Gabriele Bulfon wrote:
Well, yes...I understand, but...
...what Apple did with OSX is something nobody ever did on any unix: bring an
amazing and totally usable desktop to a unix system!
Also, switching from OS9 to OSX was a total change, both of the underlying system
AND of the underlying hardware & processor. Still, bringing portability of
older code with some kind of emulation.
No OS did this, AFAIK.
If they could do this, maybe they could even move to Solaris :) I believe it
would be a far easier path than the one they did from OS9 to OSX.
As Richard pointed out, porting would be a ton of work with very little
visible benefit for most MacOS desktop users, to say nothing of the ISVs
who would need to port their apps. Some of the ISVs would drop OS X.
There's also the question of iOS users (iPhone/iPad) which Apple needs
to support and for whom the benefit is even less obvious.
And even if this was an easy change for Apple (it's not) it's unlikely
Apple would want to do this because they would then not have control of
the kernel in the OS they are using. I.e. if Oracle makes changes that
benefit large servers but hurt desktops, Apple does not want to be in
the position of having to accept Oracle's changes even if they don't
match Apple's roadmap.
For example, what if Apple wants some kernel changes for iOS
(handhelds)? Right now Apple controls this, but if they were using
Solaris they would lose control.
Summary: you can be pretty sure this is not going to happen.
Hugh.
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