A PC World article says that all indications point to Apple releasing OS X 10.1 this month, as promised. The article covers some of the shortcomings that users dealt with in the 10.0 release, and how they’ve been addressed with 10.1. The article also mentions that Microsoft Office for OS X is expected in November. Update: A news.com article has more details, and reports that current Mac OS X users will be able to obtain the upgrade CD at no cost from Apple dealers and Apple retail stores. Apple had originally said it would charge $20 for the upgrade.
When are they going to (are they going to?) release a version for x86 compatible machines? Hell they’d probably make a fortune pissing off Billy.
darwin is available for download through the apple developers site.
as for the ‘mac’ GUI, X86 users do not need it.
X86 users may very not “need” the Mac GUI. Using this argument, they don’t need *any* GUI other than whatever flavor of Windows they’re running. They have no “need” for XWindows, GNOME, NextStep, AfterStep, BeOS/Tracker, or anything other than plain vanilla Windows. How depressing!
Even if I never ended up using MacOS on my X86 machine, I’d still dearly love to have the *opportunity* to use it … if only for the reason that it would provide competition, either perceived or real, to the Windows-world.
Choice is good!
Barring Apple’s getting *really* desperate, we’re never going to see OS X for the PC. Why? Because you really can’t make money from selling an operating system. Apples uses their OS to make their hardware stand out, and that’s what makes them their money.
Moreover, one of the benefits of the Mac OS is that Apple controls the entire platform. If Apple wants to all of a sudden use USB, they can build it into the OS, and since they control the physical hardware, they can be sure the OS works smoothly with all models. That kind of control just doesn’t exist in the PC world, for better or for worse (or, more correctly, a little of both), so it would be a tremendous undertaking for Apple to try and make OS X for x86 work “like a Mac”. There’s just no financial incentive.
Well darwin dosen’t work on my computer it boots up a horible CLI just like Sun’s Solaris (black text on a white background) and stop working when it looks at my harddisk, bit like QNX used to till 6.10 came out. I guess I’ll have to wait till I can try it.
::Because you really can’t make money from selling an operating system.
I agree. And I also agree that Apple is a hardware company.
But, I believe it would make sense and also may be a good idea to not continue with the PowerPC line (which is something that Motorola do not want to continue either) but move to AMD 64bit Hammer CPU. This CPU is NOT compatible with Intel’s Itanium, however, it is x86 compatible, plus it has its own, unique 64bit instruction set where Apple can use to create incompatible machines (and hence continue make huge profits because of this). They can modify the hardware to be compatible only with OSX if they want.
In other news, my wedding with Jbq was a success here in France.
Apple has ported and maintains an x86 version of Mac OS X. However, a deal was struck between Microsoft and Apple whereby Microsoft agreed to port Office if Apple agreed not to sell and x86 version of their OS. I have heard this on several forums over the last year, but have never been able to confirm if with a legitamate article – so take it as rumor. BTW, Microsoft made all of its money by just selling an OS, apple could clean up too by selling the x86 version of OS X.
BTW, Microsoft made all of its money by just selling an OS, apple could clean up too by selling the x86 version of OS X.
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I beg to differ. Microsoft did it when things were quite different and things were still in their infancy. They also did it by strangling OEMs with exclusive agreements. They made money (and lots of it) despite the jaw-droppingly superior software & hardware of the competition (amiga/mac/atari). They also made lots of money on the software that went along with the OS, not just the OS itself. There is very little incentive for a Windows person to go Mac nowadays. In the past that would have been a very different story.
Hey, Eugenia, Congradulations I had been praying here that all the wedding plans (and travel plans) would work out.
best wishes and congradulations on your new life.
:))
“Microsoft made all of its money by just selling an OS”
I would really beg to differ on this. What I’ve always heard is that Microsoft makes over 80% of its money from Office. Now, with Windows NT/2000/XP being more popular at the Office (and more expensive than, say, Win9x), this number could change, but think of the astronomical costs of developing Windows. The astronomical costs of tech support and whatnot for an operating system that has to run so many different applications and on so many different pieces of hardware. I would really be surprised if it were that profitable any more; Microsoft uses the operating system as a means to get people to buy its other products.
“apple could clean up too by selling the x86 version of OS X”
Except that you’re forgetting an important rule of economics. Selling software involves a sunk cost (the cost of development) and then is essentially free to sell any number of copies (disregarding the costs of packaging and support). Thus the margin of profit increases along with your sales. Microsoft has near-100% penetration in the PC market. Apple would have much less market share to begin with, especially considering there would be almost no software available for the platform initially. So your assumption that they could “clean up” is based on conjecture and certainly not fact.
“move to AMD 64bit Hammer CPU”
I would certainly agree with you if the timing worked out better and that architecture was out when they were developing OS X, but now it’s a stickier situation. By the time those chips are available, users and developers would have just finished a rather large migration, and asking them to do it again would upset a *lot* of people. Now, they certainly might have to do something like that if the PowerPC platform cannot sustain them, but I wouldn’t jump the gun on it yet before considering other alternatives.
moving to AMD wouldn’t be such a big move for most of them. In the end, the machines will all be upgraded anyway in 1 or 2 years time, and if Apple is selling AMD boxes then, that’s what most Apple users will buy.
Software developers will mainly have to recompile, maybe even the endian isues could be worked out? I donno, but I do not think it would be such an impact, as everyone knows most of the NeXT stuff ran on x86 already….
“In the end, the machines will all be upgraded anyway in 1 or 2 years time”
Most people don’t buy a new computer even close to that often. And if I bought a machine, I would certainly expect the company to support it for more than “1 or 2 years”.
“Software developers will mainly have to recompile”
Umm…..so when users buy a new machine, none of the software they previously bought will work? Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.
“maybe even the endian isues could be worked out”
The endian issues are nothing compared to the specific architectural enhancements some programs use (i.e. Altivec and whatnot) that would have to be modified.
This isn’t even to mention the burden on software developers, who would have to sustain the cost of developing for and supporting two architectures (how many BeOS companies supported both? Not many). Oh, and then Macintosh users would have to learn that not all “Macintosh software” would run on all Macintoshes (moving to the PowerPC was hard enough, and that kind of emulation just wouldn’t be possible right now). Not to mention that the endian issues would make lots of hardware, such as graphics cards, not work without at best a flash of the ROM and at worst the purchase of a new card. There are a host of other problems that I’m not going to even bother to go into here.
The simple fact is that the move would cause a tremendous burden on Apple, its developer community, and its users, and they would need one hell of a reason to do it.
Gawd you people suck. No really, you do!
Does anybody remember OPENSTEP? Did that take over the world? Did somebody get rich selling it? Did Microsoft even CARE?!
Oh pullleze. Until you morons are willing to pay for the true cost of OS development, it will have to be subsidized by hardware or office/IT sales.
Why doesn’t anybody beg Apple to sell platform-independent OS X for $500? Because nobody is willing to face reality and pay that much.
Now please crawl away and die you lintel weenies!
“What I’ve always heard is that Microsoft makes over 80% of its money from Office.”
It’s too bad Microsoft didn’t get broken up then it would have shaken up the OS market a bit.
Yeah, congrats!
Thank you guys!
“Most people don’t buy a new computer even close to that often. And if I bought a machine, I would certainly expect the company to support it for more than “1 or 2 years”. ”
Well, I’m sorry to tell you, my experience in the MacOS market is that most professional users (DTP users, gfx people) tend to upgrade their machine more by sticking to it one or two years and then replacing it, then anything else. Home users may think differently, but that is not their target.
“Umm…..so when users buy a new machine, none of the software they previously bought will work? Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.”
Did you see this problem when Apple switched from 68K machines to PPC? No? Emulation, Apple has always been good at hiding changes. Other posibility is the OpenStep way, include multiple architectures in one “binary”. No problem…
“The endian issues are nothing compared to the specific architectural enhancements some programs use (i.e. Altivec and whatnot) that would have to be modified.”
Most applications making use of Altivec also run on machines not using it, so this is a bridge they have already crossed (if dev has been done correctly). I know my sw can work with & without…..
“This isn’t even to mention the burden on software developers, who would have to sustain the cost of developing for and supporting two architectures (how many BeOS companies supported both? Not many). Oh, and then Macintosh users would have to learn that not all “Macintosh software” would run on all Macintoshes (moving to the PowerPC was hard enough, and that kind of emulation just wouldn’t be possible right now). Not to mention that the endian issues would make lots of hardware, such as graphics cards, not work without at best a flash of the ROM and at worst the purchase of a new card. There are a host of other problems that I’m not going to even bother to go into here.”
BeOS never was a professional dev platform yet, it was on the rise, but sure no big mainstream thing. Most devs were part-time devs, and even those supported PPC as much as they could. Only when Be themselfs showed PPC as a low prio the support for PPC went down fast…..
“The simple fact is that the move would cause a tremendous burden on Apple, its developer community, and its users, and they would need one hell of a reason to do it. ”
Most of the burden would be on Apple, if they keep their track record up….