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A podcast about all things Macintosh. For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. Show 122. Dvorak predicts Apple switch to Windows?!!. Apple lawyers and the OSX86 Project. Details emerge on Apple OS X Leap-A Worm. Second OS X worm discovered by F-Secure but is non-threat. Rumors of a 17″ MacBook Pro by the Apple World Wide Developer Conference in June. Apple and NBC offer free pilot episode of Conviction, maybe? Follow up: Grants.gov does offer Mac support, sort of. New iWeb update allows duplicate page names between sites. Apps and hardware to help you remote control for your Mac and use FrontRow with buying a new Mac.
New music, Broken In all the Right Places by I am Jen
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The Joy of Tech says it all
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/789.html
Dvorak has finally lost his mind!
why would we want to use Windoze,?? it sucks:
it has no eye candy
or cool features
and its so slow (and crappy)
Ohhhhhhh, Just thinkin of moving back to windows makes me cry! Jees, mack goin to windows is a scary thought!
Adam, you were talking about the 17″ MacBook Pro and said it is supposed to be as thick as the current 15″ Powerbook. I’m pretty sure you meant 15″MacBook. I had read about it elsewhere, but it would only make sense for the 17″ Macbook to be as thin (or thinner) than the 15″ MacBook, as the 17″ Powerbook is the thinest PowerBook and the 15″ Macbook is thinner. Sorry if that was worded confusingly, just wanted to clarify.
i love the way you started this show adam. it was great.
Marshall,
I think you are right. The strange thing is that the 17″ PowerBook and the 15″ MacBook are both 1.0″ thick and the 17″ already has an 8x SuperDrive, so I am not even certain the rumor of the drive causing delays makes sense.
Great, great show Adam. One of your best, honestly.
I kind of like it when you rant like that, I’m not sure if everyone feels the same, but I am totally on your side for this one.
Again, great show, and thanks so much for your dedication and effort into the MacCast.
Dvorak’s claim that Apple will “switch” to Windows was nothing more than an attempt to drive up his website’s traffic. I enjoy his banter on TWIT, but this was simply a ploy to get more hits on his site.
Mac OS X is Steve Job’s baby. Have you seen how passionately he talks about the OS – the ease of use, simplicity etc.
It’s his burning desire to create and maintain the best operating system in the world. The best ‘experience’.
Yeah, I listened to Dvorak ranting on TWiT. The guy was talking about drivers and stuff. The beauty of the mac is that I don’t need to worry about crap like that – I just plug a printer (or whatever in) and it works
I think this Dvorak guy is intentionally doing this to attract attention to his site
Great show Adam as always. This Dvorak has reached moronic proportions, he needs to get a mac and GET IT.
You are so right on your argument against Dvorak.
Chris, i totally agree with you. and if you go to the thread in the forums, alot of people agree with you that he’s just being an attention seeker.
Adam, it would be great if you went on twit. definately try and get yourself on.
Apple isn’t going to shaft all it’s Cocoa developers in one sweep. Apple has been down the road of runtimes under Windows before and in general it wasn’t successful.
Doesn’t sound like you appreciate the history of Cocoa and it’s relationship to NeXT Computer.
Agreed. I have high respect for Mr. Dvorak, but he is
way off base on this one. Mac OSX is a major component
of Apple Mac products. I haven’t seen Vista yet, but
I doubt it supplies application suites as good/complete
as what is supplied in iLife. Seeing the amount of
development efforts that Apple has done on OSX, iLife,
and its Pro products would suggest the shift to
Windows very unlikely. Maybe when Hell freezes over. ;-)
Regarding iPod going to USB only, it’s pure cost
cutting on Apple’s part. This just makes good
business sense. If the majority of the users are
USB based, then Apple can improve its margins by
eliminating the FW chip from the bill of materials.
Furthermore, product such as Apple’s Nano doesn’t
leave much space for FW. In addition, USB is more
than fast enough for transfers and doesn’t warrant
a FW. Apologies ahead of time to users with old
Apple hardware that doesn’t support USB.
Adam. Look how could ya even give that story front row status? I mean windows on mac, come on, let’s talk wine or VPC but Apple switching to Windows, it’s laughable, some may even call it blasphemy!
Just cause Apple switched to what kind of engine runs the machine, the machine (read OS) is not gonna switch. Apple is about Mac OS, not Windows OS. I am glad Apple has a small market share. There are benefits you know. Community for one – and it’s strong, we are a fine bunch!
…and the story is based the possibility of some hardware not running on a mac? Give me break! Go to the Apple store virtual or real…how much friggin hardware do you see for the mac? Is something missing?
How many scanners, printers, usb devices, firewire devices, how many those run perfectly on macs? Can you say thousands?
The mac has so much hardware that runs smoothly, beautifully – just plug and play perfectly. We all know that a lot of the hardware to make it on the mac is some of the best in the industry as a whole.
The whole article was a time waster, of no interest and based on nothing of anything. The argument bordered on comical.
Dvorak I love listening to you on TWIT, you’re a great guy but come on…find something real to talk about. Besides, is it all so perfect on the windows side, are there no hardware accessory problems. Hmm…I wonder.
TWIT? Dvorak? You there? Listen, come one Dvorak…write a real article will ya?
Now I want to hear what Adam has to say about it.
With this one I had to read it first to get my own views and the hear Adams
That song was so cool I just bought it!
Good job with the Dvorak idiocy, Adam. He’s been given WAY too much credibility because he supposedly predicted Apple’s switch to Intel chips. The problem is that the prediction was made while Apple was struggling with Motorola. He did not predict the switch to IBM G5 chips and IBM’s subsequent failure to make a suitable laptop chip. His ideas concerning Macs have been completelty moronic and this latest dust-up is just par for the course.
Apple just a hardware company? Ridiculous. The outstanding OS and apps drive the hardware sales. It’s the integration that we Mac fans are buying.
The significance of the seeming disappearance of FireWire? Meaningless. Mac used to be ALL proprietary connectors and Apple has since gone to ALL industry-standard connectors. Big deal.
Peripherals? This argument is embarrassingly stupid. Mac users have plenty of choices in printers, scanners, monitors, external drives, etc.
The Mac experience is mostly about the human interface and that lives in the OS (and is put to use by application developers.) The idea that Steve Jobs or any of us Mac devotees would accept the inferior experience that MicroShaft wants to stick us with is absurd.
Hey Adam,
Perhaps Dvorak is not entirely off base with the switching to “Windows” comments.
There is a distribution called GNU/FreeBSD, which transplants the FreeBSD kernel on a standard GNU userland. FreeBSD has the ability to run Linux applications unmodified at native speeds.
Maybe Dvorak was talking about just the Windows kernel, but leaving the userland untouched ala GNU/FreeBSD. That way you could use the Windows drivers to support all Windows compatible hardware. No one says that Apple would have to take the Windows userland applications such as the GUI. And no one says you have to lose any feature in a transition of this type.
However I strongly disagree that Apple would do this. The majority of the problems Windows had (pre-spyware) was badly written drivers. Everyone, including Apple, knows that Windows has a lot of poorly written drivers. To switch kernels to badly support hardware would ruin the Apple experience where things “just work”.
People need to realize that quantity does not equal quality. And come on, let’s face it, Dvorak’s never right. Remember, he said that the mouse would never catch on. . .
While I agree that it’s lunacy to suggest that Apple would adopt Windows for its hardware, I think that you’re not going to get far with non-Mac users by referring to an ethereal “soul” of the Mac. Talk about GUI or integration or user experience or a system with a true sense in innovation and direction, but just talking about “heart” and “soul” is a rather weak basis for an opinion.
I used Windows for over a decade. I’m a practical kind of person. I didn’t trade my high-end Toshiba in for a PowerBook because it was prettier. I switched because Windows (3.1, 95, and XP) ran only when they wanted to. Mac OS-X works no matter what.
Why would I want a slower machine (or people think that macs are slower, anyway) running a crap operating system (Windows)? I would run OS-X on a $10.00 solar-powered scientific calculator before I run Windows on anything again… It’s the os that counts, not just the hardware.
Huh. I guess I’m the only one here who actually gives any credence to the idea of Apple running a Windows system of a sort at some point. They could totally put their own interface on top of Windows with very little difference in usability from OSX. Honestly, most people could give a rat’s butt about what’s underneath, as long as it works well and is ergonomic to use. If I could have the mac interface, running Windows programs seamlessly, I’d get it in a second. Cause, y’know, there ARE some good windows programs I miss running on a Mac. And Virtual PC doesn’t cut it.
On the flip side, I’m surprised already that they haven’t come out with an iLife bundle for Windows. They could make a truckload of money with that! There’s nothing like it yet for that platform.
And I agree with Joshua that the argument that the “soul” of a Mac is what keeps people coming back is not the way to argue it. It’s the beauty and elegence of the product that most are attracted to. Which doesn’t equal soul. It equals design.
The other day I was trying to fill out the college student aid site for my daughter — FASFA. Lo and behold, I kept on getting notices of browser non-support. In the long list of supported browsers was Netscape and IE, but only for the PC. There were NO MAC BROSWERS at all.
You could click through anyway, the dropdown menus were funky on all three Mac browers I tried — IE, Safari, and Firefox.
Also, I’d like to point out that Apple almost died in the 90’s but not because the quality of the third party manufacturers sucked. Apple almost died because the third party’s made machines were cheaper. The third party machines were the same speed or faster, were not as pretty but they were cheaper. Apple could not compete as a hardware company.
The difference today is that Apple is mostly a consumer electronic company today. Making most of its money from iPod’s, they could transition to a software company, but that would mean letting go of the hardware OR competing (something Apple is not used to!).
Either way, just thought I’d say, I love the show. Keep up the good work.
Joshua – I totally agree with you. Dvorak is just simply putting something out there for us to think about. He’s a columnist, it’s his job.
While I’ve always known about how loyal Apple folks are, when I hear them talking about their “heart” and “soul” of their computers, I can’t help but thinking how out of touch they are with reality.
Guys…. it’s just a computer. Get a life.
I agree with Joshua.
We understand what you mean by the ‘soul’, but non-computer users might think you’re a little erm.. crazy. Just kidding, but you know what I mean.
Apple like keeping things simple – look at the remote of the iMac – compare with the remote of the media centre PCs
I acutally think Photocasting is a great feature. Just one example of an extreme simple innovative idea..
Apple allows non-nerds to harness the power/use from very high end hardware..
Joshua,
I agree with you about GUI and integration, but I just figured that stuff was obvious. It is that level of detail and integration which creates the user experience that allows us to connect with Macs the way we do. It is that connection that creates the “soul” of the Mac I was reffering to. Maybe that didn’t come through as well as I hoped on the Podcast.
Mike,
Thanks for proving my point. To Windows users it “just a computer”. It’s something to just use for work. A tool. There is no joy in the experience which is, I guess, why PC users are so willing to accept the experienece when it sucks. They know when the work is done they won’t have to deal with it anymore. Mac owners relish in the experience of using the machine. The technology is so well designed and integrated that you don’t even really think about it. For Mac users the focus is on the results not the means to get there. We feel connected to the machine because it acts like a friend who helps us do what we want to do. I guess it is this connection that makes us seem “out of touch with reality”. If so, then I will gladly stay out of touch.
Dvorak really doesn’t look deeply into things he writes about. All of Apple’s Pro applicationsa rely on fundamental APIs that are deep within OS X. Core Audio/Image/Video, Quicktime etc are all low latency because of the OS. The argument for drivers is flawed also. I personally haven’t come across and modern periferal that doesn’t work on the Mac.
Besides, in June when Steve Jobs gave the WWDC keynote and confirmed the move to Intel CPUs, Steve said that “OS X has set Apple up for the NEXT 20 YEARS!”
Great show! Nonetheless, neither Dvorak nor the MacCast community “gets it”.
I do not deny that Apple has “soul”, but Dvorak is wrong not because Apple has “soul”.
The reason Dvorak and the MacCast community are wrong is because “Stevie Baby” loves his margins. Without their own operating system, Apple is selling the same box as everyone else.
The bottom line, “Stevie Baby” is a businessman. If Apple is selling the same box as everyone else, then the person making the cheapest box wins. The only way that “Stevie Baby” can keep his margins is to continue with a unique operating system.
Also I have one more point to make about running Windows applications on OS X. This would not be a benefit at all.
For example, OS X uses a document centric design, where as Windows uses task based design. The menus in OS X are always at the top of the screen. In Windows, the menus are at the top of each window.
Expose wouldn’t work very well with Windows applications since a large number of Windows applications are MDI based.
How would they integrate Mac only features such as system-wide spell check?… they can’t because it’s part of the Cocoa API, not Win32.
Chris, i dont see why you’re saying, “…but non-computer users might think…”
are you saying that non-computer users are gonna turn on a computer in a store, download the MacCast, and have an opinion on what Adam has to say about a topic they know absolutely nothing about? No podcaster should have to format his/her show to suit the ‘non-computer’ audience. that makes absolutely no sense. how is a non-computer user gonna get the show if they dont use computers?
hehe, just to clarify
– I agree with the ‘soul’ of the Mac. I think the phrase is ‘spot-on’! It’s the beauty of the mac. It’s why we all love it
– Remember there are a lot of ignorant people out there who just don’t get computers. They just aren’t into computers. They might not ‘get’ the whole ‘soul’ thing.
Steve Jobs said that OS X (not Windows) has set Apple up for the next 20 years. He said that back at WWDC 2005 when he revealed the Intel switch.
Hey Adam thanks for mentioning the AirClick with regards to controlling FrontRow. It may interest your listeners to know that we’re working on something new for the AirClick (and a whole lot more) which should make it much easier to customize the AirClick to work with FrontRow or anything else. We have a beta program ongoing and more information can be found here:
http://griffin.somegeekintn.com/
Keep up the great work on the MacCast!
Well, I certainly agree that, from the facts and analysis you presented it would seem to be ridiculous for Apple to drop the Mac OS.
But don’t be so sure! Five years ago I would have agreed with you that it would be “impossible” for Apple to do this, because they would make a rational decision based on facts and analysis. But in this pre-enlightenment 21st century, any stupid thing is possible.
Dvorak’s argument and others I’ve heard seem inconsistent in that they declare Apple to be just a hardware company and not a software company. Therefore, the hardware should run windows software, and, oh yeah, that cool Apple software too because OS X and iLife are sweet. Dvorak and others can’t have it both ways.
For a moment there I thought the comments were going to be devoid of coherent argument, but I see further down some solid thinking.
Really, all you who jump straight in and say “no way” and mention “soul” are taking it a little too much to heart. Adam included.
Who knows what Apple will do? I’ll tell you something for nothing – OS X is far from the perfect user experience. Granted Windows is worse, and by a long way. Frankly, I’ve had the pleasure of a better thought out UI and I was using it in the late 80’s. (And no it is not any *nix based one.)
Here’s a question for you: If OS X *looked* like Windows but otherwise operated as it does today, would you seriously be defending it as stoutly as I see here? As far as I can see OS X is *different* to windows and, security flaws aside, I don’t see such a huge difference other than the pretty graphics.
I am a PC-convert, and have to say that I would absolutely hate an OS
X “look-alike” over the top of Windows XP. I didn’t purchase a Mac
for the “look” of Tiger, I purchased it because I knew it was a
superior product with a great OS. One of the best features is that it
is written over the top of UNIX, which makes it easy to compile a Java
program or locate a file using “ls”. It’s easy to use, and not prone
to as many problems as XP. Plus I love the fact that every time I
load new software, I have to give it permission to execute. I had
spyware up the ying yang on Windows XP, but on my Mac? NONE. It’s
like a dream come true.
In short, I think the PC World guy is an idiot who has never tried
using Tiger. If he had, he would realize that it’s more than just a
“pretty version” of Windows.