New x86-based Macs are out!

[kenn michael]

I think the main problem with all of this is the cold reality that the sum of us pro music users don't nearly make a dent in the sales Apple gets from its consumer audience. For an average consumer, since iLife and iWork is already native, and since everything else (photoshop, office, etc...) runs well enough in Rosetta, the intel macs will work just fine for them. Our needs are different, and we're not the majority. We're just all excited that there are faster Macs and we want to take advantage of that, but for the moment, a Dual 2.3 or 2.7 or Quad 2.5 will NOT be slower than these intel Macs.

[birrbits]

Jean Phillipe Gassee and the crew of 22 former Apple engineers who built BeOS and the BeBox certainly thought otherwise. They hoped that their built-from-scratch streaming media oriented OS would become the next MacOS and the audio community got behind them - Emagic and Steinberg announced Logic and Nuendo for BeOS a few years back. The silly twat that was running Apple at the time chose the more corporate oriented OSX - look at the huge sales into the corporate world that the Mac has achieved since then!

Just to clarify a few points, Steve Jobs was the 'twat' you are refering to & the corporate OS that was adopted was the brainchild of Steve's former company NeXt...OSX. The decision to adopt it as the new OS makes alot more sense when seen from the perspective of Steve's wallet.

I personally don't think much of mac's either way. I have used them from time to time in my graphic artist days. I do agree, however, that killing BeOS was the dumbest move Apple ever made. To further clarify, the Be crew was working for Apple at the time (not contracted, they were Apple employees). They left to form Be, Inc after the OS NeXt announcement was made and ported thier work to the PC.

[Reverse Engineer]

I wonder what apple are up to with the final cut studio "universal" package. And why are they offering crossgrades to logic users? Seems like they want to streamline their product range (more than likely i'm talking through my arse though...)

[whyterabbyt]

Just to clarify a few points...
(Hope you dont mind)

I do agree, however, that killing BeOS was the dumbest move Apple ever made.

Apple had nothing to do with it.

To further clarify, the Be crew was working for Apple at the time (not contracted, they were Apple employees).They left to form Be, Inc after the OS NeXt announcement was made and ported thier work to the PC.

Jobs returned to Apple in '97 after Apple purchased NeXT in '96. Be Inc. itself had already been formed in 1990/1991 by Jean Louis Gassee and a couple of other ex-Apple people, and the first developer systems running BeOS shipped in '94 on Be's own hardware design (The BeBox) based on the same PPC processor family as the Macs were using. Around '96 it was widely rumoured that Apple were interested in BeOS, since it was working on Apple's Common Hardware Reference Platform, (basically a spec for 'open' Mac type systems) but Apple bought NeXT instead, and Jobs set about replacing Apple's intended 'Rhapsody' OS with a revamped version of the NeXT OS. (He also killed off the idea of anyone but Apple making Mac hardware, as the CHRP would have allowed)

Eventually BeOS ported BeOS to generic PC hardware by about '98, since it was a much bigger market, but by then they'd lost impetus, and they weren't making much in the way of sales. Eventually they were bought up by Palm in 2001.

[daverich]

*yawn* - am I the only one who finds these computer-geek-history threads boring?

Yeah I know - I shouldn't bloody well read them then heh.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

[james0tucson]

*yawn* - am I the only one who finds these computer-geek-history threads boring?

I had a prof who actually knew people who worked on the ENIAC project, including a woman who was the keynote speaker at the ceremony where he received his Turing Award. Man, could that guy go ON AND ON about computer folklore, because he'd seen IT ALL. There was an occasional gem, but most of it was BORING AS FCUK.

[birrbits]

Just to clarify a few points...
(Hope you dont mind)

I do agree, however, that killing BeOS was the dumbest move Apple ever made.

Apple had nothing to do with it.

To further clarify, the Be crew was working for Apple at the time (not contracted, they were Apple employees).They left to form Be, Inc after the OS NeXt announcement was made and ported thier work to the PC.

Jobs returned to Apple in '97 after Apple purchased NeXT in '96. Be Inc. itself had already been formed in 1990/1991 by Jean Louis Gassee and a couple of other ex-Apple people, and the first developer systems running BeOS shipped in '94 on Be's own hardware design (The BeBox) based on the same PPC processor family as the Macs were using. Around '96 it was widely rumoured that Apple were interested in BeOS, since it was working on Apple's Common Hardware Reference Platform, (basically a spec for 'open' Mac type systems) but Apple bought NeXT instead, and Jobs set about replacing Apple's intended 'Rhapsody' OS with a revamped version of the NeXT OS. (He also killed off the idea of anyone but Apple making Mac hardware, as the CHRP would have allowed)

Eventually BeOS ported BeOS to generic PC hardware by about '98, since it was a much bigger market, but by then they'd lost impetus, and they weren't making much in the way of sales. Eventually they were bought up by Palm in 2001.

ahh, thanks for the clarification...
I'm still left with the impression that Jobs interest in NeXt as an OS was more than a bit personal.

I did hear about the hardware kill off, didnt that start with Apple refusing to release g3 specifications? (didnt this effectively kill BeOS on the mac side)

yes, computer folklore is boring.

[michat]

Apple have publicly stated: NO you won't be able to buy/crack OSX to run on normal PC's, and YES, they will allow dual-booting into Windows or OS X on Apple MacIntels, or at least won't actively prevent.

So in theory, your fast, uber-cool, sleek, *powerful* macIntel laptops can run windows *and* OS X.

[michat]

Apple has done it again......

Smart bastards they be.....

A lot of people already had machines that could run Logic and Sonar. They were called PC's. Then one day Logic magically stopped working on PC's. Forgot how that happened exactly.

I think Apple should cooperate with Micosoft and make sure both OS's work flawlessly together on the same machine.

Ah yeah!

[egbert]

Jean Phillipe Gassee and the crew of 22 former Apple engineers who built BeOS and the BeBox certainly thought otherwise. They hoped that their built-from-scratch streaming media oriented OS would become the next MacOS and the audio community got behind them - Emagic and Steinberg announced Logic and Nuendo for BeOS a few years back. The silly twat that was running Apple at the time chose the more corporate oriented OSX - look at the huge sales into the corporate world that the Mac has achieved since then!

Just to clarify a few points, Steve Jobs was the 'twat' you are refering to & the corporate OS that was adopted was the brainchild of Steve's former company NeXt...OSX. The decision to adopt it as the new OS makes alot more sense when seen from the perspective of Steve's wallet.

Are you suggesting Jobs bought his own company from himself? That did not happen. Gil Amelio had replaced Spindler and Gil was a former NatSemi CEO with a reputation for cost cutting but not knowing a whole lot about IT - like Lou Gerstner who ran IBM around that time.

Amelio invited Jobs back onto the Apple board and negotiated with Gassee and then Jobs for the purchase of a real operating system after Apple had spent upwards of $500 Mill on trying to develop one themselves (ie a decent protected mode, multi-tasking OS - the much vaunted inhouse project was called Copland and was at that stage many years late).

In the end they bought Next and not Be and Jobs manouvered Amelio out of the company in short order (no great loss). In other words, Amelio had apparently not watched enough horror movies because he made the cardinal error of inviting the vampire into his house. There has been debate over whether the financial turn around which Jobs took the credit for was based on the standard business school slash and burn job Amelio did at Apple during his 400 day reign or whether Jobs deserves the credit.

I personally don't think much of mac's either way. I have used them from time to time in my graphic artist days. I do agree, however, that killing BeOS was the dumbest move Apple ever made. To further clarify, the Be crew was working for Apple at the time (not contracted, they were Apple employees). They left to form Be, Inc after the OS NeXt announcement was made and ported thier work to the PC.

Not so - Gassee had flown the coop some time earlier with those guys - what you think they did all that work for another company after dinner and on weekends?

They burned through tens of millions of venture capital - you think VCs fund you for part time work in a fast moving industry like IT. If they don't think you'll work 100 hours a week they won't even take the time to tell you to f**k off.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e
The above confirms Gassee left in 90 and started Be in 91.)

I don't think you achieved a whole lot of "clarification" in your post BTW.

[egbert]

Apple bought NeXT instead, and Jobs set about replacing Apple's intended 'Rhapsody' OS with a revamped version of the NeXT OS.

Nope - Rhapsody was a name applied by Jobs to the trainwreck which resulted when Apple's code collided with NextStep - this was the term used before the name OSX saw the light of day. There was a lot of talk about Blue Box and Yellow Box and I don't think they were talking about eucalypts either.

[egbert]

*yawn* - am I the only one who finds these computer-geek-history threads boring?

Yeah I know - I shouldn't bloody well read them then heh.

There's an idea

[machinesworking]

but for the moment, a Dual 2.3 or 2.7 or Quad 2.5 will NOT be slower than these intel Macs.

Hi Kenn! I'm Micahel at OSXAudio BTW. That's the other thing really, as it stands the PPC tower is boasting a quad G5, hard to beat right away, it's just for those of us who want to use some of the performance oriented mac only pieces of software like Musolomo, (seriously the best free plug in ever, bar none! if you haven't picked it up from Plasq.com do so!) on more than a 1.67 Ghz g4.... hell I have a 1.5, but twice to three times as much power would be nice.

Anyway, I promised myself I wouldn't buy one until at least Live 5, GURU, and Zebra 2 were running on it. Also, it would be really smart to wait until next year and get one that could take on a ton of Reactor ensembles. Just get a PC with an Athelon for the studio and run my Native Instruments stuff from there......... I'm a perpetual gear tweaker .......

[birrbits]

I don't think you achieved a whole lot of "clarification" in your post BTW.

I dunno, i learned you know alot more about Apple history than I would ever want to know
I'll just blame my ignorance on some bad press & a fading memory. One point that still confuses me however, NextStep was never really a corporate OS, was it? I thought it was aimed at scientists & the like.

[egbert]

I don't think you achieved a whole lot of "clarification" in your post BTW.

I dunno, i learned you know alot more about Apple history than I would ever want to know
I'll just blame my ignorance on some bad press & a fading memory. One point that still confuses me however, NextStep was never really a corporate OS, was it? I thought it was aimed at scientists & the like.

It was a BSD Unix based OS with a neato graphical front end. It had great frameworks for app building but no intelligible marketting ideas behind it. For the first few years at Next, Steve J focussed on building cool factories to make cool looking 10k$ black boxes and never really worried that much about who was going to buy them - I kid you not. He was able to flatter himself that he remained a "player" in the industry but really it made no business sense -- unless a big player ended up adopting it for the masses.

Steve had $100 mill in the bank when he cashed his Apple holdings and between Next and what became known as Pixar he was burning through it at about 10 mill a year. He was saved just in time by the geniuses at Pixar finally generating money - bigtime - and his Next folly also turned to gold when he sold the company and its assets to Apple - the Next staff came on board too.

Next got sizable amounts of financial backing from Canon at one stage and stopped making its own Next Cubes (how many were ever sold? - must be real collectors items now) and sold a version that ran on the 486 and onward Intel stuff. It was reputed to be a good OS and programming environment but was not really making money.

The corporate thing - Amelio presented the fact that NextStep was a mature OS ready for prime time in the corporate world as part of his reason for choosing NextStep over BeOS. BeOS was much more advanced since it was conceived and designed in the 90s, but less mature. Unix is 70s technology at base with everything else built on top.

Given the lengthy timeframe over which Apple got a decent version of OSX to market my guess BeOS could have easily been brought up to speed. Wikipedia says Gassee demanded 400 mill and that put Amelio off - but then he paid slightly more for Next.
On the BeBox with dual 60 - 66 MHz PPC 601s, BeOS wowed the nerds at computer shows with demos of it running several video streams simultaneously. Imagine what it might have done on todays hardware ...

Gassee replaced Jobs as head of Macintosh development so there was no love lost there. He was also a scathing opponent of the licencing of the MacOS. So if his OS had won I wonder what the political landscape at Apple would look like now. Steve certainly knows how to work a crowd so I think his almost messianic return to Apple has delivered something important beyond the technical merits of his OS - just not necessarily for guys like us who want to work with audio and video.