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IBM Launching an Open Desktop Solution
DJ_Maiko writes "IBM just announced their intent to release an open desktop solution which they're calling "Open Client Offering." The new offering will make it possible for big businesses to present their employees with a choice of running Linux, Macintosh or Windows software on desktop PCs, using the same underlying software code, which will cut the cost of managing Linux or Apple relative to Windows. If this project succeeds, it will make it unnecessary for companies to pay Microsoft for licenses for items that don't rely on Windows-based software. IBM plans to also roll this out in-house to 5% of their 320,000 employees worldwide. This sure seems like a promising endeavor. "
Lotus Notes, Sametime, Domino... ? It seems like 'Open' has officially been overloaded to the point of being meaningless.
"IBM plans to also roll this out in-house to 5% of their 320,000 employees worldwide. This sure seems like a promising endeavor. "
So out of their 320,000 employees they will have about 16,000 employees using this new open desktop solution. It would seem like a hard solution to sell to other's if the company selling it will barley be using it.
If IBM really wanted to make this a proven solution as an alternative to "big business" they should show that a company as large as them could roll out sure a large change to software to a wide variety of employee types.
TruePunk | Games
Seems to me, IBM has been down this so-called "cross platform" before, being able to run REXX on an OS/2 machine for example (and SNA)
With what they did to^H^Hwith OS/2, I still hold them in a bit of suspicion, lets hope this doesn't take the same turn. (at least the OS itself from multiple vendors, that sounds promising)
"Open" has been overloaded to the point of meaningless for years, if not decades.
The Open Group, anyone?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
IBM has been trying to convince people for years to use 'alternatives' to Windows but they always do a really bad job of saying why anyone should use the alternative and then the alternatives die a horrible drawn-out painful death in the arms of the early adopters. The only real alternatives to Windows are Linux and Apple and both of those will make much better cases to prospective adopters without any 'help' from IBM. IBM does not really want anyone to use Apple because they don't play in that space and IBM has never gone anywhere with Linux even though at one time they said they were going to switch a substantial portion of their worldwide desktops over to it, which they never did.
Posting AC to avoid the wrath of the Apple crazies.
Long term Apple has to be looking at the OS market and not seeing much of a future for OS X beyond its niche status. Vista has pretty much closed the gigantic security gap, no matter how much Mac fans don't want to believe it, and regardless of who copied who, Vista is very close to OS X in both appearance and use.
And now with running Windows on Macs being the number one topic for Apple users, the native OS X app market is in serious trouble since the lure of just having Mac users run a company's app under parallels is financially appealing, no matter how much some Mac users are abhorred by the thought.
As far as Linux goes, one just needs to look at various Linux distro boards where trying to make the various Linux desktops look and function like OS X are usually the most active and largest threads. That is an amazing indictment of just what crap the various Linux desktops and UI toolkits are.
The value of OS X is probably at a high point for Apple right now and will only go down over time as Microsoft and the various Linux distros/companies continue to get their shit together. Selling off the OS X desktop interface and toolkits/tools certainly makes business sense.
Apple has been selling more Macs in the last several quarters than ever before in its entire history, and been making insane profits. They also continue to develop all of their desktop and server software at an utterly bewildering pace. I don't know exactly what you're talking out of, but I have a suspicion.
Mac desktops also have pushed themselves into extremes at every corner. If I want a decently priced Mac desktop, I've got two options: iMac or MacMini. MacMini is cheap enough for sure, but it's graphics processor is a joke, and you are stuck tacking on external hard drives if the storage space is insufficient. It's really more like a laptop with the keyboard an monitor included.
The iMacs have slightly better specs (acceptable at least), but they have the darned monitor built in. Many, many people either already have a monitor and don't want to pay for an extra one hanging off of their computer, or they want the freedom to shop around an buy a non-Apple monitor.
So in reality, what I really want is a darned tower unit with some expandability and a decent graphics chipset (or at least a slot where I can buy an after market one if I want). Sure Apple makes those, but they start right at $2500.
Seriously, Apple: make us a regular old tower (you can even throw in fruity colors or whatever) and bring it in under $1000. Heck I'd take the mini specs in a bigger case any day if they'd just give me the ability to plug in a better graphics card.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If ODF takes off, Microsoft would simply adopt it as the primary format for their documents. An office suite of software is far more than a document standard, it's an interface and functionality both of which appear absent from Open Office and other Microsoft competitors. If Microsoft simply adopted the format now they'd extinguish any advantage ODF gives their competitors.
Long term Apple has to be looking at the OS market and not seeing much of a future for OS X beyond its niche status. Vista has pretty much closed the gigantic security gap, no matter how much Mac fans don't want to believe it
This remains to be seen. Even if Vista is safer than XP (it probably is), there's not a lot of evidence that says it works. I mean, the fact that you're safe for the first two weeks means essentially nothing. Crackers and exploiters aren't rushing to be first, they're trying to hold their exploits until there are enough people about to make it worthwhile. Spammers/botters/virus-writers pay cash for vulnerabilities. They're not going to exploit Vista until there are enough potential victims to make that cash well-spent.
With regards to parallels, your logic only holds if Mac sales don't increase. A company is going to lose sales if it wants you to buy parallels and Windows for $250ish to run its software. And they'll be wide open to competitors who decide to offer native solutions.
Finally, your idea that Windows and Linux will quickly catch up to OS X assume that OS X is a stationary target. Between now and Vienna, 10.5 will ship, and 10.6 as well, assuming Vienna ships on time (mid-2009). Vista is currently about equal to OS X in features and ease-of-use, but that won't be true 4 months from now, and it will be even less true 18-24 months from now.
If Linux actually cared about being relevant, they would have figured out how to get hardware to autodetect and autoconfigure. You know, like Microsoft has been doing since around 1995.
./configure && make install . Where have you been?
Hmm, autodetect and autoconfigure for hardware works great on my Debian Etch laptop. It also worked OK on my old Mandrake desktop circa 1999. Where have you been?
Or maybe they could figure out how to get software to install across distros without requiring moving around files and manually editing config files.
apt-get packagename OR
But rather than do all that hard and boring work... the Linux community focused like a laser beam on making a few more text editors.
Oh right, you've been using Windows and pretending Linux doesn't have the features you want.
Most IBMers (like me) live with their thinkpads joined to their hips. Do you want to try migrating 320K employees from Windows to Linux in one go? Think about organizational impact. Think about your customer base. Give some thought to the migration challenges that are illustrated in this book (of which I was the project leader)...
Linux Client Migration Cookbook, Version 2
IBM is a solutions company. A lot of us need to live (compute) within the same environments as our clients do. As more companies consider Linux on the desktop, more of our business will head that way, and consequently more IBMers will to.
So you should look at this announcement in context. This offering is a yet another clear indication that Desktop Linux is gaining market momentum, and IBM sees a need (and is making a big investment in internal transformation as well as product offerings) to be able to meet the needs of clients that are increasingly demanding more diversity in client computing solutions.
iLife 07, Microsoft is doomed!!!!!
Keep drinking the kool-aide there, guy.
How is a set of programs that deal with providing content (mainly podcasting) going to kill MS? Oh, sorry, forgot iDVD for the millions of PC users today who are making their own DVDs (note the rolling of my eyes).
I keep hearing about how Linux or OSX is a MS killer too... obviously this isn't the case today. A bunch of media content tools certainly isn't going to kill it either.
But, please, keep up the fanboism. It's making me laugh.
Well, we all know what happened to 95%+ of the people who were saying that 15 years ago.. Turns out they *were* able to solve that. Windows came in and people rewrote apps to work on it, in spite of the dominance of the mini-computer and mainframe. There are only a very few specialized business requirements that to this day require the dominant technology at that time.
People get past platform-dependence. It's happened a few times in the past, and it will happen again. Just because an app relies on a certain platform TODAY does not imperil it to have that requirement forever. Market momentum trumps legacy dependence.
It's really amazing to see all the opinions about IBM fly by here on Slashdot... you know, how IBM only sells services, but is the second-largest software company (yes, in terms of software revenues) after Microsoft. Or how it doesn't make computers any longer, even though it's the largest server and supercomputer seller, and leading in sales of blade computers.
And that only speaks to sales misconceptions, to say nothing of whether 18 gagillion patents are evil weaponry, a defensive posture, truly valuable, a load of crap, or good for the defense of open standards... Or how it forced customers into proprietary systems in the 1960s, but hasn't End-of-Lifed those ancient architectures, or forced radical change to the systems running applications developed 30 or 40 years ago.
You can pretty much say two opposite things about IBM in any regard and have them both be true. Anyways, back to working for my dying-since-1982 east coast anachronism of a company...
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
apt-get packagename OR ./configure && make install
I tried the first thingy and it said something about "dependencies" and "non-free". I tried the second thingy and it said something about "libpong" or something and not being able to continue. For god's sake, I just want to watch this video of my grandkids, like I could do with AOL. AOL is a much friendlier OS than Linux.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
While I agree that people aren't upgrading as often, I don't think it's ue to lack of Improved performance, rather just lack of perceived improved performance. You know... when doubling the speed of your computer meant an operation that took 8 seconds, now only takes 4 seconds, you're gonna sit-up and take notice and be motivated to plunk down another $1000 bucks for the latest machine. However, once your going from 1/8 of a second to 1/16 of second or some other insignificant time savings, then the Average Joe, just doesn't care. Of course the fact that we're increasingly working with more complex and larger data, does help push the technology. (i.e. Average Joe who used to play with his 3 Megapixel photos on his 500 MHz machine without a problem may suddenly feel the slow down when he buys that new 8 megapixel camera.) - It seems to me that it the upgrade cycle is now linked with the adoption of other technologies outside of the PC itself, than it has been in the past. Other technologies certainly don't move at the same pace as computers. If a 1 megapizel camera was $200-300 in 1997, and if the pixel count doubled every 18 months... we would be seeing 64 Megapixel cameras in that same price range.
--Aaron Greenberg
"I keep hearing about how Linux or OSX is a MS killer too."
Baby Steps. A journey of a thousand miles first begins with one step. OSX and Linux has killed Microsoft in my domain.
What you're missing is that you represent a very small market segment of computer saavy people without money to spend. The vast majority of consumers do not care about graphics cards and expandability - they replace computers when they're old and use them like appliances. Most software developers and engineer types who use their computer daily don't find $2500 expensive for a tool they use daily. I'm not saying that you don't represent a valid market - just that a company can't target every single market. You have to pick and choose, or you lose focus on your core business areas.
Agreed R3/4 wasn't the best stuff going. But...you HAVE to check out Notes/Domino 8. Huge reinvestment in the UI side of the house.
Agreed on all counts, and to expand on your point:
The integrated LCD is wasteful, yes, since it involves throwing out a perfectly good display whenever you change computers. That said, it is also a core aspect of the Macintosh experience. The whole point of the iMac is to take away your tower, your LCD, and the bajillion wires and peripherals that come with it. Monitor cable? None. Monitor power? None. Speaker cables (usually a huge tangle of wiring)? None. You've got a keyboard that goes to your iMac, a very short wire that doesn't loop back or tangle. You've got a Mighty Mouse that plugs into your keyboard, without a whole spool of long wire that has to go all the way over to your tower like on a PC. All in all your desk is uncluttered, there aren't wires all over the place, and when you need to move your computer it's as simple as unplug-and-move.
Wasteful? Yeah, but it is just one more thing that makes a Mac more like an appliance than a cool technical gadget that does everything, and that is exactly the type of thinking Apple shoots for.
What YOU are interested in Linux for, and what IBM is interested in Linux for, are vastly different things.
IBM couldn't care less about how easy Linux is to setup for your grandmother. They like Linux as a solution to be deployed on company computers, low maintenance costs, easy administration (by paid professionals).
Whether your $5 sound card works under Linux doesn't matter one bit to IBM, or to any company that has more than a handful of machines.
As far as IBM's purposes are concerned, Linux has long been ready for use everywhere they care about. You can run Linux on all your IBM servers and workstations without problems.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's complete lunacy to expect IBM to invest billions in an endeavor which has no guarantee of creating a return. Heck, investing that kind of money into Lunix doesn't even have a *decent chance* of returning the investment.
What would it accomplish, aside from pissing away billions on free software? Replace Windows? How does that help put money in IBM's pocket? Also, what about IBM's history makes you view them as visionary in any way, shape, or form? Heck, what about their history even gives a view of technical competence?
IBM is all about manipulating the tech industry in order to get as much of it's money heading into IBM's direction. That's why they are a quote-unquote "solutions company"... which amazingly doesn't actually provide any solutions aside from deepening your company's dependence on IBM's teeming legions of H1B consultants, and helping American companies ship American jobs overseas to one of IBM's subsidiary companies.
"Finally, your idea that Windows and Linux will quickly catch up to OS X assume that OS X is a stationary target. Between now and Vienna, 10.5 will ship, and 10.6 as well, assuming Vienna ships on time (mid-2009). Vista is currently about equal to OS X in features and ease-of-use, but that won't be true 4 months from now, and it will be even less true 18-24 months from now."
I don't think the post to which you are responding said anything about the relative quality of Vista vs OS X. Nor did it say that Apple sales would evaporate over night. It simply stated that Apple sales may be at a peak. I think it is widely accepted, even among Windows users that OS X is a better OS. I've dealt with such people, shown them OS X and gotten the expected ooohs and aaahs, only to then be told that they depend on a particular application that they can't live without. (Even if I can eventually convince them that this is not true, not all Windows users have someone around to make that case for them.)
The weak link in the Apple strategy (but since it is intentional, maybe "weak" is a poor choice of words) is that with the shift to Intel, and the ease of running Windows applications, as was the case with OS/2 people are going to find themselves more and more just running the Windows application, and at some point they are going to conclude that they are so often in that Windows mode that they might just as well be running Windows.
It's a big big mindshare issue. Take Robert Scoble for example. He recently bragged that he had spent something like $10K on Apple computers for his family. But he NEVER mentions actually using the things, because he's just running Windows on them. When he DOES mention that Apple computers it is usually in the context of something (overheating, poor support) that has gone wrong with one of them.
I work with a small construction company that has a dozen users, only one of which is an Apple fan. Yes, her machine is more reliable and easier to use. But they also have to spend more time on the fact that Excel spreadsheets she has edited don't quite work right for anyone else, and does she HAVE to run Outlook, or can she make do with the built-in Apple mail program, etc. etc. (I'm trying to get them all switched over to Google so these issues will go away). Do you think Microsoft would intentionally poison-pill Office for the Mac (which is a separate and some say better code base). Nah MS would never do anything like that!
The Microsoft monopoly will not end as a result of one user at a time switching to Apple. It will take whole companies making that commitment, or in the case of Linux, whole countries and government organizations. Last I heard, there was no small country or city that was switching to Apple. There is almost never any news about Apple server success stories (other than a few R&D grid systems, and many if not most of those seem to be running YDL Linux), while Oracle's entire datacenter is Linux based.
In summary, I think Apple (the company) has given up on world domination in the computer space (hence the name change.) Yes, they may continue to make computers for a while, but they are positioning that as as purely an optional part of their business. By the time they get out altogether hardly anyone will notice. My guess is that they will release OS X for generic PCs as the last change they make before making that move. Apple fans will continue to love that interface, but they will find it works just as well on a Dell or Toshiba, or Lenovo, or... and some of those machines (surprise!) look an awful lot like the Apple laptops now anyway.
It will be a nice present to the Open Source community when Apple finally realizes there is no big profit to be made in supporting an also-ran OS. Like Sun with Java, they will wait far to long to release the code for OS X, but maybe by the time they do there will be enough established Linux shops that they can get the benefit of the bits and pieces that can be salvaged from the Apple lo
Apple will begin to appear on the enterprise desktop once these people graduate and start working in corporations, launching their own companies, etc.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Holy shit. Are you dumb?
The Mac has the following:
The Dell has:
The Core 2 Duo *crushes* the Pentium D, regardless of clock speed. The X1600 is also incomparably better than the X1300, regardless of video RAM.
It's people like you, buying Dell systems with shit hardware for $1000, that allow them to keep selling this trash. Now, I'm not saying that the hardware in that iMac is a good deal for $1,600 (the laptop form factor is driving the price way up)... but at least the Mac will run video games. If someone offered me that Dell for $400 I'd turn them down, but the hardware in that iMac is easily worth $700 in a generic desktop.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
"need" is a curious thing. It often (probably more
often than not) an illusion mostly fueled by laziness
and ignorance.
Criticism of Lemmings is older than Linux or Windows.
That's rather the whole point of this here IBM product
offering.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The short answer is that IBM (like all companies) only invest with the hope of a return. Like you stated, it will take IBM billions of dollars to fill in the gaps. IBM won't commit billions of dollars just because you don't like Microsft. IBM needs returns on its investment and an all out assault won't guarantee a break in the status quo.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The flexibility of the Unix desktop is hardly a fault.
The Unix desktop can literally be all things to all people. It can achieve much if not all of the fru-fru of Macs of various eras without completely alienating people who already have well established habits and preferences.
The fact that people want to clone Macs on Linux just mean they think there's some merit in the idea in terms of the source being useful and the destination being possible. This would contrast to attempting to adapt either WinDOS or OS10. Even if you found a good idea from elsewhere, neither environment would be accomodating to the mod.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
most businesses are better off with linux desktops than windows desktops. staff can run word processors, spreadsheets, email clients, web browsers and other standard applications. without the viruses, trojans, keyloggers, botnets, spamware, spyware and other malware. and the system will be locked down, so that the users can't install games, stupid screensavers and other crap that either make the system unstable or are a vector for virus/trojan infection or both.
there's also gnucash, sql ledger, and other financial applications. or Crossover Office if they really need to run MYOB or Quickbooks (dunno if they run on Wine yet).
then their office computer will be an appliance for actually doing work, rather than a toy for wasting time and fiddling with the settings.
gamers might need windows because of the huge range of games available for windows. office workers don't.
Not to burst your bubble so fast, but Photoshop has a dependency on QuickDraw, which is not in NextStep or GNUStep. iTunes has dependencies on QuickTime, CoreAudio, and the FairPlay tech, which are not in GNUStep. Office is not built on Cocoa/NextStep at all, it's built on Carbon, which has no Open Source reverse-engineering project.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I took a look at this in early beta last year. IBM is tying this to a Notes (called Workplace) client that will eventually tie you into the IBM license version of their entire stack. This is their new entry into a corporate account. It will end up with an IBM support license, and of course it will only work well with WebSphere, and DB2, and the rest of their non OS stack.