"sharp as SOAP" where SOAP is Sharpest Object At Present. Then even if something sharper comes along, you don't have to change your phrase, because it is so highly abstracted from the hardware that it hardly means anything anymore.
Anyone who denies this truth is a spatially absolutist lunocentric whose refusal to recognize the validity of hammer mechanics/experience places him wholly beyond the help of Galilean metaphysics.
You are right for all the wrong reasons. See, to a hammer, everything is a nail. The other objects are much less motivated to hit their target. Be the hammer.
I agree. I began to program the day my friend and I were walking through the mall on the way to see The Empire Strikes Back for the 10th time. He said "watch this" and walked up to a TRS-80 in Radio Shack and typed:
>10 PRINT "STEPHEN WAS HERE ":GOTO 10 >RUN
As the screen filled up with text I was hooked.
Can kids walk into a mall today and show off their coding skills in 30 seconds or less?
[And kudos to Radio Shack; it became our computer lab. Our school didn't have a computer but more than one nice manager at Radio Shack would let us sit for hours and type in game listings from magazines.]
"APPLE is stealing from your [an Apple employee's] livelihood by not selling me what I want [Mac OS X for generic PC hardware]."
In a world where Apple sold you what you want, that friend could likely be out of a job in a few years as Apple starts bleeding like they did in 1997 when they last licensed their OS to third-party manufacturers.
Imagine someone who wants to run Mac OS X in this hypothetical world. That person can:
Buy a Mac, or
Buy a copy of OS X for generic PC hardware
In case (1), Apple gets, say, $500 profit. In case (2), Apple gets, say, $100 profit. For Apple to make money in a world like this, you'd think Apple would need people to choose option (2) over option (1) by more than a 5:1 margin. You can speculate on whether that would be a fair bet.
But what are the costs to Apple that erode that simple 5:1 formula? Here are the two biggies that come to mind:
Direct confrontation with Microsoft
Supporting OS X on generic PC hardware
So when you're done with that, what would the bias have to be for Apple to seriously consider it? 10:1?
There's an excellent blog post by John Gruber at Daringfireball.net entitled "Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas Regarding Apple's Strategy That Boot Camp Does Not Portend" about this, where I got some of these ideas from.
What you say makes sense, until some day when the further abstraction of mach messaging allows a mach-kernel based OS to make a leap that would be a severe hack for a linux kernel. I admit I'm not sure what that would be, if there even is such a thing, but it might be something that allows mach to scale better somehow (perhaps distributed shared memory or something, I don't know). Anyway, abstraction usually buys you something unforeseen due to its flexibility, but you could argue that it hasn't paid off (and mach is what-- nearly 20 years old now?). But that's in comparison to the Linux phenomenon, which is quite extraordinary. An army of hackers can overcome the extra effort it takes to deal with less elegant solutions, I guess.
I wonder if they waited until the contest was over on purpose? It would have seemed a little pig-headed for them to render the contest moot by stepping in before anyone. Of course if no one had come up with anything by the summer they would have probably gone ahead to stay on track with a beta program before WWDC.
I think the front-page nytime.com video of David Pogue using the onmac.net hack was what forced their hand, so that there wouldn't be a bunch of upset novices out there, especially ones complaining that Windows games on the Mac were slow (not knowing or caring about the video drivers).
Using core duo minis in place of dual-G5 Xserves starts to make sense when you consider the reduced power/cooling/space/$$ and with performance probably not too much worse, especially if you don't need lots of memory and will access a central file store via gigabit enet.
Jobs financially made Woz what he is today, and Woz should really be nothing but grateful. Slashdot probably is not the most receptive crowd to such heresy, but it is the truth
It isn't heresy to me-- or at least to the type of engineer I am. When an excited visionary comes along who wants me to join in some fantastic new adventure that pushes the limits of science or engineering, I'm usually hooked and grateful if it is someone I respect. Without people like that most of us would continue toiling away in our own dark corners, creating great stuff other geeks appreciate and thinking that's enough. Once in awhile it is worth sticking your head up out of the hole, taking a step back and looking at the big picture. I'm not saying Woz couldn't do that, but I know that happens to me and though I like to think I can see the big picture, I wouldn't bet my bootstraps on it. I need people with other points of view (yes, even the crass commercial marketing types) to give me a good kick sometimes. Sometimes I'll just ignore them, but othertimes it gets me on a better track.
I even had a dream about Steve Jobs the other day, and I rarely remember my dreams. I've seen him enough in keynotes, a little in person, written about in books, etc, that my brain did a really great simulation (or my brain convinced me it was a great simulation-- my own reality distortion field). Anyway, Steve really wanted me to join Apple as if I was some guru of some type (which I'm not), and I felt such a rush of appreciation being the focus of that sort of manic attention and positive energy-- I felt as if I really truly mattered and was going to finally make a difference. One of the best feelings ever. Having that sort of persuasive power on your side (if it is even anything close to what I imagine) must have been a great boon to Woz as I'm sure he'd be the first to admit.
By the way I saw Woz at WWDC 2005 when Steve made the Intel announcement. On his way out Steve stopped to talk with Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles but ignored Woz who was nearby, though it may have been more like he was in a rush, I don't know. But it seemed like a symbolic moment at the time.
I think I'd have a hard time justifying quantitatively that Mac OS X has higher visibility today than OS/2 had then, though I suspect it might. I admit I'm too lazy to find out what statistic from what source to search for.
But since Apple and Macintosh have always been such a highly visible cultural phenomena for so long-- and even more recently due to the iPod, I think it is safe to say that Mac OS X enjoys quite a halo effect. I'm arguing that the halo effect might be at its zenith now, and so now is the time to take the gamble and challenge Windows.
What in your opinion happened with OS/2 or OpenStep both of which were superior to Windows/NT?
Your average computer user would be hard pressed to know those even existed at the time. Via the iMac/iPod, nearly every consumer, never mind computer user, is aware of Macs (and indirectly, that they run a different OS), and almost always that is a positive awareness. And you can bet that if they use Winows they've had a growing negative awareness about Windows and its security issues. Very different situation now.
Apple has never shown an ability to offer the best value for the money in a mature market (according the the mainstream). Apple has shown is an ability to out innovate.
Many would say that Apple offers the best value for the money on their hardware products, and that should keep them alive even if they license the OS. In the clone days what did they have to compete with boring, cheap beige Power Computing boxes? The answer: boring expensive Apple beige boxes. No wonder they lost money.
They could compete and win now, because of superior industrial design. But... eventually Apple's industrial coolness factor and the iPod splash will dissipate. I hope they can keep it up, but the public is fickle and will find a new shiny thing. I'm confident Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive will be able to stay on top of it and stay out in the front, but they will retire someday. Why bet your company on it staying cool?
I'm more a devoted fan of the software engineers at Apple than the industrial engineers. Bet your company on them, Apple! I've used Mac OS on boring beige boxes and been happy, because Mac OS just makes computing happy. Be confident in your OS and license it-- your industrial design protects you now, your software design keeps it real for the long haul, and Windows users are starting to get really fed up. Strike while the iron is hot!
Think about it. One of the reasons Windows can be so annoying is that there are a bazillion different configurations. Apple can keep OS X running smoothly because they know exactly what's inside their machines. Once it gets put on a Dell, some idiot's going to complain about how buggy OS X is because it doesn't run on his own personal cobbled-together POS
I agree for the most part, but how bad is it, really?
Motherboards: Supporting EFI over the old BIOS in the first place ensures that the user has a new motherboard, not some old one with ISA slots for instance. I don't know much about EFI, but it perhaps can abstract away most of the hardware under a set of simplified APIs?
Video cards: For the most part there's just Nvidia and ATI. Fall back to VESA with a warning otherwise
Printers: Apple works with HP, Epson, Lexmark, and Brother already for printer drivers on PPC. Fall back to gimp print/cups with a warning otherwise.
Peripherals: USB/Firewire peripherals often work out of the box for HID-compliant devices. Warn otherwise.
If Apple warns the user in an effective way about sub-optimal hardware conditions they can tell the user nicely that the maker of this hardware does not support Mac OS X. If the user likes Mac OS X enough, he/she will put pressure on the hardware manufacturer for not being hip enough to be with the program, and Apple comes out clean.
Depending on the situation, splitting off/var,/usr/local, and/or/etc can make sense too.
I don't use '/or/etc' much, but to each their own. I think the idea of a space in the name is a clever way to keep others out, but one day it will be you.
And
- 1 world-weary comment about slashdot culture
This is just the same, tired rhetoric we've heard before time and again.
Oops, make that
- 2 world-weary comments about slashdot culture
Slashdot Mirror
1. launch some stuff into orbit
2. say it will be a hotel, science lab or college or something
3. profit!
My guess is that in Space College, it will be a different type of bong...
But there's more to the story that meets the eye sooner, since it will have increased mass.
"sharp as SOAP" where SOAP is Sharpest Object At Present. Then even if something sharper comes along, you don't have to change your phrase, because it is so highly abstracted from the hardware that it hardly means anything anymore.
Anyone who denies this truth is a spatially absolutist lunocentric whose refusal to recognize the validity of hammer mechanics/experience places him wholly beyond the help of Galilean metaphysics.
You are right for all the wrong reasons. See, to a hammer, everything is a nail. The other objects are much less motivated to hit their target. Be the hammer.
I agree. I began to program the day my friend and I were walking through the mall on the way to see The Empire Strikes Back for the 10th time. He said "watch this" and walked up to a TRS-80 in Radio Shack and typed:
>10 PRINT "STEPHEN WAS HERE ":GOTO 10
>RUN
As the screen filled up with text I was hooked.
Can kids walk into a mall today and show off their coding skills in 30 seconds or less?
[And kudos to Radio Shack; it became our computer lab. Our school didn't have a computer but more than one nice manager at Radio Shack would let us sit for hours and type in game listings from magazines.]
Ok, the excuse that they don't have the bucks to support BSG and another original series falls flat now...
In a world where Apple sold you what you want, that friend could likely be out of a job in a few years as Apple starts bleeding like they did in 1997 when they last licensed their OS to third-party manufacturers.
Imagine someone who wants to run Mac OS X in this hypothetical world. That person can:
In case (1), Apple gets, say, $500 profit. In case (2), Apple gets, say, $100 profit. For Apple to make money in a world like this, you'd think Apple would need people to choose option (2) over option (1) by more than a 5:1 margin. You can speculate on whether that would be a fair bet.
But what are the costs to Apple that erode that simple 5:1 formula? Here are the two biggies that come to mind:
So when you're done with that, what would the bias have to be for Apple to seriously consider it? 10:1?
There's an excellent blog post by John Gruber at Daringfireball.net entitled "Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas Regarding Apple's Strategy That Boot Camp Does Not Portend" about this, where I got some of these ideas from.
inbox full inbox full inbox full ...
What you say makes sense, until some day when the further abstraction of mach messaging allows a mach-kernel based OS to make a leap that would be a severe hack for a linux kernel. I admit I'm not sure what that would be, if there even is such a thing, but it might be something that allows mach to scale better somehow (perhaps distributed shared memory or something, I don't know). Anyway, abstraction usually buys you something unforeseen due to its flexibility, but you could argue that it hasn't paid off (and mach is what-- nearly 20 years old now?). But that's in comparison to the Linux phenomenon, which is quite extraordinary. An army of hackers can overcome the extra effort it takes to deal with less elegant solutions, I guess.
I think the front-page nytime.com video of David Pogue using the onmac.net hack was what forced their hand, so that there wouldn't be a bunch of upset novices out there, especially ones complaining that Windows games on the Mac were slow (not knowing or caring about the video drivers).
Wouldn't a higher-res mpg use more energy?
um, just checking... do they look anything like this?
Link backwards? Wrong? A bit harsh I think. Sure, the little green hat is dated, but... oh, wait
Using core duo minis in place of dual-G5 Xserves starts to make sense when you consider the reduced power/cooling/space/$$ and with performance probably not too much worse, especially if you don't need lots of memory and will access a central file store via gigabit enet.
It isn't heresy to me-- or at least to the type of engineer I am. When an excited visionary comes along who wants me to join in some fantastic new adventure that pushes the limits of science or engineering, I'm usually hooked and grateful if it is someone I respect. Without people like that most of us would continue toiling away in our own dark corners, creating great stuff other geeks appreciate and thinking that's enough. Once in awhile it is worth sticking your head up out of the hole, taking a step back and looking at the big picture. I'm not saying Woz couldn't do that, but I know that happens to me and though I like to think I can see the big picture, I wouldn't bet my bootstraps on it. I need people with other points of view (yes, even the crass commercial marketing types) to give me a good kick sometimes. Sometimes I'll just ignore them, but othertimes it gets me on a better track.
I even had a dream about Steve Jobs the other day, and I rarely remember my dreams. I've seen him enough in keynotes, a little in person, written about in books, etc, that my brain did a really great simulation (or my brain convinced me it was a great simulation-- my own reality distortion field). Anyway, Steve really wanted me to join Apple as if I was some guru of some type (which I'm not), and I felt such a rush of appreciation being the focus of that sort of manic attention and positive energy-- I felt as if I really truly mattered and was going to finally make a difference. One of the best feelings ever. Having that sort of persuasive power on your side (if it is even anything close to what I imagine) must have been a great boon to Woz as I'm sure he'd be the first to admit.
By the way I saw Woz at WWDC 2005 when Steve made the Intel announcement. On his way out Steve stopped to talk with Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles but ignored Woz who was nearby, though it may have been more like he was in a rush, I don't know. But it seemed like a symbolic moment at the time.
But since Apple and Macintosh have always been such a highly visible cultural phenomena for so long-- and even more recently due to the iPod, I think it is safe to say that Mac OS X enjoys quite a halo effect. I'm arguing that the halo effect might be at its zenith now, and so now is the time to take the gamble and challenge Windows.
Your average computer user would be hard pressed to know those even existed at the time. Via the iMac/iPod, nearly every consumer, never mind computer user, is aware of Macs (and indirectly, that they run a different OS), and almost always that is a positive awareness. And you can bet that if they use Winows they've had a growing negative awareness about Windows and its security issues. Very different situation now.
Many would say that Apple offers the best value for the money on their hardware products, and that should keep them alive even if they license the OS. In the clone days what did they have to compete with boring, cheap beige Power Computing boxes? The answer: boring expensive Apple beige boxes. No wonder they lost money.
They could compete and win now, because of superior industrial design. But... eventually Apple's industrial coolness factor and the iPod splash will dissipate. I hope they can keep it up, but the public is fickle and will find a new shiny thing. I'm confident Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive will be able to stay on top of it and stay out in the front, but they will retire someday. Why bet your company on it staying cool?
I'm more a devoted fan of the software engineers at Apple than the industrial engineers. Bet your company on them, Apple! I've used Mac OS on boring beige boxes and been happy, because Mac OS just makes computing happy. Be confident in your OS and license it-- your industrial design protects you now, your software design keeps it real for the long haul, and Windows users are starting to get really fed up. Strike while the iron is hot!
I agree for the most part, but how bad is it, really?
If Apple warns the user in an effective way about sub-optimal hardware conditions they can tell the user nicely that the maker of this hardware does not support Mac OS X. If the user likes Mac OS X enough, he/she will put pressure on the hardware manufacturer for not being hip enough to be with the program, and Apple comes out clean.
I don't use '/or /etc' much, but to each their own. I think the idea of a space in the name is a clever way to keep others out, but one day it will be you.
Maybe he's a counterfeit expert?
ok, "did you read that as" comments are a bit silly, but hey, I'm home sick with no beeper so I'm gonna contribute one!
The first ad in the marketplace below the story that showed up for me was:
Full Layer 4-7 Functionality only $2,450
Which I read as
Full Lawyer 24-7 Functionality only $2,450
For a minute there I thought Google itself had a robot lawyer service it wanted to advertise (lawyer.google.com), it was so well targeted.
And - 1 world-weary comment about slashdot culture This is just the same, tired rhetoric we've heard before time and again. Oops, make that - 2 world-weary comments about slashdot culture