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[Dave Stevens]

Phil Ouellette wrote on Sun, 09 April 2006 08:54

Personally, my Mac experience is really old and limited. I found the paternalistic attitude expressed in how Apple prevented you from seeing what is really going on in your machine to not be to my liking (I'm an engineer and I want to know what's that man is doing behind the curtain).

You may want to look at a Mac that's been released since they went to OS X.    It's the desktop *.nix that Linux (or the others) wish they were.  The under pinnings are Darwin, which is FreeBSD with a Mach kernel, the Quicktime Media layer with the Quartz window server and the Aqua UI.  While the console and root are somewhat abstracted, there is still a full command line environment with all the normal command line tools with the ability for a wide variety of custom configs.  It's *nix with a good interface and graphics subset.  Darwin is open source but QT, Quartz, Aqua and the implementation of the kernel are still closed but more of the system is more open than any version of Windows.  If you want to peak behind the curtain, there is plenty to look at and also several features that aren't yet available in other OSes.

Dave

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Phil Ouellette wrote on Sun, 09 April 2006 08:54

Personally, my Mac experience is really old and limited. I found the paternalistic attitude expressed in how Apple prevented you from seeing what is really going on in your machine to not be to my liking (I'm an engineer and I want to know what's that man is doing behind the curtain).

I had a company-issue Mac PowerBook 180c for a couple years after I started with QSC, and that was one of the things I disliked about it, too. Back then, I also worked from my home in Connecticut, where I had my store-built Windows desktop machine. They both crashed from time to time, but at least I'd get an error code in Windows that often clued me in to the cause.

I was often amused by graphic designers, et al, who referred disdainfully to any Intel/Microsoft computer as "IBM," whether or not it was an actual Big Blue product (usually not).

As Dave and othes have said, they're tools, and you should use what suits you. Apple's Boot Camp move is smart because it reduces the "but all the software I've invested in is for Windows" barrier.

I think the PC platform was just more open to independent developers early on, which probably led to an abundance of hardware and software companies. I remember the hobbyist electronics magazines in the 80s had a lot of ads in the back pages for ISA-bus developer boards, no-royalty programming languages like Turbo Pascal, etc. I'm sure there were geek tools for Apple products, too, but they didn't seem to be as readily available.

[Andy Peters]

Rory Buszka wrote on Wed, 12 April 2006 14:37

The reason OSX being sold for Intel PCs probably will not happen any time soon is the sheer volume of hardware that the Mac OS would have to support. Right now, Apple only has to have driver support and OS support for the hardware they build into their machines. If OS X suddenly hit the shelves, it wouldn't be compatible with hardly anything at all in the grand scheme of computer hardware.

You're repeating an oft-told tale with which I don't agree.

Microsoft and Apple don't write device drivers for third-party hardware!  There's no reason that any given PCI, USB or FireWire device sold "for Windows" won't work with a Mac (or Sun, or pick-a-hardware-platform-with-standard-buses).  All that's required is that the 3rd-party hardware vendors write appropriate drivers.

Microsoft ships Windows with a discload of device drivers for all sorts of things, but they didn't write them; they were provided by the hardware vendor.

There's so much commonality in PC design because Microsoft dictates the hardware standards down to the chip-set level.  The chip-set vendors want their products to work with Windows, so they follow Microsoft's rules and the chipsets work with the standard drivers.  It's also worth noting that the firmware (BIOS) does a lot of the heavy lifting while booting, and the BIOS is modified by the motherboard manufacturer--not Microsoft!--to handle the specific pre-OS configuration (PCI enumeration, setting up memory spaces, etc) that may be required.  When the BIOS has finished its job, it hands off control to the OS, which expects certain things to be in the usual places.  Of course, once the OS boots, a "Better" driver for standard things can be loaded: anyone who's loaded the VIA 4-in-1 chipset driver knows what I'm talking about, and obviously this is the case with video cards.

Quote:

Though I don't know if linux drivers could be ported more easily to OS X. There exists quite a variety of linux device drivers.

Forget it; the driver models are incompatible.

-a

[Tom Reid]

Quote:

You're repeating an oft-told tale with which I don't agree. Microsoft and Apple don't write device drivers for third-party hardware! There's no reason that any given PCI, USB or FireWire device sold "for Windows" won't work with a Mac (or Sun, or pick-a-hardware-platform-with-standard-buses). All that's required is that the 3rd-party hardware vendors write appropriate drivers. Microsoft ships Windows with a discload of device drivers for all sorts of things, but they didn't write them; they were provided by the hardware vendor.

And as usual, you're right on the money.

Anyone who has had the thrill of digging through MS'es DDK will agree MS don't write drivers, they dictate how a driver is to respond to an ever changing set of parameters aka the incredible moving API.

Most drivers shipped with the OS are the bare bones (will work with Windows, no bells and whistles drivers).

There are two instances (probably many, may more) I can think of where Microsoft tried to create drivers, or kill driver development because of upcoming technology.  One would be the LIM (Lotus, Intel, Micorosoft) joint paper on extended memory management.  That has went away since the OS no longer needs a 'window' to higher memory a universal thunk took it's place. And we no longer need to figure out things like C:\windows\emm386.exe -i A000-AFFF

The second they got burned on in the Anittrust litigation.  Intel was doing a wonderful job at creating an (incompatible with future MS product) multimedia suite of drivers for support chips/CPU.  This didn't play well with the DirectX specs.  Some phone calls, and a meeting established, Intel would go the Microsoft route for some unkown reason, blow millions on their almost functioning R&D, and demote the guy steering the boat.

Added for fun would be the OS/2 insanity where MS tried to write drivers with IBM.  Anyone who has tried to work with a buggy OS/2 driver, you have my sympathy.

I agree with others here.  The right toolset for the right job.
We wouldn't be looking for missing neutrinos on an XP box, this job is better suited for the "thunder cluster" on linux.  But I would not use a "thunder cluster" to fill out my expense report.  However, it would be the coolest FFT box I've had the privs to login.

The Mac vs. Windows fight will go on for time immortal.  Just as the Linux vs. Windows fight.  Or the Crown/QSC fight.  Mr. Jobs has realized he can get better prices by leveraging more readily common hardware.  Just 'cause it runs Windows does not make it a peecee.

All said, pick your tools for the way you work.  I'm always open to suggestion.  However, forcing one's opinion based on their experience turns me off.

btw,
I use an IBM X-41 tablet XP Tablet 2003
Sun Sparc 5 Solaris, yeah I know, I just can't kill it.
Ibm RS6000/SP2 AIX 4 or 5 dependant on cluster.
A widescreen Titanium Powerbook to check for app compatibility. OSX 11.2?  
A few old Dell servers doing RedHat, Debian, and the *nix dujour.
(Best thing to run snort on)
3 .NET Active Directory forests.
A Vic 20, Apple 2E, for museum pieces
and a TI-994a I just had to revive, and can't give up, since it still does USCD Pascal (don't go there, file transfers are a bitch).

I'm not giving anyone of them up.  Well, hopefully the TI *IF* I can get someone to port Pascal.  Turtle is much more educational.


$.02

[Lee Patzius]

I respect Apple/Macintosh, but never had any experience with one.