This has been said many times before, but obviously not often enough: Market share is only one way to play the game. Other goals are things like "profit" and "shareholder value."
There is a little German car maker you might have heard of named Prosche. They make sehr viel money. Their stock is doing sehr gut. They don't really care about market share. Now, nobody bothers them about this or writes little essays about how Porsche will never catch up with Toyota or GM, because everybody understands they are playing for profit, not market share. For some reason, many people don't understand this with Apple. They keep talking about market share.
Apple has no debt. They are making lots of money -- okay, so is Microsoft. Their stock is up, what, 70 per cent this year -- Microsoft's has been dead in the water for years. Apple has two different product lines that are doing fine: Computers and iPods. They are working on a third, the iPhone. Microsoft has two products of the same type, Windows and Office, that make money. Everything else they have touched, like the Zune and the Xbox, has been a financial disaster.
Let Microsoft keep its market share. Apple is making money and making its shareholders happy. Like Porsche.
This drives me up the wall every single fscking bloody damn time: "HIV" stands for human immunodeficiency virus. So a "HIV virus" is a human immunodeficiency virus virus. The term is simply "HI virus". There is also no such thing as a "PIN number", either, because "PIN" means personal identification number.
Both terms have been around just about forever (unfortunately). Learn it. Editors, you are getting paid to catch this sort of stuff. Correct it.
I hope somebody uses the whole Firefly case in business school one day as an example of how to fuck up something great. First, they let the guy do his stuff just enough to show everybody it is a brilliant idea. Then, they pull the plug. They piss of the guy. They piss of the fans. Then, they make one movie, and seem to have off the guy even more while doing it. And now they piss off their customers some more. These are the best and brightest that are running America's economy?
Don't you wish Bill Gates were a Sci-Fi fan? He could just finance a whole season, no strings attached, just for the heck of it, and donate the the sales of the DVD to his charity fund. I'd buy.
What Gentoo should do is produce a standardized base version for the Mac Intel line -- MacBooks, MacPros, iMacs, MacMini. These machines have standardized hardware, and the iMac especially doesn't lend itself to fooling around with the internals. Buy a Mac, pop in the Gentoo CD, fool around with some of the minor points, and then you have an instant computer.
First they do the two-format-thing all over again. Then they keep all kinds of crap that pissed people off with DVDs such as the Regional Code. After that, they tell us that there will be draconian DRM. The prices are simply sick. And in the end, the added quality just doesn't change my life. Cool, yes, impressive with computer generated films, of course, but worth the price, the loss of control and the hassle? No way.
This is turning out to be all stuff and nonsense, and I think I'll just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray one and wait for the next next generation, when maybe somebody with half a brain is involved. DVD is perfectly good enough for me, thank you very much.
There is packaging and there is packaging. Apple packs "excessively", but it is fun: My iPod and iSight both involved flipping things around and having little messages appear and whatnot. What makes it fun is that somebody actually took the time to sit down and think about how the user will be opening the box instead of how they can save as much money as possible. The fact that somebody went to that trouble is, well, touching. It's a marketing trick, sure, but a fun marketing trick.
Now, if I just knew what to do with those Apple stickers they keep including...
Fortunately, this is America, so it is very easy to figure out if this is a widespread problem: If there is no gimme-a-million-bucks-I-deserve-it class-action lawsuit ongoing, forget it. It is that easy.
I can't wait to see his American lawyer claim that he didn't understand what he was doing -- how was he to know that the defense computers were actually defence computers? How could he realize that his behavior was bad behaviour? After that, you can only hope that the court will table the claims...
Maybe it would have been nice for the OP to have pointed out, like Daring Fireball does, that Mark Pilgrim now works for a company called IBM. Last time I looked, they didn't make Macs. Now, why am I not surprised anymore that he switched to a ThinkCentre [sic]? He even says in the article that he gets an IBM discount. What's the guy to do, run Windows on the thing?
I'm told that Coke frowns on their employees publicly drinking Pepsi, too. Or try showing up to work at GM with a Honda.
I'm one of those people who switched from Linux to OS X for the desktop (the server of the house still happily runs Gentoo). The main reason is time: Whatever geek problems OS X might have, for everyday tasks, the thing just works. When I close the lid of my iBook, it goes to sleep, when I lift the lid, it wakes up. Sound simple, but (at the time at least), Linux couldn't do that. I have kids and a real-world job and a bunch of other things that want my time, and fooling around with computers just to make the simple things in life work is not an option anymore. USB was a pain in the ass with Linux, Firewire was a pain in the ass with Linux, and don't get me started with editing video for the grandparents. Linux simply does not have software that compares to iMovie and iDVD.
So yeah, maybe some ubergeeks I've never heard of switched. Whoopie. Back in the real world, the rest of us are pretty happy not having to screw around with configuration files for every little thing, because it leaves us more time to play with our children.
In, oh, ten, twenty years at the most, everybody will have a computer powerful enough and software good enough to generate any sort of pornography on the fly. And when that happens, they will not have to trade pictures anymore (and the clever ones won't do it), and the rest of us are left with the question if that sort of software should be banned. It is better to have these people sitting in front of a computer generating their fantasies in the seclusion of their houses, or do we want to (try to) take that away from them and risk that they take their cameras out to playgrounds again?
So, yeah, go ahead and build your database. By the time it is up and running, it will be obsolete, and we'll be discussing other problems.
There is no way in hell I am going to invest in a technology when there is a 50-50 chance that it will go the way of the Betamax. A brief and informal survey among my friends -- some of whom actually bought laserdisks and such -- shows the same thing. Also, the thing is so riddled with control mechanisms that I get the impression I would never really own a movie again: It seems that they could just decide to switch off my copy when everything they plan to do is finished and done. Oh, and then there is the region code thing again. That has to go before I will even consider it.
In short, no way either way. Try listening to the customers and getting your act together next time, and we'll see.
The question is -- what is left to blog about at Microsoft at the moment anyway? It has all been said. We've seen Vista, and it's a late clone of Mac OS X. We've seen the new Office, and we're going to have relearn a lot. Their stock market performance is a joke, and Ballmer is going to sit on all that money they have instead of giving back to the shareholders or doing something useful. The Xbox 360 looks pretty cool, we know that, too. There don't seem to be any new, exciting products in the pipeline. So what is the point of blogging? This simply is not a sexy company anymore. Give us something to sing about, and we'll sing. Until then...everything has been said.
Especially of course if they gave you your towel back...
The problem for Sony is not this one single terribly sourced rumor, but that most people by now have no problem whatsoever believing that they might actually do something like this. After endless series of PR disasters, they've gotten themselves to the point where any new stupidity seems possible.
My experience has been more that they don't realize that things can be different.
"Microsoft" is a synonym for computers for them, since they have never seen a computer with a different operating system. They don't remember "Atari" or "Amiga" (now that makes me feel old), and have never touched a Mac or a PC running Linux. So they assume that things must be the same there, too.
Colleagues at work stare at me when I tell them that neither my Apples nor Gentoos have any virus protection at all, that I don't have to reboot it for every little thing, that I can plug my camera into my iBook and it just works. For them, the Windows way is the way all computers work.
What has really opened their eyes is Firefox. It is so much better than IE in all respects that those computers that don't have it installed are being avoided. Firefox shows people that things can be different, that there is a life without Microsoft, and that this life can be pretty good.
Slashdot readers need to remember that not everybody has a job where computer literacy is high. Lots of people out there just suffer through Microsoft in quiet desperation, never guessing that things could be different.
You know which story the media is just waiting for? The one where thieves start cutting off people's body parts to get to the chip instead of just stealing the keys or your wallet. That will be right up there with iPod-muggings and Internet child pornography as a set piece we'll read day after day after day. Mexico and Brazil, of course.
Personally, I think having anything put in your body that doesn't have to go there is a stupid risk to take, however small it might be.
Everytime somebody says something about Apple wanting to "dominate the desktop", stop reading. In certain ways, Apple is just like a certain German car company, Porsche: They make fantastically engineered, kick-ass cool products for the high end of the market, and they make a killing financially while doing so. Porsche doesn't want to become another Ford or GM (take a look at GM to see why) and Apple doesn't want to be a Dell (take a look at a Dell to see why). Not everybody wants to rule the world, because it usually doesn't make business sense.
This whole "wants to be the biggest" thing is beyond me, unless it has something to do with Freudian hangups on the part of the commentators. Get over it.
At the risk of sounding like Ellen Fleiss here, Bonjour was one of the things that got me hooked on Apple. We have just about every type of OS at home -- Windows XP, OS X, Gentoo Linux -- and I'm used to endless fooling around to get a network running. So when I went over to set up my parents' new iMacs, connected with one of those little AirPort Express bricks, I was expecting to spend most of the day. Well, no. I give the Macs their names, I set up the network data on the AirPort, and, wham, that was it, printer and all. My first thought is, holy shit, how do they do that? My second thought is, think of all the time I've wasted. My third thought is, man, it would be a real bummer if I were to loose my homework while I'm stoned...
I tried it at home with the various machines there, but Bonjour for Windows sucked (only worked for printers anyway) and Linux, well, isn't there yet (I'm wondering if that shouldn't be an acronym: LITY. I seem to be using it a lot since I switched to a Mac).
This is a technology that should be everywhere and one you seriously don't want to be without once you have seen it (the other is Spotlight -- I'm never going to use a desktop machine again that doesn't have live searching). If you have a chance to use it, go for it.
This is a good thing: Every time some little company pisses off some big player like Microsoft, IBM or Apple with some inane patent thing, it pushes the big companies (and their army of Washington lobbyists) one step closer to realizing just how screwed up the American patent system is. Of course it would help if the people in Congress had a clue, but every little bit helps.
Think of the military uses: You drop a reverse-cell bomb over, oh, let's just say Tehran, and their cells reverse, and they all go back to being children! And because they are too short to reach the control panels anymore, the whole problem of them building the bomb vanishes, too! All they need is a good spanking. Oh, and diapers maybe, depending on the dose...
Maybe IE 7 will win back some market share for Microsoft, maybe not. The important thing in the larger scheme is that Firefox has broken through their "mental" monopoly: Even the most clueless of my Windows-using friends has now at least heard of it and knows that there is a viable alternative to the Internet Explorer. They know that there is something called "Open Source" and that free software can be at least as good as what Microsoft is offering, if not better. Use any metaphor you want -- the wall of ignorance is breached, the dictator's iron grip broken -- it comes down to the fact that Firefox has made it just that more likely that people will even look at OpenOffice.org, VLC or Linux. Firefox could lose all of its marketshare and this would still be the case. From Microsoft's point of view, the damage is done, and IE 7 is just an attempt to limit its spread -- too little, too late.
Which seems to be Microsoft's company motto these days...
A few years ago, Microsoft might have had a chance. However, IBM has too much invested in Linux by now to let somebody push the penguin around. If Microsoft's shareholders were to "demand" a lawsuit (which is bull, what Microsoft's shareholders really want is for them to ship a product once in a while, like, say, Apple), IBM's shareholders would "demand" a defense of Linux. And let's remember one thing: IBM wins its lawsuits, while Microsoft needs a friendly U.S. administration to save them. You don't start a land war in Russia, and you don't try to sue IBM, because they might get pissed enough to take a look at what patents they have from the days when Gates was trying to program his teddy bear.
Microsoft is too late, again. Seems to be the company motto at the moment.
Microsoft is doing stuff right with the new office
on
Office Delayed, Too
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· Score: 1
Though I might be one of the more unlikely people in the world to say this, as we have OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice (the Mac version) at home exclusively: What I have seen of the new version of MS Office looks like they are finally on the right track again. For one thing, they have cut down on the number of features and menus, and have reorganized stuff based on the steps of normal workflow (editing, reviewing, etc) instead of around, well, whatever the current chaos was supposed to do. The preview functions are a lot better than they were, with live updating on fast machines. Instead of adding stupid features for two percent of their users, they are focusing on better usability for all.
Now, I have a Mac friend who claims that this all just ripped off from Apple's Pages word processor. Since Vista is a shameless OS X clone right down to the colors, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. However, Pages currently fails the same test as MS Office: They want me to pay money for it. Anything is too expensive when I can do everything I have to do for free on NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org with increasing amounts of Aqua). If you haven't looked into OpenOffice.org, this delay might be what yo have been waiting for to save that money you have been giving Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) all those years.
I'm not buying anything with RC anymore
on
Region-free PS3
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· Score: 1
I'm glad somebody actually has half a brain at Sony. Now, if they could get their Blu-ray people to see the light, too, I might even consider buying one some day. There is no way in hell I'm going through the trouble of figuring out how to bypass regional codes again for normal films: I paid for the player, I paid for the film, and anything that prevents me from using the two together will mean one thing: Lost sales. Thank God for VLC.
Unfortunately, I think that part of Sony will force this part of Sony to do something stupid again...
Slashdot Mirror
There is a little German car maker you might have heard of named Prosche. They make sehr viel money. Their stock is doing sehr gut. They don't really care about market share. Now, nobody bothers them about this or writes little essays about how Porsche will never catch up with Toyota or GM, because everybody understands they are playing for profit, not market share. For some reason, many people don't understand this with Apple. They keep talking about market share.
Apple has no debt. They are making lots of money -- okay, so is Microsoft. Their stock is up, what, 70 per cent this year -- Microsoft's has been dead in the water for years. Apple has two different product lines that are doing fine: Computers and iPods. They are working on a third, the iPhone. Microsoft has two products of the same type, Windows and Office, that make money. Everything else they have touched, like the Zune and the Xbox, has been a financial disaster.
Let Microsoft keep its market share. Apple is making money and making its shareholders happy. Like Porsche.
Both terms have been around just about forever (unfortunately). Learn it. Editors, you are getting paid to catch this sort of stuff. Correct it.
Don't you wish Bill Gates were a Sci-Fi fan? He could just finance a whole season, no strings attached, just for the heck of it, and donate the the sales of the DVD to his charity fund. I'd buy.
What Gentoo should do is produce a standardized base version for the Mac Intel line -- MacBooks, MacPros, iMacs, MacMini. These machines have standardized hardware, and the iMac especially doesn't lend itself to fooling around with the internals. Buy a Mac, pop in the Gentoo CD, fool around with some of the minor points, and then you have an instant computer.
They forgot Apple.
This is turning out to be all stuff and nonsense, and I think I'll just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray one and wait for the next next generation, when maybe somebody with half a brain is involved. DVD is perfectly good enough for me, thank you very much.
Now, if I just knew what to do with those Apple stickers they keep including...
Fortunately, this is America, so it is very easy to figure out if this is a widespread problem: If there is no gimme-a-million-bucks-I-deserve-it class-action lawsuit ongoing, forget it. It is that easy.
I can't wait to see his American lawyer claim that he didn't understand what he was doing -- how was he to know that the defense computers were actually defence computers? How could he realize that his behavior was bad behaviour? After that, you can only hope that the court will table the claims...
I'm told that Coke frowns on their employees publicly drinking Pepsi, too. Or try showing up to work at GM with a Honda.
So yeah, maybe some ubergeeks I've never heard of switched. Whoopie. Back in the real world, the rest of us are pretty happy not having to screw around with configuration files for every little thing, because it leaves us more time to play with our children.
So, yeah, go ahead and build your database. By the time it is up and running, it will be obsolete, and we'll be discussing other problems.
There is no way in hell I am going to invest in a technology when there is a 50-50 chance that it will go the way of the Betamax. A brief and informal survey among my friends -- some of whom actually bought laserdisks and such -- shows the same thing. Also, the thing is so riddled with control mechanisms that I get the impression I would never really own a movie again: It seems that they could just decide to switch off my copy when everything they plan to do is finished and done. Oh, and then there is the region code thing again. That has to go before I will even consider it. In short, no way either way. Try listening to the customers and getting your act together next time, and we'll see.
The question is -- what is left to blog about at Microsoft at the moment anyway? It has all been said. We've seen Vista, and it's a late clone of Mac OS X. We've seen the new Office, and we're going to have relearn a lot. Their stock market performance is a joke, and Ballmer is going to sit on all that money they have instead of giving back to the shareholders or doing something useful. The Xbox 360 looks pretty cool, we know that, too. There don't seem to be any new, exciting products in the pipeline. So what is the point of blogging? This simply is not a sexy company anymore. Give us something to sing about, and we'll sing. Until then...everything has been said. Especially of course if they gave you your towel back...
Basically, they're screwed.
My experience has been more that they don't realize that things can be different.
"Microsoft" is a synonym for computers for them, since they have never seen a computer with a different operating system. They don't remember "Atari" or "Amiga" (now that makes me feel old), and have never touched a Mac or a PC running Linux. So they assume that things must be the same there, too.
Colleagues at work stare at me when I tell them that neither my Apples nor Gentoos have any virus protection at all, that I don't have to reboot it for every little thing, that I can plug my camera into my iBook and it just works. For them, the Windows way is the way all computers work.
What has really opened their eyes is Firefox. It is so much better than IE in all respects that those computers that don't have it installed are being avoided. Firefox shows people that things can be different, that there is a life without Microsoft, and that this life can be pretty good. Slashdot readers need to remember that not everybody has a job where computer literacy is high. Lots of people out there just suffer through Microsoft in quiet desperation, never guessing that things could be different.
Personally, I think having anything put in your body that doesn't have to go there is a stupid risk to take, however small it might be.
This whole "wants to be the biggest" thing is beyond me, unless it has something to do with Freudian hangups on the part of the commentators. Get over it.
I tried it at home with the various machines there, but Bonjour for Windows sucked (only worked for printers anyway) and Linux, well, isn't there yet (I'm wondering if that shouldn't be an acronym: LITY. I seem to be using it a lot since I switched to a Mac).
This is a technology that should be everywhere and one you seriously don't want to be without once you have seen it (the other is Spotlight -- I'm never going to use a desktop machine again that doesn't have live searching). If you have a chance to use it, go for it.
This is a good thing: Every time some little company pisses off some big player like Microsoft, IBM or Apple with some inane patent thing, it pushes the big companies (and their army of Washington lobbyists) one step closer to realizing just how screwed up the American patent system is. Of course it would help if the people in Congress had a clue, but every little bit helps.
Which seems to be Microsoft's company motto these days...
Microsoft is too late, again. Seems to be the company motto at the moment.
Now, I have a Mac friend who claims that this all just ripped off from Apple's Pages word processor. Since Vista is a shameless OS X clone right down to the colors, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. However, Pages currently fails the same test as MS Office: They want me to pay money for it. Anything is too expensive when I can do everything I have to do for free on NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org with increasing amounts of Aqua). If you haven't looked into OpenOffice.org, this delay might be what yo have been waiting for to save that money you have been giving Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) all those years.
Unfortunately, I think that part of Sony will force this part of Sony to do something stupid again ...