[Tfug] Why Desktop Linux Holds Its Own Against OS X | bMighty.com

[Zack Williams]

> I think OS X owes a considerable bit to the open source
> world and probably wants to acknowledge that (I think many
> of the "key people" on their team have open source ties
> and backgrounds)

I think it's also to jumpstart technology adoption of standards
they're using.  The CalDAV standard had basically no functional server
software until apple released a free server implementation, and now
Google and various other vendors support it.    The same should go for
the CardDAV and OpenCL standards in their 10.6 release.

>> the fact that they don't support older OS releases as long as
>> I'd like are annoying.
>
> I don't imagine you'll see many folks in the commercial world
> pumping many resources into older OS's when the typical
> business cycle is O(3 yrs) or less.  It just doesn't make sense
> economically ("What?  We have to spend re$ource$ supporting an
> older product with NO associated revenue stream just to help
> keep these people from buying our *new* product???")

That's totally true, and the case through the entire industry.  I bet
Microsoft wishes they did a worse job supporting XP, as that would
have made Vista seem so much more attractive - their biggest
competition isn't Linux or OS X - it's old versions of their own
software.   I think we'll still see XP around in 10-15 years, even
longer in the embedded market, which is still running DOS right now...

>> I support free operating systems - often an OpenBSD, FreeBSD,
>> OpenSolairs or Linux box is the appropriate solution for
>> meeting someones needs. But for an end user who wants to get
>> work done with a minimum of problems, OS X is a pretty slick
>> solution.
>
> I think this is what many FOSS folks miss.  Most people buying
> and using computers just want to get some work done.  They
> aren't zealots.  They don't care about the philosophical issues
> surrounding the whole FOSS idealogy.  They just want to get
> a job done with the minimum amount of hassle (time/cost).

Exactly.  And that's where vendors can make their money.   I spent a
good bit of time talking to one of the executives of Codeweavers at
MacWorld -  their entire product is "Make what we had work on the new
system, with minimal hassle", and to supply support and fixes for
specific issues in Wine.   More than 50% of their revenue at this
point comes from their Mac products, mainly because the attitude of
people who buy a Mac have proven that they are willing to pay for
something that gives them value.

Note that I still think the ideological points made by the FSF, etc.
are still valid.   Business people simply don't care about ideology
(or following software licenses...).

> I.e., give them another similar/better car and they'll
> switch OVERNIGHT!

Thus explaining the 1-2% marketshare growth year over year  for Apple
recently (Vista helped).

>> In terms of cost, Apple doesn't make crap, and thus
>> their machines aren't cheap.  What really makes them a
>> winner is that the long term support costs are much less
>> than Windows.
>
> OTOH, if you are planning on replacing your computer
> in ~3 years, how much do people really think about support
> costs?  From what I have seen, Mac purchasers tend to
> "underbuy" their hardware.  *If* new software/OS releases
> there are as bloated as in the MS world, it seems like this
> would be an even bigger issue for Mac users ("Boy, my
> machine was slow before but now it is *dreadful*!")

Apple has done a lot to speed up their OS in each new release. Some of
this is design -  Launchd runs startup scripts on demand and in
parallel, so disparate things like network initialization and starting
up the GUI can happen simultaneously.    Not having to run antivirus
software is another huge benefit.  Software is compiled with the
minimum hardware requirements in mind (10.5's PPC binaries are G4 and
later specific). No crapware comes in the default install.

The design choices for Apple's machines run fairly high end. Apple has
never shipped a Celeron or Core-based Pentium processor in any of it's
machines.   Every Mac since 2006 uses Gigabit ethernet, including the
laptops.     I do wish they had a middle of the road single quad core
processor machine, but that would cut into their other product lines,
which is why it's unlikely they'd do it.

Of course, that doesn't stop people from buying the low end MacBook
to run Adobe CS4...

> [N.B.  This is more of a question than a statement.
> I don't know how bad the bloat-curve looks in the Mac
> world.  But, in the MS world it is a really heavy tax!]

My MacBook Pro's graphics chip died last week (nVidia 8600M chipset
failure), so I'm typing this on a 5+ year old Powerbook G4 running
10.5.  With enough RAM, most Macs (and almost all computers) are fine
running everything but games and media creation software.

- Zack