There might be a wider selection of choices in a number of categories of applications on Windows, but if you look at the requirements of these apps in terms of processing capacity, data storage needs, communications needs, security requirements and so on, you will very quickly find that the there is nothing keeping a modern Mac from accommodating these needs.
Those who have really specialized needs moved to Linux a long time ago, giving them the ability to modiy the kernel, something you cannot do on Windows. You could modify the opendarwin kernel, but then you would loose the GUI and a lot of other good stuff on the Mac. Snort Inline is an application that is impossible to implement on a standard Mac OS X or Windows system, but perfectly possible on Linux thanks to Linux's ability to be adapted to special needs.
apt-get update if you have installed the Fink package management system.
For normal Mac apps, either an installer will do the upgrade, or simpler, a drag and drop of a new version to the location of the old version to replace the old one.
Right. If you want to install the exact same apps on Mac OS X as you want to do on your Linux boxen, you can choose between the Debian apt-get package management system Fink or the FreeBSD Port package management system. They even have GUI frontends if you choose in.app directories that you can move wherever you want on the filesystem. Pretty simple, eh?;-)
Does anyone remember the Vista Perspective or Vista View that Microsoft presented some time ago where you have some folks looking out over a blue-ish kinda misty landscape. I mean, there is some strange feeling over that image. What are the people in the Vista Perspective actually looking for?
I kinda filled in the blanks and updated the image to display a more realistic Vista Perspective. (Sorry for the link back to my blog, but Slashdot does not do images...)
It was an interesting read, the comments on Mini Microsoft the other day when it was made public that Vista was delayed once more. What is the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X! was one of the comments.
What is even more interesting is that there might be a connection between Apple pushing their World Wide Developer Conference back to September and the new delivery date of Vista. Too close in time for Microsoft to be comfortable in the chance of having Vista look like a silly copy of Mac OS X 10.4 after Mac OS X 10.5 was introduced. More on the story in my blog entry written a couple of days ago.
One of the unusual things about the "hacked" machine was that Fink was installed. This most likely means that the Apple developer tools were installed (although Fink can install precompiled binaries), making it possible for the hacker to bring his own code and compile on the system. Although Apple ships the developer tools on the OS X client install DVD, it is not installed by default, nor is X11.
Fink lists a catalog of 6359 open source projectsthat can be installed, many of which are tools that could help a hacker exploit a machine or that are exploitable in themselves. Fink is a Debian style package manager for Mac OS X.
One of the unusual things about the "hacked" machine was that Fink was installed. This most likely means that the Apple developer tools were installed (although Fink can install precompiled binaries), making it possible for the hacker to bring his own code and compile on the system. Although Apple ships the developer tools on the OS X client install DVD, it is not installed by default, nor is X11.
Fink lists a catalog of 6359 open source projects that can be installed, many of which are tools that could help a hacker exploit a machine or that are exploitable in themselves.
Re:Expresscard/34 slot no good for 3G/UMTS use
on
MacBook Pro Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In general I agree Apple has done good sheding legacy technology from their products, but for communications options like the 3G cards there are two issues in addition to the PCMCIA vs Expresscard/34 discussion:
Most of the card manufacturers don't even bother to write Mac device drivers because of Apple's limited marketshare. Had it not been for 3rd party companies like German Nova Media, Mac users would by and large be shut out from these services. The same situation goes for the Linux crowd.
If you get as far as having device drivers for the cards, the service providers often load firmware adapted for their own network on the cards, and again they cannot be bothered to support the sub 5% marketshare that Apple has in a number of these countries.
Unfortunately this will hurt the MacBook Pro in certain markets.
Expresscard/34 slot no good for 3G/UMTS use
on
MacBook Pro Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
One of the major shortcommings of the MacBook Pro is the removal of the PCMCIA slot in exchange of the Expresscard/34 slot. At least they could have made PCMCIA a built-to-order option.
The problem is that a number of 3G/UMTS services in Europe depend on PCMCIA 3G/UMTS add-in cards for what is basically relatively cheap, unlimited UMTS/GPRS network access without having to use a 3G bluetooth connected phone.
For people who more or less depend on these services for connection and doing their work, the MacBook Pro is basically no alternative at the moment.
Unfortunately, Apple has, at the expense of moving the plattform forward, removed the very options that people use for communication, and is in many ways recreating the same situation we had some years ago when they shed the serial ports from their machines; marketing systems lobotimized of important communications options. One should think that for a portable system, enabling the system for any type of communication would be one of its most important features.
You could always put a Mac there as a print-server. It sure supports USB connected printers, has a full implementation of CUPS and is Linuxy enough that your sys admin should feel at home in the command-line.
My first owned computer was the Grundy Newbrain with 32 k of RAM, Basic, RS-232 port, cassette interface and quite a decent 80 character monocrome display when connected to a TV. It also came with a 16 character one-line display on the unit. It could even run CP/M and had an architecture that supported up to 2 MB of main memory.
I even wrote some assembly embedded in a Basic text processing application to output Norwegian characters in graphics mode on an Epson printer that did not support anything but 7-bit ASCII. It was a fun machine to use, and quite impressive at the time.
Otherwise my first real computer experience was on the Univac university mainframe and the Norsk Data NORD-10 multiuser minicomputer that could support up to 30 concurrent terminals in up to a whopping 256 kilo-words of main memory.
Yes, from a technical perspective, I am inclined to say that Apple's switch from the PowerPC was not necessarily a brilliant move. However, the real reason for the switch was in my opinion this:
Apple could no longer live with a processor manufacturer that reserved its best performing processors for their own use
IBM has a huge business of their own to protect, making servers and workstations using the same technology that Apple does. IBM's issue is that these systems are priced at 2 to 4 times higher than the same performance from Apple. This became very evident when Apple shipped the G5 Xserve and completely undercut IBM in large cluster configurations (which is clearly IBM core markets.) Why has the Xserve not yet shipped with the dual-core IBM 970MP? Why has Apple never shipped anyhthing but dual processor machines even if it was possible all they way back to the PPC 604 days to build 8 way systems. IBM had them. No coincidence if you ask me.
Intel does not have any such hangups og dependencies. Intel is all about delivering its best performing processors to those who can build systems from them.
Intel will even throw marketing efforts into the equation -- something IBM never, ever did to help Apple promote the PowerPC plattform. I think IBM's - and IBM Software's complete lack of support for Mac OS X is a telltale sign why Apple had no choice but to switch even if the PowerPC/POWER processors at the technical level perhaps would be better.
IBM's continued more or less total lack of software support for Mac OS X can be seen as a telltale sign of why Apple is in the middle of making the switch from IBM's PowerPC processors to rival Intel's new generation of processors. I have blogged before on the background of why Apple is choosing Intel processors over the, in my opinion, in many ways still superior PowerPC/POWER IBM processors.
My take on this is that when Apple's XServe with the G5 started popping up in supercomputer configurations around the world at a fraction of the cost of similar configurations from IBM, IBM could only see this as a serious threat to their midrange and Unix product lines and could not allow Apple to undercut their business. It is no coincidence that the XServe has not been upgraded with the dual-core PowerPC 970MP like the Power Macintosh workstations has been.
Likewise, IBM Software has not ever lifted a finger to port their software to Mac OS X Server and help Apple promote IBM's own processor architecture. No support for DB2, Tivoli, Tivoli Storage Manager (with the exception of a half-baked client) or any of the WebSphere modules to mention a few.
Who of the parties actually cut the cord last year is still unclear to me, but I don't think Apple any longer could live with IBM reserving their best processor performance for their own hardware and thereby limiting which markets Apple could enter. Intel, fortunately, does not have such split priorities, which is good for Apple.
It will be interesting to see if IBM Software will be more eager to support Mac OS X once the switch is over. Presently they can hardly blame it on software difficulties given they market the excellent IBM XL-C and XL-Fortran compilers for Apples G5 hardware. A recompile of the Linux version of DB2 Express-C for OS X should be a no-brainer for IBM as a technical exercise.
My bet is that this agreement with Microsoft is a stopgap for Apple while they are waiting for Microsoft to get their open XML document formats passed through the Ecma standardization process. Once this open format is available, Apple is free to release their own full office suite including a spreadsheet that will read and write fully MS Office Windows compatible documents. Remember Apple did support the Microsoft announcement for an open Microsoft XML document format?
Another thing is of course that Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac in general is a very nice package despite the shortcomings in Entourage. One also have to remember that Excel was born on the Mac, and a lot of Mac users cannot live without it.
I think the most interesting aspect of this announcement is that the presense of OSS and open standards in this case seem to have been a much more efficient anti-trust measure than any of the legal processes both the EU and the US DoJ has run against Microsoft -- the combination of OSS and the buying power of Government.
(It was really interesting to watch the activity when I translated the Norwegian government's hearing documents on the use of open source and open standards and placed them in the agenda section of my blog. For a period of almost two months, a certain company did one RSS lookup per minute on that section. It slowed down only after the deadline for submitting comments to the hearing.)
Just a thought... what if someone poisoned a podcast? Subscribe to kool sounding podcast, get malicious file via podcast auto-update. Possible attack-vector?
One should think a company that supports a product (Office) on multiple platforms would release a beta of the product for all supported platforms at the same time? Kinda be proud to show it off?
The iMac can live fine with a 32-bit processor in terms of memory configs for still some time. It is more of a market perception issue going back from the 64-bit G5.
More imporant, IMO, is the ability to lock OS X to a 64-bit CPU, thereby preventing mass-copying to 32-bit x86 systems during the early stages of marketing. This could prove to be crucial for Apple to preserve their business model though the transition period.
The highly reliable sources ThinkSecret often cites, most of the time produces so, so predictions.
Statments like "The dual-core Yonah chip could very likely deliver performance greater than Apple's current G4-based PowerBooks." does not sound too reliable. Why on earth would Apple intro systems with less performance than current models -- and I am not just thinking in terms of real processsor performance, but perceived system performance? They'd be the laughing stock of the industry. Unless they can put a system into the market that gives a noticeable better performance than what is possible with the G4, they will wait. Apple does not want the Intel experience to be mediocre. They want it to be top notch.
I find the predictions AppleInsider made last Friday to be more sensible, but I am still not sure if Apple would put the 32-bit Yonah into the iMac, as it may be seen as a step back from the 64-bit G5. I've commented on Apple's 64-bit roadmap and how to get there, mentioning av 64-bit Yonah, which is really the Merom. Perhaps Intel may have been able to bring this chip forward in time from fall 2006 to this spring, enabling Apple to go straight to 64-bit from day one.
Apple is well in a position to combine the techniques in this patent with locking Mac OS X to run on a 64-bit Intel CPU only. Already the Pro desktop and Xserve product lines are 64-bit and ship in configs up to 16 Gig memory. They will of course not revert to a 32-bit processor. There is nothing stopping them from waiting a launch of Intel bases systems until they can use Intel's new 64-bit chips in the Mini and portable product lines too.
Actually it would make more sense to go with the low voltage IBM 970MP for the Mini and even for a portable design for still some months because the application developers in the consumer market needs more time to prepare their apps. Running PowerPC apps in emulation with Rosetta on the Monad chip could prove to give a pretty mediocre user-experience, and I don't think that is the impression Apple would want give their new customers when they make the switch.
It keeps logging in snort on other operating systems too, but since it presumably tries to install a binary compiled for an Intel processor, it would not do much harm even if it penetrated the other layers of protection. But I guess FreeBSD and others that run Intel Linux binaries could be targeted.
Slashdot Mirror
The MacBook Pro's got all the keys and buttons you need to run Mac OS X.
There might be a wider selection of choices in a number of categories of applications on Windows, but if you look at the requirements of these apps in terms of processing capacity, data storage needs, communications needs, security requirements and so on, you will very quickly find that the there is nothing keeping a modern Mac from accommodating these needs.
Those who have really specialized needs moved to Linux a long time ago, giving them the ability to modiy the kernel, something you cannot do on Windows. You could modify the opendarwin kernel, but then you would loose the GUI and a lot of other good stuff on the Mac. Snort Inline is an application that is impossible to implement on a standard Mac OS X or Windows system, but perfectly possible on Linux thanks to Linux's ability to be adapted to special needs.
apt-get update if you have installed the Fink package management system.
For normal Mac apps, either an installer will do the upgrade, or simpler, a drag and drop of a new version to the location of the old version to replace the old one.
Right. If you want to install the exact same apps on Mac OS X as you want to do on your Linux boxen, you can choose between the Debian apt-get package management system Fink or the FreeBSD Port package management system. They even have GUI frontends if you choose in .app directories that you can move wherever you want on the filesystem. Pretty simple, eh? ;-)
Does anyone remember the Vista Perspective or Vista View that Microsoft presented some time ago where you have some folks looking out over a blue-ish kinda misty landscape. I mean, there is some strange feeling over that image. What are the people in the Vista Perspective actually looking for?
I kinda filled in the blanks and updated the image to display a more realistic Vista Perspective. (Sorry for the link back to my blog, but Slashdot does not do images...)
It was an interesting read, the comments on Mini Microsoft the other day when it was made public that Vista was delayed once more. What is the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X! was one of the comments.
What is even more interesting is that there might be a connection between Apple pushing their World Wide Developer Conference back to September and the new delivery date of Vista. Too close in time for Microsoft to be comfortable in the chance of having Vista look like a silly copy of Mac OS X 10.4 after Mac OS X 10.5 was introduced. More on the story in my blog entry written a couple of days ago.
One of the unusual things about the "hacked" machine was that Fink was installed. This most likely means that the Apple developer tools were installed (although Fink can install precompiled binaries), making it possible for the hacker to bring his own code and compile on the system. Although Apple ships the developer tools on the OS X client install DVD, it is not installed by default, nor is X11.
Fink lists a catalog of 6359 open source projectsthat can be installed, many of which are tools that could help a hacker exploit a machine or that are exploitable in themselves. Fink is a Debian style package manager for Mac OS X.
One of the unusual things about the "hacked" machine was that Fink was installed. This most likely means that the Apple developer tools were installed (although Fink can install precompiled binaries), making it possible for the hacker to bring his own code and compile on the system. Although Apple ships the developer tools on the OS X client install DVD, it is not installed by default, nor is X11.
Fink lists a catalog of 6359 open source projects that can be installed, many of which are tools that could help a hacker exploit a machine or that are exploitable in themselves.
In general I agree Apple has done good sheding legacy technology from their products, but for communications options like the 3G cards there are two issues in addition to the PCMCIA vs Expresscard/34 discussion:
Unfortunately this will hurt the MacBook Pro in certain markets.
One of the major shortcommings of the MacBook Pro is the removal of the PCMCIA slot in exchange of the Expresscard/34 slot. At least they could have made PCMCIA a built-to-order option.
The problem is that a number of 3G/UMTS services in Europe depend on PCMCIA 3G/UMTS add-in cards for what is basically relatively cheap, unlimited UMTS/GPRS network access without having to use a 3G bluetooth connected phone.
For people who more or less depend on these services for connection and doing their work, the MacBook Pro is basically no alternative at the moment.
Unfortunately, Apple has, at the expense of moving the plattform forward, removed the very options that people use for communication, and is in many ways recreating the same situation we had some years ago when they shed the serial ports from their machines; marketing systems lobotimized of important communications options. One should think that for a portable system, enabling the system for any type of communication would be one of its most important features.
You could always put a Mac there as a print-server. It sure supports USB connected printers, has a full implementation of CUPS and is Linuxy enough that your sys admin should feel at home in the command-line.
My first owned computer was the Grundy Newbrain with 32 k of RAM, Basic, RS-232 port, cassette interface and quite a decent 80 character monocrome display when connected to a TV. It also came with a 16 character one-line display on the unit. It could even run CP/M and had an architecture that supported up to 2 MB of main memory.
I even wrote some assembly embedded in a Basic text processing application to output Norwegian characters in graphics mode on an Epson printer that did not support anything but 7-bit ASCII. It was a fun machine to use, and quite impressive at the time.
Otherwise my first real computer experience was on the Univac university mainframe and the Norsk Data NORD-10 multiuser minicomputer that could support up to 30 concurrent terminals in up to a whopping 256 kilo-words of main memory.
Yes, from a technical perspective, I am inclined to say that Apple's switch from the PowerPC was not necessarily a brilliant move. However, the real reason for the switch was in my opinion this:
Apple could no longer live with a processor manufacturer that reserved its best performing processors for their own use
IBM has a huge business of their own to protect, making servers and workstations using the same technology that Apple does. IBM's issue is that these systems are priced at 2 to 4 times higher than the same performance from Apple. This became very evident when Apple shipped the G5 Xserve and completely undercut IBM in large cluster configurations (which is clearly IBM core markets.) Why has the Xserve not yet shipped with the dual-core IBM 970MP? Why has Apple never shipped anyhthing but dual processor machines even if it was possible all they way back to the PPC 604 days to build 8 way systems. IBM had them. No coincidence if you ask me.
Intel does not have any such hangups og dependencies. Intel is all about delivering its best performing processors to those who can build systems from them.
Intel will even throw marketing efforts into the equation -- something IBM never, ever did to help Apple promote the PowerPC plattform. I think IBM's - and IBM Software's complete lack of support for Mac OS X is a telltale sign why Apple had no choice but to switch even if the PowerPC/POWER processors at the technical level perhaps would be better.
IBM's continued more or less total lack of software support for Mac OS X can be seen as a telltale sign of why Apple is in the middle of making the switch from IBM's PowerPC processors to rival Intel's new generation of processors. I have blogged before on the background of why Apple is choosing Intel processors over the, in my opinion, in many ways still superior PowerPC/POWER IBM processors.
My take on this is that when Apple's XServe with the G5 started popping up in supercomputer configurations around the world at a fraction of the cost of similar configurations from IBM, IBM could only see this as a serious threat to their midrange and Unix product lines and could not allow Apple to undercut their business. It is no coincidence that the XServe has not been upgraded with the dual-core PowerPC 970MP like the Power Macintosh workstations has been.
Likewise, IBM Software has not ever lifted a finger to port their software to Mac OS X Server and help Apple promote IBM's own processor architecture. No support for DB2, Tivoli, Tivoli Storage Manager (with the exception of a half-baked client) or any of the WebSphere modules to mention a few.
Who of the parties actually cut the cord last year is still unclear to me, but I don't think Apple any longer could live with IBM reserving their best processor performance for their own hardware and thereby limiting which markets Apple could enter. Intel, fortunately, does not have such split priorities, which is good for Apple.
It will be interesting to see if IBM Software will be more eager to support Mac OS X once the switch is over. Presently they can hardly blame it on software difficulties given they market the excellent IBM XL-C and XL-Fortran compilers for Apples G5 hardware. A recompile of the Linux version of DB2 Express-C for OS X should be a no-brainer for IBM as a technical exercise.
My bet is that this agreement with Microsoft is a stopgap for Apple while they are waiting for Microsoft to get their open XML document formats passed through the Ecma standardization process. Once this open format is available, Apple is free to release their own full office suite including a spreadsheet that will read and write fully MS Office Windows compatible documents. Remember Apple did support the Microsoft announcement for an open Microsoft XML document format?
Another thing is of course that Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac in general is a very nice package despite the shortcomings in Entourage. One also have to remember that Excel was born on the Mac, and a lot of Mac users cannot live without it.
I think the most interesting aspect of this announcement is that the presense of OSS and open standards in this case seem to have been a much more efficient anti-trust measure than any of the legal processes both the EU and the US DoJ has run against Microsoft -- the combination of OSS and the buying power of Government.
(It was really interesting to watch the activity when I translated the Norwegian government's hearing documents on the use of open source and open standards and placed them in the agenda section of my blog. For a period of almost two months, a certain company did one RSS lookup per minute on that section. It slowed down only after the deadline for submitting comments to the hearing.)
Just a thought... what if someone poisoned a podcast? Subscribe to kool sounding podcast, get malicious file via podcast auto-update. Possible attack-vector?
One should think a company that supports a product (Office) on multiple platforms would release a beta of the product for all supported platforms at the same time? Kinda be proud to show it off?
Oh, that platform!!?! OS X....
The iMac can live fine with a 32-bit processor in terms of memory configs for still some time. It is more of a market perception issue going back from the 64-bit G5.
More imporant, IMO, is the ability to lock OS X to a 64-bit CPU, thereby preventing mass-copying to 32-bit x86 systems during the early stages of marketing. This could prove to be crucial for Apple to preserve their business model though the transition period.
The highly reliable sources ThinkSecret often cites, most of the time produces so, so predictions.
Statments like "The dual-core Yonah chip could very likely deliver performance greater than Apple's current G4-based PowerBooks." does not sound too reliable. Why on earth would Apple intro systems with less performance than current models -- and I am not just thinking in terms of real processsor performance, but perceived system performance? They'd be the laughing stock of the industry. Unless they can put a system into the market that gives a noticeable better performance than what is possible with the G4, they will wait. Apple does not want the Intel experience to be mediocre. They want it to be top notch.
I find the predictions AppleInsider made last Friday to be more sensible, but I am still not sure if Apple would put the 32-bit Yonah into the iMac, as it may be seen as a step back from the 64-bit G5. I've commented on Apple's 64-bit roadmap and how to get there, mentioning av 64-bit Yonah, which is really the Merom. Perhaps Intel may have been able to bring this chip forward in time from fall 2006 to this spring, enabling Apple to go straight to 64-bit from day one.
Apple is well in a position to combine the techniques in this patent with locking Mac OS X to run on a 64-bit Intel CPU only. Already the Pro desktop and Xserve product lines are 64-bit and ship in configs up to 16 Gig memory. They will of course not revert to a 32-bit processor. There is nothing stopping them from waiting a launch of Intel bases systems until they can use Intel's new 64-bit chips in the Mini and portable product lines too.
Actually it would make more sense to go with the low voltage IBM 970MP for the Mini and even for a portable design for still some months because the application developers in the consumer market needs more time to prepare their apps. Running PowerPC apps in emulation with Rosetta on the Monad chip could prove to give a pretty mediocre user-experience, and I don't think that is the impression Apple would want give their new customers when they make the switch.
Let's see... I submitted this story to Slashdot on Friday November 4. Just for the record.
Yes, it looks like that.
It keeps logging in snort on other operating systems too, but since it presumably tries to install a binary compiled for an Intel processor, it would not do much harm even if it penetrated the other layers of protection. But I guess FreeBSD and others that run Intel Linux binaries could be targeted.
So, since it downloads an executable, I guess it is a Linux on Intel problem or does it target other processors?