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

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.

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: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.

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!"

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.

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: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...