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?"
on Dvorak being right (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the move hurting Linux, maybe. But OSX has been hurting Linux on the desktop for a while as it is. Lots of hackers are switching; they get the power of the CLI when they want it, with no need to fuck around when they want to view video, plug in hardware and have it reliably work, etc.
Linux has a future with regards to openness (Score:2, Interesting)
Longhorn and Mac OS X ( Tiger, Leopard) may still have many more appealing features, but from a freedom and open use perspective, you better start looking at that Linux box.
I don't agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
People will be able to develop truly cross platform libraries more reliably, on which people will write applications which will work on all platforms. I find it exceedingly unlikely that a developer would choose to develop solely for apple, when for a little extra work they can cover Linux too.
I disagree with his slurs against open-office too. The bi-monthly preview versions of open-office 2.0 are very impressive, not only in terms of functionality but also in the quality of its interface. I'm sure there are arm-fulls of features present in Microsoft Office that are not there in open-office but do I really give a flying fuck?
It's not the total number of features that matters; it's whether the features I want to use are there that really counts. I'd bet that almost all of the Slashdot community have not used any of the new features in Microsoft Word since the release of Office 97. After Office 97 no real value was added to the office suite, so why should I have to upgrade every couple of years?
Microsoft force upgrades because you can't buy Office 97 licenses any more. When your company expands you have to get the brand-spanking-new licenses of office and then because of possibility of incompatibility between the two versions it becomes sensible to harmonize the licenses across your business and this invariably means buying loads of new licenses.
In contrast, Open-office has all the features I want to use and they're organized in an accessible way. I can always get an older copy of open office so the same expansion issues do not apply. I think if most companies could start over with their office suite, most would adopt open-office. What's stopping market penetration by open-office is the hidden cost of converting all the documents to the new format.
Simon.
Re:Marginal effect on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Why OS X on x86 won't kill Linux:
1. It's not free.
2. It's not that other free, either.
3. It won't run on a generic whitebox that you built from Newegg.
4. It probably won't run on those nice 1U rackmount servers you just bought from HP.
5. Loyalty. Loyal Mac users have taken Apple through all sorts of dark ages, but they aren't programmers. OTOH, most open source hackers are loyal Linux or BSD users, who aren't likely to switch.
6. It's not a real Unix. Of the tiny handful of Unix gurus I know who have switched, they have all switched on the desktop, not in the server room. As we all know, Linux's greatest strength is in the latter, and my experience suggests that OS X is simply not ready for enterprise-class server applications.
7. Netinfo. It's even worse than ncsd.
8. Cost. If you expect an Apple box to cost significantly less with a different processor, you're smoking crack.
9. Performance. Anyone who wants serious power will still go with Linux, especially since Apple is inexplicably going from a 64-bit processor with a 128-bit memory bus to a 32-bit clunky piece of junk.
Summary: We might see a blip in the desktop penetration of Linux, and possibly a fiery Clash of the Zealots, but that's about it.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, NeXT went from selling Computers with a BSD-based OS to selling just the OS for x86 computers. Steve Jobs was there, he saw how well that worked.
Re:Define "Harm" (Score:2, Interesting)
You haven't even climbed the tree yet. Apple stated after the keynote that they will allow their Intel based Macs to run both Windows and Linux and they plan on doing nothing to hinder this though they will do nothing to support it either. However, they also stated that OS X for Intel will only run on their Intel based systems, not generic PCs or PCs from major distributors like Dell. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that HP may be given an opportunity to sell a branded OS X box sometime in the future in the same way they were granted permission to sell branded iPods.
OT -- Re:can't be wrong all the time (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it is running minute slow:
The Two Clocks
Which is better, a clock that is right only once a year, or a clock that is right twice every day? 'The latter,' you reply, '"unquestionably.' Very good, now attend.
I have two clocks: one doesn't go at all, and the other loses a minute a day: which would you prefer? 'The losing one,' you answer, 'without a doubt.' Now observe: the one which loses a minute a day has to lose twelve hours, or seven hundred and twenty minutes before it is right again, consequently it is only right once in two years, whereas the other is evidently right as often as the time it points to comes round, which happens twice a day.
So you've contradicted yourself once. 'Ah, but,' you say, 'what's the use of its being right twice a day, if I can't tell when the time comes?' Why, suppose the clock points to eight o'clock, don't you see that the clock is right at eight o'clock? Consequently, when eight o'clock comes round your clock is right.
'Yes, I see that,' you reply.Very good, then you've contradicted yourself twice: now get out of the difficulty as best you can, and don't contradict yourself again if you can help it.
You might go on to ask, 'How am I to know when eight o'clock does come? My clock will not tell me.' Be patient: you know that when eight o'clock comes your clock is right, very good; then your rule is this: keep your eye fixed on your clock, and the very moment it is right it will be eight o'clock. 'But--,' you say. There, that'll do; the more you argue the farther you get from the point, so it will be as well to stop.
Lewis Carroll: ca. 1850 In: The Rectory Umbrella, M.S. First published 1898.
source [gavagai.de]
So it will run on standard hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
I can understand locking down OS X so it only runs on custom X-86 boxes, but wouldn't such a lock down prohibit windows from running on it. I think OS X will run on standard PC hardware (that is supported by it) and Apple will make a small effort to lock it down. After all, the base for it is Darwin which runs on standard X-86 hardware, a complete rewrite of Darwin is not profitable at this point.
Get ready to download an X-86 OS X torrent.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More good than harm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Talking about companies as if they were people is bad enough. Talking about computer programs as if they were people is just absurd.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:3, Interesting)
Harm? How? Apple makes proprietary systems, composed of proprietary hardware and proprietary software. Now they'll switch from PowerPC to Intel CPUs - this doesn't mean they'll give up on their own hardware, just that they'll switch to a different supplier for one of the parts. So the question is not whether this can kill or harm Linux, but how this would have any effect at all for Linux.
Dvorak's idea is that people would now fork out the money to buy a Mac, then buy a license and install Windows on it. Hardware vendors and Linux would suffer from that.
Seriously, that's his argument.
This is supposed to impact a market which buys standard PCs and installs Linux instead of Windows, i.e. a market of people who don't want Windows to run on their machine...
Re:Doubt it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh? Apple's been "moving closer toward commodity hardware" ever since the first revisions of the original Macintosh. If your definition of "commodity" means "used or made popular by PCs", then you're in for a shocker as today's Macs have:
* commodity memory
* commodity hard disks
* commodity optical drives
* commodity system bus (PCI)
* commodity video chipsets
* commodity peripheral buses (Firewire, USB)
Along with the motherboard chipsets and BIOS, the CPU was one of the few components left that drastically separated Macs from beige-box x86s.
but it's the attraction of Linux I believe is there regardless of Apple's existence.
You are correct here. The move to x86 will not affect Linux on the Mac in the slightest, as getting Linux to run on PowerPC was never the hard part in the first place.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Interesting)
e.g
3.2ghz Pentium 4 1GB ram 200GB HD PC $600
or
3.2ghz Pentium 4 512MB ram 120GB HD "Apple Mac" $999
I wonder which consumers will think is better value, up till now apple could pull the "but our hardware is magically fast even though it looks slow" trick.
One possibility is Intel reserve its true dual core (or some other new cpu) for apple only but then it will shoot itself in the foot considering AMD is already producing better CPUs.
Re:So it will run on standard hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
Since it's just a hidden extension, Windows won't have a problem running on "Mac" PC hardware; unless someone reverse engineers Tiger86 to figure out the detection routines, Windows won't even be able to tell the difference.
Why would a switch to x86 attract more developers? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Incidentally, the use of the word allow indicates to me that perhaps the hardware will be practically identical and artificial restrictions may be put in place to ensure the hardware is a genuine Apple box... then someone will hack OS X to run on generic PCs... and Apple will bludgeon them with the DMCA... I can hardly wait.)
Dvorak was right, let's admit it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's be fair to this guy; he really had it right. And of course, as flame retardant, I have to state my Mac credentials: I am writing this from my dual-G5 Tiger box... I've never owned an Intel machine. But I'm glad and hopeful for this switch, although a bit worried at the same time.
Intel Macs will not use OpenFirmware (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't mean they will run a standard BIOS. Surely they will not. But it looks an awful lot like they want their solution to be an Intel showboat.
Also, given the fact that we have Apple on record saying that they will do nothing to stop people from running Windows on their new macs, I think that they're going to stake their Different-ness more on the speed and quality of their engineering.
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one out there who doesn't really care for Apple's "great GUI"? I currently have the latest greatest dual proc. G5 with 4 GB of memory running Jaguar on my desktop sitting next to my vanilla Athlon running FC3. Guess which one gets used 99% of the time? I am a hard core Linux user from the start who cares most about three things: the terminal (gnome-terminal with tabs), the editor (vim/gvim) and whatever handles my personal key and mouse bindings (which is why I hate Metacity and stick with sawfish). I don't care if I have 64 bit rendered window borders with buttons that look stunningly like cough drops. Honestly, the only software I run regularly on the G5 is the Palm software which syncs up my Zire. It's broken in FC3 right now.
I got the G5 with grant money (I'm a meteorology professor/researcher) because I am interested in creating movies of renderings of my model data, and got the Final Cut Pro / Motion / DVD burner suite and it works fine. I also wanted to see how the IBM processor stacked up to the Athlon/Intel for large floating point model runs (now that seems to be less of an issue). But you can bet if those movie making apps ran under Linux, I wouldn't have bothered with the Mac.
Unless something much, much better comes along, I will probably run Linux as my primary "Desktop" and research OS until I retire in twenty-odd years.
Re:I'm not going to suddenly switch (Score:3, Interesting)
There are some bottlenecks in this region, but they are not inherent to the design. For example, the Mach-O ABI has a weakness on RISC machines, and the kernel resource locking needs to be more finely articulated.
OS X has a lightweight OO architecture for device drivers, but this is in C++, so it hardly matters once the code is compled. Mach itself is OO, but implements a very fast message passing algorithm. It is not the source of any performance woes, and opens up many possibilities in distribued computing.
And certainly, these issues are different from any Smalltalk VM performance issues I've seen. OS X isn't suffering because they refuse to let the OO metaphor go. It's suffering because as an OS its still growing. Linux had its fair share of problems and performance woes back in the 2.2 days. They were corrected fairly quickly.
XNU is showing a similar trend.
Again, gah? You don't have the sourcecode to the windowing system and some of the applications. You have the code to all the services, the core of the OS and company.There are a few holes here, and it'd be nice to see them filled, but they're not really in typical problem areas. The vast majority of problems exist in services or in the security architecture of the system. I can understand if you're upset that we don't have the code to the Keychain, that's something Apple needs to open so we can have some confidence about it.
But it's nowhere near as bad as Windows. Or many other commercial OSs, for that matter. To compare them this way does a major disservice to the app.
For me, one of the major attractions of OS X is how damn good Cocoa and its dev platform is. GNOME and KDE suck by comparison, in nearly every way you compare. At unlike KDE, at least Apple is honest about being proprietary.Re:More good than harm. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be *very* suprised if OSXX86 (heh) can't be made to run on standard PC hardware. It will be against the license, and it won't be plug and play, but I'm 99% sure it'll be possible.
It's the desktop (Score:2, Interesting)
However, for Linux to truly succeed it must succeed on the desktop. Linux fans: let's be honest, gnome and KDE are neither cool, innovative or good in comparison to Windows or Mac OS - regardless of what style of windowing system you like.
To fix the issue Linux developers must move quickly. First, X sucks - it lacks the underpinnings that allow OS X to do thing like expose, and other nice 3D effects. The answer to this problem is to move to a pure openGL based render system (which is what OS X does) - such as Xgl being worked on by David Reveman - http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-
Secondly, as a community we must *decide* on a GUI api - not have the 50+ ones which are available now. Perhaps this is gtk 2.0, maybe something else. But professional developers, and software companies which have to support products dont like making software which looks crappy b/c every developer is using a different system for drawing buttons and handling user activity.
Everything else is beside the point: window managers, kde, gnome desktop environments, etc.
But, without the two above problems solved, there is no way for Linux on the desktop to be significant.
Re:More good than harm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More good than harm. (Score:1, Interesting)
already too late (Score:3, Interesting)
Dvorak hates linux (Score:4, Interesting)
First, he spends about 2/3rds of the article trash-talking open source applications. They're not intuitive, he claims, and thus haven't been accepted much. Somehow macos is going to kill them (even though he claims they aren't accepted?)
But in the last third (last 4 paragraphs) is where he actually makes some arguements, instead of just trashing open source applications.
First, he makes two claims obviously false claims. First, source apps haven't targeted macos, but suddenly will. Simply wrong. Lots of open source apps have been ported to os-x. But even more rediculous is the notion that macos on intel support will be to the exclusion of linux support. Utterly stupid. There's a very strong established trend for multi-platform support on almost all major open source apps. Suddenly everyone's going to abandon gnu autoconfig, automake and libtool? Yeah, right!
Then in the 3rd to last paragraph, he talks about the GPL's "rigid license requirements". Ok, compared to BSD or public domain, maybe? But compared to Apple's macos? Or any other proprietary software. The GPL's source code release requirements are only "rigid" to one group of people... the proprietary software vendors, who would really, really like to appropriate all that free code, if only they themselves wouldn't have to play by the same rules.
But Dvorak claims everyone who's believed the GPL was a good idea in the past is suddenly going to see profit opportunity and abandon the GPL. Doesn't seem too likely. This is an old, well worn fear/unknown argument that seemed believable years ago when Red Hat, Caldera and others companies started selling, going public, etc. Hackers worldwide weren't suddenly overcome by greed then, seems unlikely now.
But the fear is really laid on thick in the last two paragraphs. Apple's going to benefit (probably), so somebody is necessarily going to suffer. Suddenly linux is going to have a new "enemy", and together Apple and Microsoft are going to destroy linux.
Yeah, like Microsoft hasn't already been trying as hard as they can? And Apple hasn't already been trying to draw people to macs as agressively as they know how? All of a sudden, because Apple's switching chips, BOTH Apple and Microsoft are going to try to attract new customers where they weren't before.
It's all so silly. If these are the best argument Dvorak can dream up for the impending doom of linux, open source and free software... well, I think those of us who use and depend on linux on a daily basis can sleep well tonight, without nightmares of fear, uncertainty and doubt whether the rest of the linux world suddenly shun linux in favor of macos when we awake in the morning.
Aqua and mathematica (Score:3, Interesting)
Mind you later there were drivers which came out which let you fake having a coprocessor so you wouldn't even have this limitation (though floating point math was still really really slow).
Not sure what this means for a GUI but I imagine a similar scenerio might hold.
Re:I was thinking the same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you realize that if the "Car" patent hadn't been slapped down as harmful to consummers in the 1900's that there would be only one manufacturer of cars, and that the Ford Assembly line would never have been invented?
Same for the TV! Look it up sometime when you are checking out the "car" patent.
Great analogy, for the opposite argument.
What's special about software is that is an attempt to get patents on the Concepts, otherwise a copyright would serve the purpose.
Very small chance of keeping it on Apple hw (Score:3, Interesting)
> Apple-branded hardware.
Three options here.
1. The new x86 Macs only run OS X. In this case there is zero change in new adoption and a slow bleed away since Apple will always be behind the tech curve. The PPC chip was their only ace in the hole, they run stock IDE drives, year old video cards, etc. Since they only introduce new hardware twice per year that also means that they will usually be six months to a year behind on the CPU.
2. The new Mac hardware is a stock Dell compatible PC capable of running Windows. This means it will be a good universal box capable of running OS X, BSD, Linux and Windows. Appealing to some, but always overpriced and underpowered, see above. More interesting will be the instant porting of OS X to commodity hardware. This will be resisted at Apple but pretty hard to prevent. By not selling it though, they are creating a massive pirate community instead of paying customers.
3. Option two but with a pervasive DRM system to eliminate running on clone hardware. Massive backlash as Apple is perceived as going over to the 'dark side'. The Apple faithful will of course drink the kool aid and remain faithful, insisting DRM is now good because Steve said so. In a sane world it would invoke the Justice Dept's Anti-trust division's wrath but we all know that won't happen.