On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 05:27:47PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I think the NeXT technology is present in OSX in terms of idealology. I doubt there is that much actual NeXT code in there. Jobs has practically admitted that Apple do have a running X86 build of OSX....but running and running as well or better than it does on a PPC are different things.
Hmmn, from what I heard (especially from one guy I used to work with who was a NeXT fan/user) parts of Mac OS X (well, this was more in the beta period and early OS X releases, I can't speak for the past few years) were exactly the same as NeXTstep. I would be very surprised if parts of the Mac OS X codebase *wasn't* based on and originally used in NeXTStep.
Well sort of I suppose but Adobe can't just take the Win32 code and run it on a X86 Mac. It would certainly make the port easier knowing that they already have a x86 codebase but building for a X86 Mac is bound to be a bit different from building for Win32
Yup, but I don't think it a huge leap as any bits they have which are PPC assembler for example they will have copies of as x86 assembler. The rest of it should work with a bit of clever hacking given the Unix/NeXT heritage in Mac OS X.
Also you have to consider things like 3rd party drivers and the OSS comunity efforts to port code over to OSX PPC, neither of those two camps are going to be so thrilled about having to rebuild (and probably introduce new bugs into) their existing work.
Well, much OSS stuff already builds on an alarming amount of architectures and operating systems the stuff that builds on Mac OS X PPC should be pretty simple to take and just compile for Mac OS X. I do know of one software porting effort where a large Unix codebase which was built for many architectures had a customer requirement for an OS X version, the actual port to OS X took around 24 hours....
As for drivers, again I don't see this being a huge problem. Linux has lots of drivers and it runs on lots of platforms and how many people who produce Mac drivers don't produce an x86 driver? Again there will be porting work here but given that Apple wouldn't say "as of tomorrow we are only selling x86 kit" people will have plenty of time to develop new drivers. (I thought the rumor said that x86 Macs would be available in 2006).
I think that Apple don't really make money out of OSX it's just a reason to get you buying Apple hardware, so unless there was some hugely profitable licensing deal to be had I can't see them ever supporting running their operating system on someone else's hardware
Agreed, I also don't see why they would go to x86 but then, we shall see. It certainly would be interesting if they did.
Apple wouldn't want to do that. Wine or Virtual PC is great when you have no option but to run some Windows code but to actually rely on it for a desktop strategy would be a little silly.
I'm talking about them adding some extra Apple magic, and I have worked in an environment that relied upon Codeweavers crossover office for running apps on Linux and tbh, everything did "just work".
It would just be an ugly situation and there would be no guarantee that Microsoft doesn't either make it a licensing requirement that Office is run on a MS operating system or somehow breaks compatability in a future version.
How do you say anti-trust :) Future versions would mean that Apple would fight back. It may sound ugly, but then under the hood lots of Mac OS X stuff is already ugly so it wouldn't be unknown territory for them.
Also potentially you could open up OSX to all the Windows spyware,malware and viruses. Admittedly the better default security policies of the Mac would make this less likely.
I'm sure that Apple would have an installer wrapper that made you install an app before it would run. I don't think they would make it quite the same as a click the .exe to run.
They already do that in a way, The iPod whispers subliminal messages watermarked over the Owners music in real time by the AAC compression. If you close your eyes and listen real hard you can hear "Buy Apple....Buy a Mac....Apple are your friends.....Having a Powerbook makes you look cool and intelligent" :-)
Heh, I always suspected this. :)
But as you say on Monday we may even hear that some big wires have been crossed and that actually they are looking at Intel to provide some supporing chips (Wireless or perhaps chipset) or perhaps they are going to get back into PDA's and need an ARM chip.
Which In all likelyhood seems to be what will happen as I do tend to agree with you that it is a strange and unlikely move for Apple to make, but having said that I don't see it as an impossibility...
Oh well, all the Mac fanboys should only have about 24 hours to wait now :) I'm just hoping that there are no mass suicides from devoted Apple fans ;)
Adam