On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Tim Byars wrote:
> Symmetric Multiprocessing - It will be there. Every task will be able to
> be run across multiple processors.
Bullshit. Not even Apple can magically take an arbitrary
single-threaded program written in machine code and efficiently
parallelize it.
> Cluster Processing - Count on it. Wire up your Yosemite or Sawtooth
> machines with MacOS X, and you can automatically set one machine on the
> network to be the "Master" machine and the others to be the "Slaves". Every
> "Slave" machine will handle the instructions sent to it by the "Master".
> This way, you can connect 500 G4's and have all of them, say, rendering
> "Toy Story III: The Adult World". Whatever. Unlimited power. Unlimited
> scalability.
People are doing this already.
> Red Box - Apple hates emulation. It doesn't want emulation in its product.
> Emulation is slow. However, Apple is working on a hybrid method to bring
> seamless Windows comaptibility to the Macintosh. The first is a Win32 API
> set, part of the so-called Red Box. The other is a custom "DOS
> Compatibility Card".
Are we expected to believe that Apple will write a full implementation
of the Win32 API? It seems that even Microsoft can't quite do that --
they wrote NT, defined its API to be "Win32", and then implemented
Win95 -- which ended up with numerous portability problems.
We're talking about a truly massive effort here -- roughly comparable
to what Microsoft did to turn Win3.1 into Win95 (although Apple already
has the central part, memory protection and multitasking, free.)
> MacOS X and Linux - Apple is proposing a UNIX binary format and submitting
> it to the ISO later this month. This will eliminate one major hassle of
> UNIX -- having to download source and compile it.
Funny, System 6 UNIX had a format for binaries in 1976.
Or maybe this means a *portable* binary format. What machine code will
this binary format use? PowerPC code? Or perhaps Java bytecodes?
That'll really reduce hassles, won't it -- instead of having to
laboriously recompile things, I'll just run them at a tenth the speed
in an emulator! What joy Apple brings.
Unless this means a binary format portable between Unices for the same
architecture, like the iBCS stuff we've had for a few years.
> This is a major stride towards making UNIX - including Linux - more universal.
Sure.
> Apple is also
> working to license Carbon APIs and YellowBox to all major UNIX versions...
> This doesn't mean that Apple is giving away MacOS X, just the support
> necessary to run MacOS X applications. No source code will be given.
a. Apple does not plan to give out source code.
b. Apple plans to require a license from anyone who
implements the Carbon or OpenStep APIs.
That would be frightening, except that it's blatantly illegal.
Tim, did you make this post up?
-- <kragen@pobox.com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/> Silence may not be golden, but at least it's quiet. Don't speak unless you can improve the silence. I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. -- ancient philosopher Syrus (?) via Adam Rifkin, <adam@cs.caltech.edu>