...what email app are you going to use? Presumably you use some cloud-based 'free' email service. Be it gmail, yahoo, outlook, aol, etc. These are all ad-supported, and if they don't 'read' your mail in order to better target the ads, it's because they haven't (yet) figured out how. And if they haven't figured that out, I'd be just as worried about whether they've figured out how to keep intruders from reading your mail instead...
So, when it comes to ad-supported free services, the standard probably shouldn't be whether they are scanning your mail (sure, if you can find a service you trust that doesn't, by all means...), but just how annoying the resulting ad barrage is. So far, Google has kept their advertising subtle, and even occasionally useful. I agree it's starting to get creepy when YouTube offers to show me videos based on stuff I searched for on Google. Haven't yet noticed it happening based on my email contents, but I'm sure it will. Creepy, but oddly efficient - i.e. better than random suggestions.
It remains to be seen how much creepiness I can endure - or whether I'll start to take that creepiness for granted, and 'enjoy' the resulting targeted stuff. Of course, with a little paranoia, creepy morphs readily into scary and oppressive. But other than occasionally (and reluctantly) complying with the NSA, Google has stayed pretty transparent about what it does, and lets you opt out of the worst of it. Evil is in the eye of the beholder...
I'm so sick of hearing "companies are amoral" as if that's some kind of excuse for psychopathic behavior. If Broadcom had to buy another company to produce a successful LTE product, it's because they (management) failed to produce one themselves. And not necessarily because the engineers in charge failed - more likely because some dopey manager with herd mentality stuck to the 'support Windows and the rest will follow' script.
But "amoral" companies used to provide their employees with a modicum of security, because they were expected too. The rules have been changed, by Ayn Rand fans too dense to see that "Atlas Shrugged" is the same kind of utopian claptrap as "Das Kapital". In John Galt's hidden mountain paradise, I'm sure there were people to clean the toilets - and I'll bet they were treated a lot better than Broadcom's employees...
I'm reluctant to respond, since WTF does this Nobel Prize story have to do with Obama... but nice, idiotic cherry-picked simplification of the Obama presidency and the media.
How about the codpiece media that helped the predecessor launch one of those wars based on lies - to the detriment of maybe winning the other one? How about the codpiece media that repeats and amplifies today's Republican talking points about the need to pay down the deficit, and also repeated the 2001 talking points about how the surplus was going to pay down the deficit, and then what will we do... Better to cut taxes in 2001 and stop running that immoral surplus...
It worked reasonably well, and was a full real copy of Windows.
Microsoft's strength and weakness in a single sentence. It seems the major selling point of all Microsoft platforms is the "full real copy of Windows". I.e., the promise that all that software written for the Windows desktop monopoly will somehow provide the leverage to make whatever platform MS supports win. And the major weakness, of course, is that they insist on cramming a 'full real copy of Windows" onto form factors where it doesn't make sense (i.e. "it works only reasonably well - or requires expensive hardware to work at all").
They wasted years on a windows phone platform marketed based on 'Windows Familiarity (tm)', as iOS and Android proceded to win. Apparently cramming a totally hobbled version of Windows CE onto a phone wasn't any kind of a panacea. WP7/8 are better, but too late. Alas, without the Windows monopoly effect, you really need to be a little quicker on your feet than MS has traditionally been. Now they're trying to exploit the monopoly effect for tablets. The RT, which could be a nice true tablet, unfortunately doesn't have the Windows apps. And the Pro is too much software for the form factor. It may develop into a nice niche for people who really need some WIN32 app, but won't work well for most people, who really just need a $200 Nexus or Kindle.
Assuming your OS caches data effectively, there's not much benefit to extra fast I/O access to what is essentially another cache. i suppose if frequently accessed data is kept in that cache across boots, that might speed certain things up. But then again, if that's really important, the OS could implement pre-fetch logic to re-load its cache with that same data in the background on boot. So, I repeat, non-volitile cache is a lifesaver when guaranteed immediate writes are required. But very little of what's done on a typical desktop machine has that requirement. For day-to-day application speed, everyday ram cache works fine.
Flash solves the problem of waiting for verified writes. That's why putting database logs onto battery-backed high speed memory improves performance dramatically.
That said, do desktops really need that kind of performance boost. Unless you're doing some serious data creation, the only thing that's slow on today's desktops is booting Windows. Linux boots so fast, I wouldn't bother worrying about throwing hardware at that 'problem', and Windows isn't even that bad these days. Whether ChromeOS and it's like ever really replace traditional desktops, the desktop workload is going to continue to move in the direction that Chrome addresses. Brute speed (beyond the basics to provide a smooth experience) will become less and less of a factor. As it is, battery life seems to be overtaking speed as the main hardware concern.
Specs and code are two different things, no? Do you think they have no legal right to release API's that talk to code running on their cards? Nobody's talking about writing open source firmware for the cards - that's not OS-specific. Or am I missing something?
They don't even need an Android compatibility layer. How about a Windows compatibility layer. If the damn RT allowed you to recompile your WIN32 apps for ARM like Microsoft allows themselves to do for Office they'd have a huge number of apps, and ownership of the corporate market. But their direction with this product is so muddled that the strategy of 'beating Apple at its own game' is winning out over the strategy of 'leveraging Windows to win the Enterprise market'.
True enough, except if you look at the cases where they stuck with it, they were cases where either the Windows or Office monopoly would eventually make them win once they reached 'good enough' status. In fact for Word, they used what would have been illegal bundling to get early versions included 'for free' with new PC's. That kind of thing is illegal now that Windows has been found to be a monopoly. But they're still trying to use the Office monopoly to prop up Surface until it has enough apps to fly on its own. Don't know whether that kind of free bundling is legal - but even if so, they will have succeeded or failed long before the wheels of justice could stop them. They're also trying to use the desktop Windows monopoly to speed up the Surface apps race - but that one's less of a sure thing. Nobody's jumping on the bandwagon to convert existing Win32 apps to Metro apps.
Anyway, my point is that they gave up on Zune, Kin, etc, because there was really no way their monopoly products could be used to overcome the huge iPod, iPhone lead. They can't offer Office tie-ins, and the competition works fine with Windows desktops. Without the free copy of Office, Surface RT would be dead. It can't offer anything an iPad or Nexus tablet can - except Office. In fact, they included a huge desktop subsystem just for Office, which introduces lots of bloat and probably rules out midrange specs to compete with Nexus tablets (not to mention Asus and Kindle). But they had no choice. It was Office tie in or die. And of course, if the DOJ hadn't caved when Bush got in, that avenue would have been closed.
At some level, they have a point. It's not really patent trolls that are the problem - it's what's being patented. You couldn't sit on a patented idea and wait for implementations to appear before suing if ideas weren't being granted patents in the first place. Of course our corrupt political system isn't about to write unambiguous rules that disallow software patents or gesture patents or file format patents, etc. So cracking down on non-practicing entities is the only solution available at the moment.
I wonder if Forbes would weigh in on bad patents as strongly as they do in their reflexive support for trolls.
In case you haven't noticed, the marketplace for 'workstations' has changed drastically since the 90's. The hardware is now a cheap commodity, and for most uses, the software is irrelevant - i.e. all you need is a web browser, and possibly an office suite. All of which can be provided by either Windows or Linux on cheap HP or Asus hardware.
Sure, there's still a small market for movie effects production and publication-grade desktop graphics. But hardly one worth introducing a whole new hardware line to tap. Especially one that's incompatible with whatever legacy apps are still out there. Linux + WINE handles that better than a new Power Workstation would.
Right. Android may not be magic, but 'Android == Samsung' is just as misguided as "Nokia + Android == Success". There are many reasons for Samsung's success with Android, but a primary one is name recognition. Everyone's heard of Samsung. HTC, ZTE, even LG - much less. Nokia would've had the name recognition bit sewn up. In any case, the barrier to entry for Android devices is low - that's why there are so many of them. And the barrier for adoption is zero - i.e., the apps are there for any new entrant - it's not like trying to establish desktop Linux in a Windows-centric world.
All they'd have had to do is execute well, and they'd have stood a good chance of succeeding. And if they had succeeded with WP, all Samsung would have had to do is execute well in that space to unseat them. Of course, now that they're Microsoft's in-house shop, nobody else is going to go WP. So unless that was the plan all along...
More and more, there's no other consistent explanation (other than an outdated belief that 'you can't fail if you ride the Microsoft train'). And if this skunkworks Android project was real, maybe that was part of Elop's plan to force Microsoft's hand and make his plan a reality. In any case, 7 billion is a lousy deal for Nokia's shareholders, but I'll bet Elop's otherwise worthless stock options made it a mighty big windfall for him. Just another case where the CEO's priorities are not aligned with the shareholders', and failure of the company == success of the CEO.
Maybe Apple plans to cram a full-blown desktop system into the iPhone, Shuttleworth style. Phone personality when stand-alone, and desktop personality when docked. Not right away, of course. The two systems haven't merged yet. But down the road...
Actually, that might be a route for Microkia to take - and the new low-powered intel chips might make it feasible. If so, the desktop OEM's won't be happy. In any case, I hope Android gets there first - followed by Canonical. The interesting bit is that none of the potential players in a 'dockable phone/desktop' arena have a serious stake in desktop hardware. Apple does, but minor compared with their mobile juggernaut. Microsoft has a desktop software business, and I don't suppose they can get away with charging a $100 software premium on their phones (on top of the beefy hardware requirements) to make up for the loss of desktop Windows licenses. So maybe they'll hold back and give Samsung, Asus and Motorola a chance to shine.
The original netbooks had tiny SSD drives - which were a new thing at the time, and of course, were only big enough to handle a stripped down distro of Linux. So you couldn't use those netbooks as a small standalone laptop. That is, until Microsoft decided that you had to be able to load XP on them. The tiny SSD drives got replaced with 160 GB hard drives, and the things became a little less of what they were intended to be (ultra-portable, quick to boot and indestructible). But yeah, they also became cheap standalone laptops at that point. Until they started eating into laptop sales and MS and the OEMs started making them less and less attractive.
The funny part is that some Chromebooks (from Asus, I think) also had those 160GB drives, and could be easily reworked into Linux laptops. I think they were essentially existing netbook designs with Chrome OS replacing the crippled Windows 7 starter edition that they had been strong-armed into loading onto their netbooks. Best of both worlds: a non-crippled full desktop OS (with netbook UI variants) - or Chrome. No need to pay (or settle) for Win7 starter (is there a Win8 starter edition for netbooks today?).
Either way, the netbook has been vindicated. It's not a 'compromise' - it's what people want. Small, cheap, ultra-portable and indestructible is where todays market sweetspot lies. And for many people, that's an iPad mini or a Nexus 7. But even if you need a desktop machine a Chromebook fits the bill for many people, and geeks can even load Linux on them. Sure, there's still a market for pricier ultrabooks and the like, but pricier is relative. The $1000+ computer market is an ever shrinking one.
They wanted an app store, partially, but not just, "because that's what Apple does". Essentially they know that they can't make money on OS software for tablets. The price points have been set too low by Android devices, and even Apple devices. So the only way to play in the tablet business is to try to make money on all the content, including apps.
Yeah, they could've tried, I guess to charge an OS premium for "it runs all your Windows apps", but that probably wouldn't have flown. Either way, the price points for portable devices are on a downward trajectory, which is good for everybody but Microsoft. And if laptops get replaced by cheap devices like this one from Asus, then it's netbooks all over again, and the Windows monopoly will be worth a whole lot less.
It's kind of silly to lay cap and trade on Al Gore's doorstep. Cap and Trade is the 'business-friendly' version of carbon regulation - i.e. the only kind of regulation that stands a chance of passing in today's lobbyist-owned government. I'm sure Gore would tell you a carbon tax would be a more efficient way to reduce consumption - even a revenue neutral one (that distributes the proceeds back to the public). But try proposing a tax as a solution to anything (and calling it a tax). Recipe for gridlock. Anyway, we have gridlock regardless, and cap and trade isn't gonna happen - so why are you railing on about it?
I was wondering about that too. I think I read somewhere else, that gut bacteria are a natural part of our digestive system, and that the 'fat-making' kind are just better at getting food ready to be absorbed by the body. In other words, it's not that the 'thin-making' bacteria are eating our lunches, but just that they make it harder for us to eat them. Either way, it points to the 'fat' bacteria being better at their assigned job in the human digestive system - and evolution being behind the curve in catching up the overabundance of food in (some) modern cultures. Or maybe the 'thin' bac's are an evolutionary response to overabundance...
Just curious. Are there a lot of fat one percenters? I suppose that's classist of me, but I do wonder what the stats are. And if there aren't very many, how did the one percenters come by their already 'good' gut bacteria popluations? I think the research points to a low-fat diet favoring the establishment of the good kind of bacteria, and once established, they out compete the bad kind - even in the presense of higher fat diets.
Everything you say about Nokia's potential problems with Android applies equally to Windows Phone.
1. If you think they were 'out of date' hardware wise, then they were just as out of date regarding a potential Windows phone - okay, they needed to upgrade their hardware specs, what does that have to do with Android vs Windows? And of course their out of date hardware had to do with not building smartphones - their hardware was appropriate for their inexpensive featrure phones, so the bit about their hardware prowess has to do with their phones being well made, regardless of their low-end components.
2. Ditto. I assume you don't think their Lumia designs are 'dated and behind the curve'. So that issue's off the table. The question is whether the Lumias would've sold better if they ran android. I can't say for sure they would've, but likewise, you can't say they wouldn't.
3. True, there's competition in the android world. But if Windows had caught on, there would've been competition there too. Each of the major Android competitors hedged their bets and put out Windows phones too. In fact HTC's was a very attractive piece of hardware. But Elop's Nokia refused to likewise hedge its bets by putting out an Android device. Why they put out the N9 under those circumstances is equally baffling - almost to 'prove' that there was no other choice. But it proved no such thing. The press liked the N9, but couldn't recommend an already discontinued platform. Anyway, OEM smartphones are a highly competitive proposition - if you don't want to be in that business, don't go into it. And yes, perhaps Microsoft can ultimately succeed with the Apple model - producing the hardware as well as the software. But if that was the plan, then the conspiracy theorists are right - Elop = cheap MS acquisition plan for a crippled Nokia. Congrats on a job well done.
As often happens in businesses that have 'missed the boat' on a marketplace change, a new leader comes in an decides to shake things up. By definition, they know little about the company's history and relative strengths - they just see the weaknesses and feel that change is what they were hired for. And naturally, lacking some vital info, the tendency is to 'go with the Microsoft playbook' and reap the glory when Microsoft is proven right. And with Elop's past history with Microsoft, that approach was a given.
Except that Microsoft's playbook itself is in 'missed the boat' territory, and those 'bold and brilliant' managers that play that game don't seem to have figured that out. And of course, the money guys on the boards are completely clueless, so the game goes on.
There was no reason Nokia couldn't have succeeded with Android. Their strengths are in hardware, industrial design and a large, relatively loyal customer base. That customer base is currently providing what little success Nokia's having with their Lumia line - and it took the low end versions of that line to do it. I.e., those customers didn't want Windows Phone - they wanted a cheap, attractive Nokia phone. They could have had that two years earlier with Android, and they could've done it without fighting the battle of the missing apps. In short, they could've been the Samsung of Europe. They could've even done it while testing the waters with Windows Phones.
But you don't get to be touted in the business press as 'bold and brilliant' by hedging your bets. And you don't get to be rehired by Microsoft and short-listed for the CEO slot without that 'bet the shop on MS' attitude.
Part of the problem with many of the software patents being enforced anti-competitively these days is the fact that patent holders are attempting to restrict the consumers of material created with the patent. So you get:
1. Video codecs, where the intellectual property resides in the encoding process, but for which patent rights are being used to restrict decoding. Once encoded, a video format is no different than any other file format. Decoding it is just consuming the media, and shouldn't require a patent license to do. Sure, if a poducer of video content wants to use the best compression tech out there, charge 'em for it. But don't charge the consumer for the 'intellectual property' involved in decoding the resulting file - unless they're using your code to do the decoding.
2. The notorious FAT32 patent, which seems to be the basis for Microsoft's royalty shakedown of Android OEM's. This 'intellectual property' is a workaround for a bad file system design. Using it in a device, which needs it in order to be able to plug into a Windows PC is not a question of Android taking a free ride on the intellectual brilliance of Microsoft. Nobody in their right mind would use FAT32 except for the fact that it's the common denominator that Windows understands. So, sure Microsoft ought to be able to charge you for it as part of Windows. But nobody should have to pay Microsoft for intellectual property needed to connect to Windows unless they are paying for a license to the actual code to do it.
It would seem that restrictions on patenting file formats would go a long way toward these kinds of potential abuses. A file format isn't the intellectual property - it's just the way to store the results of a patentable process.
I agree about Nokia/Android. The "Samsung owns Android" meme is bullshit. The smartphone-buying public is fickle, and so far nobody's given them a great reason to jump ship from Samsung. The HTC One could've done it - maybe will still, but Samsung has so far kept the hype (and new models) coming to the point that everyone else is drowned out. Let's see how the Moto X does.
In any case, Noka's Lumia devices had some really nice industrial design going for them. And these days, they're trying to differentiate themselves based on high-end camera tech. Who's to say those two factors alone wouldn't have made them a standout in the Android crowd? They'd have gotten to market a lot sooner, that's for sure.
Elop's research of Nokia's options reminds me of Dick Cheney's search for a vice presidential running mate for G.W.B. (or the run-up to the Iraq war, for that mattrer). A phony process to justify an already foregone result. Whether the MS purchase was part of that forgone result, we'll never know. But it's at least a 50-50 chance that it was in there from the start as Plan B.
For all the kneejerk 'Google is Evil' memes that flare up whenever it is revealed how they read your email, etc., Google has been pretty consistent about their business model. They gather info on your habits and use it to present targeted ads *to you*. This has proven to be an effective form of advertisement (in search, at least), and has made Google lots of dough without selling your info directly to anyone - or even getting too intrusive with their advertising (and you can use AdBlock, if that's too much). Creepy? Kind of. But it's an acceptable tradeoff for most people in exchange for the free services.
Facebook's model has some similarities, but they are much freer with direct publication of your info. Some of that is inherent to their service - after all, you're putting the stuff up there to be public to some extent at least. But their means of monetizing your info are less clear than Google's. The idea that they would use your image to endorse products to other people without your express permission is way over the line. I suspect that inline ads on the facebook page (a la Google) just aren't cutting it as a business model, since those ads probably aren't very effective. Google has the advantage of presenting ads when you're actually looking to buy something. This can even be helpful at times, though you're obviously not getting a neutral selection of results - in the paid ones, at least.
For most 'free' internet services, we're still in the phase where venture capital is filling in for a viable business model. And for the ones relying purely on advertising, most of them will never pan out. Then what? Another wave of over-hyped services, or a less appealing (or less free) internet that is actually self-sustaining.
So does that completely exclude simulations of real-world objects? Is a progress meter no longer patentable because the 'invention' is implementing a meter as a computer graphic/animation (i.e. 'on a computer')? Is Apple's scroll bounce back no longer patentable because there are real world devices that bounce when you scroll past the last item?
If so, this is a fairly big blow against nuisance GUI patents at least.
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...what email app are you going to use? Presumably you use some cloud-based 'free' email service. Be it gmail, yahoo, outlook, aol, etc. These are all ad-supported, and if they don't 'read' your mail in order to better target the ads, it's because they haven't (yet) figured out how. And if they haven't figured that out, I'd be just as worried about whether they've figured out how to keep intruders from reading your mail instead...
So, when it comes to ad-supported free services, the standard probably shouldn't be whether they are scanning your mail (sure, if you can find a service you trust that doesn't, by all means...), but just how annoying the resulting ad barrage is. So far, Google has kept their advertising subtle, and even occasionally useful. I agree it's starting to get creepy when YouTube offers to show me videos based on stuff I searched for on Google. Haven't yet noticed it happening based on my email contents, but I'm sure it will. Creepy, but oddly efficient - i.e. better than random suggestions.
It remains to be seen how much creepiness I can endure - or whether I'll start to take that creepiness for granted, and 'enjoy' the resulting targeted stuff. Of course, with a little paranoia, creepy morphs readily into scary and oppressive. But other than occasionally (and reluctantly) complying with the NSA, Google has stayed pretty transparent about what it does, and lets you opt out of the worst of it. Evil is in the eye of the beholder...
I'm so sick of hearing "companies are amoral" as if that's some kind of excuse for psychopathic behavior. If Broadcom had to buy another company to produce a successful LTE product, it's because they (management) failed to produce one themselves. And not necessarily because the engineers in charge failed - more likely because some dopey manager with herd mentality stuck to the 'support Windows and the rest will follow' script.
But "amoral" companies used to provide their employees with a modicum of security, because they were expected too. The rules have been changed, by Ayn Rand fans too dense to see that "Atlas Shrugged" is the same kind of utopian claptrap as "Das Kapital". In John Galt's hidden mountain paradise, I'm sure there were people to clean the toilets - and I'll bet they were treated a lot better than Broadcom's employees...
I'm reluctant to respond, since WTF does this Nobel Prize story have to do with Obama... but nice, idiotic cherry-picked simplification of the Obama presidency and the media.
How about the codpiece media that helped the predecessor launch one of those wars based on lies - to the detriment of maybe winning the other one? How about the codpiece media that repeats and amplifies today's Republican talking points about the need to pay down the deficit, and also repeated the 2001 talking points about how the surplus was going to pay down the deficit, and then what will we do... Better to cut taxes in 2001 and stop running that immoral surplus...
It worked reasonably well, and was a full real copy of Windows.
Microsoft's strength and weakness in a single sentence. It seems the major selling point of all Microsoft platforms is the "full real copy of Windows". I.e., the promise that all that software written for the Windows desktop monopoly will somehow provide the leverage to make whatever platform MS supports win. And the major weakness, of course, is that they insist on cramming a 'full real copy of Windows" onto form factors where it doesn't make sense (i.e. "it works only reasonably well - or requires expensive hardware to work at all").
They wasted years on a windows phone platform marketed based on 'Windows Familiarity (tm)', as iOS and Android proceded to win. Apparently cramming a totally hobbled version of Windows CE onto a phone wasn't any kind of a panacea. WP7/8 are better, but too late. Alas, without the Windows monopoly effect, you really need to be a little quicker on your feet than MS has traditionally been. Now they're trying to exploit the monopoly effect for tablets. The RT, which could be a nice true tablet, unfortunately doesn't have the Windows apps. And the Pro is too much software for the form factor. It may develop into a nice niche for people who really need some WIN32 app, but won't work well for most people, who really just need a $200 Nexus or Kindle.
Assuming your OS caches data effectively, there's not much benefit to extra fast I/O access to what is essentially another cache. i suppose if frequently accessed data is kept in that cache across boots, that might speed certain things up. But then again, if that's really important, the OS could implement pre-fetch logic to re-load its cache with that same data in the background on boot. So, I repeat, non-volitile cache is a lifesaver when guaranteed immediate writes are required. But very little of what's done on a typical desktop machine has that requirement. For day-to-day application speed, everyday ram cache works fine.
Flash solves the problem of waiting for verified writes. That's why putting database logs onto battery-backed high speed memory improves performance dramatically.
That said, do desktops really need that kind of performance boost. Unless you're doing some serious data creation, the only thing that's slow on today's desktops is booting Windows. Linux boots so fast, I wouldn't bother worrying about throwing hardware at that 'problem', and Windows isn't even that bad these days. Whether ChromeOS and it's like ever really replace traditional desktops, the desktop workload is going to continue to move in the direction that Chrome addresses. Brute speed (beyond the basics to provide a smooth experience) will become less and less of a factor. As it is, battery life seems to be overtaking speed as the main hardware concern.
Specs and code are two different things, no? Do you think they have no legal right to release API's that talk to code running on their cards? Nobody's talking about writing open source firmware for the cards - that's not OS-specific. Or am I missing something?
They don't even need an Android compatibility layer. How about a Windows compatibility layer. If the damn RT allowed you to recompile your WIN32 apps for ARM like Microsoft allows themselves to do for Office they'd have a huge number of apps, and ownership of the corporate market. But their direction with this product is so muddled that the strategy of 'beating Apple at its own game' is winning out over the strategy of 'leveraging Windows to win the Enterprise market'.
True enough, except if you look at the cases where they stuck with it, they were cases where either the Windows or Office monopoly would eventually make them win once they reached 'good enough' status. In fact for Word, they used what would have been illegal bundling to get early versions included 'for free' with new PC's. That kind of thing is illegal now that Windows has been found to be a monopoly. But they're still trying to use the Office monopoly to prop up Surface until it has enough apps to fly on its own. Don't know whether that kind of free bundling is legal - but even if so, they will have succeeded or failed long before the wheels of justice could stop them. They're also trying to use the desktop Windows monopoly to speed up the Surface apps race - but that one's less of a sure thing. Nobody's jumping on the bandwagon to convert existing Win32 apps to Metro apps.
Anyway, my point is that they gave up on Zune, Kin, etc, because there was really no way their monopoly products could be used to overcome the huge iPod, iPhone lead. They can't offer Office tie-ins, and the competition works fine with Windows desktops. Without the free copy of Office, Surface RT would be dead. It can't offer anything an iPad or Nexus tablet can - except Office. In fact, they included a huge desktop subsystem just for Office, which introduces lots of bloat and probably rules out midrange specs to compete with Nexus tablets (not to mention Asus and Kindle). But they had no choice. It was Office tie in or die. And of course, if the DOJ hadn't caved when Bush got in, that avenue would have been closed.
At some level, they have a point. It's not really patent trolls that are the problem - it's what's being patented. You couldn't sit on a patented idea and wait for implementations to appear before suing if ideas weren't being granted patents in the first place. Of course our corrupt political system isn't about to write unambiguous rules that disallow software patents or gesture patents or file format patents, etc. So cracking down on non-practicing entities is the only solution available at the moment.
I wonder if Forbes would weigh in on bad patents as strongly as they do in their reflexive support for trolls.
In case you haven't noticed, the marketplace for 'workstations' has changed drastically since the 90's. The hardware is now a cheap commodity, and for most uses, the software is irrelevant - i.e. all you need is a web browser, and possibly an office suite. All of which can be provided by either Windows or Linux on cheap HP or Asus hardware.
Sure, there's still a small market for movie effects production and publication-grade desktop graphics. But hardly one worth introducing a whole new hardware line to tap. Especially one that's incompatible with whatever legacy apps are still out there. Linux + WINE handles that better than a new Power Workstation would.
Right. Android may not be magic, but 'Android == Samsung' is just as misguided as "Nokia + Android == Success". There are many reasons for Samsung's success with Android, but a primary one is name recognition. Everyone's heard of Samsung. HTC, ZTE, even LG - much less. Nokia would've had the name recognition bit sewn up. In any case, the barrier to entry for Android devices is low - that's why there are so many of them. And the barrier for adoption is zero - i.e., the apps are there for any new entrant - it's not like trying to establish desktop Linux in a Windows-centric world.
All they'd have had to do is execute well, and they'd have stood a good chance of succeeding. And if they had succeeded with WP, all Samsung would have had to do is execute well in that space to unseat them. Of course, now that they're Microsoft's in-house shop, nobody else is going to go WP. So unless that was the plan all along...
More and more, there's no other consistent explanation (other than an outdated belief that 'you can't fail if you ride the Microsoft train'). And if this skunkworks Android project was real, maybe that was part of Elop's plan to force Microsoft's hand and make his plan a reality. In any case, 7 billion is a lousy deal for Nokia's shareholders, but I'll bet Elop's otherwise worthless stock options made it a mighty big windfall for him. Just another case where the CEO's priorities are not aligned with the shareholders', and failure of the company == success of the CEO.
Is that a serious response - or are you jockying to be modded 'funny'?
Maybe Apple plans to cram a full-blown desktop system into the iPhone, Shuttleworth style. Phone personality when stand-alone, and desktop personality when docked. Not right away, of course. The two systems haven't merged yet. But down the road...
Actually, that might be a route for Microkia to take - and the new low-powered intel chips might make it feasible. If so, the desktop OEM's won't be happy. In any case, I hope Android gets there first - followed by Canonical. The interesting bit is that none of the potential players in a 'dockable phone/desktop' arena have a serious stake in desktop hardware. Apple does, but minor compared with their mobile juggernaut. Microsoft has a desktop software business, and I don't suppose they can get away with charging a $100 software premium on their phones (on top of the beefy hardware requirements) to make up for the loss of desktop Windows licenses. So maybe they'll hold back and give Samsung, Asus and Motorola a chance to shine.
The original netbooks had tiny SSD drives - which were a new thing at the time, and of course, were only big enough to handle a stripped down distro of Linux. So you couldn't use those netbooks as a small standalone laptop. That is, until Microsoft decided that you had to be able to load XP on them. The tiny SSD drives got replaced with 160 GB hard drives, and the things became a little less of what they were intended to be (ultra-portable, quick to boot and indestructible). But yeah, they also became cheap standalone laptops at that point. Until they started eating into laptop sales and MS and the OEMs started making them less and less attractive.
The funny part is that some Chromebooks (from Asus, I think) also had those 160GB drives, and could be easily reworked into Linux laptops. I think they were essentially existing netbook designs with Chrome OS replacing the crippled Windows 7 starter edition that they had been strong-armed into loading onto their netbooks. Best of both worlds: a non-crippled full desktop OS (with netbook UI variants) - or Chrome. No need to pay (or settle) for Win7 starter (is there a Win8 starter edition for netbooks today?).
Either way, the netbook has been vindicated. It's not a 'compromise' - it's what people want. Small, cheap, ultra-portable and indestructible is where todays market sweetspot lies. And for many people, that's an iPad mini or a Nexus 7. But even if you need a desktop machine a Chromebook fits the bill for many people, and geeks can even load Linux on them. Sure, there's still a market for pricier ultrabooks and the like, but pricier is relative. The $1000+ computer market is an ever shrinking one.
They wanted an app store, partially, but not just, "because that's what Apple does". Essentially they know that they can't make money on OS software for tablets. The price points have been set too low by Android devices, and even Apple devices. So the only way to play in the tablet business is to try to make money on all the content, including apps.
Yeah, they could've tried, I guess to charge an OS premium for "it runs all your Windows apps", but that probably wouldn't have flown. Either way, the price points for portable devices are on a downward trajectory, which is good for everybody but Microsoft. And if laptops get replaced by cheap devices like this one from Asus, then it's netbooks all over again, and the Windows monopoly will be worth a whole lot less.
It's kind of silly to lay cap and trade on Al Gore's doorstep. Cap and Trade is the 'business-friendly' version of carbon regulation - i.e. the only kind of regulation that stands a chance of passing in today's lobbyist-owned government. I'm sure Gore would tell you a carbon tax would be a more efficient way to reduce consumption - even a revenue neutral one (that distributes the proceeds back to the public). But try proposing a tax as a solution to anything (and calling it a tax). Recipe for gridlock. Anyway, we have gridlock regardless, and cap and trade isn't gonna happen - so why are you railing on about it?
I was wondering about that too. I think I read somewhere else, that gut bacteria are a natural part of our digestive system, and that the 'fat-making' kind are just better at getting food ready to be absorbed by the body. In other words, it's not that the 'thin-making' bacteria are eating our lunches, but just that they make it harder for us to eat them. Either way, it points to the 'fat' bacteria being better at their assigned job in the human digestive system - and evolution being behind the curve in catching up the overabundance of food in (some) modern cultures. Or maybe the 'thin' bac's are an evolutionary response to overabundance...
Just curious. Are there a lot of fat one percenters? I suppose that's classist of me, but I do wonder what the stats are. And if there aren't very many, how did the one percenters come by their already 'good' gut bacteria popluations? I think the research points to a low-fat diet favoring the establishment of the good kind of bacteria, and once established, they out compete the bad kind - even in the presense of higher fat diets.
Everything you say about Nokia's potential problems with Android applies equally to Windows Phone.
1. If you think they were 'out of date' hardware wise, then they were just as out of date regarding a potential Windows phone - okay, they needed to upgrade their hardware specs, what does that have to do with Android vs Windows? And of course their out of date hardware had to do with not building smartphones - their hardware was appropriate for their inexpensive featrure phones, so the bit about their hardware prowess has to do with their phones being well made, regardless of their low-end components.
2. Ditto. I assume you don't think their Lumia designs are 'dated and behind the curve'. So that issue's off the table. The question is whether the Lumias would've sold better if they ran android. I can't say for sure they would've, but likewise, you can't say they wouldn't.
3. True, there's competition in the android world. But if Windows had caught on, there would've been competition there too. Each of the major Android competitors hedged their bets and put out Windows phones too. In fact HTC's was a very attractive piece of hardware. But Elop's Nokia refused to likewise hedge its bets by putting out an Android device. Why they put out the N9 under those circumstances is equally baffling - almost to 'prove' that there was no other choice. But it proved no such thing. The press liked the N9, but couldn't recommend an already discontinued platform. Anyway, OEM smartphones are a highly competitive proposition - if you don't want to be in that business, don't go into it. And yes, perhaps Microsoft can ultimately succeed with the Apple model - producing the hardware as well as the software. But if that was the plan, then the conspiracy theorists are right - Elop = cheap MS acquisition plan for a crippled Nokia. Congrats on a job well done.
As often happens in businesses that have 'missed the boat' on a marketplace change, a new leader comes in an decides to shake things up. By definition, they know little about the company's history and relative strengths - they just see the weaknesses and feel that change is what they were hired for. And naturally, lacking some vital info, the tendency is to 'go with the Microsoft playbook' and reap the glory when Microsoft is proven right. And with Elop's past history with Microsoft, that approach was a given.
Except that Microsoft's playbook itself is in 'missed the boat' territory, and those 'bold and brilliant' managers that play that game don't seem to have figured that out. And of course, the money guys on the boards are completely clueless, so the game goes on.
There was no reason Nokia couldn't have succeeded with Android. Their strengths are in hardware, industrial design and a large, relatively loyal customer base. That customer base is currently providing what little success Nokia's having with their Lumia line - and it took the low end versions of that line to do it. I.e., those customers didn't want Windows Phone - they wanted a cheap, attractive Nokia phone. They could have had that two years earlier with Android, and they could've done it without fighting the battle of the missing apps. In short, they could've been the Samsung of Europe. They could've even done it while testing the waters with Windows Phones.
But you don't get to be touted in the business press as 'bold and brilliant' by hedging your bets. And you don't get to be rehired by Microsoft and short-listed for the CEO slot without that 'bet the shop on MS' attitude.
Part of the problem with many of the software patents being enforced anti-competitively these days is the fact that patent holders are attempting to restrict the consumers of material created with the patent. So you get:
1. Video codecs, where the intellectual property resides in the encoding process, but for which patent rights are being used to restrict decoding. Once encoded, a video format is no different than any other file format. Decoding it is just consuming the media, and shouldn't require a patent license to do. Sure, if a poducer of video content wants to use the best compression tech out there, charge 'em for it. But don't charge the consumer for the 'intellectual property' involved in decoding the resulting file - unless they're using your code to do the decoding.
2. The notorious FAT32 patent, which seems to be the basis for Microsoft's royalty shakedown of Android OEM's. This 'intellectual property' is a workaround for a bad file system design. Using it in a device, which needs it in order to be able to plug into a Windows PC is not a question of Android taking a free ride on the intellectual brilliance of Microsoft. Nobody in their right mind would use FAT32 except for the fact that it's the common denominator that Windows understands. So, sure Microsoft ought to be able to charge you for it as part of Windows. But nobody should have to pay Microsoft for intellectual property needed to connect to Windows unless they are paying for a license to the actual code to do it.
It would seem that restrictions on patenting file formats would go a long way toward these kinds of potential abuses. A file format isn't the intellectual property - it's just the way to store the results of a patentable process.
I agree about Nokia/Android. The "Samsung owns Android" meme is bullshit. The smartphone-buying public is fickle, and so far nobody's given them a great reason to jump ship from Samsung. The HTC One could've done it - maybe will still, but Samsung has so far kept the hype (and new models) coming to the point that everyone else is drowned out. Let's see how the Moto X does.
In any case, Noka's Lumia devices had some really nice industrial design going for them. And these days, they're trying to differentiate themselves based on high-end camera tech. Who's to say those two factors alone wouldn't have made them a standout in the Android crowd? They'd have gotten to market a lot sooner, that's for sure.
Elop's research of Nokia's options reminds me of Dick Cheney's search for a vice presidential running mate for G.W.B. (or the run-up to the Iraq war, for that mattrer). A phony process to justify an already foregone result. Whether the MS purchase was part of that forgone result, we'll never know. But it's at least a 50-50 chance that it was in there from the start as Plan B.
For all the kneejerk 'Google is Evil' memes that flare up whenever it is revealed how they read your email, etc., Google has been pretty consistent about their business model. They gather info on your habits and use it to present targeted ads *to you*. This has proven to be an effective form of advertisement (in search, at least), and has made Google lots of dough without selling your info directly to anyone - or even getting too intrusive with their advertising (and you can use AdBlock, if that's too much). Creepy? Kind of. But it's an acceptable tradeoff for most people in exchange for the free services.
Facebook's model has some similarities, but they are much freer with direct publication of your info. Some of that is inherent to their service - after all, you're putting the stuff up there to be public to some extent at least. But their means of monetizing your info are less clear than Google's. The idea that they would use your image to endorse products to other people without your express permission is way over the line. I suspect that inline ads on the facebook page (a la Google) just aren't cutting it as a business model, since those ads probably aren't very effective. Google has the advantage of presenting ads when you're actually looking to buy something. This can even be helpful at times, though you're obviously not getting a neutral selection of results - in the paid ones, at least.
For most 'free' internet services, we're still in the phase where venture capital is filling in for a viable business model. And for the ones relying purely on advertising, most of them will never pan out. Then what? Another wave of over-hyped services, or a less appealing (or less free) internet that is actually self-sustaining.
So does that completely exclude simulations of real-world objects? Is a progress meter no longer patentable because the 'invention' is implementing a meter as a computer graphic/animation (i.e. 'on a computer')? Is Apple's scroll bounce back no longer patentable because there are real world devices that bounce when you scroll past the last item?
If so, this is a fairly big blow against nuisance GUI patents at least.