"Is there any chance of Linux EVER replacing Windows on the desktop?"
And is there any chance of Macintosh ever replacing Windows on the desktop? The answer, as virtually everyone but the most mislead Mac zealot knows, is No. But unquestionably Apple has the user experience & terminal tools down pat; if Apple dosen't have a hope, how can Linux?
They obviously have a system that's "good enough" - what else does it take? What can Linux learn from Apple's experience trying to break into the mainstream?
Certainly many (in fact, most) OSS-savvy IT industry workers I have come across think Apple is merely using open source for a free ride. Certainly Bruce Perens thought so, and Richard Stallman very pubicly rejected Apple's licensing efforts and questioned their intentions. The Free Software Foundation even boycotted the company. These comments have reinforced IT scepticism of Apple Computer and acceptance of Apple technologies in this field remains close to nil. ZDnet's Evan Leibovitch points out many problems with Apple's (lack of) efforts in Open Source's Black Hole, problems which still remain more than 2 years later.
Your question is good because it would be interesting to see if Bruce's opinions on Apple are still the same, and does he now think the company is genuine? Has it given back a sufficient amount or is it paying lip service only?
"If you want Windows to improve, you actually have to take part in the process."
An improving Windows means it keeps up with the majority of user's slowly-rising level of what's "good enough" over time. It's been Windows meeting that level that has made it standard, and thus the lowest common denominator in operating systems (to the detriment of all others). If I want to keep using Windows, sure I'd want to voluntarily help Microsoft better their product. But surprisingly, many of us on Slashdot want to give another OS a swing at the big time.
Let's do some very approximate math on iTunes Music Store...
To date, 6.5 million songs sold so far (from parent post; I've heard 5 million as of WWDC NY). Although I think their estimate is high, according to some observers Apple gets USD$0.35 per song sold. This is undoubtely less per album sold (according to Apple, this is near 50% of songs) but to be generous let's count all songs downloaded as single-song purchases. This means Apple has taken in (6.5M x $0.35) = USD$2.275M so far on iTunes Music Store. This is not much despite the fact that Apple probably has close to 100% of the paid music download market for the Mac. Considering that this is approximately 5% of the US market, we can extrapolate that, even should Apple dominate (near 100%) the entire US paid music download market when it releases iTMS for Windows, this will still only be [(100/5) x $2.275M] = USD$45.5M. While this will increase if Apple releases iTunesMS for other countries, a number this high is still highly unlikely since Apple will face very stiff competition by the time they release iTMS for Windows.
Now let's put it in perspective. $45.5M wouldn't be bad for 3 months (this is as long as iTMS has been out so far and what the 6.5M download figure is ostensibly based on), it would actually be $182M annually on all platforms if Apple retained close to 100% of the market for an entire year. However, the company had total net sales last year of $5.47 billion - even dominating close to 100% of the present theoretical paid music download market would account for only another 3.3% revenue for the company!
...this is why iTunes is not, and probably never will be, financially very significant to Apple Computer. While Apple hopefully is recouping the money they invested in making iTMS and will turn a small profit eventually, the Music Store is used to generate 'buzz' rather than profit, and it is quite effective. However, looking at the numbers (even if the paid download market grows substantially) makes you wonder what BuyMusic.com's founder Scott Blum is doing blowing over $40 Million in advertising on a venture that's locked into technologies he does not control (Win/IE/Win Media Player), features unpopular licensing, and realistically will not even return $40M back to the company in the first year. Seemingly the only thing he got right was that they're basically copying the iTunes Music Store outright when they made BuyMusic.com
Apple has been stung (repeatedly) by others taking their ideas and using them in their own way, most famously with the Windows graphical user interface (not that Apple hasn't used other's ideas as the basis for better implementations themselves in the past). What they have to gain from this is a slight bit of protection against other, virtually identical knockoffs; anyone copying will have to get a bit more creative when they do so.
The title of the article is misleading - it is not a patent for fast user switching, but more like a fast user environment change à la MacOS 9, which is a continuation of a 1995 patent they already have. Crucially, the article states:
"Will Apple use its new-found intellectual property rights? Maybe not, but like its use of QuickTime patents to win a $150 million investment from Microsoft demonstrated some years back, it may now have the opportunity to do so if it ever hears the words 'cancelled' and 'Microsoft Office' in the same sentence."
I dislike frivolous 1-Click style patents, and I thought this was approaching the line when I first read the headline. But reading the article, there actually is some merit to this particular patent claim. And by claiming such a patent they are taking a page right out of the MS legal rulebook and using it against them, something that might actually let them win a battle in the future. Unfontunately, it's hard to have any kind of surprizes when you're scrutinized as much as Apple, so MS know about this by now (and will undoubtedly try to outflank this flanking move). At least they're competing though.
"Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux[...]"
"misunderestimate"? Oh no... George W. starts using it, and now it's common in American parlance. I guess this is the way standard English is turned into American English. The rest of us just keep misunderestimating the benefits of US cultural enrichment.
The article is a "nice" introduction for those new to Linux, but I suspect that the author (and most that dabble with Linux) generally know their way around computers. For these people, IT mindshare & performance are important issues, and it probably is no bonus to Linux that much hay has been made that Windows is substantially faster than Linux for many important technical tasks. Microprocessor report editor Peter Glaskowsky was recently quoted as saying a company could get better results using a Dell machine with Microsoft compilers than with a Linux machine and GCC compiler, for example. These are the types of stories & tests that technical users considering trying out open source systems pay attention to, not "nice" pieces that are basically uninformative.
"Nowadays when bidding on government proposals, you typically have to bid at much lower service rates than you would to a private company, because the proposals are very competitive [...]"
Almost US$1,000 per machine for 494,000 PCs is not at all competitive.
"When they do any kind of major purchase like this you can be sure they have studied it extensively, and sent out RFPs (Request For Proposals) to several competing bidders, fairly evaluated all of the proposals [...]"
OK, so who were the other competing bidders and for how much? How did they fairly evaluate the proposals and why did they decide on this solution? What's that, we don't know because it's all hush-hush? Oh, we're just supposed to trust them on this $.5B deal. Openness in government, and checks & balances, used to be held in high regard in America for a reason.
Neally half a billion to MS for licenses & equipment in this one agreement alone? I'm glad I don't live in the US, but if I did I'd seriously consider contacting my congressman or senator about this deal. From the few details made public so far, it looks like the DoD really didn't negotiate that hard for the best deal for taxpayer $$$. I'd be more than a little steamed, considering that with a purchase of this magnitude there is a great deal of negotiating power, now that there are secure alternatives; power that apparently wasn't used. It almost sounds like a subsidy. Would Americans let this issue fade away without investigation?
This will never work. The credibility of this service now could not be worse with the RIAA et al, they would never agree to sell their content on Kazaa. Especially since the Kazaa model would give them very little control over their own content, they'd never go for it. Presumably Hemming knows this (I can't imagine her being naive enough not to), I wonder if she is just taking the opportunity to try and goad Rosen and Valenti...
" It's incorrect to normalize the compiler out when performing CPU benchmarks."
No, it isn't. It's normal to use similarly-optimized compilers in benchmarks (the same compiler if possible) to give the hardware as level a baseline as possible. In this case they used the GCC compiler for PPC on the G5 vs. the GCC compiler for x86 on Intel. They charitably assumed that they would be roughly equally optimized on both platforms, and so attempted to eliminate the effects of the compiler from the benchmark results. I say "charitably" because GCC on x86 is surely optimized much more than GCC on PowerPC, not the other way around.
" If everyone benchmarked with open source compilers, there would be none of the shady benchmark-specific optimizations you'd expect to see in proprietary compilers. Everything would be above the table."
Bwahahahaha aha ha. There has been optimizations (shady & otherwise) for as long as there has been benchmarks. And always will be, whether using open source compilers or not - they just might be a little easier to spot with open compilers, that's all. Then again, not that much easier: where there's a desire to hide something, there's usually a way.
If Slate wanted to generate as much reaction as possible for an article, Boutin couldn't have chosen a better way to sensationalize some pretty tame analyst conjecture. This story isn't new, and heck - I even suspect that regurgitated analyst conjecture has been wrong in the past. But even if it isn't wrong this time, who cares? Boutin presents an eclipse of MacOS by Linux as another death knell for Apple, when in fact it presents the greatest opportunity Apple Computer has seen in decades. This is for 3 fundamental reasons:
1. Linux will not be replacing Macs, they'll be replacing current & future Windows boxes. They will be the new systems of price-conscious IT managers or consumers or who would have otherwise used cheap Windows systems anyways. Where Linux is making desktop inroads (with the corporate & enterprise set) Apple has never has had, and probably never will have, any significant acceptance. And nobody can credibly say that Apple's core users - people who work with graphics & music, publishers, etc - will dump their platform and be using Gimp et al instead of Photoshop & MSOffice this decade. Neither will the grandmas of the world anyday soon be getting Linux boxes instead of dead-simple iMacs from their adult children so they can chat with the grandkids. Boutin is right that Linux is growing, but Linux is not eating into Apple's market share to any significant extent.
2. Linux acceptance means more willingness to look at all alternatives to Windows. If we, as consumers or enterprise managers or whomever, are considering going with something other than what we're used to, all options are suddenly open for discussion. The hard part is stepping away from the psychologically safe, familiar zone of Windows to start with; after that, most people don't care what they run so long as they can do what they need to with minimum hassle. The more people use Linux, the more they will consider a Mac, and vice versa.
3. More Linux adoption directly results in more Mac software. Porting is easy, and how many app developers wouldn't spend a few days (nearly a worst-case scenario) to make MacOS X-compatible versions of their software for minimal cost, opening up a market of millions? Furthermore, the more people using Linux, the more users out there will be familiar with the *nix conventions and tools that are also permeate MacOS X, so switching from one to the other will be increasginly like going from KDE to Gnome rather than to/from something foreign.
Boutin is wrong to imply that growing market share for Linux will eat away at Apple's customers. Analogies to Sun & SGI are misleading, since these companies are competing with Linux in the same market spaces that Linux has strength in, and may not show enough beneficial differentiation from Linux to be considered a better solution for the same needs. Apple, however, is very significantly differentiated in the minds of most people from Linux - how many people would confuse the two? - and presents real & imagined specialized benefits that are not seen to be available elsewhere, certainly not with Linux. I won't even comment on his analogies to the XBox vs. Playstation & Gamecube, it's so irrelevant. Wost of all, Boutin pits Linux vs. Apple, predicting Apple will be another "friendly fire" casualty. The two communities have so much to gain from one another by an increased acceptance of either, that one should really consider a success for one to be a success for the other (and the *BSDs as well). A nice try at inflammatory writing, though.
Far from them being an advocate of free trade other than in speeches, this is only one example of increasing protectionism in the current Bush Administration. Taking the largest single trading partner to the US as an example, a wide range of recent tariffs and duties counter to the NAFTA and GATT agreements has done real harm the Canadian economy. Some economists estimate that the cost of such trade policies costs Canada approximately 1% of annual Canadian economic growth (2002 at 3.4%) The only answer, since this protectionsim seems only to be increasing despite numerous WTO rulings against them, would seem to be long-term diversification of export customers for US trade partners such as Canada, the EU, Australia, Japan & China, resulting in less dependance on access to US markets.
Although Apple has done a great job lately on helping to improve the state of unix, and they never have explicity stated that MacOSX was UNIX(tm) Certified, they do throw around "UNIX-based" (note caps) without attribition to The Open Group in some of their literature. I agree with your conclusion that the UNIX(tm) standard should be protected to avoid dilution, but not the way you're supporting it.
"[...] and of course the Open Group has made significant contributions to the Linux Standard Base (about 95% of the test-suite software, I'm told) and has been working on an Open Source Strategy with me since last year."
How is this comment germain to the UNIX(tm) certification question at hand? If you mean to show that despite this legal action The Open Group has been generally supportive of Linux or open source software, so has Apple. Neither can claim the moral high ground here, nor would this support of Linux or open source be relevant to the issue.
Protecting the UNIX standard to prohibit explicit use of falsely implied certification is important, for the very reason that if not everyone will be able to call their OS "UNIX" and the term loses value and meaning. I'm not sure that Apple has done this here, but in any event I hope they lose their counter-suit. For Apple, even losing both suits would not be particularly painful - they would just pay the $110k and get certified, then promote MacOSX's UNIX capabailties even more. For The Open Group, losing either would be more serious; therefore for this reason as well it would be better if The Open Group won (despite that fact that I generally support both parties).
"Rights are a 3 year term. For iTunes only, of course. This is totally non-exclusive."
Apple apparently asks that you license them to sell your song for 3 year stints, but non-exclusivity means you can also sell your music wherever and however else you want.
"Check" (the noun) in this instance is an incorrect spelling of the word that has become so ubiquitous it is now considered an alternate spelling. For Americans, it is becoming the only recognized correct spelling.
"Seems to suggest that "check" is the correct modern spelling and that people writing "cheque" are just weird, or "chiefly British"
Case in point (your link to Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary). Along with the weird "cheifly British" folk you can also include Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, etc... almost the entire English-speaking world outside the US.
You're missing the point here. The meeting wasn't about sales figures or proprietary information. The important thing is that this shows Apple is now actively courting independent artists for iTMS, and apparently giving them the same deal that the big 5 labels get. As much as this can be feasibly done, at any rate: iTMS should not be a free-for-all where anyone with a garage band can upload songs in the hope that they take off. Probably Apple's preference for having a (independent) label represent artists rather than the artists upload the songs themselves is to ensure a manageable level of both quality and responsibility.
The interesting part was "When asked if artists with their own label would be eligible, the iTunes guys had an odd answer, saying that this was invitation-only and they want to deal with those of us in the room." This is not a No, but neither is it a Yes. Do they mean to see how things go and keep options open for welcoming Artist-Labels in the future? They have to walk a tightrope between satisfying the big labels and giving maximum access to the independents.
In any event, this shows Apple is attempting to include independent artists in the iTMS, and at least trying to be fair about it. If this really takes off, it could substantially change the position of the independent artist in the recording industry.
I second that. There's already enough confusion in the language without having to decipher things like "Check checked checks" using this spelling of the word "cheque".
"The United States alone had a GDP of $10 trillion in 2001, compared to $7.8 trillion for the entire EU -- and an apples-to-apples comparison would measure the EU against NAFTA"
Um, you can count us out. Not interested in getting lumped in with 'borrow & spend' policies dragging down our "combined" economies.
...Apple does not have a monopoly in the computer market. MS does. (For those pedantically saying they have a monopoly in the "Macintosh Market", this is the equivalent of a monopoly by Porsche in the Porsche car parts market. Yes, they have one, but it's meaningless since under this definition every company is a monopolist)
While I recognize the right of Apple to dictate conditions & practices to their resellers, I think Apple is being short-sighted by scaring off resellers like this. Agreements not allowing recompense for damages, and preferentially releasing product earlier to their own stores is clearly creating an unfair competitive situation favourable to Apple Retail, something which Apple said they would not do when they announced their retail store strategy 2 years ago. Sure, it means more business will go to Apple Stores and Apple online, but there is also a cost invloved: fewer people in the market to promote Macintosh products. One example is that Elite and other resellers are/were able to get into vertical markets in a way Apple would never have the resources to pay attention to.
While deprecating resellers for company-branded stores may result in a short-term finacial gain, I think it's poor long-term strategy for the overall health of the platform. Note to all you people out there saying "Slashdot has double standards with MS!" it's not the same, since
Slashdot Mirror
"Is there any chance of Linux EVER replacing Windows on the desktop?"
And is there any chance of Macintosh ever replacing Windows on the desktop? The answer, as virtually everyone but the most mislead Mac zealot knows, is No. But unquestionably Apple has the user experience & terminal tools down pat; if Apple dosen't have a hope, how can Linux?
They obviously have a system that's "good enough" - what else does it take? What can Linux learn from Apple's experience trying to break into the mainstream?
Certainly many (in fact, most) OSS-savvy IT industry workers I have come across think Apple is merely using open source for a free ride. Certainly Bruce Perens thought so, and Richard Stallman very pubicly rejected Apple's licensing efforts and questioned their intentions. The Free Software Foundation even boycotted the company. These comments have reinforced IT scepticism of Apple Computer and acceptance of Apple technologies in this field remains close to nil. ZDnet's Evan Leibovitch points out many problems with Apple's (lack of) efforts in Open Source's Black Hole, problems which still remain more than 2 years later.
Your question is good because it would be interesting to see if Bruce's opinions on Apple are still the same, and does he now think the company is genuine? Has it given back a sufficient amount or is it paying lip service only?
"If you want Windows to improve, you actually have to take part in the process."
An improving Windows means it keeps up with the majority of user's slowly-rising level of what's "good enough" over time. It's been Windows meeting that level that has made it standard, and thus the lowest common denominator in operating systems (to the detriment of all others). If I want to keep using Windows, sure I'd want to voluntarily help Microsoft better their product. But surprisingly, many of us on Slashdot want to give another OS a swing at the big time.
Let's do some very approximate math on iTunes Music Store...
...this is why iTunes is not, and probably never will be, financially very significant to Apple Computer. While Apple hopefully is recouping the money they invested in making iTMS and will turn a small profit eventually, the Music Store is used to generate 'buzz' rather than profit, and it is quite effective. However, looking at the numbers (even if the paid download market grows substantially) makes you wonder what BuyMusic.com's founder Scott Blum is doing blowing over $40 Million in advertising on a venture that's locked into technologies he does not control (Win/IE/Win Media Player), features unpopular licensing, and realistically will not even return $40M back to the company in the first year. Seemingly the only thing he got right was that they're basically copying the iTunes Music Store outright when they made BuyMusic.com
To date, 6.5 million songs sold so far (from parent post; I've heard 5 million as of WWDC NY). Although I think their estimate is high, according to some observers Apple gets USD$0.35 per song sold. This is undoubtely less per album sold (according to Apple, this is near 50% of songs) but to be generous let's count all songs downloaded as single-song purchases. This means Apple has taken in (6.5M x $0.35) = USD$2.275M so far on iTunes Music Store. This is not much despite the fact that Apple probably has close to 100% of the paid music download market for the Mac. Considering that this is approximately 5% of the US market, we can extrapolate that, even should Apple dominate (near 100%) the entire US paid music download market when it releases iTMS for Windows, this will still only be [(100/5) x $2.275M] = USD$45.5M. While this will increase if Apple releases iTunesMS for other countries, a number this high is still highly unlikely since Apple will face very stiff competition by the time they release iTMS for Windows.
Now let's put it in perspective. $45.5M wouldn't be bad for 3 months (this is as long as iTMS has been out so far and what the 6.5M download figure is ostensibly based on), it would actually be $182M annually on all platforms if Apple retained close to 100% of the market for an entire year. However, the company had total net sales last year of $5.47 billion - even dominating close to 100% of the present theoretical paid music download market would account for only another 3.3% revenue for the company!
Apple has been stung (repeatedly) by others taking their ideas and using them in their own way, most famously with the Windows graphical user interface (not that Apple hasn't used other's ideas as the basis for better implementations themselves in the past). What they have to gain from this is a slight bit of protection against other, virtually identical knockoffs; anyone copying will have to get a bit more creative when they do so.
The title of the article is misleading - it is not a patent for fast user switching, but more like a fast user environment change à la MacOS 9, which is a continuation of a 1995 patent they already have. Crucially, the article states:
"Will Apple use its new-found intellectual property rights? Maybe not, but like its use of QuickTime patents to win a $150 million investment from Microsoft demonstrated some years back, it may now have the opportunity to do so if it ever hears the words 'cancelled' and 'Microsoft Office' in the same sentence."
I dislike frivolous 1-Click style patents, and I thought this was approaching the line when I first read the headline. But reading the article, there actually is some merit to this particular patent claim. And by claiming such a patent they are taking a page right out of the MS legal rulebook and using it against them, something that might actually let them win a battle in the future. Unfontunately, it's hard to have any kind of surprizes when you're scrutinized as much as Apple, so MS know about this by now (and will undoubtedly try to outflank this flanking move). At least they're competing though.
"Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux[...]"
"misunderestimate"? Oh no... George W. starts using it, and now it's common in American parlance. I guess this is the way standard English is turned into American English. The rest of us just keep misunderestimating the benefits of US cultural enrichment.
The article is a "nice" introduction for those new to Linux, but I suspect that the author (and most that dabble with Linux) generally know their way around computers. For these people, IT mindshare & performance are important issues, and it probably is no bonus to Linux that much hay has been made that Windows is substantially faster than Linux for many important technical tasks. Microprocessor report editor Peter Glaskowsky was recently quoted as saying a company could get better results using a Dell machine with Microsoft compilers than with a Linux machine and GCC compiler, for example. These are the types of stories & tests that technical users considering trying out open source systems pay attention to, not "nice" pieces that are basically uninformative.
"Nowadays when bidding on government proposals, you typically have to bid at much lower service rates than you would to a private company, because the proposals are very competitive [...]"
Almost US$1,000 per machine for 494,000 PCs is not at all competitive.
"When they do any kind of major purchase like this you can be sure they have studied it extensively, and sent out RFPs (Request For Proposals) to several competing bidders, fairly evaluated all of the proposals [...]"
OK, so who were the other competing bidders and for how much? How did they fairly evaluate the proposals and why did they decide on this solution? What's that, we don't know because it's all hush-hush? Oh, we're just supposed to trust them on this $.5B deal. Openness in government, and checks & balances, used to be held in high regard in America for a reason.
Neally half a billion to MS for licenses & equipment in this one agreement alone? I'm glad I don't live in the US, but if I did I'd seriously consider contacting my congressman or senator about this deal. From the few details made public so far, it looks like the DoD really didn't negotiate that hard for the best deal for taxpayer $$$. I'd be more than a little steamed, considering that with a purchase of this magnitude there is a great deal of negotiating power, now that there are secure alternatives; power that apparently wasn't used. It almost sounds like a subsidy. Would Americans let this issue fade away without investigation?
This will never work. The credibility of this service now could not be worse with the RIAA et al, they would never agree to sell their content on Kazaa. Especially since the Kazaa model would give them very little control over their own content, they'd never go for it. Presumably Hemming knows this (I can't imagine her being naive enough not to), I wonder if she is just taking the opportunity to try and goad Rosen and Valenti...
" It's incorrect to normalize the compiler out when performing CPU benchmarks."
No, it isn't. It's normal to use similarly-optimized compilers in benchmarks (the same compiler if possible) to give the hardware as level a baseline as possible. In this case they used the GCC compiler for PPC on the G5 vs. the GCC compiler for x86 on Intel. They charitably assumed that they would be roughly equally optimized on both platforms, and so attempted to eliminate the effects of the compiler from the benchmark results. I say "charitably" because GCC on x86 is surely optimized much more than GCC on PowerPC, not the other way around.
" If everyone benchmarked with open source compilers, there would be none of the shady benchmark-specific optimizations you'd expect to see in proprietary compilers. Everything would be above the table."
Bwahahahaha aha ha. There has been optimizations (shady & otherwise) for as long as there has been benchmarks. And always will be, whether using open source compilers or not - they just might be a little easier to spot with open compilers, that's all. Then again, not that much easier: where there's a desire to hide something, there's usually a way.
If Slate wanted to generate as much reaction as possible for an article, Boutin couldn't have chosen a better way to sensationalize some pretty tame analyst conjecture. This story isn't new, and heck - I even suspect that regurgitated analyst conjecture has been wrong in the past. But even if it isn't wrong this time, who cares? Boutin presents an eclipse of MacOS by Linux as another death knell for Apple, when in fact it presents the greatest opportunity Apple Computer has seen in decades. This is for 3 fundamental reasons:
1. Linux will not be replacing Macs, they'll be replacing current & future Windows boxes. They will be the new systems of price-conscious IT managers or consumers or who would have otherwise used cheap Windows systems anyways. Where Linux is making desktop inroads (with the corporate & enterprise set) Apple has never has had, and probably never will have, any significant acceptance. And nobody can credibly say that Apple's core users - people who work with graphics & music, publishers, etc - will dump their platform and be using Gimp et al instead of Photoshop & MSOffice this decade. Neither will the grandmas of the world anyday soon be getting Linux boxes instead of dead-simple iMacs from their adult children so they can chat with the grandkids. Boutin is right that Linux is growing, but Linux is not eating into Apple's market share to any significant extent.
2. Linux acceptance means more willingness to look at all alternatives to Windows. If we, as consumers or enterprise managers or whomever, are considering going with something other than what we're used to, all options are suddenly open for discussion. The hard part is stepping away from the psychologically safe, familiar zone of Windows to start with; after that, most people don't care what they run so long as they can do what they need to with minimum hassle. The more people use Linux, the more they will consider a Mac, and vice versa.
3. More Linux adoption directly results in more Mac software. Porting is easy, and how many app developers wouldn't spend a few days (nearly a worst-case scenario) to make MacOS X-compatible versions of their software for minimal cost, opening up a market of millions? Furthermore, the more people using Linux, the more users out there will be familiar with the *nix conventions and tools that are also permeate MacOS X, so switching from one to the other will be increasginly like going from KDE to Gnome rather than to/from something foreign.
Boutin is wrong to imply that growing market share for Linux will eat away at Apple's customers. Analogies to Sun & SGI are misleading, since these companies are competing with Linux in the same market spaces that Linux has strength in, and may not show enough beneficial differentiation from Linux to be considered a better solution for the same needs. Apple, however, is very significantly differentiated in the minds of most people from Linux - how many people would confuse the two? - and presents real & imagined specialized benefits that are not seen to be available elsewhere, certainly not with Linux. I won't even comment on his analogies to the XBox vs. Playstation & Gamecube, it's so irrelevant. Wost of all, Boutin pits Linux vs. Apple, predicting Apple will be another "friendly fire" casualty. The two communities have so much to gain from one another by an increased acceptance of either, that one should really consider a success for one to be a success for the other (and the *BSDs as well). A nice try at inflammatory writing, though.
"Good one, isolated cases without proof."
You want proof? You can't handle the proof!
Far from them being an advocate of free trade other than in speeches, this is only one example of increasing protectionism in the current Bush Administration. Taking the largest single trading partner to the US as an example, a wide range of recent tariffs and duties counter to the NAFTA and GATT agreements has done real harm the Canadian economy. Some economists estimate that the cost of such trade policies costs Canada approximately 1% of annual Canadian economic growth (2002 at 3.4%) The only answer, since this protectionsim seems only to be increasing despite numerous WTO rulings against them, would seem to be long-term diversification of export customers for US trade partners such as Canada, the EU, Australia, Japan & China, resulting in less dependance on access to US markets.
Bruce,
Although Apple has done a great job lately on helping to improve the state of unix, and they never have explicity stated that MacOSX was UNIX(tm) Certified, they do throw around "UNIX-based" (note caps) without attribition to The Open Group in some of their literature. I agree with your conclusion that the UNIX(tm) standard should be protected to avoid dilution, but not the way you're supporting it.
"[...] and of course the Open Group has made significant contributions to the Linux Standard Base (about 95% of the test-suite software, I'm told) and has been working on an Open Source Strategy with me since last year."
How is this comment germain to the UNIX(tm) certification question at hand? If you mean to show that despite this legal action The Open Group has been generally supportive of Linux or open source software, so has Apple. Neither can claim the moral high ground here, nor would this support of Linux or open source be relevant to the issue.
Protecting the UNIX standard to prohibit explicit use of falsely implied certification is important, for the very reason that if not everyone will be able to call their OS "UNIX" and the term loses value and meaning. I'm not sure that Apple has done this here, but in any event I hope they lose their counter-suit. For Apple, even losing both suits would not be particularly painful - they would just pay the $110k and get certified, then promote MacOSX's UNIX capabailties even more. For The Open Group, losing either would be more serious; therefore for this reason as well it would be better if The Open Group won (despite that fact that I generally support both parties).
From the notes:
"Rights are a 3 year term. For iTunes only, of course. This is totally non-exclusive."
Apple apparently asks that you license them to sell your song for 3 year stints, but non-exclusivity means you can also sell your music wherever and however else you want.
"Why is it wrong? There are no rules to spelling. [...] If one society spells it differently then fine but you can not say it is wrong."
Gr8! Then i cun shpell any w4y i want! i'll d3finately te11 that to mai teechur NeXT time she gifs me un "F" for riting like a l33t h4x0r!
"Check" (the noun) in this instance is an incorrect spelling of the word that has become so ubiquitous it is now considered an alternate spelling. For Americans, it is becoming the only recognized correct spelling.
"Seems to suggest that "check" is the correct modern spelling and that people writing "cheque" are just weird, or "chiefly British"
Case in point (your link to Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary). Along with the weird "cheifly British" folk you can also include Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, etc... almost the entire English-speaking world outside the US.
You're missing the point here. The meeting wasn't about sales figures or proprietary information. The important thing is that this shows Apple is now actively courting independent artists for iTMS, and apparently giving them the same deal that the big 5 labels get. As much as this can be feasibly done, at any rate: iTMS should not be a free-for-all where anyone with a garage band can upload songs in the hope that they take off. Probably Apple's preference for having a (independent) label represent artists rather than the artists upload the songs themselves is to ensure a manageable level of both quality and responsibility.
The interesting part was "When asked if artists with their own label would be eligible, the iTunes guys had an odd answer, saying that this was invitation-only and they want to deal with those of us in the room." This is not a No, but neither is it a Yes. Do they mean to see how things go and keep options open for welcoming Artist-Labels in the future? They have to walk a tightrope between satisfying the big labels and giving maximum access to the independents.
In any event, this shows Apple is attempting to include independent artists in the iTMS, and at least trying to be fair about it. If this really takes off, it could substantially change the position of the independent artist in the recording industry.
I second that. There's already enough confusion in the language without having to decipher things like "Check checked checks" using this spelling of the word "cheque".
As always, good old MacSurfer toi the rescue with a link to the Gnutella News story.
Lots of interesting details; it looks like Apple is being fair and genuinely trying to help out independent artists as much as possible.
"The United States alone had a GDP of $10 trillion in 2001, compared to $7.8 trillion for the entire EU -- and an apples-to-apples comparison would measure the EU against NAFTA"
Um, you can count us out. Not interested in getting lumped in with 'borrow & spend' policies dragging down our "combined" economies.
-Canada
...Apple does not have a monopoly in the computer market. MS does. (For those pedantically saying they have a monopoly in the "Macintosh Market", this is the equivalent of a monopoly by Porsche in the Porsche car parts market. Yes, they have one, but it's meaningless since under this definition every company is a monopolist)
[Apologies for the split post]
While I recognize the right of Apple to dictate conditions & practices to their resellers, I think Apple is being short-sighted by scaring off resellers like this. Agreements not allowing recompense for damages, and preferentially releasing product earlier to their own stores is clearly creating an unfair competitive situation favourable to Apple Retail, something which Apple said they would not do when they announced their retail store strategy 2 years ago. Sure, it means more business will go to Apple Stores and Apple online, but there is also a cost invloved: fewer people in the market to promote Macintosh products. One example is that Elite and other resellers are/were able to get into vertical markets in a way Apple would never have the resources to pay attention to.
While deprecating resellers for company-branded stores may result in a short-term finacial gain, I think it's poor long-term strategy for the overall health of the platform. Note to all you people out there saying "Slashdot has double standards with MS!" it's not the same, since
How much did they pay for the license?
Knowing this may reveal the intentions of MS in the matter.