Exactly! The majority of Windows users that I have met have pirated at least one software package or some other copyrighted material, everything from MS Office, Windows XP Pro or 2000, Photoshop, music, videos, and much more. In fact, a lot of users don't even pay their $30 for WinZip or some other shareware app. Heck, I've seen used computers being sold with pirated software. Yet when you ask them about Linux, OpenOffice, and the GIMP, they have some excuse (too hard to use, doesn't work with [insert hardware here], its required) and defend their position about why they pirated (insert product here). In fact, some even have a "they won't catch me" attitude about pirating.
I don't support "trusted" computing at all, nor do I like MS and the [MP|RI]AA, but I wish that something would be done to stop the pirating of copyrighted material. It will help with the adoption of OSS software, too.
AMD is a member of the Trusted Computing Group, along with MS, Sun, IBM, Intel, HP, Sony, and a whole slew of contributors and adopters of this technology, too.
My main problem with "trusted" computing is the fact that it could lock out software that the manufacturer of the computer deems "not trustworthy." But, what does "not trustworthy" mean? Could some manufacturers use this technology to further entrench the Windows monopoly by locking me out of my "not trustworthy" Linux or *BSD disks? I could just think of the things that MS could do, such as force its vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.) to only ship "trusted" computers. I know, I know, I might be paranoid here, but I'm just saying that this is possible.
I agree. I hope this isn't troll/flamebait, but I'm ready to burn some karma, so here it goes....
Bill Gates may be one of the founders and leaders of a certain company that we all know and love [microsoft.com], and there is a lot of things that I don't like about Microsoft (Windows, convicted monopoly, business practices) but Gates himself is an interesting person. He started out as a geek like most of us here. He also does a lot of good things, like donate to schools, AIDS and cancer research, and other charity organizations. Now, I don't like the way that he has ran Microsoft, but I feel that it is important in some cases to separate Gates and his organization from MS. Gates may be "evil," but I think that he shouldn't be flamed for helping out or his donations; not everything he does is a part of an evil plan for M$ to take over the world.
Whether you like MS or not, they were the ones who made computers commonplace. Before Microsoft, computers were stuff used by Insurance Companies, Banks etc. Now they are used by anyone on the street.
You may hate [Microsoft] but [Microsoft] made the respective technologies accesible to Joe Sixpack.
Wrong! The reason why PCs appear on just about everyone's desktop isn't solely because of Microsoft; don't give them all of the credit. Remember that the reason why computers appear everywhere is because it is all from the results of many manufacturers, (Apple, IBM, Compaq, HP, Dell, etc.), researcher centers and universities (UC Berkeley, Stanford, Xerox, MIT, etc.), software (VisiCalc was a killer product, then was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, now it is MS Office; Adobe is a major player in the graphic design areas), the creation of the World Wide Web, operating systems (Windows "stole" many of the aspects of the Macintosh, which "stole" from the Lisa, which "stole" from the Xerox Parc, which used many of the ideas made by Doug Engelbart from Stanford University; and don't forget the significance of Unix), and many, many more.
Microsoft was just one of the players in the industry who provided an operating system that many PC manufacturers can use. To make a long story short, and to euthanize a bit, Microsoft's OS is the most common because any PC manufacturer can sell it with their PCs. Even so, Microsoft did not make computers commonplace. Microsoft made Windows commonplace, and it is a result of many, many companies that made computers commonplace.
If so, why not placate the power users who crave portability and offer a PowerBook G5 before catering to the lower-tier market within which the iMac resides?
There are two things, though. The G5 is a very hot processor. Whereas putting a hot processor in a desktop computer is one thing (they don't have to move it around, so the users wouldn't care about some heat as long as its not melting or its a heater), putting that same G5 in a portable computer is another thing. Users of portable computers demand having a cool (literally) computer just about all the time, and I don't think Apple is ready to put the G5 in the PowerBook yet (not unless it want to recreate the Macintosh Portable or something). I think that the new iMac would have enough room to support (and cool down) the G5 processor in it (although I think that the current pictures are fake).
Another interesting that you stated is that Apple is putting its G5 in a consumer based computer before in its professional notebook. Although it is kind of odd, remember that the iMac is Apple's mid-range desktop computer. This is the first time that Apple has had two seperate consumer based desktops (eMac and iMac) since the days that Jobs returned, so I'm actually not too surprised that the iMac would have a better processor than the PowerBook. With the G5 processor in it, it fills up a gap between the eMac (Apple's low-range desktop) and the PowerMac (Apple's professional desktop). It's good that Apple is refreshing its iMac line now, since sales of the iMac G4 weren't going too well IIRC (in fact, an eMac was a better deal at times than an iMac). With a complete iMac refresh, the mid-range iMac line makes sense, again.
I believe that the PowerBook would finally get a G5 processor sometime in 2005-2006. But, what would be completely weird is if that eMac gets a G5 first....
Saying MS is like the RIAA is pretty absurd. MS isn't suing everyone. (emphasis mine)MS isn't even a monopoly. Other companies produce software that can run theirs, and there are even competing operating systems out there, too! (check out "linux" - I think it's going to be big one day).
Okay, if Microsoft isn't a monopoly, the how do you explain that more than 90% of the computing population use some version of Windows? What about the fact that nearly every Windows or Macintosh computer have some version of MS Office installed, even though that there are many alternates (I know of at least the Windows alternates, such as WordPerfect Office, Lotus ProSuite, OpenOffice, etc; can't say much about the Mac)? And, I don't have a problem with monopolies in general; I have a problem with monopolies that don't play fair. Microsoft does every dirty trick in the book to get the computing world locked into their products, no matter what the quality of their products are.
Just because there is some competiton in sight doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't a monopoly. Remember, a monopoly doesn't have to have 100% of the marketshare and userbase; a monopoly needs enough marketshare to have a stronger user base than all competitors combined and is powerful enough to have a say in how things are going in the computing world in general.
If good UI design is targeted at computer novices, as is widely assumed, then why do so many technically talented people love OS X? Answer: Because usability gains for "our grandmothers" are also usability gains for we geeks.
The beautiful, mouth-watering interface isn't the only reason why geeks (like myself) love Mac OS X. Geeks also love OS X because it has a Unix core, meaning us geeks could work on the command line, use our Unix tools, and do our work. Not only that, but while we are doing those things, we can be listening to songs from our iTunes collection and painting in Photoshop. The proverbial "Grandma" likes Mac OS X because she could do what she likes to do, whether it is typing a letter on Word, browsing the web on Safari, or browsing her photo collection on iPhoto, without the fuss and worrying about other things, such as going through a hard to learn interface or worrying about viruses, malware, 5cr1p7 k1dd135, and other perils of computing.
The second problem is that open source when they turn to the general tools they tend to be in the line of "let's implement what we already know" so they will take Microsoft Office and they will clone it. Since we've been criticising Microsoft for years for cloning Apple it is only fair to criticise open source for cloning Microsoft. The point being that you don't move ahead but you have to do something new.
Good point taken. I hope I'm no troll or flamebait here, but have you seen KDE or GNOME lately, as well as their applications? They almost look like replications of the Windows interface. Isn't leaving Windows and learning something new part of the "benefits" of switching to Open Source? I think that the Open Source developers should build a brand new interface from the ground up, that is different from the other interfaces out there, but also useable enough so that way non-geeks would be able to use it with minimal trouble.
What I mean is this. Say you're a hypothetical non-geek Windows user who is using KDE or GNOME. You notice that the interfaces look very, very similar; the minimize/maximize/close buttons are in the same spot, the bar where your applications go works quite similar, and everything has a bit of familiarity. But say you want to go further. Then you'll hit some rough spots, because KDE/GNOME doesn't work exactly like Windows does, even though it looks very similar to it.
But what if I gave that same user a completely different user interface, one that the user has no experience in. Yes, the user would have to learn how to use the new interface, but if the interface is well designed enough for usability, the user will master most, if not, all of the aspects of the user interface in very little time. Plus, because the interface doesn't look like anything that he or she seen before, the user wouldn't expect "well, it worked here in this environment, so it should work the same way here."
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Those are all good and valid points, but how many Windows users are going to switch to *nix or Mac OS? For a lot of people, with a firewall, some anti-(virus|spyware|adware) apps, (Mozilla|Firefox|Opera|anything except IE), the latest patches installed, and some common sense about security (e.g., don't click on e-mail attachments, don't log in as "Administrator," and if a program needs Admin access, just change your user settings to allow you to use the program) Windows works fine, especially in its 2000/XP incarnations. It runs all of the programs that most users need without much hassle. Unfortunately, a lot of users don't do this, but that can be solved with some education.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux, and I currently run Windows 98 (yes, I know, I can't afford XP) with a form of Slackware called ZipSlack. (I will move completely to Linux in about a month). Linux, IMO, can be used as a desktop operating system. However, the desktop environment isn't refined yet, and some little things that us *nix geeks don't mind (like installing X11, getting your sound to work, compiling applications) would drive the heck out of less computer-savvy users. For them, a properly secured Windows installation (especially in its 2000/XP forms) would do fine.
If you think that was impressive, my mom is running Windows 95 and ran it for nearly 6 years without a reinstall. It is connected to the Internet nearly every day, yet the computer is protected (firewall, anti-virus/adware/spyware, Mozilla), so that might be a reason.
About his concerns for people who are still using IE 5.5 (mostly all Windows 95 users, since they can't upgrade to IE 6, nor does MS support them anymore), they can be convinced to use IE 7.0 through convincing them to buy a new computer. There are still a lot of Windows 9x boxes out there, so Microsoft could use security as a incentive (among others) for people with older versions of Windows to switch to Windows XP with the new and improved Internet Explorer. (Likewise, Linux/BSD supporters could convince Windows 9x users to switch for the same reasons, too, and there is always Mozilla/Firefox, which runs on Windows 95, so there are other options)
Still, though, the developer's comment was stupid; everyone benefits from full CSS and PNG support; it would save developers a lot of time trying to get their pages to render properly under IE, and it would make IE more standards compliant.
I just upgraded to Mozilla 1.7 from Mozilla 1.6. It works perfectly and I do notice a speed bump. It even saved my old settings (after deleting the Mozilla folder). I wonder if 1.7 is going to work on my old Windows 95 box as well; 1.6 works perfectly there, and it only has a 166MHz Pentium MMX and 48MB RAM! Keep on making good products, Mozilla!
This makes a lot of sense. Microsoft hasn't innovated anything for years, if at all. After crushing its competitors (Netscape, WordPerfect, etc.), Microsoft hasn't really made any viable updates to its software. Take Windows for example. The first few versions of Windows were bad and it didn't take until Windows 3.0 until Microsoft finally made it usable enough for developers to develop on it. Windows 95 was probably at Windows's peak. It's interface was very usable, didn't really get in the way, and had a lot of developers.
But then, Windows's quality deteriorated beginning with Windows 98, when Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer as a means to kill Netscape (and when Windows now had a 95% market share). However, as many people on this board know, integrating a browser to an operating system causes all sorts of problems, and Windows has gone downhill ever since. Windows XP, for example, is more stable than Windows 95/98, but it suffers from more worms than those operating systems, it's "eye candy" (if that's what you call it) is really an eye sore, and the interface gets in the way (compare the Find dialog in Windows 95/98 to the Find command in Windows XP, you'll see a difference). Ditto for Office, last time I checked, Clippy is still there. Microsoft Word has a lot of other annoyances (ever tried outlining there? It's a pain).
Now, look at Apple. Apple has made a lot of innovations within its whole lifetime. It was the first to bring the graphical user interface to the secretary's desk (Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh). Apple has made a lot of innovations that make many processes very easy (for example, in the old days, all you needed to do to network two Macs together was to connect a printer cable to each other, and then use Chooser to share files. No network configuration or anything. Try that on an old PC.). Finally, Apple took UNIX and fused the Mac OS with UNIX to make, after a long process that includes NeXT and Rhapsody, to create Mac OS X. Mac OS X is the only UNIX-based operating system where it is so easy for a non-geek to use without much difficulty, yet the UNIX pro could access the core using a few mouse clicks.
Apple could be considered one of the masters of usability. The operating system never gets in the way of your work, you control the computer. This is different from the Microsoft approach, which is the computer controls what you do. This is exactly why Apple hasn't came out with something annoying like Clippy or that dog in the Find box in Windows XP.
Microsoft needs to do something drastic with Windows and Office. Microsoft needs to start innovating, make Windows and Office user-friendly again, and finally make a stable version of Windows. Windows doesn't need a UNIX core (Microsoft spent tons of money on NT; besides, Microsoft adopting a UNIX core wouldn't be innovation), but Windows should be stable enough to use on a regular basis without any problems. Microsoft should also fix many of its other applications, such as the rapidly deteriorating and antiquated Internet Explorer, and not integrate the browser with the operating system. Isn't it about time that Microsoft should learn that integrating a browser with an operating system causes instability within the operating system? It's like, whenever Microsoft finally takes control of something, they sit on their couches, raise the prices, and the quality of their applications deteriorate with each and every new release. Microsoft needs to innovate fast here, and improve its products.
I hope this isn't a stupid question, but since PearPC is a PowerPC processor emulator, wouldn't an older version of the Mac OS work with PearPC or not? If Darwin and Mandrake Linux 9.2 are supposed to work under PearPC, wouldn't an older Mac OS version work, too?
This doesn't look good for OSS software. If just about everything were patented, there would be no way that future developers of software could implement certain features. Imagine if Microsoft patents the toolbar. Or if Adobe patents the photo editing tool. If this whole software patenting initiative is implemented and spread in other places, I think that it might be a major obstacle in Open Source Software that be very hard to get past. This would also impede innovation (not of the Microsoft kind) and would possibly force us into using proprietary standards forever.
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Exactly! The majority of Windows users that I have met have pirated at least one software package or some other copyrighted material, everything from MS Office, Windows XP Pro or 2000, Photoshop, music, videos, and much more. In fact, a lot of users don't even pay their $30 for WinZip or some other shareware app. Heck, I've seen used computers being sold with pirated software. Yet when you ask them about Linux, OpenOffice, and the GIMP, they have some excuse (too hard to use, doesn't work with [insert hardware here], its required) and defend their position about why they pirated (insert product here). In fact, some even have a "they won't catch me" attitude about pirating.
I don't support "trusted" computing at all, nor do I like MS and the [MP|RI]AA, but I wish that something would be done to stop the pirating of copyrighted material. It will help with the adoption of OSS software, too.
You're correct. Both articles talk about how Steve Jobs and Apple don't support "trusted" computing.
AMD is a member of the Trusted Computing Group, along with MS, Sun, IBM, Intel, HP, Sony, and a whole slew of contributors and adopters of this technology, too.
My main problem with "trusted" computing is the fact that it could lock out software that the manufacturer of the computer deems "not trustworthy." But, what does "not trustworthy" mean? Could some manufacturers use this technology to further entrench the Windows monopoly by locking me out of my "not trustworthy" Linux or *BSD disks? I could just think of the things that MS could do, such as force its vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.) to only ship "trusted" computers. I know, I know, I might be paranoid here, but I'm just saying that this is possible.
I agree. I hope this isn't troll/flamebait, but I'm ready to burn some karma, so here it goes....
Bill Gates may be one of the founders and leaders of a certain company that we all know and love [microsoft.com], and there is a lot of things that I don't like about Microsoft (Windows, convicted monopoly, business practices) but Gates himself is an interesting person. He started out as a geek like most of us here. He also does a lot of good things, like donate to schools, AIDS and cancer research, and other charity organizations. Now, I don't like the way that he has ran Microsoft, but I feel that it is important in some cases to separate Gates and his organization from MS. Gates may be "evil," but I think that he shouldn't be flamed for helping out or his donations; not everything he does is a part of an evil plan for M$ to take over the world.
Wrong! The reason why PCs appear on just about everyone's desktop isn't solely because of Microsoft; don't give them all of the credit. Remember that the reason why computers appear everywhere is because it is all from the results of many manufacturers, (Apple, IBM, Compaq, HP, Dell, etc.), researcher centers and universities (UC Berkeley, Stanford, Xerox, MIT, etc.), software (VisiCalc was a killer product, then was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, now it is MS Office; Adobe is a major player in the graphic design areas), the creation of the World Wide Web, operating systems (Windows "stole" many of the aspects of the Macintosh, which "stole" from the Lisa, which "stole" from the Xerox Parc, which used many of the ideas made by Doug Engelbart from Stanford University; and don't forget the significance of Unix), and many, many more.
Microsoft was just one of the players in the industry who provided an operating system that many PC manufacturers can use. To make a long story short, and to euthanize a bit, Microsoft's OS is the most common because any PC manufacturer can sell it with their PCs. Even so, Microsoft did not make computers commonplace. Microsoft made Windows commonplace, and it is a result of many, many companies that made computers commonplace.
There are two things, though. The G5 is a very hot processor. Whereas putting a hot processor in a desktop computer is one thing (they don't have to move it around, so the users wouldn't care about some heat as long as its not melting or its a heater), putting that same G5 in a portable computer is another thing. Users of portable computers demand having a cool (literally) computer just about all the time, and I don't think Apple is ready to put the G5 in the PowerBook yet (not unless it want to recreate the Macintosh Portable or something). I think that the new iMac would have enough room to support (and cool down) the G5 processor in it (although I think that the current pictures are fake).
Another interesting that you stated is that Apple is putting its G5 in a consumer based computer before in its professional notebook. Although it is kind of odd, remember that the iMac is Apple's mid-range desktop computer. This is the first time that Apple has had two seperate consumer based desktops (eMac and iMac) since the days that Jobs returned, so I'm actually not too surprised that the iMac would have a better processor than the PowerBook. With the G5 processor in it, it fills up a gap between the eMac (Apple's low-range desktop) and the PowerMac (Apple's professional desktop). It's good that Apple is refreshing its iMac line now, since sales of the iMac G4 weren't going too well IIRC (in fact, an eMac was a better deal at times than an iMac). With a complete iMac refresh, the mid-range iMac line makes sense, again.
I believe that the PowerBook would finally get a G5 processor sometime in 2005-2006. But, what would be completely weird is if that eMac gets a G5 first....
Okay, if Microsoft isn't a monopoly, the how do you explain that more than 90% of the computing population use some version of Windows? What about the fact that nearly every Windows or Macintosh computer have some version of MS Office installed, even though that there are many alternates (I know of at least the Windows alternates, such as WordPerfect Office, Lotus ProSuite, OpenOffice, etc; can't say much about the Mac)? And, I don't have a problem with monopolies in general; I have a problem with monopolies that don't play fair. Microsoft does every dirty trick in the book to get the computing world locked into their products, no matter what the quality of their products are.
Just because there is some competiton in sight doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't a monopoly. Remember, a monopoly doesn't have to have 100% of the marketshare and userbase; a monopoly needs enough marketshare to have a stronger user base than all competitors combined and is powerful enough to have a say in how things are going in the computing world in general.
The beautiful, mouth-watering interface isn't the only reason why geeks (like myself) love Mac OS X. Geeks also love OS X because it has a Unix core, meaning us geeks could work on the command line, use our Unix tools, and do our work. Not only that, but while we are doing those things, we can be listening to songs from our iTunes collection and painting in Photoshop. The proverbial "Grandma" likes Mac OS X because she could do what she likes to do, whether it is typing a letter on Word, browsing the web on Safari, or browsing her photo collection on iPhoto, without the fuss and worrying about other things, such as going through a hard to learn interface or worrying about viruses, malware, 5cr1p7 k1dd135, and other perils of computing.
Good point taken. I hope I'm no troll or flamebait here, but have you seen KDE or GNOME lately, as well as their applications? They almost look like replications of the Windows interface. Isn't leaving Windows and learning something new part of the "benefits" of switching to Open Source? I think that the Open Source developers should build a brand new interface from the ground up, that is different from the other interfaces out there, but also useable enough so that way non-geeks would be able to use it with minimal trouble.
What I mean is this. Say you're a hypothetical non-geek Windows user who is using KDE or GNOME. You notice that the interfaces look very, very similar; the minimize/maximize/close buttons are in the same spot, the bar where your applications go works quite similar, and everything has a bit of familiarity. But say you want to go further. Then you'll hit some rough spots, because KDE/GNOME doesn't work exactly like Windows does, even though it looks very similar to it.
But what if I gave that same user a completely different user interface, one that the user has no experience in. Yes, the user would have to learn how to use the new interface, but if the interface is well designed enough for usability, the user will master most, if not, all of the aspects of the user interface in very little time. Plus, because the interface doesn't look like anything that he or she seen before, the user wouldn't expect "well, it worked here in this environment, so it should work the same way here."
Those are all good and valid points, but how many Windows users are going to switch to *nix or Mac OS? For a lot of people, with a firewall, some anti-(virus|spyware|adware) apps, (Mozilla|Firefox|Opera|anything except IE), the latest patches installed, and some common sense about security (e.g., don't click on e-mail attachments, don't log in as "Administrator," and if a program needs Admin access, just change your user settings to allow you to use the program) Windows works fine, especially in its 2000/XP incarnations. It runs all of the programs that most users need without much hassle. Unfortunately, a lot of users don't do this, but that can be solved with some education.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux, and I currently run Windows 98 (yes, I know, I can't afford XP) with a form of Slackware called ZipSlack. (I will move completely to Linux in about a month). Linux, IMO, can be used as a desktop operating system. However, the desktop environment isn't refined yet, and some little things that us *nix geeks don't mind (like installing X11, getting your sound to work, compiling applications) would drive the heck out of less computer-savvy users. For them, a properly secured Windows installation (especially in its 2000/XP forms) would do fine.
If you think that was impressive, my mom is running Windows 95 and ran it for nearly 6 years without a reinstall. It is connected to the Internet nearly every day, yet the computer is protected (firewall, anti-virus/adware/spyware, Mozilla), so that might be a reason.
About his concerns for people who are still using IE 5.5 (mostly all Windows 95 users, since they can't upgrade to IE 6, nor does MS support them anymore), they can be convinced to use IE 7.0 through convincing them to buy a new computer. There are still a lot of Windows 9x boxes out there, so Microsoft could use security as a incentive (among others) for people with older versions of Windows to switch to Windows XP with the new and improved Internet Explorer. (Likewise, Linux/BSD supporters could convince Windows 9x users to switch for the same reasons, too, and there is always Mozilla/Firefox, which runs on Windows 95, so there are other options)
Still, though, the developer's comment was stupid; everyone benefits from full CSS and PNG support; it would save developers a lot of time trying to get their pages to render properly under IE, and it would make IE more standards compliant.
beefing up your computer.
I just upgraded to Mozilla 1.7 from Mozilla 1.6. It works perfectly and I do notice a speed bump. It even saved my old settings (after deleting the Mozilla folder). I wonder if 1.7 is going to work on my old Windows 95 box as well; 1.6 works perfectly there, and it only has a 166MHz Pentium MMX and 48MB RAM! Keep on making good products, Mozilla!
This makes a lot of sense. Microsoft hasn't innovated anything for years, if at all. After crushing its competitors (Netscape, WordPerfect, etc.), Microsoft hasn't really made any viable updates to its software. Take Windows for example. The first few versions of Windows were bad and it didn't take until Windows 3.0 until Microsoft finally made it usable enough for developers to develop on it. Windows 95 was probably at Windows's peak. It's interface was very usable, didn't really get in the way, and had a lot of developers.
But then, Windows's quality deteriorated beginning with Windows 98, when Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer as a means to kill Netscape (and when Windows now had a 95% market share). However, as many people on this board know, integrating a browser to an operating system causes all sorts of problems, and Windows has gone downhill ever since. Windows XP, for example, is more stable than Windows 95/98, but it suffers from more worms than those operating systems, it's "eye candy" (if that's what you call it) is really an eye sore, and the interface gets in the way (compare the Find dialog in Windows 95/98 to the Find command in Windows XP, you'll see a difference). Ditto for Office, last time I checked, Clippy is still there. Microsoft Word has a lot of other annoyances (ever tried outlining there? It's a pain).
Now, look at Apple. Apple has made a lot of innovations within its whole lifetime. It was the first to bring the graphical user interface to the secretary's desk (Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh). Apple has made a lot of innovations that make many processes very easy (for example, in the old days, all you needed to do to network two Macs together was to connect a printer cable to each other, and then use Chooser to share files. No network configuration or anything. Try that on an old PC.). Finally, Apple took UNIX and fused the Mac OS with UNIX to make, after a long process that includes NeXT and Rhapsody, to create Mac OS X. Mac OS X is the only UNIX-based operating system where it is so easy for a non-geek to use without much difficulty, yet the UNIX pro could access the core using a few mouse clicks.
Apple could be considered one of the masters of usability. The operating system never gets in the way of your work, you control the computer. This is different from the Microsoft approach, which is the computer controls what you do. This is exactly why Apple hasn't came out with something annoying like Clippy or that dog in the Find box in Windows XP.
Microsoft needs to do something drastic with Windows and Office. Microsoft needs to start innovating, make Windows and Office user-friendly again, and finally make a stable version of Windows. Windows doesn't need a UNIX core (Microsoft spent tons of money on NT; besides, Microsoft adopting a UNIX core wouldn't be innovation), but Windows should be stable enough to use on a regular basis without any problems. Microsoft should also fix many of its other applications, such as the rapidly deteriorating and antiquated Internet Explorer, and not integrate the browser with the operating system. Isn't it about time that Microsoft should learn that integrating a browser with an operating system causes instability within the operating system? It's like, whenever Microsoft finally takes control of something, they sit on their couches, raise the prices, and the quality of their applications deteriorate with each and every new release. Microsoft needs to innovate fast here, and improve its products.
I hope this isn't a stupid question, but since PearPC is a PowerPC processor emulator, wouldn't an older version of the Mac OS work with PearPC or not? If Darwin and Mandrake Linux 9.2 are supposed to work under PearPC, wouldn't an older Mac OS version work, too?
This doesn't look good for OSS software. If just about everything were patented, there would be no way that future developers of software could implement certain features. Imagine if Microsoft patents the toolbar. Or if Adobe patents the photo editing tool. If this whole software patenting initiative is implemented and spread in other places, I think that it might be a major obstacle in Open Source Software that be very hard to get past. This would also impede innovation (not of the Microsoft kind) and would possibly force us into using proprietary standards forever.