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Should Apple commercialize OS X for PC/Mac Clones?

17-Apr-08

I’ve read several blogs, and news sites discussing this utopian possibility, I think most make valid points in favor and against this move, but I think they still miss the big picture, and here I will detail what I believe that is.

The Windows argument

Some believe Apple should release OS X as an OS for non Apple hardware as away to destroy the Microsoft empire. This is in my view the most retrograde argument of them all.

The notion that a company would base an important decision as this one on this argument is ludicrous in this day and age, now the 80’s Steve Jobs might have given it some consideration, and maybe even tried to push it to the board, but not this Steve Jobs, no way.

But let’s play Devil’s advocate and assume that OS X is released with a licensed for use in Intel/AMD base systems, and sold at the price OS X is currently sold. Would that destroy Microsoft? The answer is simply and utterly “NO”. It wont because Microsoft makes money from a number of different sources not just the OS, and worst case scenario, they have more room to maneuver prices and what not to make it competitive.

Well at least they will be forced to make Windows better! That’s an interesting argument, but still, no. It doesn’t force them to go in that direction either, it just forces them to reinvent themselves, and if they manage to make it better, then great, but wouldn’t bet on it.

So, no Microsoft wont die, if Apple releases OS X to the masses for free or pay.

Apple would make even more money!

The sales would soar!

Those that believe this need to understand that’s it’s not that simple. Apple would need to come up with an approach to deal with support for all the different hardware in the market. This means new sale logistics, a broader scope of training, and more work all around for the support staff, technical or otherwise. This also means, having to change their QA procedure, and that’s not taking into account security, compatibility, etc..

It would be as bad or worst than Windows

Those that believe this, are wrong, very wrong. If Apple manages to plan accordingly, and partner intelligently with Hardware vendors, then the problems will be minimal.

One of the benefits Apple has is that it can learn from Microsoft’s failures. Creating a sane HCL, and supporting only those peripherals that are in the HCL will make Apple’s life easier, it will not be perfect but it will good. Apple doesn’t need to support all hardware vendors but partnering with a few, a handful if you will, will bring them a long way. If they go the route of letting the Vendors develop their own drivers, leaving Apple with just the need of certifying it, then things might look better.

This is a very complex situation, and while it would definitely benefit Apple, and bring more money to the share holders, and let’s face it Apple is a corporation and money talks. It’s still a utopian dream at best.

Apple is a hardware company!

This is true, and would continue to be one.

Their hardware sales would crumble

May be, may be not. It’s difficult to predict this. What can happen is that their hardware would expand, they might start actually give the consumer more options. Also it might help them expand their line, and will help them score better deals on the hardware and passing on the savings to the consumer, in the end they can become bigger than all the PC companies combined.

But alas this are all conjectures, and it may all fail.

The Hackintosh

Many people are applauding Apple’s public stance on the hackintosh issue, what’s their stance you ask? Silence, that’s the best stance they can make right now.

Why don’t they pursue this people?

Well how are they going to do that? Most of this guys (the one doing the hacking) have legally purchased copy of OS X, and while they may be braking the EULA it seems it’s not enough to prosecute or convict.; I’m not a lawyer, but you can find a lot of comments from lawyers in this regard, and the consensus is Apple would get nothing or very little, if they go out to get this people/Companies.

Why don’t they put some anti-theft/tampering/hacking counter measures?

They have, and failed. Look at the iPhone, and the iPod, all their smart security features have been broken. My guess (hope) is they have learn their lesson, but really it’s simple. Every time Apple puts out a firmware to render useless the hackintosh, their will be some one that breaks, it and the cycle continues, now given enough time someone will have to give, most would think it will be the hackers, but that’s not necessarily true, this guys (as weird as they may sound) are having a lot of fun doing this, and learning in the process, so go figure, in the other hand, for Apple it will get to a point, where all those counter measures might actually hurt the performance of their hardware.

Again this oversimplifying and this is quite complicated from all standpoints.

So what’s left then?

Honestly, I don’t know what will happen. I just hope is a positive move for all of us, and that includes Apple.

My guess is they might create a version of OS X for the Mass market, let’s face it all hardware is different, and while the hackintosh are quite stable, and work fine, the real deal have far better performance reliability, because of Apple being able optimize the OS for their hardware.

Conclusion

As I see it, it’s a gamble for Apple to go either way. That said the path of less resistance is to continue silent, and continue working on their products and their R&D and let this feed the Cult of the Mac.

Because in the long run, I think some of those Hackintosh owners might end being Mac owners. Others will either continue to work at it, or will just let it fade.

So this Hackintosh thing might prove worthwhile for Apple, and as they say “There is no such thing as bad publicity”. Apple has the attention of hobbyist once again, maybe this time they will capitalize a bit differently, and hopefully more equally and open.

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Editors the saga continues……

16-Apr-08

It is quite an interesting event to see that still in 2008 people are fighting and searching for the perfect editor, things have certainly change from when I started programming, in those days we had:

  • ed
  • vi
  • emacs
  • pico

There were others but those were the main contenders. Now we have:

  • Eclipse
  • Netbeans
  • Visual Studio
  • TextMate
  • E-texteditor
  • Sam
  • Acme
  • Jed
  • Joe
  • nedit

…. and many more. But we still fail to be satisfied, I admit I’m guilty of this. I’ve tried a lot of those editors. I used ed for 6 years and then switched to vi used it for 2 or more years. Then emacs which is still going strong. What I like about emacs, is elisp. I’m not a fan of all the key combos (chords), but, I am a big fan of it’s navigation shortcuts, which are basically the same used in most shell these days as a default.

As I have moved to OS X (yet again) I’ve being trying out TextMate. One of the things I really like about it is the emacs navigation bindings (Ctrl-a – Beginning of line) (Ctrl-e – End of line) etc… and the fact you can do everything with the keyboard. I’m not a fan of the mouse, which why Quicksilver is the first application I installed on my mac.


Although what is really fascinating, is to observe all the editors mentioned in my limited list above –let’s face it there are a lot editors right now (free and commercial). Looking at the differences of approaches, as well as the similarities they share, taking into account what they state as their prime value, and what the users of those editors and IDE value, it just boggles the mind. We are still searching and not satisfied with the current state of our programming tool set. I know there are people that are very much happy with their tools, but those in my humble opinion, are the minority. Even they, try out new editors/IDEs. Sometimes we have to use tools we hate because they are the standard at our workplace and everybody has to use the same hammer no matter what. In a way it makes perfect sense, different editors handle things a bit different, and well the (tab vs. spaces) is one of those, as well, as many other aspects.


If you compare editors to compilers, you will see that there are a handful of compilers (C and C++) that are consistently used by most programmers. If you go to Java you have the same thing, but with editors every day a new, better, robust, user friendly, does what you need editor comes along.


I don’t think it’s all bad, I think the reasons for this phenomena has more to do with human nature, and less with technical details. We are strange beings. We use things despite the fact that they hurt us because we have grown accustomed to them. Alternatives, despite being superior or providing better benefits scare us. We use things that make us inefficient, because we believe its a waste of our time to learn a better way of doing things.


We have different editors/IDEs, much in the same way we have different types of pens. With the caveat that a pen is a pen is a pen, and they are all used in the same way (fountain pen being the exception), but not all editors work the same way. Each editor has some form of a learning curve, and the reason we become so fanatical. It becomes an extension of our self. When we are programming, or writing, having to stop our train of thought to look into a manual to find the combinations of key, or the command to do “X” is really frustrating, so we learn that one editor (some will search, for the editor that has the least learning curve) others look for power, and so on, but most often than not, we start with the wrong editor/IDE for our needs.


I’m not advocating the use of any particular tool, I believe that every single person should make their own choice. What I do find interesting, is how people are so resistant to change his tool, even when it’s in his best interest. I don’t want to get into the psychology of it (though I have to some point), but we do need to step back, and unplug ourselves from the Matrix before it consumes us, and be objective to our needs. In the end it’s our well being and happiness that really matters.

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What have you been up to?

24-Mar-08

In the last couple of days I’ve been asked that question more times than I want to answer, so to make it easier for me I’m posting the answer here. It’s not that interesting, but as this blog has been neglected and some of the people expressed their discontent to this (didn’t know so many of my friends took the time to read my blog) decided to post it here, and direct those interested to this post.

Work

I was working as a contractor for a big Software company in the US, basically a telecommuting gig, which a lot of people when heard about it were kind of jealous, well let me tell you, in my case the work hours sucked! and the stress got into my home life, of course that’s my experience, yours might be different.

Currently as of two weeks ago I’m intentionally unemployed, by that I mean I’m concentrating on my company and things that are really important to me.

What’s more Important than money?

Lot’s of things are more important than money, and you all know that. But for me the biggest change has been my wife gently bullying me into dedicating more time to music, finishing a couple of pieces (string quartets, and a piano sonata) that have been neglected for over a year due to real life. She has also gotten me more interested in getting into playing music again, so I’ve started to work on my guitar playing very slowly (carpal tunnel syndrome is a bitch) and every day I can play for a bit longer, before my hands either go numb or hurt. I am also changing and adapting my technique to work around the effects of CTS, so far it’s working well for me.

The last push my lovely wife made, was to buy me a new guitar as a birthday gift, her reasoning is that my main guitar is too heavy (she’s carried it a few times) and decided I needed something more light weight (no, I’m not selling my main guitar, it was a graduation gift from my father) so a new addition to the family was made in the form of a Stratocaster type guitar built by Gerard Melancon, now to say it’s perfect for me in this juncture is an understatement, her name is “Luna” (Spanish for Moon).

I’ve also been practicing and building a classical guitar repertoire, but it does take a toll on my hands, because of the bigger neck, but working around some of the more pain inducing fingerings have been very interesting and refreshing, I’m considering getting a 640mm classical guitar built, as hopefully it would be less demanding on my left hand.

So you are going to Join A band?

Maybe, but not on my plans. It has nothing to do with playing or having my music performed, it just have to do with me being happy, and my family being happy, as my kids tell me it’s a lot more fun when I’m working on my music, I’m on a better mood, more receptive, and there is no stress.

I do take composing and playing very seriously on all accounts, but I’m also very much aware that it’s an uphill battle, the music I like to play and write “Avant-garde Jazz thingy”  I’m not good on genres, don’t really like them, to be honest. But any how the thing is my music does not appeal to everyone, I have a very eclectic taste, if you look at my record collection you’ll find Tool in the same rack as Tchaikovsky, and Takemitsu. So yeah I’m kind of weird that way.

To sum up, I’m playing/composing for my own need of expression, if an opportunity to showcase my playing or music comes up, I will consider it, and probably accept or not.

What about your company?

Glad you ask! Well I’m still in it, and motivated. We have undergone some unfortunate changes, two of our partners moved on to greener pastures (the best to them), and well we are back to the original founders: Tamgo and myself.

We are working on some very interesting projects of which I can’t/wont talk, safe to say, that they are challenging in every aspect, but the result is well worth it. We are working very hard, we have changed our methodology to accommodate our particular situations, and so far is working out.

In the coming weeks as we sort a few things out, more details may be given, and in a few months time, we might have some alpha releases.

So you are back?

I was never gone, but let’s say yes, I’m back in more ways than one.

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The Radiohead / Trent Reznor – Saul Williams / ….. CD sale model.

28-Nov-07

There has been a lot of talk about the Radiohead In Rainbows CD sale strategy. Some say that they can do it because they have a following, have sold tons of records in the past, and their concerts are well, sold out. Same is said about NIN remix a initiative started by Trent Reznor, and more recently with Reznor collaborating with Saul Williams, on the NiggyTardust album.

I personally prefer the model put forth by Reznor and Williams, you have two options:

  • Pay nothing and get the album on 192kps mp3’s.
  • Pay 5 bucks and get it in lossless (flac), or mp3’s at 320kps or 192kps.

I of course payed the 5 bucks, and got it in lossless. Those were the best spent 5 bucks in my life.Until I saw Trent Reznor post on Saul Williams, I had never heard of him, that does not mean he’s not a establish artist, I think he is, and if not he should, he is really good.

I believe all bands whether starting out or not (specially starting out) should embrace this model. For starters it’s a lot cheaper, than making a couple of thousands or hundred thousands copies of an album to sell on shows. You will also be available to a wider audience, and if you do a bit of research you can do marketing for your album for free. Now I do think you should charge for your album, and if you are inclined, you can give the album for free in 192kps, and charge for lossless quality.

But how much to charge? Well traditionally bands would, calculate to break even on the cost of making the album we would need to sell x amount of albums at y price, and hopefully get a benefit margin of z. Now this is a different medium. For starters you will never run out, or need to reprint CD’s they are always available, so you can still make money of an album, even if you have four more out. If you get your own domain, and host, your website + music + other info, you reduce cost. If you use services like lastfm you can market yourself as stated above, sending new/press clips to sites like boingboing and others you can effectively reach a bigger audience, than just old fashioned news paper, and word of mouth. By this I don’t mean you shouldn’t use the traditional mediums, by all means use everything and all at your disposal. So taking the above into account, I would recommend charging $US5.00, the highest I would go is $US10.00. I think a good margin of difference between the prices of CD’s and online media is needed to make this a success. Most CD’s are way overpriced.

This a brave new world for musicians, and instead of fearing it, you should embrace it and make it your own. The level of control in all ways and forms you can attain with this model, will only empower you to make a better living, and making better music for your fans.

By the way this is a must read, and yet another reason, why the stated above is a good idea.

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Laziness and Hubris (Well more laziness than anything else)

28-Nov-07

Long day! Been up for 46 hours don’t ask, not pretty, and I’m very pissed off! So what’s all this about, I was writing some code, that was proclaimed finished three weeks ago, to find out that, well, it needs to be ported to a new hardware, and the demo is today (I was told this last night). I’ve been working on unrelated critical project, which has made a mess of sleep cycle.

One of the beauty of said hardware spec, is that there is a set of instructions that needs to be run in sequential order, checked, and continue to the next instruction. Now each instruction is a separate function, because they are huge and are reused in other parts of the code. The spec had a list of all the functions names (of course the list was in a spread sheet) so I just copied and pasted the functions name, to the code (I don’t do copy and paste, but after only having slept for an hour, It looked might attractive).

So in my laziness I came up with this:

    1 void *(*p_foo[])() = {
    2         function1,
    3         function2,
    4         function3,
    5 };
    6
    7 for (i = 0; i < ILIMIT; i++)
    8         trace_error(p_foo[i](param1,param2));

Now this works, because all the functions share the same prototype, and return a pointer to void. The value of ILIMIT is huge, so I saved myself a lot of typing. I don’t remember seeing that idiom anywhere, I’m not claiming I made it up, or is my invention or anything of the sort. It’s not that creative to begin with, and can be made a lot better.

But if you ever find yourself with a similar problem, and don’t want to write code to generate the function calls for you (or are to tired to do so :)). This is a clean alternative.

Going to sleep now.

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The Importance of good Code

24-Sep-07

I’ve been in shock for a while about how little importance is given in
some fortune (insert number here) companies, to the ability or act of
coding.

Much have been said about how programmers need a quiet, interruption
free environment. Yet we find that in most companies including those that
purport to create software, give very little importance to the aspect of
programming, in some cases and I’ve been told this to my face, it’s the least important.

This post is not about whether programmers should have an office with a door,
instead of cubicles, or about special treatment for programmers. No, this is
about the state of mediocrity in software, and the cause of it.

What good is it, to have a well designed application, if the code is not
up to the level, of the design?

Projects fail for a lot of reasons, and most of the time, the most
experienced or just plain good programmers, will notice this, and usually
will leave the place before it goes down (They leave, because management
does not listen to him).

It is said that programmers have big egos, some do. Some just use this as a
front, so people don’t see their failings, but that’s another topic.

Programming is a discipline, an art form, it’s not enough to know
Algorithms, Data Structure, Math, and several programming languages.

Any one can learn all the above and more, in fact a lot of people have degrees
in Computer Science, even Master degrees, and don’t know what a Hash
Table is, other know not only what Hash Table is, but the math behind it, but
still are not good programmers.

Let me make a comparison to music. I teach Classical Composition. Every
single one of my students knows the basics of music, and more. Most human
beings know the basics of music: Melody, Rhythm, Harmony. Most of us have
tastes, and according to them discern the good or bad music.

If we put the logic that most big companies use, every single one of my
students should be as good or better than Beethoven, Mozart or Bach.

Some of you will be thinking well duh, those guys were really talented!

That’s true, they were. But talent alone wouldn’t have enabled
them to be great, even (talent + knowledge) is sometimes not enough! You
need to work, like all artistic endeavors it’s a craft, maturity,
experiences, failures and success. Going beyond the limits, breaking
free from all the rules, and inhibitions is what made, Beethoven the
Beethoven we know. There are other factors that weight in as well,
the culture, open mindedness, all bears in the success or the failure
of a great composer.

The late string quartets from Beethoven, stretched
the limit of what was then the rigor in music, and hence were not appreciated
in the same ways as his early quartets were, or his Symphonies, and even the
Symphonies were innovative, as he stretched the musical themes, and development,
making most of his work too long, for what they were used to at that time.

Great composers, have a need to compose, they can’t live with out the
act of creating, and yet in every piece of music, whether a Symphony, or
a Prelude, they put their soul, life, and blood into them.

As such great programmers, work hard, they read, they research, they try
things that fail, and learn from those failures to make better
applications, better code.

Companies don’t value this. They are not interested in this, this is just wasted time
to them. To them failure, is just failure.

They don’t see the advantages of failing early, to avoid failing later. They don’t understand
that there are a hundred ways not to do something, but just need only one good way.

It takes time, creativity, concentration, and skill.

Great designs, with bad code, is just plain bad; Great code with a bad
design, is at worst mediocre.

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iPhone. The saga.

20-Sep-07

By now everybody knows that Steve Jobs is a Stud evil genius.

Apple has reduced the price of their iPhone product. The cries of outrage from the “Early Adopters” were so loud, that Steve thought he had discovered a new level of high definition in his iTouchPod, cause he had never heard that chorus before in his old Yoko album –that he so legally ripped and copied to his cool new iTouchPod.

The end of the world

Early adopters are going wild, filling the blogosphere with cries of “I got screwed”. Well now really, if you got scrwed, that’s nice I hope you enjoyed it, but I do not need to know, that’s your business. Be happy and move along.

The truth of the matter, is that most people crying are not really early adopters, you see early adopters have always, and I do mean always been screwed over in this “oh so shame full way”, by a multitude of companies including Apple. Now, now, don’t be calling them whores, they don’t do it for the money, most of them don’t care about the money cause it’s the technology they care about, not coolness, they just care about the usefulness of the device.

So. If you got screwed, it was consensual, so stop your crying, you should have known what you were getting into. If you didn’t know, well tough, if you got it cause it was cool, and all that, I’m sorry, but you need help, and you should go to the nearest corner and cry yourself to sleep, cause you are the only one to blame, it was you after all handing the credit card with a smile of glee and satisfaction.

The Mistake.

Steve Jobs made a huge mistake, (no, it wasn’t screwing you) you asked him to do it, and smiled back at him, while he was doing it.

His mistake, was reducing the price at this juncture. I understand why the need of reducing the price, let’s be honest. The damn thing is not selling as they expected, and AT&T is not happy with them, they are not displaying the iPhones in the stores, so go figure. They need to sell, they need to feed the hype, cause iPhone 2.0 is coming, it has to sell, it’s got to.

I think that Apple should have waited a bit more, say I don’t know November or maybe late October, to do that. Mac geeks would’ve have a good credible excuse. Cause it’s all about excuses.

The panic I wore a condom.

Apple is now worried cause, people are focused on the iPhone thing, and well, they have just released three new products, and people don’t seem to care. So he did what any smart man would do in this situation, he’s doing the honorable thing, he’s assuming responsibility, and it’s giving all affected iPhone owners, a $100 gift certificate. Talk about magnanimous acts! Which company has ever given back willfully to it’s customers? No, Microsoft did it under duress, that does not count.

The truth is that in the great scheme of things this story is bullshit, you see, in a few months all this people will be bending ass backwards for the new Macbook’s and Leopard, and ……

I just realized, that I have a lot of important things to take care off, but no here I am blogging about “Disgruntled Early Adopters” wannabes, see I’m as bad as you,! if not worst.

But at least I wasn’t screwed by Steve Jobs/Apple (This time).

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It’s been a while

20-Sep-07

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been swamped with work. I can’t talk much about it because of well you know contracts and stuff, I’m telecommuting for an IT company in the US, they want me to relocate, I’m not really into relocating, but that’s a long arduous, and boring story.

I have a few posts about interesting things going on in the interweb, so watch out for new content in a few hours (That is if the 4 or 5 of you are still reading).

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alive, and well, but broke

10-Aug-07

I’ve been on vacation in New York for the last week and a half, been site seeing, and doing the tourist stuff.

Last weekend met with tamgo, we met at Toys ‘r us and he bought himself a PS3 (I had nothing to do with that decision, though he says I do.) Bought a few DS games, and basically have spent a small fortune on games for my family (the wife, and kids are into gaming), Also bought a Wii for my son he’s a Nintendo fan boy, had to get a refurbished unit though, with full and extended warranty, because it’s difficult to find that damn system.

Today I have been confined to be inside the house due to very bad weather.

I also upgraded my desktop machine, to a new Dell XPS Intel Quad Core machine, with a 24″ HD display, and a wonderful Raid 5 system.

I have decided to not waste money on laptops, they break to easily and too much for my pocket, so this machine will keep me happy for a while. I have to admit, that if it weren’t for the fact that the new LED 15″ Mac book pro, were not in stock, I would have walked out with one last Friday, from the Fifth Av. Apple Store.

I’ll be going home next week, though New York is an amazing city, I can’t wait to get home.

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Busy with work.

27-Jul-07

It’s been a bit since I blogged. I’ve been busy with work. I’m working on a non-deterministic algorithm, that will be used for random data generation that serve as seeds for a more complex algorithm that generates serial keys.* I know the above is very ambiguous but that’s all I’m allowed to say. It’s not an easy task, and I’m quite sure it is a futile task, but it meets the company needs, and it’s just one step of validation, and besides it keeps me happy busy.

In the process, I have been trying out several distributed revision control systems. So far I have tried:

  • Bazaar
  • Mercurial
  • Darcs
  • Arch
  • monotone
  • svk

I think they are all good at what they do, and picking one above the others, is really a matter of personal preference.

I liked bazaar, git, and mercurial the most. I decided on Git, because of the ability to interact with svn out of the box, it’s svn integration is really good. I actually liked bazaar the most, but it’s svn support is not as robust as git’s. Now let me be clear I hate git’s command interface, but it’s growing on me. The fact that there is a emacs vcs mode makes it a lot simpler for me.

With this I’m not suggesting ditching svn for a distributed system. At work we use svn and it’s not going to change any time soon. If it were not for the fact that I have the bad habit of using svn branches for development, I wouldn’t care about merging all that much, while merging in svn it’s not really as bad, as some people make it sound, you do have to be careful, and svn it’s not very helpful with conflict resolutions, besides that, the fact that I don’t have to run a server for my local repository is a wonderful thing. I also like the simplicity and multiple methods for publishing my Git branch.

If you haven’t tried a distributed revision control system, and you are a svn user, I suggest you start with bazaar, as it’s user interface is very much like svn so the learning curve is really small, Mercurial is also a nice system to start with, though a bit different than svn.

If you do try them out, I would love to hear about your experience.

* This has nothing to do with warez keygens, it’s part of the validation process of our software.

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