This was originally posted to the 'BeBits' section of Be's web site 8 
years ago, shortly after the Be announcement that they were moving to 
Intel. Just remembered it (nice memorable title) and Googled it up:



It's Dark in the Box

"I used to get excited about architectural purity, I would argue the 
superiority of the Mac over the PC for hours on end, It was so easy 
since I was right. But then one day � I lost my religion.

[...]

Then one morning I tried to imagine what the Mac would look like running 
on CHRP. Take the Apple brand monitor away, was it still a Mac? Yes. I 
had proof. I had a Magnavox monitor on my Mac at home. Keyboard, Mouse? 
Yes again. Some of the workstations and PCs I'd used had really nice 
input devices. Oh oh. What made a Mac a Mac? time to look in the system. 
CPU? was 68K, now PPC. It could be changed again. Still a Mac. Memory? I 
kept needing more, but the memory SIMMs kept changing all the time 
anyway, so that's not it. I/O? well I would miss auto eject floppies, 
but by then most of my new software came either on CD ROM or was 
downloaded from the internet. Serial ports? The Mac serial ports were 
much better, but the PC ones were capable of everything I actually 
wanted to do. One after another the hardware "advantages" of the Mac 
were measured against the PC, and were found to be better but...

All that really mattered was the user experience of the software. It 
didn't really matter what was in the box, or who it was from, because it 
was dark in the box and that was that."

More: http://www.josephpalmer.com/view/box.shtml

Of course, Apple isn't going nearly as far as what this article talks 
about -- Apple isn't giving up superior peripheral interfaces, or its 
industrial design, or any of that; these new machines will just be Macs 
that happen to have a different processor. But this article is 
definitely worth a read, for anyone who thinks the Mac can't be a Mac 
without PPC.

-- 
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply
ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table."
   -- George W. Bush in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005

ZnU wrote:
> Of course, Apple isn't going nearly as far as what this article talks
> about -- Apple isn't giving up superior peripheral interfaces, or its
> industrial design, or any of that; these new machines will just be Macs
> that happen to have a different processor.

Things like firewire target disk mode might disappear for a while.

> But this article is
> definitely worth a read, for anyone who thinks the Mac can't be a Mac
> without PPC.

That's not quite the issue, I'm more afraid of sundry legacy x86 crap
being retained for no good reason (really vm-ware Windows compatibility
is good enough for me, I don't need to actually dual-boot a Mac into
Windows I don't think).

I ~had~ wanted Apple to tack its ship closer to the xbox2 and ps3, but
they chose another course.

IBM+Cell+Linux+Java+OpenGL could still be an alternative. Dubious if it
will establish a beachhead against x86, but it would certainly pick up
where BeOS and now Apple left off.

In article <znu-170FBF.03575107062005@individual.net>, ZnU <znu@fake.invalid> 
wrote:

> This was originally posted to the 'BeBits' section of Be's web site 8 
> years ago, shortly after the Be announcement that they were moving to 
> Intel. Just remembered it (nice memorable title) and Googled it up:
> 
> 
> 
> It's Dark in the Box
> 
> "I used to get excited about architectural purity, I would argue the 
> superiority of the Mac over the PC for hours on end, It was so easy 
> since I was right. But then one day � I lost my religion.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Then one morning I tried to imagine what the Mac would look like running 
> on CHRP. Take the Apple brand monitor away, was it still a Mac? Yes. I 
> had proof. I had a Magnavox monitor on my Mac at home. Keyboard, Mouse? 
> Yes again. Some of the workstations and PCs I'd used had really nice 
> input devices. Oh oh. What made a Mac a Mac? time to look in the system. 
> CPU? was 68K, now PPC. It could be changed again. Still a Mac. Memory? I 
> kept needing more, but the memory SIMMs kept changing all the time 
> anyway, so that's not it. I/O? well I would miss auto eject floppies, 
> but by then most of my new software came either on CD ROM or was 
> downloaded from the internet. Serial ports? The Mac serial ports were 
> much better, but the PC ones were capable of everything I actually 
> wanted to do. One after another the hardware "advantages" of the Mac 
> were measured against the PC, and were found to be better but...
> 
> All that really mattered was the user experience of the software. It 
> didn't really matter what was in the box, or who it was from, because it 
> was dark in the box and that was that."

This is pretty much the same way I see it. I couldn't care less about what 
brand CPU is in my Mac. Jusst as long as it's adequately fast and runs OSX, I'm 
a happy camper.

-- 
Sandman[.net]

imouttahere@mac.com a �crit :
> ZnU wrote:
> 
>>Of course, Apple isn't going nearly as far as what this article talks
>>about -- Apple isn't giving up superior peripheral interfaces, or its
>>industrial design, or any of that; these new machines will just be Macs
>>that happen to have a different processor.
> 
> 
> Things like firewire target disk mode might disappear for a while.

I don't see why, the target disk mode is provided by Open Firmware, 
which could be adapted for those "newer world" Macs.

>