People couldn't legally build IBM PC clones, either.
Until the DMCA, which didn't pass until nearly 20 years later, reverse engineering was not only legal but IBM had recently lost a big court case on that very subject in relation to their mainframe business.
the PowerBook line is frozen in terms of upgrades.
There are faster G4s than they're using, and the e600 would solve the only real problem the G4 has... the slow memory bus. A dual-core e600 would smoke a 970, watt for watt, and be MUCH more forgiving of the smaller cache of a laptop because the 7 stage pipeline doesn't have nearly as big a problem with cache misses.
It seems like even Apple has forgotten the Megahertz Myth.
OS X is gonna smoke on a Intel 3.2Ghz box !!
The 2.7 GHz G5 is right up there with the 3.2 GHz Intels.
We're in the era of release fatigue. People can't just throw away all their existing software overnight.
Agreed. Apple would have to transition over years. They only quit selling Macs that could boot to OS 9 last year, which means (if I'm not mistaken) they supported Macs that could run 68000 binaries for a decade after the PPC transition.
I'd think Apple could roll out their own hardware DRM stuff in a similar timeframe as they could switch to x86, and avoid a bunch of the problems they'd have with a switch.
Good point. They could put it in the video card, since ATI does custom firmware for Apple anyway.
Better than one on a closed-source operating system. Although even then, it's pretty useless.
You're looking at it from the point of view of an engineer. Try looking at it from the point of view of someone who believes in DRM. Whether or not DRM can possibly work, they're going to assume it can, and treat anything that weakens the DRM as a problem. If Hollywood pressure is enough to get Apple to switch, then it seems to me Hollywood pressure may be enough to kill open-source Darwin as well.
It doesn't matter whether DRM works or not, if the result is the same either way.
1. Other than the Wired speculation, the only good reason I've seen for a switch to Intel would be a retail OS X for clones.
2. Pretty unlikely. Cloning the Windows API is not just the mother of all emulation challenges, it's liable to drive the developer insane. I never really appreciated the Necronomicon properly until I got started working on Windows software.
3. You mean open-source the Cocoa frameworks, or open the APIs for cloning? There's already a partial Cocoa framework clone for UNIX/X11 in GNUstep.
This Wired article could be on the money, but if Apple's switching to get Intel's DRM technology the odds of them ever releasing another Darwin source tree are pretty slim. What good is a DRM scheme on an open-source operating system?
I have to say that this is the most depressing reason for a processor switch ever.
Could be, but if Apple's doing this the odds of them ever releasing another Darwin source tree are pretty slim. What good's a DRM scheme if you're releasing the source to a lower layer than the one DRM scheme operates at?
I have to say that this is the most depressing reason for a processor switch ever.
there are *major* heat issues with IBM's processors, and it's looking like there isn't much room to grow for them in the near term if IBM pursues this sort of chip design.
There are major heat problems with Intel's processors, too. They just don't get the same kind of insane cooling system because they're not trying to keep them cool and quiet.
Since x86 machines are cheaper for the foreign OEMs to build than PPC machines
A PPC motherboard doesn't cost any more to build than an x86 motherboard. The only reason there's not a market for PPC motherboards is that there's no consumer OS you can buy to run on them. You can't run Mac OS X on them, because Apple doesn't license Mac OS X for them.
MS wants people to build clones because Apple lives and dies on hardware margins
But people can't legally build Mac clones. Moving to x86 won't change the fact that people still can't legally build Mac clones. They can build "OS free Mac compatible" computers, but they can do that now... they don't because there's no legal market for that.
putting a MacOS API into the Windows released for those clones would [...]...be irrelevant. It might even sell some Macs: it's a much nicer development environment than Windows. If developers could write a program for Mac OS, and not mess around with Win32, and have it run on Windows or Mac, who in their right mind would choose Windows?
Apple has no divine right to margins if it is no longer the single source of that hardware.
It's not the hardware, it's the software. Apple is a software company that makes its money off the margins on the hardware they package that software in. But if it wasn't for the software, they wouldn't sell any of that hardware.
They're just like Cisco, really.
Which means: people are paying a 50% or greater premium on their computers so they can run Mac OS. Not, in most cases, because they want to run Mac OS apps... because there's MORE apps for Windows... but because they want to run Mac OS itself.
Most people don't know or care what OS they're running.
And every one of "those people" are already running Windows. The only people using Macs are the people who are using them because they have software they want to run that doesn't run on Windows. But pretty much the only software that runs on the Mac that you can't get on WIndows is Mac OS X itself.
And try answering this one again: I ask "Why on earth would Microsoft doing anything at all on it make it cheap?" I didn't ask "Why would Microsoft want to make it cheap", I asked "How could Microsoft do anything to make it cheap". They can't. All they can do is sell software. And they can't sell Mac OS. They might, after a heroic effort, produce an emulator for a version of Mac OS a couple of years old... but it's not a sure thing that they could do it well enough. And if they did, they'd be undermining their own market!
So let's take it from the top:
Apple won't be able to maintain their margins if Taiwanese are cloning their boxes right and left
True, but irrelevant, because regardless of the processor nobody can legally build an Apple clone.
and left because MS wants OEMs to build clones
True, but irrelevant. OEMs are already building "non-Apple" Apple clones. You can buy one now, plug in a PPC CPU, and have your "it's not a Mac but you could probably run OS X on it if you wanted to break the law" clone. If Apple used an x86, you would STILL not be able to buy any more of Apple clone. ALL you would be able to do would be to pirate OS X.
MS wants people to build clones because Apple lives and dies on hardware margins
MS wants lots of things, but they can't change the fact that people want to buy Macs and you can't legally build Mac clones, any more than they can change the fact that people want to run UNIX and DO NOT CONSIDER even Microsoft's excellent Interix on Windows an adequate replacement.
And cloning UNIX is MUCH easier to do than cloning OS X and everything on top of it.
if Apple moves to x86 chips MS-friendly OEMs will be willing to play along
They don't need to. If Apple moves to x86 the clones they already make will be just as cloney as any deliberate Apple clone they could make. No more, and no le
This is a hole in Safari, not Dashboard. Dashboard is inherently too powerful for widgets to be treated as a "safe" file, even if "automatically open safe files after downloading" was an acceptable thing to do.
Which it isn't.
HOWEVER, this exploit does not actually launch the applet. You have to run it in Dashboard to launch it. This is a design flaw in Safari, yes, and Apple's fix is incomplete. But it's at best a social engineering attack, it's not a situation where the applet will launch immediately the way ActiveX will. Even if you (a) have "open safe files" on, and (b) you're on an old version of Tiger or you reflexively hit OK to the dialog box, you still have one more step before you're stung.
This is not like ActiveX where one incautious click on "OK" and you're infected.
The main reason there aren't more Mac viruses seems to be lack of market share, not lack of opportunity.
This is the absolutely worst problem on the Mac so far, and it's still infinitely better than Windows. So I disagree, Apple's been frustratingly obtuse about the problems they keep running into with "auto-open" and Webkit's use of LaunchServices, but there is still no exploit that's more than a "social engineering accelerator".
So far, the biggest distinction Apple has over MS is that Apple sells its own hardware and MacOS will not run on any other platform.
So far, the biggest distinction Apple has over MS is Mac OS X. Everything else is secondary.
If MacOS suddenly runs on x86 chips, a certain number of people will switch from MacOS to the sure-to-be-released Windows version tailored for that new x86 Macintosh.
Why? The x86 Mac will cost more than a comparable Wintel machine, even if the Wintel machine is as well made, because Apple's got higher margins. They can get away with higher margins because people want to run their software.
Especially if Microsoft builds a MacOS API into that version of Windows.
They could do that now. You used to be able to buy Openstep for Windows, and the Openstep/Cocoa API is well documented. They don't because Microsoft's whole being is based around Win32. They only reluctantly produced a complete POSIX subsystem, even.
And that machine would get cheap.
Why? Which machine? The x86 Mac? Why on earth would Microsoft doing anything at all on it make it cheap?
I don't get it. Why are you even bringing Microsoft into this?
THere's just so many gaps and just weird jumps in your reasoning I can't figure out what it is well enough to properly address it.
A virus or a worm is a piece of malware containing a delivery mechanism, a propogation mechanism, and a payload.
Cowhand is a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism. Apis us a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism. MP3virus is a test for a possible delivery mechanism. It didn't work without unusual user intervention, and Apple has changed the behaviour of Safari to make it less likely to trigger. It has no payload or propogation mechanism.
I'm not talking about what Apple users expect. I'm talking about what the operating system expects.
Here's the original comment in the thread:
If Apple move to Intel, then they are just another clone maker. If you could then get OS X on any x86 PC, how much more would you pay for the pretty box? Their hardware margins would go in the toilet.
This would be the beginning of the end for Apple as a *hardware* company. They could then focus on iPods, software and the like.
Then Keeper wrote:
Nothing says it has to be anywhere near compatible with a modern PC.
As far as the OS is concerned, the only insurmountable problem for someone wanting to install Mac OS X on an non-Apple PC is the CPU. Once you change the CPU you go from "completely incompatible" to "nearly compatible"... and the code to go from "nearly" to "completely" is already published.
You are forgetting Open firmware which allow us to boot off firewire devices and the Power management subsystem which allow us to "schedule" power on and power off from within the OS.
That's nice, but I'm only talking about those things that are necessary to support OpenDarwin and thus OS X.
And since Mac OS X and OpenDarwin run on systems without Open Firmware, the absence of Open Firmware would not prevent Mac OS X from booting up on a partly-OpenDarwin kernel.
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People couldn't legally build IBM PC clones, either.
Until the DMCA, which didn't pass until nearly 20 years later, reverse engineering was not only legal but IBM had recently lost a big court case on that very subject in relation to their mainframe business.
Under the DMCA things are very different.
As soon as they said "Leopard" I knew that's what it was all about.
Steve Jobs steps down. To be replaced by Carly Fiorina.
Xserve/Itanium?
I have insufficient room space to have both a OSX and Wintel machine.
My Mac takes up less space than the speakers on my PC. It uses the same display, keyboard, and mouse. And I can switch between them with a key combo.
Apple kept telling its users "megahertz myth", etc, and talking about "pipelines".
Apple was right.
The G4 is faster, clock for clock, than the G5. Its only problem is the 166 MHz bus. And that's already being dealt with by Freescale.
the PowerBook line is frozen in terms of upgrades.
There are faster G4s than they're using, and the e600 would solve the only real problem the G4 has... the slow memory bus. A dual-core e600 would smoke a 970, watt for watt, and be MUCH more forgiving of the smaller cache of a laptop because the 7 stage pipeline doesn't have nearly as big a problem with cache misses.
It seems like even Apple has forgotten the Megahertz Myth.
OS X is gonna smoke on a Intel 3.2Ghz box !!
The 2.7 GHz G5 is right up there with the 3.2 GHz Intels.
no one has any sort of timetable for when IBM will be able to deliver a G5 cool enough to run in a laptop.
Who the hell cares? There's nothing wrong with the G4 that a faster memory bus wouldn't fix, and Freescale has a timeline for that!
We're in the era of release fatigue. People can't just throw away all their existing software overnight.
Agreed. Apple would have to transition over years. They only quit selling Macs that could boot to OS 9 last year, which means (if I'm not mistaken) they supported Macs that could run 68000 binaries for a decade after the PPC transition.
But a .NET application is bytecode. It shouldn't take converting to Intel to run .NET.
Don't forget OS/2 and its Windows compatibility mode.
They had Microsoft's help on that, and the Windows API was probably a few percent of the size it is now.
IBM doesn't sell nearly as many power boxes as intel boxes.
Does IBM sell Intel boxes at all any more? I thought that stuff all went to Lenovo.
I'd think Apple could roll out their own hardware DRM stuff in a similar timeframe as they could switch to x86, and avoid a bunch of the problems they'd have with a switch.
Good point. They could put it in the video card, since ATI does custom firmware for Apple anyway.
I agree with the guy who said this is the worst possible reason to switch processors.
I didn't say "worst", I said "most depressing".
Unfortunately... right now it's about the only explanation that makes sense to me. Maybe I'm too cynical.
Better than one on a closed-source operating system. Although even then, it's pretty useless.
You're looking at it from the point of view of an engineer. Try looking at it from the point of view of someone who believes in DRM. Whether or not DRM can possibly work, they're going to assume it can, and treat anything that weakens the DRM as a problem. If Hollywood pressure is enough to get Apple to switch, then it seems to me Hollywood pressure may be enough to kill open-source Darwin as well.
It doesn't matter whether DRM works or not, if the result is the same either way.
1. Other than the Wired speculation, the only good reason I've seen for a switch to Intel would be a retail OS X for clones.
2. Pretty unlikely. Cloning the Windows API is not just the mother of all emulation challenges, it's liable to drive the developer insane. I never really appreciated the Necronomicon properly until I got started working on Windows software.
3. You mean open-source the Cocoa frameworks, or open the APIs for cloning? There's already a partial Cocoa framework clone for UNIX/X11 in GNUstep.
4. That would be "just one more thing"?
This Wired article could be on the money, but if Apple's switching to get Intel's DRM technology the odds of them ever releasing another Darwin source tree are pretty slim. What good is a DRM scheme on an open-source operating system?
I have to say that this is the most depressing reason for a processor switch ever.
Could be, but if Apple's doing this the odds of them ever releasing another Darwin source tree are pretty slim. What good's a DRM scheme if you're releasing the source to a lower layer than the one DRM scheme operates at?
I have to say that this is the most depressing reason for a processor switch ever.
there are *major* heat issues with IBM's processors, and it's looking like there isn't much room to grow for them in the near term if IBM pursues this sort of chip design.
There are major heat problems with Intel's processors, too. They just don't get the same kind of insane cooling system because they're not trying to keep them cool and quiet.
Since x86 machines are cheaper for the foreign OEMs to build than PPC machines
...be irrelevant. It might even sell some Macs: it's a much nicer development environment than Windows. If developers could write a program for Mac OS, and not mess around with Win32, and have it run on Windows or Mac, who in their right mind would choose Windows?
A PPC motherboard doesn't cost any more to build than an x86 motherboard. The only reason there's not a market for PPC motherboards is that there's no consumer OS you can buy to run on them. You can't run Mac OS X on them, because Apple doesn't license Mac OS X for them.
MS wants people to build clones because Apple lives and dies on hardware margins
But people can't legally build Mac clones. Moving to x86 won't change the fact that people still can't legally build Mac clones. They can build "OS free Mac compatible" computers, but they can do that now... they don't because there's no legal market for that.
putting a MacOS API into the Windows released for those clones would [...]
Apple has no divine right to margins if it is no longer the single source of that hardware.
It's not the hardware, it's the software. Apple is a software company that makes its money off the margins on the hardware they package that software in. But if it wasn't for the software, they wouldn't sell any of that hardware.
They're just like Cisco, really.
Which means: people are paying a 50% or greater premium on their computers so they can run Mac OS. Not, in most cases, because they want to run Mac OS apps... because there's MORE apps for Windows... but because they want to run Mac OS itself.
Most people don't know or care what OS they're running.
And every one of "those people" are already running Windows. The only people using Macs are the people who are using them because they have software they want to run that doesn't run on Windows. But pretty much the only software that runs on the Mac that you can't get on WIndows is Mac OS X itself.
And try answering this one again: I ask "Why on earth would Microsoft doing anything at all on it make it cheap?" I didn't ask "Why would Microsoft want to make it cheap", I asked "How could Microsoft do anything to make it cheap". They can't. All they can do is sell software. And they can't sell Mac OS. They might, after a heroic effort, produce an emulator for a version of Mac OS a couple of years old... but it's not a sure thing that they could do it well enough. And if they did, they'd be undermining their own market!
So let's take it from the top:
Apple won't be able to maintain their margins if Taiwanese are cloning their boxes right and left
True, but irrelevant, because regardless of the processor nobody can legally build an Apple clone.
and left because MS wants OEMs to build clones
True, but irrelevant. OEMs are already building "non-Apple" Apple clones. You can buy one now, plug in a PPC CPU, and have your "it's not a Mac but you could probably run OS X on it if you wanted to break the law" clone. If Apple used an x86, you would STILL not be able to buy any more of Apple clone. ALL you would be able to do would be to pirate OS X.
MS wants people to build clones because Apple lives and dies on hardware margins
MS wants lots of things, but they can't change the fact that people want to buy Macs and you can't legally build Mac clones, any more than they can change the fact that people want to run UNIX and DO NOT CONSIDER even Microsoft's excellent Interix on Windows an adequate replacement.
And cloning UNIX is MUCH easier to do than cloning OS X and everything on top of it.
if Apple moves to x86 chips MS-friendly OEMs will be willing to play along
They don't need to. If Apple moves to x86 the clones they already make will be just as cloney as any deliberate Apple clone they could make. No more, and no le
This is a hole in Safari, not Dashboard. Dashboard is inherently too powerful for widgets to be treated as a "safe" file, even if "automatically open safe files after downloading" was an acceptable thing to do.
Which it isn't.
HOWEVER, this exploit does not actually launch the applet. You have to run it in Dashboard to launch it. This is a design flaw in Safari, yes, and Apple's fix is incomplete. But it's at best a social engineering attack, it's not a situation where the applet will launch immediately the way ActiveX will. Even if you (a) have "open safe files" on, and (b) you're on an old version of Tiger or you reflexively hit OK to the dialog box, you still have one more step before you're stung.
This is not like ActiveX where one incautious click on "OK" and you're infected.
The main reason there aren't more Mac viruses seems to be lack of market share, not lack of opportunity.
This is the absolutely worst problem on the Mac so far, and it's still infinitely better than Windows. So I disagree, Apple's been frustratingly obtuse about the problems they keep running into with "auto-open" and Webkit's use of LaunchServices, but there is still no exploit that's more than a "social engineering accelerator".
The first one relies on a MacOS X hole that allows any unprivileged program to specify that a program should be run at startup.
This is not a hole, any more than "cron" or "at" or for that matter ".login" or ".profile" are holes.
So far, the biggest distinction Apple has over MS is that Apple sells its own hardware and MacOS will not run on any other platform.
So far, the biggest distinction Apple has over MS is Mac OS X. Everything else is secondary.
If MacOS suddenly runs on x86 chips, a certain number of people will switch from MacOS to the sure-to-be-released Windows version tailored for that new x86 Macintosh.
Why? The x86 Mac will cost more than a comparable Wintel machine, even if the Wintel machine is as well made, because Apple's got higher margins. They can get away with higher margins because people want to run their software.
Especially if Microsoft builds a MacOS API into that version of Windows.
They could do that now. You used to be able to buy Openstep for Windows, and the Openstep/Cocoa API is well documented. They don't because Microsoft's whole being is based around Win32. They only reluctantly produced a complete POSIX subsystem, even.
And that machine would get cheap.
Why? Which machine? The x86 Mac? Why on earth would Microsoft doing anything at all on it make it cheap?
I don't get it. Why are you even bringing Microsoft into this?
THere's just so many gaps and just weird jumps in your reasoning I can't figure out what it is well enough to properly address it.
A virus or a worm is a piece of malware containing a delivery mechanism, a propogation mechanism, and a payload.
Cowhand is a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism.
Apis us a possible payload. It has no delivery or propogation mechanism.
MP3virus is a test for a possible delivery mechanism. It didn't work without unusual user intervention, and Apple has changed the behaviour of Safari to make it less likely to trigger. It has no payload or propogation mechanism.
There are no viruses for OS X in the wild.
I'm not talking about what Apple users expect. I'm talking about what the operating system expects.
Here's the original comment in the thread:
Then Keeper wrote:
As far as the OS is concerned, the only insurmountable problem for someone wanting to install Mac OS X on an non-Apple PC is the CPU. Once you change the CPU you go from "completely incompatible" to "nearly compatible"... and the code to go from "nearly" to "completely" is already published.
You are forgetting Open firmware which allow us to boot off firewire devices and the Power management subsystem which allow us to "schedule" power on and power off from within the OS.
That's nice, but I'm only talking about those things that are necessary to support OpenDarwin and thus OS X.
And since Mac OS X and OpenDarwin run on systems without Open Firmware, the absence of Open Firmware would not prevent Mac OS X from booting up on a partly-OpenDarwin kernel.