Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] SuperClonider
From: David Matthews (dgm4+@pitt.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 22 2002 - 19:46:52 EEST
> This is not really surprising, as OSX is pretty much NeXTStep, and they
> were releasing a version of NeXTStep for Intel Machines many years ago.
> I don't think that Steve Jobs is that short-sighted that he would ignore
> the Intel-platform for too long. How long can Apple continue to sell
> their "overpriced" machines.
>
Not entirely true. Apple is releasing a version of *Darwin* for Intel
iron. Darwin != OSX. Darwin is the kernel of OSX; however, I don't think
it includes such things as CoreGraphics and CoreAudio. The Darwin kernel
is open source, released under a BSD-like license, so if Apple didn't port
it, someone else could. However, I'm pretty sure that CoreAudio and
CoreGraphics are proprietary. You can run X Windows on OSX, but it's
mostly only there to allow users to run existing Unix software without too
much effort. I don't think anyone developing specifically for OSX is using
X Windows, so porting a native OSX app (which would presumably rely on
CoreGraphics, rather than X Windows) to Linux or even to straight Darwin
(which would probably use X Windows rather than CoreGraphics) is further
complicated. Let's also not forget that OSX uses CoreAudio for sound
support; I suppose JACK is close enough to CoreAudio that a CoreAudio app
could be ported to JACK without too much hassle.
Also, there's been a lot of talk about Apple releasing a full-blown version
of OSX for Intel. It'll never happen. It would kill their hardware sales
(which have been up the last few years) and not enough people would buy it
to make up for the loss. They could do the port easily if they wanted to,
but it just simply doesn't make economic sense.
-dgm
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