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Apple joins benchmarking group

http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6055586.html explores some of the reasons Apple might have in joining a Windows benchmarking group.

There's the usual group who think Apple is going to abandon OS X and ship Windows. I think they are so far off base it is hardly worth discussing. Apple gets premium prices for their hardware because they have something better than Windows; it would seem ridiculous for them to become another commodity hardware vendor.

But Apple may be extremely interested in comparing benchmarks against their machine running Windows in emulation software. That's especially true if it's fast, and although you'd never expect it to win against real hardware, a good showing would be great grist for the mill.

Or they may want to go head to head: OS X apps against Windows apps.

Or maybe it's both.

I really think this will turn out to be related to virtualization. If we see RedHat echoing this move, that would seal it (RedHat has announced that they will be building VM into their product). I just can't see dual boot machines as having much value - if you can't get Windows in a vm, sure, dual boot is the next best choice, but otherwise it sure is not. If your need for Windows is constant, you don't want to reboot. If it's once a week or so, you'll probably buy a cheap Windows box rather than dual boot. Virtualization is the way to go, and I can't imagine that Apple doesn't know that.

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Sun Apr 2 09:35:48 2006:   drag


Ah, lets see here, I have at home right now:

2 computers.. A 'server' and a 'desktop'.

Server runs Debian Stable on Xen for DomU. I have a 'domain controller' style thing running in a Dom0 enviroment.. 2 systems actually. One for the kerberos controller and another for the Ldaps stuff. Those are pretty stripped installs.

Also on that server I have a Debian Testing install I that I have a Plone CMS website on it. (kinda interesting.. The entire thing is written on Zope/Python. Databases, the webserver, etc etc). ("apt-get install plone-site" in debian testing)

On my desktop I have Debian Unstable for my personal machine. On that I have vmplayer installed (some vmware folks contributes to Gnome and the niceness of their gui shows this).

- On this I play a stripped down Ubuntu install that runs Firefox 1.0.7 and 10.5.something for 'secure browsing'.
- I have a Redhat Enterprise 4 install running Zimbra Collabration Suite 3.0. (very nice so far, I bet it kick's exchange's rear end)
- As well as a Suse 10 install showing off the latest version of KDE.

I generally only have one running at a time, however it's nice that I can 'pause' the image just by hitting the 'window close' X up at the corner. So basicly I only have to boot these images up once.

All of this is based on free images provided by Vmware itself, one of their partners, and that Suse is something I found google'ng around and was made by a kde developer.

Without virtualization I would have to have, at a minimum, FIVE machines one of quick I would have to quadrupal boot.

This stuff is some serious fun stuff for people that like to play with computers.



Sun Apr 2 12:21:29 2006:   TonyLawrence


It is fun, but what is likely to bring it to the masses is the packaging I spoke of previously. You can now distribute an app with the exact OS it runs best with, tuned exactly as you want it, ready to run. No installation hassles, no conflicts: install and run. Tremendous support gains and the only downside is increased storage demands (small penalty nowadays).

For now, Microsoft can't easily play in this game (neither can Apple) because of OS licensing restrictions. On the other hand, neither of them can afford NOT to play.

It's going to be interesting.


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