But if it REALLY must be mini, you can probably find a suitable mini-itx system somewhere. Just google for it.
But that's the point isn't it... Apple has delivered a great "mini" system. Why fight it? Hell it's even UNIX based what more do you want? Linux? You do know it can run Linux-PPC, right?
Everybody knows that people buy Linux servers just so they can install pirated versions of Windows on them!
I know this was intended to be a joke, but seriously, have you looked at the price of RedHat Enterprise lately? It ranges between $179 upto $3500. Of course that's for the "support" contract not the software, but no company will let you buy software to run your business without support.
The sad part is, when you try to get support from RedHat it sucks. Because redhat doesn't support "everything" that entails GNU/Linux. They give you a best effort support but will not support apache, mysql, tomcat, etc. So what are you really getting for that $3500 support contract?
Completely wrong, Apache was at roughly 50% 5 years ago and is now at roughly 70%
You didn't even read what i wrote... Sure, 5 years ago apache was probably around 50% but Netscape Enterprise WebServer was probably the other 25%... Now netscape accounts for almost nothing on the web.
Linux replaces only Windows while other Unices maintain marketshare
Hmm... First hand I have seen aix servers and solaris servers replaced with Linux servers in an enterprise environment.
I wish netcraft was working, I wanted to show you the stats... look em up sometime for www.americanexpress.com.
You can't just show stats of how Apache is 75% of the websites, Apache used to have even higher market website market share back 5 years ago and microsoft had almost no market share as a webserver. (at least according to netcraft). Apache has almost completely eatten Netscape Webserver's place and I think that microsoft webservers were typically "new servers" not replacing apache servers. So even though microsofts market share got larger, I feel they also increased the numbers overall, not replaced.
But that still proves my main point, Linux currently eats mainly into UNIX, not Windows.
This news is interesting but what would be interesting to see is which markets Linux servers are eating up. People of/. are going to assume "FINALLY THE DOWN FALL OF MICROSOFT!". But the truth of the matter is Linux is probably eating up the markets of AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Alpha, etc. Look at Sun's stock.... Down over 30% from last year? Even if this statistic is true I don't think Microsoft is probably losing any business but rather our fellow UNIX brothers. Go Linux!?
I see a lot of people talking about possible reasons for this news to be true. IBM wanting to get rid of Microsoft, IBM being so corporate focused, etc. I also see reasons why there is "a snowball's chance in hell" that IBM would want MacOSX. Such as IBM could just repackge BSD or use their own AIX. BUT, there is something that nobody has mentioned yet.
I'm sure IBM HATES putting "Intel Inside" stickers on their laptops and machines they use for desktops. Throwing a PowerMac under a desk at a client's operation is a DOUBLE win for IBM. Eats into Microsoft and it doesn't say "Intel" on it anywhere.
IBM and Apple have one major thing in comon. They both sell HIGH quality solutions which come with a pricetag. Sure, Apple has some sub $1000 solutions, but there are venders out there selling sub $300 systems which totally lack quality. Sellings systems with such a pricetag requires consumer confidence and a "NAME". Receiving a product purchased from IBM having a sticker on it that says "Intel Inside" is a HUGE blow to IBM.
I don't know about you, but I was shocked to see the POWERMAC G5 when it was released. My VERY FIRST thought of the Powermac G5 was "This looks like as if Apple had designed a system for IBM." I don't know exactly why I had that thought, maybe it was all the hype around the IBM PPC 970. But if you look at a powermac, it looks like the combination of eligance but the look of power. In otherwords, Apple + IBM.
I'll be buying a PC now, since I can get an entire x86 box with three times the horsepower for the same price as that upgrade.
That's an interesting take on things. The fact that doom3 requires a G5 is going to make you buy a PC. In what world did you live in where a MAC was the ultimate gaming machine? In what world did you live in where PCs weren't cheaper that Macs? In the world I live in PCs have always been cheaper and PCs were the game machines.
The slogan I saw years ago that I kinda' live by, "Macs for Productivity and PCs for Games..." If you want to play games you get a windows machine. If you want to get some work done without screwing with your OS all day, you get a mac. I own 4 macs and NO PCs. I guess I changed my moto a while back cause now I have a gamecube and PS2 for that. I use my powerbook all day, it's nice to just play games on a HUGE TV with an awesome stereo without having to muck around with virus', booting, rebuilding, maintaining another computer, etc...
I cleaned up a lot of macs in the pre-OSX days when a handful of annoyances like macro-viruses were common.
You should clarify that statement. "....when a handful of annoyances like microsoft office macro-viruses were common."
I'm a huge OSX supporter, and I wouldn't touch a mac with PRE OSX. OS9 and below are such different worlds from OSX. OSX is a developer's dream environment. I wouldn't spend my own money on any other platform no matter how cheap a NON OSX machine is. And price is not a valid reason to not get a mac these days. The iBooks and iMacs are powerful enough and cheap enough to compare with any PC.
When I was 10 years, old back in 1984, my dad had an 8088 XT and a 300 baud modem. I had an older friend who showed me how to connect to BBS' and find BBS' in my area. By the time I was around 12 years old I was Sysop of my own WWIV BBS. I paid the $25 to Wayne Bell to become a registered WWIV Sysop and legal owner of the WWIV C Source Code. I hacked that BBS up till no tomorrow. I made a ton of my own mods and learned tons of skills to make me be where I am today.
I think it's too bad what has become of "computer professionals" these days. I knew more about how a computer worked and what was really going on behind the scenes at 12 years old than lots of newly found Microsoft Windows MCSE graduates whom I have talked to. It appears that the average "computer professional" these days can get away with just knowning about troubleshooting the windows operating system and the flaws it has and not knowing one stitch of code in ANY language or how a computer really works. Very sad.
Your "experiment" has already been done: linux IS the GPL case, and the various BSDs are the BSD case. If linux has been wildly more succesful than the BSD variants...
well...what does that tell you?
Well, If you want to use the previous existing kernels as the "test case" then lets see what has happened then.
In the BSD corner we have MacOSX
In the Linux Corner we have variants of RedHat, Debian, SuSE, and a few others.
I don't want to turn this into a MacOSX vs Linux discussion, but the main reason I use MacOSX over Linux is because MacOSX has several major commercial companies developing software for MacOSX and management of the OS and libraries is completely simple and flawless.
Linux on the other hand has very, very, very little commercial support (yes there's Maya and a handfull of others) and is a nightmare to maintain. Updates are extreamly frequent, and if you lag behind you're going to be stuck with a serious security issue on your hand.
So to sum up, BSD looks like it's the better model. I would like to see a company do an overhaul to Linux like Apple did with BSD.
I personally believe the last string holding Linux back is the GPL. If there was ONE linux fork that could be under the BSD tree and one under the GPL tree, how does that hurt anything? The GPL believe that the GPL is the best thing in the world and that's the best way to develop software. So why don't the GPL followers just continue development with the GPL and then the BSD believers could develop on the BSD tree. And we'll get to see which becomes the BEST linux in the end.
It would be an excellent way to actually test the beliefs of the GPL vs BSD. Uptill now it's just speculation and feelings as to what would happen.
Microsoft has had so many bugs and security flaws over the years that companies are completely immune to bad press for Microsoft. I wonder how much more of this people will finally take until they switch to MacOSX / Linux. I would highly suggest the MacOSX route....
I'll buy it without the intention of playing it very often, just to support companies that take the time to port fresh games to the Mac.
I would think that would be true for a lot of people on macs. We want to let the software vendors know there is a market and to continue or start making more software for us. I would estimate that more percentage of gamers on the mac actually buy the games than on windows. That probably makes the mac market at least something companies should look at. But there is no question even with the huge numbers of piracy on the windows side there is much more chance of success on windows over any other platform.
I wish they would release their numbers for sales for each platform. I guess with ID they just allow a download for the binaries on linux, but they could at least show some sort of stats showing the numbers.
It's all about Google's Business model. They need to show you advertisments to help pay for the storage space, bandwidth, and development. They want you to log in and check your mail manually. Everytime an automated tool checks your mail for you they lose advertising potential and their stats of how many hits they get per second/hour/day are skewed. Being able to reliably tell their customers how many people are seeing their ads probably drove most of that.
Probably something like Apple's Spotlight which will be released in OSX 10.4 (Tiger). Like others are pointing out, it seems that Apple brings out all the new ideas and everyone else follows suit.
I'll bite. What are the 'competing layers' and how do they make it less coherent?
He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. yes, there is a Mach kernel, a BSD Unix Subsystem, and Quarts (extreme, whatever), Audio Units, etc.. But honstely you need all the 'layers' to have a functional operating system. You need a kernel, you need a subsystem to do things behind the scenes, and you need a UI.
OSX is layered perfectly. If you want to talk about a thrown together system look at Windows XP. You have layers and layers and layers of APIs and subshells that are all different and don't work together. It's layers and layers of things built up from Windows 1.0, windows 3.0, windows 3.11, windows 9x, windows 200x, etc... I'm sure longhorn won't be any better.
Telephone and power companies are forced by the government to provide service to even the most remote areas without charging more money for service in the remote areas. So these companies predict growth and invest in building up areas mostly because they 'have to' but they are able to charge enough to everyone to ofset this problem.
Now you think 'poor poor big company' because they're forced to service those remote areas and now they aren't getting the growth they have anticipated? WRONG...
These companies are not forced to stick to old technologies. They have decided to stick to technologies for as long as they can, but the telco company could be offering much better solutions to everyone but they were 'comfortable' with the situation. They wanted to milk the old technology for all it had. Instead of spending all the resources trying to install new technologies in everyone's homes, they were trying to squish the new technology. Remember all those attempts at lobbying for internet taxes and things? Those were attempts to make internet more expensive than typical communications so they wouldn't have to change their ways. Their thoughts were, "Why install new technology when we haven't made our projected return on your current technology?". The answer is obviously, "To save your company from being obsoleted by the companies installing the new technologies."
Songs that are legally purchased with iTMS and shared using Rendezvous (iTunes or other) wouldn't be able to be played by other people unless they were authorized.
Nobody has cracked the encryption to date. They have found ways to unencapsulate the file from being encrypted but unless your machine is authorized for the songs they are worthless. Copy the songs till your heart is content, you can't use the files. I believe this model will still enable iTunes sharing to continue the way it is.
I am actually very upset that the original way iTunes shared music was changed. You used to be able to give your friends your IP address and they could connect to your iTunes music (by default out of the box).. but then a TON of sites went up where you could register your IP address of your iTunes library and it would pull down your list of songs and have it searchable to use much like Napster. This obviously lasted long enough till the next incremental iTunes release came out and "fixed it" so sharing worked only on the local network.
Why not just get a cheap computer with a nice sound card and power a sweat system with it. You should be able to get optical audio out without too much of a problem.
Uh, why not? Because the Airport Express is all of that and more for $120.00. Have you even looked at what the airport express offers?
they could never compete with MS because they bother with all that quality controll non-sense
Well, I think the main thing the seporates Apple and Microsoft is that Apple does lots of research of video tapeing people. They watch people using new proposed interfaces and lots of times new interfaces are inspired by watching people using the current interfaces. Microsoft developers appear to do things according to what they feel best. As a developer myself I have found that "what I feel best" doesn't always translate to the most intuitive system.
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The sad part is, when you try to get support from RedHat it sucks. Because redhat doesn't support "everything" that entails GNU/Linux. They give you a best effort support but will not support apache, mysql, tomcat, etc. So what are you really getting for that $3500 support contract?
I wish netcraft was working, I wanted to show you the stats... look em up sometime for www.americanexpress.com.
You can't just show stats of how Apache is 75% of the websites, Apache used to have even higher market website market share back 5 years ago and microsoft had almost no market share as a webserver. (at least according to netcraft). Apache has almost completely eatten Netscape Webserver's place and I think that microsoft webservers were typically "new servers" not replacing apache servers. So even though microsofts market share got larger, I feel they also increased the numbers overall, not replaced.
But that still proves my main point, Linux currently eats mainly into UNIX, not Windows.
This news is interesting but what would be interesting to see is which markets Linux servers are eating up. People of /. are going to assume "FINALLY THE DOWN FALL OF MICROSOFT!". But the truth of the matter is Linux is probably eating up the markets of AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Alpha, etc. Look at Sun's stock.... Down over 30% from last year? Even if this statistic is true I don't think Microsoft is probably losing any business but rather our fellow UNIX brothers. Go Linux!?
I see a lot of people talking about possible reasons for this news to be true. IBM wanting to get rid of Microsoft, IBM being so corporate focused, etc. I also see reasons why there is "a snowball's chance in hell" that IBM would want MacOSX. Such as IBM could just repackge BSD or use their own AIX. BUT, there is something that nobody has mentioned yet.
I'm sure IBM HATES putting "Intel Inside" stickers on their laptops and machines they use for desktops. Throwing a PowerMac under a desk at a client's operation is a DOUBLE win for IBM. Eats into Microsoft and it doesn't say "Intel" on it anywhere.
IBM and Apple have one major thing in comon. They both sell HIGH quality solutions which come with a pricetag. Sure, Apple has some sub $1000 solutions, but there are venders out there selling sub $300 systems which totally lack quality. Sellings systems with such a pricetag requires consumer confidence and a "NAME". Receiving a product purchased from IBM having a sticker on it that says "Intel Inside" is a HUGE blow to IBM.
I don't know about you, but I was shocked to see the POWERMAC G5 when it was released. My VERY FIRST thought of the Powermac G5 was "This looks like as if Apple had designed a system for IBM." I don't know exactly why I had that thought, maybe it was all the hype around the IBM PPC 970. But if you look at a powermac, it looks like the combination of eligance but the look of power. In otherwords, Apple + IBM.
The slogan I saw years ago that I kinda' live by, "Macs for Productivity and PCs for Games..." If you want to play games you get a windows machine. If you want to get some work done without screwing with your OS all day, you get a mac. I own 4 macs and NO PCs. I guess I changed my moto a while back cause now I have a gamecube and PS2 for that. I use my powerbook all day, it's nice to just play games on a HUGE TV with an awesome stereo without having to muck around with virus', booting, rebuilding, maintaining another computer, etc...
I'm a huge OSX supporter, and I wouldn't touch a mac with PRE OSX. OS9 and below are such different worlds from OSX. OSX is a developer's dream environment. I wouldn't spend my own money on any other platform no matter how cheap a NON OSX machine is. And price is not a valid reason to not get a mac these days. The iBooks and iMacs are powerful enough and cheap enough to compare with any PC.
When I was 10 years, old back in 1984, my dad had an 8088 XT and a 300 baud modem. I had an older friend who showed me how to connect to BBS' and find BBS' in my area. By the time I was around 12 years old I was Sysop of my own WWIV BBS. I paid the $25 to Wayne Bell to become a registered WWIV Sysop and legal owner of the WWIV C Source Code. I hacked that BBS up till no tomorrow. I made a ton of my own mods and learned tons of skills to make me be where I am today.
I think it's too bad what has become of "computer professionals" these days. I knew more about how a computer worked and what was really going on behind the scenes at 12 years old than lots of newly found Microsoft Windows MCSE graduates whom I have talked to. It appears that the average "computer professional" these days can get away with just knowning about troubleshooting the windows operating system and the flaws it has and not knowing one stitch of code in ANY language or how a computer really works. Very sad.
In the BSD corner we have MacOSX
In the Linux Corner we have variants of RedHat, Debian, SuSE, and a few others.
I don't want to turn this into a MacOSX vs Linux discussion, but the main reason I use MacOSX over Linux is because MacOSX has several major commercial companies developing software for MacOSX and management of the OS and libraries is completely simple and flawless.
Linux on the other hand has very, very, very little commercial support (yes there's Maya and a handfull of others) and is a nightmare to maintain. Updates are extreamly frequent, and if you lag behind you're going to be stuck with a serious security issue on your hand.
So to sum up, BSD looks like it's the better model. I would like to see a company do an overhaul to Linux like Apple did with BSD.
I personally believe the last string holding Linux back is the GPL. If there was ONE linux fork that could be under the BSD tree and one under the GPL tree, how does that hurt anything? The GPL believe that the GPL is the best thing in the world and that's the best way to develop software. So why don't the GPL followers just continue development with the GPL and then the BSD believers could develop on the BSD tree. And we'll get to see which becomes the BEST linux in the end.
It would be an excellent way to actually test the beliefs of the GPL vs BSD. Uptill now it's just speculation and feelings as to what would happen.
Microsoft has had so many bugs and security flaws over the years that companies are completely immune to bad press for Microsoft. I wonder how much more of this people will finally take until they switch to MacOSX / Linux. I would highly suggest the MacOSX route ....
I wish they would release their numbers for sales for each platform. I guess with ID they just allow a download for the binaries on linux, but they could at least show some sort of stats showing the numbers.
It's all about Google's Business model. They need to show you advertisments to help pay for the storage space, bandwidth, and development. They want you to log in and check your mail manually. Everytime an automated tool checks your mail for you they lose advertising potential and their stats of how many hits they get per second/hour/day are skewed. Being able to reliably tell their customers how many people are seeing their ads probably drove most of that.
OSX is layered perfectly. If you want to talk about a thrown together system look at Windows XP. You have layers and layers and layers of APIs and subshells that are all different and don't work together. It's layers and layers of things built up from Windows 1.0, windows 3.0, windows 3.11, windows 9x, windows 200x, etc... I'm sure longhorn won't be any better.
These are better odds then I'm anticipating on gains on my 401k funds and me receiving payout of the social security I pay to every pay check.
Now you think 'poor poor big company' because they're forced to service those remote areas and now they aren't getting the growth they have anticipated? WRONG...
These companies are not forced to stick to old technologies. They have decided to stick to technologies for as long as they can, but the telco company could be offering much better solutions to everyone but they were 'comfortable' with the situation. They wanted to milk the old technology for all it had. Instead of spending all the resources trying to install new technologies in everyone's homes, they were trying to squish the new technology. Remember all those attempts at lobbying for internet taxes and things? Those were attempts to make internet more expensive than typical communications so they wouldn't have to change their ways. Their thoughts were, "Why install new technology when we haven't made our projected return on your current technology?". The answer is obviously, "To save your company from being obsoleted by the companies installing the new technologies."
Might be cool to have Microsoft Word and Excel as OSX 10.5 Dashboard Widgets.
Songs that are legally purchased with iTMS and shared using Rendezvous (iTunes or other) wouldn't be able to be played by other people unless they were authorized.
Nobody has cracked the encryption to date. They have found ways to unencapsulate the file from being encrypted but unless your machine is authorized for the songs they are worthless. Copy the songs till your heart is content, you can't use the files. I believe this model will still enable iTunes sharing to continue the way it is.
I am actually very upset that the original way iTunes shared music was changed. You used to be able to give your friends your IP address and they could connect to your iTunes music (by default out of the box).. but then a TON of sites went up where you could register your IP address of your iTunes library and it would pull down your list of songs and have it searchable to use much like Napster. This obviously lasted long enough till the next incremental iTunes release came out and "fixed it" so sharing worked only on the local network.
How about features like, "Increased performance by 60%, less memory leaks/bloat, and increased stability."
I'll be letting that one sit for about 6 months before I touch it...