nor is it a brand new technology - but it's only going to happen and appear on the site of your favorite component supplier because MS has decided to support it in it's new OS.
A whole load of new hardware tech never takes off as it's a bit chicken and egg - I'm not buying a PhysX card until I actually find my software will support it and the software's not going to be made until I buy the card etc.
People might bitch and moan about MS, but it looks like they can actually make new stuff happen.
MS decide they're going to support a new type of drive -> All the drive makers start making the new sort of drive -> Linux/OSX will get drivers to support the new drive -> We all benefit.
See MS is good for something.
would just stop pissing around with these great ideas.
Whatever the deposit is, whatever else they try to do the simple fact is supply will outstrip demand and people will get pissed off and the consoles will be on ebay for silly money.
Two solutions to this, you can either increase supply, or reduce demand. We can assume Sony have maxed out the supply bit, so they now have to try to reduce demand in some way (and seemingly they've been trying their best to do this for months with the neverending fiascos).
Price of console has to be put up in some way to reduce demand. Have a pre-christmas price that's £100 more (give it to charity to make people feel good). Sell a bundle that has every game in it. Sell a bundle that has a free game voucher you can redeem every 6 months for a couple of years, bundle a guaranteed PS3 with nice big Sony flatscreen displays, just stick 25,000 (or whatever) on ebay and be done with it.
into google's gcash thingie they've just wheeled out.
You'll click an advert, buy a product, go to the checkout and pay via the gcash (I've forgotten the name and can't be bothered looking). Google will know you clicked the advert and they'll know precisely how much you paid and can take their % off before the vendor even gets his money.
In fact it allows for a new model from google. The vendor doesn't pay for the adverts at all, they agree a percentage of the sale price they'll give to google. Google can then decide which adverts to place where entirely based on how much revenue they'll make - e.g. if you have a site that is reviewing a piece of hardware, google can work out if it's better for them to link the site that offers the lower price and pays a lower % or higher price with higher % (i.e. lower volume, higher margin)
is if MS brought out a higher priced Live Platinum service and provided an all you can eat music subscription service.
Use the 360 to choose what music you want, construct playlists, have the music playing as you play your games, play through your stereo and then just wifi it to your Zune.
As long as they provided it cheaply enough to get people hooked it would boost live sales, boost zune sales and tie peoples music and gaming to MS equipment forever.
In fact if you were trying to convince yourself to reach deep and buy yourself a 360, a few dollars extra on the live charge wouldn't be noticed, but free music for a year would be a saving.
In fact you'd bundle a few months free music with each 360. Ideally (probably essentially due to the size of the 360 disk) the whole thing would link to an MSTunes service on your PC.
1. How on earth is Apple keeping the prices down? How does having a (virtually) sole supplier help lower the prices? Can you give me an example of how a monopoly ever keeps prices down (unless the monopoly lowers prices in an effort to keep others coming into the market - which is pretty much what MS gets bashed for all the time).
2. Erm fine. I use iTunes on a PC, no reason you couldn't use MS whatever on your Mac (I know you're probably frothing at the mouth at this, but I can't see a reason why MS wouldn't want to let Mac users into this).
3. Erm.. 'ugly'? wtf
4. It's not illegal and they're not the downloadable music monopoly... apart from that spot on..
was about a year ago - I'm sure it's all flashing lights and 20 confirmation screens now.
I think the message was along the lines of do you want to pair your ipod to his iTunes.
Seemingly you can get around this problem, by configuring your ipod not to auto-sync with the second copy of iTunes. This is dandy - apart from the fact iTunes only gives you the option screen where you can change this from the default after you've already connected your ipod...*holds head in hands*
Your 60Gig iPod can hold 15,000 songs.
Soo, lets say you've filled it from iTunes and say that would cost say..oooh $15k
Ignoring for a start that nobody has ever filled an iPod with legit music, do you really think that MS is going to pay that much to help you switch?
They've obviously done a deal with the record companies. We'll help you break Apple's virtual monopoly on downloaded music and ensure you don't lose a penny.
Record companies allow MS to 'swap out' Fair Play tracks for Plays for Sure at zero cost. Apple monopoly broken, MS gets the killer way into market, We get more choice, Apple finally has to compete.
Can ANYBODY actually see a problem with this.
I'm not saying it's Apple's fault though - music industry really aren't switched on to what people want (this is people who have actually decided to give them money).
When I first got my ipod, it was nice. I installed itunes, I installed my music. It was great.
Sat at work and had some music on my PC there. Excellent I'll stick it on my ipod to take home with me. Installed iTunes, plugged in my ipod and iTunes completely emptied it for me.
My main problem with iTunes is that it makes your iPod it's bitch. Your first copy of iTunes is where your music lives, your ipod is just a way of allowing you to access a subset of that on the move - that's it.
Once you've accepted it, I've no real problem with it, it just seems bizarre that the mobile part of the iTunes solution (i.e the bit you might move between PCs) isn't considered to be the primary key.
It's not vendor lock in, it's lock in to a format sure. In the same way that owning a CD player is vendor lock in (in that you've got to buy hardware that 'supports CDs' and buy media in a 'CD format'). There are a growing number of different manufacturers making players that can play this evil MS format and a large number of different stores you can buy this evil MS format from.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but with Apple and FairPlay *sniggers* you're stuck with iTunes and an iPod (or that shitty phone) and that's it. Forever (unless you want to lose the music you've bought, or MS actually do give you the stuff you've paid for).
I assume MS isn't reaching into their pockets to cough up the complete 79p a track - one suspects a nice deal has been done with the music industry - they really aren't huge fans of Apple.
Personally I think this will be better for everybody. If you want rid of your ipod and a choice of players you can now have it without the huge hit. If you want to stick with Apple, then you know they're actually going to have to innovate (and not force you through iTunes every time you want to listen to anything (and yes I know there are alternatives like Anapod)).
It's virtually impossible to close a GSM phone - and surely if somebody had, they'd have been making obscenely expensive outgoing calls on it. Two possibilities:
T-Mobile have cocked up - they can easily check the calls and get more information about them to confirm if this is the case.
Your partner is lying/mistaken about receiving calls. If I had a suspicious mind, I'd just 'borrow' his phone and check the call log on the handset - see if one of the mysterious calls appears there.
Google is better than the MS search engine (which I think most people would agree is getting better rapidly, whatever your views on MS might be).
So unless MS cajoles their employees to use their own engine over google, I'd expect the majority of them to use google - much as you would with any other randomly chosen company.
The vast majority of MS employees just want to find information to help them with whatever they're trying to do. I'm not entirely sure whether the point of this article is that 'Google is better than MS Search' or 'MS doesn't hobble their employees by restricting them to their own engine'. Either way, not quite sure why this got picked up on/.
*rubs crystal ball*
I foresee in the future as the MS search engine improves further, the share of MS employees (and the rest of the planet for that matter) using MS Search will also improve.
although I'm sure I'll be in a minority here (y'know MS supposedly useless and all).
99% of all crashes and malfunctions my PC experiences are down to dodgy drivers.
I've had months of fun trying to get my NV4 mobo to play nice with my X2 for large USB data transfers and it's driven me up the wall - wish I'd never bothered upgrading.
I envision a future where I can find a review for the latest graphics card and there'll be a little automatically updating graph at the bottom that tells me how many crashes were reported to MS from people using driver X on it.
In fact this sortof data manipulation could enable you to do fancy stuff, like enter in your current driver config (automatically) and then enter a proposed upgrade - and there's no reason why it shouldn't be able to tell you whether you can expect more of less crashes.
I guess the only missing piece to this jigsaw is reporting to MS when you install a driver (I'd be happy to) - the number of crashes reported to MS is only important if they'll also let you know how many people have installed a driver and not had it crash on them.
Another tangent of thought would allow MS to report to manufacturers crash dumps for a particular combination of drivers/hardware that is proving to be problematic. PCs aren't buggy because of MS, or often from a driver maker alone - but rather than quite gargantuan combination of drivers people have installed (contrasted with say Apple, or even Dell where driver combinations are much fewer and can be tested to death before release).
I'm with you to a point. If you buy a CD, you're locked into a company that's paid Philips a licensing fee for the technology. It's just that the fee is so low and the market penetration is so wide that it's not something you need to even consider any more.
If you buy something on Fairplay you're stuck with Apple (and with the single hobbled Motorola implementation aside, you're going to be stuck with them forever).
With Plays for Sure you're still hobbled - just less hobbled.
I'm not saying I like either DRM implementation, I'm just saying that one seems to be better than the other.
the people who benefit from research are the people who need a treatment. Big pharma collectively makes a very large profit.
They make a profit as people need the treatments they produce (people seem to have deep pockets when faced with death and disease).
The current situation you've created is that the publicly funded scientists have handcuffs applied, that the private sector doesn't have to deal with.
Now assumign those without restraints are going to be more likely to find a profitable cure for something - then maybe (even if you don't like the idea of stem cell research) you might consider that you're not really getting the best bang for your buck - and in the future more likely to be lining the pockets of pharma - rather than receiving the treatment your tax-dollars funded.
" will make a competiting product obsolete"
That's not what he's saying - NOBODY was sitting about trying to decide whether they should buy a PS3 or a PC
This is like him saying buying a PS3 will make your requirement for oxygen obsolete.
He doesn't think stem cell research funding should be denied - yet belongs to a party where the majority of members (and their voters) think it should be.
Whilst it's a political issue - he's got to either help withold the funding (something he doesn't believe is right), or piss off his voters (which he really doesn't want to do).
If it stops becoming a political issue, then the funding decision isn't his to make and if voters demands he withold it, he can just say it's not his problem.
The US is a very conservative country - and there is genuinely very little to separate the Democrats and Republicans ideologically.
Both parties are broad churches containing members of differing views on pretty much all of the 'issues'
The only persons of interest are those at the extremes - you can probably tell the differece between a right wing republican and a left wing democrat - but between the two it gets a little fuzzy.
"It is unacceptable that stem cell research is being outlawed pretty much everywhere"
It's mainly just been outlawed in the US, and specifically in projects that take funding from your government (as I understand it).
It's a quite bizarre situation. If stem cell research had been banned outright, then it would make more sense as at least it could be looked at as an ethical decision. This ban on funding is an entirely political point - the US science system has been hobbled entirely to make a political point.
Still - when your scientists are phoned and asked which party they vote for, before they get their money (and nobody seems to care)
*shrugs*
You reap what you sow.
much as I hate to - I agree with you.
You have itunes and an ipod and you can buy music.
Want a better music player, go to apple.com, pick one you can afford and slam it in your cradle - you're away!
On the other hand defending this ease of use (well laziness) over competition is exactly what Mac zealots complain about keeping XP as the dominant OS.
there's an awful lot of people looking to get away from iDRM
I've bought music from iTunes. If I stop buying iPods between now and the end of my life, I've got to either lose that music on the go, or re-buy it (and add that cost to replacing my iPod).
The MS system isn't as slick - but at least I know I'll have more choices of vendors to buy from in the future (who might actually try to compete with each other) and sooner of later one of them is going to produce something much better than the iPod of that time.
ex-flatmate was a journalist and brought home an iPod pre-release.
The one and only Apple product ever that make my jaw drop and fill my heart with desire.
"I can fit albums on there? Many Many albums? On a little box that goes in my pocket!!!"
I really don't want to like my iPod. I loathe having stuff tied into iTunes.
But it just all kind of works - easilyish (well more easily than the alternatives).
The iPod is really rather a lovely bit of technical design... ...and now I've bought m4p music - I have to keep buying iPods into the future....
they're completely different companies.
Nintendo flogs hardware at pretty much cost - recouping by selling titles/accesories to the consumer.
Apple makes their money on the hardware sale and then pretty much writes off income until it's upgrade time.
Nintendo enters the market at the lowest price point they can to acheive maximum market penetration.
Apple sells at a premium and doesn't penetrate that much as a consequence.
If anything Nintendo is like Dell - they shift large numbers of units, at low prices and get into pretty much every demographic as a consequence.
This might be a bit controversial - but what would help MS, Apple and games in general is if MS released a stripped down/cheap version of XP.
Mac users want to play a game. They go go to Microsoft.com, give MS $40-50 or whatever and download and install XP which sets itself up as a nice dual-boot system.
MS gets money from people who weren't going to buy their OS otherwise, Apple gets cash from gamers who finally get tempted by pretty hardware and the potential games market expands by the 10% or whatever that OSX currently occupies.
In fact if you coupled this with direct2drive this becomes even cheaper to the end user. Whoever is selling the game won't get the sale unless the downloader can play it - so surely it's not too much of a bitter pill for the game publisher to pass say half their profit over to MS to subsidize the new OS required?
OpenGL has fallen way behind DirectX.
Open GL and DirectX are both supported on XP and in GPU drivers. If people have given up developing on OpenGL (which has more scope to be ported) and have moved to DirectX, maybe that's because a) it's better and b) it's easier to develop for.
If you own a decently specced machine (i.e. decent GPU) then in all likelihood you've got a recently produced intel-based Apple machine.
Just buy XP. Use OSX for everything else by all means - but games take over the whole user interface and once running full screen the OS running silently in the background is immaterial.
Quite how the writer of the article expects OSX porters to carry on, when shortly every Mac user can buy XP and run every game out there, is beyond me (unless he's some weird zealot type).
Slashdot Mirror
nor is it a brand new technology - but it's only going to happen and appear on the site of your favorite component supplier because MS has decided to support it in it's new OS.
A whole load of new hardware tech never takes off as it's a bit chicken and egg - I'm not buying a PhysX card until I actually find my software will support it and the software's not going to be made until I buy the card etc.
People might bitch and moan about MS, but it looks like they can actually make new stuff happen.
MS decide they're going to support a new type of drive -> All the drive makers start making the new sort of drive -> Linux/OSX will get drivers to support the new drive -> We all benefit.
See MS is good for something.
would just stop pissing around with these great ideas.
Whatever the deposit is, whatever else they try to do the simple fact is supply will outstrip demand and people will get pissed off and the consoles will be on ebay for silly money.
Two solutions to this, you can either increase supply, or reduce demand. We can assume Sony have maxed out the supply bit, so they now have to try to reduce demand in some way (and seemingly they've been trying their best to do this for months with the neverending fiascos).
Price of console has to be put up in some way to reduce demand. Have a pre-christmas price that's £100 more (give it to charity to make people feel good). Sell a bundle that has every game in it. Sell a bundle that has a free game voucher you can redeem every 6 months for a couple of years, bundle a guaranteed PS3 with nice big Sony flatscreen displays, just stick 25,000 (or whatever) on ebay and be done with it.
into google's gcash thingie they've just wheeled out.
You'll click an advert, buy a product, go to the checkout and pay via the gcash (I've forgotten the name and can't be bothered looking). Google will know you clicked the advert and they'll know precisely how much you paid and can take their % off before the vendor even gets his money.
In fact it allows for a new model from google. The vendor doesn't pay for the adverts at all, they agree a percentage of the sale price they'll give to google. Google can then decide which adverts to place where entirely based on how much revenue they'll make - e.g. if you have a site that is reviewing a piece of hardware, google can work out if it's better for them to link the site that offers the lower price and pays a lower % or higher price with higher % (i.e. lower volume, higher margin)
is if MS brought out a higher priced Live Platinum service and provided an all you can eat music subscription service.
Use the 360 to choose what music you want, construct playlists, have the music playing as you play your games, play through your stereo and then just wifi it to your Zune.
As long as they provided it cheaply enough to get people hooked it would boost live sales, boost zune sales and tie peoples music and gaming to MS equipment forever.
In fact if you were trying to convince yourself to reach deep and buy yourself a 360, a few dollars extra on the live charge wouldn't be noticed, but free music for a year would be a saving.
In fact you'd bundle a few months free music with each 360. Ideally (probably essentially due to the size of the 360 disk) the whole thing would link to an MSTunes service on your PC.
1. How on earth is Apple keeping the prices down? How does having a (virtually) sole supplier help lower the prices? Can you give me an example of how a monopoly ever keeps prices down (unless the monopoly lowers prices in an effort to keep others coming into the market - which is pretty much what MS gets bashed for all the time).
2. Erm fine. I use iTunes on a PC, no reason you couldn't use MS whatever on your Mac (I know you're probably frothing at the mouth at this, but I can't see a reason why MS wouldn't want to let Mac users into this).
3. Erm.. 'ugly'? wtf
4. It's not illegal and they're not the downloadable music monopoly... apart from that spot on..
was about a year ago - I'm sure it's all flashing lights and 20 confirmation screens now.
I think the message was along the lines of do you want to pair your ipod to his iTunes.
Seemingly you can get around this problem, by configuring your ipod not to auto-sync with the second copy of iTunes. This is dandy - apart from the fact iTunes only gives you the option screen where you can change this from the default after you've already connected your ipod...*holds head in hands*
Your 60Gig iPod can hold 15,000 songs.
Soo, lets say you've filled it from iTunes and say that would cost say..oooh $15k
Ignoring for a start that nobody has ever filled an iPod with legit music, do you really think that MS is going to pay that much to help you switch?
They've obviously done a deal with the record companies. We'll help you break Apple's virtual monopoly on downloaded music and ensure you don't lose a penny.
Record companies allow MS to 'swap out' Fair Play tracks for Plays for Sure at zero cost. Apple monopoly broken, MS gets the killer way into market, We get more choice, Apple finally has to compete.
Can ANYBODY actually see a problem with this.
I'm not saying it's Apple's fault though - music industry really aren't switched on to what people want (this is people who have actually decided to give them money).
When I first got my ipod, it was nice. I installed itunes, I installed my music. It was great.
Sat at work and had some music on my PC there. Excellent I'll stick it on my ipod to take home with me. Installed iTunes, plugged in my ipod and iTunes completely emptied it for me.
My main problem with iTunes is that it makes your iPod it's bitch. Your first copy of iTunes is where your music lives, your ipod is just a way of allowing you to access a subset of that on the move - that's it.
Once you've accepted it, I've no real problem with it, it just seems bizarre that the mobile part of the iTunes solution (i.e the bit you might move between PCs) isn't considered to be the primary key.
It's not vendor lock in, it's lock in to a format sure. In the same way that owning a CD player is vendor lock in (in that you've got to buy hardware that 'supports CDs' and buy media in a 'CD format').
There are a growing number of different manufacturers making players that can play this evil MS format and a large number of different stores you can buy this evil MS format from.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but with Apple and FairPlay *sniggers* you're stuck with iTunes and an iPod (or that shitty phone) and that's it. Forever (unless you want to lose the music you've bought, or MS actually do give you the stuff you've paid for).
I assume MS isn't reaching into their pockets to cough up the complete 79p a track - one suspects a nice deal has been done with the music industry - they really aren't huge fans of Apple.
Personally I think this will be better for everybody. If you want rid of your ipod and a choice of players you can now have it without the huge hit. If you want to stick with Apple, then you know they're actually going to have to innovate (and not force you through iTunes every time you want to listen to anything (and yes I know there are alternatives like Anapod)).
It's virtually impossible to close a GSM phone - and surely if somebody had, they'd have been making obscenely expensive outgoing calls on it. Two possibilities:
T-Mobile have cocked up - they can easily check the calls and get more information about them to confirm if this is the case.
Your partner is lying/mistaken about receiving calls. If I had a suspicious mind, I'd just 'borrow' his phone and check the call log on the handset - see if one of the mysterious calls appears there.
Google is better than the MS search engine (which I think most people would agree is getting better rapidly, whatever your views on MS might be). /.
So unless MS cajoles their employees to use their own engine over google, I'd expect the majority of them to use google - much as you would with any other randomly chosen company.
The vast majority of MS employees just want to find information to help them with whatever they're trying to do. I'm not entirely sure whether the point of this article is that 'Google is better than MS Search' or 'MS doesn't hobble their employees by restricting them to their own engine'. Either way, not quite sure why this got picked up on
*rubs crystal ball*
I foresee in the future as the MS search engine improves further, the share of MS employees (and the rest of the planet for that matter) using MS Search will also improve.
although I'm sure I'll be in a minority here (y'know MS supposedly useless and all).
99% of all crashes and malfunctions my PC experiences are down to dodgy drivers.
I've had months of fun trying to get my NV4 mobo to play nice with my X2 for large USB data transfers and it's driven me up the wall - wish I'd never bothered upgrading.
I envision a future where I can find a review for the latest graphics card and there'll be a little automatically updating graph at the bottom that tells me how many crashes were reported to MS from people using driver X on it.
In fact this sortof data manipulation could enable you to do fancy stuff, like enter in your current driver config (automatically) and then enter a proposed upgrade - and there's no reason why it shouldn't be able to tell you whether you can expect more of less crashes.
I guess the only missing piece to this jigsaw is reporting to MS when you install a driver (I'd be happy to) - the number of crashes reported to MS is only important if they'll also let you know how many people have installed a driver and not had it crash on them.
Another tangent of thought would allow MS to report to manufacturers crash dumps for a particular combination of drivers/hardware that is proving to be problematic. PCs aren't buggy because of MS, or often from a driver maker alone - but rather than quite gargantuan combination of drivers people have installed (contrasted with say Apple, or even Dell where driver combinations are much fewer and can be tested to death before release).
I'm with you to a point. If you buy a CD, you're locked into a company that's paid Philips a licensing fee for the technology. It's just that the fee is so low and the market penetration is so wide that it's not something you need to even consider any more.
If you buy something on Fairplay you're stuck with Apple (and with the single hobbled Motorola implementation aside, you're going to be stuck with them forever).
With Plays for Sure you're still hobbled - just less hobbled.
I'm not saying I like either DRM implementation, I'm just saying that one seems to be better than the other.
the people who benefit from research are the people who need a treatment. Big pharma collectively makes a very large profit.
They make a profit as people need the treatments they produce (people seem to have deep pockets when faced with death and disease).
The current situation you've created is that the publicly funded scientists have handcuffs applied, that the private sector doesn't have to deal with.
Now assumign those without restraints are going to be more likely to find a profitable cure for something - then maybe (even if you don't like the idea of stem cell research) you might consider that you're not really getting the best bang for your buck - and in the future more likely to be lining the pockets of pharma - rather than receiving the treatment your tax-dollars funded.
" will make a competiting product obsolete"
That's not what he's saying - NOBODY was sitting about trying to decide whether they should buy a PS3 or a PC
This is like him saying buying a PS3 will make your requirement for oxygen obsolete.
He doesn't think stem cell research funding should be denied - yet belongs to a party where the majority of members (and their voters) think it should be.
Whilst it's a political issue - he's got to either help withold the funding (something he doesn't believe is right), or piss off his voters (which he really doesn't want to do).
If it stops becoming a political issue, then the funding decision isn't his to make and if voters demands he withold it, he can just say it's not his problem.
The US is a very conservative country - and there is genuinely very little to separate the Democrats and Republicans ideologically.
Both parties are broad churches containing members of differing views on pretty much all of the 'issues'
The only persons of interest are those at the extremes - you can probably tell the differece between a right wing republican and a left wing democrat - but between the two it gets a little fuzzy.
"It is unacceptable that stem cell research is being outlawed pretty much everywhere"
It's mainly just been outlawed in the US, and specifically in projects that take funding from your government (as I understand it).
It's a quite bizarre situation. If stem cell research had been banned outright, then it would make more sense as at least it could be looked at as an ethical decision. This ban on funding is an entirely political point - the US science system has been hobbled entirely to make a political point.
Still - when your scientists are phoned and asked which party they vote for, before they get their money (and nobody seems to care)
*shrugs*
You reap what you sow.
much as I hate to - I agree with you.
You have itunes and an ipod and you can buy music.
Want a better music player, go to apple.com, pick one you can afford and slam it in your cradle - you're away!
On the other hand defending this ease of use (well laziness) over competition is exactly what Mac zealots complain about keeping XP as the dominant OS.
there's an awful lot of people looking to get away from iDRM
I've bought music from iTunes. If I stop buying iPods between now and the end of my life, I've got to either lose that music on the go, or re-buy it (and add that cost to replacing my iPod).
The MS system isn't as slick - but at least I know I'll have more choices of vendors to buy from in the future (who might actually try to compete with each other) and sooner of later one of them is going to produce something much better than the iPod of that time.
ex-flatmate was a journalist and brought home an iPod pre-release.
The one and only Apple product ever that make my jaw drop and fill my heart with desire.
"I can fit albums on there? Many Many albums? On a little box that goes in my pocket!!!"
I really don't want to like my iPod. I loathe having stuff tied into iTunes.
...and now I've bought m4p music - I have to keep buying iPods into the future....
But it just all kind of works - easilyish (well more easily than the alternatives).
The iPod is really rather a lovely bit of technical design...
*over a barrel face*
*grits teeth and takes it*
they're completely different companies.
Nintendo flogs hardware at pretty much cost - recouping by selling titles/accesories to the consumer.
Apple makes their money on the hardware sale and then pretty much writes off income until it's upgrade time.
Nintendo enters the market at the lowest price point they can to acheive maximum market penetration.
Apple sells at a premium and doesn't penetrate that much as a consequence.
If anything Nintendo is like Dell - they shift large numbers of units, at low prices and get into pretty much every demographic as a consequence.
This might be a bit controversial - but what would help MS, Apple and games in general is if MS released a stripped down/cheap version of XP.
Mac users want to play a game. They go go to Microsoft.com, give MS $40-50 or whatever and download and install XP which sets itself up as a nice dual-boot system.
MS gets money from people who weren't going to buy their OS otherwise, Apple gets cash from gamers who finally get tempted by pretty hardware and the potential games market expands by the 10% or whatever that OSX currently occupies.
In fact if you coupled this with direct2drive this becomes even cheaper to the end user. Whoever is selling the game won't get the sale unless the downloader can play it - so surely it's not too much of a bitter pill for the game publisher to pass say half their profit over to MS to subsidize the new OS required?
OpenGL has fallen way behind DirectX.
Open GL and DirectX are both supported on XP and in GPU drivers. If people have given up developing on OpenGL (which has more scope to be ported) and have moved to DirectX, maybe that's because a) it's better and b) it's easier to develop for.
If you own a decently specced machine (i.e. decent GPU) then in all likelihood you've got a recently produced intel-based Apple machine.
Just buy XP. Use OSX for everything else by all means - but games take over the whole user interface and once running full screen the OS running silently in the background is immaterial.
Quite how the writer of the article expects OSX porters to carry on, when shortly every Mac user can buy XP and run every game out there, is beyond me (unless he's some weird zealot type).