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'Cultlike' Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit (businessinsider.com)
mattydread23 writes: Great story about the Open Compute Project from Business Insider's Julie Bort here, including this fun tidbit: "'OCP has a cultlike following,' one person with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider. 'The whole industry, internet companies, vendors, and enterprises are monitoring OCP.' OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system did for software: make it 'open source' so anyone can take the designs for free and modify them, with contract manufacturers standing by to build them. In its six years, OCP has grown into a global entity, with board members from Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and Microsoft. In fact, there's a well-known story among OCP insiders that demonstrates this cultlike phenom. It involves Apple's networking team. This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely -- never. Building a 100% reliable network to meet Apple's exacting standards was no easy task. So, instead of going it alone under Apple's secrecy, the Apple networking team wanted to participate in the revolution, contributing and receiving help. But when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said 'no.' 'The whole team quit the same week,' this person told us."
This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable it would never down. Not rarely — never.
Leave it to business insider to make ludicrous claims about network availability. If Apple's network had 99.99% uptime, and it would cost ten billion dollars to add another 9 to it, I'm pretty sure they'd rather pocket that money than spend it on more redundant switches/routers.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
We use Chinese made hardware because it works better than US made stuff (Cisco). If the Chinese gov't wants to spy on our business, they can have at it. It's worth it to us to have reliable equipment.
I don't respond to AC's.
100% uptime means the network wasn't down in time period you're talking about. My network has 100% uptime this week.
Maybe last year I had crappy up time, but this year my network doesn't go down (hasn't gone down).
I enjoy the first few weeks of football season because my team is always undefeated, at least until the end of the first game.
Actually 100% uptime even over a long period isn't THAT difficult - heteregenous reduncancy pretty much does the trick. That's heterogenous, not homogenous. In other words, you have redundancy for everything, but not by having two of the exact same things. You have a pair of connections (or sets of connections) to the outside world - a metro ethernet connection from one provider, and a direct MPLS connection from another. A Cisco router in the metroE and a Juniper on the MPLS.
It's extremely unlikely that both providers will go down at the same time. It's extremely unlikely that both the Cisco (or pair of Ciscos) and the pair of Junipers will crap out simultaneously.
If I were an apple hardware engineer I'd quit too. Clearly a company that's selling 3-4 year old technology as a new "top spec" computer doesn't value their hardware wing.
Don't get me started on the fact that their only laptop with a network adapter is 4+ years old...
> After ripping BSD
*facepalm*
Cisco buys from the Chinese. All the best stuff is made in China
All the worst stuff too.
#DeleteChrome
This is not the same as hardware, because in real engineering work there are people who have a long time track record. (The phrase Software Engineering is an oxymoron.) Unfortunately the same short sighted behavior is starting to invade some engineering disciplines, so they will end up producing crap as well.
Why is Snark Required?
The definition of the term "better" is the key here. In broad terms, a product is "better" if it more closely meets the needs of the person or organization than what was previously being used.
One thing that comes to mind that made old software "better" was how much smaller it was. The oldest Microsoft Office ISO I have immediately available is 2003 Professional. It's 410MB for, if memory serves, everything including Access and Frontpage. The Office 2016 Professional installer is 2.4GB, and doesn't allow for any installation customization unless you use the volume licensed editions. There are certainly improvements (>1 million rows in Excel, multiple Exchange server support in Outlook, sparklines, and better PDF support and WordArt in Word), but a sixfold upshot in installer size? Those don't align. A kitchen-sink installation of the current version of Winamp is about 50MB - a number that is incredibly bloated by 2.91's 26MB full install, but a bargain compared to the 200-300MB required by iTunes. Then, there is the train wreck that are HP printer drivers...
Older software was much more frugal with its system resource usage. Today's software couldn't care less. Whether the increase in user friendliness really justifies the much larger increase in application size is an exercise left to the reader - there are plenty of examples in either direction. Install size is just one example. The increased requirement of an internet connection is a point of contention for me. The mass migration to "cloud applications" that are indefinitely rented, but never owned, isn't something I'm generally a fan of. The increase in telemetry and decrease in customization options are two things that I find are not things from which I benefit. There is a reason why OldVersion.com is a thing - because newer is not always better.
You're not being fair and you know it. Most of the public, through no fault of their own, is not educated in the value of software freedom. So they take walled gardens and digital rights management as a given. Now consider the difference between an iPhone and a Macbook versus a Samsung Galaxy S-something and a high end Dell laptop.
First, Apple does have an edge in aesthetics in the judgment of most people. If that didn't matter, we Linux enthusiasts would be merrily running FVWM and Blackbox.
The iPhone is likely to get software updates and security updates from Apple much longer than the Android device. Software updates for the Macbook might only be for four or five years, while Windows 13 will probably run on the Dell. The new Apple operating systems are cheap, too.
And Apple support might charge through the nose, but it's fast and efficient. If you have to call Dell support, it's probably less painful to just light yourself on fire and be done with it.
Android and Windows own most of their respective consumer markets because the great majority of smart phone and laptop shoppers can't budget the iPhone and a $1000 machine. But for people who can afford high end devices, Apple is not a waste of money only pursued by fashion victims and phonies.