It was one thing to license low-volume companies to build Mac knock-offs. Selling Mac OS X to consumers and maybe to OEMs is another business entirely. Not that I rate it at all likely in the near term. But if Msoft keeps screwing up, Apple could swoop in five years from now.

Also, note the Safari on Windows announcement. Apple is starting to appreciate high volume.

“If you like iTunes you’ll love Safari!” Followed by: “If you like iTunes and Safari, you’ll love OS X!”

Jeremy,

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Robin

They’ve had many chances to license their software – 68000 systems and the PPC reference platform (CHIRP?) – but haven’t.

The only way I can see them keeping their focus, ‘staying pure’ perhaps, is to kick-out Mac OS/X into a separate company – but that leads to problems like Palm has had…

They will have a window of opportunity if Microsoft ever hits a financial crisis like IBM in 1989/90 – or if Microsoft gets into legal problems with consumer protection legislation (Operating Systems should *operate* if the hardware is OK. It can’t be that hard – hobbyists built Linux if their notional backyard/shed for nothing, and it passes that test much better.)

From the convertfs page: “moves files from the primary filesystem to the mounted image”
From other stuff on the pages, it’s not clear to me that the original filesystem goes away either – it seems the new filesystem is created within the original FS… Not apples and apples.

For me the whole point of the Apple patent is that only the meta-data is changed – the data is left inplace.

It’s like doing an in-place sort – the clever bit is twiddling pointers, not copying massive amount of data.

The analogy is far from perfect, but instructive nonetheless. For a couple of decades Ford Motor was the world’s largest automobile manufacturer in unit volume and sales with the Model T. And then the market changed and Ford didn’t move fast enough. General Motors took the lead and been the world’s largest car company ever since. Yet now Toyota, with years of steady work, is ready to take the crown. My point is a modest one: just because Microsoft has been the desktop leader doesn’t mean they always will be. Steve Jobs is a hyper-competitive guy who loves to win. Apple is changing the competitive landscape and changing with it. With iTunes Apple is now on the huge majority of Windows machines, showing users how software could be. If they keep Microsoft on the defense, Apple plays offense.

There is nothing Toyota has done that GM couldn’t do. They just didn’t. Microsoft is under attack on numerous fronts, as they should be. Apple just happens to be the best funded and most creative contender.

Robert,

I agree that Apple wouldn’t support a lot Wintel configs. As I thought about it some more it occurred to me that perhaps the Vista Pro configs from 3-5 major vendors would be a manageable number. I don’t rate it as likely, but Steve had OS X running on Intel for five years before they released it. He is willing to invest in technology that gives Apple strategic flexibility. The same team probably has OS X running on HP, Dell and Lenovo PCs today, learning about the potholes they’d face. As Microsoft tries to improve customer satisfaction by requiring more uniform hardware from vendors, they play into Apple’s hands.

Ben,

Thanks for the links! I’d been wondering if anyone else had the same idea. I’d note that these utilities are limited to a single OS – Linux – and require support for sparse files. The Apple patent is a cross-platform technology. Like most such ideas there are worthy progenitors who point the way.

Robin

Oh wait… here is an implementation for Linux:
http://directory.fsf.org/ConvertFS.html

As you can see from the homepage, the first release was on August 23, 2001:
http://tzukanov.narod.ru/convertfs/

Everyone keeps pointing to how Apple could and, in their opinion, will dominate the world of mass-market PCs. Delusions of grandeur I say. They’ll take baby steps into other people’s territory if anything.

I really think the iPhone is a baby step despite how the media has hyped it up to be. I’m excited about the iPhone too but Apple isn’t saying or acting like they plan to put Motorola, Nokia and LG out of business. They just want their implementation to do well because they believe it’s the best.

Back to ZFS, I give it an 95% chance that it will replace HFS+ as the default CLEAN install file system. As for the converter, I really hope it works out but I’d give that much lower odds. Guess we’ll find out on Monday!