I'd be inclined to agree. My response is colored by the fact that I've read an awful lot of comments along the lines of, "Ugh, why do people buy Photoshop instead of supporting FOSS projects like GIMP? GIMP does everything that Photoshop does, and I know because I used it to make a picture once! People who buy Photoshop are morons who've been brainwashed by marketing."
So when you say, "you'd still complain about it not being useful for professional work for some other reason," it sounds like you're implying that those gripes are unfounded, which makes me want to argue with you. GIMP is great, but of course if you try to argue that it makes Photoshop unnecessary, you're going to get some arguments.
GIMP is quite good for screen graphics, and that's what most people do.
It's sounds more like you mean "GIMP is quite good for amateur work, and that's what most people do."
An awful lot of graphic design professionals do need to do some kind of print work at some point, so CMYK is pretty important. Beyond that, if there are any problems with font rendering, that's huge for professional designers too. An amateur might not care very much and might not notice the difference, but subtle changes in font can create a dramatic difference in the impact an image has.
But that's not where it ends. I did some work a while back where I really needed to optimize the hell out of the exported images for screen display. I had a bunch of images that needed to be exported to JPEG/GIF at very small file sizes while protecting quality as much as possible. Adobe's products did a far better job than GIMP or other FOSS solutions.
I could provide other examples, but I think I'm straying off into a GIMP hate-fest, which isn't what I want to do. It's a great program for Linux users who want a free image editor. It just happens that there are good reasons that professionals tend to use Photoshop instead.
Er... I think if you actually want to avoid offending crippled people, you should probably stop calling them "crippled". That word is also considered pretty politically incorrect. Shoot, these days, I think even "disabled" is considered offensive in some circles. It's supposed to be... maybe "differently abled"? I can't keep track.
Yeah, I wrote a new spreadsheet program called "Ninetimes International GNU General Excel Replacement System". Who could ever be offended by that? Only people who have a deep seated need to be offended.</sarcasm>
Look, they chose an acronym that is a pejorative term, and most likely they did it on purpose because they thought it was clever or funny. And ok, fine, so what. I don't care. I'm not offended. On the other hand, if I were going to recommend this program to a bunch of uptight office workers, the name would give me pause. I have no doubt it would lead to jokes, and my HR department would be at least a little concerned that someone would take offense and complain.
As a practical matter, if they want people to adopt their application in serious work environments, they should probably change the name. If they don't care whether people use their application, then good for them, they can name it whatever they like.
Yes, except that windowless toolbars have a place in traditional Mac OS UI conventions. In recent years, MacOS has included toolbars as part of the main application window, but the old style of doing things was much more object-oriented. The idea was that the window itself was not meant for the application, but for the document itself, and you had floating toolbars that allowed you to work in the document.
However, GIMP has typically violated the MacOS object-oriented approach too. In MacOS, the menu system for the image (e.g. the "File" and "Edit" menus) were integrated into a consistent bar, and the toolbars were for tools only. Also, the toolbars would disappear when the document using them was not actively selected, and you didn't close the application by closing the toolbar. In GIMP, the toolbars are generally working as a Windows-style single-window application, but then they also have the image windows at the same time.
Basically, GIMP doesn't really follow any set of UI conventions that I'm aware of. It may be following the conventions of an old Unix desktop environment that I'm not remembering or that I never used, but there's really not a good reason for the way it handles things on modern desktop operating systems.
Also, ever since Pulp Fiction, the word "gimp" has had a pop-culture meaning of a male sex slave or sexual submissive. So... it's really not a word you want to toss around in a professional environement.
I don't like the concept of unifying the UI across platforms, and I don't like the idea of Firefox being more identifiably "Firefoxy". If you ask me, one of the strengths of Firefox is that it does a passably good job of appearing to be native on each platform.
When I'm on a Mac, I want my browser to appear "Mac-y". When I'm on Windows, I want my browser to appear "Windows-y". When I'm on Linux, I want it to be "Linux-y". The browser should be inconspicuous, and it should blend into the platform that you're using. I personally think applications should be "out of your way" as much as possible. It should basically be an intermediary between the document and the platform, appearing as though it was something meant to be built into the OS from the start. The more aware I am of the application having a personality, the worse the UI is.
So if you want to refine the UI, I say more power to you. Make it sleeker, less obtrusive, more powerful. IMO, Firefox looks slightly clunky when compared to Safari or Chrome, and a few superficial tweaks might do something to improve that. But please don't turn it into an exercise in branding, to make your browser "distinct". Make your browser distinct by improving performance or adding useful features. Or make it distinctive by making the UI so bland and making it fit so well into the installed OS that all other browsers seem weird and quirky and non-standard by comparison.
Well not "kill it". They're going to cripple it and tie it to other services so most people won't want it, and those who want it will still be stuck with cable TV.
Hulu was created by NBC/Comcast, Fox, and ABC/Disney, and none of those companies want Hulu to succeed. They all make too much money from traditional broadcast/cable distribution, cross-promotions, etc. They each enjoy the benefits of having limited/controlled distribution of media. They don't want everything to be on-demand over the Internet.
So why start Hulu? First, they know that people are going to watch their shows online somehow. They'd rather have control of that distribution channel and monetize it somehow. They want a hedge in case the cable companies do go down, and they want leverage against the cable companies in negotiations.
But still, they don't want Hulu to succeed. They don't want you to be watching Hulu instead of traditional TV.
Hulu is a joint venture of NBCUniversal (Comcast/General Electric),[5] Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) and Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company)
So Hulu is owned by the same old-media companies that want to keep the cable companies going. Hulu was not built to compete. Hulu was built as a hedge.
No, they get it. They have an old business model that lets them lock you into paying $50 a month to watch the handful of shows that you like, in addition to the ad revenue. That business model also lets them schedule when you watch things, and try to push you into watching what they want you to watch. They've locked content to infrastructure, maintaining monopolies on distribution channels.
Technology is dismantling their control, and they don't like it. Once they're lost control, you'll pay less money and have a lot more control over your viewing habits. They don't know whether they can stop the march of progress, but they know they can use their market position and their lobbyists to slow progress. They can hold onto their kingdom for a few more years, at least, and they're going to do that.
Average consumers *do not* like stepping into the middle of a fight which they don't even understand.
Lately, I've been thinking this is a key thing, and it's something that gets glossed over in discussions among techies. Sorry, but I think even you miss the mark a bit when you're asking for a single distro. The problem isn't exactly a technical one, but that the migration requires people to seek out a confusing set of decisions with minimal apparent benefit.
I've been arguing for a little bit now that part of the problem is that people like to break their options into dichotomies. Especially when faced with a complex choice they don't understand, people will tend to narrow them down into "the normal thing that most people choose" and "the quirky alternative that might have benefits". Everything else gets brushed aside or ignored. Whichever option a person chooses, the other becomes "the thing that stupid people choose". It's why you have Apple vs. Microsoft, Intel vs. AMD, and Democrats vs. Republicans. So right now, Microsoft and Apple are filling those two roles, and there isn't really room for another player.
Aside from that, there are two major problems, and both come down to a lack of commercial support. The first problem is that if you go into a random store and buy a computer, you probably won't see any Linux computers. If you go to Dell's website or HP's website, they aren't advertising Linux computers. There isn't really comprehensive support from anyone. The only real way I can see this being solved is not increased community support or individual component OEM support, but through system integrator support. For example, if Dell made their own distribution that was designed to work on all of their hardware with full driver support, then you'd have some seeds for change.
The other problem is commercial software developer support. The big problems that I've specifically seen in my career are that there's no Microsoft Office for Linux, and there's no Adobe CS for Linux. Linux advocates will tell you that there are FOSS alternatives, but having supported serious business users of Adobe CS and MS Office, it still seems to me that the FOSS alternatives aren't yet capable of displacing the commercial suites. So one way that we could see Linux on the desktop is if Adobe created a Linux distribution designed to support Adobe CS with great color matching and font support, and then they included an office suite to match. If Adobe were to do something like that and then partner with HP and/or Dell, I think you could see substantial displacement of Microsoft for business users.
Of course, you also need to have a good replacement for the combination of Exchange/Outlook. I have yet to see a replacement that's comprehensive and satisfying for business users. Even Microsoft Outlook for Mac isn't very good, but at least it exists on the Mac.
Sorry, I'm going to be a little pedantic here, but the sonic screwdriver doesn't really have any set of capabilities to emulate. Something like the tricorder at least has some vague definition-- it's a set of sensors that can tell you about the material composition and structure of items at a distance.
But the sonic screwdriver? How the device works is something like, "point it at anything in order to get the writers out of the corner they've painted themselves into". There's nothing that it can not do, except apparently that it doesn't work on wood. How are you going to build that, and how will you know when you've succeeded?
I don't think this is a good plan. If they use Android, then they basically have 2 options:
A) Stick close to the reference design, and be just another Android phone manufacturer. Relinquish control over future software development to Google. Then they struggle to compete and differentiate themselves from other Android manufacturers-- i.e. "Why do I buy this RIM phone instead of the Samsung phone with the same features?"
B) Go their own way and deviate widely from the reference design. Run the risk that people won't like their changes. Run the risk of creating incompatibilities with the reference design. If you break compatibility enough that not all Android apps will run or feel "native" on your customized system, then you lose the main advantage of going with Android in the first place. Any changes that you make to the system that are not contributed back to the reference design need to be maintained separately by you. As Google releases new versions of Android, changes which you don't have control over, you have to port all of your changes back to the new version.
I don't think either of these options are very good. The first doesn't give RIM a good foothold to compete. The second removes some of the technical challenges of developing their own OS, but it still relies on them to have all the same technical/creative abilities as if they were developing their own OS, but relinquishes control on a technical level.
But then, unfortunately for RIM, I don't see any recipe for success. They've spent several years resting on their laurels, and now they're in the position of being an underdog, essentially starting from scratch. They're competing against the big boys-- Apple, Microsoft, and Google-- and they don't really have any advantages. They have the leverage that comes with corporations already having BES servers, but any move they make is probably going to also require rebuilding their BES strategy.
In other words, there's the iPad, the Kindle, and "everybody else"
And just to throw this in there, I think we've seen this is the standard thing in technology. For years, in the desktop OS market, there's been "Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else." In servers, there's been "Microsoft, Linux, and everyone else." In mobile phones, for a while there was "Palm, Blackberry, and everyone else," and then it was becoming "Blackberry, Windows, and everyone else," before jumping to "Apple, Android, and everyone else."
I think that the masses only have enough room in their brains to keep track of 2 technology alternatives at the same time.
Any operating system can be compromised, even if it requires that the user is dumb enough to install things that they shouldn't. We can argue about whether Windows or OSX is safer, but neither is immune to attacks.
Pretty good, I guess. Still no viruses, and I don't expect any soon. But gee, come to think of it, I don't have any viruses on my Windows computer either.
Huh, maybe it's because I don't just go installing any trash that random porn sites tell me to install. Maybe it's because I don't run programs that have been emailed to me by Nigerian princes.
Anyway, I still think Macs users are probably less vulnerable. I don't think this because of some technological superiority of MacOS, but because the usage profile for Mac users are different. Most Mac users I've had to support don't go around installing crap on their computers without knowing what it is. Also, the UI provides slightly clearer visual cues about when you're running something off of the Internet, and exactly what you're running. On top of that, many Mac users are already using the App Store, which provides a pretty safe bet that the software they're downloading isn't malware.
As an IT guy, I still wouldn't recommend that Mac users install an antivirus, but it's not because I think Macs are invulnerable. It's because I think antivirus software is trash sold by snake-oil salesmen. On Windows, because viruses are a greater risk, it's a good idea to install some kind of antivirus, but I recommend focusing on getting something cheap, lightweight, and unobtrusive. I often recommend MSE, and people ask, "Is it better at detecting viruses than other AV software?"
I tell them, "I don't know and I don't care. Your AV software isn't going to provide complete protection anyway. Most AV software is almost as bad as the malware they're protecting you from. You just want something that will add protection without recking your computer too badly."
I've pointed that out before, here on Slashdot. You have a lot of businesses using Windows, not only for their infrastructure, but for the majority of their desktop/laptop computers. A lot of companies only do perimeter security, so once you get inside the firewall, you have a nice, ubiquitous, unprotected network to target, perhaps with hundreds of computers, and profitable data to steal.
If you target Macs only, you get what? Home users? The design department of a company? A lone executive, maybe? It's not merely whether there are more Macs or PCs, it's about where those Macs and PCs are.
Of course, I don't think it's just an issue of that, either. These things are more complicated than people like to believe.
Thank you. I had to make this point several times in the last round of discussing vaccines on Slashdot: vaccines do not make everyone 100% immune to the disease. They decrease the chances of getting sick, or if you get sick they may decrease the severity of the illness, but they do not provide 100% immunity to everyone.
Therefore, even if your kid is vaccinated against a disease, exposing him to an outbreak of the disease will still increase his chances of getting sick over his chances if he were not exposed to the disease at all. Therefore, unvaccinated children present a risk to vaccinated children.
This does not even take into account the people who are unable to be vaccinated, or the kids who (in this case) haven't managed to get a booster shot before their immunization wears off.
But ultimately, I place the blame on shareholders and investors.
But you understand that a huge portion of the shareholders and investors are also grossly overpaid playboys? Even when the money itself comes from normal hardworking people, they don't have time to worry about what's happening to their money, so they dump it into some mutual fund and trust things will work out. You can't trust shareholders to be looking out for their interests, and that's part of the reason this whole system doesn't make a lot of sense.
This being, of course, why there is only Ford and GM, and Toyota are just dreaming if they think they can make any inroads into the big two, eh?
When you buy a different brand of car, you don't need to relearn how to drive that car. You don't need to change gasoline providers or change how you're accessing the roads. It's different when buying a smartphone. You're committing yourself to a UI and a set of apps, and when you switch you have to buy new apps. 3rd party developers need to decide which platforms they're developing for.
Yes, it's a sort of karmic process to watch Microsoft struggle in this situation. They successfully kept both Apple and Linux on the margins of the desktop for years, and now they're being marginalized in a very similar way.
I think part of the problem is there's just not really room for a 3rd platform. In a lot of these kinds of markets, most people think of there being a default option and then an alternative, and then anything after that is "another alternative that I don't want to have to think about." I think that's what Linux has struggled with in trying to attract both commercial developers and users, because Microsoft Windows was the default, MacOS was the alternative, and no one wanted to go past that.
Developers can be persuaded to support a second platform. They might feel forced to, or they might feel like they're hedging their bets. It lets them make claims about being "cross platform". There are benefits. But a 3rd or 4th or 5th platform? Where does it end? Similarly, users might be convinced to learn a second UI, but most don't want to learn the UI conventions of several different systems. They don't want to have to figure out the ins and outs of, "All of my friends can do this thing on their computers, so why can't I on mine? Oh, I have the one kind of system that doesn't allow that."
I think that's something that a lot of tech people misunderstand. Many users simply don't want to think about their computer or phone. They don't want to be asked to understand what the advantages and disadvantages are. It won't work to ask them to keep track of the differences between several different operating systems and evaluate which is best for themselves. Because they don't want to be overloaded with options, they simplify it down to 2 choices: there's the thing that everyone uses, and then there's the thing you use if you don't want to use the thing that everyone uses.
By default, iTunes puts inline links in the media player to the iTunes store. iTunes supports iTunes Match, and does not support similar "cloud" services from Google or Amazon.
I'm not criticizing Apple for this. I'm just saying I wouldn't call it "agnostic" with regards to which services you use.
OLED might make a big difference. I know in recent years, they've greatly improved the black level and dynamic contrast that TV sets are capable of, and I'd count that as significant.
Still, my TV is 7 years old, I have no problems with it, and I have no plans to upgrade.
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I'd be inclined to agree. My response is colored by the fact that I've read an awful lot of comments along the lines of, "Ugh, why do people buy Photoshop instead of supporting FOSS projects like GIMP? GIMP does everything that Photoshop does, and I know because I used it to make a picture once! People who buy Photoshop are morons who've been brainwashed by marketing."
So when you say, "you'd still complain about it not being useful for professional work for some other reason," it sounds like you're implying that those gripes are unfounded, which makes me want to argue with you. GIMP is great, but of course if you try to argue that it makes Photoshop unnecessary, you're going to get some arguments.
GIMP is quite good for screen graphics, and that's what most people do.
It's sounds more like you mean "GIMP is quite good for amateur work, and that's what most people do."
An awful lot of graphic design professionals do need to do some kind of print work at some point, so CMYK is pretty important. Beyond that, if there are any problems with font rendering, that's huge for professional designers too. An amateur might not care very much and might not notice the difference, but subtle changes in font can create a dramatic difference in the impact an image has.
But that's not where it ends. I did some work a while back where I really needed to optimize the hell out of the exported images for screen display. I had a bunch of images that needed to be exported to JPEG/GIF at very small file sizes while protecting quality as much as possible. Adobe's products did a far better job than GIMP or other FOSS solutions.
I could provide other examples, but I think I'm straying off into a GIMP hate-fest, which isn't what I want to do. It's a great program for Linux users who want a free image editor. It just happens that there are good reasons that professionals tend to use Photoshop instead.
It's only offensive to people who are crippled
Er... I think if you actually want to avoid offending crippled people, you should probably stop calling them "crippled". That word is also considered pretty politically incorrect. Shoot, these days, I think even "disabled" is considered offensive in some circles. It's supposed to be... maybe "differently abled"? I can't keep track.
Yeah, I wrote a new spreadsheet program called "Ninetimes International GNU General Excel Replacement System". Who could ever be offended by that? Only people who have a deep seated need to be offended.</sarcasm>
Look, they chose an acronym that is a pejorative term, and most likely they did it on purpose because they thought it was clever or funny. And ok, fine, so what. I don't care. I'm not offended. On the other hand, if I were going to recommend this program to a bunch of uptight office workers, the name would give me pause. I have no doubt it would lead to jokes, and my HR department would be at least a little concerned that someone would take offense and complain.
As a practical matter, if they want people to adopt their application in serious work environments, they should probably change the name. If they don't care whether people use their application, then good for them, they can name it whatever they like.
Yes, except that windowless toolbars have a place in traditional Mac OS UI conventions. In recent years, MacOS has included toolbars as part of the main application window, but the old style of doing things was much more object-oriented. The idea was that the window itself was not meant for the application, but for the document itself, and you had floating toolbars that allowed you to work in the document.
However, GIMP has typically violated the MacOS object-oriented approach too. In MacOS, the menu system for the image (e.g. the "File" and "Edit" menus) were integrated into a consistent bar, and the toolbars were for tools only. Also, the toolbars would disappear when the document using them was not actively selected, and you didn't close the application by closing the toolbar. In GIMP, the toolbars are generally working as a Windows-style single-window application, but then they also have the image windows at the same time.
Basically, GIMP doesn't really follow any set of UI conventions that I'm aware of. It may be following the conventions of an old Unix desktop environment that I'm not remembering or that I never used, but there's really not a good reason for the way it handles things on modern desktop operating systems.
Also, ever since Pulp Fiction, the word "gimp" has had a pop-culture meaning of a male sex slave or sexual submissive. So... it's really not a word you want to toss around in a professional environement.
I don't like the concept of unifying the UI across platforms, and I don't like the idea of Firefox being more identifiably "Firefoxy". If you ask me, one of the strengths of Firefox is that it does a passably good job of appearing to be native on each platform.
When I'm on a Mac, I want my browser to appear "Mac-y". When I'm on Windows, I want my browser to appear "Windows-y". When I'm on Linux, I want it to be "Linux-y". The browser should be inconspicuous, and it should blend into the platform that you're using. I personally think applications should be "out of your way" as much as possible. It should basically be an intermediary between the document and the platform, appearing as though it was something meant to be built into the OS from the start. The more aware I am of the application having a personality, the worse the UI is.
So if you want to refine the UI, I say more power to you. Make it sleeker, less obtrusive, more powerful. IMO, Firefox looks slightly clunky when compared to Safari or Chrome, and a few superficial tweaks might do something to improve that. But please don't turn it into an exercise in branding, to make your browser "distinct". Make your browser distinct by improving performance or adding useful features. Or make it distinctive by making the UI so bland and making it fit so well into the installed OS that all other browsers seem weird and quirky and non-standard by comparison.
Yes.
Well not "kill it". They're going to cripple it and tie it to other services so most people won't want it, and those who want it will still be stuck with cable TV.
But yes.
Hulu was created by NBC/Comcast, Fox, and ABC/Disney, and none of those companies want Hulu to succeed. They all make too much money from traditional broadcast/cable distribution, cross-promotions, etc. They each enjoy the benefits of having limited/controlled distribution of media. They don't want everything to be on-demand over the Internet.
So why start Hulu? First, they know that people are going to watch their shows online somehow. They'd rather have control of that distribution channel and monetize it somehow. They want a hedge in case the cable companies do go down, and they want leverage against the cable companies in negotiations.
But still, they don't want Hulu to succeed. They don't want you to be watching Hulu instead of traditional TV.
Besides, speaking of which, how exactly does Hulu intend to compete with the cableco's own online/streaming features?
They don't. From the Wikipedia article:
Hulu is a joint venture of NBCUniversal (Comcast/General Electric),[5] Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) and Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company)
So Hulu is owned by the same old-media companies that want to keep the cable companies going. Hulu was not built to compete. Hulu was built as a hedge.
No, they get it. They have an old business model that lets them lock you into paying $50 a month to watch the handful of shows that you like, in addition to the ad revenue. That business model also lets them schedule when you watch things, and try to push you into watching what they want you to watch. They've locked content to infrastructure, maintaining monopolies on distribution channels.
Technology is dismantling their control, and they don't like it. Once they're lost control, you'll pay less money and have a lot more control over your viewing habits. They don't know whether they can stop the march of progress, but they know they can use their market position and their lobbyists to slow progress. They can hold onto their kingdom for a few more years, at least, and they're going to do that.
Average consumers *do not* like stepping into the middle of a fight which they don't even understand.
Lately, I've been thinking this is a key thing, and it's something that gets glossed over in discussions among techies. Sorry, but I think even you miss the mark a bit when you're asking for a single distro. The problem isn't exactly a technical one, but that the migration requires people to seek out a confusing set of decisions with minimal apparent benefit.
I've been arguing for a little bit now that part of the problem is that people like to break their options into dichotomies. Especially when faced with a complex choice they don't understand, people will tend to narrow them down into "the normal thing that most people choose" and "the quirky alternative that might have benefits". Everything else gets brushed aside or ignored. Whichever option a person chooses, the other becomes "the thing that stupid people choose". It's why you have Apple vs. Microsoft, Intel vs. AMD, and Democrats vs. Republicans. So right now, Microsoft and Apple are filling those two roles, and there isn't really room for another player.
Aside from that, there are two major problems, and both come down to a lack of commercial support. The first problem is that if you go into a random store and buy a computer, you probably won't see any Linux computers. If you go to Dell's website or HP's website, they aren't advertising Linux computers. There isn't really comprehensive support from anyone. The only real way I can see this being solved is not increased community support or individual component OEM support, but through system integrator support. For example, if Dell made their own distribution that was designed to work on all of their hardware with full driver support, then you'd have some seeds for change.
The other problem is commercial software developer support. The big problems that I've specifically seen in my career are that there's no Microsoft Office for Linux, and there's no Adobe CS for Linux. Linux advocates will tell you that there are FOSS alternatives, but having supported serious business users of Adobe CS and MS Office, it still seems to me that the FOSS alternatives aren't yet capable of displacing the commercial suites. So one way that we could see Linux on the desktop is if Adobe created a Linux distribution designed to support Adobe CS with great color matching and font support, and then they included an office suite to match. If Adobe were to do something like that and then partner with HP and/or Dell, I think you could see substantial displacement of Microsoft for business users.
Of course, you also need to have a good replacement for the combination of Exchange/Outlook. I have yet to see a replacement that's comprehensive and satisfying for business users. Even Microsoft Outlook for Mac isn't very good, but at least it exists on the Mac.
Sorry, I'm going to be a little pedantic here, but the sonic screwdriver doesn't really have any set of capabilities to emulate. Something like the tricorder at least has some vague definition-- it's a set of sensors that can tell you about the material composition and structure of items at a distance.
But the sonic screwdriver? How the device works is something like, "point it at anything in order to get the writers out of the corner they've painted themselves into". There's nothing that it can not do, except apparently that it doesn't work on wood. How are you going to build that, and how will you know when you've succeeded?
I don't think this is a good plan. If they use Android, then they basically have 2 options:
A) Stick close to the reference design, and be just another Android phone manufacturer. Relinquish control over future software development to Google. Then they struggle to compete and differentiate themselves from other Android manufacturers-- i.e. "Why do I buy this RIM phone instead of the Samsung phone with the same features?"
B) Go their own way and deviate widely from the reference design. Run the risk that people won't like their changes. Run the risk of creating incompatibilities with the reference design. If you break compatibility enough that not all Android apps will run or feel "native" on your customized system, then you lose the main advantage of going with Android in the first place. Any changes that you make to the system that are not contributed back to the reference design need to be maintained separately by you. As Google releases new versions of Android, changes which you don't have control over, you have to port all of your changes back to the new version.
I don't think either of these options are very good. The first doesn't give RIM a good foothold to compete. The second removes some of the technical challenges of developing their own OS, but it still relies on them to have all the same technical/creative abilities as if they were developing their own OS, but relinquishes control on a technical level.
But then, unfortunately for RIM, I don't see any recipe for success. They've spent several years resting on their laurels, and now they're in the position of being an underdog, essentially starting from scratch. They're competing against the big boys-- Apple, Microsoft, and Google-- and they don't really have any advantages. They have the leverage that comes with corporations already having BES servers, but any move they make is probably going to also require rebuilding their BES strategy.
In other words, there's the iPad, the Kindle, and "everybody else"
And just to throw this in there, I think we've seen this is the standard thing in technology. For years, in the desktop OS market, there's been "Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else." In servers, there's been "Microsoft, Linux, and everyone else." In mobile phones, for a while there was "Palm, Blackberry, and everyone else," and then it was becoming "Blackberry, Windows, and everyone else," before jumping to "Apple, Android, and everyone else."
I think that the masses only have enough room in their brains to keep track of 2 technology alternatives at the same time.
Any operating system can be compromised, even if it requires that the user is dumb enough to install things that they shouldn't. We can argue about whether Windows or OSX is safer, but neither is immune to attacks.
Pretty good, I guess. Still no viruses, and I don't expect any soon. But gee, come to think of it, I don't have any viruses on my Windows computer either.
Huh, maybe it's because I don't just go installing any trash that random porn sites tell me to install. Maybe it's because I don't run programs that have been emailed to me by Nigerian princes.
Anyway, I still think Macs users are probably less vulnerable. I don't think this because of some technological superiority of MacOS, but because the usage profile for Mac users are different. Most Mac users I've had to support don't go around installing crap on their computers without knowing what it is. Also, the UI provides slightly clearer visual cues about when you're running something off of the Internet, and exactly what you're running. On top of that, many Mac users are already using the App Store, which provides a pretty safe bet that the software they're downloading isn't malware.
As an IT guy, I still wouldn't recommend that Mac users install an antivirus, but it's not because I think Macs are invulnerable. It's because I think antivirus software is trash sold by snake-oil salesmen. On Windows, because viruses are a greater risk, it's a good idea to install some kind of antivirus, but I recommend focusing on getting something cheap, lightweight, and unobtrusive. I often recommend MSE, and people ask, "Is it better at detecting viruses than other AV software?"
I tell them, "I don't know and I don't care. Your AV software isn't going to provide complete protection anyway. Most AV software is almost as bad as the malware they're protecting you from. You just want something that will add protection without recking your computer too badly."
That means the equation is all-but useless and pointless to try to "predict" anything except, apparently, in hindsight.
Welcome to the world of soft science, where everything causes cancer and housing prices continue to rise without limit.
I've pointed that out before, here on Slashdot. You have a lot of businesses using Windows, not only for their infrastructure, but for the majority of their desktop/laptop computers. A lot of companies only do perimeter security, so once you get inside the firewall, you have a nice, ubiquitous, unprotected network to target, perhaps with hundreds of computers, and profitable data to steal.
If you target Macs only, you get what? Home users? The design department of a company? A lone executive, maybe? It's not merely whether there are more Macs or PCs, it's about where those Macs and PCs are.
Of course, I don't think it's just an issue of that, either. These things are more complicated than people like to believe.
Thank you. I had to make this point several times in the last round of discussing vaccines on Slashdot: vaccines do not make everyone 100% immune to the disease. They decrease the chances of getting sick, or if you get sick they may decrease the severity of the illness, but they do not provide 100% immunity to everyone.
Therefore, even if your kid is vaccinated against a disease, exposing him to an outbreak of the disease will still increase his chances of getting sick over his chances if he were not exposed to the disease at all. Therefore, unvaccinated children present a risk to vaccinated children.
This does not even take into account the people who are unable to be vaccinated, or the kids who (in this case) haven't managed to get a booster shot before their immunization wears off.
But ultimately, I place the blame on shareholders and investors.
But you understand that a huge portion of the shareholders and investors are also grossly overpaid playboys? Even when the money itself comes from normal hardworking people, they don't have time to worry about what's happening to their money, so they dump it into some mutual fund and trust things will work out. You can't trust shareholders to be looking out for their interests, and that's part of the reason this whole system doesn't make a lot of sense.
This being, of course, why there is only Ford and GM, and Toyota are just dreaming if they think they can make any inroads into the big two, eh?
When you buy a different brand of car, you don't need to relearn how to drive that car. You don't need to change gasoline providers or change how you're accessing the roads. It's different when buying a smartphone. You're committing yourself to a UI and a set of apps, and when you switch you have to buy new apps. 3rd party developers need to decide which platforms they're developing for.
Yes, it's a sort of karmic process to watch Microsoft struggle in this situation. They successfully kept both Apple and Linux on the margins of the desktop for years, and now they're being marginalized in a very similar way.
I think part of the problem is there's just not really room for a 3rd platform. In a lot of these kinds of markets, most people think of there being a default option and then an alternative, and then anything after that is "another alternative that I don't want to have to think about." I think that's what Linux has struggled with in trying to attract both commercial developers and users, because Microsoft Windows was the default, MacOS was the alternative, and no one wanted to go past that.
Developers can be persuaded to support a second platform. They might feel forced to, or they might feel like they're hedging their bets. It lets them make claims about being "cross platform". There are benefits. But a 3rd or 4th or 5th platform? Where does it end? Similarly, users might be convinced to learn a second UI, but most don't want to learn the UI conventions of several different systems. They don't want to have to figure out the ins and outs of, "All of my friends can do this thing on their computers, so why can't I on mine? Oh, I have the one kind of system that doesn't allow that."
I think that's something that a lot of tech people misunderstand. Many users simply don't want to think about their computer or phone. They don't want to be asked to understand what the advantages and disadvantages are. It won't work to ask them to keep track of the differences between several different operating systems and evaluate which is best for themselves. Because they don't want to be overloaded with options, they simplify it down to 2 choices: there's the thing that everyone uses, and then there's the thing you use if you don't want to use the thing that everyone uses.
By default, iTunes puts inline links in the media player to the iTunes store. iTunes supports iTunes Match, and does not support similar "cloud" services from Google or Amazon.
I'm not criticizing Apple for this. I'm just saying I wouldn't call it "agnostic" with regards to which services you use.
OLED might make a big difference. I know in recent years, they've greatly improved the black level and dynamic contrast that TV sets are capable of, and I'd count that as significant.
Still, my TV is 7 years old, I have no problems with it, and I have no plans to upgrade.