The Problem with Apple

[neo_x500]

The topic I am talking about is obvious. Many people would just love to see some decent programs for Macs, but it's not going to happen any time soon. In order for apple computers & OS's to become popular, they need to licsense their software to other Computer companies like Dell. They have a great OS, but they don't do business all to well. Think about it, All Mac OS systems can only be used on apple computers, which can only be purchased from apple. When the first PC was released, they used the first version of DOS on it, and IBM made the biggest mistake of their lives- they didn't fully license the use of MS-DOS on their PC's, letting MS sell it to as many computer companies as they wanted. This is what helped create the monster known as microsoft. It gained popularity not because of it's ease to use, but because of it's ability to be used on any type of computer. That's what Apple needs to succeed, the ability to put it on something besides a Mac. They actually sold the rights to a few companies, but then they hired back steve Jobs and he rudely cancelled all deals-that was apple's mistake. Sorry for the essay I jsut wrote, hadn't intended for it to be that long-and for the bad spelling.

[psyjax]

Hmmm....

You make some good points. Alot of Apple users wish that Apple would licence it's OS. And I am sure there would be a pretty good market for them. In fact I wouldent be surprised if that very suggestion is in the works in some form or another.

I know of at least one grupe of UNIX hackers who are trying to tweek the x86 version of Darwin so that OSX can be installed on it. And in fact, I belive Apple was expecting such projects when they released Darwin free and Open sourced.

I think the above is the major point. Apple has made the core part of OS X available and free over the net to other platforms, most notably the PC. If such project's take off, no doubt some market share would be recaptured at no expense to Apple it'self. Sound's far fetched? Not really, Apple knows very well what Open Source means and the power that it has (M$ can't stand the idea).

Furthermore, Open Source means community. Windows has no true "community" as do Mac followers, or UNIX/Linux heads. If people actually participate in the development of the OS and contribute their efforts to it (as has been going on since the release of OS X! I myself am amazed at how many people are making cool FREE stuff for it) there is a bond that developes. Ask an Amiga person or a Mac person, they know this well     Windows people, just HAVE to use their OS.

Apple also works on the age old axiom of "The Costomer is Allways right" and what better way to express this than letting the costomer have full controll over what he buys? Bill Gates 's MO is more like "The Costomer comes in and never get's out of the store till his wallet is empty and we own the deed to his house".

But I digress...

My point is, that Darwin has been ported. There are comunities of programmers already working on making things cross platform and the like. And things can only get better from here on out    

The Clones you spoke of, were not a good thing. Jobs axed them cuz they were leeching what was left of the economically batterd Apple. Like it or not, the reason Apple still survives is because the Clones are gone.

Most of Apple's money comes from it's hardware sales. Not it's software. One of the ways they keep people buying their hardware is by making their (EXCELENT!) OS available on it.

Hopefully the growing OS X comunity will expand cross platform boundrys and perhapse even up the playing field for the future of computer industry.

Alot of people wonder why Linux has not done this? Well, there is a pretty influential company behind a similar effort now. Apple may not be number one, but they are not to be underestimated.

In my opinion Apple actually WANTS to make things better. Not just suck up moeney and digital relestate.

OS X ROCKS!


P.s. Oh ya, one last thing. Carefull with talk like: "no decent programms for the mac". I know you probably are refering to the quantaty of programs as well as perhapse games. But it could be misconstrude (at least i hope you don't belive this) that  you are saying there are no good programms for the Mac which is indeed absolute crap. I'm sure you can post something like that in the MAC OS forum and get liberaly flamed by everyone including me  

[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax:

Alot of people wonder why Linux has not done this? Well, there is a pretty influential company behind a similar effort now. Apple may not be number one, but they are not to be underestimated.

I agree with most of your post and am looking forward to actually running OSX one day.  And I believe that switching to a solid "open source" underbelly is the smartest move Apple has made in a long time. I am, for the first time, excited about Apple.

I don't understand what you mean by the above quote though. You may be right, I just don't understand what you mean by it.  Do you mean to say that Linux isn't cross platform?  And do you mean that because of IBM getting into the mix that it is now becoming cross platform?  If that is what you mean then I have to disagree. I do however like the fact that IBM has embraced it and is taking it to the next level on their platforms.  I use or have used a wide range of their platforms from Mainframe to AS/400 to RS/6000 down to PCs.  But before IBM Linux already ran on more platforms than any other OS that I know of.

On the other hand, if you mean taking a single binary executable and running it on all of those platforms without recompiling then you would be somewhat correct, however in Linux that isn't an issue since you have the source code to every application and can easily build the binary for whatever the platform.  With apple you don't have a choice because you don't have the source to the GUI so you have to find some other way of running the native object code on a different platform. To me that comes too close to "emulation" and there can't help but be performance issues, but hopefully very small performance issues.

[Calum]

Of course, OSX may not run so well on a PC due to the PC's erratic and sometimes inadequate physical architecture (each machine being different from each other machine). This in its turn, may make some people think that OSX is buggy and unreliable, which is something Apple have worked hard to avoid a reputation for.
And i think that point about a big company putting itsmoney where its mouth is, or whatever it was, is about Apple being a company that is punting a decent open source OS, using advertising. This isn't something that widely happens with Linux. Isn't this what you were saying?

[psyjax]

ya basically. Apple is not only open-sourcing it, it is advertining, promoting it and supporting it. This prevent's the Million distor problem and sets a standard for developers.

[voidmain]

They are opening up the GUI/Desktop?  That's news to me... Are there any articles that you know of where I can find specifics?

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
They are opening up the GUI/Desktop?  That's news to me... Are there any articles that you know of where I can find specifics?

Not the GUI the core kernel behind the GUI. It's calld Darwin. There is a link to it on the main page. Also here is one of Apples official pages:

http://www.opensource.apple.com//

This is what powers the GUI, It's basically FreeBSD. It is open sourced and that's what I was refering to. The GUI as far as I know is still proprietery.

[ravuya]

Apple licensing out the OS would be a major mistake. One of the biggest strengths of Apple is its ability to move quickly on hardware; it can choose to dump a certain feature (floppy drives) all across the line, ensuring support from hardware manufacturers for the newer-tech solution (usb, firewire).

Apple can also ensure, that way, that it knows how every install of OS X will run on each machine, because it knows what machine you're installing it on and what all the documented quirks of it. Windows and *nixes should be envious of that. I haven't had an issue with an Apple software upgrade ever.

If Apple's hardware licensees are all spread out across various corps, Apple can't pull them in and say, "This is how you have to build your machines", because they have no guarantee that it will work.

Your main point seems to be for price/performance, ne? If you factor in the free stuff you get with a Mac (FireWire, for one) and compare it with a Dell, you'll notice that they come out to about the same. And Apple even has tech (L3 cache, for one) that no other PC manufacturer has. So, really, I don't see much of a difference in price or features between a tricked-out Dell and a standard Macintosh G4.

And I wouldn't license the Mac OS to Dell if they offered to sell the company to me - Dell has killed every dual-boot initiative they have for home machines, and publicly insulted Apple on multiple occasions. Plus they have that annoying Dell punk.

True, OS X on Intel would kick ass - I know I'd hate my Pentium III a lot less - but it wouldn't help Apple at all. What they're doing now, releasing the x86 Darwin kernel, is good.

Want OS X? Buy a Mac. End of story, really.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax:


Not the GUI the core kernel behind the GUI. It's calld Darwin. There is a link to it on the main page. Also here is one of Apples official pages:

http://www.opensource.apple.com//

This is what powers the GUI, It's basically FreeBSD. It is open sourced and that's what I was refering to. The GUI as far as I know is still proprietery.

I already knew all of that and like I said in my post in order to run the GUI on other platforms (x86) a certain amount of emulation has to occur at the darwin level that would in my opinion have to come at the cost of a performance hit.  Unless Apple recompiles the GUI for that platform and sells a copy. And everyone that has commented on that part of it says it will not happen.  Now you still didn't answer my question about you inference to Linux.  I didn't understand what you meant by it.  Could you maybe rephrase it so I can understand it? (It may be obvious but sometimes I don't see the obvious).

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Ravuya:
Apple can also ensure, that way, that it knows how every install of OS X will run on each machine, because it knows what machine you're installing it on and what all the documented quirks of it. Windows and *nixes should be envious of that. I haven't had an issue with an Apple software upgrade ever.

No, UNIX/Linux should not be envious of that. Because OSX can only run on specific platforms it is limited to doing certain types of work.  Now the types of work that OSX can do, it does extremely well (probably better than any other OS).  However, OSX can not do the types of things that Linux can do running on an IBM mainframe, but OSX users have no interest in doing that type of work.  Because Apple does limit to certain types of work and certain types of hardware their job is much easier at supporting that environment like you say.  You could make the case that that ease of support is a source of envy but you just can't have your cake and eat it too.

[psyjax]

Hey VoidMan sorry for not answering.

I was reffering to the Linux buzz a few years ago. When everyone was touting it as the Windows killer that was going to free the comp. industry. Not necisserly IBM and others who use it for Mainframe and technical type tasks, but for the common user.

Microsoft was afraid that if Linux became friendly enugh to gain a foothold in it's market that they could have some stiff competition on their hands. When the DOJ made M$ have to let computer manufaturers ship alternet OS's Linux was the first one out there.

Plus Linux was cross platform (heck even one for PPC). So it was, and I guess still is, a potential thret to Windoze.

Anyway, my point simply was to say, that because Linux, though a damn fine OS, is somewhat obscure and difficult to the common user, furthermore there was no marketing force (not that there should be on a free OS) making it appealing to the common user, so it never caught on like it was expected.

However, Apple OSX/Darwin has an excelent user friendly GUI with the low level tech ability of a *NIX OS. With Apple supporting it, advertising it, and making it both accessible and understandable to the comon user. This coupled with a growing Open Source programmer comunity makes OSX a pretty fine alternative.

This relates to what you were saying about porting Darwin and having to emulate OSX on some level. As I understand it OSX is almost like a shell over Darwin, kinda like Win 3.1 or X Windows. So if that is the case, I belive it should work on anything capable of runing Darwin.

I may be totaly wrong on this, but that is my understanding.

[voidmain]

Ahhh, thanks for clarifying that.  Again I agree with everything you say except for the last paragraph.  When Darwin is ported to another platform the OSX binaries will not be able to run on that platform, at least not without some level of hardware/processor emulation, depending on how the original GUI binaries were compiled.  Just because the OS runs on a platform does not mean that the application binaries will run on any platform with that OS.  For instance you can not take "Netscape" compiled on Linux for x86 and run it on Linux on a Sun Sparc.  Netscape has to be recompiled.  Same with Windows.  Windows apps for x86 do not run on Windows Alpha (when there was a WIndows alpha).  You had to get the application compiled for the Alpha processor.

Now this is not written in stone because there is a certain amount of binary formats that try to eliminate them being tied to a specific platform but I don't know what Apple uses, but they would have no reason to have cross platform binaries since they only currently run on a limited set of hardware.

Now you CAN at the OS level emulate the processor and hardware so that the binaries *think* they are running on their native platform but in my opinion that would come at the cost of performance (however minimal that may be).

[psyjax]

Ok, now I understand. Hmmm... I just hope once these projects are nearing compleation that Apple decides to re-release or re-compile the bianarys for them. I think this might actually be a possibility since Apple has expresed interest in supporting th x86 Darwin comunity.

Only time will tell.

[voidmain]

That would be awesome! Imagine if Dell/HP/BestBuy etc offered machines with OSX as an alternative (since they can't seem to comprehend Linux)?  I think the MS marketshare would start coming down for sure!

[Shakinbrave1]

The biggest problem with apple is their crippling of lower-end macintoshes. The first macintosh ever to have an accelerated video card was the power mac 9500! Which was ok, because you could add them via nubus or PCI, but what about all-in-ones? They were stuck with processer-rendered graphics at turtle speeds, and which bogged down the processor. Hence, none of the 60X all-in-ones were capable of any decent gaming or quictime playing, not even the 275Mhz 603e powered 5500s, which could have flown past the PCs of their time with a decent graphics chip. Hell, with a radeon card, it could likely do better than an iMac! Instead, it's useless for much other than internet, and it sucks even at that because it takes too long to scroll though pages with pictures. And how about iMacs... even new iMacs. The iMac G4 has an outdated video card already, and it is totally non-upgradible. Plus, no sound card, so all sound is rendered by the processor, making it slower at anything with sound. The G4 cube was a step in the right direction, but it was so incredibly overpriced it didn't sell. And the G4 is way too expensive for the average consumer. How can apple compete with PC companies if they make a computer non-user servicible? My iMac has a rage 128 card built onto a 2x AGP slot. I could kill someone at apple! My rage 128 is now useless to me, but imagine what Radeon 8500 would do for me? Making the graphics card in an upgradible slot wouldn't cost apple a cent, actually, it would cut the cost of the computers down. Apple intentionally cripples cheaper macs to sell more of their higher-level macs, but it doesn't work, because it just drives people away from macs altogether.Why no $700 G3 cube?