Apple has introduced many improvements that goes beyond small incremental improvements to existing technologies (think Quartz Extreme, Rendezvous etc.). They have succeeded in integrating complex technologies without the complexity.
A great example of this is Rendezvous. Rendezvous makes networking, whether in private homes or businesses as easy as 1-2-3 – great examples are the integrating in iPhoto and iTunes, XGrid, XCode as well as iChatAV (particularly – just look at the competition: MSN, AIM etc.).
While Apple should continue to tout the excellent features already in the OS, they need deal-making features to sell their upcoming OS upgrade (presumably X.4). I will talk about two of the features I feel will help Apple accomplish this. One is necessary, while the other is a typical Apple’ish ‘wow’ type of feature (like Exposé was it in Panther).
Palm synching – for the rest of us
Disaster struck the Mac platform at this year’s Palm Developer Conference, when Palm announced that they would stop the development Palm Desktop, their syncing (and more) software for the Mac. Why is this a disaster you might ask? Because of the growing importance of PDAs in the environments that Apple caters to. As of right now, no noteworthy company actively supports syncing with the Mac. This means, that companies wishing to commit themselves to the platform, has to give up PDAs, or make use of third-party software, such as The Missing Sync by Mark/Space – a small software firm, that businesses might not want to commit significant trust to, especially if it’s not officially supported by the original manufacturer.
Conclusively to these chain of events, it’s clear that Apple needs to consider a counter-measure to limit the negative effects of Palm’s decision. As far as I can tell there are three different approaches Apple can take and I will very briefly describe their possible implications.
1.Do nothing
As described above, this poses a serious threat, since no other PDA platform currently supports the Mac platform. Businesses will have to resort to third-party products to get their PDAs to work, buying a product where there exists no official support to help the businesses with their potential problems.
2.Develop a PDA themselves
While Apple arguably has considerable knowledge about how to develop a PDA from their experiences with the Newton, I believe it to be very doubtful that they can get a PDA to market within a 6 months timeframe when the non-compatible PDAs from Palm will begin to appear on the market, and Apple will be in a position where no PDAs are compatible with the Mac. It will probably be very hard to gather developers to support a new PDA platform with no market share from a company with a history of failure in the PDA market.
There are also reasons why this could prove to be a good alternative, such as helping Apple to gather experiences in the iPod -> iPodPDA conversion, I think will inevitably happen, and as Apple does have industrial Design capabilities, they could probably create a very appealing piece of hardware.
3.Approach Palm to establish a relationship for Apple to development the synching software themselves
This is in my opinion the best way for Apple to strengthen their market position. Apple already has considerable knowledge about syncing with Palms, and could use this knowledge, in cooperation with Palm, to develop NATIVE support for Palm devices on the Mac. Native support for Palms is very similar to Rendezvous in its nature. While Rendezvous removed the configuration mess with setting up and using a network, native support for Palms(in the OS and in key applications such as Address Book, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto etc.) would remove the potential installation and setup mess with Palm Desktop and the learning of new applications to use the new hardware device (the PDA). Think of this hassle-free scenario: Buy PDA in store => unwrap and charge it => turn it on (Bluetooth/USB cradle/WiFi connects and updates the device) and your set to go. This fits very well with Apple’s “… for the rest of us” terminology.
This approach would also possibly allow Apple to present the technology at this year’s WWDC, BEFORE Palm Garnet and Cobalt devices enter the market and be ready to boost native integration with the new devices before they’re released. Just think of a “no configuration when used with a Mac” cheesy-logo on every Palm box – you simply gotta love it.
The conclusion is this. While it’s a disaster for Apple and the Mac platform, that it doesn’t have official support for any of the major PDA platforms (Palm, Microsoft, Symbian/Nokia), they have a window of opportunity to rectify this by engaging in collaboration with Palm to provide native support to Palms new PDA, and once again simplify how we operate our computer-connected devices.
XGrid – Computing power for the rest of us
Apple has recently demonstrated a breakthrough (arguably) technology called XGrid which, in short, uses the collective processing power in a LAN to speed up processing intensive calculations. The implications are, in my opinion, being severely understated by Apple, as this potential X.4 feature is useful for almost all markets that Apple caters to.
Some of Apple’s core markets are the educational markets, Graphics and Video rendering markets and the consumer market, consisting of private homes and small businesses. It is my assumption that XGrid, if implemented correctly (as an open API), could potentially provide benefits to all of those markets.
1. The educational market
The educational markets is where Apple currently “targets” the XGrid application. It’s used to utilize unused processing power for programs like BLAST and other processing power intensive applications, that’s usually run on Server farms, mainframes or computational clusters.
2. Graphics and Video
This is where XGrid has a great potential. Programs like Shake, Final Cut, Photoshop would potentially benefit a great deal from the increased processing power. If Apple were able to make a plug-in/code-rewrite to incorporate XGrid in key applications such as Final Cut and Shake for the X.4 release, the ‘wow’ factor would be significant. Just imagine a small workgroup being able to do special-effects on a machine 3-5 times faster than they can now just by upgrading to the latest OS. This productivity increase would not easily be matched by Microsoft/Sun/IBM with their offerings, since they for now (to my knowledge), doesn’t have products in the market that cater to these market segments. This is where I believe Apple can toot the XGrid feature as a real time-saver.
3. Consumer market
XGrid also caters to the consumer market, if developed so that there’s no setup (as with Rendezvous). Think of the small family with 4 Macs in home-LAN. Someone in the family wants to compress a large video into DivX. Now (s)he can utilize all 4 computers in the home to speed up the process. This is of course also useful for iMovie, iDVD(?). It could also bring more processor intensive features to the consumer market.
4. Software development
This is where it’s actually already being used, as XCode already supports it(the Distributed Builds feature), but it could be further tooted to show how many places XGrid can be a useful feature.
There are of course many more instances where XGrid would be immensely helpful, but I can’t imagine them(in comments please!), and we’ll have to wait until creative programmer think of them. But even with just the features I’ve outlined, XGrid has potential to be a real deal-maker for MacOS X.4. This is further strengthened by the fact that neither Linux or Windows has these capabilities. Even further, Microsoft probably won’t be able to incorporate a similar feature before they release Longhorn in 2006-2007, at the earliest. The same doesn’t go for Linux, but Linux will have a hard time with the integration part (i.e. the ease of use/ease of installation…well basically, ease-of-use).
Summary
From this article, I think it is evident that both native Palm-syncing and XGrid incorporation into MacOS will be features that can achieve the typical “Apple touch” and further strengthen Apple as a leader in OS development and integration.
About the author:
Søren Friis Østergaard has a bachelor in Computer Science and Business Administration and is studying for a Master of Science in Management of Innovation and Business Development at the Copenhagen Business School. He’s been following the MAC OS development for the last 4 years.
how about incorporating the zaurus to some use?
i think it’s a perfect pda for an apple.
I am eagerly awaiting the day I get to know a home user with multiple Apple machines…
This is certainly NOT for everybody but but business/education only…
BTW, Apple for rendering is not favourable because: A rendering box is only to donate its CPU power — why would I buy 10 fully featured boxes including audio, DVD burner, etc, etc..?! It makes no sense.
Seems like he’s talking about 10.3 anyone else agree?
>4. Software development
> This is where it’s actually already being used, as XCode >already supports it(the Distributed Builds feature), but >it could be further tooted to show how many places XGrid >can be a useful feature.
Apple should become an active part of eclipse.org .
SW-Development on the Apple got a problem : its just for apple. Who cares about a niche of 1.8% ? Popular IDEs like Borlands JBuilder X are not avaible on OSX. XCode doesn’t run on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Windows.
Sorry, a niche of 1.8% has to do somethin to become more popular by doint things to avoid the NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrom.
krgds,
Frank
Right on.
Umm, you would buy 10 fully featured rendering boxes if you were an idiot.
If you weren’t an idiot you might decide to use an xserve. Not sure how they go against the likes of intel and amd, but that’s another story.
…
*drools*
I don’t think that developing their own Palm syncing software will be any problem for Apple since they make their own mobile syncing software as well.
So the fact that Palm says it aint support the macintosh is just because they want to shift the costs to Apple itself. Really stupid, Palm is depend on a lot of mac users, who might buy a “potential” apple device if syncing is a lot better here.
Xgrid is indeed a great solution which will make Apple more popular in at universities and in the business.
The current iSYNC software does not work with Entourage! I guess I will have to switch to iCal and Mail. Apple has always had a problem with outside vendors. For some reason, many people/companies hate them for being beautiful.
Wouldn’t it just mean plug’n’play cluster computing for everyone that can use a Mac, instead of having to spend weeks or months developing specialized applications for cluster computing?
It’s not cheap, but probably cheaper to manage 10 Macs with XGrid than to setup and manage 10 Linux boxes in a cluster and to develop the specialized software for what you need to do.
Besides those 10 Macs could just function as desktops in normal work hours and turn into computing nodes after work, instead of spending money and power on a dedicated cluster, so it’s not silly at all, when you need to do some computing intensive stuff that needs to be ready next morning.
Thinking of it, XGrid-like technology shouldn’t be hard to port to other Unices?
For some reason, many people/companies hate them for being beautiful.
No, I think they hate Apple for comments like that.
Umm read before you speak.
Xgrid works like Setiathome, or foldingathome. The grid connectsseveral machines, and uses a very low priority process on the client machines. A trick made possible with unix style threading. So that hot secartary at the door, who doesn’t really need a dual G5 for typing can have a whole processor assigned to the xgrid, there nearly adding a third to one desktop doing the rendering.
BTW, Apple for rendering is not favourable because: A rendering box is only to donate its CPU power — why would I buy 10 fully featured boxes including audio, DVD burner, etc, etc..?! It makes no sense.
I think you don’t quite get what I was trying to say. Getting the XGrid feature is the bonus, that comes without the cost. If you have to buy 10 boxes for you graphics department, the videorendering department can utilize the spare CPU power when available at NO cost. While you might not agree, I think this is a very attractive deal when shopping for new boxes.
When faced with two alternatives of either 10 G5 (w/XGrid) og 10 P4/AMD I think it’s obvious that the BONUS of being able to use the 10 G5’s as an easy to configure cluster for various tasks (faster rendering of video/graphics/compiling-of-code etc.), will make a difference when choosing to buy one or the other.
The current iSYNC software does not work with Entourage! I guess I will have to switch to iCal and Mail
I don’t think this is Apple’s fault per se. I’m sure Apple would like to support syncing with Microsoft Office products if Microsoft would work with them in doing so. As far as I know, there are 3rd party utilities that will allow you to sync between Entuorage and your palm. This could, of course, be of no concern if Microsoft would support the Apple Addressbook instead of Entourages own (just as Mailsmith has done) and use iCal instead of their own Calendering program. But Microsoft doesn’t (as far as I have seen) go to great lenghts to support other firms standards (not that Apple is an angel there either)
When faced with the alternative of 10 G5s or 10 P4/AMD, you’d save the money on the G5s and add extra capabilities to the x86 workstations, such as more memory, extra SCSI disks, etc. You’d maybe also use the saved money to buy yourself a decent server to render on, or a pile of lightweight x86 cluster boxes to render with.
Bear in mind that XGrid is useless for rendering more than trivial tasks, such as your example of Photoshop tasks (which are short enough anyway that network latencies and setup outweigh the benefits), because things which really need render farms, such as 3DS Max or Softimage already come with distributed computational server and client programs.
So basically, you’d just save the money and use it to buy a lot more processing power, which you can use in a distributed manner anyway.
I don’t think that developing their own Palm syncing software will be any problem for Apple since they make their own mobile syncing software as well.
So the fact that Palm says it aint support the macintosh is just because they want to shift the costs to Apple itself. Really stupid, Palm is depend on a lot of mac users, who might buy a “potential” apple device if syncing is a lot better here.
My point exaxtly, BUT if the Palm devices that are sold in retail outlets doesn’t have a “works with Macs” on the box, people will be less likely to buy a Mac, because they won’t know that Palms work with Mac. Furthermore, if Apple made an agreement with Palm to develop the syncing themselves (under license) its syncing would “just work better”(tm) on a Mac.
From what I have heard, Palm might start to bundle Mark/Space’s syncing software with the future Palms, but this will probably lead to higher prices for Palm if used on Macs which would deter customers from buying Macs (think: yet another device with higher prices when used a Mac).
Therefore IMO Apple needs to get an agreement and do what I have outlined.
Apple should become an active part of eclipse.org .
SW-Development on the Apple got a problem : its just for apple. Who cares about a niche of 1.8% ? Popular IDEs like Borlands JBuilder X are not avaible on OSX. XCode doesn’t run on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Windows.
This is a bit off topic, but what the heck. JBuilder does run on OSX.
And I also think it’s kind of funny when people think or imply that because of the machines sold this quarter, Apple’s number is 1.8% and therefore only 1.8% of people who own computers own/use a mac. If the average mac is used twice as long as the average pc before it’s getting replaced then that number is not nearly correct. If the past sales have had a higher percentage in favor of Apple (which they have), then that number is not nearly correct. If organizations and companies buy pc desktops and laptops for their workers, some of who have macs at home, does that make them pc users exclusively? If I have/use 3 PCs and one mac that still makes for ONE person that uses computers, in this case uses both platforms – not 3 pc users and 1 mac user.
hey thats what i’ve got, mine you one of the four is a 7200, and another one is a IIsi so i don’t think XGrid is an option lol
Bear in mind that XGrid is useless for rendering more than trivial tasks, such as your example of Photoshop tasks (which are short enough anyway that network latencies and setup outweigh the benefits), because things which really need render farms, such as 3DS Max or Softimage already come with distributed computational server and client programs.
While the Photoshop might not be the best example you have
clearly understood my point that XGrid MIGHT be useful.
While programs like 3DsMax etc. might come with their own clustering servers, I still think XGrid has relevance as a deal-maker. The mere existence of an easily programmable API for computational intensive tasks, could open doors. As I said in the article I can’t imagine all the possibilities, but indexing services a local machine should be able to utilize the increased processing power.
And why should any firm have to develop the wheel once again if they want to use distributed computing? Xgrid is here already, so why SHOULDN’T Apple incorporate it in 10.4?
I’d like to point out that while, like Mr. Østergaard says, OS X doesn’t have official support for any of the major PDA platforms (Palm, Microsoft, Symbian/Nokia) the fact is that the symbian platform is actually integrated and works much better via iSync than either of the major PDA/smartphone platforms mentioned work on Windows with their “official” solutions.
To synchronize my Nokia 6600 with my win box is irritating and unintuitive, while it’s a matter of clicking on the 6600 icon in iSync and you’re good to go. No matter how many different phones or PDAs you have, you can make them all work together via one simple interface of iSync (some devices like PocketPC would need a 3rd party plug in mentioned, granted… but I tested it and it works great – much better than trying to keep contacts/calendar/etc. in sync with ActiveSync, PalmDesktop, Nokia’s suite or Sony Ericsson suite – gets worse when you want them all to work together). Transferring files/apps via bluetooth is like using open/save dialog boxes – couldn’t be easier.
Having said that, I agree that it would be a good idea for Apple to develop their own or purchase mark space conduit for iSync and ship it with the OS. What it would say on the box of a PalmOS PDA would be up to the specific manufacturer, but I’m sure they’d like to mention their device works with more rather than fewer platforms, whether or not Palm Deskop is needed.
While people are saying that right now it’s only useful for certain things — that’s true. But it’s going to get to the point with fast networking, combined with rendezvous on top, that XGrid will be robust enough to build networks where resources are shared for nearly everything.
Take for example, a word processor written in cocoa. It’s got its own nifty grammar check that runs in a mach thread. Now, on the local machine, it doesn’t care which processor it’s running on, just so long as it gets its proper amount of time to run while the user is typing. That said, it’s not a particularly resource-intensive thing. Why, then, can’t it run on the xserve in the back that’s just receiving e-mail with hardly any load?
This isn’t a new idea — it’s just an idea that hardware is finally catching up with. Over token ring or 10BaseT half-duplex, it’s just too slow. Over gigabit, however, it’s a different story. The mega-expensive Cray links that used to interconnect rooms full of SGI Origin 2k’s are being replaced by CAT5. And it will all fit in three racks instead of seventy.
Yes quite right. If I was an idiot, I would by 10 fully featured boxes, or else 10 1-U-servers. I figured that one out myself. The point I tried to make is that there is no such thing as a Grid “at home”. No home user has multiple G5s for Gridcomputing at home and no 1-Us either — no matter how smart or idiotic someone may be. This is a corporate-thinggy, as I already said above.
While this is off topic, What if Apple developed the KOffice suite for Mac. QT development already has a native Mac version. This would also free them from worrying about MS pulling support away from them. I would say that they would probably use OpenOffice, but I don’t know if they would want to use a product related to Sun or not? Although that likely wouldn’t matter at all. This may matter because if Apple were to use OpenOffice they would have to follow the Sun Industry Standards Source License, GPL, and LGPL. Both are being ported regardless of offical support from Apple.
But Microsoft doesn’t (as far as I have seen) go to great lenghts to support other firms standards (not that Apple is an angel there either)
Hmmm…PDF, SMB, iCalendar, vCard, better CSS in Safari, open standard email formats and protocols (Apple’s lack of full Exchange support is not APPLE’s fault), what else? Word? Excel? PowerPoint?
Look Apple is actually doing pretty well adhering to (first) open standards, and (second) supporting defacto proprietary standards…where possible.
This whole Palm issue would go away if Palm simply supported SyncML…an OPEN standard.
This is NOT disaster for Apple. Geez.
What does this have to do with 10.4? You just highlight some avenues that Apple should address but don’t even require a new version of their OS. They could update iSync now, granted they’ll probably wait till the next release of the iSuite of software to release a version that natively syncs with Palms, atleast I hope they will. I don’t know how many Mac users have them but it would make sense to cater to the market.
As to the Xgrid, well Linux has the capability and thats more likely what you’d use in the case anyways. Why? It’s quite a bit cheaper. I’ve worked at my friends renderfarm and they have fifty AMD Athlon MP boxes with a 1Gb of RAM and a decent HD in each. Nothing else really. Linux runs them and clusters them and it was a pretty cheap setup.
The OS5 devices will still work with mac’s out of the box, it’s just the OS6 models. So I don’t think people should freak out just yet in regards to losing Palm support at this moment. Maybe you can’t call them for tech support, but when that time comes, Apple should have a solution. Apple is not going to ignore the fact of not having even one pda not able to sync with os x. Whether they partner up with someone or make their own, there will be a great option for mac users. I’m a multi-platform dude, so it doesn’t make a difference to me. I use Fedora, OS X and XP everyday, so one of the boxes will sync my Tungsten|E !! LOL.
I think Apple will continue to have this covered with iSync. The Palm connection software for Mac was always junk anyway.
But I for one, could care less. I still have a Mac; I used to have a Palm.
At home we have 3 macs, which I have to admit are used ALOT as video players. I would use xgrid style clustering not to improve the most powerfull computer (which is happy enough) but to bring my old iMac up to speed so it doesnt drop frames on divx movies
“They have succeeded in integrating complex technologies without the complexity.”
Every UI’s dream.
Another thing on this issue. Steve Jobs has been saying for a years now that they don’t think there is much of a future in PDAs. He may be right. He may be wrong. He’s looking more and more right as time goes on. The phones now have much of the functionality previously exclusive to PDAs. I USED to have a Palm III (way old). I gave it up after a while. If I go that route again, it will likely be a Bluetooth mobile phone.
I would _love_ to see Palms work natively with Mac OS X. I would also like it to support syncing with Palm Memos. I think the Memos ought to be synced with Apple’s Stickies. Then I wouldn’t need the Palm Desktop at all.
While programs like 3DsMax etc. might come with their own clustering servers, I still think XGrid has relevance as a deal-maker. The mere existence of an easily programmable API for computational intensive tasks, could open doors. As I said in the article I can’t imagine all the possibilities, but indexing services a local machine should be able to utilize the increased processing power.
And why should any firm have to develop the wheel once again if they want to use distributed computing? Xgrid is here already…
3DS Max is a bad example. Their network rendering system, well the whole package for that matter, is Windows only. Maya is one of few major modeling/animation packages that are multi platform and (right now) the ONLY high end package for MacOSX. I haven’t done network rendering in Maya, so I can only *assume* that a Maya client running on a Mac can be added as a rendering slave.
The point? No software firm that develops commercial software (3D Studio Max, Maya, XSI) will adopt XGrid because XGrid is only available on Macs. Sure, XGrid brings simplicity to grid computing, I’ll give you that. What good is it if you can only use it on one platform? These software firms are “reinventing the wheel” as you say, because if they do it their own way, they can make it cross platform and not have to rewrite it again.
XGrid will first and foremost appeal to the private uses: medical research, scientific simulations, private multimedia work (video encoding). It’ll be hard to commercialize XGrid into commerical “off-the-shelf” software [unfortunately] because of the Mac platform is too small right now.
Xgrid is *NOT* currently being used in any shipping product from apple.
Xcode does not use it for distributed builds, XCode actually uses a modified version of distcc.
I would say PDAs are dead effectively. As some New York Times article has argued recently, people are going more to smart phones or sophiscated cellulars. Apple gave up Newton because the true era of PDAs is not going to come after all or at least in near future. I don’t use PDAs and most of people I know don’t use them. Even few who use are usually satisfied without sync. In short, sync is not a killer feature.
Secondly, I doubt that clustering or grid computering is the mainstream now. It has a lot of potentional but those technologies are still in a category of future technologies. Besides, the selling point of macs is its easy-to-use, nice-lookig GUI. I bet Apple is going to be after those who use iLife and the features you suggested don’t match with this segment.
that modifies version of distcc happens to be modified so that redevue picks it up 😉
No pda…no Palm deal (Palm blows…it’s OS has become a total joke…it is worse than PocketPC, and that’s saying something).
Apple will make a phone that works with iSync and the iApps. It will be a v60 done right. Elegant pda capabilities, along with QUICKTIME. Mark my words…
Colorful names aside, I have 3 networked Macs (and a PC) at home. A co-worker has 6 networked macs in his house.
And as far as the Palm Desktop…I sync my Palm every day with my Mac (and PC at work), but I can’t remember the last time I launched the Palm Desktop application. I just don’t see how not having this application included with the handheld device is that critical. iSync does a fairly good job on it’s own.
Question, Does the Palm Desktop have to be installed in order to use iSync to sync your Palm with Apple’s Address Book and iCal?
-Mike
I have 3 G4’s and 4 G3’s networked in my home. And a couple more obsolete systems (In other words “pre-G3”) sitting around the house.
Personally I see no need to write a piece of software for syncing with Palm OS as they already have one. Nor do I see much point in adding XGrid to the standard install, as this is really only for large clusters of XServes.
[off topic]
This being an Apple thread but it seems someone has forgotten the traditional comments of:
Apple is doomed, and
Apple must release OS X for x86 (because I’m to cheap to buy their hardware),
Perhaps it could be the earlier story of the fact that they are making profits (unusual for a hardware manufacturer) which are rapidly growing.
[/off topic]
People, how representative are you?! Answer not at all.
People, how representative are you?! Answer not at all.
NO ONE that reads (let alone posts) on this site is representative of the typical (or majority) computer user.
>>I am eagerly awaiting the day I get to know a home user with multiple Apple machines… >>
I have two Macs at home.
My dad has two Macs at home.
My uncle has two Macs at home.
My brother has one Mac at home, but he’s thinking about buying a new one and giving the old one to his kids.
>>People, how representative are you?! Answer not at all.
>>NO ONE that reads (let alone posts) on this site is representative of the typical (or majority) computer user.
BTW-
My dad, my uncle and my brother don’t read this page or any other tech related pages…
Linux already has the Xgrid capability, OpenMosix. If you set it all up it is offloads extra processes to other computers with no rewrites. I’m sure Xgrid is based off the same idea. The only problem is it really isn’t all that great for most people. You need to have threads that can be done in parallel and that take long enough to make it worth your while. It must be something CPU intensive which most people don’t run. Maybe Divx encoding if it is written to use threads, and compiling. 3D rendering benefits if threaded, as well as scientific stuff. Again it is nice for some markets but not that many.
I understand these are important features to some. For me, they’re uninteresting.
Therein lies the problem with new features, impress the most people, with the lowest common denominator sort of features, or go specialized like xgrid. As for palm connectivity, I’m not sure it’s Apple’s job to pick up the slack whenever a hardware company gets too cheap to write drivers. There are untold 3rd party software vendors that would love to get paid for that sort of stuff.
What Palm has done is kill itself in the Mac market. Even if you can still sync via some route, their desktop sucks, and won’t get any better now, and the mind-share is aware now that “Palm has dropped the Mac”. Even if that is not technically true, that’s what most think have happened. (I certainly would not reccomend to my management anymore purchases of Palm devices).
Palm is gonna die a slow death. The thing that held them up is that they supported multiple OSes. Now, they have to compete in the exact same space as PocketPC. MS is gonna kill them.
So the real question is, who is gonna setup up to the plate?… and what will the device be?… another PDA, some sort of smart-phone?…
There are a few comments here about the usefulness of XGrid. Understandably grid computing isn’t something a lot of home users need or would have the power to use. That would make it a niche market I guess. But a lot of the markets where it would be needed are the same markets Apple leads in. Remember, the XServe was made for video professionals, not IT guys. Go into any video, audio, or graphics shop, and most 3D and multimedia houses, and you will notice they are filled with Macs. XGrid is going to speed up their workflow in a big way. Someone posted earlier about encoding DiVX…ever tried editing down a few hours of 23MB/sec high def video, then compositing effects, rendering, and encoding it? Anything that speeds that process is going to be very welcome.
“… the (cluster) features you suggested don’t match with this segment.”
They want and should expand into other segments.
I have 2 macs at home. I know lots of Mac owners that have more than one in their homes and they don’t hang out and read tech sites all day. You have to remember a lot of Mac owners keep old hardware because it is still useful. An old Powermac G3 beige is still a good machine and can run Jaguar fairly well.
Can we end this now? I’m sick of the Macs are expensive comments.
I too think Palm is becoming less relevant. I have a Palm V in a drawer. The basic functions I was using are covered by my iPod and phone. However, not supporting it just leaves another bullet available to anyone who chooses to take shots at Apple and talk themselves, their friends, or their company from purchasing macs. Apple should roll their own support for newer palms to minimize any of the “drawbacks” of switching to mac.
When predicting what will or should happen in the world of Apple, consider the technical and business aspect. Only if it is feasible and strategic for Apple will something be introduced. Regarding xGrid, everyone is right that it is not for the majority of users. However, the Virginia Tech project was great for Apple. VT uses custom clustering software, but xGrid could allow Apple to offer a complete clustering solution. Once they have xGrid, why not roll it into x.4 client and server? Inkwell is included, despite its very limited use.
Even if Adobe and Maya wouldn’t support it, it’s a great feature to roll into final cut, dvd studio, shake and logic. I suppose Apple would have to release a node installer for each app so users wouldn’t have to buy licenses for all of the nodes. If the process of making apps xGrid aware was simple enough, Photoshop, Maya, etc would probably support it. Now, if Apple developed the “server” only part of xGrid for windows, users on macs could use the power of macs and pc’s on the network.
From a business perspective that wouldn’t be as good as encouraging people to buy all macs for a network, but would encourage groups to add Macs to existing networks and demonstrate a clear advantage.
> Maya is one of few major modeling/animation packages that are multi platform and (right now) the ONLY high end package for MacOSX.
Lightwave 3D is available on MacOSX. And yes, it is high-end if you define high-end being a program that Hollywood-studios use. Cinema4D is also graded as high-end system for some uses, and it is available for MacOSX too.
Thus, Maya is not the only high-end package for MacOSX.
I don’t want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I have recently upgraded from a Mac 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM to a new G5 dual 2GHz with AGP 8X and PCI-X to help me at my freelance gig where I needed to copy a 17 Meg file from my home network to a desktop folder. On the G5 it took about 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, my iPod will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won’t bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I’ve encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I’ve never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs’ faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is faster than this G5 dual 2GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don’t get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you’d like, but I’d rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Well, i don’t have a Mac. But i’m pretty sure that 17Meg file transfer won’t take 20 minutes on any present machine if everything is setup correctly. But you propably meant 17 gig.. well that could take some time, depending on the network speed. Harddrive bandwidth propably won’t be overrun by the network speed, so the problem is propably just with the network-client software. If you downloaded from SMB(Windows)-share then i ain’t surprised that some emulation of Microsoft’s proprietary architechture is slower than the native implementation.
Well, if your 486/66 with 8MB of ram is faster than your dual 2ghz processor machine with minimum of 512 mb of ram.. i’m sure there is something wrong either with your setup, or you got faulty hardware.
Ah, Lightwave. Thanks for reminding me, forgot that one. I am aware of Cinema 4D on MacOSX, I’ve played with the demo. But I consider C4D and Lightwave mid-range packages.
Well, if your 486/66 with 8MB of ram is faster than your dual 2ghz processor machine with minimum of 512 mb of ram.. i’m sure there is something wrong either with your setup, or you got faulty hardware.
Or there is something wrong with him: he just wants to start a holy war, and he lies (not the least of which is I’ve never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs’ faster chip architecture).
Yah, i just thought that i might have been trolled. =)
> Ah, Lightwave. Thanks for reminding me, forgot that one.
You’re welcome.
> I am aware of Cinema 4D on MacOSX, I’ve played with the demo. But I consider C4D and Lightwave mid-range packages.
Well, i consider C4D as mid-range package too, even if it has been used in big projects.
But Lighwave3D definetly is a high-end package. Imho it beats the crap out of any default renderer, and imho it beats Renderman when you don’t have thousand monkeys typing your shaders for you =). And it beats even Maya in some character animation stuff.. and definetly in many modelling tasks(if we leave NURBS out of question). I consider Maya more like effects tool in standard package, but the expendability makes it worth any other package for big production houses that has lot’s of coders/scripters working on it.
Buuut, each to his own. Not any single package is going to make an instant artist of anyone. And ofcourse everyone has their favourites, mine is Maya and Lightwave.
And we’re quite off-topiccing now =) But it is nice to know that there is other “technically aware” artists reading technical computer articles. Have fun.
Well we got on the topic of 3D graphics packages because the author of the article suggested that those software firms embrace XGrid as the method for distributed network rendering.
I can understand the Mac platform being great for 2D work, but there’s things still lacking for the 3D field and I don’t think XGrid is going to save it.
We need professional graphics cards. Radeon 9800 and GeForce FX isn’t going to cut it, those are gaming cards. Last I heard from ATI, they were going to release *soon* a FireGL card for Mac, but I stopped looking.
But there seems to be hope, if you’re aware of the deal where you get RealVIZ for free if you buy Lightwave 7.5, but this is a Mac only offer
OT: This is off topic, but for those interested, the data rate of HiDef is more in the ballpark of 1.5 Gb/s, not 23 Mb/s.
XGrid could be very usefull in the highend video market. Avid might be able to use it to overcome some of the barriers that stop it from bringing there really highend stuff back to the Mac platform….
Yeah, uncompressed (and lightly compressed) HD is huge…
As for 3D, I like Lightwave the best. And lightwwave 8 is just amazing. I agree with TLy about the professional graphics cards. The Mac platform is kind of weak there.
I’d like to see heavy improvements in communications. (You could even hype them with a “10.4 good buddy” cb-talk buzz). This would mean improvements in the existing faxing, email, and ichat components, but would also include some new things, like what? perhaps….
A phone app, usable when connected through the modem port, via bluetooth to a cell phone, or by sending the tones to through the speaker as a last resort. It would use the mics on the mac, iSight, or USB. It would have a voice mail system to make an old iMac or iBook into the ultimate answering machine that will wake from sleep when a call comes in to answer (didn’t the Performas offer something like this?) Integration with the address book so that it will keep a log of who you called and who called you via the mac (optionally keeps track of ichat conversations).
When connected via Rendevous, allow Stickies to let you post things to another user’s mac. They can be free-form like regular stickies or they can have templates like those “Called While You were out” slips. If filled in, the things could make an address book entry, start an email, or intiate a call back.
How about a security framework (with plugins for different encryption standards) so that one can effortlessly encrypt email, ichat, and any other sort of communications.
On that same note, issue a WEP patch for original Airport products to make those networks less that trivially crackable.
Offer a decent FTP client. The Finder chokes on so many sites I almost expect it to fail more often than succeed.
Use P2P technology to set up a distributed shared public folder on one’s mac. Make it operate only over local machines though if legalities are a concern. There are times when such a situation in a classroom passing out notes to all student machines would be pretty handy.
Add other chat services (like irc, yahoo, etc) to iChat. Or at the least, make it pluggable so that others can write the plugins.
Update Sherlock. Bundle Watson instead? Rewrite from the ground up? I’m not certain, but there’s considerable room for improvement (imho)
Distribute Apple Remote Desktop free to all. Better yet, incorporate Citrix or opensource screen sharing technologies into it so that other users can jealously get a taste of the mac and maybe give in to buy one for themselves.
Other features unrelated to communication:
Put in an anti-virus architecture. Most of the anti-virus products out there are poorly coded hacks that more often break or kernel panic a mac than help scan for viruses. Since most of these services work on a subscription basis anyway, they’ll still get their fees. At least if someone ever does write a Mac virus that Apple feels needs a patch, the architecture is there to nail it once spotted.
It would be neat to offer a versioning software architecture on the mac based on subversion or some other open standards but maybe something like Macromedia’s Contribute if svn isn’t mature enough.