So the story here is 'Apple gives it away free with your hardware purchase' but when Dell 'gives away' Windows 'free' with their machines, we all get out picket signs and hold a Windows Refund Day rally.
What about people who buy Macs to run Linux on them? (I have Macs that run NetBSD, personally). Are they entitled to a MacOS Refund?
As you said, 'free is not the correct answer.'
I don't have a problem with the concept of profit. And anywaysI am mostly responding to the 'NextStep was really expensive because they don't sell hardware' excuse. Lots of things used to be expensive, software-wise.
I have a pile of Dell Optiplex mini-tower machines in the living room. The pile of Beige G3 Macintoshes has been moved to the second bedroom (storage room). There's also a dual Pentium 3 Proliant server (rackmount version, kitchen chair mounting method) in the living room.
Isn't this Slashdot? What's with 'living room decor' type questions? The important question is wether the living room should have a raised floor or not.
State one even mildly plausible alternative motive for seeking these patents,
Microsoft is on record as saying they Patent so many things in order to prevent snipers from patenting them and preventing Microsoft from implementing them.
Microsoft essentially 'accelerates technology to public domain' by patenting them and then not enforcing the patent against others.
Remember, also, that Patents are enforcable for a limited period of time, after which the patent is just a nice piece of documentation for some technology.
Pretty much every OS developed in recent history has derived their TCP/IP stack from the BSD codebase. The BSD codebase can be referred to as a 'reference implentation,' which in the case of intercommunications protocols is a REALLY GOOD THING because it means different systems interoperate smoothly.
Linux is one of the few exceptions of an OS that used a different implentation, supposedly because of some arcane objection that Linus raised. As a result Linux has it's own unique warts and differences. Which isn't a good thing.
It's probably why Apple has not ended up in court with the DOJ and Microsoft has many times.
Also, Apple has not landed in court as a plaintiff because they essentially 'lost' in the market, so couldn't grab the market share Microsoft did. In part, interestingly, because Apple in the 80's perferred to sue their opponents and run them out of business with legal manouvres.
Yes, Microsoft's money given to Apple back in 1998 was NOT close to the kind of money that would have been needed to bail out Apple if it had been 'on the edge of bankruptcy.'
What's hilarous is that it's the Apple Zealots who now have to shout to the world 'Microsoft's money was just a gesture, to show the world that Apple was a viable company.'
Yep. That's what the Apple fans are forced to acknowledge.
they were 7 - 10 years late to the "next generation OS" party
That really isn't an accurate characterization.
Apple kept throwing their own little 'next generation OS' parties, but nobody turned up. Everybody kept going to Billy's parties down the street. (which sucked, but at least there were chicks there)
Apple foundered and fumbled, and their in-house-geniuses bled millions and millions of dollars (and oh was there a 'celebration of our wunnerful corporate culture' during said period) and finally gave up and bought NeXT.
What were some of the names of all that crap? Pink? Taligent? I remember they had something called Sagan for awhile until Carl Sagan objected, so they renamed it BHA (buttheaded astronomer).
He was just poking fun at some of the not-so-Tech-savvy words from the past that Mac Zealots have been guilty of.
Incidentally, if YOU are a Mac Zealot (its far from certain from your comment) it's simply DELICIOUS that you're now referring to 'PowerPC or whatever architecture.'
I run almost exclusively Dell Optiplexes here at home now (mostly GX1's and some older stuff in a few places)(I'm too busy buying cool non-Intel hardware, i.e. classic UNIX hardware from Sun, HP, etc., to bother with 'keeping up' in Winteland these days.) There is a lot of variation just in the GX1 line. Little things that aren't that noticible pop up if you swap around a hard drive with Windows 98 on it from one system to another.
There are now firmware 'tweaks' and tricks you can use to 'upgrade' a GX1. For instance, if you want to run a Pentium III 800 in a GX1 motherboard, you must DOWNGRADE to a non-current BIOS version, because Dell decided at one point they were no longer supporting newer-than-Pentium 550 processors so they dropped support that was present in earlier BIOS versions.
So, yes, Dell has added software (BIOS firmware) to disallow 'forbidden' hardware upgrades.
I don't understand how Linx and xBSDs can be expected to "run everywhere" on everything, yet, for some reason OS X, a very pretty GUI that is supported by the same technology as the other Unixes, is excluded from that. It just mystifies me.
Well, to start with OS X is, uh.. Closed Source.
(don't preach at me about Darwin. I've run it on both Intel and one of my Beige G3s. It's a nice OS, with X and everything. It's not OS X)
Even I'm not foolish enough to think Apple hung their printers off the ADB port in the classic Mac era.
There was a printer port. It used a mini-DIN connector. I sure HOPE you didn't plug your keyboard in there. I sure HOPE you didn't plug your printer into the connector on the side of the keyboard (and bend some of the pins).
After a few decades we would end up with hundreds of ports on the back.
Only if every vendor spun out their own proprietary connector/port scheme. And not too many did (except in the early days before an 'industry standard' was established)
It could have been Compaq, or Sun, or any of the other interests that were rumored as being close to buying Apple at the firesale prices it was riding at before NeXT took it over.
It's not enough to simply classify somebody who embodies the old spirit of Slashdot and the hacker community as a troll.
Until the last several years it was extremely uncommon to find ANYBODY in the alternative/Free Software community who saw Apple products as anything but joke/boutique hardware/software products.
There were regular PC drones, there were hackers/freaks/enthusiasts, and there was the short bus with the Mac Users on it (granted there were many cultured idiot savants on said bus).
Some of us hate Steve Jobs because we remember his smug, triumphant pronouncement of the sealed-box 'get all you dev. tools from us' original Mac as 'hacker proof'. He used those very words to describe it at an early National Press Club speech broadcast on NPR in the mid 80's.
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So why aren't you overclocking a 68040, then??
So the story here is 'Apple gives it away free with your hardware purchase' but when Dell 'gives away' Windows 'free' with their machines, we all get out picket signs and hold a Windows Refund Day rally.
What about people who buy Macs to run Linux on them? (I have Macs that run NetBSD, personally). Are they entitled to a MacOS Refund?
As you said, 'free is not the correct answer.'
I don't have a problem with the concept of profit. And anywaysI am mostly responding to the 'NextStep was really expensive because they don't sell hardware' excuse. Lots of things used to be expensive, software-wise.
I have a pile of Dell Optiplex mini-tower machines in the living room. The pile of Beige G3 Macintoshes has been moved to the second bedroom (storage room). There's also a dual Pentium 3 Proliant server (rackmount version, kitchen chair mounting method) in the living room.
Isn't this Slashdot? What's with 'living room decor' type questions? The important question is wether the living room should have a raised floor or not.
State one even mildly plausible alternative motive for seeking these patents,
Microsoft is on record as saying they Patent so many things in order to prevent snipers from patenting them and preventing Microsoft from implementing them.
Microsoft essentially 'accelerates technology to public domain' by patenting them and then not enforcing the patent against others.
Remember, also, that Patents are enforcable for a limited period of time, after which the patent is just a nice piece of documentation for some technology.
If you mean that US Patents are irrelevant in Zimbabwe, Cuba, and a few other places, you're correct.
Pretty much every OS developed in recent history has derived their TCP/IP stack from the BSD codebase. The BSD codebase can be referred to as a 'reference implentation,' which in the case of intercommunications protocols is a REALLY GOOD THING because it means different systems interoperate smoothly.
Linux is one of the few exceptions of an OS that used a different implentation, supposedly because of some arcane objection that Linus raised. As a result Linux has it's own unique warts and differences. Which isn't a good thing.
It's probably why Apple has not ended up in court with the DOJ and Microsoft has many times.
Also, Apple has not landed in court as a plaintiff because they essentially 'lost' in the market, so couldn't grab the market share Microsoft did. In part, interestingly, because Apple in the 80's perferred to sue their opponents and run them out of business with legal manouvres.
There aren't that many (modern) x86 chipsets to support. Really, there aren't. It wouldn't be that difficult to support a rich subset of them.
SCSI? You're asking Apple Computer to support SCSI? SCSI is last decade's PowerPC. Didn't ya know?
Hey, those are cool songs.
Don't go associating them with a greedy cokehead.
(I am not referring to Elvis Costello)
Yes, Microsoft's money given to Apple back in 1998 was NOT close to the kind of money that would have been needed to bail out Apple if it had been 'on the edge of bankruptcy.'
What's hilarous is that it's the Apple Zealots who now have to shout to the world 'Microsoft's money was just a gesture, to show the world that Apple was a viable company.'
Yep. That's what the Apple fans are forced to acknowledge.
how much NeXTStep cost for intel.
Solaris cost that much for Intel back in that time period, too.
Solaris for Intel is free now (commercially licensable for more, but free for The Rest Of Us)
He's picking on the pile of Beige G3 boxes I have stacked in the second bedroom. *sniff*
They're great for running Darwin, BTW.
they were 7 - 10 years late to the "next generation OS" party
That really isn't an accurate characterization.
Apple kept throwing their own little 'next generation OS' parties, but nobody turned up. Everybody kept going to Billy's parties down the street. (which sucked, but at least there were chicks there)
Apple foundered and fumbled, and their in-house-geniuses bled millions and millions of dollars (and oh was there a 'celebration of our wunnerful corporate culture' during said period) and finally gave up and bought NeXT.
What were some of the names of all that crap? Pink? Taligent? I remember they had something called Sagan for awhile until Carl Sagan objected, so they renamed it BHA (buttheaded astronomer).
He was just poking fun at some of the not-so-Tech-savvy words from the past that Mac Zealots have been guilty of.
Incidentally, if YOU are a Mac Zealot (its far from certain from your comment) it's simply DELICIOUS that you're now referring to 'PowerPC or whatever architecture.'
I run almost exclusively Dell Optiplexes here at home now (mostly GX1's and some older stuff in a few places)(I'm too busy buying cool non-Intel hardware, i.e. classic UNIX hardware from Sun, HP, etc., to bother with 'keeping up' in Winteland these days.) There is a lot of variation just in the GX1 line. Little things that aren't that noticible pop up if you swap around a hard drive with Windows 98 on it from one system to another.
There are now firmware 'tweaks' and tricks you can use to 'upgrade' a GX1. For instance, if you want to run a Pentium III 800 in a GX1 motherboard, you must DOWNGRADE to a non-current BIOS version, because Dell decided at one point they were no longer supporting newer-than-Pentium 550 processors so they dropped support that was present in earlier BIOS versions.
So, yes, Dell has added software (BIOS firmware) to disallow 'forbidden' hardware upgrades.
I don't understand how Linx and xBSDs can be expected to "run everywhere" on everything, yet, for some reason OS X, a very pretty GUI that is supported by the same technology as the other Unixes, is excluded from that. It just mystifies me.
Well, to start with OS X is, uh.. Closed Source.
(don't preach at me about Darwin. I've run it on both Intel and one of my Beige G3s. It's a nice OS, with X and everything. It's not OS X)
It sounds a whole lot like BeOS 5.0, which I gave a try for awhile.
(ordered it right from Be themselves)
Even I'm not foolish enough to think Apple hung their printers off the ADB port in the classic Mac era.
There was a printer port. It used a mini-DIN connector. I sure HOPE you didn't plug your keyboard in there. I sure HOPE you didn't plug your printer into the connector on the side of the keyboard (and bend some of the pins).
After a few decades we would end up with hundreds of ports on the back.
Only if every vendor spun out their own proprietary connector/port scheme. And not too many did (except in the early days before an 'industry standard' was established)
How do you remount the hard drive? There must be some 'user friendly' trick that I have yet to discern, eh?
The first Linux mascot was a Platypus.
Yet another example of Apple stealing someone else's idea.
Yes. We're lucky that NeXT only took over Apple.
It could have been Compaq, or Sun, or any of the other interests that were rumored as being close to buying Apple at the firesale prices it was riding at before NeXT took it over.
Nope.
It's not enough to simply classify somebody who embodies the old spirit of Slashdot and the hacker community as a troll.
Until the last several years it was extremely uncommon to find ANYBODY in the alternative/Free Software community who saw Apple products as anything but joke/boutique hardware/software products.
There were regular PC drones, there were hackers/freaks/enthusiasts, and there was the short bus with the Mac Users on it (granted there were many cultured idiot savants on said bus).
Some of us hate Steve Jobs because we remember his smug, triumphant pronouncement of the sealed-box 'get all you dev. tools from us' original Mac as 'hacker proof'. He used those very words to describe it at an early National Press Club speech broadcast on NPR in the mid 80's.
So how come when I drag the Hard Drive icon to the 'trash can' the machine doesn't conveniently spit out the Hard Drive?
Isn't the User Interface supposed to be consistent?
Since Apple branded printers never used that interface,
Indeed. And hell has no fury worse than the fate reserved for an Apple customer who wants to attach a non-Apple printer to his Mac.
Can you imagine the screaming, fuming, pissing match that would have commenced if IBM has designed their PC to only function with IBM Brand printers??
The Mac isn't a 'BMW' class product.
It's a Schwinn. In a world full of Huffy, Hercules, and even lowly Sears bike riders.
Do you remember how we all treated the snobby kid with the Schwinn bike?