Re: OsX compared to Linux and BeOS

From: ZnU (znu_at_fake.invalid)
Date: 04/27/05 

Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:41:27 -0400

In article <MPG.1cd9a5be2574e56798a4ce@news.verizon.net>,
 Randy Howard <randyhoward@FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote:

> In article <Nowhere-32A17E.14174227042005@news1.west.earthlink.net>,
> Nowhere@spamfree.com says...
>
> > You're forgetting two major items:
> >
> > 1. Having the OS on x86 isn't any help at all. You also need all the
> > apps to be ported.
>
> Anyless they're written in assembly, that shouldn't be hard at all
> if they use any reasonable standard programming language, and one
> for which Apple migrates development tools. They have gotten
> lazy in a few places and made assumptions about byte order or word
> size, but that's just bad code that they happened to get away with
> and should be fixed.
>
> Anything written at a reasonably high level and by competent
> developers will be quick to port, provided all of the underlying OS
> features are there on both CPUs.
>
> > 2. If OS X runs on x86, Apple has the problem of keeping their sales
> > level up.
>
> Not if they make it dependent upon Apple hardware. Something as
> simple as putting in a proprietary set of I/O ports with magic
> features and having OS X look for them would be sufficient.

There's no particular reason to expect hypothetical Apple x86 hardware
to have much resemblance to other x86 hardware. They'd probably still do
some of their own ASIC design, and I can't imagine they'd want to adopt
the current x86 boot architecture. They might even just implement Open
Firmware.

There's still a certain danger in being on x86, though. For one thing,
Mac users would be able to run Windows software at full speed, in a
virtual machine environment. That initially sounds great -- until you
consider that a lot of vendors might figure they didn't need to write OS
X versions of their stuff, since Mac users could use the Windows
versions. I understand OS/2 had that problem. 

-- 
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply
ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table."
   -- George W. Bush in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005

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