I think the difference is the amount of risk involved. Innovation involves coming up with ideas for new products that may not prove to be desirable to the market. Indeed most of the time innovation fails.
What Apple does is generally pretty much certain to succeed because others have proven the existence of a market and indeed developed that market.
I don't think Apple and Microsoft are really very different at this conceptual level. They both seek develop and refine products in market areas that are opened up by the innovation of others.
You're quite right that Apple's business is in making very stylish and well designed products. My contention is that this is not innovation but rather it is refinement.
This isn't criticism. There's a place for companies and people that innovate, and a place for those that refine. My point is that Apple do the latter, and do it very well indeed.
I really don't understand why people think that Apple are innovative. Would someone like to highlight which products are truly original Apple innovations?
Read the comments. It seems that the editors are the haters but the readers and commenters seem to be a little more balanced. Perhaps the editors should take notice of the slew of comments berating their bias everytime they print FUD concerning MS and become a little more rational.
I don't actually think the original poster was suggesting that Slashdot should be a MS fansite. What he said was that Slashdot would be better if it had a bit more balanced reporting.
Well, you can use all the same GNU tools on Windows as you can on other UNIX-a-like systems.
Perhaps you would like to be concrete and give an example of something that can be done easily at the Linux command line but that is not feasible at the Windows command line.
Here at SD West this week there have been a handful of talks about Silverlight, but nothing about Flash. I guess that's because Silverlight is new and everyone already knows how to do Flash.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism/ says this about Prism:
Prism is a simple XULRunner based browser that hosts web applications without the normal web browser user interface. Prism is based on a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSB). An SSB is an application with an embedded browser designed to work exclusively with a single web application. It doesn't have the menus, toolbars and accoutrements of a normal web browser. Some people have called it a "distraction free browser" because none of the typical browser chrome is used. An SSB also has a tighter integration with the OS and desktop than a typical web application running through a web browser. In other words it's a web browser without the chrome.
Thus it's nothing like the AIR and Silverlight frameworks. Would someone like to explain why people keep lumping Prism and AIR/Silverlight together? Is it because they don't want Mozilla to feel left out?
The Register all reported this two days ago:
Director of new media and technology Ashley Highfield said the impact of iPlayer on ISP networks has been "negligible", with traffic representing a "few per cent" of overall bandwidth. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/iplayer_flash_iphone/
Seems like it can't quite make up its mind what it thinks.
Are there any companies outside USA that owns top-level blocks? I know the Internet was invented in USA, by Al Gore I believe;-), but it's not really in the long term interests of the USA to hoard so many addresses.
I thought the author of the FUD would have been kdawson but it turns out to be Malda! What's the point of editors if they don't even bother to check the facts, read the stories etc?
His single file copy test was a bunch of files from a flash drive. He copied them three times before SP1, and three times after. He then reports average times, but no reporting of variation. That's not exactly serious benchmarking now is it.
To be fair to PC World they do say that this is informal and preliminary and they will publish comprehensive results in due course. My criticism is that this makes front page of Slashdot (the reason of course is that it's somewhat critical of Vista and therefore of course is great news here in anti-MS FUD world).
It astonished me that stories about Mark Russinovich's blog post on Vista file copying (including changes implemented for SP1 after customer feedback) were rejected.
It strikes me as feeble that the Slashdot crowd all scream FUD! whenever MS are guilty of it (frequently), but then commit the same sin themselves in the other direction.
And the other thing that hacks me off is that this post will no doubt be modded flamebait or troll which means worse karma (got none anyhow) and therefore no voice. It's an interesting effect of the Slashdot moderation scheme that any criticism of Slashdot is suppressed. Free speech doesn't flourish here (unless you follow the herd!)
Slashdot is many things but news it ain't. Microsoft release a service pack for their OS. They do this because they need to change things. So they decide to use a different version number from the previous release of the OS. How on earth can that be a surprise to anyone? Please can someone explain the significance of that? When was any OS updated without the version and build numbers changing?
One of the most respected experts on Windows internals blogs all about the technical details behind the much discussed Vista copy issues, and about what MS have done to improve things with SP1. And that post languishes in the Firehose? Has anyone else here heard of Mark Russinovich? Or Sysinternals? Or is it just me?!
Slashdot Mirror
.....that the C++ language needs to improve!
Well I think it's refinement.
I think the difference is the amount of risk involved. Innovation involves coming up with ideas for new products that may not prove to be desirable to the market. Indeed most of the time innovation fails.
What Apple does is generally pretty much certain to succeed because others have proven the existence of a market and indeed developed that market.
I don't think Apple and Microsoft are really very different at this conceptual level. They both seek develop and refine products in market areas that are opened up by the innovation of others.
You're quite right that Apple's business is in making very stylish and well designed products. My contention is that this is not innovation but rather it is refinement.
This isn't criticism. There's a place for companies and people that innovate, and a place for those that refine. My point is that Apple do the latter, and do it very well indeed.
Invented at Xerox PARC I believe.
Next.
I really don't understand why people think that Apple are innovative. Would someone like to highlight which products are truly original Apple innovations?
Read the comments. It seems that the editors are the haters but the readers and commenters seem to be a little more balanced. Perhaps the editors should take notice of the slew of comments berating their bias everytime they print FUD concerning MS and become a little more rational.
I don't actually think the original poster was suggesting that Slashdot should be a MS fansite. What he said was that Slashdot would be better if it had a bit more balanced reporting.
Even if the security of your car is entirely in your hands you should wear a belt, unless you are the first infallible human being in history.
Well, you can use all the same GNU tools on Windows as you can on other UNIX-a-like systems.
Perhaps you would like to be concrete and give an example of something that can be done easily at the Linux command line but that is not feasible at the Windows command line.
I guess you didn't detect my sarcasm.
Heck, I wish those guys at Apple and Microsoft would catch up and add support for the command line....
Here at SD West this week there have been a handful of talks about Silverlight, but nothing about Flash. I guess that's because Silverlight is new and everyone already knows how to do Flash.
Thus it's nothing like the AIR and Silverlight frameworks. Would someone like to explain why people keep lumping Prism and AIR/Silverlight together? Is it because they don't want Mozilla to feel left out?
Seems like it can't quite make up its mind what it thinks.
Are there any companies outside USA that owns top-level blocks? I know the Internet was invented in USA, by Al Gore I believe ;-), but it's not really in the long term interests of the USA to hoard so many addresses.
I thought the author of the FUD would have been kdawson but it turns out to be Malda! What's the point of editors if they don't even bother to check the facts, read the stories etc?
What's a "death knoll"? Are MS going to be wiped out by some evil killer hillock? Or will it they be put out to graze on a grassy knoll?
Developers, developers, developers.
Ballmer was right all along.
True this time, but how do you think my karma got so bad before?
I guess I was just a bit more eloquent this time.
His single file copy test was a bunch of files from a flash drive. He copied them three times before SP1, and three times after. He then reports average times, but no reporting of variation. That's not exactly serious benchmarking now is it.
To be fair to PC World they do say that this is informal and preliminary and they will publish comprehensive results in due course. My criticism is that this makes front page of Slashdot (the reason of course is that it's somewhat critical of Vista and therefore of course is great news here in anti-MS FUD world).
It astonished me that stories about Mark Russinovich's blog post on Vista file copying (including changes implemented for SP1 after customer feedback) were rejected.
It strikes me as feeble that the Slashdot crowd all scream FUD! whenever MS are guilty of it (frequently), but then commit the same sin themselves in the other direction.
And the other thing that hacks me off is that this post will no doubt be modded flamebait or troll which means worse karma (got none anyhow) and therefore no voice. It's an interesting effect of the Slashdot moderation scheme that any criticism of Slashdot is suppressed. Free speech doesn't flourish here (unless you follow the herd!)
The very fact that this story makes it to the front page but http://it.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=504352/ remains unloved in the Firehose pretty much epitomises what is rubbish about Slashdot.
Slashdot is many things but news it ain't. Microsoft release a service pack for their OS. They do this because they need to change things. So they decide to use a different version number from the previous release of the OS. How on earth can that be a surprise to anyone? Please can someone explain the significance of that? When was any OS updated without the version and build numbers changing?
One of the most respected experts on Windows internals blogs all about the technical details behind the much discussed Vista copy issues, and about what MS have done to improve things with SP1. And that post languishes in the Firehose? Has anyone else here heard of Mark Russinovich? Or Sysinternals? Or is it just me?!
It's called the bicycle
When do MS release software that breaks backwards compatibility?
First chapter would have to be the endless bashing of Windows by people who know nothing about it!