Nope, I always thought of them as extremely sleazy despite having zero corroboration. My brother buys from them all the time, the stuff comes in a very timely fashion and exactly as represented. One time, about 5 years ago, I even broke down and ordered a 500 watt modular power supply with 2 lighted fans and a bluish chrome finish for 20 bucks. I was sure there was a catch to this deal. Absolutely positive. A couple days later the power supply came, and it was super nice quality. It came with so many modular cords that I didn't even use half of them, and the cords were super nice quality as well: wires wrapped in a tube of cross stitch metal shielding, sealed in a colored translucent rubber tube. Bottom line, I got a power supply that would have cost over twice as much on sale anywhere else, that has been running nearly 24/7 for over 5 years now.
I never ordered anything from them again, because for some reason I just could never shake the shady feeling I get from them.
"100% on software? Do support techs work for free? Did their developers work for free? Did their QA staff work for free? Will bug fixes cost Apple nothing? Is the manufacturing and package design free?"
Depends on how many units sold. See hardware requires a lot of people to do work for each unit sold, whereas software almost all the work is done when the product is done. The more copies you sell, the less it cost you to make each one.
That's why Microsoft makes SO much more money than Apple.
As Apple's market share shot up, so would their profit on each unit sold. If they continued to make their own Macs and sell OS X for PC the OS money would pretty much be exactly as the other guy said, 100% free money.
That is if they think my buying OS X for my PC is costing them a sale of a Mac. Which they probably think is true but are dead wrong.
How many people have said that this changes nothing, a Mac is still going to be a Mac, just a different processor? They are right, in more ways than one.
Just as Mac users aren't going to jump ship over a processor, PC users aren't going to suddenly run out and buy Macs over a processor. Apple quite simlply wouldn't be losing anything by selling Macs with OS X and OS X for PC. They'd probably even sell more Macs that way because they would no longer be a niche market most people are afraid of.
"There are too many x86 combinations out there for Apple to consider selling OSX for Dells. Isn't going to happen. Please deal with it so I can stop posting the same obvious stuff!"
Linux is not OS X. That should be all I had to say, but just to make it clear...
Driver support in Linux sucks because developers have to write drivers from scratch using a crystal ball or hardware developers throw it together real quick to say they have it.
Apple has never and will never have a problem with driver support. Hardware developers will be falling all over themselves to support OS X.
Driver support for Linux sucks because Linux developers have to write it from scratch using a crystal ball or hardware developers throw it together in a hurry to say they have it.
Apple does not and would not have a problem with driver support. Especially when they had a 50% market share in a matter of days.
1. No. Apple would have to have minimum system requirements on the box just like everything else including Windows.
2. No. Microsoft is already in hot water. They can't play the monopoly card right now. Every OEM, including Dell, would LOVE to offer systems that dual boot Windows and OS X.
3. Piracy isn't a nightmare, it grows marketshare. Besides, despite the common perception that hackers will always win, DRM is going to lock out piracy in the next few years.
Is it likely to happen soon? I agree, probably not. Apple is either scared or greedy.
The argument that Apple controlling the hardware gives them power over Windows is dead. Apple doesn't control the hardware any more, just the price.
A Mac today is a PC with a different processor. A Mac tomorrow will be a PC.
Back in the day a Mac was a very different animal. It was made up of parts that Apple designed or chose to use because it had advantages over PC hardware. Every aspect of a PC has been refined to the point to where it was the best choice for Apple to use, now even the processor.
"Yes, but does that give them incentive to switch? Not for many. Why do you think this would be different if they didn't have to change their hardware, just their software? It still means, for the average customer, a $1,000 investment in new software."
Tiger for PC including iLife for $129. Think about that for a second. Would you buy it? Yeah, I know you're a geek so of course you would. But would you buy it for mom and dad too? Yeah I would too. See, now we're getting started. OK, you gonna tell all your friends about it? Yup me too. Yeah, I know a bunch of them are kinda fanboyish, mine too, but we both know they are gonna buy it just to try to make fun of it. We also both know that there isn't much they can make fun of. We also know that they've had a couple viruses and their PCs are running like crap because they are full of spyware. Yup, they'll only boot into Windows to play games from now on.
OK, now the other 50 people that call you for free tech support every week. You're not going to keep this secret from them are you? Me neither, finally some peace and quiet.
OK, that covers just about everyone.
Oh, oh yeah, your boss. Yeah, mine's not going to install OS X on all the PCs at work either. But he'll buy a few OS X PCs from the OEM vendor next year I'm sure.
Apple is still making Macs as well. MOST of the people with Macs today will buy Macs tomorrow instead of PCs. I know all my Mac friends will, I doubt your Mac friends are any different.
Face it, such a move wouldn't take over the business sector over night, but the average Joe just surfs the net and sends email. OS X and iLife will do just about everything they need. Thanks to MS for moving games from the PC to console, how often would most people have to boot into Windows?
I use my slow ass iBook more than any of my PCs anymore even though they are all much faster. I'd buy a copy of OS X for each PC tomorrow and rarely feel the need to boot into Windows. (OK, you caught me in a lie. I'd buy a copy of OS X and install it on all my PCs tomorrow, but still...)
"Apple theoretically releasing some version that would be horrible for their business model"
Horrible for their current business model, but an excellent business model none the less. Or do you think Apple's business model is better than Microsoft's? Making 50 bucks a pop off the sale of 1 billion units of an OS is a little bit more than making 500 bucks a pop off the sale of a couple million Macs. About 49 billion dollars more, just ask Bill.
I also feel it is a dream that will be long in coming, if ever, true. However, that is their own fault. Either they will greedily cling to the high margin business model that has kept them where they are because their greed has blinded them into thinking that they can somehow, someday have a total and complete monopoly on the entire industry. Or they simply don't belive their OS is really good enough to take on Windows head to head.
Look at all the free publicity Apple got over this Intel announcement. Imagine the impact of announcing, "OS X has a little secret, it's been running on PCs all along, and today is the day we let the Tiger out of the cage."
EVERYONE would be talking about that, everyone. Not just some tech sites, and a blurb on TV business shows. It would be front page headline news on every paper across the globe. It would be on every news show, Letterman and Leno would be joking about what Bill Gates was going to do to answer this, Opra would have Jobs on her show giving away free copies to everyone in the audience... just imagine the rest for yourself.
I honestly believe that had Steve said that last Monday, the only thing stopping Apple from having more market share than Microsoft today would be the long lines in stores.
Now, if he does announce it next year, or the year after, people will have been expecting it and it won't have near the impact it would have had Monday.
Since it is almost a fact that OS X does run on plain Jane PCs, meeting the minimum system requirements. Since the general perception of most people is that OS X is superior. Since people are fed up with spyware and viruses. Since Steve Jobs has the vaccine. I think this proves he isn't the business genius people think he is. People give him far too much credit. He just gave Bill another chance to steal his thunder.
"Apple makes killer hardware, which they make their money on, and set bar for what people are willing to pay for an OS AND for the quality that they should expect."
That is a myth. Everyone says it so everyone believes it. Apple makes expensive hardware and to justify their spending that amount of money people site extreme quality.
Two months after spending $1500 on a Mac my HDD died and I lost everything. Sure, I should have backed up, and really I didn't loose much but my settings and all the time it took to get it all setup, but who expects their brand new "Apple" hardware is going to die? Well, now I do, as does anyone knowledgable enough to know better than the extreme quality myth.
Obviously Apple didn't make the hard drive, but it was a Fujitsu, which is a very cheap brand I would certainly never choose. I was not surprised one bit that it was replaced with an IBM drive, having to replace the drive more than once would really take a bite out of their profit. I was surprised they cracked the case while replacing the drive though.
Aside from the crack in the case everything was fine until the logic board fried. Luckily that was under recall, not a normal recall though where a severe flaw is found in the design and a company tells everyone with that product to return it and have it replaced. A special recall where you have to wait for the part that is known to be flawed to actually fail then you can return it and they will replace it with the same part.
On the plus side, I shipped it back with a note in the box asking them to replace the cracked case and they did. However, this time I got it back with a poorly mounted trackpad (the top left corner sticks up well past flush with the case) and significantly less Airport signal strength.
Now I do realize none of that is major, but there has been plenty of quirky behaviour to go along with it. It's had its share of kernal panics, lock ups, and general unexepctedly quits. Just yesterday something happened where all my settings were set to default and it can't find my keychain. All of that on top of significantly less performance than any other computer I own. While it's only a 900 MHz G3, I realize it won't have the performance of a dual G5 system, but there's been plenty of times it has had trouble keeping up with my typing.
Add this story to the countless stories of my friends, and I know if you have friends with Macs they have stories of their own, and it becomes quite clear that Apple does not make extremely high quality hardware that sets the bar for everyone else and justifies the premium price they set.
I'm not saying they suck. I'm not even saying they aren't good. I'm just saying they aren't extremely great and I certainly look forward to the day I could run OS X on PC. As does most of the world I suspect, even those that have never heard of OS X.
Not that you don't have a point about Microsoft, but your point is really the converse of what you said. Apple has until Longhorn to 'commercially' release OS X for PC. If they think they are going to take over the computer idustry on their hardware, well, they know better themselves. If Longhorn both comes out before OS X PC and plugs up most of the holes then the motivation for most to switch will be gone.
Sure, there's some possibility that Intel could make a special PPC type processor for Apple. Yet, consider the snail.
You remember the snail right? Remember the tank?
Well, you don't have to remember too much, go to Apple's G5 page and read all about how the G5 is umpteen percent faster than the fastest thing Intel has to offer.
So Intel is going to keep making billions of their lowly, pitifully slow PC processors, the best they've been able to come up with all these years that still fall well short of the remarkable PPC, AND a few million PPC variant processors that are so far beyond their grasp that Apple had to show them how it's done?
So what will their new slogan be? Yeah, it's Intel inside, but it's not the good Intel that we make for Apple, it's the sucky slow Intel that's the best we could come up with on our own.
Won't that look really funny on Apple's site when they show how their Intel PPC variant is umpteen percent faster than the fastest thing Intel could come up with on its own?
While it's almost as ugly as a mini, I don't think it resembles a mini very much at all. I could easily tell the two apart with glimpse of no more than a fraction of a second. The mini has a very prominent white top, not to mention the traditional giant Apple logo.
Both are small, silver, and square with rounded corners. Does Apple own any or all of those traits? I don't think so. Small is something that most products strive for, and mini-itx PC have been around years before the Mac mini. Silver, well, my brothers TRS 80 coco was silver, and that was at least 20 years ago, Oh, that TRS 80 had rounded corners too, but then again just about all corners on every product are rounded to some degree.
When Apple borrows design elements people credit them with inventing the wheel and then anyone that ever uses those design elements again are ripping off Apple. It's ridiculous.
Aside from seeing no necessity for change, your suggested change does not mention that the oxygen must be breathable nor that the oxygen is extracted from a simulated form of lunar soil.
I guess you are just trying to drum up hits for your free Mac mini.
Slashdot 'editors' aren't really editors in the traditional sense of journalism editors, not even close really. They are just story approvers, who approve a story if they feel it is of interest to the general Slashdot crowd.
The stories are just headlines and blurbs that link to an actual journalistic piece located on some other site.
Slashdot's motto should be, We don't make the news, we don't report the news, we collect the news.
Although seldom used, every story on/. has a link to an article on another site. The only content/. provides is a headline and a blurb. (Which are generally written by the story submitter.) To get any real information you have to click the link and read the article on the other site.
Of course, you could just skip that part and go right into the comments, but most of those people didn't read the article either.
Yes, it seems you have decoded the the exact purpose of Slashdot, congratulations.
That's so not what happened it's not even funny. You probably don't know because you weren't there. Just like kids think their teachers live at school, someone who wasn't around in the early days of computers think Microsoft was always a huge multi-national corporation.
Microsoft and Apple started this game of global Monopoly pretty much at the same time. Apple bought Boardwalk, Park Place, Electric Company, and Water Works. They started building hotels and figured that was all they would ever need to amass their empire. Meanwhile Microsoft bought up all the low rent properties and waited for rent to start trickling in to build any houses.
In the early 90's Apple was way out in front in terms of product quality, but Microsoft had basically already won with the land grab. It was merely a matter of time. When Apple killed the ][ line they gave the electric company and water works to MS.
I remember very clearly the first "PC" I ever owned. I'd been lusting after a Mac for years and years, while putting along on my Apple//gs, swapping out a dozen 3.5" floppies an hour. Then my parents got an IBM PS/1. They called me up and asked me to come over and help them set it up. I thought they were so stupid to get a "PC", I really didn't even want to go, I'd been telling them to get a Mac and they go out and by some stupid "PC"!
Man that thing was sweet! It's hard to imagine it now looking back, but that PS/1 had everything I'd ever dreamed of a computer having. I went from a Mac dreamboi to Windows user in 8.4 seconds, well, I bought my own PS/1 a week later.
For the next several years I upgraded every year. Every year I would seriously consider getting a Mac. Every year I would buy a PC because the price difference was very large while and the feature set was not.
Now I own a bunch of PCs and a couple Macs, I'm writing this on an iBook. I've got a few Linux/XP dual booting systems, but honestly Linux doesn't see much boot time anymore.
Linux could easily be number one. If Linux gave people what they get on Mac and Windows they would be number one. It would take the Linux community coming together to make one great product and throwing out the mindset of being proud that you are able to use Linux. Nobody brags about being able to use Windows or Mac OS, they just use it.
Actually modders are a step behind by definition as there is nothing to mod until MS releases it. Where MS messed up big time on the XBOX was relying on hardware protection as once the hardware protection is broken the game is over.
With software protection they can continuously repair chinks in the armor and keep the box locked down as long as they want. The iPod is the most obvious example of this. Every time someone punches a hole in Apple's iron curtain they plug the hole with the next release of iTunes.
While it might appear Apple is playing catch up with the hackers, in reality it is the hackers that are forced to continually come up with new ways to storm the castle.
Of course you can look at it from a hardware angle and say that all one need do is simply not update the software. Yet in the case of both the iPod and 360 you would loose a large portion of the functionality of the device.
This general conception that hackers will always win is a dangerous one I think. If people accept all these, not only closed systems, but completely locked down systems with the expectation that hackers will always be able to unlock them and open them up to allow us our fair use then the day will come when everything is locked down.
CSS completely locked down DVD playback. Only DVD players with a valid key can play DVDs. Keys were only given to companies that agreed to implement all the lock down they demanded. Keys themselves were to be encrypted in the players and it was only because of a mistake that one player's key was left unencrypted. Hackers found the unencrypted key and were not only able to use it, but generate more valid keys from it. As it turns out this key encryption was a rather weak 40 bit encryption that can be easily brute forced.
DeCSS is therefore a product of 2 mistakes, weak encryption keys and leaving a key unencrypted. The genie was out of the bottle, well countless millions of bottles, and it will take a new bottle to capture it again. New bottles are on their way, Bluray/HDDVD.
At the time of DVDs inception it was hard to imagine brute forcing a 40 bit key, and indeed the keys did hold until the first one was found unencrypted. This time around you can bet the keys will be very strong and encryption of the keys will be closely scrutinized. I wouldn't even be surprised if players had firmware that could be updated transparently by a movie disc to allow the protection scheme to evolve if need be.
The point is, most hacks are the result of simple mistakes. With phone home technology such mistakes can be rectified in the future, if, and that's a big if, they ever exist to begin with.
Of course with corporations buying new laws at will, protection schemes might not even be necessary in the future. How many distributions sites are able to stand up to the legal might of hundreds of lawyers armed with dozens of recently purchased laws?
The only way to effectively combat this corporate lock down is by adopting Nancy Reagan's mantra and "Just say no to locked down technologies." Unfortunately, judging from how readily people lap up iPods I'm afraid it's going to be an uphill battle.
I don't understand how an illegal alien can do anything legally when their very presence in this country is illegal.
The only real problem I have with this bill is that it uses a standard practice that I think should be outlawed. It has been attached to another bill about something entirely unrelated.
There should be a bill that states that it is illegal to attach a bill to another bill. To make sure this important bill gets passed it should be attached to a vital bill like giving congress a pay raise.
"I'll take firefox over IE's Broken/Incomplete..."
If you prefer Firefox then by all means use it. That is your choice. If you want to persuade others to choose to use it as well, then everyone involved would be better served by a knowledgeable summary of its strengths and weaknesses so that they can make an informed decision of their own.
You are doing a disservice to everyone if you just say it sucks less than IE. I can't speak for the Firefox/Mozilla developers, but personally my goal for an application I develop wouldn't be that it suck less than something else. Nor as an end user would I find the "sucks less" argument all that compelling.
Furthermore, I find comments like, "Interweb-monopoly-lock-in-Explorer", to be quite telling as to the motivation of a persuader. Clearly you have a lot of baggage when it comes to Microsoft and your opinion of MS products is there for highly suspect.
Not to say that I wouldn't take it on the chin a few times to support a product from an entity that strives to server a higher cause. However, in the personal computer industry there's really only the big 3: Microsoft, Apple, and Open Source.
Microsoft has indeed clearly demonstrated that their ultimate goal is to amass huge sums of money. Their greatest tool to that end being locking down data with proprietary formats. However, the personal computer end user rarely feels the brunt of their greed as it is generally directed at other huge corporations. I only give Microsoft money when I buy a new Windows OS or a computer with it pre-installed.
Apple is every bit as money hungry as Microsoft. However, their greed is focused squarely on the personal computer end user. They are locked in tighter than Microsoft could ever dream of becoming. Every "innovative technology" they come up with comes at a monetary price to the end user. They do everything they can to lock in proprietary formats and technologies while still being able to compete.
Finally there is Open Source. Most think that being OSS automatically implies a selfless desire to serve humanity. In my experience this has almost never been the actual case. While OSS is monetarily free, almost all OSS begs and nags for donations. Furthermore, and really despite this appeal for donations, they wrap themselves in a cloak of "Hey, I'm doing this in my free time, for free. You have no right to complain about anything. This includes functionality, features, bugs, and development schedule." Often OSS products remain in beta for years while they amass a large user base and then discontinue the OSS product to transition to a proprietary product. Which as a result reduces OSS to a marketing tool. Of course, not all OSS is abandoned for pursuit of a proprietary product, sometimes it's abandoned just because the developers got tired of developing it. Or often times people can't agree and development splinters off into competing products with mixed features and functionality. The end result is that each OSS product has to be evaluated independently and it's extremely difficult to ascertain motivation of the developers and by extension the longevity of the product.
Years ago I wanted to add a forum to my website. After looking at hundreds of competing OSS products I found a very nice one. On the main page the developers said something to the effect that apache is free, php is free, mysql is free, why should a BBS built on all these technologies be hundreds of dollars? I was impressed by this, until years later I went looking for a forum for my website and came across this product which was now proprietary costing hundreds of dollars.
The point being, there are few products that exist solely for the betterment of mankind. Therefore in almost all cases you are supporting not only a product, but the entity that created it and its agenda. With Apple and Microsoft that agenda is shareholder profit, but they are very open about this fact. With OSS the agenda is largely unknown. While for the most part end user satisfaction is neither their primary concern nor in opposition to their agenda.
All you can do as an end user is make an informed decision that best meets your needs.
There's not many comments yet, but most of them have a similar theme: " Oh no, now Microsoft and Internet Explorer users can get payback for all the trash talk we've thrown at them." Then they rationalize it with, "But, MS and IE are way worse because of quantity, severity, and duration until patch."
Now think about it for a minute. Who are you really at war against? Security exploits and the people who would exploit them, or browsers other than the one you use and the people that use them?
This reminds me of the days when Mac zealots would get all freaked out every time PC's got faster. "OMG, this is bad news! Now there are 3GHz PCs for under 500 dollars!"
This really boils down to people rating the quality of Product A compared to the suckiness of Product B. Personally, I've been using Products A, B, and C for a long time. When there is a problem found with Product B, that really doesn't make Product A perform the task I use it for any better.
If you want to call yourself a truly knowledgeable computer user, then you have to acknowledge that Products A, B, and C all have their strengths and weaknesses and therefore have tasks their better suited for as well as tasks in which they're not the best solution.
If you look at it from the proper perspective, every time an exploit is found by good people before bad people have a chance to do harm with it then it is good for everyone.
This particular exploit also demonstrates how foolish it is to posture and sling insults. The whole time FF users slung insults at IE when exploits were found, this exploit was there lurking below the surface waiting to be found.
Let applications that are without exploit cast the first stone. Since that's never going to happen, argue your cause based on its merits.
You are saying extend HTML instead of creating a new format that must be learned in addition to HTML. I couldn't agree more. Others have pointed out other projects that they seem to be implying do exactly what you suggest. Yet, I'm very suspicious if these other formats are indeed nothing more than a few more tags thrown in to HTML. I'm not familiar with them, and since I have never personally needed more control than HTML (with the exception of php), I don't care to go try to find out what they are.
You my friend are very logical, I like you. HTML is used by everyone hundreds of times a day. Millions of people already know HTML. Thousands of HTML editors already exist. Which is better, add a few tags to HTML that most people probably don't need anyway but can easily learn if ever they do, or create an entirely new format with a 680 page manual to learn how to use?
A format that is incompatible with every editor now in existence, that needs mass adoption to become useful at all.
I would say that it might not be too harmful if HTML documents could be easily converted, as I'm sure is the case, but it's just so stupid. Stupidity is harmful.
It's really all about ego. That's the biggest problem with the OSS community. Everyone wants to be the leader of something doing things their way so one project splinters off into dozens of smaller projects all incompatible with each other.
What are the most successful OSS projects? Apache and Mozilla. In both cases they were working with a standard they had to conform to. Think about what a disaster it would be if Apache or Mozilla decided to make their own "open" standard. Who is going to use.moz files when they can only be opened with Mozilla browsers?
You want an open document standard that can compete with Word? Extend HTML. Or just champion the use of HTML like it is as it has everything 99.99% of us need.
Why embrace archaic paradigms? Why force pages and line wraps on readers?
Yeah, if you're going to print a book you have no choice but to force pages and by extension line wraps. What is the benefit of book formatting unless you are printing a book?
If you are providing documentation, let the reader format the shape and size of the text to their own preferences. HTML formatting allows for plenty of organization without the need for pages or line wraps at all. Every web page you view uses this formatting after-all.
Even a very large document can be cleanly organized and efficiently navigated on a single page. However, if you have a large document you would like to break up in pages, then you are very able to create as many pages as you like.
As far as line wrapping is concerned, to say you have no control with HTML is an overstatement. Although I would again argue that you should leave the page width up to the reader, you can in fact easily control page width with the use of a table.
It's hard to ague against HTML as a viable document format when nearly everyone that uses a computer views an HTML document every time they use a computer.
Printing a document to paper is about the only argument against HTML with any legs. Yet, the simple and obvious answer is not to print documents to paper, that is a legacy procedure with vastly superior alternatives.
HTML is the perfect document format for documentation. It's used by most large vendors. You can't expect people to be able to access every obscure open format around, but you can expect everyone to be able to access HTML. You're accessing it right now!
C'mon people. HTML is the wave of the past AND the future. You're looking at it right now.
Even this dude's short sighted comment doesn't dispute HTML in any way. He mentions how some people want to edit a document they are sent, this is in no way prohibited by HTML.
HTML - Just use it. - Oh wait, you're using it right now!
Sure, I realize there are still people in the dark ages that feel the need to smear ink all over paper and pay some dude 2 bits to walk the paper to its destination in a few days time.
Most of the time, I dare say all the time but most of the time is good enough, people smearing ink on paper would be better served with HTML and digital transmission. Look at the benefits:
It's free! No ink to buy!
It's free! No paper to buy!
It's free! No mailman to pay!
It's free! No expensive application to buy!
It's free! Save your money for beer. (I really don't even like beer. I mention it only because I feel it will motivate slashdotters to adopt this open standard when they think about all the more beer they can purchase.)
HTML - you ARE ready.
(The Mozilla people should incorporate a basic HTML WYSIWYG editor with Mozilla to aid in the adoption of the standard they so adamantly support.)
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, I always thought of them as extremely sleazy despite having zero corroboration. My brother buys from them all the time, the stuff comes in a very timely fashion and exactly as represented. One time, about 5 years ago, I even broke down and ordered a 500 watt modular power supply with 2 lighted fans and a bluish chrome finish for 20 bucks. I was sure there was a catch to this deal. Absolutely positive. A couple days later the power supply came, and it was super nice quality. It came with so many modular cords that I didn't even use half of them, and the cords were super nice quality as well: wires wrapped in a tube of cross stitch metal shielding, sealed in a colored translucent rubber tube. Bottom line, I got a power supply that would have cost over twice as much on sale anywhere else, that has been running nearly 24/7 for over 5 years now.
I never ordered anything from them again, because for some reason I just could never shake the shady feeling I get from them.
"100% on software? Do support techs work for free? Did their developers work for free? Did their QA staff work for free? Will bug fixes cost Apple nothing? Is the manufacturing and package design free?"
Depends on how many units sold. See hardware requires a lot of people to do work for each unit sold, whereas software almost all the work is done when the product is done. The more copies you sell, the less it cost you to make each one.
That's why Microsoft makes SO much more money than Apple.
As Apple's market share shot up, so would their profit on each unit sold. If they continued to make their own Macs and sell OS X for PC the OS money would pretty much be exactly as the other guy said, 100% free money.
That is if they think my buying OS X for my PC is costing them a sale of a Mac. Which they probably think is true but are dead wrong.
How many people have said that this changes nothing, a Mac is still going to be a Mac, just a different processor? They are right, in more ways than one.
Just as Mac users aren't going to jump ship over a processor, PC users aren't going to suddenly run out and buy Macs over a processor. Apple quite simlply wouldn't be losing anything by selling Macs with OS X and OS X for PC. They'd probably even sell more Macs that way because they would no longer be a niche market most people are afraid of.
"There are too many x86 combinations out there for Apple to consider selling OSX for Dells. Isn't going to happen. Please deal with it so I can stop posting the same obvious stuff!"
Linux is not OS X. That should be all I had to say, but just to make it clear...
Driver support in Linux sucks because developers have to write drivers from scratch using a crystal ball or hardware developers throw it together real quick to say they have it.
Apple has never and will never have a problem with driver support. Hardware developers will be falling all over themselves to support OS X.
but...
Own3d!
Driver support for Linux sucks because Linux developers have to write it from scratch using a crystal ball or hardware developers throw it together in a hurry to say they have it.
Apple does not and would not have a problem with driver support. Especially when they had a 50% market share in a matter of days.
1. No. Apple would have to have minimum system requirements on the box just like everything else including Windows.
2. No. Microsoft is already in hot water. They can't play the monopoly card right now. Every OEM, including Dell, would LOVE to offer systems that dual boot Windows and OS X.
3. Piracy isn't a nightmare, it grows marketshare. Besides, despite the common perception that hackers will always win, DRM is going to lock out piracy in the next few years.
Is it likely to happen soon? I agree, probably not. Apple is either scared or greedy.
The argument that Apple controlling the hardware gives them power over Windows is dead. Apple doesn't control the hardware any more, just the price.
A Mac today is a PC with a different processor. A Mac tomorrow will be a PC.
Back in the day a Mac was a very different animal. It was made up of parts that Apple designed or chose to use because it had advantages over PC hardware. Every aspect of a PC has been refined to the point to where it was the best choice for Apple to use, now even the processor.
"Yes, but does that give them incentive to switch? Not for many. Why do you think this would be different if they didn't have to change their hardware, just their software? It still means, for the average customer, a $1,000 investment in new software."
Tiger for PC including iLife for $129. Think about that for a second. Would you buy it? Yeah, I know you're a geek so of course you would. But would you buy it for mom and dad too? Yeah I would too. See, now we're getting started. OK, you gonna tell all your friends about it? Yup me too. Yeah, I know a bunch of them are kinda fanboyish, mine too, but we both know they are gonna buy it just to try to make fun of it. We also both know that there isn't much they can make fun of. We also know that they've had a couple viruses and their PCs are running like crap because they are full of spyware. Yup, they'll only boot into Windows to play games from now on.
OK, now the other 50 people that call you for free tech support every week. You're not going to keep this secret from them are you? Me neither, finally some peace and quiet.
OK, that covers just about everyone.
Oh, oh yeah, your boss. Yeah, mine's not going to install OS X on all the PCs at work either. But he'll buy a few OS X PCs from the OEM vendor next year I'm sure.
Apple is still making Macs as well. MOST of the people with Macs today will buy Macs tomorrow instead of PCs. I know all my Mac friends will, I doubt your Mac friends are any different.
Face it, such a move wouldn't take over the business sector over night, but the average Joe just surfs the net and sends email. OS X and iLife will do just about everything they need. Thanks to MS for moving games from the PC to console, how often would most people have to boot into Windows?
I use my slow ass iBook more than any of my PCs anymore even though they are all much faster. I'd buy a copy of OS X for each PC tomorrow and rarely feel the need to boot into Windows. (OK, you caught me in a lie. I'd buy a copy of OS X and install it on all my PCs tomorrow, but still...)
"Apple theoretically releasing some version that would be horrible for their business model"
Horrible for their current business model, but an excellent business model none the less. Or do you think Apple's business model is better than Microsoft's? Making 50 bucks a pop off the sale of 1 billion units of an OS is a little bit more than making 500 bucks a pop off the sale of a couple million Macs. About 49 billion dollars more, just ask Bill.
I also feel it is a dream that will be long in coming, if ever, true. However, that is their own fault. Either they will greedily cling to the high margin business model that has kept them where they are because their greed has blinded them into thinking that they can somehow, someday have a total and complete monopoly on the entire industry. Or they simply don't belive their OS is really good enough to take on Windows head to head.
Look at all the free publicity Apple got over this Intel announcement. Imagine the impact of announcing, "OS X has a little secret, it's been running on PCs all along, and today is the day we let the Tiger out of the cage."
EVERYONE would be talking about that, everyone. Not just some tech sites, and a blurb on TV business shows. It would be front page headline news on every paper across the globe. It would be on every news show, Letterman and Leno would be joking about what Bill Gates was going to do to answer this, Opra would have Jobs on her show giving away free copies to everyone in the audience... just imagine the rest for yourself.
I honestly believe that had Steve said that last Monday, the only thing stopping Apple from having more market share than Microsoft today would be the long lines in stores.
Now, if he does announce it next year, or the year after, people will have been expecting it and it won't have near the impact it would have had Monday.
Since it is almost a fact that OS X does run on plain Jane PCs, meeting the minimum system requirements. Since the general perception of most people is that OS X is superior. Since people are fed up with spyware and viruses. Since Steve Jobs has the vaccine. I think this proves he isn't the business genius people think he is. People give him far too much credit. He just gave Bill another chance to steal his thunder.
"Apple makes killer hardware, which they make their money on, and set bar for what people are willing to pay for an OS AND for the quality that they should expect."
That is a myth. Everyone says it so everyone believes it. Apple makes expensive hardware and to justify their spending that amount of money people site extreme quality.
Two months after spending $1500 on a Mac my HDD died and I lost everything. Sure, I should have backed up, and really I didn't loose much but my settings and all the time it took to get it all setup, but who expects their brand new "Apple" hardware is going to die? Well, now I do, as does anyone knowledgable enough to know better than the extreme quality myth.
Obviously Apple didn't make the hard drive, but it was a Fujitsu, which is a very cheap brand I would certainly never choose. I was not surprised one bit that it was replaced with an IBM drive, having to replace the drive more than once would really take a bite out of their profit. I was surprised they cracked the case while replacing the drive though.
Aside from the crack in the case everything was fine until the logic board fried. Luckily that was under recall, not a normal recall though where a severe flaw is found in the design and a company tells everyone with that product to return it and have it replaced. A special recall where you have to wait for the part that is known to be flawed to actually fail then you can return it and they will replace it with the same part.
On the plus side, I shipped it back with a note in the box asking them to replace the cracked case and they did. However, this time I got it back with a poorly mounted trackpad (the top left corner sticks up well past flush with the case) and significantly less Airport signal strength.
Now I do realize none of that is major, but there has been plenty of quirky behaviour to go along with it. It's had its share of kernal panics, lock ups, and general unexepctedly quits. Just yesterday something happened where all my settings were set to default and it can't find my keychain. All of that on top of significantly less performance than any other computer I own. While it's only a 900 MHz G3, I realize it won't have the performance of a dual G5 system, but there's been plenty of times it has had trouble keeping up with my typing.
Add this story to the countless stories of my friends, and I know if you have friends with Macs they have stories of their own, and it becomes quite clear that Apple does not make extremely high quality hardware that sets the bar for everyone else and justifies the premium price they set.
I'm not saying they suck. I'm not even saying they aren't good. I'm just saying they aren't extremely great and I certainly look forward to the day I could run OS X on PC. As does most of the world I suspect, even those that have never heard of OS X.
Not that you don't have a point about Microsoft, but your point is really the converse of what you said. Apple has until Longhorn to 'commercially' release OS X for PC. If they think they are going to take over the computer idustry on their hardware, well, they know better themselves. If Longhorn both comes out before OS X PC and plugs up most of the holes then the motivation for most to switch will be gone.
Sure, there's some possibility that Intel could make a special PPC type processor for Apple. Yet, consider the snail.
You remember the snail right? Remember the tank?
Well, you don't have to remember too much, go to Apple's G5 page and read all about how the G5 is umpteen percent faster than the fastest thing Intel has to offer.
So Intel is going to keep making billions of their lowly, pitifully slow PC processors, the best they've been able to come up with all these years that still fall well short of the remarkable PPC, AND a few million PPC variant processors that are so far beyond their grasp that Apple had to show them how it's done?
So what will their new slogan be? Yeah, it's Intel inside, but it's not the good Intel that we make for Apple, it's the sucky slow Intel that's the best we could come up with on our own.
Won't that look really funny on Apple's site when they show how their Intel PPC variant is umpteen percent faster than the fastest thing Intel could come up with on its own?
Yeah, I can see that happening. heh
While it's almost as ugly as a mini, I don't think it resembles a mini very much at all. I could easily tell the two apart with glimpse of no more than a fraction of a second. The mini has a very prominent white top, not to mention the traditional giant Apple logo.
Both are small, silver, and square with rounded corners. Does Apple own any or all of those traits? I don't think so. Small is something that most products strive for, and mini-itx PC have been around years before the Mac mini. Silver, well, my brothers TRS 80 coco was silver, and that was at least 20 years ago, Oh, that TRS 80 had rounded corners too, but then again just about all corners on every product are rounded to some degree.
When Apple borrows design elements people credit them with inventing the wheel and then anyone that ever uses those design elements again are ripping off Apple. It's ridiculous.
Aside from seeing no necessity for change, your suggested change does not mention that the oxygen must be breathable nor that the oxygen is extracted from a simulated form of lunar soil.
I guess you are just trying to drum up hits for your free Mac mini.
Slashdot 'editors' aren't really editors in the traditional sense of journalism editors, not even close really. They are just story approvers, who approve a story if they feel it is of interest to the general Slashdot crowd.
The stories are just headlines and blurbs that link to an actual journalistic piece located on some other site.
Slashdot's motto should be, We don't make the news, we don't report the news, we collect the news.
Although seldom used, every story on /. has a link to an article on another site. The only content /. provides is a headline and a blurb. (Which are generally written by the story submitter.) To get any real information you have to click the link and read the article on the other site.
Of course, you could just skip that part and go right into the comments, but most of those people didn't read the article either.
Yes, it seems you have decoded the the exact purpose of Slashdot, congratulations.
That's so not what happened it's not even funny. You probably don't know because you weren't there. Just like kids think their teachers live at school, someone who wasn't around in the early days of computers think Microsoft was always a huge multi-national corporation.
//gs, swapping out a dozen 3.5" floppies an hour. Then my parents got an IBM PS/1. They called me up and asked me to come over and help them set it up. I thought they were so stupid to get a "PC", I really didn't even want to go, I'd been telling them to get a Mac and they go out and by some stupid "PC"!
Microsoft and Apple started this game of global Monopoly pretty much at the same time. Apple bought Boardwalk, Park Place, Electric Company, and Water Works. They started building hotels and figured that was all they would ever need to amass their empire. Meanwhile Microsoft bought up all the low rent properties and waited for rent to start trickling in to build any houses.
In the early 90's Apple was way out in front in terms of product quality, but Microsoft had basically already won with the land grab. It was merely a matter of time. When Apple killed the ][ line they gave the electric company and water works to MS.
I remember very clearly the first "PC" I ever owned. I'd been lusting after a Mac for years and years, while putting along on my Apple
Man that thing was sweet! It's hard to imagine it now looking back, but that PS/1 had everything I'd ever dreamed of a computer having. I went from a Mac dreamboi to Windows user in 8.4 seconds, well, I bought my own PS/1 a week later.
For the next several years I upgraded every year. Every year I would seriously consider getting a Mac. Every year I would buy a PC because the price difference was very large while and the feature set was not.
Now I own a bunch of PCs and a couple Macs, I'm writing this on an iBook. I've got a few Linux/XP dual booting systems, but honestly Linux doesn't see much boot time anymore.
Linux could easily be number one. If Linux gave people what they get on Mac and Windows they would be number one. It would take the Linux community coming together to make one great product and throwing out the mindset of being proud that you are able to use Linux. Nobody brags about being able to use Windows or Mac OS, they just use it.
Actually modders are a step behind by definition as there is nothing to mod until MS releases it. Where MS messed up big time on the XBOX was relying on hardware protection as once the hardware protection is broken the game is over.
With software protection they can continuously repair chinks in the armor and keep the box locked down as long as they want. The iPod is the most obvious example of this. Every time someone punches a hole in Apple's iron curtain they plug the hole with the next release of iTunes.
While it might appear Apple is playing catch up with the hackers, in reality it is the hackers that are forced to continually come up with new ways to storm the castle.
Of course you can look at it from a hardware angle and say that all one need do is simply not update the software. Yet in the case of both the iPod and 360 you would loose a large portion of the functionality of the device.
This general conception that hackers will always win is a dangerous one I think. If people accept all these, not only closed systems, but completely locked down systems with the expectation that hackers will always be able to unlock them and open them up to allow us our fair use then the day will come when everything is locked down.
CSS completely locked down DVD playback. Only DVD players with a valid key can play DVDs. Keys were only given to companies that agreed to implement all the lock down they demanded. Keys themselves were to be encrypted in the players and it was only because of a mistake that one player's key was left unencrypted. Hackers found the unencrypted key and were not only able to use it, but generate more valid keys from it. As it turns out this key encryption was a rather weak 40 bit encryption that can be easily brute forced.
DeCSS is therefore a product of 2 mistakes, weak encryption keys and leaving a key unencrypted. The genie was out of the bottle, well countless millions of bottles, and it will take a new bottle to capture it again. New bottles are on their way, Bluray/HDDVD.
At the time of DVDs inception it was hard to imagine brute forcing a 40 bit key, and indeed the keys did hold until the first one was found unencrypted. This time around you can bet the keys will be very strong and encryption of the keys will be closely scrutinized. I wouldn't even be surprised if players had firmware that could be updated transparently by a movie disc to allow the protection scheme to evolve if need be.
The point is, most hacks are the result of simple mistakes. With phone home technology such mistakes can be rectified in the future, if, and that's a big if, they ever exist to begin with.
Of course with corporations buying new laws at will, protection schemes might not even be necessary in the future. How many distributions sites are able to stand up to the legal might of hundreds of lawyers armed with dozens of recently purchased laws?
The only way to effectively combat this corporate lock down is by adopting Nancy Reagan's mantra and "Just say no to locked down technologies." Unfortunately, judging from how readily people lap up iPods I'm afraid it's going to be an uphill battle.
I don't understand how an illegal alien can do anything legally when their very presence in this country is illegal.
The only real problem I have with this bill is that it uses a standard practice that I think should be outlawed. It has been attached to another bill about something entirely unrelated.
There should be a bill that states that it is illegal to attach a bill to another bill. To make sure this important bill gets passed it should be attached to a vital bill like giving congress a pay raise.
Dell pre-installs Red Hat on all server machines to be sold.
Friday's headline:
Michael Dell sells shares in Red Hat for big profit.
"I'll take firefox over IE's Broken/Incomplete..."
If you prefer Firefox then by all means use it. That is your choice. If you want to persuade others to choose to use it as well, then everyone involved would be better served by a knowledgeable summary of its strengths and weaknesses so that they can make an informed decision of their own.
You are doing a disservice to everyone if you just say it sucks less than IE. I can't speak for the Firefox/Mozilla developers, but personally my goal for an application I develop wouldn't be that it suck less than something else. Nor as an end user would I find the "sucks less" argument all that compelling.
Furthermore, I find comments like, "Interweb-monopoly-lock-in-Explorer", to be quite telling as to the motivation of a persuader. Clearly you have a lot of baggage when it comes to Microsoft and your opinion of MS products is there for highly suspect.
Not to say that I wouldn't take it on the chin a few times to support a product from an entity that strives to server a higher cause. However, in the personal computer industry there's really only the big 3: Microsoft, Apple, and Open Source.
Microsoft has indeed clearly demonstrated that their ultimate goal is to amass huge sums of money. Their greatest tool to that end being locking down data with proprietary formats. However, the personal computer end user rarely feels the brunt of their greed as it is generally directed at other huge corporations. I only give Microsoft money when I buy a new Windows OS or a computer with it pre-installed.
Apple is every bit as money hungry as Microsoft. However, their greed is focused squarely on the personal computer end user. They are locked in tighter than Microsoft could ever dream of becoming. Every "innovative technology" they come up with comes at a monetary price to the end user. They do everything they can to lock in proprietary formats and technologies while still being able to compete.
Finally there is Open Source. Most think that being OSS automatically implies a selfless desire to serve humanity. In my experience this has almost never been the actual case. While OSS is monetarily free, almost all OSS begs and nags for donations. Furthermore, and really despite this appeal for donations, they wrap themselves in a cloak of "Hey, I'm doing this in my free time, for free. You have no right to complain about anything. This includes functionality, features, bugs, and development schedule." Often OSS products remain in beta for years while they amass a large user base and then discontinue the OSS product to transition to a proprietary product. Which as a result reduces OSS to a marketing tool. Of course, not all OSS is abandoned for pursuit of a proprietary product, sometimes it's abandoned just because the developers got tired of developing it. Or often times people can't agree and development splinters off into competing products with mixed features and functionality. The end result is that each OSS product has to be evaluated independently and it's extremely difficult to ascertain motivation of the developers and by extension the longevity of the product.
Years ago I wanted to add a forum to my website. After looking at hundreds of competing OSS products I found a very nice one. On the main page the developers said something to the effect that apache is free, php is free, mysql is free, why should a BBS built on all these technologies be hundreds of dollars? I was impressed by this, until years later I went looking for a forum for my website and came across this product which was now proprietary costing hundreds of dollars.
The point being, there are few products that exist solely for the betterment of mankind. Therefore in almost all cases you are supporting not only a product, but the entity that created it and its agenda. With Apple and Microsoft that agenda is shareholder profit, but they are very open about this fact. With OSS the agenda is largely unknown. While for the most part end user satisfaction is neither their primary concern nor in opposition to their agenda.
All you can do as an end user is make an informed decision that best meets your needs.
There's not many comments yet, but most of them have a similar theme: " Oh no, now Microsoft and Internet Explorer users can get payback for all the trash talk we've thrown at them." Then they rationalize it with, "But, MS and IE are way worse because of quantity, severity, and duration until patch."
Now think about it for a minute. Who are you really at war against? Security exploits and the people who would exploit them, or browsers other than the one you use and the people that use them?
This reminds me of the days when Mac zealots would get all freaked out every time PC's got faster. "OMG, this is bad news! Now there are 3GHz PCs for under 500 dollars!"
This really boils down to people rating the quality of Product A compared to the suckiness of Product B. Personally, I've been using Products A, B, and C for a long time. When there is a problem found with Product B, that really doesn't make Product A perform the task I use it for any better.
If you want to call yourself a truly knowledgeable computer user, then you have to acknowledge that Products A, B, and C all have their strengths and weaknesses and therefore have tasks their better suited for as well as tasks in which they're not the best solution.
If you look at it from the proper perspective, every time an exploit is found by good people before bad people have a chance to do harm with it then it is good for everyone.
This particular exploit also demonstrates how foolish it is to posture and sling insults. The whole time FF users slung insults at IE when exploits were found, this exploit was there lurking below the surface waiting to be found.
Let applications that are without exploit cast the first stone. Since that's never going to happen, argue your cause based on its merits.
You are saying extend HTML instead of creating a new format that must be learned in addition to HTML. I couldn't agree more. Others have pointed out other projects that they seem to be implying do exactly what you suggest. Yet, I'm very suspicious if these other formats are indeed nothing more than a few more tags thrown in to HTML. I'm not familiar with them, and since I have never personally needed more control than HTML (with the exception of php), I don't care to go try to find out what they are.
.moz files when they can only be opened with Mozilla browsers?
You my friend are very logical, I like you. HTML is used by everyone hundreds of times a day. Millions of people already know HTML. Thousands of HTML editors already exist. Which is better, add a few tags to HTML that most people probably don't need anyway but can easily learn if ever they do, or create an entirely new format with a 680 page manual to learn how to use?
A format that is incompatible with every editor now in existence, that needs mass adoption to become useful at all.
I would say that it might not be too harmful if HTML documents could be easily converted, as I'm sure is the case, but it's just so stupid. Stupidity is harmful.
It's really all about ego. That's the biggest problem with the OSS community. Everyone wants to be the leader of something doing things their way so one project splinters off into dozens of smaller projects all incompatible with each other.
What are the most successful OSS projects? Apache and Mozilla. In both cases they were working with a standard they had to conform to. Think about what a disaster it would be if Apache or Mozilla decided to make their own "open" standard. Who is going to use
You want an open document standard that can compete with Word? Extend HTML. Or just champion the use of HTML like it is as it has everything 99.99% of us need.
Why embrace archaic paradigms? Why force pages and line wraps on readers?
Yeah, if you're going to print a book you have no choice but to force pages and by extension line wraps. What is the benefit of book formatting unless you are printing a book?
If you are providing documentation, let the reader format the shape and size of the text to their own preferences. HTML formatting allows for plenty of organization without the need for pages or line wraps at all. Every web page you view uses this formatting after-all.
Even a very large document can be cleanly organized and efficiently navigated on a single page. However, if you have a large document you would like to break up in pages, then you are very able to create as many pages as you like.
As far as line wrapping is concerned, to say you have no control with HTML is an overstatement. Although I would again argue that you should leave the page width up to the reader, you can in fact easily control page width with the use of a table.
It's hard to ague against HTML as a viable document format when nearly everyone that uses a computer views an HTML document every time they use a computer.
Printing a document to paper is about the only argument against HTML with any legs. Yet, the simple and obvious answer is not to print documents to paper, that is a legacy procedure with vastly superior alternatives.
HTML is the perfect document format for documentation. It's used by most large vendors. You can't expect people to be able to access every obscure open format around, but you can expect everyone to be able to access HTML. You're accessing it right now!
C'mon people. HTML is the wave of the past AND the future. You're looking at it right now.
Even this dude's short sighted comment doesn't dispute HTML in any way. He mentions how some people want to edit a document they are sent, this is in no way prohibited by HTML.
HTML - Just use it. - Oh wait, you're using it right now!
Sure, I realize there are still people in the dark ages that feel the need to smear ink all over paper and pay some dude 2 bits to walk the paper to its destination in a few days time.
Most of the time, I dare say all the time but most of the time is good enough, people smearing ink on paper would be better served with HTML and digital transmission. Look at the benefits:
It's free! No ink to buy!
It's free! No paper to buy!
It's free! No mailman to pay!
It's free! No expensive application to buy!
It's free! Save your money for beer. (I really don't even like beer. I mention it only because I feel it will motivate slashdotters to adopt this open standard when they think about all the more beer they can purchase.)
HTML - you ARE ready.
(The Mozilla people should incorporate a basic HTML WYSIWYG editor with Mozilla to aid in the adoption of the standard they so adamantly support.)