🚀 go-pugleaf

newquist@maxwell.ucdavis.edu (Jason Newquist) writes:

>Steve Kanefsky (kanefsky@datamagic.com) wrote:

>Moreover, Apple is pressuring IBM to adopt MacOS as its OS of choice 
>since OS/2 seems destined to dwindle.  Yes, that's right, Apple is 
>applying pressure to Big Blue to get in bed in the OS market *as well as* 
>the processor market.

I thought Mr Gerstner recently reassured users that IBM will continue to
develop and support OS/2, and also that licensing agreement with Apple is
only for CHRP boxes (which could also run NT).

>Think about this for a minute.

I couldn't really see IBM and Apple doing anything together except to make
more money for themselves.

>> Actually, I believe Apple will do a much better job with Copeland than
>> Microsoft did with Win 95 or even NT.

I have not used Copeland or know much about Gershwin, but NT IMHO is a
rather robust, and competent product (considering it came from MS).
So IMHO it is rather premature for anyone to predict that Apple will
do a better job.;-) (puttting aside NT's default security settings which
could easily be fixed).

>Win95 I can easily see since Copland will have little of the legacy code 
>problems that riddle Win95.  NT is a harder sell -- and is the test for 
>all the Unixheads floating around this group.

Actually, I don't know how long MS can keep up with supporting 386+ codes
(IMHO 286 is well and truely dead), but as a small time user it is actually
preferable to me that I don't have to buy new software when I upgrade my
hardware (at a guess I'd say more than 50% of my software is not the current
version, and IMO perfectly usable, and I know offices that still use Word_4
for mac quite happily).
<snip>
>That's the nice thing about Copland: it will give your PowerMac a nice 
>speed boost in every way.  But in Win95, you've got pages fluttering by 
>when you copy files, eating up processor time: sounds like a wonderful 
>speed boost to me.

IMHO, Win95 is a bait to get developers to write more applications for NT.
Oh, and could you elaborate on fluttering, I have not notice anything on NT,
running CAD, or graphics apps.

>Copland will not have bloat.  Considerable toolbox rewriting is also 
>occurring, remember, with the several QuickDraws being merged, passed 
>through redundancy filters, and honed for speed.  Same for mostly 
>everything else.  Sure, you'll get additional managers such as the 
>Interface Manager and whatall, but what you'll get will be amazingly lean 
>and fast compared to the previous generation.

Actually I've read in the past that RISC codes for the PowerPC is relatively
bigger than current CISC codes for boths _86 and 68k, could someone please
dispute this or elaborate? And judging from the size of current native 
PowerPC codes for mac as compared with 68k codes I tend to believe that the
above is true.

>Copland's real competition will be with NT in more ways than one.  NT 
>will be more like Copland, NT will run on CHRP boxes along with Copland, 
>etc.  But it's Win95 that will be the spiritual competitor, and I have no 
>doubts that Apple is in a better position (with a fresh architecture and 
>a host of cool technologies such as OpenDoc, etc) to provide something 
>wonderful.

IMHO Win95 will not be Copeland's competitor, isn't it still largely a
monolithic kernel tied closely to the _86 hardware, as opposed to Copeland's
and NT's microkernel, which is not so hardware dependent, thus it is much
more a case of NT vs nativeMacOS and with SCO just acquiring Unix I think
this is going to get really interesting.

On the point of fresh architecture, I think there is a disadvantage to Apple
as developers will soon realize that Apple's current market share will be
somewhat split into two i.e. 68k and PowerPC, unless of course Apple decides
to support 68k as well to which I don't know if this is possible (can a guru
elaborate) as the hardware abstraction will have to somehow disable the 
mac roms present is current macs.

To get back to Intel's woes, as this thread has unfolded, the demise of Intel
can not rely solely on the assumption that Apple's Gershwin or Copeland 
is better than Win95, or that MS does not support OpenDoc. IMHO, regardless
of Intel's cash vault, it can confidently keep making its own rules, because
Novell is still the Lan leader, SCO is becoming more committed to the PC
Unix market, IBM still support OS/2 regardless of its licensing of MacOS, 
and NT is here and now while Copeland is ... 

BTW, does anyone know if it is possible to log into Copeland remotely to
kill misbehaved apps like in Unix or NT? I am asking because with PMT and
mem protection offered in Copeland how would one make full use of it, and
if so does that mean that Copeland will offer security permissions for all
hardware devices and filesystems?

hu ru.