Re: life extension of old computers thanks to opensource Contiki

["Andrew Owen" <aoweninoz@yahoo.com.au>]

zwsdotcom@gmail.com wrote:
> Modern personal computers are black boxes designed to run
> shrinkwrapped software. They are shipped without programming tools and
> with no technical documentation whatsoever. Operating system vendors
> are actively working to confine software development to an exclusive
> club of licensees, and lower-level development at the
> direct-hardware-access layer is at best very difficult due to the
> unavailability of chipset documentation (in many cases due to the
> manufacturer's contractual obligations to preserve trade secret
> information related to intellectual property protection mechanisms),
> and the utter complexity and heterogeneity of PC hardware.

Apple doesn't quite fit this picture. To paraphrase:

Modern Mac computers are white boxes designed to run preinstalled and
shrinkwrapped software. They are shipped with a DVD full of programming
tools and technical documentation  (xcode, gcc etc). Additional support
is available via Apple's website. Apple are actively working to open
software development to anyone who is interested because it is in thier
financial interest to see more Mac software created. Lower-level
development isn't something that anyone should want to do except for
very small programs. Even on a Z80 programs with more than about 8K of
code soon become difficult to develop in assembler without introducing
bugs. I think the PowerPC chip set is pretty well documented, but of
course Apple is in the process of switching to Intel. At least hardware
conflicts of the type experienced by PC owners are still rare on Macs.

I know there are some people who just bought a G4 based Mac that was
replaced by a cheaper Intel based one but I'm quite happy to have a G4
system (when virus writers finally get around to attacking the Mac I
doubt they'll be doing fat binaries). However I'm still very much
attached to the idea of RISC processors, since it does make lower level
stuff easier. I hope 10 years from now when I buy my next computer
there's still a choice rather than just ubiquitous x86 boxes. Maybe
someone will have successfully revived the Amiga by then? Guess not. :(