Dvorak Says Apple Move to Intel Will Harm Linux 1098
Deep Fried Geekboy writes "John C. Dvorak is pretty quick off the blocks with a response to the news that Apple intend to switch to Intel processors. Thankfully, he doesn't gloat about having called this one correctly, but says that the move is likely to hurt Linux, as OSS developers increasingly target the Mac. Since it now turns out that Dvorak was apparently not smoking crack when he predicted the Apple move, could he be right on this one too?"
Re:Intel != x86 (Score:2, Informative)
his prediction was not quite correct (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Intel != x86 (Score:1, Informative)
I was thinking the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about Linux/Unix users switching to Macs in droves [wired.com]. If that's true, I don't see how Apple switching to Intel based system will stop that switch. It will almost certainly make the switch even easier to make. Let's face it, with a Mac you get Unix AND a great GUI.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.osnews.com/ [osnews.com]
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dvorak's (Current) Folly (Score:5, Informative)
You're half-right...
-- MacWorld [macworld.com]
Elsewhere they have said, of course, they're not going to allow Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware. So it seems that if you want to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows, you'll have to buy a Mac. (Or wait for the inevitible hack.)
Re:Marginal effect on Linux (Score:1, Informative)
Oh, but then the most common fiction is that it's based from FreeBSD, rather than BSD. It uses a FreeBSD userland, and even made use of parts of NetBSD and FreeBSD's kernel for drivers, but it's otherwise just a BSD server for Mach. Go look at Darwin sometime, and see just how not BSD 4.4 OS X is.
Also, part of the whole point of 4.4BSD Lite2 is that it removed the AT&T code from BSD.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Marginal effect on Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Makes one wonder, what kind of game is Apple playing? It does not make much sense to withhold information from developers and say later "actually
Goes without saying that a 32bit-only x86 PowerMac would flop when you can buy a 64bit machine from any other vendor and have the Windows version of your image/video processing toolchain run faster/better.
Either way, it will suck for the short term and remains to be seen what the long term will bring.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:2, Informative)
Keep in mind, just because the CPU happens to be Intel/x86, doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the architecture has to be compatible with current PC's.
Although it would be nice for MS to have some more real competition.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:3, Informative)
No, they don't. The "core OS" is much more than just Darwin. Quartz and Aqua are so important to the execution of any major "Mac application" that they too must be considered as part of the core. And obviously, they are not nearly Open Source.
If you didn't need the Graphics and UI stuff, you'd probably be better off running your applications on BSD or Linux, forgetting OS X.
Waitaminute... OSX on x86??? (Score:3, Informative)
I was talking about that last night on IRC, and afaik x86 is limited to 32 bit architecture!
Why the heck would Apple, who's G5 is 64 bits switch to a 32 bit architecture?
Most likely they're going to use another Intel chip, like Itanium2 or something to come that runs 64 bits, not 32!
It doesn't make sense for them to DOWNGRADE their hardware. They'd be signing their death as a competitor for high end applications, which is what they are for most professional graphics and video applications.
Seriously people, think about it! Amd is 64 bits now, apart from the sempron line, and that's destined to disappear sometime in the future.
So yes, in my opinion Dvorak is smoking crack, because it's not OSX for x86! It's OSX for a non-x86, 64 bit Intel chip! Itanium2 might be it, or it might be something else, I haven't kept up with Intel's 64 bit attempts.
Also switching from the 64 bit PowerPC to a 64 bit Intel chip would seem more coding than switching to 32 bit, as they have OSX running on their older G4s and even G3s.
Remember that end of article about migrating to Intel? "It's going to be a lot of hard work"? It wouldn't be if they were switching to x86, Darwin runs fine on x86...
Doesn't someone else see the flaw here?
Re:Intel Macs will not use OpenFirmware (Score:1, Informative)
Eh???? From the forementioned weblink:
Pre-installed implies that it is installed on hardware. Furthermore, you do not get to keep this hardware (not sure why that isn't better documented there). You have to send it back in before Leopard ships. This is purely a developers tool until Apple starts shipping the real systems. [ Similar to Microsoft shipping Apple G5 systems to folks doing Xbox360 development. That will change once Xbox360 hardware gets closer to shipping.]While this interium system may be generic whiteboxes, it seems likely that this analyst is on track with Apple's true path for boxes that ship.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824781,00.as p [eweek.com]
http://www.intel.com/technology/security/ [intel.com]
LaGrande is backward compatible (i.e., windows will boot) but there are hooks for Apple to stop MacOS X (not Darwin... the full proprietary stack) from booting up. Meshes very well with what the Apple VP is quoted as saying about not precluding Windows (or Linux) from booting.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Informative)
You are ignoring the thing that makes it impossible. Supporting the x86 world is nearly impossible- just ask any Linux distro. Despite years of work on drivers there are still cheap webcams, wireless cards, dvd drives, sound cards, and other peripherals that won't work with Linux because there is no driver. Are you saying that every creator of all the x86 shit (including those that are out of business like Aureal) is going to create new drivers JUST for a new OS that will have a smaller percentage of the market than Linux has today? No. OSX on Dells are a fantasy. The magic of OSX works because the OS knows every piece of hardware it touches . There are only a few thousand MAC possiblities. The arrangement of parts in other x86 boxes can easily reach over a billion combinations. Apple isn't going to mess with that. People won't accept "buy OSX, and there is a small chance it will work!"
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
Because software isn't a car. Software isn't a TV. Software isn't a microwave.
Software already has protection via copyright and trade secrets. Thanks to copyright, and the very nature of source code vs machine code, we can't see how closed software works. We can't modify it. We can't improve it. We can't learn from it. It's a black box, never to be opened. And thanks to patents we can't even make another piece of software that WORKS like the original.
My car might have patents but nobody owns the copyright to my car. My television might use a radical new form of electron gun but nobody will sue me for building my own TV. With patents I'm supposed to be able to see how the invention works; that's the balance that patents are supposed to provide. Where's that balance with software patents?
Books have copyrights but I don't see anybody claiming a patent for murder mysteries. Music can be copyrighted but nobody owns a patent on Rock Ballads. With copyright the original is supposed to pass into the public domain for the good of all humanity. With software copyright, where is the balance? The knowledge is still locked up in the source code which we NEVER SEE.
The software manufacturers are simply greedy; they want copyright protection AND patent protection AND trade secrets. They want copyright on the machine code and trade secrets for the source, so the public NEVER receives the intended balance. They want patents on the algorithms so nobody can compete, but if you can't see the code then how can you know when you infringe? Once again, where is the balance?
I'd like to see a simple rule applied here; software can have patent protection, or copyright protection, but not both. If you choose patents then you must publish your source code and in 20 years time it's in the public domain. If you choose copyright then you can keep the source code a secret but you can't enforce patents. That would go some way towards restoring the balance.