Apple Patent Hints at Net-Booting Cloud Strategy 156
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has received a patent that hints at the intent of providing network computers that will boot through a 'net-booted environment.' It may seem that Apple is moving slowly into the cloud computing age and that it has many assets that are simply not leveraged in what could be a massive cloud environment that could cause more than just a headache for Google and Microsoft. However, it appears that Apple has been working for some time on an operating system, conceivably a version of a next-generation Mac OS or iOS, that could boot computers and other devices via an Internet connection."
linux - PXE? (Score:2)
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Only on your own LAN, without a PXE helper to redirect traffic elsewhere. Presumable a "cloud boot" will go directly to the internet and boot from there. I just wonder if it will be encrypted (assuming you trust the place it boots from).
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Presumable a "cloud boot" will go directly to the internet and boot from there. I just wonder if it will be encrypted ...
If not, we can trust that it'll only be a matter of a few weeks before people find that their ISP (think Comcast for example) is inserting their own software into the download. And it may only be a matter of days before lots of Windows botnets have inserted themselves into the boot process, making all Windows "cloud computers" part of one gigantic spam/phish System -- let's just call it "skynet" and be done with it.
Of course, the way most commercial network encryption goes, even if a cloud boot is encrypte
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Who cares whether it's encrypted.
Only a few days ago, people were sleeping in late due to a bug on their iPhone.
Apple, like all others, does not make bugfree software.
Do you trust Apple enough to push their latest OS update without any control on your side?
Theoretically, they could break every single iPad/iPhone within a day. Realistically, this isn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.
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Has Linux not been able to do this for years using Intel's PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment)?
There are much, much better examples of network booting than Linux. Solaris for one, and it's old as dirt in computing years. The install media has a working PXE grub image which is integrated with their installer, which makes additional DHCP queries for install configuration. SPARC PROMs do the same thing, although skipping the PXE part. Grub itself will make one DHCP query for the location of a grub.conf, and I guess that's how Linux folks manage network installs, by embedding everything in a smatteri
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On a Sun note, their Sparc hardware can install Solaris over a WAN with HTTP. See here:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5504/6mkv4nh5i?a=view [sun.com]
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Definitely possible (Score:5, Interesting)
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"who really owns (pwns) your hardware? "
Why are you asking that question on an article about Apple? Isn't it obvious?
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"who really owns (pwns) your hardware? "
Why are you asking that question on an article about Apple? Isn't it obvious?
Le'me guess... AT&T? (the man in the middle?)
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I can definitely imagine Apple moving to cloud-booting ipads/iphones/imacs/appleTV's/whatevers.
Of course, at that point who really owns (pwns) your hardware? Hmm.
Wrong question. The right ones would have been:
a. who pays for the data transfer when you switch on the iPhone/iPad? A good reason never to switch-off your phone (or a very good deterrent to use a phone that eats your data allowance and a bit over evry time you switch on the phone).
b. who the hell have enough time to wait their iphone to boot over internet? Or, for that matter, their TV? I still remember the pre-semi-conductors era TV-sets, using vacuum tube - about 1-2 mins for the TV to come alive. Wond
Booting via the internet? I have three words... (Score:3)
Time Warner Cable.
It's slow as old folks fucking, and yes I've done a personal comparison.
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Different markets, different levels of investment in cable infrastructure. SC is an impoverished backwater outside of Charleston.
and then... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:and then... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is nonsense.
Apple has had network booting for some time now (hold N while booting, or select "network" as your default startup disk). I think the article is after some cheap clickthrough, or some cheap FUD. This is from a site linking to a related article citing OS X as "the most dangerous OS [in terms of malware issues] to use in 2010", based on some security company that "won;t give details, but claims the 'penchant for secrecy' and the '644Mb OS update' are sufficient reason to crown it the riskiest OS to use in 2010.
So, ignoring the detailed security knowledgebase articles that accompany every update, including more in depth ones for people who want more detail is "secretive", and let's not forget, the lack of any serious malware outbreak on OS X in.... well, ever, let alone 2010. No one is claiming OS X is immune to security threats or malware/trojans/viruses, but calling it "the most dangerous OS of 2010 [in security terms]" is just nonsense.
So, in my opinion, move along, nothing to see here.
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Conceivably Tech is one of the most detrimental "journalism" outfits I've yet encountered. I'm fairly certain their writing method is as follows:
We've all seen this kind of system before, used by psychics to predict various catastrophes. "There w
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The article is nonsense.
Apple has had network booting for some time now (hold N while booting, or select "network" as your default startup disk).
To be specific, since Mac OS 8, as in classic Mac OS. And it's been in OS X since an early version of OS X Server.
Best evidence I could find is here [lowendmac.com]. This was part of the reason the classic Mac OS installer would allow you to do an install with a universal set of drivers.
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What technologies today do people think Apple invented rather than perfected? Or is more this lame "I'm so cool, I'm going to bash Apple fans for being sheep" propaganda?
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MP3 players.
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The MP3 player?
The Smart Phone?
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...after 2 years they'll have the majority of the world convinced they invented net-booting....
... because the version they cooked up is actually useful.
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Pre-iPod music players were useful, too.
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Yeah too bad booting from a network was/is already done... I guess Apple is the first company to throw the term CLOUD in thus they clearly deserve another patent
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Apple doesn't get sell devices because of marketing. They sell them because people like their products. Really, their ads are cool, a shadow person dancing, or a girl sitting down using the product, but you really think that's why they do so well? And if it is, why can't they dominate the PC market the same way they domina
Your Mac comes pre-rooted. (Score:3)
slowly? (Score:2)
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See, this is how the Apple RDF works. You think that this is a new service and that Apple is offering it first when neither are true. There has been a multitude of hardware vendors offering network and internet boot appliances for a long, long time now.
Have you ever heard the phrase "The network is the computer."? If you don't know it's Oracle's slogan. Oracle released a diskless network booted workstation in 1996, the same year that Apple only started offering online storage.
Somehow in the Apple world this
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OK I'll bite. Are you saying Oracle did all that, or are you being sarcastic about Sun now being Oracle? I'm confused.
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See, this is how the Apple RDF works. You think that this is a new service and that Apple is offering it first when neither are true. There has been a multitude of hardware vendors offering network and internet boot appliances for a long, long time now.
Have you ever heard the phrase "The network is the computer."? If you don't know it's Oracle's slogan. Oracle released a diskless network booted workstation in 1996, the same year that Apple only started offering online storage.
Somehow in the Apple world this means that what Oracle did 14 years ago, and that other hardware manufacturers have been doing all along, somehow magically didn't happen.
Yes, it is their slogan and has been for about a year and a half.
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Not only that but, being true visionaries, Oracle even put a SUN logo on their JavaStations.
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Ever make one of those posts where you just want to bang your head on the desk? Obviously I have the Sun / Oracle names backwards and I apologize for that glaring error.
Conceivably Tech misses the point, again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing we need is more patent FUD. The patent [uspto.gov] is quite clear on what it's intended for:
2. Description of the Related Art
Most organizations currently employ local area networks (LANs) of thick clients, e.g., personal computers. While this represents an improvement over the disconnected computing environments of a decade earlier, many limitations still exist. In current LAN environments, each client computer has its own local copy of operating system software, application programs, and user customizations to the desktop environment. Typically there is no centralized mechanism for maintaining a consistent system configuration in such a computing environment. Consequently, individual user workstations often get out-of-sync with each other as one or more users upgrade to newer versions of the operating system, upgrade their application programs, or install application programs that were not part of the original system configuration. Additionally, in this type of uncontrolled, decentralized environment, the operating system of a client computer can easily become corrupted. This is especially true with the Microsoft.RTM. Windows.RTM. 95, 98 and NT operating systems where user modification of a single system file can have undesirable consequences and require significant downtime. For example, editing the Windows Registry file could render a client computer unusable thereby requiring reinstallation of the computer's operating system software and all the application programs.
In view of the foregoing, it should be apparent that administration and maintenance of current computing environments is complex and time consuming. Therefore, what is needed is a reliable computing environment that can be maintained more easily and at a lower cost.
This has nothing to do with cloud computing. This has everything to do with managing a large net-booted environment, like a large corporation with a few thousand workstations. From reading the patent's claims, it's a design for a net-boot server that maintains separate boot volumes for each client class. Those volumes can be modified on the fly, without the need for carefully creating images.
TFA implies that this may be a technology for Apple to have more control over iPods and other devices, by keeping the OS internal and possibly charging a subscription fee to keep the device booting. With today's systems, that's ridiculous. Downloading a whole working OS is impractical over current residential networks, and it kills one of the best features of handheld devices: they're ready at a moment's notice. It simply doesn't make sense for Apple to expect users to wait for a half an hour every time they turn on an iPod.
The more reasonable in TFA speculation is that this is a push to have a bigger corporate Apple presence, but that's glossed over in favor of more outlandish claims.
Sounds like.. (Score:2)
iSCSI operation against a writable snapshot of a lun. Or various nfsroot solutions for linux. Or probably a number of other things...
This patent was filed in 2006, back when Apple was taking enterprise semi-seriously. Expect the validity of this one to be a moot point as Apple ignores it.
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Regardless of whether the behavior could have been done before, the patent would still be valid unless the average professional in the field would have done it as a matter of course.
Given that I've never seen a system with exactly this combination of write permissions, deployments, and automatic configuration, I certainly think it's novel enough for a patent.
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The claims indicate they've never actually worked with a MicroSoft server environment used to push software installs to the desktop. I've even seen sites that instead of a mere weekly reboot, do a full weekly re-image of the desktops.
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An interesting approach. Now to protect it from patent trolls, you just need to patent it (and offer free licenses if you want). Posting here does not invalidate patent claims, because your one-paragraph summary is nowhere near precise enough to be considered a working design specification.
Patents cover implementations, not ideas. Patent trolls get patents on implementations that are either unspecific (easily overturned on review) or unavoidable.
For example, the patent on LZW compression [espacenet.com] affected all GIF-cr
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<soapbox>
More or less, this is why I am a supporter of software patents. After spending the time, effort, and money to take a one-paragraph idea and make it something concrete, I want to be able to try to sell it myself without seeing some big company copy it freely. Likewise, I don't want to be holding up progress by my own greed. I'd rather see reasonable time limits for patents in the software field.
With a physical device, 20 years is a reasonable time to take a product from prototype design to an
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The patent is for managing net-boot machines. That's useful for large numbers of similar machines, like a big corporation or a big cluster. It has almost nothing to do with virtualization, nothing to do with time management, and nothing to do with load distribution.
Then there's a few more details getting in the way. The patent was files in 2006, about five years before the Xserve line was discontinued.
If the technology were to be used by Apple internally, there'd be no need to patent it. It'd really only be
Control (Score:2)
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No it isn't. It's a design for a server infrastructure that manages network clients, for example in a large corporate environment, with the ability to have custom OS images ready to go depending on the type of client without having to set up and prepare a whole load of specific ones. It has absolutely nothing to do with "cloud computing".
Seriously, read the actual patent. The article is just FUD and buzzwords and baseless speculation.
What? (Score:2)
Holy run-on sentence, Batman! Buzzwords aplenty, too.
On-topic: meh. This has existed for ages in local networks, as have the means to secure this over the Internet. I would guess the reason it hasn't been done yet is that it's just not very practical, bandwidth-wise. So,
More Information (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=I8V6AAAAEBAJ [google.com]
The article is wrong with the dates as you can see in the patent described in the article it was filed in 1999 and granted in 2006 but the article stated it was filed in 2006, and granted recently. This gave the author reason to believe that this has something to do with what apple is doing next which seems unlikely since they have had the idea for over 10 years and have done nothing with it.
Also from the article it sounded much like a Net-boot Linux distri
Plan9 anybody? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody remember Plan9? A not fully developed idea in it was of an anonymous workstation. The workstation would behave like a caching terminal which could run applications. Since it merely cached from the file server, and the same apps ran on all hardware, you could move from station to station without an active sync.
The hierarchical storage mechanism in Plan9 was almost instantly recognizable in TimeMachine. Basically, all data from workstations dribbled towards file servers which snapshotted to optical storage. To go back to where you were yesterday, just involved mounting your workspace with a /yyyymmdd/ in the path.
That would make alot more sense than an internet wide bootp....
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Not fully realized == didn't present a use case :)
What I remember (from ~14 years ago) was that it worked well, with client caching, if everything remained connected. If you worked disconnected, you had to manually resolve conflicts. At the time, we were using stateless nodes, auto-caching the 'seldom modified', and using "cvs" as a cache conflict resolution mechanism. Was mainly ok.
This needs a nontrivial amount of data (Score:3)
And that means a nontrivial bandwidth requirement.
If these do come out, and and get popular, then the ISPs get to decide if they like the bandwidth usage...
Nice. I like being able to boot without a network, thanks.
BOOTP over a Cloud (Score:2)
BOOTP over a Cloud, or an Internet Server via HTTP? Is this truly innovative? LAN cards have been able to do it for years as well. Yes, not a "Cloud" but an Intranet..
Wait, DEC VAX Workstations could boot into a VMS Cluster across a network..
Again, how is this truly innovative other than the image repository is "not on my local network" and the transport "can be unreliable?"
I'll bet on it (Score:2)
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Net-boot done before. Cloud OS vaporware. Lame.
You're thinking too new... Think Apple II (Score:3)
My Apple IIgs has the ability to boot via an AppleTalk network-hosted boot image. Apple has had this on the Macintosh since the late '90s with Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X has supported it since its introduction. Just hold down 'n' during boot on any Open Firmware or EFI-equipped Mac, and it will try to netboot. And netboot.me provides a minimally-assisted INTERNET-based netboot for any gPXE computer. It is even possible to configure an OpenWRT-compatible WiFi router to send the proper netboot.me assistance, so you don't need any "infrastructure" on your premises at all, just your internet modem and router.
just remember... (Score:2)
According to Apple fanboys, like multitasking, cloud computing and network booting is a disaster, horrible, awful... until Apple invents it first!
Already done (Score:2)
My computer (Fedora 12) already does this. It involves putting a boot strap image onto the harddisk of my laptop. I then boot it up, and it downloads the bits of the OS it needs. It caches these parts to disk, for faster booting next time. Now I come to think of it, even Windows does this. I don't have any Apple computers, so what do they do? ;-)
Big Data Center??? (Score:2)
Hasn't everyone been trying to guess what the big data center they are building is for? Well, this could be the answer you're looking for... TFTP booting has been around since the days of Xterms, maybe even before then.
It makes perfect sense for user-recovery as well. Imagine this: You've dropped your macbook, and now it won't boot from the HD, but can automatically default to net-booting into a utility that will attempt to repair the HD. It will also allow you to boot into a stripped down OS that allows yo
If we shouldn't trust our C compilers... (Score:2)
... what in the world would make me want to trust an operating system that isn't even located on my computer and is being loaded onto my computer without my at least having had a chance to check it? Am I supposed to just trust Steve Jobs? Ri-i-i-ight.
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and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.
who would want this w/o strong encryption either: Maybe a telephone company, and their vendor locked in phone. "oh i'm sorry, it wont work w/o the net boot OS"
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and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.
I have quite a few systems that boot from SAN.
And PXE boot is very handy for installing or when you want to boot off of a virtualized floppy.
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and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.
Right, because it was a dumb idea when it was originally developed and hasn't improved with the passage of time.
Bootable USB and MicroSD have rendered it obsolete and only the Control Freaks at Apple would want you to boot over the air from the cloud that they control.
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Huh? Netbooting is anything but a dumb idea. Used all the time in enterprise situations. It makes the lives of admins much easier.
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Centralized network booting is a great idea...as long as you're in control.
All the new "cloud" concepts of centralization are actually really good ideas, the problem is that instead of using these ideas to make things better and easier, vendors use them to lock their customers in.
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and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.
Right, because it was a dumb idea when it was originally developed and hasn't improved with the passage of time.
Bootable USB and MicroSD have rendered it obsolete and only the Control Freaks at Apple would want you to boot over the air from the cloud that they control.
Yeah because we all know that distributing thousands of USB or other Flash media units is so much easier than booting from a server or servers (not). It's hardly a 'dumb idea' and netbooting is something that has been and will continue to be used by quite a few enterprises.
Maybe it's a dumb idea if you are in Mom's basement, but in the real world having ways to manage images/OSes across many client devices matters a lot in some instances.
Now I'm not saying I think doing it from a third party via 'the cloud
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and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.
No, lots and lots. It's extremely common for OS installs on both servers and clients, and also typical for Citrix/Terminal Services dumb terminals.
Probably 80% of the computers in our organisation have been netbooted at least once.
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very few home systems use it. quite a bit of home systems have had the capability.
tons of enterprise systems have a use for it.
that doesn't mean it adds anything new. if apple has a "cloud capable os" that actually has any traction, it will defeat any reason to even consider mac hardware.
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Those iPads and iPhones and iPods and Macs and Macbooks aren't the hardware devices you are looking for (theatrical wave of hand).
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uh, go loko at gtall's comment.
they *have* to sell hardware. They have literally set themselves up to do so. By not selling hardware, there's also less compelling reasons for apple products.
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Apple have NetBoot, just simply press 'N' on boot to boot up over a network.
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Yup, one of my office computers is a diskless iMac that boots from a network server. Works fine.
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Basically it replaces whatever network protocol used to be for TCP/IP over internet.
How can this possibly be worth a new patent?
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I'd say it's coming soon. Apple isn't going to restrict the success of the iPad by chaining to a PC for that much longer.
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That terminal hardware was dumber than my old C64, which booted in approx. zero seconds. Why bother with hosting the OS on a network?
Note that netboot boots the OS that runs on the hardware, not the OS you see emulated on your terminal.
Re:Fraught with peril (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fraught with peril (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't patenting booting from a lan.
They are patenting booting over an internet connection.
And If you ask me, this has nothing at all to do with corporate, and has everything to do with Apple wanting Joe Sixpack's ipad/iwhatever to merely be an extension of Apple Inc, with nothing for Joe to fiddle with other than the one big on/off button.
You were dead on about the tightly controlled bit. You just forgot who the patent was issued to.
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I imagine a tech support nightmare for supporting the Gentle Users. It couid work OK for IT professionals.
I don't see this for mobile devices for the unwashed masses however...
On the contrary, I'd argue it is exacly for unwashed masses. Because, the l337 IT proffesionals may use this by tricking the iPhone to boot from their "cloud" and "temporary jailbreak" their phone (reverting afterwards to the Apple/intercom cloud when they like), they won't be scared by a patented method.
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And, of course, unless Apple knows something that we don't about how ISP/Telecom will bill their clients and expand their network/bandwidth.
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Support would be part of the package no doubt.
It's only a patent and as we know each patent is just another land mine in the minefield of corporate greed.
More likely ... (Score:2)
... it will be called borgboot.
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"Lot of assumptions, illogical jump to conclusions, wishing headaches to submitter's favorite company's competitors and actually inflecting it on the readers."
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"Lot of assumptions, illogical jump to conclusions, wishing headaches to submitter's favorite company's competitors and actually inflecting it on the readers."
And Slashdot's making money from it.
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I'll never understand why something that caused so many users so much trouble is heralded by some as innovative.
While most PC makers approached the aging floppy disk situation by first offering to leave the fdd out, then making them optional but not the default, and then making them available on select models, and only then ceasing to offer them, Apple dropped support entirely with no regard for their own users.
This is an example we are to hold in esteem?
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What trouble was caused for users? People were already using zip drives and CD-Rs by then, and not to be condescending, but the Mac userbase had likely already shifted away from floppies, being full of creative professionals who dealt with documents larger than 1.44 MB on a regular basis.
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i personally knew several Mac users who were not pleased by the change. My uncle, a huge Mac guy had trouble with the transition, our high school computer lab who somehow purchased several new machines without realizing their entire "hand in your assignments on a floppy" system was screwed, etc.
i certainly remember much weeping and gnashing of teeth from the mac people i knew, but perhaps my experience was atypical. didn't know any "creative professionals", just normal folks who weren't too pleased with t
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They were dead when Apple stopped shipping systems with them. And they merely shifted the burden to the user who had to buy a USB floppy drive. So it went from standard to optional. Note how when I word it that way it turns into the more graceful method you think PC makers used.
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not really. there was a huge variety of software that didn't work with USB floppies. maybe not so much on the mac, i wouldn't know.
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I was about ask you to name something that didn't work with a USB floppy, and then I noticed you had switched the topic from Macs to PCs. That might be the reason that PCs held onto them for so long. MacOS was able to take advantage of the fact that a floppy was treated similarly to a flash drive or any other virtual drive -- just another storage medium, rather than requiring special handling.
I suppose I should have said that flash drives and other virtual drives (images, for example) were treated the same
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the problems with USB floppies had nothing to do with the operating system on the hard drive of the computer. the problem was booting the operating system *on the floppy*
again, maybe macs didn't have that problem. all of this is really missing the point, which is that many Mac users felt Apple had abandoned them again when they made the move to drop floppies. It was not met with rejoicing and celebration, it was not considered a great move.
only now looking back have macholes managed to spin something tha
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I was half expecting a generic pie chart to magically pop up at that point...
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Translated from marketing speak:
Apple could tie their large range of products more tightly to their online services, locking in their customers more strongly and making themselves a bigger threat to Google and Microsoft.
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Boot an iPhone at a hacking convention, and you get GoatseOS, then your picture is taken through the front webcam and put up on the big screen.