Why pay 5-10X as much to host on AWS? It's not for free.
Hosts have a really nice markup, compared to hosting yourself. Hosts make a lot of sense for small companies who can benefit from the aggregated demand and capital costs being spread over many clients.... but not when you're at the level of building your own datacenter, or even using a full rack.
It's funny how since 1980 people have been talking negatively about Apple as "vendor lock in". For most of that time it was advocating vendor lockin to windows.
The thing is when you build your system on an OS or hardware choice you're making "vendor lockin" to that platform. Build on Linux and you're locked into just Linux, unless you port.
There is little risk being "locked in" to the largest most successful company in the world. Plus the costs being dramatically lower given the rabidly higher performance of Apple's technology for this particular service more than covers the cost (in fact I think one Mac Pro probably replaces 4 or 5 Linux boxes doing this.)
If you think Optimized OpenGL shaders would do this, you're not understanding what it is that they are doing. You're just assuming it's a trivial problem, it is not.
Owning your hardware makes a great deal of sense when you are operating at scale.
You have no idea what the comparison is, and I don't either. But again, the criticisim is around running a business off of a bunch of Apple "trash cans".
>advocating vendor lockin to windows.
Linux is no lockin, Windows lockin via software vs. Apple for hardware and software.
>"vendor lockin" to that platform
Java, Scala,or any other JVM language protects from that, and to a lesser degree Python, PHP does as well.
>There is little risk being "locked in" to the largest most successful company in the world.
Price gauging? Deciding not to support your platform anymore? Forcing you to upgrade?
>Build on Linux and you're locked into just Linux, unless you port.
Only that there are a bunch of Linux options to choose from, they are all open source so you can do whatever you want as far as upgrade paths and support, and if you use the JVM languages this isn't an issue.
>in fact I think one Mac Pro probably replaces 4 or 5 Linux boxes doing this.
There is no fact there, that's your delusional opinion.
>If you think Optimized OpenGL shaders would do this, you're not understanding what it is that they are doing. You're just assuming it's a trivial problem, it is not.
It's a CDN + image manipulation tool, you don't need 3D libraries. And if you use exiting libraries or tools, it is quite trivial. Here is their API: http://www.imgix.com/docs/reference
Platform lockin isn't exactly vendor lock-in, but there's a kind of lockin nonetheless. You're going to be dependent to some extent on your platform whatever your platform happens to be.
>Platform lockin isn't exactly vendor lock-in, but there's a kind of lockin nonetheless. You're going to be dependent to some extent on your platform whatever your platform happens to be.
So you making your own chips off of beach sand or something? /s After a certain point you get ridiculous.
JVM and C/C++ (python and other scripting languages to some degree) are the options if you want cross platform environments.
Jeez, this post is brimming with strawmen. (Why am I even bothering...)
> Why pay 5-10X as much to host on AWS?
Nobody said anything about AWS...
> Hosts make a lot of sense for small companies
Sure, nobody is disputing their choice of colocating themselves.
> OS or hardware choice you're making "vendor lockin" to that platform
It is abundantly clear that the vendor lock-in refers to single sourcing your hardware. That problem is nonexistent on Windows, Linux, BSD, etc.
> I think one Mac Pro probably replaces 4 or 5 Linux boxes
Oh come on, now you're just talking crazy... see other posts in this thread for a cost/performance comparison.
> you're not understanding what it is that they are doing
On the contrary, I think I understand better than you. Do you perform a lot of image processing work on various platforms (including OSX and Linux)? I do.
Hosts have a really nice markup, compared to hosting yourself. Hosts make a lot of sense for small companies who can benefit from the aggregated demand and capital costs being spread over many clients.... but not when you're at the level of building your own datacenter, or even using a full rack.
It's funny how since 1980 people have been talking negatively about Apple as "vendor lock in". For most of that time it was advocating vendor lockin to windows.
The thing is when you build your system on an OS or hardware choice you're making "vendor lockin" to that platform. Build on Linux and you're locked into just Linux, unless you port.
There is little risk being "locked in" to the largest most successful company in the world. Plus the costs being dramatically lower given the rabidly higher performance of Apple's technology for this particular service more than covers the cost (in fact I think one Mac Pro probably replaces 4 or 5 Linux boxes doing this.)
If you think Optimized OpenGL shaders would do this, you're not understanding what it is that they are doing. You're just assuming it's a trivial problem, it is not.
Owning your hardware makes a great deal of sense when you are operating at scale.