Apple Losing Touch With the OS Community?

InfoWorldMike writes to tell us that InfoWorld's Tom Yager recently had the chance to sit down and chat with Apple about their closing the OS X Kernel. From the article: "The Mac platform is an overflowing basket of raw materials for innovators and creators of all stripes. It's what Steve Jobs would fantasize about if he still worked out of his garage, and you can bet that he'd be livid to find that the vendor locked some portion of his chosen platform behind a gate without a word of notice or explanation."

Comments

Part Deux

[American AC in Paris]

This is a follow-up to one of Tom Yager's earlier editorials, which was discussed recently on Slashdot.

Oh, and nice headline. I'd even go so far as to call it a sensational headline. You get a slow clap.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yellow journalism, plain and simple. Tom Yager claims with a straight face "no story is more timely, or more broadly relevant, than this one." When asked by Apple, according to his own account, Tom Yager could provide no examples of people who had written to him to complain about this issue. Tom Yager goes on to accuse Apple of suggesting people who recompile kernels are an "underclass". Way to create a straw man, Tom Yager. How easy it is to knock that down.

Hey, Tom Yager, you claim Apple promised to make future kernels' source open? Care to point us to any supporting evidence for your spurious claim?

Re:Part Deux

[prencher]

Surely, that should read "loosing", being slashdot and all?

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. Apple got enormous press for "open sourcing" their kernel, even in mainstream newspaper outlets. The amount of sensationalism for "close sourcing" it has been a drop in the bucket.

Re:Part Deux

[everett]

And surely you can find something better to do with your time than post snide remarks. Oh wait, this is Slashdot, I'm sorry just forget I said anything. Would you like some hot cocoa, I'm sure your mom would love to see you, it's been how many weeks since you left the basement^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdungeon master's lair.

Re:Part Deux

[vertinox]

When asked by Apple, according to his own account, Tom Yager could provide no examples of people who had written to him to complain about this issue.

Umm....

FTFA

The meeting started sliding downhill when Apple asked, "Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?" I do, for one. I rattled off some of those groups that value open source in its fullest sense. I included academia, high-performance and high-throughput computing experts, and shops that want to roll in system-level enhancements before Apple gets around to packaging them.

Did you need specific examples? I suppose you could ask him what he rattled off but it is very clear that he did give apple names of people that had contacted him.

Tom Yager goes on to accuse Apple of suggesting people who recompile kernels are an "underclass". Way to create a straw man, Tom Yager. How easy it is to knock that down.

He didn't say that. He was talking about his readers who may or may not recompile kernels.

FTFA

Apple pushed back, saying that as eclectic as my readership is, the subset I described is only a "fraction of a fraction" of the geeks (Apple's word) who are my regular readers...I go on the defensive whenever a vendor suggests that any portion of my readership is an underclass because of its numbers. It is our fraction of a fraction that is the bellwether for the next leading edge.

He is preaching to the choir, but sensationalism it is not.

He actually has a desire to recompile the kernel and not get ad hits as far as this article appears.

Re:Part Deux

[HardCase]

Kettle, this is pot. You're black.

Re:Part Deux

[mrtrumbe]

Umm....

Look closer at the passage you quoted. Here it is again:

"Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?" I do, for one. I rattled off some of those groups that value open source in its fullest sense. I included academia, high-performance and high-throughput computing experts, and shops that want to roll in system-level enhancements before Apple gets around to packaging them. He never says that these groups contacted him, which I sincerely doubt they did. Instead, he says that these groups value open source in its fullest sense. This may be true, but whether they are complaining about this is another matter entirely.

Taft

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how did you COME to find this out?

Re:Part Deux

[everett]

God damn, I know I smoke too much but now the drugs are talking to me. And they're confused, I'm most definately asian.

Re:Part Deux

[DJCacophony]

"Those groups" would refer to "those groups that recompile their OS X kernel". Were it to refer to groups that value open source in it's fullest sense, it would read "the groups", "some groups", or just "groups".

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

but it is very clear that he did give apple names of people that had contacted him.

On the contrary, it is clear he was answering the second question. He avoided the first question because he did not have a positive answer for it. Email him and have him send you copies of those emails from "academia, high-performance and high-throughput computing experts" that contacted him personally before the meeting with Apple. You will find it did not happen.

He didn't say that. He was talking about his readers who may or may not recompile kernels.

The subset he described is precisely his readership who recompile kernels. He claims that Apple described his readership that recompiles kernels as an "underclass". Apple made no such statement.

FTFA

Please don't swear at me.

He is preaching to the choir, but sensationalism it is not.

This is sensationalism, pure and simple. I don't know what choir he is preaching to, though.

He actually has a desire to recompile the kernel and not get ad hits as far as this article appears.

His own article states he believes Apple will release the source soon. If he really is a Mac fan who likes to re-compile kernel source, he should already be aware of the lag time in the release of past kernel sources.

Your comment also does not address Tom Yager's claim that Apple made a promise about releasing the Intel kernel source code. Apple did not.

Re:Part Deux

[multimediavt]

As a representative member of two of the communities he references (academia and HPC), I can say that having the kernel closed *DOES* cause concern. We have modified and compiled alternate kernels for Mac OS X running on System X at Virginia Tech. We did, however, get the kernel source and assistance from Apple to do this. I would imagine (not being perfectly positive) that legitimate requests for kernel source *MAY* still be an option even with the closed kernel.

The one thing that Yager does fail to address is the reason WHY Apple closed the kernel. I think everyone knows that answer, but for the sake of discussion I'll inject the prominent theory. The kernel was closed so Apple could protect the code used to lock the Mac OS to Apple Intel-based hardware. Until Apple can find, or invent, a better way to secure that Mac OS X will not get into the wild, i.e., installed on non-Apple hardware, or just gives up trying and declares that they will not support it running anywhere else, the kernel source will remain closed. I do believe that Apple will re-open the entire Mac OS X source in the future, but they are presently protecting their fragile sliver of market share in the mean time. Is it an affront to the OSS community? Yeah, but it's also business. They have a product to sell and shareholders to protect. Was it uncool? Yeah. Will the recent actions be nullified and a fully open Mc OS X re-released? I believe so.

Re:Part Deux

[Overly Critical Guy]

Did you need specific examples? I suppose you could ask him what he rattled off but it is very clear that he did give apple names of people that had contacted him.

He didn't give examples of people contacting him, he gave random examples (no specific names) of people he thought were recompiling the OS X kernel.

Re:Part Deux

[node 3]

Did you need specific examples? I suppose you could ask him what he rattled off but it is very clear that he did give apple names of people that had contacted him.

Actually, yes, the whole point of asking for specific examples is to be provided with specific examples. Apple asked him if anyone had actually complained to him that they cannot recompile the kernel. You don't respond with vagueries like "I know lots of organizations which value open source software".

It's worse than that, though. He's fighting against his own best interest. If he wants Apple to re-open the kernel, there's no better way to do so than to point out that there are *actual* people who *actually* want to recompile the kernel. If no one is *actually* complaining about something they *actually* want to do, that removes a lot of motivation for Apple to give them that option.

Tom Yager goes on to accuse Apple of suggesting people who recompile kernels are an "underclass". Way to create a straw man, Tom Yager. How easy it is to knock that down.

He didn't say that. He was talking about his readers who may or may not recompile kernels.

It's really funny, then, that you quote him saying exactly that:

I go on the defensive whenever a vendor suggests that any portion of my readership is an underclass because of its numbers.

...

He is preaching to the choir, but sensationalism it is not.

Nice try. Claiming it's not "sensationalism" is not the same as saying it's not "yellow journalism" (what the OP actually said). But even so, you don't call, "Yet no story is more timely, or more broadly relevant, than this one." sensationalism? Timely? Not really, but even that sensationalistic claim pales in comparison to "more broadly relevant". *Broadly*? To who? There are tens of millions of Mac users. You'd have to take an extremely distorted point of view to see the extremely small fraction of those users who have any desire to recompile the kernel as broad, let alone to consider the subject of the article as the most broadly relevent story of all.

He actually has a desire to recompile the kernel and not get ad hits as far as this article appears.

I think he wants both. But that's irrelevant to the topic of the quality of his journalism.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple closed the code because they are rearchitecting the system around Trusted Computing. New Intel-based Macs have a TPM (hardware DRM chip) built in, and (among other things) this allows Apple to hide what the code is doing, and allows them to verify that you are only running code that they approve of, for DRM purposes. If you can recompile the kernel, then this is meaningless... so Apple is simply making explicit what has been obvious for a long time. Very soon... the Apple architecture will be designed around Trusted Computing, and unless you have Apple's blessing (and they sign your code), it will not be trusted... and effectively, Apple will have total and complete control over the machine and be able to operate with total secrecy with the hardware protecting their privacy, not yours.

See here for some more examples of what this hardware does, and what Apple has planned.

Re:Part Deux

[multimediavt]

First, there is no mention of Apple in the article you reference. In order to reinforce a claim of what a company "has planned" you should really find something that actually mentions those words in it, or at least the company.

Second, I know quite a bit about what "Apple has planned" for their OS based on the relationship we've built over the past three years and I can't even say (not because of NDA) what Apple has planned as far as using the TPM technology in their hardware and software. To make any claim is PURE speculation.

Third, there are probably a handful of people inside Apple that know what Apple has planned for the TPM technology and last I checked they weren't talking about it.

Fourth, I doubt, VERY, VERY seriously that Apple will take a Microsoft-like stance (as you have described) as far as signed/blessed code goes. It would not be in their interests to do so as they are still trying to woo developers to the platform from Microsoft.

Finally, "and effectively, Apple will have total and complete control over the machine and be able to operate with total secrecy with the hardware protecting their privacy, not yours." HUH? Where on Earth are you getting that idea from? What, ever, in Apple's history makes you even think they would want to do something like that? Can I get some of what you're smoking? The paranoia effects aside, it must be good stuff.

Re:Part Deux

[Antonymous Flower]

Perhaps the possibility of Apple selling their OS as a separate package, i.e. competitor to Windows, has slipped your mind. This seems a much more likely reason for them to close their OS. When I heard Apple was switching to Intel hardware my first thought was Apple is porting their OS to sell to PC users. I have seen nothing since that has convinced me otherwise. On the contrary, this seems a step in that direction. Further, the features that Microsoft has added to Vista mirror OSX quite accurately. Perhaps this is a move by Microsoft in anticipation of Apple's direct competition?

Re:Part Deux

[multimediavt]

Nope, hasn't "slipped my mind", just won't happen. Apple will not put their OS on ANY hardware that doesn't have an Apple logo on it; not as long as Steve Jobs lives and breathes, and probably longer. There is one thing that you are assuming, or missing, as well. You are assuming that Apple, after the transition to Intel is complete, will continue to use the exact same hardware you can get for any white box out there. You have missed the fact that intel has been trying to get Apple to switch architectures since the early 1990s. Why? Because they are sick and tired of boring white box hardware manufacturers and Microsoft. Intel wants to do cool new things that only a niche market player like Apple might be interested in. If you think that this Intel-Apple partnership isn't going to yield hardware technology that will CLEARLY differentiate Apple Intel-based hardware from the field you are in for a BIG surprise in a few years.

Re:Part Deux

[zo219]

Way to write. It would be a whole lot more of an affront if we didn't have Macs.

It would be markedly more uncool than closing the kernel. Waaay more.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

GAWD you're a fanboy fuck-up! 'Spurious claim'? LMAO What a fanboy jerk.

Re:Part Deux

[Wabbit Wabbit]

I'd mod you up if I could.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you have no evidence to back up the columnist's claim either?

Re:Part Deux

[Breakfast Pants]

But it still doesn't refer to "those groups" that have written to him; which would be none. Which was the only point the distant parent post tried to make.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod him down. Selling OS X to everybody would bust Apple's hardware business. They have been a hardware company from the start, and there's no evidence whatsoever that they want to change that. Xserves, iPods, new MacBooks -- that is their forte. Wholesome packages.

They switched to Intel mainly because they wanted to finally get rid of the dependence to Motorola and IBM developing processors and chipsets for Macs -- Intel will do that without Apple paying a dime for the R&D or having to persuade Intel to innovate. While Intel is actually happy to finally have a customer that wants to and can leverage any new tech Intel creates -- the Dells and HPs in the PC world are always slower to do that.

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignore some key issues: 1. this onlty refers to x8s, nothing has altered with PPC-based OS kernel code... and that is actually being deprecated 2. there is currently no x86 server class hardware produced by Apple, 3. the kernel is actually in a very transitional period right now; the "Mach" kernel will change drastically in this time period with a great deal of work from Apple and Intel, 4. even though the primary reason may be to keep private certain OS-2-hardware encryption locks, there is no reason to believe that Apple will not cooperate with you as a large academic customer to explain what changes have occurred in the kernel and what the two of you together can do as partners... nor that there is a possibility that Apple will develop a method of releasing kernel code to the public eventually, something that their developers have actually suggested will occur 5. nothing in this story is new, but there HAS been conversation between Apple and its kernel-modifying developers via its mail lists 5. it is not timely at all in light of the fact that WWDC is coming in two months, server class hardware is coming in two months, Apple's x86 transition is not complete.

Wish I wasn't Anon since no one will see/read this.

Re:Part Deux

[multimediavt]

He (Wabbit Wabbit) was talking about modding my post, not the one I was responding to. I have a firm grasp of the realities of Apple and the overall IT market. The guy (or anyone) that thinks Apple will sell OS X (or should) on anything but their own hardware is in a reality distortion field of their own.

Re:Part Deux

[multimediavt]

1. Who ignored issues? I certainly am aware of all the ones you mentioned and a ton more. 2. Create an account and then you'll start getting modded up. 3. You have "5" twice in your post. Ooops!

Re:Part Deux

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't actually know anything about TPMs and trusted computing? Do you?

Personally

[C_Kode]

Personally I find Apple very much like Microsoft. They are trying to take over as "King of the Lock-in Mountain". Go European countries that are bitchslapping them.

I will stick with OSS thanks.

Re:Personally

[Eideewt]

And you have a nice time with your lock-in.

Re:Personally

[sakusha]

Yeah right, Apple's lock-in formats like .jpg, .pdf, DV, .zip, mpeg4, etc. are real dead ends.

You DO realize that Apple is going to great effort and expense to use industry standards, unlike OTHER mass-market OS vendors that are famous for their proprietary formats?

Re:Personally

[Tumbleweed]

Personally I find Apple very much like Microsoft.

Yeah...except their OS actually...you know...WORKS.

Re:Personally

[C_Kode]

iPod.

Re:Personally

[Anonymous Coward]

what a douche

Re:Personally

[MyNameIsEarl]

.wma not locked down as much as .aac? I can't even play a .wma file on my Mac anymore because MS doesn't make an updated version of WMP for OSX. (I'd call needing to spring for a whole new OS locked down) Also, I don't believe .aac is locked down. My CD rips in iTunes are transferrable to any computer for playing. Now Fairplay, which is applied to .aac formatted files do lock down those files, however, I can burn as many CD's as I want with those Fairplay protected files.

Re:Personally

[sakusha]

I don't see MS locking down wma anywhere CLOSE to the way Apple has locked down AAC.

Open your eyes. AAC isn't locked down, it's an industry standard. You can use AAC without using DRM, but even if you do use DRM, it runs equally well on Windows and Mac systems. On the other hand, WMA protected files run only on Windows.
Oh, I see, you meant the iPod and AAC. I don't have a single AAC file on my iPod. I guess that's not locked down either.
Or maybe you meant the iTunes Music Store. You do realize you can burn those files to AIFF/WAV files on CDs and turn them into other formats, right?

Oh well, I guess there's no sense explaining this to someone who has their eyes shut.

Re:Personally

[ScrewYouTroll]

screw you.

Re:Personally

[AstroDrabb]

Yeah right, Apple's lock-in formats like .jpg, .pdf, DV, .zip, mpeg4, etc. are real dead ends.

A mac wouldn't be very useful if it didn't support the above standards. Pretty much every modern OS supports all of the ones you listed.

You DO realize that Apple is going to great effort and expense to use industry standards

What are you talking about? Industry standards reduce efforts and costs. What "great effort and expense" has Apple experienced because they used an industry standard? The only reason to not use an industry standard is for lock in.

Re:Personally

[sakusha]

What "great effort and expense" has Apple experienced because they used an industry standard?

Well, for example, they spent a lot of effort on the MPEGLA group working to establish the AAC standard. Then there's IEEE1394. And there are many other things that are now industry standards that Apple developed and brought to market first. Remember when Macs had USB and nobody else did? It isn't cheap or easy to be first-mover on industry standards. It is even more expensive and time-consuming to help author those standards.

Re:Personally

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP works great too, has far more applications available for it and is fully closed source, just like OS X. Aside from the heavily hyped "cool" factor that Apple spends MILLIONS of dollars to maintain every year, what does OS X give anyone that XP doesn't? And please shut up about viruses and security fixes, because a well administered XP box is as secure, or more so, than any OS X box.

Re:Personally

[jcr]

You need a bit more stuffing in your straw man, sport. AAC is an open standard.

-jcr

Re:Personally

[elrous0]

AAC isn't locked down, it's an industry standard.

Well then, why don't you point me to some non-Apple mp3 players that support it? I mean, if it's so open, then surely Creative and others must support it, right?

-Eric

Re:Personally

[elrous0]

AAC is an open standard.

Then where are all the non-Apple mp3 players that support it?

-Eric

Re:Personally

[steeviant]

Have a nice time "locked-in" your mom's toilet jacking off over a full page spread of Dick Stallman.

Re:Personally

[jcr]

Then where are all the non-Apple mp3 players that support it?

Ask Sony. They just announced that they're going to be offering AAC in their products.

-jcr

Re:Personally

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even play an itms .aac file on my mp3 player because apple decided to close the format and only allow their ipods to play them
Luckily microsoft decided not to close down wma protection, and it plays on nearly every modern mp3 player in existance.

Re:Personally

[Golias]

Lack of support by third parties does not make it a closed format.

Neither "A" in "AAC" stands for "Apple." It's not Apple's format. It's the Audio layer of MPEG 4, and a current industry standard.

From Wikipedia:

AAC was declared an international standard by the MPEG group by the end of April 1997. It was developed with contributions by Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia.

Every music player which is not using it should be, because it sounds better per bitrate than MP3 is not locked down like WMA, and requires less processor work (and therefore less drain on batteries) to decode than Ogg Vorbis.

I don't care for any lossy formats for home listening, but for a mobile player, AAC is clearly the best choice. Now if only Apple (or SOMEBODY) could finally make an AAC player capable of gapless playback, I'll be a happy camper.

Re:Personally

[DJCacophony]

Apple fairplay is an open standard? That's news to me (and everybody who owns a non-ipod mp3 player).

Re:Personally

[Golias]

IIRC, the PSP already has it, too.

Re:Personally

[Sometimes_Rational]

I agree with your overall statement that .wma is more locked down than .aac, but while it is true that "MS doesn't make an updated version of WMP for OSX", it is because they are outsourcing Windows Media support on OS X. The free Flip4Mac player is a QuickTime Player plugin that enables it to play Windows Media files. It works fine on every standalone .wma, .wmv file I've seen, but it occasionally has trouble with content integrated into a web page.

Re:Personally

[jcr]

Apple fairplay is an open standard?

Try again. Fairplay and AAC are not the same thing.

-jcr

Re:Personally

[94229a]

AAC is an ISO Standard. Really. The licensing terms can be found here.

I am quite surprised that so few other MP3 players support it. Some Sony-Ericcson phones do, as do Nokia, Motorola, Siemens and the Sony PSP.

Maybe the reason why Creative, iriver, Rio and others don't support AAC is because they are too busy supporting proprietary formats like WMA.

Re:Personally

[Overly Critical Guy]

How am I "locked in" because I can't compile the Darwin kernel? You would never, ever even have a need to do that. You're putting ideals over common sense needs.

Re:Personally

[Overly Critical Guy]

Right, MPEG-4 (AAC), WAV, AU, MP3, MOV, and AIFF are crazy lock-in formats that nobody else uses.

Next.

Re:Personally

[Overly Critical Guy]

AAC, the MPEG-4 the audio standard?

As for FairPlay, it's the #1 most liberal DRM in existence. You never even notice it's there. Every single time someone complains about FairPlay, it's instant proof that they've never even bought anything from the iTunes Store and actually used it.

Re:Personally

[Overly Critical Guy]

Like cell phones and the PSP? Not to mention Winamp and all the other software players?

AAC is MP4, the official successor to MP3. They probably should have just always referred to it as "MP4" so everyone would get that, but Apple wanted to differentiate between audio and video, so MPEG-4 audio is M4A and MPE4-4 video is M4V or in Quicktime's MOV container format.

Re:Personally

[resiak]

Every single time someone complains about FairPlay, it's instant proof that they've never even bought anything from the iTunes Store and actually used it.

Of course I haven't. My iRiver wouldn't be able to play it. (No, burning a CD, re-ripping that CD and reencoding the track does not count as a reasonable way to listen to music I buy.) It may be the "most liberal DRM in existence", but that's obviously not liberal enough because I would not be able to listen to the tracks. (The fact that my iRiver doesn't play AAC is irrelevant --- Rockbox (which I use) may well cope with it. I've never tried.)

My housemate appears to have lost all her music because iTunes has decided that she's copied it too many times. I suspect that, if she has exceeded the limit, it's because she's on her third under-warranty replacement iPod. \o/

Re:Personally

[coop0030]

Wow, just mentioning the word ipod gets us modded +4 Insightful now!

I guess it is more popular than beer...

Re:Personally

[Overly Critical Guy]

My housemate appears to have lost all her music because iTunes has decided that she's copied it too many times.

You're incredibly vague, so chances are she simply ran out of her five computer authorizations. That's as simple as going into iTunes, going to your account, and removing the existing authorizations. Then re-authorize the computer she's on.

iTunes would never, ever just magically delete your music because you copied it somewhere. You can copy your iTunes music ANYWHERE.

Re:Personally

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

The digital Music player that Okley sells either built in or attached to sun glasses supports AAC files.
Sony Ericson K750i phones support AAC files (even as ringtones), probably others in the range as well.
Soundbridge distributed home music players i'm sure also support the format.

Just three off hand that i can think of i'm sure there are others.

Oddly Creative Video Players support MPEG 4 as a video format, but AAC (aka MPEG4 audio) is not supported.

Re:Personally

[snuf23]

"iTunes would never, ever just magically delete your music because you copied it somewhere. You can copy your iTunes music ANYWHERE."

On purpose? Probably not. Due to a bug? Quite possibly. At least that what has appeared to happen with my girlfriend's older iTunes purchased files. All of her older iTunes purchased songs mysteriously vanished.

Re:Personally

[sakusha]

Well then, why don't you point me to some non-Apple mp3 players that support it? I mean, if it's so open, then surely Creative and others must support it, right?

Right. Sony recently dropped their proprietary ATRAC format and now supports AAC in their digital audio players. I even found one Sony portable CD player that can play mp3/AAC CDs, the Sony Walkman D-NS707. Toshiba's DAPs support AAC. Hell, even Dell ships DAPs that support AAC.

It looks to me like the only DAPs that don't support AAC are WMA units aligned with the Microsoft "Plays For Sure" disinformation program. And there's your tipoff. If you want Microsoft's support behind you, you abandon industry standards like AAC and go with proprietary, locked formats like WMA.

Re:Personally

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't allow usage of their FairPlay DRM technology to third parties, they don't allow their customers to play M4P on non-Apple hardware/software, they block support for competing formats on the iPod (Google for Real, iPod), they don't support WMA, DivX, XviD, APE, OGG, WavPack, etc., etc.

Re:Personally

[DJCacophony]

Fairplay is an AAC standard, and the grandparent was clearly talking about itms. Stop arguing semantics.

Re:Personally

[jcr]

Fairplay is an AAC standard,

Nope. It's a DRM system that can be applied to files of any type (the videos that are available on the iTMS, for example: they're not AAC.) Try again.

-jcr

Re:Personally

[MassacrE]

oooh, let me try it!

. . . iPod.

Re:Personally

[DJCacophony]

Alright, explain to me how I can protect a wma file of mine with fairplay.

Re:Personally

[jcr]

Alright, explain to me how I can protect a wma file of mine with fairplay.

When did I ever say you could?

The question at hand is whether AAC is an open standard. It is.

-jcr

Re:Personally

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see MS locking down wma anywhere CLOSE to the way Apple has locked down AAC.
 

Wow. That may have been the dumbest thing I've ever read on /. before. I'm truly amazed at your ignorance.

Re:Personally

[DJCacophony]

When did I ever say you could?

When you said this: Nope. It's a DRM system that can be applied to files of any type

Re:Personally

[jcr]

Reading comprehension isn't your long suit, is it?

-jcr

So what?

[Umbral Blot]

Well we will always have Linux/BSD. I mean that is why they became so popular in the first place, because people wanted to kernel hack. You want to be all practical and have pretty graphics get a Mac. You want to have fun rewriting the driver stack install something open source, it's that simple.

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

Only a tiny minority of Linux users program at all. An even smaller fraction of those programming are going to touch the kernel source.

The most common reasons for trying Linux are going to be:

(1) It's something different.
(2) It's free (as in beer).
(3) It's not Microsoft.
(4) It's generally very stable & secure.
(5) There's a lot of stuff to customize (not talking about programming).

Yes OSS is nice (I actually advocate it whenever I can at work as we have onsite programmers so we can customize OSS apps however we want), but if you think that most Linux users care about it being OSS, you'd be mistaken. If you think they switched over to Linux just b/c it was OSS, you're crazy. And no, a quick response typed back stating "But I did switch b/c it was OSS." does not negate this point.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the point is that one year ago we were able to have both the pretty interface, mainstream apps, AND the ability to "kernel hack". There used to be little reason one would need to run linux on a mac when Darwin was open, and in near-perfect sinc with OS X (I could tinker with Darwin portion, combine that with the closed OS X's frameworks/binaries, and have a modified OS X.

The fact that 2 years ago Apple still kept their bootloader/kernel open allowed me to modify it to the point where I could justify over $120,000 in Apple hardware purchase by my university (sure, peanuts for Apple, but still...).

I am holding off getting Apple's x86 hardware party because I would not be able to change things the way I can on my older PPC machines.

Re:So what?

[Mister Whirly]

What?? I thought I heard BSD was dead...

Re:So what?

[binary paladin]

I think you hit the nail on the head. The part of "free" software that most people like is the free as in beer portion. Personally, I also like the philosophy behind open source but I initially jumped into Linux/BSD for reasons #1 and #3. (I paid for a boxed distro my first time so free wasn't so much an issue.)

I'm arguably a programmer. (I say that because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer.) I do not hack anything but scripts (and the occasional C CGI). I don't look at or mod any source code for major applications and idea didn't even strike me until after I began using Linux on the desktop and I considered all the little features I wanted to see in X app.

Eventually though, I became a Mac user because I had tasted the fruit of Unix and the command line, loved many of the tools there but didn't have a lot of the commercial apps I liked. (Games obviously aren't a factor.) And motivations were #1 and #3. Apple fits the bill. This is why a lot of geeks are going over to Apple.

When you're 16ish - 20ish (and perhaps a little older) it's cool to upgrade your computer every single paycheck, tweak this and that and spend hours fiddling with your computer. My computer used to triple boot: Win2k, Slackware Linux and BeOS 4.5. It was all fun. But when I actually started making money doing web dev and server related stuff, that kind of lost its luster. I wanted a computer that "just worked."

Macs fit the bill. I will say this though, if you use a little but of forethought when picking out hardware, Ubuntu installs and "just works" easier than WinXP or Win2k. I still keep an OSS desktop around and run FreeBSD on my servers, but I don't want to fiddle with my work machine and generally prefer Mac GUI apps to anything I had in Linux. (Safari, TextMate, Pages, iTunes, Photoshop, etc.) My computers are my tools and I go with preference.

OSS is not why most people/geeks play with Linux. The fact that they're geeks and routinely do technological crap like install NetBSD on their DreamCast is why. We like to play with stuff just because.

Re:So what?

[0racle]

All of those reasons condense down to 'It's free.'

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, no, 'dying', it's 'Netcraft Confirms It: BSD is dying.'

Re:So what?

[deb2006]

Sorry, this is crap. Most of the people I know changed to Linux, *BSD, *Solaris _because_ these systems are by definition open source. It means the source code will remain open source and everyone can change it if he wishes. And yes, most Linux users have chosen Linux _because_ it is open source (the source is open, that's what it says and means), not because it is "free". You haven't seen much in your life, yet, buddy. And your view is somewhat distorted ---

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

I've been through a college compsci program, a member of the LUG at that campus, and have worked at 2 organizations now that have done heavy Linux deployment. Out of the students (and during the course of my studies I spoke with several hundred that used Linux), virtually none of them gave a shit about it being OSS. What they did care about, was that they could do their HW assignments on a free OS and not have to tread down to the Solaris lab. A few others used it because it was something to play with. The only ones who mentioned any care about it being open source were the 5 or 6 people in the Users Group.

Even at the companies I've worked for, where it being OSS SHOULD actually count for something, nobody cares. We replaced Novell Netware with FreeBSD + Samba. Bordermanager with FreeBSD + Squid. We're running a Jabber IM system instead of a proprietary. We're running an OSS mail filtering setup. The reason for all of this? We save money on liscensing costs. Thats it. Nobody in charge cares one bit about the open source part of it.

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

One correction. When I said heavy Linux deployment in the first paragraph, that should read heavy open source deployment. The first company I worked for did deploy Linux, though the current company I'm working for has focused more on FreeBSD, though we do run a few Linux servers.

Re:So what?

[JebusIsLord]

True - I run a linux server compiled from scratch via LFS, and yet there is little reason for me to be running my own services at all (the package my ISP charges for my static IP would include free hosting if I wanted it anyhow). I run it cause I like to fiddle.

Something you've missed though is the feeling you get when "fiddling" with something as culturally subversive and revolutionary as a free (as in Speech) platform. I think that is a big part of it. I fiddle with my Windows machine all the time as well, but I don't feel like Jean Val Jean when doing it!

Re:So what?

[deb2006]

Fine - but to be honest: if that's your opinion you have not understood a word. Do you remember BeOS? A fine OS, yes, definetely. Well, one day they shut it down, sold everything to Palm. Gone. Folks at haiku.org are _painfully_ working for several years now to restore the state of BeOS 5 (that was the state the OS was several years ago). A proprietary OS. But hey, who cares. Licensing costs are not really that important, believe me. What counts is the support for the software. Even SUN has nowadays understood that. So yeah, Fedora is free and open source. Red Hat is open source _but_ it is very expensive because you pay for the support. As a company you want professional support - everything else is stupid in my opinion.

Re:So what?

[Stalyn]

But I did switch because it was OSS.

Re:So what?

[bigredradio]

Ummm.... Solaris was only opensourc(ed) recently. It was free (as in download) for a while. That is why I used it. It was a cheap learning tool. Same with Linux. I own a PowerBook that is used mainly for iLife. (email, making dvds on my kids, iTunes, etc). I have a cheap thinkpad for Linux development. Using a Mac for that type of work seems like the wrong tool for the job. If I am compiling my OS X kernel for some obscure support, I am a niche market. This does not constitute Apple turning it's back on the OSS community. There needs to be a OSS community first and I think for OS X there isn't one.

Ask yourself, if your favorite brand of Linux cost as much as an XP License, but was open source, would you still use it?

Re:So what?

[Infernal Device]

I'm arguably a programmer.

There is a large majority of programmers who never work on traditional application software and who do not work with compiled software. It doesn't make them any less of a programmer.

It's more about the ability to break a problem down into logical pieces ad infinitum.

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

Do you remember BeOS? A fine OS, yes, definetely. Well, one day they shut it down, sold everything to Palm. Gone. Folks at haiku.org are _painfully_ working for several years now to restore the state of BeOS 5 (that was the state the OS was several years ago). A proprietary OS. But hey, who cares.

And that's a wonderful argument about why people should care about OS. I don't think you're understanding my points. Here. I LIKE open source. I advocate it where I can. I'm not argueing that noone should care about OSS, I'm saying that most people don't. There's a big difference there. It's like recycling. Sure it's a great thing. You can argue till you're blue in the face about the merits of recycling, but at the end of the day (most) people just don't care.

Licensing costs are not really that important, believe me. What counts is the support for the software. Even SUN has nowadays understood that. So yeah, Fedora is free and open source. Red Hat is open source _but_ it is very expensive because you pay for the support. As a company you want professional support - everything else is stupid in my opinion.

Don't know where you work, but where I'm at liscensing costs are very much important. We don't purchase support for everything, but if we do, it's extra on the proprietary stuff too. That support is usually around 25% annually of the liscensing cost. In other words, it's going to be 4 years before the cost of support even equates to the cost of the software. That's a bit beside the point though. Whether or not the software is open or not has nothing to do with support costs, so this part is a seperate topic entirely. They could just as easily give away closed source apps and charge for support.

Re:So what?

[heinousjay]

because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer

We call those people 'virgins.'

Re:So what?

[killjoe]

Me I like the fact that I don't have to type in a 32 character key code when I re-install. That's just one thing. I also LOVE the fact things don't constantly pop up out of the taskbar with useless messages and interrrupt my flow, multipe desktops, and a dozens of other features too but that's just me.

To me linux "just works". Stays out of my way, doesn't tell me what do to, doesn't pretend it's smarter then me, doesn't do things behind my back, doesn't interrupt me when I am thinking.

Re:So what?

[LWATCDR]

"(I say that because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer.)"
Okay if you are talking Perl, Python, Ruby, Php, Lua, or some other scripting language then yea you are a programmer. If you think you program in HTML then no.

I think you are right about Linux. Most people don't even get past ./configure
make
make install
as far as programing Linux goes.
Source code is nice for a tiny minority of people out there. Hell most of the people that rant about having the source on slashdot probably have never loading it up and looked at it.

Re:So what?

[Arker]

I'm arguably a programmer. (I say that because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer.) I do not hack anything but scripts (and the occasional C CGI).

You're not a programmer then. You're just computer literate.

Which is not a bad thing to be. I'm in the same shape. But it's just silly to call yourself a programmer just because you know how to *use* a computer.

Re:So what?

[g2devi]

It'll have to disagree with you. Here's a point by point refutation:
(1) So was BeOS and it died.
(2) So was BeOS and it died. Beside, Windows if "free" if you get most new computers and you actually have to throw it away if you want to install Linux. It's also "free" if you "have a friend who knows stuff about computers" (i.e. most people) and you're okay with pirating.
(3) Neither are BeOS, MacOS, QNX, etc.
(4) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.
(5) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.

When it comes down to it, living outside the "normal world" is a pain (e.g. glash 8 doesn't exist for Linux. no iTunes, etc), so there has to be better incentive than free. People's time is just too expensive.

IMO, the reasons the most of current crop of Linux users choose Linux is because:
(1) It's open source, so even if you don't look at the source code, you know someone is, so you can be more certain that you don't have to deal with corporate spyware like the Sony CD.
(2) It's open source, so you know it will still be there even and be maintained (even if you have to pay for support) if everyone abandons it.
(3) It's open source, so you don't have to feel guilty about pirating stuff.
(4) It's open source, so it's non-proprietary and thus you don't have to deal with the crap of vendors forcing planned obsolence changes on you in an effort to get you to pay for an upgrade. (E.g. Microsoft file formats)
(5) It's open source, so it's likely that your files are in a standard format or are convertable to a standard format. (There's less need to put up proprietary roadblocks)
(6) It's open source, so things like the Debian package repository and Synaptic allow you to gain a huge collection of programs simply without any proprietary barriers.
(7) It's open source, so vendor lock-in just can't happen.

Yes free factors into it, but even if there was a charge (as is the case for corporate Linux), the advantages are just too big to ignore.

Re:So what?

[Propaghandi]

Amen to that!

I used to diss Macs, calling them "Macintrash" (of course, this WAS pre-OSX). However, I've been using Macs since 2001, and am generally happy with them (certainly more than Windows, although I am not particularly anti-MS). I was also a Linux geek of sorts, happily putzing around with OSS and trying to set uptime records for my home server (personal record: 437 days-then we had a neighborhood outage-and no UPS!). What changed me to Macs for my "work" computer, unlike you in having paying clients-was having children . Hmmm, let's see, do I alter the kernel to eke out a little performance-or read a bedtime story to the kids? If you answered "yes" to the former-you are a geek! (and probably unmarried or soon to be divorced-no wife would stand long for that!). That's not to say Linux doesn't have its place-and frankly Ubuntu and Edbuntu are pretty nice! But like you said earlier, Macs "just work". So, to summarize:
Macs are for work (and creating)
Windows is for play (games) and catching the latest virus
and Linux is for tweakin'

Take care!

Mike

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

It'll have to disagree with you. Here's a point by point refutation:
(1) So was BeOS and it died.
(2) So was BeOS and it died. Beside, Windows if "free" if you get most new computers and you actually have to throw it away if you want to install Linux. It's also "free" if you "have a friend who knows stuff about computers" (i.e. most people) and you're okay with pirating.

BeOS makes for a very poor counterexample. For a very long time, BeOS was not free (and all during this time, Linux was indeed free). This whole time Linux was able to gain more "marketshare" away from something like BeOS. Even when it came out for free it's own installer was a "launch from windows" setup that most people just didn't like. Sure most of use ./ers who played with it installed it to it's own partition, but that process wasn't exactly intuitive.

Windows being free doesn't really matter as I gave other examples as to why people wanted to use Linux instead of Windows.

(3) Neither are BeOS, MacOS, QNX, etc.
Indeed they aren't. QNX only has an older version available for free though (if even that is still available. Was a neat system when I played with it though). MacOS isn't really a good counterexample, as it seems you're trying to list unsuccessful OS's. MacOS has been extremely sucessful, and has never really been open source (yeah Darwin was open source, but to call that MacOS X is laughable).

(4) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.
Again, MacOS is successful. It SHOULD be on the list. BeOS and QNX have already been discussed.

(5) Ditto for MacOS, BeOS, QNX.
Ditto #4.


IMO, the reasons the most of current crop of Linux users choose Linux is because:
(1) It's open source, so even if you don't look at the source code, you know someone is, so you can be more certain that you don't have to deal with corporate spyware like the Sony CD.

I'll not argue this point. It is a benefit of OSS, but not really a reason a lot of people switch.

(2) It's open source, so you know it will still be there even and be maintained (even if you have to pay for support) if everyone abandons it.
If everyone abandons it then you're back to maintaining it yourself (or paying to do so). Very few single users would ever bother, relegating this to mainly beneficial to businesses. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but have you ever heard of source-escrow? It's a fairly common practice. Basically, it says that if Company X buys a closed source product from Company Y, then company Y has to place the source with an escrow company (and regularly update it). If Company Y flops, then the source is released from escrow to Company X.

(3) It's open source, so you don't have to feel guilty about pirating stuff.
This has nothing to do with being open source, and everything to do with being free. My favorite newsreader is Xnews. I love the damn thing. It's close source, but free. == no crappy pirating feeling ;)

(4) It's open source, so it's non-proprietary and thus you don't have to deal with the crap of vendors forcing planned obsolence changes on you in an effort to get you to pay for an upgrade. (E.g. Microsoft file formats)

Apps don't need to be open source to have open document formats. PDF is a very open well documented standard, yet I don't see the source for Acrobat anywhere.

(5) It's open source, so it's likely that your files are in a standard format or are convertable to a standard format. (There's less need to put up proprietary roadblocks)
See previous response.

(6) It's open source, so things like the Debian package repository and Synaptic allow you to gain a huge collection of programs simply without any proprietary barriers.
That has nothing to do with the OS being open source. By default apt-get grabs BINARY packages. They could just as easily setup a system to do this for any OS for which free software is available. A

Re:So what?

[binary paladin]

Eh, I can "program" in Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and used to do ASP in JScript. Some people don't consider the "interpreted crowd" to be programmers. I should have been clearer. There are a lot of programming snobs out there and if it ain't assembler, C or C++ you don't seem to count as a "programmer" because you're some high level shmuck who doesn't compile or get close to the machine. I can do algorithms, but I don't do much in the way of specific memory management.

*I'd* call me and others like me "programmers."

I don't really consider HTML, XML or CSS to be programming, but I do those too.

Re:So what?

[HermMunster]

Total feldercarb. Some wanted OSS for hacking the kernel, most just wanted an alternative--even a colorful flashy one included. Stop classifying OSS/Linux/BSD under your zealotryistic banner--it's pathetic and it will kill the long term success of OSS.

Re:So what?

[binary paladin]

Well, unless something has changed, I haven't had to enter any kind of code to run OS X, but I don't know that it matters. It's propriety, and I think that's a problem Apple has. It's got this sort of open image by using Darwin, but it's not all that open. Mind you, the fact that it IS propriety is something I always accepted and never cared about. Should it ever begin to interfere with work or freedom to the extent that it's more trouble than production, then I'll switch. Aside from the lack of commercial software, I'm pretty happy with pretty much any distro running KDE.

I think to say that Linux "just works" is a bit of a misnomer. In all honesty saying "Linux" is usually a misnomer. When I say "OS X" people know I'm talking about the Mach kernel, Darwin, Aqua, etc. In most instances they even know what file manager I'm talking about without me having to specify. When someone says "Linux" they're either really talking about their distribution (Ubuntu "just worked" last I installed it but a stage 1 Gentoo install certainly didn't... which was the point really).

Most of what people around here tell me they like about Linux--take multiple desktops for instance (and I loved them too, expose is nice but it's debatable what setup I like better)--are things that are specific to desktop environments or window managers. Multiple desktops is not a Linux thing anymore than it's a *BSD thing. It's a Gnome, KDE, XFce or whatever thing. Hardware "just working" is always distro specific. Some do. Some don't. How bothersome popups and such are and interruption is also generally app and DE specific.

That's really one of Linux's biggest problems for mass adoption and its biggest strength for geeks. Choice and diversity is great for people who like to tinker and customize. However, it's not so great when something is trying to define itself which is pretty much necessary to be marketable. "Linux" is a kernel with some specific apps that go with it. (UDEV for instance, which is one of the few things other than the kernel that's truly a Linux only thing.)

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. I keep a Linux desktop around to make sure I don't get TOO rusty with it and run it on some of my servers. I also keep it around to make sure that my heavy Mac use doesn't inspire me to wear a turtleneck. However, at the end of the day my computers are no more part of any of my personal idealism than my hammers and screwdrivers. I'm going to use what I like and prefer. At the same time, I also don't really care what other people use. I'm not trying to sell anyone on the idea that Macs are the be all end all... they're not. No computer platform ever will be. Find what you like best (which is matter of your preferences, skills and how much you're willing to pay or steal) and that's that.

Right now, Mac wins out for me because (and not in any particular order): 1. It's pretty (and frankly, the aesthetic is important to me). 2. Commercial Software that is either unavailable or that I just plain like better (Pages, Photoshop, Illustrator, TextMate, Safari, Mail). 3. Peripheral device support AND usability (digital camera, scanner, printer) is better (for me). 4. I like Mac laptops and Minis. I also like booting from Firewire drives.

When I read these discussions I note this snobbishness that's really annoying. If I say, "I like Macs." I'm not saying, "Linux people suck." Furthermore I see the Free Software crowd as being some of the coolest and worst zealots out there. Some of them really embrace freedom to the full extend of "use what you like" and others feel if you use anything proprietary you are the spawn of hell and are single handed part of a global conspiracy to deprive people of digital freedom. If your platform defines you then you have some serious issues. If you make serious judgments about other people based on their platform, you're an idiot.

Blah. Sorry. I'm in a writing mood today.

Re:So what?

[binary paladin]

My first computer was an Apple IIgs so I always had some level of respect for Macs, though until OS X came out I was totally uninterested in using them again.

I covered this pretty extensively in another post, but as long as Linux has the software you need, many distros (*buntu is all the rage these days, and for a good reason) "just work." Although, it's just not as slick or as simple as a Mac. Linux doesn't have to be a tweaker OS, but I think a real problem we geeks face is that if it CAN be tweaked... we'll tweak it.

Your point is interesting too. Kids. (If you have a newer Mac laptop I bet the magnetic plug is a nice bonus!)

Ultimately it's just a matter of using what "just works for you," since "just works" is a pretty damn subjective phrase.

Re:So what?

[geekoid]

"It's a fairly common practice. Basically, it says that if Company X buys a closed source product from Company Y, then company Y has to place the source with an escrow company (and regularly update it). If Company Y flops, then the source is released from escrow to Company X."

I wish. I can't tell you the number of application I have had to rewrite and/or hack because the company went out of business, or no longer sells the product.

Also, I ahve seen escrowed code that relied on other 3rd party code that may, or may not, be in business.
Escrowing is no garauntee.

Re:So what?

[killjoe]

"If you make serious judgments about other people based on their platform, you're an idiot."

Nonsense. Your choices say a lot about you. Your choice in music, films, clothes, politicians, news channels and yes your operating system too. That's a big componenent of how we judge people. If somebody is fat, had a dirty beard, wears tatoos and rides a harley they that says something about him. If somebody is clean cut, has no tatoos and rides around in a scooter it says something else.

I told you why I use Linux and I said nothing about ideology. Linux gets out of my way and lets me do the job I want to do. Once it's set up I pretty nuch never have to touch it again. It just works. I also have a mac but to me the mac is a toy. I use it as a toy. It's fun sometimes but when I am on it I miss my linux box. That's because I have my linux box tweaked to serve me, to meet my needs, to please my wants, to cater to my quirks of working. I am unable to do that with the Mac or windows. That's why I like linux, it pleases me.

Sure the Mac is a hundred times better then windows. And yes the mac does have better wireless support. On the other hand I think the finder is an abomination, I think the minimize/maximize on windows is just annoying, the GUI is too slow, I can't get the mouse speed up to a speed I like (I like a very fast mouse), it won't work my HP laserjet 3100, I can't stand darwinports or fink, X-11 on mac is an horrid thing, and asterisk sucks on it.

All of that has nothing to do with ideology. I actually like the way linux looks and works. Yes better then the mac. Maybe that's because I have never felt the need to use photoshop (even though I hear it works under wine).

Re:So what?

[binary paladin]

Now, before I get into this let me say that the, "If you make serious judgments about other people based on their platform, you're an idiot," was using "you" in general and it wasn't meant to be personal. I screwed up in the way I phrased that and I apologize. The whole last paragraph was more of a general rant than anything else. That being said...

Nonsense. Your choices say a lot about you. Your choice in music, films, clothes, politicians, news channels and yes your operating system too. That's a big componenent of how we judge people. If somebody is fat, had a dirty beard, wears tatoos and rides a harley they that says something about him. If somebody is clean cut, has no tatoos and rides around in a scooter it says something else.

Oh sure, those things say a lot. For instance, if someone has a Harley, it says, "That guy has a Harley." If someone has a tattoo I know, "Woah, that person has a tattoo." If someone is dirty, it tells me, "This person is currently dirty." I don't know why one guy owns a Harley. Could be because he's a Hell's Angel or because he's having a mid-life crisis. If someone is dirty, it could be that they're a bum or that they simply have poor hygiene. Motivations are what make actions and circumstances have meaning. A person's choice in music tells me nothing unless I know whether they like it because it's "cool and popular" or because they love the beat or because the lyrics touch them. Jumping to conclusions about circumstances with no understanding of their foundation is " a big componenent of how we judge people." It doesn't make it a good thing.

So, when I know that someone uses Linux, I know one thing: They use Linux. I don't even know that they prefer it anymore than I known whether the average Windows user "prefers" Windows. Could simply be that they're honest and its all they could afford or that their job requires it. They could be a tinkering geek with no consideration for the ideals or a pragmatist who likes it better. They could be my mother, who ran a Linux box I set up for her for a couple years. So, using Linux doesn't even tell me that the person is computer savvy.

I'm not trying to sell you on a Mac or imply that it's better for you. I'm glad you like Linux. I was simply explaining why Macs currently fit the bill better for me. (And I'm sure that over time I'll switch again. I'm in no way loyal to any platform.)

Photoshop "works fine" under Wine is what I usually hear from people who pirate Photoshop when they're at a level that requires nothing more than The Gimp in the first place. When you have oodles of custom filters and do advanced printing, things get a lot stickier. This doesn't include InDesign or Illustrator either. Wine is an extremely cool program and I actually paid for a copy of CrossOver Office so my dad could continue to use MS Office while running Linux and so that I could test pages in IE 6 without dual booting or a second computer. (Although, Javascript didn't work for me but it was rarely a problem.)

The Finder is pretty weak as far as file managers go, but Linux is the OS that really taught me not to care. When I just wanna open up my Documents folder and browse for something, it's fine. I rather like column view. However, if I want to do complicated file management, I use the terminal just as I did and do in pretty much anything with Bash. I used to care about file managers, when before programs began becoming smarter about their own file associations. I used to open up my file manager to find my mp3s and make a playlist or drop videos into a media player or whatever. Most programs have libraries (media programs) or projects (text editors and IDEs) or simply have their own internal structure (mail apps).

Path Finder is an awesome file manager and I do love it. However, I've downloaded the trial twice and while you can customize nicely and it has some very cool features (the drop s

Re:So what?

[Arker]

I don't consider PHP to be programming. It's a scripting language. The other stuff you mention I don't know, but it's my impression they're the same. It has nothing to do with whether it's compiled or not, or whether it's high or low level, because lisp, java, caml and the like are definitely the realm of programmers. (And yes, C is a high level language... what on earth do they teach kids in schools these days?)

Where is the line? I'm honestly not sure. Never really thought about it much. But you know there is one, as you said, HTML is not programming. (I've had people say I'm a programmer because I write HTML and PHP/SQL before though. The mind boggles.) But scripting isn't programming, it's normal use of the computer. Neither is markup. That's just basic communication.

Using algorithms and solving problems a piece at a time isn't programming, it's simply logic. Problem-solving skills. Stuff any literate human being does daily.

Of course in the broadest sense you could call all this 'programming' but that's very sloppy usage. Then to call someone a 'programmer' for doing these things is to dilute the word of all meaning. Anyone that's computer literate can edit a script or markup a text. Surely you don't mean to argue that makes us all 'programmers'?

Re:So what?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Oh sure, those things say a lot. For instance, if someone has a Harley, it says, "That guy has a Harley." If someone has a tattoo I know, "Woah, that person has a tattoo." If someone is dirty, it tells me, "This person is currently dirty." I don't know why one guy owns a Harley. Could be because he's a Hell's Angel or because he's having a mid-life crisis...

Or any other reason, such as liking the brand. My brother has a Harley. He rode with other guys who had Harleys, one of whom was Malcolm Forbes.

I very much agree with the parent here -- ad hominem and false-choice arguments suck fallacy, and the process of sorting and categorising people as groups along arbitrary and specious lines is a basis for evil. I like Macs, a lot. I like XP, a lot. I like Linux a lot, VMS too, and still find humour in GCOS and MVS. But if you try to characterise me in any way on that basis I will mentally mod you down.

One of the Kennedys said it best... "Where there's smoke, there's a smoke-making machine".

It pays not to smoke too much before posting.

Estwing framing hammers look really nice, especially the ones with the leather wrapped handle, but you have to like the balance. Great rock hammers though.

Re:So what?

[killjoe]

There is no need to sell me on a mac or windows or linux. I have three (yes three) macs. Two mac minis and a powermac. I used to have a powerbook too but it died and they wanted over a thousand dollars to fix it so I threw it away. The warranty was expired and I had it serviced four times while it was under the warranty so I swore I would never buy a mac laptop again. I replaced it with a dell which is running ubuntu just fine thank you.

In addition to the macs I have two computers running windows (both dells) and of course I use windows at work all day long.

Of all the OSes I use every day my favorite is Linux. Not because of ideology because it gets the job I want done and it gets out of my way. No I don't need photoshop. I have never used it, I have never needed to use it. I am not an artist, I can't draw, I don't care. I have every single database server on the planet running on one machine or another but I don't have any program other then paint or whatever comes with the OS. That's what I do, I like databases, I like programming.

I have never needed to steal any software because linux has everything I need. It works with my digital camera, it works with my printers, it works with my treo, it just works for me.

Re:So what?

[LMariachi]

"I wonder if this guy running towards me screaming and waving a cricket bat is really mad at me. There's a chance it's some sort of performance art. In fairness, I should just stand here and not make any assumptions whatsoever."

Granted, that's a gross exaggeration, but there is a reason people make judgements based on outward appearances. The trouble is that some people aren't all that great at picking up the subtle cues that would hint that no, this isn't a malevolent gangsta looking for trouble, it's just some teenager. And that their reactions to their assumptions go too far. But to deny that there are subcultures and social groups that identify themselves through some commonality of mannerism or dress is myopically naïve. If you see a fat dude with a dirty beard wearing a Confederate flag bandanna sitting on a certain style of Harley, you know that he's either an "outlaw biker"... or a guy who doesn't mind being mistaken for one. That doesn't mean you should go ahead and assume he's a meth dealer, but you can pretty much rule out Olympic Sprinter or Air Force General.

Re:So what?

[LMariachi]

You say a lot about what isn't "programming" but nothing about what is.

Re:So what?

[Arker]

Well, as I did say, I don't know exactly where the line is.

Low level programming is clearly programming. High level (i.e. C) is too. Scripts aren't. What can we deduce from that?

Perhaps that it has something to do with creating a program, that is to say, an executable that stands alone, rather than a script that another program interprets?

I said earlier that it has nothing to do with interpreted or compiled though, and I still think that's right. Or maybe just part right. Lisp is normally developed in an interpreter, but then compiled before distribution, right? But then again, I used to program on some early micros (I've only been 'not a programmer' for, umm... about ten years now.) That was in BASIC, through an interpreter, and there wasn't any other way to do it. Yeah, there was some low level programming, as I would write frequently performed routines in machine code and use peek and poke to run them, but it was still all wrapped up in a basic routine and handed to the interpreter to execute. But, in the context of the machine at least, it was a stand-alone executable, relying on nothing but what was built into the hardware to run.

I don't know. But it's clear that if scripting makes one a programmer then every grandmother that's figured out how to edit a shortcut is a programmer, and that just doesn't seem useful, does it?

Jobs upset?

[TheWanderingHermit]

I doubt Steve Jobs would have been the one to get upset about thing being closed off, since very little of the actual innovation, creative, and design work ever was his. I can see Steve Wozniak getting ticked off about it, but I imagine he'd hack away anyway.

Jobs may be great at pushing the designers to do more, but he was NOT the one who did most of the hacking. He even exploded when Woz asked if he could help with the Apple's analog port.

Re:Jobs upset?

[gEvil (beta)]

Exactly. One of the driving forces behind the original hermetically sealed Macintosh getting upset about the Mac OS kernel being closed off? It seems that this guy doesn't know his history. Or more accurately, he's fully aware of the history behind it, but writing that up wouldn't draw the page-hits like a sensationalistic write-up like this does.

Re:Jobs upset?

[bombadillo]

I doubt Steve Jobs would have been the one to get upset about thing being closed off, since very little of the actual innovation, creative, and design work ever was his. I can see Steve Wozniak getting ticked off about it, but I imagine he'd hack away anyway.

The only problem is that OSX is based off of NEXT OS. Steve Jobs started NEXT when he was forced to leave Apple. A more apt comparison would be when Steve Jobs hired John Sculley as the new CEO of Apple. Sculley and Jobs had a a power struggle. The board stood behind Sculley, and Jobs was stripped of most of his duties and banished to an office at the back of a distant building on the Apple campus unofficially known as "Siberia". After a few months of being ignored, he left.

So Steve Jobs would get ticked off and come up with something better.

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

Honestly, I don't think either one would have given a damn about this: they would have been too busy creating their own system from scratch. Neither one has ever been content to play in someone else's sandbox, and I can't picture them whining about someone else's system being closed off to them.

FWIW, I believe that both Steves were necessary for the creation of Apple as a world-changing phenomena. Steve W. was (and still is) the prototypical alpha geek, who views a technical challenge as a personal quest, and who doesn't "work" on a problem, he plays with it. Steve J. had the vision of a world where technology was put in the hands of regular people, and knew enough to make seemingly impossible demands from the people who worked with him, and for him. The kinds of demands that once they were met, resulted in a revolution. I've briefly met both men (at different times), and I have deep respect for what each brought to the table in that fateful partnership.

Vision without ability is neutered. Ability without vision is sterile. The one thing both Steves have in common is the refusal to accept the idea that something's impossible.

m-

Re:Jobs upset?

[steveo777]

Good God! I read that comment and started imagining the nerdiest Collectable Card Game ever. Wozniak would be one of the rarest cards (+10 to hacks of any kind), but Jobs' would be everywhere. His power? PR +10.

Re:Jobs upset?

[Piquan]

Honestly, I don't think either one would have given a damn about this: they would have been too busy creating their own system from scratch.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there.

Woz built the Apple I as an open system. He intended hackers to hack; he went into this with a philosophy of openness and building on what other people have done.

Had a comparable open system existed, would he have built the Apple I? Possibly, but more for the exercise... several geeks write their own OS (or at least kernel), but still use another OS for day-to-day hacking.

Re:Jobs upset?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve J. had the vision of a world where technology was put in the hands of regular people

You mean people with enough money to afford Apple's hardware. That's above average income, not regular people. As much as I hate MS, I have to say that Gates was the one with the vision that regular people - even those with somewhat below-average incomes - should be able to have a computer, not anyone at Apple.

Re:Jobs upset?

[Pope]

Talk about not knowing your history. IBM PCs were aroun $10,000, while the Apple ][ was about $2,000. On top of that, the 80s personal computer market had MANY other players besides Apple and IBM.

Gates had little if anything to do with affordable computing, because MS is not a hardware concern. Of anything, praise Compaq for reverse-engineering the BIOS, bringing x86 clones to the market.

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

This is revisionist thinking, IMO. When the Apple ][ was introduced, it was very much in the same price range as its competition. The Macintosh was more, but then, it had a lot more invested in it all new hardware, software etc. (1/10th the price of the Lisa, at the time) Only when you got to the era of Jean-Louis Gasee et al were Apple's products seriously overpriced.

When Jobs returned, it was a conscious decision to position the line as a premium product. Even so, the pricing has almost always been near-equivalent, considering what you're buying.

The reason PCs got cheap had nothing to do with Gates. It was a side effect of the brutal race-to-the-bottom that happened in the late-'80s clone market.

m-

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

It was a hobbyist's machine, built for hobbyists by a hobbyist.

I really don't think that Woz would have ever been "just another hacker" if a comparable machine already existed. He would have looked to create something completely new that couldn't be found anywhere else.

Hey, if "openness" is the be-all-end-all, use today's hobbyist os: Linux, BSD or whatever. I don't understand the idea that everything "must" be open. If you don't like it for what it is, for god's sake use something else. There are no shortage of alternatives. Hell, write your own.

Sometimes it seems like today's "hackers" want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Damn kids. :-)

m-

Re:Jobs upset?

[JeffElkins]

>>Talk about not knowing your history. IBM PCs were aroun $10,000, while the Apple ][ was about $2,000.

I call BS. The original IBMPC was in the $3K range. Apple ][ was around $2K.

After reading about it [IBM] in Byte, I was lusting for one to replace my Atari 800 which I bought for about $500 less than an Apple.

Re:Jobs upset?

[HermMunster]

They created their early computers not because they wanted to hack nor because they were creative. They did so because computers of the day were huge, costly, and only men in white robes in big business had access to them. Back to the very beginnings of the computer revolution that was the fundamental premise.

Job's motivation was a bit different. He wanted a company and ultimately to be in power. He proved he was up to the task. He was an evangelist not a creator, not an artists, not an engineer, not a programmer.

It certainly would not have affected Jobs and maybe not even Woz, but it would have affected their success had they started in today's atmosphere.

As far as I know Apple still has to contend with its reponsibility toward Darwin. They can't just close it.

You have to remember Jobs was one who lived in a commune after dropping out of college where they had an apple orchard. He dropped acid and did other illicit drugs. When they started Apple he was living with his parents again (they adopted him and his adopted sister). He had his mother making him special foods and he never bathed and cried to get what he wanted. Yes, cried.

On top of that he would go to business meetings with bare feet, unwashed body and clothing, and when they refused his desires he would cry and scream until they let him have what he wanted.

He did change and he is someone that can enrapture you but you have to remember he was a druggy college dropout who rode on the backs of others till he managed a position of power. The reason Apple became what it was is due to an ex-Intel employee who invested and a slew of other managers capable of making a company function. Stop giving Jobs a stature he didn't deserve.

Today he has my respect because he did do what it took to climb back. My hat is off to him, but you guys give him way too much credit for making Apple, and hence too much influence on us as to what he would or would not have done if he were in our position today.

And remember, those arguing that closing the kernel source is wrong and despicable most likely lived that era and know why computers were created to begin with and why so many hate Microsoft for how it does things.

Re:Jobs upset?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Talk about not knowing your history. IBM PCs were aroun $10,000, while the Apple ][ was about $2,000. On top of that, the 80s personal computer market had MANY other players besides Apple and IBM.

The Apple ][ (and most other PCs of the era) shipped with Microsoft software, so that doesn't really speak to the point.

Re:Jobs upset?

[ClamIAm]

Steve J. had the vision of a world where technology was put in the hands of regular people

Without the freedom to run, change, and redistribute software, "technology" sits locked in the vault of Company X. Steve J saw a way to make a lot of money. He's not some idealist that democratized computing.

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

Without the freedom to run, change, and redistribute software, "technology" sits locked in the vault of Company X.

Bullshit. The average teenager today has more "technology" sitting in their bedroom than their parents would have believed 20 years ago. Why is the phrase "FUD" coming to mind?

Amazing how well we got along before the "open source movement" even got started. Not that it's a bad idea, all in all. However, it certainly isn't the only (or even the best) way of doing things. The last 30 years proves that.

m-

Re:Jobs upset?

[Chaostrophy]

Seeing as NeXT damn near needed to be sued to get them to release the modifications to gcc they made for Objective-C, I think Steve is quite happy being closed.

Re:Jobs upset?

[tehcyder]

the refusal to accept the idea that something's impossible

But you could also use this as a definition of madness.

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

But you could also use this as a definition of madness.

There's a fine line between madness and genius, As Dali said, "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."

m-

Re:Jobs upset?

[ClamIAm]

The average teenager today has more "technology" sitting in their bedroom than their parents would have believed 20 years ago

Why is the phrase "Panem et circenses" coming to mind?

Re:Jobs upset?

[ultramk]

Why is the phrase "Panem et circenses" coming to mind?

Oh, of course. It's all a big plot by "the man." Gimmie a break. This generation is like any other. Those who really want to accomplish things, change things, will find a way. Those who don't... well, they won't. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

m-

Consistent with the past

[moankey]

This is not different than how Apple has always approached things. They have always been about form and function. Developing the next killer app or killer hardware. And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.
Doesnt matter how stubborn it may seem at the time and goes against potential profits or their customer base, its just classic Apple thinking.

While people may remark that Jobs should be thrilled at their level of success and want things opened up or looking towards Mac's as a game machine, or whatever else it may be. This was more Woz's thinking not so much Job's. Job's has always been the suit side of it all, that happens to be in jeans and loafers.

Re:Consistent with the past

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This is not different than how Apple has always approached things. They have always been about form and function. Developing the next killer app or killer hardware. And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.

Really. What killer apps have they created that rely unnecessarily upon closed formats or protocols? What hardware have they developed that unnecessarily relied upon nonstandard hardware or interfaces? Heck this is the company that built their entire display layer on the PDF standard and for years stuck with the open standard PCC platform, rather than the reverse engineered, x86 non-standard. Give me some examples here so I have a clue what you're talking about (if you have a clue what you're talking about).

Proprietary != OSS

[fak3r]

Yeah, since Apple used parts of BSD people think it's as free and open, but anyone who knows what's up knows this is not the case. Sure, Darwin is available, but how is that comparable with OS X? It's not. The base, sure, but anything above 'ls' and you're not in an enviroment that even tries to be similar; it feels like lip service only. The 'closing' of the kernel (many things have been written to prove/disprove this actually happened) is just going to end up being Apple protecting its marketing edge; if the src was available all of a sudden 'free' versions of OS X would appear everywhere, and since they run on Intel now they could/would be running on any x86 box. No, they wouldn't run as smooth, which would again damage Apple's cred as having a 'rock solid' OS. Let's not forget the 'hook' (aka hardware) would be cut out of the loop too, so I think this discussion goes more along to the 'apple should release OS X for general x86 boxen' that failed to solve anything last year.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[zeroduck]

They closed the kernel. They say this has to do with piracy issues of OSX86 (as to not have someone make one that will run on generic hardware). Big deal. Aparently, the code for the PPC kernel is still open. Still the rest of Darwin is as open as it always was--and if you think the extent of Darwin is 'ls', then. . . well, you're wrong. The pretty GUI has never been open, and I surmise, never will. Stop complaining, they have no obligation to open it up to the world.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[VWJedi]

Sure, Darwin is available, but how is that comparable with OS X? It's not. The base, sure, but anything above 'ls' and you're not in an enviroment that even tries to be similar; it feels like lip service only.

Yes, that is true, but...

... if the src was available all of a sudden 'free' versions of OS X would appear everywhere, and since they run on Intel now they could/would be running on any x86 box. No, they wouldn't run as smooth, which would again damage Apple's cred as having a 'rock solid' OS.

... this sentence seems to contradict your earlier statement. The open-source kernel (Darwin) is NOT the same as OS X. The primary advantage of keeping Darwin open is to allow people to customize the way their kernel functions. What works best for Apple's "average user" may not work best for me, and I'd like to opportunity to make changes to suit my situation.

Since many key components of OS X (e.g. Aqua, the user interface) are not open-source, you could not download enough parts of OS X to assemble a "free OS X" that would have nearly the features of the official version, and would be unlikely to run most OS X applications. I sincerely doubt anyone would find a reason to use this environment. Either they would pay for full Mac OS X to run their OS X apps, or they would run a completely free and open-source OS on their hardware and get apps that work with that.

As far as I can see, keeping the kernel open source does not hurt Apple's profits nearly as much as the backlash their announcement that they're closing it.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[yabos]

What's stopping people from downloading the kernel source and replacing the stock kernel from OS X x86 to make it run on non Apple machines? That's probably what will happen if they release the source code and that's not going to be good for Apple.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[dfghjk]

As if OS X on Apple runs "smooth". What exactly is that anyway?

I'm writing this on a MBP. It's already failed and required a new motherboard (which resulted in having my HD wiped my Apple, why's that?) and it crashes often enough. Perhaps not as often as my XP notebook but hardly "rock solid". My mac early-life failure rate is still 100% and i've owned 3 macs now. Pitiful.

Hardware lockin for OS X has nothing to do with "smoothness". It has to do with protecting the MacOS monopoly and minimizing ongoing support. Intel macs are the same hardware as Intel PC's without any special, Apple-engineered "smoothness" chip.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[oudzeeman]

people are presuming they didn't release the latest darwin x86 kernel (xnu) source because they don't want hackers to circumvent the DRM in OS X by replacing the apple supplied kernel with a custom kernel...

why not put the DRM in something that is proprietary like Aqua?

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[VWJedi]

If the machine is not an Apple, where would they get the rest of the OS? You can't buy OS X (Intel); you can only get it by buying a Mac.

I don't know off-hand the details of Apple's copy-protection, but they do have methods to keep me from buying one copy of OS X 10.4 (PPC) and using it to upgrade all of my older PPC Macs. Those same methods should work for Intel Macs.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know off-hand the details of Apple's copy-protection, but they do have methods to keep me from buying one copy of OS X 10.4 (PPC) and using it to upgrade all of my older PPC Macs.

No, they don't.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[wbd]

And you think that because it happened to you it happens to everyone? Ridiculous.

I've purchased about seven Macs in the last 20 years, the last one purchased about 3 years ago, and only one had any early problems (the previous PowerBook G3 I owned before the G4) and that was fixed quickly and easily and permanently. I still have that old G3 and it works fine, eight years after I bought it. Also have had several different models of Newton and iPod. No hardware problems whatsoever with any of those, either.

But at least I realize that my experience doesn't mean that other's WON'T have problems, of course, and I'd never assume it did, as YOU are doing.

Frankly, if you've having that much trouble, you've got to be doing something wrong to your equipment, abusing it or perhaps your location just has bad power, etc. The one time I was having weird crashes on a unit, I noticed a drastic drop in weird crashes when I put a UPS in the between them and the wall power outlet. Wish I could get a UPS on my Windows PC at work....Windows and Office are always crashing in weird and unique ways. That can't ALL be Microsoft's fault, can it?

However, of the several folks I know who have Macs, none have had any hardware failures. Software problems happen occasionally, but are also rare. The PC users I know are always dealing with problems one sort or another, usually viruses, spyware, crappy discount hardware or drivers causing problems.

I haven't had but ONE kernel panic in the entire 3 years of owning my current PowerBook G4. Even apps rarely crash (and, surprise surprise, the ones that usually do are Microsoft apps, or F/OSS apps like Firefox.)

Of course, people are always pushing Apple to make "cheaper" Macs. And so now they are. And you know what that does to quality.....perhaps that's starting to finally affect Apple. Good, fast, cheap...pick any two.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple produced iBooks with bad logic boards for three years in a row. eMacs have CRT-related issues. *Some* MacBooks have design-related heat problems, the issues are documented all over the web, the only thing left is the class-action suits and the recalls.

It's great that you can babble about various personal experiences with Macs, but the overall quality record isn't really anything special, nor is it suprising to anyone paying attention that his MBP fried.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[NDPTAL85]

There is no Apple copy protection on retail OS installs. You can buy one copy and install it on as many PPC Macs as you own. I doubt they'll leave it this way for the Intel Macs however.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[Hungus]

Apple put no copy protection on the OS that I am aware of. In fact there is a family license for about 20 bucks more or so that gives you license to install the os on 5 machines. On the workstation version there is no serial number at all, just for the server version.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[VWJedi]

Wow... I'm surprised at that. I know you cannot have multiple servers w/ the same serial number, so I expected the "client" version to have the same limitation. If there is no copy protection and they don't have any way of telling how many machines you upgrade, why would someone pay more to get more licences? If you assume all Mac users are ethical and do not violate license agreement, then I guess they would pay for licenses. I would question the judgement of anyone who believes Mac users are somehow more ethical than everyone else and feels strongly enough to ignore the possibility that they are not ethical.

I do know that the 10.4 (maybe only server version?) installer will not install on older machines that do not meet certain requirements. I don't know how this is checked, but can't a OS X (Intel) installer check for required hardware (e.g. Apple BIOS) before installing?

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[Daedala]

So, you're arguing _for_ DRM? Saying a company that doesn't use it in this situation has questionable judgment? Am I on the wrong site?

Apple is a hardware company. Software piracy does not make them cry; pissing off users, however, would be a problem. It's superconvenient to be able to just upgrade stuff without futzing with serial numbers.

10.4 won't install on computers that don't meet the hardware requirements. Yyou can still install it on such machines pretty easily with XPostFacto. I have a beige desktop running 10.4. It's kinda slow, but it doesn't crash.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[rickb928]

Interesting. I hacked away at Darwin to see if it would run on Intel a bit before Apple bit Intel for chips. Almost worked, but i needed those modules that bypassed the TPC stuff...

Apple doesn't really *need* copy protection for PPC - based Darwin. It really only ran on Apple Hardware, and OS upgrades might not be where the money is for Apple.

Now that OS X runs on Intel relatively plainly, they might have need of something like copy protecton, but if there's hooks to BIOS or TPC stuff, problem solved.

Having a 'family license' isn't a demonstration of 'no copy protection' if you need Apple hardware to run it.

Imagine Microsoft brings out versions of Vista that can only run on specific vendors' platforms, say a version for Dell, one for HP/Compaq, one for Sony, etc. Any feature that Dell had that HP users wanted would spark a war to crack the code.

Uhoh. Hope nobody from M$ is reading this...

rick

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[yabos]

Someone could download the DVD restore image off a bittorrent site, burn it, rip out the kernel, install their hacked kernel, install on non Apple machine. I'm sure that OS X Retail will be soon including an intel build as well.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[raga]

I hacked away at Darwin to see if it would run on Intel a bit before Apple bit Intel for chips. Almost worked, but i needed those modules that bypassed the TPC stuff...

???...Darwin-x86 has always run on Intel without any additional hacking.

cheers- raga

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[rickb928]

Ah, but we wanted the true Apple rev, with all the goodies. I believed my partner in crime that Aqua wasn't part of GNU-darwin... jerk.

Silly, though. We coulda lived with the GNU rev.

rick

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[Ash-Fox]

And MacOSX x86 has still been cracked for generic x86 hardware.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[VWJedi]

I am not arguing for or against DRM. I just think Apple needs to make up its mind on what it wants to do. I can't understand why the company would use the "honor system" when it comes to licenses for OS X (client), but implement serial number restrictions for OS X Server. For several years they say, "You can download the source for the kernel and compile a version customized to your liking." And now they say, "You can't compile your own kernel for an Intel Mac because we don't trust you (even though we trust not to do anything illegal with your PPC Mac)."

And unless the Intel version of the kernel is completely different from the PPC version (which I doubt), there is nothing to stop a less-than-ethical group from porting the PPC kernel to run on non-Apple machines, pirating the rest of the OS X (Intel) components, and creating the "free OS X" Apple is appearently trying to avoid.

My point is, with Apple's current stance on licensing and how they choose to enforce (or not) their rights, negative backlash from closing the Intel version of the kernel source seems to be much larger than the anti-piracy gains of doing it.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[fak3r]

Ok, I mean "not as smooth" not that OS X on PPC has been smooth for me; it hasn't. This is something I'm hoping IntelMacs will fix. At home I have a 800Mhz iBook, and yeah, it's on it's FOURTH 'logic board' (read motherboard). In addtion I have an old iMac (500Mhz) that replaced an older one (350Mhz) after its sound failed to work anymore, and fixing it would have been more expensive than buying a newer/better(/smoother?) one. An I completely agree with your logic on the lockin and monopoly comments, without the OS/Hardware hook Apple would be left to deal iPods as their main hand.

Re:Proprietary != OSS

[raga]

Well, you "partner in crime" is correct in that Aqua is not OSS, and is only available from Apple. But AFAIK, there are atleast a few Aqua-lookalike skins floating around, and some of them are OSS.

cheers- raga

OS-X is a closed OS

[WinEveryGame]

IMHO, OS-X is pretty much a closed operating system at this point. All of the innovation is dictated by Apple. BTW, I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that Apple can not claim that OS-X has the benefits (and downsides) of open source development.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[masklinn]

Thing is, OSX has always been a closed operating system.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

IMHO, OS-X is pretty much a closed operating system at this point. All of the innovation is dictated by Apple. BTW, I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that Apple can not claim that OS-X has the benefits (and downsides) of open source development.

Greetings and welcome to terminology 101. Our phrase of the day is "open source." The term means the source code is open to the public to view. It does not imply that the code is freely licensed, able to be legally copied, or under any specific license at all.

OS X is partially open source and partially free (as in freedom). They benefit because people look at the source code and find bugs. People make modifications and submit them as patches (which may or may not make it into OS X). Because people can see much of the code, they can more easily interoperate with it. Because some of the code is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused, other people copy it into their projects, improve it, find and bugs. These can be pulled back into OS X and make those projects more easily interoperate with OS X.

Because OS X is not completely free (as in freedom) user do not gain some benefits, like the ability to completely customize it, fork it for special purposes, or port it to other platforms. OS X does not gain all the benefits of being freely licensed code, but it does gain most of the benefits of being open source. Do you see the difference?

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[Random832]

Greetings and welcome to terminology 101. Our phrase of the day is "open source." The term means the source code is open to the public to view. It does not imply that the code is freely licensed, able to be legally copied, or under any specific license at all.

The correct term for that is "shared source". Open source means it's freely licensed, able to be legally copied, and probably under a license that conforms to the open source definition published by OSI.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The correct term for that is "shared source".

Nope. "Shared source" is a particular licensing initiative.

From wikipedia:

...the term "open source" fosters an ambiguity of a different kind such that it confuses the mere availability of the source with the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute it. Developers have used the term Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS), or Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS), consequently, to describe open-source software that is freely available and free of charge.

"Open" means the source is available to view under some license. "Free" (libre) means it is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused. The OSI was formed in 98, decades after the term "open source" entered the programming lexicon. Don't confuse the advocacy of one group for a formal definition.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[SteeldrivingJon]

All of the innovation is dictated by Apple.

Let me introduce you to one of the other evergreen knocks against Apple: accusations that Apple steals someone else's innovation and incorporates it into the OS. I don't mean borrowing an idea from Microsoft, I mean duplicating something developed by a small independent developer.

That can't happen unless innovation is *not* dictated by Apple. Other people are innovating the functionality, all Apple is dictating is what goes on the install disks.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[Random832]

The ambiguity is in the imagination of those who want to use the term without opening their source.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The ambiguity is in the imagination of those who want to use the term without opening their source.

People were using the term to describe making the source available, but not necessarily freely licensing it for twenty years before a particular group decided to try to hijack it. Free software has the code available for modification. Open software, just has readable code.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[Random832]

Cite.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"Take, for example, "open source." That used to be a simple term for software where the source was visible to the end user, who could use it as needed. Now it implies software licensed with source code provided and no copyleft provisions, at least to some. " [http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/37558.html]

"Those involved with journalism and open source intelligence used the earliest known practices of open source that focused on accessibility rather than modification of sources." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source]

From the OSI pages at opensource.org, "Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of this document as "The Debian Free Software Guidelines" ...in June, 1997. He removed the Debian-specific references from the document to create the "Open Source Definition."" [http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.h tml]

"Hence the term `open source', which the first participants in what would later become the Open Source campaign (and, eventually, the Open Source Initiative organization) invented at a meeting held in Mountain View the offices of VA Research on 3 February 1998." [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/ha cker-revenge/ar01s05.html]

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[Random832]

The first one doesn't clearly support your claim. It seems to me that "who could use it as needed" mean that there is at least some free licensing involved, and that what they are claiming has been added on to it is a LACK of copyleft (that is, its original meaning could mean either copyleft or bsd/mit, and now it only means bsd/mit)

The second, the only one that actually supports your claim... well, it's not contemporary. someone with the same misconception as you do might have written that.

The third doesn't support it at all, and it's not clear why you cited it.

The fourth directly opposes it, stating that "open source" was _newly invented_ (that is, did not have a previous, different meaning) to describe what had been called "free software" while avoiding the confusion with free as in beer.

What i meant was you should provide cites of people actually using open source in what you claim is the old meaning - maybe in old articles or on usenet.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It seems to me that "who could use it as needed" mean that there is at least some free licensing involved...

You're mistaken. In the early days code was copyrighted, but no one bothered to enforce it and it was often specifically given to the public domain. Licenses were not involved until much later.

and that what they are claiming has been added on to it is a LACK of copyleft...

I think you are misjudging the context.

The second, the only one that actually supports your claim... well, it's not contemporary.

That is sort of the point. Just go ask any group of old-timers. It's not like I'm just making this stuff up. The problem is you're asking for citations to support what people commonly understood an uncommon term to mean. How often does someone write that down? I found a few references to show others agree, but I'm certainly not spending more than a few minutes on this. If you are really interested, I think if you do some real research you'll find plenty of people who recall.

The third doesn't support it at all, and it's not clear why you cited it.

The dates.

The fourth directly opposes it...

Again, look at the dates when they stopped calling it Free software and claim to have "invented" open as a term. Now do a google search for earlier instances of the term open source. You'll find a whole lot of them.

What i meant was you should provide cites of people actually using open source in what you claim is the old meaning - maybe in old articles or on usenet.

And how are you to know what they meant by the term when they used it? I'm sure somewhere there is an old post that describes the term to a newbie, but I'm certainly not going to waste my time looking for it. If you don't believe me, I'm okay with that. I was just trying to inform.

Re:OS-X is a closed OS

[Random832]

You were claiming though, that "open source" applied to code that was "look, don't touch" - that as long as it's visible, they'd call it open, and that using it only for code that can be freely used and modified (either with a license or implicitly) is a "hijacking" of the term. That's a lot different from saying that it was unenforced and often public-domain. (and if you're going to cite something that goes against your point to illustrate that the person you're citing is wrong and why, you should at least say you're doing so)

Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[Anonymous Coward]

but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?

At one point it was cool to have a PowerBook to do unix dev on, but the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips and I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.

With how fast Ubuntu with the new accelerated desktop is coming up to speed, I don't think I even care about OS X anymore outside of the more ascetically pleasing UI elements.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[John Miles]

...but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?

When they shipped the Apple ][+ with a commented assembly-language listing of its firmware.

Not so much since then.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[paperclip2003]

Being one who works with PCs and Macs everyday as an IT job: PPC Macs have the same quality as Intel Parts. Some models are good and some are total crap. A good example of a very crappy designed macintosh is a generation one imac. Tray loading thing that had all sorts of wierd problems.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[apeeira]

Or even make an improved UI.... With Ubuntu it's posible, and any way, Apple eye candy IS a little bit overrrated...

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[Ibanez]

the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips and I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.

I'm sorry, what? I fail to see even the slightest logical connection in the switch to Intel chips being due to the low quality of Apple hardware.

What exactly are you comparing the quality to? Certainly not your average PC...

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?

When they collaborated on dozens of standards implemented by both Apple and the OS community. When they hired a large number of OS proponents and other "old school" UNIX heads to work for them.

At one point it was cool to have a PowerBook to do unix dev on...

Cool?!? I think you're a little confused. OS X is useful to do UNIX dev on, not "cool." I haven't exactly seen fewer macs at UNIX development conventions lately, have you?

...but the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips...

The quality is about the same as any other first generation release by Apple. Almost all companies have bugs in the first generation of anything that requires significant engineering, including computers. Arguing that somehow the chip set used has altered the quality of Apple machines, with no evidence provided, is just empty rhetoric.

...I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.

When have you ever? It is always a constant trickle, although some analysts are claiming it is indeed gaining switchers much faster now that they have switched to Intel.

With how fast Ubuntu with the new accelerated desktop is coming up to speed, I don't think I even care about OS X anymore outside of the more ascetically pleasing UI elements.

You just let me know as soon as I can run mainstream software like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and World of Warcraft without rebooting on Ubuntu. Also, let me know when they let me easily IM programs to co-workers, implement an expose clone, and get a system services framework functional and implemented by all major applications. Oh, and when all applications can natively create PDFs and when I can migrate to a new machine including all settings, programs, configurations, and files, simply by plugging a firewire cable between the new and old machine.

Ubuntu is not bad, but for most of us it is nowhere near as functional of a workstation. It may be fine for what you do, but not for a whole lot of us who need to get work done. The UI elements are the last thing I want Ubuntu to add, after they get all the real functional improvements.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[cappadocius]

I fail to see even the slightest logical connection in the switch to Intel chips being due to the low quality of Apple hardware.

Simple connection: Apple's hardware started to suck due to problems with PPC not entirely under their control. They switched to Intel to remedy this. Now their products are comparable to everyone else's.

You think they decided to switch architectures and make more work for everyone just for the hell of it? I assure you, it was because they couldn't make the products they wanted to on PPC.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[jasonditz]

You must've been off-planet, because every financial analyst report I've read in the past few months says that Macs are selling way better than expected.

Re:Perhaps I Was Off-Planet And Missed It...

[Aceticon]

the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips and I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.


I'm sorry, what? I fail to see even the slightest logical connection in the switch to Intel chips being due to the low quality of Apple hardware.

What exactly are you comparing the quality to? Certainly not your average PC...

I think you misunderstood the causal relation the GP is trying to describe - the meaning is that now that Apple has been forced to switch to Intel chips the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted.

Thus your knee-jerk, Apple-fanboy reaction was aimed at the wrong place.

Then again, logic never stoped blind faith before.

If I may add...

[MudButt]

FTFA, It's not about code. It's about character.

It's also about money. Yager states that he believes Apple will open the OS back up again (eventually), and I'd have to agree. A running theme in economics is that investment (in technology) leads to increased capital. I believe the main reason that the Linux community enjoys so much capital right now is because of the years of investment. That investment was at the cost of human labor and hard work by the OSS community!

When Apple realizes that free (as in beer) investment into their business (by the OSS community) actually has a bottom dollar impact on capital, the lock on the kernel will fly open pretty quickly.

Re:If I may add...

[squiggleslash]

When Apple realizes that free (as in beer) investment into their business (by the OSS community) actually has a bottom dollar impact on capital, the lock on the kernel will fly open pretty quickly.

That's not really the way it's ever worked in Darwin's case. The amount of "OSS community" involvement in Darwin was relatively low, and Apple did what they could do to keep it that way. Apple was happy to extract code from existing OSS projects to put into Darwin, but once put together, pretty much all development on Darwin was internal, and Apple did little to encourage (arguably they actively discouraged) outsides to contribute.

With Darwin an APSL project, the contributions will continue to come largely from other projects with extremely liberal licenses, namely the BSDs. Pretty much by definition, if a project has a license compatible with the APSL, then there's no reason for Apple to open it up. As time's gone on, we've seen a deprecation of openness for code that Apple's not obligated to open, the most extreme being the closing of the x86 kernel.

I don't think there's any incentive beyond wanting to use the occasional bit of GPL'd code for Apple to continue to release its changes. Apple is one half of the "Open Source (the alternative marketing strategy for Free Software) is Bullshit" argument. They "open sourced" everything, and found they didn't appreciate the results. Perhaps open sourcers didn't want to go in the same direction Apple did, perhaps there weren't enough people remotely interested in improving Darwin. Either way, Darwin is not, and never has been, an "Open Source" - that is, community-lead development, project. And Apple's death grip on the free software part of it isn't difficult to understand.

Re:Surprising if true.

[Anonymous Coward]

what, apple loosing touch with its fans? oh boy, this flame war is going to be like sitting under the shuttle during take off.

Re:Surprising if true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. the actual amount of open source involvement in Darwin was nearly nil. The platform sells well to people who want a Unix, not people who want to hack the OS.

OS X

[geekmansworld]

It's a non-story being touted by yet another tech columnist who's realized that pushing mac users' buttons generates site traffic. Indeed his fraction of a fraction geeks don't outweigh the larger fraction of geeks who want to use Darwin to port/pirate OS X to generic X86 hardware. Like is or not, Apple is still a business, and their goal is to make money.

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats fine, but I don't want to hear a peep out of anyone who says Apple is committed to the community

Re:OS X

[tyrione]

Which Community? Last time I checked there were many Communities in this "FOSS" World.

article down

[specific]

If they are doing this to prevent a rash of new Mac-Clones from running a hacked OS X, then i can understand why. Besides the niche of some serious number crunchers, who else will this adversly affect? The performance benefits to Apple's average user wouldn't be worth raising much fuss over this, FOR NOW. If it remains shrouded in secrecy, though, wouldn't Apple find a way to allow for or make changes and optimizations themselves? (at least for the scientific communinity & others who need to be able to tweak OS X for their purposes)

Re:article down

[poopdeville]

And you can be sure that this niche of number crunchers is going to have full access to the Darwin source code, should it matter. Obviously under an NDA, but that's fine as long as they get to crunch their numbers. The number crunchers are usually only interested in hacking commercial products as a means to an end: number crunching. For their point of view, the xnu kernel is pedestrian.

Re:article down

[Frumious Wombat]

As a number-cruncher, may I politely say that most days, I really don't care. I do care that they provide good math libs (they do), or documentation that helps me optimize my code for their hardware (they do), and hardware that for some combination of price/reliability/speed, performs to my specs (they do). They also provide a good development environmnent that plays well with other compilers, and a good desktop environment that supports both native and legacy (X11) apps, which I can seamlessly link to the HPC side. For the previous generation of processors, there was IBM fortran (which made it easy to go from AIX -> OSX), and now there is Intel Fortran ( Linux -> OSX), both of which are extremely strong performers on their respective processors, and both of which make more difference to my actual runs than would the ability to recompile my kernel from scratch. Neither of those compilers are open-source either, yet we purchase them because their performance is high enough that it outweighs whatever political misgivings we may have.

As you say, the real HPC guys on the nitty-gritty end (people optimizing TCP stacks for high-performance network interfaces, for instance), will sign the NDAs, then those of us in the field will decide whether or not we can use their solution. Whether or not we can get the kernel source code is not going to matter to 98% of us. We ran Irix (closed), UNICOS (closed), AIX (closed), VMS (closed), and Linux (open), and will run OSX whether it's open or closed, as long as we get reliable simulations done in an acceptable amount of time on equipment we can stand to work with.

It's natural

[gravy.jones]

It is natural that the source code was closed. It protects that commercial investment of the company and the security of the product. Early adopters, such as the group described in the article, should have a way to work with Apple to learn how to extend the O/S.

Re:It's natural

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they can use something free and open like Linux or BSD or something else. Freedom is freedom. You can't work within a system like that.

Re:It's natural

[AstroDrabb]

It protects that commercial investment of the company and the security of the product

Huh? That is the dumbest thing I have heard on /. in a long time. Has being closed and proprietary helped Microsoft with security holes and to protect their commercial investment from "piracy"? Nope.

Re:It's natural

[ScrewYouTroll]

Thanks for the corporate speak. Your next action item is to add value to that, leveraging the open source community to take it to the next level. Embrace, extend, and corrupt! Wait, that's Microsoft. Oh yeah, and screw you, too.

Re:It's natural

[poopdeville]

Should you leave your front door unlocked just because a thief could kick it in? Nope.

Re:It's natural

[AstroDrabb]

A better way to look at it IMO is: "there is no reason for me to lock my front door because a thief could still break in".

You are also comparing Apples (no pun) to Oranges. There is a big difference between real-world physical security and trying to keep code "secret". I could spend tons of money and really lock down my house. I could have no windows, 6 feet thick concrete walls and a safe room made of steel. One can create a pretty secure safe zone.

Things are very different with trying to keep code secret/proprietary. If the code runs on my system, I can disassemble it, reverse engineer it, snoop protocols, etc. To date, there has not been one fool proof way to prevent someone getting at the code if they are determined. Take Jon Lech Johansen as an example.

Re:It's natural

[Ash-Fox]

I would like to note that MacOSX has already been cracked to run on generic x86 hardware.

Fork?

[rehashed]

My understanding was that they cannot guarantee an OSX compatible open source darwin kernel. Wouldnt this be more along the lines of a fork as opposed to being evil?

No quotes

[stevejobsjr]

He sat down with Apple, yet he has no quotes. 95% of the "article" is his own speculation. I'm betting the 5% paraphrased from the alleged talks comes from his own mind, too.

Apple said what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The meeting started sliding downhill when Apple asked, "Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?""

I'd like to know with whom Tom actually met. I'm sure this subject is important but I think he's reaching. In the end, Apple will do (or try to do) what is best for the company and it's interests. It is not at all surprising. As long as they continue to produce quality hardware (- macbook plastic bits and exessive thermal paste) and software (- aperture) I don't care what they do with their kernal.

Makes no sense (Google)

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doeasn't loose touch with the OSS community because it gives closed-source wine-based software for Google Earth and Picasa. OTOH, the slashdot crowd and chrisd like google even more. So why should apple open the source of OSX?

This article is Stallinism.

darwin?

[venicebeach]

Does anyone actually use Darwin as an OS? If so, why? Does the 'closing' of the Intel version of the kernel really affect anyone?

Re:darwin?

[deb2006]

Yes, e.g. the folks at Gnu-Darwin: http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[WombatControl]

Apple is a hardware company.

Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS and great consumer and pro apps, but when it comes to what butters Apple's bread it's all about the hardware. Apple is not, nor will it ever likely be, a software company.

Does opening the source for OS X sell more Apple hardware? Obviously not, since it allows people to use OS X on non-Apple machines. That's not in Apple's interest, and that's why they're making that more difficult to do. Apple is first and foremost a business, and no smart business would cannibalize itself to pick up a market that they don't need.

People who are dogmatic about OSS have plenty of choices in the market. Apple just isn't one of them. Somehow, I doubt Steve Jobs really loses sleep over such a small part of the market.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[The Cubelodyte]

I disagree. I think Apple is a computer company. Apple is interested in selling you the complete package, software and hardware. Having seen the company from the inside, I don't believe that the infrastructure and effort that's behind their applications is merely some kind of slick adjunct or value-add to sell hardware. The strategy is synergy.

Apple is about selling (and having as much control as possible over) the whole enchilada.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[hackstraw]

Apple is a hardware company.

Again supporting my mantra that human rationality goes to zero when a computer is involved.

Apple is a computer company. In fact, the name of the company is "Apple Computer, Inc."

So, what is next? Verizon being a phone company? Oh, they have proprietary software, they sell phones, but their bread and butter is ripping people off via locked in contracts.

Oh, and Ford is a car company. Yeah, they have proprietary software, and sell auto parts, but their bread and butter is selling cars.

GM is a defense and financing company that also sells cars.

So, to recap, Apple is a computer company that sells computers, monitors, music gadgets, and plenty of other goods and services. In recent times, they switched to a very popular commodity chip, and their bread and butter of selling computers is potentially threatened by Slashdot style geeks building some white-boxes of variable quality and selling them on the black/grey market to customers with OS X and Apple's name all over the place. (As what happened with the Apple clones of the mid-late 90s). If the quality and reliability is not up to Apple's standards, then Apple's name would only stand to lose from having copies of their software floating around and running on random white boxes.

I'm very, very happy with how far Apple has come since the Apple // days. My PowerBook is the best personal computer that I've ever owned. And if Apple has to take some unpopular steps with a minority of geeks to maintain their ability to provide people with nice computer systems, then so be it. /rant and karma

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

And what are computers? Hardware, you dumbass. So are the "monitors, music gadgets" you mention.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a jerk-off. Apple reports hardware and software revenue seperately, on a management level they understand the difference.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[Mister Whirly]

Actually, Apple is a "electronic music hardware" company. Mac hardware sales up 20% in Q1 2006, iPod sales up 207% in same period.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[at_slashdot]

Apple is a hardware company

That reminds me: Apple is a computer company they should not get involved in music.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[e40]

Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS...

I'd like some of what you're smoking. It must be good. My experience is just the opposite. Mac OS X is just now starting to mature, but it's got a ways to go. When I download some OSS and do "configure && make && make install", I expect it to work on Linux and Solaris, but I hold my breath on Mac OS X. Often it just doesn't work, and hacks and more are required to get the software to work. This is definitely less true than in the 10.2 and 10.3 days, but it happens waaaay more often than it does on Linux and Solaris.

Second, we run Linux, Solaris, and a bunch of other OSs, including Mac OS X. Mac OS X is the least stable OS of the group. Try this: install AMD and touch /net with the finder, the result requiring a hard reset of the machine to regain control.

The software on top of Mac OS X is a different matter. People love it. I personally don't like it, but I understand it's a matter of taste.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[bertramwooster]

Apple is a hardware company.

Apple happens to have an incredibly great OS and great consumer and pro apps, but when it comes to what butters Apple's bread it's all about the hardware. Apple is not, nor will it ever likely be, a software company. Does opening the source for OS X sell more Apple hardware? Obviously not, since it allows people to use OS X on non-Apple machines. That's not in Apple's interest, and that's why they're making that more difficult to do. Apple is first and foremost a business, and no smart business would cannibalize itself to pick up a market that they don't need. People who are dogmatic about OSS have plenty of choices in the market. Apple just isn't one of them. Somehow, I doubt Steve Jobs really loses sleep over such a small part of the market.

Then what about opening the hardware, as in, providing specs and drivers. Then people can put in linux and windows on a mac. Are they doing that? That should help them sell more hardware. I am just curious.

Aravind.

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[gd23ka]

Sir, wouldn't you agree that comparing Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris is like comparing, Apples, Pears and Oranges with another?

Re:Rule #1 For Understanding Apple

[vistic]

"When I download some OSS and do "configure && make && make install", I expect it to work on Linux and Solaris, but I hold my breath on Mac OS X. Often it just doesn't work, and hacks and more are required to get the software to work."

And sometimes a program that was developed on a PC running Red Hat won't compile on a PC running FreeBSD. A lot of programs will work, but it depends on the program and how portable it is versus how much it gets into specifics of the operating system. I don't see how this should surprise you at all. It really would be the author of that software's fault, not Apple's.

Consistent with the BSD license too

[Anonymous Coward]

Also consistent with the BSD license. In fact, BSD license advocates suggest that this ability to create proprietary derived works of their stuff is exactly what makes it better than the GPL.

Personally, I don't quite get it, but this move of Apples clearly should NOT offend BSD license advocates since that is exactly what they stand for.

I think this is a perfect example of some of the tensions within the open source community too, and a key differtiator between the positions of the FSF (Stallman's group who advocates GPL-like philosophies) and the OSI (who has people like ESR who often advocate BSD over GPL tend to like it when companies like Apple do this).

To summarize, I'd say that Free Software advocates will criticize Apple's move, but Open Software Initiative advocates will hold it up as a prime example of business and open source playing nicel togehter.

Re:Consistent with the BSD license too

[dfghjk]

"Personally, I don't quite get it, but this move of Apples clearly should NOT offend BSD license advocates since that is exactly what they stand for."

Not exactly. BSD license advocates just don't stand against it. They stand against the additional restrictions of the GPL license.

You're right that it should not offend. It shouldn't offend anyone and it should have been expected.

The real mistake is thinking that Apple is a friend of open source to begin with. They sometimes contribute voluntarily, sometimes through license requirements, but always because it benefits their business. Nothing wrong with that. Apple's in business to make money, not friends.

Re:Consistent with the BSD license too

[flooey]

Nothing wrong with that. Apple's in business to make money, not friends.

Personally, I'm in business to make money off my friends. $12.87 and a 10 yen piece and counting!

Why?

[kronnek]

Look, I've been a window user for years... I just don't understand Apple. They have vision, ideas and a damn good OS. Why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot? Mac users must be frusterated because of the one step forward and then five steps back Apple keeps taking. Why not keep it open, what are they afraid of, people actually using their desktop? I just wish Apple would realize that there is a secondary OS niche that needs to be filled and if they just jump into it they might come up as winners. When there's an opportunity to be taken they back off. They avoid conflict.... WHY?!?!? Damn you Apple! I want to use your OS! STOP MAKING IT HARD TO SWITCH!!!!!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then buy an Intel Mac Mini and switch - you can dual boot the machine, etc. I guess you only want to switch on your existing hardware?

Re:Why?

[kronnek]

Why the F do I have to buy a Mac Mini... That's gey.... There's no reason to support propritary hardware in a world of knockoffs. They would do so much better competing with Windows directly. They are the better OS choice and they don't seem to know it. What gives?

Re:Why?

[HarukiShinju]

What "gives" is that they make their profit on their hardware. If they went into the generic OS business they'd go out of business quite quickly, because all the people currently in-the-know enough to want OS X on their computers are probably largely the same segment that don't want to PAY for it. What does Apple gain by releasing a generic x86 version of OS X? Maybe a few people buying it, a much LARGER number pirating it, and dramatically reduced hardware sales. AKA Bankruptcy. You have a choice--you can support Apple's business and continued development of their "better OS" by buying the hardware that finances it, or you can keep using Windows/Linux/what-have-you on your generic box. But don't act like Apple OWES you something just because you want it and are unwilling to front the cash to get the option that actually supports.

Re:Why?

[oh_my_080980980]

"Damn you Apple! I want to use your OS! STOP MAKING IT HARD TO SWITCH!!!!!"

One question: Are you going to PAY (as in money) for Apple's O.S. or are you just going to copy it from a friend?

The bottom line, it's about profit. Apple has no incentive to open up their O.S. for free. If Apple can't make a profit off it, what's the point? Nothing stops you from purchasing a new Mac. That's Apple's bread and butter, computer sales. You want to switch, buy a Mac. You could probably buy a new Mac cheaper than switching to Windows Vista.

Re:Why?

[NtroP]

Damn you Apple! I want to use your OS! STOP MAKING IT HARD TO SWITCH!!!!!

It's not hard to switch. Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. Buy a MacBook or a Mac Mini and get the best of both worlds.

If you want to stay with your Dell or Gateway box, load SuSe or Ubuntu. Much of the advantages to OS X is the tight integration between hardware and software. You just won't get the same benefit by loading it on to some crappy WallMart box. Contrary to some people's beliefs, you don't have a right to load OS X on any computer you like. It is a proprietary piece of software and buying Apple's hardware is part of the deal. If you don't like it, use OSS on your beige-box.

BTW, this was written on a Dell running SuSe 10.1 -- sitting next to my MacBook Pro dual-booting WinXP and Tiger.

Re:Why?

[iluvcapra]

Wow. This post seems so on-topic, yet strangley makes no specific statement about Apple's actions. Almost as if Mr kronnek had this in a clipboard buffer and pastes it into every "Apple did something bad" story.

Look, I've been a window user for years... I just don't understand Apple

The second, hence the first. Many people do not understand Apple, particularly her fans.

They have vision, ideas and a damn good OS. Why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot? Mac users must be frusterated because of the one step forward and then five steps back Apple keeps taking.

s/Apple/Microsoft .. Or even s/Apple/Linux sometimes.

Why not keep it open, what are they afraid of, people actually using their desktop?

Yes, the WAVES OF USERS just waiting for Apple to open their source code so they can use their OS would surely end any financial or marketing problem Apple has never had.

I just wish Apple would realize that there is a secondary OS niche that needs to be filled and if they just jump into it they might come up as winners...

They're right there, in the secondary OS niche you speak of. They make a bit of money with it, its users are very happy and loyal. No one switches back.

When there's an opportunity to be taken they back off. They avoid conflict.... WHY?!?!?

This opportunity you speak of is a chimera.

Damn you Apple! I want to use your OS! STOP MAKING IT HARD TO SWITCH!!!!!

When you have to upgrade your laptop next year, buy a MacBook. They'll have all there technical issues worked out by then and should be pretty slick, as well as competitive with any laptop you might want to buy from Dell or Sony (excluding those bizzare coupon deals). Oh and it'll run the Windows you seem to be invested in, despite your exaspiration with the closed-source OS X.

Re:Why?

[Gilmoure]

Most Mac users don't care as the desktop has never been open, just the underlying system. And if you want a system to play with, why not run NetBSD dual boot?

Re:Why?

[kronnek]

Fine... I don't understand apple. But, that's what I'm saying.. Most of the OS market doesn't... Are they practicing witchcraft? Possibly ... I don't know... They sure aren't acting like a company that wants to take the market over. period.

Re:Why?

[Lord Ender]

"Contrary to some people's beliefs, you don't have a right to load OS X on any computer you like" ...in some jurisdictions. If you live somewhere that has no laws granting Apple copyrights, then you DO have the right to use any Apple bits any way you want. And that is just legal, not moral rights.

IP law is simply a restriction some countries put on free speach intended to promote economic growth. There is no natural, moral right to copyright.

Re:Why?

[hauk]

Good thing you did not go closed source. That way I can fix your bugs with a patch

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
  The second, hence the first. Many people do not understand Apple, particularly her fans.

  They have vision, ideas and a damn good OS. Why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot? Mac users must be frusterated because of the one step forward and then five steps back Apple keeps taking.
-s/Apple/Microsoft .. Or even s/Apple/Linux sometimes.
+s/Apple/Microsoft/ .. Or even s/Apple/Linux/ sometimes.

Re:Why?

[JeffElkins]

>One question: Are you going to PAY (as in money) for Apple's O.S. or are >you just going to copy it from a friend?

I'll gladly pay for a retail copy, as long as they don't screw with the end-user (WGA, I'm looking at you!).

Re:Why?

[charlie_vernacular]

They sure aren't acting like a company that wants to take the market over.

Well maybe they're happy with the profits and hugely loyal customer base that they have. Steve Jobs has long since acknowledged that Microsoft won the "PC Wars" [1] and has also long held the view that Apple needed to innovate its way of its predicament in the late 1990s [2]. In my view, taking on Microsoft at its own game doesn't appear to be part of strategy. However, the fact that Jobs said to Bill Gates "Thank you for your support of this company. I think the world's a better place for it" suggests that co-existing peacefully with Microsoft is a part of their strategy[3].

[1] Linzmayer, O. (1999) Apple Confidential. (p.238) 1st edition. San Francisco: No Starch Press. Quote from an interview with Fortune magazine given in February 1996.
[2] Linzmayer, 1999, p.217
[3] Linzmayer, 1999, p.238

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so when you buy your next computer, buy a Mac. If you end up not liking OSX, you can wipe it clean and install XP, Linux, or whatever other OS you want to try next.

Apple does not listen to geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does not listen to nerds or geeks about how their consumer OS should be and it is a good thing.

All these FUD is a result of that.

They won't open cocoa so couple of geeks will be happy since Redmond is waiting for it.

People like me will "repair permissions" since they want a proper system and also will remove the X11 just because it is wasting space. They are confusing Apple with a linux company or something. Apple OS X is making money. Apple does make money with hardware sales too. Apple's real consumers are 98% non geeks and they are perfectly happy how their systems work too.

Go help Yellow Dog Linux and make it a better OS. That is the real open source for you.

Excuse me, but...

[bobalu]

As far as I know (not being a rabid Apple historian) when they started with the Apple I they DID in fact do the whole thing themselves, right? So what Jobs and Woz must've wanted while starting up in a garage was just the chips. They didn't expect to be handed the thing on a platter by some big existing company. Quite a difference.

Re:Excuse me, but...

[NutscrapeSucks]

Sort of. They started out writing the whole thing themselves, but soon were licensing BASIC (which was the user interface) from Microsoft.

BSDs asked for this

[JohnFluxx]

I'm sorry to say this, but this is BSD's 'fault'. They put the kernel under the BSD license - a license that allows for this to happen.

In my opinion, this is why the BSD license is bad. However in many other people's opinion this is why the BSD license is good - because it gives you the freedom to fork and close source it.

Whether it's better to have the 'freedom for the code' (GPL, LGPL somewhat, etc) or the 'freedom for the person' (BSD) is of course a personal opinion.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. The BSD license is what allowed OS X to even be created. Don't get all socialist on us now that the company that created OS X actually wants to protect their investment.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[ivoras]

In case you are saying that it's somehow a "bad" or "unwanted" thing and, like, people don't realize that Big Evil Companies are going to !!steal!! their precious code if they put it under the BSD license and are just doing it because they are ignorant:

Wake up. That's what the BSDL is *created for*! If you don't agree with it, go use something else. Don't pretend you know the reasons behind people's actions better than they do.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[dfghjk]

Claiming that this is anyone's "fault" is also a personal opinion. Some, especially Apple, would consider it a feature and you can bet Apple never would have worked with the code to begin with had it been under the GPL. You aren't getting complete OS X source---it's the family jewels.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[BobVH]

Precisely, like Theo de Raadt said : it must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.

They feel the software had to be written, be it either one time by them or countless of times by companies.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[JohnFluxx]

I've had 3 replies all the same the same thing. I put "fault" in quotes, mentioned that is was "my opinion" and also giving the view of others - surely that was obvious enough that this was my opinion.

Of _course_ Apple is happier that it's under the BSD license!

I'm not convinced that you could bet that Apple wouldn't have worked with the code if it was GPL'ed though and there was no other decent BSD licensed unix kernel.

And what's with the strawman "complete OS X source". If the kernel was under the GPL then they would have had to just made sure that their kernel work in kept open source. I don't really see that as unreasonable personally. Shame on you for trying to strawman this.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[evilviper]

I'm sorry to say this, but this is BSD's 'fault'. They put the kernel under the BSD license - a license that allows for this to happen.

Why do GPL advocates act like companies are going to be forced to use their code, no matter what license they chose?

If FreeBSD code was GPL'd... Apple certainly wouldn't have used it, just as they didn't use Linux, and would have based it on a propritary OS. And you can be sure they wouldn't have released ANY source code in that situation.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[JohnFluxx]

Wow. I see my quote. I see your reply. However I cannot discern how you manage to misread my quote and get to the conclusion that Apple would have been forced to use the code no matter the license.

Besides, since either way it doesn't benefit the open source community, why exactly would we care if Apple based it on a proprietary OS rather than taking an Open Source solution then closing it? Or are you hoping that this way Apple might throw the open source community the odd dog treat?

If Apple went with a proprietary OS then at least they would be paying for the kernel in some way. That's better than nothing.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[Billly Gates]

More than likely apple would just stay proprietary rather than opensource and anger their investors who dont want their capital out on the street.

BSD is just more corporate friendly and corporations are required for IT to exist.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[tiocsti]

Why does it matter if apple paid for it or not? Apple is doing far in excess than what is required of them. They don't have to release any code at all, they can just use the bsd and mach licensed code, if they fulfill the other requirements of the license. They have been quite good about releasing code, and even providing an opensource base.

There's nothing in the license that requires opendarwin to exist, so the fact that it exists at all is very nice to the community. Now, I can make some strong arguments as to how it helps apple, and i'd like to see them unbreak darwin, but they don't owe anything to the community.

Apple is making extensive use of the bsd code which is, near as I can tell, exactly what those who choose a bsd license want. Again, closing the source is phrasology the gpl fanboys use to intentionally deceive you -- what they really mean is you dont have any rights to what I created, unless I opensource them as you did. This isnt closing the source (i just tried, i can still access freebsd.org's cvsup servers) it is merely neglecting to provide you with that which they created.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[JohnFluxx]

The people that put the code under the BSD license quite clearly gave Apple permission to do this. That is why I wrote: 'BSDs asked for this'. If it was me, under _my opinion_, then I would not have put my code under the BSD license because of this. You say Apple doesn't owe the community anything, but I think that if a company uses a large amount of open source code, then they should give back changes that they make to it (within reason - don't strawman this.)

That is why I prefer the Linux kernel.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[tiocsti]

They do so, within reason. They've been quite cooperative with freebsd, in passing back relevant changes. This, of course, is unrelated to opendarwin not being rebuildable.

Re:BSDs asked for this

[evilviper]

Or are you hoping that this way Apple might throw the open source community the odd dog treat?

I'm not "hoping" for anything. Apple has, and continues to contribute code back upstream.

Besides, the whole world benefits if OSes are more standard, more stable, more secure against attacks, even if they aren't contributing anything back. It's just like any other standard... If everybody makes a propritary, no-interoperable version of HTTP, we all lose out.

If Apple went with a proprietary OS then at least they would be paying for the kernel in some way. That's better than nothing.

What now? How is it better that they pay somebody, somewhere, for a license? How does that benefit me?

that is why they became so popular

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Sorry, did I miss some news? When did Linux/BSD become popular?

You want to have fun rewriting the driver stack

You really need to look up the word 'popular' in a dictionary some time.

Re:that is why they became so popular

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, did I miss some news? When did Linux/BSD become popular?

How about "more popular". I never thought I'd see the day when one of our law professors demanded linux and one of our law students walks around packing a laptop running OpenBSD.

No joke.

Re:that is why they became so popular

[alfs boner]

Make sure, that when you find the entry for 'popular' in the dictionary, you resist the urge to quote it in your posts. It'll make it harder for me to tell that you're a layman with poor reasoning skills.

Re:that is why they became so popular

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD would not be my personal choice for a laptop.

Secure? hell yeah! But at least in my case (HP zv6100) the lack of hardware support in OpenBSD translated in a system that, while usable, was not be able to do things like suspend/resume/throttling, screen brightness control, etc. Lack of graphics card support (ATI card with 128meg onboard) meant having to use shared memory to enable 1280x800 mode (instead of 1024x768), which means less ram for system and more swap. Also, video drivers do not support dual head... so connecting a projector is a PITA! And since the CPU cannot be throttled, it runs very hot, and both fans go very loud, and a 12 cell battery lasts less than 2 hours.

FreeBSD has a better ACPI support, but needs a LOT of hacking to actually get it to boot (hangs on a missing PS/2 keyboard port probe), and still has same video issues...

Linux distros work lots better, on the other hand, with Suse 10.1 providing full hardware support (including media keys) by default.

Jobs *UNDERSTANDS* (was:Jobs upset?)

[Lead Butthead]

Steve Jobs despites all of his personality flaws, understands that much of Apple's value comes from software , not the expensive dongles they passed off as products. Locking down the OS and services to prevent... compatibility with "unauthorized platforms" is absolutely essential in maintaining that value.

Re:Jobs *UNDERSTANDS* (was:Jobs upset?)

[shawnce]

Apple's value comes from software

Actually it comes from solutions which is the sum of software, hardware, packaging, etc.

Re:Jobs *UNDERSTANDS* (was:Jobs upset?)

[bill_mcgonigle]

not the expensive dongles they passed off as products

Brilliant perspective. Thanks.

Protect Yourself At All Times

[MacDaffy]

Apple has finally mounted a head-to-head challenge with Microsoft (see the new commercials). Microsoft is struggling to get features into Vista that Mac OS X has had from the beginning. Does anyone really think that Microsoft would resist taking advantage of an open source Intel-based kernel if it could help them solve the mountain of problems under which Windows is buried?

Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple's innovation before and thrived in doing so. I think it's prudent for Apple to keep its guard up and its kernel safely locked away until it has enough momentum and market share to make it a smart move.

I imagine that Microsoft's first look at a MacBook made them feel like Apple felt when it got its first look at Windows 98; "Holy shit!"

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[NutscrapeSucks]

Too much paranoia. None of the stuff that gives Apple a competitive advantage was open sourced. (You may have noticed the ads talk about iPhoto and not Mach messaging.) In fact the OS X kernel is probably the weakest part of the whole system, and probably offers very little to Microsoft who already has a decent OS kernel. This has nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with piracy potentially cutting into their hardware revenues.

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[courtarro]

Microsoft is struggling to get features into Vista that Mac OS X has had from the beginning.

Apple steals as many ideas from Microsoft as the latter from the former. Neither of them invents anything, they just become first to market ideas from 3rd parties.

Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple's innovation before and thrived in doing so. I think it's prudent for Apple to keep its guard up and its kernel safely locked away until it has enough momentum and market share to make it a smart move.

I don't think MS was ever planning to steal from the OSX kernel; if they had, Windows would have turned into Unix variant a long time ago. Most of what MS might steal is in the GUI - the way the system interacts with users and the things it offers them. The hard part about innovation for companies like this is the idea, not implementation. Stealing an idea is safe because it's often not illegal (even with patents), but stealing code is very dangerous, and you can't expect MS to do this when given access to the OSX kernel.

I imagine that Microsoft's first look at a MacBook made them feel like Apple felt when it got its first look at Windows 98; "Holy shit!"

Is that good or bad? The only interest MS would have in the MacBook would be that it is capable of running Windows. Otherwise it offers no direct competition to them.

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[TomHandy]

That's a ridiculous assertion. Certainly MS and Apple have both in many cases been companies who created successful and popular implementations of ideas people had before them, but in the entire history of MS and Apple, they have certainly invented things themselves as well. It seems pretty unfair to both MS and Apple to not give them credit for the things they have invented themselves. And for what it's worth, there is also something to be said for being able to create a popular and usable implementation of an idea that someone else had previously, but which had faults that made it impractical (or with companies who didn't know what to do with what they had, in the case of Xerox).

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[bXTr]

Does anyone really think that Microsoft would resist taking advantage of an open source Intel-based kernel if it could help them solve the mountain of problems under which Windows is buried?

FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD ... Microsoft can do that now, and some would say they already have *cough*TCP/IP*cough*.

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[enrevanche]

Apple has no kernel secrets which Microsoft does not know about. Window keeps it's makret position because of legacy lock-in.

You cannot just mix stuff from one system into another. The work to integrate the things your talking about is usually greater than to redevelop them. Apple's codebase is way too different. To keep it's marketshare MS needs to keep its own codebase, it couldn't neither integrate larger parts of Apple's nor it could not just start over with Apple's (in which case it would have to integrate all the Windows compatability with OS X (ICK!)).

The reason Apple cannot free OS X is because you would no longer have to buy Apple hardware. Apples hardware, except for having pretty cases, is entirely composed of components made by others who actually own the technology. It's only uniqueness is OS X.

This is similiar to their business model with the iPod, i.e. it is based on lock-in and exclusive control. MS has nearly the same business model except the make their money on software, not hardware. Apple's business model is like the old IBM business model (before the PC).

The open source business model is about giving up control. It's about the belief that multiple independent companies and organizations sharing the same code base is better for everyone over the long run. It's about democracy as opposed to autocracy, In some ways it's also about a free market vs. a market controlled by an elite.

Re:Protect Yourself At All Times

[aeoo]

Does anyone really think that Microsoft would resist taking advantage of an open source Intel-based kernel if it could help them solve the mountain of problems under which Windows is buried?

Microsoft has way too much ego and pride to do that, even if it was a logical choice. The only code they seem to use from others is the type they can buy and call "mine".

Maybe Microsoft will wise up, and perhaps it's happening right now, but conventionally they are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here people.

Get things straight...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Apple hasn't released the kernel for x86...YET. See this forum post from a Apple Employee:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Fed-talk/2006/May/ msg00105.html

In my opinion if I had to put companies on a list, Apple would stil be high on my openess with developer list. At least Apple has all of the developer tools (Xcode and others) free for the taking. You still have to pay Microsoft to write programs for windows unless it's a batch file.

Re:Get things straight...

[AstroDrabb]

You still have to pay Microsoft to write programs for windows unless it's a batch file.

What? 5 seconds of research would have kept you from looking ignorant. You can download all the needed SDK's from MS without cost. You can even get the free (as in cost, not Freedom) versions of Visual Studio 2005 along with the free (cost) version of Sql Express.

The Visual Studio Express editions allow you to do development with C#, J#, C++ and unfortunately VB.Net.

I am not an MS fanboy, however if you are going to take a jab at MS, at least do it for a valid reason.

Re:Get things straight...

[Mister Whirly]

"I am not an MS fanboy, however if you are going to take a jab at MS, at least do it for a valid reason."

Whoa there cowboy, slow down... If you read the Slashdot rules and regs you will see that you are way offbase with your comment.

Re:Get things straight...

[AstroDrabb]

Whoa there cowboy, slow down... If you read the Slashdot rules and regs you will see that you are way offbase with your comment.

I appologize. I will hand in my geek-card for a period of 1 week :-)

Re:Get things straight...

[cbhacking]

You still have to pay Microsoft to write programs for windows unless it's a batch file

I refer you to the Visual Studio Express Editions. Granted, they are limited versions of the real thing, but VS is a great product; MS deserves to make some money off it. Anyhow, don't bitch about developing for Windows; even the express editions are better than most IDEs.

Metrowerks Debacle

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple Losing Touch With the OS Community?" I think so. It is also losing touch with the applications programmer community, an even worse sin. As an applications programmer, I still bristle at the awful way that Apple/Intel have orphaned those of us who used the Metrowerks IDE and the PowerPlant library. Apple/Intel haven't done a single thing to ease the life of those people. A very cruel and very dumb snub, since the Metrowerks IDE was THE best Mac IDE around for more than an decade.

Why hasn't anybody mentioned DRM yet?

[Spy der Mann]

Remember what Steve Jobs said about France regarding interoperability? Apple isn't just losing Touch with the OS Community. Apple is losing touch with _ALL_ the community!

Re:Why hasn't anybody mentioned DRM yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

France wants music from iTunes to be transcoded to any other device. I doubt that Apple would mind, but I can guarantee that the RIAA would raise holy hell and it would probably be enough of an issue to significantly reduce availability of new stuff. Why? If you can transcode it, its easier to get rid of DRM, and recording companies are tenaciously clutching a business model that's crumbling around them instead of innovating -- figuring out a new business model, if there is one. Personally, I think the problem is that the recording companies are just middlemen, having trouble staying in the middle.

Nonetheless, realize that Apple itself doesn't create what goes on the ipod -- music, whatever -- just the hardware and firmware that lets you make it portable. I'm sure they'd be quite happy to have more content, which would sell more hardware. But they have to keep their asses out of the legal fires.

Re:Why hasn't anybody mentioned DRM yet?

[ScrewYouTroll]

See? You're proving my point, moderators! Screw you too!

BSD license encourages opportunism

[amightywind]

Proprietary OSX should be expected now that Apple has gotten all it can out of the BSD code base. Let it be a lesson to the Free Software Community about the dangers of BSD style licenses. It encourages opportunism. Theo's rant earlier today is a further example.

Re:BSD license encourages opportunism

[Caspian]

Theo's rant earlier today is a further example.

Um, what? No. Theo's rant has nothing to do with this. If, for instance, a bunch of hackers want to improve support for proprietary crypto chips, there's nothing in the BSD license stopping them from forking OpenBSD, just like there's nothing in the GPL preventing people from forking Linux.

BSD gives developers the 'freedom' to make their code proprietary in future releases, but it does not give them the power to retroactively destroy branches of code. Once the code's out there, people can basically do what they want with it.

Free VC++ 2005

[Frankie70]

You still have to pay Microsoft to write programs for windows unless it's a batch file.


Here

You can stop talking rubbish now.

Re:Free VC++ 2005

[Chanc_Gorkon]

And anyone who writes REAL apps know that you should really pay for the application. The free version is NOT good enough for production apps in my opinion.

Re:Free VC++ 2005

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Rubbish my ass. You are not going to write a full fledged app with an Express edition. It's too limited to write with an app with the Express version.

Re:Free VC++ 2005

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Oh and it's only free for one year and read the following:

As far as I can tell, no registration or activation is required. The Express edition does have some limitations: no 64-bit support, no source code control integration, no ATL/MFC, no Win32 resource editor, no macro assembler (MASM), and you must download and manually integrate the Platform SDK (using some ugly instructions in the help). However, it does come with the optimizing compiler, can generate 100% native executables, and does have the Threads pane that was taken out during beta 2. I highly recommend getting it, if for no other reason than that it has a very capable GUI debugger.

Pretty hefty limitations considering the 64 bit platforms (Athlon 64) are starting to become populer. I stand by my comment....you ain't going to start ANY project with Express Edition except personal ones.

Re:Surprising if true.

[AKAImBatman]

The platform sells well to people who want a Unix, not people who want to hack the OS.

What about people who want to hack up an OS using a Mac? (raises hand) Believe it or not, cross compiling to the x86 platform using a PPC Mac and QEMU actually works. It's actually a better development environment than Windows, because you don't have to work around Windows' lack of Unix tools.

If you're weird like me, check out the OS FAQ for information on creating your own operating system, including the building of a cross-compiler. Bonefide also has some great tutorials on getting going with your operating system construction project.

And this means. . .

[kimvette]

What exactly?

Fewer technical folks will switch to OS X, but on the other hand the typical Mac user could not care less either way. Open source, closed source, or even lose the shell prompt again, they'll be totally unaffected.

As an aside: I still want OS X, but I do not want Apple hardware. Open up the licensing, Jobs!

Re:And this means. . .

[aristotle-dude]

You don't want Apple hardware? Why?

If you are so damn geeky that you insist on wasting your valuable free time building a box yourself, go right ahead but don't expect companies like Apple to cater to you.

Re:And this means. . .

[kimvette]

I want to run a more expandable system, with the ports I want, with the case I want, with the processor selection I want, and be able to dual boot with other operating systems without major headaches. Gee, that's just like a PC, isn't it?

If I want an SLI system, I should be able to get it. If I want dual LAN ports on the motherboard for a server box, I should be able to get it. Apple's hardware selection is puny compared to what I can assemble for a standard Windows or Linux PC. There are too many constraints with Apple's hardware offerings.

What if I want to run a backplane server with 12 PCI slots for a custom server? Windows, Linux, BSD, not a problem. OSX? Good luck.

Re:And this means. . .

[hayne]

I still want OS X, but I do not want Apple hardware

And how much are you willing to play for OS X? Don't expect Apple to be selling OS X for generic hardware at the price they currently charge - which is heavily subsidized by Apple's hardware sales. Is OS X worth $500 to you? or $750 ? (Note that you should expect OS X to be significantly more expensive than any version of Windows since Apple sells fewer copies.) If so, be sure to let Apple know - so they can calculate how much money they could make on software to compensate for the possible loss of hardware revenue.

Re:And this means. . .

[aristotle-dude]

What do servers have to do with a desktop OS? If you want serious rack mounted server options with technical support, look at the xserve line either before now or after they transition to X86. Those needs that you pulled out of your ass would apply to 0.001% of the market. It is hardly worth it for Apple to support such obscure needs. Linux is perfectly acceptable as a server OS but quit mixing servers into this discussion.

Only official Apple response

[daveschroeder]

To sum up Apple's objections, they felt I had given a year-old story a fresh coat of paint and sensationalized it for an audience that wasn't affected by it.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

To date, the only official response has been:

Just to be clear, Tom Yager was *speculating* about why we have -- so far -- not released the source code of the kernel for Intel-based Macintoshes. We continue to release *all* the Darwin sources for our PowerPC systems, and so far has released all the non-kernel Darwin sources for Intel.

Nothing has been announced, so he (and everyone else) certainly has the right to speculate. But please don't confuse "speculation" with "fact."

Thanks,
-- Ernie P.

Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D. (408) 974-3075
Product Manager, Open Source & Open Standards; Mac OS X Product Marketing
Apple Computer; 303-4SW 3 Infinite Loop; Cupertino, CA 95014


and a response to a private message I sent:

Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 12:08:45 -0700
From: Ernest Prabhakar
To: Dave Schroeder
Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Apple [may not open] OS X Kernel for Intel

Hi Dave,

On May 21, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Dave Schroeder wrote:

When *will* something regarding a xnu source release on x86 be announced?

I know you probably can't answer this, so it's somewhat of a rhetorical question, but seriously: the lack of release of source for xnu on x86 represents a significant change in strategy to some customers with no corresponding announcement or roadmap. When will concerned customers be informed as to what is happening?

Generally speaking, when a final, irreversible decision has been made, we will find
_some_ way to let affected customers know about it.

If nothing else, the very fact I am telling you to *not* assume that something is true,
means *I* don't believe it is true. :-)

-- Ernie P.

Seriously, might there be kind of a, you know, huge developer conference coming up in a month and a half or so here where some of these questions might be answered? Especially since Tom Yager's speculation is just that - speculation - and extremely old news at that? Is it any wonder that both of Yager's articles are under "Opinion" headlines?

Re:Only official Apple response

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was a betting man... I would bet that Intel version of Mac OS X 10.4.x kernel is living on a branch between Mac OS X 10.4.x and what will become Mac OS X 10.5. Apple is not ready to announce Mac OS X 10.5 features and capabilities (for one they are not set in stone) and hence cannot easily release the source for current Intel builds because it would spill the beans so to speak. ...and/or the state of the Mac OS X 10.4.x Intel code base is on the ugly side of things (lots of transitional work taking place) so Apple sees no value in release that code since it is not code they want the community to build from.

I believe that come WWDC 2006 (2nd week of August) that we will see some clarification from Apple on the state of Intel Kernel (XNU) and of course Mac OS X 10.5.

I think folks are getting their collective panties in a bunch over what will turn out to be... nothing.

Re:Only official Apple response

[squiggleslash]

Tom isn't "speculating", it's quite honestly a fact that Apple has not released the source to Intel XNU. Claiming this is false, or "speculation", because they "haven't yet" released the source, as a multitude of Apple apologists have done so far, is sophistry. The binaries are out. The source is not. Apple has given no indication it intends to recant and release that source code. It is, very clearly, a reversal of policy. Prabhakar's comments do not add anything whatsoever to the discussion, other than to dismiss a statement of fact (all recent releases of XNU for Intel are closed right now) as "speculation", a meaningless and, dare I say, moronic statement to make.

In any case, get your story straight. Either this "doesn't matter", because "nobody needs source code anyway", or "Apple has hit a problem releasing the source code but will do shortly, but cannot dare say such a thing in public because, erm, yeah, RDF! RDF! Our refusal to release source needs no justification, it "just works". Insert hypnotoad here".

I'm tired of hearing pretty much every excuse from the insulting to the flat-out false. Maybe they will release XNU for Intel in the near future. Hey, guess what, MAYBE MICROSOFT WILL RELEASE THE SOURCE TO WINDOWS IN THE FUTURE TOO! Yeah, that's it! We can all start describing MICROSOFT as a FUCKING OPEN SOURCE COMPANY because they MIGHT release the source code under the GPL in a few hours!!!

Apple: put up or shut up.

Re:Only official Apple response

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but Tom was speculating in his first opinion piece about why Intel XNU source hasn't been made available (he implied it was a result of Apple wanting to close source XNU for various reason). His opinion piece was then picked up by various bloggers and news sites and quoted as fact, some even to the point of Apple making an official announcement.

Prabhakar's email was meant to put the situation into perspective... 1) that Tom was speculating in an opinion article about the reasons for Apple not releasing Intel XNU and 2) that Apple hasn't yet made any announcements about why Intel XNU isn't available (despite PowerPC XNU being available).

Apple: put up or shut up.

So not having Intel XNU some how negates the fact that they have made available Darwin Intel source that matches with the Darwin PowerPC source side of things minus XNU or that they have several other active open source projects that they maintain or contribute to... one of the more popular is of course WebKit in which Apple actually went above and beyond releasing more code then they had an obligation to release (morally or legally).

Apple leverages open source when they see value in it for themselves as well as for their developers and customers. Having access to XNU is a value for Mac OS X driver developers and less so (given past community involvement) for Darwin users. So if you really are concerned about having access to XNU for something other then ideological reasons (ideology seldom puts food on the table) let Apple know via developer feedback channels.

Re:Only official Apple response

[NutscrapeSucks]

Thank you for showing up to post something informative and not astroturfy, Dave.

Re:Only official Apple response

[shawnce]

Don't forget that Intel version of XNU may contain code licensed from Intel and others that they don't have the right to distribute. The delay could be as simple as Apple needing the time to work out the legalities and/or repackage the code to allow distribution of a subset of Intel XNU. It is known that some of the Intel related drivers are not releasable because of legalities.

Personally I bet it is a mix of several issues (including time and resources) and that come WWDC 2006 more will be made clear (one way or the other).

Re:Only official Apple response

[daveschroeder]

Tom isn't "speculating", it's quite honestly a fact that Apple has not released the source to Intel XNU.

To date, yes. I will 100% agree that the Intel xnu source is currently closed. However:

- Intel xnu source hasn't always been closed
- PowerPC snu source is still open
- The change happened with Intel-based Macs began shipping
- He is speculating as to the *reason* xnu on Intel isn't currently open source
- The implication in Yager's articles is that because it's closed now, it must/might be closed permanently

Also, in Yager's first article, he uses the title:

Apple closes down OS X

Excuse me, but when was "OS X" ever open? And since when does one component on one architecture being closed constitute everything being closed, especially when all non-kernel sources that have been traditionally released to date continue to be released.

The first sentence is:

Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's OS X is now a proprietary operating system.

Again, huh? First, Mac OS X has always been a proprietary operating system. Nothing has changed. Second, all of the Darwin sources are still released on both architectures. With ONE, admittedly large, exception: the kernel (xnu) on x86.

The problem is exactly as Apple framed it in Yager's followup article:

- Yager presented this inaccurately and sensationalistically, making it seem to a broader audience as if "OS X" itself was previously "open", and is not "closed"
- Yager does not discuss the nuance of what the kernel being closed means from a practical standpoint
- Yager incorrectly asserts this somehow matters more now because Intel-based servers will be coming, because people who buy servers and equipment for enterprise will somehow have needs to use the kernel source, but Apple has been selling into this marketplace for over 4 years, and the fact that the server platform will be on Intel changes none of that
- Yager generally makes it seem like this "matters" to ordinary users in a broader audience

In any case, get your story straight. Either this "doesn't matter", because "nobody needs source code anyway", or "Apple has hit a problem releasing the source code but will do shortly, but cannot dare say such a thing in public because, erm, yeah, RDF! RDF! Our refusal to release source needs no justification, it "just works". Insert hypnotoad here".

There's no logical inconsistency in anything I've said, either here, or previously. Of course it matters. It matters to me. It matters to the people who actually want or need the source, which is an extremely small subset of Mac OS X users. (And no, users who don't even know what a kernel is don't receive a substantive benefit from others outside of Apple being able to see the kernel source.)

I'm tired of hearing pretty much every excuse from the insulting to the flat-out false. Maybe they will release XNU for Intel in the near future. Hey, guess what, MAYBE MICROSOFT WILL RELEASE THE SOURCE TO WINDOWS IN THE FUTURE TOO! Yeah, that's it! We can all start describing MICROSOFT as a FUCKING OPEN SOURCE COMPANY because they MIGHT release the source code under the GPL in a few hours!!!

Wrong.

The source code for Windows has never been open; the argument is not the same.

The source for xnu has been open, continues to be open on PowerPC, and is available in an earlier incarnation for x86 (parity with Mac OS X 10.4.0). Therefore, saying that a final decision might not have been made on current iterations of xnu on x86 is perfectly reasonable.

Further, if anything, MORE source is now released than previously: x86 sources for all non-kernel components are released with parity with Mac OS X releases for PowerPC and x86; previo

Re:Only official Apple response

[NDPTAL85]

As long as Apple keeps the sources to the PPC version available they are in some way contributing to open source.

In the meantime if this really bothers you then you may want to kick the BSD license out of the open source camp. It allows for unrestrained raping of OSS code.

Re:Only official Apple response

[brian.reading]

XNU is still available in source for the PowerPC platform, right? Why would Apple keep the PowerPC code right there, but not the Intel code? I mean what motivation would Apple have to close their source so far on the Intel side, besides stopping people hacking their full OS to steal it? Is your idea as a business to make it easier for your product to be stolen? It'd just make more sense to me to think that Apple is coming up with a plan that will help them, and allow them to keep their OS open. It's not just a ideological thing, for Apple, it's more of a marketing advantage. You make comments such as "Apple: Put up or Shut up." and compare Apple to Microsoft in the amount of open source code they release or have released in the past. Apple is already "putting up" and have done so many times in the past. Apple and Microsoft at this point in time are just flat out not comparable as far as a business model and especially a technical model at this point in time. It's foolish to do so. Basically, your arguments are just flat out fallacious. I know this will be considered a Mac troll statement, but really I'm too sick of all that trendiness going on to care anymore. No, you're not cool because you hate OS X users and everything Apple stands for.

shouldn't the headline read...

[Mister Whirly]

I believe the headline has a typo.. It should read "Slashdot Posters Loosing Touch with the Headline Community & Natalie Portman+hot grits"

Re:shouldn't the headline read...

[PornMaster]

They could, but then they'd have spelled "losing" wrong.

Re:shouldn't the headline read...

[Mister Whirly]

Welcome to Slashdot. "Losing" is officially spelled "loosing" in case you haven't got the memo yet. But kudos on pointing out grammar/spelling errors (a.k.a. "speling errors"), even though the misspelling was intentional in this case...

Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[eko33]

Personally I find Apple very much like Microsoft. They are trying to take over as "King of the Lock-in Mountain"

It's not like the concept of take over and control is limited to software. This is fundamental human behavior. Anyone ever hear of the Roman Empire?

I don't understand why everyone bitches so much when a corporation makes a strategic decision that takes them one step closer to market dominance.. If it's really that bad. If it is that bad, you should go make your own OS/mega-corporation that will be better than the one you are bitching about. You aren't elite because you compile and you aren't elite because you're an arm-chair business strategy professor... If you really knew better, you wouldn't be here complaining about it know would you?

/rant

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[cmacb]

"I don't understand why everyone bitches so much when a corporation makes a strategic decision that takes them one step closer to market dominance."

Maybe because as a former Apple supporter (a short-lived state of being as it turned out) I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch. It might be a different matter if they had already captured a 50 percent market share, or for that matter even a 20 percent market share, but their number are right where they always have been. I see all their recent moves as desperation, and quite possibly the results is that they will cease to matter at all. I just got done answering a request for advice on a non-technical forum and I couldn't honestly advise them to buy an Apple "laptop" even though my last two laptops were Apple machines. Their switch to Intel, coupled with more and more DRM orientation, legal action against well meaning users, and the dissing of the Open Source roots of their OS makes me wonder if the company hasn't suffered a stroke or something. The personality of the company has changed, and with no good reasons (roadmaps be damned), their quality control sucks and they spend more time on propagandizing than they do on actually supporting their users. I have little use for them any more. Unlike the author of the original article, I don't expect them to get better any time soon. Recent departures at the top ought to give some people a clue that something is wrong in Cupertino.

If the iPod market fails the company is history. That should give the fans nightmares.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[AstroDrabb]

I wonder why this was not modded up? I find it well said and spot-on.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[vertinox]

It's not like the concept of take over and control is limited to software. This is fundamental human behavior. Anyone ever hear of the Roman Empire?...If it's really that bad. If it is that bad, you should go make your own OS/mega-corporation that will be better than the one you are bitching about.

Rome circa 100AD

Roman Slave: This sucks
Roman Centurian: *whips slave* Quit your bitchin! If it is that bad, why don't you go start your own empire.
Roman Centurian: Ow! Well... I would but you see... You've got this thing called a Roman Legion and I've got these chains on me... Oh and I did revolt you'd kill my family and then crucify me and feed me to the lions.
Roman Centurian: Good point! Get back to work anyways! *whips slave again*
Roman Slave: Ow!

Corporate Environment 2006AD

Cubicle slave: This sucks!
Supervisor: *delegates another deadline* Quit your bitching! If it is that bad, why don't you go start your own company.
Cubicle slave: Well... I would but you see... You've got this thing called millions of dollars of investment into entry barriers of the market and I've got this NDA and contract that owns all my ideas... Oh and I did revolt you'd sue family and then crucify my VC capital and then feed me to the Patent Lawyers.
Supervisor: Good point! Get back to work! *assigns another deadline*

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Jerry Smith]

If the iPod market fails the company is history. That should give the fans nightmares.

Apple has been dying since, well, over 20 yrs now. They produced some lousy products all those years (yes they did! Don't make me mention the Performas!) and their roadmaps have been damned as well (Motorola could not deliver, IBM couldn't, Intel mistook the word 'wafer' for 'toasting iron'). Yet they're one of the best in the market IMHO.

This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_phe nomena#Netcraft_confirms_it came to mind, though. Dvorak, is that you?

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Anonymous Coward]

The definition of insanity - "doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." - Benjamin Franklin

Apple has perpetually been an also-ran in the market, continuing to cater to geeks won't change their place in the market. So they are willing to abandon that base to capture more of the mass market.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Golias]

I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch. It might be a different matter if they had already captured a 50 percent market share, or for that matter even a 20 percent market share, but their number are right where they always have been.

Why do you give a fuck about the market share of a computer company whose products you are no longer buying? Is your IRA tied up in APPL shares?

I use Macs all the time, and I don't give a rat's ass about their market share. As long as they are doing well enough to continue to exist, and as long as I prefer their OS and software, I'll keep buying them.

By the way, if I may ask... What (if anything) were you hoping to do with all that Kernel source which is currently unavailable for the x86 version of Darwin?

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[jcr]

I am frustrated to see them cavalierly drop the principles that got me to switch.

Oh, for christ's sake. TWO PEOPLE are SPECULATING as to the reasons why Apple hasn't released some of the CoreOS code YET, and everyone takes their guesses as gospel?

Did anyone consider the possibility that the code in question is being delayed because publishing it right now (in the middle of a processor transition) would probably tip their hand as to features of upcoming products?

If that code doesn't show up after we get the Intel Xserves and the Intel desktops, there might be some reason to believe that Apple's decided to give up on open-sourcing the OS. Until then, it's nothing but guesses, so can everyone can just quit going off half-cocked?

-jcr

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[podperson]

If the iPod market fails the company is history.

Apple is already history. It essentially created the personal computer industry (as it likes to mention in every press release... I think it uses the words "ignited" and "revolution"), created the graphical user interface as we know it (sure, it borrowed ideas from others, who doesn't?), and a few other things besides (first consumer-oriented digital cameras, for instance).

Indeed, the iPod may be a business sensation, but among Apple's historical achievements it is chump change. It seems to me important to differentiate business achievements (iPod, iMac) from actual innovation (Apple II, Mac UI, QuickTime). In that respect, iTunes, iLife, the iTunes music store and the iPod "user experience" represent innovation, the iPod itself is just a pretty MP3 player.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Anonymous Coward]

pretty funny!

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[multimediavt]

Here, here! to what you stated. I think everyone is over-reacting to the reasons why the kernel source hasn't been released, or has been closed. Again, speculation, but I wouldn't look to see it released before Leopard goes public, i.e. ships. I don't think the kernel disappearing from the source tree is a permanent thing, and Apple is ALWAYS cagey about future products and features. This behavior is legendary and totally in character. They are obviously protecting something for business reasons, and the why's and where for's remain to be seen.

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone thought that this might be because the switch to Intel, brought alone new rules for Apple?
Perhaps in the rush to get x86 out the door they have to clean up the code? What if they have Intel
confidential code in some section? Do they have to wait to release the code?

Best yet!!!
They have to cut out all the !@##$@#$!@$ and $H17 variables? You know that the PPC kernel guys put tons in!

Re:Rant on arm-chair-biz-o-nomics

[stony3k]

You have to remember that Steve Jobs now has a big stake in Disney. I'm sure that explains a lot of the pro-DRM stance emanating from Apple.

Steve Jobs

[nurb432]

You are speaking of a differnet Steve Jobs. The one in charge now is vastly different then the one in the garage back then. Times change, so do people. Insane success tends to do that to a person.

So whats the difference?

[madu]

Why not open things up a bit and get a stronger foothold on market share? IMHO, closing this to the OSS community really doesnt seem to make much difference for them as a whole. People that use Macs for the reason they do, probably arent really affected much at all.

Duh

[j0e_average]

It's what Steve Jobs would fantasize about if he still worked out of his garage

Reality time: Steve no longer works out of his garage. He runs a multi-billion dollar empire that creates products that customers want to buy, thereby maximizing shareholder value. Any relationship with OSS/Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA/etc. is irrelevent unless it maximizes shareholder value.

Re:Duh

[geekoid]

NEWSFLASH:
Apple takes risks.
NEWSFLASH:
A company is under no obligation to maximize there shareholder profits, unless there statement says so.

Apple is just waiting Vista

[TristanGrimaux]

Apple will release the kernel code when Vista comes around. They are just so sick of Microsoft copying them they'll wait till vista is out and done...

I know, it may take some time...
---
Donde Ser Geek No Duele

Re:Apple is just waiting Vista

[Mister Whirly]

And the Palo Alto Research Center is sick of both companies incessantly copying their festures...You think Apple invented the GUI or mouse input?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC

Who was his source (at Apple)?

[kuwan]

I find it interesting that he doesn't name the source at Apple that he spoke with. From the tone of the article it sounds more like he spoke with some marketing nitwit than an actual OS X Engineer/Manager. This is evidenced by the questions that Apple purportedly asked:

Has anybody ever written to you about this? How many people actually recompile their OS X kernels?

These seem like questions marketing would ask. People that are actually in charge of OS X's development wouldn't need to ask these questions because they would understand the reasons why people would want the kernel's source code.

At any rate, we still don't know why Apple hasn't released the source yet (or if they will at some point). There are some hints that there might be Intellectual Property issues involved. This post on one of Apple's Darwin mailing lists indicates that there are IP issues that precluded the release of one of their Intel ethernet drivers. If the Intel Kernel contains licensed code from Intel (for TPM or EFI or something else) or licensed code for Rosetta then they might have problems releasing the code.

Re:Who was his source (at Apple)?

[plasmacutter]

The problem is they didn't need to use "TPM or EFI"..

they could have used their own system for authentication of apple hardware. it's not like it's that hard. The itunes DRM was already tied to serials on the hardware pre-intel.

Furthermore, intels newer chips have become basically risc chips with x86 instruction set emulators tacked onto them.. why not simply contract for the chips to be made without the x86 interpreters? That would effectively make it a completely different platform.

But no they didnt.. and theyre wandering why everyone and their mother is porting it to beige boxes.

i't because of Intel Macs

[sheimers]

Before: "If the community makes MacOS better, we sell more PPC Macs"

Now: "If the community makes MacOS run on IBM clones, we sell less Intel Macs"

And in addition, it might have to do with DRM protected media, or with third party licensed code.

Why are they experimenting with Intel then?

[gd23ka]

If they wanted to sell more hardware then why of all things are they experimenting with Intel?

Most people that bought the previous generations of PPC Macs bought them because they wanted OSX. A lot of people bought them too because all they wanted was a Power Architecture Desktop or Notebook. Each and every one of these people bought a MAC.

No matter what, however people will find ways of getting Intel-OSX to run on and with non-Apple hardware whether Apple keeps the platform sources to themselves or not, VMWare and other hypervisors come to mind.

It's the same old story told over and over, Apple just lost a fortune all thanks to Intel for stooping and trying to pick up a few pennies that were laying on the street. They'll wise up and the next generation of Macs will again be PowerPC machines, and even if not PowerPC then anything but Intel. Depend on it.

Re:Why are they experimenting with Intel then?

[binary paladin]

Wrong. Just wrong.

PowerPC wasn't cutting the mustard, otherwise Apple would still be using them. We were still stuck with bloody G4s in the laptops. Thanks to heat, they were one generation behind. With x86 Apple doesn't have to focus on hardware development and they don't have to play magic numbers to try and convince people a crappy G4 is somehow more powerful than what Intel is offering. With Intel, there is no concern as to whether they'll be around tomorrow and with the hard competition from AMD, it's a no brainer that they have to improve. On top of that, if Intel starts to go sour, there's nothing stopping them from going with AMD since there are multiple contenders in the x86 world.

Moving to Intel has allowed dual booting Windows and much improved VMs to work with Windows since the hardware no longer has to be emulated. This gets rid of a major road block for a lot of people and why I was able to sell a major client of mine on the idea of using a Mac instead of a new PC.

A Mac can run pretty much everything under the sun now, plus OS X is awesome. Seriously, PowerPC was a dead zone, just like Motorola before it. Apple no longer has to concern itself with a company that's too busy working on "other things" to update their processor line. Intel gives Macs more power, less power consumption, more versatility and more value than IBM ever could.

Re:Why are they experimenting with Intel then?

[mehtajr]

They went with Intel because, especially for portables, Intel has a better chip that they can count on being able to buy. My week-old MacBook easily runs circles around every Mac I've ever owned-- the Core Duo is a damn nice chip for the money.

This is a simpler issue than Tom admits.

[jpellino]

The Simple Part
Darwin is still open source, except for the x86 kernel (XNU).
This is meant to slow down / stop wholesale use of OSX on generic x86 hardware.
Everything else, including the PPC source for XNU is right there, open and available to developers. I browsed it mere minutes ago.
Apple still hasn't said that this is the final disposition of the x86 kernel, but it's what they have for now.

The Part Tom's Making Complicated
Tom's invoking everything short of motherhood and apple pie (sorry) over this.
He imagines and carries the standard for legions of people who want to compile custom x86 Darwin kernels.
(Isn't this the very definition of astroturfing - "a few people discreetly posing as mass numbers of activists advocating a specific cause"?)
He seems to claim customizing the kernel is Very Important, Real Soon, for those who simply want to, and for those who want to optimize some custom servers and thin clients / workstations that he imagines Apple will be releasing in the future.
Maybe they will. If so, they'll figure it out.
But so far, no pitchforks or torches have been spotted on Mariani Ave.
Take his argument to the logical extreme and Apple lets everyone run OSX on anything they want.
That would be Bad for the future of Apple.
He does seem to say there's some magical way for Apple to have it both ways, but doesn't say how.

Re:This is a simpler issue than Tom admits.

[Anonymous Coward]

no, astroturfing is when you use shills. get it? fake grass?

this is just a few seedlings of real grass with delusions of grandeur.

that is, unless it's Microsoft shills trying to point out a supposed problem with a competitor, then it back to astroturfing.

not much of a loss

[PureCreditor]

Microsoft, IBM, HP never was open about their OS to the OSS community (Windows, AIX, HPUX), so shouldn't Apple have the right ?

The BSD camp keeps boasting that the BSD license is more free than GPL because it allows modified distribution without the source code, and now they're complaining Apple is no longer opening Darwin ?

And even Apple did open Darwin, the OSS crowds keeps claiming it's semi-proprietary, and continued praising Linux/BSD instead of Darwin. Apple has to spend the time and resource to keep distribute the kernel portion of Darwin and make sure no private code gets out, yet what's their ROI?

They can easily borrow the best practices from FreeBSD/OpenBSD - i.e. code reviewed and commented by the community.

And the OSS community keeps forgetting the first rule of business - it's ran for the benefit of the shareholders first.

Re:not much of a loss

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The BSD camp keeps boasting that the BSD license is more free than GPL because it allows modified distribution without the source code, and now they're complaining Apple is no longer opening Darwin ?

To be clear, I've never heard anyone I'd categorize as in "the BSD camp" complain about what Apple has done. Mostly it is just uninformed geek wannabees (what a sad thing to be) that don't understand the difference between the BSD license and the GPL.

Apple has to spend the time and resource to keep distribute the kernel portion of Darwin and make sure no private code gets out, yet what's their ROI?

The same as it always is with Open Source, more audited, fixed, and interoperable code.

And the OSS community keeps forgetting the first rule of business - it's ran for the benefit of the shareholders first.

Mostly, it is a lot of people who want everything right now. They argue Apple should open the entire source tree and make OS X run on generic x86, not because it is good for Apple, but because they want it. Well, it will happen when and if Apple sees it as benefiting them. If you want that to happen, give them the incentive.

Free SDKs and compilers @ microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Excluding the limited "Learning Edition" versions of VB available as far back as 1997, MS has made compilers and SDKs with command line compilers freely available for a while. The compilers from Visual C++ 7.0 and 7.1 are available for download and an AMD64 compiler for Windows XP x64 and Windows 2003 is in the Windows 2003 SDK. And as also mentioned, the Express editions of Visual Studio 2005 are also free.

Windows Scripting Host is a nice step up from batch files and is also included in Windows.

Re:Free SDKs and compilers @ microsoft.com

[WatertonMan]

You can't write commercial software with VS Express whereas you can with XCode. So "free for playing around" isn't quite the same as free.

Re:Free SDKs and compilers @ microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't write commercial software with VS Express whereas you can with XCode. So "free for playing around" isn't quite the same as free.

Nothing prevents you from selling commercial software written with the Express editions, see question 4.

Re:Free SDKs and compilers @ microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, this must be the "misinformation" thread. Your exact point is answered (correctly) in the FAQ, just one click away from the main Visual Studio 2005 Express page:

4. Can I use Express Editions for commercial use?
  Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using the Express Editions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ faq/

Re:Free SDKs and compilers @ microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the poster to whom you are replying probably never heard about this license change. All prior free editions of Microsoft's compilers and dev environments have been for personal use only. You weren't even alowed to distribute the compiled EXE, much less the MS libraries upon which it may have relied. This is a new policy, probably in response to the fact that every other OS on the market supplies any and all interested users with the development tools along side the OS. OSX is getting more popular, and Linux is getting more popular. Microsoft was probably a bit worried about the fact that it was easier and less expensive to start developing for OSX than it was to start developing for Windows, so they decided to make it easier. They haven't exactly gone out of their way to make the policy change widely known, though.

crApple? ^^|^^

[Anonymous Coward]

"Crapple is a shitty company."

Thanks for checking in Mr. Gates, but should you be doing something inspirational for the Vista developers instead of trolling /.?

Except...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple reports hardware and software revenue seperately, on a management level they understand the difference.

Except that Apple fails to report internal revenue for OS and other software sales with new hardware.

Which tends to inflate the supposed value of the hardware component of the sale, relative to the software component of the sale.

If they really understood the difference internally, then:

(1) Software would be considered a profit center

(2) There would be "funny-money" transfers from Hardware to Software for the software shipped with hardware

(3) The breakdown would be visible on Edgar online and in their financials

-AC

Re:Surprising if true.

[mrchaotica]

I started liking Mac OS when it became a unix, and bought my first Mac (an iBook) a few years ago (I switched from Linux). I also own an Intel iMac because Best Buy couldn't repair my PPC one.

However, between Apple closing the kernel to prop up their Treacherous Computing stuff (even though it hasn't stopped people from running OS X on normal PCs), using DRM in iTMS, and continuing to refuse to make a tablet, I'm seriously considering switching back to Linux with my next computer.

Closing the kernel isn't the only factor in my decision, but it most certainly is one of them.

Untrue (to a point)

[Lead Butthead]

And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.

I strongly disagree with this statement. Apple's preference to in-house proprietary solutions early on had more to do with the intense desire to design a better mouse trap and less to do with locking in customers. If you want to see proprietary for the sake of being priprietary, check out Compaq computers and peripherals in the 80's, or Sony' UMD, Memory Stick... etc.

the explanation that didn't come

[jdbartlett]

"...without a word of notice or explanation."

Try: too many people hacking OS X to run on PCs.

Fraction of a Fraction sounds about right

[Enrique1218]

I don't really see the issue about the kernel and everything. I am geek. Moreover, I am and Apple geek. The OS satifies my needs in current incarnation. I have never saw the need to recompile the kernel for this OS. I recompile for Linux more out of necessity than any masochistic desire. I rather not be bother with it which is why OSX is my primary OS.

Re:Fraction of a Fraction sounds about right

[Eminence]

The point of open source is not that you have or need to recompile everything, but that you can.
And all profit from the fact that someone will.

Re:Fraction of a Fraction sounds about right

[TristanGrimaux]

That's why you are not a real geek, you just look geek. Be a man and recompile the kernel ;-) Anyway, the real thing here is to keep Darwin a part of the community. Thank God there are out there geeks who wants to recompile the kernel, and see what's in it, and point out bugs and throw ideas about it.

---
Donde Ser Geek No Duele

MOD PARENT UP

[linefeed0]

This is the issue, right here. Apple used the open source community for attention and went ahead and dumped on them with nary a word from any of the people that covered how innovative Darwin was when it was released as open source in the first place.

A fair number of people choose to work for Apple rather than some other Silly Valley company because they're a "cool company" who did things like open source the guts of their OS. What should someone in their position think after this kind of stunt?

More alarming to me than the kernel being closed is that they didn't release any of the core source until people started complaining. Even the parts of the OS that are most useful for tinkering were an afterthought for Apple.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

More alarming to me than the kernel being closed is that they didn't release any of the core source until people started complaining.

You are assuming that Apple started to release addition Intel 10.4.x code only after folks started to complain... in fact the truth was Apple was in the process of releasing that code before anyone started to complain... it has to clear various hurdles (legal, packaging, etc.) before it can be posted and the folks that do that work also work on other things.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[linefeed0]

How do you know this? Do you work at Apple? Code for previous releases was never withheld without notice like this, and Apple released only the code they had to (GPL) before people complained.

Don't you mean MACH asked for this?

[emil]

AFAIK, there is precious little code from a BSD kernel in the Apple kernel.

I believe that CMU issued MACH under a BSD license, but MACH never touched CSRG or any of the BSD derivatives.

Outside of MACH, Apple wrote most of their kernel from scratch (again, AFAIK).

Re:Don't you mean MACH asked for this?

[shawnce]

A large amount of POSIX support that lives in the kernel (XNU) is inherited from FreeBSD but Apple has and is feeding back relevant changes to FreeBSD.

Re:Don't you mean MACH asked for this?

[Guy Harris]

AFAIK, there is precious little code from a BSD kernel in the Apple kernel.

YDK. Take a look at xnu/bsd/ufs, xnu/bsd/vfs, xnu/bsd/nfs, xnu/bsd/net, xnu/bsd/netinet, xnu/bsd/netinet6, and many of the files in xnu/bsd/kern. It's not just "straight BSD code", but, then again, if you compare, for example, the FreeBSD and NetBSD versions of the corresponding directories, you'll find differences, so it's not as if "straight BSD code" would refer to anything other than the 4.4-Lite versions of those directories, and *BSD has diverged from 4.4-Lite there just as Darwin has.

ascetic vs. aesthetic

[Anonymous Coward]

ascetically pleasing? or aesthetically pleasing?

ascetic: "A person who renounces material comforts and leads a life of austere self-discipline, especially as an act of religious devotion."

er, now that I see the "religious devotion" part, and seeing that we're talking about Apple, maybe you're right.

I don't know how else to say it...

[NDPTAL85]

...but you are an idiot.

Seriously.

Apple went with Intel because Intel's chips are faster and more plentiful. Freescale and IBM are not advancing fast enough in the speed department and they have continual yield problems. Sony has just recently declared that they're having yield problems with the Cell processor, another IBM PPC design.

How you can not understand this is beyond me. This is brain dead simple. People did not buy Macs because of the Power architecture. Are you forgetting who the Mac audience is? They're people who don't know jack about the computer industry, not geeks who know the differences between x86, Power or Sparc architectures.

To review, Apple went Intel so that Apple could actually sell hardware again. No one wants a slow computer, and PowerPC chips are slow in comparison to Intel's chips. I have an Intel Mac, it screams compared to my PowerPC Mac. Apple also doesn't want to have to hold up shipments ever again because the CPU's aren't ready. Or downgrade the speed of its computers because of sudden yield problems.

If you truly believe that Apple will be going back to the PowerPC architecture then you must come from straight out of DumbFuckIstan.

Good Greif.

Damn it

[dueyfinster]

and I was hoping they'd add ogg support to the iPod. Oh *sigh* damn

Why people love Apple so much ?

[livingstrangedays]

Really, am I the only one to perceive Apple as just a facade ? I feel it's just a brand name for a target market, absolutely nothing more. I still remember the KHTML fiasco (and the lengthy posts about it in Slashdot) when the white knight turned black. In every action, every decision I see Jobs as a Gates-wanna-be. It's the same kind of company. I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to understand why Apple is loved so much. Can anyone give reasons, real reasons, for this (beyond the slick design of their hardware) ?

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could list 3 "qualities" from CrAplle:

1) Marketing;
2) Style;
3) Non-Microsoft company. :-p

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Apple is loved so much. Apple is a refuge for insecure people who are scared of choice. They need a lot of hand holding and emotional reassurance that they bought the "right computer". They actually find solace in conformity. Apple has exploited this market niche very well. Apple even allows these conformists to fantasize that they "think different".

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Really, am I the only one to perceive Apple as just a facade?

Probably not, there are lots of people without a clue.

I feel it's just a brand name for a target market, absolutely nothing more.

And all of the innovative technology they have created and or popularized was an illusion of some sort?

I still remember the KHTML fiasco (and the lengthy posts about it in Slashdot) when the white knight turned black.

Why don't you bother to go read some informed post about said, issue, you know like what the KHTML people had to say about it? Apple followed their license, used the code, made it better and gave it back. They diverged in purpose quite a bit from what Konquerer wanted, so many of the changes were hard to pull back in or were not wanted. Further, some of the developers did not like the way the code was posted (as a lump) and asked for more granularity and documentation, which the Safari team worked hard to give them. If you had any sort of a clue, you would not pick this example to complain about Apple's behavior.

In every action, every decision I see Jobs as a Gates-wanna-be. It's the same kind of company. I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to understand why Apple is loved so much. Can anyone give reasons, real reasons, for this...

I can give a lot of reasons. They listen to their customers and make products many of us geeks want and make a profit at the same time. They save a lot of us from having to use the abysmal Windows or functionality lacking Linux. They make our lives easier. The most devout Apple fanatic is usually someone who bought their first Apple machine a month ago and is still amazed by how much easier everything is. They can't understand why everyone isn't using it and just want to let everyone know. I've seen it many times.

The enthusiasm of a newbie aside, Apple consistently delivers innovations. I would be very sad to use a primary workstation without system services after Apple supplied them to me. I use them every day and when I use a Linux or Windows machine I feel like I took a step back to a more primitive era. They supply a top notch GUI with real innovations, like expose. They supply a fully functional command line environment that integrates with the graphical UI. They integrate application with one another and they run mainstream software. I can actually invoke photoshop from a usable command line. I can use one program's functionality in another. For example, I can highlight a URL in Safari and use a third party program's ability to automatically generate a bibliography citation from that HTML page and insert it into a book I'm laying out in InDesign. No other OS lets me do that without a bunch of copying and pasting. I have one dictionary. When I teach it that "SNMP" is not misspelled, all my applications know from then on. I could continue, but there is no real point.

If you use OS X for a few months as your primary workstation you will understand why so few people switch back. Naturally, a lot of people like Apple, because Apple gives them this. Now they don't do everything better than others. They are behind MS and Linux in certain areas. They do a lot of things I'm not to fond of and they do a lot of things to try to get a little more money out of people. What they don't do except in one or two very necessary areas is lock customers in and they do a good job of interoperating using standards. For this, a lot of us are appreciative.

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[robertjw]

I'm no Apple fanboy and I think Jobs is probably more dangerous and potentially evil than Gates (at least Gates is predictable). That said, I can think of two good things about Apple.

• iPod/iTunes - You have to admit, while the iPod isn't the end all/be all of mp3 players it's better than most other products and combining it with iTunes changed the world
• OSX - Much better than Windows, but easier to deal with the Linux.

Overall I think their products are high quality. They don't offer me the versatility I want, so I don't buy them, but most of what they make is very solid.

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[Ash-Fox]

> OSX - Much better than Windows, but easier to deal with the Linux.

• It won't install on my PC or even my Amigas :(
• It requires me to edit XML files for some settings I want to change .
• I have to reboot for codecs!? I never had todo this on Windows or Linux.
• As a cross-platform programming enviroment, it doesn't play well with most cross-platform *nix libraries in my expirence
• It feels slower than windows xp on the same hardware
• It can't play most of my games, while Linux can with native linux versions and windows versions which I run under Wine (darwine doesn't even come close).

On the plus side for MacOSX, I think the spell checker is neat (all the ones I've tried under KDE are crappy).

Re:Why people love Apple so much ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said, sir.

Target market?

[LoudMusic]

Who is Apple's target market? I think the only reason they even try to appeal to geeks is because they can use the word "UNIX" like some kind of geek mating call. Aside from that they've really got nothing geeky in their linup. It's all posh bling. Look at the PC vs Mac adverts - it's all about easy to use and does the things a basic user wants to do.

Apple and Jobs don't care that they're losing touch with 'the OS community'. I doubt they ever cared much in the first place. Just enough to get Slashdot to make an Apple section.

Re:Target market?

[robertjw]

OK, I don't know about you, but somebody using the word "UNIX" has never resulting in any kind of 'mating' for me.

Re:Target market?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Aside from that they've really got nothing geeky in their linup.

How many heavy duty geek conventions have you been to lately? Were you at Nanog? I consider geneticists to be geeks. I consider mathematicians to be geeks. I consider network security experts to be geeks. What is the ratio of macs to PCs at these conventions?

Apple and Jobs don't care that they're losing touch with 'the OS community'. I doubt they ever cared much in the first place.

Maybe so, but a lot of Apple employees certainly do. There are a lot of old school UNIX guys at Apple these days. There are a lot of Open Source developers working on Macs these days. I think perhaps, you've not been paying attention.

Re:Target market?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you are pretty on-the-mark when it comes to Apple's target market. Here's your 10/23/2001 comment on the iPod release.

"Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...
Raise your hand if you have both ...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."

You're a regular Apple Nostradamus.

Re:Target market?

[LoudMusic]

I guess now is as good a time as any, Mr / Mrs Anonymous Coward.

I see you are pretty on-the-mark when it comes to Apple's target market. Here's your 10/23/2001 comment on the iPod release.

"Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...
Raise your hand if you have both ...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."

You're a regular Apple Nostradamus.

Months after that post Apple released iTunes for Windows.
Later they produced a USB iPod.
And the price has come down to as low as $99. Infact you can't even spend $400 on an iPod if you tried!

Wow! They fixed what was wrong with the product and now it's selling millions of units. Imagine that.

You're a regular ass hat.

Two words:

[Slithe]

Commodore 64

Underestimating the network effect of FOSS

[Zigurd]

I can cite two examples of a "network effect," where FOSS has improved commercial products. One example involves Apple.

1. Embedded Linux has a huge growth rate in mobile handsets and other embedded applications, most of which are big commercial product development projects. These projects benefit from widely available experience with Linux kernel building. Anyone with a spare old PC and the time to read an O'Reilly book (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/belinuxsys/)can get into configuring and building embedded Linux kernels and persuse and modify source code as much as they like. Contrast this with what it would take for you to get into porting Symbian, or even VxWorks.

2. The Web browser in the Nokia E61 (and probably many upcoming Nokia handsets) is based on WebKit: http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/ This means Nokia customers will benefit from having the same HTML engine and Javascript engine as in Konquerer and Safari.

So Linux users may or may not "care" about FOSS, but the elements of the value chain bringing Linux-based and other products that include FOSS certainly do care, and so should Apple. In fact I think the customers will begin to care quite a bit.

If Apple doesn't do all they can to cultivate a FOSS community around MacOS, they are missing a trick. Even if they triple their market share based on iPod users switching, that's still an 8:1 ratio (or worse) of Windows to MacOS in market share. Apple can't afford to stumble the way Sun did in their relations to the FOSS community.

-1 Obvious

[Random832]

Seriously, that has to be a moderation - since there can't be any other reason i'm not seeing it already in the comments.

They're not releasing it so that you can't put it on a Dell. If you could combine the OSX kernel (with modifications to make it run on any old PC), with the x86 binaries for stuff like aqua and everything, why would anyone buy a mac?

Is it wrong? Is it unreasonable? maybe. But it's not like it's some big mystery.

Seriously, am I the only one here who gets this? If it were ANY other possible reason, they either wouldn't be releasing any open-source at all (userspace, etc) for anything other than what they have to (gcc), or they at least wouldn't be releasing the PPC kernel either.

Re:-1 Obvious

[geekoid]

"...why would anyone buy a mac?"
Looks, quality, Size, and Silent.

Re:-1 Obvious

[Ash-Fox]

> Looks, quality, Size, and Silent.

Here you go:
looks
quality
size
silent

Re:Surprising if true.

[Golias]

and continuing to refuse to make a tablet

Imagine! The nerve of them, refusing to release their computer in a form factor that has never made anybody any money. After all the rumors sites saying they were making one, it's their obligation to you, personally, to make one! Shame on them!

I think you should hold your breath until you turn blue. That'll show 'em!!!

Re:Surprising if true.

[mrchaotica]

Jeez, what made you decide to be all pissy? Is it your "time of the month" or something?

I'm not complaining just to be complaining about it; I'm complaining becuase I'm shopping for a Tablet PC! My current laptop is an iBook, and I would have very much liked to replace it with another Apple, but since they don't make what I need I'm going to get myself a Thinkpad X60 Tablet (when they come out) instead.

I realize completely that they have no obligation to make a tablet, and I'm taking my business elsewhere because of it (along with the other reasons)! Do you have some sort of problem with that, asshole?

Simple answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing.

Apple is an image marketing company more than anything else. They spend MILLIONS of dollars promoting the idea that using their computers makes you better (smarter, better looking, etc) than other people who use PC's. Look at any of advertising campaigns, they actively promote themselves as THE brand for young hipsters, and it obviously works extremely well. You can never over-estimate the capacity for people to see themselves as better than others.

No official word; delay != closed

[raga]

If indeed it has been closed, it is going down the wrong philosophical path, and Steve Jobs should rethink the strategy on this (loss in revenues from pirating vs. goodwill from OSS.) But then I have not seen Apple indicate that it will be closed.

He actually has a desire to recompile the kernel and not get ad hits as far as this article appears.

I remain skeptical. How many Mac users are there who are recompiling xnu (not just to blog about it on Infoworld etc., but because they have actually studied it, and improved upon it?)

So all you xnu hackers, please stand up and be counted. As I recall, only three people even came close to understanding the kernel bug in the The Mac OS X Expert Challenge. As previously reported on slashdot, "Also looks like other than these guys, nobody got anywhere with the problem.". So much for the myth of the legions of ubergeeks working with Macs.

Even the parts of the OS that are most useful for tinkering were an afterthought for Apple.

You lost me on that. The part of the OS that is "most useful for tinkering" is xnu, the kernel. For those who care, the only missing piece right now is xnu; it has not been updated - there is no "afterthought for Apple" (yet).

FWIW, xnu from Darwin released before the Intel switch six months ago is still available for Infoworld blogers to recompile to their heart's content.

cheers- raga

Huh ?

[planetfinder]

You lost me. I looked up the definition of conformist and insecure
just to make sure that the definitions hadn't changed. Here is the
scoop.

Conformists tend to do what most other people do, i.e. they conform. In this case
that is Windows. Insecure people don't choose something different
from what everyone else has chosen. They choose what most other people
have chosen, Windows in this case,
so that they don't have to defend their choice as much.

The bass ackwards thing that you are saying would only make sense to you
if you thought that it were apparent to everyone that Apple makes superior products.
If that were the case then it might make some sort of sense
for an insecure person to feel comfortable buying an Apple but even then
the sheer numbers of Windows users would make them feel insecure.

Re:Huh ?

[che.kai-jei]

i agree actually with the parent partly but i wil explain.

there are many reasons i love OSX and even apple hardware.

however the mac fanboy mentality is not a myth or a minority phenomenon but SEEMingly a mass delusion. its widespread. the constant comparisons with BMW, the merest hint of relevance on any forum thread quickly gets hijacked into a spiel on "just works" or style and prestige, any deviation form the norm is met with "why?" allegations of unworthy , undeserving wrongheadedness . or hww their time is important bla h blah.
see the vitriol at hackers running osx on x86 hardware for instance.[ i od not condone piracy]

to be honest i hate PCs despite owninga few and running linux alongside OSX, runnin g bsd etc on ultrsparc etc etc

or having an artist gf who refuses to buy any apple and only runs gnu/linux and the gimp. i would ditch her but she is hot ; / and i agree with her reasons. [watch adobe/apple nazis decry my her choices and drone on about BMWs getting you there in style or somesuch]

i am aware of deviancy amplification theory in that this vocal minoroty on a mass medium will distort my sense of natural representation within any sample. but i feel its not just apple/linux/MS users its computer users in general think too many of us are insecure fanboy conformists.

lets feel better about ourselves and just realise we all use different things in many weird ways and we are all the better for it . lets share tips and help each other!
lets start creating worthwhile stuff while we have the time and ability [and the hardwrae and software] - we are uniquely better placed than any other generation [even iwth in the last ten years of computing!] to create free and non free content and software yet we mostly spend our time writing badly typed posts like this on slashdot!

PS cant the gnu|osx/darwin+coreOS/xnu commuinity do a GNU and fork the last kernal and do a rewrite?

and while they are at it get rid of MACH?

PPS i know its dead hard etc and not veryone can be a tenacious Torvalds with legion army of kernal hackers

i would love to see a rewritten totally FREE xnu-MACH kernel replacement [or maybe even a variant NETBSD/linux/SUNos kernel that would be XNU call-compatible] for osx

thanks

Re:Huh ?

[Ash-Fox]

> PS cant the gnu|osx/darwin+coreOS/xnu commuinity do a GNU and fork the last kernal and do a rewrite?

I'd rather see Mach binary support in the Linux kernel and a set of opensource reimplementations of Aqua, Cocoa etc.

It would be possible then to run MacOSX applications on Linux, which would be neat for those who need a working copy of things like Photoshop.

A possibly less partisan point of view (or not)

[Wry Cooter]

The kernel was more open to OSS tweakers when it was not so common knowledge that Macs would eventually run on Intel. It became closed, apparently, after the switchover. How does this make business sense? During the development of OS X, Darwin helped portage of code written to various *nix flavors, to one compatible to be run within OS X. Including truly cross platform stuff that worked on different CPUs. And Old Next wares, etcetera. It increased the possible market for the open source geek, and development flourished. Do you think there would have been nearly as many Cocoa apps if not for the encouragement of this community? The old school PPC developers would have stuck with their legacy C and Carbon code, because, why bother? Now that the kernel is apparently closed (and may have even forked a bit, perhaps dropping some Mach here or there), it may be, now that it is public that intel had to be used as a platform because of supply and other issues, it is more important to keep the kernel stable and closed during the transition, or less prevalent to sabotage from competition. Once the entire mac line is refreshed and another cat is let out of the OS bag, and Boot Camp may become virtualized, the kernel might reopen as a playground. But all I know about kernels deals with fried chicken anyway.

Re:Surprising if true.

[Stanistani]

Nah, he's happy as a clam or sumfin'

From one of his earlier posts:

"I, on the other hand, am very happy and content, living in my suburban house on a French land-lot style yard in a straight row with many other houses. My air and water are clean, my food is delicious, my TV set is huge, and life is wonderful."

Re:Surprising if true.

[Golias]

Relax, chief. It's just a little sarcasm. I was having fun with the fact that you sounded all wounded about the lack of an Apple-branded tablet.

Re:Surprising if true.

[IdleTime]

Frankly my dear, I don't Give a damn...

Re:Surprising if true.

[Golias]

From one of his earlier posts: ...

LOL. I made a snide remark about somebody's favorite self-help-book-publishing guru, and now I've won my very own stalker. I suppose this means that 5 of my past comments will mysteriously be marked down as "overrated" the moment you get your hands on mod points, too. I'm shaking in the knees just thinking about the inevitable wrath.

Still, you're being less creepy and aggressive than the Wii fanboys. Enjoy your hating.

Steve Jobs has NEVER supported open source!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks that Jobs is an open source advocate is sadly mistaken. He does not believe in free software (by either the "liberty" or "free beer" definition) unless it is software that he needs to acquire from a third party to bundle into Mac OS.

I distinctly remember, as if it was yesterday, Jobs telling a group of us at an early NeXT developer symposium that closed source was a benefit since then software vendors could trust that these "university hackers" would not change the system and break something. That closed source was the reason for Microsoft's great success; and therefore NeXT would be closed source.

Jobs even tried to stop distribution of the NeXT gcc and EMACS sources.

So to any of you who were deluded by Darwin, sorry but the truth was out there. The sole purpose of Darwin was to lure in the suckers who thought that by going with Apple they were choosing the anti-Microsoft, a Big Company that would be Open Source but much more professional and better-designed than the various Linux distributions.

Uh-uh. Apple is at least as evil as Microsoft (perhaps more evil, since they also are in the proprietary hardware business). They just aren't as successful.

I'm sorry to have to say all this, but this is the truth. Mac OS X is a turnkey GUI UNIX environment for people who don't want to maintain it themselves; but it is not an open source environment.

For what it's worth, I use Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux on a daily basis. I prefer the GUI of Windows over Mac OS X; and prefer the GUI of Mac OS X over KDE/Gnome/etc. in Linux. For a serious server, I wouldn't think of using anything other than Linux.

Security now!

[mgabrys_sf]

The fact that the Power PC version is still open and not the Intel makes me wonder if Apple is hoping to keep non-intel OSX freaks at bay a little while longer.

And by "at-bay" I mean several hundred feet below the Golden Gate Bridge...

Umberto Eco Windows Are Protestant Apple Catholic

[cannuck]

Umberto wrote this great essay awhile back. he concluded that Window PC's are Protestant while Apple PC's are Catholic (and Intel Apple PCs?). Linux wasn't cooking when Eco wrote his essay. My guess? Linux would likely classified as Athiest.

That's one word and a number.

[StikyPad]

NT

GPL

[Watson Ladd]

If Apple used the GPL they could wait for Microsoft to take the bait, run a comparision, and sue. They don't need to use BSD licences.

My reason

[Britz]

What drove me to Linux was the support. I had a problem with Windows and couldn't even get to the people that would have been able to help me. With Linux if I have a problem I track it down and send a bug report. Granted, not all respond, but a lot of stuff got (and gets) fixed.

Hot Grits

[unity]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_phe nomena#Netcraft_confirms_it came

Thanks for the link, I had forgotten all about the hot grits phenomena, guess I'm getting old. My favorites always had both Hot Grits and Natalie Portman involved in some way together.

how can they "lose touch"?

[m874t232]

OS X wouldn't exist without open source software, and huge chunks other than the GUI in OS X are derived from open source software; yet, both Apple and NeXT have given back very little in return--even when the license forced them to open something, what they put up has often been completely useless to the original open source project.

Prior to OS X, Apple for years was shipping a clunky, single-tasking OS when other systems were already robust and multitasking, and at some point, Apple tried (and fortunately failed) at their attempts to shut out all other GUIs from the market.

I don't think Apple has ever been "in touch" with the tech community.

it's the thermal paste ;D

[plasmacutter]

it has to do with all that thermal paste oozing out of every orifice..

i'll take 3 ice cream size scoops of paste on my heatsink please!

list of reasons for agreement with the grandparent

[plasmacutter]

-apple started gutting features from itunes, and the quality has been suffering ever since they started becomming the "ipod company".

-in previous years, apple has come out publically against DRM, with the advent of the itunes store i'm seeing more and more DRM making its way into the systems.. culminating in the completely unnecessary inclusino "Trusted Platform Modules" in their intel line. Apple has used their own chips to insure authentication in the past, this leads me to conclude that they have every intention of abusing the potential of these chips to usurp end user control of their own systems.

-apple has been dedicating less and less resources to making quality programs.. as demonstrated with my upgrade to quicktime 7, which is absolutely abysmal compared to quicktime 6.X.. maybe if they dedicated less programmers to DRM they would have the time to .. i don't know.. make quicktime's caching good enough to not choke on everything not in an apple format.

-apple replaced a perfectly good ppc system with the turd sandwich which is intel, exposing themselves to the very real threat of incurring yet another beige box clone war (which almost killed them last time it happened). And don't say.. "well they couldnt get what they want from ppc".. if they licensed the ppc architecture and put as much effort into it as they did into ipod, they could iron out ppc on their own.

-finally, steve jobs has been buying up media companies while slipping all this DRM in the back door.. this does not bode well for me as the end customer.

Weird, but since the kernel was closed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...everything got more snappy!

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

And don't say.. "well they couldnt get what they want from ppc".. if they licensed the ppc architecture and put as much effort into it as they did into ipod, they could iron out ppc on their own.

Thank goodness you're not running the business, because your grasp on reality is tenuous at best. Do you think that Apple gave up on PPC on a lark? The fact is, IBM wasn't willing to invest in a G5 that could go in a laptop. If you think that Apple could afford to do it on their own, then you're on crack.

-jcr

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

it's called hiring engineers and setting up a department.. exactly what part of this is a departure from reality?

if they really wanted to they could have done it, especially with the panamax ships of cash the ipod has been bringing in for the past few years.

it's called business, where you take risks for your future.

Tell me what is more founded in reality:
a.stick with your architecture and hire engineers of your own to solve your problems
b.adopt the same architecture of all the white box manufacturers and bury your head in the sand when reports roll in of everyone hacking your os onto them to avoid paying for your hardware.

I go with a rather than b, because i've seen first hand what putting your head in the sand does.

Re:Security now! - typo

[mgabrys_sf]

clarifier: should read "non-apple-intel OSX freaks" (IE: those who would put OSX on non-apple boxes). Previewed - and still muffed it up.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

it's called hiring engineers and setting up a department.. exactly what part of this is a departure from reality?

Oh, well! If it's so easy, why don't you start a new PPC development company? Let us know when you come up with a G5 that's suitable for laptops.

it's called business, where you take risks for your future.

I pity any investor who takes a risk on your management acumen.

-jcr

BSD encourages proprietary modifications

[amightywind]

there's nothing in the BSD license stopping them from forking OpenBSD, just like there's nothing in the GPL preventing people from forking Linux.

I am not talking about forking. The point of my original post is that the Open Source folks feel betrayed that Apple has closed OSX. The BSD license foolishly permits proprietary modifications. GPL does not. Free software stays free. BSD style open source is at permanant risk.

restriction of OSX kernel access

[Anonymous Coward]

My take is that they're just trying to hide the awful broken mess that memory management is on OSX...

Please fix your parser and check your filters.

[gd23ka]

I wrote: "Most people that bought the previous generations of PPC Macs bought them because they wanted OSX. A lot of people bought them too because all they wanted was a Power Architecture Desktop or Notebook. Each and every one of these people bought a MAC."

You replied: "How you can not understand this is beyond me. This is brain dead simple. People did not buy Macs because of the Power architecture. Are you forgetting who the Mac audience is? They're people who don't know jack about the computer industry, not geeks who know the differences between x86, Power or Sparc architectures."

I think you failed to properly parse the following information elements:
"MOST people ... bought them because they wanted OSX". (emphasis added).
and
"A LOT OF people bought them too because all they wanted was a Power Architecture..."

I'm not going to get started on set theory here.

I understand fully well that (MOST!) people who use a MAC OSX are not especially savvy technology-wise and they bought it because
it appealed to them for non-technical reasons.

"To review, Apple went Intel so that Apple could actually sell hardware again. No one wants a slow computer, and PowerPC chips are slow in comparison to Intel's chips. I have an Intel Mac, it screams compared to my PowerPC Mac. Apple also doesn't want to have to hold up shipments ever again because the CPU's aren't ready. Or downgrade the speed of its computers because of sudden yield problems."

While it indeed true that Power Architecture implementations are as of yet not available beyond the kitchen microwave clock ranges intel
integer toasters exceed, try not to confuse pure integer throughput with the overall performance of the chip or the entire
computer system. Aside from clocking a bunch of bad ideas hobbled together lightningly fast the way Intel does, there's a lot to be said
for L1/L2 caching, bus bandwidth but also instruction set efficency which really boosts or retards the performance of any chip. As far as
the complete computer system is concerned performance generally stands and falls with the the bandwidth on I/O busses (IDE vs. SCSI for ex.),
amount of main storage, speed of aux storage, offloading specific work to dedicated processors such as GPUs etc. etc.

"If you truly believe that Apple will be going back to the PowerPC architecture then you must come from straight out of DumbFuckIstan."

Obviously we tend to take a slightly broader view here in PPC-Dumbfuckistan. BTW a colleague of yours objected to pretty much the same issues
you did but he somehow worked his way around calling me an idiot.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

wow the same point i already debunked a second time! right out of the hannity and oreilly handbook. i mean how erudite of you! XD

Re:Surprising if true.

[Stanistani]

*checks appointment book and to-do list*

Nah, I haven't the time to effectively stalk anyone. I was just pointing and laughing. Feel free to do the same with my silly posts - it's all good.

I use mod points generally to mod UP, not down.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[Anonymous Coward]

You've debunked nothing. You have failed to understand how big an undertaking designing and fabricating chips is. You have failed to demonstrate that undertaking that monumental expense would benefit Apple more than a switch to Intel. You have failed to understand that the PC component market has commoditized to the point that processor architecture is no longer a relevant distinguishing factor. You have failed to understand the necessity of Apple's position on DRM, nor the fact that Apple limits it to those things for which it is absolutely necessary. Instead, you make assertions with no evidence, no argument, and no knowledge of the industry or of basic economics.

You have failed.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

the same point i already debunked a second time!

Nonsense. You haven't debunked anything, you just proclaimed that something that's very expensive and difficult, isn't.

-jcr

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

to you it's very expensive and difficult.

to an established company with close ties to ppc manufacturers and billions in revenue it's a challenge which is surmountable with proper coordination and management.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

to an established company with close ties to ppc manufacturers and billions in revenue it's a challenge which is surmountable with proper coordination and management.

Has it occured to you that Apple's management may have come to a different decision than you wish, because they have information which you don't?

Easy to say what someone else should do, when you're not the one responsible to the shareholders.

-jcr

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

no i'm just interested in the survival of the company that makes my OS, and I don't see this as the proper path to insure said survival.

"because they have information which you don't?"

you mean because they lack a spine?

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

I don't see this as the proper path to insure said survival.

Better-informed people than you have come to a different conclusion.

-jcr

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

and "better informed people than me" have also come to the conclusion that we all need to be spied on without a warrant(bush), that DRM needs laws protecting it(republican congress 1998), that slaves were to count as 2/3 of a person(founding fathers), and that we would never need filesizes larger than 72k(bill gates).

that doesnt make them right.

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

Wow, what an amazing feat of reaching for a non-sequitur!

Nevertheless, you're still wrong about PPC. Have a nice day.

-jcr

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[plasmacutter]

just as amazing as "proving" me wrong by saying, in essence "You don't know everything"

and ps: i'm not wrong about PPC, i'll be watching as the pirated x86 versions continue to spread and gain traction and stability... in the mean time one of the reasons i bought mac was because they didnt have TPM chips in them. that reason no longer exists.. linux anyone?

Re:list of reasons for agreement with the grandpar

[jcr]

What's to prove? The PPC stagnated, you propose pouring a pile of money into continuing along a failed path: the burden of proof is yours.

-jcr