He probably confused open source with open systems (more precisely Portabale Operating System Interface and eXchange - POSIX). The key is that (as I understand) OS X is based on the Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) of Dennis Ritchie and David Kernegin's (sp?) UNIX operating system developed at Bell Labs when what is now Lucent was developing truly ground breaking tech.
What is Linux based on? Who is Linux Tovil? (careful- I met with a Norse named Linux Tovil in the late 80's so I believe that I know.)
When I was still developing code (for money) I didn't have time to do this kind of stuff. Where are you and who do you work for or through? Go out and make money man! www.dice.com
Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really.
By Robert X. Cringely
The crowd this week in San Francisco at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference seemed mildly excited by the prospect of its favorite computer company turning to Intel processors. The CEO of Adobe asked why it had taken Apple so long to make the switch? Analysts on Wall Street were generally positive, with a couple exceptions. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE!? Are these people drunk on Flav-r-Ade? Yes. It is the legendary Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work. And this time, what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now.
Apple and Intel are merging. Let's take a revisionist look at the Apple news, asking a few key questions. The company has on its web site a video of the speech, itself, which is well worth watching. It's among this week's links.
Question 1: What happened to the PowerPC's supposed performance advantage over Intel?
This is the Altivec Factor -- PowerPC's dedicated vector processor in the G4 and G5 chips that make them so fast at running applications like Adobe Photoshop and doing that vaunted H.264 video compression. Apple loved to pull Phil Schiller onstage to do side-by-side speed tests showing how much faster in real life the G4s and G5s were than their Pentium equivalents. Was that so much BS? Did Apple not really mean it? And why was the question totally ignored in this week's presentation?
Question 2: What happened to Apple's 64-bit operating system? OS X 10.4 -- Tiger -- is a 64-bit OS, remember, yet Intel's 64-bit chips -- Xeon and Itanium -- are high buck items aimed at servers, not iMacs. So is Intel going to do a cheaper Itanium for Apple or is Apple going to pretend that 64-bit never existed?
Yes to both is my guess, which explains why the word "Pentium" was hardly used in the Jobs presentation. Certainly, he never said WHICH Intel chip they'd be using, just mentioning an unnamed 3.6-Ghz development system -- a system which apparently doesn't benchmark very well, either (it's in the links). So is 64-bit really nothing to Apple? And why did they make such a big deal about it in their earlier marketing?
Question 3: Where the heck is AMD?
If Apple is willing to embrace the Intel architecture because of its performance and low power consumption, then why not go with AMD, which equals Intel's power specs, EXCEEDS Intel's performance specs AND does so at a lower price point across the board? Apple and AMD makes far more sense than Apple and Intel any day.
Question 4: Why announce this chip swap a year before it will even begin for customers?
This is the biggest question of all, suggesting Steve Jobs has completely forgotten about Adam Osborne. For those who don't remember him, Osborne was the charismatic founder of Osborne Computer, makers of the world's first luggable computer, the Osborne 1. The company failed in spectacular fashion when Adam pre-announced his next model, the Osborne Executive, several months before it would actually ship. People who would have bought Osborne 1s decided to wait for the Executive, which cost only $200 more and was twice the computer. Osborne sales crashed and the company folded. So why would Steve Jobs -- who knew Adam Osborne and even shared a hot tub with him (Steve's longtime girlfriend back in the day worked as an engineer for Osborne) -- pre-announce this chip change that undercuts not only his present product line but most of the machines he'll be introducing in the next 12 to 18 months?
Is the guy really going to stand up at some future MacWorld and tout a new Mac as being the world's most advanced obsolete computer?
This announcement has to cost Apple billions in lost sales as customers inevitably decide to wait for Intel boxes. Apple's stated reason for pre-announcing the shift by a year is to allow third-party developers that amount of time to port their apps to Intel. But this makes no sense. For one thing, Apple went out of its way to show how easy the port could be with its Mathematica demonstration, so why give it a year? And companies typically make such announcements to their partners in private under NDA and get away with it. There was no need to make this a public announcement despite News.com's scoop, which only happened because of the approaching Jobs speech. Apple could have kept it quiet if they had chosen to, with the result that not so many sales would have been lost.
This means that there must have been some overriding reason why Apple HAD to make this public announcement, why it was worth the loss of billions in sales.
Question 5: Is this all really about Digital Rights Management?
People "in the know" love this idea, that Hollywood moguls are forcing Apple to switch to Intel because Intel processors have built-in DRM features that will keep us from pirating music and movies. Yes, Intel processors have such features, based primarily on the idea of a CPU ID that we all hated when it was announced years ago so Intel just stopped talking about it. The CPU ID is still in there, of course, and could be used to tie certain content to the specific chip in your computer.
But there are two problems with this argument. First, Apple is already in the music and video distribution businesses without this feature, which wouldn't be available across the whole product line for another two years and wouldn't be available across 90 percent of the installed base for probably another six years. Second, though nobody has ever mentioned it, I'm fairly sure that the PowerPC, too, has an individual CPU ID. Every high end microprocessor does, just as every network device has its unique MAC address.
So while DRM is nice, it probably isn't a driving force in this decision.
Then what is the driving force?
Microsoft.
Here is my analysis based on not much more than pondering the five questions, above, and speaking with a few old friends in the business. I won't say there is no insider information involved, but darned little.
The obvious questions about performance and 64-bit computing come down to marketing. At first, I thought that Steve Jobs was somehow taking up the challenge of making users believe war was peace and hate was love simply to show that he could do it. Steve is such a powerful communicator and so able to deceive people that for just a moment, I thought maybe he was doing this as a pure tour du force -- just because he could. Nah. Not even Steve Jobs would try that.
The vaunted Intel roadmap is nice, but no nicer than the AMD roadmap, and nothing that IBM couldn't have matched. If Apple was willing to consider a processor switch, moving to the Cell Processor would have made much more sense than going to Intel or AMD, so I simply have to conclude that technology has nothing at all to do with this decision. This is simply about business -- BIG business.
Another clue comes from HP, where a rumor is going around that HP selling iPods could turn into HP becoming an Apple hardware partner for personal computers, too.
Microsoft comes into this because Intel hates Microsoft. It hasn't always been that way, but in recent years Microsoft has abused its relationship with Intel and used AMD as a cudgel against Intel. Even worse, from Intel's standpoint Microsoft doesn't work hard enough to challenge its hardware. For Intel to keep growing, people have to replace their PCs more often and Microsoft's bloatware strategy just isn't making that happen, especially if they keep delaying Longhorn.
Enter Apple. This isn't a story about Intel gaining another three percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking back control of the desktop from Microsoft. Intel is fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft has no innovation that drives what Intel must have, which is a use for more processing power. And when they did have one with the Xbox, they went elsewhere.
So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one).
This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And if they tuned the OS to take advantage of unique features that only Intel had, they would put AMD back in the box, too. Apple could return Intel to its traditional role of being where all the value was in the PC world. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much. And if they paid in stock it would cost nothing at all since investors would drive shares through the roof on a huge swell of user enthusiasm.
That's the story as I see it unfolding. Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates. And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company.
unixguy, I'll let them speak for themselves and you can argue with them. Please note the x86 reference as well...
Darwin
Apple's open source projects allow developers to customize and enhance key Apple software. Through the open source model, Apple engineers and the open source community collaborate to create better, faster and more reliable products for our users.
Beneath the appealing, easy-to-use interface of Mac OS X is a rock-solid foundation that is engineered for stability, reliability, and performance. This foundation is a core operating system commonly known as Darwin. Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly Mach 3.0, operating-system services based on 4.4BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), high-performance networking facilities, and support for multiple integrated file systems.
Darwin 8.1 Source Code Posted The sources for Darwin 8.1, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.4.1, are available for download. [May 16 2005] Darwin 8.0.1 Installer CD The Darwin 8.0.1 Installer CD is available. Darwin 8.0.1 corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.4 and is available at the following URLs:
The source code for Darwin 8.0.1 is available via the web. For more information, please see the Release Notes. Darwin 8.0 Source Code Posted The sources for Darwin 8.0, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.4, are available for download. [Apr 29 2005] Darwin 7.9 Source Code Posted The sources for Darwin 7.9, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.3.9, are available for download. [Apr 15 2005] Creating Cross-Platform Applications with Core Foundation and Open Source Core Foundation "Lite" provides data types and services across a range of platforms. Read this article to learn how to import and export data types with CF-Lite. [Apr 11 2005] Introduction to MPI Distributed Programming With Mac OS X Mac OS X is a great platform for multi-processor solutions. Read this article to learn how to use MPI on Mac OS X to create tightly coupled, distributed algorithms to run on multiple computers. [Feb 14 2005] Darwin 7.8 Source Code Posted The sources for Darwin 7.8, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.3.8, are available for download. [Feb 9 2005] Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X X11 (the X Window System) is a widely-used graphical user interface on UNIX. Read this article to learn how to set up and use X11 applications on your Mac OS X system. [Jan 17 2005] Darwin 7.7 Source Code Posted The sources for Darwin 7.7, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.3.7, are available for download. [Dec 15 2004] Optimizing Your Application with Shark 4 The newest version of Shark includes powerful new features such as data mining and Java support. Learn how using Shark 4 can help you dramatically improve performance in your application. [Nov 08 2004] Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger: Developer Overview The next version of Mac OS X is loaded with powerful new features, APIs, and frameworks that bring new and interesting opportunities for developers. [Oct 19 2004] Writing Open Directory Plug-ins With Open Directory your application can locate and manage information about users and other resources in your existing network infrastructure. Read this article to learn how to write Open Directory plug-ins that take advantage of this capability. [Sept 13 2004] Developing Cross-Platform UNIX Applications with Mac OS X Mac OS X makes it easy to develop applications then deploy them to other flavors of UNIX. This article discusses tools and techniques for developing code on Mac OS X for deploying on other UNIX platforms. [Aug 30 2004] Installing the W3C Validator on Mac OS X Create your own validator to test web pages within your firewall. Read this article to download the open-source files, and use Fink, OpenSP and Perl modules to make a validator that works for you. [Jul 19 2004] The GNU Compiler Collection on Mac OS X Knowing the open-source tools GCC and GDB is useful in developing on Mac OS X. Read this article to learn about these tools, and the enhancements and options specific to Mac OS X. [July 12 2004] June 2004 ADC Reference Library Update A collection of ADC Reference Library Documentation is now available as a PDF Download Package. All ADC members can download this package from "Download Software - Reference Library". See the ADC Reference Library Revision List for a list of all new and updated Documentation, Release Notes, Sample Code, Technical Notes, and Technical Q&As. [Jun 28 2004] A/G BLAST 2.2.9 now available We are pleased to announce that Apple/Genentech BLAST has been updated to correspond to NCBI BLAST 2.2.9. The new A/G BLAST is optimized for use with the Power PC G4 and PowerPC G5 processors, including vectorization and other algorithmic enhancements. Visit Apple's Advanced Computation Group page for details, or the A/G BLAST project page to download the source code and binary versions. [Jun 04 2004] Technical Resources Darwin Source Code The sources for Darwin are available for download. ADC Reference Library The ADC Reference Library is a key developer support tool. It integrates the core ADC technical resources — Documentation, Technical Notes, Sample Code, Release Notes, and Technical Q&As — and adds a highly functional interface that supports filtering, sorting, and browsing. The Getting Started with Darwin document provides a guided introduction and learning path for developers new to Darwin. Darwin 8 Preview Source Code Posted Selected sources for the WWDC 2004 Developer Preview are available for download. HeaderDoc 8 Public Beta with MPGL HeaderDoc 8 is the next generation of HeaderDoc, a tool for generating documentation from comments embedded in headers and source code.
HeaderDoc 8 adds many new features, including a new (optional) tagless syntax, code coloring, template-based index pages, improved error checking, man page output, and support for many new languages, including Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP shell scripts, and Pascal.
HeaderDoc 8 also adds support for the Man Page Generation Language (MPGL), an XML dialect you can use to easily author well-formatted man pages. In addition to generating man pages from HeaderDoc content, HeaderDoc 8 also includes tools for converting MPGL files into man pages using the BSD mdoc macros. Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD The Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers. The version of Darwin installed by this CD corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.3 and is available at the following URLs:
The source code for Darwin 7.0.1 is available via the web. For more information, please see the Release Notes. Darwin 7.0 Source Code The sources for Darwin 7.0, which correspond to Mac OS X 10.3, are available for download. The CVS repository has been updated for gcc, gdb, cups, efax, gimp-print, tcl, Bonjour, StreamingServer, and HeaderDoc. Mac OS X for UNIX Users Technology Brief (PDF) This PDF download is an overview of Panther technologies, with a specific focus on Darwin, the Open Source, BSD-based core of Mac OS X. This document is intended for developers, researchers, system administrators, and others interested in the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X. Apple Public Source License Version 2.0 The 2.0 version of the Apple Public Source License improves upon the OSI-approved APSL 1.2 by conforming to the definition of Free Software Licenses, as certified by the Free Software Foundation. APSL 2.0 is also being submitted to the Open Source Initiative to certify its continued compliance with the Open Source Definition. Apple ID APSL Registration The Darwin team is now using Apple IDs to indicate acceptance of the terms of the Apple Public Source License 2.0. Now the same Apple ID you use for Apple Developer Connection, the Knowledge Base, the Apple Store, the iTunes Music Store, or your .Mac account may be used to view and download APSL-licensed Darwin source code. Additionally, you may update your contact information via myinfo.apple.com or request a reminder for your password from iforgot.apple.com. If you don't already have an Apple ID, please obtain one at signin.apple.com by clicking the "New Account" button. Also, access to the CVS repository has been updated. Working with Open Source Projects
Before you start working with open source projects, please read and familiarize yourself with the licensing terms that apply to that project.
For access to Apple-developed open source projects, you will need to register as a member of the Apple open source community by accepting the Apple Public Source License and choosing a user name and password. Non-Apple third party open source projects can be accessed without such registration. Kernel Programming A guide to programming in the Mac OS X (Darwin) kernel (under development). Kernel Extensions Tutorials Information on creating and debugging kernels. Choose your language:
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