Time to Move On

[motorollin]

MacOS rocks. Get a Mac. Immediately.

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moto

[motorollin]

:-)
AInc/Hyperion/whoever he hell is developing AOS now are fools to be holding on to OS4. OS4 with a nice installer to allow it to run on a Mac would sell tonnes of copies. All the money they make could be reinvested in an "Amiga" hardware solution if they really must.

But then, what do I know. I'm just an end user :roll:

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moto

[motorollin]

spihunter wrote:
I know, its more complex then that :crazy:

Why? :-?

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moto

--EDIT
Correct smiley this time!

[motorollin]

HellCoder wrote:
If you can't program, why not learn and make that what you want. You'll be surprised how much joy it gives you!

Sure, I'll learn to write apps for OS4 one of these readily-available AmigaOne boards :roll:

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moto

[motorollin]

Definitely not. I would hate for anybody to think I was complaining  :-P

My point is that it's all very well asking people to be proactive and develop for the platform, but how are they supposed to do that if they can't but the platform in the first place?

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moto

[motorollin]

CLS2086 wrote:
About porting to MAC, forgot about Apple licences fees  :rtfm: .

I don't accept that as a reason for not porting OS4 to run on a Mac. Do you think Linux developers pay Apple a license fee for the privilege of porting Linux to Apple hardware? I don't think so. So why would AmigaOS be any different? The only problem with porting to Apple hardware is drivers, but that's no excuse when Linux PPC drivers already exist.

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moto

[motorollin]

nicholas wrote:

The only problem with porting to Apple hardware is the problem of the x86 CPU's used inside them

Rubbish. There are loads of PPC Macs still available.

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moto

[motorollin]

srg86 wrote:
Actually, Mac OSX is based on the Mach kernel with a FreeBSD layer on top. It is a mess of an operating system IMHO and quite inefficient.

It works beautifully IMO, and is less of a mess than (for example) Linux.

srg86 wrote:
From what I've hard from other people using OSX, it's not as stable as other *nix'es.

I don't know what they're doing to make it unstable. None of my Macs have *ever* crashed or produced unexpected error messages.

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moto

[motorollin]

srg86 wrote:
Under the hood, there is a lot of overhead with the difference layers.

Who cares? I'd much prefer to throw a slightly faster processor at the OS and end up with something stable (like MacOS) than have something supposedly less "messy" but runs like dog sh*t (like Windows).

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moto

[motorollin]

coldfish wrote:
But Linux developers dont charge for the OS, Hyperion/Ainc etc would be wanting money for OS4, making it a commercial venture.
 
I doubt Apple would sit idley by as someone makes money hijacking their hardware?

I don't think Apple would care as long as they are selling hardware. The OS people choose to use on it is nothing to do with them. I find it very hard to believe that Apple would charge developers a license fee for porting a commercial OS to their hardware.

Put it another way: If Hyperion decided to port OS4 to Intel, would they have to pay Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, and all the other manufacturers of IBM Compatible hardware a license fee? I don't think so.

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moto

[motorollin]

Waccoon wrote:
Yeah, but how many hardware platforms does Linux support?

How many does it support well? I have tried Linux on loads of systems and it is always a headache to get it working properly. I would prefer to buy in to a proprietary platform and OS and know that everything will work properly.

Waccoon wrote:
Can you run the latest OSX on a Mac that is 6+ years old?

Why would you want to?

Waccoon wrote:
Plus, high-level driver support is a joke.  All you need is one bad driver to wipe out a system.  Contrary to popular belief, Linux is no more immune to crashes than Windows if you have buggy drivers, and Linux has plenty of those.

My point exactly...

Waccoon wrote:
Never confuse "clean" with "sparse".  Besides, Linux isn't clean by any standards.  I'd be more fair to compare OSX to BSD, its parent.  What has Apple done to improve BSD?  Or, have they merely stripped out the stuff they think they don't need?

I fail to see the difference. The end result is a stable platform. Does it really matter exactly what they did to achieve that?

Waccoon wrote:
I tried to play a DVD, and I got one of those infamous "negative number" error messages.  I tried to make a connection to my web server, and I got an error "-50".  Great work on the usability front, Apple.  Everyone knows negative numbers are the best way to handle unexpected results.  It also locked up during the NFS connection, once I did figure out why I was getting "-50".

I really don't understand why you are getting problems like that. I have never had a message like that, and have been using Macs for several years.

Waccoon wrote:
I don't agree.  Apple is far, far more aware of their brand image than most other PC companies.  They can't do anything to the free software guys, but they get pissy when commercial companies move into their territory, even if it may increase hardware sales.

What can they do, legally, if a commercial entity decides to write and sell an OS for their hardware? My guess is nothing.

Waccoon wrote:
Define "IBM Compatible".  ISA is long gone.

That's splitting hairs. I think you know full well that by "IBM Compatible" I mean any brand of PC which has evolved from the IBM model - IOW, any consumer board which will run Windows.

Waccoon wrote:
Modern PCs are based on open standards.  It's relatively easy to get hardware documentation.  Even Macs are just PCs in a different box, though there's more weird stuff going on at the firmware level AFAIK.

I don't think that's entirely relevant. The fact that PPC Linux runs on Macs means that it is possible to port an OS to Apple hardware. Why would OS4 be any different?

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moto

[motorollin]

@tomazkid
Thanks for the link. I can understand Apple not wanting to give away too much. After all, their business is selling hardware. If they give away too much information on the Macintosh hardware then clones may start popping up.

If you read my post a bit further down in this thread, I mention that Linux is already running on Apple hardware. My point there is that you don't necessarily need hardware documentation to port an OS. And if it can be done with Linux, I'm sure it can be done with OS4...

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moto