The Dell exec would be skewered because Dell would lose a bunch of business, not because of anything Microsoft did. In other words switching away from Windows entirely would be a really stupid decision; having an excellent market position isn't a useful definition of monopoly to me, but maybe I'm crazy.
It doesn't matter if it is something MS does or not that makes this untenable for Dell. Being a monopoly legally, is simply having the power to do a lot of damage in a specific way. Because MS has that power, they are capable of undermining the free market. Note, it is not illegal to be a monopoly (have this power) it is only illegal to abuse this power in such a way that it undermines competition in a separate market. Since only monopolies are capable of this, economists look for a company's ability to do this in order to determine who is a monopoly. Once they establish someone is a monopoly, they are banned from behaviors that undermine the market, but which would not undermine the market if they were not a monopoly with this special kind of power.
Have you seen this btw:
Yeah, most OEMs have Linux projects that are not pre-installs, but services, or which only apply to some specific device they don't sell with Windows, based upon their particular contract with MS. These companies know they are getting screwed and want an out and are looking to keep their options open as much as they can.
It really isn't Microsoft's fault that the market isn't interested in BeOS
What!?! It is directly MS's fault as MS threatened to destroy any company that shipped BeOS pre-installed and even forced one company that had already announced they were shipping systems with a dual-install to cancel that. That is a clear case of monopoly abuse and is a direct action... MS misusing their monopoly.
In an actual harmful monopoly, Linux would never have been able to grow into a useful system; that it did says (to me anyway) that Microsoft does not have a monopoly.
When the closest thing you have to a competitor in a market is a cooperative effort run as a nonprofit enterprise controlled by hobbyists that simply wanted some alternative, that's a bloody good indication that you do have a monopoly. Anyway, no serious economist doubts that MS is a monopoly unless they're being paid to do so. MS has been convicted multiple times by courts around the world. Get over it. They are not only a monopoly, but one that frequently abuses their market position. It is an established fact.
Because none has been written? How many people have bothered to write something for an OS with ~ 4% of the market share when there is a whole 96% out there waiting to be owned, apparently no one.
This is an unsupported assertion. Logically, just because there are no propagating worms does not imply that no one has tried and failed to create one.
There has been one attempt at a rudimentary Trojan recently, but OS X goes largely unexploited, and for good reasons - too much work with little gain.
If it is "too much work" then you've strongly implied that OS X is fundamentally more secure than Windows, since it is basically no work to make a Windows worm. As for the gain, some worms are still written for reasons of prestige, which the first real OS X worm would create a lot of. For financial gain, some recent worms have begun data mining and Macs have lots of valuable financial data, especially as compared to the average Windows box, many of which are pirated installs running in China or something. Finally, worm authors generally try to spread as much as possible and to new platforms. Adding another exploit to the 6 your worm uses on Windows, will hit those same vulnerable Windows boxes for little return compared to adding one that hits OS X. There have been Linux/Windows cross-platform bugs... why not OS X?
It doesn't help that OS X actually uses a real programming language for the OS - this for the most part helps to keep the script kiddies out.
This is one way, some of OS X is more secure, fundamentally, than Windows.
Here is the thing - when and if, OS X gains a reasonable amount of market share, you can be sure that it, and it's users will become a target.
OS X users are a target for worms now, just not an easy one. More people will try to exploit it as it gains market share, but not just for the reason you imply. One of the reasons OS X is not targeted as much is because malware authors have a fairly limited skill set, much of which is very Windows centric. As more malware authors become mac users, more will also target the mac, in addition to the increased number of potential victims and easier propagation.
What I think many people do not realize is that Microsoft is now trying to deal with protecting users from themselves.
This is a very counter-productive attitude for a security person. Blame is irrelevant to good security, only results matter. You can say that an infection is wholly the user's fault for running an untrusted binary. You can just as logically say the OS failed because it did not provide a good mechanism that let a user safely run an untrusted binary. Since running untrusted binaries is a huge part of what users want/need to do, I think it is unreasonable to blame them for doing this, rather I blame the OS for being designed to accommodate the wrong tasks. I'm not sold on Window's solution to this and I think it has some serious design flaws at present, but in general I think this needs to be addressed.
Most of the malware is now propagated by users themselves.
My personal data and all the presentations at security conferences I saw this year fail to support this assertion. Most malware spreads via user interaction, if you're just counting malware variants. If, however, you're looking at infections, most are the result of malware requires no action from the user. These worms spread faster and more widely than malware that relies upon user interaction.
For example the find a "helpful" toolbar that says: "Download this great new toolbar!" the user clicks OK and they are owned. There is NOTHING to prevent this from happening on OS X, except for the fact that no one has bothered, yet.
There are several things on OS X that mitigate this. First, all the holes that let a download auto execute an arbitrary binary have been quickly plugged. Second, when a user runs a binary for the first time, they are made aware that it is a program and warned and given t
So it's okay if (and I'm not suggesting this is the case) you design something with severe holes all over the place, as long as you fix them when it's brought to your attention? You might want to tell all the "Windoze Haters" here. Apparently this is not acceptable.
You've presented a false dichotomy. It is unreasonable for a developer to create insecure bug ridden software, with no testing, unless it is unlikely for other reasons that that software will be compromised (only running on an internal net or something). For a consumer grade desktop, it is reasonable for a company to do a level of testing and design that keeps their product reasonably secure in the real world. Normally, this would be a non-issue, since any product that did not meet these criteria would fail in the market, but one monopoly dominates the desktop OS space and is being leveraged into the server space. In this, I don't think anyone can fault Apple as their product is very rarely compromised, as compared to the other offerings in the market. That is the first issue, dealing with bugs not known by the designers, but which perhaps should be.
The other set of bugs are bugs the vendor knows about, but does not fix anyway. Within a company it is hard to say how many of these exist, but I've been told by former employees MS fixes about half of the security bugs that are reported internally. Further, MS has a poor track record fixing bugs that are know publicly as well. Apple has a pretty good track record with public bugs (not perfect, but good) and I don't know about internal bugs.
I much prefer my OS vendor to be proactive, not reactive, to security.
I much prefer my security vendor to be both, in a balanced fashion. It is good to audit code and design securely, but it is also good to react quickly to known, public threats that probably present more risk.
...yes, you can call me a fanboi. But it amazes me to see that in the eyes of so many readers here, Microsoft can do no right.
Except that Microsoft can do good things in the eyes of many of us, this just isn't one of those good things. I applaud MS when they make good technological decisions and when they play nice (which is rare). Arguing that people are reacting badly to this move because they are prejudiced is completely unfounded. If you want to argue that this is a "good thing" you need to address specifically, the arguments of those that explain why it is not.
I'm happy this is coming to Games for Windows. do not need a nice box and I can easily read specs, but I also recognize that common folks (not everyone is a geek like us guys) will find it useful, and the extra testing will only help quality.
Who says there will be any real testing? Who says quality will improve. In fact, this may very well be simply MS dictating guidelines that restrict game companies from innovating and charging a fee that comes out of what would be that company's QA budget. If MS is dictating the size and color of packaging, that means no one will be innovating better packaging because they can't. How does that promote innovation?
And so what if Microsoft uses their Windows dominance to help the Xbox? Look at Sony... 70% of the console market and they cannot innovate beyond a faster CPU and they have such an arrogant attitude.
Okay look. There is this nifty method that motivates innovation. It is called the "free market." When lots of companies are competing on a level playing field they all have direct financial motivation to innovate in order to please customers and thus make money. When one player has a method of winning customers that does not involve innovating (leveraging Windows) they have less motivation to innovate, not more. Right now Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, as well as other companies have motivation to come up with cool new ideas. It is a healthy market with multiple players and offerings. That does not mean all players will innovate equally well or in the same direction. Nintendo is concentrating on input devices and gameplay. MS focused on online play and graphics and Sony focused on graphics and backwards compatibility. The free market then decides which one made the best choice by rewarding them with money, and each company responds to the market by focusing their innovation in a different way.
If MS is allowed to leverage their monopoly by tying Windows and Xbox gaming, this situation will go away. MS will end up dominating the gaming market, then like every other market they took over, they will have no financial motivation to improve that product in any way and they will have direct financial incentive to make the product worse. Look at IE. Notice how secure it is and how well it manages to implement 8 year old standards that every other browser handles just fine? Take a look at Windows Media Player. Notice how, by default, it rips CDs in a format that customers want, i.e. in one that they can copy other places and which plays on more than a tiny fraction of portables? As MS illegally dominates markets using Windows, those markets shrivel and die. Innovation slows to a crawl.
And here you are, seriously arguing that instead of greed and competition motivating innovation, that just letting MS do whatever they think is best, even if it breaks the law, is the key? Why in the world would anyone in their right mind agree with you?
And if Linux is supposed to be an alternative to Windows, then it needs to have what it takes.
You miss the point. Using a monopoly allows you to take over a market with a product that is inferior. IE is not as good as Firefox, by almost any rational person's account, but IE dominates the market because it is bundled with Windows. This means consumers get an inferior product. Window Media Player is inferior to iTunes, and even worse than Mplayer, but it dominates the market
Sony has already adopted a version of OpenGL|ES and collada for the PS3, and likely the best way to foster a cross platform DirectX is to urge Sony, Nintendo, Apple, PC hardware vendors, and even [Gasp!] Microsoft to participate in its development by joining with Khronos to further define the APIs and by adopting, or at least supporting, them in their products.
You provide a reasonable summary, but I'm not sure I agree with some of your conclusions and assertions. Microsoft has direct financial motivation to promote Direct3D and hinder OpenGL based competitors. I'm sure they'll join any such group, but only to try to throw a wrench in the works. Microsoft will support it and work with it only when it is a clear winner in the market that has crushed Direct3D completely.
As for the current players, Sony does seem to be stepping up, at least somewhat, but without the support and real contributions from others, I don't think it will be enough. I haven't seen Nintendo or Apple buy into this and really throw resources at it. That doesn't mean it isn't happening. I'm not closely following the development at the Khronos group and a lot happens behind closed doors anyway. I hope it is, but I somehow doubt it.
Why is apple included in this? I thought we were talking about games...
I included Apple for several reasons. First, they are a major OpenGL contributor/user. Second, MS is leveraging their monopoly in the OS space, which Apple can help to mitigate. Third, Apple is highly motivated to mitigate this issue. Finally, Apple in undoubtedly aware of the lack of games issue hindering sales on their platform and games developers are aware fo the growing platform and are targeting it more and more. When you put all of these together, Apple becomes a very good candidate for this alliance. In any case, the point is not to reach specific platforms, but to build an open and easy development platform to reach many end systems. I don't expect Sony to write components to target the Nintendo. But there needs to be buy-in enough to meet as larger than the market on Windows and the Xbox combined. An open system of this sort would get components to reach Linux pretty quickly, but I doubt it would be coming from some company that can be partnered with.
Do you mean GPL software you developed, or GPL software that's worked on by people not paid by your company?
You make it sound as though these two are mutually exclusive. They aren't. We sell systems that include hardware, open source software, and closed source software. We write most of the closed source software included, and we write a small part of the open source software included. It works like this. We make some really cool software developed in house that no one else has really figured out how to duplicate. That code and the intellectual property around it we keep closed and top secret. The boxes we sell, however, also need an OS and a slew of random tools and the like. Also, they need a few services. The OS, services, and tools are not our core competence and are commodities, so we rely upon OSS solutions and end up contributing a lot of code back to these projects. Linux and a couple BSDs, Apache, and dozens of lesser known projects benefit from our work. This is not unusual, but the norm from my experience. Most OSS coders are being paid by someone. That is why branding OSS as "non-commercial" seems so strange. It is a different business model with less waste and more benefit to customers than the developers, but most developers are also customers. It works and it makes a lot of money for a lot of very major companies. IBM is not a charity.
With the exception of Massive studios, most games that are developed licence a game engine from a third party vendor; large developers will choose...
This is true, but not all games use one of the cross-platform engines, and not all games can run on an existing engine. This move does not target existing players in the market, most of whom presumably have the sense to maintain portability. This targets new development shops that want to get started on the cheap. Every year there are dozens of mostly unsuccessful and a few successful games that are developed entirely with DirectX based technologies because of the low up-front cost. The successful ones go on to make another title, often based on the same, since most don't have the skills to do a really portable title. This provides a real edge to Windows and now the Xbox, over other consoles that aren't getting this spillover. There are a lot of Windows machines out there and a lot of DirectX developers. Combined with all the development houses MS has bought up, this is a significant influence on how many exclusive games they will get and we all know it is just one or two games that are exclusive to a platform that can really sway a buyer.
Coming up next on Behind the Games: the fall of Microsoft, and '99's battle with fame and amphetamines.
I'm really more of a whiskey and hallucinogens kind of guy... and I'm way too ugly to be famous. They'll attribute all my hard work motivating major corporations to someone with less facial hair.
You must be on crack if you think that Microsoft's push of DirectX will sway the console wars.
Yeah, people have said the same thing about other markets they embraced.
Game studios which put out multi-platform games are not interested in abandoning their multi-platform market in favour of the oh-so-lucritive[sic] PC and XBox market.
MS already owns a lot of those game studios. They will buy more as they need to. And they don't need to change the minds of entrenched players, if they can win over the new development shops. Already a lot of games are developed with DirectX tools, simply because the tools and skills are cheap and easy. Some of those new companies move on to make good, multi-platform games, but some have enough important people with a DirectX-only skill set that they stay with it out of momentum. Every one of them, is just that many more Windows/xbox exclusive titles that contributes to their win. Maybe it won't happen with the Xbox360, or even the next generation of consoles, but it only needs to hit critical mass once, and then it is theirs.
There is much more money to be made in selling the same game on numerous platforms instead of only 2.
There are different types of costs. There is overall cost and their is up front investment cost. If a new company wants to make a game and they can cheaply use existing DirectX talent and kit the Xbox and Windows, they'll do it. Hell, a whole lot of small time companies already do so and all they hit is the Windows market. Unless they have a toolset that competes and lets them hit a similar number of end users for similar or lower upfront cost, this number will slowly grow.
The only explanation for your reasoning is that it will simplify development - but the only one who is having trouble with their dev kits (at this point) is Sony, so your argument goes out the window.
Game developers always complain about dev kits, for every platform. Anything that makes it easier, or cheaper in the short run is a real competitor. This is a proven market strategy and it will be benefitting MS. The only question is how much will it benefit them and will it be countered.
I guess our disagreement is rather funadmental -- you believe that people should be forced to contribute their work back. I don't, which is why I prefer the BSD license -- when I release stuff under the BSD license, I'm thrilled to see someone else take it, modify it, and if they can turn a profit with it, even better for them.
I think the BSD licenses are ideal for a slew of projects and I even contribute. I think the GPL is ideal for other projects and public domain ideal for yet other IP. To me, each has its place. For official standards, infrastructure components that the author(s) are planning to use and which they would like the most widespread adoption for, I favor BSD licenses. There is less to be gained by forking these projects and the compatibility gains are more important. For consumer projects, I think Linux and Apache have shown why a more GPL styled approach pulls in more development work and faster progress. In the case of a game engine, I think this is the sweet spot. Developers already have a way to prevent their work from being run off with, in copyrights on their artwork and trademarks on their story elements. It doesn't benefit them much to keep the code to themselves, but the gaming industry is such that most would anyway. This would quickly piss off hobbyists and the like who would fork a GPL version anyway, basically wasting time and work.
I don't believe in forcing anyone to contribute their work. I believe that as a contributor, I'd much rather contribute to a project where each user pays for using the code of one another with any code they create and publish, rather than with mere credits. Really, if I spend a month making a bunch of cool models and textures for some beasties, I'm happy to give them to someone who will give me back a better way to script them, or some AI to make the whole game more fun. I'm much less happy about providing them, only to have them incorporated into a closed source project that they want me to pay them for. Not that I think making for sale games from this is a bad idea, so long as they contribute back the work so other people can also make open games with them.
Stop comparing DirectX to OpenGL!!!! You can't!! If you are going to compare OpenGL to something compare it to Direct3D
I didn't compare the two, I made mention of them as parts of development toolkits. Neither of them constitutes such a toolkit in and of itself, but they are recognizable to the average reader, while mentioning SDL and the like and Direct3D results in a bunch of irrelevant questions.
the thing is, everyone wants to be M$ with regards to the OS and game market, they all want to lock people in so that they can't leave.
Sure they do, but if they're trying it while going up against a company that has a monopoly they can leverage they'll lose. Sony is part of a cartel and has some leverage to bring to bear. Apple has a near monopoly on iPods they can exploit (and nothing to lose from interoperability). Even so, unless they work together to take shares in a competitive market, they'll fall further and further behind as isolationist entities.
Even the nice guys of the market won't open up everything. Just leave those damn closed source games for PCs
They don't need to open up very much at all, simply to collaborate on an open standard toolset. None of them have a lot to lose by this and mostly they keep technologies closed out of reflexive secrecy.
This is your wake up call. MS intends to leverage their OS monopoly to give themselves and advantage in the gaming console market. This also provides another layer of defense around their core, OS monopoly. This is bad news for all of you, Nintendo, Sony, and Apple. They're also trying to build out DirectX tools to make the PC and Xbox a one stop shop. This is their classic strategy and it works, unless the existing players form a good, open standards based partnership. You're all influential OpenGL houses. You all have a vested interest here. Sony has already moved towards making OpenGL models key to their gaming platform. Now is the time for all of you to abandon trying to build lock-in strategies in this field and start making a concerted effort to interoperate. Build a game development toolset that makes OpenGL games on Windows, PS3, Wii, and the Mac a single entity. Beat MS at their own game. Give Blizzard and Id a call. You've got one shot at this guys, and if you fail your media enterprises are going to be easy targets. Get to it!
Its[sic] a moot point if they're wanting to put it under the GPL, which is not commercial friendly, by design.
My company makes millions every year using GPL software. How is that not commercial friendly?
Now, if they were to buy it, and put everything into the public domain, or release it under the BSD license, THEN it'd be commercial-friendly, and I'd consider supporting it.
I disagree. Until the project has momentum and regular contributors, I think the GPL is a better way to go. There just aren't enough game development shops that understand the open source model. They'd try to make a closed product from it and be afraid to contribute back and lose most of the benefits. As a result, they'd poison the reputation of the engine and drive other companies away.
Instead of making it BSD they should GPL the code and make the artwork and existing gaming scripts and the like public domain. Then they should make it a modular system so that different developers can easily load in proprietary artwork, sounds, etc. without any licensing issues. This will encourage gaming companies that they have sufficient protection for their IP, while at the same time force them to contribute core changes back to the project.
Windows clearly has a more robust permission scheme with its ACL's and user rights policies...
Umm, do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Windows group policies is something with no real equivelent in UNIX either.
What? You can certainly recreate the functionality of Windows group policies in numerous UNIX systems and have been able to for a long, long, long time.
Umm, huh? They were comparing a mac and a "Windows PC." Read more carefully.
A custom made, locked-in PC.
Locked in? Have you ever used a mac?
What's great about the Mac is the OS. The hardware isn't in any way better. It just looks better.
I agree that the software is the big draw for Mac users, but as to the hardware, according to Consumer Reports and pretty much every other reputable review publication, it is among the highest quality and most reliable hardware among desktop computer sellers. It isn't something magical and special, but it is in the same bracket as Sony and Lenovo, at the top of the heap, and much better than Dell and the like who sell cheap junk.
Second, I have a Damn Small Linux running on a 5 years old PC (turned into a "media Center") just fine, running all the new codecs (xvid, h264) just fine...
So, my media center is actually a dual 533Mhz G4, powermac and it has been chugging away or 5 years, and has not had more than a few days down time at any point (when I moved a few times).
Third, I've installed civilization 4 on an "old" dual G4 with 1Gb ram and it runs like shite. It runs fine on a really old Athlon XP 1.5Ghz/256Kb with 1Gb ddr... I bought it second-hand at about half the price of a mac mini..
Anecdotal evidence is pretty useless to start with, but at least be consistent. It runs better on a given PC than a given mac and cost less than half the price of a different mac? And this is useful information for what reason?
I made a piece-by-piece comparison to the new Intel iMacs and I found out I can build an equivalent machine made from high quality components (ie: best quality ASUS mobo and video card etc) and it costs about 250E less than the iMac. I don't give a fuck that it includes the OS. I can download my favourite distro and install it.
Again, this is anecdotal. Independent studies show Macs cost, on average, 7% more than the same hardware elsewhere, with the largest difference on the high end. Mac minis seem to be cheaper than the same hardware elsewhere, even without any software involved.
Plus, it looks like Apple lost its mind entering an arms race with x86 CPUs. The best thing Apple has now are crappy Core 2 Duos...
Umm yeah, those crappy chips currently winning the fight at all the credible review sites. What chip is it that you think they should be shipping?
And when was the last time you could change the cpu on a Mac?
Have you done any actual research. You can change the CPUs out on current, desktop macs and servers and several review sites and hobbyists have done just that.
And did you look at "Apple memory" (wtf) prices?
Yeah, that's why I buy memory from a different vendor. Did you have a point?
And I'm not even factoring in things like AMD's integrated coprocessors and stuff to come in 2008...
Good. Arguments that depend upon your prediction of what one company is going to do with regard to some other company's potential products that aren't even finished with development, let alone testing, is pretty pointless. For all you know, they will be slow as crap and Apple will be using them.
Macs are customized PCs with a really great OS.
Macs are a brand. "PCs" is a term usually reserved for Windows systems, but that isn't even the term used. It was "Windows PCs." Macs are above average quality computer hardware, that happens to come with a pretty neat OS. That doesn't make them great in some way, but neither does it make them particularly overpriced or average.
Back at you. Microsoft only has a monopoly on...Microsoft Products.
This statement is nonsense. Any monopoly is a monopoly on only ones own products since, as a monopoly, they are the only one in the market. What does this have to do with anything?
There are no significant barriers to entry for another company to produce and attempt to sell an (desktop) operating system.
I see, that is why BeOS is doing so well these days? MS has monopoly influence on the market via discriminatory pricing agreements. They use those agreements to stop their customers (Dell, HP, Gateway) from pre-installing other OS's. Since a OS manufacturer can't sell to the main customers in the market (OEMs looking to pre-install) there is an almost total barrier to entry in the market.
...but they don't have a monopoly, not if you want that word to have a useful definition.
The functional definition of a monopoly is any company that wield untoward influence in a given market because of their disproportionately large market share. This definition is useful, because it describes the most important characteristic of monopolies in regard to maintaining a healthy, competitive marketplace. This definition is of great use to economists and the legal system.
And you can't really accuse Microsoft of abusing its pricing power(the bad thing monopolies do) to keep other people out of the OS business when they are charging $200 on up for their software.
You are ignorant. They charge $200 to regular buyers. They charge $200 to any OEM stupid enough to try to pre-install some other OS as well as Windows. They charge between $50 and $120 to large computer makers that don't pre-install other OS's. That is their main method of illegally influencing the market.
And yeah, they did apparently write abusive contracts that punished their oem customers for offering other software for sale, but as far as I can tell, they stopped doing that.
If by "stopped doing that" you mean, "they now classify those contracts as trade secrets so no one can read them." Not that it matters. How a company maintains their monopoly has no bearing on if they are a monopoly. The relevant question is, if Dell decides they don't want to use Windows, where can they buy another OS that won't result in the CEO being fired and replaced within the month? The answer, is nowhere, thus MS is a monopoly.
However, taking away the need to type the password is the problem. If all they have to do is click OK, then they will just do it. It's like the dialog box for deleting a read-only file. People just click OK, and are done with it. If they have to type their password, they might stop and think about why it's asking for their password.
I think both are problematic because neither UI forces the user to know what is going on. There should never be a dialogue box that says, "This program wants root permission (OK)(Cancel)." There should never be a dialogue that says, "This program wants to read your e-mail address book (OK)(Cancel)." There should never be a dialogue box that says, "This program wants to replace Defender (________ Submit Password)(Cancel)." All of these are failures from a UI point of view.
A good UI should present choices that are actions on the buttons themselves. "This program would like to access your e-mail address book. (Stop it from reading my addresses)(Let it read my addresses)." Such a UI does not condition users to always hit the same option because the options are always different. Also, even if they don't read the dialogue message, just the buttons themselves are enough to convey the actions they are taking. This aspect is a great deal more important than having a password prompt because common password prompts will still condition the user to enter their password without knowing what is going on.
Sure, there might be some comparisons to Macintosh for the look & feel, but in a corporate (> 500 employees) environment, the Windows platform really shines. From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.
My personal experience really disagrees with this. Larger deployments where I've worked always end up either granting dangerous amounts or permission to end users, or preventing people from getting work done in a timely manner, as compared to Linux desktops.
If you add Exchange to the mix, Windows really shines in the shared environment.
What? Exchange is the bane of mixed platform environments. It is unreliable and support is spotty, at best, on anything but Windows.
Sure, for "grandma's" use and other special applications the Mac is a bright and shiny object, but it's just not a good team player.
Yeah just because OS X relies upon open, published standards anyone can interoperate with and does its best to be compatible even with closed, obfuscated protocols and formats doesn't mean... oh wait, yeah it does mean OS X is a good team player. Windows just plain sucks at interoperating with anything MS did not create and which has not completely destroyed MS in the market. It can't even get HTML right for the love of Buddha. Sorry but in the "team player" arena, Windows is the biggest loser ever.
Imagine a user who just bought an x86 Macintosh running OS X 10.4. Apple would like to sell that user a desktop upgrade when 10.5 comes out. Microsoft would like to sell that user a desktop version of Windows. That makes Apple and Microsoft direct competitors on the Intel desktop PC market.
Even accepting all your arguments, the market for people buying boxed upgrades of their OS and who own a mac is so small as to not show up when the entire market for intel based desktop operating systems is considered.
The point isn't that "everyone's the equivalent of a dev team member." The point is that there is reusable code in development that anyone can take and make their own MMORPG with (using their own server). And perhaps, if the developers want, the community can contribute code.
I understand the concept, but I don't think it is a good idea unless you can get buy in from some commercial enterprises. Most large OSS projects thrive on support from corporations that use that software. Look at Apache, for example. For an OSS-MMORPG framework to survive, there need to be one or more commercial ventures based upon that project. Then, there is direct financial motivation to keep it clean and make improvements. Without a development shop interested in undercutting the market with free improvements from other contributors, I don't see such a project really keeping up and remaining popular. I could be wrong, but that is the way I see it. Some really sharp developers should get together and put together the rest of the money needed to open this code and then use it to get rich.
It was interesting that you mentioned that single button mice force better design in Mac apps. I think this is kind of funny because the I've always felt the lack of a second button has resulted in Mac context menus that aren't very good relative to Windows. I've found that if I use a two button mouse on a Mac or hit CTRL+CLICK, that the menus were small and lacking features.
The benefit is for power users and novices. Novices are confused by multiple buttons. Power users customize their interfaces. By default the right click menu in InDesign has 17 items in it on both the mac and PC. I actually use four of those items regularly. But, since all of those items are replicated in the regular menus and right-click menus are not mandatory I have customized that menu to include those four items and another 8 I do want to use all the time. The end result is in Windows I have to pick among 17 items to get 4 of the 12 I want and I have to go elsewhere for 8 of them. On the mac, I get all the options I want and none I don't want.
The mac is not perfect and they could make it a whole lot easier to change the contextual menu functionality on the fly. But the fact that I can customize this without losing functionality is directly related to the fact that the OS and program are designed to work for users of a single button mouse.
What I'd really like to see is both that kind of functionality along with NTFS's really excellent ACL permission system implemented. ACL permissions are a godsend for people responsible for running a file store that's used by humans as opposed to automated processes.
Others have already pointed out that ZFS supports fine grained ACLs, but I thought I'd add an interesting sidenote to that. Apple also listed support for ACLs in the form of Mandatory Access Controls ported from TrustedBSD to the official feature set of Leopard, but just recently pulled all mention of this framework from their public documents for developers not under NDA. Whether this means they are part of a "top secret" addition that leaked, or simply are not going to be ready for Leopard is anyone's guess.
NTFS is one of the few worthwhile things that's ever come out of Redmond. I wish more people would spend a bit learning from it without throwing it away simply because it's MS bloat.
NTFS is a reasonable filesystem as far as features are concerned, but not really ahead of the pack as far as what is "out there" IMHO. Also, the giant anti-feature of it being patented, obfuscated, and intentionally incompatible with other players pretty much makes it a non-starter for everyone.
Are you sure about this? Apple's very own Shake application lists a 3 button mouse right in the requirements
There are a small number of exceptions to this rule, including some X11 applications, bad ports, and a few high end graphics applications like Shake and Maya. For the most part, however, people using alternative input schemes will find the high-end graphics programs unusable anyway. So yes, there are some exceptions to the rule.
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The Dell exec would be skewered because Dell would lose a bunch of business, not because of anything Microsoft did. In other words switching away from Windows entirely would be a really stupid decision; having an excellent market position isn't a useful definition of monopoly to me, but maybe I'm crazy.
It doesn't matter if it is something MS does or not that makes this untenable for Dell. Being a monopoly legally, is simply having the power to do a lot of damage in a specific way. Because MS has that power, they are capable of undermining the free market. Note, it is not illegal to be a monopoly (have this power) it is only illegal to abuse this power in such a way that it undermines competition in a separate market. Since only monopolies are capable of this, economists look for a company's ability to do this in order to determine who is a monopoly. Once they establish someone is a monopoly, they are banned from behaviors that undermine the market, but which would not undermine the market if they were not a monopoly with this special kind of power.
Have you seen this btw:
Yeah, most OEMs have Linux projects that are not pre-installs, but services, or which only apply to some specific device they don't sell with Windows, based upon their particular contract with MS. These companies know they are getting screwed and want an out and are looking to keep their options open as much as they can.
It really isn't Microsoft's fault that the market isn't interested in BeOS
What!?! It is directly MS's fault as MS threatened to destroy any company that shipped BeOS pre-installed and even forced one company that had already announced they were shipping systems with a dual-install to cancel that. That is a clear case of monopoly abuse and is a direct action... MS misusing their monopoly.
In an actual harmful monopoly, Linux would never have been able to grow into a useful system; that it did says (to me anyway) that Microsoft does not have a monopoly.
When the closest thing you have to a competitor in a market is a cooperative effort run as a nonprofit enterprise controlled by hobbyists that simply wanted some alternative, that's a bloody good indication that you do have a monopoly. Anyway, no serious economist doubts that MS is a monopoly unless they're being paid to do so. MS has been convicted multiple times by courts around the world. Get over it. They are not only a monopoly, but one that frequently abuses their market position. It is an established fact.
Because none has been written? How many people have bothered to write something for an OS with ~ 4% of the market share when there is a whole 96% out there waiting to be owned, apparently no one.
This is an unsupported assertion. Logically, just because there are no propagating worms does not imply that no one has tried and failed to create one.
There has been one attempt at a rudimentary Trojan recently, but OS X goes largely unexploited, and for good reasons - too much work with little gain.
If it is "too much work" then you've strongly implied that OS X is fundamentally more secure than Windows, since it is basically no work to make a Windows worm. As for the gain, some worms are still written for reasons of prestige, which the first real OS X worm would create a lot of. For financial gain, some recent worms have begun data mining and Macs have lots of valuable financial data, especially as compared to the average Windows box, many of which are pirated installs running in China or something. Finally, worm authors generally try to spread as much as possible and to new platforms. Adding another exploit to the 6 your worm uses on Windows, will hit those same vulnerable Windows boxes for little return compared to adding one that hits OS X. There have been Linux/Windows cross-platform bugs... why not OS X?
It doesn't help that OS X actually uses a real programming language for the OS - this for the most part helps to keep the script kiddies out.
This is one way, some of OS X is more secure, fundamentally, than Windows.
Here is the thing - when and if, OS X gains a reasonable amount of market share, you can be sure that it, and it's users will become a target.
OS X users are a target for worms now, just not an easy one. More people will try to exploit it as it gains market share, but not just for the reason you imply. One of the reasons OS X is not targeted as much is because malware authors have a fairly limited skill set, much of which is very Windows centric. As more malware authors become mac users, more will also target the mac, in addition to the increased number of potential victims and easier propagation.
What I think many people do not realize is that Microsoft is now trying to deal with protecting users from themselves.
This is a very counter-productive attitude for a security person. Blame is irrelevant to good security, only results matter. You can say that an infection is wholly the user's fault for running an untrusted binary. You can just as logically say the OS failed because it did not provide a good mechanism that let a user safely run an untrusted binary. Since running untrusted binaries is a huge part of what users want/need to do, I think it is unreasonable to blame them for doing this, rather I blame the OS for being designed to accommodate the wrong tasks. I'm not sold on Window's solution to this and I think it has some serious design flaws at present, but in general I think this needs to be addressed.
Most of the malware is now propagated by users themselves.
My personal data and all the presentations at security conferences I saw this year fail to support this assertion. Most malware spreads via user interaction, if you're just counting malware variants. If, however, you're looking at infections, most are the result of malware requires no action from the user. These worms spread faster and more widely than malware that relies upon user interaction.
For example the find a "helpful" toolbar that says: "Download this great new toolbar!" the user clicks OK and they are owned. There is NOTHING to prevent this from happening on OS X, except for the fact that no one has bothered, yet.
There are several things on OS X that mitigate this. First, all the holes that let a download auto execute an arbitrary binary have been quickly plugged. Second, when a user runs a binary for the first time, they are made aware that it is a program and warned and given t
So it's okay if (and I'm not suggesting this is the case) you design something with severe holes all over the place, as long as you fix them when it's brought to your attention? You might want to tell all the "Windoze Haters" here. Apparently this is not acceptable.
You've presented a false dichotomy. It is unreasonable for a developer to create insecure bug ridden software, with no testing, unless it is unlikely for other reasons that that software will be compromised (only running on an internal net or something). For a consumer grade desktop, it is reasonable for a company to do a level of testing and design that keeps their product reasonably secure in the real world. Normally, this would be a non-issue, since any product that did not meet these criteria would fail in the market, but one monopoly dominates the desktop OS space and is being leveraged into the server space. In this, I don't think anyone can fault Apple as their product is very rarely compromised, as compared to the other offerings in the market. That is the first issue, dealing with bugs not known by the designers, but which perhaps should be.
The other set of bugs are bugs the vendor knows about, but does not fix anyway. Within a company it is hard to say how many of these exist, but I've been told by former employees MS fixes about half of the security bugs that are reported internally. Further, MS has a poor track record fixing bugs that are know publicly as well. Apple has a pretty good track record with public bugs (not perfect, but good) and I don't know about internal bugs.
I much prefer my OS vendor to be proactive, not reactive, to security.
I much prefer my security vendor to be both, in a balanced fashion. It is good to audit code and design securely, but it is also good to react quickly to known, public threats that probably present more risk.
Except that Microsoft can do good things in the eyes of many of us, this just isn't one of those good things. I applaud MS when they make good technological decisions and when they play nice (which is rare). Arguing that people are reacting badly to this move because they are prejudiced is completely unfounded. If you want to argue that this is a "good thing" you need to address specifically, the arguments of those that explain why it is not.
I'm happy this is coming to Games for Windows. do not need a nice box and I can easily read specs, but I also recognize that common folks (not everyone is a geek like us guys) will find it useful, and the extra testing will only help quality.
Who says there will be any real testing? Who says quality will improve. In fact, this may very well be simply MS dictating guidelines that restrict game companies from innovating and charging a fee that comes out of what would be that company's QA budget. If MS is dictating the size and color of packaging, that means no one will be innovating better packaging because they can't. How does that promote innovation?
And so what if Microsoft uses their Windows dominance to help the Xbox? Look at Sony... 70% of the console market and they cannot innovate beyond a faster CPU and they have such an arrogant attitude.
Okay look. There is this nifty method that motivates innovation. It is called the "free market." When lots of companies are competing on a level playing field they all have direct financial motivation to innovate in order to please customers and thus make money. When one player has a method of winning customers that does not involve innovating (leveraging Windows) they have less motivation to innovate, not more. Right now Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, as well as other companies have motivation to come up with cool new ideas. It is a healthy market with multiple players and offerings. That does not mean all players will innovate equally well or in the same direction. Nintendo is concentrating on input devices and gameplay. MS focused on online play and graphics and Sony focused on graphics and backwards compatibility. The free market then decides which one made the best choice by rewarding them with money, and each company responds to the market by focusing their innovation in a different way.
If MS is allowed to leverage their monopoly by tying Windows and Xbox gaming, this situation will go away. MS will end up dominating the gaming market, then like every other market they took over, they will have no financial motivation to improve that product in any way and they will have direct financial incentive to make the product worse. Look at IE. Notice how secure it is and how well it manages to implement 8 year old standards that every other browser handles just fine? Take a look at Windows Media Player. Notice how, by default, it rips CDs in a format that customers want, i.e. in one that they can copy other places and which plays on more than a tiny fraction of portables? As MS illegally dominates markets using Windows, those markets shrivel and die. Innovation slows to a crawl.
And here you are, seriously arguing that instead of greed and competition motivating innovation, that just letting MS do whatever they think is best, even if it breaks the law, is the key? Why in the world would anyone in their right mind agree with you?
And if Linux is supposed to be an alternative to Windows, then it needs to have what it takes.
You miss the point. Using a monopoly allows you to take over a market with a product that is inferior. IE is not as good as Firefox, by almost any rational person's account, but IE dominates the market because it is bundled with Windows. This means consumers get an inferior product. Window Media Player is inferior to iTunes, and even worse than Mplayer, but it dominates the market
Sony has already adopted a version of OpenGL|ES and collada for the PS3, and likely the best way to foster a cross platform DirectX is to urge Sony, Nintendo, Apple, PC hardware vendors, and even [Gasp!] Microsoft to participate in its development by joining with Khronos to further define the APIs and by adopting, or at least supporting, them in their products.
You provide a reasonable summary, but I'm not sure I agree with some of your conclusions and assertions. Microsoft has direct financial motivation to promote Direct3D and hinder OpenGL based competitors. I'm sure they'll join any such group, but only to try to throw a wrench in the works. Microsoft will support it and work with it only when it is a clear winner in the market that has crushed Direct3D completely.
As for the current players, Sony does seem to be stepping up, at least somewhat, but without the support and real contributions from others, I don't think it will be enough. I haven't seen Nintendo or Apple buy into this and really throw resources at it. That doesn't mean it isn't happening. I'm not closely following the development at the Khronos group and a lot happens behind closed doors anyway. I hope it is, but I somehow doubt it.
Why is apple included in this? I thought we were talking about games...
I included Apple for several reasons. First, they are a major OpenGL contributor/user. Second, MS is leveraging their monopoly in the OS space, which Apple can help to mitigate. Third, Apple is highly motivated to mitigate this issue. Finally, Apple in undoubtedly aware of the lack of games issue hindering sales on their platform and games developers are aware fo the growing platform and are targeting it more and more. When you put all of these together, Apple becomes a very good candidate for this alliance. In any case, the point is not to reach specific platforms, but to build an open and easy development platform to reach many end systems. I don't expect Sony to write components to target the Nintendo. But there needs to be buy-in enough to meet as larger than the market on Windows and the Xbox combined. An open system of this sort would get components to reach Linux pretty quickly, but I doubt it would be coming from some company that can be partnered with.
Do you mean GPL software you developed, or GPL software that's worked on by people not paid by your company?
You make it sound as though these two are mutually exclusive. They aren't. We sell systems that include hardware, open source software, and closed source software. We write most of the closed source software included, and we write a small part of the open source software included. It works like this. We make some really cool software developed in house that no one else has really figured out how to duplicate. That code and the intellectual property around it we keep closed and top secret. The boxes we sell, however, also need an OS and a slew of random tools and the like. Also, they need a few services. The OS, services, and tools are not our core competence and are commodities, so we rely upon OSS solutions and end up contributing a lot of code back to these projects. Linux and a couple BSDs, Apache, and dozens of lesser known projects benefit from our work. This is not unusual, but the norm from my experience. Most OSS coders are being paid by someone. That is why branding OSS as "non-commercial" seems so strange. It is a different business model with less waste and more benefit to customers than the developers, but most developers are also customers. It works and it makes a lot of money for a lot of very major companies. IBM is not a charity.
With the exception of Massive studios, most games that are developed licence a game engine from a third party vendor; large developers will choose...
This is true, but not all games use one of the cross-platform engines, and not all games can run on an existing engine. This move does not target existing players in the market, most of whom presumably have the sense to maintain portability. This targets new development shops that want to get started on the cheap. Every year there are dozens of mostly unsuccessful and a few successful games that are developed entirely with DirectX based technologies because of the low up-front cost. The successful ones go on to make another title, often based on the same, since most don't have the skills to do a really portable title. This provides a real edge to Windows and now the Xbox, over other consoles that aren't getting this spillover. There are a lot of Windows machines out there and a lot of DirectX developers. Combined with all the development houses MS has bought up, this is a significant influence on how many exclusive games they will get and we all know it is just one or two games that are exclusive to a platform that can really sway a buyer.
Coming up next on Behind the Games: the fall of Microsoft, and '99's battle with fame and amphetamines.
I'm really more of a whiskey and hallucinogens kind of guy... and I'm way too ugly to be famous. They'll attribute all my hard work motivating major corporations to someone with less facial hair.
You must be on crack if you think that Microsoft's push of DirectX will sway the console wars.
Yeah, people have said the same thing about other markets they embraced.
Game studios which put out multi-platform games are not interested in abandoning their multi-platform market in favour of the oh-so-lucritive[sic] PC and XBox market.
MS already owns a lot of those game studios. They will buy more as they need to. And they don't need to change the minds of entrenched players, if they can win over the new development shops. Already a lot of games are developed with DirectX tools, simply because the tools and skills are cheap and easy. Some of those new companies move on to make good, multi-platform games, but some have enough important people with a DirectX-only skill set that they stay with it out of momentum. Every one of them, is just that many more Windows/xbox exclusive titles that contributes to their win. Maybe it won't happen with the Xbox360, or even the next generation of consoles, but it only needs to hit critical mass once, and then it is theirs.
There is much more money to be made in selling the same game on numerous platforms instead of only 2.
There are different types of costs. There is overall cost and their is up front investment cost. If a new company wants to make a game and they can cheaply use existing DirectX talent and kit the Xbox and Windows, they'll do it. Hell, a whole lot of small time companies already do so and all they hit is the Windows market. Unless they have a toolset that competes and lets them hit a similar number of end users for similar or lower upfront cost, this number will slowly grow.
The only explanation for your reasoning is that it will simplify development - but the only one who is having trouble with their dev kits (at this point) is Sony, so your argument goes out the window.
Game developers always complain about dev kits, for every platform. Anything that makes it easier, or cheaper in the short run is a real competitor. This is a proven market strategy and it will be benefitting MS. The only question is how much will it benefit them and will it be countered.
I guess our disagreement is rather funadmental -- you believe that people should be forced to contribute their work back. I don't, which is why I prefer the BSD license -- when I release stuff under the BSD license, I'm thrilled to see someone else take it, modify it, and if they can turn a profit with it, even better for them.
I think the BSD licenses are ideal for a slew of projects and I even contribute. I think the GPL is ideal for other projects and public domain ideal for yet other IP. To me, each has its place. For official standards, infrastructure components that the author(s) are planning to use and which they would like the most widespread adoption for, I favor BSD licenses. There is less to be gained by forking these projects and the compatibility gains are more important. For consumer projects, I think Linux and Apache have shown why a more GPL styled approach pulls in more development work and faster progress. In the case of a game engine, I think this is the sweet spot. Developers already have a way to prevent their work from being run off with, in copyrights on their artwork and trademarks on their story elements. It doesn't benefit them much to keep the code to themselves, but the gaming industry is such that most would anyway. This would quickly piss off hobbyists and the like who would fork a GPL version anyway, basically wasting time and work.
I don't believe in forcing anyone to contribute their work. I believe that as a contributor, I'd much rather contribute to a project where each user pays for using the code of one another with any code they create and publish, rather than with mere credits. Really, if I spend a month making a bunch of cool models and textures for some beasties, I'm happy to give them to someone who will give me back a better way to script them, or some AI to make the whole game more fun. I'm much less happy about providing them, only to have them incorporated into a closed source project that they want me to pay them for. Not that I think making for sale games from this is a bad idea, so long as they contribute back the work so other people can also make open games with them.
Stop comparing DirectX to OpenGL!!!! You can't!! If you are going to compare OpenGL to something compare it to Direct3D
I didn't compare the two, I made mention of them as parts of development toolkits. Neither of them constitutes such a toolkit in and of itself, but they are recognizable to the average reader, while mentioning SDL and the like and Direct3D results in a bunch of irrelevant questions.
the thing is, everyone wants to be M$ with regards to the OS and game market, they all want to lock people in so that they can't leave.
Sure they do, but if they're trying it while going up against a company that has a monopoly they can leverage they'll lose. Sony is part of a cartel and has some leverage to bring to bear. Apple has a near monopoly on iPods they can exploit (and nothing to lose from interoperability). Even so, unless they work together to take shares in a competitive market, they'll fall further and further behind as isolationist entities.
Even the nice guys of the market won't open up everything. Just leave those damn closed source games for PCs
They don't need to open up very much at all, simply to collaborate on an open standard toolset. None of them have a lot to lose by this and mostly they keep technologies closed out of reflexive secrecy.
This is your wake up call. MS intends to leverage their OS monopoly to give themselves and advantage in the gaming console market. This also provides another layer of defense around their core, OS monopoly. This is bad news for all of you, Nintendo, Sony, and Apple. They're also trying to build out DirectX tools to make the PC and Xbox a one stop shop. This is their classic strategy and it works, unless the existing players form a good, open standards based partnership. You're all influential OpenGL houses. You all have a vested interest here. Sony has already moved towards making OpenGL models key to their gaming platform. Now is the time for all of you to abandon trying to build lock-in strategies in this field and start making a concerted effort to interoperate. Build a game development toolset that makes OpenGL games on Windows, PS3, Wii, and the Mac a single entity. Beat MS at their own game. Give Blizzard and Id a call. You've got one shot at this guys, and if you fail your media enterprises are going to be easy targets. Get to it!
Its[sic] a moot point if they're wanting to put it under the GPL, which is not commercial friendly, by design.
My company makes millions every year using GPL software. How is that not commercial friendly?
Now, if they were to buy it, and put everything into the public domain, or release it under the BSD license, THEN it'd be commercial-friendly, and I'd consider supporting it.
I disagree. Until the project has momentum and regular contributors, I think the GPL is a better way to go. There just aren't enough game development shops that understand the open source model. They'd try to make a closed product from it and be afraid to contribute back and lose most of the benefits. As a result, they'd poison the reputation of the engine and drive other companies away.
Instead of making it BSD they should GPL the code and make the artwork and existing gaming scripts and the like public domain. Then they should make it a modular system so that different developers can easily load in proprietary artwork, sounds, etc. without any licensing issues. This will encourage gaming companies that they have sufficient protection for their IP, while at the same time force them to contribute core changes back to the project.
Windows clearly has a more robust permission scheme with its ACL's and user rights policies...
Umm, do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Windows group policies is something with no real equivelent in UNIX either.
What? You can certainly recreate the functionality of Windows group policies in numerous UNIX systems and have been able to for a long, long, long time.
Uhm? Whut? First of all the Mac IS a PC.
Umm, huh? They were comparing a mac and a "Windows PC." Read more carefully.
A custom made, locked-in PC.
Locked in? Have you ever used a mac?
What's great about the Mac is the OS. The hardware isn't in any way better. It just looks better.
I agree that the software is the big draw for Mac users, but as to the hardware, according to Consumer Reports and pretty much every other reputable review publication, it is among the highest quality and most reliable hardware among desktop computer sellers. It isn't something magical and special, but it is in the same bracket as Sony and Lenovo, at the top of the heap, and much better than Dell and the like who sell cheap junk.
Second, I have a Damn Small Linux running on a 5 years old PC (turned into a "media Center") just fine, running all the new codecs (xvid, h264) just fine...
So, my media center is actually a dual 533Mhz G4, powermac and it has been chugging away or 5 years, and has not had more than a few days down time at any point (when I moved a few times).
Third, I've installed civilization 4 on an "old" dual G4 with 1Gb ram and it runs like shite. It runs fine on a really old Athlon XP 1.5Ghz/256Kb with 1Gb ddr... I bought it second-hand at about half the price of a mac mini..
Anecdotal evidence is pretty useless to start with, but at least be consistent. It runs better on a given PC than a given mac and cost less than half the price of a different mac? And this is useful information for what reason?
I made a piece-by-piece comparison to the new Intel iMacs and I found out I can build an equivalent machine made from high quality components (ie: best quality ASUS mobo and video card etc) and it costs about 250E less than the iMac. I don't give a fuck that it includes the OS. I can download my favourite distro and install it.
Again, this is anecdotal. Independent studies show Macs cost, on average, 7% more than the same hardware elsewhere, with the largest difference on the high end. Mac minis seem to be cheaper than the same hardware elsewhere, even without any software involved.
Plus, it looks like Apple lost its mind entering an arms race with x86 CPUs. The best thing Apple has now are crappy Core 2 Duos...
Umm yeah, those crappy chips currently winning the fight at all the credible review sites. What chip is it that you think they should be shipping?
And when was the last time you could change the cpu on a Mac?
Have you done any actual research. You can change the CPUs out on current, desktop macs and servers and several review sites and hobbyists have done just that.
And did you look at "Apple memory" (wtf) prices?
Yeah, that's why I buy memory from a different vendor. Did you have a point?
And I'm not even factoring in things like AMD's integrated coprocessors and stuff to come in 2008...
Good. Arguments that depend upon your prediction of what one company is going to do with regard to some other company's potential products that aren't even finished with development, let alone testing, is pretty pointless. For all you know, they will be slow as crap and Apple will be using them.
Macs are customized PCs with a really great OS.
Macs are a brand. "PCs" is a term usually reserved for Windows systems, but that isn't even the term used. It was "Windows PCs." Macs are above average quality computer hardware, that happens to come with a pretty neat OS. That doesn't make them great in some way, but neither does it make them particularly overpriced or average.
Back at you. Microsoft only has a monopoly on...Microsoft Products.
This statement is nonsense. Any monopoly is a monopoly on only ones own products since, as a monopoly, they are the only one in the market. What does this have to do with anything?
There are no significant barriers to entry for another company to produce and attempt to sell an (desktop) operating system.
I see, that is why BeOS is doing so well these days? MS has monopoly influence on the market via discriminatory pricing agreements. They use those agreements to stop their customers (Dell, HP, Gateway) from pre-installing other OS's. Since a OS manufacturer can't sell to the main customers in the market (OEMs looking to pre-install) there is an almost total barrier to entry in the market.
The functional definition of a monopoly is any company that wield untoward influence in a given market because of their disproportionately large market share. This definition is useful, because it describes the most important characteristic of monopolies in regard to maintaining a healthy, competitive marketplace. This definition is of great use to economists and the legal system.
And you can't really accuse Microsoft of abusing its pricing power(the bad thing monopolies do) to keep other people out of the OS business when they are charging $200 on up for their software.
You are ignorant. They charge $200 to regular buyers. They charge $200 to any OEM stupid enough to try to pre-install some other OS as well as Windows. They charge between $50 and $120 to large computer makers that don't pre-install other OS's. That is their main method of illegally influencing the market.
And yeah, they did apparently write abusive contracts that punished their oem customers for offering other software for sale, but as far as I can tell, they stopped doing that.
If by "stopped doing that" you mean, "they now classify those contracts as trade secrets so no one can read them." Not that it matters. How a company maintains their monopoly has no bearing on if they are a monopoly. The relevant question is, if Dell decides they don't want to use Windows, where can they buy another OS that won't result in the CEO being fired and replaced within the month? The answer, is nowhere, thus MS is a monopoly.
However, taking away the need to type the password is the problem. If all they have to do is click OK, then they will just do it. It's like the dialog box for deleting a read-only file. People just click OK, and are done with it. If they have to type their password, they might stop and think about why it's asking for their password.
I think both are problematic because neither UI forces the user to know what is going on. There should never be a dialogue box that says, "This program wants root permission (OK)(Cancel)." There should never be a dialogue that says, "This program wants to read your e-mail address book (OK)(Cancel)." There should never be a dialogue box that says, "This program wants to replace Defender (________ Submit Password)(Cancel)." All of these are failures from a UI point of view.
A good UI should present choices that are actions on the buttons themselves. "This program would like to access your e-mail address book. (Stop it from reading my addresses)(Let it read my addresses)." Such a UI does not condition users to always hit the same option because the options are always different. Also, even if they don't read the dialogue message, just the buttons themselves are enough to convey the actions they are taking. This aspect is a great deal more important than having a password prompt because common password prompts will still condition the user to enter their password without knowing what is going on.
Sure, there might be some comparisons to Macintosh for the look & feel, but in a corporate (> 500 employees) environment, the Windows platform really shines. From a robust permission scheme, remote control of group policies and really easy deployment there's nothing like Windows.
My personal experience really disagrees with this. Larger deployments where I've worked always end up either granting dangerous amounts or permission to end users, or preventing people from getting work done in a timely manner, as compared to Linux desktops.
If you add Exchange to the mix, Windows really shines in the shared environment.
What? Exchange is the bane of mixed platform environments. It is unreliable and support is spotty, at best, on anything but Windows.
Sure, for "grandma's" use and other special applications the Mac is a bright and shiny object, but it's just not a good team player.
Yeah just because OS X relies upon open, published standards anyone can interoperate with and does its best to be compatible even with closed, obfuscated protocols and formats doesn't mean... oh wait, yeah it does mean OS X is a good team player. Windows just plain sucks at interoperating with anything MS did not create and which has not completely destroyed MS in the market. It can't even get HTML right for the love of Buddha. Sorry but in the "team player" arena, Windows is the biggest loser ever.
Imagine a user who just bought an x86 Macintosh running OS X 10.4. Apple would like to sell that user a desktop upgrade when 10.5 comes out. Microsoft would like to sell that user a desktop version of Windows. That makes Apple and Microsoft direct competitors on the Intel desktop PC market.
Even accepting all your arguments, the market for people buying boxed upgrades of their OS and who own a mac is so small as to not show up when the entire market for intel based desktop operating systems is considered.
The point isn't that "everyone's the equivalent of a dev team member." The point is that there is reusable code in development that anyone can take and make their own MMORPG with (using their own server). And perhaps, if the developers want, the community can contribute code.
I understand the concept, but I don't think it is a good idea unless you can get buy in from some commercial enterprises. Most large OSS projects thrive on support from corporations that use that software. Look at Apache, for example. For an OSS-MMORPG framework to survive, there need to be one or more commercial ventures based upon that project. Then, there is direct financial motivation to keep it clean and make improvements. Without a development shop interested in undercutting the market with free improvements from other contributors, I don't see such a project really keeping up and remaining popular. I could be wrong, but that is the way I see it. Some really sharp developers should get together and put together the rest of the money needed to open this code and then use it to get rich.
It was interesting that you mentioned that single button mice force better design in Mac apps. I think this is kind of funny because the I've always felt the lack of a second button has resulted in Mac context menus that aren't very good relative to Windows. I've found that if I use a two button mouse on a Mac or hit CTRL+CLICK, that the menus were small and lacking features.
The benefit is for power users and novices. Novices are confused by multiple buttons. Power users customize their interfaces. By default the right click menu in InDesign has 17 items in it on both the mac and PC. I actually use four of those items regularly. But, since all of those items are replicated in the regular menus and right-click menus are not mandatory I have customized that menu to include those four items and another 8 I do want to use all the time. The end result is in Windows I have to pick among 17 items to get 4 of the 12 I want and I have to go elsewhere for 8 of them. On the mac, I get all the options I want and none I don't want.
The mac is not perfect and they could make it a whole lot easier to change the contextual menu functionality on the fly. But the fact that I can customize this without losing functionality is directly related to the fact that the OS and program are designed to work for users of a single button mouse.
What I'd really like to see is both that kind of functionality along with NTFS's really excellent ACL permission system implemented. ACL permissions are a godsend for people responsible for running a file store that's used by humans as opposed to automated processes.
Others have already pointed out that ZFS supports fine grained ACLs, but I thought I'd add an interesting sidenote to that. Apple also listed support for ACLs in the form of Mandatory Access Controls ported from TrustedBSD to the official feature set of Leopard, but just recently pulled all mention of this framework from their public documents for developers not under NDA. Whether this means they are part of a "top secret" addition that leaked, or simply are not going to be ready for Leopard is anyone's guess.
NTFS is one of the few worthwhile things that's ever come out of Redmond. I wish more people would spend a bit learning from it without throwing it away simply because it's MS bloat.
NTFS is a reasonable filesystem as far as features are concerned, but not really ahead of the pack as far as what is "out there" IMHO. Also, the giant anti-feature of it being patented, obfuscated, and intentionally incompatible with other players pretty much makes it a non-starter for everyone.
Are you sure about this? Apple's very own Shake application lists a 3 button mouse right in the requirements
There are a small number of exceptions to this rule, including some X11 applications, bad ports, and a few high end graphics applications like Shake and Maya. For the most part, however, people using alternative input schemes will find the high-end graphics programs unusable anyway. So yes, there are some exceptions to the rule.