I posted this to a newsgroup yesterday, the more I think about it the more I think someone *could* make a go of selling a Apple like solution. Anyone care to comment ?
When are those people over there ever going to wake up? Jobs could put Gates on welfare if he'd port the Mac OS to the PC. I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even with Apple's usurious profit margins ..
Every time I hear this I wince, Do you know what OSX would become if it was ever ported over to the X86 platform...
OSX is nice, clean, relatively stable and deserved of the "Just works" title simply because the developer of the OS is in 100% control of the platform. The only machines that (in a legitimate manner) can run OSX are designed and manufactured under licence from Apple themselves. Because of this I would expect random crashes and installation difficulties from an Apple no more than what I'd expect from say an Xbox.
Port it over to a platform like x86 where there are a thousand manufacturers competing with their own little tweaks, variations and buggy third party drivers combined with the massive task of support for legacy hardware and applications and you'd either have the unstable mess that is Windows XP or limited manufacturer hardware support as towards Linux.
Think about this- (and if anybody forms a business model based on this I thought of it first :-) )
For the sake of argument (and because we are on a SuSE newsgroup here) Lets say Novell came up with their own hardware platform, base it on X86 architecture if you like.
Now imagine that they only supported SuSE linux when it was running on that platform, and the only third party hardware and software they supported was that which they had agreed (by arrangement with the manufacturer) was compatible with SuSE linux.
Imagine how stable and easy to use that system could be, everything could just plug in and work, there would be almost zero hardware compatability issues because they would have been resolved by Novell/The Hardware manufacturer before you bought the kit....it would be just like an Apple (or a Sun box)
Of course some people would shun it, they would say that they can buy a computer cheaper from Dell cheaper than the Novell one and then download a free Linux distribution to go on it, or they'd say that Novell don't sell a computer that meets their particular needs, or they dislike the fact they they are tied into one vendor. But some people want more of an appliance than a computer and that's how I see Mac's, you take them home and plug them in and they just work.
On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 05:45:50PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I posted this to a newsgroup yesterday, the more I think about it the more I think someone *could* make a go of selling a Apple like solution. Anyone care to comment ?
Port it over to a platform like x86 where there are a thousand manufacturers competing with their own little tweaks, variations and buggy third party drivers combined with the massive task of support for legacy hardware and applications and you'd either have the unstable mess that is Windows XP or limited manufacturer hardware support as towards Linux.
Well, Mac OS X is partially a port of BSD Unix and NeXT technology, NeXT made releases of their software for x86, BSD Unix runs on x86, Darwin exists for x86 and there are a few bits of other software that are obviously not ported yet and lots of bits of GPL stuff in OS X.
Basically, yeah Apple could put everything into a big mixing pot and come out with a version that runs on x86 and it would probably be very cool, worrying about some drivers isn't really a huge problem as if you buy crap hardware then you get crap drivers, if the hardware already has a Mac OS X driver then why should the x86 version be any crapper?
The reason that Apple won't release Mac OS X on x86 would be because it would instantly kill their hardware lineup, who would buy a super-expensive Mac for twice as much as a cheap x86 box with Mac OS X? and given that how many people would then buy Mac OS X for x86 when they could just pirate it? At this point Apple will have managed to kill their revenue stream, Apple would die as would Mac OS X and a large company that opposes M$ would crumble into the dust. This would be bad news and not very good news for Linux as M$ (who are imho far more evil than Apple will ever be) would now have a larger market share and more of a stranglehold on that monopoly of theirs, *just* kept it on topic there with that last line.
Adam
On Wednesday 06 April 2005 7:45 pm, Adam Bower wrote:
Basically, yeah Apple could put everything into a big mixing pot and come out with a version that runs on x86 and it would probably be very cool, worrying about some drivers isn't really a huge problem as if you buy crap hardware then you get crap drivers, if the hardware already has a Mac OS X driver then why should the x86 version be any crapper?
I remain unconvinced, it's hard to properly QA software or hardware for the X86 platform because there are so many variables and inconsistencies. If you say "Supports Mac OSX" then you are really talking about a very limited range of machines that you have to test your product against.
The reason that Apple won't release Mac OS X on x86 would be because it would instantly kill their hardware lineup, who would buy a super-expensive Mac for twice as much as a cheap x86 box with Mac OS X?
Agreed apart from the bit about Mac's being super expensive, that's only true if you ignore things like build quality and sensible design and just compare clock speeds.
I struggle to find laptops as well designed as say the iBook or Powerbook's for less money when I start to consider other things that are important to me (portability, battery life, build quality).
When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a X86 based machine with the same real world performance for much less money and that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best designed and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to bits.
You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance comparasion, but factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny form factor and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of my head a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU comes to about £250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not include an operating system or any manufacturer support)
and given that how many people would then buy Mac OS X for x86 when they could just pirate it? At this point Apple will have managed to kill their revenue stream, Apple would die as would Mac OS X and a large company that opposes M$ would crumble into the dust. This would be bad news and not very good news for Linux as M$ (who are imho far more evil than Apple will ever be) would now have a larger market share and more of a stranglehold on that monopoly of theirs, *just* kept it on topic there with that last line.
Agreed
On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:45:45PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Agreed apart from the bit about Mac's being super expensive, that's only true if you ignore things like build quality and sensible design and just compare clock speeds.
No, have to disagree on this totally, build quality is something you can't argue about really as it gets subjective to the actual machine you do the comparison with. There are crap built x86 machines, but then there are some fine examples of x86 engineering. Sensible design, I would/could somewhat agree on in the Macs favour, although there are flaws (more on that below) and the clock speed comparison isn't really what I am basing my examples on. Just look how much Apple charge you to have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium over what you can buy for an x86 pc. They usually want 35 quid! just to add bluetooth support.
I struggle to find laptops as well designed as say the iBook or Powerbook's for less money when I start to consider other things that are important to me (portability, battery life, build quality).
IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop owners I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in another year.
When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a X86 based machine with the same real world performance for much less money and that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best designed and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to bits.
That will be the one that Apple got in trouble for because they lied about the performance ;) and how do you categorise "real world performance"? Many of the tasks I want to do on my computer are not possible on a Mac, that would mean it has a real world performance rating of 0, on other tasks then it may be slightly faster but then I could buy 2 (or more) x86 machines for the same price. Also look at how expensive a Mac that will play Doom III nicely costs compared to an x86 gaming rig.
You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance comparasion, but factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny form factor and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of my head a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU comes to about £250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not include an operating system or any manufacturer support)
There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* sensible design).
There are some benefits to having a Mac, but then downsides too. Trying to take the Mac cult approach of "everything is good" doesn't really work. I'm not really defending x86 though, as I think the architecture is a bit crap but then again there aren't many options but I think I will stay put for now. I also thought of one more point that wasn't raised and that is the relative upgradability of a PC compared to a Mac.
The machine I am typing on was originally a 1.4Ghz Athlon with a Ge-Force 2 card which cost 600 quid, the motherboard died and it cost 50 quid to replace with a newer better motherboard and around the same time I upgraded the gfx card to a geforce 4 for 100 quid. At christmas I upgraded the cpu and gfx card which cost me 200 quid for a 2.mumble Ghz Athlon and a GeForce 6600GT card and the upgrade required me to buy some new ram (total 1GB). Every time I have upgraded the machine I have sold many of the bits on ebay.
When I add up what it has cost me over 4 years (1050 quid) and what I got back by selling bits (150 quid, and if I had sold the geforce 2 card I would have got another 50 quid) It has cost me 850 quid to have a machine that is more than fast enough (and at the beginning was fairly high end) for nearly 4 years with no upgrade projected for another 2 years I would say that works out as a bit of a bargain compared to an equivalent Mac (in fact, looking at the Apple store online, an equivalent (but admittedly slightly faster) G5 Mac would cost me about 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed with Mac kit from the beginning.
Adam
On Wednesday 06 April 2005 23:44, Adam Bower wrote: . Just look how much Apple charge you to
have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium over what you can buy for an x86 pc.
I feel I have to make a comment here. If you take your 'wintel' machine to somewhere like PC World they will charge an arm and a leg to fit more RAM or upgrade the hard drive. If, however, you buy the bits from Anglian Internet (for example) and fit them yourself you will save a bomb and get a cheap upgrade in the bargain.
My Apple eMac 1.25 uses standard RAM and IDE drives. I brought more (Crucial) RAM from Anglian Internet and fitted myself and saved a packet on Apple's prices. The hard drive is easy to get to and to upgrade with a standard IDE drive.
Incedentaly, HP (I think it was) wanted to port OS X over to their PC range, but Apple said no.
Peter Peter Hunter (G0GSZ)
I thought I'd read somewhere the new apples only have 256mb ram and talking of HP anyone know how to upgrade the hard drive in a HP Pavillion N5472 laptop, do I have to dismantle it? Regards Stan
On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 05:17:48PM +0100, Peter Hunter wrote:
On Thursday 07 April 2005 12:04, Stan Fraser wrote:
I thought I'd read somewhere the new apples only have 256mb ram and talking
That's correct Stan, they do. But they do have TWO slots and can take a total of 1GB (2 x 512) of PC-2700 (DDR 333) RAM.
Mac-Mini only comes with one slot for memory, unless we are talking about a different machine?
Adam
On Thursday 07 April 2005 17:50, Adam Bower wrote:
On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 05:17:48PM +0100, Peter Hunter wrote:
On Thursday 07 April 2005 12:04, Stan Fraser wrote:
I thought I'd read somewhere the new apples only have 256mb ram and talking
That's correct Stan, they do. But they do have TWO slots and can take a total of 1GB (2 x 512) of PC-2700 (DDR 333) RAM.
Mac-Mini only comes with one slot for memory, unless we are talking about a different machine?
Adam
No, sorry, I should have said, I am talking about the new eMac.
Peter
On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:12:12 +0100 peterslinuxbox@ntlworld.com wrote:
On Wednesday 06 April 2005 23:44, Adam Bower wrote: . Just look how much Apple charge you to
have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium over what you can buy for an x86 pc.
I feel I have to make a comment here. If you take your 'wintel' machine to somewhere like PC World they will charge an arm and a leg to fit more RAM or upgrade the hard drive. If, however, you buy the bits from Anglian Internet (for example) and fit them yourself you will save a bomb and get a cheap upgrade in the bargain.
My Apple eMac 1.25 uses standard RAM and IDE drives. I brought more (Crucial) RAM from Anglian Internet and fitted myself and saved a packet on Apple's prices. The hard drive is easy to get to and to upgrade with a standard IDE drive.
Incedentaly, HP (I think it was) wanted to port OS X over to their PC range, but Apple said no.
Peter Peter Hunter (G0GSZ)
Whats Mac on Linux like?
I have heard its solid and good? It would be nice to have a minimac and debian stable running ubuntu and MacOS side by side with debian testing in the background for thoughs alpha software products attempts Guess Ill need the 1Gb max ram on day 1. Maybe not a long term computer like thier workstations.
Regards
Owen
Not sure what Mac on Linux is like.
I was thinking more of using a mini as a sort of smart terminal downstairs. Running the local Apple applications and then remote X windows from the Linux box when I need more horsepower or an application that is not available on the mini. If I need access to OSX from the study then I can always remote the Mac using the OSX VNC server or something. The only issue I see with this is that I have heard worrying things about the X server implimentation on OSX.
On Mon, 2005-04-11 at 09:02 +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Not sure what Mac on Linux is like.
I'm impressed with Mac on Linux. I'm running Gentoo, and when working from home use MoL to use Microsoft Office for Mac. (Crossover wasn't there for ppc so MoL convinced me I didn't really need Crossover).
I have MoL set up on a separate Virtual Terminal, and it's quick and responsive. The iBook has 512Mb RAM and 96Mb assigned to MoL.
Regards, Adam
Owen Synge wrote on 11 April 2005 02:52:
Whats Mac on Linux like?
I have heard its solid and good? It would be nice to have a minimac and debian stable running ubuntu and MacOS side by side with debian testing in the background for thoughs alpha software products attempts Guess Ill need the 1Gb max ram on day 1. Maybe not a long term computer like thier workstations.
Well, these people do Debian on a Mac Mini:
http://www.positive-internet.com/dolphin/dolphinmini.html
Apparently it works quite well as a low-end server.
Regards,
Martyn
On Wednesday 06 April 2005 11:44 pm, Adam Bower wrote: (lots of snips)
Just look how much Apple charge you to have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium over what you can buy for an x86 pc. They usually want 35 quid! just to add bluetooth support.
I'll agree that some of the upgrade prices are on the expensive side of acceptable. But to be honest they are no worse than many other brand name manufacturers. For example the Wireless card in my Thinkpad is (at retail values) more expensive than the Airport and Bluetooth combined when fitted as an option on the Mac Mini (I can't do a fair comparasion on Laptops because Airport extreme is standard on all Apple laptops now). I will agree that memory and hard drive prices are a bit on the high side, but again other brand name x86 platform manufactures charge similar amounts. Also keep in mind that this is an installed price (not that is important to the likes of us but to some it is)
IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop owners I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in another year.
I do agree that Thinkpads are pretty excellent, I love mine and would probably only ever replace it with another Thinkpad. But in the eyes of a general consumer the iBook/powerbook is a far more pleasant design (I'll use the simple example of the screen catch here but there are other factors) Don't get me wrong I love the design of the Thinkpad, I love it for it's slightly retro but rugged feel and that rather square 80's look and I love the fact that there are 5 year old bits that still fit my 6 month old unit, but put it next to the Apple kit and you 'd have to admit it looks a little dated.
As to build quality I'd say that it's pretty much an even match, there are weaknesses on some Thinkpads and there are elements of Apple kit I wonder about (although less so on the current lineup). It is true that Apple (more so on the laptop front) have had some reliability issues, but in my view they have been more than honest about these problems and have satisfied me that they are trying to do the right thing by those who purchased faulty kit. Did you know they were even refunding people that have paid for out of warranty repairs on kit which they later identified as faulty by design.
There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* sensible design).
Didn't know about the vga adapter thing, but I welcome small form factor and still maintain that there are very few true SFF PC's that can match the Mini.
I also thought of one more point that wasn't raised and that is the relative upgradability of a PC compared to a Mac.
True, upgradeability is an issue with Apple kit, but to be honest their target demographic doesn't care much. Larger businesses and many home users don't do component upgrades and to be honest last year when I upgraded my home machine I quickly noticed that given the parts of the machine to be replaced it was more economic to just replace the whole thing and sell a complete machine rather than a pile of bits.
G5 Mac would cost me about 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed with Mac kit from the beginning.
True enough in your case, but as I say a lot of people don't do incremental upgrades like that. Also don't forget that the depreciation on Apple kit seems (pre Mac Mini anyway) to be a lot lower than most X86 hardware. Just before the Mini was released I was having no trouble passing early G4 Powermac's onto the 2nd hand market for circa £250, there aren't many 2000-2001 era X86 machines that would fetch that.
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