Apple Joins BAPCo 213
DigitalDame2 writes to tell us Gearlog is reporting that Apple has joined up with Windows benchmarking consortium BAPCo as a full blown member. From the article: "This is significant because it means that Apple has now committed to Windows-based performance testing, and it will influence industry-standard testing methodologies going forward, possibly including Mac OS X testing."
For the switch to windows (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What utter tripe. (Score:2)
Re:What utter tripe. (Score:2)
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Re:What utter tripe. (Score:2)
The poster was talking about Apple's legacy computer business, not their iTunes store.
TWW
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What utter tripe. (Score:2)
Cheers.
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Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
On one hand, allowing Win XP apps to run on Intel Macs will ease the transition of more people to Macs. Many people have that one critical app that is holding them back
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
I suspect we'll be seeing the Mac equivalent of CoLinux (http://www.colinux.org/)very [colinux.org] shortly. Cooperative operating systems will allow developers to address the best aspects of both systems - UI from the Mac, drivers from Win/Vista, for example.
Eventually the two commercial oprating systems will merge and become one. The merged system will be co-developed as a joint venture by Apple and Microsoft, who
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Most people have enough trouble installing one operating system by themselves. Expecting them to install a second thru virtualization is asking too much.
No developer is going to expect a large number of users to run their program
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
A middle manager might decide to make this kind of decision, especially if Apple were to add some kind of WINE-like emulation layer to make Win32 apps run on the Mac.
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Exactly. If they don't make any profit from the hardware, then they have to make it up from the software. Whose going to pay an extra $200 to $300 to run OS X on their Windows box? The same people that bought OPENSTEP [wikipedia.org]. Good luck with that. And again you run into the chicken and egg problem of drivers. Or they could go the route of OPENSTEP Enterprise and run it on top of Windows. Because that worked so well.
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
No, you have. How many people buy a computer without Windows on it? And you haven't addressed the driver issue. Or is Apple going to write them all with the huge profits they're making from their software?
Apple could focus their efforts on software development and reap huge profits, like Microsoft.
Trying to be like Microsoft is a fool's errand. Microsoft is always going to be better at being Microsoft.
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:2)
Yeah, not so much.
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Wha...? (Score:2)
"IBM's proprietary model?" WTH is that? The BIOS?
"Fatal?"
(How many manufacturers of "Apple clones" are there again?
Re:Wha...? (Score:2)
Re:Wha...? (Score:2)
Sometime check into the sophisticated things Apple did with the original Mac to prevent someone else from doing a clone of it. IBM certainly did not intend that the PC should be cloned. That happened because of plain sloppyness on IBM's part. For one thing, Apple had already had the problem of another company (Franklin) trying to clone t
Re:Wha...? (Score:2)
That's not my recollection. Rather, I seem to recall that IBM allowed their PC division free rein to come up with their machine concept, and the PC group decided to go with an "open architecture" patterned after the S-100 bus. They did have a "proprietary BIOS," but that was reverse-engineered shortly after (and led to the "rise of the Phoenix" [wikipedia.org] among other things). The "proprietary BIOS" shortly thereafter was quite "unproprietary."
Apple has done
Re:Wha...? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at how the IBM PC affected IBM, it basically caused them to have to lay off a third of their workers. They should have owned that market. Instead, they were so afraid of Apple that they lost all common sense and made a stupid mistake.
If you are IBM, what does it matter that your product became the basis for all PCs when the result to your bottom line is a fucking disaster.
Yet idiots like you keep claiming that Apple is somehow stupid for not making the same idiotic mistake that IBM made. (Actually they did make that mistake - when they tried to clone the Mac. And it had predictable results.) Historically, cloning does not help the company that developed the architecture.
Re:Wha...? (Score:2)
Again, not my recollection at all. They simply thought, well, there's this micrcomputer market, everyone tells us we should get in it, so let's go.
You can hardly say that it was a "big mistake." They made a pile of money and established the desktop computer standard that dominates today. They've made MORE piles of money because of its existence. They sold their desktop/laptop business at a pretty good prophet, and are still involved in it.
If you want to point to a "s
Re:For the switch to windows (Score:3, Insightful)
If their current focus on the "more profitable" business has netted them >80% market-share, how much more of their focus is needed?
Battle of the Benchmarks... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
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Re:Consider the business case (Score:3, Funny)
The RDF distorts reality. That's what it d
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
You probably meant this facetiously, but if you look at the numbers for what MS blew on the Longwind debacle, and what it would cost them to buy a license for OS X, it makes sense.
Not really. They'd only be taking a technological step forward in a handful of areas. The best you could say about the rest is it was a step sideways.
MS has just spent several billion on a failed development project, they're going to ship SP4 six years late and pretend it's Longwind, and they really need to consider whether
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
It's not failed until they fail to recover their costs. I appreciate that that's looking more likely every time they put back the release date, but it's by no means certain.
As a bonus, life improves drastically for their users.
Short term, perhaps it does improve a lot for a lot of users, although even that's going to be a mixed bag - none (or few) of their apps will run, so they'll be swapping security for appliaction support. Once OS X has a
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
MS licensing MacOS means that developers targeting non Win32 APIs have a much easier time reaching native performance and meeting interprocess communication standards. Granted, modern toolkits help quite a bit in the GUI area already, but at the very least this means that
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
I suspect at least two, possibly more, important people would have to leave Microsoft before their pride would let them make this particular business decision...
Re:Consider the business case (Score:2)
When has Microsoft's operating system strategy ever involved improving life drastically for the users?
The value of Windows to Microsoft is as a brand, not as an OS. It's the glue and duct tape that holds their entire sales strategy together. WMP, Xbox, Internet Explorer, Office, Media Center; it all ties
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Does MS have a say? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does MS have a say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eula's also can claim the right to have your spouse and first born child - doesn't mean it's legally binding. "Right to revoke?" How about right to what I paid for?
Besides, if Apple were to have a contract with MS (as if), it would not be a one sided EULA.
Microsoft has nothing to lose. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a mind-boggling selection of specialty software that runs in Windows that will never get ported to the Mac, and
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Re:Does MS have a say? (Score:2)
What possible reason could they have for even *wanting* to do that, let alone actually doing it ?
Re:Does MS have a say? (Score:2)
How does Windows know what it's activating on? It's like one of those TNG holodeck episodes where the characters end up going into a holographic holodeck. The only way Windows could tell if it were on real or virtualized hardware is if MS required crypto hardware to prove a cmpu
Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:3, Insightful)
This means the Apple machines will not be the ideal machines to run Vista.
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
There are exceptions, but the general rule is AGP and at least 16 megs of vram.... which means just about any jankie graphics card will do these days. The requirements for QT are not that high.
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
OS X requires the same (Score:2)
So I think in fact Apple computers will be able to run Vista better than most cut-rate $500 computers.
Re:OS X requires the same (Score:2)
Not the Core Mac Mini - what were they thinking.
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Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
My point was why would Apple throw in a DirectX card into a Mac, when its(DirectX's) sole use will be on Windows. Even when negotiating with card vendors, wouldn't it be cheaper to get a custom graphics card with all the DirectX circuitry taken out? Why waste transistors on capability you will never use.
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the customers might use the capability.
Even if a customer bought a Mac, uninstalled OS X and ran Windows on the Mac until it died, Apple still got a sale out of the deal.
And if being Windows-compatible attracts Windows users to buy a Mac and switch completely, that's even better.
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
this statement is wrong in so many ways. A "DirectX version Y compatible" G{U is simply a GPU that meets a certain threshold for image processing APIs. The marketing departments at ATi and nVidia have turned around and made it a big selling point that the card in your hands will be able to run with all the features enabled by DirectX version Y.
I submit to you cyberjessy, that Core Image [apple.com] has minimum compatible GPU's that all just also happen to be DirectX 9 compatible. (example 1 [ati.com], example 2 [nvidia.com]) Why? Because the GPU is programable. Core Image needs a programable GPU, and DX9 needs a programable GPU.
-cyberjessy
there isn't any DirectX circuitry. The GPU tells the host "hi, i'm capable of A, B, C etc" If the host is windows, and all these capabilities meet the minimum requirements for DirectX 9, than DirectX 9 will run, otherwise, i believe it falls back onto DX 8, or some sort of compatibility mode. If the host is a Mac, and these capabilities meet the minimum requirements for Core Image (or even Quartz2D Extreme) than said technology is enabled, otherwise, it falls back on a CPU driven code path that has fewer special effects. Once again, the main GPU capability that Core Image, and DX 9 are looking for are a programable GPU.
I hope that i have at least partially removed that fishing rod from your throat....
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Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
Re:Vista Graphics could be an issue (Score:2)
No problem - Vista isn't shipping until 2007 [slashdot.org], so it doesn't matter what machines can run it today!
Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
The single biggest incompatibility has been applications, and the single biggest reason has been the fundamentally different processor. With that out of the way, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is seriously considering helping Windows apps run on OS X. Then it would have the best of both worlds - Unix-like (Darwin) codebase and Windows app compatibility.
So the fact that "Apple has now committed to Windows-based performance testing" is hardly surprising.
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Puto
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obvious (Score:2)
Darwine [opendarwin.org]. I haven't tried it yet, but they have an Intel version available. I doubt it is working yet, but it will be.
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Re:Obvious (Score:2)
What's with the "dump OSX" theme? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about the user experience, and OSX is the experience Apple wants to deliver.
Big surprise... having used nearly every OS known to man, I can say that OSX is certainly one of the greatest ever. And it's already well past the bootsrapping stage that kills most young OSs. Ditching it now would be completely insane.
Cheers.
Re:What's with the "dump OSX" theme? (Score:2)
"Don't you mean 'insanely great'?"
-- Bill Gates
Re:What's with the "dump OSX" theme? (Score:2)
That Dvorak has not been torn limb from limb by crowds of angry Mac users is a testiment to their self restraint.
Re:What's with the "dump OSX" theme? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Apple switches to building commodity PC hardware
Re:What's with the "dump OSX" theme? (Score:2)
To be fair any of the detailed versions of the claims of Apple moving to Windows describe Apple using the Windows kernel and simply layering the MacOS GUI on top of that. Under that sort of claim the user experience wouldn't really change and it would be more like switch
fact or fiction? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, nice headline, but where are the facts?
Re:fact or fiction? (Score:2)
No shit, sherlock... after all, TFA says, quite clearly,
Note: this is not an official splashscreen; we cobbled it together by adding an Apple logo to the member list.
So, sorry, but there's nothing particularly sinister about the photoshopped image.
Re:fact or fiction? (Score:3, Insightful)
A Complete Merger of the OSes in the Future? (Score:2)
Death of Mac OS predicted, pictures at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2005 Steve Jobs announces that the next generation of Macs will run on Intel processors and almost immediately everyone assumes that this will mean Windows in some way. But with the apparent dissatisfaction within Microsoft over the progress of Vista [slashdot.org], against the almost inevitable success of getting Windows XP to work on the Macintel platform, who is going to be the winner? OS X is far ahead of XP in usability, incorporated apps and security. Gnome has a better unified API, even if it struggles to create blue water between it and Windows and for me at least, consequently limits itself on the user experience. So why even consider Windows? Just because it works on Intel doesn't mean that is has to be the de facto OS for Intel machines. That's been broken all ready.
Remember that the migration to Intel was based on the phrase 'just in case'. So what are Pages, Keynote, Aperture and the other Apple workflow apps for? The day that Mac OS 10.5 appears in a box for Intel PCs? That's a good 'just in case' scenario - just in case Microsoft take their ball home completely and don't release a Universal version of Office perhaps? Apple isn't down, and anyone who assumes that doesn't remember its history.
Re:Death of Mac OS predicted, pictures at 11 (Score:2)
She Wants a Better Windows (Score:2)
Insane (Score:2)
It would be many orders of magnitude more useful to run OS/X on commodity x86 hardware.
Bench-marketing (Score:2)
They really shouldn't call this benchmarking, but rateher bench-MARKETING. Apple has always used benchmarking as a marketing tool. For a long time, it was Macs were than comprab;ae intel base PC. Now that Macs are on Intels, they say Intel Macs are faster than PowerPc Macs. But this is only an onetime deal. It would seem silly to keep touting that in the next revision of Intel Macs. So, hmm let's, what is Macs tangibly better than...? Why not Mac OSX is faster than Windows XP (Vista). You need a selling poi
Re:Makes sense... (Score:2)
I believe Apple has publicly said if you want to know what kind of Macs they'll be releasing over the next few years, look at Intel's processor roadmap.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:2)
I wonder how such a compatibility layer would affect developer's drive to port to OSX. We've seen similar arguments that Wine and ndiswrapper
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You're Dumped! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you meant that in jest, as we all know Apple hedged their bets and essentially two-timed IBM by keeping a fancy woman in Intel as a bit on the side. I guess if IBM claimed to have 'dumped' Apple at any point, it'd be more the actions of a 'spurned lover' trying to save face
"You aren't going to recognize Apple a year from now. And I sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to buy an Intel based Mac unless you plan on selling it on eBay a few years down the line as a novelty item"
Hmmmm... is your surname Dvorak by any chance?
To be fair, computer users generally fall into two camps regarding upgrades - the ones who do (and want to keep 'up with the Jones's') and those who don't (and will keep the machine until it breaks).
If you fall into the 'do' camp, whether you'll end up with a machine which is obselete in 2009 is a moot point - you'll have moved onto something else long before then. If you're a 'don't' type, then you'll be happily using the computer with whatever OS it came with (probably) rather than lusting after whatever's shiniest.
"If you're a Mac user you better start getting over your hate for Microsoft and Windows..."
I don't have hatred for MS or Windows. I just choose the best product for me at a given time (which happens to be OSX for everything except my legacy and web dev work, which requires a PC on which I run XP). Hate's a bad thing, but recognising the flakiness of products such as Windows and the general sloppiness of MS' approach to security, etc., is just being prudent. I choose to avoid that grief as much as possible, and I voted OSX. YMMV.
Re:You're Dumped! (Score:2)
The parent poster displayed some supreme idiocy, but that's one point of his that's up for debate. Could the G5 have been retrofitted into a lower power design to accommodate Ap
Re:You're Dumped! (Score:5, Insightful)
1) it lets them charge a premium for what is now essentially the same hardware that others have to sell for a lower price, part of which goes to MS.
2) They sell a _lot_ of OS X upgrades to existing Mac users, which gives them a post-sales income stream that would otherwise go into Microsoft's coffers.
3) Apple also sell a lot of Mac software ranging from iLife upgrades to high-priced professional applications. These sales would dwindle if they were forced to compete with entrenched ISVs on Windows.
4) Ditto for high-priced Apple hardware such as Airport. These things sell for a premium because they are part of the "Apple life style", and that would not exist if Apple became yet another Windows box maker (the fact that Apple are associated with a life style is indicative of how strategically important OS X is. One does not for example hear people talk about a "Dell life-style" or a "Gateway life-style").
5) All of the above would also mean a massive diminution of income from AppleCare, because existing Wintel support companies would offer better contracts at more attractive prices.
And if the above financial reasons weren't more than enough for Apple to continue developing OS X, there is also a strategic factor that comes from having the freedom to set their own agenda, a freedom that many consumer-oriented computer manufacturers would love to have. Apple is a company that likes to have complete control, and switching to Windows would mean ceding virtually all of that control to Microsoft. And as many others have found to their cost, letting Microsoft have control over one's destiny can be very dangerous indeed.
Re:You're Dumped! (Score:2)
Well, I don't hear people talk about an "Apple life-style" either, but then, maybe I just don't hang out with the right people.
It's always seemed to me that the push for Apple to be associated with some particular life-style is actually coming from people who don't like Apple, and are always talking about "clueless hipsters" and "artsy types" and trying to disparage both the perceived demographic and, indirectly,
Re:Predictions coming as jokes (Score:2)
Re:Predictions coming as jokes (Score:2)
Re:Predictions coming as jokes (Score:2)
Re:Apple/Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
MS sold their shares quite a while ago, and at quite a nice profit too!
Re:Apple/Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
MICROSOFT OWNS PART OF APPLE - On Aug. 6, 1997 Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple
Microsoft settled an antitrust lawsuit with Apple. Buying these shares was part of the agreement. They have long since sold them for a very good ROI (although not as good as if they still had them).
Microsoft continued support for MS Office on the mac was also part of settlement (although dropping it would have just started another successful anti-trust suit for Apple). That part of the settlement also expired, although MS has made a newer deal with Apple ensure they continue it for another four years.
As for the feature set of MS Office, releases are staggered so usually a few features are added to the mac version that don't make the Windows version (which typically is released a year earlier).
I'm sorry to burst your conspiracy theory bubble and all.
Re:Apple surrenders (Score:2)
Re:Apple surrenders (Score:2)
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling.
There are plenty of elite PC manifacturers that make slick designs such as the recently purchased by DELL, Alienware computers.
Ummm, alienware is junk with "cool" cases and high prices. They haven't put together a reasonable machine in years. You fell for marketing tripe.
Now they joined BAPCo, to pull their latest ace: OSX, the only thing remaining that makes them unique. We'll see a lot of tests proving how superior OSX is compare
Re:Apple surrenders (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not going to get into whether either of the claims were true, but the fact that the claims were made at different times means that they could both have been true.