I just cleaned up an old Dell Latitude D410 for my 7-year-old - reinstalled an old copy of XP and it works great. It was a leftover from my wife's work. Battery doesn't work but I figure that's a good thing since I don't really want him taking it around with him any old place - just at his desk and for very limited blocks of time.
As for software we've been enjoying MIT's Scratch. It's a great programming environment for kids that he really loves to play with. He can actually manipulate graphical sprites with sounds, move them around on the screen, and encode logic using a graphical lego-brick-style metaphor.
There's something else going on here - reversion to the mean. Think of your health as a curve that goes up and down. On average, you're probably pretty healthy. Sometimes less and sometimes more. When you're sick, no matter what you do, you'll probably get better. So as long as whatever treatment you do or don't do doesn't make you a lot worse, you will probably get better. Drilling a hole in your skull might seem to cure depression, the common cold, or hemorrhoids, as long as you don't drill too deep or get a bad infection that kills you. Rubbing your ear, walking in a circle, drinking infused water -- almost anything, including eating sugar pills, or just waiting, will seem to cure you most of the time.
This is really simple. You don't like the product, don't buy it. Microsoft hasn't misrepresented a thing here. It's kind of the same thing as the hackintosh, actually. Is Apple evil too? If so you have a real simple remedy -- don't buy it. These companies are within their rights entirely. If someone wants to sell a different kind of game console and a different kind of game network where games are cheaper and mods are allowed, then fine. Maybe there's a business there. Maybe this is your big chance. Go start that business and stop whining.
This kind of approach makes me think about the drone pilots in Nevada. If the car is entirely drive-by-wire, maybe I could hire someone else to drive me to work, or better yet, home from the pub when I'm drunk. The real driver would never have to leave their office in Bangalore or Nevada or wherever! Just put a couple of cameras and proximity sensors on the bumpers and connect it up with 3G wireless and voilla!
Sounds like you have the beginnings of a business plan. While you may be a bit too optimistic on cost savings, why not give it a try? Compete with this techno-gadget in the open marketplace and win! If you don't do it you'll be kicking yourself when someone else does and makes a billion.
Open isn't enough - you're right. And Apple has brought in partners in an astute way to make iPhone successful - AT&T and their hardware partners for example. Also the App Store is a controlled way to open up the platform to build an ecosystem. But it may not be enough. Time will tell but one lesson from the past is that open can be a powerful differentiator, even in the face of better usability or features. Apple lost this gamble last time.
Apple doesn't learn. This very same strategy is what gave Microsoft such a big opening in the 80s. If Apple sticks to the closed system approach they will have higher price points in the short term, but long term will lose out to more open platforms like Android where the incentives for a more diverse network of partners will be greater.
In the early 80s Apple outsold IBM and everybody else in PCs. They took their Apple II win and moved up-market with the Mac. Sure the technology and user experience were radically better than the competition, but they further closed down the platform to partners and end users. Pretty quickly the open platform, multi-vendor combination promoted by IBM, Microsoft, and Intel won the day - even though it didn't work as well.
Do you own shares in the company or something? It's awfully hard for me to believe that a boutique car company selling 50k+ vehicles is somehow going to transform the economy and have more impact than the interstate highway system. There is no new technology required to build electric cars. Even the batteries are good enough to provide enough power for most commuters today.
If you want electric cars to be delivered next year you just have to do one thing -- increase the price of fuel dramatically. Until that happens none of this matters and no efforts short of that to move to electric cars will work.
I just don't know why we have to keep on waiting for an electric car we can buy off in the future. Electric cars aren't new. This isn't about innovation. There is no new technology required to deliver electric cars. Just retool the factories and get started. Now that the government owns a big part of GM why not have a cheap electric car for 2010?
How is funding a boutique luxury car manufacturer at the rate of half a billion similar to funding interstates, military, postal service, etc.? Tesla does not even hope to provide shared infrastructure or essential services to the country as do these programs. I don't get it.
I'm anti-subsidy for luxury car manufacturers. Starting at $49,900 -- bah! How about spending a fraction of this to rip out the engine of a Chevy Aveo and put in an electric motor? How about an electric car people can actually buy? Innovation not required!
16 years ago when I worked for Circuit City they had a similar procedure. Sales counselors (as we were called) weren't explicitly instructed to deny the product to customers who didn't want the "cheese" (aka extended service plan or ESP) - but we too were subject to management scolding and eventual firing if we didn't meet our quotas. So there was a significant incentive to tell customers who didn't want the ESP, especially on a promotional item with a low spiff (aka commission) that they should either buy something else or maybe wait around awhile while the sales person ignores you until you leave. From the sales person's perspective, why bother selling a laptop that pays the sales person a dollar or 2 (if it's on sale) and reduces his or her ESP percentage? The only way out is to lie about stock, sell lots of overpriced accessories, or upsell to a higher margin unit with a higher spiff.
Let's remember how important it is to have a president who is not overly insulated by yes-men. He needs direct communication with the outside world. Sure we could lock him in a lead box under the Pentagon if our top priority was keeping him "safe" but what good is that?
I'm not presuming anything was installed on school computers. Did I say that? I'm only assuming that some sort of computer is being used for coursework of some kind - presumably it's the kid's computer. I'm just saying, I can understand why the teacher would be annoyed if she feels like she has to deal with Linux support issues and she's not trained to do that. Obviously her reaction is over the top, but I can also imagine why she would be annoyed. Heck if I had a room of 30 kids asking me anything I might start sending illogical, angry letters all over the place.
I love Linux as much as the next geek, however, I can sort of understand her point of view, even if she doesn't represent herself very well. If a kid wants to play with Linux and learn about how the computer works then s/he should do it, but if it prevents the computer from working properly with coursework or software provided by the school, then that could be a problem.
I can see how it would be highly annoying to a teacher, who really has better things to do than to support PCs, to have to explain why some document won't display properly, or something won't work exactly as it should on Linux. In a setting where spending any time at all on helping kids with how their laptops work is a huge distraction I can see how encouraging students to install Linux would be a very big disruption.
Some will disagree, and it's better than it used to be, but I still wouldn't advise my mother to replace Windows with HeliOS or Ubuntu or any other Linux. The reason people choose Mac and Windows isn't entirely marketing and bundling, it's also because they tend to be easier to get support for - or even for novices to figure out.
Marketing only goes so far. Product shortcomings are too great to overcome. A few fuel cell vehicles on the road, a couple of gas-guzzling hybrid trucks, and a roadmap (Volt) that has no hope of catching Toyota just doesn't add up. What makes you think Toyota can't sell hybrid Tacomas as soon as they see demand? Even if you are driving a hybrid truck in a few years (which you'll think twice about buying once efficient, clean diesels come on the US market next year) it will likely be from a Japanese maker. GM is playing catch-up and is run by people with questionable intelligence.
Toyota's 2009 plug-in Prius will make all this irrelevant. When the Volt comes out with worse specs and a higher price - and without the internal combustion "back-up" the Prius has GM's stock price will take yet another plunge. Too little too late. Somebody needs to buy GM, break it up and liquidate what's left. Hopefully Toyota, Honda, Nissan, or somebody who knows anything about selling cars will see value in some of their assets.
Mostly I don't give a crap about what it looks like in print, at least not until I print it. Browsing the Web, in particular, is an experience that has almost nothing to do with printing as far as I'm concerned. This idea of "accuracy" of fonts is nonsense if it means text looks blurry. You're saying, "sure it's blurry, but it's accurate," and I should be comforted by the fact that this implementation is somehow more correct. That is a very silly argument.
And while you're at it, why not add all applications, not just games. Especially if Leopard includes a virtualization environment, or if a Wine-like solution becomes popular, it would be so easy to run Windows software that users might hardly notice when an app is for Windows or OS X. In that environment, why would software vendors spend any resources on a special Mac port? Remember OS/2?
Macs aren't Apple's core business and they should gradually get away from the costlier aspects of Macintosh production, like writing an OS.
If Apple licenses the Windows kernel and makes it look and feel like OS X I don't see why any normal user would notice. And Apple could get out of the expensive business of writing an OS.
As it stands OS X isn't much more than marketing material, giving Apple cover as a serious technology company. As far as earnings are concerned, iPods are the big items, and the development costs are quite small. Selling Macs is not really their core business anymore, and the portion of their business related to the Mac is less and less. Apple is likely to continue this as it aligns with Intel's consumer device technology roadmap. Phones, DVRs, Cameras or whatever. Being in the OS business just doesn't make sense as Apple's core business switches away from personal computers (aka Macs).
Writing an OS is an expensive business, and the value Apple adds is in the application software anyway. It's frankly stupid for them to continue writing their own OS. Windows is the only choice if they want to support DRM properly, which is a requirement for any company aligned with Disney.
I don't think this keyboard would be useful for many people. I don't know for sure, but I expect that most of us who use keyboards much don't look at them while typing anyway. So what do I care what is on each key? Even if switching languages frequently a touch typist has no use for this. And by the way the location and size of the enter key is not normal, so it would actually make it harder for me to type. This is a product that sounds cool but is actually useless.
I'll definitely buy one of these and the first thing I do will be to wipe it clean and install XP. Finally a decent looking laptop from Apple that can run standard software.
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I just cleaned up an old Dell Latitude D410 for my 7-year-old - reinstalled an old copy of XP and it works great. It was a leftover from my wife's work. Battery doesn't work but I figure that's a good thing since I don't really want him taking it around with him any old place - just at his desk and for very limited blocks of time. As for software we've been enjoying MIT's Scratch. It's a great programming environment for kids that he really loves to play with. He can actually manipulate graphical sprites with sounds, move them around on the screen, and encode logic using a graphical lego-brick-style metaphor.
There's something else going on here - reversion to the mean. Think of your health as a curve that goes up and down. On average, you're probably pretty healthy. Sometimes less and sometimes more. When you're sick, no matter what you do, you'll probably get better. So as long as whatever treatment you do or don't do doesn't make you a lot worse, you will probably get better. Drilling a hole in your skull might seem to cure depression, the common cold, or hemorrhoids, as long as you don't drill too deep or get a bad infection that kills you. Rubbing your ear, walking in a circle, drinking infused water -- almost anything, including eating sugar pills, or just waiting, will seem to cure you most of the time.
This is really simple. You don't like the product, don't buy it. Microsoft hasn't misrepresented a thing here. It's kind of the same thing as the hackintosh, actually. Is Apple evil too? If so you have a real simple remedy -- don't buy it. These companies are within their rights entirely. If someone wants to sell a different kind of game console and a different kind of game network where games are cheaper and mods are allowed, then fine. Maybe there's a business there. Maybe this is your big chance. Go start that business and stop whining.
This kind of approach makes me think about the drone pilots in Nevada. If the car is entirely drive-by-wire, maybe I could hire someone else to drive me to work, or better yet, home from the pub when I'm drunk. The real driver would never have to leave their office in Bangalore or Nevada or wherever! Just put a couple of cameras and proximity sensors on the bumpers and connect it up with 3G wireless and voilla!
Sounds like you have the beginnings of a business plan. While you may be a bit too optimistic on cost savings, why not give it a try? Compete with this techno-gadget in the open marketplace and win! If you don't do it you'll be kicking yourself when someone else does and makes a billion.
Open isn't enough - you're right. And Apple has brought in partners in an astute way to make iPhone successful - AT&T and their hardware partners for example. Also the App Store is a controlled way to open up the platform to build an ecosystem. But it may not be enough. Time will tell but one lesson from the past is that open can be a powerful differentiator, even in the face of better usability or features. Apple lost this gamble last time.
Apple doesn't learn. This very same strategy is what gave Microsoft such a big opening in the 80s. If Apple sticks to the closed system approach they will have higher price points in the short term, but long term will lose out to more open platforms like Android where the incentives for a more diverse network of partners will be greater. In the early 80s Apple outsold IBM and everybody else in PCs. They took their Apple II win and moved up-market with the Mac. Sure the technology and user experience were radically better than the competition, but they further closed down the platform to partners and end users. Pretty quickly the open platform, multi-vendor combination promoted by IBM, Microsoft, and Intel won the day - even though it didn't work as well.
Do you own shares in the company or something? It's awfully hard for me to believe that a boutique car company selling 50k+ vehicles is somehow going to transform the economy and have more impact than the interstate highway system. There is no new technology required to build electric cars. Even the batteries are good enough to provide enough power for most commuters today. If you want electric cars to be delivered next year you just have to do one thing -- increase the price of fuel dramatically. Until that happens none of this matters and no efforts short of that to move to electric cars will work.
I just don't know why we have to keep on waiting for an electric car we can buy off in the future. Electric cars aren't new. This isn't about innovation. There is no new technology required to deliver electric cars. Just retool the factories and get started. Now that the government owns a big part of GM why not have a cheap electric car for 2010?
How is funding a boutique luxury car manufacturer at the rate of half a billion similar to funding interstates, military, postal service, etc.? Tesla does not even hope to provide shared infrastructure or essential services to the country as do these programs. I don't get it.
I'm anti-subsidy for luxury car manufacturers. Starting at $49,900 -- bah! How about spending a fraction of this to rip out the engine of a Chevy Aveo and put in an electric motor? How about an electric car people can actually buy? Innovation not required!
16 years ago when I worked for Circuit City they had a similar procedure. Sales counselors (as we were called) weren't explicitly instructed to deny the product to customers who didn't want the "cheese" (aka extended service plan or ESP) - but we too were subject to management scolding and eventual firing if we didn't meet our quotas. So there was a significant incentive to tell customers who didn't want the ESP, especially on a promotional item with a low spiff (aka commission) that they should either buy something else or maybe wait around awhile while the sales person ignores you until you leave. From the sales person's perspective, why bother selling a laptop that pays the sales person a dollar or 2 (if it's on sale) and reduces his or her ESP percentage? The only way out is to lie about stock, sell lots of overpriced accessories, or upsell to a higher margin unit with a higher spiff.
Let's remember how important it is to have a president who is not overly insulated by yes-men. He needs direct communication with the outside world. Sure we could lock him in a lead box under the Pentagon if our top priority was keeping him "safe" but what good is that?
I'm not presuming anything was installed on school computers. Did I say that? I'm only assuming that some sort of computer is being used for coursework of some kind - presumably it's the kid's computer. I'm just saying, I can understand why the teacher would be annoyed if she feels like she has to deal with Linux support issues and she's not trained to do that. Obviously her reaction is over the top, but I can also imagine why she would be annoyed. Heck if I had a room of 30 kids asking me anything I might start sending illogical, angry letters all over the place.
I love Linux as much as the next geek, however, I can sort of understand her point of view, even if she doesn't represent herself very well. If a kid wants to play with Linux and learn about how the computer works then s/he should do it, but if it prevents the computer from working properly with coursework or software provided by the school, then that could be a problem. I can see how it would be highly annoying to a teacher, who really has better things to do than to support PCs, to have to explain why some document won't display properly, or something won't work exactly as it should on Linux. In a setting where spending any time at all on helping kids with how their laptops work is a huge distraction I can see how encouraging students to install Linux would be a very big disruption. Some will disagree, and it's better than it used to be, but I still wouldn't advise my mother to replace Windows with HeliOS or Ubuntu or any other Linux. The reason people choose Mac and Windows isn't entirely marketing and bundling, it's also because they tend to be easier to get support for - or even for novices to figure out.
Marketing only goes so far. Product shortcomings are too great to overcome. A few fuel cell vehicles on the road, a couple of gas-guzzling hybrid trucks, and a roadmap (Volt) that has no hope of catching Toyota just doesn't add up. What makes you think Toyota can't sell hybrid Tacomas as soon as they see demand? Even if you are driving a hybrid truck in a few years (which you'll think twice about buying once efficient, clean diesels come on the US market next year) it will likely be from a Japanese maker. GM is playing catch-up and is run by people with questionable intelligence.
Toyota's 2009 plug-in Prius will make all this irrelevant. When the Volt comes out with worse specs and a higher price - and without the internal combustion "back-up" the Prius has GM's stock price will take yet another plunge. Too little too late. Somebody needs to buy GM, break it up and liquidate what's left. Hopefully Toyota, Honda, Nissan, or somebody who knows anything about selling cars will see value in some of their assets.
30 years? Try 40. Nothing interesting in manned space travel has happened since Neil and Buzz landed in 1969! That's 39 years ago!
Mostly I don't give a crap about what it looks like in print, at least not until I print it. Browsing the Web, in particular, is an experience that has almost nothing to do with printing as far as I'm concerned. This idea of "accuracy" of fonts is nonsense if it means text looks blurry. You're saying, "sure it's blurry, but it's accurate," and I should be comforted by the fact that this implementation is somehow more correct. That is a very silly argument.
It still has a bug that makes the text blurry. Please let me turn off anti-aliasing!
http://www.schneier.com/essay-034.html
And while you're at it, why not add all applications, not just games. Especially if Leopard includes a virtualization environment, or if a Wine-like solution becomes popular, it would be so easy to run Windows software that users might hardly notice when an app is for Windows or OS X. In that environment, why would software vendors spend any resources on a special Mac port? Remember OS/2?
Macs aren't Apple's core business and they should gradually get away from the costlier aspects of Macintosh production, like writing an OS.
If Apple licenses the Windows kernel and makes it look and feel like OS X I don't see why any normal user would notice. And Apple could get out of the expensive business of writing an OS.
As it stands OS X isn't much more than marketing material, giving Apple cover as a serious technology company. As far as earnings are concerned, iPods are the big items, and the development costs are quite small. Selling Macs is not really their core business anymore, and the portion of their business related to the Mac is less and less. Apple is likely to continue this as it aligns with Intel's consumer device technology roadmap. Phones, DVRs, Cameras or whatever. Being in the OS business just doesn't make sense as Apple's core business switches away from personal computers (aka Macs).
Writing an OS is an expensive business, and the value Apple adds is in the application software anyway. It's frankly stupid for them to continue writing their own OS. Windows is the only choice if they want to support DRM properly, which is a requirement for any company aligned with Disney.
I don't think this keyboard would be useful for many people. I don't know for sure, but I expect that most of us who use keyboards much don't look at them while typing anyway. So what do I care what is on each key? Even if switching languages frequently a touch typist has no use for this. And by the way the location and size of the enter key is not normal, so it would actually make it harder for me to type. This is a product that sounds cool but is actually useless.
I'll definitely buy one of these and the first thing I do will be to wipe it clean and install XP. Finally a decent looking laptop from Apple that can run standard software.