I think the thing that many people fail to understand about Apple is that I don't think they have the desire (now -- they might have in the past) to be where Microsoft is.
Sure, they want to grow their business, and provide value to their shareholders, and make their customers happy, etc. etc., but none of those things require them to be the David that slays the Golaith of Redmond.
A lot of Apple's users and evangelists would love to see them unseat Windows, but I don't think that's really in their business plan for the immediate or even long-term future.
I think Apple realizes that letting people put OS X on commodity hardware isn't going to make it into the "dominant OS." There are still too many things tying people to Windows, and too many nasty weapons Microsoft could drag out if anyone ever started to threaten their core markets. Apple can't afford to challenge Microsoft directly.
What Apple suspects -- and what I believe -- is that OS X on commodity boxes would probably just cannibalize existing Apple sales, convert them to [whitebox NewEgg PC + pirated bittorrent copy of MacOS] "sales," and drive the company quickly out of business. And once Apple is gone, that would be the end of the line for MacOS. Microsoft would really have won.
I think it's also important to look back to 10 years or so ago, and remember that it was the same sort of 'commodity hardware' thinking that led to the CHRP and Mac Clone era. In retrospect, that came close to killing Apple -- and not surprisingly, when it became clear that other manufacturers' hardware running MacOS wasn't converting legions of Wintel users to Mac, but instead just drawing existing Apple customers to someplace else, Apple killed the clones. That's the historical lesson that I assume is forefront in the minds of everyone in Apple's management, and I doubt that they're going to repeat the mistake.
Apple's "magic smoke," it's jene se qua, that keeps customers coming back and paying that "Mac Tax," is based on a lot more than just the MacOS (which at the end of the day is really a pretty interface and HAL on top of BSD). It's utterly dependent on maintaining a tight control over the hardware and the software. It's not sustainable without that control, and that's why I think it'll be a cold day in hell before you see Apple willingly sell a retail version of MacOS for boxes that aren't theirs.
That's pretty much the best summary of the situation that I've read so far. Kudos.
However, "weird," "stupid," or a "pirate" together describe quite a lot of people I know, so even though I agree with you, it doesn't mean that people won't try one of the three options you laid out.
Taiwan was recognized as a soverign nation, until they were effictively sold out by Pres. Jimmy Carter and numerous other world leaders in the name of political expediency in the 1970s. They were expelled from the UN via Resolution 2758, and were 'un-recognized' by the US via the Taiwan Relations Act.
I said something similar elsewhere in this page, but you did it more succinctly.
There's a reason why most big commercial software projects involve more than a bunch of programmer/developers sitting around and churning out code, and I think Mr Shuttleworth is catching on to why that's the case.
I've worked on projects where the number of non-programmers outnumbered actual coders by a substantial margin, and most of the actual 'design' work was not done by the programmers, it was done in the requirements-analysis, planning, and specification-writing stages. I'm not saying that development model is right for every project, but it's worth at least thinking about why it exists.
I also think that a bigger emphasis on the creation and maintence of specifications, requirements, and other technical documentation (and not just code comments) would help projects that suffer setbacks as a result of one developer leaving and somebody else having to relearn what's going on from the code itself.
I know there's a bit of a bias here on Slashdot -- and among developers in general, IMO -- against "manager types" and non-programmer software people (e.g., Analysts, Testers, Documentation Writers, etc.) but I think that one of the weaknesses of a lot of OSS projects is that they're full of nothing but coders, and very few 'ancillary people.'
I'm sure that makes for lots of code, but I'm not sure that it leads to the best final product. There's a reason why analysts and testers exist on commercial software projects (sometimes in greater numbers than actual programmer/developers!), and it's not because commercial firms like paying extra people's salaries. It's because projects work better when they're well thought out and well-documented and when there are people around who's job isn't writing code.
I'm not saying that every OSS project should go and follow the SEI CMM guidelines like a recipe, or any other top-heavy "development methodology," only that there seems to be this rampant attitude in the OSS world that the best way to solve a problem is by a throwing half a dozen programmers and three cases of Jolt cola into a room, and not letting them out until it's fixed. Maybe that's not always the best way to do things.
I think, as a community, we're very slowly getting to learn that.
I think this pretty much sums up Apple's retail strategy completely.
The closest they ever get to a "sale" (usually a bit before the holidays, another one over the summer) is that they'll up-spec the whole lineup by a certain amount. The beauty of this is that people generally don't see the price on the laptop they bought decreasing -- they usually don't bump the specs by so much at once that the middle-of-the-road system instantly becomes the $999 one, it happens gradually. Even though the different systems (Fast, Faster, Fastest) become more powerful over time, it avoids the feeling of being ripped off that's common to computer purchasers when they go online six months later and find out the system they purchased for $1k is now $600. You'll never see that on Apple's site: all you'll ever see are three systems for each model, and always at (about) the same three price points. They just become progressively better, not the same model becoming "cheaper." It's kind of a subtle psychological thing, but it works.
It's also great because most people (most 'average consumers,' and definitely most parents who are buying a computer for a kid) pick out the price they're willing to pay FIRST, then choose specs. So they decide, "okay, I'll spend a grand on a laptop." And that's it -- aside from maybe a little upselling, that's what they're willing to pay. Very few people actually go out with an idea of the specifications of the computer they want to purchase (e.g. "I want a 1.2GHz system with 512MB RAM and a 80GB hard drive with WiFi."). Geeks may do that, but the majority of the people lined up at the Apple Store probably don't.
I have a feeling that the strategy was one that they developed as a company after it became clear that they weren't going to win the megahertz war; you don't want people emphasizing specifications, you want them to associate the price directly with the product, and that product with the user experience. The hardware specs are details. They're nerdy. Ignore them. And people do -- happily.
If you look at how Apple advertises its higher-end products (the Power Macs) you'll notice there's slightly more emphasis on specifications and customization, and less on price. But at the entry level, there are usually three price points, and three products: 'you pays your money and yous gets your computer.'
Except that's not what a bunch of people are talking about -- there's a substantial effort out there to *dual boot* WinXP, which is a far cry from virtualization.
I think you're going to see a full-speed version of VirtualPC or something similar (VMWare) very soon, that won't require rebooting, and that'll be something to be (mildly) excited over. Running Windows at full speed in a sandbox environment within MacOS, that is.
But I just can't get excited about the prospect of actually rebooting my Mac and having WinXP come up. Actually, it makes me gag a little.
The thing that I do find more-than-mildly exciting is the prospect of having something like Wine or Cedega on MacOS (e.g., the Darwine project), because that gives me what I really want -- the ability to run Windows software on my Mac, without actually running Windows itself.
3-4 hrs still beats the living tar out of a lot of PC laptops, if it was actual "real world" usage; not some invented figure based on never accessing the HD or optical disk drive, using the wireless card, or anything else.
I've bitched elsewhere about it so I won't rehash the issue, but let's just say that I've been unhappily surprised that the 'acceptable' battery life of PC notebooks is substantially less than what I'd grown to feel was normal, after several years of using Apple products. Plus they do nasty little things like scaling the processor way down when running on batteries, also. (Yes, I'm aware you can turn this off, but you would further reduce the already short battery life.) Most PC-using friends of mine see their laptop's battery as something that they use in order to get from one outlet to the next without shutting down, not really a power source to do useful work from.
I hope Apple doesn't go down that road with the Intel chips.
What's great about the MacBook again? It it not compatible with PC Cards, Very few people care. Even on Slashdot, when this subject came up last, seemingly only a small percentage of PB owners used the PC card slot to begin with; among PC users the most common use of the slot was for WLAN cards, which are built-in on the Mac. As for memory card readers, they are starting to come out already. I think because of the small form factor, you're never going to see a CompactFlash one in there, but I think most people are fine with USB ones anyway -- I can't imagine that's a deal-breaker for very many people.
It has no GPRS/EDGE/EVDO/1xRTT wireless WAN card, and no slot for adding one. This is a legitimate complaint for people that use WAN services, but the MacBook does have the ExpressCard slot, so this situation probably won't last very long. It's the usual early-adopter problem, but as Dell and HP have also said they're going to release ExpressCard notebooks soon, I think you're going to see WAN devices fairly quickly. (There are USB EVDO and WAN devices around also, although I don't know if they're officially supported -- although last time I checked, the PCMCIA EVDO cards weren't officially supported on anything but Windows, either.) I further suspect that most WAN users are business types, who are usually stuck with Windows anyway, so that like PC card slots generally, it's not a deal breaker for a very significant market.
It has no SmartCard reader. The battery life, although unannounced, is expected to be average. I think the demand for SmartCard readers is very limited, also. At best, it's a niche market, especially on the Mac. Most people I know who use SmartCards, use them to access secure systems, which are almost universally PC-based. No big loss of market there. Plus, Apple has never supported SmartCards themselves -- if enough people want it, there will be a ExpressCard reader, but I wouldn't hold your breath (plus I'm not sure it would fit). Or use an external USB reader.
As far as I can tell, the MacBook lacks any kind of feature that sets it apart, other than running MacOS X. The Acer TravelMate, Ferrari series and the Thinkpad X series seem to be much better computers if you don't need MacOS X. Mac OS X is the feature that sets it apart, at least from PC laptops. And it sets it apart far enough that there's not really a comparison -- people generally pick an OS first, and then pick hardware. This is especially true of Apple users; the fact that the Acer or IBM isn't a Mac puts them out of the competition from the very beginning. The thing that distinguises the MacBook from other Apple laptops is the software compatibility. It's not really practical to run some applications on a G3 or even G4, and also I think it's important not to underestimate the importance of people buying a fast computer simply because it's fast, and not for any real reason. Nobody wants to spend $2k for something that's not the best around, so perception is a large part of the sale. As for battery life, just from personal experience I think Apple will do well there. My old iBook still gets better battery life than my ThinkPad PC notebook which is brand new -- and the PC notebook runs at less than 50% of its normal processor speed when it's not on AC power. Apple's "average" battery life of 3-4 hours would be at the higher end of what I've been told is normal from many PC users, and confirmed from my own experience (I get roughly 90min or less of 'real world' usage out of mine).
I do agree with your general analysis though, as someone who already has an existing Mac laptop. I'm not sure that Apple has created any gigantic reasons to upgrade to the MacBook right now, for anyone who's system is currently meeting their immediate needs. Which is good, considering that they've included some definite 'early adopter' technology in this system; this is the first machine in a new series, I don't think it's intended for everybody.
Sure somebody could, but what damages would they claim?
"WoW is going to run too fast on this new iBook -- it'll just be too good and I'll lose my job from playing it too much! I was promised a slower computer and I want it!"
The new power adapter with MagSafe connector is just that: a magnetic connection instead of a physical one. So, tripping over a power cord won't send MacBook Pro flying off a table or desk; the cord simply breaks cleanly away, without damage to either the cord or the system. As an added nicety, this means less wear on the connectors.
Pretty slick.
Apparently, it's been used on countertop deep fryers for a while now (after some really horrible incidents where people pulled or tripped over cords and got hot oil spilled on them).
Your car dealer or your grocery store would both be within their rights to do those kind of promotions. Bundling, by itself, isn't illegal.
Look at cable TV and cable internet -- cable internet alone (if you can get it) might cost $80 a month, but buy it along with digital cable television, and it's only $35 a month!
You have every right to complain, but nobody is going to take you seriously. There's nothing wrong with that promotion (provided they're not abusing a monopoly power or violating the antitrust laws in some other way). Where the problems start is if they advertised "Cable Internet only $35/mo.!" without saying anything about the bundle, and then you walked down to your cable office, and asked to get service, and they said "oh, well to get that price, you have to buy x, y, and z, too." That's false advertising, and to avoid this the ads usually have an asterisk somewhere and a small print that explains the "promotional pricing." Thus a smart consumer (one who reads the ad) can figure out what they're getting into. Personally I think those kinds of "asterisk offers" are still mildly deceptive, but they're legal.
Best Buy's problem was that the advertising flyers didn't say anything about only being able to get xBoxes in bundles, they advertised (presumably) both the bundled and un-bundled price. But some store managers decided to only sell them in bundles, and disregard the un-bundled advertised price. That's where they cross the line into false advertising.
The bundling itself isn't a problem, it's how it was advertised.
The advertising was printed up by corporate, which indicated what should have been happening in the stores. I've worked retail -- you don't get much say at the store level into what kind of promotions you're going to sell or not; what gets printed in the flyer is what happens. If the flyer says "Widget x now $150!" you'd best have Widget X on the shelves for $150, or you're going to have problems.
What Best Buy is claiming (and based on my own retail experience, seems quite believable) is that some managers decided to basically disregard the published advertisements that they were supposed to be honoring, and instead sell the units they had only in bundes, in order to maximize their add-on dollars. And in order to do this, they put up false notices of a "correction" to the advertising flyers.
This is false advertising, this is illegal. It looks bad for Best Buy as a company, and probably opens them up to liability if someone can show damages as a result.
From Best Buy's perspective, the problem wasn't in the printing of the flyers -- it wasn't like they just misprinted, or forgot to put the bundles in there or something -- it was with the managers who were effectively insubordinate, and didn't follow the published promotions.
Now, with that said, there are some obvious 'corporate culture' problems here also. Like, why were the store managers being put under so much pressure to generate add-on dollars, that they chose to do something like this? That's the real question, and I can only hope that after Best Buy makes it's first pass through (the 'ritual bloodletting' stage of PR-disaster management), that they'll put some thought into how to fix their system, because it's clearly not working.
I think you are substantially underappreciating the instinctive ability of "inbred deliverance-manchild-like retard fucks" to find ways to humiliate others in the most effective ways possible.
They didn't need to be told, people like that are more than capable of figuring things out for themselves.
Or did you never get bullied in elementary school? The average schoolyard bully might be dumber than a bag of hammers, but they always have an eerie propensity for figuring out exactly how to humiliate others. It's the same thing, writ large.
I think you're wrong in your example. If I come into the store for product x, and when I get in there find out that it either never existed, or they had an unreasonably low number of them to begin with, and they attempt to upsell me to product y, that's a bait-and-switch. The key though -- and what makes a fraudster different from a "good salesperson" -- is that the fraudster intends to do this from the beginning.
Plus, a product standing alone, and a product that can only be sold as part of a bundle, might as well be two totally separate products. And it becomes all the more obvious that a scam is afoot when the latter (the bundle) is the same product, just padded with a lot of high-margin addons that they won't remove and let you buy/not-buy separately (or return).
We have the same thing in the U.S., here it just falls under the large umbrella of "false advertising," which varies state by state but usually allows a person to sue for damages. However it's sometimes rather tough to prove damages and I have a feeling in this instance that the company can probably protect themselves (as they're doing) by firing all the people involved and swearing they won't do it again.
But if you did run into blatant false advertising, the way to go would be to contact your state's Consumer Protection office, if it has one, or the Attorney General (who can file suit against the company on behalf of the state).
I think you're incorrect. IBM does a lot of Linux stuff, it's just not the kind of things that are often appreciated by the linux-on-the-desktop boosters. A lot of it is either database or virtualization related, a lot of Solaris/other-UNIX to Linux migration, or backend and mainframe stuff. It's not glamorous, but it's arguably a lot more important than Google Earth, or any other desktop app.
They have what I'm sure must be billions of dollars invested in Linux, as a business server platform. That's a vested interest in seeing it succeed in the world if I've ever heard of one, and a lot more than Google has in Linux (except as a platform for their own stuff).
I'm not crapping on Google -- hey, I'd like to see a native version of Google Earth as much as the next person -- but let's not bad mouth the big blue goose that's laying the fat golden R&D eggs, either.
I'm not sure what the story is on this watermarking system, and how robust it is, but there are definitely systems that are designed to survive analog conversion and recompression.
There is one old scheme I've heard about in particular which uses a very selective notch filter (or several) on an audible frequency(s) -- they claim that most people can't hear the difference, but even on an recompressed version down the line, you can look at the audio and tell if it's been watermarked. I think this scheme, I can't remember where it was being used, was not a "watermark" per se, but was really a 'Copy/No-Copy' flag, sort of like an audio version of Macrovision, that they wanted to embed in the analog audio. I read about it in an audiophile publication and apparently it was quite disgusting to listen to if you had good hearing and were familiar with the recording.
Anyway, my point is just that there are systems which are robust enough to survive analog conversion and recompression, they just tend to begin to alter the audio. Depending on how paranoid a content producer is, I'm not sure it's out of the realm of possibility that they would choose to implement a scheme like that. Although, as other people pointed out, if the song is being broadcast on the radio, then you're going to expect a certain amount of low-quality bootlegs to turn up, since people can just record it from the received FM broadcast. For whatever reason, the RIAA has never seemed to be overly concerned with this, even though FM quality seems to be more than acceptable for a lot of people, and I have no doubt they'd download it off of P2P if it was the only version available.
You can fairly easily (well, "fairly easily" for some is another man's frustration) configure KDE to look as un-Windowsish as you want. E.g., it will do a context-sensitive screen-top menubar similar to MacOS's, and you can move the KDE menu of applications anyplace you want, or get rid of it completely. (I keep it in the upper left hand corner of the screen, personally.) There are some people who have gone so far as to basically duplicate the MacOS "Aqua" look within KDE: like this.
My problem with KDE is that the documentation is.... somewhat lacking. Or at least I couldn't find the answers to questions very easily -- it took me more than a week to figure out how to move the menus around in the screen-top menubar when they got stuck on the right hand side. (They sometimes jump over there for no good reason whatsoever when you add another applet.)
1, 4, 5, and 6, while probably generally true, aren't universally true. There are states that have intentional exceptions to them, for one reason or another. E.g., in some states you can get a driver's license without a USG issued ID; this is how illegal residents get them.
Likewise, they can also enroll in school with nothing but proof of residence in a particular area, for which a piece of mail to a particular address can be used, and even in the absence of that the school district is still required to educate them.
I've been to banks in areas that had substantial illegal resident populations, and they had systems for allowing people without ID to open bank accounts (although I believe this is no longer allowed), using a fingerprint reader. It proves that you're the same person, but not necessarily identity, since I doubt it's linked against an external database.
2, 3, 7 and 8, in my experience are the only ones that I would want to say are true almost everywhere.
The intended use of watermarking, at least as I see it, is less for mass-released files than for prerelease or limited-release uses.
E.g., radio stations get copies of songs weeks before the CDs actually hit stores -- and suspiciously, the songs tend to show up on P2P networks soon after they go out to radio stations. What the music producers would really like to be able to do is trace the leaked files back to whoever put them on the internet, and then get medeival on them for breach of contract.
You can imagine similar uses for prerelease screenings of movies that go out to critics, film review boards, etc. It's less about preventing piracy than it is about finding the snitch afterwards so they can be made an example of. Really, the piracy deterrent is not technological (the watermark), but social (whatever punishment gets inflicted). The watermark is just facilitating the latter.
I suppose in theory if you had a watermark that could be embedded into the file quickly and easily, you could use it on downloaded music (like the iTMS) to see if people were sharing files that they purchased, but really I think systems like this are designed to catch big fish, not Joe Preteen who's ripping files that he bought off of Napster and putting them onto Kazaa.
A lot of similar systems are used with images; actually many of the techniques used for watermarking are used for steganography (it's arguable that watermarking is really a form of steganography), like Least Significant Bit padding for one. There are also systems that have a robust enough watermark that they will survive printing and scanning, although they tend to begin to mess up the image slightly.
My problem with Linux on the desktop right now is lack of support. I don't mean necessarily lack of hardware support (although that's an issue also), but lack of technical support options for the non-enterprise user.
Let's say I advised someone in a small business environment to switch to Linux rather than upgrade to Vista (or whatever). I, or somebody like me, helps them get everything all set up, all networked and running OpenOffice and whatever else they need. Everything is fine. And then, I go home.
What do they do when something stops working? Maybe something really simple -- "hey, I just deleted the menu bar in KDE, how do I get it back?" -- or something more complex. If they don't have an in-house IT person, I'm stuck with the rather unappealing decision of leaving them high and dry, or becoming their tech support person.
Of course, they have lots of options: search Google, read support forums, post question on forum, chat on IRC, post bug report, etc. But they don't have any "phone number of last resort," like they would have on a commercial OS. With Microsoft and Apple, there are pay-per-incident numbers that you can call to get support right now. (With Apple, there's the Genius Bar at the Store, too.) Sun offers support contracts for Solaris 10 workstations, hardware and software, for about $40 a month. The point is that there's somebody that a user can call who (theoretically) will have the answer to their question.
With Linux, unless you're working with a vendor or consulting firm and get a "total solution" that involves a support contract, there isn't an equivalent to that. And I think that's a big turnoff to even moderately tech-savvy business owners who would otherwise jump at the opportunity to ditch Windows.
If anyone knows of a support provider that does pay-per-incident for Linux, or even does inexpensive single-user support contracts, I'd be interested. But I don't know of any, since LinuxCare went under; I've been thinking of posting an Ask Slashdot question about this actually (see my Journal for draft).
My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?
IMO, no, there's not. Any competent manager (insert jokes about how rare that is here) will consider the TCO within the context of their own business before deploying any sort of IT solution, or else they're probably not worth their paycheck.
That said, just because they're "just propaganda" doesn't mean they're not worth doing and perhaps even necessary, if you're really interested in boosting Linux in the corporate environment. A product's reputation has to be constantly defended, if these sorts of studies weren't published, then it might become "common and accepted wisdom" that Linux had a high TCO, and it would get pushed out of consideration by PHBs.
That's assuming they're willing to distribute source drivers.
That is often not the case. Niche hardware manufacturers will often target one particular Linux distro, on one particular architecture (usually x86), and produce binary drivers. If you don't want to use that distro, you're quite possibly SOL.
There are many cases where recompiling just ain't an option.
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Bingo. I think this is very true.
I think the thing that many people fail to understand about Apple is that I don't think they have the desire (now -- they might have in the past) to be where Microsoft is.
Sure, they want to grow their business, and provide value to their shareholders, and make their customers happy, etc. etc., but none of those things require them to be the David that slays the Golaith of Redmond.
A lot of Apple's users and evangelists would love to see them unseat Windows, but I don't think that's really in their business plan for the immediate or even long-term future.
I think Apple realizes that letting people put OS X on commodity hardware isn't going to make it into the "dominant OS." There are still too many things tying people to Windows, and too many nasty weapons Microsoft could drag out if anyone ever started to threaten their core markets. Apple can't afford to challenge Microsoft directly.
What Apple suspects -- and what I believe -- is that OS X on commodity boxes would probably just cannibalize existing Apple sales, convert them to [whitebox NewEgg PC + pirated bittorrent copy of MacOS] "sales," and drive the company quickly out of business. And once Apple is gone, that would be the end of the line for MacOS. Microsoft would really have won.
I think it's also important to look back to 10 years or so ago, and remember that it was the same sort of 'commodity hardware' thinking that led to the CHRP and Mac Clone era. In retrospect, that came close to killing Apple -- and not surprisingly, when it became clear that other manufacturers' hardware running MacOS wasn't converting legions of Wintel users to Mac, but instead just drawing existing Apple customers to someplace else, Apple killed the clones. That's the historical lesson that I assume is forefront in the minds of everyone in Apple's management, and I doubt that they're going to repeat the mistake.
Apple's "magic smoke," it's jene se qua, that keeps customers coming back and paying that "Mac Tax," is based on a lot more than just the MacOS (which at the end of the day is really a pretty interface and HAL on top of BSD). It's utterly dependent on maintaining a tight control over the hardware and the software. It's not sustainable without that control, and that's why I think it'll be a cold day in hell before you see Apple willingly sell a retail version of MacOS for boxes that aren't theirs.
That's pretty much the best summary of the situation that I've read so far. Kudos.
However, "weird," "stupid," or a "pirate" together describe quite a lot of people I know, so even though I agree with you, it doesn't mean that people won't try one of the three options you laid out.
But anyway, you hit the nail on the head.
I think you got your verb tenses wrong.
a l_Assembly_Resolution_2758
Taiwan was recognized as a soverign nation, until they were effictively sold out by Pres. Jimmy Carter and numerous other world leaders in the name of political expediency in the 1970s. They were expelled from the UN via Resolution 2758, and were 'un-recognized' by the US via the Taiwan Relations Act.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Gener
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act
Exactly.
I said something similar elsewhere in this page, but you did it more succinctly.
There's a reason why most big commercial software projects involve more than a bunch of programmer/developers sitting around and churning out code, and I think Mr Shuttleworth is catching on to why that's the case.
I've worked on projects where the number of non-programmers outnumbered actual coders by a substantial margin, and most of the actual 'design' work was not done by the programmers, it was done in the requirements-analysis, planning, and specification-writing stages. I'm not saying that development model is right for every project, but it's worth at least thinking about why it exists.
I also think that a bigger emphasis on the creation and maintence of specifications, requirements, and other technical documentation (and not just code comments) would help projects that suffer setbacks as a result of one developer leaving and somebody else having to relearn what's going on from the code itself.
I agree.
I know there's a bit of a bias here on Slashdot -- and among developers in general, IMO -- against "manager types" and non-programmer software people (e.g., Analysts, Testers, Documentation Writers, etc.) but I think that one of the weaknesses of a lot of OSS projects is that they're full of nothing but coders, and very few 'ancillary people.'
I'm sure that makes for lots of code, but I'm not sure that it leads to the best final product. There's a reason why analysts and testers exist on commercial software projects (sometimes in greater numbers than actual programmer/developers!), and it's not because commercial firms like paying extra people's salaries. It's because projects work better when they're well thought out and well-documented and when there are people around who's job isn't writing code.
I'm not saying that every OSS project should go and follow the SEI CMM guidelines like a recipe, or any other top-heavy "development methodology," only that there seems to be this rampant attitude in the OSS world that the best way to solve a problem is by a throwing half a dozen programmers and three cases of Jolt cola into a room, and not letting them out until it's fixed. Maybe that's not always the best way to do things.
I think, as a community, we're very slowly getting to learn that.
Bravo -- you hit the nail on the head exactly.
I think this pretty much sums up Apple's retail strategy completely.
The closest they ever get to a "sale" (usually a bit before the holidays, another one over the summer) is that they'll up-spec the whole lineup by a certain amount. The beauty of this is that people generally don't see the price on the laptop they bought decreasing -- they usually don't bump the specs by so much at once that the middle-of-the-road system instantly becomes the $999 one, it happens gradually. Even though the different systems (Fast, Faster, Fastest) become more powerful over time, it avoids the feeling of being ripped off that's common to computer purchasers when they go online six months later and find out the system they purchased for $1k is now $600. You'll never see that on Apple's site: all you'll ever see are three systems for each model, and always at (about) the same three price points. They just become progressively better, not the same model becoming "cheaper." It's kind of a subtle psychological thing, but it works.
It's also great because most people (most 'average consumers,' and definitely most parents who are buying a computer for a kid) pick out the price they're willing to pay FIRST, then choose specs. So they decide, "okay, I'll spend a grand on a laptop." And that's it -- aside from maybe a little upselling, that's what they're willing to pay. Very few people actually go out with an idea of the specifications of the computer they want to purchase (e.g. "I want a 1.2GHz system with 512MB RAM and a 80GB hard drive with WiFi."). Geeks may do that, but the majority of the people lined up at the Apple Store probably don't.
I have a feeling that the strategy was one that they developed as a company after it became clear that they weren't going to win the megahertz war; you don't want people emphasizing specifications, you want them to associate the price directly with the product, and that product with the user experience. The hardware specs are details. They're nerdy. Ignore them. And people do -- happily.
If you look at how Apple advertises its higher-end products (the Power Macs) you'll notice there's slightly more emphasis on specifications and customization, and less on price. But at the entry level, there are usually three price points, and three products: 'you pays your money and yous gets your computer.'
Except that's not what a bunch of people are talking about -- there's a substantial effort out there to *dual boot* WinXP, which is a far cry from virtualization.
I think you're going to see a full-speed version of VirtualPC or something similar (VMWare) very soon, that won't require rebooting, and that'll be something to be (mildly) excited over. Running Windows at full speed in a sandbox environment within MacOS, that is.
But I just can't get excited about the prospect of actually rebooting my Mac and having WinXP come up. Actually, it makes me gag a little.
The thing that I do find more-than-mildly exciting is the prospect of having something like Wine or Cedega on MacOS (e.g., the Darwine project), because that gives me what I really want -- the ability to run Windows software on my Mac, without actually running Windows itself.
3-4 hrs still beats the living tar out of a lot of PC laptops, if it was actual "real world" usage; not some invented figure based on never accessing the HD or optical disk drive, using the wireless card, or anything else.
I've bitched elsewhere about it so I won't rehash the issue, but let's just say that I've been unhappily surprised that the 'acceptable' battery life of PC notebooks is substantially less than what I'd grown to feel was normal, after several years of using Apple products. Plus they do nasty little things like scaling the processor way down when running on batteries, also. (Yes, I'm aware you can turn this off, but you would further reduce the already short battery life.) Most PC-using friends of mine see their laptop's battery as something that they use in order to get from one outlet to the next without shutting down, not really a power source to do useful work from.
I hope Apple doesn't go down that road with the Intel chips.
What's great about the MacBook again? It it not compatible with PC Cards,
Very few people care. Even on Slashdot, when this subject came up last, seemingly only a small percentage of PB owners used the PC card slot to begin with; among PC users the most common use of the slot was for WLAN cards, which are built-in on the Mac. As for memory card readers, they are starting to come out already. I think because of the small form factor, you're never going to see a CompactFlash one in there, but I think most people are fine with USB ones anyway -- I can't imagine that's a deal-breaker for very many people.
It has no GPRS/EDGE/EVDO/1xRTT wireless WAN card, and no slot for adding one.
This is a legitimate complaint for people that use WAN services, but the MacBook does have the ExpressCard slot, so this situation probably won't last very long. It's the usual early-adopter problem, but as Dell and HP have also said they're going to release ExpressCard notebooks soon, I think you're going to see WAN devices fairly quickly. (There are USB EVDO and WAN devices around also, although I don't know if they're officially supported -- although last time I checked, the PCMCIA EVDO cards weren't officially supported on anything but Windows, either.) I further suspect that most WAN users are business types, who are usually stuck with Windows anyway, so that like PC card slots generally, it's not a deal breaker for a very significant market.
It has no SmartCard reader. The battery life, although unannounced, is expected to be average.
I think the demand for SmartCard readers is very limited, also. At best, it's a niche market, especially on the Mac. Most people I know who use SmartCards, use them to access secure systems, which are almost universally PC-based. No big loss of market there. Plus, Apple has never supported SmartCards themselves -- if enough people want it, there will be a ExpressCard reader, but I wouldn't hold your breath (plus I'm not sure it would fit). Or use an external USB reader.
As far as I can tell, the MacBook lacks any kind of feature that sets it apart, other than running MacOS X. The Acer TravelMate, Ferrari series and the Thinkpad X series seem to be much better computers if you don't need MacOS X.
Mac OS X is the feature that sets it apart, at least from PC laptops. And it sets it apart far enough that there's not really a comparison -- people generally pick an OS first, and then pick hardware. This is especially true of Apple users; the fact that the Acer or IBM isn't a Mac puts them out of the competition from the very beginning.
The thing that distinguises the MacBook from other Apple laptops is the software compatibility. It's not really practical to run some applications on a G3 or even G4, and also I think it's important not to underestimate the importance of people buying a fast computer simply because it's fast, and not for any real reason. Nobody wants to spend $2k for something that's not the best around, so perception is a large part of the sale.
As for battery life, just from personal experience I think Apple will do well there. My old iBook still gets better battery life than my ThinkPad PC notebook which is brand new -- and the PC notebook runs at less than 50% of its normal processor speed when it's not on AC power. Apple's "average" battery life of 3-4 hours would be at the higher end of what I've been told is normal from many PC users, and confirmed from my own experience (I get roughly 90min or less of 'real world' usage out of mine).
I do agree with your general analysis though, as someone who already has an existing Mac laptop. I'm not sure that Apple has created any gigantic reasons to upgrade to the MacBook right now, for anyone who's system is currently meeting their immediate needs. Which is good, considering that they've included some definite 'early adopter' technology in this system; this is the first machine in a new series, I don't think it's intended for everybody.
Sure somebody could, but what damages would they claim?
"WoW is going to run too fast on this new iBook -- it'll just be too good and I'll lose my job from playing it too much! I was promised a slower computer and I want it!"
from http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html Pretty slick.
Apparently, it's been used on countertop deep fryers for a while now (after some really horrible incidents where people pulled or tripped over cords and got hot oil spilled on them).
No, that's not a problem at all.
Your car dealer or your grocery store would both be within their rights to do those kind of promotions. Bundling, by itself, isn't illegal.
Look at cable TV and cable internet -- cable internet alone (if you can get it) might cost $80 a month, but buy it along with digital cable television, and it's only $35 a month!
You have every right to complain, but nobody is going to take you seriously. There's nothing wrong with that promotion (provided they're not abusing a monopoly power or violating the antitrust laws in some other way). Where the problems start is if they advertised "Cable Internet only $35/mo.!" without saying anything about the bundle, and then you walked down to your cable office, and asked to get service, and they said "oh, well to get that price, you have to buy x, y, and z, too." That's false advertising, and to avoid this the ads usually have an asterisk somewhere and a small print that explains the "promotional pricing." Thus a smart consumer (one who reads the ad) can figure out what they're getting into. Personally I think those kinds of "asterisk offers" are still mildly deceptive, but they're legal.
Best Buy's problem was that the advertising flyers didn't say anything about only being able to get xBoxes in bundles, they advertised (presumably) both the bundled and un-bundled price. But some store managers decided to only sell them in bundles, and disregard the un-bundled advertised price. That's where they cross the line into false advertising.
The bundling itself isn't a problem, it's how it was advertised.
Erm, no.
The advertising was printed up by corporate, which indicated what should have been happening in the stores. I've worked retail -- you don't get much say at the store level into what kind of promotions you're going to sell or not; what gets printed in the flyer is what happens. If the flyer says "Widget x now $150!" you'd best have Widget X on the shelves for $150, or you're going to have problems.
What Best Buy is claiming (and based on my own retail experience, seems quite believable) is that some managers decided to basically disregard the published advertisements that they were supposed to be honoring, and instead sell the units they had only in bundes, in order to maximize their add-on dollars. And in order to do this, they put up false notices of a "correction" to the advertising flyers.
This is false advertising, this is illegal. It looks bad for Best Buy as a company, and probably opens them up to liability if someone can show damages as a result.
From Best Buy's perspective, the problem wasn't in the printing of the flyers -- it wasn't like they just misprinted, or forgot to put the bundles in there or something -- it was with the managers who were effectively insubordinate, and didn't follow the published promotions.
Now, with that said, there are some obvious 'corporate culture' problems here also. Like, why were the store managers being put under so much pressure to generate add-on dollars, that they chose to do something like this? That's the real question, and I can only hope that after Best Buy makes it's first pass through (the 'ritual bloodletting' stage of PR-disaster management), that they'll put some thought into how to fix their system, because it's clearly not working.
I think you are substantially underappreciating the instinctive ability of "inbred deliverance-manchild-like retard fucks" to find ways to humiliate others in the most effective ways possible.
They didn't need to be told, people like that are more than capable of figuring things out for themselves.
Or did you never get bullied in elementary school? The average schoolyard bully might be dumber than a bag of hammers, but they always have an eerie propensity for figuring out exactly how to humiliate others. It's the same thing, writ large.
Huh?
I think you're wrong in your example. If I come into the store for product x, and when I get in there find out that it either never existed, or they had an unreasonably low number of them to begin with, and they attempt to upsell me to product y, that's a bait-and-switch. The key though -- and what makes a fraudster different from a "good salesperson" -- is that the fraudster intends to do this from the beginning.
Plus, a product standing alone, and a product that can only be sold as part of a bundle, might as well be two totally separate products. And it becomes all the more obvious that a scam is afoot when the latter (the bundle) is the same product, just padded with a lot of high-margin addons that they won't remove and let you buy/not-buy separately (or return).
We have the same thing in the U.S., here it just falls under the large umbrella of "false advertising," which varies state by state but usually allows a person to sue for damages. However it's sometimes rather tough to prove damages and I have a feeling in this instance that the company can probably protect themselves (as they're doing) by firing all the people involved and swearing they won't do it again.
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But if you did run into blatant false advertising, the way to go would be to contact your state's Consumer Protection office, if it has one, or the Attorney General (who can file suit against the company on behalf of the state).
Here's an overview of Consumer Protection laws in one U.S. state (New York):
http://www.consumer.state.ny.us/clahm/clahm-false
I think you're incorrect. IBM does a lot of Linux stuff, it's just not the kind of things that are often appreciated by the linux-on-the-desktop boosters. A lot of it is either database or virtualization related, a lot of Solaris/other-UNIX to Linux migration, or backend and mainframe stuff. It's not glamorous, but it's arguably a lot more important than Google Earth, or any other desktop app.
They have what I'm sure must be billions of dollars invested in Linux, as a business server platform. That's a vested interest in seeing it succeed in the world if I've ever heard of one, and a lot more than Google has in Linux (except as a platform for their own stuff).
I'm not crapping on Google -- hey, I'd like to see a native version of Google Earth as much as the next person -- but let's not bad mouth the big blue goose that's laying the fat golden R&D eggs, either.
I'm not sure what the story is on this watermarking system, and how robust it is, but there are definitely systems that are designed to survive analog conversion and recompression.
There is one old scheme I've heard about in particular which uses a very selective notch filter (or several) on an audible frequency(s) -- they claim that most people can't hear the difference, but even on an recompressed version down the line, you can look at the audio and tell if it's been watermarked. I think this scheme, I can't remember where it was being used, was not a "watermark" per se, but was really a 'Copy/No-Copy' flag, sort of like an audio version of Macrovision, that they wanted to embed in the analog audio. I read about it in an audiophile publication and apparently it was quite disgusting to listen to if you had good hearing and were familiar with the recording.
Anyway, my point is just that there are systems which are robust enough to survive analog conversion and recompression, they just tend to begin to alter the audio. Depending on how paranoid a content producer is, I'm not sure it's out of the realm of possibility that they would choose to implement a scheme like that. Although, as other people pointed out, if the song is being broadcast on the radio, then you're going to expect a certain amount of low-quality bootlegs to turn up, since people can just record it from the received FM broadcast. For whatever reason, the RIAA has never seemed to be overly concerned with this, even though FM quality seems to be more than acceptable for a lot of people, and I have no doubt they'd download it off of P2P if it was the only version available.
You can fairly easily (well, "fairly easily" for some is another man's frustration) configure KDE to look as un-Windowsish as you want. E.g., it will do a context-sensitive screen-top menubar similar to MacOS's, and you can move the KDE menu of applications anyplace you want, or get rid of it completely. (I keep it in the upper left hand corner of the screen, personally.) There are some people who have gone so far as to basically duplicate the MacOS "Aqua" look within KDE: like this.
.... somewhat lacking. Or at least I couldn't find the answers to questions very easily -- it took me more than a week to figure out how to move the menus around in the screen-top menubar when they got stuck on the right hand side. (They sometimes jump over there for no good reason whatsoever when you add another applet.)
My problem with KDE is that the documentation is
1, 4, 5, and 6, while probably generally true, aren't universally true. There are states that have intentional exceptions to them, for one reason or another. E.g., in some states you can get a driver's license without a USG issued ID; this is how illegal residents get them.
Likewise, they can also enroll in school with nothing but proof of residence in a particular area, for which a piece of mail to a particular address can be used, and even in the absence of that the school district is still required to educate them.
I've been to banks in areas that had substantial illegal resident populations, and they had systems for allowing people without ID to open bank accounts (although I believe this is no longer allowed), using a fingerprint reader. It proves that you're the same person, but not necessarily identity, since I doubt it's linked against an external database.
2, 3, 7 and 8, in my experience are the only ones that I would want to say are true almost everywhere.
The intended use of watermarking, at least as I see it, is less for mass-released files than for prerelease or limited-release uses.
E.g., radio stations get copies of songs weeks before the CDs actually hit stores -- and suspiciously, the songs tend to show up on P2P networks soon after they go out to radio stations. What the music producers would really like to be able to do is trace the leaked files back to whoever put them on the internet, and then get medeival on them for breach of contract.
You can imagine similar uses for prerelease screenings of movies that go out to critics, film review boards, etc. It's less about preventing piracy than it is about finding the snitch afterwards so they can be made an example of. Really, the piracy deterrent is not technological (the watermark), but social (whatever punishment gets inflicted). The watermark is just facilitating the latter.
I suppose in theory if you had a watermark that could be embedded into the file quickly and easily, you could use it on downloaded music (like the iTMS) to see if people were sharing files that they purchased, but really I think systems like this are designed to catch big fish, not Joe Preteen who's ripping files that he bought off of Napster and putting them onto Kazaa.
A lot of similar systems are used with images; actually many of the techniques used for watermarking are used for steganography (it's arguable that watermarking is really a form of steganography), like Least Significant Bit padding for one. There are also systems that have a robust enough watermark that they will survive printing and scanning, although they tend to begin to mess up the image slightly.
My problem with Linux on the desktop right now is lack of support. I don't mean necessarily lack of hardware support (although that's an issue also), but lack of technical support options for the non-enterprise user.
Let's say I advised someone in a small business environment to switch to Linux rather than upgrade to Vista (or whatever). I, or somebody like me, helps them get everything all set up, all networked and running OpenOffice and whatever else they need. Everything is fine. And then, I go home.
What do they do when something stops working? Maybe something really simple -- "hey, I just deleted the menu bar in KDE, how do I get it back?" -- or something more complex. If they don't have an in-house IT person, I'm stuck with the rather unappealing decision of leaving them high and dry, or becoming their tech support person.
Of course, they have lots of options: search Google, read support forums, post question on forum, chat on IRC, post bug report, etc. But they don't have any "phone number of last resort," like they would have on a commercial OS. With Microsoft and Apple, there are pay-per-incident numbers that you can call to get support right now. (With Apple, there's the Genius Bar at the Store, too.) Sun offers support contracts for Solaris 10 workstations, hardware and software, for about $40 a month. The point is that there's somebody that a user can call who (theoretically) will have the answer to their question.
With Linux, unless you're working with a vendor or consulting firm and get a "total solution" that involves a support contract, there isn't an equivalent to that. And I think that's a big turnoff to even moderately tech-savvy business owners who would otherwise jump at the opportunity to ditch Windows.
If anyone knows of a support provider that does pay-per-incident for Linux, or even does inexpensive single-user support contracts, I'd be interested. But I don't know of any, since LinuxCare went under; I've been thinking of posting an Ask Slashdot question about this actually (see my Journal for draft).
My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?
IMO, no, there's not. Any competent manager (insert jokes about how rare that is here) will consider the TCO within the context of their own business before deploying any sort of IT solution, or else they're probably not worth their paycheck.
That said, just because they're "just propaganda" doesn't mean they're not worth doing and perhaps even necessary, if you're really interested in boosting Linux in the corporate environment. A product's reputation has to be constantly defended, if these sorts of studies weren't published, then it might become "common and accepted wisdom" that Linux had a high TCO, and it would get pushed out of consideration by PHBs.
That's assuming they're willing to distribute source drivers.
That is often not the case. Niche hardware manufacturers will often target one particular Linux distro, on one particular architecture (usually x86), and produce binary drivers. If you don't want to use that distro, you're quite possibly SOL.
There are many cases where recompiling just ain't an option.