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Cringley: Apple using Open Source to get Microsoft
alfredo writes " In the latest I Cringley, Robert Cringley demonstrates how Apple is using open source to undermine Microsoft. " Cringley, as always, makes an interested and impassioned argument, essentially arguing that Apple is doing the politically correct thing of Open Source-ing portions of their code, but doing it to become de facto standards (a la Quicktime), or else to push Microsoft down. Worth a read.
Look, folks. All these companies are fighting
with microsoft for market share. They will use
any weapon they can. And if supporting linux
helps them today, they will do it.
The interesting question is what happens if they
succeed in leveling the marketplace, and making
microsoft not so much of a threat. Will the
benevolence to Linux continue? Or will Linux
be seen as a threat and become the next target?
This is going to take *years* to play out.
-- cary
I'm gonna eat this apple, no one else can touch it. Not even M$.
AC#967
MS has released a "Media Player" For both Linux and the mac...It was just done to say they had done it and to assure content creators that their content could be viewed by eveyone. Microsoft's Media Player was a Big Fat Lie in that respect. I don't even think it ever really worked or that you could download it without already running IE, just try to find Media Player for mac or linux today.
Quiktime is a totally superior tecnology to the inflexible ASF. I'm a content Producer who has Paid out thousands for propritary Video editing and multimedia Presentation SW built around Quickime. I can say it was well worth it as I not only make more money back from what I do but have a lot of fun doing it. I would love to see Quiktime on Linux because I would really love to see quiktime everywhere. I do try to let Apple know my feelings on this. Right now if I want to share video with a unix user it has to be MPEG (not bad looking, but not the hight end)
I worked for Zeos International about 10 years ago, and they used to burn all of their systems in for 24 hours. Then Zeos got into a price war with Gateway, and the 24 hour burn-in period got shorter. Eventually Micron bought Zeos, and burn-in testing got replaced with "statistical methods", which basically means that they have a cetain percentage of unhappy customers. I think most companies do it this way now.
G3 specs are available from any G3 vhip maker (ie. Motorola or IBM). I guess you are talking about ASIC specs? Since lot of what you need to know is available in Open Firmware, so don't you think its more likely that Intel's money in Be is more likely to be the reason Be is not bothering with the G3s?
^B
kill -STOP 0
tcsendbreak()
------------------
There's your break dude..
QuickTime would be great for Linux. I still don't understand why someone hasn't started a project to implement the standard yet. Linux needs a multimedia API, and QuickTime would be the obvious candidate.
Stop whinging about Apple having to do it for us. Microsoft isn't building Wine or Samba, so why do you expect Apple to it for QuickTime?
I thought the $150 million was both for the promotion of IE, and to end the lawsuits...Plus I heard MS was threatening to pull MS Office from the Mac if they continued with the lawsuits.
Is bob@cringely.com still a valid email address for Bob? That's the one listed at "Bob's World"
at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/bob.html
Microsoft Windows Player uses MPEG-4 ...
I'm an avid mac fan. 2 related reasons seem clear:
1) The iMac was about a new Apple returning to its roots. Given how the media, prior to the iMac, absolutely socked Apple at everything, a media blitz on Apple's new machine would have been devestating, pushing away potential customers and seen as the next cludge from a company with its back to the wall. Not something to do on a product you are heavily marketing.
2) The iMac is decidedly powerbookish. Development costs were probably low. They also were ramping out in increasing production prior to the iMacs release. (Remember, one of the problems customers complained about were slipping product release dates combined with low availability when those dates came). They saw problems and saw the obvious bad consequences. Insituted 100% testing due to the first reason.
So it's not instituted along all lines because of economics and the history of the development of the machine.
I wish people would notice that SGI hasn't given anything to linux. Nothing from SGI is available for linux. Eventually maybe, but for now no.
Ah you sound like a person that might be knowledgable on the subject to answer a question that's been bugging me for some time. You see, I hear people saying that quicktime is better, but in my experience it, well, sucks. I frequent some usenet alt.binaries.multimedia groups and so have seen a fairly large number of multimedia files of all types, and the only format that seems to suck worse is real media. Quicktime files compared to AVI always seem to take more disk space compared to content and to display much less clearly. MPGs take more space than AVI but still display nicely - maybe there are just a lot of bad QT files out there but I have yet to see one that matched (or even came close) the majority of AVI or MPG files I have for display quality. On a couple of occasions I've even seen the same file posted in both formats, downloaded both, and had the same result - QT just looks crappy and takes more space so it gets deleted.
Is there some reason why a "better" format would reliably perform more poorly on my machine? (K6 based win95 machine, until I save up enough money for some hardware replacements so I can get linux running at least.)
Oh, one more thing I should mention, Quicktime for Windoze is a pain in the butt to get. It seems Apple won't allow anyone to mirror it, and the server they put it up on must be really weak, 'cause every time I've downloaded it it's literally taken days (the server often times out or just plain refuses to connect, and even when I finally get a stable connection it is soooo slow it takes hours to complete.) Of course, I finally got smart and downloaded it and saved to a safe spot a couple months ago, haven't needed to download it since then (every time windoze crashes it only takes down the c: partition so I keep installer packages on d: now,) so maybe that situation has improved.
GLX is available now.
Anything that uses TCP is not streaming IMO.
Maybe he's thinking of the Java Media Framework. It isn't a ready-to-go streaming solution, but you could easily build a streaming system with it. (Of course, who knows what the memory requirements would be...)
Shure their are plenty of reasons QT could be failing you....
A) you are looking at video sorces from alt.binarys.multimedia.x So of course absolutely anything goes in quality or lack their of... The files you say were "The same file" could be recompressed from one format to another with devistating consiquences of quality showing up in the derivitive file.
B) You could only be looking at quicktime compressd a while ago. If the codec for the MOV file is cinepac it does look a little dated on quality. Indieo 4 and 5 could easily produce better pictures than cinepac compressed MOV files. However they don't come lost to MPEG done rigt for quality.
C)You have a K6...ironicaly or sadly that's actually not quite enough horespower to keep up with the new sorenson codec... Add the burden of win 95 on top of that and hell I'd be suprised if you could see the starwars trailers right.
Anyway Quicktime happens to be a lot of things not just an API or a Big Data Pipe or a Set of Codecs or an extreamly flexible file format... I really wish more people could see how many advantages it has over all other Media Games in town. But for now I guess MPEG is the only thing that is cross platform. Technically AVI is "Not Supported" by MS anymore whatever the hell that means....
Your argument doesn't fly. The equivalent to Apple open sourcing MacOS X would be IBM open sourcing AIX. IBM simply took a free OS and bundled it with their hardware - that's like Apple pre-installing MkLinux on their boxes. You could hardly call that progress.
Furthermore, you need to prove that those Linux boxes significantly contribute to IBM's bottom line, and that they could survive on just selling Linux hardware and service contracts. I really doubt that though.
With good compression software (Media Cleaner Pro) you can actually specify A) the data rate per second or B)the total file size for both sorenson video or Mpeg 1 so file size is actually a mute point as it can be whatever reasonable size you want.
MPEG will take LESS time to compress in software and play on a wider variety of systems than Sorenson. That's a big advantage. However VBR compressed sorenson will always have a "Quality" advantage over Mpeg1 looking "better" or sharper however hard that is to actually quantify. Sorenson is also tied to the more flexible Quicktime file format and not the ridged multiplexed Mpeg1 format.
Some people have been saying that MS's Media Player/Netshow supports Mpeg4. I would call this really early support at best as they treat it as a codec not a file ormat.
I've got one of the first Zeos Pentium 90's back from 1994. That thing is still running great today! Never had a single problem with it.
I think it has one of the Zeos ASIC's on it along with a 430NX (Neptune?) and 6 SIMM sockets! I love that!
Just use some other codec, then. Use H.263 or MPEG. Maybe you'll never get Sorenson, but there are a lot of other useful parts to QuickTime.
> Shure their are plenty of reasons QT could be failing you....
> A) you are looking at video sorces from alt.binarys.multimedia.x So of course
> absolutely anything goes in quality or lack their of... The files you say were
> "The same file" could be recompressed from one format to another with
> devistating consiquences of quality showing up in the derivitive file.
*nods* I considered this, and it may well be true, it just seems hard to believe when I've gotten the same sorts of results with literally hundreds of files, from many different sources, over a period of months...
C)You have a K6...ironicaly or
> sadly that's actually not quite enough horespower to keep up with the new
> sorenson codec... Add the burden of win 95 on top of that and hell I'd be
> suprised if you could see the starwars trailers right.
Well I won't argue that win95 is a big (mostly) useless resource hog (my old 486 running VMPEG under dos does a superb job with MPGs with a lot less horsepower,) but my setup still handles mpgs, i263, and indeo 4 and 5 quite passably, even with a bunch of other programs up... makes me wonder what is it about the Sorensen codec that makes IT such a resource hog? If it takes that much more horsepower to produce approximately the same results then why say it's superior?
I'm not telling, just asking, it doesn't make much sense to me.
> Anyway Quicktime happens
> to be a lot of things not just an API or a Big Data Pipe or a Set of Codecs or
> an extreamly flexible file format... I really wish more people could see how
> many advantages it has over all other Media Games in town.
I agree, I wish *I* could see these advantages, whatever they are, because I have heard enough not-stupid people mention them I think they really must exist... I just can't seem to find out what they are.
Sorenson is a POS, mpeg4 kicks it butt to hell and back
INfact, using mpeg4 at mpeg1 videoCD rates, you can get FULL DVD resolution and 95% quality as good as DVD on 1500kbit/sec, ie 2 CDs.
Sorenson looks like a cloneof mpeg1 to me, you can still see square regions moving. mpeg4 you cannot.
And whats apple doing with mpg4? gee, so much for innovation, sorenson is closed, mpeg4 is open.
Sigh ... while the LinuxPPC people may have had to reverse engineer the firmware info that they needed ... it wasn't that hard.
Be came out smelling like a *&$&%*$, because they got to whine that Apple wasn't giving them everything that they needed. Then they were sersiously embarassed when the LinuxPPC stuff showed up and just worked.
Be = stuff made by whiners.
Ha Ha Ha, that's rich. QT4 IS the basis for the MPEG4 standard.
http://drogo.cselt.stet.it/mpeg/
Quote: "The design is based on the QuickTime® format from Apple Computer Inc"
Who says it's economical? The iMac costs hundreds more than an equivalent PC. Where do you think all of that money goes...?
and you're obviously pretty stupid
the mac sux, always has, always will.
you people are like creationists, spouting nonsense, and beliveing that you *are* in the superior position, and that everyone else is going to hell.
as one of the 1st players to come to the conclusion:
The Operating System is a Commodity. And, unlike a traditional one, there is a race to the bottom of $0 for pricing.
How can this backfire on Apple?
If some group creates a LGPLed or BSD licenced Carbon API.
And Apple knows this...why is YellowBox DOA? Simple. If OpenStep->YellowBox->whatever they called it now WAS to be successful, you have an option in the GPLed GNUStep.
Now: What company does NOT have a $0 pricing concept for OSes? (If you need a hint....I'm sure a 2x4 upside the head will hint ya good)
It was Tom Sawyer who made his friends paint the fence, not Huck Finn.
I remember seeing this too...
But I know this kind of misinformation from MS... Their usual vaporware strategy...
Don't take this too seriously.. There have been as much rumors from peoples inside Apple about a Linux port of Quicktime then there have been from MS about Media Player...
It is a trick..
the specs for the MPEG 4 standard aren't out yet.
The file format dubbed MP4 from MS is a proprietary thing they they just try to get some attention from the MP3 appellation...
Mac OSX can be installed with the BSD level available (this is an optional installed add on). OSX is just an application, which can be terminated like any other application. The point is, that Apple is a serious software company, and OSX is where they will ultimately live or die. Apple does an enormous amount of research (read: spends a ton of bucks) giving customers a GUI the customers think is ideal. (This isprobably the background motivation for the old look and feel lawsuits--the Mac interface was not just a GUI, but a carefully tuned GUi, and it was the tuning of the GUI they sought to protect as much as the GUI idea. This is not intended as flamebait in an area many have kneejerk reactions about. They really did have some major innovation and major investments it was natural to want to protect--and then the lawyers got involved.) Originally, the Mac OS seemed tuned to 6th graders (remember the Apple IIs in all those schoold?), and presumably OSX is aimed at a more mature user (Jobs may have learned something at Next).
My point is that software was and will remain a major component of the Apple business plan. (Supposedly, their software people were the driving force behind Motorola's ewxperiments with Altivec, and IBM fought against it until Apple showed them the what for--Apple software folks are doing some of the driving of the hardware side of the PPC consortium.) The glory of the Mac has always been the fact you could plug things in and unplug them and there was never a problem it took more than two minutes to fix--and seldom a problem at all. This is major major software effort brought to the customer. You just don't give all of that away--and there is supposedly a lot of really innovative stuff in Darwin (I've never looked at the details, only "heard around") that, if reports are true, it is shocking they did in fact open source it. There is something really fined tuned going on in their business plan here, and I don't have a clue what (clueless again? sigh!).
> NT's client/server microkernel architecture would generally not allow for it, so I rather
> doubt it.
Actually, you can already buy hard real time extensions for NT. I know a company that designs real-time control software for metalworking machines that runs on both QNX and NT + real time extensions. They'll probably end up porting their stuff to RTLinux one of these days too...
> I wish people would notice that SGI hasn't given anything to linux. Nothing from SGI is available
> for linux. Eventually maybe, but for now no.
Except for:
- engineers' time to work on Linux ports to their hardware
- an in-kernel debugger patch
- kernel patch to support 4GB RAM on i386 Linux
- GLX
True, XFS isn't available yet...
> Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code modified to make
> it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would definitly be
> opensource.Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code
> modified to make it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would
> definitly be opensource.
Because none of the real 'open source' hackers would work on code under such a license.
> Ha Ha Ha, that's rich. QT4 IS the basis for the MPEG4 standard.Ha Ha Ha, that's rich. QT4 IS the
> basis for the MPEG4 standard.
No. The layout and structure of mpeg4 files is modeled after QuickTime, not derived from it.
The video codecs used by MPEG are completely different (and superior) to Sorenson's codec.
(but since Sorenson's codec is simpler, it can play back video on machines too crappy to decode MPEG in software)
You mean to say POSIX, not POSTX, and NT can't do that-- it's support is too minimal to be actually useful for running any Unix software.
If you want to have real POSIX compatibility with NT, you will need to shell out serious bucks to a company which offers a working POSIX subsystem for NT. (forget their name at the moment)
into Apple's bank account, duh.
You know why Apple refused? Because they used the flawed IDE controllers that Intel had abandoned years ago[1], of course Steve can't let anybody know _that_. :D
-----
[1] http://www.lokigames.com/news/pr7_14_99.html
Apple is not a hardware manufacturer at all. I talked recently to a Macintosh Dealer at a local trade show, and he said that all the Apple hardware these days is outsourced to IBM and Motorola. Even the cases are outsourced to a different company. So, the moral of the story? If it says Mac, and you can smack it with a baseball bat, Apple didn't make it.
JoeLinux
>>>>>>>>>>
Your Mac dealer is confused.
Processor chips come from Moto and IBM. Boxes are produced in Singapore, Korea, Ireland, and Sacramento. I think the Singapore and Korea plants are outsourced (the iMac and iBook, aka "the consumer gear"), but Apple is still very much in the hardware business (Powerbook and Powermac, aka "the pro gear").
-mike_syn (who forgot his password, damn)
Um... both those things are streaming media. Don't forget the unending ability of IT companies to invent grand names for simple concepts.
Now Java is a ``Streaming Media Solution.'' Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The only ``streaming media'' I've ever seen Java do has been the equivalent of server-push, or GIF89 animations.
I admire your optimism. I've never seen a link to a Linux beta (you gotta link? share it! :), as has been mentioned. I've seen almost a year's worth of "Unix client coming soon" messages at the NetShow/WMP site. I suspect a beta will come out around the same time as the IE and Office Linux betas :)
--
--
=8^
Microsoft never released Media Player for any UNIX, afaik. They for a very long time claimed it was "coming soon", but no further progress was made (typical Microsoft vaporware policy?), so I assume it's a dead proposition, thankfully.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I don't know if they were actually willing to consider it or not - their answer was just simply, from what I understand, something to the tune of "we can't do it because of our licensing agreement with Apple"... Maybe they would otherwise. Then again, maybe not.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Then you obviously don't understand how 'micros~1' came about. Oh well, if you insist. :p
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Well, two points on that:
So, there.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I'm run Mac OS X Server on my computer at home. While there is QuickTim4 streaming server, the viewer is decidedly not QuickTime4, and not ready for prime time(it's a server, not a client).
Why? Because it is a brand new platform and they haven't even ported the entire Quicktime Viewer to Mac OS X/Darwin. I would expect the Viewer/Authoring version for OS X will ready at the same time as OS X Client.
Why would Apple port Quicktime for Linux before they port Quicktime to Mac OS X? Wouldn't a port from UNIX to Linux be far easier and economical than MacOS/Windows95 to Linux?
I don't expect to see Quicktime Player for Linux any time before Apple gets it running on their own OS.
A representative from Sorensen also said on the QuickTime list that they're only interested in having their CODEC running on QuickTime. If your platform has QuickTime, they'll see if there's a business case for porting.
The situation with Apple and QuickTime is almost exactly equivalent to the situation with Sun and Java: Apple is doing the work on the two major client platforms -- Macintosh and Windows -- and leaving it up to licensees to do the work on everything else. (I'm pretty sure SGI is or at least was a QuickTime licensee.) The only differences are that Sun is willing to license a Linux port of JDK to BlackDown for cheap or free, and Sun provides source code to the JDK to whoever wants it without distribution rights. (If I'm wrong about the Java licensing issues, please correct me.)
So talk to RedHat, or Caldera, or VA Research, or one of the other monied Linux companies, and convince them to do a licensed port of QuickTime. I'm sure Apple and many application vendors would like to see it; they just don't see any business case for doing it themselves considering how small a percentage of the client and content creation market Linux makes up.
What was at issue was the fact that Apple spent a fortune doing HCI work to ensure that the Mac had high usability.
It was this that was ripped off and formed the basis of the court case.
Strategies have a funny way of mutating in ways their originators never intended. Take, for example, frequent-flyer plans (to use an oft-cited example). Originally one airline started one to get more customers, and then others followed suit. Now frequent customers are getting a lot of free flights, which is costing the airlines a fortune. And the genie is out of the bottle; any airline which axes such a programme will be committing market suicide.
Even if Apple's open-source move may be merely a temporary strategy against Microsoft, it may end up rewriting the rules, leading to a state of affairs where standards have to be open-source to be accepted. (Which would be a Good Thing, of course.)
Eventually, hopefully every common protocol, file format and standard will be open source.
Specifically on that %100 testing of iMacs to make sure they worked right directly out of the box. My question is, why don't they (or any other manufacturer for that matter) do this for ALL their lines? If it's economical to do this with one line of computers, it seems likely to be economical, and beneficial all around, to implement this amount of testing.
It was a beta for Unix in general, and I believe it hasn't been updated since then.
By any chance does anyone out there know where I could get one of those proprietary "Turbo Cache Modules" for the Zeos "Gosling" 486 motherboard or where I could get a pin-out or specs or schematic for said module? And as long as I'm asking for miracles, a bios update that accomodates hard drives larger than 504/528/540 (depending on how you do the math) MB would be like a gift from above.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Sounds to me like neither company wants to take responsibility for this... ahem, fiasco.
What do either of them have to gain by their standard becoming marginalized when it's not available on other platforms? Perhaps it stems from some sort of PHB way of thinking that will never make sense to the rest of us.
sigh... In the meantime, it seems like everybody loses.
--Bitscape
> MS would end up "loosing" money on the deal, even though they would be making money "on the books." Oh sure, it was a calculated risk. There were some other rumored under-the-table reasons for the investment, like a supposed cessation of Apple's attempts to prove that MS stole QuickTime code for their AVI codec, but nothing was ever proven. One of the best conspiracy theories is that if MS ever was brought up on anti-trust charges, they could point to their investment in Apple and say they were helping the competition. That never seems to have happened, though...
The $150mil MS invested in Apple a couple of years ago was in non-voting stock. MS has no board or stockholder rights @ Apple. Aside from the name recognition, all MS got was some rights for cross-licensing patents.
--
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Seeing as that's a major part of my job, I can confidently say that you're wrong, and don't have sufficient knowledge of the Quicktime spec.
QT4 has been out of beta for a while, and has an excellent implementation of MP3. QT3 supports MPEG Layer 2, a better format than MP3 when used at 160kbps or higher.
Your campaign to spread misinformation is very disappointing indeed. Quicktime is an industry standard, no matter what some "Kevin-who-doesn't-have-an-email-address" thinks.
--
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code modified to make it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would definitly be opensource.
Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code modified to make it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would definitly be opensource.
And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.
I wouldn't. At least not under any reasonable scenario. Apple's high end is now around $2500, so I'd be very impressed if someone could come up with the performance-equivalent of the G3/450 for $1500. Apple's pricing, though still a little higher, has gotten a lot better in recent years. The G3 kicks ass, and the G4's gonna be even better. Apple's claims of twice the MHz-for-MHz speed are probably exagerated, but a G3/450 is still a wicked fast machine. And with the upcoming copper and SOI technologies, the PPC will be faster, smaller, and cooler than x86 chips for a while yet.
And one of the biggest advantages of having a Mac is the complete system integration: the OS and hardware were made by the same company, and the two pieces were designed to complement each other. This means that you have much less trouble with driver conflicts, configuration, etc.
A Wintel port of Mac OS would also likely be behind the current Mac OS feature-wise, and it's not going to be binary-compatible. These two combined mean that even if there was a 100%-companitble Mac OS port, most newbies will just buy from Apple and save the hassle. And Apple's core graphics market will likely stick with Apple, as Apple's hardware is very strong in that area.
What Apple should probably do is Open Source 90% of the OS, and keep the remaining 10% proprietary. This is enough to give their hardware a significant advantage, while still reaping much of the benefit of the Open Source model. Or maybe they should just delay releasing the source for 6 months or so. That way the really cool stuff would still make them money, but users would still be able to hack the rest.
the mac crowd is generally much less technical than the pc crowd. (This would mean that there would be fewer experienced programmers that would be willing to devote their spare time to working on it).
I don't think this is true at all. Certainly in absolute numbers there are going to be more PC hackers than Mac hackers, just cause there are more PC's out there. But there is a thriving Mac hacker community. Many of the users now flooding into the Mac commnunity as a result of the iMac are probably not hackers, but there is a core of Apple loyalists that have been buying Mac's for 10 years. Many of them are very technically minded. Myself included. MacOSrumors, MacInTouch, MacNN, AppleInsider, MacOpinion are all Mac news sites aimed at power users. There may not be as many of us, but we do exist.
Apple now has a decent OS which will actually be an asset, but it's based on publicly available code and knowledge. I imagine Darwin is a major improvement on the state of the art, but I also imagine that any good team of OS programmers could approach its quality, since BSD and Mach are public (correct me?).
They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.
The various forks of MOSX would certainly be less Euro and slick-looking than Jobs would prefer--hackers like to see the guts of a system; Jobs thinks the wave of the future has its guts sealed up tight--but Apple can take the improvements it likes and preinstall it (with source) on the servers and desktops it sells, maintaining the MacOS facade.
IBM (a hardware company with a few impressive forays into software) has begun to realize that it needs to become a hardware & services company, and use software as a tool, not a source of revenue. This realization led them to undercut their own costly, revenue-generating Unices by selling Linux pre-installed as an option on their servers. IBM has done extremely well recently with these strategies, and they've turned themselves around from the most hated monopoly of the early 80s into a hacker-friendly open-systems company. Apple could learn a lesson.
After all, its most likely for MS to release a linux port of media player than for apple to realease a quicktime client.
As someone else mentioned, "OS 9" is trademarked. Hence the jump to the name "OS X".
Also, bringing up the Apache bug is moot. It wasn't a "few" CGI scripts that was hard locking the server, as I recall, and I've seen a couple of reports *on here*, among other places, saying that people couldn't recreate it.
In any case, when did "Apache" become a buzzword? Last time I checked, it was just a web server. God forbid Apple should bundle a piece of software most web folk use.
>Doesn't MS own somewhere around 10% of Apple?
No. They bought $150 million of Non-Voting stock, Apple adopted IE as their default browser,
and a bunch of nasty lawsuits disappeared.
>Do they have representation on the board?
No.
>Don't they have a say in overall company direction?
No.
Apple beat the street recently with their Q3 earnings and the stock has been doing very well.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Don't worry, most people around here can't spell either :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
the codec doesn't belong to Apple, so they can't make it open source.
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SGI is having it's own troubles. It appears that many of the neato graphics progams that made SGI the end all of high end graphics are being ported to OSX.
Could the streaming digital movies being piped in from those dishes on top of your multiplexes be created on Macs, then transmitted from Darwin servers using Quicktime?
MS wanted Apple to knife the baby, QuickTime. They knew that that bit of code could be big trouble.
Maybe while MS was watching Linux, Apple was sticking the shiv in their back.
The corporate culture of Apple is different than Microsoft. I don't believe they will be as dictatorial as Gatesoft. Lets deal with M$ first, then deal with Apple if they start pulling a Microsoft on us.
BTW, OS9 will appear soon. X = 10
written on a G3/266 running LinuxPPC I rarely use the MacOS.
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Or if you were a spook for the ASA it's -... -.- *
goodbye dear Morse code. Us old ditty boppers are a dying breed. Miss the days of defending freedom, copying morse with a head full of acid, bourbon, and weed.
*That's BK to the morse challenged.
Hey guys I don't give a shit who does what, as long as the tech moves forward, and we have the freedom to use what hardware and OS we choose. Hurray for Linux, Hurray for Apple, Hurray for java, Hurray for UNIX, Hurray for open and free software, fuck Microsoft!!!
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NT's client/server microkernel architecture would generally not allow for it, so I rather doubt it.
Linux's architecture is open enough to allow for it, so I think that realtime support is possible for Linux.
My journal has hot
No, it won't be a 17" display, but it is supposed to have a larger display than it does now. Something like 16". I also hear the price may be coming down to $1099 or $999.
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InstantCool
ajdavis writes
They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.
I'd strongly disagree that Apple should release ALL of their MacOS. Their strength is in their user-oriented interface which is specifically engineered for (dare I say it?) non-nerds. The underlying kernel and OS functions are pretty much commodities with a bit of flash technology but their memeware (ie conceptual interface) is unique and should be leveraged for what it's worth (between zero and infinity depending on how they hype it). If their OS was completely freed, then it would be harder to set consistent standards and interaction modes. Quality or quantity? Your choice.
IBM (a hardware company with a few impressive forays into software)
A few? Minor point but IBM has one of the largest software development team around (someone has to keep their corporate mainframe customers happy).
LL
It's micros~1, not Microsoft~1, unless M$ has come out with a 11.3 system naming convention.
JoeLinux
...the preceding statement was brought to you by the word GNU, the letter X, and beer.
Why would Sorenson hold back the codec? From what I've seen it's not some super spiffy change the world thing like the mp3 codec so they might as well.
Mp3 isnt' that spectacular, infact there are a number of better compression systems, that result in both smaller files, and better quality
what makes mp3 a super spiffy change the world thing, is that it *is* open. if Apple wanted to change the world, they would relice the Sorenson codec. if the two companys did that, howerver, Nither $orenson, or apple would make any money, and apple wouldn't be able to make sure the best tools are only available for the mac....
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
but they still make there money from selling boxes
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Be = stuff made by whiners. no, Be == a company.
there not a bunch of guys on the net hacking hardware for *fun* they are trying to produce a good product, in a resonable amount of time. and they *don't* have time to reverse engineer crap from a selfish company that didn't want any compition from companys on its own "turf" (when steve jobs came back)
why should they even bother to support the G3 when Intel was *more* than happy to get BeOS up and running on there hardware
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
God damn Airlines suck ass, so does the new wired. Who gives a damn about "hyperfiles" not me, thats for sure. :(
I remember when I used to poor over every single page of that magazine(even that awfull negropoint crap)
now I'm lucky if i get 10 minutes out of that magazine.
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
what the hell? what does that have to do with anything? are you saying UDP is better? I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't get much more then a 10% improvement with UDP if anything at all (I really have no idea, but I doubt it would be much)
besides java can use UDP anyway.
I think X cringinly was mistaken about java. is a programing language, not a streaming media service. The only thing is, that if you write one client, it will run on any platform that supports a Java run time environment. so in theory, you could run quicktime over Java.
anyway, did you know that JWZ guy like ran mozila for a while?
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
but only in the cosole, the cant use GDI stuff
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
And of course it was Tom Sawyer who persuaded people to paint his fence, not Huck Finn.
(I was an English Lit major in a previous incarnation, so sue me.)
Outside of a dog, Man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, its too dark to read.
The two other expected announcements at MacWorld will be a larger iMac with a 17-inch screen
I highly doubt it. The next iMac design isn't slated to be announced at this show, and I would be very surprised to learn the iMac would gain a (more expensive, larger) 17" display.
At the time, the company was talking strictly about bits of AppleTalk and QuickTime that it wanted the open source
Actually, Mac OS X Server was the first thing to become open source material.
Darwin can be recompiled to run on Intel or Alpha or some other processor family. It can be and will.
I believe this has already happened. I thought I remembered running across a site that had a Darwin Intel build available on CD.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple is not a hardware or a software company. It is both.
Oddly, this concept is very difficult for some people to grasp. Since Microsoft is the "biggest, bestest" computer-related company in the world, and they make only software, that must mean that hardware and software have to be seperate, right? I just don't get that.
There is nothing that is intrinsically wrong with a company creating both the hardware and the software. In fact, to me, this seems like a much more seamless approach. This works well for Sun and IBM, why not for Apple?
Sure you can buy a G3 and install MkLinux, LinuxPPC, or whatever on it, but that's far from the norm.
A major reason people buy Macs -- the value proposition -- is that they are easier to use than their PC counter parts. This is do in large part to the fact that Apple creates both the hardware and the software. This results in one, unified package. This is what differentiates Apple from the rest of the PC world. This is, for example, why the transition from 68k to PPC and NuBus to PCI was so seemless to the end user.
Wintel PC manufacturers are clearly frustrated by the fact that the computers they produce can only be as good/bad as Windows itself is. This is evident as vendors (Sony, IBM, Compaq) struggle to customize their Windows desktops GUIs to suit their customers.
This is a bit less of a problem in the Linux world, as manufacturers could, in theory, start installing their own Linux distributions, rather than just using off-the-shelf Red Hat 6.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
What about that damn sornsen codec that Apple forbade the specs from being released to the xanim guy? The hell with Apple. I like MS more than Apple, at least they don't try to market Apache as being their own propitary webserver or partion their memory.
~Kevin
:)
The maker of the sornsen codec *wanted* to release the specs but Apple wouldn't let them.
~Kevin
:)
If Apple is really all "Praise God we have open source my brothers!" like they pretened to be then wouldn't they WANT Sorenson to release the codec? Why would Sorenson hold back the codec? From what I've seen it's not some super spiffy change the world thing like the mp3 codec so they might as well.
Apple is clearly holding them back going against their faux support of open source and is just using buzzwords to try and save their sinking ship which is rubbing off a bad image on the open source community. At least SGI isn't pulling any of this bullshit. I mean come on. Mac OS X? What happened to 9? Why not just 10? They're using the X11 keyword.
~Kevin
:)
Yes I know X = 10, pay more attention. Why is it Mac OS X? Why did they skip Mac OS 9? My *theory* is that they used it to borrow from the fame of X. Or maybe they just think they're l33t HaXoR d00ds and throwing random X's around will make them cool.
It goes along nicely with the idea of using other big industry buzz words like "Apache" and "Open Source"
http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/apache.html
Look how many times they repeat apache and open-source as they like to call it and claim it's a "core component of Mac OS X Server" but yet I seem to recall it being able to take down a server after it fires up a few cgi scripts... but maybe something else handles cgi, don't quote me on that part.
Anyhow, you should see what I'm getting at here. Apple is doing the same cut-throat activites Microsoft does but instead of going after DR-DOS or OS/2 they're going after what anyone reading this should want to support and protect.
~Kevin
:)
I don't like Quicktime to begin with anyhow. The quality is rather shoddy (black/grey splotchy squares looking like dropouts in a streaming clip) and just like avi's and real media files, you can't stick them together (ie. cat part1.mpg part2.mpg > whole_movie.mpg) which is quite nice. So I guess you're right, I deserve much better than what Quicktime can offer me.
For the curious this works with mp3's too. As an added bonus of not having burnt-in begin/end points you can view/listen as you download.
~Kevin
:)
no text
~Kevin
:)
#1 I don't post a lot either, but I know how to click on the preview button.
#2 FUD my nut. So what is going on here? Now do Mac users use buzzwords alongside Apple to get attention for what is pretty much just vaporware?
#3 MP3s? That would be QT 4.0 right? It's still in beta and it shows.
#4 You still can't stick them together
#5 I want mpeg, and I have it. Pay attention.
~Kevin
:)
This is so offtopic I don't even know why I'm replying to it. Good idea, bad execution. Get it thru your head.
~Kevin
:)
"There is a new Star Wars trailer that has been recently released and it uses the currently unsupported Sorenson Video codec. I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others."
Like I said, Apple won't let them.
~Kevin
:)
You seem to be having a problem understanding the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Just because you say something sucks, doesn't mean that it does, in fact, suck. Usually when arguing -- at least, I mean, traditionally, back before they let kindergardeners have internet access -- people supply so-called "justifications", that is, reasoning and evidence to help show that their subjective opinion is indeed objectively correct (although if you get into epistemology, you'll find that objectivity is an elusive goal). Next thing you know, you'll be making an ad hominen attack against Steve Jobs.
In shorter words, you suck, dumbass.
Jon
Many, even all of Microsoft's competitors are now starting to use Open Source. As these platforms gain mind share and market share, it will become a necessity to support a "one true standard". If MSFT remains proprietary, they'll be the only ones who are. Think about it, how many OSes can you name besides WinXX that aren't unices (traditional MacOS doesn't count 'cause it will be replaced by MacOS X)? How many can't run POSIX applications? How many are totally limited to a single company's resources? It's lonely at the top, huh Bill? :-)
-Rafi Remove the Spanish to email me.
You're sure it's still the same company? It looks a whole lot more like NeXT these days than it does Apple. If you were to rant on and on about how IBM used to be, people would flame you. Why? Because companies can and do change. It's called survivial of the fittest. It looks to me like they have changed, at least enough to avoid going down in flames...
OS 9 is already trademarked by another company. Sonata, the NT sytle multiuser MacOS, might be OS 9 if they clear up the legal blocks.
That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore.
/. thinks so, at least in preview mode. Looks like a /. bug.
1. The "Pirates of Silicon Valley" view of this deal is completely wrong. M$ made a symbolic investment as part of a big deal. They did not even remotely take over Apple.
2. The other parts of the deal were more important. M$ agreed to pay $100-200M for stolen technology. M$ agreed to not kill Office for Mac. Apple agreed to make IE the default browser, and some other things. It was a "cease fire" of sorts.
I didn't reply to the Ethan Butterfield article, but
I remember that Apple refused to give specs to the G3 to the BeOS and Linux people, making it so that the LinuxPPC people had to reverse engineer the system. And now they are putting their name under the banner of Open Source. As I remember they still haven't disclosed the specs.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
One must remember that Apple is one of the most propriety hardware/software developers in the industry in the past. They will gain political points for various, albeit minor, open-source projects. However, the culture of Apple restricts their open-source development efforts in this area to consumer applications and minor parts of their OS. Quicktime can be released because it was never seen as a direct avenue of profit for the company.
The key to Apple's success could be in creating a viable "ease-of-use" Unix or pseudo-Unix alternative to Windows. However, internal politics will block any release of the core code of OS X. Insiders see the OS as the crown jewels. Apple also wants to retain its fat profit margin, undreamed of by PC makers.
This is also the reason that Apple will not port its OS to Intel machines. Although it would not be a impossible task with OS X, Apple would be too afraid of losing server customers to a cheaper OS X/Intel systems. Though this will not be the case, this same sort of fear stopped a joint Apple/Intel project years ago to port the OS to 386 machines.
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.
Jean-Paul Sartre
To support real time streams, Darwin includes a real time kernel,
something not available in Windows NT, Linux, or anywhere else.
Well, I think the QNX folks have realtime kernels, and I believe there is a Linux RT or RT Linux project or something that brings RT capabilities to Linux. I also believe there is a realtime priority on NT, although I don't know how realtime it really is. Anyone have more info?
Doesn't MS own somewhere around 10% of Apple? Do they have representation on the board? Don't they have a say in overall company direction? If apple is taking actions that severely effect the finances of own of their primary stock holders, don't you think something would be done.
Oh, but you have to think of the "politically correct" way of handling this also. I can just hear MS whining now, "But Steve, all that high-quality software you are releasing as OSS is taking away our business that we've spent billions in developing!" I don't think that will every happen...
That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore. Yes, they could be positioned to make quite a bit of money if Apple continues on it's "comeback." But what happens if that comeback involves taking business away from Microsoft? At levels greater than what MS would make in their stock holdings? MS would end up "loosing" money on the deal, even though they would be making money "on the books."
Just don't forget that this is the same old Look-N-Feel Apple computer who in the past tried to own the entire notion of a graphical user interface. Ten years ago Apple would have topped the list of companies trying to limit freedom-of-use on computers (they liked to limit it to those who paid them tribute by purchasing their hardware.) I'm not posting this to start a flamewar (I don't care who invented the GUI) but to point out that these guys will hire a lawyer to harass their competitors at the first sign that it's in their benefit to do so. And that wasn't "Bad Old Apple" and this is "Good New Apple," as the ghosts of Apple past have reanimated the body of the company.