Comment The Big Picture, can you see it? (Score 5) 465
While Linux and the various flavours of BSD all currently offer solid environments for x86 hardware, the desktop facilities offered by all of them are still poor in comparison to most commercial opertaing systems.
Despite the hype surrounding some of them, I've not found any Unix desktop environments particularly compelling so far... There's also plenty of hype surrounding GNOME and KDE, but I don't see any killer applications for them. People don't need buzzwords, they need a powerful desktop environment running on Unix, and this is what Apple will be providing.
Linux and the BSD derivatives are excellent server environments, as is Darwin, but MacOS X is also getting Maya and the Adobe applications on a viable desktop.
Personally, I've yet to find a desktop environment that offers me everything that I want, BeOS came close, but Apple are in a position to offer everything in one package.
Apple are also in an excellent position to pick up the gauntlet dropped by SGI, right at the top end of the content creation market. 3D, publishing, design and video editing are about to get a whole lot better on the Mac.
The most likely reason Apple will want to continue development of Darwin for x86 is that it needs a backup plan, exit strategy if things go wrong.
If Motorola and the G4 architecture don't scale fast enough, if Apple can't buy the hardware in the volumes they need, if the price of PPC processors is too high, then Apple would still be able to put x86 processors into it's systems with only minor re-engineering OS X.
Custom designed Apple x86 hardware is therefore a possibility, and an exciting one, but I doubt Apple see any commercial interest in supporting generic PCs and legacy hardware.
Also remember that OS X has the useful ability to support application "bundles" with binaries for multiple platforms in a single executable. This would make it very easy for vendors to ship applications in a form that would run on both PPC and x86 transparently to the user.
Despite the hype surrounding some of them, I've not found any Unix desktop environments particularly compelling so far... There's also plenty of hype surrounding GNOME and KDE, but I don't see any killer applications for them. People don't need buzzwords, they need a powerful desktop environment running on Unix, and this is what Apple will be providing.
Linux and the BSD derivatives are excellent server environments, as is Darwin, but MacOS X is also getting Maya and the Adobe applications on a viable desktop.
Personally, I've yet to find a desktop environment that offers me everything that I want, BeOS came close, but Apple are in a position to offer everything in one package.
Apple are also in an excellent position to pick up the gauntlet dropped by SGI, right at the top end of the content creation market. 3D, publishing, design and video editing are about to get a whole lot better on the Mac.
The most likely reason Apple will want to continue development of Darwin for x86 is that it needs a backup plan, exit strategy if things go wrong.
If Motorola and the G4 architecture don't scale fast enough, if Apple can't buy the hardware in the volumes they need, if the price of PPC processors is too high, then Apple would still be able to put x86 processors into it's systems with only minor re-engineering OS X.
Custom designed Apple x86 hardware is therefore a possibility, and an exciting one, but I doubt Apple see any commercial interest in supporting generic PCs and legacy hardware.
Also remember that OS X has the useful ability to support application "bundles" with binaries for multiple platforms in a single executable. This would make it very easy for vendors to ship applications in a form that would run on both PPC and x86 transparently to the user.
