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journal: win
Is Apple Prepared for Vista?
As long as hell stays nice and chilly Apple won't go down
When I read about some of the features that are going into Vista, as a Mac users I have two thoughts. The first is “It’s gonna be 2001 all over again next year” because nobody can deny that Vista is very similar to OSX in many respects, not even Steve Ballmer. The second one expands on that… “What if it’s actually better than OSX?”.
Well, another thing you can’t deny is that when you look at Vista’s feature list, it does beat OSX in some areas, match it in others and still trails behind in the last few areas. Now I’m sure I’ll get some Mac users telling me that I’m blaspheming, “Windows? Better than the Mac? Traitor!!!” To these I say, wake up and face reality. You cannot deny that Vista is going to be the best version of Windows to date and neither can Apple. So what is Apple doing about this?
Well according to Rob Enderle Apple is doing well… umm.. nothing. Neither is Mozilla about the threat of IE 7 to Firefox and Linux is basically screwed too. But as in his article I’m only going to make a passing mention to Linux and Firefox and concentrate on Apple.
So, what is the warning for us Mac users? Apple is going to crash and burn. Yes, you heard it here first, someone is actually saying that Apple is going to go out of business. Well, you would have heard it here first if it wasn’t first said in Enderle’s article and wasn’t said 46 previous times (thanks to the TMO’s Death Knell Counter for the stat). So why will Apple be going under, according to the great prophet Enderle? His reason is that Apple almost died in 1995 after Windows 95 came out and that Vista is a bigger release than 95 was. Unfortunately for his logic, and I use that word loosely, 2006 is not 1995. Apple has changed a lot since then.
Steve Jobs came back to the company in 1996. After he took over he cancelled many projects that were going no where and brought a company on the brink, to one of the most successful companies in the world. Granted he didn’t do it alone, but Steve helped clear up the mess with each project having a mind of their own. He axed the Newton and brought out the iMac, the most successful Mac to date and the computer which not only helped save Apple but also turned the world of product design upside down. Just think about it, how many products with clear, coloured plastic were there that weren’t kids toys before the iMac and how many came out after?
With Steve Jobs came the thing Apple had wanted for a long time. Its next gen OS. OSX was released in 2001 and marked a new era for Apple. It is the product that has to compete with Windows, it is what makes the Mac the Mac and it is the most advanced operating system in the world that you can buy in a shop. Over the years its interface has improved, the iApps have been released, there have been loads of developer goodies put in and the reviews have been pouring in over how good it is.
Next comes the hardware. Many things have happened this year that for the past 20 years have been passed off as things that will only happen if hell froze over. Well Apple kindly informed us that hell had frozen over when they made iTunes for Windows and since then we’ve seen a low cost mac, a multi buttoned mouse and the announcement that we shall be saying goodbye to PPC and switching to Intel processors. And it isn’t just that we have a low cost mac in the form of the Mac Mini, Macs overall are MUCH more competitively priced than in 1995. So no longer will we hear the excuses of “it’s too expensive”, “only one button??” and “my Pentium 4 is faster”.
And last, but definitely not least, we have the iPod. This has put Apple in the minds of millions. It is a high quality product, built not only to look good and work well but to feel right. This has led to lots of people seriously considering Macs. Coupled with Apple Stores, which allow people to look at Macs when they go in to get their iPod, this has led to a great increase in Mac sales.
So, what has all that waffling taught us? Well, Mr Enderle would be correct in predicting Apple’s death if we were comparing the Apple of the past (circa 1995) with the Microsoft of the future (circa 2006). But in the same frame of mind we could say Microsoft would die if we compared today’s Apple with the Microsoft of days gone by. Apple has a lot of forward momentum at the moment, it has a solid hardware line up that can only get better with the next crop of Intel processors in them and OSX currently has a feature set close enough to what Vista aims to do to allow Apple to mop up a lot of the loose ends with 10.5. At the most Vista will stunt Apple, but not by much. But as long as hell stays nice and chilly Apple won’t go down. Now we just need to make sure that Microsoft doesn’t know how to start a fire....
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42 | 2026 |
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thinkback
I guess we’ll just have to see about that. It’ll be interesting to see just how well MS has managed to emulate OSX’s security system. My betting is that we’ll see a HUGE drop but it’ll still exist. The biggest reason will be the password requirement to do admin level stuff.
In the real-world, the admin thing isn’t that important. No system admin lets there users run as admin. They are already low privlidged users and most malware doesn’t need admin rights anyway. The abilty to apply patches without rebooting the server or user machines is far more important. Even when a reboot is required the sys-admin can be sure that no one will lose data because of freeze-dry. As it stands now, we have to notify every single user on our system that we plan to update the system and make sure they logout and save all their data. This limits our abilty to patch the OS. Vista and Longhorn server remove that limitation. Seeing as nearly every virus or malware program that comes out has already been patched by Microsoft, that should clear up most of the remaining holes.
Home users on the other-hand don’t have much to worry about because of automatic patching, the firewall on by default, and the ActiveX opt-in in IE. There are some other security features (like a more secure codebase) as well but the admin thing is mostly just for show.
And lets be candid about where that “security model” comes from… Unix not OS X.
| Sep. 21, 2005 | ||
| 11:24 am |
I’d assume it’s just to break up big blocks of text (i.e. for aesthetic reasons).
| Nick | Sep. 21, 2005 | |
| 8:37 pm |
We should start seeing more OS X86 apps as we approach the Intel release. I’d expect it to take a while for everything to go Universal Binary, though; it took a number of years for the PowerPC transition to be complete on the developer side.
“It’s still going to be worse than the OS X early days because Mactel users don’t have the option of booting into another OS when a critical software package isn’t yet ported or runs really badly. OS X users always had OS 9 and now they have nothing.”
We old-timer Mac users have been through this before. 
A lot of people felt Apple’s sales would dip between the announcement and when Macintels started shipping. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a temporary slight slowdown (or slower growth/flat sales) after the switch (since it’ll be phased in, I don’t expect a massive sales hit).
| Nick | Sep. 21, 2005 | |
| 8:40 pm |
“Dell does have the Xbrite-type screen as well.”
Inspiron 700m. We have one on the sales floor.
“When the writers of OSNEWS even say that the screens on Apple laptops are no match for Thinkpads then you know it’s gotta have some truth to it.”
Maybe I don’t quite have the eye for laptop display quality that some have. But we have (or have had) Thinkpad T42s, X40s, and X41s (tablet--so cool!) on the sales floor that I’ve used. I don’t notice anything substantially different between the two. I’m dead serious. And I’m not trying to give the “Mac Zealot” spin either, because I think the ThinkPads are some of the best laptops available today.
| Nick | Sep. 21, 2005 | |
| 8:54 pm |
“When the writers of OSNEWS even say that the screens on Apple laptops are no match for Thinkpads then you know it’s gotta have some truth to it.�
Maybe I don’t quite have the eye for laptop display quality that some have. But we have (or have had) Thinkpad T42s, X40s, and X41s (tablet--so cool!) on the sales floor that I’ve used. I don’t notice anything substantially different between the two. I’m dead serious. And I’m not trying to give the “Mac Zealot� spin either, because I think the ThinkPads are some of the best laptops available today.
I agree. My brother J. has a ThinkPad T42 and it’s got a clear 15” screen that is just as good as the 15” PowerBook’s. All these being equal, the 12” screen on a PowerBook is much less good for viewing angle and brightness and colors compared to other computers, including other PowerBooks. Rafe told me that he bought a 20” iMac G5 recently because the 17” is also not as good as far its screen viewing angle. Check out the Apple Hardware specs-sheets.
Has Apple crippled their machines too much?
“The absolute cheapest Pentium M Intel makes goes for $230 dollars on pricewatch and runs at 1.5ghz. “
That’s retail, not wholesale/bulk. I’d assume Apple will pay much less than $230 per processor.
| Nick | Sep. 21, 2005 | |
| 9:51 pm |
Apple is selling a refurbished Mac mini for $399. Beat that.
From what I understand, the switch from Altivec to SSE isn’t easy. I don’t think you can count on any large app going from heavily Altivec optimized to heavily SSE2 optimized. It took a while for developers to optimize for the G5 so I don’t see how moving to SSE is going to be any easier.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. Many apps that are heavily Altivec optimised have bother Mac and PC versions. A lot of these are also written in the same language (largely C++). The only real differences are that the Mac version use Carbon and the PC versions use Win32. And the PC versions already have the SEE optimisations, so they have basically already done the work. All they have to do it move the SEE optimisations to the Mac version and remove the Altivec ones.
Shareware and small apps aren’t the problem. It’s the big ones with expensive licenses that do. Adobe, Macromedia, Avid, and Microsoft apps are going to require a far amount of new code so getting it for free isn’t a given.
And in my experience, many people don’t upgrade all their apps with a new machine but as a separate process. Can you imagine what the cost of a new machine would run for a web developer if they had to get new versions of the Creative Suite, Macromedia Studio etc.? You could easily spend the price of the machine in just software.
But you were also suggesting that because of this fact, many people would move to Windows, which is a flawed argument, because if you move to Windows then you have to replace ALL your software.
I’d call that esitmate extremely optimistic.
Here’s a fairly compete list of OS X86 software that is available for download:
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php /X86_softwareNo Pro apps or even anything with a fairly large codebase (say Photoshop size). Gimp is there but that’s about it.
Pretty much all of those are Cocoa apps. For the most part all Cocoa apps require is a recompile to become x86 ready. Java apps run anyway, as do widgets. It’s just Carbon apps that take time and a lot of these are the big apps. I mean, if MS switched Windows to PPC then I’m sure .Net apps would be the first over (and be the easiest) but Win32 apps (which are many of the bigger apps) would take longer. Remember that many apps that use Carbon are apps like Photoshop and Office which are 20+ years old in some cases.
I don’t think the percentage will be that high and even if it is you gotta wonder how long it’s gonna take to get that software to users. Do users have to buy new versions of larger apps? Are there going to be forced upgrades?
It’s still going to be worse than the OS X early days because Mactel users don’t have the option of booting into another OS when a critical software package isn’t yet ported or runs really badly. OS X users always had OS 9 and now they have nothing. Well, maybe they can boot into Windows.. LOL
I think we could see PS CS2 for x86 for free, after all, they offered a 64 bit update for free. Shareware will for the most part be free, just because shareware vendors are nice like that. And you would be wrong, OSX users always had OS 9 but now they don’t have OS9 because pretty much every app runs on OSX now. OSX x86 users will have Rosetta for PPC apps. And you have to remember that nobody sensible upgrades something if a critical piece of software won’t work. Even the Windows world knows that. And as I have said before, moving to Windows would cost more than moving to Macintel.
When did any manufacturer say they weren’t very interested in the new Intel chips?
I think it was on somewhere like The Register or Anandtech or some big tech site. They said that all the major computer manufacturer’s want is to make cheap standard machines which Intel was finding limiting and so they wanted Apple because they know Apple likes to innovate and so Intel could use Macs as a showcase for their new chips.
Why would they? The absolute cheapest Pentium M Intel makes goes for $230 dollars on pricewatch and runs at 1.5ghz. That’s not going to work for a $600 Mac Mini. The Yonah isn’t expected to be any cheaper so unless Apple plans on using really old Pentium M’s no one wants anymore or a bunch of Celeron’s then they’ll have to raise prices or cut margins.
I’ve found an OEM version of Windows XP Pro going for £94 while the retail version appears to be £250 on Amazon. But do Dell or HP or someone just go and buy the retail version to put on their machines?
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| Sep. 22, 2005 | |
| 9:18 am |
But you were also suggesting that because of this fact, many people would move to Windows, which is a flawed argument, because if you move to Windows then you have to replace ALL your software.
I’m not saying it would be cheaper, but since you’re already replacing all of your software then the price of switching to Mactel vs switching to Windows is somewhat similar. If the Windows machine is cheaper by enough then it could very well ofset the extra cost involved in switching ot Windows. That’s what happened in 2000 and 2001 when a lot of crative professionals moved to Windows. Also, it’s worth noting that a Windows box is going to be a lot less buggy and much faster that a Mactel box for at least a couple of years until everything gets optimized and ported to X86.
Pretty much all of those are Cocoa apps. For the most part all Cocoa apps require is a recompile to become x86 ready. Java apps run anyway, as do widgets. It’s just Carbon apps that take time and a lot of these are the big apps. I mean, if MS switched Windows to PPC then I’m sure .Net apps would be the first over (and be the easiest) but Win32 apps (which are many of the bigger apps) would take longer. Remember that many apps that use Carbon are apps like Photoshop and Office which are 20+ years old in some cases.
Exactly. It’s those apps that are most important ot the platfrom IMO. I’m sure moving to Mactel isn’t trival for Adobe and their CEO has even said so. He told Cnet not to expect Adobe CS for Mactel until at least late 2006 if not early 2007. That means it won’t be CS2 that gets ported but CS3. So what creative professional would buy a Mactel in the few quarters before Adobe (and presumably Macromedia) bring over their apps? That’s when Vista should be out in Retail and when computer sales will be surging because of it and 4th quarter buying. Apple’s marketshare is probably going to tank for the first year or so after Mactels are released.
OSX x86 users will have Rosetta for PPC apps.
I’ve been running OS x86 on my PC for over a week now and if Rosetta (when it’s released) runs anything like what it does on my machine then it’s a complete failure for any large app. iapps works okay but I *tried* running FCP and Logic Pro and the results were not pretty. I stress the word “tried”.
And as I have said before, moving to Windows would cost more than moving to Macintel.
Not if the Windows machines are cheaper, which they most likely still will be. If Apple decides to stick with the Yonah/Merom processors then other manufacturers using 3.6ghz Xeon’s, A64’s, and dual core Pentium 4’s will easily beat then in performance and price. Of course this is talking strictly about desktops and workstations not consumer level machines.
| Sep. 22, 2005 | ||
| 5:52 pm |
Large programs like Photoshop will either be released for OS X86 as a free patch, a somewhat reduced-price minor upgrade, or a regular upgrade with new features. And if they release a regular upgrade just to move to OS X86, they’re not a very good company and it’s probably time to switch applications. 
But the point is, upgrading to OS X86 versions of large software programs shouldn’t cost much unless it’s superficially identical to a regular upgrade.
I’ve been running OS x86 on my PC for over a week now and if Rosetta (when it’s released) runs anything like what it does on my machine then it’s a complete failure for any large app. iapps works okay but I *tried* running FCP and Logic Pro and the results were not pretty. I stress the word “tried�.
One of the things about OS X is that with every release, Apple has managed to make it faster. 10.2 was faster than 10.1, 10.3 much faster than 10.2, etc. There is no reason they should not be able to optimize Rosetta in the next several months to the point that it is almost on par with native code. I don’t know how long the technology behind Rosetta has been around, but I’m guessing it’s fairly new, and still relatively beta (as is OS X86 itself). Aren’t you one of the people who cries foul at comparing betas to final releases (which is still several months off)?
| Sep. 22, 2005 | |
| Arden | 10:47 pm |
Maybe I don’t quite have the eye for laptop display quality that some have. But we have (or have had) Thinkpad T42s, X40s, and X41s (tablet--so cool!) on the sales floor that I’ve used. I don’t notice anything substantially different between the two. I’m dead serious. And I’m not trying to give the “Mac Zealot� spin either, because I think the ThinkPads are some of the best laptops available today.
Well, I guess you must be talking about WXGA screens. I’m not a fan of that resolution at all. WSXGA+ is so much more usable to me.
Likewise, I don’t think IBM laptops are all that. There service is great but if you’re not transporting military or industrial secrets then it’s just a lot of hype to me. Acer laptops impress me much more. They have a far better feature set, better video cards, tons of security features (smart card and fingerprint readers), great battery life, lots of configs, and amazing prices. They also sell AMD unlike some other manufacturers.
| Sep. 22, 2005 | ||
| 10:48 pm |
I like the IBMs myself. Anytime you can make a laptop that can handle water being dumped into the keyboard, then slammed onto a table from two feet up (not just dropped--thrown down) while it’s running and the computer survives without any problems, you’ll impress me.
“Well, I guess you must be talking about WXGA screens. I’m not a fan of that resolution at all. WSXGA+ is so much more usable to me.”
I’m still on XGA.
| Nick | Sep. 22, 2005 | |
| 11:04 pm |
Large programs like Photoshop will either be released for OS X86 as a free patch, a somewhat reduced-price minor upgrade, or a regular upgrade with new features.
And what makes you believe they’ll do either of the first two options when the Adobe CEO already mapped out how the move to X86 was going to function? Futhermore, what makes you think that some large application like Photoshop can just be moved to a different architecture with a “patch”? Look at the Linux and OSS world. You basically need to recompile an app to run cross-architecture unless it’s built in an architecture independent way e.g Java.
And if they release a regular upgrade just to move to OS X86, they’re not a very good company and it’s probably time to switch applications. But the point is, upgrading to OS X86 versions of large software programs shouldn’t cost much unless it’s superficially identical to a regular upgrade.
Of course, but that’s not my point. My point is that you have to upgrade or face major consequences in performance.
There is no reason they should not be able to optimize Rosetta in the next several months to the point that it is almost on par with native code.
Why would you believe that Apple is going to get PPC emulation/translation on X86 working as fast as native X86 code? What cross architecture emulator operates as fast as native code (assuming similar processor speeds so MAME doesn’t count)? None that I’ve ever seen. Not PearPC, not Virtual PC or anything else.
The performance isn’t even close to the speed of native code. And translating PPC code to X86 code isn’t a trival matter. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that Apple is going to pull some magic trick and make Rosetta run near native speeds. None.
See what I mean about optimism?
| Sep. 29, 2005 | ||
| 7:37 pm |
26.
The professional apps aren’t universal binaries yet because they have lots of legacy code from years on OS 9 and Windows, and are largely written in Carbon. Thus, they have to do quite a bit of work to get their applications to work on OS X86, which is why they aren’t in that list. But the major players, Microsoft and Adobe, are committed to supporting OS X86, and surely others will follow suit or fall behind. The reason most of those programs are shareware is because they are largely written in Cocoa, which takes relatively little time to convert, so shareware developers mostly just have to recompile and redistribute.