Will Apple Adopt Windows?

By Joni_78
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Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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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...

You must realize the irony of your statement... right? That OS X is in fact based on an indirect predecessor to NT?

OS X may have some fancy applications (dock, Expose, etc) - but the technology under OS X is ancient and hokey compared to the much more modern, efficient NT core underneath Windows.

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TheDogsBed

Posted
Posted

The whole "theory" seems to be based on nothing more than his obviously narrowed and blinkered vision:

The first was that the Apple Switch ad campaign was over, and nobody switched.
Don't just tell me that and expect me to swallow it; show me the maths.
Also, although the iPod was designed to get people to move to the Mac, this didn't happen.
Again, firstly show me where that intention was ever discussed, and secondly show me that it hasn't even created converts anyway.
And, of course, that Apple had switched to the Intel microprocessor.
Yes, and MS have software which runs on a Mac, what's your point?
The theory explains several odd occurrences, including Apple's freak-out and lawsuits over Macintosh gossip sites that ran stories about a musicians' breakout box that has yet to be shipped. Like, who cares?
Not really a question of who cares, but more a question of "who understands why", clearly not a journalist of limited ability.
This switch to Windows may have originally been planned for this year and may partly explain why Adobe and other high-end apps were not ported to the Apple x86 platform when it was announced in January.
Someone give this man another straw to clutch at. He really expected that the moment Apple made an announcement, then Adobe and such like would down tools and focus on moving everything across, just on an announcement? Oh come on...
Grand Master

MonkeyClaw Veteran

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You must realize the irony of your statement... right? That OS X is in fact based on an indirect predecessor to NT?

OS X may have some fancy applications (dock, Expose, etc) - but the technology under OS X is ancient and hokey compared to the much more modern, efficient NT core underneath Windows.

The Unix core is older, but it is much more powerful than NT, stable, and more secure. I'm not simply talking about fancy applications (BTW those aren't applications, they are actual parts of the OS ;)) but instead technology layers built into the OS and the actual capibilities. The NT core is hardly efficent compared to that of the Unix core that OS X uses. I know a lot of programmers that will agree with me. Just because something is old, doesn't mean that it isn't as powerful or developed. I would rather have something that is solid as a rock and more powerful than modern and buggy as hell.

Grand Master

Southern Patriot

Posted
Posted

You must realize the irony of your statement... right? That OS X is in fact based on an indirect predecessor to NT?

Where do you get this idea that UNIX is an "indirect predecessor" to NT? The only predecessor that NT had was OS/2, which is a completely different OS family than UNIX.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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Where do you get this idea that UNIX is an "indirect predecessor" to NT? The only predecessor that NT had was OS/2, which is a completely different OS family than UNIX.

Unix??? OS X runs on the Mach kernel. NT is the essentially the successor to OpenVMS and Mach.

OS/2 was not in any way a predecessor to NT, technologically.

The Unix core is older, but it is much more powerful than NT, stable, and more secure. I'm not simply talking about fancy applications (BTW those aren't applications, they are actual parts of the OS ;) ) but instead technology layers built into the OS and the actual capibilities. The NT core is hardly efficent compared to that of the Unix core that OS X uses. I know a lot of programmers that will agree with me. Just because something is old, doesn't mean that it isn't as powerful or developed. I would rather have something that is solid as a rock and more powerful than modern and buggy as hell.

Mach is older than NT, FreeBSD isn't. But Mach (like NT) was designed for threading. FreeBSD was not. That's why Apple had to do all sorts of ridiculous hacks in order to make threading kinda-sorta work on OS X. But it's a nightmare for developers.

Expose is an application. You can do the same thing (actually better) using TopDesk on Windows XP, for instance.

The NT core is more efficient than Mach, and vastly more efficient than FreeBSD. It's not only lighter weight, but far more refined. Threading and multi-tasking in FreeBSD is a joke. Even Linux (where threading was a total afterthought) beats FreeBSD these days thanks to the overhaul they gave threading and the scheduler in 2.6.

OS X certainly has its advantages over Windows. I won't deny that. The kernel and OS architecture aren't among them.

Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted

You must realize the irony of your statement... right? That OS X is in fact based on an indirect predecessor to NT?

OS X may have some fancy applications (dock, Expose, etc) - but the technology under OS X is ancient and hokey compared to the much more modern, efficient NT core underneath Windows.

Umm... no. OS X and its core technologies/APIs is based on NeXT Step which was developed in the mid 1980-1990's. The fact that it has a BSD subsystem is irrelevant. Your ignorance and prejudice is showing.

Unix history:

http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html

NT is based on NT OS/2 which was later abandoned when the partnership between IBM and MSFT broke down.

http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix-win200.../lucovsky_html/

http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=835&...8acabdf2900389a

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/Articl...3464/13464.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

Dave Cutler (who also designed Digital's VMS) may have taken some ideas from VMS but it was not a direct descendant of VMS and VMS is not a descendant of Unix.

People often get confused because VMS and NT both implemented a small subset of the POSIX standard. It is just a programming standard and implementing it does not make an OS a descendant or variant of unix.

Brandon, I'm afraid you do not know what you are talking about.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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Umm... no. OS X and its core technologies/APIs is based on NeXT Step which was developed in the mid 1980-1990's. The fact that it has a BSD subsystem is irrelevant. Your ignorance and prejudice is showing.

Excuse me? Carbon is based on NeXT technology. None of the systems' innards are.

No no no. NT OS/2 was going to be a replacement for OS/2. Nothing of OS/2 is in the OS itself - it's done through a subsystem that runs ontop of NT (on the same level as the Win32 and POSIX subsystems). You should read up on the NT architecture before you start spewing this nonsense.

Dave Cutler (who also designed Digital's VMS) may have taken some ideas from VMS but it was not a direct descendant of VMS and VMS is not a descendant of Unix.

Cutler architected Windows NT (WNT, each letter incremented once from VMS) after building VMS. I never said that VMS had anything to do with Unix. NT's strongest influences were very clearly VMS and Mach.

People often get confused because VMS and NT both implemented a small subset of the POSIX standard. It is just a programming standard and implementing it does not make an OS a descendant or variant of unix.

Brandon, I'm afraid you do not know what you are talking about.

NT itself doesn't implement POSIX at all. Windows ships three usermode subsystems: Win32, OS/2, and POSIX. Though the latter two are largely abandoned these days (the POSIX subsystem has been supplanted by the optional Interix/Unix Services subsystem). None of those (including Win32) is implemented anywhere in the kernel or kernel space.

NT is the ultimate abstracted kernel. It interfaces with the hardware using a HAL (which allows the same kernel to run on a multitude of platforms), and interfaces with software using it's client-facing usermode interfaces. This is how NT was able to efficiently support binaries compiled for Win32, OS/2, or POSIX.

Sorry "dude" - I'm afraid it is you who is mistaken. About a great many things.

Grand Master

the evn show

Posted
Posted
Expose is an application. You can do the same thing (actually better) using TopDesk on Windows XP, for instance.

You don't mean application in the nebulous "collection of code" sense do you?

Do you mean to say, as it sounds you do, that Expos? is nothing more involved than Terminal or dvd-player? That it works more-or-less the same was topdesk (which runs really slow on my dual xeon/2gb/nvidia 5900 machine at work—am I doing something wrong)?

If so, that's a pretty big claim and I'd like to see why you would say something like that.

If not, can you please clarify.

Carbon is based on NeXT technology

No, Cocoa is. The carbon APIs are based on the original mactoolbox calls that have origins going back to the original mac. Of course they've been re-implimented several times since the 80s, but the signatures of carbon methods are very similar to the original toolbox calls they were inspired by.

Unless you mean "based on" in the "built on top of" sense of the word…but then that would be true of everything in OS X.

Grand Master

.Neo

Posted
Posted (edited)

Good catch, I had meant Cocoa, not Carbon :)

Have you had any luck finding Expos?.app too?

I find it also very interesting that you claim TopDesk is doing a better job altho the application does nothing more than make screenshots of running windows a shift those around. Expos? on the other hand actually scales the windows itself and supports live updating: You can see people talking to you in MS Messenger and VLC continues to play media files when the Expos? "layer" is active.

Just because TopDesk's developers implemented a few more animations (which Mac OS X could support with ease) doesn't make it a more advanced/better application.

Edited by Neowave
Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted

Excuse me? Carbon is based on NeXT technology. None of the systems' innards are.

No no no. NT OS/2 was going to be a replacement for OS/2. Nothing of OS/2 is in the OS itself - it's done through a subsystem that runs ontop of NT (on the same level as the Win32 and POSIX subsystems). You should read up on the NT architecture before you start spewing this nonsense.

Cutler architected Windows NT (WNT, each letter incremented once from VMS) after building VMS. I never said that VMS had anything to do with Unix. NT's strongest influences were very clearly VMS and Mach.

NT itself doesn't implement POSIX at all. Windows ships three usermode subsystems: Win32, OS/2, and POSIX. Though the latter two are largely abandoned these days (the POSIX subsystem has been supplanted by the optional Interix/Unix Services subsystem). None of those (including Win32) is implemented anywhere in the kernel or kernel space.

NT is the ultimate abstracted kernel. It interfaces with the hardware using a HAL (which allows the same kernel to run on a multitude of platforms), and interfaces with software using it's client-facing usermode interfaces. This is how NT was able to efficiently support binaries compiled for Win32, OS/2, or POSIX.

Sorry "dude" - I'm afraid it is you who is mistaken. About a great many things.

LOL

I guess clicking on links and reading is too hard for you, especially the reading and comprehension part.

As someone else pointed out, Carbon is not from NeXT Step but Cocoa is. The latter was called the Open Step Specification before NeXT was bought by Apple. If you got something that fundamental wrong, how can you expect anyone to believe anything else you wrote?

As for the rest, you are merely restating in a slightly different way what I either wrote or linked to. That if very uncool dude. The fact that it is implemented in a subsystem is irrelevant. OS X has many subsystems including the BSD userland subsystem which implements much of the POSIX compatibility. You are arguing semantics with me when I said pretty much the same thing.

You have yet to provide any evidence of your claim that NT is descended from VMS or any connection to Mach. Regardless, Mach is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion of OS X let alone any comparison between NT and OS X. That is because the OS X kernel is no longer Mach but rather a hybrid of Mach and BSD called xnu.

Your comments on POSIX being replaced leads me to believe that you do not understand that POSIX is a standard for compatibility and it does not matter what the system is called.

Keep on digging.

:laugh:

Grand Master

Hurmoth

Posted
Posted
John C. Dvorak-not exactly a writer to be taken seriously.

Agreed. I don't think I've ever read a piece from Dvorak that I've completely or even partly agreed with.

As for whether or not Apple will ever adopt Windows for Apple systems. Simply put, no! I cannot imagine that they'd ever offer Windows.

Just my two cents...

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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Have you had any luck finding Expos?.app too?

I find it also very interesting that you claim TopDesk is doing a better job altho the application does nothing more than make screenshots of running windows a shift those around. Expos? on the other hand actually scales the windows itself and supports live updating: You can see people talking to you in MS Messenger and VLC continues to play media files when the Expos? "layer" is active.

Just because TopDesk's developers implemented a few more animations (which Mac OS X could support with ease) doesn't make it a more advanced/better application.

Actually, Expose does exactly the same thing (takes screenshots of the windows and moves them around), just like TopDesk. However, unlike the Dock minimization (where its a static screenshot), they update the screenshot.

LOL

I guess clicking on links and reading is too hard for you, especially treading and comprehension/b> part.

You don't have an actual argument, so you try attacking me personally. Do you work for the Bush administration?

As someone else pointed out, Carbon is not from NeXT Step but Cocoa is. The latter was called the Open Step Specification before NeXT was bought by Apple. If you got something that fundamental wrong, how can you expect anyone to believe anything else you wrote?

Umm, I misspoke, and immediately corrected it. Grow up.

As for the rest, you are merely restating in a slightly different way what I either wrote or linked to. That if very uncool dude. The fact that it is implemented in a subsystem is irrelevant. OS X has many subsystems including the BSD userland subsystem which implements much of the POSIX compatibility. You are arguing semantics with me when I said pretty much the same thing.

Huh? OS X isn't built on the notion of parallel userland subsystems. It has a Mach microkernel, a FreeBSD kernel stuck on top, and a partial FreeBSD userland (with some Apple stuff tacked on top). It's not an elegant design, but it was something they could deliver in a hurry so they did it.

If they'd written OS X themselves, they wouldn't have the nightmare that is threading on OS X today. You wouldn't have the limitation of only one thread executing in the brain-dead FreeBSD kernel at a time. Unfortunately for Apple, they took a well-designed microkernel and bastardized it with the kludge that is FreeBSD. Sure, it's a reliable kludge (unlike, say, Linux) - but it's still a kludge.

It's apparent to me that you know very little about system architecture. The parallels between VMS and NT are simply undeniable. Not that it matters where it came from. What matters is that NT is more portable, more robust, and more efficient. There's really no escaping that fact.

You have yet to provide any evidence of your claim that NT is descended from VMS or any connection to Mach. Regardless, Mach is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion of OS X let alone any comparison between NT and OS X. That is because the OS X kernel is no longer Mach but rather a hybrid of Mach and BSD called xnu.

How is Mach irrelevant? If you want to understand why the architecture under the Mac OS is so convoluted, you need to understand its heritage.

Your comments on POSIX being replaced leads me to believe that you do not understand that POSIX is a standard for compatibility and it does not matter what the system is called.

Keep on digging.

And you insultmy/b> reading comprehension skills? The POSIX subsystem in NT is deprecated. It's not provided on x64 versions of NT. It's been superceded by Interix/SFU. I never said anything about POSIX being replaced. Read it again if you still don't understand.

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