Will Apple Adopt Windows?

[gigapixels Veteran]

What happens when I have more than 300 or so programs, like I do on my Windows laptop?

Oh wait, I forgot. It's impossible for a Mac to have that many programs. After all, there aren't that many apps written for it, is there?

I was going to stay out of this thread, but the glaring ignorance in this post made me want to reply.

Firstly, do you truly believe that all your application shortcuts show up in the Dock automatically? Because that's not how it happens. They are voluntarily put there by the user, much like you voluntarily put (or don't put) shortcuts on your Windows desktop. The only difference is the amazing amount of functionality the Dock icons give you, as opposed to the simple function of just launching the program as do the Windows desktop shortcuts.

Secondly, there may be less software available for Mac, but I must say that the average level of quality is better... I have found better quality programs for Mac than I ever have on Windows. Out of all the freeware/shareware apps available for Windows, 90% of them are lackluster and don't perform the function you want at the level of quality you're expecting. For Mac, there were only about 10% of the apps that I found that were developed poorly. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have quality over quantity.

[Si Veteran]

And others won't, to each it's own.

Of course, that's the whole point of individuality! :)

[.Neo]

Of course, that's the whole point of individuality! :)

Yup.

[tthmaz]

Anything can happen. I mean Apple juz decided to switch to intel from ibm, it won't be a surprise if apple do adopt windows.

[jimbo12141]

very much doubt that!

[aristotle-dude]

People who want a pretty laptop have a few choices out there like Alienware, Sony Vaio or those new Titanium Thinkpads. Some people may be drawn to macs by the industrial design of their cases but the majority of mac switcher take the plunged because of the OS.

[semaja2.net]

i orginally took the switch to a ibook over a windows laptop was becuase of its cheap price and battery life for what it is, after getting it i feel in love with macosx i use it now as my primary desktop. If they were to switch to windows i wouldnt bother saving up for a imac or mac mini, i only want them for mac osx

[Prosidius]

Yeah, Apple does one heck of a job on OS X. IMHO it is the best Operating System to be found. Granted you're paying a premium for it, you'll realize it was worth it with the time you save not reformatting, defragging, etc.

I hardly ever use Windows anymore. The only time I use Windows is for games. The remainder of the time is spent on my mac mini. :)

[smooth_gt]

there is a really nice cartoon about this i think u guy should take look at

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html

[MulletRobZ]

Two words: HELL NO! :D Mac OS X is the best system out there and demand for the Macs is actually outstripping supply! As a matter of fact, so many people I know of want to switch to a Mac because of the crappy Windows user interface. Chances are, it's more likely that Apple would be forced to allow Mac OS X installations on non-Apple systems if they are not able to keep up with the hardware demand.

[aristotle-dude]

there is a really nice cartoon about this i think u guy should take look at

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html

LOL That's great.

[PGHammer]

the evn show, I think you are getting caught up in the details of what .NET and Cocoa are. They are both API's for connecting to the underlying OS in an Object oriented way. You could also say that Carbon and Win32 are somewhat analogous as they are both C based with kind of messy syntaxes.

I don't want to get into a nerd contest with you especially since I'm recovering from bronchitis. You don't need to prove how smart you are. I've written plenty of code to interface with Win32 at work and I'm sure you have too.

From a very high level, both .NET and Cocoa + the Core frameworks help developers concentrate on writing applications instead of interfacing with low level OS APIs or implementing basic network and file I/O.

Regardless of which one you happen to prefer or what features one has over the other, the fact remains that Apple and third-party developers use Cocoa and the Core frameworks to a large extent these days. Switching to Windows would throw all that functionality out the window or it would have to be ported to Windows. I think it would destroy Apple as we know it.

Essentially, this Dvorak fantasy is not going to happen. Apple might be working on providing some sort of compatibility libraries to speed up porting of windows Apps to OS X.

Actually, more likely, porting OS X apps to *Windows*, not the other way around. However, they *won't* be necessarily for Macs.

Apple is a hardware company that also writes a goodly amount of software. It is also smart enough to look beyond the base of its own hardware to make money. A case in point is QuickTime Pro. While QuickTime authoring software is mostly associated with Apple's Macs, you haven't needed a Mac to author content in QuickTime for the last two major releases (6 *or* 7). Apple, however, is faced with a rather nasty dilemma: the top-drawer photography and HD editing software outside of Avid is written by Apple itself. However, the vast majority of software that *competes* with Apple Logic Express/Logic Pro, FinalCut HD and Motion are not even available for Apple hardware (they are available for that *other OS*). That means that Apple must do one of two things: either be content with their niche market, or port their software to that other OS. Let's be honest: what percentage of iPod sales are going to non-Mac owners? Forty percent? Fifty percent? Even (egads!) *sixty percent*? Personally, I would say that even the sixty-percent figure (iPod sales to non-Mac owners) is actually underestimating the case, considering the number of downloads of iTunes for Windows (even though you can use iTunes with portable devices other than iPods). The fact that people with portable devices that *aren't* iPods (and also don't own a Mac) are using iTunes on Windows obviously means that Apple is doing SOMETHING right when it comes to writing software on Windows. Could it be that Apple (which is, as I said earlier, smart enough to look beyond their own hardware base to make money) is actually looking to port some of the applications (and possibly even development tools) to *Windows*? (One thing that is seriously lacking is a low-cost, or better still, no-cost, entry-level development environment to write managed code in Windows. Xcode, which Apple *gives away* with every copy of OS X, can be used to write managed code. Name *one* thing in Xcode that would prohibit its use to write managed-code-based Windows applications other than the usual cross-OS issues that Apple has dealt with before with QuickTime and iTunes. Xcode could be the way to woo still more developers away from Microsoft.)

Apple moving whole-hog to Windows? Not a chance. Apple porting some of their own *software* to Windows? Why not?

[Deron Dantzler]

That guy is a ****in retard. He's like the Nostradamus of IT. He sits there and spouts a billion predictions and if one turns out right 10 years later he brags about it. It's like throwing a bunch of **** at the wall and waiting for some of it to stick.

[aristotle-dude]

PGHammer, that's not going to happen. Those Pro Apps rely very heavily on OS X specific Core technologies like Core Audio, Quartz extreme, Core Image and Core Video not to mention the rest of Cocoa.

Porting that technology would be like porting .NET and all of the pillars of Longhorn/Vista to OS X. It's not going to happen.

You cannot just recompile and have it run on windows. Cocoa is as alien to windows as Win32 is to OS X.

[Dark_INk]

it doesn't matter any which way about it.

when vista comes out it will work on intel macs- case closed (tripple boot yey)

[Bluetooth]

What many Windows users fail to realize is that there is almost always an alternative program for every program that runs Windows and many of them are much higher in quality and often freeware or shareware (very cheap). This Apple switching to windows bull**** is a load of crap and Dvorak needs to take his crazy pills! More probable would be Microsoft giving up the OS industry and letting Apple take over. Also... someone earlier mentioned that Microsoft has better marketing and I must disagree... Just look at the success of the iPod! Microsoft doesnt have to do anything to sell new copies of windows except to say that there is a new version. The few ads from microsoft I have ever seen were extremely lame at best.

[.Neo]

Also... someone earlier mentioned that Microsoft has better marketing and I must disagree... Just look at the success of the iPod! Microsoft doesnt have to do anything to sell new copies of windows except to say that there is a new version. The few ads from microsoft I have ever seen were extremely lame at best.

That's anno 2006. Microsoft did do a better job getting Dos/Windowsto to the masses in the early '90s, something Apple failed to do with Mac OS.

[DG55]

Anyone know where I can download the keynote in which the article talks about? The one where Gates appears on the screen? I saw this in the pirates of silicon valley film, a tiny mockup of the scene, but havnt seen the real thing.

Thanks.

[Alladaskill17]

NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

[DG55]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4436710013736446644

[prz]

yeah, because he was soooo off the mark when he predicted that Apple would switch to Intel processors...

Actually, he predicted that Apple would switch to the Itanium chip in 2002. Yeah, that happened.

Dvorak spews a lot of crap, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

[MonkeyClaw Veteran]

Apple adopt windows?!? Lol, I think not. They may embrace a situation where it is used in conjunction with OS X on the same Mac or even possibly the Red Box technology but hardly ditch one of the most advanced consumer OS's for something still stuck in the 20th century...

[modernponderer]

Apple adopt windows?!? Lol, I think not. They may embrace a situation where it is used in conjunction with OS X on the same Mac or even possibly the Red Box technology but hardly ditch one of the most advanced consumer OS's for something still stuck in the 20th century...

Ummm... kinda got it it the wrong way around there... :o

[MonkeyClaw Veteran]

Oh lord, not turning this into another OS X vs Windows thread man, but its true. Evn Show explains it terrifically, wish I could find that post he made a while back. Oh well.

Btw, for those of you who do not know what Red Box is, its the fabled OS X technology that would allow for windows programs to run natively within OS X. Most say that it would spell the end of OS X developed programs but I tend to differ. With extremely advanced technologies such as quartz, core image, cocoa, etc built into the system, I don't think this would have any impact on the developers that use those to make smoother and more efficient programs.

EDIT: Hurray!!!! 2000 posts!!! Yea I know, I'm a loser but when you are bored and its almost midnight, little things like that make you feel good :D

[the evn show]

I needed a break from trying to decipher source code due to lack of documentation; the following is not proof read or fact-checked. Beware rampant opinion and speculation.

I could find that post he made a while back. Oh well.

Search is broken for anything more than a couple years back.

Just as a sort of final follow up to Aristotle from that side-topic we were having:

I like Cocoa, OS X, and even XCode just fine. I don't think has been another platform that would let me get nearly as much done as Cocoa and Xcode have?in fairness I've only written for maybe half-a-dozen operating systems so my experience is limited. We got off a bit of a stretch about features of IDEs APIs, and all sorts of nerdery not because I think .Net is leaps ahead of Cocoa (it's not) or because XCode sucks (only compared to VisualStudio) but because I don't agree that Mac developers couldn't have been at least as successful writing Windows Applications.

I also don't think that consumers really give a damn about how good their applications are?the number of them still using crap pretty much seals that one. I think it would be dreadful to lose Carbon and I think applications would suffer?especially small ones like Textmate and Delicious Library?but I don't think that'd effect most companies any worse than trying to sell to < 1/10th of the market does.

As a side bit: Cocoa almost completely abstracts all of the implementation details from a program. Moving an application from Cocoa on OS X to Cocoa running atop Windows may not even require a recompile in some cases. The problem (as always) is getting Cocoa to run anywhere but OS X. We already know that parts of OS X's API are running on Windows just fine (Rendezvous^wBonjour, Quicktime, all of the BSD Subsystem). We also know that OpenStep (Cocoa's grandfather) ran on a number of platforms, including Windows. Maybe Apple's been maintaining a mostly-current stand alone "cocoa runtime" that can be installed on other platforms the way the .Net can, in theory. I doubt they'd be spending the resources on such a project because there's little benefit to be seen from it?which is completely unlike maintaining a platform independent operating system?but nothing apple does surprises me any more.

The whole idea that Apple would ditch their OS as old as the "going out of business" and "apple becomes sony++" and the "switching to <X-brand> processors" rumors, all of which have been circling longer than I've been follow Apple.

Also, for what it's worth: Dvorak talks about this article on This Week In Tech where he makes it pretty clear?to my ears?that this article was written pretty much to put ads in front of your eyes. I haven't read this article specifically (him and Thurrot are little more than well paid trolls as far as I'm concerned) but I can't image there's anything in there that he hasn't said in 2005, 2000, 1995, etc. At the very least this whole the whole argument is pretty weak from what I've seen hear and on Ars. Listening to him try and explain himself on TWiT pretty much sealed the deal for me: this is a non story.

Sure - it's ad. hominem but the guy is talking out his ass?but it's getting a million page views a day so good for him: he's apparently much better at his job than I am at mine.