Tuesday, June 7, 2005

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? Exactly one month ago I wrote about Apple's Tiger. My criticism still stands. I could even add some more. Fact is, my Panther is doing fine, I don't need any change. TheRegister: "OS X Tiger sees the Mac in excellent health. However for many existing OS X users there isn't a single compelling reason to upgrade." The problems with OS X always and only arise with the introduction of a major upgrade. Some apps will no longer work and software makers have to provide their updates, often firmware updates, as well. You can encounter problems like this and this and this and this. I, myself, had a modem incompatibility problem some time ago when changing to Panther, which took me several weeks to find out about and fix. And there are the occasional hardware problems. I wonder, could these problems have been one of the reasons for Apple to look for other possibilities? Not really, OS X has been leading a secret double life for years (PowerPC and Intel). If some people consider this their favourite feature of Tiger or that Safari is running one second faster, and others are thinking of disabling Spotlight and Dashboard then it is time to reconsider. However, one must admit that the Mac is still the best computer around. And Steve Jobs is a hell of an innovator and salesman. Just watch how he sells his shift from IBM to Intel processors (video). What is it all about? In fact, changing from one processor to an other is not a big deal, OS X is still going to work as it was before. However, there is a but. As with any major upgrade of OS X there will now be a transition time during which apps will have to be translated into Intel language. And the problems mentioned above will now increase considerably with this processor change. Although every OS X has been developed with eventual implementation on Intel cpu's in mind, PowerPC-compiled programs on an Intel Mac will be handled through an emulator (called 'Rosetta'). That is a temporary solution of course, like OS 9 running on the same computers as OS X. So we can expect more changes in the coming years that will finally do away with the emulation and directly address the Intel chip. One could have expected that with the introduction of the Intel chip in Mac computers, OS X would be able to run on other Intel hardware. No such luck. Apple keeps a firm grip on its hardware sales. Just imagine you could buy a cheap pc and install OS X on it. Running windows on a Mac would be possible, but who would want that? The reason why Steve chose the Intel chip was its higher performance per Watt. As a result of this a lot of work will have to be done from this moment on to keep all apps running on an Intel Mac. This change is probably even bigger than the step from OS 9 to OS X which took years of trouble shooting. However, it is possible that Apple has in mind or is already developing applications that need the higher efficiency of Intel. We will only know that after some years have passed. In the meantime Apple is providing all the works for developers, there's an OS 10.4.1 for Intel (preview release); cocoa and carbon apps will need to be tweaked and transposed in the XCode 2.1 development environment. Apple has a complete development transition kit available. So get going, developers! Microsoft was present at Steve's big show. Microsoft Office will be running on the Intel smoothly, of course. Still, I don't have Office or Photoshop, and I have no intention of buying these expensive apps. What I am worried about is will my own apps all work on an Intel Mac or how long will it take before all of them are made Intel-friendly? I want my Gimp and all those small but very useful and free apps to run smoothly as well. Surely this will take years and years. My priorities for the coming years are a larger RAM (1 GB) and, indeed, a faster processor, the G5. The change I had hoped for is lower prices for Macs. Why should a Mac display with the same hardware as a Dell screen be so much costlier? The change from OS 9 to OS X was the best thing that ever happened to Apple. It was necessary. But is this Intel change really needed? Will the speed and performance improvements of the Intel chip really make a difference? And does this warrant a good deal of tinkering with an OS X that outwardly will not change very much? Has Steve made a lucrative deal with Microsoft and Adobe? I already know that this is going to cost us, Mac-users, lots of money. Not all developers are going to provide free upgrades. And OS X Leopard was already announced. Another change. For now, I stick to my good old OS Panther and my G4 for some more years, I hope. We'll see later. 1:11:58 PM

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