[CS-FSLUG] NI: Open letter to Apple about its marriage with Intel

[David Aikema]

Well,

a) He's an "low-level embedded systems developer", and I think that's
a large part of what's shaping his attitude towards this change.

b) He notes that Apple's sales are rising, but fails to mention that
it is desktop sales that were growing, whereas laptop sales dropped
more significantly over the last quarter of 2004 (and, from what I
recall laptops are now a bigger market than desktops when people are
purchasing new PCs).  If laptops are where the market is, then it
seems that it *might* be time for a change if this will benefit Apple
there.

c) "As for developers, that also means twice the assembly code (as
mentioned above; for many applications, that means almost twice the
development time)" -> there may a few places where people are still
writing assembly code, but as far as desktop applications are
concerned I don't think that the number is all that significant.  I'd
also expect that for those applications which were already
cross-platform and that do require assembly code, a lot of thta can
now be shared.

d) Regarding PowerPC vs. Intel, Intel has a greater economy of scale,
and when you're dealing with orders in the millions, I suspect that
you'll be given a lot more information and inside access to plans for
the future.

e) Everyone is switching to PPC? - game consoles are switching to PPC,
although I suspect that it's a fairly heavily customized variant of
that sort of chip.

f) "If it's so much about the OS like many Mac users claim, why would
they bother buying Apple hardware when they can just copy the OS and
crack it?" - how about ethics.  I think that one of the main appeals
of Macs is that "they just work"

g) "Aren't you awfully worried that Wine will be ported for the Mac?
And then that switchers will keep using Windows applications on their
new machines? Far from being good news as a transitional help, that
means a far less reliable platform overall. Gone will be the days of
the secure operating system with solid applications -- a Mac will just
be another PC, with the same awful reputation than Wintel machines" -
well, I run a fair number of unix-y apps on my system when need
requires, but Apple native apps are typically much much nicer to work
with (they spend a lot of time on their UI design).  Additionally, I
don't think that people will be happy using apps through 3rd-party
emulation the whole time ... there's a lot of stuff that simply
doesn't work

h) "Give a warm welcome to mail worms (or do you seriously think
people will abandon Outlook, even those switching to Mac OS X?)" -
Well, Microsoft Office for Mac includes Entourage, which I think is
compatible with MS exchange servers, and they've stated that they will
be supporting this on the x86 Mac platform

i) "Or perhaps having to pay an extra $999 for your Developer
Transition Kit will do the trick." - I looks like you can get yourself
a copy of XCode 2.1 without charge ... your $999 buys you a computer
as far as I can see.  A simple application - not using assembly code -
should be a simple recompile away (although it should still be tested)
... for any medium-large sized company this doesn't seem to be more
than a drop in the bucket, although I suppose that a lot of the
companies developing Apple software are relatively small.

David

On 6/11/05, "‡ø®a Wei-Yee Chan (Made in Chinar)" <survivor at brisnet.org> wrote:
> Dear Apple, I am among the many switchers you successfully brought to
> your platform. And now I plan to switch back. Simply put, after reading
> this press release, I no more think the Mac has any future as an
> interesting hardware or software platform. I further believe that you
> have made such a bafflingly shortsighted decision that I worry about the
> sanity of your management staff, enough to dread more of these moves. I
> also disbelieve most of the claims that have been made today as purely
> hilarious......
> 
> http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10793
> 
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