florian writes "Macweek is reporting that Prophet Systems, a division of Eternal Computing, is building a sub-$1,000 CHRP desktop system. " Looks like an excellent deal-they are aiming it at Linux and Darwin folks, though I'd like to see the PPC version of Be helped out by this as well.
230 comments
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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lscoughlin
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· Score: 1
Mac users who have interestes in darwin and mac os X are not the bread and butter of the apple universe.
Splitting themselves into two companies and opening competition by forcing software makers to lisence os goodies from the hardware company whould probably of made the physical platform far far more successfull.
Maybe the sofware companie would of died. woopie. Mac os X is just NeXTSTEP with a (IMHO UGLY)facelift. I'd rather have NeXT alive than Apple Software Co. Mac OS itself, well.. sucks, and even apple knows it.
In the mean time, they've taken a hurky jerky muddled buisness plan mixed up with software and hardware that haven't been significantly ahead in years (and have probably been behind for a couple now), significantly overpriced it (even now, though they're getting better), and decided that they invented sillicon and have sued everyone in sight while fiercely defending a niche market that noone can quite define with users more rabid than even the true linux shock troopers out there.
I love their hardware. I hate their prices. Their "buisness" is too stupid for comment.
-- Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
No, it just opens more doors to less populated rooms. But at least you help move the crowd into unventured territory. The only reason vendors support x86 for the most part is because, for the most part, thats what people use! The PPC is a superior chip (lets not argue and just take it as a premise of this discussion), and so I'd like to support a movement to accelerate it's adoption into the computer community. I mean, if your argument is valid, why have so many people switched to Linux over the past few years? Less vendor support, but superior (again, presumably) platform! Venture forth and the vendors shall follow!
That may be true for now, but the more people who buy and use the machines, the more likely good programs will be ported to the platform. The PPC Linux distribution has enough software on it now to make a kick-arse Web server, or SMTP, or DHCP, or all the above all at once.
I agree with SirSlud. Such boxen make great second machines. Can you imagine how well the Gimp would run on it?
I shall change my.sig shortly. If you really look closely at most of the other sigs out there they are just crap, and quite contradictory crap at that. I have had problems with debian as of late and linux as well perhaps someone will eventually fix all the problems with base level hardware instead of just fixing things that are cool to make the computer actually get up and sing/dance.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Well I would have replied to this via e-mail but I lack an address that is appropriate so I will just have to post this here for the world to see. First of all you have given away the play that the world is supposed to use to get this great conspiracy going in the first place. This is essential to any conspiracy that's why it succeedes: people cannot resist what they do not know about can they? Secondly I am not, and never going to be a quiter in any way, shape, and form, If I have to spend 20+ years getting all sorts of degrees to make me part of the elite I shall (as it is I am not stupid or on the fast track to getting there). Thirdly what I really see happening in the next 50 years is a group of people most likely "hippies" for lack of a better term who will instigate a program of euthenasia, planned depopulation of so called "threatened" areas of terrain. What this will be spurred on by is perhaps some major natural distaster which is created by global warming or the like. This in turn will raise prices on all basic necessities and will queeze most of the population through the cracks in an even more sinester way than through a bunch of people in a smoking room. If any organized conspiracy were in the works people would already have come forward and ratted on those people involved; this is why things like the X-files are not really probable in our time. What of the internet? We have access in most public places (probably sensored in the future) to all the information of a technical nature that we could ever read in a lifetime. This will make people more literate and get their foot in the door. I am just discusted with people who waste time on things when If I just had a little easier time or perhaps a little more power I could improve at least 5,000% or more where people at the top little benefit with the purtchess of several million dollars worth of computer equipment in any form. An example does bill gates get all psyched up when he overclocks his processor on his desk to give him 10% more processing power? I think not.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Actually it's really not the hd but support for the cd-rom under linux. Ever try to install Red Hat with a dos partition (the rest of a previous almost full linux one) of about 30M free space? The cd has at least 420M worth of rpm's labeled not a whit for the base stuff that is needed.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I can say that when I worked for Palindrome (now defunct tape backup software company), we had NT Alpha, and NT PPC ports in the works for Palindrome Storage Manager. Microsoft's wishy-washiness for the other platforms strongly aided in the destruction of those projects. Sigh. In those years, it really looked like MS WAS going to take over the world, and even our Unix port was crushed in an act of PHB-ness, and our ROOTS in Novell were rapidly disintegrating (although that was more Novell's fault - crappy developer support).
Remembering those years - 96, 97. . . things really are better these days. Though I don't really care if Novell makes a comeback or not, it certainly is refreshing to see this Linux movement grow and take hold, and even see Macintosh recover somewhat.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
-- These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Namely the rather still bug filled distributions and the lack of greased lightning response times for fixing bugs or getting updates for packages that I would wish to use. I would like for someone for example to get a devel kernel out with that e2compr patch (or get the patch into the kernel) so that I could get reasonable updates to the core OS instead of waiting several years between 2.0.x and 2.2.x for example.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Wait, so is pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Wellcome... they must all be working on some kinda computer-based drug thing that will ruin us all...
Yeah, IBM has been there for years. RTP is a development zone, the government of NC gives 'em incentives and also tech-types flock there... umm, here so there's a good labour pool. It's little more than a coincidence, K?
-- "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Re:MacOS' price should cover its cost
by
um...+Lucas
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· Score: 1
Last I knew, they tried to propose that to the cloners, but they all rejected the idea of actually paying enought to cover their costs...
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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47Ronin
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· Score: 1
Quality software? 0% on a Mac? BullSH*T..what are you Be peeps smoking? I don't think anyone has made a Photoshop 5.5 / ImageReady 2.0 bundle for Be.. does Starcraft run natively on Be? Oh damn! Does Be have Poser 4, Flash 4, Adobe GoLive 4, Connectix Virtual Gamestation? I think not! Get your head out of your ass before you post highly explosive flamebait.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Re:What about the Mac?
by
um...+Lucas
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· Score: 1
Isn't NT & Linux "comsumer" enough? Though I just read on PC Week that Microsoft is going to themselves suspend development for Alpha past the next service pack... story to come
Not true. It had less to do with Microsoft than you think. From what I've gathered, the NT port to PPC was killed because of several reasons, none of which were related to "billy bob wanted it"
Basically, it boiled down to Motorola and IBM not wanting it bad enough.
-- "Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
You can't keep piling crap on top of a deadening architecture. Eventually, it becomes more economical to start from scratch or at least a more recent starting point.
That's what Be tried to do, and look at how popular they've turned out. That's what Apple originally planned with Rhapsody, and they had to back track on that in order to convince developers to update their products. MS Windows 2000 has been plagued with compatiblity concerns...
Given MS & Intel's revenues and profits, it's a fair statement to say that the computing world values compatibility over performance/reliablitly/price/whatever other concern.
What Can't a Mac do? Well, the main BIG problem is that it cannot run a given network protocol over more than one hardware type. i.e. Appletalk cannot be run over Localtalk and ethernet at the same time. This makes it hard to share certain devices on a network. Also, the networking could be vastly improved on the MacOS.
These CHRP machines look wonderful. I would be VERY interested in obtaining a 4 or 8 way PPC CHRP system.
and the Acorn
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Here in the UK, there's a computer used mainly in schools called the Acorn, and that also uses ARM. Quite speedy little buggers for the price (cheap) the authorities must have paid for them.
It really is a nice indication of what companies are really Linux companies, or want to be, versus those that are supporting Linux out of desperation (like Corel).
Once they've got a working Linux version, they really don't have any excuse not to have Alpha and PPC versions.
-- A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
please think about a pizza box form factor,and gcc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That way people like me, who run ISP's could take advantage of the lower power usage/thermal envelope and stack a bunch of boxes together for our servers. The price/performance + heat factors would be enough to turn the tide in favor of PowerPC (same reasons cobalt is using MIPS).
You pay by the rack, so putting this stuff into a small form factor is key. . . the original 6100 and the LC design from the Macintosh are things to think about, as well as the low-profile Suns.
I've been monitoring the progress of linux-ppc and it looks like linuxppc-1999a is actually out with
ls/lib/libc-*
/lib/libc-2.1.1.so
so things like srpms will actually work. Which is key. In general, i think this port will continue to stabilize in the near-term. As an added bonus, it's a great platform for developing embedded software for powerpc-eabi
I would also be cool if apple or moto or ibm would pay to get gcc up and optimized on linux-powerpc specifically.
That was all stated in relation to commerial/proprietary software. I don't think that all the software I want to use or their equivilants will be available in source code form at any time in the near future, if ever.
Like always, I myself advocate using the best tool for the job, even if it means paying for it
Mac OS X Server is just that--a server OS. It is little more than a modified version of the Next OS with some network apps like Apache and WebObjects bundled in. It is not suitable as a consumer OS.
OS X Client is the future of the mainstream Mac OS, and it will feature a dramatically improved feature set for non-technical users, including...
-Carbon, which will allow existing Mac apps to run in a preemptive environment without modification
-Quartz, which is a PDF-based graphics model, supporting high-end graphics rendering abilities built into the OS
-First-class java support built into the default install
-Better hiding of the BSD internals so that new users don't have to know Unix to use their Macs.
-Ports of all the functionality of the current OS so that existing users will be able to interact with the OS in a predicatble way.
-A revamped finder
-Updated internals. They are switching to a new version of the BSD kernal (3.0 comes to mind)
-Gobs of other cool stuff I can't think of offhand.
And there probably will be a command line buried in the OS somewhere, but users will not be required to use it under any circumstances. Power users will be able to use it if they wish, however. Target release date is early 2000. They've already seeded a developer release, with a second due in a matter of weeks.
Ahh just as I thought.. a guy who really isn't interested in doing anything more than fiddling with his GUI. Okay well since doing WORK isn't your kind of thing than well let's list some realities to you: Mac interface customization: Kaleidoscope. Shareware.. thousands of custom interfaces. BASH and Xemacs : I don't know what the hell you would need these for since you can find text editors for the Mac like gum on sidewalks. BBEdit is a frontrunner off the top of my head. The fact is, if I needed a text editor, I'm better off scribbling on Notepad or Stickies. Games? Over 7 of the top 10 games listed by PCData research are available or are being ported to the Mac. Compilers and all that sh*t? Go to the store and buy it. Don't just sit at home and assume all your life. Faster hard drive? Take out the old Mac drive and put a new one in. Dang, are you that blunted? Hell, it's easier to format/partition a Mac drive anyway. Run Scripts and schedule tasks: AppleScript, nuff said. The Mac can even turn itself on/off and run jobs without additional hardware
Like I said, I'm usually addressing people who haven't really used a Mac (one that that was built in the last three years). Oh yeah, I'm writing this in Netscape on a beige G3/233 Mac while working on an 89 MB Photoshop 5.5 file on multiple screens while serving out Internet access using the shareware IPNetrouter (mixed Mac/PC clients) and sending out web pages via the Web Sharing control panel. Plus this stock config is connected to the Novell network via stock AppleTalk and has a CD-RW, scanner, Zip, Jaz, two external HDs, and a Syquest44 plugged in. No sweat. No effort. No jiggling configs. Just turn it on and work. That's what my boss pays me to do. Not f*ck around with my "window managers." They work just fine.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Oh yea BeOS is really a great system to....:P Hell yea, I'd run MacOS!!
It had better run BeOS...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...Otherwise it will be a pretty worthless venture. Who would want one? To run MacOS? (ack)
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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tak+amalak
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· Score: 1
I know! Especially since BeOS has about 100 more apps than MacOS. Oh wait, no it doesn't. Nevermind.
-- Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
who cares about the number of apps? Oh, that's right quantity equals quality.
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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tak+amalak
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· Score: 1
hmm if 20% of all mac apps are quality then that makes 2000 quality apps. Does BeOS even have half that many apps in all?
-- Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Re:It had better run BeOS...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
But since 0% are quality, BeOS has more quality apps.
Why I would love to buy one
by
webslacker
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· Score: 2
For those who don't know, LinuxPPC and BeOS won't run natively on Macs or Mac clones. I installed LinuxPPC on my Blue G3 and had to make it a dual-boot between MacOS and Linux. Why? Because the damn machine won't boot into anything except MacOS! LinuxPPC waits until the MacOS starts to boot the computer up, then hijacks the system. The sameannoying setup applied when I installed BeOS on my PowerComputing clone.
Now I love my MacOS and all, but I'd like to be able to run BeOS and Linux without having MacOS hiding underneath somewhere. If these PowerPC boards actually make it to the shelves, I'll be first in line.
Re:Why I would love to buy one
by
schuster
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· Score: 1
From what I understand, you can modify OpenFirmware to bypass the Mac OS at bootup, but I have absolutely no idea on how to do this.
-- ---
Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Re:Why I would love to buy one
by
AArthur
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· Score: 1
Yah... But it won't work with those flashy iMacs or Blue G3's because the Linux/PPC Kernel has broken OF headers which allow it only to boot on older machines (Apple fixed part of there broken OF to make it more standard -- and Linux/PPC developers haven't kept up.)
The reason for this is, it would seem little of them have interest in wasting time to do this -- after all why bother, when the Mac OS comes free with these computers, and BootX works just as good as open firmware and is easy to use.
The fact is, people that use Linux-only Blue G3's want to be able to use OpenFirmware -- any people interested in this project?
Finally, CHRP machines boot right out of OF into Linux.
Re:Why I would love to buy one
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AArthur
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· Score: 1
OpenFirmware on the Mac equals BIOS on the PC. quik on the Mac equals lilo on the PC. Linux/PPC Kernel on the Mac equal Linux/x86 Kernel on the PPC.
So it works basically the same way -- it should be noted that at least on Power Macintoshes, OpenFirmware booting has fallen out of favor of Linux/PPC developers -- so they aren't actively updating quik / Linux/PPC Kernel for better support of newer macs (blue G3/iMac) with less-brain dead OpenFirmware.
It's not that it's difficult either -- NetBSD fully supports OF booting on the iMac and the BlueG3 -- just Linux/PPC developer have no interest and continuing active development on a cryptic boot language -- when people can use something that came (free of cost -- not free as in freedom) with there PowerMac Blue/iMac G3.
Re:Why I would love to buy one
by
tgd
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· Score: 2
Ummm... on most Mac's, the only part of MacOS that starts booting is the part thats in ROM, which is the equivalent of the BIOS on a PC.
You can get Linux to boot without a BIOS on a PC too, but why the hell would you want to? LinuxPPC can be installed with that init tool that lets you dual boot, or you can easily configure the machine to boot straight to Linux. I've run LinuxPPC on two different Macs after MacOS was removed from the system.
Re:Why I would love to buy one
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arodrig6
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· Score: 2
This is not completely accurate (at least for LinuxPPC). You can use OpenFirmware. The LinuxPPC web pages do focus on the BootX (needs macOS) solution, but OF is completely feasible
Re:Why I would love to buy one
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webslacker
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· Score: 2
Sounds good, but I can't find any appropriate flashers. If anyone out there knows how to flash OpenFirmware for Linux or Be, please email me!
Correct me if I am wrong but...
by
Wyatt+Earp
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· Score: 1
I thought that the next generation of Apple Motherboards, the ones in the Sawtooth G3/G4 towers didn't have physical ROM on the board. That it was going to be more of the ROM-in-RAM like the iMac has.
I also read something on Friday...MacOSRumors or MacWeek or somewhere that IBM got one of these monsters to boot from 8.1 a while back.
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
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schuster
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· Score: 1
Don't get me wrong, I love the Athlon too, in fact, I just bought one... But the thing's a friggen microwave! It draws 50W! Hotter than the PIII. So yes, it's a nice chip at a nice price, but to be honest, I'm a bit worried about the damn thing burning a hole through my motherboard. OTOH, it should keep my apartment nice and toasty up in the cold darkness of Syracuse. The PPC, however, is a truly elegant chip. Certainly on par w/ the Athlon (Altivec routines however will blow it out of the water) and it draws far less power, only 5W for the G3 which makes it quite good for both desktops and laptops, unlike the Athlon. The G4 (which btw, is probably coming at Seybold) only draws slightly more power and is also fine for laptops. Beyond that, there's a lot of Intel hardware in CHRP which not only drives the prices down a lot, but also makes it possable to walk into "mom and pop parts stores" and walk out with a "Bag o' parts". Finally, IBM's chip volume goes way up and the price of the chip not only comes down too, but the R&D goes up (and the PPC is a vastly untapped archecture.)
-- ---
Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
iculver
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· Score: 1
I agree with you about Apple's irrelevance. IBM for years has used PPC technologies in their AIX boxen. They also have beefed-up versions of the chips on their S/390's. (What I wouldn't do to get one of those chips on a motherboard!) I doubt IBM consulted with Motorola or Apple to do that...
As you wish . .. I'll take it a step further. Avid for LinuxPPC! that's right. Top of the line Video Editing in Linux. not enough to make you cream? Sonic Solutions for LinuxPPC? They basicaly got rid of the MacOS anyway, it's the next natural step. How about LightWave or Alias for LinuxPPC? should I stop, or do we need Digital Performer and Vision DSP as well?
Re:Here's an affordable PPC laptop
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
LinuxPPC does not yet run on the iBook. They still have to figure out all the wacky new hardware. It's easier than on the Intel side, however, since there's only a few models of Mac laptops available. It took me and my friends many weeks to get Linux up and running on a friend's Quantex laptop, and we still haven't got her network card to work. LinuxPPC installed out of the box on my 'Book. Rather, out of the FTP. Only within the past couple of weeks has someone figured out how to put a Powerbook g3 series (the one I bought >1 year ago, not the new thin ones) to go to sleep under Linux. The iBook simply doesn't work right now...check back later.
Re:Here's an affordable PPC laptop
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The iBook!
I would love to buy an iBook if apple would only make a couple of minor changes.
Make one with a case that isn't so hideously ugly that I'd be embarrased to be seen with it. Powerbook case would be nice.
Have a graphics card with a resolution above 800x600.
I'm also a little dubious about buying a laptop without a PCMCIA
If would change these three things I'd be standing in line to get to fondle one. But as things stand I'm less than keen. This is of course assuming it will run Linux (and BeOS) without problem. Also they should sell it with 64 MB RAM as default, And In my experience the ATI card sucks.
OK so what I really want is an apple powerbook that is cheap, but I guess that won't happen.
-- Little is the number that think with their own mind and feel with their own heart.
~ Albert Einstein
Does such a thing exist?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Exactly what do you guys use as far as multitrack software for Linux? Is SLab or Broadcast 2000 any good? It probably shouldn't be too tough to match Pro-Tools, one might think, in terms of its user interface, etc. (but then again I'm not a programmer). I think that its simplicity, here, translates into elegance. The screenshots of SLab that I've seen fit that category pretty well. BTW, I once e-mailed the tech support guys at Digidesign, asking them if they ever plan to support linux; they promptly answered something to the effect of "no; these things take time. We don't expect to port it anytime soon." No surprise there, but maybe that'll change. -ad
Couldn't help but notice that you feel somewhat... dissatisfied with the current versions of Debian Lignux. I tried installing it a while back, and encountered a ton of problems in dependencies (dselect is a REAL BITCH) and the like.
I tried RedHat, and couldn't stand that (it is the antithesis of proper, clean Unix design). FreeBSD was somewhat cleaner, but still had install problems. It also had "it worked fine yesterday, but it's hopelessly broken today, and I changed *NOTHING*" problems and is, therefore, not a product I care to run.
I tried OpenBSD, and stuck. It is tight, clean, consistent, and secure. Everything just *works*, and works *well*.
Microsoft told Moto, IBM and Apple they wanted $100Mil for the NT5 port, each! Moto MCG never even sold near that many retail NT and Mac PPC boxes, IBM hell, what did they want NT for , they had AIX, and Apple, DUH!! Andy wanted PPC kicked out of his sandbox, and Bill did the kicking. Who know what Bill got in return, probably Intel dropped some Internet software project, they were big in networking and evangelizing net access in that timeframe.
-- Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Re: I wonder what it means for Mac OS X.
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coreybrenner
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· Score: 1
You've forgotten the Jobs factor.
If these PPC boards are widely used, and Darwin is ported over, then a couple of things could happen.
1) MacOS X (the GUI and stuff above Darwin) will be somehow keyed to work only on Apple platforms. This can likely be subverted, and if it is:
2) Further development of Darwin is closed-source. Darwin and the MacOS will become proprietary. Future versions of Darwin will run only on Apple platforms and, most likely, binary formats, APIs, and the like will change to ensure that the folks still hacking on the older versions of Darwin are at an evolutionary dead-end.
--Corey
-- Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
correlation does not equal causation
by
Scudsucker
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· Score: 1
That's what Be tried to do, and look at how popular they've turned out.
Be didn't catch on for a number of reasons. For one thing, they're developing an OS targeted at multimedia but not making it for the main multimedia platform(Macs). For another, they have yet to get any big graphics software company (Quark, Adobe, Macromedia etc) to port any of their products to BEOS.
That's what Apple originally planned with Rhapsody, and they had to back track on that in order to convince developers to update their products.
Not exactly. They revised Rhapsody because it did not provide a good upgrade path for software developers. For an application to take advantage of the modern OS buzzwords, large parts of the code would have to be rewritten. Carbon lets developers keep most of their old code while allowing them to move to OSX.
Given MS & Intel's revenues and profits, it's a fair statement to say that the computing world values compatibility over performance/reliablitly/price/whatever other concern.
Of course the fact that both MS and Intel use questionable tactics against thier compeditors wouldn't have anything to do with thier dominance, would it?
Finally, a good affordable way to get off the x86. And with the x86's 'out-phasing' by Intel sooner or later, it'll be nice to have a system to keep developing on.
And hey, this should really improve the port quality for the PPC versions of anything.
Hmm... I have no idea now
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
An Athalon system or PPC? my next computer is now debatable
One of the great myths perpetuated by Apple and others is that cloning had to die for Apple to live. The fact is that the cloners had already agreed to pay much higher licensing fee's when Apple pulled licensing.
Re:a myth
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Cloning did have to die for Apple to live as they had been. They never figured out that their audience really wanted the MacOS interface and only paid extra for the sealed proprietary hardware that can run it (probably the world's most expensive dongle) because they didn't have a choice. If Apple actually had to compete with companies that are good at making hardware with excellent bang/buck, they'd be doomed.
Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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dolanh
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· Score: 1
I'd love to see their claims come true and this computer exist, but it sounds too good to be true, especially to a Mac user.
Isn't RedHat located just around the corner from them?
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Tarnar
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· Score: 1
Actually, this looks largely useless to the average Mac user, because as the article says they'd have to have a license from Apple and I imagine they'd need Apple ROMS and various tripe like that.
We'd be right back where we were a few years ago when Apple had to get rid of the clones that were ruining their business.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Lysander+Luddite
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· Score: 1
Yeah the no web page thing made me think this is a very small company. Never heard of them. But then I never heard of that other PPC computer company mentioned a month or two back.
If it happens, great. More PPCs in the market is good for every everybody. If it doesn't happen, well, I can't miss what never existed.
I'd love to run LinuxPPC and Be for under $1K.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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lscoughlin
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· Score: 1
Yup, it will be absolutely useless to the average mac user.
Apple ruined it's own buisness through greed long long ago.
Killing the clones saved apples buiseness, sorta, but they shoulda split into a hardware and software company eons ago.
-- Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
by
um...+Lucas
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· Score: 1
True, the Mac OS isn't as buzzword compliant as Linux and Windows...
No opensource, pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, open source, object oriented archetecture... Just a very easy to set up and use system. I gave my mom a PC running Windows 98. Now that she's actually doing stuff on it beyond just looking at email, I wish I'd gotten her an iMac instead. Linux? Never.
There's more to an OS than Marketing. Apple made a great system in the Mac Operating System... Fortunately they're wiser than MSFT in realizing they needed to rebuild everything from the ground up.
As for hating their prices. Go nickle and dime with the rest of the PC crowd. You get what you pay for in when you buy Apple. PowerPC. Plug & Play. Great case designs (8500 & earlier not withstanding!).
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What makes anyone think that if PowerPCs where free Apple would charge any less for a Mac? They'd just pocket the extra money.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Matthew+Weigel
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· Score: 1
Well, I personally don't give a flying FUD about buzzwords. However, for a good while MacOS felt unusable to me, due to things like unprotected memory, cooperative multi-tasking, etc. Although MacOS has some great ideas all through it, it also has 80's corner-cutting that simply doesn't make sense any more (and now, 5-7 years after it's really really clear that it's outdated, it's getting fixed with Mac OS X), and that, further, undermine or backtrack against the advances they made.
Two steps forward, three steps back has been my experience with Mac OS prior to OS X; but it looks like Apple is finally just walking straight forward.
Also, as to their prices: IMO, the PowerBook is worth every penny, as is the PowerMac G3, and Mac OS X Server is a steal.
-- --Matthew
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
by
jafac
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· Score: 1
You assume a lot when you say that Apple will reduce the price of their boxes based on a lower PPC cost.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm a die-hard Mac fan, I bleed in 6 colors, etc., and I have a G3 at home that I absolutely love, but Apple still WAY overprices their stuff.
I just hope that someday, the G4/AltiVec boxes running OS X ship, while the concept is still relevant.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
-- These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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dolanh
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· Score: 1
I never said such a box would necessarily be useful to the Mac user (potentially it could be, if future OS X versions don't need a boot ROM as is claimed by some) -- i'm just happy to see a kickass chip finally get its due.
I'll try to be clearer in my joy/skepticism next time, but please don't jump to conclusions. thx.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
by
znu
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· Score: 1
Mac OS X has not ROM dependencies and it's entire core is Open Source, meaning that unless Apple specifically takes action to prevent it it's going to run on these things with no help from Apple at all. As for the current Mac OS, well, who cares? It sucks. Mac OS X is the real future of the Mac anyway.
-- This space unintentionally left unblank.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
They made a great user interface. Their OS is a pitiful joke on modern hardware (though an impressive feat for 1984-vintage consumer gear); that it works at all is testament to the army of hopelessly mono-platform programmers who've learned to coddle it.
You get what you pay for in when you buy Apple.
Right until they drop support for those models and expect you to pay more for what you thought you already got (and were promised!) OSX for 1997 PowerMacs, anyone? Affordable, deployable YellowBox for NT?
PPC ought to be a nice, cheap, open little architecture. Apple was the one and only reason I never seriously thought about buying one. When I can get commodity PREP boxes built by lively competitors, I will, and if Apple's half-baked OS won't run on it, to hell with them.
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Who would be dumb enough to clone a Mac? After Apple has twice cracked down and destroyed cloners, why would any sane person volunteer to meet the same fate as Apricot and Power Computing?
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
by
um...+Lucas
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· Score: 1
Apple is dependant on hardware sales to fuel software development. It is now and has been for sometime extremely difficult if not impossible to imagine a way that they could separated their businesses and suceed. They can't. They sell complete systems.
So far as interest to the Mac User goes... It's actually of much interest to us mac users... Supposing darwin gets ported to it, it may turn out that all one needs to do is purchase this machine, install darwin, purchase Mac OS-X and somehow install that over it (supposing apple doesn't just build support into the OS to handle the hardware)...
And that's something forceseeable. Apple could get away with chargin NT Workstation like prices for OS-X (client). Especially now that Apple is seeing their profits from the iMac, which a cloner can't quite compete, it's a great time for apple to consider opening up their OS to cloners again. Give them the mid range of the market, keeping the lowend and highend to themselves. And even if they started eating into OS_X Server sales, Apple'd still get $500 a pop... much more than they did from Power Computing et al
Re:Looks like vapor(hard)ware to me
by
tak+amalak
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· Score: 1
Useless to a Mac user? I don't think so. The more PPC's that get sold the less they will cost. The less the cost , the less Apples machines will cost. The less Apple machines cost, the more they sell and they make more money. And I pay less for my next Mac. Sounds good to me.
-- Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
You will also be required to install and configure a working Furby cluster.
Networked via bongonet.
-- Guges --
Re:Be should help itself
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Even if this actually comes out, it won't sell all that many. If Be has a chance to have Engineer X support 10,000 users by working on a driver for hardware Y, how is it a good decision to have him/her instead work on smooth transitions to this PPC box that might sell 1000? Not to mention the fact that the PPC market has dried up. So the N users that buy this system increase that user base. The "Free PPC" systems, the PPC boxes made pre-ReJobs are decreasing in number every day. As people get tired of their 66 and 100 mhz machines and trade them in for something newer, the Free PPC market shrinks. I think that it has sunk below the Critical Mass level for the platform. Except with regard to Linux, where hardware matters little.
Re:What about the Mac?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
NT isn't really "consumer"; it's expensive, relatively complicated, and lacks lots of drivers (especially Alpha versions!) that are available for Win95. Linux/Alpha can at least probably use all the Free Software drivers Linux/x86 uses, though there aren't as many of those as there should be either.
For me the biggest impediment is that the local screwdriver shops only stock x86 hardware. I'm hardly going to mail-order my first Alpha and then have to ship it back admitting I can't tell whether it's actually broken or I just don't know what the hell I'm doing.
In order to improve signal-to-noise ratio for this article, the following ground rules have been enacted:
1. Anyone mentioning Beowulf will be forced to write a doctoral thesis on parallel/cluster computing theory. You will also be required to install and configure a working Furby cluster.
2. Anyone declaring the superiority of Linux/Darwin/BeOS without calm, rational supporting evidence will be forced to hold a cigarette in their mouth while we light it with a military-issue flamethrower.
actually as i understand it furbys auto network and sing songs when they're in the same room. I'd be a simple problem of transfering other data over their ir ports (the black dots on their for heads). As for the flame thrower: I could always sic my 1000 furbies on you now couldn't i? I think a massive onsaught of tiny furry robots could easily defeat one person witha flame thrower. Unless it was Napalm, but that's another issue.
1. Anyone mentioning Beowulf will be forced to write a doctoral thesis on parallel/cluster computing theory. You will also be required to install and configure a working Furby cluster.
You'd have to modify the Furbies and remove their little coughing/cold feature. Can you imagine a several hundred Furby cluster all coughing? Chattering alone is bad enough.
Can you rack-mount Furbies?
How would you network them? Would they do what even the US Marines won't do - go into "battle" with a cable hanging out of their butts?
Why do I find a "Furby Cluster" amusing?
Re:Cooooool.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
In other words, all your commercial (nonzero cost) software is also proprietary (closed source). Well, sucks to be you.
finally
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm very glad to hear this. I have long awaited the day when I could afford an unfettered ppc box.
Am I missing something?
by
Brian+Knotts
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· Score: 2
You say:
anyway I hate the idea of linux which is usually a do it yourself thing having "problems" with anything (meaning it is basically broken except to Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein).
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The fate of NSHosting is up in the air. They're in the process of ripping Display PostScript out of OS X (Client) because they just can't afford what Adobe is demanding. 'course, now that we have CORBA and Java, there isn't much good reason to reduce a computer to a glorified proprietary display driver and centralize all the cycle-intensive work.
Should I be aware of a sub-1k Alpha out there..? Because if there is, damn I'd like one of them AND one of these. Would make porting software a relative breeze.
I heard something about context switching that really slows down Alphas. Is it true?
Re:What about Alpha?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Do you mean a problem with the Linux Alpha port? I can't imagine it's so poorly-written that context switches add any significant overhead beyond what's added on other platforms.
Like most RISC architectures, Alpha offers a much richer set of registers than x86. Combined with the fact that Alpha uses 64-bit registers, rather than the 32-bit general registers provided by x86, this means there is rather more information to save/restore with each context switch than is the case with x86 systems. Nevertheless, Alpha and PA-RISC still outperform everything else by a considerable margin.
But you are using an Intel box, no? So, why would the problems be any worse on a non-Intel box?
FWIW, I haven't had any major problems with hardware support in the 5 years I've been using Linux (only full-time in the last 1-1/2 years).
I use Linux at work on a P200; at home on a Celeron 300A (@450).
I have just now gotten my hands on a PowerMac and have LinuxPPC on it. I have to say: it has been mostly a pleasant experience (only problem is trying to run a custom kernel I built; it panics on boot. I'll figure it out, though). The machine is quite responsive, even though it's an older machine. It seems less jerky than an Intel box.
I'm definitely considering a PPC motherboard for my next box, if the price is right.
Re:please think about a pizza box form factor,and
by
Chris+Hanson
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· Score: 1
I would also be cool if apple or moto or ibm would pay to get gcc up and optimized on linux-powerpc specifically.
Apple is using egcs to build Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server was built with gcc 2.7.2.1 (who comes up with these version numbers?). I bet they're putting a lot of optimization work into it.
I bet their changes would port to Linux pretty easily.
I'm all over this one. Finally the power of the PPC chip without paying the price for the resource hogging of MacOS and Apple's hardware monopoly.
Maybe for my next upgrade... ? It would certainly be nice to have a price-for-price competitor for Intel and AMD. And it's RISC to boot. Maybe it's time I finally got a/seperate/ box for the Linux side of my computational-adventures.
Imagine having to decide between: XXX Software for Redhat Linux on x86 XXX Software for Redhat Linux on SPARC XXX Software for Redhat Linux on Alpha XXX Software for Redhat Linux on PPC XXX Software for Debian on x86 XXX Software for Slackware on x86 XXX Software for Corel Linux on whatever chips they'd use XXX Software for Linux PPC
No problem:
./configure make make install
commercial != proprietary
If it's proprietary (closed), I'm likely not all that interested anyhow.
Linux for the most part came to being because it ran on "commodity" hardware. You'd have never seen it take the form it has if it were developed for Sparc or Alpha initially. Why? Because all the developers already had x86 boxen in their basements. People switch to Linux because they can try it on their current computer, rather than needing to go buy a whole other box to see if they'll actually like it.
x86 will always be the platform of choice for Linux, in my eyes. And yes, G3 definetly womps on Pentiums... But the G3 is constrained to single CPU machines. G4's are around the corner, but how much will they close the distance between PPC and Alpha?
I'd rather see Linux settle onto x86 and Alpha rather than run out and try to support every platform. That's probably contrary to the mindset that got it to where it is today, but... I want to see more commercial apps appearing. That'll only really happen once linux is settled into it's place in the universe.
Imagine having to decide between: XXX Software for Redhat Linux on x86 XXX Software for Redhat Linux on SPARC XXX Software for Redhat Linux on Alpha XXX Software for Redhat Linux on PPC XXX Software for Debian on x86 XXX Software for Slackware on x86 XXX Software for Corel Linux on whatever chips they'd use XXX Software for Linux PPC
etc... etc... etc...
This only serves to slow down the application development, in my eyes...
But Linux is developed to be multi-platform. I mean, with respect to it's place in the universe, it's meant to have as little arch dependant code as possible. Ergo, building apps for Linux shouldn't be/too/ hard to do with a multi-arch goal in mind.
This was just my understanding, however. I'm not too in tune with the arch issues with respect to programming, but shouldn't we be trying to achieve this goal? I mean, theres no sense in supporting Linux as a Multi-arch OS if we don't develop apps with a multi-arch mindset anyhow. Right?
I think the multi-arch commercial app support will come when companies realize users don't want to be tied down to one arch. I find it difficult to believe 100$-500$-a-pop shrink-wrap software companies can't store their arch-dependant logic in seperate code from the main logic of the application, thus enabling them to do ports with a fair amount of ease?
Emagic (www.emagic.de) will be getting a lesson in this approach quite soon.. their Emagic Logic Audio (music sequencing software) product will soon support BeOS, on the heels of merging their Mac/Windows code about a year or so(?) ago. And that's different OSes, nevermind arches too.
You are seeing more stuffing making it to PowerPC Linux everyday -- it's not a difficult port from one Linux to another -- and it's a cheap way to sell more copies of product -- with mimual testing / support.
Stuff that is here now or is being promised:
- Netscape Communicator 4.6.1 is here now.
- Applixware (latest version) for glibc 2.1 is being ported. The last version for glibc 1.99 is out.
- CTP/Civilization is out and bunch of other commerical Linux games are being ported, including Riven (yes!).
- IBM DB/2 Database software is avalible for Linux/PPC.
- JDK 1.2 is out today.
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 is Comming Soon.
- SheepShaver 2.1 for running Mac OS apps is almost ready for release.
- RealPlayer G2 for Linux/PPC is under study of Real Inc., to see if such a port would be worth while -- figuring how much the Mac OS port of RealPlayer G2 sucks, people would really love a solid Linux/PPC version of this.
- BOCH (in.ppc.rpm format) for Linux/PPC glibc 2.1. Run great PC x86 software on your Linux/PPC including Windows.
- And a bunch others that I can't yet think of.
And yes there is all of that great GNU software out there for the PowerPC including:
- KDE / GNOME desktop enviroments. - XFree86/XF68_FBDev X Server - Mac-On-Linux. Run Mac OS or extra copy of Linux/PPC or MkLinux in a seprate console -- this is great stuff. - KOffice/AbiWord/Gnumeric/GIMP/Apache and many, many other great ones.
So you aren't by far limited on Linux/PPC -- you'll find yourself with lots of great software. And great friendly user base and friendly developers.
PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users.
Granted, x86 has the economy-of-scale advantage, so its development costs can be amortized over a greater number of sales. But that is only one factor in their prices. The x86 costs more to make than modern processors of similar performance. The x86 has to support more legacy and brain damage. A Pentium-III has chip real estate dedicated to performing useless and ridiculous things like "real" mode, V86 mode, 286 protected mode, segmentation, etc. Engineers spent time and money making that stuff work, too. If you bought one, then you paid for it.
You see, economy of scale is a blessing, but a curse as well: the only reason people buy them is that they are compatable with all the previous generations. Compatability is the #1 design constraint in x86 production. Performance and cost are secondary considerations. It must be able to run code that was compiled in 1980.
Modern processors don't have that constraint. They are easier to design, and should cost less to make. If the developers can sell enough of them to amortize the cost enough, it'll be price-competitive with the 386. In the case of the PPC, they get an easy 10% (approx) of the personal computer market, thanks to the Mac. And then there's the embedded market. Now they're going after the Linux folks too.
Will it be enough? Maybe, maybe not. I sure wouldn't rule it out. I also know how I'm gonna vote my dollars.:-)
---
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Porting should be easy enough, it's Linux to Linux after all... But I doubt that many people will ship source-code anytime soon. So you're locked into what whomever wants to ship. Take photoshop, for instance. For a long time the Mac version came out eons before the PC version. Now they're roughly equal with maybe even the PC version arriving first. They cost the same, too. Last I looked, Photoshop for SGI or Solaris was $2500 and still at version 3.
What it really boils down to is a matter of PACKAGING. Redhat, as so many/.er's love to point out is worth more than SCO, SGI, and myself combined. They can go to a software company, anysoftware company, and say "So, you're developing that for Linux, eh? How about we pay you $XXXXXXX dollars and whenever you mention Linux on the packaging or in the manual, have it say "Redhat Linux" instead?"... Oh and we're going to use a slightly different directory layout than say Caldera and Debian, so be sure to hard code that info into your installation routine"
So a company would get development money to make a version for Redhat. They'ed then need to ship a second boxed version for any other x86 Linux. Most vendors do not ship for different platforms on one medium (aside from games)... If you're going to use your software on a Mac and PC and Linux, you've gotta buy it 3 different times, as stupid as it seems. So it may turn out that if you're going to run Linux software on Alpha Linux, Redhat Linux, and LinuxPPC, you need to purchase 3 separate editions of it...
Of course that all goes away when everyone embraces opensource. Unfortunatly.... That's going to take longer than the time it takes my wristwatch to crack 4,096,302,813,988 bit PGP keys...
Maybe I'm missing something here but dosn't debian have a great deal of support for just as much if not more platforms than Red Hat? They also have a hurd port in the works check ftp://ftp.debian.org/pub/dists/potato/main/ and see for yourself.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Why run on sub-standard hardware when you don't want to run sub-standard software? With such a mindset, we'd all be running Win98 on X86.
This is what pisses me off about Be, too. They went on and on about how great the PowerPC was, how the combination of Be/PPC was top of the line all the way around, and abruptly shut up once Intel made their investment.
Besides, the article was basically about the PowerPC platform dropping down (in some cases) to 'commodity' X86 prices.
--- PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users. ---
That may be true now (although I think the 10x figure is a little off), but how can you possibly say "...won't ever drop to..." in this industry?
The original Apple computer used to be 10x more popular than the IBM PC, ergo the Intel architecture would never be more popular. Right? I think history generally proves this wrong in a big way.
You can't keep piling crap on top of a deadening architecture. Eventually, it becomes more economical to start from scratch or at least a more recent starting point. Even Apple, slowest of slow companies to figure important stuff like this out, knew that it had to transition from the M680X0 architecture onto something better (which came off almost flawlessly, too).
Plus, if Apple can get their own marketshare up to really high levels - thus dropping the price of the PPC line - IBM/Moto' would be more than willing to jump in. In particular, laptops are well suited to use such low-power, high speed chips. Don't think they have some sort of love infatuation with Intel.
PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users. AMD motherboards are projected to be MUCH more expensive than BX boards for that same reason, until the volume comes. At least AMD remains compatible with Intel...
What you're talking about is running non-standard software on non-standard hardware... I just don't think that PPC will be able to compete with Alpha at the high-end and doesn't have a chance to displace x86 at the low-end since that's where Linux gets its new users... That leaves a very narrow middle ground, which would probably be best served by Athlon, Dual-P2's... etc...
But all the application vendors seem to contently be supporting x86 linux only... Until they start releasing native and optimized versions of software for PPC, Alpha, etc... I'd stick with x86.
Unless you're using all open-source software... It just seems that switching to PPC Linux closes more doors than it opens.
Hey is MacOS X out?? I got one of those crappy mac catalogs in the mail last week something like MacMall or MacWeek or something..(i'm geeky enough to scan even maccatalogs for cool crap:)) anyway they had MacOS X selling on some of their machines and available separately (for like $400 (not exactly umm a cost effective OS)). I scanned thru it looking for an availability date and found none. However, from the looks of this thread MacOS X is still vaguely hypothetical which means either that I was having a mighty fine hallucination or Jobs is personally sending me catalogs from the future...?
i do agree that the 'open-source' (APSL) bottom layer of MacOS X, darwin, could in theory be easily ported to a CHRP-based motherboard.
but i don't see all of MacOS coming to these new boxes any time soon.
Apple's revenue centers on their high-performance hardware, with software playing at a slightly lower level of importance. as far as business sense goes, and it's been proven that Apple has more than their fair share of that, relicensing their OS would cause fracturing problems. we all know that, aside from its shotty core, windows' main source of problems is trying to support all intel-based hardware. keeping the MacOS on custom hardware is necessary to maintain their high level of performance.
if you want to keep consumer interaction with the low-level os minimal, custom hardware is the only way to go.
linux excels in this fractured hardware market because you can tweak to your heart's content.
Mac boxes are too highly priced and specialized to be anything other than what they are: Mac boxes.
i prefer to see the release of the CHRP motherboards as a boon to the linux, bsd, and BeOS communities.
i'll openly admit to being an avid mac user, as well as dabbling in *nix and Be.
if i pick up one of the new boxes, maybe i'll be able to see Be rocket on a G3 or G4 for the first time.
Alpha is a tragedy...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Alpha was a good chip when it came out. But now that it's basically owned by Intel, how much effort do you think they're going to put into making it a viable alternative to new generations of the X86?
Re:Alpha is a tragedy...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What are you talking about?? Intel owns none of Alpha. The chip designers are with Compaq, and the chips are manufactured by Samsung, for now. Intel did buy a fab plant from Digital, and manufactured Alphas there for awhile, but they got no rights to the chip technology itself.
Sign me up!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This is really cool. I've wanted to get a PPC for a while, but don't want to buy a mac. This is a great opportunity to get Debian PPC and start hacking on it:-)
If Steve decides to keep Apple hardware closed, these machines will have the life expectancy of a NeXT cube on the open market. The geeks-only segment will be the only folks who care, and that group still isn't large enough to carry a serious manufacturer.
Sorry to burst bubbles here.
But, now that Apple need not bail out clone manufacturers, there's hope. IMHO, they should concentrate on morphing their image from a hardware company to a systems company..
And if these machines run MacOS 8/9/X and LinuxPPC, I can't wait to drive the necessary ten miles to pick one up. =-) ("Y'all can go screw Silicon Valley; we have.. Morrisville!") -----
Right, that should have been "with minor modification." Carbon is a subset of the existing Mac OS API's, and Apple provides a tool called the Carbon Dater that checks your code and tells you which API calls are no longer supported. In theory, the deprecated APIs are seldom used, so developers should be able to "tune up" theis apps in days rather than months. But this allows Apple to eliminate enough of the incompatible OS calls to allow apps to run in the preemptive multitasking, protected memory environment.
I believe Adobe managed to tune up Photoshop in a matter of weeks, so it seems to work. If everything goes as planned, it'll be a nearly painless transition, and developers will be able to switch over very quickly. It's gonna be very cool.
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
Tarnar
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· Score: 1
Ok, it's flamebait, but I'll bite anyway.
#1, as to the bit on 'thought', you obviously seem devoid of it. Regardless of interpretation, there are things called Facts. And in the Article in mention, it is said that these machines are NOT treading on Apple territory. This is a Fact.
Had you read my response carefully and even (gasp) the article itself, you would have noticed the section on how these AREN'T Apple clones. Apple machines use ROM's (or used to anyway).
Calling these machines Apple boxes just because they are PowerPC boxen is like calling every x86 a Windows box. In fact, IBM has been using these chips extensively in their own machines and Apple hasn't gone ballistic yet.
As to your conspiracy theories, Apple is going to take over the world just as quickly as AOL/Sun/Netscape. You are obviously 'blind' to the fact that all Apple is doing is trying to make a business again. I don't agree with how they're doing it, but honestly, you claiming Jobs is going to become Gates is about as founded as someone saying Linus will. Because simply put, the leverage isn't there for it to happen.
And your assumption that I'm an Apple lackey is sorely misplaced. I can't stand Apple. I can't stand the way they make expensive boxen, I can't stand the way they sit on Quicktime codecs. I don't like Apple.
Like it or not, IBM made the specs available to motherboard makers. So Apple can't do SFA (sh*t f*ck all) about it. The only way Apple will crush these as competition is by making OS X either need ROM's or just not work with CHRA. Like MacOS.
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
One other thing that's bundled with Mac OSX Server is WebObjects. Apple's framework for developing WebBased applications. Seperatly it sells for $1495 alone. http://www.apple.com/webobjects
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
Chris+Hanson
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· Score: 1
set DISPLAY=macinabox:0.0?
THE X WINDOW SYSTEM IS NOT UNIX.
Mac OS X Server does support remote windowing through a Display PostScript and Mach messaging mechanism. It does not (thank God!) use X-Windows.
That is only because Microsoft noticed the political infighting and lack of customers and wanted the money as a commitment from the parties involved. They declined, so no more PPC NT development. Had they been unified, and brought enough customers to the bench, Microsoft would have bent over backwards to help. As you said, "...what did they want NT for, they had AIX, and Apple".
Motorola DID decide to do Windows CE on embedded PowerPC, and has committed itself to supporting it. How long will that last? All I got to say is do a search on Slashdot for Psion or Motorola and figure it out yourself.
-- "Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
Matthew+Weigel
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· Score: 1
i.e. are all the gnu utilities easy to port over, do we get a bash prompt? can we compile ssh,gcc??
> Take a look over at http://www.peanuts.org/peanuts/MacOSX/ for stuff that's already been ported, and replace MacOSX with NEXTSTEP and OpenStep for software written for or ported to NeXTstep and OPENSTEP. On my NeXTstation at home I have ssh and bash running just fine, and when I get around to it egcs 1.1.2 will be installed.br>
Oh it sucks that it won't run 'carbon' tho.:(
Well, it may once Carbon is done, but it wasn't released with Carbon. Subtle difference:)
-- --Matthew
Re:OS/2 PPC
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
yep, there must have been at least 8 other people ready to do that too. best of luck.
You're thinking of MacOS X Server (previously known as Rhapsody). As for MacOS X Consumer (or Workstation, or whatever you want to call it) I think it's a few months away.
And hopefully It's price will be much much lower than $400....;)
-- 2^5
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
bloosqr
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· Score: 1
Yea you are right, it was Max OS X Server. But that is the one w/ the unix core right? It was advertised as the first mac w/ true preemptive multitasking etc etc.. (no mention of unix tho explicitly) I gathered the server bit was just that it came w/ apache and the obligatory marketing buzzwordage:)
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
bloosqr
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· Score: 1
Right thats what i meant.. (the workstation/server looked like a bundling difference than any core difference) but all of this means someone somewhere has MacOS X Server (since it is out or advertised?) So what I was wondering was how cool was it? i.e. are all the gnu utilities easy to port over, do we get a bash prompt? can we compile ssh,gcc?? (it should all be relatively straightforward since its unix right?) set DISPLAY=macinabox:0.0? A Mac that can run all the mac utils as well as having a decent set of programs would be a fantastic compromise.. for people who only want one machine for all things.. (word processing etc) Oh it sucks that it won't run 'carbon' tho.:(
-avi
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why do all the typing when someone else did: http://www.appleinsider.com/macosx.shtml
and
http://www.stepwise.com/MacOSXServer/
Should answer many of your questions.
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
wagnerer
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· Score: 1
BlueBox is the run in the window thing. Carbon is a library that contains almost all of the toolbox but applications linked with it can run under Mac OS 8, 9 and X. Only under X will the code run preemptive with memory protection.
Re:MacOS X _Server_ is out
by
Matthew+Weigel
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· Score: 1
No. The difference between Mac OS X Server and Client is, essentially, what is bundled.
Last I heard, there was some question whether even a terminal application would ship with Client, much less apache or the NetInfo server stuff, and Server doesn't have Carbon (allowing Mac OS X Client to run prior Mac OS apps in a window).
There will be some differences, but it's a unified code base.
-- --Matthew
Whats to prevent M$ from porting Windoze to CHRP?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
M$ is a software company after all, Is there any reason M$ cannot increase its market share by porting to CHRP? They could also thumb there nose at Intel in the process. Not that I'd be happy seeing Windoze on CHRP.
Are you kidding? Geeks support many otherwise marginal companies. VA Linux Systems (or whatever they call themselves now) comes to mind.
But maybe you are defining "serious manufacturer" as "a manufacturer everyone has heard of", which in this context is circular. If everyone has heard of them then they aren't just for geeks, are they? --- Put Hemos through English 101! "An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
--
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Re:Geek group not large enough?
by
bliss
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· Score: 1
Is he supposed to lack basic english skills (referring to your sig)?
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
umm... Linux/PPC couldn't care about if you have an ROM or not your machine -- it never reads it at all -- neither does OpenFirmware.
The main problem with Linux on Macs is:
- They are quite expensive -- for obvious reasons -- they are brand name computers, and have licensing fees doing with the Mac OS.
- Macs traditionally have had weaker OpenFirmware compared to CHRP and IBM machines -- since OpenFirmware wasn't much of a use for Apple -- since why would an Apple machine need to select OS (besides Mac OS X vs. Mac OS Classic) or Password Protection.
- You are limited in selection when you buy an Apple machine -- CHRP gives you many more choices.
Apple is working hard to improve their weeknesses -- and it's showing up -- look at iMac -- cheap, nice looking, and a half decent OF implementation.
Lets not forget Apple helped design CHRP (and is currently selling CHRP-like Macs -- Blue G3 / iBook come to mind).
So plug and play works without problems, no matter what OS use choose on the PowerPC -- Plug in that SCSI hard drive -- and mount it in Linux -- no fidling at all. Plug in that ethernet card in a PCI slot -- make sure you have the correct drivers compiled into the kernel -- and your ready to rock.
Linux is much easier to set up on the PowerPC -- inheritably due to the much better hardware design -- doesn't matter if it's PowerMac, CHRP or RS/6000.
PowerPC hardware is designed to make adding hardware as easy and do-able as possible -- it doesn't matter of the OS.
Re:Do you need Apple's permission?
by
AArthur
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· Score: 1
Even if they did code to check to make sure for Apple hardware -- people would figure how to get around it -- using methods like recycling ROMs from first generation G3s and soldering them on to daughter board for CHRP boxes -- and using some kind of OpenFirmware hack to get around them. Or maybe just keep a software image in memory -- illegal yes -- but people would try it (remember the Mac-clones of early 1980's.)
And there might be extentions that crack Mac OS X so it doesn't do this check or that it lie to Mac OS X about the installed hardware.
If there is an challenge, crackers will often break it quickly -- no matter how hard / well Apple designs it.
MacOS' price should cover its cost
by
Sloppy
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· Score: 1
Apple is dependant on hardware sales to fuel software development. It is now and has been for sometime extremely difficult if not impossible to imagine a way that they could separated their businesses and suceed.
Seems to be that it would be easy: just make the license for MacOS be high enough to cover the cost. The price of Apple Macs wouldn't need to change, since presumably what they charge already covers the cost of both the hardware and the software. On the other hand, the cloners might end up having to pay $500 pre license of MacOS. (I'm pulling that dollar figure out of my ass, but you get the idea...)
Tying the hardware and software products together is an admission that they are overcharging their customers. There's no other reason to do it.
Well, actually, I can think of one other reason: If they charged a fair price (e.g. $500) for MacOS sales, they might fear piracy. Thus, they sell the Mac hardware as a dongle for the software. A lot of people have the demented idea that operating systems should be free or cheap, in spite of the cost of its development. (e.g. Linux is free, and Windoze is sold at a loss to lock people into buying/renting other MS products.)
---
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Re:please think about a pizza box form factor,and
by
AArthur
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· Score: 1
"I would also be cool if apple or moto or ibm would pay to get gcc up and optimized on linux-powerpc specifically."
Well, at least Motorola has contributed dozens of various patches to the Linux/PPC effort -- including some to egcs/gcc -- for better PowerPC support now and for future support of Altivec processors.
While, I don't think Motorola has full time programmers working on patching / improving PowerPC-Linux, I do know for a fact that they have people, at least part time / free time / slacking of from work time, working on getting Linux supported better on the PowerPC, and better on hardware they ship. They made Linux/PPC on CHRP possible, and helped get it on there embeded systems.
Many of Motorola employees, would love the day they can get Windows NT boxes off there desks -- many which run on Intel machines (which you can see why Motorola employees dislike there Intel Window NT boxes).
Don't believe me -- check the Linux/PPC Mailing Lists (for old patches) or the Motorola Computing group Linux website.
The reason the 750 (G3) is not often used in dual processor designs is that it lacks the S-bit (snoop bit) which allows the cache to be snooped. This can be gotten around in software. Synergy Microsystems has a good example of such a design (4 way 750) running Linux in SMP mode. -Matt Motorola Computer Group
Re:please think about a pizza box form factor,and
by
PowerPC
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· Score: 1
Actually there are people working on optimizing Linux for PowerPC. They range from the performance group at SPS, to the MCG porting group which optimizes specifically for our embedded VME and CPCI boards. At the very least, Linux is an important part of Motorola Computer Group's strategy to sell more hardware.
-Matt at MCG
Re:Not really
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
In fact, I can't think of a single complicated task that the Mac CAN'T do.
I can think of two:
Multitask worth a damn
Not crash
Actually, a Mac is a nice machine, once you start running Linux on it. MacOS 8.6 is a pile of shit, and is hideously out of date. Yes, MacOS X will be moderately cool, but it ain't here yet, is it?
SheepShaver is a MacOS emulator for LinuxPPC and BeOS/PPC.
If it will run under LinuxPPC on one of these boxes, I am there.
Re:What about SheepShaver?
by
Don+Negro
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· Score: 1
AFAIK, it's not so much an emulator as a run-time environment that accesses the MacOS ROMs from within BeOS/LinuxPPC. So, essentially, you're running the MacOS in a window, not emulating the API calls.
Don Negro
--
Don Negro Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
What makes the GUI so good that it is worth taking spare cpu cycles on?
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Re:Whats to prevent M$ from porting Windoze to CHR
by
tak+amalak
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· Score: 1
I wouldnt mint it at all. It would give the PPC platform acceptance in the eyes of the suits and help the CHRP platform. A good thing. Let MS do the hard part...
-- Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Re:Whats to prevent M$ from porting Windoze to CHR
by
geert
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· Score: 1
M$ ported Windows NT 4.0 to CHRP three years ago, and cancelled it. Just like Sun cancelled Solaris for CHRP.
My CHRP box has a Windows icon in it's graphical OF boot menu. OF course clicking on it doesn't do anything:-) Haven't found out yet how to put a Penguin in the boot menu...
M$ was one of the CHRP partners, along with IBM, Moto, Apple and others. Their part of the bargain was to port NT4 to PPC.
They never did. (Needless to say.)
That's part of why Mac cloning died the horrible death it did. All the companies weren't intended to be competing solely for the Mac market, they were supposed to go after the NT market as well.
As to why they didn't, one-word guess. Intel.
I'd imagine the concept of competing against a (let's face it ) better architecture pushed by Big Blue *and* Moto (this is back in '94, when Somerset was kicking ass and taking names) scared Andy Grove shitless.
God only knows what he offered Bill in exchange for killing the PPC port.
Anyway, that's the skinny on that. Any further details from people in the know are, of course, appreciated.
Don Negro
--
Don Negro Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Excuse me! On My NT 4 CD-ROM there is a directory/pcc/. Microsoft did indeed Port Windows NT 4.0 to the Power PC platform. They no longer *support* it however... I believe it got up to service pack 2 or maybe 3.
IIRC, IBM was doing most of the actual porting of NT. They dropped it when it just turned out that there wasn't a huge market. Eventually the acchitechture moved on. There was also supposed to be a Solaris for PPC, but it never appeared. I believe that this is why there is a little-endian mode on PPC even though Mac and AIX are big-endian. It may have been intel, but there were other factors that killed PPC NT.
NT PPC died - because MS had enough clout and audacity to demand that the HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS do the porting of the OS to their own chip: Moto had to port to PPC, DEC (now Compaq) had to port to Alpha, etc. Moto couldn't/wouldn't do it for some insane reason, so MS asked Moto to pay some obscene fee to port THEIR OS to PPC. Needless to say, after NT 4, MS raised the fee, and Moto told them to stuff it.
Now, Moto has done a number of moronic things prior and since regarding the advancement and advocacy of the PPC chip - we won't go into this sordid history here.
But yes, back in 1993/94, the future looked very bright indeed for the PPC, and I got into Macs BECAUSE of this potential future (like them still, but rail agains the price). Although I would have thought, several years back, that if PPC went nowhere, and then would have been ressurected 5 years later, there would be no chance, because by then, Intel would have caught up. Boy was I wrong. Intel hasn't done shit other than raise prices, and maneuver to shut out x86 competition, and let MS take care of competition on the Sun and IBM side of things. And now PPC is poised for a resurgence.
Only that one dickhead at Motorola (the guy who wants Intel and NT everywhere) and Steve Jobs stand in the way. They can probably kill this new PPC movement, it remains to be seen, the fortitude of these neo-CHRP cloners. Can they withstand being bought out or otherwise sleazed to death by Apple and Motorola? (the purchase - and likely subsequent destruction of Metrowerks may have been Motorola's move in that direction, with a nice side effect of hosing Apple in the process).
The only thing I know, is now, though NT PPC would mean more PPC chips sold, I think that the ABSENCE of NT PPC does more good in the net, and furthers "the cause".
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months." -jafac's law
-- These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
there is another way-- it's called Mac-on-Linux. http://www.ibrium.se/linux/mac_on_linux.html
It isn't so easy to install (requires kernel recompile type stuff), it takes over the screen instead of going in a window like in sheepshaver, and doesn't work on all machines. However it's totally open-source and free and it's here now, whereas Sheepshaver isn't quite yet released for linuxppc and seems to cost $50 anyway. So until sheepshaver/linux is released, i guess you can use this instead.
p.s. i believe the term is "hardware abstraction", not emulation, since you're using the exact same machine you're "emulating" and there's no translation between different chip instruction sets.. but it might be emulation if you run it on one of these IBM-based thingies.. i dunno.
...he's not supposed to. But apparently he does anyway. Go back and read ten stories posted by Hemos and you'll find at least 15 basic spelling/grammar mistakes. --- Put Hemos through English 101! "An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
good for portable etc/ what about the compiler?
by
pixel+fairy
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· Score: 1
the alphas are not that expensive for what your getting, especially with the crossbar switch which comes with ev6. so on my desktop id rather have an alpha(1)
i would definatly want one of these in a notebook. they could also be good for low cost machines. between ppc and alpha i see no need for x86.
[1] kinda depends on compaq here, i cant stand how they are holding back speed on gcc in a lame attempt to sell more licences of thier unix variant. intel maybe slower, but they are backing gcc fully. hey compaq! take a clue here! how are the PPC people with gcc?
Anyone know..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...if you could hook these into a Beowulf cluster and run Linux on some and Darwin and BeOS on the others????????????? RHAT RULEZ!
Mmm sounds yummy, hopefully BE Inc will quickly take advantage of this and add G3 support to BeOS. I would love to have a nice cheap G3 tower running BeOS;) Actually those iBook laptops look good too.. Are there any chances for 3rd party G3/G4 laptops?
Plug in that SCSI hard drive -- and mount it in Linux -- no fidling at all.
Now, I'm as excited about low-cost PPC boxes as anyone, but...fair is fair...
That's a feature of SCSI, not of CHRP or PPC.
Plug in a SCSI hard drive on a x86 box that has SCSI, and it's about the same. Let's not forget that new Macs (and Sun Ultra 5s and Ultra 10s -- insert Homer Simpson's girlish scream here) have IDE peripherals, along with all the baggage that entails.
And even then, who's to say that setting SCSI ID and termination jumpers is really easier than setting IDE Master/Slave jumpers?
so then GPL libmoto. . . .
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
. ..and get some decent math library performance. I see no posts on libc-hackers about this, or about adding the fused multiply-add support that is built into glibc but unused. . . .
again, I know apple is using egcs 1.1.2 but still, it took major teeth-pulling to get the Haifa stuff into egcs, so it would be politically cool if somebody would work with edelson and meissner to get the altivec patches into a mainstream egcs distro. Hello? There are a lot of moto/apple patches for PowerPC that need to go into the tree--if you have to pay for the maintainers attention and or expertise, then somebody should pony up and do it. Intel pays for a toolchain for each of their chips, so does Mips, Arm, Nec, etc etc etc. It would be fascinating to see how codgen/quality/user experience would improve if moto spread the joy a bit. . .
Re:so then GPL libmoto. . . .
by
PowerPC
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· Score: 1
These are known issues. MCG wants this stuff done but it is the responsibility of the chip maker. They haven't yet allocated resources to do it.
BTW, libmoto has some IP issues according to the "owner". I spend a lot of extra time pushing these issues, but there are a lot of people opposed to this.
Things would be a little easier if I could find another experienced PowerPC Linux developer willing to work in Phoenix.
-Matt at MCG
gcc vs. metrowerks compiler
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Does anyone know if moto is going to be using metrowerks c/c++ compiler for their s/w efforts? Are there pointers on the web for Spec results with CW and EGCS/gcc-2.95 specifically for powerpc?
-Carbon, which will allow existing Mac apps to run in a preemptive environment without modification
Carbon is a migration path. Basically it throws out 2,000 or so archaic API's and replaces them so developers can take advantage of OSX's modern features without a total rewrite of their codebase.
Can't multitask worth a damn? Read my last post and look at last paragraph. Did I also mention three other Macs were read/writing off my hard drives over the network? Not to mention two PCs looking at web pages on one drive? Oh maybe when I format a floppy it gets stuck doing just that -- well, hell who uses floppies anyway. I want to rip that old floppy out and stick a Zip drive in it.
Crash? Yeah, okay when I can find a consumer OS that doesn't crash.. fine.. Linux of course never is known to crash but that's because every single user is trying to code a way to keep it from crashing while other OS users are busy doing other things with their computer.
Mac OS 8.6 is a pile of shit? Ha.. well thanks for providing explicit, hard facts. I'll be waiting patiently for your enumerated myths of shit. In doing so I will counter them with facts. I will only concede that Dynamic Memory Allocation is needed, which may be addressed in the Sonata release.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
This is the same discussion about BeOs: I think something is good and something isn't in that OS but the point is that they are proprietary OS. If your OS is not GNU there will be a date in the future that it will be dominant, if it is good;), in the market and the price raise without reason, it start to crash too much often..... This is true, more or less, for every monopoly!IBM->Mac, Mac->PC, Unix->NT
Wanna try to buy one of these PPC boxes when they're out?
-- --Matthew
It all depends on the IT sector
by
dolanh
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· Score: 1
MacOS running on these boxen would help greatly, but realistically i see the saving grace being the Linux hype. Contrary to popular belief, in similar quantities the PPC chip is faster and cheaper to produce than the x86 equivalent. I see large IT dept's looking for fast and cheap thin OS clients being the real sales instigator, combined with the ex-apple/anti-ms geek crowd. I see hardware companies drooling over the thought of taking advantage of the G4 and all of its advantages - imagine what could happen if a large mobo manufacturer like FIC joined into the fray...
As for the sw, there is plenty there already for free and binaries for almost anything could be available as soon as someone (commercial) smelled profit. Just look at StarDivision and Loki.
Are you paying attention? We're talking about cheap, non-mac PowerPC computers, not macs. These things are the advantages of a PowerPC architecture and the openness of x86. These fix the main problem with Linux on a Mac, and that is the annoying proprietary ROMs that apple uses.
okay, I think you're missing the point here. this isnt a mac, its a PPC clone. your professed loyalty to intel is nothing more than herd-mentality idiocy. you're completely ignoring possibly superior technology in favor of the company who just so happened to be the dominant maker of chips when you started using computers; why does that mean that they will be in 10,000 years?
it sickens me to see people who are so blinded by the present that they refuse to see the future.
Alright I might like intel a little for a reason. It works now and not making me wait for a later date to get any support or until someone in Calcutta, India reads their email. I have linux with a scsi cd-rom that WILL NOT AND HAS NEVER worked under linux because no one really cares the stupid thing works with dos drivers just fine. I have tried most of the common things that try to get it to work: passing parameters, booting dos and then soft booting into linux, even compiled a bleeding edge kernel and got verbose scsi code and a bunch of crap in there; almost took up all my 16M of ram and still didn't work. Now did anyone from the industry make sure this didn't happen? No. So if I have even any trouble at all on a supported archieture what will happen if I use anything that is not easily supported. Even rebellion gets to a point where it becomes futile in almost any aspect. Well great first with all three computers that I had it was X-windows, then it's the worthless cd-rom, now with the machine (besides the cdrom) it's the useless video-card that cannot get any more than 16 colors. Why do I get stuck with so much junk? Anyone else got such rum luck as I have? I guess the only solution is to save $5,000+ US (about 20 years) and buy a new computer so that no one can claim it's the hardware's fault.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Not that obscure...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
StrongARM isn't really that obscure. It's used in the PSIONs, the Caldera NetWinder, loads of Windows CE machines etc. The reason? It's super efficient RISC, with a tiny instruction set, which (in the case of the NetWinder) can use AA batteries instead of UPS.
StrongARM is owned by ARM, and counts Digital (Compaq) and Intel amongst it's licensees.
Well I meant for man off the street computing types, and most people who don't have the knowledge to do much embedded systems work.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Wrongo
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
MS released NT4 for the CHRP. Apple decided to flaunt the CHRP and kill the Mac cloners. No CHRP boxes to be had. MS dropped NT for the CHRP. End of story.
Actually it you think I am that dangerous than demote it once again then almost no one can hear me. Then we can start burning books.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I dunno, but when you find out, tell me.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
and I'm not talking about those little $30 jobbies that everyone went mad over a month or so ago.
I'd like to see ATX PPC mobos from this too.
by
Chad+Page
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· Score: 1
It's really cool that the IBM design is being picked up, but we also need to see some good commodity boards (e.g. Asus, etc.) so that one can just walk to the store and come out with all the parts needed to build a system.
The nice thing (if there is a silver lining) about the impending Intel BX/ZX* chipset shortage (it sounds really nasty, BTW) is that mobo makers are going to either have to scale back production, or make more alternative platforms like Athlon-boards or PPC baords.
(* - these are the two most viable chipsets for building an Intel P6-based box. Especially if the BX is constrained, it's going to get tougher to build a nice P3, or even Celeron box.)
Be got a big fat check from Intel, and now doesn't seem to interested in devoloping for PPC. Well on their site it says the reason that the BeOS doesn't work with Apple G3s is Apple won't tell Be the specs.
Well fine, but when these puppies come out, Be damn well better run on them, or we'll know what a bunch of liars those guys are.
On a side note, I'd love to buy one of these things, especially if it would run OS X Server or OS X(it's possible). Apple needs some competition, it's prices are way too high right now(seriously, go to the Apple store and do some customizations and check the prices, they're ridiculous).
Great news! I wonder what it means for Mac OS X.
by
znu
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· Score: 1
This is great news! It looks like this open PPC platform might actually take off. Not only does this provide a (relatively) cheap alternative to Intel hardware for Linux users, but it could be the first step to an open Mac platform. Once Darwin gets ported to these things (and it's already being talked about), there shouldn't be any reason the rest of Mac OS X won't run on them. This could allow for a return to Mac cloning without the problems it had the first time. Apple wouldn't be subsidizing hardware development this time, and Apple wouldn't have to insure perfect compatibility with other company's computers (they'd have the source to the entire core of the OS, they could do it themselves).
If Apple delivers as promised with Mac OS X, it's going to be an OS as robust (or more!) than Linux that's easier to use than Windows. If it actually runs on an open platform, it could cause a bit of trouble for certain software companies that nobody likes. And anything that causes MS to lose some of it's iron grip on the OS market can't help but be useful to Linux.
If Apple doesn't screw this up it could be a major boon to Apple, Open Source software, and consumers. Please Apple don't screw up again!
The day Digidesign releases Linux drivers for it's hardware, is, well, . . . *head explodes* - daniel
-- - daniel
Turn off your computer and go outside
Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
tomwhore
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· Score: 1
If this turns out to be the deal, and it can run MacOSX....The question is
How long before Gates^H^H^H^HJobs sues them out of existence?
RIP power computing RIP star
-- Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
schuster
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· Score: 1
Just what exactly is Apple going to sue them for? Frankly, I don't want them to sue and I'm a shareholder.
-- ---
Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
Tarnar
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· Score: 1
RTFA. Read the fscking article. They're not treading on Mac territory. They aren't making Mac clones. They don't have a licensing agreement.
Although, if OS X eventually needs no boot ROMs from Apple, then Jobs will remove this competition.
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
MacOs X would have been great about three years ago
It was called NEXTSTEP or OpenStep, and it was. But NeXT had long since stopped making (proprietary) hardware and the x86 resource requirements were ludicrous, not that anyone who could actually afford the license would care.
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
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tomwhore
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· Score: 1
Who knows. The runnign track record of Steve "i used to be cool, really" Jobs is to act like a 5 year old at his own birthday party. Ita all about "me mine more" than about apple.
Besides, Apple with out Wozz is Van Halen without David Lee....look at the history of both. Sure apple is selling mroe now, but its the Sammy Hagar of computer (I cant drive 55 should be the theme song of the iMac generation)
The G3 stuff is neat, but there is better happening all around them. MacOs X would have been great about three years ago, and with all the features they dumped for that time. As it stands its just another OS in a crowd of OS's (sun, *nix)
Lets all just gather round and have a group prayer that Jobs either doesnt see this on his radar or neglects to act.
-- Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
schuster
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· Score: 1
The G3 stuff is neat, but there is better happening all around them.
Such as? I can't think of a platform with more potential than CHRP.
-- ---
Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
tomwhore
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· Score: 1
LTFT--Learn To Fsking Think
The article is text, the process of interpetation is clled thought, taking in past history as a base of behavior, and a little extrapolation.
If you are blind to the fact that the "biz" of apple is now the same "biz" as MS then you need to pop your head out the Terry Pratchet books a moment and look around at the world you inhabit
If this does cross, even slightly, on apple toes you can get your closet of neat expo tshirts that he is going to try to do Something to either "protect the apple brand" or make borg it ala powerC
Free your mind, your ass will follow
-- Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
tomwhore
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· Score: 1
Chip wise- the K7..the systems you can roll around on of them is shapping up to be not only nice and powerfull but it somes in at a nice price.
With a whole slew of periphs to choose from, OS's to lay on top and apps to run on them its a DIYers market now.
G3 has a ways to go yet before it gets to the point you can rool the same systems with the same ease( ie walking into mom and pop parts stores and walking out with a Bag o' parts)
I see this move to opening up the process on these other chips way way overdue. its not just a good idea, the rest of the market has shwon it to be a Do or Die option.
I embrace anything that will let me roll it better, cheaper and faster....As david lee once said(and I paraphrase here) "we are all on this river to hell, but im on a big party boat and there is room for everyone..so climb on up and let the games begin"
-- Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
znu
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· Score: 2
Mac OS X isn't going to be just another Unix* OS. It's going to be the only one that's fit for use by the general public (read: iMac users and such). Linux will be there in a couple of years, as GNOME and KDE get better, but OS X is going to be there in 6-10 months. That's a _very_ big deal. Ease of use is one of the two major reasons Linux hasn't killed Windows yet. The other of course is apps targeted at the desktop market, and Mac OS X will do better than Linux there as well in the near future. And OS X hasn't really had any features dropped from it from the original announcement. They killed the x86 version, when it ships it'll have a _larger_ feature set when it ships than what was originally announced.
As for Jobs missing this whole thing, he likely knew about it before IBM even told the public. The question is what he's going to do about it. It's easy to say that Evil Apple will do the Evil Things, but I wouldn't bet on any predictions about what Jobs is going to do.
I would really like to see Be get their hands on the hardware and get some G3/4 support going. cheap PPC BeBoxes would be really cool especially for schools and such that could use a really nice multimedia OS. Someone else also mentioned better heat/cost performance for rackmounts. Large cool cheap rackmounts means cheaper clusters and servers which is good for everyone. Maybe these could go in a line of set top boxes or portables running QNX or LinuxPPC. Tres cool.
-- I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
MacOS is lacking, even in prepress/color
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Can't multitask worth a damn? Read my last post and look at last paragraph. Did I also mention three other Macs were read/writing off my hard drives over the network? Not to mention two PCs looking at web pages on one drive? Oh maybe when I format a floppy it gets stuck doing just that -- well, hell who uses floppies anyway. I want to rip that old floppy out and stick a Zip drive in it.
Disregarding the behaviours outlined in 'Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines' and 'Macintosh Toolbox Essentials', it's true; MacOS (even with the improvements made in =>8.5) still can't multitask well.
Admittedly, many of the modal dialogues were dictated by the aforementioned programming guidelines but even disregarding that, MacOS still suffers from cooperative multitasking:-/
Crash? Yeah, okay when I can find a consumer OS that doesn't crash.. fine.. Linux of course never is known to crash but that's because every single user is trying to code a way to keep it from crashing while other OS users are busy doing other things with their computer.
MacOS is in dire need of Dynamic Memory Allocation; it still suffers from severe memory management problems (neatly outlined in 'Inside Macintosh: Overview', Apple Technical Library).
To preface, I'm an administrator in a fairly large prepress/color facility overseeing a heterogeneous (MacOS/WinNT4/Irix/AIX/Linux/SunOS/Solaris) network, and in my experience (subjective, as I have not made any substantial objective analysis), it is MacOS that chronically crashes and corrupts data.
So much as I hate to admit it, even Windows NT4 has surpassed MacOS as a much more reliable and productive production/PostScript/color client (even though Windows Quark4 is still somewhat buggy). Even if Illustrator, Photoshop, Framemaker or Quark crash, the OS is still usable and we save valuable time not having to reboot (as you often must do when applications crash under MacOS).
Prepress and color are supposed to be MacOS' forte, and unfortunately M$ is surpassing Apple in this niche market. Linux + atalk/sun already rule our Appletalk fileserving requirements, Irix runs our OPI, AIX powers our RIPs, SunOS and Solaris serves our digital press and drum scanner.
This leaves Mac as the design tool, and judging from the ratio of Mac-to-Win documents we receive from clients, Mac has been steadily losing this battle over the past two years...
The design/prepress/color community severely needs an up-to-date and powerful client OS which Apple has failed to deliver since 1994. We can only hope that MacOS X Client ships soon and has broad application support from software vendors...
To wit, let us Mac users not blindly defend MacOS (a la David K. Every) or proclaim Steve Jobs our savior against all M$ evil but admit the faults of MacOS to pressure Apple (and third-party vendors) to ensure that MacOS actually improves at the base OS level.
Bob
Notice their location?
by
Chaostrophy
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· Score: 1
In Research Triangle Park, just like Red Hat. I'd like one, though I would like the ability to run Mac software too.
What I really want is a PPC laptop, it should have much better speed/batter life than an x86 laptop.
Previous generation Alphas (21164A) are available for a song.
I recently purchased a refurbished Digital Personal Workstation 500a (500Mhz 21164A, 2MB cache) for $1100 from a local Digital reseller; had Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 running on it within an hour.
And how does it compare to a G3 or 604 PPC? Well, the Alpha is 64-bit, which enforces good coding habits;-) and the integer performance is comparable. Though GNU libm on Alpha is still not so very optimized, the floating point performance of the 500Mhz 21164A soundly flattens my 350Mhz G3 PowerMac:)
BTW, PC164SX main logic boards with 533Mhz Alpha 21164PC have appeared on Ebay for $250! Standard ATX form factor and accepts SDRAM DIMMs.
Just to let everyone know...;-)
~AC
Re:Not really
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You know.. although 47Ronin over there seems to have articulated a very good response, I think it should be known that I have been running Debian on my Quadra 605 for quite some time. And you want cheap hardware? My friend got a full Mac IIci system for $25. He then proceeded to put Debian on it. Right now, he's learning C and some Perl. Now, sure, it's just a 68030 at 25 Mhz, but that's good enough to learn how to program, right?
So head on over to http://mac.linux-m68k.org and pick up a nice free Linux for your old Mac. Or NetBSD's site.
-- Can *not_frank_zappa@yahoo.com*
Do you need Apple's permission?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The article mentions that while the system will be aimed at Linux, it might also be used as a MacOS "clone", although no licensing agreement has been reached (or sought). KNowing Steve Jobs, this would never happen. The question is: could a CHRP-compliant system run the latest Mac OS just like one of Apple's boxes, perhaps with a patch of some sort? Do Macs still have proprietary ROMS?
Re:Do you need Apple's permission?
by
znu
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· Score: 1
Mac OS no longer has ROM dependencies on the latest hardware (a ROM image now sits in a file on the HD and gets loaded into RAM during boot). However, Mac OS 8.5 has major issues on CHRP hardware or doesn't work at all.
Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server are different though. Unless Apple specifically codes them to check for Apple hardware they'll run with no help from Apple, thanks to being open source at the core.
-- This space unintentionally left unblank.
OpenFirmware
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"For those who don't know, LinuxPPC and BeOS won't run natively on Macs or Mac clones. "
Sorry, this is wrong, and I bet you just met Linux, because you clearly refer to BootX.
Macs boot MacOS simply because they are told to do so by OpenFirmware. You can simply tell your mac to boot into linux directly by modifying your OF variables, for example:
boot-device: scsi/sd@0:0 will use the device on the main scsi chain at ID 0
boot-file:scsi/sd@0:4/boot/vmlinux will look for the vmlinux kernel on that same HD in the 4th partition
By doing this you can completely remove any MacOS bit from your HDs, I suppose you can even remove your Mac's ROM because they aren't needed anymore to boot.
BootX btw is an extremely useful app. It lets you keep the kernel file on the MacOS partition, even more than one. Lets you issue kernel commands arguments easily and so on. So please stop whining .
Re:Good point
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If Apple felt capable of competing with rational hardware vendors, they wouldn't have strangled the cloners. I suspect their hardware compatability requirements will consist of "rolled off an Apple assembly line in the last six months...."
Re:G3 not SMP
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Be had the Dual 603 machines, but look how far those went.
Those sounded cool, but they were
expensive
hard to get
as proprietary as humanly possible
weren't they? I mean, if you waved enough money to convince them to sell you one, you were pretty much stuck with one proprietary OS with limited drivers and no way to fix it, right?
What about StrongARM?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I dunno about PPC/CHRP. For one thing, the PowerPC platform was designed to make development of IBM servers and the new PowerMacs easier/possible. As a result, the RISC design was compromised somewhat. Alphas are better, but not half as RISC as the StrongARM. Chalice technology in the UK make a StrongARM board pretty cheaply. Check out: http://www.chaltech.com/products.html
NT 3.51 and NT 4 were ported to PPC and MIPS. Support for those platforms was dropped after NT4 SP1. It was hard enough to get folks to ship on Alpha without getting 'em to ship on two more platforms. Micros~1 currently has piles of old PReP/PPC and ARC/MIPS boxen lying around. I'm trying to find out if they can be obtained cheaply.
Windows CE currently supports PPC. It's starting to look more and more like "Windows 9x done right" so I wouldn't be surprised if it were repositioned as a desktop OS, possibly even running on CHRP boxes.
Re:It's been done, twice.
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EverCode
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· Score: 1
That would be a quick and clean fix. It would be easier to build up CE than to tear down NT to create a new consumer OS.
Who knows what MS has planned, I don't even think they know.
--
EverCode
They don't get it
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If the PPC is going to really compete, motherboards must be marketed to screwdriver shops and roll-your-own people. They must go head to head with Asus and Abit and Gigabit, etc. An under $1K PPC system? Yawn. Show me the motherboards!
AFAIK, the G3 was never really designed to do SMP, because of the limitations of the 603 cores. I recall someone made it work with 2, but not very well. side note: Be had the Dual 603 machines, but look how far those went.
On the other hand, the G4 with its 604-based core, will SMP readily, and the Moto AltiVec vector units look *awesome* for DSP work, like audio/video production.
Me? I want a dual 600Mhz G4 with After Effects. and Mac OS X. oh baby....
pope
-- It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Re:Whats to prevent M$ from porting Windoze to CHR
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
M$ is a software company after all, Is there any reason M$ cannot increase its market share byporting to CHRP?
Microsoft is having a hard enough time with it's intel port.
I have seen alot of comments from this bozo. Most of them off topic or flaimbait. It would be nice if slashdot had a good way to get rid of repeats of people like this. The sad thing, is due to the way slashdot's moderation works, more posts = more moderation chances. I've been reading slashdot since before it was on a domain, yet I've never moderated because of my lack of posting. I know I could post and join in and make slashdot better for all, but I don't because I usually don't think I have anything worthwhile to add unless I'm an expert on the topic. It looks like other users don't share my views (see above posts).
Don't forget the Newton
by
binarybits
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· Score: 2
I think it was also a StrongARM based system. It was running at 160 MHz at a time when desktop systems were in the same speed range.
*Aaaargh!* About what are we talking in this thread? Macintosh or the "open source" CHRP design offered by IBM? If it is Macintosh: Its GUI is not built for people that have to think complicated to complex things done. It is the representation, not the information that makes something usable. You might need a click a few times but you rarely get a typo by doing so. If we are talking about PowerPC: I think it is one of the best RISC platforms around and gets faster and faster with any new generation *at the same clockspeed* (a P III is actually slower than a P II). What I heard is that Alphas have some problems with some sort of context switching (anybody a comment on that?) and are by far not as affordable as PowerPCs.
By the way, bliss - get rid of the annoying "feel the wrath" trailer - you want to sound competent, not redicilous, right?
Around the corner?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That would be kind of hard considering this year's Red Hat building is not on a corner. But it is in the same city, yes. More specifically it is in the same part of the same city. But Research Triangle Park covers several square miles. I work in RTP for IBM, and I wouldn't even consider Red Hat to be BIKING distance from us. Opposite ends of the Park (they are on Meridian, we're on Miami Blvd).
open ppc motherboard development
by
rillian
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· Score: 3
I'd like to point out that there's an open collaboration also working on producing IBM's design. I doubt we're going to ultimately price competitive with large motherboard manufacturers, but we may be faster, and we're dedicated to keeping design improvements free and available. "Open Source" for hardware, as it were.
It's hard to say anything concrete until IBM releases the design but we're aiming for a US$500-$700 box.
You would after the flamethrower finished with you.:-)
Er, what are you smoking?
by
Inoshiro
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· Score: 1
My Firewall machine (Pentuin 200 w/MMX + 96mb EDO ram) has never given me a problem. I plugged in my AHA-2940 U2W, plugged in the SCSI drives, and it worked (kernel recompile to add AHA-7xxx driver).. The IDE HD worked with less work, since IDE support was in the kernel. Any network card problems? Hell no, the PCI NICs I use just went it. As long as I add the driver, Linux finds it all without work.
Not to mention uptimes in the range of months (haven't gone past because I either end up upgrading the kernel, or fiddlind with the machine to add more hardware [read: HD space] to it)..
-- -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
1986 68k Mac.. Please don't be evil..
by
Inoshiro
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· Score: 1
Little reality check, Budski. A 68k Mac in 1986 could not run System 7.5, as System 7.5 wasn't out in 1986:^)
Now PLEASE don't leap into the "bahaha Win98 blahak 10 + years older Mac is better" because you're mixing both the hardware and software issues into an easy to digest sound byte.
The issue here is not: "I love MacOS. It rules. Windows sucks. You suck if you run Windows." That's just flamebait.
The issue here is: "Wow, cheap motherboards for the PowerPC, and no Apple mucking about."
This is a good thing, I guess, since we can all run LinuxPPC or BeOS on a the fast PowerPC platform (without the MacOS, we'd just buy an Apple box if we wanted that).
Apple has always been a hardware company, selling hardware. Their software has generally been good because they don't push dates and force things like Microsoft. I do respect their software.
HOWEVER the MacOS interface is (to me at least) like a scaled up, glorifed word proccessor. I don't like it, and I'm entitled to that opinion without you screaming about Pentuims and Macs. Will you scream at me because I not only don't use a Mac, but I also don't use Microsoft products except for that Win98 partition meant for Quake? (I hope Linux 3dfx support gets faster)
The thing that gets me most is that a 1986 386 running Linux (1.2, 2.0, 2.2, etc) is probably more stable than BOTH those machines you listed >:-> (poke)
-- -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
" BASH and Xemacs : I don't know what the hell you would need these for since you can find text editors for the Mac like gum on sidewalks."
Bash is not a text editor.
" Games? Over 7 of the top 10 games listed by PCData research are available or are being ported to the Mac"
I thought you said you wanted to do work.
"Compilers and all that sh*t? Go to the store and buy it. Don't just sit at home and assume all your life. "
But if you do sit at home and work (ie: penniless programmer), the GNU compilers are free. You can't out-price free products.
"Run Scripts and schedule tasks: AppleScript, nuff said. The Mac can even turn itself on/off and run jobs without additional hardware "
What if I want to use Perl, Python (it rules), TCL, etc?... No choice:~(.. That's bad. Besides, my systems are never down. Why would they be off? Hellooo, RC5!!!!
"I'm usually addressing people who haven't really used a Mac (one that that was built in the last three years)"
I don't want to use a Mac; please stop trying to sway my opinion by mention things I don't care about. I am a big boy now, and I can make my own decisions. I have used "recent" Macs (a friend has a Bondi-blue. Cute as a bug, but I hate the keyboard)..
Btw, Window Manager "f*cking around" hasn't ever happened to me. Have you used a recent (ie: past year or so) distribution of Linux? No? Aww, why not? I like trying new things.. Don't you?
Besides, KDE w/ Icewm in place of kwm is really nifty.:-) OS/2 Warp 4 feel.. Ahh.. OS/2, I loved thee once.. Whelp, off to reading more comments..
-- -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Re:Whats to prevent M$ from porting Windoze to CHR
by
Locutus
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· Score: 1
IBM did the port to CHRP back in the mid 1990's. When IBM stopped feeding $$ into NT on PPC, Micros$1 announced the death of the PPC port version. I get this information for the recent stories on Compaq killing the Alpha port of NT. Microsoft didn't do the work or spend the $$ on the Alpha port, DEC/Compaq did. I'd love to see CHRP come to fruition. Ah, the days when I saw OS/2, NT, and Solaris running on the same PREP systems at Comdex 94'. Hope it takes off.
-- "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road
looks like roadkill to me."
--Linus
Re:please think about a pizza box form factor,and
by
PowerPC
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· Score: 1
Actually there are people working on optimizing Linux for PowerPC. They range from the performance group at SPS, to the MCG porting group which optimizes specifically for our embedded VME and CPCI boards. At the very least, Linux is an important part of Motorola Computer Group's strategy to sell more hardware.
There's just one problem those in this society cannot eliminate those who are of a lower class. Truth be told I have felt alienated from the world of high technology since the stupid pentium craze. I have never even had the chance to get ahold of any of this at all. I have had little incentive to get excited at all from new developments in technology that will assist others such as many of the egocentered in this world in just gaining a larger slice of the American pie. What is the point of all the advances? I see little in any of it. Do I really care if someone gets even a slightly faster processor out to market? No. Why should it matter. The more society "progresses" the less it cares for those who cannot keep up. I probably have a greater base of knowledge than a good 90% of the computer public by virtue of my running and knowing the internals of my operating system of choice. People want their exclusive club and that's all. They want all the power for themselves and none for anyone else. Well the world is big and sooner or later and I will be one with the 5Gb of ram and 18 processors snubbing everybody is that what is expected in this world? I think that if the situations of nearly every unbalanced situation in this world were reversed we would see a golden age the likes of which the world has never seen. The problem stems from the idea that speech can be limited in any way in which detracts from what they want. I really do not like being refered to as a "bozo" at all in any way sir. I have never as the written reccord can show have defamed a person personally who made a scurrilous comment in my direction. When I make a hardware/software project I will not tailor it to meet the needs of some few who can do floating point calculations by the trillions per second but will help the common man and perhaps make things easier for him in some way. Why is it so hard to put the breaks on some of our advancement to perfect what we have left to drop by the wayside.
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
DAMN! You have enough problems with DOS / x86 / hardware / etc etc to justify making a solid Mac purchase. So quit fiddling with wires, IRQs, mismatching DLLs and drivers, OS patches (that M$ forgets to announce) and make your move to Macintosh! At least with a Mac you can plug things into it and get to work immediately, like me. I'm usually a productive person and have no need for useless fussing around with things that work fine. Frustration over your current machine seems to be breeding contempt for technology that just works (Mac) =).. have a good day.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I don't know what everyone is trippin' about, talking like the Mac doesn't have a "powerful" GUI. What the hell are you guys trying to do that you "think" can't be done on a Mac? I'd be glad to point out any falsehoods since most anti-Mac people try to compare a 1999 PIII w/ Win98 to a 1986 68k Mac running system 7.5. *roll eyes* In fact, I can't think of a single complicated task that the Mac CAN'T do. If you're talking about GUI customization then download Kaleidoscope and pick from the thousands of total conversions.
----- Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
-- Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Re:Not really
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I grow weary of your prattle. As far as:
There's just one problem those in this society cannot eliminate those who are of a lower class.
When technology grows to a certain point, we will. For example, given nanotech, we would no longer need laborers to clean, to build, to manuhfacture, and a variety of other non-thinking occupations. The growth between the have and have nots will increase, with the political power being in the hands of the haves. Then we will opiate those non-thinking lower classes with such things as professional sports, inane media shows, and other trinkets to convince them that that is all they need and lull them into a satiated stupor. In the meantime, the Haves with political power will intitute a policy of biochemical and economic eugenics that favors themselves and thus the lower classes will no longer be able to breed rampantly. A very few ofthe lower class will be able to rise but those that would rather wallow in their inane stupor will pass on. While those that understand will stay.
Give it 50 years buddy. You'll see.
SheepShaver works, so does Bochs
by
haaz
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· Score: 1
We tried 'em. They work.:) We've had a few machines for a few months now, so we've been playing with 'em like mad -- and making sure Linux runs on 'em. Helping with the ROMs, for instance, and just doing general stress testing. The existing boards are rock-solid!
: PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users. AMD motherboards are projected to be MUCH more expensive than BX boards for that same reason, until the volume comes. At least AMD remains compatible with Intel...
It is certainly true that there are a lot more x86 users than Mac users, but all those iMacs and iBooks give IBM and Motorolla decent volume. If Apple keeps gaining market share and a substantial number of Linux and Be users switch, you could see 15-20% market share for the PPC in a couple of years. Given that the x86 market is split several ways, that's probably enough to bring the cost down into competitive territory, especially if the G4 is as fast as it looks like it will be.
One particularly attractive option would be LinuxPPC labtops. Apple already has 400 MHz Powerbooks for about $3000. The PPC is a much smaller and cooler chip, and so you could see gigahertz G4 labtops by the middle of next year. That would leave Intel's anemic pertable Pentiums in the dust.
As for the Alpha, the Mac gives the PPC a much larger market share than the Alpha, so no matter how impressive the Alpha is in theory, it's not going to come down in price unless a consumer OS becomes available for it. The only hope of higher volumes on the Alpha is Linux users, and I doubt enough will switch to make it worthwhile.
Hey, could this in any way signal the return of OS/2 PPC edition? I was really pissed at IBM when they dropped that system. I was actually ready to switch to a mac if they'd have a decent system on it (macos doesn't count). That was before the linuxppc days.
Well suppose I wish to get the latest version of a compiler or a certain app (that linux alread), or to act as a server that could handle the slashdot effect, how about replace the hard drive for a model that has a certain higher rpm rating, get to a really nice customizable command interface (bash) set up automatically scheduled jobs, multitask well, artificial intelligence, most modern computer games worth a rat's ass, have Xemacs, let me access something besides the GUI if I want to just for the hell of it, change the desktop so that it looks/functions differently (linux window managers), Borland compilers, etc. All of these things are not avaible on a mac (to my knowledge, or are at least 2x more expensive or 4x more difficult to do).
-- The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Let the PPC vendors and users write the necessary drivers themselves. "If you buid it they will come..."
I think all Apple ROM is in RAM nowadays. So there is potential for Licensing their current OS to vendors that meet Apple Harware compatabliity requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
Mac users who have interestes in darwin and mac os X are not the bread and butter of the apple universe.
Splitting themselves into two companies and opening competition by forcing software makers to lisence os goodies from the hardware company whould probably of made the physical platform far far more successfull.
Maybe the sofware companie would of died.
woopie. Mac os X is just NeXTSTEP with a (IMHO UGLY)facelift. I'd rather have NeXT alive than Apple Software Co. Mac OS itself, well.. sucks, and even apple knows it.
In the mean time, they've taken a hurky jerky muddled buisness plan mixed up with software and hardware that haven't been significantly ahead in years (and have probably been behind for a couple now), significantly overpriced it (even now, though they're getting better), and decided that they invented sillicon and have sued everyone in sight while fiercely defending a niche market that noone can quite define with users more rabid than even the true linux shock troopers out there.
I love their hardware.
I hate their prices.
Their "buisness" is too stupid for comment.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
No, it just opens more doors to less populated rooms. But at least you help move the crowd into unventured territory. The only reason vendors support x86 for the most part is because, for the most part, thats what people use! The PPC is a superior chip (lets not argue and just take it as a premise of this discussion), and so I'd like to support a movement to accelerate it's adoption into the computer community. I mean, if your argument is valid, why have so many people switched to Linux over the past few years? Less vendor support, but superior (again, presumably) platform! Venture forth and the vendors shall follow!
"Old man yells at systemd"
That may be true for now, but the more people who buy and use the machines, the more likely good programs will be ported to the platform. The PPC Linux distribution has enough software on it now to make a kick-arse Web server, or SMTP, or DHCP, or all the above all at once.
I agree with SirSlud. Such boxen make great second machines. Can you imagine how well the Gimp would run on it?
I shall change my .sig shortly. If you really look closely at most of the other sigs out there they are just crap, and quite contradictory crap at that. I have had problems with debian as of late and linux as well perhaps someone will eventually fix all the problems with base level hardware instead of just fixing things that are cool to make the computer actually get up and sing/dance.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Well I would have replied to this via e-mail but I lack an address that is appropriate so I will just have to post this here for the world to see. First of all you have given away the play that the world is supposed to use to get this great conspiracy going in the first place. This is essential to any conspiracy that's why it succeedes: people cannot resist what they do not know about can they? Secondly I am not, and never going to be a quiter in any way, shape, and form, If I have to spend 20+ years getting all sorts of degrees to make me part of the elite I shall (as it is I am not stupid or on the fast track to getting there). Thirdly what I really see happening in the next 50 years is a group of people most likely "hippies" for lack of a better term who will instigate a program of euthenasia, planned depopulation of so called "threatened" areas of terrain. What this will be spurred on by is perhaps some major natural distaster which is created by global warming or the like. This in turn will raise prices on all basic necessities and will queeze most of the population through the cracks in an even more sinester way than through a bunch of people in a smoking room. If any organized conspiracy were in the works people would already have come forward and ratted on those people involved; this is why things like the X-files are not really probable in our time. What of the internet? We have access in most public places (probably sensored in the future) to all the information of a technical nature that we could ever read in a lifetime. This will make people more literate and get their foot in the door. I am just discusted with people who waste time on things when If I just had a little easier time or perhaps a little more power I could improve at least 5,000% or more where people at the top little benefit with the purtchess of several million dollars worth of computer equipment in any form. An example does bill gates get all psyched up when he overclocks his processor on his desk to give him 10% more processing power? I think not.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Actually it's really not the hd but support for the cd-rom under linux. Ever try to install Red Hat with a dos partition (the rest of a previous almost full linux one) of about 30M free space? The cd has at least 420M worth of rpm's labeled not a whit for the base stuff that is needed.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I can say that when I worked for Palindrome (now defunct tape backup software company), we had NT Alpha, and NT PPC ports in the works for Palindrome Storage Manager. Microsoft's wishy-washiness for the other platforms strongly aided in the destruction of those projects. Sigh. In those years, it really looked like MS WAS going to take over the world, and even our Unix port was crushed in an act of PHB-ness, and our ROOTS in Novell were rapidly disintegrating (although that was more Novell's fault - crappy developer support).
Remembering those years - 96, 97. . . things really are better these days. Though I don't really care if Novell makes a comeback or not, it certainly is refreshing to see this Linux movement grow and take hold, and even see Macintosh recover somewhat.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Namely the rather still bug filled distributions and the lack of greased lightning response times for fixing bugs or getting updates for packages that I would wish to use. I would like for someone for example to get a devel kernel out with that e2compr patch (or get the patch into the kernel) so that I could get reasonable updates to the core OS instead of waiting several years between 2.0.x and 2.2.x for example.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Wait, so is pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Wellcome ... they must all be working on some kinda computer-based drug thing that will ruin us all ...
Yeah, IBM has been there for years. RTP is a development zone, the government of NC gives 'em incentives and also tech-types flock there ... umm, here so there's a good labour pool. It's little more than a coincidence, K?
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Last I knew, they tried to propose that to the cloners, but they all rejected the idea of actually paying enought to cover their costs...
Quality software? 0% on a Mac? BullSH*T ..what are you Be peeps smoking? I don't think anyone has made a Photoshop 5.5 / ImageReady 2.0 bundle for Be.. does Starcraft run natively on Be? Oh damn! Does Be have Poser 4, Flash 4, Adobe GoLive 4, Connectix Virtual Gamestation? I think not! Get your head out of your ass before you post highly explosive flamebait.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Isn't NT & Linux "comsumer" enough? Though I just read on PC Week that Microsoft is going to themselves suspend development for Alpha past the next service pack... story to come
Not true. It had less to do with Microsoft than you think. From what I've gathered, the NT port to PPC was killed because of several reasons, none of which were related to "billy bob wanted it"
Basically, it boiled down to Motorola and IBM not wanting it bad enough.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
You can't keep piling crap on top of a deadening architecture. Eventually, it becomes more economical to start from scratch or at least a more recent starting point.
That's what Be tried to do, and look at how popular they've turned out. That's what Apple originally planned with Rhapsody, and they had to back track on that in order to convince developers to update their products. MS Windows 2000 has been plagued with compatiblity concerns...
Given MS & Intel's revenues and profits, it's a fair statement to say that the computing world values compatibility over performance/reliablitly/price/whatever other concern.
What Can't a Mac do? Well, the main BIG problem is that it cannot run a given network protocol over more than one hardware type. i.e. Appletalk cannot be run over Localtalk and ethernet at the same time. This makes it hard to share certain devices on a network. Also, the networking could be vastly improved on the MacOS.
These CHRP machines look wonderful. I would be VERY interested in obtaining a 4 or 8 way PPC CHRP system.
Here in the UK, there's a computer used mainly in schools called the Acorn, and that also uses ARM. Quite speedy little buggers for the price (cheap) the authorities must have paid for them.
Need to look more carefully. Thanks
Not all of them...
Applix and Loki are shipping PPC versions.
Applix is shipping Alpha versions.
It really is a nice indication of what companies are really Linux companies, or want to be, versus those that are supporting Linux out of desperation (like Corel).
Once they've got a working Linux version, they really don't have any excuse not to have Alpha and PPC versions.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You pay by the rack, so putting this stuff into a small form factor is key. . . the original 6100 and the LC design from the Macintosh are things to think about, as well as the low-profile Suns.
I've been monitoring the progress of linux-ppc and it looks like linuxppc-1999a is actually out with
ls /lib/libc-*
so things like srpms will actually work. Which is key. In general, i think this port will continue to stabilize in the near-term. As an added bonus, it's a great platform for developing embedded software for powerpc-eabi
I would also be cool if apple or moto or ibm would pay to get gcc up and optimized on linux-powerpc specifically.
That was all stated in relation to commerial/proprietary software. I don't think that all the software I want to use or their equivilants will be available in source code form at any time in the near future, if ever.
Like always, I myself advocate using the best tool for the job, even if it means paying for it
Mac OS X Server is just that--a server OS. It is little more than a modified version of the Next OS with some network apps like Apache and WebObjects bundled in. It is not suitable as a consumer OS.
OS X Client is the future of the mainstream Mac OS, and it will feature a dramatically improved feature set for non-technical users, including...
-Carbon, which will allow existing Mac apps to run in a preemptive environment without modification
-Quartz, which is a PDF-based graphics model, supporting high-end graphics rendering abilities built into the OS
-First-class java support built into the default install
-Better hiding of the BSD internals so that new users don't have to know Unix to use their Macs.
-Ports of all the functionality of the current OS so that existing users will be able to interact with the OS in a predicatble way.
-A revamped finder
-Updated internals. They are switching to a new version of the BSD kernal (3.0 comes to mind)
-Gobs of other cool stuff I can't think of offhand.
And there probably will be a command line buried in the OS somewhere, but users will not be required to use it under any circumstances. Power users will be able to use it if they wish, however. Target release date is early 2000. They've already seeded a developer release, with a second due in a matter of weeks.
Ahh just as I thought.. a guy who really isn't interested in doing anything more than fiddling with his GUI. Okay well since doing WORK isn't your kind of thing than well let's list some realities to you:
Mac interface customization: Kaleidoscope. Shareware.. thousands of custom interfaces.
BASH and Xemacs : I don't know what the hell you would need these for since you can find text editors for the Mac like gum on sidewalks. BBEdit is a frontrunner off the top of my head. The fact is, if I needed a text editor, I'm better off scribbling on Notepad or Stickies.
Games? Over 7 of the top 10 games listed by PCData research are available or are being ported to the Mac.
Compilers and all that sh*t? Go to the store and buy it. Don't just sit at home and assume all your life.
Faster hard drive? Take out the old Mac drive and put a new one in. Dang, are you that blunted? Hell, it's easier to format/partition a Mac drive anyway.
Run Scripts and schedule tasks: AppleScript, nuff said. The Mac can even turn itself on/off and run jobs without additional hardware
Like I said, I'm usually addressing people who haven't really used a Mac (one that that was built in the last three years). Oh yeah, I'm writing this in Netscape on a beige G3/233 Mac while working on an 89 MB Photoshop 5.5 file on multiple screens while serving out Internet access using the shareware IPNetrouter (mixed Mac/PC clients) and sending out web pages via the Web Sharing control panel. Plus this stock config is connected to the Novell network via stock AppleTalk and has a CD-RW, scanner, Zip, Jaz, two external HDs, and a Syquest44 plugged in. No sweat. No effort. No jiggling configs. Just turn it on and work. That's what my boss pays me to do. Not f*ck around with my "window managers." They work just fine.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Oh yea BeOS is really a great system to.... :P Hell yea, I'd run MacOS!!
...Otherwise it will be a pretty worthless venture. Who would want one? To run MacOS? (ack)
For those who don't know, LinuxPPC and BeOS won't run natively on Macs or Mac clones. I installed LinuxPPC on my Blue G3 and had to make it a dual-boot between MacOS and Linux. Why? Because the damn machine won't boot into anything except MacOS! LinuxPPC waits until the MacOS starts to boot the computer up, then hijacks the system. The sameannoying setup applied when I installed BeOS on my PowerComputing clone.
Now I love my MacOS and all, but I'd like to be able to run BeOS and Linux without having MacOS hiding underneath somewhere. If these PowerPC boards actually make it to the shelves, I'll be first in line.
I thought that the next generation of Apple Motherboards, the ones in the Sawtooth G3/G4 towers didn't have physical ROM on the board. That it was going to be more of the ROM-in-RAM like the iMac has.
I also read something on Friday...MacOSRumors or MacWeek or somewhere that IBM got one of these monsters to boot from 8.1 a while back.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Athlon too, in fact, I just bought one... But the thing's a friggen microwave! It draws 50W! Hotter than the PIII. So yes, it's a nice chip at a nice price, but to be honest, I'm a bit worried about the damn thing burning a hole through my motherboard. OTOH, it should keep my apartment nice and toasty up in the cold darkness of Syracuse.
The PPC, however, is a truly elegant chip. Certainly on par w/ the Athlon (Altivec routines however will blow it out of the water) and it draws far less power, only 5W for the G3 which makes it quite good for both desktops and laptops, unlike the Athlon. The G4 (which btw, is probably coming at Seybold) only draws slightly more power and is also fine for laptops. Beyond that, there's a lot of Intel hardware in CHRP which not only drives the prices down a lot, but also makes it possable to walk into "mom and pop parts stores" and walk out with a "Bag o' parts". Finally, IBM's chip volume goes way up and the price of the chip not only comes down too, but the R&D goes up (and the PPC is a vastly untapped archecture.)
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
I agree with you about Apple's irrelevance. IBM for years has used PPC technologies in their AIX boxen. They also have beefed-up versions of the chips on their S/390's. (What I wouldn't do to get one of those chips on a motherboard!) I doubt IBM consulted with Motorola or Apple to do that...
Can you imagine ProTools/24 with the 888 and having it not being dragged down by MacOS or *shudder* NT.
I'll take it a step further. Let's say a 4-way SMP G3 ProTools for LinuxPPC Digital Audio Workstation.
I won't even get into the G4 or what a 128-bit Altivec unit could do for ProTools.
God, I'm getting the shakes just thinking about it.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Can someone post appoximate specs and prices for these two boxes? Their website was down when I tried to figure this out ..
Let's hope Apple has the sense to license MacOS on these machines.
I can't wait for a box with a ppc G5 and a special version of Mandrake optimized to run on it (next year)...
LinuxPPC will run on it.
Gotta love that 11 Mbps wireless internet option, too.
check it out:
l
http://macweek.zdnet.com/1999/08/22/rfitues.htm
interesting no?
Little is the number that think with their own mind and feel with their own heart. ~ Albert Einstein
Exactly what do you guys use as far as multitrack software for Linux? Is SLab or Broadcast 2000 any good? It probably shouldn't be too tough to match Pro-Tools, one might think, in terms of its user interface, etc. (but then again I'm not a programmer). I think that its simplicity, here, translates into elegance. The screenshots of SLab that I've seen fit that category pretty well. BTW, I once e-mailed the tech support guys at Digidesign, asking them if they ever plan to support linux; they promptly answered something to the effect of "no; these things take time. We don't expect to port it anytime soon." No surprise there, but maybe that'll change. -ad
Hi,
Couldn't help but notice that you feel somewhat... dissatisfied with the current versions of Debian Lignux. I tried installing it a while back, and encountered a ton of problems in dependencies (dselect is a REAL BITCH) and the like.
I tried RedHat, and couldn't stand that (it is the antithesis of proper, clean Unix design). FreeBSD was somewhat cleaner, but still had install problems. It also had "it worked fine yesterday, but it's hopelessly broken today, and I changed *NOTHING*" problems and is, therefore, not a product I care to run.
I tried OpenBSD, and stuck. It is tight, clean, consistent, and secure. Everything just *works*, and works *well*.
Give it a try: OpenBSD
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
Not wanting it bad enough... HAH!
Microsoft told Moto, IBM and Apple they wanted $100Mil for the NT5 port, each! Moto MCG never even sold near that many retail NT and Mac PPC boxes, IBM hell, what did they want NT for , they had AIX, and Apple, DUH!!
Andy wanted PPC kicked out of his sandbox, and Bill did the kicking. Who know what Bill got in return, probably Intel dropped some Internet software project, they were big in networking and evangelizing net access in that timeframe.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
You've forgotten the Jobs factor.
If these PPC boards are widely used, and Darwin is ported over, then a couple of things could happen.
1) MacOS X (the GUI and stuff above Darwin) will be somehow keyed to work only on Apple platforms. This can likely be subverted, and if it is:
2) Further development of Darwin is closed-source. Darwin and the MacOS will become proprietary. Future versions of Darwin will run only on Apple platforms and, most likely, binary formats, APIs, and the like will change to ensure that the folks still hacking on the older versions of Darwin are at an evolutionary dead-end.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
That's what Be tried to do, and look at how popular they've turned out.
Be didn't catch on for a number of reasons. For one thing, they're developing an OS targeted at multimedia but not making it for the main multimedia platform(Macs). For another, they have yet to get any big graphics software company (Quark, Adobe, Macromedia etc) to port any of their products to BEOS.
That's what Apple originally planned with Rhapsody, and they had to back track on that in order to convince developers to update their products.
Not exactly. They revised Rhapsody because it did not provide a good upgrade path for software developers. For an application to take advantage of the modern OS buzzwords, large parts of the code would have to be rewritten. Carbon lets developers keep most of their old code while allowing them to move to OSX.
Given MS & Intel's revenues and profits, it's a fair statement to say that the computing world values compatibility over performance/reliablitly/price/whatever other concern.
Of course the fact that both MS and Intel use questionable tactics against thier compeditors wouldn't have anything to do with thier dominance, would it?
Finally, a good affordable way to get off the x86. And with the x86's 'out-phasing' by Intel sooner or later, it'll be nice to have a system to keep developing on.
And hey, this should really improve the port quality for the PPC versions of anything.
An Athalon system or PPC? my next computer is now debatable
One of the great myths perpetuated by Apple and others is that cloning had to die for Apple to live. The fact is that the cloners had already agreed to pay much higher licensing fee's when Apple pulled licensing.
I'd love to see their claims come true and this computer exist, but it sounds too good to be true, especially to a Mac user.
Isn't RedHat located just around the corner from them?
just my blog and pix
You will also be required to install and configure a working Furby cluster.
Networked via bongonet.
-- Guges --
Even if this actually comes out, it won't sell all that many. If Be has a chance to have Engineer X support 10,000 users by working on a driver for hardware Y, how is it a good decision to have him/her instead work on smooth transitions to this PPC box that might sell 1000? Not to mention the fact that the PPC market has dried up. So the N users that buy this system increase that user base. The "Free PPC" systems, the PPC boxes made pre-ReJobs are decreasing in number every day. As people get tired of their 66 and 100 mhz machines and trade them in for something newer, the Free PPC market shrinks. I think that it has sunk below the Critical Mass level for the platform. Except with regard to Linux, where hardware matters little.
For me the biggest impediment is that the local screwdriver shops only stock x86 hardware. I'm hardly going to mail-order my first Alpha and then have to ship it back admitting I can't tell whether it's actually broken or I just don't know what the hell I'm doing.
In order to improve signal-to-noise ratio for this article, the following ground rules have been enacted:
1. Anyone mentioning Beowulf will be forced to write a doctoral thesis on parallel/cluster computing theory. You will also be required to install and configure a working Furby cluster.
2. Anyone declaring the superiority of Linux/Darwin/BeOS without calm, rational supporting evidence will be forced to hold a cigarette in their mouth while we light it with a military-issue flamethrower.
Now let the games begin.
In other words, all your commercial (nonzero cost) software is also proprietary (closed source). Well, sucks to be you.
I'm very glad to hear this. I have long awaited the day when I could afford an unfettered ppc box.
anyway I hate the idea of linux which is usually a do it yourself thing having "problems" with anything (meaning it is basically broken except to Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein).
Then, you say:
Proud Debian GNU/Linux Slink 2.1 (modified) user.
Huh?
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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
The fate of NSHosting is up in the air. They're in the process of ripping Display PostScript out of OS X (Client) because they just can't afford what Adobe is demanding. 'course, now that we have CORBA and Java, there isn't much good reason to reduce a computer to a glorified proprietary display driver and centralize all the cycle-intensive work.
Wouldn't getting an Alpha be an alternative to x86?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
M$ was one of the CHRP partners, along with IBM, Moto, Apple and others. Their part of the bargain was to port NT4 to PPC. They never did.
Yes, actually, they did. Which is why the PE object file format has a PowerPC magic number for the "architecture" field in the object header.
FWIW, I haven't had any major problems with hardware support in the 5 years I've been using Linux (only full-time in the last 1-1/2 years).
I use Linux at work on a P200; at home on a Celeron 300A (@450).
I have just now gotten my hands on a PowerMac and have LinuxPPC on it. I have to say: it has been mostly a pleasant experience (only problem is trying to run a custom kernel I built; it panics on boot. I'll figure it out, though). The machine is quite responsive, even though it's an older machine. It seems less jerky than an Intel box.
I'm definitely considering a PPC motherboard for my next box, if the price is right.
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Apple is using egcs to build Mac OS X. Mac OS X Server was built with gcc 2.7.2.1 (who comes up with these version numbers?). I bet they're putting a lot of optimization work into it.
I bet their changes would port to Linux pretty easily.
I'm all over this one. Finally the power of the PPC chip without paying the price for the resource hogging of MacOS and Apple's hardware monopoly.
... ? It would certainly be nice to have a price-for-price competitor for Intel and AMD. And it's RISC to boot. Maybe it's time I finally got a /seperate/ box for the Linux side of my computational-adventures.
Maybe for my next upgrade
Yipee!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Hey is MacOS X out?? I got one of those crappy mac catalogs in the mail last week something like MacMall or MacWeek or something..(i'm geeky enough to scan even maccatalogs for cool crap :)) anyway they had MacOS X selling on some of their machines and available separately (for like $400 (not exactly umm a cost effective OS)). I scanned thru it looking for an availability date and found none. However, from the looks of this thread MacOS X is still vaguely hypothetical which means either that I was having a mighty fine hallucination or Jobs is personally sending me catalogs from the future...?
i do agree that the 'open-source' (APSL) bottom layer of MacOS X, darwin, could in theory be easily ported to a CHRP-based motherboard.
but i don't see all of MacOS coming to these new boxes any time soon.
Apple's revenue centers on their high-performance hardware, with software playing at a slightly lower level of importance. as far as business sense goes, and it's been proven that Apple has more than their fair share of that, relicensing their OS would cause fracturing problems. we all know that, aside from its shotty core, windows' main source of problems is trying to support all intel-based hardware. keeping the MacOS on custom hardware is necessary to maintain their high level of performance.
if you want to keep consumer interaction with the low-level os minimal, custom hardware is the only way to go.
linux excels in this fractured hardware market because you can tweak to your heart's content.
Mac boxes are too highly priced and specialized to be anything other than what they are: Mac boxes.
i prefer to see the release of the CHRP motherboards as a boon to the linux, bsd, and BeOS communities.
i'll openly admit to being an avid mac user, as well as dabbling in *nix and Be.
if i pick up one of the new boxes, maybe i'll be able to see Be rocket on a G3 or G4 for the first time.
Alpha was a good chip when it came out. But now that it's basically owned by Intel, how much effort do you think they're going to put into making it a viable alternative to new generations of the X86?
This is really cool. I've wanted to get a PPC for a while, but don't want to buy a mac. This is a great opportunity to get Debian PPC and start hacking on it:-)
Hate to say it, but it's true.
If Steve decides to keep Apple hardware closed, these machines will have the life expectancy of a NeXT cube on the open market. The geeks-only segment will be the only folks who care, and that group still isn't large enough to carry a serious manufacturer.
Sorry to burst bubbles here.
But, now that Apple need not bail out clone manufacturers, there's hope. IMHO, they should concentrate on morphing their image from a hardware company to a systems company..
And if these machines run MacOS 8/9/X and LinuxPPC, I can't wait to drive the necessary ten miles to pick one up. =-)
("Y'all can go screw Silicon Valley; we have.. Morrisville!")
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".sig,
Well, to be fair to IBM, someone there decided to hand that project off to Taligent. We all know what a mistake THAT turned out to be. . .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Right, that should have been "with minor modification." Carbon is a subset of the existing Mac OS API's, and Apple provides a tool called the Carbon Dater that checks your code and tells you which API calls are no longer supported. In theory, the deprecated APIs are seldom used, so developers should be able to "tune up" theis apps in days rather than months. But this allows Apple to eliminate enough of the incompatible OS calls to allow apps to run in the preemptive multitasking, protected memory environment.
I believe Adobe managed to tune up Photoshop in a matter of weeks, so it seems to work. If everything goes as planned, it'll be a nearly painless transition, and developers will be able to switch over very quickly. It's gonna be very cool.
Ok, it's flamebait, but I'll bite anyway.
#1, as to the bit on 'thought', you obviously seem devoid of it. Regardless of interpretation, there are things called Facts. And in the Article in mention, it is said that these machines are NOT treading on Apple territory. This is a Fact.
Had you read my response carefully and even (gasp) the article itself, you would have noticed the section on how these AREN'T Apple clones. Apple machines use ROM's (or used to anyway).
Calling these machines Apple boxes just because they are PowerPC boxen is like calling every x86 a Windows box. In fact, IBM has been using these chips extensively in their own machines and Apple hasn't gone ballistic yet.
As to your conspiracy theories, Apple is going to take over the world just as quickly as AOL/Sun/Netscape. You are obviously 'blind' to the fact that all Apple is doing is trying to make a business again. I don't agree with how they're doing it, but honestly, you claiming Jobs is going to become Gates is about as founded as someone saying Linus will. Because simply put, the leverage isn't there for it to happen.
And your assumption that I'm an Apple lackey is sorely misplaced. I can't stand Apple. I can't stand the way they make expensive boxen, I can't stand the way they sit on Quicktime codecs. I don't like Apple.
Like it or not, IBM made the specs available to motherboard makers. So Apple can't do SFA (sh*t f*ck all) about it. The only way Apple will crush these as competition is by making OS X either need ROM's or just not work with CHRA. Like MacOS.
One other thing that's bundled with Mac OSX Server is WebObjects. Apple's framework for developing WebBased applications. Seperatly it sells for $1495 alone. http://www.apple.com/webobjects
THE X WINDOW SYSTEM IS NOT UNIX.
Mac OS X Server does support remote windowing through a Display PostScript and Mach messaging mechanism. It does not (thank God!) use X-Windows.
Not exactly. The 603 does SMP perfectly well (the BeBox screamed, and it was only 2 by 75 MHz).
The G3 doesnt because of the way it accesses the backside cache, or at least that was the blurb i read somewhere (probably macosrumors) from Moto.
Whoops, you are of course correct, I was just throwing data out quick before I left work :)
--Matthew
That is only because Microsoft noticed the political infighting and lack of customers and wanted the money as a commitment from the parties involved. They declined, so no more PPC NT development. Had they been unified, and brought enough customers to the bench, Microsoft would have bent over backwards to help. As you said, "...what did they want NT for, they had AIX, and Apple".
Motorola DID decide to do Windows CE on embedded PowerPC, and has committed itself to supporting it. How long will that last? All I got to say is do a search on Slashdot for Psion or Motorola and figure it out yourself.
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
Well, it may once Carbon is done, but it wasn't released with Carbon. Subtle difference
--Matthew
yep, there must have been at least 8 other people ready to do that too. best of luck.
Until we bunged AIX back on it, it was running NT ppc. It even had perl!
Nice pics too . . .
-- Reverend Vryl
You're thinking of MacOS X Server (previously known as Rhapsody). As for MacOS X Consumer (or Workstation, or whatever you want to call it) I think it's a few months away.
And hopefully It's price will be much much lower than $400.... ;)
2^5
M$ is a software company after all, Is there any reason M$ cannot increase its market share by porting to CHRP? They could also thumb there nose at Intel in the process. Not that I'd be happy seeing Windoze on CHRP.
(Wiping bloody bits of bone, hair and gray matter from face)
Hell, I'd be happy with Cool Edit Pro and drivers for my Isis!
GadgetLabs seems the most likely to produce something for Be/nux someday, sometime...
**>>BELCH
oh yeah, that would solve that problem
Are you kidding? Geeks support many otherwise marginal companies. VA Linux Systems (or whatever they call themselves now) comes to mind.
But maybe you are defining "serious manufacturer" as "a manufacturer everyone has heard of", which in this context is circular. If everyone has heard of them then they aren't just for geeks, are they?
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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
umm... Linux/PPC couldn't care about if you have an ROM or not your machine -- it never reads it at all -- neither does OpenFirmware.
The main problem with Linux on Macs is:
- They are quite expensive -- for obvious reasons -- they are brand name computers, and have licensing fees doing with the Mac OS.
- Macs traditionally have had weaker OpenFirmware compared to CHRP and IBM machines -- since OpenFirmware wasn't much of a use for Apple -- since why would an Apple machine need to select OS (besides Mac OS X vs. Mac OS Classic) or Password Protection.
- You are limited in selection when you buy an Apple machine -- CHRP gives you many more choices.
Apple is working hard to improve their weeknesses -- and it's showing up -- look at iMac -- cheap, nice looking, and a half decent OF implementation.
Lets not forget Apple helped design CHRP (and is currently selling CHRP-like Macs -- Blue G3 / iBook come to mind).
So plug and play works without problems, no matter what OS use choose on the PowerPC -- Plug in that SCSI hard drive -- and mount it in Linux -- no fidling at all. Plug in that ethernet card in a PCI slot -- make sure you have the correct drivers compiled into the kernel -- and your ready to rock.
Linux is much easier to set up on the PowerPC -- inheritably due to the much better hardware design -- doesn't matter if it's PowerMac, CHRP or RS/6000.
PowerPC hardware is designed to make adding hardware as easy and do-able as possible -- it doesn't matter of the OS.
Even if they did code to check to make sure for Apple hardware -- people would figure how to get around it -- using methods like recycling ROMs from first generation G3s and soldering them on to daughter board for CHRP boxes -- and using some kind of OpenFirmware hack to get around them. Or maybe just keep a software image in memory -- illegal yes -- but people would try it (remember the Mac-clones of early 1980's.)
And there might be extentions that crack Mac OS X so it doesn't do this check or that it lie to Mac OS X about the installed hardware.
If there is an challenge, crackers will often break it quickly -- no matter how hard / well Apple designs it.
Seems to be that it would be easy: just make the license for MacOS be high enough to cover the cost. The price of Apple Macs wouldn't need to change, since presumably what they charge already covers the cost of both the hardware and the software. On the other hand, the cloners might end up having to pay $500 pre license of MacOS. (I'm pulling that dollar figure out of my ass, but you get the idea...)
Tying the hardware and software products together is an admission that they are overcharging their customers. There's no other reason to do it.
Well, actually, I can think of one other reason: If they charged a fair price (e.g. $500) for MacOS sales, they might fear piracy. Thus, they sell the Mac hardware as a dongle for the software. A lot of people have the demented idea that operating systems should be free or cheap, in spite of the cost of its development. (e.g. Linux is free, and Windoze is sold at a loss to lock people into buying/renting other MS products.)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"I would also be cool if apple or moto or ibm would pay to get gcc up and optimized on linux-powerpc specifically."
Well, at least Motorola has contributed dozens of various patches to the Linux/PPC effort -- including some to egcs/gcc -- for better PowerPC support now and for future support of Altivec processors.
While, I don't think Motorola has full time programmers working on patching / improving PowerPC-Linux, I do know for a fact that they have people, at least part time / free time / slacking of from work time, working on getting Linux supported better on the PowerPC, and better on hardware they ship. They made Linux/PPC on CHRP possible, and helped get it on there embeded systems.
Many of Motorola employees, would love the day they can get Windows NT boxes off there desks -- many which run on Intel machines (which you can see why Motorola employees dislike there Intel Window NT boxes).
Don't believe me -- check the Linux/PPC Mailing Lists (for old patches) or the Motorola Computing group Linux website.
The reason the 750 (G3) is not often used in dual processor designs is that it lacks the S-bit (snoop bit) which allows the cache to be snooped. This can be gotten around in software. Synergy Microsystems has a good example of such a design (4 way 750) running Linux in SMP mode. -Matt Motorola Computer Group
Actually there are people working on optimizing Linux for PowerPC. They range from the performance group at SPS, to the MCG porting group which optimizes specifically for our embedded VME and CPCI boards. At the very least, Linux is an important part of Motorola Computer Group's strategy to sell more hardware.
-Matt at MCG
I can think of two:
- Multitask worth a damn
- Not crash
Actually, a Mac is a nice machine, once you start running Linux on it. MacOS 8.6 is a pile of shit, and is hideously out of date. Yes, MacOS X will be moderately cool, but it ain't here yet, is it?Windows is irrelevant; everyone knows it sucks.
If it will run under LinuxPPC on one of these boxes, I am there.
I wouldnt mint it at all. It would give the PPC platform acceptance in the eyes of the suits and help the CHRP platform. A good thing. Let MS do the hard part...
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
My CHRP box has a Windows icon in it's graphical OF boot menu. OF course clicking on it doesn't do anything :-) Haven't found out yet how to put a Penguin in the boot menu...
M$ was one of the CHRP partners, along with IBM, Moto, Apple and others. Their part of the bargain was to port NT4 to PPC.
They never did. (Needless to say.)
That's part of why Mac cloning died the horrible death it did. All the companies weren't intended to be competing solely for the Mac market, they were supposed to go after the NT market as well.
As to why they didn't, one-word guess. Intel.
I'd imagine the concept of competing against a (let's face it ) better architecture pushed by Big Blue *and* Moto (this is back in '94, when Somerset was kicking ass and taking names) scared Andy Grove shitless.
God only knows what he offered Bill in exchange for killing the PPC port.
Anyway, that's the skinny on that. Any further details from people in the know are, of course, appreciated.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
You forgot expensive compared to cheap PCs today or one at a used place.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
there is another way-- it's called Mac-on-Linux.
http://www.ibrium.se/linux/mac_on_linux.html
It isn't so easy to install (requires kernel recompile type stuff), it takes over the screen instead of going in a window like in sheepshaver, and doesn't work on all machines. However it's totally open-source and free and it's here now, whereas Sheepshaver isn't quite yet released for linuxppc and seems to cost $50 anyway. So until sheepshaver/linux is released, i guess you can use this instead.
p.s. i believe the term is "hardware abstraction", not emulation, since you're using the exact same machine you're "emulating" and there's no translation between different chip instruction sets.. but it might be emulation if you run it on one of these IBM-based thingies.. i dunno.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
amiga will be a unix tailored for masses, as well. beos isnt unix but they are making a dumb-ass frienlyd version.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
...he's not supposed to. But apparently he does anyway. Go back and read ten stories posted by Hemos and you'll find at least 15 basic spelling/grammar mistakes.
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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
the alphas are not that expensive for what your
getting, especially with the crossbar switch
which comes with ev6. so on my desktop id rather
have an alpha(1)
i would definatly want one of these in a notebook.
they could also be good for low cost machines.
between ppc and alpha i see no need for x86.
[1] kinda depends on compaq here, i cant
stand how they are holding back speed on gcc in
a lame attempt to sell more licences of thier unix variant. intel maybe slower, but they are backing
gcc fully. hey compaq! take a clue here!
how are the PPC people with gcc?
...if you could hook these into a Beowulf cluster and run Linux on some and Darwin and BeOS on the others????????????? RHAT RULEZ!
Mmm sounds yummy, hopefully BE Inc will quickly take advantage of this and add G3 support to BeOS. I would love to have a nice cheap G3 tower running BeOS ;) Actually those iBook laptops look good too.. Are there any chances for 3rd party G3/G4 laptops?
Now, I'm as excited about low-cost PPC boxes as anyone, but...fair is fair...
That's a feature of SCSI, not of CHRP or PPC.
Plug in a SCSI hard drive on a x86 box that has SCSI, and it's about the same. Let's not forget that new Macs (and Sun Ultra 5s and Ultra 10s -- insert Homer Simpson's girlish scream here) have IDE peripherals, along with all the baggage that entails.
And even then, who's to say that setting SCSI ID and termination jumpers is really easier than setting IDE Master/Slave jumpers?
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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
. . .and get some decent math library performance. I see no posts on libc-hackers about this, or about adding the fused multiply-add support that is built into glibc but unused. . . .
again, I know apple is using egcs 1.1.2 but still, it took major teeth-pulling to get the Haifa stuff into egcs, so it would be politically cool if somebody would work with edelson and meissner to get the altivec patches into a mainstream egcs distro. Hello? There are a lot of moto/apple patches for PowerPC that need to go into the tree--if you have to pay for the maintainers attention and or expertise, then somebody should pony up and do it. Intel pays for a toolchain for each of their chips, so does Mips, Arm, Nec, etc etc etc. It would be fascinating to see how codgen/quality/user experience would improve if moto spread the joy a bit. . .
Does anyone know if moto is going to be using metrowerks c/c++ compiler for their s/w efforts? Are there pointers on the web for Spec results with CW and EGCS/gcc-2.95 specifically for powerpc?
-Carbon, which will allow existing Mac apps to run in a preemptive environment without modification
Carbon is a migration path. Basically it throws out 2,000 or so archaic API's and replaces them so developers can take advantage of OSX's modern features without a total rewrite of their codebase.
OK AC, let's address a few issues:
.. fine.. Linux of course never is known to crash but that's because every single user is trying to code a way to keep it from crashing while other OS users are busy doing other things with their computer.
Can't multitask worth a damn? Read my last post and look at last paragraph. Did I also mention three other Macs were read/writing off my hard drives over the network? Not to mention two PCs looking at web pages on one drive? Oh maybe when I format a floppy it gets stuck doing just that -- well, hell who uses floppies anyway. I want to rip that old floppy out and stick a Zip drive in it.
Crash? Yeah, okay when I can find a consumer OS that doesn't crash
Mac OS 8.6 is a pile of shit? Ha.. well thanks for providing explicit, hard facts. I'll be waiting patiently for your enumerated myths of shit. In doing so I will counter them with facts. I will only concede that Dynamic Memory Allocation is needed, which may be addressed in the Sonata release.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
This is the same discussion about BeOs: I think something is good and something isn't in that OS but the point is that they are proprietary OS. If your OS is not GNU there will be a date in the future that it will be dominant, if it is good ;), in the market and the price raise without reason, it start to crash too much often..... This is true, more or less, for every monopoly!IBM->Mac, Mac->PC, Unix->NT
linux.switchTo(); or switchTo(linux);
Scott, you're a mean one :)
Wanna try to buy one of these PPC boxes when they're out?
--Matthew
MacOS running on these boxen would help greatly, but realistically i see the saving grace being the Linux hype. Contrary to popular belief, in similar quantities the PPC chip is faster and cheaper to produce than the x86 equivalent. I see large IT dept's looking for fast and cheap thin OS clients being the real sales instigator, combined with the ex-apple/anti-ms geek crowd. I see hardware companies drooling over the thought of taking advantage of the G4 and all of its advantages - imagine what could happen if a large mobo manufacturer like FIC joined into the fray...
As for the sw, there is plenty there already for free and binaries for almost anything could be available as soon as someone (commercial) smelled profit. Just look at StarDivision and Loki.
just my blog and pix
Are you paying attention? We're talking about cheap, non-mac PowerPC computers, not macs. These things are the advantages of a PowerPC architecture and the openness of x86. These fix the main problem with Linux on a Mac, and that is the annoying proprietary ROMs that apple uses.
okay, I think you're missing the point here. this isnt a mac, its a PPC clone. your professed loyalty to intel is nothing more than herd-mentality idiocy. you're completely ignoring possibly superior technology in favor of the company who just so happened to be the dominant maker of chips when you started using computers; why does that mean that they will be in 10,000 years?
it sickens me to see people who are so blinded by the present that they refuse to see the future.
Alright I might like intel a little for a reason. It works now and not making me wait for a later date to get any support or until someone in Calcutta, India reads their email. I have linux with a scsi cd-rom that WILL NOT AND HAS NEVER worked under linux because no one really cares the stupid thing works with dos drivers just fine. I have tried most of the common things that try to get it to work: passing parameters, booting dos and then soft booting into linux, even compiled a bleeding edge kernel and got verbose scsi code and a bunch of crap in there; almost took up all my 16M of ram and still didn't work. Now did anyone from the industry make sure this didn't happen? No. So if I have even any trouble at all on a supported archieture what will happen if I use anything that is not easily supported. Even rebellion gets to a point where it becomes futile in almost any aspect. Well great first with all three computers that I had it was X-windows, then it's the worthless cd-rom, now with the machine (besides the cdrom) it's the useless video-card that cannot get any more than 16 colors. Why do I get stuck with so much junk? Anyone else got such rum luck as I have? I guess the only solution is to save $5,000+ US (about 20 years) and buy a new computer so that no one can claim it's the hardware's fault.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
StrongARM isn't really that obscure. It's used in the PSIONs, the Caldera NetWinder, loads of Windows CE machines etc. The reason? It's super efficient RISC, with a tiny instruction set, which (in the case of the NetWinder) can use AA batteries instead of UPS.
StrongARM is owned by ARM, and counts Digital (Compaq) and Intel amongst it's licensees.
MS released NT4 for the CHRP. Apple decided to flaunt the CHRP and kill the Mac cloners. No CHRP boxes to be had. MS dropped NT for the CHRP. End of story.
Actually it you think I am that dangerous than demote it once again then almost no one can hear me. Then we can start burning books.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
and I'm not talking about those little $30 jobbies that everyone went mad over a month or so ago.
It's really cool that the IBM design is being picked up, but we also need to see some good commodity boards (e.g. Asus, etc.) so that one can just walk to the store and come out with all the parts needed to build a system.
The nice thing (if there is a silver lining) about the impending Intel BX/ZX* chipset shortage (it sounds really nasty, BTW) is that mobo makers are going to either have to scale back production, or make more alternative platforms like Athlon-boards or PPC baords.
(* - these are the two most viable chipsets for building an Intel P6-based box. Especially if the BX is constrained, it's going to get tougher to build a nice P3, or even Celeron box.)
Be got a big fat check from Intel, and now doesn't seem to interested in devoloping for PPC. Well on their site it says the reason that the BeOS doesn't work with Apple G3s is Apple won't tell Be the specs.
Well fine, but when these puppies come out, Be damn well better run on them, or we'll know what a bunch of liars those guys are.
On a side note, I'd love to buy one of these things, especially if it would run OS X Server or OS X(it's possible). Apple needs some competition, it's prices are way too high right now(seriously, go to the Apple store and do some customizations and check the prices, they're ridiculous).
This is great news! It looks like this open PPC platform might actually take off. Not only does this provide a (relatively) cheap alternative to Intel hardware for Linux users, but it could be the first step to an open Mac platform. Once Darwin gets ported to these things (and it's already being talked about), there shouldn't be any reason the rest of Mac OS X won't run on them. This could allow for a return to Mac cloning without the problems it had the first time. Apple wouldn't be subsidizing hardware development this time, and Apple wouldn't have to insure perfect compatibility with other company's computers (they'd have the source to the entire core of the OS, they could do it themselves).
If Apple delivers as promised with Mac OS X, it's going to be an OS as robust (or more!) than Linux that's easier to use than Windows. If it actually runs on an open platform, it could cause a bit of trouble for certain software companies that nobody likes. And anything that causes MS to lose some of it's iron grip on the OS market can't help but be useful to Linux.
If Apple doesn't screw this up it could be a major boon to Apple, Open Source software, and consumers. Please Apple don't screw up again!
This space unintentionally left unblank.
This might help fuel the flames for full-blown support for Linux / Be professional sound apps. Sounds like an awesome DMW platform.
**>>BELCH
If this turns out to be the deal, and it can run MacOSX....The question is
How long before Gates^H^H^H^HJobs sues them out of existence?
RIP power computing
RIP star
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
I would really like to see Be get their hands on the hardware and get some G3/4 support going. cheap PPC BeBoxes would be really cool especially for schools and such that could use a really nice multimedia OS. Someone else also mentioned better heat/cost performance for rackmounts. Large cool cheap rackmounts means cheaper clusters and servers which is good for everyone. Maybe these could go in a line of set top boxes or portables running QNX or LinuxPPC. Tres cool.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Disregarding the behaviours outlined in 'Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines' and 'Macintosh Toolbox Essentials', it's true; MacOS (even with the improvements made in =>8.5) still can't multitask well.
Admittedly, many of the modal dialogues were dictated by the aforementioned programming guidelines but even disregarding that, MacOS still suffers from cooperative multitasking :-/
Crash? Yeah, okay when I can find a consumer OS that doesn't crashMacOS is in dire need of Dynamic Memory Allocation; it still suffers from severe memory management problems (neatly outlined in 'Inside Macintosh: Overview', Apple Technical Library).
To preface, I'm an administrator in a fairly large prepress/color facility overseeing a heterogeneous (MacOS/WinNT4/Irix/AIX/Linux/SunOS/Solaris) network, and in my experience (subjective, as I have not made any substantial objective analysis), it is MacOS that chronically crashes and corrupts data.
So much as I hate to admit it, even Windows NT4 has surpassed MacOS as a much more reliable and productive production/PostScript/color client (even though Windows Quark4 is still somewhat buggy). Even if Illustrator, Photoshop, Framemaker or Quark crash, the OS is still usable and we save valuable time not having to reboot (as you often must do when applications crash under MacOS).
Prepress and color are supposed to be MacOS' forte, and unfortunately M$ is surpassing Apple in this niche market. Linux + atalk/sun already rule our Appletalk fileserving requirements, Irix runs our OPI, AIX powers our RIPs, SunOS and Solaris serves our digital press and drum scanner.
This leaves Mac as the design tool, and judging from the ratio of Mac-to-Win documents we receive from clients, Mac has been steadily losing this battle over the past two years...
The design/prepress/color community severely needs an up-to-date and powerful client OS which Apple has failed to deliver since 1994. We can only hope that MacOS X Client ships soon and has broad application support from software vendors...
To wit, let us Mac users not blindly defend MacOS (a la David K. Every) or proclaim Steve Jobs our savior against all M$ evil but admit the faults of MacOS to pressure Apple (and third-party vendors) to ensure that MacOS actually improves at the base OS level.
Bob
In Research Triangle Park, just like Red Hat. I'd like one, though I would like the ability to run Mac software too.
What I really want is a PPC laptop, it should have much better speed/batter life than an x86 laptop.
Plato seems wrong to me today
Previous generation Alphas (21164A) are available for a song.
I recently purchased a refurbished Digital Personal Workstation 500a (500Mhz 21164A, 2MB cache) for $1100 from a local Digital reseller; had Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 running on it within an hour.
And how does it compare to a G3 or 604 PPC? Well, the Alpha is 64-bit, which enforces good coding habits ;-) and the integer performance is comparable. Though GNU libm on Alpha is still not so very optimized, the floating point performance of the 500Mhz 21164A soundly flattens my 350Mhz G3 PowerMac :)
Here are some specs I retrieved from this site:
CPU /clock / SPEC95int / SPEC95fp
Alpha 21164A / 500Mhz / 15.0 / 20.4
PPC 750 (G3) / 350Mhz / 15.4 / 11.2
BTW, PC164SX main logic boards with 533Mhz Alpha 21164PC have appeared on Ebay for $250! Standard ATX form factor and accepts SDRAM DIMMs.
Just to let everyone know... ;-)
~AC
You know.. although 47Ronin over there seems to have articulated a very good response, I think it should be known that I have been running Debian on my Quadra 605 for quite some time. And you want cheap hardware? My friend got a full Mac IIci system for $25. He then proceeded to put Debian on it. Right now, he's learning C and some Perl. Now, sure, it's just a 68030 at 25 Mhz, but that's good enough to learn how to program, right?
So head on over to http://mac.linux-m68k.org and pick up a nice free Linux for your old Mac. Or NetBSD's site.
-- Can *not_frank_zappa@yahoo.com*
The article mentions that while the system will be aimed at Linux, it might also be used as a MacOS "clone", although no licensing agreement has been reached (or sought). KNowing Steve Jobs, this would never happen. The question is: could a CHRP-compliant system run the latest Mac OS just like one of Apple's boxes, perhaps with a patch of some sort? Do Macs still have proprietary ROMS?
"For those who don't know, LinuxPPC and BeOS won't run natively on Macs or Mac clones. "
Sorry, this is wrong, and I bet you just met Linux, because you clearly refer to BootX.
Macs boot MacOS simply because they are told to do so by OpenFirmware. You can simply tell your mac to boot into linux directly by modifying your OF variables, for example:
boot-device: scsi/sd@0:0 will use the device on the main scsi chain at ID 0
boot-file:scsi/sd@0:4/boot/vmlinux will look for the vmlinux kernel on that same HD in the 4th partition
By doing this you can completely remove any MacOS bit from your HDs, I suppose you can even remove your Mac's ROM because they aren't needed anymore to boot.
BootX btw is an extremely useful app. It lets you keep the kernel file on the MacOS partition, even more than one. Lets you issue kernel commands arguments easily and so on. So please stop whining .
If Apple felt capable of competing with rational hardware vendors, they wouldn't have strangled the cloners. I suspect their hardware compatability requirements will consist of "rolled off an Apple assembly line in the last six months...."
Those sounded cool, but they were
- expensive
- hard to get
- as proprietary as humanly possible
weren't they? I mean, if you waved enough money to convince them to sell you one, you were pretty much stuck with one proprietary OS with limited drivers and no way to fix it, right?I dunno about PPC/CHRP. For one thing, the PowerPC platform was designed to make development of IBM servers and the new PowerMacs easier/possible. As a result, the RISC design was compromised somewhat. Alphas are better, but not half as RISC as the StrongARM. Chalice technology in the UK make a StrongARM board pretty cheaply. Check out: http://www.chaltech.com/products.html
it sickens ME to see people who are so blinded by the future that they refuse to see the present.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
NT 3.51 and NT 4 were ported to PPC and MIPS. Support for those platforms was dropped after NT4 SP1. It was hard enough to get folks to ship on Alpha without getting 'em to ship on two more platforms. Micros~1 currently has piles of old PReP/PPC and ARC/MIPS boxen lying around. I'm trying to find out if they can be obtained cheaply.
Windows CE currently supports PPC. It's starting to look more and more like "Windows 9x done right" so I wouldn't be surprised if it were repositioned as a desktop OS, possibly even running on CHRP boxes.
If the PPC is going to really compete, motherboards must be marketed to screwdriver shops and roll-your-own people. They must go head to head with Asus and Abit and Gigabit, etc. An under $1K PPC system? Yawn. Show me the motherboards!
Hey it ryhmes :)
AFAIK, the G3 was never really designed to do SMP, because of the limitations of the 603 cores.
I recall someone made it work with 2, but not very well.
side note: Be had the Dual 603 machines, but look how far those went.
On the other hand, the G4 with its 604-based core, will SMP
readily, and the Moto AltiVec vector units look *awesome* for DSP work, like audio/video production.
Me? I want a dual 600Mhz G4 with After Effects. and Mac OS X. oh baby....
pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Microsoft is having a hard enough time with it's intel port.
I have seen alot of comments from this bozo. Most of them off topic or flaimbait. It would be nice if slashdot had a good way to get rid of repeats of people like this. The sad thing, is due to the way slashdot's moderation works, more posts = more moderation chances. I've been reading slashdot since before it was on a domain, yet I've never moderated because of my lack of posting. I know I could post and join in and make slashdot better for all, but I don't because I usually don't think I have anything worthwhile to add unless I'm an expert on the topic. It looks like other users don't share my views (see above posts).
I think it was also a StrongARM based system. It was running at 160 MHz at a time when desktop systems were in the same speed range.
*Aaaargh!* About what are we talking in this thread? Macintosh or the "open source" CHRP design offered by IBM?
If it is Macintosh: Its GUI is not built for people that have to think complicated to complex things done. It is the representation, not the information that makes something usable. You might need a click a few times but you rarely get a typo by doing so.
If we are talking about PowerPC: I think it is one of the best RISC platforms around and gets faster and faster with any new generation *at the same clockspeed* (a P III is actually slower than a P II). What I heard is that Alphas have some problems with some sort of context switching (anybody a comment on that?) and are by far not as affordable as PowerPCs.
By the way, bliss - get rid of the annoying "feel the wrath" trailer - you want to sound competent, not redicilous, right?
That would be kind of hard considering this year's Red Hat building is not on a corner. But it is in the same city, yes. More specifically it is in the same part of the same city. But Research Triangle Park covers several square miles. I work in RTP for IBM, and I wouldn't even consider Red Hat to be BIKING distance from us. Opposite ends of the Park (they are on Meridian, we're on Miami Blvd).
I'd like to point out that there's an open collaboration also working on producing IBM's design. I doubt we're going to ultimately price competitive with large motherboard manufacturers, but we may be faster, and we're dedicated to keeping design improvements free and available. "Open Source" for hardware, as it were.
It's hard to say anything concrete until IBM releases the design but we're aiming for a US$500-$700 box.
Please subscribe to our mailing list if you're interested in participating.
You would after the flamethrower finished with you. :-)
My Firewall machine (Pentuin 200 w/MMX + 96mb EDO ram) has never given me a problem. I plugged in my AHA-2940 U2W, plugged in the SCSI drives, and it worked (kernel recompile to add AHA-7xxx driver).. The IDE HD worked with less work, since IDE support was in the kernel. Any network card problems? Hell no, the PCI NICs I use just went it. As long as I add the driver, Linux finds it all without work.
Not to mention uptimes in the range of months (haven't gone past because I either end up upgrading the kernel, or fiddlind with the machine to add more hardware [read: HD space] to it)..
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Little reality check, Budski. A 68k Mac in 1986 could not run System 7.5, as System 7.5 wasn't out in 1986 :^)
Now PLEASE don't leap into the "bahaha Win98 blahak 10 + years older Mac is better" because you're mixing both the hardware and software issues into an easy to digest sound byte.
The issue here is not: "I love MacOS. It rules. Windows sucks. You suck if you run Windows." That's just flamebait.
The issue here is: "Wow, cheap motherboards for the PowerPC, and no Apple mucking about."
This is a good thing, I guess, since we can all run LinuxPPC or BeOS on a the fast PowerPC platform (without the MacOS, we'd just buy an Apple box if we wanted that).
Apple has always been a hardware company, selling hardware. Their software has generally been good because they don't push dates and force things like Microsoft. I do respect their software.
HOWEVER the MacOS interface is (to me at least) like a scaled up, glorifed word proccessor. I don't like it, and I'm entitled to that opinion without you screaming about Pentuims and Macs. Will you scream at me because I not only don't use a Mac, but I also don't use Microsoft products except for that Win98 partition meant for Quake? (I hope Linux 3dfx support gets faster)
The thing that gets me most is that a 1986 386 running Linux (1.2, 2.0, 2.2, etc) is probably more stable than BOTH those machines you listed >:-> (poke)
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
" BASH and Xemacs : I don't know what the hell you would need these for since you can find text editors for the Mac like gum on sidewalks."
... No choice :~(.. That's bad.
:-) OS/2 Warp 4 feel.. Ahh.. OS/2, I loved thee once.. Whelp, off to reading more comments..
Bash is not a text editor.
" Games? Over 7 of the top 10 games listed by PCData research are available or are being ported to the Mac"
I thought you said you wanted to do work.
"Compilers and all that sh*t? Go to the store and buy it. Don't just sit at home and assume all your life. "
But if you do sit at home and work (ie: penniless programmer), the GNU compilers are free. You can't out-price free products.
"Run Scripts and schedule tasks: AppleScript, nuff said. The Mac can even turn itself on/off and run jobs without additional hardware "
What if I want to use Perl, Python (it rules), TCL, etc?
Besides, my systems are never down. Why would they be off? Hellooo, RC5!!!!
"I'm usually addressing people who haven't really used a Mac (one that that was built in the last three years)"
I don't want to use a Mac; please stop trying to sway my opinion by mention things I don't care about. I am a big boy now, and I can make my own decisions. I have used "recent" Macs (a friend has a Bondi-blue. Cute as a bug, but I hate the keyboard)..
Btw, Window Manager "f*cking around" hasn't ever happened to me. Have you used a recent (ie: past year or so) distribution of Linux? No? Aww, why not? I like trying new things.. Don't you?
Besides, KDE w/ Icewm in place of kwm is really nifty.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
IBM did the port to CHRP back in the mid 1990's. When IBM stopped feeding $$ into NT on PPC, Micros$1 announced the death of the PPC port version. I get this information for the recent stories on Compaq killing the Alpha port of NT. Microsoft didn't do the work or spend the $$ on the Alpha port, DEC/Compaq did. I'd love to see CHRP come to fruition. Ah, the days when I saw OS/2, NT, and Solaris running on the same PREP systems at Comdex 94'. Hope it takes off.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually there are people working on optimizing Linux for PowerPC. They range from the performance group at SPS, to the MCG porting group which optimizes specifically for our embedded VME and CPCI boards. At the very least, Linux is an important part of Motorola Computer Group's strategy to sell more hardware.
-Matt at MCG
There's just one problem those in this society cannot eliminate those who are of a lower class. Truth be told I have felt alienated from the world of high technology since the stupid pentium craze. I have never even had the chance to get ahold of any of this at all. I have had little incentive to get excited at all from new developments in technology that will assist others such as many of the egocentered in this world in just gaining a larger slice of the American pie. What is the point of all the advances? I see little in any of it. Do I really care if someone gets even a slightly faster processor out to market? No. Why should it matter. The more society "progresses" the less it cares for those who cannot keep up. I probably have a greater base of knowledge than a good 90% of the computer public by virtue of my running and knowing the internals of my operating system of choice. People want their exclusive club and that's all. They want all the power for themselves and none for anyone else. Well the world is big and sooner or later and I will be one with the 5Gb of ram and 18 processors snubbing everybody is that what is expected in this world? I think that if the situations of nearly every unbalanced situation in this world were reversed we would see a golden age the likes of which the world has never seen. The problem stems from the idea that speech can be limited in any way in which detracts from what they want. I really do not like being refered to as a "bozo" at all in any way sir. I have never as the written reccord can show have defamed a person personally who made a scurrilous comment in my direction. When I make a hardware/software project I will not tailor it to meet the needs of some few who can do floating point calculations by the trillions per second but will help the common man and perhaps make things easier for him in some way. Why is it so hard to put the breaks on some of our advancement to perfect what we have left to drop by the wayside.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
DAMN! You have enough problems with DOS / x86 / hardware / etc etc to justify making a solid Mac purchase. So quit fiddling with wires, IRQs, mismatching DLLs and drivers, OS patches (that M$ forgets to announce) and make your move to Macintosh! At least with a Mac you can plug things into it and get to work immediately, like me. I'm usually a productive person and have no need for useless fussing around with things that work fine. Frustration over your current machine seems to be breeding contempt for technology that just works (Mac) =).. have a good day.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I don't know what everyone is trippin' about, talking like the Mac doesn't have a "powerful" GUI. What the hell are you guys trying to do that you "think" can't be done on a Mac? I'd be glad to point out any falsehoods since most anti-Mac people try to compare a 1999 PIII w/ Win98 to a 1986 68k Mac running system 7.5. *roll eyes* In fact, I can't think of a single complicated task that the Mac CAN'T do. If you're talking about GUI customization then download Kaleidoscope and pick from the thousands of total conversions.
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I grow weary of your prattle. As far as:
There's just one problem those in this society
cannot eliminate those who are of a
lower class.
When technology grows to a certain point, we will.
For example, given nanotech, we would no longer
need laborers to clean, to build, to manuhfacture,
and a variety of other non-thinking occupations.
The growth between the have and have nots will
increase, with the political power being in the
hands of the haves. Then we will opiate those
non-thinking lower classes with such things as
professional sports, inane media shows, and other
trinkets to convince them that that is all they
need and lull them into a satiated stupor.
In the meantime, the Haves with political
power will intitute a policy of biochemical
and economic eugenics that favors themselves and
thus the lower classes will no longer be able to
breed rampantly. A very few ofthe lower class will
be able to rise but those that would rather wallow
in their inane stupor will pass on. While those
that understand will stay.
Give it 50 years buddy. You'll see.
We tried 'em. They work. :) We've had a few machines for a few months now, so we've been playing with 'em like mad -- and making sure Linux runs on 'em. Helping with the ROMs, for instance, and just doing general stress testing. The existing boards are rock-solid!
-- haaz.
: PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users. AMD motherboards are projected to be MUCH more expensive than BX boards for that same reason, until the volume comes. At least AMD remains compatible with Intel...
It is certainly true that there are a lot more x86 users than Mac users, but all those iMacs and iBooks give IBM and Motorolla decent volume. If Apple keeps gaining market share and a substantial number of Linux and Be users switch, you could see 15-20% market share for the PPC in a couple of years. Given that the x86 market is split several ways, that's probably enough to bring the cost down into competitive territory, especially if the G4 is as fast as it looks like it will be.
One particularly attractive option would be LinuxPPC labtops. Apple already has 400 MHz Powerbooks for about $3000. The PPC is a much smaller and cooler chip, and so you could see gigahertz G4 labtops by the middle of next year. That would leave Intel's anemic pertable Pentiums in the dust.
As for the Alpha, the Mac gives the PPC a much larger market share than the Alpha, so no matter how impressive the Alpha is in theory, it's not going to come down in price unless a consumer OS becomes available for it. The only hope of higher volumes on the Alpha is Linux users, and I doubt enough will switch to make it worthwhile.
Hey, could this in any way signal the return of OS/2 PPC edition? I was really pissed at IBM when they dropped that system. I was actually ready to switch to a mac if they'd have a decent system on it (macos doesn't count). That was before the linuxppc days.
Well suppose I wish to get the latest version of a compiler or a certain app (that linux alread), or to act as a server that could handle the slashdot effect, how about replace the hard drive for a model that has a certain higher rpm rating, get to a really nice customizable command interface (bash) set up automatically scheduled jobs, multitask well, artificial intelligence, most modern computer games worth a rat's ass, have Xemacs, let me access something besides the GUI if I want to just for the hell of it, change the desktop so that it looks/functions differently (linux window managers), Borland compilers, etc. All of these things are not avaible on a mac (to my knowledge, or are at least 2x more expensive or 4x more difficult to do).
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Let the PPC vendors and users write the necessary drivers themselves. "If you buid it they will come..."
I think all Apple ROM is in RAM nowadays. So there is potential for Licensing their current OS to vendors that meet Apple Harware compatabliity requirements.