QuickTime is an entire media layer (it supports several dozen media formats, and every media type you can image; images, sound, video, 3D, panoramas, Flash, it's own vector image formats, sprite animation, dynamically applied effects (fire, ripples, transitions) any number of tracks of any of the of the above all combined in one file and turned interactive with scripting) , and is certainly an Apple product. The file format and the streaming protocol are open, so the only thing stopping someone from writing an open source player for QuickTime is access to codecs. QuickTime supports quite a few of them, including some open ones, like MPEG. But everyone uses the Sorenson codec for downloadable or streaming stuff, because it offers the best quality for your byte.
Which has nothing to do with how good a development environment it is. If that were what mattered, NeXTStep would have more software than everything else combined.
Of course, it's entirely obvious the Windows has the most software because it's the most popular OS. And it's the most popular OS because of Microsoft's illegal business practices. So your argument is reduced to "Windows provides the best development environment because the folks at Microsoft are crooks."
Don't believe that Apple has changed it's tune. BeOS had to abandon Mac hardware PPC support because Apple refuses to release documentation on their hardware--even under NDA!
You don't think Be's decision to drop PPC support could have anything to do with Intel's major investment in Be? Are you sure you know who's "bullsh*ttng" you?
BeOS has the cleanest and most intuitive UI available for any OS. BeOS ease of use cuts into Apples core market.
What a joke. Apple's real core market (the one Apple actually makes most of the money off of that is), is pro graphics. BeOS is not serious competition in this market; Adobe owns this market, and doesn't seem to care about Be.
If Be Can't succeed on Intel, how do you expect it to succeed on a platform 1/10 as popular? A platform that people buy for its hardware software integration (and thus are less likely to install a 3rd party OS on)? Be's problems have very little to do with Apple.
In any case, just because Apple won't give things away to competing companies doesn't mean Apple isn't serious about open source for the benefit of developers and users.
I'm well aware of the range of the computer market. I am speaking within the context of the personal computer market. Apple doesn't currently have hardware products in any other.
I'm hardly saying I think Apple has a shot at taking down Microsoft by selling iMacs, but the platform war is far from over. It's just starting to get interesting again. The typical computer user needs a basic word processor, E-mail software, a web browser, maybe a finance program, and some games. You hardly need Windows for that. You hardly need a computer for that, these days. Playstation 2 anyone? Dreamcast?
The Wintel PC is getting some new competition, and it's coming from companies that make "the whole widget."
Apple's place in this isn't very clear, but if these devices do take off, it'll hurt MS more than Apple. Apple makes most of its cash selling high-end boxes for content creation. The sale of millions of these devices would only enlarge the market for $3500 G4 machines.
everything linux does? thats a blanket statement that is hard to qualify.
What's so difficult about it? It's a Unix OS. It'll have an optional BSD command line, and probably an X-Window port as well.
i think normal humans will be confused by it. i've used it, apple has been giving me development copies for close to a year now.
None of which had anything even resembling OS X's final interface until the most recent developer preview. Even that is missing quite a bit. You can hardly judge ease of use from developer previews.
Its good, definitely better than the old 20 year old operating system it was running on. I didn't know linux was lacking desktop software. I can't find enough free time to install and play with all the stuff I'd like to.
Linux most certainly is lacking in desktop software. Anyone who doesn't notice doesn't have very typical needs. Linux currently lacks even such basic things as a decent web browser. And the most important desktop software Linux is missing is, of course, a desktop environment that normal people can use. GNOME and KDE don't cut it yet. You still need to fall back on the CLI.
when people universally are willing to pay twice as much for having less choice, then OS X will win.
This "less choice" thing is a myth. The Mac is not something that restricts choice, it is simply another choice. For many people, it is the right choice.
It also isn't anywhere close to twice as expensive these days. Moreover, the initial cost of hardware or software is almost insignificant as part of the bigger picture, if your time is worth anything (this is one of the reasons the "It's free!" argument for Linux isn't as effective as the "it's reliable!" argument people should be concentrating on).
Software written for OS X's Cocoa API (read: Apple's updated version of the NeXT API) can be compiled as Java bytecode. The possibilities should be obvious.
Of course, you probably wouldn't want to do this with games or graphics software, but for 90% of apps it would be just fine.
Moreover, Apple doesn't make that much profit on a box. If you take a recent quarter in which Apple had no one time losses, and divide profits (minus one time gains) by boxes sold, you find that Apple can't be making more than about ~$130 per computer, and could be making quite a bit less (since hardware isn't Apple's only source of income). If Apple were to sell Mac OS X for Intel for $200 a copy, it wouldn't matter if it cannibalized a Mac sale. That's $200 profit (since Apple has to developer OS X for its own computers anyway, OS X's development cost isn't a factor here) minus whatever the Intel port costs Apple to maintain (which probably isn't that much; OS X is very portable).
It'll do everything Linux does. It'll usable by normal humans (more so that Window 98, in fact). It'll have the most powerful OO API the world has ever seen (inherited from NeXT). It'll have a graphics engine that blows everything else out of the water. It'll have QuickTime. It'll have OpenGL.
And on top of all that, it'll have enough software to actually make it a viable desktop OS, which is something Linux still can't say (though things are certainly getting better for it).
You wouldn't have to support all of that hardware, just a subset. In fact, if Apple made Intel boxes itself (or talked, say, Dell into building a box just for OS X), it would be just as easy to deal with as Apple's current PPC hardware. The advantages are:
1) Cheaper hardware (Apple could just buy logicboards rather than designing them, etc.) 2) You could run Windows at full speed in a VM if you needed some Windows program.
Religion certainly has an image. But more of an impact than science? Without science, we'd still be living in caves an occasionally getting eaten by large cats....
This just isn't correct. There are very serious differences.
First, religions generally claim to know the absolute truth. Science does no do this. A belief in the validity of science is not a belief in anything beyond the idea that it's possible to form theories that can explain how or why things work. Any current theory is nothing more than a 'best guess' that will be revised as necessary.
Second, think of science as open source software. Open source software tends to be (or so the theory goes) more secure than closed source software because there are thousands of people who all have access to the source and can spot bugs. You benefit from this even if you have no idea how to program.
Science is the same. You can be reasonably sure that anything accepted as scientific fact is the best available model even if you don't understand it, because thousands of people who do understand it, accept it. And if you put the effort in, you could understand it yourself.
Religion isn't like that. Religion is usually based on unverifiable claims. When religion states something that can actually be disproven, it usually is (e.g. the world is ~6000 years old). You must accept the word of some person or text as truth, and there is no method by which you or any other person can test the validity of it.
Of course, you could go on about how it's possible past conditions were different, but you'd have no real reason to ever think they were if the conclusions drawn from thinking they were the same didn't conflict with your religion. That's not a logically valid reason. It's just as valid to accept that the universe was created five minutes ago and that all memories from any point before that were simply put into our heads at that time. There's no way to prove it, no way to disprove it, it doesn't explain anything, it doesn't allow for the prediction of anything. It's useless, even if it's actually true.
Science starts by assuming nothing (except, as I note above, that it's possible to build models based on observations), and builds from there, making no unfounded assumptions.
We are a team of game developers working on a non-commercial space-shooter called Parsec. Even though Parsec will be available for download free of charge, we are concerned with delivering a product of competitive quality. We want to combine the pl aying experience found in commercial games with free availability and unrestricted non-commercial distribution. We like to call this commercial-quality freeware (CQF).
It's there now. But it still isn't and probably won't ever be up to Mac interface standards, which almost makes me wonder why they bother. I assume Communicator 6, based on the Mozilla code, will be though. Can anyone confirm that? Will Communicator 6 use the native widgets for the OSes it runs on?
The iMac and the iBook seem to stand in blatant contradiction to both of your claims.
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Re:Answer is "kind of", apparently...
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 1
The current version of Mac OS X Server has a different kernel and driver model than Mac OS X and all future versions of Server will. But remember, the entire core of Mac OS X is open source. If Apple doesn't port it to older machines, it's possible someone else will.
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Re:My 2.something cents CDN
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 1
no Shelf
The Mac OS X desktop functions the same way the NeXT Shelf did.
I actually have a site that was fully HTML 4.0 compliant and rendered perfectly in Communicator and iCab, but incorrectly in IE5. When I tweaked the code to render correctly in IE, it wasn't compliant anymore, but it displayed correctly in all three browsers.
This is a problem I've had more than once. iCab and Opera are the only browsers that seem to consistently render compliant HTML correctly.
iCab, a great little alternative browser for Mac OS, already has a built in HTML validator. It displays a little happy or sad face depending on whether the HTML is valid, and face can be clicked for a list of errors. I haven't found a single web page that's actually fully compliment, with the exception of the pages on the iCab site. It's amazing how crappy the HTML on even large commercial sites is. There are several dozen errors on the Yahoo index page, for example.
(just imagine the video ram you'd need for something like that!)
That's 8,640,000 pixels. You'd need 24.72 MB for 24 bit color (plus texture storage if it's a 3D card). This will probably be cheap by the time a screen like they one you describe can be had for under $10K. There are already cards with 64 MB.
No, you couldn't. Try comparing prices. Apple appears to be selling Airport hardware at cost to encourage Mac sales. This is true of the $4000 Cinema Display as well; that's why Apple won't sell you one except bundled with a G4.
Slashdot Mirror
QuickTime is an entire media layer (it supports several dozen media formats, and every media type you can image; images, sound, video, 3D, panoramas, Flash, it's own vector image formats, sprite animation, dynamically applied effects (fire, ripples, transitions) any number of tracks of any of the of the above all combined in one file and turned interactive with scripting) , and is certainly an Apple product. The file format and the streaming protocol are open, so the only thing stopping someone from writing an open source player for QuickTime is access to codecs. QuickTime supports quite a few of them, including some open ones, like MPEG. But everyone uses the Sorenson codec for downloadable or streaming stuff, because it offers the best quality for your byte.
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Which has nothing to do with how good a development environment it is. If that were what mattered, NeXTStep would have more software than everything else combined.
Of course, it's entirely obvious the Windows has the most software because it's the most popular OS. And it's the most popular OS because of Microsoft's illegal business practices. So your argument is reduced to "Windows provides the best development environment because the folks at Microsoft are crooks."
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Don't believe that Apple has changed it's tune. BeOS had to abandon Mac hardware PPC support because Apple refuses to release documentation on their hardware--even under NDA!
You don't think Be's decision to drop PPC support could have anything to do with Intel's major investment in Be? Are you sure you know who's "bullsh*ttng" you?
BeOS has the cleanest and most intuitive UI available for any OS. BeOS ease of use cuts into Apples core market.
What a joke. Apple's real core market (the one Apple actually makes most of the money off of that is), is pro graphics. BeOS is not serious competition in this market; Adobe owns this market, and doesn't seem to care about Be.
If Be Can't succeed on Intel, how do you expect it to succeed on a platform 1/10 as popular? A platform that people buy for its hardware software integration (and thus are less likely to install a 3rd party OS on)? Be's problems have very little to do with Apple.
In any case, just because Apple won't give things away to competing companies doesn't mean Apple isn't serious about open source for the benefit of developers and users.
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I'm well aware of the range of the computer market. I am speaking within the context of the personal computer market. Apple doesn't currently have hardware products in any other.
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I'm hardly saying I think Apple has a shot at taking down Microsoft by selling iMacs, but the platform war is far from over. It's just starting to get interesting again. The typical computer user needs a basic word processor, E-mail software, a web browser, maybe a finance program, and some games. You hardly need Windows for that. You hardly need a computer for that, these days. Playstation 2 anyone? Dreamcast?
The Wintel PC is getting some new competition, and it's coming from companies that make "the whole widget."
Apple's place in this isn't very clear, but if these devices do take off, it'll hurt MS more than Apple. Apple makes most of its cash selling high-end boxes for content creation. The sale of millions of these devices would only enlarge the market for $3500 G4 machines.
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everything linux does? thats a blanket statement that is hard to qualify.
What's so difficult about it? It's a Unix OS. It'll have an optional BSD command line, and probably an X-Window port as well.
i think normal humans will be confused by it. i've used it, apple has been giving me development copies for close to a year now.
None of which had anything even resembling OS X's final interface until the most recent developer preview. Even that is missing quite a bit. You can hardly judge ease of use from developer previews.
Its good, definitely better than the old 20 year old operating system it was running on. I didn't know linux was lacking desktop software. I can't find enough free time to install and play with all the stuff I'd like to.
Linux most certainly is lacking in desktop software. Anyone who doesn't notice doesn't have very typical needs. Linux currently lacks even such basic things as a decent web browser. And the most important desktop software Linux is missing is, of course, a desktop environment that normal people can use. GNOME and KDE don't cut it yet. You still need to fall back on the CLI.
when people universally are willing to pay twice as much for having less choice, then OS X will win.
This "less choice" thing is a myth. The Mac is not something that restricts choice, it is simply another choice. For many people, it is the right choice.
It also isn't anywhere close to twice as expensive these days. Moreover, the initial cost of hardware or software is almost insignificant as part of the bigger picture, if your time is worth anything (this is one of the reasons the "It's free!" argument for Linux isn't as effective as the "it's reliable!" argument people should be concentrating on).
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Dawin isn't just Mach, it's an entire Mach-based BSD OS.
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Software written for OS X's Cocoa API (read: Apple's updated version of the NeXT API) can be compiled as Java bytecode. The possibilities should be obvious.
Of course, you probably wouldn't want to do this with games or graphics software, but for 90% of apps it would be just fine.
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Most of the people buying higher end systems buy them for the OS. Apple makes most of it's money from high-end hardware sales.
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Moreover, Apple doesn't make that much profit on a box. If you take a recent quarter in which Apple had no one time losses, and divide profits (minus one time gains) by boxes sold, you find that Apple can't be making more than about ~$130 per computer, and could be making quite a bit less (since hardware isn't Apple's only source of income). If Apple were to sell Mac OS X for Intel for $200 a copy, it wouldn't matter if it cannibalized a Mac sale. That's $200 profit (since Apple has to developer OS X for its own computers anyway, OS X's development cost isn't a factor here) minus whatever the Intel port costs Apple to maintain (which probably isn't that much; OS X is very portable).
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Mac OS X is pretty damned revolutionary.
It'll do everything Linux does. It'll usable by normal humans (more so that Window 98, in fact). It'll have the most powerful OO API the world has ever seen (inherited from NeXT). It'll have a graphics engine that blows everything else out of the water. It'll have QuickTime. It'll have OpenGL.
And on top of all that, it'll have enough software to actually make it a viable desktop OS, which is something Linux still can't say (though things are certainly getting better for it).
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You wouldn't have to support all of that hardware, just a subset. In fact, if Apple made Intel boxes itself (or talked, say, Dell into building a box just for OS X), it would be just as easy to deal with as Apple's current PPC hardware. The advantages are:
1) Cheaper hardware (Apple could just buy logicboards rather than designing them, etc.)
2) You could run Windows at full speed in a VM if you needed some Windows program.
--
Religion certainly has an image. But more of an impact than science? Without science, we'd still be living in caves an occasionally getting eaten by large cats....
--
This just isn't correct. There are very serious differences.
First, religions generally claim to know the absolute truth. Science does no do this. A belief in the validity of science is not a belief in anything beyond the idea that it's possible to form theories that can explain how or why things work. Any current theory is nothing more than a 'best guess' that will be revised as necessary.
Second, think of science as open source software. Open source software tends to be (or so the theory goes) more secure than closed source software because there are thousands of people who all have access to the source and can spot bugs. You benefit from this even if you have no idea how to program.
Science is the same. You can be reasonably sure that anything accepted as scientific fact is the best available model even if you don't understand it, because thousands of people who do understand it, accept it. And if you put the effort in, you could understand it yourself.
Religion isn't like that. Religion is usually based on unverifiable claims. When religion states something that can actually be disproven, it usually is (e.g. the world is ~6000 years old). You must accept the word of some person or text as truth, and there is no method by which you or any other person can test the validity of it.
Of course, you could go on about how it's possible past conditions were different, but you'd have no real reason to ever think they were if the conclusions drawn from thinking they were the same didn't conflict with your religion. That's not a logically valid reason. It's just as valid to accept that the universe was created five minutes ago and that all memories from any point before that were simply put into our heads at that time. There's no way to prove it, no way to disprove it, it doesn't explain anything, it doesn't allow for the prediction of anything. It's useless, even if it's actually true.
Science starts by assuming nothing (except, as I note above, that it's possible to build models based on observations), and builds from there, making no unfounded assumptions.
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You won't have that choice:
We are a team of game developers working on a non-commercial space-shooter called Parsec. Even though Parsec will be available for download free of charge, we are concerned with delivering a product of competitive quality. We want to combine the pl aying experience found in commercial games with free availability and unrestricted non-commercial distribution. We like to call this commercial-quality freeware (CQF).
It isn't open source though.
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It's there now. But it still isn't and probably won't ever be up to Mac interface standards, which almost makes me wonder why they bother. I assume Communicator 6, based on the Mozilla code, will be though. Can anyone confirm that? Will Communicator 6 use the native widgets for the OSes it runs on?
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The iMac and the iBook seem to stand in blatant contradiction to both of your claims.
--
The current version of Mac OS X Server has a different kernel and driver model than Mac OS X and all future versions of Server will. But remember, the entire core of Mac OS X is open source. If Apple doesn't port it to older machines, it's possible someone else will.
--
no Shelf
The Mac OS X desktop functions the same way the NeXT Shelf did.
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I wouldn't make any judgments about speed yet. Chances are the OS contains quite a large amount of debug code.
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I actually have a site that was fully HTML 4.0 compliant and rendered perfectly in Communicator and iCab, but incorrectly in IE5. When I tweaked the code to render correctly in IE, it wasn't compliant anymore, but it displayed correctly in all three browsers.
This is a problem I've had more than once. iCab and Opera are the only browsers that seem to consistently render compliant HTML correctly.
--
iCab, a great little alternative browser for Mac OS, already has a built in HTML validator. It displays a little happy or sad face depending on whether the HTML is valid, and face can be clicked for a list of errors. I haven't found a single web page that's actually fully compliment, with the exception of the pages on the iCab site. It's amazing how crappy the HTML on even large commercial sites is. There are several dozen errors on the Yahoo index page, for example.
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(just imagine the video ram you'd need for something like that!)
That's 8,640,000 pixels. You'd need 24.72 MB for 24 bit color (plus texture storage if it's a 3D card). This will probably be cheap by the time a screen like they one you describe can be had for under $10K. There are already cards with 64 MB.
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Ideally MS would use something more like the BSDL so that other companies that make proprietary OSes (like Be) could add support for Win32 software.
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No, you couldn't. Try comparing prices. Apple appears to be selling Airport hardware at cost to encourage Mac sales. This is true of the $4000 Cinema Display as well; that's why Apple won't sell you one except bundled with a G4.
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