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.
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.
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
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
by
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
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
: 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.
Re:Waiting for the other shoe to fall....
by
znu
·
· 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.
Slashdot Mirror
Need to look more carefully. Thanks
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.
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.
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.
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?
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
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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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
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.
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:
make
make install
commercial != proprietary
If it's proprietary (closed), I'm likely not all that interested anyhow.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
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
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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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.
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.
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. :-)
: 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.
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.
*Yes, I know it's not Unix(tm).
This space unintentionally left unblank.