Cringely: OS X on Intel 707
sti writes: "Cringely's column this week argues that Apple should port OS X to the Intel platform. He makes an interesting case for it. I would definitely favour this. I've always had this warm spot in my heart for Apple but rarely had the money to pay for their overpriced hardware."
Wouldn't be the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the only way for OS X to be viable on x86 is with different pricing. Say something like $50 for no support, but $150 with support. That way way nerds like us can play around with a leet OS cheaply, while those who need support would make up for lost hardware profits.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:3, Interesting)
On an off topic tangent... Does anybody know how much OS X can be optimized? Are there still significant speed improvements to be made?
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll see a huge leap in performance after they get aqua accelerated via the graphics hardware. Since the graphics hardware (which these days is insanely fast) will be handling it, the CPU will have more power to use for other things. How much more? I don't know, but judging from the looks of things (anti-aliased, alpha layered, bezier curved, quartz rendered, drop shadowed, etc), I'm sure it will be significant.
Window buffering isn't turned on by default, so a 800x600 window at millions of colors eats up 1.9 megs of ram. If you're the type of person who likes to have 70 windows open at a time, this adds up very fast. With window buffering, each window will use 8.5-10x less memory. So with those 70 windows, instead of using 133 megs of ram, they use 15 megs. That's a lot of ram that could be going elsewhere, and since you won't be using as much swap or any at all, you get a huge speed increase.
A big one which can't be dealt with on a technological perspective is our dependancy of the Classic compatibility environment. Some people like having it open at all times for maximum compatibility. Well, even if they don't, having to open that One Small Thing(tm) in Classic is a pain in the ass because it uses an astronomical amount of CPU power and Ram. So the sooner we lose this dependancy, the better.
And from the looks of it, getting MacOS X synced up to FreeBSD 4.5 might be good. I'm sure we all love "hundreds of fixes, updated many system components, made several substantial performance improvements, and addressed a wide variety of security issues." Enough said.
After it's all said and done, I'd at least hope that it would be on par with MacOS 9. A little slower, yes, but not drastically.
So when is all this coming? It would have to be on or around March 24th, 2002. That's when the transition to MacOS X is supposed to be complete. What better way to celebrate than a major upgrade? If we're still bitching about something as general as speed after the transition is all said and done, then either Apple failed with MacOS X, or they need to extend the transition period.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:3, Funny)
From what I hear it's not very optimized at all. It doesn't run bad on my G4 466 with 896 MB, but OS 9.2.2 runs noticeably faster.
The nice thing about OS 9.2.2 is if it ever runs too fast, you can just hold down the mouse button to stop it and let you catch up. :-)
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, I'd have to agree with the poster you replied too--I use OS X 10.1 on a G3/300 and I don't have any of the kind of problems you talk about. Perhaps you're missing something?
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:4, Informative)
<key>BackingCompression</key>
<dict>
<key>compressionScanTime</key>
<real>5.000000000000000e+00</real>
<key>minCompressableSize</key>
<integer>8193</integer>
<key>minCompressionRatio</key>
<real>1.100000023841858e+00</real>
</dict>
I don't know if this makes a difference, but I run 10.1.2 on an iBook 500 with 640M of memory, and the performance is very nice. (BTW, I didn't come up with this hack - it's from a MacOS mailing list, IIRC).
Also, if you are running Netscape, be aware that it busy loops and consumes a lot of CPU even if it's not displaying any animations. It will sit there and consume 50% of your CPU while you have it hidden.
Also, if you have Word for MacOS X, be aware that it also busy loops, and consumes a truly impressive amount of CPU.
If you don't know what this means, the deal is that in a non-pre-emptive O.S., most applications just sit there in the event loop waiting for something to happen, and they expect the system to take control away from them when they call getNextEvent (or whatever it is in MacOS 9) if there's another application with an event running. I suspect that Netscape and Office are both expecting this to happen when they call the carbon version of getNextEvent, but they're calling a non-blocking getNextEvent, so they just sit there going "is there an event?", hearing "no," and then doing the same thing again over and over again. I'm sure this would be really easy to fix, but although I reported the bug on Netscape, at least, the next version that came out was still broken in this way.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right - it wouldn't work. There is no way that Apple could come up with an OS that has even half of the hardware support that Windows does. Hardware support on the x86 platform is no easy task. Just look how far Linux has come, and how much farther it has to go.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
I have a Promise raid controller in my computer, I clicked on the box for the driver update and my machine stopped booting, even if safe mode. I had to roll back to the latest working version of hardware, and then it was really fragged. It seemed to míx and match the different versions of drivers.. etc
After about 2 hours of trying to rescue the system, I was able to get it to boot into safe mode. I removed by hand the drivers that it installed for the raid controller, and un-installed all the hardware from the registry.
After redetecting all my hardware again, things seemed to work somewhat normally. At that point, I just copied all my important documents off the machine onto my 'Linux in the Closet(TM)' server, and reinstalled the machine.
To say the least, I don't just click/update anymore especially with drivers. I try to stick only to security updates and only udpate hardware drivers if they are not working fully or promise great performance increase to outweigh the risk of loosing the machine. (A chance I usually take with my video card)
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
For the same reason it is hard for Linux: there's lots of hardware which means lots of money | time | spec sharing needs to go into supporting each piece of hardware.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
True, but Apple doesn't have many configurations to begin with. There are just too many configurations among even Dell and Gateway for Apple to deal with at this point. The only way I can see it happening is if OS X were to be installed on a special model only.
Sadly, you are right about MS having all the apps.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
Try again.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
I certainly hope not! If Apple were to do this I would expect them to push the supported version every chance they get. If they had even 25% of the desktop market support could be very lucrative.
Re:Wouldn't be the same (Score:2)
Hardware is much better these days, yes. Still, run out and look at how much crappy hardware is still made. Cheap USB devices, scanners, printers, video cards, and sound cards. Standardizing on a few models would be good, but very few in the x86 world have similar setups, and not everybody buys quality hardware.
Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:4, Insightful)
The hardware is half the magic!!
The reason OS X and all the Mac OS's before it work so well, is that there is a finite, documented set of hardware that it has to work with. Unlike Linux and Windows OS developers, Mac OS developers don't have to worry about every pre 1990 ISA soundblaster compatable card, periphial, and motherboard.
Yes, OS X is great, so go support the company who put it together, by buying one of thier computers. You won't be disapointed.
Re:Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:2)
Re:Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:2)
Userlands tend to not support hardware so much
uh ? (Score:2, Insightful)
My audio application programmer doesn't have to know shit about pre 1990 ISA soundblaster compat i ble card. That's the task either of creative labs, either of my OS provider. Like it's not the task of the internet exploder team to support my modem, and in the opposite direction it's not the task of my telco to tell what email client to use.
Re:uh ? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Uh?" indeed. He was talking about the OS developers. On the PC they have to worry about things like pre 1990 ISA (not quite) soundblaster compatible cards.
Not Overpriced Hardware, it's STILL Microsoft's! (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the iBook. Small, light, preforms decent. Try to find a brand name x86 for the same money with similar equiptment. Same for the iMac.
Yes, you can say that you can _build your own_ for less with x86. x86 to Apple is already comparing apples to oranges, so to further try to compare a home built to off the shelf brand name is not a fair comparison.
SO, what's the REAL problem with APPLE?
When you can get an iMac for $799, an iBook for $1199, and then have to pay $550 for MS Office X who wants to buy it? When you can get at least the basic MS Office bundled with almost all x86 brand name hardware for almost nothing!
Don't bother arguing the Open Source office suites to me, I know. That doesn't change the fact that public perception is in the believe that you NEED MS Office to make a computer useful.
Re:Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:3, Informative)
Neither do Linux and Windows application developers. That's what libraries and the OS and device drivers are for. I just wrote a Python program that plays music, that I'm running on Linux, and I sure as hell didn't take into account what kind of sound card I happen to have.
Mac developers don't worry much about Mac hardware either, but not because there's not a lot of variation of hardware. It is because MacOS is wonderfully device-independent. That is why I can run MacOS 7.5.5 on my Amiga, using a program called ShapeShifter which acts like a bunch of MacOS device drivers that wrap around my AmigaOS device drivers. I guarantee you that they guys at Ambrosia never anticipated the hardware that I play "Escape Velocity Override" on.
I'm sure that the limited range of Mac hardware, sure makes things easier for the guys at Apple who write drivers, but to app developers, it is insignificant.
Re:Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:2)
Re:Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! (Score:2)
Its going to be hard (Score:3, Insightful)
They are going to have to support a vast number of devices and hardware that just don't happen on the mac.
Plus the fun of trying to provide a dual boot situation - given the average user as well as the tendancy for MS installers to trounce over anything in their way. Just doing a non destructive repartitioning would be interesting.
And as for reading the filesystem that are already there (people will want their data, right?) - well at the least it would compromise security (The new OS would probably not respect account privledges as you would be root) and at the worst would stand a real chance of corrupting the existing system.
Overall, as a clean install, it might be a goer (I'd be interested), but how many people are in that market?
Michael
Re:Its going to be hard (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem porting would be Quartz. From what I understand, Quartz is rather heavily optimized for AltiVec. They might be able to help the x86 version along with better video card acceleration, but they would probably have to settle for slower speeds there anyway. The other problem would be Classic. If Apple even bothered porting Classic to x86, it would run incredibly slow because it would have to emulate a PowerPC as well as a 68K chip.
However, a port to x86 would bring up some very interesting possibilities, such as a WINE type system for running Windows binaries, rather than a Virtual PC type full emulation. Or perhaps an end to this stigma MacOS has in the eyes of game developers.
Re:Its going to be hard (Score:2)
Actually, while Quartz got a number of AltiVec optomizations in 10.1, it actually runs perfectly fine on G3 computers as long as they have a decent graphics card, so I doubt this would be a real problem. Besides that, Apple is working on optimizing Quartz essentially by making use of chips' 3D hardware, which will, if successful, have the rather amusing effect of essentially putting Quartz on top of OpenGL. The important thing to remember in any case is that Quartz is still a very new graphics system that is still only capable of really making use a fairly small subset of what most graphics chips could do for it, and such benefits would be cross-platform. (For example, Classic offloads scrolling to the graphics chip, and a number of high-quality publishing cards allowed it even to offload font routines and more. Quartz can't do any of that yet (although Apple is definitely working on it). In other words, Quartz is still not very tied-down to any particular hardware. So I wouldn't view that as a point of concern.
Re:Its going to be hard (Score:2)
I stand corrected. However, my point still remains. If the Darwin people are already doing the work of porting to x86, what does Apple need to do? Maybe Apple would need to help out the Darwin guys more than they already do until they have a sizable portion of the hardware market supported, and then just let the magic of open source do the rest.
Re:Its going to be hard (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read the article, and it makes no sense. Cringely seems to think that a magical port of OS X to Intel would suddenly be a worthy Microsoft competitor, with no mention of software! It's stupid. Not only that, the whole first paragraph is about how every competitor to Microsoft makes Microsoft products better and kills the competitor. This is supposed to be encouraging? A pretty OS X running on Intel hardware with a handful of Cocoa shareware applications would be no more a threat to Microsoft than the BeOS was. And we know where they are today.
- j
But Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
and it would be a waste of time. Most users are simply not going to bother loading another OS with Windows, that's why BeOS failed. Linux is making some headway because (a) it's free as in beer and (b) it's free as in liberty. We don't need another stinkin proprietry OS, one is enough and users know it.
easy peasy (Score:2, Informative)
But would apple really want to do this?
The strength of apple has allways been tight integration of hardware/OS. But with such diversity in the x86 world, it throws open a whole load of problems that apple have never had to deal with - support for various chips/chipsets, interdependency problems, conflicts, support for non-standard hardware, support for the latest, greatest graphics cards etc.
Quite a number of the things which apple get right but MS dont is purely because apple have allways gone their own on the hardware side. If they ported to x86, they would be in direct competition with MS, with all the drawbacks of the architecture.
Boring Sunday again? (Score:2, Redundant)
As soon as you stop building crap with IRQs and BIOS instead of OpenFirmware etc. they might think about it.
Until then (and likely thereafter) You will get what You pay for.
By the way, when will Porsche build front wheel driven cars, so I can pick out the engine and put it into a SMART?
If You dont want it, dont buy it, if you want it cheaper, just go ahead and make one on your own or start off with a free project and make it usable. But these silly articles about OS X in Intel dont help anybody unless Apple says something (new) about this subject.
Apples looked at this in the past (Score:5, Informative)
The article also talks about the work done by ARDI, the firm mentioned in the InfoWorld story.
Apple assembled a small team and got Mac OS runnning pretty quickly, but it seemed the firm didn't have the willpower to push it to market.
It probably would be different this time around with the forceful Steve Jobs at the helm.
Did that bullet hit the pinky toe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't be a smart move unless Apple decided it wanted to move out of the Home Desktop business and simply make their machines for professional use... which they're bordering close to, but this would render all the iFruit campaigns obsolete, and this kind of intrudes of Apple's whole originating philosophy of doing something different than what all the other business-class computer companies (IBM, HP, Xerox, etc.) were doing...
Apple is a hardware company (Score:2, Interesting)
If anything, I'd rather see Apple release OS X as a GUI that rides on top of Linux, and help the Linux world fight the good fight. New OSes just divide so that others [microsoft.com] can conquer, and users know this -- that's why new ones like BeOS don't sell.
It wouldn't work (Score:2)
Microsoft would fight this hard. Unless the anti-trust case suddenly developes teeth (yeah, right) it's much safer staying in its niche.
Remember, MS controls the hardware manufacturers and the applications. They could easily drop support for MS-Office on MacOS and punish hardware manufacturers to keep MacOS out.
As it is, Apple is doing Ok. As long as they can keep coming up with neat stuff like the new iMac, they can hold on to their core users and maybe even expand into neat consumerish devices.
If they want to go back to being mainstream, however, then they need something even more radical than MacOS on Intel. At the very least they need to cut their dependance on MS. Perhaps if they joined the OpenOffice initiative that would be a step in the right direction.
Re:It wouldn't work (Score:2)
MS could fight it tooth and nail and it wouldnt matter one bit. First, there are tons sales to be made , with or without MS interaction. Think of all the govts that are tinkering with dropping MS in favor of an open soure system, well darwin is, they can inspect and recompile it. Think of all the Art Poser types, that have a 4 year old PC daddy gave em and wish they could have an Apple. Next hink of all the *NIX developer types that would love to use it as their destop *NIX, maybe not their servers but the workstation side.
But as has been stated here many times Apple is a hardware company,
Joining , full strength the OpenOffice initiative would be a good choice, bundling an Office Capable suite in OXS that ran on x86 would be great, and a boon to sales I am certain, MAJOR work needs done on the filter side of office, and a binary compatible, database to access.
One problem, X86 is forking, IA64 and X86-64.....
3 Years from now....The major companies will be pushing this for hardware and renewed software sales.
Actually, the problem is still the apps. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the biggest problem will be getting all of the application manufacturers to release two versions of the software. And before everyone talks about the 68K->PowerPC as a refutal, don't forget that that was only transitional. Try and find 68K binaries now. You get lucky somtimes, but not normally.
Now, the problem is simple. If you release on two platforms, you have to support two platforms. That is, two compilers, and their associated bugs. That is, two different endian systems. That is twice the headache in any project managers book.
Re:Actually, the problem is still the apps. (Score:5, Interesting)
Trust me. Standard application developers won't be worried about shipping two binaries if it means doubling (tripling, quadrupling?) the market for their products.
Makes Apple a threat (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely points out possible benefits to Apple if they enter the OS market on Intel (and has several good points). But what about the certain negatives? Apple now is a mild threat to MS's power. But if they 'infringed' on turf that was MS's, they would certainly be targeted by the giant. Is it really in Apple's best interests to rouse that big of bully? I don't think so.
Cringely mentions Netscape in his article (how by competition, MS made IE better). Look what happened in that case. Would Apple want to risk the same fate? To sacrifice themselves so that Windoz might be a little nicer to use.
Come on.
Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely resolves this complex matter in the space of a paragraph length assertion "The upside for Apple is enormous. Suddenly, their software budget is leveraged across a much larger number of units, making the company more profitable and able to spend even more on making the software better."
Really, Cringely? I think we need more than a handwaving assertion to back this up. e.g. What effect will porting OS X to Intel have on Apple Hardware sales? What will MS's response will be - will it withdraw its Office and IE products for OS X? etc.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely resolves this complex matter in the space of a paragraph length assertion "The upside for Apple is enormous. Suddenly, their software budget is leveraged across a much larger number of units, making the company more profitable and able to spend even more on making the software better."
Actually I think he's right about profitability. Apple typically makes a much greater profit per unit of software than per unit of hardware. There have been years when Apple's entire profit margin has been from its software division(s).
The problem that Cringley misses is that Apple has to think not only of its profits but also of its revenues. If it lost the hardware business it would immediately drop its revenues from $8 billion to around $500 million. Even if its profits went up at the same time (which they might), they would get crucified on Wall Street for this. No sane company would ever pursue a strategy that involved such a dramatic cut in its revenue stream.
So even though Cringely is right about profitability he ignores the revenue impact so his overall argument is flawed.
Re:Crap (Score:2)
Furthermore, however, the profit margins on Apple hardware are generally quite large. Excluding the iMac and iBook (whose profit margins are extremely low; something like $40 on the old iMacs and $50 on the 12.1" iBooks) Apple pulls in $200+ profits on each computer and $250+ profit on their monitors minimum. Now notice that of the products I listed earlier only two are over $300 for the consumer, and tell me that the profit per unit is higher for software. In fact, if you check out some of Apple's more recent financials, the hardware profits outflank software products by a massive majority, something in the order of about 5:1.
Unless you've got a source, I've got to label you as either a troll or a wishful thinker.
Re:Crap (Score:2)
The system software hasn't been free since the days of System 5 (or was it System 6, I don't remember). System 7.5 - 9 were all $99, and they've had AppleShare Server, and its later incarnation, AppleShareIP being sold at several hundred dollars for the longest time.
And P.S. Its Claris not Clarus. Claris was the software company, Clarus was the dogcow.
Re:Crap (Score:2)
Unless you have a source I'm not aware of, then I'll assert that that's just wrong. Until Jobs took over, all software at Apple was available for free except for the products that came out of Clarus, so what you're saying is that Clarus held up Apple. That's a pretty big lump to swallow.
Claris (note spelling) was a wholly-owned subsidary of Apple and it had years when it made a substantial profit. There were some years pre-Jobs when Claris was the only part of Apple that sold software, there were other times when both Apple and Claris sold software separately. There was also a run of about 10 years when Claris didn't exist and Apple sold plenty of software. Your assertion of fact is erroneous.
Further, even now, Apple really has only a few major software products that have the potential to bring in money: Mac OS X ($129), whose sales have tapered; QuickTime Pro ($29); Final Cut Pro ($999); AppleWorks (still available for $69 but also shipping now with all new computers); and DVD Studio Pro. The rest of their software products are given away free--including their kick-ass developer tools, i* software, Mac OS X upgrades, QuickTime Streaming Server, etc. Again, I find it highly unlikely that those pieces of software sustain Apple's profits.
Not so. For example in 1994 Apple "only" made $310 million in profits. It isn't hard to see how a major proportion of that could come from software rather than hardware revenues, especially when you consider operating margins that year were under $150 million.
Furthermore, however, the profit margins on Apple hardware are generally quite large. Excluding the iMac and iBook (whose profit margins are extremely low; something like $40 on the old iMacs and $50 on the 12.1" iBooks) Apple pulls in $200+ profits on each computer and $250+ profit on their monitors minimum. Now notice that of the products I listed earlier only two are over $300 for the consumer, and tell me that the profit per unit is higher for software.
If the profit margins are so great on hardware how did Apple loose $1047 million in 1997? Yes, when Apple is doing everything right it can have great margins on its hardware. But that is not always the case. Even when Apple was loosing a billion dollars a year its software units were still profitable. There have been years when Apple has made staggering losses on its hardware and modest but real profits on its software. 1996 and 1997 were examples of this.
Unless you've got a source, I've got to label you as either a troll or a wishful thinker.
Sorry, I was an Apple employee for four years. I helped write a lot of this very profitable software. I know what I'm talking about.
percentage, maybe - but raw numbers? (Score:2)
they can make more selling a handful of apps that mostly only run on the boxes they already sold for way more money?
Re:percentage, maybe - but raw numbers? (Score:2)
Exactly. Mainly because the cost of manufacturing software is small (print the manual, burn the CD, total cost maybe $15 on a $100+ retail price). The cost of manufacturing a hardware box is large, say $1200-$1500 for a $2000 box. Imagine that Apple builds 250,000 machines at $1500 a pop, but only sells 50,000 at the original $2000 price. The market changes or they just built a bad machine, so they have to sell the rest at $1000 just to shift the inventory. They loose a fortune and their hardware profits are seriously negative for that quarter.
Back in the bad old days, pre-Jobs Apple built up large inventories of new models and hoped they could sell them. They often produced models that sold far fewer than they had hoped, so they had to sell off the remaining stock at a loss. This not only impacted their bottom line but it ate into the sales of the next model and lowered customer's expectations of what a Mac should cost. This is exactly why Apple lost $1 billion for two years straight.
Software is typically produced in small runs and its costs of manufacture is so small you can afford to just junk any excess inventory.
Thankfully Apple has learned to reduce its inventory to avoid this problem. They now maintain one of the lowest inventories of any manufacturer in any industry in the world.
What MS's response will be (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Bundle IE with the OS, release Office for MacWindows: Microsoft Standard Operating Procedure
3. Discontinue support for IE and Office for OS-X: claim that the effort in porting Windows has consumed resources previously used for Mac apps. Promise updates 'soon'
4. Release products that directly compete with iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, iEtc... : replay the counter-Netscape strategy
5. Watch Apple dry up and turn to dust
Cringley uses Borland and Netscape to make his point. The more obvious conclusion is that "he who competes with Microsoft, dies." I don't think Apple users and shareholders would like that, would they?
Re:Crap (Score:2)
All of this desire is driven by Intel people who are jealous of the Mac OS. Yes, jealous. It's the coolest thing on wheels, and the people who are used to all of the operating systems, all of the games, and all of the press are mad that they can't have it.
Apple sells hardware. Good hardware. Apple's budget goes to hardware R&D. They don't really need to worry about putting more money into the software. There is already plenty of effort going into OS X, especially now that OS 9 is largely shut down.
Apple is doing well. The world is watching and largely approving. The cadres of drooling i386 folks are evidence enough (OS X as a GUI for Linux? Come on.) I hope they stick to what is working so far.
Just make Cringely a Slashbox, for Christ's Sake (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth (to be just a little bit on topic), I've been using Win2K and Linux at home and OS X on a G3 Mac at work. The 10.1 update to OS X along with the Omniweb browser has made that my favorite platform, bar none, to surf the web. For games, it sucks.
It has been fairly stable--I get a hard crash (locked up) about once a month now. The machine is also running Apache, ftpd, and telnetd, and for all intents and purposes I treat it just like my Linux box except that the browser is nicer...
Honestly, I would rather not have OS X on Intel hardware--it is dog slow even on this 400 MHz G3 after all the updates/patches have been applied. What I would like is just a browser as nice as Omniweb.
It would be best for us, it would be best of MS, (Score:2)
What kind of argument is this to try to convince Apple? "Give Microsoft a decent competition to bring them back into focus and back in touch with the market."
Apple are just fine in their niche of selling overpriced hardware using better software. Why would they leave this cosy little corner?
Apple hardware monopoly implies proprietary x86 (Score:2, Insightful)
Could this happen? You betcha. The PPC line is stretched to the limit with nothing new in sight. Motorola wants no part of desktop processors. AMD and Intel are racing to the moon in speed and performance, while holding down price. Already the Apple PPC system is in the dust vis-a-vis price/performance. By this time next year it will be all over. The price/performance gap will be too wide to ignore any more. PPC can not compete with the big bucks in the long run. That is when Apple will make the leap.
Chocolates (Score:2, Flamebait)
This is the nth concurrent Cringely article posted on slashdot in as many weeks, would you people fucking knock it off? Timmah: cut it the fuck out. It is getting ridiculous that the best you can do is post YACA (yet another Cringely article), there has got to be more in the submission bin than just links to pbs.com. Hasn't someone posted a story from ZDNet or Wired you can link to instead?
Well, it would kill Mac Hardware. (Score:4, Insightful)
Love it or loathe it, Mac Hardware has consistently been the most interesting consumer products in computing. To wit:
Last time Apple licensed their OS and made beige boxes like everyone else they almost went out of business.
As far as anyone complaining that Apple hardware is too expensive, go on eBay and buy any slot-loading iMac, max out it's ram, and install OS X. It runs OS X great, and you can get these darn things for, oh about $300 dollars. If they're anything like my Macs, they will last 6 years without a blip.
Re:Well, it would kill Mac Hardware. (Score:2)
Why Apple has, and why Apple won't (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple won't release a general Intel port of OS X. It makes no sense for them to do so. Apple makes the vast majority of its revenue through hardware sales, somewhere around 90-95%. If they released Mac OS X for Intel their hardware sales would fall dramatically. Because the unit cost of an operating system is much less than the cost of a hardware box (say $100 compared with $2000) Apple's revenues would fall precipitously.
No company can gp to Wall Street and say: I'm going to chop my annual revenues down from $8 billion to $500 million. Can you imagine what would happen to the Apple stock price if they announced this? It simply can't be done.
So why do Apple keep the Intel port of OS X alive? After all it costs real money to keep all that software running cross-platform.
There are two reasons. First as a hedge against Motorola or IBM screwing Apple on the PowerPC processor. In the last few years the clock rate (and other key performance measures) of the PowerPC line has fallen a long way behind Intel. If IBM/Moto can't get competitive again, then Apple wants the option of putting Intel CPUs into Macs. This would not mean you could buy an off-the-shelf Gateway/Dell/whatever and run OS X on it. You can bet Apple would make sure it only ran on a "real" Mac to preserve their hardware revenues.
The second reason they keep the port up is because it helps them produce better code. Having to write code that runs on more than one CPU family is a good engineering discipline. The different architectures stress different parts of the code and you will often see bugs on one platform that are hidden on the other.
So Apple already have OS X on Intel, but don't expect to see it in the marketplace anytime soon.
Re:Why Apple has, and why Apple won't (Score:3, Insightful)
As you may remember, when Darwin was first released, many people wanted it to run on Intel, and this ended up being a massive job that still isn't finished. It wasn't that anything had been removed; it's that it simply hadn't been maintained at all since the old Mach 2.5 version, so the foundation, while there, was simply horrendously out of date. Had Apple continued Intel ports, and especially if they had done an Alpha port, it seems as though that code would have been included as well. Recently, in fact, as Darwin's been gotten to limp along on a few varieties of Intel motherboards (and "limp" is definitely the right word here), Apple's been helping a bit with the Intel port, but, again, they're having as much trouble as anyone. No "Here's a secret250,000-line patch to make it work." Just problem solving line by line, conflict by conflict. Given all that, I've always regarded the "OS X is secretely running on Intel" rumor as just that. A rumor.
Unless you've got evidence otherwise, then another argument against OS X on Intel is simply that, despite the rumors, it doesn't exist.
Re:Why Apple has, and why Apple won't (Score:5, Interesting)
Where'd you learn this?
Four years as a senior software engineer on Apple's OS teams.
The last non-PPC port of OS X was Rhapsody DR2, to my knowledge, which lacked Aqua, Quartz, and Carbon. (It was, at that point, still essentially OPENSTEP 5 with a Platinum interface and QuickTime Media Layer injected, which at the time included QuickDraw GX and QuickDraw 3D.) It ran only on Intel and PowerPC.
What you say is true but incomplete. Mac OS X on Intel has been kept up until at least beta. After that I don't have first-hand knowledge, but I'd guess they still build it, as most of the work was done then. Aqua, Quartz and Carbon were included. Classic was not.
After that release, Jobs announced that Rhapsody was DBA (Dead Before Arrival) and announced his new Mac OS X scheme, which included the fact that the new operating system would not run on Intel. Mac OS X DP1 and later did not run on Intel hardware. And at no point did I hear anything about Alpha, and find it highly unlikely if for no other reason than due to the Darwin sources that were initially released.
Well I've seen Mac OS X beta running on Intel and I've seen the source code that supports it too, so it is real. The Alpha port went away much earlier, back in the Rhapsody days.
As you may remember, when Darwin was first released, many people wanted it to run on Intel, and this ended up being a massive job that still isn't finished. It wasn't that anything had been removed; it's that it simply hadn't been maintained at all since the old Mach 2.5 version, so the foundation, while there, was simply horrendously out of date. Had Apple continued Intel ports, and especially if they had done an Alpha port, it seems as though that code would have been included as well.
Imagine the situation where Apple did not want the outside world to know that they were continuing to maintain an Intel port. They would have released a version of the Darwin source that had the Intel parts switched out. Internally Apple has a different Darwin source tree than the one that has been released to the community.
Recently, in fact, as Darwin's been gotten to limp along on a few varieties of Intel motherboards (and "limp" is definitely the right word here), Apple's been helping a bit with the Intel port, but, again, they're having as much trouble as anyone. No "Here's a secret250,000-line patch to make it work." Just problem solving line by line, conflict by conflict. Given all that, I've always regarded the "OS X is secretely running on Intel" rumor as just that. A rumor.
Well it isn't. I've seen it, used it, worked on it. It doesn't really matter if you think I'm wrong, I have been in a privileged position that you haven't, sorry.Re:Why Apple has, and why Apple won't (Score:3)
Re:Why Apple has, and why Apple won't (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for doubting, but you didn't mention you used to work at Apple on the OS X Intel port. :)
Just to clarify, I didn't work directly on the Intel port but the software I was working on was ported and so I had to keep it maintained and tested on Intel.
Obviously that would change things a bit, to say the least. My one question, though, if you happen to know the answer, is why Apple hasn't bothered to give the Darwin community the source now, since they would still like it tremendously and it would be very helpful. I'm asking as a question of logistics, not truth.
Mainly because people would draw exactly the right conclusion if Apple did release it: that Apple is preparing to move away from PowerPC to Intel. That would cause a lot of problems for Apple with its investors, with Motorola/IBM (which isn't exactly a stable relationship at the best of times), with its current customers and with Microsoft. As has been noted elsewhere, if Apple did go head-to-head with Microsoft in the Intel-based OS market it would put Office for OS X at serious risk.
So I don't think its a matter of logistics. In fact because Apple has to maintain two Darwin code bases (internal and external) to logistics of not releasing the Intel version are somewhat costly.
We wish. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Office is no longer available on any apple lines, neither is Explorer.
2) Office XP++ doesn't write in any format office X can read.
3) Office was never available for OSX on intel.
4) Microsoft tells Dell, HP, etc that if they want to offer OSX then windows wil cost $$$$ more per copy.
which leaves apple going steadily bankrupt, and the masses with no options if they want user-friendly but don't want Bill....
I'd love it, I'd be first in line to buy it, but it ain't gonna happen
It's the Apps, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's BSD, so OSS apps can be compiled for it, but people don't want abiword or kword, they want MS Word. There's no way apple is going to bundle pre-compiled OSS software, and even if they did, it's not what people are looking for. If anything, without apps, this would be a niche desktop OS.
Unless Cringley expects a perfect win32 emulator to appear, or perhaps he supports a classic mode for windows [this is feasible, grab the netraverse guys and port win4lin to bsd in a rootless mode], this won't work.
Re:It's the Apps, stupid (Score:2)
If anything, I'd say that all home hackers should think about writing programs for MacOS X, there is a huge possible market out there, and it's not saturated to the brink of destruction such as the windows market is. M$ is doing the best thing for the consumer when they are bundling a bunch of software (it's cheaper, less hassle, and the software works good enough for most people), I am sure Apple would do it even more if they could, and they are already doing it. But they lag behind, so I don't see it as MacOS X having a shortage of software, I see it as a way to make money. But then again, I'm a software engineer and not a buyer of Apples;)
Re:It's the Apps, stupid (Score:2)
OS/2 failed for more reasons than just being Win16 compatible, such as Microsoft screwing them for daring to preload it, and IBM's major competitors not particularly wanting to give them money.
Could you explain how a competitor to a company with 90% of the market and thousands upon thousands of apps only available for it's product is supposed to compete, except by providing a migration path?
Counterpundit (Score:5, Interesting)
Technical hurdles and business considerations aside, cast your memories back to 1997 when Jobs shocked the world by teaming up with Gates. Remember that $150 million in non-voting Apple stock purchased by Microsoft, and patent cross-licensing deal? Anyone? Here's the Apple Press Release [apple.com] in case you forgot. Apple was in bad shape, and Microsoft was up for monopolistic practices. Jobs agreed to make IE the default browser for the Mac, and Gates agreed to give Office better treatment on the Mac platform.
According to my vivid imagination, Jobs had a word in Gates' ear, saying words to the effect that Gates could crush Apple like a bug if he cared to, but then he'd have no real competitor to point at in defense of monopoly charges. Why not just let Apple have its little niche, whispers Jobs to Gates, and we'll agree not to get cocky and muscle in on your turf? The IE and Office deals merely consummated the marriage, as it were. Jobs is happy because Apple gets to survive, and Gates is happy because he has a harmless competitor that he can act all panikcy about.
This is pure speculation on my part, of course, but if there's much truth in it, you can expect Apple to be totally uninterested in the OSX for PC idea. I'm thinking that both Jobs and Gates would still prefer a no-compete situation.
Re:Counterpundit (Score:2)
This, however, is just about as speculative as your explanation, although there is some circumstantial evidence in its favor.
C'mon Taco (Score:3, Funny)
Apple don't sell hardware. (Score:2)
There is no evidence that an Apple operating system purchased individually would be anything other than "overpriced".
Car Analogies have to Stop (Score:2, Informative)
Yes it is true that Porsche buyers will always WANT to buy Porshes. But Mac users (not zealots mind you) HAVE to buy Macs.
If I could get a Mac in a beige box that was as fast (faster?) than a purrty Apple case and it was $1000 cheaper you can sure as hell bet that I would.
How many people do you know with Apple towers have ugly, but functional, beige monitors attached to them? Nearly every Mac user I know breaks the aesthetic with an ugly monitor.
I'm a professional. I need to get work done. Getting it done econimically is always nice. Sure I like Apple, I like the design. But I LOVE my money.
OS X on Intel would definitely hurt Apple. No non-zealot would ever value the architecture and design of Moto/Apple over the price and performance Intel/Generic PC maker. All things else. (the OS) being equal.
Too Late (Score:2, Insightful)
Years ago 9 (1990-1992) Apple had the chance to move out of the hardware buisness, but they chose not to. Now they are locked into their hardware sales. To release an x86 version would kill their hardware business.
Their only real chance at the big OS market of M$ is to abandon their hardware buisness and focus on building OS sales to all types of hardware.
And to those that say that the mac is stable because of the consistant hardware, it has been my opinion that the mac os crashes just as often if not more that a PC.
Cringley missed something. (Score:5, Insightful)
That way dual-booting might actually be a nice thing. On one side you have linux, on the other you have OSX, a beautiful and powerfull OS, not some Microsoft piece of crap. Plus we get nice hardware. Altivec anyone?
Re:Cringley missed something. (Score:2)
If you were running slashdot on a PPC, what do you think would hold up better, OSX or Linux? I know where my money is.
Re:Cringley missed something. (Score:2)
Sun anyone? (Score:2)
Cringely should really examine those parallels more closely.
JJ
How many CALs for OS X on Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody who doubts me should consider the costs of:
- Seperate Microsoft CALs for everything under the sun.
- Down-time caused by virii, worms, and other compromise.
- Bandwidth costs associated with said worms. (Anybody still paying a Code Red debt? Anybody go out of business because of it?)
- Down-time due to hardware failure caused by use of cheap/shoddy/no-name components.
- Hour wasted re-installing OS 2-3 times annually (3-5 times annually in an office/heavy use scenario)
- Time wasted installing/finding/troubleshooting device drivers when installing hardware.
I'm not saying there won't ever be a hardware problem or support issue to arise on a Mac, because there will be, but I'm saying there are a number of hidden costs in Windows PCs.
When you factor in those hidden costs, and factor in the lowest bang for your buck prices at Apple in history, Macs become much more attractive for regular business users, not just web-designers, programmers, and graphic artists. Are you telling me that whatever Unix apps your company runs couldn't get ported to OS X or accessed as a web-application?
Data-processing workers or secretarys could even live with sub-$1000 iMac systems. Beef them up with OS X and 512 meg of RAM and you've got more than ample resources to run Office v.X and email, which is about 99% of my mom's job (and since most people know as much about computers as my mom, that's a good measureing stick.)
Re:How many CALs for OS X on Windows? (Score:2)
Of course it can, OS X is a clone of FreeBSD.
I worked in a place where we had 200 Windows PC's and 10 Mac's. Trust me, it's the Mac's that needed more maintenance. You got font problems, QuarkXPress crashing by itself and the keyboards had quiet a few problems.
Sure Mac OS runs flawlessly when you're not doing any serious work.
Re:How many CALs for OS X on Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because most of the people running the area have no idea how to maintain a Mac computer lab. They don't realize that there are things called extensions (under OS x) that can cause conflicts. They don't know how to setup the machines so people can't install software, move the contents of the system folder to the desktop. In general they don't know how to maintain the machines. Same problem within a business environment. I worked for an Apple Authorized Service Provider (we did warranties, etc.) and most of the businesses revenue came in from service contracts. As in companies with 200 pcs and 10 macs realized that their MCSE knew jack shit about keeping the Macs running for the graphics department. So they hired us to take care of the machines.
Let me say again: Macs in most "pc only" environment are not examples of macs on a whole. especially since most still aren't running OS X. Most of those places don't have anyone who actually uses a Mac at home running the network. Let alone someone who has taken a course, or read a book, or even some basic websites on managing a mac network.
Three things wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Overpriced hardware is a myth bordering now on The Big Lie - go to Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP and match any level of the new G4 iMac - then count yer change.
3. Bob, it WOULD cannibalize hardware sales - Apple's largest edge is the OS/box integration, the Mac faithful would still buy the mac boxes, but your average new user would - and does - buy the rattiest box they can find - blind to the reality of the $599 specials. And good luck getting it to run reliably on some box that, as is typical, doesn't even know the names of the cards slapped in it.
Sticking to HW/SW is not so bad - Apple knows that typical system turnover is about three years - would they rather rachet up to making box money or start tomorrow with a herculean effort at supporting all the hardware in the world to make license money? Think you can open a storefront and sell licenses? Or would you rather have a store that can sell someone a solution and make box money?
Anyone know what portion of their business MS makes on licensing the OS alone? Remember, MS makes a lot of software - odds are Apple would not - this number needs to be known before convincing anyone that ramping up the software biz would be their saviour.
I have an iBook2 with OSX because since day one, I open it up, it does everything I ask of it as a plain old person, teacher, writer, webmaster, admin, tourist, scientist, etc. I have yet to crash OSX after 11 months, anything I plug into it fits and works. It is an order of magnitude above any previous HW/SW I've seen or owned. I could run windows on it tomorrow.
But I won't, and not because of religion. because of integration.
rapid apology on the "it's" (Score:2)
Clue. (Score:2)
Porting OS-X to Intell will just decrease the amount of hardware they will sell. That's a no-brainer.
OS X on x86 equals Apple suicide (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you hear it?
That giant sucking sound you hear is the sound of all the developers at Microsoft being pulled off their Apple assignments and reassigned to the XBox.
The vast majority of Mac users use:
Internet Explorer for browsing (Poof!)
Outlook for e-mail (Poof!)
MS Office for word processing, etc (Poof!)
It is also the sound of Microsoft technology being withheld/withdrawn from any ISV that supports the Mac on x86.
That wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear is the sound OEMs that have offered the Mac desktop make when BillG tells them the price of Windows has been tripled. It is also the sound sysadmins make when they discover the time trying to integrate Mac/x86 into the network has also tripled.
That hysterical laughter you hear is Microsoft top brass laughing at the pathetic stooges at DOJ. You can just hear how ludicrous the DOJ case would sound: "Your Honor, I know we said before that Microsoft was exerting monopoly power by developing competing software, but this time we will argue that by refusing to develope IE/Outlook/Office for the Mac, Microsoft is again exerting monopoly power." And the DOJ will get handled yet again.
That gurgling sound you hear is the sound of Apple's cash reserves going down the drain as former stockholders place their money in safer havens, like Enron or Pets.com.
Linux is the only candidate for an alternative desktop on x86 because every other possibility is supported by a company at least partly dependent on Microsoft. The Mac interface (Quartz/Aqua) will never come anywhere near an x86 machine, because Steve Jobs is a good deal smarter than Robert X. Cringeley!
90s Apple Intel Port : The Star Trek Project (Score:4, Insightful)
It's time for a short lesson in Ancient Apple History, kiddies.
It turns out Apple had seriously considered porting the MacOS to Intel hardware in a joint venture with Novell beginning in 1992, as part of the secret, so-called "Star Trek" project (although Intel's Andy Grove knew of and supported it.) It's all covered in detail in Jim Carleton's book "Apple" (yes, sometimes you have to actually read real books, people!), on pg. 166-180, and elsewhere.
The goal was to put the Mac's "finder," which provides the distinctive look and fell of the Macintosh on the screen, onto an Intel-based computer...(Gifford) Calenda designated a former System 7 manager, Chris DeRossi, to head up Apple's side of the project. In a meeting with their colleagues from Novell, someone suggested the endeavor be called "Star Trek". "The idea beaing 'Boldly go where no Macintosh has gone before,' Rolander recalls.
Note that this is all well before the release of Windows 95. One can only wonder what the outcome of a full-out battle of the Mac OS with Windows 95 on Intel boxes would have been, because the project was killed in 1993, shortly after a working prototype was developed. The ostensible reason given by Carleton was that the cost of development was too high : Apple had finite resources, and didn't commit a large enough software budget to handle both the release of MacOS for Power PC hardware and Intel simultaneously.
Carleton goes on to criticize Apple for its short-mindedness in squandering a prime chance to compete for market share. However, the larger debate within Apple has always been whether to pursue the "high-right" strategy of selling small numbers of highly profitable boxes and hardware, or the "low-left" strategy of selling larger numbers of low profit boxes and hardware. The same debate occurred when Apple licensed its hardware in the late 1990s. The discussion ultimately comes down to this basic point.
While I won't go into the merits of both sides of the argument (Carleton does in some detail), I will note that people don't run computers for the operating system : they run it for the applications. For the largest fraction of consumers, the single largest software application is Microsoft's Office. Microsoft now develops and sells Office for MacOS because it is a nice niche market, and doesn't directly compete with it's bread-and-butter Wintel market.
However, would Microsoft develop Office for an Intel-based MacOS directly in competition with Windows? I would bet not. Think about what that means for an Intel-based MacOS.
Best,
Bob
Gates will never allow this to happen... (Score:3, Informative)
Gates will never allow this to happen. If Jobs wanted to move OSX to an Intel platform, he would not be "granted" Microsoft Office to run on that platform. Moreover, its very likely that Gates would then pull Office from the OSX on Apple hardware. This would be suicide for Apple. You can beat your drums all you want and the govt. could threaten the MS monopoly and so on and so forth. In the meantime, Apple would be dead...
FMnot redundant. (Score:3, Informative)
The truth is that OSX sucks. I know, I have it running on my Powerbook. The thing is that MacOS is poorly designed and it has only gotten worse. I really laugh when people say that it is easier, as I find it the most difficult and annoying operating sytem to use.
I will admit that the user interface in OS9 was quite nice, although far from perfect. Unfortunately, OS9 was also unresponsive.
The problem isn't raw speed, which in OSX can sometimes be a factor as well.. but the way that they multitask. OSX will give the active application full tasking priority, lets say it is Internet Explorer or Mozilla.. and it is fetching a page, while it is doing such.. it will put up the wait cursor. While the wait cursor is up, that application is using a lot of CPU and makes it more difficult if not impossible to switch to another application.
This has gotten worse in OSX as it has replaced the popular finder with the Dock. Unfortunately, even without anything running or using lots of CPU.. trying to use the dock to switch between running appliations can be somewhere between difficult and impossible.
Well, this shouldn't be a rant about usablity.. the point is that I don't think that OSX or any other version of MacOS is a very well designed Operating System. The best commercial OS, imho is Irix (although still far from perfect, still better then OSX)
This has BEEN TRIED BEFORE by Apple (Score:3, Informative)
Dell's response was lukewarm at best: we'll consider it, but only if it was COMPLETELY FREE.
You see, Dell had signed exclusive agreements with Microsoft in order to get a better per-unit OS cost from Microsoft. If Dell sold a computer with MacOS, they would have to pay BOTH Microsoft *and* Apple!
In fact, Dell would have to pay MS for every Linux computer they sold (or even a "naked" OS-less computer, if they did that).
You can find lots of references on this, including some old Slashdot stories from the early days.
Here's a bone:
http://macspeedzone.com/archive/articles/applec
-Scott
A disaster scenario for Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe Cringely's bought into this argument now. I expected better from him.
The whole Mac-on-x86 argument has many followers, with multiple -- and frequently contradictory -- goals. Cringely's is to get Microsoft a competitor on their home turf, one with the human-interface knowhow that Linux and other *nix versions don't have. He's a little better at strategizing than most, offering the idea of a strategic alliance with one of the surviving OEMs as a bulwark, but ultimately what he's suggesting is an altruistic gesture from Apple that offers little chance for success and huge odds for catastrophic failure.
Imagine if Steve Jobs were to announce tomorrow morning that OS X for PCs, developed in secret for months, will be available immediately at your nearby Apple Store or CompUSA. Never mind for now the enormous logistical problems of getting the installer to recognize the nearly infinite combinations of PC hardware out there, or the need to repartition your HD to accomodate an HFS+ partition; we'll say that the installer works like a dream. Here's this brand-new, gorgeous OS ready to go -- and there's not a single damn program that'll run on it.
That's because there's no developers' kit out there in the public. Oh, sure, Apple will port its developers' tools, but programmers need time to use it. (It could be that our mythical Stevenote will include a surprise announcement from Adobe that Photoshop 7 is ready to go for OS X-for-Intel, but considering Adobe's reticence in porting to Carbon, that strains credulity far past breaking. And considering that Adobe already has a perfectly good version of Photoshop running on Intel iron, it'll take quite a bit of arm-twisting from Steve to get them happy about more work.) Existing Cocoa apps will need to be recompiled; I'm not even sure how Carbon apps are supposed to move their legacy 680x0 and PowerPC code crossplatform. And good luck getting your Classic applications to run in emulation (and if you didn't create an HFS+ partition during the setup, you won't even be able to get their resource forks copied over.)
So this brand-new OS, which you paid good money for (and you're dreaming if you think Apple can afford to stick with $130 per license), is sitting on your computer without a thing to do. You have to reboot into Windows to get any work done, which makes you seriously wonder why you bothered in the first place. Meantime, the platform shift -- as Cringely says, Apple can't go into this move halfheartedly; OS X for Intel has to be first-class from the outset -- is having the effect of completely killing sales of Apple's remaining PowerPCs. New users are scared off by certain obsolescence; after all, not even Microsoft could keep two full-blown versions of the same OS running on different platforms at the same time, and Apple's clearly given up on the G4. Old-timers like me have no reason to repurchase the new Mac-compatible PCs and waste our existing investments. Plus, Apple's the only vendor of PowerPC-based desktop computers, and they're now battling Dell and Gateway on price; even assuming that they've been licensed as OEMs, they can undercut Apple's prices even more severely than the clones did.
So Apple, by shifting to x86, would have no legacy software, very few willing developers, an extremely dangerous and powerful competitor on Microsoft's home turf, none of the years of optimization that makes OS X run well on G4s, millions in lost sales for their own hardware, millions more lost dollars in R & D, an alienated fan base, and little hope of evading the implosion of Be and other would-be MS competitors. And they would do this -- why? The goodness of their hearts? Apple really has no reason to budge from PowerPC; the platform's still running, if not neck-and-neck with Intel and AMD, at least fast enough to give Mac users value for their money. Porting would not be Apple's best way of leveraging their comfortable niche market -- it would be a leap of desperation from a company that doesn't need to do it.
Re:Price of hardware? (Score:2)
That's hardly a good comparison because I would tinker with any computer which was unfortunate enough to be located in my house.
Re:Overpriced? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason Mac hardware is considered overpriced is because the only thing we can compare them to is the prebuilt kits from Compaq, HP, etc..
There's no DIY aspect to Macs. It's like buying a dishwasher. Which is exactly what Jobs wants in the first place.
But, when you compare all of the Macintosh industry, to all of the x86 industry, the Macs do fall behind in the price department.
This is a visceral implementation of the Cheap, Easy, and Fast problem. Apple chose Fast and Easy. And implemented that well.
Rather than nay-saying anyone who has anything against the pricing of Macs as FUD-broadcasters, I think it is more important to point out how FSCKING SIMPLE AND COOL MacOS is compared to just about anything else in the non-free OS market.
Re:Overpriced? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for ease of use, I'm still not buying the idea that Macs are easier to use. There are ancient studies and a lot of unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence, but not much proof of anything. I think it's pretty much a wash, and probably a dead issue.
As for speed, the G4 leaves me unimpressed. Altivec optimized binaries _do_ scream, but for >95% of the code you run, they don't seem any faster (MHz for MHz) than Intel's Pentium 2/3 generation. Binaries optimized for the P4's extended instructions, and account for the branch predictor that is woefully inadequate for its deep pipeline are also very fast, but in the PC world, this is considered a Bad Thing(R).
Of course, that brings me to one of the more interesting concepts: there is a perverse relationship between the Macintosh and PC worlds. Hardware/software/design deemed good by one camp is considered bad for the other. All-in-one systems have never been popular PC designs, and so on.
Re:Overpriced? (Score:3, Funny)
What is Apple selling? I would argue that Apple sells, "We are the computer company that cares about you. We try to build the best products we possible can." There's a level of trust and loyalty that people give Apple that is unmatched in the industry, and rarely matched outside it. Apple has that reputation because the company listens to customers. Yes, they make unpopular decisions, and a lot of people hate Apple. But Apple customers don't generally feel that way. They generally feel that Apple is doing the best that it can. Can Microsoft say the same? No.
Of course, Microsoft hasn't been able to reverse engineer the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field either.
OSX on Intel boxes (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is making a proffit on it's hardware and as such there is no value to the company to alter it's business model in such a drastic way until such time as they start losing money in their hardware business.
I say this because offering a port of their OS to comodity hardware would completely descimate their hardware business to to offer such a port would nessecerily include removing hardware from their business model completely. Companies line NeXT and Be, had in the past both abandoned their hardware businesses in favor of software as a last corporate gasp - a struggle to remain viable, so if Apple were to take this path, it would be viewed in the context of the past, as if the company were struggling, which for the moment they really are not.
--CTH
Re:Quantitative comparison of price (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that Riskable made the same mistake I did initially... which was selecting a 15" CRT, rather than a 15" LCD.
With the LCD, Dell's offering rounds out at $1289.00.
I could locate no option to add FireWire.
Now which is the bargain computer? Hmmm...
Re:Quantitative comparison of price (Score:4, Informative)
Compare two cars: Ford Mustang vs. Jaguar XK Series (I'm not going into great detail on the specific options/prices)
Both have 4 wheels
Both have a stearing wheel
Both have bucket seats
Both have CD Stereo
Both can drive you around town
Price of the Mustang is dramatically less than the Jaguar - is the Jag overpriced? I would say not, the two cars are of completely different classes, and as such, cannot compare.
What you pay more for in a Mac is the complete engineering and design. Some say ease of use, as well, but that is too subjective to quantify. The simple fact is I can attach/detach my USB camera, photo printer, scanner, MP3 player, mouse, etc. to/from my Mac without any bazaar configuration issues to deal with. A Dell, or any other x86 box, will have quite a different behaviour to the this practice. If you're using Windows, prepare for a blue-screen or two. If your using Linux/*BSD hope you have the correct kernel/module compiled and your USB subsystem doesn't panic when connecting/disconnecting devices rapidly (I have had panics in both Linux & FreeBSD due to a USB based KVM switch to share a single USB keyboard & mouse if I switch ports too quickly). This is what you pay for - a system that works consistently, without putting the user through hell just to get work done.
Re:Quantitative comparison of price (Score:3, Insightful)
no, what you pay for is no hardware competition.
Why do you think Jobs killed clones?
Office Space's computers: co-stars of the movie. (Score:3, Interesting)
Add to it the anachronistic software boxes on the shelves. I laughed my ass off when I first saw it and everyone looked at me funny because they couldn't see how humorous it was to see DBase II and Lotus 123 and Wordstar 3.3 on the shelves next to more-or-less modern computers on the desks.
Of course it could have all been accidental. The set decorator could have gone through thrift stores in Austin, TX looking for cheap software and finding those old classics. The guys who made the fake OS for display probably were working with Macs (Hollywood LOVES its Macs) and Mike Judge was probably telling them to "make the OS look like Windows." But the result, intentional or unintentional it might be, was true geek humor.
It is my assertion that the co-stars of Office Space were the computers themselves. One more reason that movie is an underrated masterpiece.
X runs under MacOSX (Score:4, Informative)
bzzzt. X runs just fine under OSX. Check out the XonX project [sourceforge.net].
. It is under darwin but that is a seperate distro and not is the bundled OSX that comes default with all macs
What? Darwin is the same, with or without OSX "on top".
The only Unix things I can run in OSX is stuff like sed, awk, etc.
Dude, what have you been smoking? You've never even *seen* OSX, have you?
Re:How about the other way around (Score:2, Informative)
- Infact I can probably run macos9 apps faster in linux then MacOSX : The Classic environment in Mac OS X is build on the same idea than mac-on-linux. The speed of Classic apps is the same as mac-on-linux's speed, ie. near 100%, provided you have enough memory.
- WIth Linux, I can run MS Word, Excell, IE, quake3, and even java : really, these apps are far better under OS X than under OS 9 : Microsoft did a good job porting its Office suite to OS X. Quake 3 works well too (never tried it, but often heard it) and Java is well integrated in OS X
- I don't believe X is even supported under OSX : XDarwin 4.2 works very well under OS X, in two screen modes : 'Rootless', where the Mac Apps and the X apps coexist on the screen and 'Full screen' (you have to switch between Mac OS X and X thanks to a key combination).
- OSX is slower according to all the benchmarks I have seen comparing it with linux : I think that OS X's window server/manager have still to be optimized and therefore are to blame for the slowness of OS X, so this comparison is not really accurate.
I'm not a Mac OS X zealot, I know it isn't perfect, but it's worth the look. Really, go and try it, you'll be surprised.
Re:*yawn* (Score:2)
Think XBox here.
Re:*yawn* (Score:2)
Which is why Apple will always be a marginal player, with marginal finances, selling to a fan club.
Absolutely true, but as Steve Jobs likes to point out exactly the same could be said of, say, BMW (who have a smaller market share of their industry than Apple do of theirs) and people tend not to use pejorative terms like "marginal". Apple is a succesful niche player producing high-quality, individualistic systems. There's nothing wrong with that and its a very good, sustainable business.
Re:The Conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
In November, I got an Apple G3 iBook. I love that machine. It does what I want it to, it does it smoothly, and with OSX it does it in a way that looks kinda cool. However, OSX isn't the fastest speed demon out there on a G3 processor, and I definitely need more RAM. But I haven't really regretted my purchase yet.
On the other hand, I recently settled a nightmare of support with Best Buy in returning an IBM laptop. I hated that thing. It was a total waste of my money. In exchange for it, I brought home a Sony VAIO with a Pentium 4 1.6. I can't respect this machine as hard as I try. I've actually had dreams about returning it and getting something else. Not daydreams, full-on-REM-stage dreams. It was a downer when I got up that morning and realized it'd been over two weeks and I couldn't take it back anyhow.
And this is a Sony, probably the closest thing to a "designer" line in the PC market.
Apple machines have a soul, it's there. But it's next to impossible to find a PC with a Microsoft OS that has one. I've even got two 50Mhz Sparc machines that I keep running for no real reason here at home, but the perfectly good 1Ghz Athlon that the Sony supplanted is powered down, dejected. My machine for several years, if you count it from the oldest component. Yet I find it hard to bother messing with it anymore. My iBook on the other hand... Yeah. I like it a lot. Still.
Re:Macs are cool because they're better. (Score:2)