Ok, hear me out on this. While I'm certianly[sic] one of the first to laugh at bloggers that seem to think they are real journalists and are the same as newspaper reporters, I do think they should be afforded the same protection.
Well, you're in luck. The law clearly defines anyone who writes for a public audience as a member of the press with the same protections as a writer for the NY Times. In fact, I suspect this whole article is a rather sensationalist spin. The actual arguments are never given, only, "Web scribes are not 'legitimate members of the press' when they reveal details about forthcoming products..."
Who is a "legitimate member of the press in legalese? Any person who is writing for the public and is not breaking the law. Since this person was breaking the law, they are not legitimate.
Press protections should be a function of what you are doing, not who you are.
The law agrees with you, 95% (exceptions are a few weird state laws).
What we have here. A source leaks information from a company to a website (blog), who then publishes it. The website operator (blogger) did nothing wrong, they violated no law.
Here is where you are mistaken. It is against the law for a journalist to publish information they know or should reasonably suspect are trade secrets. Veteran rumor site operators who have been sued for this numerous times, are making a profit, and are getting information from people who claim to be Apple employees, fall pretty assuredly in this category.
They should then be allowed to pretect their source because they are acting as a journalist, they are reporting the news to the public.
The only special protection journalists have that would protect them from prosecution for publishing said trade secrets are whistle-blower laws. These are similar in most states, but basically say that if you break the law in the process of publishing a story that fits certain criteria, then you are sheltered from prosecution. The catch is, the criteria for that story is that is must reveal a public health concern, government corruption, or other information of vital, overriding public interest. Do you think the specs for a new Apple device of any sort fit this criteria?
We should give anyone who acts as a journalist the same protections as it relates to the reporting of informaton to the public.
Federal law agrees with you, and almost all state laws do as well. The problem is, professional journalists are not allowed to reveal this information any more than bloggers are.
I'm actually pretty impressed with Apple's handling of all of these issues. They've done everything right and avoided all the sleazy actions I complain about for a number of other companies (i.e. RIAA, MS). They filed their lawsuit against the actual leaker, not some blogger. They did not try to shut down or threaten the blogger with a lawsuit by threatening extortionate amounts of damages. They did not try to get the blogger's site shut down via the DMCA. They did not threaten the blogger's ISP and demand records. They properly filed a John Doe lawsuit (the proper but harder target) instead of filing suit against the blogger (which they would almost certainly win).
I'm actually somewhat undecided on the issue of trade secrets in general, but given that they exist and Apple has to do business and compete in this environment, they seem to be doing the right thing. They are actually using the legal system the way it is supposed to be used to legitimately defend their rights under the law, not to bully or intimidate those with fewer resources. It figures that some other journalist would try to spin this the other way to be more sensationalist.
Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.
The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.
Re:Unless linux changes its tone and becomes easie
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How Vista Disappoints
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Windows and osx are way easier to use then linux. THere[sic] are many programs on linux that I had to recompile because there[sic] ready to run apps didn't run.
Your logic is very broken. Here's something analogous: Windows is much harder to use than Linux. I ran a bunch of programs included with my computer and some installed spyware and others did not work.
There are many different distributions of Linux and some set of applications, just as there are many different sets of Windows and applications distributed pre-installed on computers. You can't blame an OS for failings in applications run on top of it.
Didn't microsoft redo the code? I thought people wanted a secure and stable os? Not one with bells and whistles.
Actually, people want a secure and stable OS and bells and whistles. What they are getting is a rehashed version of Windows XP, with some GUI elements, and a bunch of half-assed security add ons.
I find it funny that for years people complained about the security wholes[sic] and how instable[sic] it was. Now people don't want that and want the bells and whistles.
What leads you to the conclusion that these two things are mutually exclusive? Anyway, I think most people would prefer stability and security, but it does not look like they are going to get it.
I Just[sic] want a stable os. If we have to drop all the 3d stuff and everything else to do that so be it.
I find Windows XP to be pretty stable, in and of itself. Most of the problems I see fall into two categories: unstable hardware drivers and hardware conflicts and failures. Neither of those is really something MS can control. Applications on top of the OS are more than a little unstable and the UI can really die when the machine tries to multitask multiple heavy CPU using programs, but that usually does not result in a crash.
Regardless of what you want, what you are going to get is not really a good answer to customer feedback. Aside from the GUI flash, most of the features that were not ripped out are anti-features. You get even slower OpenGL performance to try and kill non-proprietary graphics. You get DRM to make sure others can veto your ability to display what you want with data on your machine. You get a built-in, proprietary PDF replacement to try to kill another open standard and lock you into Windows even more. Need I go on?
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. If someone gives me a beer, it is mine to do with what I will. I can drink it and all is good. Open source licenses, however, do not quite fit with that analogy. First, the user is making a copy. They go out and get the software from somewhere, usually it is downloaded. This is like someone setting up a refrigerator with a sign on it that says if you agree to this license which is posted, you may take a free beer. If you don't agree to the license, it is illegal for you to take a beer, since the law forbids it.
I may hove oversimplified by using the GPL as my example. The point is you have to agree to the license. The GPL license requires you give back any changes before republishing. The BSD license requires that you keep the copyright and credits in anything you republish. That is not free, per se, but just really cheap.
I realize this may be completely impossible to believe, but before you start saying this guy is a shill, did you ever stop to think that this just MIGHT be a real article? And there just MIGHT be people who enjoy working at Microsoft? Is it really that hard to believe?
Who would think otherwise? This may or may not have been looked over by PR before he was allowed to send it out, but to me it sounds like someone expressing their opinions. Lots of people work at MS and most of them are fairly average people. They hire a lot of coders right out of college and teach the the "Microsoft Way" and they get paid decently in a mediocre work environment. There are a number of ex-MS employees working with me at my current company.
Or are you so bound by your narrow worldview of a particular company being 'evil' that you have to figuratively cover your ears...
The author of this look at MS goes on about his personal rationalizations about how MS is not "evil" all the while not touching on the important aspects of it. MS does a lot of very bad things. They break the law. They lie. They cheat. They destroy innovation and crush good companies in their search for one thing, money. He talks about how the people he knows there are "good" people (well except 1/3 of his managers who are incompetent and all those people who partake in personality cults rather than working for the greater good). He says the policies he know about are similarly "good." He says the upper management must be "good" because they do so well at keeping him securely employed. In all it is a very small-minded view.
Corporations are legal entities granted many of the rights of people. These entities, however, generally exist only for the expressed purpose of making money. What would you call a person who was wholly devoted only to greed? "Evil" may not be such a far-out description. Add to that the fact that the corporation cannot be punished for crimes as individuals are, only fined money. Since they are basically greed incarnate they will then break the law whenever it will gain them more money than it will lose them. Thus, MS breaks the law, a lot. Adding in other unethical behaviors that are not technically illegal and we get an entity made of good people with good policies, that has a terrible effect upon the computer industry and the world in general.
And within that company is this fellow, trying to justify to himself and us why he works there and how it is really not evil despite the fact that it keeps doing "evil" things. I think I have another person in mind who might be "figuratively covering his ears."
I don't see how using open source would help the economy. In order to boost an economy, people need to buy things, and last time I checked, free open source software was *free*. Free means it doesn't cost money, and if it doesn't cost money, no one is buying it. If enough people switch to free software, the economy will be hurt rather than helped.
This is why Econ-101 is mandatory for most 4 year degrees. Most software is tools. That is to say, most is infrastructure cost for a business or individual. There are a few exceptions, like games where it is an end product. People, companies, and organizations buy tools to accomplish other tasks. Take automobiles, for example. Businesses and individuals use them to get from place to place and to transport things. They are tools. Suppose all of a sudden some buddhist monk has a revelation. Energy and matter exist only in the mind so using this simple technique you can instantly transport yourself and everything you are carrying anywhere you want. *Poof* the world is a very different place. Free transportation takes the world by storm. All the auto companies that don't sell recreational vehicles go under. What a huge loss to the economy right? All those billions aren't being spent building cars and selling cars and buying cars. Hundreds of thousands of auto workers, salesmen, and managers need to find new jobs. Other industries take a huge hit as well, like insurance, gas, and steel. It's a disaster.
But wait, lets think about this just a little bit more. Most of the people in the US still have jobs and now they all have eliminated a huge expense from their budget. They don't have to buy a car, insurance, or gas. What do all these people do with the money? Well, they certainly vacation a lot more, since travel is now so cheap. They buy bigger houses. They buy more clothes. They invest and they spend. And all those companies that used to buy trucks for freight? Now they have fewer expenses. They can lower their prices or invest in R&D or expansion.
There are a whole lot of things wrong with my previous example. Learning how to teleport using our minds would be much, much more disruptive than widespread adoption of free software. The point I hope it illustrates is that making tools more efficiently (the shared cost of open source with little or no overhead is much less than the cost of buying closed source software that does the same. It is like the ultimate price cut. Pay only for what you need that no one else has already paid for. Everyone saves a big expense, an expense that exists solely due to an inefficient production and distribution system. It does not take money out of the economy, it merely shifts that money around to production of end-user products rather than intermediate tools.
In any case it is a mistake to believe open source software is free. If you get a new car for helping someone build a house is the car free? It cost no money. Open source software is similar. You pay by agreeing to the terms of the license. Your payment for downloading a copy of OpenOffice is that you agree if you make any changes to the code and distribute that code, you let everyone else who agrees to the license have it too. Some would call this very cheap. Others would disagree, but I don't think it is possible to say it is free as in beer.
What it is is very, very efficient. Since it costs basically nothing to make a copy, you pay only for changes you want made and you pay that cost for everyone after you. Looking back at the auto industry, a man came up with a way to build cars faster and cheaper. His name was Ford and he applied the assembly line to the auto industry. Now fewer people could make more cars, faster, with less training. It did not ruin the economy it made a huge positive impact. Similarly, the availability to everyone of code and binaries to accomplish most any task will not ruin the computer industry, rather it will make it more efficient and benefit all.
Given the efficiency of this method, it is almost certai
Microsoft's usual "embrace and extend" strategy won't work with ODF, so they are trying to ignore it for the most part.
What makes you think this? Right now they are still attempting to push several less standard "standards" so they have less work, but should those efforts fail what is stopping them from using the usual embrace and extend? HTML is a more stringently defined and controlled standard, but they've managed to embrace and extend it just fine. No, they are not ignoring it because they have no other plan, they're pretending to ignore it because they still have hopes that they won't have to embrace and extend it, which would be more work and cost them money.
The real fight will come when (if) ODF is widely excepted and MS tries to ship an intentionally broken version of the standard (as they do with HTML).
You see, if you have a problem with a Microsoft OS, you go to the MS website, where people paid not insult you answer your questions. Same goes for Apple, Sun, etc.
You do? Regardless of the OS, I usually turn first to Google, not the vendor docs. Sometimes that directs me to MS or Apple, but not more than half the time.
I've had issues with Linux support, but I think most of the frustration can be attributed to one cause: disorganization. When a user can't do something in OS X they might do a Web search and they might consult the vendor provided support. When that fails they know they are stuck. They can hire someone or give up. With Linux, the issue is much more nebulous. You don't go to Linux.org for all your support issues. Maybe the guy who can help you is on a particular IRC chat, or maybe on one of many mailing lists, or maybe there is an explanation on some Web site. The thing is, user's don't have any idea where or when would be a good idea to give up and consider hiring someone. It is that nebulous hope that leads to frustration more than anything else.
I've evaluated alot of software for different purposes; both open and closed source. I was contacted by one vendor after rejecting their offering and asked why. The reason, I explained, was that their product had failed to install and when I looked online for help resources, I found none. Another piece of software I was evaluating was an open source project that did much the same thing. It installed, but completely puked on my input data. When I looked in Google I found no mention of the problem, but I did find a bug reporting site. I submitted the bug and was replied to in a reasonable time frame. The problem was fixed in about three weeks. In both of these cases, I knew the score and was not really frustrated. On a third project (another open source one) the product worked quite well out of the box, but had a few missing features I needed. I asked in mailing lists, wikis, and IRC chat room, etc, but their were so many disparate resources with no "official channel" it was almost three days of screwing around before I gave up on getting a real reply from anyone. Now this last product (aside fom the pseudo-support) was probably the best choice, technically. It almost certainly could do what I wanted, or I could have someone modify it to do so. But because there was not one, unified channel for support, I passed on it.
That exactly, is what I feel is the problem with support for Linux. Because of the distributed nature of the development and de-emphasis on organization it is often very difficult to find knowledge and easy to connect with what seem like promising sources but are, in actuality, angst ridden teenagers trying really hard not to let anyone know they are not omniscient hackers.
SOME of OS X is open source. The things that make OSX OSX (things like Aqua, core[audio,image,data], Quartz, Cocoa, Carbon, DisplayPDF) are not.
I mostly agree with you, but I think your definition of "The things that make OSX OSX" is a bit glib. You'd have been better off just listing some of the things that are and are not open source. From one perspective, OS X is very different from Windows in many ways that are reflections of open source parts of the OS. The basis of the OS that provides the security and stability is open source. Many miscellaneous technologies are open source. Zeroconf, for example is a very "Apple" technology and is open source, even if it has been implemented by others now. Webkit is open source. Their implementation of the OpenStep application bundle is not widely used by anyone else, but is an open source part of Darwin. These things I would consider to be part of what makes OS X, OS X.
I think that it is more accurate to say that many parts of OS X are open source, but many are not, including parts that are vital to using OS X the way most people experience it today.
Right, but the argument is, you don't have to compete on price. It's that there is a designer brand space for machines running Windows.
If Apple sells high-end Windows machines they poison the brand. Magazines will run articles showing them side-by-side with a cheaper commodity machine. Unlike fashion markets, the computer industry has real, measurable benchmarks. That is why Alienware is going to die. A few years ago they were cool and high end. They still are making sales based on the brand they built, but now the machines are expensive but crappy. Their reputation is already dead in much of the market and being purchased by Dell makes it even worse. When all you have is a brand, it is very fragile in the PC market.
It may be that to Mac people, not running Windows is distinctive and cool, but to the vast majority of the world, its just an inconvenience.
It doesn't matter. People buy based upon reputation if they don't know anything and based upon features if they do. Expert users look at the tools and many buy Apple machines because they are the best tool for them. Inexpert users make guesses based upon the brand and what they see and hear from expert users.
Right now expert who own Macs saying, "macs are better" and people are buying them. The last thing they want to do is add in a component of people saying, "Macs are the same as all the others... blah blah blah...something about an OS, whatever that is."
Its not going after Dell's market at all. Its going after a different bit of the designer brand segment.
The computer market is very price sensitive. It is a commodity item. The "designer" market is very small and fickle. It is not really a good market to be in. I just don't see the profits outweighing the brand confusion.
Basically, margins are dropping every year and 80% of all sales are in the very low end. 10% are in the middle. 4% are already Apple. That does not leave a lot of room. I think Apple is doing the right thing by expanding the OS X market, rather than trying to move into the Windows one. In the Windows market they are beholden to MS, who is already fighting them to maintain their lock-in. There is nothing stopping MS from using their differential pricing to give any competitor a huge advantage over Apple. Already they would be taking a huge price hit because they sell machines without Windows on them (something MS adds a huge penalty for when negotiating OEM licenses). Other retailers in the past have actually found it cheaper to pay MS for a license for Windows for Apple computers they sell without Windows rather than incur said penalty.
Its always struck me as odd that the same people who argue that buying hardware and OS from one source is the key to the Apple selling proposition and user experience, also argue that Apple loyalists would instantly forsake it for cheaper hardware given the chance. Both cannot be true.
Actually, they can both be true. You see, having one company control the hardware, drivers, and OS does make for a better overall experience (although I don't consider this a major part of the reason using OS X is superior for most of my tasks). The common perception of a hardware buyer, however, does not take the previous factor into account, so sales would be greatly cannibalized.
Apple consequently ought to both license Windows and keep OSX tied to their own hardware.
Regardless of immediate sales effects, this is a poor strategy for the long-term. MS wants to control the OS space. They need to maintain their obscene profits and growth rate. To do this they need to keep OS X and Linux from gaining market share. Further they need to make sure no one player in the hardware space becomes too big. Dell is at about 20% right now. MS can actually fine tune their pricing to put them wherever they want. This makes for a large, stagnant market with no room for innovation (MS can and is motivated to just cancel out any effect of innovation so
I think it possible that for many people, the main reason they do not buy Macs is that they come with OSX. If they came with Windows, they would probably buy.
I take some exception to your wording. People don't buy Macs because Macs aren't running Windows. But you're right, if Macs ran Windows some people would buy them. A lot of people would not. A lot of people that do buy them now, would not. Now there are three different scenarios here. One is Apple sells machines with your choice of OS. In that instance, they might gain some sales, but add a whole new dimension to their support/software problems. They would also be diluting the brand. Apple isn't "cool" or desirable because they have shiny cases (whatever the magazines and other company's marketing people would like you to think). They are in because they are different and alternative and better and more expensive in the minds of purchasers. In the long run, this would make them less desirable.
The second scenario is Apple sells machines with no OS. This would flop as the market for blank machine is very small and very price sensitive.
The third scenario is that they sell only Windows boxes. This puts them in the same place as Dell. They no longer have a real differentiator. They lose the market they have that buys for the OS. They are competing head to head with Dell, while being subject to MS's discriminatory pricing. Basically they are at the mercy of MS (as Dell is) and they don't have the supply chain or volume. They will need to slash prices and quadruple sales in order to compete. People just won't pay for good support and quality hardware Windows boxes in reasonable volume. The market has shown it again and again.
What he is suggesting is, go after the 97%. Why is this so stupid?
That 97%, (actually about 95%) is the low end. Why doesn't Ferrari or BMW go after the low end? They could make a $20K BMW out of the same commodity parts as Ford uses and make a killing, right? Wrong. Sales volume is not equal to profit. Apple already makes a similar amount of money as Dell, while selling 1/5 the number of machines. The valuable things Apple and BMW have are twofold. They have a brand that is associated with high quality and they have a differentiator from the low-end. Apple has OS X and good hardware that people trust. BMW has reliable, high performing hardware people see as "high end." If either put out a commodity product under their own name at a commodity price, sure it would sell. It would also poison the brand and result in declining sales on the high end. This is why most companies brand commodity and boutique items separately even if they are made by the same company.
Oh, I forgot, its the integrated experience you get when you take your Vuitton luggage on board that color coordinated aircraft. Well, it may be wonderful for you, but I don't care about it.
Integrated experience is nice in some ways, but not what sells. The point is, the luggage holds five times the volume of other luggage while taking up the same space. It is bullet proof, floats, and makes it impossible for security dogs to smell your contraband.
Apple makes good, reliable hardware and has very good support. The same can be said for a number of other vendors. Apple machines run OS X, and that is why people buy them. Otherwise, they'd probably buy other hardware that is more customized to their needs. Some would buy a smaller laptop than Apple produces. Some would buy one that is cheaper, or has just the features they need. Apple can't compete with the entire market for making a machine suited to a person's needs. Thus, they don't try. They offer a good selection and provide a differentiator. Their machines run OS X. Some people buy there machines not even knowing what OS X is. Some people buy BMWs without knowing what horsepower is, or what size engine they have. They do this because the brand has a reputation. They'd still buy BMWs if they had 90 HP 4-bangers in them, but the brand would lose that re
His point in this case does not depend on understanding technology, but on knowledge of human nature, big companies, and markets.
Well, you're sort of right. It depends upon an understanding of human nature. Dvorak writes sensationalist nonsense like this because it gets a lot of attention and makes him money.
His main point is, if you are a company the size and nature of Apple, you do not simply launch BootCamp on a whim. It is a major decision, internally.
Yeah, just like all the other internal projects they have released.. err wait.. they do release this sort of thing regularly because it helps developers and power users and costs them very little for the goodwill and PR.
So they will have scenarios and objectives. What could they be?
They want to make money by selling hardware, software, media and services. Bootcamp is an incentive for some users to buy Apple hardware. Bob does not want to give up playing his Windows games (already purchased) but otherwise would rather run an OS X box. Bootcamp is released and Bob buys a mac. Apple makes money. Tom is unsure, Macs look cool and Sue's Mac works for her, but what if he doesn't like it? He's stuck having spent a few grand on the wrong thing. Bootcamp is released and he has an easy way to go back to Windows without having wasted a lot of money. Apple gets another sale. Where is the mystery in why this benefits Apple?
They will also have a followup plan. What could that be?
Umm, to keep selling Apple machines loaded with OS X and now with Bootcamp?
One of the things they may find out is that people would buy more Macs if they did not come with OSX on them. I realise that everyone on/. will instantly dismiss that, which is exactly why it is worth thinking about.
It is not like this is new ground or anything. Shipping machines without an OS does not meet the market's demand. Most people don't know what an OS is and don't want to try installing one. The market exists, but is tiny even compared to Apple's market.
Shipping Apple hardware with another OS (i.e. Windows) puts them also in well known territory. It is called the commodity PC market, where Dell sells five times as many machines as Apple does and makes 1.5 times the profit doing so, while simultaneously placing themselves entirely at the mercy of Microsoft. Yeah, I'm sure that is the market Apple wants to be in.
Steve Jobs does not want to gamble on competing with Dell for selling the most boring, commodity PCs. He wants to sell cool, innovative stuff that will "change the world." The culture at Apple is not one of making tons of money with the most efficient supply chain and cut-rate gear, but rather one of making the coolest stuff and thus guaranteeing themselves a good slice of the pie no matter what happens.
They have swallowed Intel, and now they have swallowed BootCamp. They will probably swallow the next one too, if its pitched right.
Intel processors made for some faster machines, with some minor hiccups in the transition. It has little affect upon end users. They bought the new machines and are happy. What did you expect them to do, complain about something? Bootcamp was released and a few people are using it to dual-boot. A few more boxes are sold to the slightly expanded market. This is what we all expect would happen. If Apple open sources OS X and users no longer have a reason to buy Apple hardware or software since they can get similar but more customized hardware for cheaper and the software for free. What do you expect the result of such a move would be? What would you do?
Never mind who said it, or what silliness he has said in the past. This is really an interesting and penetrating set of thoughts. Yes, I agree, from an unlikely source.
The idea is absurd. Open sourcing OS X would be a huge gamble and even cursory looks at the business plan indicate it would be unlikely to make Apple as much money as it makes now
I swear to God, what is wrong with him? Is he stupid or what?
No, he is not.
Here are the steps to making a lot of money:
Write a ridiculous article even the average person with an interest in tech can see is absurd.
Get it posted to Slashdot.
Mention to your publishers that five million people just visited your article earning them tons of ad revenue.
Repeat the process.
Dvorak is a hack and a rabble rouser. He's making money writing this crap that intentionally annoys people. Paying attention to him and linking his articles here encourages him to do it even more. It also makes Slashdot money, so they probably won't stop doing it. Just ignore the bastard and maybe we won't have to see his crap anymore.
Seriously. All the OS X fanboys can actually identify in Vista that isn't either (a) obvious, or (b) has been announced to be in Vista long, long before OS X acquired any such features, is... uh... transparency?
Expose was not obvious. It was innovative and is useful. The Vista demo showed something that looked an awful lot like it. Save to PDF from all applications has been useful for years. Vista's save to our proprietary PDF clone from all applications looks like a response to the OS X feature to me. Instant, indexed searching inside various file types has been in OS X quite a while. It was previously shown as a technology preview by a number of companies, including MS, but it did not include a plug-in method of adding new file types or quickly launching applications, and it was one benefit of a database filesystem that they scrapped. Built-in user level encryption, hmm, it's been in OS X for several years and no I don't think it is "obvious" to most people.
There are no more rehashed OS X features in Vista than there are rehashed Windows features in OS X.
Hmm, OS X copied fast user switching in a manner similar to Windows; also, tab to switch applications quickly. What else are you thinking of? In any case I never asserted otherwise. In fact I rather wish Apple would copy a few other specific features from Windows and that MS would copy a lot more from OS X. It would make my tasks easier with both OS's.
Oh, yes, and for some reason Apple fanboys are obsessed with the idea that Aero Glass is a ripoff of Aqua.
This is the logical flaw of "argument by association." Because you mentioned some things MS copied you must also believe this, which I assume everyone who notices the copied features believes. Please refine your thinking.
The rest of your comments are similar broken logic and ad hominem attacks. You're the one who needs to get their head on straight. Yes, there are people who feel Apple can do no wrong. Most of them are people who just started using OS X and are so blown away they can't stop gushing about how much nicer it is to work in. They usually settle down after six months or so. Your assumption that anyone who points out something about good about OS X as compared to Windows or who points out the obvious features Windows has copied from OS X is some sort of sub-human idiot who holds a whole range of beliefs in line with your stereotyped prejudices is patently absurd.
If you want to take issue with my assertions, fine. Point out an example that disproves them or provide a logical argument. But first, why don't you sit down with a good book on logical and rhetoric so that you can avoid all of the counterproductive, illogical attacks such as you have been making.
This post will be modded into oblivion anyway, because I've dared to think for myself instead of fellating Steve Jobs.
Maybe. Or maybe you'll be modded down because you can't construct a proper argument, address any points I actually made, or provide any facts to back up your prejudiced, emotional rant.
Besides Interface and Technical Stuff I really don't see the advantage of Windows Vista.
What is in an OS besides interface and technical stuff? Documentation?
But if they are happy with what they have now there isn't anything I can see that they really want or need in Longhorn that they don't have now... and it will make it hard to convince people they they need to upgrade soon.
Upgrade? No one upgrades Windows; well compared to the install base no one does. Some enterprises that have site licenses will upgrade, but they already paid for that with the ridiculous assurance program. For the most part users never upgrade the OS, they just buy new hardware that has it bundled. People will buy Vista because they are buying a new computer and it comes with it.
Until we see what is really in Vista, aside from rehashed OS X UI features, we can't really see if there will be a strong motivation for "power users" to upgrade.
They just invented something really new that nobody else could have ever thought of...errrr... X11 forwarding anyone?
Swooosh! That was the sound of this technology's purpose whizzing over your head. X11 is great, but has scaling issues and is limited to X11 applications and clients that have X11 support. This is supposedly more scalable, with better bandwidth usage. It has a client for most every OS you want to use, including Windows and OS X. It includes authentication and monitoring tools using LDAP, AD, or a few others. You can run Java apps, Web/HTML apps, X11 forwarded apps from Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX, Windows apps via RDP, etc.
Looking to move away from expensive, unreliable, Worm-ridden Windows PCs? Try installing a central set of redundant servers and then rolling out this client to all your machines. You can buy cheap thin clients and users will have all the apps they need. You can keep your macs in the art and marketing departments and they will still be able to access the same apps. You can convert your PC labs to linux, and they will still be able to run the same apps. Some workstation still needs Windows for a one-off application or to control special hardware, no problem, it can still run all the standard apps.
This looks like a well thought out way to pipe applications of all sorts to all sorts of workstations and make the platform upon which you are running them much less important. It makes sense to me and it will help Sun sell thin-clients and big, redundant servers.
I'm running.net applications just fine on MacOSX which were compiled in windows, with Microsoft's compilers. Please learn more about your platform and.net.
Why? One look at the architecture, licensing, patents, and business plan made it obvious it was just another attempt by MS to lock people in. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me consistently for a decade... well you get the point. If MS behaves ethically and openly for three years in a row, I'll consider their technologies for adoption again.
I suppose lack of functionality means lack of data, hence more secure in this case?
Flamebait... not even worth addressing.
This has always been possible in Outlook... You haven't even used the applications it seems.
Try some reading comprehension classes. Can you run the same spelling and grammar checker in outlook and in Photoshop and in a shell and in your Web browser? Can you run additional, arbitrary services in all of them?
No, but it's under view in the menubar. Been there since outlook was released.
That changes the menus. It does not translate the message.
You don't need to upgrade windows to 'support it'. You just install the language packs.
See above.
Already implemented in windows vista beta and ie7 beta.
Sigh, it is not even close to sufficient. It is still in limited beta release and holes have been found. I'm talking a real VM or sandbox, not the half-arsed crap in Vista/IE7
Plenty of IE plugins/addons supported that after it was first introduced.
Great now we just have to convince the makers of every other application for Windows to implement it or write a plug-in for their application... or they could just offer a mouse gesture service to all applications that use the mouse and have one consistent setup like OS X.
A[sic] annoyance to turn off?
You're missing the point. Applications have certain functionality. By providing the OS with an easy way to allow it to provide that functionality to other programs you avoid having to re-implement them in every application. Right now a few MS office applications can share a spelling checker. Why can't every application that uses text share it? Why can't another program offer services Word can use, like translation to other languages, or encryption, or any other arbitrary thing a user might want? The reason is that the Windows OS does not support it.
I hate music in pages, be it midis, flash, quicktime.
Great, so as a result if you visit a page with sound you have to listen to it or turn off all sound, including your VoIP call, your e-mail dings, your MP3 player, etc. Hence, the room for improvement.
The software I use does that (under linux and using opera right now). However under windows, I believe that's only supported with 3rd party addons/plugins still.
This is not really something an application designer should have to worry about. The OS is the proper level to handle mixing/muting sounds from most applications. Some should be able to provide their own controls as well, but the OS should be able to do it for you.
I find the thumbnail rendering, video thumbnail rendering etc. under windows far faster than under the Mac... iPhoto on a none super powered up Mac, is incredibly slow.
This is what you consider to be important improvements to Windows in the last 10 years that change the way you work? Thumbnails and image viewers? I must admit I find previews of PDFs and PSD files to be nice, but I'm not sure I'd argue it is a huge benefit. System services, expose, and even the dashboard in OS X has had more affect upon my work routine.
Like.. What? Like, uh? the search system which can search into documents, create databases on your file contents etc.
Yes, I think that will provide a real benefit to users. Also, the expose clone and dynamic task bar items.
Rather presumptuous don't you think? I own a mac, I also support mac's.
You asserted OS upgrades don't make playing games better. That is not true for Mac OS in my experience and does not agree with common knowledge. Why don't you support your assertion rather than avoid addressing it?
Direct X upgrades on the PC make games run faster. Also, better code by the game developers make games run faster.
So what? You asserted upgrading the OS would not make games run better. It does, for OS X.
Huh? There are very few Mac only games, most notable are those produced by Ambrosia.
X+"very few" > X, unless you're arguing there is a negative number of games on OS X.
Emulation is not good for frame rates unless you are talking about Pac Man. But what does this have to do with being more productive?
Emulation and virtual machines are not the same thing. Games should, with the new Intel and AMD processors, be able to run multiple OS's without a hypervisor on the same hardware and nearly the same speeds. Reimplementaion techniques, like WINE, actually sometimes result in better frame rates than running Windows. In any case, games can and likely will run just fine with Windows running as a "subservient" OS, or just running Windows Apps on another OS. Who said it had anything to do with productivity?
Btw, I have an AMD chip - Intel hasn't had the edge for years now.
For desktops and servers I agree, but I'm a laptop kind of guy as well. AMD has been leapfrogged for laptops for some time now. They may or may not catch up at the end of the year with their new laptop chips.
You are being obtuse because... you're[sic] whole argument was that an OS upgrade was going to help my productivity.
No, my argument was that OS upgrades can and do improve productivity, not that it would do so for you.
Btw, Xcode also runs on one platform, Mac.
Umm, yeah. Did you have a point?
Such a statement is in itself completely relative to the programmer and her/his needs.
All improvements to productivity are relative to a user's needs. The point is that improvements to the OS and tools can and often does increase productivity. Instant searching within PDF, HTML, CSS. etc. files can help some users a lot and others not at all. If you use your computer as a way to smash open nuts, maybe no OS improvement will help. My argument is that for myself and many (most?) users OS upgrades do help.
Yes, I am correct.
No, you're incorrect... times infinity!
These have nothing to do with my day to day productivity. They might make you feel better about the computer you are using, but at the end of the day, they don't improve your ability to manage your e-mail and calendars.
Being able to open any e-mail I get without worrying about security or scrutinizing it makes me faster and more effective. Not having to wait while my calendar loads, because it happens instantly, saves me time. Not having to reboot or close and restart programs saves me time.
Yup, I can grammar check and spell check in Outlook.
Great, but can you use the same grammar checker and dictionary as you do in your IM client, your SSH session to a remote server, and your publishing suite? I didn't think so. Can you instantly translate text in all of these to other languages? Can you get a word count in all of them? Can you highlight a word and look it up on some obscure Web site's database from all of these programs? Can you do it with a single click? Yeah, I didn't think so. Can you perform these arbitrary actions easily and without having to work at it?
Now don't you think maybe, just maybe, an upgrade that added a framework to your OS that it offered arbitrary services from one application to the others or from a stand alone service to all application might increase your productivity? I know it certainly did mine.
How did Microsoft financially benefit from Internet Explorer's dominance?
Lock-in. How many people can't switch their corporate network to Linux because they need IE to access some intranet or partner's Web site or HTML based tools? Not to mention breaking the standard helps stop the Web from democratizing the application space. How much sooner would Web-based applications have taken hold if developers only had to write to modern standards instead of having to be backward compliant with a very outdated and broken version of the spec as well?
IE is and always has been a free product. More relevant to this topic, Windows Defender is free and probably always will be. Sure, other anti-malware software companies may suffer because their products are not so in demand, but so what?
Do the developers who write IE work for free? Obviously not. Where do their paychecks come from? They come from Windows. Everyone who buys Windows is paying for IE, regardless of whether or not the ever use it. Even die-hard Firefox fans pay for IE when they buy Windows. IE isn't free; the price is bundled into the cost of Windows. That is one of the major reasons it is illegal.
The same applies equally for Windows Defender. It isn't free. it is rolled into the cost of Windows. Antitrust law is built on the markets an action affects, not the products themselves. People paid a minimal cost for Netscape. They viewed some ads at one point. They paid for support if they needed it. They agreed to a binding contract that said if they modified the code and distributed it they would give it back to the other users. All of these things are fairly indirect and hard to transform into hard cash numbers. It is hard then, to show how much damage MS did to the market by a given action.
Windows defender is moving into a space where people directly buy the product/service for cash. It is a much more clear cut case for the courts than even IE was. Legally, I don't believe Microsoft can either give away the product (bundling unless they make it for all platforms) or charge for it (the conflict of interest is double dipping and is a form of extorting current customers).
That all depends upon what you define as the gamer market. The "hardcore" market that buys specific gaming gear (high-end graphics cards and gaming keyboards) is actually quite a bit smaller than the mac market. It is a very fuzzy market to define though.
That depends on the gamer. Actually, most I know, wouldn't, because of past expirence[sic] with using laptops for gaming.
The last LAN party I went to had three desktops (owned by the person who was host) and nine laptops. That seems about typical in my experience.
I've tried upgrading graphic cards before in macs (with pretty standard hardware), slapping a new one in, fine. Getting it to actually work properly is another thing.
In the past, with more divergent platforms, this was sometimes the case. I, personally, haven't had any issues in a long time. I expect they will become even more rare as the intel designed chipsets etc. homogenize the hardware even more.
As someone who writes his own software, I've found more difficulty porting my *nix applications to MacOSX, than it is to port them to windows (seriously).
That has not been my experience, but we all use different tools and coding methodologies.
it's a pain just trying to get *standard* Java applications working *properly* under the Apple java runtime enviroment. Apple certainly isn't very standards compliant in that sense.
Again, I disagree with this. They are standards compliant with Java, although not as cutting edge as some would like. Most of the issues I've seen with this are UI ones, where people have trouble dealing with a UI that is not Windows or a Windows clone.
Linux tends to be a lot cheaper in this case than buying Mac hardware. The opensource software that runs on Macs doesn't run as well as on Linux systems (seen all the weird bugs with GTK widgets etc?).
Linux tends to be very slightly cheaper on similar hardware. The whole "macs are expensive" thing is largely a myth. Yes, you can put together a machine with the same specs for slightly less, but it usually has cheaper hardware and support. Apple is rated number one in support and customer satisfaction every year. Put together a box with reliable hardware and top of the line support and you end up in a very similar price range. You do end up with a cheaper box sometimes because you have more options and can often get a better hardware fit for exactly what you want to do. Even so, cost is not the only thing. I spend 9-12 hours in front of a workstation most days. I'll gladly shell out a couple grand more if it can be a better one in ways that matter to me.
As for running a variety of hardware, I find *nix apps run better and with more interoperability on OS X than Windows. And I find that it is easier to run mainstream, commercial offerings, and that they run with more interoperability than on a Linux box with WINE.
Windows software generally can be ran under Wine under Linux, while MacOSX has Darwine which is quite far behind in development, and nowhere reaches where Wine is today at the moment.
OS X has been running on the Intel platform for how many months? Already we have dual booting working and two betas of virtual Windows environments. A handful more solutions, including greatly improved WINE support, are in the works. This will be an non-issue very soon. I think the speed of the development has been exceptional.
Unfortunately there is no real standard installer and package management on MacOSX for items that require to go OUTSIDE the application folder and into system folders. Linux distros had this solved again with all the different package management systems availible[sic] for them.
Fink and BSD ports? There are several more, not so different from Linux. But really, there are not a lot of reasons for software to need to install anything outside the.app folder.
It doesn't have all of the apps that regular Windows users have so OSX will continue to be perceived by most people as not fitting their needs. The worst thing that could happen to Apple is that Windows on a Mac ends up becoming 2/3 of their userbase.
Most users will never install an OS. Most users don't know what an OS is, or that you can dual boot or are interested in paying for OS X for their Windows machine or Windows for their OS X machine. They aren't interested in buying upgrades. They are just going to use whatever is on the machine.
Users will install applications, so long as it is easy. In the near future I see VMs, emulators, and WINE becoming a huge force on OS X. Apple may or may not build one into the OS. If they don't you can bet developers will look to them for quick and dirty ports of games and the like. Users will look to them to run games and Windows only applications they require for some reason. For some markets, this will make little difference. No one will buy Photoshop for Windows and run it in a VM, or accept a nasty port of it. Users want it to be fast and native and take advantage of all the OS X features Windows does not yet have. For some markets, like fullscreen games, no one cares if the menus are native, so long as it runs fast enough.
People might be willing to use Windows applications in OS X, rather than use Windows most of the time. At the same time, however, it is a big strike against any application. If a competitor comes out with something native, a Windows app will have a hard time competing unless it too becomes native. I don't think Apple is worried development for native apps is going to go away, even if they build Windows emulation into the OS and 100% of their user base has it. Mark my words, the new combination of Intel+virtualization hardware and software solutions is going to allow many Windows apps to run at nearly the same speed as they do on Windows and in some cases faster, and this will allow a lot of people with the desire to finally make the switch. The only thing Apple has to be careful of is accidentally convincing development shops that they don't need native versions, as someone without a clue in a major production house could cancel a critical app and cause a lot of grief. For this reason, I don't expect Apple to market this feature much at all, without some real caveats. Think, "Run some Windows applications, until you can find a replacement" type marketing; always viewed as a transitional feature, never positioned as a long-term one.
Depends on the tasks. I play games, an OS upgrade isn't going improve that.
You've been using Windows too long. OS upgrades on OS X make games run faster. The next upgrade (assuming you have an Intel machine) may well introduce an emulation environment allowing Mac User's to run more games, more even than a Window's PC can when you count the Mac and X-Windows only titles.
I build web, thick and embedded applications, VS.NET is one of the best tools out there for it, an OS upgrade isn't going to save me any time.
So you've chose a dev system that only runs on one platform and you argue that that has something to do with the OS? Improvements to the OS and bundled tools certainly improve Web development, if you choose the right tools.
I do a lot of e-mail, Outlook is hands down the best e-mail calendar client out there, another function not dependent OS upgrades.
While taste in client software is not dependent upon the underlying OS, the stability, speed, and security of the data and application are. Also, some OS's offer functionality to client software. For example, On OS X now, and presumably in Vista when it is released will allow near instantaneous searching of data within your calendars as well as the rest of your saved data from a global prompt. And what about other services offered by the OS? What about database objects supported by the OS for reduced resource consumption and faster data handling. OS X has them now and Vista may or may not have them. What about system level services? I can run grammar checking within my e-mail and calendar, and pretty much anything else. Can you do that in Outlook? What about instantaneous translations of text between languages? Can you right-click and a message in Outlook to change text from Japanese to English? I can, because my OS was upgraded to support it.
And I surf the web, my OS isn't going to help me do that any better.
Why not? If your OS starts offering translation services to the browser, as mine does, it makes reading posts and pages written in other languages much nicer. Additional security and sandboxing could probably change Web browsing for the better as well. What about support for mouse gestures? Making them a global feature of the OS can completely change the way you surf, as well as do other tasks. Your OS's ability to add this functionality makes a difference. What about sound? More and more pages have it. Application level support for sound mixing, would let you leave sound on for alerts from your IM client or calendar, but mute it easily for your Web browser until you get to a page you actually want to hear sound for.
Sure some extra eye candy might be cool, and upgrades are always nice, but for the most part, I really don't care.
I'll say it again, you've been using Windows too long. For the last ten years you haven't had much in the way of real improvements that change the way you use your computer. Well, you're in for a treat if they ever release Vista. It has stolen lots of real, useful innovations from OS X. You'll use if for just a few months and then feel like you've gone through a time machine the first time you have to abandon all the useful new features and use an old system.
No, I'm making the point that Apple has far more to lose revenue wise than Microsoft.
I actually reject your assertion. MS has more market share to lose, and Apple has more room to grow in the PC market. Whether or not they will actually do that, however, is anyone's guess. I foresee some growth stemming from the hardware switch and some of the functionality it enables, but I don't know how significant that will be. I do know that here, among software developers and security experts, the mac/windows ratio has gone from about 5% to about 55% in the last three years. While anecdotal, I think it is a sign of the market trend.
I can't see a gamer spending a crapload of money on a system that they can't slap the latest video card into every 6 months.
First, gamers are a tiny segment of the market. Second, many gamers now use laptops to make LAN parties easier, thus have no upgrade option. Third, why can't you slap a new video card in the Mac tower when it is released?
And I can't see a business spending crap tons of money on a more expensive machine to do all the same tasks they currently do.
While some companies do use Macs for the simplified management and lower security costs, you're right that most won't be switching anytime soon. Rather, expect a slow migration towards Linux in the business space. That trend, I think, may open some doors for Mac purchases, as environments will become more friendly to standards compliant OS's
Maybe they'll sell some upgrades to people who use an older mac and want the ability to dual boot, but beyond that...?
Mostly I see this as a way to sell more Macs to potential "switchers." People might want to use OS X, but be unsure if they will like it in the long term. This gives them the security of being able to "switch back" at a low price point. The real market for new Mac users, in my opinion, are those who would love to ditch Windows, but require some Windows-only software. I foresee a lot more migration in this space as virtualization/emulation/reimplementation takes off. Here at work we get to choose among a few particular models of computers; one of which is a powerbook (used by maybe 55% the company right now). I know when the time comes to pick an upgrade several people in administration, sales, documentation, etc. who are now using a Thinkpad will probably go for a powerbook combined with something to run those Windows applications within OS X.
For some it will be their first experience using a Mac (or first using OS X anyway). They have at this point only looked over the shoulders of others and said, "hey how come you can do that?" and "wow that is really cool!" Another interesting item of note, is I don't know people that switch back. Well, I know one guy who bought a powerbook, used OS X for a while, and then went back to Linux as his main OS. But, by and large, when people buy a Mac, they continue to do so from then on. It is hard to lose all that functionality, once you get used to it. This will probably influence their next home computer purchase as well.
In summary, I don't see that bootcamp will be used much, but I do think it will drive some Mac sales. Further, I think other technologies (enabled by the switch to new Intel processors) that allow Windows software to run will drive even more sales. I think this particular article was empty fluff, but I do foresee increasing market share, especially among power users.
This is one of the nice things about Camino (as a Cocoa application, it gets access to OS X's builtin spellchecking)
Ditto for Safari and OmniWeb. Actually all three work with my spell-checker, grammar-checker, dictionary/thesaurus, language translations, text transformations, scripts, speak text, encryption tools, md5 checksums, text statistics (word count, char count, pages, etc.), Web lookups, XML processing tools, content summarizer, and a probably few other system services I've forgotten. The fact that Firefox can't use standard services is the reason I don't use it as my everyday browser. It is nice that it maintains cross-platform capabilities, but unless other platforms catch up to OS X for services I don't want to be limited to the abilities of the least common denominator. Services are, in my opinion, the most overlooked advance OS X has brought to my workstation.
You mis-typed "in compliance with the Constitution of the United States of America, particularly the IVth, Vth and VIth ammendments thereto."
I understand your point, but why does the UK care about the US constitution? They care about human rights as agreed upon by their own laws and the international agreements.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, hear me out on this. While I'm certianly[sic] one of the first to laugh at bloggers that seem to think they are real journalists and are the same as newspaper reporters, I do think they should be afforded the same protection.
Well, you're in luck. The law clearly defines anyone who writes for a public audience as a member of the press with the same protections as a writer for the NY Times. In fact, I suspect this whole article is a rather sensationalist spin. The actual arguments are never given, only, "Web scribes are not 'legitimate members of the press' when they reveal details about forthcoming products..."
Who is a "legitimate member of the press in legalese? Any person who is writing for the public and is not breaking the law. Since this person was breaking the law, they are not legitimate.
Press protections should be a function of what you are doing, not who you are.
The law agrees with you, 95% (exceptions are a few weird state laws).
What we have here. A source leaks information from a company to a website (blog), who then publishes it. The website operator (blogger) did nothing wrong, they violated no law.
Here is where you are mistaken. It is against the law for a journalist to publish information they know or should reasonably suspect are trade secrets. Veteran rumor site operators who have been sued for this numerous times, are making a profit, and are getting information from people who claim to be Apple employees, fall pretty assuredly in this category.
They should then be allowed to pretect their source because they are acting as a journalist, they are reporting the news to the public.
The only special protection journalists have that would protect them from prosecution for publishing said trade secrets are whistle-blower laws. These are similar in most states, but basically say that if you break the law in the process of publishing a story that fits certain criteria, then you are sheltered from prosecution. The catch is, the criteria for that story is that is must reveal a public health concern, government corruption, or other information of vital, overriding public interest. Do you think the specs for a new Apple device of any sort fit this criteria?
We should give anyone who acts as a journalist the same protections as it relates to the reporting of informaton to the public.
Federal law agrees with you, and almost all state laws do as well. The problem is, professional journalists are not allowed to reveal this information any more than bloggers are.
I'm actually pretty impressed with Apple's handling of all of these issues. They've done everything right and avoided all the sleazy actions I complain about for a number of other companies (i.e. RIAA, MS). They filed their lawsuit against the actual leaker, not some blogger. They did not try to shut down or threaten the blogger with a lawsuit by threatening extortionate amounts of damages. They did not try to get the blogger's site shut down via the DMCA. They did not threaten the blogger's ISP and demand records. They properly filed a John Doe lawsuit (the proper but harder target) instead of filing suit against the blogger (which they would almost certainly win).
I'm actually somewhat undecided on the issue of trade secrets in general, but given that they exist and Apple has to do business and compete in this environment, they seem to be doing the right thing. They are actually using the legal system the way it is supposed to be used to legitimately defend their rights under the law, not to bully or intimidate those with fewer resources. It figures that some other journalist would try to spin this the other way to be more sensationalist.
Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.
The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.
Windows and osx are way easier to use then linux. THere[sic] are many programs on linux that I had to recompile because there[sic] ready to run apps didn't run.
Your logic is very broken. Here's something analogous: Windows is much harder to use than Linux. I ran a bunch of programs included with my computer and some installed spyware and others did not work.
There are many different distributions of Linux and some set of applications, just as there are many different sets of Windows and applications distributed pre-installed on computers. You can't blame an OS for failings in applications run on top of it.
Didn't microsoft redo the code? I thought people wanted a secure and stable os? Not one with bells and whistles.
Actually, people want a secure and stable OS and bells and whistles. What they are getting is a rehashed version of Windows XP, with some GUI elements, and a bunch of half-assed security add ons.
I find it funny that for years people complained about the security wholes[sic] and how instable[sic] it was. Now people don't want that and want the bells and whistles.
What leads you to the conclusion that these two things are mutually exclusive? Anyway, I think most people would prefer stability and security, but it does not look like they are going to get it.
I Just[sic] want a stable os. If we have to drop all the 3d stuff and everything else to do that so be it.
I find Windows XP to be pretty stable, in and of itself. Most of the problems I see fall into two categories: unstable hardware drivers and hardware conflicts and failures. Neither of those is really something MS can control. Applications on top of the OS are more than a little unstable and the UI can really die when the machine tries to multitask multiple heavy CPU using programs, but that usually does not result in a crash.
Regardless of what you want, what you are going to get is not really a good answer to customer feedback. Aside from the GUI flash, most of the features that were not ripped out are anti-features. You get even slower OpenGL performance to try and kill non-proprietary graphics. You get DRM to make sure others can veto your ability to display what you want with data on your machine. You get a built-in, proprietary PDF replacement to try to kill another open standard and lock you into Windows even more. Need I go on?
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. If someone gives me a beer, it is mine to do with what I will. I can drink it and all is good. Open source licenses, however, do not quite fit with that analogy. First, the user is making a copy. They go out and get the software from somewhere, usually it is downloaded. This is like someone setting up a refrigerator with a sign on it that says if you agree to this license which is posted, you may take a free beer. If you don't agree to the license, it is illegal for you to take a beer, since the law forbids it.
I may hove oversimplified by using the GPL as my example. The point is you have to agree to the license. The GPL license requires you give back any changes before republishing. The BSD license requires that you keep the copyright and credits in anything you republish. That is not free, per se, but just really cheap.
I realize this may be completely impossible to believe, but before you start saying this guy is a shill, did you ever stop to think that this just MIGHT be a real article? And there just MIGHT be people who enjoy working at Microsoft? Is it really that hard to believe?
Who would think otherwise? This may or may not have been looked over by PR before he was allowed to send it out, but to me it sounds like someone expressing their opinions. Lots of people work at MS and most of them are fairly average people. They hire a lot of coders right out of college and teach the the "Microsoft Way" and they get paid decently in a mediocre work environment. There are a number of ex-MS employees working with me at my current company.
Or are you so bound by your narrow worldview of a particular company being 'evil' that you have to figuratively cover your ears...
The author of this look at MS goes on about his personal rationalizations about how MS is not "evil" all the while not touching on the important aspects of it. MS does a lot of very bad things. They break the law. They lie. They cheat. They destroy innovation and crush good companies in their search for one thing, money. He talks about how the people he knows there are "good" people (well except 1/3 of his managers who are incompetent and all those people who partake in personality cults rather than working for the greater good). He says the policies he know about are similarly "good." He says the upper management must be "good" because they do so well at keeping him securely employed. In all it is a very small-minded view.
Corporations are legal entities granted many of the rights of people. These entities, however, generally exist only for the expressed purpose of making money. What would you call a person who was wholly devoted only to greed? "Evil" may not be such a far-out description. Add to that the fact that the corporation cannot be punished for crimes as individuals are, only fined money. Since they are basically greed incarnate they will then break the law whenever it will gain them more money than it will lose them. Thus, MS breaks the law, a lot. Adding in other unethical behaviors that are not technically illegal and we get an entity made of good people with good policies, that has a terrible effect upon the computer industry and the world in general.
And within that company is this fellow, trying to justify to himself and us why he works there and how it is really not evil despite the fact that it keeps doing "evil" things. I think I have another person in mind who might be "figuratively covering his ears."
I don't see how using open source would help the economy. In order to boost an economy, people need to buy things, and last time I checked, free open source software was *free*. Free means it doesn't cost money, and if it doesn't cost money, no one is buying it. If enough people switch to free software, the economy will be hurt rather than helped.
This is why Econ-101 is mandatory for most 4 year degrees. Most software is tools. That is to say, most is infrastructure cost for a business or individual. There are a few exceptions, like games where it is an end product. People, companies, and organizations buy tools to accomplish other tasks. Take automobiles, for example. Businesses and individuals use them to get from place to place and to transport things. They are tools. Suppose all of a sudden some buddhist monk has a revelation. Energy and matter exist only in the mind so using this simple technique you can instantly transport yourself and everything you are carrying anywhere you want. *Poof* the world is a very different place. Free transportation takes the world by storm. All the auto companies that don't sell recreational vehicles go under. What a huge loss to the economy right? All those billions aren't being spent building cars and selling cars and buying cars. Hundreds of thousands of auto workers, salesmen, and managers need to find new jobs. Other industries take a huge hit as well, like insurance, gas, and steel. It's a disaster.
But wait, lets think about this just a little bit more. Most of the people in the US still have jobs and now they all have eliminated a huge expense from their budget. They don't have to buy a car, insurance, or gas. What do all these people do with the money? Well, they certainly vacation a lot more, since travel is now so cheap. They buy bigger houses. They buy more clothes. They invest and they spend. And all those companies that used to buy trucks for freight? Now they have fewer expenses. They can lower their prices or invest in R&D or expansion.
There are a whole lot of things wrong with my previous example. Learning how to teleport using our minds would be much, much more disruptive than widespread adoption of free software. The point I hope it illustrates is that making tools more efficiently (the shared cost of open source with little or no overhead is much less than the cost of buying closed source software that does the same. It is like the ultimate price cut. Pay only for what you need that no one else has already paid for. Everyone saves a big expense, an expense that exists solely due to an inefficient production and distribution system. It does not take money out of the economy, it merely shifts that money around to production of end-user products rather than intermediate tools.
In any case it is a mistake to believe open source software is free. If you get a new car for helping someone build a house is the car free? It cost no money. Open source software is similar. You pay by agreeing to the terms of the license. Your payment for downloading a copy of OpenOffice is that you agree if you make any changes to the code and distribute that code, you let everyone else who agrees to the license have it too. Some would call this very cheap. Others would disagree, but I don't think it is possible to say it is free as in beer.
What it is is very, very efficient. Since it costs basically nothing to make a copy, you pay only for changes you want made and you pay that cost for everyone after you. Looking back at the auto industry, a man came up with a way to build cars faster and cheaper. His name was Ford and he applied the assembly line to the auto industry. Now fewer people could make more cars, faster, with less training. It did not ruin the economy it made a huge positive impact. Similarly, the availability to everyone of code and binaries to accomplish most any task will not ruin the computer industry, rather it will make it more efficient and benefit all.
Given the efficiency of this method, it is almost certai
Microsoft's usual "embrace and extend" strategy won't work with ODF, so they are trying to ignore it for the most part.
What makes you think this? Right now they are still attempting to push several less standard "standards" so they have less work, but should those efforts fail what is stopping them from using the usual embrace and extend? HTML is a more stringently defined and controlled standard, but they've managed to embrace and extend it just fine. No, they are not ignoring it because they have no other plan, they're pretending to ignore it because they still have hopes that they won't have to embrace and extend it, which would be more work and cost them money.
The real fight will come when (if) ODF is widely excepted and MS tries to ship an intentionally broken version of the standard (as they do with HTML).
You see, if you have a problem with a Microsoft OS, you go to the MS website, where people paid not insult you answer your questions. Same goes for Apple, Sun, etc.
You do? Regardless of the OS, I usually turn first to Google, not the vendor docs. Sometimes that directs me to MS or Apple, but not more than half the time.
I've had issues with Linux support, but I think most of the frustration can be attributed to one cause: disorganization. When a user can't do something in OS X they might do a Web search and they might consult the vendor provided support. When that fails they know they are stuck. They can hire someone or give up. With Linux, the issue is much more nebulous. You don't go to Linux.org for all your support issues. Maybe the guy who can help you is on a particular IRC chat, or maybe on one of many mailing lists, or maybe there is an explanation on some Web site. The thing is, user's don't have any idea where or when would be a good idea to give up and consider hiring someone. It is that nebulous hope that leads to frustration more than anything else.
I've evaluated alot of software for different purposes; both open and closed source. I was contacted by one vendor after rejecting their offering and asked why. The reason, I explained, was that their product had failed to install and when I looked online for help resources, I found none. Another piece of software I was evaluating was an open source project that did much the same thing. It installed, but completely puked on my input data. When I looked in Google I found no mention of the problem, but I did find a bug reporting site. I submitted the bug and was replied to in a reasonable time frame. The problem was fixed in about three weeks. In both of these cases, I knew the score and was not really frustrated. On a third project (another open source one) the product worked quite well out of the box, but had a few missing features I needed. I asked in mailing lists, wikis, and IRC chat room, etc, but their were so many disparate resources with no "official channel" it was almost three days of screwing around before I gave up on getting a real reply from anyone. Now this last product (aside fom the pseudo-support) was probably the best choice, technically. It almost certainly could do what I wanted, or I could have someone modify it to do so. But because there was not one, unified channel for support, I passed on it.
That exactly, is what I feel is the problem with support for Linux. Because of the distributed nature of the development and de-emphasis on organization it is often very difficult to find knowledge and easy to connect with what seem like promising sources but are, in actuality, angst ridden teenagers trying really hard not to let anyone know they are not omniscient hackers.
SOME of OS X is open source. The things that make OSX OSX (things like Aqua, core[audio,image,data], Quartz, Cocoa, Carbon, DisplayPDF) are not.
I mostly agree with you, but I think your definition of "The things that make OSX OSX" is a bit glib. You'd have been better off just listing some of the things that are and are not open source. From one perspective, OS X is very different from Windows in many ways that are reflections of open source parts of the OS. The basis of the OS that provides the security and stability is open source. Many miscellaneous technologies are open source. Zeroconf, for example is a very "Apple" technology and is open source, even if it has been implemented by others now. Webkit is open source. Their implementation of the OpenStep application bundle is not widely used by anyone else, but is an open source part of Darwin. These things I would consider to be part of what makes OS X, OS X.
I think that it is more accurate to say that many parts of OS X are open source, but many are not, including parts that are vital to using OS X the way most people experience it today.
Right, but the argument is, you don't have to compete on price. It's that there is a designer brand space for machines running Windows.
If Apple sells high-end Windows machines they poison the brand. Magazines will run articles showing them side-by-side with a cheaper commodity machine. Unlike fashion markets, the computer industry has real, measurable benchmarks. That is why Alienware is going to die. A few years ago they were cool and high end. They still are making sales based on the brand they built, but now the machines are expensive but crappy. Their reputation is already dead in much of the market and being purchased by Dell makes it even worse. When all you have is a brand, it is very fragile in the PC market.
It may be that to Mac people, not running Windows is distinctive and cool, but to the vast majority of the world, its just an inconvenience.
It doesn't matter. People buy based upon reputation if they don't know anything and based upon features if they do. Expert users look at the tools and many buy Apple machines because they are the best tool for them. Inexpert users make guesses based upon the brand and what they see and hear from expert users.
Right now expert who own Macs saying, "macs are better" and people are buying them. The last thing they want to do is add in a component of people saying, "Macs are the same as all the others... blah blah blah ...something about an OS, whatever that is."
Its not going after Dell's market at all. Its going after a different bit of the designer brand segment.
The computer market is very price sensitive. It is a commodity item. The "designer" market is very small and fickle. It is not really a good market to be in. I just don't see the profits outweighing the brand confusion.
Basically, margins are dropping every year and 80% of all sales are in the very low end. 10% are in the middle. 4% are already Apple. That does not leave a lot of room. I think Apple is doing the right thing by expanding the OS X market, rather than trying to move into the Windows one. In the Windows market they are beholden to MS, who is already fighting them to maintain their lock-in. There is nothing stopping MS from using their differential pricing to give any competitor a huge advantage over Apple. Already they would be taking a huge price hit because they sell machines without Windows on them (something MS adds a huge penalty for when negotiating OEM licenses). Other retailers in the past have actually found it cheaper to pay MS for a license for Windows for Apple computers they sell without Windows rather than incur said penalty.
Its always struck me as odd that the same people who argue that buying hardware and OS from one source is the key to the Apple selling proposition and user experience, also argue that Apple loyalists would instantly forsake it for cheaper hardware given the chance. Both cannot be true.
Actually, they can both be true. You see, having one company control the hardware, drivers, and OS does make for a better overall experience (although I don't consider this a major part of the reason using OS X is superior for most of my tasks). The common perception of a hardware buyer, however, does not take the previous factor into account, so sales would be greatly cannibalized.
Apple consequently ought to both license Windows and keep OSX tied to their own hardware.
Regardless of immediate sales effects, this is a poor strategy for the long-term. MS wants to control the OS space. They need to maintain their obscene profits and growth rate. To do this they need to keep OS X and Linux from gaining market share. Further they need to make sure no one player in the hardware space becomes too big. Dell is at about 20% right now. MS can actually fine tune their pricing to put them wherever they want. This makes for a large, stagnant market with no room for innovation (MS can and is motivated to just cancel out any effect of innovation so
I think it possible that for many people, the main reason they do not buy Macs is that they come with OSX. If they came with Windows, they would probably buy.
I take some exception to your wording. People don't buy Macs because Macs aren't running Windows. But you're right, if Macs ran Windows some people would buy them. A lot of people would not. A lot of people that do buy them now, would not. Now there are three different scenarios here. One is Apple sells machines with your choice of OS. In that instance, they might gain some sales, but add a whole new dimension to their support/software problems. They would also be diluting the brand. Apple isn't "cool" or desirable because they have shiny cases (whatever the magazines and other company's marketing people would like you to think). They are in because they are different and alternative and better and more expensive in the minds of purchasers. In the long run, this would make them less desirable.
The second scenario is Apple sells machines with no OS. This would flop as the market for blank machine is very small and very price sensitive.
The third scenario is that they sell only Windows boxes. This puts them in the same place as Dell. They no longer have a real differentiator. They lose the market they have that buys for the OS. They are competing head to head with Dell, while being subject to MS's discriminatory pricing. Basically they are at the mercy of MS (as Dell is) and they don't have the supply chain or volume. They will need to slash prices and quadruple sales in order to compete. People just won't pay for good support and quality hardware Windows boxes in reasonable volume. The market has shown it again and again.
What he is suggesting is, go after the 97%. Why is this so stupid?
That 97%, (actually about 95%) is the low end. Why doesn't Ferrari or BMW go after the low end? They could make a $20K BMW out of the same commodity parts as Ford uses and make a killing, right? Wrong. Sales volume is not equal to profit. Apple already makes a similar amount of money as Dell, while selling 1/5 the number of machines. The valuable things Apple and BMW have are twofold. They have a brand that is associated with high quality and they have a differentiator from the low-end. Apple has OS X and good hardware that people trust. BMW has reliable, high performing hardware people see as "high end." If either put out a commodity product under their own name at a commodity price, sure it would sell. It would also poison the brand and result in declining sales on the high end. This is why most companies brand commodity and boutique items separately even if they are made by the same company.
Oh, I forgot, its the integrated experience you get when you take your Vuitton luggage on board that color coordinated aircraft. Well, it may be wonderful for you, but I don't care about it.
Integrated experience is nice in some ways, but not what sells. The point is, the luggage holds five times the volume of other luggage while taking up the same space. It is bullet proof, floats, and makes it impossible for security dogs to smell your contraband.
Apple makes good, reliable hardware and has very good support. The same can be said for a number of other vendors. Apple machines run OS X, and that is why people buy them. Otherwise, they'd probably buy other hardware that is more customized to their needs. Some would buy a smaller laptop than Apple produces. Some would buy one that is cheaper, or has just the features they need. Apple can't compete with the entire market for making a machine suited to a person's needs. Thus, they don't try. They offer a good selection and provide a differentiator. Their machines run OS X. Some people buy there machines not even knowing what OS X is. Some people buy BMWs without knowing what horsepower is, or what size engine they have. They do this because the brand has a reputation. They'd still buy BMWs if they had 90 HP 4-bangers in them, but the brand would lose that re
His point in this case does not depend on understanding technology, but on knowledge of human nature, big companies, and markets.
Well, you're sort of right. It depends upon an understanding of human nature. Dvorak writes sensationalist nonsense like this because it gets a lot of attention and makes him money.
His main point is, if you are a company the size and nature of Apple, you do not simply launch BootCamp on a whim. It is a major decision, internally.
Yeah, just like all the other internal projects they have released.. err wait.. they do release this sort of thing regularly because it helps developers and power users and costs them very little for the goodwill and PR.
So they will have scenarios and objectives. What could they be?
They want to make money by selling hardware, software, media and services. Bootcamp is an incentive for some users to buy Apple hardware. Bob does not want to give up playing his Windows games (already purchased) but otherwise would rather run an OS X box. Bootcamp is released and Bob buys a mac. Apple makes money. Tom is unsure, Macs look cool and Sue's Mac works for her, but what if he doesn't like it? He's stuck having spent a few grand on the wrong thing. Bootcamp is released and he has an easy way to go back to Windows without having wasted a lot of money. Apple gets another sale. Where is the mystery in why this benefits Apple?
They will also have a followup plan. What could that be?
Umm, to keep selling Apple machines loaded with OS X and now with Bootcamp?
One of the things they may find out is that people would buy more Macs if they did not come with OSX on them. I realise that everyone on /. will instantly dismiss that, which is exactly why it is worth thinking about.
It is not like this is new ground or anything. Shipping machines without an OS does not meet the market's demand. Most people don't know what an OS is and don't want to try installing one. The market exists, but is tiny even compared to Apple's market.
Shipping Apple hardware with another OS (i.e. Windows) puts them also in well known territory. It is called the commodity PC market, where Dell sells five times as many machines as Apple does and makes 1.5 times the profit doing so, while simultaneously placing themselves entirely at the mercy of Microsoft. Yeah, I'm sure that is the market Apple wants to be in.
Steve Jobs does not want to gamble on competing with Dell for selling the most boring, commodity PCs. He wants to sell cool, innovative stuff that will "change the world." The culture at Apple is not one of making tons of money with the most efficient supply chain and cut-rate gear, but rather one of making the coolest stuff and thus guaranteeing themselves a good slice of the pie no matter what happens.
They have swallowed Intel, and now they have swallowed BootCamp. They will probably swallow the next one too, if its pitched right.
Intel processors made for some faster machines, with some minor hiccups in the transition. It has little affect upon end users. They bought the new machines and are happy. What did you expect them to do, complain about something? Bootcamp was released and a few people are using it to dual-boot. A few more boxes are sold to the slightly expanded market. This is what we all expect would happen. If Apple open sources OS X and users no longer have a reason to buy Apple hardware or software since they can get similar but more customized hardware for cheaper and the software for free. What do you expect the result of such a move would be? What would you do?
Never mind who said it, or what silliness he has said in the past. This is really an interesting and penetrating set of thoughts. Yes, I agree, from an unlikely source.
The idea is absurd. Open sourcing OS X would be a huge gamble and even cursory looks at the business plan indicate it would be unlikely to make Apple as much money as it makes now
I swear to God, what is wrong with him? Is he stupid or what?
No, he is not.
Here are the steps to making a lot of money:
Dvorak is a hack and a rabble rouser. He's making money writing this crap that intentionally annoys people. Paying attention to him and linking his articles here encourages him to do it even more. It also makes Slashdot money, so they probably won't stop doing it. Just ignore the bastard and maybe we won't have to see his crap anymore.
Seriously. All the OS X fanboys can actually identify in Vista that isn't either (a) obvious, or (b) has been announced to be in Vista long, long before OS X acquired any such features, is... uh... transparency?
Expose was not obvious. It was innovative and is useful. The Vista demo showed something that looked an awful lot like it. Save to PDF from all applications has been useful for years. Vista's save to our proprietary PDF clone from all applications looks like a response to the OS X feature to me. Instant, indexed searching inside various file types has been in OS X quite a while. It was previously shown as a technology preview by a number of companies, including MS, but it did not include a plug-in method of adding new file types or quickly launching applications, and it was one benefit of a database filesystem that they scrapped. Built-in user level encryption, hmm, it's been in OS X for several years and no I don't think it is "obvious" to most people.
There are no more rehashed OS X features in Vista than there are rehashed Windows features in OS X.
Hmm, OS X copied fast user switching in a manner similar to Windows; also, tab to switch applications quickly. What else are you thinking of? In any case I never asserted otherwise. In fact I rather wish Apple would copy a few other specific features from Windows and that MS would copy a lot more from OS X. It would make my tasks easier with both OS's.
Oh, yes, and for some reason Apple fanboys are obsessed with the idea that Aero Glass is a ripoff of Aqua.
This is the logical flaw of "argument by association." Because you mentioned some things MS copied you must also believe this, which I assume everyone who notices the copied features believes. Please refine your thinking.
The rest of your comments are similar broken logic and ad hominem attacks. You're the one who needs to get their head on straight. Yes, there are people who feel Apple can do no wrong. Most of them are people who just started using OS X and are so blown away they can't stop gushing about how much nicer it is to work in. They usually settle down after six months or so. Your assumption that anyone who points out something about good about OS X as compared to Windows or who points out the obvious features Windows has copied from OS X is some sort of sub-human idiot who holds a whole range of beliefs in line with your stereotyped prejudices is patently absurd.
If you want to take issue with my assertions, fine. Point out an example that disproves them or provide a logical argument. But first, why don't you sit down with a good book on logical and rhetoric so that you can avoid all of the counterproductive, illogical attacks such as you have been making.
This post will be modded into oblivion anyway, because I've dared to think for myself instead of fellating Steve Jobs.
Maybe. Or maybe you'll be modded down because you can't construct a proper argument, address any points I actually made, or provide any facts to back up your prejudiced, emotional rant.
Besides Interface and Technical Stuff I really don't see the advantage of Windows Vista.
What is in an OS besides interface and technical stuff? Documentation?
But if they are happy with what they have now there isn't anything I can see that they really want or need in Longhorn that they don't have now... and it will make it hard to convince people they they need to upgrade soon.
Upgrade? No one upgrades Windows; well compared to the install base no one does. Some enterprises that have site licenses will upgrade, but they already paid for that with the ridiculous assurance program. For the most part users never upgrade the OS, they just buy new hardware that has it bundled. People will buy Vista because they are buying a new computer and it comes with it.
Until we see what is really in Vista, aside from rehashed OS X UI features, we can't really see if there will be a strong motivation for "power users" to upgrade.
They just invented something really new that nobody else could have ever thought of ...errrr... X11 forwarding anyone?
Swooosh! That was the sound of this technology's purpose whizzing over your head. X11 is great, but has scaling issues and is limited to X11 applications and clients that have X11 support. This is supposedly more scalable, with better bandwidth usage. It has a client for most every OS you want to use, including Windows and OS X. It includes authentication and monitoring tools using LDAP, AD, or a few others. You can run Java apps, Web/HTML apps, X11 forwarded apps from Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX, Windows apps via RDP, etc.
Looking to move away from expensive, unreliable, Worm-ridden Windows PCs? Try installing a central set of redundant servers and then rolling out this client to all your machines. You can buy cheap thin clients and users will have all the apps they need. You can keep your macs in the art and marketing departments and they will still be able to access the same apps. You can convert your PC labs to linux, and they will still be able to run the same apps. Some workstation still needs Windows for a one-off application or to control special hardware, no problem, it can still run all the standard apps.
This looks like a well thought out way to pipe applications of all sorts to all sorts of workstations and make the platform upon which you are running them much less important. It makes sense to me and it will help Sun sell thin-clients and big, redundant servers.
I'm running .net applications just fine on MacOSX which were compiled in windows, with Microsoft's compilers. Please learn more about your platform and .net.
Why? One look at the architecture, licensing, patents, and business plan made it obvious it was just another attempt by MS to lock people in. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me consistently for a decade... well you get the point. If MS behaves ethically and openly for three years in a row, I'll consider their technologies for adoption again.
I suppose lack of functionality means lack of data, hence more secure in this case?
Flamebait... not even worth addressing.
This has always been possible in Outlook... You haven't even used the applications it seems.
Try some reading comprehension classes. Can you run the same spelling and grammar checker in outlook and in Photoshop and in a shell and in your Web browser? Can you run additional, arbitrary services in all of them?
No, but it's under view in the menubar. Been there since outlook was released.
That changes the menus. It does not translate the message.
You don't need to upgrade windows to 'support it'. You just install the language packs.
See above.
Already implemented in windows vista beta and ie7 beta.
Sigh, it is not even close to sufficient. It is still in limited beta release and holes have been found. I'm talking a real VM or sandbox, not the half-arsed crap in Vista/IE7
Plenty of IE plugins/addons supported that after it was first introduced.
Great now we just have to convince the makers of every other application for Windows to implement it or write a plug-in for their application... or they could just offer a mouse gesture service to all applications that use the mouse and have one consistent setup like OS X.
A[sic] annoyance to turn off?
You're missing the point. Applications have certain functionality. By providing the OS with an easy way to allow it to provide that functionality to other programs you avoid having to re-implement them in every application. Right now a few MS office applications can share a spelling checker. Why can't every application that uses text share it? Why can't another program offer services Word can use, like translation to other languages, or encryption, or any other arbitrary thing a user might want? The reason is that the Windows OS does not support it.
I hate music in pages, be it midis, flash, quicktime.
Great, so as a result if you visit a page with sound you have to listen to it or turn off all sound, including your VoIP call, your e-mail dings, your MP3 player, etc. Hence, the room for improvement.
The software I use does that (under linux and using opera right now). However under windows, I believe that's only supported with 3rd party addons/plugins still.
This is not really something an application designer should have to worry about. The OS is the proper level to handle mixing/muting sounds from most applications. Some should be able to provide their own controls as well, but the OS should be able to do it for you.
I find the thumbnail rendering, video thumbnail rendering etc. under windows far faster than under the Mac... iPhoto on a none super powered up Mac, is incredibly slow.
This is what you consider to be important improvements to Windows in the last 10 years that change the way you work? Thumbnails and image viewers? I must admit I find previews of PDFs and PSD files to be nice, but I'm not sure I'd argue it is a huge benefit. System services, expose, and even the dashboard in OS X has had more affect upon my work routine.
Like.. What? Like, uh? the search system which can search into documents, create databases on your file contents etc.
Yes, I think that will provide a real benefit to users. Also, the expose clone and dynamic task bar items.
T
Rather presumptuous don't you think? I own a mac, I also support mac's.
You asserted OS upgrades don't make playing games better. That is not true for Mac OS in my experience and does not agree with common knowledge. Why don't you support your assertion rather than avoid addressing it?
Direct X upgrades on the PC make games run faster. Also, better code by the game developers make games run faster.
So what? You asserted upgrading the OS would not make games run better. It does, for OS X.
Huh? There are very few Mac only games, most notable are those produced by Ambrosia.
X+"very few" > X, unless you're arguing there is a negative number of games on OS X.
Emulation is not good for frame rates unless you are talking about Pac Man. But what does this have to do with being more productive?
Emulation and virtual machines are not the same thing. Games should, with the new Intel and AMD processors, be able to run multiple OS's without a hypervisor on the same hardware and nearly the same speeds. Reimplementaion techniques, like WINE, actually sometimes result in better frame rates than running Windows. In any case, games can and likely will run just fine with Windows running as a "subservient" OS, or just running Windows Apps on another OS. Who said it had anything to do with productivity?
Btw, I have an AMD chip - Intel hasn't had the edge for years now.
For desktops and servers I agree, but I'm a laptop kind of guy as well. AMD has been leapfrogged for laptops for some time now. They may or may not catch up at the end of the year with their new laptop chips.
You are being obtuse because... you're[sic] whole argument was that an OS upgrade was going to help my productivity.
No, my argument was that OS upgrades can and do improve productivity, not that it would do so for you.
Btw, Xcode also runs on one platform, Mac.
Umm, yeah. Did you have a point?
Such a statement is in itself completely relative to the programmer and her/his needs.
All improvements to productivity are relative to a user's needs. The point is that improvements to the OS and tools can and often does increase productivity. Instant searching within PDF, HTML, CSS. etc. files can help some users a lot and others not at all. If you use your computer as a way to smash open nuts, maybe no OS improvement will help. My argument is that for myself and many (most?) users OS upgrades do help.
Yes, I am correct.
No, you're incorrect... times infinity!
These have nothing to do with my day to day productivity. They might make you feel better about the computer you are using, but at the end of the day, they don't improve your ability to manage your e-mail and calendars.
Being able to open any e-mail I get without worrying about security or scrutinizing it makes me faster and more effective. Not having to wait while my calendar loads, because it happens instantly, saves me time. Not having to reboot or close and restart programs saves me time.
Yup, I can grammar check and spell check in Outlook.
Great, but can you use the same grammar checker and dictionary as you do in your IM client, your SSH session to a remote server, and your publishing suite? I didn't think so. Can you instantly translate text in all of these to other languages? Can you get a word count in all of them? Can you highlight a word and look it up on some obscure Web site's database from all of these programs? Can you do it with a single click? Yeah, I didn't think so. Can you perform these arbitrary actions easily and without having to work at it?
Now don't you think maybe, just maybe, an upgrade that added a framework to your OS that it offered arbitrary services from one application to the others or from a stand alone service to all application might increase your productivity? I know it certainly did mine.
If you want to play that game, I
How did Microsoft financially benefit from Internet Explorer's dominance?
Lock-in. How many people can't switch their corporate network to Linux because they need IE to access some intranet or partner's Web site or HTML based tools? Not to mention breaking the standard helps stop the Web from democratizing the application space. How much sooner would Web-based applications have taken hold if developers only had to write to modern standards instead of having to be backward compliant with a very outdated and broken version of the spec as well?
IE is and always has been a free product. More relevant to this topic, Windows Defender is free and probably always will be. Sure, other anti-malware software companies may suffer because their products are not so in demand, but so what?
Do the developers who write IE work for free? Obviously not. Where do their paychecks come from? They come from Windows. Everyone who buys Windows is paying for IE, regardless of whether or not the ever use it. Even die-hard Firefox fans pay for IE when they buy Windows. IE isn't free; the price is bundled into the cost of Windows. That is one of the major reasons it is illegal.
The same applies equally for Windows Defender. It isn't free. it is rolled into the cost of Windows. Antitrust law is built on the markets an action affects, not the products themselves. People paid a minimal cost for Netscape. They viewed some ads at one point. They paid for support if they needed it. They agreed to a binding contract that said if they modified the code and distributed it they would give it back to the other users. All of these things are fairly indirect and hard to transform into hard cash numbers. It is hard then, to show how much damage MS did to the market by a given action.
Windows defender is moving into a space where people directly buy the product/service for cash. It is a much more clear cut case for the courts than even IE was. Legally, I don't believe Microsoft can either give away the product (bundling unless they make it for all platforms) or charge for it (the conflict of interest is double dipping and is a form of extorting current customers).
I hope this helps to clarify the issue for you.
How many times bigger than the Mac market again?
That all depends upon what you define as the gamer market. The "hardcore" market that buys specific gaming gear (high-end graphics cards and gaming keyboards) is actually quite a bit smaller than the mac market. It is a very fuzzy market to define though.
That depends on the gamer. Actually, most I know, wouldn't, because of past expirence[sic] with using laptops for gaming.
The last LAN party I went to had three desktops (owned by the person who was host) and nine laptops. That seems about typical in my experience.
I've tried upgrading graphic cards before in macs (with pretty standard hardware), slapping a new one in, fine. Getting it to actually work properly is another thing.
In the past, with more divergent platforms, this was sometimes the case. I, personally, haven't had any issues in a long time. I expect they will become even more rare as the intel designed chipsets etc. homogenize the hardware even more.
As someone who writes his own software, I've found more difficulty porting my *nix applications to MacOSX, than it is to port them to windows (seriously).
That has not been my experience, but we all use different tools and coding methodologies.
it's a pain just trying to get *standard* Java applications working *properly* under the Apple java runtime enviroment. Apple certainly isn't very standards compliant in that sense.
Again, I disagree with this. They are standards compliant with Java, although not as cutting edge as some would like. Most of the issues I've seen with this are UI ones, where people have trouble dealing with a UI that is not Windows or a Windows clone.
Linux tends to be a lot cheaper in this case than buying Mac hardware. The opensource software that runs on Macs doesn't run as well as on Linux systems (seen all the weird bugs with GTK widgets etc?).
Linux tends to be very slightly cheaper on similar hardware. The whole "macs are expensive" thing is largely a myth. Yes, you can put together a machine with the same specs for slightly less, but it usually has cheaper hardware and support. Apple is rated number one in support and customer satisfaction every year. Put together a box with reliable hardware and top of the line support and you end up in a very similar price range. You do end up with a cheaper box sometimes because you have more options and can often get a better hardware fit for exactly what you want to do. Even so, cost is not the only thing. I spend 9-12 hours in front of a workstation most days. I'll gladly shell out a couple grand more if it can be a better one in ways that matter to me.
As for running a variety of hardware, I find *nix apps run better and with more interoperability on OS X than Windows. And I find that it is easier to run mainstream, commercial offerings, and that they run with more interoperability than on a Linux box with WINE.
Windows software generally can be ran under Wine under Linux, while MacOSX has Darwine which is quite far behind in development, and nowhere reaches where Wine is today at the moment.
OS X has been running on the Intel platform for how many months? Already we have dual booting working and two betas of virtual Windows environments. A handful more solutions, including greatly improved WINE support, are in the works. This will be an non-issue very soon. I think the speed of the development has been exceptional.
Unfortunately there is no real standard installer and package management on MacOSX for items that require to go OUTSIDE the application folder and into system folders. Linux distros had this solved again with all the different package management systems availible[sic] for them.
Fink and BSD ports? There are several more, not so different from Linux. But really, there are not a lot of reasons for software to need to install anything outside the .app folder.
That is a b
It doesn't have all of the apps that regular Windows users have so OSX will continue to be perceived by most people as not fitting their needs. The worst thing that could happen to Apple is that Windows on a Mac ends up becoming 2/3 of their userbase.
Most users will never install an OS. Most users don't know what an OS is, or that you can dual boot or are interested in paying for OS X for their Windows machine or Windows for their OS X machine. They aren't interested in buying upgrades. They are just going to use whatever is on the machine.
Users will install applications, so long as it is easy. In the near future I see VMs, emulators, and WINE becoming a huge force on OS X. Apple may or may not build one into the OS. If they don't you can bet developers will look to them for quick and dirty ports of games and the like. Users will look to them to run games and Windows only applications they require for some reason. For some markets, this will make little difference. No one will buy Photoshop for Windows and run it in a VM, or accept a nasty port of it. Users want it to be fast and native and take advantage of all the OS X features Windows does not yet have. For some markets, like fullscreen games, no one cares if the menus are native, so long as it runs fast enough.
People might be willing to use Windows applications in OS X, rather than use Windows most of the time. At the same time, however, it is a big strike against any application. If a competitor comes out with something native, a Windows app will have a hard time competing unless it too becomes native. I don't think Apple is worried development for native apps is going to go away, even if they build Windows emulation into the OS and 100% of their user base has it. Mark my words, the new combination of Intel+virtualization hardware and software solutions is going to allow many Windows apps to run at nearly the same speed as they do on Windows and in some cases faster, and this will allow a lot of people with the desire to finally make the switch. The only thing Apple has to be careful of is accidentally convincing development shops that they don't need native versions, as someone without a clue in a major production house could cancel a critical app and cause a lot of grief. For this reason, I don't expect Apple to market this feature much at all, without some real caveats. Think, "Run some Windows applications, until you can find a replacement" type marketing; always viewed as a transitional feature, never positioned as a long-term one.
Depends on the tasks. I play games, an OS upgrade isn't going improve that.
You've been using Windows too long. OS upgrades on OS X make games run faster. The next upgrade (assuming you have an Intel machine) may well introduce an emulation environment allowing Mac User's to run more games, more even than a Window's PC can when you count the Mac and X-Windows only titles.
I build web, thick and embedded applications, VS.NET is one of the best tools out there for it, an OS upgrade isn't going to save me any time.
So you've chose a dev system that only runs on one platform and you argue that that has something to do with the OS? Improvements to the OS and bundled tools certainly improve Web development, if you choose the right tools.
I do a lot of e-mail, Outlook is hands down the best e-mail calendar client out there, another function not dependent OS upgrades.
While taste in client software is not dependent upon the underlying OS, the stability, speed, and security of the data and application are. Also, some OS's offer functionality to client software. For example, On OS X now, and presumably in Vista when it is released will allow near instantaneous searching of data within your calendars as well as the rest of your saved data from a global prompt. And what about other services offered by the OS? What about database objects supported by the OS for reduced resource consumption and faster data handling. OS X has them now and Vista may or may not have them. What about system level services? I can run grammar checking within my e-mail and calendar, and pretty much anything else. Can you do that in Outlook? What about instantaneous translations of text between languages? Can you right-click and a message in Outlook to change text from Japanese to English? I can, because my OS was upgraded to support it.
And I surf the web, my OS isn't going to help me do that any better.
Why not? If your OS starts offering translation services to the browser, as mine does, it makes reading posts and pages written in other languages much nicer. Additional security and sandboxing could probably change Web browsing for the better as well. What about support for mouse gestures? Making them a global feature of the OS can completely change the way you surf, as well as do other tasks. Your OS's ability to add this functionality makes a difference. What about sound? More and more pages have it. Application level support for sound mixing, would let you leave sound on for alerts from your IM client or calendar, but mute it easily for your Web browser until you get to a page you actually want to hear sound for.
Sure some extra eye candy might be cool, and upgrades are always nice, but for the most part, I really don't care.
I'll say it again, you've been using Windows too long. For the last ten years you haven't had much in the way of real improvements that change the way you use your computer. Well, you're in for a treat if they ever release Vista. It has stolen lots of real, useful innovations from OS X. You'll use if for just a few months and then feel like you've gone through a time machine the first time you have to abandon all the useful new features and use an old system.
No, I'm making the point that Apple has far more to lose revenue wise than Microsoft.
I actually reject your assertion. MS has more market share to lose, and Apple has more room to grow in the PC market. Whether or not they will actually do that, however, is anyone's guess. I foresee some growth stemming from the hardware switch and some of the functionality it enables, but I don't know how significant that will be. I do know that here, among software developers and security experts, the mac/windows ratio has gone from about 5% to about 55% in the last three years. While anecdotal, I think it is a sign of the market trend.
I can't see a gamer spending a crapload of money on a system that they can't slap the latest video card into every 6 months.
First, gamers are a tiny segment of the market. Second, many gamers now use laptops to make LAN parties easier, thus have no upgrade option. Third, why can't you slap a new video card in the Mac tower when it is released?
And I can't see a business spending crap tons of money on a more expensive machine to do all the same tasks they currently do.
While some companies do use Macs for the simplified management and lower security costs, you're right that most won't be switching anytime soon. Rather, expect a slow migration towards Linux in the business space. That trend, I think, may open some doors for Mac purchases, as environments will become more friendly to standards compliant OS's
Maybe they'll sell some upgrades to people who use an older mac and want the ability to dual boot, but beyond that...?
Mostly I see this as a way to sell more Macs to potential "switchers." People might want to use OS X, but be unsure if they will like it in the long term. This gives them the security of being able to "switch back" at a low price point. The real market for new Mac users, in my opinion, are those who would love to ditch Windows, but require some Windows-only software. I foresee a lot more migration in this space as virtualization/emulation/reimplementation takes off. Here at work we get to choose among a few particular models of computers; one of which is a powerbook (used by maybe 55% the company right now). I know when the time comes to pick an upgrade several people in administration, sales, documentation, etc. who are now using a Thinkpad will probably go for a powerbook combined with something to run those Windows applications within OS X.
For some it will be their first experience using a Mac (or first using OS X anyway). They have at this point only looked over the shoulders of others and said, "hey how come you can do that?" and "wow that is really cool!" Another interesting item of note, is I don't know people that switch back. Well, I know one guy who bought a powerbook, used OS X for a while, and then went back to Linux as his main OS. But, by and large, when people buy a Mac, they continue to do so from then on. It is hard to lose all that functionality, once you get used to it. This will probably influence their next home computer purchase as well.
In summary, I don't see that bootcamp will be used much, but I do think it will drive some Mac sales. Further, I think other technologies (enabled by the switch to new Intel processors) that allow Windows software to run will drive even more sales. I think this particular article was empty fluff, but I do foresee increasing market share, especially among power users.
This is one of the nice things about Camino (as a Cocoa application, it gets access to OS X's builtin spellchecking)
Ditto for Safari and OmniWeb. Actually all three work with my spell-checker, grammar-checker, dictionary/thesaurus, language translations, text transformations, scripts, speak text, encryption tools, md5 checksums, text statistics (word count, char count, pages, etc.), Web lookups, XML processing tools, content summarizer, and a probably few other system services I've forgotten. The fact that Firefox can't use standard services is the reason I don't use it as my everyday browser. It is nice that it maintains cross-platform capabilities, but unless other platforms catch up to OS X for services I don't want to be limited to the abilities of the least common denominator. Services are, in my opinion, the most overlooked advance OS X has brought to my workstation.
You mis-typed "in compliance with the Constitution of the United States of America, particularly the IVth, Vth and VIth ammendments thereto."
I understand your point, but why does the UK care about the US constitution? They care about human rights as agreed upon by their own laws and the international agreements.