IBM used to be at least as much despised as MS when they were the big, bad monopoly who used nasty tactics to crush smaller competitors. And like MS, they had a notable reputation for mediocrity, with most techies believing that their continued success was entirely due to the PHB factor.
Prediction: if Google or some other company eventually forces MS to go through the same reconstructive agonies as IBM did in the 90s, everyone will cheer, just like they did when little MS kicked the big blue giant's butt. Then, five or ten years down the road, when the new tech. wunderkind has magically transformed from a geek darling into a gigantic oppressive monopolistic shite, younger techies who didn't live under the MS hegemony will be cheering them as they publically embrace and defend the latest geek hobbyhorse against big, bad NewMonopoly.
1) Because people are going to carry a cell phone anyway, and it's pretty hard to find one that doesn't come with a thousand superfluous extras. Having them there doesn't mean people use them, all, though, whereas you wouldn't buy a PDA unless you did have a use for most of what it does.
2) Phone companies pay a large proportion of the actual device cost as a way of attracting customers. IMO most popular phones would have a lot less in the way of in-built extras if customers had to pay the full retail cost, and the one with cameras and other stuff cost $600 versus a basic model for $80.
A member of the board of a company telling the press that their product is arse-kickingly better than everything else isn't news. It's a press release disguised as an interview, just like all those "interviews" that authors, actors, and musicians suddenly start giving whenever they're launching something new. And guess what? Michael Douglass doesn't sit there on TV saying "Well, Larry, this new movie is the biggest shite-fest to hit the box office in ten years. The director is crap, and the writers are crap, and my leading lady has great tits but less acting talent than a can of peas, but I decided to be in it anyway because they paid me fifty million dollars for two months' work", even if that's what he really thinks. Instead, he'll waffle on about it being a privilege to work with such a telented bunch of people, and how the role really allowed him to explore new avenues of characterisation, so everybody should just rush out and see it when it hits cinemas next week.
It's called marketing, people, and it really isn't worth getting into a debate about the relatives merits of what Andresson is selling versus what he isn't selling, because he'd be saying something entirely different if his new job was with Sun or MS instead of Zend.
The general public thinks iPods are better because, for their purposes, they are. Unlike virtually any other similar offering, iPods let people manage their music collection without having to know what a file is, where it is stored, or what format it's in. Geeks hate iTunes because it puts files away in obscure places; non-geeks love it due to the fact that it lets them think in terms of songs and albums rather than files and codecs, and they can use it to put stuff on their iPod, buy songs, listen to the radio and pod-casts, burn CDs, and now manage video too. Where geeks see a lack of flexibility and choice, non-geeks see simplicity and only having to learn one program to do everything. And of course, again unlike most competing players, Apples software works on PCs and Macs.
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IBM used to be at least as much despised as MS when they were the big, bad monopoly who used nasty tactics to crush smaller competitors. And like MS, they had a notable reputation for mediocrity, with most techies believing that their continued success was entirely due to the PHB factor.
Prediction: if Google or some other company eventually forces MS to go through the same reconstructive agonies as IBM did in the 90s, everyone will cheer, just like they did when little MS kicked the big blue giant's butt. Then, five or ten years down the road, when the new tech. wunderkind has magically transformed from a geek darling into a gigantic oppressive monopolistic shite, younger techies who didn't live under the MS hegemony will be cheering them as they publically embrace and defend the latest geek hobbyhorse against big, bad NewMonopoly.
1) Because people are going to carry a cell phone anyway, and it's pretty hard to find one that doesn't come with a thousand superfluous extras. Having them there doesn't mean people use them, all, though, whereas you wouldn't buy a PDA unless you did have a use for most of what it does.
2) Phone companies pay a large proportion of the actual device cost as a way of attracting customers. IMO most popular phones would have a lot less in the way of in-built extras if customers had to pay the full retail cost, and the one with cameras and other stuff cost $600 versus a basic model for $80.
A member of the board of a company telling the press that their product is arse-kickingly better than everything else isn't news. It's a press release disguised as an interview, just like all those "interviews" that authors, actors, and musicians suddenly start giving whenever they're launching something new. And guess what? Michael Douglass doesn't sit there on TV saying "Well, Larry, this new movie is the biggest shite-fest to hit the box office in ten years. The director is crap, and the writers are crap, and my leading lady has great tits but less acting talent than a can of peas, but I decided to be in it anyway because they paid me fifty million dollars for two months' work", even if that's what he really thinks. Instead, he'll waffle on about it being a privilege to work with such a telented bunch of people, and how the role really allowed him to explore new avenues of characterisation, so everybody should just rush out and see it when it hits cinemas next week.
It's called marketing, people, and it really isn't worth getting into a debate about the relatives merits of what Andresson is selling versus what he isn't selling, because he'd be saying something entirely different if his new job was with Sun or MS instead of Zend.
The general public thinks iPods are better because, for their purposes, they are. Unlike virtually any other similar offering, iPods let people manage their music collection without having to know what a file is, where it is stored, or what format it's in. Geeks hate iTunes because it puts files away in obscure places; non-geeks love it due to the fact that it lets them think in terms of songs and albums rather than files and codecs, and they can use it to put stuff on their iPod, buy songs, listen to the radio and pod-casts, burn CDs, and now manage video too. Where geeks see a lack of flexibility and choice, non-geeks see simplicity and only having to learn one program to do everything. And of course, again unlike most competing players, Apples software works on PCs and Macs.