Pine dates back to 1989, where it doubtless ran on some industrial UNIX, or maybe a *BSD. Thus whether nano is considered to predate or post-date Linux is something of a matter of interpretation.

Linux has offered more to Mac OS then you could imagine. Take all the open source tools that have been ported to Mac to expand the functionality of command line. nano, wget, even programs like cd and ls. Hell, GCC which is used by Mac OS to compile was birthed on Linux.

I’m not sure about nano and wget, but all the others definitely did not come from Linux (and predate Linux quite a bit). In fact, you could validly say that it is GCC that birthed Linux (but not the other way around)! Note also that the BSD kernel on which MacOS is based (aka. Darwin) has a lineage that is older that Linux.

That said, Linux was the birthplace of several important open source projects that MacOS X now benefits from. Samba is one, and I believe Apache and MySQL are too.

Look you stupid Mac fanboy, Linux has offered more to Mac OS then you could imagine. Take all the open source tools that have been ported to Mac to expand the functionality of command line. nano, wget, even programs like cd and ls. Hell, GCC which is used by Mac OS to compile was birthed on Linux.

“I think I was being generous when I said that Linux is teetering.”
Well you better hope to your God that it doesn’t teeter off the edge, cause if it does then you’re in big trouble. Lots of the GNU software that is created on Linux will stop being developed. This will mean many of the applications and services that Mac OS relys on will end up becoming old and unsupported and this will affect you.

It’s obvious you don’t know how much Linux has influenced Mac OS. BSD has played a large role, but Linux has played and equal or larger role.

Get the facts, and I’m referring to the Microsoft campaign, get the real facts. Fanboy.

T [...]

I wouldn’t worry about Apple dropping support for PPC within the next five years. People are still able to run some 68k apps (running in Classic) because of the 68k emulator that’s built into PowerPC chips. Apple hasn’t made a 68k machine since 1995 – 1996, so they’ve been supporting 68k running on PowerPC for at least the last ten or so years. I’m willing to bet that Rosetta will continue to be a part of OS X running on Intel long after most of the apps have been updated to be either Universal or Intel-only.

The Apple Blog, Dispelling a few Intel Myths:

As to your suggestion that Apple give us a choice between x86 and PPC, whilst of course it is technically possible, it’s probably less viable economically, and it’s rather impractical. Developers don’t want to be compiling software for and, more importantly, compiling device drivers for both architectures forever.

John,
I think you’re being overly paranoid. :P I’m not famililar with the technical niceties of either the PowerPC and the x86 – not at that level anyway – but I genuinely believe that Apple is fed up with IBM’s failure to deliver faster chips. And the Pentium M in a PowerBook is too good a proposition to pass up on, especially when you have nothing else.

Jeffrey,
I don’t know what your wife’s usage requirements are but is the “five years of upgrades” thing an absolute prerequisite? A lot of Mac users tend to use their Macs until they are well and truly dead, no matter the operating system etc., and I see no reason why your wife would not be able to do this if she has the tools she needs to begin with.

By way of empirical example, I still manage over 17,000 photos in iPhoto on an old iMac G3 400. It’s slow, but it keeps going.

Remember: this isn’t the Wintel world – it’s a tool that does the job that it’s supposed to do, like a fridge or a lawnmower. It’s not something you upgrade.

By the way, I am a both OS X and Linux (and FreeBSD) user. Since Jaguar, I believe that a number of Linux people have switched to Macs for their desktops.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not true of most Intel processors (please correct me if I am wrong!). This fact is consistent with Intel’s interest in hardware solutions to satisfy copyright law and various features to restrict, encrypt and appropriate code.

Here is my paranoid thought:

The real reason the Mac is going Intel is because the processor can execute hidden branch processes which are intrinsically undetectable. This means, anyone running an Intel processor can be monitored without detection. In other words, big Capital has decided that the general public must have machines that can be monitored without their knowledge.

If someone wants to prove me wrong, then they have to show an algorithm which can be used to account for all machine instructions used by any procedure on an X86.

Please… prove me wrong!

Jack B.

One of the reasons I always used Mac was the Risk chip but with this new universal code why not have best of both worlds.

Who’s to say Intel is better then IBM or visa versa in 5-10 years.
After all it’s just a purposed road map Intel laid out. This doesn’t mean they will meet their goals or have the technology to do so.

Also if IBM ends up making better stuff and faster then expected 2-3 years from now that blow Intel out of the water are we going to recompile everything over again.

[Side note: IBM is now setting up a 45nm Process]

Also I have read that Intel is going to ditch their current chip architecture for silicon using nano-carbon tubes by 2011 so this may not be x86 anymore by then perhaps a another recompile.

where as IBM has always took chances in development that is why they have always been innovative. Their new cell technology is said to be able to get 256 Gigaflops that’s fast for one chip.

To put this in persecutes one of the fastest vector chips in the world is designed by Cray is 18 Gigaflops also manufactured by IBM.

Just my thoughts but if I were apple I would stay open.

Give me a chose even if it is in only the servers and a workstation. That way you can Intel on the laptop and quad Power PC’s in the workstation / (Power Mac) even if it is only build to order.

This is why I am not happy with apple after all Linux runs on both so does Sun’s Solaris so why not Apple. This would make it much more appealing to every one also it would be good for sales instead of the slowdown Apple is going to see until Intel arrives but if Power PC was in the road map for the future with Intel I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t buy either.

“In fact, what you’ll probably see is that not until Mac OS X 11 will the system be x86 only. And that’s a way off.”

OS X 11?!? Is that like OS XXI? =)

It will be in Apple’s interest to tweak GCC on x86 as much as possible, and this will mean faster apps on all open source operating systems (that use GCC).

I’m not sure about that at all. Some time ago, there were rumors of Apple looking for a non-GNU-licensed alternative to gcc/g++. With the switch to Intel, they have that alternative: Intel’s compiler is extremely compatible with gcc/g++. And in fact it is shipped on the transition kit!

I’m not sure what the transition kit does with Objective-C, but that language is a sufficiently small extension to C (or C++) that Apple just might be able to convince Intel to add it to their line-up. Or Apple may do it themselves if given access to the Intel code.

Of course, since the Intel compiler also works with Linux, you could argue that improving that compiler for Apple would also help Linux. However, it’s far from the preferred compiler for the small open source developers.

Daveed

And frankly, Linux is teetering on the brink of utter irrelevance right now, so even the slightest insult can have a big impact.

Linux hasn’t had a major release in four years, and frankly it wasn’t that great when it was new

Forgive my frankness, but this is complete and utter rubbish, and I’m no Linux fanboy. Mac fan/evangelist though I may be, I know the platform’s limits, and in so many cases, the key one is cost.

Unless something really massive changes at Apple and they become a software-only company, they are always going to be tying Mac OS X to their beautiful but expensive hardware. Not very expensive, but a little bit pricier. If you won’t acknowledge that then we’re sunk, but I’m going to proceed anyway.

Most enterprises don’t care about beauty. They want a tool that lets them do word processing, e-mail and PIM and that’s it. The only factor is cost – very few businesses are far-sighted enough to genuinely think about ROI and TCO and so even consider a Mac; the Dell looks cheaper, and in a decent network configuration shouldn’t give any virus troubles. At the moment they run Windows, mostly for reasons historical, but Linux will slowly take over this market, because it’s cheaper at the end of the day.

There is a large class of home users who are exactly the same, for whom cost is the only factor, and that’s why Dell can churn out these anonymous black boxes – because people want them. And because these people only want the Internet, e-mail and word processing, Linux can suit them fine too.

The Mac has its place, but don’t expect Apple’s attempts to advance it into the enterprise to be at all hastened by the transition to x86. As should be patently clear, very few people care what processor is inside the machine, and certainly no business is going to choose a Mac over Linux because now they both have the same CPU.

Linux distributions may come and go, but the major force behind Linux development are volunteer open source programmers. It would be almost impossible to stop that kind of development. They all get their money from somewhere else.

The Apple-Intel deal will have very little effect on Linux. I do see, the possibility of Apple contributing open source tidbits, like GCC and, perhaps Wine.

On a completely different note, Microsoft must be kicking themselves for buying Connectix. They obviously didn’t see this coming.

Apple should start perfecting their own version of Wine. Wouldn’t it be great to use Mac OS X, and then, if you have Windows-only software, have the capability to run it on its native processor…

Dude, with that you just proved that you don’t know much about Linux.

First, ‘Linux’ isn’t monolithic. You can’t talk about it as if it is.

Second, every important Linux distribution has seen at least one new release in the last four years. And that’s putting it mildly, because of the next point.

Third, the theme in the Linux world is not revolutionary change, it’s constant and relentless evolution done in a distributed fashion. You shouldn’t expect huge changes from one version of a distribution to another. That’s just not the way it works. In the Linux world, distributions (for the desktop, anyways) are expected to release early and often. (Server-oriented distributions are of course more conservative.)

The Linux community doesn’t have a high priority on flashy GUI innovations. [joke]So darn, I guess my linux router isn’t going to display a fireworks show each time it blocks a packet.[/joke]