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Apple Joins BAPCo
DigitalDame2 writes to tell us Gearlog is reporting that Apple has joined up with Windows benchmarking consortium BAPCo as a full blown member. From the article: "This is significant because it means that Apple has now committed to Windows-based performance testing, and it will influence industry-standard testing methodologies going forward, possibly including Mac OS X testing."
It's obvious that this was just done so Apple can more easily load Windows XP by default on new Macs and phase out OS X. I mean, that's why Avie's leaving after all, his precious mach isn't used in Windows.
Does this mean that Windows Vista will be delayed yet again until it passes the Apple user interface benchmark? Maybe Microsoft should license Mac OS X.
Apple's not phasing out their #1 competitive advantage. Avie's leaving because he rich, he's worked very hard for decades, and wants to enjoy himself a bit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Is there any way MS could pull the rug out from under Apple if Apple goes further than MS likes? You know, oops, Windows won't activate on Macs anymore. I'm sure the EULA retains MS's right to revoke a license any time they see fit.
Maybe Microsoft should license Mac OS X.
You probably meant this facetiously, but if you look at the numbers for what MS blew on the Longwind debacle, and what it would cost them to buy a license for OS X, it makes sense.
When Apple was in the same boat with Copland, they were able to buy NeXT to recover from the disaster. MS has just spent several billion on a failed development project, they're going to ship SP4 six years late and pretend it's Longwind, and they really need to consider whether it's a good business decision to keep throwing good money after bad, trying to update their botched VMS knock-off.
The Evil Empire has killed off all of the other OS's they could buy, with the possible exception of Solaris. An OS-X license would cost them a couple of billion at a minimum, plus a hefty ongoing royalty, but it would cheaper than what they're doing now. As a bonus, life improves drastically for their users. Something to consider.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Vista requires _really_ powerful graphics capabilities to display its higher end Aero Glass interface. This relies on DirectX 10. Older cards will have downgraded UI. But, Apple does not need to incorporate these $-sucking monsters into its machines, as they are not required by OS X (which uses OpenGL).
This means the Apple machines will not be the ideal machines to run Vista.
Life is just a conviction.
Microsoft should be the scene of many high fives (Granted, they would be clumsy, nerd high fives) if Apple facilitates a way to get Windows working in a virtual machine in the new Intel Macs - Microsoft would win because it would mean another copy of Windows sold and Apple would win because that many more would-be switchers would finally have their last objection to getting a Mac removed.
There's a mind-boggling selection of specialty software that runs in Windows that will never get ported to the Mac, and it's very easy to imagine a near future where Windows XP takes a role very similar to X11 today - That of providing a compatibility layer for apps that for whatever reason never get around to being made native to OS X.
The only ones who would stand to lose and should be nervous are the brand name and beige box PC builders, particularly Dell, who easily could see their half of the education market disappear overnight.
I say bring it on!
"2) IBM dumping Apple as a customer"
;-)
:-)
I'm sure you meant that in jest, as we all know Apple hedged their bets and essentially two-timed IBM by keeping a fancy woman in Intel as a bit on the side. I guess if IBM claimed to have 'dumped' Apple at any point, it'd be more the actions of a 'spurned lover' trying to save face
"You aren't going to recognize Apple a year from now. And I sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to buy an Intel based Mac unless you plan on selling it on eBay a few years down the line as a novelty item"
Hmmmm... is your surname Dvorak by any chance?
To be fair, computer users generally fall into two camps regarding upgrades - the ones who do (and want to keep 'up with the Jones's') and those who don't (and will keep the machine until it breaks).
If you fall into the 'do' camp, whether you'll end up with a machine which is obselete in 2009 is a moot point - you'll have moved onto something else long before then. If you're a 'don't' type, then you'll be happily using the computer with whatever OS it came with (probably) rather than lusting after whatever's shiniest.
"If you're a Mac user you better start getting over your hate for Microsoft and Windows..."
I don't have hatred for MS or Windows. I just choose the best product for me at a given time (which happens to be OSX for everything except my legacy and web dev work, which requires a PC on which I run XP). Hate's a bad thing, but recognising the flakiness of products such as Windows and the general sloppiness of MS' approach to security, etc., is just being prudent. I choose to avoid that grief as much as possible, and I voted OSX. YMMV.
One way Apple has survived through the yars of Microsoft monopoly (besides obivously better software) is that it has able to make its system very interoperable (as much as possible) with Windows in terms of file formats and protocols. Apple has phased-out some of its own in favor of the widely used (and not necessarily better) ones.
The single biggest incompatibility has been applications, and the single biggest reason has been the fundamentally different processor. With that out of the way, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is seriously considering helping Windows apps run on OS X. Then it would have the best of both worlds - Unix-like (Darwin) codebase and Windows app compatibility.
So the fact that "Apple has now committed to Windows-based performance testing" is hardly surprising.
I've come across several comments that predict that Apple is planning to dump OSX in favor of Windows as their OS. I'm no Nostradamus, but this seems ludicrously unlikely while Steve Jobs is alive. And no, it's nothing like the switch to intel... processor flamewars were always foolishness: who really cares what processor architecture is underneath? Ask NetBSD... if it can run the OS that's what matters.
It's all about the user experience, and OSX is the experience Apple wants to deliver.
Big surprise... having used nearly every OS known to man, I can say that OSX is certainly one of the greatest ever. And it's already well past the bootsrapping stage that kills most young OSs. Ditching it now would be completely insane.
Cheers.
Whereas everything that can be seen on teh internet seems to be true, nothing about this story can be found on Apple's press page or BAPCo's website. The Apple logo is Photoshopped into the picture that BAPCo uses on their about page.
So, nice headline, but where are the facts?
I remember the first time that I saw suggestions that Mac OS had had its day. It was when the first news that Copland was struggling made its way out of Infinite Loop. A fairly well known and respected member of the UK computer journalism world suggested that as Apple were trying to port to PowerPC permanently, why not build the Copland architecture on Windows NT, whose kernel was fairly mature at the time and available for the PPC chipset. At the time it was fairly radical thinking but MS was in a far better technical position then that it is now. Of course, MS binned their PPC and Alpha support not long afterwards, NextStep became Rhapsody became Mac OS X, Linux matured to become a genuine alternative to big iron Unix and Windows found competition both on the desktop and in the datacentre again.
In 2005 Steve Jobs announces that the next generation of Macs will run on Intel processors and almost immediately everyone assumes that this will mean Windows in some way. But with the apparent dissatisfaction within Microsoft over the progress of Vista, against the almost inevitable success of getting Windows XP to work on the Macintel platform, who is going to be the winner? OS X is far ahead of XP in usability, incorporated apps and security. Gnome has a better unified API, even if it struggles to create blue water between it and Windows and for me at least, consequently limits itself on the user experience. So why even consider Windows? Just because it works on Intel doesn't mean that is has to be the de facto OS for Intel machines. That's been broken all ready.
Remember that the migration to Intel was based on the phrase 'just in case'. So what are Pages, Keynote, Aperture and the other Apple workflow apps for? The day that Mac OS 10.5 appears in a box for Intel PCs? That's a good 'just in case' scenario - just in case Microsoft take their ball home completely and don't release a Universal version of Office perhaps? Apple isn't down, and anyone who assumes that doesn't remember its history.
Then you recollect incorrectly. The proprietary BIOS wasn't enough to keep the crooks out. IBM would have known that if they had bothered to do any due diligence on their design. Instead, they let a small group have "free reign" to do whatever they wanted. Which was a good move in the sense that they got a product to market, but a bad move in that they were not able to establish a sustainable business for themselves.
If you look at how the IBM PC affected IBM, it basically caused them to have to lay off a third of their workers. They should have owned that market. Instead, they were so afraid of Apple that they lost all common sense and made a stupid mistake.
If you are IBM, what does it matter that your product became the basis for all PCs when the result to your bottom line is a fucking disaster.
Yet idiots like you keep claiming that Apple is somehow stupid for not making the same idiotic mistake that IBM made. (Actually they did make that mistake - when they tried to clone the Mac. And it had predictable results.) Historically, cloning does not help the company that developed the architecture.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Office on mac usually comes out one year after a Windows release. That said, the Mac Business Unit usually throws in one or two new ideas which end up in the next Windows Office release.
MS sold their shares quite a while ago, and at quite a nice profit too!
MICROSOFT OWNS PART OF APPLE - On Aug. 6, 1997 Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple
Microsoft settled an antitrust lawsuit with Apple. Buying these shares was part of the agreement. They have long since sold them for a very good ROI (although not as good as if they still had them).
Microsoft continued support for MS Office on the mac was also part of settlement (although dropping it would have just started another successful anti-trust suit for Apple). That part of the settlement also expired, although MS has made a newer deal with Apple ensure they continue it for another four years.
As for the feature set of MS Office, releases are staggered so usually a few features are added to the mac version that don't make the Windows version (which typically is released a year earlier).
I'm sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble and all.
They lied before when they claimed G5 is the fastest CPU on Earth, they lied when they said the Intel chips are 2x faster than the G5 (I mean they lied at least one of the times, right)
I'm not going to get into whether either of the claims were true, but the fact that the claims were made at different times means that they could both have been true.