I love Macs, so this isn't disparagements or drawing Apple customers like a cult (perhaps corporate culture?). But Scientology had one of the most wacked out, eccentric, but strangle charismatic (to some people I suppose) founders. After his death, its not just thriving but even gets people like Will Smith hooked. It's headed by David Mascavige although few people heard of him. I would argue that this state of Scientology is due purely to it's organizational structure rather than any one man.
Having a good leader will be important. But the corporate culture will have to be in place. I think Jobs is very talented, but his talent was letting the good ideas and people already in Apple (or outside, like NeXT) rise while he steered them towards this greater vision. I think Jobs has a very clear vision in some ways (he said back in 90s interview Sculley destroyed everything he sought to achieve), and when he expects to be leaving, he should write it in a book what it is - so that it can inspire his company towards it.
I think though, in the end, having a strong leader with a vision at the helm is what Apple as a company needs. What that means, is that they have to avoid putting in business men/accountants who only have the imagination to see the bottom line at the end of the day. But a pure artist is often equally disastrous with less business pragmatism. For instance, Steve was inspired by a previous calligraphy class to put extra effort in fonts in Macintosh. Most pure business men wouldn't have bothered at the time. Reading his bio, he often obsesses about aesthetic appeal.
To nix the scientology thing from above, I could draw Apple as a design studio like Wiener Werkstatte or Bauhaus. Earlier last century, they made lots of distinctive but beautiful objects (Art Deco), going so far as to build entire houses and furnishing them. An integrated solution. On the downside, neither lasted long. It is the nature of such things, it seems. In another industry, perhaps Apple can be compared to Porsche and the father son team Ferdinand/Ferry porsche.... it survived but to me it's arguable that, while, the design spirit lives on, whether successive innovative spirit has since those two passed away.
Walmart makes it a policy to fight each and every lawsuit to discourage others from taking them on. Settling may be cheaper in the long term, but what if settlements bring out more leeches hungry for a little blood?
Anyway, I'm sick of hearing about patents over common sense shit. It's not the underlying technologies that patented, just the applications they now allow (often internet versions of common real life things). I don't like Oprah all that much, but I hope she crushes this little flea.
I had remotes come with PCs before (Medion). They usually suck because it doesn't work with linux and it's usually yet another startup progam in Windows. Also, since this doesn't come bundled with all PCs, it's guaranteed to fail at attracting game developers.
That's why PS3 own effort will be a failure. Unless it comes standard, few game developers are goingto bother programming for it to get the ball rolling.
Then they'll put in a politician's clause - like they always do. Legislators in the US made their political solicitations calls immune to the Can Spam act.
Even better, catch their spouses and children in the act. Much harder to make the family immune.
More likely, "MacHeads is another cheap 'find a subculture and mock it' film that will pander to Apple haters, and bore or irritate Apple fans. It will broaden the minds of neither, and pass unnoticed by everyone else."
Yeah. What I find are more anti-whatevers, than pro-whatevers. People obsessing over what other people use. Some of the causes might be legitimate (marketshare concerns or they end up doing tech support for friends/relatives) and some are petty (obsessing how other people spend their money).
It was pretty much the poke in the eye to unix users but the anti-foreword was written by Dennis Ritchie - but was just as scathing right back:) (This was when some users came from other systems, like Lisp Machines.) It's probably still relevant today, seeing as how OS with unix foundations are the only OS with marketshare outside Windows these days.
Freedom is the right to be left alone, and the obligation to leave others alone, unless there is voluntary association between all relevant parties.
Yes, yes. But the third part, even if voluntary and completely in the libertarian sense, is what brings government involvement to any degree. It's the entity that enforces contracts (a product of some voluntary associations) and also via copyright and patents which are abstract concepts in the Constition.
So, even by that definition, Stallman's concept is giving you more freedom by a) having less or no EULAs and b) less copyright concerns. I believe in this sense, the term "Freedom" is in context of being unencumbered of restrictive obligations of running code. I know when I install Ubuntu without seeing 100 Eulas pop up or asking me for my CD key plus various other nag screen I feel a little more unencumbered by BS. For the developer, it frees them from, well, developing the wheel over and over again. Seeing that all sides of the Open Source equation is a completely voluntary system, and not some communist dictatorship giving property to the masses, it works perfectly fine within the term freedom.
Freedom also allows you sell yourself into indentured servitude (perhaps called car/home/student loans today). However, if a spiritual philosophy came along, shunning pure materialism, converting people voluntarily to its way of thinking and they ended up happier: wouldn't it, too, fit into the freedom paradigm. Couldn't we judge one way of life in some ways ultimately freer than the other?
Anyway, fortunately for us and FTA, Stallman, as always, defined his freedom specifically:
1. To run the program as you wish. 2. To study the source code, and change it so the program does what you wish. 3. To redistribute exact copies when you wish. 4. To distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish.
I will grant the GNU license isn't free in itself, but one is free to take it (or not).
Sounds like a very good deal. One question: is the prepaid locked to O2 somehow? The only prepaids I'm used to are the cheap ones like tracfone, which are locked to the carrier for life (but they're $10 phones to begin with).
a)How do you get around activation at purchase time? b)Does Apple break this later on, especially when I need it?
I could buy a legally unlocked iPhone from Hong Kong, but it costs $700+. In the unlocked countries, Apple prices it through the roof, I suppose. Although there has been talk about a prepaid version here for some time...
All too often, we are brought up on the perspective that the "killer" idea is more important than the execution. It's like some type of get-rich-quick scheme for thinkers. This is one area where the patent system used to work, only granting patents on working models are specific implementations - nowadays it's the "killer idea" which some corp or troll patents, sits on it, and waits for someone else to do the work. Truly novel or killer ideas are uncommon - great execution is more important. I would say that Apple's iPods and iPhone are a testament to this. Not one super novel idea in itself, but a slew of good compromises and vision to see it through. Good execution.
I don't think society progresses far when people hoarde their ideas in the mistaken beliefs that it's all gold (rather than the 99.999% fool's gold that they are) or actually more novel than it really is and not collaborating with anyone. I would look to Paul Erdos as the ultimate example of intellectual collaboration.
The problem is that ideas that seem good are plenty. It's like blades of grass. The problem is getting yours to stick out, so that the corporation actually picks your and pours their resources into executing it. I would imagine it's a good feeling if something actually came out of it.
*Note, I'm talking ideas, not some specific design.
Other people create the articles, we create the original content that draw people to this site. People love having a soapbox where they think others will listen to their ideas. So I don't understand the tone of the summary.
OTOH, years ago, people working at Nintendo (USA) told me that when they recieved letters, they put them in the trash as soon as it became apparent it was an "idea" letter for a game. They didn't want the liability. How is google going to curb this aspect?
Yep. Even on my modern CD sound system with skip protection (cache), if I crank the volume up loud enough, the speakers will eventually vibrate the mechanism for so long as to cause the player to shudder and skip.
Another reason this won't work is that older games tend to be ported. Gamers want the newest out there in general. Also, Open Source just won't be able to keep up with the billions of dollars spent on this industry.
But we shouldn't have to. A lot of casual gaming is moving to flash. Linux can run flash. ALL the recent games I like are on flash (no, I have a Windows install too, it's not because it's the only game in town for me): for instance games like http://www.playauditorium.com/Play Auditorium and the http://rocksolidarcade.com/Rock Solid Arcade games in general.
In my experience, the easiest to convert were the casual computer users (99% browsing activity). It would seem to me, that the casual gamers, which the Wii tapped into completely, is a larger market and one easier to bring over. Flash already works! No work to be done!
Sticking money into this area, other than a common toolkit/API to run games would be folly. Trying to win hardcore gamers whose current platform gives them practically everything.
If Linux need to get popular as fast as possible, perfect Wine a lot. Have it run Direct X whatever out of the box as well as the top games and top windows apps. Before long, a self-feeding cycle will have started where requirements will start listing Windows XP, Vista, or Wine 1.x. Then companies too, eyeing the lower TCO, will start switching, and perhaps native apps start taking off.
It's been known for a long time vibrations are not good for discs (see notebooks). Even by early 90s music CDs had skip protection. If a disc skips, latency will of course momentarily increase. And with tolerances down even further, it's probably worse than back then.
In 10-15 years it won't matter anyway, almost everything will have SSD by then.
I understand your knocking Microsoft's for not providing a workable boot manager, but that stroke of arrogance in no way dooms Microsoft. But you have to keep in mind that this matters only to you and small minority of consumers. Most people don't dual boot. Most people don't require live install discs containing 64-bit OSen.
I did not think it would, but rather that it was a symptom of Microsoft's monolithic nature and lack of nimbleness in meeting the needs of small markets, which companies using Linux can and do exploit (witness all the small gadgets from phones to GPS running linux now as an example). MS is still but one company, and it seems it cannot or does not want to keep up with what a small minority of powerusers want. Notably, their business model makes them rigid where people want more flexibility. Well, eventually, those powerusers will transistion other people over for one reason or another.
BTW, while 64 bit was more of a personal gripe, it relates to their cockamaney and confusing product lines when they should have kept it down to at most 2 - workstation and server. They are going to have Windows 7 32 bit product line last I heard, and with lowend computers already at 2GB standard, I feel Microsoft isn't making a mistake by not going all 64bit. Imagine if they dragged out the 32 bit transistion out this long. It feels like a mistake.
In 1998, you barely had webmail for a few years and it was certainly not the gmail of today. Flash games were almost nonexistent, at least decent ones. And high speed internet at home just beginning. Most software purchases came from the nice local computer shop, in a standard size boxed. Good luck finding anything but Windows titles there.
10 years later, most software is downloaded in the meantime -- other than a few commercial holdouts. They are mostly games or tax software being purchased at Walmart because Comp USA is out of business. No more rows upon rows of software in a store, just a few racks of the best selling things.
Not everything is Windows-only anymore. Not all the commercial non-game sofware packages either (many are usually on the Mac as well with its resurgence). Many packages run on Wine on linux (although this isn't satisfactory yet, but many work). Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
What keeps a lot of peope on Windows is not anything about windows itself, but exclusivity (Steve Ballmer said it best: Developers, developers, developers!). What do you think happens when that exclusive foundation is gone? People become free to move about.
Firefox itself, being multiplatform, help convert a shitload of people to Linux since Windows Home versions (before Vista) are too painful to maintain for that purpose.
Hey, you forgot their accessories division (Microsoft keyboards and mice) which will keep them afloat for many years to come!
I think, if anything, the internet will be their downfall. They just don't understand it. In the mid-90s, they tried to control the internet by marrying internet explorer to their OS. Yes, it screwed up standards and forced the internet to bend to their will for a while (IE only websites). I suppose it was great to sell boxes that way by practically having an exclusive market on the entire WWW working for them, but IE made no money on its own.
Then in the late 90s, it shifted it's attention to the holy grail of an internet Portal. MSN. It's target was yahoo. To make it apparent how serious it took this and for how long, within the last year they were trying to take over Yahoo. To demostrate their lack of focus, with the market crash, despite having a ton of cash lying about, they are not willing to buy Yahoo now. Less than 6-9 months later. I guess flailing around in the dark, they found another strategy beyond the internet portal.
But the internet marches on. It will be their death one day. Linux adoption would not have been possible without the internet. But more than that, someone else mentioned about how they would explain to their grandmother why the windows card game disk doesn't work in her linux box. It won't matter. That market is dead. Games are slowly splitting into two parts: hardcore gamer games where they need max hardware, or flash games which work on any platform readily. The middle market has eroded. Grandma is more likely playing online than off a CD these days. And the high end market, MS itself has made less important, with its consoles that are guaranteed to play. There will be always a PC gamers market, but it becomes less important with every console generation.
Lastly, Microsoft is pricing itself out of the market. I can either be a pirate and take what I need or I can pay through the behind a price for boxed MS while OEMs pay but a fraction of it. That means, eventally, with WGA, that less and less people tinker with the OS. While Ubuntu and others play friendly at installs, MS just assumes it's king and has no partition tools upon install. Nor is it's install disc readily a livecd either, unlike many linux distros. It's also not handling 64 bit too well imo. My one Vista Business install, I decided that 32 bit was no longer enough. Do they give me a 64 bit for free or a small fee? No, OEM copies cannot be upgraded cheaply, they want $$$. Yet, when I bought the computer, 32/64 bit had no price difference. It's just a case of MS wanting to extract money where it can, and in this case probably will cost more than the actual ram I want to upgrade with. Other than ram, these are things that the linux community will gladly give me free.
There will never be a year of the linux desktop. As this stastic shows, it will just keep creeping up before we realize what happened. The cracks in the wall are already there. I would say a dam bursting event is when Quicken or Photoshop list on their software Windows XP, Vista or Wine 1.0 (or whatever version) compatibility. Then you know things will get ugly quick for MS.
While you,I,and the guys here at Slashdot know that one guys does not a company make,
I'm of two minds. Steve went on to make Pixar and NeXT. He's good at business and entertainment, clearly.
OTOH, when Apple bought NeXT, it basically was the bigger company paying the smaller company to lead it, with all NeXT executives, presumably groomed by Steve, to lead Apple.
I seen computer products Jobs had his direct input on. They were not pretty or good. He's not a designer, like Jonathon Ives (who has his own misses like the desklamp iMac a few years back). But once he has some distance, he knows what doesn't work, a critiquer. That's his strength. Probably why a lot of good products come out of Apple, he kills the bullshit short and tells people what they are doing is crap.
I imagine a NeXT executive or Ives could lead the company well, but Steve's shoes will be enormous. His legend will be even bigger once he's gone. Hopefully the drive won't be.
The only way I can see them not getting blasted all to hell in the market if Steve is really dying is to bring back the Woz to keep the mythos lovers happy while they have him "groom" a successor to the throne.
What the hell you want Woz as CEO? He's a nice guy, a great guy, actually. And that's exactly the problem.
To reply to the grandparent: color is not necessary. So much print is in black and white anyway. Besides, it will give apple space to sell you upgrades in the future when color does come online. Or, they can make it a double sided screen, with one side grayscale and one side lcd. Or somehow get the lcd and e-ink "merged" or stacked somehow so both can be used, I'm non familiar with the hardware enough if such a thing is possible.
It would be nice to take notes, and right now, only the iLiad allows this.
Forget the iliad then. I only wanted a DR1000S from iRex due to screen size for textbooks (to allow display of a typical 8.5x11 sheet sans margins), but I used the iliad. The wacom screen (?) or whatever it is based on, isn't that nice for notes. The refresh rate irked me, having the "ink" always trail the pen by that little bit. But I do like the open sourcing of iLiad and would almost buy it if the battery life of it were not so lousy (daily recharging).
If you don't care about a big screen size, look into something like the Sony PR-505 or Amazon Kindle, or wait until Plastic Logic's unit comes out. Then consider getting a Pulse Smartpen for notes, they are fantastic for that purpose. Then you canhave all your notes in PDF without scanning as soon as you can transfer it to the computer and back to the reader: http://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-1GB-Pulse-Smartpen-APA-00001/dp/B001AAOZHI/
I spueculate this will be an e-ink ereader. Perhaps iTunes will start selling newspapers subscriptions and books. They sell music, movies anyways, might as well tackle the next medium.
Good for apple. I like their competence at UI. The ereaders now, like the iRex DR1000S are often panned as being more prototypes than finished products.
Slashdot Mirror
I love Macs, so this isn't disparagements or drawing Apple customers like a cult (perhaps corporate culture?). But Scientology had one of the most wacked out, eccentric, but strangle charismatic (to some people I suppose) founders. After his death, its not just thriving but even gets people like Will Smith hooked. It's headed by David Mascavige although few people heard of him. I would argue that this state of Scientology is due purely to it's organizational structure rather than any one man.
Having a good leader will be important. But the corporate culture will have to be in place. I think Jobs is very talented, but his talent was letting the good ideas and people already in Apple (or outside, like NeXT) rise while he steered them towards this greater vision. I think Jobs has a very clear vision in some ways (he said back in 90s interview Sculley destroyed everything he sought to achieve), and when he expects to be leaving, he should write it in a book what it is - so that it can inspire his company towards it.
I think though, in the end, having a strong leader with a vision at the helm is what Apple as a company needs. What that means, is that they have to avoid putting in business men/accountants who only have the imagination to see the bottom line at the end of the day. But a pure artist is often equally disastrous with less business pragmatism. For instance, Steve was inspired by a previous calligraphy class to put extra effort in fonts in Macintosh. Most pure business men wouldn't have bothered at the time. Reading his bio, he often obsesses about aesthetic appeal.
To nix the scientology thing from above, I could draw Apple as a design studio like Wiener Werkstatte or Bauhaus. Earlier last century, they made lots of distinctive but beautiful objects (Art Deco), going so far as to build entire houses and furnishing them. An integrated solution. On the downside, neither lasted long. It is the nature of such things, it seems. In another industry, perhaps Apple can be compared to Porsche and the father son team Ferdinand/Ferry porsche.... it survived but to me it's arguable that, while, the design spirit lives on, whether successive innovative spirit has since those two passed away.
Don't you mean his new client, the American people? The DoJ would be just like a law firm.
You don't actually say what is skewed in the summary. Attack the message, not just the person.
Change - coming with one Washington insider at a time. /s
Where's my robot maid that cleans and robot servant that empties the gutters and takes out the trash?
Walmart makes it a policy to fight each and every lawsuit to discourage others from taking them on. Settling may be cheaper in the long term, but what if settlements bring out more leeches hungry for a little blood?
Anyway, I'm sick of hearing about patents over common sense shit. It's not the underlying technologies that patented, just the applications they now allow (often internet versions of common real life things). I don't like Oprah all that much, but I hope she crushes this little flea.
and getting rid of the keyboard entirely.
I had remotes come with PCs before (Medion). They usually suck because it doesn't work with linux and it's usually yet another startup progam in Windows. Also, since this doesn't come bundled with all PCs, it's guaranteed to fail at attracting game developers.
That's why PS3 own effort will be a failure. Unless it comes standard, few game developers are goingto bother programming for it to get the ball rolling.
Why even bother?
Then they'll put in a politician's clause - like they always do. Legislators in the US made their political solicitations calls immune to the Can Spam act.
Even better, catch their spouses and children in the act. Much harder to make the family immune.
Yeah. What I find are more anti-whatevers, than pro-whatevers. People obsessing over what other people use. Some of the causes might be legitimate (marketshare concerns or they end up doing tech support for friends/relatives) and some are petty (obsessing how other people spend their money).
For the classic in OS satire, there is "The Unix Hater's Handbook":
http://www.icce.rug.nl/edu/ugh.pdf
It was pretty much the poke in the eye to unix users but the anti-foreword was written by Dennis Ritchie - but was just as scathing right back:) (This was when some users came from other systems, like Lisp Machines.) It's probably still relevant today, seeing as how OS with unix foundations are the only OS with marketshare outside Windows these days.
Yes, yes. But the third part, even if voluntary and completely in the libertarian sense, is what brings government involvement to any degree. It's the entity that enforces contracts (a product of some voluntary associations) and also via copyright and patents which are abstract concepts in the Constition.
So, even by that definition, Stallman's concept is giving you more freedom by a) having less or no EULAs and b) less copyright concerns. I believe in this sense, the term "Freedom" is in context of being unencumbered of restrictive obligations of running code. I know when I install Ubuntu without seeing 100 Eulas pop up or asking me for my CD key plus various other nag screen I feel a little more unencumbered by BS. For the developer, it frees them from, well, developing the wheel over and over again. Seeing that all sides of the Open Source equation is a completely voluntary system, and not some communist dictatorship giving property to the masses, it works perfectly fine within the term freedom.
Freedom also allows you sell yourself into indentured servitude (perhaps called car/home/student loans today). However, if a spiritual philosophy came along, shunning pure materialism, converting people voluntarily to its way of thinking and they ended up happier: wouldn't it, too, fit into the freedom paradigm. Couldn't we judge one way of life in some ways ultimately freer than the other?
Anyway, fortunately for us and FTA, Stallman, as always, defined his freedom specifically:
1. To run the program as you wish.
2. To study the source code, and change it so the program does what you wish.
3. To redistribute exact copies when you wish.
4. To distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish.
I will grant the GNU license isn't free in itself, but one is free to take it (or not).
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7751365763.html
Without knowing your exact parameters though, it's hard to debate any specific advantages.
Sounds like a very good deal. One question: is the prepaid locked to O2 somehow? The only prepaids I'm used to are the cheap ones like tracfone, which are locked to the carrier for life (but they're $10 phones to begin with).
I've been thinking about one, but:
a)How do you get around activation at purchase time?
b)Does Apple break this later on, especially when I need it?
I could buy a legally unlocked iPhone from Hong Kong, but it costs $700+. In the unlocked countries, Apple prices it through the roof, I suppose. Although there has been talk about a prepaid version here for some time...
All too often, we are brought up on the perspective that the "killer" idea is more important than the execution. It's like some type of get-rich-quick scheme for thinkers. This is one area where the patent system used to work, only granting patents on working models are specific implementations - nowadays it's the "killer idea" which some corp or troll patents, sits on it, and waits for someone else to do the work. Truly novel or killer ideas are uncommon - great execution is more important. I would say that Apple's iPods and iPhone are a testament to this. Not one super novel idea in itself, but a slew of good compromises and vision to see it through. Good execution.
I don't think society progresses far when people hoarde their ideas in the mistaken beliefs that it's all gold (rather than the 99.999% fool's gold that they are) or actually more novel than it really is and not collaborating with anyone. I would look to Paul Erdos as the ultimate example of intellectual collaboration.
The problem is that ideas that seem good are plenty. It's like blades of grass. The problem is getting yours to stick out, so that the corporation actually picks your and pours their resources into executing it. I would imagine it's a good feeling if something actually came out of it.
*Note, I'm talking ideas, not some specific design.
Other people create the articles, we create the original content that draw people to this site. People love having a soapbox where they think others will listen to their ideas. So I don't understand the tone of the summary.
OTOH, years ago, people working at Nintendo (USA) told me that when they recieved letters, they put them in the trash as soon as it became apparent it was an "idea" letter for a game. They didn't want the liability. How is google going to curb this aspect?
Yep. Even on my modern CD sound system with skip protection (cache), if I crank the volume up loud enough, the speakers will eventually vibrate the mechanism for so long as to cause the player to shudder and skip.
Another reason this won't work is that older games tend to be ported. Gamers want the newest out there in general. Also, Open Source just won't be able to keep up with the billions of dollars spent on this industry.
But we shouldn't have to. A lot of casual gaming is moving to flash. Linux can run flash. ALL the recent games I like are on flash (no, I have a Windows install too, it's not because it's the only game in town for me): for instance games like http://www.playauditorium.com/Play Auditorium and the http://rocksolidarcade.com/Rock Solid Arcade games in general.
In my experience, the easiest to convert were the casual computer users (99% browsing activity). It would seem to me, that the casual gamers, which the Wii tapped into completely, is a larger market and one easier to bring over. Flash already works! No work to be done!
Sticking money into this area, other than a common toolkit/API to run games would be folly. Trying to win hardcore gamers whose current platform gives them practically everything.
If Linux need to get popular as fast as possible, perfect Wine a lot. Have it run Direct X whatever out of the box as well as the top games and top windows apps. Before long, a self-feeding cycle will have started where requirements will start listing Windows XP, Vista, or Wine 1.x. Then companies too, eyeing the lower TCO, will start switching, and perhaps native apps start taking off.
It's been known for a long time vibrations are not good for discs (see notebooks). Even by early 90s music CDs had skip protection. If a disc skips, latency will of course momentarily increase. And with tolerances down even further, it's probably worse than back then.
In 10-15 years it won't matter anyway, almost everything will have SSD by then.
I did not think it would, but rather that it was a symptom of Microsoft's monolithic nature and lack of nimbleness in meeting the needs of small markets, which companies using Linux can and do exploit (witness all the small gadgets from phones to GPS running linux now as an example). MS is still but one company, and it seems it cannot or does not want to keep up with what a small minority of powerusers want. Notably, their business model makes them rigid where people want more flexibility. Well, eventually, those powerusers will transistion other people over for one reason or another.
BTW, while 64 bit was more of a personal gripe, it relates to their cockamaney and confusing product lines when they should have kept it down to at most 2 - workstation and server. They are going to have Windows 7 32 bit product line last I heard, and with lowend computers already at 2GB standard, I feel Microsoft isn't making a mistake by not going all 64bit. Imagine if they dragged out the 32 bit transistion out this long. It feels like a mistake.
I never said it wasn't. Nice strawman argument. Hi-speed internet in the home, however, wasn't.
The rest of your argument misses the point.
In 1998, you barely had webmail for a few years and it was certainly not the gmail of today. Flash games were almost nonexistent, at least decent ones. And high speed internet at home just beginning. Most software purchases came from the nice local computer shop, in a standard size boxed. Good luck finding anything but Windows titles there.
10 years later, most software is downloaded in the meantime -- other than a few commercial holdouts. They are mostly games or tax software being purchased at Walmart because Comp USA is out of business. No more rows upon rows of software in a store, just a few racks of the best selling things.
Not everything is Windows-only anymore. Not all the commercial non-game sofware packages either (many are usually on the Mac as well with its resurgence). Many packages run on Wine on linux (although this isn't satisfactory yet, but many work). Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
What keeps a lot of peope on Windows is not anything about windows itself, but exclusivity (Steve Ballmer said it best: Developers, developers, developers!). What do you think happens when that exclusive foundation is gone? People become free to move about.
Firefox itself, being multiplatform, help convert a shitload of people to Linux since Windows Home versions (before Vista) are too painful to maintain for that purpose.
Hey, you forgot their accessories division (Microsoft keyboards and mice) which will keep them afloat for many years to come!
I think, if anything, the internet will be their downfall. They just don't understand it. In the mid-90s, they tried to control the internet by marrying internet explorer to their OS. Yes, it screwed up standards and forced the internet to bend to their will for a while (IE only websites). I suppose it was great to sell boxes that way by practically having an exclusive market on the entire WWW working for them, but IE made no money on its own.
Then in the late 90s, it shifted it's attention to the holy grail of an internet Portal. MSN. It's target was yahoo. To make it apparent how serious it took this and for how long, within the last year they were trying to take over Yahoo. To demostrate their lack of focus, with the market crash, despite having a ton of cash lying about, they are not willing to buy Yahoo now. Less than 6-9 months later. I guess flailing around in the dark, they found another strategy beyond the internet portal.
But the internet marches on. It will be their death one day. Linux adoption would not have been possible without the internet. But more than that, someone else mentioned about how they would explain to their grandmother why the windows card game disk doesn't work in her linux box. It won't matter. That market is dead. Games are slowly splitting into two parts: hardcore gamer games where they need max hardware, or flash games which work on any platform readily. The middle market has eroded. Grandma is more likely playing online than off a CD these days. And the high end market, MS itself has made less important, with its consoles that are guaranteed to play. There will be always a PC gamers market, but it becomes less important with every console generation.
Lastly, Microsoft is pricing itself out of the market. I can either be a pirate and take what I need or I can pay through the behind a price for boxed MS while OEMs pay but a fraction of it. That means, eventally, with WGA, that less and less people tinker with the OS. While Ubuntu and others play friendly at installs, MS just assumes it's king and has no partition tools upon install. Nor is it's install disc readily a livecd either, unlike many linux distros. It's also not handling 64 bit too well imo. My one Vista Business install, I decided that 32 bit was no longer enough. Do they give me a 64 bit for free or a small fee? No, OEM copies cannot be upgraded cheaply, they want $$$. Yet, when I bought the computer, 32/64 bit had no price difference. It's just a case of MS wanting to extract money where it can, and in this case probably will cost more than the actual ram I want to upgrade with. Other than ram, these are things that the linux community will gladly give me free.
There will never be a year of the linux desktop. As this stastic shows, it will just keep creeping up before we realize what happened. The cracks in the wall are already there. I would say a dam bursting event is when Quicken or Photoshop list on their software Windows XP, Vista or Wine 1.0 (or whatever version) compatibility. Then you know things will get ugly quick for MS.
I'm of two minds. Steve went on to make Pixar and NeXT. He's good at business and entertainment, clearly.
OTOH, when Apple bought NeXT, it basically was the bigger company paying the smaller company to lead it, with all NeXT executives, presumably groomed by Steve, to lead Apple.
I seen computer products Jobs had his direct input on. They were not pretty or good. He's not a designer, like Jonathon Ives (who has his own misses like the desklamp iMac a few years back). But once he has some distance, he knows what doesn't work, a critiquer. That's his strength. Probably why a lot of good products come out of Apple, he kills the bullshit short and tells people what they are doing is crap.
I imagine a NeXT executive or Ives could lead the company well, but Steve's shoes will be enormous. His legend will be even bigger once he's gone. Hopefully the drive won't be.
What the hell you want Woz as CEO? He's a nice guy, a great guy, actually. And that's exactly the problem.
To reply to the grandparent: color is not necessary. So much print is in black and white anyway. Besides, it will give apple space to sell you upgrades in the future when color does come online. Or, they can make it a double sided screen, with one side grayscale and one side lcd. Or somehow get the lcd and e-ink "merged" or stacked somehow so both can be used, I'm non familiar with the hardware enough if such a thing is possible.
Forget the iliad then. I only wanted a DR1000S from iRex due to screen size for textbooks (to allow display of a typical 8.5x11 sheet sans margins), but I used the iliad. The wacom screen (?) or whatever it is based on, isn't that nice for notes. The refresh rate irked me, having the "ink" always trail the pen by that little bit. But I do like the open sourcing of iLiad and would almost buy it if the battery life of it were not so lousy (daily recharging).
If you don't care about a big screen size, look into something like the Sony PR-505 or Amazon Kindle, or wait until Plastic Logic's unit comes out. Then consider getting a Pulse Smartpen for notes, they are fantastic for that purpose. Then you canhave all your notes in PDF without scanning as soon as you can transfer it to the computer and back to the reader:
http://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-1GB-Pulse-Smartpen-APA-00001/dp/B001AAOZHI/
You are assuming this will be a music player.
I spueculate this will be an e-ink ereader. Perhaps iTunes will start selling newspapers subscriptions and books. They sell music, movies anyways, might as well tackle the next medium.
Good for apple. I like their competence at UI. The ereaders now, like the iRex DR1000S are often panned as being more prototypes than finished products.