It will also kill the rental market. I think this will result in less sales... personally I like to rent games before to buy them new. I will probably buy less game, or maybe just skip the PS2.
So, if they ship late they get bashed. If they ship with a few features missing, they get bashed. Geez, they have to release it at some point. I think it's good they are meeting the announced deadline, otherwise people will keep saying "vapoware".
Also MacOS has a software update program running which polls apple site every day for software updates (it can be disabled), so as soon as the DVD player is ready, I bet it will be uploadable that way. Or shows up in users iDisk (shared HD space on Apple servers, accessible through the desktop). Same for DVD burning. (I suspect in both cases it's just a matter of making the drivers.)
I would be more interested to know what is the state of the USB/Firewire/SCSI drivers... which 3rd parties periphericals are going to work and which will need a new driver.
Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 2
"If OS X for x86 was available, I'd be willing to bet that a large proportion of the first two groups would immediately jump ship over to cheaper hardware."
I think something you forget is that those three categories are not mutually exclusive. The media workers like the really nice and well designed case of their computer. So do some of the GUI junkies.
The price difference between Mac and PC hardware those days is not that big... it's slightly more expensive on the Mac side, but not much more (if you don't buy your RAM at the Apple Store online:-)
Also I'm not so sure that price is king.... otherwise only the cheapest computers would sell, and it seems there are lots of offerings at all kind of price points. Like for any other manifactured good.
Hey, people pay lots of moneys to buy their Nike... and it's just shoes.:)
Last but not least, if OS X worked on x86, Apple could switch from PowerPC to Intel, maybe even use some standard motherboard design and cut prices down some more, etc.
HOWEVER...
There is one thing to be known about Steve Jobs: he is a hardware guy. He likes beautiful hardware. He made the NeXT guys redesign the motherboard of the Next box so it looked visualy pleasant... yes, he went that far. He never really cared much for the software... what really excited him was to make and ship hardware. Or so I read, I don't know him personally:) Of course he may have changed (he has been pushing iMovie, iTunes and iDVD a lot), but I would be surprised that he would want to give up nice hardware design.
Re:Sounds fun, but does Apple care?
on
OS X on x86?
·
· Score: 1
>The would be taking an aggressive step towards MS, that they would not take to kindly.
Amen. That has always been one of the roots of the problem. If Apple ever develop anything threatening to Windows, MS will stop making Office of the Mac. The Mac platform would lose a lot of customers without MS Office.
I'm pretty sure there is an understanding between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that Office will being developped as long as Apple doesn't make a move to x86.
Althought I am glad there is a x86 version of darwin, I have the feeling it is a kind of teaser: like Darwin on x86? why don't you get one of our nice shiny G4 and OS X, you will have the Darwin you love and much more!
I believe if they manage to get pay-per-view content only then we will be doomed by stagnation... they will just keep selling us the same thing over and over, won't need to create much more stuff. Or it might reduce choice, if band/song X doesn't get Y millions viewers it goes to the trash. Granted that's probably what already happen with CD sales...
However if the whole system switch to pay-per-view/use, is all work/products going to be that way? will the guitar player have to pay the guitar manifacturer or the craftman who did the guitar some cents every time s/he plays it? That would only be "fair" and logic. Insane too.:)
I hope will eventually move away from all those copy protection scheme/laws/etc. it starting to really sound like 1984.
I think the article is quite biased against MacOS 8/9. My router (running all kind of servers) is running MacOS 9.1 (and before that 8.6) and never crash. I only reboot it now and then to update IPNetRouter (the router software). My main box can have a uptime of several days, sure that's not Linux with several months, but for most users who shutdown their computer at night, uptime in months is irrelevant. Granted I have carefully selected my apps to avoid the badly programmed one which can crash my Mac and which of course couldn't crash a linux box.
Another point in favor of MacOS 8/9 is the number of applications. There are a lot of apps for MacOS, not even close to as many as on Windws, but I believe many more than on Linux (even x86 linux.) Though I believe Linux and MacOS apps are covering different areas (servers/utilities for Linux, 'productivity'/graphics for the Mac.) The MacOS also has more "mainstream" games than Linux (yes, we have Diablo II;)
As for the performances, I find my G4/500 to be blazing fast under MacOS 9, thank you very much. I think it's fast enough for what most Mac users do with it. Oh sure, it's nowhere near as efficient as Linux for server tasks or other tasks requiring preemptive multitasking... but to use a web browser, an email client, a word processor, or Photoshop, it's fast.
Note that I am not saying that MacOS 9 is better than Linux (or even GNU/Linux;), far from it. I just wanted to higlight that MacOS 9 is not as bad as the article would like to let people believe.
Starting with MacOS 9 (and it's in MacOS X too) Apple deployed encryption and more to the point the Password Keychain, an encrypted repository of username/passwords/various info that ypu can unlock and let apps on your Mac access to automatically login you in sites/services. (The Keychain actually existed in a previous incarnation in Apple's PowerTalk in the early 90s.)
I think it would be nice if there was such scheme but platform-independant... so I could synchronize my Mac keychain with my palm pilot, and the Linux box at the cyber cafe could use the keychain from my palm, etc.
And to solve the forgetting to logout problem, maybe a custom timeout could be set depending on the place/service used?
It's amusing that Sony makes region free DVD players:)
Please note region-free players are the norm in Europe, or at least France and Switzerland. I've only seen region-free DVD players there over the christmast holidays. Also stores have shelves of region 1 DVDs as well as region 2 DVDs. Even online, check http://www.fnac.com/ for an example. Granted they are more expensive than in US stores, but at least they play on their DVD players and are available at local stores.
I dunno why they are so worried in the USA.
In France there are a lot of VCR that don't record the ads. They automatically detect when ads start and stop and don't record that.
And more... I was in Europe visiting my family over christmas... unexpensive 16:9 TVs are all over... on my way back here I checked around for 16:9 TVs, nothing under $2500 and even at that price point there were very few models and vendors.
More on topic... DVD zones... is north america the only place on earth were that's enforced? All the DVD players I saw in Switzerland and France were multizone and multistandards (PAL/NTSC), and stores had shelves and shelves of zone 1 and zone 2 DVDs. Hell, I even found Princess Mononoke DVD there before it shipped from my order at some online vendor in the US.
This is ridiculous.
I'm seriously considering getting a full set (16:9 TV/VCR/DVD) in Europe and have it shipped by sea (cheaper for that weight/volume).
The only downside would be to have to power the set with 220 V and some cabling issues for some extras (like a TiVio).
>And what if you wanted a service that they couldn't
>provide at $50/month?
They charge you extra for the extra services compared to the basic package. At least the basic package is available at a reasonable price.
As for higher taxes... supposedly we have higher taxes in Canada, but seems we also have a higher standard of living. I guess our taxes are put in good use, eh?:)
"How will Mac users react to that? If Macintosh do lock down the security, I bet it won't withstand having a load of freenix tools and services added."
As far as I remember, MacOS X (DP4, beta, etc.) ships with all network services (including file sharing) off. You have to login as root and enable them in the system control panel. Also Apple has developped IPv6 and IPsec support for MacOS X, i don't know if it will ship with the final release or if it will remain an add-on. MacOS (9 and X) comes with encryption services built-in the OS, it lets you encrypt files, folders and store all your password in an encrypted keychain.
Note that MacOS X is marketed as a client OS, not a server one. So users are not supposed to run many network services, if you enable them it's assumed you know what you are doing. Also I can easily imagine they could set all the users shell to something like nologin by default (tho rlogind, sshd, telnetd, etc. are off by default.)
So hopefully the security should be pretty good.
An article worth reading is Ars Technica overview of MacOS X DP4. It explains why they changed the paths compared to other *nix and why it's good. (Normal *nix paths are available via symbolic and hard links I think)
You can see the/usr,/etc, etc. directories if you select the Unix Expert setting in the preferences. A sysadmin or a geek will most likely want to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all on the subject line :)
HP has also Mac drivers... even some of MacOS X.
Yeah, I prefer Scheme to LISP too, much cleaner. And the reference manual is like 50 pages, yet the expression power is amazing.
As for a good Scheme compiler:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/
Were any of the recent software/internet-whatever patents squashed due to prior art?
That's indeed a urban legend. You can see the history of the creation of the LISA as well as screenshots at:
http://home.san.rr.com/deans/lisagui.html
One interesting site with extensive and seemingly accurate information is:
http://library.stanford.edu/mac/index.html
All "hard science" is math. What is CS based on if not math?
And come to think they managed to land on the moon with a few Ks of Fortran :)
Seriously, you have to give that to enginers, they managed some pretty amazing things with pocket calculator resources.
It will also kill the rental market. I think this will result in less sales... personally I like to rent games before to buy them new. I will probably buy less game, or maybe just skip the PS2.
It has been available to seeded developers for a while: http://developer.apple.com/devnews/devnews052600.h tml#macos
I don't know if it's in the public beta or will be in 1.0
So, if they ship late they get bashed. If they ship with a few features missing, they get bashed. Geez, they have to release it at some point. I think it's good they are meeting the announced deadline, otherwise people will keep saying "vapoware".
Also MacOS has a software update program running which polls apple site every day for software updates (it can be disabled), so as soon as the DVD player is ready, I bet it will be uploadable that way. Or shows up in users iDisk (shared HD space on Apple servers, accessible through the desktop). Same for DVD burning. (I suspect in both cases it's just a matter of making the drivers.)
I would be more interested to know what is the state of the USB/Firewire/SCSI drivers... which 3rd parties periphericals are going to work and which will need a new driver.
"If OS X for x86 was available, I'd be willing to bet that a large proportion of the first two groups would immediately jump ship over to cheaper hardware."
:-)
:)
:) Of course he may have changed (he has been pushing iMovie, iTunes and iDVD a lot), but I would be surprised that he would want to give up nice hardware design.
I think something you forget is that those three categories are not mutually exclusive. The media workers like the really nice and well designed case of their computer. So do some of the GUI junkies.
The price difference between Mac and PC hardware those days is not that big... it's slightly more expensive on the Mac side, but not much more (if you don't buy your RAM at the Apple Store online
Also I'm not so sure that price is king.... otherwise only the cheapest computers would sell, and it seems there are lots of offerings at all kind of price points. Like for any other manifactured good.
Hey, people pay lots of moneys to buy their Nike... and it's just shoes.
Last but not least, if OS X worked on x86, Apple could switch from PowerPC to Intel, maybe even use some standard motherboard design and cut prices down some more, etc.
HOWEVER...
There is one thing to be known about Steve Jobs: he is a hardware guy. He likes beautiful hardware. He made the NeXT guys redesign the motherboard of the Next box so it looked visualy pleasant... yes, he went that far. He never really cared much for the software... what really excited him was to make and ship hardware. Or so I read, I don't know him personally
>The would be taking an aggressive step towards MS, that they would not take to kindly.
Amen. That has always been one of the roots of the problem. If Apple ever develop anything threatening to Windows, MS will stop making Office of the Mac. The Mac platform would lose a lot of customers without MS Office.
I'm pretty sure there is an understanding between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that Office will being developped as long as Apple doesn't make a move to x86.
Althought I am glad there is a x86 version of darwin, I have the feeling it is a kind of teaser: like Darwin on x86? why don't you get one of our nice shiny G4 and OS X, you will have the Darwin you love and much more!
You might want to read the scifi book _Spares_ by Michael Marshall Smith. It's related to clones used as spare parts.
I was wondering if the DivX files could be used by the new Apple DVD authoring tools or if anyone plan to work on such projects?
Sounds like you are describing MacOS X. Except it doesn't run on x86 hardware. Yet.
I agree with this.
:)
I believe if they manage to get pay-per-view content only then we will be doomed by stagnation... they will just keep selling us the same thing over and over, won't need to create much more stuff. Or it might reduce choice, if band/song X doesn't get Y millions viewers it goes to the trash. Granted that's probably what already happen with CD sales...
However if the whole system switch to pay-per-view/use, is all work/products going to be that way? will the guitar player have to pay the guitar manifacturer or the craftman who did the guitar some cents every time s/he plays it? That would only be "fair" and logic. Insane too.
I hope will eventually move away from all those copy protection scheme/laws/etc. it starting to really sound like 1984.
I think the article is quite biased against MacOS 8/9. My router (running all kind of servers) is running MacOS 9.1 (and before that 8.6) and never crash. I only reboot it now and then to update IPNetRouter (the router software). My main box can have a uptime of several days, sure that's not Linux with several months, but for most users who shutdown their computer at night, uptime in months is irrelevant. Granted I have carefully selected my apps to avoid the badly programmed one which can crash my Mac and which of course couldn't crash a linux box.
;)
;), far from it. I just wanted to higlight that MacOS 9 is not as bad as the article would like to let people believe.
Another point in favor of MacOS 8/9 is the number of applications. There are a lot of apps for MacOS, not even close to as many as on Windws, but I believe many more than on Linux (even x86 linux.) Though I believe Linux and MacOS apps are covering different areas (servers/utilities for Linux, 'productivity'/graphics for the Mac.) The MacOS also has more "mainstream" games than Linux (yes, we have Diablo II
As for the performances, I find my G4/500 to be blazing fast under MacOS 9, thank you very much. I think it's fast enough for what most Mac users do with it. Oh sure, it's nowhere near as efficient as Linux for server tasks or other tasks requiring preemptive multitasking... but to use a web browser, an email client, a word processor, or Photoshop, it's fast.
Note that I am not saying that MacOS 9 is better than Linux (or even GNU/Linux
Starting with MacOS 9 (and it's in MacOS X too) Apple deployed encryption and more to the point the Password Keychain, an encrypted repository of username/passwords/various info that ypu can unlock and let apps on your Mac access to automatically login you in sites/services. (The Keychain actually existed in a previous incarnation in Apple's PowerTalk in the early 90s.)
I think it would be nice if there was such scheme but platform-independant... so I could synchronize my Mac keychain with my palm pilot, and the Linux box at the cyber cafe could use the keychain from my palm, etc.
And to solve the forgetting to logout problem, maybe a custom timeout could be set depending on the place/service used?
It's amusing that Sony makes region free DVD players :)
Please note region-free players are the norm in Europe, or at least France and Switzerland. I've only seen region-free DVD players there over the christmast holidays. Also stores have shelves of region 1 DVDs as well as region 2 DVDs. Even online, check http://www.fnac.com/ for an example. Granted they are more expensive than in US stores, but at least they play on their DVD players and are available at local stores.
I dunno why they are so worried in the USA.
In France there are a lot of VCR that don't record the ads. They automatically detect when ads start and stop and don't record that.
And more... I was in Europe visiting my family over christmas... unexpensive 16:9 TVs are all over... on my way back here I checked around for 16:9 TVs, nothing under $2500 and even at that price point there were very few models and vendors.
More on topic... DVD zones... is north america the only place on earth were that's enforced? All the DVD players I saw in Switzerland and France were multizone and multistandards (PAL/NTSC), and stores had shelves and shelves of zone 1 and zone 2 DVDs. Hell, I even found Princess Mononoke DVD there before it shipped from my order at some online vendor in the US.
This is ridiculous.
I'm seriously considering getting a full set (16:9 TV/VCR/DVD) in Europe and have it shipped by sea (cheaper for that weight/volume).
The only downside would be to have to power the set with 220 V and some cabling issues for some extras (like a TiVio).
>And what if you wanted a service that they couldn't
:)
>provide at $50/month?
They charge you extra for the extra services compared to the basic package. At least the basic package is available at a reasonable price.
As for higher taxes... supposedly we have higher taxes in Canada, but seems we also have a higher standard of living. I guess our taxes are put in good use, eh?
"How will Mac users react to that? If Macintosh do lock down the security, I bet it won't withstand having a load of freenix tools and services added."
As far as I remember, MacOS X (DP4, beta, etc.) ships with all network services (including file sharing) off. You have to login as root and enable them in the system control panel. Also Apple has developped IPv6 and IPsec support for MacOS X, i don't know if it will ship with the final release or if it will remain an add-on. MacOS (9 and X) comes with encryption services built-in the OS, it lets you encrypt files, folders and store all your password in an encrypted keychain.
Note that MacOS X is marketed as a client OS, not a server one. So users are not supposed to run many network services, if you enable them it's assumed you know what you are doing. Also I can easily imagine they could set all the users shell to something like nologin by default (tho rlogind, sshd, telnetd, etc. are off by default.)
So hopefully the security should be pretty good.
Janus
An article worth reading is Ars Technica overview of MacOS X DP4. It explains why they changed the paths compared to other *nix and why it's good. (Normal *nix paths are available via symbolic and hard links I think)
You can see the /usr, /etc, etc. directories if you select the Unix Expert setting in the preferences. A sysadmin or a geek will most likely want to do that.