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The Problem with Apple

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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?
--- End quote ---


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.
--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

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