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186
 
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Last Login: 16/10/2005 18:51:00
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Should Apple release OS X for generic PC hardware?
I'll throw my weight behind, no because one of the key reasons why Apple's systems work so well is because the hardware and software are properly integrated, something which is nogh on impossible to do on a so-called "open platform".
People often seem to conflate Windows' problems with flaws in its design and development. In my opinion this is a specious correltation. That the Mac OS is better designed than Windows is true, but Windows' usability has come on a long way since version 3.1 or even Windows 95.
Windows is buggy, bloated and and does feature most of the other problems that people criticise it for, but most people's problems (other than security) seem to come from poor hardware-software integration rather than any specific flaws in Microsoft's software.
The reason Macs run so well is not to do with Apple's programming nous. It's the same reason why SGI boxes and Sun workstations run so well.
J...
PS I do apologise for the typo in the subject line.
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286
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A licensed mobile version of Mac OS X, for a Pocket PC or Palm PDA, would be an excellent move. The platforms are far less likely to cause conflicts than with PC desktops, and proper integration with your main Mac could be achieved.
Apple invented the PDA with the Newton, but doesn't have one on the market at the moment (rumour has it they had one almost ready, but Steve Jobs cancelled the project when he returned as CEO). A licensed version of the OS would be an excellent alternative.
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286
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You've been reading too many Apple re-writes of history...the UK company PSION invented the PDA, as their early kit pre-dated the Newton by at least 8 years.
Apple reputedly coined the phrase 'Personal Digital Assitant', but the didn't invent the concept, and Palm was the first to market a machine called a 'PDA'. The Newton was a dissaster for Apple, and I'm sure they're not looking for a repeat.
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186
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Interesting. I'm not conviced, though, for two reasons:
Firstly, Mac OS X is pretty hefty – it's predecessor, NeXTSTEP, ran like glue on 680x0 CPUs. Performance only really got acceptable when it was ported to Intel in the mid 1990s and to PowerPC in 2001. I'm not sure how it would scale down to relatively low power CPUs.
Secondly, there doesn't seem to be much of a market left for PDAs. Smartphones are eating away at one end and many people, myself included, don't want either.
As for inventing the PDA, Psion were around long before Apple. Apple did coin the term PDA and market the Netwon as such. The Palm came later. The Newton was a very advanced device – if it had colour graphics it would still be more advanced than pretty much anything on the market now, at least in terms of usability. There's quite a Newton cult out there on the 'net to this day.
Despite all of this, I've never been convinced by PDAs as a concept.
Cheers,
J...
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286
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I guess it depends on what you mean by 'PDA'. I'll concede that in hindsight, by the time the Series 3 was released in 1991 the Psion could usefully be considered a PDA, but models released before that were too limited to take the title. So Psion gets the prize, but by two years, not eight.
As JW says, though, the Newton (admittedly a disaster for Apple) was far more advanced than anything around at the time. The history of the PDA as we now know it starts there, though as you say, the concept is a little older.
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186
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Last Login: 22/02/2007 10:39:35
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Apple will not do it... It won't do on the grounds of they will not be able to retain control that they have now. They have been asked about licensing and have turned it down flat.
The Newton II was prototyped by Jobs but he cancelled it as it had absolutely no market according to Apple. The PDA market is dying and they would not profit by putting a PDA on the market.
The Psion Organiser 1 was before the Newton but it was very crude with only a two line display far from a convienient PDA.
Many people would like to see such and in time who knows Apple may break but for now they wish to keep it in their hands.
Who can blame them?
Oh Globbits!!!
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286
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NeXTSTEP "like glue" on 68K hardware? Maybe on the original 030 NeXTcube or a system with little RAM, and maybe compared with NeXTSTEP on a much faster Pentium, but I definitely wouldn't describe my old 040 NeXTstation as slow. Compared with most other 15 year old computers it's still a very usable machine, especially with a RAM upgrade (thankfully it can use standard EDO RAM).
Even with the basic 16Mb RAM I always found that NeXTSTEP remained responsive when running a few apps, it's definitely at least as fast as Windows 95 running on similar speed hardware, and that's obviously a vastly inferior OS. In my opinion Windows 2000/XP or Linux with KDE/GNOME would be a fairer comparison with NeXTSTEP, how well would either of them run on a 25Mhz computer with 16Mb of RAM?
Windows NT4 often slowed to a crawl on my old 233Mhz K6 with 64Mb RAM, OpenStep 4.2 flew on the same system. Operating Systems like RISC OS, Mac System 6 and Amiga OS were certainly lighter on system resources than NeXTSTEP, but that's comparing apples to oranges as they only had a fraction of it's features. Considering the 500Mhz+ CPUs in modern PDAs I don't think that a NeXTSTEP/Mac OS X based OS would necessarily be slow.
Having said that, I'd have to agree with you that it probably wouldn't be the best choice for a PDA, I think a dedicated OS designed for that environment is better than trying to pack a desktop OS into a handheld device. Really the definition of a PDA is getting blurred, a lot of fancy smartphones pack in as many PDA features as "real" PDAs. With companies like Palm making smartphones and a lot of them running Symbian software (that used to be used in Psion PDAs), the distinction between PDAs and smartphones seems a little meaningless. Only time will tell whether they'll be a big success, I'd dubious, but then I never thought that camera phones would be anything more than a short lived gimmick...
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186
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Last Login: 16/10/2005 18:51:00
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First of all, it's quite impressive that you have a NeXT machine.
Yes, I did mean the mono cube, not the later slab and turbo editions.
You are right that "fast OSes" like the AmigaOS and RISC OS were only fast in comparison to NeXTSTEP because they were relatively underpowered.
What is an annoyance to me as a Mac OS X user is that I know that NeXTSTEP was faster than OS X (comparatively speaking). OS X should really fly on my PowerBook G4/500. It doesn't. That's not to say it's actually slow, because it's not, but it could be faster. Maybe I should just get more RAM as it is a hungry beast and has to do a lot of swapping when I have a lot of applications running.
J...
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186
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YES !! Absolutely !! if only to illustrate to EVERYONE that there is a decent o/s for users which can compete.... .... ..... .... [FX: can of worms being opened..]
As a long-term Linux user I would say that the Apple desktop is almost replicated in some of the new distros. But I am using Win XP on a laptop with ObjectDock and Konfabulator Widgets and have the functionality that I want for very little cost.
The ideal situation would be to have the desktops configured as close as possible, regardless of o/s. Which I'm pretty close to with Linux on one PC and the above configuration on the other PCs and laptops.
But I don't think that anyone will deny the close integration of the MAC hardware makes it all work so much better.
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Pete
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