Re: Steve Jobs can't even give OSX away..... :)

Oxford wrote: 
Donald McDaniel <orthocross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


http://tinyurl.com/ahpjz

Interesting article on the progress of the $100 laptop that will bring
computers and internet access to children in developing
countries....too bad Apple will have nothing to do with the effort.


"Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide
free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine,
according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of
the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source,"
says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that
can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment."


And it's a shame, because if they were truly interested in a
good platform, they would /at least/ have offered OS X as an
option, but the religious (i.e. Stallman) side of the open
source movement would be terrified to do that, for fear of
demonstrating through their actions that OS X would be preferred
to open source operating systems if price were not a factor.
For 99% of consumers, open source is something to look for,
/only/ because it is cheaper.  Access to source is useful only
for a very small percentage of people, particularly when you are
talking operating system internals instead of applications.


I thought Steve Jobs announced that OSX won't be allowed to run on any Intel
machine but its own.



steve never said that, you are thinking of phil


Considering that this machine will probably be a specially engineered Intel
machine, and considering that the only way (according to Jobs) to run OSX on
an Intel is by running OS X86, this is another indication of Apple's
possible intentions to distribute OS X86 to generic machines.


if it ever sees the light of day, it will be extremely limited, 333Mhz, 128MB of ram, no hard drive, and a price double or triple of what they are claiming.
"The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel."

it's a great pipe dream and and I have no doubt some day this price will be achieved, but most people are forgetting this idea is coming from academics not business people that actually have to "build them", pay taxes, wages, shipping, etc, etc. 
I don't think you really understand the goal of this project.



I doubt that a $100 machine (any brand) would meet Apple's stringent
hardware qualifications for OS X.  So how serious was Mr. Jobs with his
offer?  My guess is "not very".


oh, osx could be stripped down to run "okay" on these machines. osx currently runs "okay" on a Lombard powerbook, which has similar specs. just put the os on an eprom and you are done.
GNU/Linux would just run better, and allow a great deal more flexibility for the target audience. That, and it's easier to understand.


there is a wonderful picture that shows what this program is all about at the below link(s). the image is priceless :)

http://snipurl.com/jxoj

http://jackwhispers.blogspot.com/2005/11/i-hate-children-their-little-lap
tops.html



--
"There is nothing I understand." - ***
.