I want to believe what you say, but how come almost every web administrator you talk to shows reports that say less than 2% of their hits come from a Macintosh?
I have worked at three different companies, all in different forms of business and have found that the Macintosh has made up way less than 1% of all our clients. Heck, in my last job at a marketing company it was less than.5%. Linux made up a little more than 1%. So if your statistics are correct about install base then it would make sense that the number of Macintoshes would be significantly higher.
Heck, ask your ISP what percentage of Macintoshes they have as clients.
Please understand that I am an Apple fan, and hope they do well. I was going to buy a new Macintosh this year UNTIL the big switch to X86 came out. Then I, like many others decided to wait and see how this all plays out. Now while waiting I have worked with Fedora Core 4 (not bad), SuSE 9.3 (Good), and SuSE 10.x BETA. If/when any of those Distro's would work well on any of my laptops then I would not find it necessary to purchase an Apple. So it is kind of a race; will Apple get a good X86 product out before the open source guys get all the laptop issues resolved?
They went down to just above 2%. Now that they are abandoning the PPC and switching over to X86 what do you think their sales will be for the next few quarters?
I do agree with your main point. But I believe your math is a bit off.
Windows owns around a 95% marketshare and Macintosh has around a 1.9%, and Linux has around a 2%. Please note that I am talking client not server OS.
Now, I bet that way less than 10% of the Windows users will upgrade to Vista within the first month of release. So I do agree with your email in principle. The bad news for these users is that companies like Dell, HP and IBM will make Vista the default OS and that will drive Vista as the defacto standard within a couple of YEARS. Then after a year or so most large companies will standardize on it, and thus drive even more sales.
Now, having said that, it is my belief that Linux will continue to chew in to Microsoft's client market year after year and this will in a weird way also help Apple. It is my belief that when Linux hits around 10-15% marketshare the game will be over for Microsoft. At around 12% ALL companies will be forced to provide drivers and support and thus the core reasons for not using Linux starts to fade away. It is also my belief that it will take Linux far longer to reach 8% desktop market share than it will take it to go from 8 to 12%. Once the ball starts rolling it will be hard to stop it.
I say 10 to 12% because that is around the time management types start listening and reacting. A perfect example is Mozilla and Firefox. Quite a few companies around my area have started "fixing" their web applications because they didn't work with anything but IE. Well it took Mozilla to get enough traction for these companies to allocate resources to fix their applications. Trust me, NONE of those companies wanted to do this work. It took them time and time is money...
"We aren't choosing Blu-ray because we don't particularly like the idea of paying our lead competition royalty patents."
Wrong. Look at Microsoft's past as an example. My point stands. "If" the roles were reversed, you would see Microsoft telling EVERYONE why they needed HD-DVD. Much like they mentioned ALL the advantages like a HD in the XBOX vs the PS2. I do have to laugh now that they have done a 180, and won't include one in this new version.
Blue Ray in the PS3 will do two things. One is that it will cement it as the standard for HD-DVD, and the other is it will give most Americans who don't have "many" HD signals the ability to watch HD movies. So now, for a lot of Americans they could go to their local video store and rent a HD movie. This will just help fuel Blue Ray as "the" standard.
As far as games go, it will allow the devlopers to focus on either 1080i or 720p as their standard, without having to worry too much about data. The difference between 9GB and 54GB will be significant in this case.
My last question is very important. That is, specifically how few XBOX 360's need to be sold for it to be considered a failure. I ask the because Microsoft has constantly said what a giant sucess all their products where. They go out of their way to say that they have crushed all their estimates and are "way ahead" of where they are planed. They have said many times how successfull the XBOX is and yet by all accounts it has been a failure. So it begs the question of "what do they consider a failure"? 5 million units by the end of this year? 3 million?
What do they plan on shipping to the customers this year?
The silence you hear from them should tell you something.... but granted, by the end of the year, you will hear them say what a giant success it is.
A: it's going to be interesting to see how and if a high def format for movies plays out. when we designed the the initial xbox many people asked if sacd or dvd audio would be the successor to the cd format for music. as everyone knows the real successor was mp3 and digital distribution with things like napster ipod and msn music. while there is a lot of talk about this in the industry it will be interesting to see what the exact future of this is for movies. of course i think there will be a need for higher capacity optical media for storage applications. we prefer hd-dvd to blu-ray in terms of the flexibility it offers to different applications as well as the infrastructure costs to the market."
The real answer... Well we hate Blue-Ray because it is what Sony picked and we are going to do everything we can to piss all over it. We realize that by not providing HD-DVD by default it will give the Playstation 3 a significant advantage in game content and as such we need to tell all the Xbox faithfull that it really isn't that important.
The real question that should have been asked.
How few XBOX 360's need to be sold this year (shipped to customers not stores), before you consider it to be a failure?
That is a great question. The box versions that sell for under $100 don't make jack for Novell. All they do is get more users of their NOS. So, in one way this will get more and more users to at least try their product.
In my opinion Novell will make money by moving up the application stack a bit. They will focus on things like groupware, management, clustering etc. Things that can be done with Linux today but could be a lot better for the average admin and end user. When Linux gets say 25 to 40% of the server market, their products will really start to shine. People will want stuff that runs on both Linux AND Windows, and perhaps other platforms as well (BSD, AIX, Solaris, Apple etc), and Novell will do an excellent job of this. Microsoft will probably delay any products for Linux as long as possible, and thus this will give Novell a competitive advantage for a long time.
Now in my opinion they should look hard at open sourcing eDirectory, and build apps on top of it. Given that RedHat has release the Netscape directory server under GPL, the time is short for Novell to move on this.
Well this is an old thread, but I have to comment on it again.
Games today do not use "all" of a DVD, but they are not HD TV games. That is a HUGE increase in the amount of data needed. I point out to the fact that games have always taken every bit of media that has been provided in the past. First floppies, then CD's then DVD's then very large hard drives. HD-DVD will be no different. Microsoft knows they made a mistake, why else would they go to this extreme to fix it.
As I mentioned Sony is not stupid. They will dump these PS3's out and force Blue-Ray to become THE standard. Also you mention Sony would "shed" features like the PS2. Could you explain this? One year before the PS2 was launched they had the features frozen, and developers (like today) had development units. Not ONE feature was "shed". Now "if" you are referring to say 4 years before the PS2 was launched.... then I would say that no officeal announcement EVER came out of Sony. Sony announced the specs to the PS3. They only thing they left somewhat vague is "if" it will have any type of HD. It looks like it will not have one.
You mention that there are a good number of stores that are already sold out of XBOX-360's. I have the same question for you as Microsoft. How few XBOX-360's have to be sold for it to be considered a complete failure in 2005? Five million? Three Million? How many? Then after Chrismas of this year lets see how many have actually been sold (not shipped!). Then at the end of 2006 lets see how many PS3's have been sold VS XBOX-360s. If you are an XBOX fan, you better hope that they are NOT even by that time. If so then it will be a long tough road for Microsoft.
You mention that some stores have sold out of their second stock of 360's. This makes no sense at all. It isn't how retail works. Could you provide a store as an example.
What percentage of client marketshare would Linux need before Microsoft would port their applications to it? I ask this because, by my web logs, I currently have significantly more Linux clients than Macintosh clients.
Sony has development boxes in the hands of developers. It appears, from all accounts that they will hit the goal of a May 2006 release in the U.S.
Do I hear someone complaining about a company overhypeing a product? Could Microsoft actually be mad at another company because they are leveraging their existing base AND putting out demos that blow away the "soon" to be released products from Microsoft?
It sure is funny to see the kettle calling the pot black.
The fact is that Microsoft made a HUGE mistake for not including HD-DVD. They know it, and Sony is shoving it down their throat (as they should). Microsoft is now seeing the effect of this, and has to counter it somehow. I am sure it killed Gates to say what he did, but he had no choice. Now to Microosft's advantage they will get out a console before this Chrismass, and that "could" be huge. Time will tell.
I just have one question for Microsoft. What is the minimum number of XBOX 360 need to be sold for it to be considered a failure this year? Five million? Four? How many?
Now the same question can be asked of Sony.
My early prediction is that by the end of next year their will be 3 to 5 times as many PS3's as XBOX 360's.
As another poster said, they lost money this quarter only. The reasoning for their loss is understandable, and this division is by far the most profitable for Sony and has made insane amounts of money for them. Also, the PS2 has ALWAYS made a profit, from day one to today. There have only been two consoles that have sold at a loss in modern history. Sega had one and Microsoft has the other. But it is even difficult to tell with Microsoft because they hide their figures in a much larger department.
The cost to manufacture the PS3 will NOT exceed the cost the PS3 sells for given past history with Sony. Understand that Sony, unlike Microsoft will control a large portion of their manufacturing cost, and thus be able to leverage breakthroughs in manufacturing to their core profit. Much like they did in the past. Microsoft got killed by Intel and Nvidia refusing to lower their prices, and to be honest it wasn't in their best interest to do so. Granted Sony will not manufacture the Cell OR their graphics chip this time, but they will do most of the rest of the system. Heck knowing Sony, it wouldn't supprise me if they bought the technology from Nvidia and IBM, and then manufactured them in their own plant.
Lastly, you want to know what will "keep them afloat". It will be selling over priced controllers, memory sticks, hard drives, and games.
If you read the article it says that they are paying for all the R&D of the PS3, Cell, and the PSP. This year! The PS3 hasn't even sold one unit yet. So, given Sony's track record of a new console every 5 years or so, they are on track to do very well.
Microsoft can also run at a loss for a long time as noted, but I see their vision as something totally different. I see them trying to make future XBOXes more than game consoles, in that they will start to make them full computers. It only makes sense to me that they want to eventually crush out Dell, HP, IBM etc and make hardware. This would greatly reduce their software expense, in that they would only have to "fully" support their own hardware. The first step for them was to just get a console out there, the second was to make it radically different than a normal PC, the next will be to put a light version of Windows on it, then Office, then have it use emulation to run any "legacy" stuff, and the migration has begun. Now could Dell or someone produce the hardware for them? Sure, but knowing Microsoft I can see them wanting to own that business. So if this is Microsoft's long term goal, then I can understand them taking huge hits now.
As for Sony, they too might be going after that market, but at a much slower timeline. I could see them going more for the livingroom hub type of device. Currently their HUGE advantage over the XBOX360 is that they will use HD-DVD's and by bundling them with the PS3, they all but assure themselves of Blue-Ray becoming "THE" standard in DVD-HD. That alone would make taking a loss for a short time worth it. They don't want another BETAMAX on their hands, and the PS3 helps them avoid that. It is my guess that the PS3, and Sony in general will standardize on Linux as the OS of choice in the future and hope that all apps are web based, so that vendor lock in will not be an issue.
Time will tell, and as far as Nintendo, they will be fine. Their market will be kids under 12, and families with multiple kids who will only own one console. They just need to not loose focus on that market and have a somewhat competitive device.
Well, Java runs great on the mainframe, UNIX, and Windows. Your mainframe guys will probably love the fact that they don't have to bang out COBOL code any more, and they will be learning a "newer" language. Then "if" you migrate to any other platform, you will be able to use that code again.
The last time I looked, IBM took all the JAVA commands and compiled them on the mainframe, so the performance was excellent, granted they didn't have any of the AWT/Swing stuff working:-)
You won't be able to. The JVM's in the last 8+ years have improved a ton. In some benchmarks they beat C!
In our own test we found Java performed on par with C code for "our" apps. It did take more memory, but the performance was on par with C. We did use GCC, not the Intel compiler. The core reason we didn't use the Intel compiler was that we run on AMD.:-)
You do realize that a ton of code that Apple creates is, in fact written in Java. My point is valid, in that if they would have written more code in Java they would have less to "port" to a new platform.
Yeah, I can see Novell doing that. I could see the discussion now...
"Hey guys I like RedHat"
"I like Turbo Linux"
"Well I think they all suck and we should go Gentoo"
VP Guy...
Um guys you do know what company we bought don't you? You do like getting a paycheck right?
Tech guys..
Well SuSe is the best.
Yeah, I like SuSe...
SuSe it is:-)
Now as far as hardware goes does any new system from Dell, IBM, or HP not run SuSE? Or more specifically, if Novell wanted to buy any new systems in the last 3 years, how hard would it be to buy ones that ran SuSe.
So if this was a plan for a company, and they thought it "might" happen, they could start buying "certified" machines two to three years in advance. They could also do this with their applications. So for the last 3-5 years Novell could have made sure that any new software they chose, or developed would work with SuSe or at least Linux in general. Wow, this sounds like a good idea for ANY company that wants to switch platforms.:-)
This is the exact reason that almost everyone (Sun, Microsoft, IBM and others) are going to more of a VM enviornment. Either Sun's Java or Microsofts whatever...
"If" Intel could have pushed Java more, then getting people off of one of their platforms to another wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Granted this still doesn't solve the hardware driver issue, but at least the core apps would work, and thus people would be less afraid.
Your reply... in short... Yes, just not as bad what is 20,000 people killed with gas anyway...
lunatics (cough.. Iran cough..)
Iran just elected the guy who was one of the lead terrorist in the 70's hostage situation. He has denied this, but the pictures speak for themselves.
"Are they still killing people with tanks"
Your reply in short. yes they killed people with tanks, and they did it multiple times.
"Are they still promoting slave labor in their factories"
Your reply in short... yes.
"Are they still leaving their baby girls in the street to die"
Your reply again... yes they are. Given that I personally know of three families that have adopted Chinese girls, and have seen the state of these children when they reach the states, I can say that this is a MAJOR issue over there.
Now you mention how the U.S. image is. You give a CNN link. Heck give a BBC link, I am sure there are a lot. Give just about any mass media link. Given the socialist and secular views of most of the media it is not odd that so many countries don't like the U.S.A. This has been mentioned in another post, but the U.S.A. could pull all the troops from around the world back home. Remove all debt owed to it, and still give all the money and food it currently does AND these attacks would still occur, but the difference would be they would become far worse. Yes other countries would "like" the U.S.A. more, but most sensible people would agree that it would be far worse in the long run.
Now how many people are trying to escape in to all these other "great" countries?
"It's good to know that you think we should make general practice of nuking cities the size of Pittsburgh."
Well that is kind of what Saddam did. In a weird way it did work for him. He was able to keep "peace" in the area by just killing 30,000 people or so every decade or so. So in a backward kind of way I totally agree with you that the U.S.A. cannot just "nuke" other countries. However, like every country it must protect its people from attack even if that means making sure lunatics (cough.. Iran cough..) don't produce nukes.
You mention China.... Are they still killing people with tanks that want to have a peaceful demonstration? Are they still promoting slave labor in their factories? Are they still leaving their baby girls in the street to die just because they are girls? Is that the "World Leader" country you are talking about? I am not sure... Perhaps you mean another China...
Is seems obvious to me that Dell is getting something for not using AMD chips. A company that was so open about wanting to build a freaking Macintosh X86 computer would not EVER use an AMD chip?
So on one hand they will build a computer, that "may" be radically different than any other they have produced, for say 2% of the market, and of that market a large percentage would still only buy from Apple. But they won't use AMD for ANY systems??? I am willing to bet that AMD would make up far more than the fraction of a percentage of their sales...
Dude I use to work for Cendant, and I can tell you that the "Army of IBM" people you got was mostly a bunch of idiots. They use to be good, but most don't know jack anymore.
I won't get in to the fact that they (IBM) flat out stole $150 Million from a Cendant affiliate (RCI) by telling them that they could build a distibuted system to replace their mainframe. You could sit in the room with the IBMers and they would say "This thing is NEVER going to work, we can't replicate data to all these AS400's around the world in that time"; then they would get up in front of upper managment and tell them they were "right on track". Then when Cendant finally pulled the plug on the system they said that they would have finished it, but just were not given the chance. Now for the sad part... They didn't even have one freaking line of code written! None! $150 MILLION and nothing done. That sir is your "Army" of experts.
Believe it or not IBM was broght in on several other occasions, and with each one they generally proved themselves incompetent. Expensive and incompetent.
Another example was some serious performance issues on their mainframe. TCP/IP was not configured correctly, and no patches had been applied in years (The mainframe was moved from Indy to NJ and new support people that didn't patch/update stuff).... Well they called IBM again.. and again and again... multiple people came out and didn't do jack. FINALLY IBM sent in a RETIRED guy and he fixed the problem in less than 4 hours. Actually he worked on the problem for around an hour and had is solved. My guess is that guy is long gone now, and the knowlege he had is also gone.
Sorry, I jus finally saw your reply. To "port" Java code I generally just copy the JAR or WAR/EAR file over to the different platform.
Now to move C code from a Linux box to a Windows box? Yes the developer can take that code in a compiler on Windows, but I am willing to bet that the they didn't limit their stuff to all STANDARD ANSI C stuff. The reality of it is that moving code written in C to a different platform is generally not a trivial task.
I also did something similar to what you mentioned around 5 years ago. I didn't use any XML, but I did most of it with Java Applets and sending data over HTTP to a servlet. It worked great. It also worked in every major browser at that time. As you mentioned there was no full page refresh stuff the client had to endure.
Well seeing that this had a "J" in the title and it appears to have used enough Java in it to warrent that name, I would bet porting "may" be easier than you think. Easy being a relative term in all...
Now "if" it was totally written in Java, then I would say it would be very easy to port:-)
My gut feeling is that a significant portion of it was done in C, and thus it will take some time to get that part compiled and working again.
I agree but I was about to buy a Macintosh this year and there is no way I would do that now. Nor will I buy the first generation X86 Macintoshes. I went through the pain of 68k to PPC, and yes we had "fat" binaries then also. It sucked. The performance of the new machines sucked for quite a while. That was when we went from a 68k running at 66MHZ going to a 100Mhz PPC 601 chip. To be honest a 33Mhz 68k "seemed" faster than a 100Mhz PPC chip. I have no reason to believe this will be any different. You would think that would make me want to go out and get an existing machine... ahhh but there is an issue with that also....
The hardware you buy today probably won't be able to run any of their stuff in a "few" years. Apple will definately end of life the PPC code as soon as possible. Then you have to add the fact that you have people who will write cool stuff or have written cool stuff and will NOT produce fat binaries. So you may be screwed there also. Granted the Java stuff will work well, and I am sure in the long run this will probably be a great move, but in the short term I can't justify a Mac anymore.
Either way I wish Apple well and they almost had one of their old users back. Perhaps in a few years.... Or perhaps in that time Microsoft or Linux will address my issues with their OS. SuSE is close and getting better all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I want to believe what you say, but how come almost every web administrator you talk to shows reports that say less than 2% of their hits come from a Macintosh?
.5%. Linux made up a little more than 1%. So if your statistics are correct about install base then it would make sense that the number of Macintoshes would be significantly higher.
I have worked at three different companies, all in different forms of business and have found that the Macintosh has made up way less than 1% of all our clients. Heck, in my last job at a marketing company it was less than
Heck, ask your ISP what percentage of Macintoshes they have as clients.
Please understand that I am an Apple fan, and hope they do well. I was going to buy a new Macintosh this year UNTIL the big switch to X86 came out. Then I, like many others decided to wait and see how this all plays out. Now while waiting I have worked with Fedora Core 4 (not bad), SuSE 9.3 (Good), and SuSE 10.x BETA. If/when any of those Distro's would work well on any of my laptops then I would not find it necessary to purchase an Apple. So it is kind of a race; will Apple get a good X86 product out before the open source guys get all the laptop issues resolved?
You are correct about the marketshare. Howerver, I wasn't far off.
c os/story/0,10801,100548,00.html
m l
n 2003/tc20030618_7983_tc056.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/ma
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/000754.ht
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/ju
They went down to just above 2%. Now that they are abandoning the PPC and switching over to X86 what do you think their sales will be for the next few quarters?
I do agree with your main point. But I believe your math is a bit off.
Windows owns around a 95% marketshare and Macintosh has around a 1.9%, and Linux has around a 2%. Please note that I am talking client not server OS.
Now, I bet that way less than 10% of the Windows users will upgrade to Vista within the first month of release. So I do agree with your email in principle. The bad news for these users is that companies like Dell, HP and IBM will make Vista the default OS and that will drive Vista as the defacto standard within a couple of YEARS. Then after a year or so most large companies will standardize on it, and thus drive even more sales.
Now, having said that, it is my belief that Linux will continue to chew in to Microsoft's client market year after year and this will in a weird way also help Apple. It is my belief that when Linux hits around 10-15% marketshare the game will be over for Microsoft. At around 12% ALL companies will be forced to provide drivers and support and thus the core reasons for not using Linux starts to fade away. It is also my belief that it will take Linux far longer to reach 8% desktop market share than it will take it to go from 8 to 12%. Once the ball starts rolling it will be hard to stop it.
I say 10 to 12% because that is around the time management types start listening and reacting. A perfect example is Mozilla and Firefox. Quite a few companies around my area have started "fixing" their web applications because they didn't work with anything but IE. Well it took Mozilla to get enough traction for these companies to allocate resources to fix their applications. Trust me, NONE of those companies wanted to do this work. It took them time and time is money...
"We aren't choosing Blu-ray because we don't particularly like the idea of paying our lead competition royalty patents."
Wrong. Look at Microsoft's past as an example. My point stands. "If" the roles were reversed, you would see Microsoft telling EVERYONE why they needed HD-DVD. Much like they mentioned ALL the advantages like a HD in the XBOX vs the PS2. I do have to laugh now that they have done a 180, and won't include one in this new version.
Blue Ray in the PS3 will do two things. One is that it will cement it as the standard for HD-DVD, and the other is it will give most Americans who don't have "many" HD signals the ability to watch HD movies. So now, for a lot of Americans they could go to their local video store and rent a HD movie. This will just help fuel Blue Ray as "the" standard.
As far as games go, it will allow the devlopers to focus on either 1080i or 720p as their standard, without having to worry too much about data. The difference between 9GB and 54GB will be significant in this case.
My last question is very important. That is, specifically how few XBOX 360's need to be sold for it to be considered a failure. I ask the because Microsoft has constantly said what a giant sucess all their products where. They go out of their way to say that they have crushed all their estimates and are "way ahead" of where they are planed. They have said many times how successfull the XBOX is and yet by all accounts it has been a failure. So it begs the question of "what do they consider a failure"?
5 million units by the end of this year?
3 million?
What do they plan on shipping to the customers this year?
The silence you hear from them should tell you something.... but granted, by the end of the year, you will hear them say what a giant success it is.
"What is your opinion on HD-DVD?
A: it's going to be interesting to see how and if a high def format for movies plays out. when we designed the the initial xbox many people asked if sacd or dvd audio would be the successor to the cd format for music. as everyone knows the real successor was mp3 and digital distribution with things like napster ipod and msn music. while there is a lot of talk about this in the industry it will be interesting to see what the exact future of this is for movies. of course i think there will be a need for higher capacity optical media for storage applications. we prefer hd-dvd to blu-ray in terms of the flexibility it offers to different applications as well as the infrastructure costs to the market."
The real answer...
Well we hate Blue-Ray because it is what Sony picked and we are going to do everything we can to piss all over it. We realize that by not providing HD-DVD by default it will give the Playstation 3 a significant advantage in game content and as such we need to tell all the Xbox faithfull that it really isn't that important.
The real question that should have been asked.
How few XBOX 360's need to be sold this year (shipped to customers not stores), before you consider it to be a failure?
Where will Novell make money?
That is a great question. The box versions that sell for under $100 don't make jack for Novell. All they do is get more users of their NOS. So, in one way this will get more and more users to at least try their product.
In my opinion Novell will make money by moving up the application stack a bit. They will focus on things like groupware, management, clustering etc. Things that can be done with Linux today but could be a lot better for the average admin and end user. When Linux gets say 25 to 40% of the server market, their products will really start to shine. People will want stuff that runs on both Linux AND Windows, and perhaps other platforms as well (BSD, AIX, Solaris, Apple etc), and Novell will do an excellent job of this. Microsoft will probably delay any products for Linux as long as possible, and thus this will give Novell a competitive advantage for a long time.
Now in my opinion they should look hard at open sourcing eDirectory, and build apps on top of it. Given that RedHat has release the Netscape directory server under GPL, the time is short for Novell to move on this.
Well this is an old thread, but I have to comment on it again.
Games today do not use "all" of a DVD, but they are not HD TV games. That is a HUGE increase in the amount of data needed. I point out to the fact that games have always taken every bit of media that has been provided in the past. First floppies, then CD's then DVD's then very large hard drives. HD-DVD will be no different. Microsoft knows they made a mistake, why else would they go to this extreme to fix it.
As I mentioned Sony is not stupid. They will dump these PS3's out and force Blue-Ray to become THE standard. Also you mention Sony would "shed" features like the PS2. Could you explain this? One year before the PS2 was launched they had the features frozen, and developers (like today) had development units. Not ONE feature was "shed". Now "if" you are referring to say 4 years before the PS2 was launched.... then I would say that no officeal announcement EVER came out of Sony. Sony announced the specs to the PS3. They only thing they left somewhat vague is "if" it will have any type of HD. It looks like it will not have one.
You mention that there are a good number of stores that are already sold out of XBOX-360's. I have the same question for you as Microsoft. How few XBOX-360's have to be sold for it to be considered a complete failure in 2005? Five million? Three Million? How many? Then after Chrismas of this year lets see how many have actually been sold (not shipped!). Then at the end of 2006 lets see how many PS3's have been sold VS XBOX-360s. If you are an XBOX fan, you better hope that they are NOT even by that time. If so then it will be a long tough road for Microsoft.
You mention that some stores have sold out of their second stock of 360's. This makes no sense at all. It isn't how retail works. Could you provide a store as an example.
What percentage of client marketshare would Linux need before Microsoft would port their applications to it? I ask this because, by my web logs, I currently have significantly more Linux clients than Macintosh clients.
Sony has development boxes in the hands of developers. It appears, from all accounts that they will hit the goal of a May 2006 release in the U.S.
Do I hear someone complaining about a company overhypeing a product? Could Microsoft actually be mad at another company because they are leveraging their existing base AND putting out demos that blow away the "soon" to be released products from Microsoft?
It sure is funny to see the kettle calling the pot black.
The fact is that Microsoft made a HUGE mistake for not including HD-DVD. They know it, and Sony is shoving it down their throat (as they should). Microsoft is now seeing the effect of this, and has to counter it somehow. I am sure it killed Gates to say what he did, but he had no choice. Now to Microosft's advantage they will get out a console before this Chrismass, and that "could" be huge. Time will tell.
I just have one question for Microsoft. What is the minimum number of XBOX 360 need to be sold for it to be considered a failure this year? Five million? Four? How many?
Now the same question can be asked of Sony.
My early prediction is that by the end of next year their will be 3 to 5 times as many PS3's as XBOX 360's.
As another poster said, they lost money this quarter only. The reasoning for their loss is understandable, and this division is by far the most profitable for Sony and has made insane amounts of money for them. Also, the PS2 has ALWAYS made a profit, from day one to today. There have only been two consoles that have sold at a loss in modern history. Sega had one and Microsoft has the other. But it is even difficult to tell with Microsoft because they hide their figures in a much larger department.
The cost to manufacture the PS3 will NOT exceed the cost the PS3 sells for given past history with Sony. Understand that Sony, unlike Microsoft will control a large portion of their manufacturing cost, and thus be able to leverage breakthroughs in manufacturing to their core profit. Much like they did in the past. Microsoft got killed by Intel and Nvidia refusing to lower their prices, and to be honest it wasn't in their best interest to do so. Granted Sony will not manufacture the Cell OR their graphics chip this time, but they will do most of the rest of the system. Heck knowing Sony, it wouldn't supprise me if they bought the technology from Nvidia and IBM, and then manufactured them in their own plant.
Lastly, you want to know what will "keep them afloat". It will be selling over priced controllers, memory sticks, hard drives, and games.
Lets see now...
If you read the article it says that they are paying for all the R&D of the PS3, Cell, and the PSP. This year! The PS3 hasn't even sold one unit yet. So, given Sony's track record of a new console every 5 years or so, they are on track to do very well.
Microsoft can also run at a loss for a long time as noted, but I see their vision as something totally different. I see them trying to make future XBOXes more than game consoles, in that they will start to make them full computers. It only makes sense to me that they want to eventually crush out Dell, HP, IBM etc and make hardware. This would greatly reduce their software expense, in that they would only have to "fully" support their own hardware. The first step for them was to just get a console out there, the second was to make it radically different than a normal PC, the next will be to put a light version of Windows on it, then Office, then have it use emulation to run any "legacy" stuff, and the migration has begun. Now could Dell or someone produce the hardware for them? Sure, but knowing Microsoft I can see them wanting to own that business. So if this is Microsoft's long term goal, then I can understand them taking huge hits now.
As for Sony, they too might be going after that market, but at a much slower timeline. I could see them going more for the livingroom hub type of device. Currently their HUGE advantage over the XBOX360 is that they will use HD-DVD's and by bundling them with the PS3, they all but assure themselves of Blue-Ray becoming "THE" standard in DVD-HD. That alone would make taking a loss for a short time worth it. They don't want another BETAMAX on their hands, and the PS3 helps them avoid that.
It is my guess that the PS3, and Sony in general will standardize on Linux as the OS of choice in the future and hope that all apps are web based, so that vendor lock in will not be an issue.
Time will tell, and as far as Nintendo, they will be fine. Their market will be kids under 12, and families with multiple kids who will only own one console. They just need to not loose focus on that market and have a somewhat competitive device.
Well, Java runs great on the mainframe, UNIX, and Windows. Your mainframe guys will probably love the fact that they don't have to bang out COBOL code any more, and they will be learning a "newer" language. Then "if" you migrate to any other platform, you will be able to use that code again.
:-)
The last time I looked, IBM took all the JAVA commands and compiled them on the mainframe, so the performance was excellent, granted they didn't have any of the AWT/Swing stuff working
Wow, I just read that you replied...
:-)
85% slower than native code?
Care to back that up with any stats?
You won't be able to. The JVM's in the last 8+ years have improved a ton. In some benchmarks they beat C!
In our own test we found Java performed on par with C code for "our" apps. It did take more memory, but the performance was on par with C. We did use GCC, not the Intel compiler. The core reason we didn't use the Intel compiler was that we run on AMD.
You do realize that a ton of code that Apple creates is, in fact written in Java. My point is valid, in that if they would have written more code in Java they would have less to "port" to a new platform.
Yeah, I can see Novell doing that. I could see the discussion now...
:-)
:-)
"Hey guys I like RedHat"
"I like Turbo Linux"
"Well I think they all suck and we should go Gentoo"
VP Guy...
Um guys you do know what company we bought don't you? You do like getting a paycheck right?
Tech guys..
Well SuSe is the best.
Yeah, I like SuSe...
SuSe it is
Now as far as hardware goes does any new system from Dell, IBM, or HP not run SuSE? Or more specifically, if Novell wanted to buy any new systems in the last 3 years, how hard would it be to buy ones that ran SuSe.
So if this was a plan for a company, and they thought it "might" happen, they could start buying "certified" machines two to three years in advance. They could also do this with their applications. So for the last 3-5 years Novell could have made sure that any new software they chose, or developed would work with SuSe or at least Linux in general. Wow, this sounds like a good idea for ANY company that wants to switch platforms.
This is the exact reason that almost everyone (Sun, Microsoft, IBM and others) are going to more of a VM enviornment. Either Sun's Java or Microsofts whatever...
"If" Intel could have pushed Java more, then getting people off of one of their platforms to another wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Granted this still doesn't solve the hardware driver issue, but at least the core apps would work, and thus people would be less afraid.
Got me :-)
I will read the article next time. I just thought it was weird that it wasn't mentioned in the headline. Dell being the largest PC company.
"Well, that is kind of what Saddam did"
Your reply... in short... Yes, just not as bad what is 20,000 people killed with gas anyway...
lunatics (cough.. Iran cough..)
Iran just elected the guy who was one of the lead terrorist in the 70's hostage situation. He has denied this, but the pictures speak for themselves.
"Are they still killing people with tanks"
Your reply in short. yes they killed people with tanks, and they did it multiple times.
"Are they still promoting slave labor in their factories"
Your reply in short... yes.
"Are they still leaving their baby girls in the street to die"
Your reply again... yes they are. Given that I personally know of three families that have adopted Chinese girls, and have seen the state of these children when they reach the states, I can say that this is a MAJOR issue over there.
Now you mention how the U.S. image is. You give a CNN link. Heck give a BBC link, I am sure there are a lot. Give just about any mass media link. Given the socialist and secular views of most of the media it is not odd that so many countries don't like the U.S.A. This has been mentioned in another post, but the U.S.A. could pull all the troops from around the world back home. Remove all debt owed to it, and still give all the money and food it currently does AND these attacks would still occur, but the difference would be they would become far worse. Yes other countries would "like" the U.S.A. more, but most sensible people would agree that it would be far worse in the long run.
Now how many people are trying to escape in to all these other "great" countries?
"It's good to know that you think we should make general practice of nuking cities the size of Pittsburgh."
Well that is kind of what Saddam did. In a weird way it did work for him. He was able to keep "peace" in the area by just killing 30,000 people or so every decade or so. So in a backward kind of way I totally agree with you that the U.S.A. cannot just "nuke" other countries. However, like every country it must protect its people from attack even if that means making sure lunatics (cough.. Iran cough..) don't produce nukes.
You mention China.... Are they still killing people with tanks that want to have a peaceful demonstration? Are they still promoting slave labor in their factories? Are they still leaving their baby girls in the street to die just because they are girls? Is that the "World Leader" country you are talking about? I am not sure... Perhaps you mean another China...
Why did they not bother with Dell?
Is seems obvious to me that Dell is getting something for not using AMD chips. A company that was so open about wanting to build a freaking Macintosh X86 computer would not EVER use an AMD chip?
So on one hand they will build a computer, that "may" be radically different than any other they have produced, for say 2% of the market, and of that market a large percentage would still only buy from Apple. But they won't use AMD for ANY systems??? I am willing to bet that AMD would make up far more than the fraction of a percentage of their sales...
Dude I use to work for Cendant, and I can tell you that the "Army of IBM" people you got was mostly a bunch of idiots. They use to be good, but most don't know jack anymore.
I won't get in to the fact that they (IBM) flat out stole $150 Million from a Cendant affiliate (RCI) by telling them that they could build a distibuted system to replace their mainframe. You could sit in the room with the IBMers and they would say "This thing is NEVER going to work, we can't replicate data to all these AS400's around the world in that time"; then they would get up in front of upper managment and tell them they were "right on track". Then when Cendant finally pulled the plug on the system they said that they would have finished it, but just were not given the chance. Now for the sad part... They didn't even have one freaking line of code written! None! $150 MILLION and nothing done. That sir is your "Army" of experts.
Believe it or not IBM was broght in on several other occasions, and with each one they generally proved themselves incompetent. Expensive and incompetent.
Another example was some serious performance issues on their mainframe. TCP/IP was not configured correctly, and no patches had been applied in years (The mainframe was moved from Indy to NJ and new support people that didn't patch/update stuff).... Well they called IBM again.. and again and again... multiple people came out and didn't do jack. FINALLY IBM sent in a RETIRED guy and he fixed the problem in less than 4 hours. Actually he worked on the problem for around an hour and had is solved. My guess is that guy is long gone now, and the knowlege he had is also gone.
Sorry, I jus finally saw your reply. To "port" Java code I generally just copy the JAR or WAR/EAR file over to the different platform.
Now to move C code from a Linux box to a Windows box? Yes the developer can take that code in a compiler on Windows, but I am willing to bet that the they didn't limit their stuff to all STANDARD ANSI C stuff. The reality of it is that moving code written in C to a different platform is generally not a trivial task.
I also did something similar to what you mentioned around 5 years ago. I didn't use any XML, but I did most of it with Java Applets and sending data over HTTP to a servlet. It worked great. It also worked in every major browser at that time. As you mentioned there was no full page refresh stuff the client had to endure.
Well seeing that this had a "J" in the title and it appears to have used enough Java in it to warrent that name, I would bet porting "may" be easier than you think. Easy being a relative term in all...
:-)
Now "if" it was totally written in Java, then I would say it would be very easy to port
My gut feeling is that a significant portion of it was done in C, and thus it will take some time to get that part compiled and working again.
I agree but I was about to buy a Macintosh this year and there is no way I would do that now. Nor will I buy the first generation X86 Macintoshes. I went through the pain of 68k to PPC, and yes we had "fat" binaries then also. It sucked. The performance of the new machines sucked for quite a while. That was when we went from a 68k running at 66MHZ going to a 100Mhz PPC 601 chip. To be honest a 33Mhz 68k "seemed" faster than a 100Mhz PPC chip. I have no reason to believe this will be any different. You would think that would make me want to go out and get an existing machine... ahhh but there is an issue with that also....
The hardware you buy today probably won't be able to run any of their stuff in a "few" years. Apple will definately end of life the PPC code as soon as possible. Then you have to add the fact that you have people who will write cool stuff or have written cool stuff and will NOT produce fat binaries. So you may be screwed there also. Granted the Java stuff will work well, and I am sure in the long run this will probably be a great move, but in the short term I can't justify a Mac anymore.
Either way I wish Apple well and they almost had one of their old users back. Perhaps in a few years.... Or perhaps in that time Microsoft or Linux will address my issues with their OS. SuSE is close and getting better all the time.
SURE it was about people posting porn. :-)
Again, turn it around. Would you be saying this same thing if it was some conservative trade rag?