And finally, how successful would OS/X be if Apple sold it as software for any platform, Microsoft-style? It would be earth-shakingly successful, probably garnering 50% marketshare within one year. And probably making 10x more money than they do now.
They tried that before. It didn't work out too well. Also, you're wrong.
One of the strengths of OS X is that it runs on a limited, well-understood suite of hardware. Bugs are easier to fix, components are easier to tweak, and new features are more easily added. I do not, and never have, believed that Apple would be well served by opening up OS X. It's a tightly run ship (for the most part), and opening it up to all hardware would serve neither Apple nor end users.
Apple, for business reasons all their own, has chosen not to structure their licenses such that 3rd parties can sell systems that come with OS X pre-installed without Apple's approval. There are plenty of operating systems around with licenses that do permit this. If Apple had a monopoloy on operating systems this would be a different beast. They do not; competition is ripe, and heating up.
Further, this situation seems analogous to one in which some third-party decided to make their own PS3 clones, unapproved of by Sony. The PS3 is Sony's property, to do with as they see fit. Suing this PS3 clone maker into oblivion would be wholly justified. Apple is no different.
From talking to people in the industry, the innovation with the iPhone isn't so much with the device itself, it's with the kind of deal Apple was able to cut.
No, the innovation is making the features easy to use. Surveys have been done asking phone users if they use the email, internet, etc., capabilities of their phones. Compared to other smartphone users, iPhone users use more of their phone's capabilities, and more often.
I'm too lazy to find the survey right now, and you certainly have no reason to trust me. But the innovation with the iPhone may be related to its pricing structure, but people like it because it is a solid, stable, and very usable device. Add to this the ability to couple it with your computer at home and it really is easy to see why this device is popular.
So, if I, for example, need to change the level of nesting in an existing block of code for some reason (say, introducing an if statement, or factoring some code out into a separate function), the editor can't help me to ensure I get the indentation level right.
Bollocks. The semantic requirements around indentation are no more or less complex than the semantic requirements for curly braces in other languages. I've been using python for two years using vim as my editor. I have never, ever run into a compilation issue because of whitespace. Not once. I never have to think about it, and I doubt that emacs (or any other editor worth its salt) is any different.
I don't know what editor you are using but it is sub-par at best.
That's pretty silly, man. Any text editor/IDE that has a modicum of intelligence can do that for you. Whitespace being a dealbreaker is kinda banal. I like Python, and use it frequently for various scripting tasks. I like Ruby and Groovy, too, but I'm not going to disdain for an entire language simply because of something as easily adjusted to as whitespace.
You think that the a Democratic president would have invaded Iraq? Imprisoned and tortured innocent people? Pushed for telecom immunity in the first place? Undermined the military? Publicly exposed the identity of undercover agents? Ignored New Orleans after Katrina? Undermined habeas corpus?
So, no. I disagree with Obama on this one, and hope he comes out strongly against it. But I'm not so shallow or pedantic as to think this makes the parties equal in any way.
I use vim as a code editor for a few things: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, XML, Python. But if it's a compiled language -- Java, ObjC, etc. -- I use an IDE.
Point: I can see the benefit of vim for some things. It's fast, lightweight, and easy to move around in. But it's no IDE. Right tool/right job and all that.
Gee, who would have thought that a massive collaborative development effort with 30+ different corporate players might possibly face delays, developer frustration, and get generally get eclipsed by someone who seems to know how to actually write powerful, consumer-friendly software.
I suspect you're one of those "both parties are exactly the same" types, but I'll bite anyways.
This administration is historically notable for the value it has placed upon loyalty of political appointees. Appointees in the Clinton administration, for example, were able to disagree with the President and Vice President without fear. Compare Madeline Albright and Condolezza Rice, for example. Or even better: Anthony Zinni and David Petraeus. Zinni, for example, frequently alluded to the wide latitude he was given at Centcom. Petraeus, on the other hand, is a leashed dog.
Do you really think Obama or McCain gets full choice of their cabinet or aides after the coming election?
Yes. It's called "being President." But if, as I suspect, you define choice as something completely unfettered by the opinions of others, then of course not. But that's a stupid definition.
Oh right, your idiot ass CAN'T refute me, so you hide behind mod points you disgusting piece of trash.
Why would anyone want to talk to you? You're obviously a zealot, juvenile and angry. What point would there be in saying anything to anyone like that? It's not that no one has anything to say to you, it's that it would be stupid to say anything to someone like you. As you've already shown, any attempts to do so is met with bile and faux superiority.
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
You know, I wonder how hard it would be to do a Twitter clone on Google's App Engine. It seems like it would be the perfect fit: relatively simple application that needs to be massively scalable.
As far as I can remember: forever. I'm the type of person who *vastly* prefers the keyboard over the mouse. My first my was a G5 running Panther, and the first thing I did (again, IIRC) was to turn on full keyboard access so I didn't have to reach for the mouse as often: ^F2 to get to the menu bar, ^F3 to get to the Dock... And then on the eighth day Quicksilver was created, and the Light of God did shine down upon me.
Point: since switching to OS X I've never had much trouble getting around using the keyboard, and did banish the mouse to the desert.
Having said THAT, I have integrated Expose into my normal usage patterns... *shrug*
When Twitter opened it was handling 11,000 requests per second and doing it well. Twitter has gone from nothing to sensational in a very small amount of time. If you hit the ground running that quickly, your growing pains will be evident regardless of what framework or language choice you're using.
That I'm going to have to disagree with you on. For starters the most recent troubles that have plagued Twitter happened as recently as a few days ago. They have had plenty of time to mature their stack, but they are still seeing major downtime.
Second, I work for a major website and over the past two years we have *never* experienced downtime like what I've seen on Twitter, and we get far more traffic. We're on a J2EE stack, and without getting into evangelism I wonder how much of an impact that has had. It certainly has a better track record for us.
Now, large-scale enterprise applications are difficult (if not impossible) to meaningfully compare. But one can't help but notice these things. Twitter goes down a lot, and it's not all that complicated of an application. Why? A lack in a robust QA group? Operations? Rails itself? All of the above?
Rails was the cat's pajamas two years ago. The future. The in-thing. Revolutionary. Exciting. Radical. Amazing!
Then like so many similar times before, reality set in. It turned out to be buggy, unstable, less performant, and heavily dependant upon an evangelical base.
Ruby the language is interesting. Not my personal cuppa, but I have nothing against it. Rails, however... After having analyzed it and developed a prototype application for my company, I came to realize that there are other frameworks out there that are more worthwhile, epecially in an enterprise environment. The problems I've seen Twitter experience only solidify this.
If you are doing green-field development Rails should probably not be your first choice. Yes, Rails is interesting. No, it is not
the end-all-be-all, and it certainly has some rather major warts.
Twitter is a major site, even if you yourself have never heard of it, with many tens of thousands of users. As such it is felt by many to by *the* flagship RoR application.
Unfortunately it has suffered from numerous outages, some of these lasting days at a time.
Everyone has an opinion on this, but the consensus seems to be that Vista is a huge dud. Part of Microsoft's decline can be attributed to an economy that has slowed, but the fact remains that consumers are rejecting Vista in large numbers. Also, while Microsoft's revenue from Windows (and I believe Office) was down significantly, Apple's revenue was up 46%. People are spending money on computers, not just on Microsoft like they once did.
Check out this entry from the New York Times tech blog, and specifically the comments people left on it. It's interesting because the comments are from a fairly wide variety of people: stay at home moms, programmers, help desk staff, retired people, etc.
If I were in marketing at Microsoft I wouldn't have been able to sleep after having read that. And it's not like this is isolated: Vista has been almost universally panned by consumers. And not just panned: people are *pissed off*.
I think the big flaw in your numbers is business users. The vast majority of them are not going to pay the premium for Apple hardware, and I don't see Apple selling budget boxes or licensing their OS anytime soon.
And the big flaw in your logic is believing that Apple's hardware is more expensive. It's not. Hasn't been for years. Not to mention that support costs are far lower for Macs: higher quality hardware + higher quality software = fewer calls to the help desk/IT department.
First point: The black-hat scum don't even have anywhere near 100% of the Windows market; there are plenty of competent Windows admins.
I should have been clearer. Currently there are no botnets which have infected either Mac or Linux machines. These compose approximately 8-10% of the market. Since this is an entirely untapped market for botnets, there is much profit potential for exploitation. The fact that this has not happened yet gives very strong support to the statement "they cannot be compromised such that a botnet can be run on them."
The platform is far more secure, so most Linux exploits would likely involve the operator granting them permissions.
Yes, that was my point as well.
Third point: Mac users, not so much, quite a few apparently fell for that "install this viewer to look at porn!" trojan a couple of months ago. They're the current morons in the UNIX world, not unlike the computer operators in the Windows world whose systems comprise the botnets.
I'll ignore the straw-men and focus on trojans: every OS is vulnerable to trojans. Not every OS is vulnerable to botnets or viruses.
But I'm still not so overconfident as to say that Linux or Mac boxes won't fall.
Until evidence shows otherwise I will continue to believe that both Linux and Macs are immune to botnets and viruses. That will change when such a beast is shown to exist in the wild for either of those.
I think the disconnect, and correct me if I am wrong, is that you do not believe that operating systems can be structured so that they are immune to viruses. Is this correct?
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And finally, how successful would OS/X be if Apple sold it as software for any platform, Microsoft-style? It would be earth-shakingly successful, probably garnering 50% marketshare within one year. And probably making 10x more money than they do now.
They tried that before. It didn't work out too well. Also, you're wrong.
One of the strengths of OS X is that it runs on a limited, well-understood suite of hardware. Bugs are easier to fix, components are easier to tweak, and new features are more easily added. I do not, and never have, believed that Apple would be well served by opening up OS X. It's a tightly run ship (for the most part), and opening it up to all hardware would serve neither Apple nor end users.
I fail to see the controversy.
Apple, for business reasons all their own, has chosen not to structure their licenses such that 3rd parties can sell systems that come with OS X pre-installed without Apple's approval. There are plenty of operating systems around with licenses that do permit this. If Apple had a monopoloy on operating systems this would be a different beast. They do not; competition is ripe, and heating up.
Further, this situation seems analogous to one in which some third-party decided to make their own PS3 clones, unapproved of by Sony. The PS3 is Sony's property, to do with as they see fit. Suing this PS3 clone maker into oblivion would be wholly justified. Apple is no different.
So what's the big deal?
From talking to people in the industry, the innovation with the iPhone isn't so much with the device itself, it's with the kind of deal Apple was able to cut.
No, the innovation is making the features easy to use. Surveys have been done asking phone users if they use the email, internet, etc., capabilities of their phones. Compared to other smartphone users, iPhone users use more of their phone's capabilities, and more often.
I'm too lazy to find the survey right now, and you certainly have no reason to trust me. But the innovation with the iPhone may be related to its pricing structure, but people like it because it is a solid, stable, and very usable device. Add to this the ability to couple it with your computer at home and it really is easy to see why this device is popular.
Whups. My bad.
Ok, I've still never run into that, though. But... yeah...
So, if I, for example, need to change the level of nesting in an existing block of code for some reason (say, introducing an if statement, or factoring some code out into a separate function), the editor can't help me to ensure I get the indentation level right.
Bollocks. The semantic requirements around indentation are no more or less complex than the semantic requirements for curly braces in other languages. I've been using python for two years using vim as my editor. I have never, ever run into a compilation issue because of whitespace. Not once. I never have to think about it, and I doubt that emacs (or any other editor worth its salt) is any different.
I don't know what editor you are using but it is sub-par at best.
That's pretty silly, man. Any text editor/IDE that has a modicum of intelligence can do that for you. Whitespace being a dealbreaker is kinda banal. I like Python, and use it frequently for various scripting tasks. I like Ruby and Groovy, too, but I'm not going to disdain for an entire language simply because of something as easily adjusted to as whitespace.
No.
You think that the a Democratic president would have invaded Iraq? Imprisoned and tortured innocent people? Pushed for telecom immunity in the first place? Undermined the military? Publicly exposed the identity of undercover agents? Ignored New Orleans after Katrina? Undermined habeas corpus?
So, no. I disagree with Obama on this one, and hope he comes out strongly against it. But I'm not so shallow or pedantic as to think this makes the parties equal in any way.
I use vim as a code editor for a few things: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, XML, Python. But if it's a compiled language -- Java, ObjC, etc. -- I use an IDE.
Point: I can see the benefit of vim for some things. It's fast, lightweight, and easy to move around in. But it's no IDE. Right tool/right job and all that.
Yeah, we know. That's why OS X is years ahead of both.
Gee, who would have thought that a massive collaborative development effort with 30+ different corporate players might possibly face delays, developer frustration, and get generally get eclipsed by someone who seems to know how to actually write powerful, consumer-friendly software.
I think you win the prize for the most banal, substance-less post in history. Congratulations!
I suspect you're one of those "both parties are exactly the same" types, but I'll bite anyways.
This administration is historically notable for the value it has placed upon loyalty of political appointees. Appointees in the Clinton administration, for example, were able to disagree with the President and Vice President without fear. Compare Madeline Albright and Condolezza Rice, for example. Or even better: Anthony Zinni and David Petraeus. Zinni, for example, frequently alluded to the wide latitude he was given at Centcom. Petraeus, on the other hand, is a leashed dog.
Do you really think Obama or McCain gets full choice of their cabinet or aides after the coming election?
Yes. It's called "being President." But if, as I suspect, you define choice as something completely unfettered by the opinions of others, then of course not. But that's a stupid definition.
Bush/Cheney value loyalty far, far more than intelligence, expertise, or performance. They appointed a plague of loyal idiots.
Oh right, your idiot ass CAN'T refute me, so you hide behind mod points you disgusting piece of trash.
Why would anyone want to talk to you? You're obviously a zealot, juvenile and angry. What point would there be in saying anything to anyone like that? It's not that no one has anything to say to you, it's that it would be stupid to say anything to someone like you. As you've already shown, any attempts to do so is met with bile and faux superiority.
Who knows what might happen when he gets in office, though.
That's a stupid objection that could be applied anywhere to anyone. Why bother with what the candidates say or have done at all, in that case? "Vote Hitler! I know he *said* he'd kill all the Jews, but who knows what might happen when he gets in office?"
You know, I wonder how hard it would be to do a Twitter clone on Google's App Engine. It seems like it would be the perfect fit: relatively simple application that needs to be massively scalable.
And when was that implemented?
As far as I can remember: forever. I'm the type of person who *vastly* prefers the keyboard over the mouse. My first my was a G5 running Panther, and the first thing I did (again, IIRC) was to turn on full keyboard access so I didn't have to reach for the mouse as often: ^F2 to get to the menu bar, ^F3 to get to the Dock... And then on the eighth day Quicksilver was created, and the Light of God did shine down upon me.
Point: since switching to OS X I've never had much trouble getting around using the keyboard, and did banish the mouse to the desert.
Having said THAT, I have integrated Expose into my normal usage patterns... *shrug*
When Twitter opened it was handling 11,000 requests per second and doing it well. Twitter has gone from nothing to sensational in a very small amount of time. If you hit the ground running that quickly, your growing pains will be evident regardless of what framework or language choice you're using.
That I'm going to have to disagree with you on. For starters the most recent troubles that have plagued Twitter happened as recently as a few days ago. They have had plenty of time to mature their stack, but they are still seeing major downtime.
Second, I work for a major website and over the past two years we have *never* experienced downtime like what I've seen on Twitter, and we get far more traffic. We're on a J2EE stack, and without getting into evangelism I wonder how much of an impact that has had. It certainly has a better track record for us.
Now, large-scale enterprise applications are difficult (if not impossible) to meaningfully compare. But one can't help but notice these things. Twitter goes down a lot, and it's not all that complicated of an application. Why? A lack in a robust QA group? Operations? Rails itself? All of the above?
Rails was the cat's pajamas two years ago. The future. The in-thing. Revolutionary. Exciting. Radical. Amazing!
Then like so many similar times before, reality set in. It turned out to be buggy, unstable, less performant, and heavily dependant upon an evangelical base.
Ruby the language is interesting. Not my personal cuppa, but I have nothing against it. Rails, however... After having analyzed it and developed a prototype application for my company, I came to realize that there are other frameworks out there that are more worthwhile, epecially in an enterprise environment. The problems I've seen Twitter experience only solidify this.
If you are doing green-field development Rails should probably not be your first choice. Yes, Rails is interesting. No, it is not the end-all-be-all, and it certainly has some rather major warts.
Twitter is a major site, even if you yourself have never heard of it, with many tens of thousands of users. As such it is felt by many to by *the* flagship RoR application. Unfortunately it has suffered from numerous outages, some of these lasting days at a time.
Everyone has an opinion on this, but the consensus seems to be that Vista is a huge dud. Part of Microsoft's decline can be attributed to an economy that has slowed, but the fact remains that consumers are rejecting Vista in large numbers. Also, while Microsoft's revenue from Windows (and I believe Office) was down significantly, Apple's revenue was up 46%. People are spending money on computers, not just on Microsoft like they once did.
Check out this entry from the New York Times tech blog, and specifically the comments people left on it. It's interesting because the comments are from a fairly wide variety of people: stay at home moms, programmers, help desk staff, retired people, etc.
If I were in marketing at Microsoft I wouldn't have been able to sleep after having read that. And it's not like this is isolated: Vista has been almost universally panned by consumers. And not just panned: people are *pissed off*.
Apple sales are up and Asus alone, sells more Linux machines than Apple sells Macs.
You keep saying this. It wasn't true then, it's not true now. Apple sold 1.4 million portables in Q2 2008, Asus sold 350,000.
Quit lying.
I think the big flaw in your numbers is business users. The vast majority of them are not going to pay the premium for Apple hardware, and I don't see Apple selling budget boxes or licensing their OS anytime soon.
And the big flaw in your logic is believing that Apple's hardware is more expensive. It's not. Hasn't been for years. Not to mention that support costs are far lower for Macs: higher quality hardware + higher quality software = fewer calls to the help desk/IT department.First point: The black-hat scum don't even have anywhere near 100% of the Windows market; there are plenty of competent Windows admins.
I should have been clearer. Currently there are no botnets which have infected either Mac or Linux machines. These compose approximately 8-10% of the market. Since this is an entirely untapped market for botnets, there is much profit potential for exploitation. The fact that this has not happened yet gives very strong support to the statement "they cannot be compromised such that a botnet can be run on them."
The platform is far more secure, so most Linux exploits would likely involve the operator granting them permissions.
Yes, that was my point as well.
Third point: Mac users, not so much, quite a few apparently fell for that "install this viewer to look at porn!" trojan a couple of months ago. They're the current morons in the UNIX world, not unlike the computer operators in the Windows world whose systems comprise the botnets.
I'll ignore the straw-men and focus on trojans: every OS is vulnerable to trojans. Not every OS is vulnerable to botnets or viruses.
But I'm still not so overconfident as to say that Linux or Mac boxes won't fall.
Until evidence shows otherwise I will continue to believe that both Linux and Macs are immune to botnets and viruses. That will change when such a beast is shown to exist in the wild for either of those.
I think the disconnect, and correct me if I am wrong, is that you do not believe that operating systems can be structured so that they are immune to viruses. Is this correct?