You, for example, seem to be pretty unhappy about the no G3 support issue. If Apple's so dead in the future, why do you want their hardware?
Are you kidding? I've never owned or wanted any Apple hardware. I'm perfectly content with my 1Ghz Athlon Tbird, and before that my Celeron 300 OC'd to 450 for $100, and before that.... etc.
Do you see a big difference in quality between DVD and regular TV broadcast movies? Because HDTV is about twice as good as DVD (or more).
If you really can't see a difference, than you probably were not watching a properly adjusted HDTV, or it was not receiving a high quality HDTV signal.
Isent Microsoft Tieing lisences to the computer hardware it's self in it's next OS release?
No, Microsoft is just using technology to try and enforce what their licenses have always said: You have only purchased the rights to install and use this software on one machine at a time.
You're still going to be able to move to a new PC or hardware configuration, you just might have to call someone on the phone to do it (or maybe they'll have a better idea).
I mean, put 3 or 4 of those globes on the ground with the "engine" bowl above them and you get a great propulsion system. Suddenly the engine is the tires.:-)
Oh no, I can see it now. Ford, distressed over the entire mess with their Ford Explorers and the Gravestone tires takes a page out of Sun's book, and unveils their new motto...
And the chances that it will go to zero are infinitely higher than it going anywhere near the positive territory needed to get you rich.
Says you, and from what I've read of your past postings, I'm not real impressed by your understanding of this emerging market.
You know, back before Bill Gates was getting rich at Microsoft, some guys at IBM told him (and several others, like Jobs) that there was no market for personal computers for average people.
In other words, people that thought they were so smart, so on top of things, could not see the market that was sitting right beneath their noses.
So why in the hell would I believe little ol' you when it comes to the IA market?
Stop all of this bullshit - BeOS was on PowerPC for one big reason - Gasse thought he could sell the company to Apple. (Think about it - would any company that really wanted to be in the OS business target Macs as their sole platform?
Go read the history of Be, please. It started running on Hobbit processors in the BeBox. From there, a small stone's throw to PPC, because at the time, the hardware platform for PPC was relatively open for all. After a while, Apple upgraded to G3 and closed down the specs, cutting Be off. They moved to x86 and never looked back.
There's no use holding a grudge against Apple for not buying your precious OS, because you can still go and run it on a nice Ghz Intel box.
Who the hell is holding a grudge? My entire point for posting was to point out how much better off I think Be is for the future, compared to Apple.
No one is doubting that more x86 chips are out there, but you are drawing a ridiculous conclusion regarding BeOS use from this. You need to come clean about the userbase for the BeOS...its probably in the NetBSD range. OpenBSD and Solaris x86 have larger userbases.
You are really getting annoying. Please re-read what I wrote. I never said it was a large userbase. The guy I was responding to intimated that staying with PPC would have been wise. I merely pointed out porting to x86 dramatically increased their userbase. Even if it was from 1000 users to 100,000, that's 100x increase.
There is no market there - vendors have been showing off appliance devices for four years - its still a useless gimmick forgotten shortly after Comdex.
I couldn't care less about the garbage showing at Comdex for the last four years. Mostly network computers and PDA's. The most popular IA's will be wireless ethernet enabled, and that has only recently been possible.
None of the big players were showing IA's four years ago were they? Not even one year ago. Now you have Intel, Microsoft, Compaq, Qubit, Sony, Be, QNX, Linux, ad infinitum.
Once again, if you really believe Be will be succesful, you can purchase a substantial part of the company when the market opens in the morning. What are you waiting for?
No, they are under two bucks and have been most of this week.
Sorry, I consider a stock that float an eight above and below $2 to be sitting at $2. Fine, we'll say they are at $1.50 for all I care. It's still 3x what they were a few weeks ago. The stock is just where I'd expect it to be for a company with no earnings to date.
I shorted that toilet paper a long time ago, and I can tell that I made at least ten times as much riding Be into the ground as you will make propping it up.
What are you, a fortune teller? Let's put it this way, a stock can go infinitely higher, but it can only drop to zero. You claiming that you've made 10x more than I can make on the way up is just stupid...
Apple's stock had an impressive run up in the last eighteen months (before the drop), and Be employees could have made some significant cash during that time. As it stands now, their Be stock is toilet paper.
I guess you missed the one where Be went from $3 to $40 in the span of, oh, one month back in November/December of 1999, due to rumors floating around that were untrue.
The point is, in the short run, who cares what the stock does? I'm investing for the long haul, and I imagine the engineers at Be are doing the same.
You might think you've made yourself look quite insightful with your contrary hooey, but the internet appliance market is still nascent, and is potentially empty. The more people try to obsolete the PC, the more it becomes the center of the electronic home. Face it, a generalized computing device with lots of hardware, loadable software, and a complex OS is going to be part of computing in the home and business for at least the next twenty years.
So I should exchange my opinions for your guesses?
Again, I never said I thought the IA's would replace PC's. But people love devices that are specific to one task and do it well. I could use my PC as a DVD player, but I don't, it's a pain in the ass. I could use my computer as a TV (Gateway tried that), but I don't, because it's a pain in the ass. I could use my computer as a stereo, but I don't, because it's a pain in the ass.
Get the idea? A generalized component is powerful but not easy to use. It makes sense that the IA market will be huge, because there are more normal people than geeks, and normal people want things that are easy and fun to use. IA's can deliver this.
Be, on the other hand, is on its deathbed.
Yeah right! Apparantly you've been under a rock during their recent huge announcements. Sony being the biggest, but FIC is huge in Asia. Then there's Qubit, one of the first delivering untethered webpads. Compaq will be using Be. The HARP reference platform has been getting very favorable commentary, and rumors abound about who is using it (many think Compaq's upcoming stereo component will). How often have you seen companies like Sony work with a company that's on "its deathbed" for such an important part of their company plans? Sony has said they want the eVilla to be the center of the household devices.
Be is very near being delisted and will likely be delisted ion the next twelve months given the current trend in its stock.
What are you smoking? Be was down to around 50 cents a few weeks ago, before the recent announcements. They hit $3, and are now holding at $2 for the past week or so. The stock got so low because there was NO NEWS from Be, no one knew what to expect, if they had good partners for IA's, etc. Then they dropped the Sony bomb! They'd been working with them in secret since last March -- who else is Be hiding?
(Incidentally, how it works is you're given a warning by NASDAQ if you trade below $1 for ten straight days. You then have 3 months to trade above $1 for ten straight days to avoid delisting.)
They're so succesful they can hardly stay in business.
Yeah, been doing hardly staying in business for more than 10 years now, too. Must be doing something right.
Given their brutalized finances and grim outlook,
Grim outlook? They've announced great partners for this emerging market that could explode in the next few months and years. The market is not dominated by any other OS maker. They are poised to do very well. Their burn rate is low. They are focused and doing good work, judging by the announcements. Grim outlook???
I can't figure out at all how you came to your absurd conclusions, but why not put your money where your mouth is and make a substantial investment in Be.
I have, smart ass... $20,000. I've averaged down since $15, now own 5,000 shares. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and sell some calls for BEOS? When Be goes above $5 (and is marginable again), will you short it? If not, why not? They are on their deathbed, after all...
Seriously, with a sizeable loan, you could end up owning a substantial part of the company.
Well smart ass, since only a minority of the company shares are public, I'd say you're dead wrong.
If Be is going to be the next Microsoft, you could easily turn $10 million now into $20 billion...
You're probably right, except I don't have 10 million, only $20,000. Still, I'll be happy with turning that into a shitload of money, thanks a lot.
but something tells me you know deep down that you are full of shit.
I don't know about that, but I have been following computers for 20 years, and Be for 5, and have been reading everything I can get my hands on about the IA market and BeIA specifically. I'd say I'm a little more informed than yourself on the entire matter, especially judging by your ignorant comments posted here.
That is the sweetest laptop I have ever seen, and there are a lot of people who agree. Apple is gonna make a fortune off those things.
You know that old saying, "We don't charge a dime for this product, but we make up for it in volume!"
And BTW, Apple is now at 733MHz, and should be going higher soon.
Well, I heard that a year or more ago with the last increase in speed... meanwhile Intel released Pentium 4 at 1.4Ghz, and they aren't stopping there, thanks to the x86 competition (Transmeta/AMD/Intel).
I realize comparing Mhz between PPC and x86 is not even keel, but still, why in the hell did it take Apple over a year to increase the speed?
BTW, the 15.2" screen is measured diagonally. I don't care if it's wide or tall, 15.2" is bigger than 15", which is bigger than most laptop screens. I.e. expensive. Titanium is expensive. Etc....
Yeah, like the outrageous 7 cents a minute I pay for my SprintPCS phone? BTW, ham radio might be free to use, but with cell phones you are paying for a superior service.
Roaming Charges
Switch to SprintPCS. I haven't roamed in years.
Contracts which hide the true cost of the service.
Hmmm, well the only surprise on my bill is the taxes charged by the government. My service costs $49 a month, never more + taxes.
Ham radio? It's nice to play with, but not convenient or nearly as useful.
The reason BeOS doesn't run on new Macs is that Gasse(sp?) hates Jobs. Simple as that.
Yeah, that truly makes sense. Gassee risks ruining his company because he doesn't like a former co-worker. Mm-Hmm...
Again, Be could have very easily used what LinuxPPC had done to get BeOS running on G3/G4s. I don't see LinuxPPC getting sued.
LinuxPPC and Be, Inc. are hardly the same thing. What happens if LinuxPPC gets sued? Perhaps the group disbands and forms elsewhere under different leadership.
What happens if Be, Inc. gets sued? Quite possibly, they are bankrupted in the process. (They are not exactly a big company with lots of money.)
There was a post to this effect, I believe by an Apple engineer, that if Be took two people and worked for a week they could get BeOS running on the G3s.
Well if we're going on hearsay, I also remember reading posts by Be employees that it could be done, but only by reverse engineering the code, something Be, Inc. did not want to risk, legally.
Apple makes money on hardware, anyway, I doubt they'd care that much if Be stole away a few users.
If this were actually how Apple felt, why not give Be the information they needed, without requiring them to reverse engineer the code and open themselves up to attack.
"Something they are doing with this system--and it's something they have not done in the past--is being price sensitive with PCs," Sargent said. "If you compare PowerBook to PC notebooks, the price-performance just hasn't been there."
The entry-level Titanium model sells for around $2,600, making it about the cheapest notebook that packs a 15-inch display.
Dulaney scoffed at the pricing, wondering how Apple could make any money on the Titanium.
"It must be a loss leader," he said. "There's no way Apple can sell titanium casing and that large a display and make money on this."
He also faulted Apple for using titanium casing, calling it a marketing ploy. "Complete titanium is a waste of money," Dulaney said.
Apple's low-cost, low-profit approach is simply "a way to gain market share," Dulaney said. "They're probably afraid of losing their core graphics or advertising talent."
As for "That's silly. In the portable market Intel uses dumbed-down chips so they don't eat as much power. AMD doesn't even have a portable chip. Apple uses a full-power G4 in the new Titanium PowerBooks."
Notice I grouped Transmeta/AMD/Intel together. I meant them as a group. Transmeta is doing great things with mobile chip design, AMD is now working with them. Intel will be releasing their cobbled chip to compete.
Meanwhile, yes Apple has just now started shipping faster mobile processors. How long until they are way behind again? They have never been able to keep up. I believe that platform has been at 500Mhz for the entire year of 2000.
And please, no one pull out the stupid integer performance tests and try and tell me 500Mhz PPC = 1Ghz x86!
As for higher prices, don't buy one.
Yeah, me and 95% of all other computer users. And that's exactly the problem Apple has faced! Duh!
I cannot claim to be proficient enough in Apple code to know what is needed for Be to legally get BeOS running on the G* platform, but I do know that when Be was focused on BeOS, Apple was not forthcoming with that information. The reason the Linux PPC crowd got it working was because they reverse-engineered the information they needed. It would not have been rational for Be to do that and open themselves up to lawsuits by Apple.
As for having the necessary source code shipping "for years" (huh?), where'd you hear that? Let's assume that what is available for Darwin is now enough for Be to port BeOS to G*... it's too late, they are focused on BeIA. Maybe down the road they'll re-evaluate, but it doesn't matter any more.
Apple made their bed, and now they'll lay in it. Instead of selling more hardware running BeOS and MacOS, they decided to try and screw Be.
Incidentally, I believe this pissing match started when BeOS was blowing away MacOS on the same hardware, back before G* closed them down...
And old Amiga users didn't care about it after it went solely to the x86 platform.
Umm, that's strange, it is still PPC/x86. Be can't help it if there are just more x86 users than PPC. No doubt PPC will fade entirely from the Be landscape eventually (unless something drastic changes), but that's market dynamics, not a choice by Be to phase out PPC. (More like a choice by Apple to cut off Be from their specs.)
So they effectively alienated (almost) everyone they could sell to, and are now left as an example of what not to do, much like NeXT.
Are you kidding? I haven't read anything this ludicrous in weeks. Where shall we start?
1. The x86 market is so much bigger than the PPC market, it's scary. Be ported to this platform, while keeping PPC. A brilliant move, their number of users skyrocketed.
2. Microsoft owns the desktop market. Period. End of story. Be tried, but could not compete against their tactics with exclusive OEM deals.
3. Be has now shifted to a market where they can be hugely successful: IA's. They've already started showing off some of their new partners.
If Be follows your good idea, they should stay on a relatively obscure platform (PPC), target themselves towards Mac users running old hardware (since Apple will not share the G* specs), and eventually run out of money and die.
It seems to me that the eventual boredom with the SETI@home client is due to the almost complete dearth of feedback or accomplishment. the information displayed on the client is interesting, but it changes very slowly and in a completely predictable way.
Yeah, I always thought they should add an "ET Counter" that displays the total number of aliens your computer has found so far!
to all you people who are bad mouthing and talking crap about people who mod their case, bugger off. aren't you the same people who "scream from the mountain tops" to think differently, to go your own way, to be an INDIVIDUAL? it's pathetic when people like you start talking crap about others, and then turn around and cry for freedom of expression when the roles are reversed.
I love people that think it's always THE SAME PEOPLE saying DIFFERENT THINGS on slashdot.
You do realize there are more than 12 people reading slashdot, right?
However, the DOJ is biased. They were one of the sides in the case, for pete's sake! So why does it matter that one of the sides in the case, which clearly is biased, says that the judge was not biased?
It boggles the mind why this completely obvious point warrants a headline on Slashdot.
Hey, at least they spared us "Microsoft declares Judge Jackson biased!" a couple months ago!
Errr... you do realize the quality of the MP3 is entirely dependent on the quality of the decoder you're using. What decoder is used in MusicMatch Jukebox?
I'm going to GPL it fairly soon, I just didn't want to see someone open up a clone of half-empty and oust me before things got started (via better advertising.. remember nebby == poor college kid) I'm not going to enforce it on banner ads or anything like that, really. The only situation I'm worried about like I said is a clone of half-empty.. the rest I could care less about.
I have already stolen the Glasscode, and would hearby like to announce my clone site for optimists called... Half-Full. Thank you, good night.
Slashdot Mirror
You, for example, seem to be pretty unhappy about the no G3 support issue. If Apple's so dead in the future, why do you want their hardware?
Are you kidding? I've never owned or wanted any Apple hardware. I'm perfectly content with my 1Ghz Athlon Tbird, and before that my Celeron 300 OC'd to 450 for $100, and before that.... etc.
Where did I ever say I want their hardware?
I'm not familiar with VMWare.
Are you saying the software running in VMWare cannot see the actual hardware on the machine?
Here's a simple test.
Do you see a big difference in quality between DVD and regular TV broadcast movies? Because HDTV is about twice as good as DVD (or more).
If you really can't see a difference, than you probably were not watching a properly adjusted HDTV, or it was not receiving a high quality HDTV signal.
Isent Microsoft Tieing lisences to the computer hardware it's self in it's next OS release?
No, Microsoft is just using technology to try and enforce what their licenses have always said: You have only purchased the rights to install and use this software on one machine at a time.
You're still going to be able to move to a new PC or hardware configuration, you just might have to call someone on the phone to do it (or maybe they'll have a better idea).
I mean, put 3 or 4 of those globes on the ground with the "engine" bowl above them and you get a great propulsion system. Suddenly the engine is the tires. :-)
Oh no, I can see it now. Ford, distressed over the entire mess with their Ford Explorers and the Gravestone tires takes a page out of Sun's book, and unveils their new motto...
"Ford. The engine is the tires."
-thomas
And the chances that it will go to zero are infinitely higher than it going anywhere near the positive territory needed to get you rich.
Says you, and from what I've read of your past postings, I'm not real impressed by your understanding of this emerging market.
You know, back before Bill Gates was getting rich at Microsoft, some guys at IBM told him (and several others, like Jobs) that there was no market for personal computers for average people.
In other words, people that thought they were so smart, so on top of things, could not see the market that was sitting right beneath their noses.
So why in the hell would I believe little ol' you when it comes to the IA market?
Stop all of this bullshit - BeOS was on PowerPC for one big reason - Gasse thought he could sell the company to Apple. (Think about it - would any company that really wanted to be in the OS business target Macs as their sole platform?
Go read the history of Be, please. It started running on Hobbit processors in the BeBox. From there, a small stone's throw to PPC, because at the time, the hardware platform for PPC was relatively open for all. After a while, Apple upgraded to G3 and closed down the specs, cutting Be off. They moved to x86 and never looked back.
There's no use holding a grudge against Apple for not buying your precious OS, because you can still go and run it on a nice Ghz Intel box.
Who the hell is holding a grudge? My entire point for posting was to point out how much better off I think Be is for the future, compared to Apple.
No one is doubting that more x86 chips are out there, but you are drawing a ridiculous conclusion regarding BeOS use from this. You need to come clean about the userbase for the BeOS...its probably in the NetBSD range. OpenBSD and Solaris x86 have larger userbases.
You are really getting annoying. Please re-read what I wrote. I never said it was a large userbase. The guy I was responding to intimated that staying with PPC would have been wise. I merely pointed out porting to x86 dramatically increased their userbase. Even if it was from 1000 users to 100,000, that's 100x increase.
There is no market there - vendors have been showing off appliance devices for four years - its still a useless gimmick forgotten shortly after Comdex.
I couldn't care less about the garbage showing at Comdex for the last four years. Mostly network computers and PDA's. The most popular IA's will be wireless ethernet enabled, and that has only recently been possible.
None of the big players were showing IA's four years ago were they? Not even one year ago. Now you have Intel, Microsoft, Compaq, Qubit, Sony, Be, QNX, Linux, ad infinitum.
Once again, if you really believe Be will be succesful, you can purchase a substantial part of the company when the market opens in the morning. What are you waiting for?
I already own all I can afford, ass.
-thomas
No, they are under two bucks and have been most of this week.
Sorry, I consider a stock that float an eight above and below $2 to be sitting at $2. Fine, we'll say they are at $1.50 for all I care. It's still 3x what they were a few weeks ago. The stock is just where I'd expect it to be for a company with no earnings to date.
I shorted that toilet paper a long time ago, and I can tell that I made at least ten times as much riding Be into the ground as you will make propping it up.
What are you, a fortune teller? Let's put it this way, a stock can go infinitely higher, but it can only drop to zero. You claiming that you've made 10x more than I can make on the way up is just stupid...
-thomas
Apple's stock had an impressive run up in the last eighteen months (before the drop), and Be employees could have made some significant cash during that time. As it stands now, their Be stock is toilet paper.
I guess you missed the one where Be went from $3 to $40 in the span of, oh, one month back in November/December of 1999, due to rumors floating around that were untrue.
The point is, in the short run, who cares what the stock does? I'm investing for the long haul, and I imagine the engineers at Be are doing the same.
You might think you've made yourself look quite insightful with your contrary hooey, but the internet appliance market is still nascent, and is potentially empty. The more people try to obsolete the PC, the more it becomes the center of the electronic home. Face it, a generalized computing device with lots of hardware, loadable software, and a complex OS is going to be part of computing in the home and business for at least the next twenty years.
So I should exchange my opinions for your guesses?
Again, I never said I thought the IA's would replace PC's. But people love devices that are specific to one task and do it well. I could use my PC as a DVD player, but I don't, it's a pain in the ass. I could use my computer as a TV (Gateway tried that), but I don't, because it's a pain in the ass. I could use my computer as a stereo, but I don't, because it's a pain in the ass.
Get the idea? A generalized component is powerful but not easy to use. It makes sense that the IA market will be huge, because there are more normal people than geeks, and normal people want things that are easy and fun to use. IA's can deliver this.
Be, on the other hand, is on its deathbed.
Yeah right! Apparantly you've been under a rock during their recent huge announcements. Sony being the biggest, but FIC is huge in Asia. Then there's Qubit, one of the first delivering untethered webpads. Compaq will be using Be. The HARP reference platform has been getting very favorable commentary, and rumors abound about who is using it (many think Compaq's upcoming stereo component will). How often have you seen companies like Sony work with a company that's on "its deathbed" for such an important part of their company plans? Sony has said they want the eVilla to be the center of the household devices.
Be is very near being delisted and will likely be delisted ion the next twelve months given the current trend in its stock.
What are you smoking? Be was down to around 50 cents a few weeks ago, before the recent announcements. They hit $3, and are now holding at $2 for the past week or so. The stock got so low because there was NO NEWS from Be, no one knew what to expect, if they had good partners for IA's, etc. Then they dropped the Sony bomb! They'd been working with them in secret since last March -- who else is Be hiding?
(Incidentally, how it works is you're given a warning by NASDAQ if you trade below $1 for ten straight days. You then have 3 months to trade above $1 for ten straight days to avoid delisting.)
They're so succesful they can hardly stay in business.
Yeah, been doing hardly staying in business for more than 10 years now, too. Must be doing something right.
Given their brutalized finances and grim outlook,
Grim outlook? They've announced great partners for this emerging market that could explode in the next few months and years. The market is not dominated by any other OS maker. They are poised to do very well. Their burn rate is low. They are focused and doing good work, judging by the announcements. Grim outlook???
I can't figure out at all how you came to your absurd conclusions, but why not put your money where your mouth is and make a substantial investment in Be.
I have, smart ass... $20,000. I've averaged down since $15, now own 5,000 shares. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and sell some calls for BEOS? When Be goes above $5 (and is marginable again), will you short it? If not, why not? They are on their deathbed, after all...
Seriously, with a sizeable loan, you could end up owning a substantial part of the company.
Well smart ass, since only a minority of the company shares are public, I'd say you're dead wrong.
If Be is going to be the next Microsoft, you could easily turn $10 million now into $20 billion...
You're probably right, except I don't have 10 million, only $20,000. Still, I'll be happy with turning that into a shitload of money, thanks a lot.
but something tells me you know deep down that you are full of shit.
I don't know about that, but I have been following computers for 20 years, and Be for 5, and have been reading everything I can get my hands on about the IA market and BeIA specifically. I'd say I'm a little more informed than yourself on the entire matter, especially judging by your ignorant comments posted here.
...what a loss-leader is?
That is the sweetest laptop I have ever seen, and there are a lot of people who agree. Apple is gonna make a fortune off those things.
You know that old saying, "We don't charge a dime for this product, but we make up for it in volume!"
And BTW, Apple is now at 733MHz, and should be going higher soon.
Well, I heard that a year or more ago with the last increase in speed... meanwhile Intel released Pentium 4 at 1.4Ghz, and they aren't stopping there, thanks to the x86 competition (Transmeta/AMD/Intel).
I realize comparing Mhz between PPC and x86 is not even keel, but still, why in the hell did it take Apple over a year to increase the speed?
BTW, the 15.2" screen is measured diagonally. I don't care if it's wide or tall, 15.2" is bigger than 15", which is bigger than most laptop screens. I.e. expensive. Titanium is expensive. Etc....
Other things ham radio lacks:
Outrageous per-minute fees
Yeah, like the outrageous 7 cents a minute I pay for my SprintPCS phone? BTW, ham radio might be free to use, but with cell phones you are paying for a superior service.
Roaming Charges
Switch to SprintPCS. I haven't roamed in years.
Contracts which hide the true cost of the service.
Hmmm, well the only surprise on my bill is the taxes charged by the government. My service costs $49 a month, never more + taxes.
Ham radio? It's nice to play with, but not convenient or nearly as useful.
What a dumb conversation this is.
The reason BeOS doesn't run on new Macs is that Gasse(sp?) hates Jobs. Simple as that.
Yeah, that truly makes sense. Gassee risks ruining his company because he doesn't like a former co-worker. Mm-Hmm...
Again, Be could have very easily used what LinuxPPC had done to get BeOS running on G3/G4s. I don't see LinuxPPC getting sued.
LinuxPPC and Be, Inc. are hardly the same thing. What happens if LinuxPPC gets sued? Perhaps the group disbands and forms elsewhere under different leadership.
What happens if Be, Inc. gets sued? Quite possibly, they are bankrupted in the process. (They are not exactly a big company with lots of money.)
There was a post to this effect, I believe by an Apple engineer, that if Be took two people and worked for a week they could get BeOS running on the G3s.
Well if we're going on hearsay, I also remember reading posts by Be employees that it could be done, but only by reverse engineering the code, something Be, Inc. did not want to risk, legally.
Apple makes money on hardware, anyway, I doubt they'd care that much if Be stole away a few users.
If this were actually how Apple felt, why not give Be the information they needed, without requiring them to reverse engineer the code and open themselves up to attack.
-thomas
From CNET News.com a few days ago:
"Something they are doing with this system--and it's something they have not done in the past--is being price sensitive with PCs," Sargent said. "If you compare PowerBook to PC notebooks, the price-performance just hasn't been there."
The entry-level Titanium model sells for around $2,600, making it about the cheapest notebook that packs a 15-inch display.
Dulaney scoffed at the pricing, wondering how Apple could make any money on the Titanium.
"It must be a loss leader," he said. "There's no way Apple can sell titanium casing and that large a display and make money on this."
He also faulted Apple for using titanium casing, calling it a marketing ploy. "Complete titanium is a waste of money," Dulaney said.
Apple's low-cost, low-profit approach is simply "a way to gain market share," Dulaney said. "They're probably afraid of losing their core graphics or advertising talent."
As for "That's silly. In the portable market Intel uses dumbed-down chips so they don't eat as much power. AMD doesn't even have a portable chip. Apple uses a full-power G4 in the new Titanium PowerBooks."
Notice I grouped Transmeta/AMD/Intel together. I meant them as a group. Transmeta is doing great things with mobile chip design, AMD is now working with them. Intel will be releasing their cobbled chip to compete.
Meanwhile, yes Apple has just now started shipping faster mobile processors. How long until they are way behind again? They have never been able to keep up. I believe that platform has been at 500Mhz for the entire year of 2000.
And please, no one pull out the stupid integer performance tests and try and tell me 500Mhz PPC = 1Ghz x86!
As for higher prices, don't buy one.
Yeah, me and 95% of all other computer users. And that's exactly the problem Apple has faced! Duh!
-thomas
I cannot claim to be proficient enough in Apple code to know what is needed for Be to legally get BeOS running on the G* platform, but I do know that when Be was focused on BeOS, Apple was not forthcoming with that information. The reason the Linux PPC crowd got it working was because they reverse-engineered the information they needed. It would not have been rational for Be to do that and open themselves up to lawsuits by Apple.
As for having the necessary source code shipping "for years" (huh?), where'd you hear that? Let's assume that what is available for Darwin is now enough for Be to port BeOS to G*... it's too late, they are focused on BeIA. Maybe down the road they'll re-evaluate, but it doesn't matter any more.
Apple made their bed, and now they'll lay in it. Instead of selling more hardware running BeOS and MacOS, they decided to try and screw Be.
Incidentally, I believe this pissing match started when BeOS was blowing away MacOS on the same hardware, back before G* closed them down...
-thomas
And old Amiga users didn't care about it after it went solely to the x86 platform.
Umm, that's strange, it is still PPC/x86. Be can't help it if there are just more x86 users than PPC. No doubt PPC will fade entirely from the Be landscape eventually (unless something drastic changes), but that's market dynamics, not a choice by Be to phase out PPC. (More like a choice by Apple to cut off Be from their specs.)
So they effectively alienated (almost) everyone they could sell to, and are now left as an example of what not to do, much like NeXT.
Are you kidding? I haven't read anything this ludicrous in weeks. Where shall we start?
1. The x86 market is so much bigger than the PPC market, it's scary. Be ported to this platform, while keeping PPC. A brilliant move, their number of users skyrocketed.
2. Microsoft owns the desktop market. Period. End of story. Be tried, but could not compete against their tactics with exclusive OEM deals.
3. Be has now shifted to a market where they can be hugely successful: IA's. They've already started showing off some of their new partners.
If Be follows your good idea, they should stay on a relatively obscure platform (PPC), target themselves towards Mac users running old hardware (since Apple will not share the G* specs), and eventually run out of money and die.
Yeah, you're right, much better plan!!
-thomas
It seems to me that the eventual boredom with the SETI@home client is due to the almost complete dearth of feedback or accomplishment. the information displayed on the client is interesting, but it changes very slowly and in a completely predictable way.
Yeah, I always thought they should add an "ET Counter" that displays the total number of aliens your computer has found so far!
Let's crack useless encryption keys instead!
OK, you met me so far. Let me throw in a few more things a cell phone can do:
- easy to use, even for a beginner
- convenience features abound
- direct calls to anyone
- new features like wireless web access, paging, etc.
to all you people who are bad mouthing and talking crap about people who mod their case, bugger off. aren't you the same people who "scream from the mountain tops" to think differently, to go your own way, to be an INDIVIDUAL? it's pathetic when people like you start talking crap about others, and then turn around and cry for freedom of expression when the roles are reversed.
I love people that think it's always THE SAME PEOPLE saying DIFFERENT THINGS on slashdot.
You do realize there are more than 12 people reading slashdot, right?
However, the DOJ is biased. They were one of the sides in the case, for pete's sake! So why does it matter that one of the sides in the case, which clearly is biased, says that the judge was not biased?
It boggles the mind why this completely obvious point warrants a headline on Slashdot.
Hey, at least they spared us "Microsoft declares Judge Jackson biased!" a couple months ago!
but we'll never know, now that cellphones have supplanted ham radios (and at much greater cost).
One question... can a ham radio fit in your pocket and weigh only 4 ounces?
Errr... you do realize the quality of the MP3 is entirely dependent on the quality of the decoder you're using. What decoder is used in MusicMatch Jukebox?
I'm going to GPL it fairly soon, I just didn't want to see someone open up a clone of half-empty and oust me before things got started (via better advertising.. remember nebby == poor college kid) I'm not going to enforce it on banner ads or anything like that, really. The only situation I'm worried about like I said is a clone of half-empty.. the rest I could care less about.
... Half-Full. Thank you, good night.
I have already stolen the Glasscode, and would hearby like to announce my clone site for optimists called
-thomas