Wow, he was pretty unspecific there about what he was talking about.
No he wasn't. He mentioned very specific points, although he did not cover others that are equally annoying. The points he mentioned included activation/registration problems and MS reserving the right and implementing the tech to delete arbitrary programs from your machine.
Anyway... I agree DRM is stupid, but shouldn't these guys be barking at the paranoid media companies trying to enforce that junk, not Microsoft?
The media companies are several cartels. MS is a monopoly. Both need to be solved for a permanent solution. MS probably has the power to change the actions of the cartels right now, but they have no financial interest in so doing since they don't have to give customers what they want in order to sell their product.
It's like he thinks Microsoft thought it was a good idea to arbitrarily limit users in how they can view protected media. In that case, he needs to provide a major part of his article giving convincing conspiracy-free details on how Microsoft would exactly profit from that.
MS has been using their monopoly to push DRM for a long time. They bundled Windows Media Player with Windows and PlaysForSure along with it, which they licensed to music player manufacturers. They even set WMP to rip CDs to DRM'd WMP format, by default resulting in the largest number of DRM'd files now in existence, more than are sold by any online store. Microsoft thinks DRM schemes and protected media are a great idea because it can use them to lock people into Windows. How can you move to a different platform when Microsoft stops supporting WMP on other OS's? MS makes money from every portable music player sold that is not an iPod. They love this crap.
And when you've got a more balanced view on the situation, maybe it's even possible to realize that Vista can play free media as freely and unrestricted as OS X or Linux, and actually see that Vista only provides the option to playback DRM'ed content, just like OS X provides the option to playback FairPlay stuff, or Linux provides you the option to install non-free libraries with truly draconian licenses that would make baby Gates cry. Is this the operating systems' faults?
On OS X, if I insert a CD, iTunes will rip that CD to MP3 or AAC and by default it does not add any DRM locking that music to just my computer. Why should it? What user would want to make it hard to move their own music to other places, like their car stereo, to a CD for the jeep, or for their iPod? On Linux, the situation is the same. On Windows, using the default, included player and the default settings, as most everyone does, that CD rips to WMP format encumbered with DRM. This is illegal since MS is leveraging their OS monopoly to gain in the music jukebox, music player (licensing cut), and music store (licensing cut) markets.
This is like saying 'my box is unhackable, therefore it is the most secure ever'... because you never connected it to the Internet.
No, it's a lot more like saying, "zebras are partially white." What the hell are you babbling about? You didn't address a single point in my post and instead are just writing unrelated nonsense. Get a clue.
How many people really read their 10 page mortgage application? Surprisingly few. And yet the agreement is legal.
Actually, in some states, my own included, not reading some contracts before agreeing to them is grounds for the contract to be negated. That's why some contracts require you to initial each page.
Am I the only one who is getting tired of reading all kinds of "Microsoft DRM is evil!" posts, and then seeing a post the very next day talking about how awesome Apple is? One company is buckling to industry pressure and including DRM, the other has a fricking Trusted Platform Module in every new computer it makes. The double standard is infuriating.
So if I buy a mac, how does the DRM affect me? Do I have to worry about my computer becoming unusable if I change hardware? Do I have to worry about re-registering? Do I have to worry about registering in the first place? The answers are, of course, no, no, and no. So is there a chance Apple will delete software off of my computer without my permission as MS's built in security will? No. So what, exactly, is the issue? There is a chip with an encryption key on it in the box? Okay, so why should I care? I'm a pragmatist. If my files were being DRM'd so I could not move to something else or if Apple was restricting me in any way, maybe I'd care. Apple does put DRM on their music files, they sell, but I generally don't buy from them. I did buy a few songs once that I could not find elsewhere, but I legally stripped the DRM off with a freeware program and backed them up as a regular audio CD with no DRM. What's the problem?
I use Windows and OS X and Linux on the desktop. Currently I favor OS X because it gives me the best feature set for general tasks. If Apple starts implementing DRM in such a way as to inconvenience me, I'll migrate to something else. I'm not going to do so, however, unless the DRM does inconvenience me. I'm not being shortsighted either. Any use that prevents me from being able to move platforms would probably tip the balance away from Apple, as I value portability.
The only real restriction I've seen Apple implement with encryption is locking their software to their hardware (any Apple hardware not a specific machine). Since Apple only licenses their software to run on their platform the only people this inconveniences are people who plan to use the software but break the license, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for complaint. Would I prefer it if OS X would run on any hardware? Sure, it would be a great feature. The problem is Apple's main product would directly compete with an abusive monopoly, and that means it would die and we would not get to use it anymore. The traditional strategy for dealing with such a monopoly is to build a separate vertical chain of supply, which Apple has done. Breaking that chain before MS is stopped from their criminal monopoly abuse is not a real option for Apple, so I don't blame them at all for only licensing their OS for their hardware.
Like Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.?
Well, they claim to be licensing the format, so that would be some small company that will make a version for Mac OS X, and possibly for Linux. If they are smart they will provide free readers for both those platforms. Also, I haven't seen the license, but the write up claims they are licensing limited read/write functionality, so don't expect the version on other platforms to be a first class citizen.
See here for example. Reading between the lines, Microsoft would probably have been guilty of abusing their monopoly if everything XPS was bundled with the OS -- Netscape/IE all over again. Adobe threatened them, and they backed down.
If you read the post you link to you'll see several comments that support my opinion. He says XPS is built into Vista, but that they are providing an option to OEMs to remove it from the version they ship, doubtless without a corresponding reduction in cost. I think this is their attempt to muddy the waters for any antitrust case. After all, they still get away with bundling WMP in the EU by shipping another version of Windows with it stripped out. Of course anyone buying it still pays full price and thus has to pay equally the development costs of WMP along with those that actually get the software, so they are basically subsidizing those users. You'll also note that the poster contradicts himself when he says that they pulled XPS out of versions for those OEMs, then says since it is part of their printing it cannot be removed. So what he likely means is they hid that functionality so programs cannot get to it, in those special versions.
Adobe threatened them, and they backed down.
Adobe threatened them and they pulled the save as PDF from Office, not wanting Office to be found to be a monopoly (something they've gone out of their way to prevent in the past). They have not pulled XPS from Vista that I've heard of and it shows up on the feature list.
I know that I can print to XPS right now, but I can't print to PDF without paying 300 bones (standard edition) or 449 (professional).
There are a coupe of things to note in this. With PDF there are lots of free tools to read and write PDFs, as well as a lot of closed tools. With XPS, there is only Microsoft. You claim you have to pay for PDF generation tools, but that is only because you're only considering offerings from one vendor. Worse yet you assume you have not paid for XPS generation tools, when in fact the cost of them is rolled into Windows Vista and MS Office. Even if you don't want XPS and would rather use PDF, you still have to pay if you buy either of these products.
Not only do the creators of PDF's get screwed, the reader software (up until the latest version) has sucked hard.
Yeah, if you only look at one tool, it might be a bad one. So you think it would be better to move to a market where there is only one company that can create said tools, instead of the situation we have now where there are numerous companies creating tools both free and for sale? I suppose if you never look at any other tools, it doesn't matter to you much, huh?
My desktop system is OS X. It has a built in PDF reader that is simple and fast. It can quickly generate PDFs from pretty much any application. MS could have done the same thing with Windows, but they did not. Instead they went with XPS, their own, proprietary, closed competitor. Do you really think that is going to benefit you in the long run?
Currently there are three standards being specified. Which itself is bad. OpenDoc, a microsoft thingie called OpenXML and now the OpenPDF.
Currently there are two existing standards, OpenDocument (not OpenDoc which is something else) and PDF. These standards are for different purposes. The former is for word processing, and other office documents. The latter is for distributing finished products that are intended to be portable and not editable by those receiving them.
This article is about Adobe certifying their latest version of the PDF standard and announcing a formalized process for contributions from others to the development of the standard (rather than them doing most of the work and other companies contacting them to get things added).
In addition to these established standards, MS is introducing two new formats designed to "compete" with the established standards. The first is OpenXML, which is is arguably a standard but which takes care to make sure the traditional benefits of open standards are unusable. The second is XPS, built into Vista and designed to replace PDF. It is actually pretty much an OpenXML file plus a directory of images and binaries, wrapped in DRM and compressed as a zip file, with the extension XPS.
I wish PDF and OpenDoc will merge and come up with a unified standard.
I can see the argument for this, but one of the main reasons people use PDF is because they can distribute files via the Web, e-mail, IM, or whatever and users can read but not alter that content along the way. I'm not suer these two formats should be merged, or that it would bring a lot of benefit to anyone. For example, I make PDF files that use a lot of features I don't need or want in a word processing program. I can make PDF documents from my Web browser and often to in order to archive my transactions. I'm not sure I want those files to be editable in any way, and I know that putting them in ODF format as it currently exists would add considerable bloat.
I got sick of PDF's taking forever to loading, and the reader hanging constantly on our PC's at work, so I banned them from from the office. It shouldn't take a bleeding edge machine to open plain old documents in a reasonable amount of time.
XPS is built into Windows Vista. I believe all new programs on Vista will generate XPS output the same way those on OS X can generate PDF. Just being built into Office would put a big dent into the market, since XPS files will open faster than PDF, but the fact that pretty much all users can read them without downloading a reader will make them tempting for many current companies that make PDFs. You know all those manuals and user guides online for products, XPS is going to start making sense to those publishers in the near future. I also suspect MS will release XPS readers for multiple platforms. We'll have to see about writers, probably just for OS X.
I think you're underestimating the danger posed by MS's bundling. IE is not better at rendering HTML than other browsers, but it is on every Windows machine so developers target it to the exclusion of all else. They may well do the same thing with portable documents, moving to XPS as the primary format, despite all the limitations.
Even the most verbose XML couldn't come close to the unbelievable bloat that is.PDF.
The PDF standard does not seem particularly bloated to me.
I got sick of PDF's taking forever to loading, and the reader hanging constantly on our PC's at work, so I banned them from from the office. It shouldn't take a bleeding edge machine to open plain old documents in a reasonable amount of time.
Ignorance is one of the main reasons why open standards lose to MS proprietary ones in the market. The average person does not understand the advantages. One of the main advantages is that no one is locked into a single vendor for their tools. Despite this almost everyone uses the combination of Window+IE+Adobe Acrobat Reader Plug-in. This is a terrible toolset and is bloated, slow, and poorly designed. Windows can't multi-task memory resources if your life depended upon it. IE itself is bloated and poorly handles threading plug-ins and will hang the whole process until a download is complete. The acrobat plug-in is slow and bloated with all the default settings turned on. The end result is an average user with an average machine clicking on a PDF link and their whole machine grinding to a halt while it waits for the download to finish, then they get to wait yet longer while the Acrobat plug-in eventually gets around to its main purpose.
The solution is, quite simply, don't use that combination of tools. If you're on Windows there are plenty of great, free PDF readers. Foxit is my favorite. On Linux I like XPDF and on OS X I like Preview. You have choices because PDF is an open standard. Blaming a standard for the failings of a given tool is just plain incorrect.
Now I imagine you won't care what I say anyway and will be quite happy when Microsoft's bundled XPS format takes over the market. It will even render faster for you for some time, since the default tools will be built into the OS's display APIs. You'll probably be happy about this for years until you realize you can't move to another platform because all your files are trapped in one only MS's reader will open. Moreover, you'll probably be wondering why you need a top end machine 5 years from now to open files you used to be able to open on your old machine, but since there will only be one reader available you'll be stuck with that. And if they start adding DRM as a mandatory feature on XPS files, so that you have to register all the documents you create with MS, well what can you do? Sure you'll complain about these things, but what will you do? Everyone uses XPS and if you ever want to submit a resume you need to have Windows with its built-in XPS tools.
...or maybe you won't. Maybe you and the rest of the industry will wise up to the advantages of open standards, as a few large organizations currently seem to be doing. Maybe you'll just download a good PDF viewer and think to yourself, wow I'm glad I have options and I'm not stuck with just one viewer, that would suck."
First, hopefully you were referring to XPS (XML Paper Specification) and not OpenXML, which many of the replies seem to assume. I don't see this as a counter move actually, but rather as business as usual. PDF has been an open standard for a long time and I don't know that any real player has any trouble getting Adobe to add to the spec. I'm glad they've formalized the process and renewed their commitment to keeping PDF an open standard.
I also don't see that PDF has much of a chance in the battle against XPS. Unless Microsoft is forbidden from bundling readers and writers with Windows, it will take over most of the market via that monopoly leveraging. By the time the courts act I suspect the market will already be destroyed and everyone will be locked into one set of tools made by MS. The courts will eventually rule against MS, and Adobe will get some money, but the market will never be repaired and consumers will be stuck with a PDF replacement where they can only get tools from one vendor and those tools will never be improved again.
I could be wrong. The courts could be faster than molasses or the industry as a whole could see the trap coming and stick with PDF despite MS. I don't suspect that will be the case though. The most realistic hopeful scenario would be Linux adoption by corporations and government taking off for managed desktops and OS X taking off in the home market sufficiently that the Windows monopoly is weakened enough so that MS cannot effectively manage a takeover based on their monopoly alone.
It is a public crime, people can click on the spam and hunt down the person committing the crime simply by following the money.
Then I can shut down my competitors by sending spam spoofed to appear to come from them, advertising their products.
Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.
Since most spam comes from the US and advertises products within the US and ICANN is a US entity, wouldn't they be shutting themselves down?
Now, to say that 1 in 4 machines are bots I would have to whole heartedly disagree with. This just isn't very likely. Especially since the lifetime of a specific botnet has gradually been decreasing. Faster AV responses, increased patching, and more bot competition will inherently decrease these odds. Sorry but the daddy of the internet or not.. I think he's off the mark.
I haven't found any sources for the data he cites, but I just happen to have some data in front of me that represents a significant chunk of all internet traffic and the best estimates I have show about.5% of all traffic is botnet traffic. When active bots send abnormally large amounts of traffic for a host, lets just say ten times as much to be very conservative. That would mean each bot would have to be actively spamming or sending an attack about 15 minutes a day on average assuming the 1 in 4 number he cites. Now these are really, really rough numbers, but that is not outside the realm of possibility.
I'll wait until I see real numbers and sources before judging his assertion.
Does anyone know a utility/website for detecting and cleaning bots?
There are lots of tools for detecting bots; as for cleaning them, well that depends upon the environment I suppose. ISPs have tools for detecting likely bots, but generally don't have the authority or motivation to do anything. Large organizations like universities and corporations have tools for detecting bots and taking them offline until they are fixed. How does one go about cleaning bots though? Do you wipe boxes before you know what is on them? That is the only sure way to rid a box of malware since you have no idea what else is on it.
The first question that needs to be answered is clean bots from what type of network do you want to clean bots from? The next is, how much control do you have over the machines?
No, I asked you if you think MoAB is the only group that can release bugs. You did not previously answer that. It is not rhetoric. Please back away from the straw man.
In response to a comment about who was finding bugs in OS X I wrote, "Apple is doing audits for security internally, and a lot of security researchers have informally looked into OS X bugs with security implications as well. There are a lot of security people using OS X laptops these days (judging by their omnipresence at conventions the last few years), and they notice things and are interested and motivated." Then you asked, "Do you think these people have a monopoly on finding bugs?" and claimed by "these people" you meant the MOAB people. One of the nice things about this whole forum thing is it is all there to read and your claims about what was said are easily disproved. Your statement was rhetorical or you simply can't read properly.
Again just because you fail at reading comprehension doesn't mean it's rhetoric.
Way to avoid a request for you to state your point clearly. See above.
Please quote where I said MoAB was ever going to fix bugs?
We were discussing how MOAB could improve security. If MOAB does not result in bugs being fixed, how exactly is it helping?
You know I don't know why I'm even bothering to answer your stupidity. There are plenty of people here with a clue, or who can at least respond to what was written instead of spouting nonsense and trying to make crap up. If you're a troll, good job and go to hell. If not, go take your meds. I'm not even going to finish reading your post. Ta-ta.
There's already a bunch of lawsuits against Microsoft in Europe, and that's not the same issue.
Apple bundled their DRM, music store, and jukebox software with their nearly monopolized portable music player. Microsoft bundled their DRM, music store, and jukebox software with their monopolized OS. MS was convicted in the EU, but the punishment was meaningless and did not include stopping. Norway has done nothing about MS as far as I know. It sounds like the courts there are arguing that this sort of tying is only illegal for hardware and software, rather than software and software, but I can't imagine why the law would make that distinction.
To me this sounds an awful lot like consumers being pissed about DRM, so instead of banning DRM they go after the most visible (not widespread) company that sells DRM'd items. In the process they don't seem to mind making several markets less competitive by handing them over wholesale to an abusive monopoly they have done nothing about.
These problems all exist in Windows, except that there the standalone installer and the non-updating of third-party software is the default, so people are quite used to them. I cannot get why people moving from Windows suddenly would think that standalone installers, etc would be a huge pain.
There are two parts to this. One, we're talking about how to make Linux ideal for desktop users. Windows can rely upon their lock-ins and the fact that they are pre-installed on every computer you can buy in the store, Linux cannot. Windows does not have to be good because most people don't know they have other options. Linux cannot. If we make Linux just as good as the mess that is Windows, it will fail.
The second part to this is on Windows the behavior is consistent. Software is all installed by stand alone installers, so that is what people learn to use. On Linux, that is not the case, so if a user has two completely different methods of installing software and some is kept up to date automatically and some is not, there is more room for confusion and problems.
You describe problems that both Linux and Windows has, and claims that if not Linux implements a Mac-style installation procedure, Windows will dominate the landscape for the forseable future. That does not really make sense.
Windows has a monopoly and momentum. The only was things will change is if momentum shifts the other way and a system that solves all of the myriad problems of Windows is presented, so that it is significantly superior. You seem to be basing your opinions on the idea that Windows dominates the market because it is the best, but there is no evidence that is the case and a lot of evidence that it is not. Being as good as the platform that does not need to be good to maintain market share, will get us nothing.
I'm not arguing that Linux should clone OS X either. I'm arguing that Linux should get the advantages OS X has and combine them with the advantages that Linux already has to create a system that is ideal for end users.
Judge: Open your DRM tech so other companies can sell DRMed music for the device, or stop trading in our country. This is a ridiculous double-standard.
Apple: Microsoft has tied their DRM format to their jukebox software and bundled it with Windows for years now and dominated the jukebox software market as a result. You have done nothing to stop them and now that we are gaining a small amount of that market by tying ours to our Ipod device and DRM format, you think it is fair to stop us but not them and guarantee that they will continue to own the market? Don't you think that is even more of a double standard?
Judge: What? I'm sorry I was counting my bribes. The court finds in favor of Microsoft, err, I mean against Apple.
The difference between fairplay and playsforsure is that fairplay *only* supports ipod, playsforsure is compatible with all sorts of hardware. I get the impression that Norway doesn't have a problem with the DRM itself, it's because it forces you to use specific hardware.
You're right that Fairplay only supports the iPod and PlaysForSure is licensed to multiple players. That's because Apple has a near monopoly on portable music players, While MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's. It doesn't make a lot of sense to tie your format to a market you haven't monopolized. PlaysForSure is tied to Windows Media Player, which is bundled with Windows. Windows Media Player dominates the market for jukebox software, despite by default ripping CDs into a format that is DRM'd in a format that prevents it from playing on most portables despite the fact that that is directly opposed to the interests of the consumer. Forcing Apple to open up FairPlay is simply handing the music jukebox market to Windows Media Player, and it will be used to further lock people into Windows and other MS products. MS will implement Fairplay, but also formats that Apple can't use, like WMP format. This means iPod users will now be able to buy songs from MS which will play on their iPod and use WMP to manage that. iTunes the program will die on Windows. However, most music still comes from CDs. Want to bet that the default format will still have DRM applied that plays only in WMP and devices that license a format from MS? Want to bet that MS will build in a music store to their WMP software, which will take huge chunks of the market away from Apple, simply because it is bundled with Windows?
Yeah the DRM formats are bundled to different things, one to hardware and one to software. Realistically, this makes no difference in the ability to leverage that tying and stopping Apple but not MS, is simply moving the market from competing monopolies, and handing it to one monopoly.
What I found interesting about this article is that it seems to advocate one choice is better than no choice, and implies Norway is harming its citizens and consumers by depriving them of a monopoly.
If this is about monopolies, why hasn't Norway don anything about the Windows monopoly, which has larger market share and a whole laundry list of abuses and lock-ins? Apple debatably wields monopoly influence as their market share is just now reaching the percentages where courts start looking into it. MS has been convicted of being a monopoly in courts around the world.
In my view, choice is never bad. Competition is good. Apple won their market share by out-innovating the rest of the pack. But history is full of examples of the stagnation occurs once a market is consolidated. So I think other players should be allowed to work with iTunes.
In general, I agree with you. Apple may have the best portable digital music player, but just because that player has dominated that market based upon its merits does not mean Apple should just be given the online music sales market and the jukebox software market. If and when Apple is declared a monopoly that should be forbidden.
In practice, I think this is going to result in a bad move. Since Norway and the rest of the world has done nothing to stop Microsoft from bundling their DRM format, jukebox software, and music service with their monopolized OS, Apple is the only thing keeping them from destroying those markets. If Apple is forced to license FairPlay to any and all comers, removing their ability to leverage the success of the iPod, all that is doing is handing those markets to Microsoft via their leveraging of their long established monopoly. Windows Media Player already has a larger market share than iTunes because it is shipped with al Windows systems which is a bigger market than all iPods. PlaysForSure DRM' files already outnumber FairPlay DRM'd files because that is the default format WMP rips files to.
Stopping monopolistic tying is a very good thing for the industry and fosters innovation. That is not what is happening in this case. In this case, instead of two struggling monopolists* who are now competing, they're proposing using the law inequitably to reduce that to one monopolist competing with no one. And someone thinks this will help?
*Note, Apple may or may not have what amounts to monopoly influence in the portable digital music player market. I don't know and the courts are as yet undecided.
I'd be interested to hear about what you suggest need to be done to better provide for these types of software. Just stating that it need to be improved does not really explain what your problem is.
Assuming I'm a typical Linux user using Linux as a server, and sometimes as a workstation, the majority of the software I use comes from a repository my program manager interfaces with. It works very well for that purpose. It keeps the programs up to date and lets me discover software, download, install, and uninstall. So far so good. Assuming, however, that I want to use Linux as a home computer desktop and I'm not a power user, but an average user things change. Like it or not, typical home users use a lot more commercial software. I might install 5 programs over the entire course of my owning the computer, but those might be World of Warcraft, MS Office, AOL-Mozilla, Cisco VPN client, and Monopoly all from commercial vendors. None of them are in the repositories and I need to download them from Websites. Installing and uninstalling is a huge pain, in some cases requiring me to copy random files, but usually just running a stand-alone installer. Then I have to save an uninstaller program for if I want to delete it. Since I normally just use the program manager all of this is not normal behavior and what is different for average users is hard for average users. The software is also not kept up to date. Upgrading your system to a new machine may or may not copy the installed commercial applications over and they may or may not work on the new system. Finally, sharing programs becomes hard. You can't e-mail it or IM it to a friend easily, or even copy it to CD and walk it over to them. Most of these are non-issues when it comes to open source software from repositories, although sometimes software in those repositories does go away.
I think Linux program packaging and management needs to be reconstructed with several principals in mind. It needs to be easy to do everything Linux does now. It needs to account for software obtained from OSS repositories as well as software from CDs, Website downloads, and via e-mail or IM or some other transfer from a peer. It needs to provide all the benefits of the package manager to software from these other sources. It needs to provide commercial developers with a system they want to use for registration/updates instead of their own custom installer. It needs to be simple and intuitive for novice users, installing should be no harder or unintuitive than dragging an application from the CD onto the hard drive.
There are two ways to manage this that I can think of. One, make a complex back-end. When a user drags an RPM onto their hard drive the OS recognizes it, references an online database to find the original source for that program, and adds that repository/package to the program manager including simulating a repository for programs only available via download and specially marking programs that don't have any online source for updates. When a user drags that same RPM to the trash, the OS also would know about the installed package and run the uninstall routine.
I think the above is doable and would not require many changes to the way things are done now, but I also think it is inelegant and a hack rather than a good design. What I'd rather see is a move to OpenStep style packages managed by RPMs. This would necessitate expanding the OpenStep spec to include repository information, and expanding package managers to read that info. You'd gain all the functions listed above as well as a few others, while sacrificing disk space for machines that don't normally archive installers and which don't grab installers that target other platforms. Servers rarely need to be migrated to a new machine with a different processor or to share software with peers, but desktops should be able to do both smoothly. This adds a bit of complexity to servers in that they have to strip out the unneeded parts of the package (tools already exist) if they want to maximize disk
I'm fully aware of issues with some of Apple's UI choices and both of those articles contain some real issues. That said, they are both fairly minor compared to the preponderance of long running, well known UI design snafus on Windows, many of which are duplicated on popular Linux distros. For example, While having dock items that are not constant in position along the edge of the screen means you can't easily train yourself to hit them on one axis, Fitt's law makes it simple to hit them on the other. Likewise for menus, placed at the top of the screen. Compared to menus placed at arbitrary locations within the screen, both of these are huge improvements. Add to that task bar and taskbar like elements that require the mouse to be slightly above the bottom of the screen and which are also moving targets and you have a clear win on that front for OS X. For that matter, look at Tog's article on the dock and try applying it to the Windows taskbar. Notice anything? Almost all his points apply as much or more to the taskbar.
That is one example. I could go on including one button mice for the default, dialogue boxes with "OK/Cancel" instead of actions, etc. etc. but I won't. Any reputable UI expert or even many books can walk you through what to do and what not to do as general rules, and most will use Windows as an example of what not to do.
I'm completely unconvinced that OS X does not beat Windows hands down in the usability department.
So...based purely on what I'm reading alone, OSX and the built in services and QS et all appear to do a better job and achieve all the integration and consistent UI objectives and extensibility that I think we can expect of Enso. I have no idea, but since I'm on Windows and I'm still not satisfied with it, I wouldn't think that you would be even if it was in 100% perfect condition. So (again) I would say stick with what tools work best for you. Enso probably isn't your cup of tea.
Sticking with OS X's built in features for the functions I describe is great, when I'm on OS X. I also run Windows for certain programs that work better on that platform. At that point, I miss the features I was describing and was wondering if Enso will provide a reasonable replacement. I'd love to have access to plug in functionality across several applications while using Windows, or for that matter just in a given application. I doubt I'll be using Windows for word processing, everyday web browsing, IRC, IM, e-mail, text/XML editing, graphics, scripting, or many other functions any time soon, but I will be using it for accessing certain Web applications and for Adobe Framemaker. Given that, it would be awfully nice if I could add online dictionary/thesaurus lookups, bibliography formatting, some arbitrary scripts, grammar checking, and statistical summarizes within IE and Framemaker. Is Enso capable of letting me do this without constantly interrupting my workflow? don't mind memorizing new key combinations.
Well then don't friggin' use it! Good grief- I don't know what else to say to you... other than: "hey! there doesn't only have to be *one* form of every piece of software in the world!"
You originally wrote, "I think the other aspect is tight integration and a fluid user experience." in regard to how it compared to OS X's ability to do the same. I think what, I and a lot of other users are trying to figure out is if this will let us replicate some of the functionality we have on OS X on Windows or if it is an inferior or superior version of the same. Unfortunately, you're about the only person here who has had a chance to use the software, and you apparently have never used OS X making both halves of the conversation difficult.
Your going off an comparing Apple's solution to the Zune by comparison to the solution you're testing was bound to raise more than a few eyebrows since the OS X solution is very elegant and has long been considered the best solution these tasks.
For the third or fourth time (to you alone) Enso isn't a spellchecker. It takes common things like app launching, spellchecking, thesaurus
You've only responded to two of my posts so far. I never said Enso was a spellchecker, but you were using that function of it for your examples, so I used the same function. OS X's services are not just a spellchecker either. They are a way to add arbitrary functionality all applications can use either by adding a stand alone service or allowing an application to share a function it already performs. A spellchecking service, dictionary/thesaurus service, etc. ships with OS X. A grammar checker is available from third parties and one will be shipping in Leopard. You can assign a key combo to any of the service functions and they work across applications. Tab completion for App launching and file opening is covered by OS X's spotlight, or via quicksilver.
What a lot of us are curious about, is Enso actually a poor man's version of this we can use on Windows? Is it a workable version of this? Is it better than the OS X implementation and in what way? You compared it to the iPod interface to OS X's Zune, so can you describe in what way Enso's ability to bring functions to me is novel and superior?
The point is to abstract out having to learn commands and shortcuts for every application and only have to learn them once.
Almost any function that is common across applications on OS X already has a standard key combo defined in the HIG and application developers all use the same ones. I guess the question I have is, isn't this true of most Windows applications as well? Certainly the common functions like save, copy, paste, etc. seem standard enough to me.
I'm very happy that you are statisfied with your spellchecker...
I am fairly satisfied with OS X services in general and spellchecker in particular, while using OS X, but myself, like a lot of people here I imagine, run multiple OS's. When I'm using Windows XP (I tried Vista but am waiting for it to stabilize) I feel like I've stepped into the past because I no longer have all these functions. If I'm using Windows, will Enso provide me with a way to add arbitrary functions, like a dictionary/thesaurus lookup and bibliography formatter, without breaking my workflow and forcing me to copy and paste things into other programs?
Well an application *and* spellchecker integrated into the same application.
I still don't understand. OS X's spellchecker is integrated into every application. How is the fact that words I screw up being underlined in red in my web browser, e-mail client, IM client, etc and giving me alternate, correct spelling to replace it not integrated? Have you used OS X's spellchecker?
You can tell I'm not sold on it because I didn't use the spellchecker to proof this post because it gets in the way too much (as I said in OP):)
I used the spellchecker on this post because my available Web browsers (Safari, Firefox3 alpha 1, and OmniWeb) all just do spellchecking using the built-in OS X service. Admittedly some of the unusual third-party services I've added don't integrate quite as well, but highlighting a URL and hitting a key combo to get an automatically formatted bibliography entry is not particularly difficult for my workflow.
I'm just not understanding what it is that this new system is supposed to be providing, above and beyond things that have been built into OS X for years now.
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Wow, he was pretty unspecific there about what he was talking about.
No he wasn't. He mentioned very specific points, although he did not cover others that are equally annoying. The points he mentioned included activation/registration problems and MS reserving the right and implementing the tech to delete arbitrary programs from your machine.
Anyway... I agree DRM is stupid, but shouldn't these guys be barking at the paranoid media companies trying to enforce that junk, not Microsoft?
The media companies are several cartels. MS is a monopoly. Both need to be solved for a permanent solution. MS probably has the power to change the actions of the cartels right now, but they have no financial interest in so doing since they don't have to give customers what they want in order to sell their product.
It's like he thinks Microsoft thought it was a good idea to arbitrarily limit users in how they can view protected media. In that case, he needs to provide a major part of his article giving convincing conspiracy-free details on how Microsoft would exactly profit from that.
MS has been using their monopoly to push DRM for a long time. They bundled Windows Media Player with Windows and PlaysForSure along with it, which they licensed to music player manufacturers. They even set WMP to rip CDs to DRM'd WMP format, by default resulting in the largest number of DRM'd files now in existence, more than are sold by any online store. Microsoft thinks DRM schemes and protected media are a great idea because it can use them to lock people into Windows. How can you move to a different platform when Microsoft stops supporting WMP on other OS's? MS makes money from every portable music player sold that is not an iPod. They love this crap.
And when you've got a more balanced view on the situation, maybe it's even possible to realize that Vista can play free media as freely and unrestricted as OS X or Linux, and actually see that Vista only provides the option to playback DRM'ed content, just like OS X provides the option to playback FairPlay stuff, or Linux provides you the option to install non-free libraries with truly draconian licenses that would make baby Gates cry. Is this the operating systems' faults?
On OS X, if I insert a CD, iTunes will rip that CD to MP3 or AAC and by default it does not add any DRM locking that music to just my computer. Why should it? What user would want to make it hard to move their own music to other places, like their car stereo, to a CD for the jeep, or for their iPod? On Linux, the situation is the same. On Windows, using the default, included player and the default settings, as most everyone does, that CD rips to WMP format encumbered with DRM. This is illegal since MS is leveraging their OS monopoly to gain in the music jukebox, music player (licensing cut), and music store (licensing cut) markets.
This is like saying 'my box is unhackable, therefore it is the most secure ever'... because you never connected it to the Internet.
No, it's a lot more like saying, "zebras are partially white." What the hell are you babbling about? You didn't address a single point in my post and instead are just writing unrelated nonsense. Get a clue.
How many people really read their 10 page mortgage application? Surprisingly few. And yet the agreement is legal.
Actually, in some states, my own included, not reading some contracts before agreeing to them is grounds for the contract to be negated. That's why some contracts require you to initial each page.
Am I the only one who is getting tired of reading all kinds of "Microsoft DRM is evil!" posts, and then seeing a post the very next day talking about how awesome Apple is? One company is buckling to industry pressure and including DRM, the other has a fricking Trusted Platform Module in every new computer it makes. The double standard is infuriating.
So if I buy a mac, how does the DRM affect me? Do I have to worry about my computer becoming unusable if I change hardware? Do I have to worry about re-registering? Do I have to worry about registering in the first place? The answers are, of course, no, no, and no. So is there a chance Apple will delete software off of my computer without my permission as MS's built in security will? No. So what, exactly, is the issue? There is a chip with an encryption key on it in the box? Okay, so why should I care? I'm a pragmatist. If my files were being DRM'd so I could not move to something else or if Apple was restricting me in any way, maybe I'd care. Apple does put DRM on their music files, they sell, but I generally don't buy from them. I did buy a few songs once that I could not find elsewhere, but I legally stripped the DRM off with a freeware program and backed them up as a regular audio CD with no DRM. What's the problem?
I use Windows and OS X and Linux on the desktop. Currently I favor OS X because it gives me the best feature set for general tasks. If Apple starts implementing DRM in such a way as to inconvenience me, I'll migrate to something else. I'm not going to do so, however, unless the DRM does inconvenience me. I'm not being shortsighted either. Any use that prevents me from being able to move platforms would probably tip the balance away from Apple, as I value portability.
The only real restriction I've seen Apple implement with encryption is locking their software to their hardware (any Apple hardware not a specific machine). Since Apple only licenses their software to run on their platform the only people this inconveniences are people who plan to use the software but break the license, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for complaint. Would I prefer it if OS X would run on any hardware? Sure, it would be a great feature. The problem is Apple's main product would directly compete with an abusive monopoly, and that means it would die and we would not get to use it anymore. The traditional strategy for dealing with such a monopoly is to build a separate vertical chain of supply, which Apple has done. Breaking that chain before MS is stopped from their criminal monopoly abuse is not a real option for Apple, so I don't blame them at all for only licensing their OS for their hardware.
Like Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.?
Well, they claim to be licensing the format, so that would be some small company that will make a version for Mac OS X, and possibly for Linux. If they are smart they will provide free readers for both those platforms. Also, I haven't seen the license, but the write up claims they are licensing limited read/write functionality, so don't expect the version on other platforms to be a first class citizen.
See here for example. Reading between the lines, Microsoft would probably have been guilty of abusing their monopoly if everything XPS was bundled with the OS -- Netscape/IE all over again. Adobe threatened them, and they backed down.
If you read the post you link to you'll see several comments that support my opinion. He says XPS is built into Vista, but that they are providing an option to OEMs to remove it from the version they ship, doubtless without a corresponding reduction in cost. I think this is their attempt to muddy the waters for any antitrust case. After all, they still get away with bundling WMP in the EU by shipping another version of Windows with it stripped out. Of course anyone buying it still pays full price and thus has to pay equally the development costs of WMP along with those that actually get the software, so they are basically subsidizing those users. You'll also note that the poster contradicts himself when he says that they pulled XPS out of versions for those OEMs, then says since it is part of their printing it cannot be removed. So what he likely means is they hid that functionality so programs cannot get to it, in those special versions.
Adobe threatened them, and they backed down.
Adobe threatened them and they pulled the save as PDF from Office, not wanting Office to be found to be a monopoly (something they've gone out of their way to prevent in the past). They have not pulled XPS from Vista that I've heard of and it shows up on the feature list.
I know that I can print to XPS right now, but I can't print to PDF without paying 300 bones (standard edition) or 449 (professional).
There are a coupe of things to note in this. With PDF there are lots of free tools to read and write PDFs, as well as a lot of closed tools. With XPS, there is only Microsoft. You claim you have to pay for PDF generation tools, but that is only because you're only considering offerings from one vendor. Worse yet you assume you have not paid for XPS generation tools, when in fact the cost of them is rolled into Windows Vista and MS Office. Even if you don't want XPS and would rather use PDF, you still have to pay if you buy either of these products.
Not only do the creators of PDF's get screwed, the reader software (up until the latest version) has sucked hard.
Yeah, if you only look at one tool, it might be a bad one. So you think it would be better to move to a market where there is only one company that can create said tools, instead of the situation we have now where there are numerous companies creating tools both free and for sale? I suppose if you never look at any other tools, it doesn't matter to you much, huh?
My desktop system is OS X. It has a built in PDF reader that is simple and fast. It can quickly generate PDFs from pretty much any application. MS could have done the same thing with Windows, but they did not. Instead they went with XPS, their own, proprietary, closed competitor. Do you really think that is going to benefit you in the long run?
Currently there are three standards being specified. Which itself is bad. OpenDoc, a microsoft thingie called OpenXML and now the OpenPDF.
Currently there are two existing standards, OpenDocument (not OpenDoc which is something else) and PDF. These standards are for different purposes. The former is for word processing, and other office documents. The latter is for distributing finished products that are intended to be portable and not editable by those receiving them.
This article is about Adobe certifying their latest version of the PDF standard and announcing a formalized process for contributions from others to the development of the standard (rather than them doing most of the work and other companies contacting them to get things added).
In addition to these established standards, MS is introducing two new formats designed to "compete" with the established standards. The first is OpenXML, which is is arguably a standard but which takes care to make sure the traditional benefits of open standards are unusable. The second is XPS, built into Vista and designed to replace PDF. It is actually pretty much an OpenXML file plus a directory of images and binaries, wrapped in DRM and compressed as a zip file, with the extension XPS.
I wish PDF and OpenDoc will merge and come up with a unified standard.
I can see the argument for this, but one of the main reasons people use PDF is because they can distribute files via the Web, e-mail, IM, or whatever and users can read but not alter that content along the way. I'm not suer these two formats should be merged, or that it would bring a lot of benefit to anyone. For example, I make PDF files that use a lot of features I don't need or want in a word processing program. I can make PDF documents from my Web browser and often to in order to archive my transactions. I'm not sure I want those files to be editable in any way, and I know that putting them in ODF format as it currently exists would add considerable bloat.
I got sick of PDF's taking forever to loading, and the reader hanging constantly on our PC's at work, so I banned them from from the office. It shouldn't take a bleeding edge machine to open plain old documents in a reasonable amount of time.
XPS is built into Windows Vista. I believe all new programs on Vista will generate XPS output the same way those on OS X can generate PDF. Just being built into Office would put a big dent into the market, since XPS files will open faster than PDF, but the fact that pretty much all users can read them without downloading a reader will make them tempting for many current companies that make PDFs. You know all those manuals and user guides online for products, XPS is going to start making sense to those publishers in the near future. I also suspect MS will release XPS readers for multiple platforms. We'll have to see about writers, probably just for OS X.
I think you're underestimating the danger posed by MS's bundling. IE is not better at rendering HTML than other browsers, but it is on every Windows machine so developers target it to the exclusion of all else. They may well do the same thing with portable documents, moving to XPS as the primary format, despite all the limitations.
Even the most verbose XML couldn't come close to the unbelievable bloat that is .PDF.
The PDF standard does not seem particularly bloated to me.
I got sick of PDF's taking forever to loading, and the reader hanging constantly on our PC's at work, so I banned them from from the office. It shouldn't take a bleeding edge machine to open plain old documents in a reasonable amount of time.
Ignorance is one of the main reasons why open standards lose to MS proprietary ones in the market. The average person does not understand the advantages. One of the main advantages is that no one is locked into a single vendor for their tools. Despite this almost everyone uses the combination of Window+IE+Adobe Acrobat Reader Plug-in. This is a terrible toolset and is bloated, slow, and poorly designed. Windows can't multi-task memory resources if your life depended upon it. IE itself is bloated and poorly handles threading plug-ins and will hang the whole process until a download is complete. The acrobat plug-in is slow and bloated with all the default settings turned on. The end result is an average user with an average machine clicking on a PDF link and their whole machine grinding to a halt while it waits for the download to finish, then they get to wait yet longer while the Acrobat plug-in eventually gets around to its main purpose.
The solution is, quite simply, don't use that combination of tools. If you're on Windows there are plenty of great, free PDF readers. Foxit is my favorite. On Linux I like XPDF and on OS X I like Preview. You have choices because PDF is an open standard. Blaming a standard for the failings of a given tool is just plain incorrect.
Now I imagine you won't care what I say anyway and will be quite happy when Microsoft's bundled XPS format takes over the market. It will even render faster for you for some time, since the default tools will be built into the OS's display APIs. You'll probably be happy about this for years until you realize you can't move to another platform because all your files are trapped in one only MS's reader will open. Moreover, you'll probably be wondering why you need a top end machine 5 years from now to open files you used to be able to open on your old machine, but since there will only be one reader available you'll be stuck with that. And if they start adding DRM as a mandatory feature on XPS files, so that you have to register all the documents you create with MS, well what can you do? Sure you'll complain about these things, but what will you do? Everyone uses XPS and if you ever want to submit a resume you need to have Windows with its built-in XPS tools.
...or maybe you won't. Maybe you and the rest of the industry will wise up to the advantages of open standards, as a few large organizations currently seem to be doing. Maybe you'll just download a good PDF viewer and think to yourself, wow I'm glad I have options and I'm not stuck with just one viewer, that would suck."
Is this a nail in the MS XML coffin?
First, hopefully you were referring to XPS (XML Paper Specification) and not OpenXML, which many of the replies seem to assume. I don't see this as a counter move actually, but rather as business as usual. PDF has been an open standard for a long time and I don't know that any real player has any trouble getting Adobe to add to the spec. I'm glad they've formalized the process and renewed their commitment to keeping PDF an open standard.
I also don't see that PDF has much of a chance in the battle against XPS. Unless Microsoft is forbidden from bundling readers and writers with Windows, it will take over most of the market via that monopoly leveraging. By the time the courts act I suspect the market will already be destroyed and everyone will be locked into one set of tools made by MS. The courts will eventually rule against MS, and Adobe will get some money, but the market will never be repaired and consumers will be stuck with a PDF replacement where they can only get tools from one vendor and those tools will never be improved again.
I could be wrong. The courts could be faster than molasses or the industry as a whole could see the trap coming and stick with PDF despite MS. I don't suspect that will be the case though. The most realistic hopeful scenario would be Linux adoption by corporations and government taking off for managed desktops and OS X taking off in the home market sufficiently that the Windows monopoly is weakened enough so that MS cannot effectively manage a takeover based on their monopoly alone.
It is a public crime, people can click on the spam and hunt down the person committing the crime simply by following the money.
Then I can shut down my competitors by sending spam spoofed to appear to come from them, advertising their products.
Give people a 3 month warning, then start disconnecting the countries that are the worst violators, giving the secondary violators another warning. In one month, if they pass new laws or fund new enforcements, they get a trial hook up again.
Since most spam comes from the US and advertises products within the US and ICANN is a US entity, wouldn't they be shutting themselves down?
Now, to say that 1 in 4 machines are bots I would have to whole heartedly disagree with. This just isn't very likely. Especially since the lifetime of a specific botnet has gradually been decreasing. Faster AV responses, increased patching, and more bot competition will inherently decrease these odds. Sorry but the daddy of the internet or not.. I think he's off the mark.
I haven't found any sources for the data he cites, but I just happen to have some data in front of me that represents a significant chunk of all internet traffic and the best estimates I have show about .5% of all traffic is botnet traffic. When active bots send abnormally large amounts of traffic for a host, lets just say ten times as much to be very conservative. That would mean each bot would have to be actively spamming or sending an attack about 15 minutes a day on average assuming the 1 in 4 number he cites. Now these are really, really rough numbers, but that is not outside the realm of possibility.
I'll wait until I see real numbers and sources before judging his assertion.
Does anyone know a utility/website for detecting and cleaning bots?
There are lots of tools for detecting bots; as for cleaning them, well that depends upon the environment I suppose. ISPs have tools for detecting likely bots, but generally don't have the authority or motivation to do anything. Large organizations like universities and corporations have tools for detecting bots and taking them offline until they are fixed. How does one go about cleaning bots though? Do you wipe boxes before you know what is on them? That is the only sure way to rid a box of malware since you have no idea what else is on it.
The first question that needs to be answered is clean bots from what type of network do you want to clean bots from? The next is, how much control do you have over the machines?
No, I asked you if you think MoAB is the only group that can release bugs. You did not previously answer that. It is not rhetoric. Please back away from the straw man.
In response to a comment about who was finding bugs in OS X I wrote, "Apple is doing audits for security internally, and a lot of security researchers have informally looked into OS X bugs with security implications as well. There are a lot of security people using OS X laptops these days (judging by their omnipresence at conventions the last few years), and they notice things and are interested and motivated." Then you asked, "Do you think these people have a monopoly on finding bugs?" and claimed by "these people" you meant the MOAB people. One of the nice things about this whole forum thing is it is all there to read and your claims about what was said are easily disproved. Your statement was rhetorical or you simply can't read properly.
Again just because you fail at reading comprehension doesn't mean it's rhetoric.
Way to avoid a request for you to state your point clearly. See above.
Please quote where I said MoAB was ever going to fix bugs?
We were discussing how MOAB could improve security. If MOAB does not result in bugs being fixed, how exactly is it helping?
You know I don't know why I'm even bothering to answer your stupidity. There are plenty of people here with a clue, or who can at least respond to what was written instead of spouting nonsense and trying to make crap up. If you're a troll, good job and go to hell. If not, go take your meds. I'm not even going to finish reading your post. Ta-ta.
There's already a bunch of lawsuits against Microsoft in Europe, and that's not the same issue.
Apple bundled their DRM, music store, and jukebox software with their nearly monopolized portable music player. Microsoft bundled their DRM, music store, and jukebox software with their monopolized OS. MS was convicted in the EU, but the punishment was meaningless and did not include stopping. Norway has done nothing about MS as far as I know. It sounds like the courts there are arguing that this sort of tying is only illegal for hardware and software, rather than software and software, but I can't imagine why the law would make that distinction.
To me this sounds an awful lot like consumers being pissed about DRM, so instead of banning DRM they go after the most visible (not widespread) company that sells DRM'd items. In the process they don't seem to mind making several markets less competitive by handing them over wholesale to an abusive monopoly they have done nothing about.
These problems all exist in Windows, except that there the standalone installer and the non-updating of third-party software is the default, so people are quite used to them. I cannot get why people moving from Windows suddenly would think that standalone installers, etc would be a huge pain.
There are two parts to this. One, we're talking about how to make Linux ideal for desktop users. Windows can rely upon their lock-ins and the fact that they are pre-installed on every computer you can buy in the store, Linux cannot. Windows does not have to be good because most people don't know they have other options. Linux cannot. If we make Linux just as good as the mess that is Windows, it will fail.
The second part to this is on Windows the behavior is consistent. Software is all installed by stand alone installers, so that is what people learn to use. On Linux, that is not the case, so if a user has two completely different methods of installing software and some is kept up to date automatically and some is not, there is more room for confusion and problems.
You describe problems that both Linux and Windows has, and claims that if not Linux implements a Mac-style installation procedure, Windows will dominate the landscape for the forseable future. That does not really make sense.
Windows has a monopoly and momentum. The only was things will change is if momentum shifts the other way and a system that solves all of the myriad problems of Windows is presented, so that it is significantly superior. You seem to be basing your opinions on the idea that Windows dominates the market because it is the best, but there is no evidence that is the case and a lot of evidence that it is not. Being as good as the platform that does not need to be good to maintain market share, will get us nothing.
I'm not arguing that Linux should clone OS X either. I'm arguing that Linux should get the advantages OS X has and combine them with the advantages that Linux already has to create a system that is ideal for end users.
Judge: Open your DRM tech so other companies can sell DRMed music for the device, or stop trading in our country. This is a ridiculous double-standard.
Apple: Microsoft has tied their DRM format to their jukebox software and bundled it with Windows for years now and dominated the jukebox software market as a result. You have done nothing to stop them and now that we are gaining a small amount of that market by tying ours to our Ipod device and DRM format, you think it is fair to stop us but not them and guarantee that they will continue to own the market? Don't you think that is even more of a double standard?
Judge: What? I'm sorry I was counting my bribes. The court finds in favor of Microsoft, err, I mean against Apple.
The difference between fairplay and playsforsure is that fairplay *only* supports ipod, playsforsure is compatible with all sorts of hardware. I get the impression that Norway doesn't have a problem with the DRM itself, it's because it forces you to use specific hardware.
You're right that Fairplay only supports the iPod and PlaysForSure is licensed to multiple players. That's because Apple has a near monopoly on portable music players, While MS has a monopoly on desktop OS's. It doesn't make a lot of sense to tie your format to a market you haven't monopolized. PlaysForSure is tied to Windows Media Player, which is bundled with Windows. Windows Media Player dominates the market for jukebox software, despite by default ripping CDs into a format that is DRM'd in a format that prevents it from playing on most portables despite the fact that that is directly opposed to the interests of the consumer. Forcing Apple to open up FairPlay is simply handing the music jukebox market to Windows Media Player, and it will be used to further lock people into Windows and other MS products. MS will implement Fairplay, but also formats that Apple can't use, like WMP format. This means iPod users will now be able to buy songs from MS which will play on their iPod and use WMP to manage that. iTunes the program will die on Windows. However, most music still comes from CDs. Want to bet that the default format will still have DRM applied that plays only in WMP and devices that license a format from MS? Want to bet that MS will build in a music store to their WMP software, which will take huge chunks of the market away from Apple, simply because it is bundled with Windows?
Yeah the DRM formats are bundled to different things, one to hardware and one to software. Realistically, this makes no difference in the ability to leverage that tying and stopping Apple but not MS, is simply moving the market from competing monopolies, and handing it to one monopoly.
What I found interesting about this article is that it seems to advocate one choice is better than no choice, and implies Norway is harming its citizens and consumers by depriving them of a monopoly.
If this is about monopolies, why hasn't Norway don anything about the Windows monopoly, which has larger market share and a whole laundry list of abuses and lock-ins? Apple debatably wields monopoly influence as their market share is just now reaching the percentages where courts start looking into it. MS has been convicted of being a monopoly in courts around the world.
In my view, choice is never bad. Competition is good. Apple won their market share by out-innovating the rest of the pack. But history is full of examples of the stagnation occurs once a market is consolidated. So I think other players should be allowed to work with iTunes.
In general, I agree with you. Apple may have the best portable digital music player, but just because that player has dominated that market based upon its merits does not mean Apple should just be given the online music sales market and the jukebox software market. If and when Apple is declared a monopoly that should be forbidden.
In practice, I think this is going to result in a bad move. Since Norway and the rest of the world has done nothing to stop Microsoft from bundling their DRM format, jukebox software, and music service with their monopolized OS, Apple is the only thing keeping them from destroying those markets. If Apple is forced to license FairPlay to any and all comers, removing their ability to leverage the success of the iPod, all that is doing is handing those markets to Microsoft via their leveraging of their long established monopoly. Windows Media Player already has a larger market share than iTunes because it is shipped with al Windows systems which is a bigger market than all iPods. PlaysForSure DRM' files already outnumber FairPlay DRM'd files because that is the default format WMP rips files to.
Stopping monopolistic tying is a very good thing for the industry and fosters innovation. That is not what is happening in this case. In this case, instead of two struggling monopolists* who are now competing, they're proposing using the law inequitably to reduce that to one monopolist competing with no one. And someone thinks this will help?
*Note, Apple may or may not have what amounts to monopoly influence in the portable digital music player market. I don't know and the courts are as yet undecided.
I'd be interested to hear about what you suggest need to be done to better provide for these types of software. Just stating that it need to be improved does not really explain what your problem is.
Assuming I'm a typical Linux user using Linux as a server, and sometimes as a workstation, the majority of the software I use comes from a repository my program manager interfaces with. It works very well for that purpose. It keeps the programs up to date and lets me discover software, download, install, and uninstall. So far so good. Assuming, however, that I want to use Linux as a home computer desktop and I'm not a power user, but an average user things change. Like it or not, typical home users use a lot more commercial software. I might install 5 programs over the entire course of my owning the computer, but those might be World of Warcraft, MS Office, AOL-Mozilla, Cisco VPN client, and Monopoly all from commercial vendors. None of them are in the repositories and I need to download them from Websites. Installing and uninstalling is a huge pain, in some cases requiring me to copy random files, but usually just running a stand-alone installer. Then I have to save an uninstaller program for if I want to delete it. Since I normally just use the program manager all of this is not normal behavior and what is different for average users is hard for average users. The software is also not kept up to date. Upgrading your system to a new machine may or may not copy the installed commercial applications over and they may or may not work on the new system. Finally, sharing programs becomes hard. You can't e-mail it or IM it to a friend easily, or even copy it to CD and walk it over to them. Most of these are non-issues when it comes to open source software from repositories, although sometimes software in those repositories does go away.
I think Linux program packaging and management needs to be reconstructed with several principals in mind. It needs to be easy to do everything Linux does now. It needs to account for software obtained from OSS repositories as well as software from CDs, Website downloads, and via e-mail or IM or some other transfer from a peer. It needs to provide all the benefits of the package manager to software from these other sources. It needs to provide commercial developers with a system they want to use for registration/updates instead of their own custom installer. It needs to be simple and intuitive for novice users, installing should be no harder or unintuitive than dragging an application from the CD onto the hard drive.
There are two ways to manage this that I can think of. One, make a complex back-end. When a user drags an RPM onto their hard drive the OS recognizes it, references an online database to find the original source for that program, and adds that repository/package to the program manager including simulating a repository for programs only available via download and specially marking programs that don't have any online source for updates. When a user drags that same RPM to the trash, the OS also would know about the installed package and run the uninstall routine.
I think the above is doable and would not require many changes to the way things are done now, but I also think it is inelegant and a hack rather than a good design. What I'd rather see is a move to OpenStep style packages managed by RPMs. This would necessitate expanding the OpenStep spec to include repository information, and expanding package managers to read that info. You'd gain all the functions listed above as well as a few others, while sacrificing disk space for machines that don't normally archive installers and which don't grab installers that target other platforms. Servers rarely need to be migrated to a new machine with a different processor or to share software with peers, but desktops should be able to do both smoothly. This adds a bit of complexity to servers in that they have to strip out the unneeded parts of the package (tools already exist) if they want to maximize disk
Actually they have.
I'm fully aware of issues with some of Apple's UI choices and both of those articles contain some real issues. That said, they are both fairly minor compared to the preponderance of long running, well known UI design snafus on Windows, many of which are duplicated on popular Linux distros. For example, While having dock items that are not constant in position along the edge of the screen means you can't easily train yourself to hit them on one axis, Fitt's law makes it simple to hit them on the other. Likewise for menus, placed at the top of the screen. Compared to menus placed at arbitrary locations within the screen, both of these are huge improvements. Add to that task bar and taskbar like elements that require the mouse to be slightly above the bottom of the screen and which are also moving targets and you have a clear win on that front for OS X. For that matter, look at Tog's article on the dock and try applying it to the Windows taskbar. Notice anything? Almost all his points apply as much or more to the taskbar.
That is one example. I could go on including one button mice for the default, dialogue boxes with "OK/Cancel" instead of actions, etc. etc. but I won't. Any reputable UI expert or even many books can walk you through what to do and what not to do as general rules, and most will use Windows as an example of what not to do.
I'm completely unconvinced that OS X does not beat Windows hands down in the usability department.
So...based purely on what I'm reading alone, OSX and the built in services and QS et all appear to do a better job and achieve all the integration and consistent UI objectives and extensibility that I think we can expect of Enso. I have no idea, but since I'm on Windows and I'm still not satisfied with it, I wouldn't think that you would be even if it was in 100% perfect condition. So (again) I would say stick with what tools work best for you. Enso probably isn't your cup of tea.
Sticking with OS X's built in features for the functions I describe is great, when I'm on OS X. I also run Windows for certain programs that work better on that platform. At that point, I miss the features I was describing and was wondering if Enso will provide a reasonable replacement. I'd love to have access to plug in functionality across several applications while using Windows, or for that matter just in a given application. I doubt I'll be using Windows for word processing, everyday web browsing, IRC, IM, e-mail, text/XML editing, graphics, scripting, or many other functions any time soon, but I will be using it for accessing certain Web applications and for Adobe Framemaker. Given that, it would be awfully nice if I could add online dictionary/thesaurus lookups, bibliography formatting, some arbitrary scripts, grammar checking, and statistical summarizes within IE and Framemaker. Is Enso capable of letting me do this without constantly interrupting my workflow? don't mind memorizing new key combinations.
Well then don't friggin' use it! Good grief- I don't know what else to say to you... other than: "hey! there doesn't only have to be *one* form of every piece of software in the world!"
You originally wrote, "I think the other aspect is tight integration and a fluid user experience." in regard to how it compared to OS X's ability to do the same. I think what, I and a lot of other users are trying to figure out is if this will let us replicate some of the functionality we have on OS X on Windows or if it is an inferior or superior version of the same. Unfortunately, you're about the only person here who has had a chance to use the software, and you apparently have never used OS X making both halves of the conversation difficult.
Your going off an comparing Apple's solution to the Zune by comparison to the solution you're testing was bound to raise more than a few eyebrows since the OS X solution is very elegant and has long been considered the best solution these tasks.
For the third or fourth time (to you alone) Enso isn't a spellchecker. It takes common things like app launching, spellchecking, thesaurus
You've only responded to two of my posts so far. I never said Enso was a spellchecker, but you were using that function of it for your examples, so I used the same function. OS X's services are not just a spellchecker either. They are a way to add arbitrary functionality all applications can use either by adding a stand alone service or allowing an application to share a function it already performs. A spellchecking service, dictionary/thesaurus service, etc. ships with OS X. A grammar checker is available from third parties and one will be shipping in Leopard. You can assign a key combo to any of the service functions and they work across applications. Tab completion for App launching and file opening is covered by OS X's spotlight, or via quicksilver.
What a lot of us are curious about, is Enso actually a poor man's version of this we can use on Windows? Is it a workable version of this? Is it better than the OS X implementation and in what way? You compared it to the iPod interface to OS X's Zune, so can you describe in what way Enso's ability to bring functions to me is novel and superior?
The point is to abstract out having to learn commands and shortcuts for every application and only have to learn them once.
Almost any function that is common across applications on OS X already has a standard key combo defined in the HIG and application developers all use the same ones. I guess the question I have is, isn't this true of most Windows applications as well? Certainly the common functions like save, copy, paste, etc. seem standard enough to me.
I'm very happy that you are statisfied with your spellchecker...
I am fairly satisfied with OS X services in general and spellchecker in particular, while using OS X, but myself, like a lot of people here I imagine, run multiple OS's. When I'm using Windows XP (I tried Vista but am waiting for it to stabilize) I feel like I've stepped into the past because I no longer have all these functions. If I'm using Windows, will Enso provide me with a way to add arbitrary functions, like a dictionary/thesaurus lookup and bibliography formatter, without breaking my workflow and forcing me to copy and paste things into other programs?
Well an application *and* spellchecker integrated into the same application.
I still don't understand. OS X's spellchecker is integrated into every application. How is the fact that words I screw up being underlined in red in my web browser, e-mail client, IM client, etc and giving me alternate, correct spelling to replace it not integrated? Have you used OS X's spellchecker?
You can tell I'm not sold on it because I didn't use the spellchecker to proof this post because it gets in the way too much (as I said in OP) :)
I used the spellchecker on this post because my available Web browsers (Safari, Firefox3 alpha 1, and OmniWeb) all just do spellchecking using the built-in OS X service. Admittedly some of the unusual third-party services I've added don't integrate quite as well, but highlighting a URL and hitting a key combo to get an automatically formatted bibliography entry is not particularly difficult for my workflow.
I'm just not understanding what it is that this new system is supposed to be providing, above and beyond things that have been built into OS X for years now.