Jordan Hubbard, formerly head of FreeBSD development, and now of Apple MacOS X/Darwin fame, talks frankly about UNIX, Apple’s MacOS X, BSD, and the business of competing in the consumer computer world in this MacCentral article. In it, we see some of his impressions on the present and future of MacOS X, opinions on Motorola’s CPU’s in Apple products, and what it takes to get ISV support.
Jordan Hubbard Talks About Apple and Motorola
34 Comments
2002-10-06 3:01 pm
2002-10-08 8:20 am
These were all very well reasoned positions and responses by Jordan Hubbard, who is probably one of the nicest people working in BSD development today (especially compared to the likes of Theo de Raadt)
One message that was resounded once again in this interview is that there are a great number of people out there who want to use OS X, but believe the hardware investment required is too much.
For some reason, the canonical response to this is to say that Apple should switch to some other CPU vendor. However, the CPU isn’t the source of the inflated prices.
Apple has suddenly found themselves with a middle market begging for a product. They had one product which filled this niche, the G4 cube. Unfortunately, the cube was released before a market had developed around OS X, and consequently it flopped. It seems to suffer the perpetual Steve Jobs fate of being ahead of its time.
Apple needs to design a release a reasonably priced G4 system aimed specifically at this middle market of Unix users who are aching to try OS X.
Might I suggest a slab?
Is what will boost OSX acceptance for cs student and many geeks. Projects like http://www.opendarwin.org are things that will help os X gaining acceptance in the free software crowd.
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http://islande.hirlimann.net
if a user joined the Apple Developer Connection, they could be confident that their issues would be addressed.
The URL to report bug is http://bugreport.apple.com. To join ADC it’s http://connect.apple.com. From my experince each time I have filled a bug (I’ve done so for 20 or so), I’ve been contacted by email and even on my mobile (caller was in england, I in France). They asked for more info and inform you on whats going on.
Filing bug reports and feature requests is not something that UNIX users
This can be done for the unix part at http://www.opendarwin.org/bugzilla .
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http://islande.hirlimann.net
“Hubbard said that Mac OS X grants UNIX users access to applications like Maya that UNIX users only dream about”
AFAIK, Maya has been around for IRIX for years. That’s probably one of the reasons Alias|Wavefront bothered to port it to Linux.
But Irix doesn’t have MS Office =)
<psst this is said tongue in check>
In my opinion, the eMac (now that it’s avail. to everyone) could in the short-term fill this niche nicely. It’s got a decent-sized screen and a G4 CPU.
In the longer term, I agree that a “slab” would be perfect. Do a low-end one based on the eMac guts, and a high-end one based on the Xserve guts, and couple them with some nice tilt-n-swivel versions of the smaller LCD displays (the 17″ and the smaller Cinema display, for example) and you have a killer combo.
Just my $0.02
Cheers,
Ken
Great article.
This “middle” market is begging isn’t it? It seems like most everyone with some money but not necessarily a lot and is seeking a new desktop wants this magical multimedia system a la what BeOS could have been — great audio, great visual, great interface and with a technically solid Unix core.
Apple has a strategic problem in that it makes good money from its hardware and if lost that stream of revenue could it really make up for that from increased OS sales? Microsoft made a mint on OS sales but also built up considerable other software products. I’m not sure Apple can make that transition.
In any case, it is imperative for Apple to get GAMES on their systems as that will dramatically make it easier to migrate people over to OS X.
Apple and SUN are running into similar problems…support commodity hardware and lose hardware sales. With the clamor for free operating system software it becomes a double whammy.
I like proprietary hardware systems myself but don’t like paying for them
This OS, used in mainframes in the 1970s, was and is called UNIX
No, it was not. PDP-11 was not a mainframe, and mainframes were using VM/CMS – I know, I was one of those grad students.
members of the audience pointed out that UNIX users typically build their own hardware
Ah, I get it now – they mean Linux users.
Real Unix users don’t typically built their own hardware.
UNIX users are also usually prepared to add features to programs they like or fix bugs as they spot them
Wow, I thought I was good in UNIX but I’m not so good. To fix bugs I download patches from vendor site. Shame on me, shame. I guess, some of those great UNIX users refine oil into gas to power their cars too.
Vlad?
All you have said is true…
…from a given point of view. However, he was really addressing the open source *nix developer community with these statements.
Bascule:
The cube was an excellent product, but would still be considered overpriced.
A pizza box (a la the 6100) designed around the iMac or eMac logic board with the video card in an AGP slot would be ideal for many if priced right. I don’t see Apple doing this however. No matter how you painted it, it would still be a ‘beige box’. The eMac is as close as Apple has come to a commodity (hardware) computer since SJ’s return.
You are getting a lot of superior software with the Mac. This software costs money to make. The Dell comes with nothing comparable (except Musicmatch which I hear is pretty nice). There’s a lot of hardware R&D at apple too (firewire for example).
I agree a cheaper desktop mac (no monitor) would be great for bringing in more users. But one problem is that if such a mac existed, a lot of people who currently are willing to pay the higher desktop prices (like me), will just buy the cheaper machine.
Also open hardware is just not an option. Lots of PC diehards are just not wiling to acknowledge a simple fact: many of the things apple brings out first (or better implements at an early stage) takes hardware and software (e.g. adding firewire, the OS underpinnings and iMovie to make home video editing a reality). Controlling the hardware and software allows Apple to move easier and faster here — no coordination, negotiation among multiple co’s is required.
The reason some PC people can’t stand this is that they love open hardware, building boxes, etc. and it drives them batty that closed hardware can move faster. Sorry, but it’s true. Hey, open hardware has a lot of pluses. You just can’t have your cake and eat it too (well unless you buy mac and PC, that’s what I do)
Before someone says “macs have not advanced faster, they are dog slow,” let me say two things:
(1) I am always very careful to say Apple is able to move faster and better earlier in the game on new stuff that requires both hardware and software. Motherboard-oriented stuff, CPU speed does not fall into that categore.
(2) Macs have not always been slow relative to PCs. It should be clear this is a temporary situation. Apple could even go x86 if it wanted. In other words, proprietary hardware is not inherently slower.
Macs have not always been slow relative to PCs. It should be clear this is a temporary situation. Apple could even go x86 if it wanted. In other words, proprietary hardware is not inherently slower.
The issue is one of economies of scale. Being a dealer of a niche system means you’re doomed to move less volume, and consequently your product will be doomed to higher prices than the commodity system. Furthermore, the price/performance of the commodity systems will be enough to slowly erode your niche, until you find you have no ground upon which to stand.
In other words, Apple is doomed to slow death, or dying quickly if they ever tried to reposition themselves as solely a software vendor. They need to find some radical new source of revenue, such as creating a product which appeals to the growing middle market of Unix junkies who want a nice Unix desktop but aren’t willing to pay a lot to get it.
The last 2 decades of computer industry proved to us that economies of scale is extremely important.
Intel and Microsoft are the two companies which proved that this is the case.
At the time Intel x86 was not the best CPU around, and also at the time Ms-Dos was not the best OS. But eventually by selling more and more, they were able to make the products better and now nobody can compete with them. They even started to attack the server businesses. Originally none of the products of both intel and microsoft were for servers, but now Sun is threatened by both of them.
I think Apple is really in a very bad position now. I don’t know how easy it is to move on to another CPU. I think you have to recompile already existing programs for the new platform. This means that developers at least has to buy new machines and recompile them. Otherwise they will be slower which will make everything worse.
Apple was ahead of others in certain issues, such as firewire, monitor quality and so on, but on CPU and motherboard they lack speed.
I am pretty sure that Apple will go bankrupt unless someone keeps them alive.
Apple is somewhere among the top five PC sellers in terms of number of units. They are pushing lots of units as an individual company. While there are lots more Wintel units sold, economies of scale do not extend across separate companies. In other words, Dell and Gateway and HP/Compaq don’t collectively get to lump together into a single large economy of scale much bigger than Apple’s.
Even assuming Apple had higher prices due to lower econonmies of scale (on the OS side for example), that only means death if people won’t pay the higher prices. Most mac users buy macs because they think they are better. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. But what matters is what they THINK. Hell, is a Mercedes 3x as good as a chevy. NO, but mercedes seems to be doing fine.
Sergio, I agree with you Apple is in a tenous position. See, I like that, because they have to keep working hard, innovating, trying to offer a better PC. If you’re a monopoly and own the market, the same incentive is not there (although I think Linux is beginning to put some fire under MS).
I want to clarify that perhaps one reason PCs are cheaper is that Intel/AMD processors are cheaper because of the greater number of units. However, I would need to see figures here. I am not sure Apple pays that much for PowerPCs, as compared to intel/AMD.
In any event, apple could switch to x86, negating this problem if it exists.
Sergio, you are correct about the recompile (if they switch to x86 for example). However, this is not that hard. Also, I’m not sure developers would dislike this. Probably they can use it as an excuse to charge for an upgrade. YOu know, like in Photoshop 7, Adobe added like 3 things and OS X capability and charged a bundle. Same with Office, there was hardly a change but MS got $$$ for the OS X version.
It used to be that software was a fraction of the cost of a system, and now I think it’s greater than the cost of the hardware. Hell, Office alone is more than some of these 400 Dells for sale (part of the price of which is windows).
On app software like the iApps, Apple actually may enjoy the same or better economies of scale as its PC counterparts. Apple ships iPhoto with every mac and every OS upgrade. So the cost of that product is spread over a lot of units. Same with iTunes. However, in the PC world, there are usualy 10 different vendors for every type of app. So Apple may actually ship as many or more units of iTunes as Musicmatch ships its program.
why I switched to FreeBSD from OS X: I would have paid twice as much for newer hardware if I would have stuck with a mac. The software update prices are a ripoff. 165 EUR for 10.2 was ridiculous and I still wonder what the hell those coupons are for I got with my mac in the first case, I haven’t had an opportunity to use them for anything. Features I can have on FreeBSD and really like are not existant in OS X or their implementation isn’t all that well done. The stuff they pulled of with .mac didn’t help to convince me that Apple is a company I want to rely on much longer. I have always heard with every update to OS X that its oh so fast now. Sorry, to me it still felt slow. I’m not talking about how this and that photoshop plugin only needed 1,5433 seconds to complete but userinterface interaction. and Finder simply is a pain in the ass for managing your files.
appleforever, recompiling can be extremely hard, depending on how you wrote your program. If you have inserted platform specific code into your program it would be really really hard.
There maybe so many tiny stuff that you could give up porting a program. Assuming that Apple switches to x86, you need to think about big-endian, little-endian issues, atomic operations. If you used assembly in your code, you are totally screwed up because you need to rewrite the whole code. Even porting the OS will take quite a lot of time.
I am pretty sure lots of Apple applications contain hardware specific code, or assumptions about the hardware. There are thousands of details that you need to think. I mean it can be a very tedious job.
When I am thinking about my code for specific applications, some of them totally depend on the fact that you use linux on intel platform, otherwise it may not work correctly. If you want me to port it to another platform, I will avoid that job. It is that tedious.
I thought it was an interview ala Q&A. Not some propaganda article. 🙂
“I think that Mac OS X can win the war that we lost,” Hubbard said. “Twenty-five million users is a very compelling argument to win back ISVs (independent software vendors).”
I think Linux would win the war much much better. Sure, Mac OS X is a great product. It has a great free IDE. Great APIs (if you forget about Carbon, that is). Great UI. Great hardware. Great ease of use record. Blah blah blah.
But OS X lacks something Linux has. Something that gave the market to PC. Something that made Microsoft a legally defined monopoly. It is that Linux runs of commodity hardware. And that’s not all – it is commodity software! Maybe you can’t make money from Linux, but Linux has a far greater market growth last year than Mac OS X.
Mac OS X offers a great deal to UNIX users without asking them to give up much of what they have.
One of the things I have is great and cheap hardware. Why should I give it up to buy something more expensive, runs slower, just to do the same ol’ thing?
If I wanted a nice looking easy to use GUI, trust me, I would have never tried Linux.
I think the same goes to a lot of UNIX and Unix-like OS users.
Mac OS X also brings far superior OpenGL performance and compatibility to UNIX, increasing the ability of users to play games and work with three dimensional graphics.
As for OpenGL performance, if I really wanted that, I would go the SGI route. OpenGL matters to little UNIX geeks. Fact. (It may be nice to have a fast OpenGL implementation on XFree86, but not something too important for me)
So in the end, I think using cygwin on Windows is a much better choice for me 🙂 It plays more games too.
In addition to compatibility and performance, Hubbard said that Mac OS X grants UNIX users access to applications like Maya that UNIX users only dream about, and, if they even get them, cost thousands of dollars.
LOL, Linux users ALWAYS got Maya, the same goes for Irix users. The only difference is that there is education discounts for the Mac and Windows versions, but otherwise, even the Mac version cost “thousands”.
Hubbard also likes to have Office on the desktop again, but only because it is such a pervasive application.
Yeah, I bet ALL UNIX users can’t live without a office suite.
All of the above, plus “sexy hardware,” has Hubbard convinced that the convergence of the Macintosh and UNIX worlds in Mac OS X will be a real success.
The last I check, I hardly notice how my computer looks :-P. Anyway, am I the only one that thinks the iMac G4 looks…. well, I wouldn’t want it around. And the PowerMac G4 may look sexy, but very limiting. Plus, it has all this excess plastic that takes more space.
“One of the benefits of working with Motorola is that the hardware won’t get faster,” Hubbard joked.
Ahh! An Apple employee said that! At times like these you really wish CattBeMac was still around to stick out your tougue.
Bascule: These were all very well reasoned positions and responses by Jordan Hubbard, who is probably one of the nicest people working in BSD development today (especially compared to the likes of Theo de Raadt)
Such comparisons makes as much sense as comparing guys like Navindra Umanee and Mosfet…. oh wait, it does make sense, hehehe. I guess we can pretty know how good they were brought up by their actions and the way they treat people.
Bascule: They had one product which filled this niche, the G4 cube.
I totally agree with you. I might consider the Mac if they have an afforable upgradable G4 system. I don’t want a all-in-one machine where after 4 years or so, you dump it in the dustbin, neither would I want a tower so expensive I have better luck just getting a Cube and upgrading it.
Ludovic Hirlimann: Is what will boost OSX acceptance for cs student and many geeks. Projects like http://www.opendarwin.org are things that will help os X gaining acceptance in the free software crowd.
Using a non-Free Software license is perhaps not the best wa to promote Darwin in the Free Software group. It is like Plan 9 being open source just because they want to target Free Software users….
In my opinion, the eMac (now that it’s avail. to everyone) could in the short-term fill this niche nicely. It’s got a decent-sized screen and a G4 CPU.
Trust me, if I’m not interested in the eMac, many others aren’t. The big deal is that it is an all-in-one design. How hard is it for them to rerelease the Cube? (Besides, the CRT monitor used in the eMac is the worst flatscreen CRT monitor I have ever seen).
vlad: Ah, I get it now – they mean Linux users.
Real Unix users don’t typically built their own hardware.
Linux (and the free BSDs) make up the bulk of UNIX on the desktop market, after all.
MikeVF: The eMac is as close as Apple has come to a commodity (hardware) computer since SJ’s return.
The iMac G3 is $800 and above. (And no, they haven’t pulled the plug yet, and from what rumours I have heard, it is still the best selling Mac in South East Asia, can’t confirm though).
Besides, pre-SJ, Apple’s hardware wasn’t that cheap either. There was just altenatives (clone Macs).
appleforever: But one problem is that if such a mac existed, a lot of people who currently are willing to pay the higher desktop prices (like me), will just buy the cheaper machine.
Apple would just have to think of ways to get people to buy the high end Macs. Why do you buy the high end Macs BTW? I’m sure at least 1/2 the reasons would still stand even with the Cube. (For example, I doubt there would be a DP Cube). And if you can’t find any reason to, then you should buy the Cube. Nobody here is asking Apple to cut down the high margins of profits they make, so probably they would still make as much money as they previously do.
appleforever: The reason some PC people can’t stand this is that they love open hardware, building boxes, etc. and it drives them batty that closed hardware can move faster.
LOL…. can’t stop laughing….. hahahahahahahaha…….
You are just, like always, bring in iApps (though this time didn’t specifically mentioned it). Guess what, my friend, MOST OF THE PC WORLD DON’T CARE.
If iPhoto makes you take more boring vacation photos, or iTunes makes you get deaf faster, go ahead.
appleforever: Motherboard-oriented stuff, CPU speed does not fall into that categore.
Yeah, Apple motherboards uses less better specs, slower stuff, I can see exactly why they are “fast”.
Apple is somewhere among the top five PC sellers in terms of number of units.
IIRC, the top 5 is HP, Dell, Gateway, IBM, and Acer. Talking about the world though, I not sure about the ranks. But certainly, Apple is not the top five PC sellers. It is the few profitable ones though.
In other words, Dell and Gateway and HP/Compaq don’t collectively get to lump together into a single large economy of scale much bigger than Apple’s.
Actually they do. They buy the same processors, the same RAM, the same hard disks, the same software etc. The difference between hardware makers is how good the support really is. In where I’m living, Dell and IBM provide the best overall (but for laptops, IBM is the best).
appleforever: I want to clarify that perhaps one reason PCs are cheaper is that Intel/AMD processors are cheaper because of the greater number of units. However, I would need to see figures here. I am not sure Apple pays that much for PowerPCs, as compared to intel/AMD.
The figures of sales can be easily accessed from Intel’s and AMD’s websites. We would never know how much Apple pays for PowerPC, but I believe is that Apple could cut the computer’s cost. but they don’t want to. CPU cost takes a little part of the overall cost. Why Apple’s hardware is expensive is that it is a niche player. It has high margins of profit unlike PC OEMs (well, most of them).
So, if Apple moves to Intel/AMD, it won’t solve the cost issue. It would just solve the performance one.
It used to be that software was a fraction of the cost of a system, and now I think it’s greater than the cost of the hardware. Hell, Office alone is more than some of these 400 Dells for sale (part of the price of which is windows).
1) The monitor itself cost more than Windows OEM licenses to Dell and other mass-producing OEMs. The *real* reason why there isn’t any price difference between machines with Windows and without Windows.
2) The average price of PC bought in the last quarter is $800-900, IIRC. Most of the Office customers don’t buy retail versions of Office. They buy in bulk, which is A LOT cheaper. Plus, another significant part of the Office target market is from OEMs, again, cheap prices.
appleforever: So Apple may actually ship as many or more units of iTunes as Musicmatch ships its program.
Doubt that. Musicmatch BTW isn’t bundled by any major OEM. It is however bundled with a bulk of MP3 players, including iPod for PC.
WinAMP, WMP and RealONE (my current favourite one until WinAMP 3 and WMP 9 stablize) BTW for sure have a MUCH bigger customer base than iTunes.
Sergio: appleforever, recompiling can be extremely hard, depending on how you wrote your program. If you have inserted platform specific code into your program it would be really really hard.
In most cases, recompilation can be easy. But the hard part would be optimizing for x86. Why? Because they spent years optimizing their products for AltiVec, now they have to use SSE2 or HyperThreading or whatever new SIMB that comes out now..
Plus, if it is anything like 68k Mac to PPC Mac, and 68k Palm to ARM Palm, the transition is easy: emulation. Apple just need to co-processor it to a PPC emulation chip.
I would consider this a non-issue. The main issue to to prevent developers to skip company instead of moving along with Apple. Another big issue is convincing Mac users that x86 Macs is really good.
http://www.macopz.com/buildamac/
You can find parts all over the place and you can build your own mac for less $$$
LOL, Linux users ALWAYS got Maya, the same goes for Irix users.
You’re as wrong as Hubbart. Maya used to be an Irix only application (like many other 3D packages), then got ported to NT after the x86s caught up. The OS X and Linux ports came rather late.
I wonder if there’s any relation to L. Ron Hubbard…
Seriously tho, Apple seems to be lagging behind in raw speed. And the hardware costs a lot. (no, I dont care about the bundled software, I probably wont use half of it anyway) The day that Apple ports Mac OS to a typical x86 (not a subset of x86, not “Apple-branded” hardware) is the day that I’m gonna buy this OS. I just dont feel like spending much cash on a system that can only run Mac OS and Linux/*BSDs. Hell, it cant even run BeOS
Apple does have very sexy hardware though. Does anyone know any vendors that carry similar full tower ATX cases? AOpen H600B ( http://www.aopen.com/products/housing/images/h600b_black_b.jpg ) is my personal favourite case right now.
stew: You’re as wrong as Hubbart. Maya used to be an Irix only application (like many other 3D packages), then got ported to NT after the x86s caught up. The OS X and Linux ports came rather late.
I don’t know how the “ALWAYS” got out, hehe. But the Linux port came relatively close after the NT port, and way earlier to the Mac OS X port.
OK, Apple is number 6. http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0207/03.marketshare.php.
Bottom line, the argument that economies of scale will inevitably drive Apple out of business has not been sufficiently made. Apple sells a lot of units and enjoys lots of hardware economies of scale. Apple buys the same hard drives, RAM, LCD screens as the PC guys, so they don’t have any advantage there. More AMD/Intel processors are sold, buy nobody has shown that Apple pays more for PowerPC processors and rajan in fact admits he doens’t think they do.
Another thing is that Apple makes a limited number of computers. So that has economy of scale improvements. Overall, on hardware I doubt any PC maker has an advantage over Apple except possible Dell because they focus so much on efficiency and lowering cost.
The only significant economy of scale difference I can see is the OS itself. Obviously, MS can spread the costs of Windows over a MUCH larger number of units than Apple can spread the cost of OS X over. But Apple’s costs here are probably lower overall because there is less work involved in supporting Mac hardware in the OS. Also, Apple is relying upon a pre-existing base in BSD Unix. We know this has cost advantage – it’s the reason Linux from Red Hat etc. may be beginning to challenge MS’s dominance.
According to the AW site, Maya for Linux shipped in March 2001, Maya for OS X in September 2001, whereas I have to correct myself on the date for the Windows version vs the IRIX version: Maya 1.0 dated 01/06/1998 runs on NT.
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/companyinfo/history/20012002.shtml
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community/Support/qualified_hardwa…
I think Linux would win the war much much better. Sure, Mac OS X is a great product. It has a great free IDE. Great APIs (if you forget about Carbon, that is). Great UI. Great hardware. Great ease of use record. Blah blah blah.
But OS X lacks something Linux has. Something that gave the market to PC. Something that made Microsoft a legally defined monopoly. It is that Linux runs of commodity hardware. And that’s not all – it is commodity software! Maybe you can’t make money from Linux, but Linux has a far greater market growth last year than Mac OS X.
Apple also has something that Linux doesn’t, and that’s brand recognition. The Apple logo is almost universally recognized. They’re about the only company I can think of that doesn’t have to use their company name in their logo. Jaguar(Mac OS X 10.2) is getting to the same point wit the Jaguar-furred X.
Developers need to make a splash to get recognized. One way to do this is to be able to associate themselves with a powerful brand name, and Apple provides that.
Apple developers also get the advantage that the OS they’re developing applications for is already installed in millions of homes, offices, etc. A “killer app” that requires someone to install a new operating system has to work a lot harder than one that can simply be downloaded and/or purchased and run.
rajan says
In most cases, recompilation can be easy. But the hard part would be optimizing for x86. Why? Because they spent years optimizing their products for AltiVec, now they have to use SSE2 or HyperThreading or whatever new SIMB that comes out now..
Recompilation can be easy only if you didn’t make any assumption about the hardware. In certain issues there will be such assumptions, even very small ones. Obviously moving the OS will be a problem too. So overall I think it is not an easy job and will cause lots of headaches.
Plus, if it is anything like 68k Mac to PPC Mac, and 68k Palm to ARM Palm, the transition is easy: emulation. Apple just need to co-processor it to a PPC emulation chip.
Emaulation makes programs slower. Now people are complaining that OS X is slower, add emulation to that and you are going to have a very slow program.
I would consider this a non-issue. The main issue to to prevent developers to skip company instead of moving along with Apple. Another big issue is convincing Mac users that x86 Macs is really good.
I couldn’t understand the issue with the developers, but in general obviously developers should move along with the Apple. I think Mac users will be shocked initially for x86 CPU, but then I think they will forget about it, because I don’t think that CPU is the real issue in Macs. Afterall if any mac user was really into this CPU stuff, they would see that Apple is selling them slower CPUs. It is the design and the look and feel of the hardware and the software that sells macs.
I cannot see how you can make out of the only CPU-related sentences – which reads along the line that there won’t be any comment at all about CPUs – that Hubbard talked about Moto + Mac…
appleforever: More AMD/Intel processors are sold, buy nobody has shown that Apple pays more for PowerPC processors and rajan in fact admits he doens’t think they do.
I never thought so, but the economic scales is certainly in favour if x86 processor. No, the price difference is not big (I said it a thousand times, BTW, way before appleforever came here). But AMD/Intel has more reason to make faster and faster processor, and from the moves made by Apple recently, it shows that Apple needs all the processing power it could get.
appleforever: The only significant economy of scale difference I can see is the OS itself. Obviously, MS can spread the costs of Windows over a MUCH larger number of units than Apple can spread the cost of OS X over.
Wrong. Microsoft has a lot more to do than Apple with OS X. They have to make sure the OS works with MUCH more hardware (even though the drivers are normally provided by the hardware maker, Microsoft have to ensure the drivers work properly with other drivers).
Plus, OS X is cheap. They bought it along with NeXT, plus they have less money spent because a lot of it is already written for them (BSD, GCC, etc). It takes *little* investment.
Of course, these have its downpoints: I find OS X’s Darwin architecture much more horrid than NT’s. It is just that Microsoft didn’t execute NT properly.
Besides, Apple’s high prices HAS NOTHING TO DO with the cost of development of the iApps and OS X. Otherwise Apple wouldn’t be making high margins of profit. the reason why Apple is succeeding financially is because it is a NICHE player. It can charge a premium for it because people WANT it and NEED it.
Though that niche is being eroded by commodity hardware pretty fast (25 years, minimum, for Apple to loose their niche markets). But I wouldn’t consider this an big issue, Apple is smart. Notice how they are moving to other niches?
Chris: Apple also has something that Linux doesn’t, and that’s brand recognition.
That is a minor issue. Even the front pages of newspapers is fill with stories of Linux (at least in Malaysia). Ask anyone in the street if they know what’s Linux, they would answer something computer-related.
Sure, Apple has a good brand, but only in USA, and perhaps Europe and Japan. But in the emerging markets (read: India, China, S.E. Asia), it doesn’t.
Sergio: Emaulation makes programs slower. Now people are complaining that OS X is slower, add emulation to that and you are going to have a very slow program.
What’s the current speed of Pentium 4? Guess what? By time Apple is able to start a transition to x86, it would be 2x the speed. Emulation is certainly feasible – sure, it would not be as fast as native apps, but fast enough. Especially if they use coprocessing for emulation. Or if they write the emulator in hardcoded x86 ASM optimized for stuff like HyperTreading and SSE2.
Sergio: I couldn’t understand the issue with the developers, but in general obviously developers should move along with the Apple.
Many of them already spent a lot of money with a lot of suprises Apple put up in the past 6 years. Every other blow sent a few ISVs to another platform. Some may make a version for Windows and maybe Linux.
In general, not many ISVs (read: shareware, small ISVs) would be too happy. Big apps like MS Office or Photoshop would be easy (heck, if there is such plans, big apps from big companies would have already been through the process of porting).
This is probably the reason why I shouldn’t be a 3D artist, LOL 🙂
(Personally, I never saw Maya, not even with screenshots – couldn’t be bothered).
appleforever: OK, Apple is number 6.