On Jan 12, 2006, at 10:38 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
5 years ago... just before OS X 10.0 shipped... I was still
meandering around, bumping into door frames, wondering what Jobs
was smoking. Unix is the OS I fooled around with in HS and learned
to write drivers for in college. Unix is the OS that my Systems
prof often used as an example of how how not to do things.
I don't know why...the fundamental underlying design of Unix as an OS
is still quite elegant: it is the bit that allows programs to run on
a computer without colliding with each other. He may well have had
issues with various *programs* run under Unix, such as the shell or
various other bits, but Unix has lasted because it's a clean, durable
design. It's secure largely because of this design as well.
Roll forward 20 years ... and suddenly the merge with the beautiful
BeOS is history
Well, that's far more due to Jean-Louis Gasee's arrogance and
unreasonable demands than anything else. Also, BeOS may have been
beautiful, but NeXT had actually shipped. And most importantly, NeXT
came with a killer, proven development system. DOOM anyone?
and we're in bed not just with Unix, but a kludged Unix...
I still don't understad where you get the "kludged" Unix bit. OS X is
unix with a Mach microkernel (despite what Linus says, it's a much
better design than a monolithic one, at least I don't have to
recompile my kernel every (bleep> time I add a piece of new
hardware...) and the Aqua GUI. There's no more NextStep or Rhapsody
in it than there is Windows 3.1 in Windows XP.
On the hardware side, I figured the PowerPC was a nice chip to use
for a few more years, and that Apple would eventually move on to
the next big thing.
They did.
A full POWER processor, for example.
A nice chip for $15K servers with industrial blower fans, waaaaay
too hot and expensive for a desktop personal computer.
Or a Cell.
A game systems specialty chip, it doesn't even have all the
functionality of a general purpose CPU.
Or maybe even AMD *shudder*.
A second tier supplier with spotty delivery records, and an unclear
road map. This is what Apple was fleeing IBM and Motorola for.
.. But Apple didn't. They selected Intel's band-aid x86.
The chips that Apple is using are NOT 'band-aid' x86's. Please. Next
you'll be ridiculing them for having "Pentium Math Errors"
Sigh.
To reiterate:
1) Laptop shipments surpassed desktop shipments last year, a trend
that is accelerating, meaning that powerful, low power consumption
CPU's are needed.
2) Neither Apple or IBM could figure a way to put a G5 into a laptop.
3) Motorola, er, "Freescale" simply couldn't get their dual-core G4
design out the door after over two years of trying.
4) Neither Motorola or IBM are really all that interested in making
CPU's for personal computers. Moto would rather make cellphones,
Freescale embedded processors for Ford, and IBM is out of the PC
business *entirely*.
5) Obviously Intel wanted Apple's business more than AMD did.
--
Bruce Johnson
"No matter where you go, there you are", B. Banzai
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