Yikes! It is amazing to me how ignorant PC/Non-Mac users can be about Apple. Instead of just guessing and speculating about what will happen, and pulling rumors out of the air and believing them, why don't you just watch the *****ing webcast?

http://stream.apple.akadns.net/

Okay, for those that don't seem to have the latest rev. of clue...

1) The underlying OS for Mac OS X is Darwin, which is a port of FreeBSD with some extra stuff from NeXTStep, Mach-O, OSF1, and some really neat memory protection schemas. You can think of Mac OS X as a modified FreeBSD with a super-spiffy desktop; that's basically what it is.
Code:
top, bash, ksh, vi, emacs, ps, nc, nmap, snort, gcc, gdb, strace, perl, Apache, python, MySQL,
, it's all there or easy to get with guess what, the 'Ports Collection'.

2) It (OS X) started out life way back in the early 90s as NeXTStep. Google image search NeXTStep (http://images.google.com/images?hl=e...ep&btnG=Search). Hmmm, looks remarkably like WindowMaker doesn't it? Guess what...

3) Mac OS X, a.k.a Darwin, the desktop/video/audio engine (Quartz), the window manager (Aqua), and all of the Apple-produced apps have been compiled and tested on both Intel and PowerPC from the very beginning. Intel binary versions of all of these apps exist internally at Apple.

3) Apple releases secuity updates much faster than any other commercial vendor that I know of; on rival or better with any Open Source OS.

4) PowerPC is owned by IBM, which is loosing interest in further development. The search for another CPU/arch was a necessity.

5) Yes, the switch to Intel means that Macs will run the same core hardware hardware as PCs, but not necessarily be the entirely the same as your Dell PC.

6) Apple has flirted with using Intel CPUs on and off since the mid-90s, this time they had to commit due to the upcoming end-of-life of PowerPC.

7) Like it or not, Mac OS X is secure because it was designed to be that way. Not because of some fantasy that nobody uses it or anything silly like that. Apple has the #2 market share for the desktop OS market, yes ahead of Linux. The firewall is FreeBSD's 'ipfw', which is pretty damn good, and Apple solved/thwarted the kind of memory abuse problems that have plagued UNIX for it's 30+ year history by simply making all memory read-only to other processes; plus some other spiffyness.

8) I don't have a problem with Windows in general. Yeah, I wouldn't use it, but I can see why people do. Now to the point of 90% of the market share. Do you really think it is that way because every PC user make a decision that 'Yes, I want to run Windows intead of these other OSes for the Intel platform'. No, it is because up until a year ago you could not buy a factory built PC without Windows already installed. That is the only reason. Lots of folks like Windows that's true. But the 90% reflects a very wise strategy by Microsoft rather than the 'will of the people'. Have you every seen a card next to a PC in BestBuy stating 'Choose from these Operating Systems: ...'. Of course not.


Please, if you don't like Apple for some personal reason that's fine. Just don't be yet another clueless PC user who just makes **** up about Macs/Apple with ignorance and blind prejudice. It just makes you look stupid.

-- spurious