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Apple's Colossal Disappointment?
Mudzy writes "Michael Roberson, founder of Linspire, has an article at The TechZone talking about Apple's 'Colossal Disappointment' for not porting Mac OS X to PC after they announced the move to Intel processors. He discuss why this could be a mistake." From the article: "Instead of a brilliant strategic maneuver, it's a step necessitated by IBM's inability to keep pace with Intel. It seems Apple was tired of losing the gigahertz competition to the PC world. Apple had been promising faster computers for some time and had not been able to deliver them. In addition, they were frustrated at IBM's inability to produce a fast low-powered chip for laptops."
Why the heck would they? If they did they most certainly would no longer be a hardware company.
Bogus. What Michael (the author of the linked article) seems to think is that Apple made the switch for entirely reasons of CPU speed. The reality is much more complicated than that and encompasses reasons of yes, CPU speed, but also platform flexibility, heat, management of media rights and others. I covered some of these reasons here back on June 9th, but the future of media management is central to their strategy and was one of the driving forces behind the move. Additionally, Michael goes on to state that Macintosh users will "first have to suffer through a period of uncertainty and forced upgrades.". I also talked about this in my article, but to summarize, there really is no uncertainty about this process. It is going forward and most users will not notice or care about whether their Macintosh has an Intel or a PPC inside of it. They just want their computers to work as seamlessly as they have before and help them manage their lives and be more productive. Users will not have to be making any tough decisions as both platforms will be supported for years and years to come. Apple has proven this ability by maintaining parity between the PPC and Intel codebases already since the beginning of OS X and is showing the industry how to proceed when it comes to backwards and forwards compatibility.
.......yeah. As we used to say when we were kids, "No Duh". Why would Apple want to get into the game of supporting literally millions of combinations of hardware compatibility issues and troubleshooting? Why? Where is the income from that going to come from? They already make available (and will continue to) make Darwin available for PPC and Intel, so if you want to swing that way, go for it.
Any other objection that Michael has to this switch has to do with OS X not being able to run on commodity PC hardware. Well,
Don't get me wrong. I really do appreciate what he has done with Linspire, but it is not OS X and I cannot imagine that Apple will simply hand over their technologies.
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I always waited to OSX to be ported on x86. Finally I can have windows, linux, and osx all running on the same computer using vmware.
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Not sure I understand this, and it seems to be a relatively old story (last month already)...it seems to be more Michael Robertson's disappointment rather than Apple, with a tinge of sour grapes in the air. Anyway, the world is rapidly changing to make the whole Windows vs. Mac box competition to be relatively less interesting. With more applications and services moving off the desktop and into the network, the battleground is increasingly shifting online. Apple has already leveraged this move by becoming the number four vendor of personal computers, right behind Gateway on the recent numbers. Now they just need to start to race Microsoft to making more of their applications web-optimized and OS-agnostic. iTunes is a basic step in that direction. The portals are not standing still though...Yahoo!'s acquisition of Konfabulator is in my view a move toward making this new reality happen faster. More on that here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_yahoo_acquis.htm l
sure they could sell more copies of os X, but then wouldnt they lose some profits from those who would'nt but their hardware and run it on some other machine?
this topic dupes you twice a week
Apple is in the business of selling computers, not OSses. They're not going to support computers they didn't make themselves.
But who the hell is Michael Roberson, founder of Linspire to tell Apple's Steve Jobs how to run a successful computer company? Linspire has how much revenue/profit and how many users?
An operating system build around Unix that provides some elements of Unix but keeps everything incredibly simple? I'd love it. I want something simple these days. Let my servers be their usual basic selves. Let my computer be simple!
It honestly would be the answer to a lot of problems with PC's. People don't want to be arsed with learning everything, they just want to use it, and forget it. Apple does a good job of being almost sickly simple on most tasks.
And in style.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
Ohh how quickly we forget about Power Computing, Power Max, Windows, and why this a bad idea.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I'm incredibly dissapointed that Linspire will not run on my 1982 vintage casio wristwatch, but I sure hope they're working on it, I mean, wow! just think of how much marketshare they'd get if their OS could run on such inexpensive commodity hardware!
Starsucks
there is nothing at all stopping apple from doing exactly what this guy says...
When the conditions are most ripe...
when Apple is ready to face that challenge from a support perspective...
when Microsoft becomes more loathed with the release of Vista which will have 8,000 viruses out for it BEFORE its released...
you don't walk into a saloon and just start shooting up the place even if you're packing a big-ass gun. You wait to size up the situation, you make sure that you're transition to Intel is complete and solid, and you make your move when you want to.
Hell, just that very THREAT should be enough to keep Microsoft awake, pissing their pants at night. That's what the US military did to the Iraqi's the first Gulf War... we kept them awake for a whole 36 hours waiting for them to be so tired of staying awake, anticipating the strike that we did far more damage than if we had attacked at zero hour.
Don't be stupid and confuse shrewd business timing tactics for making bad decisions. This linspire guy has his head shoved up his ass if he thinks Jobs isn't interested in beating the stuffing out of Microsoft.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
After reading through the article, I'm not sure that I was convinced that it was in Apple's best interests to allow clones.
Look at it from Apple's point of view, the things he points out as negatives work more like positives:
1. Forced upgrades. Apple has announced "dual binary" support for their applications for an unspecified length of time, but either way the company has to be salivating at how many people will be buying new machines in 10 more months. And as recent reports show, they're selling more machine now than ever, so it would appear that the "halo effect" is greater than the "Osborne effect".
2. If Apple sales continue to do well after the final shift to Intel, then Apple can keep on their plans: make money off of computer and iPod sales (and whatever other new devices they come up with). Right now, they have a good line of movie editing software which only works on their software set (and they control the hardware to run it), they are developing other business tools (Pages and the like). So as long as people keep buying their machines and their market share is growing with the company making good profits, why change?
3. If, in some future, Apple decides to do cloning, it is in their best interest to do it later than sooner. My reasoning? They can use the next 10-36 months to iron out all of the issues dealing with the Intel transfer, see how the market reacts, how things like an "OS X WINE" works out, and so on. Then, with this expertise, they will be in a perfect position to dictate to cloners how things will work so the "Mac Experience" will be maintained, rather than just throwing the OS to the winds and hoping for the best.
Would I like it if Apple just let OS X free? Sure - but that's not in Apple's best interest. So, as long as they show a steady rise in profit and sales, I don't see them changing their minds any time soon. They seem to be doing what works, which probably makes them and their investors happy.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Jesus, cool your jets! Just like you, Mr. Roberson is entitled to his opinion. He makes some interesting points. It's something educated people do, have discussions of ideas.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
He wants in on the game. He wants to be the next Dell and he's bitter than he can't use OSX in order to do this. He sure does get a lot of press for someone that is barely even in the operating system game, let alone any other game.
If Apple ported OSX to Pc's, then you would have useless computers running OSX. Windoze computers are way too cheap for OSX. This would take away from Apple's image.
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
I think we're all well beyond that, what with AMD and Intel now successfully battling each other on chip features far more important than clockspeed (e.g., dual core, specialized instruction sets, heat generation, power use, etc.). It just doesn't seem that too many people are making PC purchase decisions based mostly, or even partly, on clockspeeds. Thankfully, we now have a much richer assortment of attributes upon which to base our selections.
Maybe Apple just wanted to tap into a better (i.e., cheaper and more rapidly innovating) market for important parts. Can't blame 'em...same thing drove me to Firefox. ;-)
I mean, really, how many more times can we expect another bit of "Apple should dismantle itself so I can put OS X on some POS box" punditry?
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Put them both in a room, and watch the room implode. Read Cringely's article at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050714. html, and contrast with Robertson's.
I seems like it's not all IBM failing to deliver the horsepower; there may be more to the story,
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
Let's say we all suspend judgement on whether or not this is a brilliant strategic maneuver or not for sometime in the future...oh let's for instance say sometime when we have x86 Macs shipping.
And no, I'm not new here, just a bit of an optimist.
Apple had been promising faster computers for some time and had not been able to deliver them. In addition, they were frustrated at IBM's inability to produce a fast low-powered chip for laptops.
Do we have to have this explained to us in almost exactly the same words in every single fucking article that mentions Apple's switch?
Now imagine how much control Apple has, knowing exactly what hardware their OS will be running on. They can do any number of things to optimize their OS and software to the hardware, and still keep their high level of stability.
Porting OSX out to everything would have also gotten rid of the sexy mac machines vs. the ugly beige PCs. And I am sure the MBAs out there will tell me that there are all kinds of money reasons that Apple wants to control their own hardware.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Trying to switch OSX to intel processor and deploying a shrink wrap product at the same time would be crazy.
Ask me in 5 years when all the problems have been shacken with the intel transition and apple has solved the problem of supplying drivers for all the relatively current hardware.
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mirror? Cheers :)
If OSX was allowed to run on just any PC hardware, Quality Control would go through the floor (as it has with Windows). Ant QC is somthing Linspire really doesn't know that much about...
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
If Apple restricts OSX to apple branded hardware, it could be their death knell. As superior as OSX is to Windows, people will still use windows if only for program compatibility.
That is unless Apple does something like give the Wine project a huge dose of $ and include it in OSX-86.
I believe the above poster has it right. Apple has proven they can sell 99c songs, but the media companies want to feel a little more secure about movies they could sell for $10, $15, $20 (or whatever they decide to charge). Being a Mac user, I'm not so happy about it, but oh well...
The Mothership
This quote from him "I would love to see Apple's PC market share reverse its downward trend". Is pure FUD being sown by the Linspire folks. I think Linspire should focus on competing with the other Linux distros out there. For the last six months report after report has been showing Apple increasing their sales. i.e. PC units sold (+35% from the same quarter last year) and profitability primarily due to the iPod.
This is actually old news, as documented in Michael's Minute.
I'm sure Michael is bluffing. He knows that if Apple allowed OS X to run on commodity hardware Linspire's potential market would be marginalized even further... it could be devastating to the Linux desktop push. Why would he want such competition from Apple?
It's rather curious that a week after that, Michael stepped down from CEO of Linspire (check the Michael's Minute entitled "What's Our Purpose in Life") Cause-and-effect? Maybe. Correlation? Definitely.
Michael's not dumb. He feigned disappointment at the Apple on Intel announcement, but my guess is that it was a carefully orchestrated bluff to allow him to distance himself from Linspire in the weeks after.
Any company investing in LOTD with the hopes of profitability had better hope to god that Apple does not allow OS X to run on commodity hardware. It's just common sense.
Why does he want this? I mean, is he trying to kill his job? Linspire imitates OS X.
Or maybe he's betting 1,000,000 to 1 in Vegas on MS going down.
... with a lot of ideas. He needs to prove that he can deliver on his own stuff before trying to meddle with business that he clearly does not understand though.
...is taking people like Michael Robertson too seriously.
The guy is great at making money off other people's ideas. That's it.
From the Google cache of pages 1, 2, and 3: Apple's Colossal Disappointment Updated: 06-19-2005 Submitted by: Michael Robertson I heard a rumor last week that Apple would announce they are switching to Intel chips. My first thought is that I hoped that Steve Job's success selling iTunes to the other 95% of the world - Microsoft Windows users - would embolden him to take a strategic step that could shake up the PC business as we know it. I was hoping that he would catch the openness wave sweeping the technology world and apply it to his business. I would love to see Apple's PC market share reverse its downward trend. Few people know it, but I started my tech career as a Macintosh user, ran a consulting company specializing in Macintosh, and even wrote my first commercial application, Network Security Guard, for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Apple's actual announcement on Monday, which revealed not a bold strategy embracing the openness movement but confirmation that Apple is still a company locked in the time warp of the go-it-alone '70s. Apple agreed to switch from processors made by IBM to special processors made from Intel over the next two years - that's it. This is only slightly more significant than Apple choosing to change the hard disk or memory supplier it puts into its computers. Instead of a brilliant strategic maneuver, it's a step necessitated by IBM's inability to keep pace with Intel. It seems Apple was tired of losing the gigahertz competition to the PC world. Apple had been promising faster computers for some time and had not been able to deliver them. In addition, they were frustrated at IBM's inability to produce a fast low-powered chip for laptops. Mac users will eventually see the benefit of this move, but will first have to suffer through a period of uncertainty and forced upgrades. Eventually, this switch will enable Apple to offer speedier machines more in line with PC performance. Until then, however, customers will have to make a tough decision - purchase a new computer that is guaranteed to be made obsolete or wait two years for machines to be released and software to be natively working. My disappointment was captured by an Apple spokesman who commented on what the switch does not mean: "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac." Future "Mactel" computers will have specially designated Intel chips, not generic x86 compatible chips found in common PCs. 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. The bottom line is that PC buyers will unfortunately not have the option to install and experience OS X. There will be no low-cost laptops from budget-minded Taiwanese manufacturers. There will be no generic AMD or Via white boxes sold by the millions capable of running OS X. Apple will not be reaching the 95% of the world buying Intel-compatible machines. I'm sure Jobs remembers a failed experiment in the '90s when Apple embraced a more open strategy. During that time, other companies were permitted to build Mac clones. Those companies targeted the most lucrative customers, siphoning off the high-end users who wanted the fastest machines. Apple depends on those customers to pay top dollar and uses those profits to fund their significant research and development costs. Losing them was a painful experience and Jobs shut down the clone business when he returned to the corner office at One Infinite
I love logical fallacies marked as informative instead of marked as troll.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Okay, let's look at this:
:)
;-)
1) Robertson criticizes Apple for not porting OS X to work on stock PCs.
2) Robertson happens to be the head of a company competing for those very desktops.
Why would he really want Apple to step into the market he himself is trying to gain market share in? Maybe, just maybe, he's riding on Apple's popularity as an opportunity to promote his own solutions?
Nah. That's just crazy.
(On a side note, I saw him give a presentation once, and before he started the presentation he asked how many people owned/used iPods. Only a few hands went up. Then, during his presentation where he spoke about their "LTunes" and their iTMS clone, he criticized iPod for being hard to use, saying thigns like "how do you turn this thing off? This thing is hard to use. We practiced turning it on, but we didn't practice turning it off..." I'm sorry, he's either so brain-dead he can't use a consumer electronics device with clearly labeled play and stop buttons on it, or he's playing to the ignorance of the crowd. The former makes him stupid, the latter makes him dishonest. And I don't think he's THAT stupid.
Apple's reason for switching to intel has nothing to do with more megahertz, better heat dissapation, DRM issues or any of the other crap that people have been spouting.
It comes down to one thing, they want to take on microsoft for control of the desktop. The way they are doing it is brilliant. They will switch to Intel based hardware made by Apple for the first year or so. They will then announce a deal with the HP and/or Dell allowing them to sell OSX with their hardware. After a year or so of that they will open up the floodgates and sell OSX to anyone and everyone.
What this means is that in 2 or 3 years time microsoft will have some real competition on the desktop (maybe even sooner, who knows). This also means the end of the line for linux on the desktop (linspire especially).
The reason they are implementing in these stages is simple - to keep attention on themselves. Apple will be in the news constantly the next 2 or 3 years, their stock price will continue to rise with all this attention, especially when wall street sees that each subsequent step apple takes leads to more more profit. Brilliant.
-ec
Hilarious! Perhaps when he can make his own products work in a successful way, he and Steve can talk over these issues.
He doesn't even understand the reasons Apple made this decision.
Nothing to see here, move along...
...Wouldn't an "Apple fanboy" probably already have a Mac running OS X? I could see a curious person that didn't want to spend several hundred dollars on a Mac to try out a new OS doing that, but not a "fanboy". This guy admits that he used computers from Apple in the past, but he hardly seems fanboy material.
It was the Apple/IBM alliance's inability to agree on a mutually profitable path that would allow Apple to keep up. The PPC 970, based on POWER4, is a generation behind IBM's POWER5. IBM *can* put together a roadmap that will keep the PowerPC competitive with Intel. The question is whether Apple would buy enough of them to allow IBM to leverage economies of scale.
Unfortunately the site got slashdoted too fast and I couldn't RTFA, but if this is another "Mac OS X will beat the crap out of Windows if only Apple would release it for generic x86" kinda' rant, it is one too many.
I, for one, think Apple are better off being a "niche" OEM and having BIG profit margins from quality hardware, bought because of their quality software. They just can't win against Microsoft's huminguous financial (and marketing) power. On the other hand Apple are #4 in the US after Dell, HP, Gateway and before Lenovo. And are still growing. Sticking with their tried and tested marketing model is the best they can do now. One day, who knows, but not in the foreseeable future.
Why do people keep thinking Apple is a software company. Just because you want OS X on your PC doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to port it. A lot of what makes Apple Apple is the fact that they operate on a small range of rigorously controlled hardware.
There will *never* be a general PC release for OS X, their profit margin is just too good on their own hardware, why would they want to spawn a bunch of cheap competitors?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Sell 'em the OS for cheap, make it only run on an overpriced computer.
Normally people aren't happy with Gilette for doing this with their razors, but it seems Apple has managed to even solve that problem. Gilette should learn from Apple.
Michael's Minute Archive "Apple's Colossal Disappointment" June 8th, 2005
Faster, more decked out hardware for half the price. Who would buy Apple's machines anymore?
The point of having a Mac with OSX, for Apple, is that they have *one*, very well defined platform to support, therefore they can concentrate on supporting it well. I don't own a Mac (well, a Mac 128 in my collection :-) but I understand that's how they define their business.
Now if they ported OSX so it could run on every PC, that means supporting a billion devices, or letting a billion drivers do who-knows-what and it would be a mess, just like Linux and Windows are (yes, I'm a Linux fan, don't give me shit I'm just being realistic here...)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Some guy writes "Man Apple made a mistake and should have made their OS generic to PCs" and we treat it like its a new proposition. Welcome to 1990.
Microsoft's profits come from the huge number of windows sold, however, wouldn't you think that this would also work for apple? If they treaded lightly in hardware and focused on the OS they could make a lot of money from the people jumping the windows ship.
Why would they care about gigahertz alone? It is already well proven that you can have a "slower" processor beat the pants off of a "faster" processor based on gigahertz alone. As other posters have stated, its more about flexability and future expandability. Watch Apple get some of the first Pentium-M class 64 bit chips ramped up to over 3 GHZ (low heat and power requirements while being alot more efficeint than the current round of CPU's).
My initial reaction to this posting was "Wow, why did they not release it for the PC? I would love to have OS X as the OS for my box, including other PC users. What are they thinking?"
Then emotions settled down, and I realized that Macs/OS X is the way they are, because of Apple's thinking. When you have a hardware and configuration that are somewhat common, you lower the chance of having problems.
If it was released to the masses of PC users and a ton of problems began popping up (as they most likely would). The rumors of "Apple isn't as solid as they say", etc, etc. And could really hurt Apple.
Then the company would be forced to release patch, after patch to accommodate for various hardware. This could then lead to creating a bloated OS and inviting virus writers to focus on OS X as much as they do with Windows.
Josh
I've written about a bit already, http://www.wavenger.com/index.php?p=286 and http://www.wavenger.com/index.php?p=285. This is actually starting to amuse me. His responses are an example of somebody who has an emotional response to something (i.e., getting a hard-on watching Dashboard and Exposé), and subsequently will bend and adulterate logic in every way possible in order to support their point. You can't argue with these people. It's best to avoid them.
If Apple is making most of their money in hardware. I would have thought that the move to Apple Intel would allow them to more easily provide a compatiblity layer for running Windows software within OSX at near native speeds. To get more people to want to use OSX to enjoy all the other benefits (no viruses, spyware, worms, etc). All these new people wanting to use OSX will have to use it on Apple hardware.... $$$$
I still think Apple would be silly to release OSX for generic Intel machines. They would suddenly find much less need for their computer hardware and they would also be in direct head-to-head competition with Microsoft's core industry controlling software.
I realise that OSX for Intel would probably sell like hotcakes, but Apple would have to support so much more hardware and they might find that the interest dies down after the hype when people find that the initial versions are not as fast or as compatible as they like. They'd be risking their cash cow (Apple hardware) on a gamble of competing against the dirtiest scoundrels in town at their own game.
What they are doing is best. If they release Intel machines which run Mac software and Wintel software, they may become bigger than Microsoft have ever been. Apple has been so popular over the last few years, being "cool" that they may take Microsoft down. Imagine if all of a sudden you didn't need Microsoft for anything because Apple was a better option.
Microsoft would become an applications company, writing for OSX and the likes of Dell would have to start building machines under contract from Apple.
A man can dream can't he?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I'm not sure that the head of a major Linux company would be an apple "fanboy".
But hey, ignorance about who wrote the article for the win.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Look IBM has world class fabs for SoC's, can do low power, high performance computing and have major mind share in the ASIC world. Their high volume/high profit market is not what Apple is selling. They did the PowerPC 970 for Apple and d they are the highest volume runner, which for IBM is the proverbial drop in the bucket. It adds more visibility but not revenue.
If Apple delivered more product or *gasp* payed IBM to develop low power processors for the laptop market, they couldn't complain. Should Apple have paid IBM for development when getting it from AMD/Intel in the x86 world would be free? No, but people should believe that it was because their vendor was incapable. It was just the Apple itself isn't significant enough to justify chip development with low payoff for IBM.
-Ho
Or Apple could just not want to write all those drivers for random hardware that might possibly be in your DIY beigebox...
Only having to deal with the high-quality hardware they stick in their own boxes makes Apple's job much easier.
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
Even with the implementation of Pentium M, I still prefer laptop computing with Apple. To me this is a silly argument because in reality Apple's iBooks and Powerbooks are known for their good (if not excellent) performace with much better energy efficiency than PC offerings. My 1.3 GHz G4 still kills the latest Dell, Sony, or Gateway when it comes to battery life.
He must know next to nothing about Apple's history or their business model.
-Randy
Is why everybody starts with assuming that "The Switch" will happen, and then starts to look for reasons.
.. on one hand, porting effort, buying hardware.. on the other a new platform that might have 5% of the install base (that's 5% of the 5% Apple has, that is) in 2 years. Errrm, no. Later perhaps.
/. still asking for more, they badly needed to).
...
Because Steve Jobs said so?
Guys (and girls): this is PR. SJ was sending a message first and foremost to developpers: port your apps. You think they'd have if Apple had said "we're gonna support Intel as well?" Lessee
This is just like Otellini taking the stand and saying that there will not be a 4GHz P4. Of course Intel could release that - there's enough overclocking success stories on the web. But they needed to hammer home the message that the MHz race was over. So no next round number GHz proc. (and given the amount of clueless people even here on
Back to my point.
So in 2 years Apple has released MacTels, people buy them because the software has been ported, and every app ships as fat binaries because nobody can ship for mac and dismiss 95% of the install base.
Say IBM (or Moto) comes up with a great proc, what's to prevent Apple from releasing a new PPC mac?
Nothing.
It's a win-win situation for them:
- they edge against IBM not putting out good procs (and put some pressure on them to do so);
- they edge against Intel fucking up (it's not like they never have *cough* Itanium) - and may get some marketing money;
- they got access to the two existing hi perf proc lines;
- they get better deals on pricing.
AS LONG AS
Developers port their apps.
Hence "The Switch".
After all, Apple have significantly less resources to test OS X with the wide range of x86 hardware out there than Microsoft does, and even Microsoft can't get it right half the time. If they were to dedicate the required time and energy to making sure it worked on as many configurations as reasonable, OS X for x86 would put Longhorn to shame in the "RSN" department with all the delays it'd experience.
This is why geeks aren't in charge of companies. If I were to speculate, I'd say this is Apple's strategy.
Remember, this is coming from the same man who thought it was a smart idea to make a catalog of mp3s from thousands of CDs and make them available online for free without consulting the RIAA.
By keeping the hardware Apple-only, they can *require* the latest hardware technologies instead of having software work on the lowest common denominators.
For example, they can get away with having their compiler build for SSE3 by default so that the OS as well as most commercial software are leveraging the latest CPU features.
One advantage is that Intel-based Apples will appear to be 'snappier' when running OS X compared to Windows software on the same machine.
Just love to see the Kremlinoanalytic approach applied to Cuppertino's Infinite Loop Drive. :D
Good luck!
"Apple was tired of losing the gigahertz competition to the PC world."
I think we're all well beyond that
Us, on Slashdot, sure. Just an hour ago I was talking to a well-educated guy (college student working at NASA) and he was astonished to hear that there wasn't a huge difference between 2 GHz and 3 GHz, and that clock speeds weren't really being focused on these days, and has plateaued in the last few years and isn't expected to climb much in the near future.
And if he doesn't know, your Joe Sizpack1 sure doesn't. People love having any kind of number to use for comparisons, so they're gonna keep thinking GHz are really really important until it's beaten into them.
I know you're talking about the people involved in the debate. But the OP wasn't wrong to suggest that Apple hates looking worse in GHz comparisons, because though you and he may know to look past that, the aforementioned Mr. Sixpack doesn't.
1What a weird last name.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Well, I was going to optimize some stuff in PPC asm but I hope you won't expect me to do this now we're leaving PPC, because I won't. Don't even think about me optimizing for x86 because that instruction set is just totally crap.
The point you miss, is that this would require an entire change in Apple's business model. The entire spending company infrastructure would change -- as right now they get, what, $1B in revenue from software? If they quit with the hardware (save iPod), that's a 50-60% loss in revenue.
Presumably the software component would go up, but would it go up $6B or so? Hard to say, and BIG pains during the transition period. And what would they get from it, really? For the home user, an iBook/iMac/Mini... isn't that much more expensive than a PC.
For business... OS X is still more the limiting factor than the price of hardware. "We run in house application X" or "This MUST run Outlook 2003" or "You MUST run our homebrew VPN application" or "IT says you MUST run Windows, so we can lock down your machine" are ALL way more likely to kill OS X adoption, at current, than "This Apple box is 12% more expensive than that Windows box, though it's 44.1% more reliable."
My hunch: Apple has looked at and considered this before (really?), and ran the numbers, and knows more than a Linux guy who pulls guesses out of his ass.
I don't see why all this speculation. It is like a relatively small concern, The older PPC apps should still run, most of the new software will be compatible with both. When people get a new computer even macs. They usually want it to run new software. So when you upgrade you will normally get some new software with it. To be fair the reason why OS X is so much better then Windows for stability and interface is the fact that Apple OS's are designed to run on Apple's computers, so they know what hardware will run on their OS and they can make the OS to use the hardware well and focus the rest of the resources in making a clean interface. Microsoft and Linux has it tougher they are trying to make an OS that can work on a wide range of Hardware support the very cheap hardware with a lot of failures and the latest and greatest hardware that the full specs are not even released yet, windows put a little more effort in Interface and Linux put more effort in stability. OS X running on Intel is just as Apple as Apple running on PPC. Heck I am still waiting to replace my PPC 667mhz power book with a brandnew Pm chip.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You've asserted this, but I see absolutely nothing to back up this statement- including in your blog entry to linked to. I haven't been able to think of a single reason myself- any media rights management technology, including hardware-based, would be equally easily introduced in both platforms.
What Michael (the author of the linked article) seems to think is that Apple made the switch for entirely reasons of CPU speed.
It is simplistic but correct. IBM couldn't deliver fast enough chips, and what they did make, they couldn't supply reliably enough. They've caused numerous embarassing product delays over the years. Apple most likely said "do something about it", IBM said "you're 2% of our PPC production, have a nice day", and Apple rang up Intel and AMD. Intel pretty clearly offered a better package- AMD doesn't have supply issues Apple would be concerned about, but doesn't have as deep pockets as AMD.
Please help metamoderate.
to quote somebody who once had a one-shot success, "that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of."
you think apple wants to enter the creaky world of "mad dog" peripherals and dock sweepings network cards, PCs with pushed speeds, and all sorts of marginal parts from mysterious outfits that come and go in the night? why in hell would anybody wish that support hell on them?
you control your hardware environment, you control the number of crash-and-burn intersices between hardware misbehaviors.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This is one of the dumbest things I've seen on /. in the past few years. Zonk sucks.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
this article is flamebait. we should be able to mod it down. Zonk's karma should be imploding right now.
Apple hasn't been maligning IBM's chip-building technology. It merely stated the facts: that IBM isn't delivering what Apple needs.
First, IBM failed to deliver on their roadmap. The PowerPC 970 roadmap circa 2003 called for 3.0GHz, 90nm CPUs shipping in volume by mid-2004. The 90nm transition was harder than expected, so Apple was left without chips (which made it less competitive, which impeded sales volume, which meant IBM sold fewer chips.)
IBM also has no significant low-power CPUs for mobile applications. The mobile PPC970s were late, and are currently clocked lower than the G4, and would not offer any real performance advantage if crammed into a Mac portable. (Whcih means Freescale gets all of Apple's mobile CPU business, and IBM gets none.)
Perhaps if IBM had made the necessary investments, Apple would have been more competitive in the market, and IBM would have sold more CPUs. As it is, IBM wasn't interested in supporting Apple. Business relationships work both ways: both customer and supplier have to be committed to one another.. Capabilities are irrelevant: IBM didn't deliver what Apple wanted, so Apple left. Maybe IBM could have, but it didn't, and that's all anyone has complained about.
It was there originally, and if I recall correctly, most of the votes were of disagreement (which I found rather interesting, since he normally has a significant majority agree with him). Then it mysteriously disappeared a couple days later. Maybe he felt he was victim of ballot stuffing on the part of Apple fans.
Curious to say the least.
Jobs was right to decide against porting OS X to wintel boxes, at least in the near term. To do so Apple would have to commit to 2 fundamental shifts in their business model simultaneously--a terrible idea for any company. First, they'd no longer be a hardware company, which they are now, primarily. Then, because they would hence be more dependent on revenue from sales of their OS, they'd have to retool the licensing scheme for OS X which is currently unserialized and widely pirated. Giving up a healthy revenue stream for an uncertain one is bad business in anyone's book.
I saw that headline and I thought the article was going to be about the recent iBook and Mini updates (can't really call them upgrades can we?). Imagine my disapointment.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
"Hey, if Mercedes starts making really cheap cars, and sells them at a low enough price to compete with Ford Focuses and Honda Civics, they could have a shot at taking over the car market!"
Granted, this is _never_ going to happen, because Mercedes-Benz is in the business of selling LUXURY cars - not muscle cars, not economy cars.
Similar for Apple - their business model is obviously not centered around allowing people to have just about any hardware combination possible, nor is it centered around allowing them to get the cheapest computer they can get, nor is it centered around having the fastest computers on the market. If you want any of these, you are not in Apple's target market. Live with it.
The day that Apple starts allowing MacOS to run on any old computer with the right CPU is the day that I stop buying Apple products, because it is the day that the one advantage Apple has over its competition disappears.
If you want OS X, shut up, quit praying for Hell to freeze over and fork out the $500 for a Mac Mini.
If you want an OS that is hacked together so that it can run (after a fashion) on any old hardware you might care to have, quit being an idiot and realize that what you really want is a computer you assembled from parts you got off of eBay or out of the dumpster of a CompUSA that is running some version of Windows or Linux with the GUI skinned with a mostly-white color scheme, all crammed inside a spiffy brushed aluminum case. You'll hardly know the difference, but you'll sure be a lot happier!
To me the most salient benefit of owning an Apple to the vast majority of users (like my parents), is that they just work better than commodity hardware pcs. If you look at Consumer Reports' data for pc reliability you see that Apple kills the pc manufacturers with less than half the reliability problems of even the 2nd best (Dell) out there.
This of course is the result of the fact that as a software maker they know the exact hardware that product will be running on and also seem to be much better than MS at making the applications that people use all the time (iphoto, itunes, imovie, iwork, etc.) which reduces conflicts and problems with/among 3rd party apps.
All this would be out the window if they went to offering OSX on commodity hardware. I consider the cost savings of commodity hardware to be at least offset for the average user by the above benefits.
I want to run XP on a G4 Cube. But I don't know why.
MadOgre.com
If you're smart, you'll arrive at the Best of Both Worlds solution. Make MacOS X 100% compatible with off-the-shelf PC hardware...as long as you have the $300 Macintosh Compatibility PCI Card. What the card actually does is almost inconsequential, though such a design would actually offer some technical advantages, in addition to the more obvious and important business advantages.
The typical Apple customer wants an innovatively designed system with good performance and top reliability. He or she wants computer that is ergonomically superior to the competition. You become an Apple customer because because bolting together your own PC and installing Linux on it with all the resulting annoyances due to hardware problems or having to get some software component to work gets in they way of you doing sensible work. Yes, all the annoyances you get with Linux can be solved if you just spend a few hours pouring over man pages and howto files but you simply don't want to spend your time on such things, you want something that works out of the box and keeps working and.... *** gasp *** you are willing to pay for it. There is the perception that Mac users are people who don't want to deal with the "under the hood" part of the operating system but this is crap. It is true that alot of Mac users are quite happy not knowing that the commandline even exists but I know alot of geeks/nerds/hackers (pick your favorite) who like myself use OS.X because it offers most of the advantages of Linux with none of the latters annoyances and imperfections. The whole charm of Apple products is precisely the fact that Apple computers are a tightly controlled hardware platform and that OS.X does NOT run on every random homebuilt PC or Dell box in existance. It never ceases to amaze me why that is so hard for some people to understand that.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
From the article:
Until then, however, customers will have to make a tough decision - purchase a new computer that is guaranteed to be made obsolete or wait two years for machines to be released and software to be natively working.
When was the last time you or I bought any computer which wasn't made "obsolete" in two years? If the author has this problem solved he should be sharing the solution with the rest of us. Of course I routinely use a G4 400 to this day, so obsolete is in the eye of the beerholder. I agree with the point that as things currently appear the move to Intel isn't the drastic, world-changing bomb a lot of people have written about. However I don't think this is some big blunder on their part either.
The author loses some credibility with me in regurgitating the initial announcement propaganda that the move was necessitated by IBM's inability to produce chips. We had a good idea at that moment it was a crock, and IBM confirmed it a couple weeks ago when they put the near-future roadmap for the PowerPC up for the world to see. This was pure economics, not performance or production problems.
This just seems to be another in a long line of articles declaring Apple to be making huge business and social mistakes. They survived incredibly lean times and are now on a boom. Three years from now the processors may be different but the core Apple experience will likely remain the same. Their strategic decisions can be off-putting, but Jobs and company have a specific vision and they'll stick to it until a market shift forces them into a change.
Lin what?
Exactly.
Michael Roberson is wrong.
Apple sells hardware, most of its profits come from hardware.
(last year's out of date hardware at next year's top prices - no less - better profit margins!)
Maybe someday they could become a software only company,
but I personally enjoy the combination of a well Engineered machine running smoothly with software tailored to match.
Michael Roberson's software is no inspiration to me.
I don't want every ding bat in the country running MacOS. I want them to stay on windoze so that they can continue to draw attention from the malware authors and scammers away from me. I like being left out when it comes to the BS windoze users face every single day they interact with their machines. People choose to use shitty software, so let them. If you want a mac, buy a mac. Apple branded hardware has been pretty good. Intel made great networking cards, of which I can't find anymore. I hate the cheap cards out now. The CPU should not handle networking, that is what a network card is supposed to do.
Do you mean this?/ 1457246
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/26
One of the reasons Apple went to Intel and not AMD *IS* the whole DRM thing - Intel's building it right into the chipset. This will allow Apple computers to become clients for the next rev of downloadable brainwashing crap from Hollywood. It has to be DRM'd at a very low level, and Intel's got that front and centre in their business plan.
The future is this:
From the time the audio goes into the microphone or the light goes into the DV camera, to when the audio comes out of your speakers and the signal is sent to your digital flat panel, DRM will be ALL OVER IT like Stink On Shit (which, given the quality of contemporary entertainment, is a fairly apt metaphor).
Apple wants to be part of that gravy train, and hence: Intel > AMD and IBM bye bye.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
No, it was before OSX
FalconShould there be a Law?
The author should educate himself on the difference between RISC and CISC processors and how horrible inefficient the latter is.
Or is it just me? X years ago didn't MS hand Apple a pile (actually smallish) of cash when Apple was about to go >*poof* into the good night business history? Might that explain something? (combo of bad memory and apathy, who needs details?)
Mod me a troll if you like but Linspire is nowhere. Just like all Linux on the desktop.
Just because they moved to an Intel CPU doesn't mean they should support any generic PC hardware.
Wouldn't this be the same argument for any game console that used an Intel chip (like the original Xbox?). The reason a game console is created is so that every person that plays a game on it has the same experience. A person playing a game on an Xbox has the same experience and MS can pretty much guarantee that experience. Same goes for the PS2, Gamecube or any other console ever made. Any one of them could have chosen to just sell some OS that runs on any Intel-based CPU but they didn't.
Or, take a company like Cisco. The Cisco PIX 520 is pretty much an Intel-based PC. They didn't compile the PIX software to run on just any Intel-based hardware did they? Why? Because if you bought at PIX 520, you had the same experience as anyone else running a PIX 520 (bugs and all). If they opened it up to run on any Intel platform, imagine the support headaches they would run into when trying to figure out why some feature doesn't work on a Dell Poweredge or some other non-Cisco hardware.
I guess my point is: What's the difference between Apple keeping their OS running on their own hardware versus any other vendor that does the same thing? Isn't it for many of the same reasons?
"Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes."
Instead of a brilliant strategic maneuver, it's a step necessitated by IBM's inability to keep pace with Intel. Now if only Intel could keep pace with AMD :)
This one is easy, Apple enters commodity hardware market by selling OS X alone, Microsoft says welcome to the block kid, sticks up it's middle finger and tells them, sorry kiddo, no Office for you.
Goodbye marketshare - yeah OS X sure is pretty but I can't even run word on it they'll say.
And sorry guys and galls, Open Office wouldn't be an acceptable replacement for most people. Even if, MS would just randomly patch Office to make sure things wouldn't be compatible.
And besides Apple prides itself on the whole computing experience - from opening up the box to OS X through to easily accesible USB ports etc, I think half of Apple would collapse in a heart-attack like spasm if they saw their beautiful OS running on Johny's $25 uggly-ass beige pc, with poor Johny bend over the computer, (jeans riding way too far down his ass) while he tries to plug in his USB camera into the back of the computer.
Could have been a good, useful desktop OS.
But its just a shitty, unpolished Linux distro.
Oh well.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
...could you use your crystal ball to tell me what stock I should buy?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Lindows(spire) and OS X target the same audience, after all.
Really? then why, with "the one true" GUI OS, did they get their ASSES handed to them by.... MS-DOS? iSteve the "grande buisness wizzard" was in charge too. Now _that's_ Apple's "Colossal Disappointment".
I must be dense, but I'm totally missing your point.
Are you saying that Apple would continue to sell as much or more hardware if they sold OSX for the PC because...IBM uses Linux? Are you saying that OSX doesn't help sell hardware? Are you saying Apple shouldn't try to be a hardware company because IBM tried that and they only made $36 billion in gross profit last year?
I think IBM and Apple are both successfully using non-microsoft software to sell hardware. But I don't see how anything IBM has done would lead me to the conclusion that Apple should sell their OS for regular, open-arcitecture PCs.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The thing we need to be watching is not if Apple ports OSX to work on non-Apple hardware. We need to be watching how well the intel macs run Windows. If Apple does this - they win. Seriously, they win. Why? Every single person I know who has a mac and a windows machine ends up using OS X at every turn except when they have to use a Windows box. I have a PC and a Mac and I only use the mac for games and 3dsmax. If you can run windows dual booting on a powerbook you will see a corporate invasion of macs like nothing you've ever seen. Then, over time, you'll slowly see more and more native support of OS X apps while people look for any excuse to stop booting into windows.
-_-
Yeah. The almight experts of consumer OS's-- Linspire, is calling Apple's move a bad one.
Call me crazy, but I think Apple may know what they're doing with their consumer OS and their hardware cash cow.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
for unbiased analysis... this idiot doesn't have a clue as to what Apple is up to, much less how to run a successful company. It's obvious everything this guy knows about Apple comes from Information Week.
The CPU switch has nothing to do with desktops.
Ok, what if I have a Matrox video card, 3com NIC, SIS chipset, and Cirrus Logic audio? That seems to add quite a bit more variation.
Apple sells systems, not just hardware and/or software. One way they try to make the best system to deliver the best computing experience they can think of, they limit your hardware choices in return for more stability of the overall system. There are pros and cons with this of course, but it's their tack and they seem intent on keeping it that way. The iPod is merely another system used for a specific purpose. That system is also a case of them trying to keep things simple while sacrificing configurability/upgradability (hello, can't change the battery).
I owned a Supermac 180, and I gotta say, that thing had serious stability issues while running Mac OS 9 that I never ran into using the iMacs at school. It was better than Windows was at the time (around 1999) but that's not setting the bar very high.
There is something to be said for the marriage of hardware and software design.
BMW should listen to Michael's arguments and sell their M6 engine to fit in my Ford Fiesta. Damn that BMW -- making me buy an M6 coupe just to get the engine!!
They could sell so many more M6 engines if only they made it available to all Ford Fiesta users.
Well, I think this whole case about Apple converting to intel based processors has been blown out of it's proportions. Many people greeted this with an idea that now they could expect to run OSX on their own dell or whatever PC, thinking that Apple would use the chance to redefine itself. But I think that Apple isn't interested in such a game. I am pretty sure that the last thing they want is to redefine themselves. Apple has already found their place in the computer market, as the company that would sell all sorts of professional computers with a fancy design, running this operating system that looked incredibly fancy. I am pretty sure that the only reason that they switched processor type is because the market demanded it, that they simply couldn't continue to use IBM produced processors if they were to cope. But as this is said, one should not disregard the fact that OSX is built on an open source core, allowing it to be just a matter of time before someone finds out how to emulate the things that are different in the intel-based macs compared to ordinary intel based machines, and then somehow implement it in Darwin, making it possible to run OSX natively.
Apple is a HARDWARE vendor. Its as if Dell and Microsoft were one company. Apple is not making all this money selling iTunes software, its selling iPods, hardware. The software is the gimmee to buy the hardware. Its mostly free.
Porting the OS to PC for cloning would wreck Apple. As it was wrecking Apple in the mid 90s.
These fools keep trying to sell the business model of 1980. Its 2005! Its been 25 years. Come up with a new freakin idea. The only reason why it worked for MS is they got in first. Look around, is selling an OS helping any other company to surpass Microsoft? And if this plan is so great, how come MS hasn't ported itself to work on Apple hardware?
Apple discovered that dealing with IBM eventually ends in failure. There simply isn't enough time nor enough conference rooms to sufficiently capture all of the billions of passive-agressive do nothing opinions the naysayers at IBM have to throw at you. Ultimtately the basic truth of dealing with IBM is that success doesn't matter, sales don't matter, nothing matters except slavish compliance with the PROCESS.
Then I guess...
..full of losers and little Napoleons.
Major Linix Co == Two-bit Nothing Company
IAWTC
In fact, I sit downstairs on my Compaq laptop (running XP Pro) and VNC into my mini (which is upstairs in my room). Yes, I'm lazy, but the experience is so much better.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
As it says at the top of the article, "Updated: 06-19-2005".
Paul Beardsell
Let's see how well that worked before for anybody except Microsoft.
Palm spins off PalmOS and licenses OS here and their hardware. Result: Palm corp gets nearly destroyed, Handspring merges back, and Windows Pocket takes off.
And then there's the fact that Steve Jobs tried exactly the same thing before, with nearly the same operating system back when it was grey instead of lickable: OPENSTEP.
How well were they able to keep up with drivers for modern hardware? Very poorly.
How well were they able to convince major PC makers to include OPENSTEP as pre-built option, at a competitive price? Not one bit.
Did this make NeXT Inc, stronger or weaker compared to when NeXT made hardware? Much weaker.
Jobs had a near-death experience doing exactly this strategy.
There's also the fact that this puts them in direct competition with Microsoft, attempting to copy Microsoft's business model, and competing with Microsoft for clients.
How well has this worked for IBM {OS/2}? Not very well at all.
How well does this work for Linux, which is even free and has zillions of people trying to write drivers? Only marginally, after 10 years. You can't easily click a button and get a Linux based Dell (especially a laptop) with everything pre-loaded, supported, and with all features working. After 10 years.
Ah yes lets let Michael Roberson speak, someone who uses a propetary protocal for Skype and forces people to pay large sums of money each year to use Linspire's advanced features.
Linspire is total trash, the AOL of Linux. Skype is good, but for such a open standards and competition like guy he sure doesnt like to play nice with Skype. If anything Skype is more like a microsoft product with how much propetary code is in it and how they are fighting people being able to interface with it.
Oh and he doesnt understand a buisness modle or how to read a fanancial report aparently. Seems he doesnt comprehend that OS X only works if its on a restricted platform that apple can sell as a premium product. Apple makes its money off of hardware, not software. Apple could never support the entire IBM Compatable range of hardware (compeeting standards and half assed clones).
No, he just wants to Kill OS X because OS X is more likely to take market share from him then any other Linux distro.
Is this the same Linspire that was such a huge market success in the home computer arena? OOO, yes... let's take business advice from him!
That should be stable enough.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Not to mention having the freedom to make superior machines without the Ivory Tower Syndrome.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
2nd url was supposed to be this, oops!
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Lots of these posts show that people simply don't understand what Steve Jobs is trying to achieve with the Apple corporation and its products. Everything about the Apple "experience" is thought out in rather minute detail. Even the packaging of an Apple product, the design, color, even smell of the box the product comes in is carefully thought out. If you really think that Steve Jobs will let OS X run on any crappy generic box you really haven't paid attention. Apple the corporation and Apple's products are a direct extension of the vision of the CEO. Jobs wants excellence and pursues it the way a great artist pursues perfection. I think some economic realities prevent him from achieving perfection sometimes (outsourcing hardware manufacturing to Taiwanese manufacturers to keep products relatively price competitive). Apple is what it is today (a multi-billion dollar boutique Hardware/Software integrator ) by choice not because of stupidity.
Thanks to Asus you can now have that Pentium-M coupled with the latest motherboard technology.
How long until AMD does the same thing, I wonder?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"It seems Apple was tired of losing the gigahertz competition to the PC world. Apple had been promising faster computers for some time and had not been able to deliver them. In addition, they were frustrated at IBM's inability to produce a fast low-powered chip for laptops."
:-)
Hmm, where did he get that idea... possibly from THE FUCKING WWDC KEYNOTE?!?!?
I think we need a new federal law where any journalist who says 'OMG Apple is dieing!!!11' needs to lick Steve Job's balls in public if Apple is still profitable 1 year after the date of publication. (Or should that be handled at the state level?)
PS: The OS is already 'ported', it just isn't available to the public.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Steve Jobs did this exact thing once before. I think he'd rather catch pancreatic cancer again before repeating that playbook.
My humble opinion is that Apple should create a HCL (Hardware Compatability List) like Sun does for Solaris and say if your box has X in it we support it. If it doesn't your SOL. There is WAAAAY to much shit hardware out there that they don't need to support.
That precisely describes OPENSTEP. When Steve Jobs ported his OS to generic PC's and tried to have a hardware-compatibility list of sane perepherials and cards. When were "fat binaries" invented? Yes, about 1993, by NeXT, for this very purpose, to go from motorola 68040 to generic PC's.
And that was back when OPENSTEP was zillions of times better than Windows, rather than OPENSTEP-based MacOS X being only just significantly better than Windows.
The result was that it sucked really hard as hardware manufacturers never bothered for a millisecond to make an OPENSTEP driver, and there's no way that NeXT could have even remotely kept up with all the crappy hardware being churned out all the time.
With this market move Apple has to become a software / services company. They can no longer be a hardware company as their primary focus.
And what reputation does Apple have for software services? Will they start somehwere down well below job-jettisoning Fiorinized HP?
Or maybe it will go exactly the same way as NeXT as they they had to jettison their OS and start making Objective-C development environments and "custom programming" services and Web Objects for Windows. And even though the technology was zillions of times better than standard Windows crap at the time and all the other crappy web services, how well did that work? Answer: very horribly, until they were bought by Apple to fix Apple's OS problems.
Why can't Apple be a hardware company as their primary focus? They do have some significant ability in hardware engineering.
Heard of Powerbook? iPod?
Oh by the way, how well is Solaris x86 doing on generic PCs at Fry's? What, you say the guys working there think it sounds like an Xbox game?
In truth, Solaris x86 is being used nearly exclusively by paying customers on Sun's own Opteron-based hardware.
There's another major strategic consideration.
If, as they are doing, they switch to Intel based CPU's for their own hardware: they gain a powerful best new buddy in Intel. Microsoft doesn't care too much yet they're not directly trying to steal away their prime customers.
If Apple gives up hardware and sells only OS to generic PC makers what happens?
They compete against Microsoft in Microsoft's prime business model. They have no powerful friends like Intel or IBM to shield them from Microsoft's wrath.
Remember, there is a 100% Republican US government now. You think anti-trust actions will be successful at restraining Microsoft's vengance?
Apple is much safer on the friendly side of a powerful monopoly like Intel instead of being scheduled for termination by Microsoft.
First Robertson needs to justify why Apple should take their strategic direction from Linspire.
You did a great job of acting there. I realize you're making a lot of that stuff up [well, the file renaming problem isn't that bad, but it is really annoying], but it was so funny that I don't mind. Great job.
To me, all this talk about how Apple should port OS X to an Intel box is silly.
/. afterall -- but I know a lot of die-hard Windows users who wish their laptops were as cool as the ones their Apple friends use.
Honestly, if I could run Windows XP on a sexy, stable, slim Titanium I would do it.
I couldn't care less about the Apple's operating system, but when it comes to great hardware they seem to know what they're doing very well.
I realize a lot of people out there will disagree -- this is
-David
His judgment was questioned for killing the clones, for killing the Newton, for adding colors to the Macs, for removing the floppy drives, for abandoning OS 9 and much of its interface conventions, for opening stores, for jumping to Intel, for entering the music industry, etc., etc., and I'm sure I've left out about two dozen other gripes. It would seem to me that one only needs to look at the Apple of 1997 and compare it to the Apple of 2005 before it becomes readily apparent any living creature on the planet with half a brain that Apple knows what the hell they're doing already.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
They should not decide, they should divide. One high class PC/iPod/etc company, and one software company to develop and publish OS X ++ That would leave the hardware part to blossom if it is worth it, or die if its not.
Been there, done that. They tried allowing Mac clones and it hurt them badly. And that was when they had some control and a royalty. Shipping Mac OS X on generic PC hardware would kill their Mac hardware sales. It would be suicidal.
One of the various facts that you are ignoring is that MacOS X's stability is in part due to limited hardware options, drivers generally come from Apple or other relatively reliable sources. Part of the instability of Windows is the various pieces of cheap-a** low-budget hardware and their questionable drivers.
Apple has already decided, they chose to be a hardware company. That is why the software is used to exclusively promote the sale of their relatively expensive, with the exception of the Mac Mini, hardware.
I don't think that IBM's lagging in the almighty speed department had much to do with Apple's decision. I think it had much more to do with IBM telling Apple that it would have to play 2nd. fiddle to both of the upcoming game consoles (in terms of fabrication share).
That, coupled with an already "checkered" relationship, pushed Apple to look elsewhere.
Cheers,
- slacker
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
Remember, at this point in time, Apple was making some of the worst hardware offerings of all time... the Quadra ring a bell? Power Computing and Umax were actually *better* hardware! If nothing else, it forced them to compete.
...that this guy doesn't know what the @#$@ he's writing about. If you can boot Windows XP on an bloody Apple Intel architecture development system, it is a PC.
The statement "I'd run OS X if I could run it on cheap hardware" is moot. Joe user upgrades operating systems when he upgrades PCs, and Apple already offers an inexpensive solution.
There's always the argument that you and I (people who know how to install an operating system) would run it on existing hardware, but that's comparatively small when you look at the entire market.
It really doesn't make sense for Apple to license OS X for use on just any box.
If apple were to release OSX for the general market it'd give Microsoft a run for their money . I'm willing to bet that given the choice of either OSX or Microsoft allot of people would hit apple . Unlike Linux the general public doesn't view OSX/Apple as being complicated . As a matter of fact people view apple as windows for dummies . I hear people say it all the time . I love the stability of OSX myself . Microsoft would be hard pressed to provide a more functional and stable operating system than OSX . Also if apple did this maybe they could subsidize their computer pricing with their software sales and thereby sell more systems at a lower price and make it back up on the software . FOOD FOR THOUGHT .
That would be because the clones were never supported to run OS 9. Hmm... now that I think back, I *think* the last supported software for the clones was 8.5 and yes, you may be thinking, what about 8.6? Not supported officially either, but we helped out when we could. The 9 line was hard and firm, for solid technical reasons, the 8.6 line, was slightly less so. It worked well for some clones, and terrible for others.
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
I wouldn't consider an authority someone who's so out of touch that he's working to REDUCE the security of his product by having everyone run as root, when even Microsoft is trying to go the other way and Apple has made "root" unnecessary.
Apple's Disappointment? WTF? I don't think Apple is disappointed about what Apple did... Perhaps it could have been rephrased to maintain the quote, like this: "talking about what a 'Colossal Disappointment' Apple's move was".
That wasn't enough, though. The subject is that Apple isn't switching to commodity PCs, but the rest of the blurb is unrelated quotes about IBM's supply problems. Why? Sure, that's in the linked article, but so is "selling iTunes", and a "consulting company specializing in Macintosh", but they aren't related to the main subject either.
Interestingly enough, the terrible blurb leads to a terrible discussion. All the highly rated comments on this story are idiotic (I know I'm setting myself up here).
Nonse that's been beaten-down time and time again. People spewing nonsense, like: because Windows is unstable, and MacOS is stable, MacOS must be stable because of it's limited hardware compatibility. This all completely disregards the fact that OSes like FreeBSD are incredibly stable, and on the same diverse commodity hardware that Windows runs on.
People complaining about Lindows/Linspire.
Nonsense about hardware reliability.
Baseless comments that the (no doubt more expensive) Apple PCs will displace current PCs.
And of course the same old crop of "Apple makes money on hardware not software", and the others saying "Apple makes money on software, not hardware". And more debates on why Apple switched to Intel.
I've been tired of loads of Apple stories on
With the common dupes, terrible editing, slashvertisements, other stories that only merit a yawn, etc., I wonder... Are
Maybe a few others that agree, or at least understand what I'm saying, will read this before it gets modded down to -1 with the trolls and flames.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Apple should continue being both a hardware and software company, but not restric artificially OS X86 from running on non-Apple hardware. Simply waive any support if OS X is not run on Macs, that's all. This way Apple could have it both ways; maintain the hardware business and increase the hihg-margin software business. And before anyone tells me the hardware business is the better one: bullshit. Margins on hardware sales have always, even in the most lucrative (compared to other hardware) workstation market, margins have always been in the low 10s of percent. Compared to software, where theoretical margins can reach 100% - why do you think Microsoft is doing so good.
Sigged!
>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.
Well THAT worked well didn't it?
XBox Linux
It took all of what, 6 weeks before Linux was loaded on an XBox?
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
First, who the hell is this mutha giving advice on how to strike it big in the desktop computing market. Isn't he the founder of linspire, the over-hyped rehashing of Debian that was suppose be this big monopoly buster but fell short. Linspire isn't even in the same ball park as Apple. Some jackass actually posted this shit.
You know in the seven years I used computers, I learn one thing. A computer is not box with assorted electrical components. Its the synergy between hardware and software. A "computer" without software is a 35lb paper weight and software without a "computer" are table coasters. You need both to have a true computer. I believe this is a why Steve Jobs- who is a technologist first and a businessman second- is so intent on controlling both. With control of both, Apple produces the best user experience in the market today.
Flip the coin, look at Linux. By all rights, it developers try to make it something for everything. People try to install it all over the place. But in the end, not many want to use it to surf the web, read email, type papers, etc.- the very fundamental stuff that make computers an integral part of our lives. A reason this is that in some configurations installing Linux is a breeze with everything working satisfactorily but with others its a damn nightmare even with good distributions. A notebook with wireless but Linux can't use it because it lacks the driver is crippled (You'll never say that about a Powerbook with OSX). For a techie this is frustrating but for a non-techie it is downright impossible.
Now, I read a lot of posts from so called techies who think Apple releasing OSX is such great thing. But it is actually a fallacy because the very act will erode the quality of OSX. Its all been done before and it nearly kill Apple. Remember OS 7, it was crap compared to Windows 95 and for an OS that is a bad thing to be considering 95 was total crap. That was the OS when Apple was trying to be the next Microsoft but actually was digging its own grave. Controlling both hardware and software is not a bad thing. Apple can assure that their computers will work because there will be no hiccups between hardware and the software. Moreover, Apple can dedicate more resources to innovation in both the OS and the hardware. This is why OSX beats the pants off of XP and I suspect Vista as well. This why OSX has gotten 3 major upgrades with new great features while Microsoft is still working on Vista and omitting features that won't be ready in time. Apple does all this and it still bests Dell and HP in hardware design. Apple releasing OSX for commodity hardware will probably put on the same level as Linspire. Guys, gals, Wake UP!!!
It is true, commodity hardware is cheap, but that is exactly what you get- CHEAP!
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Despite the fact that Intel invented USB in 1992-94, we sould thank Apple for making it popular. How many USB devices were mass marketed prior to the iMac? I remember to be tempted to send the USB ports of the PC's that I assembled to the trashcan in 1996 because I couldn't find or afford any device to conect in them.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
I find it interesting that the writer claims that intel have an edge over the PowerPC. It makes me wonder if they have actually ever seen any benchmarks that compare the raw performance between any of the Power range of processors and the intel range. I can understand that at this stage there is no "mobile" Power Processor however the majority of processors apples sold recently have been desktop replacements from many of the reports that I have read (must take that with a pinch of salt).
Well, long before he was the head of an MP3 or major Linux company, he ran a software and systems consulting business called "Mr. Mac". Troll the wayback machine for mrmac.com.
Also in that time frame (early 90s) he started, and stopped, and started again the mac-mgrs mailing list. I know this because I took over that list from C. Gary in 1995, who took it over from Michael a few months before that. The list is still going fine, and after TidBITs (whose server is two racks over from the mac-mgrs.org list server ironically), is probably one of the longest running Mac-oriented mailing lists on the 'Net.
If you are out there Michael, give me a holler sometime... almost 10 years since we last spoke. =)
--chuck
Shortly after that last argument was generally accepted (internally) they went broke.
Most of the arguments about freeing X are in this category. The most striking example is people who claim that Apple is not competing with Dell or Microsoft, because it is offering tightly coupled hardware and software in a controlled experience for the user.
What is wrong with this argument is that it confuses a strategy with a market segment. Consider the argument on e-world. e-world was in a different market segment from the ISPs, because it offered a tightly controlled environment of bundled content and commications. Wrong. That was the strategy it was pursuing. Similarly, Apple is pursuing a strategy of competing with MS, Dell and the other hardware vendors by offering its tightly controlled whatever. But it is in the same market. Its just that its offerings and this strategy appeal to a very small proportion of the market, which explains why share has falled from 10% or so 10 years ago to 2% last year.
The problem it has is not justifying the strategy that produced this decline, but changing that strategy to one that will allow them to compete better. If something fails for 10 years in a row, it is probably not going to turn around with more of the same.
Now, there will be those who will say that market share doesn't matter, our strategy is to be a niche player. Yes, this is another argument which failing management teams commonly use. It is the tactic of claiming that the undesired outcome of a strategy is the new purpose of it.
The capacity for self deception among people in charge of a failing business is enormous, and their inertia is probably the greatest threat. What you have to do is not accept and justify what the market does to your strategy, but plan, act and change it. Otherwise, what are you paid for? Administration?
I think it would be more of a mistake to release a generic x86 install of OSX. Its not ready to compete against MS yet. The only reason OSX has stayed as efficient as it has been is because of the closed hardware environment of macs. The main reason Windows is so sluggish effeciency wise is because of its years and years of backwards support. Not to mention that most of the problems that users encounter with XP are hardware related (yeay for bad drivers). Forcing OSX to run generic x86 hardware would cripple Apple's support and give OSX a black eye it doesn't deserve. I think this will change though. As OSX-86 gets through some more revisions, I could see Apple releasing it as a standalone install, but probably limiting it to certain hardware to begin with and building from there.
All of the posts I've seen are looking at this move as how does this affect, me or apples business model or their product. I'm seeing this IBM vs Intel.
On one side we have IBM who had certain comitments when apple signed on with them such as Mhz. who has seemed awful distracted by the cell and Xbox, both of witch have massive amounts of multithreading a much bigger step than moving to the 86.
Now we have intel who is not making any radical changes/gambles in architechure, because of the need to support legacy systems. Intel who is also cheaper and wants them badly. Who would you choose
_I_ didn't do anything. I meant the POST was aiming for funny.
I have no idea who's in that vid.
^_^
Apple releasing Mac OS X for the x86 platform would be a good strategy. Take Sun's Solaris 10 as an example. They released it for SPARC as well we x86. The result is they still get customers using their product and seeing how good it is. For the big businesses and the user who depends on stability and reliability, they know that running Solaris on a SPARC will give them better results then on a commodity system. The same will go for Apple.
Imagine, all the iPod lovers out there and all the people sick of Windows. No problem just go to your local retailer and purchase Mac OS X, install, configure (if need be) and your away. Your iPod will work better, you will have better security and just better all round. Everyone knows a computer is as reliable as its affordable and people will know that Mac OS X will run better with better reliability then a cheap Dell etc.
Sure Apple will lose sales of they're hardware at first but it will slowly pick up again and be stronger then ever, this as well as lowing prices and Apple will become a number 1 supplier in computer systems.
Besides I think Apple is the only company currently who has the power to save us from Windows hells. Linux is still not there yet unfortunately.
Though I'm an x86 user and always have been, there have been times I've wanted to switch to Apple. The only reason I havn't done so is simply because they're expensive. The entire idea of Apple's hardware being so "exclusive" does more good than harm. For instance, compatibility is virtually guaranteed. Also, it's a sort of rebellious attitude against Intel's monopoly. Well, since I couldn't afford Apple, I always used AMD to perform my rebellion. When I heard the news, I was quite shocked. I always thought Intel was one of the "enemies" of Apple? Then in a desperate attempt to gather Apple's dignity in my own mind, I was hoping Intel was only going to manufacturer the PowerPC chip--wrong. It's certainly a sad time for Apple fans. This is quite comparable to Robert E. Lee surrendering the South.
The only place Apple really could get away with locking you into Apple hardware is in Quartz. The kernel is open source and people are already running Darwin/XNU on generic PC hardware. Most of the basic drivers, likewise, are open source. But they could easily make the Quartz acceleration only work on Apple video cards. They kind of do already... ATI's video cards for Apple don't just have PPC-compatible firmware, they have a bunch of Apple-specific OpenGL extensions.
Apple uses the MHz issue as an excuse, they want the Intel DRM feature!!!
The author seems to assume that Mac hardware is proprietary still. Yes, in yesteryear Apple was very proprietary, but they had to be to be the performance king of the time (NuBus far outshined 8-bit ISA, ADB was better than serial keyboard/mouse, etc) but with the maturation of the consumer PC market, Apple has embraced openness in its hardware.
.) but the average consumer doesn't care what their computer is as long as it runs their software. And, as anyone who's installed Windows on hardware OTHER than what a PC it was shipped with will attest, driver/hardware compatability can be quite a pain. And even with the hardware Windows ships on, Blue Screens are often the result of drivers being updated, something outside Microsoft's control.
No longer to Apple computers require specialized ROM code to run. No longer are there custom backplanes or peripheral cards. If you look at the Macintosh motherboard now and compare it to a PC's, you'll see it uses the same industry standards: PCI, SATA (or SCSI), ZIF sockets, DIMMs, etc. Apple isn't stupid, it costs more to develop hardware in house and to maintain their profit margins it makes sense to use standard parts these days.
The only remaining differences between the platforms is mostly CPU and BIOS/Firmware implementations. Change those and you HAVE "ported OS X to the PC". In fact, Apple's developer Intel boxes do boot Windows XP.
It sounds like his major beef is that OS X won't be supported on GENERIC PCs . . . I.e. you can't buy a Dell with OS X on it.
I don't think that's a dissapointment, it's good business sense. The geeks who want OS X on Dell's will of course find a way to boot strap the OS (intercept the DRM calls and make OS X think it has the right DRM chip . .
Apple sticking to their hardware platform will ensure they can have 100% compatability and avoid being derided for lockups the same as Windows has.
The real key is if they can offer Macs at the same price points as vendors like Dell. If they can, I doubt anyone other than geeks will care. If they can't, they'll likely continue to lose market share as the end consumer cares more about price and compatability than the look of the machine.
I take a iBook G3, load up 10.3.9 on it with all the software we use. I can then take this to an emac, imac (Tray load, slot load, Bouncy head), iBook G4, Powerbook, G3 G4 G5 PowerMac and start any of these into FireWire 'Target Disk Mode' and clone the drive to any of these machines. No additional installation neccessary. No driver conflict. Just works.
I look over to our MPC (formerly Micron PC). We have to make sure that we order the same exact PC in order to Ghost. If we have one change, we'll have some diffuculty. Especially if it has a different NIC card because that is an entirely different ghost boot image. If one of our departments are forced by the vendor to use Dell or another PC vendor. Ghost won't work. Ghosting desktops to laptops? Haven't even thought about it.
It's easy to take a look at two machines that are separated by six years. A tray load iMac can have the same image build as our iBook G4. Take any vendor and use a 6 year old desktop build an image to use in their newest Centrino machine and make sure that wireless card works without having to load any software. Now try it with Linux.
The idea that Apple built one printer driver that works and the other vendors just create a defenition file that describes what the printer is capable of is great. You still have options and it still works.
The only disapointment I have right now is the possibility of loosing the 'Target Disk Mode' because of the BIOS.
If Mercedes-Benz was finding that having 1% market share meant that you could only refuel at 1% of the gas stations, they'd do something to increase their market share in a hurry. Like, oh, buying a generic US auto-maker like Chrysler.
/. as well?
Hold on, that happened, didn't it? I guess even a luxury car maker needs a commodity product to keep the bottom line looking good.
The day that Apple starts allowing MacOS to run on any old computer with the right CPU is the day that I stop buying Apple products.
Promise? Will you stop posting bad analogies to
Yes, Solaris x86 and Be don't worry about this. But AFAIK Solaris has no marketshare among non-geeks, and Be has no market whatsoever.
Palm's problem is that Hawkins doesn't actually give a shit for his customers, and just like making cool shit until he gets bored with it and dumps it for the next cool shit he comes up with.
Palm should still be making cheap (really cheap, as cheap as Moore's-law lets them, as much cheaper than a Zire as a Shuffle is cheaper than an iPod Mini... $40 or less) low-power long-battery-life 68000-based handhelds, and they should be on the checkout line of every Kroger and Walmart in the country.
Plus, they should be doing whatever Sony wants to get them to bring back *their* 68000-based Palms in the US market.
Or, if they're going to put an ARM in there, upgrade the OS so the apps are running native ARM code instead of mostly running under a 68000 emulator... so they can get decent performance on a low end low power LOW PRICE processor running at 40 or 50 MHz.
Palm is like Apple would be if Apple was still running Mac OS 8.1 under 68000 emulation on their G5s. There's nothing Apple or anyone else can learn from the mess Palm has made of what used to be the only credible handheld platform out there.
I bought a Mac Mini for my daughter, and I'd happily buy OSX Intel for my Thinkpad if Apple was willing to sell it to me... but I'm still using my Clie SJ22 because there's only been one handheld made since then that's even attracted my interest... and it's discontinued too...
I used to be an absolute linux zealot -- you know the kind, who kept trying to convince everyone that Emacs was all the word processor anyone needed. I bought a Mac because I liked the powerbooks (and intended to load linux on it), and instead kept OS X and have never looked back. You're right on the money.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Let's say Apple releases OS X x86 for generic x86 hardware. It's a box right next to Windows XP.
Let's say they don't. Let's say Apple releases OS X x86 through HP and Lenovo, so you can start buying Thinkpads and Pavillions running OS X and don't have to deal with Apple's Bloody Stupid Hardware. Yes, stupid. Powerbook keyboards suck, and I'd have paid more for a real desktop Mac than I did for a Mini but Apple thinks I'm independently wealthy and have two grand to splurge on a G5. No, the eMac and iMac aren't even in the running.
You go on about this possibility as if it's some big secret that ONLY YOU could have thought of. It's not. There's a whole boatload of people out there who are really bloody tired of Steve Jobs boutique designs and just want a regular desktop computer that doesn't suck running an OS that doesn't suck.
Apple hasn't made one since Steve Jobs took over. The only good thing about the Intel switch is that it provides a possibility of that happening again. Whether that involves buying a copy of OSX Intel at Best Buy and sticking it on my generic PC, or buying an HPMac running it, I don't care, and neither do most of the other people who speculate about what Apple might do next.
Unfortunately, I find it hard to believe that the New Apple is willing to let that happen.
Please name me one "Hardware" company that is larger than Microsoft.
Keep in mind that Apple is a "Hardware" company in the same way the Dell makes their own processors and motherboards. Dell doesn't and Apple isn't.
Apple has demonstraited something very important for a software company to show: they have transitioned between 3 seperate CPU baseline platforms in less than 10 years (Micrsoft, are you up for this?). Apple needs to make the commitment and make the jump; if they can't they are doomed to obsecurity.
The bottom line is that a few weeks after Apple releases their Intel product line, hackers will have OS X cracked and moved to non-Apple hardware (this law of unintended consquences is something that Apple seems to have a hard time working with). At that point in time, Apple will be forced to deal with this issue.
Kinda makes you wish Transitive was a publically held company (I could care less about Apple's stock due to the quality of decisions that are currently being made at that particular non-comprehension of the software industry institution) .
What is wrong with this argument is that it confuses a strategy with a market segment.
That's a really nice way of putting it. It's the perfect answer to the people who go on about Apple being the Mercedes of computing.
Because Mercedes didn't confuse a strategy with a market segment.
That's why they bought Chrysler.
The fact is that most of the folks complaining that OS X won't run on generic hardware are folks who want to run OS X on their own hardware.
You mean like my Powermac 7500? Which I've been running OS X on? Until Apple came up with the Mini, I was planning on keeping on running OS X on my 7500 (or a Beige G3) because I didn't like any of Apple's newer hardware (none that I could afford, anyway)... back in January even a Powermac G4/400 cost MORE than a Mac mini!
My guess is that most of these same people wouldn't bother paying for the OS either. They'd just pirate it.
I bought both Puma and Jaguar for my 7500. Even though Apple didn't support it and I had to buy a third party processor upgrade and use a third party hack to make it run.
I'd buy Leopard for my Thinkpad, if Apple would sell it to me. Unless Apple teams up with IBM (err, Lenovo) again and produces a Thinkpad-influenced Powerbook, though, I'm out of luck. Because none of the current crop of Apple's laptops appeal to me at all.
...you'd feel differently.
Most people don't have the time to frequently tinker with their computer. My PC is completely made up of Big Name products. Nothing weird at all in there. And I *still* have to deal with frequent glitches and weirdness.
With my mac, I don't have to deal with that.
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
At home, my girlfriend used to have a WinTel box... then I got tired of fscking fixing it almost *every* night when I came home from work (no second shift for me, thank you)... ...So, I brought her a Mac Mini (she already had n ipod mini). My words to her were, "if I buy this, I won't be able to fix your computer (..ever).
Imagine my surprise when I found out she had upgraded her Mac Mini to Tiger all by her self.
When the intel Macs hit the strete, I'm there and I'll pay the preimium to be able to have it all on one platform.
My only wish is that Apple would open OS X licensing to other intel hardware. Apple really needs to wake up and smell the fact that they are indeed a software company (and that being a "hardware" company is doing nothing more than holding them back).
Don't forget how well it worked for BeOS.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Such is the myth that Redmond has created in the minds of average computer users, that as much as they may hate and swear at their Wintel boxes, they keep buying them. It's a little creepy really. Maybe we need some sort of de-brainwashing/rehab clinic for them.
Yeap, unfortunately as you say it's all too true. I've had debates on this with some who should know better. Occasionally someone will say they need MS Office or Word because that's what they get from others. So what, MS has Office and Word for Macs, Office 2004 for Mac - Standard Edition, but while you can get Word to run in Linux you have to go through hoops to get it to work. Basically it's a fact that most word processing documents are Word which is a proprietary format and other word processors don't read and/or write it well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Let's face it, Robertson's article and the b.s. technical or market considerations are a sham. How many billions of innocent people have been victim to Gate's blue screens of death? What effect has his deffective products had on our GDP and national phyche? How many times have we all utterred "F-in Gates! F-in Windows!" How many marriages has these outbursts broken? How many small children and small furry animals have cried because Mommy or Daddy has a Windows problem? Will this man get away with his crimes? Jobs is getting old. He's had a brush with death. Robertson would have been more honest if he said, "Goddamnit Jobs, make Gates suffer. Please, I can't take him down. Maybe you can't take him down. But it would be worth it just to make him sweat. Think of humanity!! I know you're older and wiser, but--Put on those sexy red shorts and throw that hammer one more time!!!!"
When Macs use different hardware the value can be perceived. When the Macs use the same stuff that's in an Intel machine the price comparison becomes an issue.
For the vast majority of actual Mac users and potential Mac users the CPU is irrelevant, they choose Apple for the Operating System. The remaining people are either locked into Mac due to a particular application program or they have large computational jobs that actually benefit from a RISC architecture. Both of these cases are quite rare.
Only one group is truly devestated by the switch, Apple PR. They no longer have the fake PowerPC vs Intel issue to base an ad campaign on.
Have I missed the boat on this?
It really seems pointless to talk about porting OS-X to common x86 PC architecture when it seems likely that any forthcoming 'Intel-ified' Mac hardware will be completely incompatible.
The numerous reasons for this (notably, Apple not wanting to give up control of their hardware div.) have already been mentioned.
Anyone who wanted to hack OS-X for Intel Mac to run on generic x86 PCs would have their work cut out for them. They would have to do almost as much work as getting OS-X PPC to run on generic x86's, which AFAIK would involve creating a hardware emulator environment.
Sure Apple will lose sales of they're hardware at first but it will slowly pick up again and be stronger then ever
Were you not around in the mid-to-late 90's when Apple's cloning experiment cost them enough sales to put the company into a death spiral? The only thing that saved them was Jobs returning and doing some fancy footwork to terminate the cloners' licenses so people would have to buy computers from Apple again.
Apple sells systems. The hardware and software are complementary. They have a limited pool of hardware, they know its exact capabilities, and they take full advantage of them with software. That's synergy-- the whole being greater than just the sum of the parts.
That's why the iPod is so popular. You plug it in, and iTunes kicks off the sync process. Hardware and software working together as a complete system. No configuration wizard playing 20 Questions with you, or looking for drivers, or even telling you that it's found the drivers and is installing them. Plug it in, it works, you're done.
That's also why the Mac OS has the reputation it does. The limited pool of hardware on which it runs means it can do wicked cool stuff. Because there's so much different hardware of differing capability and quality, Windows must be coded to work with the lowest common denominator. That's why you will never (read: NEVER) be able to throw Mac OS X on some homebuilt PC and have it function as well as it does when it runs on a genuine Mac.* Even if you could, do you think Mac OS X for Generic x86 Computers would only be $129? Guess again. They'd have to make up for the pain of a lost hardware sale, so you'd probably be looking at double that at the least. If the software was that expensive, they'd have to do some serious anti-piracy activation type stuff to try to keep all you 'I want everything for next-to-nothing' types honest. But we all know it's only a matter of time before that would be cracked, and then it's a BitTorrent free-for-all. And Apple slowly bleeds to death because hardly anybody's buying their hardware (except for iPods) and nearly everybody's stealing their software.
----------
* There are only two possible exceptions to this which might happen one day in the distant future:
1. Apple licenses OS X and has a couple PC makers build systems from specific components, and adjusts OS X to support those components and only those components (in addition to what is available in Apple-branded Macs, of course).
2. Apple supports a small subset of the available commodity hardware-- like NeXT did when it ran on x86-- so you can build your own Mac OS X-compatible system by choosing parts from their list.
Don't expect either to happen anytime soon, if ever-- Apple's got enough on their plate right now with the upcoming Intel transition.
~Philly
You're that guy that walks around all day with his fingers in his ears screaming, "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA," as loud as you can because you found the truth to be so incredibly painful.
I triple dog dare you to search Google with the terms, Microsoft, anti-trust, and verdict. Chicken. Buk buk buk buk buk buk. Throw in the term illegal too if you're not already pissing yourself.
Cool. I have OS X Tiger and love it. But from your words it sounds like this Windows Vista might be the better way to go. Where can I buy it? What? O.K. When? This year? NO??? O.K. When? A ton of security features? Hot damn! You kept saying beter, better, better. So, in a year and a half it sounds like this "Vista" OS ought to be airtight, bug-free, real plug 'n play, with beauty, fun, and productivity built right in!
MS leads the way? You time travelers are so funny!
Hmmm. I'll stick with what I have that's actually working today on my computer. It may not be bug-free but it's got everything else I need. I'll take slapdash hacks over bullshit vaporware any day.
Everyone makes occasional mistakes. Happy now?
BTW, all generalizations are wrong.
- Mac User (one of the "every" group you mentioned)
This is one of those things that gets me at least a dozen calls whenever I switch people to linux. Luckily most of the time all the programs they need I get on there at the OS install, but the second most users go outside their Home folder it's confusing as hell. There has got to be a more user friendly way we can implement the filesystem.
Also, Linux really does need something like Spotlight for searching, because all the times I've tried to do it on a linux box I can usually find the file quicker manually.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
The DOJ would roll over for microsoft as it did since the regime change to Bush in the USA, just as it did for Big Tobacco by decreasing the settlement from >$30 billion to USD$14 billion, ref Doonesbury Comic strip 2005/07/31 or any reputable newspaper from May 2005.
Yeah, "we" are beyond that. Now we focus on these competitions:
1. Will it play all these games?
2. Why does this one cost so much less?
3. Is it a computer that I/my kids (will) use in the Real World (TM)?