Unless they want OS X to "just work" on typical generic PCs built by OEMs using components and peripherals from whatever little shop in Asia had a surplus that month.
Little shops in Asia usually use components that are mass produced (due to economies of scale which allows mass-produced products to be cheaper). So, drivers for the mainstream components would be more than enough to cover 90% of the market.
First, we're not just talking printers and USB memory sticks here - we're talking Ethernet cards, WiFi cards, sound cards, (or their on-board equivalents), Laptop trackpads, "extended" keyboards, TV tuner cards, webcams, cup warmers, missile launchers etc.
Make a deal with the major manufacturers - problem solved.
As for really special drivers (cup warmers, missile launchers etc), the companies that make those products should make the drivers.
Someone who buys an aftermarket OS will expect it to work with the components that they have.
When I bought BeOS 4.5, I double-checked that it worked with my computer. It did not work with my soundcard...big deal, I went out and bought a compatible one. Having to spend a few bucks for a peripheral is not the same as having to spend a few hundred backs for a whole computer.
Who, last time I looked, refer you to Apple for OS X support (for their small range of EFI-compatible cards that work in Macs).
But this is because Apple sells the hardware as well as the software. But if MacOS was a generic O/S, this needn't be the case.
Hint - when you supply a link it is customary to choose one that supports your argument rather than completely contradicts it: [from the linked article] "3.3, was released in early 1995, by which time it ran not only on Motorola 68000 family processors, but also IBM PC compatible x86, Sun SPARC, and HP PA-RISC"
Hint - it does not matter if after version XXX your O/S runs in generic 80x86 hardware, it's the one that is advertised that counts. In other words, NeXTStep made headlines as a custom O/S, but when it came on 80x86, no one knew about it. Additionally, what kind of 80x86 PC did it support?
...and if it did have exacting hardware requirements that meant it didn't run on the average PC then that kinda illustrates my whole point!
Supposing that it did (I don't know), the only thing it illustrates is that Apple did not try to have an O/S that run on generic 80x86 in the past.
Greetings traveller, and welcome to this strange and confusing world we call "Earth".
Some of us still have ideals.
Whereas MS will absolutely shower them with incentives to ship OS X
At the time BeOS was screwed by Microsoft, no one knew about the secret deals of MS with Dell and other PC manufacturers. Nowadays, such practices are illegal, and they can easily be fought in court. There is legal precedence.
No, Black Boxes ran CP/M (I'm that old!) - NeXTStep initially ran on elegantly brutalist cubes of ribbed mangnesium alloy that could in no way be demeaned by the term "box", was later released for x86 PCs, tanked, spawned an open source version, and later evolved into Mac OS X.
The wikipedia article says NeXTStep run on black boxes.
...but it was a competitor to Windows NT (...and AFAIK its Linux-based now, which makes it fairly real...)
But no one considered is as a long term alternative to NT. Even back then, Netware was a short term solution until a real O/S came along.
I don't see your point. I can have video chat sessions with anyone having a camera on his PC. Neither of us cares about what hardware the other end has.
Your idea of getting the OS out there to as many people as possible was tried by Apple in the mid 90s and failed miserably. Several third party clone manufacturers (APS Technologies, DayStar Digital, Motorola, Power Computing, Radius, and UMAX) quickly gobbled a share of the hardware market... but that share was gobbled from Apple itself, as Apple users bought the cheaper clones to run Mac OS 7.x rather than Apple's comparatively more expensive hardware. The rest of the market (mostly DOS and Windows-based PCs) barely noticed at all.
It's not the same. Apple allowed it's O/S to be sold on hardware that it was not the generic 80x86 hardware found everywhere. In other words, "custom" (i.e. non 80x86) hardware was needed back then to run MacOS...
Now, if you try and sell a "minority" OS product then - until you reach a critical mass and convince hardware mfrs to invest in supporting you - all of that behind-the-scenes support becomes your problem.
All Apple has to do is to support the major manufacturers. It does not have to support every little shop in Asia which produces hardware components. It's not that of a big deal to support the major peripherals in this day an age, with USB/firewire and PCI-express.
You also have the problem that the vast mass of users buy a PC with Windows installed and are pretty much incapable of installing an OS.
It depends on how the installation is. If all you have to do is pop in the CD/DVD, then there you have it.
Pay $200 to Apple for a copy of OS X and you're going to expect Apple to support your hardware.
Today if my NVIDIA card does not work, I don't phone Microsoft, I phone NVIDIA.
Basically, its going to cost Apple a lot of money to break into the "aftermarket OS" market - something that Jobs has already tried and failed at once (NeXTStep) and which, even if successful, would risk eroding Apple's hardware sales.
Bottom line - the MS Monoculture means that there is no "aftermarket OS" market (see: BeOS, NeXTStep, Netware).
Bottom line is, if you have a superior product, you will eventually win. Be Inc. was screwed by Microsoft because MS did not allow manufacturers to ship BeOS with their computers; and there was no internet back then so as that common folks new of BeOS. NeXTStep run only on Black Boxes, and Netware was not a real O/S.
Me too...I would actually go and buy Apple's O/S right now if I did not have to buy hardware...I did that with BeOS as well. I have even bought RedHat 6 back then...
Apple is loosing customers and market share. O/Ses are worth of millions of dollars, unlike hardware.
Then Apple should make its own office suite, based on postscript (they have over 25 years of experience in printing standards). Or, if that is too much, they can adopt an open source office suite.
If they opened OSX up to generic hardware they would need to impliment some type of anti theft setup simply because generic PC users are cheap and would steal OSX till the cows come home.
I don't think that Apple would really mind that. Going from 5% to 55% overnight is not a bad thing. Piracy helped Microsoft become what it is anyway.
Apple has a nuclear bomb device in their hands, the best operating system ever created. They can take the software market, if they want, and get back to Microsoft who stole their code 25 years ago.
Secondly: If Mac OS can be made by hobbyists to work well with non-Apple hardware, suddenly Apple finds that every PC OEM on the planet has just become an Apple-cloning company. Something similar almost destroyed Apple some years ago, they're not about to make the same mistake again.
As long as Apple does not become a pure software company, any cloning business will harm them. But the true profits are in software. Everyone wants a stable O/S which is not plugged with security problems. Isn't that one of the points of Linux anyway?
one of the main reasons that OS X is as stable as it is happens to be because it runs on a very controlled set of hardware.
That was true a few years ago, but it's no longer true. PCs running Windows XP and later versions are now as stable as Macs.
It's no excuse for Apple any more.
Everything is software, even hardware logic circuits:-).
The real benefit of an external firewall is that if your system is compromised, the firewall itself is not compromised, whereas in a firewall embedded in an O/S, if the O/S is hacked then the firewall is useless.
Wikipedia is useful to get a first idea of what we are looking for, and then go to an expert's site and read the real stuff. If Citizendium can be of the latter, it's good.
Nuclear bombs could really destroy life on this planet. When I say destroy, I mean completely annihilate it. Imagine a nuclear war where madmen from either side drop 100 MT (or greater) bombs...bye bye Earth.
I am sure Bush knows the very basics of science, as any other college graduate.
The problem is not science, it is politics: politicians must find a way to enforce the policies that they think it serves their interests; religion is a very good way, because it touches a fundamental side of humans.
Of course, their interests might not be mine and your interests, and here lies the problem.
So globalization is not good when it comes to buying cheaper products in other countries? so, let's say I have found an extremely good leather jacket in a very low price in a neighbor country, shouldn't I be allowed to buy it because it is too cheap for my income?
True capitalism does not exist anywhere anymore, and it is a sad fact. Everyone pushes and lobbies in order to have protection...the law of supply and demand is dead.
Actually, the argument you present is not a good one, simply because there are lots of elements on the screen that the user can miss with the mouse because they are not near the screen's edge. For example: a window's close/minimize/maximize/restore buttons; scroll bars; toolbar buttons; a window's title bar; a window's resize grip etc.
So why it does not matter for all these elements that the user might occasionally miss them, but so much fuss is made about the menu?
Personally I prefer context menus...if I was given a choice, my ideal O/S desktop would have no options at all, just graphical representations of data, and all actions would be accessible through context menus.
Re:One of the things that keep me in Windows is...
on
Vista Vs. Gutsy Gibbon
·
· Score: 1
To the guys who modded my comment troll: do you have a proposal?
Inspection of porn actresses of porn sites??? not a bad job, may I tell you....
One of the things that keep me in Windows is...
on
Vista Vs. Gutsy Gibbon
·
· Score: 0, Troll
...Visual Studio 8. I have yet to see something even remotely comparable for C++ development. I would rarely boot in Windows if I had a such a program for Linux.
There are simple 2d games which are very entertaining (table top ms pacman, donkey kong, table top tehkan world cup, legend of zelda, tetris etc), and there are complex 3d games which are equally very entertaining (microsoft's flight simulator, deus ex I and II, etc). There are complex 2d games which are very entertaining (starcraft, civ etc) and there are simple 3d games which are very entertaining as well (Doom III, Half Life 1 and 2, etc).
Personally, the most entertaining game I have ever played is GTA San Andreas. It gave me a chance to do things I couldn't in real life, as in mountain biking, motocross interstate racing, sky diving from skyscrapers, being chased by police, motocross jumping, truck driving, and many other things that it is not possible or probable to do in real life. It also had a every entertaining plot.
Is GTA SA uphill or downhill from pong? do I have to spell it? for me, it's tremendous progress. It's a whole livin' breathin' world. It's the closest to a Star Trek holodeck I have ever played...
If all the electronic vision/sound/touch/smell data could be put in a computer which had a simple program of recalling reactions according to those data, we could have the foundations for an electronic brain.
And if the reactions are driven to motors which could move body parts, then we are one step closer to making an android.
Slashdot Mirror
but they don't go forward either...
I don't see your point. I can have video chat sessions with anyone having a camera on his PC. Neither of us cares about what hardware the other end has.
Apple could limit the hardware MacOS runs on only to known and tested software components.
Me too...I would actually go and buy Apple's O/S right now if I did not have to buy hardware...I did that with BeOS as well. I have even bought RedHat 6 back then...
Apple is loosing customers and market share. O/Ses are worth of millions of dollars, unlike hardware.
Then Apple should make its own office suite, based on postscript (they have over 25 years of experience in printing standards). Or, if that is too much, they can adopt an open source office suite.
I don't think that Apple would really mind that. Going from 5% to 55% overnight is not a bad thing. Piracy helped Microsoft become what it is anyway.
Apple has a nuclear bomb device in their hands, the best operating system ever created. They can take the software market, if they want, and get back to Microsoft who stole their code 25 years ago.
Everything is software, even hardware logic circuits :-).
The real benefit of an external firewall is that if your system is compromised, the firewall itself is not compromised, whereas in a firewall embedded in an O/S, if the O/S is hacked then the firewall is useless.
You haven't played any games in Excel, have you? :-)
Wikipedia is useful to get a first idea of what we are looking for, and then go to an expert's site and read the real stuff. If Citizendium can be of the latter, it's good.
Nuclear bombs could really destroy life on this planet. When I say destroy, I mean completely annihilate it. Imagine a nuclear war where madmen from either side drop 100 MT (or greater) bombs...bye bye Earth.
I am sure Bush knows the very basics of science, as any other college graduate.
The problem is not science, it is politics: politicians must find a way to enforce the policies that they think it serves their interests; religion is a very good way, because it touches a fundamental side of humans.
Of course, their interests might not be mine and your interests, and here lies the problem.
So globalization is not good when it comes to buying cheaper products in other countries? so, let's say I have found an extremely good leather jacket in a very low price in a neighbor country, shouldn't I be allowed to buy it because it is too cheap for my income?
True capitalism does not exist anywhere anymore, and it is a sad fact. Everyone pushes and lobbies in order to have protection...the law of supply and demand is dead.
Actually, the argument you present is not a good one, simply because there are lots of elements on the screen that the user can miss with the mouse because they are not near the screen's edge. For example: a window's close/minimize/maximize/restore buttons; scroll bars; toolbar buttons; a window's title bar; a window's resize grip etc.
So why it does not matter for all these elements that the user might occasionally miss them, but so much fuss is made about the menu?
Personally I prefer context menus...if I was given a choice, my ideal O/S desktop would have no options at all, just graphical representations of data, and all actions would be accessible through context menus.
To the guys who modded my comment troll: do you have a proposal?
Your silence speaks volumes.
Inspection of porn actresses of porn sites??? not a bad job, may I tell you....
...Visual Studio 8. I have yet to see something even remotely comparable for C++ development. I would rarely boot in Windows if I had a such a program for Linux.
There are simple 2d games which are very entertaining (table top ms pacman, donkey kong, table top tehkan world cup, legend of zelda, tetris etc), and there are complex 3d games which are equally very entertaining (microsoft's flight simulator, deus ex I and II, etc). There are complex 2d games which are very entertaining (starcraft, civ etc) and there are simple 3d games which are very entertaining as well (Doom III, Half Life 1 and 2, etc).
Personally, the most entertaining game I have ever played is GTA San Andreas. It gave me a chance to do things I couldn't in real life, as in mountain biking, motocross interstate racing, sky diving from skyscrapers, being chased by police, motocross jumping, truck driving, and many other things that it is not possible or probable to do in real life. It also had a every entertaining plot.
Is GTA SA uphill or downhill from pong? do I have to spell it? for me, it's tremendous progress. It's a whole livin' breathin' world. It's the closest to a Star Trek holodeck I have ever played...
If all the electronic vision/sound/touch/smell data could be put in a computer which had a simple program of recalling reactions according to those data, we could have the foundations for an electronic brain.
And if the reactions are driven to motors which could move body parts, then we are one step closer to making an android.
The fault lies with using paleolithic tools like C and the abstractions of files/processes/etc.
If a LISP-like language was used, coupled by a database to provide the persistence layer, things would be much better.