Post by thread:[OT] To buy a Mac Clone?

In the last couple of days I was playing with Leopard to get it installed on my Dell laptop. More or less it works now except the sound and that I can't get the screen on my LCD, only on an external monitor. What I was thinking of that if Apple would make OS installable on - at least on selected - other hardwares than Mac then I think in long term they could achieve higher profit as so many user want the OS but does not want to replace the existing hardware - or does not want to pay that much. In Short term in the other hand they would loose money as some people would choose cheap hardware from other companies, but look at Microsoft, they are not rich because of hardware manufacturing. What do you think? Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Shawn Tan <spam_OUTshawn.tanTakeThisOuTaeste.net> wrote: {Quote hidden}> On Monday 21 April 2008 00:44:18 Xiaofan Chen wrote: > > Apple killed clones 11 years ago. 11 years later, another one is now > trying > > to be in this niche market. Will Apple allow this to continue? I do not > > think so. Apple will probably hit back with law suit or similar tactics > to > > shut down Psystar. > > Possibly a hoax: > http://gizmodo.com/380488/psystar-exposed-looks-like-a-hoax > > -- > with metta, > Shawn Tan > > Aeste Works (M) Sdn Bhd - Engineering Elegance > http://www.aeste.net > -

On 4/21/08, Tamas Rudnai <.....tamas.rudnaiKILLspam@spam@gmail.com> wrote: > In the last couple of days I was playing with Leopard to get it installed on > my Dell laptop. More or less it works now except the sound and that I can't > get the screen on my LCD, only on an external monitor. I believe that is against Apple's license... > What I was thinking of that if Apple would make OS installable on - at least > on selected - other hardwares than Mac then I think in long term they could > achieve higher profit as so many user want the OS but does not want to > replace the existing hardware - or does not want to pay that much. In Short > term in the other hand they would loose money as some people would choose > cheap hardware from other companies, but look at Microsoft, they are not > rich because of hardware manufacturing. What do you think? > I believe this will not work. Apple earns money by being unique (not open). They win mainly in the nice industrial design. I believe their success in the Mac OS X side is partly (even mainly) due to the poor execution of Microsoft in Vista. There is also the pull-in effect by the success of Apple in iPod. Apple is a great company, but I would not pay for a Mac or an iPod. I do not need an fashion accessor like iPod. And my PC (with XP) is good enough or even much better than the Mac at work or at home. With an Mac, I will still need to install Windows at work or at home. Why bother? Xiaofan

On Apr 20, 2008, at 11:25 PM, Tamas Rudnai wrote: > What I was thinking of that if Apple would make OS installable on - > at least > on selected - other hardwares than Mac then I think in long term > they could > achieve higher profit as so many user want the OS but does not want to > replace the existing hardware - or does not want to pay that much. Maybe. Where does maintaining compatibility stop, though? Microsoft carries with it an incredible legacy of ancient hardware, not to mention hundreds of vendors of CURRENT hardware that they MUST support in order not to piss people off. Apple happily abandons whole technology families as they go on to "better" things... I would NOT want to be on the other side of the support nightmare that would be "selected other hardware", in this age of essential random configuration of wintel PCs. It's a bit of a shame that Apple didn't wait till after the Intel CPU switch to try their experiment with 3rd party hardware; it might have been more successful. But for whatever reason, it WASN'T successful even with the small and tightly controlled set of other "Mac" vendors. I suspect it's just a business that Apple doesn't want to be in. BillW

> I believe that is against Apple's license... Most probably. However, I have many friends who started like this and then finally bought a real Mac - I think if they would not able to try MacOS X out first, they would not bother to buy the legacy product. > Apple earns money by being unique (not open). I remember the ancient time in the '80s when Apple ][ was THE personal computer. It was open architecture, and yes, many Taiwanese companies made clones of it. Commodore in the other hand was not open (and was not as useful as well but that's another issue :-) ) but for some reason Apple copied the idea to not being able to use 3rd party hardware or not being able to clone the motherboard itself. I think it was wrong as in the meantime IBM made the PC which used the idea of Apple ][, it was open and look around now who won. Apple really should open up, it is still not too late. > With an Mac, I will still need to install Windows at work or at home. You can have Microsoft Office for Mac :-) In terms of PIC development I have no idea where to start though? But prettey much everything can be done with Mac as with Win, maybe some unique software (like accounting or other financial ones) was specifically designed for Win that you want to keep, with those you are right. Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 8:26 AM, Xiaofan Chen <xiaofancKILLspamgmail.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> On 4/21/08, Tamas Rudnai <.....tamas.rudnaiKILLspam.....gmail.com> wrote: > > In the last couple of days I was playing with Leopard to get it > installed on > > my Dell laptop. More or less it works now except the sound and that I > can't > > get the screen on my LCD, only on an external monitor. > > I believe that is against Apple's license... > > > What I was thinking of that if Apple would make OS installable on - at > least > > on selected - other hardwares than Mac then I think in long term they > could > > achieve higher profit as so many user want the OS but does not want to > > replace the existing hardware - or does not want to pay that much. In > Short > > term in the other hand they would loose money as some people would > choose > > cheap hardware from other companies, but look at Microsoft, they are not > > rich because of hardware manufacturing. What do you think? > > > > I believe this will not work. Apple earns money by being unique (not > open). > They win mainly in the nice industrial design. I believe their success in > the Mac OS X side is partly (even mainly) due to the poor execution of > Microsoft in Vista. There is also the pull-in effect by the success of > Apple > in iPod. > > Apple is a great company, but I would not pay for a Mac or an iPod. I do > not need an fashion accessor like iPod. And my PC (with XP) is good > enough or even much better than the Mac at work or at home. With an > Mac, I will still need to install Windows at work or at home. Why bother? > > > Xiaofan > -

> Apple happily abandons whole technology families as they go on to "better" things... I > would NOT want to be on the other side of the support nightmare that > would be "selected other hardware", in this age of essential random > configuration of wintel PCs. That's what I was trying to claim of: One thing is that if some HW manufacturer could supply preinstalled MacOX then you, as user do not need to worry about HW incompatibility. You get something that all you have to do is to switch it on. In the other hand if some people could modify the BSD based kernel in such a way that is working on most of the commonly used hardware today, then the picture is not as dark as it seems to be. Most probably - as you have said - they are not interested, but I think that's a big mistake. They cannot replace most PCs, but they could replace huge amount of Windows OS' from PCs. Same mistake as IBM made with the OS2 many years ago. Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 8:32 AM, William Chops Westfield <EraseMEwestfwspam_OUTTakeThisOuTmac.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> > On Apr 20, 2008, at 11:25 PM, Tamas Rudnai wrote: > > What I was thinking of that if Apple would make OS installable on - > > at least > > on selected - other hardwares than Mac then I think in long term > > they could > > achieve higher profit as so many user want the OS but does not want to > > replace the existing hardware - or does not want to pay that much. > > Maybe. Where does maintaining compatibility stop, though? Microsoft > carries with it an incredible legacy of ancient hardware, not to > mention hundreds of vendors of CURRENT hardware that they MUST > support in order not to piss people off. Apple happily abandons > whole technology families as they go on to "better" things... I > would NOT want to be on the other side of the support nightmare that > would be "selected other hardware", in this age of essential random > configuration of wintel PCs. > > It's a bit of a shame that Apple didn't wait till after the Intel CPU > switch to try their experiment with 3rd party hardware; it might have > been more successful. But for whatever reason, it WASN'T successful > even with the small and tightly controlled set of other "Mac" > vendors. I suspect it's just a business that Apple doesn't want to > be in. > > BillW > > -

On 4/21/08, Tamas Rudnai <tamas.rudnaispam_OUTgmail.com> wrote: > > With an Mac, I will still need to install Windows at work or at home. > > You can have Microsoft Office for Mac :-) In terms of PIC development I have > no idea where to start though? But prettey much everything can be done with > Mac as with Win, maybe some unique software (like accounting or other > financial ones) was specifically designed for Win that you want to keep, > with those you are right. Mentor Graphics under Mac? No. Company software under Mac? No. MPLAB under Mac? No. Keil under Mac? No. IAR under Mac? No. I can do almost no real work with Mac... Xiaofan

> Mentor Graphics under Mac? No. Company software under Mac? > No. MPLAB under Mac? No. Keil under Mac? No. IAR under Mac? No. What I really meant is while you will face of having software not being ported to Mac, you could have some others that had - or even was originally designed on Mac platform. I agree that an OS itself should not be the reason to change to another one. However, if Apple would make their OS more popular it might happened that more and more software companies would port their products to MacOS as well so at one day you can decide which OS gives you a better stability or usability. If they do not put any effort on it, it will never going to be happened. Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Xiaofan Chen <@spam@xiaofancKILLspamgmail.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> On 4/21/08, Tamas Rudnai <KILLspamtamas.rudnaiKILLspamgmail.com> wrote: > > > With an Mac, I will still need to install Windows at work or at home. > > > > You can have Microsoft Office for Mac :-) In terms of PIC development I > have > > no idea where to start though? But prettey much everything can be done > with > > Mac as with Win, maybe some unique software (like accounting or other > > financial ones) was specifically designed for Win that you want to keep, > > with those you are right. > > Mentor Graphics under Mac? No. Company software under Mac? > No. MPLAB under Mac? No. Keil under Mac? No. IAR under Mac? No. > > I can do almost no real work with Mac... > > Xiaofan > -

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 6:18 PM, Alan B. Pearce <RemoveMEA.B.PearceTakeThisOuTrl.ac.uk> wrote: > >MPLAB under Mac? No. > > Considering the recent job advert that was pointed to here, where microchip > were wanting people with Linux experience to program tools, this is likely > to change, I would suggest. I would bet that Linux will have higher priority than Mac... > > >Keil under Mac? No. IAR under Mac? No. > > But some of the other software houses do produce PIC compilers that work on > Linux based stuff, and from what I have heard, most Linux stuff is often > useable straight out of the box on Macs underlying *nix. > Again, I will then use Linux. And it is not true that most Linux stuff is usable *straight out of the box* on Macs. Many of the Linux software packages have been ported to work on Macs, but not out of the box. That is similar to Windows. Many Linux software have been ported to Windows. Xiaofan

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 6:24 PM, Tamas Rudnai <spamBeGonetamas.rudnaispamBeGonegmail.com> wrote: > I agree that an OS itself should not be the reason > to change to another one. I agree. > However, if Apple would make their OS more popular > it might happened that more and more software companies would port their > products to MacOS as well so at one day you can decide which OS > gives you a better stability or usability. > If they do not put any effort on it, it will never going to be happened. I believe as long as Steve Jobs is there, this will not happen. And I think he is right. If Apple opens Mac OS X to commodity PC hardware, it will suffer. Mac computer sales will go down. Mac OS X bugs will be increased by 1000% because of the buggy hardware out there. Xiaofan

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Funny NYPD <TakeThisOuTfunnynypdEraseMEspam_OUTyahoo.com> wrote: > I will wait until Apple OS replacing Microsoft OS. I don't know when that day will come. Maybe there will be a day Linux will replace a large portion of Microsoft OS. IMHO Mac OS X has no chance to displace Windows. I think Open Office has a better chance to displace Microsoft Office. Office 2007 is a junk according to my wife. Yesterday they had a discussion and Vista+Office 2007 reduced their productivity by 50% compared to XP (or even Vista) +Office 2003 they normally use at school. Xiaofan

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Tamas Rudnai <RemoveMEtamas.rudnaiTakeThisOuTgmail.com> wrote: > > I remember the ancient time in the '80s when Apple ][ was THE personal > computer. It was open architecture, and yes, many Taiwanese companies made > clones of it. Commodore in the other hand was not open (and was not as > useful as well but that's another issue :-) ) but for some reason Apple > copied the idea to not being able to use 3rd party hardware or not being > able to clone the motherboard itself. I think it was wrong as in the > meantime IBM made the PC which used the idea of Apple ][, it was open and > look around now who won. Apple really should open up, it is still not too > late. IBM lost (they sold their PC business to Lenovo). Apple won since it is still alive and doing well. ;-) ;-) ;-) Xiaofan

MS Office always have been a junk :-) But it works and the file format is a "standard" in a meaning of virtually everyone can open up a Word / Excel or PPT document. BTW: In my Gmail ad I just realised that there is an ad like this: *Installing OS X On A PC?<http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BKqhpuJEMSPyWI6qorAP8xqTuC7TOmjOsh-78BMCNtwHQhgMQBBgEIIaPgAIoBjgAUMqF_9ACYPXa6oP8DqABsPqn-AOyAQlnbWFpbC5jb23IAQHaATBodHRwOi8vZ21haWwuY29tLzgyYXc2dW5maXJpb3F5ZGJ0ZzYyeXJreTBwY2VmOWiAAgGoAwHoA98F6AOvAugD4AXoAx7oA9sF&num=4&adurl=www.psystar.com/psystar_openmac_osx86_reinventing_the_wheel.html> *OSX86 Compatible Hardware Platform Get The Full OS X Experience Now! http://www.Psystar.com/OpenMac<http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BKqhpuJEMSPyWI6qorAP8xqTuC7TOmjOsh-78BMCNtwHQhgMQBBgEIIaPgAIoBjgAUMqF_9ACYPXa6oP8DqABsPqn-AOyAQlnbWFpbC5jb23IAQHaATBodHRwOi8vZ21haWwuY29tLzgyYXc2dW5maXJpb3F5ZGJ0ZzYyeXJreTBwY2VmOWiAAgGoAwHoA98F6AOvAugD4AXoAx7oA9sF&num=4&adurl=http://www.psystar.com/psystar_openmac_osx86_reinventing_the_wheel.html> But clicking on it there was a "missing object" error, so it might was not a hoax but they had to remove the page? Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 2:01 PM, Xiaofan Chen <xiaofancEraseME.....gmail.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Funny NYPD <EraseMEfunnynypdyahoo.com> wrote: > > I will wait until Apple OS replacing Microsoft OS. I don't know when > that day will come. > > Maybe there will be a day Linux will replace a large portion of > Microsoft OS. IMHO > Mac OS X has no chance to displace Windows. I think Open Office has a > better > chance to displace Microsoft Office. Office 2007 is a junk according to my > wife. > Yesterday they had a discussion and Vista+Office 2007 reduced their > productivity > by 50% compared to XP (or even Vista) +Office 2003 they normally use at > school. > > Xiaofan > -

Xiaofan I have macpro with dual boot MAC and XP. All of my development software Are for pc and I am sure one day it will be available for mac but no matter What you do there is no way to dump PC. Lots of software are made for PC and Can't be changed that easy. PC is very good OS if there is no internet connection. That's the reason I use mac or linux for internet and Pc for development but I still have internet connection on pc. I have Norton ghost Image any time I see it doesn't work right I restore in 1 hour. Image size is 55 gig very big. I personally like any thing apple makes. Very nice Looking reliable and expensive witch makes sense. Andre {Original Message removed}

Yes, he can use HD up to 132Gbyte. There is a great deal of work I can only do effectively on the Mac. Windows and Linux are not good for everything. cc On Apr 21, 2008, at 3:26 PM, PAUL James wrote: All, Speaking of MAC's and MAC clones, my son has a MAC G3 that apparently has a bad Harddrive. He says it is an IDE HD. Will any off the shelf IDE HD work in this machine? Or does it Have to be a MAC drive? If anyone has the answer to this, would you kindly reply and let me know. Note: He currently has a 4 Gig HD, and is running OS 9 something and OS 10 (OSX?) Thanks and Regards, Jim

> He currently has a 4 Gig HD, and is running OS 9 something and OS 10 (OSX?) I believe Tiger (10.4) still has the G3 support, however, from the latest & greatest Leopard (10.5) DVD they removed the G3 supprt. As far as I know MacOS X needs something like 4 or 5G space on disk? Maybe eariler versions need less? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X Tamas On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:45 PM, Cedric Chang <RemoveMEccEraseMEEraseMEnope9.com> wrote: {Quote hidden}> Yes, he can use HD up to 132Gbyte. > There is a great deal of work I can only do effectively on the Mac. > Windows and Linux are not good for everything. > cc > > On Apr 21, 2008, at 3:26 PM, PAUL James wrote: > > All, > > Speaking of MAC's and MAC clones, my son has a MAC G3 that apparently > has a bad Harddrive. > He says it is an IDE HD. Will any off the shelf IDE HD work in this > machine? Or does it > Have to be a MAC drive? If anyone has the answer to this, would you > kindly reply and let me know. > Note: He currently has a 4 Gig HD, and is running OS 9 something and OS > 10 (OSX?) > > > > Thanks and Regards, > > > Jim > > > > -

On 4/22/08, Andre Abelian <RemoveMEaabelianTakeThisOuTspammason-electric.com> wrote: > I have macpro with dual boot MAC and XP. All of my development software > Are for pc and I am sure one day it will be available for mac but no > matter What you do there is no way to dump PC. Lots of software > are made for PC and > Can't be changed that easy. It is said that MacPro is a well-engineered personal computer. There are even reports that people buy the MacPro and wipe out Mac OS X to install XP SP2. I see a lot of people use dual boot XP SP2 with Mac OS X. I agree this is a good setup albeit quite a bit more expensive. > PC is very good OS if there is no internet > connection. That's the reason I use mac or linux for internet and > Pc for development but I still have internet connection on pc. I have > Norton ghost Image any time I see it doesn't work right I restore in 1 > hour. Image size is 55 gig very big. I personally like any thing apple > makes. Very nice. > Looking reliable and expensive witch makes sense. > I agree that many of the Apple stuff is well designed. Even the failed Mac Cube was looking great. 3 out of our 4 marketing guys bought iPhone when they visited US and they really liked it. The other is a die-hard HTC fan. And Apple iPod looks nice as well except the new square iPod Nano, very ugly compared to the original iPod Nano. However, I am not so convinced of the Mac OS X from what I see and what I read. Maybe I should try it myself. But my various attempts to buy a Mac were all shot down by my wife because of software concerns and the fact it is way too expensive compared to a similar PC. >From my own impression, Windows XP SP2 is really quite stable and I have no problems with it. Actually my 3 year old home computer has an XP SP 2 installation and I do not need a reinstall it so far. It also hosts various Linux distros and FreeBSD which I regularly reinstalled last time. Xiaofan

> However, I am not so convinced of the Mac OS X from > what I see and what I read. Maybe I should try it myself. What I can see now is that it is much faster to work with MacOS X using keyboard shortcuts even completely avoiding using the mouse,.Plus there is no need to reboot the OS from time to time. Also I quite like the idea that it is Unix based so the entire system is well structured and easy to maintain. > But my various attempts to buy a Mac were all shot > down by my wife because of software concerns and > the fact it is way too expensive compared to a similar > PC. I think most of us are like this: "I fancy of that Mac... but that is too expensive..." > From my own impression, Windows XP SP2 is really quite > stable and I have no problems with it. Actually my 3 year old > home computer has an XP SP 2 installation and I > do not need a reinstall it so far. It also hosts various Linux > distros and FreeBSD which I regularly reinstalled last time. With me the experience is the opposite: One Linux distro was on my computer for years without any serious problem, while XP had to be reinstalled each year or so. Now I am playig with Windows SteadyState and maybe with that one I can avoid that, but only time will tell this. MacOS actually quite voulnarable to attacks, not because of the BSD based kernel but because of the Mach based one. But because MacOS is not as popular as Windows, at the moment it is much safer to operate than XP - simply because of MacOS is not attracted by hackers. With XP you need an AV otherwise you get infection quite easy, and every AV slows down the operating speed quite much. With Mac even if you do not use AV you are pretty much ok. Tamas

On 4/22/08, Tamas Rudnai <EraseMEtamas.rudnaispamspamBeGonegmail.com> wrote: > > From my own impression, Windows XP SP2 is really quite > > stable and I have no problems with it. Actually my 3 year old > > home computer has an XP SP 2 installation and I > > do not need a reinstall it so far. It also hosts various Linux > > distros and FreeBSD which I regularly reinstalled last time. I should say I have kept Ubuntu 6.06 from its inception. No need to reinstall. I kept Ubuntu 7.10 as well. Actually I have 7.04 as well. For other distros, normally I was just trying so remove and reinstall was normal. I really would like to try out Fedora 8.0 but it did not work for me (could not boot with FreeBSD in existence). I reinstall Linux normally not because of usability issues, but because I liked to try out new distros. Now I lost the interests to try out other distros and will only use Ubuntu. Maybe I will try out Fedora 9.0. FreeBSD is still lagging behind Linux by quite a lot, especially the USB subsystem which is of interests to me. I got pk2cmd to work under 7-Beta3 with the alternative HPS USB stack. With 7-Release, it failed again. I have also a NetBSD partition but so far I have not played with it much. The reason is that I have not learned the trick to rebuild the kernel so that I can try out PICkit 2. > With me the experience is the opposite: One Linux distro was on my computer > for years without any serious problem, while XP had to be reinstalled each > year or so. That was true for Windows 98SE, but not for XP. Of course there are people who can run Windows 95 or 98SE for years without reinstallation. > Now I am playig with Windows SteadyState and maybe with that one > I can avoid that, but only time will tell this. > MacOS actually quite voulnarable to attacks, not because of the BSD > based kernel but because of the Mach based one. > But because MacOS is not as popular as Windows, at the > moment it is much safer to operate than XP - simply because of > MacOS is not attracted by hackers. Maybe it will now that quite some people say it is the best OS in the world. ;-) > With XP you need an AV otherwise you get infection > quite easy, and every AV slows down the operating > speed quite much. That is true. I still install AVG free just in case. It does not slow down the system by a lot. > With Mac even if you do not use AV you are pretty much ok. Maybe same for Linux even though I will try to keep up with the large quantity of updates (much more than Windows XP). Xiaofan

> On 4/22/08, Tamas Rudnai <RemoveMEtamas.rudnaiKILLspamgmail.com> wrote: > > > With XP you need an AV otherwise you get infection > > quite easy, and every AV slows down the operating > > speed quite much. > From: piclist-bouncesSTOPspamspam_OUTmit.edu [spamBeGonepiclist-bouncesSTOPspamEraseMEmit.edu] On Behalf > Of Xiaofan Chen > Sent: 22 April 2008 10:57 > To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. > Subject: Re: [OT] To buy a Mac Clone? > > That is true. I still install AVG free just in case. It does > not slow down the system by a lot. I can quite honestly say I have never run virus protection (i.e. a real time file scanner) on my home PC which runs XP Pro, though I do a virus scan every week or so. In the last 5 years or so I have not found a single virus on my system. Then again, I don't execute any programs that I don't know or trust. Regards Mike ======================================================================= This e-mail is intended for the person it is addressed to only. The information contained in it may be confidential and/or protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not make any use of this information, or copy or show it to any person. Please contact us immediately to tell us that you have received this e-mail, and return the original to us. Any use, forwarding, printing or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. No part of this message can be considered a request for goods or services. =======================================================================