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."

Comments

For the switch to windows

[Rosyna]

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.

Battle of the Benchmarks...

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Consider the business case

[jcr]

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

You're Dumped!

[jtcedinburgh]

"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.

Re:You're Dumped!

[Weedlekin]

In any case, OS X is extremely profitable for Apple:

1) it lets them charge a premium for what is now essentially the same hardware that others have to sell for a lower price, part of which goes to MS.

2) They sell a _lot_ of OS X upgrades to existing Mac users, which gives them a post-sales income stream that would otherwise go into Microsoft's coffers.

3) Apple also sell a lot of Mac software ranging from iLife upgrades to high-priced professional applications. These sales would dwindle if they were forced to compete with entrenched ISVs on Windows.

4) Ditto for high-priced Apple hardware such as Airport. These things sell for a premium because they are part of the "Apple life style", and that would not exist if Apple became yet another Windows box maker (the fact that Apple are associated with a life style is indicative of how strategically important OS X is. One does not for example hear people talk about a "Dell life-style" or a "Gateway life-style").

5) All of the above would also mean a massive diminution of income from AppleCare, because existing Wintel support companies would offer better contracts at more attractive prices.

And if the above financial reasons weren't more than enough for Apple to continue developing OS X, there is also a strategic factor that comes from having the freedom to set their own agenda, a freedom that many consumer-oriented computer manufacturers would love to have. Apple is a company that likes to have complete control, and switching to Windows would mean ceding virtually all of that control to Microsoft. And as many others have found to their cost, letting Microsoft have control over one's destiny can be very dangerous indeed.

Obvious

[Godji]

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.

What's with the "dump OSX" theme?

[localman]

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.

fact or fiction?

[Pliep]

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?

Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue

[Hes Nikke]

My point was why would Apple throw in a DirectX card into a Mac, when its(DirectX's) sole use will be on Windows.

- cyberjessy

this statement is wrong in so many ways. A "DirectX version Y compatible" G{U is simply a GPU that meets a certain threshold for image processing APIs. The marketing departments at ATi and nVidia have turned around and made it a big selling point that the card in your hands will be able to run with all the features enabled by DirectX version Y.

I submit to you cyberjessy, that Core Image has minimum compatible GPU's that all just also happen to be DirectX 9 compatible. (example 1, example 2) Why? Because the GPU is programable. Core Image needs a programable GPU, and DX9 needs a programable GPU.

Even when negotiating with card vendors, wouldn't it be cheaper to get a custom graphics card with all the DirectX circuitry taken out? Why waste transistors on capability you will never use.

-cyberjessy

there isn't any DirectX circuitry. The GPU tells the host "hi, i'm capable of A, B, C etc" If the host is windows, and all these capabilities meet the minimum requirements for DirectX 9, than DirectX 9 will run, otherwise, i believe it falls back onto DX 8, or some sort of compatibility mode. If the host is a Mac, and these capabilities meet the minimum requirements for Core Image (or even Quartz2D Extreme) than said technology is enabled, otherwise, it falls back on a CPU driven code path that has fewer special effects. Once again, the main GPU capability that Core Image, and DX 9 are looking for are a programable GPU.

I hope that i have at least partially removed that fishing rod from your throat....

Re:Wha...?

[soft_guy]

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.