🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4g3t0l$b71@nuke.csu.net> ghansen@isc.sjsu.edu (Gregory L Hansen) writes:

>In article <danpop.824477998@rscernix>, Dan Pop <danpop@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>>In <4g00uj$gaq@nuke.csu.net> ghansen@isc.sjsu.edu (Gregory L Hansen) writes:
>...
>>>had started this earlier, they probably wouldn't have finished before 
>>>they switched to the PowerPC line and would have had to start over again 
>>>anyway.  And if they had finished, what's the point of putting out new 
>>>software technology for a line of hardware they're about to drop?  And if 
>>>Copland was going to run on the PPCP, they sort of needed to finalize 
>>>that standard before they could finish the new OS.
>>
>>You mean that Apple programmers are so incompetent that they're not able
>>to write code which can be easily migrated from one hardware platform
>>to another?  Linux was ported to a bunch of platforms and Apple is porting
>>it now to the PMac (they don't even seem to wait for the PPCP).  If this
>>was possible (so easily) with Linux (or *BSD), why do you think it would
>>be so difficult with software written by Apple's professional programmers.
>
>This is just a guess, of course.  But I would think that, originally, the 
>Apple programmers didn't expect MacOS to run on anything but 680x0 series 
>Motorola chips and Apple hardware. 

You missed the point.  You were talking about _new_ software (read again 
the text included at the beginning of this article), which wouldn't be
worth developing for a platform with a limited future, and I said that
if the software were correctly written, porting it shouldn't be a
problem.

>Linux, and UNIXes in general, were 
>very much designed with portability in mind.

This is false about Linux, which was designed with 386 in mind.  It took
Linus a few months to remove the 386 dependencies from the kernel (and this
was not a full-time job for him) when he ported it to Alpha.

>     Perhaps you've noticed that Copland, the first major redesign of 
>MacOS for new hardware, is rather more portable.

Which doesn't explain why it isn't available.
>
>>>I'm not saying that makes it all right, just that I'm not really 
>>>surprised it took that long to get PMT on a Mac.  But I do wonder why 
>>>Windows users haven't been able to enjoy PMT until the hybrid form of 
>>>Win95 came out.  Microsoft doesn't exactly have to deal with radically 
>>>changing hardware, you know.
>
>>Windows users had the choice between at least a dozen of OS's with PMT.
>>They could even run their Windows apps in a PMT environment, at least on
>>OS/2 and SCO.  The PMac users had MacOS as their only option.  Can you see
>>the difference?
>
>OS/2 users aren't Windows users, are they?  They're OS/2 users.  Neither are 
>SCO users.  They're SCO users.  And neither OS is controlled by Microsoft.
>I was talking specifically about Microsoft OSes for average home users.
>And Windows users don't have the choice between at least a dozen of OSes 
>with PMT.  Nowadays they have a choice between Windows 3.1 and Windows95, 
>one is CMT and one is hybrid.  Can you see the difference?

No, I cannot.  If I have a PC and I want to run Windows apps I don't have
to run a Microsoft OS.  I can install OS/2, another OS targeted at the
average home user and run those Windows apps in a PMT environment.

If I have a Mac, I'm screwed, because it's either MacOS or nothing.  Even
when Apple will finish the Linux port for PMac, it will still not be able
to run MacOS apps.  The only hope is the mythical Copland, although some
people say that only the vaporous Gershwin will provide real PMT.

Dan
--
Dan Pop
CERN, CN Division
Email: danpop@mail.cern.ch 
Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland