On Tuesday 07 June 2005 11:51 am, Bob Dove wrote:
Apple X86? Why??? What's wrong with Motorola?
Apple had issues with Motorola developing and supplying the G4 at a rate that suited them. The same issues seem to have cropped up with IBM and the G5.
With the G5 they exected to have it in laptops and be at 3Ghz by this point, neither have happened.
Sadly it doesn't just come down to technical preferences. With x86 they can piggyback the rapid development and economies of scale of the PC platform. Now that I have seen the keynote the main worrying thing in my mind is that the dev stations seem to be 32bit.
I guess they could have taken the PPC IP rights I think they own and asked Intel to build/develop it for them. But then the R&D costs to push the architecture forward would be limited to Apple's demand. IBM were developing the G5 pretty much solely for Apple, I think that's why development of the G5 hasn't lived up to Steve's own roadmap
Linux users switching to OSX (Unix) - again why? You guys seem to have a strong grip on Linux with bags of O/S to choose and run, and WINE already available to you for your Win apps why bother with OSX?
For me it's because my job involves trying to support as many platforms as I can. Some of my larger clients have a massive array of different operating systems and architectures. Even (as with Mac's) though I don't claim to be an expert on all of them it is handy to know at least a bit.
Support work and sales for Apple equipment requests have grown since we set up in 2002, that is a very relevant income and therefore I am at the point where I need one of my own so that I can remain familiar with OSX. (that's the excuse I am giving the accountant anyway)