Get APLawrence.com by RSSGive in to temptation
2006/12/30
Quote:
This analysis was conceived when the coauthors discovered we'd each
been independently seriously tempted to buy a Mac Mini, and realized
what that temptation implied.
Eric Steven Raymond and Rob Landley at
World Domination 201
That article is about what Linux needs to do to "win the desktop war" and is worth reading. While written for and with prejudice toward Linux, it intelligently examines Windows and Mac OS X and their possible future.
As much as I would like to read this and have hope for Linux desktops, I think it actually inadvertently makes a stronger argument for Mac OS X. It's not just the quote above, though I do think that is an extremely telling admission: both of these authors are strongly tied to Linux and Open Source politics and yet they were tempted by Mac. That's roughly comparable to a Vatican Bishop confessing that Wiccan theology has a lot to offer or a right wing conservative Republican saying that he'd been tempted to run as a Libertarian. Mac's are tempting, but it is more than a little surprising for Eric Raymond to say so.
But it's more than that. Their analysis of who is in the best position to take advantage of the coming switch to 64 bit desktops seems to argue much more strongly for Apple Mac's than anyone else. Not that there aren't negatives mentioned, of course: it just seems to me that the overall pictures is strongest for Macs.
There's another interesting snippet here:
Of course Windows has iTunes also, but the authors are right: even I, a person with close to no interest in music, use iTunes. I've even bought music from the iTunes store and of course have ripped what little music I do enjoy off my cd's and into my computer. Media in general is a problem for Linux and the authors recognize that. They also seem to recognize that Apple is very strong here:
Well, Linux isn't really going to lose. Linux already is taking over the server market, and that's probably going to continue: Apple doesn't have much traction there and Microsoft is skidding as usual.
I've said before that a world of Linux servers and Mac desktops has a lot to offer: the Unix underpinnings of both OSes complement each other beautifully and would simplify support tasks enormously. That's a very pretty picture from everyone's point of view: both unsophisticated and highly technical users love Macs, the geeks in the server room have their Linux servers but are quite comfortable with the Mac command line because it's exactly the same as Linux, programmers have a very similar environment and interfaces that work together well, and support folk have a lot of knowledge cross-pollination. What's not to like?
So, I suggest that Eric and Rob give in to temptation and do what I do in my home office: Linux servers and Mac desktops. It's an easy, painless switch, and I actually think it could have benefits for Linux: if more Linux programmers started concentrating on that Mac desktop/Linux server model (and vice-versa), it would hurt Microsoft and help strengthen both Linux and Apple.
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Sun Dec 31 12:47:05 2006: Subject: Drag
Raymond has come off as a bit of a nutter lately.
Essentially what he is telling people to do is more or less break the law. What he wants is to have people setup their OSes to play as much multimedia as possible. However, most Linux distros work by anonymous downloads.. you download the cdrom iso image, burn the installation disk, and install it on your system.
The way licensing for codecs go you wouldn't be allowed to do this, if you licensed it legally. Either it'd cost to much or simply not be allowed under the terms aviable to third party software makers.
It's amazing the sort of contradictions you get when you start to get into multimedia playback stuff.
Linux is amazingly compatable.
One of the best media playback applications aviable to OS X and Windows users is VLC. VLC allows playback for a wider variety of audio and visual codecs then any other application aviable, bar none. Of course VLC originated as a Linux application. A school project actually and it still most capable in Linux. It plays more different types of files and works with more different types of hardware in Linux then in OS X or Windows.
Then for actual codec support you have the ffmpeg project and it's wonderfull libavcodec. Libavcodec is a multicodec er codec that is able to support a wide veriaty of video and audio protocols.
Wmv, avi, quicktime, mpeg4, divx, xvid, h.264, mp3, ogg, vorbis, flac, realvideo, etc etc. You name it, whatever container, whatever video type, whatever audio type, it is very likely to support it. And not only does it support it, when combined with mplayer, it provides lower cpu usage and higher visual quality then any sort of propriatory codec that it supports.
Works as well on PowerPC as ia32 as AMD64.
Then not only playback, but encoding. It's best at mpeg4 codecs.. stuff that people typically call 'Xvid' or 'Divx' formats.. and does as good as a job or better job then any sort of commercially aviable product.
The legal barriers are still there, though. It's not a level playing feild and codec people are never going to provide a licensing sceme that will work with open source software. They want to have controls to extract royalties and control end users. Any sort of distro that provides legal playback will be banned from ever distributing it's OS free of charge, and that is just not how Linux works.
As far as 64bit-ness goes.. Linux is _there_. Just this weekend I setup a 64bit machine for my brother for doing A/V stuff. Used 64studio for the base install, which was upgraded to track Debian Etch. The only gotcha was Flash support, which is only aviable as 32bit propriatory plugin to firefox... So I installed the ia32 compatability libraries, uninstalled the default 64bit firefox, and downloaded and installed pre-compiled 32bit binary tarball from Mozilla's website, used firefox to automaticly install the flash plugin. Done and done.
All the hardware is supported. We had some fun yesterday playing around and mixing sounds and just goofing around learning how to use Ardour, Jackd, Alsa Modular Synth and many other applications.
As far as OS X vs Linux vs Windows, Linux is probably the most mature 64bit system. Cronic driver compatability issues plague Windows XP 64bit, which is now essentially dead except for people that _need_ 64bit for large memory applications. Vista should be a strong 64bit OS, but application and driver compatability problems mean that most OEMs are going to be very hesitent to ship 64bit versions.. Which is a good thing for OS X and Linux since Microsoft's lock-in DRM sceme is designed to only work with the signed drivers aviable to Vista 64bit users.
Also with Virtualization Linux is now coming on very strong (KVM going to be aviable by default, for instance). It's obvious nowadays that maintaining binary driver backwards compatability through software complexity is a lost cause in the long term. This is something that was obvious to IBM for decades and OS X exploited early on in it's life with it's 'Classic Mode' and more recently with it's Rosetta PPC compatability.
Unfortunately for Microsoft there is a still large culture in Microsoft that beleives that virtualization causes unnacceptable compromises and usability issues for end users. Many of the most senior and most experienced developers in the company still beleive the only way forward is through backward bug-for-bug compatability with older operating systems. With Vista it's showing that the futurist must-not-be-bogged-down in backward compatability are starting to win out a bit more, but they are doing in a sort of "we say it should work, even if it probably won't" sort of approach.
See here for some examples:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/06/999999.aspx
Very smart guy. Says that backward compatability is crucial for adoption, his example is a company that maintains thousands of scripts and programs throughout their business.. Upgrading them to latest versions of Windows will take a minimal of 3 years...
Sun Dec 31 13:56:01 2006: Subject: TonyLawrence
Backward compatibility is important: to Microsoft most of all. Linux and Mac can afford to be much looser about that because they just don't have the installed base and therefor don't have as much to lose.
If Microsoft threw away as much back-comp as Apple did with OS X, they'd effectively go a long way toward leveling the playing field, which is not something they can afford to do.
The issue of 64 bit isn't who has it now, it's whose 64 bit is going to drive the re-buy cycle that will be from consumer demand.
As to licensing, yes, you are right. ESR sees that, and just doesn't see any way around it. He (and Linux) are in a catch-22 trap because of this. So it comes down to Mac or Windows..
Sun Dec 31 14:37:45 2006: Subject: anonymous
The political analogy is an interesting one, although it was probably meant as a joke. I'm not sure it's a close one. I think some conservatives probably would think that to see political and social life in terms of an abstract absolute - in this case "liberty"; it could equally well be another (e.g, "equality") - is tempting but ultimately unsatisfactory. It's tempting because it simplifies (or appears to simplify) many questions. And Liberty as a banner is particularly attractive to us in the West, because freedom (as a social experience not an abstraction) is very much part of our history and culture.
I think Mac OS X is "tempting" to ESR because as it desktop environment it works so well. It's ultimately unsatisfactory to him, because he has what he believes to be a principled objection to closed-source software. While he doesn't make as much of this as the "free software" advocates do and prefers to take a pragmatic line, that doesn't mean that he doesn't at bottom share their viewpoint. Here the temptation to run Mac OS X is a temptation not to pursue what looks like the best solution in practical terms in favor of what is effectively the libertarian solution - the one that maximizes (or is believed to maximize) freedom conceived in rather abstract terms.
Is the overall picture strongest for Macs? I'm not sure. This is what Eric Raymond seems to think - as I read him, he's saying that technologically it is ready *now*, and I think he's probably right. But, as he says, what cripples OS X as the potentially winning OS is that it isn't just available as an OS and perhaps isn't ever likely to be; consequently, it's doomed to the margins because Apple can't realistically supply the bulk of the hardware used on the desktop worldwide. But Apple wants to sell hardware, as well as OS X, and seems to be doing quite nicely, thank you, doing that.
The other interesting - and rather horrifying - recent essay is Peter Gutmann's:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Gutmann thinks that Microsoft's incorporation of Windows Content Protection in Vista could prove to be the "longest suicide note in history". One can only hope he's right. But in the meantime, he says, it spells expense and trouble for all, including those not even running Windows.
Sun Dec 31 20:12:05 2006: Subject: TonyLawrence
Well, actually the right wing does share some values with libertarians: they like limited government as much as libertarians do.. the difference is the areas where we think government interference is necessary and justified.. so it wasn't entirely a joke, no.
As to Apple being crippled by not supporting widely available hardware, I'm not sure that's all that damaging: the pricing differential isn't all that much anymore except at the very low end, and even the middle is getting so cheap: both A and B have reached the level where price doesn't matter.. it's not quite that low yet, but it is very, very close.
Sun Sep 20 12:04:52 2009: Subject: TonyLawrence
Almost three years later now.
We're getting close to the beginning of the end here. Windows 7 is probably the most important factor in he "what happens next" equation. If it's a flop, Google (which means Linux) and Apple will rise quickly to have their own cataclysmic battle years later. If it's a resounding success (doubtful), Microsoft will be unassailable for many years.
I think it will be something in between, not a flop, but mildly disappointing. That will extend the tension until something else happens - a stunning move by Apple, a paradigm shift by Google, or a dark horse coming out of nowhere (very unlikely).
We should have a pretty good idea before 2010.
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