OS X on x86 wasn't (or certainly shouldn't have been) a surprise to anyone with half a clue.
Apple *switching to intel chips* - now that was a surprise. Either intel has got something really big in the pipeline, or IBM have completely and utterly dropped the ball on PPC.
Obviously this will change over time, but if it were allowed to suddenly change too quickly the markets would suffer a minor collapse, instead of a slow fall that can be checked as people and businesses adjust.
Presumably this change is going to come after the revolution ? Because it certainy won't happen while corporations - and their intrinsic need for draconian IP laws - are controlling the governments.
I heard that XP swapped more aggressively than Linux i.e. you could have a Gig of RAM and Windows will, utterly retardedly, start swapping anyway(!).
Windows's VM algorithms try to keep a large pool of "free" memory for disk caching and _active_ code use. It does this by pre-emptively "swapping out" _inactive_ code. However, it doesn't actually free the memory until it's needed elsewhere - so it will write to the pagefile, but may not have to read the same thing back from the pagefile if the memory that bit of the pagefile backs hasn't actually been "freed" yet.
The "dragging windows over Firefox leaves horrible trails" thing seems to meet with either "hear, hear!"s or "what?!"s depending on who I ask, so it could be some weird occasional bug in X, although it's worth noting that I've always seen it when dealing with Linux, on both my home desktop (Athlon ~2500 XP, 512MB, nvidia 5200, RenderAccel on, which currently runs Gentoo, but has seen 3 iterations of Mandrake prior to this) and my Laptop (Kubuntu).
I expect you'll find it correlates with which WM is being used. The bigger, heavier, more functional, Explorer-equivalent WMs like KDE and GNOME are "slow", where as the small, light, less-functional WMs like FVWM are (obviously) "fast".
IME, if you pick a WM that's roughly equivalent to explorer (KDE or GNOME, basically) it's noticably slower than Windows on the same hardware.
Personally I don't get the fuss about boot up times. I [re]boot my machine maybe once a month (if that - depends on whether or not a patch needs a reboot). Even most people I've met who hate leaving their computer on "all the time" can handle just switching it on in the morning and shutting it down at night - so only boot once a day.
Personally, I run Gentoo (stage 3, zero tweaking) & IceWM with a Windows dual boot (for games), and for me Linux seems to boot and run apps faster than Windows.
You're running IceWM - what do you expect ? If the shell is doing less of *course* it's going to be faster.
So you write scripts for version 1.3 of MSH and then it goes to version 1.4 and all your scripts are broken. Jee thats really fucking helpfull. I'm not saying thats how it is or will be but it's seems very possible with Microsoft running the show.
Right. Because it's not like one of the keystones of Microsoft's empire is backwards compatibility. Nope, they never go out of their way to make sure old stuff still works on newer versions. That's Microsoft, all right.
I realize that Photoshop runs on OS X, as does MS Office - but if you're a Windows user switching to OS X, it would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper if you didn't have to rebuy all of your old applications at once.
But what would be the point of switching, in that scenario ? Without native applications, you lose 90% of the reason for going to OS X - the interface.
That is, unless MS decides to render their OS software incompatible with Macs, which I wouldn't put beyond them at all. In fact, I imagine it might be a fairly good strategy for them if they're attempting to keep people locked into Windows.
Right. So Microsoft want to keep people "locked into Windows" and somehow *stopping* people running Windows on certain computers is going to achieve this end ?
Did your thought processes even manage to get past "M1cr0$0ft 1s t3h 3v1l" before posting two completely contradictory lines of reasoning ?
Many windows developers have never considered the idea that all the world isn't the latest version of Windows running on a 386.
A bit like many unix developers think the whole world is POSIX and every machine has perl installed on it ?
Unix developers tend to target more machines.
Would the be the OSS developers - whose projects tend to work reliably only on x86/Linux, or commercial developers, who only support maybe 4 or 5 different versions of unix ?
Thus Windows developers have more trouble crossing over to Unix, than Unix developers have crossing to Windows.
I'd have to disagree strongly with that. Most ports of unix applications to Windows are pretty atrocious (and packed full of unixisms that Windows doesn't have).
Seems to me both sides are as bad as each other - and that goes for users as well. Windows devs have little interest in using anything outside of Windows (because, "why would you want to ?") and unix devs loathe anything that isn't Yet Another Unix Platform.
The old MIT thing about SGI and Compaq throwing away their innovative technologies and betting the farm on x86 is really quite stunning.
You need to read it again. SGI and Compaq bet the farm on Itanium, not x86.
Hopefully I won't be when I see the products that will emerge from these changes, but it's only a matter of time before my own Mac is useless because the newer applications will no longer be compiled for G4.
By the time that happens, your Mac will be obselete anyway.
OS/2 tried this strategy, and it failed spectacularly.
While I'll agree full, transparent Windows compatibility of OSX86 would probably be counter-productive, blaming OS/2's failure solely (or even primarily) on its Windows compatibility is rather shortsighted. There were many more issues at play (higher hardware requirements, much more expensive development tools, IBM's distinct lack of interest in actually selling it to normal people, to name but a few).
I believe Phil Schiller said that Apple would not do anything to prevent people from running Windows on the new x86 Macs.
The new Macs are almost certainly not going to be capable of running stock Windows (likely they won't have a traditional PC BIOS). Note that this doesn't invalidate his statement;).
Who would buy a Mac to run Windows when it's pretty much a given they'll be able to buy a cheaper Dell or beige box with better hardware in it ?
They have always been playing catch up out there, because when a product gets popular in-house and/or elsewhere, they have to try to make their own version of it.
I'm curious - by your standards who _hasn't_ been "playing catch up" for the last twenty-odd years ?
It won't be a 'power' anything Mac since they're no longer using the PowerPC chip.
The precendent exists for the "Power" moniker to be independent of the chip architecture (the first PowerBooks were 68k machines). I wouldn't be surprised if they keep it.
Nothing is going to kill Apple faster than hoards of geeks running pirated versions of OSX on $300 Newegg computers, and Steve Jobs knows it.
Why ? It's not like many of them would genuinely represent a lost sale to Apple. You seem to be applying RIAA math (where "copied song" == "lost sale").
The big question is, will the DRM actually prevent this from happening?
There certainly aren't going to be hordes of _typical consumers_ and _business users_ running hacked-up copies of OS X on beige boxes.
* It will likely be a non-trivial affair getting it working (I'm betting on it involving source code tweaks and a custom-compiled replacement for the Darwin layer).
* It will be completley unsupported
* It will be against the EULA
* Even the basic viability of the concept is suspect given the new Macs aren't going to bear much resemblence to a standard PC (they'll almost certainly have their own unique chipsets, they won't have a traditional BIOS, etc). Just laying hands on x86-Mac-compatible hardware will likely be difficult.
The biggest problem Apple faces is application support - whether or not a tiny subset of people are running illegal copies of OS X on homebuilt PCs is hardly even worth worrying about.
I still don't understand why Apple users care so much about which processor is in their system.
Because Apple has spent the last twenty-odd years *telling* them they need to care. Apple users care about the things Apple tells them to care about - expect them to be singing the praises of Intel CPUs within 3 years.
There is NO place in the Mac OS system that needs to be writeable to every Tom-Dick and Harry application program that comes along and if that app is malicious or has a severe bug, renders the computer unbootable.
Nor is there in Windows (assuming - as you have with OS X - that the app developer is competent).
Mac OS system files are read only, even to the administrator user.
Actually quite a lot of OS X's filesystem *is* writable by admin users by default (/Applications, for example).
If any program suddenly asks for an admin password, that raises a VERY RED flag for most Mac users.
Bullshit. Most would type it in without even pausing to think about what the box really means, let alone what might have triggered it.
Knowledgable Mac users that frequent web forums like/. != typical user.
I have never been able to ascertain WHY the computers would no longer boot. It was seldom hardware but a Windows crash. Often there was some obtuse error message about the registry, and then the BSOD, but not always.
That you can't figure something out, does not make your partisan presumptions correct.
Sometimes the system was just totally dead, not even a BSOD.
Hardly something that would suggest a *registry error*. Sheesh, if your Mac *won't even start* is your first suspicion/Library/Preferences ?
MS actually has quite a bit of clout over their developers, but the USERS have the ultimate clout. If the users would bitch loudly and insistently and/or not buy programs that refuse to run under a limited account, Windows could be much more secure, without users having to buy and keep up with all sorts of anti-malware protections.
Exactly. Now, given how much difficulty the average user has with even trivial concepts like "don't run this attachment promising you free porn if you do", how much luck do you think you're going to have educating them about the intricacies of multi-user Operating System security ?
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OS X on x86 wasn't (or certainly shouldn't have been) a surprise to anyone with half a clue.
Apple *switching to intel chips* - now that was a surprise. Either intel has got something really big in the pipeline, or IBM have completely and utterly dropped the ball on PPC.
No, it's got nothing to do with clock speed - x86 is just plain faster.
It's not. The Dock is a UI train wreck. About everything it's possible to do wrong, the Dock does wrong.
Presumably this change is going to come after the revolution ? Because it certainy won't happen while corporations - and their intrinsic need for draconian IP laws - are controlling the governments.
What's your definition of "multiuser" ?
Windows's VM algorithms try to keep a large pool of "free" memory for disk caching and _active_ code use. It does this by pre-emptively "swapping out" _inactive_ code. However, it doesn't actually free the memory until it's needed elsewhere - so it will write to the pagefile, but may not have to read the same thing back from the pagefile if the memory that bit of the pagefile backs hasn't actually been "freed" yet.
I expect you'll find it correlates with which WM is being used. The bigger, heavier, more functional, Explorer-equivalent WMs like KDE and GNOME are "slow", where as the small, light, less-functional WMs like FVWM are (obviously) "fast".
IME, if you pick a WM that's roughly equivalent to explorer (KDE or GNOME, basically) it's noticably slower than Windows on the same hardware.
Personally I don't get the fuss about boot up times. I [re]boot my machine maybe once a month (if that - depends on whether or not a patch needs a reboot). Even most people I've met who hate leaving their computer on "all the time" can handle just switching it on in the morning and shutting it down at night - so only boot once a day.
You're running IceWM - what do you expect ? If the shell is doing less of *course* it's going to be faster.
Right. Because it's not like one of the keystones of Microsoft's empire is backwards compatibility. Nope, they never go out of their way to make sure old stuff still works on newer versions. That's Microsoft, all right.
And is still bloated - I can fit DOS onto a 360k floppy.
Maybe the same thing that has taken "linux" over a decade to still not have some features on par with Windows and MacOS [X] ?
I don't. Primarily because there's just so little I ever do that requires a CLI at all, let alone a particularly powerful one.
But what would be the point of switching, in that scenario ? Without native applications, you lose 90% of the reason for going to OS X - the interface.
Right. So Microsoft want to keep people "locked into Windows" and somehow *stopping* people running Windows on certain computers is going to achieve this end ?
Did your thought processes even manage to get past "M1cr0$0ft 1s t3h 3v1l" before posting two completely contradictory lines of reasoning ?
And most slashdotters *still* think more stuff than you should get.
A bit like many unix developers think the whole world is POSIX and every machine has perl installed on it ?
Unix developers tend to target more machines.
Would the be the OSS developers - whose projects tend to work reliably only on x86/Linux, or commercial developers, who only support maybe 4 or 5 different versions of unix ?
Thus Windows developers have more trouble crossing over to Unix, than Unix developers have crossing to Windows.
I'd have to disagree strongly with that. Most ports of unix applications to Windows are pretty atrocious (and packed full of unixisms that Windows doesn't have).
Seems to me both sides are as bad as each other - and that goes for users as well. Windows devs have little interest in using anything outside of Windows (because, "why would you want to ?") and unix devs loathe anything that isn't Yet Another Unix Platform.
You need to read it again. SGI and Compaq bet the farm on Itanium, not x86.
Hopefully I won't be when I see the products that will emerge from these changes, but it's only a matter of time before my own Mac is useless because the newer applications will no longer be compiled for G4.
By the time that happens, your Mac will be obselete anyway.
While I'll agree full, transparent Windows compatibility of OSX86 would probably be counter-productive, blaming OS/2's failure solely (or even primarily) on its Windows compatibility is rather shortsighted. There were many more issues at play (higher hardware requirements, much more expensive development tools, IBM's distinct lack of interest in actually selling it to normal people, to name but a few).
The new Macs are almost certainly not going to be capable of running stock Windows (likely they won't have a traditional PC BIOS). Note that this doesn't invalidate his statement ;).
Who would buy a Mac to run Windows when it's pretty much a given they'll be able to buy a cheaper Dell or beige box with better hardware in it ?
IE's "hooks into the OS" are no "deeper" than, say, khtml's or WebCore/WebKit's "hooks into the OS".
IE is (basically) nothing more than a shared library called by userspace applications.
I'm curious - by your standards who _hasn't_ been "playing catch up" for the last twenty-odd years ?
The precendent exists for the "Power" moniker to be independent of the chip architecture (the first PowerBooks were 68k machines). I wouldn't be surprised if they keep it.
Why ? It's not like many of them would genuinely represent a lost sale to Apple. You seem to be applying RIAA math (where "copied song" == "lost sale").
The big question is, will the DRM actually prevent this from happening?
There certainly aren't going to be hordes of _typical consumers_ and _business users_ running hacked-up copies of OS X on beige boxes.
* It will likely be a non-trivial affair getting it working (I'm betting on it involving source code tweaks and a custom-compiled replacement for the Darwin layer).
* It will be completley unsupported
* It will be against the EULA
* Even the basic viability of the concept is suspect given the new Macs aren't going to bear much resemblence to a standard PC (they'll almost certainly have their own unique chipsets, they won't have a traditional BIOS, etc). Just laying hands on x86-Mac-compatible hardware will likely be difficult.
The biggest problem Apple faces is application support - whether or not a tiny subset of people are running illegal copies of OS X on homebuilt PCs is hardly even worth worrying about.
Because Apple has spent the last twenty-odd years *telling* them they need to care. Apple users care about the things Apple tells them to care about - expect them to be singing the praises of Intel CPUs within 3 years.
Nor is there in Windows (assuming - as you have with OS X - that the app developer is competent).
Mac OS system files are read only, even to the administrator user.
Actually quite a lot of OS X's filesystem *is* writable by admin users by default (/Applications, for example).
If any program suddenly asks for an admin password, that raises a VERY RED flag for most Mac users.
Bullshit. Most would type it in without even pausing to think about what the box really means, let alone what might have triggered it.
Knowledgable Mac users that frequent web forums like /. != typical user.
I have never been able to ascertain WHY the computers would no longer boot. It was seldom hardware but a Windows crash. Often there was some obtuse error message about the registry, and then the BSOD, but not always.
That you can't figure something out, does not make your partisan presumptions correct.
Sometimes the system was just totally dead, not even a BSOD.
Hardly something that would suggest a *registry error*. Sheesh, if your Mac *won't even start* is your first suspicion /Library/Preferences ?
MS actually has quite a bit of clout over their developers, but the USERS have the ultimate clout. If the users would bitch loudly and insistently and/or not buy programs that refuse to run under a limited account, Windows could be much more secure, without users having to buy and keep up with all sorts of anti-malware protections.
Exactly. Now, given how much difficulty the average user has with even trivial concepts like "don't run this attachment promising you free porn if you do", how much luck do you think you're going to have educating them about the intricacies of multi-user Operating System security ?