Here is a revolutionary idea: Why don't we (the U.S.) just simply NOT get involved. True, Microsoft is an American company, but this hearing is not taking place in America. When a company sells their wares in another country, they need to play by the rules of that country, not this one. This is an EU hearing, on EU soil, and EU matters.
I don't recall when EU officials pressured the U.S. to go easy when our Microsoft anti-trust case was open.
If you really believe that any of iPod, iTunes or iTMS could have succedded without the others, then you are very shortsighted. If you believe that Apple developed each of these three components in the order in which they did purely by coincidence, then you would be mistaken. iTunes is Apple's control. That is why it was developed first. Then came the iPod, the success of which forcebly spread iTunes onto millions of computers. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: iTMS. The building blocks for the success of iTMS were laid years before it was introduced. Why have other music selling services not been as successful?? It is because Apple already had penetrated your desktop and your mp3 player. All they needed to do was add a link to the store right under the button for your library.
You are correct about RIAA and FairPlay. Apple had a hard enough time getting the executives at the record companies to jump on board. I doubt the company is on very good terms with any recording company. The record industry needs Apple just as much as Apple needs the record company. It is a relationship out of tenuous mutual dependance, not love. Every few months you can dig up a story on how Apple and some major label are clashing on some issue... Evolutionary? Sure. But I say that the iTunes-iPod-iTMS was quite revolutionary from a bussiness perspective.
Before you are so quick to judge, try and look at it from a bussiness point of view. For a multi-national conglomerate, sites like Facebook are invaluable. Consider that hundreds of thousands (millions?) of America's college-age youth have volunterally registered themselves (and their entire social network) on this site. They've itemized everything they like, and everything they hate, and matched it with detailed geographic and demographic information.
A quick glance at the constantly updated Facebook stats page showed me that the top 5 television shows "watched" by college students are Family Guy, Grey's Anatomy, Friends, The OC, Simpsons, respectively. At my school the list differs on on Friends, which is replaced by Fox's 24. If I had to make a list of the shows my friends here watched on a regular basis, it would pretty much be the same. How much does Nielsen make from providing such information??
I used Television as an example, but Facebook collects stats on many other things, such as popular movies, music and more. All of these stats are specific to the campus level, i.e. a very small geographic area. Even more, you could even tell what high school/hometown each student is from, when they were born, if they are single, male or female, etc etc.
My Point: 2 Billion is very high, but don't underrate the value that this site could provide to a (multi)national marketing team.
$999 -- otherwise known as the cost for two and a half basic Dell Dimension computers -- for a system you don't even get to keep. Jobs is one hell of a salesman!
First of all, $999 is pocket change to any company that would need these machines. Apple just doesnt want to ship every joe schmo with a ADC membership their own machine.
If you are thinking twice about ordering one of these, then you dont need it. In fact, the whole point is to make you think twice...
I cant believe this. What am I going to do now? How will I keep the virii off of my Ubuntu Linux machine? How will I keep tojan-horse/spammers from hijacking my private webserver?? Oh lord, what is I gonna do?
Ummmm can anybody provide me with information on "unix viruses?" As far as I can tell, there is very little you can actually do without priveledged access to the system. Regardless, we've all disabled the root account, right? RIGHT?:)
The only unix "virus" i have ever heard of required the user to manually execute a dubious script.
This service is interesting, but not very useful. How often are you using a wireless connection but you dont know where you are?
It reminds me of a project a friend of mine was working on earlier in the year. The college of computer science here at my university in Boston has a brand-spanking new building with cisco wireless routers built in (through all 15 or so floors). My friend was working on using these routers to triangulate the position of all of the wireless users.
This was accomplished by maticulously mapping the average signal strength of each router at various distances (1 foot, 2 feet, etc...). Since all the routers overlap a bit (as they should), extrapolating the position is not that hard. You just need a minimum of 3 routers to see any user. The more routers seeing the user, the more accurate the location. Its strikingly similiar to how the epicenter of an earthquakes is determined.
The authentication server behind the wireless network could then deny access to connections outside the building. The aim was to stop leechers from the nearby dorms and apartments, while still providing free authentication-less access (http only without authenticating) to the inside of the building.
Anyway I need to check up and see how that project is going. It was progressing well last time I checked. I think network security is a far better application for WPS.
I agree that IBM designed AIX for optimal stability and load handling rather than speed. Each additional concurrent task seems to create less slowdown compared to the other platforms. Of course, this makes perfect sense, as RS/6000's were designed as heavy-load webservice & file servers, not desktop workstations.
I would recommend the HP-UX platform for persons who wanted to get their feet wet in the world of UNIX. They are a fraction of the price of their more well known SUN and IBM counterparts, and offer very competative preformance. HP-UX11, however, is not nearly as friendly as Solaris.
I have 2 AIX RS/6000's here at work. They are truely beasts, but not really that fast - be it multi user, single user or console - as other competing boxes. I dont run Pro/E on the AIX box, but I do run Dassault's CATIA v5 CAD System. I also run Pro/E on solaris and HPUX.
In order of speed (for compiling and CAD work): 1) HP Visualize Workstation C300. Runs 64-bit PA-RISC chip and costs about $500. By far the fastest machine to compile and design on. The HP compiler whines about everything though. 2) Solaris (32 & 64). We have 2 very old solaris machines running single cpu for 32-bit and dual cpu for 64-bit. The 64-bit bax has 2x 275mhz chips and kicks the crap out of the RS/6000 for compiling. Solaris is also the "friendliest" unix IMO. 3) Win32. Windows compiles pretty damn fast. The MS compiler also accepts anything you write. It will compile utter garbage without complaining. 4) AIX. The RS/6000's we have costs in the thousands and take about 2x the time of any other machine to compile on the same code. The IBM compiler will rarely complain.
My point is that if you think the RS/6000's are fast, you should check out HP's servers. If their sub-$1000 workstations are any indication, the servers will kick butt for their price. If i were buying a UNIX box for personal use, it would be an HP. In fact, its probably they only think i would but from HP.
Yeh, I was completely wrong on this one, so I am publically admitting it here. No more flames please, I was wrong, it happens.
Its not so crazy to think that Apple would adopt an overpriced chip in their overpriced machines.... as I type this on my PowerBook G4 Al.
For the record, I got the Itanuim information from a previously posted/. article (go figure!). Somehow the post - and attached article - slipped past my bullshit meter. (The needle must have broken off from reading slashdot)
Who ever said Apple is moving to x86?!
Actually, most of the speculation is that Apple will adopt the itanium chip. No company with any bussiness sense would move to x86 right now.
Sorry folk's, but x86 is old and dying.
Lets recap:
Apple's current high-end chip: PowerPC, RISC-type instruction set
Intel's current high-end chip: Itanuim, IA-64 Instruction set
AMD's current high-end chip: Athlon FX, x86-64 instruction set
Intel & AMD's current product line, offering inferior preformance:::drum roll:: x86!
This post is crap. Pure crap.
1) The article never said that Apple was using TPM. It stated that "An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment for this story." Did the submitter OR poster ever even read the article??
2) Why the hell would we want a link to an overly speculative article that just summarizes one possible scenario? Not to mention that the prediction is just about the same length as the article, and written by a reputable research firm.
See the real "news analysis" at:
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1290 59
"Anything Apple does is revered as inovative when everything they do has been done before."
No, idiot. A good portion of Apples innovations products are based on failed ideas. Apple may not have been the first company to make a tiny computer, but they were the first to make one that small which is also:
-powerful -sleek/pretty -running OS X -silent
If making bad things good is not innovative, i dont know what is.
Critics need to recognize what Apple is and why their stock price has quadrupled recent years (~$15 - ~$60). Apple is a company of marketing geniuses. Their primary goal is to make computing simple, stable, comfortable and attractive. I think they are doing a truly exceptional job. Lets recap:
-The PowerBook line redefined laptop computing, spawning copy-cat laptops from Sony, Asus and others. -The PowerMac line, with iMovie, Garage Band, iDVD, etc, is still the undisputed out-of-the-box multimedia work horse. -The iPod. Enough said. -iTunes Music Store... nearly half a billion downloads.
Apple finds success where others failed. Thats what makes the company great.
"Where's the 12" PowerBook, btw, that has the option of IBM's trackpoint in place of that stupid, space-hogging, deceptively clumsy to use, trackpad thing? Oh, that's right, it doesn't exist."
My god! did you just cite that stupid eraser head thing as BETTER than a trackpad??
1) The rubber wears down and breaks after prolonged use, leaving just a piece of plastic. 2) Indentations in fingers. ouch. 3) If you slip, you type random keys. 4) They suck. 5) Carpal Tunnel
Note 5: The trackpads allow the user to move with his arm, instead of the finger (if they want too). Thus reducing finger muscle flexion and extension, i.e. fatigue.
I cant believe you want that little pointer. Go stick with IBM. Their laptops are comparable or better than Apple's PowerBooks... and ugly as sin.
"At a presentation on the progress of the linux kernel, Linus Torvalds Linux-based laptop it the dust. The presentation was saved by a kind audience member who volunteered his Windows XP laptop to finish displaying the remainder of the presentation."
Ever seen this article? Of course not. It doesnt exist. and THATS why this is a big deal.
"I had to constantly reboot back into Win2K to download patches/rpms, or read up about bugs and errata, get network drivers, configuration minutae, etc."
I can see your point, and I agree that Windows can definitely be a helpful thing to have. Your argument, however, is quite flawed. In this case Windows did NOT save your Linux install... the internet did! You could just have easily used Mac OS X or another Linux box.
The super-post of this./ article was meant to show that OSS projects like Linux and OO.o can take over for a Windows machine without any trouble, and to highlight their reliability in an emergency. Any OS can browse the web, download files etc.
If your linux presentation machine crashed, could a windows box retrieve the presentation files from your (ext3/xfs/jfs/etc.) drive? Could MS Word open a StarOffice SWX file? I think not (easily).
Just to perfectly clear for everyone, a hard drive's tested Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN REALITY!!
For the end user, purchasing a hard drive with an MTBF of 500,000 hours indicates that you have a 50% chance of disk drive failure in under 500k hours, and a 50% chance of drive failure after 500k hours. In other words, if a hard drive sells 1,000 units, and half of the drives die in an hour, while the other half last 1 million hours, the MBTF is 500,000 hours. Useful, eh?
Also its worth noting that manufacturers test the MBTF by putting a few dozen (or more) drives into a giant over and stressing them to the max. They will fail in a reletively short time. That time is averaged and modified to "reflect" real world usage. It is useful only for drive manufacturers (for risk management estimates etc...)
"for example: a busted floppy might cost us $150 or more"
Are you serious? I havent so much as seen a floppy disk in years;-)
Your a friggin Fortune 100 company for crying out loud! Buy 10,000 CD-R's, they'll be cheaper than 5,000 floppy's, hold far more data, and are disposable!
I see where you're going with this, and I agree, but some parts of your post need more explaination. Apple is possibly one of the most strategic companies out there. This is due mostly to the amazing leadership of Steve Jobs. In particular, the itunes/ipod/itms model was executed masterfully. If there are major features that are turned off in an Apple product, there was a reason. Lets examine:
...all iPods since 3rd gen have been able to play WMA! But Apple never enabled it.
Of course not. This would violate the ipod/itunes/itms sales model, and potentially cost Apple millions of dollars. The Itunes Music Store is a pretty good source of income for Apple. Disabling WMA support forces iPod owners to purchase music from the iTMS. That means that in the future, they will always need iTunes and an iPod to play purchased songs.
Additionally it ensures that users have dozens of one-click links to the iTMS staring them in the face (itunes links each song 3 seperate times, by name, artist, and album). Not to mention the value of having an Apple logo on millions of Windows PC's (think switchers).
I use both windows and Mac. In my experience Apple will leave out features (lots of them) in two cases. The first is when Apple exec's feel that they cannot implement a feature in the best possible way. This is in direct contradiction to M$, who will implement as many half-assed and confusing features as possible. The second case is if a feature will go against a company bussiness goal. Hence the WMA support.
Slashdot Mirror
Touche
Here is a revolutionary idea: Why don't we (the U.S.) just simply NOT get involved. True, Microsoft is an American company, but this hearing is not taking place in America. When a company sells their wares in another country, they need to play by the rules of that country, not this one. This is an EU hearing, on EU soil, and EU matters. I don't recall when EU officials pressured the U.S. to go easy when our Microsoft anti-trust case was open.
If you really believe that any of iPod, iTunes or iTMS could have succedded without the others, then you are very shortsighted. If you believe that Apple developed each of these three components in the order in which they did purely by coincidence, then you would be mistaken. iTunes is Apple's control. That is why it was developed first. Then came the iPod, the success of which forcebly spread iTunes onto millions of computers. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: iTMS. The building blocks for the success of iTMS were laid years before it was introduced. Why have other music selling services not been as successful?? It is because Apple already had penetrated your desktop and your mp3 player. All they needed to do was add a link to the store right under the button for your library. You are correct about RIAA and FairPlay. Apple had a hard enough time getting the executives at the record companies to jump on board. I doubt the company is on very good terms with any recording company. The record industry needs Apple just as much as Apple needs the record company. It is a relationship out of tenuous mutual dependance, not love. Every few months you can dig up a story on how Apple and some major label are clashing on some issue... Evolutionary? Sure. But I say that the iTunes-iPod-iTMS was quite revolutionary from a bussiness perspective.
Before you are so quick to judge, try and look at it from a bussiness point of view. For a multi-national conglomerate, sites like Facebook are invaluable. Consider that hundreds of thousands (millions?) of America's college-age youth have volunterally registered themselves (and their entire social network) on this site. They've itemized everything they like, and everything they hate, and matched it with detailed geographic and demographic information.
A quick glance at the constantly updated Facebook stats page showed me that the top 5 television shows "watched" by college students are Family Guy, Grey's Anatomy, Friends, The OC, Simpsons, respectively. At my school the list differs on on Friends, which is replaced by Fox's 24. If I had to make a list of the shows my friends here watched on a regular basis, it would pretty much be the same. How much does Nielsen make from providing such information??
I used Television as an example, but Facebook collects stats on many other things, such as popular movies, music and more. All of these stats are specific to the campus level, i.e. a very small geographic area. Even more, you could even tell what high school/hometown each student is from, when they were born, if they are single, male or female, etc etc.
My Point: 2 Billion is very high, but don't underrate the value that this site could provide to a (multi)national marketing team.
$999 -- otherwise known as the cost for two and a half basic Dell Dimension computers -- for a system you don't even get to keep. Jobs is one hell of a salesman!
First of all, $999 is pocket change to any company that would need these machines. Apple just doesnt want to ship every joe schmo with a ADC membership their own machine.
If you are thinking twice about ordering one of these, then you dont need it. In fact, the whole point is to make you think twice...
I cant believe this. What am I going to do now? How will I keep the virii off of my Ubuntu Linux machine? How will I keep tojan-horse/spammers from hijacking my private webserver?? Oh lord, what is I gonna do? Ummmm can anybody provide me with information on "unix viruses?" As far as I can tell, there is very little you can actually do without priveledged access to the system. Regardless, we've all disabled the root account, right? RIGHT? :)
The only unix "virus" i have ever heard of required the user to manually execute a dubious script.
This service is interesting, but not very useful. How often are you using a wireless connection but you dont know where you are?
It reminds me of a project a friend of mine was working on earlier in the year. The college of computer science here at my university in Boston has a brand-spanking new building with cisco wireless routers built in (through all 15 or so floors). My friend was working on using these routers to triangulate the position of all of the wireless users.
This was accomplished by maticulously mapping the average signal strength of each router at various distances (1 foot, 2 feet, etc...). Since all the routers overlap a bit (as they should), extrapolating the position is not that hard. You just need a minimum of 3 routers to see any user. The more routers seeing the user, the more accurate the location. Its strikingly similiar to how the epicenter of an earthquakes is determined.
The authentication server behind the wireless network could then deny access to connections outside the building. The aim was to stop leechers from the nearby dorms and apartments, while still providing free authentication-less access (http only without authenticating) to the inside of the building.
Anyway I need to check up and see how that project is going. It was progressing well last time I checked. I think network security is a far better application for WPS.
I agree that IBM designed AIX for optimal stability and load handling rather than speed. Each additional concurrent task seems to create less slowdown compared to the other platforms. Of course, this makes perfect sense, as RS/6000's were designed as heavy-load webservice & file servers, not desktop workstations.
I would recommend the HP-UX platform for persons who wanted to get their feet wet in the world of UNIX. They are a fraction of the price of their more well known SUN and IBM counterparts, and offer very competative preformance. HP-UX11, however, is not nearly as friendly as Solaris.
I have 2 AIX RS/6000's here at work. They are truely beasts, but not really that fast - be it multi user, single user or console - as other competing boxes. I dont run Pro/E on the AIX box, but I do run Dassault's CATIA v5 CAD System. I also run Pro/E on solaris and HPUX.
In order of speed (for compiling and CAD work):
1) HP Visualize Workstation C300. Runs 64-bit PA-RISC chip and costs about $500. By far the fastest machine to compile and design on. The HP compiler whines about everything though.
2) Solaris (32 & 64). We have 2 very old solaris machines running single cpu for 32-bit and dual cpu for 64-bit. The 64-bit bax has 2x 275mhz chips and kicks the crap out of the RS/6000 for compiling. Solaris is also the "friendliest" unix IMO.
3) Win32. Windows compiles pretty damn fast. The MS compiler also accepts anything you write. It will compile utter garbage without complaining.
4) AIX. The RS/6000's we have costs in the thousands and take about 2x the time of any other machine to compile on the same code. The IBM compiler will rarely complain.
My point is that if you think the RS/6000's are fast, you should check out HP's servers. If their sub-$1000 workstations are any indication, the servers will kick butt for their price. If i were buying a UNIX box for personal use, it would be an HP. In fact, its probably they only think i would but from HP.
Yeh, I was completely wrong on this one, so I am publically admitting it here. No more flames please, I was wrong, it happens.
/. article (go figure!). Somehow the post - and attached article - slipped past my bullshit meter. (The needle must have broken off from reading slashdot)
Its not so crazy to think that Apple would adopt an overpriced chip in their overpriced machines.... as I type this on my PowerBook G4 Al.
For the record, I got the Itanuim information from a previously posted
"With Apple moving to x86"
::drum roll:: x86!
Who ever said Apple is moving to x86?!
Actually, most of the speculation is that Apple will adopt the itanium chip. No company with any bussiness sense would move to x86 right now.
Sorry folk's, but x86 is old and dying.
Lets recap:
Apple's current high-end chip: PowerPC, RISC-type instruction set
Intel's current high-end chip: Itanuim, IA-64 Instruction set
AMD's current high-end chip: Athlon FX, x86-64 instruction set Intel & AMD's current product line, offering inferior preformance:
This post is crap. Pure crap. 1) The article never said that Apple was using TPM. It stated that "An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment for this story." Did the submitter OR poster ever even read the article?? 2) Why the hell would we want a link to an overly speculative article that just summarizes one possible scenario? Not to mention that the prediction is just about the same length as the article, and written by a reputable research firm. See the real "news analysis" at: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1290 59
Maybe a poor choice of words on my part. Do you know of a better sub-$500 machine that you can hold in one hand?
"Anything Apple does is revered as inovative when everything they do has been done before."
No, idiot. A good portion of Apples innovations products are based on failed ideas. Apple may not have been the first company to make a tiny computer, but they were the first to make one that small which is also:
-powerful
-sleek/pretty
-running OS X
-silent
If making bad things good is not innovative, i dont know what is.
Critics need to recognize what Apple is and why their stock price has quadrupled recent years (~$15 - ~$60). Apple is a company of marketing geniuses. Their primary goal is to make computing simple, stable, comfortable and attractive. I think they are doing a truly exceptional job. Lets recap:
-The PowerBook line redefined laptop computing, spawning copy-cat laptops from Sony, Asus and others.
-The PowerMac line, with iMovie, Garage Band, iDVD, etc, is still the undisputed out-of-the-box multimedia work horse.
-The iPod. Enough said.
-iTunes Music Store... nearly half a billion downloads.
Apple finds success where others failed. Thats what makes the company great.
"Where's the 12" PowerBook, btw, that has the option of IBM's trackpoint in place of that stupid, space-hogging, deceptively clumsy to use, trackpad thing? Oh, that's right, it doesn't exist."
My god! did you just cite that stupid eraser head thing as BETTER than a trackpad??
1) The rubber wears down and breaks after prolonged use, leaving just a piece of plastic.
2) Indentations in fingers. ouch.
3) If you slip, you type random keys.
4) They suck.
5) Carpal Tunnel
Note 5: The trackpads allow the user to move with his arm, instead of the finger (if they want too). Thus reducing finger muscle flexion and extension, i.e. fatigue.
I cant believe you want that little pointer. Go stick with IBM. Their laptops are comparable or better than Apple's PowerBooks... and ugly as sin.
"At a presentation on the progress of the linux kernel, Linus Torvalds Linux-based laptop it the dust. The presentation was saved by a kind audience member who volunteered his Windows XP laptop to finish displaying the remainder of the presentation." Ever seen this article? Of course not. It doesnt exist. and THATS why this is a big deal.
"I had to constantly reboot back into Win2K to download patches/rpms, or read up about bugs and errata, get network drivers, configuration minutae, etc."
./ article was meant to show that OSS projects like Linux and OO.o can take over for a Windows machine without any trouble, and to highlight their reliability in an emergency. Any OS can browse the web, download files etc.
I can see your point, and I agree that Windows can definitely be a helpful thing to have. Your argument, however, is quite flawed. In this case Windows did NOT save your Linux install... the internet did! You could just have easily used Mac OS X or another Linux box.
The super-post of this
If your linux presentation machine crashed, could a windows box retrieve the presentation files from your (ext3/xfs/jfs/etc.) drive? Could MS Word open a StarOffice SWX file? I think not (easily).
Nice.
Did you actually make any money off the ads?
Hope it covered your bandwidth costs.
By "end user" I was not referring to admins (especially not to Large Installation System Administrators...Lisa's if you will..).
That was not clear. You are correct.
Just to perfectly clear for everyone, a hard drive's tested Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN REALITY!!
For the end user, purchasing a hard drive with an MTBF of 500,000 hours indicates that you have a 50% chance of disk drive failure in under 500k hours, and a 50% chance of drive failure after 500k hours. In other words, if a hard drive sells 1,000 units, and half of the drives die in an hour, while the other half last 1 million hours, the MBTF is 500,000 hours. Useful, eh?
Also its worth noting that manufacturers test the MBTF by putting a few dozen (or more) drives into a giant over and stressing them to the max. They will fail in a reletively short time. That time is averaged and modified to "reflect" real world usage. It is useful only for drive manufacturers (for risk management estimates etc...)
"for example: a busted floppy might cost us $150 or more"
;-)
Are you serious? I havent so much as seen a floppy disk in years
Your a friggin Fortune 100 company for crying out loud! Buy 10,000 CD-R's, they'll be cheaper than 5,000 floppy's, hold far more data, and are disposable!
Arg!! Broken what? Get with the times!
Try to buy one of the adwords from Google.
I see where you're going with this, and I agree, but some parts of your post need more explaination. Apple is possibly one of the most strategic companies out there. This is due mostly to the amazing leadership of Steve Jobs. In particular, the itunes/ipod/itms model was executed masterfully. If there are major features that are turned off in an Apple product, there was a reason. Lets examine:
...all iPods since 3rd gen have been able to play WMA! But Apple never enabled it.
Of course not. This would violate the ipod/itunes/itms sales model, and potentially cost Apple millions of dollars. The Itunes Music Store is a pretty good source of income for Apple. Disabling WMA support forces iPod owners to purchase music from the iTMS. That means that in the future, they will always need iTunes and an iPod to play purchased songs.
Additionally it ensures that users have dozens of one-click links to the iTMS staring them in the face (itunes links each song 3 seperate times, by name, artist, and album). Not to mention the value of having an Apple logo on millions of Windows PC's (think switchers).
I use both windows and Mac. In my experience Apple will leave out features (lots of them) in two cases. The first is when Apple exec's feel that they cannot implement a feature in the best possible way. This is in direct contradiction to M$, who will implement as many half-assed and confusing features as possible. The second case is if a feature will go against a company bussiness goal. Hence the WMA support.
Who gives a shit?