So what's your point? Most companies start by buying some existing work; very few invent something completely new. Dell didn't invent the PC, nor did Compaq, nor did HP.
Nor did IBM/Microsoft for that matter!
Apple didn't invent the windowing GUI.
Apple didn't invent very much at all in terms of big, generic developments - however, what they did do in several cases (GUI, mice, laser printers, MP3 Players, small form-factor computers, local area networking...) was take some existing idea that was "bubbling under", make it easy to use and very pretty, add a pinch of Steve's fairy dust and do a bloody good job of marketing it.
What they (and some of the others you mention) don't rely on to the same extent as MS is letting some other schmuck make a big commercial success of something - then buying them out with a few billion in change that they find down the back of Bill's sofa.
However, Microsoft did produce a damned good BASIC for PETs and TRS 80 that let you program these new microcomputer thingies without learning assembler.
Look at C++, they broke backwards compatibility with C ( malloc casting for example ) and because of that it never became mainstream.
Two differences:
C++ ain't C version 2. is a new language that happened to have some backwards compatibility with C.
C/C++ is (...er, reads point one..) ^H^H are compiled language! Practical upshot: if you install a C++ compiler it won't instantly stop all C-derived binaries on your system from working; and you don't have to persuade your users to install C++ in order to run your latest code.
So does Python 3 also sacrifice backward compatibility with Makefile and FORTRAN, or does it still use whitespace as syntax?:->
Going by weight, emmmmmmaybe we can kind of, sort of call this ultra-portable, but like you, I've always considered the foot print to be an important aspect
Reducing the footprint much more means that you lose the full-sized keyboard, and the screen that will show the width of an A4 page at 100% + a couple of tool palettes. The MacBook Air is not an "ultraportable" in the sense of the tiny Sonys or even the Asus EEE. Its just a particularly thin and light implementation of the popular 13" widescreen form-factor.
The name should be "MacBook Executive" - its for suits who want to conspicuosly sit in business class and tweak their Powerpoints to ensure that they don't convey any actual information, and wouldn't be seen dead using the same type of "cheap" MacBook that they gave their daughter when she started college. Looking swish is an important technical specification.
The Asus eeePC is cheap and - dare I say it - a lot more portable and feature-laden than the Air (removable battery, 3 USB ports, ethernet).
OK - I've got an EEE and am not particularly inclined to buy a MBA, but I'm not sure about "feature laden". You've picked out some strengths - Ethernet, USB ports, portability and removable battery* but rather neglected RAM (512M vs 2G), storage capacity (4G vs 80G), CPU power (630MHz x 1 vs 1.6GHz x 2), screen (800x480 7" vs 1280x800 13"), trackpad (tiny with scroll area vs. humungous with multi-touch), keyboard (tiny vs. full size) and Bluetooth (none vs. 2.1EDR)...
Oh God, did I just try to compare specs on a £220 computer largely aimed at kids with a £1200 Apple aimed at jet-setters? The EEE is a credible "alternative strategy" if you want a second computer to travel with, but there's not much sense comparing feature lists - you'd use them in different ways.
Two years into college they changed everything over to Java.
The problem with that decision is not the word "Java", its the word "everything". Any college-level "computer science" course that only uses one programming language is a joke.
Heck, I did an extremely traditional Physics course with naff-all computing and a half-hearted practical component, and that managed to squeeze in Pascal (Before lunch: Learn Pascal; After lunch: write a program to solve this differential equation), 6502 assembler (before lunch: here's a 6502 and a wire-wrap gun; build a computer; after lunch: learn to program it) and microcode (on a CPU demonstrator built from TTL).
If they made a desktop Mac it wouldn't be directly competing with Windows PCs in price and specs
It would have to be vaguely competitive to avoid lots of negative reviews, and to wean people off Windows - I think people do care about relative bangs-per-buck as well as the sticker price - in the credit-card age, its more about what you can persuade yourself to borrow than what you can actually afford, and a perceived bargain is always a good incentive for that. Anyway, if its not competing with Windows then it would be competing with other, higher value, Macs.
You're asserting that people buy Apple because of the "sexy" hardware and I just don't buy it.
Different people buy Macs for different reasons - the technical superiority of Mac OS X is one, sure, but if the sexy-looking hardware isn't also a factor then Apple sure are pissing away millions of dollars on unnecessary R&D.
Probably some people want to but they can't because of the overpriced hardware.
So? Apple is a for-profit corporation, not the OLPC project. The question is not whether a desktop Mac would attract new customers, but whether it would attract enough new customers to compensate for the inevitable reduction in sales of MacBooks, iMacs and MacPros to existing Mac converts.
18 moths ago, I bought a Mac Pro. If there had bean a cheaper "non-all-in-one" Mac between the Mini and the Pro then I would probably have got one of those instead, and Apple would have significantly less of my money. They'd have had to wean at least one new customer away from Windows to compensate for that.
What *is* the point.
What market segment up until now were saying to themselves "If only this laptop was exactly the same size but *thinner*"
Business travellers will typically need to carry a bag or briefcase wide and deep enough for papers. The 13" laptop form-factor is approx the same width and depth of a folder for Legal or ISO A4 paper - so (tadah!) it fits conveniently into such bags. Meanwhile, its also big enough for a full-sized keyboard and a reasonable screen. Reduce the width and depth and you compromise on keyboard and screen but its still not gonna fit alongside a file in your briefcase - the next *useful* size down is ISO A5, and that's too small for a proper keyboard.
Reduce the thickness however, and you can fit more papers underneath it - give it a nice tapered shape and its going to be easier to slide in an out. Make it 2lb ligher and your arms and back will thank you.
I'd guess the Air is aimed at "executive" types who don't need the power of a MacBook Pro to run Powerpoint but wouldn't be seen dead using the same type of regular plastic MacBook that they bought their daughter for college.
Now, *I* wouldn't want one because I want to do crazy things like running CS3, Eclipse and a Windows VM at the same time, and I know from experience that I'd be dragging around a bagful of peripherals and pining for the 15" screen - although having recently moved from a 13" PC to a 15" MacBook Pro I can vouch for the superior portability of the 13" form factor . However, I can think of some colleagues for who it could be perfect because (a) they only really need Office and (b) I'm the one that always remembers to bring the DVI-to-VGA dongle, spare US power leads, blank CD-Rs, ethernet cables, wireless router, system discs, mini USB adaptor, modem lead, flash drives, spare batteries for wireless mice, sticking plaster, screwdriver, sheet of paper with the software license keys...:-)
I'm sure their brilliant industrial engineers could have designed a "battery door" with an easy latch, without adding to the overall thickness of the machine.
Problem is, even if you make a tiny latch and thin lid that isn't impossibly fragile, you then have to design the battery itself to survive being chucked in your hand luggage without being crushed or shorted out (bad news with a lithium battery) - which means giving it a rigid case and protected terminals. On top of that, you probably need to box in the inside of the battery compartment to keep fingers out of the computer's innards. That would mean either a thicker case or a smaller battery.
I think my main criticism is that they couldn't have squeezed in another USB port.
- OS upgrade pricing. There is none, just buy it new.
Duh! That is the upgrade price!
That OS X box is only licensed for use on Apple hardware - all Apple hardware came with Mac OS - ergo, its an upgrade. Compare the OS X prices with Windows upgrades and "full retail" - I make it (UK prices) £85 for Leopard vs. £100 for the Vista Home Premium upgrade
- Leopard "improvements"
One of the double-edged swords with Apple is that things get designed by designers with strong opinions. Some designer at Apple (or maybe the polo-necked one himself) thought that the Leopard way was better, and didn't pansy around leaving the old ways as an option. Sometimes - as with Leopard - they get it wrong. What you have to ask yourself is, do you want systems designed by committee that support every legacy UI feature back to System 7, or would you rather risk the occasional backward step?
- Ongoing arrogance and hubris, as witnessed in the $20 iPod Touch software upgrade.
With the Airport upgrade, they had some story about their accountants requiring them to charge for any "additional features" or risk prosecution against some dumb new US "No More Enrons" law. Quite frankly, I can believe that even if other firms don't seem bothered - if a senior accountant decides to "gold plate" the law of the land there's probably sod all even Blacksweaterman can do about it - especially if you're on best behaviour after a little backdating no-no. Anyway, $20 isn't that much, and I'm sure that the iPod touch software developers like to eat hot meals and sleep indoors.
Ok, now for desktop: cheap, all-in-one, and powerhouse workstation. Problem is: where is the regular computer?
I share your frustration, but I think Apple's business plan depends on selling sexy. "designer" laptop and small form-factor systems that offer a high profit margin and long "product lifetimes" without being uncompetetive. Since the Intel switch, Apple prices (esp. at the start of a product cycle) have compared well with equivalent "premium" PCs.
The mini-tower market is low margin and highly competetive, with big box-shifters putting together (often perfectly good) bargain bucket systems from whatever commodity products they have a surplus of that month. I think it would be hard for Apple to compete profitably in that market - but what they could very easily do is compete with themselves and sell low-margin Mac desktops to established Apple customers who might otherwise have bought high-margin MacBooks or iMacs.
Also remember that the Mac "Cube" was a failure, as was the 1990s experiment with licensing Mac OS (surprise, surprise, the 3rd parties went after Apple in the high end workstation market instead of trying to make VolksMacs...)
I have a hacked x86 "Mac" box that fits my computing needs.
Probably not the stereotypical non-techie Mac user, then - although less so now that Mac OS = Unix. I suspect the best way that Apple can acknowledge your market segment is to turn a blind eye to non-commercial hacking of OS X.
Not only do I not want another, but I can't use it: I share my monitor between multiple systems and you can't do that with an iMac
Although I'm inclined to agree with that, iMacs can support a second monitor (which could be shared between multiple systems).
Sort of, as many other people have said, about overclocking and such
Not the same thing. Maybe the only difference between a 1.5GHz part and a 2GHz part is that the latter was actually tested at 2GHz - but that testing and consequent loss of yield represents a real cost to the manufacturer, and the buyer of the official 2GHz part (hopefully) gets the benefit of a guarantee. Its not just the overclocker that wins: it keeps down cost of the "genuine" 2GHz part, too.
However, the scheme in TFA is subtly different: it seems to rely on each part being fully tested and guaranteed at full spec and then "crippled" until the user coughs up more dosh. That implies that either (a) the manufacturer could produce and profitably sell the full-spec part at the "entry" price, and the higher price is inflated (think the various Windows prices, esp. the OEM vs. retail price) or (b) the "entry" price is a loss leader to lock-in consumers (legal or not, bad for competition). The real bad news will be the additional EULA guff and inevitable propaganda campaign ("Hardware Rights Management circumvention is THEFT and promotes terrorism, cruelty to puppies, erectile dysfunction and hair loss ") needed to enforce it.
(although they might have to exchange it till they get one of the ones from the 2Ghz production run)
Now that is a scam - even if the victims are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.
I think the point is that Sony has a big enough share of the appliance market to sustain proprietary media formats, but have largely failed to get these more widely accepted in the originally intended mass domestic market (although they've managed a few niche successes). Perhaps that hasn't always been the game plan (but I think it was with DAT, Video8, HiFD, MiniDisc etc) They are, of course, the only company to have produced unsuccessful high-tech products (not).
- Minidisc and ATRAC? Licensed to several other companies, like JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, and Panasonic.
So, moderate success, but failed to take over the world and was outsold first by personal CD players, and then "MP3" players.
Memory sticks? Still around, like CF and SD, and unlike some earlier open standards. Again, licensed to other companies, like SanDisk and Lexar.
However, SD (and its various min- and micro- variants) has become the de-facto standard for portable, removable flash storage in any appliance not made by Sony.
DAT? -- can you even buy anything today that's comparable?
Er... recordable CD? Cheap SD cards big enough for high-bitrate compressed or lossless/uncompressed files...? Basically - DAT pulled a Betamax: successful as a "pro" medium (and computer backup drive) but I think Sony rather hoped that it would succeed in the home. (Aside - there was a rival "Digital Compact Cassette" - the players were also able to play regular analogue cassettes - that sunk without trace, too)
- 8mm video: introduced with the Sony Handycam. Compared to VHS and Betamax cameras of the day, it was smaller, had similar video quality, and better audio quality. 8mm and its successors dominated the market for almost 2 decades, until digital video arrived and squashed everybody.
Again - this may have found a niche as a camcorder medium, but "Video 8" was also pitched as a domestic VHS replacement (that also did digital audio). 8mm faced some competition in the domestic market from VHS-C (which would play directly in a VHS deck with an adaptor).
HiFD: an attempt by Sony to make a 150MB, backwards-compatible 3.5" disk. Failed horribly, for various reasons.
To be fair, Sony weren't the only people to fail at producing a 3.5" Floppy replacement. Actually, when the original 3.5" floppy came out, there were other prospective replacements for the old 5.25" (as anybody in the UK who had an Amstrad PCW256 will know) but when Apple and IBM went with Sony the game was up. Come the mid 90s, however, neither IBM or Apple still had the market share or influence to anoint HiFD, LS120, Zip etc. as the successor.
UMD (not "UMF") is the portable optical disc used by the PSP. They've sold 25 million PSPs since it started shipping just over 3 years ago
I think the original poster was referring to UMD's success as a movie distribution medium, rather than the format for PSP games.
I don't know why they picked diabetes; I was explaining the comment about why they should have chosen Friends of the Earth. Clarkson is a notorious anti-environmentalist.
Maybe they wanted to be sure of hitting Clarkson in the pocket?
Had the fraudster chosen (say) FoE then Clarkson could demand the money back with perfect integrity, since - love him or hate him - he has never made a secret of his position on environmental issues and could reasonably refuse to support FoE as a matter of principle.
If, however, he claws back the money from a diabetes charity he's going to look like a complete Scrooge.
Ha Ha.:-)
Of course, the other possibility is that, since even a lowly unpaid clerical helper at FoE seeing the name "Jeremy Clarkson" attached to a donation would immediately spray coff... er... Fairtrade carob beverage over their keyboard and make further enquiries, the fraudster thought they'd play it safe.
Isn't your bank the only institution able to transfer money out of your account?
The Banks have made it very easy to pay bills, subscriptions, charitable donations etc. by "Direct Debit" simply by giving your "public" account details (i.e. the stuff that is printed on every cheque that you write) with little or no further identification.
The recipient has to be "known" by the bank, so its not so easy for A.N.Other to simply grab your money for himself, and there's a protective charter that guarantees that any mistakenly debited money will be returned, so its in the interests of businesses to check identities. Of course, that doesn't mean that the bank will pay up for any consequential damages if someone maxes out your account and your cheques start bouncing...
The delicious irony in this case is that the victim is more or less obliged to let the charity keep the money.
I think that the point being made is that you would expect a 6 year old to understand how the calculator computes - by doing the math on paper, not in their head -- before giving him a calculator.
That's not an either/or bit of knowledge - its an understanding that will develop over several years - and good use could be made of a calculator over that time to explore and reinforce that understanding. A lot of "traditional" educational values involve rote learning of (e.g.) multiplication tables, or the algorithm for long division which doesn't automatically impart any deep insights into the nature and use of the math. Calculators, used properly, can let kids spend more time *using* the mathematics without all the tedium. Of course, what gets lost is that its also quite useful to know your tables and a 15 "multiplication quiz" each week won't necessarily cause bedwetting.
If, e.g., certain people who were taught "the good old way" had spent less time being drilled on "Hundreds Tens and Units" exactly as if they were "Yards, feet and Inches" instead of actually learning to understand place notation then they might "get" the metric system and we might not still be stuck using a medieval system of units.
Even more so in computing - there's plenty to learn about algorithms, data structures and the mathematics of computing that can quite reasonably be done in Java or any half-decent high-level programming language. The other stuff needs to be taught alongside that - not before or after. Heh - Exercise 13 could be "write a simulation of a simple CPU in Java":-)
The real problem is courts handing out windfall awards in copyright cases that are vastly disproportionate to any real damage done, and allowing copyright holders to sue the party with deepest pockets rather than the morally responsible one. As long as this goes on, any use of potentially copyrighted material is a hostage to fortune.
And even the GPL v2 says quite clearly that you can't distribute GPL2 code without passing on the full GPL rights and cites a patent license as an example of something that might prevent this.
As I understand it, the patent stuff in the GPL 3 was an attempt to prevent attempts to fudge around this with shenanigans such as:
I promise almost certainly maybe not to sue your immediate customers over any intellectual property of mine which may or may not turn up in this code but this doesn't violate GPL2 because I'm not actually going to sign a legal document saying that you need a patent license from us or tell you which patents we mean even if my colleague was spouting off at a press conference about how many of our patents it violates..."
...although trying to anticipate and block variations on that sort of FUD seems like nailing jelly to a tree to me.
The thinking is ok, but I'm not sure the people who came up with the idea work in the same building as the people who chose the content.
There definitely might be research that shows the average Barry Manilow fan owns 2.4 cats, 1.7 Big Mouth Billy Bass Singing Fish, 7.2 beige polyester shirts and believes that using your credit card online can cause sterility...
Presumably, the initial list of albums is more of a systems test than a serious launch - you probably could get those on CD in a decent convenience store... but it does mean that the servers are unlikely to melt on day one, and they can let the cracker community test their security before putting the decent stuff up.
You could rather go to a music store and buy a CD, then convert it to MP3 using ripper software.
The key word there is "music store" - specifically one which has the CD you want in stock. If the Sony idea takes off then your local "Kwik-E-Mart" (or non-fictitious equivalent) can sell the cards - just like Apple already do with iTunes cards.
You wouldn't give a calculator to 6 year old kids learning math, would you?
Now, I wouldn't give a calculator to a 6 year old kid while they were practicing mental arithmetic but that's only one facet of mathematics. There's all sorts of calculator games and explorations they can do which will help their understanding of mathematics.
Unfortunately, the human race is incapable of doing things in moderation, so what you get is a holy war between conservatives who think that the measure of a man is being able to work out 271 x 137 in your head while being beaten with a stick , versus the touchy-feely brigade who think that learning to add up before the onset of puberty will make you grow up an emotional cripple. Both have a point - neither is 100% right. I suspect similar reasoning has led to the Java monoculture in college (a few years ago, Java was the cat's whiskers and C made you go blind).
Seems to me every new Mac off the production line has a brand new spanking Intel processor in it.
Yup - Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel. Why? Because the manufacturers of PowerPC had failed to come up with a high-performance, low power CPU suitable for high-end laptops because there was no market other than Apple - for a laptop that couldn't run Windows and, instead, they'd been targeting areas like embedded devices, games consoles and *nix servers which were not completely dominated by Windows.
Meanwhile, the fact that you can now realistically run Windows alongside Mac OS is undoubtedly a factor in the Mac's new-found success.
Don't underestimate the role of Windows in Intel's success. Even Intel failed when they tried to release a 64 bit non-x86 PC chip (Itanium) which could only run most Windows software under emulation (while AMD succeeded by bolting 64-bit functionality onto an x86).
Not to mention that the AMD Geode processor used by the OLPC is x86 architecture not ARM, not PowerPC.
But the OLPC's choice of operating system means that it would be feasible for a future OLPC model to switch to ARM or PowerPC - and if widespread OLPC use led to Linux becoming the OS of choice in the developing world then any new players in the market would have a free choice of processor.
Good Unix/Linux programmers tend to be quite anal about making their code processor-independent, usually just needing a re-compile to target a different processor, and the Linux software distribution model means that the supplier of the Linux distribution (which may be the device manufacturer) can take responsibility for compiling and optimizing the key applications for their distro.
Intel contributes quite alot to the Linux world and it is strange you think they are frightened of it's adoption.
Its fairly unlikely that Linux is going to supplant Windows in the developed world anytime soon unless Microsoft does anything suicidal - they've got enough money and locked-in customers to weather lacklustre Vista sales. Most optimistic possibility is that Linux and Mac will grow their market share a bit, and why wouldn't Intel want a slice of that? Its not Linux per se that threatens Intel, its the idea of Linux getting in on the ground floor in "clean slate" emerging markets and establishing a local monopoly there . Maybe even that wouldn't worry Intel if not for the added AMD factor.
Mind you, the EEE PC comes with Linux as standard and Intel don't seem to worried about that (but although its a great little "second PC" its really just a diddy Iittle laptop with a solid-state disk - I don't see it catching on in the Sahara). Plus its got an Intel chip.
As I mentioned previously, I wrote an article on this topic, unlike a slew of bloggers & new media Journalists, I actually do research.
Good for you. If, consequently, you feel confident in reporting Intel's actions as unchallenged fact then that's your decision. I don't.
You have some reason for doubting this particular story, I'd love to hear it.
Lets get this straight: I have never suggested that the story is false - please learn the difference between the words "allegation" and "lie". If I seriously thought the allegations were false then, rest assured, I'd be pointing you at the evidence.
Ridiculous to say it threatens Intel. Those kids may be Linux kids, Linux doesn't run on Intel anymore?
One reason for the lack of serious competition to Intel in the PC market is that Windows is tightly tied to the x86 processor and the "IBM PC" architecture. Anybody wanting to compete with Intel in a Windows-dominated world is pretty much stuck with incremental improvements on the x86 design. Linux runs fine on Intel, yes, but unlike Windows it also runs fine on ARM, PowerPC etc.
I suppose if we gave them all cell phones it would be a threat to Intel because they contained ARMs.
Yes, I think that the prospect of flooding an emerging market with Brand X would generally be seen as a threat by the manufacturers of Brand Y. Don't you?
Nope, I'm only saying that the "Karma" is valuable to Google, News Corp, Red Hat and AMD.
Its even more valuable when it comes with a big juicy side-order of enlightened self-interest.
Who is it you don't believe here, the Peruvian minister of education, the wall street journal, New York Times, BBC, or Professor Negroponte? There is no alleged.
I'm glad that you have personally read all of the articles, double-checked the citations and cross-examined the people concerned. Pretty impressive, since that'll probably take years if the matter ever goes to court. Or maybe you were in the Peruvian minister's office and personally witnessed the Intel rep bad-mouthing the OLPC? I was referring to third-hand information that I couldn't personally substaniate so "allegedly" it is. I suggest you invest in a dictionary and satisfy yourself that "allegedly" does not mean "liar liar, pants on fire!"
PS: You believe everything the BBC and WSJ say? Good luck.
OLPC threatens no one.
Sorry, you don't think that millions of children in the developing world growing up using (and possibly learning to program) Linux on an AMD-powered system could be even a teensy-weensy threat to MS or Intel?
Neither Microsoft nor Intel can afford to do what Negroponte proposes, at least according to them.
Probably because when a for-profit company distributes vast quantities of product below cost in an emerging market, it's called "dumping" and is generally frowned upon - especially if its being done by a monopoly player. Now, it may be legal for a charitable foundation to do that but they shouldn't act all surprised if the industry gets jittery about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Nor did IBM/Microsoft for that matter!
Apple didn't invent very much at all in terms of big, generic developments - however, what they did do in several cases (GUI, mice, laser printers, MP3 Players, small form-factor computers, local area networking...) was take some existing idea that was "bubbling under", make it easy to use and very pretty, add a pinch of Steve's fairy dust and do a bloody good job of marketing it.
What they (and some of the others you mention) don't rely on to the same extent as MS is letting some other schmuck make a big commercial success of something - then buying them out with a few billion in change that they find down the back of Bill's sofa.
However, Microsoft did produce a damned good BASIC for PETs and TRS 80 that let you program these new microcomputer thingies without learning assembler.
Two differences:
So does Python 3 also sacrifice backward compatibility with Makefile and FORTRAN, or does it still use whitespace as syntax? :->
Reducing the footprint much more means that you lose the full-sized keyboard, and the screen that will show the width of an A4 page at 100% + a couple of tool palettes. The MacBook Air is not an "ultraportable" in the sense of the tiny Sonys or even the Asus EEE. Its just a particularly thin and light implementation of the popular 13" widescreen form-factor.
The name should be "MacBook Executive" - its for suits who want to conspicuosly sit in business class and tweak their Powerpoints to ensure that they don't convey any actual information, and wouldn't be seen dead using the same type of "cheap" MacBook that they gave their daughter when she started college. Looking swish is an important technical specification.
OK - I've got an EEE and am not particularly inclined to buy a MBA, but I'm not sure about "feature laden". You've picked out some strengths - Ethernet, USB ports, portability and removable battery* but rather neglected RAM (512M vs 2G), storage capacity (4G vs 80G), CPU power (630MHz x 1 vs 1.6GHz x 2), screen (800x480 7" vs 1280x800 13"), trackpad (tiny with scroll area vs. humungous with multi-touch), keyboard (tiny vs. full size) and Bluetooth (none vs. 2.1EDR)...
Oh God, did I just try to compare specs on a £220 computer largely aimed at kids with a £1200 Apple aimed at jet-setters? The EEE is a credible "alternative strategy" if you want a second computer to travel with, but there's not much sense comparing feature lists - you'd use them in different ways.
Now the Unix/Linux/GNU programmers manuals are fine pieces of documentation, no disrespect intended, but English language is stretching it a bit ;-)
Neat hack - but I don't think it will be petitioning the supreme court for citizenship anytime soon.
Ask not for whom the whoosh whooshes - it whooshes for thee.
The problem with that decision is not the word "Java", its the word "everything". Any college-level "computer science" course that only uses one programming language is a joke.
Heck, I did an extremely traditional Physics course with naff-all computing and a half-hearted practical component, and that managed to squeeze in Pascal (Before lunch: Learn Pascal; After lunch: write a program to solve this differential equation), 6502 assembler (before lunch: here's a 6502 and a wire-wrap gun; build a computer; after lunch: learn to program it) and microcode (on a CPU demonstrator built from TTL).
It would have to be vaguely competitive to avoid lots of negative reviews, and to wean people off Windows - I think people do care about relative bangs-per-buck as well as the sticker price - in the credit-card age, its more about what you can persuade yourself to borrow than what you can actually afford, and a perceived bargain is always a good incentive for that. Anyway, if its not competing with Windows then it would be competing with other, higher value, Macs.
Different people buy Macs for different reasons - the technical superiority of Mac OS X is one, sure, but if the sexy-looking hardware isn't also a factor then Apple sure are pissing away millions of dollars on unnecessary R&D.
So? Apple is a for-profit corporation, not the OLPC project. The question is not whether a desktop Mac would attract new customers, but whether it would attract enough new customers to compensate for the inevitable reduction in sales of MacBooks, iMacs and MacPros to existing Mac converts.
18 moths ago, I bought a Mac Pro. If there had bean a cheaper "non-all-in-one" Mac between the Mini and the Pro then I would probably have got one of those instead, and Apple would have significantly less of my money. They'd have had to wean at least one new customer away from Windows to compensate for that.
Business travellers will typically need to carry a bag or briefcase wide and deep enough for papers. The 13" laptop form-factor is approx the same width and depth of a folder for Legal or ISO A4 paper - so (tadah!) it fits conveniently into such bags. Meanwhile, its also big enough for a full-sized keyboard and a reasonable screen. Reduce the width and depth and you compromise on keyboard and screen but its still not gonna fit alongside a file in your briefcase - the next *useful* size down is ISO A5, and that's too small for a proper keyboard.
Reduce the thickness however, and you can fit more papers underneath it - give it a nice tapered shape and its going to be easier to slide in an out. Make it 2lb ligher and your arms and back will thank you.
I'd guess the Air is aimed at "executive" types who don't need the power of a MacBook Pro to run Powerpoint but wouldn't be seen dead using the same type of regular plastic MacBook that they bought their daughter for college.
Now, *I* wouldn't want one because I want to do crazy things like running CS3, Eclipse and a Windows VM at the same time, and I know from experience that I'd be dragging around a bagful of peripherals and pining for the 15" screen - although having recently moved from a 13" PC to a 15" MacBook Pro I can vouch for the superior portability of the 13" form factor . However, I can think of some colleagues for who it could be perfect because (a) they only really need Office and (b) I'm the one that always remembers to bring the DVI-to-VGA dongle, spare US power leads, blank CD-Rs, ethernet cables, wireless router, system discs, mini USB adaptor, modem lead, flash drives, spare batteries for wireless mice, sticking plaster, screwdriver, sheet of paper with the software license keys... :-)
Problem is, even if you make a tiny latch and thin lid that isn't impossibly fragile, you then have to design the battery itself to survive being chucked in your hand luggage without being crushed or shorted out (bad news with a lithium battery) - which means giving it a rigid case and protected terminals. On top of that, you probably need to box in the inside of the battery compartment to keep fingers out of the computer's innards. That would mean either a thicker case or a smaller battery.
I think my main criticism is that they couldn't have squeezed in another USB port.
Duh! That is the upgrade price!
That OS X box is only licensed for use on Apple hardware - all Apple hardware came with Mac OS - ergo, its an upgrade. Compare the OS X prices with Windows upgrades and "full retail" - I make it (UK prices) £85 for Leopard vs. £100 for the Vista Home Premium upgrade
One of the double-edged swords with Apple is that things get designed by designers with strong opinions. Some designer at Apple (or maybe the polo-necked one himself) thought that the Leopard way was better, and didn't pansy around leaving the old ways as an option. Sometimes - as with Leopard - they get it wrong. What you have to ask yourself is, do you want systems designed by committee that support every legacy UI feature back to System 7, or would you rather risk the occasional backward step?
With the Airport upgrade, they had some story about their accountants requiring them to charge for any "additional features" or risk prosecution against some dumb new US "No More Enrons" law. Quite frankly, I can believe that even if other firms don't seem bothered - if a senior accountant decides to "gold plate" the law of the land there's probably sod all even Blacksweaterman can do about it - especially if you're on best behaviour after a little backdating no-no. Anyway, $20 isn't that much, and I'm sure that the iPod touch software developers like to eat hot meals and sleep indoors.
I share your frustration, but I think Apple's business plan depends on selling sexy. "designer" laptop and small form-factor systems that offer a high profit margin and long "product lifetimes" without being uncompetetive. Since the Intel switch, Apple prices (esp. at the start of a product cycle) have compared well with equivalent "premium" PCs.
The mini-tower market is low margin and highly competetive, with big box-shifters putting together (often perfectly good) bargain bucket systems from whatever commodity products they have a surplus of that month. I think it would be hard for Apple to compete profitably in that market - but what they could very easily do is compete with themselves and sell low-margin Mac desktops to established Apple customers who might otherwise have bought high-margin MacBooks or iMacs.
Also remember that the Mac "Cube" was a failure, as was the 1990s experiment with licensing Mac OS (surprise, surprise, the 3rd parties went after Apple in the high end workstation market instead of trying to make VolksMacs...)
Probably not the stereotypical non-techie Mac user, then - although less so now that Mac OS = Unix. I suspect the best way that Apple can acknowledge your market segment is to turn a blind eye to non-commercial hacking of OS X.
Although I'm inclined to agree with that, iMacs can support a second monitor (which could be shared between multiple systems).
Not the same thing. Maybe the only difference between a 1.5GHz part and a 2GHz part is that the latter was actually tested at 2GHz - but that testing and consequent loss of yield represents a real cost to the manufacturer, and the buyer of the official 2GHz part (hopefully) gets the benefit of a guarantee. Its not just the overclocker that wins: it keeps down cost of the "genuine" 2GHz part, too.
However, the scheme in TFA is subtly different: it seems to rely on each part being fully tested and guaranteed at full spec and then "crippled" until the user coughs up more dosh. That implies that either (a) the manufacturer could produce and profitably sell the full-spec part at the "entry" price, and the higher price is inflated (think the various Windows prices, esp. the OEM vs. retail price) or (b) the "entry" price is a loss leader to lock-in consumers (legal or not, bad for competition). The real bad news will be the additional EULA guff and inevitable propaganda campaign ("Hardware Rights Management circumvention is THEFT and promotes terrorism, cruelty to puppies, erectile dysfunction and hair loss ") needed to enforce it.
Now that is a scam - even if the victims are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.
I think the point is that Sony has a big enough share of the appliance market to sustain proprietary media formats, but have largely failed to get these more widely accepted in the originally intended mass domestic market (although they've managed a few niche successes). Perhaps that hasn't always been the game plan (but I think it was with DAT, Video8, HiFD, MiniDisc etc) They are, of course, the only company to have produced unsuccessful high-tech products (not).
So, moderate success, but failed to take over the world and was outsold first by personal CD players, and then "MP3" players.
However, SD (and its various min- and micro- variants) has become the de-facto standard for portable, removable flash storage in any appliance not made by Sony.
Er... recordable CD? Cheap SD cards big enough for high-bitrate compressed or lossless/uncompressed files...? Basically - DAT pulled a Betamax: successful as a "pro" medium (and computer backup drive) but I think Sony rather hoped that it would succeed in the home. (Aside - there was a rival "Digital Compact Cassette" - the players were also able to play regular analogue cassettes - that sunk without trace, too)
Again - this may have found a niche as a camcorder medium, but "Video 8" was also pitched as a domestic VHS replacement (that also did digital audio). 8mm faced some competition in the domestic market from VHS-C (which would play directly in a VHS deck with an adaptor).
To be fair, Sony weren't the only people to fail at producing a 3.5" Floppy replacement. Actually, when the original 3.5" floppy came out, there were other prospective replacements for the old 5.25" (as anybody in the UK who had an Amstrad PCW256 will know) but when Apple and IBM went with Sony the game was up. Come the mid 90s, however, neither IBM or Apple still had the market share or influence to anoint HiFD, LS120, Zip etc. as the successor.
I think the original poster was referring to UMD's success as a movie distribution medium, rather than the format for PSP games.
Maybe they wanted to be sure of hitting Clarkson in the pocket?
Had the fraudster chosen (say) FoE then Clarkson could demand the money back with perfect integrity, since - love him or hate him - he has never made a secret of his position on environmental issues and could reasonably refuse to support FoE as a matter of principle.
If, however, he claws back the money from a diabetes charity he's going to look like a complete Scrooge.
Ha Ha. :-)
Of course, the other possibility is that, since even a lowly unpaid clerical helper at FoE seeing the name "Jeremy Clarkson" attached to a donation would immediately spray coff... er... Fairtrade carob beverage over their keyboard and make further enquiries, the fraudster thought they'd play it safe.
The Banks have made it very easy to pay bills, subscriptions, charitable donations etc. by "Direct Debit" simply by giving your "public" account details (i.e. the stuff that is printed on every cheque that you write) with little or no further identification.
The recipient has to be "known" by the bank, so its not so easy for A.N.Other to simply grab your money for himself, and there's a protective charter that guarantees that any mistakenly debited money will be returned, so its in the interests of businesses to check identities. Of course, that doesn't mean that the bank will pay up for any consequential damages if someone maxes out your account and your cheques start bouncing...
The delicious irony in this case is that the victim is more or less obliged to let the charity keep the money.
That's not an either/or bit of knowledge - its an understanding that will develop over several years - and good use could be made of a calculator over that time to explore and reinforce that understanding. A lot of "traditional" educational values involve rote learning of (e.g.) multiplication tables, or the algorithm for long division which doesn't automatically impart any deep insights into the nature and use of the math. Calculators, used properly, can let kids spend more time *using* the mathematics without all the tedium. Of course, what gets lost is that its also quite useful to know your tables and a 15 "multiplication quiz" each week won't necessarily cause bedwetting.
If, e.g., certain people who were taught "the good old way" had spent less time being drilled on "Hundreds Tens and Units" exactly as if they were "Yards, feet and Inches" instead of actually learning to understand place notation then they might "get" the metric system and we might not still be stuck using a medieval system of units.
Even more so in computing - there's plenty to learn about algorithms, data structures and the mathematics of computing that can quite reasonably be done in Java or any half-decent high-level programming language. The other stuff needs to be taught alongside that - not before or after. Heh - Exercise 13 could be "write a simulation of a simple CPU in Java" :-)
The real problem is courts handing out windfall awards in copyright cases that are vastly disproportionate to any real damage done, and allowing copyright holders to sue the party with deepest pockets rather than the morally responsible one. As long as this goes on, any use of potentially copyrighted material is a hostage to fortune.
And even the GPL v2 says quite clearly that you can't distribute GPL2 code without passing on the full GPL rights and cites a patent license as an example of something that might prevent this.
As I understand it, the patent stuff in the GPL 3 was an attempt to prevent attempts to fudge around this with shenanigans such as:
I promise almost certainly maybe not to sue your immediate customers over any intellectual property of mine which may or may not turn up in this code but this doesn't violate GPL2 because I'm not actually going to sign a legal document saying that you need a patent license from us or tell you which patents we mean even if my colleague was spouting off at a press conference about how many of our patents it violates..."
...although trying to anticipate and block variations on that sort of FUD seems like nailing jelly to a tree to me.
There definitely might be research that shows the average Barry Manilow fan owns 2.4 cats, 1.7 Big Mouth Billy Bass Singing Fish, 7.2 beige polyester shirts and believes that using your credit card online can cause sterility...
Presumably, the initial list of albums is more of a systems test than a serious launch - you probably could get those on CD in a decent convenience store... but it does mean that the servers are unlikely to melt on day one, and they can let the cracker community test their security before putting the decent stuff up.
The key word there is "music store" - specifically one which has the CD you want in stock. If the Sony idea takes off then your local "Kwik-E-Mart" (or non-fictitious equivalent) can sell the cards - just like Apple already do with iTunes cards.
Now, I wouldn't give a calculator to a 6 year old kid while they were practicing mental arithmetic but that's only one facet of mathematics. There's all sorts of calculator games and explorations they can do which will help their understanding of mathematics.
Unfortunately, the human race is incapable of doing things in moderation, so what you get is a holy war between conservatives who think that the measure of a man is being able to work out 271 x 137 in your head while being beaten with a stick , versus the touchy-feely brigade who think that learning to add up before the onset of puberty will make you grow up an emotional cripple. Both have a point - neither is 100% right. I suspect similar reasoning has led to the Java monoculture in college (a few years ago, Java was the cat's whiskers and C made you go blind).
Yup - Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel. Why? Because the manufacturers of PowerPC had failed to come up with a high-performance, low power CPU suitable for high-end laptops because there was no market other than Apple - for a laptop that couldn't run Windows and, instead, they'd been targeting areas like embedded devices, games consoles and *nix servers which were not completely dominated by Windows.
Meanwhile, the fact that you can now realistically run Windows alongside Mac OS is undoubtedly a factor in the Mac's new-found success.
Don't underestimate the role of Windows in Intel's success. Even Intel failed when they tried to release a 64 bit non-x86 PC chip (Itanium) which could only run most Windows software under emulation (while AMD succeeded by bolting 64-bit functionality onto an x86).
But the OLPC's choice of operating system means that it would be feasible for a future OLPC model to switch to ARM or PowerPC - and if widespread OLPC use led to Linux becoming the OS of choice in the developing world then any new players in the market would have a free choice of processor.
Good Unix/Linux programmers tend to be quite anal about making their code processor-independent, usually just needing a re-compile to target a different processor, and the Linux software distribution model means that the supplier of the Linux distribution (which may be the device manufacturer) can take responsibility for compiling and optimizing the key applications for their distro.
Its fairly unlikely that Linux is going to supplant Windows in the developed world anytime soon unless Microsoft does anything suicidal - they've got enough money and locked-in customers to weather lacklustre Vista sales. Most optimistic possibility is that Linux and Mac will grow their market share a bit, and why wouldn't Intel want a slice of that? Its not Linux per se that threatens Intel, its the idea of Linux getting in on the ground floor in "clean slate" emerging markets and establishing a local monopoly there . Maybe even that wouldn't worry Intel if not for the added AMD factor.
Mind you, the EEE PC comes with Linux as standard and Intel don't seem to worried about that (but although its a great little "second PC" its really just a diddy Iittle laptop with a solid-state disk - I don't see it catching on in the Sahara). Plus its got an Intel chip.
Good for you. If, consequently, you feel confident in reporting Intel's actions as unchallenged fact then that's your decision. I don't.
Lets get this straight: I have never suggested that the story is false - please learn the difference between the words "allegation" and "lie". If I seriously thought the allegations were false then, rest assured, I'd be pointing you at the evidence.
One reason for the lack of serious competition to Intel in the PC market is that Windows is tightly tied to the x86 processor and the "IBM PC" architecture. Anybody wanting to compete with Intel in a Windows-dominated world is pretty much stuck with incremental improvements on the x86 design. Linux runs fine on Intel, yes, but unlike Windows it also runs fine on ARM, PowerPC etc.
Yes, I think that the prospect of flooding an emerging market with Brand X would generally be seen as a threat by the manufacturers of Brand Y. Don't you?
Its even more valuable when it comes with a big juicy side-order of enlightened self-interest.
I'm glad that you have personally read all of the articles, double-checked the citations and cross-examined the people concerned. Pretty impressive, since that'll probably take years if the matter ever goes to court. Or maybe you were in the Peruvian minister's office and personally witnessed the Intel rep bad-mouthing the OLPC? I was referring to third-hand information that I couldn't personally substaniate so "allegedly" it is. I suggest you invest in a dictionary and satisfy yourself that "allegedly" does not mean "liar liar, pants on fire!"
PS: You believe everything the BBC and WSJ say? Good luck.
Sorry, you don't think that millions of children in the developing world growing up using (and possibly learning to program) Linux on an AMD-powered system could be even a teensy-weensy threat to MS or Intel?
Probably because when a for-profit company distributes vast quantities of product below cost in an emerging market, it's called "dumping" and is generally frowned upon - especially if its being done by a monopoly player. Now, it may be legal for a charitable foundation to do that but they shouldn't act all surprised if the industry gets jittery about it.