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Cringely Predicts Apple to Ship OS X for Any PC
boosman writes "In his current column, and in a similar op-ed piece in The New York Times, Robert X. Cringely predicts that Apple 'will announce a product similar to Boot Camp to allow OS X to run on bog-standard 32-bit PC hardware.' I dissect why this is unthinkable and challenge Cringely to a public bet on the subject."
Right, because all the big OEMs like Dell install OSes downloaded from The Pirate Bay. Oh, they don't? But surely Joe Sixpack is competent enough to install a new OS and is even aware of the existence of OS X (and hacked OS X)?
Face it, whoever's installing OS X on a non-Apple computer is not Apple's target market anyway. They're not paying now and wouldn't pay if Apple released a legal version, just like they pirate Windows today.
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The eternal question about Apple is if they're a software company or a hardware company ... and when it comes down to it, I think they'll choose hardware.
The release of the Bootcamp Beta opens the door for Apple becoming a Windows OEM and shipping dualboot systems with Windows and OS X. Apple still has decent margins on their hardware, and can make plenty of money selling to customers that just want a stylish Wintel box. Plus it gives people a low-risk opportunity to try OS X.
Apple has also had a very strong relationship with Microsoft in recent years, and I don't see them competiting head-to-head for Dell's sales.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Just about every professional should know when to leave their profession. john Dvorak should have left 10 years ago. He has been wrong on SO many things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why does anyone pay attention to Cringley? I mean, do any of these 'industry pundits' ever have to keep track of the accuracy of their 'predictions'? No... they just make ever-outlandish predictions because it gets them some publicity and gets some eyeballs for ad revenue over to their website. Just say 'no'.
Nothing to see here except a crank who made a fairly obvious, if not very likely prediction.
Boosman's response is far better than Cringely's column in pointing out the real problem: device driver management.
My experience with OSX drivers is that Apple barely gets enough support from device manufacturers (DMs) to stay above water. In some cases they bring development in-house to try to improve quality. Doing so in the Darwinistic land of PC hardware is impossible: the DMs must provide good drivers. Getting OSX marketshare up to the 25-50% level necessary for DMs to pay real attention will require years. During that time, OSX-on-nonApple-HW customers would provide a stream of complaints that would tarnish Apple's reputation but, more importantly, would slow down their development of OSX and give Microsoft a chance to catch up.
I personally would love to run OSX on other hardware right now, but PC hardware is getting _so_ commoditized that prices are falling to the point where the human cost of a poor operating system may outweigh the marginal cost Apple charges for their hardware for many people.
Apple is now 100% on that commodity train and as long as their marginal cost stays rational, they'll slowly grow marketshare.
They make themself believe they have to. And this is one of the reasons for the mess they brought themselves into.
But this is so last century.
Virtualisation. Obsoletes. This.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Yeah, right. They may be `shaping up', but it will take at least a decade before they reach the level of Apple in 2006. Never mind that they'll have to catch up with Apple's 2016 experience then.
That's from a former on-and-off Linux user since 1998, full time user since 2001, who switched to Macs in 2005 and isn't looking back in the least. I had to suffer (strong emphasis on suffer) Ubuntu for a couple of days in February, and I was reminded how painful Linux is and seriously wondered how I managed these four years as a Linux-only user. Windows is paradise in comparison. (Oh, by the way: I've never seen such blatant imitation as KDE's Control Center is of OS X's System Preferences. I actually laughed out loud the first time I saw it. I'll forever use it as an anecdote to characterize open source developers and their culture of imitation.)
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As I said over on Macslash:
.NOT wouldn't have been able to take over the windows developers quite so easily.
I was yelling as loud as anyone else when Apple reneged on the promise they'd made at WWDC three years in a row that a Cocoa runtime would be available for windows, at no charge. I still think it's something Apple probably should have done, since MS's hammer-lock on the industry isn't because of their crap knock-off the the Mac's UI, it's the number of developers who are locked into their APIs. If Yellow box had been kept alive,
Nevertheless, the yellow box depended on Display Postscript, which Apple and Adobe couldn't come to terms on licensing (Probably because anyone could have written far better PDF-manipulating app that Acrobat in about a week using Cocoa.)
When Apple abandoned DPS for Quartz 2D, the amount of work necessary to implement Cocoa on windows got a lot bigger. Windows simply doesn't have a lot of the underlying facilties on which Cocoa depends today. Their POSIX layer is a joke. Their graphics are only begining to catch up to Jaguar. Their reliability? Well, don't get me started.
But, all that being said, the main reason why Apple's not going to revive Cocoa on Windows is that there just isn't enough money to be made selling developer tools on Windows. Compare Apple's revenues to RealBasic, Delphi, and CodeWarrior combined. It's not worth it just so that Apple can make life better for developers on the other platform.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Have you typed for any length of time on a MacBook Pro's keyboard where you can honestly make this assertion or is your assertion simply based on speculation and presumption?
With regards to missing standard keys, could you be more specific? Are you referring to "Prt Scr," "Sys Rq," etc? Which keys are missing that are considered "standard"?
He's wrong for a reason. Dvorak has found a niche in publishing the unthinkable, and generating endless reams of flamebait from all kinds of industry pundits.
:)
Basically, he says alot of shit to get people pissed off and therefore generates hits.
Well, that depends on how much it cost them to make the software on the CD and how much it cost to create the mac mini. These things just don't appear in the stores automagically.
I think one of the biggest factors against OS X on PC's is the tech support. Getting hardware makers to provide OS X drivers should be easy. But then customers would call asking whether the Start button is. Or they'd call asking how to eject a CD. Answering those questions will cost Apple time and money. If if there's no solution, it'll cost them goodwill.
People like Apple because it just works. Put OS X on any PC and that advantage goes away.
Random slashdotter makes ad-homenim dismissal rather than confront the actual content. Examples at any time of the day or night.
Apple's value lies in its name, not in its propagation. Apple has been selling by the credo of "unpack - plug in - work", i.e. their stuff is known to work. Unlike Windows, which is more renowned for installing, downloading and installing drivers, downloading and installing patches, tinkering with this or that to make it work, etc.
The hacked OS doesn't hurt them. It's neither a damage to the brand nor to the sales. It doesn't work? So? WE DIDN'T MAKE IT! It works? So? You wouldn't have bought it anyway. If you did, you would've bought a Mac as well.
If they did make a "PC OSX", though, it could hurt the brand. It could drop Mac sales, and most likely it would suffer from driver problems, at least in the first year or so. A year is a long time, time enough to ruin a brand name for sure.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So he is basically the ultimate troll, trying to always say stupid things that have just enough sense in them that it is barely belivable that he didn't write them only to generate flames? Could be.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
The Kubuntu control centre (i think it's called Guidance) looks quite damned similar to the OSX control centre. See here.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
You're right - it's not rocket science. It's much harder.
To do what you request, all Apple would need to do is to get all the hardware manufacturers to write OS X drivers for their hardware, or do it themselves. And then test a representative combination of hardware systems. That's the hard part. Ever seen the MS hardware test labs? They have lots of hardware. (As a side note, apparently eBay has been a boon for the hardware labs when they want to pick up an item of some esoteric discontinued equipment, which amused me.)
And if Apple don't do this, then the support would be a nightmare, and the user experience would just be a lottery. It's that latter thing that doesn't even come close to how Apple want people to perceive their products.
I mean, Windows drivers are often a lottery, and that's when they have 95% share of the market (or whatever it is), so it's in the manufacturer's interests to make sure their drivers don't suck. In view of the actual quality of many drivers, I'm sure the manufacturers would spend up to several days getting their OS X drivers working.
By the way, this does seem like one of those things that won't happen. I know many of the Apple faithful refused to believe that Apple would switch to Intel, or that Apple would allow Windows to run on their Intel hardware, for no sane reasons I can discern. Before the fact, both things seemed to me likely or reasonable (but not inevitable). So I was pleasantly surprised by the Intel switch, and Bootcamp - but it was 90% pleasure, 10% surprise.
Running OS X on commodity PC hardware seems much less likely than either of these - precisely because one of Apple's major advantages is their closed hardware system; they only have to make their stuff run on computers that they make themselves. That's why hardware/driver issues on Macs are much less common than PCs.
Apple may be willing to sacrifice that advantage, but I doubt it. You just have to look at the insufferably smug copy on their website whenever they mention PCs. (Of course, they used to talk about Intel CPUs like that, so nothing's certain in this world.)
Apple's view is most likely that if you want a Windows laptop that runs OS X, then that's fine with them, because they sell those, too.
Microsoft's problems are much more about their corporate culture and management.
This seems to be the big gun that people throw out "Apple doesn't want to deal with all the support issues". Well, they deal with support issues now don't they? What would they need, a bigger staff?
Apple is usually listed as having one of the better customer support departments now (yes yes, there are exceptions to everything so don't barrage me with your "I bought an iPod from them and I had to wait 5 minutes on a phone blah blah blah"). Why couldn't they continue this trend with OSX?
But look at it this way, if people buy OSX to place on their computer, they pretty much will know what they're doing. What Joe Average person goes out to buy a computer with no OS on it, then go back to the store to buy the OS to load? No one. They'll buy a Dell or Gateway or Compaq that has an OS already loaded and the only thing they'll ever buy is probably an upgrade. AND if they have a problem with their computer, they do NOT call MS, but they call Dell, or Gateway or whoever.
A couple of grandparents that buy a computer from Dell are not going to call MS for support when they have a TON of flyer's and stickers and warnings with Dell's customer support number and website plastered all over them. They are also not going to go out to buy OSX to replace everything on their computer. Though they might buy a Dell with OSX on it...maybe...and then again, they would call Dell for service.
So please all of you, stop with the bullshit that "Apple doesn't want to deal with the support issues". They could handle it with ease.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
They're neither. Apple is a system company.
"if they wanted to write a good new OS, they could do it"
No offense, but if history is your guide, we have 20 years to say they can't.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The OP specifically mentioned user friendliness and desktop quality. Anyone claiming KDE or Gnome is anywhere close to OS X has been blinded by fanboyism or is just plain practicing Orwellian doublethinking. And let's not even start on the quality of bundled applications, or the simplicity of installing an application on OS X (just drag it to the Applications folder), and so on. Apple is just years ahead and I seriously doubt that there is enough talent on desktop Linux projects to ever reach Apple's level (certainly in terms of designers there isn't).
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First of all I don't think Apple can do it - they have an OS that works on a ridiculously small percentage of the possible hardware combinations out there. This will not change magically.
Secondly, Apple is not a software company, they make all their money selling hardware. If their OS could run on any hardware and tons of mac-heads buy the OS only, they would lose their hardware sales.
Jobs killed the Mac clone business for a reason, that reason is not gone. Apple fights the hackers that port the OS to other machines, but provide free bootcamp in response to the hackers that try to run other OS's on their machines. The strategy seems pretty clear.
This is Cringely we're talking about here. He's basically an inverse oracle: everything he predicts will not come true.
Such classics in the past include:
"Apple's future lies in computer-like devices"
"Microsoft has already been crippled by the department of justice"
"Sega may dominate personal computing"
"Ending the culture of secrecy doesn't matter"
"The next generation of processors will be clockless"
"Intel will ride its new Merced processor to profit"
"Y2K will be a bigger pain in the butt than most people think"
"The stock market will continue to rise"
"AOL isn't in the market to buy Netscape"
Etc.
Personally, I'd love to see some sort of Survivor style contest for that PBS columnist / NYT editorialist position. 19 Bloggers and Cringely are forced to live in a house together, where each week they make predictions about large announcements that companies make. Those with the most wildly incorrect predictions are forced into a future-past bakeoff, where they have to explain historical technological shifts to MIT professors while cooking representative food items. The professors then confer over dinner, and then walk up to the loser and shout in his face "You Fail!"
I'm guessing Cringely lasts three weeks, soley on his love of food.
The ______ Agenda
Apple is a hardware company. Their hardware support extends to creating user-friendly applications that non-techies like to use and an operating system that 'just works'. Now Apple releases Boot Camp -- even more support for end users who want tools they can use to do the things they need to do, rather than provide a guaranteed employment scheme for armies of troubleshooters. Apple isn't competing with Microsoft, they are competing with Dell.
For everything else, I use OS X and I have purchased a number of shareware apps for OS X since I switched in 2002 including some upgrades to those programs.
Maybe what you say will happen but I think it is more likely that you will see Apple and OS X marketshare increase which will encourage "more" ports of not only games but applications rather than less. Have you actually used OS X on a regular basis?
I will admit that the hardware is sexy and they include some unique features with their laptops like the MBP which I bought recently but I initially bought an eMac because of OS X.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.