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I am compelled to point out that the premise of Google's Android being the "DOS of smartphones" was examined in:

Will Google's Android Play DOS to Appleâ(TM)s iPhone?

... a followup to

Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

Take a closer look at your list of Apple failures:

Apple didn't sell the Bandai Pippin, which is why it was the Bandai Pippin and not the Apple Pippin. Bandai licensed a Mac reference design and failed for a number of reasons.

The Newton was more successful than any other PDA until the much cheaper and much less capable Palm Pilot came out. The PDA market was impossible for Palm to sustain and WinCE hadn't been able to do anything with it either. In ten years, the global market for PDAs is at 680,000 units per quarter and dropped 50% year over year, according to Gartner.

The Cube was a luxury PC shipped right as the dotcom bubble popped.

Is the MacBook Air Another Cube?

Now look at the iPhone: highly publicized reception problems and third party app instability. Wow, fresh territory for a mobile phone huh? At the same time, Apple has 79% of its users claiming to be very satisfied. Even RIM's BlackBerry only gets around 50%.

Apple is selling the iPhone 3G hand over fist. It's releasing regular updates, and promises additional fixes next month.

Compare that to Microsoft, which plans to release the next Windows Mobile 7 at the end of 2009 (!).

Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

The industry is full of analysts who desperately need to contain the iPhone's success for their clients. It should come as no surprise that "Nomura analyst Richard Windsor" is repeating his claim from last year that there will "possibly" be a massive recall of iPhones due to some plausible-sounding technical issue that does not add up.

Last year it was a faulty heat-sensing touch layer that didn't even exist. Now it's the Infineon 3G chipset that works fine in Samsung phones.

The iPhone has collected a group of telco stooges fronting for Verizon, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson that make Windows Enthusiasts Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Mike Elgan look amateurs.

Inside the iPhone 3G dropped call complaints

Take a closer look at your list of Apple failures:

Apple didn't sell the Bandai Pippin, which is why it was the Bandai Pippin and not the Apple Pippin. Bandai licensed a Mac reference design and failed for a number of reasons.

The Newton was more successful than any other PDA until the much cheaper and much less capable Palm Pilot came out. The PDA market was impossible for Palm to sustain and WinCE hadn't been able to do anything with it either. In ten years, the global market for PDAs is at 680,000 units per quarter and dropped 50% year over year, according to Gartner.

The Cube was a luxury PC shipped right as the dotcom bubble popped.

Is the MacBook Air Another Cube?

Now look at the iPhone: highly publicized reception problems and third party app instability. Wow, fresh territory for a mobile phone huh? At the same time, Apple has 79% of its users claiming to be very satisfied. Even RIM's BlackBerry only gets around 50%.

Apple is selling the iPhone 3G hand over fist. It's releasing regular updates, and promises additional fixes next month.

Compare that to Microsoft, which plans to release the next Windows Mobile 7 at the end of 2009 (!).

Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

The industry is full of analysts who desperately need to contain the iPhone's success for their clients. It should come as no surprise that "Nomura analyst Richard Windsor" is repeating his claim from last year that there will "possibly" be a massive recall of iPhones due to some plausible-sounding technical issue that does not add up.

Last year it was a faulty heat-sensing touch layer that didn't even exist. Now it's the Infineon 3G chipset that works fine in Samsung phones.

The iPhone has collected a group of telco stooges fronting for Verizon, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson that make Windows Enthusiasts Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Mike Elgan look amateurs.

Inside the iPhone 3G dropped call complaints

Take a closer look at your list of Apple failures:

Apple didn't sell the Bandai Pippin, which is why it was the Bandai Pippin and not the Apple Pippin. Bandai licensed a Mac reference design and failed for a number of reasons.

The Newton was more successful than any other PDA until the much cheaper and much less capable Palm Pilot came out. The PDA market was impossible for Palm to sustain and WinCE hadn't been able to do anything with it either. In ten years, the global market for PDAs is at 680,000 units per quarter and dropped 50% year over year, according to Gartner.

The Cube was a luxury PC shipped right as the dotcom bubble popped.

Is the MacBook Air Another Cube?

Now look at the iPhone: highly publicized reception problems and third party app instability. Wow, fresh territory for a mobile phone huh? At the same time, Apple has 79% of its users claiming to be very satisfied. Even RIM's BlackBerry only gets around 50%.

Apple is selling the iPhone 3G hand over fist. It's releasing regular updates, and promises additional fixes next month.

Compare that to Microsoft, which plans to release the next Windows Mobile 7 at the end of 2009 (!).

Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

The industry is full of analysts who desperately need to contain the iPhone's success for their clients. It should come as no surprise that "Nomura analyst Richard Windsor" is repeating his claim from last year that there will "possibly" be a massive recall of iPhones due to some plausible-sounding technical issue that does not add up.

Last year it was a faulty heat-sensing touch layer that didn't even exist. Now it's the Infineon 3G chipset that works fine in Samsung phones.

The iPhone has collected a group of telco stooges fronting for Verizon, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson that make Windows Enthusiasts Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Mike Elgan look amateurs.

Inside the iPhone 3G dropped call complaints

Yes I know what you mean. I haven't drank beer since 1984 either. I shotgunned a six pack of Animal Beer and I can't imagine trying a real beer today because of that bad experience at 11.

Also sex. I had a bad experience in 1984, and swore it off.

Also breathing. My family ran over a skunk while on vacation, and it smelled so bad I just stopped breathing.

I hate beer, sex, and breathing now. I can't imagine ever revisiting those decisions again. But the IIc I really liked.

Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Appleâ(TM)s iPhone?

Interestingly, Apple's AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule firmware does support IPv6 as local-link only, an IPv6 node, or tunnel to IPv6. It also includes an IPv6 firewall supporting incoming IPSec authentication and Teredo tunnels (to get through NAT).

Apple owns more than 10% of the retail WiFi N router market according to NPD.

Mac OS X, XP and Vista all support IPv6, but having support in the router is the important part. Enabling a significant percentage of users to flip on IPv6 and tunnel right through their legacy ISP is already possible. IPv6 just needs a killer app.

How about authenticated web apps? IPv6 secures traffic from the user to the cloud. That's something Apple has reason to push with MobileMe: "look at us, we have IPv6 security."

Look at what Apple's doing with Back To My Mac to support authenticated connections using Wide-Area Bonjour Dynamic DNS lookups. This could be done via IPv6 using direct addressing. Apple will end up selling more routers, MM subscriptions and IPv6 will get its foot in the door for others to use.

Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS?

Interestingly, Apple's AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule firmware does support IPv6 as local-link only, an IPv6 node, or tunnel to IPv6. It also includes an IPv6 firewall supporting incoming IPSec authentication and Teredo tunnels (to get through NAT).

Apple owns more than 10% of the retail WiFi N router market according to NPD.

Mac OS X, XP and Vista all support IPv6, but having support in the router is the important part. Enabling a significant percentage of users to flip on IPv6 and tunnel right through their legacy ISP is already possible. IPv6 just needs a killer app.

How about authenticated web apps? IPv6 secures traffic from the user to the cloud. That's something Apple has reason to push with MobileMe: "look at us, we have IPv6 security."

Look at what Apple's doing with Back To My Mac to support authenticated connections using Wide-Area Bonjour Dynamic DNS lookups. This could be done via IPv6 using direct addressing. Apple will end up selling more routers, MM subscriptions and IPv6 will get its foot in the door for others to use.

Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS?

SVG is just for vector graphics of course, but there are plenty of ways to present video via JavaScript without using a plugin monster like Flash or Silverlight. That's what Apple does, and there's no shortage of web users unable to watch the iPhone and Leopard ads on Apple's site.

Using the presentation of web video as a killer app for browser middleware is absurdly ridiculous.

So let's take the third application of Flash/Silverlight beyond animated ads and framing video: rich apps. Apple is also proving that this can be done just as well using a JavaScript framework with MobileMe. Yes, Apple had problems getting their servers up to serve the few million upgrading .Mac users and an an influx of new iPhone MM subscribers, but the apps work pretty well, and they outclass anything I've seen built in Flash/Flex/AIR.

Apple isn't alone in proving that Flash/Silverlight is unnecessary, but the company is also actively working to kill both by making neither work on the iPhone. Linux users should congratulate Apple's efforts to scrape this unnecessary middleware from the web, as web apps designed to run in JavaScript will also run in Linux (and JavaScript can be optimized by the FOSS community openly without patent threats from Adobe/Microsoft).

You don't even have to like Apple's hardware to appreciate what its doing for open source.

Symbiotic: What Apple Does for Open Source

... There is no market for Linux versions of Adobe apps. There cannot be a market for what doesn't exist. There can be a demand. Demand does not create a market. Only the combination of supply and demand create a market.

If you wish to say that Adobe does not feel the demand is great enough to bother creating the market, than say so. Don't try to insinuate that Adobe hates open systems or that they are in bed with MS.

Even without using the correct definition of a market (supply + demand) you figured it out. No I do not wish to say that I think that Adobe does not feel the demand is great enough to bother creating the market. Neither you nor I can say what Adobe execs really are thinking.

What can be said is that there is demand for Adobe applications for Linux, natively. There is also enough demand that Photoshop has been a goal of WINE. There is demand, but strangely no supply.

Regardless, I don't have to insinuate. I can make accusations based on circumstances and past transgressions. It could be something as simple as an NDA for some MS SDK which prohibits work on competing platforms, like the NT SDK appeared to do for OS/2.

For several decades, MS has put pressure on software houses and OEMs to curb their activities with competing systems. Even Apple, which has an on-again, off-again, relationship with the Microsoftians was under strong pressure to drop technologies MS was gunning for. That includes Quicktime and the now defunct OLE-like OpenDoc, and quite possibly the OpenDocument Format.

"I'll give you Lotus, but not WP. Word was almost always better than WP while Excel beat Lotus by being an adequate clone bundled with office. Excel beat Lotus on the back of the success of Word."

WP died with dos, their windows version have been lackluster. as is demonstrated by their efforts to get bought out more than any other hopelessly obsolete software. the fact is, Microsoft was copying claris. and claris was ruined by mismanagement and lost most of their developers to either Microsoft of failed startups. http://roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/19/office-wars-1-claris-and-the-origins-of-apple-iwork/

No, seitan is a wheat-based meat replacement for vegetarians, it's just they THEY don't know how to spell.

Warning: Google Maps Walking directions are in Beta

In both your examples, your evil companies have invested shit-tons of money into creating the economic pool you want to swim in. You are surprised that they want to impose rules to earn profits on their investment?

Without AT&T, you wouldn't have AT&T's phone service, and without AT&T's investment in the iPhone, you probably wouldn't have $199 access to an OS X-based smartphone that costs $700.

Without the RIAA, you wouldn't have artists getting million dollar contract advances to create albums, nor any rock and roll lifestyle to inspire artists to make music. That's a bad thing if all you like is folk hippie music, but most people like commercial lala popular music, hence the name Pop.

I'm not saying that AT&T and the RIAA aren't greedy assholes, I'm only saying that your outrage is rather naive and silly. "Just restricts the consumer"? You do realize that the purpose of companies is to make profits, right? They don't exist to titillate you at affordable prices.

Warning: Google Maps Walking directions are in Beta

Can anyone shed some light on the following statements, taken from:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/23/apple-iphone-vs-the-fic-neo1973-openmoko-linux-smartphone/

(after several points wraps up:)

"...OpenMoko therefore isn't a new âoeopen phone,â it's merely a version of Linux designed to run on a specific vendor's proprietary implementation of Windows Mobile. Buying an FIC phone to run OpenMoko is like buying a Dell Windows PC to run Linux. You're not changing the world, you're merely funding development of Microsoft's platform while giving yourself the opportunity to work with community software."

I don't understand the differentiation or point made regarding the serial port connection to the the GSM/GPRS run by proprietary Nucleus OS -- is this like a BIOS for the hardware instead of an OS? Is it a problem with proprietary drivers?

Perhaps more important, how does this compare to other Linux based phones out there?? Does this help the community in general, or is it really vendor specific?

First: the linked article is 3 years old and isn't even using the same hardware architecture.

Second: Apple has by no means been resting on it's laurels. In Snow Leopard there is a new thread management system called Grand Central. GS seems like it would be a kernel level feature, which means that it just might be open sourced in Darwin 10. Read up on GS (and other features) at http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/12/wwdc-2008-new-in-mac-os-x-snow-leopard/

Chances are pretty good that your entire argument will be void next year, if not already. Have a nice day. :P

Well some people seem to think so and so do others and some gave awards for shilling.

But clearly I must apologize as I don't know what I am talking about, nor does any other Slashdot reader. I don't know why we say these things, must be a geek thing. We are all liars and cowards, like you said. Must be why we disagree about Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows with you.

I'm sorry and I apologize, it was a botched joke.

Mac OS X's day will definitely come at some point, but if people keep crying wolf every time someone whips up a theoretical and entirely implausible situation, no one is going to believe the security community once some black-hat does finally decide to attack the Macs.

How sure are you of that proposition? Not that I think OS X is invulnerable, but perhaps OS X isn't attacked, not because of Marketshare but because Windows is just much easier. Afterall, I don't hear people chiming the Linux bell so much in this area even though it is being sold commercially now (gPC, eeePC, etc.) and the two are built on a similiar base:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/01/the-unavoidable-malware-myth-why-apple-wont-inherit-microsofts-malware-crown/

I'm pretty sure most of MS's attacks come from it supporting legacy apps and legacy cruft and not letting go (like the damned Registry). One thing Apple never had a problem with. Linux neither in many areas.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-flash-killer-sproutcore/ This is from Roughly Drafted.

Articles actually outlining features on Snow Leopard & SL Server and what they mean for users:

WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint

Apple's Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh

Articles actually outlining features on Snow Leopard & SL Server and what they mean for users:

WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint

Apple's Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh

Articles actually outlining features on Snow Leopard & SL Server and what they mean for users:

WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint

Apple's Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh

It is rumored that 10.6 is going to be the end of PPC support. I suppose it's time, although there are some PPC machines that are less than 4 years old. Still, as bittersweet as it is, it's probably time to let go of the legacy code and firm up the OS. I'm happy running Leopard on my Frankenmac 1.8ghz (Sonnet upgraded).

A good analysis of this decision can be read at RoughlyDrafted Magazine.

Or if you mean Apple has their own language, Cocoa, which isn't ported to XP or Linux. Funny thing is, you're not forced to use it.

I believe you meant Objective-C, and that is cross platform. In fact Apple uses gcc to compile all their Objective-C applications. The only thing that is platform specific is Cocoa. Apple originally had a cross-platform library for the system called "Yellow Box", though for one reason or another it was dropped. More information can be found here:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/4B800F78-0F75-455A-9681-F186A4365805.html

Puma was a free release.

2001-2007 is seven years.

Windows costs twice as much at retail (and few buy either at full retail). Many people get new releases with new computer purchases. No computer is worth upgrading for 7 years.

But the biggest problem with your numerology is that Mac OS X has been worth it to the 20 million people who are going out of their way to fund its development. Windows hasn't sold enthusiastically since 1995; its all just OEM bundled licensing that shows up by default on new PCs, a market that is now leveling off and is going to see very little new growth.

WWDC 2008: Predictions & What to Expect: Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Future UI Designs in Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Moscone West Spy Shots!

Puma was a free release.

2001-2007 is seven years.

Windows costs twice as much at retail (and few buy either at full retail). Many people get new releases with new computer purchases. No computer is worth upgrading for 7 years.

But the biggest problem with your numerology is that Mac OS X has been worth it to the 20 million people who are going out of their way to fund its development. Windows hasn't sold enthusiastically since 1995; its all just OEM bundled licensing that shows up by default on new PCs, a market that is now leveling off and is going to see very little new growth.

WWDC 2008: Predictions & What to Expect: Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Future UI Designs in Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Moscone West Spy Shots!

Puma was a free release.

2001-2007 is seven years.

Windows costs twice as much at retail (and few buy either at full retail). Many people get new releases with new computer purchases. No computer is worth upgrading for 7 years.

But the biggest problem with your numerology is that Mac OS X has been worth it to the 20 million people who are going out of their way to fund its development. Windows hasn't sold enthusiastically since 1995; its all just OEM bundled licensing that shows up by default on new PCs, a market that is now leveling off and is going to see very little new growth.

WWDC 2008: Predictions & What to Expect: Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Future UI Designs in Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Moscone West Spy Shots!

The point, I believe, is that Office is Microsoft's biggest source of revenue, accounting for 90% of the revenue from its business division.(ref)

If Google killed MS Office, it would be a huge blow to Microsoft.

M$'s revenue was down 24% last quarter over the last year. The knock out punch is putting something out that convinces the market NOT to buy M$ Office. The prospect of platform independence, lower cost and higher reliability can convince wavering corporate IT managers that an upgrade to M$XML and ten more years of file format lock in is a bad idea.

Don't feel bad for the Soft, it's something they have done again and again to other companies, even when the other company's tech was better. The SCO, Get the Facts, and patent attacks are all evidence of the same kind of behavior. They deserve to fail.

"The surge is working" and "bush is going to clean up the Iraq war in six months" and Obama and McCain don't disagree on fundamentals?

I agree with Obama, you're an undereducated moron.

But nice string-along-a-jingos. That's some tightly packed ignorance you've canned.

Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech

You get what you pay for. In the US, money gets spent on fear.

The Intestate highway system was not sold to Congress as a vital transportation network, but rather as a defense system that could be used to truck around ICBMs to shoot at the ruskies.

The foundations of the Internet were all funded out of DARPA research as ways to communicate during wars, where communication links might be severed and need to be routed around.

Many medical advancements have originated from the efforts to stitch people back together during wars.

If you look at how much money the US spends on being ready to kill, compared to how much it spends being ready to compete, it's no surprise why there's all this technology spilling from the military. They're the only ones being funded because fear results in funding.

If we poured money into education, transportation, information technology, health, etc, we'd see significant paybacks from those investments too. But Americans only think they're getting their money's worth when fear is involved. They haven't quite figured out why Pentagon toilet seats costs $10,000.

I don't think Republicans are entirely to blame, they've just corned the market on fear and have become great at selling it to the "I'll pay you to scare me" American public. Democrats also enjoy the funding that comes with fear, making it a key issue both sides can agree on.

Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech

The problem isn't so much whether Microsoft's innovation lies with marketing rather than engineering, but how the company has used its "innovations" to hold back the progress of technology.

It wasn't "wrong" for Microsoft to develop upon ideas Apple originated in graphical computing (just as Apple itself built upon existing ideas already in development). It was however fairly scandalous that Microsoft chose to repeatedly screw over its hardware partner, and certainly disappointing that the company delivered a shoddy, poorly designed imitation in Windows, and then used its market power to stop superior products from competitors from entering the market.

In 1991, Microsoft was extolling a vaporous vision of Cairo, what it planned to deliver after NT, as a copy of ideas from 1988's NeXTSTEP. But the company didn't even deliver NT until 1993 and never really shipped Cairo and the features it was supposed to deliver, apart from a few things that showed up a decade later around 2000. Microsoft didn't beat anyone in delivering technology, it simply lied about what it could do and used its clout to prevent real products from finding a market. That's "innovative" marketing, but certainly isn't praiseworthy.

Microsoft did the same thing in web browsers, in dev tools, in office apps, in server operating systems (NT vs Unix) and attempted to continue into media players, DRM licensing, and smartphones, the latter of which it is failing in.

The real problem with Microsoft isn't that it copies and refines existing ideas and builds upon them, but that it just copies ideas poorly and supports them with marketing lies, resulting in inferior products that are forced into the market as the only option for many buyers.

This has happened so frequently that the industry and now customers are well aware of what's going on, and its no longer working in a variety of new markets Microsoft is trying to enter.

From Vista to Zune: Why Microsoft Canâ(TM)t Sell to Consumers

I did a comparison a week prior that looks at Obama and McCain's positions (and actual voting patterns) on a variety of tech positions, following Obama's quite impressive outline of tech he gave at a presentation at Google and posted to his website. Of course, I also had to string in Apple and Microsoft, and how US corporations have taken an increasing role in subverting democracy in government:

While the United States prepares to elect a new president, candidates on both sides have made interesting comments about their affiliations with tech companies and their perspective on issues facing the tech industry.

Here's a look at Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain compare, looking first at how each relates to Apple and Microsoft, how corporations are leveraging money and political power to shape public policy to fit their own interests, and followed by a look at each candidate's stance on issues related to technology.

Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech

This is a typical Leander Kahney / Wired article that hyper-sensationalizes a story nugget that, rather than just pointing out what really happened, suggests a arc of drama that really isn't even accurate.

While Apple execs didn't really get HyperCard (and hated the idea of giving it away, as Bill Atkinson's deal required), it did serve as the model for Viola, a project by Pei-Yuan Wei at UC Berkeley to clone HyperCard for X Window systems.

"I got a HyperCard manual and looked at it and just basically took the concepts and implemented them in [X Window for Unix]," Wei later explained. Wei intended to adapt Viola to use the Internet to distribute its hypermedia documents, but then happened upon the work already done by Berners-Lee on NeXT.

Adopting the HTTP architecture of Berners-Lee's www service resulted in the creation of the ViolaWWW web browser for X Window systems in 1992.

From there, NSCA's government funded (thanks, Al Gore) Mosaic browser, pattered after ViolaWWW, resulted in both Netscape and Spyglass/Internet Explorer.

Wired missed the real story of a stepping stone towards the user created web and instead created a dramatic soap opera about how Apple missed Sun's network genius because it had boxes with lines rather than lines with boxes. Never mind that Sun never managed to deliver either a web browser that mattered (HotJava?) or make any consumer contributions that caught on (client side Java?), just make a wild suggestion that makes no sense and allow your audience to come to a faulty conclusion that Apple should have been marketing the network, a product it wasn't selling, rather than the PC, a product it was. And on top, suggest that "owning" the browser market was or could be possible and/or profitable for anyone.

This reflects the typical tech pundit-mentality that everything should be owned by Microsoft-like companies, because it worked so well for Microsoft to monopolize the PC OS market. In reality, the utility software concepts (the core OS, web browser, codecs, protocols, etc) that pundits often think "somebody" should have owned are all better off either collectively owned in the form of open industry standards, or wide open in the form of free/public domain.

The world would not be better off if the web had developed around pioneering, but proprietary HyperCard software owned by Apple. Ideally, the web will continue to be based on open standards, and proprietary extension elements like Flash/Silverlight/ActiveX will all go away.

Safari on Windows? Apple and the Origins of the Web

I give Forrester Research credit for finally waking up and smelling the coffee, but they're still in a groggy, early morning stupor.

AFAIK, this is the first article from a mainstream computer industry research report that acknowledges Apple may have a very serious and viable five year product plan, beyond their existing hit products.

But then, Forrester goes on to say Apple's "commitment to closed systems" poses a barrier to wide adoption. In the previous paragraph, Microsoft and HP are cited as tough competitors, without mention of how much more closed Windows is. Nor does the article mention that Apple's proprietary parts are superior interfaces to open protocols.

I would have been much more impressed if the article discussed how Apple's practice of continuously building and improving on past technical and product successes poses a serious challenge to Microsoft and HPs practice of quarterly product planning. I guess this degree of insightfulness is reserved for more independent sources, like Roughly Drafted.

Ouch! Don't remind him of the Cairo/Longhorn decades.

Nope.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/ABC6DFDA-9DE9-4EA8-A269-65EAAB628676.html

Apple does seem to be hit and miss on HD access on its laptops:

  - the original iBook was about 27 layers of crap wrapped around the core HD like cellophane, and bolted together with 27 different types of screws. It took me two hours to remove one, and I cheated by just bending shit out of the way.

- the modern MacBooks have RAM and a SATA HD that falls out after you remove a cover behind the battery. Very nice, although you still need to take out 3 screws on the plate.

- MacBook Pros require more disassembly, not as bad as the iBooks but not nearly as convenient as the MacBook.

Most HP/Dell/Thinkpad laptops have a single screw that holds in a slide out HD caddy. However, some PC laptops, including a quite modern HP model I tried to upgrade, artificially limit the size of the HD you can install (!).

I tried to add an 80 GB HD to a machine that shipped with 40, and it didn't work. I called HP and they first suggested I had to buy an HD from them, and then admitted that it just wouldn't support a larger HD. That is insane. If Apple did something like that, it would be front page news for months.

Newton Again: iPhone vs the Mini-Laptop

Two reasons why PC vendors aren't doing that:

a) Microsoft can punitively raise their Windows licensing to the point where any savings from shipping Windows-free Linux PCs are erased. As long has Microsoft can maintain that kind of pricing power over what is a utility monopoly, things can't change. Incidentally, that's why every PC maker advertises "we recommend Windows XP/Vista." It's in their contract! Linux sales and advertising are tightly controlled by Microsoft using its OEM leverage.

b) PC makers investing in software development are afraid that their contributions to GPL software would be used against them. So HP develops a desirable Linux distro that works flawlessly with all the modern video cards, etc, and then Dell can come along and sell it on their PCs without any contribution back, and at no investment expense. Dell wins, HP loses all its investment.

The reason Apple is doing well is because it has no obligation to or dependance upon Microsoft for Windows licensing. If it did, it would instantly be in the same boat as Palm and the other PC makers. And secondly, Apple can invest heavily in developing its own proprietary OS.

Mac OS X is a unix distro with a unique kernel that is open but which no other PC maker can effectively really use or benefit from, and a proprietary development framework and GUI.

Recall that Ray Noorda at Novell and then Caldera tried to pull off something similar with OpenLinux and then United Linux, but couldn't manage to get either one together. If a major software developer couldn't wrangle a suitable Linux desktop distro, how could a PC maker like Dell or HP, neither of which can make software that isn't any better than a flaming turd?

Caledera's OpenLinux: The Linux "Mac OS X" That Failed

And for insight on how well a community/corporate partnership can work, look at OpenMoko. It predates the iPhone, but still can't dial from the GUI.

Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone

Before you volunteer to help a PC company develop a Linux distro, you might want to consider why they aren't asking for help and why the task might be less appealing than driving nails through your eyelids.

Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone: Linux' Mobile Problem

Two reasons why PC vendors aren't doing that:

a) Microsoft can punitively raise their Windows licensing to the point where any savings from shipping Windows-free Linux PCs are erased. As long has Microsoft can maintain that kind of pricing power over what is a utility monopoly, things can't change. Incidentally, that's why every PC maker advertises "we recommend Windows XP/Vista." It's in their contract! Linux sales and advertising are tightly controlled by Microsoft using its OEM leverage.

b) PC makers investing in software development are afraid that their contributions to GPL software would be used against them. So HP develops a desirable Linux distro that works flawlessly with all the modern video cards, etc, and then Dell can come along and sell it on their PCs without any contribution back, and at no investment expense. Dell wins, HP loses all its investment.

The reason Apple is doing well is because it has no obligation to or dependance upon Microsoft for Windows licensing. If it did, it would instantly be in the same boat as Palm and the other PC makers. And secondly, Apple can invest heavily in developing its own proprietary OS.

Mac OS X is a unix distro with a unique kernel that is open but which no other PC maker can effectively really use or benefit from, and a proprietary development framework and GUI.

Recall that Ray Noorda at Novell and then Caldera tried to pull off something similar with OpenLinux and then United Linux, but couldn't manage to get either one together. If a major software developer couldn't wrangle a suitable Linux desktop distro, how could a PC maker like Dell or HP, neither of which can make software that isn't any better than a flaming turd?

Caledera's OpenLinux: The Linux "Mac OS X" That Failed

And for insight on how well a community/corporate partnership can work, look at OpenMoko. It predates the iPhone, but still can't dial from the GUI.

Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone

Before you volunteer to help a PC company develop a Linux distro, you might want to consider why they aren't asking for help and why the task might be less appealing than driving nails through your eyelids.

Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone: Linux' Mobile Problem

Two reasons why PC vendors aren't doing that:

a) Microsoft can punitively raise their Windows licensing to the point where any savings from shipping Windows-free Linux PCs are erased. As long has Microsoft can maintain that kind of pricing power over what is a utility monopoly, things can't change. Incidentally, that's why every PC maker advertises "we recommend Windows XP/Vista." It's in their contract! Linux sales and advertising are tightly controlled by Microsoft using its OEM leverage.

b) PC makers investing in software development are afraid that their contributions to GPL software would be used against them. So HP develops a desirable Linux distro that works flawlessly with all the modern video cards, etc, and then Dell can come along and sell it on their PCs without any contribution back, and at no investment expense. Dell wins, HP loses all its investment.

The reason Apple is doing well is because it has no obligation to or dependance upon Microsoft for Windows licensing. If it did, it would instantly be in the same boat as Palm and the other PC makers. And secondly, Apple can invest heavily in developing its own proprietary OS.

Mac OS X is a unix distro with a unique kernel that is open but which no other PC maker can effectively really use or benefit from, and a proprietary development framework and GUI.

Recall that Ray Noorda at Novell and then Caldera tried to pull off something similar with OpenLinux and then United Linux, but couldn't manage to get either one together. If a major software developer couldn't wrangle a suitable Linux desktop distro, how could a PC maker like Dell or HP, neither of which can make software that isn't any better than a flaming turd?

Caledera's OpenLinux: The Linux "Mac OS X" That Failed

And for insight on how well a community/corporate partnership can work, look at OpenMoko. It predates the iPhone, but still can't dial from the GUI.

Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone

Before you volunteer to help a PC company develop a Linux distro, you might want to consider why they aren't asking for help and why the task might be less appealing than driving nails through your eyelids.

Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone: Linux' Mobile Problem

What's useful about it is that it shows Apple is upselling customers to higher quality computers. HP and Dell make $1200 laptops that compare with the MacBook in hardware features, but they have to sell $700 laptops because consumers want cheap stuff.

Apple has the market power to push people toward better machines. That results in better profitability, but also higher customer satisfaction, better reliability, and a longer equipment life span.

Average sale prices of PCs are diving into the toilet, and Dell/HP would like to reverse the trend, but they can't. If one tries to prop PC prices up, the other undercuts them with cheap crap and ends up with "higher market share" despite lower profits (or greater losses).

That has locked HP and Dell into low profit spirals where they have to support junk instant eWaste PCs that only last for 18 months. Apple is not only maintaining a higher ASP, but also developing a quality brand and rapidly eating into the valuable growth in the market.

That's also why the fascination with "market share" is pointless. Obviously, Apple's 5% of the world / 9% of the US is far more valuable per percentage point than the 30% shares of HP and Dell. Every new percent Apple adds is a major expansion into greater profitability while the PC makers burn their brands as they turn into profitless Packard Bell junk vendors.

That in turn enables Apple to invest in developing better software that further differentiates its brand. Low prices are great, but most people don't want to drive a Yugo just because its cheaper.

Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone

Millions of iPhones are still only 2% of the cell phone market and only 20% of the smart phone market (if that). Far from mainstream.

See:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/BEC05CE1-D5EB-4E48-B46C-7385D5AADCFE.html

"It's weird how zealots will claim that Apple's hardware is the be-all and end-all of computing equipment but simultaneously declare that licensing OS X to third parties would destroy Apple"

It's less weird when you realize that the reason Apple sells premium hardware is BECAUSE it is subsidizing the development of its own OS and software. Apple sells Mac OS X upgrades for less than Windows, and iLife/iWork are considerably less than their equivalents. Apple make nice software, but sells it as a premium on top of nice hardware.

If Apple sold cheap hardware, or lined up cheap hardware licensees, or sold OS X at retail, it would have to change from a hardware-centric model to a software-centric one. It's easy to sell desirable hardware; it's hard to sell software. People don't see value in software, and refuse to pay for it unless DRM prevents them from stealing it. That's why there's no healthy mobile software market, why Microsoft has to laden DRM and activation into Windows (because piracy of Windows no longer supports its interests), and why Apple doesn't sell Mac OS X for use on non-Apple hardware.

When you consider that Apple brings in half the revenue of Microsoft despite selling 5% of the number of copies, it helps clarify that yes, the software business is high margin, but it's also a hard sell, particularly if you happen to lack an established monopoly. Nobody else has been able to sell a commercial desktop OS, so why think Apple can? The community can't even successfully give Linux away on the desktop in any self-supporting sort of way. Obviously, this desktop software sales business is hard to crack into, particularly with a heavily armed monopolist in the way.

From Vista to Zune: Why Microsoft Can't Sell to Consumers

In addition to the "think of the children" publicity, Apple would also benefit from having a huge worldwide population learning Cocoa development tools. That seems to be a major reason why Microsoft is pushing its war on cheap linux mini-laptops: if emerging countries learn Unix-style development, that will threaten the company's ability to sell Windows to those markets. That's also why Microsoft is ready to throw out super cheap licensing in China.

Of course, Apple doesn't need a me-too mini laptop; it has the iPhone/iPod touch, which are selling well in foreign markets. It is also going to broadly push Cocoa Touch development tools, just as a Mac OS X-based XO.

Why market a cheap $300 laptop without enough power to be a real laptop when for the same price you can sell a WiFi mobile computer that fits in your pocket and is more practical? Does anyone really see mini-laptops as more than a curiosity? They remind me of the Timex-Sinclair $99 handheld PCs with membrane keyboards of the early 80s: everybody bought one to say they had it, but it wasn't very practical or useful for anything. The iPod touch/iPhone appear to have a far larger potential impact. Of course I say that because I like what Apple has been doing lately, but it's still pretty uncontroversial.

ARM, x86 Chip Makers Fight to Ride Mobile Growth

When Apple approached OLPC about basing its mini laptop on a light version of Mac OS X, it was rebuffed because the project wanted everything to be fully open source and unfettered with proprietary software. Now it's ready to put Windows on the XO?

With Mac OS X, the XO would have a native environment for running free software including Sugar, along with or in addition to running commercial Mac software. Unlike clone PCs, there's no vast range of hardware to support. Development tools are simpler and Apple currently has no business plan for selling its dev tools. That seems to make far more sense than slapping on a OS designed primarily to run on full sized, corporate desktops with expensive Office software licensing.

It's too bad OLPC set such lofty ideals about open development, setting itself up to drop them immediately and become yet another extension of a monopoly that doesn't have the technical merits to run on low cost mobile devices.

iPod Game Console, Tablet at WWDC? Highly Unlikely

If only Vista had the ability to run across multiple machines.

Which highlights the HUGE elephant in the room on this issue: the whole thing is a marketing ploy, not a tech related solution.

The Problem:
Microsoft is finding its core PC maker customers are bleeding away at the very low end ($300 PCs) where the Windows OEM license is just too expensive to justify. If it allows this to continue, progress made in Linux on those devices will trickle up into more and more complex and sophisticated devices, quickly making OEMs wonder why they're paying for a Windows license on full price desktop PCs and laptops.

Microsoft's Solution
Announce that Windows can be stripped down and will be sold for low end PC devices (ie, a marketing announcement).

The Real Solution Required
Developing a scalable OS that can actually work on low end PC devices. Currently, Linux scales down much better than Windows XP, and Vista is only getting larger. Microsoft has to invest in stripping down XP, another distraction from Vista.

Microsoft spent ten years working on WinCE, which doesn't work well enough for anyone to use in the hand held PC realm that it was expressly designed for. If you want to argue about technology limitations of the day, then remember that desktop Linux was being developed at the same time as WinCE, 1998-2008. WinCE can't blame its shortcomings on existing technology of the day.

There is no evidence that Microsoft has the technical chops to developer a suitable mobile OS. "Embedded XP" is just XP sold to fill the market for PC-based devices. "Embedded CE" is just WinCE sold for non-PDA devices. Microsoft has no mobile OS to sell, and clearly has no ability to develop one anytime soon. It couldn't deliver decent performance in Vista within a half decade of trying, and that was just a PC desktop OS overhaul.

Linux already works and is free.

Interestingly, Apple has ported its desktop OS to the iPhone/iPod Touch "WiFi mobile platform" as a low power, flexible, but intentionally limited feature set (ie, not a desktop GUI nor a small laptop), offering a different alternative to Linux based micro-laptops rather than trying to ape them.

Microsoft should have pursued an original strategy like Apple or delivered a mini-desktop that works like the Linux community. Instead, it's in the position of trying to FUD Linux to death with a press release, despite not having the technology to sell.

Of course, this has all happened before.

The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile

Zune Sales Still in the Toilet

If only Vista had the ability to run across multiple machines.

Which highlights the HUGE elephant in the room on this issue: the whole thing is a marketing ploy, not a tech related solution.

The Problem:
Microsoft is finding its core PC maker customers are bleeding away at the very low end ($300 PCs) where the Windows OEM license is just too expensive to justify. If it allows this to continue, progress made in Linux on those devices will trickle up into more and more complex and sophisticated devices, quickly making OEMs wonder why they're paying for a Windows license on full price desktop PCs and laptops.

Microsoft's Solution
Announce that Windows can be stripped down and will be sold for low end PC devices (ie, a marketing announcement).

The Real Solution Required
Developing a scalable OS that can actually work on low end PC devices. Currently, Linux scales down much better than Windows XP, and Vista is only getting larger. Microsoft has to invest in stripping down XP, another distraction from Vista.

Microsoft spent ten years working on WinCE, which doesn't work well enough for anyone to use in the hand held PC realm that it was expressly designed for. If you want to argue about technology limitations of the day, then remember that desktop Linux was being developed at the same time as WinCE, 1998-2008. WinCE can't blame its shortcomings on existing technology of the day.

There is no evidence that Microsoft has the technical chops to developer a suitable mobile OS. "Embedded XP" is just XP sold to fill the market for PC-based devices. "Embedded CE" is just WinCE sold for non-PDA devices. Microsoft has no mobile OS to sell, and clearly has no ability to develop one anytime soon. It couldn't deliver decent performance in Vista within a half decade of trying, and that was just a PC desktop OS overhaul.

Linux already works and is free.

Interestingly, Apple has ported its desktop OS to the iPhone/iPod Touch "WiFi mobile platform" as a low power, flexible, but intentionally limited feature set (ie, not a desktop GUI nor a small laptop), offering a different alternative to Linux based micro-laptops rather than trying to ape them.

Microsoft should have pursued an original strategy like Apple or delivered a mini-desktop that works like the Linux community. Instead, it's in the position of trying to FUD Linux to death with a press release, despite not having the technology to sell.

Of course, this has all happened before.

The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile

Zune Sales Still in the Toilet

That would typically happen in a market with competition. However, Linux is not a commercial competitor on the desktop. No PC maker has it in its own interests to sell, market, or develop Linux, so it's not being sold.

The reason that HP or Dell or some smaller company isn't pushing hard for Linux is because there's no proprietary value in doing so. If Company X invested huge amounts of work into making Linux ideal on the desktop, other companies could take that work and put it on their own PCs. Unlike the server market, there's no real business model for earning revenue just from support as Red Hat does. Even Red Hat sees no market potential on the desktop.

That leaves PC makers willing to push Windows, even when it is not the best solution (particularly in mobile devices). There's no development investment to be lost to other hardware competitors.

The only company that isn't pushing Windows is Apple, but that's because it has its own proprietary OS, which is like (LIKE not is!) a superset of Linux with a custom GUI and dev frameworks. Apple can invest heavily in Mac OS X knowing that other companies can't just take its work and reuse it to add value to their own PCs. Incidentally, that's also part of why Apple has no interest in selling Mac OS X as an OS for other PCs: it serves as a major differentiator.

Until PC makers individually work or group together to develop their own OS (imagine a consortium between Dell and HP to develop a desktop Linux), the only other desktop OS will be Mac OS X. That is unlikely to happen because of the competitive barriers of Windows (installed base of software, drivers, and familiarity, but more importantly the fact that Dell and HP can't afford to have Microsoft jack up their Windows OEM prices due to the fact that they've started selling Linux PCs).

And so the status quo is resisting any change. It would take a lot of outside pressure to push PC makers to do anything different. Continued popularity of the Mac might help, continued problems with Vista might help, and continued progress on making Linux easy to use might help, but the real problem is that PC makers lack much vision and don't want to upset their business or take any risks because the commodity hardware market is very low margin. There's simply little room to compete in between Apple at the slick premium top and Windows at the high volume middle.

It makes sense that PC makers wouldn't want to continue paying Microsoft $30-50 per OEM license to put Windows on a PC that sells for $700 and has a $350 bill of materials, but it appears that they're more worried about investing millions into Desktop Linux and seeing no real return because everyone else would share their contributions to the GPL software base. Of course, if you're selling ten million PCs, those OEM licenses are costing a third of a billion dollars, so at some point you'd think Dell and HP would exercise some leadership in investing in Desktop Linux. But again, Microsoft can simply raise their OEM prices and inflate the cost of Windows per PC, making any efforts to diversify a no-win gamble.

10 million Windows PCs @ $30 Windows OEM = $300 M of Windows licensing
vs
5 million Linux PCs @ $0 Windows OEM = $150 M of Windows licensing saved, potentially invested into Linux development
5 million Windows PCs @ a punitively priced $60 Windows OEM = $300 M of Windows licensing, all potential savings lost

As long as Microsoft can charge whatever price it wants for its monopoly utility software on an individual basis, it can effectively make Linux impossible for larger PC makers to invest in. If Microsoft's OEM prices were open and regulated like most every other monopoly, then alternatives (particularly free ones) would have a chance to compete. As it is, the only way to compete with Microsoft is to compete full throttle as Apple does - all Mac OS X and no Windows dependancies at all.

Zune Sales Still In the Toilet

Wrong: Apple didn't develop the Pippin, it was a product created by Japan's Bandai, a Mac OS licensee.

It was a packaged as a high end (well, higher priced) game console to compete against other failed attempts to provide something more than a game console and less than a computer, largely aimed at accessing the Internet.

The failure of the Pippin was no more Apple's fault than the failure of the WinCE-based Gametrac was Microsoft's fault.

In addition, the other circumstances of 1995 and 2008 are a bit different too. For example, we now have fairly common WiFi rather than only dialup, so you can download games rapidly. Apple has also changed from a weak PC ghost to a consumer electronics powerhouse with its own retail outlets.

Interestingly, Apple's iPod Touch/iPhone compare pretty well against the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as a gaming platform:

iPhone 2.0 SDK: Video Games to Rival Nintendo DS, Sony PSP