

Apple Says there are Only Two OS's - OS X and Windows 7 - mikehoward

I've gotten tired of watching the spinning beachball, so I decided to switch back to Linux. A friend has a dual boot set up on his mac - OS X and Linux, so I bought a little macbook pro and . . .<p>Bootcamp Assistant only supports Windows 7<p>After updating the OS X on the system, my arch linux boot disk cannot find the disks - which it could prior to the update - so I can't even flush the hd and make a single boot machine.<p>Looks like apple is now an entertainment company.<p>Does anybody know of a nice laptop that I can use - preferably Arch (Ubuntu seems to be going (or have gone) the way of bloat and slow
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maxharris
There's no need to change your OS (especially because the OS really doesn't
matter anymore). If you're tired of the beachball, get a RAM upgrade. I can
upgrade my machine (which has 8 GB) to 16 GB for about a day's pay (or two).
And I don't make very much money right now. Changing the OS usually takes an
entire weekend (tweaking things and moving stuff takes longer than many of us
think). So by the time you get it done, you've probably broken even.

Unless you like doing this sort of pain, in which case you can't be helped :)

~~~
mikehoward
my main machine is an mbp - which is maxed at 8 Gig. Every day it starts
paging under at most a modest load. This is an artifact of the operating
system and Safari (which leaks memory)

I had the same issues with uSoft windows which led me to switching to Mac's.
Early macbooks and mbp's did not do this, but have been getting progressively
worse since Snow Leopard. Lion has a very nice interface and a lot of
convenience, but, for me, it's getting intolerable.

I'm reverting to Linux for development work. I'll probably keep the mac for
graphics

~~~
smallegan
Run Chrome not Safari.

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blario
If you get a early 2011 MBP you might be about to install linux on it. The
models afterward have a new UEFI that does not allow OS's that aren't
"allowed".

Lookup the new UEFI to get more information about it.

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batista
_Looks like apple is now an entertainment company._

Looks like a non sequitur to me.

Apple was never in the business of selling general purpose hardware.

Running Windows via Bootcamp is just a courtesy for the multitude of switches
from Windows.

Why should they bother supporting an OS that has extremely few desktop users,
and dozens of variations?

~~~
mikehoward
These are strange ideas.

Apple was a computer company until they brought out the iPod. I believe that
about 80% of their income now comes from non-computer products - with an
emphasis on entertainment.

Running windows was critical to Apple's acceptance at the time they switch
from power pc to intel processors because of Microsoft's dominance of the
computer market. Bootcamp allowed Apple to sell into the PC space - without
which they would not have been able to overshadow Microsoft.

Just think back about 5 years.

And why should they bother supporting Linux? Read Hackers and Painters by Paul
Graham

~~~
batista
_Apple was a computer company until they brought out the iPod._

No, they was an integrated computer/os company (some even call it an
"computing experience" company). Selling (or buying) hardware was never the
whole point of an Apple, just the one with higher margins.

 _I believe that about 80% of their income now comes from non-computer
products - with an emphasis on entertainment._

And I believe that if you call the iPhone or the iPad an "entertainment"
device, you are missing like 80% of the big picture. A phone is an
indispensable everyday tool, not to mention a business tool, for the majority
of the population. And the iPad has elements of what computers for the general
public (including professionals) will look like, ten years on. Like this one:
1/4 of European doctors use an iPad for work:
[http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57379622-243/study-
euro...](http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57379622-243/study-european-
doctors-getting-ipad-fever/)

Even if it's 1/10 or 1/20, it's a mighty impressive trend, from a market
segment that was a tiny 1/1000 niche before the iPad.

Actually, Apple made MORE inroads into the enterprise with the iPhone and the
iPad than they ever did with the Mac.

 _Running windows was critical to Apple's acceptance at the time they switch
from power pc to intel processors because of Microsoft's dominance of the
computer market._

No, it was not. Actually Bootcamp, and the running windows capability, came
much after the switch from power pc to intel, a year or more after. For quite
some time there was no option to run Windows on an Intel Mac.

 _Bootcamp allowed Apple to sell into the PC space - without which they would
not have been able to overshadow Microsoft._

They haven't "overshadowed" Microsoft. Apple's share went from 5% to 10-12%.
Microsoft still have 7-8 times that much.

And, since Mac's share was in an upwards trend (from 2% when Jobs come
aboard), even before the switch to Intel, no one can say how much this switch
influenced the market share increase.

Where Apple DID overshadow MS is in the media player, phone and tablet space.
And there it doesn't run on Intel, it runs on ARM.

