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Apple Businesses

After Linux-Apple? 161

Posted by Hemos from the that's-an...-interesting-idea dept.
Rustless Walter writes "In a series of articles starting here, John Martellaro discusses how Linux represents a threat to Apple's OS market share, but claims that, after Linux has peaked, Apple will be the next wave. Martellaro is a Linux user, and has experienced NT's instability firsthand. Some of his predictions make sense, but he seems to be convinced that people care more about what their computers look like than how well they work. " Hmmm...hasn't Apple been the next big thing for a while? Or was that Java? I always get confused.
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After Linux-Apple? More

After Linux-Apple?

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  • Sure, the average /. reader will still look at OS features, HW configurations and the like, but accept the fact that we are a tiny minority.

    Most people are no technocrats. Pretty green and cute orange will be the selling point to look at. The iMac has proven that.

  • Threaten Apple's Mkt share? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who wants a lousy 3 percent or whatever?

  • Rhapsody (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If the screenshots of Rhapsody are to be believed then it looks like it will maintain alot of the unix influence of NextStep... Like a complete (or mostly complete) /etc?

    They could make it nicer than linux, but will they try or will they just try to be like MacOS?

  • people *do* care more about looks (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In general, anyway. For the sake of argument, the average guy on the street will pick a fancy-looking GUI-based interface over a command-line driven one any day. That's just the way it is.

    But looking good and having horsepower and stability under the hood don't have to be mutually-exlusive. Give the users both.

  • Which is it, Hemos? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >Hmmm...hasn't Apple been the next big thing for a while?

    Gee, I thought everybody's been predicting Apple's demise for years, not their resurgence.

    Hey, whatever lets you mock them at any given juncture, I guess. So what if it's inconsistent?
  • It seems that Apple likes Linux, even encourages it's development to a certain degree. Or is LinuxPPC written on it's own without Apple's help at all?

    If so, why does Be Inc. claim that Apple won't release certain specs or info or whatever, which is why there is no BeOS release for the G3 processors. Is this a cop-out for Be? Or is it something else? I've heard this from Be, but isn't the G3 IBM's or Motorola's? Last I heard, IBM was the one designing the things...so wouldn't it be on IBM's shoulders to release the info to Be?

    Sorry for all the questions, but it mainly sounds all political to me...on all sides.

  • Apple next? Not a chance... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why would anyone want to move from an open system such as Linux or BSD to a closed system like Apple? The only choice you have in the Apple worldview is which of the 5 color boxes you want. Beyond that, Apple is one of the most closed systems you could possibly get. There aren't even alternative sources for their hardware anymore.

    Let's take a brief look at history. Apple was the first gaussian wave. Most people were ignorant about computers, so the simple one piece box was very successful. However, Apple didn't want to share or loose control of their vision, so they were very strict about licensing, and kept a tight reign on their hardware. Then came the PC and Microsoft era. While more difficult to use, they offered more choice. Also, Microsoft was much better about opening up their specifications and allowing third parties to develop software (even if they stabbed them in the back later, and consolidated once they had power.) Now we're seeing the rise of about the most open systems possible.

    More likely is that the Linux/GNU/OSS desktop will become easy enough to use that a whole new class of people start picking up computers. The price point for consumer electronic devices to really take off is about $300, and an easy way to save $50 is to not use Windows. (The other easy way to get under $300 is to not require a separate monitor, so we'll see if HDTV pans out in this regard, or we have to wait an additional X years for displays to drop in price.) Anyway, linux computers that are "easy enough" to use for under $300 could sell into the billions worldwide at some point within the next 5-10 years.
  • Oh, this is too funny. Listen: x86 is similarly as far from open source as you could possibly imagine. Apple _II_ was open. Macintosh was not. But you're glorifying, as an alternative, twenty million incompetent hardware developers none of whom are talking to each other or implement the same way? Why, exactly, doesn't Plug and Play work for MS, if the world is as you think?
    Forget it. You might as well suggest that Netwinders need to be totally clonable, or that Apple needs to ship everything triple-booting between MacOS, Be and Linux- or even Be, Linux and NT! Why should they get a chance to control their own products?
    This is nonsense, and nobody is going to listen. And most people know what you don't- that your 'survival enhancing things' are suicidal. Some have been tried, some have not- none are sensible, even though it's a pity something like Be can't be supported.
    The rest of the world is x86 running Windows- it _will_ be left behind by many different competitors. One of them is Apple. They're already obliterating the 'computing for Grandma' market without even major changes to MacOS, just by the iMac. That alone is putting x86 in the past for that market.
    Just deal with the fact that you're, well, extremely incorrect, might I say? And none of this should suggest that it'd impede Linux adoption. Diversity is more natural and healthy- the linux crowd and the iMac crowd can be _very_ different- and still overlap here and there.
  • 3% sure beats Linux's less than 0.5% (in the general public, which means desktops...it's higher among servers, of course).
  • Actually, the main reason Macs caught on in schools is because they're the logical extension of the Apple ][ series. Most schools in the US had Apple ][, ][+, and ][e computers, because the alternatives (PCs with CP/M or MS-DOS) were not very appealing. They also built up a huge software library. I remember my intermediate school bought Macs (LC IIs) specifically so they could run their old ][e software (with an add-on card...basically the entire ][e system on a card).
  • Posted by DonR:

    I agree. Has anyone else noticed that software manufacturers make pretty good hardware? Apple makes nice hardware, Sun makes nice hardware, and even Microsoft makes nice hardware. Maybe the fact that they're concentrating on OS design instead of hardware design results in a better product? Engineers left alone make something good? Dunno. Comments appreciated.
  • Posted by Cable4096:

    we can see just how scared Apple is of Linux's sucess by how quickly Apple dropped MkLinux support for WINTEL Boxes, and how MkLinux development was long since fell behind Linux development and how Apple has put heavy priorities into developing MacOS and giving MacOS Unix-like features. Maybe one day Apple will get paranoid enough to drop MkLinux?

    Linux scares both Apple and Microsoft, and for $20 a pop a CD-ROM can be bought from a computer store having Linux 2.2 on it, or Linux 2.2 can be downloaded for free over the Internet.

    The MacJihad, those that evangelize Apple and Macintosh products, are like Sheep being led to the slaught of their platform eventually by Apple's insane actions! How can you stick with a company that changes its OS Designs every six months? Many developers I know that wanted to support MacOS have ended up moving to BeOS or Linux because at least those platforms are stable and don't have an ever changing API and OS Structure. Coupland, Rhapsody, Mac OSX, where will the OS Designs end? How much Vaporware is going to pass from Apple before the MacJihad figure out that Apple really doesn't have a decent OS and has been fooling them all these years into believe that a decent Apple OS will be coming out "Real Soon NoW!" Honest, Steve Jobs swears by it, and you know he would never lie to you! :)

    I would rather use Linux 2.2 now, than Mac OSX later. Who cares if Linux is harder to set up than Mac OSX, at least Linux is here, now, and not Vaporware!

    Face facts, Apple is run by cowards and arrogent engineers that think their way is the only way. One day they will have to wake up and face reality that they might have to downsize again to make the company profitable and outsource jobs to other companies. Until eventually one day, maybe in 2006, Apple won't have very much left to it and will have to shut down.

    The Apple Doomsday Clock is ticking! Visit these web pages for more info!

    The Apple Doomsday Clock Club [yahoo.com]

    The Apple Doomsday Clock Web Page [netherworld.com]

  • ...that's not necessarily a good thing (that people value form over function).
  • I don't agree; GUIs aren't all that intuitive. What cue is given, for instance, that by holding down the mouse, one can drag icons or data? It is accepted as intuitive, but someone who has never used a computer (or a GUI) is not necessarily going to know to do that. Another not-so-necessarily intuitive idea is double-clicking to open something.

    By comparison, I really don't think the difference between a two-button (or three-button) mouse and a keyboard-modified single-button mouse is all that significant.

    As far as WIMP-style interfaces, I still believe OS/2's WPS to be the most consistent. There was a simple rule that was kept to pretty well: left button to select objects, right button to manipulate objects.

    I still miss the WPS sometimes.

  • However, for example, against a command line interface, that same novice would say, 'huh? It's blinking at me...' Or something equally confounding. In my opinion, given the muscle and power of a PC, the first that should happen is some sort of greeting or dialogue that asks "Good day! What do you want to do?"

    Back in 1994-95, IBM was rumored to be toying with the idea (for Workplace OS, which was to be the successor to OS/2) of a "Human Centered Interface," or something like that (I may have the name wrong) which basically would have had a kind of avatar-agent, sort of a disembodied head, with which you would interact, and assign your tasks to through voice recognition/synthesis.

    This seemed ultra-cool to me, even if it might be a bit silly. I was hoping it (the head) would be customizable, so I could address my daily tasks to the disembodied head of Max von Sydow.

    Now that would be cool...

    BTW, it looks like there will be another client version of OS/2, as unlikely as that may have seemed recently. I've converted over to Linux, however.

  • His argument is predicated on the (foolish) assumption of gaussian distributions over time, when Apple clearly violates that by having peaked in the past and then growing again recently.

    I agree that Linux's current interface will scare away a high percentage of Mac users. On the other hand, the relatively low diversity of hardware means that Macs make pretty good Linux machines. One could imagine an iLinux distribution that is designed for easy installation on an iMac, for example.
  • ONE Apple model was outselling SINGLE PC models.


    That's a BIG difference.


    Even THAT is not enough to shift marketshare in a market as large as all of PC's (vs. just servers).
  • As much as I might like to slag KDE (and certain KDE developers), it is NOT a manual transmisson. Apple is NOT the last word on User Interfaces.
  • They adhere to those as well and can do so without constraining you to ONE choice. The real integration is not in the stupid widgetsets but in things like corba/ole and DnD. An athena application can play just as nice with KDE or Gnome as can 'integrated' applications.
  • Heh, I've got some too:

    1. No alpha channel support.
    2. No subpixel precision for drawing primitives.
    3. No network-transparent support for sound.
    4. No support for hardward accelerated 3D. (Well, there is GLX, but that isn't X).
    5. No integration with support for printing.
    6. The single-threaded implementation of most conventional X servers leads to unresponsiveness.
    7. No support for switching display depth on-the-fly.
    8. The X11 protocol is not easily extensible.
  • This is exactly my problem. X11 doesn't have anything to do with sound. I think it should. My thinking goes like this: X11 gives me nearly what I need to do all my I/O remotely, except it doesn't do anything about sound. If I remotely run an application which uses sound, all the sound will playback on the machine where the app is running, but the display will be on my X terminal. This is weird, and not what I wanted.
  • //"Was there something else you wanted..."

    /"Yes. A standard."

    Heck, the guy already mentioned both gnome and KDE. That's two standards right there. I'm sure someone could come up with a third if you wanted :-)
  • I don't care how good the OS is, I'm not leaving my hardware behind for some Mac garbage. I've seen those much-touted G3s in action, and I'm totally not impressed. They just aren't as powerful as my Celeron at 504MHz. Period. The video acceleration sucks. Period. The audio options suck. Period.
    Now, if the Mac OS X GUI ran on the Intel Linux kernel, I'd be all about it.

  • Interestingly, I've always thought that the nicest looking cases are on the machines where form matters least and function most. The best cases are on high-end workstations and servers (SGI, Sun) because the case is such a small fraction of the cost. People won't want a $200 case on a $900 PC, but if you're already paying $10K plus...

  • Not a great example -- GUIs and CLUIs aren't equivalent except for aesthetics. They are really totally different forms of interaction, with different tradeoffs.

    But the general point is basically true. There is evidence [hcibib.org] that people's perception of the usability of a computer system is biased by its aesthetic appeal (relative to their actual productivity).

  • One thing that the author constantly assumes is that Linux has made it's peak. I disagree on the bounds that many companies that have vowed support /products for linux have yet to come out with these products. Once these products have been released and a fair ammount of time has been given then we can really tell where linux is headed.

    As of yet Linux is somewhat in the same boat as Apple, our hands are somewhat tied. You may say that open source applications are fine and dandy, however people want a name on their products. They want to see the name "IBM" or "Compaq", etc written on the side.

    Linux as of yet has no real marketting power / advertising power something that Apple has lots of, (e.g iMac). Right now we have Red Hat (which is too busy makeing deals with IBM, etc) and a highly loyal fan base. We have been extreemly lucky to have a lot of journalists publish good articles about this operating system. However, this still dosen't beat the good ole' commercials on tv.

    My predection for when Linux will peak? Probably in 1 1/2 to 2 years. It'll take about one year for big name companies to release serious products for linux and then another six months for windows developers (and posssibly others) to start picking up toolkits. After linux? I'd like to see OpenBSD go on the rise... but chances of that happening? When the install dosen't make your hair turn white. :-)
  • Or even better yet, Apple Linux.. I'd buy it if the administration tools were good. Even for a $150.. It'd be worth it. And with all those special web tools, I'd bet huge droves would pay $550.
  • When was the last time you looked at the figured, my friend? That data is at least two years old. By all accounts it's approaching ten rather rapidly in the market I assume you're quoting: the retail market (seeing as that is the only market in which Mac market share has ever dropped that low).

    I might also add that you use the inappropriate statistic of "the market." Which market do you mean? There's far more than one, after all. Do you mean business? Home? Education (where MacOS holds over sixty percent?) Content creation?
  • Look. This article was written with wuite a foolish holes in it. What I find amazing is that all of the rebuttals I see still fall into those same holes. Let me explain:
    1. Linux is an OS. Apple sells computers. You cannor compare software and hardware; it's like... well... comparing apples and oranges.
    2. Everyone here, MacOpinion writer and Slashdot reader alike, assumes that MacOS will stay at the "classic" codebase. Nobody, it seems, took OSX into account. That has the potential to change everything, by removing every argument Linux users have against MacOS except the Open-Source issue (and I wouldn't discount Jobs on that part yet, considering that the last developer CD included the source to the entire command-line layer). We will simply have to wait and see.
    3. Some here talk about people valuing "form over function." What on Earth are you talking about? The latest Apple machines are a pretty damn good mix of both, even the iMacs (which, you must remember, were not aimed at the average Slashdot reader).

    Now, it's true that all great empires eventually fall. MacOS peaked and declined. Microsoft is starting its eventual decline. Linux and MacOS appear to be both on the rise again (empires can come back after declining, after all). Eventually, both will fall when something better comes around; that's inevitable. Perhaps it'll be OSX, but it might be HURD, or some incarnation of BSD, or maybe M$ will surprise us all and come out with a respectable OS, or Be could somehow take the field in a serious way, or whatever; make no mistake it will happen. It's all a question of when, and what will replace it.
  • Vaporware my ass. Have a look here.

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/ [apple.com]
  • For $1000 you also get Web Obects.

    Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

    OSX will be released. If you don't like it, then don't use it.

  • What? (Score:1)

    by Ken ( 3185 )
    they may look nice, but adding ram to a tower was a pain in the @$$!!!! remove the Motherboard, dissconect all wires/cables, for 32 megs of ram?

    You had to remove the motherboard and all the cables to add RAM?? Yeah, right. What year was that? 1991? I guess you haven't seen the trap door on the new G3's. It has the easiest to access motherboard I've ever seen on a commercially produced computer.

  • Their recent moves, the iMac and new G3s are really desperate moves; successful perhaps and maybe it'll keep them afloat long enough to wade out their next innovation slump, but they are desperate moves nonetheless.

    Do you really believe this? I think the iMac has more to do with giving the people what they want than a desperate move. It was a way of moving into a market that they had never been successful in. I think it was a smart move. It's kept them in the public eye. And it's kept a lot of developers (especially game developers) from jumping the MacOS ship.

    Then there's the reality of who uses Apple computers to make a living. I'm a graphic artist that makes a good living using Macs. Apple would continue to produce computers for the graphic arts and printing fields alone if they had no other market to sell to. Where are the viable graphic arts, printing, multimedia, and other content creation solutions on Linux? There are none. And most artists that have used Macs from the start aren't going to switch to M$/Intel as long as Apple is there.
  • Do you really want imbeciles and secretaries using the best operating system around?

    Yes! Since what the imbeciles (management) and the secretaries use will be what the rest of the folks in a company use (because you have to actually interact with imbeciles and secretaries, which means the communication protocols must be compatible, which is unlikely on any proprietary system), I want them using what I want to use.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Why would Be have to reverse-engineer the G3? Why can't they just look at the work the LinuxPPC folks did? I don't mean copy source code per se (cause then Be would have to be GPL'd ;-), but they could use the specs that they reverse engineered (or reverse-engineer the source code to avoid the GPL).
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • I am curious how many people will actually jump from Linux back to a proprietary OS like Windows or MacOS. If anything people will jump to the HURD and I think that that itself is highly unlikely.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • What don't you like about X, specifically?
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • I'm not sure why you replied to my post, and I'm even more baffled as to why you took the time to quote it. What you replied with was completely irrelevant to what I said. I said I wonder how many people would jump *from* Linux *back* to a proprietary OS.

    I recommend you take some time out next time to think about what you're going to write. "A closed mouth gaters no foot."

    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • You joke, but seriously, the only reason Apple ever had a foothold in education had little to do with the quality of their computers and more to do with them all but giving them away to schools. That, coupled with the disproportionately high level of Mac-bigotry running through the vains of the upper echelons of school districts, explains that side of it.

    At my high-school, the teachers (the ones who actually had to teach on and use the computers) practically begged for PCs because of all the problems we had with the Macs. But guess what got installed the next year (luckily I graduated before then)?
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • I know X has its failings, I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to say "Motif is ugly" or something like that.

    BTW, how many other windowing systems are network transparent?
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • ...when I last cared about the colour of a computer. It was an ICL 2900 mainframe in bright orange ('Hot Tango'), and it was the one on which my Dad showed me the rudiments of programming. Maybe that's why I sometimes have an urge to yell "GROW UP!" at that kind of Mac user.
  • Actually, MOSR.com reports that the mach stuff is being joined with the NuKernel stuff that Copeland had (stupid move).
  • Remember that hyped product that all but killed the OS as we know it?
  • Since Linux runs primarily on Intel hardware, that means that,
    aside from improvements to KDE and gnome, Linux systems will
    remain generally linked to the tired PC architecture. To be sure,
    you'll be able to run a great Linux system on a 500 MHz Pentium
    III later this year, but it will still require you to remove eight
    stainless steel screws to open it up, you won't have Firewire
    drives, and it will still be a damn beige box. The whole won't be
    greater than the sum of the parts.

    Does "architecture" mean architecture or does it mean the case & power supply? Either way this is obviously false. Linux is less bound to a particular architecture than any OS yet. I can't even see how someone could think that it's bound to a certain style of case.

  • LinuxPPC already has both LinuxxPPC Lite and LinuxPPC Live installers in order to easily download, install and run Linux on a Powermac. They'll probably have something like that when they get Release 5 out.

    It would be good for macs and PCs alike.
  • Ah -

    I see. If it's pro-Mac, it's 'bigotry'. If it's pro-Linux, it's 'advocacy'.

    Thank you for setting me straight.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • If I remember right, MacOS is pretty much one bloody huge shared lib sitting over unprotected hardware. It's at least as tangled-together, kernel and UI, as Win95.

    MacOSX (once NeXT then Rhapsody) is much better; an object oriented web of libraries safely resting on a proper unix kernel (probably a hacked-up BSD variant).

    The only similarities between the two OSes, really, are [a] the UI looks similar (it feels very different, though) and [b] a castrated version of MacOS ("carbon") is available in shared-lib form on top of the BSD kernel, for quick-n-dirty app porting. (same idea as Winelib, really)
  • Let's take a brief look at history. Apple was the first gaussian wave. Most people were ignorant about computers, so the simple one piece box was very successful.

    Lemme tell you a tale...

    I've got a computer at home that I run a windowing system, write/edit HTML and Tcl, surf the web, check email, Telnet, do word-processing, and even some page-layout. Expensive workstation?

    Nope, my plain old SE/30, circa 1989. Runs with 8 megs of RAM, 80 meg hard drive, System 7.1, and has a 10baseT ethernet card. Motorola 68030 processor at 33 mhz, with an FPU (3.9 MIPS). You'd be hard pressed to put together a 386/33 8/80 running Linux with X, much less a 386 that wouldn't unbalance your desk. Faugh!

    People bought Macs (the SE/30 in 1989 sold for $4,400) because you couldn't get anything like it ANYWHERE. Totally unique. And that sumbitch is still running. Boots in 25 seconds, too.

    If that isn't impressive enough, lemme tell you about my SE (circa 1987, 68000, no FPU, 4 meg RAM, 20 meg HD, Ethernet, sold in '87 w/HD for $3,700) that runs a windowing system, can word-process, edit HTML/Tcl, Telnet, check email, even surf the web (with MacWeb or Lynx).

    Bah, you get Linux and X running on a PC/XT (or even AT -- I'm feeling charitable) in 4 megs of RAM, then we can talk.

  • It is weird, but people do that a lot. I have even caught myself basing my opinion of a computer on how it looks (although I tend to shy away from pretty little clear boxes with no floppy). One of my friends always based her opinion of a computer on how "big" it was (please no replies to this one). Maybe that could be a good marketing technique: "We have the biggest computers on the market." Whatever.
  • No, wait! Lets make a list of lists!



    Personally I think the whole KDE/Gnome thing is bullshit. People are throwing away effort on code that still has X underneath.
  • would it be possable to weld MacOS X UI onto the Linux kernal? A unified UI on on the hardware
    Linux supports would suddenly give them the appearance of being very popular.
    --
  • Don't tell me Apple was so foolish as to imbed the UI into kernel?
    --
  • I implied nothing of the sort...
    i was wondering if the linux kernel could be swaped out, so to speak, with the MacOS kernel...
    not one-to-one im sure, but...

    i mean look at the title, the word GNU was replaced with MacOS(in the title)
    --
  • Here's some not aimed at specifically at KDE, but at the OS in general.

    Click on a file with an unknown extension (yes i know extensions suck but they're even hints for MIME types). On windows, up pops a window asking what program you want to use to open it, and a checkbox to make it permanent. Demonstrate the equivalent in KDE.

    How about volume tracking? Having to use a mount command reminds me of using lpadmin for changing print wheels. Quaint.

    How about CD Autoplay? (not my favorite feature but occasionally useful)

    How about auto-res, a little tray utility where you can change your screen resolution depth.

    How about the Documents folder, which contains the stuff you most recently used.

    How about drag-and-drop from the file manager equivalent to file->open in 90% of apps.

    I suspect most people will reply that such things are irrelevant or that they "suck" - a corollary to NIH syndrome.
  • You got it, it's politics. Jean-Louse Gasse was a director of marketing for Apple before he left for Be. Aside from "Apple" and "Marketing" being oxymorons from the whole period between the 1984 ad and the iMac, there's a lot of bad blood between Gasse and Apple, and not a lot of kind words for Steve Jobs even.

    And Be wasn't whining about the specs for the PPC, it's the mainboard specs of PowerMacs he needs, and hasn't been getting.
  • First, go to MacOSRumors [macosrumors.com] for the latest on the MacOS X kernel. Apple has some of the smartest people in the industry churning out what appears to be the most complete and robust OS yet. The first OS allowing you to both use the best UI AND go down to the command line. Finally and Apple os that uses the PPC to the max, with a fast, responsive UI, great dev tools, tons of features, all the buzzwords and then some, Quicktime, OpenGL, AppleScript, and lots more. When this comes out, i defy ANY ONE who posts here not to at least want to try it once.

    It will turn the heads of NT-Centric IT folks

    It may finally bring respect to Apple from the *NIX camp.

    It will have the highest adoption rate of any OS when it comes out. Fancy boxes aside, this OS will sell hardware. Fast. I cant wait to benchmark it...


  • I will say this for Apple - there is a sense of UI integration and consistency that unix will never have. Not just linux, but any unix. There are an amazing number of interface motifs that are pervasive and supported well across apps. Unix UIs are still more or less chrome. The most advanced functionality of WindowMaker is about a decade behind the Mac interface. And WindowMaker is the exception - the rule is crap like Enlightenment, which simply adds more obnoxious chrome without much functionality at all.

    While there are disadvantages to the tight integration of hardware and software, Apple's plug and play is still the best - linux users shouldn't even dream of anything like this - it will never happen.
  • Well, of course if the earth gets hit by an asteroid, you're screwed. The "if Apple goes out of business" argument is ridiculous.
  • Apple has always had enough money (see the balance sheets on yahoo finance or elsewhere) in the bank to keep going for years. I'm sorry, but that argument is still weak.
  • Applying traditional sales and market cycles to an OSS project is probably not valid. If someone actually knew exactly how OSS is going to interact with business, they'd be in a great position to make a lot of money. Right now, I see a lot of companies trying various models for doing business as OSS companies..

    This 'gaussian cycle' garbage is just an excuse for the author to make ridiculous assumptions about the industry... nothing more.
  • Gaussian - Shmaussian... That's this kind of a-la scientific numerology drivel that leads to all errors.
    There is no Gaussian law for the rise and fall of technology. One can not judge what will be the future technology jsut by looking on charts as it is described in the article.
    This author is beyond dumb.
  • I'm glad OS X is where it is. But I'd say there are much more 'end-users' on Macs than PC's. And while we can see the goodness of Next in OS X, I think the usual Mac admin will cringe at / anything - which OS X has a lot of.
    I don't think there should be any real concern for Apple snuffing Linux out. I mean, Linux is free - OS * is *at least* $80 - with another $80 update comin out every 6 months (a waste!). PC hardware is (always will be) cheaper and more available than Apple.
    The problem I've always had with OS 8.* is that it's not a 'real' multitasking os. The finder is okay, but I'll take X any day over that. Hell, give me a command line over that :-) I'm not worried in the least.
  • While on the surface it does appear that technical creativity does peak in the 20s, I've never seen any definite research on the subject.

    However, most CEOs are well past their twenties.

    Note that Jobs is playing the role of CEO. I don't believe he does any coding.

    SteveM
  • Sorry dude, the Mac is a fantastic platform.

    Once you understand how it runs you can do amazing things. If it crashes and locks it is because you just don't understand the OS.

    My 1994 PowerMac 7100AV was capturing video out of the box. I plugged my Yahama DX27 keyboard into a MidiMan and had Finale transcribing what I played in a matter of an hour. And by the time I went to OS 8.0, I could go two weeks without rebooting. Try that with Win95/98.

    So to get on with your spew...

    They are better for graphics / multimedia.
    I own Photoshop, Director, and Quark for both Win and MacOS, and Mac versions are easier to work with. Bryce also renders as fast on an iMac as it does on my PII 400.

    OS overhead does not negate speed increases.
    MacOS can be very stable and take little overhead if trimmed down from a standard install. And it is much friendlier than Windows in terms of trimming down the OS. Try removing DLLs from your windows directory as easily as I can remove extentions from a Mac System file. (or try thinning down and compiling linux 2.2)*grin*

    So learn about your Macs and quit complaining.

    - jonbrewer

    BTW, I've owned systems based on 680xx, PowerPC, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro (SMP), Pentium II and Alpha. Liked them all too.
  • funny you mention size...

    I find that it is much easier to impress people with a PC server inside a double-wide 14 bay server case (with redundant PS, of course) than it is to impress them with the same guts in a regular case that would do the same job.

    And as stupid as this may sound, it is important to impress people, especially people who pay the bills. You guys just don't know how many times a manager has had me show off cool looking equiptment to customers just because it looks cool. (that's why I prefer to buy purple hubs, yellow Cat5, and chartruse patch cables.)

    -JB
  • About that circus of PC makers enabling the architecture to live forever...

    Why would Mac users be screwed if Apple went away?

    Standard 72 Pin Simms were used in the first round of Power Macintoshes. Standard SDRAM Dimms are used in the current G3s. Hard disks come in SCSI or IDE. With the advent of MultiSync displays, all Macs became able to use PC monitors. How about PCI cards? Last time I checked you could use many PCI ethernet cards in both Macs and PCs with different drivers. Video cards are different somewhat, but near-identical models can be purchased for PCs and Macs now.

    Absolutely the ONLY proprietary hardware is the motherboard and chip.

    So I think that if Cupertino fell into the Pacific ocean that mac users would go happily about their business for many years to come. While users may be stuck with an old OS, most certainly wouldn't be bothered with it. I know of many people who are happy running System 7.1 on their older Macs, and don't have plans to upgrade.

    And about those older computers they've been left with. Think about how old your fridge or washing machine is. You haven't replaced it because it still does what you bought it to do.

    So I think most Mac users would be fine if Apple went away. Of course it won't.
  • In some cases, form will supercede function ... keep in mind that some folks need a system that is EASY (for the "Average Joe") to use and maintain. In *n[i|u]x, form definitely follows function -- (nearly) everything revolves around text files and is therefore scriptable, searchable, infinitely customizable. But it is also very very very obscure. For people with large brains it is the logical choice because with a little practice all the obscurity becomes transparent and you are left with an infinitely malleable system that bends to your every whim.

    On the other hand, some (actually most) people want a somewhat shallower learning curve -- usability will supercede functionality in terms of importance. MacOS currently resides (in my opinion) at the top of the ease-of-use pyramid once you figure in the reliability factor of the "other guys" (WinXX).

    What's about to happen with Mac OS X is that Form and Function will begin to unite -- there will be an easy-to-use GUI based on a combination of MacOS and NeXTstep on top of an infinitely customizable unix-like OS. This allows Joe Average to have his GUI and Melvin Unix to have his shell scripting, cron, perl, etc.

    Eventually, Linux will need a similar "dumb" front-end if it wants to compete. The current WMs will need to standardize on a more "Windows/Mac-like" interface. I'm not talking about looks and feels here, I'm talking about things like global clipboards, drag and drop, standardized filesystem access.

    Like it or not, the Windows 95/MacOS interface is how people expect their computers to function and they will expect it of Linux too.
  • The problem with the WMs available for Linux is that there are no standards for things like drag and drop, bundled icons, global clipboards... the little things that add usability to a GUI.

    Each WM may support the features I mentioned, but they are all implemented differently and to different degrees. This is actually evidence of one of the biggest problems with Open Source software -- anybody with a little bit of knowhow can fork the code and do their own implementation of a feature. This is good for innovation, but bad for standardization.

    The tight control that MS and Apple exert over their GUIs is a good thing when you are a non-expert user (or even an expert without the time to struggle with ten different WM implementaions).

    I'm all for innovation -- my argument is that without standardization, Linux is never going to be anything more than a geek's tool.

    Decide for yourself if that's good or bad.
  • How come somebody hasn't stepped up to the plate and brought a decent GUI to *nix?

    X sucks. On this point there can be no serious argument. But the Linux kernel (for all of my philosophical differences) is an astounding bit of engineering. How is it that there aren't any "fresh" new projects to replace the Abomination Formerly Known As X?

    The Linux kernel mated to a font-handling, colorspace managing, consistent GUI would be a hyper-attractive target for ports of graphics tools currently unavailable to *nix (Photoshop, Illustrator, to name just two.)

    Curious,
    JFB

  • My, my, so much discussion of how tied Linux is to Intel, and so can't "turn on a dime", like Apple can.

    The last time Apple turned, as far as I can see, it did so as though it were a several-million-tons displacement ship. Apple can no more turn on a dime than it can spin straw into gold. Steve Jobs or not. Especially, "Steve Jobs".

    When are the Apple fans going to learn? Jobs is of an age where he's, frankly, past it in terms of spotting the "insanely great". Sorry. We all age. I don't understand the culture of 15 year-olds any more, and I'm only 29. But too late for me.

    Here's an interesting note: those Technology Review articles about Linux and GNOME and MS's research labs (there was a reference about this on /.; I read the article in my father's issue, while home for Christmas) struck me as missing the obvious factor: all the folks portrayed in the Linux article, with the exception of RMS, were young. The MS-research guys, for the most part, were people who had invented this or that, usually more than 10 years ago. In other words, they were done inventing. They're smart. They have other things to say. But they're past the really creative point for coders. (Don't believe me? Go visit your local maths department.)

    Guess which group Jobs fits into?

  • Um...so I guess all the iMacs that have been sold in the last 6 months have just been false reports?

    Nope, not false reports. Commendable marketing savvy. But technically, not even slightly insanely great. Not even a little great. Indeed, not even a new idea.

    And not even the world's greatest sales success, considering what's been sold in toto during the last six months of computer sales. The iMac mostly looks good compared to the flatlined sales Apple had been experiencing.

  • Why would anyone want to move from an open system such as Linux or BSD to a closed system like Apple?

    Because most people don't care, at all, if a system is opened or closed. They only want to know: What can it do for me, right now, today?

    The only choice you have in the Apple worldview is which of the 5 color boxes you want.

    If you know anything at all about Apple, then you know that statement is totally false and nothing but a troll (for which I seem to have fallen).

    There aren't even alternative sources for their hardware anymore.

    Is Microsoft Windows open? How many alternative hardware sources do they have? See first response.

    2nd paragraph: Many errors.

    First came the Altos. Then came the Apple I, which you had to build yourself. Then came the Apple II, which you had to program yourself. It had a bus architecture with expansion slots, BTW. Then came the PC, which rocked the corporate world because it was from IBM. Then came the Mac, which rocked science and academia because that's where the smartest people are. Then came the PC clones and MS-DOS, which succeeded for one reason: They were the cheapest way to run the software that was already entrenched! Ease of use or not, openness or not had absolutely nothing to do with it.

    Then came Windows 3.0, in which MS annihilated Lotus and WordPerfect with products it ported from the Mac and became the dominant player in applications as well as OS. And the rest is history. There are some unimportant other players I didn't mention because they're unimportant.

    Fast forward to 1999. Everyone knows Apple is only a fringe player, despite continuing to set the pace for innovation in the PC market since it started. MS is old news. What's new and exciting? The Internet! The Internet was invented on Unix, which is all that saved that old monolithic kerneled dinosaur from extinction. Well, Linux is pretty cool: a free version of that ancient OS that has a really fanatical following. David v. Goliath... that sells magazines!

    Meanwhile, nobody but Unix true believers from the old fart contingent, rebellious teenagers and idealistic original or 2nd wave hippies actually expects Linux to affect MS in the long run any more than a gnat affects an elephant.

    More likely is that the Linux/GNU/OSS desktop will become easy enough to use that a whole new class of people start picking up computers.

    Not unless it becomes a whole lot easier than the commercial OSes that exist now. Being as easy isn't enough. There has to be a compelling reason not to use the default product. The only way Linux will ever catch on in the mass market without creating a whole new usability paradigm shift is if it develops a critical mass of end user applications.

    This point is really important, so I'll repeat it. The one and only factor that makes a PC OS successful or not is having a critical mass of end-user applications. So far, only two OSes have done that: Mac and Windows. The only reason Linux exists at all right now is because it's essentially free. Is this enough of a boost to let it play with the big boys?

    It's up to the application programmers to make it happen.
  • Both use QT/GDK as a platform dependent layer, so all they need to do is change those , and they "should" work on the next big thing (berlin?). At least if the basic system is still a Unix.
  • He spent a fair amount of time touting the portability of Linux. He explained how easy it was to compile on a new platform by just typing "make." He mentioned Sun helping port Linux to the Sparc. He indicated that Apple had something to fear from promoting Linux on the Mac, despite the fact that they helped put it there.

    Then he turns around at the end and dismisses Linux as "tied to the Intel platform"! He claims that Apple will move in on the Windows/Intel/Linux rubble and take over. I'm sorry, but the analogy to armies breaks down here. A free operating system can't run out of food or be weakened by a battle.
  • There's a project to do exactly this, run
    OpenStep apps on Linux. See www.gnustep.org.
    Portions are fairly far along.
    The big holdup is the Display Postscript
    interpreter, which is tricky to write, and
    which a lot of things depend on.

    Adobe has screwed Apple by refusing to license
    DisplayPostscript on reasonable terms, so
    Apple itself is having to rework their graphics
    system. The "user" version of MacOSX won't
    be out for a year at least. I suspect longer.
    In the meantime you have to plunk down $1,000
    for the software, plus a couple grand for an
    apple machine to run it on. it's got some
    good tools that are worthwhile if you're an
    apple shop--you can netboot MacOS clients
    from a server, and WebObjects is a tres cool
    web development tool. While I'd cough up some
    extra bucks for a little convienience and ease
    of use over Linux, I wouldn't cough up that much.
    They'd have to sell it at a price point of a
    couple hundred bucks or so, in a non-crippled
    configuration--capable of having a comipler
    and web server and nfs server and sendmail
    running on it--before it would be very
    interesting.

    Apple is technically capable of releasing
    Rhapsody/MacOSX on Intel, but won't. They're
    back to being a hardware company.
  • Within 10 or 20 years free software will own just about every segment of the OS market. Most likely Linux will be the top dog, though special-needs niche systems like eCOS or RTEMS for embedded development or *BSD for BSD bigots will have a place. Proprietary systems like Windows or MacOS will have a legacy existence at best.

    It's not even because open source solutions will be technically superior in all ways. Maybe in some ways they won't be. MacOS is a lot more novice-friendly today than GNOME or KDE will be for a while, I'd bet. But that doesn't really matter. As long as the open source solution is technically good enough (or even close to good enough) you can't compete.

    Free software makes operating systems into a commodity and proprietary systems cannot compete on a commodity level. It's true some may establish themselves as "premium" brands but it would take a damn lot of technical superiority to make the user's while.
  • Microsoft would keep their Hardware proprietary if they made hardware. Their business model began and continues to be what it is out of self preservation just like Apple.

    Perhaps Apple should have allowed cloning earlier, but they didn't and that's that. I think that Apple is much more likely to be willing to coexist with Linux and eventually move to an Open source model than Microsoft.

  • I thnk the author makes some very valid points here. Linux stands the best chance of chipping away at the Microsoft empire until Apple's modern OS gets out the door.

    Apple's hands are pretty much tied until it has a viable competitor to both Linux and NT. Linux will never be "mainstream" until it has a decent, intuitive, and easy-to-configure interface attached to it. Gnome and KDE are NOT any of these... at least, not for consumer-level users. The Mac OS interface is.

    As for the aesthetics being important, well frankly, I think they are! Steve Jobs definitely hit on something when he designed machines for consumers. Consumers are where the market growth is, not IT departments, not to geeks like us who've been using computers since the 70's, and not to businesses. It's "Joe Six-pack" (as Robert Morgan calls it) who will provide the future of the industry. GM learned this lesson in the 50's when they created a "consumer market" and car culture out of Ford's all black Model T's.

    Look where it took them!

  • I think placing these two OS's in even the same sentance when discussing user interface is a serious error. The MacOS has a far more easy to use interface when dealing with: on-screen controls, menus, windows and the window concept, interface consistancy across apps, user interactivity (letting the user "explore" their environment), and forgiveness (try letting a user muck about with a UNIX config file or the registry... BAM errors up the wazzoo; you can put almost anything in the extensions folder without causing damage in the MacOS).

    While I agree that more configuration is possible in UNIX systems, it is not made available in an access method to the "consumer" user. What good is configuration if the act of configuring is too complex for the avg. user?

    I was refering only to the Mac OS interface vs. UNIX ones... I don't know why you're bringing up WinXX at all...

  • Apple should skip the OS and use Linux. Then port the Mac User Interface to X

    -- end result a killer interface (what many people say Linux needs) and lots of boxes sold (what Apple needs).
  • Hey, at least Intel publishes its hardware standards, and ,well, nothing good to say about MS. Anyway, Apple wants to lock their market down, only Apple hardware, only Apple OS's. Hot news flash, proprietary kills. If you are proprietary, you automatically shoot yourself in the foot. Why do you think that the PC architecture is going strong after all these years, it certainley isn't because of technical supperiority, its because its open! Open source, open standards win every time:)
  • MacOS, Linux (or any other *nix), and NT are all just different ways getting the job done.

    You can spend you whole life (if you can find one) debating the merits of various operating systems and hardware platforms, but when it comes time to do the job, you have to pick the best tool for task at hand. If you try to be religious about your tools, you are going to fail.

    I love my Mac, it is easy to use and take care of.

    Until something better comes along, I will continue to use Macs as my primary desktop machine.

    Unfortunately, Macs (for now at least) suck as servers. That's were Linux (or some other *nix) comes in. Bulletproof servers and easy to use desktops makes for happy people.
  • I'll just go from the top.

    Gaussian Curve

    I find it interesting he brings this up. First of all, hasn't Apple already had their turn on the Gaussian roller coaster? If Apple can now take another trip, are they unique in this regard? I personally don't think so, Linux is quite unique itself. Also to mention that while individually, many of the traditional Unix flavors have been losing share, Unix in one form or another has been around and steady running the net for many, many years, and Linux shows the category as a whole is growing.

    Stability

    Minor bit, but I don't like how he writes this off. He basically says "Linux is stable but so are other flavors of Unix". Um... How does that negate Linux's stability as a factor? Just because they are not completely unique in this regard does not mean it isn't still an advantage. If you want to say "People haven't moved to SunOS and that's stable" (or OSF or Solaris or VMS etc.), it's ignoring a number of other things, mainly the cost of the OS as well as the limitations of what (costly) hardware it will run on.

    Linux & Hardware

    Funny the author should speak about Linux being tied to Intel. Traditionally true, but more and more Linux is spreading that stuffed-to-the-brim-with-herring good feeling around. Moreover, he assumes Linux cannot be ported over to the newer Mac PPC machines without Apple's help. Granted, it may take a while, but Linux has proven to overcome great obstacles in hardware support. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Linus had a overly great deal of cooperation with Intel when he originally managed to write the first kernel. From the author's arguments, then, Linux would gain the same Great Mac Advantages TM (shiny colorful cases & fold out doors).

    Nimbleness

    I mentioned it before, Apple does have the advantage of a strong central leadership and complete control over their product. Of course, I can't help but recall all the recent treatise on the virtus of open source, which included the often impressive ability of quick accomplishments and fixes. I particularly like how Mac can quickly spin to deal with things such as Palm Pilots, QuickTime and network bootable computers, while Linux Pilot projects are well on their way, Linux users can watch streaming movies with the best of them, and network bootable computers... please, how long ago did Linux support that? Lastly, IMHO, the "stagnant Intel hardware" arena may be in for some changes... I personally think, at this time more than any other, Intel may be trumped by AMD. But that's neither here nor there.
    Just some thoughts.
  • Apple has spent a great deal of money learning what people really want. And as annoying as it may be sometimes, people won't use things they don't want.

    All of Apple's research has shown, for example, that most users prefer a one-button mouse. I, personally, use a three-button trackball, on any machine I possibly can.

    But I am not Apple's target audience. Readers of /. are not Apple's target customers.

    My Mom prefers a one-button mouse. Most people off the street prefer a one-button mouse. Sure, it'd be nice to have a forty-two button mouse, completely changeable window managers, etc, but who is going to teach everyone to use them?

    Read the Design of Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman, ISBN 0385267746. It's $12.76 at Amazon.com as I write this, and well worth every penny.

    Sure KDE offers advantages. So do manual transmissions, but people buy automatics. No one really cares how _powerful_ a tool _can be_, if they don't know how to use it, and don't want to invest the time to learn.

    Apple's strengths lie in their (mostly) strict adherance to their Human Interface Guidelines. Ease-of-use is something that many power users forget.

    My favorite editor is vi. I can do things with it that people using Word can only dream about. Yet, I'm not teaching my brother how to use it. He uses AppleWorks. It has fewer features than Word, and fewer features than emacs, and yet, he gets far more done with it than he could with either of those, because he really, truly, honestly doesn't care to learn how to use them.

    And frankly, that's how the real world works.
  • i tend to like the idea that apple and linux/OSS be good buddies. after all, apple is first and foremost a hardware company. that's where their money is made and spent, time expended in R&D, etc. better hardware means better performance for hardware-independent oses...

    if apple can continue to make powerpc boxes that smoke intel's best offerings, and the oss community can be made comfortable with the platform for development - and a lot has been made of linuxppc lately - then i could very well see a future generation of macs without what some people are calling 'the closed, proprietary macos'

    as a developer, i would think taking some of the high marks from the macos - namely the high level of hardware integration, plug and play that works, dammit, etc - and tying them together with a bombproof linux kernel would be a great goal to set for the 'linux desktop' people are looking forward to.

    hell, if i could get a disk to eject just by dragging its icon onto an 'eject' icon in X, i'd be thrilled.
  • Hey, is the MacOS X really a modified NeXTStep layered atop BSD atop Mach?

    Why could not someone mix and match the MacOSX GUI/WindowManager with Linux? Stranger things have happened...

    So all of a sudden, the power and stability and reach of Linux, the power, the ease, the usability of MacOS... Boom! Instant accpetance?

    I dunno, NeXT also ran on PCs, so I would assume that the MacOS GUI could also be ported to PCS, atop the BSD core again... And if this is the case, we could have MacOS on top of BSD or Linux running on PPC or x86... Imagine this far out combination:
    MacOS atop Linux, running on an AMD K7 using an EV6 motherboard, thereby bypassing all major monopolies, industries, and gaining the best of all possible worlds...

    Anyone want to comment?
    -Twink
  • Having looked into KDE myself, and Linux in general, the MacOS UI is pretty darn perfect for their target market...

    I'm not sure why you say Apple isn't the last word on user interfaces, because things they do that make mucho sense:
    1) one mouse button; no confusion about which button to click, and which one to double click... With 3 buttons that makes 6 choices for click and double click. Curse all you want the fact that you have to alt, ctrl, option click, but it is as intuitive as shift-a for A, for example. I don't see a reason why 2 or 3 buttons are better; more efficient and compact, yes, but better, no. One button limits user to just acting with the mouse, and modifiying actions with the keyboard, ala caps, shift, ctrl, and alt on most regular keyboards...

    2)Acutally, cooperative-multitasking...
    Not because its slow, inefficent, etc, but because there exists a large portion of the population that would not know what to do with 7 different things at once; I browse 3 Netscape windows, telnet, mp3, ICQ, and RCA all at once, and usually can deal with all throwing data to me at once, but for people who have as much literacy around computers as I have around cars, point and click, and CPU focus are fine; I couldn't deal with it, but its ideal for my dad, for example.

    3)One menu bar on top...
    Sure its limiting for those who don't use it...
    But its like having more than one book at a time, since you can only read one book. Why have several title bars available when you can only act on one at a time? Again, no big deal for computer literates, but for those who stare at a monitor and only see whatever they're working on, a second, third, or fourth menu bar would just confuse them.

    4)Drag and drop functionality...
    Again, counter to the CLI user group, but for the visual, intuitive, and illiterate crowd. Akin to books with pictures and text for little kids, it gives them something to visualize and see while they learn to grasp the meaning of the text and language. In an OS, it gives them insights into such functionality as redirection, the separation between programs and data, the concept of locations and file organization on a computer, and the concept of a program as an executable, as a different outfit or tool that a computer can use.

    There may be many others, but my rant is getting quite long =)
    -Twink
  • Yes, I would like that MacOS GUI, with its ease of use and consistency, and its design considerations running atop Linux, with its power, flexibility, and open source.

    If Apple did this, I would have no reservations buying an Apple as my next machine... I would gladly pay the OS tax, as it were, if it were an option to install Linux and place the MacOS GUI as some sort of window manager/desktop environment ala KDE or GNOME.

    As for arguments to make your own, Apple already has an excellent one; why waste my time and effort when I could conceivably buy it from Apple?
    -Twink
  • the author of this article doesn't realize why home consumers buy macs: simplicity. does he want to answer the tech support call when mrs. smith from Greendale, Ohio has to edit her inetd.conf?

    he also fails to recognize that people who use linux find it, not the other way around. there is a pre-requisite to using linux, and that's knowing how to use linux. all the marketing in the world won't teach this to the customer what to do at a login prompt.

    there's also a mention here of the performance of linux far outpacing that of macos. sure, it does when you're benchmarking, but you're not comparing similar environments. the macos uses more overhead to provide user services in the GUI. if you loaded up a window manager which replicates EVERY feature of the macos GUI, i'm sure linux would slow down considerably. you're comparing apples to oranges (pardon the pun. ;)

    I do agree that Apple will have a surgence in popularity. With all the technological advancement we've been priveleged to witness, why should computers be problematic? Apple has always been focused on the user. while everyone else is talking about pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory, they've been neglecting the user in favor of the computer. windows is slowly getting easier, but the frustration-factor is still high for some of the most simple tasks. linux is getting easier slowly, but troubleshooting is still far beyond the average user.

    apple started out with ease of use, and now with macos X they'll be adding the low-level features. they'll have the horses and the cart. i don't think it will be quite as easy as apple hopes; but a unified api set (carbon) shows promise. they'll sure beat windows2001 out the door.

    mKb
  • I get so tired of this one. $150M does not bail out a $8B company. When Amelio left Apple, they had around a Billion in the Bank!

    The $150 was, if you'd been following the news, an investment to cloak a larger payment to settle patent infringements by M$quish.

    Also - I would bet the house that Jobs will never allow any substantial open source products from Apple, and if he ever gets canned - that'll be the reason.




  • Both Linux and Mac OS X (Server release now
    announced) are being advertised as being
    POSIX compatible, and support lots of the
    same development software such as gdb and
    emacs out of the box. This is so far from
    what other OS vendors have to offer it seems
    like the competition will be largely between
    POSIX compatible systems that work well with
    state of the art free-source software, and
    crud like Windows (which must surely loose).
  • I paid $27.99 for RH 5.2 at best buy. I prolly coulda found it cheaper if I had looked elsewhere, but I'm lazy. :)

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