, and the hardware itself, is pretty spiffy looking.
Now I know the pictures in TFA are of a developer's kit, but I'm hoping the hardware for the release models looks a hell of a lot better than that. It's entirely disorganized, especially the cabling (when compared to current Mac models). I'm hoping this isn't a side-effect of the Intel switch.
Admittedly this is a bit of a silly gripe, but Apple's philosphy to date has to been to have a very definitive style for their systems, for both their hardware and software. I'd hate for them to become just another PC hardware supplier with a nifty OS.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Although this is historically true, it would be foolish to assume that this would be true in perpetuity. The balance of revenue streams in a business does change over time, sometimes by the whims of market forces, and sometimes by deliberate strategy. Take the iPod/iTunes revenue stream, for example, which could be a deliberate attempt to grow a revenue stream that is large enough to ensure that Apple could survive a transition from the low-margin hardware arena enjoyed by the likes of Gateway and Dell to the high-margin software arena enjoyed by Microsoft. I'm not saying that this is the case...only that it could be the case.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
"The soul of the Mac is the operating system" - Steve Jobs, at the very end of the WWDC keynote, right before he says "thank you". And look at their front page today, which features a Fox Trot comic strip that plugs the forthcomming "Leopard" version of OSX. I think they're moving tap into a high-margin software revenue stream.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
You mean like my new Dell machine comes with XP for free?
Ofcourse its not free - the price is just hidden.
The interface is simple and easy to learn
It is secure (security from obsecurity maybe...if it gets more popular...we'll see)
BUT.....average Joe doesn't care or even want to care. If Apple don't start selling these things (PPC or x86) in department stores then average Joe will still buy Windows boxes. I really hope they take a page from the iPod success story and let all and sundry apply to be an "authorised Apple retailer" or whatever they call them these days.
If the development version gets hacked then it may expose the OS to a few more people but not as much as letting anyone sell 'official' Macs. When you showcase a OS X and Windows together, Windows looks like a wet smelly sock and becomes just as appealing.
As for the dev system..the mobo looks almost identical to the intel mobos we used to buy for work.
Then you've been fucked. You really should have bought a Shuttle-X series case and motherboard combo, then plopped a nice passively cooled graphics card in there along with whatever cpu, ram and storage you require. Mine cost about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of my G5.
I have no problem with Linux as a server (since I've been admining Linux since '96 and UNIX since '92), but on the desktop I just have to say from the folks I've spoken to you're in the extreme minority. I switched simply because I'm tired of playing grabass every time I want to view a video clip or do something aside from web browsing, coding, or using OpenOffice.
On top of that, it isn't politcally correct to say here, but I find commercial Mac apps to be much more stable than the majority of Linux offerings, and I'm a big boy (a productively employed adult) whose time is money and am not afraid to pay for software.
And yeah, my Shuttle runs Ubuntu and Libranet along side my dual G5 tower. I like em both. My Shuttle for hacking, and my Mac for everything else.
There will be a chip on the motherboard that you can query to ensure that there is only Apple -approved hardware.
Let me say that using a different name:
There will be a chip on the motherboard that you can query to ensure that there is only MPAA -approved hardware.
So there you have it, trusted computing coming from Apple.
Apple can then go out and say windows is only used by pirates, and anyone that wants to be legit has to buy OS-X.
Yes, you get whatever version of the OS is on the box at the time you bought it. It's not different than the PC market in that regard. The point was, software upgrades are not free. They're not in the PC world either, but in the PC world the software comes from a different company than the hardware (Microsoft, usually). That's what I mean by double dipping: they make money on their hardware AND the software that runs on it, and of course, since there are no clones, they can leverage one over the other.
Yes, well, so what? Linux already works moderately great on current Apple hardware, and it works great on existing x86 hardware. Yes, you probably will be able to run Linux on the Apple/x86 hardware, which probably will be pretty "sexy" as far as x86 hardware goes. But being able to run Windows on that same hardware is a much bigger deal for most people. OS X already is a very capable Unix-like niche operating system - but it's not very good in some aspects that Windows is extremely good in, mostly this comes down to the application support.
Or in other words: Hardly anybody cares about running Linux applications on an OS X platform because many Linux applications have been ported and run just as well on OS X. The same isn't true for Windows.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Why would the choice of processor compromise this? The operating system will still be Mac OS X, will still be immune to all the Windows viruses, will still be running a Unix underneath it all, will still Just Work (tm). Relax - Apple have a reputation to defend, and they know that'd be a painful thing to lose.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
First, I haven't seen a problem with MS Virtual PC running on a system using direct connection to the network. I'd be surprised if it WEREN'T two IPs, one MAC.
Second, a simulated NAT could be done. So, the second OS has a different IP address, and doesn't directly touch the router, only the OS that eventually touches the router.
"Look at it this way... when those butt-ugly purple, orange and other "flavoured" iMacs first came out, how many did Apple sell? And, at the time, some clone company came out with pretty much the same thing that ran Windows. How many of those got sold?"
I might be biased because I worked in Computer repair for 5 years in a mom and pop shop, but I would say a great deal of those E-Machines got sold at Best Buy ended up at our shop for repair. They ran like crap, but they looked pretty. As far as the the pretty iMacs go, I saw a great deal here and there, but I couldn't give you my opinion on why people were buying them. My impression was the major selling point was because they looked pretty.
Latter down the road, I had a discussion with some major level people at an ISP I had gotten employed with where I had to learn Macs because of the amount of customers that needed to be supported. One of the debates that occurred to us about why people bought them (other than the fact that OS X just worked with DSL... although OS 9 was a unholy pain) was that they expected computers to be like those in the movies.
That may seem like a strange idea, but when a person who knows nothing about computers and sees something out of the future with a GUI interface that looks almost like something they saw in a movie, they are more likely to choose that because it just looks powerful.
To me or you this may seem absurd, but it's the same reason people buy lots of things that aren't really any better than their blander counterparts.
Or rather why people by fancy cars, jewrly, and other things that only real value is because they look cool or make them feel like they own something powerful or valuable.
That and the mac OS X is pretty futuristic looking compared to say even Winxp. If someone had no knowledge of any OS I'd say they would choose the one that looks the most impressive.
Personally, I'd choose the one that just works. *coughs*
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Aesthetics being the usual culprit, it's amazing that Apple's more "unique" designs, like the original iMac, appeal to people despite the fact that the machines are really kinda marginal.
iMacs with each freshening have been re-situated at a tier and a nudge behind a power/graphics user's level -- which is to say as a decidedly middle-class system. "Marginal" isn't the word for that. They're middle-class appliance computers. Actually as each generation of iMac has come out, Apple watchers have wondered whether the top-of-the-line models were being undercut by them on performance-for-price. The iMac G5 models were no exception. As they came out, /. types were anticipating new tower G5s, because otherwise that line almost didn't make sense any more.
And if said box is stuffed under your desk and the only entry to it you have is through your monitor, who cares what it looks like?
And again, iMacs are designed precisely for people who do not NOT NOT want to dedicate a hutch shrine to their tower down in the basement. Desk? Who wants to dedicate a whole desk in some extra office in their house? That's exactly the model that Apple was tilting against. Note the emphasis on low footprint, from the first CRT models on. This is for people whose response to a tower under the typical chintzy computer desk is "ugh" (and to some extent for schools with limited space or spots on a long counter).
(Personally I got an original Rev A CRT iMac gratis, and it grew on us a ton. There's a lampshade 17" version on the narrow kitchen counter now. The machine's lasted for years now, so if it was marginal when it started it must be positively archaic now -- despite being quite capable of handling Tiger and everything else I've had to touch on it. And it's displaced the [more recent] Wintel boxes in the house, despite my being required to keep those up for work reasons. They're in the basement corner for over a year now. The kids liked the iMacs far more.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Also uncertain is whether the Intel-based development kits seeded to developers already feature the EDID chip or whether the installation disc contains a less sophisticated installation check that simply seeks out one particular hardware configuration--the one given to developers--and will not install on other configurations.
I think the 2nd option is more likely. It's exactly what Apple has been doing with OS X for years. When you buy a Mac you get an install CD which is exactly like any other except each model comes with a "supported hardware" check as it installs. The eMac install will not work on a Mac mini, nor the iBook install on a Powerbook, etc... They all have a list of chipsets / CPU's and other hardware built in that they use to identify which system it's running on. (That is, assuming you don't have OF as these x86 Macs won't) All Apple has to do is keep doing what they've always done and you're pretty much locked into Apple hardware, I suspect they'll simply include drivers for their own chipsets and motherboards and tada... everyone is already locked out. There's no need to add extra hardware components simply to identify it as a Mac when Apple is the only one using a certain Mobo.
-Don.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
That's one of the reasons people like to say Apple is secure. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches. For local exploits, they have an average (good, but marred by a few bad apples, like the sync bug).
But, MacOSX has always defaulted to all-services-off. So, you wouldn't see a worm targetting the AFP server making it very far on the net.
Apple's security is on par with most Linux distros. This does not mean it's OpenBSD. It means that it does have some bugs, but is highly resistant to most attacks. Apple has been able to be more lax about buffer overflows because of the PPC's architecture, which makes a classic buffer overflow more difficult. When they switch to Intel, we'll probably see them step up their local security policy to compensate.
And your comment, "Most of these are ludicrous! Look at how many remote vulnerabilities there are! Some are absurd! Didn't apple do ANY checking?" That implies that you are not a security person, don't really understand the vulnerabilities listed, and are trying to spread FUD. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely (even if they are not going to disclose data and permissions remotely). Of course Apple does checking. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs, has awesome security features like a time sensitive, integrity-checking Keychain, and generally has a good set of secure, default settings.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Vander may have some performance issues though since much of the memory management is done in software.
AMD pulled an ace on Intel with x86-64 and it seems AMD will also have the better deal on virtualization with more of it being transparently handled by hardware.
To me, it seems Intel severely dulled its edge on the P4 anvil. I wonder how many years it will take for it to be solidly back on tracks... I am guessing 3-5 years as a minimum unless something truly ground-breaking failed to leak through the usual rumour channels.
The cases are the same as used in the G5s. How is the style any different?
;-)
There's more to a good computer's style than just a good looking case. Apple has for years been producing some of the most innovative works of art the computer industry has ever known.
Truthfully a good computer platform should be:
1) Do what the user needs the system to do. (I'm not talking about "wants" here I'm talking about needs.)
2) Efficient.
3) Easy to use/Easy to maintain.
4) Be a good balance of internal and external structure.
Number 4 can easily interfere with the other three and thus needs to be considered in the design. The "whole" not just the parts needs to be considered and balanced.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
yup; but conversely, it's still true
...)
that if darwin-x86 doesn't run on
some machine then OS X-x86 won't
either.
all the people who're saying "*once*
OS X-x86 comes out someone'll hack it
to work on other machines" aren't
really paying attention - if you want
OS X to run on other machines, you
should be making Darwin run on those
machines *right now*, because that'll
certainly be a prerequisite for OS X
running. (and FWIW Darwin's x86 support
is currently limited to a pretty short
list of hardware so there's quite a
bit of work to do
What on earth are you talking about? Seriously.
...and the PRECISE CHIPSET of the video card in question
Display drivers are not magic beans. They need to work, correctly, with every piece of hardware and software along the chain between the OS and the monitor.
In order to boot the developer x86 edition of OSX on a generic PC and have Aqua work, you will need a video driver that works with the following:
- MacOX X 10.4.2/x86's implementation of Quartz
- little-endian CPUs
- little-endian GPUs
- PC BIOS
-
At the moment, one such driver exists, and it is for the "Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16", a video card that cannot be bought at retail.
Now, in 4-6 months, when ATI and Nvidia have ported their unified drivers to OSX/intel, this situation should drastically change. But for right now, the chances of the above-described hack creating a working OSX instance on a generic PC is exactly zero.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I dont use and have no desire to use any "windows" apps... whatever that means. I use mac native apps (final cut studio, motion, soundtrack etc) Adobe CS, Cinema 4D and Maya - for major apps - very little else. You may mean games... or M$ office, but Im not a gamer and though I have office, I havent used it since I started trying out star office/open office (mostly I just use InDesign or Illustrator and recently iwork, ilife). For what I, and most people I know - there isn't anything else to need, not counting some shareware, plug-ins, utilities and god bless Radio lover. Thats not everyone but its a decent crossection of Macusers.
Developers spent more time previously porting to Mac than they will need to now, it's only a checkbox, and nobody wants to pump out a product that will be seen as "second rate" vs. other apps where the developer simply took a few minutes (checkbox) extra. And for such a small effort, who wouldn't want their previously windows only app to run properly on a box that doesnt go down with the associated windows issues?
Business stays in business by finding more and newer business -not by refusing to participate in an emerging market. If I were a developer I would see this as a new market, an opportunity to make a move, not something to shy from. Its almost easier to see the opposite of what you say happening, more developers starting to write for the Mac - because its simple, because they can and because it can pay.
Linux is a different issue
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
PCI cards intended for x86 systems can of course be used in PCI slots on other platforms, such as PowerMac, PReP or CHRP boards, without any modification (though their can be alternate Firmware versions for the different platforms).
Sometimes the alternate platforms are shipped with cards that have x86 firmware which just never gets used. Instead getting platform native support through motherboard firmware for example. I've found some Sun Microsystems workstations with SCSI cards which when placed into a PC, had x86 working firmware. They were standard LSI SCSI cards with the Sun logo and part numbers stamped on them.
Support for them resides in Sun motherboards Open Firmware.
Interestingly, you can also add firmware and thus BIOS support to cards which ship without x86 compatible firmware (or any firmware at all) if you have an x86 motherboard with AWARD modular BIOS. With these BIOS, you can add firmware images to the BIOS image and boot from it by choosing to boot either from SCSI or LAN. Assuming you can find a compatible firmware image for your firmware-less card. I know this works on some older 440BX boards, since I've added netboot ROMS to my motherboard BIOS for Tulip NICS which had no boot ROM on the actual cards. Don't know about more modern boards though.
Oh, you got me wrong. There's tons of open source software for Windows, to your list I'd add the obvious Cygwin. But not the other way round - there isn't a lot of Windows software ported to Linux. This is especially true for games.
And my original point was that most high profile "Linux" software has been ported to OS X. But most of the high profile Windows apps have not been, especially not the games. Which is why OS X/x86 users will be interested in some way of running Windows applications (like through a compatibility layer like WINE or by simply dual-booting) and not so much in doing the same with Linux applications.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Comparing prices between Apples and Dells is frustrating, because the standard of comparison keeps shifting. Here's how it usually goes, step by step:
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1. Somebody starts by ranting about how they have to pay "twice as much" or "three times the price" for a Macintosh. Which is obviously ridiculous, but it keeps being said time after time.
2. Examples are brought forward showing currently available Macintosh models selling for roughly the same price as comparably configured Dells. Sometimes the Apple is slightly less than the Dell. Sometimes the Apple is a fair bit higher -- but never anything like the 2X or 3X that anti-Apple trolls keep shouting out.
3. PC fanatics jump all over the proffered examples, ridiculing them because they could "build a system for a third that much". Never mind that we were talking about Dell versus Apple when the debate started, not home-built systems. When this is pointed out, someone on the anti-Apple side will chime in that only morons buy Dells anyhow, and the smart people always build their own computers.
And that's where it ends. As soon as you show that Macs don't, in fact, cost 2X or 3X as much as a Dell, then suddenly it doesn't matter because Dell is no longer the standard for comparison. (They're only the #1 computer maker in the world, sheesh.) Instead it's now computers cobbled together from components that you have to compete against on price.
Other amusing things sometimes pop up during the argument. . . Some PC fans seem to believe that Quake frame rates are the only meaningful measure of a computer's performance or value. Others are stubbornly oblivious to the typically long lifespan of a Mac, or how well used Macs hold their value (check eBay!), or how much time (and money, if you value your time at all) can be saved from reduced troubleshooting when running a Mac.
I suspect many of the complainers also are school kids who aren't accustomed to working with an adult budget. They're the same class of people who got a C64 or an Atari ST back when the rest of the world was going to PC clones, just because they could save some bucks. They're the same class of people who were too cheap to shell out for a monitor or a hard drive for their Amiga 500 -- blurry TV sets and floppy swapping was fine for playing games, anyow.
That was than. Nowadays PC clones are the cheapo systems.
So where does this whole myth of an Apple for "three times the price" come from? Here's my hypothesis. .
1. In years gone by -- in the 1980s especially -- Apple sold a lot of systems that were outrageously overpriced. Anybody remember when a Commodore C64 was $250 and an Apple II was $1600? Or when the Mac II was $8000? Yeah, people tend to remember that kind of sticker shock.
2. Apple don't sell very stripped-down models, or compete at the very lowest end of the market. (Though the Mac Mini got them quite a bit closer to it than they ever have been before.)
3. What many of the complainers really want is to run Mac OS X on the PC hardware they've already got. You can't get any cheaper than something you've already got. That's free! And current Mac users have a hard time seeing this, because a Macintosh is what they've already got. They're looking at it from the other side of the river.