So there I was, reading the story, when I saw this quote that Bill said in a meeting:
"I'll give you the philosophy: Everything is just a document, whether it be music or video or e-mail or whatever. Each will have a name and a history, and every user will have his or her favorites."
Okay, anyone around here rememeber OpenDoc? That lovely technology that was developed by Apple, adopted by IBM for OS/2, languished in Novell's "we'll port it to Windows" black hole, then got dropped by everyone in 1997? Same deal: the document is just a container. There's a quick article here on what OpenDoc was and what developers thought when Apple killed it. Apple still has some developer docs available online here, which I'm guessing Bill has been reading up on recently.
I wonder if Microsoft will ever come up with an original idea that doesn't suck.
I can say with authority that companies want software *cheap* not *reliable*.
Okay, but if your theory holds true, then howscome Linux, FreeBSD, or any of the free operating systems aren't ruling the OS world, hmmmm? Why haven't major corporations dropped Microsoft products en masse so they could save millions of dollars on per-seat fees for Windows and Office?
My theory? Too many companies define their operations in terms of the competition, and turn into mass lemmings as result. "Well, Widgets Inc. is using Windows, and they're the current market leader, so we'll just do what they're doing. After all, if they're the market leader in our industry, they have to be doing something right, right? Besides, no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft." So now we're stuck with this abortion of an OS running on the majority of the desktops, because no high-up in the corporate food chain has the balls to flip Microsoft the bird, regardless of their crap-ass bug-ridden software.
I mean shit, if a software company suddenly saw its sales drop 50% in a 6-month period, I would think they would take that as a wake-up call to fix their crapplications. But until a large number of people get fed up with M$'s shit software and start using something else, I'm living in fantasy land.
The solution to the whole airline security thing is easy and obvious, but in these times of politically-correct hand-holding the bedwetters of society, telling them soothing bedtime stories so that they go to sleep and have happy little dreams, you'll never hear one of these politicians stake their careers on it. Fine. Allow me to step up on the soapbox and do their jobs for them:
1) Having the government subsidize airline security is positively outrageous. That means that everyone in this country that pays taxes pays for the security of the smaller percentage of people that actually do the flying. Great idea there, eh? I say let the people who are doing the flying pay for the security. So it'll cost another $15 dollars a ticket. Big fucking deal. You want an air marshall with a gun on the flight with you or not? Pony up the 15 smackers, tightwad, or else take fucking Grayhound.
2) Okay, this may seem a little radical, but let citizens with concealed carry permits take their guns on the planes with them. (Personally I don't think we even should have to get a permit, but that's another debate.) It's like in Israel... All those times that terrorists decided to start lobbing grenades into crowds and the citizens gunned 'em down. The same could work on planes. And before someone replies with one of those "but the plane will depressurize!!!" bullshit uninformed responses, I recommend you read this first. Fact of the matter is, we should give gun-toting citizens a discount on air travel since they're essentially providing free security.
If this was truly the land of the free instead of the land of the we-know-better-than-you-do-so-we'll-tell-you-how-t o-live's, the events of 9/11 would never have happened.
As soon as the Cube came out, the first thing that popped in my head was, "Doh! This'd be great for a server farm!" Think of it: you ditch the fancy enclosure and design a rackmount with openings for Cube modules and forced airflow. (Screw the convection cooling.) Each module would plug into a gigabit and FireWire backplane hooked to a massive RAID, and each Cube would be running a tweaked version of Black Lab Linux to take advantage of the whole clustering & parallell computing support that it offers. So say a Cube dies (hard drive failure, or whatever). You pop it out, you pop in a spare replacement, and the whole system keeps on chugging. This'd be ideal for: render farms; web server farms; massively paralell supercomputer solutions; whatever.
But think: with the Cube being discontinued, wait 6 months and head to eBay where you'll be able to pick them up for dirt cheap. ---
Okay, cheesehead. I'll bite at the flame. I think the whole point of the post is this: YDL's web site implies that it can breathe new life into old, decrepit hardware. Fact of the matter is, the old decrepit hardware they mention happens to be on the "unsupported" list. Hrm. Okay, so instead of a usable out-of-the-box OS, you have to hack away at the kernel through endless recompiles until you get something usable. Have fun!
If you ever want Linux to get out of the server room and onto the desktop, shut the fuck up and start compiling kernels for every ancient piece of hardware. When you're done, get to work on a nice, pretty installer that handles the mess of partitioning and configuring a distro to any machine with no user intervention.
Why?
Because despite the fact I've installed more NuBus, PDS, PCI, SIMMs, DIMMs, AirPort, PCMCIA, and proprietary cards than you have sitting in the umpteen spare parts boxes in your closet, despite the fact I've wrangled my fingers into the most contorted positions to get to parts nestled way, way, way down in the innards of PM8100's, despite the countless pieces of hardware I've installed into every generation of Macintosh boxen, I still want an OS that installs and is up and running in a snap. I'll tweak once it's running. If getting it running is like some marathon several-month-long episode of Junkyard Wars, I want no part of it, thanks.
Moral of the story: until Linux distros can install on virtually every piece of hardware and be running (and online, and printing to the printer) before the average user finishes two cups of coffee, it's never gonna make it out of the server room. ---
I remember when I was a kid I'd read those Family Circus strips where every time something was broken, the kids would point at a phantom figure named Not Me and portray their innocence. Seems too many people are taking the concept into adulthood. Let's start a class-action lawsuit and sue Bil Keane for subverting the morals and integrity of a generation of parents that refuse to take blame for their own actions (or lack therof), and instead point the finger of blame to anyone and anything else so they come out of the situation as a victom, thus smelling like a rose.
Puh-lease.
I think this situation is indicative of the curent crop of parents in this country: 1) They take their kids to day care and pay someone else to raise them 2) They are more concerned with their own lives than the lives of their children 3) They refuse to take responsibility for their own actions or lack thereof 4) They replace corporal punishment and teachings of respect and dicipline with "time outs" 5) They wonder where society failed their children, while refusing to look at themselves first 6) The entire concept of "parental supervision" is a vague to them as "helping kids with their homework"
These people need to put away their Dr. Spock books and pick up Corps Values instead. ---
The SR-71 was (is) powered by two Pratt & Whiteny J58 turboramjets burning JP-7 fuel which is so dense that on the ground it has to be ignited with a chemical reaction to TEB (triethylborane). At speeds up to Mach 1.5 they operate as standard turbojets, then progressively switch over to pure ramjet at around Mach 2.5. The inlet spikes move backwards (up to three feet at max speed) as the speed increases, thus adjusting the triple-sonic shockwave and keeping it out of the engine itself. At full operating speed the intake alone produces approximately 80% of the overall thrust through compression alone. The kicker is that if the spike misadjusts and the shockwave gets sucked into the engine, it creates a situation known as an "unstart" where the engine -- in effect -- flames out. The computers are so advanced (at least for 1960!) that more often than not, they sense and correct for an unstart before the pilot is even aware.
Anyway, the SR-71 was able to acheive its remarkable speed not by "scooping enough air and burning it", but rather by taking what little air was availible and compressing it to astronomical proportions... despite the fact the air temp at operating altitude is around -35deg C, the innovative inlets compressed the air to a temperature so hot that the JP-7 (that you can throw a lit match into without it igniting) burned just by being sprayed into it. ---
FOR THE RECORD: Steve JOBS had an illegitimate daughter Lisa to some woman he had a relationship with in a commune/apple farm in Washington state. (This experience was where the name of the company came from in the first place.) Initially he denied the child was his, but later accepted her as his own. project managers "codenamed" their projects after their children; and while there's lots of rumors afoot about who had a child named "Lisa", fact of the matter is, the only person on the Lisa team with a daughter of that name was -- you guessed it -- Steve Jobs.
They tried to backpeddle and create some official acronym for what "Lisa" was supposed to stand for (Logical Intuitive something-or-other methinks... I can't remember offhand.) but the engineers all said it stood for "Let's Invent Some Acronym" since they all knew where the name came from inthe first place.
I'm writing this off the top of my head, but the facts are pretty damn stright. If you want the real scoop check out The Mac Bathroom Reader by Owen W. Linzmayer... it's got the real scoop, and is as humorous as it is informative. Great book. in the meantime, please mod this down... it makes the wonderful Woz out to be some sort of screwed up druggie. ---
IMHO, the next "killer app" of the net will be sites developed along the lines of Flash & Shockwave. Since the pipes are getting ever-fatter, those 800k Flash files are seeming smaller and smaller, and since the sites can be much more interactive and entertaining, they're abundance as compared to HTML will increase exponentially in the upcoming years.
Where am I going with this? Good question! Since Flash & Shockwave run on a plug-in, it means it doesn't matter which browser or OS is being used: it'll look and work the same. This is a Good Thing. But right now, it's up to Macromedia (or whomever) to write the plug-ins for all the browsers of all the platforms. This is a Bad Thing.
What should happen is that the plug-in APIs are standardized. Then whenever a new "plug-in"-style media is intruduced, the plug-in API would be released under the GPL, so anyone can write a plug-in for any browser running on any OS.
Then again, I'm one of those people who think iCab will dominate the browser market. =) ---
IMHO, they both suck. Proprietary tags, bloated codebase, lack of customizable features, tons of crud strewn across your OS.... flush 'em.
My browser of choice? iCab. If you're on a Mac, this browser rocks. Fast, small, highly cusomizable, tightly integrated into the MacOS, and more preferences than you can shake a stick at. No proprietary tags or other BS, either... just strickt HTML 4.0 compliance. This baby kicks the butt of both "mainstream" browsers by delivering something that both browsers should be. The final release should ship in January, and be feature-complete by that time. (The only thing that's lacking right now is lack of CSS & XML support, and the JavaScript is still a little buggy.) Everyone that's used this browser for a day or two has switched and never looked back.
When this puppy hits prime-time, look the hell out. ---
While I'm a registered independant, I cast my vote for Bush. This time. Now, in 2004 when Jesse "The Body" Ventura runs for President I'll vote for him. Especially if he picks Henry Rollins as his running mate, heh heh heh.
Nothing quite like a wrestler and a punk to shake things up on capitol hill. Can we say "tag team mosh pit at a joint session of congress", kiddies? Good. I knew you could. ---
Oh balls. You can get a rack & replacement handles from Marathon. They're an Apple authorized VAR, and even make rackmount units. And now that there's the G4 Cube.... egads, man. That thing was made to be clustered!!! Pop out the innards, pop it in a rack enclosure. Unit goes bad? Pop it out and pop in a replacement. Even has a built-in handle. Gives a whole new definition to the phrase "Cube Farm". ---
You won't see it for a while, but my guess is that it'll happen.
Right now Apple's cash cow is their hardware. And until the majority of apps are re-written to be native OS X code (a.k.a. Cocoa), as opposed to "optimized MacOS Classic code" (a.k.a. Carbon), you won't see any public push from Apple to get OS X running on Intel. I'll bet they're working on it, but way, way, way behind the scenes, in case Motorola can't deliver the faster G4s like they said they could. (IBM can do it, but the G4 is Mot's baby, and they're the ones saying "no".)
If Apple would release OS X for X86 before the apps are fully ramped up and Apple has licensing in place with PC vendors, it would be a disaster. The bottom would fall out of Apple's hardware sales, the apps wouldn't be there to make the masses switch platforms (especially corporate clients), and Apple would last about 6 months.
I say they'll keep churning along like they're doing now with PPC hardware, wait a couple years until all the major apps are OS X native, then strike up an OS X for x86 licensing deal with clone manufacturers. Assuming the current clock speed hurdles for the PPC chip are overcome, Apple will retain the "high end" with the PPC, and let clone manufacturers churn out the low-end. Why? Apple will always want to "make the whole widget". And I for one think they should. ---
FireWire is the name used by Apple. If someone wants to use the FireWire name, they have to pony up some cash to Apple. Sony decided "screw it" and called it iLink instead. The IEEE 1394 designator is the standard specification, which anyone can use without paying a royalty.
I may be biased, but I think FireWire sounds cool. =)
As for FireWire vs. USB... FireWire was never meant for mice & keyboards. It was meant for high-speed device connections. (Cameras, RAID arrays, scanners, CD burners, etc.) The beauty of FireWire is that you can hook the same device up to multiple machines, and all of them can have access to it simultaneously. The devices can even talk to each other without requiring the computer to be turned on. And to top it all off, FireWire is just so damn fast compared to USB...
IMHO, I think Intel decided that high-speed peripheral access is a market they could make some money in, so they decided to bump the USB standard to compete with FireWire. The problem is, USB was never designed for that, so they had to bolt on the ability to make faster data transfers, resulting in a kludgy protocol. I couldn't give a rat's ass about USB 2.0... if it wasn't for Apple in the first place, USB would be another languishing technology. ---
That's 3% of SALES. The "figures" are based on current sales of new machines, and don't figure in how many people are poking along on their older machines. While I don't know anyone that still uses a 286 or 386 (or heck, even a 486), I know of lots of people still plugging away on Color Classics, Mac II's, Quadras, etc. At my last job, I had several IIci's running server functions (network fax server, modem server, etc.)
These current "figures" that IDC and other "market research" companies put together are based on every sale from CompRipoff to Joe Bob's Custom Computer Warehouse. Anyone can start a company slapping together Wintel or Linux boxes. Just 1 company sells Macs: Apple. Let's see Dell's or Gateway's market share. Or Compaq, HP, etc. Compare THEM to the rest of the market.
Last I heard, there are over 40 million Macs still out there.... Many of them pre-PowerPC. Add all those into the current sales, and MacOS owns approximately 15% of the market. ---
Gee, looks like Intel hopped in the translucent, gummi, rounded, fruit-flavored bandwagon. Would it be too much to ask for one of these companyies to maybe, oh, I dunno.... come up with their own original idea for something? Maybe? PLEASE? ---
Actually, the reason you can't see as well in the dark is because of the arrangement of rods and cones. Since humans are up and moving more in the day, there are more cones (color-sensing) in the center of the eye. At night, when it's easier to see black & white than color because of the lack of ambient light, the low number of rods in the center of the retina causes an effectual "blind spot" in the center of your vision.
If you're trying to see something at night, look to the side of what you're really looking at and you'll see it better. Really!
Wow... that Marine Corps training really *did* teach me something (somewhat) useful! =) ---
Actually, AppleShareIP under the "classic" (existing non-BSD-based) MacOS kicks some serious booty. One of the locations I've installed it at slams it pretty hard day in and day out (serving files, spooling print jobs with its built-in print server software, etc) and it's been up for over 100 days. And we're talking a 3-year-old PMac G3/300 with 256mb of ram and 5 9gb Ultra2 SCSI drives. No RAID, no multiple processors, no gigs of ram. The thing floods the 100baseT switched network, and all the clients get a steady 8-9mb/sec.
Now with OS X Server, that's a different story. Why would you want to install LinuxPPC on an MP G4 when OS X will have all the Unix-y power you need, and will be specifically tuned for the G4 in MP operations? ---
...MacOS 9's Software Update control panel. Does the same damn thing, and it's been humming along for over 6 months in a released OS. Works the same way: checks all your installed OS components against the most recent versions posted on Apple's servers, and alerts you that there's updates availible, asking if you want to download & update them. If this is what Microsquish calls "innovation", I'd hate to see what they call "blatent copying". ---
Slashdot Mirror
"I'll give you the philosophy: Everything is just a document, whether it be music or video or e-mail or whatever. Each will have a name and a history, and every user will have his or her favorites."
Okay, anyone around here rememeber OpenDoc? That lovely technology that was developed by Apple, adopted by IBM for OS/2, languished in Novell's "we'll port it to Windows" black hole, then got dropped by everyone in 1997? Same deal: the document is just a container. There's a quick article here on what OpenDoc was and what developers thought when Apple killed it. Apple still has some developer docs available online here, which I'm guessing Bill has been reading up on recently.
I wonder if Microsoft will ever come up with an original idea that doesn't suck.
Okay, but if your theory holds true, then howscome Linux, FreeBSD, or any of the free operating systems aren't ruling the OS world, hmmmm? Why haven't major corporations dropped Microsoft products en masse so they could save millions of dollars on per-seat fees for Windows and Office?
My theory? Too many companies define their operations in terms of the competition, and turn into mass lemmings as result. "Well, Widgets Inc. is using Windows, and they're the current market leader, so we'll just do what they're doing. After all, if they're the market leader in our industry, they have to be doing something right, right? Besides, no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft." So now we're stuck with this abortion of an OS running on the majority of the desktops, because no high-up in the corporate food chain has the balls to flip Microsoft the bird, regardless of their crap-ass bug-ridden software.
I mean shit, if a software company suddenly saw its sales drop 50% in a 6-month period, I would think they would take that as a wake-up call to fix their crapplications. But until a large number of people get fed up with M$'s shit software and start using something else, I'm living in fantasy land.
1) Having the government subsidize airline security is positively outrageous. That means that everyone in this country that pays taxes pays for the security of the smaller percentage of people that actually do the flying. Great idea there, eh? I say let the people who are doing the flying pay for the security. So it'll cost another $15 dollars a ticket. Big fucking deal. You want an air marshall with a gun on the flight with you or not? Pony up the 15 smackers, tightwad, or else take fucking Grayhound.
2) Okay, this may seem a little radical, but let citizens with concealed carry permits take their guns on the planes with them. (Personally I don't think we even should have to get a permit, but that's another debate.) It's like in Israel... All those times that terrorists decided to start lobbing grenades into crowds and the citizens gunned 'em down. The same could work on planes. And before someone replies with one of those "but the plane will depressurize!!!" bullshit uninformed responses, I recommend you read this first. Fact of the matter is, we should give gun-toting citizens a discount on air travel since they're essentially providing free security.
If this was truly the land of the free instead of the land of the we-know-better-than-you-do-so-we'll-tell-you-how-t o-live's, the events of 9/11 would never have happened.
But think: with the Cube being discontinued, wait 6 months and head to eBay where you'll be able to pick them up for dirt cheap.
---
If you ever want Linux to get out of the server room and onto the desktop, shut the fuck up and start compiling kernels for every ancient piece of hardware. When you're done, get to work on a nice, pretty installer that handles the mess of partitioning and configuring a distro to any machine with no user intervention.
Why?
Because despite the fact I've installed more NuBus, PDS, PCI, SIMMs, DIMMs, AirPort, PCMCIA, and proprietary cards than you have sitting in the umpteen spare parts boxes in your closet, despite the fact I've wrangled my fingers into the most contorted positions to get to parts nestled way, way, way down in the innards of PM8100's, despite the countless pieces of hardware I've installed into every generation of Macintosh boxen, I still want an OS that installs and is up and running in a snap. I'll tweak once it's running. If getting it running is like some marathon several-month-long episode of Junkyard Wars, I want no part of it, thanks.
Moral of the story: until Linux distros can install on virtually every piece of hardware and be running ( and online, and printing to the printer) before the average user finishes two cups of coffee, it's never gonna make it out of the server room.
---
Puh-lease.
I think this situation is indicative of the curent crop of parents in this country:
1) They take their kids to day care and pay someone else to raise them
2) They are more concerned with their own lives than the lives of their children
3) They refuse to take responsibility for their own actions or lack thereof
4) They replace corporal punishment and teachings of respect and dicipline with "time outs"
5) They wonder where society failed their children, while refusing to look at themselves first
6) The entire concept of "parental supervision" is a vague to them as "helping kids with their homework"
These people need to put away their Dr. Spock books and pick up Corps Values instead.
---
Anyway, the SR-71 was able to acheive its remarkable speed not by "scooping enough air and burning it", but rather by taking what little air was availible and compressing it to astronomical proportions... despite the fact the air temp at operating altitude is around -35deg C, the innovative inlets compressed the air to a temperature so hot that the JP-7 (that you can throw a lit match into without it igniting) burned just by being sprayed into it.
---
FOR THE RECORD:
Steve JOBS had an illegitimate daughter Lisa to some woman he had a relationship with in a commune/apple farm in Washington state. (This experience was where the name of the company came from in the first place.) Initially he denied the child was his, but later accepted her as his own. project managers "codenamed" their projects after their children; and while there's lots of rumors afoot about who had a child named "Lisa", fact of the matter is, the only person on the Lisa team with a daughter of that name was -- you guessed it -- Steve Jobs.
They tried to backpeddle and create some official acronym for what "Lisa" was supposed to stand for (Logical Intuitive something-or-other methinks... I can't remember offhand.) but the engineers all said it stood for "Let's Invent Some Acronym" since they all knew where the name came from inthe first place.
I'm writing this off the top of my head, but the facts are pretty damn stright. If you want the real scoop check out The Mac Bathroom Reader by Owen W. Linzmayer... it's got the real scoop, and is as humorous as it is informative. Great book.
in the meantime, please mod this down... it makes the wonderful Woz out to be some sort of screwed up druggie.
---
Where am I going with this? Good question! Since Flash & Shockwave run on a plug-in, it means it doesn't matter which browser or OS is being used: it'll look and work the same. This is a Good Thing. But right now, it's up to Macromedia (or whomever) to write the plug-ins for all the browsers of all the platforms. This is a Bad Thing.
What should happen is that the plug-in APIs are standardized. Then whenever a new "plug-in"-style media is intruduced, the plug-in API would be released under the GPL, so anyone can write a plug-in for any browser running on any OS.
Then again, I'm one of those people who think iCab will dominate the browser market. =)
---
My browser of choice? iCab. If you're on a Mac, this browser rocks. Fast, small, highly cusomizable, tightly integrated into the MacOS, and more preferences than you can shake a stick at. No proprietary tags or other BS, either... just strickt HTML 4.0 compliance. This baby kicks the butt of both "mainstream" browsers by delivering something that both browsers should be. The final release should ship in January, and be feature-complete by that time. (The only thing that's lacking right now is lack of CSS & XML support, and the JavaScript is still a little buggy.) Everyone that's used this browser for a day or two has switched and never looked back.
When this puppy hits prime-time, look the hell out.
---
Nothing quite like a wrestler and a punk to shake things up on capitol hill. Can we say "tag team mosh pit at a joint session of congress", kiddies? Good. I knew you could.
---
Oh balls. You can get a rack & replacement handles from Marathon. They're an Apple authorized VAR, and even make rackmount units. And now that there's the G4 Cube.... egads, man. That thing was made to be clustered!!! Pop out the innards, pop it in a rack enclosure. Unit goes bad? Pop it out and pop in a replacement. Even has a built-in handle. Gives a whole new definition to the phrase "Cube Farm".
---
Right now Apple's cash cow is their hardware. And until the majority of apps are re-written to be native OS X code (a.k.a. Cocoa), as opposed to "optimized MacOS Classic code" (a.k.a. Carbon), you won't see any public push from Apple to get OS X running on Intel. I'll bet they're working on it, but way, way, way behind the scenes, in case Motorola can't deliver the faster G4s like they said they could. (IBM can do it, but the G4 is Mot's baby, and they're the ones saying "no".)
If Apple would release OS X for X86 before the apps are fully ramped up and Apple has licensing in place with PC vendors, it would be a disaster. The bottom would fall out of Apple's hardware sales, the apps wouldn't be there to make the masses switch platforms (especially corporate clients), and Apple would last about 6 months.
I say they'll keep churning along like they're doing now with PPC hardware, wait a couple years until all the major apps are OS X native, then strike up an OS X for x86 licensing deal with clone manufacturers. Assuming the current clock speed hurdles for the PPC chip are overcome, Apple will retain the "high end" with the PPC, and let clone manufacturers churn out the low-end. Why? Apple will always want to "make the whole widget". And I for one think they should.
---
FireWire is the name used by Apple. If someone wants to use the FireWire name, they have to pony up some cash to Apple. Sony decided "screw it" and called it iLink instead. The IEEE 1394 designator is the standard specification, which anyone can use without paying a royalty.
I may be biased, but I think FireWire sounds cool. =)
As for FireWire vs. USB... FireWire was never meant for mice & keyboards. It was meant for high-speed device connections. (Cameras, RAID arrays, scanners, CD burners, etc.) The beauty of FireWire is that you can hook the same device up to multiple machines, and all of them can have access to it simultaneously. The devices can even talk to each other without requiring the computer to be turned on. And to top it all off, FireWire is just so damn fast compared to USB...
IMHO, I think Intel decided that high-speed peripheral access is a market they could make some money in, so they decided to bump the USB standard to compete with FireWire. The problem is, USB was never designed for that, so they had to bolt on the ability to make faster data transfers, resulting in a kludgy protocol. I couldn't give a rat's ass about USB 2.0... if it wasn't for Apple in the first place, USB would be another languishing technology.
---
These current "figures" that IDC and other "market research" companies put together are based on every sale from CompRipoff to Joe Bob's Custom Computer Warehouse. Anyone can start a company slapping together Wintel or Linux boxes. Just 1 company sells Macs: Apple. Let's see Dell's or Gateway's market share. Or Compaq, HP, etc. Compare THEM to the rest of the market.
Last I heard, there are over 40 million Macs still out there.... Many of them pre-PowerPC. Add all those into the current sales, and MacOS owns approximately 15% of the market.
---
Gee, looks like Intel hopped in the translucent, gummi, rounded, fruit-flavored bandwagon. Would it be too much to ask for one of these companyies to maybe, oh, I dunno.... come up with their own original idea for something? Maybe? PLEASE?
---
If you're trying to see something at night, look to the side of what you're really looking at and you'll see it better. Really!
Wow... that Marine Corps training really *did* teach me something (somewhat) useful! =)
---
Now with OS X Server, that's a different story. Why would you want to install LinuxPPC on an MP G4 when OS X will have all the Unix-y power you need, and will be specifically tuned for the G4 in MP operations?
---
...MacOS 9's Software Update control panel. Does the same damn thing, and it's been humming along for over 6 months in a released OS. Works the same way: checks all your installed OS components against the most recent versions posted on Apple's servers, and alerts you that there's updates availible, asking if you want to download & update them. If this is what Microsquish calls "innovation", I'd hate to see what they call "blatent copying".
---