If Apple was smart, they'd bring back the server chassis that they sold AIX on - with a hot swap array, duel power supplys and 2 (or 4?) 604s, it was the closest thing to enterprise class hardware Apple ever made. (Maybe with the G4s...)
Adding a fast SCSI card and mirrored drives to a desktop box does not make a server in the real world, where uptime is more important than money. --
I had the opposite problem just now - My default is flat mode (prefs page). When I click the Threaded link, I get the threaded page, but then I can't switch back to flat.
Also Flat mode as a default makes the Poll and some other things funky. --
Actually, I have never seen "vanilla" 9x/NT fail to recognize an IDE CD-ROM, even on a laptop. (or a SCSI one on a supported controller). Yet in my limited linux experience, it's happend three times.
You may need to get a whole mess of drivers to get the video/audio/modem working right, but for the basic stuff, Windows at least finds your drive controller. --
I guess if want to write hardware device drivers, having low level source code would be very helpful... (Hmmm.. maybe OSX/Intel is not that dead.)
Other than that, the only thing other open source projects (Linux, BSD) dont' have that Apple does have is the GUI and the OpenStep/YellowBox. And Apple isn't certainly isn't open sourceing that part.
If you've ever seen the "Revenge of the Nerds" PBS documentary, there's an interesting part:
When IBM broached Microsoft to write PC-DOS, they actually thought MS owned CP/M, because they'd only seen CP/M running on an Apple II with a Microsoft 8080 board inside. (But that's actually another story...)
Anyway, the real CP/M guy was too drunk or something, so MS ended up with the DOS contract. They took one look at the specs for the IBM PC and realized that it could be cloned by other manufactures. (IBMs only property was the 4K BIOS, which had open specifications.) They even called up Intel to conspire in this plan.
So, Microsoft brokered a deal where they got paid only $50,000 for MS-DOS 1.0, but they could re-sell it anywhere they wanted. So, the clone market was born even before the first PC was manufactured.
I guess we can draw the conculsion that IBM was either stupid, didn't care if their computer was cloned, or didn't think PCs were going to amount to anything. If anything, the PS2/OS2 initiatives were an attempt to capture market control from Intel and Microsoft that IBM never had anyways.
You act as if Intel was unheard of until IBM came around. Acutally, the very first personal computers (Altair, etc.) were Intel 8080-based.
The IBM PC was just a "16-bit" version of your average CP/M machine in it's day. Just substitute the 8088 for the 8080, and substitute a clone OS (MS-DOS) for CP/M.
The reason the IBM succeeded was that it solved the lack-of-standardization mess for floppy drives, video devices, tapes, etc that existed in the CP/M world. Plus, with up to 640K RAM, it could take 10 times the amount of memory as an 8080-based system.
Early Sun machines used the 68K, as did some IBM machines, but those were big $$$. --
I would give customers the option - "We can ring up your purchase, plus the 8.75% California and SF sales taxes, OR, you can punch in your item number at that Internet terminal and not pay sales tax."
Obviously, this is a big loophole, and in f*ed up states like California where localities rely on sales taxes for most of their funding, it would be a big problem for those of us who like paved streets and sewer systems.
Windows 98 is slow and has too much bloat. KDM is slow and has too much bloat. Gnome is slow and has too much bloat. Window Maker is slow and has too much bloat. I like yeoldewm from 1985, it's quick!
No flame, but perhaps the overhead involved in creating a full featured UI is just too much "bloat" for some people. Maybe you can't have your cake and eat it too.
No longer a day-to-day Mac user, but still use one a few times a month. I use Word 98 on a 8500 and Word 6 on a Quadra 950.
Word 6 is a litte slow, but is still a hellava lot better than WordPerfect 3.0, which is the last WP-Mac version I tried. Claris seems feature deficient for me, although it's probably fine for most people. --
Apparently all MS apps are written on this psuedocode engine. This info was from a few years back, but according to some MS guy, it would be no problem to port VisualBasic or Access to the Mac, "if there was sufficent market demand" (read "if we didn't want to keep the Mac a nitch platform").
That indicates that Microsoft applications have very little OS dependancy. Which makes sense, if you notice that the toolbars and file dialogs in Office don't look like the standard Windows/IE ones. (And MacOffice 4.2, which had a look and feel more like Windows than MacOS.)
If this is still true, they probably could do a port without GTK, QT, or Motif. It would just look like the Windows version (which would fit well with KDE.) --
Bill Gates: "Oh NO! The iMac has stolen 5% of our market share. What do we do?"
ms employee: "We could stop distributing Office on floppy disk, because that costs us $3 more per copy."
Bill Gates: "Great Idea. You get a Raise!!!"
other ms employee: "Somebody put a free unix on the Internet. Unix's market share has increased 0.1%!!"
Bill Gates: "Only pot smokers and people who don't buy our stuff anyway use Unix. Take a look at FoxPro for Xenix and see how hard it would be to port to this new Unix. And tell ZDNet."
is a better product than anything WordPerfect, Claris, or anyone else has got. Sure it's slower than WinOffice, but it is feature complete and unless you are crunching lots of numbers, who cares if Excel runs a little slow. --
Office 2000 is not going to be the client-side only suite that we know and love. There's going to be an "Office Server" running on top of IIS and Exchange which will attempt to provide Notes-like groupware functionality.
I doubt Microsoft is (or should be) worried enough about the Linux on the desktop*, to use a vaporware Office to stiffle Linux desktops. What they could do, however, is promise a "MS Office Server for Linux" which might hold off NT->Linux server conversions until it is shipped (which would be 18 months after the Windows version.
*If people really didn't want to use Windows, they'd be buying more Macs. Why? Many more of the pieces are there already, when compared to Linux. --
Slashdot Mirror
"For the hell of it" is the only answer I got.
--
If Apple was smart, they'd bring back the server chassis that they sold AIX on - with a hot swap array, duel power supplys and 2 (or 4?) 604s, it was the closest thing to enterprise class hardware Apple ever made. (Maybe with the G4s...)
Adding a fast SCSI card and mirrored drives to a desktop box does not make a server in the real world, where uptime is more important than money.
--
I had the opposite problem just now - My default is flat mode (prefs page). When I click the Threaded link, I get the threaded page, but then I can't switch back to flat.
Also Flat mode as a default makes the Poll and some other things funky.
--
Earlier there was two apple threads -
1) Apple releases Source Code
2) MacOS-X released
#2 seems to have disappeared. Database problems or sinister evil cryptofascism?
--
Maybe someone can explain the Apple/GNU rift in the eighties to those of us who weren't paying attention back then.
The only thing I know was that it was really hard to do certain things on A/UX because of the GNU ban.
10 PRINT "A/UX HAS A BETTER GUI THAN LINUX",,
20 GOTO 10
30 REM Sorry!
--
Striking a blow against the your-solution-is-not-my-favorite-so-it-sucks-and-
--
I can name one hardware architecture I'd like to see supported by OS/X -- NeXTCubes!
(Maybe Apple forgot to take out the old low level Black hardware stuff, and there's something in there the Linux/68K people can use. One can hope.)
--
Actually, I have never seen "vanilla" 9x/NT fail to recognize an IDE CD-ROM, even on a laptop. (or a SCSI one on a supported controller). Yet in my limited linux experience, it's happend three times.
You may need to get a whole mess of drivers to get the video/audio/modem working right, but for the basic stuff, Windows at least finds your drive controller.
--
Looked to me like GNUStep was a long way away at my last visit to their web site.
If finished, I guess GNUStep + Darwin + KDE/Gnome = Free MacOS-X
--
If Microsoft, Apple, or IBM includes a driver with their operating systems, it probably will work out of the box.
If Linux includes a driver in the kernal or in a distribution, it might work, it might not.
Fortunately, there are many workarounds, but in my experience (with RedHat), if the driver craps out, you're not going to get very far.
--
I guess if want to write hardware device drivers, having low level source code would be very helpful... (Hmmm.. maybe OSX/Intel is not that dead.)
Other than that, the only thing other open source projects (Linux, BSD) dont' have that Apple does have is the GUI and the OpenStep/YellowBox. And Apple isn't certainly isn't open sourceing that part.
--
Right. Go ask NEC how many Windows NT MIPS systems were sold.
(Just so no one forgets, in the USA, NEC is just another word for Packard Bell. There stuff is complete crapo.)
--
The $50 "Microsoft Tax" is primarily for technical support. (MS makes it's money in other ways, such as software bundeling)
Guess how much the "RedHat Tax" costs for tech support? $50!
Or are you going to sell a computer to Granny with no tech support?
--
I'm surprised a "news for nerds" site would harbor so much anti-digital resentment.
Have you ever tried to develop film? Waaay more nerdy than pushing buttons on a computer.
--
If you've ever seen the "Revenge of the Nerds" PBS documentary, there's an interesting part:
When IBM broached Microsoft to write PC-DOS, they actually thought MS owned CP/M, because they'd only seen CP/M running on an Apple II with a Microsoft 8080 board inside. (But that's actually another story...)
Anyway, the real CP/M guy was too drunk or something, so MS ended up with the DOS contract. They took one look at the specs for the IBM PC and realized that it could be cloned by other manufactures. (IBMs only property was the 4K BIOS, which had open specifications.) They even called up Intel to conspire in this plan.
So, Microsoft brokered a deal where they got paid only $50,000 for MS-DOS 1.0, but they could re-sell it anywhere they wanted. So, the clone market was born even before the first PC was manufactured.
I guess we can draw the conculsion that IBM was either stupid, didn't care if their computer was cloned, or didn't think PCs were going to amount to anything. If anything, the PS2/OS2 initiatives were an attempt to capture market control from Intel and Microsoft that IBM never had anyways.
--
You act as if Intel was unheard of until IBM came around. Acutally, the very first personal computers (Altair, etc.) were Intel 8080-based.
The IBM PC was just a "16-bit" version of your average CP/M machine in it's day. Just substitute the 8088 for the 8080, and substitute a clone OS (MS-DOS) for CP/M.
The reason the IBM succeeded was that it solved the lack-of-standardization mess for floppy drives, video devices, tapes, etc that existed in the CP/M world. Plus, with up to 640K RAM, it could take 10 times the amount of memory as an 8080-based system.
Early Sun machines used the 68K, as did some IBM machines, but those were big $$$.
--
I would give customers the option - "We can ring up your purchase, plus the 8.75% California and SF sales taxes, OR, you can punch in your item number at that Internet terminal and not pay sales tax."
Obviously, this is a big loophole, and in f*ed up states like California where localities rely on sales taxes for most of their funding, it would be a big problem for those of us who like paved streets and sewer systems.
--
Windows 98 is slow and has too much bloat.
KDM is slow and has too much bloat.
Gnome is slow and has too much bloat.
Window Maker is slow and has too much bloat.
I like yeoldewm from 1985, it's quick!
No flame, but perhaps the overhead involved in creating a full featured UI is just too much "bloat" for some people. Maybe you can't have your cake and eat it too.
--
No longer a day-to-day Mac user, but still use one a few times a month. I use Word 98 on a 8500 and Word 6 on a Quadra 950.
Word 6 is a litte slow, but is still a hellava lot better than WordPerfect 3.0, which is the last WP-Mac version I tried. Claris seems feature deficient for me, although it's probably fine for most people.
--
Office will never be on my computer you see,
cuz it costs $600 and emacs is free.
It's buggy and broken and slow
And it's toolbars remind me of Windoze
So what if WordPerfect has even more bloat
And Applix is broken and StarOffice is choad
Their not from Microsoft you see,
And then my peecee is emmess free.
Which makes me so morally superior to the guys in the dorm
Who'd rather drink beer and chase girls than compile xforms.
The respect that I've gotten from my honorable stand,
hasn't got me laid yet but I'm sure that it can.
Now if only the boss didn't use fast save,
I'd format my FAT partition, even the games.
--
To follow myself up...
Apparently all MS apps are written on this psuedocode engine. This info was from a few years back, but according to some MS guy, it would be no problem to port VisualBasic or Access to the Mac, "if there was sufficent market demand" (read "if we didn't want to keep the Mac a nitch platform").
That indicates that Microsoft applications have very little OS dependancy. Which makes sense, if you notice that the toolbars and file dialogs in Office don't look like the standard Windows/IE ones. (And MacOffice 4.2, which had a look and feel more like Windows than MacOS.)
If this is still true, they probably could do a port without GTK, QT, or Motif. It would just look like the Windows version (which would fit well with KDE.)
--
Bill Gates: "Oh NO! The iMac has stolen 5% of our market share. What do we do?"
ms employee: "We could stop distributing Office on floppy disk, because that costs us $3 more per copy."
Bill Gates: "Great Idea. You get a Raise!!!"
other ms employee: "Somebody put a free unix on the Internet. Unix's market share has increased 0.1%!!"
Bill Gates: "Only pot smokers and people who don't buy our stuff anyway use Unix. Take a look at FoxPro for Xenix and see how hard it would be to port to this new Unix. And tell ZDNet."
--
I remember MS Flight Simulator on my friends Fat Mac. Took over the whole screen and put these DOSsy menus on top. Excelent!
--
is a better product than anything WordPerfect, Claris, or anyone else has got. Sure it's slower than WinOffice, but it is feature complete and unless you are crunching lots of numbers, who cares if Excel runs a little slow.
--
Office 2000 is not going to be the client-side only suite that we know and love. There's going to be an "Office Server" running on top of IIS and Exchange which will attempt to provide Notes-like groupware functionality.
I doubt Microsoft is (or should be) worried enough about the Linux on the desktop*, to use a vaporware Office to stiffle Linux desktops. What they could do, however, is promise a "MS Office Server for Linux" which might hold off NT->Linux server conversions until it is shipped (which would be 18 months after the Windows version.
*If people really didn't want to use Windows, they'd be buying more Macs. Why? Many more of the pieces are there already, when compared to Linux.
--