Apple purposely chose to appeal to a niche market, with a closed architecture, so there never was a threat of an 80% Apple market. The closed system/just-works mentality of Apple is so ingrained in their corporate culture, the chance of Apple developing open systems will never been an option. This isn't to say that Apple doesn't WANT a huge market share, it is simply stating that Apple would rather make as good as products as possible and that having a large market share has no correlation to the quality of their product. I'd argue that actually there is a correlation between market share and quality, in that it is inverse. The phrase, "The masses are asses", comes immediately to mind.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but could you defend your statement that FOSS allows for a greater educational impact? You aren't wrong, btw, I just like other people to see why. My MA Education thesis is steeped in Educational Technology, and I'm constantly amazed at how many people think we need to teach kids how to use Microsoft, because "that's what they use in the business world". This declaration is ridiculously short-sighted and fails almost every premise of the purpose of using technology for education in the first place.
Well, embarrassing for me only if I somehow missed the sarcasm? He stated blankly that the iPod touch has the same limitations as the iPhone, stating that AT&T is to blame for said limitations. Since AT&T has nothing to do with the touch, then I fail to see how "that was his point". Please enlighten me so as to avoid further embarrassment.
Wow. It would be hard to blame AT&T for any shortcomings of the iPod touch, SINCE IT DOESN'T HAVE A PHONE FUNCTION! However, this IS slashdot, and the pro- and anti-Mac crowds will be out in full force.
Don't let the "it has a camera!" crowd fool you. Save for some drunken pub crawls, the camera feature is awful (as it is on EVERY cell phone). The integration of taking pictures and emailing them or putting them on your computer is pretty flawless, but the image quality is crap. I took three or four pictures of my kid in the shade and I got three or four different color casts. Sometimes blue, usually green, but never even close to decent.
Hackers accessing the NSA mainframe is a "massive security problem". My iPhone hardly qualifies as any sort of security problem, no matter how unsecure it may be.
I drive down the road and routinely see 15-20-35 year old American cars , seldom a foreign car that old.
That's because someone tacky enough to buy an American car in the first place is more likely to drive that ugly rust bucket around for 15-20 years, whereas a nice Bimmer gets replaced every 5-10 years or so...mostly because I can...
Well, no matter what I list, you'll still come back with, "yeah, but Windows is cheaper and has a bigger market share". I hear that comment a lot, but it says absolutely NOTHING about the quality of the product, only that it is cheap and ubiquitous. There are a lot of Ford Tauruses kicking around, yet hardly anyone would argue it is a better car than a Mercedes Benz. Those who would are the same kind of people who argue for Windows OSes, because they put all their worth into the price of an item and turn a blind eye to all the faults.
History is rife with better alternatives. Since when does something have to be "equally inexpensive" to be as good as Windows? Seems to me pretty much every alternative is better, even though few are cheaper. Then again, you get what you pay for usually.
Just curious, if most businesses have an IT department, whose sole purpose is to maintain the corporate computers, then why would a business care if a white-box PC company has a slew of tech support people on hand or not? If a business already pays (healthy) salaries to people to fix their own computers, then there would be no support need from the white-box vendors. I find it hard to understand how any company would even consider this when deciding on purchasing Brand-X of computers. If that were the case, buy the computers with the best support options and fire your IT staff. Otherwise, buy a bunch of PCs with no support and keep your IT guys busy, and give them a raise with the money you saved by not buying (yet another) Dell.
And what does that have to do with anything? I'm not the one claiming that Apple should be forced to quit bundling Quicktime with their OS. Nor am I claiming that MS should do the same. The previous post used an incorrect example of Quicktime and MacOS X, and you throw in the non-sequitor of Windows Media Player on a PC?
I wasn't calling your chosen flavor of Linux CLI either, but I can't help notice the number of posts that basically say:
"Linux is lost on new users the first time they have to pull up a command line to configure driver-X"
Unless Linux makes that process 100% transparent, they'll never break into the mainstream. A good example would be how you can do 99.9% of everything you need to do in OSX from the GUI, yet the command line is still available for those users who know enough about Unix not to destroy their computer.
Invoking 15 year old myths (lack of right mouse button) does nothing for the credibility of your post. Gawd, when will people drop this misconception?
Focus-follows-Mouse is *mostly* irrelevant, because *most* systems operate with the exact opposite behavior of requiring a click to change focus. Please tell me you are advocating focus-follow-mouse as default? How is clicking to change focus, you know, letting the user be in control, worse than focus-following-mouse? And if your point is that there is no way to establish focus-follows-mouse by default, because it is needed by some weird application, all I have to say (other than why in the hell would you want that) is I got tens of pages with a simple google search on how to do so.
Because stupid people exist everywhere, and stupid people are consistently stumped by the O-N/O-F-F actuator.
Seriosly though, Apple offers support for OS X because it is another way the company generates revenue. I'd gladly charge somebody to tell them how to force quit a hung application. If I charge more than it costs to give out the help, then I make money. Bring on the stupid people (and their wallets)! In business, everything exists to make money, and customer support is no exception.
You don't "force" a company to make accessories for your device. You make a successful device, then the companies come in droves with accessories. This guy lost a power cable and can't go on microsoft.com and order a new one delivered in less than 48-hours? Lame.
Late 80s? Try mid 90s. I owned a Motorola StarMax, and my best friend owned the UMAX brand. The hype was hardly worth it, with improved "specs" and "lower" prices than the equivalent Mac hardware at the time, all I got was three onsite service calls within the warranty period (90-days). Gee, thanks for the great clones. If I wanted that type of experience, I'd still be using my awesome e-machines I bought from Best Buy for $199 (with rebates that were nearly impossible to redeem!).
If Windows had 1% of the market, the pros for the consumer would be we would have never have had to settle for such a mediocre p.o.s. in the first place.
Also where do you start to draw the line with computers, pdas, cellphones as the lines start to blur?
The line begins to blur when one company gains an unfair advantage by using unfair business practices to force their otherwise lousy product on >90% of the market.
Since MS makes IE for Mac
Except for the part where they stopped making IE for OSX... Seriously, if you are going to use an example to bolster your claims, at least use valid examples. Also, Quicktime is not bundled with Mac OSX, it is an integral part of the OS. Explain how you can play movies and songs in finder view without launching an app to do so? Stop applying PC logic to OS X, because it doesn't apply.
Windows doesn't "plain work" for people -- sheeple have simply accepted the fact that Windows *usually* works for them, and when it doesn't, everyone has a nerd friend. Microsoft's monopoly has given them a pass in the form of consumer complacency. Plus, like their health, people like to bitch about their (bad) windows experiences. It gives them nice water cooler converations at work. You never hear people talking about the cool things they've done with their Windows computers, only what viruses and driver failures they experienced over the weekend. Try it. Listen to everyone's computer stories at work and make two columns: "PC problems" and "cool things to do/try out". Your problem column will fill up at a 10:1 ratio, guaranteed.
Woo! Mod this guy up! I haven't seen a simple, yet powerful example like this on slashdot in weeks. Geeks really don't get it. I roll my eyes anytime somebody poo-poos GUI and praises the power of the CLI -- talk about out of touch!
I think that the Linux-obsessed crowd detracts from the real issue at hand. It is like trying to argue the merits of OSX versus windows, except *most* people can see the obviously superior design and implementation of OSX over Windows, whereas *most* people have never seen any flavor of Linux. If Linux fans truly want to make inroads, they should stop making "leaps of faith" type assertions (hasn't worked for Macintosh in 20+ years). Isn't there something in the Linux charter about not talking bad about other OSes, and getting people to try Linux on it's own merits? These kind of articles go against that creed and only make Linux users sound like sore losers. This is sad, because Microsoft has enough bad qualities that stand on their own, without the need to muddy the argument with more "Linux rulez!" articles.
I think his point was with a touch of hyperbole, but also rooted in reality. Manufacturers (all industries) do this all the time. CPUs are capable of 3ghz, yet are scaled back to 2.2ghz for "stability". And by stability, I mean, If we have a 2.2ghz chip and a 3ghz chip, we can charge $500 more for the 3ghz chip.
On a side rant, I purchased a 160gb harddrive for my PC and WinXP only recognizes 120gb. So I scrapped that idea, reformatted it, and jammed it into an old ass Mac, which happily accepted all 160gb. Before you all get wound up, yes, I realize there is a "work around", but it just goes to show (again) that if you choose Windows, you also choose all the flaming hoops that come with it: jumping lessons sold separately.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple purposely chose to appeal to a niche market, with a closed architecture, so there never was a threat of an 80% Apple market. The closed system/just-works mentality of Apple is so ingrained in their corporate culture, the chance of Apple developing open systems will never been an option. This isn't to say that Apple doesn't WANT a huge market share, it is simply stating that Apple would rather make as good as products as possible and that having a large market share has no correlation to the quality of their product. I'd argue that actually there is a correlation between market share and quality, in that it is inverse. The phrase, "The masses are asses", comes immediately to mind.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but could you defend your statement that FOSS allows for a greater educational impact? You aren't wrong, btw, I just like other people to see why. My MA Education thesis is steeped in Educational Technology, and I'm constantly amazed at how many people think we need to teach kids how to use Microsoft, because "that's what they use in the business world". This declaration is ridiculously short-sighted and fails almost every premise of the purpose of using technology for education in the first place.
Well, embarrassing for me only if I somehow missed the sarcasm? He stated blankly that the iPod touch has the same limitations as the iPhone, stating that AT&T is to blame for said limitations. Since AT&T has nothing to do with the touch, then I fail to see how "that was his point". Please enlighten me so as to avoid further embarrassment.
Wow. It would be hard to blame AT&T for any shortcomings of the iPod touch, SINCE IT DOESN'T HAVE A PHONE FUNCTION! However, this IS slashdot, and the pro- and anti-Mac crowds will be out in full force.
Don't let the "it has a camera!" crowd fool you. Save for some drunken pub crawls, the camera feature is awful (as it is on EVERY cell phone). The integration of taking pictures and emailing them or putting them on your computer is pretty flawless, but the image quality is crap. I took three or four pictures of my kid in the shade and I got three or four different color casts. Sometimes blue, usually green, but never even close to decent.
Hackers accessing the NSA mainframe is a "massive security problem". My iPhone hardly qualifies as any sort of security problem, no matter how unsecure it may be.
I drive down the road and routinely see 15-20-35 year old American cars , seldom a foreign car that old. That's because someone tacky enough to buy an American car in the first place is more likely to drive that ugly rust bucket around for 15-20 years, whereas a nice Bimmer gets replaced every 5-10 years or so...mostly because I can...
GM cars already have a hard enough time not breaking down on their own. Now they have OnStar to expediate that?
Well, no matter what I list, you'll still come back with, "yeah, but Windows is cheaper and has a bigger market share". I hear that comment a lot, but it says absolutely NOTHING about the quality of the product, only that it is cheap and ubiquitous. There are a lot of Ford Tauruses kicking around, yet hardly anyone would argue it is a better car than a Mercedes Benz. Those who would are the same kind of people who argue for Windows OSes, because they put all their worth into the price of an item and turn a blind eye to all the faults.
History is rife with better alternatives. Since when does something have to be "equally inexpensive" to be as good as Windows? Seems to me pretty much every alternative is better, even though few are cheaper. Then again, you get what you pay for usually.
Just curious, if most businesses have an IT department, whose sole purpose is to maintain the corporate computers, then why would a business care if a white-box PC company has a slew of tech support people on hand or not? If a business already pays (healthy) salaries to people to fix their own computers, then there would be no support need from the white-box vendors. I find it hard to understand how any company would even consider this when deciding on purchasing Brand-X of computers. If that were the case, buy the computers with the best support options and fire your IT staff. Otherwise, buy a bunch of PCs with no support and keep your IT guys busy, and give them a raise with the money you saved by not buying (yet another) Dell.
And what does that have to do with anything? I'm not the one claiming that Apple should be forced to quit bundling Quicktime with their OS. Nor am I claiming that MS should do the same. The previous post used an incorrect example of Quicktime and MacOS X, and you throw in the non-sequitor of Windows Media Player on a PC?
"Linux is lost on new users the first time they have to pull up a command line to configure driver-X"
Unless Linux makes that process 100% transparent, they'll never break into the mainstream. A good example would be how you can do 99.9% of everything you need to do in OSX from the GUI, yet the command line is still available for those users who know enough about Unix not to destroy their computer.
Focus-follows-Mouse is *mostly* irrelevant, because *most* systems operate with the exact opposite behavior of requiring a click to change focus. Please tell me you are advocating focus-follow-mouse as default? How is clicking to change focus, you know, letting the user be in control, worse than focus-following-mouse? And if your point is that there is no way to establish focus-follows-mouse by default, because it is needed by some weird application, all I have to say (other than why in the hell would you want that) is I got tens of pages with a simple google search on how to do so.
Seriosly though, Apple offers support for OS X because it is another way the company generates revenue. I'd gladly charge somebody to tell them how to force quit a hung application. If I charge more than it costs to give out the help, then I make money. Bring on the stupid people (and their wallets)! In business, everything exists to make money, and customer support is no exception.
You don't "force" a company to make accessories for your device. You make a successful device, then the companies come in droves with accessories. This guy lost a power cable and can't go on microsoft.com and order a new one delivered in less than 48-hours? Lame.
Late 80s? Try mid 90s. I owned a Motorola StarMax, and my best friend owned the UMAX brand. The hype was hardly worth it, with improved "specs" and "lower" prices than the equivalent Mac hardware at the time, all I got was three onsite service calls within the warranty period (90-days). Gee, thanks for the great clones. If I wanted that type of experience, I'd still be using my awesome e-machines I bought from Best Buy for $199 (with rebates that were nearly impossible to redeem!).
If Windows had 1% of the market, the pros for the consumer would be we would have never have had to settle for such a mediocre p.o.s. in the first place.
The line begins to blur when one company gains an unfair advantage by using unfair business practices to force their otherwise lousy product on >90% of the market.
Since MS makes IE for Mac
Except for the part where they stopped making IE for OSX... Seriously, if you are going to use an example to bolster your claims, at least use valid examples. Also, Quicktime is not bundled with Mac OSX, it is an integral part of the OS. Explain how you can play movies and songs in finder view without launching an app to do so? Stop applying PC logic to OS X, because it doesn't apply.
Windows doesn't "plain work" for people -- sheeple have simply accepted the fact that Windows *usually* works for them, and when it doesn't, everyone has a nerd friend. Microsoft's monopoly has given them a pass in the form of consumer complacency. Plus, like their health, people like to bitch about their (bad) windows experiences. It gives them nice water cooler converations at work. You never hear people talking about the cool things they've done with their Windows computers, only what viruses and driver failures they experienced over the weekend. Try it. Listen to everyone's computer stories at work and make two columns: "PC problems" and "cool things to do/try out". Your problem column will fill up at a 10:1 ratio, guaranteed.
Woo! Mod this guy up! I haven't seen a simple, yet powerful example like this on slashdot in weeks. Geeks really don't get it. I roll my eyes anytime somebody poo-poos GUI and praises the power of the CLI -- talk about out of touch!
I think that the Linux-obsessed crowd detracts from the real issue at hand. It is like trying to argue the merits of OSX versus windows, except *most* people can see the obviously superior design and implementation of OSX over Windows, whereas *most* people have never seen any flavor of Linux. If Linux fans truly want to make inroads, they should stop making "leaps of faith" type assertions (hasn't worked for Macintosh in 20+ years). Isn't there something in the Linux charter about not talking bad about other OSes, and getting people to try Linux on it's own merits? These kind of articles go against that creed and only make Linux users sound like sore losers. This is sad, because Microsoft has enough bad qualities that stand on their own, without the need to muddy the argument with more "Linux rulez!" articles.
On a side rant, I purchased a 160gb harddrive for my PC and WinXP only recognizes 120gb. So I scrapped that idea, reformatted it, and jammed it into an old ass Mac, which happily accepted all 160gb. Before you all get wound up, yes, I realize there is a "work around", but it just goes to show (again) that if you choose Windows, you also choose all the flaming hoops that come with it: jumping lessons sold separately.