Since Apple's marketshare continues to flounder down around three percent and the company appears to be more and more focused on the iPod side of the company, Apple should look for a company like IBM to sell off the useful parts of OS X for something like this.

Apple gets a big wad of cash and goes off to completely focus on digital media. IBM uses OS X/Aqua as the basis for their common application toolkit, Quicktime gets a full parity port to Linux.

OS X is going nowhere fast, and Linux application toolkits are a fucking embarrassment.

Do it Apple and IBM, make everyone happy.

but, I don't think they would survive the loss of the dominance of MS Office. They can port Office to Apple, Linux, heck, Solaris if they wanted to....but if ODF takes off, and they now have to compete with Sun and IBM....seem to me that's a much bigger threat.

my 2 cents anyway

This will never fly. At first after reading the summary, I thought they had figured out a way to launch native apps regardless of OS. Turns out that it's just a way to write OS agnostic apps (or similar) and deliver it to a pc in a seamless fashion. This means that you still have the massive task of convincing people to give up Office. This is interesting, but it's hard to imagine this ever really getting traction in it's current form. Perhaps they could come up with a uber OS, that can effectively VM the apps then that would be more interesting.

OSX is going nowhere fast? Apple's desktops may be floundering due to the lack of their killer app (i.e., anything made by Adobe) for the Mactels, their laptops are selling like frickin' hotcakes. Apple is pushing more Mac laptops than ever before.

Not to mention that OSX is the *only* non-Windows OS that is commonly used by average users.

Macs as desktops are going nowhere fast, mostly because much of the desktop market is now polarizing into enterprise-level hardware or cheap shite Dell boxen. There simply isn't enough demand for a non-enterprise quality home-use desktop. Laptops on the other hand are a different story, demand for the Macbook is huge around where I live, and interest in buying Mac mobiles is higher than I've ever seen it before.

...completely unworkable. There are definite "must haves" in terms of software that a solution like this will never be able to account for. You have web applications that rely on IE in order to work. This solution will NEVER solve that problem. You have local executable applications that people need to get their work done on a day-to-day basis. If these applications rely on a specific platform, (Windows, Mac or Linux) you will not be able to solve that. Those are two really big issues that IBM will never solve with this solution.

Personally, I've been able to avoid running Windows at home and at work, but I've also made an investment in time and effort to get things running on Linux the way I like. Some of it was just by moving to the FOSS alternative. Some of it was accomplished with Wine (for some Windows apps). And some of it can only be pulled off in a virtual machine. However, there are still some things even someone like me can't do unless I would actually run Windows. Fortunately I don't have those needs. :) The time invested and the knowledge gained far outweighs the convenience of sticking with a "standard platform". But that's only for me. For others who have needs that can't be met by alternative platforms or don't wish to invest time and energy into adapting, my route doesn't work. IBM's solution likely doesn't apply here either.

Like I said, nice idea, but...

Don't forget that rolling it will be a major IT challenge. 5% as a start doesn't sound very well but 16,000 is quite a lot of workstations. And add servers. That's a lot of beta testers, IMHO.

...this is about IBM offering a business the ability to run the OS of their choice, and have unified collaborative working across all platforms. i'm presuming what this actually means is a) running notes/domino on windows, linux etc, and b) charging you out the wazoo for the consultancy they require to make it all work.

They are probably the only company with the cash and skills to "fix" everything that is wrong with Linux on the desktop. But they don't do it.

Why isn't IBM throwing money at the Ubuntu guys? Why isn't IBM basically bribing Adobe to port their apps to Linux? Why isn't IBM paying their software guys to write shitloads of GPLs drivers? Why aren't they writing *all kinds* Linux software to fill in the gaps that would make it better than Windows in every way?

I'm always amused by the companies that want to "beat" Microsoft, but don't seem to really TRY. If Linux is going to displace MS on the desktop, or even be a real competitor, then it's going to take BILLIONS of dollars and at least 5 years of development. IBM could do it. But they don't. Why not?

I have a minor niggle with the latter part of your mentioning about Vista and OS X. As I mentioned last year [slashdot.org] I have now bought a Macbook and owned it for roughly a couple of months.

I used Vista quite a bit during its beta/rc stages and then a bit when it got released. I'd just like to say that after having used both for a decent while that Vista may be equal in features but those features are poorly implemented. Case in point the control panel, it has been mutated into a monster.. it's nigh on impossible to find the settings you want to change without faffing about. Eventually I just turn on the classic view for control panel and make do with that.
Then contrast that with system preferences on OS X where it's well thought out without a million and one options in your face or having to go digging for some minor niggle that you want to disable or change.

If the linux world got behind GNUStep, they would have an opensource version of MacOS X that could (potentially) run Mac apps with only a recompile. This could change linux and thrust it into the mainstream. Imagine... apps like photoshop, office and iTunes for Linux. It would be at least possible. It seems to me that the vast majority of GNU/Linux development over the past 8 years has been to make the userland more windows-like. Even the mac-like guis are nothing more than window dressing (pun intended). It's a real shame. The Linux community has a nuke in its OS war arsenal, but continues to fight with sticks and stones.

Well said. Just wanted to add for those that doesn't know how enormous IBM Global Services is: in 2005 Global Services had an revenue of 47.3 billion making up about half of IBM:s revenue... compare that to the total revenue for Microsoft last year: 46 billion (according to Yahoo Finance)

See http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/103/103329.html [yahoo.com]

I installed Vista Business a week ago. My computer is new enough such that Vista runs very well, in many senses better than XP. But it is therefore new enough that the drivers didn't autodetect. In particular, the video card and the sound card were running in an extremely crippled mode -- low resolution and somehow unreliable video showed up on only one of my two monitors. The generic drivers for the network worked fine (but I got the proper ones anyway, just in case) -- they have to, after all, or you couldn't get the drivers to anything else.

The motherboard needed a new driver too, which is confusing my understanding of the boot process. For whatever reason, my keyboard wouldn't work 9 boots in 10 before Windows started (like "press any key to boot from CD") until I downloaded the motherboard driver -- I incidentally tested this several times (the Vista install was a pain in the ass and it was only after the third complete setup that it was stable.

Obviously, since I'm using Vista, I'm not a linux partisan. I'm even using it on my primary computer! If your computer can handle it*, and YOU can handle the setup issues, it is a nice improvement. I don't care what the slashdot groupthink is.

*I've seen it actually improve perceived performance on computers that were more powerful than recommended but far less new than mine, in the whole range from games to everyday tasks (I do not have anything to empirically back this up, though). My computer was fast enough that Vista or XP, it's still fast :). I know there are many, many hardware profiles combined with usage profiles where it would lower actual performance, as do most new versions of an OS over their predecessors.

These are great points but I don't see IBM doing this. They have to see a *return on investment*. *I* think there would be a return on investment because it would open them up to more markets.

They seem to be focusing more effort on enterprise and business. They have never been a very good consumer oriented company and their marketing department should be strung up by their toe-nails.

As of now, IBM seems to be focusing their Linux front on server-side/large systems they can sell to businesses as a product like the blade servers. This doesn't require them to focus on things like drivers for printers. High-end printing manufacturers provide Linux drivers anyway. In the end, drivers will become more available from manufacturers because consumers demand it and they (the hardware manufacturers) see a return on investment.

The one thing that will help this accelerate this is the standardization of the GNU/Linux system. Manufacturers will have a larger/easier target to write drivers to for their hardware. I'm speaking of standard shared libraries, a more static kernel interface that moves in steps instead of all the time, and a standard stack of tools available on all systems. When distros apply this *agreed standard*, adoption will take off. Efforts are underway for this, so I am quite hopeful.

IBM invested over $3 BILLION to make Linux a viable alternative to proprietary Unix and Windows.

IBM then sold it's PC group to Lenovo. IBM does not make desktops anymore.

IBM has been working on this desktop idea for several years. It is called OpenDesktop (within IBM there are different flavors people have done for different distros, but essentially the same idea), also it could be called Client for eBusiness (c4eb). The problem is Windows sucks for the desktop, but Linux sucks waaay more. Drivers don't work, adding drivers is hard, the learning curve is insanely steep, KDE or Gnome?, where do I go for support, my apps don't work, or more likely don't exist, and that's just the start. Remember, some pieces of this started back in 2000 in public, and I was involved with some of this in 1998.

IBM is a huuuge company. The idea for IBM is to make money. IBM/Lotus never saw a customer demand for linux apps, but it could see one for Linux on the server. It now thinks that with a nudge, Linux on the desktop could start to take off, and that by the time someone gets it working, it will be ready. IBM has different pockets. To say "IBM should do x" is ridiculously simplistic. Technical geeks do NOT run the company, business people do. Lotus Notes ported to Linux existed as a side project that a Lotus developer did because he could years ago. But when you start to look at the real market for something like that, it has been too small to work financially. Another year or two? Maybe. IBM exists to help companies run better, and make more money for themselves. There are really only two ways any company can make money. One: make something and sell it for more that you paid for it. Two: spend less money on number one.

IBM's vision is to leverage Linux on all platforms as a way to standardize applications. Then the applications could be moved to utility computing. Write once, run anywhere kind of code. That is one of the reasons IBM sold desktops to Lenovo. We think they are going to become irrelevant.

What is a desktop's use? To store information and applications. If I then can run all that somewhere else, then put a terminal on everyone's desk, is that better? IBM thinks so. It sure does solve a lot of problems that businesses have. This is Utility computing. IBM can deliver all of this today, but IBM's marketing is soooo horrible, that nobody gets it. Stop upgrading. Stop buying computers. Stop wasting money. Get back to work.

Or, at least that's the idea.

Eric Collins

"The future was 10 minutes ago, where were you?"