What if I want to fast forward through to a certain part right away? I'd still have to wait first. Other then the waiting for 10 minutes part for it to buffer, the idea seems great.
Lets face it, consumers will use whatever it is thats put in front of them most of the time. If you include a bare OS, they will complain nothing is being included and will go to an OS that does include everything they need. If you include the programs that do the functionality the consumer asks for, then businesses say it's unfair. Therefore lets blame the consumer for being lazy. Sound fair?
The biggest being that Apple is an OEM who is bundling software with a computer, thus needs to provide a "complete" experience.
But they are the sole provider of their OS, so essentially they are Microsoft + Dell all in one. But only when you purchase a computer from them.
But if you purchase their OS as an upgrade, it doesn't include those extra apps which is correct like ilife. But it does include quicktime 7, safari and their e-mail client. But the one difference being you can remove those 3 if you want. Or not install them at all. When you buy windows; wmp, ie, and outlook express are included but can't be removed. Apple's extra apps aren't tied into the shell like Internet Explorer is. Explorer.exe which is the shell in windows, should have no ability to browse the internet. But Microsoft doesn't enable you to remove them by tying them into the shell. Unlike apple which does.
In terms of fairness, Microsoft should enable the ability to remove those 3 completely easily. Just like apple does. But when apple includes quicktime, you can stream apples format with it. Just like when microsoft includes windows media player it can stream a certain format too. But Microsoft doesn't include a dvd player in windows itself, but lets the oem provide that. Just like apple only includes a dvd player if you buy a computer from them instead of just the OS by itself. So with all these extra apps, if microsoft has to remove windows media player, then apple should have to remove quicktime. Because they both serve the same purpose. That is to promote their own media format over another. The only company that gets hurt by this is real.
Now in the pc world if an OEM can remove windows media player and put in real's player instead, they have no pressure to include wmp. They're simply licensing the OS from Microsoft. Now as for apple, how hard would it be for real to get apple oem to include real's player as part of the software thats bundled with a new apple computer. Real hard. Because the same people that make the decision to include what software are also in charge of the OS side of it. Notice how all the bundled software the apple includes with its computer is only theirs. Their is no third party software at all. Unlike an OEM pc computer maker, their is third party software their usually.
Kind of. There's tricks you can do, for example carousel, where you continously send the same file out again and again. So people can start listening at any point, receive to the end of the file in the current sending, then listen for the first half when it's broadcast again.
What? So I should watch the last half of a show to see the ending and THEN watch the first half of it? That is completely pointless. It's like watching a movie where you already know the ending. It ruins it for you. How would you like to watch the last 5 minutes of a movie where the girl that was kidnapped gets rescued and they show who the kidnapper was, then you watch the movie from the beginning where they show the girl getting kidnapped but not who kidnapped her. NO ONE is going to want to watch a tv show like that.
It would not be unreasonable to suggest Apple spin off it's iTunes music store, since it fits right into this category.
Um unless you've been paying attention, the itunes music store isn't a money maker at all. They barely break even with it. Jobs has said publicly that the itunes music store is used to sell ipods.
Moore ends up almost petering out (kind of like apple...) and there ends up being a redeeming breakthrough that keeps it around.
Yeah, peopole always say apple is on the brink of going out of business. But it survives because it has higher profit margins and its occult following of loyal mac zealots. Apple fits well in an ecosystem where it has the main monopoly. But the moment actual competition comes in, it starts to lose out. It's like it doesn't know how to compete and lives off its own arrogance. In order for it to survive, it has to have a unique product that no one else can offer and that competitors can't use the same exact technology at a cheaper price. That's part of the reason why apple pantented its scroll wheel on the ipod. That keeps competitors from putting that feature on their mp3 players. Same thing with the drm that the itunes music store has.
Apple can only thrive in an environment where no other product can match its products for features.
Maybe it has something to do with ntfs permissions and that you can't modify them easily from a linux environment. Plus the administrators uid in windows is always different with each installation compared to linux where root has a uid of 0 I believe. Feel free to correct me though.
why not build into the tcp/ip protocol packets marked voip and streaming get priority. No need to pay extra for it. All the other packets out there would just be on a best effort basis.
Applications that handle streaming and voip would create these packets with the signature on it identifying that it was this kind of packet.
It's just built into every router/switch onto the internet. It would require a major upgrade for it. But that would work.
Now what would stop say a p2p client from spoofing it's packets to say they are voip packets? That's where it gets tricky because then all of a sudden you have all these clients saying they are voip packets just so that they get priority. And of course all the routers and switches will automatically push them through ahead of the other packets that are for best efforts only.
Banned movies, tv, games, music, etc all find their way online and someone somewhere releases it for all to see. It's pandoras box basically. You can't stop it once it's out there.
Now you're going off on exactly why the lawsuit was put on in the first place. Why should I have to burn a cd just so that I can rip that same cd into mp3 format? Why do I have to go through those steps when apple can simply license their drm to other mp3 players out there so that their drm'd tracks can play off of other mp3 players out there without having to convert it? 2 reasons. They have publicly stated that their itunes music store is being used to sell ipods. They have also publicly stated that they break even with the itunes music store. Therefore unless they start to make a profit on the itunes music store, they insist they need to sell ipods to make up for that. See here:
Actually you ARE losing quality. CD audio is 16-bit sound, itunes downloads are 24-bit sound. I prefer to keep the 24-bit sound intact without having to resort to buying an ipod, if there was some competition for digital audio portable players that are compatible with the itunes music store that is. But there isn't, and that's what they're in trouble for.
Second burning audio cd's doesn't allow me to keep nearly as many songs in the same amount of space as a portable audio mp3 player. Once again I ask you, WHY am I forced to buy an ipod if I want to listen to music from a portable device? Why can't I buy a portable audio player that could be cheaper from a different competitor, but plays it back just the same or maybe even better?
Wrong on both counts. I have an iPod, and if not for the freebie songs I got from their Pepsi promotions I wouldn't have a single DRM'd track
But if you wanted to buy music from another online store that was say 25 cents a song or 50 cents a song, you wouldn't be able to. Because apple said that only they will use their drm and that they won't license it to anyone else. Just because YOU don't want to, doesn't mean other people don't want to.
my iPod is full of MP3s I ripped myself from my CD collection. And I stripped off the DRM using JHymn, anyway.
This is not about being able to play mp3's are your ipod. It is about online music buying. Also using JHymn means you're violationg the DMCA. I want a legal way to transfer purchased music from itunes to the mp3 player of my choice without losing any quality in the audio.
And if you want to listen to your iTMS songs without an iPod, you can do it the old fashioned way: burn a CD and pop it in your discman.
Now why should I be forced to downsample my purchased songs from itunes from a 24-bit 128Kbit aac to a cd audio version. I want to listen to it in the same format on my mp3 player as on my computer. Apple prevents me from doing this by making me purchase one of their ipod in order to listen to their purchased music if I'm on the road. Don't try to skirt around the question now.
They don't seem to be losing right now. The vast majority of people are perfectly happy using iPods and only buying from Apple's store.
Sure they are. But that's only because apple allows no direct competition. If I could buy any mp3 player and have it work with apple's drm, then I'd be happy. And then apple's profit margins might start to go down and they would have to lower their prices of the ipod to compete. THAT is what this antitrust case is about.
Looks like you are one of those apple zealots. Ignore the facts. And come pos there as you REAL nick. Don't hide behind the anonymous coward posting.
Maybe they prefer shopping at the itunes store but feel they shouldn't have to buy an ipod in order to listen to it on the go without having to convert it down to a cd first, then back to an mp3 file, which doing all that degrades the quality.
Or maybe they want an ipod, but want the ability to purchase music at any online store out there. Apple could have easily added the plays for sure ability to the ipod. Microsoft doesn't restrict what mp3 players can use it. Unlike apple that says its fairplay drm can only be used on its brand of ipod players.
Apple is forcing you to have to buy music from their store if you own an ipod. And apple is forcing you to buy an ipod if you want to listen to music from their store.
This is the equivalent to a brick and motar music cd store saying that if you don't buy their music cd player, then you can't listen to the music cd's they sell. But that their music cd player won't play any other music cd's that are sold at other music cd stores.
This is exactly the way apple has always been. And in the end, they lose. Every single time. But they seem to like the niche status.
If I want to use an ipod and buy music, I gotta buy my music through itunes. If I wanna use any other mp3 player that supports plays for sure, then any other music store will work with it. So with every other music store out there, I can choose my mp3 player. But with itunes, I gotta use the ipod. This is why they're in trouble.
First it was warp drive engines thats called hyperdrive. Now this. Soon enough we'll have a tricorder. If this works out, then we'll easily be able to find Osama.
- no sata or raid support (wait, see next line), - you can have sata and other "exotic" hw support with third party drivers on a floppy disk, and nothing else (just think of people like myself who doesn't even buy or have fdd for about 6 years now), which leads to
A floppy drive is 5 dollars. ONLY 5 dollars. How cheap can you be? Sata drivers come on cd as well, and include a floppy image, so all u do is make the image to put on a floppy. You also can make your own windows cd and include the sata storage drivers automatically. That's what major computer manufacturers do too. Makes it simple.
- you can't use, mount, read,... no media under the installer, can't use drivers from another optical drive, external drive, network share, nfs, and I could just go on
Lets see, I dont need network access when installing windows, I can get that afterwards. Plus having that means all the drivers need to be loaded, which means at minimum the network drivers need to be on the cd which sometimes isn't true. And that doesn't happen till later in the install. The first thing that is truly needed is the storage drivers. And yes if microsoft included the ability to load the storage drivers from more then just the floppy disk and instead check from other storage media like a cd/dvd and a usb thumb drive. But at that stage of the install, all it can read from is the devices the bios supports which just include the floppy drive and cd/dvd drive.
- you have only two choices for partition format, fatxx or ntfs; besides the goal for monopoly, how can one explain the lack of native support for other, high quality journaling filesystems
First off, its not fatxx, its fat32. It's been fat32 and ntfs only for a long time for windows xp. Second, these other file systems you were referring to were made for a unix/linux operating system. Not for a windows nt based OS. What's the point in having additional file systems to choose from if they don't work from your OS. That arguement is completely irrelevant. Unless you use those additional file systems the way windows would use fat32 without any security in mind it would work. But if you want security, then you gotta rewrite them to use the kind of security permissions that you can use in ntfs. And frankly that is a waste of time on microsofts part. You either have fat32 with no security permissions and no journaling, or ntfs with security permissions and journaling. Simple for the consumer to choose from then.
- no support for defining separate partitions for swap or user homes (that is Documents and Settings) - I know you can make these steps after a finished install, but why not during install ?
You can change the locations of certain directories in windows if you want using an unattended install method, but that just makes it more complicated for an end user. By default having it on the same partition as windows xp is on makes it easy if you just want one big partition for everything. Second windows doesn't use swap partitions and defaulting it on the windows partition makes getting it up and running alot easier. Yes you can change it after you finish installing and that makes a whole lot more sense then. Plus I prefer it to be just a file because if you need to change it, you dont need to resize a partition to do it. More user friendly.
- network will be about the last things activated during the install process and still no use since you don't have no other terminals or guis or anything, you can't do anything but wait
Why would u want to do some work from a machine while an OS is installed? I don't see linux doing that either so why are you nitpicking windows for not doing it? Most of the gui installs for linux don't let you go to the command line while installing to do some work. If you want to do some work, do it from a machine that already has an OS installed from.
- the installer gives you about 0 amount of information about the status of the instal
Looks like we might hit that mark a little bit earlier then expected. I wonder if a heavy drinking scientist named Zefram Cochran might join them and help them get a working prototype. First contact may occur then.
But I'm definately not looking forward to the eugenics wars...
One word, marketing. Marketing frequently prices a new technology related product as being more expensive then another product that it is similiar and technically superior to. Doesn't matter if the more technically superior one only cost like a dollar more to make. They'll still price it much higher, because consumers believe a newer higher priced product is technically superior to the lower priced product it's meant to replace.
For example, dvd-rom drives and cd-rom drives for years cost around the same to manufacturer. But because the dvd-rom drive is technically superior to cd-rom drives, it has to have a higher price to show to consumers that it's the better buy. That is why you can no longer find cd-rom drives easily because they both cost the same to make, yet dvd-rom drives can't fall down much in price anymore as they've reached their lowest price point now that marketing can't price cd-rom drives any lower because then the company would be losing money. So they simply stop making as many cd-rom drives.
One linux distributor finally gets it that having a standardized gui is a good thing, and then the linux fan boys go bitch and moan at them because "they" want to have a choice when installing. Well if you don't like it, use another distributor then. End users would rather have one gui not have a choice of a gui. Standardization is what is holding back linux. That's what windows has, linux needs it too.
Okay, there is an extra disadvantage, but from the point of the packagers/developers:
* for every architecture and (practically) every release, a package must be built
Yes, and this is why linux needs a universal default standard package install format. There has been one developed, but practically no distributions have adopted it. And the reason why? It would end the lock-in that distributions have and give the smaller distro's of linux a chance. Because you can't have every single piece of software out there for linux in a repository for every distro. It's just not possible. Letting the developers maintain their own application installations in a universal install format is much less work then for everybody.
What's more, Windows typically does a worse job at auto-configuring than Linux. I remember a few months ago I couldn't even install Windows XP SP-1 which cost me $300 on a machine because the new hard drive I bought were serial ATA and I didn't have a floppy drive to load the 'special drivers'. Since it was a computer I was building on a budget, I refused to buy a floppy drive just so I can load some whack drivers. I mean, I haven't used a floppy drive since 1996.
Well you can integrate the serial ata driver if you want onto the windows xp cd. And at the same time slip stream service pack 2 onto it.
Guess what... a standard Debian Linux CD-ROM which I downloaded and burned for free could see and format the Serial ATA drives with no problem. It got all my drivers right as well because it just automatically downloaded the latest versions as necessary from one of about 100 mirrors around the world.
You're comparing a version of an OS from 2001 to something that was just released recently? Nice unfair comparison you just did their. What if there wasn't a driver for your nic with your debian? How would you load it? Via a floppy disk?
Well there is one thing that windows does well that linux can't do. All those hardware raid controllers that operate on ide and sata right now linux doesn't work with them. If you setup raid1 with 2 drives, windows sees one drive while linux sees 2 drives.
As for software, a Windows installation can take a whole day and cost thousands of dollars as you install your productivity applications and whatnot each of them with a separate serial code and a reboot of your computer. With BSD or Linux distros you just pick the apps you want and they install and auto-configure along with the rest of the operating system. I think I rebooted my Debian box one time when I was editing my FSTAB file.
It doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars. Install firefox and thunderbird, install openoffice 2.0. Now what if the application I want there isn't an open source alternative? Quicktax? Turbotax? What am I to do? Do you just put up with it that there is no open source alternative? You sound like you would.
As for windows, I think windows developers appreciate that they can develop an application, create a setup program for it, know that it will work with all windows versions from windows 98 to windows xp. But for linux, you need to create a package of it for every single linux distro out there since none of them have a standard file system. You have a download for redhat linux, mandriva, debian, gentoo, etc. Sometimes you even need to have a package for different versions of the same linux distro.
As for your complaint about windows being only available in swedish in sweden. You could order a version of windows that is in english if you want. The default language in sweden is swedish, which is why all windows versions there are swedish. Just like in china, all windows versions are chinese. And in Canada, since the official languages are english and french, you can buy either the english version or the french version. It's all about where you're located.
By the way, a floppy drive is $5 on average. How cheap can you be? I'd certainly want to have a floppy drive around just in case I needed it.
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Sure, bittorrent though seems like a much better idea. Then it saves the isp's from having to put out so much servers that have to pump this data out.
What if I want to fast forward through to a certain part right away? I'd still have to wait first. Other then the waiting for 10 minutes part for it to buffer, the idea seems great.
Some people would rather have it right then and now. No waiting time.
Lets face it, consumers will use whatever it is thats put in front of them most of the time. If you include a bare OS, they will complain nothing is being included and will go to an OS that does include everything they need. If you include the programs that do the functionality the consumer asks for, then businesses say it's unfair. Therefore lets blame the consumer for being lazy. Sound fair?
The biggest being that Apple is an OEM who is bundling software with a computer, thus needs to provide a "complete" experience.
But they are the sole provider of their OS, so essentially they are Microsoft + Dell all in one. But only when you purchase a computer from them.
But if you purchase their OS as an upgrade, it doesn't include those extra apps which is correct like ilife. But it does include quicktime 7, safari and their e-mail client. But the one difference being you can remove those 3 if you want. Or not install them at all. When you buy windows; wmp, ie, and outlook express are included but can't be removed. Apple's extra apps aren't tied into the shell like Internet Explorer is. Explorer.exe which is the shell in windows, should have no ability to browse the internet. But Microsoft doesn't enable you to remove them by tying them into the shell. Unlike apple which does.
In terms of fairness, Microsoft should enable the ability to remove those 3 completely easily. Just like apple does. But when apple includes quicktime, you can stream apples format with it. Just like when microsoft includes windows media player it can stream a certain format too. But Microsoft doesn't include a dvd player in windows itself, but lets the oem provide that. Just like apple only includes a dvd player if you buy a computer from them instead of just the OS by itself. So with all these extra apps, if microsoft has to remove windows media player, then apple should have to remove quicktime. Because they both serve the same purpose. That is to promote their own media format over another. The only company that gets hurt by this is real.
Now in the pc world if an OEM can remove windows media player and put in real's player instead, they have no pressure to include wmp. They're simply licensing the OS from Microsoft. Now as for apple, how hard would it be for real to get apple oem to include real's player as part of the software thats bundled with a new apple computer. Real hard. Because the same people that make the decision to include what software are also in charge of the OS side of it. Notice how all the bundled software the apple includes with its computer is only theirs. Their is no third party software at all. Unlike an OEM pc computer maker, their is third party software their usually.
Kind of. There's tricks you can do, for example carousel, where you continously send the same file out again and again. So people can start listening at any point, receive to the end of the file in the current sending, then listen for the first half when it's broadcast again.
What? So I should watch the last half of a show to see the ending and THEN watch the first half of it? That is completely pointless. It's like watching a movie where you already know the ending. It ruins it for you. How would you like to watch the last 5 minutes of a movie where the girl that was kidnapped gets rescued and they show who the kidnapper was, then you watch the movie from the beginning where they show the girl getting kidnapped but not who kidnapped her. NO ONE is going to want to watch a tv show like that.
It would not be unreasonable to suggest Apple spin off it's iTunes music store, since it fits right into this category.
Um unless you've been paying attention, the itunes music store isn't a money maker at all. They barely break even with it. Jobs has said publicly that the itunes music store is used to sell ipods.
Moore ends up almost petering out (kind of like apple...) and there ends up being a redeeming breakthrough that keeps it around.
Yeah, peopole always say apple is on the brink of going out of business. But it survives because it has higher profit margins and its occult following of loyal mac zealots. Apple fits well in an ecosystem where it has the main monopoly. But the moment actual competition comes in, it starts to lose out. It's like it doesn't know how to compete and lives off its own arrogance. In order for it to survive, it has to have a unique product that no one else can offer and that competitors can't use the same exact technology at a cheaper price. That's part of the reason why apple pantented its scroll wheel on the ipod. That keeps competitors from putting that feature on their mp3 players. Same thing with the drm that the itunes music store has.
Apple can only thrive in an environment where no other product can match its products for features.
Maybe it has something to do with ntfs permissions and that you can't modify them easily from a linux environment. Plus the administrators uid in windows is always different with each installation compared to linux where root has a uid of 0 I believe. Feel free to correct me though.
why not build into the tcp/ip protocol packets marked voip and streaming get priority. No need to pay extra for it. All the other packets out there would just be on a best effort basis.
Applications that handle streaming and voip would create these packets with the signature on it identifying that it was this kind of packet.
It's just built into every router/switch onto the internet. It would require a major upgrade for it. But that would work.
Now what would stop say a p2p client from spoofing it's packets to say they are voip packets? That's where it gets tricky because then all of a sudden you have all these clients saying they are voip packets just so that they get priority. And of course all the routers and switches will automatically push them through ahead of the other packets that are for best efforts only.
If you can't beat em, join em.
Banned movies, tv, games, music, etc all find their way online and someone somewhere releases it for all to see. It's pandoras box basically. You can't stop it once it's out there.
Now you're going off on exactly why the lawsuit was put on in the first place. Why should I have to burn a cd just so that I can rip that same cd into mp3 format? Why do I have to go through those steps when apple can simply license their drm to other mp3 players out there so that their drm'd tracks can play off of other mp3 players out there without having to convert it? 2 reasons. They have publicly stated that their itunes music store is being used to sell ipods. They have also publicly stated that they break even with the itunes music store. Therefore unless they start to make a profit on the itunes music store, they insist they need to sell ipods to make up for that. See here:
b elong/m ents/want_to_marginalize_the_ipod_ask_steve_jobs_h ow/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/your_99c_
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/com
Actually you ARE losing quality. CD audio is 16-bit sound, itunes downloads are 24-bit sound. I prefer to keep the 24-bit sound intact without having to resort to buying an ipod, if there was some competition for digital audio portable players that are compatible with the itunes music store that is. But there isn't, and that's what they're in trouble for.
Second burning audio cd's doesn't allow me to keep nearly as many songs in the same amount of space as a portable audio mp3 player. Once again I ask you, WHY am I forced to buy an ipod if I want to listen to music from a portable device? Why can't I buy a portable audio player that could be cheaper from a different competitor, but plays it back just the same or maybe even better?
Wrong on both counts. I have an iPod, and if not for the freebie songs I got from their Pepsi promotions I wouldn't have a single DRM'd track
But if you wanted to buy music from another online store that was say 25 cents a song or 50 cents a song, you wouldn't be able to. Because apple said that only they will use their drm and that they won't license it to anyone else. Just because YOU don't want to, doesn't mean other people don't want to.
my iPod is full of MP3s I ripped myself from my CD collection. And I stripped off the DRM using JHymn, anyway.
This is not about being able to play mp3's are your ipod. It is about online music buying. Also using JHymn means you're violationg the DMCA. I want a legal way to transfer purchased music from itunes to the mp3 player of my choice without losing any quality in the audio.
And if you want to listen to your iTMS songs without an iPod, you can do it the old fashioned way: burn a CD and pop it in your discman.
Now why should I be forced to downsample my purchased songs from itunes from a 24-bit 128Kbit aac to a cd audio version. I want to listen to it in the same format on my mp3 player as on my computer. Apple prevents me from doing this by making me purchase one of their ipod in order to listen to their purchased music if I'm on the road. Don't try to skirt around the question now.
They don't seem to be losing right now. The vast majority of people are perfectly happy using iPods and only buying from Apple's store.
Sure they are. But that's only because apple allows no direct competition. If I could buy any mp3 player and have it work with apple's drm, then I'd be happy. And then apple's profit margins might start to go down and they would have to lower their prices of the ipod to compete. THAT is what this antitrust case is about.
Looks like you are one of those apple zealots. Ignore the facts. And come pos there as you REAL nick. Don't hide behind the anonymous coward posting.
Maybe they prefer shopping at the itunes store but feel they shouldn't have to buy an ipod in order to listen to it on the go without having to convert it down to a cd first, then back to an mp3 file, which doing all that degrades the quality.
Or maybe they want an ipod, but want the ability to purchase music at any online store out there. Apple could have easily added the plays for sure ability to the ipod. Microsoft doesn't restrict what mp3 players can use it. Unlike apple that says its fairplay drm can only be used on its brand of ipod players.
Apple is forcing you to have to buy music from their store if you own an ipod. And apple is forcing you to buy an ipod if you want to listen to music from their store.
This is the equivalent to a brick and motar music cd store saying that if you don't buy their music cd player, then you can't listen to the music cd's they sell. But that their music cd player won't play any other music cd's that are sold at other music cd stores.
This is exactly the way apple has always been. And in the end, they lose. Every single time. But they seem to like the niche status.
If I want to use an ipod and buy music, I gotta buy my music through itunes. If I wanna use any other mp3 player that supports plays for sure, then any other music store will work with it. So with every other music store out there, I can choose my mp3 player. But with itunes, I gotta use the ipod. This is why they're in trouble.
This looks like it could be used as one of those touch panels like the kind that was used in star trek tng.
First it was warp drive engines thats called hyperdrive. Now this. Soon enough we'll have a tricorder. If this works out, then we'll easily be able to find Osama.
- no sata or raid support (wait, see next line),
... no media under the installer, can't use drivers from another optical drive, external drive, network share, nfs, and I could just go on
- you can have sata and other "exotic" hw support with third party drivers on a floppy disk, and nothing else (just think of people like myself who doesn't even buy or have fdd for about 6 years now), which leads to
A floppy drive is 5 dollars. ONLY 5 dollars. How cheap can you be? Sata drivers come on cd as well, and include a floppy image, so all u do is make the image to put on a floppy. You also can make your own windows cd and include the sata storage drivers automatically. That's what major computer manufacturers do too. Makes it simple.
- you can't use, mount, read,
Lets see, I dont need network access when installing windows, I can get that afterwards. Plus having that means all the drivers need to be loaded, which means at minimum the network drivers need to be on the cd which sometimes isn't true. And that doesn't happen till later in the install. The first thing that is truly needed is the storage drivers. And yes if microsoft included the ability to load the storage drivers from more then just the floppy disk and instead check from other storage media like a cd/dvd and a usb thumb drive. But at that stage of the install, all it can read from is the devices the bios supports which just include the floppy drive and cd/dvd drive.
- you have only two choices for partition format, fatxx or ntfs; besides the goal for monopoly, how can one explain the lack of native support for other, high quality journaling filesystems
First off, its not fatxx, its fat32. It's been fat32 and ntfs only for a long time for windows xp. Second, these other file systems you were referring to were made for a unix/linux operating system. Not for a windows nt based OS. What's the point in having additional file systems to choose from if they don't work from your OS. That arguement is completely irrelevant. Unless you use those additional file systems the way windows would use fat32 without any security in mind it would work. But if you want security, then you gotta rewrite them to use the kind of security permissions that you can use in ntfs. And frankly that is a waste of time on microsofts part. You either have fat32 with no security permissions and no journaling, or ntfs with security permissions and journaling. Simple for the consumer to choose from then.
- no support for defining separate partitions for swap or user homes (that is Documents and Settings) - I know you can make these steps after a finished install, but why not during install ?
You can change the locations of certain directories in windows if you want using an unattended install method, but that just makes it more complicated for an end user. By default having it on the same partition as windows xp is on makes it easy if you just want one big partition for everything. Second windows doesn't use swap partitions and defaulting it on the windows partition makes getting it up and running alot easier. Yes you can change it after you finish installing and that makes a whole lot more sense then. Plus I prefer it to be just a file because if you need to change it, you dont need to resize a partition to do it. More user friendly.
- network will be about the last things activated during the install process and still no use since you don't have no other terminals or guis or anything, you can't do anything but wait
Why would u want to do some work from a machine while an OS is installed? I don't see linux doing that either so why are you nitpicking windows for not doing it? Most of the gui installs for linux don't let you go to the command line while installing to do some work. If you want to do some work, do it from a machine that already has an OS installed from.
- the installer gives you about 0 amount of information about the status of the instal
Looks like we might hit that mark a little bit earlier then expected. I wonder if a heavy drinking scientist named Zefram Cochran might join them and help them get a working prototype. First contact may occur then.
But I'm definately not looking forward to the eugenics wars...
One word, marketing. Marketing frequently prices a new technology related product as being more expensive then another product that it is similiar and technically superior to. Doesn't matter if the more technically superior one only cost like a dollar more to make. They'll still price it much higher, because consumers believe a newer higher priced product is technically superior to the lower priced product it's meant to replace.
For example, dvd-rom drives and cd-rom drives for years cost around the same to manufacturer. But because the dvd-rom drive is technically superior to cd-rom drives, it has to have a higher price to show to consumers that it's the better buy. That is why you can no longer find cd-rom drives easily because they both cost the same to make, yet dvd-rom drives can't fall down much in price anymore as they've reached their lowest price point now that marketing can't price cd-rom drives any lower because then the company would be losing money. So they simply stop making as many cd-rom drives.
So blame marketing for all this.
One linux distributor finally gets it that having a standardized gui is a good thing, and then the linux fan boys go bitch and moan at them because "they" want to have a choice when installing. Well if you don't like it, use another distributor then. End users would rather have one gui not have a choice of a gui. Standardization is what is holding back linux. That's what windows has, linux needs it too.
Okay, there is an extra disadvantage, but from the point of the packagers/developers: * for every architecture and (practically) every release, a package must be built Yes, and this is why linux needs a universal default standard package install format. There has been one developed, but practically no distributions have adopted it. And the reason why? It would end the lock-in that distributions have and give the smaller distro's of linux a chance. Because you can't have every single piece of software out there for linux in a repository for every distro. It's just not possible. Letting the developers maintain their own application installations in a universal install format is much less work then for everybody.
What's more, Windows typically does a worse job at auto-configuring than Linux. I remember a few months ago I couldn't even install Windows XP SP-1 which cost me $300 on a machine because the new hard drive I bought were serial ATA and I didn't have a floppy drive to load the 'special drivers'. Since it was a computer I was building on a budget, I refused to buy a floppy drive just so I can load some whack drivers. I mean, I haven't used a floppy drive since 1996.
Well you can integrate the serial ata driver if you want onto the windows xp cd. And at the same time slip stream service pack 2 onto it.
Guess what... a standard Debian Linux CD-ROM which I downloaded and burned for free could see and format the Serial ATA drives with no problem. It got all my drivers right as well because it just automatically downloaded the latest versions as necessary from one of about 100 mirrors around the world.
You're comparing a version of an OS from 2001 to something that was just released recently? Nice unfair comparison you just did their. What if there wasn't a driver for your nic with your debian? How would you load it? Via a floppy disk?
Well there is one thing that windows does well that linux can't do. All those hardware raid controllers that operate on ide and sata right now linux doesn't work with them. If you setup raid1 with 2 drives, windows sees one drive while linux sees 2 drives.
As for software, a Windows installation can take a whole day and cost thousands of dollars as you install your productivity applications and whatnot each of them with a separate serial code and a reboot of your computer. With BSD or Linux distros you just pick the apps you want and they install and auto-configure along with the rest of the operating system. I think I rebooted my Debian box one time when I was editing my FSTAB file.
It doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars. Install firefox and thunderbird, install openoffice 2.0. Now what if the application I want there isn't an open source alternative? Quicktax? Turbotax? What am I to do? Do you just put up with it that there is no open source alternative? You sound like you would.
As for windows, I think windows developers appreciate that they can develop an application, create a setup program for it, know that it will work with all windows versions from windows 98 to windows xp. But for linux, you need to create a package of it for every single linux distro out there since none of them have a standard file system. You have a download for redhat linux, mandriva, debian, gentoo, etc. Sometimes you even need to have a package for different versions of the same linux distro.
As for your complaint about windows being only available in swedish in sweden. You could order a version of windows that is in english if you want. The default language in sweden is swedish, which is why all windows versions there are swedish. Just like in china, all windows versions are chinese. And in Canada, since the official languages are english and french, you can buy either the english version or the french version. It's all about where you're located.
By the way, a floppy drive is $5 on average. How cheap can you be? I'd certainly want to have a floppy drive around just in case I needed it.