I have to disagree. I'm wondering why very few here on/. seem to have paid any attention to what seems obvious to many of us. MS is not worried about Linux. MS has never really made it into that server space. Perhaps they never will.
Windows (any variety) is a consumer OS. It has only one real competitor, the same one it's had for years. Apple. Linux ain't ready for Grandma, and no one knows when it will be. Apple, OTOH, has been ready for Grandma since 1984, and OSX makes the user experience even simpler while providing a level of reliability that Windows still can't quite match.
Attacking OSS, and singling out Linux, is part of a dual process; get into the server space with fewer competitors, but also (and IMHO, more importantly) kill Apple. Because Apple is threatening them now, not at some point in the future. And with each "gee-whiz" product they come out with (TiBook, new iBook, etc.) the threat gets bigger.
Apple is far from dead. Their sales are increasing steadily, while everyone else's are declining. Don't think Redmond didn't pay attention to $19,000,000 in sales of OSX in ONE week.
What about a development model like the one Apple's using for OS X? Part of the OS is free and shared and everyone who wants to can contribute and receive improvements to it, part of it is value-added and costs something reasonable which pays for managing the project and paying programmers.
Sounds like a workable compromise to me. Others could also build other value-added stuff on top of Darwin (or whatever) and sell it or sell support...
As for not needing support, show me some software with zero bugs, please. I'll wait, but I won't hold my breath. Besides, bugs aren't the only thing that require support; what about new features? What about customising for users? What about the Next Big Thing that no one's though of yet?
Officially, yes. Really? No. Sonnet's committed to working on G3 and G4 upgrades for older PCI Macs that will be OSX compliant.
The buzz is that the G3/G4 limitation is temporary, and that Apple will work its way back through at least the 604 line; they just want to concentrate on the G3/G4 now so they can get that right.
The graphics were fine for everything except games, and have been for years. I don't think the definition of "workstation" is "a device to play games with". Lots of us who've been using computers for 20 years or more to make a living don't play games at all.
OS X will use altivec (I believe Quartz benefits from it when it's present) and you're right about the G4 being sweet; now that they're ramping up the clock speed, comparisons with that CISC/RISC hybrid bag of pus intel puts out are going to get really embarrasing for Seattle.
Not if Ketch has his way. The problem with this solution is that lots of people would LIKE that punishment. We'd see a huge influx of masochists in IT land, cracking just badly enough to insure they got caught.
Then they'll hire sadists to track and punish them. Oh, wait, they already did.
Or the way that you stick in a cd, it shows up on the desktop (no whining about "this disk is unreadable, blah, blah), you drag files to it and hit "burn CD" in the finder. This is not ideal, but is a step in that direction, i.e., no app to launch, nothing to configure, etc. They've made burning a CD about as simple as putting a sandwich in a paper bag. You gotta love those guys.
I watched one of intel's top engineers set up win2k on a sitka that we built ourselves in one of intel's labs. 2 gigs ram, four-way xeon, failover raid 5 on 5 cheetahs.
BSOD. Several times. Nuff said. And no, the hardware was just fine. Win2k is better than any previous MS system, but that's not saying much.
>>Apple has had a big problem, because traditional Mac OS while great for a desktop, was a JOKE as a server of any kind.>>
Not so. I run AppleshareIP 6.3 on a 400/256/36 G4 for file, web and ftp and it's a rock. 7 months now without a restart, and that was to drop in an update. This is in a heavy production setting (read: BIG graphics files accessed by LOTS of people).
That is not a joke server, not when I listen to my pals moan about Win2kAS having an uptime measurable in days, at most. I have no doubt that *NIX servers would handle bigger loads or more clients with some greater responsiveness, but ASIP is totally worthy.
Dude, their support does suck, but what your dad has on his hands is a software problem. Get an experienced Mac head to fix it. Everything you're decribing except the mouse problem is software (driver/directory) related. Replace the mouse only.
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I have to disagree. I'm wondering why very few here on /. seem to have paid any attention to what seems obvious to many of us. MS is not worried about Linux. MS has never really made it into that server space. Perhaps they never will.
Windows (any variety) is a consumer OS. It has only one real competitor, the same one it's had for years. Apple. Linux ain't ready for Grandma, and no one knows when it will be. Apple, OTOH, has been ready for Grandma since 1984, and OSX makes the user experience even simpler while providing a level of reliability that Windows still can't quite match.
Attacking OSS, and singling out Linux, is part of a dual process; get into the server space with fewer competitors, but also (and IMHO, more importantly) kill Apple. Because Apple is threatening them now, not at some point in the future. And with each "gee-whiz" product they come out with (TiBook, new iBook, etc.) the threat gets bigger.
Apple is far from dead. Their sales are increasing steadily, while everyone else's are declining. Don't think Redmond didn't pay attention to $19,000,000 in sales of OSX in ONE week.
What about a development model like the one Apple's using for OS X? Part of the OS is free and shared and everyone who wants to can contribute and receive improvements to it, part of it is value-added and costs something reasonable which pays for managing the project and paying programmers.
Sounds like a workable compromise to me. Others could also build other value-added stuff on top of Darwin (or whatever) and sell it or sell support...
As for not needing support, show me some software with zero bugs, please. I'll wait, but I won't hold my breath. Besides, bugs aren't the only thing that require support; what about new features? What about customising for users? What about the Next Big Thing that no one's though of yet?
Officially, yes. Really? No. Sonnet's committed to working on G3 and G4 upgrades for older PCI Macs that will be OSX compliant.
The buzz is that the G3/G4 limitation is temporary, and that Apple will work its way back through at least the 604 line; they just want to concentrate on the G3/G4 now so they can get that right.
The graphics were fine for everything except games, and have been for years. I don't think the definition of "workstation" is "a device to play games with". Lots of us who've been using computers for 20 years or more to make a living don't play games at all.
OS X will use altivec (I believe Quartz benefits from it when it's present) and you're right about the G4 being sweet; now that they're ramping up the clock speed, comparisons with that CISC/RISC hybrid bag of pus intel puts out are going to get really embarrasing for Seattle.
Let's see, RISC processor, hires graphics, fast networking, hmmm, guess they already are workstations.
Not if Ketch has his way. The problem with this solution is that lots of people would LIKE that punishment. We'd see a huge influx of masochists in IT land, cracking just badly enough to insure they got caught.
Then they'll hire sadists to track and punish them. Oh, wait, they already did.
Or the way that you stick in a cd, it shows up on the desktop (no whining about "this disk is unreadable, blah, blah), you drag files to it and hit "burn CD" in the finder. This is not ideal, but is a step in that direction, i.e., no app to launch, nothing to configure, etc. They've made burning a CD about as simple as putting a sandwich in a paper bag. You gotta love those guys.
Maya is being ported to OSX. For a 3d geek that should be all you need to hear.
I watched one of intel's top engineers set up win2k on a sitka that we built ourselves in one of intel's labs. 2 gigs ram, four-way xeon, failover raid 5 on 5 cheetahs.
BSOD. Several times. Nuff said. And no, the hardware was just fine. Win2k is better than any previous MS system, but that's not saying much.
Read this.
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/g4vp3.shtml
>>Apple has had a big problem, because traditional Mac OS while great for a desktop, was a JOKE as a server of any kind.>>
Not so. I run AppleshareIP 6.3 on a 400/256/36 G4 for file, web and ftp and it's a rock. 7 months now without a restart, and that was to drop in an update. This is in a heavy production setting (read: BIG graphics files accessed by LOTS of people).
That is not a joke server, not when I listen to my pals moan about Win2kAS having an uptime measurable in days, at most. I have no doubt that *NIX servers would handle bigger loads or more clients with some greater responsiveness, but ASIP is totally worthy.
Dude, their support does suck, but what your dad has on his hands is a software problem. Get an experienced Mac head to fix it. Everything you're decribing except the mouse problem is software (driver/directory) related. Replace the mouse only.