I think the intention was to release 5.2.3 at the same time they said it would be the last release. Trouble is, at least one news outlet released the news early, so the timing of everything got thrown off. Oh well.
1) Apple doesn't care about Virtual PC. The PowerPC 970 no longer supports little-endian mode, which VPC uses to get speed (note that no one actually knows which processor Apple will use, of course...). If Apple cared about VPC, they would do the work to make VPC run as fast under X as it used under 9. Or they would have acquired VPC when they had the chance. (According to one of Connectix's founders, Apple has turned down VPC on more than one occasion!)
2) The statistic no one mentions is that, among people running OS X, Safari is already the dominant browser. So who cares if MacIE is no longer being actively developed under X? It's a non-event. It's been 3 years now that MacIE is still 5.something and no one seemed to take much notice. And besides, Microsoft is still doing maintenance revs - in fact they did one on Monday.
Safari renders text to the screen using the call CGContextShowGlyphsWithAdvances.
They use this call, introduced in Jaguar, because it's faster than any other call if what you want to do is render anti-aliased text to the screen while being able to adjust the character spacing.
If you don't believe me that they use it, run Sampler. If you think it's open source, or documented, I'd sure appreciate a pointer as to where the documentation lives.
ps Please understand that I do not mean to imply that this is the only undocumented part of the OS used by Safari.
Safari uses the call CGContextShowGlyphsWithAdvances to draw text to the screen. If you don't think it's an extra tie-in, I'd like you to please show me where it's documented.
Apple says OS X is based on Open Source, but the reality is it's only the core, Unix part, that's like that. The Graphics engine, text engine, and most of the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks are not open source.
Just like Safari, in theory, is based on an open-source browsing engine. Yeah, but try building it yourself for OS X sometime, and you'll find that major parts of it are missing. The open-source part is built atop KDE, and since KDE isn't part of OS X, Safari has a KDE compatibility layer. Which is not open-source. On top of that open-source part is the Safari UI (menus etc) and again, that is also not open-source.
When Safari was introduced, it rendered text to the screen using a system call that had never before been documented. In fact, they introduced this text API in Jaguar specificaly so that Safari could draw quickly. That would be but one example of where Apple uses their better access.
Anyway, the point is moot. Safari already has the majority of the browser marketshare under OS X, and once 10.3 ships and Safari is the default, it will probably get dominant the same way IE did under Windows. Since Microsoft has absolutely nothing to gain by trying to fight a losing battle to keep IE's share up, why fight it? Having a dominant product which you don't make any money off of is a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
"Well documented API"?!? Clearly you haven't been doing serious development under OS X. The call Safari uses to draw text to the screen was not documented when Jaguar or Safari were originally released. In fact, it didn't even exist under OS X prior to Jaguar.
If you're a dev, try running Sampler ("sample Safari 5 5" from the command line) right before you do a lot of scrolling on a page that has lots of text. Note the call that does the text drawing (DrawGlyphsWithAdvances or somesuch). Then find the documentation for it.
What's that? You can't find any? I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
> That's step one of the real threat. Step two is this: If IE doesn't run on the Mac, then there is no de facto standard browser on the Mac.
Safari is the new de facto standard browser on Mac OS X.
In OS X 10.3, it will be the default. (I don't actually know this for certainty, but I'd bet my house on it)
The only thing blocking Safari from being an even bigger de factor standard is the outright refusal of Steve Jobs to allow Safari to work on any OS less than Jaguar. But in Steve's world, everyone who matters uses Jaguar. And all apps are written in Cocoa. And... [cuts himself off]
5. Completely truthful, because these are really tought questions, and she could easily get herself in really hot waters - and so she answered the questions without really saying anything. Think about it, what she said was:
> We've heard positive things from Mac users who have tried Keynote and Safari
Clearly true.
> We believe customer research is key to developing quality products
Duh.
> we continue to listen to our customers on Apple's products and ours
Slashdot readers might argue that customers feedback is ignored, but one would have to admit it is collected in any case.
> Our relationship with Apple continues to be solid
Not "Good", not "Bad", but "Solid". Thing is, the Apple/Microsoft relationship is now and always has been one of the strangest love/hate relationships anywhere. Apple has sued Microsoft and lost, has testified against Microsoft in the antitrust trial, and is currently running an MS Office promotion entitled "Office Romance". Whatever. If you were in Roz's position, what would you say? "Solid" seems as good as any.
> Our commitment to Mac customers is as strong as ever.
Well duh. Without Mac customers Roz is out of a job, as well as the other 200 people in the MacBU division. My question would be, since people don't pay for IE, are they considered to be "customers"?
5. Completely truthful, because these are really tought questions, and she could easily get herself in really hot waters - and so she answered the questions without really saying anything.
BTW, you say "bug riden cross compilers" [sic]. You, umm, are aware that Mac Office (and MacIE) is developed in Metrowerks Code Warrior, right?
I guess I miss your point. You directed the conversation to be about MacIE (which is off-topic). You talk about "seducing people to Microsoft" and then "removing the alternatives to Windows". But if anything, MacIE helped people switch to *Macintosh*, and removing MacIE removed an alternative to *Apple*.
I'm too ignorant of Interix and Kerberos to follow your point, but I will say this: it's even further off-topic.
Chairman Jobs announced today the unquestioned victory of Internet Explorer. The Maximum Leader stated that because Internet Explorer had been so successful in developing and marketing a browser, his favorite browser, at no cost to Apple, that as a gesture of goodwill, he will be shutting it down. Workers formerly of the Internet Explorer division are instructed to report to the trainyards tomorrow at 0600 hours for transportation to re-education camps.
In other news, the Central News Service is reporting today that thousands of happy customers of OS X are thrilled to not receive any new version of IE, or any usable version of Netscape, for OS X. Instead, the users are receiving beta versions of Safari, which displays web pages correctly more than 60% of the time. "I am so thrilled to be getting this beta software instead of my old browser" says happy Apple customer Joe Schwatz. "Now I can cut down on my time spent browsing because no longer will so many sites be readable as they were intended. I am so happy I think I will compose a song praising Chairman Jobs for this wonderful event!"
Said user Jamie Greuel, "Praise this, the first step. One day there will be no Microsoft software, no Adobe software, no Quark software, to confound us. One day we shall never again be bothered by non-Apple software or non-Apple web sites. Praise be the one true Apple way!"
What's that you say, dbrutus? You mean that people will be forced to pay for new versions of Windows in order to get new versions of IE? Oh my gosh, that's awful, that's... that's... that's just like Apple!
Because if you want Safari, you have to upgrade to Jaguar!
You hit the nail on the head, ergo - MacIE doesn't make business sense anymore. By putting it into maintenance mode, Microsoft gets those engineers to work on better things that actually earn MS money.
Maybe things would be different if Apple wanted Microsoft to continue to make new versions of IE, but I think Apple wants to be in charge of the #1 Mac browser. Well, soon they will be, by fiat, having driven everyone else out.
> Will the MS branded version of VPC for Mac maintain the > ability to run x86 operating systems other than windows?
I don't see why not. Trying to run other OS's besides Windows is one way of increasing the possibility of running future versions of Windows. As I recall, modifying VPC to run Linux wasn't that difficult because Linux supported a lot of different CPUs, so it tended to do plain vanilla stuff in only slightly different ways than Windows did, and fixing VPC to run Linux really amounted to just fixing our own bugs.
On the other hand, modifying Virtual PC to run Solaris turned out to be pointless. No one really uses Solaris, at least not under VPC, and no OS but Solaris used the hard drive controller in the bizarre way that Sun did.
So I would expect the ability to run non-MS OS's to continue, in proportion to what users actually use.
On the flip side, I know Connectix was on the verge of discontinuing its Linux sku of Virtual PC (to run x86 Linux on your Mac) due to low sales... in fact, now that I look at the Connectix web page, they don't even list it anymore.
Now, that's all for the Mac side. On the Windows side, a big deal is that some customers with Linux hardware would like to upgrade to Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003), but can't because their Linux machine is running something important. When you add in Virtual PC, you can now run Windows XP while still running your Linux server, all on the same machine. In particular, with the advent of more powerful processors, it becomes possible to replace two Netware PCs and two Linux PCs with one new PC running four Virtual machines. The customer saves money, space, and power. My point being, the ability to run non-Windows OSes is critical to making this a good thing.
So, run a non-MS OS, absolutely. Sell it as a specific SKU, probably not.
jbx
(Forward-looking statements are inherently risky. Previous results are no guarantee of future performance. These are my personal opinions only and do not represent the official viewpoint of Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, or Gordon Moore. Promotion not available to residents of the Cayman Islands or employees of Publisher's Clearing House. This offer not valid in all states. Void where prohibited.)
The reason the hardware cards failed is that people don't like doubling their hardware upgrade costs. Virtual PC cost way less than any card, and if you got yourself a faster PowerPC chip, Virtual PC also ran faster.
These days, for only slightly more than a card, you can get an actual PC, connect it up with Ethernet, and whenever you want to use it from your Mac, just run Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection (which is free) on your Mac. Just as fast as a PC, because it is a PC. If you ever want to upgrade, it's a lot easier to sell an old PC than an old compatibility card.
You know, where FWB tells customers "When Microsoft purchased Virtual PC, we decided it was time to re-release an updated version of Real PC & SoftWindows 98 (and shortly XP etc). We had to discontinue the product as the agreement was with Connectix, not Microsoft. If you would like to update your Real PC to a faster, better and more powerful version, give us 30 days to finish the software and you'll be glad you waited."
If you're really the FWB CEO, would you care to elaborate on the "agreement with Connectix"? I'm thinking of that agreement in the context of the Connectix page about the acquisition, where it says:
(from www.connectix.com/about/acquisition_mac.html) "The transaction was completed as of Feb. 18, 2003; [...] During the six-month transition period, Connectix will continue to sell and support Virtual PC for Windows, Virtual PC for Mac and Virtual PC for OS/2 products through its current distribution channel partners."
I mean, at the very least, wouldn't you have to wait until August 18th?
I'm sorry but it really irks me to see writers such as timothy say "Well, now it looks like Microsoft is trying to kill that program as well."
As well as what? Look, I worked as the dev lead for Virtual PC at Connectix, and came to Microsoft 5 years ago. I work at MacBU only a few offices away from the Virtual PC development team. Microsoft has repeatedly stated that they intend to continue development of Virtual PC for Macintosh, and no matter how many times people here repeat that Microsoft is trying to kill it, it just isn't so. Microsoft likes Virtual PC for Mac, and Microsoft *loves* Virtual PC for Windows. Yeah, I know, I know, slashdot people won't believe it until they see the first Microsoft-branded VPC upgrade shipping, and try it out, and say "wow", but for those of you with a little bit of faith, the future of emulation on the Mac is quite rosy.
Technically speaking, he donates his stock to charity (the Bill and Melinda Gates fund), and his *charity* does the selling. I don't remember why it's done this way, perhaps to get around rules about the timing of selling the stock, and perhaps to make it more clear the reason he's selling so much.
I heard a story a long time ago that Gates sells 1% of his holdings every quarter, and has done so, for "diversification", almost as long as the company has been public. But if you look at the amount of money his charity has been given (5-10 billion at least), it would seem that his charitable contributions run even higher than his "diversification" does. (Remember, his charity hasn't been around that long.)
As for whether or not Dancing Boy needs to sell, remember that Microsoft pays dividends now, and they give Ballmer and Gates *way* more money than a paltry seven-figure salary. Let's see: 8cents per share times Ballmer's 431 million shares... that's 33 million dollars all by itself!
It reminds me of when we did the first Virtual PC for Mac. When we demo'd it at trade shows, about one out of every 20 people who stepped to ask about it asked if they could run Executor [a Mac emulator of sorts] within Virtual PC, and then Virtual PC in that, and then...
It was an interesting question the first time, to think about. And it was interesting to see customers ask about it. About the fifth time, it got really tiresome.
Personally, I think a browser written entirely in Java is a pretty cool accomplishment, especially when it's not Sun doing it, but just someone with a LOT of spare time. Useful, no. Cool, yes.
I think people deriding Jazilla because they think it's not terribly useful, or because they don't think it's something anyone would pay for, miss the point. It's like asking why would you climb a mountain? I mean, c'mon. Why would you build a device that can levitate a cow? #1 reason: so you can say to your friend: "Dude! Look at this! I built a device that can levitate a cow!"
And besides, the browser world is filled with this sort of stuff. In the wake of Safari, why is there continuing work on MacNetscape or MacIE, which only cost their companies money? Hell, why did Microsoft *ever* work on MacIE? You just have to expect things to happen in the world of browsers that can't be explained in logical terms.
jbx
ps I can hear it already "Dude, like we ran Virtual PC on a Mac, and then we ran Virtual PC for Windows inside that, and then we ran a Java Virtual Machine for that, and then we ran this new browser inside that, and then we ran an Apple ][ emulator that somebody wrote in JavaScript, and like, dude, it's like sooooooo slow!" I mean, when someone says that to you, *what*do*you*say*?
pps No! You can't scream out "Get a life!" It's a trade show! He might buy a copy!
ppps And I'm sick and tired of "Dude, like maybe the reason Neo can stop the sentinels is that they think they're out of the Matrix, but the Matrix is in another, bigger Matrix. And maybe *that* Matrix is in another Matrix. And..."
First off, you missed an extremely important technical detail of the PPC 970: they removed little-endian mode. Sure, you can still use instructions that store and fetch in little-endian mode, but you are forced to use indexed addressing mode when doing so. The upshot, for an emulator such as Virtual PC, is that a PUSH instruction on the x86 now takes 3 PPC 970 instructions instead of 1 G3/G4 instruction. Also there is no way on the 970 to load or store floating-point numbers in little-endian, so all those instructions take five or ten times longer.
Second off, emulators are NOT easy to write. Can't imagine where you got that. For one thing, you end up having to emulate hardware in addition to software, and the 20 years of IBM PC evolution is not pretty or elegant in any way. For another, x86 CPUs do automatic code flushing, which you have to emulate, meaning that every store instruction potentially is a code-modifying instruction that you have to beware of.
Finally, perhaps the biggest problem is still code size. 1K of x86 code still translates into 3-4K of PowerPC translation. Meaning a PowerPC would need 4 megs of instruction cache to do as well as an x86 with 1 meg of instruction cache. Lack of little-endian mode means it's even worse.
None of these problems get easier with the 970. Now, true, the 970 is a nice fast chip, and well-written PPC code will fly on it. But many of the ways in which the 970 is fast don't help emulation at all. And the lack of little-endian mode just blows chunks.
Actually, Microsoft's "corporate values" program encompasses the Microsoft "Giving Campaign". That "Giving Campaign" encourages donations to charitable organizations with a 100% match by Microsoft of any employee donation. The only restriction is it can't be a purely religious organization, and it has to qualify as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization - and FSF does. (After all, if you're going to write off your half of the donation, Microsoft wants to, too.)
Anyway, my point is, I'd be surprised if Microsoft wasn't already supporting the FSF a little - because employee donations are matched under the Giving Campaign. I know that there is already quite a bit of support among Microsofties for the EFF.
Probably the support would be more widespread, except the GPL is too restrictive for GPL-licensed software to be used in any Microsoft product - though there's lots of stuff compiled with GCC that ships out - like the WebTV console's software. Free software distributed under the less restrictive library licenses, like the png decoder or the boost library, is widespread.
"bright enough to reverse engineer"?? Well, I don't recall if it was DirecTV or EchoStar, but for one of them, the original smart cards has symbol names embedded in the code. As you can guess, this makes it substantially easier to reverse engineer!!!
jbx
Slashdot Mirror
I think the intention was to release 5.2.3 at the same time they said it would be the last release. Trouble is, at least one news outlet released the news early, so the timing of everything got thrown off. Oh well.
1) Apple doesn't care about Virtual PC. The PowerPC 970 no longer supports little-endian mode, which VPC uses to get speed (note that no one actually knows which processor Apple will use, of course...). If Apple cared about VPC, they would do the work to make VPC run as fast under X as it used under 9. Or they would have acquired VPC when they had the chance. (According to one of Connectix's founders, Apple has turned down VPC on more than one occasion!)
2) The statistic no one mentions is that, among people running OS X, Safari is already the dominant browser. So who cares if MacIE is no longer being actively developed under X? It's a non-event. It's been 3 years now that MacIE is still 5.something and no one seemed to take much notice. And besides, Microsoft is still doing maintenance revs - in fact they did one on Monday.
Safari renders text to the screen using the call CGContextShowGlyphsWithAdvances.
They use this call, introduced in Jaguar, because it's faster than any other call if what you want to do is render anti-aliased text to the screen while being able to adjust the character spacing.
If you don't believe me that they use it, run Sampler.
If you think it's open source, or documented, I'd sure appreciate a pointer as to where the documentation lives.
ps Please understand that I do not mean to imply that this is the only undocumented part of the OS used by Safari.
Safari uses the call CGContextShowGlyphsWithAdvances to draw text to the screen. If you don't think it's an extra tie-in, I'd like you to please show me where it's documented.
Apple says OS X is based on Open Source, but the reality is it's only the core, Unix part, that's like that. The Graphics engine, text engine, and most of the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks are not open source.
Just like Safari, in theory, is based on an open-source browsing engine. Yeah, but try building it yourself for OS X sometime, and you'll find that major parts of it are missing. The open-source part is built atop KDE, and since KDE isn't part of OS X, Safari has a KDE compatibility layer. Which is not open-source. On top of that open-source part is the Safari UI (menus etc) and again, that is also not open-source.
When Safari was introduced, it rendered text to the screen using a system call that had never before been documented. In fact, they introduced this text API in Jaguar specificaly so that Safari could draw quickly. That would be but one example of where Apple uses their better access.
Anyway, the point is moot. Safari already has the majority of the browser marketshare under OS X, and once 10.3 ships and Safari is the default, it will probably get dominant the same way IE did under Windows. Since Microsoft has absolutely nothing to gain by trying to fight a losing battle to keep IE's share up, why fight it? Having a dominant product which you don't make any money off of is a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
Before Apple bought Final Cut, there was very definitely a Windows version.
"Well documented API"?!? Clearly you haven't been doing serious development under OS X. The call Safari uses to draw text to the screen was not documented when Jaguar or Safari were originally released. In fact, it didn't even exist under OS X prior to Jaguar.
If you're a dev, try running Sampler ("sample Safari 5 5" from the command line) right before you do a lot of scrolling on a page that has lots of text. Note the call that does the text drawing (DrawGlyphsWithAdvances or somesuch). Then find the documentation for it.
What's that?
You can't find any?
I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
kcrca says:
> That's step one of the real threat. Step two is this: If IE doesn't run on the Mac, then there is no de facto standard browser on the Mac.
Safari is the new de facto standard browser on Mac OS X.
In OS X 10.3, it will be the default. (I don't actually know this for certainty, but I'd bet my house on it)
The only thing blocking Safari from being an even bigger de factor standard is the outright refusal of Steve Jobs to allow Safari to work on any OS less than Jaguar. But in Steve's world, everyone who matters uses Jaguar. And all apps are written in Cocoa. And... [cuts himself off]
5. Completely truthful, because these are really tought questions, and she could easily get herself in really hot waters - and so she answered the questions without really saying anything. Think about it, what she said was:
> We've heard positive things from Mac users who have tried Keynote and Safari
Clearly true.
> We believe customer research is key to developing quality products
Duh.
> we continue to listen to our customers on Apple's products and ours
Slashdot readers might argue that customers feedback is ignored, but one would have to admit it is collected in any case.
> Our relationship with Apple continues to be solid
Not "Good", not "Bad", but "Solid". Thing is, the Apple/Microsoft relationship is now and always has been one of the strangest love/hate relationships anywhere. Apple has sued Microsoft and lost, has testified against Microsoft in the antitrust trial, and is currently running an MS Office promotion entitled "Office Romance". Whatever. If you were in Roz's position, what would you say? "Solid" seems as good as any.
> Our commitment to Mac customers is as strong as ever.
Well duh. Without Mac customers Roz is out of a job, as well as the other 200 people in the MacBU division. My question would be, since people don't pay for IE, are they considered to be "customers"?
5. Completely truthful, because these are really tought questions, and she could easily get herself in really hot waters - and so she answered the questions without really saying anything.
BTW, you say "bug riden cross compilers" [sic]. You, umm, are aware that Mac Office (and MacIE) is developed in Metrowerks Code Warrior, right?
I guess I miss your point. You directed the conversation to be about MacIE (which is off-topic). You talk about "seducing people to Microsoft" and then "removing the alternatives to Windows". But if anything, MacIE helped people switch to *Macintosh*, and removing MacIE removed an alternative to *Apple*.
I'm too ignorant of Interix and Kerberos to follow your point, but I will say this: it's even further off-topic.
Chairman Jobs announced today the unquestioned victory of Internet Explorer. The Maximum Leader stated that because Internet Explorer had been so successful in developing and marketing a browser, his favorite browser, at no cost to Apple, that as a gesture of goodwill, he will be shutting it down. Workers formerly of the Internet Explorer division are instructed to report to the trainyards tomorrow at 0600 hours for transportation to re-education camps.
In other news, the Central News Service is reporting today that thousands of happy customers of OS X are thrilled to not receive any new version of IE, or any usable version of Netscape, for OS X. Instead, the users are receiving beta versions of Safari, which displays web pages correctly more than 60% of the time. "I am so thrilled to be getting this beta software instead of my old browser" says happy Apple customer Joe Schwatz. "Now I can cut down on my time spent browsing because no longer will so many sites be readable as they were intended. I am so happy I think I will compose a song praising Chairman Jobs for this wonderful event!"
Said user Jamie Greuel, "Praise this, the first step. One day there will be no Microsoft software, no Adobe software, no Quark software, to confound us. One day we shall never again be bothered by non-Apple software or non-Apple web sites. Praise be the one true Apple way!"
(With thanks to http://www.turnleft.org/apple/ )
What's that you say, dbrutus? You mean that people will be forced to pay for new versions of Windows in order to get new versions of IE? Oh my gosh, that's awful, that's... that's... that's just like Apple!
Because if you want Safari, you have to upgrade to Jaguar!
Pot... kettle. Kettle... pot.
You hit the nail on the head, ergo - MacIE doesn't make business sense anymore. By putting it into maintenance mode, Microsoft gets those engineers to work on better things that actually earn MS money.
Maybe things would be different if Apple wanted Microsoft to continue to make new versions of IE, but I think Apple wants to be in charge of the #1 Mac browser. Well, soon they will be, by fiat, having driven everyone else out.
jbx
> Will the MS branded version of VPC for Mac maintain the
> ability to run x86 operating systems other than windows?
I don't see why not. Trying to run other OS's besides Windows is one way of increasing the possibility of running future versions of Windows. As I recall, modifying VPC to run Linux wasn't that difficult because Linux supported a lot of different CPUs, so it tended to do plain vanilla stuff in only slightly different ways than Windows did, and fixing VPC to run Linux really amounted to just fixing our own bugs.
On the other hand, modifying Virtual PC to run Solaris turned out to be pointless. No one really uses Solaris, at least not under VPC, and no OS but Solaris used the hard drive controller in the bizarre way that Sun did.
So I would expect the ability to run non-MS OS's to continue, in proportion to what users actually use.
On the flip side, I know Connectix was on the verge of discontinuing its Linux sku of Virtual PC (to run x86 Linux on your Mac) due to low sales... in fact, now that I look at the Connectix web page, they don't even list it anymore.
Now, that's all for the Mac side. On the Windows side, a big deal is that some customers with Linux hardware would like to upgrade to Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003), but can't because their Linux machine is running something important. When you add in Virtual PC, you can now run Windows XP while still running your Linux server, all on the same machine. In particular, with the advent of more powerful processors, it becomes possible to replace two Netware PCs and two Linux PCs with one new PC running four Virtual machines. The customer saves money, space, and power. My point being, the ability to run non-Windows OSes is critical to making this a good thing.
So, run a non-MS OS, absolutely. Sell it as a specific SKU, probably not.
jbx
(Forward-looking statements are inherently risky. Previous results are no guarantee of future performance. These are my personal opinions only and do not represent the official viewpoint of Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, or Gordon Moore. Promotion not available to residents of the Cayman Islands or employees of Publisher's Clearing House. This offer not valid in all states. Void where prohibited.)
The reason the hardware cards failed is that people don't like doubling their hardware upgrade costs. Virtual PC cost way less than any card, and if you got yourself a faster PowerPC chip, Virtual PC also ran faster.
These days, for only slightly more than a card, you can get an actual PC, connect it up with Ethernet, and whenever you want to use it from your Mac, just run Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection (which is free) on your Mac. Just as fast as a PC, because it is a PC. If you ever want to upgrade, it's a lot easier to sell an old PC than an old compatibility card.
jbx
So, you're, uh, not sure where the rumor started?
Try http://www.macnn.com/news/19031
You know, where FWB tells customers "When Microsoft purchased Virtual PC, we decided it was time to re-release an updated version of Real PC & SoftWindows 98 (and shortly XP etc). We had to discontinue the product as the agreement was with Connectix, not Microsoft. If you would like to update your Real PC to a faster, better and more powerful version, give us 30 days to finish the software and you'll be glad you waited."
If you're really the FWB CEO, would you care to elaborate on the "agreement with Connectix"? I'm thinking of that agreement in the context of the Connectix page about the acquisition, where it says:
(from www.connectix.com/about/acquisition_mac.html) "The transaction was completed as of Feb. 18, 2003; [...] During the six-month transition period, Connectix will continue to sell and support Virtual PC for Windows, Virtual PC for Mac and Virtual PC for OS/2 products through its current distribution channel partners."
I mean, at the very least, wouldn't you have to wait until August 18th?
jbx
I'm sorry but it really irks me to see writers such as timothy say "Well, now it looks like Microsoft is trying to kill that program as well."
As well as what? Look, I worked as the dev lead for Virtual PC at Connectix, and came to Microsoft 5 years ago. I work at MacBU only a few offices away from the Virtual PC development team. Microsoft has repeatedly stated that they intend to continue development of Virtual PC for Macintosh, and no matter how many times people here repeat that Microsoft is trying to kill it, it just isn't so. Microsoft likes Virtual PC for Mac, and Microsoft *loves* Virtual PC for Windows. Yeah, I know, I know, slashdot people won't believe it until they see the first Microsoft-branded VPC upgrade shipping, and try it out, and say "wow", but for those of you with a little bit of faith, the future of emulation on the Mac is quite rosy.
jbx
Technically speaking, he donates his stock to charity (the Bill and Melinda Gates fund), and his *charity* does the selling. I don't remember why it's done this way, perhaps to get around rules about the timing of selling the stock, and perhaps to make it more clear the reason he's selling so much.
I heard a story a long time ago that Gates sells 1% of his holdings every quarter, and has done so, for "diversification", almost as long as the company has been public. But if you look at the amount of money his charity has been given (5-10 billion at least), it would seem that his charitable contributions run even higher than his "diversification" does. (Remember, his charity hasn't been around that long.)
As for whether or not Dancing Boy needs to sell, remember that Microsoft pays dividends now, and they give Ballmer and Gates *way* more money than a paltry seven-figure salary. Let's see: 8cents per share times Ballmer's 431 million shares... that's 33 million dollars all by itself!
You ask why?
It reminds me of when we did the first Virtual PC for Mac. When we demo'd it at trade shows, about one out of every 20 people who stepped to ask about it asked if they could run Executor [a Mac emulator of sorts] within Virtual PC, and then Virtual PC in that, and then...
It was an interesting question the first time, to think about. And it was interesting to see customers ask about it. About the fifth time, it got really tiresome.
Personally, I think a browser written entirely in Java is a pretty cool accomplishment, especially when it's not Sun doing it, but just someone with a LOT of spare time. Useful, no. Cool, yes.
I think people deriding Jazilla because they think it's not terribly useful, or because they don't think it's something anyone would pay for, miss the point. It's like asking why would you climb a mountain? I mean, c'mon. Why would you build a device that can levitate a cow? #1 reason: so you can say to your friend: "Dude! Look at this! I built a device that can levitate a cow!"
And besides, the browser world is filled with this sort of stuff. In the wake of Safari, why is there continuing work on MacNetscape or MacIE, which only cost their companies money? Hell, why did Microsoft *ever* work on MacIE? You just have to expect things to happen in the world of browsers that can't be explained in logical terms.
jbx
ps I can hear it already "Dude, like we ran Virtual PC on a Mac, and then we ran Virtual PC for Windows inside that, and then we ran a Java Virtual Machine for that, and then we ran this new browser inside that, and then we ran an Apple ][ emulator that somebody wrote in JavaScript, and like, dude, it's like sooooooo slow!" I mean, when someone says that to you, *what*do*you*say*?
pps No! You can't scream out "Get a life!" It's a trade show! He might buy a copy!
ppps And I'm sick and tired of "Dude, like maybe the reason Neo can stop the sentinels is that they think they're out of the Matrix, but the Matrix is in another, bigger Matrix. And maybe *that* Matrix is in another Matrix. And..."
Ummm, no.
First off, you missed an extremely important technical detail of the PPC 970: they removed little-endian mode. Sure, you can still use instructions that store and fetch in little-endian mode, but you are forced to use indexed addressing mode when doing so. The upshot, for an emulator such as Virtual PC, is that a PUSH instruction on the x86 now takes 3 PPC 970 instructions instead of 1 G3/G4 instruction. Also there is no way on the 970 to load or store floating-point numbers in little-endian, so all those instructions take five or ten times longer.
Second off, emulators are NOT easy to write. Can't imagine where you got that. For one thing, you end up having to emulate hardware in addition to software, and the 20 years of IBM PC evolution is not pretty or elegant in any way. For another, x86 CPUs do automatic code flushing, which you have to emulate, meaning that every store instruction potentially is a code-modifying instruction that you have to beware of.
Finally, perhaps the biggest problem is still code size. 1K of x86 code still translates into 3-4K of PowerPC translation. Meaning a PowerPC would need 4 megs of instruction cache to do as well as an x86 with 1 meg of instruction cache. Lack of little-endian mode means it's even worse.
None of these problems get easier with the 970. Now, true, the 970 is a nice fast chip, and well-written PPC code will fly on it. But many of the ways in which the 970 is fast don't help emulation at all. And the lack of little-endian mode just blows chunks.
jbx (former VPC engineer)
Actually, Microsoft's "corporate values" program encompasses the Microsoft "Giving Campaign". That "Giving Campaign" encourages donations to charitable organizations with a 100% match by Microsoft of any employee donation. The only restriction is it can't be a purely religious organization, and it has to qualify as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization - and FSF does. (After all, if you're going to write off your half of the donation, Microsoft wants to, too.)
Anyway, my point is, I'd be surprised if Microsoft wasn't already supporting the FSF a little - because employee donations are matched under the Giving Campaign. I know that there is already quite a bit of support among Microsofties for the EFF.
Probably the support would be more widespread, except the GPL is too restrictive for GPL-licensed software to be used in any Microsoft product - though there's lots of stuff compiled with GCC that ships out - like the WebTV console's software. Free software distributed under the less restrictive library licenses, like the png decoder or the boost library, is widespread.
"bright enough to reverse engineer"?? Well, I don't recall if it was DirecTV or EchoStar, but for one of them, the original smart cards has symbol names embedded in the code. As you can guess, this makes it substantially easier to reverse engineer!!! jbx