Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for grid computing and now it’s on Mac OS X.
Another source notes that Oracle is using the Xserve RAID in its own datacenter.
Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for grid computing and now it’s on Mac OS X.
Another source notes that Oracle is using the Xserve RAID in its own datacenter.
That’s good then.
don’t understand this one…With the virtually non-existent osx share in the server arena, making new products available for osx server seems a bit useless, IMHO.
on’t understand this one…With the virtually non-existent osx share in the server arena, making new products available for osx server seems a bit useless, IMHO
I think they see the potencial of the Xserver-
don’t understand this one…With the virtually non-existent osx share in the server arena, making new products available for osx server seems a bit useless, IMHO.
Exactly, it doesn’t make sense for Oracle to make their database products available for osx server, if there are no osx-server users. Oracle did port their database to osx server, which means… wait for it… that there is in fact an osx share in the server arena! Even more, it is big enough to support the decision to port oracle to osx server.
Do you really think that Oracle would pour millions of dollars without doing a basic market research?
Well, they already had a Linux port of it. If they used gcc for it, I doubt going to OS X (FreeBSD) would have been a ton of trouble.
don’t understand this one…With the virtually non-existent osx share in the server arena, making new products available for osx server seems a bit useless, IMHO.
It may be more prevalent than you think, or at least the major DB vendors see a potential there. IBM was considering making DB2 available for it as well. I don’t know if anything came out of it, though.
Read the article. Seems Oracle thinks OSX Server/XServe is good enough for Oracle.
If you have been following news you will know that the Xserve has been very popular for building powerful clusters. Makes sense that they would follow the trend.
Ellison and Jobs have been friends for years. I guess Ellison does see the potential of OSX and does see an opertunity… I guess, given a choice between Apple and Sun he sees Apple with a very bright future! Given the momentum of Apple… and the potential…
IMHO
Jb
Yup. Going out of business for 30 years now, eh?
Are you blind? Those are the iMac sales my friend.
If you look at the total Mac sales, you’ll see:
2002 – 3,101,000
-3%
2003 – 3,012,000
+9%
2004 – 3,290,000
Please, stop spreading FUD.
I checked that SEC filing. You only included iMac sales in your post. Total Macintosh Units grew by 9% (2004 over 2003). They say, ” Unit sales of Macintosh systems increased 278,000 units or 9% during fiscal 2004 compared to 2003. These increases in net sales and unit sales were a result of strong demand for all of the Company’s Macintosh systems, except for the iMac.”
They sound in pretty good shape.
It takes a great effort to prevent a lemming from jumping of the cliff, but I believe that the iPod will open many blind minds.
Schwarzy, ‘thank you’ for pushing the lemmings over the cliff!
It is still not to late to overcome the disaster called Windows.
Look at page 30 of the document. Note that the Total Macintosh unit sales actually increased last year.
Did you intentionally pick the worst statistic from that document, or do you have poor reading comprehension skills?
You need to keep a couple of things in mind when you start talking about unit sales that Apple actually ships.
1) Mac users don’t but a new system every year. A machine 2-4 years old probably still works just as well as when it was bought. With a majority of users doing nothing more than web surfing and email, the assumption that if Apple isn’t shipping enough units to keep its market share competative, its not a valid statement. Install user base numbers would be a different take.
2) Yes, Apple’s share number have fallen, but it really is starting to turn around. Most of it is a combination of Microsoft self inflicted wounds on spyware, virus and security, but there is also a part of it is because Apple has a better mouse trap. I wouldn’t have bought a Mac is it wasn’t Unix based and I wasn’t fed up with Microsoft. I have a valid option finally.
3) Market share only ranks units sold based on the numbers submitted by all the manufactures for the quarter. This means Apple puts its number up against Dell. When we’re talking bulk orders from Dell, of course Apple wouldn’t match. Its like comparing the number of people that shop at WalMart for the month compare to those who when to the Gap. The Gap isn’t going out of business, but they aren’t going to match Walmart number either.
4) Market share includes all systems, not just home users. With machines at corporate America being counted it really skews the numbers. Machine at corporate America have turned into nothing but ‘terminals’. I’d really like to see home user numbers.
Apple is really a BMW of the computing world. They are very profitable. They are tied to style. Both companies are not looking to displace the market place with an influx of their products. As long as they are profitable, making money for their share holders and innovating new technologies, they will continue to be OK in each of their markets.
The biggest thing that Apple needs to overcome is the view that Macs are toys and only good for graphics. They are addressing this. They have a terrific OS, they are partners with the leading manufacturer of CPUs (IBM), they have a loyal fan base to promote them. And as of now, they are readying other things that are important to enterprises: Unix base, enterprise data and server products, 24/7 support for those products, mainstream players such as Oracle and Sun with products for the OS.
I’m very optimistic that this is just the start for some very good years for Apple. I’d love to believe the $499 box is true, because honestly, if that were the case, I’d be able to switch a lot more people. Some people just refuse to try one but all of the people that I’ve shown and have had an open mind, everyone of them have been impressed. You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘I didn’t know that’ or “I didn’t know you could do that on a Mac” comments I get. Office on a Mac? That’s crazy.
When I see this kind of discussions (Apple going down, Oracle being stupid porting its DB), I ask myself: What I’m not seeing?
Do I think that the Jobs/Ellison frienship (Jobs was the filmmaker in the recent Ellison’s wedding) is “enough reason” for the port? Enough reason for “recomending and using Xserver/XRAID?
Ellison made a bold commitment to buy PeopleSoft . It took a year and a half and a lot of troubles. Did he do that because PS’s CEO was an ex-Oracle employee and a foe?
I think they see something different, or in another perspective, or just they have the data (or the guts) to make the move. I just don´t think it is a matter of friendship.
I see a pattern of BS. Nice selection of numbers, but after reading the report I found that Apple delivered over 270 million more units this year than last year. That’s actual Macintosh computers. Your post is deliberately misleading. I can’t fathom why you would go to the trouble of doing so.
make that thousands
I think much of apple web sales presence is related to that software buy rather then what type of server the software runs on. They have some rather large sites that use webobjects and this would be the market I would think Oracle would be interrested in.
Besides I think Orcale invests in ports for lots of OSes and hardware and only does the work to drop it later if the market looks interresting.
The other angle of course would be Intel shooting itself in the foot with the power envelope in 2005.
Or maybe someone just sold some sucker at Oracle a story about grid computing. And apple has made some good sales into that questionable market….
My 333 iMac running OSX is still usable as the day I bought it in Jan 1999. In the same period of time, I am on my 3rd PC. Two built from scratch, one store bought.
Why is it with every new OSX, the computer seems to get faster, easier and more capable, whereas with every Windows upgrade, my PC gets slower and slower….
Initial purchase price of “any” PC is indeed cheaper but in the long run it definately costs a lot more.
So, in my case, PC purchase was 3x higher than Mac purchase. I believe the sales figures are wrong when you only count the “number” of sales. They should really count the “lifespan and installed base”.
then thanks but no thanks. bmws are a deathtrap on a good day, and with all the younger people that drive them like its the last day of earths existance i have no hope for the future of computeing. ill take a volvo any day (is linux a good anology here?)
“don’t understand this one…With the virtually non-existent osx share in the server arena, making new products available for osx server seems a bit useless, IMHO.”
It’s conceivable that Oracle knows more about server trends than you, and if you check the numbers you’d see that Xserve sales have grown every quarter. If Oracle didn’t have some confidence in OS X and Apple’s hardware, they wouldn’t have invested in porting Oracle Database 10g to OS X Server, nor would they be using Xserve RAID in their own internal networks.
Speaking from personal experience, my brother, a CompSci major and very experienced and expert PC user, was convinced to switch to Macs a couple years ago after fooling around with OS X on my PowerBook. Since then, he’s bought multiple Macs for his family, and the staff of his trucking business. He recently bought a PowerMac G5 and OS X Server which he’s currently testing for deployment. He has been very, very happy with it so far, and he’s so sick and tired of pulling his PC’s out of service every two months to clean out spyware, that he’s committed to acquiring Xserves for his network backbone, and sworn to replace all his client machines with Macs. Needless to say, he’s been following the rumors of a sub-$500 “headless Mac” with extreme interest. So I’d say that, given his example, Apple is opening eyes in the corporate world, and OS X Server has a bright future.
And as others here have pointed out, the misleading numbers for Mac sales you supplied suggests that you’re more interested in spreading FUD than information. Keep your agenda to yourself.
Hobgoblin,
The poster was comparing the market niches of the respective companies, not their products. The analogy between cars and computers is misleading, and shouldn’t be taken as a one-to-one correlation. Besides, I disagree completely that BMW’s are death-traps (I don’t own one). From what I have seen, they’re superbly manufactured, and I can only surmise that your real problem is with the way their owners handle them.
I think personally, Macs are incredible machines. I own and am an avid PC user and have been a Windows user all of my life simply because of the abundance of software that has been available. Windows has been so dumbed down that it has become a preference of convenience. Mac is a great machine and I intend to buy a top of the line one as soon as I see that they are faster than PCs in regular use, and thier prices go down a bit and their software library goes up 10-20 fold. Till then I will be an XP user. I am going to test drive Windows Longhorn and then see if it is any faster than XP or not. If it is then I am going to upgrade, if not then I will be happy with my super tinkered and tweaked Xp haha.
you really think that a 3.6 GHz PC is faster at loading web pages than a 2.5 GHz G5? or at writing E-Mails or and word processing?
Hint:
at a certain point.. faster processor = no gain in performance of interactive applications.
Applications that do a lot of processing CAN benefit from faster processors but even then they might not because a slower processor might be better at branch prediction or have a larger Cache, etc.
Unless you’re talking about games or specialized business software, I can assure you that there is a very great deal of OS X software available, most of it of excellent quality (for example, I regularly use four different browsers, Safari, OmniWeb, Camino and Firefox; I don’t use IE). Just take a look at VersionTracker:
http://versiontracker.com
You’ll be surprised at what’s available. This is not counting Office for Macintosh or Apple’s own superb bundled software, in particular the iLife suite. There is also a large and growing library of Unix/Linux software that has been ported to OS X. I’m somewhat mystified by your comment about wanting their software library to grow 10-20 fold (although that would certainly not be a bad thing) before you commit to a Mac.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/
There are over 10,000 applications available for Mac OS X, why would having 200,000 make the OS any better? Just look at the amount of crap available on Windows!
Oracle knows that it has to port its database to every viable OS out there. This is a good move! Everyone knows that MS will not port their database to anything but windows. For Oracle, this means that they can completely dominate a niche market without any problems. Openbase, Frontbase, and Sybase are good but Oracle is best for larger deployments. This also means that OSX might be used for ERP systems. Perhaps Apple might eventually repace their SAP deployment with Oracles’s.
Can we drop the Mac/PC crap for just a moment and return to the topic?
I find it interesting that the second article link refers to Oracle using the X-Serve RAID to cut server costs. I wonder if that involves XSan (www.apple.com/xsan)…
Interesting times for the Mac.
“then thanks but no thanks. bmws are a deathtrap on a good day, and with all the younger people that drive them like its the last day of earths existance i have no hope for the future of computers.”
Actually, BMW’s are one of the safest cars you can drive. Using the 330 ci convertible as an example: Sensors detects the car is about to roll, a rollcage shoots out to protect the occupants, the doors automatically unlock, a red beacon flashes to signal distress, your GPS coordinates get sent out to emergency services instantly, variable speed airbag deployments to prevent injuries from airbags, etc.
http://www.bmwusa.com/bmwexperience/BmwTechnology/safety.htm
Please don’t spread FUD.
And no I don’t work for BMW, ask any mechanic and he’ll tell you BMW’s have an excellent safety record. Sorry to interrupt the thread, but I can’t let BS be posted.
Oh god no! Now we’re onto car analogies! Argh!
Is it just me, or does the debate suddenly become worthless when cars are used to describe a situation we already understand?
Personally i think its great as my OS migration has followed a very recognizable pattern. First windows, than the inevitable dropping windows for linux. Than guess what.. for my lappie, i bought a Mac. Why? Because its unix. I’m sick of donating my clock cycles to adware protection, virus protection and pop up protection. I want my computer to just do MY work. If you examine the efficiency of G4s and now G5’s you see that this is a very very powerfull platform for serving. When the new ppc “cell” chips coming out we will see who has the last laugh.
“Personally i think its great as my OS migration has followed a very recognizable pattern. First windows, than the inevitable dropping windows for linux. Than guess what.. for my lappie, i bought a Mac.”
I did the exact same thing, now I’m looking for a desktop OS X solution. The cell chips just might be worth waiting for =)
What is interesting is that, with the heritage of OS X, there is no excuse for the lack of a FreeBSD port if it were simply about marketshare.
Good post by thxdude. Well said, but it’s a shame this kind of thing has to continually be explained over and over. Many aren’t listening or understanding anyway.
But it is irrelevant how many millions of desktops a certain OS is installed on when discussing Oracle. One reason licenses for Oracle and other enterprise software are so expensive, is that the market for those products is relatively small.
This database is aimed at the grid market, where Apple has had some well publicized recent success. The word is out that the price/performance of Apple systems are very competitive, which allows for the possibility of increased market share in the future.
Even if Apple’s server market share remains very small, this can still be profitable for Oracle. I’m sure the license costs are on a per CPU basis, so it would seem to me that just a few large grid customers can make this worthwhile.
>
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The 1.000.000.000.000.001 times mentioned one button mouse is, as far as I can read, still not mentioned in this thread. What’s the matter guys? Got the flue ?
>
The 1.000.000.000.000.365 times mentioned high_high_Apple_prices have barely been mentioned in this thread. What’s happening in the PC-world ? Inflation ?
what i was doing was pointing out that if i transfer my personal experience of bmw’s and their owners over to macs then no way. yes its flawed way of looking at it but it just points out the bigger flaw, the original anology.
but then again i buy all my things first based on stats, then on looks. and right now, in my very personal opinion, apples products are to much style, to little stats.
allso, linux was just one example of a volvo equivalent for computers (i could not use windows now could i?) alltho, freebsd, openbsd, or similar may allso have served.
hmm, i wonder why noone from the bsd crowd gets up on the walls like rms does over gnu/linux and crys for the true marking of mac as bsd/mac or mac/bsd, it is a bsd at its core after all…
1) It isn’t the number of customers but the market of where those customers reside; if 90% of your customer base are users who whine about spending $300 on a computer, these are not the type of customers software vendors are going to concern themselves with. So even if you had 100million of those very same customers, it won’t make a difference as they’re not going to buy the software in the first place.
I’ll bet my bottom dollar Oracle asked Apple for their customer profile for their server products, realised that there was not only volume, but a decent number of customers who are not only willing but able to pay for their software as to justify the cost of not only porting it to MacOS X Server but to also make it a premier platform for their product.
2) Regarding operating systems and desktops – its a personal decision, but with that being said, you can’t rule out any operating system from being a desktop – for example, my parents computer is an old Dell Dimension, loaded with Solaris 9 (09/04) and CDE as its default desktop, they’re happy, they’ve got a rock solid desktop that does everything they want it to do.
What I suggest is that people drop this “my operating system is better than yours”. The operating system YOU ARE running could be better for YOU but not as good for another.
Operating systems are like shoes, there will never be a “One size fits all”.
Possible Apple footed some of the bill for it as well…
Mentioning the storage angle and the unix angle is an interresting swing…
Apple is currently the only inexpensive unix server dealer that can bunddle reasonalby price and good performance storage and support the system from the bottom up. Sun IBM and HP even on linux can’t touch the prices with the storage and certainly don’t provide the old fashion full integration with a complete hardware solution. Certainly you can pay them by the hour to do it but their hardware is still outragous for pc server platforms and decent raid 5 performance.
It is too bad they are so constrained on production on both peices. Their other problem is Apple sales guys are really bad with server customers. They really only know desktops well and then are more like Mercedes dealers where their server is more like a Nissan or a possibly a honda/toyota not an IBM/SUN/HP server…
Automotive analogy inserted for the fun of it….
”
My 333 iMac running OSX is still usable as the day I bought it in Jan 1999. In the same period of time, I am on my 3rd PC. Two built from scratch, one store bought.
Why is it with every new OSX, the computer seems to get faster, easier and more capable, whereas with every Windows upgrade, my PC gets slower and slower….
Initial purchase price of “any” PC is indeed cheaper but in the long run it definately costs a lot more.
So, in my case, PC purchase was 3x higher than Mac purchase. I believe the sales figures are wrong when you only count the “number” of sales. They should really count the “lifespan and installed base”.
”
I’m sorry, but I”mm still using a 1999 P3 733mhz, which came with Windows 98, to run XP and Ubuntu. I upgraded the memory to 256 mb but that’s all.
That’s my experience
I know a person in India who personally worked on the MAC OSx port for Oralce 10g. It did not cost millions of dollars (though Oracle may want you to think that), prob more on the order of $100,000. Remember that WH-Oracle was already ported to HPUX, AIX, Solaris, and Linux. Porting to another POSIX conforming API is not that difficult if you have the right skillset.
According to my Indian friend, about 10-20 talently programmers ported the entire code base in about 5 months(compiled with g++). It took another 3-4 months to “tune” it for performance. In situations like these, the compiler is far far more important than the actual API being programmed against (in this case the “OSX” kernel – which is remarkably similar to a POSIX conforming API).
Remember that these companies are often marketing driven. Oracle has billions and billions in the bank. Spending $100K to do a port is a minor gamble (IMHO). The neanderthal is a smart man – I think he can see that the POWER architecture will be growing in the next 3 to 4 years and doing a port this early in the game is a wise bet.
The power architecture is a 64bit ISAs to survive the tumultuous 1990’s. Sparc, MIPS, Alpha were all more widely used in the early 1990’s, but IBM plodded along bringing some mainframe expertise into the POWER ISA. Now the POWER5 is gaining some of the best numbers in the SPEC race and will soon run linux nearly flawlessly.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0204ibmplots.html
It is my professional opinion that only 3 architectures will survice into 2010. (x86, POWER, ia64 – mostly due to intel’s marketing muscle)
sparc, alpha, and parisc will die slow ugly deaths. They are all architectures that are not currently being maintained.
Interesting article. No matter how much it cost to port the database (100k to millions), they wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t think they’ll get back their investment. Interesting tell-tale sign about the Mac platform.
Another thing: has anyone noticed that the article is dated Dec 6th? It’s about a month old….
Oracle is just porting to Mac so that they can tap another market segment. And at my university where there is a lot of biotechnology research going on and they need vast databases to store all the information, this would be a perfect case of deployment because they already have a huge Mac cluster and they have been talking about wantin to use Oracle for a long time…so I think its more that they would or could target it towards critical app settings where Windows just wont cut it
Apple is currently the only inexpensive unix server dealer that can bunddle reasonalby price and good performance storage and support the system from the bottom up. Sun IBM and HP even on linux can’t touch the prices with the storage and certainly don’t provide the old fashion full integration with a complete hardware solution. Certainly you can pay them by the hour to do it but their hardware is still outragous for pc server platforms and decent raid 5 performance.
Well, the interesting thing will be this year when Solaris 10 and AMD64 go into full swing. The interesting part will be how well will SUNs AMD64 servers and storage go down, especially with the new Solaris 10.
IMHO, once Solaris 10 for x86 is bought up to speed, SCO will be the first to die, then you’ll see HP-UX gradually die as well – customers have already got the message, unless you want to buy a platform owned by a clueless company, you’re better off moving to IBM or SUN.
IMHO, in a few years we’ll see a consolidation; IBM/AIX for the big end of town, PowerPC/MacOS X for the low end of town; SUN will be pretty much the same, SPARC for the big end of town as well as the telcos, and AMD64s for the medium to low end.
Now just imagine MAC OS on AMD64 (x86-64). Some decisions made now will make more sense in the long-run, perhaps.
–EyeAm
http://s87767106.onlinehome.us
When Oracle running on OSX makes top 10 on the TPC (www.tpc.org), it’ll be considered a contender. Until then, there are cheaper/faster solutions out there. I’d love to eat those words, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon, if at all.
[quote]
It did not cost millions of dollars (though Oracle may want you to think that), prob more on the order of $100,000. … 10-20 talently programmers ported the entire code base in about 5 months(compiled with g++). It took another 3-4 months to “tune” it for performance.
[/quote]
I’m not sure how you do your math but even at the low end of 10 developers you mentioned, each making $50,000 per year and a project taking (on the low end again) 8 months to complete would equal
Cost = 10 dev. x $50,000 * 8/12 months = $333,333
and if it is 20 developers and not 10, double the $333,333 figure.
So yes, I can easily see how Oracle can claim that they spent a million dollars on the port when you also consider cost of purchasing Xserve’s to develop the port on etc.
developers in India make $20K per year, $25K if they are a manager.
20000 * (8%12) * 20 developers
266666.7
ok $270,000 tops, even still, oracles will get all sorts of fun tax breaks for this. Hardware schardware, oracle prob got a deal on the hardware. The same Indian person said that some companies pay oracle to port to their newest systems, or if they don’t pay – they give a huge discount on the hardware. Oracle is one of the few enterprise pieces of software that companies love to showoff their TPC-D numbers for.
One data point with my company–admittedly a small one–we would not purchase Oracle until it ran on OSX. It was a deal breaker given the enormous value in the Xserve, the tighter security in OSX, and the fact that OSX leverages a ton of open source solutions.
From what my Oracle rep told me, Oracle was doing the port because they see the XServe as a great SMB server initially, with big corps following along later when they get off the Windows teat.
developers in India make $20K per year, $25K if they are a manager.
I don’t think that is generally true.
ok $270,000 tops, even still, oracles will get all sorts of fun tax breaks for this. Hardware schardware, oracle prob got a deal on the hardware.
They don’t get hardware for free. Nor do they get free electricity, network connections, or telecommuniation (conference calls).
So you can’t just handwave on costs other than just salaries. What about QA resources, Project managment cost, Documentation, and advertizing costs etc,
There is more to a product than just 20 developers writing code.
The same Indian person said that some companies pay oracle to port to their newest systems, or if they don’t pay – they give a huge discount on the hardware. Oracle is one of the few enterprise pieces of software that companies love to showoff their TPC-D numbers for.
I don’t think Apple wants to get into the TPC-D market yet. So I doubt that they paid Oracle to develop 10g for them. It makes no business sense for Apple to spend that kind of money on a new unknown market.
Yes it cost Oracle money to do it. And Oracle likes to port to every thing that they think will make money.
sparc, alpha, and parisc will die slow ugly deaths. They are all architectures that are not currently being maintained.
I think your professional opinion is skewed.
The three architecture that will surive are x86, Power and SPARC. Sparc is activly being developed contrary to your belief.
IA64 will die a horrible death becuase of no marktet. HP just pulled out of IA64 big time. Intel can’t keep losing money with the pressure AMD and IBM are putting on it.
SPARC will survive because of a large installed base and contiued development from Sun and Fujitsu.
I am absolutely amazed at how naive some of the posters here are. Do you really believe that it would only cost $100K to port a product from one platform to another? Do you realise what you are saying: 10 developers working on it???? This is Oracle not a mama’s & papa’s outfit. This is absolutely ridiculous i would not be surprised if they had spent 50 times that amount. How about debugging, quality assurance etc… These are enormous projects not a 1000 lines of code program!
Even in India and even if all the port was made there which is doubtful.
Anyway back to your dreams….
Sorry I had not read raptor comment to which i totally suscribe.
Apple wins two InfoWorld awards
January 3 – 11:55 EST InfoWorld today announced the recipients of its 2005 Technology of the Year Awards, which recognize “significant technologies of the past year that promise to make the greatest impact on enterprise IT strategies as well as the products that best exemplify the implementation of those technologies.” Apple was honored for the best operating system (Mac OS X 10.3 Panther) and best server hardware (Xserve G5).
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/newsarticle.asp?g=477267536…
This is the second time you come to us, Larry! 😀
Thanks from an Apple’s shareholder (like you). 😉
I am going to test drive Windows Longhorn and then see if it is any faster than XP or not. If it is then I am going to upgrade, if not then I will be happy with my super tinkered and tweaked Xp haha.
Ok, here it goes: it won’t be faster. It will be slower. That doesn’t mean it will be worse.