OS 4.0 on a Mac...

[CodeSmith]

@seehund, bhoggett:

According to Hyperion, OS4 has been written to sit on top of a HAL, which should make porting to different PPC motherboards less painful than a large-scale rewrite.  However, these HALs have to be written.  I don't think for a minute that all PowerMacs have the same chipsets, for example a "candy" iMac is probably not going to have the same NB controller as an eMac, or one of the server G4 Macs.  That's even assuming you only intend to support "new world" PowerMacs. Each new northbridge needs a new HAL, and the HAL is such a  fundamental part of any OS that you have to be 100% certain of its stability before you can say it's done.  To me that means that each new supported mobo adds at least one more month until OS4 is released.

In a way, it's a smaller version of the argument against OS4 on x86: which motherboards do you support?  right now it's been decided to pick just one, just to get the ball rolling.  I would have personally been much happier to be able to pick from at least 3 different models, but I understand why for now at least my choices are Take it or Leave It.  It's not a conspiracy, it's a necessity.

[CodeSmith]

Why not? You really think Apple are going to sepnd serveral $million designing a new Northbridge for every new model?

One word: progress :-)

I would expect (and I'm sure several million Mac users would demand) that Apple come up with an improved chipset every few years to take advantage of things like DDR memory and faster buses (IIRC the "candy" iMacs had a 66MHz bus, while the "desklamp" iMacs have a 166MHz bus)

The Mac is like the Amiga, in that users expect their computers to last more than three years.  Upgrading is something you do because you want to, not because an OS and office suite vendor demands that you do :-)  How many Mac models should OS4/Mac support?

[CodeSmith]

@Hammer:

Depends on what you mean by "fine".  I remember trying to run Windows 95 on my 486 DX2/66 with 8MB of RAM (well within the requirements written on the box), and it was an exercise in patience.  I have since vowed not to run any PC software unless my computer exceeds the "recommended" requirements, and many times the software I use (mostly versions of Word, Power Point, Visual Studio and assorted games) was more usable after a hardware upgrade.

Maybe my dig at Microsoft was a bit unfair, upgrade-itis is a disease that affects the entire PC industry.

[CodeSmith]

Why? I haven't seen anybody suggest that 4.0 shouldn't be released at all until more hardware is supported (which, with the current licensing scheme in place, would most likely mean "never").

Well, the reason why no-one's suggested delays is because there's only one supported non-classic motherboard right now, that's the point (in fact, as far as I can tell the developer pre-release is meant to placate AmigaOne owners, the intention is still to sell both AmigaOne and Classic versions at the same time)

As to the licensing scheme, I've never seen it but I've heard nothing that would indicate it's not like most other licensing schemes, ie "pay me and you can use my brand name and logo, as long as you don't make me look bad in the process".  Everyone involved has repeatedly said that there's nothing exclusive about the license - the "problem" is that no-one outside of the little group of companies involved think the Amiga brand name is worth anything any more (that is, assuming they even thought PPC motherboards are worth selling at all).  Think of it as the conspiracy to keep fridge salesmen away from the north pole.

Regardless, I'm sure that if I decided to start selling Terons with MOL and MacOS on them, Apple would want to talk to me about a license too, even if I paid for MacOS in full.