Uh, BSD has many, many, many corporate backers, and many educational backers. Hell, FreeBSD (in the form of Darwin), has backing from Apple, and that's a lot of market momentum.
Hurd is a total anomoly. I'd scream that Hurd was dead long before I'd call any BSD dead, but geez, I really don't see how anything ever gets done with it.
Linux already has an almost cultish following, however, and I doubt anything short of a meteor hitting earth could kill it. Even the roaches left would probably find a way to boot a computer and play around with the kernel a bit.
Wow, way to take what I said and duplicate it almost exactly.
Linux was started by Geeks. In order for Solaris to get off the ground, it needs geek momentum, so that it can become workplace momentum; you know, most of the current people working on Linux in the commercial world would consider themselves geeks, and often troll on websites like this one.
I said myself geeks are not likely to go to Solaris, and thus, neither will professionals.
Well, it hasn't been open for very long either, but I completely agree with you. Linux, like it or not, is here to stay, and hopefully will only get better.
Sure you can, you just can't do it through strangulation like SCO is trying.
Sun could kill Linux with starvation. If Sun could promote Solaris in a way that Geeks would start a mass sendoff from Linux to Solaris, then Linux would simply run out of developers, and thus, die.
Only, that will never happen. Where Sun is the only company behind Solaris, Linux has hundreds of companies supporting it; Redhat, IBM, and Novell being the big contributors.
If Sun decided to open Solaris about 5 or 6 years ago they would have had a chance. Now they've virtually assured that Solaris will die from the same starvation as above (Sun won't pay anyone to work on their platform if they can get people out of the company to do it for free, now would they?).
and while this sounds like an interesting hack I wish more focus would be placed on making the entire platform secure.
I'd say this system actually did this part. I mean, after all, the SoulPad software features an encrypting userspace kernel module to encrypt the file system, thus making it a secure solution. Anything short of TPA really couldn't do a better job. And we know how slashdotters feel about that.
As for the rest of your comment, bullshit. Has nothing to do with anything. Encryption in software will always and forever be better than encryption in hardware because as that hardware ages, bugs will be found, and holes will be punched. If it's a software file system, you're inconvienenced by a few hours of decrypting all your files and re-encrypting at the most, or just patching your system in the least. Meanwhile with your solution, you'd throw away the whole computer.
Wow, quite the opposite argument for the typical Slashdotter. Most of the time we are subject to hearing how terrible the iPod is in comparison to X company's product because the storage size is smaller at the same price point, and now a slashdotter links to a product who's pricepoint is almost double that at of an iPod, with a storage capacity that's 15 times less.
Humor aside, the above really is the reason here. Flash is simply too expensive still, and it's seemed to hit a stall (along with storage devices) in capacity growth. As it normally may be enough to just carry around a few gigs of media and such, that media now has to compete with a full-blown linux install, which blows the amount of needed space up considerably.
Besides, typical notebook users are acustom to having a few gigs of space to grow into.
The most important consideration this operating system will have to address is the disk thrashing, but with a combination of ram disking frequently accessed programs, and perhaps some creative kernel hacking to stall commits on harddrive writes, a lot of those worries can be addressed.
Lastly, I'd have to say that IBM just designed the operating system, and I'm sure they just picked up an iPod because it's convienent and the Engineer in question wanted one and could justify getting it. Typical slashdotter pedantry would ask why he didn't get a Rio/Creative device, and the answer really is "because it doesn't matter, we're just using it as a hard disk". I would expect IBM to ground up their own hard disk container if they intend on marketing this solution.
Well, you left out the other half of the equation; development. Research and Development.
IBM's making a "machine in pocket" device that boots Linux. You'd think Slashdotters would love that.. But then they go on to say what uses it has; a person no longer has to have their machine in front of them, as their entire operating system is on disk and booted at the machine. Futhermore, the device creates an encrypted partition to store user data if it gets stolen/lost/etc.
While it's not new, revolutionary, or stunning, it's an application that gets the job done, and does it well. I wouldn't be surprised to see IBM start shipping these type solutions along side their thinkpads; use a small flash cartridge inside of the machine to boot to virtual machine, and then use the external box to boot into your own environment.
So, your sarcasm aside, it'll be a pretty nifty system if they can market it.
Oh you mean like Visual Basic.. I tried it and it sucked.
I find that even if it takes a bit longer to code, you will get better results out of C/C++/ObjC. Objective C is slowly but surely gaining momentum in my programming portfolio as I think "hey, that'd be easier to do in ObjC than it would C++".
As for scripting, PHP is pretty good now. It used to be trashy, but version 4 and 5 are very nice, easy to work with, and reasonably fast. Python's not my cup of tea (little too much like Java for me, and I really don't like my "language" to include a library for everything; I can find my own and include them or write my own). Ruby would be interesting to learn, but I doubt if I'd ever use it for anything.
Inevitably, as higher level languages are written in C, you're almost always going to find that you get better performance out of a comparable C app. But I guess if you're looking for speed of development and don't really mind if the language dies in the next ten years, Ruby or Python will work for you. Meanwhile my C app will be maintainable by the newest upstarts to the oldest of the oldies.
No offense, but that's pretty trollish. The article specifically mentions that he wants to do things with PHP and not Ruby on Rails, and since Django is Ruby on Rails for Python, you're not helping.
As for my contribution: I've worked a *miniscule* bit with Prada and I really didn't like it. But you might find it to your own liking. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
No drugs here, but then again, my argument does make sense; Security left in the hands of Microsoft is security that should be questioned.
I mean just look at the terrificly terrible job they've done with the Xbox, or the bang up job they've done to date with patching well known security issues in Windows. Their attempts at security seem half-assed at best, as most of the more critical bugs are found by companies outside of Microsoft, and as Microsoft acquires more of these companies, I doubt if their advisories will ever make it out the front door.
Thus, I believe when Vista comes out, there will be a million new exploits, just as were delivered with Windows XP when it came out. And as most of these exploits will be retroactive (as the NT platform is known for carrying bugs for years without them being detectable), WinXP and 2000 will be at risk as well. It's only an opinion, but it's a well thought out one. At this point it's all speculation.
Seeing as more and more work is being put towards computers (scripts) reading those captchas, I wonder why they don't start making them questions. Like those logic questions you see on IQ tests online or something. As artificial intellegence still sucks at these kinds of questions, there'd be no quick way for it to answer short of asking a human for the answer...
Oh, but of course that's a troll, so I've gotta say something constructive.. Microsoft's been doing a lot better with security now that everyone on earth is making a buck off of "securing" Windows. As more and more security-related technologies such as antivirus, firewall and antispyware make their way into Windows, however, lots of these companies will die or be bought by MS, and they'll be held a lot more responsible for security, and thus, when Vista rolls around, security is likely to be absymal again. Maybe it'll be just what's needed for a huge evacuation from the MS dependency...
Batteries (the car kind), are less likely to find their way into the environment, and more likely to be recycled.
Case and point, Toyota offers a HUGE warrantee on the Prius' battery, and offeres to install a new one after ten years for a fee.
On the part about real winters; the Prius is sold in the US, where you're only likely to have a "real winter" in Alaska, Maine, or a handfull of other states. If you're living in one of these places, you are more justified in owning a truck or a heavy displacement vehicle, and I would condone it. Of course, Toyota makes the Highlander hybrid too now;)
Cars crash, parts fail, what's your point? You can't expect Apple to be able to stop acts of God, bad components they get from other companies, and irresponsible employees.
What you can expect them to do without much arm pulling is fix it if they were responsible, and in all of the cases I've studied, they've been great at it. Hell, I'd encourage Apple or anyone to start a study and find just how many customers are satisfied with their Macs, how many hardware problems they'd had in their life time, and what errors they were.
I'm not saying lemons don't occur. They always have and always will, that's the nature of the environment. I'm saying by and large, from all accounts I've read, people are satisfied or they would not continue buying Apple products. And just because Slashdot is an environment where both people who like and dislike Apple (and no middle ground) exist, we will always have fundamentally different views. But in all honesty, if you have a problem with their products, go to them, don't talk to me about it.
By the way, before you make judgement on hardware that's not available to you, me, and maybe even Apple themselves, perhaps you should look into what Intel has around the corner. Call me an Intel, Apple, Palm jockey all you want, but in the end, I like functional hardware, and I like to know what is going on inside. Apple's under enough pressure that we all know what's inside. Intel just as AMD are both under enough scrutiny by this group of people that we will always know what's under the hood of their products. And Palms.. they just work for me.
I can give you the crap about you wanting a cheap PC if you give me the crap about Apple being a premium box. Hell, there are people selling computers that make Apple's look cheap as dirt. Machines geared towards people like you who oogle at them. Machines that are so expensive because they use the most bleeding edge of parts and have absolutely no expectation that they will continue to work ten years down the line.
I don't care if you don't want Apple. That's your choice. Unlike Microsoft they won't make you pay for their product if you're not buying it.
Sure, if that was the case. But it isn't. Therefore it completely invalidates this argument. We have no idea what will ship in Apple's box; just because they share the same engine archetecture, doesn't mean they'll be anything near compatible.
For all we know, Apple could even go the BGA route and solder the CPU to the board../. would cry foul, but most end users would never know the difference.
Um, if you check out the Development Macs (which I'm assuming you'd bench it against, as an OS X x86 machine vs a OS X/PPC machine comparison this early is retarded), they're all P4 machines. Some of these computers they're getting it to run on are Pentium M machines. Pentium Ms are inheirently faster than Pentium 4s by design. Thus, it quickly makes up for the discrepency.
Besides, I wouldn't care if I could take a race car's looks and strap on my 74 Postal Jeep, but give me one of those Indy V8s and I don't give a shit what goes on top of it. Better yet, give me a Indy V8, with a Ferrari's body/chassis, and you've got yourself a sell. Oh wait. That's what Apple sells. Doh!
You can buy all of that stuff, put it together, and have a PC. You will never have a Mac.
A Mac is the entire machine. It starts with the case, and moves to the (usually Apple designed) motherboard, the Apple designed Bluetooth, the Apple designe Firewire, the Apple designed WiFi modules, then moves on to the placement of fans, the duct work, the attention to details. And you end up with a machine that performs the same function, but is of a much higher quality; a computer that's as much as computer as it is a piece of furnature in the room, and that's the idea of the Mac.
While your machine may run OS X (and that's a long shot; these machines are running a developmental, most likely tagged, build of OS X that may never see the light of day on Macs), it will never match up with the quality, or the design.
If people thought about their computers the same way they thought about their cars, they'd realize exactly what Apple's going for. When you buy Apple you buy a Lexus. When you buy Dell, you buy a Kia.
You act as if a CPU is all that makes a computer a computer.
Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
Apple puts serious time into making their product work, and to making it work, every single time. They put serious effort into having good tech support. They put serious effort into making their machines fast (as that's the number one driving force to x86 today). They put serious effort into making sure the ram your system uses is of quality. The list goes on.
Most PC vendors are bidding in a market to get the cheapest, working parts they can find, and if you like your machines to run like that, then by all means I won't stop you. But before I went to Apple, I built my machine with premium parts that I raed reviews on and made sure were of quality. After doing the same with Apple's components, and finding out it was, in the end, much cheaper to go with their pre-built machine, I switched.
Besides, if you call a hundred or two bucks a premium, then your really talking bottom barrel parts. Apple doesn't even want your money if you're not willing to spend it.
Linux or any BSD is hardly a commodity OS. It runs on everything because there is a geek somewhere with every piece of hardware imaginable who has nothing better to do than make that operating system work.
Meanwhile OS X has to run because the people who want to use their computers, aren't the kinds of people who have time to make every single piece of hardware work.
Microsoft's Windows works on a lot of hardware because of the WHQL program they've instituted, and that only works because they're big enough to pressure PC manufacturers to use cheap, standard components, and because they've got the money to buy every single piece of hardware, and code for it. And, if you haven't used Windows lately, there are still hundreds upon thousands of bugs. My P3's audio quality sucks, my mom's P4's disk controller is a serious flake. Both are Dells.
Linux isn't expected to run everywhere. Linux is MADE to run everywhere. This requires effort. This kind of effort isn't economical for a business to support. I'd feel sorry if Redhat or IBM decided to go out and support hardware.. they'd immediately go out of business dealing with the Tech Support alone.
Haven't you ever seen Pimp My Ride.. you know, that TV show where they put a 30,000 dollar finish on a car, but rarely if ever touch a single part in the engine bay?
People like bling. Bling sells. OS X is blingzilla, but it also functions like a beast under the hood, as long as it is on hardware that allows it to. So, for all of those people who are hacking OS X together to run on crap hardware, Apple will try to stop you as best as they can, but in the end, you're still retarded. Upgrade the engine, and the whole package will fly.
Apple can notice the demand all it wants, but in order to produce the quality that they must to stay competitive, they _must_ limit their hardware install base, or they _must_ grow to being the size of Microsoft overnight.
Simply handing off driver creation to the companies isn't an effective way of ensuring something will work. Many companies will half-ass a driver just to get their product, others won't even put that much effort in to it.
OS X is a great operating system. Apple has the right to demand that you buy their hardware to use it.
No kidding. The original Netburst design had hints that it started in 1993 with the "Williamette" moniker. Of course, I can't validate this right now, but I know some creative Googling will find the paper I'm talking about.
One wonders if the engineers who took one look at what Netburst became and said "this would be a great diversionary tactic". Design technologies for other projects, slap them together on the Netburst-endlessly-extendable pipeline and ship. I wonder this because the Pentium M seems to have all that's good about the P4s, and really none of the bad, hot, or crufty bits. It's really a chicken/egg problem.
If Intel did use the P4 as a market diversionary tactic, this archetecture could have been designed in the 5-6 years the P4 stole from the market. That team in Israel is known to pull off magic..
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, BSD has many, many, many corporate backers, and many educational backers. Hell, FreeBSD (in the form of Darwin), has backing from Apple, and that's a lot of market momentum.
Hurd is a total anomoly. I'd scream that Hurd was dead long before I'd call any BSD dead, but geez, I really don't see how anything ever gets done with it.
Linux already has an almost cultish following, however, and I doubt anything short of a meteor hitting earth could kill it. Even the roaches left would probably find a way to boot a computer and play around with the kernel a bit.
Wow, way to take what I said and duplicate it almost exactly.
Linux was started by Geeks. In order for Solaris to get off the ground, it needs geek momentum, so that it can become workplace momentum; you know, most of the current people working on Linux in the commercial world would consider themselves geeks, and often troll on websites like this one.
I said myself geeks are not likely to go to Solaris, and thus, neither will professionals.
Well, it hasn't been open for very long either, but I completely agree with you. Linux, like it or not, is here to stay, and hopefully will only get better.
Sure you can, you just can't do it through strangulation like SCO is trying.
Sun could kill Linux with starvation. If Sun could promote Solaris in a way that Geeks would start a mass sendoff from Linux to Solaris, then Linux would simply run out of developers, and thus, die.
Only, that will never happen. Where Sun is the only company behind Solaris, Linux has hundreds of companies supporting it; Redhat, IBM, and Novell being the big contributors.
If Sun decided to open Solaris about 5 or 6 years ago they would have had a chance. Now they've virtually assured that Solaris will die from the same starvation as above (Sun won't pay anyone to work on their platform if they can get people out of the company to do it for free, now would they?).
...Bless you. Do you need a hanky to clean up that mess?
and while this sounds like an interesting hack I wish more focus would be placed on making the entire platform secure.
I'd say this system actually did this part. I mean, after all, the SoulPad software features an encrypting userspace kernel module to encrypt the file system, thus making it a secure solution. Anything short of TPA really couldn't do a better job. And we know how slashdotters feel about that.
As for the rest of your comment, bullshit. Has nothing to do with anything. Encryption in software will always and forever be better than encryption in hardware because as that hardware ages, bugs will be found, and holes will be punched. If it's a software file system, you're inconvienenced by a few hours of decrypting all your files and re-encrypting at the most, or just patching your system in the least. Meanwhile with your solution, you'd throw away the whole computer.
Wow, quite the opposite argument for the typical Slashdotter. Most of the time we are subject to hearing how terrible the iPod is in comparison to X company's product because the storage size is smaller at the same price point, and now a slashdotter links to a product who's pricepoint is almost double that at of an iPod, with a storage capacity that's 15 times less.
Humor aside, the above really is the reason here. Flash is simply too expensive still, and it's seemed to hit a stall (along with storage devices) in capacity growth. As it normally may be enough to just carry around a few gigs of media and such, that media now has to compete with a full-blown linux install, which blows the amount of needed space up considerably.
Besides, typical notebook users are acustom to having a few gigs of space to grow into.
The most important consideration this operating system will have to address is the disk thrashing, but with a combination of ram disking frequently accessed programs, and perhaps some creative kernel hacking to stall commits on harddrive writes, a lot of those worries can be addressed.
Lastly, I'd have to say that IBM just designed the operating system, and I'm sure they just picked up an iPod because it's convienent and the Engineer in question wanted one and could justify getting it. Typical slashdotter pedantry would ask why he didn't get a Rio/Creative device, and the answer really is "because it doesn't matter, we're just using it as a hard disk". I would expect IBM to ground up their own hard disk container if they intend on marketing this solution.
Well, you left out the other half of the equation; development. Research and Development.
IBM's making a "machine in pocket" device that boots Linux. You'd think Slashdotters would love that.. But then they go on to say what uses it has; a person no longer has to have their machine in front of them, as their entire operating system is on disk and booted at the machine. Futhermore, the device creates an encrypted partition to store user data if it gets stolen/lost/etc.
While it's not new, revolutionary, or stunning, it's an application that gets the job done, and does it well. I wouldn't be surprised to see IBM start shipping these type solutions along side their thinkpads; use a small flash cartridge inside of the machine to boot to virtual machine, and then use the external box to boot into your own environment.
So, your sarcasm aside, it'll be a pretty nifty system if they can market it.
Oh you mean like Visual Basic.. I tried it and it sucked.
I find that even if it takes a bit longer to code, you will get better results out of C/C++/ObjC. Objective C is slowly but surely gaining momentum in my programming portfolio as I think "hey, that'd be easier to do in ObjC than it would C++".
As for scripting, PHP is pretty good now. It used to be trashy, but version 4 and 5 are very nice, easy to work with, and reasonably fast. Python's not my cup of tea (little too much like Java for me, and I really don't like my "language" to include a library for everything; I can find my own and include them or write my own). Ruby would be interesting to learn, but I doubt if I'd ever use it for anything.
Inevitably, as higher level languages are written in C, you're almost always going to find that you get better performance out of a comparable C app. But I guess if you're looking for speed of development and don't really mind if the language dies in the next ten years, Ruby or Python will work for you. Meanwhile my C app will be maintainable by the newest upstarts to the oldest of the oldies.
No offense, but that's pretty trollish. The article specifically mentions that he wants to do things with PHP and not Ruby on Rails, and since Django is Ruby on Rails for Python, you're not helping.
As for my contribution: I've worked a *miniscule* bit with Prada and I really didn't like it. But you might find it to your own liking. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
No drugs here, but then again, my argument does make sense; Security left in the hands of Microsoft is security that should be questioned.
I mean just look at the terrificly terrible job they've done with the Xbox, or the bang up job they've done to date with patching well known security issues in Windows. Their attempts at security seem half-assed at best, as most of the more critical bugs are found by companies outside of Microsoft, and as Microsoft acquires more of these companies, I doubt if their advisories will ever make it out the front door.
Thus, I believe when Vista comes out, there will be a million new exploits, just as were delivered with Windows XP when it came out. And as most of these exploits will be retroactive (as the NT platform is known for carrying bugs for years without them being detectable), WinXP and 2000 will be at risk as well. It's only an opinion, but it's a well thought out one. At this point it's all speculation.
Seeing as more and more work is being put towards computers (scripts) reading those captchas, I wonder why they don't start making them questions. Like those logic questions you see on IQ tests online or something. As artificial intellegence still sucks at these kinds of questions, there'd be no quick way for it to answer short of asking a human for the answer...
Eh, just wait for Vista.
Oh, but of course that's a troll, so I've gotta say something constructive.. Microsoft's been doing a lot better with security now that everyone on earth is making a buck off of "securing" Windows. As more and more security-related technologies such as antivirus, firewall and antispyware make their way into Windows, however, lots of these companies will die or be bought by MS, and they'll be held a lot more responsible for security, and thus, when Vista rolls around, security is likely to be absymal again. Maybe it'll be just what's needed for a huge evacuation from the MS dependency...
Here's for hoping..
Batteries (the car kind), are less likely to find their way into the environment, and more likely to be recycled.
;)
Case and point, Toyota offers a HUGE warrantee on the Prius' battery, and offeres to install a new one after ten years for a fee.
On the part about real winters; the Prius is sold in the US, where you're only likely to have a "real winter" in Alaska, Maine, or a handfull of other states. If you're living in one of these places, you are more justified in owning a truck or a heavy displacement vehicle, and I would condone it. Of course, Toyota makes the Highlander hybrid too now
And I'd agree, seeing as Xerox was allowed to invest a million before IPO in Apple.
That means mucho denero for both companies, and Apple only got to *look* at the PARC stuff.
Luxury cars aren't perfect either... ;). They tend to be gas guzzlers (wallet biters).
Cars crash, parts fail, what's your point? You can't expect Apple to be able to stop acts of God, bad components they get from other companies, and irresponsible employees.
What you can expect them to do without much arm pulling is fix it if they were responsible, and in all of the cases I've studied, they've been great at it. Hell, I'd encourage Apple or anyone to start a study and find just how many customers are satisfied with their Macs, how many hardware problems they'd had in their life time, and what errors they were.
I'm not saying lemons don't occur. They always have and always will, that's the nature of the environment. I'm saying by and large, from all accounts I've read, people are satisfied or they would not continue buying Apple products. And just because Slashdot is an environment where both people who like and dislike Apple (and no middle ground) exist, we will always have fundamentally different views. But in all honesty, if you have a problem with their products, go to them, don't talk to me about it.
By the way, before you make judgement on hardware that's not available to you, me, and maybe even Apple themselves, perhaps you should look into what Intel has around the corner. Call me an Intel, Apple, Palm jockey all you want, but in the end, I like functional hardware, and I like to know what is going on inside. Apple's under enough pressure that we all know what's inside. Intel just as AMD are both under enough scrutiny by this group of people that we will always know what's under the hood of their products. And Palms.. they just work for me.
I can give you the crap about you wanting a cheap PC if you give me the crap about Apple being a premium box. Hell, there are people selling computers that make Apple's look cheap as dirt. Machines geared towards people like you who oogle at them. Machines that are so expensive because they use the most bleeding edge of parts and have absolutely no expectation that they will continue to work ten years down the line.
I don't care if you don't want Apple. That's your choice. Unlike Microsoft they won't make you pay for their product if you're not buying it.
Sure, if that was the case. But it isn't. Therefore it completely invalidates this argument. We have no idea what will ship in Apple's box; just because they share the same engine archetecture, doesn't mean they'll be anything near compatible.
/. would cry foul, but most end users would never know the difference.
For all we know, Apple could even go the BGA route and solder the CPU to the board..
Um, if you check out the Development Macs (which I'm assuming you'd bench it against, as an OS X x86 machine vs a OS X/PPC machine comparison this early is retarded), they're all P4 machines. Some of these computers they're getting it to run on are Pentium M machines. Pentium Ms are inheirently faster than Pentium 4s by design. Thus, it quickly makes up for the discrepency.
Besides, I wouldn't care if I could take a race car's looks and strap on my 74 Postal Jeep, but give me one of those Indy V8s and I don't give a shit what goes on top of it. Better yet, give me a Indy V8, with a Ferrari's body/chassis, and you've got yourself a sell. Oh wait. That's what Apple sells. Doh!
And you sir, are mistaken.
You can buy all of that stuff, put it together, and have a PC. You will never have a Mac.
A Mac is the entire machine. It starts with the case, and moves to the (usually Apple designed) motherboard, the Apple designed Bluetooth, the Apple designe Firewire, the Apple designed WiFi modules, then moves on to the placement of fans, the duct work, the attention to details. And you end up with a machine that performs the same function, but is of a much higher quality; a computer that's as much as computer as it is a piece of furnature in the room, and that's the idea of the Mac.
While your machine may run OS X (and that's a long shot; these machines are running a developmental, most likely tagged, build of OS X that may never see the light of day on Macs), it will never match up with the quality, or the design.
If people thought about their computers the same way they thought about their cars, they'd realize exactly what Apple's going for. When you buy Apple you buy a Lexus. When you buy Dell, you buy a Kia.
You act as if a CPU is all that makes a computer a computer.
Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
Apple puts serious time into making their product work, and to making it work, every single time. They put serious effort into having good tech support. They put serious effort into making their machines fast (as that's the number one driving force to x86 today). They put serious effort into making sure the ram your system uses is of quality. The list goes on.
Most PC vendors are bidding in a market to get the cheapest, working parts they can find, and if you like your machines to run like that, then by all means I won't stop you. But before I went to Apple, I built my machine with premium parts that I raed reviews on and made sure were of quality. After doing the same with Apple's components, and finding out it was, in the end, much cheaper to go with their pre-built machine, I switched.
Besides, if you call a hundred or two bucks a premium, then your really talking bottom barrel parts. Apple doesn't even want your money if you're not willing to spend it.
Parent post is simply ignorance.
Linux or any BSD is hardly a commodity OS. It runs on everything because there is a geek somewhere with every piece of hardware imaginable who has nothing better to do than make that operating system work.
Meanwhile OS X has to run because the people who want to use their computers, aren't the kinds of people who have time to make every single piece of hardware work.
Microsoft's Windows works on a lot of hardware because of the WHQL program they've instituted, and that only works because they're big enough to pressure PC manufacturers to use cheap, standard components, and because they've got the money to buy every single piece of hardware, and code for it. And, if you haven't used Windows lately, there are still hundreds upon thousands of bugs. My P3's audio quality sucks, my mom's P4's disk controller is a serious flake. Both are Dells.
Linux isn't expected to run everywhere. Linux is MADE to run everywhere. This requires effort. This kind of effort isn't economical for a business to support. I'd feel sorry if Redhat or IBM decided to go out and support hardware.. they'd immediately go out of business dealing with the Tech Support alone.
Haven't you ever seen Pimp My Ride.. you know, that TV show where they put a 30,000 dollar finish on a car, but rarely if ever touch a single part in the engine bay?
People like bling. Bling sells. OS X is blingzilla, but it also functions like a beast under the hood, as long as it is on hardware that allows it to. So, for all of those people who are hacking OS X together to run on crap hardware, Apple will try to stop you as best as they can, but in the end, you're still retarded. Upgrade the engine, and the whole package will fly.
Apple can notice the demand all it wants, but in order to produce the quality that they must to stay competitive, they _must_ limit their hardware install base, or they _must_ grow to being the size of Microsoft overnight.
Simply handing off driver creation to the companies isn't an effective way of ensuring something will work. Many companies will half-ass a driver just to get their product, others won't even put that much effort in to it.
OS X is a great operating system. Apple has the right to demand that you buy their hardware to use it.
No kidding. The original Netburst design had hints that it started in 1993 with the "Williamette" moniker. Of course, I can't validate this right now, but I know some creative Googling will find the paper I'm talking about.
One wonders if the engineers who took one look at what Netburst became and said "this would be a great diversionary tactic". Design technologies for other projects, slap them together on the Netburst-endlessly-extendable pipeline and ship. I wonder this because the Pentium M seems to have all that's good about the P4s, and really none of the bad, hot, or crufty bits. It's really a chicken/egg problem.
If Intel did use the P4 as a market diversionary tactic, this archetecture could have been designed in the 5-6 years the P4 stole from the market. That team in Israel is known to pull off magic..