Re: DarwinPorts (MacPorts) Advisory: Stay with at least Xcode 2.2.1 on Intel (if not PPC)

On 27 Aug 2006, at 06:08 , Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> On Aug 27, 2006, at 13:25, Emmanuel Hainry wrote:
>
>> I would not say anomaly, but in my mind, hfs[+x] is comparable with
>> ntfs. A particular system prefers to be installed on such a fs,  
>> but no
>> other system really support it. And it seems Apple is in favour of
>> people having multiple OSes on their machines, so either Apple should
>> implement drivers for hfs for other systems, either continue  
>> supporting
>> ufs.
>
> What gives you the impression that Apple wants people to install  
> multiple OSes? I always get the impression that Apple wants people  
> to run Mac OS X only. The fact that you can now run Windows also  
> should not be taken as any indication that Apple wants you to do  
> this; rather, I believe Apple observed that users wanted to do  
> this, and so made it possible. They provide no support for this  
> however. And I don't think Windows can boot from UFS either (though  
> I'm no expert on Windows). And nowhere have I ever seen any  
> indication that Apple recommends you to run Linux or FreeBSD on Mac  
> hardware either. Finally, it is not Apple's responsibility to  
> provide HFS+ drivers for any other operating system. If the makers  
> of that other operating system want to offer such drivers, then  
> they should do so, but I don't see any compelling reason for Apple  
> to invest any engineering resources into this. Mac OS X, the  
> operating system Apple wants you to use, already supports HFS+, so  
> if I were Apple, that's as far as I would go.


Apple has three businesses:  consumer products (iPod, iTunes);  
professional graphics, audio, and video software (Final Cut Pro,  
Aperture, etc.); and computer systems.  Mac OS is only required to  
support the latter two business areas.  With the shift from Motorola  
and PowerPC based systems to an Intel based architecture, Mac OS  
becomes less important to its computer systems business.

 From the perspective of Apple's computer systems business, I doubt  
that they care whether Linux, Windows, or Mac OS is booted.  The role  
of Mac OS changes from being a necessity to sell computer systems to  
a marketing tool to demonstrate the quality and reliability of the  
hardware and to support Apple's professional software market where it  
demonstrates what can be achieved using Apple computer systems.

Of course, this is only the view of a crufty, old software engineer  
sitting on the sidelines who thinks that Apple should not be wasting  
resources on Pages, Keynote, etc.  It would be more fruitful to spend  
the resources on supporting NeoOffice.  This would provide Mac OS  
with software that can actually be used to share documents with the  
rest of the world.  This would eliminate one of the major reasons for  
attempting to run Windows on Apple hardware.



Merton Campbell Crockett
[email protected]