Darwin is, and has been, two things: a bootable OS, and Apple's open source strategy with all of the open source projects and components in general.
All of the "Darwin" pieces that have always been open on PowerPC are still open on x86 with the exception of one notable item: the kernel. Most people who leveraged "Darwin" never even touched the kernel. Almost all of our any many other enterprise customers' usefulness comes from the open source OS components of Mac OS X and projects like WebKit, Open Directory, Darwin Streaming Server, etc.
For a time it appeared Apple had killed off everything but the GPL pieces of Darwin x86. However, that was a delay resulting from the fact there's basically one person at Apple packaging and setting up the sources for distribution. Since the subsequent release of the rest of the sources, Apple has done parity releases of all traditional Darwin components and projects on PPC and x86 - with the exception of the kernel.
In other words, the actual usefulness of what the vast majority of Apple open source users actually used "Darwin" for is still there. If you want to argue that its usefulness is all of a sudden severely crippled because the kernel is gone, well, in the enterprise community, one we found out that the rest of the sources would continue to be released on x86 as normal, the kernel being gone was barely a blip on our radar.
But hey, if people want to make a big deal and say "Mac OS X is now closed!" (what does that even mean?), let them.
Users in demanding fields such as biosciences or meteorology do hack OS kernels to slim them down, alter the balance between throughput and computing, and to open them to the resources of a massive grid.
Sounds pretty useful to sophisticated OS X users to me!
To Apple, letting a relatively small population of niche scientific users "slim down" the Mac OS X kernel is massively outweighed by preventing the Mac OS X on x86 hacking community from being able to easily and quickly deliver an extremely polished distribution of Mac OS X for non-Apple Intel hardware, instead of the ugly hack they have now.
Most of the usefulness of "Darwin" in the enterprise, developer, and system administration communities has come mostly from the open source Darwin components and projects, period. Not the ability to rebuild or hack the kernel, and not the ability to build Darwin as a bootable OS.
Darwin is as open as it ever was, minus the kernel - and the kernel is only required if you want to make Darwin a bootable OS.
Which is pretty much useless, and always has been.
Apple can still claim the same level of openness it always has, because all of Apple's open source Darwin components and projects (things like WebKit, etc.) are still open on x86 and PPC.
Indeed. Then why give the x86 Mac OS X hacking community the tools they need to make a nice, polished release of Mac OS X for x86 for use on non-Apple hardware?
The state of Darwin x86 hasn't changed since the day the Intel-based Macs shipped.
In fact, Apple's only action since then has been to release MORE source; APSL sources that correspond to the entire PPC Darwin tree with the exception of the kernel.
This has been discussed for MONTHS in other forums, has already been covered by slashdot, and has been beaten to death on Apple's mailing lists.
Darwin x86 *as an OS* is dead. The actual part of the Darwin strategy people cared about, i.e., the Darwin OS *components* being open, and all of the projects (like WebKit), etc., are all open, alive, and well on x86 and PPC. Apple releases parity Darwin source releases with each Mac OS X release.
The only item of note not present is one thing: xnu (the kernel).
All of Apple's open source projects, all of the APSL-licensed projects - which Apple is under zero obligation to continue releasing - and all of the GPL-licensed projects (of course) are still there.
So, in sum, paint this as some kind of bad news if you want, but if anything, it's OLD news, and actually, the pieces of Darwin people actually care about and use - indeed, both of the things you allude to in your post - are still alive and well on x86.
The only thing you can't do is make a bootable Darwin OS for x86 any more. And if you can explain to me why anyone would want to do that for any useful purpose, well, I'm all ears.
Also, "Mac OS X" has ALWAYS been proprietary. It's sensationalistic and shoddy journalism to say that "Mac OS X is now closed". Mac OS X has ALWAYS been closed. It's Darwin that has been open. And "Darwin" is more than a bootable OS: Darwin is Apple's open source strategy AND an OS; but the usefulness has always come from the open source components of the OS, not the usefulness of Darwin as an OS itself. Darwin's usefulness as an OS is, shall we say, "limited" at best, and always has been.
This has been beaten to death on the darwin-dev list, and there is no new information. Apple has taken no new recent action whatsoever, and in fact, the most recent action is that it has opened up more source code in the x86 tree, not less. Indeed, all of the traditional Darwin source with the notable exception of the kernel itself:
The thing that's not open in the x86 tree is xnu (the kernel), and it's not possible to create a fully bootable binary x86 Darwin OS, as it is for PPC. In the Darwin/OpenDarwin community, this has been discussed for months.
I predict, however, that this Macworld UK article will be seen as "new news", and will be picked up by the tech outlets, and trumpeted, exactly as the headline hopes, as "Apple closes down OS X", even though the source for pretty much everything (except the kernel and drivers) is still available. In other words, everything that a normal person needs Darwin sources for is available. In 5 years, I can think of ONE instance where I looked to the kernel source for confirmation of something, and that was only for *confirmation*, and only because it was convenient - not because I needed to rebuild the kernel. I know of no other non-developer/programmer Mac OS X adminisrators/system engineers/enterprise users who have ever had any reason to rebuild the kernel or any drivers.
If the kernel and driver source were available, it would, however, be used for one purpose: to churn out hacks to get OS X to run on non-Apple hardware in a much faster and higher-quality way than has been possible to date. Will OS X be hacked anyway to run on non-Apple hardware, and will it continue to be, regardless? Yes. If people are willing to replace enough of the OS with the ugliness they're using to get it to work, absolutely. But it will continue to be ugly. Releasing kernel and driver source for the current iterations of OS X on x86 will only make their jobs infinitely easier, while brining little to no benefit to conventional users, power users, and administrators of OS X.
I'm sure people will find a way to make a huge deal about this, though, even though a huge deal has already been made about it in various forums, including slashdot and other tech news outlets, and on several of Apple's mailing lists.
Since then, Apple has posted all of the APSL sources, and it was just a legitimate, honest delay. The PPC and x86 trees are at virtual parity with the sole exception of the kernel and drivers. So I'd submit that "Apple closes down OS X" is highly inaccurate for two reasons:
- Most of OS X was never "open" to begin with; if he wants to say "Darwin", great, but I suppose "Apple closes down Darwin" wouldn't be as sensationalistic and guaranteed to get as many page v
This is yet another example of the upcoming "patently" evil Supreme Court, now stacked with far-right extremists and corporatists by BushCo. No checks and balances, controlling all three branches of govern...
Hmm? What's that? This is a good thing, and slashdot likes it?
The only reason I said "anytime soon" was because I knew someone would say "well, FireWire isn't going to around *forever*". Of course it's not. All standards change, and some are supplanted by others.
But when the iPods dropped FireWire, everyone took that as some kind of "hint" that Apple was "backing away" from FireWire, shunning the standard, and quietly putting it to sleep/death. No. That is not the case. It wasn't then, and it isn't now.
The iPods dropped FireWire likely because of a technical/marketing/cost decision. Most iPod purchasers were (and are) Windows PC owners, almost all of whom don't have FireWire, but DO have USB, and most USB 2.0. All of Apple's machines for the last few years also had USB 2.0 (and at least have USB, since 1998). If one interface had to go for standardize chipset and sizing/cost concerns, it seems pretty clear which one it was to be.
Of course, many people took that as a sign that Apple was getting rid of FireWire completely. There was no basis, however, to make that assumption.
As I've said before:
While specific features of future Macintosh computers cannot be predicted, FireWire is an critical protocol that has come to be relied upon. Some important factors to note:
- FireWire usage across the industry is increasing, not decreasing - FireWire is featured on all currently shipping Intel-based Macs - FireWire is required for Target Disk Mode, a critical feature that many administrators and the Migration Assistant depend on; USB is not supported for these tasks - FireWire is increasingly used as the interface of choice on modern digital video and audio equipment - Since July 2005, all HD cable set top boxes are mandated by the FCC to come with a "functional IEEE-1394 [FireWire] port" - FireWire is the primary (and often only) transport mechanism used by all digital video (DV) and high definition digitial video (HDV) cameras and decks - Application software and features on every Mac, like iMovie, iDVD, and the SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW), depend on FireWire to import video into the computer via DV
For these reasons, it makes no sense that FireWire would have been abandoned now, nor will it be in the near future. *Someday* will machines ship without FireWire? Yeah, and someday they'll ship without USB, too. These standards will die just like everything else does, eventually. Did USB "win" in the mainstream desktop peripheral connectivity war? Yes, of course it did. Long ago. Unfortunately, just because USB and FireWire appeared to compete in some common areas (like desktop storage), the perception was that they were completely competitive standards, and that's not true. Technically, FireWire and USB are a lot different. Could USB be expanded to subsume at least some of the functionality of FireWire? Could a future iteration of USB provide some of the hostless or multi-host peer capabilities of FireWire? Could a universal DV-over-USB standard be adopted? Sure, to all of them. But FireWire is here now, and is used for all of these tasks.
Apple didn't go out of its way to keep FireWire just so the Intel transition was "less disruptive". It keep FireWire because customers need and want it, and its products and product features depend upon it. Apple isn't the only one keeping FireWire alive. It's used all over the industry. All of Apple's computing products will have it for quite some time, and there's no logical or technical reason to believe otherwise.
...FireWire is present, as it is on all new Intel-based Macs to date, proving that FireWire isn't going anywhere (anytime soon, anyway) on Apple's computer products. It also totally shatters Jason O'Grady's ridiculous predictions that "FireWire is gone completely from the new Intel iBooks", which were widely accepted as fact. Of course, it made zero sense at that time, too, but that didn't stop it from spreading around the net like wildfire.
Note also that the MacBook features the Core Duo, not Core Solo, and the screen resolution has increased from 1024x768 on the old 12" iBook and PowerBook to 1280x800.
With the array of connectivity (mini DVI also supports VGA, S-Video, and composite), built-in Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g (yes, a is included and supported by the OS), the ability to boot Windows natively or use Windows (or other x86 OSes) in virtualization, for just over $1000, this looks to be a great deal.
It appears that some of the traditional differences between the "iBook" and "PowerBook" line are shrinking even more; I wouldn't be surprised if there was no 12" MacBook Pro based on the new MacBook's specifications.
One hopes that Apple is applying a reasonable amount of thermal paste on the new MacBooks.;-)
or somehow account for approximately 60 tons of missing aircraft debris at the Pentagon.
Huh?
Let's take a step back for a moment:
1. There were dozens upon dozens of eyewitness reports who say that a commercial jetliner was what crashed into the Pentagon. These were all just ordinary people, going about their business in the DC area, some affiliated with government and/or miltary, some not. Of the witnesses who say it "sounded" like a missile (note the word "sounded"): how is that even relevant? I ask because of the obvious: how many of these people even know what a missile "sounds" like? How many people have heard a commercial jetliner just hundreds of feet (and at some point, tens of feet) off the ground travelling at ~400-500mph? And to repeat, many, many, many people reported directly seeing an American Airlines commercial jetliner.
2. All of the "conspiracy" reports talk about how "no wreckage" was found at the scene. That is patently false. There was TONS of Boeing 757 wreckage recovered, in total, from the Pentagon. Ironically, here are even large pieces of 757 wreckage visible in the photos used to try to "prove" there was no wreckage! Not to mention that the air disaster photos picked for the video were no doubt picked because there WAS wreckage.
4. The ONLY place I've EVER seen any claims about supposed video from the Sheraton, gas stations, etc., is in the internet flash video. I have seen no reference or proof ANYWHERE else, from ANY source, that videos have supposedly been confiscated "minutes" later by the FBI.
5. Also, stop and think about this: where was the (visible) "wreckage" from the WTC towers? Is the only reason we even believe that commercial planes crashed into the towers is because we were able to see it with our own eyes? And even that isn't enough for the conspiracy theorists: they still claim that the WTC towers were *rigged with explosives*, such that they could be made to fall AFTER jetliners rammed into the buildings!
And finally, you might be interested in a test done years ago at Sandia National Laboratory, in which an F-4 was crashed into a concrete wall. Not a 757 and not the Pentagon, but I'd implore you to find any recognizable "wreckage":
The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.
No, that's not the "real problem". Apple goes after anyone, anywhere, that ever posts or reproduces anything from their service manuals, which it considers proprietary, in whole or in part. It doesn't matter what circumstances in which this was posted: Apple would have gone after them, regardless.
Also, the service manual doesn't represent the "manufacturing process". It represents service instructions for service technicians.
However, all of that aside, Apple applies a stunningly ridiculous and inappropriate amount of thermal paste to the CPU and GPU in the MacBook Pro. It apparently does this both in the manufacturing process and the service process - the description and pictures of about ten times the amount of thermal paste than should actually be applied in the service manual only underscores the magnitude of the mistake. For those who might not be aware, thermal paste is not a case of "the more, the better": after a point, it fails to transfer heat, and the heat gets dissipated in an uncontrolled and unintended - and potentially damaging - way. And that's what's happening in the MacBook Pro. When a proper amount of thermal paste is applied, the MacBook Pro runs MUCH cooler, with heat actually transferring to the heatpipe, and the fans turning on when necessary, resulting in a massive drop in operating temperature (not to mention feeling like you're using a small campfire on your lap).
Inevitable Apple bashing aside, I'm actually quite surprised that, given its attention to detail, no one at Apple in any of its product design, engineering, manufacturing, or service operations, nor anyone at Asustek (the contractor that manufactures the MacBook Pro), realized that this is an utterly stupid amount of paste to be applying. I'm just dumbfounded that this made it through whatever QA is in place (and, again, Apple bashing and first revision products aside, keep in mind that Apple has the BEST QA and least need for service across the entire industry, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer reporting and tracking organizations like Consumer Reports).
In any case, Apple also hasn't commented or acknowledged this because it NEVER does so until there is a fix in place (or when it knows a specific fix is already in the pipeline). And yes, it is a "simple" fix, but as anyone who understands a complicated manufacturing process knows, it can take a while to implement any change.
In any event, because (regardless of what anyone may or may not say) Apple is the best in terms of responding to and remedying these kinds of problems when compared to other vendors[1], I have no doubt this will be resolved. I do hope Apple provides a free process for current owners to have this problem resolved at any Apple service facility.
[1] In other words, if anyone is going to say "Apple sucks" on this front, 1.) anyone can come up with service or product nightmare anecdotes from any vendor, and 2.) all other vendors are worse in all categories, if you accept Consumer Reports' rating processes.
I don't think anyone's saying that Aperture 1.0 had some bugs and problems (as a 1.0 release of a MAJOR product), and the recently released major update, Aperture 1.1, addresses many of these (not to mention making the application Universal for PowerPC and Intel).
Apple may feel that Aperture's architecture needs to be completely retooled, but it's not going to kill one of its pro software products that has been out for mere months, especially one that was desired as much as Aperture. Apple just needs to figure out internally which teams are going to be responsible for ongoing development and/or retooling.
Yes, Aperture has had mixed reviews, but many people already love it and are basing their entire workflows on it. It's not like it's the incapable piece of utter shit Think Secret makes it out to be. (Gotta love Think Secret's sensationalism lately...must be bitter about becoming progressively more and more wrong about almost all of their pre-event predictions.)
With SA disabled, non-military users enjoy essentially the same accuracy as military users. With systems like Differential GPS and WAAS, civilian users can get accuracy of 1-3m in 3 dimensions, just as the military can.
Universities Snatch Up Unused Cable For High-Speed Networks
The most ambitious and high-profile of these endeavors is the National LambdaRail, a large fiber infrastructure capable of connecting more than 25 U.S. cities at speeds in multiples of 10 Gbps.
I have heard reports that virtualization software can easily circumvent the security of the host system it runs on. Is this true?
No, not really.
For convenience, I'll regurgitate here some things I said elsewhere in other followups in this thread:
There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.
Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.
Also, the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.
But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:
- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system - not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files - usually not used as the primary operating system - able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised
In closing, yes, a malicious piece of software could potentially affect a VM. But there is nothing inherent in a VM that makes it easier to "take over the machine" or circumvent host security. If anything, it would be harder. It would be much easier to simply attack the host system directly with malware designed for that OS.
The only problem is, it doesn't support hardware (or even software) virtualization, so it's *very* slow. Akin to running Virtual PC on PowerPC, as your last link states.
Sure, it's free, and sure, it will work in a pinch.
But $40 for a commercially supported virtualization solution that fully supports Intel VT? Seems like that's not too much to ask.
As Q/QEMU matures on Intel-based Macs and Mac OS X in general, and if they add virtualization to the product (which is planned), it may be a worthwhile open source competitor to other virtualization solutions like Parallels Workstation and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X (note though that VMWare does NOT give away their Workstation product - only the Player and lower end Server products, both of which are geared to drive sales for Workstation and the higher end Server line products, respectively).
No, you just explained the exact opposite. The 15" and 17" are the very same thickness and therefore there is no technical reason for the 15" not to also have the dual-layer drive.
Um, yes, there is a technical reason. The 17" is both wider and deeper than the 15". There are things in the 15" that get in the way, thickness-wise, that DO NOT in the 17", period (like the trackpad and the keyboard). You don't have to believe it, but it's not an artificial reason, or to get people to "buy the 17" by arbitrarily keeping the DL drive out of the 15. The word directly from an engineer at Apple:
Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.
This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.
(Posts are already proliferating on various Mac sites making the exact same observation.)
Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.
This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.
When I initially disassembled the 15" MacBook Pro, it appeared that the trackpad mechanism was the reason. Evidently that is not the case. In any event, the physical dimensions of the 17" MacBook Pro (and 17" PowerBook) are what allow it to have the thicker drive module, even in light of being 1.0" thick.
And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking? There must be some sort of psuedo-device driver that you install so that it can talk to the virtualized 'hardware,' or else the virtualization software must emulate some kind of commonly-supported networking hardware. I guess I'm just curious what you have to do to the guest OS, if anything, to get it to work inside the sandbox.
It can either be NATed behind the host OS, or it can have its very own IP on the same network as the host machine. The virtual machine has an emulated network interface with its own MAC address. You don't have to "do" anything in the guest OS. It's a very generic network card that has had drivers available (and in my case, always included) in every OS I've installed so far.
Right now all my equipment (Mac stuff, anyway) is PPC based; however I find the whole virtualization concept really intriguing and I'm hoping that by my next round of upgrades, it'll be sufficiently mature to make dual-booting (or having a separate PC for Linux connected with a KVM switch, my current solution) unnecessary.
Well, you'll likely be very happy then, because, even at this early stage, that's exactly what I'm using it for right now. All on one machine that I can carry around with me.
I don't know the ins and outs of virtualization, but it seems to me that if I'm running Windows apps side-by-side with native Mac apps, I expose myself to the same spyware, viruses, and other annoyances inherent to Windows. I'd MUCH rather have Windows restricted to its own little disk partition, which I could nuke any time I need to. And since (1) the only Windows apps I'd want to run are games, and (2) it supposedly takes only about 15 seconds to boot these things, I'd just as soon boot into Windows when I absolutely need to and keep my MacOS main partition "pristine."
Well, yes, if all you're using is games, you'd need to dual boot anyway, since you'd need native 3D graphics support. But ignoring that for a second:
There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.
Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.
The funny thing is, that the "nuke any time I need to" is actually much, much, much easier in virtualization than anything else: the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.
But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:
- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system - not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files - usually not used as the primary operating system - able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised
As for Intel VT (Vanderpool) technology, its coming in the 64-bit Merom CPU this fall. Perhaps then I'll be ready to upgrade my current Powerbook G4 to a triple OS laptop (which I need as a systems admin).
No, VT is here today, on the current Core Duo T2500 Apple is using in all Intel-based Macs. Parallels Workstation takes full advantage of Intel VT, today. You don't have to wait to have your triple (simultaneously running) OS environment, since I'm looking at it on my MacBook Pro in front of me right now.
So as much as I want a MacBook Pro so I can utilize Windows virtualization, I won't be buying one until I see these features returned to the 15" model.
Then you'll probably be waiting a long time.
1.) I just explained exactly why the dual layer burner isn't present on the 15" MacBook Pro. It's a purely physical/technical reason. Until there is a 9mm 8x dual layer burner, you won't see one in the 15" MacBook Pro, period.
2.) FireWire 800 was also left out of the 15" MacBook Pro for space reasons (adding it requires additional support chipsets that aren't a part of any of Intel's standard chipsets, which means a comparatively considerable amount of space is required to implement it. Yes, it's still small, but every ounce of space counts.
Do you really need a dual layer DVD burner and FireWire 800 on a 15" Mac laptop so much that you'd forgo what is almost a perfect environment for virtualization of multiple operating systems, alongside Mac OS X?
This is a First Gen product from apple a company who doesn't exactly have the best track record with 1st gen products. You may wish to wait 3-4 months till the next revision comes out if stability is important to you.
Even so, it might be worth noting that Apple has the best track record across all computer manufacturers, in terms of "initial quality" (out of the box reliablity/usage characteristics), overall quality, lack of need for repairs, and technical support, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer organizations like Consumer Reports.
I think it's safe to say that ANY first gen product from any manufacturer will have problems, but even so, Apple actually has consistently less problems with quality, and specifically "initial quality", than any other vendor, at least by whatever metric Consumer Reports uses to come up with their reports every 6 months.
Still, even considering the above, it's always wise advice to wait for the second generation of ANY new product. Whether it's a new vehicle platform, or a laptop. (One might presume, however, that some things Apple learned from the 15" MacBook Pro rollout have been applied to the initial rollout of the 17" MacBook Pro.)
Yes, Apple's driver supports the "a" functionality. Also, on page 62 of Apple's MacBook Pro user's guide, it confirms that it is capable of connecting to "any 802.11a-, 802.11b-, or 802.11g-compliant product."
Apple has so far used the Broadcom BCM4311 and Atheros AR5000 Series (AR5006EX) wireless chipsets, both of which support 802.11a/b/g. Don't know what the status with regard to Linux is for any of those chipsets.
Of course, I've used RHEL, Fedora Core, and CentOS happily with networking, in virtualization, on my MacBook Pro, so there's no need to worry about "Linux drivers".
Slashdot Mirror
Darwin is, and has been, two things: a bootable OS, and Apple's open source strategy with all of the open source projects and components in general.
All of the "Darwin" pieces that have always been open on PowerPC are still open on x86 with the exception of one notable item: the kernel. Most people who leveraged "Darwin" never even touched the kernel. Almost all of our any many other enterprise customers' usefulness comes from the open source OS components of Mac OS X and projects like WebKit, Open Directory, Darwin Streaming Server, etc.
For a time it appeared Apple had killed off everything but the GPL pieces of Darwin x86. However, that was a delay resulting from the fact there's basically one person at Apple packaging and setting up the sources for distribution. Since the subsequent release of the rest of the sources, Apple has done parity releases of all traditional Darwin components and projects on PPC and x86 - with the exception of the kernel.
In other words, the actual usefulness of what the vast majority of Apple open source users actually used "Darwin" for is still there. If you want to argue that its usefulness is all of a sudden severely crippled because the kernel is gone, well, in the enterprise community, one we found out that the rest of the sources would continue to be released on x86 as normal, the kernel being gone was barely a blip on our radar.
But hey, if people want to make a big deal and say "Mac OS X is now closed!" (what does that even mean?), let them.
Users in demanding fields such as biosciences or meteorology do hack OS kernels to slim them down, alter the balance between throughput and computing, and to open them to the resources of a massive grid.
Sounds pretty useful to sophisticated OS X users to me!
To Apple, letting a relatively small population of niche scientific users "slim down" the Mac OS X kernel is massively outweighed by preventing the Mac OS X on x86 hacking community from being able to easily and quickly deliver an extremely polished distribution of Mac OS X for non-Apple Intel hardware, instead of the ugly hack they have now.
Most of the usefulness of "Darwin" in the enterprise, developer, and system administration communities has come mostly from the open source Darwin components and projects, period. Not the ability to rebuild or hack the kernel, and not the ability to build Darwin as a bootable OS.
Is it a loss? Sure.
Darwin is as open as it ever was, minus the kernel - and the kernel is only required if you want to make Darwin a bootable OS.
3 51035
Which is pretty much useless, and always has been.
Apple can still claim the same level of openness it always has, because all of Apple's open source Darwin components and projects (things like WebKit, etc.) are still open on x86 and PPC.
Take a look:
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
See my post here for details:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185992&cid=15
Indeed. Then why give the x86 Mac OS X hacking community the tools they need to make a nice, polished release of Mac OS X for x86 for use on non-Apple hardware?
There is no new news here.
The state of Darwin x86 hasn't changed since the day the Intel-based Macs shipped.
In fact, Apple's only action since then has been to release MORE source; APSL sources that correspond to the entire PPC Darwin tree with the exception of the kernel.
This has been discussed for MONTHS in other forums, has already been covered by slashdot, and has been beaten to death on Apple's mailing lists.
Darwin x86 *as an OS* is dead. The actual part of the Darwin strategy people cared about, i.e., the Darwin OS *components* being open, and all of the projects (like WebKit), etc., are all open, alive, and well on x86 and PPC. Apple releases parity Darwin source releases with each Mac OS X release.
See for yourself:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
The only item of note not present is one thing: xnu (the kernel).
All of Apple's open source projects, all of the APSL-licensed projects - which Apple is under zero obligation to continue releasing - and all of the GPL-licensed projects (of course) are still there.
So, in sum, paint this as some kind of bad news if you want, but if anything, it's OLD news, and actually, the pieces of Darwin people actually care about and use - indeed, both of the things you allude to in your post - are still alive and well on x86.
The only thing you can't do is make a bootable Darwin OS for x86 any more. And if you can explain to me why anyone would want to do that for any useful purpose, well, I'm all ears.
*Extremely* old news.
Also, "Mac OS X" has ALWAYS been proprietary. It's sensationalistic and shoddy journalism to say that "Mac OS X is now closed". Mac OS X has ALWAYS been closed. It's Darwin that has been open. And "Darwin" is more than a bootable OS: Darwin is Apple's open source strategy AND an OS; but the usefulness has always come from the open source components of the OS, not the usefulness of Darwin as an OS itself. Darwin's usefulness as an OS is, shall we say, "limited" at best, and always has been.
This has been beaten to death on the darwin-dev list, and there is no new information. Apple has taken no new recent action whatsoever, and in fact, the most recent action is that it has opened up more source code in the x86 tree, not less. Indeed, all of the traditional Darwin source with the notable exception of the kernel itself:
The thing that's not open in the x86 tree is xnu (the kernel), and it's not possible to create a fully bootable binary x86 Darwin OS, as it is for PPC. In the Darwin/OpenDarwin community, this has been discussed for months.
In fact, this article by Rob Braun (formerly of Apple, and a member of the OpenDarwin core team) was published in February 2006: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200602/apple.html. This was then covered on slashdot, to which Rob issued this response: http://www.opendarwin.org/~bbraun/slashdot_respons e.html. These two discussions cover the issues very well.
I predict, however, that this Macworld UK article will be seen as "new news", and will be picked up by the tech outlets, and trumpeted, exactly as the headline hopes, as "Apple closes down OS X", even though the source for pretty much everything (except the kernel and drivers) is still available. In other words, everything that a normal person needs Darwin sources for is available. In 5 years, I can think of ONE instance where I looked to the kernel source for confirmation of something, and that was only for *confirmation*, and only because it was convenient - not because I needed to rebuild the kernel. I know of no other non-developer/programmer Mac OS X adminisrators/system engineers/enterprise users who have ever had any reason to rebuild the kernel or any drivers.
If the kernel and driver source were available, it would, however, be used for one purpose: to churn out hacks to get OS X to run on non-Apple hardware in a much faster and higher-quality way than has been possible to date. Will OS X be hacked anyway to run on non-Apple hardware, and will it continue to be, regardless? Yes. If people are willing to replace enough of the OS with the ugliness they're using to get it to work, absolutely. But it will continue to be ugly. Releasing kernel and driver source for the current iterations of OS X on x86 will only make their jobs infinitely easier, while brining little to no benefit to conventional users, power users, and administrators of OS X.
I'm sure people will find a way to make a huge deal about this, though, even though a huge deal has already been made about it in various forums, including slashdot and other tech news outlets, and on several of Apple's mailing lists.
I'd like to point out that this was my initial reaction: http://listserv.cuny.edu/Scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0602 &L=macenterprise&T=0&P=58970
Since then, Apple has posted all of the APSL sources, and it was just a legitimate, honest delay. The PPC and x86 trees are at virtual parity with the sole exception of the kernel and drivers. So I'd submit that "Apple closes down OS X" is highly inaccurate for two reasons:
- Most of OS X was never "open" to begin with; if he wants to say "Darwin", great, but I suppose "Apple closes down Darwin" wouldn't be as sensationalistic and guaranteed to get as many page v
This is yet another example of the upcoming "patently" evil Supreme Court, now stacked with far-right extremists and corporatists by BushCo. No checks and balances, controlling all three branches of govern...
Hmm? What's that? This is a good thing, and slashdot likes it?
Oh.
Hooray, Supreme Court!
(The decision was unanimous, by the way.)
The only reason I said "anytime soon" was because I knew someone would say "well, FireWire isn't going to around *forever*". Of course it's not. All standards change, and some are supplanted by others.
But when the iPods dropped FireWire, everyone took that as some kind of "hint" that Apple was "backing away" from FireWire, shunning the standard, and quietly putting it to sleep/death. No. That is not the case. It wasn't then, and it isn't now.
The iPods dropped FireWire likely because of a technical/marketing/cost decision. Most iPod purchasers were (and are) Windows PC owners, almost all of whom don't have FireWire, but DO have USB, and most USB 2.0. All of Apple's machines for the last few years also had USB 2.0 (and at least have USB, since 1998). If one interface had to go for standardize chipset and sizing/cost concerns, it seems pretty clear which one it was to be.
Of course, many people took that as a sign that Apple was getting rid of FireWire completely. There was no basis, however, to make that assumption.
As I've said before:
While specific features of future Macintosh computers cannot be predicted, FireWire is an critical protocol that has come to be relied upon. Some important factors to note:
- FireWire usage across the industry is increasing, not decreasing
- FireWire is featured on all currently shipping Intel-based Macs
- FireWire is required for Target Disk Mode, a critical feature that many administrators and the Migration Assistant depend on; USB is not supported for these tasks
- FireWire is increasingly used as the interface of choice on modern digital video and audio equipment
- Since July 2005, all HD cable set top boxes are mandated by the FCC to come with a "functional IEEE-1394 [FireWire] port"
- FireWire is the primary (and often only) transport mechanism used by all digital video (DV) and high definition digitial video (HDV) cameras and decks
- Application software and features on every Mac, like iMovie, iDVD, and the SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW), depend on FireWire to import video into the computer via DV
For these reasons, it makes no sense that FireWire would have been abandoned now, nor will it be in the near future. *Someday* will machines ship without FireWire? Yeah, and someday they'll ship without USB, too. These standards will die just like everything else does, eventually. Did USB "win" in the mainstream desktop peripheral connectivity war? Yes, of course it did. Long ago. Unfortunately, just because USB and FireWire appeared to compete in some common areas (like desktop storage), the perception was that they were completely competitive standards, and that's not true. Technically, FireWire and USB are a lot different. Could USB be expanded to subsume at least some of the functionality of FireWire? Could a future iteration of USB provide some of the hostless or multi-host peer capabilities of FireWire? Could a universal DV-over-USB standard be adopted? Sure, to all of them. But FireWire is here now, and is used for all of these tasks.
Apple didn't go out of its way to keep FireWire just so the Intel transition was "less disruptive". It keep FireWire because customers need and want it, and its products and product features depend upon it. Apple isn't the only one keeping FireWire alive. It's used all over the industry. All of Apple's computing products will have it for quite some time, and there's no logical or technical reason to believe otherwise.
...FireWire is present, as it is on all new Intel-based Macs to date, proving that FireWire isn't going anywhere (anytime soon, anyway) on Apple's computer products. It also totally shatters Jason O'Grady's ridiculous predictions that "FireWire is gone completely from the new Intel iBooks", which were widely accepted as fact. Of course, it made zero sense at that time, too, but that didn't stop it from spreading around the net like wildfire.
;-)
Note also that the MacBook features the Core Duo, not Core Solo, and the screen resolution has increased from 1024x768 on the old 12" iBook and PowerBook to 1280x800.
With the array of connectivity (mini DVI also supports VGA, S-Video, and composite), built-in Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g (yes, a is included and supported by the OS), the ability to boot Windows natively or use Windows (or other x86 OSes) in virtualization, for just over $1000, this looks to be a great deal.
It appears that some of the traditional differences between the "iBook" and "PowerBook" line are shrinking even more; I wouldn't be surprised if there was no 12" MacBook Pro based on the new MacBook's specifications.
One hopes that Apple is applying a reasonable amount of thermal paste on the new MacBooks.
or somehow account for approximately 60 tons of missing aircraft debris at the Pentagon.
Huh?
Let's take a step back for a moment:
1. There were dozens upon dozens of eyewitness reports who say that a commercial jetliner was what crashed into the Pentagon. These were all just ordinary people, going about their business in the DC area, some affiliated with government and/or miltary, some not. Of the witnesses who say it "sounded" like a missile (note the word "sounded"): how is that even relevant? I ask because of the obvious: how many of these people even know what a missile "sounds" like? How many people have heard a commercial jetliner just hundreds of feet (and at some point, tens of feet) off the ground travelling at ~400-500mph? And to repeat, many, many, many people reported directly seeing an American Airlines commercial jetliner.
2. All of the "conspiracy" reports talk about how "no wreckage" was found at the scene. That is patently false. There was TONS of Boeing 757 wreckage recovered, in total, from the Pentagon. Ironically, here are even large pieces of 757 wreckage visible in the photos used to try to "prove" there was no wreckage! Not to mention that the air disaster photos picked for the video were no doubt picked because there WAS wreckage.
3. Remains 184 of 189 of the victims aboard flight 77 were identified AT THE SCENE from DNA: http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/stripe/6_48/nationa l_news/12279-1.html
4. The ONLY place I've EVER seen any claims about supposed video from the Sheraton, gas stations, etc., is in the internet flash video. I have seen no reference or proof ANYWHERE else, from ANY source, that videos have supposedly been confiscated "minutes" later by the FBI.
5. Also, stop and think about this: where was the (visible) "wreckage" from the WTC towers? Is the only reason we even believe that commercial planes crashed into the towers is because we were able to see it with our own eyes? And even that isn't enough for the conspiracy theorists: they still claim that the WTC towers were *rigged with explosives*, such that they could be made to fall AFTER jetliners rammed into the buildings!
For a detailed analysis, see:
Detailed analysis of building, crash, and events:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/911_pentagon_7 57_plane_evidence.html
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg 1
Article debunking the conspiracy story:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2004/11 0804factsstraight.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
http://anderson.ath.cx:8000/911/pen06.html
Purdue University also did a simulation, with associated report, that approximates what happened to flight 77 that day:
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/projects/popescu/p entagonVis_files/pentagonVis2003.mpg
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/cgvlab/projects/popescu/p entagonVis_files/paper_422.pdf
And finally, you might be interested in a test done years ago at Sandia National Laboratory, in which an F-4 was crashed into a concrete wall. Not a 757 and not the Pentagon, but I'd implore you to find any recognizable "wreckage":
http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crash_test_ slow.mpg
The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.
No, that's not the "real problem". Apple goes after anyone, anywhere, that ever posts or reproduces anything from their service manuals, which it considers proprietary, in whole or in part. It doesn't matter what circumstances in which this was posted: Apple would have gone after them, regardless.
Also, the service manual doesn't represent the "manufacturing process". It represents service instructions for service technicians.
However, all of that aside, Apple applies a stunningly ridiculous and inappropriate amount of thermal paste to the CPU and GPU in the MacBook Pro. It apparently does this both in the manufacturing process and the service process - the description and pictures of about ten times the amount of thermal paste than should actually be applied in the service manual only underscores the magnitude of the mistake. For those who might not be aware, thermal paste is not a case of "the more, the better": after a point, it fails to transfer heat, and the heat gets dissipated in an uncontrolled and unintended - and potentially damaging - way. And that's what's happening in the MacBook Pro. When a proper amount of thermal paste is applied, the MacBook Pro runs MUCH cooler, with heat actually transferring to the heatpipe, and the fans turning on when necessary, resulting in a massive drop in operating temperature (not to mention feeling like you're using a small campfire on your lap).
Inevitable Apple bashing aside, I'm actually quite surprised that, given its attention to detail, no one at Apple in any of its product design, engineering, manufacturing, or service operations, nor anyone at Asustek (the contractor that manufactures the MacBook Pro), realized that this is an utterly stupid amount of paste to be applying. I'm just dumbfounded that this made it through whatever QA is in place (and, again, Apple bashing and first revision products aside, keep in mind that Apple has the BEST QA and least need for service across the entire industry, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer reporting and tracking organizations like Consumer Reports).
In any case, Apple also hasn't commented or acknowledged this because it NEVER does so until there is a fix in place (or when it knows a specific fix is already in the pipeline). And yes, it is a "simple" fix, but as anyone who understands a complicated manufacturing process knows, it can take a while to implement any change.
In any event, because (regardless of what anyone may or may not say) Apple is the best in terms of responding to and remedying these kinds of problems when compared to other vendors[1], I have no doubt this will be resolved. I do hope Apple provides a free process for current owners to have this problem resolved at any Apple service facility.
[1] In other words, if anyone is going to say "Apple sucks" on this front, 1.) anyone can come up with service or product nightmare anecdotes from any vendor, and 2.) all other vendors are worse in all categories, if you accept Consumer Reports' rating processes.
Doh, of course the first line should read:
"I don't think anyone's saying that Aperture 1.0 didn't have some bugs and problems..."
I don't think anyone's saying that Aperture 1.0 had some bugs and problems (as a 1.0 release of a MAJOR product), and the recently released major update, Aperture 1.1, addresses many of these (not to mention making the application Universal for PowerPC and Intel).
Apple may feel that Aperture's architecture needs to be completely retooled, but it's not going to kill one of its pro software products that has been out for mere months, especially one that was desired as much as Aperture. Apple just needs to figure out internally which teams are going to be responsible for ongoing development and/or retooling.
Yes, Aperture has had mixed reviews, but many people already love it and are basing their entire workflows on it. It's not like it's the incapable piece of utter shit Think Secret makes it out to be. (Gotta love Think Secret's sensationalism lately...must be bitter about becoming progressively more and more wrong about almost all of their pre-event predictions.)
"Non-military" GPS? I assume you're talking about Selective Availability (SA), which has been turned off tentatively for about 16 years, and was permanently turned off in 2000.
With SA disabled, non-military users enjoy essentially the same accuracy as military users. With systems like Differential GPS and WAAS, civilian users can get accuracy of 1-3m in 3 dimensions, just as the military can.
...in this InformationWeek article:
Universities Snatch Up Unused Cable For High-Speed Networks
The most ambitious and high-profile of these endeavors is the National LambdaRail, a large fiber infrastructure capable of connecting more than 25 U.S. cities at speeds in multiples of 10 Gbps.
I have heard reports that virtualization software can easily circumvent the security of the host system it runs on. Is this true?
No, not really.
For convenience, I'll regurgitate here some things I said elsewhere in other followups in this thread:
There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.
Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.
Also, the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.
But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:
- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system
- not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files
- usually not used as the primary operating system
- able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised
In closing, yes, a malicious piece of software could potentially affect a VM. But there is nothing inherent in a VM that makes it easier to "take over the machine" or circumvent host security. If anything, it would be harder. It would be much easier to simply attack the host system directly with malware designed for that OS.
Sure, Q/QEMU is great for open source software.
The only problem is, it doesn't support hardware (or even software) virtualization, so it's *very* slow. Akin to running Virtual PC on PowerPC, as your last link states.
Sure, it's free, and sure, it will work in a pinch.
But $40 for a commercially supported virtualization solution that fully supports Intel VT? Seems like that's not too much to ask.
As Q/QEMU matures on Intel-based Macs and Mac OS X in general, and if they add virtualization to the product (which is planned), it may be a worthwhile open source competitor to other virtualization solutions like Parallels Workstation and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X (note though that VMWare does NOT give away their Workstation product - only the Player and lower end Server products, both of which are geared to drive sales for Workstation and the higher end Server line products, respectively).
No, you just explained the exact opposite. The 15" and 17" are the very same thickness and therefore there is no technical reason for the 15" not to also have the dual-layer drive.
Um, yes, there is a technical reason. The 17" is both wider and deeper than the 15". There are things in the 15" that get in the way, thickness-wise, that DO NOT in the 17", period (like the trackpad and the keyboard). You don't have to believe it, but it's not an artificial reason, or to get people to "buy the 17" by arbitrarily keeping the DL drive out of the 15. The word directly from an engineer at Apple:
Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.
This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.
(Posts are already proliferating on various Mac sites making the exact same observation.)
Yes, and they're all wrong.
Sent to me by a little birdie:
Actually the reason for the thinner 9.5 mm ODD in MBP15 is because it overlaps the keyboard front-to-back. The 17 is deeper front-to-back, hence the keyboard does not overlap the ODD and it can use the 12.7 mm ODD.
This is one reason why the G4 15" is 1.1" thick - it uses the 12.7 mm ODD.
When I initially disassembled the 15" MacBook Pro, it appeared that the trackpad mechanism was the reason. Evidently that is not the case. In any event, the physical dimensions of the 17" MacBook Pro (and 17" PowerBook) are what allow it to have the thicker drive module, even in light of being 1.0" thick.
Sounds neat; just out of curiosity, what are you using for the virtualization?
Parallels Workstation. Takes full advantage of Intel VT, too.
And perhaps I'm revealing my ignorance here, but how does the guest OS on a virtualized system handle networking? There must be some sort of psuedo-device driver that you install so that it can talk to the virtualized 'hardware,' or else the virtualization software must emulate some kind of commonly-supported networking hardware. I guess I'm just curious what you have to do to the guest OS, if anything, to get it to work inside the sandbox.
It can either be NATed behind the host OS, or it can have its very own IP on the same network as the host machine. The virtual machine has an emulated network interface with its own MAC address. You don't have to "do" anything in the guest OS. It's a very generic network card that has had drivers available (and in my case, always included) in every OS I've installed so far.
Right now all my equipment (Mac stuff, anyway) is PPC based; however I find the whole virtualization concept really intriguing and I'm hoping that by my next round of upgrades, it'll be sufficiently mature to make dual-booting (or having a separate PC for Linux connected with a KVM switch, my current solution) unnecessary.
Well, you'll likely be very happy then, because, even at this early stage, that's exactly what I'm using it for right now. All on one machine that I can carry around with me.
I don't know the ins and outs of virtualization, but it seems to me that if I'm running Windows apps side-by-side with native Mac apps, I expose myself to the same spyware, viruses, and other annoyances inherent to Windows. I'd MUCH rather have Windows restricted to its own little disk partition, which I could nuke any time I need to. And since (1) the only Windows apps I'd want to run are games, and (2) it supposedly takes only about 15 seconds to boot these things, I'd just as soon boot into Windows when I absolutely need to and keep my MacOS main partition "pristine."
Well, yes, if all you're using is games, you'd need to dual boot anyway, since you'd need native 3D graphics support. But ignoring that for a second:
There is nothing about virtualization that would make the Mac environment any more susceptible to anything in the Windows environment: the Windows environment is still completely sandboxed, and doesn't have ANY access to the Mac partition(s) unless you were to explicitly grant it. Theoretically, in order to even touch anything in the Mac environment, a piece of Windows malware would have to exploit a vulnerability in the virtualization software itself, that could be exploited via Windows, AND could also be used to affect the host's filesystem. Ironically, it would actually be EASIER in a dual-boot configuration: a hypothetical piece of Windows malware could include a rudimentary driver to recognize HFS+ volumes, at which point it could then install whatever it wished in the Mac environment, or otherwise alter the contents of the Mac OS X partition.
Of course, the likelihood of either of those things happening is extremely remote.
The funny thing is, that the "nuke any time I need to" is actually much, much, much easier in virtualization than anything else: the entire Windows "volume" resides in a file on the Mac OS X disk. You can keep a backup of it, and if anything were to ever happen, you could simply delete it, and duplicate your backup pristine Windows "volume" - since it's just a file - in seconds.
But that also ignores that, while Windows (or another x86-based OS) run on an Intel-based Mac could be subject to the vulnerabilities of that operating system, it is still typically:
- completely isolated from the network, operating "behind" the host operating system
- not used for traditional tasks typically used as attack vectors, like email, web browsing, and downloading files
- usually not used as the primary operating system
- able to be completely restored relatively easily and quickly from a default image, if compromised
As for Intel VT (Vanderpool) technology, its coming in the 64-bit Merom CPU this fall. Perhaps then I'll be ready to upgrade my current Powerbook G4 to a triple OS laptop (which I need as a systems admin).
No, VT is here today, on the current Core Duo T2500 Apple is using in all Intel-based Macs. Parallels Workstation takes full advantage of Intel VT, today. You don't have to wait to have your triple (simultaneously running) OS environment, since I'm looking at it on my MacBook Pro in front of me right now.
So as much as I want a MacBook Pro so I can utilize Windows virtualization, I won't be buying one until I see these features returned to the 15" model.
Then you'll probably be waiting a long time.
1.) I just explained exactly why the dual layer burner isn't present on the 15" MacBook Pro. It's a purely physical/technical reason. Until there is a 9mm 8x dual layer burner, you won't see one in the 15" MacBook Pro, period.
2.) FireWire 800 was also left out of the 15" MacBook Pro for space reasons (adding it requires additional support chipsets that aren't a part of any of Intel's standard chipsets, which means a comparatively considerable amount of space is required to implement it. Yes, it's still small, but every ounce of space counts.
Do you really need a dual layer DVD burner and FireWire 800 on a 15" Mac laptop so much that you'd forgo what is almost a perfect environment for virtualization of multiple operating systems, alongside Mac OS X?
This is a First Gen product from apple a company who doesn't exactly have the best track record with 1st gen products. You may wish to wait 3-4 months till the next revision comes out if stability is important to you.
Even so, it might be worth noting that Apple has the best track record across all computer manufacturers, in terms of "initial quality" (out of the box reliablity/usage characteristics), overall quality, lack of need for repairs, and technical support, consistently, and has for years, according to consumer organizations like Consumer Reports.
I think it's safe to say that ANY first gen product from any manufacturer will have problems, but even so, Apple actually has consistently less problems with quality, and specifically "initial quality", than any other vendor, at least by whatever metric Consumer Reports uses to come up with their reports every 6 months.
Still, even considering the above, it's always wise advice to wait for the second generation of ANY new product. Whether it's a new vehicle platform, or a laptop. (One might presume, however, that some things Apple learned from the 15" MacBook Pro rollout have been applied to the initial rollout of the 17" MacBook Pro.)
Yes, Apple's driver supports the "a" functionality. Also, on page 62 of Apple's MacBook Pro user's guide, it confirms that it is capable of connecting to "any 802.11a-, 802.11b-, or 802.11g-compliant product."
Apple has so far used the Broadcom BCM4311 and Atheros AR5000 Series (AR5006EX) wireless chipsets, both of which support 802.11a/b/g. Don't know what the status with regard to Linux is for any of those chipsets.
Of course, I've used RHEL, Fedora Core, and CentOS happily with networking, in virtualization, on my MacBook Pro, so there's no need to worry about "Linux drivers".