It's Microsoft, dude-- they can't just co-exist with a competitor, everything's got to be an Us-vs-Them-to-the-Death battle.
Personally, I have a 30 gig iPod. If I wanted to fill it up with mp3's purchased at iTunes, it would cost me THOUSANDS of dollars. It would be much more financially responsible to fill it up with "rented" songs, as I could pay $150 a year for decades before it would have been more cost effective to buy them outright.
Why does everyone who makes the "Cost to fill my iPod" pricing argument always ignore the fact that most if not all iPod buyers have a preexisting CD collection with which to populate their device? Also, it would be even more financially responsible to add to your music collection by buying used CDs-- $150 a year would get you at least 15-17 of them, you can rip those tracks to whatever format and quality level you prefer, and they're yours to keep forever with no DRM.
I've got a 30GB iPod as well, and the only songs on it that didn't come from my personal CD collection came from "free song" codes during the iTMS/Pepsi promotions.
I would love to have TC for my sisters computer. She has never had the need to run any applications besides the ones I have installed. Or is this already possible with any OS? The ability to specify a list of allowed executables and the disability for a user application to change the list.
Already doable in OS X, via Parental Controls. You can specify "user can only run the apps in this list" and that's all they can launch, period. Without knowing an admin password, they can't change anything. You can also lock down a handful of other things, but I only took a cursory look at the other features because I have no need of any of them and just made a dummy account to quickly verify my answer to your question.
A more interesting story (IMHO) of US corporation-assisted espionage was the tale of the copier that Xerox installed at the Soviet embassy in the 60s or 70s (I forget which). They hid a camera inside it that snapped photos of every document that was copied. The Xerox service guy changed out the film when he was there for regular maintenance.
Out of all of my clients and friends who've owned Powerbook G4s over the years, I have only ever seen one person actually use that slot-- I didn't know the specs on it because I've never really had the need.:)
Any true Conservatives, should have rather supported this.xxx bid, as it will help in better blocking/controlling (atleast to some extent) pornography.
To give internet porn its own little walled garden would be to legitimize it. The Conservatives are beholden to the bible-thumpers who put them into office. Said bible-thumpers want to eradicate porn from the face of the earth, and would not stand for their elected officials supporting anything contrary to that aim.
It's not really (and never has been) about keeping kids away from the stuff-- it's about the Jesus freaks imposing their beliefs and lifestyle on the rest of us.
And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.
No, but it might as well if Microsoft "improves" the file formats sufficiently (which they did quite a bit in the 90s).
If one major entity you do business with upgrades, then YOU have to upgrade-- because the only alternative is to ask them to save everything to an older format, which they will either balk at or forget to do half the time.
It hasn't been quite so bad since the whole monopoly lawsuit, but they are slowly getting bolder again.
Yeah, except how effective would that ad campaign be?
They'd have to settle for print ads, because the cable company wouldn't sell them advertising time for ads promoting things contrary to the interests of said cable company. And since nobody really reads newspapers anymore...
The G4-based incarnation of the Mac mini was basically an iBook without the LCD or keyboard-- it had identical specs. It stands to reason that Apple will continue that similarity once both machines are Intel-based. Which means that the iBook x86/MacBook/whatever they call it will have GigE and be offered with both Core Solo and Core Duo CPUs, just like the Intel mini.
As for missing features, some of them are strictly to differentiate the product lines. But you can bet your bottom dollar that gigabit ethernet will be in the MacBook. For one thing, the Mac mini which will share the MacBook's specs has it. For another, if Apple wants to get into the downloadable movies business, GigE across their entire computer line is a no-brainer-- and the G4 iBook is currently the only machine in their lineup right now that lacks it. It doesn't matter that current consumer-level broadband routers only do 10/100, it's just important that the Mac not be the bottleneck when Joe Sixpack wants to download a movie. Broadband internet will get faster and cheaper, eventually, and consumer-level 'infrastructure' items will start supporting gigabit. When that happens, Apple's products will be ready and waiting to take advantage of it.
No, we all still look down our noses at Windows... but the reality is that there are some things you simply NEED Windows for. Things like AutoCAD, websites that require Windows IE because they won't work without CraptiveX, and games, to name three.
We are excited about Boot Camp because lots of people who have to use something that is Windows-only now have the option of purchasing a Mac. There have always been plenty of people who wanted to switch to Macs but could not because there was something holding them to Windows. In the past, their only options were to either do without the Windows-only stuff, or keep an x86 box around for that. Now they can buy one machine and still do everything they want/need. Right now, dual-booting is the only way to go, but eventually Windows (and any other OS that runs on x86) will be able to run in a sandbox right alongside of OS X-- via Parallels Workstation, the forthcoming Mac version of VMWare, Virtual PC (if Microsoft ever gets off their asses and commits to producing a version for Intel Macs), or whatever virtualization goodies Apple is cooking up as part of OS X 10.5.
To sum up, a bigger target audience = more Mac sales = greater marketshare, hardware- and OS-wise. And that is certainly a good thing. So yeah, Mac users can simultaneously despise Windows and be happy about Boot Camp.
If we can share the software updates between macs, it would be a good thing.
Tiger Server does that. It might be possible to hack something similar into OS X client, since plenty of OS X Server features exist in OS X, just without graphical means to configure/start them. The software update server is barely more than a webserver with the packages and checksum files.
This article was on CNN last night as well, under the headline "Viruses catch up to the Mac."
Uh, yeah. Sure. Two guys get hit by something, the articles are not even clear about exactly what, and it's, "Oh noes! The sky is falling!"
Yeah, viruses are really catching up to the Mac. One down (maybe), a few tens of thousands more to go to catch up to the quantity available for Windows. Look at all the crap you need to do properly secure an XP box. Even if this alleged Mac virus is the real thing, you can stay safe simply by not going to dodgy sites, and thinking for a moment about why that thing you downloaded from said dodgy site is asking for your admin password.
The antivirus vendors must have realized that we just laugh at their press releases touting the dire threats to the Mac, so now they're funneling their fearmongering drivel through the Associated Press in a laughable attempt to turn it into Real News. Nice try, guys.
My employer uses (and resells) SpamSoap. It kicks ass. They filter all the mail before sending it on to your mailserver. When they catch spam addressed to a user, that user gets a notification message (one per day) directing them to a web-based console. There they're presented with a list of the messages that have been filtered and can choose to delete them or release them for delivery to the mailserver.
If your mailserver takes a shit, they can cache your inbound mail for a while as well (at least 24 hours, but maybe more). I don't know all the service's specifics because I don't work in the department that deals with it, I only really see it from the perspective of an end-user. All of our clients who have signed on to use it love it.
Micro Center is great. I live 5 minutes from a Circuit City, and 15-20 minutes away from a Best Buy and a CompUSA. But when I need something and don't want to or can't wait for it to be shipped from one of my usual mail order vendors, I drive an for hour to the Philadelphia-area Micro Center.
It's clean, well-stocked, well-staffed, and they have a good Mac department (though that's less important now that Apple has their own retail stores). I usually end up browsing for at least 30-45 minutes, and I seldom leave with just the item I came for.
The only time I'll shop at the other chains is if I desperately need an item, or I'm spending other people's money.
Maybe you could share with the rest of us what, exactly, Safari needs to know about OS X that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and any other browsers don't or can't?
Maybe you could reread my post, since I'm not the one making the claim and am merely repeating what Microsoft's rep said in the linked article?
I wonder why they couldn't keep developing Internet Explorer??
Because (to paraphrase their official statement) they could not hope to compete, because they couldn't get the kind of access to OS X that the Safari team could.
It's actually kind of funny when you remember that Microsoft always disputed other Windows developers' claims that they couldn't compete against Microsoft's own Windows applications for much the same reason. The term "Chinese wall" comes to mind.
People look at Macs and how well they work, and just assume that they could have a similar experience on commodity hardware if Apple would just let them, and that Apple's just being a bunch of meanies by not selling OS X for generic x86 boxes.
Nobody seems to realize that all that el-cheapo commodity hardware and its drivers that would have to play nice together for that to happen, wouldn't. Why do I say that? Because Microsoft has spent 20 years and untold billions trying to get Windows to work as well on the billions of combinations of commodity hardware boxes as OS X works on Macs. They haven't yet, and judging by that track record, they never will. Oh, they've gotten close over the years, but people still have maddening "this worked yesterday but it's not working today" and "this is SUPPOSED to work, but it doesn't!" type problems that leave them angry and befuddled and either spending hours troubleshooting (if they're savvy enough) or calling in the Geek Squad or their buddy who works in IT somewhere.
Just last night, I decided to mess with iMovie to try something out. When I plugged in my camera to pull in some footage, it just worked. No fuss, no muss, no 15 "Windows has detected new hardware and is now setting it up for you" balloons popping up. Plug it in and go. I didn't have to spend time trying to figure out how to get the camera talking to the Mac-- I didn't even entertain the thought that the Mac might not see the camera when I connected it. No, I just spent time editing my video. That's the kind of experience that you just can't get on Windows.
...if you are a Mac owner, and you've paid for every major release of OS X, you've paid about $500 over the last 5 years for your operating system.
I'm sorry, who exactly is putting a gun to the head of Mac owners and forcing them to upgrade their OS? Every non-techie Mac owner I know continues to happily use the OS that came with their computer, just like the non-techie Windows users do. Upgrade cost: $0.
Compare this with $120 (assuming 2k upgrade) for the last 5 years for an XP owner.
Let me get this straight. You're trying to turn the fact that Microsoft has been too inept to get a successor OS to XP out in the last five years into a plus???
An interesting point - however it is going to be difficult for Apple to upsell people on a $3K computer, from a $300 purchase.
Yeah, Apple really needs to come out with some entry level hardware to entice switchers. Maybe a small form factor machine based on those Intel Core Solo and Duo CPUs I've been hearing so much about. They could sell it for $600 or so and call it the "Mac mini" or something.
"NASA's mission to crash a probe into the moon came to an unfortunate end today as the probe suffered a glitch and settled into a stable orbit around the Moon instead of the planned death-dive. Officials said they believe the cause of the problem was engineers mistakenly using the metric system in a system where imperial measures should have been used."
Computer sales still represent 2/3 of Apple's revenues. How many copies of standalone OS X would they have to sell (and at what price), to offset the sudden disappearance of nearly 2/3 of their revenue? (I say nearly, because there are some people who would still continue to buy Apple hardware.)
The last time it was possible to legally run the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, Apple nearly went under because nearly everyone stopped buying Apple hardware and their revenues dried up, and they didn't have anything to offset that shortfall. Selling OS X for generic PCs wouldn't offset the shortfall, either. They'd have to price it high enough to maximize revenue, but low enough so that more people would buy it than pirate it. I just don't see that price being enough to make up for the lost hardware sales.
I've fleshed out some other reasons in a journal posting, as well, the link's in my sig.
And because Apple makes a mint every time they sell a copy of OSX, whether it's on Apple hardware or not?
No, they wouldn't. See, you're thinking that they'd keep the $129 boxed copy price they sell OS X for now. You forget that they price it that low because Apple has already made money from the people buying it-- they bought an Apple computer. Even in the age of the iPod, 2/3 of Apple's revenue is from computer sales.
Apple would have to price OS X for generic x86 PCs in the neighborhood of a boxed copy of XP Pro (MSRP $300). Pricing it that high means they'll sell less, because you people who piss and moan because you want to run OS X on some crapbox PC you built yourself are not going to pay for an OS that costs as much as or more than your computer did, and you know it. You're going to illegally download it, and then Apple makes no money on it. Oh yeah, that's much more lucrative for them than selling a computer.
The last time the Mac OS could run on machines not made by Apple, it damn near killed the company. They won't make the same mistake again.
I was wondering if anyone has gotten the OS X running on a regular PC?
Have you been living in a cave on the far side of the Moon, with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears for the last 9 months or so? People worked hard at cracking the protection on the Developer preview of Mac OS X x86 as soon as they got their hands on copies. With each update to 10.4 for x86, I believe the cracks were broken (purposely or not) so they'd have to figure out a workaround again.
Think about it would be dumb for Apple to not make this move, otherwise they have just turned themselves into a PC maker and will have to compete with dell for customers.
You're the one who needs to think about it. Apple is a hardware company. Despite the success of the iPod, most of their income still comes from computer sales. Think about how much a copy of OS X meant to run on a generic PC would have to cost to make up for the shortfall-- probably about $300 or so. How many people are going to buy an OS that costs as much as their el-cheapo PC?
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Who says they need to compete with iTunes?
It's Microsoft, dude-- they can't just co-exist with a competitor, everything's got to be an Us-vs-Them-to-the-Death battle.
Personally, I have a 30 gig iPod. If I wanted to fill it up with mp3's purchased at iTunes, it would cost me THOUSANDS of dollars. It would be much more financially responsible to fill it up with "rented" songs, as I could pay $150 a year for decades before it would have been more cost effective to buy them outright.
Why does everyone who makes the "Cost to fill my iPod" pricing argument always ignore the fact that most if not all iPod buyers have a preexisting CD collection with which to populate their device? Also, it would be even more financially responsible to add to your music collection by buying used CDs-- $150 a year would get you at least 15-17 of them, you can rip those tracks to whatever format and quality level you prefer, and they're yours to keep forever with no DRM.
I've got a 30GB iPod as well, and the only songs on it that didn't come from my personal CD collection came from "free song" codes during the iTMS/Pepsi promotions.
~Philly
I would love to have TC for my sisters computer. She has never had the need to run any applications besides the ones I have installed. Or is this already possible with any OS? The ability to specify a list of allowed executables and the disability for a user application to change the list.
Already doable in OS X, via Parental Controls. You can specify "user can only run the apps in this list" and that's all they can launch, period. Without knowing an admin password, they can't change anything. You can also lock down a handful of other things, but I only took a cursory look at the other features because I have no need of any of them and just made a dummy account to quickly verify my answer to your question.
~Philly
A more interesting story (IMHO) of US corporation-assisted espionage was the tale of the copier that Xerox installed at the Soviet embassy in the 60s or 70s (I forget which). They hid a camera inside it that snapped photos of every document that was copied. The Xerox service guy changed out the film when he was there for regular maintenance.
A quick Googling found this.
So yeah, the US would (and did) do it, given the opportunity. It's only logical to expect similar behavior from the Chinese.
~Philly
I stand corrected.
:)
Out of all of my clients and friends who've owned Powerbook G4s over the years, I have only ever seen one person actually use that slot-- I didn't know the specs on it because I've never really had the need.
~Philly
The Pro laptops have a PCMCIA slot, but not the others.
The Powerbook G4s have a PC Card slot. The Macbook Pros have an ExpressCard/34 slot.
~Philly
Any true Conservatives, should have rather supported this .xxx bid, as it will help in better blocking/controlling (atleast to some extent) pornography.
To give internet porn its own little walled garden would be to legitimize it. The Conservatives are beholden to the bible-thumpers who put them into office. Said bible-thumpers want to eradicate porn from the face of the earth, and would not stand for their elected officials supporting anything contrary to that aim.
It's not really (and never has been) about keeping kids away from the stuff-- it's about the Jesus freaks imposing their beliefs and lifestyle on the rest of us.
~Philly
And in any case your old MS software doesn't stop functioning the moment they release a new version.
No, but it might as well if Microsoft "improves" the file formats sufficiently (which they did quite a bit in the 90s).
If one major entity you do business with upgrades, then YOU have to upgrade-- because the only alternative is to ask them to save everything to an older format, which they will either balk at or forget to do half the time.
It hasn't been quite so bad since the whole monopoly lawsuit, but they are slowly getting bolder again.
~Philly
Yeah, except how effective would that ad campaign be?
They'd have to settle for print ads, because the cable company wouldn't sell them advertising time for ads promoting things contrary to the interests of said cable company. And since nobody really reads newspapers anymore...
~Philly
The G4-based incarnation of the Mac mini was basically an iBook without the LCD or keyboard-- it had identical specs. It stands to reason that Apple will continue that similarity once both machines are Intel-based. Which means that the iBook x86/MacBook/whatever they call it will have GigE and be offered with both Core Solo and Core Duo CPUs, just like the Intel mini.
As for missing features, some of them are strictly to differentiate the product lines. But you can bet your bottom dollar that gigabit ethernet will be in the MacBook. For one thing, the Mac mini which will share the MacBook's specs has it. For another, if Apple wants to get into the downloadable movies business, GigE across their entire computer line is a no-brainer-- and the G4 iBook is currently the only machine in their lineup right now that lacks it. It doesn't matter that current consumer-level broadband routers only do 10/100, it's just important that the Mac not be the bottleneck when Joe Sixpack wants to download a movie. Broadband internet will get faster and cheaper, eventually, and consumer-level 'infrastructure' items will start supporting gigabit. When that happens, Apple's products will be ready and waiting to take advantage of it.
~Philly
No, we all still look down our noses at Windows... but the reality is that there are some things you simply NEED Windows for. Things like AutoCAD, websites that require Windows IE because they won't work without CraptiveX, and games, to name three.
We are excited about Boot Camp because lots of people who have to use something that is Windows-only now have the option of purchasing a Mac. There have always been plenty of people who wanted to switch to Macs but could not because there was something holding them to Windows. In the past, their only options were to either do without the Windows-only stuff, or keep an x86 box around for that. Now they can buy one machine and still do everything they want/need. Right now, dual-booting is the only way to go, but eventually Windows (and any other OS that runs on x86) will be able to run in a sandbox right alongside of OS X-- via Parallels Workstation, the forthcoming Mac version of VMWare, Virtual PC (if Microsoft ever gets off their asses and commits to producing a version for Intel Macs), or whatever virtualization goodies Apple is cooking up as part of OS X 10.5.
To sum up, a bigger target audience = more Mac sales = greater marketshare, hardware- and OS-wise. And that is certainly a good thing. So yeah, Mac users can simultaneously despise Windows and be happy about Boot Camp.
~Philly
If we can share the software updates between macs, it would be a good thing.
Tiger Server does that. It might be possible to hack something similar into OS X client, since plenty of OS X Server features exist in OS X, just without graphical means to configure/start them. The software update server is barely more than a webserver with the packages and checksum files.
~Philly
This article was on CNN last night as well, under the headline "Viruses catch up to the Mac."
Uh, yeah. Sure. Two guys get hit by something, the articles are not even clear about exactly what, and it's, "Oh noes! The sky is falling!"
Yeah, viruses are really catching up to the Mac. One down (maybe), a few tens of thousands more to go to catch up to the quantity available for Windows. Look at all the crap you need to do properly secure an XP box. Even if this alleged Mac virus is the real thing, you can stay safe simply by not going to dodgy sites, and thinking for a moment about why that thing you downloaded from said dodgy site is asking for your admin password.
The antivirus vendors must have realized that we just laugh at their press releases touting the dire threats to the Mac, so now they're funneling their fearmongering drivel through the Associated Press in a laughable attempt to turn it into Real News. Nice try, guys.
~Philly
My employer uses (and resells) SpamSoap. It kicks ass. They filter all the mail before sending it on to your mailserver. When they catch spam addressed to a user, that user gets a notification message (one per day) directing them to a web-based console. There they're presented with a list of the messages that have been filtered and can choose to delete them or release them for delivery to the mailserver.
If your mailserver takes a shit, they can cache your inbound mail for a while as well (at least 24 hours, but maybe more). I don't know all the service's specifics because I don't work in the department that deals with it, I only really see it from the perspective of an end-user. All of our clients who have signed on to use it love it.
~Philly
Micro Center is great. I live 5 minutes from a Circuit City, and 15-20 minutes away from a Best Buy and a CompUSA. But when I need something and don't want to or can't wait for it to be shipped from one of my usual mail order vendors, I drive an for hour to the Philadelphia-area Micro Center.
It's clean, well-stocked, well-staffed, and they have a good Mac department (though that's less important now that Apple has their own retail stores). I usually end up browsing for at least 30-45 minutes, and I seldom leave with just the item I came for.
The only time I'll shop at the other chains is if I desperately need an item, or I'm spending other people's money.
~Philly
Cue an avalanche of "Buffering..." jokes in 3... 2... 1...
~Philly
Maybe you could share with the rest of us what, exactly, Safari needs to know about OS X that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and any other browsers don't or can't?
Maybe you could reread my post, since I'm not the one making the claim and am merely repeating what Microsoft's rep said in the linked article?
~Philly
I wonder why they couldn't keep developing Internet Explorer??
Because (to paraphrase their official statement) they could not hope to compete, because they couldn't get the kind of access to OS X that the Safari team could.
It's actually kind of funny when you remember that Microsoft always disputed other Windows developers' claims that they couldn't compete against Microsoft's own Windows applications for much the same reason. The term "Chinese wall" comes to mind.
~Philly
At last, someone else who gets it.
People look at Macs and how well they work, and just assume that they could have a similar experience on commodity hardware if Apple would just let them, and that Apple's just being a bunch of meanies by not selling OS X for generic x86 boxes.
Nobody seems to realize that all that el-cheapo commodity hardware and its drivers that would have to play nice together for that to happen, wouldn't. Why do I say that? Because Microsoft has spent 20 years and untold billions trying to get Windows to work as well on the billions of combinations of commodity hardware boxes as OS X works on Macs. They haven't yet, and judging by that track record, they never will. Oh, they've gotten close over the years, but people still have maddening "this worked yesterday but it's not working today" and "this is SUPPOSED to work, but it doesn't!" type problems that leave them angry and befuddled and either spending hours troubleshooting (if they're savvy enough) or calling in the Geek Squad or their buddy who works in IT somewhere.
Just last night, I decided to mess with iMovie to try something out. When I plugged in my camera to pull in some footage, it just worked. No fuss, no muss, no 15 "Windows has detected new hardware and is now setting it up for you" balloons popping up. Plug it in and go. I didn't have to spend time trying to figure out how to get the camera talking to the Mac-- I didn't even entertain the thought that the Mac might not see the camera when I connected it. No, I just spent time editing my video. That's the kind of experience that you just can't get on Windows.
~Philly
...if you are a Mac owner, and you've paid for every major release of OS X, you've paid about $500 over the last 5 years for your operating system.
I'm sorry, who exactly is putting a gun to the head of Mac owners and forcing them to upgrade their OS? Every non-techie Mac owner I know continues to happily use the OS that came with their computer, just like the non-techie Windows users do. Upgrade cost: $0.
Compare this with $120 (assuming 2k upgrade) for the last 5 years for an XP owner.
Let me get this straight. You're trying to turn the fact that Microsoft has been too inept to get a successor OS to XP out in the last five years into a plus???
An interesting point - however it is going to be difficult for Apple to upsell people on a $3K computer, from a $300 purchase.
Yeah, Apple really needs to come out with some entry level hardware to entice switchers. Maybe a small form factor machine based on those Intel Core Solo and Duo CPUs I've been hearing so much about. They could sell it for $600 or so and call it the "Mac mini" or something.
~Philly
"NASA's mission to crash a probe into the moon came to an unfortunate end today as the probe suffered a glitch and settled into a stable orbit around the Moon instead of the planned death-dive. Officials said they believe the cause of the problem was engineers mistakenly using the metric system in a system where imperial measures should have been used."
~Philly
With the Apple remotes, you can pair the remote and the computer so it only responds to your specific remote.
~Philly
Computer sales still represent 2/3 of Apple's revenues. How many copies of standalone OS X would they have to sell (and at what price), to offset the sudden disappearance of nearly 2/3 of their revenue? (I say nearly, because there are some people who would still continue to buy Apple hardware.)
The last time it was possible to legally run the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, Apple nearly went under because nearly everyone stopped buying Apple hardware and their revenues dried up, and they didn't have anything to offset that shortfall. Selling OS X for generic PCs wouldn't offset the shortfall, either. They'd have to price it high enough to maximize revenue, but low enough so that more people would buy it than pirate it. I just don't see that price being enough to make up for the lost hardware sales.
I've fleshed out some other reasons in a journal posting, as well, the link's in my sig.
~Philly
And because Apple makes a mint every time they sell a copy of OSX, whether it's on Apple hardware or not?
No, they wouldn't. See, you're thinking that they'd keep the $129 boxed copy price they sell OS X for now. You forget that they price it that low because Apple has already made money from the people buying it-- they bought an Apple computer. Even in the age of the iPod, 2/3 of Apple's revenue is from computer sales.
Apple would have to price OS X for generic x86 PCs in the neighborhood of a boxed copy of XP Pro (MSRP $300). Pricing it that high means they'll sell less, because you people who piss and moan because you want to run OS X on some crapbox PC you built yourself are not going to pay for an OS that costs as much as or more than your computer did, and you know it. You're going to illegally download it, and then Apple makes no money on it. Oh yeah, that's much more lucrative for them than selling a computer.
The last time the Mac OS could run on machines not made by Apple, it damn near killed the company. They won't make the same mistake again.
~Philly
I was wondering if anyone has gotten the OS X running on a regular PC?
Have you been living in a cave on the far side of the Moon, with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears for the last 9 months or so? People worked hard at cracking the protection on the Developer preview of Mac OS X x86 as soon as they got their hands on copies. With each update to 10.4 for x86, I believe the cracks were broken (purposely or not) so they'd have to figure out a workaround again.
Think about it would be dumb for Apple to not make this move, otherwise they have just turned themselves into a PC maker and will have to compete with dell for customers.
You're the one who needs to think about it. Apple is a hardware company. Despite the success of the iPod, most of their income still comes from computer sales. Think about how much a copy of OS X meant to run on a generic PC would have to cost to make up for the shortfall-- probably about $300 or so. How many people are going to buy an OS that costs as much as their el-cheapo PC?
~Philly
Microsoft is trying to take the stand that "spyware is getting so bad, there's just nothing _anyone_ can do!".
We will do well to remember this once they ramp up the marketing for Vista and paint it as the savior to the malware-plagued unwashed masses.
~Philly