Yes, apple has quite clearly and publicly decided they have no particular use for linux, and apple has made a point of choosing for Darwin BSD utilities over GNU utilities when the two are equivilent.
Let us remember, OS X (with Mach + FreeBSD at its core) is evolved from NEXTSTEP, which had Mach + BSD at its core from day one (October 11, 1988 - ten years to the day before my marriage, which I've always felt was somehow signficant). Linux did not exist at that time, and even if it had, BSD is arguably more robust in a number of ways. (BSD was particularly robust compared to what else was out there back in the 80's.)
But to develop software for BSD, and NOT bother creating a linux version, would be absolutely insane. The costs of dual-targeting linux if you are already targeting BSD would be practically almost nothing, and you would be closing off a huge portion of your known customer base and known revenue stream by failing to present a linux version. Especially given that shake was already developed to be compatible with linux and irix. The idea that apple would literally throw away current customers just because they aren't linux "fans" just does not really make sense.
Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. It would be
insane for them not to give serious consideration to making these products OS X-only, as it would move lots of video shops to Mac hardware which brings with it a number of present and future benefits for Apple. And as for the age old debate of "Why won't Apple port Quicktime to Linux??" -- the number of folks using Linux on the desktop is insignificant to Apple. It would not be worth the time and money it would take to work the port. Simple.
They should've gotten OmniGroup to lay down the conversion, Cocoa style, while magically enhancing the original PC code (and game performance) beyond all expectation, as they did with the rather hardware-itensive Giants, Citizen Kabuto...
From OmniGroup:
"This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM."
All my laptops over the last few years have run Linux very well (mostly IBM and HP). I'm also pretty happy with my OSX PowerBook, although there is a lot more software available for Linux (at least of the kind I'm interested in).
Most Linux apps will compile under OS X with the addition of a rootles X-server to OS X. And there're resources that make the download/build/install of many commonly-used apps completely trivial (pick from a menu in the terminal and...here comes the app). Unless you're playing OpenGL games in Linux that you can't part with, I think you're mistaken here. And besides, you'd do much better playing the games built for OS X. Far higher in performance... Quote from OmniGroup re: port to OS X of Giants:
This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM.
A 10-20% marketshare would be nice (and I really think it's possible if Apple doesn't screw it up!), but not much more than that. We'd just get another Microsoft and who'd like that?
Indeed. Let us remember--Apple need not come anywhere near market dominance to be wildly successful and secure. It's like Jobs' own comparison, B&M, Mercedes, etc.
Anyway, if Apple was the market leader, they'd end up "the bad guy."
While I wouldn't use the term beautiful, as far as I can see, style is the number one reason for getting a Mac. The problem is, in a few years, these things are going to be like bell bottom jeans.
Style the number one reason?? OS X is so staggeringly more robust than any of Microsoft's OS offerings that isn't even funny. Rock solid UNIX foundation, incredible performance (BSD-core outperforms Linux, Solaris), best application development platform bar-none provided free, world-class desktop applications (Photoshop, MS Office, Dreamweaver, Maya, etc.), world class server applications (Oracle being ported currently), and one company trying the OS and hardware together.
Robust UNIX core built on Mach + FreeBSD (evolved from Mach + BSD implementation of NEXTSTEP which has been around since October 1988 (yes, eighty-eight)). The most stable OS many (myself included) have ever seen.
The first viable "desktop Unix" merging the power of UNIX with full featured application support (Photoshop, MS Office X, Dreamweaver, Quicken, etc.)
One company, Apple, providing both the hardware and the robust UNIX OS providing the sort of appeal that has been previously obtainable mainly through Sun (but show me Photoshop and Office for Solaris...)
Compelling vision and strategies ("Digital Hub" - iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD--all free) as well as unique hardware offerings, lots of which are in the lost cost brackets (eMac, iBook, iPod, etc.)
Arguably the most robust application development environment ever created (Cocoa) given away for free. The "developer" version of the OS on which OS X is based, NEXTSTEP, used to retail for $6,000. Now all that and so much more comes bundled on each Mac (or for $125 for the OS purchase). (Yea, you've got to download the dev tools, to be fair...)
Promise of a bright future--Xserve (excellent value), eMac, and iPod are all clearly wise moves. Oracle is currently being ported to OS X. There's advancement by Apple on all fronts--this likely is Apple's finest hour and the future has never been brighter.
When I learned that 1) NEXTSTEP was the basis for Apple's new OS and 2) new Pro towers were forthcoming, I decided to go Mac (from PC), and did in Jan '99 w/ a G3 400. I've since upgraded to a dual G4 800 PowerMac for just shy of a year now, running OS X exclusively. I have had two kernel panics. (One stemming from plugging in an unsupported USB device.) When I had the other kernel panic, I was horrified. I powered the machine off and started recalling the memory upgrade I performed a few months earlier--wondering if it could be the culprit. I checked the LED clock at my side to see if there had been a brownout. I felt the FireWire connection to my external 160GB drive to make sure it had not come-aloos and somehow caused the problem...
...you see, I assumed it was a hardware failure. I have been running OS X for a year and it has crashed twice. It has been so stable that when the system locked up, I assume it was the hardware at fault. When you find yourself in a situation where an OS freeze is so rare that you fear your hardware has failed, you are in a good place. That's about all the testimony I can offer.
Oh...I just picked up an iBook 700. I have no practical need for this, as I am behind a machine all day at work (developer) and my G4 is there when I get home. I simply wanted to be able to bring OS X with me. On a whim, I can make use of it. It's that good. It is truly a shame what so many people are missing.
A sub-pixeling technique, such as used in Windows CE and XP, would indeed produce fonts with 3x the horizontal (or vertical, depending) resolution. Apple does not employ sub-pixeling in OS X. Quartz does an excellent job of whole-pixel anti-aliasing, but it is not presently using sub-pixeling.
But make no mistake. Apple was the first to use the technique, in the early 80's on the Apple II line. As stated in The Origins of Sub-Pixel Font Rendering [grc.com] article (written by Gibson, of the Gibson Light Pen fame):
I COMPLETELY AGREE that incorporating this technology into Microsoft's Windows operating environments will be an absolute win for its LCD display panel users. But Microsoft was apparently unaware that twenty-two years ago Apple II programmers were using these techniques -- rooted in Apple technology patents -- to improve the effective resolution of their video displays.
Sigh. That's not what subpixel sampling means. When you antialias, you render the image at a higher resolution than you can actually display. For example, you might double the effective resolution, and each pixel on the screen would be represented by four pixels in memory. Each of these rendered-but-not-displayed pixels is called a subpixel.
You are incorrect. Subpixeling, however the font was rendered behind the scenes, refers to using the R G B elements of an LCD's "pixel" to increase the horizontal (or vertical, depending on element orientation) resolution of the screen.
I posted this to a Mac friend on an intranet web board we have in the office a week ago. Not that it's a point really worth making---but I had to pass it on. Quite fine.
Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches, every time I think of them my trigger finger itches. They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class, Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass. Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve, straight up fairy stories even children don't believe. I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say, all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.
The PowerPC 750FX (G3 Sahara) used in the new iBooks is quite a nimble little piece of silicon. It has double the L2 cache (512K) running at CPU speed. Also, the L1 data cache path to the bus interface and the L2 cache reload path to the L1 cache are 256-bits wide. 4x the size of those in previous PPC7xx CPU's. The chip is copper and made on a 0.13-micron process. Quite a few changes. A comment about same-clockspeed performance increases of this chip from Apple's press release:
The new iBook runs up to 35 percent faster than previous models in CPU performance tests such as encoding a song from an audio CD into an MP3 file using iTunes(TM). iBook also now features a new video-out port that supports VGA output, as well as S-video and composite video with optional adapter.
I've been playing with Chimera on my dual G4 800. It is amazingly solid for a "pre-Beta" browser. For those unaware, Chimera is a Cocoa port of the Mozilla source. As such, it beneftis from all the robustness of OS X's truly native and incredibly robust development environment.
Chimera, as it evolves, will arguably be the Mozilla incarnation to use. Yet another amazing gemstone of technology made possible my Apple and Mac OS X.
This bit of news is about neck and neck with the rack server announcement as far as its impact upon Apple and the viability of its future. Staggeringly good news!
Inkwell is based on Newton HWR technology. The 'Rosetta' print recognizer on the Newton 2.x devices, written in-house by Apple, has yet to be surpassed in the world of HWR technology. The second best I've seen is Calligrapher, originally written by Paragraph, who wrote the cursive recognier on the Newton 2.x devices. Today's Calligrapher is still no match for the 5+ year old Rosetta HWR engine.
Apple need not "catch up" with MS on this one...
(Reminiscent of MS's ClearType sub-pixeling technology. It was seen first on the Apple II, yet MS claims it as their own technology.)
Steve Martin was right!!
on
Quark Stars
·
· Score: 0
In Roxanne, Roxanne (an astronomy student) asks CD (Steve Martin's character) if he knows what a quark is. He says, "a heavenly body?" She says, "no, subnuclear particles." [Laugh--what a silly man CD is, bla bla bla].
Slashdot Mirror
- Let us remember, OS X (with Mach + FreeBSD at its core) is evolved from NEXTSTEP, which had Mach + BSD at its core from day one (October 11, 1988 - ten years to the day before my marriage, which I've always felt was somehow signficant). Linux did not exist at that time, and even if it had, BSD is arguably more robust in a number of ways. (BSD was particularly robust compared to what else was out there back in the 80's.)
But to develop software for BSD, and NOT bother creating a linux version, would be absolutely insane. The costs of dual-targeting linux if you are already targeting BSD would be practically almost nothing, and you would be closing off a huge portion of your known customer base and known revenue stream by failing to present a linux version. Especially given that shake was already developed to be compatible with linux and irix. The idea that apple would literally throw away current customers just because they aren't linux "fans" just does not really make sense.blakespot
From OmniGroup:
blakespot
Most Linux apps will compile under OS X with the addition of a rootles X-server to OS X. And there're resources that make the download/build/install of many commonly-used apps completely trivial (pick from a menu in the terminal and...here comes the app). Unless you're playing OpenGL games in Linux that you can't part with, I think you're mistaken here. And besides, you'd do much better playing the games built for OS X. Far higher in performance... Quote from OmniGroup re: port to OS X of Giants:
This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM.
blakespot
A 10-20% marketshare would be nice (and I really think it's possible if Apple doesn't screw it up!), but not much more than that. We'd just get another Microsoft and who'd like that?
Indeed. Let us remember--Apple need not come anywhere near market dominance to be wildly successful and secure. It's like Jobs' own comparison, B&M, Mercedes, etc.
Anyway, if Apple was the market leader, they'd end up "the bad guy."
blakespot
10. It's beautiful
While I wouldn't use the term beautiful, as far as I can see, style is the number one reason for getting a Mac. The problem is, in a few years, these things are going to be like bell bottom jeans.
Style the number one reason?? OS X is so staggeringly more robust than any of Microsoft's OS offerings that isn't even funny. Rock solid UNIX foundation, incredible performance (BSD-core outperforms Linux, Solaris), best application development platform bar-none provided free, world-class desktop applications (Photoshop, MS Office, Dreamweaver, Maya, etc.), world class server applications (Oracle being ported currently), and one company trying the OS and hardware together.
Yea - and it looks nice too.
blakespot
Semper ubi sub ubi, "dude".
blakespot
When I learned that 1) NEXTSTEP was the basis for Apple's new OS and 2) new Pro towers were forthcoming, I decided to go Mac (from PC), and did in Jan '99 w/ a G3 400. I've since upgraded to a dual G4 800 PowerMac for just shy of a year now, running OS X exclusively. I have had two kernel panics. (One stemming from plugging in an unsupported USB device.) When I had the other kernel panic, I was horrified. I powered the machine off and started recalling the memory upgrade I performed a few months earlier--wondering if it could be the culprit. I checked the LED clock at my side to see if there had been a brownout. I felt the FireWire connection to my external 160GB drive to make sure it had not come-aloos and somehow caused the problem...
Oh...I just picked up an iBook 700. I have no practical need for this, as I am behind a machine all day at work (developer) and my G4 is there when I get home. I simply wanted to be able to bring OS X with me. On a whim, I can make use of it. It's that good. It is truly a shame what so many people are missing.
blakespot
( mainpage here: http://grc.com/cleartype.htm )
blakespot
A sub-pixeling technique, such as used in Windows CE and XP, would indeed produce fonts with 3x the horizontal (or vertical, depending) resolution. Apple does not employ sub-pixeling in OS X. Quartz does an excellent job of whole-pixel anti-aliasing, but it is not presently using sub-pixeling.
But make no mistake. Apple was the first to use the technique, in the early 80's on the Apple II line. As stated in The Origins of Sub-Pixel Font Rendering [grc.com] article (written by Gibson, of the Gibson Light Pen fame):
I COMPLETELY AGREE that incorporating this technology into Microsoft's Windows operating environments will be an absolute win for its LCD display panel users. But Microsoft was apparently unaware that twenty-two years ago Apple II programmers were using these techniques -- rooted in Apple technology patents -- to improve the effective resolution of their video displays.
blakespot
You are incorrect. Subpixeling, however the font was rendered behind the scenes, refers to using the R G B elements of an LCD's "pixel" to increase the horizontal (or vertical, depending on element orientation) resolution of the screen.
blakespot
I posted this to a Mac friend on an intranet web board we have in the office a week ago. Not that it's a point really worth making---but I had to pass it on. Quite fine.
blakespot
Fuck The Creationists
Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.
Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve,
straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.
I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say,
all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.
blakespot
The new iBook runs up to 35 percent faster than previous models in CPU performance tests such as encoding a song from an audio CD into an MP3 file using iTunes(TM). iBook also now features a new video-out port that supports VGA output, as well as S-video and composite video with optional adapter.
Quite a little performer. The G3 has some life in it yet. Check out IBM's spec sheet on the PowerPC 750FX Microprocessor.
blakespot
Chimera, as it evolves, will arguably be the Mozilla incarnation to use. Yet another amazing gemstone of technology made possible my Apple and Mac OS X.
blakespot -- iPodHacks.com
Ohh looky, the Dell 1U rack unit looks all purdy with two of its four drives duct-taped to the side of the rack. And it can run Windows! Yeeehaw.
blakespot
This bit of news is about neck and neck with the rack server announcement as far as its impact upon Apple and the viability of its future. Staggeringly good news!
5% down, 95% to go!
blakespot
The thing has dual blue-LED CPU meter graphs. I cannot stand it!!
blakespot
But then you can't run OS X, so you lose. I can sew my mouth shut to make my head more aerodynamic, as a runner--but then I can't eat.
blakespot
Apple need not "catch up" with MS on this one...
(Reminiscent of MS's ClearType sub-pixeling technology. It was seen first on the Apple II, yet MS claims it as their own technology.)
blakespot
blakespot
http://members.truepath.com/objective/propaganda.h tml
http://members.truepath.com/objective/ PRO PAGAN da.html
!!!!!!????
blakespot
Cheers.
blakespot --- http:://www.ipodhacks.com
The father of OS X.
My black beauty
blakespot
But he was right, it seems!!
blakespot
+RELAXED MAN smiles and leans forward: "No. They don't, you fucking tool".
blakespot