It is more likely sheer ignorance. How many people know that Ubuntu is a version of Linux. Probably less than know Linux is an OS that can replace the basic functionality of MS Windows on many machines.
My suspicion is that someone submitted this to the market place. Note that the title is Ubuntu Desktop, rather than Ubuntu Linux. Also note that the text does not seem to contain 'OS' or 'Linux', and from the description appears to be an office application rather than full featured OS. I suspect that some drone put it on the page never realizing what it was. Given that MS is almost always oblivious to the market, someone probably just thought YAOO.
I am ever so slightly on Google side of this, even though I think installing google is a bad idea, simply because this is another case of MS not providing basic services.
On Apple, the google toolbar is nothing more than a security and privacy risk, with little extra value. Pop up blocking, ad blocking, search engine choice, system search, are all available on the standard browsers. This situation was only improved when MS let IE lapse and Safari took over the default Mac browser.
OTOH, MS left basic functionality out of IE to monotize customers by sending everything through MSN, and making sure that all ads are shown. This left the gates open for the yahoo toolbar, the google toolbar, which simply modified IE to customers needs, in exchange for information.
The trouble is they still want to produce products that tie customers to MS, not through superior solutions, but embedded solutions. Just like IE, where after many years MS reluctantly added features, they have finally added search capability to the OS, but in standard form they cut everyone else out. Is the MS solution superior? Probably. But couldn't they have provided the solution years ago when customers needed it, rather than now simply as a method to cut out those that provided past service?
It annoys me that every time this issue is brought up, it has to have the fox news slant. The low power FM crisis is not only due to the lefts desire to have a single station that does not continuous play top 40 music, or contiuously droll on about how the alleged sins of certain people caused 9/11, or have five minute commercial blocks on how one can improve one sexual prowess with a natural supplement.
Before trying to create the truth by repeating a lie, get the facts. In my market, on the fm dial, we have 3 general college radio stations. We have one left radio station, and two other college stations that are leftish. We have 3 christian radio stations. The other 20+ stations are commercial, I believe mostly owned by two or three enitites. At times over the past couple years, one could find 2 pairs of stations playing the same content. I do not think these stats are atypical.
The overcrowding of the FM dial is real. There are times when, at least on an analog tuner, it is difficult to distinguish a single station. NPR is not, with it's single station, or at most two, in each market, crowding the dial. What is crowding the dial is the relaxation of the ownership rules. While the summery touched on this with putting corporate radio first, the summary also implied that the problem will be solved by simplying allowing the airwaves to become more crowded.
This will not solve the problem. And while Fox news is not going to state the obvious solution, I will. Limit ownership of bandwidth to one station per entity. If the FCC wants to a vibrant radio dial, review the rules set 10 years ago. There is not reason why a single entity should ever own more that a couple stations in any market. Period. If that means the commercials stations drop precipitately, so be it. There are evidently operators out there biting at the bit, angry that they cannot get a place to play. Ownership rules will open up that space.
For the normal customer looking for the cheapest phone, a two year contract is often required. However, I have in the past been able to pay $50 and get a one year contract. Why do I do this? To prevent the contract hell in which one loses a phone after the first year, then has to sign another two year contract to get another phone, and so on. In any case, it saves on the insurance which would be at least $50 for the year.
I hope that ATT is going to use this opportunity to improve it's reputation for customer service. However, I suspect that they will simply create innovative new ways to force people into contracts they don't want. I was kind of up on this iPhone thing, I don't really have a problem with ATT, but as we get closer, I don't know if ATT isn't going to return to it's scumbag roots.
I don't think the previous versions are the compition, it is just that previous version show very clearly that MS will put out products that are crap. I still have a machine running ME. Crap software. Windows 95, following crap software, looked really good. For those of us who ran NT, even XP took a while not to look like crap software.
So here we are, running XP, arguable the first MS modern, mature, and truly reliable OS. It is a reasonable state of the art, and does what an OS needs to do. It runs on a huge number of different machines. It is the ideal thing to give the worker bee.
And then MS Vista comes along, and we remember every version of MS Windows back to 95, and it just feels like we are about to taken for another ride. Loss of significant functionality if we do not buy the correct version. Eye candy that will not run on many machines. God knows what incompatibility. For the market in which MS Windows is the workhorse of the grunt and the unsophisticated home user, such a change makes no sense. Why give these people machines that most likely will not work. It is insane.
In six months or a year, it will likely make perfect sense for Dell and HP to force Vista down users throats. By that time every new machine and most new devices will be vista compatible, for real. At this point it is just another fit of hysterics.
Apple is a systems developer. It is one of the last systems developers. Buying a system instead of component parts is not a bad thing. People do it all the time. It is often better than the case when the end user vendor does not in fact take responsibility for all component parts in the so-called system.
Now, I don't know who RIM works, but I do know that apple does adopt standards as they become appropriate. The big controversy from many years ago was SCSI versus IDE, but I tell you IDE did not work well for Apple. I had one of the first consumer Apple laptop that used IDE, and it was slow compared to the SCSI machines.
I assume that iPhone will support smtp, pop, and imap, just like mail.app. What may not work is the web interface to MS Exchange, which in my experience requires IE, though it is no more complex than gmail.
Contacts and events are supported through vcard and webdav. Both seem to be well known and documented standards. There are applications to sync with ones google account, and application to set up ones own server. It appears to be somewhat robust.
Clearly these are not enterprise level solutions, and clearly most do not use or support these. However, the story still stands. The issue is not going to be the ability to support iPhone, but to invest to in the standard technologies that iPhone will likely use. It must also be noted that iPhone does not, as yet, exist in the retail market so talking about is really stupid.
I still see this as a question of who will control the application front end standards. Of course for general web browsing, on the open range, where one needs to be careful, Mozilla or a variant is the browser of choice. But what browser is going to be used when interfacing with an application, an application that needs to do fancy things and can't have excessive restrictions on cookies, or java, or all the other bells and whistles.
Right now that browser is IE, and when people start the internet, they run IE. And everyone is happy because it gives the server control over the client, which is dangerous only if the client is allowed to go wherever he or she wishes. If Safari can achieve the level of sophistication of IE, then there is a choice of front end, and a cross platform choice at that. Not in the MS sense, where it can run on MS Windows XP and MS Windows XP SP2, but across platforms that implement webkit.
In the front end field, I don't think that any mozilla project is even a contender. Most businesses, at least in the US, mandate IE. The browser market is an MS monopoly, with personal use of other browsers. And in that monopoly, MS cut Apple out by not developing IE for Apple products. Mozilla did not fill the need, as there are still web sites that I could get to work with IE on Mac, but never could with any Mozilla product. Therefore, Apple came in and at least partially filled the void.
Now, what is going to happen if Apple can get front end developers to write towards a broader spec? Well, perhaps Mozilla can be in the running for a competitive front end browser, something it cannot, as far as I am concerned, now do with everything written with an eye towards IE.
We should just attribute this for what it is, another BillG hissy fit. From the beginning, a product would become popular because it was easily copied, and them BillG would throw a temper tantrum complaining that people were not paying him enough. Even today, with more money in the bank than a person has a right to, he is still whining that people are not paying enough.
And the acting out is so unnecessary. There are many companies out there with more pirated software, software that is actually used to create large profits for thier users, that do not have the level of annoyware of MS. Yet Adobe, Autodesk, SAP, all seem to making money without making the customers feel like criminals.
I have used MS software since nearly the beginning. I have a respect for some of their products, and really have no reason not to use their products, except for the fact that when I do I find myself feeling very frustrated. Recently I was setting up a corporate machine to run a specific application. Everything was installed, and I was trying to get updates. All went well until I tried to update MS office. Then I had to install IE 7, with meant I had to install WGA, and then I could not tell if MS Office was updated or not, or what was going on. Furthermore, IE 7 does not seem to make any sense, so that whole update was a waste of time. If this was not bad enough, a few days later, when I was trying to geta project completed, I got this annoying modal dialog that kept popping up demanding that I restart my machine because an update had been loaded. I could not get rid of it. So, I save everything, rebooted, spent five minutes restarting applications, and got back to work.
In the end, the software would be nice if it would only do what is should do, which is to make users life carefree, instead of what it actually does, which is creates a single vendor hostage situation for anyone who uses it.
And I know what you are thinking, but I don't feel that way about apple. All my work stuff is either plain text or open document. All my music is in MP3. I have a very small investment in movies that tie me to itunes. I use an apple machiine because Apple does not treat me as a criminal, and I can move to another machine with simple transfer of harddrive.
Honestly, what does Dell expect. This is a business decision that Dell has made. If they are going to cover accidental damage then they also must cover deliberate damage as there is no way to tell the difference, and sometimes it is blurry. Is improper packaging accidental? Is leaving it outside knowing it might rain accidental? Clearly dropping it on purpose to get a new computer is fraud, but what of it?
If they wanted an honest class of customer that was willing to pay a reasonable charge for a quality machine, they would not play all the games with discounts and the like. They would just offer an extended warranty that covered parts that wore our or broke, but would leave abuse to the responsibility of the customer. The fact that offer the extended warranty they do is another game they play. We know that most extended warranties are very profitable, though useful for products on which one wishes to manage maintenance costs, i.e. not cheap headphones and like. By offering such a warranty, the entice more people to purchase the product, probably more than need it, and must, in the end, still make a tidy profit. Might they make more profit without the 'fraud', might the warranty cost less without the 'fraud'. Sure, but that only effects me if I buy a dell machine, which I don't, if for no other reason than they want another $50 to support the machine that they sold me. It is games to make believe that they are getting a good value, when all they are getting is cheap computer that needs an extended warranty as it could fall apart at any minute.
The thing about personal freedom is life, liberty and the opportunity to peruse profit. Certainly, for what I have seen, the later is the missing part of the equation in south america, while the other two items are increasingly missing in a large part of north america. The ability to travel freely, to read what one wants to read, to engage in legal acts without being harassed are quickly falling to a populous that is more fearful of microrisk than concerned about macroliberties.
OTOH, as I have seen time and time again, acess to technology increases ones ability to persue profit, i.e. happiness. The ability to use machines, and thus improve personal productivity, is the greatest asset one can have. The problem is that in many parts of the wold capital to acquire such technolgy is limit. There are no credit cards, or banks loans, or anything. Therefore anything that can be done to reduce the costs of technology to the point that an individual can purchase said technology from existing liquid assets means that the technolgy will not be just a toy for the rich, but a mover for the masses.
And this is the reform that many in south america are trying to make. Many countries in south america are at the place where the US is moving toward. Money concentrated at the few, gated communities, aggressive police presence, inadequate medical service. It may be that 10% of the people in Venezuela controls 50% of the capital,which and 40% live in poverty. Just like in the US, if you can train a person to catch fish, and not just give him a fish, and also make the fishing pole affordable, then we can begin to help people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without the dole. If a computer costs $200 instead of $400, then more people can save that over a year.
Of course, US officials who have been on the dole and the take for their entire lives find this very scary, as the United States interests are going to be threatened by an educated and technical savvy population. Of course, if the US were not so afraid of an educated and technical savvy population, perhaps we would not have the trade deficit from which we currently suffer.
There was a time, not so long ago, that one could only hook up a certified ATT phone to you ATT landline. While this was clearly partially due to a issues related to the network, after a while it had more to do with monthly rental fees paid on these phones. After a while the government said enough was enough, and we now have the opportunity to plug any phone we want into the jacks. This, along with other factors, killed the profitability of the industry.
The cell phone companies of course see the same thing happening with the iPhone. Apple does not always play be industry "wink wink nudge nudge'rules. It has had a big part in validating digital music delivery, and, for better or worse, we will see those deliveries be uninfected with DRM. What will the iphone do to the mobile phone industry. Render meaningless the contracts by which a phone user must use a certain service for email. Allow users to create thier own ring tones, as can already be done using a Mac and some cell phones. Nip in the bud the profitable music downloads over celluar networks before it even generates any significant revenue. Force major upgrades in bandwidth. Are the Europeans afraid that the iPhone will somehow undermine their excessive roaming charges? The United States, at twice the area, has inexpensive roam free plans, despite the relative backwater mobile technology.
Apple is pretty good about delivering disruptive technology. I am sure the only reason that ATT made the deal was to remain competitive with Verizon. I can't imagine it was a happy decision for them. I wonder if there is enough competition in the EU to force a carrier to do the same.
Human constructs are often used as metaphors for biological systems. There is nothing wrong with this. Comparing natural systems to our own creations is simply one of our primary methods of understanding those natural systems. I, however feel, that the most significant understanding occurs when we start taking about how the natural system differs from human constructions.
One of the more interesting examples of such metaphor is brain research, in which every IT advance has been put forth as the model that would finally allow us to fully model brain function.
A long time ago, one had to buy special machines to provide a text interface to other special backend machines. These text interface machines were very good, but expensive. Then some people came out with general machines, and one of the killer apps for the general purpose computers, in general, was the program that provided a virtual text interface to all of these special backend machines, meaning that one could work anywhere one could get a connection. The we got a GUI, and we were back to the world of special back end machines only working with other special back end machines, at least when on needed a GUI, which for a long time was not a problem because we could still network with text.
As time went, on, however, the network went GUI, and although most computers played well with others, some did not. In the beginning it was just the like the bad old days, when there was some technical justification for the lockout, but such justification has been reduced to the point where any lockout is due primarily to marketing.
At this point, the killer app for the phone is interoperability with the internet and the intranet. If I could communicate with corporate, check my email, etc, this phone would be very useful. Many people spend much of their time not creating content, but browsing content and writing short notes. The biggest impediment to this phone is that a few key servers still run based on the IE application interface, which is largely incompatible with standards implemented in other browsers.
Therefore, the fight is the same as it was. If Apple can get corporate to write the code the browser sees in a format that anyone can read, instead of the locked in MS format that requires relatively expensive MS kit, in the same way the old terminals were an extremely good value but reletively expensive, the Apple could sell these phones as Apple wants to sell these phones, as a way to surf the net when the computer is not available. Until corporate stops writing IE crap code, Apple can't see the iPhone to the full market. I do not need a killer App for my phone. I just need it to connect to do all these web and email things that I can't do with my phone now, at least not as easily as the iPhone should be able to.
I do believe the NCAA does get kids to learn through sports. It is a tough balancing act. Many kids are willing to sell themselves for a bag of silver, and most sports team are more than happy to buy these kids for as long as they are useful. It must be terribly difficult for a kid to turn down a wheel barrel full of money in hopes of future gratification, especially when a torn ACL could end all future hopes in an instance. Better to get a contract now while the getting is good.
So even though the NCAA is turning into merely a **AA licensing organization, it still does things to insure that kids get an education in exchange for the work they do on the field. For instance, the NCAA is closing down "schools" that exchange a grade for cash, with no academic development included. This is useful as it allowed school the freedom to fail to educate certain kids, merely enrolling them for the benefit of the district and coaches. As far as I am concerned, if NCAA were followed in spirit, we would have many more kids educated.
OTOH, as in any sports transaction, where player are bought and sold until they become free agents, a person does pay a price for this pathway to an opportunity to play in big leagues. Many athletes I see could go to college on academic scholarships and retain much more freedom. Many athletes could do better just getting a job, and retain much more freedoms. However, they choose to play the game, and they can play by the rules. After all, athletes know about rules. They have no problems with uniforms, rules, and the like, and they do not appear to have any problems, and given the new they have no problem being rewarded with strippers and drugs and the like. And the fact is that for every whiner athlete that can't take the pressure and follow the rules and use the drugs responsibly, there are 10 more waiting in line.
If one is runing a Linux base, there is no reason why Apple and MS cannot give schools computer. MS could donate Autocad and Apple could donate film making labs. Use one OS over another as a backbone has nothing to do with this. Indeed, even the applications, which are now often deployed over a web browser, can in principle run on any machine.
What we are talking about here is defacto official endorsement of a product. This si why soft drink companies at one time wanted nothing more than get exclusive deals on school campuses. If, as in my day, a student reguarly saw an Apple, a DEC, a CP/M, and a PC running PC or MS DOS, they may get the idea that the most reasonable thing to do is find the best machine for the job, and not just blindly buy what everyone else has. Most companies very much do not want such a critical decision making process to exist, so push hard for single vendor solutions.
Of course, with a single vendor solution based on MS products one has added costs due to interoperability issues. Using outlook, one cannot let teachers use whatever computer they have, but have to supply a PC. If one deploys over IE, one cannot just use any PC one has hanging around, but has to buy a new one to rune the latest IE. And no is going to give away all the machines a district needs. It is generally just for specialized purposes, and as mentions, such specialized section should be independent of the infrastructure.
Any open system of that allows open submission of audience created data will, as soon as it becomes popular enough, be abused by commercial interests. Planning a trip to Cancun, most hits will be fly by night vacation offers. Planning a trip to the Philippines, most ads will soon be targeted to the exotic sex tourist. The signal to noise ratio, even with rated content, quickly becomes overwhelming.
The only way that metadata can become useful is if there is little commercial interest and the normal urge for mere annoyance is purposefully squelched.
It depends if the professional level remains static. I know many companies that spend sufficient time creating new and unique product, and those companies will likely stay in business as long as the general product is needed(i.e. what does a buggy whip factory make?). Photoshop is clearly staying on step ahead of the copycats. They do appear to investing in new products rather than just blowing it on advertisements and fluff. This is very different from a department store in which all one does is blow money on advertisement and fluff as fluff is all there really is. Most department stores are only going to spend so much on the actual product or customer service, and they will tend to go under or sell out if the profit is no longer suitable.
So, Gimp is already good enough for many people. It is certainly good enough for me. However, there are features that Gimp does not have, and, if Adobe keep doing what it is doing, by the time Gimp adds features there will be other useful features added to Photoshop. Although the market for Gimp will increase, that does not mean that market for Photoshop will decrease. It is not a zero sum game.
One can ask the same question of MS Office. Should users also learn OO.org? Probably, as they next job might use it. But maybe not.
Why does apple care about your $650 dollar sale? Does it generate the 20% profit? Does it contribute to thier image as a high end computer maker?
This is not a flame. The low end computer market is very crowded, and no reputable computer maker can make a truly quality machine at that price. Even at higher prices, it is difficult. The low end computer market does not generate a profit, and depends on the MS monopoly. It is beneficial to MS to have cheap computers, and the deals to generate those cheap computer are on record.
It is actually unreasonable for anyone who just wants a cheap computer to buy a mac, just like it is unreasonable for anyone who just want cheap stuff to shop at, say Target. MS and Walmart are both cheaper options, and those who are buying solely on price tend to visit them. OTOH, both are trying to become more upscale, but the stigma of being the cheap option are hurting the effort. Why would Apple want tarnish it's image by competing at the low end? They can' win. Just look at Kmart and WalMart, or cadillac and all the other American car marks. Instead of innovating and keeping standards relitivly high, very high in the case of cadillac, they just tried to do the same old same old, respond to price, and look how it came out. KMart is all but non existent, and all the American car makers are done to the level of junk stock status. Diamler basically paid to get rid of Chrysler.
For certain machines, the Mac is cheaper. Most of the PCs I use right now could have been bought at around the same price for a Mac. On the low end, when equally configured, many PCs are more expensive than the Mac. However, that is not the point as one thing Apple does is configure machines that will run well, not just get the customer out the door.
What I find most distressing is bringing up the 20 year old lockin argument. MS successfully used this argument to generate it's current software lockin. Clearly the software locikin is not overall any better or worse than the software lockin in terms of price. If one is looking for the cheapest machine, there are models available, but that leads to situations in which, for example, people think they have a machine that can run the full MS Vista, but cannot. And you cannot even be sure your particular configuration will save money. In many medium to high end configurations, Apple will have the better price. For the cheapest machines, even MS has agreed that it can't beat building you own and running Linux, except in certain corporate environments.
But the main reason that I did not read the article was the clearly false statement that Apple software is more expensive. While nearly every piece of FOSS is available on MS Windows, and there can be a reduced availability for Mac, there is still no glut of software for Mac, though sometimes you have to be experienced enough to use the command line or X-windows. The expense argument is even more silly, as the Apple OS can be had, in full version, for as low as $100, and this includes easter egg applications such as Grapher. Apple also gives you the oppotunity to support multiple machines very cheaply. I don't see MS giving away 5 computer Vista upgrades for $300.
More than the price, I want to know the terms. One of the articles clearly stated that the phones would be available at the ATT stores, which one would infer meant that ATT is in fact controlling the price. Typically this means that they will sell at or near their cost, for a two year contract. What is that cost going to be? Also, typically, one can shave a year off the contract for $50.
And then there is the question of what plans are going to available for the phone. The standard data plan is not going be nearly enough bandwidth for reading a newspaper and Yahoo, especially considering how bloated the NYT is getting lately.
I will admit the phone has some potential, although I think it is too big for casual daily use. If they are going to sell it like a phone, that will be great. If they are going to get into the games that cingular liked to play in the past, then I will give it a miss until it becomes less hot.
It depends how the screen is made, and how you carry it. My original gameboy is still in perfect condition. I have never carried it my pocket, but have never taken great care of it. That mean is has spent most of it's life (10-5 years?) stuffed in various boxes, often with metal objects.
OTOH, my Palm and some of my phones with exposed glass have gotten broken. Now, these broke with significant force, never just by dropping, and they still worked for quite a while. My iPods, which are carried abound thrown in a bag of in a pocket, albeit in a case, have never broke.
The first item is the lesser of the issue. I have not been able to use a phone by touch for years. To make a call on my phone, I have to look at it. OTOH, like many people, the phone is just the boosting station for the ear piece.
With voice dial one does not ever have to take out the phone. Ir just needs to be nearby.
Really, this phone is almost exactly what I hoped apple would create, except I would have been happy with a mini form factor, but I understand why the did this. As I have mentioned, the killer app for a phone is break away from anachronistic "dialing" the phone. There is no reason why making a call should not be as simple as stating someone's name. The lack of tactile feedback for music is a problem, though. I wonder if they have included voice commands to move through the tracks.
You are, of course, correct. However that does not change the fact that MS significantly degrades the user experience, at least for a while, and chases customers off. In point of fact, no one really complains about MS incompatibility, at least in the real world, because it is not an issue. After all, word is mostly used to create simple, time limited, documents that few people will read and few people will remember. In most case, if one has to read a and older MS word document, one can find a machine that can read it.
But what about those of us who are not just typing memos. I recall trying to send out MS Word 97 documents when everyone else was using 2000. Great deal of difficulties getting the documents to work properly. What I did find, however, was that if I used another office suite, and saved to MS Word, there were no issues. I also discovered that MS Excel would not work properly with so forms, but other Office suites worked fine.
Here is what I am saying. After 15 years, MS lost me as paying customer because MS had no respect for my time. I would have upgraded to the next version of MS office as soon as I could have, but MS decisions pushed me away, and now instead of being a promoter of MS Office, I truly believe that 80% of the users, it provides insufficient functionality for the cost, mostly because of the discontinuities created by the upgrade cycle. Now, mind you, I dealt with discontinuities, even between MS DOS and MS Windows, but now the competitors do a better job.
Here the common response to this. MS does not need me as customer. It can live with primarily corporate customers. Here is my response. IBM thought they could live off the corporate customer, pissing off every one else, even pissing on corporate because inertia would be too strong of a force. IBM was wrong, and MS benefiting for that wrong headed thinking. IBM is still around, but has to work very hard for it's money. It is my belief that it makes as much sense to buy a MS loaded machine now as it did to buy a PC jr.
I was thinking along these lines myself. I was thinking a very aggressive person that could give asw good as she or he gets. Develop a statement stating that the phone calls are being recorded and not welcome. Record the call.
Also, have this person keep a log of the calls. On a daily basis have this person call back the recruiting company, demand to speak to a supervisor, and read the list of calls. I suspect that 80 or so dollars a day this will costs will be covered by save engineering time.
The software is what might make it interesting. The other tech, in basic form, has been around for a while. For example, smarttech has front project and rear projection, along with really nice software. Widgets can be dragged to locations. Touch a color and draw with your finger. Rotate the widget. Capture screen. All the cool stuff.
For commercial users, the packaging as a single compact device will be interesting. I can see this being used to enhance the Mini auto boutique, allowing the customers to design the car. I can also see this is certain corporate setting.
For education, I don't know. Schools that want tech already have smartboards, and they can be had inexpensively. It would be nice not to have to deal with projector. OTOH, I am unclear on the size and OS. Articles have intimated that there one has to use specialized developers, which may mean this is intended to be a Xbox rather than a commodity product. Why buy into a whole new thing, when a Mac and smartboard will let you do everything using industry standard tools, like flash, java, photoshop, etc.
This is good news as is shows that MS is trying to buck the commodity trend and come up some real products. If the software works, this will be a great little product, and will open the door for competition.
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My suspicion is that someone submitted this to the market place. Note that the title is Ubuntu Desktop, rather than Ubuntu Linux. Also note that the text does not seem to contain 'OS' or 'Linux', and from the description appears to be an office application rather than full featured OS. I suspect that some drone put it on the page never realizing what it was. Given that MS is almost always oblivious to the market, someone probably just thought YAOO.
On Apple, the google toolbar is nothing more than a security and privacy risk, with little extra value. Pop up blocking, ad blocking, search engine choice, system search, are all available on the standard browsers. This situation was only improved when MS let IE lapse and Safari took over the default Mac browser.
OTOH, MS left basic functionality out of IE to monotize customers by sending everything through MSN, and making sure that all ads are shown. This left the gates open for the yahoo toolbar, the google toolbar, which simply modified IE to customers needs, in exchange for information.
The trouble is they still want to produce products that tie customers to MS, not through superior solutions, but embedded solutions. Just like IE, where after many years MS reluctantly added features, they have finally added search capability to the OS, but in standard form they cut everyone else out. Is the MS solution superior? Probably. But couldn't they have provided the solution years ago when customers needed it, rather than now simply as a method to cut out those that provided past service?
Before trying to create the truth by repeating a lie, get the facts. In my market, on the fm dial, we have 3 general college radio stations. We have one left radio station, and two other college stations that are leftish. We have 3 christian radio stations. The other 20+ stations are commercial, I believe mostly owned by two or three enitites. At times over the past couple years, one could find 2 pairs of stations playing the same content. I do not think these stats are atypical.
The overcrowding of the FM dial is real. There are times when, at least on an analog tuner, it is difficult to distinguish a single station. NPR is not, with it's single station, or at most two, in each market, crowding the dial. What is crowding the dial is the relaxation of the ownership rules. While the summery touched on this with putting corporate radio first, the summary also implied that the problem will be solved by simplying allowing the airwaves to become more crowded.
This will not solve the problem. And while Fox news is not going to state the obvious solution, I will. Limit ownership of bandwidth to one station per entity. If the FCC wants to a vibrant radio dial, review the rules set 10 years ago. There is not reason why a single entity should ever own more that a couple stations in any market. Period. If that means the commercials stations drop precipitately, so be it. There are evidently operators out there biting at the bit, angry that they cannot get a place to play. Ownership rules will open up that space.
I hope that ATT is going to use this opportunity to improve it's reputation for customer service. However, I suspect that they will simply create innovative new ways to force people into contracts they don't want. I was kind of up on this iPhone thing, I don't really have a problem with ATT, but as we get closer, I don't know if ATT isn't going to return to it's scumbag roots.
So here we are, running XP, arguable the first MS modern, mature, and truly reliable OS. It is a reasonable state of the art, and does what an OS needs to do. It runs on a huge number of different machines. It is the ideal thing to give the worker bee.
And then MS Vista comes along, and we remember every version of MS Windows back to 95, and it just feels like we are about to taken for another ride. Loss of significant functionality if we do not buy the correct version. Eye candy that will not run on many machines. God knows what incompatibility. For the market in which MS Windows is the workhorse of the grunt and the unsophisticated home user, such a change makes no sense. Why give these people machines that most likely will not work. It is insane.
In six months or a year, it will likely make perfect sense for Dell and HP to force Vista down users throats. By that time every new machine and most new devices will be vista compatible, for real. At this point it is just another fit of hysterics.
Now, I don't know who RIM works, but I do know that apple does adopt standards as they become appropriate. The big controversy from many years ago was SCSI versus IDE, but I tell you IDE did not work well for Apple. I had one of the first consumer Apple laptop that used IDE, and it was slow compared to the SCSI machines.
I assume that iPhone will support smtp, pop, and imap, just like mail.app. What may not work is the web interface to MS Exchange, which in my experience requires IE, though it is no more complex than gmail.
Contacts and events are supported through vcard and webdav. Both seem to be well known and documented standards. There are applications to sync with ones google account, and application to set up ones own server. It appears to be somewhat robust.
Clearly these are not enterprise level solutions, and clearly most do not use or support these. However, the story still stands. The issue is not going to be the ability to support iPhone, but to invest to in the standard technologies that iPhone will likely use. It must also be noted that iPhone does not, as yet, exist in the retail market so talking about is really stupid.
Right now that browser is IE, and when people start the internet, they run IE. And everyone is happy because it gives the server control over the client, which is dangerous only if the client is allowed to go wherever he or she wishes. If Safari can achieve the level of sophistication of IE, then there is a choice of front end, and a cross platform choice at that. Not in the MS sense, where it can run on MS Windows XP and MS Windows XP SP2, but across platforms that implement webkit.
In the front end field, I don't think that any mozilla project is even a contender. Most businesses, at least in the US, mandate IE. The browser market is an MS monopoly, with personal use of other browsers. And in that monopoly, MS cut Apple out by not developing IE for Apple products. Mozilla did not fill the need, as there are still web sites that I could get to work with IE on Mac, but never could with any Mozilla product. Therefore, Apple came in and at least partially filled the void.
Now, what is going to happen if Apple can get front end developers to write towards a broader spec? Well, perhaps Mozilla can be in the running for a competitive front end browser, something it cannot, as far as I am concerned, now do with everything written with an eye towards IE.
And the acting out is so unnecessary. There are many companies out there with more pirated software, software that is actually used to create large profits for thier users, that do not have the level of annoyware of MS. Yet Adobe, Autodesk, SAP, all seem to making money without making the customers feel like criminals.
I have used MS software since nearly the beginning. I have a respect for some of their products, and really have no reason not to use their products, except for the fact that when I do I find myself feeling very frustrated. Recently I was setting up a corporate machine to run a specific application. Everything was installed, and I was trying to get updates. All went well until I tried to update MS office. Then I had to install IE 7, with meant I had to install WGA, and then I could not tell if MS Office was updated or not, or what was going on. Furthermore, IE 7 does not seem to make any sense, so that whole update was a waste of time. If this was not bad enough, a few days later, when I was trying to geta project completed, I got this annoying modal dialog that kept popping up demanding that I restart my machine because an update had been loaded. I could not get rid of it. So, I save everything, rebooted, spent five minutes restarting applications, and got back to work.
In the end, the software would be nice if it would only do what is should do, which is to make users life carefree, instead of what it actually does, which is creates a single vendor hostage situation for anyone who uses it.
And I know what you are thinking, but I don't feel that way about apple. All my work stuff is either plain text or open document. All my music is in MP3. I have a very small investment in movies that tie me to itunes. I use an apple machiine because Apple does not treat me as a criminal, and I can move to another machine with simple transfer of harddrive.
If they wanted an honest class of customer that was willing to pay a reasonable charge for a quality machine, they would not play all the games with discounts and the like. They would just offer an extended warranty that covered parts that wore our or broke, but would leave abuse to the responsibility of the customer. The fact that offer the extended warranty they do is another game they play. We know that most extended warranties are very profitable, though useful for products on which one wishes to manage maintenance costs, i.e. not cheap headphones and like. By offering such a warranty, the entice more people to purchase the product, probably more than need it, and must, in the end, still make a tidy profit. Might they make more profit without the 'fraud', might the warranty cost less without the 'fraud'. Sure, but that only effects me if I buy a dell machine, which I don't, if for no other reason than they want another $50 to support the machine that they sold me. It is games to make believe that they are getting a good value, when all they are getting is cheap computer that needs an extended warranty as it could fall apart at any minute.
OTOH, as I have seen time and time again, acess to technology increases ones ability to persue profit, i.e. happiness. The ability to use machines, and thus improve personal productivity, is the greatest asset one can have. The problem is that in many parts of the wold capital to acquire such technolgy is limit. There are no credit cards, or banks loans, or anything. Therefore anything that can be done to reduce the costs of technology to the point that an individual can purchase said technology from existing liquid assets means that the technolgy will not be just a toy for the rich, but a mover for the masses.
And this is the reform that many in south america are trying to make. Many countries in south america are at the place where the US is moving toward. Money concentrated at the few, gated communities, aggressive police presence, inadequate medical service. It may be that 10% of the people in Venezuela controls 50% of the capital,which and 40% live in poverty. Just like in the US, if you can train a person to catch fish, and not just give him a fish, and also make the fishing pole affordable, then we can begin to help people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without the dole. If a computer costs $200 instead of $400, then more people can save that over a year.
Of course, US officials who have been on the dole and the take for their entire lives find this very scary, as the United States interests are going to be threatened by an educated and technical savvy population. Of course, if the US were not so afraid of an educated and technical savvy population, perhaps we would not have the trade deficit from which we currently suffer.
The cell phone companies of course see the same thing happening with the iPhone. Apple does not always play be industry "wink wink nudge nudge'rules. It has had a big part in validating digital music delivery, and, for better or worse, we will see those deliveries be uninfected with DRM. What will the iphone do to the mobile phone industry. Render meaningless the contracts by which a phone user must use a certain service for email. Allow users to create thier own ring tones, as can already be done using a Mac and some cell phones. Nip in the bud the profitable music downloads over celluar networks before it even generates any significant revenue. Force major upgrades in bandwidth. Are the Europeans afraid that the iPhone will somehow undermine their excessive roaming charges? The United States, at twice the area, has inexpensive roam free plans, despite the relative backwater mobile technology.
Apple is pretty good about delivering disruptive technology. I am sure the only reason that ATT made the deal was to remain competitive with Verizon. I can't imagine it was a happy decision for them. I wonder if there is enough competition in the EU to force a carrier to do the same.
One of the more interesting examples of such metaphor is brain research, in which every IT advance has been put forth as the model that would finally allow us to fully model brain function.
As time went, on, however, the network went GUI, and although most computers played well with others, some did not. In the beginning it was just the like the bad old days, when there was some technical justification for the lockout, but such justification has been reduced to the point where any lockout is due primarily to marketing.
At this point, the killer app for the phone is interoperability with the internet and the intranet. If I could communicate with corporate, check my email, etc, this phone would be very useful. Many people spend much of their time not creating content, but browsing content and writing short notes. The biggest impediment to this phone is that a few key servers still run based on the IE application interface, which is largely incompatible with standards implemented in other browsers.
Therefore, the fight is the same as it was. If Apple can get corporate to write the code the browser sees in a format that anyone can read, instead of the locked in MS format that requires relatively expensive MS kit, in the same way the old terminals were an extremely good value but reletively expensive, the Apple could sell these phones as Apple wants to sell these phones, as a way to surf the net when the computer is not available. Until corporate stops writing IE crap code, Apple can't see the iPhone to the full market. I do not need a killer App for my phone. I just need it to connect to do all these web and email things that I can't do with my phone now, at least not as easily as the iPhone should be able to.
So even though the NCAA is turning into merely a **AA licensing organization, it still does things to insure that kids get an education in exchange for the work they do on the field. For instance, the NCAA is closing down "schools" that exchange a grade for cash, with no academic development included. This is useful as it allowed school the freedom to fail to educate certain kids, merely enrolling them for the benefit of the district and coaches. As far as I am concerned, if NCAA were followed in spirit, we would have many more kids educated.
OTOH, as in any sports transaction, where player are bought and sold until they become free agents, a person does pay a price for this pathway to an opportunity to play in big leagues. Many athletes I see could go to college on academic scholarships and retain much more freedom. Many athletes could do better just getting a job, and retain much more freedoms. However, they choose to play the game, and they can play by the rules. After all, athletes know about rules. They have no problems with uniforms, rules, and the like, and they do not appear to have any problems, and given the new they have no problem being rewarded with strippers and drugs and the like. And the fact is that for every whiner athlete that can't take the pressure and follow the rules and use the drugs responsibly, there are 10 more waiting in line.
What we are talking about here is defacto official endorsement of a product. This si why soft drink companies at one time wanted nothing more than get exclusive deals on school campuses. If, as in my day, a student reguarly saw an Apple, a DEC, a CP/M, and a PC running PC or MS DOS, they may get the idea that the most reasonable thing to do is find the best machine for the job, and not just blindly buy what everyone else has. Most companies very much do not want such a critical decision making process to exist, so push hard for single vendor solutions.
Of course, with a single vendor solution based on MS products one has added costs due to interoperability issues. Using outlook, one cannot let teachers use whatever computer they have, but have to supply a PC. If one deploys over IE, one cannot just use any PC one has hanging around, but has to buy a new one to rune the latest IE. And no is going to give away all the machines a district needs. It is generally just for specialized purposes, and as mentions, such specialized section should be independent of the infrastructure.
The only way that metadata can become useful is if there is little commercial interest and the normal urge for mere annoyance is purposefully squelched.
So, Gimp is already good enough for many people. It is certainly good enough for me. However, there are features that Gimp does not have, and, if Adobe keep doing what it is doing, by the time Gimp adds features there will be other useful features added to Photoshop. Although the market for Gimp will increase, that does not mean that market for Photoshop will decrease. It is not a zero sum game.
One can ask the same question of MS Office. Should users also learn OO.org? Probably, as they next job might use it. But maybe not.
This is not a flame. The low end computer market is very crowded, and no reputable computer maker can make a truly quality machine at that price. Even at higher prices, it is difficult. The low end computer market does not generate a profit, and depends on the MS monopoly. It is beneficial to MS to have cheap computers, and the deals to generate those cheap computer are on record.
It is actually unreasonable for anyone who just wants a cheap computer to buy a mac, just like it is unreasonable for anyone who just want cheap stuff to shop at, say Target. MS and Walmart are both cheaper options, and those who are buying solely on price tend to visit them. OTOH, both are trying to become more upscale, but the stigma of being the cheap option are hurting the effort. Why would Apple want tarnish it's image by competing at the low end? They can' win. Just look at Kmart and WalMart, or cadillac and all the other American car marks. Instead of innovating and keeping standards relitivly high, very high in the case of cadillac, they just tried to do the same old same old, respond to price, and look how it came out. KMart is all but non existent, and all the American car makers are done to the level of junk stock status. Diamler basically paid to get rid of Chrysler.
For certain machines, the Mac is cheaper. Most of the PCs I use right now could have been bought at around the same price for a Mac. On the low end, when equally configured, many PCs are more expensive than the Mac. However, that is not the point as one thing Apple does is configure machines that will run well, not just get the customer out the door.
But the main reason that I did not read the article was the clearly false statement that Apple software is more expensive. While nearly every piece of FOSS is available on MS Windows, and there can be a reduced availability for Mac, there is still no glut of software for Mac, though sometimes you have to be experienced enough to use the command line or X-windows. The expense argument is even more silly, as the Apple OS can be had, in full version, for as low as $100, and this includes easter egg applications such as Grapher. Apple also gives you the oppotunity to support multiple machines very cheaply. I don't see MS giving away 5 computer Vista upgrades for $300.
And then there is the question of what plans are going to available for the phone. The standard data plan is not going be nearly enough bandwidth for reading a newspaper and Yahoo, especially considering how bloated the NYT is getting lately.
I will admit the phone has some potential, although I think it is too big for casual daily use. If they are going to sell it like a phone, that will be great. If they are going to get into the games that cingular liked to play in the past, then I will give it a miss until it becomes less hot.
OTOH, my Palm and some of my phones with exposed glass have gotten broken. Now, these broke with significant force, never just by dropping, and they still worked for quite a while. My iPods, which are carried abound thrown in a bag of in a pocket, albeit in a case, have never broke.
The first item is the lesser of the issue. I have not been able to use a phone by touch for years. To make a call on my phone, I have to look at it. OTOH, like many people, the phone is just the boosting station for the ear piece. With voice dial one does not ever have to take out the phone. Ir just needs to be nearby.
Really, this phone is almost exactly what I hoped apple would create, except I would have been happy with a mini form factor, but I understand why the did this. As I have mentioned, the killer app for a phone is break away from anachronistic "dialing" the phone. There is no reason why making a call should not be as simple as stating someone's name. The lack of tactile feedback for music is a problem, though. I wonder if they have included voice commands to move through the tracks.
But what about those of us who are not just typing memos. I recall trying to send out MS Word 97 documents when everyone else was using 2000. Great deal of difficulties getting the documents to work properly. What I did find, however, was that if I used another office suite, and saved to MS Word, there were no issues. I also discovered that MS Excel would not work properly with so forms, but other Office suites worked fine.
Here is what I am saying. After 15 years, MS lost me as paying customer because MS had no respect for my time. I would have upgraded to the next version of MS office as soon as I could have, but MS decisions pushed me away, and now instead of being a promoter of MS Office, I truly believe that 80% of the users, it provides insufficient functionality for the cost, mostly because of the discontinuities created by the upgrade cycle. Now, mind you, I dealt with discontinuities, even between MS DOS and MS Windows, but now the competitors do a better job.
Here the common response to this. MS does not need me as customer. It can live with primarily corporate customers. Here is my response. IBM thought they could live off the corporate customer, pissing off every one else, even pissing on corporate because inertia would be too strong of a force. IBM was wrong, and MS benefiting for that wrong headed thinking. IBM is still around, but has to work very hard for it's money. It is my belief that it makes as much sense to buy a MS loaded machine now as it did to buy a PC jr.
Also, have this person keep a log of the calls. On a daily basis have this person call back the recruiting company, demand to speak to a supervisor, and read the list of calls. I suspect that 80 or so dollars a day this will costs will be covered by save engineering time.
But this reminds me of the database file system, not mention the 11th hour reduction in the virtual server specs.
For commercial users, the packaging as a single compact device will be interesting. I can see this being used to enhance the Mini auto boutique, allowing the customers to design the car. I can also see this is certain corporate setting.
For education, I don't know. Schools that want tech already have smartboards, and they can be had inexpensively. It would be nice not to have to deal with projector. OTOH, I am unclear on the size and OS. Articles have intimated that there one has to use specialized developers, which may mean this is intended to be a Xbox rather than a commodity product. Why buy into a whole new thing, when a Mac and smartboard will let you do everything using industry standard tools, like flash, java, photoshop, etc.
This is good news as is shows that MS is trying to buck the commodity trend and come up some real products. If the software works, this will be a great little product, and will open the door for competition.