If it gets to the point though where the games are starting to majorly sacrifice playability and content for ad revenue though, customers will complain and run for the nearest competitor.
Possibly, but I imagine the same thing that happens in any other electronic media will happen. People will just strip the ads out.
HDTV will be locked down so hard that building your own DVR will be difficult at best. Thanks to DMCA, attempt to bypass any of the DRM could potentially land your ass in jail. In summary, once analog TV comes to an end, we're all pretty screwed.
This may come as a surprise to you, but most people do not live in the US.
Indeed. Then why give the x86 Mac OS X hacking community the tools they need to make a nice, polished release of Mac OS X for x86 for use on non-Apple hardware?
The better question is, why not? People who fit into Apple's narrow marketing niche probably already have Macs. Those of us who are better served by other hardware aren't going to buy them either way. Why not sell the OS to people who'll buy it?
You seem to be under the impression that people who actually contribute *care* if newbies use their distros. Most don't. There's lots of handwaving from people who don't contribute anything else, but that's it. Certainly, the commercial distros want to attract users, but they're not going after your grandmother, they're targetting a professional audience.
If it works for you, in whatever form, go ahead and use it! If not, the tools are there for you to change it to your needs. If you're not interested in doing that, no one else really cares.
It may be easy for you to say quit and depending on where you live there may be a plethora of jobs available. However, where I live is rather rural and there are only so many tech jobs.
And what, exactly are you going to threaten them with? They'll simply learn not to share anything with you, if you violate their trust in you by punishing them for it.
Your ideas will work fine before they're teenagers, after that they won't feel any particular obligation to do what you tell them to, nor will they fell any obligation to tell you what they're doing. If you try to force the matter, they'll learn to hide things from you.
How, exactly do you think you're going to enforce that? Maybe you'll be able to do so in your own house (a big maybe, if you've got far too much free time on your hands), but you certainly won't be able to monitor what they do at school or friends houses.
If you're worried about false reviews, you would be reading Consumer Reports, and not Tom's Hardware, who accepts "gratuities" from the people they're reviewing.
Read the whole thread before frothing at the mouth, jackass.
We where talking about Apples profit centres, so no, they don't really sell MacOS on it's own. Sure, you can buy *upgrades* from a previous version of MacOS, (perhaps from MacOS 9 if there are any installations of that still around) but you cannot buy a copy of MacOS for a computer that has not had a copy before.
Every copy of MacOS is tied to a piece of Apple hardware, so it's just as valid to say that the profits from a Mac are tied to the software as it is to say it's tied to the hardware.
Not everyone needs to play WoW on their laptop. Most people are perfectly happy running an office suite, web browser and email client, while playing games on their desktop.
I can pick up a laptop that does all that with flying colours for less than $700 Canadian. And that's just by going to Bestbuy's site, and not looking around for a deal.
Maybe the cost of commodity hardware is also highly inflated where you are, but where I am Mac hardware is an order of magnitude more expensive than superior commodity hardware.
It's a rather silly arguement, though. Apple doesn't really sell MacOS on it's own. Sure, they charge for updates to it, but to get a full copy you need to buy a Mac. You could just as easily say they make no profit from hardware, and lots from software, if you consider buying MacOS to come with a free bundled computer.
It isn't cost effective to have your IT staff assemble boxes. You contract that out to someone who hires tech monkeys to do it, which is really no different from an IBM or Dell contract. If your contractor makes a change that doesn't suit your business (like, say, abrubtly switching the CPU architecture they sell) you simply switch to one of their competitors who will happily take your money. If you build your business around Apple, you do what they tell you to do, whether it makes sense for your business or not.
However, it would still be extremely irresponsible of any business to lock itself into Apple on both the hardware *and* software side. You've acknowleged the problems Microsoft causes with only half that monopoly.
Vendor lock in is very dangerous, and it should be avoided wherever possible. It isn't avoidable in many software markets (such as OS), but hardware has been a commodity market for decades. It would be extremely stupid for any business to take a step into the distant past with a single hardware vendor.
Apple has no business in the workplace until it opens up it's hardware to competition.
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If it gets to the point though where the games are starting to majorly sacrifice playability and content for ad revenue though, customers will complain and run for the nearest competitor.
Possibly, but I imagine the same thing that happens in any other electronic media will happen. People will just strip the ads out.
Then hire one. Beggers can't be choosers.
If you feel that way, build it. No one else cares what you think they should do.
HDTV will be locked down so hard that building your own DVR will be difficult at best. Thanks to DMCA, attempt to bypass any of the DRM could potentially land your ass in jail. In summary, once analog TV comes to an end, we're all pretty screwed.
This may come as a surprise to you, but most people do not live in the US.
Indeed. Then why give the x86 Mac OS X hacking community the tools they need to make a nice, polished release of Mac OS X for x86 for use on non-Apple hardware?
The better question is, why not? People who fit into Apple's narrow marketing niche probably already have Macs. Those of us who are better served by other hardware aren't going to buy them either way. Why not sell the OS to people who'll buy it?
But that's the rub. Linux is certainly desktop ready, but it's *not* aimed at the general computing market. The two are not tied together.
You seem to be under the impression that people who actually contribute *care* if newbies use their distros. Most don't. There's lots of handwaving from people who don't contribute anything else, but that's it. Certainly, the commercial distros want to attract users, but they're not going after your grandmother, they're targetting a professional audience.
If it works for you, in whatever form, go ahead and use it! If not, the tools are there for you to change it to your needs. If you're not interested in doing that, no one else really cares.
Entertainment unions mostly function to prevent anyone not in the union from finding work in their field.
It may be easy for you to say quit and depending on where you live there may be a plethora of jobs available. However, where I live is rather rural and there are only so many tech jobs.
So move.
Actually, with many of the larger more established projects, non programming tasks such as testing and documentation are needed more than programming.
Didn't exactly hurt space science...
If we're able to breed mice that react to cancer more like people, it will be much easier to study the sorts of cancers people suffer from.
And what, exactly are you going to threaten them with? They'll simply learn not to share anything with you, if you violate their trust in you by punishing them for it.
Your ideas will work fine before they're teenagers, after that they won't feel any particular obligation to do what you tell them to, nor will they fell any obligation to tell you what they're doing. If you try to force the matter, they'll learn to hide things from you.
It's not a game you can win.
How, exactly do you think you're going to enforce that? Maybe you'll be able to do so in your own house (a big maybe, if you've got far too much free time on your hands), but you certainly won't be able to monitor what they do at school or friends houses.
Windows users load all of that regardless, where as they wouldn't otherwise load the JVM.
If you're worried about false reviews, you would be reading Consumer Reports, and not Tom's Hardware, who accepts "gratuities" from the people they're reviewing.
Read the whole thread before frothing at the mouth, jackass.
We where talking about Apples profit centres, so no, they don't really sell MacOS on it's own. Sure, you can buy *upgrades* from a previous version of MacOS, (perhaps from MacOS 9 if there are any installations of that still around) but you cannot buy a copy of MacOS for a computer that has not had a copy before.
Every copy of MacOS is tied to a piece of Apple hardware, so it's just as valid to say that the profits from a Mac are tied to the software as it is to say it's tied to the hardware.
You've completely missed the point.
Not everyone needs to play WoW on their laptop. Most people are perfectly happy running an office suite, web browser and email client, while playing games on their desktop.
I can pick up a laptop that does all that with flying colours for less than $700 Canadian. And that's just by going to Bestbuy's site, and not looking around for a deal.
I'm sorry, you're just wrong on this point.
Maybe the cost of commodity hardware is also highly inflated where you are, but where I am Mac hardware is an order of magnitude more expensive than superior commodity hardware.
It's a rather silly arguement, though. Apple doesn't really sell MacOS on it's own. Sure, they charge for updates to it, but to get a full copy you need to buy a Mac. You could just as easily say they make no profit from hardware, and lots from software, if you consider buying MacOS to come with a free bundled computer.
It's not a very relevant skill to most academic pursuits.
It isn't cost effective to have your IT staff assemble boxes. You contract that out to someone who hires tech monkeys to do it, which is really no different from an IBM or Dell contract. If your contractor makes a change that doesn't suit your business (like, say, abrubtly switching the CPU architecture they sell) you simply switch to one of their competitors who will happily take your money. If you build your business around Apple, you do what they tell you to do, whether it makes sense for your business or not.
However, it would still be extremely irresponsible of any business to lock itself into Apple on both the hardware *and* software side. You've acknowleged the problems Microsoft causes with only half that monopoly.
I'm not defending MS's OS monopoly, just pointing out that it exists, where as there are numerous alternatives in the hardware market.
Vendor lock in is very dangerous, and it should be avoided wherever possible. It isn't avoidable in many software markets (such as OS), but hardware has been a commodity market for decades. It would be extremely stupid for any business to take a step into the distant past with a single hardware vendor.
Apple has no business in the workplace until it opens up it's hardware to competition.