I've said it before and have been repeating it for a couple of years... Microsoft no longer wants to be in the software business. They have been coasting on their past successes for years now, doing just the bare minimum updates to their core products, while desperately looking for a way to enter some other market (video games, various media, music, web services, search, etc.) Every big move they've made in the last few years has been in other directions besides software. Most of the work they do on their software has the feel of an afterthought. This memo is no real revelation, just a confirmation of what, to me at least, seems very obvious: they don't want to be a software company anymore.
That's my point. They may have one or two places on their site where they compare OS X to Linux or show some story of a Linux user switching but I have yet to see the kind of outright attack on Linux that they do on Windows and Microsoft. There are no organized or highly visible campaigns pitting OS X against Linux. Given some of their similarities (and I bet Apple realizes this) arguments against Linux can work both ways with OS X. It would be like Microsoft promoting XP on the basis that Win2K sucked.
I've never seen Apple pit its OS against Linux. Do you have a link to some examples? Apple always pokes and prods Microsoft but I've never once seen them take a jab at Linux.
I'm a Mac user and I'm not trying to start an argument with you, but I rarely find any software needs lacking on the Mac. I could have understood this 6 years ago, but since Apple's move to OS X, there has been an outright explosion of software, most of it freebies and ported Unix goodies with a snazzy Cocoa interfaced slapped on it (Cronnix and Cyberduck are good examples.) There has even been a massive resurgence in games (still not as much as Windows but it's nowhere near as bad as it was back in the days of OS 9.)
So I'm just curious if you'll explain what it was you were trying to do. I imagine it has to be something fairly esoteric.
Sony could not set a price low enough for me to do business with them, and this coming from someone who, at one time, religiously bought Sony products every time I could--even when they were more expensive than the competition. 10-12 years ago, their products were the absolute best, but then they started cranking out utter crap, refusing to properly honor their warranties and destroyed their reputation. And they've relentlessly gone downhill ever since. Their little rootkit incident just being the latest sign that they are the suckieset company on the planet and to be avoided at all costs.
So, Sony could price these things at 2 cents and I wouldn't touch them.
I understand that. I was wondering what the real world events were that caused it, especially for such a prolonged period of time. As the other responses here explain, it turns out it was some big customers jumping back and forth.
I've dealt with both Apache and IIS professionally and by far--by far!--I have encountered the most issues with IIS, from little annoyances to full-blown meltdowns. I'm not sure how IIS survives in the market place when its competitor is more robust, functions better and is free. Chalk one up to the marketing people at MS, I guess.
The chart marked "Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - October 2005" is interesting. I'm not entirely sure I understand what it means, but July 2001 and June 2004 show an almost mirror image in terms of the blue and red lines (Apache and MS.) When one goes up, the other goes down and vice-versa. Strange. I wonder what exactly was happening during that time period to cause that.
Apart from being a semi-entertaining curmudgeon on This Week in Tech, what does Dvorak do or say anymore that is relevant or interesting? Why continue to help his site traffic by reporting him here? I bet there are bloggers out there with more relevant and interesting things to say (example: Daring Fireball) who give off more light than heat when they criticize Apple. Why not give them a shot at the Slashdot front page?
And yeah, I know he predicted the move to Intel but stand that one success up against the staggering trail of wrong predictions in his career and you've got a guy who has made a career out of pulling things out of his ass. It's like the old saying: even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
This is precisely the kind of naysaying that was out there about the iPod when it first came out and it was repeated when the iTunes Music Store made its debut and came back with the intro of the iPod Mini. At what point to tech writers finally throw in the towel and admit that they're just pulling these views out of their ass?
Not very many people were buying music online or music players at the time the iPod came out. But that's irrelevant from what I can tell. It seems to me that Apple finds markets where people think there isn't one by taking a good idea and making it accessible to non-geeks. End of story.
There are other analogs out there to this. Remember what the Internet was like prior to the World Wide Web and Netscape and AOL (shudder) making it accessible to normal human beings? The popularity of the Internet utterly exploded when those came about because suddenly non-geeks could use it. Prior to that, I bet lots of people who use the web on a daily basis would have claimed no need for a computer in their life. A market was created by de-geeking it.
Once they've done that and once they do it in a way that makes sense to people who don't live and work 24/7 behind a keyboard, then they've got a hot product on their hands and a market where nobody saw one before. That's why all these "iPod killers" that have come and gone have failed to make a dent in Apple's dominance. It's not the hardware superiority. It's the overall design, the iPod and how easy it is to use with iTunes and the music store and how well designed it is and the interface and blah blah blah.
So anyone who thinks Apple is going to flub the video iPod is failing to learn from history. Now that TV shows can be downloaded and watched without having to use torrents or Usenet or complicated tools to reassemble large files or download codecs that make it playable, it will certainly be a success. And there are loads of people out there more than happy to pay $2 to avoid all that hassle.
Oh and "I have to keep a close eye on what my kid sees on the covers of the game boxes." wow, just wow.
Wow just wow, huh? That's your response? To try to discredit my argument by casting me as some kind of uptight control freak? Think again.
The problem is that every child is born with different tempraments. My son can deal with things like that, but my daughter has always been very sensitive and some of the junk plainly visible in Toys-R-Us can give her nightmares and scare the living hell out of her. So I do my best to keep her clear of that, but it's not always possible because too many marketing practices are indifferent about that. About a year ago, she was watching the Disney channel which I consider to be fairly safe and the ad for Pirates of the Carribbean came on, prime time, with the pirate-head-turning-to-skull effect. Thanks, Disney! Two nights of nightmares for that.
Oh but I know... it's easier to try to insult people instead of hearing them out. And that's the wrong attitude. And that's why the video game industry will continue to pretend it's not their problem and legislators will continue to waste their time and our tax money creating laws to control it. Like I said in another post here, I'm not sure which side to take. Both sides suck.
The issue is that I've been playing violent computer games since I was 12 (I'm now 18) and I'm not violent
Same here, but people like you and me are not the problem.
Most importantly, video games do not cause violence. You know what causes school masacares? Mentally unstable kids being bullied and abused in school. That and the ready availability of guns and amunition in the united states... Nothing to do with Doom though.
You're oversimplifying this in the same way as those who want to ban video games. The problem isn't well-adjusted people playing violent games. I play violent games too. I know that games don't cause violent behavior in well-adjusted people. The problem is children who are born with some predisposition to violent or aggressive behavior being coupled with inattentive parents and a society pushing violence into their face at every turn. Those kids can and do take all that and act on it. So don't oversimplify by saying, "Well, I'm not violent and I play games." Sadly, not all gamers are like you.
And furthermore, it is true that children exposed to this kind of stuff young enough and often enough are affected by it. Children are perfect mimics. Show them videos of people attacking and killing each other, and they will learn that that's okay behavior. That's beyond argument at this point. I've witnessed it myself.
And to those of you claiming that the industry is going a great job policing itself... PLEASE! Just slapping ratings on the box is the least they can do, and if I recall, they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to do that too. I love video games, but I'm under no delusions that the industry is doing a good job assuming the sort of responsibility that comes with their work. I think some of you can't separate your enjoyment of the games from the corporations that produce them and end up defending people acting purely on greed with no concern for any social responsibilities they may have.
I love the logic as expressed by the average Slashdot poster (usually an AC, but not always.) You point to parents and claim that they are the ones with the responsibility and that parents shouldn't expect society to raise their child.
Precisely! But some of you are clearly not experienced enough to know what the hell you're even talking about or how complicated that proposition gets.
I am a parent. I don't want society raising my children. In that regard, I don't want society shoving overtly violent or sexual imagery into my childrens' faces at every turn. I want to raise my child... not society and not corporate entertainment industries (that includes video game companies.) I want to make decisions about what imagery and content is appropriate for my child. I don't need advertisers, movies and video game companies deciding what's appropriate to put out there for my children.
So, when you say you don't think "society should raise your child," I agree.
And if you think video game companies are all about over-the-counter game sales, then you're fooling yourself. Look around. Violent video game imagery is gradually saturating our society and I don't care to be pummelled with that at every turn. Even now, I have to keep my kids away from the video games in most movie theater lobbies because some of them are ridiculously violent--more violent than some of the crap on the movies playing there. I have to carefully watch what games are demoed at Toys-R-Us. I have to keep a close eye on what my kid sees on the covers of the game boxes.
It's not all just parents monitoring what their kids are buying and playing. I wish that's all it was. That's the easy part. That's not what inspires this kind of legislation. If you think that's all this is about, then get outside more often. And stop griping at this strawman argument about inattentive parents you've propped up. That's not even the half of it.
I abhor overreaching government intrusion into these kinds of things, but the video game industry has had ample time to step up to the plate on this. This has been an issue for over five years at this point. The film and tobacco industries self-regulate to some degree in this regard. There's no reason video game companies couldn't have done the socially responsible thing and headed this kind of thing off. It still may not be too late, but when money-grubbing video game companies and their corporate parents carry on like they don't give a shit, then I find myself extremely unsympathic to reactions against this kind of legislation.
I posted my opinion here on Slashdot a couple years ago and I continue to stand by my prediction. The video iPod will be one part of a bigger system that will allow you to play videos on things other than iPods. Apple has all kinds of things in place for this to happen and could possibly augment it with a full-blown movie download store too. Apple already has iPods that can connect to TVs to show photo slideshows, they have all wide-screen monitors (excepting the iBooks) and have wireless technology built into everything at this point. They also have introduced seemingly puzzling things like Airport Express for streaming your music to your stereo. I say the video iPod will come out with a movie store. You can play on your wide-screen Mac, stream the movies from your Mac to your TV or port the movie around on your iPod to play somewhere else if you want. I'm sure there will be other features that I couldn't guess but that will be the core of it.
Before writing this off, bear in mind that there have been rumors about an Apple-branded set-top device floating around for a while that could play some role in all this.
And also, remember which computer company also has a CEO who also runs a well-respected animation company, a CEO that shares the movie industry's concerns and can "speak their language." If any computer company will get such a system together, I think Apple will be the one.
Maybe I'm naive because I'm not a "security guru" but it just seems to me that there will likely never be a Windows-style virus explosion on OS X. Every time I hear about a Windows virus making the rounds, I go read about how it works and it occurs to me that it simply wouldn't happen on OS X (big market share or not) because of the conservative default settings that Apple ships their machines with (all unnecessary services and ports closed, no automatic activities in apps, etc.) or because you would need a root account to do certain things (OS X's admin account isn't like a Windows admin account--at least from what I've read.) So why do people keep predicting this stuff? Is there some solid, technical reason to think it might happen or are tech writers just pulling this stuff out of their ass so they can someday turn around and say, "HA! I told ya so" if it ever does happen?
You know, as a long-time Mac user who watched every interesting idea that Apple had in the mid- to late-90s and in the early 2000s be greeted with words like "beleagured" and "struggling" and predictions that they were going out of business any day, I find it extraordinarily ironic to hear people complain that Apple is being treated as a media darling (which they are not.)
Even today, there are still lingering attitudes about Apple. How many articles have we seen in the last two years predicting the imminent arrival of devastating viruses to the Mac? How many articles have we seen explaining why Macs are no more secure? How many articles have we seen trying to play up the nonexistent virus threat while downplaying the simple fact that there isn't a single virus for OS X yet.
And yet, people compain that someone in the media might be too nice to Apple.
I stopped reading the article after about 6-7 paragraphs. There is a subtle defensive posture this guy is taking. Every advantage that Apple has is tempered by a caveat about Microsoft that you may have forgotten if you are one of those silly fools who underestimate the mighty power of Microsoft. At least, that's the message I was getting, between the lines.
I mean, c'mon. To shrug off Apple's spotlight as essentially meaningless because a "mass market" isn't using it is just overly defensive tripe coming from someone who doesn't want to admit that his beloved MS has been one-upped. Spotlight has massively changed how I use my computer and has increased my efficiency in surprising and unexpected way. That has nothing to do with mass market use. I don't understand that statement and Thurrott offers no explanation.
Also, the idea that Windows betas are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of features and you can always expect more when MS has spent the last couple of years scaling back expectations on Longhorn/Vista is just plain ludicrous. This guy is an apologist to the core presenting himself as a non-biased observer. I don't buy his spin.
Mr. Thurrott, you can explain away the stuff that makes you uncomfortable by couching them in imagined advantages that MS has, but the simple fact is Apple is already shipping these things and MS is still talking about it. Microsoft has mounted a great marketing campaign supplemented by glimpses of a beta. Meanwhile, I'm actually using spotlight.
That's like telling a guy lost in the desert that he shouldn't stop at the little pool of water but should pass by and continue crawling to that big pool he can almost see miles away... just keep going... a little further... hope it's not a mirage.
Anyone here ever play Quake Team Fortress and get hit by that particularly obnoxious weapon (can't recall which character class has it) that causes you to go temporarily insane? You start having hallucinations, seeing flashes of lighting and hearing sounds and seeing imagery that doesn't make sense. The best you can do is go park yourself somewhere safe and wait for it to pass otherwise you end up shooting at things and reacting to stuff that isn't there while potentially writing off real dangers are hallucinatory. It's a real tough thing to deal with.
So, could such a thing undo Nintendo's patent? I get sick to death of corporate pinheads trying to patent every idea under the sun.
Seems that big corporations like MS want the good side of capitalism (the money-making bit) without the annoyances of the bad (competition.) People should be free to leave companies and use whatever they can take in their own heads with them. If they go to a competitor, so what? Of they start their own business doing the same, so what? Isn't competition good for the system? That's what I was told growing up.
Or maybe tech companies could avoid this mess by treating employees like life-long investments, treating talented and intelligent people like an integral part of the company instead of an expense, instead of treating them as a resource to be drained and discarded, instead of outsourcing their jobs when they become inconvenient or too expensive, instead of making them sign restrictive employment contracts, instead of hiring them on in a temporary basis, instead of cutting back benefits. Maybe then employees wouldn't feel the need to leave and go to a competitor.
Oh, that's right. That would require companies to compete to retain employees. I forgot... they don't want to do that. They just want the money, no matter who gets walked on.
Read my comment more closely. I said a substantial market. Apple took what was a floundering market and packaged it all in a way that made sense and they ran with it.
Apple lovers are sure good with revisionist history.
So are Apple haters. And for the record, I'm not an "Apple lover." I just have a good enough memory to recall that prior to iTunes there were a few half-assed attempts at doing online music sales along with a mishmash of hardware that was confusing to the average user. Apple pulled it all together in a few simple, inter-working products. That's their forte. No surprise. And it worked and continues to work. There is no revisionism here.
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You still haven't shown any evidence for that. A story on Apple's site about a Linux user switching isn't what you're talking about.
Apple's argument is simple: "Linux is technically OK, but its GUI is unusable for normal people".
Show me some evidence for this. I have never heard this.
That's my point. They may have one or two places on their site where they compare OS X to Linux or show some story of a Linux user switching but I have yet to see the kind of outright attack on Linux that they do on Windows and Microsoft. There are no organized or highly visible campaigns pitting OS X against Linux. Given some of their similarities (and I bet Apple realizes this) arguments against Linux can work both ways with OS X. It would be like Microsoft promoting XP on the basis that Win2K sucked.
So I'm just curious if you'll explain what it was you were trying to do. I imagine it has to be something fairly esoteric.
So, Sony could price these things at 2 cents and I wouldn't touch them.
I wouldn't use IIS to serve HTML either,
I've dealt with both Apache and IIS professionally and by far--by far!--I have encountered the most issues with IIS, from little annoyances to full-blown meltdowns. I'm not sure how IIS survives in the market place when its competitor is more robust, functions better and is free. Chalk one up to the marketing people at MS, I guess.
And yeah, I know he predicted the move to Intel but stand that one success up against the staggering trail of wrong predictions in his career and you've got a guy who has made a career out of pulling things out of his ass. It's like the old saying: even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
Not very many people were buying music online or music players at the time the iPod came out. But that's irrelevant from what I can tell. It seems to me that Apple finds markets where people think there isn't one by taking a good idea and making it accessible to non-geeks. End of story.
There are other analogs out there to this. Remember what the Internet was like prior to the World Wide Web and Netscape and AOL (shudder) making it accessible to normal human beings? The popularity of the Internet utterly exploded when those came about because suddenly non-geeks could use it. Prior to that, I bet lots of people who use the web on a daily basis would have claimed no need for a computer in their life. A market was created by de-geeking it.
Once they've done that and once they do it in a way that makes sense to people who don't live and work 24/7 behind a keyboard, then they've got a hot product on their hands and a market where nobody saw one before. That's why all these "iPod killers" that have come and gone have failed to make a dent in Apple's dominance. It's not the hardware superiority. It's the overall design, the iPod and how easy it is to use with iTunes and the music store and how well designed it is and the interface and blah blah blah.
So anyone who thinks Apple is going to flub the video iPod is failing to learn from history. Now that TV shows can be downloaded and watched without having to use torrents or Usenet or complicated tools to reassemble large files or download codecs that make it playable, it will certainly be a success. And there are loads of people out there more than happy to pay $2 to avoid all that hassle.
Wow just wow, huh? That's your response? To try to discredit my argument by casting me as some kind of uptight control freak? Think again.
The problem is that every child is born with different tempraments. My son can deal with things like that, but my daughter has always been very sensitive and some of the junk plainly visible in Toys-R-Us can give her nightmares and scare the living hell out of her. So I do my best to keep her clear of that, but it's not always possible because too many marketing practices are indifferent about that. About a year ago, she was watching the Disney channel which I consider to be fairly safe and the ad for Pirates of the Carribbean came on, prime time, with the pirate-head-turning-to-skull effect. Thanks, Disney! Two nights of nightmares for that.
Oh but I know... it's easier to try to insult people instead of hearing them out. And that's the wrong attitude. And that's why the video game industry will continue to pretend it's not their problem and legislators will continue to waste their time and our tax money creating laws to control it. Like I said in another post here, I'm not sure which side to take. Both sides suck.
Same here, but people like you and me are not the problem.
Most importantly, video games do not cause violence. You know what causes school masacares? Mentally unstable kids being bullied and abused in school. That and the ready availability of guns and amunition in the united states... Nothing to do with Doom though.
You're oversimplifying this in the same way as those who want to ban video games. The problem isn't well-adjusted people playing violent games. I play violent games too. I know that games don't cause violent behavior in well-adjusted people. The problem is children who are born with some predisposition to violent or aggressive behavior being coupled with inattentive parents and a society pushing violence into their face at every turn. Those kids can and do take all that and act on it. So don't oversimplify by saying, "Well, I'm not violent and I play games." Sadly, not all gamers are like you.
And furthermore, it is true that children exposed to this kind of stuff young enough and often enough are affected by it. Children are perfect mimics. Show them videos of people attacking and killing each other, and they will learn that that's okay behavior. That's beyond argument at this point. I've witnessed it myself.
And to those of you claiming that the industry is going a great job policing itself... PLEASE! Just slapping ratings on the box is the least they can do, and if I recall, they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to do that too. I love video games, but I'm under no delusions that the industry is doing a good job assuming the sort of responsibility that comes with their work. I think some of you can't separate your enjoyment of the games from the corporations that produce them and end up defending people acting purely on greed with no concern for any social responsibilities they may have.
Precisely! But some of you are clearly not experienced enough to know what the hell you're even talking about or how complicated that proposition gets.
I am a parent. I don't want society raising my children. In that regard, I don't want society shoving overtly violent or sexual imagery into my childrens' faces at every turn. I want to raise my child... not society and not corporate entertainment industries (that includes video game companies.) I want to make decisions about what imagery and content is appropriate for my child. I don't need advertisers, movies and video game companies deciding what's appropriate to put out there for my children.
So, when you say you don't think "society should raise your child," I agree.
And if you think video game companies are all about over-the-counter game sales, then you're fooling yourself. Look around. Violent video game imagery is gradually saturating our society and I don't care to be pummelled with that at every turn. Even now, I have to keep my kids away from the video games in most movie theater lobbies because some of them are ridiculously violent--more violent than some of the crap on the movies playing there. I have to carefully watch what games are demoed at Toys-R-Us. I have to keep a close eye on what my kid sees on the covers of the game boxes.
It's not all just parents monitoring what their kids are buying and playing. I wish that's all it was. That's the easy part. That's not what inspires this kind of legislation. If you think that's all this is about, then get outside more often. And stop griping at this strawman argument about inattentive parents you've propped up. That's not even the half of it.
I abhor overreaching government intrusion into these kinds of things, but the video game industry has had ample time to step up to the plate on this. This has been an issue for over five years at this point. The film and tobacco industries self-regulate to some degree in this regard. There's no reason video game companies couldn't have done the socially responsible thing and headed this kind of thing off. It still may not be too late, but when money-grubbing video game companies and their corporate parents carry on like they don't give a shit, then I find myself extremely unsympathic to reactions against this kind of legislation.
Before writing this off, bear in mind that there have been rumors about an Apple-branded set-top device floating around for a while that could play some role in all this.
And also, remember which computer company also has a CEO who also runs a well-respected animation company, a CEO that shares the movie industry's concerns and can "speak their language." If any computer company will get such a system together, I think Apple will be the one.
I hope they do. >:^)
Even today, there are still lingering attitudes about Apple. How many articles have we seen in the last two years predicting the imminent arrival of devastating viruses to the Mac? How many articles have we seen explaining why Macs are no more secure? How many articles have we seen trying to play up the nonexistent virus threat while downplaying the simple fact that there isn't a single virus for OS X yet.
And yet, people compain that someone in the media might be too nice to Apple.
More like Vista will be shipping when 10.6 is out.
I mean, c'mon. To shrug off Apple's spotlight as essentially meaningless because a "mass market" isn't using it is just overly defensive tripe coming from someone who doesn't want to admit that his beloved MS has been one-upped. Spotlight has massively changed how I use my computer and has increased my efficiency in surprising and unexpected way. That has nothing to do with mass market use. I don't understand that statement and Thurrott offers no explanation.
Also, the idea that Windows betas are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of features and you can always expect more when MS has spent the last couple of years scaling back expectations on Longhorn/Vista is just plain ludicrous. This guy is an apologist to the core presenting himself as a non-biased observer. I don't buy his spin.
Mr. Thurrott, you can explain away the stuff that makes you uncomfortable by couching them in imagined advantages that MS has, but the simple fact is Apple is already shipping these things and MS is still talking about it. Microsoft has mounted a great marketing campaign supplemented by glimpses of a beta. Meanwhile, I'm actually using spotlight.
That's like telling a guy lost in the desert that he shouldn't stop at the little pool of water but should pass by and continue crawling to that big pool he can almost see miles away... just keep going... a little further... hope it's not a mirage.
So, could such a thing undo Nintendo's patent? I get sick to death of corporate pinheads trying to patent every idea under the sun.
Or maybe tech companies could avoid this mess by treating employees like life-long investments, treating talented and intelligent people like an integral part of the company instead of an expense, instead of treating them as a resource to be drained and discarded, instead of outsourcing their jobs when they become inconvenient or too expensive, instead of making them sign restrictive employment contracts, instead of hiring them on in a temporary basis, instead of cutting back benefits. Maybe then employees wouldn't feel the need to leave and go to a competitor.
Oh, that's right. That would require companies to compete to retain employees. I forgot... they don't want to do that. They just want the money, no matter who gets walked on.
Illegal downloads? No, that was a symptom.
The sickness was overpriced CDs.
Here we go again. These idiots can't get around their own greed to see a good thing when they have it.
Note to Steve Jobs: you can lead a music industry horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Read my comment more closely. I said a substantial market. Apple took what was a floundering market and packaged it all in a way that made sense and they ran with it.
Apple lovers are sure good with revisionist history.
So are Apple haters. And for the record, I'm not an "Apple lover." I just have a good enough memory to recall that prior to iTunes there were a few half-assed attempts at doing online music sales along with a mishmash of hardware that was confusing to the average user. Apple pulled it all together in a few simple, inter-working products. That's their forte. No surprise. And it worked and continues to work. There is no revisionism here.