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Mac OS X x86 Put To The Test
stivi writes "ZDNet has tested Mac OS X x86 on a Toshiba laptop. The article discusses installation process, performance and power consumption comparison and has a thorough photo gallery as well." From the article: "Mac OS X will not be available on any old x86 PC, though, as Apple wants to retain control over its hardware platform. From the company's point of view, this is an understandable position, as the margins on Apple-branded computers are much higher than is usual for standard x86 PCs. Were Apple to put the x86 version of its operating system on general release, Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Apple's own computers -- something the company is naturally keen to avoid."
I'm not sure I agree with the author's positions at all...
Mac OS X will not be available on any old x86 PC, though, as Apple wants to retain control over its hardware platform. Right, Apple wants the fastest, smoothest and most gorgeous OS. It won't run on any old X86. You don't see V12 engines in Hyundais either. You don't see marble floors in Section 8 housing. You don't see big, soft seats in coach class.
From the company's point of view, this is an understandable position, as the margins on Apple-branded computers are much higher than is usual for standard x86 PCs. Which allows them more money to develop the next OS, more money to pay employees and more money for risky R&D. If you sell $500 cost hardware for $500, you're left with nothing for the future. Yet profit isn't the only motive. By restricting the base hardware, Apple spends less on supporting what ends up being dumb users. My MS helpdesk team fixes 90% of problems that can be assessed as "sub par hardware" and "user is a moron and bought crap."
Were Apple to put the x86 version of its operating system on general release, Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones. And lose MS' favor? I highly doubt it. New techs needed, new marketing, a bifurcated customer base? Keep bullshiting, ye who know not business.
This would put enormous pressure on the price of Apple's own computers -- something the company is naturally keen to avoid Right. Every business wants to avoid competition. Even the one the editor (or his parents) works for.
I see intelligent thought behind Apple. Lexus makes a great car, with a ton of room for third party add-ons and third party service. But their smooth engine and user friendly console won't fit in a Hyundai. Are Hyundai drivers mad?
No producer of high quality goods should listen to cheapskate NewEgg buyers who don't care for quality and future development.
For instance, when setting the time zone in Windows, you must select it from a list; with Mac OS X you simply click your region on a map of the world. I shouldn't even comment on the quality of reviews like this.
Mac OS X x86 also runs on the AMD platform. ???
Final versions are generally considerably faster and less resource-hungry than beta versions. Or, "it'll run better on the required hardware, which is more than just a processor."
I'm actually excited for this move by Apple, but it changes nothing for me. I haven't seen a Mac in nearly 6,000 work orders.
Steve does not like it when you operate outside the bounds of the reality distortion field. Will Apple go after ZDNet like it does bloggers for "violating" the license agreement for OS X x86?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"Put to the test?" = Installing pre-release software on hardware it wasn't developed for?
Can't we just wait until Apple ships a mac with intel inside? I love Apple and everything, but this barrage of useless Apple articles has got to stop.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
I think that if Apple allowed third parties to make Apple clones, or Apple-Approved machines to run the new OSX on, this could potentially be good for Apple. I'd rather spend $200 on OSX for my workstation, than $200 for Windows anything -- especially if it worked properly.
This might be useful if Apple embraces the FOSS community, and lets them fill in the gaps in device drivers, etc. Keeping things closed isn't good for anyone except the company that is doing the closing, and there are many many anecdotes of where that kind of practice isn't even good for them.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Aren't some people going to find it harder to pick out their state graphically than picking from a list. Not everyone knows what a world atlas looks like.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
I think Apple will put a toe in the x86 water by locking OSX to their own hardware, so they don't compete head to head with Microsoft. If it works well for them though, I suspect they'll start to sell the OS alone.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Sell OSX x86 only through the online Apple store. Put a big line of text in the EULA saying no resellers allowed. If someone named "M. Dell" attempts to put 50,000 copies in a shopping cart, deny the transaction. Is it really that difficult?
The reason that most people want to switch to Apple is the perceived quality that accompanies it. The reason people don't switch is because of cost and lack of software.
Keeping the prices high on what is essentially commodity hardware does nothing to alleviate the cost problem.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
"Steve Jobs might not approve, but Apple's latest operating system can be installed on any x86 hardware."
That will last as long as it takes Apple to DRM the hell out of it. Or worse, dispatch it's army of lawyers armed with cease and desist orders to anyone who dares to suggest a method to install on a non Apple box.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
So... Apple has a developer version that can install on any machine, but they'll restrict it to Apple-only at release.
Apple is playing with fire. Those developer releases will certainly get out in the world. I'm also certain someone will find a way to get around the Apple-only requirement once the x86 Macs start shipping, cutting into Apple's hardware revenue.
OS X will not be available on any old x86 PC
Good. This means that, like the hardware in my Powerbook, OS X should play well with the hardware of their x86 PC. Better than trying to support all odds and ends of hardware for all x86's. Things are much more stable in the Powerbook, than the Linux desktop with the Nvidia graphics card (on which X.org crashes and freezes up the screen after 5 minutes of use).
Hey, I'm a huge fan of Linux, but sometimes, you just want things to work the way they were meant to and not spend 3 hours setting something up. This is how OS X spoiled me I suppose....
"Were Microsoft to not put the internet explorer version of its browser on general release, Netscape would begin to sell people their browsers. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Microsoft's own browsers-- something the company is naturally keen to avoid."
;)
Of course I now expect several comments telling me why this analogy is wrong. They will range from "Microsoft is a convicted monopolist!!!" to "Apple needs to control the hardware to create the best user experience". Bottom line is, Apple wants to keep its hardware prices high and doesn't want Dell to undersell them.
To address the second issue MS would argue that they need IE on Windows to control the Windows experience. That it wouldn't be the same without it. (This is true, it would probably be much better without it). To address the monopoly issue...everyone's gotta start somewhere
Everyone else seems to be harping over how Apple will lock out unapporved hardware. I'm interested in the opposite. Will Apple companies to make hardware that Apple has approved but also works for other x86 platforms? This is interesting because I can forsee "Apple Approved" being a quality standard for x86 hardware. That could potentially be a very good thing regardless of your OS or computer manufacturer.
Were Apple to put the x86 version of its operating system on general release, Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Apple's own computers -- something the company is naturally keen to avoid.
While this is undoubtedly true, perhaps the bigger risk to Apple is that without maintaining their traditionally tight control over the hardware/software integration, the Mac OS X user experience would be likely to suffer, and thus so would Apple's reputation for quality.
What would piss Apple off even more in such a scenario would be when software vendors were slow to adopt new hardware characteristics specific to Apple models simply because those features were unavailable in the clone market.
So it's not necessarily so much about a loss of revenue for Apple (which they could, after all, potentially make up for with some appropriate licensing scheme) as it is about a loss of control, which is, after all, something Steve Jobs obviously values very highly.
Then every kid out there is wrong.
While it is true that Apple sells the hardware for more than the sum of the parts; Apple hardware costs more because it goes through more quality control and has better design. Neither of those comes cheap, and they are appreciated by people who appreciate such things.
Regards to markup being your major opposition to buying Apple: what's wrong with the mini? Dirt cheap as far as computing goes and a very capable system to boot. It is actually your lust to possess the latest and greatest that prevents you from buying a cheap and good Mac? Perhaps you feel that you are something of a "top dog" with computing equipment and you don't want to loose that edge by going to the cheaper Macs and can't afford the uber-Tower G5's (which are really for professional work)?
While there are many reasons to skip Apple, price is no longer one of them!
When I was looking up tutorials online for this, I always found "It is completely illegal to install Mac os X on any old x86 machine, take no responcibility for your actions"
Then obviously they installed it on their computers (and probably downloaded the dvd img from bittorrent), and they act like they never did it. I understand they are trying to protect themselves by giving you a warning, but they have photographic proof that they did something that they shouldn't have. Seems silly to me.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
I have to agree that, while protecting their hardware business is the most important reason for Apple to try to prevent the Mac OS from running on non-Apple hardware, ensuring a smooth customer experience is nearly as important a reason.
A large percentage of the trouble I've had with PCs while running Microsoft's OSes stem from Microsoft having only vague ideas of what my hardware might be.
Even moreso, probably 80% or more of the troubles I've had with PCs while running Linux stem from the developers having only vague ideas of what my hardware might be.
I'm perfectly happy with that situation under Linux, though. Linux is a power tool; a bread-box; &c. But my Macs are as close to appliances as I've seen a general purpose PC come. That's exactly what I want from my Macs for my wife, my children, & even myself.
Now, personally, I might rather see Apple take an approach that encouraged people to use Apple hardware but allowed those who knowingly choose a worse user experience to use any hardware. Make the installer say, "Hey, this ain't our hardware, so we're making no promises. Go buy our hardware if you want the best-of-breed user experience we've been working hard to give you."
I bought a Mac Mini, just to give the Apple thing a try. And I have to say that the software is what impresses me. What comes for free on this machine is superior to many products under Windows I'd have to pay money for.
As long as people think software has no value, they are going to be unwilling to pay extra for what Apple is offering. I will not be one of those.
Is there middle ground in this?
The usual assumption is that Apple can't sell OS X x86 for generic x86 because they're a hardware company, and nobody will buy their hardware if they can buy x86.
I can think of several possible solutions. Right now Apple is making OS X x86 locked to their hardware. What if Apple was to license this locking technology to hardware vendors, allowing them to sell at a premium, a machine that could run X or Windows. This would allow them to collect part of the price.
The licensing agreement could also require that the licensing chip was only available to hi-tier machines priced at similar price points as Apple machines, as well as requiring certain hardware elements (ie, built-in BT, Firewire 800, USB2, display adapters, etc).
This would allow people interested in OS X but unwilling to buy an Apple machine to get into OS X, but still retain revenue from hardware sales and maintain the quality level associated with Apple hardware. Even if there were no restrictions on price points, the hardware licensing should make up for lost margin on Apple hardware.
What you don't seem to understand is that Apple is not driven culturally to be the biggest, they have a burning desire to be the best.
The positive changes in their market cap and bottom line are the rightful reward for their mission.
One of the less-touted aspects of the 10.4.3 update for both platforms was "enhanced compatibility with FAT16." Who the hell cares, you ask.
Better question: What still uses FAT16 specifically?
The Dell Restore partition you get when CTRL-F11-ing at startup.
Food for thought?
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
That's 50,000 Apple computers that Apple has to manufacture and ship. Let's say Apple profits $500 on each unit, that's $25 million.
Microsoft, meanwhile is making about $200 per each of the other 95%. That's 950,000 x $200 = $190 million just for software licenses -- no hardware manufacturing, no shipping.
If Apple licenses OS X to Dell, HP, and Sony to ship with clones, they have a realistic shot at 20% of the computer market in the short term.
That's 200,000 units times the $200 MS currently makes = $40 million.
So, Apple makes $40 licensing OS X instead of $25 million selling Macs per every 1 million units. That's a 160% increase in profits, and that's assuming clones completely canibalize Macs which is unlikely -- there's no reason why they couldn't still sell Macs anyway.
CONCLUSION: Apple WILL license OS X to Dell/HP/Sony. It's inevitable.
boxlight
Apple are justifiably proud of their boast "It just works". If you start letting people run OSX on any platform, then that becomes much harder, if not impossible.
Personally I think Apple should continue producing quality hardware and software for those that want the best, and not cater for the cheapskates who want to run the OS on crappy cheap hardware.
Has anyone tried it on a Tecra M4 Tablet convertible? I wonder if inkwell would work with the display. That would be schweeeeet!
You know Apple hardware is way less expensive because???
I'm sure it's because you've combed their financials and you've figured out what per unit profit is after removing cost/profit associated with R&D, retail, distribution, software sales....
Or did you simply decide this because you did the most obvious thing, you compared them to Dell? You figured a G5 is pretty much the same thing as a P4 even though Apple has to buy a relatively low volume processor from a different company, and they have to design and contractract the fab of their own system controller and motherboards, and they have smaller economies of scale, and they make a nicer box (there's about 10lb of Aluminum in just the G5 tower shell)...
That's how you know that Apple charges way too much, right?
Of course every kid knows this.. that's why the average ACT score is like 13.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
I'll preface this by saying I'm not an Apple pundit, and while my current machine is a Powerbook, my last dozen were all PCs (of the AMD kind).
Why do people get all worked up about OS X being hardware locked? If it were my OS, I'd do the same thing -- not just to secure my profits (though they are entitled, it is THEIR operating system), but to actually standardize on a reference platform that can be supported.
How much of any OS developer's time is wasted trying to account for instabilities in your cheap ass, five dollar, no name, Korean sweat shop motherboard? I don't care if Intel just botched a huge batch of boards, it happens, but trying to accomodate a hundred different chipsets and video cards and ram types and people messing with voltage...
We complain about how this industry has been around for so long, and how computers still aren't that stable? It's because there are N! possible combinations of hardware and software to try and get working together nicely, which is a lofty goal at best.
Call me crazy, but I'm at an age where I just want it to work, and my Powerbook at home always does, and my Powerbook at work always does. Part of that is the quality of the OS, and that's reflected in the (relative, not concrete) stability of the reference platform it's built on.
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
It's lucky they provided screenshots, I was wondering how different it would look on x86.
Nothing costs nothing
Try these:
(All work and no play makes the filter a dull boy)Google cache: Page 1
(All work and no play makes the filter a dull boy)Google cache: Page 2
(All work and no play makes the filter a dull boy)Google cache: Page 3
(All work and no play makes the filter a dull boy)Google cache: Page 4
(All work and no play makes the filter a dull boy)Google cache: Page 5
All Apple motherboards are manufactured by a company named Foxconn, probably in the same Shanghai factory as the boards you mention (If you look inside the case at the I/O ports on the back of the motherboards you own, chances are they say "Foxconn" in really little letters).
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Try to add a static network mount. Just drop it in fstab, and it'll all be there, right? . Sorry yet?.
/etc/sysconfig/network, doesn't work on slackware though...
:) And I can assure you from experience, getting your unix app to run on other varients of unix is not usually a piece of cake either.
... with a spiked hammer.
... but yet, Mac OS X is one of the harder common platforms to test on due to the need for special hardware and the lack of developer / "lite" OS versions.
:)
You create static network mounts by editing the fstab? Er...
BTW, mac os x can be configured to use the same files as any other unix, by default it's just set up to check netinfo first. You can modify the lookupd configuration to change this. Yeah, apple does things differently. But hey, different unix systems do to. I mean, I'm used to editing my
Now look at the syntax in `ld' for linking "framework" libraries, and hell, the fact that "framework" libraries exist. If you haven't worked on build systems, you won't understand the horror of that one.
This is a product of apple's development environment. They provide and promote their own dev environment that is not unix based. Well, sort of but not really unix based. Frameworks to me are a better solution than libraries, because they are far more flexible. Your framework can include multiple libraries for different platforms (say, um, x86 and PPC), it can include translations for multiple languages, it can include graphics and help files, etc all in one neat little package. How do you do this with unix systems? You end up with files spread all over the place, requiring installers and multiple archives for different platforms. I can easily delete everything associated with a framework. Deleting everything installed by a library is not so simple.
And of course mac os x supports plain old shared libraries as well.
If you haven't given up yet, try starting a GUI app from the console. Tip: You have to use the special "open" command, just executing it isn't enough.
Not true, you can start an app from the console just like you would on a unix system. Hint: the actual binary is not the yourapp.app folder, it resides inside there.
It goes on, and on. None of these things are all that bad (well, except for the retard who chose to ignore all compatibility and use "-framework name" instead of "-framework,name" in the linker options) but they're all very frustrating for someone developing for UNIX.
They're much less frustrating than getting your unix app running on windows
They're also good reasons to inform any Mac user who claims that "Mac OS X is just UNIX on the inside" just how wrong they are
Depends on what you consider unix... I mean, os x is unix on the inside. However, like many unix vendors and linux distros, they have their own way of doing certain things. At the core though, you have a unix kernel. That doesn't mean that your linux app will just compile and work (although many do just fine if you have the right libraries installed and use X11 for display). Now if you want your unix app to use apple's GUI components and other tools, well then, you're going to have to do more work, as you're leaving the compliant unix layer and using apple's own additions.
All these sorts of issues make it crucial to test on Mac OS X
I'd agree with that, but really it shouldn't be that hard to test. A mac mini costs less than $500. There are also a large number of mac os x hosting companies, not sure but I would think that someone out there probably offers some sort of full account where you could do VNC or something. Maybe... It'd be a good idea at least
I think that a lite version of OSX would not be worth apple's time though, I mean the resources to maintain a sepearate crippled release probably wouldn't benefit apple any. And if they just offered a developer version that is fully featured but runs on cheap x86 boxes, well, I think that would be abused pretty quickly.
I understand your frustration, but you aren't making sense.
The one great thing about the x86 platform was that we could put what operating system we wanted on it.
You can't run Solaris on it. Until recently (and still, legally speaking) you coulnd't put OS X on it. Apple isn't changing anything there. They aren't doing a darn thing to your existing x86 box, and the x86 boxes that they sell will happily run any operating system that you want. Their restrictions are software restrictions, and have no effect on the hardware that runs the new OS.
Apple is bringing to the x86 world that it is okay to lock consumers into your own brand of hardware. This is not the direction we need to go.
Bah. Your criticism is nothing new, and it isn't specific to the x86 world. Apple has always restricted its OS to its own hardware, except for the brief period where they allowed clones. The move to x86 is not some insidous plot to force their business strategy on everyone else, and it won't change the way Linux or even Microsoft products operate.
After what Apple did to the original Mac clone makers it makes one wonder how anyone can excuse them.
As an Apple shareholder, I most certainly can excuse them. The decision to open up their business to other vendors was theirs to make, and so was the decision to close it again. As a responsible business, they could not continue to hemorrage money just because it makes them look nice and "open" (even though only officially licensed clone makers could produce computers that ran MacOS).
Perhaps its just "correct" to continue to excuse their obviously monopolistic activities...
When you make a claim like "obviously monopolistic", you are assuming that nobody could observe their actions and disagree that they are a monopoly. However, many people do disagree, and the burden of proof is on you to provide examples of monopolistic behavior and back that up with informed references to U.S. and global anti-trust laws. I believe that you cannot, and should therefore stop wasting your time writing rants like this. Come to think of it, I should stop wasting my time responding to rants like this.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
I'll admit to my potential ignorance now and get it over with...I don't follow the whole MS/Apple/Intel/??? soap opera as closely as most of the Slashdotters do, I'm probably more the everyday Joe Sixpack who just wants a machine that works.
Having switched to Mac OS X from Windows, I have achieved that goal: a machine that "just works." Reboot my iBook? Why? Reboot my HP? Every other day, and make sure I take out the Linksys WiFi card, because half the time it won't boot with it installed.
OK, enough of that, back to the topic at hand.
For years the MacOS has run only on Apple hardware. Now Apple has decided to switch to an x86-based architecture and has a version of OS X that will run on said architecture in advanced development. Marvelous, now they can use x86 processors in Apple hardware instead of PowerPC processors.
Now there's a big hullabaloo about wanting to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. There are pros and cons, many of which have already been brought up for discussion here. "Sell it for standard PC hardware and you'll capture market share!" "Lock it to Apple hardware to prevent loss of hardware sales and keep the stability of running on known hardware!" All valid points.
My question to the masses is: if it is limited to Apple hardware, who cares? How is that different from present, where OS X is only available to the general public with Apple hardware?
It's Apple's OS. Whether it runs on an Apple or grapefruit, that's their own business. Frankly, as a user, I'd prefer that OS X stay on Apple hardware. It works. It's stable. Apple doesn't sell a computer or an OS, they sell a package solution--a package solution that works.
Now, that brings up the question of Microsoft and Microsoft-produced hardware. If Microsoft were to come out and say "Starting with Longhorn, Windows will only run on Microsoft-built hardware." The lawsuits would come down hard and heavy.
How is this different from Apple? With the brief Mac clone market, Apple Mac hardware has always been required to run Apple Mac software (don't know if this is true for the Apple II/III line so I can't go back that far.) Marrying OS X to Apple hardware isn't a new business practice, it's been that way since the beginning. Microsoft starting the same thing now would be abuse of it's near-monopoly position.
So to keep myself from getting long-winded I'll end with the question again. Apple OS tied exclusively to Apple hardware. It's been that way since the beginning, what's the big deal now?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Apple's design is elegant and reliable from the top down for hardware and software. Apple pushes the whole experience as a product, not just hardware or software. They even push third party manufactures to follow their example. All those made for mac products, are designed to be consistent with the Apple experience. Those are the products the Apple consumer purchase.
Do you see third party hardware being consistent with Dell's design? NO. That's because Dell doesn't design their hardware to esthetically please anyone. It's all about pushing out product. This approach also attributes to the huge number of returns on Laptop that Dell has. They don't care about the design as long as the fucking thing useable.
If I were Apple I wouldn't want to push my OS through Dell's shitty boxes that might be returned 5 times before a useable one ships. That would hinder the experience. I also wouldn't want receive support calls for someone's homebuilt fuckjob with a crappy ECS mobo and cheap ass video card so they could save a few bucks, that's what linux is for. Apple puts top quality and tested hardware in their system to go along with their top quality OS.
I could see OS X Server edition making it's way onto third party hardware before the desktop version. However, small shops are still better off with Apple's hardware as XServe, xSan and Xraid hold their own very well when consider price and features.
Solaris runs on x86.
So you're saying Apple has a monopoly on PCs? Obviously, you don't believe that. So you must think they have a monopoly on Operating Systems? No? Well, what exactly does Apple have a monopoly on then? OSX? A monopoly is defined based on controlling a market for a type of good or service, not based on being the sole producer of a particular product within that market. OSX is not a market. It's a product in a market, and has a pretty small market share at that.
Apple only sells around 10 different Macs, but Dell sells countless different machines with constant spec changes for each type. Consequentally, Apple probably sell more base spec Minis than Dell does of any given spec, so economies of scale are actually a lot more in Apple's favour than those calling their hardware 'exotic' might think.
Secondly, Apple won't be paying the Windows tax on it's x86 machines, and everybody else (except Linux vendors) will. This gives Apple a price advantage, they could actually undecut Dell if they chose to.
Why does everyone assume we'll be paying a sizable premium for an Apple machine? Because G5s looked more expensive than X86s? That's (if you'll pardon the pun) Apples v. Oranges. Now we are moving to a situation where Apple can be compared a lot more easily to other manufacturers, I think they will either be forced to be competitive, or be revealed to have been competitive all along. Certainly going with IBM/Motorola for CPUs was a big expense for them, or they wouldn't be changing to Intel, so they should have more room for price cuts when they are with Intel.
I think that a big and often overlooked factor in Apple's decision to stay a hardware company is that becoming an OS vendor would quickly shift them above Google as the number 1 target for Mircosoft's wrath, and Microsoft could seriously damage them (without even breaking too many laws this time) just by saying "No more Office for OS X". The general public don't know a CPU from C3PO and are probably going to percieve a x86 box without Office as less compatible with their Windows machine than a G5 with Office was.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Actually, I don't see the logic in your statement, at all.
Currently there is no compelling reason to buy an apple computer to run an alternative OS. Sure, you can run Linux and NetBSD, but not many people are doing that (well, perhaps on XServe, but I even doubt that). Virtual PC is bundled with Office for a reason, it doesn't actually sell many copies on it's own. I can't think of many people who enjoy spending most of their time in VPC. You can even run GNOME and KDE under the X11 layer if you want - nope, not many people doing that, either.
While this obviously isn't empirical data, I know plenty of mac users and not a single one of them are using macs primarily because of the hardware. This kind of counters your complete speculation.
I blew $2000 this year on an iMac because I wanted a nice computer that ran Mac OS X. I did the same last year on a laptop. There's no real benefit to buying a $2000 computer in this day and age without a compelling, exclusive reason. My PC's certainly didn't cost that much.
Personally, instead of this x86 bullshit, I'd rather they fixed the damn finder, already.
Static mounts:
/mountpoint
/mountpoint
/Network/<sharename> and without the 'net' option) isn't actually static, it's still mounted on first access, and this breaks some applications that seem to use access mechanisms that don't trigger the automount. The mounts also appear in a different place (/Network/<sharename> or for dynamic mounts /Network/Servers/Hostname/Sharename) than they would if the user had connected to the mount manually (/Volumes for a Go->Connect to Server mount, somewhere else in /Network otherwise).
... but neither of those seem to be true.
;-)
.app bundle - I *write* apps for Mac OS X. Hence most of the issues I outlined - I'd hardly be bitching about linker options otherwise. The problme is that unless an application is started by Launch Services (not sure that's the right name), some things are not properly set up. This results in many apps not getting their own global menu bar but instead interfering with the menu bar of Terminal.app, not getting their own dock icon, etc. The problem is confined to "real" Mac gui apps (Cocoa / Carbon) and Carbon/POSIX hybrids that use Aqua; it doesn't affect X11/POSIX apps. This w
Yes, I eventually discovered how to do this with NetInfo. It wasn't too easy to find good documentation, and there were some unpleasant complexities. For example, you can't use vfstype=afp and name=afp:///blah (even though you CAN use vfstype=nfs and name=host:/path for NFS mounts), you have to use vfstype=url and opts=url==afp://blah . This is despite the fact that:
mount -t afp afp://host/path
works, but
mount -t url -o url==afp://host/path
fails, claiming there is no mount_url command (and well, there isn't). Just to make things even more fun, a static mount (ie in
umount also deletes the mount point, but mount does not create it. fstab isn't used as it is on UNIX, but is instead merged into NetInfo on boot, where it's interpreted with entirely different semantics to what the fstab file has. Fstab is a table of static file system mounts, not an automount map. That's what automount maps are for. The `umount' and `fstab' man pages don't document these quirks, but instead refer to the conventional BSD behaviour.
I don't think there's any excuse for this sort of behaviour. If the documentation was accurate, and NetInfo / lookupd / autodiskmount / whatever did less behind-your-back magic, that'd be OK
It's all fine if you ignore the not-really-UNIX-like underlayer - there's nothing inherently wrong with most of this behaviour. However, it's incorrectly documented and looks just UNIX-like enough on the surface to suck you in before it beats you up.
I still haven't found out how to get Mac OS X to do a _genuinely_ static mount (connect at log-in time or boot-time) of a network volume without hacking the startup scripts. Even that has problems, apparently due to some issue with Carbon and Cocoa apps needing volumes to be "registered" with the "VolInfo database".
On Mac OS 9, I can just tick one box ("connect at next boot") and it just works. Well, at least 80% of the time
Frameworks:
I didn't want to write a massive speil on this. I don't think there's anything wrong with framworks, and think they solve some significant problems, especially for an OS with a drag-and-drop software installation interface as opposed to an intergrated package-manager based one. My issue is solely with the way they completely ignored the way the linker command syntax works and made up their own that breaks piles of build tools. It's a minor issue, but it's really annoying, and it's a strong point in terms of why you need to be able to test software on Mac OS X if you want to have any hope of being able to build software that'll compile there.
GUI apps from a terminal:
Yes, it is possible to launch a GUI app from the terminal. I know the real binary is inside the
>> Why did Apple choose Intel over AMD?
What Apple needs right now is a decent chip to put into laptops. The G5 is fine for desktop machines at the moment, and it will probably be competitive for a year or two.
AMD is ahead of Intel in the area where Apple doesn't need a replacement for PowerPC. But in the area where Apple is behind and needs help, it is Intel that is ahead.
But once OS X runs on Intel, there is nothing to stop Apple from using AMD at any time in the future.
The difference being that even with technically (I mean, by specification, not including whatever funky copy-protection nonsense is on there) identical hardware, Apple wishes to restrict their base.
First, the technically identical hardware is temporary, its convenient, it may be a good feint, etc. Switching to an Intel PCI chipset and Intel CPU *does not* mean you will have PC/AT compatible hardware. Apple has the expertise to design their own motherboards and chipsets. They could do anything from take their current proprietary design and replace the PowerPC with a Pentium to take a stock Intel PCI chipset as a reference and incorporate some of their custom chipset work, or simply leave out legacy PC junk that they have no historical dependency on but the currently shipping Windows does. Apple *did not* say that the current version of Windows would run on their hardware, they said they would not prevent Windows from running on their hardware. This suggests Windows will need to be ported to Apple's x86 hardware. Look back in history, once upon a time MS-DOS machines were not IBM PC compatible, the IBM PC was merely one of various MS-DOS machines. These machines had Intel CPUs and other similar hardware and benefitted from commodity parts as a result. However these systems were fundamentally incompatible, you had to adhere to the MS-DOS API to be safe. I'm leaning towards a repeat of history over a standard off-the-shelf PC design plus a DRM chip.
Secondly, Apple does not wish to restrict their user base, they wish to ensure that they survive in a meaningful sense. Apple fundamentally is a hardware company, they are famous for their software but that software is largely a tool to get people to buy their more expensive hardware(1). Their software is not really their core business, it is their core marketting to some degree. To run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware would kill their hardware business. They tried growing the Mac market by introducing alternative hardware vendors and it nearly killed them. The market did not grow, Apple's sales were cannibalized as existing Mac users flocked to the Mac clones. You can look to Linux as another example. Sun once had a thriving desktop business selling generic (with respect to the functionality that the user needed) unix boxes. Once a generic unix (Linux - again, only addressing people who needed generic unix apps/tools) could be run on inexpensive hardware Sun's desktop market evaporated. Apple would suffer a similar evaporation of their hardware market, suffer a devestating loss in revenue, and be a ghost of their former self. So a PC user may benefit from Mac OS X on generic PC hardware but what is in it for Apple. It has to be a mutually beneficial deal for it to happen, it is not, it won't happen.
(1) I have to note the mini as an exception. Unlike other systems it is pretty damn price competitive, or maybe its just that Apple's proportionately higher markup is being applied to such an inexpensive machine that the difference between the mini and a comparable PC is insignificant. Or maybe the mini's margin is much less than other Macs and the mini is being used as a "loss leader" to draw users into the Apple family. If enough people buy a bigger Mac as their second Mac whenever it comes time to upgrade Apple may have made a very good long term versus short term tradeoff.
I think it's high time you guys up your intelligence. Apple make the hardware. Apple make the software. Apple says this software runs (or should be used only on, it makes little difference) this hardware. Nothing illegal, immoral or evil. Moreover, Apple's Phil Schiller publicly declared that the company would not do anything to prevent you form running Windows Whatever on your next Powerbook (assuming it will be a x86 one). This is hardly monopoly in any sense.
Your whole reasoning sounds to me like one of a 12 year old or that of an extremely stingy person.
Mods, please read and think before you click on the drop-down menu.
It is not the fact that it is beta software. It is just that iTunes is absolutely the worst application that they could have tested.
First, iTunes is the one application in the developer build that comes as a PowerPC application. That means, it hasn't been compiled for a Pentium, but for a PowerPC, and has to be translated to Pentium code by Rosetta. Every other application would have been absolutely on par with its Windows counterpart. I first thought they might have used iTunes deliberately, but it is of course the only one where a Windows version exists, so they had to use this.
Second, iTunes music encoding (which is what was measured) is about the most highly optimised code that you can find. It takes advantage of Altivec on PowerPC, it uses SSE2 and SSE3 on Pentium, and on an elderly G3 it falls back to plain floating-point code, using all the 32 floating-point registers that the G3 has.
Guess what. Rosetta doesn't handle Altivec code. For two reasons: It is an absolute pain to translate to Pentium code, and if an application needs handcoded Altivec optimisations on a PowerPC, then you surely want handcoded optimisation using SSE on the Pentium. Because Altivec is not handled, the G3 version is translated, which is much less optimised. So we are now comparing the translation of plain floating-point code with hand-optimised SSE code. But that floating-point code uses all 32 floating point registers - and Pentium has only eight! So the translated code spends lots of time storing and loading registers, which the Pentium code doesn't. An AAC or MP3 encoder written for Pentium just wouldn't do that; it would try to use fewer variables.
3. iTunes encoding is incredibly processing intensive, while other applications are memory intensive. Memory has the same speed, whether you run original Pentium code or translated PowerPC code. Memory intensive applications tend to use the same time, whether Pentium code or Rosetta-translated code is used. If you copy 100MB of memory, the speed will be exactly the same, whether you use Pentium code or translated PPC code. With compute-intensive code, Rosetta falls behind.
4. iTunes encoding doesn't use any operating system functions. Most apps use the OS a lot, for drawing, user interface, disk access and so on. All OS routines run at full speed, with no translation penalty. Rosetta apps with lots of operating system calls will tend to be quite close to native speed, those without any OS calls will be relatively slower.
So here we have the absolutely worst case for any application: A compute-intensive application, heavily relying on Altivec code, where the much inferior G3 version gets translated to Pentium 4 code. Compared to hand-optimised SSE2 code. Exactly the kind of application where developers would create a native version as quick as possible.
(Note that with a shipping product, iTunes encoding on Windows and on MacOS X 86 will use exactly the same source code and run at exactly the same speed, because Apple will use exactly the same hand-optimised SSE code for both versions.)
The windows driver model (WDM), is, quite frankly, one of the most impressive parts of the entire operating system. It is quite a bit more flexible and a lot easier to use than the unix model, and is so simply because there are so many cheap-ass broken devices out there.
I'm sorry, but you are just wrong. The parent is correct, and obviously you've never tried to develop a device driver and in fact are an end-user at best. I have done drivers, and let me tell you - unix is a pain in the ass to develop for. There are no standard classes, interfaces, or architectures for developing a device - simply "is this a block or character device". How quaint. You get to jump through hoops and develop the entire thing yourself, with no real framework to work in. At least Microsoft provides you that much.
Microsoft blames device drivers for a simple reason: 99% of them suck ass and are written by hardware hacks who just don't understand software and can't write it to save their lives. The only reason a BSD/Unix/Linux driver will be any better is because someone more familiar with _software_ will be writing it.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Maybe if the software weren't written by baby chickens, it wouldn't take so long to produce.
First, I should note that I don't use Mac OS X much. Every time I try, it hurts - because I'm a long-time UNIX (mostly Linux) user, and nothing works even remotely "right" to my eyes. Consequently, I could easily be seeing things from the same perspective as (say) a win32 user just exposed to Linux - "oh god it's all scary and different and weird and argh!".
;-) . At other times, they're fixing a problem really well in a way that the UNIXes can't due to the constraints of history, inertia, and backward compatibility. Some of the time, they're doing both, and almost all the time there's a hefty dose of not-invented-here syndrome going on. Also, it's clear that Apple don't believe anybody reads man pages.
/changing/ quite as fast.
So, about your questions:
(1) If anything, they're moving further away from being UNIX-like with every release. Aqua, NetInfo, Launchd, etc etc etc. It's turning more and more into a whole new OS that has bits that look and work superficially like UNIX, instead of being a whole new OS with a UNIX-like subsystem that it uses for parts of its functionality. That's not a bad thing, so long as nobody tries to call Mac OS X "UNIX", though I do wish they'd do a better job of documenting what they do (or integrating it into the existing docs - a "see also" here and there in the man pages would go a long way) and making it all fit together neatly. So far, Mac OS X looks like it's an OS 1/2 way through being totally re-written, and each release includes more of the "new" OS and backwards compatibility kludges for the old one.
(2) Almost all of what they do appears to be their effort to "make things better". Sometimes I suspect they're fixing one problem with a half-assed bodge that'll cause other problems, or fixing it in a way that could arguably be done much less distruptively. None of their fixes feel very UNIX-like. (a) they're not always horrific hacks, (b) they all need special domain-specific tools, (c) the tools seem to SUCK, and (d) the changes outpace the documentation. OK, those last two are very UNIX-like
I guess they're trying to make Mac OS X into a more user friendly OS, but they seem to be paying little attention to the administrator as they go.
As an example of how they don't seem to be trying to be all that sysadmin friendly, check out the section on xinetd in the launchd summary: http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html . Nice document, nice idea re launchd, but if I ever have to configure that by hand instead of xinetd I think I'll cry . It's evidently made to be configured using launchd specific utilities, which is a trend I intensely dislike but can live with - until the tools break, as tools always do.
The single biggest things that I like about UNIX (mainly BSD / Linux) are the things Apple are taking away:
- The ability to see (relatively) clearly what the system does as it performs a task / the ability to follow what the system is doing as it does it. Solaris 10 is AMAZING in this regard with dtrace, and most UNIXes are pretty good thanks to the fact that much of the OS is human readable scripts, and thanks to tools like strace/truss and gdb.
- The ability to easily configure the system and alter the system's behaviour using nothing but a text editor, including not only config files but system scripts .
It's that last one that Mac OS X suffers for the loss of, and the one I most miss when I have to use it.
I should note that almost all of this is really from the sysadmin's perspective. Things are quite a bit more stable when it comes to programming APIs and ABIs (more so than your average Linux distro), and quite a bit better documented too. There are certainly plenty of quirks, but they're not
I note a whole lot of comments about how Apple "ought to do clones so that I could homebuild my own Mac," and Apple sux or Apple rox or whatever.
The real interest in this article is that Apple is moving forward to increase its market share. They're a hardware company and they also write software that makes their hardware really sparkle, though I have read a number of articles that suggest that their OS software created so much overhead that it's not a great server for a back-office application
But from the user's perspective -- a GUI tool to partition a hard drive, imagine that! Easy installation that starts out with a simple GUI, gosh, that's neat! -- Apple's operating system generates a user experience that sets it above many others. Apple has "done design" on its hardware and they have also "done design" on their software.
A great follow-on article to this would be a research project to teach 10 students to use Windows, 10 to use Apple's OS X, 10 to use a popular and easy-to-use distro of Linux, 10 to use BSD, etc. Then submit a survey to them after they're up and running on their computers and try to elicit how each user feels about the experience of using the operating system and the applications they would use to do regular work, like write term papers, do finances, research things on the Internet and so on.
From my own experience of having used Windows and Apple's System 7, 8 and 9 as well as OS X, I'd say my personal experience on a Mac is an easier one. I think I am more relaxed on it. I think less about computer problems than I used to and now think only in terms of getting the sork accomplished.
Apple won't allow clones because when they had clones, it almost took down the company. They need the high income stream to continue to innovate. Sorry about all of you homebrew computer enthusiasts out there who want to build your own Mac but this cannot be helped.
And there are cheaper Macs out there; the Mac Mini is being sold for as little as $499, "nicely outfitted" at $998, plus the cost of a monitor. But remember, you're not buying "homebrew." You're not buying an Acer heapy-cheapy clone from some box assembler that does not innovate. Apple should be compared to HP in terms of price because HP actually does put innovation in their computers. IBM used to but they sold out to Lenovo and now they'll fast besmirch the name. So price comparisons need to take reality into consideration -- one should not rank Apple's price with a lower-tier manufacturer.
Also, the Apple computer I purchased in 1999 is still going strong and very useful. I know of no pee cees that can last that long. This probably cuts into the perceived market share for Apple computers because, if you buy a good one, it'll last longer than the equivelant pee cee. Look at the user-installed base to see Apple's true market share. I even know of people who are still using Apple's old System software and have not transitioned to OS X. One, in particular, does audio mixing with Digidesign's Pro Tools and not Avid's because the old software that ran under the old OS meets all current and future needs -- until his Mac finally bites the dust.
Intel makes processors and motherboards. Apple went with Intel, presumably because they had something more to offer than IBM.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
It's hard to argue that the iMac is "well priced" when I can get a 3Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM and an LCD for the same price.
Very true! Especially to people who don't care about how the OS works, how the machine looks, how QUIET it is and how many features it has (Firewire, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, 802.11g, DVD+_RW DL, digital monitor connection, SATA, Gigabit ethernet, built in camera and remote). People who only shop for a computer based on cost or on its ability to run MS Word, play MP3s and surf the net are never going to be convinced that Apple computers are worth the slight increase in cost.
What really annoys me about some BIY PC owners is that they don't consider the warranty of the machine, the superior OS (Mac OS X), the lack of searching for/fighting with drivers, noise level, power consumption, astetics and sometimes feature sets, when they claim that their BIY PC cost them up to a couple hundred less than a Mac.
I'm surprised that Apple is even porting to X86 specifically, rather than having Intel design a PPC variant or license the PPC processor from the current manufacturers/owners of the design.
Why would they do that [Put OS X on X86/Generic Hardware]? Unless Steve J is trying to copy (for once) the marketing techniques of Bill G and co; and just get everyone (who knows the difference) to pirate Mac OS X instead of pirating Windows. I refer to south-east asia, mostly.
It's not often you'll hear me say this, but for once the proprietary nature of Apples product(s) - I think - make those products "better" than those that run Windows, and even Windows itself.
[In case you are wondering, I use 4 different OSes daily, so I'm confident that there is *some* legitimacy to my opinion].
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