BusinessWeek features an extensive set of articles, editorials & interviews with key Apple people regarding the future of Apple and MacOSX. A very good read overall. In the meantime, MacUserUK and MacMinute revealed that Tuesday 22nd of January is the most likely day that Apple will announce three new, top of the line, PowerMacs: 800, 933 and dual 1 Ghz, with all models “shipping immediately.” Pricing and additional specifications are unclear, although sources suggest that Apple may make the SuperDrive standard on all systems.
The Future of Apple – A Special Report at BusinessWeek
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
i think apple rocks! keep on rockin in the free world apple!
you Linux users are in for a shock when you try Apple’s incredible OS X and gasp your ever-loving jealous hearts out when you see the true power and beauty of it! I will be smiling with a great Cheshire grin when the whole Linux community fails like Microsoft technology at a Gates speech, and the you all buy Apple because it’s the best!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA@!!!!!!
Stop making alternative operating systems!!! Resistance is futile! Alternative OS news makes me sick because it detracts from the house of power that is Apple’s amazing OS X. Please desist from publishing such nonsense.
In case you’re wondering, spam does not bother me at all! I am immune to your pitiful cries of anguish because I have the all-powerful Spam-blocker from hotmail which was inspired by superior Apple innovations.
Long Live Apple!!!!!!! Down with Yellow Dog Linux and all other open source crappola!!! BOOOOOOOO to QNX! Your poor microkernel cannot compare to the POWER of Darwin!
James is a porsche lover (a cad too)…. I am sure about that. Did James ever wanted to drive a good old eastgerman <a href=”http://www.trabant.de/a_union/ifa/ifa.htm“>Trabant. Ha.
As well as his attitude towards porsches is his attitude towards “alternative” OS’es a bit like my attitude towards porsche lovers…
Well thats it… Bye cad.
James Warkentin, may I kindly remind you that the base of Mac OS X is Mach, an open source crappola, and FreeBSD, an alternative OS.
I think the dude was trying to start a flame war… Mac OS X and Linux are cousins now and should just get along in the family of UNIX!!!
“Never, ever cloud the issue with the facts.”
As a Mac user, I should say you should be infinitely ashamed of yourself. The Mac owes as much to Darwin, itself based off of BSD (namely FreeBSD) as it does to Mach, which is an open-source Microkernal developed by Avie Tevanian (NeXT’s and now Apple’s tech head) while he was at Carnegie-Melon University. So, from these other OS’s, comes great alternatives to proprietary kernals. In truth, if Linux were to develop into a better alternative, Apple could simply pull the underpinnings out of OS X and redevelop it to run on top of Linux. For their own reasons, they chose not to.
Although this isn’t to say that proprietary kernals aren’t good either. I mean, after all… BeOS was “INCREDIBLE”. I really wished they would’ve caught on better and gotten better hardware support, along with more software titles out for it. They probably had the most polished alternative OS out there. The best file system (probably bar none), and their interface while not perfect, was as close to Apple’s Mac OS (1-9) as there was out there, which is to say… one of the best GUI’s. Hopefully someone will figure out how to keep OpenBeOS alive, as I know that I’d love to have the chance to run it on my little PC right here.
To the Linux-heads that keep chanting about the inferiority of Mach, I think it’s just a bit of jealousy, in that sense that if Apple had said “Yes, we’ll use Linux as our foundation” suddenly… you’d all have that cannon fodder. Then again, what good it’d do you without the proprietary end of Apple’s code would remain to be seen.
So I don’t think that James was that wrong on that aspect (although irate tempers and lashing back are hardly the solution to the childish drivel), as half of every Slashdot reading 1337 d00d5 wants to be able to go off saying “OS X 5ux0r5” but, alas… it still has more of a viable marketshare, better installation and ease of use than most any x11 window manager (getting better but they’re still as far away from a “REAL” polished GUE, or Graphic User Experience as the old x11 variations were in the 1980’s compared to the lesser refined GUI’s of that time). Not to mention, it has one of the best software development toolkits in Cocoa (Java and Objective-C), and still retains backwards compatabilities via first Classic, and secondly (and long-term) Carbon. While I know I’ll hear of Unix/Linux umpteen thousands of applications, stop and think… how many people care about the various science programs? How many care about the little open-source hacked CAD programs? Even the open-source Office programs, even the most decent of one’s, are still no match for the “Reality Distortion Field” that Microsoft has the industry woo’ed under.
This isn’t to say that what KDE and Gnome have achieved isn’t anything short of “AMAZING”, but this is to say that unless a “MAJOR” company embraces Linux, the whole “TAKE OVER THE WORLD” mentality that the Linux-heads and Slashdot freaks are seduced by may not ever reach total fruition (in truth, I feel that Apple has a better shot if the mad-coders embraced Darwin). It is an incredible OS, I do give it credit… but GIMP is not a viable alternative to Photoshop, OpenOffice and Applixware aren’t going to knee Microsoft in the groin anytime soon (although I wish they would on all fronts, all platforms), and that’s the bottomline. Until Adobe releases on Linux, until Microsoft releases at the very least “Word”, if not the whole suite, and until Linux gets a completely polished, refined, elegant GUI that has gone through numerous and proper designers, provides the right tactile feedback, then Linux will remain what it is… an OS for the IT Pro that wants a cheap, durable, reliable server platform to which they can do as IBM did… move all of their servers to one.
Just to clear up… IBM is not the company that they need to make that “MAJOR” impact. They need someone more mainstream, that deals with the consumer, to take Linux and begin the effort to get Linux to the desktop. The problem is… I feel that Linux blew it’s chance, when it wasn’t “ripe” enough on PowerPC to be chosen over the more mainstaying BSD variants (much as JLG missed the boat when he quoted “We have Apple by the balls” with Be). True it was impressive at the time for as short a time as it had taken, but it’s more of a crapshoot than BSD which has been floating around for years, and has been the foundation for “MANY” variations of Unix. For an IBM, which deals mostly in “HIGH-END” environments… Linux is a godsend (it is a godsend because it’s pretty much trouble-free if you know enough to take the time to set it up, know how to partition, etc. etc.). As it will be for SGI if they can stay afloat long enough to use it (depending on whatever processors they go for).
Yet… no Dell, no Compaq, no Gateway, no eMachines, no Sony. The User Experience won’t improve at the rate of an Apple, of a… well… of an Apple (I can’t bring myself to put XP in that category, even though I use it). hehe Be had the polish of the GUI down pretty good, but it’s just a matter of getting the installer, the drivers, and everything else supported (not to mention generating a file system and formatting schema that doesn’t fry the average snot-nosed teenager’s brain), and then… getting usable viable applications out, and major companies to support it. That’s no easy task.
People want “EASE OF USE”. They want easy to install if they have problems, easy to fix if they have glitches and conflicts, they want usability without headaches, as most deal with enough headaches at work. So in other words, they want… “LITTLE TO NO PROBLEMS”. They don’t care if Mach isn’t as fast as the dynamic microkernal-less Linux. They don’t care about the 150,000 little shareware, scientific, or the really big download that goes “PING” when you double-click it kinda’ stuff. They don’t particularly even care so much about security, as few know as much about it as they even do about virii (which is another reason Linux will fail, as it doesn’t dumb itself down enough to “SHELTER” it’s users). You see, for Linux to take over the world, it must first become what it is not… appliance-like, simple, easy to understand, easy to administer, crash-resistant, and have a wealth of usable applications/tools. The problem is, the OS hasn’t come far enough yet for the developers to shift their focus from kernals and User Interfaces and other elements to actually making “SOFTWARE” that people really want. Until then… Linux is that cheeky, alternative OS, with the penguin mascot, that should more or less have Pinky and The Brain as their mascot. Foiled attempts to take over the world with repeated acts to attempt to do so.
… very, very good posting! Lots of excellent points!
I’d love to dump Windows and use either BeOS or Linux. It’s not going to happen, ’cause the stuff I use hasn’t been and probably never will be ported to either OS. Adobe Illustrator, LiveMotion, Fractal Painter, etc., etc.
I’ll still be using Linux for database programming and things like that. I’ll be using BeOS just to remind me now and then of how things might have been and still could be.
I won’t be moving over to OS X, ’cause while I might be able to afford the low-end hardware, I can’t afford to buy a new platform *and* get all of the software apps that I need.
Hey check out Inferno, it might give you alittle bit of the graphics stuff you’re looking for?!
http://www.sentronic.nl/inferno/