If WalMart is so stingy in paying their employees that some employees qualify for taxpayer-funded Medicaid, then taxpayers in general and the Ma and Pa proprietors are subsidizing WalMart.
Because Microsoft has a monopoly on the Operating Systems market, it can charge an inflated price for its Operating System. It can also abuse that monopoly to extend it into related markets: Media Players, Servers, etc. And then you'll get to pay inflated prices for those products, as well.
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft, by bundling Windows Media Player (a product in a competitive market) with Windows (a product where Microsoft has a monopoly) forces customers to pay for Windows Media Player whether they want it or not. Microsoft can roll the cost of WMP in with Windows, and make the customers pay for both when they only wanted Windows.
Suppliers of other media players cannot force customers to buy their product. So they are at a disadvantage. Anti-monopoly laws that have been on the books for a century or more state that such cross-subsidies are illegal.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
Yeah. The current situation is that consumers are forced to pay for Windows Media Player to get Windows. And when Windows is a monopoly, that is illegal.
But the remedy, where you are forced to pay for Windows Media Player, and then you get to choose whether you get it or not, is no good. Consumers are still denied choice.
I'm not sure I buy your rule #1. If you get there first, you're there, and others are not. So, temporarily, you have it. But you have to keep it (see Americans, Native, or Palestinians).
The only rule seems to be: If you can defend it, it is yours. If not, oh, well!
American Can was founded 1901; the name died in 1987 when the company changed its name to Primerica. Went through a bunch of owners, is now part of Citigroup.
American Car and Foundry, founded 1899 from a merger of 13 smaller firms, renamed ACF Industries Inc. in 1959. Now known as ACF Industries, LLC. Still in business.
American Locomotive, founded 1901 from a merger of 7 or 8 smaller locomotive manufacturers, commonly known as ALCO. They changed their name to Alco Products in 1955, were bought by the Worthington Corporation in 1964, and stopped making locomotives in 1969.
Fascinating history. How the mighty have fallen! Two makers of steam locomotives (ALCO and Baldwin); the industry would be dead in twenty years.
Bell labs suffered from the breakup of AT&T on January 1, 1984. As part of a regulated monopoly, funding basic research was easy, and everyone had to pay for it on their phone bill. After the breakup, AT&T lost the regulated revenue from the operating companies, so it could no longer pad the regulated bills with Bell Labs expenses.
And then the wizards at Lucent made Dense Wave Division Multiplexing hardware, and the capacity of the already-laid fiber optic cable increased by an order of magnitude or two. Which drove down the price of long distance service to the point where AT&T is struggling, and will likely be bought out soon.
How can MacOS X Leopard (f'rex) "require" Open Firmware?
Once the machine has booted, it has booted. And remember, MacOS X Leopard would have to tell the difference between running over Darwin on Apple hardware, vs. running over Darwin on generic hardware. It isn't MacOS X Leopard that boots; it's Darwin. And we know it will work.
I fear Apple is setting themselves up to compete against Microsoft _and_ Dell at the same time. And they won't have the cash to pull it off. Revenues are going to fall off sharply this year and next; noone will want to spend money on PPC software that will be hobbled by running on an emulator in just a year or two. And if you're not buying new software, why bother buying new hardware?
Apple has three choices for x86 hardware: none at all, PC-compatible, and unique. Not making hardware means that Apple is having MacOS X competing 100% against Windows and Linux. They won't win against Windows; they won't win against Linux; not without available software, which they won't get without an installed base, which they can't get without available software. They will implode the way that Be did, and NeXT would have (without the Apple buyout). Recall that Microsoft's entire business was built by ensuring that customers had no choice but to pay for Microsoft Software. Why pay extra for your PC to be able to run MacOS X software? What would be available for MacOS X/86 that isn't out for the PC already? And MacOS X/86 will always be more expensive than Linux.
Apple could try and build their own PC-compatible hardware, and bundle MacOS X/86 with it. And compete directly against Dell as well as Microsoft and Linux. Do you think Intel will give Apple first shot at the hot new chips? Or Dell? When there are supply problems, is Intel going to be more worried about annoying Dell or Apple? Will they be able to charge a premium for their hardware? The Megahertz Myth was a difficult piece of marketing; it will be much harder convincing the public to support Apple the way it will need to be supported when choosing between one Pentium IV 570 machine and another.
Or Apple can keep their hardware unique. Different from the PC, even though they share the same processor. Now there is no possibility of a multi-boot machine. Good or bad? I don't know.
While the Mac Mini made me want to believe, this makes me not.
The Keynote speach starts in an hour and twenty minutes. We will all know when it is over.
Developers will not have to recode from the ground up. Since Apple controls MacOS X, they can keep the APIs the same (from a C perspective), and have the compiler do the work.
I would be concerned from a business point of view. Both NeXT and Be dropped their unique hardware, and nearly died being an alternative OS vendor for commodity hardware. The one that didn't get bought by Apple is gone from the public eye.
What is Apple's business? Selling MacOS X? Or selling well-integrated hardware/software systems? I don't think Apple could give up the hardware and make in on Software alone, when the software would have to compete with Microsoft (and their illegal business practices) and the free alternatives (Linux, *BSD). Apple can't compete with Microsoft on volume, and can't compete with Linux on price.
And would Apple survive making compatible hardware? Dell et. al. have driven all the profits out of the hardware business. $430 for a computer with a flat panel display? Makes the Mini look expensive.
So what course is left? Unique hardware? OK, but how do you sell people on "it's not quite a PC, and you should pay more for it!"? Tought one, that.
No hardware, proprietary hardware, commodity hardware. Is there another choice? I don't see a winning course when the heart of the machine is just like everybody else. You won't have all the software that everybody else has.
I wish the BBC would let us see the whole diagram, at the same level of detail as their little clip. Which I thought looked like a jet or rocket engine. Sure enough, "enlarge" the figure, and you see that is what they chose to show.
But look at the two purple masses. Does it bring to mind the design of "Little Boy"? Could the projectile in the back be enriched Uranium? Would the combined Uranium-Plutonium mass be critical?
Scientific American ran a piece a few years back, about a fully automated, solar-powered, raw-materials-in factory that could build... a fully automated, solar-powered, raw-materials-in factory.
Send one of those up to the moon, and wait for ten generations. Make sure you have an "off" switch! Now send a crew up to reprogram the robots. Have the factories build habitat. Or digging machines to build habitat. Now you have a place to live and a power supply.
I'm trying to get Linux up and running on an old computer (AMD K6-2 450 MHz with 128 MB RAM and new 80 GB drive). I have 3 CD-Rs of Mandrake 10.0, and broadband. I want it to run NetATalk and Samba, and sit in the closet and serve music and picture files to my old iMac (400 MHz G3 Lime; MacOS 9.2.2) and my wife's old PC (PII Win98).
I might have media problems, or the CD-ROM drive might be flaking out. I had to do the install a couple of times, scaling it back each time when I got to the Jedi Mind Trick "that isn't the CD I'm looking for"... I can't simply install packages from the CDRs. And I'm not getting very far with the downloaded image of Mandriva 10.1; I can write the boot floppy, but the PC only gets half way through the boot. Bad Floppy? Bad Drive? I don't know, and the machine won't tell me. It's trivial to format a removable disk (Zip, CD-R, CD-RW for my current machine; Zips and floppys on its predecessor) on a Mac. It's a cryptic maze on Linux.
It's taking a lot of time to do what should be simple things: either getting the current security patches for Mandrake 10, or updating to Mandriva 10.1. It will take days more effort before things are running the way I want them to.
It is much easier to get things running on a Mac, or on Windows, than on Linux.
Both innovative, both open source. Yeah, the first came out of a university, and the second out of a government lab.
The _Packaged_Software_ business is challenged by Open Source. However, companies will still pay to have software customized, custom-written for them, or supported because the software solves a problem they have.
Note that when Apple changed processor architectures last time (1993-1995) they had their fastest market share decline. The engineering resources that they spent making the M68K->PPC transition (which they had to do; M68K was falling further and further behind) could have kept MacOS far ahead of where Win95 was.
So you missed the Electricity and Magnetism demos with a Van de Graff generator, high-voltage transformers, Jacob's Ladders, and firing a metal washer to the auditorium roof to demonstrate induction?
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In this instance, I have to agree with Rhenquist, Scalia, Thomas, and O'Conner.
Now I need to go take a shower.
I should be surprised that noone at the DoJ Anti Trust division is pricking up their ears about this.
Then I remembered who runs the DoJ....
Has someone forgotten to convert from 11 or 54 megabits per second to reported transer rates of megabytes per second?
If WalMart is so stingy in paying their employees that some employees qualify for taxpayer-funded Medicaid, then taxpayers in general and the Ma and Pa proprietors are subsidizing WalMart.
Because Microsoft has a monopoly on the Operating Systems market, it can charge an inflated price for its Operating System. It can also abuse that monopoly to extend it into related markets: Media Players, Servers, etc. And then you'll get to pay inflated prices for those products, as well.
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft, by bundling Windows Media Player (a product in a competitive market) with Windows (a product where Microsoft has a monopoly) forces customers to pay for Windows Media Player whether they want it or not. Microsoft can roll the cost of WMP in with Windows, and make the customers pay for both when they only wanted Windows.
Suppliers of other media players cannot force customers to buy their product. So they are at a disadvantage. Anti-monopoly laws that have been on the books for a century or more state that such cross-subsidies are illegal.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
Yeah. The current situation is that consumers are forced to pay for Windows Media Player to get Windows. And when Windows is a monopoly, that is illegal.
But the remedy, where you are forced to pay for Windows Media Player, and then you get to choose whether you get it or not, is no good. Consumers are still denied choice.
I'm not sure I buy your rule #1. If you get there first, you're there, and others are not. So, temporarily, you have it. But you have to keep it (see Americans, Native, or Palestinians).
The only rule seems to be: If you can defend it, it is yours. If not, oh, well!
Hmmmm. My machine (Lime iMac purchased March 2000) is a 400 MHz G3.
For $1000, plus a Mac Developer subscription, it could be replaced by a 3.6 GHz P IV that produces a net speed increase of 25%.
Hmmmm, what a deal.
American Can was founded 1901; the name died in 1987 when the company changed its name to Primerica. Went through a bunch of owners, is now part of Citigroup.
American Car and Foundry, founded 1899 from a merger of 13 smaller firms, renamed ACF Industries Inc. in 1959. Now known as ACF Industries, LLC. Still in business.
American Locomotive, founded 1901 from a merger of 7 or 8 smaller locomotive manufacturers, commonly known as ALCO. They changed their name to Alco Products in 1955, were bought by the Worthington Corporation in 1964, and stopped making locomotives in 1969.
Fascinating history. How the mighty have fallen! Two makers of steam locomotives (ALCO and Baldwin); the industry would be dead in twenty years.
Bell labs suffered from the breakup of AT&T on January 1, 1984. As part of a regulated monopoly, funding basic research was easy, and everyone had to pay for it on their phone bill. After the breakup, AT&T lost the regulated revenue from the operating companies, so it could no longer pad the regulated bills with Bell Labs expenses.
And then the wizards at Lucent made Dense Wave Division Multiplexing hardware, and the capacity of the already-laid fiber optic cable increased by an order of magnitude or two. Which drove down the price of long distance service to the point where AT&T is struggling, and will likely be bought out soon.
Was all this the fault of Bell Labs?
How can MacOS X Leopard (f'rex) "require" Open Firmware?
Once the machine has booted, it has booted. And remember, MacOS X Leopard would have to tell the difference between running over Darwin on Apple hardware, vs. running over Darwin on generic hardware. It isn't MacOS X Leopard that boots; it's Darwin. And we know it will work.
I fear Apple is setting themselves up to compete against Microsoft _and_ Dell at the same time. And they won't have the cash to pull it off. Revenues are going to fall off sharply this year and next; noone will want to spend money on PPC software that will be hobbled by running on an emulator in just a year or two. And if you're not buying new software, why bother buying new hardware?
Is there a 64-bit x86 laptop available now?
Apple has three choices for x86 hardware: none at all, PC-compatible, and unique. Not making hardware means that Apple is having MacOS X competing 100% against Windows and Linux. They won't win against Windows; they won't win against Linux; not without available software, which they won't get without an installed base, which they can't get without available software. They will implode the way that Be did, and NeXT would have (without the Apple buyout). Recall that Microsoft's entire business was built by ensuring that customers had no choice but to pay for Microsoft Software. Why pay extra for your PC to be able to run MacOS X software? What would be available for MacOS X/86 that isn't out for the PC already? And MacOS X/86 will always be more expensive than Linux.
Apple could try and build their own PC-compatible hardware, and bundle MacOS X/86 with it. And compete directly against Dell as well as Microsoft and Linux. Do you think Intel will give Apple first shot at the hot new chips? Or Dell? When there are supply problems, is Intel going to be more worried about annoying Dell or Apple? Will they be able to charge a premium for their hardware? The Megahertz Myth was a difficult piece of marketing; it will be much harder convincing the public to support Apple the way it will need to be supported when choosing between one Pentium IV 570 machine and another.
Or Apple can keep their hardware unique. Different from the PC, even though they share the same processor. Now there is no possibility of a multi-boot machine. Good or bad? I don't know.
While the Mac Mini made me want to believe, this makes me not.
The Keynote speach starts in an hour and twenty minutes. We will all know when it is over.
Developers will not have to recode from the ground up. Since Apple controls MacOS X, they can keep the APIs the same (from a C perspective), and have the compiler do the work.
I would be concerned from a business point of view. Both NeXT and Be dropped their unique hardware, and nearly died being an alternative OS vendor for commodity hardware. The one that didn't get bought by Apple is gone from the public eye.
What is Apple's business? Selling MacOS X? Or selling well-integrated hardware/software systems? I don't think Apple could give up the hardware and make in on Software alone, when the software would have to compete with Microsoft (and their illegal business practices) and the free alternatives (Linux, *BSD). Apple can't compete with Microsoft on volume, and can't compete with Linux on price.
And would Apple survive making compatible hardware? Dell et. al. have driven all the profits out of the hardware business. $430 for a computer with a flat panel display? Makes the Mini look expensive.
So what course is left? Unique hardware? OK, but how do you sell people on "it's not quite a PC, and you should pay more for it!"? Tought one, that.
No hardware, proprietary hardware, commodity hardware. Is there another choice? I don't see a winning course when the heart of the machine is just like everybody else. You won't have all the software that everybody else has.
And more virtual "funny" mod points to otis wildflower.
If I had mod points, this post would be one higher.
"But this one goes to eleven! That's one more!"
Considering the number of divorces in this country, you'll lose your nuclear batteries far less often than you'll lose your wedding ring.
I wish the BBC would let us see the whole diagram, at the same level of detail as their little clip. Which I thought looked like a jet or rocket engine. Sure enough, "enlarge" the figure, and you see that is what they chose to show.
But look at the two purple masses. Does it bring to mind the design of "Little Boy"? Could the projectile in the back be enriched Uranium? Would the combined Uranium-Plutonium mass be critical?
Scientific American ran a piece a few years back, about a fully automated, solar-powered, raw-materials-in factory that could build... a fully automated, solar-powered, raw-materials-in factory.
Send one of those up to the moon, and wait for ten generations. Make sure you have an "off" switch! Now send a crew up to reprogram the robots. Have the factories build habitat. Or digging machines to build habitat. Now you have a place to live and a power supply.
Then the moon becomes a much more inviting place.
Macs have come with IDE drives as standard equipment since around 1996 (plus or minus a year).
I believe the newest Macs have dropped IDE for SATA.
The hardware problems reported in TFA are with fly-by-night vendors that noone has ever heard of, like Sony and Dell.
Which "Quality PC Vendors" did you have in mind?
I'm trying to get Linux up and running on an old computer (AMD K6-2 450 MHz with 128 MB RAM and new 80 GB drive). I have 3 CD-Rs of Mandrake 10.0, and broadband. I want it to run NetATalk and Samba, and sit in the closet and serve music and picture files to my old iMac (400 MHz G3 Lime; MacOS 9.2.2) and my wife's old PC (PII Win98).
I might have media problems, or the CD-ROM drive might be flaking out. I had to do the install a couple of times, scaling it back each time when I got to the Jedi Mind Trick "that isn't the CD I'm looking for"... I can't simply install packages from the CDRs. And I'm not getting very far with the downloaded image of Mandriva 10.1; I can write the boot floppy, but the PC only gets half way through the boot. Bad Floppy? Bad Drive? I don't know, and the machine won't tell me. It's trivial to format a removable disk (Zip, CD-R, CD-RW for my current machine; Zips and floppys on its predecessor) on a Mac. It's a cryptic maze on Linux.
It's taking a lot of time to do what should be simple things: either getting the current security patches for Mandrake 10, or updating to Mandriva 10.1. It will take days more effort before things are running the way I want them to.
It is much easier to get things running on a Mac, or on Windows, than on Linux.
Tcl.
Perl.
Both innovative, both open source. Yeah, the first came out of a university, and the second out of a government lab.
The _Packaged_Software_ business is challenged by Open Source. However, companies will still pay to have software customized, custom-written for them, or supported because the software solves a problem they have.
Note that when Apple changed processor architectures last time (1993-1995) they had their fastest market share decline. The engineering resources that they spent making the M68K->PPC transition (which they had to do; M68K was falling further and further behind) could have kept MacOS far ahead of where Win95 was.
So you missed the Electricity and Magnetism demos with a Van de Graff generator, high-voltage transformers, Jacob's Ladders, and firing a metal washer to the auditorium roof to demonstrate induction?
That was one of my favorite lectures.