How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
One or two. And one or two for spreadsheets, and presentations, and so on.
The point is that it should be the right one or two. It would kind of suck if that extension ended up being TXT, right?
Operating Systems using extended attributes for file types (like OS/2 and Mac OS X) have no problems when all extension are the same. In fact they work perfectly well with no extensions at all.
It's not just a "new extension", it's actually a different file format -- there's a lot more work that has to go into this than typing "odt" instead of "doc".
This is why I think IBM and Apple got it right in not relying on extensions for file formats and it would be better of if we did not have them at all. And I don't speak about hiding them - which only leads to "Summer Vacation Photo.jpg.exe" exploits.
Interesting side note on hiding extension: With Mac OS X hiding extensions is an (extended) attribute of the file so you can decide for each file separately if you want to see the extension or not.
Also note that NTFS and most Linux file systems support extended attributes as well - Windows and Linux just don't use all the features there file system offers.
And before you ask: Both OS/2 and Mac OS X support extended attributes on FAT as well (both using hidden files to keep them).
But wait: Windows and Linux don't have fall back mechanism for file systems which don't support extended attributes natively. That might be the reason they don't use them.
Well, no boot camp on hour two Mac system. If there is anything needs Windows then we use vmware fusion. To put things in perspective: AFAIK My Wife did not start fusion for about 3 weeks. And I last started fusion a week ago for the IKEA room planer.
I think the rise of MacOS has more to do with the Intel CPU and the psychological advantage that you can run windows if you really need to.
Well once I understood the + button I found it quite nice. Best thing - i think - once learned used everywhere since the + button is consitantly used - well everywhere.
No I did not miss any point - I just did not comment on it - basically because I agree with you - monopoly isn't the issue here.
The question is: Can Apple ban anybody from installing MacOS on any other computer. Note that this is a long going problem. Long, long ago I used an product called Aladdin on my Atari ST. Basically you could run MacOS - version 5 I think - on an Atari ST.
Apple did not like it but there was not much they could do as long as the Aladdin user had a set of original MacOS ROMs.
That's long ago and this year I finally bought myself a "real" Mac.
You have given the reason yourself: You can buy a Fort and rip out engine and put it into an VW. (Ok, most countries will require some form road safety test after such a change - but that is a different matter).
And actually for a short while in the '70 in Germany it was "en vouge" to put an Porsche 911 engine into a beagle. Nothing I would do but some people like that kind of stuff.
I have used home made PC systems since I send my Atari Mega ST into pension.
I have used used Linux since I send OS/2 into pension.
But then: I have not compiled a Kernel - well since I am married to be honest. Not only because I would not find the time - but because it became to complicated. An endless row of options and always the danger of making the system unbootable.
On my last home made PC systems the only hardware stuff I did (after initial set-up) was more memory and a new graphic card. Have a look into the inside of a MacPro (http://www.apple.com/macpro/design.html). Those two extensions are a lot easer on a MacPro. So is adding another harddrive.
What else to do?
New CPU? By the time you want a new CPU the sockel / socket / whatever needed by you main board are out of production.
New main board? Needs new memory (bus speed), new graphic card (AGP 2x, 4x, 8x PCIe...), new hard drive (ATA, SATA). technologie moves so fast - when you need to / want to replace your main board you might as well replace the hole system.
On the other hand: No matter how much tinkering I did: Skype on Linux did not work with the Webcam. But it worked out of the box on my Wives iMac.
And this is the final point: You don't need as much tinkering if it just works.
Wow.. you just described my absolute hatred of Apple and their philosophy.
I will NEVER purchase an iAnything. Why? Because I like to tweak, tinker, and have options.
With most of what you say. But there is an exception: for the iMac it's not valid. The iMac is great for tweaking and tinkering. Better then a windows PC. All you need is opening Terminal.app and take it from there.
And what most users never notice: Apple isn't actualy against it, read:
Flash in its current usage - mostly ads and multimedia. Which is the reason I switch Flash of by default. I just plan hate ads with animations and websites which play music.
Say what you want but there must be something fundamentally slow about X. I do notice that X applications are slower on my Mac then native applications.
Note that I use X on Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac - and yes I see the advantages of network transparency. Cool stuff. I do X sessions over VPNs - as long as all I do is XTerm and GVim even that is quite OK.
Personally, I'm still unconvinced that X is a particularly "good idea." 15 years later, and the promises of simplicity and compatibility are still unrealized, as every single implementation of the protocol has suffered from numerous problems. Perhaps it would be best to start from scratch, and revise X11 to be a more realistic/practical specification. Me too. Only I voted with my money and went from SuSE Linux to Mac OSX. Maybe it is time for some new technology and why not get inspiration from the best and try to clone Quartz [1]?
I had been a Transgaming subscriber for the minimum 3 month and what Procket meant is that Cedega is quite good in ignoring some fractions of there customers.
For example World of Warcraft runs better with bug standard WINE then then with Cedega pimped up version.
Just in case you wonder: Cedega, Transgaming, GameTree - all the same.
Which direction for difference. As I noted in the post 2 up:
World of Warcraft runs great on my MacPro and my Wifes iMac. Both outperform my Fathers custom made water cooled gaming machine. Now it should be noted that my Fathers custom made water cooled gaming machine has the newest graphic card in town and the fastest Athlon you can get. Both at the time of course - we all know how fast gaming hardware ages.
I take it that my MacPro was only marginally more expensive but with 200+ fps it runs circles around my fathers computer - and that without actually breaking into a sweat.
Which is the best part of it: All that water cooling stuff is of course to keep the system silent:-) .
World of Warcraft runs great on my MacPro and my Wifes iMac. Both outperform my Fathers custom made water cooled gaming machine.
All World of Warcraft DVD come with both with a Windows and an OSX version - no need to search for Mac version in the shops either.
BTW: World of Warcraft also runs on Linux using bog standard WINE. Note that after a nasty glitch in there anti cheat program Blizzard sanctioned the use of Linux a platform (as in: "Using Linux to play is not considered cheating").
World of Warcraft is quite accommodating to Non-Windows use.
Apart from that a vertical vendor which compiles a custom made Linux optimized for his hardware won't have all those problems. If well done such a system would outperform most of what you can buy today.
Note that Linux is already quite successfully in this area. Think of set-top phones, mobile phones etc. pp.
This is indeed a sad truth. I noticed a huge performance increase when I moved to x86_64 - an I think most of it is due to CFLAGS="-O0 -mcpu=586" for the 32 bit SuSE.
But it does not stop there - recompile parts of Cygwin or MinGW with "-O3 -mcpu=pentium4" and you will notice an significant as well.
And - letting the Apple fan boy out - I believe that part of Apples impressive performance is due to the fact that Apple knows which Hardware there system is going to run on and that they can tweak -mcpu= accordingly.
Of course this could be duplicated with Linux as well. The future will be a return to vertical vendors (like Apple) which produce hardware, operating and base software and can optimize how those three parts interact. And the OS will most likely be and optimised Linux.
Well there are former Linux users which move to OSX as well.
For me: I had enough of tweaking my system all the time. I wanted my next system to which just work. And indeed it does
SAMBA - no configuration needed - it just works. Printer - Bonjour [1] - and just works.
(I could continue)
On the other hand all my GNU / OpenSource tools are there as well [2]. Note that the Darwin kernel is OpenSource as well [3].
But enough of that. I don't want to convert you - I am on your side.
The interesting part is: Why is Apple successful? Answer: Because Hardware, OS and Software starter pack comes form the same vendor which makes sure that everything just works fine.
And back to original post: Why are those Linux based UMPCs so successful? They are cheap and Hardware, OS and Software starter pack comes form the same vendor which makes sure that everything just works fine.
Windows has none of these. It's not cheap any more and it's not single vendor either.
It think the single vendor part is the great change for both Linux and OSX.
And yes, your little "OS X------Windows------Linux" is absolutely right but let me quote Odder (1288958) from way up:
Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it. Mind you I don't by the "has taken" part - "might take" is more like it.
Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it. Precisely what I thought as well! At least for the private sector. And in the past the corporate market tend to follow the private market some time later (first the SOHOs then small companies later large companies).
However the corporate market which might have already passed the point on no return.
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How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
One or two. And one or two for spreadsheets, and presentations, and so on.
The point is that it should be the right one or two. It would kind of suck if that extension ended up being TXT, right?
Operating Systems using extended attributes for file types (like OS/2 and Mac OS X) have no problems when all extension are the same. In fact they work perfectly well with no extensions at all.
It's not just a "new extension", it's actually a different file format -- there's a lot more work that has to go into this than typing "odt" instead of "doc".
This is why I think IBM and Apple got it right in not relying on extensions for file formats and it would be better of if we did not have them at all. And I don't speak about hiding them - which only leads to "Summer Vacation Photo.jpg.exe" exploits.
Interesting side note on hiding extension: With Mac OS X hiding extensions is an (extended) attribute of the file so you can decide for each file separately if you want to see the extension or not.
Also note that NTFS and most Linux file systems support extended attributes as well - Windows and Linux just don't use all the features there file system offers.
And before you ask: Both OS/2 and Mac OS X support extended attributes on FAT as well (both using hidden files to keep them).
But wait: Windows and Linux don't have fall back mechanism for file systems which don't support extended attributes natively. That might be the reason they don't use them.
Martin
Well, no boot camp on hour two Mac system. If there is anything needs Windows then we use vmware fusion. To put things in perspective: AFAIK My Wife did not start fusion for about 3 weeks. And I last started fusion a week ago for the IKEA room planer.
I think the rise of MacOS has more to do with the Intel CPU and the psychological advantage that you can run windows if you really need to.
Martin
Strange, my Wife stopped complaining after half an hour. Before she was slightly about a non main stream OS. But that is not an issue any more.
Martin
Well once I understood the + button I found it quite nice. Best thing - i think - once learned used everywhere since the + button is consitantly used - well everywhere.
No I did not miss any point - I just did not comment on it - basically because I agree with you - monopoly isn't the issue here.
The question is: Can Apple ban anybody from installing MacOS on any other computer. Note that this is a long going problem. Long, long ago I used an product called Aladdin on my Atari ST. Basically you could run MacOS - version 5 I think - on an Atari ST.
Apple did not like it but there was not much they could do as long as the Aladdin user had a set of original MacOS ROMs.
That's long ago and this year I finally bought myself a "real" Mac.
Martin
You have given the reason yourself: You can buy a Fort and rip out engine and put it into an VW. (Ok, most countries will require some form road safety test after such a change - but that is a different matter).
And actually for a short while in the '70 in Germany it was "en vouge" to put an Porsche 911 engine into a beagle. Nothing I would do but some people like that kind of stuff.
Martin
Note that Power without PC is a server CPU like Opteron or XEON. But still they share the same instruction set.
Martin.
The AC I was answering was stating that not using Windows will mean "all productivity will shut down" and quote:
"Year of the Linux Desktop" my ass. And I was answering to that.Besides, I use Opera on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.
I have used home made PC systems since I send my Atari Mega ST into pension.
I have used used Linux since I send OS/2 into pension.
But then: I have not compiled a Kernel - well since I am married to be honest. Not only because I would not find the time - but because it became to complicated. An endless row of options and always the danger of making the system unbootable.
On my last home made PC systems the only hardware stuff I did (after initial set-up) was more memory and a new graphic card. Have a look into the inside of a MacPro (http://www.apple.com/macpro/design.html). Those two extensions are a lot easer on a MacPro. So is adding another harddrive.
What else to do?
New CPU? By the time you want a new CPU the sockel / socket / whatever needed by you main board are out of production.
New main board? Needs new memory (bus speed), new graphic card (AGP 2x, 4x, 8x PCIe...), new hard drive (ATA, SATA). technologie moves so fast - when you need to / want to replace your main board you might as well replace the hole system.
On the other hand: No matter how much tinkering I did: Skype on Linux did not work with the Webcam. But it worked out of the box on my Wives iMac.
And this is the final point: You don't need as much tinkering if it just works.
Martin
For example you could use OSX as your desktop operating system.
Wow .. you just described my absolute hatred of Apple and their philosophy.
I will NEVER purchase an iAnything. Why? Because I like to tweak, tinker, and have options.
With most of what you say. But there is an exception: for the iMac it's not valid. The iMac is great for tweaking and tinkering. Better then a windows PC. All you need is opening Terminal.app and take it from there.And what most users never notice: Apple isn't actualy against it, read:
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/overview.html
Of couse the MacPro is ever better for tinkering - but then there is no 'i' in it's name...
Martin
Martin
Unlike you I was not joking. I bought SuSE 5.2 to SuSE 10.3. And now I don't.
Martin
PS: 2 SuSE a year or on OSX in 2 years should be about the same price - but what I get for it is a damm side better.
Say what you want but there must be something fundamentally slow about X. I do notice that X applications are slower on my Mac then native applications.
Note that I use X on Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac - and yes I see the advantages of network transparency. Cool stuff. I do X sessions over VPNs - as long as all I do is XTerm and GVim even that is quite OK.
It's the heavy desktop applications like OpenOffice and Kontact and where I start notice performance impacts. And when it comes to Kasbar previews or Desktop switch - well that cannot even be compared with the Dock, Places or Exposé.
And if network transparency is not the reason for these performance degrations then it's something else.
Whatever, it need addressing.
Martin
Only GNUStep is X based on Unix like operating systems - so that won't help. In fact that might be the reason why GNUStep never took off.
That and the fact the GNUStep visuals are based on the old NextSTEP visuals and not the new Mac OSX visuals.
Martin
and get actual work done fast!
Network transparency is *the* feature of X. And what stops you - Macs come with an X Server as well.
But then: only X applications can grind my MacPro to a halt. Maybe you can't get network transparency and performance at the same time.
Martin
Martin
Martin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)
I had been a Transgaming subscriber for the minimum 3 month and what Procket meant is that Cedega is quite good in ignoring some fractions of there customers.
For example World of Warcraft runs better with bug standard WINE then then with Cedega pimped up version.
Just in case you wonder: Cedega, Transgaming, GameTree - all the same.
Martin
I take it that my MacPro was only marginally more expensive but with 200+ fps it runs circles around my fathers computer - and that without actually breaking into a sweat.
Which is the best part of it: All that water cooling stuff is of course to keep the system silent
Martin
World of Warcraft runs great on my MacPro and my Wifes iMac. Both outperform my Fathers custom made water cooled gaming machine.
All World of Warcraft DVD come with both with a Windows and an OSX version - no need to search for Mac version in the shops either.
BTW: World of Warcraft also runs on Linux using bog standard WINE. Note that after a nasty glitch in there anti cheat program Blizzard sanctioned the use of Linux a platform (as in: "Using Linux to play is not considered cheating").
World of Warcraft is quite accommodating to Non-Windows use.
Martin
For Apple I suggest you read those two wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_(NEXTSTEP)
Apart from that a vertical vendor which compiles a custom made Linux optimized for his hardware won't have all those problems. If well done such a system would outperform most of what you can buy today.
Note that Linux is already quite successfully in this area. Think of set-top phones, mobile phones etc. pp.
Martin
This is indeed a sad truth. I noticed a huge performance increase when I moved to x86_64 - an I think most of it is due to CFLAGS="-O0 -mcpu=586" for the 32 bit SuSE.
But it does not stop there - recompile parts of Cygwin or MinGW with "-O3 -mcpu=pentium4" and you will notice an significant as well.
And - letting the Apple fan boy out - I believe that part of Apples impressive performance is due to the fact that Apple knows which Hardware there system is going to run on and that they can tweak -mcpu= accordingly.
Of course this could be duplicated with Linux as well. The future will be a return to vertical vendors (like Apple) which produce hardware, operating and base software and can optimize how those three parts interact. And the OS will most likely be and optimised Linux.
Martin
For me: I had enough of tweaking my system all the time. I wanted my next system to which just work. And indeed it does
SAMBA - no configuration needed - it just works.
Printer - Bonjour [1] - and just works.
(I could continue)
On the other hand all my GNU / OpenSource tools are there as well [2]. Note that the Darwin kernel is OpenSource as well [3].
But enough of that. I don't want to convert you - I am on your side.
The interesting part is: Why is Apple successful? Answer: Because Hardware, OS and Software starter pack comes form the same vendor which makes sure that everything just works fine.
And back to original post: Why are those Linux based UMPCs so successful? They are cheap and Hardware, OS and Software starter pack comes form the same vendor which makes sure that everything just works fine.
Windows has none of these. It's not cheap any more and it's not single vendor either.
It think the single vendor part is the great change for both Linux and OSX.
And yes, your little "OS X------Windows------Linux" is absolutely right but let me quote Odder (1288958) from way up: Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it. Mind you I don't by the "has taken" part - "might take" is more like it.
Martin
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software)
[2] http://www.macports.org/
[3] http://kernel.macosforge.org/
However the corporate market which might have already passed the point on no return.
Martin