Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 14th Jun 2006 17:52 UTC
"Apple extended the courtesy of meeting with me one day after my column on the closing of the OS X x86 kernel source code was published online. To sum up Apple's objections, they felt I had given a year-old story a fresh coat of paint and sensationalized it for an audience that wasn't affected by it. Yet no story is more timely, or more broadly relevant, than this one." Tom Yager, who raised concerns over the closed-source Intel half of the MacOS, details why he was so concerned. "The kernel will open up again, this tempest will fade away, and I'll be glad for it. What will continue to concern me so deeply is that Apple thought it would be OK, that nobody would notice or care." Note: The 2nd link was incorrect, it is fixed now. Excusez-moi.
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Member since:2006-01-01
I have never liked the phrase that Apple is a hardware company, because while they do make the bulk of their revenue from selling hardware their business revolves around creating or securing content for use with that hardware so as to encourage the sale of that hardware. Which is to say that Apple sells many products that have a certain synergy. It's sort of like thinking of a printer manufacturer as an ink company, because that is where most of the revenue from their printers comes from. It's an oversimplification.
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Member since:
2006-01-08
Why did Apple close up?
Simple,
Mac OS X is what sells Apple hardware.
Apple is a hardware company.
When they had PPC processors it was realitivy easy to keep their OS open because it couldn't run on the numerous x86 based Intel processors.
When IBM FAILED with their G5 processor plans and left Apple hanging, Apple was forced to find a cooler processor for their laptops and other machines.
They had to go to Intel for those processors, which if you read the Apple forums, these Intel dual cores are not really cool, just cooler than G5 processors. (I don't expect much performance increases in the future for laptops.)
So with the swtich to x86, Mac OS X is all of a sudden able to run on generic x86 hardware from any computer maker.
So for every copy of Mac OS X on a crappy Dell means one less potential switcher to Apple hardware which they need to sell to survive as a company.
So like Apple was forced to use Intel processors and now they are forced to close up their OS.
I'm sure your a nice person and give blood occassionally, but sure not going to give away the entire farm in the process.