Microsoft, Apple Sign 5-Year Software Pact: a Dark Cloud is Gathering

[JimmyJazz]

I thought this was an interesting new development in the OS world...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10794396/from/RS.3/

[MetalMusicAddict]

I dont see how this is too big a deal. Maybe for Mac guys that wanna play games.

Most of the Mac guys I know, that's their only gripe. Games. Kinda like us.

Do you see the Mac people going out and buying Windows? I dont. I could be wrong though. I think unless you really wanna play games or need to run pro, windows-only software it wont be that big a deal.

OSX on a normal PC, that will be a big deal.

[mustang]

OSX on a normal PC, that will be a big deal.

Isn't that already possible?

[Arktis]

Last time I checked it was possible on certain hardware with a cracked developer version.

[prizrak]

I don't see it as a big deal, MS allows you to run Linux on your machines (I'm sure they could prevent us if they wanted to but prolly get pawned by the gov't). Besides the Intel based Apple PC's are really just regular desktops now only with some DRM chip that lets it run OS X. Beside Apple had to announce that, they NEED Office for Macs that's one of the very few programs that allows them to still sell their PCs.

[JimmyJazz]

well its interesting to me because the idea of running Windows on a MAC was once insane now its possible. In some way this seems like the end of the MAC as we once knew it.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Beside Apple had to announce that, they NEED Office for Macs
They could try and bite the bullet and develop their own open-office variant.

that's one of the very few programs that allows them to still sell their PCs.
I dont agree. There are a great many software reasons to buy a Mac. Just none of them compelling enough for me. :)

[JimmyJazz]

does this mean we will be able to use x86 Linux on the new macs?

[aysiu]

They could try and bite the bullet and develop their own open-office variant. Nope. Just iWork:
http://www.apple.com/iwork/

[ardchoille]

I don't see it as a big deal, MS allows you to run Linux on your machines ...
Exactly how does M$ "allow" me to run Linux on my machines? I have been running Linux as my only OS for five years.. Microshaft has no say in the matter at all. And, if they did have a say in the matter, I would give up computers altogether before I used their ******, unstable, insecure, brain-dead OS wannabe. Microsoft products are nothing more than garbage.

LONG LIVE LINUX!

[prizrak]

Exactly how does M$ "allow" me to run Linux on my machines? I have been running Linux as my only OS for five years.. Microshaft has no say in the matter at all. And, if they did have a say in the matter, I would give up computers altogether before I used their ******, unstable, insecure, brain-dead OS wannabe. Microsoft products are nothing more than garbage.

LONG LIVE LINUX!
Do you really think it would be impossible for MS to stop you from running another OS? Think Winmodems, nothing would stop them from having winmotherboards, winharddrives and winsomething else. The reason they are not is that they would get seriously owned by the gov't of just about any country you can think off. They are moving towards it tho, with Trusted Computing and DRM anyway.

I dont agree. There are a great many software reasons to buy a Mac. Just none of them compelling enough for me.
One of the things I heard many people who switched to Mac (in the college I used to attend) was that it didn't have all the problems Windows did and still allowed them to run MS Office, iTunes, and Photoshop. There is prolly other software too but the one most people liked was MS Office.

[poofyhairguy]

Microsoft also said it had signed a five-year pact with Apple to develop versions of Office for Macs and announced plans to release a version of Office that will be compatible with Apple's new Intel-based computers.

Proof, once and for all, that MS does NOT see Apple and OSX as a competition. Even after a switch to Intel (the thing many Mac zealots see as their chance to topple Ms).

It makes sense to me though. Always has. Ford does not fear BMW for the same reasons....

[mstlyevil]

Microsoft also said it had signed a five-year pact with Apple to develop versions of Office for Macs and announced plans to release a version of Office that will be compatible with Apple's new Intel-based computers.

Proof, once and for all, that MS does NOT see Apple and OSX as a competition. Even after a switch to Intel (the thing many Mac zealots see as their chance to topple Ms).

It makes sense to me though. Always has. Ford does not fear BMW for the same reasons....

On C-net today the Mac zealots were proclaiming to the high heavens that Mac would now rule the world and that Windows somehow made Intel processors slow and only OSX could let Intel live to it's true potential. It was very entertaining reading these comments considering Linux outperfomed OSX on the power pc processors according to some of the benchmarks I read on it recently. These zealots do not understand that Apple and Microsoft are now partners on DRM and other technology being developed. If I remember correctly, Steve Jobs and uncle Bill buried the hatchet in the late 90's when MSFT donated money to Apple to bail them out and keep them from going under. They both annouced it in a joint press conference for gods sake. If Gates felt Apple was a threat to MSFT does anyone believe he would have actually done such a thing?

BTW Gates and Jobs kissed and made up for those of you that think The Pirates of Silicon Valley is the gospel truth.

[Iandefor]

Freaky. I wonder how this is going to influence Linux's market share?

Also, I wonder how long it will take Apple to migrate to a 64-bit architecture, if they ever plan on it?



On C-net today the Mac zealots were proclaiming to the high heavens that Mac would now rule the world and that Windows somehow made Intel processors slow and only OSX could let Intel live to it's true potential. It was very entertaining reading these comments considering Linux outperfomed OSX on the power pc processors according to some of the benchmarks I read on it recently. Interesting.

[BoyOfDestiny]

Exactly how does M$ "allow" me to run Linux on my machines? I have been running Linux as my only OS for five years.. Microshaft has no say in the matter at all. And, if they did have a say in the matter, I would give up computers altogether before I used their ******, unstable, insecure, brain-dead OS wannabe. Microsoft products are nothing more than garbage.

LONG LIVE LINUX!

Agreed, unless you buy a microsoft PC. A what? The old xbox... However, people got linux running on that despite their best efforts...

Although the xbox 360 is another story:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2200

As for lame windows only style parts (like a winmodem), either reverse engineer it, or better yet, buy something else. Don't give your money to companies that manufacture stuff like that.

If not for Linux, I would no longer consider them a hobby and a tool. It would just be another run of the mill consumer device. I like the freedom and general purpose nature of a computer (specifically a Personal Computer)

Here is a nice GNU link:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Enjoy!

[prizrak]

MS is very much keeping Apple around to fight off the courts. Whenever they are threated with anti-trust action they point to Apple and go "see there is another company that is competing with us we must make a better product since no one uses theirs".
Apple switching to x86 makes no difference whatsoever, Linux runs on everything that even remotely resembles a CPU including x86 and the desktop market share of Linux is like 2.5% according to the latest statistic I ran across (it didn't even say Linux it just said "Other") of course there is lies, damn lies, and statistics and enough people dual boot to make those statistics not super accurate but I would say that Linux maybe holds like between 2-5% of the desktop market not to mention that it runs ALOT faster than Windows especially employing voodoo such as XFCE or Fluxbox. So for anyone who thinks Apple will gain any significant market share from going x86 you are sorely mistaken.

[prizrak]

Agreed, unless you buy a microsoft PC. A what? The old xbox... However, people got linux running on that despite their best efforts...

Although the xbox 360 is another story:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2200

As for lame windows only style parts (like a winmodem), either reverse engineer it, or better yet, buy something else. Don't give your money to companies that manufacture stuff like that.

If not for Linux, I would no longer consider them a hobby and a tool. It would just be another run of the mill consumer device. I like the freedom and general purpose nature of a computer (specifically a Personal Computer)

Here is a nice GNU link:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Enjoy!

You are missing the point, yes I could buy hardware that will run on Linux (if it's even available). My point was that MS could make it extremely hard for you to run anything else on a PC that comes with Windows. There are many people shying away from Linux because w/e hardware they got sitting in their box is unsupported by it and they don't see a point in getting new hardware just cuz they wanna try out another OS. Add to that the TPM/DRM platform that will be supported on the hardware level and it would be fairly easy for MS to lock any other OS out of your machine.
/fantasy rant
Imagine amazon.com and newegg.com not accepting your credit cards unless you are on TPM enabled machine with Windows on it. Imagine your bank not letting you check your balance of pay your bills online unless you have TPM Windows. You get the picture. How long would it take for Linux to "fall off" the desktop? I don't want to use Windows but I might have to if the above becomes the case. Make no mistake a monopolistic company as unethical and predatory as MS can implement many hurdles for people to move to other products and if they know they can get away with it they will do it.

[BoyOfDestiny]

You are missing the point, yes I could buy hardware that will run on Linux (if it's even available). My point was that MS could make it extremely hard for you to run anything else on a PC that comes with Windows. There are many people shying away from Linux because w/e hardware they got sitting in their box is unsupported by it and they don't see a point in getting new hardware just cuz they wanna try out another OS. Add to that the TPM/DRM platform that will be supported on the hardware level and it would be fairly easy for MS to lock any other OS out of your machine.
/fantasy rant
Imagine amazon.com and newegg.com not accepting your credit cards unless you are on TPM enabled machine with Windows on it. Imagine your bank not letting you check your balance of pay your bills online unless you have TPM Windows. You get the picture. How long would it take for Linux to "fall off" the desktop? I don't want to use Windows but I might have to if the above becomes the case. Make no mistake a monopolistic company as unethical and predatory as MS can implement many hurdles for people to move to other products and if they know they can get away with it they will do it.

Did you read the xbox 360 link and GNU link at the bottom? I mean I can see they want to do something like this. But in the current enviroment it isn't possible. They have to make non-drm devices totally illegal (the gov has/is trying). If that were the case, plus ignoring all the anti-competitve problems that would arise...

Also, I'm thinking in a somewhat U.S centric way in respect of this. There is a whole world out there... China is even making their own MIPS style chip (horrible example I know, but yeah...)

I did see your point. I just don't think it will sneak up on us.

[prizrak]

Did you read the xbox 360 link and GNU link at the bottom? I mean I can see they want to do something like this. But in the current enviroment it isn't possible. They have to make non-drm devices totally illegal (the gov has/is trying). If that were the case, plus ignoring all the anti-competitve problems that would arise...

Also, I'm thinking in a somewhat U.S centric way in respect of this. There is a whole world out there... China is even making their own MIPS style chip (horrible example I know, but yeah...)

I did see your point. I just don't think it will sneak up on us.
To tell you the truth I'm not too worried about it sneaking up on us I'm worried about it happening. I'm very pessimistic especially when it comes to MS as they have proven that pessimism is the best way to deal with them :/

[Derek Djons]

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves.
Source of message (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10794396/from/RS.3/)

My colleagues and I discussed many times about this possibility. First of all it's weird because ten hours ago I read a completely other on a website which stated that the new Apple Macbook Pro for example would have a piece of hardware build in in order to exclude Windows from ever seeing daylight on a Macbook Pro.

But okay, it's not that difficult to fool a chip, reflash it or even swap it. I can imagine that Geeks and Tweakers will have months of fun working on all kind of 'Windows' project. But for serious business I don't see a future (especially) if Apple isn't going to support it (thank God!).

The wonderful thing about Apple hardware is it's software. Without it, it's just a normal notebook (tough of course beautifully designed). So what's the kick to buy a $2000,- costing notebook and install Windows on it facing the same crap as ever:

- Installing drivers before you can start working.
- Not be able to switch from language.
- Limiting resources since Windows is not that light.
- Exposing yourself to all kinds of trojans, virus and spyware.
- And of course more...

I think if it would be easily possible to install Windows on a Macbook Pro or future Apple computers people would really see what kind of difficult and outdated OS they have been using all these years.

[prizrak]

Source of message (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10794396/from/RS.3/)

My colleagues and I discussed many times about this possibility. First of all it's weird because ten hours ago I read a completely other on a website which stated that the new Apple Macbook Pro for example would have a piece of hardware build in in order to exclude Windows from ever seeing daylight on a Macbook Pro.

But okay, it's not that difficult to fool a chip, reflash it or even swap it. I can imagine that Geeks and Tweakers will have months of fun working on all kind of 'Windows' project. But for serious business I don't see a future (especially) if Apple isn't going to support it (thank God!).

The wonderful thing about Apple hardware is it's software. Without it, it's just a normal notebook (tough of course beautifully designed). So what's the kick to buy a $2000,- costing notebook and install Windows on it facing the same crap as ever:

- Installing drivers before you can start working.
- Not be able to switch from language.
- Limiting resources since Windows is not that light.
- Exposing yourself to all kinds of trojans, virus and spyware.
- And of course more...

I think if it would be easily possible to install Windows on a Macbook Pro or future Apple computers people would really see what kind of difficult and outdated OS they have been using all these years.

Now that Apple switched to the x86 chip (I know it's Intel for now but how long till it can run on AMD?) I'd never ever ever ever get an Apple machine, it's simply not worth it. Before I was considering their laptops for the battery life and lack of heat (compared to x86) but now if I'm gonna be stuck with the same x86 chip I might as well spend the money for much better hardware or if I want overpriced crap get a Panasonic Toughbook, which I'm sure will support Linux since it was designed for the military.
The best thing about Apple was never the software, if that was the case you wouldn't see Ubuntu PPC edition used at all. It was always the hardware, the PPC chips combined with a short list of hardware made it a very nice and stable computing environment with the x86 chip there is no point at all especially since the G5 was 64 bit and Intels aren't......

[BoyOfDestiny]

Now that Apple switched to the x86 chip (I know it's Intel for now but how long till it can run on AMD?) I'd never ever ever ever get an Apple machine, it's simply not worth it. Before I was considering their laptops for the battery life and lack of heat (compared to x86) but now if I'm gonna be stuck with the same x86 chip I might as well spend the money for much better hardware or if I want overpriced crap get a Panasonic Toughbook, which I'm sure will support Linux since it was designed for the military.
The best thing about Apple was never the software, if that was the case you wouldn't see Ubuntu PPC edition used at all. It was always the hardware, the PPC chips combined with a short list of hardware made it a very nice and stable computing environment with the x86 chip there is no point at all especially since the G5 was 64 bit and Intels aren't......

Looks like 64-bit to me:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050823-5232.html