You are probably not alone in anticipation of a new trading platform preference. As Apple's broader, Intel-based operating system nears its debut, you can bet that: in addition to thorough scrutiny of the newer OS's overall performance for trading applications vs. the Windows OS, will be the bottomline value debates regarding the to-be-sure unchanged, pesky price premium for the Apple name vs. PCs... Three observations on what Apple has to accomplish to effect its upcoming OS improvements to WIN-over the PC crowd: http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1759,1825040,00.asp "... I love my G5. It is faster than a high-end PC for some tasks, but it is also slower for some others. In other words, the whole platform-performance thing is a tie, and the G5 has not evolved anywhere near as fast as initially promised by Apple. (And let's not even discuss the painful issue of the nonexistent G5 PowerBooks.) Somewhere along the line, things just haven't worked out as advertised. Of course I'm not a developer, and I can see that the transition will present a challenge and require some additional resources, but from a user's perspective, nothing should change; Tiger will still look like Tiger. The Mac UI won't feel different because it's running on Intel silicon. And we can trust Apple to come up with a catchy name and clever marketing for the next high-end Macintosh platform..." http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824695,00.asp "... Apple's Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life, having been compiled for both for Intel and the PowerPC, Apple's current processor of choice, Jobs said in the keynote. The company will support the PowerPCâright now it uses IBM's PowerPC 970FX chipâfor some time to come. Apple will use dynamic translation software called Rosetta, named after the famous Rosetta stone, to allow applications designed for PowerPC chips to run on Apple's Intel systems. ... Intel can provide Apple with a number of different processors, including dual-core desktop chips and a low-power, high-performance processor in the Pentium M, as well as other computer guts such as chip sets, analysts said. ... 'the Apple is not just a computer. No one has a love affair with their HP; they have a love affair with the Apple. Apple will have to be [careful not to] lose hardware identity when getting the same 3.6GHz processor that all the other machines have.' ... If you take away the hardware issues and turn it into more of an OS vs. OS type of situation, this might be a good way [for Apple] to increase market share. Now Apple will begin the work of getting its developers on board to create universal OS X applications for PowerPC and Intel chips." (the technical crux of the matter) http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1824229,00.asp "In the hubbub over Apple's anticipated move from IBM to Intel chips, much has been said about how difficult the move would be. But really, how hard can it be to port Mac OS X to the Intel platform when its core operating system already runs on x86 chips?... Still, the yeoman work of porting the core operating system has already been done. With Apple's full support, porting over the proprietary layers should go quickly. Apple's expected goal of releasing an x86 Mac OS X port by mid-2006 seems perfectly doable. The biggest problem is likely to be getting ISV (independent software vendors) to port their proprietary applications to the new platform and device drivers... ... Still, simply getting Mac OS to run on PCs won't be that much of a problem. The real trouble will lie in getting out the applications and drivers needed for a successful enterprise operating system."
The thing that amazes me at times is the fact that a very large portion of trading at the individual level is being done on the Windows platform, which is not exactly the most secure platform out there. I was thinking a bit today about how I would ideally go about taking care of this issue, not counting basic concepts, such as using a hardware firewall or two between your internal network PCs and the Internet: - have a dedicated PC that runs nothing but trading/charting software, we're talking OS + drivers + trading platform, nothing else - have a single dedicated PC with a removeable HD. One HD has skeleton OS + drivers + trading platform, other HD is your "normal" config, for surfing the net, playing games, etc. Anyone want to add some suggestions that I may have overlooked?
You remember all those believers that got screwed with that fabulous NEXT from the same guy? He got even Sun to believe in it! Don't like windoz? Trade up to Linux: runs beautifully on Intel and NON-Intel, even on MAC.