I agree that OSX certified Unix but it is a desktop Unix. NextStep was never a server Unix either so I don't consider that to be anything more than just the "Linux didn't make it to the desktop" problem. In the same way that in the late 1990s Irix survived on desktop systems without the server OS..
IBM would contend that AIX is very much alive as well - they sell shedloads of it on their P-series big-iron servers to enterprise customers.
AIX has been experiencing high single digit growth as the others are fading and the server market still exploding. I don't think even IBM doesn't believe that's not shrinkage plus of the effect of their competitors dying. I spent all day yesterday with IBM their entire campaign this year against Oracle is focused on Netezza (Linux based hardware solution) and the more VM friendly licensing model for DB2. They mentioned, rightly how much better the whole thing would be with z-series (mainframe) but they understand where the sale can be made. AIX is in trouble but IBM is fine with that.
I suspect that Wine won't matter much. Emulation has never been popular. My belief is that Linux will win the desktop market the same way it won the server market. The steps are:
1) Average user runs mostly proprietary software running on a proprietary OS. 2) Lots of free software becomes available and for all but the most demanding tasks they switch. So mostly open software on a proprietary OS. 3) The open software runs better open systems and the few remaining proprietary pieces are ready to port. So this becomes mostly free software on a free OS.
That's a justification for the shift towards open technologies that I was saying. And I agree that open standards and cross device in general are quite a bit better. I should mention that Microsoft is a semi-open standard because they are not in the hardware business. The most active area for new software other than web is Objecive-C / Cocoa which is even less open than Microsoft. Desktop development with Visual Studio for Metro will happen...
I think the problem with.NET has more to do with a moribund culture and entrenched players than the virtues of open standards. Open standards (mostly the web) are way to displace the entrenched players and create breathing room for new applications and that's great. But if the native desktop apps were a dynamic exciting place (like it is on iOS) I think open standards would be having a tougher time.
I agree that Microsoft is making a huge mistake in allowing Windows 8 to install on systems without some form of touch screen or tablet input (like a wacom) attached. Same with trackpads. I low resolution (i.e. cheap) trackpad is going to be frustrating. Apple spends a lot more on their trackpads.
And what's ironic is this is the same mistake that sunk Longhorn / Vista. The vision for Longhorn was that the hardware requirements would be well above those for XP but it would have 3 powerful new features:
a) Brand new interface that required graphics chip support (i.e. Aero with all the good stuff turned on) b) A mini computer like database filesystem c) Security hardware and software support for trusted computing
But Microsoft freaked out about the consequences of releasing an operating system that would work on almost all existing hardware. So they pulled (b) and (c) making the system much worse, didn't stand their ground on the hardware requirements and Vista was a disaster.
You would have thought they would have learned their lesson. And what they are attempting with Windows 8 is even more drastic. To get this to work essentially 100% of all COM and.NET software is going to need its entire UI rewritten from scratch. And they need this to be happening within the next 5 years. They have got to push hard. But...
Sure the vision of Metro is good, but the implementation of it on Windows 8 desktop, with the constant jarring between the familiar desktop and the Metro launcher/start menu, is going to send desktop Windows users mad.
No question it will. People like you who hate the idea of a mixed interface are the rule not the exception. From the end user's perspective the Windows 8 shift will
1) Drives up the cost of their next computer by several hundred dollars 2) Forces them to get expensive paid upgrades to all the applications you commonly use 3) Forces them to spend valuable time adjusting
Making them not do this things being unpleasant works to Microsoft's advantage. One of the ways to make developers change is to make COM and.NET software feel terrible to use. It doesn't take too much for Windows 8 desktop users start excluding or mostly excluding COM &.NET solutions from their software options. The problem is to make that happen Metro apps have to feel good, and that means forcing the OEMs to offer Metro designed hardware which is a lot more expensive. If Toshiba is offering those sorts of systems while Dell isn't the end user experience is going to be that "Toshibas are much better than Dells".
Think about how Apple used the classic box in the switch to OSX. Running classic applications (OS7-OS9) was possible for everyone in 10.0-10.1 but it was still kinda bad and yucky and awkward. So end users demanded that software companies port to OSX (usually Carbon). 10.2-10.4 it got harder to run Classic and far fewer people even had the classic box so developers that hadn't ported lost their market entirely. With 10.5 Apple dropped it entirely. So 100% compatibility break in 6 years. That's roughly one Microsoft OS version. If Microsoft were going to maintain the same pace would want to be targeting dropping the Windows classic environment, breaking compatibility with all COM and NET applications entirely for Windows 9. That's probably too drastic but it definitely should not be installed by default and should require separate licensing for Windows 9 and Microsoft should be letting developers know that today.
They need to send the message the classic environment is dead. When people say Windows 8 doesn't work well on their hardware, Microsoft should enthusiastically agree and tell them they need to get new hardware for it to be anything less than obnoxious. In short, Microsoft needs to take a moribund culture and get them to change fast. There is going to be unbelievable high blowback, from this. I think that Microsoft had the power to force this ch
Not 5 years ago but 8. And Apple was rapidly losing developer support. A huge number of products that had had Apple versions through OS 9 did not bother to move over to the Carbon / OSX versions. A huge number that had Carbon versions dropped support when they would have to move towards Cocoa for Intel support. Today Apple represents the most profitable segment of the desktop market and the paucity of software relative to Windows is still staggering.
I don't know that's the only problem for Linux on the desktop. I was defending it in other areas. On the a) home and small business desktop b) enterprise desktop
(a) and (b) are really different markets there are problems. I think that sort of view is common among/.ers because they aren't powerusers of the office products nor the artistic stuff. Lets just make a quick list of problems:
a) Inferior office suite (though the catch up in the last dozen years is fantastic, and you are finally starting to see reasonable percentages of Mac and Windows users choose OO). b) No mail client with integrated task allocation and management features (i.e. nothing like outlook). c) Lack of quality non-developer BI tools: power spreadsheets, natural language DB query systems, any device query engines don't have Linux support... d) Few universal communications clients e) Almost total lack of ERP software f) Lack of desktop sharing and presentation solutions (which is ironic given how much easier this is under X11). g) No advertising support software that I know of. h) Lack of design packages for web, print, video... aimed at the designer community. Lack of quality in those that do exist i) Lack of sophisticated Javascript tools
I think I could probably come up with another 50 areas where Linux is deficient on the desktop. Windows has a tremendous depth of software in so many areas, there would be a strong market for Windows even if Linux desktops were vastly superior. That being said I think Linux has gotten to the point that with Linux games it might be a good fit for about 1/2 the consumer desktop market. Selling systems preloaded with a few dozen gigabytes of applications of all different stripes at time of sale would be appealing, even if those applications are individually inferior to their commercial counterparts. GCC replaced commercial compilers (like the CC it was named after) long before GCC was "better".
In other words I don't think Linux is anywhere near wiping Windows out, but I do agree that if it caught a break it could start to establish a beachhead and then grow the software ecosystem. Ironically, Microsoft's Windows-8 strategy which inevitably means pushing up hardware costs considerably might create that opening on the low end of the consumer market. I think cost factors might work for small business, and creating industry targeted applications for small business is easy. For mid/large business with developed software stacks I don't think Linux is remotely close.
Also, after Windows 8 comes out for desktops, Metro is going to be the least popular user interface style on the planet after it catastrophises everyone's Windows desktop experience.
I agree with everything you wrote till this. I don't know that this is true. Its entirely possible that the mixture of mouse, keyboard, voice, touch, stylus with all the different forms of breaking off screens and keyboards is such an amazing computing experience that it becomes the future. Obviously disaster is more likely, but the vision here is rather bold and exciting.
There is a very good reason they shouldn't support it. Windows mobile usage fell 40% in the last 3 years, that is during a time when the size of the market tripled. The reason developers never took to the platform is because customers won't buy it.
The problem is... there aren't that many of you..NET is a terrific compiler and a good technology stack. By any reasonable measures vastly richer than the stack for the web. Yet year after year after year more and more software migrates to the web and web based technologies. The rich exciting market for new native applications is happening in XCode for iOS. There market is scuttled. It may very well have happened in the move from COM to.NET but it has already happened.
No one else offers ubiquitous computing with full functioning business productivity software available on every device a person owns. No one else is even trying. I don't know whether Microsoft will be successful in their Windows 8 strategy or not. But I wouldn't accuse them of copying. Their vision is bold.
Linux was a good idea, then the zealots got a hold of it and now its a pile of crap.
When exactly was it that "the zealots" wren't part of Linux? The GNU stuff was founded by zealots. The kernel came out of the Minix hobbyist community which have no interest in the sorts of standardization you are talking about.
Linux is crap, deal with it. Don't argue with me, don't lie to yourself, fix it.
Linux owns -- a huge chunk of the server market -- essentially all of the super computing market -- a huge chunk of the embedded market -- is becoming a major guest OS for new development on mainframe
The purpose of the GNU project was to create a free Unix on par with the commercial Unixes. Linux has killed off most off the commercial unixes. Digital Unix, , Irix, SCO are dead and HPUX, AIX and Solaris are on life support.
I don't think the Linux community has much to be unhappy about. That's a very successful OS by any standards and it achieved the goals of the GNU project. The enterprise and personal desktop market has had huge improvements since the mid 1990s and Linux hasn't been able to gain enough ground for those 2 segments. Oh well.
I agree with the comments below about a 2nd post being this generic.
users of WP devices are filling to pay for apps.
Except their not. About 85-90% of the market is the iPhone store. There is no evidence that the Windows 7 store is any more successful than the: Android, Blackberry, Ovi (Nokia)...stores that each have a few percent. Further Windows mobile market share has been declining rapidly. Over the last 3 years your userbase has declined 40% while the market tripled in size.
As for Visual Studio for OS X... how exactly would a IDE / compiler for GDI and the.NET execution engine be ported effectively to OS X?
The Power chip has excellent emulation. Back in the PPC days one of MS Office versions shipped with a VM and a version of windows. Not much has changed with the Intel architecture in terms of the ability to run windows, except the ability to boot to Windows.
If you want to polarize OSX and Windows you can clearly do it on the Mac platform and you would get a far more accurate result than trying to compare 2 different markets of significantly different size.
First off I'm not the one polarizing the two communities, the data is. And I could do the experiment you are talking about looking at the subgroup of Windows users on only Apple hardware. And the Windows users on Apple hardware, I have no idea what their upgrade habits, but they have no impact on the Windows eco system so they don't matter. The community I was addressing is the ones running Windows, on other vendor's hardware. You can't freely change the dependent variable and expect the independent variable to remain unchanged. And the use of percentages, which is a ratio takes care of the size thing.
and corporate IT is well known for being slow-moving on upgrades so naturally you would expect the take-up to be slower as a percentage, which doesn't really tell you anything you couldn't already infer.
That's an explanation for the data. And that does tell you something. That's there is a large group of windows systems owners who buy with the intention of not upgrading quickly, with no corresponding group on the Mac side. Were that the entire difference you would be right it is something you could infer though it would substantially change the market regardless of why. But it isn't the entire difference. The percentages are so large that even if one were to exclude corporate purchases entirely you still see a difference in behavior. Lets quote the data again:
Conversely on Windows XP 47% Vista (Jan 2007) 7% Windows 7 (July 2009) 45%
In other words almost 1/2 of all Mac users had upgraded their OS within the last 11 mo. 10.6 and Windows 7 are about the same age 85% of Mac users were that far updated as contrasted with 45% of windows users. Almost 1/2 of Windows users use an OS older than 5 years as contrasted with 3% of mac users.
As another data point. The Microsoft OS upgrading problem goes back to the DOS days long before corporate uptake. Microsoft didn't even bother to offer upgrades, until DOS 4 which was hated. DOS 5 was hugely popular, but DOS 6 didn't sell well at all.
PearOS may look a bit like a Mac but doesn't act anything like a Mac. Gnu Step acts a bit like a Mac but doesn't look like one. Mix the two, and there might be an alternative.
True one of the huge advantages of the system. I'm not sure what the percentage of Fink/Macports/Homebrew users are though. But if you want to weigh people who use dozens of open source packages...
Palm devices were not designed that way at all. Not remotely. They didn't even have capacitive touchscreens. They most certainly did not have a GUI based on animations. And they generally didn't use real time web interactions. In all 3 major regards that the iPhone was unique the Palm did the opposite.
Except they didn't come up with identical designs. Apple and Sony is over the iPad and the Galaxy not the phone. And the Prada and the iPhone aren't similar. The only meaningful way they are similar is they both used full sized capacitive touchscreen and no one argues that either Apple nor LG invented that.
I agree that inventions are different than innovations. My definition would be an invention is an innovation that requires a unique insight. I don't think Xerox invented the GUI since as I mentioned: Sketchpad and Logo both of which Alan Kay said influenced him were GUIs that predated the work at Parc. So I think it is false under the strong definition you were using earlier to say Alan Kay invented the GUI. I don't think its false though to say it under the the weaker definition of unique insight.
Alan Kay was the first person to understand that languages, operating systems, hardware and software all needed to tie together to make a GUI really work. It wasn't about one part changing it was about all the parts changing. So I don't think its fair to say he invented the GUI, but he did invent the WIMP GUI.
But equally under the definition of unique insight. Steve Jobs was the first one to understand how GUI could actually become mainstream. He did not steal Xerox's GUI, he took a few key ideas from Xerox and built the entire system in a way that it could be sold to millions. And tons of details that people have pointed out.
Right now there exist 50 gigapixel cameras. But they are one of a kind and incredibly expensive. The camera companies that take us from.5 mega pixel to to hundreds of gigapixel over the next generation or two will be innovating. And those innovations will require lots of inventions.
That's an odd and impractical definition of innovation. So Xerox becomes a computer innovator but they have nothing to do with photostatic duplication, that becomes the A.B. Dick Company. Under that definition the ancient greeks were the innovators with the steam engine not the British. But in reality everyone knows the technology eco system that grew up around steam power is what was important. I think that's a dumb definition of innovation that only considers the initial invention and not the thousands of improvements required for practicality.
And no one is considering the people who put something in a consumer product to be innovators. Don't change the topic! The question was about the people who figured out how to make it cheaper.
Conversely on Windows XP 47% Vista (Jan 2007) 7% Windows 7 (July 2009) 45%
In other words almost 1/2 of all Mac users had upgraded their OS within the last 11 mo. 10.6 and Windows 7 are about the same age 85% of Mac users were that far updates as contrasted with 45% of windows users. Almost 1/2 of Windows users use an OS older than 5 years as contrasted with 3% of mac users.
Because Macs are so much more expensive than PCs their users historically did not upgrade as often.
Not true. Mac users upgrade their hardware more often. They may brag about being able to use their old computers but in practice they don't.
I agree with them being wonderful. I'm on my new rMBP. I can't get get myself to go back to my 27" screen I'm loving the retina experience so much. And I'm not even an aesthetics guy. The only thing that makes me ever question my move to Mac has been Microsoft One Note. I've had far fewer problems than I ever expected and the number of things that "just work" has been huge. Stuff I never would have expected I'd enjoy like iDVD I love.
I don't know if it does limit their OS sales. Lots of people do sell operating systems only. And OpenStep which was essentially an earlier version of OS X was available. People didn't buy OpenStep. Mac OS X Server 1.0 was the first version of OSX available only for Apple hardware and sales have been much much better since they stopped selling OSes.
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I agree that OSX certified Unix but it is a desktop Unix. NextStep was never a server Unix either so I don't consider that to be anything more than just the "Linux didn't make it to the desktop" problem. In the same way that in the late 1990s Irix survived on desktop systems without the server OS..
IBM would contend that AIX is very much alive as well - they sell shedloads of it on their P-series big-iron servers to enterprise customers.
AIX has been experiencing high single digit growth as the others are fading and the server market still exploding. I don't think even IBM doesn't believe that's not shrinkage plus of the effect of their competitors dying. I spent all day yesterday with IBM their entire campaign this year against Oracle is focused on Netezza (Linux based hardware solution) and the more VM friendly licensing model for DB2. They mentioned, rightly how much better the whole thing would be with z-series (mainframe) but they understand where the sale can be made. AIX is in trouble but IBM is fine with that.
I suspect that Wine won't matter much. Emulation has never been popular. My belief is that Linux will win the desktop market the same way it won the server market. The steps are:
1) Average user runs mostly proprietary software running on a proprietary OS.
2) Lots of free software becomes available and for all but the most demanding tasks they switch. So mostly open software on a proprietary OS.
3) The open software runs better open systems and the few remaining proprietary pieces are ready to port. So this becomes mostly free software on a free OS.
That's a justification for the shift towards open technologies that I was saying. And I agree that open standards and cross device in general are quite a bit better. I should mention that Microsoft is a semi-open standard because they are not in the hardware business. The most active area for new software other than web is Objecive-C / Cocoa which is even less open than Microsoft. Desktop development with Visual Studio for Metro will happen...
I think the problem with .NET has more to do with a moribund culture and entrenched players than the virtues of open standards. Open standards (mostly the web) are way to displace the entrenched players and create breathing room for new applications and that's great. But if the native desktop apps were a dynamic exciting place (like it is on iOS) I think open standards would be having a tougher time.
I agree that Microsoft is making a huge mistake in allowing Windows 8 to install on systems without some form of touch screen or tablet input (like a wacom) attached. Same with trackpads. I low resolution (i.e. cheap) trackpad is going to be frustrating. Apple spends a lot more on their trackpads.
And what's ironic is this is the same mistake that sunk Longhorn / Vista. The vision for Longhorn was that the hardware requirements would be well above those for XP but it would have 3 powerful new features:
a) Brand new interface that required graphics chip support (i.e. Aero with all the good stuff turned on)
b) A mini computer like database filesystem
c) Security hardware and software support for trusted computing
But Microsoft freaked out about the consequences of releasing an operating system that would work on almost all existing hardware. So they pulled (b) and (c) making the system much worse, didn't stand their ground on the hardware requirements and Vista was a disaster.
You would have thought they would have learned their lesson. And what they are attempting with Windows 8 is even more drastic. To get this to work essentially 100% of all COM and .NET software is going to need its entire UI rewritten from scratch. And they need this to be happening within the next 5 years. They have got to push hard. But...
Sure the vision of Metro is good, but the implementation of it on Windows 8 desktop, with the constant jarring between the familiar desktop and the Metro launcher/start menu, is going to send desktop Windows users mad.
No question it will.
People like you who hate the idea of a mixed interface are the rule not the exception. From the end user's perspective the Windows 8 shift will
1) Drives up the cost of their next computer by several hundred dollars
2) Forces them to get expensive paid upgrades to all the applications you commonly use
3) Forces them to spend valuable time adjusting
Making them not do this things being unpleasant works to Microsoft's advantage. One of the ways to make developers change is to make COM and .NET software feel terrible to use. It doesn't take too much for Windows 8 desktop users start excluding or mostly excluding COM & .NET solutions from their software options. The problem is to make that happen Metro apps have to feel good, and that means forcing the OEMs to offer Metro designed hardware which is a lot more expensive. If Toshiba is offering those sorts of systems while Dell isn't the end user experience is going to be that "Toshibas are much better than Dells".
Think about how Apple used the classic box in the switch to OSX. Running classic applications (OS7-OS9) was possible for everyone in 10.0-10.1 but it was still kinda bad and yucky and awkward. So end users demanded that software companies port to OSX (usually Carbon). 10.2-10.4 it got harder to run Classic and far fewer people even had the classic box so developers that hadn't ported lost their market entirely. With 10.5 Apple dropped it entirely. So 100% compatibility break in 6 years. That's roughly one Microsoft OS version. If Microsoft were going to maintain the same pace would want to be targeting dropping the Windows classic environment, breaking compatibility with all COM and NET applications entirely for Windows 9. That's probably too drastic but it definitely should not be installed by default and should require separate licensing for Windows 9 and Microsoft should be letting developers know that today.
They need to send the message the classic environment is dead. When people say Windows 8 doesn't work well on their hardware, Microsoft should enthusiastically agree and tell them they need to get new hardware for it to be anything less than obnoxious. In short, Microsoft needs to take a moribund culture and get them to change fast. There is going to be unbelievable high blowback, from this. I think that Microsoft had the power to force this ch
Excellent point didn't know that. And add BBOS to your list of systems where those sorts of transfers to/from are easy.
Not 5 years ago but 8. And Apple was rapidly losing developer support. A huge number of products that had had Apple versions through OS 9 did not bother to move over to the Carbon / OSX versions. A huge number that had Carbon versions dropped support when they would have to move towards Cocoa for Intel support. Today Apple represents the most profitable segment of the desktop market and the paucity of software relative to Windows is still staggering.
I don't know that's the only problem for Linux on the desktop. I was defending it in other areas. On the
a) home and small business desktop
b) enterprise desktop
(a) and (b) are really different markets there are problems. I think that sort of view is common among /.ers because they aren't powerusers of the office products nor the artistic stuff. Lets just make a quick list of problems:
a) Inferior office suite (though the catch up in the last dozen years is fantastic, and you are finally starting to see reasonable percentages of Mac and Windows users choose OO).
b) No mail client with integrated task allocation and management features (i.e. nothing like outlook).
c) Lack of quality non-developer BI tools: power spreadsheets, natural language DB query systems, any device query engines don't have Linux support...
d) Few universal communications clients
e) Almost total lack of ERP software
f) Lack of desktop sharing and presentation solutions (which is ironic given how much easier this is under X11).
g) No advertising support software that I know of.
h) Lack of design packages for web, print, video... aimed at the designer community. Lack of quality in those that do exist
i) Lack of sophisticated Javascript tools
I think I could probably come up with another 50 areas where Linux is deficient on the desktop. Windows has a tremendous depth of software in so many areas, there would be a strong market for Windows even if Linux desktops were vastly superior. That being said I think Linux has gotten to the point that with Linux games it might be a good fit for about 1/2 the consumer desktop market. Selling systems preloaded with a few dozen gigabytes of applications of all different stripes at time of sale would be appealing, even if those applications are individually inferior to their commercial counterparts. GCC replaced commercial compilers (like the CC it was named after) long before GCC was "better".
In other words I don't think Linux is anywhere near wiping Windows out, but I do agree that if it caught a break it could start to establish a beachhead and then grow the software ecosystem. Ironically, Microsoft's Windows-8 strategy which inevitably means pushing up hardware costs considerably might create that opening on the low end of the consumer market. I think cost factors might work for small business, and creating industry targeted applications for small business is easy. For mid/large business with developed software stacks I don't think Linux is remotely close.
And you are quite right. So let me add that to the list.
-- Linux is the dominant smart phone operating system
Also, after Windows 8 comes out for desktops, Metro is going to be the least popular user interface style on the planet after it catastrophises everyone's Windows desktop experience.
I agree with everything you wrote till this. I don't know that this is true. Its entirely possible that the mixture of mouse, keyboard, voice, touch, stylus with all the different forms of breaking off screens and keyboards is such an amazing computing experience that it becomes the future. Obviously disaster is more likely, but the vision here is rather bold and exciting.
There is a very good reason they shouldn't support it. Windows mobile usage fell 40% in the last 3 years, that is during a time when the size of the market tripled. The reason developers never took to the platform is because customers won't buy it.
The problem is... there aren't that many of you. .NET is a terrific compiler and a good technology stack. By any reasonable measures vastly richer than the stack for the web. Yet year after year after year more and more software migrates to the web and web based technologies. The rich exciting market for new native applications is happening in XCode for iOS. There market is scuttled. It may very well have happened in the move from COM to .NET but it has already happened.
No one else offers ubiquitous computing with full functioning business productivity software available on every device a person owns. No one else is even trying. I don't know whether Microsoft will be successful in their Windows 8 strategy or not. But I wouldn't accuse them of copying. Their vision is bold.
Linux was a good idea, then the zealots got a hold of it and now its a pile of crap.
When exactly was it that "the zealots" wren't part of Linux? The GNU stuff was founded by zealots. The kernel came out of the Minix hobbyist community which have no interest in the sorts of standardization you are talking about.
Linux is crap, deal with it. Don't argue with me, don't lie to yourself, fix it.
Linux owns
-- a huge chunk of the server market
-- essentially all of the super computing market
-- a huge chunk of the embedded market
-- is becoming a major guest OS for new development on mainframe
The purpose of the GNU project was to create a free Unix on par with the commercial Unixes. Linux has killed off most off the commercial unixes. Digital Unix, , Irix, SCO are dead and HPUX, AIX and Solaris are on life support.
I don't think the Linux community has much to be unhappy about. That's a very successful OS by any standards and it achieved the goals of the GNU project. The enterprise and personal desktop market has had huge improvements since the mid 1990s and Linux hasn't been able to gain enough ground for those 2 segments. Oh well.
Good catch. Thanks for finding that.
I agree with the comments below about a 2nd post being this generic.
users of WP devices are filling to pay for apps.
Except their not. About 85-90% of the market is the iPhone store. There is no evidence that the Windows 7 store is any more successful than the: Android, Blackberry, Ovi (Nokia)...stores that each have a few percent. Further Windows mobile market share has been declining rapidly. Over the last 3 years your userbase has declined 40% while the market tripled in size.
As for Visual Studio for OS X... how exactly would a IDE / compiler for GDI and the .NET execution engine be ported effectively to OS X?
That one in terms of parents might make things worse because stuff moves and changes. I'm not sure.
The Power chip has excellent emulation. Back in the PPC days one of MS Office versions shipped with a VM and a version of windows. Not much has changed with the Intel architecture in terms of the ability to run windows, except the ability to boot to Windows.
If you want to polarize OSX and Windows you can clearly do it on the Mac platform and you would get a far more accurate result than trying to compare 2 different markets of significantly different size.
First off I'm not the one polarizing the two communities, the data is. And I could do the experiment you are talking about looking at the subgroup of Windows users on only Apple hardware. And the Windows users on Apple hardware, I have no idea what their upgrade habits, but they have no impact on the Windows eco system so they don't matter. The community I was addressing is the ones running Windows, on other vendor's hardware. You can't freely change the dependent variable and expect the independent variable to remain unchanged. And the use of percentages, which is a ratio takes care of the size thing.
and corporate IT is well known for being slow-moving on upgrades so naturally you would expect the take-up to be slower as a percentage, which doesn't really tell you anything you couldn't already infer.
That's an explanation for the data. And that does tell you something. That's there is a large group of windows systems owners who buy with the intention of not upgrading quickly, with no corresponding group on the Mac side. Were that the entire difference you would be right it is something you could infer though it would substantially change the market regardless of why. But it isn't the entire difference. The percentages are so large that even if one were to exclude corporate purchases entirely you still see a difference in behavior. Lets quote the data again:
As another data point. The Microsoft OS upgrading problem goes back to the DOS days long before corporate uptake. Microsoft didn't even bother to offer upgrades, until DOS 4 which was hated. DOS 5 was hugely popular, but DOS 6 didn't sell well at all.
Well yes. But
PearOS may look a bit like a Mac but doesn't act anything like a Mac.
Gnu Step acts a bit like a Mac but doesn't look like one.
Mix the two, and there might be an alternative.
True one of the huge advantages of the system. I'm not sure what the percentage of Fink/Macports/Homebrew users are though. But if you want to weigh people who use dozens of open source packages...
Palm devices were not designed that way at all. Not remotely. They didn't even have capacitive touchscreens. They most certainly did not have a GUI based on animations. And they generally didn't use real time web interactions. In all 3 major regards that the iPhone was unique the Palm did the opposite.
Except they didn't come up with identical designs. Apple and Sony is over the iPad and the Galaxy not the phone. And the Prada and the iPhone aren't similar. The only meaningful way they are similar is they both used full sized capacitive touchscreen and no one argues that either Apple nor LG invented that.
Lets see where we agree.
I agree that inventions are different than innovations. My definition would be an invention is an innovation that requires a unique insight. I don't think Xerox invented the GUI since as I mentioned: Sketchpad and Logo both of which Alan Kay said influenced him were GUIs that predated the work at Parc. So I think it is false under the strong definition you were using earlier to say Alan Kay invented the GUI. I don't think its false though to say it under the the weaker definition of unique insight.
Alan Kay was the first person to understand that languages, operating systems, hardware and software all needed to tie together to make a GUI really work. It wasn't about one part changing it was about all the parts changing. So I don't think its fair to say he invented the GUI, but he did invent the WIMP GUI.
But equally under the definition of unique insight. Steve Jobs was the first one to understand how GUI could actually become mainstream. He did not steal Xerox's GUI, he took a few key ideas from Xerox and built the entire system in a way that it could be sold to millions. And tons of details that people have pointed out.
Right now there exist 50 gigapixel cameras. But they are one of a kind and incredibly expensive. The camera companies that take us from .5 mega pixel to to hundreds of gigapixel over the next generation or two will be innovating. And those innovations will require lots of inventions.
That's an odd and impractical definition of innovation. So Xerox becomes a computer innovator but they have nothing to do with photostatic duplication, that becomes the A.B. Dick Company. Under that definition the ancient greeks were the innovators with the steam engine not the British. But in reality everyone knows the technology eco system that grew up around steam power is what was important. I think that's a dumb definition of innovation that only considers the initial invention and not the thousands of improvements required for practicality.
And no one is considering the people who put something in a consumer product to be innovators. Don't change the topic! The question was about the people who figured out how to make it cheaper.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qpcustomb=*1
Take a simple example: OSX share June 2012.
10.4 3%
10.5 (Oct 2007) 12%
10.6 (Aug 2009) 38%
10.7 (July 2011) 47%
Conversely on Windows
XP 47%
Vista (Jan 2007) 7%
Windows 7 (July 2009) 45%
In other words almost 1/2 of all Mac users had upgraded their OS within the last 11 mo. 10.6 and Windows 7 are about the same age 85% of Mac users were that far updates as contrasted with 45% of windows users. Almost 1/2 of Windows users use an OS older than 5 years as contrasted with 3% of mac users.
Because Macs are so much more expensive than PCs their users historically did not upgrade as often.
Not true. Mac users upgrade their hardware more often. They may brag about being able to use their old computers but in practice they don't.
I agree with them being wonderful. I'm on my new rMBP. I can't get get myself to go back to my 27" screen I'm loving the retina experience so much. And I'm not even an aesthetics guy. The only thing that makes me ever question my move to Mac has been Microsoft One Note. I've had far fewer problems than I ever expected and the number of things that "just work" has been huge. Stuff I never would have expected I'd enjoy like iDVD I love.
I don't know if it does limit their OS sales. Lots of people do sell operating systems only. And OpenStep which was essentially an earlier version of OS X was available. People didn't buy OpenStep. Mac OS X Server 1.0 was the first version of OSX available only for Apple hardware and sales have been much much better since they stopped selling OSes.