Apple turns to the dark side.......

[Byershome]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050611/D8AL7TUO1.html



This story has been out for a few days now... ... . just like to know what you Apple fans think.



I can tall you one thing for sure, one of the biggest pro's of the Apple was stability. You can pretty much through that out the "window" now because it will be plagued by the same bugs as windows. Problems caused by a large number of possible configurations, both in parts and software.



On the upside you could see your software and hardware choices expand vastly and the Apple OS could become a formidable competitor of Windows.

 

[bmoeller]

I think Apple is after market share. More power to them. Gives us more options to choose from.

 

[Ol'TrailDog]

This will not affect the stability of the new OS X because it is inherently a Unix OS, i. e. BSD or SCO derivative, I'm not mistaken. This move will NOT give it the inherently unstable issues of Windows crap. MS has been chasing it's tail trying to reinvent the the Unix world since NT. Intel is heading for the 64 bit world intel Itanium (finally following the Alpha, PowerPC, and AMD lead). Of course we all know they were just hunkered in waiting for MS to rewrite all it's junk software to 64 bit code -- not that I'm another embittered MS hater and Linux fan, or anything like that :-laf Linux has been running on 64 bit Itanium and formerly the Alpha processor for years.



The new switch is to take advantage of the intel 64 bit chip, although the PowerPC chip is currently 64 bit. Me thinks its the "intel inside" marketing image.

 

[Byershome]

I don't see Linux as a good comparison because it has many hardware issues as well. You either can't get the hardware to work or you have to be a guru to get it to work. Same goes for the software. I don't think Apple can compete against Windows without having the same hardware software flexibility/compatibility. The cost will be instability caused by trying to work on every PC configuration. Now if they limit the configurations their OS will work on (limiting the number of problems that can occur) then they can avoid this but they will not be able to compete against Windows either.



I know the original Apple processors operated differently than the X86 processors, is this still the case for the processor IBM builds for them? It has been a long time but I want to say they loaded the registers in the processor in a different order. I'll have to look it up tonight but I know it was a more efficient manner than the X86 processor.

 

[Ol'TrailDog]

JH kudoed:

you have to be a guru to get it to work

Gee, thanks JH Now I can add this to the repertoire of things I've been called. Unfortunately, most haven't been so complimentary :-laf



The PowerPC is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computation) chip versus the CISC (Crap Iinstruction Set Computation) or something to that effect. Clearly demonstrating the power of market share versus sound technology, similar to the Windows versus Apple-Unix-Linux theme.



Yeh, I know Linux is pure garbage. That's why many of the major vendors, i. e. IBM, HP, Sun, etc. install and support it, and that's why MS is advertizing against it and attempting their own "open source" imitation. Not that I expect Linux to crush MS beneath it's small penguin heels. :-laf

 

[Byershome]

"Yeh, I know Linux is pure garbage. That's why many of the major vendors, i. e. IBM, HP, Sun, etc. install and support it"



Hey I never said they were junk but how many home desktop computers are running them? They are specialized OS's for small nitchies in the market place. I build and repair computers on the side and just for fun, I maintain 6 including the server at home (all home built, my first computer was a Telex running DOS 5. 0 with a 286 processor, a wopping 2 MB memory, and a 10 MB harddrive. . oooooooooo :-laf ) and in the last 5 years of messing with Linux I have only got it running correctly once on one computer with older hardware. I have built computers for people running Win 98 that ran for two or more years without any problems, no lock ups or blue screens of death... why because no hardware was changed and only a minimal amount of software was added (No changes no problems). It is a 4 or 5 hour project to get Win 98 to this point. So I like to think of myself as a bit of a guru. The point being your operating system has to be pretty simple to use and configure in order to garner the home market or the lower end business market anymore. XP is the first OS to truly achieve this. None of those other operating systems support the range of software and hardware Windows does.



I would love to see the Apple OS compete with MS but their will be a price to pay if they were too adapt it to compete directly. Also Apple will be starting from scratch and they have never had to deal with the wide range of hardware out there. In order to compete with MS they will have to become MS. I think they will have to just stay in their little nitchie and remain the proprietary system they always have been with limited hardware upgrades short of buying the next whole new system. Now however you will see three Blueman members pointing and saying "theres an Intel Inside". :-laf

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

It's far easier to market a stable platform when the hardware/software is highly limited or tightly controlled by the PC maker...



Walk into any major computer store, and compare the percentages and varieties of hardware/software available for Apple vs the IBM clones - no comparison. But that flexibility DOES come at a price. and that price is often some degree of operational incompatibility and instability.



OS's like Unix can be more stable because they are used in FAR more tightly controlled environments and limited, structured programs and peripherals than those most of the rest of the world is using.



As far as adapting a non-IBM platform over to in some way mimic the Clones, whatever happened to Commodore, when in last-gasp desperation, they tried to do the same thing?