“Like it or not, buyers of x86 servers, clients, and workstations face a major platform shift as the 32-bit CPUs, operating systems, and applications slowly fade into history. That historic migration will have dramatic impact. Yet one factor keeps getting pushed aside as we obsess over hardware progress: humans. Among the demands we make of new technology, raising human productivity should top the list. And although 128-bit registers have productive effect, usability has a magnitude more impact. That’s why Apple’s latest Macs and OS deserve a good, hard look as mainstream enterprise fare.”
This article seems like it should be in one of Apple’s website or promoting brochures instead of infoworld.com. It makes a lot of comments not backed up by facts.
“Neither you nor any of Apple’s competitors could turn off-the-shelf components into a machine of comparable quality and functionality in the same price range as a Mac.”
The author spends some time on the first page talking about the quality of Apple’s x86 machines. That’s fine, but how about some proof? How do I know buying an Intel 945G motherboard, with the same processor and memory configurations from the same companies, install it in my own box, Apple’s computer will nevertheless be of higher quality? Aren’t the parts still the same, regardless of so-called dubious Asian manufacturers?
“…Apple publishes most of the source code for OS X — primarily the system software, commands, and utilities that reside below the presentation layer — as the Darwin open source project.”
Darwin is NOT the feature technology of OS X. The main feature is its windowing & graphics technology, specifically Quartz and OpenGL, which is NOT open source. Quartz is not exactly a new technology, but it has been improved over a great deal of time. Open source desktops have JUST started adopting a high-quality rendering engines (e.g., Cairo) for its GUIs, but it hasn’t been fully adopted yet. So Quartz is very ahead of its time. Aqua has a LOT of visual effects that are just not possible without its very sophisticated graphics subsystem. For example, try dragging a transparent Terminal window over a playing movie. The movie will not skip, even on slower systems (Power Mac G4 1.33Ghz 512MB RAM), and the GUI system will not temporarily stop responding. This is noteworthy because every time the movie is updated or the window is moved, that entire region on the display has to be completely re-rendered. And this happens A LOT when you’re dragging the window over the movie, AND without a hiccup. Try dragging an opaque window over a playing movie in X, and the movie will stop playing and the GUI will stop responding for a second. And this is on a very new, fast computer (Intel Pentium D Dual-Core 3 Ghz, Intel 945G motherboard, 2GB RAM). Again, OS X’s graphics subsystem is a technological feat, much more so than Darwin, but it is not open-source.
Just to show how secondary Darwin is, most people in the open-source community never took much interest in Darwin. Many programmers felt improving Darwin was free labor for Apple and never touched it. It never presented any original engineering ideas in operating systems.
“…A presentation showing that Vista’s design is rooted in OS X Tiger to a degree that even a die-hard Mac zealot would find incredible.”
Ahh, the old religious battle over who copied who. Mac OS took tooltips from Microsoft. Microsoft took widgets from OS X. Apple took widgets from a 3rd party developer. OS X also took Finder’s sidebar idea from Windows. I remember seeing a screenshot of Vista’s equivalent to Spotlight and its UI being almost identical. Excuse me, but that’s not a legitimate complaint. How on earth are you supposed to design a UI that is not like Spotlight? A single search bar… sounds like Apple originally copied that from Google. The debate rages on, yet no one can come to a rational, logical conclusion because there isn’t one. Unfortunately, the author doesn’t have a logical conclusion either.
Don’t bother with the article unless you’re an Apple fanboy.
Infoworld is all but composed of Apple fanboys …
install it in my own box, Apple’s computer will nevertheless be of higher quality?
There are plenty of motherboards using the same chipset and they have not the same quality.
If you buy “generic” motherboard instead of an Asus for example, you will likely have more problems because of cheaper components in it.
And the quality is not only the motheboard, you can put low cost memory on a very good motherboard and make is unstable.
Darwin is NOT the feature technology of OS X.
Darwin IS a feature technology of OS X.
Launchd is a feature, Apple System Logger another one, disktool, etc … and now we will have Dtrace. They are all features at least for sysadmin. It is not because you don’t see them while watching a video that it is not a feature …
i am SOOOOO happy to see that there are still so many over emotional, NT era-know it all, wan-a-be MCSE, apple/mac hating, non-compensated MS sales people out there.
…and mac zealots are bad? what ever! mention how good OSX REALLY is on a web site… and you’ll get even the most hypnotized PC gamer to put down his crack pipe, and tell us how it really is!
i am always floored by how well these people “know Mac” even though they hate the company and OS so much that using a mac to 10 seconst drive them up a wall!
If you even read my post, you would’ve noticed I spent a lot of time describing the achievements OS X’s graphics system, but I guess since you’re too caught up in “Apple is the best” & “Everyone Else Sucks” attitude, you wouldn’t have noticed that.
I don’t hate Apple. Apple is a corporation, which is merely a legal/economic structure. I can’t have any emotional attachment to any legal/economic structure. That’s like saying you love GE Corp or whatever.
Mac zealots are bad, not because they support the Mac platform, but because they are zealots. People should like their platform because of its technology and engineering, not the pretty logo on the startup screen.
um… i am positive you are not refering to me when you say “”but I guess since you’re too caught up in “Apple is the best” & “Everyone Else Sucks” attitude”” because, i DO NOT have that attitude…. i dont beleive that at all!
…oh… and do you actually think there is a single person out there that owns a particular computer just because of the logo and start up screen? give me a break! that is such an elitist comment!
and like i have said before. for every 1 mac zealot… there are 95 mac haters out there. ZEALOTS for any platform are bad, unless you are actually getting compensated by apple or MS… or who ever, then being a zealot is beneficial to you and the platform.
the problem lies when you get these users that talk about their choice in platform as “the best”….. it seams that as soon as one can plug a mouse in or install and app…. you automaticly become and expert on all platfroms!
all zealots SHOULD die! thats just uncommon knowledge….
Nevertheless, from the summary it sounds like ESR’s “The only chance people have to change platforms is when the architecture changes” department is working overtime. People have (subject to hardware and applications requirements) always been able to change over to MacOS, and since Windows is going to be available on 64-bit systems, there just isn’t the incentive to switch to other systems en masse like there was when DEC dropped RSTS/E on PDP for VAX/VMS (to cite one example).
EDIT: Oh, it’s Tom “MacOS sales will wipe out Linux sales by 2008” Yager. Schlock, horror. Don’t waste a click.
Edited 2006-10-05 22:21
really need to get your house in order.
In the past two weeks I have gone from not being able to log in under Firefox (on Windows) to using IE to view the site, to not being able to log in on IE, and back and forth again like that several times.
No extensions, operating systems, or browsers seem to factor into the equation since I can confirm the changes have happened without any changes in extension or browserl it’s seemingly just random.
I was prepared to put up with it whilst I’m forced to use Windows, but I won’t be happy if this keeps happening when I use Firefox on Linux.
Once in a while it is great to remembered through articles like these that Apple still stands for state-of-the-art hardware and software. Yes, I am an ‘Apple-fanboy’, but for a very good reason.
“Apple took over stewardship of Darwin and a sister project called DarwinPorts, which is a repository of ready-to-compile open source applications validated for the Mac.”
Is this correct? Last time I chekced, OpenDarwin closed down and DarwinPorts moved to MacForge and renamed itself to MacPorts. I have yet to see anthing indicating that Apple is in charge of the MacPorts project.
Is this correct? Last time I chekced, OpenDarwin closed down and DarwinPorts moved to MacForge and renamed itself to MacPorts.
OpenDarwin <> Darwin.
You can find source and binaries from Apple here:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
Yes, yes, I know that Darwn <> OpenDarwin. My question was about DarwinPorts/Macports. OpenDarwin hosted DarwinPorts, closed down, DarwinPorts moved to MacForge and renamed itself to MacPorts. What I’m curios about is the fact that I’ve yet to hear anything about Apple assuming control over MacPorts which the article claimed.
apple’s open-source site is macosforge.org, though it seems to be down ATM, but i do believe it brought in darwinports (could be wrong though)
Well, Apple hosting MacPorts isn’t quite the same thing as Apple managing MacPorts, is it?
nothing new, move along…
There is a LOT more to any computer besides the motherboard. For instance, take apart one of the new iMacs and then start looking for EVERY piece of the computer and see how much you can find the EXACT components (not just similar ones).
You will not find the iMac case anywhere. And you will not find parts that you can very closely clone something to look like an iMac. That’s the look part. But it is also the fit and finish and how everything is designed to work together in the form factor. Basically they are stuffing mostly PC and some laptop components into the space not much larger than a laptop but with 17″, 20″, and now 24″ LCD displays.