Either way, it's not the same thing as making the browser a part of your monopoly operating system then writing it in such a way that it breaks web standards so everybody is forced to code for your browser and maybe, as an afterthought, for everybody else's.
You have Netscape to thank for that little "innovation", since it pretty much sums up their entire business plan.
Them and the glacial pace at which web standards were defined back in the '90s. Kinda hard to stick to "standards" that are still defining years-old technology and "innovate" in a market where 6 months is considered eons.
I'm guessing you weren't actually around for the "browser wars", otherwise you'd remember that Microsoft was the one playing catchup to Netscape, who kicked off that whole "code for Navigator, not HTML" game.
It's the same "bundling" that got IE as the majority browser used against Microsoft for a change.
I realise it's a popular meme, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis. IE displaced Navigator because it was *better* and was well on the path to doing so before it was "bundled" into Windows (and had actually done so before any version of Windows with IE "bundled" had reached a significant marketshare).
Apple has a chance to give Microsoft a major kick in the balls... the question is whether they'll go that route or not. They're doing exactly what Microsoft has always wanted to do -- dominate an entire ecosystem from desktops to laptops to mobile to the television. This is what Bill Gates has been trying to do for the past 20 years, and Apple has done it in just about 5. It's an incredibly smart move on Apple's part, and a major blow to Microsoft's hegemonic ambitions.
You appear to be a bit confused about what the word "dominate" means. If Apple were "dominating" this market, then the Mac Mini hooked up to my TV would still be running OS X, rather than its recent upgrade from XP MCE to Vista MCE. Or, at the very least, the choice would have been between OS X and Vista, rather than XP MCE, Vista MCE and - a distant third - MythTV.
You seem to have lost touch with the world outside the RDF.
So basically making Safari the default browser for HTML files and links. So what? How often does the average user double click on an HTML file? Practically never. How often does the average user click on an HTML link OUTSIDE of a web browser? Occasionally, but not very often.
I'd be quite willing to lay down a hundred bucks on a bet that the average user clicks on a http:/// link outside of their browser *at least* once a day. I'd be willing to lay down another hundred on a bet that a significant proportion - if not a majority - do so many times a day.
However, you're missing the most important aspect of being the "default browser", which is the part where you get launched every time the user clicks on that "Internet" link on the Start Menu and Desktop. You seem to be forgetting that most people don't run "Internet Explorer", they run a "web browser" or, more likely, "the Internet".
The proportion of people who give even the slightest damn about the browser they're running, outside of compatibility issues with websites, is vanishingly small and isolated almost completely to people on sites like Slashdot.
"We've got a basic version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Premium version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Business version, $129. We've got an Enterprise version, $129. And we've got the Ultimate version, we're throwing everything into it, it's $129. We think most people will buy the Ultimate version."
See, this happens because Apple, being primarily a hardware company, practice their pricing discrimination on the hardware side (which does a similar thing to Vista). Their software is incidental to that, and tied to the hardware, so they don't do much with its pricing.
Microsoft, OTOH, are primarily a software company, so they have to do their pricing discrimination on their software products.
I'm so tired of people constantly measuring memory usage. You're SUPPOSED to be using all your memory, or it's just wasted memory. The more that's cached, the better. If something else more important needs that memory, the OS will free it and allocate it to them. You don't have to worry about it.
There is a vast gulf of difference between memory allocated to an application and memory allocated to disk cache. Conflating them is simply wrong.
Just because you prefer it another way does not mean that it isn't bad UI design in the general case.
It's not, and your arguments trying to demonstrate so are sketchy, at best. In particular the irrelevant "does what you do with the menus in that window matter for every window or just for the one you have in the front" (which applies equally to both models) and "if you close all of the windows in the application can you still configure preferences on it" (which is based completely on opinion and a preference for the MacOS aplication-centric model).
The single menu bar becomes less usable as screen resolution (because the average relative distance from the pointer to the menu increases) and display count (because the likelihood of the menu and application window being on different displays increases) increases . The menubar-in-window becomes more usable in the same scenario (because the opposite applies to both metrics).
Do you think screen resolution and the number of displays is on the way up, or down ?
Admittedly, the "infinite height" aspect does mitigate the distance issue significantly, but not the locality-of-display issue (*especially* if the two displays are at different resolutions). Further, the vastly better support in Windows for both a) keyboard access and b) context menus (which are superior to both other types of menu in every way except discoverability), significantly reduces the need to intertact with the primary application menus for typical usage at all, which subsequently removes much of the advantages gained from the "infinite height" menubar-on-top.
Or, to put it more succintly, any measurable usability advantage in OS X from the single menubar is miniscule, on the remote chance it even exists at all. It was a somewhat valid point in the days of 9" displays and Windows 3.0. In the days of multiple 20"+ displays and Windows >=95, it's a specious argument.
Irrelevant. Microsoft's revenues are $50 billion per year, which means that plenty of people are paying plenty.
This is a very, very different argument. You've gone from "people are paying Microsoft $1000 for Windows and Office" to "Microsoft are making lots of money" (with the clear implication that you think it's "too much").
These revenues will shrink to nearly nothing in the world of $100 computers running very high quality free software. And this world is coming -- count on it.
We've been told to "count on it" for nearly a decade now. I won't be holding my breath. The $100 PC running FOSS software isn't going to take over the business desktop any time soon and is only marginally more likely to be successful on the home computing desktop.
If anything, the future of "home computers" is X-box 360s (or 720s, or whatever) with wireless keyboards running Internet Explorer to access various web apps (be they from Microsoft, Google, or someone else).
Again, the point you seem to be missing (or ignoring) is that regardless of what the retail cost of Microsoft's software actually is, no-one really cares too much about it. Home users don't because they get it either bundled (="free") or pirated (="free"). Business users because the up-front cost of software is insignificant compared to the TCO of the machine. For the former, there is no price advantage (since the Microsoft software is already "free"). For the latter, the price advantage is a minor issue, compared to the managability, productivity and compatibility advantages.
This is a very old and court exposed M$ game. They break a program then flood the lists with bullshit. When you see through it once you never listen to it again
The person who wrote that is either lying, or ignorant - it is littered with both factual and recollective errors.
So, as usual, your anti-Microsoft tirade is little more than baseless FUD.
You should, because not only is the link wrong about it (as you note - no production version of Windows displayed the non-fatal warning message), but also because the Wikipedia quote is wrong as well.
DR-DOS was _not_ "100% binary compatible with applications written for MS-DOS", as anyone who was actually using computers at the time will know. There were _numerous_ pieces of software that worked fine with MS-DOS, but not with DR-DOS. This "99% compatibility" became more obvious as PC gaming gained popularity and programmers started to play fast and dirty with DOS internals to get better performance. Doubly so once EMS and XMS memory managers were added to the equation. Games weren't the only victims, however, there were plenty of high-end applications trying similar tricks that had compatibility problems.
This isn't necessarily so. More often than not so called 'disruptive technologies' are not higher quality at all. Their real benefits are cost and production efficiency, not higher quality.
I'd qualify the same functionality at a significantly lower price "much better". It's not just about the specifications sheet.
Exactly. Reasonable quality + rock bottom price = winner. Rugged, reliable $100 machines of all kinds will take over, leaving little room for Microsoft's $800 software bundle.
1. As previously noted, no-one who cares pays full price for Microsoft's software.
2. By the time a $100 machine is as capable as today's $300 - $500 machines, there will be $30 machines that are like today's $100 machines and the relative situation will remain unchanged.
You are just repeating what I said in different words. So-called "professional-grade" products are very expensive with sophisticated features. As technology advances, "amateur-grade" equipment start incorporating those same features at a much lower price. Gradually, amateur equipment creep into professional performance levels and professionals start using them for many uses. In the end, there's no market left for the old "professional-grade" equipment.
But there is - it's just that the benchmark for "professional" has moved upwards.
Every industry is littered with examples. Less than a decade ago, a computer with 4 CPUs was something even high-end "professional" users were unlikely to have. Now you can put together a quad-core PC for a thousand-ish US$. 600cc street motorcycles today produce more power than litre-class racing bikes were not long ago. Vehicles full of airbags, with ABS brakes that would have been top-end luxury are now cheap. A 42" plasma TV that cost as much as a car only a few years ago you can now pick up for maybe a week or two's wages. Etc, etc.
Yes, consumer-level equipment acquires "professional" features as standard. But in the time it takes to do that, the benchmark for "professional" increases.
In fact, I think it's perfectly reasonable to demand that no operating system "bundle" desktop search, web browsers, or other software like that and instead give users the option to pick and choose what components they like.
And what about all those people who haven't the knowledge, experience, time or interest to do so ? You know, the 99% of the market that Microsoft and Apple are selling to ?
Microsoft aren't selling you a garage full of parts and a greasy service manual, they're selling you a car. If you'd rather assemble all those parts yourself, pick one of the *multiple* operating systems out there that let you go down that path - don't make the rest of us suffer because you're so fucking anal you care whether or not you can uninstall a freaking web browser, rather than just not use it.
I remember the days of having to spend days/weeks/months assembling and tweaking a semi-working system from a plethora of just-different-enough-to-be-annoying, barely interoperable components and I have zero interest in reliving the experience, just because some 14 year old Gentoo nerd who thinks compiling everything from source is so cool, would like the rest of the world to experience his l33tness.
You haven't tried Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, the hottest Linux distro, have you?
Certainly have. Linux has come a long way and has a _lot_ to be thankful to Apple (and Microsoft, for that matter) about.
A hostile reviewer like yourself may find some flaws to carp about, but these flaws are shrinking year by year. Free software is growing up -- fast. At some point, Linux will be more than good enough for 99% of all computer users.
You can't displace another product by being "good enough", because there is no incentive to change. You need to be better - *much* better.
When that happens, Microsoft will become largely irrelevant.
Why ? You think they'll just give up and walk away ?
That's why I said $500 - $1000. At retail prices, Windows Vista Ultimate plus Office 2007 can easily cost $800.
And no-one pays $500, either, because the vast majority of people (outside of volume licensing agreements) who actually pay for them get their copies of Windows and Office for ca. $50 each bundled with their new computer.
So you admit that Microsoft's revenues are about to take a drastic dive, thanks to Linux.
No. It's possible they might decline a bit in the home user market, but there's no signs that Linux is going to make a sudden breakthrough there.
All three of your suggested countermoves by Microsoft imply a huge price cut -- and large savings by the consumer. If you are a consumer yourself, you should be gratefully thanking the free software movement for the lower prices! (And for keeping Microsoft from becoming too tyrannical.)
Why would I be thanking people whose influence is, at best, minor ? Added to which, quite a bit of commercial FOSS costs as much as, if not more, than Microsoft's equivalents.
Besides, Linux's initial price of zero is not the only way a large business can save. By adopting Linux, a company gets off Microsoft's upgrade treadmill -- permanently. That in itself is a huge benefit.
The "upgrade treadmill" is nothing more than anti-Microsoft FUD.
In addition, viruses, trojans, and other malware are costing companies huge amounts of time, money, and frustration. They are sick of it, and are eager for an alternative. A more diverse software ecology is far more robust against malware than the Microsoft monoculture.
The biggest hole in the system is the end user. Linux won't change that. As its market share increases, so will the malware for it - migrating to Linux might buy a couple of years, but it's a lot of money to pay for that couple of years that would be better spent on the more generic task of just running the IT infrastructure better.
So yes, your worst nightmare will come to pass: there will be a massive migration away from Microsoft.
I'm not sure why you think this is my "worst nightmare". My interests and (important) skills are platform agnostic. Windows could be displaced by Linux, OS X or even something relatively esoteric like Solaris and I'd still be quite safely - and happily - employed.
It only takes a few to begin the change and start saving tons of money; the rest will have to follow lest they lose to their more efficient competitors.
It takes a lot more than a few, and there's little to indicate they'll be saving "tons of money". A badly run Linux environment is just as expensive and unproductive as a badly run Windows environment.
Despite the torrents of wishful thinking and FUD gushing out of the FOSS community, especially over the last few months, there's little actual evidence to suggest Microsoft's market position is under any real threat from Linux. The biggest threat to Microsoft, is Microsoft.
When I wrote that OLPC is only leading the tidal wave of cheap machines, my point was that technology marches on. You can't stop it. At some point, very capable computers costing $100 or less will be standard. When that happens, Microsoft will become largely irrelevant.
"High quality software for free" is the disruptive innovation.
"FOSS is free only if your time is worth nothing."
Now, there _are_ a handful of examples of high quality, polished, well supported and well documented FOSS projects out there - I will not dispute that. But to suggest they are the rule, or even common, is just pure fantasy. There's not a lot of "innovation" coming out of the FOSS community - the vast, vast majority of FOSS software projects are highly derivative, if not outright reimplementations.
It is cutting into Microsoft's oxygen supply. When $100 computers become common (the OLPC is just the leading edge of a huge tidal wave), can any consumer justify spending $500 to $1000 on Windows and Office? The answer, of course, is no.
The actual answer, of course, is that no consumer is spending $1000 on Windows and Office _today_ (or, at least, no consumer who also wouldn't be paying the same for "free" software), and certainly won't be any time in the future.
For the home market, Microsoft will happily sell Windows and Office for a dollar if that's what it takes. In the business market, up-front software cost (outside of specialised, niche programs) is an insignificantly small part of the TCO of a computer - and even there, Microsoft will be happy to drop the price significantly, or - more likely - move to the annual subscription model most commercialised OSS packages use.
The future is in the little portables like OLPC, and Linux will dominate that market.
Rubbish. Little portables like the OLPC will be too limited in functionality for most purposes.
Microsoft knows it too, which is why it has been flailing about so desperately lately.
Only in the wet dreams of the anti-Microsoft trolls, are they "flailing about".
I'm confused. You started out agreeing with a poster saying that a laptop was a perfectly good substitute "as a personal workstation" for a desktop. Yet all your counterpoints revolve around essentially turning a laptop into a desktop by plugging in external drives, LCDs, etc - thus pretty much removing all its advantages as a laptop, without bringing even close to the capabilities of a genuine desktop.
I'm not sure Apple hasn't done it. Since "The 30-inch display takes advantage of the MacBook Pro's support for dual-link DVI" and they're running nVidia's 8600M chipset, I have to wonder whether currently it's merely a driver issue.
I hoped this as well when the first dual-link DVI Macs turned up, but the fact that there's not even been the *hint* of such functionality leads me to believe it's a hardware limitation.
What's your screen resolution beef?
Mac laptops, with the exception of the just-released 17" MBP, have relatively low screen resolutions.
Don't follow here either.
Laptop disk IO sucks.
Drives the FW800 RAID0 and FW400 drives just fine with the expected performance.
Even the ~80M/sec FW800 tops out at isn't *that* fast, compared to what's possible with a relatively modest desktop machine.
That will pretty much kill your battery life. What even semi-mainstream laptop builder offers that configuration in a sub 7# laptop with more than a max 2 hours of battery life?
None. Which is the whole freaking point I'm trying to make.
This was an Intel chipset limitation, addressed by the Santa Rosa chipset. Check out the new MBPs.
They still top out at 4GB (although bigger DIMMs in the future may improve this). My work PC has 4GB already, and I'd like to bump up to 8GB.
For your requirements, Price really becomes a secondary factor.
Again, you miss the point. "Price" is standalone argument. If you're buying a bunch of PCs for a room full of office workers, buying them all laptops is just stupid. I.e. this is another situation where a laptop is a poor substitute for a desktop.
You're wanting performance, that always comes at a premium, esp when you want it in a laptop configuration. Then there's the physical limitations of power requirements vs heat vs battery life.
You seem to be completely missing the point of my argument, which is that laptops *aren't* clear-cut substitutes for desktops because the above reasons. I don't understand why you're trying to argue that the above requirements are a poor fit for a laptop, when the whole reason I posted them was to illustrate exactly that.
Like I said originally. There are a whole bunch of very good reasons why laptops make poor desktop substitutes. This is not to deny there are some people for whom they do, but to agree a sweeping, general statement like "these days there's little reason to invest in a computer that I can't take with me should I need to" when there are so many clear reasons why it is wrong, is just silly.
It doesn't matter how small part of the final product it is, you chose to use the code covered by the GPL, and thus you are bound by its terms. People contributed code under the GPL for a specific purpose, i.e. that it remains licensed under the terms of the GPL until the end of time. What gives you the right to change those terms because it makes up just a small portion of your products?
Another straw man argument. I have never suggested anyone has the right to use "intellectual property" in ways its creator(s) did not intend (except as an inherent part of my wider arguments against "intellectual property" in general).
If it is so small, you could have written a substitute yourself.
5% of a project as big as, say, KDE, is still a lot of code. Not to mention the percentage of code is only one way a "fairness measure" might apply.
So? Tell me why the argument is wrong, instead of (ignorantly) calling it a straw man.
It's not wrong, it's irrelevant. Hence the reason I (accurately) identified it as a straw man.
Do you even know what a straw man is? Then you should be able to tell me what argument I made up and pretended that you subscribe to.
The arguments you appear to be making up and pretending I subscribe to, are that people should not be bound by the restrictions of the GPL if they don't want to be and that people are forced to use the GPL against their will.
Then you can complain until the end of time, because I (and others) don't think that it is deceptive, and will continue to use the term free software to mean among others software covered by the GPL.
And you will continue to alienate, confuse, deceive and frustrate the majority of the population who don't know - let alone understand - your definition of the word "free". Especially since the vastly more accurate and significantly less loaded term "open source software" exists.
The GPL does not try to cover other separate works on the same medium, only those that actually depend on the covered code.
Wow. Another standard straw man. Didn't see that one coming.
Thus, I take issue with the use of "viral" in the context of the GPL.
You can "take issue" with it all you want, but that won't change the fact that the primary point of the GPL was to produce more GPLed code by "infecting" source code and that this aspect is one of its - if not the most important - defining features.
This "contagiousness" of the GPL is often painted as a unique property of the GPL, but it hardly is. Most proprietary licenses also cover derivative works, and are thus as "viral" as the GPL.
And we get another standard straw man argument using the typical apples and oranges comparison of "most proprietry licenses" to the GPL.
I can only assume there's some "use these straw men to deflect any vaguely critical comments about the GPL" handbook, since the same ones get trotted out every. Single. Time.
Hah! In 10 years, they'll be 14, 12 and 10, so I wouldn't have thought they'll be in jail just yet.
Well that changes the situation somewhat. Saying your children have never been spanked when the oldest one is 4 is a vastly different situation than if, say, they were all teenagers.
Much like the vast gulf of difference between the odd clip 'round the ear here and their to drive home a point and child abuse. These two things are not - despite the best efforts of some people - even close to being synonymous.
Thousands of generations of human society have been practicing corporal punishment. It would be drawing a very long bow indeed to say current society is any better today than it has been in the past with regards to discipline and respect, especially amongst young people. Many - including myself - would say it is a hell of a lot worse and believe that the decline has a great deal to do with a known-to-be-effective form of discipline being strongly discouraged, if not outright criminalised.
What I would suggest is effective discipline in the first place. My parents never hit me, and I'm not in jail. Plural of anecdote is not data, I realise, but violence of any kind in the home engenders a violent attitude to problems encountered in adult life.
Bollocks. I got my fair share of spankings when I was kid - none of them unjustified, in hindsight - and I've never even been in something as trivial as a schoolyard fight. I know many people with the same story to tell, because they grew up in the same sitaution.
I've yet to see any proper data linking physical disicpline in the way you suggest. Most (deceptively, because they're pushing an agenda) conflate physical discipline and child abuse.
You want a good sign about whether or not someone will grow up to be violent freak ? Have a look at how they treat their pets, not whether or not they've ever been whacked on the arse by their parents.
* Multiple displays (I eagerly await the first laptop than can drive 2+ LCDs. I'm actually quite surprised Apple hasn't done it already. No, hacks like that Matrox thing don't count.)
* Screen resolution (somewhat of an Apple-specific problem)
* Good IO performance
* 4+ cores and/or >2.4Ghz
* 4+ GB RAM
* Price
In short, there are numerous quite good reasons why laptops are not the computing nirvana some people seem to think they are.
Slashdot Mirror
On the one hand, MS was telling everyone for years about their new filesystem named WinFS.
No, they weren't. WinFS is not - and never has been - a filesystem.
In my opinion, just about any operating system vendor should switch to an open, posix-compatible, journaling file system.
Like, say, NTFS has been since 1993, you mean ?
Either way, it's not the same thing as making the browser a part of your monopoly operating system then writing it in such a way that it breaks web standards so everybody is forced to code for your browser and maybe, as an afterthought, for everybody else's .
You have Netscape to thank for that little "innovation", since it pretty much sums up their entire business plan.
Them and the glacial pace at which web standards were defined back in the '90s. Kinda hard to stick to "standards" that are still defining years-old technology and "innovate" in a market where 6 months is considered eons.
I'm guessing you weren't actually around for the "browser wars", otherwise you'd remember that Microsoft was the one playing catchup to Netscape, who kicked off that whole "code for Navigator, not HTML" game.
It's the same "bundling" that got IE as the majority browser used against Microsoft for a change.
I realise it's a popular meme, but it doesn't really stand up to analysis. IE displaced Navigator because it was *better* and was well on the path to doing so before it was "bundled" into Windows (and had actually done so before any version of Windows with IE "bundled" had reached a significant marketshare).
Apple has a chance to give Microsoft a major kick in the balls... the question is whether they'll go that route or not. They're doing exactly what Microsoft has always wanted to do -- dominate an entire ecosystem from desktops to laptops to mobile to the television. This is what Bill Gates has been trying to do for the past 20 years, and Apple has done it in just about 5. It's an incredibly smart move on Apple's part, and a major blow to Microsoft's hegemonic ambitions.
You appear to be a bit confused about what the word "dominate" means. If Apple were "dominating" this market, then the Mac Mini hooked up to my TV would still be running OS X, rather than its recent upgrade from XP MCE to Vista MCE. Or, at the very least, the choice would have been between OS X and Vista, rather than XP MCE, Vista MCE and - a distant third - MythTV.
You seem to have lost touch with the world outside the RDF.
So basically making Safari the default browser for HTML files and links. So what? How often does the average user double click on an HTML file? Practically never. How often does the average user click on an HTML link OUTSIDE of a web browser? Occasionally, but not very often.
I'd be quite willing to lay down a hundred bucks on a bet that the average user clicks on a http:/// link outside of their browser *at least* once a day. I'd be willing to lay down another hundred on a bet that a significant proportion - if not a majority - do so many times a day.
However, you're missing the most important aspect of being the "default browser", which is the part where you get launched every time the user clicks on that "Internet" link on the Start Menu and Desktop. You seem to be forgetting that most people don't run "Internet Explorer", they run a "web browser" or, more likely, "the Internet".
The proportion of people who give even the slightest damn about the browser they're running, outside of compatibility issues with websites, is vanishingly small and isolated almost completely to people on sites like Slashdot.
"We've got a basic version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Premium version, which is going to cost $129. We've got a Business version, $129. We've got an Enterprise version, $129. And we've got the Ultimate version, we're throwing everything into it, it's $129. We think most people will buy the Ultimate version."
See, this happens because Apple, being primarily a hardware company, practice their pricing discrimination on the hardware side (which does a similar thing to Vista). Their software is incidental to that, and tied to the hardware, so they don't do much with its pricing.
Microsoft, OTOH, are primarily a software company, so they have to do their pricing discrimination on their software products.
I'm so tired of people constantly measuring memory usage. You're SUPPOSED to be using all your memory, or it's just wasted memory. The more that's cached, the better. If something else more important needs that memory, the OS will free it and allocate it to them. You don't have to worry about it.
There is a vast gulf of difference between memory allocated to an application and memory allocated to disk cache. Conflating them is simply wrong.
Just because you prefer it another way does not mean that it isn't bad UI design in the general case.
It's not, and your arguments trying to demonstrate so are sketchy, at best. In particular the irrelevant "does what you do with the menus in that window matter for every window or just for the one you have in the front" (which applies equally to both models) and "if you close all of the windows in the application can you still configure preferences on it" (which is based completely on opinion and a preference for the MacOS aplication-centric model).
The single menu bar becomes less usable as screen resolution (because the average relative distance from the pointer to the menu increases) and display count (because the likelihood of the menu and application window being on different displays increases) increases . The menubar-in-window becomes more usable in the same scenario (because the opposite applies to both metrics).
Do you think screen resolution and the number of displays is on the way up, or down ?
Admittedly, the "infinite height" aspect does mitigate the distance issue significantly, but not the locality-of-display issue (*especially* if the two displays are at different resolutions). Further, the vastly better support in Windows for both a) keyboard access and b) context menus (which are superior to both other types of menu in every way except discoverability), significantly reduces the need to intertact with the primary application menus for typical usage at all, which subsequently removes much of the advantages gained from the "infinite height" menubar-on-top.
Or, to put it more succintly, any measurable usability advantage in OS X from the single menubar is miniscule, on the remote chance it even exists at all. It was a somewhat valid point in the days of 9" displays and Windows 3.0. In the days of multiple 20"+ displays and Windows >=95, it's a specious argument.
Irrelevant. Microsoft's revenues are $50 billion per year, which means that plenty of people are paying plenty.
This is a very, very different argument. You've gone from "people are paying Microsoft $1000 for Windows and Office" to "Microsoft are making lots of money" (with the clear implication that you think it's "too much").
These revenues will shrink to nearly nothing in the world of $100 computers running very high quality free software. And this world is coming -- count on it.
We've been told to "count on it" for nearly a decade now. I won't be holding my breath. The $100 PC running FOSS software isn't going to take over the business desktop any time soon and is only marginally more likely to be successful on the home computing desktop.
If anything, the future of "home computers" is X-box 360s (or 720s, or whatever) with wireless keyboards running Internet Explorer to access various web apps (be they from Microsoft, Google, or someone else).
Again, the point you seem to be missing (or ignoring) is that regardless of what the retail cost of Microsoft's software actually is, no-one really cares too much about it. Home users don't because they get it either bundled (="free") or pirated (="free"). Business users because the up-front cost of software is insignificant compared to the TCO of the machine. For the former, there is no price advantage (since the Microsoft software is already "free"). For the latter, the price advantage is a minor issue, compared to the managability, productivity and compatibility advantages.
This is a very old and court exposed M$ game. They break a program then flood the lists with bullshit. When you see through it once you never listen to it again
The person who wrote that is either lying, or ignorant - it is littered with both factual and recollective errors.
So, as usual, your anti-Microsoft tirade is little more than baseless FUD.
I won't contest the DR-DOS issue at all [...]
You should, because not only is the link wrong about it (as you note - no production version of Windows displayed the non-fatal warning message), but also because the Wikipedia quote is wrong as well.
DR-DOS was _not_ "100% binary compatible with applications written for MS-DOS", as anyone who was actually using computers at the time will know. There were _numerous_ pieces of software that worked fine with MS-DOS, but not with DR-DOS. This "99% compatibility" became more obvious as PC gaming gained popularity and programmers started to play fast and dirty with DOS internals to get better performance. Doubly so once EMS and XMS memory managers were added to the equation. Games weren't the only victims, however, there were plenty of high-end applications trying similar tricks that had compatibility problems.
This isn't necessarily so. More often than not so called 'disruptive technologies' are not higher quality at all. Their real benefits are cost and production efficiency, not higher quality.
I'd qualify the same functionality at a significantly lower price "much better". It's not just about the specifications sheet.
Exactly. Reasonable quality + rock bottom price = winner. Rugged, reliable $100 machines of all kinds will take over, leaving little room for Microsoft's $800 software bundle.
1. As previously noted, no-one who cares pays full price for Microsoft's software.
2. By the time a $100 machine is as capable as today's $300 - $500 machines, there will be $30 machines that are like today's $100 machines and the relative situation will remain unchanged.
The same thing that happens now: they buy a complete, pre-installed system from a PC manufacturer.
How ? You're insisting no-one be able to bundle software.
I'm on my Mac, clickin' my second mouse button.
Click it as much as you want, but it doesn't really *do* a lot in general (which is the point).
OS X's support for secondary buttons is - being generous - primitive. Windows 95 made more use of multiple mouse buttons, over a decade ago.
You are just repeating what I said in different words. So-called "professional-grade" products are very expensive with sophisticated features. As technology advances, "amateur-grade" equipment start incorporating those same features at a much lower price. Gradually, amateur equipment creep into professional performance levels and professionals start using them for many uses. In the end, there's no market left for the old "professional-grade" equipment.
But there is - it's just that the benchmark for "professional" has moved upwards.
Every industry is littered with examples. Less than a decade ago, a computer with 4 CPUs was something even high-end "professional" users were unlikely to have. Now you can put together a quad-core PC for a thousand-ish US$. 600cc street motorcycles today produce more power than litre-class racing bikes were not long ago. Vehicles full of airbags, with ABS brakes that would have been top-end luxury are now cheap. A 42" plasma TV that cost as much as a car only a few years ago you can now pick up for maybe a week or two's wages. Etc, etc.
Yes, consumer-level equipment acquires "professional" features as standard. But in the time it takes to do that, the benchmark for "professional" increases.
In fact, I think it's perfectly reasonable to demand that no operating system "bundle" desktop search, web browsers, or other software like that and instead give users the option to pick and choose what components they like.
And what about all those people who haven't the knowledge, experience, time or interest to do so ? You know, the 99% of the market that Microsoft and Apple are selling to ?
Microsoft aren't selling you a garage full of parts and a greasy service manual, they're selling you a car. If you'd rather assemble all those parts yourself, pick one of the *multiple* operating systems out there that let you go down that path - don't make the rest of us suffer because you're so fucking anal you care whether or not you can uninstall a freaking web browser, rather than just not use it.
I remember the days of having to spend days/weeks/months assembling and tweaking a semi-working system from a plethora of just-different-enough-to-be-annoying, barely interoperable components and I have zero interest in reliving the experience, just because some 14 year old Gentoo nerd who thinks compiling everything from source is so cool, would like the rest of the world to experience his l33tness.
You haven't tried Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, the hottest Linux distro, have you?
Certainly have. Linux has come a long way and has a _lot_ to be thankful to Apple (and Microsoft, for that matter) about.
A hostile reviewer like yourself may find some flaws to carp about, but these flaws are shrinking year by year. Free software is growing up -- fast. At some point, Linux will be more than good enough for 99% of all computer users.
You can't displace another product by being "good enough", because there is no incentive to change. You need to be better - *much* better.
When that happens, Microsoft will become largely irrelevant.
Why ? You think they'll just give up and walk away ?
That's why I said $500 - $1000. At retail prices, Windows Vista Ultimate plus Office 2007 can easily cost $800.
And no-one pays $500, either, because the vast majority of people (outside of volume licensing agreements) who actually pay for them get their copies of Windows and Office for ca. $50 each bundled with their new computer.
So you admit that Microsoft's revenues are about to take a drastic dive, thanks to Linux.
No. It's possible they might decline a bit in the home user market, but there's no signs that Linux is going to make a sudden breakthrough there.
All three of your suggested countermoves by Microsoft imply a huge price cut -- and large savings by the consumer. If you are a consumer yourself, you should be gratefully thanking the free software movement for the lower prices! (And for keeping Microsoft from becoming too tyrannical.)
Why would I be thanking people whose influence is, at best, minor ? Added to which, quite a bit of commercial FOSS costs as much as, if not more, than Microsoft's equivalents.
Besides, Linux's initial price of zero is not the only way a large business can save. By adopting Linux, a company gets off Microsoft's upgrade treadmill -- permanently. That in itself is a huge benefit.
The "upgrade treadmill" is nothing more than anti-Microsoft FUD.
In addition, viruses, trojans, and other malware are costing companies huge amounts of time, money, and frustration. They are sick of it, and are eager for an alternative. A more diverse software ecology is far more robust against malware than the Microsoft monoculture.
The biggest hole in the system is the end user. Linux won't change that. As its market share increases, so will the malware for it - migrating to Linux might buy a couple of years, but it's a lot of money to pay for that couple of years that would be better spent on the more generic task of just running the IT infrastructure better.
So yes, your worst nightmare will come to pass: there will be a massive migration away from Microsoft.
I'm not sure why you think this is my "worst nightmare". My interests and (important) skills are platform agnostic. Windows could be displaced by Linux, OS X or even something relatively esoteric like Solaris and I'd still be quite safely - and happily - employed.
It only takes a few to begin the change and start saving tons of money; the rest will have to follow lest they lose to their more efficient competitors.
It takes a lot more than a few, and there's little to indicate they'll be saving "tons of money". A badly run Linux environment is just as expensive and unproductive as a badly run Windows environment.
Despite the torrents of wishful thinking and FUD gushing out of the FOSS community, especially over the last few months, there's little actual evidence to suggest Microsoft's market position is under any real threat from Linux. The biggest threat to Microsoft, is Microsoft.
When I wrote that OLPC is only leading the tidal wave of cheap machines, my point was that technology marches on. You can't stop it. At some point, very capable computers costing $100 or less will be standard. When that happens, Microsoft will become largely irrelevant.
"High quality software for free" is the disruptive innovation.
"FOSS is free only if your time is worth nothing."
Now, there _are_ a handful of examples of high quality, polished, well supported and well documented FOSS projects out there - I will not dispute that. But to suggest they are the rule, or even common, is just pure fantasy. There's not a lot of "innovation" coming out of the FOSS community - the vast, vast majority of FOSS software projects are highly derivative, if not outright reimplementations.
It is cutting into Microsoft's oxygen supply. When $100 computers become common (the OLPC is just the leading edge of a huge tidal wave), can any consumer justify spending $500 to $1000 on Windows and Office? The answer, of course, is no.
The actual answer, of course, is that no consumer is spending $1000 on Windows and Office _today_ (or, at least, no consumer who also wouldn't be paying the same for "free" software), and certainly won't be any time in the future.
For the home market, Microsoft will happily sell Windows and Office for a dollar if that's what it takes. In the business market, up-front software cost (outside of specialised, niche programs) is an insignificantly small part of the TCO of a computer - and even there, Microsoft will be happy to drop the price significantly, or - more likely - move to the annual subscription model most commercialised OSS packages use.
The future is in the little portables like OLPC, and Linux will dominate that market.
Rubbish. Little portables like the OLPC will be too limited in functionality for most purposes.
Microsoft knows it too, which is why it has been flailing about so desperately lately.
Only in the wet dreams of the anti-Microsoft trolls, are they "flailing about".
GNU Linux and FOSS are eroding their revenue base. They have read Clayton Christensen's work. They know what a disruptive innovation is.
What's the "disruptive innovation" coming out of "GNU Linux and FOSS" ?
Clearly, you don't know any Scotsmen ;).
---
Woman: Would you like some catsup on your eggs?
ScotsMan: You're going to use your cat to do what with my eggs ?
I'm confused. You started out agreeing with a poster saying that a laptop was a perfectly good substitute "as a personal workstation" for a desktop. Yet all your counterpoints revolve around essentially turning a laptop into a desktop by plugging in external drives, LCDs, etc - thus pretty much removing all its advantages as a laptop, without bringing even close to the capabilities of a genuine desktop.
I'm not sure Apple hasn't done it. Since "The 30-inch display takes advantage of the MacBook Pro's support for dual-link DVI" and they're running nVidia's 8600M chipset, I have to wonder whether currently it's merely a driver issue.
I hoped this as well when the first dual-link DVI Macs turned up, but the fact that there's not even been the *hint* of such functionality leads me to believe it's a hardware limitation.
What's your screen resolution beef?
Mac laptops, with the exception of the just-released 17" MBP, have relatively low screen resolutions.
Don't follow here either.
Laptop disk IO sucks.
Drives the FW800 RAID0 and FW400 drives just fine with the expected performance.
Even the ~80M/sec FW800 tops out at isn't *that* fast, compared to what's possible with a relatively modest desktop machine.
That will pretty much kill your battery life. What even semi-mainstream laptop builder offers that configuration in a sub 7# laptop with more than a max 2 hours of battery life?
None. Which is the whole freaking point I'm trying to make.
This was an Intel chipset limitation, addressed by the Santa Rosa chipset. Check out the new MBPs.
They still top out at 4GB (although bigger DIMMs in the future may improve this). My work PC has 4GB already, and I'd like to bump up to 8GB.
For your requirements, Price really becomes a secondary factor.
Again, you miss the point. "Price" is standalone argument. If you're buying a bunch of PCs for a room full of office workers, buying them all laptops is just stupid. I.e. this is another situation where a laptop is a poor substitute for a desktop.
You're wanting performance, that always comes at a premium, esp when you want it in a laptop configuration. Then there's the physical limitations of power requirements vs heat vs battery life.
You seem to be completely missing the point of my argument, which is that laptops *aren't* clear-cut substitutes for desktops because the above reasons. I don't understand why you're trying to argue that the above requirements are a poor fit for a laptop, when the whole reason I posted them was to illustrate exactly that.
Like I said originally. There are a whole bunch of very good reasons why laptops make poor desktop substitutes. This is not to deny there are some people for whom they do, but to agree a sweeping, general statement like "these days there's little reason to invest in a computer that I can't take with me should I need to" when there are so many clear reasons why it is wrong, is just silly.
It doesn't matter how small part of the final product it is, you chose to use the code covered by the GPL, and thus you are bound by its terms. People contributed code under the GPL for a specific purpose, i.e. that it remains licensed under the terms of the GPL until the end of time. What gives you the right to change those terms because it makes up just a small portion of your products?
Another straw man argument. I have never suggested anyone has the right to use "intellectual property" in ways its creator(s) did not intend (except as an inherent part of my wider arguments against "intellectual property" in general).
If it is so small, you could have written a substitute yourself.
5% of a project as big as, say, KDE, is still a lot of code. Not to mention the percentage of code is only one way a "fairness measure" might apply.
So? Tell me why the argument is wrong, instead of (ignorantly) calling it a straw man.
It's not wrong, it's irrelevant. Hence the reason I (accurately) identified it as a straw man.
Do you even know what a straw man is? Then you should be able to tell me what argument I made up and pretended that you subscribe to.
The arguments you appear to be making up and pretending I subscribe to, are that people should not be bound by the restrictions of the GPL if they don't want to be and that people are forced to use the GPL against their will.
Then you can complain until the end of time, because I (and others) don't think that it is deceptive, and will continue to use the term free software to mean among others software covered by the GPL.
And you will continue to alienate, confuse, deceive and frustrate the majority of the population who don't know - let alone understand - your definition of the word "free". Especially since the vastly more accurate and significantly less loaded term "open source software" exists.
The GPL does not try to cover other separate works on the same medium, only those that actually depend on the covered code.
Wow. Another standard straw man. Didn't see that one coming.
Thus, I take issue with the use of "viral" in the context of the GPL.
You can "take issue" with it all you want, but that won't change the fact that the primary point of the GPL was to produce more GPLed code by "infecting" source code and that this aspect is one of its - if not the most important - defining features.
This "contagiousness" of the GPL is often painted as a unique property of the GPL, but it hardly is. Most proprietary licenses also cover derivative works, and are thus as "viral" as the GPL.
And we get another standard straw man argument using the typical apples and oranges comparison of "most proprietry licenses" to the GPL.
I can only assume there's some "use these straw men to deflect any vaguely critical comments about the GPL" handbook, since the same ones get trotted out every. Single. Time.
Hah! In 10 years, they'll be 14, 12 and 10, so I wouldn't have thought they'll be in jail just yet.
Well that changes the situation somewhat. Saying your children have never been spanked when the oldest one is 4 is a vastly different situation than if, say, they were all teenagers.
Much like the vast gulf of difference between the odd clip 'round the ear here and their to drive home a point and child abuse. These two things are not - despite the best efforts of some people - even close to being synonymous.
Thousands of generations of human society have been practicing corporal punishment. It would be drawing a very long bow indeed to say current society is any better today than it has been in the past with regards to discipline and respect, especially amongst young people. Many - including myself - would say it is a hell of a lot worse and believe that the decline has a great deal to do with a known-to-be-effective form of discipline being strongly discouraged, if not outright criminalised.
What I would suggest is effective discipline in the first place. My parents never hit me, and I'm not in jail. Plural of anecdote is not data, I realise, but violence of any kind in the home engenders a violent attitude to problems encountered in adult life.
Bollocks. I got my fair share of spankings when I was kid - none of them unjustified, in hindsight - and I've never even been in something as trivial as a schoolyard fight. I know many people with the same story to tell, because they grew up in the same sitaution.
I've yet to see any proper data linking physical disicpline in the way you suggest. Most (deceptively, because they're pushing an agenda) conflate physical discipline and child abuse.
You want a good sign about whether or not someone will grow up to be violent freak ? Have a look at how they treat their pets, not whether or not they've ever been whacked on the arse by their parents.
Not as a personal workstation.
Yes, as a "personal workstation":
* Multiple displays (I eagerly await the first laptop than can drive 2+ LCDs. I'm actually quite surprised Apple hasn't done it already. No, hacks like that Matrox thing don't count.)
* Screen resolution (somewhat of an Apple-specific problem)
* Good IO performance
* 4+ cores and/or >2.4Ghz
* 4+ GB RAM
* Price
In short, there are numerous quite good reasons why laptops are not the computing nirvana some people seem to think they are.