Linux, PowerPC, and Apple

Here's a great article about Linux running on PowerPC. It's well-written, easy to follow for the not-too-technical, and does a great job of explaining the current situation.

The "big idea" that I draw from this article is such: Linux, PPC, and the Mac (i.e., non-Microsoft-Intel-AMD architectures) provide a tremendous value to people who are willing to try new ways of doing things. I think the combo of PPC and Linux offers great benefits to people who use it now, but the real potential has yet to be explored.

There's no doubt that Apple provides a uniquely easy, seamless, and powerful computing solution with their proprietary hardware systems and Mac OS X. Much of the success of Apple lies in the fact that they control the full vertical chain of the computing experience, so they can ensure that everything works well together. It's because of this fact that many people think, rightly so, that were Apple to port their operating system to the world of non-proprietary hardware out there, they would be unable to provide the same level of seamless elegance with their operating system.

That is true, to an extent, and is also one of the reasons why Windows is so difficult for Microsoft to maintain; they've got to support the entire world's hardware and software, while Apple need only support its own stuff and the wares of their small universe of hardware and software developers.

It's also true that, as good as the Apple experience is, they will simply never be able to seriously compete with Windows on a market-share basis because a closed hardware platform from a single vendor simply cannot compete with everyone else in the world who creates products around a competing standard.

The real threat to Windows is Linux, because it runs on the "world standard" PC architecture. The only thing holding Linux back from being a serious competitor (yet) to Microsoft for the average desktop computer user is that Linux is simply not easy enough or compatible enough for that average user to use. Windows is still better on those points.

But imagine if Apple took the best part of their computer experience- their great interface and philosophy of software design- and ported it to Linux. Then, suddenly, Linux users would be able to use the Mac interface as their own, and suddenly Microsoft's biggest competitive advantage over Linux would be not only equalized, but bested.

For this to succeed, Apple would need to provide the OS X interface to Linux in a way that makes it work as much as possible like it works on the Mac, but preserve as much as possible the Linux innards so that they don't create something that loses the benefits of inherently "being Linux."

In other words, "Mac OS X for Linux," so to speak, would need to work like Mac OS X for the Mac, and would need to use device drivers that work with standard Linux (i.e. not Mac-specific drivers), and would need to make it very easy for developers of all of the great Mac software to port their programs to the Linux version of Mac OS X.

This is definitely a technical challenge, but one that I propose would be worth tackling. The result would be, to end-users, the Mac OS running on their PCs, using their existing drivers and software, and also a library of great Mac software that's been ported to the Linux platform.

The Cocoa development environment for Mac OS X is especially well suited to porting to other architectures, so the program-porting aspect of this may not be as difficult to achieve as it sounds.

The net result would be the Mac OS for all Linux users. It would not be quite as seamless or rock-solid as the Mac version of OS X, but it would be, if done right, a hell of a lot better than what we've got today on the PC platform (Windows and Linux with no awesome GUI).

And doing it this way would preserve Apple's hardware department, because they would continue to develop Mac hardware (for the immediate future, at least) that would work even better than the PC hardware. But they would be free to sell their greatest asset to the entire world of PC users. The Mac OS deserves to be used by more people because it's really great. Bringing it to Linux would be a tremendous step forward for everyone.