Well the reason I didn't mention the Macintosh is because in the 80's it was in a niche market of Desktop publishing due to its cost and the insistence of Jobs to keep the Mac monochrome for WYSIWYG.
Apple learned its lesson with the Apple II and had developer workshops for the Mac starting in 1986. By the way, the insistence of Jobs to keep the Mac monochrome (OK maybe his type-A personality) was probably one of the main reasons Sculley replaced him in 1985. So there goes your theory of Job's "extremely controlled experience". He was creating Next and Pixar at the time.
What made Apple lose it's chance for market share in the 80's was the board of directors ousting the only executive that had a "vision". Luckily for Apple, he regained his seat on the board and the rest is history....
I cannot believe Apple did not learn this lesson the last time in the 80s. They were in the drivers seat with the PC and they refused to let anyone develop any software for it. Well, everyone gave them the finger and now almost everyone uses a Microsoft OS (although I am glad that is finally changing).
What?
I don't remember that. The Apple ][ was pretty open, and I had absolutely no problems developing for it nor finding software. Hell we even had Apple clones in our user's group.
What gave Microsoft DOS the market share were all those cheap IBM PC clones (even cheaper when the manufacturer went bankrupt) and the pirated copies of WordStar, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
The number one selling point for the IBM PC clones (back then they were called PC compatibles, and thanks to the crappy clones provided by Sharp "MSDOS Compatible" was coined) was why spend your hard earn money on a toy computer when you can buy a computer that would run all the programs you used at work.
By the way, the mistake Apple made in the 80's was not courting over any big software firms to make products that were compatible or at least similar to the software on the PC. Apple is not making this mistake, since they created a App marketplace first. Remember they had a VC firm seed the new software companies that made the apps for the iPhone OS 1.0.
You have confused Apple's inability to attract big software firms (and their titles) to the Apple II platform in the 80's with the "wall-garden" of the present. If anything, Apple is ensuring their market share. If the ability to have an open software market was the key ingredient for success, then all the articles on CNET, Slashdot, etc would be calling all the new phones the next "Windows Mobile Killer".
Instead of trying to astroturf the Android OS with these sensational stories, or flaming the iPad, or anything else from Apple. Maybe we should wonder why it's hard to find an Asus EEE netbook in the US that comes preinstalled with something other than Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter Edition?
Actually I will hazard a guess that most of the small businesses that are starting up in this economy is performing work on a contract given by the government.
These contracts would not exist without earmark spending.
Small business and pork spending are not mutually excluded. I bet they are mostly in the same set.
I remember when we were chanting more competition when the Walmart store were being built. Everybody was happy because the prices were lower than the mom-n-pops. At least until Walmart drove the mom-n-pops out of business. Now where's the competition?
Thats why i take such issue when people try to compare a pretty normal and so far benign company like Google with a multiple times convicted monopolist like Microsoft.
Microsoft settled with the DOJ after Microsoft found itself in a position of being called a 'monopoly'. This was after decades of growth, and I still question the settlement since no one forced us to use Windows. It was a single conviction, well technically a settlement since Microsoft saw the fairly weak settlement favorable to more years of court battles. EU doesn't count since they do nothing but make money off of US companies.
Google is far from 'normal or benign'. Microsoft only has a 'monopoly' in personal computer operating systems. Google has the search engine market. They purchased their competitor DoubleClick in March 2008 to grab enormous share of the Internet Ad market. Google video couldn't compete with YouTube so Google purchased them in Feb 2005 giving them a enormous share of the Internet video market. They have the android OS and Chrome OS. They are developing their own browser. They have Google Talk (chat) and Google Voice (VOIP). They are now getting to the broadband market. They have mapping with street views. They have a big enough presence on the Internet to be able to invade pretty much anybody's privacy, at least when it comes to web browsing, google email, google chat, google voice, cookies from web ads, and anybody who uses Google DNS.
Microsoft seems pretty small compared to Google at the moment.
Why use the word "appear"? If the integration is useful, then the product is genuinely better for having it.
I used the word "appear" because it's more subjective than quantitative. It's a matter of personal preference, and besides even if Google is liberating the data it doesn't address the question of Google indirectly harming the consumer by limiting competition by integrating the service. I'll address this next...
Integration can also be bad for users when they are forced to pay for a set of integrated products to get the one they want/need. Since the services discussed in the article are free, this is not an issue.
It's not an issue of Google directly harming their consumer and I'll add that there isn't any evidence that Google does anything bad to their customers. I trust them with my data.
This is an issue of Google may be indirectly harming their consumers by unintentionally limiting competition.
I know this sounds counterintuitive but selling someone an integrated product of which that the user only needs one feature isn't "bad". However if you use that integration to eliminate competition in the field, then it becomes "bad", since you pretty much forced the user into buying the integrated product.
For Example:
Internet Explorer's integration into Windows wasn't "bad" because it forced its users to use it to browse the web (it doesn't). It was "bad" because it gave Microsoft an unfair advantage against competitors that charged for their much product (eg. Netscape).
The "unfair" advantage that Google enjoys is brand loyalty. Imagine if there was a new hip way to communicate that an upstart created, and Google decided to provide a similar service. Which one would the average user pick - the mostly unknown upstart, or the recognizable Google? What if Google included it in its suite of web apps or integrated it with GMail?
Personally I would pick Google because of the trust and convenience. Hence, my concern.
I do not believe Google is "evil", but I do worry that there is a danger of it becoming "evil".
In this particular case Facebook isn't a push over, so I'm not too worried. It's when it becomes a trend that I begin to realy worry. It's not like their making an OS that integrates with their service... oh wait.
Tell me how you really feel. I knew I'd get some Google fanboi upset.
While Google goes after buys services that people find useful and are popular, Microsoft goes after any service that could in time pose a threat to their only income and kills it.
Since Google derives its revenue from traffic, how does this make Google any different than Microsoft? If it's popular then it's taking hits away from google therefore it is a threat to their income.
Google makes popular services more popular and useful, Microsoft kills the ones posing a threat. One kills any innovation, one takes it further.
What? Is that a new way of saying "embrace and extend" ?Actually that doesn't make any sense. That's like saying Microsoft made web browsing more popular, because they integrated it into Windows. I'm sure Netscape really appreciated Microsoft's help.
Ill take Googles approach thank you.
Google's "no evil" marketing campaign is working.
Besides I'm not calling for a boycott of Google. I'm just warning that I see a definite pattern emerging. I think its more important to question this behavior before it gets out of hand. I remember when Microsoft was the darling of the emerging personal computing market.
Some people seem to forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Google is the new Microsoft. It goes wherever they see money. It is the 800 lb gorilla that not only has the money to undercut its competition, but the advantage of giving themselves a higher page rank in searches. They can make their product appear better by marketing the new product's integration with the rest of Google's services.
Soon it will be like the 80's when tech companies' strategy switched from long term goals to the short term "What would make us attractive to Google?" strategy. Did we not learn anything from living with these tactics from Microsoft?
Phones don't have virtual memory or swap partitions -- what would you like it to do when it runs out of memory? Swap to flash? At least on mine the music keeps playing when you switch to another app.
It's not that I dislike it swapping out apps to make room for new apps - It's when it swaps out the notification for the provided email app that drives me batty. It would be nice, when more space is needed to run a new app, if it could warn me that an app that is using the notification bar is about to be "suspended" and allow me to either pick a different app to "suspend" or to not run the new program. Even better if I could tag apps that shouldn't be suspended and have the OS warn me that I couldn't run another app unless I "unload" an app.
Interestingly, I don't have these issues with Google branded services on the phone.
Well it's a love/hate relationship with my myTouch 3G. It crashes with a "Green Screen of Death" when I use the camera functions, but I usually don't use the sub-par camera anyway.
The irritation comes from the multitasking. Pressing the home button to switch apps took some getting use to, but my pet peeve is that some applications will stop doing notifications because it gets pushed off by the OS to make room for another app. The weather bug app works but doesn't update its location until I run the app in the foreground. Twitroid works without issues. But the IMAP email program that came with the OS will stop notifying, until I bring it back to the foreground.
I believe my problems would be temporary minor inconveniences if all the handsets were updated to the current version of android in a timely manner.
Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago."
It's only been a couple of days, let's see if he likes it after he had a chance to really use it. I speak from experience. I'm still have my android phone, but the only thing keeping me on the platform is T-Mobile.
Mozilla CAN'T support h264, at least not in countries with broken patent law (US, Germany, UK, Japan).
Broken patent law?
I agree software patents are bad especially when the USPTO seems to be hellbent on granting patents to blatantly obvious stuff. However, I wouldn't exactly call the algorithm that sends compressed video trivial or obvious.
We have Theora which seems to be unencumbered by the patents granted to h264, and therefore the market place can decide if freedom from royalties is a greater attribute than any gains on quality given by h264.
My point being that I too believe that we need to get rid of software patents, but I do have some nagging feeling that we shouldn't do away with software patents completely. There are some algorithms that are non-trivial and cost lots of money to develop, and there should be some legal instrument that allows the person who invested the time and money to develop the algorithm to profit from their work. We also need something that protects the small developer from large corporations when he tries to sell his work. I temper this with the reality that the patent system only favors the wealthy anyway...
Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer, called for the creation of an 'Internet Driver's License' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying, 'If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.'
In other words, Windows doesn't suck - The users do.
The drivers license analogy is being used to shift some of the blame from the OS to its users.
Quite the opposite. Just as TCP/IP means "TCP using IP as the next layer down", GNU/Linux means "GNU using Linux as the next layer down".
I only believe your half correct.
True "TCP/IP" is the accepted name for that Internet Protocol Suite which are two layers made by the DOD.
However, "GNU/Linux" is a name that is a fabrication of the FSF (via RMS).
I agree with Linus Torvalds when he was quoted in Revolution OS when asked about the 'GNU/Linux' controversy as saying "Well, I think it's justified, but it's justified if you actually make a GNU distribution of Linux... the same way that I think that "Red Hat Linux" is fine, or "SuSE Linux" or "Debian Linux", because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing, but calling Linux in general "GNU Linux" I think is just ridiculous.".
If you stop trying the moment you've mastered something, you're deadweight.
So you assert they mastered voice communications, web applications, and web browsers and are ready to move ahead into OS development and Mobile applications...
"GNU/Linux" is a fabrication of RMS that has a single task of giving the GNU foundation the illusion of being directly involved with the kernel development.
I should use some sort of punctuation that indicates humor.
Having separate microcontrollers (or full fledged processor boards) does not necessarily guarantee robustness or safe design when they are linked to perform a shared function.
To continue your example:
If the transmission crashes, it'll need major hardware repair, but at least you'll have power brakes/steering/etc as you stop. If the engine crashes, you'll smoothly downshift, glide to a stop, and put it in park.
If software that executes on another computer orchestrates the operation of both fails. It could place both in a untested state where the engine accelerates and the gear shift is unresponsive. Worse, the third computer could keep overriding your actions, returning the other two computers to the state that it believes it needs to be in.
Toyota and most car manufactures test for this situation, but my point still stands that having a distributed computing environment doesn't necessarily mean safer. Especially when you consider that the more complex the design is - the more complex (and thorough) the testing needs to be.
In response to Apple's iPad announcement, Google proved that it could draw a tablet and post it on the web.
My point being that maybe there is something more interesting than tablets. We already know that we'll see a fresh batch of articles on tablets / iPad in about 60 days.
You're correct. I was mostly pointing out that it was 'Woz' and not Jobs in the article.
Now if your tech reps were part of the demographic that watches the Bravo network, they would think that Wozniak was just Kathy Griffin's ex-boyfriend.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the reason I didn't mention the Macintosh is because in the 80's it was in a niche market of Desktop publishing due to its cost and the insistence of Jobs to keep the Mac monochrome for WYSIWYG.
Apple learned its lesson with the Apple II and had developer workshops for the Mac starting in 1986. By the way, the insistence of Jobs to keep the Mac monochrome (OK maybe his type-A personality) was probably one of the main reasons Sculley replaced him in 1985. So there goes your theory of Job's "extremely controlled experience". He was creating Next and Pixar at the time.
What made Apple lose it's chance for market share in the 80's was the board of directors ousting the only executive that had a "vision". Luckily for Apple, he regained his seat on the board and the rest is history....
What?
I don't remember that. The Apple ][ was pretty open, and I had absolutely no problems developing for it nor finding software. Hell we even had Apple clones in our user's group.
What gave Microsoft DOS the market share were all those cheap IBM PC clones (even cheaper when the manufacturer went bankrupt) and the pirated copies of WordStar, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
The number one selling point for the IBM PC clones (back then they were called PC compatibles, and thanks to the crappy clones provided by Sharp "MSDOS Compatible" was coined) was why spend your hard earn money on a toy computer when you can buy a computer that would run all the programs you used at work.
By the way, the mistake Apple made in the 80's was not courting over any big software firms to make products that were compatible or at least similar to the software on the PC. Apple is not making this mistake, since they created a App marketplace first. Remember they had a VC firm seed the new software companies that made the apps for the iPhone OS 1.0.
You have confused Apple's inability to attract big software firms (and their titles) to the Apple II platform in the 80's with the "wall-garden" of the present. If anything, Apple is ensuring their market share. If the ability to have an open software market was the key ingredient for success, then all the articles on CNET, Slashdot, etc would be calling all the new phones the next "Windows Mobile Killer".
Instead of trying to astroturf the Android OS with these sensational stories, or flaming the iPad, or anything else from Apple. Maybe we should wonder why it's hard to find an Asus EEE netbook in the US that comes preinstalled with something other than Windows XP or Windows 7 Starter Edition?
Now get off my lawn!
Sure when the Democrats spend WAY more pork money elsewhere.
I applaud Richard Shelby's efforts. He's showing more initiative than Jeff Sessions.
Actually I will hazard a guess that most of the small businesses that are starting up in this economy is performing work on a contract given by the government.
These contracts would not exist without earmark spending.
Small business and pork spending are not mutually excluded. I bet they are mostly in the same set.
I could say the same for the Green Jobs initiative, "Bullet Trains", or any other Obama spending package.
I guess it's only bad pork when it isn't helping your state.
Like bank robbers, Google is just going where the money is. Don't fool yourself into thinking they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Don't question the logic of a Google lemming.
I remember when we were chanting more competition when the Walmart store were being built. Everybody was happy because the prices were lower than the mom-n-pops. At least until Walmart drove the mom-n-pops out of business. Now where's the competition?
Microsoft settled with the DOJ after Microsoft found itself in a position of being called a 'monopoly'. This was after decades of growth, and I still question the settlement since no one forced us to use Windows. It was a single conviction, well technically a settlement since Microsoft saw the fairly weak settlement favorable to more years of court battles. EU doesn't count since they do nothing but make money off of US companies.
Google is far from 'normal or benign'. Microsoft only has a 'monopoly' in personal computer operating systems. Google has the search engine market. They purchased their competitor DoubleClick in March 2008 to grab enormous share of the Internet Ad market. Google video couldn't compete with YouTube so Google purchased them in Feb 2005 giving them a enormous share of the Internet video market. They have the android OS and Chrome OS. They are developing their own browser. They have Google Talk (chat) and Google Voice (VOIP). They are now getting to the broadband market. They have mapping with street views. They have a big enough presence on the Internet to be able to invade pretty much anybody's privacy, at least when it comes to web browsing, google email, google chat, google voice, cookies from web ads, and anybody who uses Google DNS.
Microsoft seems pretty small compared to Google at the moment.
I used the word "appear" because it's more subjective than quantitative. It's a matter of personal preference, and besides even if Google is liberating the data it doesn't address the question of Google indirectly harming the consumer by limiting competition by integrating the service. I'll address this next...
It's not an issue of Google directly harming their consumer and I'll add that there isn't any evidence that Google does anything bad to their customers. I trust them with my data.
This is an issue of Google may be indirectly harming their consumers by unintentionally limiting competition.
I know this sounds counterintuitive but selling someone an integrated product of which that the user only needs one feature isn't "bad". However if you use that integration to eliminate competition in the field, then it becomes "bad", since you pretty much forced the user into buying the integrated product.
For Example:
Internet Explorer's integration into Windows wasn't "bad" because it forced its users to use it to browse the web (it doesn't). It was "bad" because it gave Microsoft an unfair advantage against competitors that charged for their much product (eg. Netscape).
The "unfair" advantage that Google enjoys is brand loyalty. Imagine if there was a new hip way to communicate that an upstart created, and Google decided to provide a similar service. Which one would the average user pick - the mostly unknown upstart, or the recognizable Google? What if Google included it in its suite of web apps or integrated it with GMail?
Personally I would pick Google because of the trust and convenience. Hence, my concern.
I do not believe Google is "evil", but I do worry that there is a danger of it becoming "evil".
In this particular case Facebook isn't a push over, so I'm not too worried. It's when it becomes a trend that I begin to realy worry. It's not like their making an OS that integrates with their service... oh wait.
Tell me how you really feel. I knew I'd get some Google fanboi upset.
Since Google derives its revenue from traffic, how does this make Google any different than Microsoft? If it's popular then it's taking hits away from google therefore it is a threat to their income.
What? Is that a new way of saying "embrace and extend" ?Actually that doesn't make any sense. That's like saying Microsoft made web browsing more popular, because they integrated it into Windows. I'm sure Netscape really appreciated Microsoft's help.
Google's "no evil" marketing campaign is working.
Besides I'm not calling for a boycott of Google. I'm just warning that I see a definite pattern emerging. I think its more important to question this behavior before it gets out of hand. I remember when Microsoft was the darling of the emerging personal computing market.
Some people seem to forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Google is the new Microsoft. It goes wherever they see money. It is the 800 lb gorilla that not only has the money to undercut its competition, but the advantage of giving themselves a higher page rank in searches. They can make their product appear better by marketing the new product's integration with the rest of Google's services.
Soon it will be like the 80's when tech companies' strategy switched from long term goals to the short term "What would make us attractive to Google?" strategy. Did we not learn anything from living with these tactics from Microsoft?
It's not that I dislike it swapping out apps to make room for new apps - It's when it swaps out the notification for the provided email app that drives me batty. It would be nice, when more space is needed to run a new app, if it could warn me that an app that is using the notification bar is about to be "suspended" and allow me to either pick a different app to "suspend" or to not run the new program. Even better if I could tag apps that shouldn't be suspended and have the OS warn me that I couldn't run another app unless I "unload" an app.
Interestingly, I don't have these issues with Google branded services on the phone.
Well it's a love/hate relationship with my myTouch 3G. It crashes with a "Green Screen of Death" when I use the camera functions, but I usually don't use the sub-par camera anyway.
The irritation comes from the multitasking. Pressing the home button to switch apps took some getting use to, but my pet peeve is that some applications will stop doing notifications because it gets pushed off by the OS to make room for another app. The weather bug app works but doesn't update its location until I run the app in the foreground. Twitroid works without issues. But the IMAP email program that came with the OS will stop notifying, until I bring it back to the foreground.
I believe my problems would be temporary minor inconveniences if all the handsets were updated to the current version of android in a timely manner.
It's only been a couple of days, let's see if he likes it after he had a chance to really use it. I speak from experience. I'm still have my android phone, but the only thing keeping me on the platform is T-Mobile.
Besides, why should we really care?
Broken patent law?
I agree software patents are bad especially when the USPTO seems to be hellbent on granting patents to blatantly obvious stuff. However, I wouldn't exactly call the algorithm that sends compressed video trivial or obvious.
We have Theora which seems to be unencumbered by the patents granted to h264, and therefore the market place can decide if freedom from royalties is a greater attribute than any gains on quality given by h264.
My point being that I too believe that we need to get rid of software patents, but I do have some nagging feeling that we shouldn't do away with software patents completely. There are some algorithms that are non-trivial and cost lots of money to develop, and there should be some legal instrument that allows the person who invested the time and money to develop the algorithm to profit from their work. We also need something that protects the small developer from large corporations when he tries to sell his work. I temper this with the reality that the patent system only favors the wealthy anyway...
So you are correct the system is broken. sigh.
In other words, Windows doesn't suck - The users do.
The drivers license analogy is being used to shift some of the blame from the OS to its users.
I only believe your half correct.
True "TCP/IP" is the accepted name for that Internet Protocol Suite which are two layers made by the DOD.
However, "GNU/Linux" is a name that is a fabrication of the FSF (via RMS).
I agree with Linus Torvalds when he was quoted in Revolution OS when asked about the 'GNU/Linux' controversy as saying "Well, I think it's justified, but it's justified if you actually make a GNU distribution of Linux ... the same way that I think that "Red Hat Linux" is fine, or "SuSE Linux" or "Debian Linux", because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing, but calling Linux in general "GNU Linux" I think is just ridiculous.".
So you assert they mastered voice communications, web applications, and web browsers and are ready to move ahead into OS development and Mobile applications...
No.
"Linux" is a kernel. It does only one thing.
"GPL" is a license, it does only one thing.
"GNU/Linux" is a fabrication of RMS that has a single task of giving the GNU foundation the illusion of being directly involved with the kernel development.
I should use some sort of punctuation that indicates humor.
Having separate microcontrollers (or full fledged processor boards) does not necessarily guarantee robustness or safe design when they are linked to perform a shared function.
To continue your example:
If software that executes on another computer orchestrates the operation of both fails. It could place both in a untested state where the engine accelerates and the gear shift is unresponsive. Worse, the third computer could keep overriding your actions, returning the other two computers to the state that it believes it needs to be in.
Toyota and most car manufactures test for this situation, but my point still stands that having a distributed computing environment doesn't necessarily mean safer. Especially when you consider that the more complex the design is - the more complex (and thorough) the testing needs to be.
I'm more concerned that Google is becoming a "jack of all trades and master of none".
In response to Apple's iPad announcement, Google proved that it could draw a tablet and post it on the web.
My point being that maybe there is something more interesting than tablets. We already know that we'll see a fresh batch of articles on tablets / iPad in about 60 days.
You're correct. I was mostly pointing out that it was 'Woz' and not Jobs in the article.
Now if your tech reps were part of the demographic that watches the Bravo network, they would think that Wozniak was just Kathy Griffin's ex-boyfriend.