Google benefits because they can now easily sync to Exchange servers. Before, Google's Exchange synchronization tool required you to keep Outlook as you default Email account and have it installed on your PC and your PC up and running and logged into your account. Even then, it wasn't too smooth.
By licensing ActiveSync, Google can now synchronize their calendar (and gmail) to people's MS Exchange server calenders (and email).
For Microsoft, it takes a bit of pressure off of businesses who are finding Exchange's proprietary technology confining.
Microsoft's Exchange Server is one of the major components that tie businesses to Microsoft based solutions. This monopoly is beginning to fray. Non-Windows portable devices keep on multiplying, and employees are demanding to be serviced by the IT department. In order to prevent companies from abandoning Exchange Server, Microsoft is allowing non-Windows devices some access.
By allowing non-Windows devices access to Exchange, Microsoft hopes to keep their Exchange monopoly alive. Windows systems are still first class Exchange citizens, but by allowing basic synchronization with non-Windows devices, Microsoft has relieved the pressure on companies to abandon Exchange.
1). Windows Basic: It has an OEM price of $1.00. This will help stem the threat of a desktop Linux. If computer prices continue to drop, the Windows License becomes a significant share of the price, the pressure to switch to a Linux desktop becomes more and more powerful. I use Fedora at work and see no reason why it can't be a consumer desktop. Ubuntu is even shinier. Microsoft certainly knows this by now. By selling Windows Basic for $1.00, they are simply trying to keep Windows as the default desktop OS. Its all they can do to stem the bleeding.
2). Windows Home Premium: It includes all the bells and whistles and is a $75 Internet installed upgrade for all Window Basic systems. This way, there are no Windows Home Premium CDs being spread around from person to person. 99% of the people who want to upgrade will pay their $75. To encourage users to upgrade, Microsoft can include some free Internet services and other goodies.
3). Windows Business: Commercial users will be prohibited from using Windows Basic or Windows Home Premium. Therefore, they will pay the $175 for Windows Business. Their whole infrastructure is Windows based, and their IT departments know nothing but Windows. They can't switch to Linux.
4). Windows Server: Why not? Even Apple makes a separate Mac OS X Server vs. Mac OS X. Charge $500. What are businesses suppose to do? Switch to Linux for servers? Like a typical MSCE knows anything about that. Besides, you can't run Exchange on Linux.
If you work in a convenience store, you never ever try to stop a robbery. It doesn't matter if the guy has a gun, a Bat'leh, or an attack gerbil.
Your job is to get this guy out of your store as fast as possible with as few injuries as possible. I knew someone who worked in HR at Southland Corporation (the people who run 7-11s). They train their workers to help the robbers.
Most robbers have little idea of what they should do once they run into a convenience store and demand all of the money. The clerks are trained to not make sudden moves and to keep their hands visible.
The clerks ask the robber if they want their money in a sack and if the robber would like them to lie down behind the counter until they leave. The clerk's job at that point is to get the robber out of the store as quickly as possible.
Most of the time, there is less than $50 in the till. If someone comes in with a bat'leh, you don't know if they may also have a gun on them. You have no idea what this person might be capable of doing or whether they have a few friends outside who may try to help out if you put up a fight.
It simply isn't worth the fuss over $50. You give the money to your assailants, wish them a nice day, and hope they leave as quickly as they came.
You can explain to your Beijing IT officials that their use of pirated software is putting the company into legal jeopardy. Even though this is all taking place in China, the company could be sued in the U.S. by another U.S. company, and the court case will be heard in the U.S. If that happened, the U.S. company could be fined millions of dollars.
Let them know that the company will pay for the licenses for the software they need. Help them find alternatives for the software if you aren't going to license it. Let them know that corporate policy is to only use software where you have a valid license for it.
China is sort of a special case. For the longest time, there was no concept of business enterprise or ownership. The rules for private businesses are still unclear. Courts and police do not understand these issues, and are still under the influence of the Communist Party which acts more like the Mafia rather than the Protector of the Proletariate Revolution. Many business rules and laws simply aren't followed if someone involved has connections to the Party.
However, let them know that they must follow American law and their failure to do so will affect their American counterparts. Let them know you will be happy to help, and that no one is going to get in trouble while you are working on getting this licensing issue resolved.
If they still prove uncooperative, you've pretty much done all you can. Now it is officially time to cover your ass. Document everything you are doing, and pass this on to your Corporate Compliance Office. If some rather smelly organic matter comes in contact with some nearby rotating blades, you've documented that you took all the action you could and had alerted everyone who should be alerted. With luck, the Finger 'o Blame will not fall on you.
Making security difficult and then blaming people for its failure is no solution.
For example, computers could be much more secure if people change their passwords every month and passwords must be a string of at least 120 random letters. Except that everyone will write down their password or never log out or let their computer go to sleep. You now have your nice super-duper security protocol all set, but your computer is less secure than ever because you've made it impossible to use.
How many people will use that sleeve if you have to struggle with it every time you have to show your passport? How long will that sleeve last? How vulnerable do people understand their passport to be? Do people even understand that their passport could be read while riding in a taxi?
A better solution would be to put this "sleeve" inside the passport. The pages where the RFID chip is on should be the sleeve. When the passport is closed, the chip is protected. The chip can only be read when the passport is opened.
Of course, that's even if this type of security even works.
First of all, are they charging for the software or for something else? If they are charging for the software, you can remove it and redownload it from OpenOffice directly. If they are charging for the service, tell them you don't want the service and you're canceling. They can huff and puff, but if your friend isn't in Germany, there isn't too much they can do.
I would not worry about dinging her credit rating. You have to be a member of the credit bureau in order to report someone.
My take is that this is one of those companies that send out invoices and hope the person will pay it.
If you want to be religious, find God. If you want to do tech, then don't become a fanatic.
The OLPC would make an excellent Netbook. An "Adult" sized one selling just for under $200 would be a great seller. And, as a bonus, it would give you the economies of scale necessary to produce a true $100 OLPC. Heck, he could have sold the original OLPC in the U.S. and Europe as a computer perfect for young kids. Within a year, he'd have enough scale to hit the $100 price.
Unfortunately, Negroponte didn't want to compromise on his beliefs. This was suppose to be the computer for the underprivileged kids.
I am not sure on Windows. Windows was designed for a large desktop computer and has failed miserably in situations where screen real estate and memory considerations are limited. Windows Mobile never took off despite it's inherit advantage of syncing with the Windows desktop and IT department support. Windows never managed to make it into the home outside of the office. Scientific Atlanta is very happy with Linux on their setup boxes.
I can see why the developing world cast aspersions on the OLPC. There was a certain first world, I know what you need arrogance in the whole project. They wanted a REAL computer, and to them, that means it runs something like Windows. Maybe if this ran a standard consumer Linux system rather than the graphical sugar, these countries may have felt better about it.
I do believe that the OLPC project did end up making Netbooks quite popular. The OLPC did show that there was quite a bit of interest in the development of small computers, and other companies then filled the gap. If you look, you can find a Netbook just below the $300 barrier. Next year, it'll be at $250, then $200. With in five years, the $100 laptop may actually be commercially available.
This is asking about the GOALS of the civilian U.S. space program. No one is talking about throwing out NASA. They're talking about what NASA should be focusing on. For example, the Bush administration removed from Nasa's job description the part about monitoring the Earth and its environment. To me, that should be one of the primary goals of NASA.
Way back in the pre-Cambrian days when I actually was a decent C programmer, there was a book chalked full of algorithms. I can't remember now if it was the "Stevens" book or the "Stevenson" book. It was our bible. Our guide. The holiest book in our bookshelf. Whenever we got the yen to do some programming, we always took out the "Stevens" book and asked ourselves "What Would Stevens Do?"
In this day, is there not one such book or place where someone says "Gee, I have to write some code that will calculate the date, day of week, and year from a fixed day. I wonder if I can look up this bit of code in some reference book, and do it right the first time?"
And, then the second question: Why in the heck does the Zune care a fig about today's date? I believe there's some other device on the market that rhymes with "Shapple ShiPod" that does something similar to the Zune and yet doesn't care one whit about today's date. I won't claim that particular device is error free, but I but you a couple of doughnuts that it won't freeze up the day before a big holiday because it doesn't realize that 2008 has 366 days in it.
My first response was "Do they still develop Perl?"
When I first started with Perl 3.0 many, many years ago, I fell in love with the language. It was flexible, powerful, and could do all sorts of amazing things. Version 5.0 brought in objects, but the way they worked was a little kinked. Defining classes in Perl is not easy, and I always have to go back to the manpage to make sure I've got all the incantations. Many times, I simply use object oriented structures and forgo the object definitions.
Perl 6 was suppose to fix everything. It would improve the way class definitions worked. Perl 6 would be a better object oriented language while still allowing you to hack out quick scripts like you would in shell script.
Well, Perl 6 was announced almost a decade ago, and it still isn't released. Meanwhile, Python has become the defacto scripting language for the OSS world. Even I, a Perl fanatic whom makes most Mac fanatics look mellow have to admit that, and learn Python. I hate Python. It's use of indents for flow control is a throwback to Fortran. Its lack of regular expressions in the string object (you have to import a special "re" object) makes it maddening. Why o' why does Python use "pop" for arrays, but not "push"? What were the designers on when they decided "exists" is not a member function of hashes -- excuse me -- dictionaries and arrays? Why this syntactic distortion of over 50 years of computer programming overturned?
But, I am now a good Python developer writing all of my stuff in Python. I am use to the cryptic error messages that don't really explain the problem (after all, Python has only been around for a bit over a decade). I am use to the fact that basic structures of the language change from implementation to implementation. I even like the fact that "numbers" are divided into multiple types although you really can't declare a number to be a specific type. It does allow you to experience the fun of your division suddenly not working because it is INTEGER division. (And, of course, Python 3.0 will change this very basic part of implementation and break everyone's Python script!)
Perl could have been the language of the web. After all, even Perl has fewer syntactic quirks than PHP, but it is PHP that is the glue behind server side webpages. While the Perl gurus were redesigning Perl, PHP got incorporated into an Apache module and added the syntactic sugar needed to run sessions and keep variables between PHP scripts.
So, Perl, the glue that use to keep the Internet flowing has become a niche language. Almost all of the younger developers I know never bother to learn it, and fewer and fewer jobs are interested in it. It is Python that everyone wants. It is PHP that runs the message boards and CMS pages. Perl is simply no longer in the picture.
Every few years, something I've learned becomes obsolete. It's the field. One time, I knew how to setup a UUCP network. One time, I could setup a Gopher site. I also learned all the quirks of HTML 3.2 and had to lose that to learn CSS. I use to know C shell programming, and of course I was a C developer and an expert in the curses library. I've usually gave up these technologies without too many problems.
Perl is different. I've been a Perl developer for over a decade. I've always loved the language, and I've solved many, many issues with it. One place where I worked was a.NET development shop when they suddenly realized that some major component of their software couldn't retrieve the information from the network. It would take weeks to fix! I wrote a Perl script in four hours that took care of the problem.
Another place I worked had damage in a customer's database. They had everyone in the company searching for problems and re-inputing the information by hand into a clean database. A Perl script I wrote in a couple of hours did the job. Perl made me the expert. I was the wunderkind. Perl allowed me to do the impossible. It was quick, hackish, yet could also be used to build powerful programs
I can't say what Apple would do. But, this begs the question why a player that merely plays music needs to figure out what day it is. I can understand why something like the iPhone and iPod Touch might have a bug like this. (Actually, I can't because these both use a real OS). But the Zune is similar to my iPod Classic, and my iPod Classic doesn't know the date and time unless I set it.
I installed Windows for one senior citizen, and he moved the mouse to the other side of the desk. Laughter ensued.
"You need to change the buttons on your mouse. Go to the Start Menu and click on the other button. No, the other button. THE OTHER BUTTON!"
There is a reason why Macs only have a single button on their mouse by default.
I would prefer Linux just because it is easier for me to set it up to log in remotely and add that new printer or fix an error than trying to take control of the desktop remotely. Yes, you can use all sorts of services on Windows like Logmein or Windows Remote Access, but it is just easier when the OS was designed to allow you to do this in the first place.
You can setup Ubuntu to automatically do updates on a daily basis. The user never needs to know. You can create a panel and add the icons for the most commonly used programs which makes access a lot easier than finding them through the Start Menu. I place the Ubuntu main menu on the bottom left corner just like the Windows Start Menu, and I can set it up to limit what a particular user can see.
The only problem I have is when someone asks me to install a particular program which is Windows only, and I can't.
First of all, Apple has stated time and time again they'd love to remove the DRM from their music, but the record companies won't let them. The record companies have even gone as far as giving non-DRM to Apple's competitors, yet that still doesn't work because it isn't about DRM, it's about playing your music.
Let's look at the Apple iPod/iTunes interaction. I cruise the store, click on something I want, and it's on my iPod. Magic!
I recently tried to buy some non-DRM tunes from Amazon. First of all, their website is a mess, and it was hard to find what I was looking for. Then, when I downloaded their music, I had to first download and install a installer application. Then download the music. However, it didn't get added into iTunes. I had to find where Amazon stored the music on my machine, and then ask iTunes to import it.
The boycott will fail because the alternatives still don't work as well, so consumers won't go for it, and even if it did make a dent in Apple's sales, Apple couldn't remove the DRM if they wanted to without the record companies' permission. And, the record companies aren't going to give Apple that ability unless Apple gives them "flexibility" in prices (i.e. charge more).
Google doesn't care if Chrome succeeds or dies because other browsers step up to the plate and incorporated Chrome's features. I see Chrome doing several things:
* It puts more pressure on the other browsers to adopt WebKit as their rendering engine. WebKit is quickly becoming the default browser on the "Internet Device" market thanks to Google and Apple, and this will put more pressure on FireFox and Opera to adopt it. Or at least emulate it better. Apple and Google would love to see FireFox and Opera become WebKit based. For Apple, it means that the Internet is towards an open standard that makes devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch more desirable. For Google, it means they don't have to worry which browser their AJAX browser services work on.
Microsoft is already feeling the pressure which is why IE 8 is trying so hard to comply with the various Acid tests. I already know a few non-geeks who downloaded Safari or FireFox because IE is unable to render particular websites.
* It puts pressure on other browsers to incorporate the needed security and performance needed for AJAX web applications. Hey, Chrome is open source. Beg, borrow or steal what you want from the source code and put it in your own browser. Google doesn't care. Their money is in web services and not selling browsers.
So, there is no real issue with Google's support of the FireFox project. Google would be happy if Firefox becomes the #1 browser on the market and makes Chrome a historic footnote. That is, as long as Firefox incorporates the features Google plans on exploiting: Better security, better JavaScript, better performance.
Actually, the way the Electoral College was suppose to work was changed back after our fourth election for POTUS. Jefferson (the presidential candidate) and Burr (the *VICE* presidential candidate) both got the same number of electoral votes. This happened because the wisdom of our founding fathers dictated that each elector got TWO votes for president. The second place finisher was suppose to be vice president. This was the first campaign where the election of president was actually contested, and the results led to the creation of our first two party system with Federalists and Republicans (who later became known as the Democratic Republicans and even later as Democrats).
Since all of the Republican electors chose both Jefferson and Burr, they were tied in the Electoral College. Officially, Burr should have stepped aside and let Jefferson be president. However, Federalists convinced Burr not to drop out, and the vote went to the House where after 30 ballots, there was still no decision. Hamilton -- a Federalist -- convinced Federalist House members that not respecting the outcome of the election was probably more damaging to the Republic than allowing an "atheist" like Jefferson as President.
The whole Electoral College system came about because we didn't have universal suffrage in this country. In Virginia, the most populous state, only White males with the largest land holdings could vote while in Pennsylvania, almost all freemen were allowed to vote. Allowing a direct vote for President would mean that smaller Pennsylvania would have two to three times the voting power of Virginia.
The Constitutional Convention tried to come up with tax and landholding requirements for voting, but failed. Plus, there was disagreement about how slaves should affect a state's voting power for the office. The Electoral College was a punt. The Constitution didn't even bother to specify how electors would be chosen.
They did give each elector the ability to have two votes for President, so they could choose one local guy and one guy who wasn't a resident of that state. This was done because when you only have a very small select group of men voting, their was fear that there would be a lot of political hanky-panky and vote trading. Allowing the electors an outlet to cast a spurious vote for a local political bigwig was a way of venting this political horse trading. After all, what was the worse that could happen?
In the first three elections, all electors were chosen by the voters, and the electors were chosen by districts. This was how the election was envisioned to happen by our founding fathers. However, when Adams ran against Jefferson, states started mucking up the rules. In New York, the way electors were chosen was changed from election (which would allow the Republicans to get some electors) to having the legislature choose them (to guarantee all electors would be Federalists). When the Federalists lost the legislature, the outgoing legislature changed the rules to allow the Governor to choose them instead of the Republican dominated incoming legislature.
Election shenanigans wasn't a Federalist monopoly. Almost all states changed the way electors were chosen in order to satisfy the dominant political party. It was the first time states used a winner takes all method of selecting electors. A method that is still with us today, and probably not something the original writers of the Constitution imagined would happen.
Today, the United States is one of the few presidential republics that don't allow direct election of their president. Historically, electoral colleges were used to keep the powers in power. It was the way Indonesia used to keep Suharto in power and it is currently used in Hong Kong to keep democracy advocates at bay. It's a great way to make sure that you can remain in power when you don't have popular support.
The Electoral College in the U.S. lost its initial purpose with the election of Andrew Jackson which started a period of universal suffrage when property and
Net Neutrality is somewhat a myth. Network providers already prioritize their own traffic in many ways like edge caching. Or, they might change the way data is serviced to allow a more requested provider better access. Absolute Net Neutrality is a myth.
What we want to prevent is the practice of shoving a provider purposefully shoving third party content aside in order to better highlight their own content. For example, setting up your network in such a way that a Google search takes three to four seconds to return results while the provider's search results are instantaneous. Users will switch to the faster provider's search engine. Or, maybe streaming content from iTunes or YouTube is no longer smooth. You attempt to listen to a song or play a video, and you get a lot of caching going on. However, the provider's own video and music service is smoother with no caching.
This is the true issue. Is the same firm that provides the pipe (or if you live in Alaska, the tube) to your computer using its advantage to push other business they're way.
There were two types of monopolies that the government use to watch over. One was a horizontal monopoly where a single company captures a vast majority of the market and can use their clout to prevent others from entering the market, thus eliminating competition. An example of this was Standard Oil.
The other, lesser known monopoly was the vertical monopoly where the company controls the entire vertical distribution. Two examples: One was the three television networks. They were prohibited from producing their own shows for the longest time. The reasoning is that if they could, they could favor their own productions over third parties. Instead of hundreds of independent production studios, there would be three who could control payments.
Another example is Boeing. At one time, Boeing was not just an airplane manufacturer, but also owned an airline. This meant that Boeing could favor its own airline with newer equipment at cheaper rates, thus giving its airline a cost advantage over other rivals. This was back in the days when airmail was an important revenue stream for airlines, and Boeing could outbid its rivals. The government separated United Airlines and United Technologies from Boeing back in the 1930s.
This is the actual problem. Local providers of service should not be content providers too. Otherwise, their content would have an unfair advantage over other content providers. This should be enforced not just in the Internet, but also with cable and satellite television providers. You can either provide the pipe to the TV, or you can provide the content over that pipe.
If local providers of Internet service didn't have their own content they were pushing, there would be no issues with net neutrality.
My sister had broken her arm. It was so bad, they put some sort of metal bar through her arm to hold her arm in a single position. Because of the pain, she was on some powerful medication. To put it mildly, she was not her normal self. Many hippies have spent decades attempting the mental state those drugs put my sister in.
She was watching TV late one night and called me up and told me about this great science fiction show. It was witty, the writing was wonderful. She laughed, She cried. She was on the edge of her seat. But she couldn't remember the name. She remembered that there was a doctor or surgeon on it and they were in a phone booth...
Dr. Who?, I suggested.
That's it!
Dr. Who? I replied again. Are you sure it was Dr. Who?
Yes, she told me, it was wonderful.
The next week, she saw the show again. This time, not enwrapped in her druggy little fog. She called me up the next day and told me she changed her mind about the show.
I've watched the show many times since then, and as far as I am concerned, being sober doesn't help improve the coherence of the plot. Frankly, I would find it hard to tell if our local station cut out vital scenes which hurt the clarity of the overall plot.
(WARNING: The above post contains a large amount of sarcasm. It is not intended to be taken seriously. If you feel a need to argue with this point ("No way, Dude! Apple is the bestest company in the whole wide world!). Go download an iPhone application. I hear there's a new one out that's nice and shiny. If you want to defend this post (Yeah, Apple Sucks!). Go back to your PC and marvel at the wonders of Vista. If you only use Linux as your operating system, let your parents know I feel sorry for them.)
But, I've switched to Google Chrome because it is so much faster. Yes, I don't have many of the plugins, and when I need something like FireBug, I load up FireFox.
But, Google Chrome, despite its problems is faster, crashes less often, and rarely freezes. I also like the way it puts popup windows on the bottom of the browser. Much better than merely attempting to block them. Most popup blockers no longer work, and I am tired of switching them on and off. I also like the fast JavaScript engine.
There are many problems in Google Chrome. Jira and Confluence don't like it. When you have multiple tabs, and close the browser window, there's no warning. Spell check doesn't work too well. There are many sites (mainly Flash sites) that Google Chrome doesn't work well with.
But, the speed is a major selling point. Opening Chrome is instantaneous. Compared to it, other browsers seem to take forever. I've opened pages in Google chrome, read them, and closed them before FireFox even opened.
I would love to see many of the features in Google Chrome in FireFox, Opera, and Safari. And, I think that's what Google really wants. They don't care what happens to Chrome as long as the other browsers become faster and more dependable.
The problem with Silverlight is pretty much the same issue I have with Flash: It is a proprietary third party protocol. I can write my own web browser because all the protocols are known, and there are open source tests I can use to check my browser.
Flash and Silverlight are different. I can write my own browser and browse away, but then I need Microsoft or Adobe to write a flash client for my browser and platform. Every page that insists upon Silverlight or Flash is another part of the Internet I can't get to. Even worse, what worked for one version of Silverlight or Flash doesn't work with the next. I am not only stuck on third party plugins, but I am hoping they keep them updated. What version of Silverlight will Microsoft decide it's not worth supporting for non-Windows non-IE platforms?
Apple started WebKit and created it as an open source project because it is extremely important to them that the web does not become proprietary. Otherwise, Apple products could be locked out of much of the computing world. That's why Flash doesn't run on iPhones. Apple does not want to encourage the usage of Flash.
My prediction is that Apple will eventually buy Adobe, then put Flash out as open source and attempt to get Flash adopted as part of the web standards. Apple will need to do this because Flash has become important in many websites and Apple doesn't want their products to depend upon third party plugins. Apple also does not want Microsoft to dictate web content. Apple went through that in the 1990s as more and more Websites insisted they could only support IE and Windows. Apple doesn't want to go through that again.
For the last decade or so, many people have been making the flag issue a major issue. As someone once said: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
"Mr. Senator. You have been charged with embezzlement, fraud, bribery, and doing the nasty with a goat that's younger than the age of consent. What do you have to say for yourself?"
"I love our country! Look I have a flag label pin!"
I think much of America's flag obsession has to do with the basic rootlessness in this country. In Europe, you have cultural identity. The French live in France. If a large area of France was annexed by another country, the people living in it would still be French. The Poles were divided among three different countries for over 200 years, yet still thought of themselves as "the nation of Poland".
In America, most people come from other places. Even inside the U.S., there's a lot of movement from one place to another. My family came to the U.S. just three generations ago. My wife is a second generation American. Many of our friends have been Americans less than a decade.
Maybe that's why we Americans depend more heavily upon symbolism than most other nations. To the French, they're French no matter where they live. They have a long cultural history that they are proud of. Same with the British, the Germans, Chinese, and almost any other nation state. They all have a long cultural identity that Americans can't match.
Still, I do find our flagaphilia to be a bit uncomfortable. Why must our politicians wear a flagpin? Why did this become a big campaign issue? What other countries do this? North Korea, the former Soviet Union, China under Mao... Not exactly the type of crowd we normally associate ourselves with.
Back in the days the software was known as SoundJam MP, iTunes had all sorts of skins and UI enhancements.
When Jeffrey Robbins, the creator of SoundJam moved to Apple, all of those exotic features were stripped off of SoundJam MP. Instead, the UI was vastly improved and the whole project was relabeled iTunes.
And, that's why iTunes is so successful. It is simple and easy to operate. You put in a CD, and almost magically, the music is now in your iTunes library. You go to the iTunes store, click a button, and there it is in iTunes.
We heard many of the same complaint with the iPod when it first came out. The iPod had no microphone, it didn't have a radio, there was no slot for a memory card. You couldn't use it as a recorder. All it could do was play MP3s. It will never sell!
But, sell it did. What Apple had demonstrated time and time again is that features don't sell. Simplicity and elegance do. There are plenty of high end packages for Mac OS X -- including SoundJam's main competitor Audion (Freely downloadable from Panic's website). However, Apple's solution is to ignore the dross and concentrate on usability.
For more information, see the story of Audion at .
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Google benefits because they can now easily sync to Exchange servers. Before, Google's Exchange synchronization tool required you to keep Outlook as you default Email account and have it installed on your PC and your PC up and running and logged into your account. Even then, it wasn't too smooth.
By licensing ActiveSync, Google can now synchronize their calendar (and gmail) to people's MS Exchange server calenders (and email).
For Microsoft, it takes a bit of pressure off of businesses who are finding Exchange's proprietary technology confining.
Microsoft's Exchange Server is one of the major components that tie businesses to Microsoft based solutions. This monopoly is beginning to fray. Non-Windows portable devices keep on multiplying, and employees are demanding to be serviced by the IT department. In order to prevent companies from abandoning Exchange Server, Microsoft is allowing non-Windows devices some access.
By allowing non-Windows devices access to Exchange, Microsoft hopes to keep their Exchange monopoly alive. Windows systems are still first class Exchange citizens, but by allowing basic synchronization with non-Windows devices, Microsoft has relieved the pressure on companies to abandon Exchange.
Here's what I would do with Windows:
1). Windows Basic: It has an OEM price of $1.00. This will help stem the threat of a desktop Linux. If computer prices continue to drop, the Windows License becomes a significant share of the price, the pressure to switch to a Linux desktop becomes more and more powerful. I use Fedora at work and see no reason why it can't be a consumer desktop. Ubuntu is even shinier. Microsoft certainly knows this by now. By selling Windows Basic for $1.00, they are simply trying to keep Windows as the default desktop OS. Its all they can do to stem the bleeding.
2). Windows Home Premium: It includes all the bells and whistles and is a $75 Internet installed upgrade for all Window Basic systems. This way, there are no Windows Home Premium CDs being spread around from person to person. 99% of the people who want to upgrade will pay their $75. To encourage users to upgrade, Microsoft can include some free Internet services and other goodies.
3). Windows Business: Commercial users will be prohibited from using Windows Basic or Windows Home Premium. Therefore, they will pay the $175 for Windows Business. Their whole infrastructure is Windows based, and their IT departments know nothing but Windows. They can't switch to Linux.
4). Windows Server: Why not? Even Apple makes a separate Mac OS X Server vs. Mac OS X. Charge $500. What are businesses suppose to do? Switch to Linux for servers? Like a typical MSCE knows anything about that. Besides, you can't run Exchange on Linux.
If you work in a convenience store, you never ever try to stop a robbery. It doesn't matter if the guy has a gun, a Bat'leh, or an attack gerbil.
Your job is to get this guy out of your store as fast as possible with as few injuries as possible. I knew someone who worked in HR at Southland Corporation (the people who run 7-11s). They train their workers to help the robbers.
Most robbers have little idea of what they should do once they run into a convenience store and demand all of the money. The clerks are trained to not make sudden moves and to keep their hands visible.
The clerks ask the robber if they want their money in a sack and if the robber would like them to lie down behind the counter until they leave. The clerk's job at that point is to get the robber out of the store as quickly as possible.
Most of the time, there is less than $50 in the till. If someone comes in with a bat'leh, you don't know if they may also have a gun on them. You have no idea what this person might be capable of doing or whether they have a few friends outside who may try to help out if you put up a fight.
It simply isn't worth the fuss over $50. You give the money to your assailants, wish them a nice day, and hope they leave as quickly as they came.
You can explain to your Beijing IT officials that their use of pirated software is putting the company into legal jeopardy. Even though this is all taking place in China, the company could be sued in the U.S. by another U.S. company, and the court case will be heard in the U.S. If that happened, the U.S. company could be fined millions of dollars.
Let them know that the company will pay for the licenses for the software they need. Help them find alternatives for the software if you aren't going to license it. Let them know that corporate policy is to only use software where you have a valid license for it.
China is sort of a special case. For the longest time, there was no concept of business enterprise or ownership. The rules for private businesses are still unclear. Courts and police do not understand these issues, and are still under the influence of the Communist Party which acts more like the Mafia rather than the Protector of the Proletariate Revolution. Many business rules and laws simply aren't followed if someone involved has connections to the Party.
However, let them know that they must follow American law and their failure to do so will affect their American counterparts. Let them know you will be happy to help, and that no one is going to get in trouble while you are working on getting this licensing issue resolved.
If they still prove uncooperative, you've pretty much done all you can. Now it is officially time to cover your ass. Document everything you are doing, and pass this on to your Corporate Compliance Office. If some rather smelly organic matter comes in contact with some nearby rotating blades, you've documented that you took all the action you could and had alerted everyone who should be alerted. With luck, the Finger 'o Blame will not fall on you.
Making security difficult and then blaming people for its failure is no solution.
For example, computers could be much more secure if people change their passwords every month and passwords must be a string of at least 120 random letters. Except that everyone will write down their password or never log out or let their computer go to sleep. You now have your nice super-duper security protocol all set, but your computer is less secure than ever because you've made it impossible to use.
How many people will use that sleeve if you have to struggle with it every time you have to show your passport? How long will that sleeve last? How vulnerable do people understand their passport to be? Do people even understand that their passport could be read while riding in a taxi?
A better solution would be to put this "sleeve" inside the passport. The pages where the RFID chip is on should be the sleeve. When the passport is closed, the chip is protected. The chip can only be read when the passport is opened.
Of course, that's even if this type of security even works.
First of all, are they charging for the software or for something else? If they are charging for the software, you can remove it and redownload it from OpenOffice directly. If they are charging for the service, tell them you don't want the service and you're canceling. They can huff and puff, but if your friend isn't in Germany, there isn't too much they can do.
I would not worry about dinging her credit rating. You have to be a member of the credit bureau in order to report someone.
My take is that this is one of those companies that send out invoices and hope the person will pay it.
The whole organization is now run by a bunch of AppleScripts running on an old Mac Cube in a utility closet in the executive suites.
Now, you'll have to excuse me. My new manager, the microwave oven, has asked me to build a fleet of killer robots that will take over the world.
No need to fear, I'm making their OS based upon Vista.
If you want to be religious, find God. If you want to do tech, then don't become a fanatic.
The OLPC would make an excellent Netbook. An "Adult" sized one selling just for under $200 would be a great seller. And, as a bonus, it would give you the economies of scale necessary to produce a true $100 OLPC. Heck, he could have sold the original OLPC in the U.S. and Europe as a computer perfect for young kids. Within a year, he'd have enough scale to hit the $100 price.
Unfortunately, Negroponte didn't want to compromise on his beliefs. This was suppose to be the computer for the underprivileged kids.
I am not sure on Windows. Windows was designed for a large desktop computer and has failed miserably in situations where screen real estate and memory considerations are limited. Windows Mobile never took off despite it's inherit advantage of syncing with the Windows desktop and IT department support. Windows never managed to make it into the home outside of the office. Scientific Atlanta is very happy with Linux on their setup boxes.
I can see why the developing world cast aspersions on the OLPC. There was a certain first world, I know what you need arrogance in the whole project. They wanted a REAL computer, and to them, that means it runs something like Windows. Maybe if this ran a standard consumer Linux system rather than the graphical sugar, these countries may have felt better about it.
I do believe that the OLPC project did end up making Netbooks quite popular. The OLPC did show that there was quite a bit of interest in the development of small computers, and other companies then filled the gap. If you look, you can find a Netbook just below the $300 barrier. Next year, it'll be at $250, then $200. With in five years, the $100 laptop may actually be commercially available.
This is asking about the GOALS of the civilian U.S. space program. No one is talking about throwing out NASA. They're talking about what NASA should be focusing on. For example, the Bush administration removed from Nasa's job description the part about monitoring the Earth and its environment. To me, that should be one of the primary goals of NASA.
Way back in the pre-Cambrian days when I actually was a decent C programmer, there was a book chalked full of algorithms. I can't remember now if it was the "Stevens" book or the "Stevenson" book. It was our bible. Our guide. The holiest book in our bookshelf. Whenever we got the yen to do some programming, we always took out the "Stevens" book and asked ourselves "What Would Stevens Do?"
In this day, is there not one such book or place where someone says "Gee, I have to write some code that will calculate the date, day of week, and year from a fixed day. I wonder if I can look up this bit of code in some reference book, and do it right the first time?"
And, then the second question: Why in the heck does the Zune care a fig about today's date? I believe there's some other device on the market that rhymes with "Shapple ShiPod" that does something similar to the Zune and yet doesn't care one whit about today's date. I won't claim that particular device is error free, but I but you a couple of doughnuts that it won't freeze up the day before a big holiday because it doesn't realize that 2008 has 366 days in it.
My first response was "Do they still develop Perl?"
When I first started with Perl 3.0 many, many years ago, I fell in love with the language. It was flexible, powerful, and could do all sorts of amazing things. Version 5.0 brought in objects, but the way they worked was a little kinked. Defining classes in Perl is not easy, and I always have to go back to the manpage to make sure I've got all the incantations. Many times, I simply use object oriented structures and forgo the object definitions.
Perl 6 was suppose to fix everything. It would improve the way class definitions worked. Perl 6 would be a better object oriented language while still allowing you to hack out quick scripts like you would in shell script.
Well, Perl 6 was announced almost a decade ago, and it still isn't released. Meanwhile, Python has become the defacto scripting language for the OSS world. Even I, a Perl fanatic whom makes most Mac fanatics look mellow have to admit that, and learn Python. I hate Python. It's use of indents for flow control is a throwback to Fortran. Its lack of regular expressions in the string object (you have to import a special "re" object) makes it maddening. Why o' why does Python use "pop" for arrays, but not "push"? What were the designers on when they decided "exists" is not a member function of hashes -- excuse me -- dictionaries and arrays? Why this syntactic distortion of over 50 years of computer programming overturned?
But, I am now a good Python developer writing all of my stuff in Python. I am use to the cryptic error messages that don't really explain the problem (after all, Python has only been around for a bit over a decade). I am use to the fact that basic structures of the language change from implementation to implementation. I even like the fact that "numbers" are divided into multiple types although you really can't declare a number to be a specific type. It does allow you to experience the fun of your division suddenly not working because it is INTEGER division. (And, of course, Python 3.0 will change this very basic part of implementation and break everyone's Python script!)
Perl could have been the language of the web. After all, even Perl has fewer syntactic quirks than PHP, but it is PHP that is the glue behind server side webpages. While the Perl gurus were redesigning Perl, PHP got incorporated into an Apache module and added the syntactic sugar needed to run sessions and keep variables between PHP scripts.
So, Perl, the glue that use to keep the Internet flowing has become a niche language. Almost all of the younger developers I know never bother to learn it, and fewer and fewer jobs are interested in it. It is Python that everyone wants. It is PHP that runs the message boards and CMS pages. Perl is simply no longer in the picture.
Every few years, something I've learned becomes obsolete. It's the field. One time, I knew how to setup a UUCP network. One time, I could setup a Gopher site. I also learned all the quirks of HTML 3.2 and had to lose that to learn CSS. I use to know C shell programming, and of course I was a C developer and an expert in the curses library. I've usually gave up these technologies without too many problems.
Perl is different. I've been a Perl developer for over a decade. I've always loved the language, and I've solved many, many issues with it. One place where I worked was a .NET development shop when they suddenly realized that some major component of their software couldn't retrieve the information from the network. It would take weeks to fix! I wrote a Perl script in four hours that took care of the problem.
Another place I worked had damage in a customer's database. They had everyone in the company searching for problems and re-inputing the information by hand into a clean database. A Perl script I wrote in a couple of hours did the job. Perl made me the expert. I was the wunderkind. Perl allowed me to do the impossible. It was quick, hackish, yet could also be used to build powerful programs
I can't say what Apple would do. But, this begs the question why a player that merely plays music needs to figure out what day it is. I can understand why something like the iPhone and iPod Touch might have a bug like this. (Actually, I can't because these both use a real OS). But the Zune is similar to my iPod Classic, and my iPod Classic doesn't know the date and time unless I set it.
I installed Windows for one senior citizen, and he moved the mouse to the other side of the desk. Laughter ensued.
"You need to change the buttons on your mouse. Go to the Start Menu and click on the other button. No, the other button. THE OTHER BUTTON!"
There is a reason why Macs only have a single button on their mouse by default.
I would prefer Linux just because it is easier for me to set it up to log in remotely and add that new printer or fix an error than trying to take control of the desktop remotely. Yes, you can use all sorts of services on Windows like Logmein or Windows Remote Access, but it is just easier when the OS was designed to allow you to do this in the first place.
You can setup Ubuntu to automatically do updates on a daily basis. The user never needs to know. You can create a panel and add the icons for the most commonly used programs which makes access a lot easier than finding them through the Start Menu. I place the Ubuntu main menu on the bottom left corner just like the Windows Start Menu, and I can set it up to limit what a particular user can see.
The only problem I have is when someone asks me to install a particular program which is Windows only, and I can't.
First of all, Apple has stated time and time again they'd love to remove the DRM from their music, but the record companies won't let them. The record companies have even gone as far as giving non-DRM to Apple's competitors, yet that still doesn't work because it isn't about DRM, it's about playing your music.
Let's look at the Apple iPod/iTunes interaction. I cruise the store, click on something I want, and it's on my iPod. Magic!
I recently tried to buy some non-DRM tunes from Amazon. First of all, their website is a mess, and it was hard to find what I was looking for. Then, when I downloaded their music, I had to first download and install a installer application. Then download the music. However, it didn't get added into iTunes. I had to find where Amazon stored the music on my machine, and then ask iTunes to import it.
The boycott will fail because the alternatives still don't work as well, so consumers won't go for it, and even if it did make a dent in Apple's sales, Apple couldn't remove the DRM if they wanted to without the record companies' permission. And, the record companies aren't going to give Apple that ability unless Apple gives them "flexibility" in prices (i.e. charge more).
Google doesn't care if Chrome succeeds or dies because other browsers step up to the plate and incorporated Chrome's features. I see Chrome doing several things:
* It puts more pressure on the other browsers to adopt WebKit as their rendering engine. WebKit is quickly becoming the default browser on the "Internet Device" market thanks to Google and Apple, and this will put more pressure on FireFox and Opera to adopt it. Or at least emulate it better. Apple and Google would love to see FireFox and Opera become WebKit based. For Apple, it means that the Internet is towards an open standard that makes devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch more desirable. For Google, it means they don't have to worry which browser their AJAX browser services work on.
Microsoft is already feeling the pressure which is why IE 8 is trying so hard to comply with the various Acid tests. I already know a few non-geeks who downloaded Safari or FireFox because IE is unable to render particular websites.
* It puts pressure on other browsers to incorporate the needed security and performance needed for AJAX web applications. Hey, Chrome is open source. Beg, borrow or steal what you want from the source code and put it in your own browser. Google doesn't care. Their money is in web services and not selling browsers.
So, there is no real issue with Google's support of the FireFox project. Google would be happy if Firefox becomes the #1 browser on the market and makes Chrome a historic footnote. That is, as long as Firefox incorporates the features Google plans on exploiting: Better security, better JavaScript, better performance.
Microsoft is not telling people to use alternate browsers as this /. article states. They just recommend people be "vigilant" when browsing with IE.
Actually, the way the Electoral College was suppose to work was changed back after our fourth election for POTUS. Jefferson (the presidential candidate) and Burr (the *VICE* presidential candidate) both got the same number of electoral votes. This happened because the wisdom of our founding fathers dictated that each elector got TWO votes for president. The second place finisher was suppose to be vice president. This was the first campaign where the election of president was actually contested, and the results led to the creation of our first two party system with Federalists and Republicans (who later became known as the Democratic Republicans and even later as Democrats).
Since all of the Republican electors chose both Jefferson and Burr, they were tied in the Electoral College. Officially, Burr should have stepped aside and let Jefferson be president. However, Federalists convinced Burr not to drop out, and the vote went to the House where after 30 ballots, there was still no decision. Hamilton -- a Federalist -- convinced Federalist House members that not respecting the outcome of the election was probably more damaging to the Republic than allowing an "atheist" like Jefferson as President.
The whole Electoral College system came about because we didn't have universal suffrage in this country. In Virginia, the most populous state, only White males with the largest land holdings could vote while in Pennsylvania, almost all freemen were allowed to vote. Allowing a direct vote for President would mean that smaller Pennsylvania would have two to three times the voting power of Virginia.
The Constitutional Convention tried to come up with tax and landholding requirements for voting, but failed. Plus, there was disagreement about how slaves should affect a state's voting power for the office. The Electoral College was a punt. The Constitution didn't even bother to specify how electors would be chosen.
They did give each elector the ability to have two votes for President, so they could choose one local guy and one guy who wasn't a resident of that state. This was done because when you only have a very small select group of men voting, their was fear that there would be a lot of political hanky-panky and vote trading. Allowing the electors an outlet to cast a spurious vote for a local political bigwig was a way of venting this political horse trading. After all, what was the worse that could happen?
In the first three elections, all electors were chosen by the voters, and the electors were chosen by districts. This was how the election was envisioned to happen by our founding fathers. However, when Adams ran against Jefferson, states started mucking up the rules. In New York, the way electors were chosen was changed from election (which would allow the Republicans to get some electors) to having the legislature choose them (to guarantee all electors would be Federalists). When the Federalists lost the legislature, the outgoing legislature changed the rules to allow the Governor to choose them instead of the Republican dominated incoming legislature.
Election shenanigans wasn't a Federalist monopoly. Almost all states changed the way electors were chosen in order to satisfy the dominant political party. It was the first time states used a winner takes all method of selecting electors. A method that is still with us today, and probably not something the original writers of the Constitution imagined would happen.
Today, the United States is one of the few presidential republics that don't allow direct election of their president. Historically, electoral colleges were used to keep the powers in power. It was the way Indonesia used to keep Suharto in power and it is currently used in Hong Kong to keep democracy advocates at bay. It's a great way to make sure that you can remain in power when you don't have popular support.
The Electoral College in the U.S. lost its initial purpose with the election of Andrew Jackson which started a period of universal suffrage when property and
Net Neutrality is somewhat a myth. Network providers already prioritize their own traffic in many ways like edge caching. Or, they might change the way data is serviced to allow a more requested provider better access. Absolute Net Neutrality is a myth.
What we want to prevent is the practice of shoving a provider purposefully shoving third party content aside in order to better highlight their own content. For example, setting up your network in such a way that a Google search takes three to four seconds to return results while the provider's search results are instantaneous. Users will switch to the faster provider's search engine. Or, maybe streaming content from iTunes or YouTube is no longer smooth. You attempt to listen to a song or play a video, and you get a lot of caching going on. However, the provider's own video and music service is smoother with no caching.
This is the true issue. Is the same firm that provides the pipe (or if you live in Alaska, the tube) to your computer using its advantage to push other business they're way.
There were two types of monopolies that the government use to watch over. One was a horizontal monopoly where a single company captures a vast majority of the market and can use their clout to prevent others from entering the market, thus eliminating competition. An example of this was Standard Oil.
The other, lesser known monopoly was the vertical monopoly where the company controls the entire vertical distribution. Two examples: One was the three television networks. They were prohibited from producing their own shows for the longest time. The reasoning is that if they could, they could favor their own productions over third parties. Instead of hundreds of independent production studios, there would be three who could control payments.
Another example is Boeing. At one time, Boeing was not just an airplane manufacturer, but also owned an airline. This meant that Boeing could favor its own airline with newer equipment at cheaper rates, thus giving its airline a cost advantage over other rivals. This was back in the days when airmail was an important revenue stream for airlines, and Boeing could outbid its rivals. The government separated United Airlines and United Technologies from Boeing back in the 1930s.
This is the actual problem. Local providers of service should not be content providers too. Otherwise, their content would have an unfair advantage over other content providers. This should be enforced not just in the Internet, but also with cable and satellite television providers. You can either provide the pipe to the TV, or you can provide the content over that pipe.
If local providers of Internet service didn't have their own content they were pushing, there would be no issues with net neutrality.
My sister had broken her arm. It was so bad, they put some sort of metal bar through her arm to hold her arm in a single position. Because of the pain, she was on some powerful medication. To put it mildly, she was not her normal self. Many hippies have spent decades attempting the mental state those drugs put my sister in.
She was watching TV late one night and called me up and told me about this great science fiction show. It was witty, the writing was wonderful. She laughed, She cried. She was on the edge of her seat. But she couldn't remember the name. She remembered that there was a doctor or surgeon on it and they were in a phone booth...
Dr. Who?, I suggested.
That's it!
Dr. Who? I replied again. Are you sure it was Dr. Who?
Yes, she told me, it was wonderful.
The next week, she saw the show again. This time, not enwrapped in her druggy little fog. She called me up the next day and told me she changed her mind about the show.
I've watched the show many times since then, and as far as I am concerned, being sober doesn't help improve the coherence of the plot. Frankly, I would find it hard to tell if our local station cut out vital scenes which hurt the clarity of the overall plot.
When does Apple ever do anything creative?
(WARNING: The above post contains a large amount of sarcasm. It is not intended to be taken seriously. If you feel a need to argue with this point ("No way, Dude! Apple is the bestest company in the whole wide world!). Go download an iPhone application. I hear there's a new one out that's nice and shiny. If you want to defend this post (Yeah, Apple Sucks!). Go back to your PC and marvel at the wonders of Vista. If you only use Linux as your operating system, let your parents know I feel sorry for them.)
But, I've switched to Google Chrome because it is so much faster. Yes, I don't have many of the plugins, and when I need something like FireBug, I load up FireFox.
But, Google Chrome, despite its problems is faster, crashes less often, and rarely freezes. I also like the way it puts popup windows on the bottom of the browser. Much better than merely attempting to block them. Most popup blockers no longer work, and I am tired of switching them on and off. I also like the fast JavaScript engine.
There are many problems in Google Chrome. Jira and Confluence don't like it. When you have multiple tabs, and close the browser window, there's no warning. Spell check doesn't work too well. There are many sites (mainly Flash sites) that Google Chrome doesn't work well with.
But, the speed is a major selling point. Opening Chrome is instantaneous. Compared to it, other browsers seem to take forever. I've opened pages in Google chrome, read them, and closed them before FireFox even opened.
I would love to see many of the features in Google Chrome in FireFox, Opera, and Safari. And, I think that's what Google really wants. They don't care what happens to Chrome as long as the other browsers become faster and more dependable.
The problem with Silverlight is pretty much the same issue I have with Flash: It is a proprietary third party protocol. I can write my own web browser because all the protocols are known, and there are open source tests I can use to check my browser.
Flash and Silverlight are different. I can write my own browser and browse away, but then I need Microsoft or Adobe to write a flash client for my browser and platform. Every page that insists upon Silverlight or Flash is another part of the Internet I can't get to. Even worse, what worked for one version of Silverlight or Flash doesn't work with the next. I am not only stuck on third party plugins, but I am hoping they keep them updated. What version of Silverlight will Microsoft decide it's not worth supporting for non-Windows non-IE platforms?
Apple started WebKit and created it as an open source project because it is extremely important to them that the web does not become proprietary. Otherwise, Apple products could be locked out of much of the computing world. That's why Flash doesn't run on iPhones. Apple does not want to encourage the usage of Flash.
My prediction is that Apple will eventually buy Adobe, then put Flash out as open source and attempt to get Flash adopted as part of the web standards. Apple will need to do this because Flash has become important in many websites and Apple doesn't want their products to depend upon third party plugins. Apple also does not want Microsoft to dictate web content. Apple went through that in the 1990s as more and more Websites insisted they could only support IE and Windows. Apple doesn't want to go through that again.
For the last decade or so, many people have been making the flag issue a major issue. As someone once said: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I think much of America's flag obsession has to do with the basic rootlessness in this country. In Europe, you have cultural identity. The French live in France. If a large area of France was annexed by another country, the people living in it would still be French. The Poles were divided among three different countries for over 200 years, yet still thought of themselves as "the nation of Poland".
In America, most people come from other places. Even inside the U.S., there's a lot of movement from one place to another. My family came to the U.S. just three generations ago. My wife is a second generation American. Many of our friends have been Americans less than a decade.
Maybe that's why we Americans depend more heavily upon symbolism than most other nations. To the French, they're French no matter where they live. They have a long cultural history that they are proud of. Same with the British, the Germans, Chinese, and almost any other nation state. They all have a long cultural identity that Americans can't match.
Still, I do find our flagaphilia to be a bit uncomfortable. Why must our politicians wear a flagpin? Why did this become a big campaign issue? What other countries do this? North Korea, the former Soviet Union, China under Mao... Not exactly the type of crowd we normally associate ourselves with.
Damn that liberal media! Because of them, Ron Paul didn't get elected!
Back in the days the software was known as SoundJam MP, iTunes had all sorts of skins and UI enhancements.
When Jeffrey Robbins, the creator of SoundJam moved to Apple, all of those exotic features were stripped off of SoundJam MP. Instead, the UI was vastly improved and the whole project was relabeled iTunes.
And, that's why iTunes is so successful. It is simple and easy to operate. You put in a CD, and almost magically, the music is now in your iTunes library. You go to the iTunes store, click a button, and there it is in iTunes.
We heard many of the same complaint with the iPod when it first came out. The iPod had no microphone, it didn't have a radio, there was no slot for a memory card. You couldn't use it as a recorder. All it could do was play MP3s. It will never sell!
But, sell it did. What Apple had demonstrated time and time again is that features don't sell. Simplicity and elegance do. There are plenty of high end packages for Mac OS X -- including SoundJam's main competitor Audion (Freely downloadable from Panic's website). However, Apple's solution is to ignore the dross and concentrate on usability.
For more information, see the story of Audion at .