1) Consider how long it took for the hacking community to make OS X to run in a virtual machine on an Intel Box.
2) Now consider how long it took for the hacking community to make windows run on a macbook.
Which one of these tasks was harder (I would say the first, as Apple was actively hindering this activity, but 'not precluding' the second).
People in glass houses....
Which one of these tasks is harder:
1) For the hacking community to make OS X to run in a virtual machine on an Intel Box.
2) For the hacking community to send a Mac Book Pro to the moon.
I would say the first, as Apple was actively hindering this activity, but 'not precluding' the second.
Unfortunately, as you can see, your logic only works if Apple's actively hindering an activity is the only difference between two activities. As it is not, you have set up a false equivalency and your logic is flawed. Bringing us full circle to:
I was digging through some of the old speeches, and I came across this one from the 2001 Radio-Television Correspondents' Dinner. The first book of "Bushisms" had come out a couple of months before and President Bush reads some of the quotes from it and tries to explain what he meant. It is quite funny. I'd love to find a copy of the video. C-SPAN (and the networks, for the older ones) should put up all of these old correspondents' dinners. They offer a very rare glimpse into the lighter side of our presidents.
It was supposed to be self deprecating humor, not beat up Bush and the Press night.
See the Bush act - mocking himself (and it was pretty funny). All the others pretty much did the same, except Colbert with his attack act.
WTF? It was supposed to be "self-deprecating humor, not beat up Bush and the Press night"? Like how Bush mocked himself? Do you even know what this was? This was the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It is a yearly gathering of the Washington, D.C. press corps with their celebrity guests and leading politicians. They hire a comedian to poke fun at the politicians and the press. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO! This has happened every year for decades. IT ISN'T A SURPRISE! Watch the clip reel they showed at the dinner, if nothing else. Do you really think they hired Stephen Colbert to make fun of Stephen Colbert? If not, do you understand what "self-deprecating" means?
For example, here's a quote from Al Franken's speech at the 1996 dinner:
"So, Carl [Leubersdorf, outgoing WHCA president], you can rest assured. I'm not going to do any jokes that could make the President or the First Lady even remotely uncomfortable. And if you believe that, I've got some land in Arkansas I'd like to sell you. "
And in case you are wondering why they hired Al Franken; as you will no doubt recall, Al Franken had a huge bestselling book out and was a hot political comedian. Kind of like how Stephen Colbert has a hit new show out now and is a hot political comedian.
Hmm, who else have they had? For Gerald Ford, they had Chevy Chase, who became famous doing a mocking impersonation of President Ford (well, that was the Radio-Television Correspondents' Dinner, but same thing). For George H.W. Bush, they had Dana Carvey. For Clinton, they had Darryl Hammond. Hell, in 1998 they invited Paula Jones to the dinner (not as a speaker, but still), who was then engaged in a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the President. Having Stephen Colbert fits right into that.
And what do you mean by "all the others pretty much did the same"? Did you watch the show? Everyone else did normal speeches. The only comedic speeches were George W.'s and then Stephen's. Did you switch channels in-between or something?
Stephen lifted a bunch of his material directly from his show. They got exactly what they were expecting. If you can't laugh, perhaps the joke hits a little too close to home.
It's hard not to compare this to MS (M$ if you prefer), considering how many times there have been calls for the heads of various decision-makers/teams/ec., and how unrepentant Microsoft has been when their products suck.
Shoot, that reminds me of a certain political leader, but I can't remember which one....
Ahh, okay, so this is preventing a copy from userspace to the kernel, before the kernel does something like send the data through a network socket? In that case, I don't know how Xnu handles it. Naively, I would think that there would be size threshold below which CoW isn't worth it, but above which it provides performance benefits.
I think my confusion arose from "the space just written becomes read-only to the writing process." Shouldn't it be "the space just written from becomes read-only to the writing process?" Also, mentioning the kernel/userspace difference is helpful. I didn't read Linus' e-mail exchange until afterwards, but that bit of context was still missing. I should have probably picked it up, but then I'm not really a kernel guy.
I don't know about the rest of your post, but your explanation of CoW is confusing and inaccurate:
The basic idea is to fake some memory to memory copying operations by using the virtual memory hardware. More specificially, the idea is that when you do a big "write", the space just written becomes read-only to the writing process, rather than being actually copied. When the write is complete, read-only mode is turned off. This eliminates one copy.
The way CoW works is that when a process copies something already in memory, the kernel has the MMU map those same memory pages to a new location in the process' address space and mark them as read-only, after which the kernel returns the address of the "copied" memory to the process. When any of the processes using that memory try to write to it, the MMU generates an exception (because the pages are marked read-only). The kernel intercepts the exception, allocates additional memory and copies the pages being written to into it, has the MMU remap that process' address space to point to those pages, and then proceeds with the write.
Apple brought decent search to Mac OS X in 2005 after Microsoft announced it would implement it in Vista, then Longhorn.
As you'll recall, is was quite evident that Apple had been working on this long before Microsoft announced it. They hired Dominic Giampaolo, the co-creator of BFS, the first commercial file system with live search (AFAIK), some time in 2002. And since BeOS introduced this in 1996, around 10 years ago, nothing Microsoft is doing with search or even WinFS is original.
Did they stop developing it during OS X 10.2? WTF is with the pinstripes? Is he going ol' school?
I really don't want anything developed by this guy. From his FAQ:
What's more, the Finder doesn't show you the Unix-specific data on files, such as their inodes.
If I want to see inodes, I go to the command line. That is exactly the kind of stuff I *don't* want to see in my file browser. I want to be able to get to my files, move them around, organize them, and not have to worry about anything else.
Index files are inaccurate and a poor substitute for speed. Write the programs right and the results are always 100% accurate with no disk space clutter and waste.
So you'd rather search through the contents of the hard drive each time than build an index file? That is faster? Thank God Apple doesn't subscribe to this guy's idea of "fast."
There are no hidden files in Xfile. The program is counting on you to be intelligent and to use discretion. Live up to its expectations.
I like my programs to have some intelligence. I like them to take care of the mundane things. If I have to think less about running them, then I can spend more time thinking about the stuff I need to get done.
Reading through this guy's site, he comes off as extremely cocky, like a djb without the talent. I'll stick to developers that want to make my life easier.
I realized that there was one factor which could be important to a game developer: Preserving the cinematic intent of the game.
If that were the case, then they would leave the resolution set to what it is (preferably native, but that is the user's choice) and just use a 4:3 chunk in the middle. Instead, they change resolution to their 4:3, non-native one and leave the screen looking like crap. If they cared about the quality of the experience, they've just ruined it far more than allowing a widescreen view would have. There have been widescreen monitors now for over half a decade. At this point, it is just lazy programming.
So Republicans were 87% of the vote against the amendment. And the subcommittee is stacked 21-10 in favor of Republicans. And the amendment was proposed by a Democrat. But they are equally responsible for its defeat. That doesn't sound like reality-based reasoning.
[T]he "House Energy and Commerce subcommittee," which is actually called the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee (but why do research?)
Because it is factually immaterial to the story and the writers decided it was superfluous. You'll notice that they didn't provide the full text of the amendment, either, nor the names of every member of the subcommittee. Was this because they didn't do their research or because their job is to boil down all the facts into what is the most relevant to the reader?
And those Democrats, who apparently feel so strongly about this proposal and are so deserving of the support of the Internet community, had no problem going along for the ride and voting 27-4 in favor of the final bill without the Markey net neutrality amendment. Wow! So principled!
So the only criteria for voting on a bill is based on whether you supported or were against one or more defeated amendments to it? What if you supported one amendment that was defeated and didn't support another amendment that was defeated? Sounds like a dilemma, although I have no idea what type of logic you are trying to use.
Markey, who is clearly an expert on such topics, declared, "We're about to break with the entire history of the Internet. Everyone should understand that." Indeed, because the entire history of the Internet has been based around the ability of broadband providers to offer high-speed video services.
No, because the entire history of the Internet is that it has more or less been a dumb network. That is what to which network neutrality refers. Apparently, Markey is more of an expert than you.
Let's go even more abstract: the entire history of the Internet has been one that prohibited the prioritization of network traffic.
I like how you morphed what he said into something he didn't say and then argue against that. But exactly. There has always been some prioritization (ICMP traffic, etc.) for performance reasons. And it has morphed in to more of a context aware network with the growth of such latency-sensitive services as VOIP. But what we are talking about here is prioritization based not on application, but on who is sending the packets. Verizon, Comcast, and other Internet providers are also getting into the Internet application game and they want to be able to give their services priority over any other traffic and also delay or block traffic from their competitors. This absolutely violates both the history and the principles of the Internet and threatens to stifle the innovation that those principles have inspired. Now, the service providers can filter out applications and services of which they don't approve. Or, even worse, they can only allow applications and services of which they do approve. This hasn't happened yet, but that is the road they are heading down. So, it appears that we now need to codify the Internet principle of network neutrality. Regardless of the partisan issues, hopefully everyone involved with the Internet can see how important this is.
I don't believe Apple is altruistic, just as I don't believe Google is altruistic, and I never said so. What I did say is that Apple is the best consumer representative we're going to get for digital music under the current system, because Apple makes their money primarily from hardware sales, with the lion's share of song profits going to the RIAA. Apple could conceivably stop selling songs online. They'd take a hit, but people could go back to buying CDs and pirating music just as the did before iTMS. The hit to the RIAA would be greater.
As I said, the lock-in does benefit Apple. But what is the upside to Apple opening up FairPlay, even to device manufacturers? Now they have to support a bunch of different MP3 players and they have to make up in song sales what they lose in hardware sales. And then they are dependent on the RIAA and they lose their bargaining power. Their sole advantage is that the RIAA needs them a lot more than they need the RIAA. Take that away and Apple is beholden to the RIAA, just like every other music company, and we lose the only advocate we have.
But Google will only ever have the same leverage that Apple has over the Majors.
No, they will both have less. This is what the RIAA wants, at least two significant players that they can play off of each other. Apple won't agree to higher prices? Then the RIAA can take their ball and go home, because they no longer need Apple, they can sell everything through Google. Google won't raise prices higher than Apple? I guess Apple will get all of the business. This is the same thing they've done with copyright law.
"Oh, now the European Union has longer copyrights. The U.S. has to have parity."
"Oh, now the U.S. has longer copyrights. The E.U. has to have parity."
Oh look, now coprights are the life of the creator plus 100 years.
Etc., etc.
Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.
That's Apple. Remember when the RIAA wanted to raise prices? Apple stood their ground and took the battle public. They've got the least amount of DRM that the RIAA will allow. This does benefit Apple due to lock-in, but FairPlay is the only leverage Apple has over the RIAA. If they open that up, the RIAA no longer needs Apple. This is the problem with our current media system. As long as there is no competition amongst publishers, than competition amongst distributors doesn't benefit consumers, only publishers. The real problem is that publishers aren't competing for consumers' entertainment dollars. Until they do, competing at the distributor level is pointless and only reinforces the current system by providing even larger profits to publishers.
How is one closed/propriatary DRM scheme "more standard" than any other?
Because Microsoft is bigger than Apple; therefore, everything Microsoft does is "more standard" than anything Apple (or any other company) does. This falls under the specialized field of "monopoly logic."
No, they're not. The Disney approach gives consumers more choice, allowing the market to decide which people like more: DVDs or going to a movie theater. The movie theaters want to artificially restrain the availability of DVDs so that consumers only have one option.
The point is, the market should go where ever the market says it wants.
Exactly. But that runs counter to your subject line. Only one of these positions is trying to offer consumers more choice.
BOTH of these men are looking at the issue from a selfish perspective
So are most people trying to make a buck. That has no bearing on which position is better.
I was able to run their test apps. I have no idea about other apps or how representative their test apps are. I'll have to copy them over to a Windows box and try to run them. They looked like Windows apps.
No, you have. How many people buy a computer without Windows on it? And you haven't addressed the driver issue. Or is Apple going to write them all with the huge profits they're making from their software?
Apple could focus their efforts on software development and reap huge profits, like Microsoft.
Trying to be like Microsoft is a fool's errand. Microsoft is always going to be better at being Microsoft.
Do you realize that Steve Jobs already tried this once, and it nearly destroyed NeXT?
Exactly. If they don't make any profit from the hardware, then they have to make it up from the software. Whose going to pay an extra $200 to $300 to run OS X on their Windows box? The same people that bought OPENSTEP. Good luck with that. And again you run into the chicken and egg problem of drivers. Or they could go the route of OPENSTEP Enterprise and run it on top of Windows. Because that worked so well.
Re:What's with the "dump OSX" theme?
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Apple Joins BAPCo
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Yes of course drivers would be a big issue but I think that is a problem that could be solved also.
How? The OS X driver model is completely different from everything else out there, including other unixes. Would they support a tiny subset of computers that have nearly identical hardware to their own? Just reference hardware? How many people would actually read the list of supported hardware and not call Apple wondering why their software doesn't work? How many people know what hardware components are in their computers? And how many people would buy it to install on their systems? Michael Dell said that Dell would be willing to sell it on their computers, so most likely consumers (average ones, not anyone on Slashdot) would get it that way (but how many, really? Both OSes will cost more). Dell does not make computers up to Apple's standards and Apple already tried that in the 90s. It failed miserably. Despite what geeks think, it would be a horrible move for Apple and if Apple ever did it, it would be an act of desperation in their death throes.
And yet the Apple was 37% faster on the Photoshop test against 3 of the laptops. That is much better than the 8% advantage it has in processor speed. And with the crappy drivers, it has one hand tied behind its back. I am very skeptical of that result, but it is possible that further tests will bear these results out.
A more valid comparison would be SPEC tests between the MacBook and other machines. What you'd likely see is, given the same hardware, they perform exactly the same -- which is the point.
Umm, if they were the exact same hardware, then yes, they would perform the exact same. But the point is they aren't the same hardware. If they were all using the same processor then you would expect them to perform similarly on a processor-limited test like SPEC, but the rest of the hardware could have been customized. So some subsystem could perform better and lead to better real-world performance on tests that use that subsystem. As you'll notice, the Acer scored almost the same as the Mac on the Photoshop test. And yet, they use different processors. Is it possible that that test isn't processor-limited and instead stresses some other part of the system? Maybe it is the Acer's better video card, but if the Mac is using generic graphics drivers and getting similar, valid results, it would point to something else. Perhaps they both have 7200 RPM drives. But if they both have that as an option from the manufacturer and the others don't, that has some value. Yes, you can always add one after you buy, but testing manufacturer's configurations is a valid test. The point is that the Macs could be faster than other laptops in real-world XP performance. This isn't an ideal test, but it is an interesting result.
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1) Consider how long it took for the hacking community to make OS X to run in a virtual machine on an Intel Box.
2) Now consider how long it took for the hacking community to make windows run on a macbook.
Which one of these tasks was harder (I would say the first, as Apple was actively hindering this activity, but 'not precluding' the second).
People in glass houses....
Which one of these tasks is harder:
1) For the hacking community to make OS X to run in a virtual machine on an Intel Box.
2) For the hacking community to send a Mac Book Pro to the moon.
I would say the first, as Apple was actively hindering this activity, but 'not precluding' the second.
Unfortunately, as you can see, your logic only works if Apple's actively hindering an activity is the only difference between two activities. As it is not, you have set up a false equivalency and your logic is flawed. Bringing us full circle to:
I don't think you've thought this through.
I was digging through some of the old speeches, and I came across this one from the 2001 Radio-Television Correspondents' Dinner. The first book of "Bushisms" had come out a couple of months before and President Bush reads some of the quotes from it and tries to explain what he meant. It is quite funny. I'd love to find a copy of the video. C-SPAN (and the networks, for the older ones) should put up all of these old correspondents' dinners. They offer a very rare glimpse into the lighter side of our presidents.
WTF? It was supposed to be "self-deprecating humor, not beat up Bush and the Press night"? Like how Bush mocked himself? Do you even know what this was? This was the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It is a yearly gathering of the Washington, D.C. press corps with their celebrity guests and leading politicians. They hire a comedian to poke fun at the politicians and the press. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO! This has happened every year for decades. IT ISN'T A SURPRISE! Watch the clip reel they showed at the dinner, if nothing else. Do you really think they hired Stephen Colbert to make fun of Stephen Colbert? If not, do you understand what "self-deprecating" means?
For example, here's a quote from Al Franken's speech at the 1996 dinner: "So, Carl [Leubersdorf, outgoing WHCA president], you can rest assured. I'm not going to do any jokes that could make the President or the First Lady even remotely uncomfortable. And if you believe that, I've got some land in Arkansas I'd like to sell you. "
And in case you are wondering why they hired Al Franken; as you will no doubt recall, Al Franken had a huge bestselling book out and was a hot political comedian. Kind of like how Stephen Colbert has a hit new show out now and is a hot political comedian.
Hmm, who else have they had? For Gerald Ford, they had Chevy Chase, who became famous doing a mocking impersonation of President Ford (well, that was the Radio-Television Correspondents' Dinner, but same thing). For George H.W. Bush, they had Dana Carvey. For Clinton, they had Darryl Hammond. Hell, in 1998 they invited Paula Jones to the dinner (not as a speaker, but still), who was then engaged in a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the President. Having Stephen Colbert fits right into that.
And what do you mean by "all the others pretty much did the same"? Did you watch the show? Everyone else did normal speeches. The only comedic speeches were George W.'s and then Stephen's. Did you switch channels in-between or something?
Stephen lifted a bunch of his material directly from his show. They got exactly what they were expecting. If you can't laugh, perhaps the joke hits a little too close to home.
Shoot, that reminds me of a certain political leader, but I can't remember which one....
I think my confusion arose from "the space just written becomes read-only to the writing process." Shouldn't it be "the space just written from becomes read-only to the writing process?" Also, mentioning the kernel/userspace difference is helpful. I didn't read Linus' e-mail exchange until afterwards, but that bit of context was still missing. I should have probably picked it up, but then I'm not really a kernel guy.
Anyway, thanks for the clarification.
The basic idea is to fake some memory to memory copying operations by using the virtual memory hardware. More specificially, the idea is that when you do a big "write", the space just written becomes read-only to the writing process, rather than being actually copied. When the write is complete, read-only mode is turned off. This eliminates one copy.
The way CoW works is that when a process copies something already in memory, the kernel has the MMU map those same memory pages to a new location in the process' address space and mark them as read-only, after which the kernel returns the address of the "copied" memory to the process. When any of the processes using that memory try to write to it, the MMU generates an exception (because the pages are marked read-only). The kernel intercepts the exception, allocates additional memory and copies the pages being written to into it, has the MMU remap that process' address space to point to those pages, and then proceeds with the write.
...but I felt he didn't deserve any. : )
As you'll recall, is was quite evident that Apple had been working on this long before Microsoft announced it. They hired Dominic Giampaolo, the co-creator of BFS, the first commercial file system with live search (AFAIK), some time in 2002. And since BeOS introduced this in 1996, around 10 years ago, nothing Microsoft is doing with search or even WinFS is original.
I really don't want anything developed by this guy. From his FAQ:
What's more, the Finder doesn't show you the Unix-specific data on files, such as their inodes.
If I want to see inodes, I go to the command line. That is exactly the kind of stuff I *don't* want to see in my file browser. I want to be able to get to my files, move them around, organize them, and not have to worry about anything else.
Index files are inaccurate and a poor substitute for speed. Write the programs right and the results are always 100% accurate with no disk space clutter and waste.
So you'd rather search through the contents of the hard drive each time than build an index file? That is faster? Thank God Apple doesn't subscribe to this guy's idea of "fast."
There are no hidden files in Xfile. The program is counting on you to be intelligent and to use discretion. Live up to its expectations.
I like my programs to have some intelligence. I like them to take care of the mundane things. If I have to think less about running them, then I can spend more time thinking about the stuff I need to get done.
Reading through this guy's site, he comes off as extremely cocky, like a djb without the talent. I'll stick to developers that want to make my life easier.
Two words: Path Finder.
If that were the case, then they would leave the resolution set to what it is (preferably native, but that is the user's choice) and just use a 4:3 chunk in the middle. Instead, they change resolution to their 4:3, non-native one and leave the screen looking like crap. If they cared about the quality of the experience, they've just ruined it far more than allowing a widescreen view would have. There have been widescreen monitors now for over half a decade. At this point, it is just lazy programming.
[T]he "House Energy and Commerce subcommittee," which is actually called the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee (but why do research?)
Because it is factually immaterial to the story and the writers decided it was superfluous. You'll notice that they didn't provide the full text of the amendment, either, nor the names of every member of the subcommittee. Was this because they didn't do their research or because their job is to boil down all the facts into what is the most relevant to the reader?
And those Democrats, who apparently feel so strongly about this proposal and are so deserving of the support of the Internet community, had no problem going along for the ride and voting 27-4 in favor of the final bill without the Markey net neutrality amendment. Wow! So principled!
So the only criteria for voting on a bill is based on whether you supported or were against one or more defeated amendments to it? What if you supported one amendment that was defeated and didn't support another amendment that was defeated? Sounds like a dilemma, although I have no idea what type of logic you are trying to use.
Markey, who is clearly an expert on such topics, declared, "We're about to break with the entire history of the Internet. Everyone should understand that." Indeed, because the entire history of the Internet has been based around the ability of broadband providers to offer high-speed video services.
No, because the entire history of the Internet is that it has more or less been a dumb network. That is what to which network neutrality refers. Apparently, Markey is more of an expert than you.
Let's go even more abstract: the entire history of the Internet has been one that prohibited the prioritization of network traffic.
I like how you morphed what he said into something he didn't say and then argue against that. But exactly. There has always been some prioritization (ICMP traffic, etc.) for performance reasons. And it has morphed in to more of a context aware network with the growth of such latency-sensitive services as VOIP. But what we are talking about here is prioritization based not on application, but on who is sending the packets. Verizon, Comcast, and other Internet providers are also getting into the Internet application game and they want to be able to give their services priority over any other traffic and also delay or block traffic from their competitors. This absolutely violates both the history and the principles of the Internet and threatens to stifle the innovation that those principles have inspired. Now, the service providers can filter out applications and services of which they don't approve. Or, even worse, they can only allow applications and services of which they do approve. This hasn't happened yet, but that is the road they are heading down. So, it appears that we now need to codify the Internet principle of network neutrality. Regardless of the partisan issues, hopefully everyone involved with the Internet can see how important this is.
Jeez, it was a joke. Lighten up already.
I don't believe Apple is altruistic, just as I don't believe Google is altruistic, and I never said so. What I did say is that Apple is the best consumer representative we're going to get for digital music under the current system, because Apple makes their money primarily from hardware sales, with the lion's share of song profits going to the RIAA. Apple could conceivably stop selling songs online. They'd take a hit, but people could go back to buying CDs and pirating music just as the did before iTMS. The hit to the RIAA would be greater.
As I said, the lock-in does benefit Apple. But what is the upside to Apple opening up FairPlay, even to device manufacturers? Now they have to support a bunch of different MP3 players and they have to make up in song sales what they lose in hardware sales. And then they are dependent on the RIAA and they lose their bargaining power. Their sole advantage is that the RIAA needs them a lot more than they need the RIAA. Take that away and Apple is beholden to the RIAA, just like every other music company, and we lose the only advocate we have.
No, they will both have less. This is what the RIAA wants, at least two significant players that they can play off of each other. Apple won't agree to higher prices? Then the RIAA can take their ball and go home, because they no longer need Apple, they can sell everything through Google. Google won't raise prices higher than Apple? I guess Apple will get all of the business. This is the same thing they've done with copyright law.
"Oh, now the European Union has longer copyrights. The U.S. has to have parity."
"Oh, now the U.S. has longer copyrights. The E.U. has to have parity."
Oh look, now coprights are the life of the creator plus 100 years. Etc., etc.
Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.
That's Apple. Remember when the RIAA wanted to raise prices? Apple stood their ground and took the battle public. They've got the least amount of DRM that the RIAA will allow. This does benefit Apple due to lock-in, but FairPlay is the only leverage Apple has over the RIAA. If they open that up, the RIAA no longer needs Apple. This is the problem with our current media system. As long as there is no competition amongst publishers, than competition amongst distributors doesn't benefit consumers, only publishers. The real problem is that publishers aren't competing for consumers' entertainment dollars. Until they do, competing at the distributor level is pointless and only reinforces the current system by providing even larger profits to publishers.
Because Microsoft is bigger than Apple; therefore, everything Microsoft does is "more standard" than anything Apple (or any other company) does. This falls under the specialized field of "monopoly logic."
No, they're not. The Disney approach gives consumers more choice, allowing the market to decide which people like more: DVDs or going to a movie theater. The movie theaters want to artificially restrain the availability of DVDs so that consumers only have one option.
The point is, the market should go where ever the market says it wants.
Exactly. But that runs counter to your subject line. Only one of these positions is trying to offer consumers more choice.
BOTH of these men are looking at the issue from a selfish perspective
So are most people trying to make a buck. That has no bearing on which position is better.
I was able to run their test apps. I have no idea about other apps or how representative their test apps are. I'll have to copy them over to a Windows box and try to run them. They looked like Windows apps.
No, you have. How many people buy a computer without Windows on it? And you haven't addressed the driver issue. Or is Apple going to write them all with the huge profits they're making from their software?
Apple could focus their efforts on software development and reap huge profits, like Microsoft.
Trying to be like Microsoft is a fool's errand. Microsoft is always going to be better at being Microsoft.
Darwine. I haven't tried it yet, but they have an Intel version available. I doubt it is working yet, but it will be.
Exactly. If they don't make any profit from the hardware, then they have to make it up from the software. Whose going to pay an extra $200 to $300 to run OS X on their Windows box? The same people that bought OPENSTEP. Good luck with that. And again you run into the chicken and egg problem of drivers. Or they could go the route of OPENSTEP Enterprise and run it on top of Windows. Because that worked so well.
"Don't you mean 'insanely great'?"
-- Bill Gates
How? The OS X driver model is completely different from everything else out there, including other unixes. Would they support a tiny subset of computers that have nearly identical hardware to their own? Just reference hardware? How many people would actually read the list of supported hardware and not call Apple wondering why their software doesn't work? How many people know what hardware components are in their computers? And how many people would buy it to install on their systems? Michael Dell said that Dell would be willing to sell it on their computers, so most likely consumers (average ones, not anyone on Slashdot) would get it that way (but how many, really? Both OSes will cost more). Dell does not make computers up to Apple's standards and Apple already tried that in the 90s. It failed miserably. Despite what geeks think, it would be a horrible move for Apple and if Apple ever did it, it would be an act of desperation in their death throes.
A more valid comparison would be SPEC tests between the MacBook and other machines. What you'd likely see is, given the same hardware, they perform exactly the same -- which is the point.
Umm, if they were the exact same hardware, then yes, they would perform the exact same. But the point is they aren't the same hardware. If they were all using the same processor then you would expect them to perform similarly on a processor-limited test like SPEC, but the rest of the hardware could have been customized. So some subsystem could perform better and lead to better real-world performance on tests that use that subsystem. As you'll notice, the Acer scored almost the same as the Mac on the Photoshop test. And yet, they use different processors. Is it possible that that test isn't processor-limited and instead stresses some other part of the system? Maybe it is the Acer's better video card, but if the Mac is using generic graphics drivers and getting similar, valid results, it would point to something else. Perhaps they both have 7200 RPM drives. But if they both have that as an option from the manufacturer and the others don't, that has some value. Yes, you can always add one after you buy, but testing manufacturer's configurations is a valid test. The point is that the Macs could be faster than other laptops in real-world XP performance. This isn't an ideal test, but it is an interesting result.
"Aaaghh, there's too much content!"
"I know; let's create a hash table!"