he banned cloning and i really don't think he will like this.
just my 2 cents.
I think you're right in that cloning won't happen again in the way that it did before or in the standard windows way. I could see a partnership approach - possibly with Apple providing motherboards etc which are then used by another manufacturer in a similar way to the HP deal with iPods, or some other scheme where Apple keeps a significant degree of control over the hardware, but allows a third party to sell 'macs' in order to extend their distribution or more likely, expand it into areas where they are currently weak such as in enterprise. I'd say it's still unlikely though, and anyone who thinks that Apple are going to allow a scheme where third party hardware significantly undercuts their own hardware is dreaming.
Of course 2x 6600 GTs could not match one 6800 Ultra. What ever gave you the idea that 2 cards that are less than half the speed of one card would magically add up to more when put together?
Two points:
- I get three 6600 GTs for the price of one 6800 Ultra,
- two SLI'ed 6600 GTs should performance wise be pretty close to a 6800 Ultra - in theory
Quote:
Originally posted by onlooker
Post a link to your real world test. I recently dissected a test in here that showed SLI performing at almost 2x the speed as as a 6800 ULtra on a Mac in these very forums.
Well, here is one, but this one is a little dated. The one I am referring to is in print and in German.
And for the PC SLI being twice as fast as a single Mac card: I wish nVidia put half as much effort into tweaking thier drivers for the Mac as they do on the PC side.
Quote:
Originally posted by onlooker
That is the older design for intels processors. Nvidia's nForce4 for AMD Opteron is 16 lanes both ways.
But you are right, nVidias upcoming nForce Professional chipsets will provide dual 16x slots - but there are neither mainboards available nor any announcements yet. So, up unitl now, this is vaporware.
And, by the way, I did not know that there is/was an SLI chipset for Intel processors.
The SLI idea is not bad and there are some performance gains. Drivers at this point still seem immature. And since Apple is dependant on nVidia to deliver stable software, it might still take some time. And then the question of economic viability still remains (SLI machines will be a very small niche market).
Ask yourself this: what would need to be true for Apple to license OS X on Intel?
You need at least the following:
1) OS X (and its applications) would work within the Intel architecture (not just Intel chips, but the whole of the ecosystem of motherboards, peripherals, devices, etc.. [this is actually quite plausible, but no small undertaking on the applications side.]
2) Apple would have to be able to make more money in the long term than by owning a monopoly on OS X machines. This too is quite plausible. Even if Apple only made half as much money on each OS X machine sold, there is good reason to expect that with multiple vendors selling and marketing the platform that more than twice as many would be sold.
3) Microsoft would not be able to stop Apple. I think it all falls apart here. If Apple did this, MS would have two sledgehammers to stop Apple. First, they could cut the price of Windows to PC manufacturers, thereby recreating the price gap between OS X and Windows. With so much revenue coming from collateral sales of office, exchange, server software, MSN, etc... MS would hunker down for the battle to win the key leveragable asset -the OS. Secondly, MS would hobble MS Office for OS X. This kills the application side of the business and would require the Apple camp to create and market applications that were as good as, compatible with and believed to be as good as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This is an extremely tall order and even if Apple made the decision to this years ago, there are still years of development left to take place. (although there is now an apple presentation and word processing application). Just see how long it takes though to get any acceptance of these.
I think it is far too easy to underestimate how devastating a battle the OS war between MS and Apple would be if Apple tried to cross over to Intel.
MS has a bigger warchest and would not go down for the count easily. Remeber a little company named Netscape. Remember how MS took care of them? Remember Lotus. Remember Wordperfect.
You don't initiate a life or death battle unless you're certain you can win!
In short I think this may be a long term strategic option for Apple, but now it would fail and would probably bring down the whole of Apple with it.
1) Apple hardware sales would plummet, perhaps stop altogether
2) Compatability problems, vertically controlled hardware is a good thing!
3) Software availability - there would be nothing available for OS X x86, it wouldn't be fun trying to persuade adobe etc to produce OS X ppc, OS X x86, and windows x86 software
4) Who would buy it? Manufacturers would get their ass bitten by MS if they shipped machines with OS X (look at what happens to companies that try to ship Linux and the bad deals they get on win licenses). How many people are actually going to fork out $129 for a copy of an OS when they got windows "free" when they bought the machine.
Then who in there right mind would buy an Apple branded desktop,
Those who want as computer with style. Tell me when you find a windows box that has the coolness factor of the Mac Mini or the iMac. The vast majority of the two and a half percent of the market that buys Apple will continue to buy Apple.
Two points:- I get three 6600 GTs for the price of one 6800 Ultra,
- two SLI'ed 6600 GTs should performance wise be pretty close to a 6800 Ultra - in theory
And for the PC SLI being twice as fast as a single Mac card: I wish nVidia put half as much effort into tweaking thier drivers for the Mac as they do on the PC side.
Ok RolandG, 2 things. Who's theory, and you do know that Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. If the drivers are not performing as well it's not nvidias problem., Apple is getting the exact same source code that PNY, and everybody else gets.
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X on Intel chipsets?"
Jobs laughing "When hell freezes over and I like new Bob Dylan songs."
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X?"
Jobs "Sure, but we're only supporting current hardware vendors and PowerPC chips. Here's their address. Write me a check on the way out."
Rationale. Porting OS X to x86 would be fairly easy. Star Trek II.
However porting the applications and keeping the developers from jumping ship would be well nigh impossible.
Three weeks later on a golf course in Hawaii
Steve and Mr Sony admiring the sunny sky and scenery...
Mr Sony: Esruse me Steve-San you have nice putter and OS X I would Rike to get one of each how do I do so??
Steve: My putter was designed by Mr. Ives and consists of an aluminum/titanium head and built in RDF so that even if I miss the put you think I sunk it.
OSX sure but I want all of your Movies and Music on itms
Sony: Steve-san we want to sell walkman with itms support.
Steve: Sure you do everyone does it just comes down to How bad Do you want it! I'll take Those nice nifty Cell Chips that We designed for IBM with exlusivity for 1 year from release to any other manufacurer (including you guys) and you can have fairplay and Al Gore's phone number.
Here sign your greens card....
Steve: Ha aha HA HA that was the contract for your music and movie library printed very very small!!!
Sony: Er Mr Steve- You screwed me I thought that this year of Sony/Apple hiDef?
Steve: Hi def? No! I said "MY Def"
Sony: What about MWSF stage show?
Steve: R I g h th ok, that was to show the world that sony is standing there with a neat litttle video camera and WE have HI Def on the Screen and Tiger in the TAnk!!!
Sony: you BAstard
Steve: All your media are belong to us!!!
Ha Ha Ha!
Make your time...!
tune in next episode of the TednDi theather where you will hear Carly Fiorina Ex-CEO of HP say....
....."but Steve I thought we had something together??"
I agree with the statement made by others that OS X on x86 is unlikely, particularly due to the complexity involved with supporting such an enormous hardware base. That said, if Apple were to pursue licensing of OS X, I think it would be more of a hardware + software deal, similar to how HP licensed the iPod.
The question though is if licensing is even particularly necessary at this point in time? I'm not sure that it is.
I agree with the statement made by others that OS X on x86 is unlikely, particularly due to the complexity involved with supporting such an enormous hardware base.
The hardware complexity argument is bogus. The parts of OSX that interact directly with hardware are in Darwin. Darwin already has support for more than one hundred x86 motherboards. Don't believe me? Go to this page and learn the truth:
[Edit] Furthermore, x86 OSX doesn't have to support every x86 motherboard. OSX doesn't support every Mac model ever made, so why would anyone expect OSX to support every x86 machine ever made? All Apple needs to do is to start supporting new models from the top two or three PC makers. Imagine Apple collecting OSX money from one out of every 3 or 4 new PCs sold by the major PC vendors. Sweet.
3) Software availability - there would be nothing available for OS X x86, it wouldn't be fun trying to persuade adobe etc to produce OS X ppc, OS X x86, and windows x86 software
Wrong. There would be plenty of useful software for x86 OSX right from the start. The entire iLife suite would be available, as well as tons of X11, KDE, and Gnome based software such as OpenOffice, etc. Companies that make PPC OSX software will definitely want to recompile their stuff for x86 OSX for the simple reason that the number of x86 OSX installations is likely to surpass the number of PPC OSX installations in a relatively short time.
The hardware complexity argument is bogus. The parts of OSX that interact directly with hardware are in Darwin. Darwin already has support for more than one hundred x86 motherboards. Don't believe me? ...
Not bogus at all. Did you see my earlier post regarding NextStep for Intel? NextStep was a shipping commercial product from Steve Jobs' company, and it didn't support much of anything. Darwin uses X11, Aqua and Core Image do not. How many video boards will be supported under Aqua and Core Image? Who will write the drivers?
All you Mac-OS-X-on-Intel fans: Where were you when NextStep was available? Why didn't you buy it? Why didn't it sell millions of copies?
Besides, in the PC world, 100 motherboards is not many at all. Dell alone probably has more than that in their currently supported and shipping systems.
Agree with you on the software, tho. The NextStep classes in Cocoa (they're still called NSxxx!) would make porting to the new version quite easy - and after all, there's not all that much Mac OS X software now, anyway.
It would be better for Apple to have Windows on Apple hardware than to have OS X on Wintel hardware.
Windows vendors wouldn't compile or ship PPC versions of the software, so little software would be available. This was tried back in the early NT days. All the vendors of non-Intel NT hardware died long ago.
Wrong. There would be plenty of useful software for x86 OSX right from the start. The entire iLife suite would be available, as well as tons of X11, KDE, and Gnome based software such as OpenOffice, etc. Companies that make PPC OSX software will definitely want to recompile their stuff for x86 OSX for the simple reason that the number of x86 OSX installations is likely to surpass the number of PPC OSX installations in a relatively short time.
Let me get this straight--MacOS X x86 will have commercial software available because Apple will provide it. Is that your position? And MacOS X x86 will also be able to run X11 software, which you can run on Linux x86 today? And you say that MacOS X PPC developers will definitely want to compile to x86? Definitely? Did I miss a press conference? How many MacOS X vendors have made that definite commitment? Can you provide a link to one? Please?
Maybe we are thinking about this all wrong. Don't think about a computer like we know them today. Think of it as an appliance that helps people with multimedia stuff, and has web services, an appliance that just so happens to run OSX, but the owners will not think of them as computers. Do you know or care what OS your DVD player uses? Do you care what OS your multimedia machine uses as long as it works. If Apple gets into this area it will be with a toe, they will not jump right in and compete with MS, why? that would make no sence.
What if the computer was sold as a multimedia machine with internet services.
It would be able to do very little at first, run iLife stuff, Quicktime, iWorks. A person may be able to use this machine to play some games. But why does it have to only use Intel processors now that IBM has made a standard for making boards based on PPC. I could see HP getting to use a special version of OSX for a multiledia machine, that includes a PPC and could be made in China. This would add to the sales of HP and still not take away from the sales of Apple machines, because the end user would not recognize that they were using a machine that was running Apple software. If Apple did put their name on the software, if written properly, the end user may think hey Apple wrote the software for this? when in reality they are using all Apple software. I see this totally different, maybe the meeting that IBM had about PPC as an open platform was about something like this happening. The PC makers would want to use Intel equipment, but this would be expensive for Apple. If the PC makers could be persuaded to use PPC equipment they could have it all. A machine that is inexpensive, the manufacture of it does not interrupt the maunfacturing of the primary business of the PC makers and they get added revenue, Apple gets added revenue. Apple is not selling their OS for PCs and will not feel the wrath of MS nor will the PC makers, and importantly Apple will not incur the costs of having to port thier OS and software for a small market. I'm thinking multimedia appliance with web services, all of the things that we think of when we see the Mini, except the multimedia box would have a narrower focus, multimedia only. Mac users are the creative types, but lots of folks would like to have an appliance that would help them take control of their multimedia, and they would like to surf the web. Apple right now has all of the right software for this appliance, OSX, iLife, Quicktime, Safari, Mail, even iChat. Read the article in Fortune Mag. SJ says it is the software. What do you think of Apple writing the software for this machine. If the machine uses PPC then the customers of the PC makers get what they want, and more. A secure way to surf the net, send e-mail, watch HD-DVDs when available, Chat with their friends over the net, work up a home movie or two if they wish, iTunes to organize and play their CDs, iPhoto for photos. If the PC users want to do work, buy a PC for now
Why is it that every one assumes that these companies want OS X on Intel? Why not simply put out machines under your brand with Motorola or IBM or ahem Sony chips? There is no law that Dell, HP, etc have to use Intel.
Why is it that every one assumes that these companies want OS X on Intel? Why not simply put out machines under your brand with Motorola or IBM or ahem Sony chips? There is no law that Dell, HP, etc have to use Intel.
Funny, but that would probably kill Microsoft. If MS decided to switch to PPC their developers would have to switch their apps to PPC. (Like - AUTO CAD, and everything else that hasn't been ported to Mac) So once the hardware was the same, and the software was ported to PPC, who would want to use Windows? Everybody would want it all ported to OS X, and by then it really wouldn't be as much of a problem for them (developers) as they would have already done the majority of the work they have been avoiding for years.
Why is it that every one assumes that these companies want OS X on Intel? Why not simply put out machines under your brand with Motorola or IBM or ahem Sony chips? There is no law that Dell, HP, etc have to use Intel.
Not only that but where would the software come from. I think introducing a PC that does not run windows is going to be a hard fought battle, the battle that MS would prefer. I know window users that are thinking about getting a Mini just for their kids to surf the internet and play music. I think that going after the general PC market is looking a gift hourse in the mouth. These people want an internet/multimedia appliance, and Apple has all of the right pieces right now.
Added: Going after MS directly would be dumb. 95+% of the general use PC market is Windows. And Apple would have a great OS but very little Apps. Better to play to strength, leverage the OS and Apps that Apple has developed to provide a solution. What I think is that more people would buy a multimedia solution than would buy a Mac. And the supply pipe needs to be opened up, Apple cannot supply this market alone, it is small for Dell, Sony, and HP but it is huge for Apple. People like choise. But Apple would never let Dell or HP to put different front ends on their software. What would be interesting is for someone that is good with numbers to look at the potential market. Is this 100,000 per month or 1,000,000 per month. I know that because of security issues people are wanting an internet e-mail solution. Apple OSX is secure, it has internet and e-mail apps. Other folks are wanting to get rid of the stereo, DVD, player for home theater. Apple has that crowd covered in that they have iLife and Quicktime. iChat would be a nice solution for those that want to use their multimedia appliance to chat with others be it internet phone, internet video phone, or text chat.
Comments
do you really think steve would actually do this?
no.
he banned cloning and i really don't think he will like this.
just my 2 cents.
Originally posted by Agent Macintosh
come one guys....
do you really think steve would actually do this?
no.
he banned cloning and i really don't think he will like this.
just my 2 cents.
I think you're right in that cloning won't happen again in the way that it did before or in the standard windows way. I could see a partnership approach - possibly with Apple providing motherboards etc which are then used by another manufacturer in a similar way to the HP deal with iPods, or some other scheme where Apple keeps a significant degree of control over the hardware, but allows a third party to sell 'macs' in order to extend their distribution or more likely, expand it into areas where they are currently weak such as in enterprise. I'd say it's still unlikely though, and anyone who thinks that Apple are going to allow a scheme where third party hardware significantly undercuts their own hardware is dreaming.
Originally posted by onlooker
Cute, but you got nothing.
Of course 2x 6600 GTs could not match one 6800 Ultra. What ever gave you the idea that 2 cards that are less than half the speed of one card would magically add up to more when put together?
Two points:
- I get three 6600 GTs for the price of one 6800 Ultra,
- two SLI'ed 6600 GTs should performance wise be pretty close to a 6800 Ultra - in theory
Originally posted by onlooker
Post a link to your real world test. I recently dissected a test in here that showed SLI performing at almost 2x the speed as as a 6800 ULtra on a Mac in these very forums.
Well, here is one, but this one is a little dated. The one I am referring to is in print and in German.
And for the PC SLI being twice as fast as a single Mac card: I wish nVidia put half as much effort into tweaking thier drivers for the Mac as they do on the PC side.
Originally posted by onlooker
That is the older design for intels processors. Nvidia's nForce4 for AMD Opteron is 16 lanes both ways.
ASUS says so - see under "Expansion slots".
But you are right, nVidias upcoming nForce Professional chipsets will provide dual 16x slots - but there are neither mainboards available nor any announcements yet. So, up unitl now, this is vaporware.
And, by the way, I did not know that there is/was an SLI chipset for Intel processors.
The SLI idea is not bad and there are some performance gains. Drivers at this point still seem immature. And since Apple is dependant on nVidia to deliver stable software, it might still take some time. And then the question of economic viability still remains (SLI machines will be a very small niche market).
You need at least the following:
1) OS X (and its applications) would work within the Intel architecture (not just Intel chips, but the whole of the ecosystem of motherboards, peripherals, devices, etc.. [this is actually quite plausible, but no small undertaking on the applications side.]
2) Apple would have to be able to make more money in the long term than by owning a monopoly on OS X machines. This too is quite plausible. Even if Apple only made half as much money on each OS X machine sold, there is good reason to expect that with multiple vendors selling and marketing the platform that more than twice as many would be sold.
3) Microsoft would not be able to stop Apple. I think it all falls apart here. If Apple did this, MS would have two sledgehammers to stop Apple. First, they could cut the price of Windows to PC manufacturers, thereby recreating the price gap between OS X and Windows. With so much revenue coming from collateral sales of office, exchange, server software, MSN, etc... MS would hunker down for the battle to win the key leveragable asset -the OS. Secondly, MS would hobble MS Office for OS X. This kills the application side of the business and would require the Apple camp to create and market applications that were as good as, compatible with and believed to be as good as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This is an extremely tall order and even if Apple made the decision to this years ago, there are still years of development left to take place. (although there is now an apple presentation and word processing application). Just see how long it takes though to get any acceptance of these.
I think it is far too easy to underestimate how devastating a battle the OS war between MS and Apple would be if Apple tried to cross over to Intel.
MS has a bigger warchest and would not go down for the count easily. Remeber a little company named Netscape. Remember how MS took care of them? Remember Lotus. Remember Wordperfect.
You don't initiate a life or death battle unless you're certain you can win!
In short I think this may be a long term strategic option for Apple, but now it would fail and would probably bring down the whole of Apple with it.
1) Apple hardware sales would plummet, perhaps stop altogether
2) Compatability problems, vertically controlled hardware is a good thing!
3) Software availability - there would be nothing available for OS X x86, it wouldn't be fun trying to persuade adobe etc to produce OS X ppc, OS X x86, and windows x86 software
4) Who would buy it? Manufacturers would get their ass bitten by MS if they shipped machines with OS X (look at what happens to companies that try to ship Linux and the bad deals they get on win licenses). How many people are actually going to fork out $129 for a copy of an OS when they got windows "free" when they bought the machine.
Theres probably more, but I'll stop for now.
Originally posted by kupan787
Then who in there right mind would buy an Apple branded desktop,
Those who want as computer with style. Tell me when you find a windows box that has the coolness factor of the Mac Mini or the iMac. The vast majority of the two and a half percent of the market that buys Apple will continue to buy Apple.
Originally posted by RolandG
Two points:- I get three 6600 GTs for the price of one 6800 Ultra,
- two SLI'ed 6600 GTs should performance wise be pretty close to a 6800 Ultra - in theory
And for the PC SLI being twice as fast as a single Mac card: I wish nVidia put half as much effort into tweaking thier drivers for the Mac as they do on the PC side.
Ok RolandG, 2 things. Who's theory, and you do know that Nvidia gives Apple source code. Apple writes the drivers. If the drivers are not performing as well it's not nvidias problem., Apple is getting the exact same source code that PNY, and everybody else gets.
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X on Intel chipsets?"
Jobs laughing "When hell freezes over and I like new Bob Dylan songs."
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X?"
Jobs "Sure, but we're only supporting current hardware vendors and PowerPC chips. Here's their address. Write me a check on the way out."
Rationale. Porting OS X to x86 would be fairly easy. Star Trek II.
However porting the applications and keeping the developers from jumping ship would be well nigh impossible.
Originally posted by Electric Monk
The conference room where they discussed this:
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X on Intel chipsets?"
Jobs laughing "When hell freezes over and I like new Bob Dylan songs."
Sony, HP, IBM/Leveno "Can we use OS X?"
Jobs "Sure, but we're only supporting current hardware vendors and PowerPC chips. Here's their address. Write me a check on the way out."
Rationale. Porting OS X to x86 would be fairly easy. Star Trek II.
However porting the applications and keeping the developers from jumping ship would be well nigh impossible.
Three weeks later on a golf course in Hawaii
Steve and Mr Sony admiring the sunny sky and scenery...
Mr Sony: Esruse me Steve-San you have nice putter and OS X I would Rike to get one of each how do I do so??
Steve: My putter was designed by Mr. Ives and consists of an aluminum/titanium head and built in RDF so that even if I miss the put you think I sunk it.
OSX sure but I want all of your Movies and Music on itms
Sony: Steve-san we want to sell walkman with itms support.
Steve: Sure you do everyone does it just comes down to How bad Do you want it! I'll take Those nice nifty Cell Chips that We designed for IBM with exlusivity for 1 year from release to any other manufacurer (including you guys) and you can have fairplay and Al Gore's phone number.
Here sign your greens card....
Steve: Ha aha HA HA that was the contract for your music and movie library printed very very small!!!
Sony: Er Mr Steve- You screwed me I thought that this year of Sony/Apple hiDef?
Steve: Hi def? No! I said "MY Def"
Sony: What about MWSF stage show?
Steve: R I g h th ok, that was to show the world that sony is standing there with a neat litttle video camera and WE have HI Def on the Screen and Tiger in the TAnk!!!
Sony: you BAstard
Steve: All your media are belong to us!!!
Ha Ha Ha!
Make your time...!
tune in next episode of the TednDi theather where you will hear Carly Fiorina Ex-CEO of HP say....
....."but Steve I thought we had something together??"
and Steve say: "Ha Ha ha....NEXT!"
The question though is if licensing is even particularly necessary at this point in time? I'm not sure that it is.
Originally posted by Chagi
I agree with the statement made by others that OS X on x86 is unlikely, particularly due to the complexity involved with supporting such an enormous hardware base.
The hardware complexity argument is bogus. The parts of OSX that interact directly with hardware are in Darwin. Darwin already has support for more than one hundred x86 motherboards. Don't believe me? Go to this page and learn the truth:
http://www.opendarwin.org/hardware/
[Edit] Furthermore, x86 OSX doesn't have to support every x86 motherboard. OSX doesn't support every Mac model ever made, so why would anyone expect OSX to support every x86 machine ever made? All Apple needs to do is to start supporting new models from the top two or three PC makers. Imagine Apple collecting OSX money from one out of every 3 or 4 new PCs sold by the major PC vendors. Sweet.
Originally posted by Qchem
3) Software availability - there would be nothing available for OS X x86, it wouldn't be fun trying to persuade adobe etc to produce OS X ppc, OS X x86, and windows x86 software
Wrong. There would be plenty of useful software for x86 OSX right from the start. The entire iLife suite would be available, as well as tons of X11, KDE, and Gnome based software such as OpenOffice, etc. Companies that make PPC OSX software will definitely want to recompile their stuff for x86 OSX for the simple reason that the number of x86 OSX installations is likely to surpass the number of PPC OSX installations in a relatively short time.
Originally posted by Tidris
The hardware complexity argument is bogus. The parts of OSX that interact directly with hardware are in Darwin. Darwin already has support for more than one hundred x86 motherboards. Don't believe me? ...
Not bogus at all. Did you see my earlier post regarding NextStep for Intel? NextStep was a shipping commercial product from Steve Jobs' company, and it didn't support much of anything. Darwin uses X11, Aqua and Core Image do not. How many video boards will be supported under Aqua and Core Image? Who will write the drivers?
All you Mac-OS-X-on-Intel fans: Where were you when NextStep was available? Why didn't you buy it? Why didn't it sell millions of copies?
Besides, in the PC world, 100 motherboards is not many at all. Dell alone probably has more than that in their currently supported and shipping systems.
Agree with you on the software, tho. The NextStep classes in Cocoa (they're still called NSxxx!) would make porting to the new version quite easy - and after all, there's not all that much Mac OS X software now, anyway.
It would be better for Apple to have Windows on Apple hardware than to have OS X on Wintel hardware.
Why not that?
Originally posted by wwwork
I always say this in these kinds of threads:
It would be better for Apple to have Windows on Apple hardware than to have OS X on Wintel hardware.
Windows vendors wouldn't compile or ship PPC versions of the software, so little software would be available. This was tried back in the early NT days. All the vendors of non-Intel NT hardware died long ago.
Originally posted by Tidris
Wrong. There would be plenty of useful software for x86 OSX right from the start. The entire iLife suite would be available, as well as tons of X11, KDE, and Gnome based software such as OpenOffice, etc. Companies that make PPC OSX software will definitely want to recompile their stuff for x86 OSX for the simple reason that the number of x86 OSX installations is likely to surpass the number of PPC OSX installations in a relatively short time.
Let me get this straight--MacOS X x86 will have commercial software available because Apple will provide it. Is that your position? And MacOS X x86 will also be able to run X11 software, which you can run on Linux x86 today? And you say that MacOS X PPC developers will definitely want to compile to x86? Definitely? Did I miss a press conference? How many MacOS X vendors have made that definite commitment? Can you provide a link to one? Please?
What if the computer was sold as a multimedia machine with internet services.
It would be able to do very little at first, run iLife stuff, Quicktime, iWorks. A person may be able to use this machine to play some games. But why does it have to only use Intel processors now that IBM has made a standard for making boards based on PPC. I could see HP getting to use a special version of OSX for a multiledia machine, that includes a PPC and could be made in China. This would add to the sales of HP and still not take away from the sales of Apple machines, because the end user would not recognize that they were using a machine that was running Apple software. If Apple did put their name on the software, if written properly, the end user may think hey Apple wrote the software for this? when in reality they are using all Apple software. I see this totally different, maybe the meeting that IBM had about PPC as an open platform was about something like this happening. The PC makers would want to use Intel equipment, but this would be expensive for Apple. If the PC makers could be persuaded to use PPC equipment they could have it all. A machine that is inexpensive, the manufacture of it does not interrupt the maunfacturing of the primary business of the PC makers and they get added revenue, Apple gets added revenue. Apple is not selling their OS for PCs and will not feel the wrath of MS nor will the PC makers, and importantly Apple will not incur the costs of having to port thier OS and software for a small market. I'm thinking multimedia appliance with web services, all of the things that we think of when we see the Mini, except the multimedia box would have a narrower focus, multimedia only. Mac users are the creative types, but lots of folks would like to have an appliance that would help them take control of their multimedia, and they would like to surf the web. Apple right now has all of the right software for this appliance, OSX, iLife, Quicktime, Safari, Mail, even iChat. Read the article in Fortune Mag. SJ says it is the software. What do you think of Apple writing the software for this machine. If the machine uses PPC then the customers of the PC makers get what they want, and more. A secure way to surf the net, send e-mail, watch HD-DVDs when available, Chat with their friends over the net, work up a home movie or two if they wish, iTunes to organize and play their CDs, iPhoto for photos. If the PC users want to do work, buy a PC for now
Originally posted by blue2kdave
Why is it that every one assumes that these companies want OS X on Intel? Why not simply put out machines under your brand with Motorola or IBM or ahem Sony chips? There is no law that Dell, HP, etc have to use Intel.
Funny, but that would probably kill Microsoft. If MS decided to switch to PPC their developers would have to switch their apps to PPC. (Like - AUTO CAD, and everything else that hasn't been ported to Mac) So once the hardware was the same, and the software was ported to PPC, who would want to use Windows? Everybody would want it all ported to OS X, and by then it really wouldn't be as much of a problem for them (developers) as they would have already done the majority of the work they have been avoiding for years.
Originally posted by blue2kdave
Why is it that every one assumes that these companies want OS X on Intel? Why not simply put out machines under your brand with Motorola or IBM or ahem Sony chips? There is no law that Dell, HP, etc have to use Intel.
Not only that but where would the software come from. I think introducing a PC that does not run windows is going to be a hard fought battle, the battle that MS would prefer. I know window users that are thinking about getting a Mini just for their kids to surf the internet and play music. I think that going after the general PC market is looking a gift hourse in the mouth. These people want an internet/multimedia appliance, and Apple has all of the right pieces right now.
Added: Going after MS directly would be dumb. 95+% of the general use PC market is Windows. And Apple would have a great OS but very little Apps. Better to play to strength, leverage the OS and Apps that Apple has developed to provide a solution. What I think is that more people would buy a multimedia solution than would buy a Mac. And the supply pipe needs to be opened up, Apple cannot supply this market alone, it is small for Dell, Sony, and HP but it is huge for Apple. People like choise. But Apple would never let Dell or HP to put different front ends on their software. What would be interesting is for someone that is good with numbers to look at the potential market. Is this 100,000 per month or 1,000,000 per month. I know that because of security issues people are wanting an internet e-mail solution. Apple OSX is secure, it has internet and e-mail apps. Other folks are wanting to get rid of the stereo, DVD, player for home theater. Apple has that crowd covered in that they have iLife and Quicktime. iChat would be a nice solution for those that want to use their multimedia appliance to chat with others be it internet phone, internet video phone, or text chat.