[hacker]

Originally Posted by MrSaint

What I don't understand is why in the discussion of hardware you separate Linux from Windows as both run on X86, at least by most folks.

For a couple of reasons:

1. Linux runs on 32 different processors, including those made by Intel
2. As far as I know, you can't reconfigure Microsoft Windows to perform say... real-time, or pre-emptible, or change the VM or any number of a dozen things that can change the "personality" of the OS on that hardware. Linux can be configured to run poorly on Intel, or it can be configured to run exponentially better/faster than Windows. It all depends on how you build the core kernel itself. With Windows, you're stuck there.

Second, the here cited claims for superiority of the PowerMac are based on numbers not on usablity.

Exactly, I could care less about usability, we're talking about processors here, specifically how well a processor is performing on certain tasks (not getting into the glaring ugly security holes in the core silicon of Intel's Hyperthread processors of course).

Do you realize, though, that Apple, with its proprietary hardware, offers the least amount of choice here?

The "least" amount of choice, in exchange for the most amount of control about EXACTLY how well their OS performs on THAT hardware. There is a tradeoff, and its not unlike PalmOS itself.

When you control the hardware and the software to the extent that Palm and Apple (and others like Cisco, Linksys, Nokia, etc.) do, you can make it do exactly what you want, at the performance level you expect.

Sure, you can yank the NIC out of a Cisco router, but why would you want to? It OS was designed to run with THAT NIC in the unit. You pull it out and replace it with a "better" NIC, the OS itself (IOS in this case), might not perform "better".

See my point?

Windows == Games
Apple == Media
Linux == Everything else (including games and media of course)

I'm not defending Apple's decisions, or the PowerPC processor (made by IBM, of course). I'm simply trying to show you that the "numbers" aren't as black-and-white as many would want them to appear to be.

And frankly, who cares. Run whatever you want on your hardware as long as it does what you want it to do. Do you need a 9Ghz machine? Of course not, but people will still continue to buy them in 2010.

Just don't try to screw over the company that is providing that OS for you, even if you run it on your own "whitebox, clone" PC, or on their hardware itself.

If you like it, compensate the people that spent their time, money and resources building and delivering it for you.