Well, pictures, yes, but also a small piece they could take home and play around with any time they wanted to. That's worth quite a lot when you're a NASA engineer who doesn't get out much. Their terrestrial tail-chasing capabilities are probably not as advanced as their interplanetary counterparts...
It's funny that you mention desktop/laptop support... most of my experience has been on the server side. Dell might have great support for desktop/laptop systems, I certainly wouldn't know about it. In terms of enterprise-level hardware support, especially storage products, HP/Compaq has Dell beat by a mile. That's not to say Compaq can't be frustrating to deal with at times, but generally it's much better. As for IBM, Siemens or Toshiba, I've never had to work with any of them much, server-level or otherwise.
The main problem with Dell, for us, has been their field service. We have sites scattered all over the country, and we maintain four-hour call-out contracts to keep those sites covered, while having a minimal staff of our own field engineers. Dell out-sources a lot of their onsite support to another company. The individuals employed by that company are stunningly incompetent.
In one instance, a technician shuffled the drives in one cabinet of a 4TB NAS while troubleshooting a multiple drive failure. The NAS did not support roaming drives. Goodbye to 1TB of medical data, hello tape retrieval. Good times! In another case, while trying to replace parts in a Dell NAS head, the technician used a power screwdriver with a screw that was too long. The end result... A neat hole drilled through the NAS head's mainboard. Stellar! It doesn't take many incidents like that to destroy confidence in a company's service offerings. Considering how much money can be made off of service contracts and various uplifts, that can be crippling to a company. And don't even get me started on NAS firmware bugs, christ... if you have a Dell NAS, make sure the firmware is up to date, that's all I've got to say.
Actually, that's a business strategy I think we'll see even more of, but in new areas as well. Selling products at a distinct loss, and then locking the consumers of those products into service contracts, upgrade costs and maintenance fees. I think a lot more closed source software companies will move in that direction, but in a more extreme sense. Like buying a mobile phone that's only good as long as you maintain the contract; software that only works as long as you keep paying. All the more reason to go with open source software:-)
As someone who works for a service dept. maintaining turnkey systems for hospitals, many of which involve Dell hardware, I can unequivocally state that Dell does *not* have good support. That may once have been the case, but it is no longer true; they are currently vastly inferior to Compaq/HP, even when you consider the degrading in support that I have noticed since the merger.
Dell's success came entirely from optimizing supply chains, while at the same time providing a great deal of flexibility in system customization at order time. Once they got to a certain size, they could start using economies of scale to save money, getting fat price breaks from OEM vendors by dangling juicy parts contracts in front of their noses.
In general, I think companies like Dell or Walmart have only extended their market dominance through ruthless tactics. You can't really do that until *after* you've become the dominant force in a market sector. When you're a small fry with nothing more than a clever business idea, you don't have the power or influence to be ruthless. Ruthless can help you stay on top, but it won't really get you there all by itself.
In terms of installed units, the C64 might not have been the overall leader. However, I can distinctly recall that most of the families I knew with a computer in the 80s had a C64 at that time. I think the C64 was fairly price-competitive back than, as compared to the alternatives, and had great mindshare in the home market.
Unfortunately for them, the home market was a pitifully small slice of the pie at the time, and apparently wasn't a big enough niche to allow them to survive. The majority of systems out there that I saw (lots of Apple IIwhatever systems) were installed in schools and such. Apple always did have a big presence in the education market, back in The Day. I don't think the Commodore64 ever broke out of the home market, and most of the big money in the beige box business comes from education, goverment and private sector contracts.
To say that the Matrix is an allegory gives it too much credit, I think. Sure, there's lots of symbolism in the movies (especially when you include the... bleh... second and third installments), but it's such a mishmash of stuff, it really doesn't have the kind of cohesion required to start considering it allegory. In a broad sense, it fits the definition of allegory, but I shudder to imagine any classification that puts the Matrix in the same category as works of literature like Moby Dick (the quintessential example of an allegorical tale).
Yes, a MicroHTML interface embedded in silicon is behind the times for medical devices, because very few of them use embedded silicon for anything anymore. The average medical device does far more than you could hope to embed in silicon without blowing the cost of the unit sky-high. On top of that, users want the ability to upgrade the unit's capabilities quickly and easily. I agree that, obviously, the security on those ultrasounds that allow Messenger popups is terrible, but I have no control over how they're made, I've just spoken with users of these units. The question isn't whether I understand security, the question is do the people who make medical devices understand security. Sadly, it seems many of them don't, but that doesn't necessarily make MicroHTML in silicon a viable solution for a lot of modern medical devices.
I work for a medical imaging company; we don't make devices like ultrasounds, but our image viewing software displays the images they take. I've already had a few calls for users about Messenger popups advertising cheap university degrees, on Windows-based ultrasounds. MicroHTML sounds all well and good, but it's about 10 years behind the times for medical devices. Most medical devices these days are running either a full or embedded OS (often Windows-based for ultrasounds, and some flavour of Unix for more complex devices like CTs or MRs).
The "new" Finder isn't really that new at all. In fact, much of its basic design is so old it hurts. Have a look at this screenshot from the NextStep OS, and note the "File Viewer". Now compare it to this pic of the "new" Finder's column view. Apparently Mr. Jobs is using his position to bring back as many NextStep-isms as he can. That wouldn't be a bad idea, except the NextStep File Viewer pretty much sucks compared to more modern means of browsing a file system. You get a separate column for every subfolder; more than three levels deep, and it gets difficult to navigate with the column view. Personally, I like folders as a means of organizing files, and things often get nested pretty deep. My experience with NextStep makes me think that trying to browse anything but the flatest of filesystems will likely be horrendously painful with this "new" Finder.
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Well, pictures, yes, but also a small piece they could take home and play around with any time they wanted to. That's worth quite a lot when you're a NASA engineer who doesn't get out much. Their terrestrial tail-chasing capabilities are probably not as advanced as their interplanetary counterparts...
It's funny that you mention desktop/laptop support... most of my experience has been on the server side. Dell might have great support for desktop/laptop systems, I certainly wouldn't know about it. In terms of enterprise-level hardware support, especially storage products, HP/Compaq has Dell beat by a mile. That's not to say Compaq can't be frustrating to deal with at times, but generally it's much better. As for IBM, Siemens or Toshiba, I've never had to work with any of them much, server-level or otherwise.
:-)
The main problem with Dell, for us, has been their field service. We have sites scattered all over the country, and we maintain four-hour call-out contracts to keep those sites covered, while having a minimal staff of our own field engineers. Dell out-sources a lot of their onsite support to another company. The individuals employed by that company are stunningly incompetent.
In one instance, a technician shuffled the drives in one cabinet of a 4TB NAS while troubleshooting a multiple drive failure. The NAS did not support roaming drives. Goodbye to 1TB of medical data, hello tape retrieval. Good times! In another case, while trying to replace parts in a Dell NAS head, the technician used a power screwdriver with a screw that was too long. The end result... A neat hole drilled through the NAS head's mainboard. Stellar! It doesn't take many incidents like that to destroy confidence in a company's service offerings. Considering how much money can be made off of service contracts and various uplifts, that can be crippling to a company. And don't even get me started on NAS firmware bugs, christ... if you have a Dell NAS, make sure the firmware is up to date, that's all I've got to say.
Actually, that's a business strategy I think we'll see even more of, but in new areas as well. Selling products at a distinct loss, and then locking the consumers of those products into service contracts, upgrade costs and maintenance fees. I think a lot more closed source software companies will move in that direction, but in a more extreme sense. Like buying a mobile phone that's only good as long as you maintain the contract; software that only works as long as you keep paying. All the more reason to go with open source software
As someone who works for a service dept. maintaining turnkey systems for hospitals, many of which involve Dell hardware, I can unequivocally state that Dell does *not* have good support. That may once have been the case, but it is no longer true; they are currently vastly inferior to Compaq/HP, even when you consider the degrading in support that I have noticed since the merger.
Dell's success came entirely from optimizing supply chains, while at the same time providing a great deal of flexibility in system customization at order time. Once they got to a certain size, they could start using economies of scale to save money, getting fat price breaks from OEM vendors by dangling juicy parts contracts in front of their noses.
In general, I think companies like Dell or Walmart have only extended their market dominance through ruthless tactics. You can't really do that until *after* you've become the dominant force in a market sector. When you're a small fry with nothing more than a clever business idea, you don't have the power or influence to be ruthless. Ruthless can help you stay on top, but it won't really get you there all by itself.
In terms of installed units, the C64 might not have been the overall leader. However, I can distinctly recall that most of the families I knew with a computer in the 80s had a C64 at that time. I think the C64 was fairly price-competitive back than, as compared to the alternatives, and had great mindshare in the home market.
Unfortunately for them, the home market was a pitifully small slice of the pie at the time, and apparently wasn't a big enough niche to allow them to survive. The majority of systems out there that I saw (lots of Apple IIwhatever systems) were installed in schools and such. Apple always did have a big presence in the education market, back in The Day. I don't think the Commodore64 ever broke out of the home market, and most of the big money in the beige box business comes from education, goverment and private sector contracts.
To say that the Matrix is an allegory gives it too much credit, I think. Sure, there's lots of symbolism in the movies (especially when you include the... bleh... second and third installments), but it's such a mishmash of stuff, it really doesn't have the kind of cohesion required to start considering it allegory. In a broad sense, it fits the definition of allegory, but I shudder to imagine any classification that puts the Matrix in the same category as works of literature like Moby Dick (the quintessential example of an allegorical tale).
Yes, a MicroHTML interface embedded in silicon is behind the times for medical devices, because very few of them use embedded silicon for anything anymore. The average medical device does far more than you could hope to embed in silicon without blowing the cost of the unit sky-high. On top of that, users want the ability to upgrade the unit's capabilities quickly and easily. I agree that, obviously, the security on those ultrasounds that allow Messenger popups is terrible, but I have no control over how they're made, I've just spoken with users of these units. The question isn't whether I understand security, the question is do the people who make medical devices understand security. Sadly, it seems many of them don't, but that doesn't necessarily make MicroHTML in silicon a viable solution for a lot of modern medical devices.
I work for a medical imaging company; we don't make devices like ultrasounds, but our image viewing software displays the images they take. I've already had a few calls for users about Messenger popups advertising cheap university degrees, on Windows-based ultrasounds. MicroHTML sounds all well and good, but it's about 10 years behind the times for medical devices. Most medical devices these days are running either a full or embedded OS (often Windows-based for ultrasounds, and some flavour of Unix for more complex devices like CTs or MRs).
The "new" Finder isn't really that new at all. In fact, much of its basic design is so old it hurts. Have a look at this screenshot from the NextStep OS, and note the "File Viewer". Now compare it to this pic of the "new" Finder's column view. Apparently Mr. Jobs is using his position to bring back as many NextStep-isms as he can. That wouldn't be a bad idea, except the NextStep File Viewer pretty much sucks compared to more modern means of browsing a file system. You get a separate column for every subfolder; more than three levels deep, and it gets difficult to navigate with the column view. Personally, I like folders as a means of organizing files, and things often get nested pretty deep. My experience with NextStep makes me think that trying to browse anything but the flatest of filesystems will likely be horrendously painful with this "new" Finder.