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Roundtable on Apple's Future
John Murrell writes "Given the insatiable appetite for Apple rumors, analysis and speculation, SiliconValley.com has opened a week long roundtable discussion on the company's post-Intel future. Among those on the panel are Andy Hertzfeld, Tim Bray, Brent Simmons, John Gruber, Keven Krewell, Mark Gonzales and Leander Kahney."
You can buy a fancy computer that is relatively well built that runs OS X. But if you don't like OS X then you can put Windows or Linux on it. Most older PPC applications should work, Newer Applications have Fat binaries so both platforms work for a while. The OS has been tested on x86 in duel Development from day 1. All this ends are the annoying xPlatform is faster then yPlatform debates. Sure PPC may have its strong points but not much, this is probably a good move for Apple. While I am sure hacks for OS X that will make it run on any PC will be out most people are not going to try to hack there system to run OS X, or bother looking for it, when OS X says I can't install on my platform, most people don't have the time to make a hack for the OS. So not much will change, with the exception of some compiler flags that are different in some applications.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As a developer, I'm far more interested in a forum on the future of Objective-C. While a totally fantastic language, it still is lacking some amenities one expects from modern languages. Automated garbage collection is one such example. There are rumors (as recently as April) that Apple is/was working on a garbage collection system for Objective-C.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Apple already controls the music market, has excellent MIDI stuff, and seems to have the sound side covered. Intel's website points to significant research in the text-to-speech/voice recognition/continuous voice processing areas. As a result, if I were to speculate 5 years ahead (a long time) then I'd offer speech/language processing to be a likely avenue of exploration for the new Apple/Intel matchup.
Seriously, we always get these "what is the future of Apple" things. With Microsoft pushing their "7 flavours of Vista", I'd like to see a round-table on Microsofts future, with some serious consideration as to how they're going to survive now that varous governments (Mass.) have officially rejected their Office cash cow.
I'm in complete agreement with you...I went *from* Java to ObjC and Cocoa. To me, cross-platform compatibility isn't essential, and besides, I've just never ever gottan a Java app to run with that...crispness...that a C/C++/ObjC program has.
Of course, it helps that my target audience are Mac folks already, but XCode + ObjC/Cocoa has proven so good that I'd happily develop for any platform that could run that combo.
It's sad to think that I had access to a NeXT machine back-in-the-day and apart from firing up Project Builder once or twice, never really considered trying to learn to program on it.
I don't know gartenberg, and although I do enjoy Daring Fireball, it seems odd to me that those two would be held in the same regards as Bray and Hertzfeld, at least in this instance.
The roundtable intro describes Gruber as an influential blogger. Who does he influence? Apple? I doubt it. Although most of Gruber's posts are well written and reasonable, they're still often wrong. I don't think Steve Jobs is influenced by any Apple related sites, except maybe he's totally enraged when a rumor site scoops a new product announcement. Do you think Apple really cares what industry analysts think?
Bray and Hertzfeld are definitely smart guys, and they've contributed some great stuff, but I'm not sure I'd even give their predictions much weight. They're kind of out of the loop. This whole roundtable discussion is fun, because Apple is so secretive, and their products are so distinctive. But honestly, I think you could have a similar discussion with just about any six random people who were at least mildly familiar with the computer industry. Nothing that has been said so far goes beyond random comments that have been floating around on Apple related articles on slashdot for the past couple months.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I thought the comment regarding the yellow box implementation (sic Rhapsody era) was very interesting and plausible.
This idea is that with the switch to Intel, Apple will be porting (has already ported) and developers will be porting all their apps to Intel compile to run native... has to happen...
to continue...
iTunes on Windows has already introduced a significant amount of OS X AppKit codebase to Windows (on Intel of course)...
which means that anyone with iTunes on Windows is ready to run many of these soon to be available intel compiled OS X Apps
inside Windows, ala Yellow Box (basically an OS X runtime space on Windows).
SO..... we will end up seeing all of the Apple consumer / free apps for OS X also running on Windows inside the YellowBox space at native speeds (cause they're built for intel) and an increasing number of developers using XCode to compile apps that run perfectly on both OS X and Windows/YellowBox and decreasing number of developers not doing so as there will be no performance hit or added overhead and thr upside is you hit two OS's for the price of one. Which also means consumers can pay for one license while being able to install their purchased software on both Windows and Mac.
Over time people start thinking "I really only use the free Apple Apps and all my installed and paid for apps will run on Macs, so why not buy a Mac?"
This could take less than 5 years but at least 2 years... just long enough for Game developers to start the process.
IMHO
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I actually don't eitnrely agree...
I have a strange feeling the main reason, besides low power consumption laptop chips, that apple is doing this will be seen in the next 1.4 years. All of a sudden, "windows" only software will start running with no hitches in mac.
And I seriously doubt the x86 version of mac will only run on branded hardware. I don't think apple wants it to only run on branded hardware.
This will get them market share of the desktop OS arena, and for all the right reasons. While at the same time they'll be increasing their hardware sales.
Soon to come: sub $800 iBooks and $450 mid sized desktop cases built from good hardware at a good price with a good OS. That also run more software, since software makers will have an eaisier job of making their stuff portable.
Cheers.
-=fshalor
You've got the wrong take on DRM.
How DRM works is that content will be released that requires DRM hardware for playback. No one in the computer industry is proposing technologies that would prevent non-DRM'ed media files from playing back! And if that was going to happen, it wouldn't be using Intel's DRM technology.
A DRM-free system will keep on working like today's systems - it just won't be able to play future DRM'ed content. While DRM can be very frustrating, a system lacking it will be perceived by end users as having a bug, not a feature.
Now, a computer with CRACKED DRM support, so that it would play DRM'ed content would be interesting. Basically like an unlocked DVD player. But that's a different thing entirely.
The companies to get PO'ed at over DRM aren't the computer vendors, but the media companies. They'll need constant consumer pressure to keep the DRM rules they implement consumer friendly.
My video compression blog
Think about this one for a minute.
Sun and Apple's development efforts seem to be luring them into the same general direction (towards high-end workstations), but coming from different value adds: Solaris has a firm footing in the high-end server market, one which Apple is just beginning to crack with its computing clusters. Meanwhile, Apple has the sexiest cachet of any technology company in the world, and has what most agree to be the best designed operating system for the end-user anywhere. Why aren't these companies merging?
Just think of it. Sun, and Apple, together at last.
We could call the resultant company, "Snapple."