"Apple Inc. has pulled its security engineering team out of a planned public discussion on the company's security practices, which had been set for next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas."
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Member since:2005-11-21
Venezeuela has a perfect analogy this time. :-) Macs *are* great, but Linux will eat Apple's lunch if they don't watch it. "
Keep dreaming. If you think Linux has an easier time of converting people to Linux over OS X you truly are dreaming.
Focus on making Linux as consistent and user friendly as OS X and you'll accelerate more Windows people to Linux just as they are moving to OS X. They won't switch from OS X to Linux as they already have the GUI paradigm and they also have familiar applications under that paradigm.
Linux will never be the big player for Desktop as long as Desktops require a GUI and a consistent user experience.
Linux has made huge inroads in the server space against traditional big iron companies because these companies have dumped billions into helping it mature.
If Linux Community lost the funding/support from IBM, Novell, Google and Sun you'd see advancement of the OS go from a tidal wave to a stream.
Member since:2006-01-16
"Linux will never be the big player for Desktop as long as Desktops require a GUI and a consistent user experience."
Never say never ;-)
Seriously: What you describe presents the current state of the art. But this industry is a very rapidly evolving one. Sometimes it helps to look at the past to see the possible future. If you compare current Linux installs with them five years ago, you will see a huge amount of progress being made in regards of desktop usability. And there are no signs of this progress to be declining, quite the opposite is happening these years.
And btw, I find my Linux-based graphical environment to be far more consistent compared to the Windows machine I have to work with lately. I see lots of potential -- for the future.
You don't know what happens in another five years. If Desktops (including OS X) will still work the same as today, that would be a sad story. Wouldn't it?
Edit: I have to add something. Your perception of the past is not right, it's quite the opposite. It's the big iron companies who jumped on the train after they watched GNU/Linux eating their market. Exactly the same can happen with the Desktop or not. Microsoft is very good at missing out opportunities to keep their position strong lately. Time will tell.
Edited 2008-08-03 21:42 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2008-06-03
Member since:2005-07-08
Someone needs to fix the quoting mechanism here. I'll try to quote with italics.
Keep dreaming. If you think Linux has an easier time of converting people to Linux over OS X you truly are dreaming.
Focus on making Linux as consistent and user friendly as OS X and you'll accelerate more Windows people to Linux just as they are moving to OS X. They won't switch from OS X to Linux as they already have the GUI paradigm and they also have familiar applications under that paradigm.
Linux will never be the big player for Desktop as long as Desktops require a GUI and a consistent user experience.
Linux has made huge inroads in the server space against traditional big iron companies because these companies have dumped billions into helping it mature.
If Linux Community lost the funding/support from IBM, Novell, Google and Sun you'd see advancement of the OS go from a tidal wave to a stream.
Oh, I know they won't convert many OS X users, but I suspect they'll get to the point where the GUI in Linux is Good Enough, on the level of say Windows with some of the eye-candy of OS X. It's never going to be as elegant as OS X probably, simply because open source development resists that level of consistency and the Linux desktop is too fractured with multiple desktop environments and toolkits, much less applications that adhere to interface guidelines. Many users, however, are used to some inconsistency already.
If Linux can get to the point where it doesn't need much command line intervention, and gets included in more OEM systems, then it will make progress. There is already a large market of people who would get a computer running Linux in a user-friendly fashion at a low price, netbooks are filling some of that market - ASUS's EEPC is a large percentage of new notebook sales now. Remember what the largest selling computer in history is? Not anything from Apple or the PC. The Commodore 64. When computers are available at blue-color prices again, there will be a shift.
As for corporate funding, it helps, but a lot of the progress has been made by Ubuntu and others on the desktop, though with some help from Novell, IBM, Google, and a "consortium" of other companies that have a grudge against Microsoft. ;-)
Incidentally, I don't say this as an Apple-hater. I use a Mac, but am very disappointed at what they're doing with security and secrecy. I still recommend Macintosh to people, but if this keeps up Apple is asking for trouble. What happens to their image of being less virus-ridden than Windows when the first malware outbreak comes? Security-through-obscurity isn't enough. I believe OS X is the best for my needs, else I wouldn't be running it, but they really need to work on this - especially if they intend to crack the enterprise market they need to be more professional about security.
Edited 2008-08-03 22:45 UTC
Member since:2008-07-15
Not likely. Linux lacks several things that OS X has:
* A consistent ABI
* consistent driver model
* a consistent user interface
What does linux have? On the ABI front, every distro has a different version of glibc, gcc, and the other base tools (half the time with additional "distro-supplied" patches applied that cause unforseen bugs). On the UI level, we have a lot of different DEs/WMs to choose from, none of which really look or feel like any others. Even if we choose a DE and not a WM, the apps in that DE are hardly consistent--worse, IMHO, than even some of the inconsistent windows apps. Finally, we have the Linux driver model which, for in-kernel drivers or other open source drivers, is fine. But it falls short when dealing with the possibilities of vendor-supplied drivers. One of the major issues is, of course, that the drivers have to be linked to a certain kernel version. Now, before you Linux zealots go after me, yes I know there are ways to work around that (usually making the kernel-specific stuff open source and putting the rest in a binary blob)--nVidia, OSS, and Smartlink are evidence of this fact, but it doesn't change the underlying issue that every time you receive a kernel update, any vendor-supplied drivers need to be reinstalled. To the end user, this is worse than annoying. Yes, I know that if someone's voluntarily updating their kernel they are aware of what will need to be done in regards to their drivers. But, for the average users, their distro gives them a kernel update that they don't pay attention to. They click on software update, the distro updates itself, then tells them they need to reboot. So they do... only to find that some of their hardware isn't working anymore.
All of these things mean that Linux is not a consistent target for vendors to supply drivers and applications for. Each distro is slightly different, has a different kernel, a different DE or version of said DE, etc. So, which one do they target?
This is contrasted to OS X and Windows, where you know exactly what is part of the base OS and what is not, and the ABIs and APIs are done in a way that updating the OS, and even the kernel, doesn't break drivers and apps. OS X has a better handle on this than Windows does at the moment, especially with Windows Vista.
I'm not an OS zealot, I happen to prefer OS X, as it gives me the power of BSD with a consistent and functional GUI. My point is simply to illustrate that Linux has some major hurdles to overcome before it can ever "eat Apple's lunch." Unfortunately, it seems that providing a consistent target is the last thing on the mind of the OSS devs which is understandable, given their development process.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about."This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Member since:
2005-07-08
Venezeuela has a perfect analogy this time. :-) Macs *are* great, but Linux will eat Apple's lunch if they don't watch it.