I lot of the backbones use IOS (Cisco's not Apple's). Unixes, with a few exceptions aren't realtime operating systems and aren't designed for security from the ground up.
As for market share depending on how you count: by hardware revenue, by total systems, by share of traffic... you get totally different numbers. But in all cases Linux is growing and growing strongly with big Iron Unixes falling at about 15% per year. Microsoft seems to be settling in around 45%. If you include supercomputers as hundreds of individual computers, and mainframes by guest OSes though then Linux is beating Microsoft, since Linux owns approx 98% market share, of the supercomputing market and a huge percentage of the massive VM market.
Let me just point out a few George Washington quotes:
It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
I would suggest that you are reading far more into freedom than what was ever proposed. And considering the Constitution is considerably less free than the Articles of Confederation under Washington, that perhaps you might want to read the Constitution. America is not and was never established as an anarchy.
I don't know about that. Where Microsoft has really been dynamic this decade is at the enterprise level. For example Microsoft Dynamics (which I understand was an acquisition) ties very tightly to office. But accountants and sales people know office. CRM, ERP, Accounting... all tied together with an office interface relatively easy to configure/setup and use. That's rather impressive. Now tie that in with the enhancements to Sharepoint and Universal Communicator and you really have a fully formed office based total communication system. So they have been innovative on a windows / office paradigm.
Their problem is in consumer / internet and to a certain extent not developing there was strategic. It bought them an entire extra decade of dominance. Now Balmer / Microsoft is fighting for consumer market share we'll see what they do. But I don't think its fair to say there has been a lack of innovation. Perhaps not innovations you are about though.
Think about the analogy. You are basically saying the stuff that OS/2 aimed to bring to PCs. Those were the days when the Microsoft/Western Digital/Intel standard crushed every other consumer & small business based system based on the cost / feature set ratio. I agreed with you at the time and used QEMM as my memory manager and Desqview to multitask but still owned Windows and was moving towards Windows applications. So yes that is what they mean. A dynamic company rapidly improving their products and challenging new markets. Windows for Workgroups may very well have been the worst Lan sold, but it was WfW that owned the small business space and made Lans ubiquitous.
Now Microsoft is in a "shrink slowly but profitably" stage.
I've never worked with the hfs on a mainframe though I've heard that the Linux for mainframe subsystem works wonderfully and has allowed them to bridge the gap and bring over a whole new generation of programs. In terms of database I wasn't thinking in terms of transactions since COBOL isn't transactional in the ACID/relational sense. Rather think more like a network database and batch programming. So for example the automatic retention of generations and the uses there, is now starting to happen on a Mac. Another example which Mac doesn't have is file partitioning which clearly only exists to allow for very large datasets. Partitioned tables are standard in databases but most hfs won't support multiple reads from the same file.
What would you call the traditional MVS system? You have one giant "directory" with another outside structure giving it hierarchy.
Probably they are moving towards a database structure like you have on minis and mainframes. The always on and save state features of Lion are steps in that direction. The sandboxing so that applications have to be granted specific access: i.e. App X has the right to do Y to Z, is a step in that direction. A system wide OS notification system is a step in that direction. Those types of systems are incredibly powerful. They are the reason why in mainframes you can see 75 COBOL programs acting in sequence with chains a dozen programs long, dating forking between these programs and coming back together, all automated. While on a PC you are lucky to pass data through 3 programs without something breaking.
From a user land perspective you wouldn't have application files as anything more than ways of viewing a dataset.
I don't think you know what 9 means. 9 prohibits the government from creating negative laws. Something like "everything on the internet is illegal unless specifically authorized" would be illegal under 9. 9 does not prohibit the government from creating black letter law about anything they want. Other parts of the constitution might but 9 does not.
Seizure of property as part of an arrest, is standard and has been. People suspected of shootings get their guns taken. People suspected of drug dealing have bank accounts frozen. Etc... There is nothing cruel or unusual about taking computers. You may not like the government's ability to take property in advance of conviction, I agree with that. But I'd have no problems with computers being taken after conviction.
As for 4. The government can't hack a site and use that evidence unless they have a court order. USA v. Jarrett for example where evidence given to the government by a hacker while acting as an agent of the state was tossed.
I took it that they would need to be flashed potentially. I figured a mass purchase of DSL modems are like $20 each. I had room for some level of service in my $50, estimate per head. The number might be too low, but where poverty is rampant labor is cheap. If my $50 is off and it should be $75 I would agree that rural DSL customers aren't likely to have lots of extra money.
Almost all the country at this point has Broadband. The FCC has been taxing to make availability happen. Looking at the current budget it is $7.2b in total spend. I just don't see a few hundred million as a disaster. An annoyance yes, a disaster no.
4 doesn't apply to public information presented openly. If they don't have to search.... 8 doesn't apply to a take down, that's neither cruel not unusual it is SOP for illegal content 9 would apply if the Congress did something like required all websites to get prior approval for all changes or additions, maybe.
I'm not seeing how this is devastating to rural America. This generates a service call. The ISP either gets an up-sell opportunity or they bill for the fix. The rural person making the call either gets a free fix or the pay $50 for service. The whole thing works about to (using the 4m number) at most 4mx$50 = $200m in costs. That's about a 1/2% of annual cable revenues in the US. Where is the devastation?
Congress has pretty broad authority over just about any communications related activities that occur on US shores. The FBI doesn't have to sneak congressional rule in. They have it. The FBI doesn't have to push for the authority to shutdown YouTube. Google, who owns YouTube is a US company, they just need to hand them a takedown order if Congress or the courts wanted it down.
I don't care what Apple chooses to call something I own. It's mine as soon as I give them the money and they give me the phone.
That's fine. And if you want to view things that way. One could just say that Apple is equally indifferent to what you want to do with something you own after you've paid. That sort of logic runs both ways.
If on the other hand these things are an agreement, they you have decided to do buy a device X that does A,B,C and want to do D with it. Then it becomes a discussion.
They don't impose any restrictions on the iMac which is why I have one and if they were dumb enough to do that I wouldn't buy another.
You probably shouldn't. They have certainly encouraged developers and have built an eco system. They have precisely the same attitude about your iMac in terms of total eco system that they do with your iPhone. What I suspect is the difference is your opinion and there's are more in accord, but that's just a matter of chance.
Somehow I doubt that they see Apple users in such a benevolent way. They are concerned with the total ecosystem because it makes them more money.
Well yes. Apple is a luxury good's manufacturer, they need a very happy clientele willing to pay large premiums and/or buy higher end, for their products. But because Apple is interested in genuine customer satisfaction over the long term, there isn't a conflict of interest here. Apple's interests mostly coincide with their customer's interest. There are exceptions, but because Apple wants a satisfied user base even when they hit an exception they work hard to make the disadvantages ambiguous by creating corresponding advantages. That's not a bad situation for the customer.
I don't need a supposedly benevolent dictatorship determining what's good for me. That's for me to decide, not them.
That's fine. You will be much happier in the Windows/Android world where there isn't a benevolent anything.
If I want freedom on my Android phone I need do nothing, because I already have it.
No question, Android is more free.
The only way to get freedom on an Apple phone or tablet is either to be unable to return it if it breaks
As I said above that ain't true.
I object to paying anything just so I can put what I choose on my portable computer.
Apple has never classified their iOS devices as portable computers. They have always classified them as secondary devices.
. My phone belongs to me, not Apple or Google or Samsung,
Apple disagrees with you there. They are concerned about the total ecosystem and always have been. They see Apple users as a community and a society. Where your actions affect others and visa versa.
plus they allow me to add another 16GB of storage for about 10GBP from Amazon.
Apple's markups on storage for iOS devices are completely out of hand. OTOH in the last year I've given them $300 for about $30 worth of storage. I'm not going to defend that aspect, that's just pure "what the market will bear".
The point of this is, if you want freedom there are multiple routes to it. If you don't know how to reinstall an image from iTunes I doubt you have any need to do anything that Apple doesn't allow. Besides I don't know of Apple being strict about (a) or (b) mainly they won't support non standard configurations.As for (c), the people who object to paying $99/yr are likely the ones who would brick their phone if they had the access they are asking for.
That makes sense. I was mainly objecting to the comments about the Romans. The difference between the Mongols and the Romans is the Romans had a long term financial interest even in the areas where they had to overcome resistance.
You are right. I was thinking of that example myself. I had donated to NeoOffice once prior to the switch after using it a few times. I've actually paid twice since the switch, though less money. At this point of I just think of Neo-Office as inexpensive semi-commercial software. RedHat, JBOSS, Open-Xchange... use this model as well.
Anyway Neo is still a much better product than Open Office. There are some serious runtime bugs in Mac Base that Neo gets rid of that cost me several hours using OO.
why would your soldiers "go native" if you encouraged them to rape and pillage as much as they wanted?
Romans didn't rape and pillage generally. Pillaging reduced the economic output of a region long term, which reduced the possibilities for tax revenue. As for rape, it depended on the slave strategy. Frequently homosexual rape was used to break down resistance in captives thus making future male slaves more maintainable. Heterosexual rape frequently reduced the value of female captives as slaves or as wives, so it was generally discouraged. I'd say Rome probably suffered from 20 rapes for everyone they committed. Barbarian tribes used to rape to humiliate and thus make passive female captives for slave trading and pillaging was the whole point of their sacking of border communities.
I think you have a totally fallacious idea about how Romans conducted war. The mongols absolutely used rape and pillage. But they didn't maintain the sorts of long term facilities the United States uses so your analogy breaks down there.
Do you think the Roman Legionnaires followed local laws they disagreed with in the many lands they conquered? Of course not,
Actually in general they did. The Roman legions set up all sorts of barriers to prevent Roman troops from offending local custom. It also slowed down the rate at which Roman soldiers "went native" and ended up with mixed loyalties. Which is essentially the policy and model the US follows today.
No those features aren't provided third party for Apple. And they can't be provided entirely 3rd party because you need an interface into the outbound dialing system on the iPhone. There is no good reason Apple couldn't offer that hook to 3rd parties to allow for the creation of MVS like features, but as of today they don't. They do not offer a PSTN API. This BTW is the same reason they don't offer nearly as good encrypted voice as RIM or Nokia.
As for BES being tens of thousands... First off, that's retail. People didn't pay that. Quite often the initial licenses were included with the first deployment and then additional employee licenses were about $10 each. For example on a 2200 phone deployment I did:
BES was free for up to 3000 users (retail $15k) MVS was free for the first year ($18k year) Support and upgrades and continuing licenses of $4k / yr after the first year.
The real cost of BES though is you need to hire BES administrators that is at least one staff. What RIM should be doing is offering BES/MVS/PBX in the cloud for midsized business. They could probably do it for about $20/yr/head and or partner with any number of 3rd party PBX vendors to make it standard.
I understand what you mean by user base I wan't considering the 3rd world. My point was that phones are on a 2 year (or less) renewal cycle. If shipments are down, and they quite a bit down and have been the user base is shrinking not growing. Shipping fewer phones is cutting into their user base.
Checking the data, there is a lag because 1st world cast off phones get sold in the 3rd world, but RIMM doesn't make money from 2nd hand phone sales. I guess they are pulling in the 3rd world fees from BlackBerry messenger but those are much lower than first world fees they are replacing. This speaks well of RIM's phones durability but I'm not sure it says anything healthy about the company.
Take a second look at their current offerings (the 9900 is a solid high-end phone.)
The 9900 is a 2 year old phone. It was IMHO somewhat behind the iPhone 4, in terms of hardware but definitely better than the 3G. Which is what reviews said at the time. In other words hardware wise 2 years ago they were a little behind. The problem is since then things have gotten worse, Apple and Android hardware has been on tare. It isn't even in the same ballpark as the 4S and Apple is very close to the 5. Again the 9900 is far better than most feature phones, is comparable to the low end Android stuff but no its not top of the line for a high-end phone at all.
Googling the developer preview I don't see what's out of the ballpark on those phones. So I'm not seeing what you mean.
They were the #1 selling smartphone brand less than two years ago, and the brand still carries a lot of weight -- just not on Slashdot. /. people are younger and quite often business don't pay for mobile for their IT staff. Many/. users have never used a BlackBerry, and and even greater percentage have never seen a full RIM setup with BBes, MVS.... But the evidence of the brand still having weight is the fact that RIM still gets coverage. People don't even bother to cover Vion relative to Apple / Android.
I believe, based on what we know about BB10 and the new hardware, that they can recapture a large chunk of that market.
I think so too. I think enterprise is being incredibly foolish with BYOD. It encourages corporate data to migrate out to cloud services. Particularly in environments where the desktops are locked down for security while at the same time IT budgets are tight (which is not an uncommon situation) smart phones are becoming the gateway for non standards software that's not going through IT at all to become business critical. 2 days ago tethering became included free with all Verizon plans. Companies that would never think of allowing an alternate wired network are now going to have devices designed to plug into desktops and laptops which tether to a wholly uncontrolled network at every desk, and security policies which encourage its use.
That being said. RIM when they were on top, and I say this as a guy who pushed at a 2300 person RIM based solution, did not and still does not encourage enterprises to use all their advanced features. They charge a lot of money and don't provide the support for implementation. Lots of companies that had, or still have BlackBerry don't take advantages of things like MVS which are value adds unique to RIM. Lots of companies don't use BES properly and have no idea of its full capacity.
RIM is still the only company focused heavily on enterprise, but they aren't upgrading their software offerings quickly enough. Meanwhile 3rd parties are moving towards offering 80% of BES's functionality and the security functionality for Android and Apple and might be there in about 2 years.
QNX offers advantages far greater than the Linux kernel or the XNU. But so far no RIM device is using them, they are just working on getting existing functionality ported.
If we still treating RIM as high end phone manufacturer then:
a) Their devices are behind on 3rd party software by a lot
I know it's hard to fathom but the rest of the world (not the US) doesn't seem to prefer the Apple glitz.
iPhone does excellent in European countries where the carriers subsidize phones. It does badly in countries which operate on a prepaid basis. I think it is fair to say that the rest of the world does prefer Apple glitz but might not be willing to pay what it costs. Your comment simply isn't accurate.
Some have. RIM for example has a limited selection of phones with very gradual changes. Most of the device manufacturers though don't have brand loyalty from their customers so they target profitable niche markets and then broaden out.
Why would Apple want to support virtualization? You yourself are saying you don't want to buy their hardware which is how they make money. The one time Apple hemorrhaged money was when they allowed clones.
Slashdot Mirror
So now buying products and gluing them together is innovative?
Yes. Taking technologies and creating business solutions is what many technology companies do. Its what Microsoft has more or less always done.
I lot of the backbones use IOS (Cisco's not Apple's). Unixes, with a few exceptions aren't realtime operating systems and aren't designed for security from the ground up.
As for market share depending on how you count: by hardware revenue, by total systems, by share of traffic... you get totally different numbers. But in all cases Linux is growing and growing strongly with big Iron Unixes falling at about 15% per year. Microsoft seems to be settling in around 45%. If you include supercomputers as hundreds of individual computers, and mainframes by guest OSes though then Linux is beating Microsoft, since Linux owns approx 98% market share, of the supercomputing market and a huge percentage of the massive VM market.
Let me just point out a few George Washington quotes:
It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
I would suggest that you are reading far more into freedom than what was ever proposed. And considering the Constitution is considerably less free than the Articles of Confederation under Washington, that perhaps you might want to read the Constitution. America is not and was never established as an anarchy.
I don't know about that. Where Microsoft has really been dynamic this decade is at the enterprise level. For example Microsoft Dynamics (which I understand was an acquisition) ties very tightly to office. But accountants and sales people know office. CRM, ERP, Accounting... all tied together with an office interface relatively easy to configure/setup and use. That's rather impressive. Now tie that in with the enhancements to Sharepoint and Universal Communicator and you really have a fully formed office based total communication system. So they have been innovative on a windows / office paradigm.
Their problem is in consumer / internet and to a certain extent not developing there was strategic. It bought them an entire extra decade of dominance. Now Balmer / Microsoft is fighting for consumer market share we'll see what they do. But I don't think its fair to say there has been a lack of innovation. Perhaps not innovations you are about though.
Think about the analogy. You are basically saying the stuff that OS/2 aimed to bring to PCs. Those were the days when the Microsoft/Western Digital/Intel standard crushed every other consumer & small business based system based on the cost / feature set ratio. I agreed with you at the time and used QEMM as my memory manager and Desqview to multitask but still owned Windows and was moving towards Windows applications. So yes that is what they mean. A dynamic company rapidly improving their products and challenging new markets. Windows for Workgroups may very well have been the worst Lan sold, but it was WfW that owned the small business space and made Lans ubiquitous.
Now Microsoft is in a "shrink slowly but profitably" stage.
I've never worked with the hfs on a mainframe though I've heard that the Linux for mainframe subsystem works wonderfully and has allowed them to bridge the gap and bring over a whole new generation of programs. In terms of database I wasn't thinking in terms of transactions since COBOL isn't transactional in the ACID/relational sense. Rather think more like a network database and batch programming. So for example the automatic retention of generations and the uses there, is now starting to happen on a Mac. Another example which Mac doesn't have is file partitioning which clearly only exists to allow for very large datasets. Partitioned tables are standard in databases but most hfs won't support multiple reads from the same file.
What would you call the traditional MVS system? You have one giant "directory" with another outside structure giving it hierarchy.
Probably they are moving towards a database structure like you have on minis and mainframes. The always on and save state features of Lion are steps in that direction. The sandboxing so that applications have to be granted specific access: i.e. App X has the right to do Y to Z, is a step in that direction. A system wide OS notification system is a step in that direction. Those types of systems are incredibly powerful. They are the reason why in mainframes you can see 75 COBOL programs acting in sequence with chains a dozen programs long, dating forking between these programs and coming back together, all automated. While on a PC you are lucky to pass data through 3 programs without something breaking.
From a user land perspective you wouldn't have application files as anything more than ways of viewing a dataset.
I don't think you know what 9 means. 9 prohibits the government from creating negative laws. Something like "everything on the internet is illegal unless specifically authorized" would be illegal under 9. 9 does not prohibit the government from creating black letter law about anything they want. Other parts of the constitution might but 9 does not.
Seizure of property as part of an arrest, is standard and has been. People suspected of shootings get their guns taken. People suspected of drug dealing have bank accounts frozen. Etc... There is nothing cruel or unusual about taking computers. You may not like the government's ability to take property in advance of conviction, I agree with that. But I'd have no problems with computers being taken after conviction.
As for 4. The government can't hack a site and use that evidence unless they have a court order. USA v. Jarrett for example where evidence given to the government by a hacker while acting as an agent of the state was tossed.
I took it that they would need to be flashed potentially. I figured a mass purchase of DSL modems are like $20 each. I had room for some level of service in my $50, estimate per head. The number might be too low, but where poverty is rampant labor is cheap. If my $50 is off and it should be $75 I would agree that rural DSL customers aren't likely to have lots of extra money.
Almost all the country at this point has Broadband. The FCC has been taxing to make availability happen. Looking at the current budget it is $7.2b in total spend. I just don't see a few hundred million as a disaster. An annoyance yes, a disaster no.
4,8,9?
4 doesn't apply to public information presented openly. If they don't have to search....
8 doesn't apply to a take down, that's neither cruel not unusual it is SOP for illegal content
9 would apply if the Congress did something like required all websites to get prior approval for all changes or additions, maybe.
I'm not seeing how this is devastating to rural America. This generates a service call. The ISP either gets an up-sell opportunity or they bill for the fix. The rural person making the call either gets a free fix or the pay $50 for service. The whole thing works about to (using the 4m number) at most 4mx$50 = $200m in costs. That's about a 1/2% of annual cable revenues in the US. Where is the devastation?
Congress has pretty broad authority over just about any communications related activities that occur on US shores. The FBI doesn't have to sneak congressional rule in. They have it. The FBI doesn't have to push for the authority to shutdown YouTube. Google, who owns YouTube is a US company, they just need to hand them a takedown order if Congress or the courts wanted it down.
I don't care what Apple chooses to call something I own. It's mine as soon as I give them the money and they give me the phone.
That's fine. And if you want to view things that way. One could just say that Apple is equally indifferent to what you want to do with something you own after you've paid. That sort of logic runs both ways.
If on the other hand these things are an agreement, they you have decided to do buy a device X that does A,B,C and want to do D with it. Then it becomes a discussion.
They don't impose any restrictions on the iMac which is why I have one and if they were dumb enough to do that I wouldn't buy another.
You probably shouldn't. They have certainly encouraged developers and have built an eco system. They have precisely the same attitude about your iMac in terms of total eco system that they do with your iPhone. What I suspect is the difference is your opinion and there's are more in accord, but that's just a matter of chance.
Somehow I doubt that they see Apple users in such a benevolent way. They are concerned with the total ecosystem because it makes them more money.
Well yes. Apple is a luxury good's manufacturer, they need a very happy clientele willing to pay large premiums and/or buy higher end, for their products. But because Apple is interested in genuine customer satisfaction over the long term, there isn't a conflict of interest here. Apple's interests mostly coincide with their customer's interest. There are exceptions, but because Apple wants a satisfied user base even when they hit an exception they work hard to make the disadvantages ambiguous by creating corresponding advantages. That's not a bad situation for the customer.
I don't need a supposedly benevolent dictatorship determining what's good for me. That's for me to decide, not them.
That's fine. You will be much happier in the Windows/Android world where there isn't a benevolent anything.
If I want freedom on my Android phone I need do nothing, because I already have it.
No question, Android is more free.
The only way to get freedom on an Apple phone or tablet is either to be unable to return it if it breaks
As I said above that ain't true.
I object to paying anything just so I can put what I choose on my portable computer.
Apple has never classified their iOS devices as portable computers. They have always classified them as secondary devices.
. My phone belongs to me, not Apple or Google or Samsung,
Apple disagrees with you there. They are concerned about the total ecosystem and always have been. They see Apple users as a community and a society. Where your actions affect others and visa versa.
plus they allow me to add another 16GB of storage for about 10GBP from Amazon.
Apple's markups on storage for iOS devices are completely out of hand. OTOH in the last year I've given them $300 for about $30 worth of storage. I'm not going to defend that aspect, that's just pure "what the market will bear".
I haven't used it. What are the differences with OO for Mac?
The point of this is, if you want freedom there are multiple routes to it. If you don't know how to reinstall an image from iTunes I doubt you have any need to do anything that Apple doesn't allow. Besides I don't know of Apple being strict about (a) or (b) mainly they won't support non standard configurations.As for (c), the people who object to paying $99/yr are likely the ones who would brick their phone if they had the access they are asking for.
That makes sense. I was mainly objecting to the comments about the Romans. The difference between the Mongols and the Romans is the Romans had a long term financial interest even in the areas where they had to overcome resistance.
You are right. I was thinking of that example myself. I had donated to NeoOffice once prior to the switch after using it a few times. I've actually paid twice since the switch, though less money. At this point of I just think of Neo-Office as inexpensive semi-commercial software. RedHat, JBOSS, Open-Xchange... use this model as well.
Anyway Neo is still a much better product than Open Office. There are some serious runtime bugs in Mac Base that Neo gets rid of that cost me several hours using OO.
why would your soldiers "go native" if you encouraged them to rape and pillage as much as they wanted?
Romans didn't rape and pillage generally. Pillaging reduced the economic output of a region long term, which reduced the possibilities for tax revenue. As for rape, it depended on the slave strategy. Frequently homosexual rape was used to break down resistance in captives thus making future male slaves more maintainable. Heterosexual rape frequently reduced the value of female captives as slaves or as wives, so it was generally discouraged. I'd say Rome probably suffered from 20 rapes for everyone they committed. Barbarian tribes used to rape to humiliate and thus make passive female captives for slave trading and pillaging was the whole point of their sacking of border communities.
I think you have a totally fallacious idea about how Romans conducted war. The mongols absolutely used rape and pillage. But they didn't maintain the sorts of long term facilities the United States uses so your analogy breaks down there.
Do you think the Roman Legionnaires followed local laws they disagreed with in the many lands they conquered? Of course not,
Actually in general they did. The Roman legions set up all sorts of barriers to prevent Roman troops from offending local custom. It also slowed down the rate at which Roman soldiers "went native" and ended up with mixed loyalties. Which is essentially the policy and model the US follows today.
No those features aren't provided third party for Apple. And they can't be provided entirely 3rd party because you need an interface into the outbound dialing system on the iPhone. There is no good reason Apple couldn't offer that hook to 3rd parties to allow for the creation of MVS like features, but as of today they don't. They do not offer a PSTN API. This BTW is the same reason they don't offer nearly as good encrypted voice as RIM or Nokia.
As for BES being tens of thousands... First off, that's retail. People didn't pay that. Quite often the initial licenses were included with the first deployment and then additional employee licenses were about $10 each. For example on a 2200 phone deployment I did:
BES was free for up to 3000 users (retail $15k)
MVS was free for the first year ($18k year)
Support and upgrades and continuing licenses of $4k / yr after the first year.
The real cost of BES though is you need to hire BES administrators that is at least one staff. What RIM should be doing is offering BES/MVS/PBX in the cloud for midsized business. They could probably do it for about $20/yr/head and or partner with any number of 3rd party PBX vendors to make it standard.
I understand what you mean by user base I wan't considering the 3rd world. My point was that phones are on a 2 year (or less) renewal cycle. If shipments are down, and they quite a bit down and have been the user base is shrinking not growing. Shipping fewer phones is cutting into their user base.
Checking the data, there is a lag because 1st world cast off phones get sold in the 3rd world, but RIMM doesn't make money from 2nd hand phone sales. I guess they are pulling in the 3rd world fees from BlackBerry messenger but those are much lower than first world fees they are replacing. This speaks well of RIM's phones durability but I'm not sure it says anything healthy about the company.
Take a second look at their current offerings (the 9900 is a solid high-end phone.)
The 9900 is a 2 year old phone. It was IMHO somewhat behind the iPhone 4, in terms of hardware but definitely better than the 3G. Which is what reviews said at the time. In other words hardware wise 2 years ago they were a little behind. The problem is since then things have gotten worse, Apple and Android hardware has been on tare. It isn't even in the same ballpark as the 4S and Apple is very close to the 5. Again the 9900 is far better than most feature phones, is comparable to the low end Android stuff but no its not top of the line for a high-end phone at all.
Googling the developer preview I don't see what's out of the ballpark on those phones. So I'm not seeing what you mean.
They were the #1 selling smartphone brand less than two years ago, and the brand still carries a lot of weight -- just not on Slashdot. /. people are younger and quite often business don't pay for mobile for their IT staff. Many /. users have never used a BlackBerry, and and even greater percentage have never seen a full RIM setup with BBes, MVS.... But the evidence of the brand still having weight is the fact that RIM still gets coverage. People don't even bother to cover Vion relative to Apple / Android.
I believe, based on what we know about BB10 and the new hardware, that they can recapture a large chunk of that market.
I think so too. I think enterprise is being incredibly foolish with BYOD. It encourages corporate data to migrate out to cloud services. Particularly in environments where the desktops are locked down for security while at the same time IT budgets are tight (which is not an uncommon situation) smart phones are becoming the gateway for non standards software that's not going through IT at all to become business critical. 2 days ago tethering became included free with all Verizon plans. Companies that would never think of allowing an alternate wired network are now going to have devices designed to plug into desktops and laptops which tether to a wholly uncontrolled network at every desk, and security policies which encourage its use.
That being said. RIM when they were on top, and I say this as a guy who pushed at a 2300 person RIM based solution, did not and still does not encourage enterprises to use all their advanced features. They charge a lot of money and don't provide the support for implementation. Lots of companies that had, or still have BlackBerry don't take advantages of things like MVS which are value adds unique to RIM. Lots of companies don't use BES properly and have no idea of its full capacity.
RIM is still the only company focused heavily on enterprise, but they aren't upgrading their software offerings quickly enough. Meanwhile 3rd parties are moving towards offering 80% of BES's functionality and the security functionality for Android and Apple and might be there in about 2 years.
QNX offers advantages far greater than the Linux kernel or the XNU. But so far no RIM device is using them, they are just working on getting existing functionality ported.
If we still treating RIM as high end phone manufacturer then:
a) Their devices are behind on 3rd party software by a lot
I know it's hard to fathom but the rest of the world (not the US) doesn't seem to prefer the Apple glitz.
iPhone does excellent in European countries where the carriers subsidize phones. It does badly in countries which operate on a prepaid basis. I think it is fair to say that the rest of the world does prefer Apple glitz but might not be willing to pay what it costs. Your comment simply isn't accurate.
Some have. RIM for example has a limited selection of phones with very gradual changes. Most of the device manufacturers though don't have brand loyalty from their customers so they target profitable niche markets and then broaden out.
Why would Apple want to support virtualization? You yourself are saying you don't want to buy their hardware which is how they make money. The one time Apple hemorrhaged money was when they allowed clones.