Green IT Toolkit

Is Apple on the way out?

David Berlind ZDNet.com

Published: 13 Oct 2004 17:45 BST

A headline like that is bound to draw the ire of the Macintosh faithful. After all, since Microsoft, which can marshal its forces and target competitors at will with lethal precision, hasn't finished-off Apple after all these years (and I'm not saying that this was necessarily a Redmond goal), how on earth can an operating system like Linux spell trouble for Apple?

After putting down the Mac last year because of a failed attempt to try the switch (incompatibility with my company's virtual private network was the culprit), I'm giving it another try and can report that -- thanks to the recent Panther OS (I was on Jaguar before) -- I've been nearly Windows-free for long enough to say the switch is technically possible for most people (more on that later).

For any technology to finish off the Mac -- and by the Mac, I mean OS X -- it will have to wipe out demand for the desktop version of OS X. Apple has some very cool OS X-based servers, but they haven't been key to Apple's survival. Apple's desktop devotees have played a critical role in helping the company achieve some success with a blend of desktop and notebook systems and entertainment solutions. Judging by the toll that Linux has taken on Windows on the server side, it only stands to reason that it could do similar damage to other desktop encampments.

However, rattling the foundations of desktop Windows and Mac OS X (aka: Unix) will prove far more challenging for Linux than undermining the server versions of the two operating systems. Although it plays a role, ease-of-everything (use, software installation, management, etc.) is hardly the factor in a server operating system's success that it is for desktop operating systems. In fact, the many hardcore server administrators would just as soon do away with a lot of the ease-of-anything frills in return for a mean, lean, simple, command-prompt driven Web, database, email, directory or database application server. Compared to Windows, the way Linux can be deconstructed and reconstructed in a way that allows server administrators to achieve the perfect balance between bloat and function for whatever itch needs scratching is a winner. Compared to Unix, in which such a balance can also be struck, cost has been Linux's primary driver.

My own "datacentre" has two Linux-based servers running in it -- one as a Web server, and the other as a database server. Both are old Pentium IIs with a little extra memory. In the name of performance and simplicity, I haven't taken the time to strip them of their unnecessary fat (I'm not an expert at this) such as unnecessary daemons and other processes that load at boot time. I know that they could lose about 70 percent of their "weight." Since these are machines that were long ago donated to the recycling heap, the cost of this part of my datacentre has been near zero (not counting my time).