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Microsoft Encouraging OEMs to Beautify Computers
Grooves writes "Microsoft has shipped a 'Vista Industrial Design Toolkit' to PC manufacturers, meant to
encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing. From the article: 'From color palettes to suggestions about how the power and reset buttons should appear, the kit basically describes Microsoft's vision of what a Vista PC should look like. The look features accelerated curves and purposeful contrast, among other qualities.' The report goes on to say that Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.' Sound familiar? It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this."
I desire my PC to be pure of spyware, security flaws and unstability.
We want you to look more like a Mac.
Unless encased in Jessica Abla, it will never be an object of desire.
MS is just trying to grab a few sales away from Apple at the expense of the OEMs. Why not? MS doesn't have anything to loose on this one - the OEMs are the ones taking the risk.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I can't wait to see the Microsoft designers parading their visions of loveliness down the Bravo runway Wednesday nights at 10:00 PM EST.
Would you really want to take design suggestions from MS? I can't think of anything they've designed (on their own) that looks like I'd want to put my name on it and sell it.
Beautifiers! Beautifiers! Beautifiers! ...
After all, that's where everybody keeps their porn.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
It's true that Apple attracts a certain "I don't know what" kind of person. Apple's success, however, is not based on its cosmetic appeal. Apple offers much more beyond just its good looks. It's like Apple and and its users signed up on eHarmony and found each other. If Vista is stable and easy to use, then MS won't need the glitz and glamour to attract customers since they already have a majority of the customers. MS will only have to retain customers, which it can do with a great Vista release.
...after 20+ years Microsoft finally "gets it" or at least half of "it"? Oooh shiny wins with consumers every time. Apple knew this when they made the first Macs. But Apple also knew the other half of the equation that MS is still not getting: "just works".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Just a box that every component in the world will fit please.
It is just a tool.
"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." - Bill Gates.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sounds like Microsoft should try getting Apple to ship Macs with Windows.
Haiku for you!
e want you to look more like a Mac.
Am I the only one who HATES the look of the Mac? I despise their "boy racer" looks. Apple wouldn't know true style if it kicked them in the ass.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Perhaps Microsoft is trying to make computers look exciting. Remember when all the OEMs switched to Black? I remember when everyone looked at their old, beige PCs in disgust as they saw new black models. Could this be something similar? Depending on Microsoft's design, who knows? OEMs may like the idea for marketing purposes. I know, I know. "Microsoft" and "Design" together is strange. But let's wait and see until the new designs are unveiled.
Well, if they're concentrating on this now then Vista *MUST* be free of all security holes, instabilities, and bugs. Right?
Right?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Well they sell me boxes of instant grits to go with that Natalie Portman-shaped computer?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Ha! They know PC's look like huge, drab, stinky turds and they want OEM's to spiff em up!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...just copy Apple already!!!!
It will still have Windows inside. Ugh.
This is yet further evidence of how MS have forgotten and broken their business model. They rose to prominence on cheap commodity hardware -- they empowered users and manufacturers alike to use whatever they wanted to get the job done, at a time when NeXT, SGI, Apple and Sun were competing to lock customers in to shiny, proprietary, non-serviceable hardware.
Hard to believe that even the most fundamental lessons from MS's years of success can have been forgotten -- but there it is.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Oh, sure. After all, we know how unbelievably gorgeous Lenovo laptops are.*
Actually, I suspect that this, more than anything else, is a sign of just how concerned Microsoft is that Apple is about to eat their lunch. The "beautify the box" message is inteneded as a point of product differentiation, but the only other product in this space who is doing better than Microsoft here is Apple. Unless you know of a company who is making really attractive Ubuntu boxes. (And if so, please let me know. I have a birthday coming up.)
* I should note at this point that in my previous job I administered a lab full of IBM ThinkPads. They were absolutely monster workhorses, and I have nothing bad to say about them. I mean, other than the fact that I was stupid and didn't set BIOS passwords right away, and as a result lost one laptop to some MBA student thinking he'd be cute and setting a boot password. Whoopsie.
I wonder if Real Doll would consider partnering with Microsoft in creating a new type of chassis? Muahhaha... let the imagination wander!
BOXX Technologies gives me the appeal of the clean lines of a MAC Tower with the applications I use regularly for the PC - best of both worlds...
I would like the OEMs to go with a more minimalist view. I love the Thinkpad and its' bento box inspired design. Simple design is timeless. Of course, since Vista will be replaced by some Memphis/Longhorn hybrid in 3-5 years anyway the point is kind of moot.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Somehow the phrase, "Microsoft-approved" seems to be heading in a direction that I never thought possible. Not only will software writers have to conform, but now PC manufacturers should worry about how their systems look, just because they *might* be used to run Vista? What arrogance. Some things never change.
I'm not sure I agree with the "Be like a Mac!" comparison. For most PC manufacturers, having their own "look and feel" has been part of what has given them a strong brand name. Sure, Microsoft wants to grab some of that brand recognition beyond just the bootup splash screen (and the desktop look and feel), but I also think this will create more than just brand recognition for Microsoft -- I believe it will also produce an interesting "playing field" for companies beyond the Big Four (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba). Consider the smaller OEMs and white box companies -- by providing a standardized look and feel, this will open the door of opportunity for many more companies. Sure, the big guys probably don't WANT this (they want to keep their look and feel in order to keep their branding strong), but it could create a new competitive atmosphere by giving smaller companies a foot in the door to compete on the look and feel front.
I've always loved third party cases and keyboards and monitors moreso than the Big Four for the same reason that I've always liked clones -- they've pushed the envelope before the big guys did. The downside is that the clones never seemed to sell well in the corporate environment nor in the newb home environment; the clones were just powerhouse sellers for us geeks. By having Microsoft "dictate" what they want to see, we may actually see more third parties offering competition to the Big Four, which in turn could see prices drop a bit more, which could push more legal Microsoft products into the fray.
All around, there are some Mac-branding similarities, but I don't really think that is Microsoft's desired goal to miMac (mimic the Mac, in my vernacular). I think it is just a good idea that will help the little(r) guys, and still give the big guys a chance to offer different products that the market can choose from.
My standard black tower case isn't pretty enough to be Vista-compatible :(
I guess this means MS is going the Apple way of not letting that impure gaming get in the way of all that purity of desire.
Good thing there is a good rnd division
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
unstability????
;)
by Stavr0 (35032)
You MUST be an editor of slashdot, right?
Introduction: How to Steal Back the Market from Apple - i
Getting Smart: Our new user interface needs some magic and copies Aqua -1
Making Titanium-looking cases from inexpensive aluminum -2
Preventing dual-boot -3
Wacky driver troubleshooting -4
Thwarting competing anti-virus makers-5
Understanding why we have so many versions of the same thing, and how to sell it -6
Learning how to shave like Steve Jobs -7
Appendix A: Stock options manual for new employees
Appendix B: Using your wife's PR company to kill everyone's love for you
Appendix C: Why Longhorn isn't a cheese
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You're not the only one, but you are in the stylistically challenged minority.
lose (verb): to not win
loose (adjective): slack, not tight
Come on, guys. English isn't *that* hard to get right.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Put nipples on the reset and power button. If you're going to reboot the POS everyday, why not get a little titty with it?
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this.
They'll try, and fail, as they have in the past. Remember that little blue Compaq that looked kind of like an SGI O2? It had an LCD panel in the front that could show you the time or if you had emails. (This was made when Celeron 500s were cool--I remember a friend had one.) How about that little grey tube thingie that Dell made for a while, a little after Compaq ditched that blue model? I think it was called, like, Web Jr., or something. Came and went in a matter of months. Both came out and were supposed to compete, style-wise, with the original CRT iMacs. They both did so badly that I'm having trouble even finding references to them. Anyway, yes, in theory, PC makers could design great products, but I'll bet anything they won't. Successfully, anyway. Besides the Cube (which only failed because it was overpriced), Apple hasn't had any really bad designs in the past few years. And PC makers haven't had any really great designs.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I've been using PC's since the first. I don't recall "when everyone looked at their old, beige PCs in disgust as they saw new black models". Exactly when was that?
...meant to encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing.
It's a lot like the toolkit they shipped to DC lobbyists encouraging the govt to go easy a few years ago. No wait, that was cash....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Appendix D: Profit!!!
Appendix E: Priceless.
Where were you when the voynix came?
that if Apple wasn't making MS just a little nervous they would even suggest this?
A number of years ago there was a brief trend of clothing that had been shot full of holes. People were selling jeans, t-shirts, jackets, etc, that had been shot with automatic rifles and such. Manufacturers of Windows PCs should try to bring that idea back. Aside from being an cheap and easy way to make a generic case look cool, it will save the buyer's valuable time (and ammunication.)
--- What?
Please make it close to the size of a laptop.
I don't want a another pretty but big object in my house.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Given Windows' booting time I don't even think I'd last until the logon screen.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
as an object of impure desire. Does that count?
"Remember that little blue Compaq that looked kind of like an SGI O2? It had an LCD panel in the front that could show you the time or if you had emails"
I LOVED the spamlight feature!
Where were you when the voynix came?
but I imagined pile of them sitting in a dumpster covered in penguin shit
"je ne sais qua"
we would have known what you meant. Most of us are multilingual with *spoken* lanugages, too.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...should be blue (to match the screen.)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Get rid of that ugly MS license key sticker!
Dear Microsoft,
It seems that you are doing a lot of things lately to tell me what I want out of your products. Vista's new UI, and now these fancy industrial design specs.
Guess what? I couldn't care less what the shape of my PC is. It is under the desk with my UPS, subwoofer and trash can. And I have no need for a fancy new desktop UI, especially one that takes resources away from what I actually want to do with my computer, like photo and video editing.
What I want is excellent software, compatible with open standards, for a reasonable price. You used to deliver this. When you delivered virtual memory and preemptive multitasking, you were ahead of Apple. Now you seem way behind. And also, I want you to support open standards so that I can use other products with others that haven't paid you a licensing fee, such as open source. I'm not a sheep to lock in. Hello Linux and OSX.
And your prices are far from reasonable. The fact that I can't transfer a OEM Windows licence from one PC to another is rubbish. The fact that you want $399 for the standard edition of office, which I have paid you for several times over the years is robbery. I was happy with the functionality of office five years ago. Why should I need to buy it again? Hello, Open Office.
I'm not a sheep, Microsoft. You used to be innovative. Now you are all about marketing. Its been fun, but we're breaking up!
When the average person purchases a computer where do they put it? Usually in the den or study. But if it is an attractive piece of "furniture" it will get placement in the more commonly occupied areas. Honestly would you rather have your boxy OEM loud-as-hell and not very sleek Dell or a shiny iMac or Mac Mini/Cinema Display out in the living room? The one in the common living space is going to get the most use. It's why the sunflower iMac G4 did so well; people didn't mind it out where it could be seen.
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
This has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, so just stop with all the "Apple just gets it" lines. This has to do with selling PCs to the XBox crowd.
1) Make Vista look like a video game (shiny-shiny)
2) Make OEMs design toy-like cases.
3) Marketeer magic/witchcraft (insert probable goat sacrifice here)
4) PROFIT!
See, that wasn't so hard, was it?
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Between the myriad of sticky notes stuck to the monitor, the stains on the keyboard and plant life growing from between the keys, my users have no problem beautifying their computers.
When you add in all the pictures of family, the stuffed toys and gazillion dust bunnies, it's like a freakin' art gallery!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Macs don't have reset buttons. 'nuff said.
In the Dell Corprate HQ.... "Mike, we want you to make Dells look pretty so people won't notice Vista as much"
"Fuck off, Ballmer"
Steve: I am going to kill Dell!!!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
That was a stretch.
...by going into the case business. They knew a good looking workstation.
a big reset button with neon lights.
The era of *really* ugly PCs has arrived. Really good, classy ID is one of those things you either nail on the head or miss completely. Expect to see a lot of clueless OEMs that follow this advice from MS and pump out machines that look like something ripped right off of Voltron's armor...
I like computers (and cars, and houses, and clothing ...) to be mostly plain -- which is not to say homely. "Sleek" is OK, if it's purpose-driven / purpose-appropriate; adding needless fluff in order to *make* it sleek is disgusting.
;)).
Apple's recent computers are all nice looking; so are a lot of mini-ITX machines; so are ThinkPads (except for the ugly metal roofed ones
I want the ports to be well labeled and accessable. I want the interior to be easy to work with and free of dangerous finger guillotines. I want the top to be flat, so I can (if I take this risk upon myself) rest my saucer of pie there, or an external hard drive.
But most intentional "beautification" drives for computers end up looking (IMO) stupid; I think Dell bought Alienware to make the bulk of their lineup look less contrived by comparison.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Milksnort. Thanks.
...will Microsoft bite the bullet and put out its own line of PCs?
Yes, it would mean screwing their hardware partners, but events have shown that they didn't seem to mind doing that when all their previous runs at the iPod/iTunes marketshare didn't pan out.
On one of my rare walks through Walmart yesterday, I noticed a DVD player for $34.00.
:)
It's hard to imagine that there is $1200 worth of electronics in the new Dell computer I just got at work. As cell phones and iPod-like devices become ever-more powerful at sub-$200 prices, it's going to cast an ever-more powerful spotlight on the PC market. I've thought for some time that we are on the verge of seeing PC's become commoditized like calculators.
This latest blurb from Mircosoft is an attempt to stop PCs from becoming generic commodities - because once they start to look like that consumers will expect them to be priced like that.
I already do.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
So the question is can OEMs create and manufacture these pretty PCs at no additional cost. If not can they absorb the cost. I would say that margins are already so thin, designing a line of stylish computers with no markup is out of the question.
Passing the cost onto the consumer is not an option either. Just look at how people already whine that they have to pay $100 more for a mac(and don't tell me it is more, I check comparable macs and dells every couple weeks, remember to include XP pro, and iLife, of course you can a computer with fewer features for less), and how people complained that the black mac is $100 more than a white. And what is going to happen when Dell starts getting complaints of discolored product? From my experience, they barely handle the technical issues.
What I think is going to be the downfall of this, though, is the temptation just to pile on colors and nick nacks. Right now the PC market uses a very safe palette. Every time they try to do something cool, like a pulsing light to simulate sleep mode, they royally screw up because they do not understand that the purpose is not effect, but affect. Even the most hardened PC user admits that 'architectural details' on the mac are more affective than the lame attempts on most PCs. What this means is that the OEMs will attempt to use these details as selling points, but they won't be authentic. Sure they may seem cool to the person who buys the dogs playing poker, but since that person is also looking for the $400 computer, I hardly think it will matter.
The best example of this is sony, the only OEM that is pushing style, and charging for it. The market share of computer and laptops are perhaps comparable as Apples, and the markup might be even more. Overall PC users want cheap computers, not cute ones.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Aaah, the cube... I still have mine, and it's still chugging away. I've had multiple laptops come and go (#%^%^## gravity...) but the cube soldiers on. I sure do wish someone would make a pull-out upgrade to either a G5 or a core duo for it...
sigh. and while I'm dreaming, could I get a pony?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
__
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If anything has "boy racer" looks, it is Alienware et al. Apple designs may not be for everyone, but they are generally clean and simple, while the "boy racer" look is anything but. Case windows, cold cathode tubes that flash in time with the audio, LED fans, and gaudy paint-jobs are more in the realm of PCs than Macs.
/usr/games/fortune
You think MS used to deliver "excellent software, compatible with open standards, for a reasonable price"?! You think they used to be innovative? How can you possibly make such ridiculous statements and yet try to pretend you are not a sheep. Wow, windows had multitasking 20 years late, how innovative!
Square and boxy. It's a good shape. the insides are easily accesible, and I can pile things on top of it, and it makes it fit snugly between my wall and my desk.
Hi, I'm a Mac.
Hi, I'm a PC.
(only now the PC guy is wearing trendy clothes and has a new hair style)
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
I'm not talking about me or geeks. I'm talking about average Joe consumer. The black was sleek and sexy at the time.
http://www.apple.com/
For once Microsoft isn't being overly verbose and gradiose.
Yeah the sort you can't put upgrade hardware in, at least the sort you can buy yourself without shelling out 3x the cost to get custom fit bullshit.
Sometimes a nice "bulky" Antec case is just a smarter choice? That and frankly the PC just sits there, I don't fucking look at it. I look at my monitor.
And besides keyboard/mouse/sound are already colour coded on most proper motherboards. If you can't sort out where the VGA and power plugs go you should return the computer and buy a lava lamp instead.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
So let's see then...
Mac/OSX users are Alliance, while the PC/Windows users are the Independents?
Let the Wars of Independence begin!
I love it. For decades we've had to listen to FUD about Macs being 'pretty but not powerful' - now that Macs are powerful, suddenly PCs 'need to be pretty'????
SAD.
it's the software/hardware it works with.
Microsoft gained, and will maintain, it's position as the #1 operating system, based mainly on the emence amount of software and hardware which can be used with it. While nobody loves their window's system, many people do love their dual SLI graphics cards, video games, printer/scanner/copier, accounting software, physics accelerator etc...
The windows platform offers hardware options for any needs or budget, and tones of software to run on it, and this is what keeps people comming back, no matter how bad microsoft skrews up.
I would submit that Apple finally "got it" when they started using standard DIMMs (versus proprietary), PCI-based graphics (versus proprietary), IDE drives (versus SCSI), USB (in addition to firewire), standard monitors, and now Intel CPUs.
proprietary | (protected by trademark or patent or copyright; made or produced or distributed by one having exclusive rights)
NuBus was an IEEE standard. The Mac RAM wasn't proprietary either. If my memory serves FireWire did not predate USB on the Mac platform either. I don't recall Macs with built in FireWire and ADB ports, so I'm not sure about the USB in addition to FireWire comment. small video adapters were available to plug VGA/SVGA monitors into the earlier Mac video port (which were also another Int'l standard, nothing proprietary).
While I see something in your point, your examples seem weak by comparison.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
so now they don't want to just control the inside of my computer, they want to control the ouside too....
They really are the Borg!Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Those OEMs couldn't "beautify" anything if their life depended on it. If they could, they'd already do so. The best they can do is steal Apple's 3 year old designs.
They need us to love our PCs so we don't throw them out the window out of frustration.
Microsoft shouldn't get to dictate the market for the appearance of PC cases. How about a case that really relects MSFT and the Windows OS, don't think I've ever seen a huge 'walnut-whip' turd case before. They're asking for it.
...that nobody's going to buy it because of the operating system.
At my last job things got thrown out automatically if there were beige. This included monitors, speakers, desktops and other accessories. My boss then would say to his bosses that everything is current because its all black. It worked.. he hid that some systems were bought when dell first switched to black. Some of the newer optiplex case designs and possibly this will really screw him in the short term.
I personally like black electronics in general. I also have a few macs in my home and they still look new.. the dell server and workstation look very dated. (one's only 2 years old) My year old AMD box looks great though.. antec case still looks rather new.
iBooks look at bit dated though, especially my wife's original 300mhz toilet seat/compact model. Of course iBooks also have that packard bell gray color on the "inside".
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
How about Microsoft focuses on the operating system until it is flawless, then decide what their case design looks like, rather then wasting time designing a pretty case. A pretty case isn't going to help when every script kiddie on the block can use your pc and you have spyware to the point of a non-booting computer.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
The last thing I would ever want is a "standardized" PC case. I happen to prefer unobtrosive appearance from my PC, not swoopy curves or transluscense.
i think this is very good for microsoft. they're finally looking beyond where the OS ends, and actually thinking of the whole experience.
imitation is the sincerest form of flaterry, and apple's excellence in design has forced microsoft
to think more broadly about the user's experience. its nice to see them broadening their horizons -- even
if ever so slightly.
for consumers, the box and the OS are one and the same. apple has always known this -- they are not an either/OR
hardware OR software company -- they are a both/AND company, they build value reciprocally, by looking at them as a whole.
microsoft has traditionally never done this. that they are, is a sign that they're making their first steps towards actually
thinking about the computer as a 'whole widget' -- good for them.
they're not requiring compliance, but they are offering a way for those who want to take part of a coherent design -- to do so. let them continue to play catch-up to apple's innovation.
in the meantime -- here's some words from the very ones they're trying to immitate:
From:
Jonathan Ive on Design
Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky
beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real
function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good,
stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think
that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'
By contrast, he says, 'you won't be able to find a single thing on an
Apple that hasn't had thought put into it'...
With the first iMac the goal wasn't to look different, but to build the
best integrated consumer computer we could. If as a consequence the shape
is different, then that's how it is. The thing is, it's very easy to be
different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to
do with the new iMac.'
(THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, Interview with Jonathan Ive,
Charles Arthur talks to the designer of the iMac, January 14 2002)
Steve Jobs on Design
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a
man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers
of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or
the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible
consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is
much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
like it.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/2000/01/24/app6.ht
If anything has "boy racer" looks, it is Alienware et al.
Who do you think Alienware et al are emulating? It was Apple that came out with computers in five play-doh, transparent colors. How about the G4 Macs in that bright blue and puke-colored white? How about OS/X, which was supposed to look "lickable"?
The only Mac you could arguably say is tasteful is the iMac with the stalk, but most of Apple's line is not exactly tastefully restrained.
Indeed, the first ones I truly hated were the imacs and ibooks that looked like childrens toys. You know the whole blue/white orange/white monoliths of a style that died ing the 70s. Now all apple's gear looks like the designers sit with their eyes wired open watching nothing but old Stanley Kubrik films while licking Ikea catalogs.
I can't fathom why computers are all plastic and chrome. It's just so trashy.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
As a starting point, I'd like to suggest designers read, "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink, and check out some articles at: http://www.danpink.com/. Furthermore, I suggest visiting IDEO http://www.ideo.com/ideo.asp. Pay special attention to their "method card" deck. Lastly (for purposes of this discussion) I suggest visiting http://www.mcdonough.com/# . The common thread in all this is DESIGN. William McDonough says that the need for regulation indicates a failure in design.
2 ,00.asp http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/ ) to really innovative interfaces ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_project http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/).
The design of the product goes 'way beyond just cosmetics. There is only so much you can do with an enclosure for a PC board, but there is LOTS you can do with the system as a whole. Case modding is just a place to start. Functional design improvements are being made in everything from the input devices ( http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,111201
The IDEO method cards are different from the "Creative Whack Pack" or "Thinkertoys" cards, in that they redefine the product design domain. The jobs of the future are going to be design jobs requiring both high creativity and high technical ability. If someone in India or China can do your job as well and cheaper than you, or if a computer can do your job better and faster, your job is obsolete.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
of how my pc will look.
First, I will get a boot screen, that says Please select your OS---
1.Mac OSX
2.Windows Vista (Or whatever the release name will be)
It's very strange, because the actual box looks much like the Mac Mini...Ha Ha! WAIT! It IS a Mac Mini.
The sexy/practical personal computer is already out there. Vive le Mac.
The first Mac was a beige box with a monochrome screen. Gadzooks, my black-and-silver TRS-80 looked like a more modern design! What impressed people about the first Mac was the point-and-click user interface, not the ugly box. The Mac II and Quadras were even worse, looking just like a contemporary IBM-PC. Apple didn't really get the whole industrial-design thing together until the release of the first iMac.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"Then please explain MS's 95% marketshare versus Apple's 5%?"
Piracy.
This all reminds me of their monopolistic policies with retailers of the early 90's, when small business owners paid royalties on every PC sold out the door, whether it had an MS OS installed or not. OEM's are gonna pay through the nose.
The new PC's are going to look exactly like a Mac, and the following Apple lawsuit will suddenly disappear when Ballmer joins GW Bush and brother in Florida for a weekend of golf.
This just strikes me as too little too late, trying to make the PC visually appealing (as Apple did YEARS ago) because the fact is no-one cares about what OS is running any more, they just want it to all look good, on-screen and off.
Or is it just that Vista is so filled with eye-candy that they need something equally as over-bearing sitting beside the user so they take their eyes off the screen once in a while?
Will program for karma.
Fewer cables -- particularly power cables and power bricks. Things ought to daisy chain. Also, the computer ought to be able to power off devices when not needed (think external peripherals).
Lower electrical power -- I'd like to be able to reel in consumption, slow down the CPU and power use when not needed. If drives took less power, you could run them off some daisy-chained juicier USB2 or FireWire.
Quieter machines -- one shouldn't have to sacrifice or pay big bucks just to knock 20dB off the sound output of the fans/drives.
Fast bluetooth -- or an equivalent thereof. Maybe something that would make sense with external HDDs, as well as cameras, camcorders, phones, etc. Monitors?
Cheap low-power monitors with decent color for video work would be nice too (the LCDs with the truest color are just too expensive compared to the CRTs).
After that, I'd put aesthetics -- which I don't care too much about since my PC's under the desk.
I don't see a large mass of people falling over themselves to upgrade to Vista. Most are just happy with what they have. My PC is nearly 6 yrs old, but I have no need to upgrade. I'm not editing video, and the last game I was into in a big way was Doom. Cruise the web and read email about does it for me nowadays. Compared to the vast majority of the people I meet, I'm a power user that lives for my computer. So how do we get people to buy new computers (MS' biggest source of OS revenue), if they're plenty happy with the one they have? Make the box pretty.
There was a big push to beautify boxes just after Apple started their resurgance. It had an impact, but not a big one. People still looked for the same thing...the cheapest price. I don't know anyone who will buy a new computer just because the new one has a prettier box.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
For that matter, why does Microsoft think it has any standing in this issue? It's the OEM's (Dell) that sell things to consumers, THEY are the ones that should be placing requirements (or making susggestions) to Microsoft, not the other way around.
It's probably another "feature" of the OEM contracts which also allow Microsoft to say "we'll charge you more per copy of Windows if you want to sell machines without Windows on" and similar thinggs.
This move doesn't seem to have anything to do with competition with Macs, really. It does, however, seem to be another manuever where M$ is trying to get home users to ditch XP and upgrade to Vista buy playing the "ooo shiny!" card. Remember the stories about a month ago now where WGA was going to disable all copies of Windows it determined weren't authentic? Weither that story ends up being true or not, the reasoning behind it of forcing home users into an operating system that most would not upgrade to otherwise had a lot of validity. This seems to be nothing more then a more subtle approach to achieve the same ends.
Microsoft is in the precarious position of being too successful, where it has no where to go but down. Granted, the slow spiral downward will take time as a new breed of IT worker who is more UNIX/Linux savvy come into power, but the end is inevitable... Microsoft will fall from it's lofty position of 95% market dominance eventually... the only real question is how soon. Once that happens, Microsoft will have to start competing on merit instead of its past monopoly, which in turn will be good for everyone.
Your computer will not need much mips,storage, or software on it at all. It
will just be a cheap terminal that runs vnc and connects to google to supply
all your needs. They will run backups, supply search, your software up-to-date.
They will prevent viruses.
A bigger computer will just have some cached local apps that people would
use when disconnected from the net.
Oh, and your computer will be shaped just like your phone. With ports
for a keyboard, mouse, and large digital display.
Why not take a cue from the Auto Industry, and add tail fins! This seems to speak from the same kind of impulse that gave us tail fins for cars in the 50's, which also served no functional purpose whatsoever other than to create an artificial demand to get people to buy new cars.
Steve Jobs on PBS' Triumph of the Nerds:
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way."
;-)
sig? Oh, that sig...
What I think would be a really sexy PC is a high capacity USB style
drive that self-boots to whatever port it is plugged into and through
software, emulates or virtualized any OS desired.
All I want is a USB powered 8 port device and a USB style mass of
memory. Ooops, too much beer. Sorry.
Yes make us pretty, make us sexy, make them want us. Windows alone can't do that because they know we are as dangerous as the corner whore.
Seriously Microsoft sticking thier noses in another business, just makes me laugh. If they honestly think PCs should be sexy, why not design them yourselves. Your Xboxs are about the ugliest imposing consoles ever made ("about" because there was the Neo-geo and Jaguar, as well as the sega gensis with all the add ons)
The fact is Microsoft can't do this, they can't sell the PC's sex appeal themselves because they don't have Apple's employees. Why doesn't the Ipod have a replacable battery? Because it would make the design look ugly. Having a little latch or a big screw on the case? ick. But instead they have this beautiful white case that while you can't open, you don't want to. It's something Sony never really was able to reach, even the Rio wasn't that beautiful. But Apple knows how to do it.
Watch when Microsoft's portable comes out (it's an Microsoft version of the Ipod, not the PSP or DS, though in that field the DS would be the example of "beauty") Basically you'll have tons of gashes and crevices in the Argo stuff that ruins the beauty of the system.
But so Microsoft just can't understand "beautiful" cases, they feel the need to tell others how to do it.
I guess it boils down to "Those who know, do. Those who don't, teach".
Fins worked for Edsel, so all new PC's should have them too! Fins will make them go faster than those old, plain, slow, white boxes!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Microsoft has thrived on the notion that you can buy your PC from anyone; what counts is that you are using the M$ OS. Thus they can charge a premium for the OS and the commodity PC makers have to duke it out with each other. The ascendency of Dell's model is a testament to that - the cheapest is the best in that kind of market.
I think M$ is hoping for something different here. Specifically, if the market for PCs is saturated, you can't increase sales by selling PCs to folks who don't have them, you have to sell to folks who already have them. There are two ways to increase sales to your existing customer base - get them to want to have more PCs for convenience, or *style* - just as the Ma Bell of yore made beaucoup bux selling princess phones for the bedroom... or introduce a factor that makes consumers want to junk an otherwise perfectly workable system for a new one. Detroit, cell phone manufactures, and clothing manufacturers all figured out the answer to that one too, and the answer to that is *fashion*.
"Nothing is so ugly as fashion - that's why it changes every six months." Since OEM copies of Windows are or will be locked to a particular machine, every new machine sold is a sale for M$. Introduce fashion on top of cheap computers, and that's a lot of turnover, each buying a new license to windows.
No, M$ loves the fact that PCs are commodity products. Their fear and loathing of FSF Gnu/Linux is exactly because Gnu makes the OS a commodity, and that's not a place they want to go. They want PC hardware to become even more like commodities, but with a very limited lifespan. They want fashionable PCs, which is a segement of the market only Apple (of the major manufacturers) has been able to tread (and not without many missteps), because fashion is a very jealous mistress. And here is where I think some of the other posters are right - M$ is only getting 1/2 of the equation. There is no consistent design to Windows. It's a hodgepodge of functionality that may be great for the masses, but those who have more discerning tastes (or those who will aquire them when the market shifts to be more fashionable) aren't going to want to caught dead running Vista on their machine. It's too mainstream, too common, too bland. M$ really hasn't thought through where this will head, but I think it's a blunder, and one Gates would not have made if he were still involved in such decisions.
-- I speak only for myself
All that and no pictures. Pictures could have done wonders to those thousands of words.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
OMG, ponies!
I lost my sig...
and it's called DirectX.
Assuming your post isn't a rhetorical question, I'm a little scared you didn't already know this.
He never suggested buying a MacBook Pro or an iMac. Secondly Apple desktop computers will become available pretty soon and until they do become available and we have seen the specs let's not assume they won't have expansion slots and are guaranteed to have processors that suck ass because they are made by Intel. AMD makes powerful processors but contrary to popular opinion in some circles, the sun does not shine out of AMD's ass.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Powerbook?
G4 cube?
Mac Mini?
iPod?
iPod Nano?
In the music production business, we often say turd pollishing is a waste of time, 'cause it's still a turd inside. Might this apply here? Can you envision a sleek, sexy, powerful turd? Every blue-screen-of-death is going to generate some nasty stink.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
I don't care what my computer looks like -- ugly can be covered or ignored. It is much more difficult to quiet or ignore a noisey computer.
You don't think the MacBook Pro, Power Mac G5, or Mac Mini look tasteful?
Have you ever seen one of them in person? The designs are very simple, with very little decoration.
Albuquerque PC
1997 called and wants it's transparent colored plastics back.
Since 2001 they have released the Titanium PowerBook, the all white iBook, the Aluminum PowerBook, the Aluminum PowerMac, the all white iMac, the all white eMac, the new all white iMac, and the new black MacBook.
Apple has not had any associated with colored PCs since 2001, five years running now.
If you include the iPod, the ONLY color they played with is blue, green, gold, silver, and pink on the iPod mini released in 2004 and retired in 2005.
So if everyone is emulating Apple, they are five years out of date.
GPL Deconstructed
"Grow a pair and fix it."? So he should throw out his career and devote himself to developing games on a platform has almost no market share?
I know your intentions are good and I'd love to see a thriving linux game development market the rivals the windows one, but this has little to do with anything other than market share. Not only is the initial investment likely to be much, much higher to design, develop, and test the game, the linux market is a tiny fraction of the windows market, and only a fraction of that market are willing to pay/can afford to pay for a game.
... running on the beach, wearing a bikini
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I think your parent post is stuck in the Mac world of 7 years ago.
The iMac '5 Flavors' existed only for a short period -- released Jan 1999, discontinued October 1999. The iMac was before then only available in that pale Bondi Blue, and after that, mostly in Graphite, Snow or Indigo (barring the craptacular and thankfully short-lived Early 2001 Dalmatian and Flower-Power models... egads!)
Likewise, the Blue & White G3 PowerMac towers were only produced between January and August 1999. Between then and the arrival of the aluminium G5 machine, the G4 towers were clad in subdued graphite.
How anyone can claim that any of Apple's designs in the past five years haven't been simple and clean is beyond me. How on earth could you make a machine more simple than the G5 iMac?
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Microsoft has been a regulatory force on the industry
And there you have stumbled upon the main value they provided. They forced all the disparate hardware vendors to support a common OS - MSDOS, and then later Windows, so that hardware became interchangeable.
^-- I found that particularly insightful.
How about budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to shipping their ugly budget-conscious PC's with non-micro$oft budget-conscious software and with non-intel budget-conscious CPUs?
Maybe microsoft realizes a computer to people these days is more than just a box and some software?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
...designers who are overqualified and underutilized looking for something to fatten their resumes, and damn the lack of true market need.
MS is a software company not hardware. Although, in the last decade it can be argued that the products only exist to give the marketing department something to do.
This "Industrial Design Toolkit" screams "we're afraid of Apple". MS obvisously wants to strongarm the OEMs into creating simulacrums of Apple's product design philosophy. It works for Apple because there's really only one person at the top: Steve Jobs. Never mond the fact that Apple hardware and software visually mesh, with the design itself being clean and elegant, if not minimalist.
MS plus all the OEMs will not be able to pull this off. Will Dell, HP, Lenovo, or any other OEM be willing to adhere to design guidelines that reduce or eliminate the recognizability of their products for the sake of the software installed on them (which is not their product)? Hell no. The next step would be for MS to require that all laptops have a light-up Windows logo on the back of the screen in order for the OEM to get reduced cost Windows licensing. The OEMs will laugh at that, and many lawyers will get rich off of the lawsuits.
The only way an industry wide hardware branding for Vista can happen is if MS outright buys the PC divisions of every OEM in existance, and begin to make themselves into a mirror of Apple. But, they won't do that, because a 400% margin on software (Office) is more profitable than an 8% margin on all the hardware to run Office. Of course, it's more than likely that they would completely botch this, and in 10 years there would be little left of the PC market.
Plus, this is just another seemingly innocent move which reveals that MS is very afraid that Vista won't sell on its own.
Another potential minefield is the cost of the OS. If Windows accounts for 25% of the cost of the PC, Lindows/StarOffice will start to look very attractive. I've no idea how cheaply MS licences Vista to OEMs, but I expect most of the smaller manufacturers pay at least $50.
I think you misunderstand the relationship between MS, Dell, and the customers. MS is where nearly all of the profit in the PC industry goes, and Dell is the chump that gets to try to make money selling the cheapest possible hardware and shaving all the pennies they can on the support costs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm not sure i'd want MS picking my color scheme, see the microsoft grovy wireless mouse as an example.
But i'm all for breaking away from the ubiquitous beige box. Granted these days it's the ubiquitous black box, but the point is valid. A computer is a household appliance not unlike your TV or your dish washer. People go out of their way to buy matching washers and dryers. Dishwashers are often sold with optional faceplaces to match the kitchen. And there is always a tendy color of the decade such as avacado or almond. If microsoft wants to go out of their way to create color pallets, more power to them. Odds are there would be one that is not too offencive. It would be nice to be able to at the very least get a matching monior, keyboard, and printer.
But most important, really most imporant I see is standarzing the size and shape and color of the power and reset buttons. This isn't an issue for slashdot users, but joe user and easily be confused with the placement of the power button. I'm not being insulting, you can spy them with ease if you look dead on but when the desktop moves under the desk, the only thing you can see is this round bit and this other round bit, where round bit could be sleep, reset, or off. And between the location and placement of power buttons on desktops, monitors, printers, well you can see where this would be an issue. This is one of those cases where it doesn't actually matter too much what the end result looks like, so long as there is something consistent. For example, no bugger knows how to turn on my canon ip5200 printer, they alway hit the silver button next to the unlit LED which is resume stop, or the button dead center which is the front cover release.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
On the contrary I want my PC such that i can open it up and poke around. Add more stuff to it. Cant imagine doing that to a laptop.
If you want a PC like a laptop. Doh!!! get a laptop.
You were thinking "RSOD"!
Yeah, I'm slow but I eventually get there!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Now, I don't drive a Volkswagen beetle or a Mini Cooper like you fancy Apple fans, but it seems to me that the Thinkpad is a hell of a lot better looking than the "IBM Business Black" Apple MacBook. The Apple box looks like it was made by Acer in one of their cast off factories somewhere in Cambodia or something, and Apple is STILL only offering a crappy stupid pad-mouse, rather than the far more intuitive, easy to use, and ergonomic "nub" design that IBM invented for the Thinkpad.
Countdown to "how dare you criticize Apple!!!!!!" downmod punishment in 5... 4... 3... 2...
Short Answer: You can have all these things, but you have to pay a lot more
Long Answer:
Its all about pricepoint marketing, in other words what people want per extra dollar spent. The market is saturated with cheap hardware, so consumers usually will pay extra for a few different reasons. Color isn't really a significant consideration to anyone, it would be difficult to convince any consumer that a particular color of plastic is important.
Sony and Apple market most notebooks toward the luxury pc consumer. My mom recently bought a 17inch VAIO core duo 1.66ghz, 1 gig ram, dvd-r, webcam. It was pretty friggen sleek. It has a razer thin display, less than 7 pounds, crisp display, and the most expensive 3-year warranty option.
Look at the comperable Macbook Pro. My mom simply wanted an elegant, high-quality machine. If bootcamp was released, she could have easily been a Macbook Pro consumer, although a 15-inch would likely suffice. She has the 17-inch xga laptop hooked into a 17-inch LCD display.
So why are Apple consumers like windows consumers?
Because my mom is by no means computer illiterate (unlike my father), she understood that there was some more value in the additional dollars spent on a computer. Obviously aesthetics, and the perception of higher quailty(reliability) factored into her decision. She considered 'Price vs. Aesthetics and Reputation and Warranty and Power/Specs' . The price of the competition was not important to her, since she had already determined to spend $2000. Macbook Pro users also make a similar decision, deciding that a $2000-$3000 purchase decision (well above average) is providing significant gains not quantifyable in terms of hardware cost.
y father has only used Lotus Notes, and isn't very interested in PCs outside of work. He is also a penny-pinching accountant for a non-profit, so he considers pc buying in the terms of 'Price vs. Price of Competition', every computer around his office is generic, or cheapo-retail boxes. He purchases with minimum consideration.
Then you have people like me, I owned an iBook through 4 years of college. When purchasing a notebook for college, I considered a lot more things than my mom or pop when buying a PC. I am also a lifelong geek, who has been around computers since birth. When purchasing my iBook i considered Price vs. Reliability and Price of Competition. and Geek-factor and Aesthetics and so on... representing the typical power-user who is in the market for a Macbook. I foremost wanted reliability and portability, and the aesthetics were nice. Unfortunately, the reported defects discouraged me from buying a MacBook, and I purchased a HP convertible tablet that is also a quailty notebook.
The point is that your collect considerations of wanting something "pure of Spyware, Security Flaws, unstability," that "manage[s] to be Sexy at the same time" is only limited by how much you want to pay for it. My tablet it realitively free of all these things, with some extra cool-factor. If you spend $3000 on a MacBook Pro, you can have something that is damn close to unbeatable for all these things, but you have to pay $3000 for a damn computer.
By saying "I spent $500 extra for an OS I don't need that does nothing better than other modern OS choices".
So, I'd like mine to look like it's bleeding money.
Literally, bleeding.
Oh, and I'd like a Big Brother Eye, so I'd know that by using it, I am signing away (thanks, DCMA!) my personal privacy.
And, last but not least, I'd like The Green Screen Of Death - I know they got rid of the Blue Screen, this time maybe it will be a Green Screen. And throw in some bling that looks like virus or worms eating away at my insecure box.
Yeah, that's my Vista PC! Shout it out to the WORLD!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In the Dell Corprate HQ.... "Mike, we want you to make Dells look pretty so people won't notice Vista as much"
Hmm. How about putting flame insignia on them?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Stealing from apple? Nay. Product with not that great tech specs but it comes in a very shiny case = Motorola RAZR. Sells 50 million units. Windows Vista, not that great tech specs but if it comes in a shiny case....
Sorry to burst your bubble sweetheart but it's not the programmer's job to turn the industry on its head by suddenly stomping into his boss' office and demanding they make games for a tiny fraction of the overall market. It's not his "lack of effort" that's preventing you from playing games on your boutique item without bootcamp, it's YOURS.
YOU get off your ass and start getting people to buy Macs until the market is desirable enough for companies to spend money on.
Or spend YOUR fucking money and get an XP license.
The primary reason that people are into macs (although they may deny it), is that macs look nice. Same as when they buy automobiles, or choose who to date, looks do matter. If I am going to spend $4,000+ on a new computer, I want a little effort put into appearance. Most PCs are just ugly... utilitarian at the very best. The "attractive" PCs are still souped up gaming machines that look pretty silly if you are doing anything other than gaming on them.
I might buy a cheap to mid range PC, but if I am going to spend a lot of money for the high end machine, it will be on a mac. Microsoft realizes this, and it is quite sensible that they would want to compete on looks. The difficulty they will have is that Microsoft has no real control over manufacturing like Apple does.
I think the clamshell iBooks and colourful iMacs were really designed for children, or at least families.
I like the simile though. I think I snorted some of my vermicelli.
Microsoft designing/building their own hardware? They're doing it with the "iPod killer", why not with PC's? Hell, if they threw enough bucks at it, I bet they could kill Dell, too.
The guidelines recommend that manufacturers use blue screens to provide a cohesive tie-in with the OS.
Microsoft would be the last company I'd ask for colour advice, particularly for hardware where you can't simply select the "PC Classic" theme once it has been installed... Beige (or black) may be boring, but at least it isn't eye-gouging like the Windows XP default theme.
Even if they get top-of-the-line architects to perfect the exterior, the software is still designed by Frank Gehry.
Niche markets are usually very profitable. Very. Insted of being a small or medium fish in a big pond, with just tons of competition, you can be a big fish in a little pond, and dominate there. That's the theory anyway. Macs may only have a small over all market share, but they cost a lot, have a fanatical owner base,(marketing just loves fanaticsm, it's called mindshare and is usually sought after) and the same owner base is used-to and accepts paying a premium for various "stuff".
....well, I ain't shy so I'll say it.. crooked is the word that fits. IMO, no diff from enron or worldcom or haliburton, just raking it in with sleazy tactics over the years. I think that sucks and wouldn't even try to make a penny off of supporting it. Replacing it, sure, supporting it..no. I'd be ..ashamed and embarrassed...to promote them in any way, directly or even indirectly. Again, that's just me and not forcing that view on any other person at all. Everyone gets to make choices. History judges what was good or bad after a long time period passes. So be it and stuff. Have fun.
Just something to consider.
I got no dog in this fight, neither a new mac owner nor much of a gamer at all, maybe 2-3 times a year play mah jongg or however you spell that. Really, I don't give a crap about games and wouldn't drop 50 cents on the best one out there, but that's just me. I know a billion people or more are serious gamers. I've worked E3 several times and know it is big business. I don't care about games EXCEPT I know it drives advanced video research, which is cool. I drop my "spare" loot on meatspace tools and outdoor sporting goods. I like that better. Computers to me are surfing internet access machines. Which means I can get by quite cheaply on the hardware side.
What I don't like about games is it is (primarily) keeping people using windows, which I think is a very bad precedent given their long standing anti competetive beahvior and the effect it has had on computing in general. I would try to not work for or encourage "the mafia", and yes, I consider MS as a company to be
Uh, Microsoft has no 'hardware' of it's own. The computers its operating system runs on are made by other companies, which Microsoft is now "suggesting" industrial design/style direction to. What happens next: Microsoft offers more favorable OEM licensing terms to PC makers who foillow their suggestions, due to razor-thin margins, other PC makers fall in line to remain competitive.
And I'm sure if Micorsoft had some way of limiting what PC's could run it's operating system it would (some would argue by making OEM licenses that require a fee for all PC capable of running Windows, whether they use it or not, Micorsoft is limiting OEMS to only making WindowsPC's).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't have an Apple sticker on my Windows laptop, but the wallpaper is the old Happy Mac logo, and I suppose I could add one of the Apple stickers that came with my iPod. The home desktop either does or does not have penguins on the wallpaper depending on which OS I booted.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Current windows machines are not good enough for 90% of the population. It's just that 90% of the population doesn't know how good an OS can be.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I like my Beige G3 Mid-tower. But then I am not a fashion princess.
I like how you emphasise "ONLY" to hint at a small amount, and then go on to itemise five colours (plus white and black). I don't know, I wouldn't release a consumer audio device and describe it as "ONLY available in SEVEN colours".
When I read this, I was first thinking that "Apples, all over again."
Then I started to see it the Microsoft way.
Have form over function.
After all, that is how Microsoft software works.
It has the form, but it doesn't function very well.
With more and more people choosing an operating system and software that works, and isn't Microsoft they need to do something. Especially since they were of the opinion the one laptop per child project using Linux would not work. The number of orders has put that comment from Microsoft in a definate downward spiral.
With this, the computer will have some use, perhaps as a footstool instead of a useful machine. As long as it has a version of Windows on it.
For power users, the people who really use cycles, function over looks is what they want. It's the way it will always be. Unfortunately, that market is going away from Microsoft, so they need to change minds of people, especially the gaming market, who Microsoft indicates are the ones who make computers advance.
If their systems cannot keep up with the advances, why not make things so that they don't have to advance as long as they look good?
Just my opinion on what Microsoft wants.
"There is only so much you can do with an enclosure for a PC board, but there is LOTS you can do with the system as a whole."
Only if you stick with the PCI form factor. ExpressCard is the future. This also frees designs from the right-angle (hence the boxed look) that PCI imposed. Combine that with multi-function motherboards, and your future computer may look more like your cable-modem than a PC.
I like how you emphasise "ONLY" to hint at a small amount, and then go on to itemise five colours (plus white and black). I don't know, I wouldn't release a consumer audio device and describe it as "ONLY available in SEVEN colours".
And he was right on the money. The ONLY color DEVICE they played with in all that time was the iPod Mini, which was not a computer of course, and was quickly replaced by the (black or white) iPod Nano. Reading what you quoted in the context of the rest of his comment, his point stands: with a minor exception, Apple's hardware since 2001 has been monochromatic, thus refuting the GP's point.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
No, Apple really is built upon cosmetic appeal, marketing, marketing, and more marketing. You can pretty much rest assure that in 10 years (or less) Apple's come back is going to be required reading for anyone even vaguely interested in studying marketing.
I am not saying that Apple doesn't make good products, nor am I saying that Microsoft does. I am saying that Apple capitalized on a product that was workable through cosmetic appeal, marketing, marketing, and more marketing. It isn't like Apple is the only mp3 maker out there.
Hell, they don't even offer the best product for many users. I would argue that my creative Zen Vision M and all you can eat Rhapsody combination beats the piss out of Apple and iTunes. I have an MP3 player filled with 30 gigs of legal music for 15$ / month. That would cost me a solid $7,500 with iTunes or a large chunk of time and effort pirating. That might not be the best deal for you or someone else, but surely there is a market that would find that to be a swell idea. Despite this, iPod dominate. Yes, that scroll wheel is a nifty feature, but that is the extent of the non-cosmetic innovations on it; despite this, it owns a solid 80% of the market.
My mother decided to buy an MP3 player for my little brother. She is utterly computer illiterate and didn't bother asking anyone for help in selecting an MP3 player. She of course went right over to the iPod. She didn't even realize that other types of MP3 players existed. Hell, she didn't even know what the term "MP3 player" meant, much less that an iPod was one and that many other types existed. This is the sort of marketing domination that iPod currently has. Every idiot knows what an iPod is and what it does, but your average non-geek will struggle to tell you even a brand name of another MP3 player. The iPod marketing domination is absolute.
So, do I credit Apple's engineers for a slick product? Hell yes. They have done some awesome stuff. Do I credit their cosmetic design team for making a pretty product? Absolutely. However, the real masters of the show are the marketers and the geniuses behind their marketing campaign. They took a product that might or might not have made it on its own and collected a monopoly sized share of the market. Those guys are fucking Jedi Knights.
nice one for a software company that wants google cake.
.doc burned to a CD to the OEMs?
have they distributed this in
Take out the drm, and wga shit and people will.
If pretty is all your selling microsoft... Theres a much better alternative.
I took two years of French, then two of Spanish, then two of Latin, one of Italian and another year of Spanish.
I can say "window" four ways, but I can't remember which is which language.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The vast majority of PC users that make up their 9X% market share are 1) in the government and 2) in large corporations and other businesses. These users don't have a choice of which computer they use--it's decided for them by purchasing agents, etc., and those buyers couldn't care less about what a PC looks like, only that it's the least expensive box they can buy to do the job.
The difference with Macs is that the 100-9X% of Mac market share is overwhelmingly made up of consumers who personally choose which computer they're going to buy. How a computer looks is a more important consideration for them.
The consumer part of Microsoft's market, even though it's a minority, is starting to be eroded by Apple. The latest quarterly financial reports by Dell and Apple show that. Microsoft's call for "cool-looking" PCs is a knee-jerk reaction of their management to try to stem that erosion. If it adds cost to boxes, it ain't gonna happen.
Atleast with PCs you have a choice (there are probably thousands of different cases to choose from when building your own pc). Can I make that decision when I build my own mac...er wait, scratch that, I can't build my own mac because apple = vendor lock-in.
No you're not the only one. I think the whole white plastic thing looks cheap and ugly, hence I'm not a big fan of the current iMacs and iBooks/MacBooks (except that black one). I do like the look of the "cheese grater" G5 tower, and the Mac Mini isn't bad either. When it comes to notebooks, I think that IBM did it best with the utilitarian, no nonsense design with the Thinkpad. Though really, I don't care much what it looks like, which is why my PC is housed in a cheap, boring beige box under the desk.
It was the last time you got laid... about 7 years ago.
It's a major cop-out to read a story like this and immediately resort to talking about how Mac's are so wonderful and how MSFT is just trying to be as cool as the Mac. I'll put my own spin on it. Apple has it incredibly easy. They're the ultimate closed system (in a way, one might way, their a monopoly). If Microsoft did what Apple does...own the whole system from hardware to OS to applications and charge a hell of a premium for it they could probabl put together a pretty decent system. MSFT took a different...dare I say much more democratic route...by building an operating system that works on literally millions of combinations of hardware. Thousands of different motherboards. Thousands of different video adapters. Thousands of different displays. Uncountable variations. There are hundreds of thousands of applications for Windows that run on all of these combinations of hardware. This is a MUCH MUCH harder challenge than Apple has to deal with in thier walled garden. Despite that, Windows manages to work pretty well. Most people who don't muck around with their system extensively run Windows without any problem for years on end. They buy PC's for $399 (or less) that are capable of doing more than they will likely ever need. While many of them could choose to buy a Mac (hey, I'm writing this on a brand spanking new iMac (with Intel inside and bootcamp, of course) but not every sucker like me can or wants to pay to hefty price premium. My point is that I think it's cool that Microsoft is trying to improve the industrial design of the PC. If even a few of the dumb OEM's were smart enough to design a cool form-factor then they'd probably be able to charge a nice price premium and still be able to charge a nice price premium and still sell a good system for less than a mediocre Mac.
class... and has hardware AND OS's.
BUT, ms LACKS, can't design an console (I call it "hexed-box) that is cracked but isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and is trying to BUY/CO-OPT class...
Vista will probably melt like the waxy Crayola crowns do in heat, then windoze will just glop like tender meat...
Hopefully the public sees past this wax horror show. Maybe if they put Vincent Price or Boris Karloff on the machines shells (we -- are -- here -- toooo -- skehhhhrrr -- yhou -- (hew-huu-hew)....)
Class is something ms will probably NEVER know.. but it's pr firm sure as hell can graft it onto them on TV... and grafts don't add up when the underlying tissue is so necrotized... so vapid...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Non sequitur...
Their 95% comes first because they cheaply got Kilgore's code. They slid one past IBM. They strong-armed the ass-kissing-for-survival hardware industry. The politicians had no balls to challenge mshaft way back when, and once many businesses saw electronic spreadsheets, they wanted them LIKE YESTERDAY.
It didn't help the losers that mshaft released retaliatory or pre-emptive "oh, WE will have those features and MORE by Q3", causing a massive ass vacuum loss of investor cash to companies that would surely lose SOLELY to ms lying-through-the-mouth marketing machine. AND, ms had MORE marketing dollars than ANYONE.
Had Lotus not dropped the ball, had IBM and numerous other vendors been able to stay ahead of dodgy shit from mshaft, so many other companies would have collectively kept ms at bay, but ONLY for a bit longer, since ms' insidious, insipid purchasing and quashing of its competitors did more damage than other companies that did or tried to do the same thing.
KNOW YOUR HISTORY! PONDER THE LITTLE GUY'S PLIGHT as one other little guy goes on the path of "megalomaniacal asshole of the industry".
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Hmmm.. I think ms wouldn't know INNOvation if it came up and bit them in the ass twice.
Come to think of it, I don't think they'd now ENERvation if it bit them in the ass THRICE.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
and you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear...
Perhaps microsoft should start to make their own boxes... dictating to the OEMs how a PC should look is madness.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
no text
> The designs are very simple, with very little decoration.
That's what makes them look cool. IMHO of course.
Bland? Maybe. However, the boy-racer/ricer/fast-and-the-furious look is certainly not bland. Gaudy? Yes. Busy? Yes. Several clashing colours in use at once? Sure. Random tchotchkies such as LED fans and giant coffee-can exhaust tips? Of course! But bland? Certainly not. Which was, of course, my point. Current (and most past) Apple computers may be bland to some, but you really can't call them boy-racerish.
/usr/games/fortune
Powerbook? It's a plain aluminum box with an Apple logo on it.
G4 cube? It WAS (not made anymore) a plain white cube with an Apple logo on it, encased in plexi.
Mac mini? It is a plain white box with an Apple logo on it.
iPod? It is a white (or black, now) box with a circle and rectangle on the front, and a silver back.
iPod nano? It is a small white (or black) box with a circle and rectangle on the front, and a silver back.
Alienware? Lime green box with racing stripes and vent slats all over, with light from blacklight-reactive wires radiating through a giant window cut in the side. The LED fan exhausts through a giant coffee-can sized cat-back, while the giant aluminum wing adds downforce on the rear wheels of this decidedly front-wheel-drive computer. The PC speaker adds fake blowoff valve noise whenever you shift the automatic transmission into D, and the whistle go WOO WOO!
/usr/games/fortune
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The bizarre pronunciation rules (are there any?) make these kind of mistakes very common.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wasnt' there some attempt at this in the 90's. I seem to remember HP and some others coming out with much less mundane cases. I don't think it worked then and I doubt it will work now. There are certain people who will pay for the fancy, and a lot more who won't. Find your niche.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Gah. Gotta start looking at that "X posts below threshold" thingie...
/usr/games/fortune
I've had the Mac OS X user interface freeze on me... on my Macbook Pro, on my Mac Mini, on my G4/466, my Beige G3, all the way back to my upgraded 7500. It happens, just like it does with Windows. Deal.
At least on the Mac you can often ssh in and do a clean shutdown or even just kill loginwindow and get back up without bouncing all the way. Windows doesn't give you this option... you gotta put it to bed by cutting its head off.
why should i waste an extra $50 on a case because "it's pretty?" why shouldn't i spend that extra money on a better power supply or faster ram? when will people realize that function comes before appearance?