Taking it or leaving it is a too simple a view of a negotiation. Buying or using only the things for which you accept the terms of exchange is power. You keep ignoring that option in your response. So why is that ? Is it because it would force you to acknowledge all the effort that went into producing something that had a quality that you want. Why can't you say one positive thing about the people who went to all that risk and effort in the face of the ugliest competitor in history and survived it ? Now you want their product so you get on the air and poop all over their name an say that they are worse than known criminals. The only motivations I can see for this are not good ones.
Its their stuff and your inability to accept that and deal with it in a constructive way does not bode well for the future of a competitive innovation in the computer industry. If it were your stuff the you could set the terms but if someone were forcing you to distribute your product on their terms you would feel differently about this issue. Be honest with yourself on this. You are so passionate about this that you call people names and accuse them of drinking coolaid. This suggest to me that you aren't facing the truth of your own motivations.
I want people to be honest in their dealings with others. You are advocating dishonesty. I understand that you want to have the right to force someone to deal with you only on your terms. I don't respect this attitude. It isn't right.
You are advocating for things that way that you want them to be. The notion that you advocate for what "should be" is some sort of self satisfying version of a moral justification for doing something that you don't feel is right.
Fundamentally its about what you agree to when you buy it. If you don't agree to their terms when you buy it then that isn't the honest or moral or constructive way to address the problem that you think you see.
The right way is not to do business with them if you don't agree to their terms.
So you are denying what you know when you buy software and break the red seal on it and you philosophize about the law and how it doesn't apply to you and you philosophize about morality and how it isn't applicable and how its really someone elses fault that you have this problem. Everyone wants to think that they are good guys and that the problems that they have with acquiring what they want and doing what they want to do is the other guy's fault. How tiresome can it all get.
This is so simple. If you don't want to buy their product on their terms then don't buy it. Its theirs and you are going around and around about it because you don't feel good about what you want to do and are trying to get the approval of others to feel good about it. I don't understand why you can't just buy or use something with an agreement that you believe in. If everyone does this then the whole problem goes away. Your alternative doesn't seem nearly as constructive or even moral or legal to me.
You raised the coolaid issue and that indicates to me that you don't feel strong enough in your position to defend it on a rational basis. I don't think that you really believe in the point that you are pushing.
If you think that someone is evil because they won't engage in an exchange with you on your terms then maybe you aren't right in that judgement.
I know lots of MS fanboys who love to shout out about how bad MS is and how bad the big corporations are blah blah. But when you get down to what they do and where they are comming from they are 5 bladed 3 speed gyrating blades for pushing MS air. They just do it by pushing more negative air at other companies in the same breath. Accusing other companies of being just like MS or worse isn't an honorable thing to do because you know better. People aren't intrinsically evil just because they are people and corporation aren't evil just because they are corporations. MS happens to be an evil corporation and you can't seem to manage to say that without saying that so and so is just as bad or worse and calling them evil to. It is a sure sign of a 5bladed 3 speed MS air pushing doohicky in spite of your protestations. I'd take your denials seriously if you didn't seem to be in denial of so many other basic things.
So lets be clear then.
Are you saying that if their behavior is childish in your opinion then you have the right to steal their stuff or are you just calling people names because the won't do what you want i.e. they won't give you stuff for free. I'm just trying to understand your point here and to sort out who is being childish.
OS X belongs to the customer if the license that the customer agreed to when they purchased it says so. You bought what you bought and nothing more. Maybe you never worked like a dog to produce something for customers but I have and no matter how many people agree with what you are trying to say it will never make it right or beneficial in the long run to anyone but yourself.
Legitimate useage is determined by the legally binding agreement that you committed to when you purchased OS X. If you want the law to change and you can get enough people on your side then by all means do it. The problem is that its the way it is and will stay that way because most people want it that way. Believe it or not people with a thought process like paying for good products and services because that means that there will be more of them in the future and it means that if they work their but off to make a good product that other people will pay for it in return. I know that is all a news flash and that it sounds like a wild and crazy new idea but there you have it, it seems to have caught on.
Microsoft breaks the law outright and gets away with it so I'm not sure what your point of comparison is. In any case their response to whining is to crush a few more competitors and stick lower quality and smellier poo in a box at even higher prices than they did before they crushed the poor idiots who were working like dogs thinking that people would appreciate their good products and services. Moreover Microsoft lives off of denying you the option to buy another solution. To have someone use Microsoft's behavior as an excuse to steal other peoples property who do provide excellent service and product for a living is the height of irony.
Whey you buy stuff from someone and you know that you bought it with an agreement do you feel in the least bit honor bound to stick with that agreement? Or do you think that if you read enough stuff written by other people that says it isn't fair then you can just do what you want with a clear conscience ?
If you feel that software should be free of licensing and other encumbrances then maybe you should only use software that people make available to you under those conditions. I would respect that and lots of other people would too. Maybe you even have a little time to commit some of your passion for free sotware to generate some of it yourself.
The coolaid you speak of is an MS product consumed by all of the people terrified that something different from what they have might be OK or, horror of horrors, actually better. So its always hilarious to me when I hear an MS advocate accusing other people of drinking the coolaid. Its a real window.
"it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft"
Furthermore, if someone steals your stuff you don't hate them because they have stuff. You hate them because they have YOUR stuff. In many people's opinions Microsoft stole their stuff. That includes users who paid the built in tax on every machine they ever bought and the excessive prices for low quality products that resulted from the illegal destruction of the competition. When this opinion becomes prevalent enough Microsoft will be treated as a criminal.
If you stole the only well in town then all of the "happy" customers in town will pay your "low" prices for your "high" quality product and they will kiss your posterior until they get around to rearranging your anterior.
They crushed the competition and they did it illegally. With the exception of XP their main products that no longer have serious competitors are junk. Any postive qualities that XP has are the result of some paranoia about "competing" products that can only muster 5% of the marked combined. If ever that 5% becomes 2% then you can expect XP to sink from its current quality (whatever you deem that to be) to the pits of hell where Word, Excel and Pointless Power live.
After reading many of these responses I would say that there is a strong consensus among this bunch of kind hearted technogeeks that its OK to love Microsoft if you don't know any better. If you do know the score and still insist that you love Microsoft then the consensus is that you are a liar in your heart and you are so desperate for the approval of others that you would condone the elimination of 5% of humanity if the other 95% insisted that it was OK. From all this I conclude that technogeeks are kind hearted but intolerant of real evil.
Its a survival response I guess. I've loved every computer that I've used as a desktop except for my Windows computers.
Some of my Windows computers were adequate but I just never could warm up to them. Unlike some of my other machines the passion of Microsoft craftsmen never seems to shine through. Maybe they don't care enough or maybe their designs are too constrained by the requirments for incremental increases in market control with each new version. In any case, by and large I find their products to be of low quality and buggy-geek-feature-laden compared to the competition in categories where competition still exists. Unfortunately they produce the operating system and every product that runs on that operating system suffers from their lack of vision and passion and their drive to incrementally increase their control of the market with each new release. The only time they care about quality is when there is a threat of revenue loss or a reduced rate of growth.
I love computers and computing technology. Its been my job, my hobby and my passion for many years now and when possible, I buy machines and software from people whose similar disposition shines forth in their quality products.
I don't believe that Microsoft leadership is creative, visionary or passionate about their products in anything remotely like a constructive way. Even their passion is a marketing ploy. As soon as the competition in a product area goes away they no longer have direction (nothing to copy) in the evolution of their product and they lose the incentive to make it better and it shows. Microsoft only makes pretty good products in an area until the competition is dead and then the quality sinks and the hostage users pay and come to love their abusive master and their "quality" products.
After Microsoft's external competition dies in a category the only competition left for their product comes from the previous version of their own product. This eliminates any incentive for support and backward compatibility. Ironically compatibility remains the main selling point of Windows systems.
I have nothing against Microsoft and people who love them for whatever reason as long as they don't systematically obliterate my access and option to use quality products crafted by people who give a darn. I'd willingly pay Microsoft for great products if I ever thought that they produced one. As things stand I am essentially forced to buy and use their products in a way that is shutting the door on quality competition. It isn't right.
" Do things like Gaussian theory and Faraday cages not work in space? "
I believe that a cosmic ray is usually a massive charged particle. It can be deflected by a magnetic field but it will won't be affected by a Faraday cage.
"A magnetic field to deflect said particles (aka like the earth's field) would require a lot of energy, which could only come from a nuclear source. Which would emit its own radiation, require its own shielding, etc...ie, would add weight to the craft."
The amount of energy that it would take to maintain a magnetic field depends on the amount of resistance in the coil. If you use a superconductor then its a matter of keeping the coil cold enough. So you need a light weight umbrella to keep the coil out of the sun.
Mr. Metcalfe's observations about private property seem to be oversimplified and unneccessarily negatively critical of open source. Its not about private property or ownership. Its about real opportunities for large numbers professional software engineers and programmers to earn a decent living by developing and supporting open source. I believe that the open source platform can only advance at a rate consistent with the size of the programmer base that can make a decent living contributing to it. It might be just a matter of misunderstanding on the part of professional programmers. Maybe a lot of them believe that they can't make a good enough living developing open source software. If that's the problem then the open source community needs to recruit software developers by doing a better job explaining how there are tons of real concrete opportunities to make a decent living developing and supporting open source software. They need to be shown that the customer base is real. Ideological arguments about how you should be able to make money developing and supporting open source software are a dime a dozen. The hard nuts case descriptions are not getting enough air time. The open source community needs to broadcast real examples that are common enough to represent tens of thousands of real opportunities. With tens of thousands of real software engineers supporting open source today the future would be here tomorrow afternoon.
If it is cheaper it will have little to do with the switch to intel. The real deals will be on new and used powerpc Macs. They will probably be good for another 3-5 years but people will be holding off on the new ones and dumping the old ones in fear. I'm looking forward to some very nice deals in the coming months.
As this article indicates OS X costs money and it will still cost money after the switch. Additionally, these Apple systems will be nicely integrated packages that cost more than the systems used by typical cost conscious Linux users. Additionally, Apple's hardware development team will take a while to integrate each new generation of intel chips into a nice hardware package so that there will be a delay between the emergence of the hottest new chips and the nicely integrated Apple systems that use these chips. This means that at any given time the most desirable systems for performance addicts will still be custom built or specialty PC's. The Mac systems will be for people who don't care about having the last iota of speed right this minute and who want to use, and don't mind paying for, OS X and who want access to commercial apps in that environment and/or who want the benefits of Apple's hardware and software integration. I would say that many or maybe even most Linux users either don't care about these things or they have both Linux and OS X systems already. The people who use both will now have the option for a dual boot Linux/OS X system. They currently have that choice on Apple hardware but their choices of Linux distros and versions is limited. Its hard for me to believe that this switch will affect the current balance against Linux.
This move was a must for Apple but they must also maintain the integration of software and hardware so that the end-to-end quality of the user experience is maintained. Allowing OS X to run on generic Intel PC hardware is not an option. The track record for other operating systems on generic Intel hardware is not pretty. The only real survivors in that game are freeware OS's unless you want to count Solaris as a survivor. Those who argue for allowing OS X on generic hardware are arguing for the disapperance of OS X and Apple as a computer company.
the money. When I got my 2.5 GHz G5 and found out that it was liquid cooled I had a feeling that IBM was in trouble. You have to remember that they had promised a 3 GHz cpu in a year and all they could crank out a year later was a 2.5 GHz and that only with liquid cooling. Make no mistake, my G5 is screaming fast, its a great machine and I'll probably buy two more this year but Apple has to begin the switch now while the G5 is still a good competitive processor. Waiting until IBM pulled their face out of the mud 2 years from now would have been fatal for Apple. They had no choice. Apple's dual executable strategy is proven technology. Their port of OS X to x86 goes way back to the days when OS X was called NextStep. They marketed a version that ran on generic pc hardware. Hopefully they will not make the same mistake this time and keep the hardware-software integration in house.
Was your frustration with x86/Linux vs ppc/osx based on the difference between the intel cpu and the ppc cpu or was it based on the poor integration of hardware and software or was it based on the quality of the operating system ? OS X will still be OS X and if Apple continues to do the hardware-software integration then there should be little difference in the user experience that is presumably the basis for switching in the first place. Incidentally, when OS X was called NextStep it was ported to generic intel hardware so that it could run on cheap generic pc hardware. It lost a lot of the benefits of design and integration that comes from having one company put the hardware and software together for you. The product went nowhere.
That opening would be the end of Apple and OS X. The integration of Apple hardware and software would be lost and the overall experience of a Mac along with it. Most people don't give a rat's patoot about a quality experience with computers and they would wonder why they should buy two operating systems for the same hardware ? You might do it but most people would not and when it came to the choice between the two operating systems most people would chose Windows for the games, the greater selection of applications and the so called compatibility. Windows has no security to speak of, is incompatible with itself from version to version, is of very low overall quality and is generally badly behaved as an operating system but most people will put up with all that instead of spending another $129 for another operating system. It would definitely be the end of Apple.
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Taking it or leaving it is a too simple a view of a negotiation. Buying or using only the things for which you accept the terms of exchange is power. You keep ignoring that option in your response. So why is that ? Is it because it would force you to acknowledge all the effort that went into producing something that had a quality that you want. Why can't you say one positive thing about the people who went to all that risk and effort in the face of the ugliest competitor in history and survived it ? Now you want their product so you get on the air and poop all over their name an say that they are worse than known criminals. The only motivations I can see for this are not good ones.
Its their stuff and your inability to accept that and deal with it in a constructive way does not bode well for the future of a competitive innovation in the computer industry. If it were your stuff the you could set the terms but if someone were forcing you to distribute your product on their terms you would feel differently about this issue. Be honest with yourself on this. You are so passionate about this that you call people names and accuse them of drinking coolaid. This suggest to me that you aren't facing the truth of your own motivations.
I want people to be honest in their dealings with others. You are advocating dishonesty. I understand that you want to have the right to force someone to deal with you only on your terms. I don't respect this attitude. It isn't right.
You are advocating for things that way that you want them to be. The notion that you advocate for what "should be" is some sort of self satisfying version of a moral justification for doing something that you don't feel is right.
Fundamentally its about what you agree to when you buy it. If you don't agree to their terms when you buy it then that isn't the honest or moral or constructive way to address the problem that you think you see. The right way is not to do business with them if you don't agree to their terms.
So you are denying what you know when you buy software and break the red seal on it and you philosophize about the law and how it doesn't apply to you and you philosophize about morality and how it isn't applicable and how its really someone elses fault that you have this problem. Everyone wants to think that they are good guys and that the problems that they have with acquiring what they want and doing what they want to do is the other guy's fault. How tiresome can it all get.
This is so simple. If you don't want to buy their product on their terms then don't buy it. Its theirs and you are going around and around about it because you don't feel good about what you want to do and are trying to get the approval of others to feel good about it. I don't understand why you can't just buy or use something with an agreement that you believe in. If everyone does this then the whole problem goes away. Your alternative doesn't seem nearly as constructive or even moral or legal to me.
You raised the coolaid issue and that indicates to me that you don't feel strong enough in your position to defend it on a rational basis. I don't think that you really believe in the point that you are pushing.
If you think that someone is evil because they won't engage in an exchange with you on your terms then maybe you aren't right in that judgement.
I know lots of MS fanboys who love to shout out about how bad MS is and how bad the big corporations are blah blah. But when you get down to what they do and where they are comming from they are 5 bladed 3 speed gyrating blades for pushing MS air. They just do it by pushing more negative air at other companies in the same breath. Accusing other companies of being just like MS or worse isn't an honorable thing to do because you know better. People aren't intrinsically evil just because they are people and corporation aren't evil just because they are corporations. MS happens to be an evil corporation and you can't seem to manage to say that without saying that so and so is just as bad or worse and calling them evil to. It is a sure sign of a 5bladed 3 speed MS air pushing doohicky in spite of your protestations. I'd take your denials seriously if you didn't seem to be in denial of so many other basic things.
So lets be clear then. Are you saying that if their behavior is childish in your opinion then you have the right to steal their stuff or are you just calling people names because the won't do what you want i.e. they won't give you stuff for free. I'm just trying to understand your point here and to sort out who is being childish.
OS X belongs to the customer if the license that the customer agreed to when they purchased it says so. You bought what you bought and nothing more. Maybe you never worked like a dog to produce something for customers but I have and no matter how many people agree with what you are trying to say it will never make it right or beneficial in the long run to anyone but yourself.
Legitimate useage is determined by the legally binding agreement that you committed to when you purchased OS X. If you want the law to change and you can get enough people on your side then by all means do it. The problem is that its the way it is and will stay that way because most people want it that way. Believe it or not people with a thought process like paying for good products and services because that means that there will be more of them in the future and it means that if they work their but off to make a good product that other people will pay for it in return. I know that is all a news flash and that it sounds like a wild and crazy new idea but there you have it, it seems to have caught on.
Microsoft breaks the law outright and gets away with it so I'm not sure what your point of comparison is. In any case their response to whining is to crush a few more competitors and stick lower quality and smellier poo in a box at even higher prices than they did before they crushed the poor idiots who were working like dogs thinking that people would appreciate their good products and services. Moreover Microsoft lives off of denying you the option to buy another solution. To have someone use Microsoft's behavior as an excuse to steal other peoples property who do provide excellent service and product for a living is the height of irony.
Whey you buy stuff from someone and you know that you bought it with an agreement do you feel in the least bit honor bound to stick with that agreement? Or do you think that if you read enough stuff written by other people that says it isn't fair then you can just do what you want with a clear conscience ?
If you feel that software should be free of licensing and other encumbrances then maybe you should only use software that people make available to you under those conditions. I would respect that and lots of other people would too. Maybe you even have a little time to commit some of your passion for free sotware to generate some of it yourself.
The coolaid you speak of is an MS product consumed by all of the people terrified that something different from what they have might be OK or, horror of horrors, actually better. So its always hilarious to me when I hear an MS advocate accusing other people of drinking the coolaid. Its a real window.
The author had it right.
"it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft"
Furthermore, if someone steals your stuff you don't hate them because they have stuff. You hate them because they have YOUR stuff. In many people's opinions Microsoft stole their stuff. That includes users who paid the built in tax on every machine they ever bought and the excessive prices for low quality products that resulted from the illegal destruction of the competition. When this opinion becomes prevalent enough Microsoft will be treated as a criminal.
If you stole the only well in town then all of the "happy" customers in town will pay your "low" prices for your "high" quality product and they will kiss your posterior until they get around to rearranging your anterior.
They crushed the competition and they did it illegally. With the exception of XP their main products that no longer have serious competitors are junk. Any postive qualities that XP has are the result of some paranoia about "competing" products that can only muster 5% of the marked combined. If ever that 5% becomes 2% then you can expect XP to sink from its current quality (whatever you deem that to be) to the pits of hell where Word, Excel and Pointless Power live.
After reading many of these responses I would say that there is a strong consensus among this bunch of kind hearted technogeeks that its OK to love Microsoft if you don't know any better. If you do know the score and still insist that you love Microsoft then the consensus is that you are a liar in your heart and you are so desperate for the approval of others that you would condone the elimination of 5% of humanity if the other 95% insisted that it was OK. From all this I conclude that technogeeks are kind hearted but intolerant of real evil.
It just doesn't feel small.
What we need is a study that measures blood pressure while people are using their favorite operating system ?
So I guess that you are saying that the question addressed in the article should have been a question of education and not a question of love.
Based on the content of your post I'm assuming that that you meant to write "Macroshaft".
Its a survival response I guess. I've loved every computer that I've used as a desktop except for my Windows computers.
Some of my Windows computers were adequate but I just never could warm up to them. Unlike some of my other machines the passion of Microsoft craftsmen never seems to shine through. Maybe they don't care enough or maybe their designs are too constrained by the requirments for incremental increases in market control with each new version. In any case, by and large I find their products to be of low quality and buggy-geek-feature-laden compared to the competition in categories where competition still exists. Unfortunately they produce the operating system and every product that runs on that operating system suffers from their lack of vision and passion and their drive to incrementally increase their control of the market with each new release. The only time they care about quality is when there is a threat of revenue loss or a reduced rate of growth.
I love computers and computing technology. Its been my job, my hobby and my passion for many years now and when possible, I buy machines and software from people whose similar disposition shines forth in their quality products.
I don't believe that Microsoft leadership is creative, visionary or passionate about their products in anything remotely like a constructive way. Even their passion is a marketing ploy. As soon as the competition in a product area goes away they no longer have direction (nothing to copy) in the evolution of their product and they lose the incentive to make it better and it shows. Microsoft only makes pretty good products in an area until the competition is dead and then the quality sinks and the hostage users pay and come to love their abusive master and their "quality" products.
After Microsoft's external competition dies in a category the only competition left for their product comes from the previous version of their own product. This eliminates any incentive for support and backward compatibility. Ironically compatibility remains the main selling point of Windows systems.
I have nothing against Microsoft and people who love them for whatever reason as long as they don't systematically obliterate my access and option to use quality products crafted by people who give a darn. I'd willingly pay Microsoft for great products if I ever thought that they produced one. As things stand I am essentially forced to buy and use their products in a way that is shutting the door on quality competition. It isn't right.
" Do things like Gaussian theory and Faraday cages not work in space? " I believe that a cosmic ray is usually a massive charged particle. It can be deflected by a magnetic field but it will won't be affected by a Faraday cage.
"A magnetic field to deflect said particles (aka like the earth's field) would require a lot of energy, which could only come from a nuclear source. Which would emit its own radiation, require its own shielding, etc...ie, would add weight to the craft."
The amount of energy that it would take to maintain a magnetic field depends on the amount of resistance in the coil. If you use a superconductor then its a matter of keeping the coil cold enough. So you need a light weight umbrella to keep the coil out of the sun.
" Do you think SCO is finally sorry it started down this road? I'll bet the lawyers are, even if SCO isn't."
If I know anything about lawyers then the lawyers on both sides of this are so happy they are peeing their pants.
What's the difference between an infrastructure application and something lik AutoCAD ? Why will AutoCAD always exist ?
Mr. Metcalfe's observations about private property seem to be oversimplified and unneccessarily negatively critical of open source. Its not about private property or ownership. Its about real opportunities for large numbers professional software engineers and programmers to earn a decent living by developing and supporting open source. I believe that the open source platform can only advance at a rate consistent with the size of the programmer base that can make a decent living contributing to it. It might be just a matter of misunderstanding on the part of professional programmers. Maybe a lot of them believe that they can't make a good enough living developing open source software. If that's the problem then the open source community needs to recruit software developers by doing a better job explaining how there are tons of real concrete opportunities to make a decent living developing and supporting open source software. They need to be shown that the customer base is real. Ideological arguments about how you should be able to make money developing and supporting open source software are a dime a dozen. The hard nuts case descriptions are not getting enough air time. The open source community needs to broadcast real examples that are common enough to represent tens of thousands of real opportunities. With tens of thousands of real software engineers supporting open source today the future would be here tomorrow afternoon.
An optimal combo for your needs might be a game console and OS X.
If it is cheaper it will have little to do with the switch to intel. The real deals will be on new and used powerpc Macs. They will probably be good for another 3-5 years but people will be holding off on the new ones and dumping the old ones in fear. I'm looking forward to some very nice deals in the coming months.
As this article indicates OS X costs money and it will still cost money after the switch. Additionally, these Apple systems will be nicely integrated packages that cost more than the systems used by typical cost conscious Linux users. Additionally, Apple's hardware development team will take a while to integrate each new generation of intel chips into a nice hardware package so that there will be a delay between the emergence of the hottest new chips and the nicely integrated Apple systems that use these chips. This means that at any given time the most desirable systems for performance addicts will still be custom built or specialty PC's. The Mac systems will be for people who don't care about having the last iota of speed right this minute and who want to use, and don't mind paying for, OS X and who want access to commercial apps in that environment and/or who want the benefits of Apple's hardware and software integration. I would say that many or maybe even most Linux users either don't care about these things or they have both Linux and OS X systems already. The people who use both will now have the option for a dual boot Linux/OS X system. They currently have that choice on Apple hardware but their choices of Linux distros and versions is limited. Its hard for me to believe that this switch will affect the current balance against Linux.
This move was a must for Apple but they must also maintain the integration of software and hardware so that the end-to-end quality of the user experience is maintained. Allowing OS X to run on generic Intel PC hardware is not an option. The track record for other operating systems on generic Intel hardware is not pretty. The only real survivors in that game are freeware OS's unless you want to count Solaris as a survivor. Those who argue for allowing OS X on generic hardware are arguing for the disapperance of OS X and Apple as a computer company.
the money. When I got my 2.5 GHz G5 and found out that it was liquid cooled I had a feeling that IBM was in trouble. You have to remember that they had promised a 3 GHz cpu in a year and all they could crank out a year later was a 2.5 GHz and that only with liquid cooling. Make no mistake, my G5 is screaming fast, its a great machine and I'll probably buy two more this year but Apple has to begin the switch now while the G5 is still a good competitive processor. Waiting until IBM pulled their face out of the mud 2 years from now would have been fatal for Apple. They had no choice. Apple's dual executable strategy is proven technology. Their port of OS X to x86 goes way back to the days when OS X was called NextStep. They marketed a version that ran on generic pc hardware. Hopefully they will not make the same mistake this time and keep the hardware-software integration in house.
Was your frustration with x86/Linux vs ppc/osx based on the difference between the intel cpu and the ppc cpu or was it based on the poor integration of hardware and software or was it based on the quality of the operating system ? OS X will still be OS X and if Apple continues to do the hardware-software integration then there should be little difference in the user experience that is presumably the basis for switching in the first place. Incidentally, when OS X was called NextStep it was ported to generic intel hardware so that it could run on cheap generic pc hardware. It lost a lot of the benefits of design and integration that comes from having one company put the hardware and software together for you. The product went nowhere.
That opening would be the end of Apple and OS X. The integration of Apple hardware and software would be lost and the overall experience of a Mac along with it. Most people don't give a rat's patoot about a quality experience with computers and they would wonder why they should buy two operating systems for the same hardware ? You might do it but most people would not and when it came to the choice between the two operating systems most people would chose Windows for the games, the greater selection of applications and the so called compatibility. Windows has no security to speak of, is incompatible with itself from version to version, is of very low overall quality and is generally badly behaved as an operating system but most people will put up with all that instead of spending another $129 for another operating system. It would definitely be the end of Apple.