Having now attended the Linuxworld show, I am more convinced than ever that Apple did only what is ultimately inevitable if it is to survive in the mainstream business software market, acquiesced. I listened to many of my "REAL GEEK " associates talk, and it was enlightening in many ways. Apple by it's own admission is rapidly approaching marketshare of about 5% of the desktop market. They are hoping that "Boot Camp" will let them increase this a bit more. It was done to appease those customers who work on PC's at work and have Apple products at home. Confusingly, stubbornly, they are also not urging Mac users to try it. What many of my tech associates have told me is that while it may not be all that practical to do this, hard core techies won't be able to resist. And that reinforces my point, IT AIN'T PRACTICAL! They say that those who do have both platforms will be sitting in to develop their pet projects, but no real foothold of development should be expected. Head off into the arena of Virtualization and you'll be better served. MS and Linux are lining up properly and the communities already understand their values. MS Virtual Server products were handed out to key folks at the affair. I have three copies and I'll be setting up several of my systems in the coming month or so for some real testing. I have recommended to my clients that for the summer quarter they plan on devoting some serious resource time and money to their testing modes. I have told them that they need to be able to smoothly transition into this around the Christmas season at the earliest as this really looks like the best path to synergy for now. I say this because I'm sure that there will be some exec with a hard on proposing the next great move around yearend. I'll need hands on test data to either support, or buttress, the desires. For now, I'd say look toward VMware for the reasons for MS market directions here. My buddy at Sabre and I will be having lunch in the next few weeks and I'll ask him about their plans also. I think the first vendor to develop a virtualization tech and management tools product with sound support will win here for now. Cats and dogs living together? Microsoft acknowledging the need to blend with the rival Linux? Mass hysteria!!!
For the more discriminating connoisseurs visiting this thread, also take a look at xbox clusters and supercomputers: http://www.llamma.com/xbox/beowulf.htm nono
Thanks, I needed this quote from the article: The Reward: A cheap Super Computer! A cluster is a type of server configuration that shares the processing burden of large tasks over multiple PC's or in this case Xboxes. Each Xbox has a mobile Intel Celeron 733 processor so it is a cheap PC with a good amount of processing power. If they are setup in cluster configuration they can all work together to solve mathematical problems and other tasks. Notice it states a "cheap PC" and not a cheap Apple! Telling? Subtle, and true. This configuration will also not grace the computer rooms of any major corporate entity any time soon. Which is my point in particular. Not that it does not provide the home user, geek, geek-in-training, a platform/playform. But that your local corporate enterprises of major stature will not be xBoxing their places of business. Ain't gonna' happen! The writer states this as his reasoning for the venture: Why X-boxes? I have been trying to scrape together the resources to do this for some time and PC's aren't cheap. The best option I could find would be a Celeron 500-700 with an all in one board to create a PC for around $100.00. Hopefully this will work out a little cheaper and hey this is more fun and more challenging. The motivation, the rationale, the logic of an underfunded geek. Maybe he could parallel together 50 cheap PIII processors with a high speed bus setup combined with several USB connections for multi drive... I need say no more!
What I'm really interested in will be to see what the next version of MacOS X will deliver. There has been quite a bit of talk on Mac forums that virtualization will be a feature, and I agree - I think that there is a good chance that Apple will include the ability to run a PC environment within MacOS as part of the operating system. Regarding the current dual booting issue, I'm suprised that nobody here has really commented on this issue from a trader's perspective. More specifically, there aren't very many programs relating to trading (charting and/or execution platforms) that will run on MacOS. The ability to dual boot provides the ability to run Windows from time to time as a secondary environment, something that I would argue as being a valuable feature. For example, one could default to MacOS for general use (surfing, e-mail, etc.), then boot into Windows each trading day to run their charting package.
There would be the rub for me. Why jump back to check mail or surf when you can do so in the windows environment? The lack of software is a key point and you're right to think in that vein. For a MAC owner, I would understand the happiness with the dual bootability too. If you have the Apple hardware, expanded capability should be a good thing. Using windows based products enhances your footing of software possibilities since there is apparent limited vendor interest in doing that.
They are a software business. It is their operating system that is the difference. Let Dell assemble the hardward and pay a royality to Apple for the operating system. They can farm out the hardward business. John
That is not correct. They are in the software business only to sell their hardware. Microsoft is in the software business. nitro
Why dream about 'next version of MacOSX' ? Simply take a look at Linux. That's what MacOS is based on these days. Nothing less, nothing more.
Less or more. Seems they are trying to hang on for the last few years. Ever try to follow the Vista hullabaloo? Not very convincing. You will keep on paying trough your nose for something garanteed to keep giving ya the same kind of problems like in the past.