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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."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Someone is going to do it eventually anyway. If apple wants to get any cash from PC's using their OS they will have no choice but to come up with a "real" version to conteract the hacked versions that are undoubtedly going to spring up on every torrent site sometime in the near future (if not already)
Stay tuned for new sig...
Random blogger issues challenge to PBS columnist / NYT editorialist!
ASCII animation at 11pm...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Seriously. I want OSX on my Dell laptop. This isn't rocket science, people. Even operating system development isn't rocket science -- it's computer science. If some guy on the Internet can put OSX on a generic PC, why won't Apple? I would pay $200 to put OSX on my Dell, maybe even more if it comes with all the extra bits. And if not? I'll still use Centos, if Apple doesn't want me as a customer.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The reason is simple. Linux is shaping up to be better and better at being user friendly and desktop quality. Apple will have to compete with that.
I'm actually interested in getting a linux box up at work, as an introduction to what office software is available on it..
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.
I have to agree with this site that talks about Apple possibly resurrecting "Yellow Box" for Windows which would allow for running Cocoa (and possibly Carbon) apps under Windows after a paltry 150MB install. Sort of a sanctioned WINE for running OS X apps cross platform.
This would allow developers to continue developing Cocoa for Mac and have instant ports to Windows; no dual booting or emulation involved.
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.
You know, the funny thing is I was wondering if were weren't going to see the exact opposite of what Dvorak is predicting yesterday when pondering boot camp with the local Mac zealot. It struck me that Boot Camp might be the first step in a Microsoft purchase of the Apple OS, allowing Apple to concentrate on being a hardware company. With the delays and problems with their future OS, one can imagine Microsoft quitely purchasing Apple's OS line, or even just licensing it, rewiring the GUI to look like Windows. It would solve some of their security and stability problems, and chances are that they could pull it off without the average user noticing the change.
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.
Much more likely that Apple will start selling hardware to run Windows. It will be marketed as a "high-end" Windows platform that is certified and all that jazz. The drivers and everything will be tested (or written) by Apple just like they do now for OS X so they system will function as a cohesive unit much like OS X + Apple hardware does now.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I am the founder and owner of probably the most successful formerly Openstep based software companies. We were very successful, and I suspect but can't prove that we made a lot more money from Openstep than NeXT ever did. Apple acquired NeXT and after a couple of years refused to sell more Openstep deployment licenses at any price (reneging on a couple of years of promises to the contrary that I personally heard emanate from Steve Job's mouth).
We sold specialized vertical market software for a lot of money. We could easily have bundled a Mac with each license to use our applications as long as Apple let our customers toss the Mac in a dumpster and run the software on an embedded Intel based single board computer. Apple clearly did not regard such a proposition as an adequate business model for selling Openstep deployment licenses.
Neither Apple nor Mr. Jobs nor market conditions have changed in any way that would change this. Yellow Box is not coming back. OS X on generic Intel will not be sanctioned by Apple any time soon. The rules of doing business with Apple have become painfully clear.
Microsoft is a company with a lot of talent, if they wanted to write a good new OS, they could do it. The problem is that they need to support DOS, 16-bit Windows apps and all the different incarnations of win32.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
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.
There's nothing new about his prediction in this week's column, he's just confirming that he still think it's going to happen, even though they released the reverse product from the one he said they would. In the same column he predicted "two new Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options -- literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too" and an expanded
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."
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.
Dvorak, Cringely and Jobs and all the Apple fans should take part in a public mass debate about this.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
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.
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.
.. all depends on what you want to do with the system. It is a tool like any other system.
Just curious.. what are you talking about?
KDE control center screen shot
Apple System Preferences
As far as linux "catching up"
So what will be the point of buying Apple hardware then if this happens. Gee thats nice its a pretty overpriced box.
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.
As for tech support, when's the last time anyone called Microsoft for tech support? I don't know anyone who's ever done it; they didn't do it for DOS, not for Windows 3x, 9x, NT or XP. Everyone I know does the following, though in varying order:
- tries stuff, swears, tries more stuff
- reboots
- clicks all over the place
- looks it up on the net
- asks a friend
You'll notice they NEVER READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!The only time I call a support number for hardware or software is for an RMA.
So why would OSX be different?
The pundit game reminds me of a something I learned in college psychology class.
If you have an experiment where pushing button A in response to a flashing light gives you a reward 70% of the time, and pushing buton B 30%, college students will converge on a rate of pushing A of 70%, but rats will end up pushing A nearly 100% of the time.
This means that in a hundred trials, the rats get 70 treats, students 58.
Which illustrates the danger of trying to get predictions "right". If there is no downside, you shouldn't worry about guessing wrong occasionally, and go with the approach that maximizes your reward relative to effort, rather than attempting to be right 100% of the time which in many if not most cases is impossible.
So, if you're a pundit, an occasional wild stab in the dark doesn't hurt; if it doesn't come true, the downside is very minimal. But if it it does come true, you get to strut around like you've got a private channel to Gold almighty.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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. --
It would be nice if that came to pass, but remember that this is MacOSrumors we're talking about, the "Weekly World News" of the Macintosh rumor industry; one should always take a large bite from the salt block before reading anything on the site. Their credibility rests somewhere between zero and zero squared, and their "rumors" appear to be nothing more than a wish list conjured up in the fevered imaginations of the site's editors. They are far and away the least accurate of the Mac rumor mills, and their information always sounds as if it was passed on to them by Bigfoot, who arrived at their office in a UFO. It always sounds interesting, but likely? Nope. It's not what they think will actually happen, it's what they hope will happen. They should just do us all a favor and change their name from "MacOSrumors" to "MacOSwishfulthinking".
Computer sales still represent 2/3 of Apple's revenues. How many copies of standalone OS X would they have to sell (and at what price), to offset the sudden disappearance of nearly 2/3 of their revenue? (I say nearly, because there are some people who would still continue to buy Apple hardware.)
The last time it was possible to legally run the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, Apple nearly went under because nearly everyone stopped buying Apple hardware and their revenues dried up, and they didn't have anything to offset that shortfall. Selling OS X for generic PCs wouldn't offset the shortfall, either. They'd have to price it high enough to maximize revenue, but low enough so that more people would buy it than pirate it. I just don't see that price being enough to make up for the lost hardware sales.
I've fleshed out some other reasons in a journal posting, as well, the link's in my sig.
~Philly
Linux is shaping up to be better and better at being user friendly and desktop quality. Apple will have to compete with that. Are you high, man?
ACME Septic. We're #1 in the business of #2.
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.
You mean like the Mac switch to intel a year early, which all the Mac geeks killed him for? Sure, he is right on some things, and wrong on others. His horrid reputation on slashdot however is a result of him not drinking the kool aid of slashdot group think.
If there is one thing his opinion columns always are, that is entertaining.
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 reason Apple hardware works better is because they write the OS for their specific platform. Doing OSX for PCees would drive costs on OSX through the roof trying to support all the junk HW out there.
Essentially he has become an Ann Coulter of the computer industry. Same gig, different arena.
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.
John Dvorak should have left 10 years ago.
Why? He continues to make a salary that you may only ever dream about. His type of journalism pays *very well*.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Apple will release OSX for generic PCs eventually. (PCs of some minimum specification, that is.) The question is simply when.
:-)
But it won't happen until one or the other of the following becomes true:
1) Apple PC hardware sales become insufficiently profitable to remain a (mostly) hardware company
or
2) Apple decides it is in its best interests to fight a head-to-head OS marketshare war with Microsoft
Which won't happen until at least:
2a) The minimum-spec PCs themselves have a very large market penetration. (I think minimum-spec will at least require EFI.)
and
2b) Microsoft's continued development of apps for OSX can be lost without serious strategic harm
and
2c) Microsoft interoperability protocols are sufficiently documented or openness is legally enforced such that MS would have serious trouble fighting dirty
and
2d) Apple is supremely confident that OSX can crush XP/Vista/Whatever in terms of user experience
Of these, (1) is clearly not the case. It seems almost certain that (2a) is not true. (2b) will be solved if Apple comes out with their own office suite, or once OpenOffice has a version truly native to OSX. (2c) is close, and (2d) is obviously here right now.
In all, probably not this year. If it doesn't happen by one month after Vista's release, then I think it'll be a long while yet.
(Hmmm... I wonder if the real reason 32-bit Vista does not support non-BIOS-emulating EFI is to reduce the number of "Vista-ready" PCs that are OSX-ready? Microsoft might well be fearful of this move and have already executed their countermeasure. Can Apple make a BIOS version of OSX? Would they? Will manufacturers generally support EFI if Microsoft doesn't require it?)
PS: Now that I've placed my bets, it's time to go RTFAs.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Humm...but getting them in one place at one time would be tough. So it would be better to do it via a newspaper or something. But that's so 20th century. If only there was some kind of web site, dedicated to tech issues, where anyone who wanted to could come in and post an opinion, for everyone else to read....
Pity it hasn't been invented yet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
drivers.
Currently, OSX runs well on a limited selection of hardware - it's all chosen by Apple - and non of it at the time of writing can support third party AGP,PCI or PCIe cards. Opening up OSX for all PCs is going to cause all number of problems for Apple - firstly by making sure that OSX supports pretty much an infinite number of hardware configurations, and secondly to support people directly who are having problems.
One of Apple's strengths is its control of the hardware its OS runs on. Throw this away and you're also throwing away a large chunk of OSX's stability...
The students are getting treats a lot more than you think -- all the students pressing "B" are getting the thought-treat "I'm screwing this dude's research up...uh huhuhuhuh..."
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
You have a very high opinion of gold.
All this talk about "catching up to Windows" and "catching up to XP" is quite backwards to me.
For me, I recently tried to actually use Windows XP for work. I felt like my hands were tied, and I wanted the flexibility that Linux gave me. The Windows tool bar is primative, I wanted KDE. The Command window is little different that Win95 command window. I wanted Konsole, or another modern shell. Add-on software, compilers that are naturally available (install or a apt-get/yum command away) in Linux, aways seam awkward in Windows. Drive letters and two char dos newlines, yuck. And the requirement of virus software to work around MS bugs really does not help with my impression of security and stability.
So I switched back to Linux for good, and run the win apps that I must using Wine.
As for OS-X, I have a dual-booting Mac Mini-PPC. I tried OSX for a while, but again felt too limited. I just wanted to run KDE, firefox and thunderbird.
So again, I use Linux alone.
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.
Essentially he has become an Ann Coulter of the computer industry. Same gig, different arena.
Although he doesn't (yet) advocate rounding up Apple users and putting them in camps.
must... stay... awake...
I'd buy OS X for the PC. In fact that is the only way I will ever run OS X at home. At the office we'll likely buy two x86 Macs, but begrudgingly. I'd rather build my own PC using higher-quality motherboards and power supplies. Will it be as nice looking as an actual Apple computer? Not likely - they do have (IMHO) the best-looking cases. They tend to skimp on quality whether motherboards and power supplies are concerned though (look at G3 motherboards, and G5 tower power supplies), and somewhat limit expansion capability. Also, I'd never buy an Apple laptop, because their failure rate, according to surveys, is worse than even low-end HP and Dell hardware. And the iMac line? Ugh.
They really ought to consider licensing the OS to OEMs again - they can do what Microsoft did with Windows NT: have a hardware compatibility list and refuse customer support if you stray from that list; that would limit their support costs and keep compatibility very high. Leave it up to the user to decide whether or not to stray from that list, or leave it up to the OEM to provide the support on Apple-unsupported hardware. Apple hardware would of course always be stable running OS X.
OS X? Great stuff, high quality, very stable. Apple hardware? Meh. They've had too many lemons. Heck, with the warranty claims, they may be far better off focusing on the software (where they really shine) and leave the hardware up to others.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Neither is she
When you plug a standard Windows keyboard into a Mac, the Windows key acts as the cmd/Apple key :)
Microsoft is a company with a lot of talent, if they wanted to write a good new OS, they could do it
As ex-Microsoft I can confirm the former, but I don't agree with the latter.
Any development project that size takes a lot more than talent. It takes a cohesive vision, it takes a lot of sacrafices and tradeoffs, and amazing organization, communication, and cooperation. In my experience Microsoft lacks all these things internally. Which is a shame because again, they have a lot of very talented people there.
Cheers.
"When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?" -- John C. Dvorak
Classic. Absolutely classic.
You mean like the Mac switch to intel a year early, which all the Mac geeks killed him for?
Take a look at that prediction again.
It predicts that
- Apple will switch to Itanium
- Apple will ship dual-architecture Itanium-PowerPC machines
- The switch would happen sometime between March and September of 2004.
Even today, that article is ridiculously out-of-touch. Itanium? Dual-architecture machines? Nobody with a modicum of common sense would buy that.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Someone responds with a one-line reply and you label them a snarky douche. Someone responds with a well formatted post containing distinct points and you whine it's an essay. Are you 14?
I should have known better. However, the point remains that you're the one who's failing to understand nor appreciate the issues behind the design.
Are you sure you wouldn't be happier with an IBM Selectric? After all, your keyboard of choice is missing the white-out and line-feed keys.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The remaining 30 times, they press B, and 30% of those (= 9) give treats, for a total of 58.
I certainly can. It's really too bad that you can't also. The excited squeals of mac users as they rush to flipflop again and proclaim microsoft the greatest company ever and the only one with elegant, usable interfaces. Oh, you should see the joy on their faces too. They look so happy as they wait in line for the midnight release of Microsoft WindowsOS. Really warms my heart to see such genuine happiness. Oh look, one of the little maclets has gotten away from his mother and is snuggling up against an xbox 360. SHE'S BUYING IT FOR HIM! He's so happy he's doing a little dance. It's so beautiful, I wish you could see it, nuggetman.
The Farewell Tour II
Over the last few years, and especially since Apple switched to x86 and even more since Boot Camp was released, I've watched the usual suspects here on Slashdot rip Apple for not selling OSX on generic PC hardware. To be very honest, I don't think those people would ever be happy, whatever one were to do for them, but it did occur to me that one way that Apple can really swing in extra cash is for Applw to make a generic grey box PC ITSELF! That's right, for Apple to make a bog standard cheapo PC with mutiple drive bays, numerous free PCI and PCIe slots, in a cheap as shit case from GuShangHoo or where ever in China and sell it along with OSX for all the motherfuckers who complain here constantly about not being able to get cheap hardware.
It would be an interesting experiment.
Don't Talk shit about Dvorak.
/* Yes, I realize the Irony in quoting Apple's Think Different ads for a man who said that Apple will go over to the dark side. */
Granted he is wrong quite often, but he is still awesome IMHO.
Maybe reading his columns is like reading the Weekly World News. But sometimes what he says are distinct possibilities. He just likes to go off on a limb and scream things as opposed to just riding it out until there is more evidence than random events and hearsay.
But that is just my opinion...
Love him or hate him, I say "Here's to the crazy ones..."
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I'd like to nominate you to be the slashdot representative in this debate, since clearly your public mass debating skills are second to none.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
> No other PC box can dual boot two OS's practically out of the box. With all due respect, no PC box can boot ANY stable OS out of the box. PC manufacturers ONLY boot Windows, and poorly at that. Their job should be easier only having to write drivers and put the boxes together.
Let's see... With bootcamp, you update your firmware, you resize your Mac partition, you copy various files from your original windows xp (sorry, can't use your 'rescue disk').
Hm, now with say a Dell, insert Mandriva install DVD (As a example), tell the partioner to take some availible space away from NTFS, automate the rest of the partioning proccess, let Mandriva install. Which will also handle the bootloader etc. automatically (or you can optionally choose manual if you want).
Uh. I don't see how Macintels dual boot practically out of the box more than 'normal' x86 systems.
> Once consumers realize that Apple hardware can run Windows with more stability from well-written drivers, they will realize the value of owning a Mac.
Too bad there are a few drivers still lacking for windows on Macintels. So, in actual fact, there is unsupported hardware under windows. I don't see why people would buy a system they know isn't going to be supported fully.
> The day OS X ships alongside a Windows OS will be sooner rather than later. It's a calculated move on Apple's part to ship OS X Leopard 10.5 around the same timeframe as Vista/Longhorn. It's a sure bet that Leopard systems will run Windows out of the box whether through boot camp or virtualization.
Blah, it's going to be even more expensive then. I'll just get a Falcon Northwest system. They're more likely going to be cheaper (for the hardware you get), more powerful and better looking (custom case jobs -- yay).
> Lets face it, the only reason consumers are buying PC boxes is to run Windows.
I thought it was because they wanted a PC. Many people don't know they're using Windows.
> PC manufacturers didn't have to worry about Apple hardware before, but now that they boot Windows alongside OS X they're gonna start sweating.
Why in the world would anyone want to buy a Mac to run *only* Windows when there is much cheaper and better windows hardware out there?
> Microsoft is more than willing to take money from switchers, but don't realize that the end user will end up hating Windows since it's so much easier to compare the two OS's.
It doesn't matter if you hate windows, you still rely on it, that is the industry.
> Oh I look forward to the next 18 months.
You really think there is going to be a revolution?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Um... Microsoft already *did* this. It was called Windows NT. It had a VMS-like core, originally it ran on all kinds of hardware, and making it backward-compatible with DOS and whatnot was a lot of work.
;)
Of course, the VMS-like core might not have been the best idea, since, well, UNIX was also widely available... but oh well, live and learn.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
When you allocate memory in Windows NT (2000/XP/2003/Vista) with NtAllocateVirtualMemory, it starts out all zero. To optimize this, the "System Idle Process" actually zeros out memory pages all the time, in the hopes that there will be enough pages available when an application wants them. It works out pretty well. If there aren't enough pages, NtAllocateVirtualMemory will block while it does a rep stosd / rep stosq.
In case you're wondering, when the kernel detects it's on battery power, the System Idle Process becomes an "hlt" loop to shut off the processor instead of a memory zeroing process. (Similarly, if there are no more pages to zero when on AC power, it also goes into an "hlt" loop.)
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Forget about booting Windows on Macs. That goes against Apples' best interests.
m ac/
What is the main reason most people won't run a Mac? Because we have one or more Windows apps that we MUST run. And the solution is very simple:
1. Change the Mac to Intel processors (underway).
2. Test Windows on the new platform (underway).
3. Develop VM technology inside OS/X that can run Windows (underway).
4. Jobs launches the new Mac tower as the only machine that runs OS/X, Windows and Linux AT THE SAME TIME.
This will allow Macs to be used inside corporations that are locked into certain Windows applications. They only have to displace about 10% of those Windows PCs to almost double their sales. And dual core processors could be setup to allow for one core per OS. Should run pretty darn good.
Want to see a VM that runs Windows inside OS/X? Look here:
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/
From the above site:
"Use any version of Windows (3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, 2000, NT, XP, 2003), any Linux distribution, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation, or MS-DOS in secure virtual machines running alongside Mac OS X."
The software is beta, can be downloaded for free, and will sell for about $40. I might have to buy a Mac...
Place nail here >+
AMD also has SSE2 for most recent cores and SSE3 for Venice and up. AMD embraces every extension intel produces, it is intel that has no interest in some AMD extensions (3dnow). However, Intel did certainly embrace AMD64 (of course not calling it that...) At least I haven't heard of intel system doing that.
My intel system flags (Pentium M):
fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe est tm2
My most recent AMD system (pre-venice):
fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt 3dnowext 3dnow
It is of course true that whichever vendor has an extension released there is a short time in which it is exclusive to their product line, but it doesn't last long. I think AMD and intel have a long standing cross-licensing agreement that precludes either from locking out the other from new instructions/instruction sets.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So, for the curious among us... were you lying?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If they are anything like her performances on TV, or in syndicated newspaper columns, you got some really novel definition of "logic". The woman gleefully operates by manipulating most base, animalistic instincts (which most civilized people are ashamed of admitting of even having -- never you mind flaunting), in her "audience" in order to exploit them for her profit and social standing.
Her kind operated throughout history repeatedly, on all sides of political and ethnic divides, and its method of operation very well understood by now.
To spare you a long story, some hardwired-in "pack" instincts people have, inhereited from the days of roaming the jungle, enable creation of social chierarchies, chief feature of which is existence of an "in-crowd", for which of course an "out-crowd" must exist. In order to solidify the cohesion of the "in-crowd", one needs the "out-crowd" to be a constantly villified enemy, accused of all sorts of unspeakable things, against which any action by the "in-crowd" is implicitely "justified" (for the "greater good", you see). Any opposition to this idea, or as a matter of fact any activity whatsoever by members of the "out-crowd" are to be used to create a perpetual persecution complex within the minds of the members of the "in-crowd", regardless of the factual balance of power. This is beautifully exemplified when one such group holds all three branches of governance of a powerful nation, owns most of its media and in fact most of that nations' resources as a whole, and yet still persists in casting itself as oppressed victims. Or if a majority religious group claims that a "war" is conducted on its beliefs by the very state they control. Every "in-crowd" needs a set of demagougues to maintain it. Some of these demagouges have to hold extreme positions, to invite ridicule and scorn, as is required, because stronger the attacks on the ridiculous nature of such positions, the better for the maintenance of the irrational persecution complexes and fobias of the "in-crowd". And so on.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Otherwise, you are basing your ideas on a bit of hear-say and a few facts ... Otherwise, why are you commenting on her?
See above.