It was probably the decision to openly license it. The Mac--when the Mac came out and for two years thereafter it was at least four or five years ahead of Windows and possibly could have taken the place of Windows if it was openly licensed, but because the Macintosh was restricted to a single member, Apple, it never could become an industry rather than a single platform.
Highly insightful. The Mac was like the old order, where one company made hardware, OS and software. The PC is part of the new order.
I disagree with Andy's assessment. The Mac may have been years ahead of Windows, but it's real problem, IMHO, is MS-DOS was already pretty entrenched, and the Mac didn't offer a migration path. I was working for Lotus at the time (working sometimes on the Mac, sometimes on DOS), and we had a pretty large community of 1-2-3 users who would not leave behind their accumulated DOS spreadsheets and what-not for the Mac even if they wanted to.
Employment contracts often have something called a "covenant not to compete", enforced to at least some extent in pretty much every U.S. state but California.
Yeah, I've had non-compete clauses in many of the employment agreements of the (12) companies I've worked for; it's hardly that restrictive in reality. Very few of the companies I've worked for actually compete with each other, anyway. Colleagues often moved to directly competitive companies, but in the rare cases that the companies tried to act, it involved an employee with unique knowledge or value to the company. The smarter companies dealt with it by making the employee want to stay, rather than trying to block the move directly (which never worked, anyway).
The more common case I've encountered is when Company A find that it's being aggressively poached on by Company B. I was in a situation that bordered on that, and there was some saber-rattling, but in the end I was able to make the move without resistance.
Freemasonry Lodges and The Vatican are sworn enemies and have many times declared the other as a menace to mankind and such.
That's incorrect in theory and in practice. Officially, Freemasons have no position on any church. Unofficially, my own lodge has Catholic members. While it's my understanding that the church disapproves of us, that's entirely one-sided.
Validating that: our lodge's chaplain happens to be Catholic (and at least one other senior officer is Jewish, AFAIK). Our chaplain says he gets an occasional comment about it from some priest or other, but it's mostly not an issue.
People like Mitch Kapor didn't see any value whatsoever in graphical environments - after all he was selling 1-2-3 hand over fist to companies still running DOS.
Let me fix that for you. Mitch was an early fan of the Mac, and Lotus endeavored to build a killer app for the Mac. There were problems of execution, but not vision.
Observers fault Lotus for building Jazz, an ambitious, integrated application, instead of a simpler "1-2-3 for the Mac". But at that time, Lotus was already working on what was planned to be 1-2-3 Release 2 for DOS, the product that was eventually released as Symphony. The Jazz team was trying to look ahead (skating to where they thought the puck would be), and undertook to implement that product for the Mac.
In spite of that fact that it was too damned big for even a 512K Mac, Jazz was, in some ways, ahead of its time. It implemented embedding (placing portions of spreadsheets in work processing documents, for example), foreshadowing what OLE and OpenView would implement later.
Another mistake Lotus can be faulted for is 1-2-3 Release 3, which was a re-implementation in C of the original product. In spite of the emergence of graphical user interfaces (the Mac, OS/2 Presentation Manager; WIndows was not a serious contender when the project was started), 1-2-3R3 was almost intrinsically an MS-DOS application, so much so that it was painful and costly to port it to Windows and the Mac (a project I worked on).
Mr Kapor claims that Microsoft "took advantage" of its position in controlling the operating system to make life hard for independent software developers like Lotus.
When these criticisms are put to Mr Gates, he says he finds it "ironic" that he could be accused of such a thing when Microsoft had "evangelised" its software to other companies, begging them "please write software for our platform".
I was at Lotus from '83 to '93, and I distinctly remember Microsoft visits, begging us to target our apps for their next OS: OS/2. While Excel for Windows was almost certainly already in development.
If Safari becomes the default browser on these systems, you end up with critical vulnerabilities in a browser installed on non-tech-savvy individuals' computers.
So first we have to have a user who is unaware of what Safari is or careless enough to not uncheck the box in Apple Software Update. It seems highly unlikely to me that many of the users who download Safari without thinking about it are going to go looking for it in the Programs menu and launch it. And it's not vulnerable if it's not running.
It was silly and wrong for Apple to leave the box checked by default, but this is not a big problem, and it's not going to become one.
...is to let people board as a group, but in the latest loading phase that any member of that group belongs to. This applies to almost any phased boarding scheme, including United's window/center/aisle phasing.
The result is that groups have to wait to board together, but they are likely to be slightly more coordinated in staying out of each other's way than three random individuals trying to fill a row in random order.
I can just see Steve Jobs rubbing his hands and gloating to his minions..."Yes, and with Firefox handicapped, we will have five percent of the browser market all to ourselves! Ours...all ours! Muahahahaha!"
"And at $0 per copy, we'll make... Oh, never mind...";-)
Does anybody remembers an old SF story in which a black hole is created and contained, and then somehow it _falls_ and start eating the Earth away? Cannot remember name or a author, but it gave me the creeps back then:o)
I remember reading a short story, probably in the 60's, with a plot like this. The story starts with investigators trying to understand a rash of mysterious structural failures around the world, and tracing them to tiny vertical holes drilled through whatever failed; including buildings. It's ultimately traced to a scientist who had been attempting to create a black hole in a mountaintop laboratory. The black hole couldn't be contained or supported (because it sucked in the material), and was basically in an "orbit" that carried it down to the center of the earth, back out the other side until it reached the same distance on the other side, and so on, like a pendulum. The rotation of the earth cause it to cross the surface at various places. The hole was becoming more destructive as it consumed more material and became larger, and the earth was doomed unless a way could be found to get rid of it. I think the story ended without resolution (before the earth is destroyed).
I got the creeps, too. I hope someone finds the title and author.
...but still not what I would call a long-term plan for success: handling ad-supported distribution of otherwise-free music and committing yourself to keeping up with Apple's avoidance maneuvers.
But it does trigger a thought: what if the record companies are looking at a scheme where they'll release DRM'd music under Qtrax's nominally free ad-supported model, and adopt Apple's $0.99/track DRM-free alternative? I could live with it.
It's easy to put songs on an iPod without interference with FairPlay: use DRM-free music. Most writers, and/.ers, it would appear, seem to miss this point: Apple does not restrict non-FairPlay music from the iPod. Whatever DRM scheme Qtrax is using is designed to prevent music from being played on devices that don't license their DRM scheme.
The only way Qtrax can get their music to play on the iPod is to a) make it DRM-free, which it doesn't sound like it's doing; b) use FairPlay DRM, which they seem to have eliminated; c) implement their DRM "client" (unlocking) on the iPod, which seems unlikely; or d) get Apple to license their DRM scheme for the iPod, retroactively. Yeah, that'll happen.
As somebody said way back at the beginning, you can be pro-Apple, even have the 6-color Kool-Aid running through your veins, and still do things that are harmful to their efforts.
Apple could have been harmed by the premature release of product information in at least three ways:
- It gave potential competitors time to position or re-position their own products against Apple before the product was released.
- It could alter consumer buying plans, causing some to defer a planned purchase and impacting Apple's near-term bottom line.
- It diminishes their ability to spin the product release their own way, which you cite as one of their great strengths.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute undertook a major restructuring of their undergraduate program in the early 70's, called "The WPI Plan", known on-campus as "The Plan". Broadly, the aim of The Plan was to produce engineers who were more aware of the impact of technology on society and vice versa. Key elements of The Plan when instituted:
A project-focused curriculum (I notice that project orientation was the first thing the NYT noted about Olin), including multi-term projects: a Major Qualifying Project in concentrating on your major and an Interactive Qualifying Project applying technology to human need.
A comprehensive examination in your major in lieu of narrowly-defined course requirements; a typical comp involved tackling a problem in your major area for a couple of days, submitting a solution, and facing a panel to defend your solution (and general competence in your major) orally.
A "humanities sufficiency" requirement that encouraged depth over a scattering of minimal course requirements.
A non-traditional grading system (Pass w/ Distinction, Pass, No Record) that encouraged risk-taking (and, unfortunately, over-subscribing to courses;-) ).
As a transfer student, I was one of the last people who could choose to graduate under the traditional system, which I did because it took best advantage of my transferred credit. I did enjoy some of the benefits, including the ability to do an MQP-scale project for credit.
There were some initial problems and the Plan has been tweaked -- notably, some faculty observed that IQP's often took on a shallow variation on "an electronic crutch" -- but I found it a dynamic environment to learn in.
I've also had a chance to observe Olin from a distance (my daughter was recently an undergrad at Babson); only time will tell if the program is successful, but I welcome a new generation of mold-breakers who will think different (and differently).
Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field.
This may not be a bad thing. I would be a much happier engineer if there were more people in the marketing, sales, and product management roles who had a better background in engineering.
I haven't had all that much trouble getting my Mac's working with Comcast's service, but it's more than a little frustrating to see all the software (PhotoShow, "an $89 value!"; VideoMail; McAfee Security) Comcast offers for "free" that I couldn't use if I wanted (OK, I wouldn't), even though I pay the same rates as the eligible users.
I once did suggest to a customer service rep that I shouldn't have to pay the same rate for fewer services, but I couldn't even make the drone on the other end of the phone line understand the point.
I wouldn't worry too much about that - after all, the Mayor of Boston just has to ban Apple from the city network, and then no one in Boston will be able to get a new Macbook anyway.
You're right; we can't blame only Microsoft, the whole industry is to blame for promoting the common practice of publishing documents in editable formats. Apple has done (very) slightly better by making it straightforward to produce PDF from the normal workflow, but common practice is still to distribute documents in their original editable format.
Distributing documents in editable format is as stupid as providing source code with applications...
Oh, wait, wrong audience, skip that...
Seriously, when the average user wants to publish their own work, it should be clear whether the product should be an immutable representation of the author's intent, or open to collaborative modification by others. And the interfaces and common practices promoted by computer systems should make it straightforward and obvious to establish that distinction.
Slashdot Mirror
"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion." - George Bernard Shaw
More likely multiple LEDs, like this.
It was probably the decision to openly license it. The Mac--when the Mac came out and for two years thereafter it was at least four or five years ahead of Windows and possibly could have taken the place of Windows if it was openly licensed, but because the Macintosh was restricted to a single member, Apple, it never could become an industry rather than a single platform.
Highly insightful. The Mac was like the old order, where one company made hardware, OS and software. The PC is part of the new order.
I disagree with Andy's assessment. The Mac may have been years ahead of Windows, but it's real problem, IMHO, is MS-DOS was already pretty entrenched, and the Mac didn't offer a migration path. I was working for Lotus at the time (working sometimes on the Mac, sometimes on DOS), and we had a pretty large community of 1-2-3 users who would not leave behind their accumulated DOS spreadsheets and what-not for the Mac even if they wanted to.
IIRC, they now have enough docking ports to park a second Soyuz.
Employment contracts often have something called a "covenant not to compete", enforced to at least some extent in pretty much every U.S. state but California.
Yeah, I've had non-compete clauses in many of the employment agreements of the (12) companies I've worked for; it's hardly that restrictive in reality. Very few of the companies I've worked for actually compete with each other, anyway. Colleagues often moved to directly competitive companies, but in the rare cases that the companies tried to act, it involved an employee with unique knowledge or value to the company. The smarter companies dealt with it by making the employee want to stay, rather than trying to block the move directly (which never worked, anyway).
The more common case I've encountered is when Company A find that it's being aggressively poached on by Company B. I was in a situation that bordered on that, and there was some saber-rattling, but in the end I was able to make the move without resistance.
Freemasonry Lodges and The Vatican are sworn enemies and have many times declared the other as a menace to mankind and such.
That's incorrect in theory and in practice. Officially, Freemasons have no position on any church. Unofficially, my own lodge has Catholic members. While it's my understanding that the church disapproves of us, that's entirely one-sided.
Validating that: our lodge's chaplain happens to be Catholic (and at least one other senior officer is Jewish, AFAIK). Our chaplain says he gets an occasional comment about it from some priest or other, but it's mostly not an issue.
People like Mitch Kapor didn't see any value whatsoever in graphical environments - after all he was selling 1-2-3 hand over fist to companies still running DOS.
Let me fix that for you. Mitch was an early fan of the Mac, and Lotus endeavored to build a killer app for the Mac. There were problems of execution, but not vision.
Observers fault Lotus for building Jazz, an ambitious, integrated application, instead of a simpler "1-2-3 for the Mac". But at that time, Lotus was already working on what was planned to be 1-2-3 Release 2 for DOS, the product that was eventually released as Symphony. The Jazz team was trying to look ahead (skating to where they thought the puck would be), and undertook to implement that product for the Mac.
In spite of that fact that it was too damned big for even a 512K Mac, Jazz was, in some ways, ahead of its time. It implemented embedding (placing portions of spreadsheets in work processing documents, for example), foreshadowing what OLE and OpenView would implement later.
Another mistake Lotus can be faulted for is 1-2-3 Release 3, which was a re-implementation in C of the original product. In spite of the emergence of graphical user interfaces (the Mac, OS/2 Presentation Manager; WIndows was not a serious contender when the project was started), 1-2-3R3 was almost intrinsically an MS-DOS application, so much so that it was painful and costly to port it to Windows and the Mac (a project I worked on).
Mr Kapor claims that Microsoft "took advantage" of its position in controlling the operating system to make life hard for independent software developers like Lotus.
When these criticisms are put to Mr Gates, he says he finds it "ironic" that he could be accused of such a thing when Microsoft had "evangelised" its software to other companies, begging them "please write software for our platform".
I was at Lotus from '83 to '93, and I distinctly remember Microsoft visits, begging us to target our apps for their next OS: OS/2. While Excel for Windows was almost certainly already in development.
Safari installs a icon the desktop.
Which I agree is wrong, but will probably go unclicked with all the rest of the crapware on the typical Windows installation.
Can I come over to your home and install a whole bunch of unwanted and vulnerable software...?
We agree on the "unwanted" part. Do you really think an unused browser makes a Windows machine noticeably more vulnerable than it already is?
If Safari becomes the default browser on these systems, you end up with critical vulnerabilities in a browser installed on non-tech-savvy individuals' computers.
So first we have to have a user who is unaware of what Safari is or careless enough to not uncheck the box in Apple Software Update. It seems highly unlikely to me that many of the users who download Safari without thinking about it are going to go looking for it in the Programs menu and launch it. And it's not vulnerable if it's not running.
It was silly and wrong for Apple to leave the box checked by default, but this is not a big problem, and it's not going to become one.
...is to let people board as a group, but in the latest loading phase that any member of that group belongs to. This applies to almost any phased boarding scheme, including United's window/center/aisle phasing.
The result is that groups have to wait to board together, but they are likely to be slightly more coordinated in staying out of each other's way than three random individuals trying to fill a row in random order.
I can just see Steve Jobs rubbing his hands and gloating to his minions..."Yes, and with Firefox handicapped, we will have five percent of the browser market all to ourselves! Ours...all ours! Muahahahaha!"
;-)
"And at $0 per copy, we'll make... Oh, never mind..."
Mars was not part of the story I remember.
Does anybody remembers an old SF story in which a black hole is created and contained, and then somehow it _falls_ and start eating the Earth away? Cannot remember name or a author, but it gave me the creeps back then :o)
I remember reading a short story, probably in the 60's, with a plot like this. The story starts with investigators trying to understand a rash of mysterious structural failures around the world, and tracing them to tiny vertical holes drilled through whatever failed; including buildings. It's ultimately traced to a scientist who had been attempting to create a black hole in a mountaintop laboratory. The black hole couldn't be contained or supported (because it sucked in the material), and was basically in an "orbit" that carried it down to the center of the earth, back out the other side until it reached the same distance on the other side, and so on, like a pendulum. The rotation of the earth cause it to cross the surface at various places. The hole was becoming more destructive as it consumed more material and became larger, and the earth was doomed unless a way could be found to get rid of it. I think the story ended without resolution (before the earth is destroyed).
I got the creeps, too. I hope someone finds the title and author.
You could also say: "Men without girlfriends are over represented in terrorist groups."
/.ing.
Damn; beat me to it. Second time this week that's happened.
Work is starting to interfere with
...but still not what I would call a long-term plan for success: handling ad-supported distribution of otherwise-free music and committing yourself to keeping up with Apple's avoidance maneuvers.
But it does trigger a thought: what if the record companies are looking at a scheme where they'll release DRM'd music under Qtrax's nominally free ad-supported model, and adopt Apple's $0.99/track DRM-free alternative? I could live with it.
The only way Qtrax can get their music to play on the iPod is to a) make it DRM-free, which it doesn't sound like it's doing; b) use FairPlay DRM, which they seem to have eliminated; c) implement their DRM "client" (unlocking) on the iPod, which seems unlikely; or d) get Apple to license their DRM scheme for the iPod, retroactively. Yeah, that'll happen.
I smell a rat: too many claims, too few details.
Apple could have been harmed by the premature release of product information in at least three ways:
- It gave potential competitors time to position or re-position their own products against Apple before the product was released.
- It could alter consumer buying plans, causing some to defer a planned purchase and impacting Apple's near-term bottom line.
- It diminishes their ability to spin the product release their own way, which you cite as one of their great strengths.
A project-focused curriculum (I notice that project orientation was the first thing the NYT noted about Olin), including multi-term projects: a Major Qualifying Project in concentrating on your major and an Interactive Qualifying Project applying technology to human need.
A comprehensive examination in your major in lieu of narrowly-defined course requirements; a typical comp involved tackling a problem in your major area for a couple of days, submitting a solution, and facing a panel to defend your solution (and general competence in your major) orally.
A "humanities sufficiency" requirement that encouraged depth over a scattering of minimal course requirements.
A non-traditional grading system (Pass w/ Distinction, Pass, No Record) that encouraged risk-taking (and, unfortunately, over-subscribing to courses ;-) ).
As a transfer student, I was one of the last people who could choose to graduate under the traditional system, which I did because it took best advantage of my transferred credit. I did enjoy some of the benefits, including the ability to do an MQP-scale project for credit.
There were some initial problems and the Plan has been tweaked -- notably, some faculty observed that IQP's often took on a shallow variation on "an electronic crutch" -- but I found it a dynamic environment to learn in.
I've also had a chance to observe Olin from a distance (my daughter was recently an undergrad at Babson); only time will tell if the program is successful, but I welcome a new generation of mold-breakers who will think different (and differently).
This may not be a bad thing. I would be a much happier engineer if there were more people in the marketing, sales, and product management roles who had a better background in engineering.
...I'd like to think that he would have disclaimed the movie.
You have a link to the German details? That part isn't mentioned here in the USA anywhere.
Maybe he means this.
I once did suggest to a customer service rep that I shouldn't have to pay the same rate for fewer services, but I couldn't even make the drone on the other end of the phone line understand the point.
Please don't give Mumbles any ideas...
Distributing documents in editable format is as stupid as providing source code with applications...
Oh, wait, wrong audience, skip that...
Seriously, when the average user wants to publish their own work, it should be clear whether the product should be an immutable representation of the author's intent, or open to collaborative modification by others. And the interfaces and common practices promoted by computer systems should make it straightforward and obvious to establish that distinction.