So I don't get this, your primary competitor just fumbled their latest major release, and clearly people like Apple's software, so why not really let the masses get their hands on it cheaply, get them addicted now while they are really looking for alternatives.
So IMHO Apple should turn this into an opportunity, spec a middle of the line hardware spec for 3rd party PC vendors, and then offer an approved version 'Mac OS X Lite' which is really cut down but only works on the 3rd party hardware. Sell it for the same price as Mac OS X, so that if you buy a clone you'll always have to buy the lesser version.
This way Apple controls the differentiator. It seems they would be excited about extending their market share, I bet they probably would net the same kinda profit off a mac mini that they would by selling OS to a 3rd party vendor.
And if they were really thinking about this strategically, they would require the cloned PCs to have a nice 3D chipset so that game companies start to see their platform as a more appetizing one to build games for.
Here are some of the books I would shell out $$ for.
GCC Internals: How it works/How to modify it.
- Have you ever looked at this heaping mess of code? I would love to play around with it, but the learning curve is too high to just jump in.
Linux/Unix Lowlevel Programming: Ok there are bunchs of crappy assembly programming books out there... by chapter 12 they have covered what a register is. I don't want the most basic stuff I wanna know exactly how the linker works, I wanna know how stack frames are setup. How ELF binaries are loaded. What assembly code is needed to bind it all together. Sure I can piece most of it together from web sites, the kernel and other sites, but it is hard to put it all together.
Programming KDE 3: QT and KDE are awsome, I do a little bit of development with QT/KDE now, but there is just some documentation that cannot be found...
Architectures of Popular Linux Apps: A book that does an overview of the architectures behind popular linux applications, with a little bit of discussion about thier architecture and implementation, maybe mixed with a little theroy. For instance an chapter on apache, X11, SSH, postfix, php, konqueror, mozilla... This would be really good at helping linux developers dive into existing projects. You could even solicit open-source authors to provide an overview of thier project architecture and ask them to discuss how what thier biggest challenges where, why the did so and so.. This could really boost participation in certain projects.
Using GNU Development Tools: A book that details how to use GDB, gprof, gcov, ld, ar, and etc. effectively with all the options and do-dads. Maybe cover other tools like DDD, Electric Fence, etc.
Oh yeah! These need to be in paper form! Screw electronic form, it sucks to read.
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So IMHO Apple should turn this into an opportunity, spec a middle of the line hardware spec for 3rd party PC vendors, and then offer an approved version 'Mac OS X Lite' which is really cut down but only works on the 3rd party hardware. Sell it for the same price as Mac OS X, so that if you buy a clone you'll always have to buy the lesser version.
This way Apple controls the differentiator. It seems they would be excited about extending their market share, I bet they probably would net the same kinda profit off a mac mini that they would by selling OS to a 3rd party vendor.
And if they were really thinking about this strategically, they would require the cloned PCs to have a nice 3D chipset so that game companies start to see their platform as a more appetizing one to build games for.
- celer
GCC Internals: How it works/How to modify it. - Have you ever looked at this heaping mess of code? I would love to play around with it, but the learning curve is too high to just jump in.
Linux/Unix Lowlevel Programming: Ok there are bunchs of crappy assembly programming books out there... by chapter 12 they have covered what a register is. I don't want the most basic stuff I wanna know exactly how the linker works, I wanna know how stack frames are setup. How ELF binaries are loaded. What assembly code is needed to bind it all together. Sure I can piece most of it together from web sites, the kernel and other sites, but it is hard to put it all together.
Programming KDE 3: QT and KDE are awsome, I do a little bit of development with QT/KDE now, but there is just some documentation that cannot be found...
Architectures of Popular Linux Apps: A book that does an overview of the architectures behind popular linux applications, with a little bit of discussion about thier architecture and implementation, maybe mixed with a little theroy. For instance an chapter on apache, X11, SSH, postfix, php, konqueror, mozilla... This would be really good at helping linux developers dive into existing projects. You could even solicit open-source authors to provide an overview of thier project architecture and ask them to discuss how what thier biggest challenges where, why the did so and so.. This could really boost participation in certain projects.
Using GNU Development Tools: A book that details how to use GDB, gprof, gcov, ld, ar, and etc. effectively with all the options and do-dads. Maybe cover other tools like DDD, Electric Fence, etc.
Oh yeah! These need to be in paper form! Screw electronic form, it sucks to read.
celer