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Apple Businesses

Cringley: Apple using Open Source to get Microsoft 153

Posted by Hemos from the put-on-the-asbestos` dept.
alfredo writes " In the latest I Cringley, Robert Cringley demonstrates how Apple is using open source to undermine Microsoft. " Cringley, as always, makes an interested and impassioned argument, essentially arguing that Apple is doing the politically correct thing of Open Source-ing portions of their code, but doing it to become de facto standards (a la Quicktime), or else to push Microsoft down. Worth a read.
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Cringley: Apple using Open Source to get Microsoft More

Cringley: Apple using Open Source to get Microsoft

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  • Re:Java is... what? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now Java is a ``Streaming Media Solution.'' Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The only ``streaming media'' I've ever seen Java do has been the equivalent of server-push, or GIF89 animations.

    Um... both those things are streaming media. Don't forget the unending ability of IT companies to invent grand names for simple concepts.

  • So? 6 years ago, Linux had virtually no mindshare, very few developers maintaining it, and virtually no momentum. That didn't stop people from using it.
  • Cringely wrote:
    QuickTime is [...] the cheapest streaming media solution other than Java,

    Now Java is a ``Streaming Media Solution.'' Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The only ``streaming media'' I've ever seen Java do has been the equivalent of server-push, or GIF89 animations.

  • I don't think it will be too long before a Linux [Media Player] client pops up...

    I admire your optimism. I've never seen a link to a Linux beta (you gotta link? share it! :), as has been mentioned. I've seen almost a year's worth of "Unix client coming soon" messages at the NetShow/WMP site. I suspect a beta will come out around the same time as the IE and Office Linux betas :)

    --

  • That was my general thought. But then, you never know what the real meanings of marketing terms are.
  • Microsoft never released Media Player for any UNIX, afaik. They for a very long time claimed it was "coming soon", but no further progress was made (typical Microsoft vaporware policy?), so I assume it's a dead proposition, thankfully.
  • I don't know if they were actually willing to consider it or not - their answer was just simply, from what I understand, something to the tune of "we can't do it because of our licensing agreement with Apple"... Maybe they would otherwise. Then again, maybe not.
  • Then you obviously don't understand how 'micros~1' came about. Oh well, if you insist. :p
  • Some people have been saying that MS's Media Player/Netshow supports Mpeg4. I would call this really early support at best as they treat it as a codec not a file ormat.

    Well, two points on that:
    • MPEG-4 WILL be a codec-type arrangement. Apparently, it's been officially stated that MPEG-4 will drop into the QuickTime multimedia framework, and that'll be the native container format for it.
    • MPEG-4 isn't available yet. From what I understand, MS Media Player uses MP4 (not actually MPEG-4).

    So, there. :p
  • I'm run Mac OS X Server on my computer at home. While there is QuickTim4 streaming server, the viewer is decidedly not QuickTime4, and not ready for prime time(it's a server, not a client).

    Why? Because it is a brand new platform and they haven't even ported the entire Quicktime Viewer to Mac OS X/Darwin. I would expect the Viewer/Authoring version for OS X will ready at the same time as OS X Client.

    Why would Apple port Quicktime for Linux before they port Quicktime to Mac OS X? Wouldn't a port from UNIX to Linux be far easier and economical than MacOS/Windows95 to Linux?

    I don't expect to see Quicktime Player for Linux any time before Apple gets it running on their own OS.
  • Chuck Wiltgen, Apple's QuickTime evangelist, has had a very consistent message for people on the QuickTime list who want to see QuickTime on their favorite platform: "Get your platform vendor to license QuickTime." (That's paraphrased, not a direct quote.)

    A representative from Sorensen also said on the QuickTime list that they're only interested in having their CODEC running on QuickTime. If your platform has QuickTime, they'll see if there's a business case for porting.

    The situation with Apple and QuickTime is almost exactly equivalent to the situation with Sun and Java: Apple is doing the work on the two major client platforms -- Macintosh and Windows -- and leaving it up to licensees to do the work on everything else. (I'm pretty sure SGI is or at least was a QuickTime licensee.) The only differences are that Sun is willing to license a Linux port of JDK to BlackDown for cheap or free, and Sun provides source code to the JDK to whoever wants it without distribution rights. (If I'm wrong about the Java licensing issues, please correct me.)

    So talk to RedHat, or Caldera, or VA Research, or one of the other monied Linux companies, and convince them to do a licensed port of QuickTime. I'm sure Apple and many application vendors would like to see it; they just don't see any business case for doing it themselves considering how small a percentage of the client and content creation market Linux makes up.

  • What was at issue was the fact that Apple spent a fortune doing HCI work to ensure that the Mac had high usability.

    It was this that was ripped off and formed the basis of the court case.
  • Strategies have a funny way of mutating in ways their originators never intended. Take, for example, frequent-flyer plans (to use an oft-cited example). Originally one airline started one to get more customers, and then others followed suit. Now frequent customers are getting a lot of free flights, which is costing the airlines a fortune. And the genie is out of the bottle; any airline which axes such a programme will be committing market suicide.

    Even if Apple's open-source move may be merely a temporary strategy against Microsoft, it may end up rewriting the rules, leading to a state of affairs where standards have to be open-source to be accepted. (Which would be a Good Thing, of course.)

    Eventually, hopefully every common protocol, file format and standard will be open source.
  • Specifically on that %100 testing of iMacs to make sure they worked right directly out of the box. My question is, why don't they (or any other manufacturer for that matter) do this for ALL their lines? If it's economical to do this with one line of computers, it seems likely to be economical, and beneficial all around, to implement this amount of testing.
  • It was a beta for Unix in general, and I believe it hasn't been updated since then.
  • Linux has far more mindshare at this point in time, and there are far more developers maintaining it. Darwin is barely a few months old. It doesn't have the momentum Linux has.
  • By any chance does anyone out there know where I could get one of those proprietary "Turbo Cache Modules" for the Zeos "Gosling" 486 motherboard or where I could get a pin-out or specs or schematic for said module? And as long as I'm asking for miracles, a bios update that accomodates hard drives larger than 504/528/540 (depending on how you do the math) MB would be like a gift from above.



  • Sounds to me like neither company wants to take responsibility for this... ahem, fiasco.

    What do either of them have to gain by their standard becoming marginalized when it's not available on other platforms? Perhaps it stems from some sort of PHB way of thinking that will never make sense to the rest of us.

    sigh... In the meantime, it seems like everybody loses.


    --Bitscape

  • > MS would end up "loosing" money on the deal, even though they would be making money "on the books." Oh sure, it was a calculated risk. There were some other rumored under-the-table reasons for the investment, like a supposed cessation of Apple's attempts to prove that MS stole QuickTime code for their AVI codec, but nothing was ever proven. One of the best conspiracy theories is that if MS ever was brought up on anti-trust charges, they could point to their investment in Apple and say they were helping the competition. That never seems to have happened, though...
  • The $150mil MS invested in Apple a couple of years ago was in non-voting stock. MS has no board or stockholder rights @ Apple. Aside from the name recognition, all MS got was some rights for cross-licensing patents.
  • >I don't like Quicktime to begin with anyhow. >The quality is rather shoddy Use a different codec. >and just like avi's and real media files, you >can't stick them together 100% Freshly Squeezed False. You are simply spouting FUD about a product you've never used beyond the player. Simon Wright.

    --

  • Whoops, I don't post every day ;(
    Stupid HTML formatting mode...lol

    ---

    >I don't like Quicktime to begin with anyhow.
    >The quality is rather shoddy

    Use a different codec.

    >and just like avi's and real media files, you >can't stick them together

    100% Freshly Squeezed False. You are simply spouting FUD about a product you've never used beyond the player.

    Furthermore, you can even link different files of different codecs -- I often do Quicktime files that switch between Sorenson during video sequences, 'Animation' compression during animation sequences (I believe you can use FLASH now) and JPEG compression for still images. The sound switches between MP3 during music, and QDesign for voice-only passages.

    This way, I can get the best ratio of quality vs file size. And you can't do that with any other format that I know of.

    If you don't want Quicktime, what DO you want?

    Simon Wright

    --

  • I would like you to produce evidence to show you can't stick Quicktime movies together.

    Seeing as that's a major part of my job, I can confidently say that you're wrong, and don't have sufficient knowledge of the Quicktime spec.

    QT4 has been out of beta for a while, and has an excellent implementation of MP3. QT3 supports MPEG Layer 2, a better format than MP3 when used at 160kbps or higher.

    Your campaign to spread misinformation is very disappointing indeed. Quicktime is an industry standard, no matter what some "Kevin-who-doesn't-have-an-email-address" thinks.

    --

  • Because iMacs are aimed at normal people. Non-computer types. People who are buying a first computer.

    Other mac users are generaly long time mac users, and if they dont know a lot about them (say there just /users/... DTP people) then they proably have a on site mac guy - officialy or not.

    Any failure, no matter how trivial would be incomprenehable to a first timer, but a lot of DOA problems can be easily fixed by people with a little bit of experience.

    And no other company is realy selling cash and carry computers marketed at newbies. Sould othercompanies do this - build and market computers for the brain dead? Thats a compleatly different issue....

  • They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.

    Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code modified to make it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would definitly be opensource.

  • They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.

    Why dont they do this with the exception that your not allowed to release code modified to make it run on non Apple hardware. This might not quailfy as OpenSource but it would definitly be opensource.

  • Bob seems to have deemphasized the ability to communicate from his website.

    otherwise he would have gotten something like this:

    It was a matter of Steve Jobs playing Huck Finn and trying to get the rest of us to paint his fence.

    Tom Sawyer, not Huck Finn

    hey! kids read this page and he should take some responsibility...

    full text and miscellany online here:
    http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/tomsawye/t omhompg.html


    Page 26
    Chapter II

    SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
    Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate ...

  • And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.

    I wouldn't. At least not under any reasonable scenario. Apple's high end is now around $2500, so I'd be very impressed if someone could come up with the performance-equivalent of the G3/450 for $1500. Apple's pricing, though still a little higher, has gotten a lot better in recent years. The G3 kicks ass, and the G4's gonna be even better. Apple's claims of twice the MHz-for-MHz speed are probably exagerated, but a G3/450 is still a wicked fast machine. And with the upcoming copper and SOI technologies, the PPC will be faster, smaller, and cooler than x86 chips for a while yet.

    And one of the biggest advantages of having a Mac is the complete system integration: the OS and hardware were made by the same company, and the two pieces were designed to complement each other. This means that you have much less trouble with driver conflicts, configuration, etc.

    A Wintel port of Mac OS would also likely be behind the current Mac OS feature-wise, and it's not going to be binary-compatible. These two combined mean that even if there was a 100%-companitble Mac OS port, most newbies will just buy from Apple and save the hassle. And Apple's core graphics market will likely stick with Apple, as Apple's hardware is very strong in that area.

    What Apple should probably do is Open Source 90% of the OS, and keep the remaining 10% proprietary. This is enough to give their hardware a significant advantage, while still reaping much of the benefit of the Open Source model. Or maybe they should just delay releasing the source for 6 months or so. That way the really cool stuff would still make them money, but users would still be able to hack the rest.
  • the mac crowd is generally much less technical than the pc crowd. (This would mean that there would be fewer experienced programmers that would be willing to devote their spare time to working on it).

    I don't think this is true at all. Certainly in absolute numbers there are going to be more PC hackers than Mac hackers, just cause there are more PC's out there. But there is a thriving Mac hacker community. Many of the users now flooding into the Mac commnunity as a result of the iMac are probably not hackers, but there is a core of Apple loyalists that have been buying Mac's for 10 years. Many of them are very technically minded. Myself included. MacOSrumors, MacInTouch, MacNN, AppleInsider, MacOpinion are all Mac news sites aimed at power users. There may not be as many of us, but we do exist.
  • I posted to /. a while ago that Apple is and will continue to be a hardware company--they make great hardware, and the OS has been nothing but a liability to them for a long time. Even Quicktime can't be making serious revenue for Apple. OS upgrades may have been a significant source of revenue for Apple, but with the new wave of great hardware from Apple, aren't virtually all copies of MacOS "bought" preinstalled? Apple should give up any attempt at making revenue from software, and use OSS to gain hardware market share, in desktops and servers.

    Apple now has a decent OS which will actually be an asset, but it's based on publicly available code and knowledge. I imagine Darwin is a major improvement on the state of the art, but I also imagine that any good team of OS programmers could approach its quality, since BSD and Mach are public (correct me?).

    They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.

    The various forks of MOSX would certainly be less Euro and slick-looking than Jobs would prefer--hackers like to see the guts of a system; Jobs thinks the wave of the future has its guts sealed up tight--but Apple can take the improvements it likes and preinstall it (with source) on the servers and desktops it sells, maintaining the MacOS facade.

    IBM (a hardware company with a few impressive forays into software) has begun to realize that it needs to become a hardware & services company, and use software as a tool, not a source of revenue. This realization led them to undercut their own costly, revenue-generating Unices by selling Linux pre-installed as an option on their servers. IBM has done extremely well recently with these strategies, and they've turned themselves around from the most hated monopoly of the early 80s into a hacker-friendly open-systems company. Apple could learn a lesson.

  • I remember seeing a beta of mediaplayer for linux on the ms site last year...

    I'll see if i can find the link
  • Because there's a client from ms but not one from apple.

  • The thing is, apple doesn't want to provide the specs for sorenson because they say they are not aloud; but they aren't going to provide any quiktime clients themselves, not even a netscape plugin.
  • You are missing the point, apple won't release any of the client side multimedia stuff for linux because then linux would be competing with MacOS and apple is already having a hard time against windows. I don't think that its wrong because apple is a company and they want to sell, but i do think that standards like mpeg-1 and mpeg-4(soon) are much better than quicktime. Anyway, as soon as fast connections are more common, everyone is going to use mpeg for video and audio.
  • I see your point, i just never thought they would be that stupid.
  • I should have clarified that: apple doesn't consider linux a threat because linux and the MacOS are aimed a different markets. Now that OSX server is out, this might cause a clash, but I think OSX server is aimed to compete with NT. Using the "enemy of my enemy" method (and the fact that linux and NT have not been too cosy of late) I would think that anything that would help linux would be pushed.
  • The open source model does not work every where. Correct me if I am wrong, but Netscape communicator recieved much less support than it expected. I remember reading somewhere (it might have been in the halloween documents... there goes my credibility :) but it mentioned that if a project is already fairly developed, then there won't be as much support of it. I doubt that, even if MacOS 10 were opened up completely, that it would get a fraction as much support as linux. I believe this for 2 reasons:
    1) the attitude towards all things apple is generally quite negative in the open source society, well at least in the slashdot arena (this would mean that many programmers that believe in the open source model already would be less likely to suport it); and
    2) the mac crowd is generally much less technical than the pc crowd. (This would mean that there would be fewer experienced programmers that would be willing to devote their spare time to working on it).
    That said, I think it would be a good thing for apple to do *if* it worked. I just don't think it would because of the reasons above.
  • Sorry, but that is just silly. Why would multimedia playback ability suddenly make linux a competitor? A few months back apple had a story on its website about how some people used linux on apple hardware instead of the MacOS because they were worried about stability. (this was pre MacOS X server) This was on Apple's website! I have never seen any indecation that apple considers linux a competitor. If anything, quicktime support for linux would make linux a competitor for windows (less reason for a dual boot system.) I doubt that apple would shy away from making microsoft squirm.
    finally, the first program that mpeg-4 was going to be supported by was quicktime as the mpeg standards group decided that quicktime is the best multimedia program available(if I remember correctly.)
    also, does anyone have any independent information about the quality:size:speed ratios for mpeg1 compared to sorenson and other formats. I heard that sorenson had better quality:size than mpeg1, but I have no actual information to support or refute that claim. Idealy it would be cool if the sorenson codec were opened up, but apple does not look to be allowing that in the near future.
  • The trouble with this idea, as with people who years ago argued that Apple could go bankrupt but the Mac would live on, is that in order to stay competitive with Microsoft, Apple has to keep putting huge amounts of work into its OS.

    New features like Java 2.0 (not here yet), faster performance, search functionality, better navigation, multi-user support....

    All these things don't come cheap, and wouldn't come at all if Apple just open-sourced it and forgot about it.

    So they make some of that money back in upgrade sales, and the rest in just selling more hardware because people buy the competitive hardware/software combination.

    And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.

    Apple will never opensource everything, and it shouldn't. Its business model is just too different from other opensource companies.
  • As someone else mentioned, "OS 9" is trademarked. Hence the jump to the name "OS X".

    Also, bringing up the Apache bug is moot. It wasn't a "few" CGI scripts that was hard locking the server, as I recall, and I've seen a couple of reports *on here*, among other places, saying that people couldn't recreate it.

    In any case, when did "Apache" become a buzzword? Last time I checked, it was just a web server. God forbid Apple should bundle a piece of software most web folk use.

  • >Doesn't MS own somewhere around 10% of Apple?
    No. They bought $150 million of Non-Voting stock, Apple adopted IE as their default browser,
    and a bunch of nasty lawsuits disappeared.

    >Do they have representation on the board?
    No.

    >Don't they have a say in overall company direction?
    No.

    Apple beat the street recently with their Q3 earnings and the stock has been doing very well.

    Pope
  • Don't worry, most people around here can't spell either :)

  • the codec doesn't belong to Apple, so they can't make it open source.
  • SGI is having it's own troubles. It appears that many of the neato graphics progams that made SGI the end all of high end graphics are being ported to OSX.

    Could the streaming digital movies being piped in from those dishes on top of your multiplexes be created on Macs, then transmitted from Darwin servers using Quicktime?

    MS wanted Apple to knife the baby, QuickTime. They knew that that bit of code could be big trouble.

    Maybe while MS was watching Linux, Apple was sticking the shiv in their back.

    The corporate culture of Apple is different than Microsoft. I don't believe they will be as dictatorial as Gatesoft. Lets deal with M$ first, then deal with Apple if they start pulling a Microsoft on us.

    BTW, OS9 will appear soon. X = 10

    written on a G3/266 running LinuxPPC I rarely use the MacOS.
  • Or if you were a spook for the ASA it's -... -.- *
    goodbye dear Morse code. Us old ditty boppers are a dying breed. Miss the days of defending freedom, copying morse with a head full of acid, bourbon, and weed.

    *That's BK to the morse challenged.

    Hey guys I don't give a shit who does what, as long as the tech moves forward, and we have the freedom to use what hardware and OS we choose. Hurray for Linux, Hurray for Apple, Hurray for java, Hurray for UNIX, Hurray for open and free software, fuck Microsoft!!!

  • NT's client/server microkernel architecture would generally not allow for it, so I rather doubt it.

    Linux's architecture is open enough to allow for it, so I think that realtime support is possible for Linux.


  • You make the same mistake a lot of make proponents make.http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/07/18/1 421241

    Sure, Apple is a hardware company. Always has been. But this fact has been Apple's major *downfall*.

    As a hardware vendor, Apple has tried to distance itself from the Wintel camp by providing an operating system that feel is not only different, but technically and/or aesthetically superior to the Wintel offering.

    But that is exactly what's wrong with Apple. It is this fact that has cost them money and marketshare. Apple can no longer differentiate its machines in this way because the applications available for Macintosh are (mostly) the same applications available for Wintel. Word on the Mac and Word on the PC aren't much different. Same for Photoshop, PageMaker, QuarkXPress, etc.

    So Apple has gained some recent successes by differentiating their machines in terms of pure exterior aesthetics. Technical superiority doesn't sell computers, but aesthetics does. So they've started a fad.

    But it can't last. Until Apple realizes that they need to concentrate on software, and consider the hardware to be a commodity like the rest of the industry, they will never make serious gains against Microsoft.

    Think about it. Microsoft is successful precisely because they have always viewed software and particularly applications as the key to making money and selling units, not the hardware. Sure, they make hardware (keyboards, mice, joysticks, stereo speakers) but these items are unique in that they are designed to sell software. The Intellimouse pushes features built into Office and Internet Exploiter. The keyboards were initially built to support features in Windows 95. And joysticks and stereo speakers point at where Microsoft knows it will make LOTS of money: games and multimedia software.

    Apple, on the other hand, doesn't view Mac OS X or anything else (except QuickTime) as the "end product." They view the hardware as the end product, and they try to make money on that when the margins are extremely narrow. There are very few really successful hardware companies compared to the number of really successful software companies.

    I know all of this goes against the whole Open Source mentality and mindset ... but when it comes down to it, the industry is evolving into a services-oriented industry and Apple isn't following suit. Their recent success will be short-lived.

  • I highly doubt it. The next iMac design isn't slated to be announced at this show, and I would be very surprised to learn the iMac would gain a (more expensive, larger) 17" display.

    No, it won't be a 17" display, but it is supposed to have a larger display than it does now. Something like 16". I also hear the price may be coming down to $1099 or $999.
    --

  • ajdavis writes
    They should just release the whole damn MacOS X. Sure, some people would port it to cheaper Intel hardware, costing Apple revenue, but most people would run MOSX on G3/G4 hardware, and MOSX would kick butt even more if it were open-source. Its OSS development would be particularly fast since a) most OSS developers are already familiar with Mach & BSD, and b) this is so political.

    I'd strongly disagree that Apple should release ALL of their MacOS. Their strength is in their user-oriented interface which is specifically engineered for (dare I say it?) non-nerds. The underlying kernel and OS functions are pretty much commodities with a bit of flash technology but their memeware (ie conceptual interface) is unique and should be leveraged for what it's worth (between zero and infinity depending on how they hype it). If their OS was completely freed, then it would be harder to set consistent standards and interaction modes. Quality or quantity? Your choice.

    IBM (a hardware company with a few impressive forays into software)
    A few? Minor point but IBM has one of the largest software development team around (someone has to keep their corporate mainframe customers happy).

    LL
  • It's micros~1, not Microsoft~1, unless M$ has come out with a 11.3 system naming convention.

    JoeLinux

    ...the preceding statement was brought to you by the word GNU, the letter X, and beer.
  • Apple is not a hardware manufacturer at all. I talked recently to a Macintosh Dealer at a local trade show, and he said that all the Apple hardware these days is outsourced to IBM and Motorola. Even the cases are outsourced to a different company. So, the moral of the story? If it says Mac, and you can smack it with a baseball bat, Apple didn't make it.

    JoeLinux

    ...A corpse is a corpse a corpse of course, and no one can talk to a corps of course, unless that corpse just happens to be the Democratic Presidential Candidate for 2000.
  • And trust me: you, me, everybody would buy cheaper Intel versions of MacOS if they could. If some company ported a 99% compatible MacOS to Intel and undersold Apple by $1000, Apple would be out of business. Unfortunate, but true.

    You seem to be forgetting that people usualy use applications and not OSes. If some company would port mac OS to the intel and give it for free, it would still have no application for it (unless it would emulate the apple processor, but this would be shure much slower then a real mac OS). The macOS clone would have to convince a lot of app makers (including apple itself) to port their apps for intel and maybe giving suport for it, and this is much harder then simply port code.

    In my opinion this is the final obstacle to linux and what make OS/2 die. Linux is wining in this area since a lot of apps are realy getting ported.


    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"

  • Why would Sorenson hold back the codec? From what I've seen it's not some super spiffy change the world thing like the mp3 codec so they might as well.

    Mp3 isnt' that spectacular, infact there are a number of better compression systems, that result in both smaller files, and better quality

    what makes mp3 a super spiffy change the world thing, is that it *is* open. if Apple wanted to change the world, they would relice the Sorenson codec. if the two companys did that, howerver, Nither $orenson, or apple would make any money, and apple wouldn't be able to make sure the best tools are only available for the mac....
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • It might be posible to stand up to compition, to underhanded tacktecs, etc. but its hard to stand up to a truckload of money. Even if micro$oft never does anything with your technology, you're still a *very* rich man......

    they paid $700 million dolars for hotmail.com
    then they raped it up the ass by trying to run it on NT, they probably lost a lot of users, doing that. now there onto Free BSD I think (that's what netcraft reports anyway)

    but in the end it dosn't matter how badly they screwed it up, beacuse those VCs still made $700million dolars
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • but they still make there money from selling boxes
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Be = stuff made by whiners. no, Be == a company.
    there not a bunch of guys on the net hacking hardware for *fun* they are trying to produce a good product, in a resonable amount of time. and they *don't* have time to reverse engineer crap from a selfish company that didn't want any compition from companys on its own "turf" (when steve jobs came back)
    why should they even bother to support the G3 when Intel was *more* than happy to get BeOS up and running on there hardware
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • God damn Airlines suck ass, so does the new wired. Who gives a damn about "hyperfiles" not me, thats for sure.
    I remember when I used to poor over every single page of that magazine(even that awfull negropoint crap)
    now I'm lucky if i get 10 minutes out of that magazine. :(
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • what the hell? what does that have to do with anything? are you saying UDP is better? I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't get much more then a 10% improvement with UDP if anything at all (I really have no idea, but I doubt it would be much)

    besides java can use UDP anyway.
    I think X cringinly was mistaken about java. is a programing language, not a streaming media service. The only thing is, that if you write one client, it will run on any platform that supports a Java run time environment. so in theory, you could run quicktime over Java.
    anyway, did you know that JWZ guy like ran mozila for a while?
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • but only in the cosole, the cant use GDI stuff
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • And of course it was Tom Sawyer who persuaded people to paint his fence, not Huck Finn.
    (I was an English Lit major in a previous incarnation, so sue me.)
  • Actually frequent flyer plans serve their purpose of ensuring customer loyalty. The latest issue of Wired magazine has an article on "hyperfliers" and states that the typical free flight costs the airline only about $20, but that frequent fliers waste hundreds and thousands of dollars by trying to build up the miles on an airline frequent flier plan instead of flying on the cheapest flight.
  • You can build dual Celeron systems for less than $2500 which can almost certainly match G3 (and probably beat it). My twin 450 came in at about $2200, but is somewhat overbuilt in places--for that price you could probably find a nice dual 550 now. I'm also *very* interested in how the K7 will stack up against the G3/G4, esp. in SMP configurations. (Of course, that only gives you faster; no chance of smaller and cooler.)

  • The two other expected announcements at MacWorld will be a larger iMac with a 17-inch screen

    I highly doubt it. The next iMac design isn't slated to be announced at this show, and I would be very surprised to learn the iMac would gain a (more expensive, larger) 17" display.


    At the time, the company was talking strictly about bits of AppleTalk and QuickTime that it wanted the open source

    Actually, Mac OS X Server was the first thing to become open source material.


    Darwin can be recompiled to run on Intel or Alpha or some other processor family. It can be and will.

    I believe this has already happened. I thought I remembered running across a site that had a Darwin Intel build available on CD.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Apple is not a hardware or a software company. It is both.

    Oddly, this concept is very difficult for some people to grasp. Since Microsoft is the "biggest, bestest" computer-related company in the world, and they make only software, that must mean that hardware and software have to be seperate, right? I just don't get that.

    There is nothing that is intrinsically wrong with a company creating both the hardware and the software. In fact, to me, this seems like a much more seamless approach. This works well for Sun and IBM, why not for Apple?

    Sure you can buy a G3 and install MkLinux, LinuxPPC, or whatever on it, but that's far from the norm.

    A major reason people buy Macs -- the value proposition -- is that they are easier to use than their PC counter parts. This is do in large part to the fact that Apple creates both the hardware and the software. This results in one, unified package. This is what differentiates Apple from the rest of the PC world. This is, for example, why the transition from 68k to PPC and NuBus to PCI was so seemless to the end user.

    Wintel PC manufacturers are clearly frustrated by the fact that the computers they produce can only be as good/bad as Windows itself is. This is evident as vendors (Sony, IBM, Compaq) struggle to customize their Windows desktops GUIs to suit their customers.

    This is a bit less of a problem in the Linux world, as manufacturers could, in theory, start installing their own Linux distributions, rather than just using off-the-shelf Red Hat 6.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson

  • What about that damn sornsen codec that Apple forbade the specs from being released to the xanim guy? The hell with Apple. I like MS more than Apple, at least they don't try to market Apache as being their own propitary webserver or partion their memory.

    ~Kevin
    :)

  • The maker of the sornsen codec *wanted* to release the specs but Apple wouldn't let them.

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • If Apple is really all "Praise God we have open source my brothers!" like they pretened to be then wouldn't they WANT Sorenson to release the codec? Why would Sorenson hold back the codec? From what I've seen it's not some super spiffy change the world thing like the mp3 codec so they might as well.

    Apple is clearly holding them back going against their faux support of open source and is just using buzzwords to try and save their sinking ship which is rubbing off a bad image on the open source community. At least SGI isn't pulling any of this bullshit. I mean come on. Mac OS X? What happened to 9? Why not just 10? They're using the X11 keyword.

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • Yes I know X = 10, pay more attention. Why is it Mac OS X? Why did they skip Mac OS 9? My *theory* is that they used it to borrow from the fame of X. Or maybe they just think they're l33t HaXoR d00ds and throwing random X's around will make them cool.

    It goes along nicely with the idea of using other big industry buzz words like "Apache" and "Open Source"

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/apache.html

    Look how many times they repeat apache and open-source as they like to call it and claim it's a "core component of Mac OS X Server" but yet I seem to recall it being able to take down a server after it fires up a few cgi scripts... but maybe something else handles cgi, don't quote me on that part.

    Anyhow, you should see what I'm getting at here. Apple is doing the same cut-throat activites Microsoft does but instead of going after DR-DOS or OS/2 they're going after what anyone reading this should want to support and protect.

    ~Kevin
    :)

  • I don't like Quicktime to begin with anyhow. The quality is rather shoddy (black/grey splotchy squares looking like dropouts in a streaming clip) and just like avi's and real media files, you can't stick them together (ie. cat part1.mpg part2.mpg > whole_movie.mpg) which is quite nice. So I guess you're right, I deserve much better than what Quicktime can offer me. :)

    For the curious this works with mp3's too. As an added bonus of not having burnt-in begin/end points you can view/listen as you download.


    ~Kevin
    :)
  • no text

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • #1 I don't post a lot either, but I know how to click on the preview button.

    #2 FUD my nut. So what is going on here? Now do Mac users use buzzwords alongside Apple to get attention for what is pretty much just vaporware?

    #3 MP3s? That would be QT 4.0 right? It's still in beta and it shows.

    #4 You still can't stick them together

    #5 I want mpeg, and I have it. Pay attention.

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • This is so offtopic I don't even know why I'm replying to it. Good idea, bad execution. Get it thru your head.

    ~Kevin
    :)

  • I think the number was 32. That sounds like a few to me. You recall wrong. Stop being in denial. Yeah I used an Apple IIe back in the day and loved playing Odell Lake. However unlike the public school system, I learned they suck and went PC.

    Apple is a worse monopoly than Microsoft and they produce crap. UMax was making faster Macs then they were... can't have that, and wham, they pulled the plug. BeOS was running better than MacOS. Can't have that, wham, pull the plug. They even have infomertials. Ugh.

    And don't give me any of that "I run Linux on my PPC." I've seen Linux on a ppc. It sucks. The hardware sucks. The software sucks. Go buy a PC, you'll never go back.

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • "There is a new Star Wars trailer that has been recently released and it uses the currently unsupported Sorenson Video codec. I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others."

    Like I said, Apple won't let them.

    ~Kevin
    :)
  • You seem to be having a problem understanding the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Just because you say something sucks, doesn't mean that it does, in fact, suck. Usually when arguing -- at least, I mean, traditionally, back before they let kindergardeners have internet access -- people supply so-called "justifications", that is, reasoning and evidence to help show that their subjective opinion is indeed objectively correct (although if you get into epistemology, you'll find that objectivity is an elusive goal). Next thing you know, you'll be making an ad hominen attack against Steve Jobs.

    In shorter words, you suck, dumbass.

    Jon
  • Many, even all of Microsoft's competitors are now starting to use Open Source. As these platforms gain mind share and market share, it will become a necessity to support a "one true standard". If MSFT remains proprietary, they'll be the only ones who are. Think about it, how many OSes can you name besides WinXX that aren't unices (traditional MacOS doesn't count 'cause it will be replaced by MacOS X)? How many can't run POSIX applications? How many are totally limited to a single company's resources? It's lonely at the top, huh Bill? :-)

  • Yeah, and Faust was the source of all evil for signing a deal with the devil.

    Sheesh, get over your Apple infatuation. Sometimes they're wrong you know.

  • You're sure it's still the same company? It looks a whole lot more like NeXT these days than it does Apple. If you were to rant on and on about how IBM used to be, people would flame you. Why? Because companies can and do change. It's called survivial of the fittest. It looks to me like they have changed, at least enough to avoid going down in flames...
  • OS 9 is already trademarked by another company. Sonata, the NT sytle multiuser MacOS, might be OS 9 if they clear up the legal blocks.
  • Jwz, look at Geo's streaming Java video stuff
    at http://www.emblaze.com/

    I think this is what they mean...

    Best regards
    Dev Mazumdar
  • That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore.

    1. The "Pirates of Silicon Valley" view of this deal is completely wrong. M$ made a symbolic investment as part of a big deal. They did not even remotely take over Apple.

    2. The other parts of the deal were more important. M$ agreed to pay $100-200M for stolen technology. M$ agreed to not kill Office for Mac. Apple agreed to make IE the default browser, and some other things. It was a "cease fire" of sorts.

    I didn't reply to the Ethan Butterfield article, but /. thinks so, at least in preview mode. Looks like a /. bug.
  • No I was talking about the fact that Apple refused to disclose information about the G3 systems, (Bios, system chipsets,etc) So that Neither the LinuxPPC or the BeOS people were able to make the system work. The linuxPPC people have recently reverse engineered it, but Be refuses to reverse engineer anything.
  • One must remember that Apple is one of the most propriety hardware/software developers in the industry in the past. They will gain political points for various, albeit minor, open-source projects. However, the culture of Apple restricts their open-source development efforts in this area to consumer applications and minor parts of their OS. Quicktime can be released because it was never seen as a direct avenue of profit for the company.

    The key to Apple's success could be in creating a viable "ease-of-use" Unix or pseudo-Unix alternative to Windows. However, internal politics will block any release of the core code of OS X. Insiders see the OS as the crown jewels. Apple also wants to retain its fat profit margin, undreamed of by PC makers.

    This is also the reason that Apple will not port its OS to Intel machines. Although it would not be a impossible task with OS X, Apple would be too afraid of losing server customers to a cheaper OS X/Intel systems. Though this will not be the case, this same sort of fear stopped a joint Apple/Intel project years ago to port the OS to 386 machines.
  • no, it doesn't. it uses MP4, which is NOT a standard, it is a marketing ploy, and a closed system for music distribution that is encrypted. MPEG 4 has not come out yet, but when it does, it will be based primarily on - you guessed it - QuickTime.
  • To support real time streams, Darwin includes a real time kernel,
    something not available in Windows NT, Linux, or anywhere else.

    Well, I think the QNX folks have realtime kernels, and I believe there is a Linux RT or RT Linux project or something that brings RT capabilities to Linux. I also believe there is a realtime priority on NT, although I don't know how realtime it really is. Anyone have more info?
  • Doesn't MS own somewhere around 10% of Apple? Do they have representation on the board? Don't they have a say in overall company direction? If apple is taking actions that severely effect the finances of own of their primary stock holders, don't you think something would be done.

    Oh, but you have to think of the "politically correct" way of handling this also. I can just hear MS whining now, "But Steve, all that high-quality software you are releasing as OSS is taking away our business that we've spent billions in developing!" I don't think that will every happen...
  • The interesting question is what happens if they
    succeed in leveling the marketplace, and making
    microsoft not so much of a threat. Will the
    benevolence to Linux continue? Or will Linux
    be seen as a threat and become the next target?

    I don't think Linux will ever be thought of as a "threat." There is no one company that anyone can "target" in the Linux community. Anyone can use Linux and make their own distribution. SGI, IBM, Oracle, and Sun can all make their own distributions and fight against each other for the best features/support. That's the beauty of the community, it fosters higher levels of competition rather than promoting proprietary solutions to "lock in" you customer base. Sooner or later, someone will come out with a product that outweighs the benefits of yours and the pain in totally replacing a proprietary solution. Your customers are never "locked in" forever....

    And I don't think it will take *years* to play out...
  • That's interesting -- didn't know that. Doesn't seem like a particularly good deal from MS' perspective anymore. Yes, they could be positioned to make quite a bit of money if Apple continues on it's "comeback." But what happens if that comeback involves taking business away from Microsoft? At levels greater than what MS would make in their stock holdings? MS would end up "loosing" money on the deal, even though they would be making money "on the books."

  • See this [slashdot.org] comment. Microsoft may end up loosing on their investment even though Apple stock is doing better.
  • After all, its most likely for MS to release a linux port of media player than for apple to realease a quicktime client.

    Why do you say this?
  • I remember seeing a beta of mediaplayer for linux on the ms site last year...

    I'll see if i can find the link

    Yea, I remember seeing that also. But that still doesn't explain why you "don't think Quicktime is good for linux." Why? Do you think Microsoft's technology is better?
  • Oh, God. How may times do we have to go through this? Apple CAN'T release the specs. They lease the specs from another company. It's not their specs to release. Complain to someone else.

  • As I replied jsut 30 secs ago, that's an old version that doesn't contain the "new" technologies. It hasn't been kept up to date since Microsoft bought out the company that produced it.
  • Apple doesn't have control, the maker does. How could Apple "not let them?" Are you referring to the agreement that Sorenson and Apple have in their "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" policy explained here? [slashdot.org] If so, then you have to blame Sorenson just as much as Apple. As suggested, write to Charles and tell him why Apple should port to Linux.
  • That's because the MS lawyers are a bunch of idiots. Wait.... Maybe that's their basis for appeal, incompetant representation...
  • Sorenson is saying this because they want to avoid any heat for the decisions they have made. If they entered into an agreement with Apple (signed, legal, or not) that basically says that Sorenson will not release the specs for any platform that does not have QuickTime ported to it then that's their fault. They need to take responsibility for their own decisions. It's their fault for trying to "corner the market" into their proprietary protocol by making such a stupid deal with a computer manufacturer to promote their technology.

    Even if it is in a legal document signed by both Apple and Sorenson, I'd have a hard time believing that Apple could do anything if Sorenson did give out the specs. All it could possibly do is make the agreement between Apple and Sorenson null and void. It's not like Apple could sue Sorenson over the release. That would be political suicide anyway. They'd never live it down, and all their talk about opensource would be for null.

    So, it's Sorenson's fault for getting into a stupid, idiotic agreement with Apple and not having the balls to break the agreement. And they have the nerve to whine that "Apple won't allow [us] to license it to others!" Oh, bullshit.
  • Read this [slashdot.org] for my response to your failure to understand that it's not Apple's fault that Sorenson got into a bad deal with them.

    Stop blaming the devil for convincing Eve to take a bite of the Apple and start blaming Eve...

  • I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here

    But, it's kinda the same with all the companies that Microsoft has bought out to "stifle competition." A certain amount of blame has to be put on the stupid little companies that make the agreements with Microsoft and then find themselves in a bad position. It's almost like some of them have absolutely no foresight, and a terrible memory. What's amazing to me is that there are STILL companies that dont' realize that Microsoft will take advantage of them given the chance.

    Apple may be similar to a certain extent, but you can't totally obsolve Sorenson of their involvement in the situation... That's the point I was trying to make. We can still beat Apple over the head and petition them to create a Linux client, but let's beat Sorenson over the head too!


  • Exactly! But if you're going to start placing blame, place blame at the feet of both Apple and Sorenson and not just Apple.

    Hopefully, that PHB will be looking for another job soon.
  • Yes, but the Microsoft client is old. It doesn't have all the capabilities of the new clients, and isn't being kept up to date with the main development tree. It was developed (ported, whatever) by the company that Microsoft bought out to get the code. Microsoft dropped support for it as fast as they could. That's why you don't see download links to it prominently posted all over the place. It's old technology that isn't as useful anymore.

    I don't think it will be too long before a Linux client pops up...

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