Because in the beginning PCs were made by engineers, and they made boxes to hold stuff. They didn't make boxes for your living room, because computers were supposed to go in basements and under monitors and under desks. Jobs' first Apple was no design marvel, it was a wooden box with lines of silicon inside.
Now Apple makes beautiful machines. So does Ferrari. Neither will find a general audience.
What I can't really answer is why like 90% of cell phones seem to be gray flip phones. Is it really that important not to offend? Is colored plastic that much more expensive? Are the conformity-loving Asian manufacturers who make 90% of the phones to blame? Do they not want to irritate the accessory makers who sell color cases?
Here's what M$ needs: A real business OS, and a real consumer OS. Media Center doesn't work at these prices, and XP Home/Prof. seem to have rubbed off on each other too much. Home should be really easy and colorful compared to Pro. or server. Like comparing Linux with Gnome to Solaris. Of course, we'll always be able to make both versions look like Windows 2000/95, etc. But the Business should be somber with few personalization options, and the Home should look like Linux's 1,000,000,001 customization features, none of them documented or accessible by the regular user account. For example, you should be able to su in Windows, shut down explorer, antivirus, internet access, etc. to squeeze more performace out of PC games. You should be able to access and administrator panel and activate a Mac OS X type search, or widgets, or change the windows bars to tabs, etc. It's time that the oligarchy of Dell, HP, Gateway/Emachines lightens up. They'll have to pay more for support, but Windows desperately needs some excitement for the consumer, outside of piracy, blogging and IM. None of those are exclusive to Windows, after all. They need to let M$ loosen up on the consumer side.
The difference is that Google has many PhD's who actually find their 1/5 work exciting/fun, etc. Google is young enough and smart enough that they could very well keep the 1/5 rule around for a while.
But I think in the long run, you're probably right. Eventually, everything tanks.
Don't just say there will be viruses, when M$ is so acutely aware of the problem. With it being on top of.Net, what makes you think appropriate security won't be implemented?.Net was built with networking and security in mind, and so is Longhorn. Plus, I doubt that the monad shell will be implemented by default for home users - why would they need it?
Can you explain how this will be a boon for virus writers?
Really, with all the open-source 'real' databases, Access is disappearing. Most things are going web-based. Of course, Access will never disappear, there are too many legacy apps.
How can DEI NOT have rights to 3? It just ain't right.
Niche maker, the Mercedes Benz of Computers
on
Dell We'd Sell Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Apple is totally niche, and here's why:
If they switched to selling OSX, they may become competitive with M$. They may even keep getting relevant updates to M$ Office for Mac. But M$ and Apple would get into a price war that the hardware manufacturers would love, and M$ can simply wait Apple out, since M$ has a huge cash pile and ALSO makes money on every version of Mac Office.
If they ever wanted to compete on hardware alone (ha, ha), they'd run into a similar problem, in that Dell has made it a commodity business, and Dell, etc. have more money and current customers.
I think what will help is that Intel has access to mobile, integrated chipsets, and is motivated to push design forward. Also, I'm thinking they could return to a slate design, following M$ and copying them instead of vice versa. This is the sort of thing Apple should be good at, and Apple knows they can't coast on Ipods forever. And as we've seen with the Ipod, they can have success building accessories for PCs, which worked reasonably well for palmpilot, etc.
It doesn't matter what you sell, THE most important feature is the price. Consumers DO buy decent items, but no matter how much you charge for a pair of pants, it's just meant to cover your ass.
Let's look at pants. 50 years ago, most people wore slacks most of the time, and paid a lot for each pair, and then payed specialists just to dryclean them. Now I go to work in jeans, and pay virtually nothing to get them washed in my own washer/dryer. The jeans are the better product, not worse. Price doesn't mean something better, and Walmart isn't evil. The jeans last longer, I can do more in them, and I feel better wearing them than the slacks. My Adidas are (adjusting for inflation) like 10 times cheaper than dress shoes from 1950's and like 10 times better for my knees.
You may not realize it, but you're calling for a return to elitism, not quality. If you want better quality, no one has put LL Bean out of business, so go ahead. But when pants are $10 to replace 'better quality' doesn't mean anything. 'Quality' clothes are for weddings and management.
And I sincerely believe that quality and creativity are usually opposite attributes- a craftsman needs repetition to get really high quality, and Edison needed thousands of low-quality failures to CREATE a new invention, the light bulb. After Edison's initial burst, it took years to get a 'quality' light bulb. Look at japanese carpentry, high quality, high price, lowest creativity, hasn't change in years. It's only in software, people think quality and creativity go hand in hand, but remember that Apple hardware and software is about craftsmanship, and studying usage, not about pure invention. They're no more creative than M$, just slicker.
Walmart has actually pioneered technology use in retailing, and M$ has done a lot of good research. So lay off. You're not smart because you don't shop at Walmart.
1. Until the robber barons, monopolies could corner the market, then do anything they wanted, harming the public. 2. M$ isn't quite the same, I agree. But there is a difference between including solitaire that hurts the card game makers, and including a media player that captures an entire broadcast market. Notice, the solitaire game has only one executable file to delete, the media player actually 'breaks' Windows. And in the media game, the pre-installed player makes you the default format. 3. Netscape sucked because they couldn't afford to improve their product after a monopolist started giving it away for free. No one's going to starve to death, but M$ was scared and acted predatory, and so they should be punished. But then, time moves on, and no one could charge for a browser, or a media player, nowadays (I know they have premium players). 4. Unchecked, M$ will eventually lock in movies and music, charge extra for playing them, get in league with Hollywood and the Chinese gov't (to stop piracy), and make even more money. A Media Center PC is the idea, and it costs a lot more money. And no movie-maker wants $10 DVDs to last forever- the Xbox and PS3 are going to charge more for games, and I'm sure Hollywood is coming up with a plan, too. If there were no monopoly laws, M$ would simply crush everything. Who can do business without their OS? Nobody. 5.Yes, you pointed out Linux, etc. Businesses are technically free to adopt Linux and OOO, etc. If Toyota had 95% market share, I'd still sue them if I couldn't uninstall the Toyota radio. And I wouldn't be surprised if the dealers refused to sell a model WITHOUT a Toyota radio, after a court ruled that Toyota had to offer one.
While I like some of what you said,/. is open to all 'politics and religion'. The M$ products have a real problem, while I accept that utility software will continue to be included with Windows, it would benefit the customer immensely to be able to pick and choose, and uninstall things. But M$ has never served the customer this way.
Worse, media players and browsers aren't simply utility software, they're more akin to TV and stereos. No one wants Sony limiting what you can watch on TVs they sell, or a CD player that gives MTV ads every time you turn it on. M$ has simply abused their monopoly power in this realm - and the courts agree. Personally, I pay too much for a computer to have M$ shove their advertising down my throat after purchase.
The analogy is a car. I can't change the engine without a lot of money and grief, but I ought to be able to change the CD player.
Google's stuff might as well be publicly available betas, it's the cheapest and most realistic form of testing, and it allows them to ramp up server demand.
Most consumers like me never heard of 'beta' until Google started up. So I assume their meaning is just as good as yours, because popular usage trumps tradition and logic (which is why a generation of students will spell googol google!).
Why restrict beta tests to 'expert-only' invitations? Since people CAN use this service productively, I'm glad they allow access in 'beta' form. And now they've elicited a free list of bugs and features that should be added - and from their supposed competition, no less.
Finally, Google is an advertising company, not a shrink-wrap software company. No doubt they open up public betas because it draws eyeballs, and that just doesn't work for Gale's licensing-based sales model.
Personally, I don't think Academic journals need publishers anymore. Every prof puts their papers online, and universities certainly have enough free resources to offer html articles and links to sources. It's kind of embarrassing that scholars still use regular journals. Just keep them online, and when someone wants it, they'll print it out- a waste of paper, but students just make a zillion copies, anyway.
Here's what kills me: one of the major expenses of a college library are the journal subscriptions (whose prices are rising due to consolidation), and they serve professors, who are the ones who write the journals to begin with!
I just bought a new laptop and I thought it was so corny. I have a wireless network, network cables, RoadRunner cable internet, but I have to plug into a phone line to activate? What happens when I switch to cell phones - or lose my telephone cables? I guess I pull out my copy of Win2k, that's what.
"Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%; Windows NT popularity was reduced from 13.5% to about 10%; and Windows XP became the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs."
I don't think ME was ever popularly deployed in businesses. I shudder to think about it. Win2k was available then.
15 years ago, you payed more than a thousand dollars to run a couple office programs. No one in their right mind would pay that much today. I have an AMD ~500 mgz chip computer with ~300 mgs RAM that can run Windows 2000 and Office 2000 quickly. I only run into problems when I browse to ESPN.com, and then only because the hard drive is a little slow. You can get a much better computer for $300 today.
More importantly, a $300 computer can play CDs, 3d computer games, surf the internet, run Windows XP, Office XP and download and runs thousands of open-source applications with a lousy $30-a-month broadband account. Your thousands of dollars computer from 1990 can't even come close to that functionality, and we all know that.
So unless you're playing bleeding edge 'Half-Life 2', you're not spending more than $700 or so on a computer? What's the point? I spent that on my laptop, and I've barely used these major features: Microsoft Works, the CD burner, the DVD player, the M$ Media Player. 99% of the time, I surf wirelessly on my couch, and that's why I bought it (and my wireless router) 3 months ago. That's pretty much everyone's core use for PCs now. Unless you're at work, you're online and on email. Even there, it's mostly what I do.
Of course, maybe I'm no average/. user, but I think I'm pretty close to the average user.
I think you're wrong about OS/2. Developers didn't like it because of market reasons. It wasn't a consumer OS, and no matter what you think about OS/2, the marketing and appearance of Windows 95 KILLED IBM in the consumer space, and in the business space, Microsoft had better value and had support from hardware makers. I think all this porting talk is just a small thing developers worry about. Developers follow the money.
Apple appeals to a different market than IBM, and always will. The consumer market is where Apple has it's biggest successes. It doesn't matter what you can/can't port or run on Apple, because people purchase Apples for simplicity, home use and high-end graphics. You mostly can't replace these things with emulated Windows apps, so the Apple won't lose it's appeal.
Listen, OS/2 was terrific engineering. But IBM couldn't win in the market - their fate was essentially set when IBM clones appeared. It's the same reason that Apple faltered at the same time- nothing about porting software, it's about competing against the huge Wintel biosphere with expensive, proprietary stuff. IBM left the PC OS business essentially because they had other options, and Apple didn't. Apple found a market that worked for them, and they've stuck around long enough to gain ground back at this opportune time.
I know this move won't help Intel with the PC makers, so Intel has finally given up on M$. They clearly see that their integrated chip designs work better in Apple's economic model because Apple doesn't have to leave their options open with AMD. Apple can sell at higher prices and people will pay. With Dell, HP, etc., their competition keeps driving the price of Intel's components down, and M$ doesn't budge on the OS, so I'd make a deal with Apple, too. The future is integrated systems like consoles and cell phones (Microsoft Cell OSs run on non-Intel), not these monstrosities called Personal Computers. Despite the prices, Apple is closer to selling information appliances than HP/Dell/Lenovo/Gateway+Windows is. Does anyone else think the Media Center PC is a disaster in the marketplace?
I thought this article was so pro-M$, that it was embarassing. I mean, don't you get the sense these M$ problems made him a lot of money? Because I did.
And declaring how much better they are NOW? Doesn't it matter that we still spend millions of dollars on anti-everything software, and lose additional money it terms of resources spent to run that software?
I'd love to do one of those massive statistics estimates, where judging that every Windows computer connected to the Internet is running anti-virus, and that takes 10% of resources including updates, M$ security costs the country $3 bil, etc.... you get the point. This should be a bigger deal. Lots of individuals stop using their computer because of these hassles and money, and businesses soldier on because they feel they have no choice.
And I'm sure M$ is crying that their constant massive updates are killing dial-up and making millions in Windows Security software and consulting, like with this author.
Microsoft shipped WIN2K with IIS, it's not stand alone and you certainly can't purchase it for a non-Windows OS. And most of the worms didn't need IIS to bring down the Internet. I think we SHOULD all gripe about Win2K and IIS, and I think that the article was far too kind.
An OS that needs gigs of updates is no OS, it's an embarassment. Linux needs updates, but it can certainly be functional without hours of downloading.
The best mobile chips are probably made by Intel, in general. They are certainly the best selling and best supported ones. AMD doesn't really do this, yet. Switching from IBM to AMD wouldn't gain Apple much, because they'd still be weak in laptop chips, basically.
A lot of their brilliant stuff is behind scenes and purposefully secret. It can't compare to Bell Labs, but then the Internet is a vast, international group brain, and we're not sure how important it is itself. Google provides search, and that's really the core function of our "shared memory", the Internet. Plenty of people can/will provide search, and Google is 'just an advertising' company at it's core. But it's one of three major providers of the most important online service, and there's every reason to believe it will become more important and essential.
Mark my comments (and I did have some dumb statements) as being about the market for PC games. I know that my friends are not the universe and I know a couple of hardcore PC gamers. But in college the difference between the PC and the Super was light-years. The difference between GT4 and PC racing games isn't that apparent, and that's mostly a matter of economics, not hardware!
MMORPG's are staying on the PC, and if the developers could make 50 of these and sell all of their subscriptions, they would. But the market isn't that large, see: Motor City, Dragon Empires, Sims Online, etc.
Your reasons why PC gaming is fine (the first 4 reasons anyway) is also why developers are abandoning the PC. Rethink it from the business perspective. $500 computers and cheap games are the problem, not the solution. Without licensing fees, the hardware maker isn't as much, the software makers aren't paid as much (and deal with MORE piracy, though of course consoles have that problem, too, my mistake).
I also wanted to say that M$ originally SAID they were bringing out the XBOX to encourage PC games to be developed (so they admitted the problem years ago!) and now are switching to an IBM architecture, basically admitting they are more serious about this and that the PC-compatible architecture of the first XBOX was a problem. So there will always be PC games, but the golden era is over, and the A-List titles are starting to thin out. Note that M$ stopped developing sports titles for the PC after the XBox started (it didn't hurt that they sucked, but since when did that stop them?).
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Because in the beginning PCs were made by engineers, and they made boxes to hold stuff. They didn't make boxes for your living room, because computers were supposed to go in basements and under monitors and under desks. Jobs' first Apple was no design marvel, it was a wooden box with lines of silicon inside.
Now Apple makes beautiful machines. So does Ferrari. Neither will find a general audience.
What I can't really answer is why like 90% of cell phones seem to be gray flip phones. Is it really that important not to offend? Is colored plastic that much more expensive? Are the conformity-loving Asian manufacturers who make 90% of the phones to blame? Do they not want to irritate the accessory makers who sell color cases?
Here's what M$ needs: A real business OS, and a real consumer OS. Media Center doesn't work at these prices, and XP Home/Prof. seem to have rubbed off on each other too much. Home should be really easy and colorful compared to Pro. or server. Like comparing Linux with Gnome to Solaris. Of course, we'll always be able to make both versions look like Windows 2000/95, etc. But the Business should be somber with few personalization options, and the Home should look like Linux's 1,000,000,001 customization features, none of them documented or accessible by the regular user account. For example, you should be able to su in Windows, shut down explorer, antivirus, internet access, etc. to squeeze more performace out of PC games. You should be able to access and administrator panel and activate a Mac OS X type search, or widgets, or change the windows bars to tabs, etc. It's time that the oligarchy of Dell, HP, Gateway/Emachines lightens up. They'll have to pay more for support, but Windows desperately needs some excitement for the consumer, outside of piracy, blogging and IM. None of those are exclusive to Windows, after all. They need to let M$ loosen up on the consumer side.
The difference is that Google has many PhD's who actually find their 1/5 work exciting/fun, etc. Google is young enough and smart enough that they could very well keep the 1/5 rule around for a while.
But I think in the long run, you're probably right. Eventually, everything tanks.
Don't just say there will be viruses, when M$ is so acutely aware of the problem. With it being on top of .Net, what makes you think appropriate security won't be implemented? .Net was built with networking and security in mind, and so is Longhorn. Plus, I doubt that the monad shell will be implemented by default for home users - why would they need it?
Can you explain how this will be a boon for virus writers?
Really, with all the open-source 'real' databases, Access is disappearing. Most things are going web-based. Of course, Access will never disappear, there are too many legacy apps.
Small business is not Apple's market. They are consumer oriented, and the Ipod cements that.
How can DEI NOT have rights to 3? It just ain't right.
Apple is totally niche, and here's why:
If they switched to selling OSX, they may become competitive with M$. They may even keep getting relevant updates to M$ Office for Mac. But M$ and Apple would get into a price war that the hardware manufacturers would love, and M$ can simply wait Apple out, since M$ has a huge cash pile and ALSO makes money on every version of Mac Office.
If they ever wanted to compete on hardware alone (ha, ha), they'd run into a similar problem, in that Dell has made it a commodity business, and Dell, etc. have more money and current customers.
I think what will help is that Intel has access to mobile, integrated chipsets, and is motivated to push design forward. Also, I'm thinking they could return to a slate design, following M$ and copying them instead of vice versa. This is the sort of thing Apple should be good at, and Apple knows they can't coast on Ipods forever. And as we've seen with the Ipod, they can have success building accessories for PCs, which worked reasonably well for palmpilot, etc.
It doesn't matter what you sell, THE most important feature is the price. Consumers DO buy decent items, but no matter how much you charge for a pair of pants, it's just meant to cover your ass.
Let's look at pants. 50 years ago, most people wore slacks most of the time, and paid a lot for each pair, and then payed specialists just to dryclean them. Now I go to work in jeans, and pay virtually nothing to get them washed in my own washer/dryer. The jeans are the better product, not worse. Price doesn't mean something better, and Walmart isn't evil. The jeans last longer, I can do more in them, and I feel better wearing them than the slacks. My Adidas are (adjusting for inflation) like 10 times cheaper than dress shoes from 1950's and like 10 times better for my knees.
You may not realize it, but you're calling for a return to elitism, not quality. If you want better quality, no one has put LL Bean out of business, so go ahead. But when pants are $10 to replace 'better quality' doesn't mean anything. 'Quality' clothes are for weddings and management.
And I sincerely believe that quality and creativity are usually opposite attributes- a craftsman needs repetition to get really high quality, and Edison needed thousands of low-quality failures to CREATE a new invention, the light bulb. After Edison's initial burst, it took years to get a 'quality' light bulb. Look at japanese carpentry, high quality, high price, lowest creativity, hasn't change in years. It's only in software, people think quality and creativity go hand in hand, but remember that Apple hardware and software is about craftsmanship, and studying usage, not about pure invention. They're no more creative than M$, just slicker.
Walmart has actually pioneered technology use in retailing, and M$ has done a lot of good research. So lay off. You're not smart because you don't shop at Walmart.
1. Until the robber barons, monopolies could corner the market, then do anything they wanted, harming the public.
2. M$ isn't quite the same, I agree. But there is a difference between including solitaire that hurts the card game makers, and including a media player that captures an entire broadcast market. Notice, the solitaire game has only one executable file to delete, the media player actually 'breaks' Windows. And in the media game, the pre-installed player makes you the default format.
3. Netscape sucked because they couldn't afford to improve their product after a monopolist started giving it away for free. No one's going to starve to death, but M$ was scared and acted predatory, and so they should be punished. But then, time moves on, and no one could charge for a browser, or a media player, nowadays (I know they have premium players).
4. Unchecked, M$ will eventually lock in movies and music, charge extra for playing them, get in league with Hollywood and the Chinese gov't (to stop piracy), and make even more money. A Media Center PC is the idea, and it costs a lot more money. And no movie-maker wants $10 DVDs to last forever- the Xbox and PS3 are going to charge more for games, and I'm sure Hollywood is coming up with a plan, too. If there were no monopoly laws, M$ would simply crush everything. Who can do business without their OS? Nobody.
5.Yes, you pointed out Linux, etc. Businesses are technically free to adopt Linux and OOO, etc. If Toyota had 95% market share, I'd still sue them if I couldn't uninstall the Toyota radio. And I wouldn't be surprised if the dealers refused to sell a model WITHOUT a Toyota radio, after a court ruled that Toyota had to offer one.
While I like some of what you said, /. is open to all 'politics and religion'. The M$ products have a real problem, while I accept that utility software will continue to be included with Windows, it would benefit the customer immensely to be able to pick and choose, and uninstall things. But M$ has never served the customer this way.
Worse, media players and browsers aren't simply utility software, they're more akin to TV and stereos. No one wants Sony limiting what you can watch on TVs they sell, or a CD player that gives MTV ads every time you turn it on. M$ has simply abused their monopoly power in this realm - and the courts agree. Personally, I pay too much for a computer to have M$ shove their advertising down my throat after purchase.
The analogy is a car. I can't change the engine without a lot of money and grief, but I ought to be able to change the CD player.
I'm sorry, you're going to have to limit yourself to one of the other 10,000 distributions available.
Google's stuff might as well be publicly available betas, it's the cheapest and most realistic form of testing, and it allows them to ramp up server demand.
Most consumers like me never heard of 'beta' until Google started up. So I assume their meaning is just as good as yours, because popular usage trumps tradition and logic (which is why a generation of students will spell googol google!).
Why restrict beta tests to 'expert-only' invitations? Since people CAN use this service productively, I'm glad they allow access in 'beta' form. And now they've elicited a free list of bugs and features that should be added - and from their supposed competition, no less.
Finally, Google is an advertising company, not a shrink-wrap software company. No doubt they open up public betas because it draws eyeballs, and that just doesn't work for Gale's licensing-based sales model.
Personally, I don't think Academic journals need publishers anymore. Every prof puts their papers online, and universities certainly have enough free resources to offer html articles and links to sources. It's kind of embarrassing that scholars still use regular journals. Just keep them online, and when someone wants it, they'll print it out- a waste of paper, but students just make a zillion copies, anyway.
Here's what kills me: one of the major expenses of a college library are the journal subscriptions (whose prices are rising due to consolidation), and they serve professors, who are the ones who write the journals to begin with!
I just bought a new laptop and I thought it was so corny. I have a wireless network, network cables, RoadRunner cable internet, but I have to plug into a phone line to activate? What happens when I switch to cell phones - or lose my telephone cables? I guess I pull out my copy of Win2k, that's what.
"Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%;
Windows NT popularity was reduced from 13.5% to about 10%; and
Windows XP became the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs."
I don't think ME was ever popularly deployed in businesses. I shudder to think about it. Win2k was available then.
Forget the 9x series. 98 can still get worms. Use Windows 2000 - though I hear M$ may end support! ;)
15 years ago, you payed more than a thousand dollars to run a couple office programs. No one in their right mind would pay that much today. I have an AMD ~500 mgz chip computer with ~300 mgs RAM that can run Windows 2000 and Office 2000 quickly. I only run into problems when I browse to ESPN.com, and then only because the hard drive is a little slow. You can get a much better computer for $300 today.
/. user, but I think I'm pretty close to the average user.
More importantly, a $300 computer can play CDs, 3d computer games, surf the internet, run Windows XP, Office XP and download and runs thousands of open-source applications with a lousy $30-a-month broadband account. Your thousands of dollars computer from 1990 can't even come close to that functionality, and we all know that.
So unless you're playing bleeding edge 'Half-Life 2', you're not spending more than $700 or so on a computer? What's the point? I spent that on my laptop, and I've barely used these major features: Microsoft Works, the CD burner, the DVD player, the M$ Media Player. 99% of the time, I surf wirelessly on my couch, and that's why I bought it (and my wireless router) 3 months ago. That's pretty much everyone's core use for PCs now. Unless you're at work, you're online and on email. Even there, it's mostly what I do.
Of course, maybe I'm no average
You could search for php files you edited 5 or 6 days ago.
Don't tell the insurance companies that the damages are preposterous!
I think you're wrong about OS/2. Developers didn't like it because of market reasons. It wasn't a consumer OS, and no matter what you think about OS/2, the marketing and appearance of Windows 95 KILLED IBM in the consumer space, and in the business space, Microsoft had better value and had support from hardware makers. I think all this porting talk is just a small thing developers worry about. Developers follow the money.
Apple appeals to a different market than IBM, and always will. The consumer market is where Apple has it's biggest successes. It doesn't matter what you can/can't port or run on Apple, because people purchase Apples for simplicity, home use and high-end graphics. You mostly can't replace these things with emulated Windows apps, so the Apple won't lose it's appeal.
Listen, OS/2 was terrific engineering. But IBM couldn't win in the market - their fate was essentially set when IBM clones appeared. It's the same reason that Apple faltered at the same time- nothing about porting software, it's about competing against the huge Wintel biosphere with expensive, proprietary stuff. IBM left the PC OS business essentially because they had other options, and Apple didn't. Apple found a market that worked for them, and they've stuck around long enough to gain ground back at this opportune time.
I know this move won't help Intel with the PC makers, so Intel has finally given up on M$. They clearly see that their integrated chip designs work better in Apple's economic model because Apple doesn't have to leave their options open with AMD. Apple can sell at higher prices and people will pay. With Dell, HP, etc., their competition keeps driving the price of Intel's components down, and M$ doesn't budge on the OS, so I'd make a deal with Apple, too. The future is integrated systems like consoles and cell phones (Microsoft Cell OSs run on non-Intel), not these monstrosities called Personal Computers. Despite the prices, Apple is closer to selling information appliances than HP/Dell/Lenovo/Gateway+Windows is. Does anyone else think the Media Center PC is a disaster in the marketplace?
The computer market is getting crowded and messy.
I thought this article was so pro-M$, that it was embarassing. I mean, don't you get the sense these M$ problems made him a lot of money? Because I did.
And declaring how much better they are NOW? Doesn't it matter that we still spend millions of dollars on anti-everything software, and lose additional money it terms of resources spent to run that software?
I'd love to do one of those massive statistics estimates, where judging that every Windows computer connected to the Internet is running anti-virus, and that takes 10% of resources including updates, M$ security costs the country $3 bil, etc.... you get the point. This should be a bigger deal. Lots of individuals stop using their computer because of these hassles and money, and businesses soldier on because they feel they have no choice.
And I'm sure M$ is crying that their constant massive updates are killing dial-up and making millions in Windows Security software and consulting, like with this author.
Microsoft shipped WIN2K with IIS, it's not stand alone and you certainly can't purchase it for a non-Windows OS. And most of the worms didn't need IIS to bring down the Internet. I think we SHOULD all gripe about Win2K and IIS, and I think that the article was far too kind.
An OS that needs gigs of updates is no OS, it's an embarassment. Linux needs updates, but it can certainly be functional without hours of downloading.
The best mobile chips are probably made by Intel, in general. They are certainly the best selling and best supported ones. AMD doesn't really do this, yet. Switching from IBM to AMD wouldn't gain Apple much, because they'd still be weak in laptop chips, basically.
A lot of their brilliant stuff is behind scenes and purposefully secret. It can't compare to Bell Labs, but then the Internet is a vast, international group brain, and we're not sure how important it is itself. Google provides search, and that's really the core function of our "shared memory", the Internet. Plenty of people can/will provide search, and Google is 'just an advertising' company at it's core. But it's one of three major providers of the most important online service, and there's every reason to believe it will become more important and essential.
Mark my comments (and I did have some dumb statements) as being about the market for PC games. I know that my friends are not the universe and I know a couple of hardcore PC gamers. But in college the difference between the PC and the Super was light-years. The difference between GT4 and PC racing games isn't that apparent, and that's mostly a matter of economics, not hardware!
MMORPG's are staying on the PC, and if the developers could make 50 of these and sell all of their subscriptions, they would. But the market isn't that large, see: Motor City, Dragon Empires, Sims Online, etc.
Your reasons why PC gaming is fine (the first 4 reasons anyway) is also why developers are abandoning the PC. Rethink it from the business perspective. $500 computers and cheap games are the problem, not the solution. Without licensing fees, the hardware maker isn't as much, the software makers aren't paid as much (and deal with MORE piracy, though of course consoles have that problem, too, my mistake).
I also wanted to say that M$ originally SAID they were bringing out the XBOX to encourage PC games to be developed (so they admitted the problem years ago!) and now are switching to an IBM architecture, basically admitting they are more serious about this and that the PC-compatible architecture of the first XBOX was a problem. So there will always be PC games, but the golden era is over, and the A-List titles are starting to thin out. Note that M$ stopped developing sports titles for the PC after the XBox started (it didn't hurt that they sucked, but since when did that stop them?).