Samba 3 does work with whatever Sun is calling their directory these days (I get confused;) ). Ive got it running myself actually, as a PDC. Granted, the directory is on the same box as the samba software, which is admittedly different than what you have (for one Im not even using Linux in this case) - but it works.
On the other hand I will tell you that its just easier to get it working with OpenLDAP because thats what they test with. Using the Sun directory on Solaris/SPARC is quite a bit harder to set up than OpenLDAP on Linux x86.
Id be happy to help with specific questions or errors if I can, but the point of this post is pretty much to let the slashdot world know that *yes*, it does work with other directories (specifically Sun - since someone already mentioned the IBM variant). Im not the only one who has it working, even if it was a pain to get it there.
Now if Sun would just drop their PC interoperability product and just move to Samba (do what Apple has done - integrate it - dont make your users do it) I'd be a lot happier. I can set up an Apple or Linux-OpenLDAP Samba PDC much faster than a Solaris-iPlanet one.
I remember that backward compatibility wasnt listed as a huge feature, but I don't remember Apple saying that there "wouldn't" be. That article isnt exactly firm in its quotes - it sounds more like a company that doesn't know what it wants to do with its next OS. IIRC Apple always said that they didnt want to have as much compatibility as possible, and it would improve with the Gershwin (if Im remembering the follow on to Copland correctly) product.
NeXTStep actually took 2 years to be released in the form of OS X Server (early 1999). By that time Apple committed to improving backward compatibility with the final OS X that came out two years later.
At any rate, wasnt much of the Copland project (along with Quicktime and maybe some of the MAE stuff for Classic) later included as the Carbon environment? Seems like that turned out just fine.
As far as the value of NeXT goes - you may argue about the value of Jobs, or of NeXT - but I think going to a Unix base was the best idea they could have possibly come up with under the circumstances. It has perfectly placed them for the rise of OSS software. Copland probably would not have done that.
You were doing so well until the last couple of paragraphs.
Microsoft WAS willing to write for Copland - but it was cancelled because it was way over budget and behind schedule. The thing just wasnt going to make it out the door. So Apple bought NeXT to get their OS. That was more than six months before the famous MS investment. What Microsoft did NOT want to do (along with Adobe) was create "cocoa" versions of all of their apps - thus the modern OS X came from Rhapsody in about 1998 (shipped much later obviously).
As far as Microsoft support for Mac apps goes - besides IE I just dont see it. Office 2004 is a nice update to Office v. X IMHO.. doesnt look like a phase out to me. Nor the new versions of MSN Explorer and Messenger, or Windows Media Player for Mac, or the Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac, or the upcoming Virtual PC 7 for Mac. Yea, not going away quite yet...
Office is really the key app there - and dumping that app would be very bad for MS. Office is their cash cow, so why give Apple and all the Mac users of the world a great reason to push OpenOffice? Do you think Apple getting behind OOo (perhaps file format compatibility in their new office suite - making the only viable cross platform option the OASIS format) would be good for Microsoft? Probably not... 3-5 percent of the market perhaps, but definitely quite a bit more powerful than that in terms of effect and innovation.
The AC who says its a conspiracy at the UA obviously doesn't understand how a higher ed instition of education works:) (translation - its a madhouse where people do what they want)
With that said, the new student information system will only work with Windows/IE/Office for administrative purposes. C# has been added to the CS curriculum, but its not required. The College of Engineering, CS, and MIS are all a part of the Microsoft "Academic Alliance" (www.msdnacademicalliance.com) - where students in those departments get large amounts of "free" Microsoft software (nearly everything not Office/Project).
On the other hand, despite the heavy leaning of some IT personnel toward Wintel (and that really has a lot to do with the training infrastructure built around Microsoft, and the fact is what most people are most familiar with) - generally most people just follow the crowd. Quite simply, Microsoft is a very powerful company who has the marketing ability to get those products where they want them. Anyone who thinks Wintel really is cheaper (unequivocally anyway) probably has never done an in depth study. The best reason to use Windows is that it has the apps you want and nothing else will do - otherwise it quite often loses in a serious comparison.
Things really do appear to have peaked for Microsoft at the University however. I think diversity is recognized as a potential source of strength, and the mindshare of Linux is translating into people wanting to learn more about it. Once they consider Linux, they often end up considering OS X as well.
As far as not seeing a lot of Macs - they are all over the place if you look for them. A lot of that depends on the department you are looking in, however. The mindshare sure has improved significantly since the release of OS X, at least in the College of Engineering.
Are you sure it costs the school money? Our internet pipe is quite a bit more expensive than on campus bandwidth. Getting them to download the stuff from a local source instead of from Apple probably helps. Honestly neither the iTMS nor Napster2 seems like a great idea for a school (for the reasons discussed previously in this thread).
This sounds like what Microsoft did with Intuit and some other companies who's names escape me right now (I believe Novell in the 80s was another). They send all sorts of people over to "investigate a merger", when in reality what they are doing is learning how you do business and who your key people are.
Perhaps this is what Microsoft's intent was with SAP?
I might have confused your situation, and certainly Apple gave you a rough run around, but of course the Airport software tells you how its configured. If you didn't know that you were running a DHCP server on the Airport, all you had to do was fire up the Airport Utility included with OS X and look there. It tells you how its distributing IPs.
Ive always had very very good luck with troubleshooting OS X boxes, so Im not sure what you and the other people you spoke of ran into. Its not perfect, but there just aren't that big of a combination of hardware and software (OS wise) options to make things crazy for you. Compare that to half a million Linux distros on half a million different brands of hardware. You NEED awesome tools because there are just so many possible ways for things to go wrong.
At any rate, I used to be one of those people that couldn't understand why anyone would run Linux on the PPC. Then my brain started working and I realized how well the Linux installs I did do on PPC went, and how fast the OS worked (compared to OS X on the same older hardware). If you want a modern OS on older Mac hardware, than Linux is a great way to go. If you want an all open environment on new hardware, its also a great way to go. If you like using the 2 Linux programs that don't run on OS X (;)) then go that way again. Make sure to be careful that your hardware is supposed (like thats different than x86 how? Oh yea, the list to check is smaller).
Sit down, evaluate the pros and cons of what you want to do with your machine and then make the decision from there. Duh!
PS Id still rather dual boot Linux and Mac than Linux and Windows:)
Technically the ferraris you are referring to are probably mid engined:)
(yea, you meant engine behind the driver.. I know I know.. damn slashdot nitpickers)
In that case lets not forget the MR2 Spyder, the Boxster and Boxster S, and a bunch of cars over 100k that I can't recall right now. Oh yea.. and how could you forget THE THING? (since you mentioned a few VWs)
Actually it says right in the summary that having IOKit emulation working was the important thing right now.
So the question I have is, does this mean that now NetBSD on PPC can use Mac OS X drivers? The short article doesn't really point that out. Seems like a nice bonus before working on the Window Server.
Henrico and Maine don't seem to share the problems you foresee - thus Apple is "in the game" for this contract. They sold a solution that works, and now others are getting on board. Theft doesn't seem to be much of a problem, breakage isn't because iBooks are durable, viruses (you must be on Windows), and security (they dealt with the couple of minor gotchas they ran into at Henrico in their first year) is excellent.
Except Apple has far greater openness in their network environment. A Linux migration would be much smoother from the Mac than from Windows (well, in terms of technology it would be). Sure, you can buy from another vendor - but its always going to be Microsoft and Intel powered. Microsoft represents greater lock in than any other network environment. So if MS comes to your door and wants twice as much what do you do? Switch to Linux? You can do the same to Apple, and it will be a lot easier.
And yes, Dell has been getting pretty cheap lately - and Im not talking about price. When those crappy outdated Inspirons start breaking those school districts will be looking longingly upon places like Henrico http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/ and the State of Maine. No, if they buy Apple its because they *cough* did their homework.
I wouldn't quite say that education has been "lost", even if they did take a beating there. As long as they stay in the double digits, and continue to have successes like Henrico, Maine, and the dozen or so smaller copycat deployments that I have heard of - then Apple is still in the game when it comes to education.
When the school districts that are Mac districts are running THAT much better than their struggling Wintel counterparts then they still have something viable to sell.
If Microsoft dropped Office for Mac, I think Apple would jump on OpenOffice.org whole heartedly. Do you think Microsoft would want Apple contributing massive resources to the best competition they have to their most profitable product? So I wonder if Microsoft isn't the one who is lucky that Office exists on the Mac - if it didn't the alternatives would become that much stronger in the couple of years that the current version was still viable.
You are essentially correct about low volume leading to a bad software situation, leading to lower volume. Thats well known. However, Mac software selection and developer interest has jumped since OS X - and in certain new niches (science and technology is one that I see) the needle is beginning to move for Apple again. When your "niche marketing" encompasses almost all the population (consumers, scientists, enterprise), and it works, then you aren't in such a fragile position after all.
Wait until the G5 architecture filters down the product line, and the economy rebounds. I think you will be surprised how well Apple does. Im not saying they will have 20 percent marketshare overnight, but I think they aren't as bad off as you might believe. For them to have even maintained any sales with the bad economy and 350 dollar Dells (with monitor) - well, they must be doing something right going after niches.
The Newton was the first "modern" PDA to be sold in any quantity. Yea, the first ones had pretty poor handwriting recognition, but it rapidly improved.
Hypercard was a rad tool that could have been used to build something very much like todays web - but a few years earlier.
When Sun ships their product and its installed on tens to hundreds of thousands of corporate desktops (many of which it probably wouldn't be on without Sun's integration work) how is that not helping the market share of Open Source technologies? Sure, it might be a little "corrupted" by Sun's influence - but the potential application base is expanded nonetheless.
I can't really argue with any of your other points out of ignorance, but I don't think you can argue that the net effect of this product wont be more desktops running a Linux operating system.
I think what you are missing is that Sun (and to a lesser extent Apple) is giving something very important to the Open Source community - market share. Market Share Matters (TM) - ask Microsoft.
Actually, at the risk of sounding like a zealot I've heard of organizations with ratios of 1 IT guy supporting a couple thousand machines without difficulty. Crazy? Nope - Mac OS X (and OS 9 before it even). I didn't believe it myself (and Im a Mac user), but people with large Mac installations (all three of them) seem to get by pretty well without a lot of support costs.
My memory is a bit hazy, but I think I talked to a few folks in K12 who made those types of claims (I was trying to do an informal TCO study of large Mac installations since you can't find a good recent one from something like Gartner), as well as a guy from Los Alamos IIRC. Perhaps we just got used to the support intensive Windows model.
OK, Im being a little vague, but its 3am and my buzz is wearing off:)
Indeed it does run Active X. The company that sells the initial system hasn't any plans to change, nor do they see anything wrong with this.
So yes, Microsoft definitely knows how to throw around influence at school.
Want to switch to Linux for your administrative systems? Good luck - you better have a copy of Windows somewhere to interface with this system.
Best bet is that the system won't work properly upon full deployment (its in its early stages right now). Thats probably pretty accurate - too bad they are blowing millions on its development.
Guess what? We aren't the only ones using this stuff. http://www.jhu.edu/isis/what_will_isis_do.htm - same product.
Here is the product: http://sct.com/Education/Products/Matrix/index.htm l. My favorite line? "Built on proven Microsoft(R) technologies, SCT Matrix is ready to leverage the power of Microsoft.NET and XML Web Services". Bye bye choice, hello platform lock in.
I probably should shut up, I don't need to lose my job:)
Re:that as it may be on a purchasing level...
on
Big Company on Campus
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Actually the University of Arizona runs DNS on VMS. Definitely a large variety of server platforms.
My only gripe at that level is the new MS only MS based student information system. If you want to fully interact with it, you need to be running Windows/IE/Office. No lie! cosmos.arizona.edu.
The Newton was first released a year (1993) before e pass got its patent - so no lawsuit there. The Palm was simply a smaller, less powerful version of a Newton.
Case closed.
Remember, this just means that the judge says to look at it - it doesn't mean they won anything. If size doesn't matter, maybe Apple can sue epass:)
The user interface isn't acceptable to good levels as you put it. Sure they don't need to rip it out at this point and confuse everything, but little improvements are definitely nice. Too bad they muck it all up by going fisher price color crazy.
They are making the desktop look fancier so they don't LOSE share of the market. How do you gain market share at 95+ percent of the desktop market? Not very easily, its much easier to lose it from a numbers point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
Samba 3 does work with whatever Sun is calling their directory these days (I get confused ;) ). Ive got it running myself actually, as a PDC. Granted, the directory is on the same box as the samba software, which is admittedly different than what you have (for one Im not even using Linux in this case) - but it works.
On the other hand I will tell you that its just easier to get it working with OpenLDAP because thats what they test with. Using the Sun directory on Solaris/SPARC is quite a bit harder to set up than OpenLDAP on Linux x86.
Id be happy to help with specific questions or errors if I can, but the point of this post is pretty much to let the slashdot world know that *yes*, it does work with other directories (specifically Sun - since someone already mentioned the IBM variant). Im not the only one who has it working, even if it was a pain to get it there.
Now if Sun would just drop their PC interoperability product and just move to Samba (do what Apple has done - integrate it - dont make your users do it) I'd be a lot happier. I can set up an Apple or Linux-OpenLDAP Samba PDC much faster than a Solaris-iPlanet one.
AAC is essentially MP4, so Creative would be behind Apple by about 3 years in this regard.
From http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/ - Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is at the core of the MPEG-4, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 specifications
I remember that backward compatibility wasnt listed as a huge feature, but I don't remember Apple saying that there "wouldn't" be. That article isnt exactly firm in its quotes - it sounds more like a company that doesn't know what it wants to do with its next OS. IIRC Apple always said that they didnt want to have as much compatibility as possible, and it would improve with the Gershwin (if Im remembering the follow on to Copland correctly) product.
NeXTStep actually took 2 years to be released in the form of OS X Server (early 1999). By that time Apple committed to improving backward compatibility with the final OS X that came out two years later.
At any rate, wasnt much of the Copland project (along with Quicktime and maybe some of the MAE stuff for Classic) later included as the Carbon environment? Seems like that turned out just fine.
As far as the value of NeXT goes - you may argue about the value of Jobs, or of NeXT - but I think going to a Unix base was the best idea they could have possibly come up with under the circumstances. It has perfectly placed them for the rise of OSS software. Copland probably would not have done that.
You were doing so well until the last couple of paragraphs.
.. doesnt look like a phase out to me. Nor the new versions of MSN Explorer and Messenger, or Windows Media Player for Mac, or the Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac, or the upcoming Virtual PC 7 for Mac. Yea, not going away quite yet ...
... 3-5 percent of the market perhaps, but definitely quite a bit more powerful than that in terms of effect and innovation.
Microsoft WAS willing to write for Copland - but it was cancelled because it was way over budget and behind schedule. The thing just wasnt going to make it out the door. So Apple bought NeXT to get their OS. That was more than six months before the famous MS investment. What Microsoft did NOT want to do (along with Adobe) was create "cocoa" versions of all of their apps - thus the modern OS X came from Rhapsody in about 1998 (shipped much later obviously).
As far as Microsoft support for Mac apps goes - besides IE I just dont see it. Office 2004 is a nice update to Office v. X IMHO
Office is really the key app there - and dumping that app would be very bad for MS. Office is their cash cow, so why give Apple and all the Mac users of the world a great reason to push OpenOffice? Do you think Apple getting behind OOo (perhaps file format compatibility in their new office suite - making the only viable cross platform option the OASIS format) would be good for Microsoft? Probably not
The AC who says its a conspiracy at the UA obviously doesn't understand how a higher ed instition of education works :) (translation - its a madhouse where people do what they want)
With that said, the new student information system will only work with Windows/IE/Office for administrative purposes. C# has been added to the CS curriculum, but its not required. The College of Engineering, CS, and MIS are all a part of the Microsoft "Academic Alliance" (www.msdnacademicalliance.com) - where students in those departments get large amounts of "free" Microsoft software (nearly everything not Office/Project).
On the other hand, despite the heavy leaning of some IT personnel toward Wintel (and that really has a lot to do with the training infrastructure built around Microsoft, and the fact is what most people are most familiar with) - generally most people just follow the crowd. Quite simply, Microsoft is a very powerful company who has the marketing ability to get those products where they want them. Anyone who thinks Wintel really is cheaper (unequivocally anyway) probably has never done an in depth study. The best reason to use Windows is that it has the apps you want and nothing else will do - otherwise it quite often loses in a serious comparison.
Things really do appear to have peaked for Microsoft at the University however. I think diversity is recognized as a potential source of strength, and the mindshare of Linux is translating into people wanting to learn more about it. Once they consider Linux, they often end up considering OS X as well.
As far as not seeing a lot of Macs - they are all over the place if you look for them. A lot of that depends on the department you are looking in, however. The mindshare sure has improved significantly since the release of OS X, at least in the College of Engineering.
Are you sure it costs the school money? Our internet pipe is quite a bit more expensive than on campus bandwidth. Getting them to download the stuff from a local source instead of from Apple probably helps. Honestly neither the iTMS nor Napster2 seems like a great idea for a school (for the reasons discussed previously in this thread).
This sounds like what Microsoft did with Intuit and some other companies who's names escape me right now (I believe Novell in the 80s was another). They send all sorts of people over to "investigate a merger", when in reality what they are doing is learning how you do business and who your key people are.
Perhaps this is what Microsoft's intent was with SAP?
I might have confused your situation, and certainly Apple gave you a rough run around, but of course the Airport software tells you how its configured. If you didn't know that you were running a DHCP server on the Airport, all you had to do was fire up the Airport Utility included with OS X and look there. It tells you how its distributing IPs.
:)
Ive always had very very good luck with troubleshooting OS X boxes, so Im not sure what you and the other people you spoke of ran into. Its not perfect, but there just aren't that big of a combination of hardware and software (OS wise) options to make things crazy for you. Compare that to half a million Linux distros on half a million different brands of hardware. You NEED awesome tools because there are just so many possible ways for things to go wrong.
At any rate, I used to be one of those people that couldn't understand why anyone would run Linux on the PPC. Then my brain started working and I realized how well the Linux installs I did do on PPC went, and how fast the OS worked (compared to OS X on the same older hardware). If you want a modern OS on older Mac hardware, than Linux is a great way to go. If you want an all open environment on new hardware, its also a great way to go. If you like using the 2 Linux programs that don't run on OS X (;)) then go that way again. Make sure to be careful that your hardware is supposed (like thats different than x86 how? Oh yea, the list to check is smaller).
Sit down, evaluate the pros and cons of what you want to do with your machine and then make the decision from there. Duh!
PS Id still rather dual boot Linux and Mac than Linux and Windows
Technically the ferraris you are referring to are probably mid engined :)
.. I know I know .. damn slashdot nitpickers)
.. and how could you forget THE THING? (since you mentioned a few VWs)
(yea, you meant engine behind the driver
In that case lets not forget the MR2 Spyder, the Boxster and Boxster S, and a bunch of cars over 100k that I can't recall right now. Oh yea
avi or asf? Huh? And quicktime is too proprietary?
..
How about an mpeg? 4 even
Actually it says right in the summary that having IOKit emulation working was the important thing right now.
So the question I have is, does this mean that now NetBSD on PPC can use Mac OS X drivers? The short article doesn't really point that out. Seems like a nice bonus before working on the Window Server.
Henrico and Maine don't seem to share the problems you foresee - thus Apple is "in the game" for this contract. They sold a solution that works, and now others are getting on board. Theft doesn't seem to be much of a problem, breakage isn't because iBooks are durable, viruses (you must be on Windows), and security (they dealt with the couple of minor gotchas they ran into at Henrico in their first year) is excellent.
Or maybe just send an email to the prof telling him to be a little more interesting?
Except Apple has far greater openness in their network environment. A Linux migration would be much smoother from the Mac than from Windows (well, in terms of technology it would be). Sure, you can buy from another vendor - but its always going to be Microsoft and Intel powered. Microsoft represents greater lock in than any other network environment. So if MS comes to your door and wants twice as much what do you do? Switch to Linux? You can do the same to Apple, and it will be a lot easier.
And yes, Dell has been getting pretty cheap lately - and Im not talking about price. When those crappy outdated Inspirons start breaking those school districts will be looking longingly upon places like Henrico http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/ and the State of Maine. No, if they buy Apple its because they *cough* did their homework.
I wouldn't quite say that education has been "lost", even if they did take a beating there. As long as they stay in the double digits, and continue to have successes like Henrico, Maine, and the dozen or so smaller copycat deployments that I have heard of - then Apple is still in the game when it comes to education.
When the school districts that are Mac districts are running THAT much better than their struggling Wintel counterparts then they still have something viable to sell.
If Microsoft dropped Office for Mac, I think Apple would jump on OpenOffice.org whole heartedly. Do you think Microsoft would want Apple contributing massive resources to the best competition they have to their most profitable product? So I wonder if Microsoft isn't the one who is lucky that Office exists on the Mac - if it didn't the alternatives would become that much stronger in the couple of years that the current version was still viable.
You are essentially correct about low volume leading to a bad software situation, leading to lower volume. Thats well known. However, Mac software selection and developer interest has jumped since OS X - and in certain new niches (science and technology is one that I see) the needle is beginning to move for Apple again. When your "niche marketing" encompasses almost all the population (consumers, scientists, enterprise), and it works, then you aren't in such a fragile position after all.
Wait until the G5 architecture filters down the product line, and the economy rebounds. I think you will be surprised how well Apple does. Im not saying they will have 20 percent marketshare overnight, but I think they aren't as bad off as you might believe. For them to have even maintained any sales with the bad economy and 350 dollar Dells (with monitor) - well, they must be doing something right going after niches.
You serious?
The Newton was the first "modern" PDA to be sold in any quantity. Yea, the first ones had pretty poor handwriting recognition, but it rapidly improved.
Hypercard was a rad tool that could have been used to build something very much like todays web - but a few years earlier.
When Sun ships their product and its installed on tens to hundreds of thousands of corporate desktops (many of which it probably wouldn't be on without Sun's integration work) how is that not helping the market share of Open Source technologies? Sure, it might be a little "corrupted" by Sun's influence - but the potential application base is expanded nonetheless.
I can't really argue with any of your other points out of ignorance, but I don't think you can argue that the net effect of this product wont be more desktops running a Linux operating system.
I think what you are missing is that Sun (and to a lesser extent Apple) is giving something very important to the Open Source community - market share. Market Share Matters (TM) - ask Microsoft.
Actually, at the risk of sounding like a zealot I've heard of organizations with ratios of 1 IT guy supporting a couple thousand machines without difficulty. Crazy? Nope - Mac OS X (and OS 9 before it even). I didn't believe it myself (and Im a Mac user), but people with large Mac installations (all three of them) seem to get by pretty well without a lot of support costs.
:)
My memory is a bit hazy, but I think I talked to a few folks in K12 who made those types of claims (I was trying to do an informal TCO study of large Mac installations since you can't find a good recent one from something like Gartner), as well as a guy from Los Alamos IIRC. Perhaps we just got used to the support intensive Windows model.
OK, Im being a little vague, but its 3am and my buzz is wearing off
You got a link for dual Opterons for 1500 bucks with all the goodies in the G5? If yes, Id love to see it.
:) )
(seriously - I can take out a loan
Indeed it does run Active X. The company that sells the initial system hasn't any plans to change, nor do they see anything wrong with this.
m l. My favorite line? "Built on proven Microsoft(R) technologies, SCT Matrix is ready to leverage the power of Microsoft .NET and XML Web Services". Bye bye choice, hello platform lock in.
:)
So yes, Microsoft definitely knows how to throw around influence at school.
Want to switch to Linux for your administrative systems? Good luck - you better have a copy of Windows somewhere to interface with this system.
Best bet is that the system won't work properly upon full deployment (its in its early stages right now). Thats probably pretty accurate - too bad they are blowing millions on its development.
Guess what? We aren't the only ones using this stuff. http://www.jhu.edu/isis/what_will_isis_do.htm - same product.
Here is the product: http://sct.com/Education/Products/Matrix/index.ht
I probably should shut up, I don't need to lose my job
Actually the University of Arizona runs DNS on VMS. Definitely a large variety of server platforms.
My only gripe at that level is the new MS only MS based student information system. If you want to fully interact with it, you need to be running Windows/IE/Office. No lie! cosmos.arizona.edu.
The Newton was first released a year (1993) before e pass got its patent - so no lawsuit there. The Palm was simply a smaller, less powerful version of a Newton.
:)
Case closed.
Remember, this just means that the judge says to look at it - it doesn't mean they won anything. If size doesn't matter, maybe Apple can sue epass
The user interface isn't acceptable to good levels as you put it. Sure they don't need to rip it out at this point and confuse everything, but little improvements are definitely nice. Too bad they muck it all up by going fisher price color crazy.
They are making the desktop look fancier so they don't LOSE share of the market. How do you gain market share at 95+ percent of the desktop market? Not very easily, its much easier to lose it from a numbers point of view.
Or just get better friends :)