On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 20:55 +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 12:36 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
Well, increased Mac-only API usage would only be caused by an increase in Apple's marketshare. But if Apple's marketshare is going up because it is more useful now that Wine works in more instances, then Linux would be experiencing the same growth in utility.
Well, I am not sure I agree with this proposition. The problem is that MacOS would now be Windows compatible, Linux/BSD compatible and Mac compatible. But there is no Mac emulator and probably won't be one for many years, if ever. So Linux can't match that level of compatibility, neither can Windows, therefore Apples utility would increase faster.
This is true. However, Apple still has their main disutility working against them - much higher prices, both due to software and hardware costs. That's something they'll never be able to compete with Linux on, since Linux is free and hardware costs are at most the same as Mac.
Basically the classical supply/demand based free market can't cope with the idea vendor lockin at all, it seems to degenerate into monopoly. Same is true in the digital TV market for instance.
No argument there - monopoly creates dead weight loss felt by all consumers. We're feeling it first hand, even if we don't pay for Windows.
Even if Linux doesn't grow that much during this period (which would be unexpected given its rapid growth and the increasing utility of Wine), I'd still rather Apple be gaining ground instead of Microsoft.
Hmm, why? I don't see them as being any better than each other, really. Microsoft has good points Apple lacks, Apple has good points Microsoft lacks ... it's a bit of a wash.
Yeah, I suppose there's ups and downs to both. However, the best thing for Wine and Linux other than increasing Linux usage is probably a marketshare distribution between two extremes of Apple and Microsoft such that neither has a monopoly - in other words, more in the Apple direction than it is currently.
People switching from MS to Apple helps Linux too, in an indirect way - it lowers Microsoft's ability to break standards (standards that Linux wins on), and it is slightly easier to make things Apple/Linux interoperable than Windows/Linux interoperable.
I'm not sure I agree with this either. Why is it easier? Mac apps are not written to POSIX, they are written to the old Mac (Carbon) or NeXT (Cocoa) type APIs.
Well, code-compatibility is harder with the Mac APIs that don't have their replacements, but interoperability also includes other stuff Microsoft likes to break regularly, like network integration. Just ask our friends over at Samba :)
In the unlikely event Apple becomes big enough to become the next Microsoft and Linux users have to start worrying about how to run Cocoa apps without equivalents, well, there's already a wine-like project to get them working :)
If you mean GNUstep, they chose long ago not to go for Apple compatibility. Many interesting apps (like Photoshop or iTunes) also use Carbon not Cocoa. So I think it would be a Wine scale effort. Like, 10 years to get something that can run a few popular apps. Well 10 years is a long time ... in that period (the 1990s) Microsoft grew from being a small company into a really big company.
And many interesting apps, like Photoshop and iTunes, are also ported to Windows. Good examples too - ones that work in Wine :) I suppose you're right about the difficulty of providing an OSX compatibility layer, though it'll probably slightly easier than Wine since the Apple environment is a bit more open.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie