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Countering the Arguments Against Unbundling Windows
An anonymous reader sends in a link to a blog posting by Con Zymaris arguing for competition regulators to force the unbundling of Windows from consumer PCs. The argument takes the form of knocking down one by one the objections raised by "unbundling skeptics."
This is covered in the article, but no, they shouldn't. No more than you'd expect a cell phone to come without software.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Where did anyone say that Dell doesn't make money, or that Apple doesn't have support costs?
The implications were that Dell would continue to make money, but that support costs would be transfered to Dell, same as with Windows, if Dell started selling PCs with OSX on them.
No manufacturer is FORCED to bundle Microsoft XP or Vista with their hardware.
Oh yes they are, if they want to stay in business.
Inform yourself. Here is a start: link here.
Manufacturers who wanted to get the nice cheap bulk OEM Windows licenses had (have?) to agree to pay-per-processor/system, regardless of actual OS installed.
PC sales run on obscenely thin margins. If a manufacturer can't get the cheap price, they'll lose competition to someone who can.
Dig around. Some of the manufacturers (see Gateway) had sales minimums and marketing requirements attached to the prices.
So yes, they are FORCED.
No it doesn't.
If Microsoft wanted to sell a Windows PC that it itself made, then this also wouldn't be a problem. TFA says that Microsoft were to sell the entire package themselves, fine. It's the forced bundling with other manufacturer's products that's the problem."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
there were other operating systems, ones that ran on x86 hardware. they were better than windows, too. the company that created one of them desperately tried to sell dual-boot systems (they had an excellent boot manager, for which i left the OS installed long after it had any relevance). as far the argument that they will be gone in 10 years, i find it highly unlikely; the barriers to entry are too many.
:-(
why didn't they get a manufacturer to ship dual-boot systems with their OS? because microsoft's OS licensing policy forbids it, it not by outright language, then by punitive cost measures. this was part of the focus of the department of justice's antitrust suit. as a matter of fact, even beige box companies used to force a copy of windows on individuals who purchased an entire system. microsoft's corporate policy is to force the entire world, if possible, to have only one choice. excuse me, let me correct myself; one choice in several flavors (think all the different vista incarnations that will be paraded in front of any future antitrust action as evidence of innovation and variety).
did i hear anyone say BeOS? no, i didn't think so
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
> "Unbundling won't happen - when sheeple buy a computer, they expect to have a fully functional thing that can surf the "Interweb" and "process a word", and "sheet a spread".
Case in point: I encountered an irate phone caller because the version of Microsoft Office with her mac was only a trial version. She didn't like this, and ended up filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in spite of the fact that the computer in question clearly stated that it came with a trial version.
Unbundling will happen, within the next 2 years.
I'm constantly running into people with expensive laptops or years of usage who truly want an appliance PC, and have settled into an uneasy compromise of knowing just what to do to get predictable effects, like reading email. These are people who call the computer a 'hard drive' or think that IE is 'the internet' because that's what it says in the start menu, often professionals who rely on computers, often in their 50's. The mere mention of changing to another operating system truly freaks them out, because they've invested enough braintime to not be so afraid of the damn thing. Even using a Mac is threatening because they 'don't know where anything is' [translation: where the start menu is, etc.].
Computers badly fail the 'appliance' test. I tell them that they should learn to use it, the same way a carpenter has to learn a table saw or plumb line, but get chagrined shrugs.
So, next week, I'm starting an afterschool computer club at my kids' school. They've just moved the whole district to Fedora via the Linux Terminal Server Project, w00t, no hardware replacement costs in my tax bill, so it's just getting interesting here in this small community, there's hope for the kids, more likely they'll convert the old farts by importing linux into the home.
Damn those pesky terrorists
> Ah, but what's the proportional value of the software? See, you need to think more like a salesperson. Cost is irrelevant. It's the value that is added. And, look at all the value Windows adds to a PC.
.NET, for business applications development
First, cost is not irrelevant. Value is important. Granted, Windows comes with a certain unique feature set. But seriously, you are not comparing that value to a Linux desktop distro that has just about every software a regular user would need? The pieces that are missing are mostly because there is a monopoly OS out there (Third party proprietary software, driver, formats).
a) You have Direct X 10, for games. And, there are a ton of games for Windows.
Hard to argue. But without the monopoly status, DirectX cannot maintain as much lead. It still is better than OpenGL alternatives though.
b) You
Not compelling. Too many other alternatives now.
c) You have a pretty good web browser. Yeah, IE has its flaws, but it works pretty good for most people. That is, I can go to the baseball site, get the scores, and it works.
Every desktop OS now comes with an browser. IE works for most people because that is all they know. Once they understand taking advantage of FireFox plugins, they never go back. That has been the case with every IE user who has watched me use my browser more than a few minutes.
d) You have interfaces to a whole bunch of consumer appliances, from digital cameras and video players, and more.
So do Linux distros. Windows market status attracts driver support from appliance makers, but not as much of an advantage of the software architecture per se.
e) Vista has a really cool sound model that I am eager to play with.
I don't know much about it. I will skip that.
f) Unicode (UTF-16) is built in from the ground up. NTFS stacks up well against Reiser and ExtN for most applications. Remote Desktop and Terminal Services for Windows work really well...
Don't know about UTF-16 enhancements. RDP is a good but remoting X and Linux Terminal Server work quite well too. Don't forget though that to have these features you have to pay quite a bit more too. Sure, but NTFS is good enough. But good enough is not what we are talking about. We are talking about what they offer to justify 95% market share and making computers cost significantly higher when they barely manage to go up against free alternatives. I expect 6 billion in productions costs to do a lot more.
And this is not a new argument. This has all played out before. When IE won the browser wars, MS froze all further development on it (the team was disbanded as I recall), after all it made no business sense to spend any more money on it. The only reason that we even have an updated IE7 is because of FireFox. That is the price of a monopoly.
Yes, I know this is slashdot, but you could try reading the article. There's a whole section called "But Windows only constitutes a mere 10% of the price of a PC, right?" which might interest you.
Quotes:
"Windows has reached 35% of the price of a new computer."
"52% of the price of a new Acer laptop was constituted by the forced-bundling of Microsoft and other Windows platform software"
No sig today...
Apple clearly rejected the idea of selling their operating system separately a long time ago. In the late 80's there were at least two companies that made Mac clones. Apple refused to sell them the operating system and sued them out of business for copyright infringement.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison