Apple aspires to sell the highest margin third and no more. It makes them a premium brand with premium margins. They have no aspiration to control the market and don't care what the other two-thirds do with their share. This is a grand successful strategy for Apple and I cannot disparage it. They get almost all the profit money and they're fine with that. I don't care for their gear, their philosophy, nor their 'ware - but they've got this money thing figured out.
With iPad they overshot by a good deal and they'll be grinding out product as fast as they can to meet that third for the forseeable future. They're building factories the size of cities, investing tens of billions of dollars in inventory and parts to secure a major fraction of the world's production capacity. But they didn't ever and won't ever aspire to be the cheap gear the least two thirds of people buy, nor will they aspire to be the provider of gear we turn to our own odd purposes. That's not them.
I don't even care for their products, nor their Cathedral. I'm more of an Android Bazzar kind of guy. I like to own my gear and control it utterly. But even I can see this strategy is working for Apple. They're kicking ass and taking names.
Microsoft carefully managed and encouraged the hardware provider race to the bottom by managing the cost of the software for certain partners. They needed their hardware partners to be weak, subsisting on slim margins less than their software cost.
Now they reap what they sow. It was a good plan up until we found an escape from it.
A better plan would have included the idea that people crave progress as a postulate, and worked from there. Preventing progress can only get you so far and no more.
The trick is fooling other people into making the big bold bets, thinking you will backstop them when you won't. If you can pull that off over and over for 20 years and more, you're Microsoft.
As Microsoft said in the surface announcement, the opportunity to design both the hardware and the software together so that they work together the most completely is the ultimate ideal. The silicon can be improved to work around hardware difficulties, and vice versa. HP and Dell can't do that. Apple and Android manufacturers can.
The lesson here is that software and hardware designed together has benefits. Microsoft actually said that. PC OEMs can't design Windows to best fit their hardware. They would need open software or own software for that. So the worst possible Microsoft outcome would be for the hardware OEMs to agree with them on this obvious issue and act on that.
Decent tablets are starting to appear at about $100. Before this appears a nice 7" quad core tablet will be $200. An actual iPad starts at $350. I just don't see it priced to appeal to Windows users. And the pro? No way.
I'm writing this reply on my Asus Transformer TF101. This thing is awesome. My only problem with it is I need to work it one-handed. I need the other hand to hold the flyswatter I need to chase the children away from it. I can't afford Transformers for all. $200 tablets? That I could do.
All of them. Hiding your tracks is the opposite of terrorism. Terrorism, by definition, requires maximum awareness of the activity. Public fear is quite the point of terrorism, and covering your track defeats that.
Israel has had nukes for a very long time and not hurt anybody with them. When somebody new gets nukes we have to worry if they'll settle a grudge right away.
Iran uses XP as desktops for their top nuclear physicists. I think that's all we need to know about their IT technical proficiency and operations security. They're the Wile-E-Coyote of secret technology.
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This i supposed to be funny. Oracle prohibits private benchmark publication in their license.
Sure you can. SCO did it. The lawyers will make sure that by the time it's done all the assets are gone and the creditors don't get paid.
NVidia doesn't even have sole ownership of their own hardware interface specifications. There will be no documenation. Ever. It is not theirs to give.
Not really. What is needed is hardware that can be documented. Nice of nVidia to confess they are "not it". Spares having to consider them.
This is neither here nor there, but I seem to attract the AC respondents more than the average slashdotter.
Apple aspires to sell the highest margin third and no more. It makes them a premium brand with premium margins. They have no aspiration to control the market and don't care what the other two-thirds do with their share. This is a grand successful strategy for Apple and I cannot disparage it. They get almost all the profit money and they're fine with that. I don't care for their gear, their philosophy, nor their 'ware - but they've got this money thing figured out.
With iPad they overshot by a good deal and they'll be grinding out product as fast as they can to meet that third for the forseeable future. They're building factories the size of cities, investing tens of billions of dollars in inventory and parts to secure a major fraction of the world's production capacity. But they didn't ever and won't ever aspire to be the cheap gear the least two thirds of people buy, nor will they aspire to be the provider of gear we turn to our own odd purposes. That's not them.
I don't even care for their products, nor their Cathedral. I'm more of an Android Bazzar kind of guy. I like to own my gear and control it utterly. But even I can see this strategy is working for Apple. They're kicking ass and taking names.
Microsoft carefully managed and encouraged the hardware provider race to the bottom by managing the cost of the software for certain partners. They needed their hardware partners to be weak, subsisting on slim margins less than their software cost.
Now they reap what they sow. It was a good plan up until we found an escape from it.
A better plan would have included the idea that people crave progress as a postulate, and worked from there. Preventing progress can only get you so far and no more.
The trick is fooling other people into making the big bold bets, thinking you will backstop them when you won't. If you can pull that off over and over for 20 years and more, you're Microsoft.
As Microsoft said in the surface announcement, the opportunity to design both the hardware and the software together so that they work together the most completely is the ultimate ideal. The silicon can be improved to work around hardware difficulties, and vice versa. HP and Dell can't do that. Apple and Android manufacturers can.
When they were marched out toward the end of the last decade, they didn't leave forwarding addresses. So failure to notify them is excusable.
But what have you done for me lately?
There are limits. I'm sensing that if they're not over the limit yet they are dangerously close.
The lesson here is that software and hardware designed together has benefits. Microsoft actually said that. PC OEMs can't design Windows to best fit their hardware. They would need open software or own software for that. So the worst possible Microsoft outcome would be for the hardware OEMs to agree with them on this obvious issue and act on that.
Lose more money. Their mobile efforts are already bleeding out like an ebola victim.
They don't have the margins to make big bold bets.
"Finnish him!"
There is talk of ending the one-nexus-at-time rule.
Decent tablets are starting to appear at about $100. Before this appears a nice 7" quad core tablet will be $200. An actual iPad starts at $350. I just don't see it priced to appeal to Windows users. And the pro? No way.
In bioterrorism there are dead bodies lying 'round to invoke terror.
I'm writing this reply on my Asus Transformer TF101. This thing is awesome. My only problem with it is I need to work it one-handed. I need the other hand to hold the flyswatter I need to chase the children away from it. I can't afford Transformers for all. $200 tablets? That I could do.
We love the people of Iran, and crave as they do the day they can join us in the modern world. The government of Iran though... not so much.
All of them. Hiding your tracks is the opposite of terrorism. Terrorism, by definition, requires maximum awareness of the activity. Public fear is quite the point of terrorism, and covering your track defeats that.
Israel has had nukes for a very long time and not hurt anybody with them. When somebody new gets nukes we have to worry if they'll settle a grudge right away.
This is seriously old stuff. You have no idea.
Iran uses XP as desktops for their top nuclear physicists. I think that's all we need to know about their IT technical proficiency and operations security. They're the Wile-E-Coyote of secret technology.