The choice should not be between "sensible hardware" and "good consumer operating system." That is a shitty, false binary choice that is imposed by Apple upon legions of people who want to run their platform.
I would mod you up if I could. The real reason to run a Hackintosh is that Apple's product matrix is left with an intentional hole in it to force people to buy up to an insanely-specced, insanely-priced Mac Pro, or something that doesn't really fit their needs (iMac) to satisfy Jobs' ego about how wonderful AIO is.
Not only that but if something doesn't work, who are you going to turn to.
Hardware? Psystar. Software? Probably Psystar or the OSx86 community. People who buy these machines know what they're getting into. And the point is not to save money; the point is to have a machine running OSx86 that breaks Steve's matrix.
there's an A-12, which is basically the same plane, at Udvar Hazy in Maryland. It's an annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.
This also happens to be Enterprise's current perch. I had no idea she was there the first time I went. So I'm walking along and turn a corner, and HOLY SHIT SPACE SHUTTLE@!>!@$!#E#KRK
A lot of that stuff is really old and just will not run on Windows Mobile 6 (or even WM5). The console is an excellent example of this.
I have been hoping for a UNIX environment on Windows Mobile devices for ages and it just won't come despite CE being more POSIX-compliant than NT/2K/XP/Vista.
Trying to sell OS X by itself is economic suicide.
I don't disagree. But I'm not calling for that -- I'm calling for a Mac Pro Jr., because hardly anyone actually NEEDS a Mac Pro as it currently exists. The fact that people buy them doesn't mean it matches their needs - just that it has a feature set that is greater than what they need.
I want the Mac Apple refuses to sell me: an upgradeable machine that doesn't have ridiculous components (Xeons, FB-DIMMS) that maybe 0.01% of the userbase actually needs.
Jobs refuses to sell it because he knows people will buy it. He fears this because he is in love with AIO and wants people to buy iMacs even when they aren't a fit for their needs. He also is under the delusion that creating a Mac upgradeable prosumer desktop will somehow "Dell-ize" Apple. The reality, which most Mac users understand, is that what is actually valuable about Macs is not their different-ness, but the fact that they run OS X, which is the best consumer operating system on the market. Mac hardware is not special. It got even less special after 2005. Mac SOFTWARE is what is special.
but empowering CLI scripting, X11 apps and Unix power tools on a desktop machine is not equivalent to allowing developers to convert the iPhone into another junk mobile platform with the interface of WinCE, the stability of the Palm OS, the performance of Java ME, the viruses of Symbian, and the political feuding and incompatibilities of mobile Linux.
You have repeatedly failed to explain why the one leads to the other, and why changing from a desktop to a mobile device magically makes this a huge problem. The reasons cited (which aren't reasons so much as emotional reactions) are often something along the lines of "OMG ITS A FONE IT HAS TO WERK!!!!1" Well, see, here's the problem with this logic. Take a look at Windows Mobile phones, which I think we can agree are an example of some of the worst mobile device design in terms of software that you can find in the industry. Even when these break, they do so in a manageable fashion. They get slow. They get unresponsive. They become cruddy. They can, however, typically still make phone calls. It takes a LOT to crap your phone up to the point where it can't even make phone calls.
Now let's look at Mobile OS X. My jailbroken 1.1.4 iPhone, for example, has about 20 applications loaded on it, including Samba, AFPd, OpenSSH, Firefly Media Server, MobileRSS, and PureFTPd. All the applications I just mentioned run daemons in the background. Strangely, not only have I ALWAYS been able to make phone calls, but this doesn't seem to slow down my phone at all -- mostly because good software development and the sensible organization of OS X prevent them from doing so. Where Apple leads, developers follow --this has been demonstrated time and again in the desktop release of OS X, and it leads to good software development practice.
One reason the iPod worked is that Apple didn't clutter it with a public API for adding bells and whistles.
What? What could that possibly have to do with A) the iPod's excellent value B) its excellent integration with iTunes C) the terrific, simple UI? Again, a question you have failed to answer over and over is how person A's installing Widget Q onto their device somehow ruins person B's experience with THEIR device.
Adding a limited SDK is better than turning it into a Linux Tinker Toy set that converts into a pile of junk after you install a few apps.
Oh, Linux hate, too! You've managed to cover all the bases! Lovely! Very cute comment, except this doesn't happen. With any device. Installing applications does not magically convert devices into piles of junk. How do you even believe the garbage that you write? Have you even used a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch? Have you worked out the system by which fully-capable devices destroy the happiness that stock users have? I hope you can describe it for us here, really, I'm all ears.
Despite all of Apple's restrictions, there will apparently continue to be a jailbreak community adding unsupported apps, so I don't understand what the controversy is here. It looks like we can all have our cake and eat it too.
The problem here is that we are never promised this will always be possible. All we are told is that Apple won't do anything to specifically hurt jailbreak, which was already proved false in the 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 transition -- the AFC hack that allowed it was deactivated, despite its not being a security risk and not causing errors.
All Apple would have to do is put somewhere, out of the way, on some obscure portion of the iPhone bit of their site, "here is how to activate 'developer mode' on your iPhone or iPod touch. Please note that activating this mode will void any software support Apple offers on the device and is intended for advanced users only. Developer mode may damage your device, so take care." This, of course, would be total bullshit, as no iPhone or iPod touch has ever been bricked from simply jailbreaking, but the warning would stop casual users, who would then be free
Partial List MobileScrobbler Sketches Flashlight (amazing how often this comes in handy) OpenSSH (server and client) MobileChat bsflite ScummVM VNsea iPhysics (SO ADDICTIVE OMG) PocketGuitar VNotes Firefly Media Server
I will never understand OS wars. I run XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Arch, BSD, and OS X on various machines and partitions in this house. Right tool for the job, that's all there is to it.
It is not actually the existing policy. The existing policy is to stomp on jailbreak whenever convenient and engage in no communication with the community at all.
You're such a shill. It's truly awe-inspiring. Can Apple EVER do anything wrong, Dan? Don't you think it's a little odd that they're always right? How incredibly unlikely! What possible confluence of events could have transpired to make one company always successful and always right in every policy?!
My comments are already all over that entry, and I think those of us who support openness in the mobile application arena stomped all over the Apple apologists. Thanks for spamming your blog on Slashdot YET AGAIN, though.
The short version: remember the headlines gasping that the iPhone could have spy software installed that took pictures with its camera and mailed them to the Terrorists? That can't happen with SDK software. It can (hypothetically) happen with jailbroken phones.
Yes, I remember those headlines. Remember how it didn't happen? Remember how it hasn't happened with Symbian? Remember how it hasn't happened with Palm? Remember how it hasn't happened with Windows Mobile? It hasn't happened not because it "can't," (note the SDK is actually entirely capable of working with the camera, so try again), but because something like that would be almost entirely pointless, as the user would have to be pointing the lens in the direction one wanted to perform "surveillance" on, and HOLD STILL long enough for the camera to take a shot.
Apple isn't "trying to be responsible." They're doing a couple of things. First, they are trying to control yet another revenue stream they see as ripe for exploitation, and are tiptoeing around AT&T with the silly VOIP restriction -- as if VOIP is even remotely practical over EDGE, though that's another matter. Second, Jobs is OBSESSED with control. He considers every iPhone deployed in the world to be "his" iPhone. Deviation from his vision of how it's supposed to look and function really, really gets on his nerves. That's what this is really about: money and preserving the "perfection" of his beautiful little work of art.
I said this on your blog, and I'll say it again here: Windows Mobile, Java and Flash(?) don't suck because of a lack of Big Brother-esque control by an OEM. They suck because they suck. They are badly designed. It's been EIGHT YEARS since we saw the release of PocketPC (more?) and they STILL haven't figured out that poking hesitantly at a screen with a stylus juuust might not be the best interface for a handheld device. The PocketPC/Windows Mobile shell still tries to squash a desktop PC UI metaphor into a handheld format. The system as a whole is still slow, slow, slow, not to mention unresponsive. Java runs interpreted code on whatever device you're working with, has no real filesystem access most of the time, and operates in a gimped sandbox. Apple is the first company to have really figured out what a handheld interface should look and work like. Apple is better because the product is better, not because they have better control over your experience.
You don't have to support Apple's outlook, but representing it as a pointless limitation that hurts users is simply irresponsible.
I would never suggest that it's pointless. The point is obvious: generating revenue for Apple and feeding the ego of Jobs and the company as a whole.
is what you get for synonyms when you look up "miserable failure" in the dictionary. What's it been, two years now, and there has been hardly any progress in the project? They're still working on the damn keyboard, ffs -- not that a virtual keyboard is of any use with a resistive touchscreen.
I'm waiting for the last gasps of that project to finally expire. It is going exactly nowhere at about Mach 5.
I was really excited when I heard about Android, and then I found out that everything runs in its own separate little Java sandbox. No thanks.
"But, there is no way that jailbroken apps will be any sort of successful business model for the iPhone."
Actually, people are already selling jailbroken apps.
Slashdot Mirror
The choice should not be between "sensible hardware" and "good consumer operating system." That is a shitty, false binary choice that is imposed by Apple upon legions of people who want to run their platform.
I would mod you up if I could. The real reason to run a Hackintosh is that Apple's product matrix is left with an intentional hole in it to force people to buy up to an insanely-specced, insanely-priced Mac Pro, or something that doesn't really fit their needs (iMac) to satisfy Jobs' ego about how wonderful AIO is.
Not only that but if something doesn't work, who are you going to turn to.
Hardware? Psystar. Software? Probably Psystar or the OSx86 community. People who buy these machines know what they're getting into. And the point is not to save money; the point is to have a machine running OSx86 that breaks Steve's matrix.
there's an A-12, which is basically the same plane, at Udvar Hazy in Maryland. It's an annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.
This also happens to be Enterprise's current perch. I had no idea she was there the first time I went. So I'm walking along and turn a corner, and HOLY SHIT SPACE SHUTTLE@!>!@$!#E#KRK
It was kind of a surreal experience.
You're ALWAYS better off going with your own router.
Just get a nice draft-N router and use that.
If someone uses your car when you're not using it, you're being deprived of something: gas, mileage on your odometer, wear and tear on your car.
If someone uses your wifi when you're not using it, you're being deprived of nothing at all.
A lot of that stuff is really old and just will not run on Windows Mobile 6 (or even WM5). The console is an excellent example of this.
I have been hoping for a UNIX environment on Windows Mobile devices for ages and it just won't come despite CE being more POSIX-compliant than NT/2K/XP/Vista.
That doesn't actually seem to happen. There is a sad dearth of free software on PPC.
we can still jailbreak, and there's no reason we can't continue to develop free software with the community toolchain.
You do not has it.
Those consumers can buy iMacs.
that the additional features of the mac pro doesn't cost that much more on top of the already high price.
The additional features are the REASON for the high price. Start with Xeons and FB-DIMM RAM -- without that, the Pro would be a sub-$2000 box.
Apple could simply sell upgrade cards or say "this one card works, and we make no guarantees about others." Just like they do with the Mac Pro.
Why does everyone forget that the Mac Pro exists when this concept is brought up?
Trying to sell OS X by itself is economic suicide.
I don't disagree. But I'm not calling for that -- I'm calling for a Mac Pro Jr., because hardly anyone actually NEEDS a Mac Pro as it currently exists. The fact that people buy them doesn't mean it matches their needs - just that it has a feature set that is greater than what they need.
Can you tell me why? (Hint: There already exists a machine that ALMOST fits the description I gave.)
I want the Mac Apple refuses to sell me: an upgradeable machine that doesn't have ridiculous components (Xeons, FB-DIMMS) that maybe 0.01% of the userbase actually needs.
Jobs refuses to sell it because he knows people will buy it. He fears this because he is in love with AIO and wants people to buy iMacs even when they aren't a fit for their needs. He also is under the delusion that creating a Mac upgradeable prosumer desktop will somehow "Dell-ize" Apple. The reality, which most Mac users understand, is that what is actually valuable about Macs is not their different-ness, but the fact that they run OS X, which is the best consumer operating system on the market. Mac hardware is not special. It got even less special after 2005. Mac SOFTWARE is what is special.
They gave me one for my house. I ended up replacing it with an old SpeedStream I had and a TrendNet router. The 2700's radio is terrible.
but empowering CLI scripting, X11 apps and Unix power tools on a desktop machine is not equivalent to allowing developers to convert the iPhone into another junk mobile platform with the interface of WinCE, the stability of the Palm OS, the performance of Java ME, the viruses of Symbian, and the political feuding and incompatibilities of mobile Linux.
You have repeatedly failed to explain why the one leads to the other, and why changing from a desktop to a mobile device magically makes this a huge problem. The reasons cited (which aren't reasons so much as emotional reactions) are often something along the lines of "OMG ITS A FONE IT HAS TO WERK!!!!1" Well, see, here's the problem with this logic. Take a look at Windows Mobile phones, which I think we can agree are an example of some of the worst mobile device design in terms of software that you can find in the industry. Even when these break, they do so in a manageable fashion. They get slow. They get unresponsive. They become cruddy. They can, however, typically still make phone calls. It takes a LOT to crap your phone up to the point where it can't even make phone calls.
Now let's look at Mobile OS X. My jailbroken 1.1.4 iPhone, for example, has about 20 applications loaded on it, including Samba, AFPd, OpenSSH, Firefly Media Server, MobileRSS, and PureFTPd. All the applications I just mentioned run daemons in the background. Strangely, not only have I ALWAYS been able to make phone calls, but this doesn't seem to slow down my phone at all -- mostly because good software development and the sensible organization of OS X prevent them from doing so. Where Apple leads, developers follow --this has been demonstrated time and again in the desktop release of OS X, and it leads to good software development practice.
One reason the iPod worked is that Apple didn't clutter it with a public API for adding bells and whistles.
What? What could that possibly have to do with A) the iPod's excellent value B) its excellent integration with iTunes C) the terrific, simple UI? Again, a question you have failed to answer over and over is how person A's installing Widget Q onto their device somehow ruins person B's experience with THEIR device.
Adding a limited SDK is better than turning it into a Linux Tinker Toy set that converts into a pile of junk after you install a few apps.
Oh, Linux hate, too! You've managed to cover all the bases! Lovely! Very cute comment, except this doesn't happen. With any device. Installing applications does not magically convert devices into piles of junk. How do you even believe the garbage that you write? Have you even used a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch? Have you worked out the system by which fully-capable devices destroy the happiness that stock users have? I hope you can describe it for us here, really, I'm all ears.
Despite all of Apple's restrictions, there will apparently continue to be a jailbreak community adding unsupported apps, so I don't understand what the controversy is here. It looks like we can all have our cake and eat it too.
The problem here is that we are never promised this will always be possible. All we are told is that Apple won't do anything to specifically hurt jailbreak, which was already proved false in the 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 transition -- the AFC hack that allowed it was deactivated, despite its not being a security risk and not causing errors.
All Apple would have to do is put somewhere, out of the way, on some obscure portion of the iPhone bit of their site, "here is how to activate 'developer mode' on your iPhone or iPod touch. Please note that activating this mode will void any software support Apple offers on the device and is intended for advanced users only. Developer mode may damage your device, so take care." This, of course, would be total bullshit, as no iPhone or iPod touch has ever been bricked from simply jailbreaking, but the warning would stop casual users, who would then be free
And who can argue against such a sophisticated argument based entirely on a homophobic pejorative?
Are you so deep in the RDF that you can't even interpret English correctly anymore? Whathomophobic pejorative? "Sucks?" Are you for real?
Partial List
MobileScrobbler
Sketches
Flashlight (amazing how often this comes in handy)
OpenSSH (server and client)
MobileChat
bsflite
ScummVM
VNsea
iPhysics (SO ADDICTIVE OMG)
PocketGuitar
VNotes
Firefly Media Server
I will never understand OS wars. I run XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Arch, BSD, and OS X on various machines and partitions in this house. Right tool for the job, that's all there is to it.
It is not actually the existing policy. The existing policy is to stomp on jailbreak whenever convenient and engage in no communication with the community at all.
You're such a shill. It's truly awe-inspiring. Can Apple EVER do anything wrong, Dan? Don't you think it's a little odd that they're always right? How incredibly unlikely! What possible confluence of events could have transpired to make one company always successful and always right in every policy?!
My comments are already all over that entry, and I think those of us who support openness in the mobile application arena stomped all over the Apple apologists. Thanks for spamming your blog on Slashdot YET AGAIN, though.
The short version: remember the headlines gasping that the iPhone could have spy software installed that took pictures with its camera and mailed them to the Terrorists? That can't happen with SDK software. It can (hypothetically) happen with jailbroken phones.
Yes, I remember those headlines. Remember how it didn't happen? Remember how it hasn't happened with Symbian? Remember how it hasn't happened with Palm? Remember how it hasn't happened with Windows Mobile? It hasn't happened not because it "can't," (note the SDK is actually entirely capable of working with the camera, so try again), but because something like that would be almost entirely pointless, as the user would have to be pointing the lens in the direction one wanted to perform "surveillance" on, and HOLD STILL long enough for the camera to take a shot.
Apple isn't "trying to be responsible." They're doing a couple of things. First, they are trying to control yet another revenue stream they see as ripe for exploitation, and are tiptoeing around AT&T with the silly VOIP restriction -- as if VOIP is even remotely practical over EDGE, though that's another matter. Second, Jobs is OBSESSED with control. He considers every iPhone deployed in the world to be "his" iPhone. Deviation from his vision of how it's supposed to look and function really, really gets on his nerves. That's what this is really about: money and preserving the "perfection" of his beautiful little work of art.
I said this on your blog, and I'll say it again here: Windows Mobile, Java and Flash(?) don't suck because of a lack of Big Brother-esque control by an OEM. They suck because they suck. They are badly designed. It's been EIGHT YEARS since we saw the release of PocketPC (more?) and they STILL haven't figured out that poking hesitantly at a screen with a stylus juuust might not be the best interface for a handheld device. The PocketPC/Windows Mobile shell still tries to squash a desktop PC UI metaphor into a handheld format. The system as a whole is still slow, slow, slow, not to mention unresponsive. Java runs interpreted code on whatever device you're working with, has no real filesystem access most of the time, and operates in a gimped sandbox. Apple is the first company to have really figured out what a handheld interface should look and work like. Apple is better because the product is better, not because they have better control over your experience.
You don't have to support Apple's outlook, but representing it as a pointless limitation that hurts users is simply irresponsible.
I would never suggest that it's pointless. The point is obvious: generating revenue for Apple and feeding the ego of Jobs and the company as a whole.
Who do you suppose he was shilling for? The Open Source movement, who I'm sure pay him thousands of dollars to do it?
and I don't care what you say, that was a terrific card. I still have one somewhere -- one of the old 16-bit ISA ones.
is what you get for synonyms when you look up "miserable failure" in the dictionary. What's it been, two years now, and there has been hardly any progress in the project? They're still working on the damn keyboard, ffs -- not that a virtual keyboard is of any use with a resistive touchscreen.
I'm waiting for the last gasps of that project to finally expire. It is going exactly nowhere at about Mach 5.
I was really excited when I heard about Android, and then I found out that everything runs in its own separate little Java sandbox. No thanks.
"But, there is no way that jailbroken apps will be any sort of successful business model for the iPhone."
Actually, people are already selling jailbroken apps.